Decorate Your Space

Decorate your small business with items traditionally used during the Fourth of July. Red, white and blue pinwheels, flags, streamers and fireworks. You can even order streamers in bulk so you can hand them out to your customers, or print business cards from Printingforless.com for less than you’d spend on traditional fliers or hand outs– along with that added sparkling flair.

You Can’t Go Wrong With a Giveaway

Generate more business by offering them a change to win a Fourth of July themed giveaway with any purchase. Whatever your giveaway offers, give it a catchy name, press release, and get to work promoting it online. Familiarize yourself with local forums and online communities, as well as national sweepstakes and coupon communities. Thousands of people frequent them every day, waiting for the next great deal or chance to get their hands on something for free. However, if your prize or giveaway exceeds a value of $600.00, you must register it according to your state’s laws.

Offer Deals and Incentives

Now that your festive decorating skills have brought in some customers, offer them discounts and deals. A great way to make money is by offering customers deals: if they feel they’re getting a great deal they’re willing to spend more money than they would on a normal day. Try offering 10 percent off on their entire purchase, or do a BOGO sale on Fourth of July specific items. If the customers are excited to shop, they’ll spend the money.

Use Social Media

When you have begun to build a presence online from your incentives and/or giveaways, it’s time to follow up with consistent social media outreach. Although many businesses upload their information and carefully fill out their social media profiles, they don’t update them nearly enough. When you upload pictures of your business on sites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, it has to be a continuous, interactive proceess. Your followers will see all the festive and new items for the holiday and will want to check it out for themselves. Marketing through social media is always a great way to get more business so make sure you post daily leading up to the Fourth of July about your deals, incentives and new inventory.

The post How Your Small Business Can Rake in the Dough During Any Holiday appeared first on DIY Marketers.

Sit at the same table. 

My first business endeavor almost ended over a desk. Setting up the small office space my partner and I spent two days searching for the perfect desks. We bickered from folding chairs hunched over our laptops while searching for the best desk layout. She argued for the clean open feeling of a l-shaped model offering that each desk would neatly fit into a corner of the office, giving us each privacy. I countered with the ample storage and workspace provided by u-shaped desks.

At an impasse, we decided to get both, as well as a big kitchen farm table as well. Now we were literally were always seated at the same table. This created more opportunity for meaningful discussion, the occasional eye roll, and most importantly nearly constant engagement. It’s hard to ignore someone sitting just across from you.

Similarly, businesses wishing to create identities and capitalize on social media need to sit at the same table as their customers–figuratively speaking. Feel free to utilize Facebook for giveaways to attract attention, customers love freebies. But, do not just rely on the power of the free to attract likes and loyalty. Instead encourage comments or creativity. Make contests and giveaways about them and their stories. Users will click back to the comment thread to check out other submissions and feel the warmth of their own spotlight.

Openly ask for stories about your product. Ask for feedback, even if its negative. Be willing to grow from what your customers tell you. Encourage users to engage visually by utilizing social photo apps like Instagram, or even social video apps like Vine to respond. Words are nice, but a picture is worth a thousand words–especially on the Internet.

Devote time to thanking customers for visiting your page. Feel free to thank them for their like and their comments. Ask them open-ended follow-up questions that can’t be answered with a yes, no, or simple shrug of the shoulders. Allow their role in the story to blossom. Engagement is key. Allow customers to steer the conversation and be willing to take inspiration from it. Build ideas for products or marketing from what they tell you. Listening is more important than talking in a conversation, take stock of what your customers tell you so you may give them what they want.

Seated at the same table with the focus sharply on them, your customers will help sustain any campaign launched. A starring role ensures that they have investment in the success of your business. After all in addition to being a customer, they are also the pitchman.

You Have to Be Social to Get Chosen

The social media rewards those users who are in a conversation.  While previous generations passively consumed marketing, social media users get a starring role in each campaign. Today’s are hungry for engagement and relationship. Your customers use social media users and demand the ability to digest, repost, comment, remix, and tag everything.

Social media engagement requires constant conversation. Telling customers what to buy through advertising registers as a flat monologue. Savvy marketers ride the coattails of conversation through all its viral tunnels and redirects into the view of new customers. And if you play your social media strategy right, you’ll ride the wave to profits.

The post Take a Seat at the Social Media Table appeared first on DIY Marketers.

When it comes to reaching out to a larger audience and generating more sales, retailers today are adopting social media and taking advantage of digital marketing. The reason for this is simple: social media gives retailers a clearer insight by letting them study valid consumer data while inviting their prospects/customers to socialize/interact and be a part of a thriving community. And this is working because knowing your customer base and understanding/predicting customer trends are both important for success in retail.

