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Greetings! Thanks for visiting Masterful Marketing. You’ll find a lot of content about marketing your small business in the blog, so you may want to subscribe via the RSS feed or email so you won’t miss any valuable information.

Marketing assets are things that you own and control that help with your marketing initiatives. And according to Seth Godin, marketing assets are tools or platforms that can be used over and over without using them up and which get better the more you invest.

Your brand identity, website, domain name, email list, customer list, white papers, presentations, pay-per-click advertising, social media, directory sites or any platform that houses your important marketing content, are critical assets to your business.

Why are these online marketing assets critical?

Let’s take a look at what these assets mean to your business:

• Your domain name is associated with your business and most likely is your business name. Your website and blog, built using that domain name, provide online visibility to your prospects and customers. If you were ready to sell your business, these assets would be valuable to the new business owner. Did you register the domain name under an account you own (i.e. like Godaddy or Network Solutions) or did someone do it for you?
• Your Google Places page is another online asset that provides information on your business location for local search such as phone numbers, directions and reviews. Is your Google Places page verified in your Google account or in someone vendor’s account?
• Your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools associated with your site are important tools to assess the effectiveness of your online presence. Are you the owner of these accounts or did someone else set them up and provide only reports to you?
• Are you running Google AdWords or other pay-per-click advertising for your business? If so, did you set up the accounts and have someone managing it or did you have an outside agency set it up for you? Is the money you spend monthly all going towards clicks or is some being pocketed by the agency?

Why am I concerned about who controls these assets?

A couple of things happened this week that reminded me that many small business owners still don’t understand the value of their online presence, are totally unaware of their online reputation and have fallen prey to unscrupulous “online marketing experts”. Unfortunately, these experts target small local businesses that need to be online but don’t have the time or expertise to do it themselves. And once in their hands, it is very hard to regain control. For example:

• A small business owner was spending $700 per month in pay-per-click campaigns but had no idea what keywords they were bidding on, how much each keyword cost or how much of this money was actually being spent on clicks. Lesson learned: Set up your PPC accounts directly with a credit card and work with someone who can set up and manage your campaigns through your account.

• Another was unaware that his domain name was expiring and a disgruntled web developer chose not to tell him. His website and email disappeared, the domain expired and the business has to wait the redemption period (about 30 days) for him to register it under his own name. Unfortunately, in 30 days Google will have dropped many of his website’s pages from the index and when the site returns, it will basically have to start over. Lesson learned: Never let someone else register your domain name unless you are totally confident that you can trust that person. Someone you trust will most likely tell you to register it yourself.
• A local business had his Google Places page and other local business listings set up by a local search firm using their accounts, not one from the business owner. When the local business decided to discontinue working with this firm, they refused to release the Google Places page so the owner could claim it. Lesson learned: Claim your Google Places page and other local business listings yourself or hire someone to do it on your behalf through accounts you have already set up.

When you want to hire an external resource to help you with your online marketing, just remember to think through what happens if you decide to discontinue working with them.

• Do you still have access to your accounts?
• Can you take over the management of the campaigns?
• Will remnants of these efforts remain long after your relationship with these agencies end, such as phone numbers you don’t own showing up associated with your business in the search results?
• Will your online presence remain visible on the Internet or will you need to start over?

My Advice

Take inventory of all of your online assets and determine who has ownership. This can be done by your office manager or an intern who can search for your business and record the information they find. Once you have that data, determine how you will claim all the properties and update the information so that it accurately reflects your business.

Do you have control of your online marketing assets?

Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/online-marketing-assets-why-you-must-be-in-control/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=online-marketing-assets-why-you-must-be-in-control

Greetings! Thanks for visiting Masterful Marketing. You’ll find a lot of content about marketing your small business in the blog, so you may want to subscribe via the RSS feed or email so you won’t miss any valuable information.

Facebook announced the new Timeline for Pages and surprised everyone by making them available immediately! And honestly, there are a lot of changes and many questions to be answered.

But don’t worry – as an admin, you can preview what your page will look like, make the changes you want and tweak for a while. The world will continue to see your current page until you publish or March 30th, when Facebook is migrating all pages to the new format. So you have this month to update your page and create an exciting cover photo.

The major thing to think about now is how your page will look to your visitors. If you do nothing, your page will look a bit dull. So, here are the changes you must address now so you are ready before the timeline goes into affect on March 30th:

New Cover Photo

The new cover photo will be a nice addition. The previous 180x540px image was restrictive. Now with 851x315px of space, either mimic your website header if appropriate or create something more exciting. But with all the good, there are restrictions that you must understand so you don’t violate any of Facebook’s requirements. Review the Facebook Page guidelines for complete information, but the following highlights the important restrictions to your cover photo.

