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5 Effective Tips for Boosting eCommerce Sales

If your eCommerce business is currently not making good sales, chances are high that you are doing many vital things wrong. As online shoppi...

Wednesday, April 03, 2019

Benefits of Sharing Content on Social Media

Social media signs and symbols with handles projecting from a computer mouse.
 It may not be out of place to assert that nearly everyone appears to be on social media these days. For online marketers, many have since discovered the awesome power of social media as it affects marketing online. That power derives mostly from the ease of use and ability to share content widely and quickly. Marketing experts appear to agree that the single most powerful feature of social media is the power of sharing. When users post quality content which is in alignment with the interests of their friends/followers, many of these friends/followers may resolve to share that content with their own connections as well. That scenario helps to give the content a “viral effect” which directly benefits the business of marketers. Such benefits come mostly by way of attracting the much needed traffic to where such businesses are located online.

As a marketer, sharing your content helps to accomplish a number of goals in your business, the most obvious being the ability of your content to reach and be seen by a large number of readers. Effective sharing of content manages to do so much more. It is potentially exponential and the multiplier effect is enormous. Depending on the number of friends/followers at each level who in turn take on the sharing, a viral process is triggered as a result. The more quality content you post, the higher the chances that it will in turn be shared by others at each level.



 

The ability to share good content somehow reinforces your connection with the friends/followers who share the post. When a fellow marketer agrees to and actually shares your content, it simply means he/she is vouching for the quality of the content. Such friends/followers are actually chesting out directly affirming that your content is a good one by sharing it. If their own friends/followers like and appreciate the content as well, they also share it. What that means is that you have contributed value that has helped others to bond with their friends/followers. This relationship when appreciated with gratitude somehow helps to reinforce your connection with others.

Many marketers have found out that sharing somehow helps to create more links to your content. Here is how it works. For example, if you have a link on any content of your blog posts, each subsequent sharing creates another link to your blog. If that post is also shared on social media it also creates a link to your social media profile. Each share creates more backlinks to you or your blog. More sharing increases and enhances more ways you and your business can be found. That translates to exposure. So, the more ways other people can find their way to your content, the more popular that content becomes. In online parlance, popularity simply means more traffic to your business.

If you make a good post and it gets shared more and is “liked” by many more people, the search engines usually give it a higher rating since they see a clear proof that it is good content. Therefore, the more your posts get shared, the more exposure you get on the search engines. The more exposure you get from search engines, the more traffic they send to your site. Social media sites do love real activity on their platforms as well. That is why sharing on their platforms also increases the rank of your social media profile on the sites.  That no doubt is good for any online business.


 

Ease of sharing within and with other social media sites is another great benefit. As people are different so also are social media sites. Everyone, depending on their preferences and the nature of their businesses always has a preferred social media site. That you are not on the same platform with me does not mean I can’t help share your content. If for example I am your friend on Facebook and you share your blog post, I can easily have your good content therein shared to my own friends/followers on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and many others. Other persons in those other platforms can also share the content within their own platforms. Here is the benefit. Even if you the original content “owner” may not be active on all the social media sites, further sharing by your friends/followers on these other sites helps to spread your content farther and more widely. That is much better than what you can do on your own within the one site you are active on. More and wider sharing of your content greatly expands your reach exponentially. Your business gets to benefit directly from that.  

Monday, April 01, 2019

How to Promote Your Website like a Pro

Online work station with a computer, mobile phone, notepads, folded eye glasses, pencils of many colours in a glass cup.

If you have a website, and you greatly need to have one if you are a serious marketer, you must devise ways to promote it with a view to attracting traffic to it. You need very clear strategies to do so if you want your efforts to yield good results. What requires the most attention is how to use these strategies not just to increase the visibility of your site but most importantly to increase the quality and standing of the site. To promote your site like a Pro, you must do what the Pros like to do. Here are some of the strategies real Pros recommend particularly about design, layout, aesthetics, presentation, hosting and actual operation of any website meant for online business marketing purposes.

