Customer Support As a Marketing Tool on Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites can play a new role in customer support these days. Virtually every company has customer issues. You can try to produce the highest quality product, package it with care, and deliver it on time. You can set up accounts for people who want to use your services and go about doing the best job for them you know how to do. Eventually there will come a time when someone will have a complaint or disagreement with your business.

The old-fashioned way of dealing with customer complaints was to speak to the customer in your store or place of business. You would try to appease him and make things right. Hopefully, he would be satisfied not give you bad publicity.

Now that the Internet is so important to business, customer support is often done online. Customers can read FAQs to find out about simple problems. They can do online chats to find out about specific detailed problems. Yet, all these methods of meeting customer service needs do not reach out to a mass audience on a social level. When you bring customer support to social networking sites, you can do just that.

Imagine reading on your Facebook page about a problem someone is having with your product or service. You have the option of having a closed conversation with the person to settle their disagreement in private. It may seem that you would not want others to know you had a problem, so you might get out of the social setting as soon as possible.

The truth is that interacting with that customer right on the face of the social media website can bring you many more customers than solving the problem individually. Go back in your mind to that image of reading about a problem with your business on a social networking site. Think about what you are doing. If you immediately go away from the public eye, it gives the appearance that something is wrong. It can send a message of guilt and shame; avoid it if you can.

Instead, you can make a comment on the person’s problem and have a conversation about what you can do to help them with it. As the conversation goes on, others might join in and find out how helpful you and your company can be. A good outcome will be shared across the social network, and more people will become interested in your products.

Potential customers will become actual customers because they will know that you take your customer complaints seriously. They will see that you work to attain a positive outcome. You will gain a reputation as a solid professional, and your company will gain popularity as one which stands by its products. If you work it right, you could even come across as a hero.

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Total Viral Marketing – A Balanced Approach

People are great observers, and they are becoming more adept at it every day. What they hear or see, they want to repeat. In Internet space, this usually means forwarding some form of content to their friends and acquaintances. When it happens often enough, and fast enough, that is viral marketing.

Most people hear the words “viral marketing,” and they think of viral videos. While viral videos are great tools for bringing attention to your business, there are other ways to go viral as well. As long as you can get many people talking and sharing your content, create a buzz, and somehow connect it to your business, you are doing viral marketing. A balanced approach will allow you to reach all your target audience, regardless of their Internet use habits. Video is certainly where it is at for many people. It makes sense to take advantage of the popularity of the medium.

Before you make your memorable video, brainstorm to come up with the most interesting, unusual, and even outrageous ideas. These are the ideas that will get people talking and forwarding your content on to all their friends. People want to feel intelligent and on top of things, so they send it quickly.

Social networking sites are great places to do viral campaigns. When you try to go viral on Facebook, you can do it with a video posted on your wall. If you make it funny enough, strange enough, or something people care intensely about, they will post it to their own walls and more people will see it and have a chance to share it.

Here is a secret, though: You can do the same thing with written content too. With a few words in a Facebook comment, you can start a viral marketing explosion. They just have to be well-chosen words. You can post something that touches people’s emotions, tickles their funny bone, or sparks their imagination. That is not all. You can find ways to give away free gifts or present special offers. People want to increase their popularity by sending out news of these perks to all their friends.

There is no reason to choose between going viral with video or with written content. You can do both. In fact, you probably should do both. Unless you have a very specifically targeted audience which clearly prefers one over the other, you should work both sides of the street. It is not difficult to do, and it brings you to the attention of hundreds, even thousands, of new potential customers. That is not bad for something that does not have to cost you any more than your time.

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Location, Location, Location – How to Use Internet Marketing to Increase Local Customers

If your business has a physical location where customers go to shop or purchase services, most of your customers probably come from your local area. Internet marketing can help get them there, but you need a special emphasis on location to lead them to your website.

You can encourage a following of local Twitter users by bringing up topics of interest in the area. Another way to connect with your Twitter locals is to offer them walk-in coupons for items they can buy in your store. This not only brings in people who are sitting in their nearby homes at their computers. It also reaches the mobile audience using Twitter on their Smartphones.

Google is changing the way they rank the search results for local businesses. Businesses with local information on their websites rank higher for search terms that include their keyword with a location word. For instance, you might have a hair salon in Duluth. If a person typed in “women’s hair stylists Duluth,” the search engine would pick up both the fact that your website optimized for women’s hair stylists and that you are located in Duluth.

To get this consideration, you need to display your location prominently. It should be listed in the title of your webpage if possible. You need to include the location in the META tags. You can mention your location in your webpage content. Finally, you can put a line of print at the bottom of your webpage that has your business name, your service, and your street, city, and state address. Be sure to add a local phone number to gain trust from your home audience.

