Booting Up Your Business
5 Digital Tools to Advance Your Brand in 2013
Bringing your business online is just the first step in establishing your brand among online audiences. Other than creating a visually pleasing, easily navigable and user-friendly website, you’ll need a blog or podcast, as well as a few social media pages. There are also other tools you need to make your online marketing campaigns a success. Here are some tools recommended by CheapSally.com, which you can use to fully realize the potential of your campaigns and earn more customers:
1. Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking allows users to save bookmarks on a public site and tag them with keywords. These keywords will allow you to easily find bookmarks you have saved. You’ll need to register on a social bookmarking site so you can store bookmarks, which you can designate for public or private use. Visitors on these sites can search for resources using keywords, persons or popularity to see the public bookmarks registered users made.
Popular social bookmarking sites include Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and more. Brands can use these sites to save their finds and share them with their followers. This will encourage engagement as followers will be exposed to your products and services, resources, and other marketing content. You can also post interesting pictures and links that will engage your followers’ attention and make them more interested in what you’re posting. One business who gained success in using a social bookmarking site is Whole Foods.
Whole Foods used Pinterest to show boards, which interest their customers. From plants to recipes to kitchen decorations, this business has engaged followers until they grew to have more than 60,000 followers.
2. F-Commerce
Facebook is the largest social media site today with more than 800,000,000 users. With this site, you can create ecommerce opportunities to boost your sales. This especially works for businesses which are popular on Facebook. Show your appreciation for their continued engagement with exclusive product offers. Encourage them to share the limited offer to their friends. According to research, “users are four times as likely to conduct a transaction inside Facebook if it is referred to them by a trusted friend.”
Promote your exclusive offers on weekends when users are likely to be online. As they spend more or less 25% of their web browsing time on Facebook, there’s ample opportunity for your business to garner attention and incur sales.
Giving exclusive offers like what Oscar de la Renta did can bring more likes to your Facebook page and make it easier to reach a wider audience.
3. Digital Deals
Coupons are the way to a savvy shopper’s heart. Catch the attention of bargain-hunting users with discount offers on your page. This has the added benefit of increasing engagement on your page and attracting more people to browse your content. Coupons also have a way of getting new customers inside your store. This gives you a chance to widen your client base, so ensure you make those deals enticing. Strive to perform stellar customer service to make them come back and become regular visitors.
Any business can use deals to make more people come to their shop. Inquire with deal sites to promote your business using coupons.
4. Mobile Photo Sharing
Most of us have a fascination with pictures, as these can serve as records of memorable times. This spurred the development of Instagram and other picture editing and sharing applications. Businesses can use this tool to take pictures of their own products and services in beautiful and creative ways. Milysan Troche used Instagram to post images of her fashionable outfits. She quickly gained popularity with her tasteful style until followers inquired whether she can post and help them sell their slightly used luxury merchandise. Troche’s consignment business grew rapidly until her Instagram cannot handle the demand as fast as it used to. This made Troche launch MyHauteCloset.com where multiple items are sold on the same day they are posted.
Other businesses can also succeed on Instagram. One thing to keep in mind about posting on this application is to ensure you publish only the most beautiful images you have of your merchandise. Poorly taken pictures will not succeed, so make sure to take good pictures or hire a professional to help you out.
5. Gamification
Gamification employs gaming mechanics to encourage users to behave as desired and through the use of a point and reward system. Badges, levels, challenges and the possibility to level up increase the users’ motivation and make them engage more.
One example of this method is Foursquare, an app used to save and share the places you’ve visited. When users record where they have been, they earn points, challenge friends, earn badges, and become ‘Mayors’ of places they visited.
The Bottom Line
These tools can help businesses earn success for their marketing campaigns. Using these tools helps you learn which method will work best for your trade. Consider each one to supplement the traffic coming to your website and social networking pages.
References:
Mashable.com Instagram for Business
Photo Credits: