My Favorite Google Chrome Extensions for Social Media Marketers

What has changed in the world of Chrome extensions? A great deal. New extensions are continually emerging that can drastically change the day-to-day habits of social media marketers. Plus, a few classic extensions have undergone impressive upgrades.

Check out this list of the best Google Chrome extensions for social media marketers, and start saving some valuable time and effort at work.

Momentum

Sitting down at work and firing up your computer only to be faced with an overflowing inbox isn’t the best way to start your day. This extension offers a beautiful way to get in the right headspace before getting bogged down with scheduling posts, replying to followers, monitoring hashtags, creating new content, and everything else a busy social media manager is responsible for on a daily basis.

The Momentum extension replaces your “new tab” homepage with a gorgeous new photo every day along with a personalized greeting. Momentum also allows you to set one main goal for the day and keep track of a longer to-do list, helping you stay focused throughout the day. You’ll see the local weather in the top right corner, a list of links you frequently visit to the left, and a motivational quote at the bottom of the page.

Stay Focused

Just because social media managers get paid to be on the sites that other people use to waste time doesn’t mean they don’t suffer from bouts of intense procrastination elsewhere on the web. Thankfully, technology can be a source of discipline as much as it is a source of distraction.

StayFocusd is an extension that limits the amount of time you can spend on certain websites (a.k.a. the ones that you visit instead of doing work). Once you’ve used up your allotted time, you can’t visit the site again for the rest of the day. You can get pretty granular with what you choose to block as well, whether it’s an entire site, a specific page, or even certain types of content like videos, games, or images.

Evernote Web Clipper

Social media managers typically have to switch between their creative and strategic hats throughout the day, often needing to wear them at the same time. Jumping back and forth between these two dynamics during a busy day can cause even the most organized person to feel a little frayed. Enter: Evernote.

The Evernote Web Clipper extension allows you to clip any article or web page and save it in one place. Alongside the notes and to-do lists that you can create in Evernote itself, this extension allows you to pull in key text from any website or article you find while doing research online. This is also a great way for you to collect content to share on social without having to keep 20 tabs open all day.

Grammarly

Publishing a post with a spelling mistake is a nightmare for social media managers—and rightly so. While the occasional error happens to everyone from time to time, consistent mistakes can damage your brand’s credibility. Grammarly can help catch them all, including the mistakes that manage to evade the usual red squiggly line: an incorrect verb tense, a missing article before a plural noun, or the misuse of a comma.

The Grammarly extension can catch over 250 types of errors, many of which aren’t typically caught by spellcheckers. Along with catching your mistakes, Grammarly can actually help you write better overall, by offering synonym suggestions in line with the context of what you’re writing.

Figure it Out

The biggest challenge when working globally often has nothing to do with language barriers or cultural nuances—it’s figuring out what time it is in a different region without doing the math on your fingers under your desk. The Figure it Out extension allows you to add up to 10 time zones to your “new tab” screen, which should help make scheduling posts or setting up meetings with different regions super easy. Figure it Out also displays regional national holidays, so you can avoid posting your best social content on a day when no one will be paying attention.

How to Get Your E-commerce Store Noticed

More and more people are looking to set up e-commerce stores which allow them to sell products from their own home. First, you must get your E-commerce store noticed.

After all, these businesses can be relatively easy to set up and operate, which makes them a fantastic way to earn money while working from home, whether this is a full-time position or a way to earn on the side.

Additionally, you can sell practically anything online regardless of whether it’s a digital product, a physical product that you have made, or physical products that you have sourced from elsewhere.

With that in mind, here is our must-know guide for getting your e-commerce store noticed.

Sell In-Demand Products

Your e-commerce store will never succeed if you are selling products which not many people want or need. Instead, look into trending products that you can easily sell from home. There are then various ways that you can sell these goods.

A few good examples of current in-demand products include:

Smartphone accessories
Clothing
Health and beauty products
Fitness products
Maternity wear
Video games

To get noticed and develop a brand reputation, you will need to sell products that are of the highest quality.

Make sure that anything that you make or source will satisfy the customer.

Social Media

Social media is a fantastic tool for raising awareness about your e-commerce store. Invite your network to follow your professional pages and use relevant and interesting content to be shared to attract new followers.

You can also use promotions such as “like and share” competitions to encourage people to share your pages.

Create High-Quality Content

Following on from this, you can get noticed by generating high-quality content that your target audience will find helpful.

A few good examples include:

Product demonstrations/reviews
Explainer videos
Interviews
How to guides
Industry news

Internet Marketing

One of the most effective ways to get your e-commerce store noticed is to use internet marketing from a reputable agency.

They will be able to increase your web presence and visibility online, which will direct more traffic to your website while simultaneously establishing your brand as an authoritative figure.

Influencer Marketing

Another useful form of marketing is influencer marketing where you get an influential figure (on social media) to promote your products.

It can be highly effective as the recommendation is coming from someone else but also somebody that is influential and respected amongst their followers.

Customer Reviews

Similarly, getting your existing customers to leave reviews for both the products and service is a great way to increase your reputation, which will help you to get noticed and become a trusted seller.

You can also use any negative feedback to learn and adjust your business model.

Setting up an e-commerce store can be a great way to earn money, but it can be challenging to get your store noticed in such a competitive marketplace.

Once you have developed a reputation and lots of people are visiting your store, these businesses can be relatively easy to operate, but first, it will require hard work and patience when starting out with these all being effective ways of getting noticed.

29 Point Zappos Media Checklist to Learn From

Excellence is … caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, and dreaming more than others think is practical. This is a good definition of excellence by Winston Churchill, isn’t it? Certainly worked for selecting the social media experts I recommend. In my career of 45+ years, I have experienced many types of jobs, many of them in the field of marketing, and customer service. Innovation and business growth. I have learned much from the Zappos media checklist and many media marketing secrets.

With the advent of the Internet, the number of marketing options available to both budding and experienced entrepreneurs has become staggering. Zappos media checklist has been leading the charge.

In all of these, I found that it was critical for continuous learning and adapting to change. This is particularly true for the field of social media, where things change with the speed of the internet.

No shock in this statement – I’m a big fan of blogs and blogging as a core marketing, content, and SEO practice.

