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Posts Tagged / Marketing

  • Sep 05 / 2013
  • 0
Articles, Blogging for Business, Social Media

Havasu Graphic Design-How to Get More Subscribers, Part I

imagesGood morning NSquared readers!

 

Do you have a blog?

 

If so, chances are you want people to read it, right? Well Hubspot posted a fantastic article, “How to Concert Casual Blog Visitors into Dedicated Subscribers“. Check out Part I below:

 

 

“How to Convert Casual Blog Visitors Into Dedicated Subscribers

 

You probably know all too well by now that content creation is a very necessary function of successful inbound marketing. And for the inbound marketers who embrace that, abusiness blog is one of the most reliable and effective platforms for publishing much of the content they create.

 

But if you’ve been consistently blogging for a while, you probably have all the business blogging basics down pat. So wouldn’t it be great if you could take your blogging to the nextlevel, scaling the impact of your blog so it makes an even bigger, better, and more powerful dent in your marketing results?

 

Enter the concept of ‘blog marketing,’ which refers not to using a blog to market your business, but instead to implementing a marketing strategy to grow and scale the impact of your blog. In other words, marketing for your blog. There are three critical steps to blog marketing: 1) getting your blog discovered by new visitors, 2) converting those visitors into dedicated subscribers, and 3) leveraging your blog evangelists to share your content and attract brand new audiences.

 

So let’s say you’ve worked through step number 1, and you’ve got a good amount of blog traffic flowing. How can you get those folks to stick around and keep coming back so they become avid readers and fans of your blog content? With step number 2: by converting those visitors into subscribers! In this article, we’ll give you some great tips for turning those casual visitors into valuable, dedicated blog subscribers.

 

 

1) Blog Frequently (and Make Sure It’s High Quality)

 

First things first: frequency matters. How can you expect visitors to subscribe to your content if you rarely or infrequently publish anything for them to come back to? You wouldn’t exactly be making the strongest case for subscription. If you really want to scale your blog, you need to make a commitment to boosting your blogging frequency. According to an internal study of HubSpot customers, businesses that blog more than once per week add new blog subscribers at twice the rate of businesses that blog just once per month.

 

Yes, frequency matters — so work your way up. If you’re currently blogging once a month, work your way up to once a week. If you blog once a week, work your way up to a few times a week. Truthfully, the most successful blogs publish content daily — or multiple times a day.

 

Keep in mind, however, that a boost in frequency can’t come with a decrease in quality. Your new visitors won’t be enticed to subscribe if they don’t find your content to be worthy of their attention. And with all the crappy content out there, you can’t afford mediocrity if you want to win over those new visitors. For more on creating high-quality content, here’s how to tell if your content is actually valuable, and here are eight instant ways to improve your content’s quality if it’s not.

 

 

2) Encourage Blog Subscription (Particularly Email)

 

If you want people to subscribe, encourage blog subscription! Sounds simple right? But it’s amazing how often I have to hunt through a blog’s homepage to find where in the heck to subscribe. Make it easy for visitors to subscribe — put your subscribe module above the fold on your sidebar, and display it prominently.

 

 

 

blog-subscribe-above-fold

 

 

 

Also notice how I mentioned you should emphasize email subscription. Remember, there are two ways your visitors can subscribe to your blog — via RSS, and via email. Both are valuable, but email subscription can have a much bigger impact than RSS subscription. Email boosts traffic to your blog, since subscribers get emailed whenever new content gets published (compared to RSS, which subscribers have to manually check on their own).

 

In fact, 14% of our monthly traffic to the HubSpot blog comes from email. And to tie this all back to the importance of blogging frequency, in that same study of HubSpot customers we mentioned earlier, we learned that businesses that blog more than once per week generate 9x more blog email traffic than businesses that blog just once per month. Convinced that you should put more of an effort into generating email subscribers yet?”

 

 

 

Contact us if you need a website, inbound marketing campaign, or IT consulting. Stay tuned for part II where we share more tips on boosting your subscribers and talk about CTA’s (call to actions).

  • Aug 28 / 2013
  • 0
Articles, Websites

Have a Rockin Lake Havasu City Website, Part III

checkTop o’ the mornin’ to ya readers!

 

Keep reading to see more of Hubspot’s awesome examples of a well put-together homepage:

 

“16 Brands That Totally Nailed Their Homepage Designs

 

…continued…

 

 

8) JIB

A great use of a simple illustration, excellent complementary color palate, crystal clear copy, and a single call-to-action all combine to make this website’s homepage one of our favorites.

 

 

 

jib_edited

 

 

 

9) Galpin

The Galpin page uses typography to showcase its character. Notice that the page focuses less on graphics, and instead uses text to convey its messaging.

 

 

 

Galpin

 

 

 

10) Surf Right

Easy navigation and beautiful design can (and should) work together. An interactive slider and a well-organized set of tiles make this website easy to surf … hehe, get it? 😉

 

 

 

surf_right

 

 

 

11) Riley Cran

Here we see another appealing tile-based website design. Setting Riley Cran apart is the fact that the entire site is set within a single page — no scrolling necessary!

