Consulting Business 101: How To Manage Your Facebook Campaign (Part 1)

Facebook For Business

Facebook is a social networking service. Due to its popularity, it’s used to market your brand.

Facebook makes things happen to you without delays. Once you create an account, you own a key to unlock a world of possibilities, mostly for free.

With consistency and patience, you can use its features to improve your present and future campaigns.

In this first part of the series, it focuses on the three major features used for marketing:

Timeline

A timeline is your profile. This is the section in which you’ll write the W’s about yourself, upload photos and share something to the public.

In other words, people will see, read and interpret what is posted in your timeline. It plays as your public diary.

Whatever content you post, either a status, shoutout, link, photo, or a video – it reveals something about your reputation.

Strategies to Improve Facebook Timeline

• Be Professional

Professionalism is a must in Facebook. Keep in mind your timeline plays a vital role in molding your reputation.

Before posting something, ask yourself: “What’s my goal in posting this content?”

If your answer is to show off then, think twice. Arrogance is okay in the business world for as long as you can deliver great results.

That’s why; it’s best to stay simple. It’s a good practice to sprinkle your contents with personal tone but never reveal everything.

For example, as a fitness instructor with two children, how will you inspire your list of friends?

Answer: Be the real you. People don’t want phony people who make selfies as their profile and cover photos.

Make it a habit to tell a story. Share your experience, your ideas and your realizations without disclosing names, address and phone numbers.

Once or twice a week, post photos of a social event you’ve attended with your kids.

• Be Consistent

Popular entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and such make it a daily habit to post contents.

You can do it too!

People will remember you if you keep sharing contents that make them happy and inspired.

Page

A page acts as your business door that shows your products and your services.

It’s different from your timeline. Your page gives your target customers two reasons.

One, to explore around (comment, get your contact number, visit your site). Two, to come back for more.

Strategies to Improve Facebook Page

• Post Every day

An active page is filled with new information about your business. It highly talks about your product, your service and your blog.

You’re going to create a visual post whenever you have announcements, surveys and updates.

• Vary Your Content

Never limit yourself. Experiment with your daily post to attract attention.

For example, think how you’ll present the information if you’re going to announce new special rates for summer season.

Perhaps, you’ll create a photo. Or, create a promo video. Maybe, do both.

• Get More Likes

Invite your list of friends to like your page. If they won’t like it, don’t force it. Instead, promote your page offline.

Organize a seminar or a workshop in which you’re one of the main speakers. See to it every guest receives your calling card and a newsletter in their emails.

• Create Contest

You grab more attention if you encourage people to join your contest.

May it be a blog guest posting, write-a-comment, submit a selfie, submit a meme, etc. – it’s a great and fun contest. You’ll hand rewards and they will remember.

• Promote Your Page

Page promotion means you’re asking Facebook to help you reach more people within your preferred location.

It’s a simple paid feature that allows you to choose the right type of ad to use and its accompanied daily budget.

• Measure Results

Everything is measurable in Facebook. The Page Insights is a free analytics tool used to monitor the daily, weekly, monthly and annual performance of your page.

There are five variables you can measure using this tool namely: Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People.

If you’re interested to learn more, you can click the link for free online training.

• Like Other Pages

Consider it a good practice if your page likes other pages relevant to your business. This is your good chance to like their posts. You’re a stand-out if you write a comment too.

Who knows? They will notice your presence.

In return, they will like your posts. They might also call you for orders.

Group

A Facebook group, in real life, is a classroom. You with other people stay in one place for a healthy discussion.

It’s a bit the same as Page yet the major difference is the feel. A Group acts as a forum but arranged in real-time.

There are more voices around. They talk. They complain. They seek solutions.

Here, you use your real name. You’re their moderator and your role is to:

• Calm them down
• Provide realistic solutions
• Negotiate effectively
• Encourage a private talk
• Encourage to attend seminars
• Encourage to join contest
• Give more freebies
• Assess their further needs
• Ask for star ratings
• Ask for reviews
• Curate content that’s helpful to them

*****

Leads Ahoy provides services in reputation management, search engine optimization, list building and geo-targeted lead generation. http://leadsahoy.com/

12 Reasons Why You Need A Blog

Reason 1.