Make sure you are in all the local online listings. Give your business information to Google Places for inclusion in all their location-based searches. Add your listing to Yahoo Local and Bing Local. Put a map on your website to show people where you are located as well. Good maps can also improve search engine rankings.

Some new social media websites are location-based. These include Brightkite, Gowalla, and Foursquare. These applications and others have gone mobile on Blackberrys, iPhones, and Smartphones. They allow people to communicate with those in their social networks about places they are going or where they are. Getting involved with a location-based social media site will help you call attention to events around town where you will be introducing your products or services.

Even if you are a strictly online company, you service different areas. It is always a good idea to have local phone numbers whenever possible and have them routed to one call center if need be. The more local involvement you can have, the more exposure you can get on a local level.

When people are not sitting at their computer, they are interacting locally. Human contact is far from dead. Many people still like to go into a store and browse, many like to make large purchase in person, and everyone who eats out at a restaurant does so in a specific physical location. Take advantage of where you are and use the online marketing tools that will make your business a success.

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Staying Engaged – Connecting with Your Facebook Fans through News

New information is coming to light about the influence news stories have on Facebook users. As it turns out, people who use Facebook pay close attention to news stories if they are recommended by friends. What is more, the advertising connected with those news stories affects those Facebook users profoundly.

If you want to stay engaged with your Facebook Fans, attach your advertisements to fascinating stories that are likely to show up on Facebook. You can find out what these stories are by looking at trending topics, and generally paying attention to what is going on in the world. Find a news outlet to associate your company with, and ask for alerts when exciting news stories come along so that you can include your advertising with them.

You can also recommend the news stories yourself. The person who recommends a news story is considered to be intelligent and current. If you mention your brand name (mention, not sell) within your comment, your recommendation will create a halo effect that will increase the popularity of your brand among your Fans and others who see the post.

It is important to mention your company in a way that is casual and informative if possible, but not aggressive at all. Some stories are shared more than others. If you can get advertising along with an ongoing story that is of specific interest to your target audience, you are golden. Slightly less influential are breaking news stories. The reason breaking news is not more important on the scene is probably because it is usually here and gone fairly quickly with not much time for conversation. Funny or odd news stories are shared even less, but advertising with them still influences Facebook friends who read them.

People especially like stories that have an impressive visual impact, are about current topics, or about their own special areas of interest. People like, have always liked, and will probably continue to like human interest stories. As long as the story is unusual or truly newsworthy, people will be anxious to share it with their friends.

If your brand is associated with well-received stories, you can expect a very positive response. People who learn of a brand through a news story on a social networking site such as Facebook are about 20% more likely to recommend the brand to others. By the way, they are 27% more likely to prefer the brand themselves. News is a powerful force in the world, and as it turns out it has a strong influence in advertising in particular.

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Keyword Statistics – Keyword Factors That Change Your Search Engine Rankings

You have researched and found the keywords that will strike a chord with your target audience. Now you just sprinkle them into your article or website, right? Actually, there are several different factors you need to take into account when you are placing the keywords into your content. They are keyword density, keyword proximity, keyword prominence, and keyword frequency.

Keyword Density The ratio of the number of keywords you use to the number of words contained in the content is called the keyword density. Keyword density is usually between 2% and 8%. In some situations, a specific keyword density level is required. For example, if you submit articles to article directories as a part of your marketing campaign, you may find that there is a maximum keyword density allowed. Commonly, that number is 4% to 5%. Too low a keyword density and the search engine will not recognize your content, too high and it may ignore it as spam.

Keyword Proximity The keyword proximity factor is based on the use of long-tailed keywords by searchers. If they type in a keyword phrase with several words, the closer those words are to each other, the higher the rank of that page will be. For example, a person might type in “seo marketing keyword tools.” If you used the keyword in a sentence such as “The best keyword tools used in seo marketing are easy to learn,” your page would rank lower than it would if you had placed “The best seo marketing keyword tools for your business are easy to learn.” As you can see, these are subtle differences, but the keywords must be close together as they are in the search.

Keyword Prominence A keyword is prominent if it stands out. This can be done by placing keywords in the title, in headings, in the beginning of the article, in the beginning of the sentences, and in the META tags. Use keyword prominence to display the fact that your article is a valuable discussion of the keyword-related topics.

Keyword Frequency Keyword frequency is similar to keyword density in that it is a measure of keyword abundance within some piece of content or a webpage. In the case of keyword frequency, what is being measured is the number of times the keyword is used in a given page or article. The search engines respond well to a webpage which has a good number of its most important keyword. However, if you put too many of the same words in your webpage or content, it will be considered a dishonest manipulation of the system and you will be ignored.

After you have learned all the factors involved in placing your keywords correctly within your articles and webpages, use that information to your best advantage. If you hire someone to do your writing for you, give instructions to use these ideas while drafting your articles and web content. Whenever you do your own writing, you can practice using these factors to produce your best content ever.

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YouTube SERP Success – Getting High Rankings for Your Marketing Video

When you make up a YouTube video to promote your business, you will want to make sure to get the top Search Engine Results Page (SERP) level you can. Believe it or not, there are some actions you can take to make this happen. You just have to follow a few basic rules.

1. Do keyword research. Just as you would do keyword research for your usual SEO content, such as articles, press releases, and your website, do it for your video as well. You can definitely use these keywords, so make sure they are the ones that will bring in your target audience.

2. Make up a keyword-rich title and description. Your marketing video on YouTube will always have a title, anyway. You might as well make it a title that will come up high on the SERP. Also, write a thorough but concise description, carefully incorporating as many of your keywords as possible into the text. Do not forget to put your website link into the description.

3. Choose keyword tags. If you are marketing with a video, it is more important than ever to use the keyword tags function of the YouTube submission process. Include all keywords you have found that are relevant to your video, up to the limit available to you.

4. Choose a good thumbnail photo. When your video comes up on the SERP, users will see the thumbnail photo or video still shot you have created. If it is boring, they might skip over it and go on to other search results. However, if you can make the picture distinctive in some way, you can attract viewers from all over the web. The thumbnail should be clear, have good contrast, and look unusually exciting. Even if the picture is of a person speaking, it should be interesting in some way. The more your video is seen, and the more people who link to it, the higher it will be ranked by the search engines.

5. Accept comments. You do not have to let every comment be published. In fact, you can even set the comments so that you have to approve them before they are published. However, it is important to have some conversation going on about your video. It creates more interest, not only in your video, but hopefully in your products and your company as well. Join in the conversation and add your own comments.

It is not enough to just film a video and slap it up on YouTube without a thought. It does not take long to do a little keyword research, make a few good choices, and contribute to a conversation about your video. Yet, in the long run, it is these actions that may contribute to the success of your video in bringing you more website visitors and customers.

Camcorder by Petr Kratochvil

Marketing Online with Press Releases

The most obvious reason for press releases is to spread news, and you should never forget that fact. However, now that press releases are available to consumers online, they are also a great tool for marketing your business to potential customers. Press releases are a special kind of content leading back to your website.

The basic idea of a press release is to announce something in your company. Make sure that when you plan your press release, you have considered the reason for submitting it. You might want to tell people about a new product, a special promotion or event, or a change in your company. Whatever you do, always have something newsworthy to talk about in a media release.

You need a news angle which explains why your news is important in the world. If you sell health foods, you might have a news angle relating to current public health trends. Within the article, you could discuss the merits of your product in relation to health. If you are a real estate agent, you might use a news angle about how the economy is affecting the housing market. Then, you can explain in the release how you can help people take advantage of those circumstances.

Get your press release noticed by the way you construct it. Have a keyword-rich, distinctive title. Make it a title people will want to click on when they see it in their search results. Use keywords in the press release, but never go over 2% go 3% keyword density.

Since it is a press release, you are allowed to talk about your company within the body of the written content. Do so in a news-oriented way. Describe your company and tell a little history about it, but do not sell it so much that you overshadow the news angle.

Your marketing goal is probably not just to get exposure, but also to get website visitors who convert to paying customers. To achieve these goals, encourage people to visit your website, and make it an appealing idea by offering something of value. People might want to visit your website to find out about a sale, get a discount, download an ebook, join an interesting forum, or enter a contest. Use a call to action and add your website link for them to follow.

Once you have composed your press release, send it to one of the online newswires. Many of these are free. All they ask is that the press release be well-written and newsworthy. You can distribute your press release to several news outlets, or you can hire a company to do that for you. The most important thing is to get your message out there and finally, to link it back to your website.

“A Press Release must be newsworthy.”

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The Best Internet Content Strengthens Your Online Presence

There seems to be a problem of internet marketing in how people understand the need for good, user-friendly content. Some people see the need for great content on their websites, and go no further to bring the customers to them. Others focus all their energies on content outside their website, hoping that the potential customer will stay at their website once they arrive. Few people realize that the best strategy involves using high quality content both on and off their website.

It is important to find exciting and interesting content for your website for two reasons. The first reason is to be noticed by the search engines. Having relevant, on-topic content on your website is a plus with any of the search engines. Also, when your content is informative, others will want to share it. They will post links to you on their websites, and this will give you high quality backlinks, which the search engines smile on as well.