Related: An Update to Starbucks Creative Ideas and Innovation

Did you know the amount of new technical information is doubling every two years? EVERY TWO YEARS? The top 10 jobs that were in demand in 2013 didn’t exist in 2004.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that don’t yet exist. All this in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. Scary, isn’t it?

For students starting a 4 year technical or college degree, one-half of what they will learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study. We are clearly living in exponential times, aren’t we?

For more background see Shift Happens 2013.

So we hope you note and appreciate the amount of change going on in the world and the rate of change acceleration. The implication of the rapidity of change means everything we learn has an extremely short shelf life. Big implications here for continuous learning in any field, yes?

Here is an interesting quote that sheds a good light on how to stay up to speed on social media:

I just sit in my office and read all day.

– Warren Buffett

Well maybe not all day, but reading for continuous learning is a must, isn’t it? To increase your continuous learning, what skill would you choose? We would choose to increase learning by improving reading skills.

Reading … this is how Warren Buffett, one of the most successful people in the business world, describes his day. Sitting. Reading. He advises everyone to read more, and that’s certainly a goal we can all get behind.

So where do we find what to read? And what are we to do with all that information once we have it?

I subscribe to many blogs, read blogs daily, and generally find that when I search for things, blog posts offer the most useful information and new ideas. I read many different types of blogs – some for inspiration, some for thought leadership, and still some for personal growth from the Zappos media checklist.

I frequently get asked about resources I turn to and, for today, here they are. I placed them into a handful of categories, but many of them could cross over into multiple categories and often do in the range of topics they weigh in on.

Most of these won’t be new to my regular readers as I reference them often, but it can be helpful to see them all in one place. Subscribe to this list and you’ll always have ready access to the best social media tips, tools, and techniques you can take action on today.

Today I will present a list of blogs that I turn to on a regular basis when I want to learn something practical and useful for social media marketing and customer service.

This list of 30 blogs isn’t the top list or ranking or any other of the link-bait kinds of lists you see out there. The blogs on this list are tools for me as I market and grow my business and attempt to expand my knowledge in an ever-changing world.

Feel free to share blogs you find useful when you need to learn how to do stuff.

Zappos media checklist … social media

Social Media Examiner – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
Buffer – https://blog.bufferapp.com/
Razor Social – http://www.razorsocial.com/blog/
Kiss Metrics – https://blog.kissmetrics.com/
Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog/
QuickSprout – http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

Social media marketing tips … conversion

Kiss Metrics – https://blog.kissmetrics.com/
Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog/
QuickSprout – http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

***Zappos media checklist … how to do social media* *marketing***

Seth Godin Blog – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Guy Kawasaki – http://guykawasaki.com/

Digital Spark Marketing – http://www.digitalsparkmarketing.com/

The Life Hacks: Secret Sauce You Should Employ?

Video

Reel SEO – http://www.reelseo.com/
Video Brewery – http://www.videobrewery.com/blog/

Podcast

Podcast Answer Man – http://podcastanswerman.com/
Entrepreneur on Fire – http://www.entrepreneuronfire.com

SEO
MOZ – http://moz.com/
Search Engine Watch – http://searchenginewatch.com/

PPC

PPC Hero – http://www.ppchero.com/
WordStream – http://www.wordstream.com/blog

Analytics

Occam’s Razor – http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Crazy Egg – http://blog.crazyegg.com/

Content

Content Marketing Institute – http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/
Copyblogger – http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/

WordPress

WP Beginner – http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/wp-tutorials/
Yoast – https://yoast.com/

Key takeaways

So if you want to maximize your continuous learning in social media, marketing, and customer service, do lots of reading from these references. You will be amazed at how much you will learn.

Be curious and ask yourself lots of questions that you should try and answer. Never stop learning and living a full life.

Live as if today will be your last day and learn as if you will live forever.

Please share one of your continuous learning experiences on social media with this community. Have any questions or comments to add below?

Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Adapting to Major Changes in the Social Media Climate

An Update to Starbucks Creative Ideas and Innovation

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

COVID-19 and the Changing Role of eCommerce

COVID-19 has and will continue to send a shiver through the retail sector, although eCommerce has managed to remain relatively unscathed as lockdown days turn into weeks, and we each forge a new sense of normal.

Brands who already offered their products and services online through an eCommerce website have captured a large slice of the pie, and businesses without that online presence are scrambling to get themselves live and in front of the right audience through the aid of leading eCommerce SEO agencies.

We don’t know what’s around the corner and how long these restrictions will stay in place, but we do know that the role of eCommerce is rapidly changing, so let’s review the opportunities and considerations.

Change in shopping behaviour

There has been an undeniable change in buying behavior across the board, and how could there not be when these very rituals have been removed as an option mandated by governments?

Panic buying aside, eCommerce has ultimately seen a spike in uptake with individuals of all generations shopping online in lieu of a brick and mortar option. Data from Search Engine Land shows that people are spending 10-30% more online due to COVID-19.

One thing to consider is that all spikes come with a downturn or a growth plateau in a best-case scenario. As new customers walk through your proverbial doors, work to convert them into a return customer and advocate, so that when they can visit their bricks and mortar locales, your eCommerce business is part of their consideration.

There will be many new outlooks when COVID-19 ends, as businesses and workplaces have shown how effective they can adapt, so be a part of that change and prove that the old way isn’t necessarily the best way.

What products are soaring and what products have seen a downturn

When looking at eCommerce performance, there are no surprises to see who is outperforming the market and who has taken a pause amidst our lifestyle adjustments. Health/medical supplies, pet supplies, groceries, home entertainment, delivery services, and home gym supplies have seen exponential growth.

Conversely, beauty, apparel, and home/furniture have seen a downturn. That’s not to suggest all fitness suppliers are enjoying that growth and all beautiful retailers have closed up shop – but it does demonstrate the priorities of buyers.

These patterns present an opportunity for eCommerce businesses to enhance their service offering and potentially diversify to meet the growing needs of a wider group of customers. That’s not to say that you must ditch your entire eCommerce model, but perhaps it’s a matter of re-educating the market as to why these services and products are still relevant in a COVID-19 world.

This is were content complements your eCommerce store, providing quality descriptions, blogs, FAQ’s and Hot-To’s that will shape their experience and how they rate their need for your goods. After all, your audience has the time to engage more consistently.

