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Why Google+ Means the World to Your Business

“We’re extremely happy with our progress so far, and one of our main goals is to transform the overall Google experience and make all of the services people already love faster, more relevant, and more reliable” - Google

It’s safe to say that Google owns the internet. Google accounts for 90% of online traffic and the second largest search engine is YouTube which, we all know, is owned by Google! With many layers to its empire including Google Docs, Google Alerts, gMail, Picasa and Google Shopping to name a select few, Google was always missing that one key element, a social layer.

With bad reviews, an archaic platform and many complaining users, Google’s social layer; Google+ didn’t have the best of starts. What was supposed to be the next best thing since Facebook (in Google’s eyes) clearly wasn’t performing and something had to change.

Do you remember Google Buzz or Google Wave? Probably not. Google+ was Google’s third time lucky when attempting to harness the power of Social. As it stands, Google+ is an extremely important platform for those who want to market their business online and here are a few reasons why;

  • SEO Benefits – With Google owning 90% of online traffic, you should reap the benefits Google+ can offer your business when it comes to search engine optimisation. Make sure your Google+ Business Page includes all of your keywords and is constantly updated with fresh and relevant content.

  • Google Hangouts – Google offers something unique in their social layer where you can actually hold a face to face meeting with a group of people, inside Google+ completely free of charge.

  • Google Circles – The ability to categorise those you are connected with via Circles is a great way to share the right information with the right people. Google Circles is a great way to target your sharing.

Google+ is more active than you are probably aware of. With over 260M active users, 60% of which log in everyday, Google+ is one of the fastest growing social networks ever boasting over 500M Google+ “enabled” users. Google+ also acts as an influencer, especially when it comes to shares of +1’s. Google sees this as a social recommendation and will rank you in search according to this.

Google+ is the same as Facebook and Twitter in the sense that it acts in real time but with an extra edge. Any status update on Google+ is immediately indexed and pushed into Google Search. When posting in Google+, make sure you use keywords and use “” to make sure they are being picked up by Google as being key search terms for your business.

Google+ isn’t going anywhere and I have a feeling it will become an influential networks inside of the social media space. From being able to create a community and using keyword rich content, linking straight back to your site, Google+ is not only a social advantage to a business selling online, its a Search advantage too.

7 Reasons Why a Small Business Should Enter Awards

Once you have an established business, you need to start thinking about entering industry awards. Awards aren’t just about receive kudos for something remarkable your business has achieved. Here are my 7 reasons why a small business should enter awards.

1. Learning Process

Entering awards for your business isn’t just about winning. You get to learn more about yourself and your business. The awards process itself can be quite grueling and difficult. Once you have all the right information, it will make it easier further down the line. You will need to create a spreadsheet with all of the awards you are eligible to enter so that you don’t miss any of the deadline dates.

2. Helps Re-evaluate your business

Every time you enter a new award, there may be something new worth mentioning. Entering these awards helps you re-evaluate your business so that you are always on top of what is going on. It is worth mentioning that when your business hits a milestone, you need to document it so that it is ready to be included in your awards entry.

3. You need to be in it, to win it

If you don’t enter, you won’t win. This may mean putting aside a budget for some of the more important awards so that you are ready to enter as soon as entries open. Just because your business may not be as established as one of your competitors it doesn’t mean you won’t come away with something. You may not win, but you may be highly commended. Don’t let the fear of your competition putt you off entering any industry awards.

4. Make important business connections

If the awards you are entering have ceremonies, make sure you or one of your colleagues attends them. This is very important as you could meet very influential people that you will be able to connect with on a business level. Don’t forget to take business cards with you as you never know when you may need them! When Gloople was chosen as one of Smarta’s top 100 businesses, I attended the awards ceremony where I made a lot of important connections and had a conversation with James Caan.

5. Brand Exposure

Entering Awards and having your business shortlisted is one of the best ways to gain the right kind of brand exposure. It may not happen straight away but the more awards you enter, the more your businesses name will appear in front of people and this can only be good exposure for your brand.

6. Build Relationships with Employees

Entering awards and winning will help build relationships in house. It is always nice to be acknowledged for the work you put into a business and your employees will feel the same way. It may also be a nice gesture to have your team at an awards ceremony to enjoy the company of each other in a social environment.

