Get yourself out there: how to mark your business presence online

With Twitter, Facebook and up to the minute news taking over the advertising world as we know it, it’s important now more than ever to understand the benefits of marketing your business online. This is more than just good advertising – it also encompasses good use of social media and web design. Here are five ways that you can use the web to get your business noticed.

Get the look

The multitude of custom-built website designs is enough to make any client yawn these days, so try to get a little creative when it comes to designing your website. Good website design is about aesthetics and user accessibility – take GamingClub.co.uk, for example. With quirky, unusual fonts and easy to recognise brands (i.e. Tomb Raider) on its homepage, this immediately draws the user in, while its casino games are clearly displayed to give the surfer instant access.

Be a social butterfly

What use is a beautifully designed website if nobody knows about it? One of the wonders of the modern age of digital marketing is social media, so get tweeting. Studies show that 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks, so make sure you use a Twitter handle at the bottom of every one of your web pages.

Social Media

Blog till you drop

Another way of building up your online presence is to use the power of the written word. Even the biggest named brands use blogs to highlight the simple fact that behind the business model are people, giving your brand a more personal touch and making your prospective clients feel closer to your product. Blogging is a great way to inform others about any work you have done in the local community, with the opportunity to post photos as well as large walls of text. To use it most effectively, make sure you post your blog posts to Twitter or Facebook, and keep them to no more than 500 words, with hyperlinks at appropriate places.

Link back and forth

One of the more subtle ways of online marketing, you can liaise with other businesses and ask them to put hyperlinks to your business on their website. This is a great way of attracting customers almost without them realising – rather than using a large, intrusive ad on the right hand side of a page, a hyperlink, for example, within somebody’s blog, is a more subtle link. Studies show that users regularly spend no more than 10-20 seconds on a website, so make sure that the link they’re going to next is yours.

Be accessible

As we forgo our laptops in favour of tablets, smart phones and more, it’s important to make sure your website is as up to date with the technology as your clients are. So, make sure that your ads are well placed on a page, rather than for example, lurking inaccessibly on the bottom right hand side, and if you can, try to create a mobile version of your site to make it easy to read for those on the go.

Must Know Social Media Stats for 2014

The simple fact of the matter is – the things we used to invest time in and that worked on social media no longer do, so it’s crucial to invest in the social media the provides the best ROI. This means you need the most up to date data on offer to make those rewarding decisions.

Recently, social media guru Jeff Bullas provided the world with a whole host of statistics on social media and the trends that we’re seeing at the moment. We’re going to take a closer look.

globalization concept

The Main Takeaways

Social media is widely utilised across the planet and more influential than it’s ever been. Social influences how people think about us, how often they see us and also influence search results more-so than ever before. So, it’s an imperative to enhance your presence. Here are some stats:
• 72% of web browsers are on social media
• 89% of 18-29 year olds are users
• 72% of 30-49 year olds use social media
• 60% of 50-60 year olds use social media
• 43% of over-65s use social
• 71% do so via mobile

Facebook

The biggest of all social media sites, Facebook is a must for businesses to be on if they’re to be taken seriously. It’s not as much of a monopoly as it once was but it’s still extremely important to business. Here are some Facebook stats to get you thinking:
• Facebook users – 1.15Bn
• 47% of Americans say it’s a buying influencer
• The average American is online for 16% of an hour each day
• 70% of the new customers marketers get are via the platform

Twitter

Big changes to Twitter in the last 12 months mean it can now showcase video and rich media content. This has made it increasingly influential for sellers and means it can easily increase leads, engagement and brand exposure for business. Of course, the addition of social media PPC services and advertising also has an impact on Twitter, as it’s had on Facebook and Google before it.
• Twitter has 550m subscribers
• Twitter has 215m active users
• Twitter grew 44% in the last two years to Jan 2014
• Twitter is used by 34% of markers to generate leads

Google+

Google+, owned by Google, has the most impact on search engines according to statistics and Google+1s are seen as an influential ranking factor, as does AuthorRank. The site has achieved a lot in an understated manner in less than three years and impacts the way we produce content not just for social, but also blogs and on-site too.
• There are over 1Bn active accounts
• Google+ has over 360m active users each month
• Google+ grew at a 33% rate last year
• The 45-56 year old bracket has increased usage by 56% since 2012.

Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram

The visual social media sites are incredibly influential and social media networks such as Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram are only going to increase in popularity.
• Pinterest has 20m active users a month
• Instagram has 150m active users a month
• YouTube has 1bn active users a month

Social media in its more traditional form and also the more visual forms is worth investment more-so now than ever. Creating a complete strategy that incorporates your content and these social channels, as well as email and web design will provide you with the leverage to address your needs realise your social media potential and make 2014 a very successful year.

SocialAdr – Social Bookmarking Tool

SocialAdr Free Bookmarking Tool

Socialadr Introduction

I always find that it is a good thing to have a diverse number of link sources when trying to promote your website as it seems that too many incoming links from the one range of IP addresses does not have as much impact. In addition, Google and other major search engines are starting to put more weight on social networking when it comes to passing link equity to your website or blog, and this is where SocialAdr comes into play.

SocialAdr is a 100% free to use Social Bookmarking Service. Socialadr works by sharing your bookmarks (urls) across approximately 20 different social accounts (Twitter, Delicious etc) that belong to thousands of other users. Socialadr has a small disadvantage in that it requires an hours work to get all the social accounts set up initially, however it is worth doing this as once the initial setup is complete, it takes very little time each day to keep SocialAdr working away for you.

Here are the steps you need to take to get Socialadr up and running:

1. Sign up for a free SocialAdr account.
2. Use the SocialAdr Setup wizard to create each of your social accounts.
3. Click the “Quick Share” button in the Socialadr interface to post other peoples links to your social accounts.
4. Create some bookmarks on Socialadr that you would like other users to share.

Lets go through the steps in a little bit more detail.

1. Sign up to Socialadr is easy. Click Register, scroll to the bottom of the very long page and click on “Get started with SocialAdr Now!”. You will then be taken to a screen when you can enter your Name and Email address. Again, scroll down to the bottom of the next screen and click “No thanks, Free for Now”. There is a final bribe page to get you to sign up. Once again, scroll down to the bottom and click “No Thanks, take me to registration”.

2. Once you have registered with Socialadr you are ready to set up your social accounts. You can use existing social accounts such as your existing Twitter account if you like. However, as I really didn’t want to be sending out strange and wonderful bookmarks to my friends I created approximately 20 new brand-new accounts especially for SocialAdr and I suggest you do the same. Using the wizard, create each account and populate the log-on details so that SocialAdr can sign-in and post on your behalf.

3. Once you have all your social accounts added to Socialadr, you simply have to click the “Quick Share” button and share the 5 bookmarks that come up. This will earn you some credits. You will get a notification to your email as each bookmark is shared. This can get annoying after a while so click on settings and then Notifications to turn some of the notifications off. Note that you will only be able to do a “Quick Share” in Socialadr one time per day.

4. Finally, create the bookmarks you want to share using Socialadr. You can do this by clicking on Bookmarks, Add Bookmark. You need to enter the URL of the page you want to promote as well as a title, a description and tags. The title and the description should be spun. If you do not already have a spinning tool I would highly recommend The Best Spinner. As the name suggests, it IS the best spinner and it will save you lots of time compared to the free alternatives due to its huge community-driven database of synonyms (you can get by with either Content Professor or Jetsubmitter 2). Create as many bookmarks as you would like to share on Socialadr but a couple will get you started and you can always come back and add more when you have time.

The Best Spinner Sign-up

Content Professor

Socialadr Maintenance

And that is it done! You should log in to your SocialAdr account every day, click the “Quick Share” button and share your 5 links to keep the Socialadr credits rolling in.

SocialAdr

In addition to social bookmarking using Socialadr, you may want to build some links to your website using Linxboss and at the same time get 125-150 FREE LINKS to your website. See our Linxboss Review for further information.

If you know of any other great free social bookmarking tools please let me know in the comments below as this is the only one I have found to be any good.