9 Great Internet Marketing Tips for SMBs

        I.            Stop ignoring the Internet

The whole world is embracing the Internet at an unprecedented rate. According to a report by World Telecommunications Union, 39% of world population of 7.1 Billion were using Internet in 2013. If we add to that the increased mobile internet usage, the percentage could go much higher. Thus, if you are ignoring the power of the Internet, you won’t realize how soon the world is moving away from you.  The graph below shows the Internet Growth trend, can you project where you stand here?

 

      II.            Explore what your competitors are doing

Your competitors might have already started Marketing Online  and could have already developed their Internet Marketing Strategy. If you are an SME, chances are that your competitors are using  Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc). So, the sooner you start, the better chance you have to catch up with those ahead.  If you think your competitors are not doing anything on the Internet, you have a great chance to beat the competition here. 

 

    III.            Get a website if you are not having one at present

A website is your virtual shop and you cannot afford to ignore the benefits of having a website. If you are running a business where leads are coming naturally and maximum clients are of captured market, website might not look like a good idea to you. But wait, do you remember the scope of extra business that you are losing by not getting to connect with new prospects? A website adds good deal of credibility to your business and provides opportunity to show your business – the way you would want. So, get a website !

 

    IV.            Invest in a new website if you have a shabby looking website

If you are a progressive business of 21^st century, chances are more that you already have a website. If that is the case, take a look at how great it looks. Ask some friends and customers to give an honest feedback about your website. Ask younger folks for this. If you are not much updated with internet, chances are that your website is not too updated also, with latest standards. It is time to take a fresh look at it. It is time to redesign your website, contact an expert website designing company for the same.

 

      V.            Optimize your website- else it will be of little use

Having a website doesn’t suffice all purpose. You need to optimize it too. Optimizing basically means, among other things,

·         Using business and search relevant keywords in your website contents, titles, tags, meta-tags etc

·         Keeping the website structure easily navigable to people and search engines

·         Keeping the theme of communication in tune with all other communications

·         Making it easier people to contact you from the website.

 

 

    VI.            Update website contents regularly

Search engines love it if you update your contents regularly. So, keep it in mind that whatever new changes happen in your business- new products, new services, new clientele, new testimonials, new market update- all have to come up in to your website immediately. This practice will take your miles ahead of your competition on the Internet.

 

  VII.            Make yourself visible to your target audience

You will need to tell everyone that you are there. So, make sure you have your website URL in visiting card, bill-boards, RSS Feed, press releases (if you manage to), ads, Facebook posts, blog posts and so on. This will ensure people see you and link to your website.

 

VIII.            ENGAGE with your audience in social media

You clients – present and future ones, are spending a good part of their time on Social Media sites like- Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. And, a lot of businesses are also interacting with your market in many creative ways. As such, it is extremely important that you also engage with your clients in social media, so that you are always on top of their preference list. The tactics of engaging with audience in social media are very different from that of other marketing medium. At least, to begin with, you need some proficient Social Media Marketing Agency to guide you on the new domain.  You will never regret a strategic investment in Social Media Engagement.

 

    IX.            Maintain a Blog

You may not know much about Internet Marketing – and you don’t need to also, if you are not in the business of Internet Marketing.  You just need to be the expert in your business. So, if you are a florist, keep taking some pictures of different varieties of flowers of every season and post on your blog, research and write about different varieties etc; if you are doctor, write about different ailments and their easy healing procedures and so on. The idea is – make yourself a reference point to people looking for information in your industry. You will shine in Internet if you are able to do this. To start it all, do some more research and study. Additionally, contact an Internet Marketing Agency that specializes in Small and Medium Enterprise Business. WebRhino,

an India based Digital Marketing Company could be an excellent starting point for you. 

 

We welcome your suggestions and comments. If you liked this article, please share it and let others benefit from it too !

