Why You Need a Business Address

For many small businesses, the business address is also the home address of the business owner. There are several reasons why this happens. First, it’s simple to just keep your business at home when it's so small and just starting out. Second, having the business in your home does not cost any extra money.

In many cases, the use of a home address as the business address is not a huge problem. However, for SEO purposes, it’s always best to have a separate business address that you can use to connect with your online content. And in some cases, there can even be downsides and legal consequences for using a home address for your business. Let’s go over some of the issues to consider if you have a home-based small business:

Liability and Safety

Any LLC or corporation should think long and hard about using a home address for its business. A major benefit of having a business entity is the limited liability for business debts and activities. You should know that this protection only applies if you keep your business and personal activities completely separate. If you do decide to use a personal address for your business, you could hinder that limited liability and end up personally liable for any business debts and obligations.

Trust and Credibility

There is a chance that if someone finds your business and they see no contact address or even a PO box, they may steer clear of using your services entirely. Some people feel that without a physical address for the business, it’s going to disappear quickly.

Based on what your business is, it may be beneficial to present your potential clients with a physical address where they can contact you or set up a meeting. Having a physical address that is dedicated solely to your business and nothing personal helps your business build up trust and credibility with both current and future clients.

Online Credibility

A physical business address also adds to your credibility online. As soon as you set up a location, you need to register and verify it with all of the online maps and location services, like Google Maps. You also need to register the location with social media sites like Facebook. Once these steps have been completed, you should see a spike in your SEO statistics, as your business becomes more established online with one simple change!

A Meeting Place for Clients

Sure, you can meet your clients out somewhere for lunch or even meet at their office, but what if your business changes its focus? What if you need to set up client meetings more and more often? You may eventually want to have your own place of business to start holding these meetings. Having a single place where you can meet your clients will also help your business on the path to building trust and credibility. Overall, it will enhance your business's professional image to others.

Professional Image

The U.S. Census Bureau released findings in 2011 that more than half of the businesses that responded to the survey of business owners were home-based businesses. Home-based business is alive and well, but there are times when it can be very difficult for a home-based business to shake the negative images. Many people envision home-based business owners chilling out in their pajamas while they relax and work from bed.

Having a physical address and location can help provide your business with a more professional, polished image for incoming clients.

How to Get a Physical Business Address

There are many places out there that you can rent as office space for your business, and they will all come with some type of cost to you. Here are a few different ways you can get a business address:

Mailbox Services - If you rent a mailbox at a service that is offered at places like the UPS store or Mail Boxes Etc., you can use the store’s street address with your mailbox number as a suite or office number. If you are a business that does a lot of shipping, you get the added bonus of being able to make use of the other services these locations offer.

Virtual Office Space - These spaces are also known as virtual business addresses. They can provide you with a professional-looking mailing address as well as offer other features and facilities. Some locations even offer receptionist services and meeting spaces that can be rented out when you need them!

Coworking Space - This is like a virtual office space in that it gives you a professional looking business address as well as the use of meeting space and conference rooms. The other thing a co-working space offers you is a physical space to actually work in along with use of shared resources like a Wi-Fi connection.

Office Space – If you want your own business space to work in and don’t want to share, you will probably just need to find a regular office space. This does not mean renting out a whole building or floor. Most towns and cities will have small spaces for rent or sale that can be used by small businesses. Keep an eye out on the listings!

No matter if it is for legal reasons, your stress level, or looking more reputable for future clients, there are many things to consider when you are looking at an actual business address. If your business is growing and you don’t have a separate place to call your own, it’s probably time to get into an office space and take your business to the next level. There are options available that can work for nearly any business budget.

If you want more information on how to get your business established online, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s blog on improving your online advertising and marketing here!

