How Social Media Platforms Help in Mobile Marketing

Technology has simply improved the way of living for all of us. It has become so much easier to establish and maintain communication with others around the globe. Social networks have become immensely popular as platforms to share information and ideas.

Effective Mobile Marketing via Social Media Networking Sites

Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Facebook

Researchers are of the view that in the coming years, the majority of us will use the internet from our mobile phones. In countries where there is a limitation in landline and broadband access, mobile internet use will increase.

A Few Mobile Marketing Tips!

Mobile marketers can build their customer base through popular social media networking platforms.

Offering free apps
SEO
Understand who your competitors are
Do not turn off your customers

Consider the above aspects when thinking of a successful mobile marketing strategy and you will get to enjoy excellent results.

Article Source:- How Social Media Platforms Help in Mobile Marketing

Top 8 Tools for Optimizing Mobile Websites: Checking Accuracy in Coding and Compatibility with Browsers

Optimizing websites for mobile devices is immensely important since mobile search contributes to a large chunk of online traffic. This surge is only bound to keep increasing which is why businesses need to ensure that their websites function in a user-friendly and efficient manner on the mobile phone.

In-depth Testing with MobiReady



MobiReady is one such testing tool. It checks mobile-readiness such as W3C compliance through best standards and practices and offers a 1 to 5 score. It also provides in-depth page analysis for determining your site's performance on mobile devices. Another plus point is that it's free.

Perfecto Mobile's MobileCloud Platform

Perfecto Mobile has a MobileCloud platform which can help you access many tablets and handsets that are connected to various mobile live networks spread in various geo-locations. You can monitor and test processes on each of the handsets which will help ensure the compatibility of your website as well as your application or service. It costs $25 per hour if you are paying per project. When you pay on a monthly basis the plans begin at $15 per hour.

Mobile Readiness Checked by Gomez

Gomez features a test that evaluates your website's mobile readiness. You can secure a score after analyzing more than 30 web mobile development best practices. These also include in-depth suggestions on fixing the identified issues. This is a great tool you can use for free. All you need to do is submit the contact information.

Free Spot-checking with DeviceAnywhere



If you're looking for a free spot-checking tool, DeviceAnywhere is a great one. It helps spot-check web mobile content on mobile devices. You can remotely interact in real time with live mobile devices to know how your web content appears and behaves in various devices. The spot-checking aspect of DeviceAnywhere is free though it does have an exciting option of interactive testing that has been created for developers and comes with plans beginning at $100 per month.

Test Browser Compatibility with CrossBrowser Testing

With CrossBrowserTesting you can test your website in more than 130 browsers on 25 various operating systems and mobile devices, which means you can test for iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. You get automated site screenshots and also the functionality of a test site. The plans begin at $29.95 per month.

Multi-Browser Viewer

As the name suggests, Multi-Browser Viewer is an application that checks the cross-browser compatibility of your website for mobile devices. There are 55 standalone and 88 screen capture browsers as well as 11 mobile emulators and browsers featured. Multi-Browser Viewer is available with a single user license for $139.95.

BrowserStack - Much for Less



For plans starting at $19 per month, BrowserStack provides web browser testing quick access to developer tools, live testing and remote browsers. You can also get access to official Android, Opera Mobile and Apple iOS mobile emulators. BrowserStack is really a great tool that can test your website on a wide array of devices.

iPhone Tester - Free iPhone Emulator

iPhone Tester is a free and simple iPhone emulator which enables you to check your website in iPod Touch, iPhone 3G and 4G dimensions. All you need to do is type in the URL of the website to be tested.

A professional SEO company can design websites that are mobile compliant and bring maximum targeted visitors. SEO professionals use highly sophisticated tools to test mobile compliance of your website and ensure improved mobile performance.

Mobile Website Design: Design Tips for Success

Sandra was visiting Tulsa Ohio with a friend and they were out shopping till lunchtime. Her friend was a strict vegetarian and they wanted to find a nearby vegetarian restaurant where they could have lunch. She took out her mobile phone and using MapQuest's mobile web site she clicked the 'find places' link, typed 'vegetarian restaurants' along with local zip code and clicked Go. Voila! Within seconds, she got a list of 'vegetarian restaurants' sorted by distance. They could choose one, view a map and get directions to get there. They could even call up the place and ask what was on the menu before they set out! That's the magic of mobile search, something that was unthinkable a few years ago.

Mobile usage and mobile web browsing is advancing by leaps and bounds. An IDC (International Data Corporation) research report indicates that mobile internet usage will surpass PC web browsing by 2015. Mobile searches usually happen on the go, at home, or at work. According to new research reports from Google and Nielsen, 55% of the conversions (in the form of a store visit, phone call, or purchase) happen within an hour. All this explains why it is so important for a business to see seen on mobile search. The solution, as everybody knows, lies in mobile website design.