1. Moving from Print Media to Digital Marketing

While having a well-designed website is an important step towards gaining an online presence, it’s also the most basic. Today retail companies are realizing that they need to go beyond the traditional approach and have a strong social media presence for developing their brand further and making it a success.

The fresh and new “retail marketing movement” is lead by social platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram. Besides that, using microblogging platforms such as Twitter, retail companies are learning from their buyers while keeping track of consumer trends. For many clothing retailers, targeted video lookbooks and even short films about their collections go hand in hand with customer’s want for a highly interactive experience. For example, an online store that sells men’s clothing can have a video specifically about their Sport Shirts collection, which can then be shared on various social platform and spread by word of mouth.

2. Enhancing or Improving Customer Service

Leading retailers are taking advantage of social media marketing by adding the social factor on their own websites. Besides using the popular social media platforms/tools available today to build relationships, they have their own product Q & A forums where the customers can interact with each other, and can review the different products sold on their site. Having such options lets these retailers build a better relationship with the customers by giving them a better, more fulfilling experience.

Retailers are exploring the power of social in the online world in a more significant way. The idea of helping their customers connect with each other and at the same time connect with the key people in the company is not only being adopted more openly, but is also growing. This shows that social media for many retail companies is no longer limited to a specific platform.

3. Merging the Old and New Together

Retail companies are leveraging social media to not only promote and build their brand image, but also to promote different company sponsored events. Let’s take the example of pop-up shops, where stores aim to attract buyers by presenting a “limited version” of their product and offering a sample of this product.

The pop-up stores are proving to be highly successful because social media outlets are accustomed to promoting them. These social media outlets serve as a virtual venue for video footage and event photos, where the attendees are able to communicate and at the same time, give feedback on various products. This is the marriage of traditional retail marketing tactics with the new digital approaches, letting retailers make the most out of social media.

Overall, social media marketing is ideal for retailers.  It’s inexpensive, builds relationships locally and worldwide and when used properly will convert passers by to loyal customers.

The post 3 Vital Social Media Marketing Trends in Retail appeared first on DIY Marketers.

You may be asked to create content for marketing on a topic that doesn’t interest you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the most out of those topics.

You need to provide the readers with something that stands out from the rest.

How do you create excitement in something that doesn’t excite you? It’s easy; stop thinking like a content creator, and start thinking like the reader. This will help you to shift gears and write what the audience of that niche are truly looking for.

Where to Start?

You can start with the ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ strategy to see what you can come up with.

For example, if you’ve been asked to promote guest blogging; take out a few seconds and ponder over the questions that can bring out some interesting content ideas:

1. Who invented the idea of guest blogging?
2. When do bloggers accept guest post and what does this tell us about their mentality?
3. Where are guest bloggers found?
4. How do people manage to get free content in the form of a guest post and get paid as well?
5.  What makes readers think they need to read a post from a guest blogger rather than the official blog owner?

Try it out and see what interests you.

Compare with conventional marketing

Another thing you can do is compare the content with strategies that marketing experts use to nudge people into buying. Take promotional signage, trade show exhibits and large format printing – companies use these conventional marketing tactics to further influence their target market.

Many leading technology and craft based (architectural) blogs have used this element on monotonous topics to stand out from the rest.

Dress for the audience

Try to make the content you’re going to create easy to read through and dress it for interest of audience.

Add an element of surprise when it comes to the visual appeal. Digital images, infographics and posters created by talented companies aid in the aesthetics of your blog.

Another tip is to break down sentences into short paragraphs. This will be good for the eyes of the readers and believe it or not, you’ll find writing 2-3 sentences easier in a paragraph than adding 6-8, which will keep you at the topic at your disposal.

Create subheadings wherever possible as they help readers to find out what a particular section is about.

Care for the needs of the audience

You should keep in mind that readers don’t really care about who you’re and what the company you’re marketing is about; they only care about their needs, and the only way to fulfill their needs is by creating compelling content.

Whatever you write shouldn’t be stuffed with call for action or promotion. Keep a balance and also put some stories there.

Considering the topic of guest blogging, you can start like:

‘Rachel was a work-at-home mom who has been trying to get website rankings up through social media marketing since 2008. While she managed to get 10,000 loyal followers from social media networks over the years, she managed to do the same in two months through guest blogging’.

