Marketing Techniques Businesses Need to Know
Marketing Tools and Tips the Every Business Needs to Know for Social Media Marketing, Continued Education, Business Evaluation, and Additional Opportunities
Below are tips and tools that I have discovered this past month. I am confident that you will be able to use at least one of them in your professional or personal life. Understanding the tools available to you is essential when growing your business.
Continue to Learn
- Cheat sheets! Learn just about anything with these cheat sheets regarding HTML, organization, Finance, Technology, and so much more. http://ow.ly/fy7tl.
- This is fantastic! Who knew you could take free online courses from prestigious Universities? Review suggest 10 courses.
- Learn small business marketing tools for free to small and medium-sized business. Visit Site.
- Turning entrepreneurs into marketers for free. Courses, webinars, and tutorials available to assist you.
- Small business research whitepapers available for free for your technical decisions.
Client Management
- Free client management program that allows you track your contacts and more. Free with upgradeable features at a low-cost.
- Customer relationship management and sales force automation for free. Visit site.
Blogging/Website Content
- SEO optimization for your blog content. If you are like me who has created a blog to share information and gain awareness of your company, you want to make sure that your content is optimized for SEO. Some tips include:
- Use your titles wisely! Search engines use a set number of characters with searches, be sure you are on the list.
- Pull quotes. By posting quotes from your content and highlighting it, you draw your reader’s attention to read the quote and want to read more.
- Add pictures, captions, color, and graphs. Want to turn text into an image? Visit recitethis.com.
- Use subheadings for a more attractive post while allowing the user to scan your content easily.
- Use custom URL’s, links, labels, and the search description. Do not leave anything blank.
- Want to learn about SEO rather than pay a company to do it for you? You can find resources at: Learning SEO.
Explore Additional Social Media Platforms
- The platform, atthepool.com, is gaining traction in the business community. Facebook is great for connecting with individuals you already know, but this platform encourages you to connect with people you do not know, but share similar interests.
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As I am sure you already know, a plethora of social media platforms exist and are tailored to specific groups of people. After you have identified your target market as mentioned in my post, “Before beginning a social media campaign, you must first develop a marketing plan,” you can then explore the other media platforms outside of the top 3: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. A great way to discover these other formats can be found by visiting: http://namechk.com/.
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Quora should not be forgotten. Quora is a lot like LinkedIn’s Answer forum (if you are not using this section of LinkedIn, you must do it now.) Quora is a social media platform that connects individuals with answers to anything he or she want to learn about. You are also able to answer a question to be viewed as an expert in your industry.
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Do not forget to network. Traditional networking is as important today as it was before the Internet. Want to learn about meetings applicable to you? Meetup is a fantastic site to get you connected to events you need to be a part of.
Enhance Your Online Experience
- This website allows you to schedule your tweets, expand your Twitter profile, track your keywords, and shorten URL’s for free or upgrade for a small fee. Visit Site.
- Hootsuite allows you to track up to five social media platforms, schedule your posts, and view recent activity.
- Analyze your headlines for the emotional marketing value (EMV) percentage. The higher your percentage, the more likely you are reaching your audience on an emotional level. This is a good thing. It has been proven that a higher emotional value engages customers more.
- Be listed correctly on the Internet! Not sure if you are? Go to Getlisted.org.
- Host your webcasts for free or paid sites at blip.tv, iTunes, or Libsyn.
- Add Facebook application to your fan page. You can add static HTML pages, your twitter account, blog posts, events, shared files, and so much more. Use the applications to promote your business effectively.
Evaluate Aspects of Your Business
- Use these calculators to evaluate the different aspects of your business.
- Understand your competitors through research. Spend time researching your competitors through search engine inquiries, social media platform searches, and Google Alerts. With Google Alerts you can set up alerts specific to your competition and receive an email any time new information is found. It is free, requires very little time, and is effective.
- Calculate marketing ROI with this calculator.
Additional Useful Tools
- Have you experienced the situation that you are on-the-go and have a brilliant idea? Unfortunately, you may be away from a piece of paper or your computer. Evernote is a free solution to save your ideas, thoughts, and experiences; capture notes from meetings and events; create tasks and delegate later; and improve marketing productivity.
- Searching for compelling data but do not want to spend a lot of time through the usual search options? Factbrowser is the tool for you. You can easily browse for data specific for an industry, geographical area, customer demographics, and technology methods.
I will post additional tools and tips as I discover them, and I encourage my viewers to share their own tips they would like to share. Want to stay connected to the AGM blog to continue learning a variety of marketing and public relations strategies? Click on the “Follow” button at the top of your screen.
–Amber
Marketing and public relations strategist assisting businesses by filling the marketing and public relations gap. Want to learn more about how we can help you grow your business? Learn More about AGM
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