Social media is up by up to 50% in some areas

eCommerce cannot exist in a vacuum and is best paired with an active social media presence that captures an audience and drives conversions. In some areas, social media is up almost 50% which is an incredibly compelling reason to focus your energy here as the key lead generator for your eCommerce store.

And due to this screentime increasing, you should be experimenting with different content forms as this period of uncertainty has allowed for valuable awareness and consideration phases.

Another fact that many eCommerce brands have failed to see is that many first-time users are venturing into this online landscape, and that should come with some responsibility and due diligence. Is your eCommerce set-up to cater to all web-literacy levels, or could you do with a few more prompts to ensure your user pathway is clear and enjoyable?

These new online audiences (typically Gen X and Baby Boomers) have arrived at your site by circumstance only, but maybe you can give them a reason to return if the process is validating, transparent and well-engineered.

There is no end date that anyone is working toward here, and so it’s impossible to predict and plan for the end of COVID-19. All we can do is leverage those elements that we can control and try to make an opportunity out fo the cards that we have been dealt with.

Look for Ways to Improve Your Team Through Better Hiring

Hiring new talent is an inevitable and critical part of being a business leader to improve your team. And it’s more complicated than just reviewing resumes and conducting interviews.

There are many employer mistakes that might deter candidates, from poorly-crafted job descriptions to lack of communication about applications.

However, there are also a few steps you can take that might ease the process and encourage only the best applicants. Here are six to improve your hiring process.

Write sound job descriptions

Many companies write descriptions with lists of responsibilities and requirements, but a study found that this can alienate qualified employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the study, U.S. and Canadian researchers rewrote 56 job ads to emphasize two different approaches: the Needs-Supplies approach, which focuses on what the company can do for the candidate, and the Demands-Abilities approach, which focuses on what the company expects from the candidate.

Of the 991 responses, applicants who responded to Needs-Supplies job listings were rated higher than those who responded to the Demands-Abilities ads.

Focus on what your company can do for potential employees, and you’ll attract candidates who better fit your needs.

Build a strong employer brand

According to an Office Vibe report, more than 75 percent of professionals are passive candidates who aren’t currently looking for jobs but are open to new opportunities. Building a strong employer brand not only reduces employee turnover by 28 percent, it also attracts these passive candidates to your company over others.

A Glassdoor survey found that 69 percent of respondents are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages its brand by responding to reviews, updating the company’s profile, and sharing updates on the company’s culture and work environment.

When you focus on building a well-known employer brand, you won’t have to do as much active recruiting. You’ll be a highly desired organization, flooding with applicants.

Move as quickly as possible

Office Vibe reported that the best candidates are off the market in 10 days. It’s important to act quickly, especially when you know you’re interested in a specific applicant. Even if you haven’t made a decision yet, you should follow up with the candidate often, discussing further details of the position to ensure you’re on their radar.

Also, respond to any questions or concerns right away to keep them updated throughout the process.

Embrace social media

Most people want to work for companies that keep up with the latest tech trends. Part of embracing the digital age means using public social media profiles for candidate research. Like most employers, you’ll probably do a standard background check on applicants, but the candidate’s social media profiles can offer more details about the individual as a person and an employee, for better or for worse.

While it’s legally risky to allow a candidate’s social media activity to factor into your hiring decisions, it can give you a better picture of someone you’re interested in hiring.

Fit the personality to the job

Although the right skill set may seem like the most important factor in whether a candidate is a good fit, the truth is that skills can be acquired, but personalities cannot.

Consider how a candidate’s personality traits align with daily job tasks. For instance, a trait such as empathy would likely be much more important for a nurse or a social worker than it would be for a tax attorney or a computer programmer.

“What kind of person you hire depends on [the] culture of the organization and the kind of job,” said Maynard Brusman, a San Francisco-based psychologist and founding principal of consulting firm Working Resources. “A great person with all kinds of skills may be [a] good fit for one and [a] poor fit for another, simply based on their personality type.”

Improve your interviews

A study by Leadership IQ found that failures exhibited by new employees may result from flawed interview processes. Eighty-two percent of the 5,000 managers surveyed reported that the interviewers were too focused on other issues, too pressed for time, or lacked the confidence in their interviewing abilities to pay attention to red flags.

According to Leadership IQ CEO Mark Murphy, this is because the job interview process focuses on making sure new hires are technically competent, whereas other factors that are just as important to employee success – like coachability, emotional intelligence, temperament, and motivation – are often overlooked.

It’s important to allow prospective employees to interview you, too. Letting candidates ask questions will give you a chance to see what’s important to them, Brusman said. It also gives them a chance to determine that they want to keep pursuing a job at your company or to decide that it’s not the right fit for them.

“Be open and honest about what it’s going to be like to work for your company,” Brusman said. “You want to give a realistic preview of the work environment.”

Pay attention to all your reviews

Potential employees often seek insider information about companies they want to work for, and this includes salary estimates, interview tips, and reviews from current and former employees from sites such as Glassdoor.

According to Glassdoor, 46 percent of its members read company reviews before they even speak to a recruiter or hiring manager. Top candidates may not even apply in the first place if they don’t like what they see: 69 percent of job seekers said they would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation, even if they were currently unemployed.

Based on Glassdoor’s data, two actions that draw in candidates include being active on review websites and posting accurate information. If you have a lot of negative reviews from former employees, it may be time to work on your company culture before you try to fill any open positions. Doing so can improve employee retention and lead to more positive reviews that will attract quality employees.

Five Great SEO Tips for Any Entrepreneur

Building a business is daunting in itself, but you’re then faced with the prospect of actually successfully marketing that business and getting the word out there. If you want your new business to be noticed, then you’ll need to ensure that you’re making it to the top of the search engine rankings to ensure that you start pulling in good business and climb your way there. As a starting point, good tech knowledge is always a must. Here are five great SEO tips any new business owner can implement.

Perfect Your Design

It’s not good pooling all your effort and potentially money into good SEO practices if your website is going to be bland and unusable as soon as people land on it. You need to make sure that your SEO is fully up to scratch and engaging and interesting enough when people do land upon your website.

Your online presence should be second to none, so perfect your design and feel proud of the results once completed.

