Improve Your Business’ Social Media Presence (10-Tips)

Last Updated on Monday, 4 June 2012 09:49 Written by admin Monday, 4 June 2012 09:46

Social media is the new word-of-mouth and active participation is key for engaging customers and clients on the web. With so many opportunities to connect, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and stuck hiding behind the scenes or in analysis mode.

While you get focused and begin to refine your strategy, here are a few simple things you can do today to help you ramp up your social media presence:

1. Be yourself. Social networking is meant to be genuine. Let your company’s personality shine through your posts and you’ll better connect with consumers. You shouldn’t be unprofessional, but you also don’t need to try to sound like a rocket scientist. (Unless, of course, you are a rocket scientist.)

2. Take advantage of multiple formats. The written word is powerful, but visual representations are appealing and can help readers understand complex concepts. Try creating an infographic, an ebook, a video or even a podcast.

3. Interact. Don’t just publish content. Ask questions and respond to others. Check your message inbox and reply to direct messages. They reached out to you for a reason after all! People like to be valued, so ask for their opinions and feedback. Then put it to use!

4. Build a company page on all the primary social networks. Potential customers are likely to look you up on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. A presence on the most-frequently used networks will ensure your customers can find you when they’re looking for you. You should also make sure to check these sites pretty frequently.

5. Mix it up. Don’t post the same announcements, word-for-word, on every social network you’re on. It’s likely that your followers are following your updates on more than one network, so don’t bore them by repeating the same message. Sharing the same information is fine, but present it in a different manner (then take note of the ones people respond best to for future posts.) Remember that different platforms have different audiences. What works on LinkedIn may not work on Facebook.

6. Find the right consistency. There’s a fine line between engaging your audience and being obnoxious. Find a comfortable posting frequency and stick to it.

7. Have a contest. You don’t have to offer an expensive prize to get followers to join in a contest. Just make it an easy, fun competition. A company called SmartyPig ran a super simple contest to promote knowledge of SmartyPig’s services. They took to Twitter and asked their followers questions about SmartyPig’s services. Anyone who answered correctly was entered to a win a $100 gift card. What made this contest even better was how they selected their winners. They would think up cool ideas to select the winners and then film the selection process. You can see them picking winners by putting golf balls, throwing snowballs and more on their blog.

8. Interact. Don’t just publish content. Ask questions and respond to others. Check your message inbox and reply to direct messages. They reached out to you for a reason after all! People like to be valued, so ask for their opinions and feedback. Then put it to use!

9. Try a social networking management app. Apps like HootSuite and Postling allow businesses to effectively manage multiple social networks through a single dashboard, simplifying the complex task of logging in to several networks each day to interact with your audience. At Grasshopper, we use and love Argyle Social.

10. Educate your consumers. Don’t stick to posting promotional information about your business. Instead, focus on offering value-added content that solves a problem, provides pleasure or reduces your customer’s pain points. Gaining pleasure and solving pain points are two primary driving forces behind purchasing decisions. So rather than sell your product or service, inform your readers on how they can accomplish their goals using your product.

Heed your analytics. If you have access to analytics, use them. Facebook insights, for example, offers some simple analytics on posts, indicating the number of responses, views and interactions each post receives. Monitor and track these stats to determine your most successful posts, and use it as a framework for future updates.

Building a solid social presence doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to take hours and hours out of your day either. Using a few simple techniques, you can easily ramp up the effectiveness of your social campaigns and start reaping the benefits.

Great article by the Grasshopper.com Team

Email to Text Message (How to) AT&T ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Virgin, Boost, Virgin and others

Last Updated on Friday, 9 December 2011 09:39 Written by admin Friday, 9 December 2011 09:37

Your at work and no access to your cell phone but gotta get a text message out.  If your using one of the majors; AT&T ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Boost, Virgin and others it’s actually simple.

Below is a list of compiled email address which can be entered into any email client and if properly formatted will be received by the other party via txt message on there phone or device.  There are other tricks and methods which I will elaborate on in future posts.

AT&T – cellnumber@txt.att.net
Verizon – cellnumber@vtext.com
T-Mobile – cellnumber@tmomail.net
Sprint PCS – cellnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Virgin Mobile – cellnumber@vmobl.com
US Cellular – cellnumber@email.uscc.net
Nextel – cellnumber@messaging.nextel.com
Boost – cellnumber@myboostmobile.com
Alltel – cellnumber@message.alltel.com

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Last Updated on Wednesday, 16 November 2011 12:47 Written by admin Thursday, 10 November 2011 06:53

Some things are right their but we are not paying attention. It’s actually about how much time do you have to make sure you can do it or just farm it out. Google has provided great tools and documents, like the attached, which will help you understand it’s importance.

Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and performance in organic search results. You’re likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide, because they’re essential ingredients for any web page, but you may not be making the most out of them.

Even though this guide’s title contains the words “search engine”, we’d like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what’s best for the visitors of your site. They’re the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site’s best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines.

Your site may be smaller or larger than our example site and offer vastly different content, but the optimization topics we discuss below should apply to sites of all sizes and types. We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we’d love to hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Forum.