Tag Archives: novice

5 Tips for Adding Humor to Your Social Media Strategy

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“Earlier this year, Forbes published a piece advancing the notion that funny people may actually have an edge in business.” By adding humor to your content, you increase your chances of being shared — and when you’re shared, customers begin to evangelize your content. Jason Boies recommends, “Your social media team should stay on top of what’s happening in the world of current events and pop culture.  What’s popular right now? What are people buzzing about?” Yet, more than that, you should be taking some time to make your content entertaining. It’s important not to overdo it and force the humor. But, when something witty pops into your head, chances are others will enjoy it too.

For 5 tips on adding humor to your social media strategy, check out Jason’s article for Salesforce’s Radian6, 5 Tips for Adding Humor to Your Social Media Strategy.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Social Media Marketing Tips for Easy Content Sharing

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One of the easiest ways to lighten the load of your content sharing and improve customer evangelism is to set up a Buffer account. Okay, so we’re not explicitly endorsing the application. But, in order to launch an effective evangelist strategy, your small business needs to maintain a cohesive schedule of posts, tweets and updates. It’ll free up the time you devote to managing your social media accounts, and give you some leg room to run other aspects of your business. “By sharing content via Twitterfeed or Buffer ensure that you have clear goals in mind like driving revelvant traffic to your website and setup applicable campaigns to track key metrics that matter for your business.”

For more tips on easy content sharing, check out TrendSlide’s article, Social Media Marketing Tips for Easy Content Sharing.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Live Chat Can Improve Service, Sales

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Without seeing the products for themselves—in person that is—customers are oftentimes initially hesitant to make a purchase online. Adding a “live chat” feature, however, can easily solve this dilemma of last-minute hesitation and improve your site sales. Take, for example, this story posed by Armando Roggio (practicalecommerce)—”‘Laura’ wanted to buy a shirt for her husband, but did not understand how the color and size options worked on the retailer’s site. She liked the price and was pretty motivated, so she called an 800 number listed on the web page, a customer service representative helped her pick out a couple of nice plaids. A sale was saved.” If you realized that “Laura” didn’t engage in live chat, you’re absolutely right. Live chat, however, addresses this sort of issue just as well as (if not, better than) an 800 number. 

To read more about how live chat can improve your site sales, check out Armando Roggio’s article, Live Chat Can Improve Service, Sales.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

LinkedIn is the Best Social Network for Improving SEO

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Short and sweet, being shared on LinkedIn improves the distribution of your site content. As Pam Dyer (Pamorama) notes, “According to an article on the SEOmoz blog, Zarrella compiled a database of 25,000+ URLs that had been shared at least once on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The URLs were all at least one month old and had a minimum of one incoming link. The study found that, while Facebook and Twitter users share the most links to content, the number of links directed at that content is higher per share via LinkedIn.” With these facts in hand, it’s important to recognize that your business should already have a LinkedIn page. If not, go ahead and set one up. As you begin to think about your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, prioritize sharing content through LinkedIn while never forgetting to also share content across Twitter, Facebook and of course, Google+. 

To read more about LinkedIn and how it can help your distribution, head over to Dyer’s article, LinkedIn is the Best Social Network for Improving SEO. 

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Building a Community Around Your New Online Store

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Before you begin promoting your small business and building brand awareness across social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, etc.), start “by creating a unique voice… [via] in-store, e-mail, social media, and your website and ecommerce platform.” Shawn Graham (for Shopify) recommends making a cohesive promotional campaign that looks ”for every opportunity to educate your customers on what they’ll be able to find online.” Developing a brand voice requires that you take a look at the core missions of your small business. If your small business was to have a voice, would it be humorous? Witty? Sincere and knowledgeable? From experience, customers appreciate and reward consistency — and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be tweeting, posting and updating just as consistently.

To read more about building a community around your online store and promoting brand awareness, check out Shawn Graham’s guest post for Shopify in November 2011, Building a Community Around Your New Online Store.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages

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Two important lessons for promoting brand awareness on Facebook can be learned from looking at the “Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages,” chosen by Social Media Examiner: 1) a stunning cover photo (i.e. smart visual branding) can go a long way; and 2) balancing valuable and fun posts is crucial. Take a look at Social Media Examiner’s choice for #1 just below.

