@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

basilpuglisi@aol.com

Don’t Say “No” Before you Read 140 Characters

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In the last “State of the Union” speech President Obama gave, some politicians could be seen were busy twitting their remarks about what they just heard. Comedians do it too, to increase their audiences, and if the tweets are funny, they have a following. It’s for fans as well as a way to feel close to their idol. Justin Bieber tweets when he goes to eat, telling his fans what kinds of food he likes.

Twitter is a marketing tool as well and if it is used right can be a very useful tool. Here are a few examples how it can work:

–          A Global Communication company established an account. For a short time they learned the ropes, tried a few things but nothing big happened. The man in charge of the account found out there is a third company application that will alert him to tweets which contain certain words. Not long after, he got one of those from a company that is looking to revamp their communications and asked for recommendations. The man called the company, and less than two weeks later closed a deal for $250,000. He was there at the right time in the right place

–          A small independent Ice Cream shop in San Francisco had no money for advertising, but wanted to increase their circulation. A twitter account enabled them to stay in touch with their regular customers and let them know every time a new flavor is introduced. The reaction is amazing, says the shop co-owner. Every time they tweet about a new flavor, the response is immediate. Almost every customer that walks in asks for this flavor and more and more new customers are joining their ‘community’.

–          A bake shop owner in Los Angeles uses twitter in another way. She likes to experiment with new recipes but can’t afford to wait and see if the new creation will sell. Instead she tweets, and asks her followers to voice their honest opinions. Much cheaper then making a batch of muffins that don’t sell, or investing money in research and polling. Her latest muffins, with bacon, went through 3 changes fuelled by twitter comments before it became one of her best sellers.

These are only 3 examples how small business owners use Twitter accounts. It’s not enough anymore to just open an account and hunt for followers. Twitter is a tool and you have to know how to use it to maximize your exposure.

That is not so easy to do, when you do not know all the possibilities. By hiring someone who does know how to make it work for you, you get an exposure that costs you very little money compared with an advertising campaign. Visibility Acceleration (http://www.visibilityacceleration.com/) is a company that deals with electronic media and increasing your visibility in the market place. A subsidiary of Puglisi Consulting Group (http://puglisiconsulting.com/#), it can provide you with the knowledge and the connection to make every available electronic media work for your benefit and increase your business.

Barter for Visibility

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In today’s high-tech world, the term “barter” sounds like something from the days of the Pony Express and telegrams.  But the truth of the matter is that barter can help even the most high-tech businesses.  In fact, some of today’s best-known companies use barter as a means of advertising.  If your business if suffering through a downturn or is low on customers, consider familiarizing yourself with barter programs to increase visibility in the marketplace.

A barter exchange can be anything that involves an exchange of goods or services.  A local restaurant might offer a free coffee to anyone who brings in a receipt from a nearby retail store.  Or a theme park can offer $10 off admission for anyone who brings in a certain brand of soft drink.  The idea is that cross-promotion helps attract new customers and increase brand awareness for both parties involved.

There are many benefits to implementing a barter program.  First and foremost, a well-implemented program can expand your customer base and the visibility of your business.  Second, barter is an inexpensive form of advertising.  Usually the only cost involved in barter is a customer discount on goods or services.

Setting up a barter program can be simple if you have the right network.  Reach out to relevant business partners that you speak to regularly.  Treat the barter conversation like you would any sales pitch; remember that you are pitching an idea that benefits both parties.  Think carefully about the program that you set up.  Just because a fellow business owner is a close colleague doesn’t mean that his service will provide a complimentary product to your customers.

If you do not have anyone in your immediate network that you can set up an exchange with, consider joining a professional barter organization.  The International Reciprocal Trade Association, or IRTA, provides a professional network for businesses that are looking to barter.  The organization also provides tips for barter in a modern world.  If you find that you are interested in expanding barter beyond customer-facing programs, there are opportunities to exchange supplies and business services as well.

Although barter is a great advertising tool to use during rough times, don’t rule out barter during strong financial times as well.  Even the best businesses can benefit from inexpensive customer acquisition.  Become a pro at barter and you can ensure that your business remains visible at all times.

Yelp Your Business & Increase Visibility

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How often do you check your company’s online reviews?  Do you reach out to customers that post reviews of your business online?  If you are late to the online review game, it’s time to pay attention. 

Research shows that a bad review online can be extremely damaging to your business.  Nearly two-thirds of the population has researched products or services online within the past three months, and 70% of consumers trust reviews from strangers online more than they trust information from manufacturers or from friends and family.  A few bad reviews can turn potential customers away quickly.

