The Must Use Social Media Strategies To Expand Your Brand - R. Rashaad LV Patrick II PhD

An integral part of your business success is reaching customers through inventive and comprehensive social-media marketing campaigns.

Here are some tips to help build up your following and your brand.

Make your tweets stand out.

If you don't want your posts to get lost in the Twitter stream, make sure to include an image, related link or even an emoji to separate your missives from the torrent of other tweets.

Express yourself with longer posts.

If you feel limited by Twitter's 140 character count, feel free to expand on a point with posts on platforms like Tumblr and LinkedIn.

Strengthen your Facebook network.

If you find that you aren't getting the response you are after from your company's Facebook page, create some groups to spark more connections and conversations around your product and brand. Your customers can also choose to get updates from you this way.

Inspire action.

Include call to action buttons (i.e. "like this page" and "learn more") in your posts to gain more traction, clicks and conversions.

Stay top of mind.

Market and post consistently across multiple platforms. Tailor your posts for each community and be sure to include links to your other social accounts in the bio and about sections so customers know where else to find you.

Make connections.

You’re not just selling a product or a service, but a larger network. If you know of people in your orbit that would benefit from a meeting, whether they are an investor, advisor, client or customer, make the introduction – you and the brand be well remembered.

Share your feedback.

When you get positive feedback from a customer, don't be afraid to highlight it. Retweet customer praise, thank individual customers on your Facebook page and consider a crowdsourced, user-generated campaign.

Veer off the beaten track.

If a marketing idea appeals to you but you're not sure if it'll work, do the research but give it a try anyway. People will appreciate something a little unusual, and it could go viral.

Until Next Time,

Dr. P

Rashaad Patrick PhD - 12-Point Checklist For Building an Online Business (Part 2)

Building an online business is never an easy task. Either if you are a business veteran or a beginner pursuing a dream, there are numerous challenges to overcome, trends to keep an eye on and a need for tremendous preparation. To make it at least a tiny bit easier, I decided to put together a 12-point checklist in a 4 part series, covering all the essential steps for starting an online business.

4. Take a look around

Okay. You have an idea, which seems to be interesting and also figured out a business model, that would generate constant revenue for your online business. Now it's time to turn the focus on the other players. Dig up everything on any other online companies, or solo entrepreneurs who are offering the same service as you will be. The chances are high that you will bump into a bunch of future competitors, where the best scenario is ending up with a few big names who are doing something similar. Why? Because it proves that your idea is already working - only it's making others successful at the moment and not you.

Don't get nervous about discovering that your idea is already out there. In these cases, you can either get back to the first point and think of another one (not the easiest thing), or alter your present idea, so that it can offer something better, faster, cheaper, easier compared to your future competitors. Also, if it seems like that there are hundreds of others doing the same as you are planning to, don't simply just give up on your idea, but start thinking about how you could make it unique. Surely if there are hundreds like you, they were able to do the same, so why give up? The next point might come in handy in this case.

5. Analyze and learn

It's time to get back to the lab! Gather every detail that you can on your future competitors. Know them and know them well. If you are going to join the competition for online success, it is vital to know the business model of the others. How do they generate revenue? Who is the most successful? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What is their target audience? It might take considerable time but these insights are vital in the long run. Why? Because this can help you create value and transform your idea into an actual piece of art, that offers better capabilities compared to others. Furthermore, it helps you to make your future product or service: UNIQUE!

6. Uniqueness

If you have done your homework, you should be aware of the similar services out there. The information can help you to hone your future product or service and make it more unique. All the data that you have gathered in point five and two, will get you a bunch of vital insights on your target audience, the best business models out there, the various pricing possibilities, and on the unique functions, services or extras which are needed to differentiate your own service from your competitors. This is your way to uniqueness. 

