Is Your Business Social Enough?

From Flexpoint Digital Marketing Consulting

Today, social media platforms have invaded and taken over public consciousness. It has become a big part of day to day routines and an indispensable communication tool for people to connect and stay in touch. Consumers have used social media presence as one of the integral basis of a company’s legitimacy, reliability and viability. Businesses today are judged based on their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, and consumers expect companies to respond to the concerns and queries they have tweeted within the day or within the hour.



Suffice it to say, social media has managed to steal the thunder away from traditional marketing methods. Modern marketing strategies today have a mix of social media tactics as its integral component for reaching business goals.

Discover the Social 5-Pack  

Highly competitive companies have taken the aggressive path and actively pursued the “Social 5-Pack”, made up of: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. This is in line with the aim to engage their target market and existing client base in order to fill the top of the sales funnel as well as understand the prevailing consumer preferences and behaviors to ensure brand loyalty.
However, signing up and maintaining multiple accounts on all social networking sites is not as easy as it seems. Jumping right in without any in-depth understanding of the social media process can prove to be potentially detrimental for a company, which can lead to exposing its online presence at serious risk and leading it towards an unproductive direction.  

Take the Reins of Your Online Presence  

Given the power of social media, it is critically important for businesses to work through their strategies and develop processes to lead to scalability, efficiency, and successful social engagement. This eBook provides you all the necessary information to understand the full potential of social media, as well as how your business can harness its latent power so you can make smarter decisions on how your organization can effectively incorporate it into your company’s marketing and communications mix.
If you want to drive your business forward, you need to make sure it stays social, current and relevant in consumers’ consciousness. Discover how social media can become your most effective and influential marketing workhorse. This eBook will equip you will all the important information on how to get started and how you can use social media to your full advantage and rake its long-term rewards.    

Understanding the Value of Social Media Buzz and What It Can Do For Your Business
These days, social media is the buzz word in marketing and a global trend that has gotten everyone of every age engrossed in one, two and possibly even several social media sites. Everyone is on it, in one form or another. But what is it exactly?

Social Media Explained in Plain English

The term social media has been carelessly tossed around and used too often in online marketing. But what is it really about? In essence, social media incorporates the use of online technologies and methods that allow people to share personal opinions, content as well as swap insights and perspectives with the rest of the world.  

Social media content can take different shapes and forms:
 Text – often used to write or put across personal opinions or posts  Images – photos are used to display anything of interest  Audio – podcasts can be created to other users to download  Video – video content can be shared to engage, entertain or educate
Among the most popular social media sites at the moment include:

 Social Networking: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+  Wikis: Wikipedia  Video Sharing: YouTube  Photo Sharing: Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr  News Aggregation: Digg, Reddit   Online Gaming: World of Warcraft

The New Approach to Branding and Communication – Moving Beyond Marketing


Social media has paved the way to a more powerful communication channel for companies to publish their marketing messages – all without the exorbitant cost. While we all know social networks is generally used by businesses to engage their target market and study consumer preferences and behaviors, the truth is, it has other equally powerful features that you can incorporate into your marketing strategy, with highly rewarding payoff at that.

Here are other areas in your business that you can apply social media to drive success:

 Customer Service – One ideal example of this is Best Buy. With their Twelpforce, employees are empowered to provide prompt assistance on issues and queries. The ability to respond and react quickly is very critical in today’s market, especially in influencing and changing perceptions. Even if a concern has not been resolved immediately, customers will feel their issues were acknowledged and given attention in a timely manner.
  Internal Communications and Collaboration – Small and large organizations can largely benefit from social media, in terms of file sharing, collaborative editing and knowledge sharing.
  Recruitment and Retention – A lot of employees today decide on whether they want to be a part of an organization or not based on information derived from social networks. It can also present a powerful tool in sourcing social channels that exists through professional networks.
Understanding the Social Media Ecosystem

To effectively use social media to your full advantage, it is important to take time and learn how the ecosystem works and the emerging habits of the “social consumers”.  Consider each social networking site as a town and the ecosystem basically pertains to the infrastructure of that town.
Your knowledge of the ecosystem will provide you a virtual map to navigate your way around the streets and how to find the path towards connecting with your target market. According to the latest study conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey, consumers who are both Twitter followers and Facebook fans of a certain brand will not only recommend it products or services but also buy from those brands. In the same study, consumers reveal that brands that do not engage in social media are perceived as “out of touch” and outdated.

So the main idea here is to focus your social media efforts on the power users who command influence within their social networks. However, it is also important to note that connecting with medium and light users will also help your business earn social proof and trust.

