Customer Questions Coming to Google Maps

Customer Questions Coming to Google Maps was originally seen on: Canada West SEO Company

Google has announced that customer questions are coming to Google maps, and if you're a small business, you should be excited.  Larger businesses?  Maybe not so much.

For the average user of Google Maps, this will certainly help in the day-to-day use of the service, as Google rightly mentions:

"Planning a visit somewhere raises questions ranging from “Does this restaurant provide high-chairs?” to “Are there gluten-free noodles at this market?” To find the answers to such questions, most people use search engines, but often answers are not readily available."

For businesses, this service will allow you to answer questions from customers right in maps, which will provide the opportunity to engage with customers by receiving a push notification when someone asks a question and the ability to answer in real time, while also adding frequently asked questions right to your maps location for future reference.

However, larger businesses with hundreds of locations may see this as a bit of a nightmare to manage.  Currently, there is no enterprise version, so companies will need individual locations to possibly answer questions that are unique to their locale.

For more information, see Google's News Update here.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=3000

20 Best Social Media Management Tools You Can’t Live Without

The blog post 20 Best Social Media Management Tools You Can’t Live Without was originally published on: http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com

Are you scouting for the potential leads to catapult your business? Social media can be a game changer for you. This is evident from a report depicting the active social media users in the world. According to this report, there are 2.8 billion users present on various social media networks. It's a no-brainer - if you can harness the potential of social media, you can generate qualified leads for your business.

As these people are not active on a single social media network, you need a social media management tool to create a connection between your content and the users. For an efficient interaction and outreach, you should deploy a suitable social media management suite.

Here is our list of the 20 best social media management tools that can be utilized to handle social media marketing and analysis.

1. HootSuite

HootSuite is undoubtedly one of the most revered social media management tools. There are more than 10 million users, including Virgin, Herschel, MailChimp, University of Cambridge, etc., who utilize the exceptional services of HootSuite.

You can schedule posts for publishing, curate optimized content, analyze the performance, and monitor the social media network for innovative ideas and latest news.

2. Buffer

You can schedule bulk publishing of insightful content with Buffer social media management tool. Using Buffer, you can manage all social media accounts from a single dashboard and analyze the performance of your posts to get better ideas for future publishing.

More than 40 million marketers bestow their trust upon Buffer suite. The list includes Business Insider, Shopify, About.com, and so on.

3. TweetDeck

The official social media application of Twitter, TweetDeck is beneficial in managing your Twitter accounts for an extensive outreach program. You can manage your Twitter accounts from a single TweetDeck dashboard.

you can streamline your preferences pertaining to topics, events, hashtags, activities, etc. Tweet from your accounts and monitor other accounts to keep yourself updated with the latest happenings on Twitter.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot Marketing software is an essential suite for CRM. The social media management is an integral aspect of this software. Publish the latest content on various social media accounts from a single dashboard. You can schedule future proceedings for timely updates with HubSpot social media tool.

With HubSpot, you can interact with influencers to gain valuable insights in your niche. Along with the social media management suite, HubSpot integrates other valuable CRM solutions in the Marketing suite.

5. SocialOomph

Socialoomph is a social media management tool that offers numerous features for effective interaction and marketing on social media sites. RSS feed entries let you create engaging, informative posts based on latest trends.

Submitting posts via email is an indigenous Socialoomph’s feature that allows users to manage social media activity from email accounts.

6. Socialbakers

If you are looking for publishing and analytics features integrated into a single social media management suite, Socialbakers can serve the purpose. You can analyze your content strategy by generating timely reports and compare your performance against your competition using Socialbakers. Apart from this, publish relevant content at regular intervals from Socialbakers dashboard.

7. IFTTT

IFTTT is an intriguing platform that houses numerous applets for multiple uses. These applets can be customized by the users to trigger specific functions. For example, if you published a post on your blog, you can customize an IFTTT applet to share your post on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on.

8. Tweepi

Twitter can be a potential ground for social media marketers. If this is the case with you, harness the potential of Tweepi to gather potential leads and strengthen your influence on Twitter. Just mention your preferences related to hashtags and users, and let the Tweepi AI work on accumulating crucial information for you.

9. Sproutsocial

You can imagine the worth of Sproutsocial by the list of its clients that include Hyatt, Bentley, Stanford University, and so on. This social media suite offers a complete package including CRM tools, social media publishing, content calendar, monitor, and analysis, etc. Engage your audience with compelling content, and study the latest trends to expand your online presence with Sproutsocial.

