New ways to grow your Business

LinkedIn has evolved from a little known website used as a place for job seekers to a more and more popular networking hub which has gained a positive reputation for helping businesses gain clients.

LinkedIn can be used for some many reasons such as business development, sales, marketing, hiring, recruiting, advice, job hunting and much more.

While Facebook and Twitter are great social media platforms that many small businesses have already started using, relatively little has been heard about the power of LinkedIn. Yet this professional network should be a part of your small business social media marketing plan.

It’s main appeal? LinkedIn is business focused, provides the opportunity to connect with millions of people and allows its users to participate in conversations by joining groups.

9 Steps to a Winning LinkedIn Strategy

Who Will You Connect With?

Who do you connect with beyond your coworkers, family and friends?

Start by asking yourself who you with to network with, what is your niche market and where do you find it? By answering these questions you will understand what types of contacts you need to seek out. Once you have made your initial connections, you can search your contact’s networks and request to be introduced.

Only add connections that are relevant to you and your business: perfect prospects, people you can learn from or those who can provide you with another connection or new business. Meaningless connections are just that, meaningless.

What Are Your Goals?

Figure out what your LinkedIn objectives are. Are you participating to gain business recognition? Are you participating to grow your network and build client list? Having a clear understanding as to why you have signed up for an account in the first place will help you achieve your ultimate goal.

Build a Great Profile

Your profile gives you credibility and should represent you and your business in a professional manner. Make sure to provide enough information to get noticed and differentiate you from the crowd.

Don’t forget to use SEO to your advantage. LinkedIn is a highly respected website by Google and LinkedIn profiles can rank high in SERPs. Attract further traffic by including key phrases Google users will be looking for.

Build Relationships

Social media is all about building relationships, creating trust and helping others. Get to know the people in your network. Don’t just accept connection requests. Reply to those invites and learn about this new person. Likewise, try to send a genuine request instead of the generic “I’d like to add you to my professional network” message when reaching out to new people. It will make you appear more human and less business-like.

Share great content, news and articles consistent with your brand. Use the “Network Status Update” feature often as a tool for sharing information, offering advice, posting company announcements, links to your recent blog articles etc.. The size of your network is valuable ONLY IF you’re communicating with that network on an ongoing basis.

Be a real person and let people know the real you. Being genuine opens many opportunities. Marketing jargon will surely close them.

Group Participation

LinkedIn groups can be very effective in building your brand, connecting with other professionals who share your interests and generating traffic to your website/blog. Once you join a relevant group you can participate in discussions and connect with its members. When you contribute to discussions and add your professional opinion you establish yourself as a professional and put yourself in front of potential clients.

Linkedin Groups have become very popular over the past six months – whatever your interests you’re sure to find at least one active group. There are industry-specific groups, trade and professional organization groups, college/alumni groups, location-specific groups, personal interest groups – find one relevant to your business and connect.

Request Recommendations

LinkedIn offers a great feature everyone should utilize – recommendations. This is a powerful feature because of the social proof that endorsements provide. You can request recommendations from past employers, co-workers, clients and of course the more, the better.

Answer questions

Another unique feature of LinkedIn you should be using is “Answers” (similar to Yahoo Answers). Answer questions posted there as often as you can this. This will help you establish yourself as an expert in your field and get yourself noticed by more people. Once you’re noticed by more people on LinkedIn, they’ll start connecting with you, eventually recommending you, and telling their connections about you, thereby growing your network.

Be Consistent

Stay active on an ongoing basis. Do a little something every day – 10 or 15 minutes, or at least several times a week. Consistent, frequent communication and activity keeps you “on the radar” screen of your network.

Backup Your Contacts

LinkedIn allows you to export your connection details to an Excel spreadsheet, a feature you should be using. If you don’t, you are at the mercy of LinkedIn – if they ban you or their business model changes you may loose access to this vital information instantly. To backup, simply click “export connection” link located on the bottom of your connections page.

In Conclusion

LinkedIn can be a terrific resource for your business if used properly. Of all of the social networking websites, LinkedIn, may be the most beneficial to your business because of its entirely professional nature.

A Smart Free Way to Backup Your Files

The file backup system that I am

talking about is a great tool I use and

love called Dropbox.

