What is LinkedIn and How Can it Benefit My Business?

While you may or may not be familiar with LinkedIn, this is a social media platform that you may want to consider for your business strategy. This blog post defines what this social media platform does and why it makes sense to add to your channels of engagement.

What is LinkedIn?

This social media platform is essentially a database of professionals that provides a way to categorize your professional career and business history by company and by your individual experience. It can also serve as a great search tool to find other

professionals and build a network that can help grow your business.

Why Does LinkedIn Benefit Your Business?

There are a number of ways that LinkedIn can help you and your business:

• It helps raise awareness and furthers your brand image through a professional profile that builds credibility and trustworthiness. Once you have a professional profile, you can set up a company page, which can include information about your company and links to your website and social media pages. You can also raise awareness about your business by joining LinkedIn Groups where you can offer and get advice, share information and ideas, and build credibility within your industry.
• It enables more people to find your business and learn more about you and it. LinkedIn pages do end up in search engine results, especially if you use specific keyword content in your profile, summary, and business description.
• It provides market intelligence on other companies, including the competition. This helps you plan your marketing strategy and find those places where you can gain that competitive advantage.  
  
• It puts knowledge and information at your fingertips that can help you improve how you do business as well as offers tools that assist with the marketing effort. LinkedIn Signal is a great place to start so you can see what type of information is available through this resource.
• It connects you with other professionals you can trust and that may be able to help you with an aspect of your business or spread the news about your business. Being connected to other influential people will move your business forward, including brand ambassadors, employees, talent and more.
• It creates momentum. As more people see the number of connections you are making, they will want to connect with you. It’s like when a crowd gathers. The more people there are, the more others want to know what is going on so they join. It is the same with your LinkedIn profile.

Are you ready to learn more? Flyline Search Marketing can help you set up and manage your LinkedIn profile. Contact us today to learn more.

Internet Marketing – One of the Most Valuable Tools for Your Business

Internet Marketing is not a fad; it’s the strategy to take for your business in a world that is increasingly relying on the Internet to find products and services as well as make purchase decisions. 

Besides that value, there are many other reasons why Internet Marketing is one of the most valuable tools you can add to your business.

Brand Enhancement

Getting your brand out across the multiple online channels is a way to get awareness of your brand as well as enhance its reputation. You need to put your logo and business name where your target audience is now searching – the Internet.

Consumer Influence

More consumers than ever before are being influenced by their peers online through reviews and social media posts where they look to those they know and trust to guide their choices. 

If you are not online, you don’t know what they are saying about you and these influencers cannot share information about you. Having an online presence makes it easy to pass the word on about your products and services.

Cost Effectiveness

Compared to many of the traditional marketing channels, Internet Marketing is very cost effective, especially for the type of targeted results it delivers, the speed at which new leads are gained, and the capability of increasing revenues. There is a much higher return on investment for the fewer dollars spent, making it an ideal way for a small business owner to get more recognition.

Increased Website Traffic

Many of the Internet Marketing tools are designed to drive traffic to your website, including Google AdWords and social media platforms. This is a way to capture more leads and leverage a well-developed website as a means of converting those leads into sales. It also can help you increase online sales or encourage more consumers to visit your physical storefront.

Revenue Growth

Studies have indicated that Internet Marketing delivers a much higher rate of return for the dollars spent on this form of marketing in terms of the revenue growth achieved for that effort. 

Many small business owners have reported that this increase often occurs quickly after an Internet Marketing program has been implemented.

Around-the-Clock Availability

With an Internet Marketing presence, you are always open, which many consumers prefer with their busy schedules that often has them not traveling to a storefront to do business. You can be more accessible, which also increases your chances of more traffic and greater revenue.

Customization Possibilities

With traditional marketing, it is often difficult to customize the advertising messages by various segments of your target audience. With Internet Marketing, you can easily create a wide array of campaigns and issue those on the fly. You can also track the results in this segmented way as well.

Open and Interactive Communication

From landing pages, email blasts, and newsletters to status updates and blog posts, Internet Marketing offers so many relevant ways to connect with your audience and to have them respond. 

This feedback is also an invaluable aspect to Internet Marketing as it helps you understand your audience better in terms of what they want and what they are thinking about.

Elevated Credibility

Because content drives Internet Marketing, the information you can provide and share with your audience positions you as an expert in your industry. They need to know that you are a credible provider of a product or service solution. In addition to the content you provide, your brand ambassadors that write reviews and recommend you online can also help build that necessary credibility.

Want to know more about Internet Marketing and how it can work for you? Contact us today!

What’s the Deal with a Hashtag?

Some of you may know what it is or heard about while others of you still may not be sure by what a hashtag is – after all, it looks like a number, or pound, sign and it is indeed the same symbol. 

Yet, it means something a little bit different. And, it is important to know about if you plan on using Twitter and social media as an effective communication platform for engaging with your target audience and existing customer base.

The hashtag is commonly used on social media site, Twitter. It is a simple and effective symbol that is used so that people can search for specific tweets that have a common topic that they are interested in. This is also a way to create a community of like-minded individuals that share an interest in those same topics. Having the hashtag helps to find each other easier and share it quickly by retweeting it.

While you would assume since it is used on tweets that Twitter was the one that came up with using the hashtags, but it is actually not a function of Twitter. How it got started, no one really knows but it has certainly taken off since then, becoming viral in its use.

Typically, the hashtag is used in a few common ways, including breaking news, as a way to promote something, for a brand or event, and any topic where people want to discuss it in general. Other ways are for a little extra feeling or commentary on a particular subject they just tweeted about but ran out of characters to use. 

Hashtags are used for specific online conventions, including certain abbreviations or short terms used for particular concepts. Lastly, a hashtag can even be used for group activities, such as online events, clubs, or classes, to share information amongst the group.

Now, Twitter is not the only place where you will now see hashtags. Other social media sites now feature them as the trend catches on, including Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest.

As a business, you may also want to consider creating your own hashtags to share with your followers and fans so they can connect with you through this new communication tool and further feel engaged in your business. It is also a way to extend the search capability for your business to be found and discovered by new customers.

Learn more when you partner with us on an Internet Marketing program that sets you apart from the competition and helps you get connected to your target audience faster!

Benefits of an Internet Marketing Consultant

As a small business owner, you may be used to doing everything yourself or assumed you did not have the resources to have outside help, especially on something like marketing. 

However, you could be focusing on your core capabilities while someone else helps handle expanding your marketing channels to a larger, more targeted audience. This is just one of the many benefits of hiring an Internet Marketing consultant.

Save Time and Money
A comprehensive Internet Marketing program requires time and money – two things you are most likely short on as a small business owner. There are so many channels and tactics to exploit, content to create, comments and engagement to manage, and statistics to study. 

Learning what each does let alone which ones you should choose and how you should use them takes considerable time. However, an Internet Marketing consultant already knows and understands how to work within these channels, platforms, and applications.

Focus on Your Core Business

When you have someone else handling your marketing and advertising functions, you can focus on your core business to make it a place these new customers will want to come back to again and again. 

You can work on making the important decisions that keep your business running at optimum performance, including attention to service, training, strategy and finances while your Internet Marketing consultant brings in your target audience.

Tap into Greater Expertise

An Internet Marketing consultant has specific expertise that they continually hone as the rules of online marketing and advertising continue to change, including search engine optimization rules and new social media platforms. 

Their expertise also transcends industries and niches, so they can work with a number of types of retail operations to help them understand their audience better. They also are more aware at works at moving you up the search engine ranking and how to select content that is relevant and interesting to your audience.

Expand Creativity and Innovation

When you are inside your business, it may difficult to think ‘outside the box’ so having an Internet Marketing consultant can provide you with a unique perspective, ideas, and feedback that can move your business forward and generate exciting new products and service experiences for you.

We’re Here to Help!

We have the team of professionals, experience, training and knowledge to serve as your Internet Marketing consultant. Find out more by visiting our website and seeing how we have helped many other businesses just like yours!

