5 Tips to Growing Your Business with Mobile

OpinionLab has unveiled five tips that will help companies improve the mobile experience and attract new customers:
1. Begin with user experience
2. Don’t assume you need an app
3. Don’t assume that mobile always means mobile
4. Leverage already existing, free mobile technologies to connect with mobile audiences
5. Adopt an effective mobile measurement framework

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8 Tips to Get More Out of LinkedIn

Here are 8 tips to get more out of LinkedIn that you can start doing today. They may seem like basic tips but sometimes refreshers are good to remind us to keep up with the basics.

1. Fill out your profile completely including customizing your URL with your name.
2. Connect with colleagues, friends, and others in your profession and areas of expertise/practice.
3. Find relevant Groups to join and begin participating in them.
4. Post relevant, helpful information via status update such as industry news and important updates.
5. Search Answers for questions relevant to your industry and your areas of expertise. Provide thoughtful and helpful answers to show expertise in subject matter.
6. Follow companies to receive regular updates on their status.
7. Search on general terms and industries to find new industry peers to connect to.
8. Write recommendations for colleagues and others in your network. Also, ask for recommendations, where applicable

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21 Essential SEO tips

Small businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of SEO, search engine optimization. But if you read a variety of small businesses blogs and Web sites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.

This article is the second in a two-part SEO checklist specifically for small business owners and webmasters. Last week, I shared 20 “don’ts.” Naturally, this week addresses the “Do’s”—things to make sure you include whether you’re hiring an SEO company or doing it yourself.

Small Business SEO Checklist: The Do’s

1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.

2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.

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6 Benefits of Building a Brand leveraging Social Media

Social media has put the one-to-many model of marketing and branding on steroids. It used to be that companies had to market to people by sending catalogs, brochures, postcards or other direct mail pieces. It was time-consuming to get all that promotional material printed, collated, folded and out the door into a local mailbox. Whew, it feels like a lot of work just describing that process (not that there isn’t a place for direct marketing still).

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8 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring

Do you think social media measurement is only about return on investment (ROI)?

Are you struggling to find measurements that are meaningful to your organization? Do you feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack of metrics?

Here are 8 useful metrics that you may not be measuring, but should be >

3 Tips for Maximizing Engagement With Facebook “Likes” and Shares

When it comes to Facebook, if you’re uncertain where and when to place a “Like” button on your site and when to use “Share,” you’re not alone. Social sharing technologies have evolved significantly in the past several months, but it’s not as complicated as it may seem. Used in concert, “Like” and “Share” are some of the best tools around for driving referral traffic from social networks, opening new communication channels with customers and prospects, and building relationships with your best advocates.

Here are three best practices for applying them together >

Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign

If you’re going to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, you’re going to have to know math. That may come as a disappointment to people who thought social media was only about accumulating Twitter followers or monitoring Facebook “Likes,” but it’s true. The future of social media is about math, metrics and monetization.

The problem is that most companies aren’t doing an effective job of measuring the value of their social media campaigns. In fact, a recent survey by Econsultancy found that 47% of the companies they surveyed said they were “not able to measure” their campaigns and that “the jury is still out” on the value gained from their social media investment.

If you’re one of the people who isn’t measuring your social media campaigns on an ROI basis, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Here are some tips, advice, and a little bit of simple math to get you on the right path to ROI success.

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