As a great starting point, you should lay a solid foundation of a well-designed website and landing pages in order to start having something to show when you implement keywords.

Identify Your Keywords

In order to begin your SEO journey of increasing your rankings, you first need to understand which keywords and key search terms you’re aiming to rank for. These should be in line with the products and services you are offering. Competitor research can be extremely helpful for this, as you will be able to see which search terms your competitors are the best ranking for.

If you’re looking for assistance understanding keyword terms and how best to employ them, employ the SEO services of a company like clickintelligence.co to help you, including if you’re short on time and looking for partner services to help you get on track.

Create Unique Content

Ensure that everything you write and produce is unique to you and your business. By writing unique descriptions and content, this can help your business stand out from a similar product or service when Google is filtering through content.

Ensure all site content is engaging and original, and that no content is duplicated on your site.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Google doesn’t take into account your activity on social media or follower engagement, but that doesn’t mean you can’t drive people to your website through social media. Through all the content and posts you make, you can sell what your business is offering and include backlinks to your website and products.

Engage with others on social media and create positive reactions to increase the likelihood that your content is always willingly viewed.

Offer Something Useful

Help visitors and consumers get to know a certain product or industry or create content that is helpful and informative. You could post demonstrative videos, helpful ‘how to’ guides or any general information which helps people understand your service better and allows them to engage with your business.

12 Successful Ways Canva Creates Images That Sell

The right kind of imagery is the difference between social media graphics and ads that convert, and others that make little or no impact. So you want Canva creates images to sell.

They can also turn customers away if the images aren’t handled just the right way. We’ve all seen it. Blank, glossy eyes, stretched smiles, forced, friendly interactions.

The telltale signs of a stock photo. Over the years, people have become professional stock spotters, and they typically don’t like them.

The thing is, there are times when stock photography is necessary, and with a few tips and tricks, you can disassociate your photos from the generic smiling businesswoman standing in front of a conference table.

For successful visual marketing, it’s important for Canva to have the skills to know how to create images that will sell and convert.

To help you out, we put together this handy guide with many useful tips that will help train your eye and transform you into a visual marketing pro.

Canva creates images … never compromise on quality

Low quality, pixelated images are a big no-no. Many viewers will click off of a web page if the images are grainy. Make sure your images are clean, crisp, in focus, and have a good resolution (images online should be no less than 72 dpi).

As well as our selection of free, high-quality stock photography to choose from, there’s plenty of great options out there that won’t require you to spend a cent.

Canva creates images … evoke strong emotions

Humans are emotional creatures. A great way to connect people to your brand is through striking an emotional chord. The emotion you portray should be the one you want your brand to make people feel. If they feel something towards your brand, they’ll build a stronger connection.

An ad drawing attention to the poverty other countries face

This image plays on irony and empathy. You’re curious why a man in the middle of a desert would be holding a glass of beer, and when you read the text, you make the connection. You feel empathy for him, and even a little guilty about drinking your beer while he has little fresh water.

Utilize hashtags and popular search terms

This is one of the most important things you can do with your images.

If you optimize your images, you can create more traffic to your website through search engines (like Google Images). It’s almost like a hashtag in a sense and can be done rather easily.

Canva creates images … images express the message without text

The images you choose should lend well to your message. Make sure they support what you’re trying to say, whether that’s visually representing your message, or acting as an accent.

An audience should see them in the design

If you’re targeting millennials, don’t show images of middle-aged people. Show the people you want to have as customers.

Put them in situations that your viewers can relate to, and try to make them feel as real as possible.

Canva creates images … experiment with Instagram

Instagram can be your best friend. Snap a quick photo with your phone (the quality is often as good as some digital cameras) and post it online.

Take a few more seconds to create an interesting composition, slap a filter on it, and use a few hashtags and you’re on your way to tons of likes.

Topshop’s Instagram page is showing lots of snapshots.

There are a lot of brands that are heavily active on platforms like Instagram, and they have a huge following, like Topshop.

Not everything they post is necessarily a product they sell or related to the company, but it still fits in with the overall theme they have going on.

The Instagram aesthetic is incredibly popular and can be found in a lot of images taken with professional grade cameras.

They’re very easy to construct and edit, and you can see some good examples of the imagery above.

Visual content should always have a purpose

People can smell a generic photo from a mile away. Make sure you’re not just using an image for the sake of using an image.

Sometimes you’re strapped for time and can’t shoot your specific image, but if you have to use a generic one put it into context.

Here’s a good example of what could have been a generic ad for prescription medicine. A blank staring pose and empty frame, yet it was customized just enough to pull it out of that generic, medicine feel.

Canva creates images … jazz up your images

Don’t feel constrained to the image you have. You can do whatever you want with it. Try cropping it, adding text and filters, and adjusting the colors. Feel free to utilize the image in whatever way works best for you.

An example of a manipulated image

This is a good example of photo manipulation. This is a little more advanced, but a lot can still be learned from it. Odds are, they had the picture of the goldfish sans helmet.

They added in a separate image of the helmet to create one entire image. Feel free to put multiple photos together if it suits your needs.

For more inspiration, check out Canva’s social stream on Instagram.

Here are some examples of adding filters and text, cropping, and changing colors on existing photos to give them a new feel.

Imagery using a punch of color to attract attention

The bright color in this image leads to the freshness of the product as well as the season. It looks pleasant and appetizing and encourages you to visit the market and purchase what you’re seeing.

Choose images that relate to your objective

The things you post personally on social media won’t always be the same as what you post on your business’ social media. It’s important to know where that difference lies to avoid issues.

A brand that relies on humor. And it works.

Taco Bell is very humorous and carefree. They can get away with posting a lot more radical stuff because that is who they are as a brand.

Make sure you know what your brand stands for, and reflect that in your social media and imagery.

Tip: Once you decide what kind of images your brand will use, also decide which ones they will avoid.

Here are some things that are good to avoid (unless you’re someone like Taco Bell).

If you’re not a liquor brand, you probably don’t want to be posting drinks and parties. Keep it professional and keep ‘rants’ on your accounts.

Engage the audience by getting them to generate photos with your product

Another instance where Instagram can be your best friend (along with other social media platforms). You can encourage people to snap their photos and post them online.

Give them a unique hashtag to use, and you’ll have people from all over stockpiling images for your brand.

