marketing-online-tips.com – Page 50 – Online Marketing Tips, Info and Resources

How to Turn Your Best Customers into Your Biggest Assets > Online Marketing

Most consumers trust their friends, family, influencers and experts to make recommendations about products and services to them. In addition, there are many ways to make recommendations – from online testimonials, to affiliate links, to direct mentions from the customer. They all work to some degree.

To encourage your customers to provide referrals, you can take some steps in advance that set everything up to turn your best customers into your biggest assets.

1. Be Excellent – The better you do your job, the more pride with which your customers can recommend you to others. If you provide excellent products and services, your customers will be happy to provide referrals when asked to do so.

2. Ask Customers to Refer You – Just ask your customers to please offer referrals to their friends and family who need your products or services. Give them some literature and information about your offerings so that they can easily share.

3. Create an Active Online Community – Using either a message board, forum, or private Facebook group, creating an online community can help spread the word of your good services and products fast to those who have need of them.

4. Build a Long-Term Relationship – Focus on relationship building over the long term and you will create true raving fans that are eager to recommend your business. When you have a real relationship with someone, they’re that much more likely to tell others about you.

5. Create a Formal Referral Program – Offer discounts to friends and family recommended by customers, along with a coupon to the one who gave the referral. With a formal referral program you should let every customer know about it as soon as they become full customers.

6. Use Social Media Strategically – Offer a coupon code for consumers “liking” or “following” your brand on social media, and encourage them to share. Offering sign-up incentives for newsletters and more always helps get the word out about your services.

7. Market Your Testimonials – When someone gives you a raving testimonial, turn it into a meme, ask for a recording, put it into many formats and then publish it and market it across all channels. Market your testimonials as you could other types of content.

8. Follow Up – Always follow up with customers who have provided referrals to you by offering them a discount, a thank you note, and acknowledgement. The more you follow up after a positive referral, the more likely they will to continue doing it.

Word-of-mouth referrals are over 50 percent more effective than other forms of marketing. If you want to develop a long-term business, the best way to ensure that it really is a long-term business is to encourage word-of-mouth marketing in every way that you can.

Many business owners find after years of being in business that most of their customers come from word-of-mouth, which lessens the need to expend more time, money and effort on other forms of marketing.

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The Power Of The Entrepreneur’s Mind > Free Online Marketing Ebook

Law of Attraction Online & Business ebook “The Power Of The Entrepreneur’s Mind” looks at Be Crystal Clear, Be Approachable, Be Real and Act Like You Don’t Want It. Click “The Power Of The Entrepreneur’s Mind” to download this free Law of Attraction ebook.

How to Scale Content Creation > Content Marketing

Scaling content creation enables you to get the most out of the content that you spend money, time and resources on. Plus, it allows you to pad that with other people’s content to bring to your audience a plethora of content that adds value to them and helps them to make purchase decisions.

Use Curated Content

Collect content that you believe your audience will be interested in as well as content directly about your brand that you did not author. Include content that is about your niche, and not your brand directly, and other topics you feel that your target audience will find educational, useful, and valuable.

* Share curated content – Be sure to share this content as heavily as you do your original content in order to keep your audience engaged and informed. The great thing about curated content is that it enables you to participate in discussions across the web. It adds interest of your brand by those authors and allows you to impress your audience.

* Know your niche – To properly curate content it’s important that you understand your own brand and niche enough to choose the right content to curate. Plus, it’s important to always give the right attributions and credit to the original author. Never post the content to your website. Post a small blurb, your thoughts and point of view about the content and a link to the original source.

Repost Original Content

It costs a lot of money, time and effort to create content for your niche. You need content for everything, and every platform and every form, and you need it on a regular basis. If you’re not repurposing and reusing some of your content, you’re not getting the most out of your investment.

* Share more than once – Sharing new content on social media needs to be done more than once to ensure it gets maximum views. With the way social media works, on a feed system it is likely only a very small percentage of followers, or likes, will see the share more than once, or even once. Share each new addition to your content at least three times a day.

* Use older content – Alternatively, if an issue comes up that the old content piece answers then go ahead and share it again, even if it’s months old. It’s also okay to update the content first to be more relevant if any part of the original piece is out of date. As long as the content is relevant, original, and makes sense at that time, share away.

Use Multiple Platforms

You probably are part of many different online communities and networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook groups, forums, groups and so forth. Make sure to take advantage of this fact. While it’s true that some of the audience will be the same on each network, if you find a fresh way to share the same content throughout all these platforms then you can share the same content.

