Showing posts with label industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label industry. Show all posts

Friday, 27 May 2016

Creating a Facebook Ad? Implement These Call to Action Tips

Recommend Article Article Comments Print Article
Expert Author Peg McDermott
Anybody with a little bit of time and a few dollars can create a Facebook ad and run a campaign. Not everybody has what it takes to create an ad that generates clicks and converts these people into buyers.
When creating a Facebook ad, regardless of your company size or industry, the call to action is one of the most important factors. If your ad is boring and unattractive, you can't expect it to receive a high click through rate. On the other hand, if you implement a killer call to action, you may be surprised at how much traffic you drive.
Here are three call to action tips that can take your mediocre ad and turn it into something much more powerful:
  1. Use at least one "action" keyword. A Facebook page is full of content and images, so your ad has to stand out in the crowd. By using an action keyword, you are telling your audience that you have something special to offer. You are telling them to take action now if they want to take advantage.

    Some of the best action keywords include: save, discount, book now, sign up today, order now, try, and subscribe.

    You can build off of these, based on your particular industry and offering, to create an even more powerful message. For example, if you are pushing a weight loss product, you could use a phrase such as "lose weight today" or "lose weight faster."

  2. Don't beat around the bush. You only have so much time to grab the attention of your audience and convince them to click through.

    Don't make people read through your ad to find out what you want them to do. Instead, the call to action should be displayed in a prominent and powerful location. If your audience can identify the call to action at a glance, while also understanding what it means to them, you have reached your goal.

  3. Ask a question. This is one of the best ways to engage your audience. Not only does a question draw people in, but it can improve your click through rate as they will be interested in learning the answer.

    Note: if asking a question, keep it short and sweet.
With these three call to action tips, you will find yourself taking a different approach when creating Facebook ads. Subsequently, you may also find that your campaign is generating better results.
Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert,Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Peg is the founder and president of COGO Interactive, an innovative Internet Marketing firm specializing in helping small to mid-sized businesses increase revenue and awareness by leveraging Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

