How To Make Facebook Your Lead Generator

Social media has become one of the biggest marketing tools in the digital age, and nothing more so than the platform of Facebook.

As confirmed in this recent article, Facebook now has 1.23 billion active users, and with such a huge influential power over consumer’s online activity, it has become the largest marketing portal for businesses worldwide.

But aside from throwing money at advertising a page and boosting posts, there are far simpler tactics that can enable even small businesses to enhance their return without the need for heavy expenditure.

Be Available

One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make on Facebook is not having their contact details available on the page.

As a consumer, there is nothing more infuriating than being caught up by a call to action, to find that there’s no way of even contacting the company.

Always ensure that your full contact details are listed on the page and that any call to action posts have a contact method included.

Be Relevant

Whenever you post on Facebook question the relevance to your audience.

Will they find this information useful? Informative? Amusing?

Is it going to make them act?

What are you trying to gain for this post?

Asking yourself questions such as these will ensure that you are targeting your audience more efficiently and becoming a help rather than a hindrance.

Don’t forget that Facebook is still seen as a very personal space to consumers, and pitching your business throughout their timeline will only encourage them to unfollow.

Be Organized

If you’re a small business, managing your social media can feel like a mammoth task that you simply don’t have time for.

When other business tasks can be more pressing than a social media update, Facebook and other social sites can soon become neglected and filled with posts that have been put up sporadically without any thought in the process.

Posting at key times is important to any marketing campaign as it gives your post the greatest amount of exposure to your audience. And therefore the greatest results.

This article details advice as to the best and worst times you should be posting.

Combine that with scheduling tools such as Sprout Social and Hootesuite, and you’ve got yourself a plan that can’t fail.

Be Successful

Once you’ve got your head around being organized it’s time to set a measurable goal of what you would like to achieve from a social campaign.

With the methods listed you can gain more sales and leads, but don’t forget to set a target that can be measured.

Do you want more views of your website or the phone ringing off the hook for your services?

Once you’ve decided this you can then use insightful tools such as Google Analytics, or Call Tracking systems such as this one.

Keeping a record of the activity generated from your campaign can make you see what’s been working and what hasn’t so that you can change your strategy if needed.

Social media marketing is constantly changing and can work differently for each business.

Do your research and you’ll be surprised at how it can improve your businesses without the need for a big marketing budget.

Five Books to Read for Better Content

Content Marketing is now the name of the game. With the rise of social media and short attentions spans, one must be able to easily and consistently produce shareable content. Be it for social media, for blog, or for website, here are some of the best books to read to help make your content better.

1. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook (Gary Vaynerchuk)

Vaynerchuck is the CEO and Co-founder of Vaynermedia, a social media brand consulting agency. In this book, he talks about how to utilize the different social media platforms of today. He ran through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and other rising platforms such as Snapchat to discuss what type of content works best. He also gives examples companies with the best and worst utilization of each platform.

Read to: develop campaigns, raise brand awareness, and engage customers using different social media platforms.

2. Epic Content Marketing (Joe Pulizzi)

The title says it all: this book provides a roadmap in developing content that engages customers and makes people seek it out. Joe Pulizzi talks about leveraging on social media to propagate your content, how to write content that drives behavior, and measuring the impact of your content marketing efforts.

Read to: use content marketing to affect consumer behavior and measure it’s impact.

3. Talk Like Ted (Carmine Gallo)

With a tagline of “ideas worth spreading,” TED talks conferences are not only greatly attended but also quickly shared. With speakers tackling different topics and featuring some of the best and most innovative thinkers and doers of different industries, TED talks are enjoying an increasing level of popularity. While the primary focus of this book is public speaking, there are many gems in it that can be applied to content marketing. It talks about the best practices of the most popular TED presentations, specifically how to present an idea as simply as possible to get the point across as quickly and clearly as possible.

Read to: develop easily communicated content

4. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help Not Hype (Jay Baer)

If you browse around online, it’s easy to notice that a large percentage of shared content are those that people find useful. Think: 10 Easy Ways to Flat Abs and other stuff like that. This book talks about the idea behind that. It discusses how companies can identify customers’ needs and shape their content to address those needs. It talks about how to meet the goal of being relevant and shareable based on today’s standards.

