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!

The Ultimate Guide for How to Use Hashtags

Hashtags are found everywhere in social media these days, and have even permeated into our everyday language. The symbol for hashtags was previously only known as the pound sign (#) on telephones. What does using a hashtag mean? Where does that hashtag go once you put it out on the Internet? Do they really serve a purpose? When used well, they are definitely very useful for spreading and finding information online and reaching out to your audience. This blog will go over how to use hashtags for your business while making them fun to use at the same time!

What is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is a word or phrase with no spaces that has a pound sign in front of it. It is essentially a word, phrase, or sentence fragment that has been smashed together. The ‘hashtag’ has become so widely recognized that the Oxford Dictionary added the word to its dictionary in 2010 and Scrabble added it to their dictionary in 2014.

The hashtag was first introduced and most widely used on Twitter, but has since found its way onto Facebook, Instagram, and countless other sites. Now that so many websites use hashtags, the format links them together so that people using the same kinds of hashtags on one site can easily find more information on the other. All this sounds great, but #HowDoIHashtag? Knowing how to use hashtags well is important. The more specific you are with them, the more you reach out to your target audience.

For some formatting basics, you capitalization doesn’t matter too much when using hashtags for reach purposes. Here, we’ll capitalize each word to make them easier to read, which is a good thing to do for longer hashtags or ones that can be read multiple ways without clarification. Many people only capitalize the first letter, no letters, or whatever they feel like capitalizing in the moment. No capitalization is just fine for shorter hashtags. Also, remove any punctuation from the sentence, including commas and apostrophes.

Be Specific

So you think you are ready to use hashtags to start promoting and marketing your business. Great! First off, you need to know your target audience. Imagine that your service is dog grooming. You could use the hashtag #Dog, but that is way too general. By using something more specific like #DogGrooming, you would get a more targeted audience to what you are actually wanting to sell. If you are trying to promote something other than a specific product, such as a photo, make sure the hashtag is specific to that as well.

Relevant Hashtags

When you are using hashtags for your business, try and come up with ones that have yet to be claimed by another business. This is where it can be tricky. You do not want to use your actual business name as the hashtag, but you want something that is relevant to it. However, tons of hashtags have already been claimed by businesses around the world.

As an example of good branded hashtags, many cities use official hashtags for tourists to use when they are posting pictures from a vacation. This is a great way to promote travel to their city using people who have been there and are posting their own pictures. A few examples of this are:

• South Dakota uses #HiFromSD
• Florida uses #LoveFL
• Disney World uses #DisneyWorld

By doing this and asking audiences to use these branded hashtags when posting to social media, everything from baseball teams to travel destinations to small businesses can reach a target market while creating a good research tool for its viewer base. It also gives them follower-generated content to use on their website and social sites. The initial branding may take some time and research, but will be a powerful tool in the long run.

Short and To The Point

It can be fun to get witty and creative with hashtags, but make sure you do not make them too long. For example: #DontMakeAHashtagAnEntireSentenceLong. Even with capitalization, is that pleasant to read? Sure, a longer hashtag may target a very specific audience and provide lots of information, but it will not trend or search well at all. Pretty much no one would think up the same long sentence in a search. Also, no one wants to type in that many characters, and this hashtag would take up most of the character limit on Twitter.

Being too clever in your hashtags may hurt you as well. You want people to naturally search for your hashtag, not have to be super clever to even find it. Being simple and short with the hashtag will get you more searches and more eyes towards your business.

More Content than Hashtags

When you are posting to social media, no matter which platform, make sure you have more content in your post than you do hashtags. A post crammed full of hashtags overwhelms and annoys many readers. Just because Instagram reportedly lets you use up to 30 hashtags in a single post, does not mean you should actually do that! It is hashtag overload, and often leaves you looking desperate. Sure it will gain you more viewers, but with this many hashtags, the visitors you gain will most likely be spammers rather than real people or people who are not in your target audience. If you like to use many different hashtags, make a list and spread out their use in several different posts over time.

If your post just repeats information and does not add to the general conversation of the topic, it is sometimes best to leave hashtags off entirely. When you are just reposting a breaking news story or a DIY idea you found online, there is no need to hashtag, since you are essentially just repeating something that isn’t your own content that was already out there.

Cater to the Social Media Sites You Use

Each social media site has its own preferred way to use hashtags to get the most out of them while using the platform. Do the research for each site to find the best way. Instagram tends to be more focused on the content description, while Twitter is more focused on the topic of the conversation. Take the time on each social media platform to look into what is the most relevant hashtag for your topic and go from there. If you use LinkedIn, keep in mind that that site does not like hashtags, so using them there can actually hurt your posts.

Hashtags on Twitter

For Twitter, the hashtag is used widely to tie everyone together in an ongoing conversation. For example, if you use #2016PresidentialDebate and click on the hashtag in Twitter, it will pull up all posts for that hashtag. This connects people who are not actually friends and allows them to all be a part of the bigger conversation. There is a hashtag stream that Twitter uses that allows you to connect with people in several ways within the same hashtag. It goes something like this:

• Top: This is the stream of tweets that have seen the most engagement, usually those that have the most recent followers.
• Latest: This is the live stream of those tweeting out a hashtag at that very moment.
• People: This is a list of the top Twitter accounts that you can follow relating to the current popular hashtags.
• Photos: This a collage of photos that are included in the tweets that use the trending hashtags.

Knowing this system for Twitter can help you find your best target audience and help you in figuring out the best hashtags to use. You can see what kinds of hashtags become the most popular and formulate your own hashtags in a similar way.

Hashtags on Facebook

Hashtags on Facebook are much like Twitter, where they tie together people who do not know each other. Unlike Twitter, Facebook profiles can be private, so when the hashtag is clicked on, the person’s information and posts may not be visible. Most hashtags used on Facebook are by brands, publishers, and influencers rather than individuals using them to connect to strangers.

Hashtags on Instagram

Hashtags have the same effect on Instagram as they do on Twitter and Facebook, but the search for a hashtag is much easier. Just go to the search bar in Instagram and type in the hashtag you are looking for to find results including that word or phrase.

Hashtags in the Offline World

Can you use hashtags outside of the Internet for your marketing? Sure! They can be great on fliers to help with a promotion or fundraiser drive you might have. They are also great for weddings, since guests don’t all know each other but will all be posting photos. Having a unique hashtag will create an album of sorts for all customers, guests, or clients. The research may take awhile, but your business will reap the benefits of a good hashtag in the long run. #ExploreHashtags

Hopefully this blog helps you develop your strategy for how to use hashtags for your business or event. If you want more information about social media, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs. This one goes over how to use social media to promote your blog posts!

Simple Ways to Improve Content Protection

Simple Ways to Improve Content Protection

From blog posts, to pictures, to an actual web page, most people have some form of online content out there. But how do you keep this content from being copied and reused without your permission? With the ease of getting your message out there comes the ease of someone else reusing your message somewhere else on the web. Here we will go over some simple steps you can take for content protection to help keep your content on your website or blog only.

Blog Posts Already Stolen

You are surfing around the Internet and come across a great blog about your interests, and you realize its great because (ugh!) it’s your exact blog! What are the steps you can take to not only get the stolen version taken down, but to also prevent it from happening on your other blog posts?

Find the Webmaster: See if you can locate the web page owner on the blog and send them an email asking them to please remove the copied post. If you are unable to locate the website owner, you can go to WhoIs.com and type in the web address. Doing this should give you the webmaster's email and/or information about the hosting company. Once you have this contact info, you can start sending DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) emails.

DMCA to Web Host: Send the same DMCA email to the webmaster and the web hosting company. Hosting companies also have forms to fill out for DMCA takedown requests. Most hosting companies take copywriting seriously and have a team dedicated to correcting the issue. Here are a few direct links to hosting company DMCA forms:

• GoDaddy DMCA link
• HostGator DMCA link
• Bluehost DMCA link

DMCA to Google: You will also want to fill out a claim form in its entirety with Google. Make sure you check every box so that your claim will not be rejected unnecessarily.

DMCA to Facebook: If you want to check and make sure that your content was not copied or posted to Facebook, you can do a search of the exact title in the search bar. If you found your copied content on Facebook, you will want to file A DMCA claim with them as well. When you fill out the claim form, make sure you copy the exact link to your content that was copied.

Protecting Written Content

Maybe you have already been through the above process of getting your copied content removed, or you are just starting your blogging journey and want to provide content protection from the start. There are a couple steps that can help you make sure your blog post stays yours:

Disable Right Clicking: You can disable the ability for visitors to your site to right click and copy your content. Doing this will prevent most people from copying and pasting your content or pictures for their own use. There are a few ways to do this. First, you can go into javascript and code it in yourself. If this is not something you want to do, you can install a plugin like WP Copy and Protect that can disable the right click for you.

Display Strong Warnings: To stop some content theft, you can place a warning in large bold letters that clearly states that copying your content is prohibited. For example:

WARNING! COPYING PROHIBITED

WE WILL PROSECUTE ALL INTERENT THEFT OF OUR MATERIAL

COPYING PROHIBITED!

There are also official badges that you can place on your website from protection companies such as Stop Web Pirates and CopyScape. This method works in a similar way to having a home security sticker in the window of your house.

Change RSS to Summary Instead of Full Post: Most spamming sites use an RSS feed to get to your full post and copy and paste it from there. By changing this to a summary instead of the full post, you will force them to actually visit your site. When they do this and you have the right click disabled, they will be unable to copy your post. Or they will not visit your site in the first place and will go on to the next one. To change this setting in WordPress, login to the dashboard and go to Settings. From there, click on Discussion and change the RSS feed to Excerpt. There should be a similar option on other development sites.

Protecting Your Images

Images are one of the easiest forms of content to steal online, so it’s important to protect them if you don’t want them to be spread without your permission. There are a few ways to go about this:

Watermark your Images. A watermark is a faint bit of writing or logo that is placed over the image. If you do this, there is no way for a person to remove it even after they take your image, so people will see where it came from. There are several software programs that help you create a watermark for your images.

Disable Right Click: Again, just like for your written content, you want to make sure that the right click option is disabled for your images. This is just like locking the door of your home to deter all but the most persistent burglars from getting in.

Copyright: You can also get a copyright for your images or business, if you are a photography business. If you do this, make sure you attach your copyright notice to the right of all images you post online. Doing this will give you good grounds to prosecute someone for stealing your images.

The Internet is a tricky place to navigate, as you try to provide content protection for your own images and writing. Sometimes it can seem overwhelming, but there is always a step to take to make your content protection stronger or fight back against thieves. When it is something written or created by you, then taking steps to protect it is well worth it. There are web content companies out there that can help you keep your website safe. Just like you keep your home and its belongings safe, you need to do the same for your content online.

If you want more information about content, website development, SEO, blogging, and more, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!

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.