Part III is on its way

Dr. P

Rashaad Patrick PhD - 12-Point Checklist For Building an Online Business (Part 1)

Building an online business is never an easy task. Either if you are a business veteran or a beginner pursuing a dream, there are numerous challenges to overcome, trends to keep an eye on and a need for tremendous preparation. To make it at least a tiny bit easier, I decided to put together a 12-point checklist in a 4 part series, covering all the essential steps for starting an online business.

1. The idea

The most crucial part of becoming an entrepreneur in the online business is to have at least a rough idea of what you could offer for your audience or customers. Are you thinking about offering a complex service? Would you like to generate revenue from an interesting topic and an audience? There are numerous business models out there, which you can follow and which can help you to visualize the future of your online business. Brokerage, advertising, infomediary or affiliate services are a few examples of online business types. With some research, you might find yourself coming up with an idea that fits one of these categories and seems like a real profitable one. On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to have at least a broad idea of what you would like to do, you are ready to move on to the second point. 

2. Make ideas great again!

You wouldn't want to fall into the mistake of establishing a business, which offers services that nobody cares about. I know that you probably think that this isn't so, however, sometimes we can easily get carried away by our own "great" ideas. Your next step is to make sure that there is an actual need for the services that you would like to offer. How is this possible? Gather as much data as you can, ask people on the street, send out a bunch of emails to the ones who you think would be your target audience, run polls in online communities, etc.

All in all, try everything you can to get as close as possible to having a representative data. This will not only get you closer to confirming the "greatness" of your idea but will also help you to identify the real target audience. For example, if you create an online questionnaire and share it in a group chat, make sure to have people share their age and gender with you. This can be later used to narrow down your target audience.

Obviously, don't share your whole plan while talking to people, as you should be keeping your "great" idea to yourself. Share the most important aspects and features of your future product or service and have them rate your idea. It is even better if you ask for their email addresses, which help you create your initial email list. Not everyone will be interested or will be willing to share it with you, but it's a start!

3. Money, money, money

As mentioned earlier, there are numerous business models out there which you can follow with your next online business. However, picking one in the early phase is a must! You need to be aware of how will your future business generate revenue - and I'm not only talking about having a broad idea. No! You need to know the exact steps before setting up your business and throwing the whole idea out there. This will help you to stay on the top of your game, create your detailed business plan and most importantly, give you better chances at not failing - especially financially. If you will not be selling products, this can be tricky, so make sure to dedicate enough time to this topics. There are numerous solutions, so it's the best time to get back to the lab and start your research. 

Stayed tuned for Part II.

Cheers

Dr. P

Why RP Media Tech Say Video is Your Key To Online Success

For more than 10 years, RPM has worked with clients around the world designing brand identities, video packages, social media campaigns, printed media, creating packaging, advertising materials and more to help clients grow their businesses. Here's to 10 more!

Wat Are The Goals and Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing, which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks like You Tube, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook to name a few, social web application like dig, delicious, reddit, Wiki. The goal of each SMM program varies from business to business, but mainly involves building of brand awareness, increasing visibility and through this, sells a product or service.

Social Media Marketing is an essential marketing tool for connecting with customers and optimizing online presence. Social Media describes the tools and platforms, people use to publish, converse and share content online. Video, pod cast, blogs, discussion boards and social networking sites are all tools, online businessmen can use to build relationship with their customers and keep them on websites longer. Social media provides more opportunities for organizations to present optimized content that can be indexed by search engines and ultimately improves site rating.

To implement some of the social media elements, it is first important to evaluate your customers to create an effective strategy. If your consumers are professionals who commute, then pod cast can be downloaded and can be very effective.

Posting video content on YouTube is a unique opportunity to improve your position in Google’s universal search results. WithYouTube, customers can visit the site, view your video and easily post to their own blogs, social networking profiles or websites. YouTube is a great way to reach a broader viewer and generate buzz around new products, especially if your product has a visual appeal.

Building healthy relationship with the customer, that last is an on-going process for a businessperson. Social media takes this a step further by making that relationship personal through blogs. It tells about you, not only about your product or service.

A blog, which includes video, pictures and text, can build interest and loyalty among customers and a new way to search engine optimization. Create a page dedicated to community with website visitors and this will be interactive.

Social media encourages social visits to your site. Keep adding content to encourage customers to return regularly. With the advent of social media, consumers have become contributors, contributing to brand messaging. SMM is related to other online tactics such as SEO, SMO. It has a more active planned role in directing, influencing and suggesting the community members.

Improve Your Online Brand Image With RP Media-Tech

RP Media Tech RPM has worked with clients designing brand identities, video packages, social media campaigns & printed media to help clients grow their businesses, Let RPM help you. visit us at http://rpmediatech.com today 

How to Monetize a Social Network

A review of ways marketers can align with these consumer hot spots. 

Online social networks are hot. Those who participate in them belong to two, three, four, maybe even more than 10 or 20 different ones. They enjoy their features, upload photos, request business contacts and talk with friends. 

For now, consumers get to do this for free. For now.

Although social networking in the offline world may be well-established -- monetized through conferences, venues, referral fees and headhunters -- the online world seems to just be examining the methods of monetization. The general principle still stands: if you have a large database of active users, you can make money -- right?

Here is how it is being done today:

Advertising -- A quick review of ad dollar expenditures in the U.S. reveals that only a small portion of the total is spent online -- but that is going to change fast. Online advertising is once again booming -- and just as public television and print media often can be sustained from pure advertising models, online is no different. The leading social networking sites (MySpace, Friendster and LinkedIN, along with many others) are primarily supported by advertising. Although their aggressive growth strategies mean that some may still be losing money, advertising represents a substantial amount of revenue. 

Revenue Share/Per Transaction Fees -- Someone clicks on her friend’s profile on Friendster and sees that he loves HBO’s hit series "Deadwood." Clicking on the term ‘Deadwood” brings up all the other members who have the same interest -- and an easy-to-purchase link for the "Deadwood" Season One DVD through Amazon. It’s essentially a focused advertising arrangement -- marketers now have precision targeting through social networking profiles, tapping into user interests -- and offering purchase options within very specific filters.

Events -- Although revenue numbers generated from MySpace-style events are difficult to come by, these events are known to be well attended and a driving force behind MySpace’s impressive growth. In general, while it’s unlikely that offline events account for more than 10 percent of any social network’s revenue, events do make for great content and word-of-mouth advertising.

Moving forward, compelling new ways to monetize social networks will continue to emerge. The downside, however, is that some of these methods may not be in the user’s best interest -- and they might end up taking the “cool” edge off these communities. 

The Buying Club/Affiliate Revenue Models -- With Buy.com’s purchase of Metails, a major offline and online retailer has recognized the power of social networking and made a commitment to the space. Yub.com enables users to develop their own social network focused around products, product ratings and, more importantly, a point-based rewards system that lets members benefit from a friend’s purchases. While Yub.com feels like heavy retail -- with a full online mall that has grown rapidly in the last few months -- the site is building a large user base and enticing members to recommend products to friends.

Although the buying club mentality might work only within certain types of social networks, the notion of a point system that rewards users for certain activities should be embraced more broadly. By developing a currency system, a social networking site can create very real incentives (promotions, giveaways, contests, fundraisers) for specific actions, from which everyone can benefit.

Corporate Sponsorship -- Does being a fan of a brand mean that you want the owner of that brand to have all of your personal profile information? Practically speaking, the answer has to do with the type of brand and the reward the user receives for sharing that information. Corporations will take notice of these social networks and begin offering competitive services with products and (if they are smart) experience-based rewards. Just as Icelounge (described as a “MySpace for skaters”) was launched, larger brands will begin to do the same. Increased brand loyalty and sales opportunities will lead directly to monetization.

Country Clubs/Membership Fees -- The SNS world can be a field of dreams -- albeit for a price. As social networking site ASmallWorld.com has recently demonstrated, if you build a great social network -- making it “invite-only,” with restrictions on activities -- well, everyone wants to join. Naseeb likewise has proven that a focused social network, aimed at a specific niche, can justify an admission charge. From where I sit, I’d much rather be part of a social network with fewer members, no advertising, and no corporate sponsorship but that charges for entry. 

Overall, social networking sites are experiencing hockey stick growth and, in the process, influencing new types of two-way brand experiences and community building on the web. Although the approaches to monetization outlined here just scratch the surface, revenue models abound. Any repository of personal data and contact information on a large group of users (perhaps better to call them “consumers”) inevitably translates to profit opportunities. 

Let’s just hope that all our email accounts and personal profiles don’t end up in a spam database though a dot-com SNS auction.

Benefits Of Internet Marketing Search Engine Optimization

Because the internet has became a staple in the daily lives of the majority of people around the world, it is important for business owners to realize how much their company can benefit from having a properly optimized web site. Regardless of whether a company sells products or services, having a web site that is properly optimized can and will provide several major benefits for any company.

Obviously, the first major benefit of having a web site for your company is an increase in revenue. As long as your web site is properly optimized by a professional firm, your web site will help you increase your sales of your company’s products or services. When a web site is properly optimized, it will be able to attract targeted visitors. This means that the majority of the traffic your web site receives will be people that are already interested in the products or services your company is providing, which will make the task of completing a sale much easier (instead of trying to complete a sale with an un-targeted visitor).

In addition to increasing your company’s revenues, a quality web site will increase the awareness of your company’s brand. Because people will consistently see your web site when they are searching for something in your industry, they will associate your company’s brand and name as a reliable leader in that industry.

Finally, when your company has its own web site, it will actually increase your company’s credibility in the off-line world. Because people expect businesses of all sizes to have their own web site, when you are able to print your web site’s URL on materials such as business cards or fliers, people will instantly feel that your company is more credible than one of your competitors that has not taken the time to have a web site created for their company.

In order to have a properly optimized web site that your potential customers will actually be able to find when they visit a search engine like Google, you need to work with an internet marketing SEO firm. In case you are not familiar with this terminology, an internet marketing SEO firm combines the practices of internet marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) to provide their customers with the highest level of service. Internet marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, interactive advertising and viral marketing, while search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results. Although many firms only focus on internet marketing or search engine optimization, by choosing a firm that is experienced in both fields, you can ensure that your web site is properly optimized from every angle and provides the maximum amount of benefits for your company.

Evaluating The Response To Your Internet Marketing

Starting an Internet marketing campaign is only the first step in the battle. Sure it is a good idea to start an Internet marketing campaign if members of your target audience are likely to use the Internet to research or purchase the products you sell or the services you offer but these marketing efforts may turn out to be a complete waste of time if you are not diligent about evaluating the response to your Internet marketing. This means each time you implement a change to your marketing strategy; you should evaluate the results of the change to determine whether or not it generated a greater profit for you. This is important because it can help you determine what is working and what is not working for you.

Evaluating the response of your Internet marketing can be done in a number of different ways. Customer surveys and embedded HTML code are two of the most popular methods of evaluating the effectiveness of an Internet marketing campaign. Customer surveys can be as simple or as complex as you like depending on the amount of feedback you would like to receive. However, one of the most effective ways to find out how well your different marketing tactics are working is to include a question asking the consumer where they first learned about your products or services. This is important because if you find a great deal of your customers are learning about your products or services through a particular venue, it is a good indication this method of advertising is working quite well for you.

Embedding code into your advertisements for the purpose of receiving feedback is also a popular method of evaluating the response to your Internet marketing strategies. Advertisements can be coded so the business owner receives feedback each time an Internet user clicks through a particular advertisement. This is useful for letting the business owner know which of his advertisements are attracting the most attention. If the business owner is using two different designs for his advertisements he may discover one design is attracting more attention than others and may make the decision to convert all of the advertisements to a more effective style. Similarly a business owner who is running the same advertisement on several different websites may discover he is receiving more traffic from one website than others. He may also discover some websites are not attracting much attention at all. This would give the business owner an indication of which advertisements to cancel and which ones to keep running.

