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Guide to Getting Started with a Blog for Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Guide to Getting Started with a Blog for Your Business

Having a blog as part of your business website is a brilliant way to help to connect with the customers that you have, and it also adds some strength to your business, and gives you some clout as a brand. However, even with these benefits, there are many businesses that haven’t yet latched on to the idea that having a blog is something that is going to be beneficial. Many businesses think that a blog can be something that is time-consuming. It can take some planning to come up with ideas for posts, and actually getting them written, but that shouldn’t be what stops you from launching one for your business. The time and planning really is worth the effort.

A blog for your business website is not a waste going to be a waste of time. In fact, it has been found that it can be one of the most cost-effective ways that you can market and promote your business, and can help to get more leads, and as a result, sales and customers. You can establish yourself as an authority in your industry, when you share relevant and correct information, and it can help you to get found more easily on the world wide web. Not only that, it is pretty straightforward to blog. You can always outsource it too, but with so many businesses doing it, and seeing the benefit, it needs to be something that you at least consider. With that in mind, here are some of the top tips on how to start a professional blog for your business.

Write for your customers

Writing for your business blog is something that is going to be different to writing for your own personal blog. Although some examples can come into play, they should be business related to demonstrate a point, rather than drawing on personal experience. The business blog is not all about you as an individual. You should always bear in mind that the people who are going to read the blog, are your customers or potential customers. So the content that is out there, needs to be written for them and their needs. Think about who your ideal customer is, and then write content according to that.

Great web hosting

If you already have a website, then the chances are that you are already happy with what you have. However, for a blog, you should have some great hosting, to really maximize the benefits of blogging, and making sure that the look and design of your site works well, and fits in with your brand. There are a variety of options, such as cloud hosting, or using a platform that is specific to blogging, like WordPress, for example. You could even consider something like Hostgator WordPress hosting which is hosting that is designed specifically to cater to any WordPress websites. When you combine cloud and WordPress hosting together, as in this case, it could help you to get a fast, secure, and reliable website and blog. You want the site to be quick to load and reliable, otherwise people will just get bored.

Content is king

In order for readers to stick to your blog, and keep coming back for more, the content that you create needs to be great! Not to mention that Google loves fresh content, so posting regularly helps to have new content for it to index, and helps your website to rank well in searches. Having great content is how you establish your business website as an authority in your industry. When you write about what you know, then it will make the writing easy. As a result, it will be more comfortable and engaging, and keep readers coming back for more.

If you have a business that sells garden furniture, for example, it can be something that can be a little dry, but there are lots of ways that you can go with it. If you are an expert on all things garden and furniture related, and what will work best in different settings or conditions, then that is the kind of content that you should run with. It is all having content that is relevant and interesting, even if on the surface you might not think that it is.

You should also look to answer questions that you think your readers might have. Going on to the garden furniture topic again, for example, you could talk about storage and weather conditions, such as looking after your furniture in winter. This is potentially a question that your customers could have. When they know that they can come to you for all things garden related and have their questions answered, it is more likely that they will come back again.

Little and often

Blog posts don’t need to be long essays. So it is a good idea to keep them short, sweet, and to the point, answering questions along the way. Unless someone is looking to thoroughly look into and research a particular topic, people will only be looking for quick information that they can skim read. As a guide, it is a good idea to aim your blog posts to be around 250 to 500 words. If it is going to involve more words to get your point across more clearly, then that is obviously something that is completely fine to do. There is also no set time to post, or how often you should post. Just think about being consistent. If once a week is all you can manage, then just make sure that it is once a week. Customers will want to come back to see new content each time.

One of the key points is to mix things up a little. Of course, a blog is there to help convert site visitors into sales. But don’t make it all about your products and recommending them. Mix up your posts with plenty of images, link to relevant articles, and even share videos. Engage with those that leave comments, and get the whole team involved; it will make a difference.

How to Boost Web Traffic to Your Company Site

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, How to Boost Web Traffic to Your Company SiteWhen you’re trading online, you need customers to visit your website. When they do, they browse your pages, get to know your brand, understand your products, and begin doing business with you. It stands to reason, therefore, that when you have fewer individuals visiting your website, you end up with lower profits and fewer sales. In this article, you’ll learn how to boost traffic to your website. Using the tricks of the trade, you’ll bring in more consumers to your website, where you’ll be able to convert them into paying customers.

Digital Advertisements

One of the first solutions you’ll consider when you’re trying to drive traffic to your website is to simply create some marketing material for use online. This can feel like a simple solution, but it can actually take a lot of time to draw up an advert – whether a still image or a video – and make sure that your content is linking back to your site and giving off the right impression. It can also be costly to advertise online. As such, you should only use this option when you can be sure of the return you’ll get on your investment.

