Category Archives: Online Business

Blogging: The most important Social Media tool

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Blogging:  The most important social media tool

Blogging is the most important social media tool to utilize online because here you can really get  in-depth about all things related to your business/brand.  If you utilize blogging correctly you can create a strong foundation that supports all other social media platforms and uses them as additional “directors” to guide traffic back to your website.

When you blog, you are able to demonstrate your expertise on whatever subject it is that you are blogging about.  To your audience you appear knowledgeable and credible and therefore people will be more likely to participate by following.

There are some things to look out for with blogging though.

  1. You need to legitimately know what you are talking about.  It is extremely easy to detect when blog articles or bloggers are full of it and once people do, they will drop you faster than you can say Jack Robinson.
  2. Do NOT focus the blog on yourself.  Focus the blog on something one would want to know about that falls in the realm of your business or brand and then subtly and casually tie in how your business or brand is related or could be utilized at the end, here again we are practicing re-direction.
  3. Your content needs to be the correct length.  As my favorite english teacher once said, “Keep your content like a skirt; long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep it interesting”.  Or just stick to the KISS method.
  4. Don’t overdo it with the jargon.  Unless you are an advanced and specialized technical blog you will want to integrate vocabulary that someone who is just tuning in would be able to understand.  If you do need to introduce some terminology perhaps tailor a specific blog toward an inventory or overview of industry specific terms to educated and keep your followers on point.
  5. Many times we are misled into thinking that if we blog about our practices or techniques that we use, we are essentially giving up our “secrets”.  It’s quite the contrary actually.  Sure, some people might run with the idea or even try to use it but the majority of people are reading about it, with no intention to ever practice it, but merely to gain knowledge on it.  This reverts back to the first point, that by telling your audience these things that you are simply demonstrating your comprehension of the subject and making them aware of their online needs.

BOSS Pro Net has a network of specialists for all of your online needs.  Contact us today to find out more about how BPN can help get your business online and generating results.  www.BOSSProNet.com

A Shift in the 4 P’s

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If any of our readers have ever studied marketing or even business, you probably will remember the principle of the 4 P’s; Product, Price, Promotion & Placement.  The 4 P’s have been hammered into our heads as the most important aspects to define for your business marketing strategy.  But as long as everyone hasn’t been living under a rock for the past decade then we should all be in agreement that the way business is conducted has changed drastically.  In today’s business world, the consumer is flooded with; options, substitutions, a multitude of pricing points, quality levels and suppliers.  We no longer have just a few competitors to choose from, we have hundreds of thousands and they are located all around the world, the traditional business models we know and love are becoming obsolete and some flat out won’t work anymore.  I attended a Web 3.0 conference this past weekend in Mexico City and one of the topics of the conference was the new 4 P’s of marketing.  The Harvard Business Review recently wrote an article regarding the new shift in the 4 P’s:

1. From Products to Solutions

2. From Place to Access

3. From Price to Value

4. From Promotion to Education

The acronym they use for the new 4 P’s is SAVE.  Read the article here. 

Consult with BPN today to find out how we can help you get your business shifted from the 4 P’s to SAVE.  www.BOSSProNet.com

Why Social Media?

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Why Social Media?

First of all, let’s talk about what social media networks/platforms are.  A social media network/platform is a virtual meeting place for users who share similar interests, backgrounds, histories and affiliations.  The relationships that we see throughout social media are B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer) and C2C (consumer to consumer).

According to Pew Research in one of their recent studies approximately 74% of adults (who have access to internet) use 1 or more social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn just to mention a few (this does not include e-mail or non-social platform websites). To see more of the details and a breakdown of demographics check out the article from Pew.

Why is this important?  It means that more people are on the internet than ever before and it is important because if you have the ability to reach a multitude of new customers who you had never even considered, with the same amount of effort you put into reaching your known target market, imagine the results?!

Now this is not to say that you can just make accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram LinkedIn and Pinterest and POOF, you have customers.  It does take planning and time and little bit of elbow grease to formulate and carry out.  It also doesn’t necessarily mean that you need all social media outlets.  Here is a brief rundown of what each social media platform works well with:

-Facebook: Allows for In-depth content sharing, video posting, image posting, status updates which allow you to add multiple media links and images.  Users can like, comment and share the uploaded media and also follow your personal or business profiles/pages. You can add users as “Friends” or get customers or target market to “like” and follow your business via their newsfeed.

-Twitter:  Create a brief profile then share status updates in 160 characters or less.  It allows you to add shortened web links as well as photos and allows users to post, re-post, “favorite” user content/statuses and follow (or subscribe) to other user account content.

-Instagram:  This platform also consists of creating a brief profile and allowing users to follow you and receive updates of your posted content.  It is a place for sharing photos and videos and allows # Hashtagging and commenting to link to similar categories and themes, allowing you to explore other similar users and categories.

-Pinterest:  Using Pinterest is like creating a giant cork board of things you like, for everyone else to see and share and re-post.  Pinterest gives you the ability to post links to content on other platforms, websites or links for videos/images.  Many people use Pinterest as a tutorial source from anything from hairstyles to technology modifications to cooking. You can search by keyword, user, category or theme.

-Linked In:  A professional place for  businesses and job seekers to post profiles, job openings and resumes.  Linked-In allows you to connect with people in your “network” via relationships with people in your own network.  You must confirm that you know these people (with personal profiles) before you can be added but you can openly follow any business profiles. It’s pretty much online head-hunting and job searching.

So with the creation of all these different platforms, we now have the channels to display content that will draw your target market in, but since each platform has its own unique set of characteristics and features they might not all necessarily apply to your needs, but that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t.

See our other blogs and video blogs for a more in-depth explanation of each platform and to explore how each platform can be used and for updates tips, tricks about social media related topics.