10. Iconosquare

The engagement time on Instagram is on a consistent rise and hence, it seems to be an ideal forum for social media marketing. Analyze the performance of your posts and stories on Instagram, manage operations like comments moderation and content posting, schedule posts in the calendar, and scout for the influencers in your niche; all these tasks simplified by Iconosquare.

{Read our post on 5 Great Examples of Creative Instagram Campaigns}

11. Sendible

As evident by the name, Sendible offers sensible services for managing your social media accounts with perfection. The all-in-one inbox generates messages from multiple social media sites on a single platform. Generate detailed reports within minutes, and start working on your campaign. Analyze the keywords and content recommendations generated by Sendible social media management software.

12. ZOHO Social

ZOHO Social is a renowned name in the social media management tools niche. Engage with your audience in an effective manner by analyzing the content trends, contemplating the responses received on your marketing campaigns, scouting for the powerful keywords in your niche, and so on. You can even download ZOHO Social app for Android or iOS devices.

13. Tailwind

Tailwind focuses on visual marketing aspect and hence, it provides marketing tools for Pinterest and Instagram only. Scale your business by appealing the users with lucrative visual content.

Schedule posts, analyze performances and manage conversations with Tailwind social media marketing tool. Credible companies like Walmart, P&G, Unilever, eBay, Viacom, and others trust Tailwind for their marketing campaigns.

14. Oktopost

The Oktopost social media management software is specifically designed for B2B marketers. Integrate your social media profiles with Oktopost to deliver regular posts, monitor conversations, collaborate with your team to achieve the targets, and much more. Reputed brands like Panasonic, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and others rely on Oktopost for triggering their social media presence.

15. SOCIALFLOW

Accomplish two crucial tasks with the assistance of SOCIALFLOW suite. These are – social media publishing and social media advertising. SOCIALFLOW utilizes data driven approach for successful conversions and outreach program.

Manage conversations and analyze latest trends to curate content according to the demands of the user. Download benchmark reports on SOCIALFLOW to analyze your performance in every segment.

16. Blog2Social

Propel your social media presence with Blog2Social by ADENION. This social media management tool is solely focused on expanding your social media engagement.

Schedule and publish posts on multiple platforms, track the performance, select relevant images, edit comments, and so on. Blog2Social gives you flexibility while managing your blog posts and website content.

17. Sprinklr

Enhance your customer interaction and propel social media marketing with Sprinklr management tool. Whether it’s about publishing content, managing sales, advertising content, gaining valuable insights, or retaining the customers; Sprinklr can accomplish all the jobs with ease.

This is the reason Sprinklr is trusted by the industry leaders such as Nike, HP, NASA, NASDAQ, and so on.

18. Spredfast

Spredfast offers reliable social media solutions for the online marketers. The wide range of services like publishing post, managing & interacting with the team, devising strategies based on Geo locations, and so on; Spredfast will deliver more than expectations on every aspect. The firms like NBA, Discovery, ESPN, KPMG, and others rely on Spredfast services.

19. Everypost

Everypost knows about its tasks. Therefore, it does not mingle the processes and make it complicated for the users. The simplified interface makes it suitable software for the novice marketers.

It provides social media marketing tools such as content creation, content publishing, coordinating with the team, and social analytics. The reasonable pricing is also an added advantage.

20. MAVSOCIAL

The visual content is more appealing and it facilitates better conversions as well. MAVSOCIAL believes in this concept and therefore, it provides customized solutions with a major emphasis on visual content marketing.

Create captivating content, schedule the timings on the calendar for posting the content, analyze the behavior of the users to improvise the content, and much more with MAVSOCIAL tool.

THE FINAL WORD

Social media is an ever-changing database that can be used to connect with your audience and build relations with prospective clients. These social media management tools emphasize on delivering the best results for their customers.

Based on your budget and requirements, you can opt for particular social media management software for your business. Build your online presence, and take a step towards being the industry leader.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=2943

5 Tips to Writing Effective Ad Copy for PPC

5 Tips to Writing Effective Ad Copy for PPC is available on: Canada West Internet Marketing

Creating the perfect ads for your PPC campaigns requires plenty of thought in order to be written effectively. They require a mixture of not just having a way with words, but also techniques of leveraging data and information you have about your target audience.