One of the leading online review sites for local businesses is Yelp.  Yelp provides a listing of businesses and allows customers to rate each business and to post reviews.  Each business is assigned a rating from one star (poor) to five stars (excellent) based on the average customer review.

If you have not been active on Yelp, now is the time to get started.  First, claim your business by navigating to biz.yelp.com.  Once you have registered as the business owner, completely fill out the information for your place of business, including address, contact number, hours and any special announcements.  This ensures that customers know the basics about your business and that the information is visible to the Yelp community.

Second, respond quickly to any negative reviews.  Yelp provides the option to either post a public response or send a private email to the reviewer.  Send an apology and a constructive response, such as offering a free product or service as an incentive to try the business again.  Often the consumer will be so pleased by the prompt response that they will revise their review to note the high level of customer service.

Third, make special announcements and offers as much as possible.  Yelp displays a special notice for businesses that offer special promotions, which incentivizes customers to click on the page.  Examples of special promotions include 15% off for mentioning Yelp, 10% off for new customers or a link to a website with printable coupons.  Be sure to change the promotions often to keep customers coming back for more.

Although Yelp is one of the most popular local review sites, there are many other online outlets for customers to post reviews.  Be sure to frequently monitor online feedback and respond to consumer complaints.  Just one negative comment online can drive away hundreds of other potential customers.  Proper management of customer feedback is crucial to managing a business in today’s high-tech world.

If your busy with your business then look for Social Brand Reputation Management, this service will monitor your brand as well as other keywords and phrases and comes in Tiers 1-3 allowing you to customize the support you get, from basic notification to Public Relations support and responses.

Visit Visibility Acceleration for more information.

Getting Ahead in Today’s Economy

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Small businesses has been historically the backbone of the American economy, employing more than 50% of the work force.

Small businesses are also the ones who were hit the hardest by the economic downturn. Employment numbers published on 8/19/2010 tell another grim story. Not only they did not recover yet, but they continue to shed jobs.

No bailout money, banks that want assurances and proofs and won’t loan to small businesses unless their credit score is very high and the turnaround very profitable, collateral to secure loan that has shrank due to the low real-estate markets, all those contribute to an atmosphere of trepidation.

The result? Starting a business today or keeping the one you have, has become more and more difficult.

Business needs clients and the clients are still worried about the future today as they were almost two years ago. They would rather save than spend. Usage of credit cards has gone down as well, as customers prefer to buy what they have cash for today and not rely on credit and future payments.

Even the White House and the Finance Secretary Tim Geitner admit that the economy is not moving in the pace they hoped it would.

So when you set out to establish a new business, or trying to keep the one you have, there’s one thing you should keep in mind; the Internet is a great marketing tool.

With considerably less money than what you would have spent on advertising in the old world in print, radio, television, billboards,  mobile advertising (on truck and cars) or event advertising, you can get exposure that is not only localized but worldwide. The internet and fast shipping made the location issue irrelevant. Now you can reach customers in different corners of the world as easy as if they were in the next town.

But to harness that great power, you need something you needed years ago – knowledge.

The mistake most people make is to think that if the computer is in their house, they can advertise as much as they want and not pay for it, and it is nobody’s business how they do it, as long as they have the high speed connection.

Advertising through the World Wide Web is a profession just like the ad agencies you see today on the television show “Mad Men”. The Internet has some rules and regulations, there are things you can and can not do and there are fines to deal with and bans to overcome.

Internet marketing includes many elements of advertising; Websites, Social Media, Mobile phones, SEO marketing, PPC advertising, e mail marketing and some of the old media elements like mailers, fliers and special events.

To maximize your potential, you should turn to a company that specializes in Internet Marketing like the Puglisi Consulting group and their specialty arm for creating Internet visibility called Visibility Acceleration. They can show you the main road to Internet visibility without taking you on a tour of trials and errors through the small streets that lead to dead ends. It is your money and you’d rather spend it on getting ahead in today’s economy.

Using Facebook Places to Promote Your Business

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Last week, Facebook entered the location services game with the release of Facebook Places. Places is very similar to Foursquare, in that the feature allows users to “check-in” to local businesses to alert friends of where they are at any given time.

For business owners, Facebook Places provides a means of promoting your business, increasing visibility and rewarding loyal customers.  Each customer that checks into your business is sharing the name and location of your company with hundreds or thousands of online friends.

To register your business on Facebook Places, search for your business on Facebook Places.  Click on the link that says “Is this your place of business?” and follow the verification prompts.  Once you have claimed your business, you can update the location’s contact information, hours and profile picture.

Once you have successfully registered your business on Facebook Places, consider using Places as an additional advertising platform.  Hang signage to encourage customers to check-in to the location.  Remember that every check-in spreads the word about your business.

You can also use Facebook Places to attract new customers.  Post a note on Facebook informing potential customers that they will receive a discount if they show that they have checked in to your business.  Not only does this technique bring in new clients, it also creates viral advertising as customers share the check-in with their friends.

Use Facebook Places to reward loyal customers.  Reach out to customers who frequently visit your business and offer coupons or promotions for additional visits or check-ins.  Keeping loyal customers happy is an easy way to gain repeat business and ensure positive word of mouth referrals.

Encourage your existing customers to post notes, photos and comments about your business online.  Perhaps reward customers who post feedback with special coupons or freebies.

Of course, any marketing plan needs to be tailored to the needs of your business.  Claim your business on Facebook Places today, and create a detailed plan that makes sense for your company and your customers. 

Need Help? Contact Visibility Acceleration by Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. 631-932-0019

Is Your Online Marketing Hurting your Business?

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It seems so simple; you want to open a business, you look for a field where your business is needed, you design a web site by yourself through WordPress or other sources and, voila – you’re in business.

 Not long after, your realize that your site is not bringing in much business. Where have you gone wrong? Why is your competitor making big bucks and you are making only peanuts?

 Take a look at your site. Here are some common mistakes you should try to avoid:

 –          Are you really marketing to a niche? People tend to confuse niche with demographics. A niche is a group of people that have a common problem and are seeking solutions. Marketing to stay-at-home moms, senior citizens or baby boomers is marketing to a demographic. Potential customers are the ones who have a problem you can solve, like DIY Solar Panels, Baby Strollers or Green Plumbing. Those clients can come from all wakes of life and all ages.

 –          Your web site is not up to par. It looks cheap, it has spelling mistakes, you don’t update it for months and you haven’t added new products in the past year. With the saturation of the Internet, one of the requirements of a successful site is constant updates. You want to be seen, don’t you?

 –          Not having a system in place that analyzes your visitors and captures them. Some people visit a site, plan on visiting it again on a later date, but never do because they forgot, don’t have time now or they lost your address. Having a system of capturing their names and e mail addresses will enable you to contact them, send newsletters and show you are interested in them and in their business. Some of those who forgot about you will come back.

 –          Not making a long term plan and following the advice of every new guru in the field of Internet marketing. Think about what makes you different and what you can offer that others can’t. Your business plan doesn’t have to be 500 pages long. It is important, however, to make sure your goals are clear and you have a plan and a system to know when your plan is working and when it’s not.

 Even if you’ve downloaded all the e books, web seminars and Internet courses about Internet marketing, have you been reading them all? Who’s got the time, you ask yourself. If I’ll be busy reading all those pages, who will run my business?

 That is main reason why it is smart business to hire consultants who deal with those issues on a daily basis and make it their business to keep updated on all the new trends. Companies like Puglisi consulting Group (http://puglisiconsulting.com) which can help you avoid all the beginners’ mistakes. Through their company Visibility Acceleration (http://visibilityacceleration.com/#/seo-visibility/4541420003) they can touch and solve all the points mentioned here and make sure you have to ability to see and be seen.

For Small Businesses, Online Visibility is a Must

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Despite what small business owners think, they might not be doing enough to increase their online visibility.

Online visibility is one of the most important tools in the kit of the small business owner. Whether you operate from a store front, the garage or the bedroom, whether you are in the service industry or selling a product – online visibility is your advertisement. And no business exists without advertising.

 A comparative research done in San Diego, California, of 194,000 small businesses, revealed that most of them have a low to medium visibility on the internet. Only a small percentage hit the high mark.

 As a business owner, the first step to increase visibility is to have a website. There are rules to what is considered a useful site. It does not, however, always go hand in hand with the aesthetics of the site. Picture is better than a thousand words, they say, but not always in the internet world.

 The second step would be to be listed in local directories. The more directories you are listed in, the more people happen to find you.

 And that is where the effort usually stops. 

In today saturated internet that is not enough. There are ways to increase your presence that go many steps forward. Most of them are not extremely expensive and should be considered your advertisement budget.

 Advertising online includes steps to optimize your site for a better search engine placement, so your site will be on the front page of the search engine and not buried in page 35 of Google. (Have you ever been there in your personal searches?)

 Advertising on line sometimes means just that. Ads that are placed on result pages of search engines (PPC they are called – Pay per Click), when you pay Google advertising fee only when someone clicks on your ad and goes to your site. It means putting banners and ads inside websites and other solutions as well.

 Advertising on line means creating social media pages, and writing on them. It means being present in article sites that link to your site, it means creating a blog and updating it.