You can not include:

• Price or purchase information
• Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section
• References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”

So be creative and show who you are with a visual representation. That is much harder for some of us than others, but we’ll figure it out! Right? Here’s a screenshot of my updated Facebook page and new cover photo:

Masterful Marketing Facebook Timeline Cover Photo

Custom Tabs

You probably spent a lot of time creating custom tabs and now you may think they are not as valuable because the side navigation is removed and you no longer can direct non-fans to a special welcome landing tab. You can however, still use custom pages to contain information that you want to provide to fans. Plus you can send people to them directly through other means – your email signature, from your website or email campaign. To find your tab URL, hover over the image, click on the edit pencil and select “Link to this tab”. My welcome tab is: https://www.facebook.com/MasterfulMarketing?v=app_324041830948398.

Your custom Facebook page content probably need some edits to make them fit into the new 810 pixel width. This is also a nice change because you can fit more valuable information above the fold! However, until you get around to it, your previous 520 pixel pages will be centered in the new page with white space around it.

Profile and Application Thumbnails

Your cover image and your profile photo/thumbnail should work together. I purposely left my logo off of the cover photo because the logo works nicely as the profile thumbnail. These images must be created at 180px by 180px. You can also add thumbnail photos for your custom tabs to make them more interesting.

To upload a new image, hover over it, click on the edit pencil in the corner and upload an image:

Adding an image to your application tabs

Note the “Custom Tab Image” link. Click on “change” and upload your image. You can see that my welcome tab now has my square thumbnail image associated with it.

Rearrange your Facebook Custom Pages to Suit your Needs

You can also rearrange the order of these applications to provide the most important information visibly because, although you can have up to 12 applications, only four show and Photos has to be in the first position. Some may miss the little arrow with the number in it to the right of the four applications.

Change Happens, Change is Good

The Facebook Page design changes have many good features that outweigh the few perceived negatives. I highly recommend you start updating your visual presence on Facebook now so you have a great image projecting to your fans sooner than later.

I’d love to see your new Facebook cover photos! Post a link to your updated Facebook page in the comments here or on the Masterful Marketing Facebook page. It’s OK to brag – we all can get some inspiration from your creativity.

Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/facebook-page-changes-3-things-you-need-to-address-now/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-page-changes-3-things-you-need-to-address-now

Patience and consistency – virtues in many aspects of your life. These same qualities are important for marketing, and even more critical for your inbound marketing efforts. Putting an inbound marketing plan in motion that attracts your ideal client is something that requires stamina and determination:

• Stamina to continue on course for the long term no matter who says you should change
• Determination to make it work and see your business succeed

Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Inbound marketing is a process that requires regular, consistent delivery to increase your visibility and demonstrate your expertise. Patience and persistence is necessary for this to work and for you to see the results.

How long? That can vary from one business to the next. In today’s highly connected world, time to visibility, credibility and profitability has been reduced, but it is still doesn’t happen overnight.

Three Tips to a Successful Inbound Marketing Marathon

So many small business owners get excited about setting up their web presence. They develop a website, set up their social platforms and then stop and do nothing. Why put all the time and effort into training for a marathon to just stop when you get to the starting line?

So before you put money and time into setting up your web presence for your long term inbound marketing activity, here are three tips to ensure you understand the effort required:

• A Standalone Website is a Thing of the Past – The website needs to support the rest of your online strategy. A quality website provides a landing area for those who come from your other web properties. Once your visitors finally get to your website, be sure to give them something to do – a call to action – so they provide you the contact information that begins the process of building a relationship with them. Tip » A website is the central hub of your web presence but it is not the end of the game. Once the website is set up, add links to all of your social media profiles so your digital footprint covers a wider area of the Internet.
• Your Social Sites won’t be Social Without You – The pleasure of your presence is requested – on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest or … . So many platforms, so little time! I get it. It’s hard to be visible across so many platforms while running your business and servicing your clients, but that’s why you create a plan and select only those platforms that make the most sense for your business. Tip » Social media marketing is a long term commitment, not a marketing campaign that has a beginning and end. Select your platforms based on your target market and then stay active and present to create the most value.
• Your Brand isn’t Built Overnight -You didn’t build your personal reputation overnight (although some people manage to destroy theirs that quickly!), so you shouldn’t expect your professional or business brand reputation and visibility to be created instantaneously. Establish a consistent brand and project it on your website, social profiles, email marketing campaigns and anywhere you maintain a presence to help your brand’s visibility and recognition. Tip » Set a goal to become one of the top three brands in your niche and do what it takes to get there.