* Edit for network personality – The important thing to do here is to be sure to craft each message a little differently for each network. For example, you might want to share the content in a more visual way on Pinterest than you do on Twitter. Plus, each network has a different personality. Make the content fit the personality of that network for best results.

* Use different formats – This is just repurposing content, which you hopefully already do. A blog post becomes a slide share, becomes a video for YouTube, and becomes a podcast for iTunes. It really is that simple to reuse your content. After all, the format doesn’t change the research you’ve already done. You’re just changing the format and sometimes the mood of the research to participate on multiple platforms.

A lot of work goes into creating the content that you use to market your business. You may as well get the most out of it by repurposing it for multiple channels.

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I’m Too Much of a Procrastinator > Marketing Mindset

Procrastination is the Achilles’ heel of most marketers. Being your own boss is both a blessing and a burden, and you’re in control of how much of each you allow. On one hand, you gain the flexibility of working whatever hours you want, taking off when you want, and focusing on whatever projects bring you personal satisfaction on a day to day basis.

The drawback of being your own boss is that, since you are in control, you don’t have anyone breathing down your neck and telling you that you have to get your projects done.

You are able to put them on the backburner until a later date, which sometimes never rolls around. If you are the kind of person who simply labels yourself as a procrastinator, then you are letting yourself off the hook and doing yourself a disservice.

You have targeted yourself as someone who is unable to work as an effective employee. Instead of belittling your own efforts, give yourself credit that you can power through your obstacles and get to the finish line.

Learn how to properly deal with the desire to be a procrastinator. For example, instead of shoving a project to the side because you want to avoid it, arrange your time so that you get the hard part out of the way at the beginning of your day.

This helps you avoid the shame, guilt, and frustration of putting things off. You can also devise a time management system that allows you to have frequent breaks whenever you are working on a particular project that you wish you could procrastinate on.

For example, what is it you normally do when you are procrastinating? You might be the type of person who starts binge watching a show on Netflix. Instead of forgetting about the entire project for the rest of the day so that you can devour a show, alternate between the two until you complete the project.

You can allow yourself to watch one episode, one scene, or a certain number of minutes of a show in between each item on your task list. If you are writing content, then you might alternate an activity with every page or chapter.

You want to begin seeing yourself as an accomplished individual and not someone who simply abandons projects in midstream because you don’t feel like facing the work involved.

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How to Tap into a Niche for Profits > Free Online Marketing Report

Online Marketing report “How to Tap into a Niche for Profits” covers: Start By Setting Yourself Up for Repeat Earnings, Find a Variety of Affiliate Programs, Increase Commissions with Real Reviews, Get Affiliates Working for You and See If You Can Add Coaching to Your Income Stream. Click “How to Tap into a Niche for Profits” to download (216 KB pdf) this free Online Marketing report.

Blogging For Profit > Free Blogging Ebook

Blogging info ebook “Blogging For Profit” looks into: Why Start a Niche Blog, How to Find Content, The Importance of Key Word Strategies, How to Integrate social Media, Back Links and Themes, Making Money From Your Blog, Tips for the Best Blogging Websites. Click “Blogging For Profit” to download (750 KB pdf) this free blogging ebook.

The Best Web Hosting For Your Brand New WordPress Website > Using WordPress

The WordPress platform needs two things to work. It needs a domain name and web hosting. Think of it this way, if your website is your house, then your domain name is the street address and your web hosting is the piece of land your house sits on. And just like your house, you want to build it on a good piece of land. This is why choosing a good web hosting company is a must if you want your WordPress website to succeed.

Web hosting companies number by the thousands and most can support a WordPress installation on their servers. However, WordPress itself recommends 3 web hosting companies. These are:

1) Bluehost
2) DreamHost
3) SiteGround

You can’t go wrong with any of these companies. All three offer 1-click WordPress installation, so you can quickly have a WordPress website without any hassle or headache involved. They also offer 24/7 support so if you have questions about web hosting or you need help setting up your site, then you can contact them anytime through a variety of communication channels.

However, they do have some differences in the services they bundle up with their hosting plans. For instance, Bluehost and Dreamhost both offer free domain names for their plans, but SiteGround does not. If you’re going to buy a domain name from SiteGround, you’d need to spend an extra $15.95/yr, so you may want to buy your domain name elsewhere.

When it comes to pricing, Bluehost offers the lowest price. If you lock yourself in a 3-year contract, then you’d only need to pay $2.95/mo for the basic plan. DreamHost offers the most expensive plan at $6.95/mo, and that’s if you get a 3-year contract!

