Business Beginner

Every year the social media landscape shifts as new trends emerge that shape and mold it in different ways. For savvy businesses these trends represent an opportunity to get ahead of the pack and make their mark while engaging a wider audience in the process.  There are already several very noticeable trends that are shaping social media marketing this year. Out of them the 3 that seem to be playing the biggest role are: Live Video  Although live-streaming is nothing new, it is only over the last few years that it has started to be introduced on social media with platforms such as Periscope leading the charge. Now that Facebook has joined in with Facebook Live, and Twitter and Instagram also have their own live video features – the game is truly afoot. Already live video has been shown to increase engagement levels and attract more viewers who stay and watch for longer. In short it is a trend that is likely to define social media marketing for some time.  Social Messag...

Reviews from previous customers not only have major impacts on other potential customer’s purchase decisions. They also play an increasingly important role when it comes to your Google rankings . As a result, businesses are looking for ways to leverage customer reviews to drive their brand’s search ranking and performance.  However, many marketers and business owners hoping to manage customer feedback become overwhelmed easily especially when it is difficult for them to prioritize their resources and time. It's especially difficult for small businesses and solopreneurs to handle this ongoing task because they don't have a digital marketing or online reputation management team to take care of it.  This article goes into the importance of reviews for your Google rankings and further explains how review platforms such as Eooro can help your business improve its search ranking.  Online Reviews Have Multiple Benefits  The importance of getting reviews from previous cus...

I'm constantly asked about social media marketing, digital media, entrepreneurship, search engine optimization, retail sales, social selling, and many other topics through various outlets. These business questions come through my website, social media platforms, forums like Medium / Quora / Reddit / Ask /   Google / Inbound.org, and other outlets. When I have a lot of information to share on a particular subject I'll usually write an in-depth answer in the form of an article here... but I don't always have the time. Sometimes I just give a quick answer, or whatever initially comes to mind without prepping or brainstorming.  This series is reminiscent of  hustling entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk 's book #AskGaryVee (which I'm finishing now before posting a review), but I've actually been doing this for years with previous projects and businesses. My first  Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz  was a big hit so I'm making this a mainstay feature on my site...

Achieving an A or A+ rating for your business with the BBB can help you attract a higher number of quality customers . A lower rating will hurt your customer base, so you need to look into climbing out of the hole and making sure you do not fall back in it. If you want an outstanding stamp of approval, read the four sections below, and you will get off to a great start.  Reduce # Of Complaints the BBB Gets About Your Business  There are a myriad of factors that have an effect on your BBB rating, but the single biggest one to influence your score is the number of complaints the BBB receives about your business. Whether your business has five customers or 5000, ensuring you have nothing for customers to complain about is the plan to implement. It is vital to have a system already set up or fine tune your current system to ensure customers receive rapid delivery of services or products and equally prompt customer service. Being proactive prevents problems before the turn into ne...

Enjoy my most recent installment of Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz: answering your questions on social media marketing and more! These days how relevent is it for a blogger to have a Twitter account as opposed to an Instagram account? It’s still very important to have both in my opinion. I get 5–10x the blog and website traffic from my Twitter than I do from Instagram and it has helped my blog / website SEO tremendously. I think most bloggers that use both platforms successfully have a similar experience. Use both well to cover your bases. I like to remind people that “Twitter isn’t dead yet”. Why have I suddenly lost interest in social media pages like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? I’d have to say that it’s probably a positive thing, unless you are using these platforms for business purposes. I’m on social media all day every day (mostly for work) and it gets old after awhile. Hopefully you are replacing the time you spent on social media with healthier and more productive activ...

Do you remember the days of the Dot-Com Bubble in the early part of this century? That was a time of high speculation and lofty expectations as to how the Internet was going to transform the enterprise world. One of the most unusual predictions made a couple of decades ago was related to the future of customer service, which some analysts believed would be nearly eliminated through automation and highly efficient business processes.  Fast forward to today: despite incredible advances in robotics , we are not even close to replacing customer service agents with automatons. If anything, consumers have become more demanding with regard to the support and service they expect from modern companies. In today's highly competitive economy, the customer service strategies of the 20th century will not allow you to thrive in your sector. If your approach to customer service has not changed too much since the year 2000, you really need to modernize your strategies. Here are four tips to get yo...

I get questions on a daily basis about social media marketing, digital media, entrepreneurship, SEO, retail, and many other topics through various outlets. These questions come through my website, social media platforms, forums like Quora / Reddit / Google / Inbound.org, and other outlets. When I have a lot of information to share on a particular subject I'll usually write an in-depth answer in the form of an article here... but I don't always have the time. Sometimes I just give a quick answer, or whatever comes to mind first without edits.  It's actually ending up feeling a bit like hustling entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk 's book #AskGaryVee (which I'm finishing now before posting a review), but I've actually been doing this for years with previous businesses.  This will be my first installment of Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz, tackling quick questions from readers, viewers, peers, and friends. You'll also see plenty of internal links throughout which bri...

Here are some of my favorite inspirational quotes from business expert, bestselling author, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: 1)  "Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential." 2)  "Leadership is not bullying and leadership is not aggression. Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place." 3)  "When you're more valuable, the people around you will do more to make it work." 4)  "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on." 5)  "We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change." 6)  " Leadership belongs to those who take it." 7)  "It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness." 8)  "Knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to ...

If you're reading this right now, there's a very good chance that you are logged in to your Facebook. No I'm not reading your cache, but I am speculating it through those social media facts that tells us how much this generation is obsessed with all the social media platforms out there. In today's digital world we're all living two lives at once. One on the streets and the other on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or other social platforms.  Out of 7.3 billion people in the world, there are a staggering 2.3 billion active social media users on  Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, Google+, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. in their daily routines. With such massive traffic on these platforms, it only makes sense that marketers have fully embraced these websites to achieve outstanding results. Here are some of the statistics and strategies for 3 of the leading social networks: Facebook Statistics According to Facebook statistics, 72% of all US adults visit Facebook ...