The second reason that content should be vital on your website is that it helps you retain visitors. Be aware that excellent content can take many forms. You can have any of the following on your website to attract search engines and keep visitors. There are articles, blogs, press releases, games, and surveys. The more chances a person has to read and interact with your website, the longer they will stay, the more often they will return, and the better the chance that they will buy.

Yet, there are other places to put your custom content, and you should not focus so much on your website that you do not give these other avenues any time. Many of these outside sources of content use the same types of content as you use on your website. You can send a press release to be included on an outside newswire, and then add it into your website.

You can also write articles for article directories. These articles should be filled with relevant and valuable content for the benefit of the reader. Then, you can add a link to your website to bring your customers to you. What is more, you might have the ability to use the article on your website as long as you follow the rules of the article directory website.

Make sure you use the best quality content you can deliver, both to your off-website readers and to your on-website visitors. Many of your potential customers will not even start their browsing session looking for products, but to find interesting and important information. The content should give something to the reader.

The links back to your website from off-website content sites or the prolonged interaction of visitors on your website are the incentives for you. They should generally flow naturally from your content without you forcing a sales pitch on your readers. Your online presence will grow, and you will have the potential of gaining a wider customer base than you ever thought possible.

Your potential customers often browse for quality content rather than for products.

Internet Browsing by Petr Kratochvil

Video Distribution and Analytics – Send It Out and Watch It Perform

You have staged a stunt, written a script or put together a power point presentation. Next, you have made a video using your ideas and plans. Now you can upload it to YouTube or your website. However, if you want to send out your video faster and to more people, you can use a video distribution service, which might also give you analytics to help you watch its performance.

There are paid video distribution services that sometimes your video to send to up to two hundred video sharing websites, social networking websites, blogs, and other websites. If you want to pay for a service like that, you should be sure that you are going to have an extensive and powerful campaign.

If your budget is less or you want to spend less of it on video distribution, you can go with a free service. Free services still send out your video to several sites for you. All you have to do is get your video ready and click a few buttons to upload it and enter the meta data.

When your video is deployed to all the distribution points, you will quickly see it climb the search engine results pages. Your video will show up multiple times in a search result because it is coming from several places on the web.

Beyond the search engine advantages, there is also the fact that people who go on each of the sites your video is being distributed to will have a chance to see your video. You will get a kind of mass exposure that you could not possibly get from just one website.

Many video distribution services also have analytics. It is easy to see how many people have viewed your video. Data will show which search terms people are using to bring up your video. You can learn which of the sites is showing the most viewers for your video, and how long they are staying to listen to your complete video. Many services go so far as to provide sales campaign statistics for you related to your video, such as social actions and completion rates.

Since you can get the service for free, there is no reason not to ignore the opportunity. It takes no more effort to set up a video with a distribution service than with one video sharing site alone, once you have gotten started. Video distribution and analytics improve your video marketing campaign and take it to a higher level.

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How Facebook Group Chat Works for Your Business

Facebook Groups are microcosms of the Facebook community as a whole. You may not be able to efficiently interact directly with the millions of people on Facebook, but you can have some very satisfying conversations with a smaller number of people who are in a group with you. Facebook Group Chat makes this possible, and you can use it to your advantage in your business.

Set up a Facebook Group by going to the homepage and clicking in the left hand column on “Create a Group.” From there, you do all the setup for the group, including inviting Friends to the group and adding a Group name and privacy settings. Since you can be in up to 300 Facebook Groups, it is a good idea to have several groups so that you can sort your Friends by target demographic. This streamlines the chat experience.

You have two options for how to start a Group Chat. If you want to plan for a Group Chat, you can send out notifications to your Group and request that everyone interested participate at a set time. This is the best way to get the maximum number of people from your group when you want to chat with them. The second option is to simply log on to Facebook and open up your Group’s chat window to see who is available for a chat. You can do this on the spur of the moment, anytime you have an extra block of time.

Once you start the Group Chat, you should talk about subjects that are interesting to your Group members. Yet, there will be times when you can bring in thoughts about your business. They can be serious thoughts about the state of your industry, or frivolous thought about the goings-on at your office. Be very careful about mentioning your product. However, if someone specifically asks what they can do about a problem and your product would solve or help with it, you might have a chance to interest them in your line. Just remember to be informative and not commercial.

The most important thing to do with Group Chat is to develop relationships with people who are in your target demographics. These are your Friends already; you are just cementing that relationship and making it one that has potential for growth. Use Group Chat to widen your contact with your consumer base, and you will reap the rewards over time.

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