 

Five Steps to Start a Web Designing Business

Starting a Website Designing business is not that difficult if you believe in hard work and perseverance. By the way, any business requires hard work and perseverance, but the best thing about Website designing business is that it requires very less resource start with. And, if you can do a good job at it, you can plan for much bigger and extensive things related to this.

The steps of starting a website designing business are not much different from that of starting any other business. We state below the major steps you need to start a web designing entity.

Name Your Business: First of all you need to think of a name which genuinely defines your business offerings. You can choose any name for your company, but as a nascent entrepreneur, it is recommended to use names that define your business appropriately. Not everyone is as lucky as Google & Yahoo ! J

Write a Brief Business Plan: The second most important thing (and probably first) is to write a business plan. Yes, that’s very important. Writing a business plan ensures that you have done your homework thoroughly before you started. A carefully thought out Business Plan saves a lot of time, money and energy by indicating all the probable pitfalls in the way ahead. It also increases your chance of success, greatly. In website designing specifically, competition is very intense and hence, you need to have your strategy ready before you start the race.

Register with Government: Now you need to register your entity with government. You need to take at least one government certificate for your newly opened business. This is important from two aspects: First, this will help you in opening bank account (current account for business) and Second, in establishing reliability in front of clients or prospects.

You can register your entity either as a Proprietorship, Partnership, Private Limited Firm or a LLP. You may need to do a do a little soul searching to choose the right structure of your business.You may check on the merits of demerits of these in have done this now you are ready to apply for bank account for your business.

Required Basic Resources: Now you need to have some basic resources for your business like hosting, domain name registration etc. You can purchase reseller domain hosting from various big player in the industry like Godaddy, Bluehost, and others. Before going ahead, research on their offerings, pricing and other aspects as well.

Cost management: Focus on bringing projects as much possible from market using various means. Hire freelancers initially to deliver your projects and decide to hire full time guys after you are confident of having enough business to justify your cost. Note though, hiring Freelancers have their own risks. Unless you are really skilled enough to catch their goof-ups, don’t go for it. At WebRhino, in the initial days, we managed a lot of work through our own staff and also on project based hires. We went for full-time guys only when we had a good deal of rotating projects in hand.
 
Hit the Market: If you have done all the above steps right, it is time to get equipped with marketing stuffs like visiting card, brochures, etc. along with bill book etc. and get into the market to hunt the projects for your newly form business. 

We wish you the best in your journey ahead. Free to contact us should you need our assistance at any point.

 

Ten Points to Consider When You Create a Website for User and Search Engine

1. Forget that you are designing website for your own interest find out User and Search Engine's interest in your marketplace.
2. Admit you don't really know what your users want and commit yourself to finding out by doing research into how they express themselves to search engine.
3. Think deep, think laterally and take your time when investigating the way users search for the stuff on your website
4. Get closer to what search engine knows about the words in your marketplace. It knows a lot and will give it up if you ask it the right question.
5. Chunk and repeat when you right for users and search engine
6. Create the quality content that your users want and need to find. This work for Search Engine too.
7. Always remember that the long tail exists-even if you can't see it-so err on the side of more content.
8. Be prepared to travel far down the long tail of search because there are always profitable surprise in the pattern and themes you'll find there.
9. Find the money to buy good quality search term data. It will worth it.
10. Build your website's information architecture from a detailed taxonomy of demand.

20 Ways to Promote Your Blog

You spent hours researching, writing, finding graphics and uploading your blogs posts, but your work isn't done yet. To get the most out of each blog post, you need to promote it as much as you can. Because reach is very important to get exposure to your work.

Below are twenty ways you can promote each blog post. most of which are free. With a little work and planning, you'll get the most leverage out of each post.

•  Don't pretend to be someone you're not. Write in you won voice and be authentic. There's only one YOU!

• If you want to gain readers, be consistent with your blogging efforts, even if that means you blog less frequently. Pick a frequency-daily, weekly, monthly, etc.-and stick with it.

• Have visually appealing photos with each blog post, Make them relevant and original. Don't steal other people's photo.

• Building a following takes time. The adage "if you build it, they will come" is incorrect. Instead, think "If you market it, they will come".

Facebook: Add it on your personal and business pages, group and through ads.

Twitter: Schedule it on Twitter 2-3 times per day for the next 30 days (changing the title).

Pinterest: Create a board specifically for all your blog posts and pin each post to it.

Linked-In: Share on your LinkedIn profile, in groups you belong to and through

Google Plus: Share with your circles, and publicly, on Google+ for added SEO benefits

StrumbleUpon: Create an account at StrumbleUpon.com and start stumbling your posts.

Digg: Submit each post to Digg.com to share with others and help them discover.

Reddit.com: One of the most popular bookmark sites, Reddit.com is must.

Delicious: Help others discover your posts when you submit to Delicious.

Technorati.com: The top search engine for blogs, Technorati.com is must

Email Newsletter: Add your latest blog post in your email newsletter.

Forums: Share your blog post with people in group or forum you belongs to.

Email Signature: Add your latest blog post to your email signature using Wisestamp.com.

Feedback: Send email to your list with your latest blog post and ask them for feedback.

RSS Feed: An RSS feed automatically pushes your posts to those who sign up.

Comment: Comment on relevant blogs and include a link to your blog post.

Submit an Article: Submit an Article as guest post other relevant blogs (with a bit of re-writing).

Ask Link-Building: Ask influential bloggers to link to your relevant blog posts.

Submit Re-Print: Submit it as a reprint to other relevant blogs.

Exchange Links: Join a blogging community and exchange links with other bloggers.
  

For any clarification, feel free to comment or post on Facbook page click here. Follow us on Twitter click here

Adding Facebook Like Box to Blogger

Everyone want to increase likes to his or her Facebook page. Adding Facebook Like Box to the website or blog is one of the best way to get more and more likes to your Facebook page.

Today, I am going to explain how to add Facebook like box to your  blog using Blogger. What all you have to do is- Understand the process step by step.

Firstly, I will explain about adding Facebook like box to blog using blogger. I assume that you would have created you Facebook Page already, which you want to add your blog. 

Step 1: Go to the https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/  . You will see the following image there-

Edited pink colored font is used for the explanation of each tab used in the page. I will repeat once more here to explain every tab here-

1: Facebook Page URL: Paste your Facebook Page URL here. It is easy go to your facebook page and copy URL and paste it in the blank area here. As you are seeing in the picture above https://www.facebook.com/digitalgranth which is Digital Granth facebook page URL.

2: Width and Height: Here you can customize width and height of Facebook Like Box. It depends upon how much resolution allowed for the Facebook Like Box on the template of your website/blog.

3: Color Scheme: Here you can chose color scheme for your like box. There are two options available here "Light" and "Dark", by clicking on drop down you can chose either one. Light one is being used widely.

4: Stream: If you click on check-box and tick the stream option, then one of two latest updates will be shown in the like box on you website or blog. 

5: Border Color: You can choose border color of your choice by entering just color name in box or RGB value to it.

6: Show Header: Tick according you your choice.

7: Get Code: Click on Get Code now. Once you have done it you'll see a dialogue box containing code click on IFRAME like image below-

 Now Login your blogger and click on Layout. Click on Add a Gadget, choose HTML/Java Script, copy generated code and paste it and click on save. As in the picture given below

You can change position of your Facebook Like Box according to your need by re-arranging you gadgets in the layout option then click on "Save Arrangement" on top right. 

If still you need any clarification feel free to write in comment box. I will get back on the issue immediately.

Ways to Make Google Love Your Website

Google is world’s most powerful search engine today. It has very clear policy of search results. Google says “You can earn money without doing evil”. It means Google has given its best to make user friendly search services with no charges.  It has more calculative mathematics and less computer science behind it. Google gives us most relevant results detecting our intent which on less than miracle today.

