Increase Branding and Traffic With Infographics

While there is no denying that words are an exceedingly powerful tool in creating a brand or driving relevant traffic to your site, they are but a piece in the overall marketing equation. Why does your brain crave infographics? As humans, we are very visual creatures. And in today’s society of online A.D.D., marketers need to be clever and savvy in how they grab the attention of potential customers.

While the digital form of infographics is relatively recent, explaining an idea in image form is nothing new. Infographics are the smart new digital way of communicating ideas, data and knowledge.

Did you know the world’s information is currently doubling every two years? It’s no wonder people experience information overload.

The use of visualized information has increased drastically.

– 9900% on the internet (since 2007)

– 142% in newspapers (between 1985 & 1994)

From 2010 to 2012, infographic search volumes have increased over 800%.

In 2013, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, Gareth Cook, was brought in to edit the first volume of The Best American Infographics.

So, why do infographics work?

1. We live in the information age: In one day, we create 1.5 billion pieces of content, 140 million tweets and 2 million videos. But we have less and less time and attention spans to read and take in as much content as we want. Most people decide to stay or leave a site in just 2-4 seconds. With infographics, it’s much more likely your content will be remembered.

2. We are Visual: An infographic collects data, organizes it, and turns this information into an easy to understand visual. A well-researched and designed infographic empowers readers by breaking down complex ideas into visual groupings. Stunning images or well-designed charts simply make a bigger impression.

3. Demonstrate & Convince: Want to learn how to do the Moon Walk? You could read about it, but it would be a lot easier to view an infographic with step-by-step pictures. An infographic also can easily tell a story, behind the statistics of just about anything you can think of. They make it easy to understand even complex concepts.

4. Brand Awareness: Infographics have company logos embedded for instant brand awareness. And built on the same principles of content marketing components, it should tell a good brand story.

5. Earn Links: Because of the visual appeal, infographics are easily shareable on all social profiles. They allow sites in niche industries with minimal natural linkage to earn links from other markets. Infographics can provide global coverage, at a much smaller cost, than print media ever could.

6. Become an Authority: The research required for an infographic will help you become the expert in the topic or industry.

7. Measurable Results: Infographics are meant to go viral. Good infographics equal enhanced search visibility and increased SEO. Infographics offer quick measurable results from social shares, backlinks and traffic.

Some fantastic examples:

1. 50 Years of Space Exploration: Massive infographic that displays the last 50 years of space exploration. Designed by Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic.

2. Grand Mosque: This is an infographic press release from the Gulf News (Dubai)

3. The Slowest Loading Website in the Fortune 500: This details the load times of all Fortune 500 companies.

4. The Big Questions of Climate Change: This detailed and data rich infographic by Adolfo Arranz shows the true impact of climate change.

Information has to be digestible for it to go viral. Generate a unique connection with visitors with creatively designed, animated and educational infographics. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Small Business Owners: Your Leadership Style Can Increase ‘Profits’

Covid-19 pandemic has forced a lot of business closures. Government leaders are issuing stay-at-home orders and the government is reopening in phases, which has limited customers sizes to 25%, 50% and 75% for the health safety of our community. How can you lead in constant changing environment? How do you motivate employees and simultaneously look for the next product to keep the doors open? How do you change your management style to be an effective leader in such a uncertain future and ‘doing more with less’ employees.

Leadership

I suggest send out a survey of what qualities they want to see in a CEO (then pledge to do everything you can to live up to these expectations)

Leaders need to provide coaching, because no one ever got to be the best without the constructive feedback, probing questions and active teaching. Be honest and positive in all communication messaging.

Search for opportunities to improve

  • What’s new?
  • What’s next?
  • What’s better? And not just for yourself but also for those around you.
  • Find a significant purpose for addressing your challenging and most difficult assignments.

Who you are and what your values are (then you give voice to those values)

Leader must affirm the shared values of the group.

Inspire a shared vision

  • Envision the future by imagining, exciting and enabling possibilities
  • Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations
    • Imagine the possibilities
    • Find a common purpose

Leaders who focus on the future attract followers more readily

  • Read trends
  • Listening to Podcasts
  • Watching documentaries

People regard most favorably those leaders who regularly talk about the ‘why’ of work and not just the ‘what’ of work

People who are leaders want to do something significant, accomplish something that no one else has yet to achieved.