See what you did there? You just created something that the audience will be able to relate to. Perhaps a work at home mom may be going through a similar phase and she would consider Rachel as someone similar to her.

It won’t harm to see what competitors are writing on as well. No, you shouldn’t start taking their content, but squeeze out ideas and themes as well as see the current trends in the niche.

Come to think of it, there aren’t any uninteresting topics, just an uninteresting you. However, with inspiration and the tips mentioned above, you can do fine and pat yourself on the back later on.

The post How to Get the Most Out of Uninteresting Topics on Your Blog appeared first on DIY Marketers.

There are key elements that every business plan requires (or at least, every good one). There are tens of thousands of businesses starting every day. Unfortunately, the majority of those fail. Chances are these said businesses missed one or more crucial parts during the planning phases.

Here’s a brief outline of the different aspects you should incorporate into your plan:

Executive Summary
This should actually be the last thing you complete, but it will be the first thing potential lenders see.  Like the name says, it’s  a one to two page summary of your plans. Use this to draw in a reader enough to make him/her continue to the rest of the plan.  The idea here is to get the reader excited about the potential success of your venture – so don’t bore them to death.  Use a clear, easy to understand writing style.  Don’t think that you have to impress them with fancy industry-specific language, this will just confuse them.

Business Description
In this section you will want to provide a brief description of your business. Your reader should know the answer to the following questions by the time they are through:
1. What is the name of the business?
2. Is this a corporation, sole proprietorship, or partnership?
3. Who are the owners of said business?
4. How long has this been in the works?

Explanation of Products/Services
You are going to want this to be addressed in simple terms with a clear painted picture of what you will provide. You should be able to answer what you will be selling, the benefits of your service, and the pricing.

Marketing Plan
This section should provide your reader with a target market, current conditions within the prospective industry, a brief analysis of competitors within your market, and your plans to promote your business.  This is another section designed to get the reader excited about the potential success of your venture.  Think it through and share your marketing strategy as clearly and colorfully as possible.

Industry and Competition
Here you will want to have a detailed explanation of the status of your current industry along with how you plan on entering the industry. Make sure to acknowledge the positives and negatives of this type of business.  One word of warning.  When you get to the competitive analysis DO NOT say that there is NO OTHER company doing what you are doing.  While there may not be another company just like yours, your audience IS currently meeting their needs somehow.  Talk about that and talk about how you will set yourself apart and how you will get them to choose YOU.

Promotion/Advertising
Use this space to define how you plan on reaching your target market through PR, promotions, and advertising. Be as detailed as possible without sounding entirely too redundant.

Ownership and Management
Here you will want to provide the key members of your team. This should include the legal structure of your business.

Location
1. Where is the ideal location to reach your desired demographic?
2. How important is location?
3. What types of special permits will you need for your location?

Risk Management
This is a tricky area, as risks are hard to predict. Try to define areas where you think your business has the highest risks involved and potential solutions for these problems. This is more of a constant and systematic process that will require regular analysis and updating.

Funds Needed
How much will you need to get you started? Include rent or lease payments, utilities, and your salary for at least the first year. Also include the salary of any of your staff for at least 6 months.

All of these areas need to go into as much detail as possible without creating an overwhelming effect. You want your readers or potential lenders to have a clear picture of what you are trying to do. Over or under explaining your plans will either leave them underwhelmed or confused. Try to avoid being too technical, keep your plans in simple terms that the average Joe can understand.

The post Start Your Business off Right: Build a Solid Plan appeared first on DIY Marketers.

So what is SEO?

SEO is a way of marketing yourself by using search algorithms and keywords. Each search result uses keywords while search algorithms calculate relevancy through the way you position the words in your content. If you are more relevant to a search engine when certain keywords are typed in, you become one of the first results a visitor will encounter – the primary goal when optimizing your website.

SEO is profitable because it works on constant growing traffic rather than something static with a small possibility of change. SEO helps your brand – after all, a growing website will receive a different degree of trust and credibility from fellow visitors compared to one that doesn’t. Trust and visibility are two important components when discussing about branding – and when doing SEO, you’re doing proper branding and marketing at the same time.

What is the meaning of trust in SEO? Trust is made online by gathering recurrent visitors that will spread the word and gather even more recurrent visitors. RSS readers, Twitter followers and Facebookers will become part of your community and spread the word even further about your services and information. So let’s recap for a moment there, what’s so wonderful about SEO traffic?

1.) It Rolls The Money In

When paired with PPC campaigns and affiliate programs, SEO strategies simply push them over the top and show a significant difference in revenue. It’s far more likely that your visitors consider your other website links than if they come via any other source of traffic.

