Category Archives: Viral marketing

6 Awesome Strategies that Will Show You How To Grow Your Business Locally

Blogging, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Viral marketing

How to grow your business locallyBusinesses need to rely on either excellent marketing or local customers if they want to be successful locally. The only thing is that businesses usually have low budgets for local marketing. One optimal method of ensuring that you maximize your potential in terms of marketing is to utilize local sources of marketing and develop your business locally.  There are more than just a few methods you can get this accomplished so you need to select strategies that best fit your business model. You need to always identify the demographics of your customers before anything else and cater your efforts of marketing to them when you can.

Setting Up for Local Business
Before you launch a local campaign for marketing, make sure you are completely set up especially if you are beginning a brand new business. It is a good idea to do research of the options you plan to pursue and plan up to half a year in advance while you get your business license or settle a lease. In the case where you have already set up your business, you might want to think about local business rebranding. You need to consult your graphic designer or website developer to ensure that you have great, attractive, and professional local branding. In the long run, it will pay off.

Create Local Website
Setting up your website is the next step. This is something you should do especially when you are planning to penetrate the local market. After all, local customers search online for stuff they need using search engines. Having your site online with service details, directions and contact information is highly recommended.

Advertise with Free Ads
Use free advertising online. Sign up for a free account on Google places where you can list a service description, post a picture, list a website link, phone number and your address. Outside of Google, there are also going to be places your customers might look so get listed as much as you can. Sign up for free accounts on CitySearch, Yelp, FourSquare, Twitter and Facebook. You should set up a Facebook page and make friendly suggestions that your customers or visitors ‘like’ your account. When used regularly, these are great tools for exposing your business to local customers.

Start Blogging
If you love to write and want to share your business, your craft, offer videos, photos and tips of your business then you need to consider blogging. This could attract a throng of customers. Keep in mind that successful business blogs are the ones that give out stuff other than business promotions. They offer insight about the community or the craft. Blogs updated regularly will gain followers and can be linked to Twitter, Facebook or your website.

Network Locally
In your local newspaper business section, find out who the local reporters are and get to know them. They can, after all, be the key to getting your business promoted locally. You might first ask about advertising that is paid and then inquire if there are free listings for businesses on the website of the newspaper.  When you can, make sure you keep networking with them and other local businesses.

Get Referrals
Encourage all your website visitors and customers to write reviews on your website to help promote what you have to offer. Not all reviews might be great and if a majority are favourable they will get you more customers.

Growing your business, whether locally or online will demand a lot of time from you and the only way to succeed is by using proven strategies. Try these 6 awesome strategies to grow your business locally.

Emma Ursula is the local online marketing expert at OSI Affiliate Software providing local marketing help. When Emma is not golfing, she is always reading.

What Is The Secret To Viral Marketing?

SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Viral marketing

With the boom in dotcom businesses, there has been a subsequent explosion in the success of viral marketing. By using social media to spreading the word about your business, product or interests you can capture traffic, which depending on your ambitions can either be translated into a cash return or help you to build your online brand.

Finding Your Edge!

With 48 hours worth of video material being uploaded to YouTube every minute, to execute a successful viral marketing strategy takes consideration. Although there are a few basic principles to guide you in producing strong viral content (which this article will address in a moment), the real secret to producing profitable viral marketing is this: the main reason social media users share anything is in order to build their own image. If you keep this simple truth at the forefront of your mind at all times you will find it easy to produce super shareable viral content.  If your clip is able to provoke a reaction, it is more likely to be shared. Simple!

Share Your Creative Juices

Perhaps the first principal when it comes to successful viral marketing is size. Keep your clips short, sweet and preferably ripe for a remi x. Also remember that whatever you want to go viral – a video, an animation or a jingle – your piece of content should aim to be unusual. Whilst it’s almost impossible to be original nowadays try to think outside the box when it comes to developing your idea. Another clip of a dog barking the words ‘I love you!’ is not likely to spread like wildfire.

Ship’em Out!

Remember that attention span is a short and precious thing. Attempting to slow release content or encourage people to return for a scheduled announcement just isn’t going to work. If you have related items, release them at the same time and cash in on those click throughs.