Guide for Writing Facebook Ads

You have just started promoting your business online, and you want to get your name and logo out there. It’s a good idea to get business recognition in the world of social media. With Facebook on pace to have over 2 billion users by the end of 2017, it’s a good idea to start there. But how do you write a Facebook ad, and what is the best way to get it done? We will go over the best and simplest ways to write Facebook ad copy and get your brand visible to the nearly 2 billion users ASAP!

Criteria for Successful Facebook Ads

It is visual. If you are going to market to Facebook, you need to remember that no matter what kind of ad you create, the image you use needs to have good visual appeal. A visual ad is more likely to be shared and remembered than purely written content.

It is relevant. You must remember that you are spending money to get clicks and views for your ad. If your ad is not relevant to your target audience, then you are wasting your money. As you create the ad, it is best to keep your audience and goals in mind before you put it out there.

It has enticing value. Giving the reader a reason for clicking on the ad to learn more about your product is key. You need to tell them why your product is different and why they should click on your ad. Your proposition to the reader needs to be believable and reasonable for you to follow through with, like offering 20% off a product or purchase.

It has a clear call to action. Having a good visual ad that is relevant is great, but with no clear call to action for your audience, they may not know what they need to do next. A good example of a call to action (or CTA) might be “Buy now to save 20%!” This adds a sense of urgency to the viewer of your ad and will encourage them to click on it right now.

Placement of Your Text Within the Ad

Where you place your text within your ad matters. You want your important messages where they will be best seen. If your audience is looking at the image, it only makes sense to put your key message on that image.

Having text within an image creates a great direct message to your audience, but Facebook will not let you publish or use an image where text copy takes up more than 20% of it. This includes not only what you have placed over your image, but also text-based logos and watermarks, as well as text in your video thumbnails.

Where you place the text on the ad matters too. Facebook uses gridlines for their ads, and if your text falls over those gridlines, it is possible that Facebook could misread your image as full of text when determining that 20% rule. You can save yourself the trouble my testing your image with this tool before you submit your ad.

Facebook suggests that you feature just one product in your image or use a plain blurred background. Also keep in mind that they will not allow you to use any “before and after” photos.

Keep Your Text Copy Simple

There is no need to be over the top and wordy on your Facebook ad. You will lose your audience if there is too much to read. You want to catch their attention with a clear call to action and relevant image; one that they will stop and click on as they are scrolling through their Facebook feed on their lunch break.

As you are creating that eye-catching call to action, do not be afraid to say something that may seem a little over the top. Also, sometimes people need instructions. It is fine to include something like, “Click here to sign up!”

Facebook likes you to keep your text copy at 90 characters or less. This should be easy, because this is a quick ad to get your audience’s attention anyway. Once they click on your ad, then you can give them more detailed information. This needs to be a quick “Hey! Look at me!” type of thing. Remember as you are creating your short simple text that it needs to be relevant to your audience.

Creating Facebook ad copy can seem overwhelming at first, but the key is to keep it simple with a great call to action and a great image. This is the fast-paced world of social media after all. Think of what would make you stop scrolling and click on something. Make it personal to you and relevant to your customers and the audience will follow.

If you want more information on using social media, check out Virtual Market Advantages blog about generating high-quality leads!

How To Promote Your Blog Post Using Social Media

How To Promote Your Blog Post Using Social Media

You have a great idea, so you sit down and write a piece about it. You put it out there by publishing it to your blog. Is just posting it on your website enough? The short answer is no. By sharing your blog post the correct way through social media, you will get a steady flow of visitors to your site. Here we will go over a few tips and tricks to get the most eyes on your blog using different social media platforms.

Posting the Blog Link to Facebook

There are a couple of quick steps here you can take that will ensure that you reach more of your followers. First, as you go to post to Facebook, don't just copy and paste the link. Give your readers a tease before they click on the link. You are allowed over 63,000 characters on a Facebook post, but the first 480 characters are what is visible to viewers without clicking to see more. By providing a quote or paragraph from your blog to get the readers interested, you will entice a bigger percentage of viewers to click that link. Another way to get followers interested via Facebook is to include a picture in your post that relates to the content of the blog.

