A Quick Look at Building Backlinks in 2015

A Quick Look at Building Backlinks in 2015

Since backlinks are proving to still be a large part of ranking well in Google, it makes sense to use what amounts to the best practices for acquiring backlinks that not only count with Google, but are sure to withstand scrutiny.
These days, knowing what you can and can't do with backlinks can be totally confusing, and lead to mistakes and sometimes even penalties.
To help avoid that scenario, let's have a look into some of the best practices for building backlinks going forward in 2015, and how you can benefit from them.

5 Best practices of link building in 2015

Vary your anchor text - When Google sees a link profile containing 95% of one particular keyword, it is a sure sign to them that some fairly heavy link engineering has been going on, and you will be penalized. Instead, vary your anchor text to include text that occurs naturally, together with a few naked URLs and "Click Here's", etc.
Go after social links - One of the most effective ways to garner new and relevant backlinks is through your social channels. This works for you in two ways, also showing that your pages are socially engaged.
Natural growth is the ticket - When you get large numbers of links for no clear reason, such as a launch or event, then Google is going to wonder why, and may take action.
Don't purchase backlinks - Steer clear of buying backlinks. Even if you are very careful, too much is out of your control for it to be a safe practice in any way. Those seemingly fantastic deals you see on Fiverr and some of the Black Hat forums can really get you in trouble fast.
Avoid private blog networks - One technique people have been using to engineer lots of relevant backlinks is through the use of private blog networks. Google's recent updates have uncovered many of these, and you need to be a very smart operator to have that tactic work today, which most of us aren't or have time to become. Build links gradually and naturally: you'll win in the long run!

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How to Turn a Negative Review into a Positive

How to Turn a Negative Review into a Positive

It happens to the best of businesses. Once in a while a customer will post a negative review that is going to influence potential customers about your business, products or service. It can't be helped.
What can be helped is the way you deal with an unhappy customer. Having a clear plan to manage the occasional negative review is essential for any business seriously interested in its long-term survival. Let's have a look at several ways you can minimize the impact of poor reviews, and indeed, turn them into a positive for all involved.

5 Tips for turning a negative review into a positive

1. Don't fight back! - However much you want to defend yourself and your company, be sure you suppress the desire. It never works. You'll never be seen in a positive light. Preferably instead, take responsibility and use this opportunity to show awesome customer service.
2. Answer promptly - Nothing is worse than simply ignoring a complaint or taking forever to get back to them. It indicates a basic lack of concern on your part in regards to the customer. Make sure you have some way to monitor mentions of your business, such as Google Alerts, to help you deal with these things quickly.
3. Apologize and make amends - Nobody wants to hear a bunch of lame excuses, or even genuine ones. Offer a sincere apology for their experience, and generously offer a way to make it up to them. Doing so with sincerity can go a long way toward turning them around in your direction.
4. Be transparent - Standing up and taking responsibility for your mistakes makes you look very good in the eyes of other customers who are watching. And they are watching!
5. Ask for more reviews - The very best way to counteract the effect of negative reviews of your business is to generate more positive ones. Continually ask your customers to leave feedback for you, and chances are, if you are doing well, you'll get a majority of very good reviews. If not, you'll at least have a blueprint on how to fix what is wrong!

Great Tips for Creating a Video Marketing Strategy

Great Tips for Creating a Video Marketing Strategy

Since there's no longer any doubt that video rules this day and age of online marketing, it's high time to kick your video marketing strategy into overdrive and start harvesting some of the windfall that is coming to marketers that are.
The average internet user watches 206 videos each month, and you need to get your share of that, since videos are 4X more engaging than static content, and are proven to convert far better.
Let's look at 5 quick tips to help you come up with a video marketing strategy singularly crafted for your business.
5 Items you need in your video marketing strategy

1. Understand your audience - You first and foremost need to understand who your audience is and what they are interested in. After you know this, all else will follow. Good ways to uncover this crucial information are with surveys, polls and bribes!
2. Decide what types of videos to make - This is somewhat dependent on the talents you already possess, together with those around you, and your budget. Since you can easily make effective videos now with little more than a smartphone, the barrier of equipment is largely done away with. If you are uncomfortable shooting live action videos, consider making screencast videos, or slideshow videos, where you simply narrate the screen or slides. Both can usually get the message across well.
3. Set some objectives and goals - Understanding what the goals are not only of your video marketing overall but of a specific video is very helpful, both in producing content and marketing it. Know what you want to accomplish with each video before you make it!
4. Use a calendar - Placing someone in charge of this task as well as scheduling your videos makes them far more likely to actually get done. Using a production or editorial calendar is an excellent way to keep an eye on your overall strategy and marketing.
5. Don't forget to market your videos - Just making the videos isn't good enough. Millions are made everyday, and you have to have your videos stand out amongst a sea of competing videos, you need to do some basic marketing to at least get them to show up well in YouTube. Not hard to do, but definitely necessary!

See these 5 Reasons Why People Buy Online

See these 5 Reasons Why People Buy Online

If you sell anything online, it's imperative for you to understand why people shop and ultimately buy online. This kind of information can go a long way toward helping you design your sales pages, ads and more.
You may think that the reasons people give for buying online are the same; predominantly price. But you would be wrong. In fact price is far down the list. It's a given that the online prices are generally lower, given that there isn't any visible overhead. Even so, there are some very specific and sometimes surprising reasons people give for purchasing online.
Let's look at 5 of the top ones.

5 Reasons people give for buying online

1. Generally a far wider selection and choice - Most online shops are apt to carry a far wider selection of goods for sale than a brick and mortar store is able to display within their walls.
2. People like to read reviews from other buyers - Absent having a friend who's purchased the item in question, people will seek out whomever they can find for an opinion on the product, as long as it's not from the company itself.
3. It's a major time saver - In a day and age when none of us have a spare moment to call our own, the ability to shop from you're your desk or your phone while vegging out on the couch is a blessing. Not only does this save us from having to venture out in the our cars, burn gas, and drive all over town, the very idea of doing it all form home and having it delivered to our door is appealing.
4. Can you say "Free shipping" - This is one of the top reasons people give for buying online, which at first glance makes little sense. I mean, if you went out and got it, there's be NO shipping! But still this ranks as a top reason for buying online.
5. Easy return process - Admit it, you might not like it. If one trip outside the house was too much, imagine how much you'll hate two! Having a rock solid guarantee and easy return process is a major factor for people choosing to buy online.

Want to See How Other Small Businesses are Using Social Media?