Motivating Employees

  • Cross Training Employees about each other roles/responsibilities
  • Mentoring
  • ‘how can I help you?’… walking around 30 minutes a week
  • Delegating responsibilities
  • Brown Bag lunches (training)
  • Praise and Work for work above normal day activities

Sending them to seminars

Have them to do presentations

Quarterly Corporate Town hall Meetings (teleconference)

Weekly recognition of outstanding performers

  • Email
  • Walking around
  • Must be based on ‘visible’ performance (daily if outstanding)
    • Monthly meeting (recognize your performers)

Social Media interaction with customers

  • Do you have a scalable website (WordPress)
  • Do you have LinkedIn profiles about employees and products
  • Engaging with customer markets about current happenings
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Reddit
    • Twitter
    • Weibo (china)

Finally, some business owners will make the necessary changes to keep afloat and some will drown. Navigating in rough waters, takes a team effort, innovations and commitment to ride it out!!!!

Your job as a business leader is to communicate, communicate with honesty and positivity to build trust in customers, employees and shareholders.

Powerful Tips for Home Offices That Will Drastically Increase Work Flow

If you work from home then you will probably be familiar with what a struggle it is constantly to remain productive and to get work done when you’re surrounded by distractions. When your work environment is the same as your home environment either all the time or sometimes, it’s far too easy to make excuses to pop to the kitchen or to pick up that tempting book lying on the coffee table and these things can actually destroy our productivity.

Another problem is that home offices are designed and maintained by us. There’s no boss telling us to keep our desk tidy and no HR team to advise us on the best posture or the best point in the room for enhancing productivity. Below are some fixes that can help you stay on task.

Paper Trays

Having papers everywhere is a problem that affects not just home workers but pretty much everyone else too. The first solution to this issue is to get paper trays which allow you to quickly and easily ‘dump’ your papers out the way so they at least aren’t making mess.

Here you’re going to have two trays. One will be your ‘working memory’ and one will be your ‘short term memory’. Anything that you’re done with but not ready to get rid of will go in your ‘short term memory’, whereas anything that you’re currently still working with or that you’ll be able to throw away later will go in your ‘working memory’. At a predefined time every day/week/month you’ll then sort through the trays and move anything from the short-term memory tray into a filing cabinet – your ‘long term memory’. This mimics the way the human brain stores information and it makes it much easier to keep on top of everything.

Portable Scanners

Portable scanners are scanners that can take paper through a feed in a similar manner to a printer. Some of these can even take multiple sheets of paper at once and this actually makes it much easier to quickly scan reams of documents, while OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software will automatically catalogue and organize them. This allows you to get rid of an awful lot of paper and to thereby create far less paper for yourself. Likewise you should of course go paperless with your bills, statements and everything else you can.

Desk Toys

If you do struggle with procrastination then a desk toy can go a long way to help. This can include things like small rakes and sand pits, or like cat’s cradles. The reason these work well is that they provide work for idle thumbs but aren’t nearly as engaging as a mobile phone. In other words, you can play with these little toys while your computer loads and not risk getting ‘sucked in’. They also add to that business feel and make your home office feel more like a real place of work.

Can a Market Research Company Increase Business Opportunities

Research can be used companies of any scale to build a strong foundation, understand their product, know their market segments. A Market research company guarantees them these benefits.

Helping companies with how they conduct business:

A startup is smaller in scale and enters their market with the intention of positioning themselves as a unique name with a unique product or service. So, naturally they want to cater to a niche market. A good amount of research can be used to help build a product and get it out to that market. They can even determine why consumers may not want to purchase that product.

With relevant data, they can identify their target segments in a market. You see, start-ups know that a type of problem or need exists and that they can solve it. They are even aware that the service or products that they have will benefit people, but they aren’t sure who those people are. Research shows them exactly who it is that they need to cater to.

Big companies need to adhere to a product development phase that is much slower. Competitors can easily surpass them in the time that it takes to perfect a product. This reduces the differentiation that the company could have used to get ahead.

Research can help bridge this gap. They can use exclusive market research reports to evaluate where they stand in a market. With this viewpoint, they can understand how fast their product iterations need to be, if any. They can even focus on what’s more important to them and what needs changing, like pricing, derivative product offerings or if the product requires redesign.

Big companies and start-ups benefit from research in this way:

The main reason are the risks of loss. Startups always need to revise their product offering several times. It’s because they launch a product immediately, usually without the prerequisite research to define a particular set of customers. They don’t want to invest in understanding who their customer is, as it’s assumed that they already have buyers.

The general thought is that capital will be better utilized in building or developing the product and not business plans.

Bigger corporations do have plenty of capital, but don’t have the time to gather individual customer feedback, expert opinions – they use market research for that. They’ve also got a much bigger, commercial level market too and research agencies are the feasible approach.

To set long-term goals, prevent cash overspending and actually sell a product in the market, companies need to have plans – detailed plans, which can only be developed once they have the right data.

Unlike start-ups, they are focused on improving a product and price points and not on proving how many consumers they have for their respective products. Only detailed data, collected and assessed using precise parameters, enables them to do that.