SEO Strategy

Meanwhile, you can also employ the strategy of improving your position in search through search engine optimization. This strategy is a long-term one and requires you to identify which search terms people might use to find your business. By identifying these terms and using them in your site copy, you’ll boost your visibility and climb up Google’s rankings on these specific search terms. If you feel you need a helping hand with this strategy, you should contact local business SEO experts at lbmsllc.com to build your strategy alongside you.

Social Media

As always, social media remains one of the greatest assets to small businesses everywhere. With its grassroots feel and free interface, social media is one of the most important assets that you can leverage in order to bring new individuals to your website. It’s absolutely imperative that you set up pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter – as well as new apps like TikTok – in order to find the right audiences to advertise your products and services to. It helps to hire a social media-savvy individual to help you guide your content to the right people over time.

Linking to Other Sites

Finally, if the above tips seem a little adventurous, and you’re looking for instant results without all that much effort, you may find that linking your website to other websites – and their reciprocating – can help share customer bases between allied businesses. This strategy works best when you know the business owners you’re going to cross-pollinate with – so for local businesses in a town, city, or district, this is a great option to share your customer base and your web traffic with companies that you would like to partner with.

There you have it: four important tips for anyone looking to boost their web traffic over the course of 2020, bringing more customers and profits to your business.

5 Ways to Increase Post Engagement on Your Facebook Business Page

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Ways to Increase Post Engagement on Your Facebook Business Page

Are you using Facebook as a platform for your business? Do you notice your post engagement losing some steam?

Post engagement is one of the key metrics that say how effective your Facebook business page is. It measures your followers’ loyalty to your brand.

With 80% of businesses using Facebook in their marketing strategies, you need to increase your Facebook page post engagement. But how do you do it? What are the techniques that you need to start practicing?

Continue reading below as we look at five effective ways to increase your post engagement.

The Value of Post Engagement

What is post engagement on Facebook? As we mentioned earlier, it is a metric that measures the activities your Facebook posts generate.

But why is it important?

Facebook engagement helps increase your social media reach. Your brand will get more exposure. In turn, you will generate more leads faster.

Furthermore, post engagement also serves as a cost-effective way of marketing your products. Instead of paying for expensive TV ads and billboards, social media engagement will cost you very little.

5 Techniques to Boost Your Post Engagement

Part of learning how to grow a Facebook page is managing your posts. Here are five effective ways that will boost the number of interactions on your Facebook account:

1. Timing is Key

Don’t just post on Facebook anytime you want. Instead, schedule your posts accordingly. Post during times when most of your fans are online.

Use a Facebook scheduling tool to determine the best times to publish your posts.

2. Create More Videos

Do most of your posts involve plain text? Try upping the ante by posting more videos.

Users love watching videos. They find it more engaging than plain text. But you need to make your videos entertaining and informative at the same time.

Moreover, post the videos directly to your Facebook page. Avoid posting a link to your videos coming from your YouTube account.

Also, consider publishing interactive Facebook posts. Try doing a Facebook Live once a week. Users love it when they can directly interact with the brands they follow in real-time.

3. Boost and Recycle

Remember your top posts from a month ago? Consider boosting them to increase engagement. Boosting will only cost you a minimal fee.

Alternatively, you should consider recycling your top posts.

When recycling them, tweak the posts a little. You may add a question or incorporate a video or image.

4. Brevity and Quality

Another effective way of increasing engagement is to shorten your posts. Keep them brief as much as you can, as longer posts may bore users.

But make sure your posts do not fall short in quality. Try using witty statements or ask them quick questions.

5. CTA Matters

Last but not least, you need to include a call-to-action (CTA) to your posts. A CTA sends the message that you want to hear from them. Throwing a question at the end of your post is a good option.

You may also create polls to see how they feel about a certain topic. You can go here to learn how to create a poll on Facebook.

Take Your Facebook Business Page to the Next Level

By increasing your Facebook post engagement, you can build your brand faster and create new leads for conversion. But post engagement is only one area you must work on.

Learn more strategies by reading our different articles. We discuss other techniques that will help take your social media pages to the next level.

Now is The Time to Monetize Yourself with a Vlog!

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Now is The Time to Monetize Yourself with a Vlog!

Don’t sit around waiting to be told by the TV when the covid lockdown ends so you can return to your nine-to-five grind or that horrendous night shift job you’ve wanted to leave for years. Now is your chance to capitalize on yourself – your talents, whatever they are, by building an online presence on video platforms and monetizing your web traffic.

