Increase Traffic and watch Sales Boom

READY TO GET NOTICED ONLINE? Today’s tech savvy, smartphone-using consumers get their information from the Internet where they can simply type a couple of words into a search field and get what they are looking for with a click of a button. Our high-quality products and services ensure that when local consumers go online they find your business before your competitors – sending your leads and sales skyrocketing! http://www.theboomworks.com/

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Why Does My Business Need A Website?

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3 WAYS TO PROMOTE A WEBSITE

There are a zillion ways to promote a website to potential readers. You can start a contest that people enjoy. You can entice your readers with a discount. You can do the equivalent of standing on top of a roof and screaming out your website’s name. Here are some techniques that we have used to build and promote a website from scratch.

Run a Contest

Everyone wants to dream that they will be the winner in a grand contest. If you want to promote a website, you want to run a contest on that website. Let’s say that you have received $500 in swag from a manufacturer and want to get rid of it. That $500 can be given away in a contest of your choosing. The size of the prize will determine what you can get your readers to do. But, if you are after Facebook likes and other social proof, running a contest is one of the easiest, most cost effective ways to promote a website.

Talk with Others

Talk with others in your niche. Write comments on their blog. Talk with them through Skype and through email. These people in your niche are key to growing your own blog and your website. These people will help you shine. You see, when you talk with others in your niche, they might end up talking about you within their own blog. They might read your work, provide you with links, and more. Friends will do quite a lot for one another.

Don’t, however, simply talk with others in your niche because you think that you can ultimately get a link from them. That is not a way to promote a website. No, just take the time to talk with your peers, learn from them, and through that everyone can grow.

Promote Someone Else

The more that you talk about someone else, the more you will gain the spotlight. You see, your customers want to hear about how you can help them. Your customers want to hear about what problems that you can solve, even if you’re solving problems that they never even acknowledged as problems. When you want to promote a website, use content that talks to your clients and they will come to you.

A great way to promote someone else while you promote a website is to create a best of list. This list consists of the top people within the field or category. So, for example, let’s say that you are a pressure washing specialist. You can create a best pressure washing equipment, maybe a worst messes list, or even a best graffiti list. The goal of the creating the list is to get those others who are in the list to promote your website. They will, too.

There are some people, when they find out that you have been promoting them, who will turn around and promote you as one of their peers and authority figures within the field. The truth is, when you promote someone else while you promote a website, you are opening the doors of possibility wide open.

Creating great content and talking about other people are wonderful ways to promote a website. When you next think about what you will put on your website, think about what’s n it for them.

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Today, we're going to take a closer look at what people are looking at on their smartphones. I know that I love my smartphone, and I'm not alone. In the UK, you'll find that half of our total population owns a smartphone (According to this New Media Trend Watch report).

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Take a look out there at what organisations are doing in the world of social media and you will see there are basically three groupings: those who see it as a form of media, those who see it as a form of infrastructure and those who understand it as an agent of change.

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Love this.

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WHAT DO YOU DO WITH NEGATIVE REVIEWS?

We’ve talked about ways to get your customers to love you and we’ve talked how to get reviews for your online marketing venture, but we haven’t talked much about what should be done with negative reviews on Yelp and other local platforms.    What happens when the customers don’t love you and they decide to talk about it? Customer recovery is the art of interacting with customers when something has gone wrong.  On the Internet, it becomes extremely important to develop skill at customer recover, primarily because more potential customers can see the interaction and create a cycle of negative reviews.

When you receive a negative review, there are three options:

Ignore it

Some things aren’t worth the effort to respond to it.  If it’s someone calling you names out of the blue, or someone who received a bad experience once, it might not be worth making a public issue about it.  If you have plenty of positive responses to your service or business to counteract, then you might not need to worry.

Acknowledge it

If possible, acknowledge the negative review in the same forum.  Ask the individual about what you can do to make it better for them.  There may be times where your customer might have just had a bad day and is pushing their bad day on you.  You’ll look better if you ask if there’s anything you can do.

Fight fire with fire

This never turns out well.  Calling your customer out in one of these situations will usually end in a name-calling match or a PR nightmare.  Essentially, what originally starts as a chance to turn an unhappy customer into a satisfied one turns into a chance to keep the fire and the anger at bay with no winners.

Usually, bad customer reviews are the result of conflicting expectations between the two parties.  A customer expects that a restaurant will have good food.  A luxury place will provide you with experience, and so on.  When that goes awry, there are bad reviews delivered.