An example of a brand that posts user-generated photos on Instagram

Benefit Cosmetics often features people who use their products on their Instagram page, and that’s a great way to get people to build a relationship with your brand.

Essentially they’re doing the work for you; you just have to sift through the images and decide what ones you want to feature yourself (but always be sure to mention the original owner).

Canva creates images … find creative ways to optimize images

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so save your breath when you could use an image. If you don’t need to spell something out for someone, don’t. Choose to do it visually.

The images in this ad don’t need further explaining!

Here’s a good example of communicating a message visually. You know exactly what Nikon is trying to showcase: facial recognition. The ad shows different faces being highlighted humorously.

Choose photos that provide a feeling without needing to be explained

In these images, you get the message without seeing words. If you see a blazing red chili pepper, you know it’s hot (the same with flames).

You see the images and understand the feeling they’re giving off without it being spelled out for you.

Canva creates images … create a sense of energy with action images

Show action in your photos; it excites the viewer. It doesn’t matter what the people in the photos are doing as long as it relates to your brand or message, it could be talking, eating, dressing, shopping, etc.

An ad using a still image that still has movement

You can feel the movement in this image even though it’s still. The energy creates an emotion and fuels the message underneath.

It is so much more powerful due to the action, and wouldn’t have the same effect if they chose to show the impact of two vehicles another way.

Get your viewers excited by choosing images that show action.

All of these images contain action, yet they all show it differently. Some of it is fun and lighthearted, some are intense and adrenaline filled, while some are relaxed and playful.

Action can help enforce the mood and emotion you’re hoping to create in your imagery.

The bottom line

We often talk about purple cows; about why we need to stand out from the crowd, and why it’s important being different. Some people make it their quest to be different.

It’s so much easier to be remembered when you’re different, it’s true, as a person, and as a business. But, being different is not it, when it comes to marketing and business.

If you look at a specific group of people, the individuals inside the group will try to be different from people outside the group.

But, at the same time, they understand that they belong to the group. So, it means that they’re different than the rest of us, but they’re similar to the people inside the group they belong to.

Look at the people in a band. Are they that different from the other people in the band? They’re not identical. No, they’re not. But, you can probably see the same features.

They’re different from you, but not that different from the other people in the band.

Being different is more important than ever. But, it’s still not it.

Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman says that 95 percent of our decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind.

This means that most of the time, we don’t make rational choices. What you should be focusing on is not being different, but the story of how to create the difference for your customers.

That is creating visual content and selecting images that will be remembered because they are so unique.

WINNING ADVERTISEmeNT DESIGN — Want to build a winning advertisement design?

Need some help in improving the creativity of you and your staff? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote for a workshop on creativity. Learn about some options for creativity workshops to get noticeable results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new creative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?

Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

10 Examples of How Zappos Marketing Strategy Makes a Difference

What makes Zappos marketing strategy stand out above the crowd?

Cultivating relationships and social networks are certainly contributors. Using the many new social media tools and social platforms, yes?

Marketing, at its best, is about the future. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time stuck in the past. We research what already happened and extrapolate forward to produce a plan. It’s not that we’re lazy, we simply know a whole lot more about the past than the present or the future.

It’s been nearly half a century since Philip Kotler first published his Principles of Marketing, which has defined the practice of millions of professionals worldwide ever since. It’s no stretch to say that before Kotler, there was no true marketing profession.

What made Kotler different than what came before is that he took insights from other fields, such as economics, social science, and analytics, and applied them to the marketing arena. Although that may seem basic now, it was groundbreaking then.

Today technology is transforming marketing once again. Although up to this point, most of the impact has been tactical, over the next decade or so there will be a major strategic transformation. This, of course, will be a much harder task because we will not only have to change what we do but how we think.

We already know that marketing is becoming more social, local, and mobile, just as we know that big data and new interfaces such as touch, voice, and gesture are becoming increasingly more important. What comes next?

Note that “The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.”
—Soren Kierkegaard

History is filled with examples of people who embraced their limitations rather than fought them. Dr. Seuss wrote his most famous book by only using 50 different words.

Ingvar Kamprad only had enough money to start a business selling match sticks. He turned it into IKEA. George R.R. Martin writes best-selling novels using decades-old technology. Richard Branson has built 400 businesses despite having dyslexia.

Our limitations provide us with the greatest opportunity for creativity and inventiveness.

When choosing to learn from other marketing strategies, it is always helpful to choose one of the top dogs. Ones that stand way above the crowd. Zappos is certainly one of those in this category we believe. One that we regularly follow.

Some excellent marketing campaign examples.

Social networking is not about farming followers, it’s a way of cultivating relationships.

– Hubspot

Meet Zappos. They have been successfully executing their marketing strategy with a social focus since the first days of social media. For over 5 years, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.

An introduction to Zappos is probably unnecessary.

Key to know: What Marketers Need to Know about Personalization Strategies

But let’s examine one of the Zappos top advantages … their company culture. The four dimensions of their culture core values (our favorite company culture):

Mission

Deliver ‘WOW’ through service

Do more with less

Adaptability

Embrace and drive change

Pursue growth and learning

Involvement

Create fun and a little weirdness

Be adventurous, creative, and open minded

Be passionate and determined

Consistency

Build open and honest relationships with communication

Build a positive team and family spirit

In our opinion, the company has inserted itself into the American e-commerce landscape more quickly and craftily than any retail company in history (even considering its parent Amazon). It has forever changed the way companies market themselves to customers.

Zappos has obviously built their business entirely in the digital realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers. They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in customer service and social media.

Zappos’ ability to wear so many hats … corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation warrants strategic examination.

Why is Zappos’ marketing strategy such a difference-maker? There are key reasons in our minds:

Zappos marketing strategy … going to its customers

When Zappos uses an example of their customer service, it shares it on Google+, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, and pins it on Pinterest. It clearly goes to where all its customers like to hang out. Cross-promotion is more valuable as the world becomes more digitally focused.

Each network provides an opportunity to reach their audience in a new channel. Integrating their strategy on each is crucial to increasing visibility and promoting the brand.

Market segmentation

The company has stayed focused exclusively on e-commerce, competing on those who prefer excellent customer service. One could say they set the mark for everyone to target in customer service. And they make it the core of their marketing strategy.

