Sell To International Customers and Make More Sales

I’m often asked by an individual whether or not they should sell to international customers.  My reply is always a vibrant, “Yes!”  Why?  Let me tell you a few reasons:

First, if you sell your products to international customers, your market has just increased 15% or more.  What do I mean?  It’s allowing more people to bid on your items.  The more people you have bidding on your items, the more money you will make.  Also, these bidders may not even win your items at the same time their bids are increasing the final bid amount.

Is it a hassle to sell internationally?  Let me ask you, “Would you like to make more money?”  Of course so.  Filling out international forms wether from the US Post office, FedEx or UPS is getting easier and easier.  I typically use the USPS for all of my international mailing.  We’ve managed to widdle down the time it takes to package, attach customs forms, and meter because of all the volume we are doing.  I rememer not long ago thinking what a pain it was to do all this work.  Then we got better and better at it.

Most of the countries that we ship to are (in order) Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.  The rest of our international market is scattered around the world but mostly in Europe.  Rarely do we get international orders from South AMerica or Africa.  If we do, we always check the feedback of the person who just made a puchase from us.

Sell internationally. Increase your sales.

Free Ebay Advertising Auction Bump Sites – Seller Marketing Tools

If you found this guide helpful, please vote that you liked it with the thumbs up button up top 🙂

This Guide only covers EPN (Ebay Partner Network) approved sites: 

Below is a weird trick I came across to increase traffic for free to your Ebay listings. I hope this information helps others who read my guide as it did for me. As an Ebay seller looking to increase sales myself, I tried all types of internet advertising over the course of several years. None of the Pay per click advertising I tried brought me any real increase in sales and paying to sell on Ebay seemed to be at odds with why i really opened an Ebay store in the first place.

Then, quite by accident, I came across a method of item promotion that showed amazing fast results at no cost. It is called ‘Bumping’. Within a few days of bumping my Ebay listings, I was getting substantially more page views, watchers and in turn more sales! in the first few days of bumping I noticed that my page views went up about 50% and then within a few weeks about 200% – back to the number of page views I was experiencing several years ago. Watchers increased and of course with more people seeing my items, sales have increased. I knew it was working when a surprising # of items that I was bumping were the same items I was selling. And some of the items I was bumping had not had a sale in months. The more sales I saw, the more excited I became about bumping and trying to find a few extra moments each day to bump a few more items. I found it best to bump about 4 items or so about 3 times per day on all the good Ebay bump sites.

If no one is viewing your items, this is obviously going to make it hard to sell these items. The best part of auction bump site advertising is that it is easy and completely FREE. We all need FREE ADVERTISING and more exposure to help our Ebay listings sell. Below is the updated for 2014 Ebay auction/listing bump sites.

1.) fashionbump net

2.) boostbump com

3.) dejacreations com

4.) paulajeansjewelryandcloset com

5.) learn2earnok com

6.) advertiseyourauctionsfree com

7.) theirishshamrockcompany com

8.) promobump com

9.) justbumpit info

10.) sb55-graphics com

11.) mygothcorner com

12.) sassyssavings com

You will need to copy and paste the above sites into your browser with the appropriate prefix, punctuation and such as Ebay does not allow clickable links in the guides section. I will try to keep this guide updated as frequently as possible. 

if you found this guide helpful, please vote that you liked it and found it useful up top 🙂

Etsy Listings: The Magic Number for More Traffic – Etsy Case Study

More Listings = More Traffic, More Sales, More Everything

Let’s say you have one small, red ceramic bowl in your shop.

You’ll probably snag a few customers looking for handmade ceramic bowls, but you’ll miss out on all the customers looking for large bowls, black bowls, painted bowls, white bowls, fish-shaped bowls, and so on.

More things in your shop = more chances of something from your shop showing up in search.

Do you really need 100 listings?

Helpful members on the Etsy forums often suggest 100 items as a baseline, but I think that’s overkill for a lot of shops. If you’ve got a unique, specific product that doesn’t have a lot of competition (in my shop’s case, that’d be my plush bettas) you can get found for that one thing just fine. In more saturated markets, like jewelry, it seems like you really can’t have too many listings.

