Summary:

• Understand @ replies. Overuse of @ replies can be extremely confusing to your followers.
• Go easy on the acronyms. No matter how many people fail to take it seriously, spelling still counts on Twitter.
• Think about the venue. Twittering during a solemn ceremony (wedding, briss, court proceeding) is generally a no-no.
• Learn the lingo. Check out "Twitter Commands Reference Guide" (last section of the story).
• Up-to-the-minute spoilers. It is unreasonable to expect tweeters to suppress or censor their comments for fear of spoiling a surprise.
• Following the followers. It's a good idea to look at the follower's profile before you decide on following them.
• Retweeting in 140 characters. It is recommended to meet the character limit by truncating the end of the message.
• Mind the plugs. If your feed consists of nothing but plugs for yourself and your work, most of your followers will unsubscribe.
• Don't forget that Twitter is public wherein a Twitter post can be read by anyone.

If you want to grow your business now, check out our web design page or take a look at some of the websites that we've done.

Website Design

1. Having an online presence in the World Wide Web, does not only mean having a website, but ensuring that your website transmits the message that you are trying to accentuate to your target market. Does your website contain the X factor that leads every visitor to go along and explore your site? Does your homepage transmit information about your business in as little as 3 seconds? Was it professionally made or is it a piece of a junk? Does it contain vital and complete information that can convert a visitor to a customer?
   Even if you could excel in internet marketing campaigns and get your company to the top of the list in search engines, the effort would be worthless if your website is not well designed. Don’t let a poor website destroy your opportunity to introduce your business to your target audience.Have it carefully designed and ascertain that the effort you invest in online advertising media is not wasted by a poorly designed website.
   Foremost in the online advertising is ensuring that you have a “good” website.

Pros:

• A properly designed website gives you an edge over your competitors
• A captivating website that offers desirable information will result in increased traffic and sales
• You can use a website as your main hub for all your online marketing efforts, saving space and cost in your various advertisements, and opening the doors for most other internet advertising options.

Cons:

• A professionally built website may cost that little bit more, but it’s an investment that will definitely payoff if you want it to.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

2. This type of advertising is the quickest and the easiest way to reach your target market. PPC advertising enables you to advertise for your business and lets you just pay for the clicks that you have on each advertisement. The most widely used are Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, allowing your business to be exposed to a wide range of target audiences. At a minimal level, all you have to do is open an account, select good keywords or phrases that are related to your website and set a budget.

Pros:

• A quick driver of traffic to your site
• Introduce your business to your potential target audience especially for the newly established business who needs to draw attentions from a large target customer base.

Cons:

• Your keywords and phrases can be quite tricky to get right
• The cost involved might outshine the benefits derived from it

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

3. Wikipedia defines SEO as the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search result. It is the desire of every website owner to have their sites appears on the top of the search engine results at Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. In this case, a website should be fully optimized in such a way that search engines see it, and the right keywords and key phrases describe the contents.

Pros:

• It is a long lasting approach to marketing; hence, the cost of investment far outweighs its benefits in the long run.
• It lets you connect with prospects that were already looking for your products through search engines; hence, optimizing your website to gives you greater chances of increasing your sale.
• Increased internet traffic from your website being on top of the list for search engines.

Cons:

• SEO may increase spam, because you receive more traffic.
• You might generate too many sales leads which entails additional cost.
• A small investment, or the use of poorly trained SEO ‘experts’, may be totally wasted. An increase from page 200 of a search result to page 3 is good, but just not enough.

Video marketing

4. A video can be a tool in marketing your business to your potential customers which can be broadcast everywhere. You may create a video about your business’ important information, a specific things that make your services unique or some “how to” specific steps that will draw attention from your audience.

Pros:

• Most of the audience wants to see something before we read something; hence this would offer an added value to marketing your business.
• Enhance costumers experience by educating about the product/services
• An effective tool to convince costumers because of feelings that a video can trigger more strongly than text.
• Can be highly integrated into your website to add that extra “WOW” factor

Cons:

• Can turn away customers if it doesn’t capture customers emotions
• An irrelevant video tends to annoy viewers

Social Media Marketing

5. Have you ever wondered how we can utilize the ever exploding market of twitter and facebook? These social marketing sites contain different target audiences which are appealing to almost all businesses to capture.

Pros:

• You can reach practically any target market given that Facebook now has over 500 million users on it, for one example.
• A good place to build relationships with customers or target market
• Can forecast and analyse consumers characteristics

Cons:

• Low conversion rates because these social media sites were solely for conversation and meeting with friends and users don’t log in at these sites to buy.
• Ensure that advertisement is relevant as being placed in a social website may lead to negative feedback about your business.