Execution

The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes shoes and continues to add new products slowly, ensuring it can maintain its quality service. They keep their focus and attention to the details of great execution and service.

Zappos marketing strategy … social media

One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Zappos has certainly taken a leadership position. Their social media strategy is built around their company web site and 5 additional core social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, and Youtube.

We will review Zappos’ social media strategy in detail below.

Adaptation and Innovation

Zappos’ business innovation via its website, has been a huge success. Why you may ask? Because they have combined the concepts of change, experimentation, social media, customer engagement, and market research.

They made the results key components of both their brand as well as their marketing strategy.

Have you given Zappos a try? What did you think?

Zappos marketing strategy … customer relationships

Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers (by word of mouth marketing) in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates.

This holds particularly true in its emphasizing the importance of customer service.

Customer engagement

They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible. What is most important is that they listen carefully, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.

Encourages sharing

Happy customers are eager to share good experiences and offers.

For example, the Zappos promotions like “buy 1 get 1″ garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media through comments, “likes,” and shares.

Experience customization

Want to know one of the most effective examples that Zappos uses to build its marketing and create reciprocity with its customers?

By surprising them!

People like getting things for free and like them, even more, when they are viewed as ‘favors’. But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.

For instance, did you know that Zappos automatically upgrades all purchases to priority shipping … without so much as even a mention on the sales or checkout page?

Why give away this sort of benefit without mentioning it?

Simple …

a company like Zappos (known for their legendary customer service) recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a next day delivery.

That’s not even mentioning the fact that this shipping creates immense goodwill between Zappos and their first-time buyers. (I still remember my first order.)

Lots of ideas here that can be easily replicated … which ones do you feel could benefit your business?

How could you improve the Zappos customer service campaign concept for your business?

The bottom line

At the end of the day, Zappos’ rise to online dominance really just revolves around turning an otherwise complicated shopping experience into one that feels quaint and easy. It accomplished this by setting up a strong behind-the-scenes infrastructure that puts the customer experience at the forefront.

And isn’t that what their new strategy is all about—giving the customer what they want where and when they want it? Unfortunately, it is much easier said than done.

Zappos is one of many businesses we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your own great examples of social marketing strategies.

It’s up to you to keep improving attention to your brand.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy in each of these steps to improving attention to your brand?

Do you have a lesson about making your brand better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Starbucks Marketing … 9 Ways They Employ Social Media Innovation

When choosing to learn from others’ social media strategies, it is always helpful to choose one of the top dogs in social media. Like Starbucks marketing for example.

Marketing is often confused with promotion, but it’s more than that. As Peter Drucker put it, “the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” In truth, marketing is about insights more than anything else.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

Meet Starbucks

They have been successfully executing their social media marketing plan since the first days of social media and social commerce. For over 5 years, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.

With more than 18,000 retail locations in 60 countries, the coffeehouse is the picture of success.

Starbucks rode the baby-boomer trend in the 1990s, the swelling ranks of mid- age professionals who could share and enjoy a cup of coffee with friends and colleagues, away from work and home.

In my opinion, the company has inserted itself into the American urban landscape more quickly and craftily than any retail company in history. It has forever changed the way companies market themselves to customers.

It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests them. So if you are going to generate content marketing campaign designs, you are going to have to create an interesting copy. And, oh, by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?

Here is how we believe they have been so successful:

Related material: What Marketers Need to Know about Personalization Strategies

Market segmentation

The company has stayed with the upper-scale of the coffee market, competing on comfort rather than convenience, which are the case with its closest competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts.

Execution

The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes good coffee, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. They keep their attention on paying attention to the details of great execution and service.

Starbucks marketing … Social Media

One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Starbucks has certainly taken a leadership position. Their social media strategy is built around their company web site and 6 additional social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, YouTube, and My Starbucks Ideas. We will review Starbuck’s social media strategy in detail below.

Adaptation and Innovation

Starbuck’s business crowdsourcing, via it’s My Starbucks Idea website, has been a huge success. Why you may ask? Because they have combined the concepts of change, experimentation, social media, customer engagement, and market research and made the results key components of both their brand as well as their marketing strategy. Have you given My Starbucks Idea a try? What did you think?

Starbucks has clearly embraced the digital realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers.

They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in social media.

Starbucks’ ability to wear so many hats corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation warrants strategic examination.

Why is Starbucks such a social media marketing success story?

There are seven key reasons their social media strategy is a successful difference maker for their marketing campaign. Here is my take on why:

Customer relationships

Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates. This holds true across the board: In-store experiences are highly valued, along with online engagement, emphasizing the importance of customer service.

Going to its customers

When Starbucks takes a photo, it shares it on Instagram, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, and pins it on Pinterest. It clearly goes to where all its customers like to hang out. Cross- promotion is more valuable as the world becomes more digitally focused.

Each network provides an opportunity to reach a new audience, and integrating your strategy on each is crucial to increasing visibility and promoting the brand.

Starbucks marketing … customer engagement

They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible. They listen carefully, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.

My Starbucks Ideas

The My Starbucks Idea website, where Starbucks does its business crowdsourcing, has been actively engaging customers for over 6 years now. It encourages customers to submit ideas for better products, improving the customer experience, and defining new community involvement, among other categories. Clearly, Starbucks has seen and believes what Peter Drucker has to say about business adaptability.

Customers can submit, view, and discuss submitted ideas along with employees from various Starbucks departments. The company regularly polls its customers for their favorite products and has a leaderboard to track which customers are the most active in submitting ideas, comments, and poll participation.

The site is at once a crowdsourcing tool, a market research method that brings customer priorities to light, an on- line community, and an effective internet marketing tool.

More to discover: Facebook Stories … Have You Heard These Remarkable Ones?

Starbucks reflects a mission

Its mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit” one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” They believe lifting customers up will lead to more customer loyalty.

The bottom line

“The value of an idea lies in the using of it .”

Do you have an idea that will change the world? Well, it’s not worth anything unless you can turn that idea into a reality. So take the plunge and see just how far that idea can take you. Or, you can sit around trading advice over the internet.

Our world is in flux. There is no part of the consumer experience that is untouched. Digital technology is disrupting the marketplace, while changes in our understanding of the psychology of decision-making have overturned centuries of conventional wisdom. Even a brief summary such as this one can make the challenges seem overwhelming.