 

You can install dropbox on multiple

computers and all files you put in your

dropbox will be accessible in this folder

on both computers. 

 

You can also access your dropbox files

from any computer on the dropbox website.

 

Dropbox gives you 2GB for free, and this

is typically enough to back up all important

documents, and more!

Visit dropBox 

Architect your web site which your path to success

We all know that online success isn’t about sitting there toddling our thumbs, hoping the taffic that makes it to our web site takes action. We have to be an active, more active than our competitors in exchange with our customer, potential customers or web site visitors. We have to persuade our visitors by interviewing the selling process with the buying process. Our website it the place where our selling process and customers’ buying process meet together and fulfil both parties needs. In other words or marketing theories, aidas ( attention, interest, desire and action) and wiifm ( what’s in it for me?). These are the critical points or elements behind any sales or conversion process.




Persuasion architecture ensures the design of our web site has a sold foundation. So it persuade and converts visitors efficiently and effectively. Below are the main elements in the persuasion architecture.


1. Uncovery

2. Wireframing

3. Storyboarding

4. Prototyping

5. Development

6. Optimization


Uncovery


Skilful uncover is the first necessary step towards designing and developing effective persuasive architecture. Neglecting this element in the process would be the architectural equivalent of constructing a building but omitting the foundation.


Below activities are come under uncovery


i. Mapping objectives
ii. Developing strategy
iii. Understanding the customers buying process
iv. Understanding and refining the sales process
v. Defining personas
vi. Researching keywords and key phrases
vii. Defining the key business metrics that will be used


If any one doesn’t get the uncovery part right, we will not be able to define or measure success. Uncovery is completed with the development of personas, along with narrative that described how the personas buy and what you would do to persuade them. So uncover is pretty much the who of the creative process of our persuasion architecture.


Wireframing


Wireframing defines the what of the creative process of persuasion architecture. It is a sturcturall, page by page representation of every click through possibility and path your visitors might take. It other word, map of interactivity.


No pictures, no designs, just bare bones text and hyperlinks. You can click the links and see where you go, you can get a feel for the process of the web site and the help generate useful feedback at a time when changes and multiple iterations are snap. When your wireframe, you evaluate the entire web site and all it’s interactions and navigations before you enter the more costly phase of programming. Saves your time saves your money.




Storyboarding


Storyboarding focuses on how you go about accomplishing the what. It is the why you begin to flesh out your wireframe. When you storyboard, you develop the persuasive copy that is going to grab your visitors’ attention and motivate them through your web site. You pay careful attention to;


• The graphic mockup
• Scanning and skimming
• The eight second rule
• Priority of content
• Kiss ( keep it simple and stupid)


Your first storyboards should appear in gray scale, so you can evaluate the composition and process without the emotional influence of color. Then yiu can proceed to a color mockup, finally html mockupo will start.

Business Building Tips for Small Company owners

You may be just start your own dream to realistic. The journey is long way to go. Sometimes you may tired or boring. It wont grow as you dreamed. Many obstacles. But don’t give up. Only few people have smooth path to reach the top. All other face many difficulties while they grow their business.

Below are some little hits, how you keep your head up.
01.    Find your passion to your business.
02.    Make a list  of all reasons why you love your business, your products and services.
03.    Share your thoughts and story, why you became a entrepreneur. It will bring you big enthusiasm about yourself.
04.    Don’t stop your dreaming habit. Imagine how you and your business in another 5 years, 10 years. It will give you courage to achieve most difficult goals in your business.
05.    Read the stories of rich people, successful businessmen. There are enough inspirational books, blogs articles online freely available for everyone. Gain the benefits from those materials, Good strategies, thinking can be achieved though continuous learning.

Botox treatment for lines and wrinkles at Cheshire Cosmetic Clinic

Select right web development company for your business

Now web site is must to any type of business, you may be in small or medium scale organization or large organization, it is better to have web site when your customers search you on the internet. However building a web site is not easy task and we need some expert knowledge to implement this project and it is an on - going project as well. It is an investment for the company. Some companies, especially large organizations maintain separate division for web site development and maintain it’s operations. However most of companies now out sourcing this project to external company due to various reasons such as internal division maintain is more costly than our sourcing, need to hire more experts to develop the web site and manage it. Other infrastructure like servers are additional cost to company.

Therefore most of companies, event large companies now out sourcing their web site development project to external companies. However finding a best matching web development company might be difficult. This article will help to find the right web development company and what are the main areas to be consider. If you have not selected right company, you could not achieve your target and it is wasting money as well.

01. Plan your basic requirement

Before go to service provider, your should understand your need well. You are the person who explain the need to web development company and they will develop the site according to your requirement. If you have them incomplete or wrong information, They may develop incomplete product for you.

02. Set your budget

Before finding a company to out- source your project you should know, how much you can afford for this investment. There are so many companies doing web development at different price range, careful for very low prices, they may fool you. Most probably, it may be an incomplete project

03. Start searching

Now start to search who is doing web development. Give high priority for local area people such as , if you are in Manchester, search for web development companies in Manchester area . Easy to negotiate and will understand your need and your target audience well. You can search through main search engines, like google, yahoo, or you can collect information from some referral sites like linkdin, facebook. List down most attractive vendors match to your needs.

04. Evaluate each vendor.

Careful evaluation will help you to find the best match to your needs, budget, time limit and other factors. If you have big list first short list them and evaluate. Otherwise you may not be able to take correct decision. It is better to consider positive and negative both factors.

05. Check their previous clients

This is not feasible all the time, but if you can get some feedback from previous clients, that will be big support to evaluate vendors.

06. Ask them the brief and proposal

You can ask short listed web development companies to send you small brief or proposal after you explain your need to them, then you can understand their professionalism for web development area and it will help you to select one company to hand over your project.

Web site is must to any company. Bespoke Web designing is recommended

Online, internet, web sites are now very common topics and everyone is interesting it. Any company in this world should have a web site. Because now, your customers may ask, what is your web site? Can I order through web site, Can I get all the information from your web site? Now no one ask you, whether you have a web site or an email? That was gone for history. Even you are a very small company it is better to have a web site. You may surprise 20 billion shoppers now online, they buy small groceries to land to cars through web site. Even doctors’ consultations are selling through online. In early days we thought to get the services from Service providers like doctors, lawyers, beauticians, we should visit the  service providers location. Now that was change completely. You can get their service to your home instantly. 

When you think about having a website for your web site, there are several options available. If you want to get common and basic website, there is a way to get it from some template driven web sites. Then there are so many web sites more similar to your one. Only content is different. But if you want unique web site to standing among others, you should develop your own web site. We called it bespoke web desiagning.  Bespoke web design help  you to create unique web site match to your corporate theme, colors and can integrate physical company  appearance to web site as well. Customers who come to your office or store, will feel the same when they visit to web site as well.
If you have low budget for website development, or no enough technical support, or you are hurry to go online and you are not worrying about your unique presence in online, then template driven sites or CMS( content management System) sites are the easy way to implement your web site. Only thing you have to do is to do needed content or information relating to your company and products you sell and update the content management system accordingly. 

But if you are more concern about your business presence on internet and line to aline all things together and you have some budget to spend, you can have bespoke web design to your site. This will help to build the credibility among your customers, because if your site and the other stuff wont match together customers may confused which one should believe. They believe what they experience first. That mean  website may to achieve the expected objectives. Therefore it is better to have you unique bespoke web site for your own. That’s why all big brands in the world have their own web site with match to company themes and gaining good revenue from online as well. 

Now you may think seriously, how to get bespoke web design for your company web site and how much should you spend for this project. Nowadays there are enough bespoke web deign companies in the world and your area as well. It is better to select local company. Then you can communicate effectively and can implement your need quickly. Most of companies offer web design consultations and suggest their recommendations. If you select local company, it is easy to negotiate and web design company may know about your customers well due to same area. My recommendation is, if you are based in Manchester, search for web designers in Manchester

Other than the uniqueness and individuality in bespoke web design, site quality, speed are the other main plus points I can highlighted. Cost is the negative point I can mention with compared to CMS sites. But I can guarantee, it is an investment, not just as cost for your company. Even though you need more technical knowledge, web design company will help secure you from this area always

Is Retargeting Ready to go Mainstream?