In an idyllic setting, we’d suggest that you not get into a position where you have to deal with a negative review.  Sometimes, however, things go wrong.  Sometimes they go badly wrong and the recovery process needs to be started.  It’s hard to go wrong when you’re taking the high road.

Have you had any issues with negative reviews?  What did you do about them? 

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Popularity can be measured by many metrics.  You can judge your blog by the number of commenters that you have on it.  You can judge it by the number of overall visitors You can also judge it by the number of conversions that you receive from it.  Having people recognize you for the greatness that you produce in the field is absolutely wonderful.

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ATTRACT NEW CUSTOMERS WITH LESS HASSLE

Small business owners who want to attract new customers and increase sales can no longer afford to hide their head in the sand and ignore the internet.  They can no longer hope and pray that physical word of mouth advertising and other traditional channels will carry them through to the next year, because their customer's needs and expectations are evolving toward a more digital mindset. Companies must have a digital presence to be competitive these days. At the end of September, UPS (package delivery service) and comScore (information provider) published a report titled UPS Pulse of the online Shopper; Europe Study.  This study surveyed over 5,000 shoppers in 6 European countries (the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, the UK and Germany) about their experiences with online shopping. It clearly shows what customers are looking for in their online shopping experiences:

They want an easy, hassle-free experience through all aspects of the purchasing process./li>

They want to be able to return their items without having to jump through hoops (58% of online consumers from the UK take a look at returns policies before making a purchase).

These consumers want to make their purchases online through the use of their mobile devices.  64% of UK tablet owners and 45% of UK smartphone owners make purchases through their devices

Those consumers are also willing to reward the brands who interact with them through social media and other interactive channels. 88% of UK consumers who liked a brand on Facebook will pay attention to the social media campaigns of that brand.

49% of mobile shoppers in the UK will not comparison shop when they're using a mobile app over a mobile website.

"Consumers in Europe and across the globe have a growing number of digital touch points, with more ways to stay connected with their favorite online retailers through every phase of the shopping, buying, and fulfillment process," said Susan Engleson, comScore senior director.  "What will set apart one retailer from another in a competitive marketplace is how well they meet the rapidly evolving needs and expectations of the consumers."

Does your company have a solid, proven way to attract new customers?  We would love to hear about it in the comments. If you’re seeking one, take a look at our services and see what we can do to help bring your business into the digital age.

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THE 12 THINGS THAT SELL BETTER THAN SEX

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The 5 must have components of your Googlr plus listing

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A marketing strategy needs to be designed around the needs of the customer, ‘what’s in it for them’ is the question that should be asked. Here's a good read on marketing strategy. http://www.theboomworks.com/blog/outsourcing-your-marketing-strategy/#.UkvaqtKmhe0

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There are a zillion ways to promote a website to potential readers. You can start a contest that people enjoy. You can entice your readers with a discount. You can do the equivalent of standing on top of a roof and screaming out your website’s name. Here are some techniques that we have used to build and promote a website from scratch.

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BLOG COMMENTING 101

When combined, blog commenting and guest posting make a powerful one-two punch in any company’s social media campaign.  We’ve talked about guest posting – asking other bloggers to post your content.  In this post, we’ll be talking about the best practices for blog (and forum) commenting.  Like most forms of social outreach, there’s an art to blog commenting.

Why Do Businesses Have Blogs (and why should we comment on them)?

One of the ways to generate trust with your clients is to provide free, useful information.  Blogs are a perfect platform for this purpose, so they naturally pave the way for more sales, more customers, and more site visitors.  A well-run blog can be used for networking, sales, and marketing.

Here are some great statistics about blogging as presented by the Yahoo Small Business Advisor.

Commenting on blogs offers many of the same advantages as guest posting:

Introduces you to new audiences

Shows that you’re part of the community

Demonstrates authority (if written well) within your niche

In fact, blog commenting has some advantages over guest posting

Doesn’t take as long to comment

‘Softer’ way of marketing your work

Occasionally provides backlinks

You gain ideas for your own posts

More chances to network with your community

More blogs accept comments than guest posts

What’s the best way to go about blog commenting?

Blog commenting should be one part of the overall strategy, not the sole strategy that you’re using to get attention and relevant links from other people.  Having a blog is the first crucial step in implementing a blog commenting strategy.