So what to do? First, start somewhere. It can be one place or the other, but at least start. The change will be unfolding for years and everyone else is as confused as you are.

Lots of ideas here that can be easily replicated … which ones do you feel could benefit your business?

How could you improve the Starbucks Coffee Social Media campaign concept for your business?

Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

12 Lessons from Ben and Jerrys Marketing Strategies

What are your favorite brands? Which ones do you follow closely and learn the most from? When choosing to learn from others’ marketing successes, it is always helpful to choose great brands to follow. We follow Ben and Jerry’s marketing strategies.

Why? because of their creativeness and unique approach to customer focus.

Steve Jobs liked to say that it’s not enough to kill bad ideas, you have to kill good ones too. That’s because the good strategy is about making choices and it takes more than intelligence or even instinct, it takes discipline, one of Jobs’ most overlooked qualities.

Marketing strategy is particularly difficult because, as I’ve noted before, the rules have changed. A generation ago, brands mostly strove to create buzz and “drive awareness,” now they need to build compelling experiences that keep consumers engaged.

However, the old tasks have not gone away. We still need to run TV ads and in-store promotions, man conference booths, and hand out brochures, but now on top of that, we have a whole new world of algorithms, apps, and devices to master.

There is a spiritual aspect to our lives … when we give we receive, when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them.

– Ben Cohen

If you want to effectively build your personal brand, you have to center everything around a story.

And not just any story, your story.

Meet Ben and Jerrys. They have been successfully executing their social marketing strategy and plan very early in social commerce. For over 20 years their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.

Before we get started, let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried the Ben and Jerrys experiencc? Can you tell us about it in the comments section? We would really appreciate it.

An introduction to Ben and Jerrys is unnecessary, isn’t it?

With more than 600 retail locations in 34 countries, the ice cream scoop shop is the picture of success.

Ben and Jerrys marketing strategies rode the baby boomer trend in the late 1980s. This was during the swelling ranks of mid-age social media professionals. They created the need where people could share and enjoy a unique ice cream dessert with friends and colleagues.

In our opinion, the company has changed the way companies market themselves to customers. Here is how we feel they have been so successful:

Ben and Jerrys marketing strategies market segmentation

The company has stayed with the upper-scale of the ice cream market, competing on product quality rather than convenience or price.

That strategy was the case with its closest competitors. They target customers with high end ice cream tastes and unique flavors.

Execution

The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes great ice cream, unique flavors, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around.

They keep their focus on paying attention to the details of great execution and service.

Ben and Jerrys marketing with social media

One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Ben and Jerry’s has certainly taken a leadership position in social engagement.

Their social media strategy is built around their company web site and 6 additional social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, Instagram, and YouTube.

Some excellent examples are shown here.

Adaptation and innovation

Ben and Jerry’s have clearly embraced the social realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers.

They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in social commerce.

Ben and Jerry’s ability to wear so many hats on corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation warrants close examination.

Related: Marriott Marketing Makes Customer Experience the Difference Maker

What makes this company so good at being social and executing a great marketing strategy? And what can it teach us? Here are our thoughts on these questions:

Customer collaboration

Collaboration with customers is used to obtain customer ideas on new flavors. Fans inspired the best-selling Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavors.

Customer relationships

Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates.

This holds true across the board. In-store experiences are highly valued, along with online engagement, emphasizing the importance of customer service.

Interactive customer engagement

Engagement is a high priority for the brand and they continually look for new ways to collect inputs from customers. A good current example is their ‘Scoop Truck’, which travels around the country giving out free samples of new products and soliciting customer inputs.

They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible.

They listen carefully, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.

Encourage sharing

Happy customers are eager to share good experiences and offers. For example, frequent promotions garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media through comments, “likes,” and shares.

Social mission focus

Ben and Jerry’s brand has always chosen a social mission. A social mission to stand for and stand behind.

One great example of an issue they got behind was supporting the push to get corporate dollars out of politics … www.getthedoughout.org.

Experience customization

Ben and Jerry’s provides its unique experience through programs such as personalized ice cream flavors, and localized store experiences.

Their social sites, in particular Pinterest and Instagram, encourage users to share their Ben and Jerry’s moments’ which are shared on all their social sites.

adaptation and innovation — Adaptation and innovation.

Taking a stand

Giving consumers a charitable reason to buy that ice cream cone or package is beneficial for all.

The takeaway from Ben and Jerry’s is to know your customer and tie that in with what matters in the world.

So, pay attention to how your brand can fit into trending topics.

Showing customer appreciation

Always looking to show appreciation for their customers. The lead in quote to this article from Ben Cohen says it all about their culture and success at showing customers appreciation.

Whether we are discussing businesses that are social, the best at engaging customers, or being great at a social commerce business, there are few businesses in the class of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.

Being social is a core component of Ben and Jerry’s marketing strategies. It is the integrating ingredient of their online and online to traditional marketing/media.

Not all businesses can go to the extent that Ben and Jerry’s does. But they can support local issues and do weekly online promotions to increase customer engagement. Always looking to gain new customers and convert good customers to advocates.

The bottom line

Lots of ideas here that can be easily replicated. Which ones do you feel could benefit your business? How could you improve the Ben and Jerry’s marketing strategy for your business?

Give it a try and show some patience. You will be surprised at how well at works!

Ben and Jerry’s is one of many businesses we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your own great examples of social marketing strategies.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

More and more people are looking to set up e-commerce stores which allow them to sell products from their own home. First, you must get your E-commerce store noticed.

After all, these businesses can be relatively easy to set up and operate, which makes them a fantastic way to earn money while working from home, whether this is a full-time position or a way to earn on the side.

Additionally, you can sell practically anything online regardless of whether it’s a digital product, a physical product that you have made, or physical products that you have sourced from elsewhere.

With that in mind, here is our must-know guide for getting your e-commerce store noticed.

Sell In-Demand Products

Your e-commerce store will never succeed if you are selling products which not many people want or need. Instead, look into trending products that you can easily sell from home. There are then various ways that you can sell these goods.

