Successful Blog

Here is a good place for a call to action.

Search Results for: questions

5 Reasons Why Social Media Managers Shouldn’t Live Without Analytics

by

By Marcela De Vivo

An adept social media manager knows that no social platform or social signal is truly insignificant, which is why we often create multiple accounts on every platform that exists, or has the potential to become the “next big thing.” Currently sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ dominate the market, but collating data from these four sites alone can be a full-time job.

Every campaign has its own methods of tracking and analyzing data, but ultimately every social media manager longs for a tool that will not only allow you to aggregate various metrics in a convenient way, but also gives you the data you need to discern what is your most engaging content, how it applies to your target audience, and how it calls them to act.

Long no more–that tool does exist, in the form of social media analytics dashboards. Analytics dashboards are designed to organize information in an easy-to-access and comprehensible presentation. You can gain all the valuable statistics from every social media network, all in one place, along with the data that can help you measure the quality and effectiveness of your campaign, thereby increasing your overall productivity on social media.

With a number of widgets and add-ons, dashboards allow you to gain specific information without having to visit an endless amount of sites to access them. Managing your social media output requires a lot of legwork but dashboards will decrease the amount of time finding the data and giving you the time to work with it.

If you are a social media manager and you do not have a social media dashboard, this will revolutionize the way you do your work for five valuable and empowering reasons:

1. Time Management

It’s vital for a business or website to keep their finger on the pulse of social media, but this often requires having multiple campaigns running on multiple networks, which can be incredibly time consuming. Though the small actions of logging in, tracking activity, switching back and forth to compare metrics, and engaging with customers might only take a few minutes or even seconds each, those actions quickly rack up.

A social media dashboard like Google Analytics or Cyfe can greatly reduce the amount of time you spend because you have access to each network, and each network’s data. This gives you quick and simple answers to questions such as “what’s working” and “when were we the most effective?”

Besides having access to a variety of networks such as Facebook and Pinterest, you can also create multiple dashboards to control each campaign or client separately, if need be. And when it’s time to present reports to clients or to your manager, outputting the data is as simple as a quick export.

2. Visual Comparisons

With a dashboard, the easy aggregation allows you to see all of the statistics regarding a campaign, which can be displayed in a variety of graphs and charts (another great feature for reporting).

sm1

Image Courtesy of koozai.com

Along with the stunning amount of graphs, dashboards like Cyfe gives you the ability to track what works with customers such as the number of conversions, likes, re-tweets, etc. Another time saving tool for social media managers is that most of the brand management data on social media dashboards can not only be exported but also be transferred to a hard copy at the end of a time period

Dashboards simply give you the opportunity to monitor your reputation around the clock worldwide. Kristi Hines’ piece on Cyfe, Get your Business Analytics Fix in One Dashboard, goes in depth about the usefulness of dashboards and widgets in regards to your business (definitely worth checking out).

3. Collaboration

An essential feature of social media dashboards is the ease of sharing; this hands you the ability to collaborate with others in your company. Most dashboards empower you with a feature to share the information no matter what the distance is.

This not only makes it easy to work together with someone on a campaign but increases the effectiveness by giving them the opportunity to see all of the valuable aggregated data. Instead of spending time over the phone or e-mailing, your co-worker can simply just access the dashboard and have all of the data right in front of them.

4. Tracking Your Competitors

A very important quality to social media dashboards is the ability to track your competitors’ data. It’s time consuming enough tracking your own data, so why spend your valuable time tracking theirs? With a dashboard, however, you can monitor widgets that can show you their statistics on social media platforms just the same as yours, and that are just as easy to view and compare.

You can also install widgets to view their SEO data like their MozStats and view their Alexa rating. This gives you the information you need to compare where they stand in regard to your campaign without setting you back in terms of time and resources.

5. Not just for Social Sites

Managing social media doesn’t just stop at Twitter and Facebook. It is important to have access to all of the benefits that the internet has for business.

sm2

Image Courtesy of iacquire.com

Widgets that track your Google Adwords data along with AB testing give you the opportunity to see how customers engage with your business and allow you to track what is most appealing for them. Finance information from Paypal and Salesforce are all available, so you have access to invoices and balances from a variety of sources.

Stop wishing about a quick and easy social analytics dashboard and set yours up this week. Searching will help you find a myriad of tools to get you started.

