Is Facebook Doomed?

Post author By JoAnn Kauffman
Post date September 3, 2015

For the past few months there has been an increased rise in the number of “niche” social media platforms due perhaps to the heavy criticism networks leveled toward some of the popular social media platforms.

For example, Facebook has received some scrutiny recently regarding their lack of privacy and the priority that is given to advertisers. What many couldn’t have predicted last year was the emergence of a new social platform intended to go head-to-head with social media giant, Facebook. The platform, which is still in public beta (meaning invite-only), has caused quite a stir; dubbed by some as the ‘hipster social network’, Ello offers a forever ad-free experience and promises to never sell its users’ information to third parties. Their website states: “Collecting and selling your personal data, reading your posts to your friends, and mapping your social connections for profit is both creepy and unethical. Under the guise of offering a “free” service, users pay a high price in intrusive advertising and lack of privacy.”

It’s unclear at this point whether the extreme buzz around the platform is simply because of its positioning as the ‘anti-Facebook’, or whether it has the substance, design and functionality to actually become a serious competitor for Facebook. Engagement on the platform doesn’t seem to be high at this point, and some are pointing out the current weaknesses of the platform, including the lack of video-integration and meaningful conversation and engagement.

Regardless, Ello is likely to grow in 2015, both in terms of numbers and engagement, and many will be watching closely.

Speaking of Facebook, Facebook’s ad pricing and demand will significantly increase. It’s no secret that Facebook post reach is significantly decreasing, and has become a serious problem for business owners who are using the platform for marketing purposes. This steady decline in reach is what has been coined the Filtered Feed Problem. As Facebook continues to limit the number of posts page fans actually see, the demand for promoted posts and ads will continue to increase. And with this increased demand will come increased pricing.

Twitter’s new business advertising model will skyrocket in popularity. With Twitter’s move to offering businesses more choice and flexibility in how and what they pay for in terms of advertising, more small and medium-sized businesses will jump on the Twitter ad bandwagon. The new fee structure allows businesses to pay for certain performance-based actions rather than just retweets or clicks.

These objective-based campaigns, which are still currently in beta, will offer more flexibility including tweet engagements (retweets, replies, etc.), website clicks or conversions, app installs, new followers and leads. These campaigns will be particularly appealing to small business owners who want to pay for results, not just for brand visibility.

Instagram will also continue to grow in the micro-video space. With both Vine and Instagram vying for billing as the top video networking site, the platforms have continued to differentiate themselves from the other offering different features, video lengths and editing capabilities. However, I believe we’ll see Instagram begin to outpace Vine as we enter 2015.

And with the recent emergence of Instagram’s in-feed video advertising, marketers will now have the option of paying to target their 15-second videos to users based on age, gender and country. While some have called the new video ads incongruous, the new feature is a welcome addition for marketers looking to promote their wares to Instagram’s young, affluent user base.

LinkedIn has been the top network of choice for the B2B crowd for years already, and I believe we’ll see the gap between LinkedIn and other networks continue to widen in 2015.

While B2C marketers report LinkedIn as being significantly less important than Facebook or Twitter for their marketing efforts, the numbers are quite different for the B2B crowd: according to the 2014 Social Media Examiner survey, 88% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn, compared to 89% for Facebook and 86% for Twitter.

In 2015, marketers will finally realize that there are two core pillars of a content marketing strategy: publication and distribution. Marketers will learn that social media is the most effective method of expanding the reach and visibility of their content, and because of this, will come to view social media as more of an “amplifier” for their published content rather than as the content itself.

So, while the content marketing buzz continues to pick up steam, marketers needs to remember that a distribution strategy for that content is just as important, if not more important, than the content itself.

Some things to look for in 2016: an increase in the use of podcasting, video social commerce and mobile marketing.

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Fun

Old Spice Funny Website

Post author By David Kauffman
Post date July 2, 2015

Flash websites are mostly gone from the web. But from time to time I find one. This one from Old Spice is pretty odd and funny.

musclesurprise.com

It just goes to show you some of the cool things you can do with Flash.

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Uncategorized

Wasting Money On Website Design

Post author By RK
Post date June 26, 2015

Why You Are Wasting Thousands of Dollars on New Website Designs!