2.) A Better And Stronger Community

The beauty of SEO is that it creates a community that’s simply less probable to breakdown easily. It has this tendency of growing and keeping together most of its previous members – not to mention that it spreads incredibly fast.

3.) It Improves Social Media Levels

If you’re looking for a strategy that will include your social media plans, SEO is for you. As discussed before – it creates that recurrent visitor pattern that will happily follow your Twitter or Facebook page and read your RSS stream.

So, now that you know how effective SEO can be, what are the three most important pointers about search engine optimization? Well, the first one employs quality – in other words, if you plan on publishing content on your website, you can’t hope to get away with whatever you can get your hands on.

Quality copyrighted content is the first rule behind a powerful SEO campaign. Google frowns on the heavy use of keywords, so you should focus on the right thing to do. Copied content won’t do it either. Your content needs to be not only top-notch but 100% unique from everything else on the internet.

Lastly, you need to be and stay relevant – as previously mentioned, SEO doesn’t work with just writing random content. For years, websites such as Ezinearticles and Articlesbase focused on publishing tons and tons of articles for a lot of their members but had no quality control – so it ended up being one of the worst article farms in history that got their members absolutely nowhere.

SEO is taking the world wide web by storm. Why is SEO important to you?

The post Understanding SEO Basics And How It Can Improve Your Online Business appeared first on DIY Marketers.

Enhance your brand and reputation online with these tips:

Branded Communication

On social-media sites, the rate at which information travels is speedy. No longer do customers have to wait days for a response after filling out an online contact as a form. Now, a disgruntled or satisfied customer can post on Facebook or Twitter and have a company representative reply within minutes.

Real-time communication on Facebook is equivalent to customer support software from LivePerson.com. It’s quick, effective, reliable and resourceful. Make sure to maintain the same identity and company values, such as a “customer comes first” mentality. For example, retailers should communicate with followers as if they’re sales associates helping customers shopping in the store. You don’t want to destroy your company’s image by upsetting a customer on the Internet. Craft proper, polite responses to complaints and remain genteel. Express gratitude with positive feedback. With proper brand management, your business can expand and secure successful brand awareness in the digital landscape.

Digital Branding

Remember anything you post on social-networking sites brands your business. Fans, followers, loyal customers and new prospects see what you’re posting and form opinions about your products and services based on those observations. Be consistent with the style and voice of your content, from the graphic you posted to the sweepstakes you’re promoting.

Also, as a small business or entrepreneur, you may not have the funds or resources to dedicate a skilled expert to your networking activity. If you’re managing your own social content, always make sure to separate your personal perspectives from a company persona. For example, tread carefully with provocative or edgy content. In most industries, customers trust firms that are branded with directness, stability and reliability. A little personality can attract attention but strike a balance.

Brand Investment and Customer Loyalty

As with offline branding, consistent online branding provides customers with a secure feeling of confidence and familiarity with the company. Once consumers make a connection with your brand, they also start to form an investment with your brand, including your products and services. Loyal customer investment will undoubtedly lead to increased sales and referrals. Good branding can even catapult a small company into the global arena, explains Entrepreneur. Social-networking sites in particular are full of opportunities for work-of-mouth marketing and brand awareness. A photo or update that resonates with a follower can be re-posted and shared. As a result, you’re reaching a whole new audience. So interact with your audience, and you’ll boost your business.

The post Brand Your Social Media Presence — Grow Your Business appeared first on DIY Marketers.

For those of you nodding your head as you read this, it’s time to start using video scribing to get your visual messages across to your audience. What is video scribing? Good question! Lets look at all you need to know about video scribing.

1. What is video scribing?

Video scribing is essentially video-based storytelling. Through the use of whiteboard animation, the video is a combination of an artist’s illustration, a written script with a voiceover, and stop-motion photography. All these techniques are combined to create an experience that leaves the viewer engaged and wondering what will happen next in what they’re watching on screen.

2. How is video scribing different from a video?

Video scribing keeps the viewers’ attention longer than simply watching a video because they are watching the actual content unfold in front of their eyes. It’s a visual stimulation that involves both the audience and the author. And when you combine audio and video messages, retention jumps to 65%, almost twice as effective than video alone.

3. Why do I need video on my website?

Most people learn by watching, with 83% of learning occurring visually. To complement that, 11% of people learn by hearing. We all know that combining words and pictures make for a more compelling visual image. Through the use of storytelling, that concept is taken a step further and helps the brain process information in a way it will retain the knowledge.