Make it simple to use and navigate

Depending on your type of business, simple sites always give better results than complex and complicated sites. The Pros always advise that such sites must be clean, simple, sleek, and very fast in loading time. If can avoid excessively large images and too many fancy features on the site, that can help a great deal on its navigation since large images and fanciful features tend to slow down navigation on any site. The easier you make it for someone to browse through your site, the better their chances of staying longer on the site or even winding up subscribing or making a purchase.



 

Have on it many channels of feedback and Interaction

In any business, a 2-way communication is very vital. The more and easier ways visitors can interact with your site, the better chances of your site becoming more and better known. The more you allow users to interact on your site, the more they will do so. The more they interact with your site, the more likely they are to become interested in it. How do you better enhance this interaction? Install on the site, email contact button, allow users to comment and even engage in conversations with some token moderation. Allow users to rank the site and vote on comments with likes and dislikes. Even sharing and live chat features on the site are helpful as well.

Foster an onsite community

Community is where group interaction and communication really takes place and works well. As you design and build your site, you must factor in and think of the type of community that you want to foster. By allowing interaction, responding quickly, and moderating the discussions onsite, you are, in essence, creating a community. It is not good for business to always push your product/service on everyone you come across. Pros advise that it is best to always create awareness first before you make your product/service available. Fostering and working in an onsite community of like-minded fellows enables you to do that fairly easily.

Be very liberal with visitors’ participation

 
If you want to sell and sell well, you must be ready to deal with people at all times taking into account the complex nature of every human being. In our complex world of today, most people not only want to be seen, they want to be heard as well. Everyone thus always has an opinion to express about any and every issue. You must therefore device ways on your site to allow visitors to interact freely with your site and with others. People always like to bring their knowledge and wisdom into any conversion. By allowing them to freely do so, a bit of moderation directly by you is of essence. Set and maintain boundaries by monitoring and moderating your site yourself. This type of check should not in any way be seen or construed as akin to command and control. Real freedom particularly of expression and choices is very good for business. So, you must allow liberal freedom to visitors to your website.

Respond to feedback very quickly

Quick response to inquiries is very good for business. Your site must be known by others as a quick response site. That notion helps to promote it a great deal. No matter the type of inquiry, even if it is mere commenting, filling out a form or sending an email, online visitors always want a quick response from a responsive site. The real reason you must make your website responsive and quickly too. Timely responses always manage to help move relationships forward while the interest therein is still keen and fresh.

Personally monitor and moderate your website
 

Freedom of choice and decisions is very good for business. Allowing real time interaction onsite is crucial to a successful website operation. But, too much uncontrolled freedom is a danger to it as well. As the site owner, you must set boundaries for all your visitors to stay within. Adequate allowances must be made so as not to allow these boundaries to be unduly restrictive. If they are too restrictive, you may end up scaring away visitors you are keen on retaining. People tend to abuse excessive liberty online by spamming and being abusive. Both must be checked directly by the site owner who may need to invest a bit of time and energy to delete or moderate spammy and offensive comments. That is what the Pros do.


 

Integrate your site into larger online communities
 
To integrate your site into larger online communities, you inevitably must turn to social media. Because of their huge popularity and ease of sharing messages by millions and millions of users, social media is the best place to integrate your site and latch into the activities of a huge and very active online community. Social media sites are best used not only to draw traffic to your site, but to demonstrate how your site and eventually the community you desire to create on your site manages to fit into larger communities which online platforms represent. A very fitting and productive goal is to design your site with the social media features that allow for easy integration with these larger communities. That is what the Pros do and they highly recommend.

Last Line!

Aside from having interesting and entertaining content on your website, deploying the foregoing strategies will make it more attractive to others. Websites give better results if you use a format that works well on different types of media. For flexibility and versatility, your website should be readable and attractive to read on different devices like smart phones, tablets, TVs and desktops, irrespective of whatever operating system or browser used to view them. That is how the Pros get it done and they highly recommend too.