Grow Your Customer Base through Google AdWords, Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media Marketing

While you may be familiar with these terms – Google AdWords, SEO, social media marketing and content marketing – you may not know how they could be included in your business to more effectively target your specific audience and then exponentially grow your customer base. Magazines and articles attempt to explain each of these tactics to help small business owners understand how they can use these new tools.

Here is a brief guide on how each of these four tools could work for you when you work with an Internet Marketing agency that knows how to develop, manage, and monitor each tool.

Google AdWords

There are a lot of small businesses like yours out there on the Internet and that come up in search engine results that are competing for the same customers. Running Google AdWords campaigns creates a paid sponsorship that gets you noticed in the search engine rankings but, more importantly, places an ad on the side of the search results to get noticed over your competition.

An Internet Marketing agency like Flyline understands how to create effective Google AdWords campaigns, including selecting the right keywords, so you don’t have to worry about this aspect of your online marketing efforts.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing tactics include Social Media, Article Posting, eNewsletters, Case Studies and Blogs. The purpose of this tool is to deliver relevant and interesting information to a key audience segment. This will keep that audience coming back for more, and it will transform your business into the ‘expert’ in that particular product or service area. It provides an authentic and trusted source that your audience can engage and feel comfortable with, which helps them conclude their purchase decision in your favor.

Since content marketing takes considerable time and ongoing management as well as needs the expertise of quality writers, an Internet Marketing agency can do this f or you as you more than likely are already spread too thin and may not feel comfortable with writing.

SEO

SEO can help your customers find you among the crowded Internet marketplace. It is a way that can help you determine what search terms your audience is most likely to use so that you can use these in your content and strategy as a way for them to locate you before the competition.

The rules around SEO are constantly changing and have confused many a small business owner who has tried to do this on their own. An Internet Marketing agency like Flyline stays on top of the ongoing changes in requirements from the search engines so they can quickly adapt their SEO strategy to help you while you focus on your core capabilities.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is quickly evolving to continually ensure that the customers’ needs are met across all types of social media platforms. The key to make it work is authentic engagement and interaction between you, the small business owner, and the customers and potential customers.

This can be a very time-consuming process and one that is vital if a small business owner plans on having a presence on Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and more. An Internet Marketing agency can handle this for you, keeping up with all comments, adding photos and videos, responding to questions, etc. to keep that presence engaged and viral.

Ready to get started? Find out how we can help your small business by contacting us now. 

Case Study on Website Development Capabilities: Jay McDonald

Your website is now often the first things prospective clients may see about your business. If that is how they are judging whether they want to do business with you, then you will want to ensure that your website looks incredible and transmits the messages you are seeking to communicate to your target audience.

At Flyline Search Marketing, we’ve been busy putting our website design and website development expertise to work for a wide range of clients. One of our recent success stories is our case study for this blog post, Jay McDonald. Read his story below.

Jay McDonald

Jay McDonald wears many hats. He is a CEO and Business Owner in the Atlanta area as well as Coach, Mentor, Board Member, Strategist, and Confidant and Chair for Vistage International.

He is a successful entrepreneur who provides business consulting, coaching, and mentoring services for some of Atlanta's premier business owners. 

This includes people like Charles Carithers, owner of Carithers Flowers, who happens to be one of Flyline’s longest clients. Other clients of Jay McDonald include the owner of Chateau Elan.

A High-Tech, Responsive, and Scalable Website

When Jay came to us, he was looking for a sophisticated web site that could scale up with his business. Not only is his new website easy to navigate and uses colors and a design that enhances readability, but it was also built on a Wordpress platform that incorporates a high-tech, responsive site design.

The responsive design allows the website to literally morph into a full mobile website when accessed via a smartphone or IOS device, such as an iPhone or Android. The site also integrates when a user is accessing it via a desktop, laptop, or tablet device.  

Optimized and Updatable Websites

Additionally, Jay is able to enjoy a website that comes with a Customer Management System (CMS) tool that allows for easy updates so he can regularly update his content for a more dynamic website. 