You should, however, aim to fill up your front page. That means posting a minimum of 20 items. If there’s a magic number to Etsy listings, it’s at least 20.

(But don’t feel like you need to stop at 20 – aiming for 50, 75, 100, can only help).

Having lots of stuff on offer makes your shop look like a well-maintained, happening place, and customers like that. No one wants to send $20, $50, $100+ into a sketchy-looking place.

What won’t work

Don’t make the listings identical. You’re going to have to vary the tags, titles, descriptions, and photos of every listing you post. It won’t do you much good to have two small red ceramic bowls, but having a blue large ceramic bowl and a small red ceramic bowl = twice the chances to capture the bowl buyers.

Don’t worry too much about timing, just get ’em up. I added my 20 new listings over the course of three days and I saw no difference in the time of day posted. If there’s some magical time to post a new thing, I didn’t find it.

Etsy Shop Before

Before its makeover, the case study Etsy shop looked like this. (I think a tumbleweed just bounced through.)

“But I offer 400 fabric choices! If only people would find me…”

My Etsy Shop Mistakes

The shop was sparse for a few reasons, which I now realize were big mistakes in my original shop strategy:

1. I thought customers would want to customize the product, so I showed it once and told them how to choose a custom fabric
2. I only sell two plush designs, wouldn’t it be weird to list a ton of the “same” thing?
3. I was cheap and didn’t want to spend $4 when I could spend 20 cents!

My hundreds of fabric choices are packed with keywords: flowers, pirates, skulls, rainbows, hearts, you name it, but my items are generic. I wasn’t capturing any of those searches! People looking for a “pirate plush” wouldn’t land on my customizable grub and think “oh, I want this with pirate fabric”.

These were big Etsy mistakes that I didn’t realize I was making until I started dissecting successful shops. Successful Etsy shops list a TON of similar-looking things!

Are you selling a customizable product? You should list those variations separately.

If your thing can be made with “rubies” or “diamonds”, make two listings. You’ll catch searchers looking for “rubies” with the first listing, and searchers looking for “diamonds” with the second.

It’s okay to mention that the item can be customized, but listing them separately will bring way more traffic for a much bigger variety of key words.

Adding More Stuff to the Etsy Case Study Shop

Before I could add 20 items to this shop, though, I had to do a few things:

1. Have 20 variations of a product on hand (fortunately, I already had plenty)
2. Photograph those 20 variations from 5+ angles each (this took about 3 hours – here’s the $5 setup I used)
3. Write listings for each of the new products (I copy/paste a template listing but I still write a unique opening blurb for each individual product)
4. Post each product to Etsy 

This took me several hours start to finish – it ate up the majority of a Saturday.

Etsy Shop After Adding More Listings

Here’s the shop after the 20 items were added. The product hasn’t changed – but there are so many more keywords in this shop now.

Now I’m going to get traffic for words like “pirate plush”, “strawberry plush”, “graffiti fabric”, and “pastel bubbles”.

Isn’t it pretty? This shop looks much more alive now, and customers can see all the lovely varieties of plush bugs available.

Showing up in Etsy Search: Quantity and Variety

So, did it work? Is there more search traffic now? Let’s take a look.

Here’s the shop’s search data from February 2014.

In February, 21 people came to my shop by searching for these key words. Most of my traffic comes from key words about bettas and fish. That’s good – since I do actually sell plush bettas.

But it’s not helping people find my grubs. Grubs are kind of weird. Most people don’t search for “plush grub”. However, people who see grubs in real life usually love them and I’ve sold them for years to friends and co-workers. Getting them to show up in search is trickier.

Are your products weird or hard to describe?

Try to find other ways to bring customers to your product by using more common phrases.

No one searches for “grub”, but they might search for “plush bee”.

By listing a big variety of grubs, I can now use words like “yellow” and “snowboard” – these words are relevant to my product, and to searchers. Imagine someone searching for a cute gift for a snowboard-loving girlfriend. A snowboarding-themed grub could be perfect! That’s the kind of buyer I need to reach.

For tips on writing listing names, see Part 2 of our Etsy Case Study.