If your site doesn't look as great on a mobile device as it looks on a desktop computer, it means that you are missing out on leads, traffic and sales opportunities. Having the right kind of mobile web design can help in improving customer response and giving you a competitive edge.

Tips for Successful Design of Mobile Website

Here are some important features of good mobile website design:

Design from User's Point of View: - The design would be useful from the user's point of view. Variables such as speed, content, page layout, and size are identified and a simple and user friendly design is created.

Defining Content Stacking Strategy: - Displaying proper content with changing screen sizes (of smart phones) is essential. Prioritizing important content in the most visible areas will help in developing an appealing website.

Less Navigation Time: - Every webpage visitor, would like to locate the required information within seconds. Making navigation as swift as possible is one of the determining factors of a quality mobile webpage design.

Less Loading Time: - Website performances can directly affect shopping behavior. Studies reveal that 47% of the customers expect a website to be loaded between 2-3 seconds. Forty percentage customers abandoned a website that took more than 3 seconds to load. Also, one second delay in page response can result in 7% reduction of conversions and every 100ms increase in load time decreases sales by 1%. These facts explain why page loading time is an important factor in design.

Technical Factors to Consider

• Designing should be with fluid layout and minimum width of 320px
• High resolution images should be included for iPhone 4 retina display
• Auto-scaling should be turned off
• Usage of CSS3 in place of images, for shadows, rounded corners and gradients, can help reduce load time
• Create icons for your site

Clickable Elements Should be Big Enough to be Used by Fingertip

Mobile visitors often make use of their fingertips on their touch screens. Avoid making them feel the need of having sharp fingertips just for the sake of clicking on your website buttons.

Simplified design that streamlines navigation and layout is users they expect. It's best rely on professional website design services. The expert web designers in a reliable firm can help you create a mobile-friendly, smart phone compatible version of your website. With the right mobile friendly website design, you are guaranteed an increase in targeted traffic and more conversions.

Some Ways to Gain the Right Online Exposure with SEO

For any business, it is crucial to create a robust online presence and ensure easy accessibility to targeted visitors. The more useful a website is to the user, the better it will perform in SERPs. SEO is an investment that will help you gain excellent online exposure. On-page and off-page SEO strategies, when implemented properly can do wonders for your business. It would be wise to implement a strategy that uses both SEO and SEM together.

How to Get Maximum Online Exposure with SEO

Let us discuss this with an example. Imagine that you run an elevator & lift company that serves the areas - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Your main goal would be to enhance the online visibility of your business website. Here are certain SEO tips to help you out.

Make your website user-friendly: Create a uniquely designed website with easily navigable pages. Make sure not to load your website with too many heavy images. This may increase the loading time, prompting the visitor to move to your competitor's website. Remember to add a call to action or a quick contact form in each page you create.
 
Choose the right domain name: Having a relevant internet address is essential in terms of brand recognition and is a vital part of a successful optimization plan. A simple domain name related to your business or targeted keyword such as "homeelevator.com" or "homeelevatorcompany.com" is ideal since it makes it easy for a searcher to simply type the business name into a browser to find your company. Even thought this helps it is not necessary. Exact Match Domain is no longer valuable. Nowadays getting domains like that are difficult. Search Engines are no longer interested in an exact name but to make sure your brand is well established in your domain name.

Do your keyword research: SEO begins with the words typed in the search box. It is crucial to rank for the right keywords. Make sure to pick less competitive, geo-targeted long tail keywords specific to your business. This can attract the right kind of visitors to your website. Choose the keywords that your prospects may type in to find you such as "Home elevators NY, NJ, CT" or "Multilift Vertical Platform Lift NYC".

Advanced keyword research tools such as Google AdWords tool, Wordtracker and Market Samurai can be used to find targeted keywords.

Create engaging content: Create fresh content for web pages, articles, blogs and newsletters that will engage your current and potential clients and educate them on the advantages of quality elevators and lifts and why your company is their best choice. Make sure your content is unique with the right keyword density, adhering to the latest Google algorithms.

Optimize your title tags and meta description: A title tag is the main text that describes an online document. Title tags should be descriptive and readable. Often visitors go for the easier option of reading the meta tag and description to know about your site, rather than opening the site and reading the entire content.

Get quality back links: Growing the link profile of your website is critical to gain attention and traffic from search engines. It is also important to get quality links from relevant websites related to your business. Your link building campaigns can include sharing guest posts, testimonials, case studies and RSS feeds. Ensure to include keyword-rich anchor text.