Converting Leads to Sales: The ROI of Social Media

Like any business endeavor, you naturally want to have a fair idea on the return of your investment in social media and not simply jump right in just because it’s the popular thing. The ROI cycle of social media can be separated into 3 stages.

Stage 1: The Launch  
At this stage, 100% of your focus is on setting up accounts on the 5 Social Packs: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. While there are a number of other popular social networking sites, the 5 are considered to be the critically important ones. You simply can’t afford not to have presence on all 5 platforms.

The Launch stage is more of executional with the primary goal of getting started. Here are the details of this stage:

Approach: Executional Objectives:  Social Media Presence Focus:   Short-Term Results: Negligible
At this point, you won’t be able to expect any significant impact or derive results.

Stage 2: Management At this stage, about 60% of your company’s efforts will be focused on developing the 5 social media sites. About 10% of the focus is directed towards the creative and brand offer and 20% on setting up quantitative metrics like inbound links, traffic, Facebook “likes”, etc.   The remaining 10% will be focused on qualitative metrics such as survey results, pools and studying brand sentiment.

Approach: Tactical Objectives:  Customer Engagement Focus:   Mid-Term Results: Increase in Traffic

Stage 3: Optimization During the Optimization stage, 25% of the focus is on gaining more leverage on all 5 social media platforms, and 30% will be distributed to creative and brand offer development, as well as the quantitative and qualitative metrics. The other 25% of the focus will be directed to

Improving the conversion rate and the optimization of campaigns. The remaining 20% will be used to measure success of the campaign which will be the basis of your ROI.

Approach: Strategic Objectives:  Social Media ROI Focus:   Long-Term Results: Increase in Revenue

Despite what many social experts claim that ROI of social media cannot be measured, there is actually a way to measure it. This process will require a better understanding of your customer lifetime value (CLV) or the average revenue generated by a customer during their entire engagement period with your products and services. This figure will be used to compare the results that have been generated on your campaign in social media.

For example:   
If a typical customer spends about $10 every month on a particular product and has been a loyal patron of a certain brand for about 3 years, this equates to the average customer lifetime value of $360.00.

Most companies are willing to spend about 10% of their CLV for the acquisition of new customers. This means, they are willing to spend $36 to acquire a new customer who is expected to spend $360 all throughout her engagement with the brand.

So if your social media efforts will cost you $36, 000 for one full year, and your campaign will be able to generate 1, 000 new customers every year, then you definitely have a clear winner in your hands. 

Issaquah Small Business Web Design Services Uplifts Your Business’ Brand

Elevating your business to the topmost level requires the efficient assistance of the best web development professionals. Amongst a range of functions performed by you to publicize your business, effective web designing and management is worth mentioning. Now, it might not always be the case that clients wish to design a website for large business endeavours. There are several owners of small business requiring efficient web designing and management professionals, for their business. Some of the top notch services available ensure great leads and increased sales for their clientèle.

Efficient web management

In this regard, the Issaquah small businessweb design professionals leave no stone unturned to provide great strategies for brand establishment. From increasing brand awareness to becoming a major resource for marketing activities, these worthy professionals guide on every nuance of digital marketing. Moreover, they are capable of designing customized services for every distinguished client and transforming their vision into reality. Apart from that, there are SEO optimization services, generating great amounts of traffic to your website. In this regard, they assist you in maintaining a perfect balance of off page and on page factors.

Providing actual customers

It is not only great traffic that the Issaquah small business web design services offer; rather they channelize every possible effort to convert effective leads into actual customers. This in turn, monetizes your major resources. Moreover, there are successful email marketing strategies, to directly reach out to potential customers. Apart from that, the presence of highly CRM software ensures effective monitoring of customer activities. 

How to Identify a Good Website Designer?

The choice of your website designer largely affects the success of your online business. The better the elements added to a site the better would be the results. Here are a few points that you should keep in mind when it comes to choosing the best amongst wide selection of Bellevue web designer firms -

• Before signing the deal make sure, you know about the charges of their services. A good web designer will want to know thoroughly about your business so that he can understand your needs in a better way.
• Look into their previous work. Watch out the websites designed by them. A good designer is flexible in his work; he doesn't give the same feel to all his creations.
• Know about the experience of the professional in layout and graphic designing of the website.
• If they do not hold any expertise in graphic work can they give any recommendations of the artist?
• Make sure they carry their work with systematic and structured planning. Also, make sure they document all the decisions and discussions regarding the project. It’s best if they create a Website Planning Guide.