Results: How’d It Do?

Here’s my favorite part of the Etsy case study: finding out what works!

Here’s a snapshot of the shop’s stats 3 weeks after adding the 20 new listings.

Big improvement. Now I have a full 2 pages of search terms, and much more variety in those terms (ie: it’s not all plush fish anymore).

I waited another 2 weeks and checked my Etsy stats again:

It should be pretty plain by now: more listings = more ways for shoppers to find you.

Effect on Sales

Alas, I didn’t make any sales in this time. More traffic is always welcome, but it’s definitely frustrating to be a new seller not selling any products. I’ll explore more ways to promote the shop and how to experiment with pricing to make sales in future posts (and I’ll share an update when sales do start picking up).

Tags are Important

You might notice that “kawaii plush” is my second most traffic-pulling keyword. I only thought of this tag recently – just two weeks ago – and it’s already my #2 keyword. Tagging matters so much. Check out the tagging portion of this Etsy case study for more help with tags.

Got a Business Idea? Here’s How to See If It’s Sustainable

Ideas come in many shapes and sizes, but not all “good” ideas are created equal.

Chances are, you’ve come up with a business idea at some point in your life, whether you realise it or not.

Some people come up with a possible idea for a solution to a common problem and dismiss it, never to address the subject seriously again.

Others generate an idea for a business and fixate on it, trying to take action but never getting off the ground.

Ideas come in many shapes and sizes, and while most bad ideas are recognisable as bad ideas immediately, not all “good” ideas are created equal.

A “good” idea, in theory, is one that solves a problem adeptly, with no major drawbacks. But not every good idea can sustain a good business.

Related: Hate Being Stuck Behind a Desk? 7 Business Ideas for You

For example, your idea, while good, might not be cost effective, therefore preventing you from generating a worthwhile profit.

If you have a good idea, but you aren’t sure whether the idea is sustainable as the foundation for a real business, ask yourself these questions:

1Are you solving a common problem?

The first question to ask is an easy one. Think about your idea. Does it solve some kind of problem that an average person would face?

The first key here is that you’re actually solving a problem and not introducing some new function that nobody ever needed. The second key is that the problem you’re solving is widespread.

For example, if you invent a device that allows someone to play accordion and perform automotive repairs at the same time, you probably aren’t going to reach a wide audience.

You can do some market research to back up your idea here, but for now, a common sense thought experiment should let you know whether your idea is solid.

2Are people going to pay for your solution?

Following the same rules as the question above, you can conduct some market research to get a surefire answer, but just think about this question in a practical setting.

Imagine you didn’t come up with this idea, and that instead, someone was coming to you with it. Would you be willing to pay that person for this product or service?

How much would you be willing to pay? These two questions should immediately let you know whether this idea has the potential to make real money.

3Is your idea scalable?

Making money, believe it or not, is only the first step of the process. To thrive as a business, your idea needs to have room to grow – the term for this is scalability.

Can your idea gradually expand to new markets? Can you come up with new, improved models? Can you expand your business into other areas to make more money?

Related: (Video) How To Find New Business Ideas

If your idea isn’t scalable, and it can only exist in its current form, it may not be worth pursuing as a business.

4Has someone else beaten you to it?

This is an important question to ask, and one quick Google search should provide you with a succinct, direct answer.

See if there are any other companies that are already using your idea. If it’s a great idea, there’s a good chance that someone else already thought of it.

If you see at least one competitor with a version of your idea that’s as good as or better than yours, your idea probably isn’t sustainable.

5Could anyone do this?

Imagine for a moment that nobody else has jumped on this idea yet. If you introduce it to the world and start shopping around a prototype or preliminary service, how easy would it be for someone else to replicate your idea? How easy would it be for them to make a subtle improvement?

If your idea isn’t unique, or if it can be easily copied, it has a high chance of being taken advantage of by copycats and idea thieves working well within the confines of the law.

6Can it last for more than a year?

This may seem like an obvious question of sustainability, but think critically about the nature of your idea. Does it take advantage of a current fad or trend? If so, remember that fads don’t usually last long.

Business ideas that take advantage of a fleeting interest do not succeed – instead, you need something that solves a long-term problem with a long-term solution.

