Boost Your Facebook Business Page with Business Apps

When you create a Facebook Business Page or Fan Page for your ecommerce business, one challenge you might have is figuring out how to create something that isn’t a static, basic Facebook Page.

The best way to get noticed and to have people make use of the “Like” button on your Page is to have a professional developer design your Facebook page and work with your business to create Facebook-friendly photos, video and other assets.  This will help highlight what your business has to offer and also make your Facebook page an appealing destination for your customers.

Of course, that project will cost money and take time. If your small business or ecommerce business is lacking in either of those departments, then the following three Web apps and services can help you bring your business to Facebook with a little style.

Read more: 3 Apps to Boost Your Facebook Business Page
By Vangie Beal, May 19, 2011

Tips to Build a Relevant Twitter Following

We all know how cool it is to see a Twitter user with thousands of followers, but is that really the best way to approach Twitter marketing? A celebrity or well-known brand on Twitter is different than the average small business or individual looking to use Twitter for word-of-mouth marketing.

One method I use to build a Twitter list is to find the people who are active in the Twitter conversations related to my own main topic of discussion.  When I use Twitter I mainly tweet about ecommerce and technology, so I follow like-minded Twitter users. To find the most relevant users, I might search for #ecommerce, shopping carts and similar keywords.  When I spot Twitter users who send out interesting messages about these topics I follow them. In return when they view my Twitter profile and see we have many tweet topics in common, they are more likely to also follow me in return.

The reason behind using this method to build a Twitter list is simple. It’s one way to find the most relevant Twitter users in your own niche topic. From this group you can expect users to post things you will want to retweet – and in return your messages are also more likely to be retweeted.

You may not have an MC Hammer-sized twitter list, but a smaller more active and functional list from those within your niche topics will work better and help spread your Twitter messages to those who are interested in the topic of discussion.

15 Twitter Tools for Small Business Marketing

As a follow up to my recent Ecommerce-Guide.com article (25 Twitter Tools to Make Tweeting Easier, Faster) this week I look at a different set of 15 Twitter tools that will help you to further take advantage of using Twitter as a small business marketing tool. If you have integrated Twitter into your small business marketing plan, it’s helpful to invest the time to find the right tools to integrate Twitter into your existing social marketing practices. This list of desktop and Web-based tools will help make using Twitter an easier and faster process for you.

Feel free to add your own favorite Twitter Tools in the article comments section.

Read the article: 15 More Twitter Tools for Small Business Marketing
By Vangie Beal, December 29, 2010

How to Create Useful Ecommerce Surveys

Offering ecommerce surveys and polls on your website can help you connect with customers and gain useful insights about your marketplace. Alex Terry from Zoomerang explains why.

For the most part, a poll can be considered a slimmed-down version of a survey, but the data and information an ecommerce business owner obtains from each type of communication differs.

With a survey you can go a bit more in-depth about a particular topic and ask a series of questions you can use to do a number of things, like evaluate your product quality, guide future product development or even just to boost your customer relations and satisfaction.

According to Terry, polls are simpler to create but they are directional in nature. You can really only focus on one specific point. Also, he said that polls are a great way to add entertainment or value to your website.

7 Tips to Create Useful Ecommerce Surveys and Polls
By Vangie Beal, November 10, 2010

4 Tips to Prevent Shopping Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment (or shopping cart abandonment) is a familiar phrase for most ecommerce site owners. It’s the commonly used term to describe an online shopping cart that a consumer has added products to but then leaves the website without making the purchase and completing the transaction.

Knowing why consumers abandon shopping carts can help you to redesign your pages to provide optimal conversion rates. Let’s look at each reason given by consumers in this research and look at ways ecommerce site owners can address the issue before the consumer even lands on your site.

Read the Story: Cart Abandonment Explained and 4 Tips to Prevent It
By Vangie Beal, November 17, 2010

10 Social Media Tips for Small Business Marketing

One thing a small business owner should know is that using social media for marketing is a time-consuming task, and there is definitely a right and wrong way to deal with customers in online social spaces.

2. Find Your Customers: With so many social networking platforms available to consumers, it can be difficult to choose a social network for your business to use. Before you randomly log on to Twitter or Facebook to start your small business marketing campaign, research to find out where your customers already congregate online. Existing communities of customers will have formed the basics of the “social glue” that holds online relationships together. It takes less time and effort to join customers where they are, compared to creating multiple profiles and accounts in the hopes that customers will find you.

Read: Top 10 Social Media Tips for Small Business Marketing
By Vangie Beal, October 5, 2010

Trigger Email Marketing Tips

In email marketing, an event-triggered email , often called trigger email marketing, is a message that’s sent to a list subscriber based on “a customer behavior or a lack-of-action response from the customer,” according to Wendy Lowe, director of product marketing for Campaigner.

For example, trigger events could be a new sign-up form submitted on your site, an abandoned shopping cart, or a customer who looked at a product or downloaded a demo. There are countless events and customer actions that marketers use for trigger email marketing.

Trigger email marketing uses automated and very relevant emails that offer a significantly higher ROI than general email blasts. According to Forrester Research, however, despite the high ROI, fewer than four out of 10 email marketers currently use triggered messaging.

3 Trigger Email Marketing Tips for Ecommerce Marketers

By Vangie Beal, August 11, 2010

Small Business Marketing Tips: Writing a Press Release

When it comes to small business marketing, one way to self-promote your business is through increased media exposure. To do this you need what’s called a press release or a news release.

A press release is basically a statement that is written for news media; newspapers, magazines, television networks, radio stations, or online news outlets and trade publications.  As the phrase suggests, the written statement is a news article.

For example, an announcement of a new product, results of a survey you ran on your website, a new service you offer, or big client acquisition is all examples of a newsworthy statement — an overview of your company or the latest tips you offered in your e-mail newsletter is not.

Small Business Marketing Tips: Writing a Press Release

Contests as E-commerce Marketing Tools

From growing your e-mail list to creating an online community, a contest can be a valuable small business marketing tool. Strutta CEO, Ben Pickering, offers Web shop owners’ tips for running online contests.

Before you can plan a contest, you have to set your marketing objectives and goals. If, for example, your goal is to increase your e-mail subscriber list, then a basic online contest entry form asking people to submit their details and click a box to join your mailing list would suffice.

Sometimes an online contest can promote a special feature or product-line launch. Using Crate and Barrel as an example, Pickering said the company is running a large contest that encourages newly married or soon-to-be married couples to create a gift registry on the site.  ‘This type of marketing objective’, he added, ‘is designed to collect relevant marketing data that translates directly into sales.’

Contests as E-commerce Marketing Tools
By Vangie Beal, March 31, 2010

How to Twitter for E-commerce Success

Follow the lead of other businesses and learn how to successfully integrate Twitter in to your existing marketing and customer-service strategies.

Twitter can be an important marketing and customer service tool for businesses, but it’s easy to make mistakes. A business owner may hear about Twitter and decide to jump on the bandwagon and wrongly expect this micro-blogging service to be a substitute for a marketing or customer-service plan.

The best way to get the most out of Twitter is to incorporate the tool into your current strategies.  Remember, Twitter can help your business — but it is not a complete solution on its own. 

We take a look at one company’s Twitter success and discuss the strategies it uses.

How to Twitter for E-commerce Success
By Vangie Beal, February 3, 2010