Having the right market research partner can prevent costly mistakes or the failure of startups. It’s the tool that’s required for getting that game-changing business strategy that could make all the difference.

Increase Business Revenue With an Innovation Strategy

Innovation provides many ways to increase revenue in your business. A properly managed innovation strategy can increase sales of products or services. An increase in sales can result from new products or services, as well as the introduction of new features for existing products or services.

Increased business revenue can result from:

  1. New customers that are attracted to your innovative products or new product features. These new customers may also purchase other products and services from your company.
  2. Existing customers who purchase your new products in addition to the products they previously purchased. This situation builds stronger customer relationships while expanding product sales.
  3. Existing customers who begin purchasing more frequently due to the new product innovations. Your new product features may cause existing customers to consume more products, or buy more of your products as “replacements” for products previously purchased from a competitor.

Promote your business as an “innovator” and show the market how your products offer unique benefits. Look for new product features that have the potential to become the “must have” features in your market. Tell people why these new product features are so valuable – give examples. Establishing yourself as an innovator in your market builds your customer loyalty and produces valuable word-of-mouth advertising.

Let’s consider an example. In a particular market, certain individuals have not purchased a particular type of electronic device due to perceived problems or confusion with operating the device. However, when a version of the device with an innovative user interface is developed by a new company, these individuals purchase the product from the new company due to the ease of use. This new device with the new user interface performs the same basic function as other devices in the market, but the “must have” feature is the easy-to-use interface. In this example, the innovative product brings new customers into the market and increased revenue for that company.

When developing an Innovation Plan, be sure to consider opportunities to increase business revenue with both existing customers and new customers. Also, consider how innovative products (and product features) can attract new customers who have not previously purchased products in your market. Implementing new product features that satisfy unmet needs in the market is a great way to increase sales.

Increase SERPs For Your Social Media Marketing Business Enterprise With Link Exchange Application

Trouble is, I didn’t realize how challenging it would be for consumers to locate me. There are plenty of websites out there now that if you don’t gain a high position on search engine results pages (SERPs) you will be absolutely lost in a sea of competitors. That’s why I’m contemplating buying some link exchange software to market my business.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) specialists have completely different theories regarding how Google, Yahoo, as well as Bing (formerly MSN) estimate their search rankings and identify which websites to show in which order in the search engine results pages. Each search engine has a unique protocol, so you’ll frequently get a little bit different results even if you input exactly the same research. But nearly everybody concurs that backlinks, useful links from several other websites linking back to your own, are usually essential to getting a high ranking — which is exactly where link exchange software program can help.

It used to require a lot of time to put quality backlinks on the World Wide Web. You either had to invest lots of money to an search engine optimization company to make it happen or you had to select partner websites, and send e-mails to the webmaster requesting backlink placement. But link exchange software has altered the game and made it much easier to accomplish this task. Now you will no longer have to buy or beg backlinks, and you will skyrocket in the search engine results pages very quickly. With link exchange software program, all things are completely automated. You simply run a script, then relax and wait while your search engine ranking improves.

Apart from helping with Serps, link exchange application can likewise provide a boost in organic traffic. After all, backlinks to your own site are actually going out where potential customers would notice — and click — on them. So even as waiting for the Google spiders to pick up on all the new backlinks you have around, you should definitely notice an increase in client traffic on your site. It would be smart to get ready in advance for the extra visits by giving sale prices as well as other rewards in the hopes of generating some repeat business.

There are a few different link exchange software program products for your social media marketing business available on the market, so I’m going to have to examine each one a bit more closely just before I make an acquisition. The going rate seems to be between $50 and $100, which is not bad at all considering just how much time I am going to save from the automatic process. Frankly, it seems as though there’s no faster way to build up traffic, gain standing in the search engine results pages, and improve website popularity than to use link exchange application to get the job done. I should have tried this the day I unveiled my internet site rather than waiting this long!

How Can Listing My Company on a Social Media Site Increase Traffic to My Business

When it comes to your business, online marketing is no longer an option. Social media provides you with backlinks for the sites that Google indexes. However, the search engine also counts shares +1s. If your link does well on social networks, it helps you rank more highly in the search engine. It’s not just Google+ that Google considers, either. Before the advent of Google’s own social network, the search engine was counting popularity of content shared on Facebook and Twitter.

If your video, meme or links goes viral, it will only help increase visibility on social networks and search engines. Going viral gets you more traffic, and if you’re writing about something that others deem newsworthy, you might find a write-up about your website on Huffington Post, The New York Times or a local ABC affiliate!

With tools such as TweetDeck or Buffer App, you can schedule posts to go out on your social channels multiple times during the day. Using different text appeals to different parts of your demographic while posting multiple times ensures that you catch followers who operate on different schedules or in different time zones. Technology enables you to tackle social media without sacrificing too much time for the job that you already do, and we all know how addicting Facebook can be!

