2016 Short Guide To SEO and Online Marketing For Small Businesses

White Rapids Marketing EbookBy: Marc Normandeau

Chapter 1- Why SEO matter for Small Business Owners

Types of SEO On Page SEO Off Page SEO

Chapter 2- What’s Needed For Local SEO For Small Businesses

Chapter 3- Mobile Search Marketing

Chapter 4- Social Media Marketing

Chapter 5- Video Marketing

Chapter 6- Advocates & influencer’s

Chapter 1-Search engine optimization (SEO) for small business websites

Search engine optimization (SEO) is what increases your chances of being found when customers search for a product or service like yours with Google, Bing, and other search engines.  If a customer is using a search engine to find what they need and you don’t show up, you don’t exist.

Why SEO matters to the Small Business Owner

There are many opportunities to get your name and brand out about your business: telephone books (if they are even doing those anymore), flyers, radio spot ads, PPC ads, and more.  This day of age however some of these have been shown to be outdated and wasting companies money. Some of these outdated are Yellow Page Books. Yellow pages where for your grandfathers and Grandmothers, they have little benefit to consumer’s today. Direct Mail- the only way direct mail works is if you specifically target your customers whom want your products, which takes a lot of research online to find out buying patterns etc, but you really can’t get the info that you need. Buying email list are completely a waste of money and I think many companies need to be shut down because these email list are stolen and spammed. Radio Commercial? Obsolete, why you ask? Radio commercials are so expensive to be on a main station and with technology in cars today many are on their “playlist station” like Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, or XM radio. Paid Online ads are good if you can get visual verification of where they are posted so that you can see the page rank of the website they are posting them on. Page rank was numbered from n/a and 0-10. The higher the number the more “authority” the website has and the better the link power going back to your website is, however since writing this section for our blog Google isn’t using the PR ranking as they did before. A lot of research we use to figure out what the site quality is. We use companies like moz.org, Ahrefs, and Majestic. It is all about quality not quantity. Now the more quantity links you get above your competitors the higher and more you will out rank them, as long as the rest of your Online Marketing Strategy coincides with your SEO Strategy. A side note, YOU MUST have a strategy. We will talk about this soon but too many small businesses go into SEO and Social Media Marketing without a strategy and this is why 99% fail miserably at it.

However, if leads find your business while using a search engine it’s like free website traffic (organic traffic).  You probably spent time and effort into optimizing your website, but you’re not paying for each new lead like with Google pay per click (PPC) campaigns, which we feel is almost 99% a waste of money. 96%+ of traffic will click on an organic spot. That only leaves an average of 6% of traffic clicking keywords. You not only are only getting 6% but you are also competing for that 6% with all of the other companies using the PPC keywords..

SEO is significant because it will be your lowest cost of advertising to bring in new leads, sales, and customers to your business.  So why don’t more people do it?  SEO takes time (months- year), Strategies, and patience to do it right.  Most people just want

fast results and aren’t willing to invest the time, but it never happens overnight. With Google ongoing ever changes all the time half of my article on this subject in 2015 already has wrong info since google has changed. Do I got back and change the articles? That’s for another entirely longer conversation.

Types of SEO

SEO is typically divided into two main groups:

On page SEO: Everything on your web page.  This comprises of everything the words in the content you use to all the technical stuff (i.e. code) like the HTML tags that tell the search engines about your content.  This is all within your control. (Meta Keywords Are almost obsolete so these are the last thing to do if at all)

Off page SEO: Everything not on your website.  This is chiefly made of links to your website from other websites.  This is and is not in your control, but you have some ability to influence it (Social Media, Re-targeting, PPC, and Backlinks).

On page SEO

On-page SEO is the most vital feature of SEO because it is entirely within your control as the owner of the website.  This includes making sure your website uses all the right HTML Code, tags, and structured data to correctly markup your content, which is colloquially referred to as technical SEO due to the code related nature of it. Good Quality readable content is Crucial in today’s On Page SEO

In essence, these markup conveys to search engines what your website is about, what the significant things are, and how to understand all of it.  The more you help search engines understand what your website is about (#1 Quality Content), the more qualified leads you’ll get from search engines (also called organic traffic). This is where Title, Meta Description, and on page content match as much as possible. You also want different Titles and Meta Descriptions for each page and none that are duplicates.

