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5 Social Media Marketing Lessons Learned from People’s Chatting Nicknames

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A Guest Post by
Rahil Muzafar

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Social Media Marketing is easy for those who understand the nitty-gritty of sociology and human’s need to share anything substantial, with their loved ones. Everybody likes to share, even the people who appear to be a little unsociable have this underlying desire to let somebody in on what’s going around in their lives. Any social media marketing campaign that manages to trigger this desire is sure to make it big. Sharing is made extremely easy by all those social networks out there, all you need to know is exactly why, when, and what people want to share with their friends, families, or colleagues. When looking for the answers, there are some invaluable lessons that you can learn by looking at the people’s nicks in your contact’s list (given that you have a fairly large one), let’s take a look at some of these lessons.

Like to share something inspirational:

People look to share whenever they come across something that touches their hearts in a positive way, giving them something good to think about, something to cheer, and something to help them see a silver lining in the dark clouds, that’s the reason you will see people using the phrases like “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true” or “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves”. Therefore, if you can come up with an article, image, or video which is inspirational in one way or another, you will surely find people who are keen to share that with the friends.

Like to share something hilarious:

Another thing largely shared by people at social networks is anything which is downrightly funny. People love to share a good laugh with their friends, doesn’t matter if it is coming from a witty one-liner, funny incident, videos, or an article. Hilarious videos are one of the most commonly shared types of videos at social media and you don’t need to see any statistics for that. You can simply go to your Facebook page and take a look around. You will surely find a couple of funny videos shared by some of your contacts at any given point of time. Lesson for you; come up with something funny, which is directly related to the theme of your blog/website. It doesn’t necessarily need to be outrageously humorous, anything that brings smile to someone face will do.

Like to share something adorable:

That’s especially popular amongst the female users, apart from the nick names; you can see the popularity by looking at the number of views at videos with babies, pets, and the likes. To make the most of this trend, you need to offer something cute, anything having to do with family and the loved ones, something that ignites the feelings of love, affection, bonding, and care.

Like to share the ironies of life:

This is cynic’s reply to people sharing that cute stuff. You will often see nick names like “It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others” or even the more crude ones like “We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse”. It’s not easy to come up with something that true yet funny, but that’s probably the most commonly shared type of content amongst adults, especially if it has something to do with their profession.

Like to share something that’s closer to their heart:

At times you will see people keeping nick names, which are not funny, cool, witty, inspirational, or doesn’t even make any sense at all, the only reason for choosing these nick names over the more interesting ones is because there’s something that’s closer to their hearts. Lesson to be learned? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and then try to come up with some slide, video, or article that they can relate to, something that’s directly related to their age group, profession, ambition, views, likes, or dislikes, and chances are that they will be sharing that with the like-minded people in next to no time.

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Author’s Bio:
Rahil is an Internet Marketing and social media expert. Feel free to visit his website and avail a yahoo domain code and coupon for midphase. In addition to these yahoo and midphase deals, you will find many different coupon codes and discounts for web hosting services.

Thanks! Rahil!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Making Sales for Small Businesses More Predictable

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A Guest Post
by Cynthia Kocialski

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Seeing Sales as a Solution

Every business needs revenue and the more the better. Most don’t have cash reserves or access to capital like the big corporations to shore up operating expenses, and so getting sales right is crucial. What every small business wants to know is how they can increase sales with minimal effort and how their sales can be more effective.

I have to admit I didn’t begin with a background in sales. I had to learn it by doing. Everyone does it this way. As far as I know there aren’t any college degrees in sales. As I’ve gone through many start-ups, my view of sales is far from where I begin on my first start-up.

Without a sales background, I had an immediate dislike of this business function. It seemed a necessary evil. If someone mentioned sales to me in those early days, I’d cringe. I had visions of a sleazy used car salesman that would lie and cheat his way to closing the sale.

Now, I have a completely different outlook. Why? I looked at the sales from the customer’s point of view. As any customer, I have many problems in desperate need of solutions. Most of my issues don’t have easy-to-find answers. I want to know if someone can fix my problems. I want them to tell me about their solution. I am tired of dealing with the problem and I want it to go away forever, never to come back to bother me again.

Let’s flip back to the sales side, your customer wants you to tell them the solution to their problem. You are doing them a favor. You aren’t bothering them; they want to talk to you. It’s only when you are trying to sell them something they don’t need or want that you’re acting like a sleazy, greedy, unethical used-car sales person.