The cost-effective design can deliver traffic and convert it to sales as soon as it arrives.

Further value comes from the fact that the team at Flyline optimizes (i.e., uses search engine optimization strategies) the web site to maximize the chances of getting free organic traffic from search engines, including Google, Yahoo/Bing, Ask, Dogpile, Anywho and others.

A Comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategy

Along with a comprehensive Internet Marketing program, an optimized website can help quickly direct traffic to a website. 

For instance, Jay’s website has easy buttons that integrate his social media efforts, including a button for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and RSS Feed to encourage his clients and prospects to reach out to him beyond just his website.

Ready to roll out a website that shows you are the go-to business for your niche area? 

Contact us today to get started on designing or re-designing your website as well as integrating a comprehensive Internet Marketing program that builds further access to more opportunities and revenue! 

The Importance of the Press Release for Publicity

In the new age of media, when people look to Facebook for their news, it is pretty easy to see why some might think of the regular old press release as dead and gone.

However, at Flyline Search Marketing, we are here to tell you that it is far from dead. 

Sure, the press release has changed, but it is still here and as effective as ever. 

In fact, it is so effective that we consider press releases to be an essential component of our Internet Marketing programs for our clients.

Advantages of Using Press Releases

Here are the advantages to using press releases:

1. Press releases provide exposure and promote brand awareness in a whole new way.  
2. They also make your company appear professional and active. More news translates in consumer and customers’ minds as a company to work with or buy from because they are busy and successful.
3. Press releases can be a way to put the power of search engine optimization (SEO) to work so you can get attention from search engines.  
4. They can be cross-merchandised on other platforms, such as being posted to a Facebook page, Twitter account, or blog for further coverage.
5. From small companies to large ones, press releases are an effective way to share progress with all stakeholders – from prospective clients and regular customers to investors and media to employees.

Press Release Professionals

Although some companies write their own press releases, handling a publicity program takes time, effort, and know-how that a small business owner may not have, especially in the age of minimal resources and the need to wear many hats.

At Flyline Search Marketing, we have a team of media relations specialists who can craft press releases across a wide range of industries. They know what makes news and what attracts attention in the media.

You can customize your program for your budget – maybe you only want two releases each month or you have a lot to share so can issue four per month. 

We can help you decide what works best, including providing a list of key topics and keywords that should be included. 

Additionally, we have partnerships with online wire services so we can quickly disseminate your press releases to the widest and most accurate publications for your industry and coverage area.

Ready to get started? Visit our website for more information!

The Great Tweet Guide to Twitter Marketing

At Flyline Search Marketing, we live and breathe the realms of social networking because we know that, without social media, businesses would truly struggle to succeed in the online world. With that in mind, we have always encouraged the use of sites like Facebook and YouTube.

That’s because these platforms enable businesses to more personally interact with their customers and use these channels as an effective medium for online advertising. 

Even when working to create personalized marketing strategies for each of our clients, we always suggest creating and managing a variety of social networking channels. This helps spread the good word on the business we are working with.

In this blog post, we explain how Twitter can help build up your following and brand.

Using Twitter to Build Your Business

One such social media site that is especially effective in advertising is called Twitter. When on Twitter, users follow each other to receive updates on what is happening with friends, family, and colleagues.

Businesses can also use Twitter’s simple update interface to tweet about new products, sales, and more. By more, we mean more -- a whole lot more.

All about Twitter and the Fine Art of Tweeting

By itself, Twitter can be pretty effective as it is an easy way to get more free exposure to the public. Let’s explain how this works.

First, we create and manage a Twitter account for your business. At this point, you can post the link on your business website, Facebook page, or any other site that you use.

Chances are many of your business customers are to some degree apart of the social media realm and when they ‘follow’ your Twitter page you will become visible to their followers. This can lead new customers to your doorstep and, in some cases, create a viral effect when it comes to spreading the news about your products or services. 

Take a look at some of the most popular Tweets in history to get a better idea of just how many people are online.