Want to See How Other Small Businesses are Using Social Media?

It wasn't that long ago that small business deemed social media nothing more than a time-sucking distraction; something to keep your employees from whiling away their days upon. Not any longer. Now you'd give your brother's 401k for someone social media savvy enough to take your business to the next level.
The truth is, you probably have employees spending their work time on social media. What you may not have is a plan for how to best utilize their talents.

What are small businesses doing with social media

Now some 74.5 percent of small businesses report using social media to promote their companies, and they're throwing money into it as well, as 21.4 percent count this as their highest media spend of all. Clearly, social media has gone from a waste of time to a viable marketing channel.
55 percent of these companies have a Facebook business page, and another 20 percent are using Facebook Ads to promote posts on that page.
There are other players, naturally, and some of these include LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. You can also have Google+ in this group, even as they transform yet again into what's is known as Google My Business, an all-encompassing amalgam of Google+, Places, Local and Maps. (and probably something else by now!)

What can you do to get your business working with social media?

First of all dive right in! Make a Facebook Page, get accounts at the social sites that make sense for you, and above all, don't spread yourself too thin. You'll want to be posting content to these sites, not merely quotes from dead guys and pictures of cute kittens.
Start with only a few social properties, like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and possibly Twitter. If you have a lot of products that you can showcase, consider adding Pinterest and Instagram. The key here though is to make sure you don't take on more than you can reasonably manage.
Make videos, and always endeavor to point people to where you want them to go, preferably your blog or site. Engage with anyone who wants to strike up a conversation, and be generous with your comments and knowledge. You'll find that before long you'll have more of a following than you expected!

See How to Easily Manage your Local Business Listings

See How to Easily Manage your Local Business Listings

One critical yet sometimes unappetizing part of running a local business is managing your local listings. The hours involved are probably not exactly what you had in mind, nevertheless, making sure your listings are not only correct but aiding your business are many times the difference between local success or failure.
If you have multiple locations for your business this work might be even more unsavory, but steel yourself with the fact that getting this part right can unlock the door to a better business in numerous ways. Let's check out some of what you need to do to achieve good local listing management.

The basics: getting your local listings in order

Here are some of the things you'll need to get in order from the beginning.

• Make sure your business information is consistent across and all platforms you presently have. One mistake here can ruin everything. This means business names, addresses, phone number, websites and social media.
• Be sure you are reachable. A phone number is a must-have for a local business, even if it only leads to a voicemail. (please don't)
• Completely fill out any profiles you have on sites that have your local listings. There is very little that creates mistrust more than a business who doesn't want to tell you anything about themselves.

Taking local listings a step beyond

After you've got your business listings on your sites and local directories finished, it's time to look into what you can reap from the many and varied local business sites designed to help you get noticed. Many of these won't charge a fee, but there are a few that are worth spending a few bucks on. What follows is a few ideas to get you moving.

• Make sure you are indexed in the major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing.
• Take a peek at sites like Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze, and Factual. These aggregators provide data to mobile companies and search engines alike, and are very useful in extending your reach and visibility.
• Yelp, Yext, Foursquare, Facebook have a lot of authority when it comes to local business. Good reviews on these can boost your business in a short time.
• Tools like Bright Local, Moz Local, Whitespark or Local Buzz are extremely handy when it comes to monitoring citations and tracking your progress. You'll need to enlist one of these to help garner more and better citations that will give your business a boost.

Check Out These Awesome Visual Content Management Tips

Check Out These Awesome Visual Content Management Tips

These days businesses are creation visual content at an astounding rate, and the question soon arises, how and where to manage these assets? The sheer numbers of images, infographics, videos and creative web art bring into play the need for a cohesive strategy for keeping it all organized should and when you need it. Assets they are, good for use down the road and as part of your company's intellectual property. If you ever wanted to sell the company at some point, it would be smart to have your visual content assets managed well.

The time savings alone that will occur if you didn't have to search high and low for that particular image or video can be worth it. Let alone the need to ensure you have proof of your ownership of these images should a copyright infringement action come against you. That could be an expensive mistake, and one that is totally preventable. Let's have a quick look at how you can get a better handle on your company's visual assets.

5 Tips for managing your visual content

1. Create or purchase a system - If you have someone on your team who can establish a system for you, fantastic. If not, there are a number of solutions available, including off site cloud solutions. A company called North Plains is a leader in digital asset management.
2. Name your files appropriately - Naming your files with a filename that can actually identify the content is a must-do. There's nothing worse than having to open dozens of files that are named IMG457723760 looking for one particular picture.
3. Limit access and establish guidelines - Be sure that you have some control over who accesses your files. This can change as time passes, but keeping up on it is preferable to having problems down the road.
4. Store your content in one central location - Make it easy on everyone by storing your visual content in one location, assuming you have appropriate backups enabled. This obviously saves time and expense, and if they are stored in a cloud, there is minimal risk of data loss.
5. Have a protocol for how it is used - Ensure that no one uses images or videos in a fashion or manner that isn't what you want. Eager and over-zealous employees can wreak havoc with well-meaning but misguided adventures.

How Does Google Use Keywords to Determine Relevance on Your Pages

How Does Google Use Keywords to Determine Relevance on Your Pages

All of us want to rank our pages high in Google's search results, and as time goes on, the factors that determine where your pages rank is constantly changing.
There are at this count more than 200 items that play a part in the Google search algorithm, and keyword relevance is one that we'd like to focus on here. We feel that keywords, while only a factor, influence the remainder of the ranking in many ways. In a sense, it's where everything starts.
In a search world not so long ago and far away, you could get top-notch rankings by just stuffing as many of your primary keywords into your content as you could reasonable fit. Not any more. Google's search algorithm has gotten smarter, and is able to discern a lot more intent, and recognizes keyword stuffing instantly.
This is not to say you can't do well by strategically inserting keywords in all of the right places. Indeed, you need to do this. You just have to do it naturally.

How to use keywords to lift your search rankings

There are specific ways to use your keywords to help your search ranking. These include things like making sure they are in the title tag, page titles, page URL, H1-5 tags, and within the content itself.
Today having the keyword in your URL, title tag, H1-5 headings and sprinkled judiciously throughout the content is the best way you can help your cause.

What keyword tactics can hurt you

Try to stuff keywords in this day and age, or use cloaked content, and you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a Google penalty.
Another way is through the improper use of anchor text in your site's backlinks. Having all the backlinks that appear for a particular page show up with the same anchor text, and all be followed links, is a sure red flag in this current algorithm. Strive for as natural a link profile as you can build, and vary your anchor text with natural phrases that would occur, such as a few "click here" and the like.

