All posts in Online Business Tips & Tools
Do you have a Twitter account but not sure how to make good use of it? Build your following, reputation, and customer’s trust with these simple practices:
- Share. Share photos and behind the scenes info about your business. Even better, give a glimpse of developing projects and events. Users come to Twitter to get and share the latest, so give it to them!
- Listen. Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand, and products.
- Ask. Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are listening.
- Respond. Respond to compliments and feedback in real time
- Reward. Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals.
- Demonstrate wider leadership and know-how. Reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business.
- Champion your stakeholders. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your followers and customers.
- Establish the right voice. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a likable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter community?
Read more at http://business.twitter.com/basics/best-practices
In the California gold rush in the mid 1800′s many people flocked to the area to look for gold. The people who were really making money weren’t the gold diggers, but the businesses selling shovels and equipment. Learn how you can apply this principle to your business in this video by BigCommerce.
There’s a problem with the way most companies are “marketing” their products and services.
- Companies don’t focus on anyone and at the same time try to reach everyone
- No one is asking the customer what they want. Business owners are afraid to talk to their customers.
- Too many businesses focus on price, rather than focusing on value
Marketing has the potential to make or break your company. Products that are marketed well almost always outsell products that aren’t.
A 7 Step Marketing Plan
- Create your typical customer profile
- Position your products to appeal to your ideal customer
- Spread the word to people who fit your typical customer profile
- WOW them immediately after buying
- Follow up with lots of free, useful stuff
- Ask for a testimonial
- Repeat steps 3-6 indefinitely
(The information in this post is from a series of marketing talks by Mitchell Harper of BigCommerce. You can watch his videos below for an in depth review.)
Youtube. Facebook. MySpace.
Flickr. Digg. Wikipedia. Google.
Have you heard of these? The internet has rapidly changed from a two lane highway of information to an organic, ever-changing network of real people sharing their experiences and opinions. With this change comes a dramatic shift in effective internet advertisements. Gone are the days of the supremacy of static, newspaperesque ads.Today, successful marketing campaigns include popular videos on youtube, facebook groups, blogs, and the like. A social web demands social marketing.
Create your own “money tree” by selling a product in an electronic format (like an ebook, music, training videos, and more). Your online store can be open 24/7 and can sell your products for you without any intervention. No shipping, no paper, no worries. If you are an expert in an area that would be useful to a given market, a music artist, videographer, photographer, or writer you can join the growing number of successful entrepreneurs making money through digital downloads.
We build beautiful custom websites with a focus on business logistics and usability. Interested?