Posting to Twitter

Twitter is a whole different ballgame from Facebook. Twitter takes time and patience to reach a solid audience. It was the first social media platform to use hashtags and @ handles to spread information. While they have stretched out the character limit to 140, it is sill most effective to use the least amount of characters as possible. Using up to 4 hashtags also makes it more searchable for keywords. Also, use @ handles aimed towards specific people or companies to spread a message or give credit where it is due.

The average time a tweet stays relevant is 18 minutes. This is where the time and patience comes in. To keep your blog post relevant, it is best to share your blog post to twitter more than once and on different days of the week and at different times of the day. The best time to share on twitter is between 8-10am, 11am-1pm, and after work at 4pm. Keep in mind that your audience may mostly reside in a different time zone than you when you decide when to post. Posting within these time frames will give your tweet, and hopefully your blog, more eyes. You can post your link weekly and then slow up to monthly depending on what type of promotion you want for the blog.

Posting to LinkedIn

This is a platform that lets you post to a personal profile, to a group, or on a company page. If you're posting to a company page, it works a lot like Facebook, where only the first 150 characters will be seen. So making those characters engaging and enticing to the reader will make people more likely to click on your link. Make sure that you establish a conversation with your readers within your post. An easy way to accomplish this is by asking them questions. When sharing your blog post to LinkedIn (as with Facebook), it's a good idea to attach an image to your link.

The best time frames to post to LinkedIn are between 8-10am and 4-6pm. Make sure you are posting once here for the first promotion of a particular blog. Then post once a week, eventually reducing down to once every 2-3 months. Make sure these reposts are on your profile and not your page.

Pinning On Pinterest

This location of social media promotion is all about image. With thousands of images up to see on Pinterest, you want yours to catch people's attention and hold them long enough to read the description and click on the image. Pinterest gives you up to 500 characters in the description. However, to keep the reader convinced, it is best to keep your pin at 150-300 characters long. Always use a link to your blog in the description here, because clicking on the image takes the reader to your blog location. Share your featured image of the blog post to Pinterest to help the reader connect from Pinterest to the blog, and add a call to action in the description to engage readers to like, repin, buy now, or read more.

To gain a specific audience, you should use the feature of creating boards based on specific topics and pin to those accordingly.

Sharing on Instagram

Instagram is similar to Pinterest in being image-driven. With Instagram, the images are shared in a single stream and lose impact quickly. Most interaction takes place within the first 3 hours of posting. With only the first 155 characters of the maximum 2200 characters allowed in the description of a photo showing, it is key to say what is most important within the first 3 lines. Hashtags are a great way to engage on Instagram, and there are times where the description is all hashtags. This decision is up to you, depending on what you are promoting.

Use your blog's featured image to promote here first. Then post again over the weeks to keep an audience interested. You may want to post other pictures featured in your blog as well. The best time to post on Instagram is in the evening.

Post Based on Social Media Outlet

What all of this should tell you is that you should not go and post the exact same thing to all of these social media platforms. Each platform has a tailored audience and a different method of dispersing information. Look at your audience and your followers, and ask yourself what would make them stop scrolling and look at what you are posting. Tailor your posts to the platform and the readers who are going there. You also may not need to cross post to all of these sites with every post you make, depending on the blog. Each blog is unique, and so is the social media post that will give you the most viewers.

If you want more information about blogging, SEO, social media, website development, and more, check out Virtual Market Advantage's other blogs here. This one goes into the history of Vine, and why it dissolved even though short videos are a huge content powerhouse right now.

Why Vine Died

Vine was a hosting service for posting short videos. The videos could only be 6 seconds long and would repeat on a loop over and over. This short format pushed people to be innovative and make creative videos that worked well with the short time-span and repetition. These days, short videos are a powerful form of content that really draws in viewers and engages your audience. Let's take a look at why Vine died, since it was a service that provided an easy way to create short videos.

Beginning of Vine

Vine was founded in June 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. Its short format quickly drew the interest of Twitter, the social networking service that’s known for its short, 140-character posts. Twitter bought Vine in October 2012 for around $30 million. The service was officially launched as a free IOS app on January 24, 2013.

The creators of Vine envisioned the service as an easy way to share short, casual life moments with friends and family members. However, people found another use for their videos pretty much from day one. Many people took Vine’s 6 second limitation as a challenge for creativity, humor, and visual art. The original beta only had about a dozen people, and even those few people started to immediately use Vine imaginatively.

The creators have said that almost immediately after launch, it became clear that Vine wasn’t being used as a day-to-day platform for sharing daily moments. “Watching the community and the tool push on each other was exciting and unreal, and almost immediately it became clear that Vine’s culture was going to shift towards creativity and experimentation,” said Hofmann in an interview with The Verge.

Rising Popularity and Famous Vines

Vine only existed on its own for a few short months before joining Twitter. Ian Padgham, part of Twitter’s marketing team at the time, saw the creative potential of Vine immediately. He made many videos using Vine both as promotional content and for pure enjoyment. His first Vine was a simple view of the street outside Twitter headquarters. Padgham loved the 6-second limit, because it made you think more about your content. “It’s kind of like drawing in Microsoft Paint,” he said, “you couldn’t get distracted by the bells and whistles.”

Padgham’s Vines became pretty popular. One of his most famous creations is a tribute to early photographer and filmmaker Eadweard Muybridge. This short video took him several hours and 300 pictures to create. His time-lapse Vine that shows his fingers traveling around and manipulating Big Ben has been viewed 6 million times. 6 months after Vine was released, Padgham actually got enough offers from big brand companies like Sony to make him feel comfortable enough to quit his job at Twitter to pursue a career of Vine marketing.

In 2013, Twitter updated the Vine app to allow users to record their videos using their front-facing phone cameras. This change made Vine’s popularity explode, and many Vine stars arose from the masses. Magician Zach King became famous for his amazing tricks. Definitely check them out if you haven’t! Amanda Cerny became famous for her fun Vines that featured a lot of physical comedy. Logan Paul even turned his Vine popularity into an acting career.

Instagram and Snapchat: The Beginning of the End

Vine’s popularity peaked by 2014. Twitter didn’t release specific statistics, but once claimed to have an audience of 200 million. The humor became increasingly self-referential, and many memes came from Vine’s short videos. However, the beginning of the end for Vine had already begun in June 2013, when Facebook released the ability to post videos with Instagram. Not only did Instagram provide a similar service to Vine, but that company moved faster to respond to its audience and provide more innovations.

Instagram appealed to a wider audience than Vine. It permitted up to 15 seconds of video, allowing for over twice the amount of content within a single post. This was later extended to 60 seconds. Instagram also promoted its celebrity accounts with an “explore” option that allowed viewers to find new content easily. Marketers and celebrities quickly moved away from Vine into Instagram, which remains a powerhouse of social media to this day.

Another big draw that pulled users away from Vine was Snapchat. This service allows users to create and post 10-second videos. Through its design and marketing, Snapchat managed to secure the niche of users casually posting about their daily lives that the creators of Vine intended to fill. By May of 2016, reports indicated that Vine users were sharing fewer and fewer new posts, and many were leaving for other services.

Management Problems

Another problem Vine faced was a constant turnover in upper management. Hofmann had quit back in 2014, shortly followed by Kroll. Yusupov was eventually fired by Twitter. In response, he ironically Tweeted “Don’t sell your company!” on Twitter. Jason Toff took over Vine between 2014 and 2016. Hannah Donnovan followed after that beginning in March 2016, but she had no real experience running a company.

