As a Local or Online business, spreading Brand awareness is one of the top elements of your marketing strategy – with the end goal being to bring in new customers, readers, users, followers, subscribers, etc.

Extending your reach through as many online platforms as possible provides additional visibility for your Brand, while increasing your business profile in search engine results when mobile and local queries are performed.

Registering your Profile with consistent information across all platforms and listing sites allows search engines to display your business in their search results based upon specific keyword searches related to your services/products.

Traditional and non-traditional year round Holidays are an opportunity providing a never-ending loop for content to include in your newsletters.

Research shows 90% of people like to receive promotional Emails from businesses they buy from, so Holidays are a great way to engage your list with teasers and subtle promotions all year round.

Be sure to maximize your audience by proactively building your list from all channels:

• On your Website
• At Events and In-Store
• Through Blogs
• On Social Media Channels

What Is Google Optimize?

Google Optimize is a free A/B testing and personalization Google tool that allows website owners to set up experiments and discover what works best on their sites. Google Optimize offers a free version, and a paid version named 360 Optimize.

Per the Google Blog:

"People want compelling and relevant digital content that's delivered at just the right moment. That's why Google Optimize is making changes to help businesses deliver better, more personalized experiences to your customers. Now, in addition to running short-term website experiments with Optimize, you can create custom website experiences that deliver the right message to your customers—every time they visit your site.

Optimize has always helped you test which version of your site works best for your customers. Now it’s even easier for you to immediately launch the winning version of your site with just a few clicks.

Say you’ve run an A/B test on your site and Optimize has determined the winning version. You can now simply click “DEPLOY LEADER,” and Optimize will re-create the winning version of your site as a new personalization that you can launch to any segment of your customers.

You can also create personalized experiences without running a test first. For instance, you might want to offer a special like free shipping to all customers in San Francisco.

Launching a personalization from scratch is now simple in Optimize. First, click the “Create Experience” button and select “Personalization” as the experience type. Using the Optimize Visual Editor, you can add the free shipping offer to your site. Then, select “users located in San Francisco” and launch the personalization."

Everyone’s jumped on the “Brand Reputation” bandwagon the past few years … and with good reason.

It’s important to know what people are saying about your business, products and services.

• Is someone using unauthorized images of your products on their website?
• Is someone bad-mouthing you and your company?
• Is someone using your photo on social media without your knowledge?
• Has someone left a negative review?
• Has a Blogger mentioned you in their post?

Wouldn’t it be nice to receive alerts each time your Brand name is being searched or mentioned?

Fee based subscription Reputation monitoring tools are useful and sometimes absolutely necessary to protect your Brand. If you don’t subscribe to a monitoring service yet – you may want to try out these Free monitoring tools.

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are any link on or in a website page pointing (linking) to your website.

Back in the day, link exchanges were a common way to build backlinks to and from websites. People started building site highways and interconnecting them with hundreds, and in some cases – thousands - of reciprocal links that lead to Google dropping the proverbial hammer.

Check out these 7 Tips for Growing Your Business Facebook Organic Reach. Here is the first:

#1 – Post and Schedule Consistent Content

Facebook can become a direct line of communication between you and your audience. When people begin to view you as an authority in your niche, the information you post will begin forming a connection your viewers will count on. They’ll share and like your posts more frequently.

Create a weekly schedule for your Facebook posts and stick to it. Include images, and video when possible. Take advantage of holidays and events to post personal and business related content.

Definition : Search Operator

A Search Operator (or search parameter) is a character or string of commands and characters used in a search engine query to narrow the focus of the search.

Using Search Operators help you search quickly for information plus can find information to assist with SEO, identify errors that may exist on your site, and may also reveal information about competitor websites and activity.

What is Snapchat?

Snap, Inc states they are “a camera company”.

“We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together”.

Snapchat allows users to capture and send “Snaps” which are only viewable for a set duration between 1 to 10 seconds before they automatically delete, or with no time limitation until they are closed by the recipient.

Snapchat users have an option to save specific snaps on a private storage area with the “Memories” feature. Users can see locations on a map where other people make their snaps.

For many businesses the holiday season can dictate over 50% of their entire years’ revenue.

Planning is important.

A solid strategy is important.

Hardcore planning of Holiday marketing should begin in June. You’ll want a strategy in place by the time September rolls around. Cultivating your Email subscribers year-round is doubly important because if you’ve spent time growing your list you should have a good base of customers ready to buy from you come holiday season.

If you’re playing catch-up and it’s later in the season than you’d like, there are still a few holiday email marketing strategies you can put into place.

Using custom Facebook Frames will give a unique twist for your business page and/or to share images with your followers. Great to use for personalizing profile photos, page photos and for business event frames.