4. How do I find a video scribing company?

Since video scribing is a fairly new avenue of online video marketing, it’s important to find a company that has experience in the scribing arena. You can start with a simple web search using the terms “video scribing” or “whiteboard animation.”

Once you’ve completed a video, the sky’s the limit as to what you can do with it. You can place the video on your website, social media channels, YouTube, and send it out in your email newsletter.

You do not need a huge budget allocated for video scribing creation these days, especially with companies that can help you through the entire creative process. However, it’s important to make sure you do have funds available so you can compete in the field you want. Start reviewing your line items to see where you can allocate funding to video.

What do you think of video scribing? Would you be willing to try it for your business?

The post Have You Heard About Video Scribing? appeared first on DIY Marketers.

Too many businesses make the mistake of treating their social media marketing assets as a strategy themselves instead of just channels to connect. Think of your businesses social media channels as a empty field on a farm. If you scatter handfuls of seeds around and hope for rain, you might grow some gnarled bramble, but the odds aren’t in your favor. If you plant too many seeds and over-water them, you’ll destroy them with rot. To maintain a farm that flourishes, you must plan accordingly, organize the seeds and tend to them consistently. Crops don’t grow in straight rows by themselves, just like social media success isn’t an accident.

Plan Your Crops

When you’re planning your social media marketing campaign, you’ll need the tools of the trade. In addition to your primary PC or Mac, you’ll need an a portable way to stay connected. Although iPads and other tablets are becoming more popular for business people on the go, smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S3 can handle almost anything a tablet can. This will allow you to jot down and test strategies anytime, anywhere.

Once you have your tools, you can begin planning. In a Forbes article, reputation expert Davia Temin, highlights the importance of knowing your audience. She reminds us that the digital economy thrives on ideas, and social media is the place where you, your insights and your audience can become cohesive.

Sow Your Seeds, Tend Consistently

Many new businesses hit the ground running. They try out all kinds of social media strategies and then quickly burn out when they don’t work. Businesses and brands that succeed know that social media campaigns seldom catch like a wildfire, and there’s a lot of work behind going viral.

AdvertisingPittsburgh.com reminds us that social media and SEO campaigns don’t have many shortcuts. Even the best campaigns can take up to a year or more to generate results or even be evaluated. Like planting a garden, you can’t force your social media to grow instantaneously, but you can take good care of it— tailor it as you learn, and fertilize with creativity and interaction. If you put forth hard work and consistent effort, your social media campaign can add visibility, loyalty and revenue to your company. If you cross your fingers and haphazardly toss seeds, you’ll be lucky if anything grows at all.

The post Marketing Mindsets: Plant a Digital Harvest That Flourishes appeared first on DIY Marketers.

1. Offer an incentive. More companies are offering a free downloadable “tip sheet” or ebooks to entice readers to sign up. Free gifts are a great way to motivate a person to action.

2. Keep it simple. Make sure you keep the signup form as simple as possible. In fact, just asking for an email address will guarantee you more subscriptions than requesting additional information like name, zip code, and demographics. Save that for an “update your profile” message once the person is subscribed.

3. Make the email easy to forward. Take advantage of the “forward to a friend” option that comes with so many email platforms. This is a great way for your customer to send the information to other networks and attract potential subscribers.

4. Make it easy at tradeshows and conferences. Attending a conference or being a tradeshow vendor means you will meet dozens of prospective customers. Make it easy for those individuals to subscribe to your email newsletter by asking them to simply scan a QR code with their smartphone.

5. Use social media. Don’t limit your email subscription form to your website or blog. Be sure to include an email sign-up form on all your social media platforms. It’s very possible a prospective customers will go to your Facebook page before she ever reaches your website.

6. Watch the frequency by which you send out messages. It’s tempting to schedule several messages to go out each week. But is that what your customers want? If you are sending more than two message each week and you see your unsubscribe count increasing, consider sending fewer messages.

7. Make the subject line compelling. So many people only read an email subject line before deleting or opening a message. Write your subject lines so the words inspire curiosity and engage the reader. Consider using a question or call-to-action phrase.

8. Include valuable content in your email. More than anything, give your reader a reason to subscribe and keep reading your messages by including information that is of value.

Do you have tips and sure-fire tricks you’ve used to gain new email subscribers? Share with me and your fellow DIY Marketers readers. 

The post 8 Tips for Increasing Email Subscribers appeared first on DIY Marketers.