7. Get to know your Business Sector and Competition

The more awards you enter, the more likely you are to see your competitors. There will always be that one company that you roll your eyes at because they keep winning the awards you enter. Don’t let this defeat you, you never know what will happen – people might start rolling their eyes at your business next!

Are you ready, as a Small Business to build your band and enter industry awards?

Social Commerce – The Future of Connecting with your Online Consumer

In an ideal world for most people, the way we buy and sell as a business or consumer, would never change. I, however am not most people and believe that change is a great opportunity to learn more about the technology world and improve the way our businesses function. Two words that have been floating around the web for some time now have a purpose and meaning. Social Commerce is here, and it won’t be disappearing anytime soon.

Mark Zuckerberg was right when he said “If I had to guess, Social Commerce is next to blow up” back in 2011. Social Commerce is the combination of social media and digital technology to sell both products and services online.

Social Commerce will be a driving force for online sales because of the art of storytelling. What better way to connect with an online customer than giving them a reason to connect with YOUR business? Every business has a story and a personality trait which is social media worthy.  If you can connect with your customers on a personal level through story telling on social media, you will build your clientele which in essence will translate into a social commerce transaction.

There are 1 billion people on Facebook with around 75% of those users “liking” a brand’s Facebook page. The Facebook users that like a fan page are ultimately saying they will buy from that business IF that company engages with them in the right way. Did you know that a Facebook share (when someone see’s a post on your Facebook fan page, “shares” it with their community who then follows the link back to your page, visits your website and purchases from you) is worth £2.60? Even more surprisingly, Twitter can generate a massive £21.04 in sales through a share. Think Social Media is a waste of time? Think again.

When I hold a keynote seminar, I always ask the same question. When you are inside Facebook and see one of their advertisements down the side of the page, do YOU firstly click on it, and THEN purchase that product? 99% of the time, no more than three hands are raised out of around 50-60 people. Why? Because we no longer trust advertising more than we do peer to peer recommendations. Andrew Mason, Groupon founder said the following; “Middle-class people sit around, trying to think of how to spend money.  One of the most powerful ways to figure that out is looking at what your friends are buying – these are the people you trust”. This, I definitely agree with.

It has been estimated that by 2015, Social Commerce sales will reach around $30 billion a year with 50% of online revenue coming from social media. We are seeing well known brands like Mercedes selling 666 cars in the space of 8 hours with their “Three Point Twitter” campaign and Adidas selling around £2,500 worth of products via in-stream Facebook and Twitter. Brands are making magic and it’s not just a myth anymore, there is a lot of money to be made if you utilise the tools available to combine social media and digital commerce.

The best way to sell on social media is to in fact, not sell at all. For your followers to really trust your business, you need to take a step back and realise why you are even a part of a social network. The intent is not always a purchase, it is to share great content and to engage with a community. Once you have built this foundation, you won’t need to force your products or services onto those who are connected to you, they will naturally, become brand advocates.

Social Commerce is here to stay and it’s time for you to look at the future of connecting with your online consumer.

Using Gmail More Effectively #Filter #Important #Extensions

As someone who is constantly short on time, I am always trying to find ways to make sure I am doing everything I can to save time wherever possible. In my last blog I spoke about using LinkedIn to avoid wasting time when speaking to a companies Gatekeeper and I want to try and help those who basically live in their Gmail inbox like I do.

As most of you know, Gmail can be difficult at times, especially when you are receiving numerous unimportant emails which are going straight into your inbox. As this is something that used to happen to me on a daily basis I had to find a solution. The best way to avoid having your phone buzzing every two minutes with pointless emails is to filter them. To do this, click on the email, go to the “more” button and select “filter messages like these”. A white box will then appear and you will need to select “create filter with this search”. You will then come to various options regarding how you want to filter the corresponding email address. For me, the best way to organise this is to select “skip the inbox (archive it)” and apply it to a label. Once you have made your decision you can click “create filter”. This will now automatically add the emails you receive from that filtered email address to a different place in your inbox. The advantages of doing this are;

  • To clean up your inbox by removing all the unimportant emails and filtering them into the correct folders

  • To allow YOU to focus on the important emails as opposed to being distracted.

  • To avoid the constant vibration of your mobile phone.

 

Did you know that having an inbox full of emails forces you to multi task which lowers your IQ? I didn’t realise how much of a difference it made to my organisation until I changed the way my Gmail works.

Another great way to make your Gmail more efficient is to integrate an application called PowerBot which allows you to work more productively with Evernote. Powerbot allows you to link the notes and reminders from inside Evernote and transfer them to an email or even your googe calendar. If you go to the Powerbot application site here and click on “install the browser extension” you will see a pop up window where you can select to “add to chrome”. Once you have followed the steps on this page, you will then have to follow the three simple steps to connect your Evernote account with your Gmail account. Keep an eye out for Step 3 – this will show you exactly how PowerBot works.

This free of charge software allows you to file a message from Evernote in your Gmail folder and even insert an Evernote message into an email and send an email to Evernote.

Without using these handy tips, I would find myself having to constantly clean my inbox and using other tools that are not compatible with each other, wasting more of my valuable time.

I hope you find these tips helpful and trust me, there is a lot more you can do inside of Gmail to keep you focused on running a successful business.

Using LinkedIn 5 Minutes a Day

Running a B2B business can be challenging at times, especially when you are trying to contact the right person in a company regarding potential partnerships or joint venture. We all go through the same problem when we call a company, asking to speak to the relevant person and being caught up by a gatekeeper.

A gatekeeper is someone who directs calls to the right person within a business. The problem with this is that this person does not understand how important it is for you to share your business with them. On most occasions, you will end up either taking an email address that is already on the site like info@, enquiries@ or giving your details in the hope that there is a chance they will call you back (which we all know, is very slim indeed).

It has taken me a long time to overcome this problem and find a solution to solve this ongoing issue which I did in 2008.. I am happy to say that I have and want to share it all with you, and now is part of my Customer Acquisition Journey. Thanks to social media, we can now find the right person to talk to and for B2B companies, it all comes down to LinkedIn.

When I was exhibiting at a trade show last year with my eCommerce Platform Gloople, we were approached by a well known global company in the hopes of striking up a partnership which I was very interested in doing. After weeks of chasing this contact, they were not moving forward with what had been initially discussed at the trade show. I then decided to go over this person’s head and use LinkedIn search to find the right person to speak to. After various back and forward emails, I then had a face to face meeting with this company which went very well indeed.

Back in 2008 I remember a similar situation where I was caught up by a gatekeeper and was going around in circles. I then went to LinkedIn, found the right person to contact and had a successful meeting with that person 72 hours later.

I have spent a long time growing my LinkedIn account to over 2,500 connections, allowing me to find the right people to connect with. If I am trying to contact someone who is not a connection of mine, I use the search functionality to find the right person in that said company. On various occasions, I find that the person I am trying to contact is a secondary connection meaning we have a person in common. I will then email them and ask for a warm introduction so that I am not coming from an unknown place.

If you don’t know how to get started with LinkedIn, here are my 5 top tips for using Linkedin 5 minutes a day;

1.Treat LinkedIn differently to Facebook and Twitter – LinkedIn is a B2B network and because of this, it should not be treated the same as other social networks. Only add those you have done business with or want to in the future.

2. Make sure your Profile is 100% Complete – If it isn’t LinkedIn will know and keep pestering you because they want you to experience all that LinkedIn has to offer.

3. Participate in Groups – There are so many great groups on LinkedIn with industry experts that you will be able to learn something off and vice versa. Utilise this part of LinkedIn and make some strong business connections.

4. Use LinkedIn as a News Outlet – LinkedIn now has a News tab once you have logged in. The news in this section is created based on your interests, which you can customise. Use the information in this section to share with your community who also share your interests.

5. Endorsing your Contacts – This is a relatively new feature LinkedIn have brought into play and has already proved its effectiveness. Make sure you endorse your contacts for the work they deserve recognition for and you will receive the same in return.

I hope you will start to use LinkedIn to help you grow your business and make those all important connections.