Advertising on line means creating videos and placing them in the right places. It means linking all those elements together with everything leading to your business.

Small business owners who have not invested yet in online advertising have the most to gain. The point being is not to be the first, but to be among the chosen few, detached from the crowd.

The shortest and most economical way to achieve all that is to contract visibility experts like Puglisi Consultants http://puglisiconsulting.com and their Visibility Acceleration arm http://visibilityacceleration.com/#/seo-visibility/4541420003. You can do some of it yourself, but the field is developing very quickly and there is so much to learn to avoid costly mistakes. From a business sense – isn’t it best to leave it to the experts who constantly update their knowledge for a living?

Marketing in the Internet Age

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It used to be simple; you would hire someone to design a website for you, put some pictures, graphs, numbers, and post it on the internet.

As far as you were concerned – your name was out there, your business advertised, you got your money’s worth.

But things have changed. Throughout the years information kept coming in, into this absorb-all, Ethernet. It kept coming in, but hardly going out. The World Wide Web has becomes saturated with websites.

It only got worse when Google followed a business model of ads, PCP, Adsense and more. Millions all over the world started to figure out a way to make money by providing ad space to advertisers. E-commerce was born when people open information websites to link them to businesses for a cut of the sale.

With a crowded marketplace it is not so easy to get visibility. Research shows that most of the searchers on the big search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) look mainly at the first page of the results. In order to get the clients, you need to be high up on the list, preferably in the first few positions.

How to do that became a highly specialized field. To understand it you have to know how Google, for example, scans the pages of a new website that is posted, what does it see and what it doesn’t. Graphs and pictures are not seen by the scanners for example. While it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it is not the case with the logarithms of Google.  How those scanners (or spiders in professional language) scan the page is another thing you need to know. Do they start from the top? From the bottom? How do they categorize their scans?

What words, or a combination of words, will bring the most results is another issue. How to place those words so the spiders can read them and categorize your site the way you want it, have another set of rules.

Words matter the most in building sites that will rank high on Google and create the most visibility. Volume of the site – how many pages, is another category. Google is watching very closely and places fines on users that are abusers. That is called the “Google slap”, and when you are slapped, it is not easy to reverse it.

This is what Puglisi Consulting Group (http://puglisiconsulting.com) specializes in, through their Visibility Acceleration (http://visibilityacceleration.com/#/website-visibility/4541419972) company. How to make your site more visible, how to use social media to increase it, how to use e mail campaigns, mobile phones, even old methods of print and radio ads is their expertise. Your website, and your business, will not only be out there, it will increase the visitors, and buyers, coming to your business.

The Marketing Power of the Written Word

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Using articles as a marketing tool for small businesses, has been known to be a very cost effective way to increase traffic to your site, increase its visibility on search engines pages, and increase sales  with relatively small effort and very low cost.

The main objective of your website is to generate clients. And that starts with generating traffic and increasing your visibility on the World Wide Web.

There are many ways of generating traffic and with most of them you keep spending money. Since the internet is such a vast ocean of information, getting visitors to you site, through a ‘back door’, can increase you traffic and what’s more, will convert clicks and visitors to sign ups and sales.

Two things have to be considered when talking about internet advertising; the huge amount of information out there which keeps renewing and updating every second and the short attention span of the reader.

Your site might be the most colorful and eye popping, but it is the content on the page that will make the reader stay. This is the face of your company. A bunch of numbers and specs will not do it anymore.

So, the first way to use articles is to make sure your landing page is tempting.

Renewing the page location on the search engines (SERP)  is made up of, among other things, the volume of your site and the new information added. Having a blog on the site and writing in often, is another way to generate a better location on the page.

The third way is ‘the back door’ way, which proved to be very efficient.

Let’s face it, internet took over our lives. It is our key to the libraries of the world and it brings the information back fast. When someone is trying to solve a problem, or make a purchase and types a combination of words, the information that comes back has something to do with the word combination, on top of the words themselves. And what might sit there, at the top of the Google search page, if no other than an article that someone wrote dealing with a similar problem, with the same word combination.

If the title and the sub title are catchy, the searcher will click to read the article – which has a back link to your site.

You’ve created a connection with a highly potential customer.

The more articles of yours are out there, the more exposed your site will become.

There’s an art and a way to those articles to make them affective. You’ll hear talk about mysterious words such as “keywords”, “SEO”, “SERP” and other terms, so you might want a professional write the articles on your behalf.

At Visibilityacceleration.com you’ll find such experts. The mystery will become a mastery of the written word and you’ll see the marketing power of the written article in action.