Blog Marketing

6. Lots of people use blogs to communicate and share stories and information. As a business you can also make use of this option to drive traffic to your website or to make your business known to your target audience. You can create blogs that are relevant to your industry, your business and/or your products.

Pros:

• Low cost and is an excellent avenue to build a network.
• Encourage customer interaction. A comment placed by your customers on your blog is a good avenue for customers’ compliments, complaints and feedback.
• Increase exposure to your product or business. A blog that talks about your business or product is a great way to educate your prospective clients about the services you offer.

Cons:

• Inability to update blogs with good quality content might put your company’s reputation at higher risk.
• Can be time consuming to come up with content that others want to read about.

Article Marketing

7. This is an online marketing tool where a company writes short articles that are relevant to their industry. These articles are uploaded to different internet sites in order to reach targeted audience for a certain business. This type of advertising is very effective when a business will carefully analyse its target audience and correspondingly creates articles that interest them.

Pros:

• You can boost your company’s credibility, especially if it your article is properly written and shows that you really are an expert in your field.
• Can create long term traffic to your site

Cons:

• Requires time and substantial writing skills to develop worthy articles.

Banner Advertisement

8. The most common advertisement on the online world is the banner advertisement. A graphic image and links are displayed on a highly visited website and people viewing that site see the advertisement.

Pros:

• Can drive high traffic to your site because it is placed in a site with high web traffic.
• Considered faster than SEO because you may not be placed on top of the search list but with a banner ad you have more control of how your business is presented.
• It allows you to grab audience attention to discover more about your business by simply clicking the banner.

Cons:

• This can be very costly; however, proper planning on this type of advertisement can get you a reasonable return on investment.

Affiliate Marketing

9. This is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates marketing efforts. It is a joint effort of online merchants with other website owners who agree to advertise the merchants business; in return a commission is paid to the site owner on every activity made that benefited the merchant’s business, for example sales or sign ups to an offered service.

Pros:

• It gives wider place to sell the company’s product
• Merchants gain more customers without spending time searching for them since the effort is at the other website.

Cons:

• High cost associated with high commissions or referral fees to website owners/affiliates
• Might put your business at risk – for example,if the affiliates indulge in false advertising and misleading information to gain commissions.

Email Marketing

10. This is a direct marketing style of campaign that sends email information to prospective and past customers about certain products and/or services or your business. A well-crafted, personalised message that goes directly to the inbox of your target market is a powerful marketing tool in the online arena.

Pros:

• Cost effective and allows you to reach global audience
• You can add graphics, videos, and music to make the campaign more interesting (although music or sound effects are not recommended)
• It’s the simplest form of marketing - all you need is a well-constructed email, an interesting subject line and a list of your target recipients.

Cons:

• There is a possibility that your email be labelled as spam, and be blocked from reaching your customers, if you are not experienced.
• Many people tend not to open unsolicited emails.

If you want to grow your business now, check out our web design page or take a look at some of the websites that we've done.

1. Time management begins with clarity. You must take the time to sit down with a piece of paper and think through what it is you want to accomplish in a day, a week, or a month - or even in every area of your life. Unclear definitions of what you want to accomplish in a given day prevents you from getting the work done in the time allotted to it. Without clarity you may be attempting to do many things only to find out that it does not contribute to your goals.

Plan in advance

2. Make a list of your tasks every day before you begin, or, just before you finish the day for the next day. Get a journal or setup an excel sheet and list every step and each task that you want to complete and organize that list by priority and sequence. Planning in advance lets you figure out things before they are in action; it will give you an idea of what to do and what to avoid in order accomplish your goals. As a time management expert Alec Mackenzie says, “Action without planning is the cause of every failure.”

Organize your list by priority

3. Prioritize your tasks; rank and separate each item by importance. Choose your most important task and discipline yourself to concentrate single mindedly on that one most important task or activity until it is 100% complete. Each time you complete an important task you will experience a burst of elation, enthusiasm and heightened self esteem that will keep you going and motivated to start and complete your next major task. If the task is not possible to complete, make sure you spend the first two hours of the day doing it, not the last two. Usually if you make a start, you’ll be more motivated to continue.

Delegate and learn to say “no”

4. Learn to delegate, outsource and eliminate all tasks and activities that contribute very little to your results and rewards. Also one of the most powerful words in time management is to say “no” to anything that is not high value use of your time. Make every effort to act thoughtfully and deliberately, and decide the things you are not going to do right now, if ever.

Have an end to the day

5. Here’s an absolutely brilliant piece of advice that I received recently: make your post-it note list for today, and do that ONLY. Write everything else that crops up on tomorrow’s post-it note list. That way, you get more and more motivated as you list goes down and down (not up and up). This forces you to prioritise well, serves to energise you as you go on, and also allows you to have an ‘end’ to your day (particularly relevant for those working at home).