 

 

 

Riley_Cran

 

 

 

…to be continued…

 

 

 

Contact us if your business needs a new website or an inbound marketing campaign. Stay tuned for the final blog of awesome homepages this Friday!

  • Aug 09 / 2013
  • 0
Articles, Inbound Marketing, Websites

Promote Your Lake Havasu City Website – How to Boost Profits with Craigslist, Part I

craigslist_LogoHowdy readers!

 

Craigslist. We here at NSquared are almost positive you have heard of this website. But, did you know that this website can be an extremely beneficial tool for marketing your business and boosting profits? Check out, Marketing on Craiglist, below:

 

 

 

“Marketing Your Business on Craigslist

 

Learn how to showcase your products and services on this popular online marketplace.

From e-commerce websites to furniture wholesalers, small businesses both online and off are realizing the marketing power of Craigslist.org. Founded in 1996 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist.org gets an estimated 10 million unique visitors per day. With an online classified ads format organized by either region or city, Craigslist connects buyers and sellers in more than 300 communities; for the most part, posting on the site is free.

 

If you’ve never heard of Craigslist or never considered using the site to market your business, the following tips will help you determine whether it might be a good fit for you and offer another outlet for marketing your products and services.

 

What Sells Best on Craigslist

 

From services like tutoring, car repair and real estate to products such as wholesale furniture, consignment goods and retail e-commerce, Craigslist is the ultimate destination for online marketers. If you manufacture goods, provide services directly or sell products regionally, Craigslist is a marketing tool you should consider. You can also easily promote an eBay store, a franchise operation or a referral partner. And it’s a bourgeoning business opportunity for affiliates and webmasters looking for new ways to find customers.

 

 

Identifying Your Market

 

Like any other advertising medium, Craigslist requires some strategy, though paramount to its usefulness is simplicity. To start, you need to determine which city or cities you’re going to post an ad. If you’re a service provider, you can identify available cities on Craigslist that encompass your service region. Keep in mind that some regions overlap. For instance, if you’re a mobile groomer working in Orange County, California, but service from Los Angeles to San Diego, Craigslist reaches your service area across four cities. So you’d want to develop your messaging and a posting schedule in each of these regions to increase your exposure. If you sell a product or offer a service nationwide, the opportunity to reach new customers is even greater.

Posting on Craigslist, either nationally or locally, requires an understanding of the rules. Craigslist has in place–a set of rules that prohibits advertisers from over-posting or spamming users. You can follow these rules and still get excellent exposure. To start, develop unique ads for each city you post in, focus on specific products and rotate them on a promotional schedule. Never post the exact same ad within 48 hours, and be careful to delete your old ad. Craigslist users are quick to spot businesses that misuse the system and can be quite unforgiving. The Craigslist flagging system puts the power of spam control into the hands of the users.

 

 

Building Ads

 

Building an ad on Craigslist can be as simple as typing in some text, or you can incorporate html and images. Typically, what works best is the direct approach. For instance, if you’re a real estate agent using Craigslist to promote properties for sale, build a text ad that incorporates images of the properties for sale–you don’t need to know html to do this. Simply define what property specifications best sell the property and keep the sales pitch to a minimum. Be sure to include important search words, such as “three bedroom” or “condominium,” as well as regional identifiers including a ZIP code, city or community name. You do this so that people who search for specific items find you in the search results.

Craigslist’s search function isn’t based on a search algorithm; instead, search results are displayed first by date, then by keyword. This makes the text content of your ad extremely important. Ads with images only increase ad effectiveness. And adding images to your ad isn’t difficult. If you’re not web savvy, use the “upload image” function available during the posting process. (If you want to feature a large image or more than one, you’ll need to upload your images to your own web server and reference them inside your ad using basic html.) Images, however, are not required. Often the best performing ads on Craigslist are simple text ads that get straight to the point.”

 

 

 

…to be continued…

 

 

 

Contact us if you need inbound marketing, IT consulting, or an awesome website. Stay tuned for Part II on Monday. Until next time, stay groovy!

  • Aug 07 / 2013
  • 0
Articles, Inbound Marketing, Social Media

Promote Your Lake Havasu City Website – Why a Google+ Profile is Important for Your Business

google-plus-for-businessHowdy NSquared readers!

 

You may have heard or seen the hype regarding Google+. But, if you’re anything close to an average American, you already have multiple profiles on multiple social media websites. Is it really that important to have one more password to keep track of? In regards to Google+, the answer is yes.

 

If you aren’t using a Google+ profile to boost your business, then you are missing out. Keep reading the article below to see why one more password is totally worth it. You won’t regret it!

 

 

 

“Why Google Plus Can be so Important for your Business

 

Google plus is indexed by Google so it can help customers find your business faster and easier also by creating a business page you can increase your visibility.Google+ has more than 90 million members and 60% of them log in every day.How to reach all those users?

 

Provide original information but more importantly share other people’s ideas. Also make sure that you post few times a day to reach people in different times zones.

 

Build up trust

 

If someone you trust shares a link, you are more likely to check it out. Therefore, comment on your shares, respond to other people’s comments.

 

Educate your followers

 

Let your circles know more about your brand as the more they know the easier it is to them to make informed decision about your product or service.

 

Customer service

 

Make sure that your customers are kept happy and respond rapidly to their questions and complains. Offer videos or other media to help resolve their problems or issues.

 

Build a community

 

Give fans a place to talk and share their experiences but tailor your community to your location and business.

 

Share media

 

Do not forget to add media and provide value. Always look for user-created content like e-book, video, reports or photos.

 

 

 

Few ideas how to get it done:

 

Build a relevant audience by looking for people who are appropriate to your business. You can do that by defining your audience by demographic or location or topic.

 

Look for a content that your circles would like outside of Google+

 

Engage in conversation on a post

 

Read posts by others and comment but at the same time you need to comment on your own posts.

 

Share a new post since the purpose of a social network is to connect and share.

 

Finally, do not forget to be consistent and keep your offline and online business presence the same. Moreover, provide a continuity so your clients always know what to expect.”

 

 

 

 

 

Contact us if you want to start promoting your business through inbound marketing. Until next time, stay social media savvy!

 

  • Jul 17 / 2013
  • 0
Articles, Social Media

10 Reasons Your Business Should Tweet, Part I

twitter-marketingBonjour intellectuals! Are you at the cross street of Marketing Avenue and Twitter Street? No? You should be!

 

Monday we showcased an article explaining why twitter is beneficial for your business. Well today and Friday we are going to do a two part series featuring, 10 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Twitter. The list begins now:

 

 

 

“10 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Twitter

 

 

 

If you don’t know, companies have already started using twitter as it is the new way to promote, connect and brand a company. In my last post I mentioned if your company is not using twitter then your company is going to miss out be crushed.

 

 

So why bother using twitter for your business? Even twitter themselves know about the power of using twitter for business that they’ve set up a special twitter 101. Here is what twitter says

 

 

 
Here are reasons that I’ve came up.

 

 

1. Connecting with customers

 

 

This is the  main reason why you should use twitter for your business. You will be able to connect with your customers because they themselves are using twitter. Twitter has become a daily routine where people log onto it every single day, some log onto twitter the first thing they wake up even before brushing their teeth. If you have an unsatisfied customer you will hear them on twitter. This will help your company to help them. On the coming days I’ll be going deeper about how you can “spy” on tweets using free tools like twitter search.

 

 

2. Branding

 

 

You don’t have to be a big brand like Dell, Nike, Starbucks to brand yourself on twitter. You can be an average joe and brand yourself on twitter. For me if your company is not recognize then you need to get a PERSONAL account. Why? Firstly nobody want to talk to a LOGO unless its a famous brand. Everyone wants to connect with a person and not a bot.

 

 

3. Customers feedback

 

 

Once you have connected with your customers you will for sure be getting feedback on how you can improve your product, your services and maybe even improve your customers service. Listening to them will help you in the future.

 

 

4. Marketing

 

 

One of the reasons to use twitter is you get to market your product or services to more people and the best part about that is its FREE. You don’t have to pay (Unless if you plan to hire someone to run your twitter account).”

 

 

 

…to be continued…

 

 

 

 

 

Contact us for your IT and inbound marketing needs. Be sure to stick around for the last of the list this Friday!

  • Jul 10 / 2013
  • 0
Articles, Social Media

Are You Suffering From FOMO?

fear-of-missing-outThere’s an epidemic going on. It’s FOMO. Are you a victim of this relentless ailment?

 

 

 

 

FOMO (fear of missing out) goes hand in hand with social media. Check out, Report: 56% of Social Media Users Suffer From FOMO, below:

 

 

 

 

 

“Report: 56% of Social Media Users Suffer From FOMO

 

 

 

We all know that social media can be an addiction, a slippery slope consumed by a syndrome commonly referred to as Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). If you indulge in a few days away from your Inbox or Twitter stream, the emails start to pile up and key news is missed.

 

 

As technology enables us to stay more connected than ever, the addiction continues to grow. In fact, a new survey conducted by MyLife.com revealed 56% of people are afraid of missing out on events, news and important status updates if they are away from social networks.

 

 

Many would trade other addictions to stay connected this way — about 26% percent said they would trade habits such as smoking cigarettes or reality TV for access to social networking sites.

 

 

In the same vein, about 51% of people visit or log on more frequently to social networks than they did just two years ago. And users want their updates first thing in the morning: 

 

 

About 27% of participants flock to social sites as soon as they wake up.

About 27% of participants flock to social sites as soon as they wake up.

 

 

 

People are managing more social networking accounts as well. About 42% of study participants have multiple accounts — and the percentage jumps to 61% for those between the ages of 18 and 34. The average person also manages 3.1 email addresses compared with 2.6 from last year.

 

Although 52% of respondents said they have considered taking a “vacation” from one or more social networks in the past year, only 24% said they will likely follow through. Why? FOMO, of course.

 

 

For a full look at how people are using social media and managing the many platforms, check out the infographic below.

SocialMediaAddictionInfographic

 

Homepage image via iStockphoto, rudigobbo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact us for your IT and inbound marketing needs. And if this article didn’t convince you that obviously social media marketing is one of the best things out there…then well, it should have.

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