If you want to try out which web host is best for your website, then you can sign up for each one. Both Bluehost and Siteground offer a 30-day money back guarantee while DreamHost offers 97 days. If you’re unhappy with the service, simply cancel it within their money back period, and you’ll get a refund. Plus, they will automatically cancel your 12-month, 24-month or 36-month contract.

While these 3 companies come highly recommended by WordPress.org itself, there are many more web hosting companies you can choose from. Just be sure to ask them first if they offer WordPress support, and if they do, then feel free to sign up for their hosting plans.

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How To Decrease Your Page Load Times Using Htaccess > Website Design

If you’ve built your site on WordPress, then you can pretty much use only plugins to help speed up your site (provided you don’t go plugin-happy and install every plugin you find interesting!). However, there are still some advantages to editing your .htaccess file directly instead of installing another plugin.

When you use plugins, you run the risk of installing a badly-coded one which could potentially undo all your hard work. A bad plugin can cause conflicts, and you can lose some important functions on your site. And, of course, it can also cause some speed problems with your site.

With .htaccess, however, you get the benefit of not having another plugin to install. Plus, it’s also processed faster by your web server. This helps make your site run faster.

Now, touching the .htaccess file may not be as easy and as simple as installing a plugin. With .htaccess, you’re going to get your hands dirty, so to speak. That is, you’re going to need to either:

(1) create the .htaccess file from scratch if you don’t have it yet, or
(2) you’re going to edit the .htaccess file.

To do either, you need to access your website files using an FTP client like FileZilla (https://filezilla-project.org), or if your web host has cPanel access, you can use the file explorer. Make sure you activate the hidden files option. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see your .htaccess file.

Here are some of the speed-inducing features you can activate using .htaccess:

1. Enable Gzip compression

Gzip compression simply means your web server will be zipping up your files before it gets sent over to your visitor’s browser. Gzipping can significantly reduce your website file size which directly translates to faster website speed.

2. Enable browser caching

When you have browser caching on, specifically the Expires header feature, then your visitor’s browser won’t need to contact your web server anymore if the website files are still within their ‘expiration date.’

The browser will first check its cache, and if your website files haven’t ‘expired’ yet, then it’s going to be serving up those files to the user. Since the cached files are stored on the user’s computer, then that will make your site load faster on their browser!

Just a word of caution though, if you don’t know what you’re doing with .htaccess, then it’s best to seek assistance from an expert.

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I’m Not Lucky Enough to Get Rich > Marketing Mindset

Have you ever found yourself consumed by envy when it comes to looking at the success of other online entrepreneurs? Even before you begin your own journey, it’s hard to avoid wishing you were in their shoes.

This is a normal, human emotion that you can either allow to sabotage your success or light a fire inside of you to succeed. It’s one thing to admire someone for the effort they have put into building a business and wish you were as far along as they were in your own journey.

It’s another to assume they simply got lucky and hit the lottery in terms of striking it rich with their entrepreneurial career. Focusing on the bad luck you have online, or the good luck someone else has, is a great way to sabotage your own efforts.

Yes, there are times when someone gets a break that you didn’t. There will also be times when you get a break someone else wishes they had. But the fate of your destiny as an online entrepreneur does not rest in luck alone.

In fact, most of it is a direct reflection of your ability to focus on your goals, take action that benefits your business, and strategically grow it from the ground floor up. Not only is it defeating for you to believe luck is in control of your impending success or failure, but it’s also a slap in the face to those you are envying.

To label them as merely lucky individuals negates all of the hard work they have put into building their own business. Imagine if you had spent weeks, months, and years absorbing information, recovering from setbacks, and powering through obstacles to succeed, only to have someone tell you it was all due to sheer luck.

You wouldn’t appreciate someone belittling your journey like that. Instead of whining about someone else’s lucky break, look at what they did to achieve the results you desire and see how that can work in your own business.

For example, maybe they happened to get lucky in your eyes because a successful guru took notice of their product and blasted their list about it. You would love to have that same lucky break.

But if you don’t get it, you need to think of ways that you can get the same results. For example, you’ll start by developing an innovative idea for an info product. Then, work hard to create one of the best products the industry has ever seen.

You might use a variety of media formats, such as text combined with video. Then, find a similar marketer who has a hefty list of subscribers who would be the perfect target audience for your product.

Begin networking with this individual and eventually present your idea to them in a way that appeals to them. Just because you had to work for the results doesn’t mean it’s any less impressive. In fact, people will respect your hustle more if you strategically pursued an arrangement like this than if someone happened to stumble on it and got the break they needed on accident.