Thursday, 26 May 2016

Ways to Protect Your Data Center Against Disasters

Recommend Article Article Comments Print Article
Expert Author Taiba Fatima
In today's Internet-driven world, the role of data centers, in giving oxygen to different business verticals so that they can efficiently meet their targets, can't be overlooked. Ever since the dawn of the Internet, these specialized facilities have marked a significant shift in the way services are offered to the clients. These specialized facilities are equipped to house and manage critical business assets. In addition to this, they provide access to the suite of IT capabilities that include bandwidth access, network/firewall/asset security, application management, and other computing resources required to run a business process smoothly. The facility that supports different industry domains also needs to be managed well, so that its core functionality remains unaffected from both internal and external factors.
Do you remember the Hurricane Sandy that reportedly caused $400 million damage? This hurricane spoiled the functionality of many leading businesses across New York and New Jersey. Just for your information, this disastrous event is labeled as the most expensive hurricane of the nation. Apparently, the downtime caused owing to this catastrophic event has sparked customers' anger and dissatisfaction. It goes without saying that natural calamities are a prevalent contributor to data center failure. Well, we all know that no one is perfect - the scope for improvement remains available everywhere, and this statement deems fit in data center scenarios as well.
If reports are to be believed, human made errors are the most prevalent and leading threat to the existence of business. No matter if it has occurred due to abrupt disconnection of IT equipment or unintentional deletion of a business-critical file from the systems, issues caused by internal management team are quite significant. Another report in this regard suggests that approximately 70% of all downtime issues are instigated by individuals. This is actually a very disturbing figure, as the average costs of downtime is about $700,000, or above.
In this article, you will get to know about the ways opted by various companies to mitigate these hazardous events:
Today, most of the businesses are investing in training programs to prevent downtime issues that occur due to incompetent IT equipment set-up, crippled configurations, or poor maintenance practice Moreover, the inadequate training on internal IT functionalities and improper use of IT shortcuts that result in partial or complete infrastructure failure. Other downtime issues originate from improper equipment labeling or due to overloaded power supplies.
Well, the real time communication solution is the best way out to address all the aforementioned challenges. Companies should lay a concrete foundation for holistic disaster recovery planning. Today, there is a number of data center hosting service providers present in the market who offers super-charged disaster recovery plans to their customers. It is also observed that most of the organizations turn up to the professional vendors, as they lack internal resources and pieces of equipment, and prowess to match with the required disaster recovery procedures.
How Disaster Recovery Proves a Beneficial Alternative
According to experts, those, who leverage an array of business continuity and recovery services, cloud hosting solutions, testing services, including Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), can efficiently combat unwarranted issues.
Typically, these solutions are hosted in a dedicated environment or on the cloud, which in turn ensures maximum protection for business-critical assets. It majorly involves assessment, designing, provisioning and endorsement of the facility with the help of failover testing. The best thing is such, cloud-enabled BC/DR solutions are powered by global data centers, which enable service providers to deliver solutions through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technology. The failover technology allows business owners to maintain high availability in today's competitive world.
However, it is recommended to partner with a vendor that delivers an array of computing and storage capabilities for deploying fault-bearing disaster recovery enabled infrastructures. Also, it is important to note that these solutions (offered by these vendors) are supported by stringent security and full compliance at each level.
Cloud-based DRaaS: An Effective Alternative
Cloud-based DRaaS has the power to recover data within a jiffy, which is undeniably impossible with when using conventional recovery solutions. Minimum investment on hardware and software applications leads to significant cost reductions. As cloud computing model works on a pay-per-use basis, it gives organizations enough flexibility and scalability to manage their applications without facing any downtime issues. The best thing is, it removes the compulsion of deploying physical run books, which ultimately boost automation and accuracy in business operations.
Do not get overconfident that mistakes can't be at your end. Remember, even a small IT error can annihilate your overall business processing.
By partnering with a professional for reliable service benefactor, disasters can be mitigated. Cloud-enabled solutions are highly automated, which reduces the threat of IT failure that generally occurs due to human interruption. It again goes without saying that every organization must now look for such shielding solutions that protect their mission critical systems - powered by such DRaaS.
To conclude extra attention and advance care solutions backed by disaster recovery including continuity plans can help organizations to capitalize on various market opportunities without fearing for catastrophic circumstances.
Go4Hosting is one of the known providers of data center and VPS hosting services, offering purpose-built solutions to businesses of all domains. Supported by industry-leading IT components, the data center facility is managed by experts so that business stays available all the time even if the disaster hits the facility. If you are looking out for a provider that has right disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place, you can either visit the location to take a tour of the data center, or connect with the experts for adequate assistance.

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

5 Simple Tips for Maximised eCommerce Success

Recommend Article Article Comments Print Article
Expert Author Souvik Ganguly
Every online shopping platform has a unique working style, making generalized assessment extremely difficult. Marketing strategies of an online chocolate store and a portal that sells mango milkshake online will naturally be different. However, there are some basic practices that tend to work in most cases. You can spend millions in advertisements, but without the right basics the chances of a successful run is quite low. I will list the most important tips that can maximize your success without having to spend a lot.
First impression is the one that counts
If your website fails to strike a good first impression, the other factors won't even matter. You can have the best logistics partners, the best deals, and the widest range of quality products, but all that will practically mean nothing without a good first impression. By first impression, I mean the first-screen feel. Try to showcase your best products and deals in the first screen without making it clumsy. The initial feel has to be attractive without being heavy. Simple layout with readable fonts, soothing color combination, and intuitive interface are the first three must-haves in any commercial website. You must realize that online users are not known for their patience when it comes to assessing a website. Most users tend to decide the fate of a website within the first 10 seconds. That is all the time that your website will have to attract and lengthen the stay duration of a new user.
Customer's trust is your first priority
When it comes to running a successful business, customer trust is a must-have. If you run a bakery business, try to be a trusted platform before asking your customers to buy bakery products online. The entire marketing strategy will become much easier if your brand is in the customer's good book. Customer trust is easy to gain if you strictly follow a transparent operating policy and consistently offer high-quality products. Like all other businesses, the eCommerce industry also revolves around customer trust. Even a single dissatisfied customer can hurt your market reputation.
Have a simple operating process
Confusing your customer is the last thing that you should do. The competitive nature of the current market has no room for a time-consuming operating process. Try to keep things simple and short. Easy search options and internal run-time search optimization are absolute necessities for eCommerce platforms. Your website should be able to predict the desired product based on recent search inputs and showcase them accordingly. No modern-day user will take the pain of going through your entire website for a particular item. All pages should be interlinked with variable tabs and buttons. Do not try to be creative with button labels. You must avoid being over creative with buttons and tabs. Use the most obvious and popular label to avoid creating any confusion.
Boosted purchase decisions
Use your back-end data correctly to identify the most popular categories and products offered by your platform. Prioritize your products according to their likability among users. Allow customers to add and remove multiple filters in their search options. As a business website you will naturally try to give your customers options, but too much of anything is usually bad. Think from a customer's point of view and shape your website accordingly. Have checkout buttons and related links on every product page. Never try to push-sell products, if you want to do well in the long run.
Data stream your products correctly
The on-site-search and filter navigation are critical to a website when it comes to sustained user footfall. Try to stream your data as perfectly as possible. Use your back-end and run-time traffic data correctly to make your website appealing and desirable.

