social media

5 Key Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers (Without Buying Them!)

By |July 15th, 2016|

While dubious-sounding ads promising to increase your Twitter followers by thousands in rapid fashion are ubiquitous, how should you actually approach attracting new followers in a way that genuinely benefits your business?

This post gives you five key ways to increase your Twitter followers and build a genuine community that truly benefits your business for the long-term.

But first, what exactly are the benefits for your business from attracting more followers?

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Using Tumblr for Business: The Ultimate Guide

By |May 2nd, 2016|

Should you be using Tumblr for your business? Perhaps.

It’s not a platform many businesses are familiar with. They struggle to understand it. At first glance, it’s all a bit overwhelming.

Some even dip a toe in the water, only to give up far too early.

Many others, still believing cheap shortcuts work for online visibility, post content on Tumblr as just somewhere-else-to-publish-confortent, with little real understanding or appreciation of the platform or its users. They consequently fail to get much if any benefit from it.

Is Tumblr just yet another social site? 

Or is using Tumblr for business worth investigating further? What are the benefits?

That’s what this post aims to help you determine, as well as show you what Tumblr really is, and exactly how to use it for business purposes. I’ll even show you examples of real businesses successfully using the platform.
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Ultimate Guide To Social Meta Tags: Open Graph And Twitter Cards

By |February 1st, 2016|

By adding some simple social meta tags to your website or blog, you can improve how your content is displayed on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. This improves your visibility and increases your traffic by making your updates more appealing for both clicks and shares.

After all, when you use the right image, descriptive text, and so on for a sponsored update on social, you can improve engagement (including click-throughs) by often 100s of percent.

The same principle applies for organic updates – normal, every day, run-of-the-mill updates on social – and social meta tags are how you control exactly what’s shown, including:

  • The title
  • The description
  • The image

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“My Customers Aren’t On Facebook And Twitter!” – Here’s Why Your Business Still Should Be…

By |January 15th, 2016|

An interesting email came in from a customer a few weeks back stating that Facebook and Twitter simply weren’t relevant to their business.

They were in a specific niche selling products and services B2B within a specific geographical location. Their client base, which they had an intimate knowledge of (of course, vitally important), certainly didn’t use either social platform either personally or professionally. It wouldn’t even be on their radar.

Unusual? With over one and a half billion monthly active users worldwide on Facebook alone, yes. But general stats are just that – general. It’s always smart to know your own market in fine-tuned, specific detail.

Instead, the best way for them to reach potential customers was through search (Google) and video (YouTube), backed up by a presence on LinkedIn because they were B2B.

Smart. They know their market. And as they saw it, Facebook and Twitter were completely irrelevant.

But, smart as they are, is that really the case?

Would Facebook and Twitter actually still hold value for them as a business?

In fact, this post shows that even if you’re not reaching your marketplace directly through Facebook and/or Twitter, there are still important benefits to be had.

Rather than ignoring these platforms (even if your customers do!), your business should still strive to build up a following and a presence on them. While you might not use them to reach clients directly, they can certainly help indirectly.

Here’s 3 main reasons why…
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6 New Year’s Resolutions For Content Marketing Success

By |December 29th, 2015|

At this time of year it is of course customary to think about the 12 months ahead of us, to set goals and to resolve to adopt new and positive habits to help achieve them.

That goes for business too (it’s not all weight loss and fitness!). So with content marketing now crucial to even stay in the game, I wanted to share 6 key New Year’s Resolutions to help you achieve success with your content marketing in the coming 12 months.

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How To Use Facebook Notes To Market Your Business (And Why You Should Start Now!)

By |December 11th, 2015|

Facebook Notes is available on your Page (as well as Profiles) and means you can publish longer content directly on Facebook. This allows you to reach more people on Facebook, potentially by simply repurposing content you may already have published elsewhere.

Find out how to use Facebook Notes in this post… along with more info on why you should start incorporating it into your marketing now.

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Top Content Marketing Predictions For 2016

By |December 4th, 2015|

As one year draws to a close, it’s normal practice for business owners to start reflecting on the year past, and consider what they want to achieve for the coming year and how those goals will be achieved.

Marketing is of course central to business growth and success, and it’s a fast-changing scene. One of the most important changes over the past 12 months is that there is far less distinction between online, digital marketing and more traditional, offline marketing.

As online access and smart phone usage has become ubiquitous and central to most people’s lives across the world, it’s now all just marketing.

Regardless of your type of business, if you want to reach prospects and customers, you have to be where they are. And they are everywhere, and across multiple devices.

The only way to reach them effectively is through content. Content allows you to be where they are, to attract them through ‘pull’, inbound marketing, to build up trust and relationships.

This is of course content marketing – using content for marketing purposes. According to Seth Godin, content marketing is the only marketing that’s left. Those businesses still ignoring it are ignoring marketing and will struggle.

So with content marketing central, how’s it shaping up for the next 12 months?

Here are my key content marketing predictions for 2016…

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3 Sneaky Ways To Use Email Leads To Grow Your Social Media Following, Build Your Online Visibility And Better Connect With Prospects

By |November 27th, 2015|

Email marketing remains an important and effective marketing channel.

But why stick to email?

Did you know that reaching out to customers and prospects through multiple channels has a radical impact on profit levels?

Multichannel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do.
sas.com

Furthermore, when you get a new email lead, that email address doesn’t last as long as you might think. 30% of email subscribers – that’s nearly a third of people signing up to your list – change their email addresses every year (source).

With this in mind, this post highlights three sneaky (but perfectly legal and ethical!) ways to:

  • Help maximize your return from your email leads.
  • Keep communicating with leads for longer.
  • Turn single channel email marketing leads into multi-channel prospects.

What’s more, if your list currently works on a double opt-in basis, it doesn’t even matter if the prospect hasn’t confirmed their subscription.

These techniques don’t involve you emailing them directly, so as long as you have their email address you can still benefit from those leads.

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Hashtag Marketing Mastery: Understanding Hashtags and How To Use Them For Your Business (A 5 Minute Guide)

By |November 19th, 2015|

This quick and easy guide to hashtag marketing was inspired by a customer support inquiry (always an easy way to get new ideas for blog content and to supply info your market is looking for). It went a bit like this:

What are hashtags? Can I make them up? How do I use hashtags? Is there a hashtag directory somewhere?

So if you’re a bit unsure about hashtags and how to use them, this post’s for you.

It aims to give you all you need to know for understanding hashtags and using them effectively for your business – and all in under 5 minutes!
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How To Promote My Blog (10 Must-Do Steps For Every Post You Publish)

By |November 13th, 2015|

I’m on a journey of expanding the reach of my blog, and shared previously how organic traffic to the blog has increased not far off 6x over the course of 6 months. It continues to rise, with organic traffic for this month already 50% up on the same period last month.

I’m now aiming to ramp things up a gear – not just for organic traffic, but for traffic in general. Continuing to learn and explore how to promote my blog effectively is an exciting challenge!

Of course, I already have in place some of the required steps in place – or it’s likely you wouldn’t be here reading this! So far, so good…

But to further increase my traffic, more steps are needed…

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