A blog is a non-branded page of a site. It updates regularly. It publishes new information and it entertains new regular visitors.

For these reasons, major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing love to crawl and index blogs.

Reason 2.

There’s freedom in blogging. You’re in control of what to publish and what not to publish. You can write news. You can publish case studies filled with statistical data.

You can embed your YouTube videos. For more active engagement, you can even attach polls and conduct contest in all your blog posts.

Reason 3.

A blog is your business notebook with a personal touch. New visitors prefer to visit it rather than see and read what’s written in the About Us, FAQ, Rates & Packages and Contact.

Reason 4.

Content marketing starts with a blog. Most of the time, your blog publishes visual contents such as articles, photos and videos.

These are the types of contents that can convert frequent visitors into subscribers if you include a vibrant call-to-action above the fold.

Reason 5.

A blog reveals your online reputation. People can tell who you are based on the following:

• Blog’s appearance
• Update frequency
• Writing tone
• Placement of texts, links and call-to-action

Reason 6.

You don’t have to be a professional writer to be a blogger. You’re a business blogger not only because you can write well but more because your contents can convert:

• readers into frequent visitors
• frequent visitors into subscribers
• subscribers into leads
• leads into buyers
• buyers into repeat customers

Reason 7.

A blog markets your products and services well. Unlike traditional advertising like TV and radio ads that only last for 30 seconds or less, the information you write in your blog are for long-term.

The people can bookmark the link in their browser and reread it over and over again.

Reason 8.

It’s possible to optimize your blog for local search. For example, you opened two branches for ABCD Catering. Your main branch is located in Seattle and the other is in Chicago.

If you only have no budget for a website, it’s best to create two separate blogs with similar brand design but with different contents.

Reason 9.

You can use your blog to generate more leads. Contents that always keep your audience happy, inspired and hopeful will keep your phone busy. It rings and rings for your help and support.

Reason 10.

Content conversion is easier when you start with a blog post. A blog post, a 500-word article with a photo for example, can be converted into a press release, a promo video, an e-book, an infographic, a slide share, a podcast and an e-newsletter.

Reason 11.

Blogging isn’t too technical. All it requires is creativity and imagination. Let your ideas flow freely, write it down and edit it later.

Reason 12.

Blogging is free. It only requires you to have a free email address to create an account in WordPress, Blogger or Tumblr. There are also limited number of free templates you can use to get started.

*****

LEADS AHOY provides services in reputation management, search engine optimization, list building and geo-targeted lead generation. http://leadsahoy.com/

23 Reasons Why Black Hat SEO Does No Good For Your Website

No to Black Hat SEO!

Black hat SEO services are no good. Google, Yahoo and Bing despise them. Your audience dislikes them.

These illegal techniques will only hurt your search ranking and will eventually kill your online reputation.

Photo Courtesy of: Search Engine Land

Reason 1: Keyword stuffing is unnecessary.

Stuffing involves the excessive use of main keywords in the title and body of a content, in an aim that it becomes more visible in Google search.

Always remind yourself excessive use of keywords destroys the overall substance and quality of a written content.

If you consider yourself a competent content writer, it’s expected of you to use the main keyword once in the title and thrice in the body (one in the opening paragraph, one in the middle and one in the conclusion).

The Keyword Density Analyzer Tool reveals if your site is using the recommended frequency of keywords.

Reason 2: Only unaccomplished websites use hidden texts.

These sites attempt to hide keywords in the white or black background, as well as in the HTML Codes. The user can’t see it but search engine robots always can.

That’s why; it’s recommended to use a SPAM Detector to reveal the hidden secrets, or better yet, talk to your webmaster and see to it he or she is using the proper coding.

Reason 3: Meta-tag stuffing is ineffective since 2005.

As the owner of the site, it’s unprofessional to use repeating keywords in the meta tags (Meta Title, Meta Description, H1, H2, H3) just to get attention.

The use of meta tags helps your site become more SEO friendly but when you abuse it, it’s called despair.