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Senior Marketer’s Guide to Mindful Self-Care > Free Online Marketing Report

Online Marketing report “Senior Marketer’s Guide to Mindful Self-Care” covers: Make Sure Sleep and Energy Are Being Prioritized. Finding a Tribe to Support You. Stay on Top of Your Health. Say Goodbye to High Stress Situations. Micro Manage Things That Threaten Your Personal Satisfaction. Click “Senior Marketer’s Guide to Mindful Self-Care” to download (199 KB pdf) this free Marketing Online report.

How to Integrate Scaled Content Creation > Content Marketing

Knowing how to scale content, or get the most out of your content, is an important idea that all small business owners need to understand. There is only so much time in the day, and only so much information that can be out there at any one time. If you don’t learn how to scale the content that you spend a lot of time, money and resources on, you’ll come up short.

Curate Compelling Content

Researching and finding content that your audience will find valuable outside of your own content is an important component of becoming a thought leader and getting your name into the discussion. Plan in advance to find the right content that relates to the information that you’ve created for the day, week or month. Share your thoughts on the content that you share, and link to the original source.

Use a Lot of Original Content

It is important to use at least as much original content as you do curated content. To craft content that speaks to your audience you need to always research your audience. Remember that while an audience may not change, e.g. “Housewives with children under 2 who stay at home,” their ideas change through the generations. You wouldn’t create content for the wife and mother who stays home with her young children today that has any relationship to content that you may have created back in 1960.

Craft Engaging Social Media Content

Remember that each social network has its own personality and values. You need to make sure the content you share on the social media matches this personality. You can edit and change it to make it fit. Share older evergreen content when it relates to a discussion on social media as an answer. Also, don’t be afraid to share everything more than once on the same social media. The people who are online right now may not be online later.

Repurpose Your Content Well

When you repurpose content, do not copy and paste into new formats. Truly change the personality of the content by using it as research and making it practically new for the different format. You don’t want it to look cookie cutter; you want it to look and feel new. All content should be housed on your website, so by making it new you avoid issues of duplicate content, and maintain the originality of the piece. Cross-link to all your content as needed to tie it in.

Tell Your Story

The best way to improve brand awareness is to find ways to tell your story. You’ll generate more leads and make more conversions by getting close to your audience, and letting them get to know who you are, why you are who you are, and what you stand for. Craft a compelling story that puts your audience front and center.

Plan in Advance

You know the saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. When it comes to content, nothing could be truer. You need to decide how much content you want to create, what formats the content will take, and how much curated content you want to add. In addition, you need to put it all in writing in the form of a publication calendar so that you can visually see how it all ties in with your product funnel.

Promote Everything

Whether it’s curated content, content you’ve created in its original form, or repurposed content, it’s important to share it all. Promotion is at the heart of your success. Promote via social media, pay per click, email marketing and affiliates. The more ways you can find to promote the content that you want your audience to see, the better conversions you’ll see.

Get Help

All of this seems like a lot of work, and it is. But, you can do it by getting help. You can outsource to individuals and manage everything yourself, or you can hire a company or a content manager or content strategist to help you with the process. You can be as hands on or off as you want as long as the content that is created and promoted fits your brand.

Your audience wants a continuous flow of information, and they want it in different forms and from different resources. You can offer them the best of all worlds by giving them the content you believe is valuable that other people create, and by providing them with your original content in many different forms for their use. Putting all that together in a cohesive form needs to be planned in advance to make it work seamlessly.

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I’m Not Good at Networking > Marketing Mindset

Networking involves communicating with others in the industry who can help further your success, but it’s not a one-way street. You need to offer your support to them, too. Some people are too shy or feel incapable of professionally socializing with others, especially if they are the ones who have to initiate it.

You don’t need to overcomplicate the process of networking. In most cases, it’s simply the easy task of befriending someone online who you can turn to in case you ever need them in a professional manner.

For example, if you know you struggle with sales copy, you might want to befriend someone who excels at it. Create a genuine friendship with this person, and maybe, if you ever have a question about getting your page to convert better, you will be able to ask them how to do that.

Befriending other marketers is a simple process. First, connect with them on social media. Find their profiles and either follow or friend them on places like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

You also want to subscribe to their email list so that you can stay abreast of what they’re doing in the industry. Once you’ve done these things, it will be easy for you to casually connect with them over common interests.