Here is the way a lot of business people think. My website isn’t producing properly. We need a new design to spruce it up and bring it up to date. Fine. You spend thousands of dollars to get put on a designers profile and see a site you are proud of. Except several months later, you realize the site isn’t producing. Hmm, we must need another new design.

The problem isn’t the design, the problem is the site is functionally useless. You might as well buy a car without an engine.

When I ask a lot of prospective clients about working on Conversion Optimization, they say, “We are having our site redesigned right now and we will start working on conversion optimization once the site is finished.”

They think that conversion optimization is an add-on. Conversion is a website’s goal. A conversion is defined as a lead, a purchase, a registration, a request for a newsletter, a request for free report, etc.

Conversions are the Reason you have a website! Stop wasting money on redesign and get your website producing the way it should!

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Uncategorized

Inspirational Quotes

Post author By David Kauffman
Post date June 2, 2015

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill

Source: Top 100 Inspirational Quotes

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Uncategorized

Adwords Campaign

Post author By RK
Post date March 27, 2015

I wanted to give everyone out there some important information on how to conduct an adwords campaign. There are many companies that will set you up, but a lot of them don’t share the important information you need in order to make good marketing decisions.

Check out this video for more!

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Website Design

Website Design West Jefferson Ohio

Post author By David Kauffman
Post date February 1, 2015

Website Design West Jefferson Ohio and Online Marketing Strategies

Are you looking for a Website Design professional in the Jefferson Ohio area?

Super Cool Sites, Inc. not only can design your website but we work with you to develop on-line marketing strategies tailored to your business. The right marketing strategy can help prospects find your business, increase the performance of your website and turn leads into customers.

Along with website design we do search engine and conversion optimization, mobile websites and hosting.

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Conversion Optimization

2015 Internet Marketing Musts

Post author By RK
Post date January 9, 2015

2015 Internet Marketing Musts

I was reading one of my favorite blogs by Neil Patel. He made 10 predictions on what the New Year will bring in Internet Marketing. To see the article click here. The two that will impact small to medium size businesses the most are Conversion Optimization and Link Building .

There is no way around it. These two items can significantly increase your revenue and profit.

Let’s look at each one in a little more detail.

Conversion Optimization is an Instant Money Maker.

You don’t need to do anything else in order to increase your ROI dramatically. You have the same website, the same visitors, but now you make twice the money or more. Instead of 1 out of 100 converts you can increase it to 2, 3 or more out of 100. This can double or triple you online business revenue instantly.

There are many, many methods in the art of conversion rate optimization (CRO). But the stalwart of them all is testing, testing and more testing. Without testing, you just don’t know. A/B testing is the best. There is a service called Optimizely that can make it easy to do testing without any coding experience. If you are familiar with Google Analytics, you can set up tests there for free.

The biggest mistake I see people constantly make, is assuming their beliefs about what people want are correct. They assume everyone thinks like they do. Keep Testing!!

Link Building Can Be Difficult, But is also Very Rewarding

You must convince high ranking websites to put a link on their site that connects to yours. It isn’t a simple matter of exchanging links. One way links are the best. That means there is a link from a high ranking website directly to a page on your website and no reciprocal link back.

How do you get other high ranking sites to do this? There are a few ways that come to mind.

Pay them
Ask Them
Have interesting and education information that would benefit their audience on your site

If your site is converting at a high percentage, paying them could prove profitable. If you know other businesses owners, you can ask them to put a link on their website to yours.

You can write educational blogs on your site that would compel other sites to link to yours and thereby increasing traffic. More traffic, more revenue!

If your blogging skills aren’t the best, you can find people at www.fiverr.com that will write articles for $5. You can then tweak them to your desire. I have tried this service and was very satisfied.

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Uncategorized

CRO Conversion Rate Optimization

Post author By RK
Post date December 29, 2014

I have been wondering what I can say or do that would motivate business owners or marketers to really look at what conversion rate optimization (CRO) can do for their companies.

Am I the only person that looks at businesses through math eyes? I thought every business should do this. How can you not? Your payroll is certainly math. Your income is math. Your balance sheet and taxes are math.

Hmm, let’s revisit one of these. YOUR INCOME IS MATH!!! Let me think about this, if I make $5,000 per month of profit from my website and my conversion rate is 1%, when my conversion rate increases to 3%, then I make $15,000 per month profit.