How are you tracking your company’s data?

Marcela De Vivo is the CEO of Gryffin Media, an online marketing agency specializing in helping companies integrate their social media, paid, and content marketing efforts. She loves to research different ways of growing online, and sharing her knowledge. In her spare time, she’s a yoga and meditation junkie. Follow her on Facebook.

How Will Google’s Hummingbird Update Affect Small Businesses?

by

By Michelle Rebecca

When Google issued its most recent update (named Hummingbird) to the company’s 15-year-old search algorithm, it raised a number of concerns for small business owners. The update has two primary objectives: using so-called conversational searches to find results, as opposed to the traditional keywords, and displaying search content on the far right side of search pages.

Many small businesses rely on search engine optimization to gain the notice of potential customers. As with any algorithm update, this one will impact SEO in a big way. Here’s what small businesses can expect, and what measures they can implement to ensure that their rankings don’t take a hit.

Google's hummingbird algorithm change

Think Like Your Customer

The Hummingbird shift to conversational searches is based in part on the impact that mobile phones are having on search. These days people can vocally ask their tablet or smartphone a question, like “where’s the best Chinese restaurant within 5 miles of here,” instead of simply searching “Chinese restaurant” with the keypad. Google’s goal has always been to think like its users, therefore bringing back the most relevant and helpful results. And so it’s changing its search to anticipate questions.

Small businesses must do the same thing. Any SEO company should now advise their clients it’s time to rethink search. You must expand beyond keywords and instead think about conversational search terms that could lead people to your site. Try to anticipate what sort of phrases people might use to search out your wares. For example, if you provide plumbing services, a good place to start would be “where can I find the best plumber?”

More Focused Results

In the past small businesses were often fighting with bigger ones, with bigger budgets, over choice keywords. But with the greater focus on phrases, which tend to be more precise, small businesses will gain an edge. Geo-targeting, or targeting by location, becomes increasingly important with these Hummingbird updates.

Small businesses should increasingly focus on searches confined to a specific area, where they stand to benefit most, rather than broader search terms. Hummingbird will take the location of a search into account whenever possible, and a small business with a very narrow focus is more likely to come up in results than a big one with locations across the country.

Dealing with the Drawbacks

Of course, for every up there is a down, and the down for small business owners is the other Hummingbird adjustment, which is designed to give users answers to their questions without ever leaving the Google page. Displaying search content on the search pages means in essence that Google will try to anticipate the information people are searching and highlight the answer in special boxes on the right-side column that offer small glimpses into web pages without making the searcher click on the result.

For example, if you’re looking for the date that the song “My Girl” was released, Google might display a few lines from the “My Girl” Wikipedia entry that answer the question on the right side of the search results page, eliminating the need for further searching.

The end result is less web traffic for your business’s web site. The dilemma is how to get people to click to your site anyway. Small business owners will need to come up with some innovative answers. One is to offer something of value on the site that can’t be “scraped” onto the right side by the Google bots, such as a coupon or voucher for a free sample. You might try offering contests on your site that you can advertise on the homepage but require clicking on the site to actually enter. The smartest businesses will play around with different approaches to see what delivers the most traffic, at least until Google offers another update.

Will you be making any changes to your SEO strategy because of the Hummingbird update?

Author’s Bio: Michelle is a freelancer who currently works for a top SEO company. She has a passion for the Internet, specifically social media and blogging. She loves how social media connects people across the globe, and appreciates that blogging gives her the opportunity to voice her thoughts and share advice with an unlimited audience. Follow her on Google+.

Give your site a pulse with live chat help

by

“A shopkeeper should always have a ready smile”

One of the most impactful changes my company has made in the last couple of years is our addition of live help on the website. It has made a big difference in sales, and I’m convinced that it’s our version of the “ready smile” mentioned in the Chinese proverb.

The cheery greeting “bonjour!” rang out every single time I entered a shop on our trip to France years ago. It didn’t matter if the shopkeeper was in the back, sweeping out front, or behind the counter. It made us feel welcome–and more likely to linger and strike up a conversation.

live chat is a smiling shopkeeper

To power our “ready smile,” we’re using a service called SnapEngage, but there are a lot of other options out there, including LiveEngage, Moxie’s Chat Spaces, and Velaro.