Alongside all of the coverage of the iPad, Apple and Google's growing war, and iPhones being left on bar stools, Google's launch in March of a retargeting capability from search into the content network felt comparatively ignored.
This is one of the important trends for search and display marketers of 2010. Many may not be using retargeting now (sorry, remarketing as Google calls it), but we'll look back on 2010 as the year this became a mainstream tactic. This should be the year most paid search and ad serving tool providers rushed to support retargeting, if they didn't offer it already.
Why? Three reasons: the recession, Google and the growing maturity of digital.
Tear Down the Digital Wall!
We all know display budgets have suffered from recessionary pressure over the last few years as brands cut budgets, looked for efficiencies, and in many cases stopped any activity that didn't generate a return in terms of direct acquisition.
Retargeting helps close the loop between search and display and knocks down some of the walls that have developed in the industry. Consumers don't perceive display and search silos – they go about their business on the Web, reading content, using Facebook, seeing ads, and then search when they're ready to start their journey to a purchase. They don't care about how we structure agency teams or brands allocate their budgets across channels or attribute sales.
Retargeting allows display and search budgets to work in a more complementary manner; not passively when post-campaign analysis is carried out and trends are spotted, but actively, with conscious decisions taken to retarget consumers based on search clicks during their research phase.
A Boost for the Google Content Network – and Paid Search Generics
Google entering this space is an obvious move for the company. Their revenues from the content network will increase if this works, and many advertisers have, despite Google's insistence to the opposite, found that the content network just doesn't work for them.
This could bring them back into the content fold. Once Google backs a marketing technique, agencies and many brands start questioning if it's something they should make a pillar of their strategy (to the frustration and relief of display and search people who have been shouting into the dark that this was the way to integrate disciplines for years).
Potentially, retargeting will also further underline the need to invest in generics term in paid search or as part of a natural search strategy. While often expensive and competitive, these terms many receive a boost as brands deliberately re-engage consumers "lost" after visiting a site via a generic term.
If a retargeted ad causes them to revisit the site and buy, when previously they may have not done so, future investment in a generic term can been justified and the cash involved made to work harder. This approach drives increased volumes and becomes a positive feedback loop feeding into the bottom line if managed efficiently.
Next time, we'll look at how digital is getting wiser, some third-party tools, and display's new best friend.

Price is matter for online shopping.

When we buying online, we always think, whether we get the right price . Internet shopping is like so many competitors under one roof. No any switching cost to search from another supplier. So having great price for your products is most important thing in online business. There are few tactics you can use to show that you have great price for your products.


01. Try slash through pricing

02. Use free shipping/delivery ( this is use by many companies online)

03. Add a limited time offers

04. Show comparisons to competitors

05. Show good, better, and best options.

06. Don’t give offers to all the products. Give few offers among big range.

How you improve your conversion instantly?

Conversion means, your web site, your product or service can meet the your customer expectations or customer needs. To satisfy your all customers need may be impossible, but as far as you can you have to meet the customer expectation, otherwise your business will die day by day.
Therefore , all the marketing gurus always emphasis about understanding about customer needs. When any visitor come to your site, can they find what they are looking for? When we drive visitors through search engine , we target specific key words terms that how customers search the product or service, May be they directly type about your web site name, product name or the benefits that can get from your product. If we can give most relevant page them to find what they search, you may win the visitor and if he satisfy with your product, he may be a repeat visitor to your web site. Below are some suggestions to improve your web site conversion
01. Give high prominence for fast moving Items. All the customers may not aware about it. But when they see it, there may be impulse buying
02. Match the lading pages to your campaigns, drive visitors to most relevant page
03. Tune your internal search engine to match top search terms as well as very niche terms that may your customer search.
04. Test your categories, navigation, pages with your customers, they are the best people to test. Most loyal customers will always willing to give their ideas.
05. Try cross selling, you can add related items to products reviews, look at Amazon. They do this in best way.
06. Smooth navigation is must. Add relevant, topically based shopping navigation.
07. Ensure interactivity is in each pages to bring visitors through pages.
08. Display large photos of your products, this the online merchandising. When visitor see more detail about the product, it is easy to get fast decision.
09. Show the products in action
10. Give the more prominence the key benefits of the products
11. Look at the headings of each products. It is one way to get quick attention from the visitors.
12. Do not Display large paragraphs for product information, short and sweet way is best, but ensure most important information are available