In addition to technical SEO mentioned above, the rest is content centered and comprises of the words (Quality Content) you use on your website.  For example, if you use words like family, custody, child support, divorce, family law, etc., search engines will assume you’re a Lawyer or Law Firm and your website is about Family Law and Divorce.  When users enter search terms (also called keywords) into search engines like these, they’ll be more likely to find pages on your website related to these keywords.

This notion is particularly important for local small businesses.   If you’re a Lawyer, customers won’t find you by typing ‘Lawyer’ into Google.  But if you’re a plumber in Salt Lake City, Utah and customers type in ‘Salt Lake City Lawyer’ there’s a much better chance they’ll find you.  This is called as local SEO.  Some websites don’t use local SEO at all, but we do it automatically for our business website customers. Local

SEO is actually one of the BASE lines to build amazing SEO campaigns and successful Google Rankings. Local business that don’t do the local citations and SEO correctly will be lost and never make it onto Page One or the Local Maps that Google offers.

This is the reason on page SEO is so significant and #1 for online marketing. It intertwines with local and national citations and you want them to match with the same content and keywords. If you use the right HTML tags and structured data to markup your content, Google will know what you do and where you are.  So, when customers in your area are searching for your business they are going to find it. Now before you begin and say “I can do all that myself”, there is more to do than just put your business address, phone number, and website into a business directory and then call it good. There is a process. White Rapids marketing uses our SEO MAPIT™ for Local also. This map is a process strategy, that also encompases thing we do with backlinks and furthering them to intertwine with each other and social media account and then directing those links to search engines and their robots to index those pages quicker. What many people don’t realize is that there are billions of pages out there on website that are not indexed in Google. Google does not automatically place a page on their search engine, there are some factor that SE’s have and that need to happen in order for the page to be published. We do everything so that it will. Our success rate and any SEO company should be 100% of any client’s pages indexed.

If you’re using the right cutting-edge structured data plugins or coding, Google can even show your phone number and where your business is located to potential customers. Youtube can allow customers to click on the video and call straight from their mobile phone or desktop via skype and not have to remember the number it will pull up and say call xxx-xxx-xxxx”  Awesome right?  That’s why on page SEO is so important.

Website Coding and what you use to build your website makes it easier or harder. Word Press makes it very easy for someone with no or limited knowledge to get some good SEO on their website with items called Plugins. HTML sites are harder and you have to have an editor like Dreamweaver or Text Editor, so that you can change and add to the HTML code. One of White Rapids Marketing benefits when clients hire and work with us is we teach and help you get understanding of SEO and Social Media Marketing. Therefore we use Word Press for the majority of websites we build for our clients. Ecommerce and more technical websites we use HTML, though Word Press can also be a very good system to run an Ecommerce store on also.

Two collective types of structured data used for SEO are local markup and video thumbnails. Below are two examples of structured data at work in Google search results.

Local SEO at work in Google search results:

Video SEO at work in Google search results:

You can spend hours and hundreds of dollars writing the best website content, but it won’t matter much if your on page SEO as lacking.  So invest the time and make sure your website has what it needs to get your business found.

Off page SEO

Off page SEO is primarily made up of links to your website from other websites.  I hesitate to mention off page SEO because most people do it wrong.  Heck, most SEO “experts” even do it wrong.

Most SEO experts assume that more links are better, no matter where they come from. More links can actually hurt your website if they’re from low quality sources.

Most third party referencing administrations build links thusly and it harms businesses. Can you envision paying for an service that damages your business? You'd be amazed what number of business get penalized by Google for poor linkbuilding strategies if they had any strategy at all from local and national SEO companies. Thus the importance to get references on long term clients to see how their link building has affected their business in the long term.

The top SEO companies and experts do outstanding work, but they also cost, but the long term cost is much lower than if you have to pay a company to disavow (get rid of) links with Google. So paying upfront for a good SEO and Linkbuilding company can save you thousands of dollars.  The worst ones are often cheap and focus too much on getting more links instead of earning more links.

You can earn backlinks by creating Quality valuable content that others want to link to. We have a blogger in the UK that loves our Monkey Blog and shares our content regularly.  The best links come from trustworthy sources that are applicable to your business. This blogger is in Social Media and SEO, it would not do us much good if he was a 401k legal expert and that was his website content.  Another example, if you’re a Chiropractor, a link from a Chiropractor’s association is better than a link from a website about Sea World.  The link from the Sea World site isn’t inherently bad for your site (unless it’s a low quality website), it’s just not as good. So Sea World is a highly trafficated website so you can good some good from it but what about the local mom and pop animal farm that barely stays open year after year, yeah no much traffic and not relevant enough for you.