Once I was able to see myself as not becoming the used car salesman, I was able to embrace sales and learn how to do it much better.

Focus on the Customer

The first place to start is to begin by reviewing your sales of the past several months and to conduct some customer interviews. You want both the good and the bad customers, but focus two-thirds of your efforts on the satisfied customers. For your existing customers, answer the following questions among your staff before conducting any interviews. Then look for similarities among customers.

  • What problems are your customer trying to solve and what are they hoping to accomplish? There is a difference; the later are bigger customer goals.
  • Is your customer using the product in the way you intended?
  • Is there a specific feature to your product that they are using to solve their problem?
  • What is the financial cost if the problem is not solved?
  • Whose job is it to solve this problem? Who are your contacts and what are their titles?
  • What problems are blocking the customer from accomplishing their goal?

Customer interviews are important. You hear established business talking about how they have lost touch with the customer all the time. If your company doesn’t have any customers or your closing rates are low then customer interviews are immensely useful. I’ve sent my staff back to call on failed sales to ask questions. Most former prospects or potential customers will spend 15 minutes on the phone with you. You don’t need many phone interviews, 15 or 20 are enough. Patterns emerge quickly.

When conducting customer interviews, add a few more questions to the list above. Prepare the questions you want answered ahead of time, but always be prepared to let the customer take the conversation where they want it to go.

  • When your customer was in the process of buying your product, what concerns or questions did they have during this process?
  • What do your customers think of your competitors? Is there anything you could learn from them?
  • Have your customers interacted with your customer service and what did they think of it?

Why did you do all this work? Sales is a search for the customers that are most likely to buy. The shotgun approach of talking to anyone and everyone, hoping that someone will buy is not effective. You need to know who your most satisfied and happiest customers are and why they are buying. For example, if your happiest customers are using feature X with benefit Y, then why is this tenth on the list in your marketing materials. You want to find more like them, and not waste your time with the others.

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Author’s Bio:
Cynthia Kocialski is the founder of three tech start-ups companies. In the past 15 years, she has been involved in dozens of start-ups. Cynthia writes the Start-up Entrepreneurs’ Blog and has written the book, “Startup From The Ground Up – Practical Insights for Entrepreneurs, How to Go from an Idea to New Business.”

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Thanks, Cynthia!

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Using Foreign Languages to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

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By Adria Saracino

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Connecting Globally

One of the single greatest aspects of the Internet is the ability to connect with people from all over the world. Social media and blogging have quickly created an environment conducive to erasing the distance between people. Now more than ever, information can quickly spread within a matter of seconds.

This global market is great news for website owners, as it means there is opportunity for more people to visit your site. However, you may not be capturing as many of those visitors as you think.

This graph shows that only one fourth of all Internet users are English speakers. Since ¾ of Internet users are not native English speakers, disregarding this audience on your website could mean a missed opportunity for more traffic.

So how do you make sure to capture non-English users? Cater to their native language.

For quick results, using programs like Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en) to translate your site content will give your international readers—who may have come to your site via English search terms—the option to view your content in a much friendlier environment. This shows cultural sensitivity, and as a result could encourage brand loyalty.

However, note that using free automatic translating services tend to produce very literal translations, which is often free of colloquialisms and common slang. Such literal translations oftentimes come off as poor grammar, so if your translations are faulty it could turn off potential foreign visitors.

Thus, more traditional methods of language learning (http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/) and translating your own content is probably the best way to ensure your site is suited for an international audience. Investing in programs like pimsleur French (http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/learn-french/) and pimsleur German (http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/learn-german/) are great for learning the fundamentals of the common languages you are hoping to optimize for. Whichever route you decide to take, make sure your site content is carefully edited for accuracy.

There are other benefits to catering to an international audience besides showing cultural understanding and sensitivity. Translating your site to popular languages also optimizes your site for international search engine results, since onsite factors are a major indicator of how well you will rank in search engines. This should give you a unique advantage over many of your domestic competitors who otherwise might not optimize for the often overlooked foreign web community.

As translation software improves and the web advances, translating your site should get easier. Until then, invest the time and resources needed to get your web properties optimized and into the search results of foreign visitors before your competition.

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Author’s Bio:
Adria Saracino is the Head of Outreach at Distilled, a creative internet marketing agency in Seattle. When she’s not connecting with interesting people on the web, you can find her talking about style at her personal fashion blog. Follow her on twitter @adriasaracino to stay in touch.

Thanks, Adria!
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Be irresistible!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!