Social media is also necessary when it comes to connecting with local consumers. Even though they might drive by your office everyday, these potential customers might not give your sign a second glance. Social media like Facebook and Google Business helps consumers in the area discover your company while you should consider local company listing to get visibility for people who might be searching for you on social media, search engines and review sites such as Yelp. Don’t forget about local social media sites to increase traffic.

Listing your business on these sites doesn’t just make it easier for people to find you. Google uses contact information, website URLs and even reviews for your company that are collected from these sites to populate the search engine results pages with information about your company. If your URL is on those sites because you’ve made a point to add the correct information about your company. This information also appears in apps like Google Maps, which helps you connected with mobile users who might be looking for your address specifically or simply a company in the neighborhood that provides the products or services that you do.

3 Easy Ways To Increase Sales For Your Small Business

Having started my business career using the more traditional bricks and mortar business route I know only too well how difficult it can be to increase sales for a small business. Sadly, nowadays it is even harder for local businesses to survive as more and more of us opt for the more convenient route of ordering our goods online… But are there any “tactics” that small businesses can employ to lure more of us to buy their goods or services?

Mobile Marketing-Promoting To The Converted

Many local businesses miss out “big time” as they waste too much valuable time and resources chasing new customers when the real money (and consistent income) comes from marketing to existing customers. After all, people who have already bought from you will already be aware of the quality of your product or service and providing that the buying experience that they had with you was good, then chances are that they will buy from you again and even encourage others to buy from you as well… They just need a little prompt or reminder that you are still open for business.

One of the easiest and most instant ways to promote to existing customers is to use mobile marketing. Let’s be honest most of us now carry our mobiles with us 24 hours a day and more texts are opened straight away than any other form of communication.

Indeed, most of us now provide a mobile phone number as our first point of contact as opposed to the more traditional landline contact number. Therefore all you small business owners out there need to make a point of storing these valuable mobile numbers and start using them to promote your business via a cheap text messages. Don’t worry of you don’t know how to get started as there are affordable training packages out there that will show you step by step how to set a mobile marketing campaign.

The best way to achieve instant results for your business by using this method is to promote an offer or a promotion. Let’s be honest we all like a bargain so simply offering, for example, a free glass of wine to customers who book a table at your restaurant on a quiet evening will help to attract more business. Even though it will cost you a glass of wine, you will more than make up for it by filling empty tables with paying customers.

Mobile marketing can benefit other small businesses too including texting appointment reminders for businesses like dentists or doctors, luring people into car showrooms via Bluetooth messages, promoting special offer up sells for businesses like beauticians or health spas. There are endless benefits that using mobile marketing as part of your local business marketing can offer, not least of all that it’s cheap, quick and offers instant results.

What Is A Business Without A Good Website?

I am amazed by how many local businesses are still not online. Given the ever growing popularity of the internet, small business that are not promoting their business online are losing out on massive income potential and are passing that business onto other business savvy owners instead.

Creating a website for your business does not have to cost a fortune… In fact some websites even offer free templates that you can use. You then simply need to purchase a domain name and some hosting for your website. If you lack the confidence or knowledge to do this yourself, there are websites out there that offer a way of outsourcing this task to others quite cheaply, simply check out outsourcing sites for that offer that type of service. Often you can put a bid on the outsourcing websites that will invite people to bid for the work. This can be a great way of getting the best value for your money.

Again, there are training packages available that offer step by step training on the best ways to create a website for you business together with the cheapest ways to drive traffic to the website including how to get onto page 1 of Google.

Without a doubt, regardless of what small business you own, it is vital to have a good internet presence to ensure consistent sales for your business.

Business Blogs- Seeing The Bigger Picture

It’s often quite challenging to persuade small businesses to start blogging. They fail to realise that writing a blog can significantly increase sales for their business; most sadly fail to see the bigger picture.

Blogging takes time but if you are consistent, your business will begin to see dramatic results. Blogging for your business can help you to connect with people, especially if you are careful to write in a style that is unique to you and that you offer valuable content. If you are careful to offer useful advice within you blog, then you will help to promote yourself as an expert who people can trust, which will result in the reader buying from you rather than your competitor. It doesn’t matter what business you own, whether you’re a dog trainer, a piano teacher, a shop owner or a driving instructor, writing a blog can offer an affordable and fun way of getting your business noticed.

You can then drive traffic to your business blog by sharing the link to your blog on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. There are also opportunities available, (for a small monthly fee) for small businesses to use existing high ranking blogging sites to promote their business.

These are the 3 ways that I personally consider to be the most effective way to increase sales for your small business. They are methods that I have personally used, with success, within all of my businesses as they are affordable and create instant results.

Exit mobile version