Monday, 16 May 2016

5 Blogging Hacks to Make Your Content Marketing More Efficient

Recommend Article Article Comments Print Article
Expert Author Teesa Vaz
Don't you just wish there was a way you could save yourself the countless hours that you pour into your business blog and instead use that time to do what you really enjoy? Like running your business, for example!
There are some great time savers out there to help you significantly reduce the amount of time that you are spending on your blog. Try out some of these blogging hacks and see if it makes your content marketing efforts more efficient:
1. Consider the amount of time you have to write a blog post when selecting a format.
Who said that every blog post you write needs to be 3,000 words? Often, the best blog posts that I read are filled with pictures or include a really helpful infographic. If you don't have a lot of time to commit to writing an in depth blog post, collaborate with someone in your industry to curate an infographic. You could also use the post to throw together a quick how-to video or share pictures of customers loving your new products (with their permission, of course). While a lengthy post filled with text could easily take you 2+ hours to write, taking advantage of images and graphics could cut your time down to 30 minutes max.
Mixing up the types of content that you share on your blog can keep it from becoming monotonous and can offer an unexpected element for your readers, which they will love.
2. Keep a running list of content ideas.
Often, deciding what to write about takes longer than actually writing the blog post. Save yourself the agony of trying to come up with great content ideas when you're sitting down to write and instead refer to your running list of killer content ideas. Naturally, the best ideas come to you when you're in the shower or are driving in your car. Take a minute to jot these ideas down on a Google document or Trello board. Basically, these ideas should be stored in a place that is easily accessible and offers the ability to organize your thoughts.
3. Hold yourself accountable by adding writing deadlines to your work calendar.
In the fast-paced corporate world that we live in, it's so easy to put off writing blog posts and instead deal with the 98 different office emergencies that are happening at the moment. Instead, to help hold yourself accountable to maintaining a solid blog for your business, build writing deadlines into your work calendar. This will give you a set time to work on a blog post. Plus, if colleagues have access to your calendar as well, they will know not to interrupt you during this time.
4. Develop a blog post production process that works for you.
If you spend 95 percent of your time writing a blog post, chances are that it won't give you the results that you want. The best bloggers boost their productivity by creating a blog post production process that breaks down each aspect of writing quality content (brainstorming, researching, writing, editing, publishing, and promoting). At any given time, you could have multiple blog posts in these various stages. Think of it as your content pipeline!
5. Come to the realization that not every post will be perfect to your standards.
You will drive yourself bonkers if you try to make your posts 100 percent perfect before hitting publish. Obviously, you want to thoroughly proofread and edit your posts before publishing them, but the big takeaway here is not to over think things. Being too meticulous can be a huge time drainer!
So, hopefully, these time-saving content marketing SEO tips will help you to write higher quality blog posts without consuming too much of your business day!

Visit also my 10k in a 100 day's challenge.
http://myfirst10kbusiness.blogspot.nl/