Another great aspect of Twitter is the website’s ease of use. When you have followers, you can tweet to them. These can be anything from a simple “Happy Holidays” message to something that everyone finds appealing like information on an upcoming sale or change in product line.

At Flyline, we whole heartedly endorse the use of Twitter for social media and advertising purposes as it is extremely effective. Still not convinced? Check our very own Twitter to see just what you have been missing out on.

Marketing to a Holiday Audience

The holidays can be so different in nature to any other time of the year when it comes to marketing. Other times throughout the year, it is normal to for any attractive marketing to bring in customers. 

For example, if you own an HVAC company and advertise “free quotes and consultations” on your vans, website, and all over the city, then you will find yourself getting business.

People like the sound of “free,” but during the holidays people become more and more picky as about to whom they give their business to. Whether it is because they want to save or have a more stringent moral compass around this time of the year is irrelevant.

Ultimately, what matters is that, to stay afloat, you need business whether you are selling products or services like the HVAC company we mentioned in the example.

This blog describes some of the key holiday marketing strategies you can employ to attract your target audience and get them to buy, buy, buy.

Holiday Marketing

While we used service companies as an example and while it is true that a service company will benefit more from a festive marketing campaign, companies that sell products may still reap the benefits as well. Service companies are put more at a disadvantage over the holidays than product companies and here is why.

People have saved up for the holidays so they can buy gifts, go out, and celebrate. Essentially, if they want to get someone a specific gift, they are going to buy it, meaning many companies that offer products will get good business over the holidays just by advertising. 

However, when something goes wrong and requires a service call, people are going to be far more reluctant in making that call over the holidays as they want to spend their money on gifts and festivities rather than, say, a backed-up toilet.

At Flyline, we have the solution. Sure, some people are going to just get it fixed to get it over and done with and others have their companies they always use, but others may find themselves with a choice to make. Flyline wants to help that choice to be your company and, best of all, we can. Let us develop a festively themed marketing strategy that can help your business.

Whether or not your company is already signed up with us doesn’t matter. We would be happy to take on any new clients and work with them to develop an advertising campaign that best fits their needs and budgets. 

Even better is the fact that we have the knowledgeable and creative staff to design the perfect holiday ad campaign to help draw in more festive-minded customers. Ask us how!

Come Tweet with Us

If you have followed our blogs, then you probably have become aware that that we live and breathe social media. 

At Flyline Search Marketing, time and time again, we have stressed the complete and utter importance of online businesses being socially active and having a dominating social media presence.

Then it hit us -- at Flyline, we have a massive online presence and take pride in being socially active on sites like Facebook, YouTube, and now Twitter. 

That’s right, Flyline Search Marketing is cordially inviting you to check us out and follow us on Twitter. Be sure to follow us at: @FlylineSrchMktg.

Having a Twitter Account

Do you love tweeting, or do you not know what it is? Well, if you are constantly trying to tell your customers and fans about new deals, specials, and products or services, then we can pretty much guarantee that you will love tweeting.

You see, like the status updates on Facebook, Twitter lets you tweet about whatever you want and it shares it will all your followers. 

They can then share it with their followers and if it’s an unbeatable deal or an awesome new product, then chances are they will do just that.

We use our Twitter handle to keep our clients, fans, and followers informed on the new services we offer. Or, other times we like to inform them of the various specials we are constantly offering throughout the year. 

Twitter, like all other social networking sites, is an amazing way to get your business name out there for all to see.

In fact, we are so confident in the effectiveness of Twitter and social networking that we make the most of it ourselves on a near daily basis with regular tweets.

Getting a Twitter Account

By now, you may very well be considering a Twitter account. Well, you have nothing to lose as an account is free and only takes minutes to set-up. 

For businesses, Twitter is a great way to reach out and keep others informed, but it is understandable that, as a business owner, you may wonder when you have time to update your account and keep the social aspect of your business humming along.

That’s why, at Flyline, we offer various Internet marketing strategies, including a social media package. 

The best part of such a package is that we literally take care of everything for you so you can focus on growing your business and working with all the new customers that find out about you on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube! Then, you’ll be able to tweet all about your new success!