Organize your space

6. Manage your time through organizing your work place and creating an effective file management system, to minimize time spent on locating files and documents. Having your work space under control will help you feel more in control of your time. Trying to save money by not investing in some sort of filing system will inevitably waste you hours down the track. And I do mean waste. It’s so frustrating not being able to find files. Get a filing cabinet or similar, folders, labels, and sort away!

Break tasks into easier bite-sized chunks

7. We tend to have many excuses for not getting things done. “It’s too hard”, “it’s too long”, “I need something to eat”, “I can do this tomorrow” are our usual excuses. But by breaking down complex tasks into smaller bite-size chunks, makes difficult things become doable steps. Moreover, breaking up tasks into smaller pieces lets you see clearly how much (or how little) you have to do now, and you’ll be able to delegate easier.

Try this:

1. Write down the broad objective or goal.
2. Break that down into two or more broad sections (more necessary for larger projects).
3. Break each section down into two or more (perhaps five or six) much more quantifiable steps (not broad) that will complete each section.
4. Break down each of these tasks into small, bite-sized chunks. It’s important that your final steps be something easily quantifiable, e.g. setup graph; upload and publish article; clean out inbox; follow up Bill & Jane.
5. Then delegate tasks and note down which ones must precede others to help with prioritising.

If you want to grow your business now, check out our graphic design page or take a look at some of the graphics that we've done.

Be remembered through your Company's brand

1. Branding is one of the crucial factors that aid the success of any business. Company logos and even letterhead create an impact in the minds of your customers. A logo gives a symbolic identity to a company, it is the face of your business, and it serves a dual purpose of influencing your target market and connecting prospective customers to your products or services. Letterheads and logos are powerful marketing tools to build a strong brand and a corporate identity. By ensuring that it is well designed and is of good quality, you clearly send a message out to the recipients about your professionalism and the values you stand for.

Be effective in advertising

2. A good business card can be a tool for advertising your business. It may answer this question: "What's the one thing that you want anyone who takes your card to do?"
   Business card design is important, as they are your main presentation to a possible client. In a competitive world, it is necessary and almost mandatory to have a business card that represents your company and communicates your values, all the while being elegant and attractive, besides being profitable. A business or personal card represents you to your future clients, symbolizing the values and services that your company offers to its customers.

Get ahead among others

3. You may feel that your company was not rising above your competitors and is often left behind. So what could be the problem? Often businessmen settle for mediocrity with regards to proper branding of their business, without taking into mind that proper business packaging gives you an edge over your competitors. How well your business graphics looks, leaves an impression on the potential customers to drop by, stay, and get to know more about your business.

Influence potential customer decision

4. Oftentimes great colour contrast, a fascinating logo design, a skilful brochure, flyer or even a business card draws attention to potential clients. How well you present your company through these mediums will lead to convert an inquiry to a satisfied client. While it is true that you can't change the market, effective designs can influence and convince people, and lead them to give your business a try.

Stand out in the market place

5. As the number of companies, products and services increases, an effective eye catching design is a critical element for marketing your business. An innovative design incorporated with fresh ideas on a regular basis keeps your company interesting and compelling to new clients and will help differentiate your company from the competition. Brands are not just for big companies, they can also make smaller businesses stand out from the crowd and can play a significant part in helping your business or services become the first choice for customers.

Build trust and confidence

6. Marketing solutions that look experienced and professional can go a long way towards building trust and confidence among your customers thus making your business more credible. You may not have been in business "since 1908", but if you have invested in an identity, you are much less likely to fold in the eyes of your customers. It goes a long way toward building that all-important trust.

Make your company look bigger

7. The way your business graphics look can really affect how your business is perceived. A professionally made business advertising campaign that instils the aura of professionalism would make your customers see you as much more of an authority in your area. Home-printed, generically designed graphics make your potential clients cringe and label you as small and inconsequential -and that is how they will want to compensate you.

Convey that you are established

8. A well designed logo and professionally printed materials show that you are committed to both your business and clients. It also makes you look like you've been around for some time and that you are stable.

Grow customer sales and increase repeat sales

9. With the latest advancements in the graphic design technology, it has now become possible to easily attract new clients and retain the older ones. Graphic designs help in selling a product or service by enhancing their visual representation. Business professionals often use graphic design in order to further promote their products and services.

Increase business value

10. Businesses that add value through design see a greater impact on business performance than the rest. Your brand value is very important to increase your sales, and graphic designs are used to create appeal to make your brand identity work in the right way for you. It enhances the message you are trying to send, thus adding credibility to your business and helps your business gain more recognition.

If you want to grow your business now, check out our graphic design page or take a look at some of the graphics that we've done.