Read to: develop content that is hinged on customers’ needs

5. Superfreakonomics (Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner)

Levitt and Dubner are an Economist and a journalist, respectively, that teamed up and decided to use economics principles in explaining different things from how a street prostitute is like a department store Santa and whether or not people are predisposed to altruism or selfishness. This is not really a content marketing book but one can take a look at how the book was written. Levitt and Dubner were talking about statistics and mathematical regressions to explain how they were able to derive their conclusions in a way that laymen not only understand but also enjoy. It takes a lot of word skills to do that.

Read to: develop a voice that is credible, authoritative, yet relatable.

Just remember, if you want to make readers interested in what you write, your content should be amazing. And more tips to learn how to brighten your content can be found here. Hope that your content will get better with each day!



Author Bio:
Yohana Petrovic is a writer and blogger. She has 10 years` experience in educating and now she is a proofreader at globalessays.org . You can reach her on Facebook: Yohana Petrovic or on Twitter: @YohanaPetrovic

Blogging Via Instagram

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and they are probably correct when you look at how the popular Instagram is. You can resist it all you want but visual blogging is the new blogging. Maybe you are a bit old school and like to express your opinions through words, as it is easier for you to get your point across. That however, doesn’t mean you should cut out Instagram completely from your blogging toolbox. It doesn’t mean you have to change your blogging style altogether. It simply is just another opportunity where you can build an online presence and lead new viewers to your blog. Below are some tips to help grow your blog through Instagram.

Make Sure You’re Easy To Find

People have a tendency to be lazy. So if you make it hard to navigate back to your blog they most likely won’t ever find you. Make sure all your information, including a direct link to your blog, is easy to find in your Instagram bio.

Keep It Professional

With social media being an extension of our every day life it is easy to blur the line between work and play. If you are using Instagram to push your work remember to keep it professional and not to have too many personal pictures. Unless that is what your blog is about otherwise you might consider having two accounts to keep things organized.

Don’t Overuse Hash Tags

Many people tend to overuse hash tags because they think it will make them more visible online. That may be true but it also makes you look unprofessional, a novice and desperate. Get creative with your hash tags and come up with relevant and unique ones to describe your images. This will help with encouraging like-minded people to view your blog.

Create A Hash Tag Challenge

We’ve all witnessed a host of Facebook challenges that have gone viral on our newsfeed. Instagram has been known to have more new users sign ups then Facebook and has the potential of reaching a larger amount of people. You can use this platform to generate engagement and get viewers to your blog. An example of a hash tag experiment that gained lots of attention is the #HungerChallenge which encouraged people to post photos of them living off less then five dollars a day to promote awareness for people who often go hungry. Collaborating with people helps build your presence online as well as connect you with similar minded people. This is a great way to get attention to your blog.

Don’t Buy Instagram Likes

It’s not a secret that you can now buy like and followers on all social media platforms. However I would advise against this as it is obvious, it turns real users off and it’s a waste of money. If you work hard at building your brand you will organically build loyal followers who care about what you have to offer. Buying likes for an Instagram photo from a dodgy site does nothing for you other then increase a number. In the long run it is not helpful with gaining you real viewers.

Above are just some suggestions on how to promote your blog through Instagram. It is important that you try and experiment to see what works for your viewers, as all industries are different and require different techniques. Happy snapping!

Myths Related To Seo On Wordpress.Com

If you are a diligent blogger striving hard to make a place in web blogging, naturally you will want to achieve SEO on WordPress.com. If your blog has achieved Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it means that sophisticated search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN will link your blog to a keyword when someone searches it on internet and will display it among the top 10 results. For e.g. your latest blog is on patriotism. Now if your blog has achieved SEO, it will be displayed among the top 10 results whenever anyone makes a search for the word 'patriotism'. And thus your blog will be visited by users more frequently.

To achieve SEO, you need to increase your site's SERP (Search Engine Result Page). You can accomplish this by:

Frequently updating your account and by publishing new and interesting content promoting your blog in a way that it reaches your target audience. People looking for information on a particular topic which your blog covers.

There are a number of ways and methods to increase your site's SERP ranking. But unfortunately, there exist a lot of commonly-believed myths about SEO on WordPress.com which have nothing to do with reality. Let's take a look at some of these myths and the true facts which negate these myths.

Myth No.1:

To achieve SEO, I require a plugin.

Fact:

Matt Cutts, who is the head of Google's webspam team, claims that WordPress.com is self sufficient in SEO and the users of WordPress.com only need to take care of 10-20 percent of the mechanics of SEO. The themes on WordPress.com have been composed in a way that they automatically link with search engines. Their design and composition makes it easy for search engines like Googlebot and several other search engines, to link the content and make it appear in front of a user. So no, you don't require a plugin to achieve SEO on WordPress.com.