Want to Generate More Content? Get a Content Marketing Plan!

Want to Generate More Content? Get a Content Marketing Plan!

The lifeblood of all businesses on the internet is content. It's what your readers come to look at and study, and without having fresh, innovative compelling content, your business really has nothing to say.
And it's not simply words. It's a lot of them, authoritative and compelling, original and unique that drive both search engine rankings and traffic. It's also many other types of content, particularly visual that gets the job done.
But how do we make this happen? The simplest and best way is by the creation of a content marketing plan, which enables you to keep a steady stream of content pouring into your site, and increasing your search rankings at the same time. Let's take a look at four steps toward creating a workable content marketing plan.

Creating your content marketing plan

Determine who your audience is and what they want - Each and every business is unique in that it has a demographic singular unto itself. You've got a set of customers and people interested in what you do that is yours and yours alone. Identifying this audience and getting an idea of what it is they want to know, and dovetailing that with your business goals is your task here.
Decide on types of content - There are many types of content you can utilize, from simple blog posts to whitepapers, videos, infographics and much more. Decide what you are best able to produce and get on it!
Post new content regularly - If you post once per month, or even once a week, you might as well not do it at all. Statistics indicate that companies that create 15 blog posts each month average 1,200 new leads per month. And that's just blog posts; not even counting all of those other types of content you'll be creating.
Promote your content - Once you've created this wonderful new content, don't make the fatal mistake of doing nothing about it. Get out there and tell the world about it, promoting it on your social media channels and any place else you can. There is simply too much competition to be heard on the Web otherwise.

Want More Traction from Your Facebook Ads? See These 5 Tips!

Want More Traction from Your Facebook Ads? See These 5 Tips!

Facebook ads have grown into a powerful tool for the average marketer, enabling them to reach vast numbers of people they might otherwise not have had the budget or ability to find. It can also be very cost effective if you know a bit about how to manage your campaigns, making it an extremely viable option when compared to Google Adwords and other PPC platforms.
Imagine having the ability to dial in a highly targeted audience based upon interests and behaviors and have your ads up and running, bringing you new leads and sales within hours. That can happen, but you need some knowledge to make it happen. Here are 5 tips that will help guide the way!

5 Best Practices for Your Facebook Ads

Become a targeting master - The single most effective way to be successful with Facebook Ads is to become a whiz at creating targeted audiences for your ads. This is actually not as fearsome as it sounds, as Facebook gives you a number of great tools to help, particularly one called Audience Insights. Utilize these to drill down and create the prefect audience for your offers.
Utilize only the Mobile and Desktop ads - Right side ads have their place but are trickier to try and get a positive return on your investment. Besides, newsfeed ads and mobile are the place to be, as more than fifty percent of all Facebook traffic originates on a mobile device.
Use Dayparting and segment your ads - Taking advantage of the dayparting feature in Facebook, where you can ensure your ads are only shown at times most advantageous to your audience, only makes sense. Likewise, be sure to segment your audiences for easy re-use later on.
Use original, compelling images - Do not use imagery that has been seen by everyone on Facebook dozens of time. Create your own images, and make them stick out, as a terrific image can do all the heavy lifting for your ad!
Investigate lookalike audiences - Facebook's ability to create a "lookalike" audience based upon your fans, email list, and other factors is a goldmine waiting to be found. Use this before your competition does!

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See these 5 Tips for More Google Love

See these 5 Tips for More Google Love

While a lot of people think content marketing as the darling of the search engines at present, there is another aspect to ranking your pages well, and that lies on the technical side of things.
Draw back the curtain and you'll find that Google is especially concerned with a number of geeky factors. Get these wrong, and you'll be left scratching your head wondering why all your superb content isn't ranking well.
Let's have a look at a 5 ways you can better optimize your pages to be more Google-friendly.

5 Ways to optimize your web pages technically

Page speed - You may have heard the latest human attention span statistic; that we now are transfixed a mere 8 seconds, one second less than a Goldfish. Thus it should not be a surprise that Google will not rank your site well if it loads slowly, as people will see this as a poor user experience, or perhaps not go there at all!

Internal links - Google likes to see a good internal linking plan, one that provides users with useful links to relevant pages within and outside of the site. This also plays a role in passing Pagerank. Also, don't make the mistake of having multiple navigation menus. Use one, together with a sitemap and a link back to your home page from each page.

Clean up your Schema - Schema.org is the agreed upon Web language for search engines to best understand what your pages are all about. Your webmaster can help you ensure that your pages are Schema compliant.

Use HTML elements - A significant part of how your page will be ranked is determined by the use of certain HTML elements that indicate what your content is about. This includes the use of H1-H4 tags, meta data and image optimization, among others.

Keywords you wish to rank for - This is your chance to tell Google in no uncertain terms what your page is about, and hopefully be ranked for these terms. You'll need to make sure they are found in all the places Google is looking for them, such as title tags, titles, description, the body of your content and links.

Want more customers and more revenue go here for a site audit valued at $297. go here now

Learning How to Market Your Small Business

Learning How to Market Your Small Business

You've done all the initial steps when it comes to getting your business online. You've got a website, signed up with a hosting account, and maybe even learned how to accept money.
But what about marketing? Have you figured out exactly how you can begin marketing your small business effectively and affordably? Often this is left for last, and unfortunately it's probably the most important piece.
When you're first starting out, you need to watch your pennies! Let's look at some first steps when it comes to starting to market your business online.

5 First steps to small business online marketing

Begin with a Blog - A blog is an excellent way to start building an online following for your small business. You can go a long way toward branding yourself and gaining the trust of people by being both available and knowledgeable.

Learn how to use social media - This is where your audience is spending time these days. If you wish to connect with them, you'll have to learn how to use it effectively.

Keep a watchful eye on your online reputation - It's wise to set up Google alerts so that you're notified anytime there is a mention of your name or company online. This makes it a lot easier to reply to issues or problems, resolving them before they become large.

Begin building an email list - The top thing successful online marketers say when asked if they could do one thing differently, is that they wished they'd started building an email list from Day One. Don't be one of those guys.

Make use of online directories - Get your business listed in all the major online directories for small businesses, such as Yelp, Google My Business, Merchant Circle and others. One very important must-do on this is to make sure that your NAP info, (name, address, phone) is consistent over all of these sites. Make it easy for people to find you!

Don't forget November 29

Check Out These 7 Copywriting Tips to Make Your Web Copy Sing!