If you can answer all of these questions confidently, and backed with ample research, you’ll have a good chance at turning your idea into a successful enterprise.

Just remember the ideation phase is only the first step of the process. From here, you’ll need to do exhaustive research, write a business plan and start shopping your idea around to investors. It’s a long, trying process, but with confidence in your idea, you’ll be off to a great start.

Want to increase your sales?
visit my website here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

5 Ways to “Guarantee” More Sales and Conversions

1.  The Money Back Guarantee

This is probably the most popular guarantee in the world. In fact, it’s so popular that it’s no longer viewed as a benefit, but as a right.

The origins of the money back guarantee go back as long as people have been buying and trading goods…it’s a natural offer.

The problem is that it’s so overused and average that unless your product is extremely valuable (like a car) or easy to return (commodity products, such as retail goods), then you’re going to have an incredibly difficult time overcoming an objection with this guarantee alone.

That being said, it’s certainly better than having no guarantee at all, and if you communicate this well in your sales material, you’ll at least mitigate some of the risk to the buyer.

Chrysler recently tried this with their line of automobiles, but recalled it a few short months later. Almost every existing retail establishment, such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, chain book stores (brick and mortar), Amazon, and Apple (online) offer a guarantee of this caliber, but most of the time, it’s hidden in the fine print, which is a poor idea.

Instead, take the example of Rockable Press and make the benefit clear and concise. You’ll have a much higher success rate as a result.

2.  The Risk-Free Guarantee

This is a close relative of the money back guarantee because it’s essentially the same thing, the only difference being the context surrounding it.

Risk free guarantees work best with high cost products, services, recurring billings, and products with amazing, but yet to be proven claims, such as the ShamWow and/or a variety of Internet Marketing products.

A risk-free guarantee, which has been used by everyone from Frank Kern to Billy Mays, gives your customer a chance to try something before they buy, or at least commit to buying.

SEOMoz offers a risk-free guarantee for their SEO services, as quoted in this line of their pricing and signup page:

“If for any reason you’re not satisfied with your membership, simply e-mail xxx@seomoz.org during your first 30 days and we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.”

The great thing about a guarantee like this is that it pushes people over the hump and moves them from “I’m considering it,” to “what the heck, I’ll try it.”

3.  100% Satisfaction Guarantee

This is the hallmark of the new generation, and is a great take on both the risk-free and the money back guarantee.

How does it work?

Instead of simply offering a customer’s money back or giving them a chance to try before they buy, you create an offer that’s advantageous to both the customerand your business.

A 100% satisfaction guarantee not only guarantees that the customer will be happy, but also guarantees that you’ll get another chance to save the sale by offering an exchange or 2nd chance effort.

From a customer’s perspective, you’re not only reducing risk, but you’re reducing it almost completely. You’re guaranteeing a result, which as we talked about earlier, is the most important aspect of the conversion. You’re guaranteeing their satisfaction, which in turn negates the opportunity for regret.

It’s a win-win.

For a company like Inkd, which expends a tremendous amount of creative resources during the logo design process, the satisfaction guarantee gives them a chance to keep working until they get it right.

Hampton Inn, managed by Hilton Hotels, offers a similar guarantee for their rooms. If you aren’t satisfied, you don’t have to pay. Being that they trust in their overnight experience, they can offer this guarantee, knowing that 99% of the people won’t use it.

When someone does, they get the feedback they need to improve their experience.

4.  The Forever Guarantee

When I was a teenager, I got tired of working for McDonald’s and decided to move into marketing, where I spent 2 years working in direct sales for a company that offered the most incredible guarantee I’d ever seen.

Cutco sold high-priced cutlery that was guaranteed to rock your socks off. The only issue was that most people simply weren’t in the market for high priced cutlery.

However, when I told them that by buying today, they’d never have to buy another knife again, they suddenly re-thought their position. Cutco’s “Forever Guarantee” meant that by buying a set of knives today, they’d save hundreds, if not thousands by never having to buy another.

Most people buy cutlery like they buy pots and pans, which is every few years. Rather than racing to the bottom, Cutco raised prices and improved their guarantee instead.

