Social Media As A Platform For Customer Engagement

In my last social media tip, Plan Your Social Media Marketing, I mentioned the importance of formulating a social media marketing plan before jumping on the bandwagon and haphazardly joining every social media site on the internet. To unleash your business growth potential, try making the most of customer engagement.

The best way to get social with your customers and prospective customers is to find out where they’re hanging out on the internet and then join the conversation. Small businesses, or any business for that matter, do not need to be everywhere, just on the key social media sites where there are questions and lively conversations happening in their particular field. Identify where your target audience is online and then give, give, and give even more.

Are they talking on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? Or are they on other niche community sites? Read more

Social Media Tip: Plan Your Social Media Marketing

The entire point of Social Media is to be social and get involved; to start or respond to a conversation on a particular topic. With this aim in mind, it would be smart for more small businesses to take advantage of social media and plan out a social media marketing strategy in order to engage their customers and potential customers in a little dialog.

It appears that the main reasons small businesses may be reluctant to really dive in with a solid social media marketing plan has to do with time and know how. Social media can be time consuming to maintain, especially as there are so many different social media sites and communities online. It could feel like a never ending rollercoaster ride to try and keep up with all of the latest and greatest sites and applications. Read more

How To Make Sure You Have A Happy Customer

As the speed of business and commerce seem to be going faster and faster, it just might be time to slow down a minute and make sure you have a happy customer. Providing excellent customer service is not hard or difficult, yet people seem to struggle in really giving it. Want to rise above your competition? Practice excellent customer service.

Start by smiling. This is very important in face to face encounters, but just as important over the phone. Did you know that you can hear a smile?

Next, make sure to use the appropriate respectful greetings and do not use slang or general terms when referring to customers, like “Hey guys.” In the initial interaction, be proactive and ask how you can help or be of service to them. Then, actually listen to the response. Be attentive and take notes if you need to, then repeat back to the customer what you understood they needed before proceeding. This is a basic, yet effective business communication skill and not used often enough in customer service settings. However, if your aim is a happy customer, then this technique can resolve many misunderstandings and miscommunications before they even start.

Choosing Keywords To Optimize Your Results

Keywords are very important in helping your website get to authority status in the search engine results pages (SERPs), but you need more than one kind of keyword. There are two specific kinds of keywords that you should be using: broad or general keywords and long-tail keywords.

General Keywords

Broad or general keywords are rather generic and large in scope, covering a large base in topic. While a broad keyword has more overall searches, going after the most searched keywords can prove to be more difficult to achieve a high ranking for because they also have more competition. An example of a broad keyword would be “dog.”

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are named ‘long’ because they are made up of several words. This helps them to be more focused and specific. As fewer sites target and try to rank for longer keyword phrases, there is less competition and it can be easier to get good results in the search engines. An example of a long-tail keyword phrase is “best dog training guide.”

Why You Need To Include Keywords In Your SEO Strategy

The use of keywords plays a significant role in your online success. The goal is to organically or naturally rank high in Google and the other search engines. Effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that include proper keyword usage will help to improve website ranking.

By spending time doing keyword research, you’ll discover the terms your prospective customers enter in the search engines to find what they are looking for or better yet, what you have to offer. Once you have these golden nuggets of information, waste no time cashing in on them. Include the relevant keywords and phrases on your site, in your copy, and in your content.