If I have to pay $1,000 per month in order to achieve this, I will be $9,000 per month ahead. Who in their right mind would not want to do this?

I was just reading a blog that shows the top 35% of companies in CRO are testing constantly while the bottom 35% are doing very little testing. The top 35% have 3 to 4 times better conversion rates.

Let’s do some more math. $10,000 per month of revenue times 3.5 = $35,000 per month. I guess that sounds like too much work. Maybe it looks better like this: 1,500,000 X 4 = $6,000,000. $4,500,000 is nothing to sneeze at.

Any company can achieve higher conversion rates with a little work. Higher conversion rates = more money PERIOD! As long as you don’t have to do any work and you make more profit than you are paying for conversion optimization, you are basically making free money.

It’s certainly money that you wouldn’t have had if you kept going the way you were. And the nice thing is that it’s all verifiable. No guessing. It’s all in black and white.

I find it funny when I call on a new prospect that they are “not interested” in that. Really? Not interested in making more money or increasing revenue? Why are you in business?

So, I am asking for your help. What should I say or do that could get the point across? Please reply below.

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Uncategorized

What Super Cool Sites is NOT!

Post author By RK
Post date December 4, 2014

What Super Cool Sites is NOT!

We are not like the phone calls you get that promise to get you to the top of Google. We are not like the emails you get that promise 1000’s of people to your website. We are not like Web.com or Wix.com that offer you a “Free” website. We are not like local advertising companies that overcharge you for running web ads.

What’s wrong with being “those” companies? They don’t base anything on the actual money you will make. What good is it to drive a 1000 people to your website if none of them do anything? If they charge you $1,000 per month or more to get people to your site that don’t buy, you’re just throwing your money away.

Why not know what percentage of people will buy and how much profit that means before you start throwing money into ads? When I look at the pages that some of the companies that market local advertising puts up and the amount of money they charge, I can’t believe it. I think (maybe) that their intentions are good, but wow, they are certainly misguided.

We are a small company that can give you personal attention. All though we have processes, nothing is cookie cutter. Each company has different needs. Some need more traffic, some need higher conversions, some need a better design, and some need social strategies and more.

We can write the content and use the graphics that will get results. Guaranteed! Check us out!

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Uncategorized Weekly Tips

Inbound Marketing

Post author By RK
Post date October 27, 2014

Use the Power of Inbound Marketing To Unleash A Whole New Animal

As more and more small businesses struggle to gain a competitive edge, it is becoming important to find a unique set of tools that can maximize the potential profit from every advertising dollar you spend. Forget about the old days of having to do direct mailing, expensive radio and television advertising and full-page newspaper ads. These have grown out of fashion. The Internet and its recent revelation of social media have unleashed a whole new animal that has affected small and large businesses alike – it’s called inbound marketing!

When you consider that most direct mail isn’t even opened and the fact that most people skip TV ads to grab their favorite snack, you’ll begin to understand the power of inbound marketing as the marketing strategy for the 21^st century.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Why “inbound” you may be asking?

The “inbound” has to do with reeling in customers to your company in comparison to going out and fighting for them. In this way, potential customers are already warmed up to the idea of buying your products and services. No need for hard selling! No need for begging! In other words, they want to hear more about what you have to offer.

That sounds wonderful but how can all this actually be done?

Inbound marketers take advantage of the latest technology of web 2.0 in order to thoroughly engage their audiences on the unique vision that their company offers. This is done with the use of blogs that publish high, quality content about their business or in the form of electronic white paper or webinars that can disseminate a large amount of info in a very short time.

Furthermore, the use of social media in inbound marketing is used to create “buzz” and get people actively engaged, with the hope that they’ll share critical information about your company left and right in a way that it goes viral. Best of all, social media is free and there are now many tools that can allow you to manage all accounts from one location.

Finally, SEO can be used to develop higher rankings for your company’s position in the search engines. This can be as simply as optimizing the tags of photos shared on social media platforms to complex strategies that involve PR outreach and relevant keyword research for your target market.

With so many companies taking advantage of inbound marketing’s recent success, what are you waiting for? There is a wealth of opportunity available out there waiting to be tapped into and designed to maximize your profits, while leveling out the playing field for many small businesses.