Where to start?

Start with your passion!

If you’re not doing what you love to make a living, I’m sorry but you’re doing it all wrong.

Whatever your passion in life, you have gained knowledge and experience which could have immense value to others.

To monetize that passion, all you have to do is let other like-minded people know you exist. One of the easiest ways to do that is by making and uploading videos. Here are some strategic ideas to build an online audience and turn visitors into cash.

Monetizing Video Content

You can monetize your passion with vlogs. Photo by Alexander Mils from Pexels.

Video platforms offer a variety of monetization options. The highest paid YouTubers in 2019 were worth between US$11 and 26 million, according to Forbes. Their videos go viral for various reasons and they become sought after influencers, for a while.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of individuals earn a regular income from YouTube and other monetized video platforms simply for sharing their experiences, ideas, beliefs and projects in video logs or video blogs (vlogs).

With a few thousand subscribers, you can regularly earn a few hundred dollars just for speaking your mind.

Youtubers generally monetize their content in these four ways:

  1. Revenue earned from ads displayed before, during or after their videos through Google Adsense.
  2. Product placement or recommendations in videos for affiliate marketing partners
  3. Directly advertising your own product or services
  4. Accepting donations such as superchat during live streams and support from Patrons through Patreon or a similar account.

There are many alternative platforms to YouTube, where you can create your own channel, post videos free of charge and monetize your content. Here are just a few of them:

  • Patreon – a membership platform that makes it easy for artists and creators to get paid
  • Vimeo – grow your business with video creation, hosting, and marketing tools
  • Dailymotion – News, entertainment, music and sports
  • Instagram TV (IGTV) – Videos for Instagram
  • Twitch – Live streaming platform for gamers

Clearly define your niche and target market

Do this first! It’s really important to narrow down the definition of the one single thing you do really well, or the one single “product” you have to sell.

Selling your product(s) isn’t always a straight forward transaction. There are tangible and intangible products. Your particular product can be anything of value to others such as knowledge, advice, a video, a piece of music, how-to instructions, a whiteboard presentation… Anything which gives your online audience something to take away after watching one of your videos.

Even your personality can be a product. Maybe there’s a million-dollar YouTuber in you bursting to get out. You might have a unique and engaging presentation style that appeals to a particular demographic.

That demographic sliver of the world’s web traffic is your target market. You must aim your marketing directly at them; just as a sniper uses a rifle, not a shotgun.

When you are on target, your audience grows organically and you see improvements in the ratio of conversions in your visitor numbers.

How to Encourage your visitors to perform an action (convert)

A conversion can be anything that has engaged your visitor and prompted them to do something. It could be one of the following:

  • Watch a video
  • Download a file
  • Click on an affiliate link
  • Subscribing for news and updates
  • Make a comment
  • Buy something
  • Click through your web pages
  • Read through a blog post or two

All these actions or conversions can be monetized. The direct sale of a tangible product is obviously a simple financial transaction which directly translates into money.

Downloadable digital products such as books, manuals and music are more profitable, because you only have to make one but can sell it over and over again.

Offering cheap digital products gives you a better chance of improving your conversion rate.

Buy Web Traffic to Boost Video Views

Once you have your video channel up and running, you need views and subscribers to monetize your content.

Most video hosting platforms provide built-in marketing tools to help you increase the size of your audience but you need to bring viewers in from outside too.

If you don’t have one already, get a website to direct web traffic to your videos and centralize your marketing efforts.

Embedding your videos in your website’s landing page is an effective way to boost video views and subscribers. A website visitor watching one of your videos on your web page counts as a conversion.

Gaining popularity organically through search results alone takes a long time. You could be pounding away on social media for years before benefitting from any serious monetization

One of the quickest and cheapest marketing strategies to kick-start video monetization is to buy targeted traffic directly to the web page featuring your video content.

When you buy targeted web traffic from a reputable vendor you can reach real people interested in your niche or based in a specified geographic location. If visitors find your videos interesting and watch them all the way through, you have converted those visitors and will benefit from the video monetization methods mentioned earlier.

The cost of web traffic varies, depending on the number of visitors you want in a specified time period, as well as the variety of niches available to you. Web traffic vendor MaxVisits has a cheap traffic wizard which gives you a variety of transparent options, letting you tweak and fine-tune your web traffic plan to suit your budget and niche audience.

Free & Cheap Video Production Tools

Almost anyone can make and upload videos with a few basic essentials. A standalone video camera is worth investing in if you want to make solid productions with different angles, zoom and other handy features not available on phones and webcams. Most smartphones and webcams will suffice though, if your face or the screen is always the focus of attention.

Free Video Recording & Editing Software

You can produce professional videos without paying a penny by downloading free recording and editing tools. OBS Studio is popular among gamers for live streaming on YouTube and Twitch while playing the latest shoot-em-up. As you can record and stream your own screen with OBS, it’s also handy if you want to make a slideshow or Powerpoint presentation.

Shotcut is a free open source cross-platform specifically for video editing available for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows. You can use it to convert your OBS recordings to Mp4 format to upload to video hosting platforms such as YouTube. You won’t need any more than that, unless you are doing advanced special effects.

Cheap Audio & Video Hardware

If you have a good PC, laptop or mobile phone, you should already have enough internal hardware power to produce videos that are good enough to view on mobile devices. However, to make sure you can produce high quality videos with good sound it’s worth investing in a few essential pieces of hardware.

Good Audio is Essential

The audio quality of a video makes the difference between and a mature and professional production. Bad quality audio with wind, hiss, pops and crackles or low volume is an instant turn off. If there’s one thing you should invest in for your vlogs, it’s a good microphone. Webcam mics just don’t cut the mustard.

There’s a good selection of professional Rode and Cannon brand microphones available at discount rates this April and May with a Media Markt voucher.

Make sure you get a mic with a foam sock to cover it to prevent popping sounds from bursts of wind when you speak or are filming outdoors in the wind. This is one investment you’ll be pleased you made when your voice comes over like a news presenter.

It’ll Be Alright on The Night!

It’s perfectly normal to be nervous for your first vlog. Some prefer to pre-record and edit everything before uploading. Others just throw all caution to the wind and go live, warts and all.

See what works best for you. Interacting with your audience during a live stream can really help make your broadcast entertaining and engaging.

Don’t procrastinate. Get proactive and start earning a living just being you!

Why Your Business Needs an Online Presence

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Why Your Business Needs an Online PresenceThere are many ways available to market your business. Discovering which media is best to reach your customers takes patience and research. Some of the most popular avenues to explore today involve the internet and social media. Here are a few reasons to try online marketing.

Bigger Audience

Your Orlando web design gets more views from around the world than an article in the paper will. Customers can shop your company at any time of the day whether you are open or closed. If you have merchandise for them to select and pay for, they can do this on their own time. They can also schedule an appointment with you there if you offer a service instead of goods. If they are pleased with what they find on your site, they will share it with family and friends. Their word of mouth will bring in more sales and revenue into your company. You are able to reach new customers on their schedule with little help from your sales staff. However, be sure to add a link so that you can be contacted with questions from those people who want to work with you.

Stay Competitive

Nearly every organization has either a website, social media site or both. To stay up with your competition, you need a spot for your customers to find you and learn about your company. Put as much information as you can concerning your business on your sites so that your clientele can learn what you have to offer them. If they are local, they will visit your physical store after they shop your virtual one. Also the higher you can get your name on a Google search, the more traffic you will drive to your internet presence.

Builds Relationships With Customers

Having a spot on the internet where clients can review the products you sell or the services you provide can be intimidating. However, the way you work with them also displays how great your customer service can be. Customers that are pleased with your company will leave critiques that tell the world what they like about your business and why they recommended it. If you do get evaluations that state problems that a customer had, you have the opportunity to address them online and offer to make it right for them. When you do this, others who are reading these reviews will see that your client’s happiness is a priority to you.

Affordable Advertising

Another benefit of online marketing is that it costs less to reach more people than the mediums you normally know. Hiring someone to design your website can be expensive. However, when it is finished, the fee to keep it on the internet is minimal. It can be even cheaper if you or a staff member has the ability to assemble it and upload the final product. Putting an advertisement on social media is a fraction of the cost of a television or radio ad and reaches a much larger audience. It can also post at all hours of the day, drawing potential clients to shop your company even while your physical store is closed and your staff is gone. Marketing on the internet and by social media lets your advertising dollar go farther and reach more people.

Change Plans In an Instant

Online marketing allows you to use trial and error in your advertising that traditional methods are unable to do. You can promote a certain product to a select demographic on social media to see if it will work. If the results are slow, you can change up what you are trying to sell or widen the criteria of customers you want to reach. This can be done within hours of your first post. You can extend a campaign that is working or shut down one that is having issues. The option to tweak your ads until they work is in your hands. This also works for your website as well. If you receive feedback from customers that your site needs more photos, videos, or colors, you can make these changes before your client looks at it again. Constantly adding to and changing your social pages and website will bring people back over and over to see what is new.