Distance education

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube: Wherever you go, you’ll find people discussing their activities on these Web sites ad infinitum. Those social media tools, and others like them, have become a major part of people’s lives and are fast becoming the chief method of reaching and connecting with people. These tools are also viral in nature, which means that it is extremely easy to share information you like with other people using these sites. These are the main reasons why these tools are also becoming indispensable for marketers and business owners and why social media marketing is all over the place today.

Social media marketing simply means using social networking tools to market your business and build and establish its brand. Though social networking tools were initially used by people for personal networking and socializing, they are now increasingly being used for promotion as well. But there are a couple of things you should keep in mind before you take the plunge.

• The first and foremost thing you have to do is to ensure that you are willing to commit the time and energy to regularly update your blog, Twitter, Facebook or whatever other tool you are using. Creating an account on a social networking site and not updating it regularly is worse than not creating an account at all.

• Limit conversations about yourself. Though this might seem like a paradox considering that you want to promote your business, you have to remember that people have short attention spans that tend to get shorter if the content does not interest them. The best thing to do is to provide regular information about a specific topic or about the industry that your business is based in.

• Don’t get into it blindly just because others are doing it. Make sure you have a definite set of goals before you start. Plan every step and plan the various ways you can make the information on your various pages as interesting as possible.

• Contribute quality content. Posting information just because you have some does not work. Readers can sense when you actually mean something and when you are doing something just for the heck of it. To make it easier for you, choose a topic that interests you or that you are passionate about.

• Social networking tools are very informal in nature. So whatever you write does not have to be formal or stiff. In fact, it will help your business more if your posts and videos are laid-back and fun. This is your chance to show people that owning a business does not automatically equal being stuffy.

• Try to use as many social networking tools as possible. The more exposure your business gets, the better for you. So make use of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts and anything else you can think of. Just remember to update them regularly. If you don’t have the time to personally do it, you can hire someone to do it for you. Jut make sure that you hire someone who is extremely knowledgeable about them.

• Contribute to other people’s blogs. Make comments for their posts either offering some advice or tips on something they have written or just providing some new information.

• Once you have everything in place, extensively promote your YouTube videos, your blog posts or your podcasts on social bookmarking sites such as Technorati (for blog posts), Digg, or StumbleUpon.

You have to be very careful while using social networks because if your plans backfire, then the bad publicity you get will be greater than any good publicity you might have received if all had gone well. As mentioned above, social networking tools are viral in nature. You know the old saying, “bad news spreads faster than good news.” You can be sure that any fiasco by your business will reach thousands of people within minutes. For example, when KFC started their line of grilled chicken, they used online coupons to promote it. Each coupon allowed the holder to get two pieces of free grilled chicken, two sides and a biscuit over a two-day period. KFC made use of Oprah to promote the coupons but what could have been PR gold turned into a disaster. The offer made KFC the No. 1 topic on Twitter and it was talked about on blogs everywhere – but there was so much demand that the company was unable to hold up their side of the bargain. So the chain had to end the promotion and give the customers a rain check. Saying that the customers were unhappy would be an understatement! KFC could have avoided this if they had had more control over their promotion and a stronger PR team.

Having said that, utilizing only social networking tools to build your business and brand is also a bad idea. You should have an entire marketing campaign to publicize your business, which should include more traditional media such as T.V and newspaper ads, radio spots, newsletters and promotional giveaways. And sometimes social networking tools, or the entire concept of social media marketing, may be wrong for your business. For example, if your business caters to a niche audience that you know for sure are not avid users of these tools, then using these tools will not make much difference to your business. In such cases, you will be better off using more traditional approaches that you know would reach your audience. The key to social media marketing is to fully understand how it works and then to determine how to best make it work for you.

When you are looking to increase conversion rates on your PPC accounts there are some test that are important to carry out within Google website optimizer using the multivariate testing option.  Here is a comprehensive checklist to help you improve conversion rates on your pay per click campaigns:

Test 1 – Call to Action

Here you need to check the button colour, test the location on the page and also test different copy on the button.

Test 2 – Shopping Cart or Form

Check the length of form, how the link location works and also thoroughly test the content within the form

Test 3 – Headline

Test the overall size, font type and colour used.  The copy should be well tested using your keywords and decode via testing whether or not to use a subheading.

Test 4 – Copy

Test out various tones be it emotional, sales driven or urgent.  Look at the structure of your copy and compare minimal copy versus lots of copy.  Finally try bullets compared to paragraphs to see how this affects conversions.

Test 5 – Trust Symbols

Try combinations of case studies, testimonials, client logos and trust logos.