So What is Low quality Content and Sites?

What is low quality content?

Anyway, what is low quality content? Low quality content comprises of things such as free, ineffectively written, inadequately researched, copy, industry call “thin” or “spun” content. Free content and content from minimal effort writing composing benefits dependably falls into these classes.

Free content: Content offered uninhibitedly to use on your site.

Ineffectively written content: Content written for content's purpose that is of no genuine worth to site guests.

Inadequately researched content: Content that contains real blunders or is shallow in substance.

Copy content: Content that can be discovered somewhere else (counting all alone site at times).

Thin content: Content that is of inadequate length to give esteem. Spun content: Unoriginal content that has changed rendition of other content

Summary

That was a brief overview of SEO for small business websites.  SEO can be a very complicated topic, but just stick to the basics and you’ll do better than most.  In fact, SEO is actually easier than it seems because most businesses (especially small businesses) do it poorly.

Chapter 2What’s Needed For Local SEO For Small Businesses

There are many things in regard to what is needed for Local SEO for your small business. This ebook again is just an overview and points to help yourself get on the right page.

Optimizing your business website for local search is one of the most important things that you need to do in 2016. Local search plays a great role in e-commerce business these days. Most local businesses will focus on a particular region in optimizing their websites. Latest statistics shows that 73% of Google search comes from local searches. You can easily rank your website and get highly targeted audiences with local SEO. That is why it is important that you learn the latest trends in local search engine optimization for 2016. Here is a useful guide to local SEO in 2016.

Optimizing your website for local search is not an easy task. The way local SEO operates is much different from the traditional methods of search engine optimization. But local SEO helps effectively rank your website higher in the search engines. The Google Pigeon Update is an algorithm update that simplifies the local SEO process a bit. There are a few factors to consider when optimizing your website for local search.

Domain authority is the main factor in this regard. A website with a higher domain authority gets preference over a website with a lower domain authority. On-Page search engine optimization also plays a big role when availing your website for local search. A good On-page optimization strategy will help easily rank your website on the local search results page. The keyword density is one thing that you need to be careful when dealing with On-Page optimization. A high keyword density will raise red flags with Google and other search engines. Maintain a keyword density of 1-2% for best results in ranking your website. Concentrating on proper On-Page SEO methods will help rank your website easily and permanently in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Here are five important areas that you need to work on to rank your website higher in the SERPs in 2016.

Responsive Websites -

This is a big factor of ranking a website on local search in 2016. We all know that mobile search has overtaken other modes of search in 2015. The trend will continue to rise in 2016 and beyond. The latest Google statistics show that people around the world are spending more than 15 hours a week on the net through their mobile phones. The trend is said to grow even further in 2016. Hence, if you need to rank your website higher in the local SERPs, you need to have a website that responds well to a desktop as well as mobile search. A responsive website comes handy under such circumstances. A responsive website adapts according to the screen size of the searcher. This not only helps to rank your website higher but to broaden your audience too. On the other hand,

Google ranks responsive websites higher on their results page compared to websites without a responsive theme. It is included in their ranking matrix too.

Impressive Content -

Engaging and unique content is extremely important to rank a website higher on the search results page. If your content is not relevant to what people search, it may create a bad impression on your visitors. Your business will not have repeated customers if this happens with your website. That is why it is important that you provide unique and engaging content to your visitors at all times. Unique content ranks better in the search engines than duplicate content. Engaging content helps you attract repeated visitors to the website.

Social Media Helps Local Rankings -

Google took a decision in 2010 to integrate social media data into its organic search algorithm. Google relies more than 70% on social media data today. With the importance of social media growing, you need to integrate social media into your marketing plan to rank your website higher in the local search results. Post updates regularly and respond to customers who contact you via social channels. Google has included social comments and engagement to their ranking factors when ranking a website. This is why it is important that you include social media in your local search marketing plan.

Register Your Business In All Major Business Listings On The Internet -

This is another big one if you plan to rank your website higher in the local search results in 2016 and beyond. Listing your business in all the major local business directories will help you attract more visitors as well as improve your rankings in the local search results page. Here are some of the most important local business listings that you should include your website. Yelp, Yellowpages, Whitepages, ExpressUpdate, and MerchantCircle.