Check Out These 7 Copywriting Tips to Make Your Web Copy Sing!

Copy makes the Web go round, and great copy will take you from seldom read and acted upon to superstar status in terms of traffic and sales. This truism, along with the fact that Google prizes and rewards great content that readers share will make your content marketing dreams come true.
But what are the elements of great copywriting that will get us to this point? What precepts and tips will get our content to rise above and be noticed? Here are 7 copywriting tips to both help your content connect with readers, but also to get noticed near and far.

7 Copywriting tips that can make your content sing!

1. Tell a great story - Everyone loves a good story, and if you can spin one while accomplishing your sales aims you'll be a rockstar. Tugging at emotions and empathy are wonderful tools to employ here.
2. Focus on benefits - The primary thing you need to remember about your readers is that they need to know what's in it for them. They really don't care what number of features your product or service has; they want to know how it will make their life better.
3. Make it valuable all by itself - If your reader comes away with the feeling that they've already received a ton of value simply by reading your content, you've got them just where you want them.
4. Use questions to get to Yes - Getting your readers to agree with you puts them in the frame of mind to say Yes, as they're already doing so by agreeing with you. This makes it a far shorter leap to conversion when the time comes.
5. Get emotional - Connecting with your readers with emotion is a great way to get them on your side. This one is powerful, and if you can learn how to inject emotion in your copywriting, you'll be able to write your own ticket.
6. Write longer content - Currently the pages that are found on Page One of Google are running over 2,000 words. Longer, in-depth pieces that provide value and insight are what the readers want, and what Google wants to rank well.
7. Get social - Make sure you are using social media to promote your content. Encourage your readers to share on their social channels, as you never know who may have some awesome connections that will help your incredible content go wide.

Don't Overlook the Importance of your Welcome Emails

Don't overlook the importance of your welcome emails

We all get them, welcome emails. But are you up to speed on how best to create your own for your subscribers?
What elements are necessary to not only welcome them, but also highlight what they can expect and what you have to offer them during their time with you?
Here are 7 ways you can optimize your welcome emails to set the stage for a long lasting, profitable relationship.

7 Tips for crafting welcome emails

1. Send out immediately - Send these out immediately. Don't wait to batch send your welcome emails. A study by Experian found that welcome emails sent out individually rather than by batch were opened 10X more! Show you care about them signing up.
2. Use a working email address - Using a no-reply email address will only do one thing for you: give you a no-response customer. People are going to want to email you. Don't make it hard.
3. Split-test your welcome email subject lines - This is very easy to do, and can make a big difference in your open rates. Wouldn't you want to do this for a possible 15-20 percent increase in opens?
4. Encourage social media - Exhort your readers to follow you on social media, and make it easy for them by installing links and/or buttons on your email template.
5. Personalize - It's always best if you're trying to develop some sort of customer relationship with your subscribers that you personalize the emails if at all possible. This of course means you'll need to collect names.
6. Perhaps offer an incentive - Many times companies choose to include an incentive to start the relationship off on the right foot. Maybe a percent off coupon?
7. Make sure to optimize for mobile - Since about half of all emails are now opened on a mobile device, it would be a good idea to make sure you are using a responsive design so that your emails can be opened anywhere.

How the Right Words and Phrases Can Close More Deals

How the Right Words and Phrases Can Close More Deals for You

Words matter, and nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to the words you prefer to close your sales with. Often a single word or phrase can kill the deal, and you're left holding the bag. (Literally!)
The words we select to create our sales messages need to create a mindset that is conducive to persuading the prospect to click the purchase button. There is a great deal of thought that has gone into the science of conversion, and the psychology behind it is really quite interesting.
That's why it's imperative to ensure we are making the most of this opportunity. Let's examine some words and phrases that can get more conversions for you.

5 Types of phrases that sell

Assumptive close -- "So where can we ship your product?" Assuming the prospect couldn't possibly pass on this puts them in a mindset that is thinking of implementing rather than continuing to think about the pros and cons. Works wonderfully whenever the prospect is favorably inclined to purchase.

Asking directly for the sale -- Often times it's best to take the direct approach. If you've managed to make a good case for your product and have answered all the negatives you can imagine, just be bold, (not pushy!) and simply ask for the sale.

Fear of loss close -- No one wants to miss out on something that will truly help them, and this close works best when the cost of not buying is greater than the cost of the item. Fear works wonders, particularly when the market is competitive.

Have a friendly close -- Being personable and friendly in your close, such as "Would you like me to help you get going with this?" casts you and your products in a friendly, helpful light, and thus lowers defenses and resistance several notches.

Use and alternative close -- If you are in the position of having several choices for them, help them decide by offering them a choice, whether or not they're at that point yet. "So after examining both Product A and Product B to determine which fits your needs better, which one would you like to order?"

Are You Committing Any of These Social Media Blunders?

Are You Committing Any of These Social Media Blunders?

You probably think it's enough to be involved with social media at all, but let me be the one to break it to you: there are some grievous errors you might be making with your social media marketing that will not only cost you followers, but hurt your brand long term.
Social media is amazing in its ability to extend your reach beyond what you might generate on your own, but that is also the same way that it could hurt you. Let's check out 5 mistakes you might be making that will hurt.

1. 5 Social media marketing mistakes to avoidNot being visual - These days people are all about wanting to view, not read. So whether you have a video, cool image or unique infographic, rest assured that your visual content will be read more, engaged with more ,and ultimately be acted upon much more. Just sayin'…
2. Constantly selling - Put yourself in their shoes: do you like to have sales messages in your face all the time? No. Neither does your audience. Try to make your sales pitches no more than 20 percent of your content at most.
3. Making negative comments disappear - This is a big no-no. If people determine that you are managing your social media in this fashion, they'll not trust you at all. It just looks like the complainer was right, and you're trying to hide it. Preferably use this as a chance to demonstrate awesome customer service!
4. Don't buy likes and fans - Even though this appears at first glance to be an easy way to pump up the volume on your social media, in reality it will have the opposite effect. The social networks won't like it, and any real fans or followers you have will see right through it.
5. Don't use LikeBait - LikeBait, as its name implies, is the act of bating people to like your post or page by crafting a controversial or otherwise titillating headline to get people to click or like. The problem is, there is usually not real or relevant content behind the headline. Facebook hates this too, and is changing their algorithm to exclude it. Don't be that guy.

How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

If you're writing consistent blog posts someone by now has surely told you that you should make sure you optimize them for SEO.
What?
I get it. Most writers aren't up to date on what it takes to properly optimize for the search engines. In fact, most SEOs aren't either, but that's another blog post.
The fact is that optimizing your blog posts will help them find a wider audience, and rank better in the search engines, particularly Google. But how to do that? Here are 5 tips that can help your blog posts enter the blogosphere ready for action.

5 Blog post optimization tips

1. Target specific keywords - Primary among your tasks is to determine what keywords you are targeting. Like it or not, writing to be found in the search engines mandates that you give them a clear road map to where you'd like to be found. Pick one primary keyword and several other secondary for each post, and make sure they are in the title, first sentence or two, and then when needed throughout your post. DO NOT go overboard and stuff your post; it won't help and WILL hurt!

2. Make your content fun to read - Readers online typically scan a page, so it's your job to make them pause. The best ways to do this are by using lots of headlines, visuals and videos. Don't pound them with long stretches of text, or they're out of here!

3. Entice with compelling headlines - Remember that people love to skim? A good way to slow them down a bit is by inserting a headline that either raises a question or makes a claim that they have to find out about.

4. Enable social sharing - Be sure your blog is linked up to your social media channels, and that your buttons are prominently displayed on each post. These days it is a social world, and you want to extend your reach as far as possible.

5. Are you using responsive design? - Since more than half of all blog posts are now first read on a mobile device, you must make certain yours are displaying properly. Responsive design will make sure that you will be seen clearly across any platform.

Need help with your SEO

5 Essential tips for Video SEO

Check Out These 5 Tips for Video SEO

There's honestly no point in going to the trouble of creating a great video just to have it languish deep in the search results where nobody will find it. Making your videos to rank well in YouTube and Google isn't as hard as you might think, and in fact can happen quite quickly if you know what you're doing.
So to get going on making that happen let's have a look at 5 tips that can help you rank your videos better.


5 Essential tips for Video SEO

1. Making a good video - Good videos are some of the best video SEO you can do, and the benefits of having a video that is popular are enormous. Strive to put your best foot forward here, and the rest might take care of itself.
2. Do keyword research - If you want to rank for a specific keyword, you'll need to do your research to make sure you are targeting the best phrases you can. This will allow you to find other keywords you can use in your description, tags and other videos as well.
3. Optimize your titles and descriptions - Using the previously mentioned keywords in these is paramount, as well as being sure to include any links you'd like people to visit at the beginning of your description, as well as the YouTube video link at the end. This is so that if anyone uses your content, you'll be linked back to.
4. Get social signals - A major part of ranking videos these days is the presence of social signals. Shares, views, embeds, channel subscribes and comments all play a large part in where your video winds up. Try not to artificially inflate these with fake views and comments, as these are easily discovered and will not help your cause.
5. Get links - Oftentimes you will not need to do this last step, if you have done the previous ones, but in the case of hard to rank for keywords, you might need to build backlinks to your video. Again, try to do this organically and not artificially, or it could have the opposite effect of what you've wanted.

7 Tips for Better Conversion Rates for Your Checkout Pages

7 Tips for Better Conversion Rates for Your Checkout Pages

Going to all the effort of getting a prospective buyer to the checkout page, and then seeing them abandon the cart, as some 67 percent of them do, is a real problem.
Some of this is natural: second thoughts, distractions, and the like. But what we should minimize here is the things you might be doing to sabotage your own sales. Listed below are 7 ways to improve your checkout page conversions you may not have thought of.


7 Easy checkout page conversion tips

1. Free shipping - Whenever possible, you need to be able to offer free shipping for any physical product that you can. Obviously if you're selling tractors, we can fudge some here, but high shipping costs and the lack of perceived value in that are the #1 reason people abandon shopping carts.
2. Words matter - The text you use on your calls to action and especially any purchase buttons should be carefully planned and tested. It can be the difference between a purchase or an exit.
3. Clutter free forms - Make certain you're not asking for anything you don't absolutely need in your shopping cart forms with respect to information. People are only going to give you what's necessary for the transaction, and if you press for more, they're outa there.
4. Reassurance works - Trust seals and especially guarantees near the credit card fields make a big difference.
5. Easy contact information - Give prospective customers ways to contact you if they need more information. This can be an email, phone or webpage.
6. Images sell - It's good for a person to see what they're buying before they pull the trigger. Including a small product image on the checkout page can suffice.
7. Live chat - If you discover that your product offering is receiving a lot of questions, check your sales copy and think about offering a live chat solution to help. The simple act of connecting with another human may be all the push they need to complete the sale.

Here is a beautiful info graph showing you the way 

See These 10 Email Marketing Best Practices

See These 10 Email Marketing Best Practices

Email marketing can be quite a tricky business, and what is acceptable is subject to change over time, so it's a smart idea to revisit email marketing best practices routinely. What works best is affected by other aspects and technology changes, so if we want to get the very best results we need to keep current.

Ten best practices for email marketing

1. Craft an attention-getting subject line - This is task one, as if you don't make this something that compels an open, you're finished. Use short, bold and punchy text
2. Mobile optimized emails - If you're not mobilizing for mobile now, you're losing out, as some 67 percent of all emails are now opened via a mobile device.
3. Let them know who it's from - Having a bland perfunctory "From" address may lead to your emails never getting opened. Make it identifiable.
4. Utilize several calls to action - If you really want the click, sell it, and make sure you have one of these above the fold.
5. Make the body text brief and to the point - No one is looking forward to reading a thousand word email, so don't be that guy! Say what you need to say, using bullet points if you have several points, and ask them to click elsewhere for more.
6. Include videos and pictures - Visual content is extremely popular these days, and there is a lot of evidence that it converts much better than mere text.
7. Emphasize benefits to reader - Don't spend time talking about you: all they really want to know is what's in it for them, so be sure not to disappoint.
8. Don't send too little or too much - This is one you need to test, as all audiences are a bit different, but rest assured that once a month is too little, and a dozen times a week is excessive.
9. Encourage and enable social sharing - Using social sharing effectively doubles your click through rate. Any more questions?
10. Create compelling content - Delivering valuable, timely content your readers can use will do you more good than almost any other of these best practices. Become somebody they would like to hear from, and you're halfway home.

6 elements of a Converting Landing Page

6 elements of a Converting Landing Page

It is easier than ever to set up a landing page these days, with oodles of tools to choose from to generate beautiful pages in a few simple clicks.
But let's suppose you want it to actually convert customers into sales or other actions? That's a bit more involved, and has a few indispensable steps connected to it. Let's see what goes into a highly converting landing page.


