3 Reasons Why It’s a Good Idea to Collect Your Blog Visitors Email Address

clivelee Business, Connections, Marketing Leave a comment

Digital marketing has created the traditional way to market products and services to the next level.  Customer behavior has evolved through adaptation of the technology of the times.  It is amazing to compare how things are sold before and how it is made easy by just a click away.  A lot have embraced digital marketing because it is effective.  It created a very diverse marketplace with no limits.  It made things reachable.  With the seamless markets, geographic boundaries have been defied.  Competition is stiff and so every site visitor is as valuable.

Why is it a good idea to collect email addresses of those who visit your blog?  There are three reasons which I think will enlighten you and hopefully see its benefit too.

 Prospect

These visitors to your site are looking for something and it could be what you are selling.  They are prospects.  You see, in traditional sales prospecting, you have to list all possible prospects using a telephone directory or you go out there and join social events and organizations to meet other people.  While we cannot take away great results of face to face engagement, people are embracing the internet.  The internet is exceptionally a great potential for business.

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Contacts

These visitors are your contacts.  Somehow they are able to reach your website because they have been referred by others or they have seen some adverts that led them to your site.  The main point is they are interested.  This fact makes them worthy to be your contacts.  Building your contacts is a good practice when you are into business.  It is so easy to make regular updates.

Business development

While a sale is very important, it is paramount to build relationships with your followers.  Building relationships by sending them updates on your posts or free newsletters is strategy you can use.  Conversion might be a little later but then the most important thing is being able to establish rapport with your visitors and build a trusting relationship that will ultimately be converted into sales and repeat sales.

When you value those who visit your website and continue to connect with them, you will be building a community within your website.  This is one way to achieve your sales goals.  Bank on your contact; they will bring the viral marketing magic to your business.  Do not ever fall into the trap of being complacent because you have an awesome traffic coming in.  You have to get this traffic buy from you and online buying behavior of people is different.  It considers your name, your personality as a website.  While there is no face to face encounter, how you represent your website to your prospects will determine the success of your business.

If you will keep these in mind, I will not be surprised that soon enough, you will be generating an ROI you have never expected to come so soon.

 

Is it Time to Upgrade Your Business’s Accounting Software?

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Accounting software is one of those pesky items that companies seem to upgrade every year. You buy the latest version and a year later the accounting software company starts harassing you about upgrading to a newer version. On top of it all, they want you to pay for the upgrade. This article will help business owners decide when it’s time to upgrade.

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The truth is, in most cases, you don’t need to upgrade your business accounting software every year; contrary to what your software provider may be telling you. This idea of needing to upgrade every year comes from tax accounting. The truth is that tax accounting laws change every year and so the software associated with tax changes every year. However, accounting does not equal tax no matter what misconceptions you have been told over the years.

Accounting is tracking financial information (usually transactions like sales and purchases) and using that information to make decisions. Yes, it is true that you use the information for tax purposes, but if that’s all you use it for, then your business is missing out on opportunities to become more profitable.

It has been my experience that many smaller businesses will upgrade their accounting software very three to five years. Here’s why they do it:

The payroll portion of their software is outdated. A lot of business software providers will try to scare you into upgrading claiming that the deductions and withholdings information on your payroll module are outdated. They will often make you buy the payroll module on a monthly basis so that you get an “updated” version every year. While this isn’t a horrible plan (payroll laws change quite frequently), it isn’t always necessary. In many cases, your old software will do just as good of a job as your new software. Check to see when the last time you are local or state employee laws changed. If it’s usually five years between law changes, then no need to waste the money on an upgrade.

Another reason accounting software for businesses is updated because the old system’s database is full and the system is running slowly. After a certain amount of information is packed into the database, it can slow down. business owners will often upgrade to avoid this problem. Before purchasing business accounting software, check to make sure the database will work for your company for years to come.

The last reason many owners upgrade is that the accounting software lacks a certain feature. Sometimes managers will want data sharing through the Internet, and that will require an upgrade. Also sometimes managers will want a software package that can create certain reports and they upgrade to a system that will provide them these reports. A great example is my own business, wherein I’d been a dedicated fan of pavin the way.com since the beginning. Over the years I came to realize that the fulls suite of features I needed just wasn’t there, so I switched!

Next time the latest edition of your accounting software is released, you might consider putting on the brakes before rushing out to purchase it. Make sure it has a new feature that your business
will need before wasting your valuable resources.

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5 Reasons Why You Need Email Marketing for Your Business

clivelee Marketing Leave a comment

Email marketing is a very important marketing tool for all businesses. When you have a list of subscribers, you have a readership that you can promote your products or services to at any time. Many marketers have enjoyed success with email marketing and if you are not using this powerful marketing tool yet, you should consider using it now.

There are many reasons why you need to use email to market your business. Although the email appears to be a simple medium, when it is crafted well, it can bring unbelievable results. Now, let me share with you 5 reasons why email marketing is important:

1. Readership. The only way to get your business recession-proof is when you have your own loyal readers in your list. If you have established a good relationship with your subscribers & customers, you can market anything to them through emails. They will most likely open and read your mails and if your offer is good, you stand a higher chance to make sales. You can also share useful information such as industry news to your subscribers to keep them updated with the current trend.

2. Good channel to share information. If you have any pre-launch, you can use email marketing to let your customers know in advance and build up the anticipation before the actual launch. Building anticipation before a big launch is a very useful marketing technique which you can do it with email marketing. Furthermore, you can even offer discounts and special offers to your subscribers to further enhance your relationship with them.

3. Email marketing is fast. Nothing beats the speed of an email when it comes to communication transmission. With email marketing, you can get your message across to your subscribers within seconds. This provides you with a way to communicate instantly with your customers and the ability to service any request from them.

4. Able to write sales copy with links to your site for better interaction. With email marketing, you can write sales copy and position the links to your website. In this way, your subscribers can click on the links and visit your site to get more information about your offer. On your website, you can then list down in details the benefits and features of the product or service that you offer to entice them to buy it.

5. Able to track the performance of the campaign. Most email marketing system allows you to track the number of emails that are successfully sent, the number of subscribers who opened up and read your email, the number of emails that are undeliverable, the number of people who unsubscribed from your list – all in a single and comprehensive email campaign report. With these statistics, you will be able to quantify the ROI more easily.

 

6. Build Authority With Your Prospects. An email campaign is a great way to educate your readers and give away value in order to build your own authority with potential prospects, and push them towards the sale. Sign up for any B2B SAAS email list like Statement-Matching.com (an SAAS accounting application) and you’ll see the company using education to engage their readers. In this case, Statement-Matching.com’s emails help businesses manage their accounting departments and show them how to reconcile vendor statements, pushing their readership towards the sale in the process.

Email is easy to use but it is also easy to get wrong. We have all sent or received an email which we have misinterpreted so think about how your customers will respond. Double check the message and be careful with the wording. Email marketing is a tool that all marketers should make use of. Try out email marketing and benefit from it now.

 

Checklist: Setting up Your First Blog

clivelee Business, Connections, Marketing Leave a comment

There is more to think about than what topics you will be blogging about in case you decide to start a blog of your own whether it is a personal blog or a business website.  Here is a helpful checklist that you can refer to and make sure everything is taken into consideration.

Choose a template and appropriate style

Before you even start writing, you should have decided on your template and style.  Blogs or pages are great when they appear consistent and reader friendly or else if this is a business site, you will lose potential sale.  Too much design may discourage your visitor.  What you want to achieve is to entice your page visitors to read on what you have posted and ultimately bring them to click that sale button for example.  Designs should therefore be purposeful, first and foremost.

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When you have decided which template to use, consider what style you should be adapting for your page.  Visuals are there to lure attention but what really creates a strong readership or followers would be what they can find in your page and that is your content.

 

 

Identify what your listing page should be

A listing page shows the gist of the blogs you have posted.  Generally, the listing page is the homepage.  The contents on this page are title of the blog, name of the blogger (could be about the business, if it is a business blog), image, and previews of the various posts and not the full blog itself.  The listing page is like your “customer service” page wherein the reader gets a glimpse of what is expected or what can be found in your website.

Creating tags

Tags should be related to the topic of discussion and thus, tag carefully and appropriately.  Randomly placing unrelated tags can be frustrating for your readers.  It can be a turn off.  Decide on a tag that captures a generalization than too specific because it is not really good to have hundreds of tags in your blog site.

Write am impressive but not so over-the-top author profile

This does not only give your reader a brief background of the author but also promotes SEO value.

The profile should be around 120 words the most.

Handling comments

You have an option to allow comments on all your posts.  This means that comments will appear right away without any moderation.  There is also an option which requires approval before comments are posted.   There are actually other options. What is important is you are able to decide what option you are most comfortable with before publishing any of post.

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Encourage subscription

All you need is to create a subscription in your sidebar where visitors can easily fill in their name and email.

Set up social sharing buttons on your blog

The essence of posting public is to share your content to everyone.  With the social sharing buttons easily seen facilitate easy sharing.  By doing so, you are stretching your reach for new traffic.

 

 

4 Essential WordPress Plugins for Your Blog

clivelee Business, Marketing Leave a comment

 

WordPress is a breakthrough. It offers limitless possibilities for any website.  You can create a website for your business other than blog.  It created another dimension for easy website creation. What aided this breakthrough is the availability of various plug ins you can choose from.  Gone are the conventional looking blogs and websites.  With the plug ins readily available, webpages can be transformed into something really great in the shortest time possible.

WordPress plug ins are actually scripts made by programmers to give Wp users choices for better looking websites.  There is no reason for a dull looking website.

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A lot of people blog using WordPress to share personal accounts of their lives or opinions. But more than that, it has become a tool for advertising and marketing.  With an independent hosted website, users can incorporate Adsense, marketing links and place ads for affiliate products.  Wp plug ins are just so many, it makes customization of websites like magic.

You must know which plug ins to use because if you put so many plug ins in your website, it can result to longer loading time and it could mean opportunity loss for prospects.

Let me share to you five essential plug ins you cannot do without.

  1. Akismet

Akismet is a standard WordPress plug in.  This means it is already included upon Wp installation.  The main purpose of this plug in is that it limits spam comments.  This is a very useful plug in. It is said to be an intelligent plug in.

  1. All in One SEO Pack

It is always a goal to get high rankings on search engines.   This will be responsible for that desired website ranking.  It gives you the option to create title and description on every page as well as use keywords.

  1. Google XML Sitemaps

This is a plug in that allows better indexing of a blogsite since this immediately makes XML sitemap.  You may ask, what is the relevance of a sitemap? A sitemap enables easy for search engine spiders to trail the website structure and as a result it can be efficiently indexed.  Another thing that it can do is that it automatically gives major search engines a signal every time a new post or page has been added to your website.

  1. WP-DBManager

It is essential to create a backup to your blog. What this plug in does is that it gives you the facility to back your database up and most importantly maximize and repair.  What is also exceptional with WP DBManager is that it has an option for schedule and so there is no reason not to create a backup.  There is always a reminder.

Plug ins help you maximize your website potential.  It is therefore very important to identify plug ins that you will need and can help boost your website.

Watch out for another post on useful plug ins.  Remember, these are the ones that will ultimately help you in running your website.