Voice Search Is Important In 2016 -

Voice Search is becoming important for local search rankings in 2016. More people are using this feature on their mobile phones to search for local products and services. Some customers use this feature so that they can multi-task easily. In fact, many consumers find it easier to speak to their phone instead of typing the search query in Google or any other search engine. You need to shift your keywords to Voice Search friendly phrases to obtain the best benefits from this feature. This is another important feature to include in your website when making it search engine friendly to rank for local search terms in 2016.

Although the aforementioned factors are quite important when ranking your website in the local search results page in 2016, there are many other factors that you need to

consider. In fact, good local SEO means providing a great customer experience to the visitor. The customer's decision to buy or not will finally depend on the accumulation of all these factors. That is why it is important that you pay close attention to these SEO factors when performing local search engine optimization for your website in 2016.

Best-Practice Methods To Optimize Your Images To Boost Page Ranking Web Design Boise a White Rapids Company

So you've optimized your site and found all the right keywords. You've made sure your text is up to par with the most recent Google spider updates and has the right images and graphics to go with it. Now what? Do not underestimate the power of your images in search-engine rankings. With the right tweaking they too can help you boost your site. Here are the 5 fundamental steps to making sure your images bring in those hits. Follow these steps one by one for best results. Name That File With The Keywords Good SEO starts way before you even upload the image. Remember that search engine spider bots can't as such 'see' what is in your images. Google labs is cooking on a spider bot that they claim can recognize pictures and their beta tests look promising, but for now remember to tell and not just show. That means giving your images names that include or at least are related to the keywords that appear in your post or article. Don't ever use the generic file-names your camera cranks out. If you have a post about a dog food, then a picture with the title dog_food.jpg or dog_eats_dog_food.jpg will rank much higher in the returns as opposed to IMG_546455854.jpg. Also, do not run the words all together and use hyphens instead of spaces as separators. Be specific if necessary but don't overdo it either by overstuffing the file name with keywords. Compressing The Compression Once upon a search engine update the advice for good SEO was to have a minimum of images. This was due to the slow internet dial-up-speeds of yesteryears. We all remember the desperation when encountering a 1MB image that took an excruciating long amount of time to download. How far we have come. Curiously though, while internet speeds are now literally hundred-fold compared to those of the late 90s, the advice still stands: less is more. That is because while speeds went up, the attention span went down. Statistics show that a site needs to load in 2 seconds or less in order to satisfy. If your awesome hero background image takes longer than that to load, you may lose the visitors. But in stark contrast to that stands the desire of visitors to be wowed by crystal-clear images across their ever-growing screen-sizes.

So is less still more? More or less. What comes into play here is the compression -- or file-size versus quality -- of an image. You need to shrink the size just small enough to load quicker, but still big enough to be clear and attractive. It's the old 'having your cake and eating it too' debacle. To hit that perfect sweet spot use an image editing software or compression tool and play with the compression options. JPG is usually the preferred format, but sometimes GIF or PNG might work better, depending on the use of the image. JPG works great with photos, while GIF and PNG are best for logos or transparent images. Also, make the image only the size you actually need it to be. Unless you are a photographer who needs to showcase his work, keep the image at the smallest acceptable dimension. There are also small tricks by which you can cheat a bit: a large blurred background image for example might actually give your site an interesting look, and a blurred image compresses much smaller. It is true that WordPress and other CMS will shrink or blow up the images at will, but that isn't always a good thing. So think and plan ahead. If needed use plugins and adjust the automatic compression settings of the CMS you are using. Alt Text This is something a lot of us overlook or even skip. Again, remember that search engines are essentially blind. So don't be shy to tell the search engine spider what they are actually seeing. This is done in code with the 'alt' tag and usually looks like this: alt="here is what's going on in the image". When uploading an image to a CMS such as WordPress, you usually get that option without you having to type any code. Simply fill out the area entitled 'Alt Text' with a few short keywords. Other options the CMS offers may also be to give the image a title, a caption and a description. Capture With The Caption It is true that there is no statistical correlation between image captions and rankings, but we do know that captions contribute to bounce rates -- and those are a ranking factor. That means they help keep people on the site. People usually skip over long texts and then return to the search engine. How fast this happens is called the bounce rate. Image captions are big eye-catchers and the first thing people read when looking at an article. Remember how as a kid you liked to pick up the newspaper and skip to the funny pages? If it weren't for those funny pictures with their short texts, you may not have picked up the newspaper in the first place and 'bounced it back.' This is the principle behind captions on images. So say something relevant in the captions of the images and bring down your bounce rate, while raising your ranking.

Imagine Mapping The Image Site Map If you've dabbled in SEO, then you may be familiar with the concept of sitemapping. It is a great method for helping the spiders out in understanding what your site is all about and what it offers.

Search engine spiders are very organized creatures and love to come to a site that is well mapped and organized. It tickles their programmed OCD so to speak and assigns value to your site, ultimately ranking it higher. So don't forget to add your most important images to the image sitemap. You don't have to add them all, but the most relevant should do fine.

Chapter 3Mobile Search MarketingConsumers today, more than ever, turning to their mobile devices to connect to businesses for the services and goods they need. As a small business, it is essential that you start optimizing your website, to make it more mobile-friendly if you want to

enjoy better sales. If that is what you are looking to do, then these simple tips should help you make the best of your mobile marketing efforts for better results.

Before delving into the tips, let’s look at some statistics. Recent studies show that the number of smartphones being used globally is well over 2 billion. As more people turn to their mobile phones to connect with businesses, it is imperative that you strive to tap into this ready and ripe market by bolstering your marketing efforts to focus on mobile consumers. For most small businesses, it is quite hard to keep up with all the constant technological changes.

However, things are not necessarily that hard when it comes to mobile marketing. With the following tips, making mobile marketing something that works for you is almost guaranteed. So, what is it that you need to do?

Assess Your Mobile Marketing Readiness

Before investing in mobile marketing, it is important that you be ready for it. There is no sense in trying to push potential consumers to a mobile brand if you haven’t created a great mobile experience for them. It is therefore essential that you first of all understand what it is you want to achieve from your mobile marketing initiative; and that includes the main results you want to get from it.

Create A Mobile-Friendly Version Of Your Site

Today’s mobile internet users demand a lot. When they visit a website and it is not optimized for easy use and if it does not provide a great user experience, they’ll get frustrated and leave without a second thought. It is therefore important that the mobile site you create be unique, intriguing, fast, and easy-to-use. It should also keep up with the constantly changing mobile technologies. White Rapids Marketing creates mobile websites.

Use Engaging And Responsive Designs On All Pages

For a better shot at winning and retaining customers, it is important that you employ the use of responsive designs that automatically adjust the content and layout of any webpage in relation to the type of a device being used and the screen size. Responsive designs allow you to create content that will display well for any user, regardless of the device they are using. White Rapids Marketing creates responsive websites.

Keep It Simple

The best way to capture mobile users is through using simple apps and calls-to-action. As such, it is essential that your mobile site be simple and easy to navigate. At the same time, it is imperative that your marketing assets, things like apps, be simple and engaging. As such, if your marketing efforts are to direct users to a specific app, make sure that it is simple, straightforward and task-driven. Also, you need to ensure that your

content loads fast if you want to retain potential customers. On the other hand, your calls-to-action need to be mobile friendly and engaging – they need to be ones that push the consumer to do something about the idea you are selling to them. See White Rapids Marketing at http://whiterapidsseo.com

Use Text Message Marketing Smartly

Any message sent to mobile shoppers needs/should offer something that is worthy of the interruption. It is therefore imperative that you carefully choose when you text and what you text to potential and already existing customers. When dealing with text message marketing, it is essential that you be very keen with the frequency you send. At the same time, it is important that you monitor things like unsubscribe rates and click-through. This way, you can easily understand how they, the customers, are taking the information you are sending to them. One of the best ways to ensure that you do not get on the nerve of your customers is to have them subscribe or sign up for daily or weekly specials. This way, they decide when and how often you should contact them. After all, the customer is the king.

Take Advantage Of Social Media

When mobile marketing, do not push social media to the side. Mobile social media marketing is one of the best mobile marketing strategies there is. Why? About 2/3 of Facebook users visit the social site via their mobile devices at least once every day. By implementing social media marketing into your mobile marketing strategy, it becomes easier to capture the attention of more mobile consumers as they do their own personal stuff.

Do Not Silo Your Mobile Marketing

It is important that you identify your client’s underlying business goals as they work with their mobile instead of solely concentrating on their mobile goals. Mobile marketing should be a meaningful aspect of your brand’s marketing endeavors and not just a series of meaningless campaigns. It is therefore essential that you understand the place of the mobile and where in the its funnel your brand sits – and where you eventually want it to be. A brand should continually build awareness and should differentiate itself from its competitors whilst driving sales across different devices.

Make Your Mobile Marketing Live Off The Device

The mobile is not an extension of the desktop. As such, your mobile campaign should be created and optimized from the ground up for mobile devices for it to be effective. A mobile marketing campaign needs to take advantage of the device for the best results. Make sure that your mobile marketing strategy lives off the device as mobile marketing is more than just delivering adverts on another screen/device.

The mobile phone is an interaction tool and medium that has the ability to scan QR codes, take and share pictures, track location, augment reality and even watch television and listen to music. As such, it is a great tool through which you can have all sorts of interactions; making it easier to measure behavioral analytics, app ranks and precise brand engagements across different platforms and networks.

Test

If you want to make your mobile marketing efforts successful, it is important that you constantly test and try out new things. Why? Basically because functionality, design and content that will work well for a desktop user will or may not be as effective to a visitor visiting the site on a smartphone or tablet. It is therefore important that you create an excellent user experience for your users on smaller screens by making information accessible and easily consumable even on smaller screens. The best way to do this is to play around with, and to test different things like color palettes, word structuring, and media placement within the content.

Chapter 4Social Media Marketing

The Best Social Media Practices For Your Small Business

Social Media Marketing is the latest advertising methods for your small business. It helps popularize your business among highly targeted customers as well as build your brand. Social media marketing doesn’t have to be expensive when done the right way. In fact, it is one of the cheapest ways to promote a small business in this new millennium. This is why social media is so popular among a majority of small business owners. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the best social media practices for small businesses. White Rapids Marketing were several hats: SEO Company in Boise, Web Design Company in Boise, and Social Media Marketing Company in Boise.Analyzing the data provided by social media marketing is important for the future growth of your business. Try to get as much insight as possible from your followers as well as other social media users who mention your business. You can do this easily by using a simple software. This way you learn a lot about the pros and cons of your business. Even if someone criticize your product, do not become disheartened. It provides a good opportunity for you to improve the product or service even further.

You need to identify your business goals before applying the best social media techniques for your business. Every piece of social media strategy will service the goals you set. In fact, you will not be able to move forward without identifying these goals. Take a closer look at your company’s future goals, and decide how you are going to use social media to achieve these goals. Enhancing brand awareness, reducing the marketing costs, retaining existing customers and searching for new customers are some of the most important goals for a small business. You should choose a primary goal from the aforementioned goals to focus on. This will help your business succeed in the long run.

Goals are useless if you don’t have a way to know when you have achieved these goals. If you want to generate more leads for your business, how many leads do you need to categorize the goal as being successful? This is where you need effective marketing objectives. Marketing objectives help you get from one point to another. This is why it is important that you make your objectives SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound). If your goal is to increase your leads, a specific objective would be is to increase the leads at least by 50% within a specific time period. You may have to choose certain tools and software to measure your goals when they have been achieved. These are important factors to consider before you apply the best social media strategies for your small business.

If you are a small business is having a low engagement on its social profiles, it is because they are not having an accurate customer profile. You should have more details of your targeted customer, without these important details, it is difficult to target the customer at the right time in the buying circle. When you have important information such as the age, income, occupation, likes, dislikes, obstacles, motivations, problems

and objectives of the customer, it is easier for your business to target the particular customer at the right time within the buying process. This is why it is important that you get enough details of your followers when promoting your business on the social media profiles.

You need to research your competition when it comes to choosing the best social media strategies. It will help you know about your competition, and learn what is working right now. This will help you refine your strategies to meet the new trends in the social media marketing arena. This is one of the most important aspects to consider when using the best social media practices for your small business. Start by compiling a list of 3-5 of your main competitors. Learn about how they promote their business on the social networks. What networks are they using? What is their content strategy? Look at the number of followers they have. How are they engaging the followers? What time of the day do they communicate with their followers? What type of content are they posting on their profiles? What is the context of their content? For example, check whether the content is promotional or humorous. These are some of the most important information to gather from your competition. You can learn a lot about the best strategies used by your competition if you perform an effective competition analysis. It will help you adopt the best social media practices for your small business too.

Most small businesses create social media profiles on almost all of the networks without analyzing which networks will bring the best results. This is a waste of your time. In fact, you need to choose the most suitable social media channels according to the niche of your small business. Avoid wasting time in the wrong place by creating the most appropriate social media profiles for your business. The best way to judge this is by looking at your competition. What type of networks are they using? If your competition is quite successful in the social media networks they use, you can use the same social media networks for your business too. The next thing is to look at where your

consumers spend most of their time. If 40% of your consumers spend most of their time on Facebook, and 20% spend their time on Twitter, you now have a good idea on how you should spend your time of the social networks. You should pay more attention to Facebook while developing Twitter as the secondary network.

Social Media has revolutionized the way businesses are marketed today. They are very helpful in promoting small businesses to a highly targeted consumer base. Social media marketing is quite affordable compared to TV and print media promotions. This is why it is important that you use social media to promote your small business. The aforementioned article highlights some of the best social media practices for your small business

Chapter 5Video Marketing your Small Business

The Video Marketing idea is not another idea in elevating items to clients yet today it is reflected as one of the addon marketing features to SEO. Visual presentation is substantially more appealing than plain content presentation, typically people are more visual learners. People tend to give careful consideration to a Video record contrasted

with a picture or plain content documentation. On that perspective, it is a great deal more sought after as a promoting device. Businesses regularly utilize it as an instrument to make an item or administration more sellable. Video Marketing Companies allow companies to publicize where Videos are utilized to make an interest for an item and make it more alluring to the planned business.

Spreads Your Info Visually

Video advertising Marketing empowers an organization to spread data about the item or administration that it advances and also its temperament and the advantages in utilizing it.

This Video can be shown in an organization's site or some other facilitating destinations where client might ready to view Videos as to advertise through Video is by posting a Video in a well known host site like YouTube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion.

An understood organization can without much of a stretch advance their new items through Videos promoting in the organization's official site.

By facilitating Videos in the organization's site, individuals why should utilized going to the site can quickly understand that there is another item.

On the other hand, not all that surely understood organizations can show signs of improvement opportunities in utilizing a facilitating site where they can transfer their Videos.

It is glorious as it makes an unrivaled holding with clients through viable direct promoting.

In A Web Host

Video Marketing boosts up in facilitating locales and social destinations is a powerful and element promoting method.

On an online networking website, for example, YouTube, posting a special Video of administration or item is important to draw in new clients.

In any case, these Videos should be target intrigued clients so that every hit and reaction builds the business and the offers of such item.

In this sense, there is a need to make brand on the most up to date offering of your organization.

In the same way that pursuit designers ought to target purchasing clients, it's crucial for these Videos to achieve individuals who are keen on survey such and Video Marketing is turned out to be the perfect answer for make them accessible to potential clients.

Promoting Your Product

There are such a large number of approaches to publicize your item and Video promoting administrations is only one of those.

It is a persuasive promoting device which has been utilized for a long while. Its significance in advancing item and different management is useful in building great relations with the business.

There are such a variety of organizations that makes utilization of it alongside content promoting administration or some other showcasing methodologies.

Online Video Marketing companies have a planned interest from organizations that are searching for a minimal effort distinct option for verify that their items will achieve individuals who for whom it is proposed.

Because of the current circumstances, it is ending up being a standout amongst the most sought after showcasing device for web promoting.

Outfitting The Benefits

These days, Video Marketing is not simply some instrument; it is the apparatus for accomplishing fancied results in deals and in benefits.

It's a smart thought for any individual who has a web based business to get Video Marketing performed on their features and items.

You realize that show as seen on television, well they make a huge number of dollars every moment at whatever point they do a Video battle and that is a strict number.

Conclusion:

The substance of Videos Marketing can't be slithered via internet searcher creepy crawlies. On the other hand, destinations that permit social Video sharing, for example, YouTube permit the client to include composed substance alongside the Video and this incredibly helps the SEO targets. You can include titles rich in magic words, and in addition portrayals and Meta labels in addition to other things. There are numerous organizations around the world that offer Video Marketing nowadays. Hunt down them on the web and reach the particular case that suits your needs and additionally your financial plan.

Chapter 6Advocates & Influencer’s

I know first hand just how difficult it can be to be successful in the world of small businesses. This is because I have tried and failed at a large number of different small businesses in the past. With that being said, I have seen lots of great success in the

past decade and have been able to succeed in a number of different small business in a wide range of different niches. It goes without saying that succeeding in the world of small businesses is heavily reliant on such things as advocates and influencers in the community. Hence, this article will focus on presenting helpful information in regards to gaining influencers and advocates for your small business.

Advocates and influencers come in many different shapes and sizes. Advocates can be something such as a key, famous, community member who serves as a professional advocate for your small business. On the flip side, an advocate can be as simple as a loyal customer that loves to tell their friends and family about just how great your business is. Influencers also fall into the same type of category, as they are able to go out into the community and spread the word about your business, which will lead to greater profits in the long term. Indeed, it’s quite clear the benefits that come with having great advocates and influencers as part of your small business.

Of course, getting advocates and influencers is not as easy as it seems. Getting these types of individuals involved with your business is one of the most sure-fire ways to ensure that your business will succeed. This is because these individuals are able to cause something much like a chain reaction in the community. As they spread the word about your business, the people who are being told about the business will go out and try out the business for themselves. Hence, if they find out that the business is great, they too, will go out and tell all of their friends and family. Thus, this kind of chain reaction will essentially continue indefinitely. This is perhaps one of the most effective and cheapest forms of advertising that a small business can do.

With this being said, getting this chain reaction happening is much easier said than done. This is because this kind of advertising campaign heavily relies on the fact that your business is able to provide a top quality service and is a stand out company amongst other competitors in the area. Hence, if this is not the case, when influencers go out and tell others of how great your small business is, they will go ahead and try it out for themselves. If they find out that your business is not good, they will go about telling their friends and family about how bad your business is. This is actually worse than not doing any advertising at all, as it lowers the reputation of your business. Thus, it’s absolutely vital to have a business that will impress everyone and anyone.

Lots of businesses in the past have tried to enforce this kind of tactic, and have found out that it has backfired on them. This is especially true for small businesses that still haven’t properly been managed yet. Sending out influencers as well as advocates for the small business during the early stages of the business will lead to a huge spark in interest from the community. However, if the original spark of interest is met with disappointment and criticism of the small business because it was unable to provide a top quality service, this will essentially mark the beginning of the end for the business.

Hence, it is vital that all of the efforts are placed on making the business as good as possible. It should be stressed how important this step is in order to get advocates and influencers. If the business is exceptional in quality, the business won’t even have to

employ people to be influencers or advocates for the business, as the customers of the business will be impressed naturally and tell all of their friends and family about how great the business is naturally as well. With that being said, adding some professional advocates and influencers to this mix can call for a truly profitable combination that will really set the business on fire in regards to success.

Going about getting professional advocates and influencers for a small business can be done in a number of different ways. One of the most common ways is to go and sponsor one of the key members in the community. Like the Collabar Tank or StartUp Idaho This can be done in a whole range of different ways, however, for small towns, this can be something as simple as sponsoring the most popular politician in the area. By doing this, the politician may be able to go ahead and host events and speeches near your venue, and he or she will be able to give small mentions of your business to the greater community, which can really improve future prospects of the business.

Furthermore, taking part in many community activities will also help in the solidification of the small business, and thus the generation of natural advocates and influences for the business. This could be something such as being the main sponsor of the local baseball league. The business can provide such things as sports gear for the local business and perhaps even get advertisements put up at the local stadium. This will increase the public image of the small image very greatly, and will lead to really great brand recognition in the community.

I really believe that all of the information that I have presented in this article will serve to be immensely useful for literally anyone who is looking to see great success in the world of business. Small businesses can be particularly challenging to make succeed. However, I am quite certain that all of the advice I’ve gone out of my way to present today will help anyone involved in the workings of a small business.

Marc NormandeauCOO White Rapids Marketing

Marc Normandeau is an Industry leading authority on SEO and Online Marketing with +16 years of experience in the field of SEO and Online marketing. Owning several Start up marketing companies and continual development of his first company since 1999. Combing a mix of professional leadership marketing and business strategy. Marc works with local small businesses, medium size, and corporate enterprises with million dollar

accounts nationally and internationally. He is Owner & COO of Square Box SEO and Owner & COO of White Rapids Marketing a highly sought after company for SEO and Online Marketing in the United States. Among other roles within startups and other marketing companies.