6 Ways to convert visitors to your landing pages

1. A killer headline - You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and this is the element your visitor sees first. You should make this headline not just get them to read on, but also understand that they need to take action on this offer.
2. Use compelling images and videos - There's no doubt about it: videos on your landing pages convert far better than those without, so don't ignore this!
3. Emphasize the benefits - People want to know what it will do for them, not what it will do. See the difference? Make liberal use of bullet points to indicate this, rather than a long block of text.
4. Use a clear call to action - If you tell people in no uncertain terms precisely what you want them to do next, you'll find that much more of the time they will do it. Don't be shy about this. Also make your buy or download buttons stand out from the rest of the page, using color and persuasive text.
5. Use customer testimonials - Using terrific testimonials from previous customers is a great way to use social proof to make it easier for people to click that button. You don't need a lot of them either; one or two will do.
6. Employ scarcity - Like it or not, scarcity tactics work, and people will click on your offer versus missing out, if you have done a good job telling them exactly why they need this now! Word of caution however: be truthful. If you use false scarcity, they won't trust you next time around.

Facebook for your business what you should and shouldn't be doing

Facebook for your business what you should and shouldn't be doing

Facebook is an incredible platform for business, despite what you may have been told. Although many would have it remain the world's largest kitten and baby photo repository, it has definite uses for business, and smart marketers are making very sizeable gains by utilizing Facebook.
There are some definite do's and don'ts with regards to using Facebook for business, and the thing you don't want to do is to have yourself or worse, your brand, viewed as a marketing parasite that's only there to take their money. (Whether that's true or not)

Have a look at what to do and what not to when marketing your business on Facebook!
Be sure to

• Be quick to respond - If you leave people waiting for days or weeks before you get back to them, you've already lost.
• Briefer is better - Research now shows that posts of less than 80 characters are 66% more likely to be engaged with.
• Build your page organically - Building a popular page on Facebook is better done through having readers recommend and share you. You can help it along somewhat by running a Like campaign to a targeted group.
• Ask questions - This will engage like nothing else!
• Post great content - No one will share your content if it's sub-par. Make sure you are sharing something you would want to read, and more importantly that your audience would as well.
• Have a regular posting schedule - You'll need to test this for yourself to see what your audience wants, but it's safe to say that 1 time a week isn't enough, and a few dozen is too much, unless testing proves otherwise.
• Use the Facebook ad platform - Probably the best PPC platform available to the public at large, it's a terrific way to expand your reach.
• Be sure to share - Let the world find out about your content by sharing it across all your channels and platforms.
• Engage - Get acquainted with your audience and directly talk to them, It will pay off.

Be sure not to

• Sell all the livelong day - Nobody wants to be constantly sold to, so don't do it! Adopt the 80/20 rule as regards content to offers.
• Ignore questions or problems - A surefire recipe for disaster.
• Make huge posts - This isn't the place for long-form content. Link out to it on your blog if you need to.
• Buy Page Likes - This is like buying fake sales. A page with thousands of fans but minimal to no interaction is a dead giveaway.
• Post content not related to your business - This isn't your personal Facebook page, so don't treat is as such. Make it about your business and you'll be rewarded.

You Don't Ever need to Buy These SEO Services Again

You Don't Ever need to Buy These SEO Services Again

It's oftentimes challenging to know what exactly to do when you're working to get your site ranked in the search engines. You'll hear a lot of advice, some of it actually good, but exactly how do you know what to listen to and what not?
Unfortunately there isn't any easy answer. A lot of the SEO advice you see comes with a price tag, that is, someone wishing to sell you something. SEO is one of those things that morph over time, and there's no certainty that what worked last year has any hope of doing anything for you now. Worse, it could hurt you irreparably.
So instead of raise the white flag of surrender, let's take note of 5 SEO services we know no longer work, so you aren't tempted to spend any of your precious marketing budget on them.
5 SEO Services to Skip

1. Anything starting with Y - Specifically, Yelp, Yext and the YellowPages. We'll give Yahoo a pass for the moment. These companies all want to help you get a more robust presence in local search, but the fact is they are having a hard time remaining legitimate themselves. Get listings and reviews the old fashioned way - earn them!
2. Avoid search engine submission services - You can do this yourself, and the thing is is you really don't even need to. The search engines, especially Google, prefer to find your pages on their own. Just give full attention to creating great content, and announcing it via your social media platforms, and the hard work is done. Not so hard, right, and it was free.
3. Don't spin your content and shoot it out all over the web - One time someone thought that since a little content was great, a lot would be greater. Doesn't work that way. This was the basis for the recent Google Penguin update that purged the internet of a lot of sites containing duplicate and spun content.
4. Don't build link farms - Farms are great, for corn. Thinking you will game Google by building linkwheels and site pyramids is a fools wager. This did work for a time, but that was a long time ago.
5. Don't buy links - Google can tell if you purchase links, and the best you will achieve from that is that they won't do you any good; the worst, well, you won't be able to find your site in Google. Enough reason? Thought so.

How to Come Up with Social Media Posts that Get Clicks

How to Come Up with Social Media Posts that Get Clicks
It's tough enough making sure you are fitting enough time into your day to make your social media efforts happen. It's a tragedy if all of that effort is wasted!
After wracking your brain to make clever and useful posts for your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ account or whatever combination you happen to use, if no one is moved to click on the links you've placed in those posts it's simply not worth the time.
So now what, should you junk it all? No, instead use the following 3 tips to goose your social media audience into clicking on your links and heading where you want them to go!
3 Tips to get more clicks from your social media posts

1. Ask for the click and share - First and foremost, the easiest way to get more clicks from your social media posts is to just ask for them. Carefully compose your calls to action so that there's no question what you want them to do. This goes for sharing, also. Subconsciously, if you make the suggestions they will be far more likely to act upon it.
2. Give them something to look at - These days all of us love to watch videos, look at images, pore over infographics and otherwise engage visually. Oftentimes you can kill two birds with one stone with just the promise of a video or infographic that can be had for a click, which gets you both what you want.
3. What's in it for me? - People need a compelling reason to click through. This is where you can make the decision very easy for them by offering a helpful bribe that practically guarantees the click. The only way this doesn't work is if your call to action is weak or nonexistent, or you don't deliver real, relevant value. There's nothing that will draw the ire of a reader faster than a marketer who is trying to deceive, so be sure the bribe matches their interests.

Here's a link to a recent article from NewsCred and 56 reasons content matters

3 Killer Ways to Use Google Hangouts in Your Business

3 Killer Ways to Use Google Hangouts in Your Business
Google Hangouts are a terrific platform for melding your online video marketing with your social media. Directly connected to your Google+ account, it has the advantage of being very easy to use, and fast. You can go online and create a Hangout, and start broadcasting in minutes, and then after that find it uploaded to your YouTube channel for you! Actually sounds like a perfect business medium to me.
Hangouts are easy to conduct, and once done they are immediately loaded to your YouTube Channel, allowing a seamless transition for you to be able to market with it.
If you haven't already thought about using Google Hangouts for your business, here are 3 reasons why you should.

3 Great Reasons to Incorporate Google Hangouts into your Business

1. Great alternative to webinars - Small businesses often can't afford the expense of using services like GoToWebinar, which can run you north of $500 a month if you have sizeable audiences. Hangouts are free, drop-dead easy to start, and require no elaborate tech setup. What's more, Google will record it all for you and send it to your YouTube account when you're done. Hangouts are an effortless way to hold a "webinar" without the expense and expertise required of other platforms.
2. Give a glimpse into your business - Hangouts are an easy way to show off your latest products, introduce new services, and give a look inside your business. Using hangouts for instruction and customer service are fantastic ways to increase your brand authority and give customers top-notch service. This is especially valid if you use social media in partnership with Hangouts to widen your reach.
3. Engagement and fast service - Hangouts are really good for engaging with your audience, especially a small one. Being virtually face to face with your audience is invaluable, and has a great many benefits with regards to your efforts to brand yourself in your chosen market. Hangouts also make it possible to be a participant in what is becoming known as Agile marketing, that is, the ability to quickly respond to trends and market events with answers and solutions. This ability on your part will resonate wide within your market.

How to Avoid Making These 7 Linkedin Mistakes

How to Avoid Making These 7 LinkedIn Mistakes

LinkedIn has quickly become a social media powerhouse among professional and business people. The days of it being merely a place to dump your resume are long past, as LinkedIn now drives four times as many visitors to your home page as Facebook and Twitter combined. In addition to that, newer initiatives on the site like the ability to post content and the new ad platform bode well for the future prospects of the platform as it pertains to business.
Unfortunately, a lot of us are strapped for time and already burdened with way too many tasks, fail to take the time to optimize our LinkedIn so as to receive the full benefit it offers. Let's attempt to help you change that right this moment.
7 Ways you can really blow it with LinkedIn

1. A lousy picture - You get one chance at this. Make your photo on LinkedIn one that speaks to your professional demeanor and will get you connections. The photos from your last big party are most likely not what we're going to use here.
2. Use your headline well - You've got a mere 120 characters to tell the world what you're about, so think it over and don't settle for bland. Give an accurate headline, truthful and yet enticing, all at the same time.
3. Not taking advantage of the Summary Section - Here you have 2000 characters to make a statement about you and your skills. Use as much as is necessary to sell the world on you. Consider it an elevator pitch if you will, and do your best to craft one that draws interest.
4. An incomplete profile - Do this and you're telling the world that you really don't care about the way people view you, which is generally enough reason for them to move on.
5. Not posting links - LinkedIn offers you a great chance to link to your website and social media channels. Take advantage of this. If someone is interested enough in you to want to visit your site, don't make them head over to Google to find you. Drop a link!
6. Don't spam the community - Many have tried and all have failed. LinkedIn users can smell spam at a distance, so don't even consider it. It's just too valuable to do it legitimately.
7. Not being present - Not updating your account for months at a time is a sure sign of a person unclear on the concept. Update often, make connections, and use the platform the way it was intended to be used. It will pay off for you!

Email List trouble spots to consider

List marketing trouble spots to consider
List marketing is one of the most powerful Internet marketing strategies.  When people say “the money is in the list”, they do so because they've experienced firsthand just how valuable a responsive list can be.

But not every effort at list marketing produces a windfall some fall well short of expectations.  What separates a winning list from a disappointment? Here are a few list marketing trouble spots to consider.

1. First, ask yourself why people are subscribing?  If it's solely a matter of receiving a freebie, you might be attracting nominally interested tire kickers instead of real potential customers.
2. Second, ask yourself if you'd want to read the emails you're sending.  It's easy to let your desire to turn a profit cloud your efforts to construct a truly helpful and appreciated series of messages.  You want to build trust and credibility.  Are your messages doing that?
3. Third, ask yourself if people are reading your emails in the first place.  Are you avoiding spam filters?  Are you providing a headline that will attract interest and attention?  Too many potentially lucrative lists rot on the vine because of weaknesses in these areas.

There are many different ways to boost the effectiveness of list marketing.  Looking at these three potential trouble spots are proven ways to improve your list performance.

They will leave you in a New York Minute.....your list needs nuturing

Abusing your list with gimmicky headlines
You can't make money with a list when its members aren't opening your email.  Mailboxes are overflowing and it's far too easy to send out an email with a title so unremarkable that it never gets opened.  That's a profit killer.
Your email needs a good title.  You want to attract attention and to encourage people to open the message.  If you can get your open rate up, it stands to reason that your profits should increase along with it.
Unfortunately, that's led some marketers to rely on gimmicky headlines.  These titles might increase open rates, but they don't have the desired effect.  People will open “You have a sale” emails or messages that claim some kind of emergency is afoot.  It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to come up with email titles that people will feel compelled to open.
When they find out the contents don't match the title, however, they're a lot more likely to unsubscribe than they are to make a purchase. 
Write good titles.  Attract attention.  Don't abuse your list with gimmicky approaches, though.  That's the one time when an increased open rate

Pick the right product to promote

Are you working with the right publishers?
Are you, as an affiliate marketer, really working with the right publishers?  It makes a difference.  Some publishers create circumstances that provide you with a great opportunity to profit.  Others just “dial it in”, limiting the effectiveness of your affiliate efforts.
A good publisher is going to do more than offer a good product.  He or she is also going to offer a good sales page.  Even the most skilled affiliate will have a hard time moving a product if the sales page is a dog.  Obviously, a top-notch publisher will respect affiliates enough to provide a reasonable commission, too.
A good publisher is going to go the extra mile, too.  He or she is going to offer real resources to affiliates to make things even easier.  We're talking about good graphics, sample content, support and anything else an affiliate might be able to use to increase sales.
If you're not working with the right publishers, you might want to survey your niche again in hopes of finding a better alternative.  Smart publishers understand that they need to do their best to take care of affiliates in order to maximize everyone's profits.