Finally, the response to an Internet marketing campaign can be evaluated by carefully reviewing website traffic statistics after implementing changes to the marketing strategy. This information is useful because an unusual spike in the amount of website traffic immediately after implementing a stage of the marketing campaign can provide positive feedback that the change was well received by potential customers. While this method of evaluating the response to an Internet marketing campaign can be effective it is important to note implementing multiple changes at once will make it difficult to determine which changes were the most effective. Therefore if you plan to use website traffic as feedback for how well your marketing strategy is working it is important to only implement one major change at a time so they can each be evaluated separately.

Internet Marketing Services That Deliver Traffic

Internet marketing in itself is a wide domain supported by multiple theories and tactics but not all of them are effective enough to drive sales. The core idea behind any Internet marketing strategy is to create a web presence by using various Internet marketing services to drive revenue and achieve maximum ROI. The question is what are the key components of Internet marketing services and how can they drive ROI?

To understand it better, we need to first identify what a successful online strategy must be like. A fundamentally strong online strategy should be able to achieve the following:

1. It should be able to drive targeted traffic to your website and persuade visitors to take a decision. This basically means that if a person is visiting your site for a particular product then the availability of the product on your website and the customer experience should end with a sale. You can use web metrics to analyze as well as measure the behavior of the user.

2. It is not an easy task to drive targeted traffic to your website especially in the age of rising competition. You need to use certain elements of Internet marketing services to drive targeted traffic. Some of the elements include search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. An SEM strategy further includes pay-per-click or PPC advertising and search engine optimization or SEO strategy.

3. Application of the SEO strategy is quite common but the distinguishing factor lies in the type of keyword you choose. It’s important to identify the right keywords that can be used as a part of your PPC and SEO campaigns.

4. Your internet marketing strategy should also include the use of tools like Wordtrackers, which can generate a random list of all possible keywords and phrases perfect for your business. Using a tool like this, you will be able to determine the frequency of search for each of the phrases. Based on the result, you can evaluate the options and identify the strength of competition. You can select the phrases and keywords and test them by using them for search engine optimization and PPC campaigns.

One of the key objectives of using Internet marketing services is to be able to effectively persuade a website visitor to take a desired action. You can buy a list of newsletter subscribers or offer a free download of a software demo package on your website. These are just minor elements that will draw a visitor to your website and help your to achieve the desired result.

Some of the other attributes that play an important role in making the marketing strategies effective include the total design and website architecture. Website architecture will include elements like navigation, design, content & copy and usability. All these elements need to be in sync to help drive traffic to your website.

Let us take a closer look at some of the Internet marketing services tools that are an integral part of any website or online business promotion:

PPC or Pay per click: PPC campaigns have become extremely popular platform of driving traffic. In PPC, you won’t have to pay for advertising space or the advertisement itself but you will be charged every time a visitor clicks on your advertisement. It is also known as the cost per click (CPC) mode of advertising.

Search Engine Marketing: Also known as SEM, it is an online advertising strategy through which your online business can be optimized. This is an integral part of the Search Engine Marketing Services and this strategy will use your business/product/service oriented keywords to create a potential link with various other businesses. This will enhance your website relevancy and get your website listed among the top 20 or 30 search engine result page (SERP). A good SERP will increase the number of visitors to your page and will also help in converting them to customers.

Banner Advertising: A couple of years back, this was one of the top Internet marketing services but since the advent of SEM, it is not as critical but still is considered as a key factor. In banner advertising, you have to pay for the banner space. You can also display your banner in another website through banner exchange.

Email Marketing: Email marketing includes mostly newsletters, mailers etc, which can be sent to a group of subscribers or customers and is used to inform them about the launch of a new service or product.