Test 6 – Additional testing elements

In addition to the above you can try the following elements:

•           Landing page colours, flash, images and videos

•           Contact forms

•           Types of navigation – drop down versus basic

•           Promotions and offers

•           Single conversion funnel or multiple

•           Product comparisons

•           Shopping cart funnel

At http://www.clickconsult.com we can assist in all elements of pay per click management and campaign analysis.

Social media has come to play an incredibly important role in the marketing campaigns of a variety of different businesses. Here are 8 rules of social media optimization that you must follow to ensure that you maximize the results of your social media marketing campaign.

1. Increase Your Website’s Linkability

The problem with a lot of websites is that they are static. Their content remains the same and nothing on the site is updated on a regular basis. Increasing the linkability of your site is one of the first and most important steps of social media optimization and SEO. The easiest way to get started with this is by adding a blog to your site and updating it regularly.

2. Develop a Clear Social Media Optimization Strategy

All marketing campaigns have a strategy behind them and SMO is no different. Define your objectives and set goals that will help you reach your desired outcome, whether that is credibility, a boost in reputation, site traffic, or increased conversions. One of the biggest mistakes that many companies make is not approaching SMO with clear goals or a strategy.

3. Stay Fresh

Don’t be afraid to be different in social media. The social media landscape is constantly morphing and the companies that dare to be unique are the ones that end up with the most successful SMO campaigns and getting national PR. Keep up with all the new tools and products that pop up to stay on top of your game.

4. Make It Easy for Readers to Tag and Bookmark

When you add features like the “add to del.icio.us” and the “Retweet” buttons to your content, it serves as a direct reminder for people to share your content. Many bloggers receive a 100% increase in retweets when they add the button. When a lot of people tweet or Digg your content, you get a lot of social proofing. Nonetheless, you don’t necessarily have to make it easier for people to tag and bookmark since great content will be shared no matter what.

5. Help People for Nothing in Return (Yet)

To put it simply, in social media, you have to give value to get value. You can pass along links that would help someone resolve an issue or give them advice if they need it. Eventually, people will come to see you as a source of information. This will lead them to link to your site or tag it as being an authoritative site in your niche, gradually boosting your reputation and improving your search engine ranking.

6. Participate Fully in the Community

Participation is the core of social media. Social media is a two-way street. You must create awareness of your brand and spread your message by participating in social media outlets on a regular basis. Your reputation and message will spread faster and further if you actively participate.

7. Know Your Target Audience

In order to make content and market ideas that are compelling to your target audience, you have to know them well. You have to realize that you can’t appeal to everyone. That’s why it’s important to know who your main audience is so you can tweak your messages to appeal to them. In order to learn who your audience is, you have to become a member of the community yourself.

8. Be authentic

Social media users are becoming more and more skilled at spotting fakers so to avoid being shunned and prevent damage from being done to your reputation, be authentic in your interactions.

Web design is used as a general term to describe any of the various tasks involved in creating a web page. More specifically, it refers to jobs focused on building the front-end of a web page.

The web consists of myriad pages, presenting information using different technologies and linked together with hyperlinks. There are two basic aspects to any web page found on the Internet. The first is a presentation that the user interacts with, usually visually, while the second is a back-end that includes information for non-human browsers.

The basic markup language used to tell a browser how to present information is called the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). A stricter version of HTML is also widely used, known as eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML). Using HTML or XHTML, a web designer is able to tell a browser how a web page should appear. In the last few years there has been a push towards separating the underlying structure of a web-page (using HTML) from the visual presentation of the site (using Cascading Style Sheets or CSS). This approach has a number of major benefits in both the short and long term, and is gathering popularity as time progresses.

From a technical standpoint, the act of web design can be quite difficult. Unlike more traditional print media, HTML has a number of variable factors. To begin with, not all browsers interpret HTML according to the standards created by the standard-setting body — the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3. This means that while one piece of web design will appear as the designer wishes it to in one browser, it may appear completely differently in another. There are numerous fixes and workarounds to try to circumvent browser-specific bugs, but it is a tenuous business at best.

Imagine telling an advertising agency that you will pay them only when you get leads from an ad. Or, perhaps you suggest paying them based on the sales that you make because of exposure of an ad. Besides having difficulty measuring these outcomes, chances are the agency will not take you seriously.

Approach a web site owner and he or she may actually consider your offer. The Internet enables you to pass this off through a marketing method called affiliate marketing – an effective way to increase your web site’s exposure, identify new customers and increase sales. According to Forrester Research, affiliate marketing is the most effective of all online marketing methods.

With an affiliate program you offer affiliates an incentive to perform a particular outcome. This outcome may be to generate customer leads for your business, increase ‘clicks’ to your site or improve sales – from a banner ad, text link, graphic or other means such as a newsletter. The incentive is usually a fee, provided as a flat rate or percentage depending on your affiliate program objectives.