To help you write effective ad copy for PPC, here are 5 quick tips that you can use to revamp your campaigns:

1. Incite Action by Tapping into Emotions

Emotional response is an important aspect of ads because triggered feelings can be answered with your product or service. Emotional triggers would apply to PPC ad copy much like in traditional marketing. These include fear, guilt, trust, value, belonging, competition, instant gratification, leadership, trendsetting and time. You want the audience to connect to your ad message with their feelings and to take action on those feelings.

Depending on your line of business, it is a good idea to try and explore ad copy that is not solely sales-oriented. Experiment with ad copy that makes the audience question their problem which your business has the solution to. For example, you could test out negative ad copy such as ‘Unhappy with your Skillset?’ which could then lead to a landing page for a training provider website. You could also play around with positive ad copy such as ‘Want to Acquire the Best Skillset?’.

In addition to understanding your audience’s emotions, you need to address user intent. Cater your ad copy to the goal of each type of visitor - what stage of the customer buying cycle they’re at and what is most relevant to their problem. Throw in relevant and vivid words to grasp their attention and incite action. If an ad isn’t relevant, your ad impressions aren’t going to turn into clicks.

It’s not just for search ads that you’ll need a strong call-to-action - for display ads they require an even stronger focus. You’ll want to go for ad text that hits them close to home and then back it up with a strong call-to-action such as ‘Learn More’. A case study by Jeff Allen from PPC Hero found that ‘Learn More’ as a call-to-action amongst ‘Become A’, ‘Apply’ and ‘Sign Up’ had the highest conversion rate, while call-to-actions containing ‘Apply’ had the highest CTR of that group. Regardless of these findings, ad testing should still always be performed to find the one that works best with your audience.

2. Gain their Trust

A key barrier of clicks on your ad is buyer friction. The audience may be anxious at whatever stage of the customer buying cycle they are at, so it is important to reduce buyer friction through focusing on the benefits available. For example, you can make use of review extensions, callout extensions and headings or descriptions to show benefits such as ‘free shipping’, ‘3 day delivery’, ‘30 day guarantee’, etc. which will help put their mind at ease and emphasize your outstanding customer service.

3. Provide Incentives

Other than solving the audience’s problem and addressing user intent, why else should the audience click on the ad and go to your site? Providing additional incentives is a great way to draw in visitors and entice them to go ahead with their actions.

If you mention sales, offers, promotions and exclusives, this can provide an advantage in raking in people who are simply looking for a product or service with price as an important factor. For this reason, ad copy should be up-to-date and reflect current sales situations.

4. Implement Ad Customizers

Appeal to customers by implementing ad customizers to personalize your ads. This feature is one which every PPC agency needs to know how to utilize, especially when they have the supporting data to leverage for more clicks.

You can create a sense of urgency by including a countdown customizer such as ‘X Days Left!’ to entice the audience to click your ad. It also serves as a reminder because they may remember it and come back the following day if they’ve bounced from your site.

Mobile ad customizers can also be implemented to cater more towards mobile users. For example, you can use a customizer that changes part of the ad copy to include a link to your mobile phone application which is more applicable than if it were being included on ads targeted for desktop users.

Location ad customizers are extremely useful when it comes to searches where the audience does not enter a location for the service or product they are seeking. For example, someone might type in ‘ice cream delivery’ and if you have a location ad customizer set up, you can have the ad copy be dynamic by matching it to the location from which the person is searching from on their mobile. For example, the ad copy could be customized to ‘Ice Cream Delivery - Sydney’.

5. One-Up Your Competitor Ads

Why are your competitors possibly receiving more clicks to their site than yours?
Take a look at how the ads for your competitors have been written and create a set of test ads with copy that is similar but make sure you build upon it to make it even better!. This is a good strategy if you do not have the budget to perform your own market research or if your business is new to pay per click and SEO.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=2931

An Essential Pocket Guide for White Hat Backlinking

The article An Essential Pocket Guide for White Hat Backlinking was first published on: http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/

If you have invested heavily in your online business, it is obvious that you are looking for any idea that can help boost your ranking. Times have changed in internet marketing, and new strategies in marketing are emerging. The search engine optimization (SEO) landscape keeps changing and even the old SEO techniques are being remodelled to keep up with the times. One of the most effective SEO tools so far has been link building, and while the debate continues about the best application of backlinks, there is no denying this is a must-have in your SEO campaign. If you are finding it hard to reach your target audience, it is time to rethink your link building approach in line with ongoing algorithm updates. This is the only way to remain relevant in this viciously competitive marketplace.

