If you love to stay up-to-date on the latest business news, it’s hard not to come across some alarming numbers about what is happening in the economy and how businesses are performing. Luckily, there are ways of staying ahead of the curve and learning about how to be successful in any industry by following these tips from top professionals. A firm’s ________ describes how a firm will produce a superior return on invested capital.
For example, online marketing expert Russell Porch has several great tips that can help anyone develop a stronger online presence and build their personal brand. You will find him advising companies on this subject since 2002 when he started Webbmedia Group Online Marketing Services (OGOMS). He shares his advice here.
1. Use Social Media for Free.
This is an easy way to build an online presence, especially starting with a brand new business. You can start building your brand using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which are all free. Then after you build some sophistication in your social media presence and use these tools to promote your products or services, you can make money by offering additional services or products.
2. Put Your Content in the Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Places.
The most important search engine place is Google so you need to be sure they see (and trust) your content and links to generate organic traffic by acting in a professional way on the site. However, when you have searched for a term to find out more about SEO and Google, you probably came across SEO writing. This is an important topic as it speaks to the various components of SEO, which are not all that difficult to understand.
The components include the domain name you want your site to be found on, keywords or search terms that people use to find what they want online (and Google wants them to do this) and the content of the site.
3. Have a Well-Designed Site.
A well-designed site is one that looks presentable and impressive. It will make a great impression on your customers and they will trust your site more than a poor-looking one. Your customers need to trust the information you have on the site.
4. Have a Professional Portfolio or Website.
This includes your LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter pages as well as other social media accounts that can help with developing a strong online presence for different reasons, such as search engine optimization (SEO), familiarity and credibility by building your personal brand or increasing traffic to your website for customer support or sales.
5. Offer Free Content to Start With (such as Blog Posts)
and then Offer Premium Content.
Free content will vary depending on what you do. Your customers can enjoy blog posts, photos, videos and much more. But after they trust you, they may want to pay for premium content such as special reports, tools and other resources that help customers to achieve what they want.
6. Avoid Self Promotion and Focus on Selling.
Studies show that people simply don’t trust people who are only in it for themselves and do not provide anything of value. If you are going to sell something, you need to give something to the customers in terms of free content or in-kind offers or services, such as professional consultations, videos on how-to’s and more.
7. Use Image Files Properly (they should be at least 5000 pixels).
People today have become used to high-quality images so they expect them when visiting websites without even thinking about it. Some people are also looking for images on social media pages, such as Facebook and Twitter.
8. Write Clearly for Web (75% of people do not read text that is not even one word long).
This means that you should use short sentences and paragraphs, which will make your writing easier to understand. You don’t have to be a wordsmith but you will need to convey your message in a way that makes sense and makes the reader want to know more. You can always add links or images to a post if you want but those should be used sparingly because they tend to weaken the post’s message.
9. Have a Call to Action.
People have to know what you want them to do next so you have to include a call to action that makes it clear what this is. Make it obvious and easy for the reader and do not include more than one call to action at a time.
10. Use Links Proactively (as an important element of online marketing).
Search engines find links extremely important so they will see these as important components of your content and your site’s value. However, you can only use links when they actually work. This means that if you have a link to another site, the user should be taken to that site and not to a page on your site for example. Links should also be related to the text and where they are placed on the page, as well as look professional with no spelling/grammar mistakes.
Summary:
The bottom line is that a website should look professional through excellent design and proper use of the various components mentioned above. If you are going to be focused on selling online and online marketing, I recommend that you do your research and evaluate different platforms for each part of your business. You need to be aware of them all and know how they fit together in order to provide the best experience for your customers as well as achieve your goals.