How internet marketing works no need to overcomplicate things

A basic Internet marketing formula
There are so many different pieces and options in the world of Internet marketing that it can sometimes be difficult to maintain a well-informed “big picture” outlook.  That's particularly true when you're just starting out, swimming in what feels like an infinite sea of IM info and ideas.
At its core, though, Internet marketing isn't really the complicated.  There's a simple basic formula that underlies just about everything we do.  After you strip away all of the bells and whistles and start looking at principles, there are three things in which we're really interested.
Traffic.  In order to make sales, you need customers.  In order to create customers you need prospects.  Traffic is one of the “big three”, you can't make money if you aren't connecting eyeballs to your offers.
Conversion.  After you get the traffic, you need to persuade those individuals to make a purchase or to take some other action that puts money in your pocket.  That's conversion and nothing good happens without it.
Money.  Every time someone makes a purchase or “does the right thing”, you need to make your money.  This is the end goal of the whole pursuit.  How much you make per sale or action matters.
What happens when we put it all together?
Traffic x Rate of Conversion x $/Conversion = Gross Profit
When you get down to brass tacks, it's pretty obvious how IM works!

Three great headline starters
The difference between a good article and a great one?  The headline.  The difference between an email your list ignores and a solid gold mailing that cranks out sales?  The headline. 
Put simply, headlines matter.  They matter a lot.  You can't keep people reading with bad content, but you can't even get the ball rolling without a headline that attracts attention.  There's a reason why top copywriters spend more time wrestling with headlines than they do on any other part of the creative process.
Here are three great ways to start headlines.  These proven winners can put you on the path of writing that “must-open” email or that “must read” article.

1. The Best Way to _____
2. Five Tips for _____
3. The Secret to Bigger/Better/Higher _____

Obviously, you can adjust and tweak these “starters” to meet your needs.  The underlying principles behind them (supply how-to information, offering a specific/quantifiable number of something, promising to reveal a secret) are what makes them work.
If you're not writing good headlines, you're not getting the most out of your efforts.  This is one area not to neglect!
The best way to get yourself in copywriting mode is to go to the grocery store and look at the headlines on the magazines some of them a shear artwork how they grab your eye and others just pure showmanship either way they sell magazines even in this digital world.

The Myth of Entrepreneurship and Time

The myth of  Entrepreneurship and working for yourself. Most people think if they give up their job in corporate and start working for themselves they will have so much freedom and time, that they will never look back at working for someone else again.  Unfortunately that is the last thing you have because if you have freedom and time to do whatever you want then you are unemployed and not really in business, you have a hobby.  As an Entrepreneur you can make sure you have off for a doctor's appointment there is no doubt about that. If you say I am only going to work 2 hours today I am sure your wallet will show you why only working 2 hours really isn't the best idea if you want to stay in business very long.  I know from my own experience that when I decide to take off or cut my hours I generally will feel it in my pockets and when they come knocking on the door for your rent or cell phone bill the collection agency really doesn't care that you had doctor's appointment and you couldn't generate leads or close any deals.  They want their money just like you do for they services you provide.

It is not easy building a company that is for sure. Some people make it look easy but,  most of the time when you see a successful Entrepreneur you rarely see them when they are first starting out, when they are scrimping together a couple of dollars so that they can go to event where their next client/investor may be or when they have to hear from their family over, over again when are you going to get a job because they don't understand what you do. I pretty much kept what I was doing from family and friends since they are all employees and they just don't get what it is to be in business for themselves.  I sure they think I am nuts but that's ok because I know I come from a different state of mind then they do as most Entrepreneurs do. 

Content Marketing is really nothing more than creative SEO

I went to an event today sponsored by a big corporation and I think I heard the words content marketing about a million times in the presentation. For the most part I think everyone that is in the business of driving traffic has their own opinion about content marketing. Here is mine:
content marketing really is nothing more than search engine optimization with more fluff around it. It is nothing but SEO and somewhere there was a blogger that coined the term content marketing and it stuck like a wet noodle against the wall. I also went to this event under the pretense of learning about tribes and why some people follow and others don't I should of read the content of the flyer. It was not about that at all. I thought I was going to learn some neuromarketing statistics and ninja keywords tricks that get people to sign on to your tribe but instead I learned about crowd funding which was pretty cool. Here I thought crowd funding was all about getting an album out and produced or getting a invention to market but it turns out there is several different types. The one that the speaker went over was all about getting money for your startup and business ideas,  a few people were even able to pitch their ideas to a panel of "experts" very interesting some of the facts that were shared. Your pitch video should not be more than one minute and 27 seconds. I have been to networking events that some people couldn't get their business idea out in less than 10 minutes. The long of the short of it you will here more about this in the coming months with the next trend of crowd funding comes into play and more wannabe entrepreneurs look for alternative funding to start businesses and especially the ones that sound crazy.  There are so many of these kickstarter.com type businesses out there now and you will see so many more to come. Small business owners and creators have a fighting chance now instead of just relying on family and friends when banks turn them down.
Kiva.org is another type of model they give microloans to small businesses at lower rates than a bank or one of those merchant services loans. You will have to do some research to figure out what is the best thing for your startup or invention but it is nice to know there are alternatives to banks.

What does your perfect client/customer look like

        

        This is the million dollar question, this separates successful businesses from the not so successful businesses. I am involved in a class right now and we had to work this question out. It is a pretty easy question for some others not so much. A friend to everyone is a friend to no one. If you have a business and you think everyone is your customer you probably are struggling. Not everyone likes the same food, drinks, clothes or music, so if you are in business you might need to figure that out and if you are in start up phase don't open your doors for business before you figure this one out.
I am sure you are asking why do I need one? It allows you to precisely target prospective groups effectively, and helps you determine your marketing resources to achieve the best results. Having the right client/customer profile in your marketing efforts will give you the ROI that will make your business grow faster and more efficiently.  To know your customers, you have to be able to know what triggers them to buy. Some questions you need to answer are what is the demographic profile

• How old are they
• What is their gender
• What is their job title
• What is their education level
• What are their interests
• What is their income level
• Does your product or service fill their needs or wants
• Where do they spend their free time
• What magazine or blogs do they follow
• Do they use social media, which ones are they using
• What kind of car do they have or what is their means of transportation

Do you have to answer every question No, but the more questions you can answer the better you can understand your customer/client, the more you understand them the easier it will be to reach them and you will have a more ROI on you sales and marketing campaigns. 

Next post will be on psychological client/customer profile. Tonight's sunset pic