Be active on social media sites: Social media presence can generate awareness of your elevators / lifts and brand, and help you reach the millions of users on social media platforms. Make sure to regularly update your social media profiles, and share interesting content / videos that can persuade more buyers to contact you via social media.

Go mobile: Mobile optimized website is a necessity now with more and more people using Smartphones and tablets to search for businesses. The mobile version of your site is in fact a smaller version of your existing website with a more simplistic design. Make sure your location is "findable" to mobile searchers.

Track the progress of your website. Use Google analytics to keep a close eye on your visitors' activity and to identify the sources of your traffic.

Have you got enough time for all these SEO efforts along with managing your core business? Most businesses do not. Then the option would be to outsource your SEO tasks to an experienced SEO company. Staying constantly abreast with all Google updates and changes, skilled SEO specialists at reliable firms ensure comprehensive services at affordable rates.

Article Source:- How to Maximize Your Online Exposure Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

YouTube Marketing - Promote Your Brand to the Next Level

Online video is virtually dominating the internet, and businesses are striving to keep abreast with this trend and promote their brand. YouTube is a great platform that businesses can effectively utilize to promote their messages. It is important to be aware that most people visit YouTube for the primary purpose of entertainment and therefore businesses must create and publish YouTube videos that are entertaining enough.

Video marketing has been adopted by many famous brands such as Sony Mobile and Jamie Oliver's Food Tube, which are taking advantage of YouTube's mammoth audience base to engage with their potential customers. Compared to other traditional search engine optimization strategies, videos in your SEO plan can maximize your outreach and attract more number of customers. Let us consider how YouTube fits into an effective search engine optimization plan.

YouTube Marketing for Business Success

Video SEO based on YouTube analytics essentials, can play a solid role in deciding the success of your marketing strategy. According to this report that quotes Chris Clarke, chief creative officer at DigitasLBi, the agency that produces YouTube content for Sony Mobile, YouTube remains the biggest and best video site on the web. However, brands aren’t leveraging YouTube talent in the best way. Brands need to provide content that operates in the ways YouTube and its communities operate. Only then can they make the best of YouTube marketing.

Though challenging, businesses can choose from the many promotion options available on this popular video channel. Pre-roll ads that run before videos and are skippable can be created. This is an economical option since the advertiser needs to pay only when someone watches the ad for at least 30 seconds. There is also the option of buying ads that appear at the bottom of the screen during video or buying display advertising on the site.

Here are some reasons why you need to consider YouTube marketing.

• Absolutely free and easy to upload your video in YouTube and share it with others.

• No need to spend on web servers to store your video, as it is possible to host it directly through YouTube.

• YouTube easily accelerates the broadcast of the video and helps to reach out to a massive crowd.

Find the Perfect YouTube Tool

YouTube provides powerful tools which you can use to create excellent content, share content, build a strong fan base and effectively market your brand.

• YouTube Capture: This enables you to create movies on the go, capturing every moment. You can record as many clips as you want and any number of clips can be stitched together. Moreover, you can trim and reorganize the clips conveniently from your phone and even add a soundtrack that you prefer either from your own music library or from Capture's audio library. Upload your video to YouTube and simultaneously post to all of your social networks.

• YouTube Video Editor: This is another valuable YouTube tool that can be used to enhance your uploaded videos in your web browser. You can combine videos, add music and text effects, trim and rotate clips, insert transitions and stabilize clips. You can auto-fix and fine-tune the colour and lighting using a panel of controls and soothe the shakiness of the video. Options are available to alter the speed of the play. You can specify half speed or quarter speed and include smooth slow motion effects. The face blurring property of the tool identifies and removes the anonymity problem of actors. You can also add your favourite music from the approved tracks available in the library.

• YouTube Captions: With this tool, you can add, edit or remove captions and create automatic captions.

• YouTube Analytics: This tool allows you to monitor your videos/channel with up-to-date metrics and reports. Data is available for Views, Traffic sources, and Demographics. This tool can be accessed through youtube.com/analytics.

• Audio Library: This enables you to download background music for your videos. It is absolutely free as well.

To gain ultimate success in your business, you need to have a clear-cut understanding about video marketing tactics and trends. YouTube is a prevailing platform to optimize your video content. Make the best use of the built-in tools available in the website to enhance your visual content and gain maximum visibility for your brand.

Take some time to learn about the use of videos in SEO, and how YouTube can help in promoting your brand and improving your reputation. A professional SEO company can guide you in this regard, while providing video SEO services customized to your particular requirements.

Article Source:- YouTube Marketing - Can It Take Your Brand to the Next Level?