I am big fan of Google Search Mechanism and keep trying to know more and more from various sources.  Today I want to share some precise points on “make Google love your website” which results with good PageRank and healthy SERP.

1.       Visibility: Visibility doesn’t mean visual appearance of you webpage here. Googlebots (Name of Google’s Robot) do not analyse as a user can, consequently a website to be visible to Google’s software and the information available to be well organized and structured for machine processing.

2.       Relevance:  The next step is to decide what the world’s information is actually about and whether any part of it matches the things people for. Google’s pursuit of the meaning of information and its efforts to match it with the searches people make is at the heart of the decision about whether a site is relevant or not to the needs of users.

3.       Reputation: Finally, faced with multiple sources of apparently meaningful information, Google has to decide which are the most authoritative or trustworthy. Comparing the quality and quantity of the references these sources have from around the web enables Google to assess the Reputation of the information and rank it by likely usefulness in its result.

Work From Home: Free Top 5 Websites You Should Try

Focus Forward 

During my recent net surfing I found Focus Forward. Which seems good in first look for those who are willing to work from home and having basic resources like computer, high speed internet with required configuration.
This is good paying site for general data entry, here you can register yourself and start working with it.

This is not as easy as I you are reading in first and half paragraph above. You need to pass a test conducted by Focus Forward. You can download instructions from the website and read carefully before getting into the test.

Focus Forward pays as much $10 for 15 minutes sound. This is good amount in the first look but that could be realized once you try it.

You can follow the this link and get started.

http://www.fftranscription.com


Elance.com

This is one of the handsome paying freelancer site. Most importantly this is free to sign up. Once you'll start getting projects according your skill set you can upgrade account to the next level. You can set your own hourly charges for your service. More than that there is free test conducted by elance itself.

Give those test according to your skill set and attain the score, which will help you to get more clients. According to me this website is one step ahead to well know freelancer.com. I am also giving some hours everyday to this eleance.

https://www.elance.com




Text Broker

If you love writing articles. This is one of the best options available for you on the internet. Writing is a skill which comes when you prictice a lot.

Text Broker pays you according to your excellence. Payment rates are given below

Article Quality                                                payment per word                  payment per 500 words
(approximately one letter page)
2 stars: legible                                                        0.7 cents                                 3.50 USD
3 stars: good quality                                                1.0 cents                                 5.00 USD
4 stars: excellent quality                                        1.4 cents                                 7.00 USD
5 stars: professional quality                                         5.0 cents                                 25.00 USD

You can go ahead and register yourself with TextBroker and get paid for you writing skills

http://www.textbroker.com



Leapforce

Actually I personally didn't try Leapforce, but I heard about this website to one of my fellow. This is one of the reliable platform for the people who want to work from home. Leapforce is Search Engine Evaluation service providing company, which hire candidates who want to work from their remote area. There is a drawback of this company, i.e. if you are resident of the following countries only then you can register yourself with Leapforce.

United States of America - English Language
United States of America - Chinese Simplified Language
United States of America - Spanish Language
United States of America - Persian / Farsi Language
Canada - English Language
Canada - Chinese Simplified Language
Canada - Persian / Farsi Language
Brazil - Portuguese Language
Egypt, Arab Republic of - Arabic Language
Germany - German Language
Russian Federation - Russian Language
Spain, Spanish State - Spanish Language
Portugal - Portuguese Language
Japan - Japanese Language
Italy - Italian Language
France, French Republic - French Language
United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland - English Language
Hong Kong - Chinese Simplified Language
Taiwan - Chinese Simplified Language

If this profile suites you then you can go ahead for it.

https://www.leapforceathome.com


Needle.com

Needle is the good source of earning by chatting with clients online. Once you register yourself by defining your skill sets and expertise; needle.com will match it with  the client requirement and you will be given a chance to serve the client.

Needle pays through pay pal account with the rate approx. $ 10. Payment frequency is weekly.

Register yourself by clicking on the top-right>become a needler. Fill the require fields
and wait for the reply.

http://needle.com/