Snapshot of Facebook Page: "How to Market Your Horse Business"

Click the picture above to view the Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages. Credited to Social Media Examiner.

If you intend to use Facebook as a marketing tool for your small business, you need to devote just as much time and energy into it as you would any other marketing endeavor. The key to accomplishing the first lesson above (creating a great cover photo) comes with 1) figuring out the personality of your small business, 2) brainstorming multiple ideas to capture that personality in an image, 3) centering the attention around your main product (or products) in the image, and 4) receiving feedback from others before publishing.

The key to the second lesson comes with practice. Take a look at Phil Mershon’s post, Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages, to learn more about promoting brand awareness through Facebook.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Get Ready for the Loyalty Marketing Renaissance of 2013

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In terms of building customer loyalty for small businesses, a lot can be learned from larger corporations who focus on giving back to the community. Even with just a small amount of resources, a small business has an enormous potential to make “giving back” a core part of their mission, and then “publish” it — setting into effect another solid reason for customers to be loyal to your company. As Adam Broitman says, “We have seen brands like Zappos and Warby Parker take brand ‘amore’ to new heights. Each brand uses social media and technology in exciting new ways, but each brand also manages to present their costumers with something marketers and advertisers speak about ad nauseam, ‘surprise and delight.‘” What does this all mean? As you concentrate on maintaining your customer base by creating loyal customers (who come back to your online store time and time again), you need to extend your efforts away from just selling products.

To read more, check out Adam Broitman’s article for AdAge, Get Ready for the Loyalty Marketing Renaissance of 2013. 

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

The New Rules of Building Customer Loyalty

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Fostering customer loyalty (in today’s world) requires that you step away from just handing out discounts to loyal customers. Short and simple, you need to do more! Consider this suggestion: provide loyal customers a way to satisfy the “gamers” inside every one of them. Forget the easy reward and give loyal customers something to work towards. “Today, brands of all stripes are experimenting with the psychology of status and power in rewarding customers. A generation raised on video games is wired to love incentives—and that doesn’t just mean freebies” (Inc.). Loyalty programs should be complex enough to tug on all aspects of purchase-satisfaction. In other words, you need to engage and interact with your loyal customers in order to foster full and complete loyalty. Handing out a 10% discount for customer loyalty is too far removed from business-to-consumer relationship building. 

Check out Inc.’s article, The New Rules of Building Customer Loyalty.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

10,000 Likes or 10 Brand Evangelists?

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Instead of deciding between either getting 10,000 Facebook likes or 10 brand evangelists, why not choose both? As you aim to grow your network of customer evangelists (i.e. all those customers who “rave” about your company to their own networks), don’t get bogged down in the specifics—and this is especially important for small businesses who are already stretched for time and effort. What do we mean? Ryan Connors, for Bussiness2Community, says, “There’s no set formula for the value of a like, a follow, a share or a retweet, or even a brand evangelist for that matter. It’s understood that engagement is important for building brand awareness, but only a fraction of social activities per person results in website hits, store visits, sales and repeat customers.” A customer evangelist strategy should embrace a more expansive approach, from a general sense and specifically for a small to medium sized business. The object is simply to produce content that people want to “share.” And remember, when someone “likes” a piece of content, they’re effectively sharing that “like” with their own networks.

To learn more, check out Ryan Connors’ article, Quickly: 10,000 Likes or 10 Brand Evangelists.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line

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The slower your page takes to load, the less likely a site sale is going to be made. Just take a look at the [INFOGRAPHIC] below.

Graph Measuring Loading Time and Page Abandonment

Click the image above to see the [INFOGRAPHIC] in full from blog.kissmetrics.com

But, what do you do from there? Great question! Two things you can do:

  1. Inquire with your web host and ask if they use GZIP compression and deflation on their servers. These will greatly speed up a site, “reducing file size by as much as 70%” and leave the quality of the images, video and site unaffected.
  2. Save your photos and images in Photoshop or Fireworks with the “Save for Web” version.
To learn more about how your web page’s loading time affects site sales and customer conversion, take a peek at the [INFOGRAPHIC] from kissmetrics or read their article,

Speed Is A Killer – Why Decreasing Page Load Time Can Drastically Increase Conversions.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity