We work with quite a variety of businesses in terms size and sophistication. Some have invested appropriately in their web marketing and continue to hone the marketing channel, while others are playing catchup and trying to stretch their budget as far as possible. In both cases, we continue to encourage our clients and prospects to think big, even if they don't have the budget for it yet.
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One of our newest brand marketing initiatives here at protocol 80 is podcasting, and although the idea of creating a podcast can seem intimidating to a novice, having started from scratch and gotten a podcast rolling I'd have to say it's much easier than most folks assume. There are plenty of free services available that make the process a lot easier, and if done right it can be pretty fun! As a result, I decided to throw together a quick set of tips for any small business looking for a new way to reach prospect clients.
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Welcome back for another round of helping real estate agents get their web marketing acts together. This is the 4th post in this series so be sure to read the other 3:
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One of the first things we always tell folks when they're starting to establish a presence on Facebook is the importance of setting up a personal profile (Dave Kemick) before you create a business page for your company or brand (protocol 80). Even if you don't want a personal profile it's a necessity, but up until very recently the functionality of one versus the other could be quite confusing. Do I invite people to events from my personal profile or business page? Can I post as my business, or does everything have to go through my own profile? Fortunately a lot of this just got a whole lot easier with the launch of the new redesigned Facebook pages and page functionality! Let's run down the brand new goodies...
Read moreSo your small business has decided to invest in a mobile app of some sort. You know that it's important to be accessible to your potential customers and since they're all looking at their smartphones most of the time, even when they probably shouldn't be, it's about time you create a mobile experience that will be finger friendly and give them access to relevant information about your product or service quickly and easily.
Read moreThe hype before the Super Bowl claimed that this years group of ads would be pushing social. The new way for big brands to communicate with their audience with a new way to achieve a positive ROI...which can be tough given the cost of a 30 second spot. One benefit of a social promoting ad is that if you reach your audience and get them to follow you, will be be able to continually communicate with them months after the Super Bowl.
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Between "Using Facebook For Your Small Business" and "Twitter for the Absolute Beginner" we've been talking a lot about the big players in the social media world lately, but there are a whole lot of other newcomers trying to break through with their own set of cool features that are attracting attentive eyeballs. You may be struggling to keep active on Facebook and Twitter as it is, so what benefit would you get from exploring other social networks? More importantly, is there an easy way to manage all of these services at the same time? Of course there is! Let's get into it.
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Welcome to the 3rd and final part of my Twitter guide for the absolute beginner. In part 1 of the series I wrote about the fundamentals of Twitter and in part 2 I covered some more advanced topics like the importance of following, ideas for what to tweet and how to setup twitter searches so you can monitor your brand. In this section I'll explain how to tailor the look of your business's Twitter profile to match your company's brand and share some fun tools that'll make managing your Twitter presence a breeze. Let's get started!
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This is part 2 of my beginner's guide to Twitter for small business owners and employees. If you missed part 1 be sure to get caught up here. Part 1 was more focused on the fundamentals of using Twitter, and in this post I'll give some guidelines for growing your follower count and monitoring your brand so that you can interact with current and prospect customers. All set? Here we go!
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It seems like I've been writing about Facebook a lot lately, but that's for good reason. It's becoming more and more apparent that, if you're trying to market to your small business customers online, Facebook is the one place you absolutely MUST be. The latest bit of news comes from a report by Experian Hitwise which shows that Facebook has surpassed Google as America's #1 most-visited website in 2010.
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If you are executing digital marketing, congratulations! You are most likely already one step ahead of your competition, and making strides to meaningfully connect with prospects online. But, how do you know if you’re seeing continual success year over year, and improving your metrics?
Without the tools in place to analyze and benchmark your efforts, it is impossible to scale your online marketing and ensure continuous success.