The layout and design of your website essentially affects the success ratings of your business largely. Interviewing the website designers, will help you in finding a proficient website designer for you. Make sure he is willing to listen to your requisites and holds enough expertise in a website that delivers best work within the given time frame and budgeted rates.

Web designing tips and techniques - For start-ups

In this era when the digital marketing is at its boom… every company is moving towards securing a good online presence in order to target their potential customers as well as retaining their existing ones.

These days many startups companies are coming up, some among them are experiencing success in right way, and others failing to create impact. But in order to survive in this tough competition, a startup needs to have an online presence in form of their website. But surely the website has to be unique and attractive so that it has great impact on the minds of their potential customers. The work done by Seattle web designer for startups is an amazing example of how to do the designing work.

In simple terms, a good web design means having feature like:

1.      Innovative concept: Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design developed in tandem with innovative technology what the need of the hour is!

2.      Great content: A sign that the website is the good one is that it makes the product understandable to the person who is visiting the site.

For this, the content of the website is the key! Simpler and understandable the content more successful will be the website and thus the startup.

In the end, it could be concluded that a Good design cannot be made using glossy buttons or with creative wireframes alone.  And though it could be created on your own but hiring an expert for the work is a better idea as they know how to work in order to convert your ideas into realty!

Just like for a start-up, a good business plan stands without execution of experts, similarly, a great Photoshop mockup is nothing without careful consideration to User interface or the user’s needs.

Why Are the Search Engine Optimization Services extremely Important For Your Website?

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is a procedure that makes your website more attractive that it can fit on any top search engine result page. Search Engine like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are called "crawlers." These, "crawlers" are looking for new websites and content. If the crawlers find anything new on the web, they try to add it to their database. This is known as indexing. And these indexing is done by professional search engine service. But they have to do it correctly. Through this procedure, people can find their desired information on the internet through search engines.

Service of Seattle search engine optimization:

A professional search engine optimization service in Seattle assists you get high ranking in search engine results pages. Not only that, it also aids you to get the targeted audience who visit your site regular basis. We all know that, like other things search engine optimization has also undergone various changes nowadays. These changes generally occur due to the changes in search tool algorithms. While you select for the SEO services, you should pick a well trained SEO professional like Seattle search engine optimization services who have a great knowledge about all advantages and disadvantages of SEO promotion. The main aim of this professional service to get the website indexed in search engine results pages.

Seattle search engine optimization services are offered by local SEO experts who have the specialization in all aspects of SEO that can help all type of business to grow their businesses utilizing advanced Internet technologies.

Two questions that will be helpful for you, hire a reliable company is online.

One very important and helpful question that will help you to get hold of a good company is by asking this question. By doing a search online and by reading the advisors list will help you to get to know about the past of the company and also their services.

·         Do you have a portfolio so that I can review it?

As it is vital that you always take time to examine a web design agency's portfolio so that you are able to gauge what type of work they do as well as determine their specific design style. Additionally, it is imperative that you seek out an agency that targets your particular market or industry as they will have much more expertise and can offer a more accurate quote for the type of project that you have. The agency that targets your specific market will be able to set a realistic and definitive deadline.

·         Is your agency doing all of the work of design?

You might be paying a higher amount of money to the most famous company, however, in the end your work is done by usual people. Hence, it is very important that you first make sure that you know who exactly is doing the entire work for your project. Be firm that it stays in-house and also make sure that you have all the detailed information in your contract.

Besides these, it is very important that you ask more questions as it help you to get hold of an Issaquah web designer agency in Issaquah and also all over the world. 

Expert services in search engine optimization

If you are running a business then you must be looking for growing it further. But, if you follow the traditional way of making a business established and popular then you will hardly manage to be a successful businessman within a very short period. This is the world of technology and you need to follow various advanced technologies to make the business a successful one. Here you can follow the techniques like

Ø  Search engine optimization

Ø  Web designing

Ø  Internet marketing

There is need of an impressive website of your company which can bring traffic for you as well as can create an impressive image in the minds of the prospective clients.

From the above list it is quite clear to us anyone of us cannot work on such technologies. We will need help of some experts who have vast knowledge as well as experience in this field. Especially, if you are living in Seattle then you can easily contact with experts in Seattle search engine optimizationservices. Let us have a look at the services that these expert companies will generally provide.

Ø  These companies are expert in preparation of digital marketing strategy

Ø  We will get expert services in developing content strategy

Ø  Keyword research is another tool that help us in business development

Ø  The professional involved with these service providers will help in internet marketing

So, what you are waiting for? Just grab some expert services of these companies and make your business famous worldwide.