Study Reveals Quick Twitter Responses Work Wonders

Skeptical about the importance of Twitter marketing? The following survey would clear your doubts.

Immediate Response to Tweets Demanded by Customers

A recent study by Millward Brown Digital for Lithium gives fascinating insight into how businesses should carry out Twitter marketing and customer care. The findings revealed that 53% of the consumers expect the business to respond to a direct tweet to it, or one involving its products or services, before an hour passes. 72% of consumers expect the same if the tweet deals with a complaint about the business or its products. The survey was conducted on 501 consumers who claimed to be active communicators with businesses on Twitter.

The study also showed how important responding quickly to tweets is. It is where businesses can build their reputation. 38% of the respondents revealed that they would feel negative about a business or brand if it failed to respond to a tweet promptly, while 60% of them claimed that they would even take negative action against the brand if it failed to respond to tweets within a reasonable time period. The reason why a tweet was made determines the urgency in response expected by customers.



Greater Sway over Customers with Prompt Response

The study also revealed that brands promptly responding to tweets were able to get more positive reactions from the consumers. 47% of the respondents revealed that it was likelier for them to recommend a brand that responded promptly to tweets. 34% of them were more likely to buy more stuff from such brands.

If anything, this survey only shows how businesses need to embrace Twitter marketing. All social media marketing is massively beneficial but Twitter, as proved, has the capacity to enable businesses to directly influence and impress customers.

Hashtags

Using hashtags is the ultimate means of leveraging the power of the social media. Now has this hashtag concept thrown you into confusion? Here's some light. A hashtag basically groups the information posted in Twitter.

• What these hashtags do is bring users with certain interests in touch with posted information that deals with those topics.

• When businesses use hashtags to post content on Twitter, even users who are not in their list of followers could access them. It's a great opportunity for businesses to get themselves new prospective customers.

• Hastags work not just for Twitter but on other social networks as well such as Facebook and Google+.

So here's how hashtags can be used. All you need to do is identify the topic your posts would fit in. There may already be a hashtag for the topic. Check out the hashtags others in your field of business are using. You can collect a list of such hashtags and choose which ones you'd like to employ for your posts. Clicking on a hashtag will open a new list containing posts having the hashtag. This is true for Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. Hashtags dealing with various topics can also be combined to deliver more accurate results.   

This is crucial and could give businesses the vital edge over the competition. Twitter marketing should indeed be a major social media marketing strategy for small and medium-sized businesses and hashtags should be a major element of it. Start loving Twitter and hashtags like never before.

Social Media Analysis

A reliable and professional SEO company can help businesses in that as part of their social media marketing services while also providing social media monitoring and analysis on a regular basis. Effective social media analysis is how your business can perfect it social media strategies and ensure their effectiveness. Thanks to the sheer volume of consumer data and the sprouting of social media activity it is important to study how people connect to each other in these social networks and how and what kind of data is shared the most.  

Social media analysis also helps in gathering analytics which can help you make informed business decisions, particularly those dealing with customer service and marketing. There's no better way to get a clear idea of customer sentiment than through social media analytics. The services of an experienced SEO company obviously help in gathering precious social media data.

Article Source:- Study Reveals Quick Twitter Responses Work Wonders

Increase Website Traffic through Affordable SEO Services

It is possible to increase your website traffic through affordable SEO services. At present, the Internet is used by many business firms to reach out to their customers. These business firms provide details about their main products and services through their websites. Internet users mainly depend on search engines to acquire details about required products and services. That is why it is important to own search engine friendly websites. Your website can be made search engine friendly with the assistance of SEO professionals who are skilled in their field.

Optimize Web Pages According to Search Engine Norms

Through search engine marketing and placement services, you can make your business website appear more attractive, professional and balanced for the search engines. SEO services ensure you top positions in the result pages of the search engines.



Improve Your Online Visibility through Advanced Website Optimization Techniques

Advanced SEO services make sure that you receive consistent net traffic for your website for a long time. For promoting your business website among online users, the important website optimization techniques used by the SEO firms include:

• Planning and designing of websites
• Research of keywords
• Creation of website content
• Building reciprocal links
• HTML code optimization
• Meta tag optimization
• SEO copywriting
• Submission to directories
• Submission to search engines
• Blog writing
• Article posting
• Maintenance of ranking reports

Select a Reliable Company

In order to satisfy your website optimization requirements, it is important to depend on a professional SEO company. At present there are a number of companies offering reliable SEO services. Therefore it is important to identify the appropriate company, which can offer superior services at affordable service charges, within minimum time.

Article Source:- Increase Website Traffic through Affordable SEO Services