I can personally attest that this guarantee alone earned me 10-25% increases in revenue, and tens of thousands in sales.

5.  Low Price Guarantee

When a lifetime guarantee, or Forever Guarantee, won’t work, consider taking a page out of the Amazon.com playbook, which is to not only offer returns, but offer a low price guarantee right along with it.

If you pre-order an item from Amazon.com, they’ll guarantee that you’ll be charged the lowest price the item has been sold for, rather than the price at the time of purchase.

Furthermore, they guarantee that low-price for 30 days after purchase, meaning that if it goes on sale, you’ll get a refund of the difference.

Another example of this type of guarantee is with retail outlet Best Buy, who offers price matching on any in-store item.

Though it’s slightly more difficult to use this for online info-products and services offered in only one place, it’s a perfect option for online retailers.

More sales? visit my website here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

Facebook Stats that Every Social Marketer Should Know

With over 1.23 billion active users (including 71% of online adults in the United States), a 94% increase in shared content since 2012, and enough spending money to buy several small countries, it’s clear that Facebook isn’t going anywhere soon. Smart marketers are already using Facebook’s impressive reach to their own advantage, but the network is still relatively new and constantly evolving. It’s hard enough to keep up with Facebook’s changing algorithms – how can marketers be sure they’re using Facebook strategically, not just “marketing at random”?

In addition to arming yourself with a rock solid social media tactical plan (click the link for a comprehensive sample plan, including high-level objectives and granular action items), marketers need to approach their Facebook strategy with the most up-to-date insights and stats.

With that in mind, I was excited to read a new report from competitive intelligence platform TrackMaven: The Marketing Maven’s Guide to Facebook. This report analyzes 5,804 Facebook pages, spanning a total of 1,578,006 posts, and examining patterns in Likes, Comments, and Shares. As a marketer, this kind of data is invaluable – read on to get a prime sample of their findings:

Is There a “Best” Day to Post on Facebook?

TrackMaven focused their investigation on Facebook pages with – at minimum – 1,000 Likes. Of the 5,804 pages they analyzed, posts were published almost evenly throughout the workweek, but then then dropped off during the weekend.

The least popular day for Facebook posts is Sunday, on which only 8.73% of total posts are published. But if you look at effectiveness by day of week, weekend posts actually get a lot more engagement than those published on weekdays:

In fact, posts published on Sundays – the least popular day for posting – are 25% more effective, in terms of engagement (or average interactions per post), than posts published on Wednesdays. So while there’s no “best” day to post on Facebook, if you’re looking to tap into a little more engagement per post, why not experiment with some posts on the weekends? If you see increased engagement, make weekend posts a habit.

How to Make Facebook Work “After Hours”

To get a little more granular, TrackMaven also looked at the time of day most people post, and the time of day posts get the most engagement. Surprisingly, Facebook posts published after work hours (between 5pm and 1am) seem to get the highest engagement.

Keep in mind that because TrackMaven limited their report to official pages, rather than profiles, these posts were coming from brands, not people. So the numbers above show that we’re more likely to engage with brands (not just with our personal networks) during our own free time.

Marketers can find two key takeaways from that fact:

1) Schedule your posts. If you’re not using Facebook’s scheduler function to publish posts after work hours, you should definitely start. Scheduling posts ahead of time will keep your cadence steady throughout the evening.

As you can see below, scheduling posts on your Facebook Page is easy. Simply click on the clock icon below your message, and choose the date/hour. You can actually schedule these out as much as six months in advance.

2) Facebook is a “social” network, not a business network. As we’ve mentioned, consumers are now engaging with marketing messages on Facebook during their free time – in the midst of their personal social networking interactions.

So when you’re posting on Facebook, think about how your sales pitch will look amongst the wedding pictures and new baby photos…that’s right, not so good. Instead, use a conversational (maybe even humorous!) tone, and post content that is fun, entertaining, and human.

Higher Word Count Equals Higher Facebook Engagement

But while a simple, conversational message is key to successful Facebook marketing, you don’t want to dumb your message down. Although TrackMaven’s report found that the average length of a Facebook post is between 10 and 19 words (posts with between 0 and 9 words were the second most common), posts with between 80 and 89 words were actually the most effective:

In fact, posts with over 80 words they had twice the amount of engagement of any other post. This may be because of that intriguing “Keep Reading” link, but it also may be because Facebook users are interested in lengthier, more valuable content that tells a story — not sales pitches.

Need help with more followers, likes or targeted traffic?
visit my website: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

3 REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO LEARN SEO

Even if you decide to outsource your SEO campaign execution and management to full service SEO company I believe it is incredibly important that site owners and marketing managers take the time to learn SEO for themselves, even if it’s just an understanding of the basics. I know what you’re thinking—Why do I have to learn SEO when I can just pay someone to do it for me? I know that site owners and SMB marketing managers are incredibly busy and their daily to-do list only seems to get longer and longer and learning SEO seems like just another time mongering but I promise that it is well worth your time in the end. Here’s why:

1. LEARN SEO TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM SPAMMY, CHEAP SEO SERVICE PROVIDERS.

There are plenty of great, white hat SEO agencies out there that will do a phenomenal job with your SEO program and you’ll never lose a wink of sleep over it. There are also more than a few low-end, spammy, cheap SEO service providers that are just looking to make a quick buck and don’t really care about the long term impact their actions might have on your website. If you don’t learn SEO for yourself (at least enough to understand what is and isn’t Okayed by the Google Webmaster Guidelines) you are putting yourself and your website in a vulnerable position. What if the advice your SEO firm is giving you is bad advice? Obviously you don’t have to become an expert, but you should want to learn SEO well enough so that you can at least notice the red flags should they pop up. You don’t want to get penalized 6 months from now because your SEO provider was engaging in black hat SEO tactics and you didn’t know about it.

2. YOU’LL BE ABLE TO TACKLE YOUR SEO INTERNALLY.

Even with a great white hat SEO firm at your side, there are some things that need to be done internally when it comes to SEO. For instance, you are going to be the in-house SEO champion that makes sure every department is onboard and understands how what they do fits into the SEO program at large. Everything you do can be leveraged for SEO provided you know how to look at it! A little SEO knowledge helps you find the SEO value in everything else that you do to market your business online.

If you understand how SEO works you’ll also be able to explain the “grand plan” to your own managers and make sure everyone has realistic expectations. For instance, if you learn the fundamentals of SEO you’ll come to understand that SEO is a long term, building process and that link building is really something you’ll be doing forever. You can’t hit a certain benchmark and call it quits and expect things to stay that way! But if you didn’t take the time to learn SEO for yourself you might be expecting bigger results faster than your SEO program can deliver them. I’ve seen plenty of good SEO programs get the legs cut out from underneath them because site owners were too impatient.

3. LEARNING SEO ON YOUR OWN MAKES YOU A VALUABLE ASSET TO YOUR SEO PROVIDER.

If you learn SEO for yourself that also means you’ll be better able to help your SEO partner. There are some link building tactics that require your cooperation or approval (like joining an association that has a membership fee or becoming a guest blogger somewhere) and the more you know about and understand SEO the more you can help move your own SEO campaign forward. As you learn SEO you start to see link building and content marketing opportunities in everything, including things your SEO provider might not find. You know your business inside and out and learning SEO is only going to bring good things your way in the long run.

You need some SEO improving?
visit my site here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

3 Shockingly Simple Steps to Generate More Likes, Leads and Listings Using Facebook

Are you a realtor using Facebook and not generating the leads you’d like?

Are you spending wasting time on Facebook trying to “drum up business”?

Are you sick of hearing about other agents that have had success with Facebook, but you can’t figure it out?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this blog post is for you. This blog post will lay out exactly how you should be using Facebook to generate more leads, listings and profits. Follow these simple steps and you can control your lead flow.

I am going to lay out the three steps you need to become a top agent in your area. It really isn’t that difficult and please, please do not over-complicate this.

Step 1 – Drive Targeted “Likes” to Your Facebook Page

This is extremely important. I have underlined the word ‘targeted’ for a reason. Please do not get caught in the trap of “more likes = better” as that is not the case. Getting “likes” from people who will never buy from you is going to cost you money in the long run.

Please do not go and ask all your Facebook friends to “like” your page.

Or your Aunt Sue that lives 2,300 miles away to like you page.

Or your best friend from high school who now lives in Costa Rica.

I am sure these are all great people, but they are not your ideal client. Focus on the right fans.

Who are the right fans?

Your target market.

How do you define your target market?

Answer the following questions…

Who is your ideal client?

Who is most likely to buy/sell a home with you?

Who do you enjoy working with?

Write down your ideal client demographics and psychographics (personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles). This is who you’ll want to target on Facebook.

Example: Let’s say my target market is

• 35 – 44 women
• Live in Las Vegas
• Who like Oprah

As you can see, in the image above, there are 14,000 women in my target market. This is who I would run ads to for page likes.

You can set up a small budget ($1/day is Facebook’s minimum), but I recommend starting with $5/day to start. You can expect to pay anywhere from $0.50 – $2.00 per like. It all depends on the targeting you do and the audience size.

Once you get this dialed in and are comfortable with the price you’re paying per like, you can let this campaign run.

Step 2 – Engagement

I know, “engagement” is such a buzzword. I am kind of sick of hearing it myself, but it is important.

Post Daily – You’ll want to post daily content to your page. Things that work well are local news stories, blog posts, DIY projects, local charity events, your story (most forget this and it is so important), motivational messages, your listings, testimonials and special offers likes ebooks, guides, tips on buying/selling, lead magnets.

You can take 20 minutes at the beginning of each week and schedule your posts for the week. This is not hard to do with an editorial calendar.

Step 3 – Promote Your Content

This is the final step and an important one. You’ll want to promote your content that is getting the best engagement. See what content is resonating with your audience and either boost the post or run Page Post Engagement ads.

In order to “boost” a post, you must have 50 likes on your page. If you do not have 50 likes, use page post engagement ads. I prefer those anyways.

I suggest boosting one post per day for 1 – 3 days. You want your target audience to get to “know” you before making an offer (ebook, guide and/or lead magnet). You want them to see that you are offering valuable content whether that is a blog post, a DIY project, a charity event or a local event.

The common problem I see is that most agents start with asking for something before providing value. It’s 2014 and building trust is crucial to success. If you can get them to “know, like and trust” you, you’ll have more business than you can handle.

A good problem to have, right?

Give first, then ask.

Conclusion

There is a “sweet science” to doing Facebook effectively. Follow the 3 steps I laid out and you’ll have more likes, leads & listings. You’ll become the top producing agent in your marketplace.

It takes work, but it is worth it.

Increase your sales and leads here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

How to Improve Your Site Speed for Better SEO Results

You’ve created what you believe to be the best website to sell your products or services, you’ve incorporated search engine optimization into every facet of your online business and yet you are still not getting the high ranking for your website that you feel it deserves. One aspect you might be overlooking is site speed, i.e. how fast your site loads on your website visitor’s computers or mobile device.

How Site Speed Affects SEO Rankings

Site speed is actually one of the elements which major search engines use in determining your site’s SEO ranking. Your website load speed can make a significant impact on how your website ranks on SERPs (search engine result pages). If your website is feature packed (e.g. fancy galleries, live chat, Flash elements etc.), you might think you’re giving your visitors the best possible experience, when you could be doing the opposite by giving them slow loading pages. You should aim for a balance between fancy website features and giving visitors the optimal site speed experience.

Check Your Site Speed

You can run your own test on a computer to see how fast your website uploads. Ideally, your site should load in less than 3 seconds. Between 3 and 5 seconds you’re doing OK but there’s room for improvement. If your website takes more than 5 seconds to load then you should really look into this because chances are it’s hurting your SEOrankings.

How Important Is Site Speed for SEO

While site speed in itself is not a dominant factor, it can help you rank higher than your competitor, all things being equal. So, to get that needed edge over your competition you should work on maintaining a site speed of below 3 seconds. While Google for example states that site speed affects on 1% of the results that belies the importance of having good site speed for your website since it can make the difference.