Your blog should be:

Up to date

Easy to read

Simple to navigate

Un-spammy

Well written

These are the same considerations that you should make for blogs on which you’re commenting.  If you know that nobody reads the blog that you’re commenting on, why comment on it other than to forge a relationship with the blog owner?

Perform a search

You need to find blogs on which to comment.  The easiest way that you can do that is to conduct a Google search to find what you need.  The search terms look like, <keyword> “leave a comment” or <keyword> “0 Comments”  You can mix and match your search terms to find what works for you in your keyword.  Think about these like using Google Alerts to find what you’re after.

Vet the blog

There are some blogs that just aren’t appropriate for your commenting.  You might sell magnets, and the topics on the blog are about relationships.  Sometimes, blog owners do one-offs as far as topics are concerned, so you need to investigate the blog to figure out whether it’s one that you want to be regular on.

Check the PR

Check the traffic

How much love does this blog receive?

Blog commenting is not necessarily to receive links, it is to gain exposure for your company.  Wouldn’t you rather have interested buyers than ones who are merely ‘kicking the tires’?  Blog commenting offers a way to bring the interested buyers to you, making your business boom.

Make a comment

Your first few times making comments may or may not capture the attention of the people who own the blogs.  If they see your name over and over again, you will gradually capture their attention and perhaps inspire them to reach out to you.

Your comments should follow the three R’s of blog commenting:

Real

Relevant

Responsive

Nobody likes spam on their blogs.  It’s an indication that people just don’t care about it, and deters the influential people from responding to you in any form or fashion.  Basically, the people who will offer you exposure won’t pay attention to you if all they see on your site is ‘nice blog’ or a litany of bad posts.  It’s your job to make sure that you give as good as you get.

Blog commenting should be done as part of a concerted outreach effort.  It is a piece of the puzzle that includes ebooks, a stellar blog on your own site, guest posting, and more.  The best way to get traction in your niche is to actually socially interact with others (or have someone do it for you – we know it can be time consuming!) rather than merely giving it lip service with a single piece of the puzzle.

Please book mark this article and comment too.

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GOOGLE JEOPARDIZES SEO STRATEGIES

In the not too distant past, we asked whether it was possible to give Google the finger.  As it turns out, Google gave marketers the finger by locking down its organic search data.  Instead of referral data which is used to hone marketing approaches, marketers are increasingly receiving keyword (not provided) in their listings. While Google’s securing of this data might make them a hero in some people’s eyes, in others it makes them the villain.  Marketers everywhere are scrambling and trying to figure out what they are going to do without that knowledge at their fingertips.  Fortunately, there are several options for what can be done when the pipeline is completely turned off.

Bing and Yahoo still allow marketers to see the search term data.  Even though Google has more than 60% of the market share, these two search engines still have very useful information.

Focus on the page views and other indicators that are coming in.  You don’t necessarily need to have all of the information coming in about a page to be able to determine its success.  If you find that some pages are getting more views, you can get an idea of what to focus your future pages on.

You can also bite the bullet and start running a Google Adwords campaign to see where the hot keywords are.  This costs a bit of money, but it can be well worth it if you are trying to open up new markets and new keywords for your business.

How are we at the Boom Works planning on tackling this problem?  We’re taking the already existing keyword lists that we have and expanding our content base to include more epic content.  We know that a lot of the SEO strategies involve keywords, but there are more things than keywords to focus upon.  Let The Boom Works take over your marketing campaign – we’ll make your business boom.

Inspiration for the article that you’ve just read can be found at Moz.com

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Share, Like, Win Promotions | Social Media Today

Running promotions or competitions without the use of an app was previously a highly risky strategy, the changed rules however provide much more freedom and make it super easy to run promotions and competitions. Don’t make the mistake of running these promotions too often, because after a while your community will start to lose interest and may become less responsive.

Be sure to keep all of your promotions and competitions fresh, interesting and relevant and don’t rely solely on the Facebook share, like, win mechanism.

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The art of guest postingAccording to some, guest posting is one of the most important social outreach strategies available to bloggers.  Not only does it improve the relations between bloggers, but having valuable links between blogs improves the overall value of the site in the eyes of the search engines.  The rocket scientists here at The Boom Works use guest posting as one of the strategies to make the sales of your business boom.

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By Fausto Mendez

Content (marketing) is King! Let’s define and discuss the fundamentals of web-based content marketing because, frankly, too many business owners misunderstand the purpose and methodology of this marketing strategy. To start, let’s get one thing clear: content...