You might comment on their post about their vacation, offer friendship and encouragement if they post anything emotional, and interact with them if they happen to comment on your posts.

Who should you try to network with as an online entrepreneur? The most important thing is to find people who can genuinely help you – not just those making the most money.

You want to figure out who you need to surround yourself with. That includes affiliate prospects who have the potential to send many customers and sales your way whenever you launch your own product.

You might also want to network with those who create great products of their own. Not only can you learn from their product creation efforts, but you can gain inspiration about their launch process as well.

You might also want to network with those who motivate and inspire others. There may be times during your journey where you need to lean on someone who can simply lift you up when you are plagued with self-doubt.

Networking with those who understand technological things is always a good idea. That way, if you post something about confusion with something technical, they can chime in and help.

You even want to network with perspective customers in your audience. This allows them to get to know you in a different light, on a more personal level. It often means the difference between them feeling suspicious of you and them trusting you fully and making a purchase.

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5 Easy Ways To Improve Your Site’s Speed > Website Design

You don’t need to feel down and dejected if your website’s running slow. It’s not the end of the world. Even if you don’t have a technical bone in your body, you can still get it done.

Now, there are tons of ways to speed up your site, but in this article, we’ll only cover the easiest ways. You can always work on the more advanced methods later on. For now, you need a quick win and these easy methods will help you feel good about yourself and your business!

1. Choose a good web host

A good web host can mean the difference between a fast and a slow website. Of course, looking for the best web host is easier said than done – there are thousands of them out there!

So, how do you know which one’s a good one? Well, you have to check out their reviews, you have to check out their packages and their guarantees. You should also test out their support because you’re going to need it down the line.

2. Optimize your images

There’s no point in uploading a 5MB image if a 500KB version will look exactly the same. You can resize your image dimensions to, say, less than 2000 pixels. And with image compression, you can further cut down your image’s file size by a significant amount!

3. Don’t upload your videos to your site

If unoptimized images can go upwards of 5-10 MB and more, then you probably know that a 1-2 minute video can be upwards of 100MB! If your server has to serve your 100MB video, in addition to the rest of your website files, then you’ll have a stressed out server. What you can do instead is you can upload your video to sites like YouTube and Vimeo and just insert the embed code into your website.

4. Use a content delivery network (CDN)

A CDN will store a copy of your website files in many different server locations. For example, if your main server is in Texas and your site visitors are spread throughout the world, then your international visitors will probably find your site a bit slow. However, with a CDN, their browsers will be able to download your website files from a much nearer location which translates to faster download speeds.

5. Remove unnecessary plugins on your WordPress site

It’s easy to get carried away with plugins – there’s so many of them to choose from! However, if you don’t want your site to slow down considerably, then you need to be selective with your plugins. Delete unused and unnecessary plugins, and you just may see a bump in your website speed!

I’m Not Good at Creating Content > Content Marketing

When you stop and think about all of the content that has to be created in order to launch and run an online business, it can be very overwhelming. You may have embraced a limiting belief that your content is not up to par, and will therefore sabotage your chance for success.

The truth is, you are probably your own worst critic. Stop and think about why you don’t think your content is good. Did someone tell you that along the way? Do you dislike your style?

Did you maybe receive comments and criticism during your years in school about your writing, so now you believe everything you do is unable to live up to the standard of others?

Sometimes, your message may be good, but your delivery simply needs some work. Instead of just stating that you aren’t good at writing or content creation, take time to understand why you feel that way and whether or not anything can be done about it.

For example, regardless of your current age, you can always improve your grammar, punctuation, and spelling. This is a skill that can be polished over time. You can also set aside funds for an editor of your work.

An editor can quickly and easily scan your content to see where it needs improvement. Simple edits like this are generally inexpensive. Usually, editing that requires more in depth analysis and reworking of concepts is where the price adds up.

If it’s not as easy as cleaning up grammatical errors, you can still learn how to improve your content by taking courses that teach you how to engage your audience with your message.

There are courses that teach people how to write nonfiction articles and eBooks. There are people who teach you how to make engaging videos and podcasts. You have to learn what makes people enjoy content in your niche and then deliver it to them.

Stop and think about what makes you enjoy the content that you devour. You can emulate someone you admire without being a copycat who steals ideas. For example, maybe you enjoy over the shoulder instruction videos instead of text based eBooks.

If you create content based on the same times of information and styles that you enjoy, your enthusiasm may shine through easier and help you engage your own audience. Don’t forget, you can also consider outlining your ideas only and then outsourcing them to a freelancer who can flesh them out in full.

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