Running the Inbound Marketing Marathon

For inbound marketing to succeed, you must become the consistent, patient, always present and helpful business owner providing relevant content to your target market.

If you make a commitment to increase your brand’s visibility through inbound marketing, make sure you are ready to be there for the long term before you establish a web presence of any type.

Are you getting ready for a marathon or a sprint? Which one do you think will be the most beneficial to your business visibility?

 

Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/inbound-marketing-marathon-not-a-sprint/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=inbound-marketing-marathon-not-a-sprint

Greetings! Thanks for visiting Masterful Marketing. You’ll find a lot of content about marketing your small business in the blog, so you may want to subscribe via the RSS feed or email so you won’t miss any valuable information.

Top Facebook Questions

Here are the top Facebook Page questions that I get asked regularly. Given the frequency, I thought I would share the answers for the benefit of everyone.

1. Question: I want to set up a business page for a business I own but I do not want my personal profile linked to the business page. Can I do this?

Answer: A Facebook Page is a separate account that does not have login information and are created by people through their profiles (timelines). This does not associate it with your personal profile other than you are an administrator. People who become fans will not gain any access to your personal account. Log into your personal profile and go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to get started.

2. Question: I want to link Twitter and my blog to my Facebook Page not my personal profile but when I link the accounts, the posts go to both. How can I link Twitter and my blog and not have the posts appear on my personal profile?

Answer: Any posts to your Facebook Page will appear in news feed of all the fans, therefore if you like your own page (which you should), you will see the posts on your personal news feed.

3. Question: I see businesses creating “personal” accounts so they can quickly network and gain strong “friend” numbers rather then growing them through “like”. Some businesses have actually deleted their Business Page only to re-make one as a Personal Profile. Will they get shut them down?

Answer: These businesses are violating Facebook’s terms of service and they do run the risk that their account could be disabled. There are many ways to increase engagement and build relationships. You can:

• Install the Like Box or other social plugins on your website to encourage Likes
• Get higher visibility in the search engines because your pages are always visible
• Access Insights (analytics) to see how your fans are engaging with your page
• Set up custom tabs just for your business (like a welcome tab and a reveal page)

4. Question: If I create the Facebook Page for my company, will I be able to transfer the admin permissions to another employee?

Answer: First, you should make sure that you have multiple admins so you don’t run the risk of stranding your page. Second, Facebook now provides the ability to remove the person who originally created the Facebook Page.

5. Question: Will I be violating Facebook regulations by creating a Personal Profile using a new Gmail address in order to create a Facebook Page?

Answer: Yes, you will violate Facebook’s terms of service. See questions 1 and 3 as to why you don’t need to do this.

6. Question: How can I post to my company’s Facebook Page as myself if I am the administrator?

Answer: As an admin, you can switch between using Facebook as you or as the page. You as an admin will always post as the Page unless you switch your posting preferences under settings. If you do that, you can post under your personal profile, not the admin.

7. Question: Does a Facebook Business Page and a Facebook Business Account have different functions?

Answer: Yes, they are very different options. The Facebook Page has richer functionality geared toward engaging fans and provides visibility for the brand in search engines. A Business Account is available to a company that does not have nor wants to create a personal profile that wants to create / manage / advertise the Facebook Page. A business account is restricted from adding friends or installing applications.

8. Question: What does Facebook mean when it says you can’t add applications to your business account?

Answer: Do not confuse Facebook Business Accounts with Facebook Business Pages – they are not the same. See question 7.

9. Question: Why does my business have two Facebook Business Pages?

Answer: Facebook started creating community pages from the information people put into their personal profiles around topics, causes or experiences. Before you were able to create a Brand Page for your company, what you put into your personal profile ended up becoming a community page for your business. This has resulted in duplicates for many companies. There is a merge tool for duplicates under resources which will be visible if there are eligible pages, but the tool has not worked for many (including me).

What questions do you have about Facebook Pages that I haven’t covered here? Feel free to post your questions in the comments area below.

Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/top-9-facebook-page-questions/

As your trusted marketing coach and advisor, let me help you leverage inbound marketing – a combination of search, social and content marketing – to build brand visibility within your target market. Connect with me and find out more. Read more »

Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/local-search-marketing-getting-found-in-a-crowded-local-market/