According to a Velaro white paper, “although statistics show that over 66% of all ecommerce shopping carts are abandoned, online customer service (live chat) improves the chance of a purchase by 40%-60%.”

But it’s not really about the technology. It’s about having a person with a ready smile on the other end of the chat. We often get people question the popup box, “are you a robot? or are you a real person?” Our staff is likely to reply with a friendly joke. What better way to make a connection with a visitor than making them smile?

Here’s how to maximize the benefits of live chat on your website:

  • Be selective about where you use the proactive popup. Consider disabling it on pages that show video, or other media that might be interrupted by the popup.
  • Wait a few seconds before it pops up. Let the visitor come all the way in and take a peek before you prompt the chat window.
  • Make sure someone is staffing it. It does take a commitment to staff the live chat; make sure you have internal staff ready to respond if you have the chat window enabled.
  • Train employees to react appropriately to different questions. Incoming questions from visitors can be unpredictable…it can be sales oriented, a customer question, a technical question, or something completely off the wall. Be sure your chat staff is prepared. Does the sales team want an email address collected from prospects? Ensure that message is communicated to those staffing the live chat.
  • Analyze the data (what types of questions, where are they coming from, what browsers are they using, what pages are they lingering on). You’ve got a treasure trove now. Use it to inform your content strategy, your marketing materials, your sales messaging, and perhaps even your product documentation.
  • Define the purpose of the popup (is it customer support, or sales, or both?). Make sure it’s clear to your visitors, and your chat staff is informed.
  • What’s your business personality? Share with your chat staff the tone you want to communicate. Are they free to use smilies? Can they make jokes? We go for a tone of friendly professionalism; often it’s a good idea to follow the lead of the visitor.

A live chat service on your website can be a direct conduit to your visitors’ thoughts.

But perhaps more importantly, it’s a technological version of your “ready smile.”

How do you greet your website visitors?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Is Having Clients at Your Home for Business a Wise Move?

by

You finally have your small business up and running. And it’s in your home. How do you have clients come to see you? What do you need to think about?

Many small business owners can’t afford office space, or really don’t need it, so they work from home.

A lot of questions arise about meetings in the home, so here are some of them with their answers:

1.    Do I need a separate entrance?

Ideally yes, but that’s not always possible in the real world. If you have a separate entrance, you will come off as more professional than if a client comes into your home filled with your personal life. But if it’s not possible, just make sure you have any area clean of clutter (even if you stuff it all in a cabinet), pets are put away and no one will bother you during your meeting. If your office is upstairs or somewhere else in the home where you’d need to walk through much of it, have your meeting in the dining room or another neutral area more easily accessible in your home.

2.    Should I tell my client beforehand or will that make me look bad?

Many people say they drive up to a house for a meeting and think they have the wrong address. Be upfront and let your client know you work from home and that is where you’ll be meeting.

3.    What if my client hurts him or herself in my home?

This is a tricky one. If your client slips and falls or your dog bites him, you’re legally responsible. The smartest thing you can do is have insurance to cover this. If you don’t and something happens, it can turn into something pretty big and bad.

4.    Should I just meet at a coffee shop or somewhere else instead?

Sure, some people who home office have off site meetings. It depends a lot on what you do. If you need to look at material that takes up space, your home is probably better. At home you can avoid distractions that may be found elsewhere. You also have all your materials and don’t have to lug anything around. But if you have kids or pets at home, or another working adult, it may be too distracting and you should think about another spot.

5.    Are there any other little tips I should know?

Yes.

• Dress professionally. Maybe you work most of the time in sweats, but remember you’re meeting with a client, put on your work clothes.

• Try to avoid any household smells like last night’s dinner or your golden retriever. You can use a candle or other air fresheners; just make sure nothing is too strong or offensive.

• Oh, always make sure the bathroom is clean!

Many people work from home and as long as you keep it professional and let your client know up front, you should be fine.

If you run your small business from home, do you allow clients to come by? If so, what have your experiences in such cases been like?

 

Photo credit: thesmarterwallet.com

About the Author: Heather Legg is a writer who covers topics related to small business, social media and personal finance.

Will Securing Funding for Your Business Venture Be Difficult?

by

Among the most frequently asked questions for those interested in starting a business is, “Is it hard to secure funding?”

The answer will depend on a number of factors.

Credit ratings will effect people trying to get a loan. If bad credit is a factor, securing funds will be harder than for someone with a good credit history.

It is harder now than it was before 2008 to secure a loan. Lenders are more stringent with loans and securing credit is harder for those with less than stellar credit ratings.

Family Loans

Loans from family members have started many a successful business.

These loans can often be paid back at a slower rate than with non-family. Relatives aren’t always interested in charging late fees or interest to loans.

This isn’t true for every situation, but for the most part, family loans are the easiest to repay if a business is successful. Most loans of this nature are small, though there have been large loans from wealthy family members. The larger the loan, the more likely the relative is to treat it as a ‘real’ loan.

Full Time Jobs

Quite often the best way to secure funding for a new venture is to make the money yourself.

When you are working and saving money toward your own business you have no loan to repay. This route will typically take much longer than taking out a loan, but the reward is knowing you have no creditors.

Some people that take this route become consultants and work on their product on the side. They develop the product for the people they are offering consulting services and then change their business model at a later date to sell the product they’ve created.

Angel Investors

Angel investors are individuals that offer funding to start ups.

These people are wealthy and invest in new businesses in order to help them grow. While this sounds appealing, most angel investors will expect a return on their investment. This means you must create a product or service that sells well or a company that is good enough to merit another larger company buying it.

Not every new business owner will want to sell what they think of as their ‘baby’, so keep in mind that angel investors look for start ups that will turn a profit through sale of it or many sales of service/product.

Funding Companies

There are companies that work in essence like angel investors.

These companies are seed funders and also venture capitalists. The former offers small amounts to new companies, literally seeding it with capital. Seed companies offer advice to brand new businesses which is a boon to new owners.

Venture capitalists offer large amounts, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions to new business, but these are better reserved for someone that has started a company in the past with good results.

There are many ways to fund a new business.

With careful consideration choosing the one that is right for your new business will become clear. Consider the stage of planning or start up you are in, how much funding you need, and how far you plan to go.

Photo credit: capitalcabin.com

About the Author: Tina Samuels writes on ways to accept credit cards online, social media, healthcare options, home improvements, and small business solutions.

5 Tips for Over The Top Customer Service

by

By Deb Bixler

In any home business or direct sales business, just providing good customer service is not enough in a very competitive economy.

Customer Service

You need to encourage your team members to take their customer service from bland and average to spectacular.

How do they do that?

5 Tips For Over The Top Customer Service

Here are five things to do that will make your customer service stand out from the pack by turning indifferent customers into raving fans who will return again and again.

1. Create a positive experience from start to finish. Take a look at all aspects of your company to see how customers perceive their experience dealing with your business.

Did their phone calls get answered courteously and promptly?

Were they greeted with a smile and an enthusiastic hello every time you met with them?

Did you or a team member do everything possible to find answers to their questions?

Was every point of contact enthusiastic, energetic and incredible?

It is important to view your business from the other side and then improve any area that appears lacking.

2. Engage your customers and step into their shoes.

Listen to their wants and needs. Learn to empathize with their problems. They want to believe that you care about their desires. The direct sales business is all about customer relationships and sales consultants who can truly make connections will have the inside track on making the sale.

3. Think outside the box.

Doing the same thing over and over again is boring. It is also bad for business. Though customers are sometimes resistant to change, they do enjoy surprises from time to time.

Without making wholesale changes to your way of doing business, you can still offer little surprises that delight both repeat and new customers. Creativity, imagination and ingenuity are essential ingredients for successful entrepreneurs.

4. The customer is always right.

It can be difficult at times to acquiesce to the customer’s demands and requests. However, good customer service demands that you work with your team members to get them to truly understand that the customer is always right. If you offer more service, more empathy and more understanding than your competitor, your customers will notice.

5. A little enthusiasm goes a long way.

If you are not enthused about your business, how can you expect the customer to be enthused about your products or services? Deliver your customer service with enthusiasm and excitement. Make sure that your team members also provide customer service with the same levels of enthusiasm and excitement.

Customer service should impress and inspire.

It should be grounded in the fundamental belief that you have something wonderful to offer your customers and that they are intelligent and well-informed consumers. If customers are impressed and inspired, they will pull out their checkbooks, cash and credit cards to purchase your products and services.

If they feel that your service is bland and boring, you won’t be in the direct sales business for very long.

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter: @debbixler.