This kind of overturn in the company’s leadership most likely contributed to Vine’s inability to make money. Vine’s creators resisted most monetization strategies from the start, and the company never got on the same page as Instagram and Snapchat for cutting deals with celebrities and promoting accounts. There were eventually talks of combining Vine’s services within the default Twitter app. However, this never came to pass. By July 2016, most of Vine’s top executives had already jumped ship.

The End

In December 2016, Twitter officially announced that Vine would be shut down, and that Twitter users could instead post videos of any size directly to Twitter. In January 2017, a “Vine Camera” app was released that allows users to record and post videos on Twitter, but the app suffers from bad reviews. They also announced that preexisting Vines would remain online to view in an archive.

Ankur Thakkar, Vine’s head of editorial, explained the downfall of the company: “A couple of things plagued Vine, and it all stems from the same thing, which is a lack of unity and leadership on a vision.” Many of the stars continued to work on other platforms, but none of them have quite the same feel of the 6-second repeating loop that spurred such interesting innovation.

So how should we answer the question of why Vine died? The short answer is an inability to compete by providing new features for its users, leading to a dwindling user-base. The company also suffered from a revolving door of top executives who were never prepared to properly monetize the company.

If you want to see more information about SEO, website development, social media news, and more, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!

Improve your Copy with these Copywriting Exercises

Our previous VMA blog defined copywriting and discussed what makes good copy. As a refresher, good copy will engage your audience and provide something valuable to make people want to buy your product or use your services. In addition to starting a conversation with your customers, good copy also needs to take web design and SEO into account in order to thrive in modern-age business.

The next question is:

How do I get better at writing copy?

Let’s go over some useful copywriting exercises to help you improve your copy and make you more comfortable with writing and creating as a whole. Practice makes perfect, so let’s go over some things you can do to develop your copywriting skills.

Re-Write Ads

Advertisements are everywhere. We’re bombarded with them constantly. As you interact with the world every day, pay close attention to the ads around you and try to re-write them. Can you figure out a way to make people crave that restaurant’s food even more with a better billboard slogan? Is there any way to improve that Google AdWord advertisement that came up on your last search?

Don’t worry about the quality of your fake re-written ads. The important thing is to constantly practice using different styles and methods to promote an idea or product.

Make a Swipe File

If you have a job that requires you to constantly produce new content, keeping a swipe file is a must. A swipe file is a collection of advertisements and copy that left a mark on you in some way. Even if it has nothing to do with your field, you can put content in your swipe file for any reason: great visual design, a clever turn of phrase, or even a cool font that you want to use later. Make sure to save anything that makes you click on a link, laugh, or even just pause for a closer look.

A swipe file can be either a physical file or digital file. You can even have one on your phone, which is a great way to keep up with mobile-responsive innovations. Screenshots are a great tool for easily saving digital copies. If you have a Mac, you can press command-shift-4, then drag a box around the desired image. By default, this saves the screenshot to your desktop, where you can drag it into your swipe file.

If you have a Windows PC, it gets a bit more complicated. Here’s an overview of several different ways to take screenshots in Windows. If you have Windows 10, by default one of the easier ways to take a screenshot is to press Windows-PrintScreen (usually abbreviated to something like PrntScrn or PrtScn and located near F12). This will save an image of your entire screen to Screenshots under the default Pictures folder.

So what do you do with your expanding swipe file? Use it for inspiration! If you need to make something, browse your swipe file for ideas related to that project. Need a clean-but-interesting web layout? Want to find phrasing ideas for blog titles? Check your swipe file and see if anything that popped out at you in the past can help with your current problem.

Copy Copy

A simple exercise for improving your content is to copy other people’s copy. While you’re filling your swipe file with fun ideas, physically write down advertisements, slogans, and other forms of copy that you think are brilliant. Copy them word-for-word, so you can get a better feel for how the sentence is structured and what makes it sound and look good.

Highlight the Benefits

When you describe the features of your product or business, don’t simply list them. You also need to let your customers know the results of these features and how they will benefit them.

For example, a feature of WordPress is the ability to publish content such as pages and posts without using code. This is a great feature, but on the WordPress website, the copywriter further explains that anyone who has created a document on their computer is already prepared to write a post, format it, insert media, and publish “with the click of a button.” Not only does the paragraph describe the feature of WordPress, but it also explains in simple terms how this feature benefits the potential user.

Keep in mind that you are most likely much more informed on your business’ field than your customers. They want to know how they can use your features to benefit themselves and why they should use your company over another. Most of them won't be drawn to a jargon-heavy list of features.

Be Concise

There’s a reason why social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram are so huge. People love taglines. A short, concise phrase such as “just do it” or “I’m lovin’ it” sticks in your head much easier than a longer sentence would.

When creating your copy, try to trim down the content and get your point across with as few words as possible. By sending out information more efficiently, you will get your message across better. Whether it’s text, video, or audio, spread information with fewer words.

This doesn’t mean that all of your copy should be cut short. Long copy can spread a lot of information, draw people in, and sell well. Longwinded copy, on the other hand, drives people away before they finish listening.

Read Out Loud

One of the best things you can do to improve your copy right away is read it out loud. Not only does this help you weed out typos and grammatical errors, but it also helps you make your content sound more conversational. It’s much easier to make a sentence sound natural if you hear it as you read it. It will also help you avoid being as longwinded!

Read aloud to yourself, record your voice and listen to it, or even force someone else to listen to you. You’ll see instant results.

Learn More

Many jobs require you to keep up-to-date on the latest news, techniques, or trends. Working as a copywriter is no different, especially if your focus is online. A copywriter who is good at many things is always going to have an edge over one who is only good at one thing.

Get experience wherever you can. If you want to work as a freelancer, it’s best to start out in an established company for a few years. That way, you can learn how many aspects of the business works, and it’s not as easy to get stuck in a rut of your own repeating ideas.

Constantly search for more ways to learn something new or improve an old skill. Take classes, join a discussion, read a book…the possibilities for new information are endless, especially online!

Hopefully these tips help you develop your copywriting skills a bit more in the future. If you want more information on SEO, web development, design, and many other topics, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!

10 Ways to Use Social Media to Boost Online Sales

10 Ways to Use Social Media to Boost Online Sales

Social media has become a necessity for helping businesses flourish, especially if you rely on online sales. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and many other sites are great platforms from which you can spread information about your business. The unique thing about advertising on social media is that you can easily start a discussion with your customers. You can also get immediate feedback, answer questions, ask your own questions…the possibilities are endless! Another great aspect of social media is the fact that once you create content for one site, you can easily share it to your accounts on the other sites.

Whether you’re just starting out with promoting your business on social media or need a few tips for expanding your reach, here are several ways you can use social media to boost online sales:

Twitter

Using Twitter is incredibly simple. There’s a small limit to the number of characters you can use within your message, forcing you to keep it short and to the point. Because of its popularity and simplicity, Twitter is a great resource to use to start a conversation with your customers and spread news about your business.

Twitter is the site that created the use of hashtags (#) in social media. By putting a hashtag in front of a short key word or phrase, it groups your message in with similar hashtags. This makes it so that you can search for related posts and other people can similarly find your post. Use this tool to see what people are saying about your product and to interact with them. Get people talking about your product, answer questions, and make connections.

Facebook

Although Facebook started as an exclusive site for connecting college students together, it has grown to be one of the biggest and most influential social media sites. As such, it’s important to use Facebook to your advantage for your online business. Make a page for your store that other people can visit and follow. Reach out and share information with status updates. Interact with other groups and pages that have to do with your business.

Pinterest

and

Instagram

Pinterest and Instagram are both amazing resources for online businesses trying to get more traffic. They are lumped together here because they are both used to spread more visual media than many other sites. Engage with your audience by sharing photographs, infographics, and other pictures. Take pictures of your product, show the manufacturing process, tell a story, and develop your brand image. Some businesses will have an easier time coming up with interesting visuals than others, but if you are creative enough, you can gain a loyal and growing following with these sites.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a more business-oriented, professional social media platform. It’s purpose is to connect professionals from all kinds of industries together. It allows you to easily network with people from all around the world. Set up an e-commerce business profile and look around for connections with other companies, suppliers, potential employees, and other websites. Use it to find other businesses that might want to carry your product. This site is less for advertising or sales and more for connecting professionally and improving your reach in other ways.

YouTube

YouTube isn’t just for finding music videos, movie clips, and other entertainment. It can be a powerful tool to use for your business. People love to watch videos, and if you can make interesting content in video form, you can draw in tons of viewers. Create a YouTube channel for your business and post videos related to your product. Try behind the scenes manufacturing videos, tutorials, maintenance and repair tips, interesting ways to use a product, and any other type of video that works well for you.

Tumblr

Tumblr and other blogging sites are a great way to spread information about your product and business. Design your page around your business and provide content that is engaging, informative, funny, or otherwise interesting. Reinforce your brand by talking about it and providing more information. Make sure that you connect these posts to your other social media pages and vice versa. You don’t have to make completely different content for Tumblr and for Facebook!

Reddit

Reddit is a site used mostly for news and entertainment. However, if used properly, it can also be a great resource for your business and draw in dedicated followers. The tricky part is knowing which subreddits (indicated by r/topic) you should post on. r/entrepreneur is a great place to start. Also look for subreddits directly related to your business or product, if it’s popular enough. As with other sites, try to engage with the audience by showing behind-the-scenes processes, reveal struggles you have faced, and other unique information about your business in particular.

Craigslist

and

Etsy

Online marketplaces can be a great place to start selling your products before you set up your own sales website. General sites such as eBay and Craigslist have been around since 1995, and allow you to sell pretty much anything to pretty much anyone in the world. More recently, sites have created more specialized sales environments. For example, Etsy is a marketplace for artistic and handmade creations.

Forums

Before the big social media explosion, forums were the major way people connected online over various topics. Although they have been shoved out of the spotlight, forums are still thriving and are great places to make connections. Find forum websites that specialize in your product or niche and start a conversation. Forums tend to be great resources to use to find answers to questions that people have already asked. You might find some great blog, post, or video ideas deep in the online forums!

Advertising

Besides providing content, there are other ways you can use some of these sites: paid advertising. Facebook, Google AdWords, YouTube ads, and banner ads reach all over the Internet. Carefully consider where your money would be best spent when deciding how to use paid advertising on social media sites. Do you have a lot of followers on Facebook? Are people watching your YouTube videos? When you design these ads, spread the word about your other social media pages so people can easily connect.

Try using these sites and others to help spread the word about your business and boost online sales. Compared to other advertising methods, these sites require you to show a bit more of your company’s unique personality. Try to engage with your customers, listen to what they have to say, and adjust your content to fit their needs and wants. Using social media for your business can seem like a daunting task, but once you get used to it, it can be really fun!

If you want more tips for promoting your online business, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs. Here we discuss ways to use content marketing to boost online sales.

Content Marketing and Return on Investment

It can be difficult to calculate how much return on investment (ROI) your business is getting from your content marketing strategy. If done well, content marketing has a higher-than-average marketing ROI. This Forbes article contains an interview with Julie Fleischer, former Director of Content Strategy and Integration at Kraft Foods. Fleischer claims that Kraft’s content marketing gives the company a ROI that is, “among the highest of all of our marketing efforts.” So where do you start to improve your business’s content marketing strategy?

The first step is to determine your current content marketing ROI with these 3 components:

Cost

First you need to determine how much money is being spent on your current content marketing strategy. Depending on the size of your company and the amount of content it produces, you will either need a full audit or a smaller sample of the total content. Use average costs to get a rough estimate of content spending.

Utilization

You also need to figure out how much of the content that’s made is actually being used. Any created content that goes unused is a complete waste. Calculated a rough percentage of content utilization.

Performance

For the content that is created and used, you also need to determine how well it is performing. There are many factors to check, such as page views, likes, social shares, etc. But you also have to link these results back to the business’s content history. See which types of content marketing worked best for your company and review how the strategy developed over time as groundwork for moving forward. It’s important to continue checking performance regularly as you change your strategy.

Make sure your business holds marketing accountable for their ROI. Often a company will send out employees to produce content without fully keeping track of the investment. Request verified results that are measured and reported. Don’t let your content marketing go unsupervised.

How to Improve Your Content Marketing

Now that you know more about how your content marketing has worked up until now, it’s time to start improving it.

Reach Out to Early-Stage Buyers

Much of the marketing we see around us is overly promotional. For buyers who are not yet familiar with your brand, pushy advertisements tend to get tuned out. You need to find a way to make your brand noticeable, likable, and trusted enough that people will want to buy your product or use your services. Here are some things to take into account when setting up your online marketing:

Branded Conversations

Search the online conversations about your product category. What percentage of them mentions a specific brand? What percentage mentions your brand? If that percentage is much different than your market share in your category, it means your competitors are taking away potential prospects right from the beginning.

Unbranded Search Traffic

How many people are searching for your product category online? What percentage of these prospects end up at your website rather than a competitor’s? You can’t only promote your brand within your own website. You must branch out to other sources in order to draw people in.

Website Traffic

Be aware of the quality and quantity of traffic that flows through the websites you use for advertising and the cost of using them. High-traffic sites are great for spreading your brand quickly, but may come with a hefty price. Smaller sites with less traffic can be much cheaper for advertisement fees. Keep track of these costs as you determine where to show your ads.

Organic vs. Paid Traffic

Many companies pay for fake traffic in order to make their sites look more trustworthy and popular. Organic content marketing allows you to reach out to potential and existing customers, start conversations, spread the word about your brand, and gain additional reach without paying for fake viewers. In the long run, it’s always better to earn your customer’s trust and attention rather than buying it.

Unused Content

Again, any content that is created for your company that goes unused is a complete waste of resources. Keep a close eye on the percentage of content that goes unused and reduce that number as much as possible.

Banner Advertisements

You see banner advertisements everywhere you go online, but how effective are they really? Banner ads are actually shown to underperform when compared to almost any other kind of content marketing. Make sure that they are part of a broader marketing strategy. Think carefully about where you place them in order to get the most out of the investment.

Engaging Your Customers

There are several ways that you can monitor how well you are engaging your customers online. Resources such as Google Analytics allow you to easily keep track of various aspects of website viewership.

Bounce Rate

How many people who visit your site stay there for an extended period of time and click on several different pages within the site? The percentage of viewers who leave your site after viewing only one page is known as the bounce rate. As you alter your content marketing strategy, pay close attention to how each change affects the bounce rate, so you can focus on the changes that are beneficial.

Repeat Visits

Pay attention to repeat visits and extended time spent with your brand. By looking at repeat visits, you can measure the value of brand awareness and track how your content marketing affects loyal customers.

Subscribers

Calculate the value per subscriber. Determine the cost and payoff of bringing customers into the brand fold, and learn how to market towards these customers.

In summary, keep track of your content marketing strategy. Pay attention to where the money is going. Pay close attention to the cost of your content, and make sure that the content actually being used. Check on the performance of each type of content and constantly try to improve. Use a resource such as Google Analytics to help see what’s going on with your website traffic as you make changes.

Try to draw in organic traffic by starting conversations, spreading your brand name, and instilling loyalty in your customers. When trying to develop your business’s content marketing strategy, keep these factors in mind, and make improvements wherever possible for a greater ROI.

If you want more suggestions for developing your website, check out VMA’s other blogs. This one goes over how to keep your content fresh and up-to-date, or “evergreen.”