Myth No.2:

Increased use of tags and categories in my blog post means a better chance for it to link with Google.

Fact:

Adding irrelevant tags and categories that have nothing to do with the content of your post, won't result in an increased visibility for your site on Google. Matt Cutts says, that Google doesn't blindly rely on categories and tags. It knows the context of your post from its content. Also, if a post is bombarded with TOO MANY categories and tags, it will result in its exclusion from Reader Topics pages. While adding categories and tags for your post, choose wisely and only add those tags that have the highest significance to a post. On a similar note, be more specific while adding tags. For e.g. add "nanotechnology" as a tag instead of "science".

Myth No.3:

If I am making a post about say, green tea, I should refer to the keyword and related terminologies again and again, as much as I can. This will get my post a lot of green tea-related traffic. Also, I should create multiple identical sites about green tea to get maximum traffic.

Fact:

It is good practice to inculcate correct keywords in your post and titles, period. Howbeit, overdoing it by stuffing keywords will not do any good for your SERP ranking. Also, copied material is not appreciated by Google and having multiple identical sites will be detrimental for your search ranking. Make your content appealing for human eyes, and not only to get maximum linkage with search engines.




AUTHOR BIO:
Austen Selby is currently working as a Content Editor at Key Difference. Her areas of expertise encompass business consulting, SMO, mobile technology, seo services and other technology and marketing-related topics.

SEO and SMO are Two Different Techniques

The terms Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) are often confused as being synonymous. It must be for the word 'optimization' which creates the illusion that these terms are interchangeable. This is a false trend, and both these terms are visibly different from each other with regards to their meanings. You can achieve good SEO even if you are not doing so well in the SMO department and vice versa. On the other hand, it is possible that the progress of SMO will be directly linked with the progress of SEO. To clarify things in a better way, let us see what SMO and SEO are and how they differ.

What is SEO?

SEO is the utilization of search engine results page (SERP). It is the calculated placement of frequently searched and commonly used words and phrases in the web content. These frequently searched words and phrases are called keywords and key phrases. SEO is a marketing strategy which is used to amplify site traffic, sales of the product, marketing of brand and reorganization on part of a company or a person. When a user intends to do a search on internet, he inserts the keyword or key phrase into Google, Yahoo! or MSN, which are the commonly used search engines. SERP displays a list of top 10 pages which show the highest relevance with the keyword or key phrase. In other words, the best optimized websites will be displayed as the top 10 pages. In most of the cases, the websites which make it to the top 10 displayed pages have achieved SEO.

Benefits of Achieving SEO:

Websites which achieve SEO will appear more frequently than the others and they will be more popular and better trusted among the users of internet. This is valuable for the PR of a site. The PR of a site is ranked from 1 to 10 on the logarithmic credibility scale. The PR value of a site is directly proportional to its credibility. A site with better credibility will charge more for posting ads.

Now let's take a look at SMO.

What is SMO?

SMO makes full use of all forums of social media for the marketing and publicity of web content, a product or a brand. Bookmarks, news, pictures and video sites also play a role in advertising through SMO. SMO disseminates web content on popular social media sites like Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Businesswire and Youtube. The intended use of SMO is to amplify site traffic, product and affiliate product sales and to achieve subscribers.

How to Achieve SMO?

Unlike SEO, SMO is not gained by the strategic placement of keywords and key phrases. Doing so definitely helps, but this is not the key principle for achieving SMO. Rather, it is achieved by producing eye-catching, innovative and influential web content which can grasp the attention of a user. If an audience finds the content interesting, he will share or post it. If the content gains popularity, it will appear on top social media bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

Cut to the chase: Despite using different strategies and techniques, both SEO and SMO are often applied simultaneously to market the same content. Using these strategies prudently will make your content popular on social media sites and will make it appear on top ranking on search engines.
Image Credit: hywards

Author Bio:

I am Jeniffer, editor at Key Difference. Am passionate about SEO services, Technology, Email Marketing Services, Mobile Application Development, Marketing Consultant, etc. I wish to share my knowledge with others and jump into blogging.

5 Awesome Web Design Pinterest Boards You May Have Missed

Pinterest is a wonderful tool for new and seasoned website creators looking for additional inspiration, tips, industry connections and perhaps even new clients. There are many talented and well-known designers who use the Pinterest platform to create boards dedicated to the subject of website design and development. These boards are essentially collections of content (mostly images) that the contributor thinks will be interesting or helpful to other users of the site. When this content is being posted by reputable web professionals, the advice and wisdom that you can gain may actually increase your abilities, and your profits too! By knowing which posters to follow and who is posting the most helpful information, it will ensure that you spend less time browsing through the hundreds of other lower quality boards, and more time learning about the industry from the people who know it well. If you would like to stay on the cutting-edge of the website design world, here are some amazing Pinterest boards that we think you should be following.

1) Rusty C. Cook (ohrusty)

In addition to posting about well-designed web and mobile websites, Chicago, IL based designer Rusty C. Cook also has boards dedicated to other subjects relevant to the industry that many would find helpful, such as typography, branding and general layout.

2) Eva Morell (evamorell)

Freelance designer Eva Morell is a very prolific Pinterest poster, curating over a hundred different collections of design related images and other inspirational content, including a comprehensive board dedicated to great website design examples.

3) Web Design Library (webdesignorg)

Stacy Summers is the chief editor of webdesign.org, and she shares her extensive knowledge about the subject of her expertise to her dedicated Pinterest fans on her board “Web Design Tips & Tricks.”

4) Design Quixotic (helloquixotic)

With almost 82,000 followers, Brooklyn, NY, Art Director and Designer Thea Kennedy has a collection dedicated specifically to digital design, with many images and screenshots of superbly designed websites to inspire.

5) Waila Skinner (waila)

As the head of W Creative in Missouri, independent designer Waila Skinner has learned a plethora of website design tips, hints and tricks over the years, and regularly posts unique tutorials and links to quality content.

We hope that you have found our list of useful and informative web design Pinterest boards helpful in your quest to become a better webmaster. By learning from the pros, you will pick up good habits and learn how to spark your creative and business side in ways that you never thought to be possible. In addition to the Pinterest users listed in this article, it’s always a good idea to see who the masters follow as well. By clicking on the board owner’s profile, you can get a list of the people that they also follow, which can often lead to even more awesome Pinterest collections. In an ever changing industry such as website design, a never-ending source of spectacular, up-to-date content is a must-have tool in any designer’s arsenal.

Image Credit: kromkrathog

Author Bio:

This post comes from Sarah at Orange Digital, a hardworking web design agency in Brisbane. Not just a web design firm, their blog contains plenty of social media tips and tricks including ways to leverage your Pinboard for more business.

The Growth of Today’s Website Designing Industry

Since the concept of websites first came into being in the early 1990's, web designers have continually shaped and reshaped the way websites look. During the first few years, websites were entirely text-based, with scarcely any images and very little layout except perhaps for an occasional heading or paragraph. However, as the web design industry advanced, we began to see table-based designs, Flash, and finally CSS-based designs. To those who may not know how this all started, a gentleman by the name of Tim Berners-Lee published the first website in August 1991, but it was nothing more than a simple, text-based page with a couple of links. A web page from 1992 had a dozen or so links, and its objective was to simply let everyone know what the World Wide Web was all about. All web pages looked almost alike, and they were all entirely text-based with a single-column design and inline links.

Interestingly, the first versions of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) enabled only basic content structure: headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.), a few paragraphs (<p>), and a few links (<a>). The later versions of HTML however included images (<img>) on pages, and eventually supported tables (<table>) as well.

During 1994, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed, and this consortium set HTML as the standard for marking up web pages. This almost prevented any individual organization from building a proprietary browser and programming language.

Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web design and development have been one of the most rapidly growing industries in the world. In fact, during 1995 there were fewer than 1,000 web development companies in the United States. A decade hence there were over 30,000 such companies, just in the U.S. alone.

Web development is today a broad term and can range anywhere from developing the simplest static single page containing plain text to the most complicated web-based internet applications, e-businesses, social networking sites, etc. One of the foremost reasons influencing this growth of the web design industry is the decline of costs for creating and managing a website.

Today’s Internet has become an effective tool for interaction, communication and even business growth. Website development has ceased to be costly, and there are a large number of small web developers who offer their services at very affordable rates. The growth of the web design industry was fuelled by companies using the web as a business tool to sell their goods or services. The emergence of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has contributed a spurt in the growth of the Web design industry. E-commerce sites have dramatically altered the way people buy or sell goods, making trading much easier and convenient than ever before.

Another classic example of transformation led by web development is blogs. Open source content management systems (CMS) such as Joomla!, Drupal, XOOPS, and TYPO3, along with enterprise content management systems such as Alfresco, have carried web development into totally new spheres of interactive communication.

Social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter offer users a platform they can communicate freely with one another, and this is also changing e-commerce through the number of hits and online advertisements.

Advertising on the web is also developing into a multi-million dollar industry, as advertisements in one form or another are invariably available on every page of a website.

Today, many web development companies have well-trained and skilled professionals who offer excellent services and have earned exceptional reputations around the world. With competition getting fiercer every the day, and with there being a proliferation of websites, effective SEO practices are also becoming necessary. It is a fact that online businesses and their unique web designs are the KEY to commanding a lot of attention and respect from today’s Internet visitors.

Author Bio:

Kevin is a Content editor Specialist of Visit keydifference. He is in charge of market research. He's a content writter and blogger.

5 Reasons Why You Should Convert Your HTML Site to WordPress

Having an online presence for your brand has its share of incentives. And if you are already running an HTML website, you have already made your first move.

However, the decision to stick with HTML is something that won't pitch you well enough for gaining the leverage you have been striving for through your presence on the Internet. HTML binds you in may respects and thus, the experienced webmasters as well as the novices are beginning to lean towards converting their HTML sites into more customizable and dynamic websites. And this is where Content Management Systems come into the fray.

As and when an individual decides to have a website of his own, choosing the most ideal content management system is consideration that takes precedence over everything else. And when it comes to that, you are greeted with a whole ensemble of options. But, let's say it without masking: Despite the stiff competition from CMSes like Joomla, Drupal, etc. Wordpress emerges to be the choicest CMS out there.

But, going back to the HTML websites, if you are one of those webmasters who still isn't convinced enough to make a switch from HTML to Wordpress, here are some bonafide reasons for your consideration

Your Static HTML Site Gets a Dynamic Wordpress Makeover

It's understood that you must have invested quite a bit of effort into developing that HTML website, but with the end-user becoming more and more tech-savvy, your efforts aren't bringing in the expected results since your website doesn't give you the free rein to be creative and play around with it. When you are aiming to build a website that needs constant updating of content, the HTML website won't serve the purpose. Websites made on Wordpress can be updated with new content as many times a day as you want. The website structure with HTML is rigid, and does not leave room for changes. Also, the URL's on the Wordpress website can be easily tailored for optimizing the site for SEO and you don't have to deal with the gibberish URLs for your website's pages and posts.

You can Seamlessly Tweak Wordpress Website's Design

Customization capability is of utmost importance in today's dynamic digital age. Any portal needs constant reinventions and updates to keep the users interested. If you stick with the same design and layout, you might as well start losing your loyal visitors to the competition. Wordpress gives you incredible freedom to tailor the website as and when you want. The multifarious themes of Wordpress provide you with a range that leaves you spoilt for choices. New Wordpress templates are developed every day and every once in a while when you decide your site neds a makeover, you can have your options.

No complicated Editing Programs to Deal With

One of the major challenges faced by the webmasters who run an HTML-enabled website is that they need to be expert at the editing programs of the likes of Dream Weaver. It is rather an unwieldy tool that requires investment of a lot of efforts and time to get used to. And with any HTML site, it has to be used quite too often. But Wordpress, with its suite of capabilities and a very straightforward tool for publishing content and images makes it remarkably easy to modify, add, delete or make any other tweaks to the content. Particularly when you are running a blog that needs to be updated with content every day, Wordpress offers an excellent alternative.

Versatility and Responsiveness Can be Seamlessly Combined with Wordpress

While on one hand, Wordpress makes it a breeze to develop dynamic and versatile websites that give them the wherewithal to achieve uninhibited level of funtionality, this CMS also doesn't interfere with the responsiveness and compatibility of the website over different browsers and operating systems.

The WordPress Plugins for Extended Functionality

Another remarkably useful feature of Wordpress websites is that it allows us to add advanced features to websites without having to write separate codes for them. These plugins are available for everything – be it for SEO, or for changing the designs or for increasing website speed, etc.

It is a proven fact that Wordpress gives you an absolute free rein over how you wish to structure your website. Get your HTML site converted to Wordpress and avail the freedom and the accompanying benefits.

Author Bio:

Sarah Parker is a HTML to Wordpress techie and always looking for new tips and tricks possible to make functionality of WordPress more efficient. Currently, she is working in Designs2HTML Ltd., as a WordPress developer and socialize aspects related to same on Facebook and Twitter.