Finding a home Sweet Home

Think carefully about which forum you might release your material through – forums belonging to your target demographic are a great place to start. Likewise, using social media platforms can be a great place to begin circulating your content through your faithful followers. If you think your material is strong enough, use a charm offensive to target a celebrity with similar interests. Just one repost from them and you could be well on your way to a huge share count.

Theirs A Time And A Place

Plan your release by picking a sensible time to share. Don’t compete with television schedules or make a post whilst the football is on. Think about the trends that are relevant to your chosen topic and try to time your release and if possible, try to connect your viral to an existing promotion. Most reposts happen on Twitter between 9am and 6pm, on Facebook around lunchtime and in the evening and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are the best weekdays for sharing as people are bored at work.

Always Fresh

Keep it current and concise. Choose trending topics, news items, anything that will grab your audience’s attention instantly. When you title it, keep by-lines pithy and purposeful and remember that friendly titles that will translate clearly when shared are ideal.

Hook, Line And Sinker

With these tips in mind, you will be well on your way to a successful viral marketing campaign in just the click of a mouse. 

About our guest author: Steve Seymour is MD at Project Print Solutions, a printing and design company based in Manchester, UK.

How to Make Videos with SEO in Mind

SEO, SEO video, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Viral marketing

Make video with SEOOnline marketing is more than just running a search engine optimization campaign for your website and social media marketing. A good online marketing campaign should include every type of media possible, especially videos. By including online videos into your Internet marketing strategy, you will ensure that you create and distribute content in a format that your target audience enjoys consuming.  But how do you  make videos with SEO  in mind so they are seen by the search engines?
Let’ take a look here:

Keyword Optimization

Just like you would with a website, you need to optimize your videos for your target keywords. By placing your target keywords in strategic locations of your video files, you will increase the likelihood that these videos are found via online searches. Some places where you need to place your keywords are:

• Title
• Video File Name
• Alt Tags
• URL
• Link Text
• Video Description

When you place your target keywords in those locations with each video you upload, you will give the search engine bots a better idea as to what your content is about. This will help the bots rank your videos appropriately in the search results, allowing people to easily find your videos online.

Build Links to your Videos

In addition to optimizing your videos for specific keywords, you will need to build links to your videos just like you would with a website. When you create a number of backlinks that point to your videos, search engines will view your videos as containing valuable content because other people are linking to them. When your videos are viewed as having valuable content, search engines will be more likely to include your videos in their search results so that they can give their users the best content possible related to their search queries.

High Quality Content

In order for your online video marketing campaign to be a success, your videos need to contain high quality content. By making sure each of your videos contains content that people will actually enjoy viewing, you will increase your chances of having your videos be shared online. Once your marketing videos are able to go viral, you will see a ton of backlinks come in to your videos, improving your search engine rankings in the process.

If you produce low-quality videos that do not contain useful information, people will not want to view all of the videos you produce. After one viewing people will think your videos are a waste of time and will move on to the next company that offers better quality content. This is why it is so important to create videos with high quality content as you will have an easier time keeping your target audience engaged with your online videos.

Use Exciting Titles

Another tip you can use to help improve the SEO associated with your online video marketing campaign is to use exciting titles that entice people to click on your video. It can be rather easy for a video’s URL to get lost in the mix if you use a boring title. If no one is enticed to click your link, fewer people will actually view your video. By making sure you create eye catching, interesting tittles, you will increase your chances of getting clicks on your links and therefore will have better results with your video marketing campaign.

Video marketing should be an important piece of your overall online marketing strategy. Through the use of high quality videos, you will be able to reach more of your target demographic, especially the subset that enjoys consuming their content in video form. When using this marketing technique, you will want to ensure you use your target keywords in strategic locations of your video, build links to your videos and create eye catching titles to attract more clicks. Using these tips should help you see the best results possible when it comes to running an online video marketing campaign.

About our guest author: Professional writer and SEO consultant, Sebastin Webb, born and raised in New York. Today he writes about the importance of incorporating SEO into your videos.  Although it is a very powerful tool,  not many people use the power of YouTube.