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20 ways to use Social Media to improve Sales

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:34:10 +0000

We are based in the Central Belt of Scotland …Welcome to the Central Strata blog.

Help companies with their existing social media marketing, why because it helps you also.
Tagging and other metadata improves the measurement and spread of your information.
Use twitter to build your companies personality online
Understand that bloggers might care about your customer. Learn and use their influence to spread your message.
Understand which social media websites your customers use and do business. You can start a community group on Ning, MySpace or LinkedIn.
Build your email newsletter content with additional content about your website, providing click through traffic.
Learn how people on social media sites are talking about your customer base. This will help you target your customer.
Can you reach more customers and buyers of your service and product. Learn how your competitors communicate with these customers.
Research whether your product or service sells better by recommendation and what would be the best social media sites to connect with your target market.
Social media is powered by people. Learn how to connect with these people through social media.
Apologize to your customers if you’ve made a mistake. Your customers will value this.
Spread the good idea and good work of other companies, through your social media activity. This will build your credibility.
Explore your target markets viewpoint of social media.
Remember social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc help push your web presence
Build and communicate your business ethics with the use of Social Media, it will pay dividends.
Deliver quality content on your blogs and your site. It will help your customers feel valued and educated.
Remember that the more ways that you can spread the content using social media the better.
Understand the technical quality of your website and how you can communicate this.
Understand where your websites traffic comes from and benchmark your competitors site.
Last of all, learn how to communicate with the wider world and your customer base using social media before you start using it.

Remember there is more that 20 ways that Social Media can be used to improve your sales…..this is just a few.

SEO activity boosts sales

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:29:44 +0000

Twitter, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, review and shopping comparison sites; the Internet has the ability to communicate your message to millions of people with more options and more flexibility than ever before. Reaching your target market, increasing brand awareness and building customer loyalty, however small your company or which niche your product or service, can now be achieved.

Your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns are fundamental components of your Internet marketing, but Central Strata’s additional marketing services provide you with complete coverage. The ability that social media sites offer huge benefits for your business and should not be underestimated.

There are now over 70 million bloggers generate over 1.5 million posts each day. If this trend continues there will be more than 500 million blogs by 2010. Each month more than 27 million people use news search engines such as Yahoo! News, to find information that interests them. It is estimated that 97% of Journalists go online daily to source information for stories, with 73% of them using the internet to find press releases.

Social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook can have a strong impact on a firms reputation, I recently met a company in West Lothian, that sells Shower equipment and accessories that now generate a huge proportion of their sales directly from Twitter. This is proof that Social Media has a strong impact on a brand’s reputation and generates sales for companies in Scotland. Central Strata helps you connect with your target market, build traffic to your website, most of all we help provide the right message that benefits your sales.

Good effective Search Engine Optimisation using all the tools at your disposal is not an option it is essential. Remember that over 90% of Internet users find websites by using search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. 75% of people agree that search engines help them find products, brands and companies that they haven’t thought of before .

Blogs, Search Engine Optimised Press Releases, Keyword Research are all cost effective ways for you to get your message out there, not just for promoting your brand but for getting you sales. Search Engine Optimisation methods such as directory listings, Social Media and Search Engine Optimised Press Releases (SOE PR) are cost-effective ways of promoting your business.

Central Strata understands the importance of your Internet identity, but we don’t do this in isolation we provide a full marketing service with our professional services trained and Chartered Institute of Marketing qualified staff. Remember that online shopping is estimated to quadruple by 2020, when it will account for almost 40% of all retail sales.

Why keyword research is important

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:46:20 +0000

Welcome to Central Strata the Internet and Marketing Company, based in Scotland in the UK

The importance of research is one of the areas that businesses often trip up on when they build their web sites.

The type of keyword research you will do or want, depends on what you’re using the keywords for. Keywords research for Articles will, for example, be very different to the keyword research done for websites with the main reason being that people are searching for different types of words which depending on what they are looking for. It doesn’t matter what type of keyword search you are doing, there are some basic rules when it comes to good keyword searches. Here are a number of tips for keyword research and keyword searches:

Study the market. Your market will tell you a lot about what keywords are the popular words for you. What I mean by this is that the keywords used by Amazon will be completely different to the keyword used in a University website.
Keywords are just words and strings of words. Either way, by understanding your market we can find the correct terms to use for your website. But remember that keywords and keyword strings should never be static and should always be updated to achieve the best results. So if you have keywords that are working for you that’s great but remember, when it stop producing results and giving you website traffic, then you need to refresh these keywords.
It can take months for a website to show up on search engines such as Google. This is because Google has built in an ageing delay on new websites. A good website with good keywords and Search Engine Optimisation tactics such as good SEO articles can serve you better in the long run for your rankings.
It is necessary to use market research methods for keyword phrases because until you know what other people are targeting and what the competition is for some key phrases you may be optimizing for SEO rankings on some keywords that you can’t have. Once you have got rid of saturated phrases, you have a better idea of what keywords that you can use.
It is important to understand that each page on your website is its own distinct and seperate unit. You can’t increase your site traffic by using keywords in only one page. You have to adjust the content of each page to qualify for search engines.
Test, test and test again. Once you have identified keywords or a string of keywords, test these keywords. You’ll be able to see how well these keywords are working.
Remember that your web presence and your traditional marketing should work hand in hand, they don’t work in isolation. Therefore, understand the keywords that are attractive to your market.