Reason 4: Doorway pages serve no purpose to your visitors.

These pages contain low quality information that makes no sense for the readers.

Instead of using a gateway, it’s recommended to use a geo-targeted page that contains the right information the readers want to know.

Reason 5: Scrape sites are for the lazy.

These sites contain quality information but they are only copy-pasted from other sources without proper acknowledgment.

The goal is to make you believe the information is original but the truth is, the owner only wants you to click the ads around the content.

Reason 6: Article spinning is a waste of time.

This technique doesn’t guarantee page views or conversion. A spun article is a dead fish even if it takes three hours to write.

Instead of spinning the past articles, it makes more sense to convert the article into types of content such as video and upload it in YouTube.

Reason 7: A machine translation is no use.

It’s necessary for your site to translate an English content to Spanish to embrace more readers.

It doesn’t mean you’ll buy a machine translator, which yields low quality texts. Better use Google Translate.

Reason 8: Deception is for the fool.

To make things clearer, deception is an illegal technique of publishing a page irrelevant to its title.

Users might see it as a mistake but beware, there are times this technique is used to either trick the users or force them to visit another page.

Reason 9: Link building using an automated software is a waste of money, time and effort.

No software can help you circulate links in the right place.

If you want to circulate links around the web, do it manually. It’s time consuming but it gives you the guarantee you’re linking to a high quality page.

Reason 10: Link farming is an unaccepted old school trick.

Your site gets penalized if you allow a group of low quality sites to link to you. In case, you want to circulate your homepage url, make a list first.

Make sure you choose quality popular sites relevant to your business campaign.

That’s why; make it a habit to use a backlink tool like ahrefs. This tool regularly checks the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site.

Reason 11: There’s no reason to use a highlighted link text if you’re a reputable businessman.

A text link or hyperlink connects two pages together but it doesn’t mean you’ll hide this link somewhere in your site just to increase your page visibility.

See it this way. You don’t hide when you’re not a criminal, right?

Reason 12: Sybil attack is synonymous to link farming.

There’s no good reason to create multiple sites with different domain names and link these sites together. This technique is a garbage.

One website is enough (for example, abcd.com). If your business is located in various location, it’s best to create a geo-targeted page (abcdny.com) pointing to your main website.

Photo Courtesy of: Pinterest

Reason 13: Google Panda hates you if you create blogs filled with spun articles.

These blogs have no authority, especially if the articles are spun and posted by an automated software.

Reason 14: Guest blogging becomes a black hat SEO service if you submit an article for the sole purpose of linking to your site.

If that’s your goal, the overall quality of an article suffers. The real purpose of guest blogging is to enhance your reputation.

Readers will remember you when you regularly submit a well-written and well-researched article. See Jeff Bullas blog.

Reason 15: Page hijacking is for desperate entrepreneurs.

You make things more complicated if you duplicate a popular site only for the web crawlers, but your goal is to redirect users to your site.

Reason 16: Buying expired domains to change its link architecture doesn’t guarantee high ranking.

No technique guarantees a high ranking. In fact, Google resets the link data once a domain expires.

Reason 17: Cookie stuffing is stealing.

Google automatically punishes a site that puts an affiliate tracking cookie on users’ computer without their knowledge.

Cookie stuffing includes the use of pop-ups, iFrames and flash.

Reason 18: The use of spambots brings nothing but headache to users.

A spam post, which contain keywords and links, are generated by automated spambots and are usually posted in forums.

Reason 19: The value of a blog post decreases when it receives fluff comments with links.

These nonsense comments are irrelevant and are only promoting a low-rank site.

Reason 20: You destroy your reputation when you insert low quality link in user editing sites such as Wikipedia.

If this link points to your site, it’s best to share your link to a group of influencers in Twitter and Facebook.

Reason 21: Google highly disapproves if you create a number of mirror sites if its contents are similar but with different urls.

It’s best to get busy managing one site and update your blog with fresh contents to all types of users.

Reason 22: URL redirection is a black hat technique if done inappropriately. An example is 404.

If you redirect a page to a new address, make sure it’s a 301 permanent redirect.