4 Quick Ways to Improve Site Speed

So we’ve established that site speed is an important factor in SEO and all webmasters should aim to maintain the optimal site speed. Thankfully, there are a number of quick and affordable ways to help you achieve this. Below I’ve listed just some of the quick and dirty fixes

Reduce Image Size:

Images are one of the biggest memory hogs on your website, the larger the image, the more information it carries and the longer it takes to load. By reducing the size of your images you can significantly speed up the time it takes for your website to upload. Start with reducing each of your images by 10%, starting with the larger ones.

Reduce Codes and HTTP requests:

You should minimize the number of codes on your website. Every code requires loading from a computer, so the more code you have, the more loading requests sent to the visitor’s computer, thus slowing the site response time. The same principle applies to HTTP which may contain multiple, redundant pages that you don’t need.

Limit the Use of Plugins:

This tip applies to WordPress websites. Whilst plugins are an easy way to extend and customize your website’s functionality, they can also cause your site to load slower because of the extra code they inject in order to work. We’ve already discussed in the above how extra code affects site speed.

Add Site Speed Tools:

There are a number of great site speed tools you can use to augment your website. This is not a complete list, but here are a few you can use to start.

• WebPageTest: A free online speed test which tests your site speed using multiple browsers from various locations around the world. Simply enter your site URL and submit.
• WP Super Cache: A free WordPress plugin (I know I advised against too many plugins but this is one of the more useful plugins which improves site speed by clearing the cache and generates html files instead of heavier PHP
• YSlow: A free Yahoo site speed tool that analyzes your site and makes suggestions for improvements. It’s available as a plugin for major browsers like Firefox, Chrome, IE etc.

These tools help you optimize your website performance by analysis, trimming the fat on your website, or by providing site speed recommendations leading to a better visitor experience, resulting in better SEO rankings.

Hopefully you’re now clued up on how site speed affects your SEO rankings and it is important. Although important, it’s also one of the easier SEO elements to fix because of the relatively straightforward procedures and tools available to improve site speed. My final advice to webmasters: regularly keep an eye on your website speed and follow the above advice if and when your site becomes too slow.

Check my SEO Improving website
here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

4 SIMPLE WAYS TO GET MORE VISITORS ON YOUR BLOG

Even if we blog just as a hobby, it’s always nice to have people coming back to your website or blog. It must mean we are producing some good content, right? Not only that – it’s a fun way to make some friends! There are several important (but simple) things you can do to make sure people can not only find you again, but get your content shared and get more visitors to blog.

1. DISPLAY SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOW BUTTONS AT THE TOP OF YOUR BLOG

There are tons of different types of social media follow plug-ins to choose from, and makes it really easy for people to find you again. This is often the first thing I look for when I find a new blog I like, or a post from a blog that I want to share. I get frustrated when I can’t find them, or they are all in a different place with a different widget. Especially if I want to share a post on Twitter, but can’t find their twitter handle!

2. POST QUALITY IMAGES AND PINNABLE GRAPHICS.

Pinterest is a fantastic resource to help grow your blog. For this reason, it’s really important to have good quality pictures on your blog that people can pin and bring new visitors to your site! Ok, I get that good quality pictures might not be very ‘simple,’ and in fact sometimes can take a lot of work. But, you DON’T have to have a super fancy camera for this, either. All the pictures on my blog are taken with my iPhone! No, they may not be the BEST quality compared to some of the food photographers out there, but if you have good lighting and a good program for editing, you can make them look FoodGawker worthy.

3. USE CATCHY HEADLINES.

I used to be very generic with my headlines. Or they were just kinda boring. Knowing how to write a catchy headline might take some work, but they can better drawer in readers! Sometimes, if you host or participate in link-ups, a generic headline might work for you. But I try to title my posts something I think a reader might want to see, instead of ‘WIAW #33,’ for example! You can learn how to write better headlines from HubSpot.

That being said, see if you can make them SEO friendly, too.

4. PUT SOMETHING IN THE FOOTER!

Take advantage of people scrolling through your site to hook them into staying a little bit longer. You can do this by using your footer!

Need more targeted traffic?
Visit my website here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/