Why SEO Matters for your Business

Why should you bother about SEO in your marketing campaign? For a start, you must consider that there are more than 3.7 billion internet users according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). A recent Pew Research Study says 8 in 10 Americans are online with 15% of Americans shopping online on a weekly basis. 51% of people in the U.S prefer to shop online, and when these numbers are considered in combination, it becomes obvious that the internet market has limitless opportunities.

However, there is a catch; a good looking website alone does not suffice when it comes to online marketing. In spite of how fantastic your website looks, you will never achieve your marketing goals if you are not investing in techniques to boost your SEO efforts. With search remaining the #1 driver of traffic to content websites, it goes without saying that SEO should be at the core of your overall marketing strategy.

How Backlinks Link to Your SEO Campaign

Your online business can grow tremendously, but this will only happen if you are ready to adapt your marketing strategy to suit emerging demands. In line with the ongoing Google algorithm updates including Google Penguin among others, you need to tweak your backlink practices. There is no denying the link between backlinks and high ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).

In fact, a study by Moz shows the direct relationship between quality backlinks and high ranking on Google results. The study seeks to answer the question whether any site can rank highly without backlinks and the answer is simple; for you to rank highly on SERPs, you need quality backlinks. 90% of all the top results had at least one external link pointing to the website.

In summary, quality backlinks are advantageous to your online business through:

1. Building your brand’s authority
2. Driving steady flow of referrals traffic
3. Building new lasting relationships
4. Brand visibility and recognition
5. Long term directory and resource links

The power of link building cannot be underestimated, and this ultimate hat guide for backlinking is intended to help you harness this powerful SEO tool. Here are some of the key factors that will guide your link building campaign:

Understanding What High-Quality Links Are

Before commencing the link building campaign, you have to understand link anatomy. You have to appreciate that not all links are equal and this is, in fact, the reason there is so much debate about link building. At the basic level, a link is a vote for your website, but you must consider who is giving that vote. This is where the quality of a link comes in. The facts to remember are:

1. Authority: The authority of both the linking page and the linking domain are important metrics if you want to determine the quality of a link. If the authority of a linking page and domain is high, this is beneficial to your SEO efforts.
2. Follow vs. Nofollow: The rel=”nofollow” attribute is one of the oldest features in link building and it elicits different reactions. A no-follow link is not supposed to boost ranking but if you are focusing on getting quality traffic, don’t let a no-follow attribute discourage you.
3. Location of a backlink: Link placement is a crucial factor in determining the value of a link. The clickable aspect of a link matters, which means a link that is placed in an area where it can easily be clicked will have more weight.
4. Anchor text: Anchor texts are important in link building, but then they should not be over optimized. It is very easy to over optimize for an anchor text because it is one of the easiest ranking factors to manipulate. The best idea is to be content with the anchor text the one linking to you decides to use rather than risk a penalty for over optimizing.
5. Link relevancy: To discourage webmasters from misusing link building, Google uses link relevancy to determine the quality of a backlink. If a page has very many outbound links, the value of a single link is low. Your target pages when looking for links should be those with less number of outbound links.

Strategies in Link Building

Your link building process is divided into:

• Research: You should take time to research your backlink targets to avoid reaching out to bad prospects. Take time to look at the backlinks pointing to your competition using tools such as Ahrefs. This helps you know how your competitors are building links and also finding high-value link targets.
• Outreach process: This is an art more than a science and will depend on your goals. It can either be structured or unstructured, but the bottom-line is to meet your unique needs.

These are the broad steps you will undertake in the link building process. To get the best out of your backlinking campaign, you can use among other techniques link magnets or ego baits, interviews, link reclamation/broken link building, checking what is trending and write targeted content for press releases, guest blogging, using images, content repurposing and syndication, directories, blog, forum, and community participation among others.

There are different automation tools that can help you in link building including those for competitor and link research (Ahrefs, Majestic and OSE from Moz), for content research (Buzzsumo and Ahrefs Content Explorer) for web monitoring (Google Alerts and Mention) and for outreach (Buzzstream, Ninja Outreach, Yesware and Mailshake).

In conclusion, link building remains one of the most important cogs in any successful SEO campaign. It is a powerful technique to boost flow of traffic, increase conversion rates, build brand recognition and much more. With these simple techniques, you can now build links without risking penalties from Google.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=2922