Reason 23: Cloaking is unacceptable.

It doesn’t yield good results if you present different information for search engine spiders and for users.

Search engine spiders are smarter than you and they can tell if your page is real or fake.

Remember, honesty is still the best policy even in SEO. Never hide anything from Google and your audience.

Therefore, don’t complicate things. A website needs white hat techniques to appear in Page 1 of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

If you pay for SEO services, always remind the virtual assistants to:

• Create a website for the people.
• Write like a human and for the people.
• Link like a human and for the people.

*****

Leads Ahoy provides services in reputation management, search engine optimization, list building and geo-targeted lead generation. http://leadsahoy.com/

How to Generate Leads Online

Good Reputation + Good Offer = Leads!

                                                                                                                           Photo Courtesy of: Flickr

When you heard the terms “online lead generation,” you tend to overthink. You ask yourself “where will I get them?” or “how I will get them?” Questions and endless questions cloud your mind and you end up doing nothing. It’s a sad story, right?

In the game of online marketing, your reputation attracts leads. Your reputation gives these leads the reason why they need to trust you. However, the story doesn’t end here. Let’s say you obtained some leads. They remember you. They trust you then, what?

The cycle of lead generation will give you the answers. Online lead generation is divided into four stages. First, what’s your irresistible offer? Second, where will you put the offer to attract the right people? Third, how will you convince these people to act? Fourth, how will you repeat the process to ensure greater success?

First Stage: The Offer

The first stage acts as the foundation. Come up with a good offer and you’re on your way to the top. Question is: What’s the right offer?

An offer is a noun, which refers to a product (free e-book, free coupons, free movie tickets for two, free pen), a service (live webinar, free one-on-one coaching, free demonstration), a price (discount, order two get one for free), payment terms (cash on delivery, payment 30 days after invoice date, cash before shipment, payment through Paypal, bank-to-bank payment), a trial period (sign-up in exchange for a 30-day free trial), an incentive (monetary incentive, paid vacation leave, positive performance review, grocery coupons) , ease in shipping (free shipping, discounted shipping) and a legal guarantee (money-back guarantee in 48 hours).

Second Stage: Offer Placement

Offer placement plays a vital role in lead generation. Simply put, the online world is vast. Search engines index thousands of new company websites, blogs, social media and review channels every day. Ask yourself: What will I do to get attention? Attraction is a key in online marketing. Less attraction means few or no leads at all.

Therefore, start thinking big. Study your brand, know your audience and identify the correct channels for communication. Is it enough to get their attention using your website? Is it enough to stick with a promotional page? Is it enough to send them a newsletter without their permission? Will you limit your reach in Facebook and Twitter?

Third Stage: Persuasion

Let’s say you figure the the number of websites you’ll use to market your offer. Say for example, you have your blog, your Facebook page, your Twitter and your Yelp. Next question to ask: How will you convince the people to give their name, email address and contact number to you?

Again, placement is the key. Font size, font style, color, shape and the choice of words will do the trick. For example, putting an attractive opt-in rectangular box above the fold proved to be an effective call-to-action strategy.

People will see your offer the moment they stumble upon your page. They don’t have to explore around to search for your free offers. Entrepreneur provides four more strategies for call-to-action.

Fourth Stage: Repeat

Successful call-to-actions yield results – your leads. These leads will either become your regular visitors or your loyal customers. Some of these leads might only forget you after getting your free offer. Some will even unsubscribe if they feel dissatisfied. It’s a sad story, yes, but never give up. It’s part of the game. Go back to first stage and get new leads to convert.

REMEMBER: Lead generation is entirely different from lead management. It’s good to celebrate a little should you have leads. A cup of ice cream will do. Yet, stay focus. Leads are neither your prospects nor customers. Money comes depending on your ability to nurture these people.

Welcome to Leads Ahoy!

This is our new blog!

Leads Ahoy is your newest online business consultation firm. Hopefully, you and our team will have a great time sharing our thoughts and ideas about search engine optimization, reputation management, video marketing and lead generation. This blog will serve as your platform for communication. Tell us what you want and we’ll write it for you.

The Leads Ahoy Team