A few good examples of current in-demand products include:

Smartphone accessories

Clothing

Health and beauty products

Fitness products

Maternity wear

Video games

To get noticed and develop a brand reputation, you will need to sell products that are of the highest quality.

Make sure that anything that you make or source will satisfy the customer.

Social Media

Social media is a fantastic tool for raising awareness about your e-commerce store. Invite your network to follow your professional pages and use relevant and interesting content to be shared to attract new followers.

You can also use promotions such as “like and share” competitions to encourage people to share your pages.

Create High-Quality Content

Following on from this, you can get noticed by generating high-quality content that your target audience will find helpful.

A few good examples include:

Product demonstrations/reviews

Explainer videos

Interviews

How to guides

Industry news

Internet Marketing

One of the most effective ways to get your e-commerce store noticed is to use internet marketing from a reputable agency.

They will be able to increase your web presence and visibility online, which will direct more traffic to your website while simultaneously establishing your brand as an authoritative figure.

Influencer Marketing

Another useful form of marketing is influencer marketing where you get an influential figure (on social media) to promote your products.

It can be highly effective as the recommendation is coming from someone else but also somebody that is influential and respected amongst their followers.

Customer Reviews

Similarly, getting your existing customers to leave reviews for both the products and service is a great way to increase your reputation, which will help you to get noticed and become a trusted seller.

You can also use any negative feedback to learn and adjust your business model.

Setting up an e-commerce store can be a great way to earn money, but it can be challenging to get your store noticed in such a competitive marketplace.

Once you have developed a reputation and lots of people are visiting your store, these businesses can be relatively easy to operate, but first, it will require hard work and patience when starting out with these all being effective ways of getting noticed.

With the advent of the Internet, the number of marketing options available to both budding and experienced entrepreneurs has become staggering. Zappos media checklist has been leading the charge.

In all of these, I found that it was critical for continuous learning and adapting to change. This is particularly true for the field of social media, where things change with the speed of the internet.

No shock in this statement – I’m a big fan of blogs and blogging as a core marketing, content, and SEO practice.

Related: An Update to Starbucks Creative Ideas and Innovation

Did you know the amount of new technical information is doubling every two years? EVERY TWO YEARS? The top 10 jobs that were in demand in 2013 didn’t exist in 2004.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that don’t yet exist. All this in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. Scary, isn’t it?

For students starting a 4 year technical or college degree, one-half of what they will learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study. We are clearly living in exponential times, aren’t we?

For more background see Shift Happens 2013.

So we hope you note and appreciate the amount of change going on in the world and the rate of change acceleration. The implication of the rapidity of change means everything we learn has an extremely short shelf life. Big implications here for continuous learning in any field, yes?

Here is an interesting quote that sheds a good light on how to stay up to speed on social media:

I just sit in my office and read all day.

– Warren Buffett

Well maybe not all day, but reading for continuous learning is a must, isn’t it? To increase your continuous learning, what skill would you choose? We would choose to increase learning by improving reading skills.

Reading … this is how Warren Buffett, one of the most successful people in the business world, describes his day. Sitting. Reading. He advises everyone to read more, and that’s certainly a goal we can all get behind.

So where do we find what to read? And what are we to do with all that information once we have it?

I frequently get asked about resources I turn to and, for today, here they are. I placed them into a handful of categories, but many of them could cross over into multiple categories and often do in the range of topics they weigh in on.

Most of these won’t be new to my regular readers as I reference them often, but it can be helpful to see them all in one place. Subscribe to this list and you’ll always have ready access to the best social media tips, tools, and techniques you can take action on today.

Today I will present a list of blogs that I turn to on a regular basis when I want to learn something practical and useful for social media marketing and customer service.

This list of 30 blogs isn’t the top list or ranking or any other of the link-bait kinds of lists you see out there. The blogs on this list are tools for me as I market and grow my business and attempt to expand my knowledge in an ever-changing world.

Feel free to share blogs you find useful when you need to learn how to do stuff.

Zappos media checklist … social media

Social Media Examiner – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/ Buffer – https://blog.bufferapp.com/ Razor Social – http://www.razorsocial.com/blog/ Kiss Metrics – https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog/ QuickSprout – http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

Social media marketing tips … conversion

Kiss Metrics – https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog/ QuickSprout – http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

Zappos media checklist … how to do social media marketing

Seth Godin Blog – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Guy Kawasaki – http://guykawasaki.com/

Digital Spark Marketing – http://www.digitalsparkmarketing.com/

Customer service/experience

Video

Reel SEO – http://www.reelseo.com/ Video Brewery – http://www.videobrewery.com/blog/

Podcast

Podcast Answer Man – http://podcastanswerman.com/ Entrepreneur on Fire – http://www.entrepreneuronfire.com

SEO MOZ – http://moz.com/ Search Engine Watch – http://searchenginewatch.com/

PPC Hero – http://www.ppchero.com/ WordStream – http://www.wordstream.com/blog

Analytics

Occam’s Razor – http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ Crazy Egg – http://blog.crazyegg.com/

Content

Content Marketing Institute – http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/ Copyblogger – http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/

WordPress

WP Beginner – http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/wp-tutorials/ Yoast – https://yoast.com/

Key takeaways

So if you want to maximize your continuous learning in social media, marketing, and customer service, do lots of reading from these references. You will be amazed at how much you will learn.

Social Media Examiner – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
Buffer – https://blog.bufferapp.com/
Razor Social – http://www.razorsocial.com/blog/
Kiss Metrics – https://blog.kissmetrics.com/
Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog/
QuickSprout – http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

Kiss Metrics – https://blog.kissmetrics.com/
Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog/
QuickSprout – http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

***Zappos media checklist … how to do social media* *marketing***

Reel SEO – http://www.reelseo.com/
Video Brewery – http://www.videobrewery.com/blog/

Podcast Answer Man – http://podcastanswerman.com/
Entrepreneur on Fire – http://www.entrepreneuronfire.com

SEO
MOZ – http://moz.com/
Search Engine Watch – http://searchenginewatch.com/

PPC Hero – http://www.ppchero.com/
WordStream – http://www.wordstream.com/blog

Occam’s Razor – http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Crazy Egg – http://blog.crazyegg.com/

Content Marketing Institute – http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/
Copyblogger – http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/

WP Beginner – http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/wp-tutorials/
Yoast – https://yoast.com/