Differentiation

Over the years, the widely use of social media within any business marketing mix has become as common as pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving time. Nowadays, being responsible for managing an established presence on at least the big three of social media is normal. Any business that wants to survive the Social Media era must have a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.  

This is even true for local companies in my neck of the woods. Both companies exist in the grocery industry, and utilize social media; but, are they truly taking advantage of what social media can offer them?

Lowe’s Supermarkets is a Littlefield, Texas-based company that has been serving families since 1964 (Lowe’s Supermarkets). Since 1964, they have grown to over 140 stores. This is a tremendous growth for the supermarket chain, but how much bigger can they grow if they utilize their social media outlets more. Currently, they manage a Facebook and Twitter account; although, it seems as if they do it spiraling. Their last update to Twitter was on June 6, 2014. They currently have a total of 96 overall tweets and 43 followers. The interesting thing about this was they do tend to update more frequently their Facebook page. They currently have 803 likes on Facebook, which makes you wonder if they would put more engagement into Twitter how many more followers could they gain. Another very interesting observation I made was that they had videos in their Twitter account. Lowe’s could take advantage of social media and create not only a Google+ page but a YouTube page. This would increase their online visibility and move them further along in the utilization of social media to grow their business.

Like Lowe’s Supermarkets, there is another supermarket that is quickly growing at least in my area. Vista Markets/Vista Quality Markets are a chain of grocery stores designed to cater to the tastes of the El Paso community (Vista Markets). This supermarket started in the mid-80’s but have quickly grown into a strong competitor at least in this area. I foresee them expanding within the near future to the bordering states and other cities within Texas. Like their competitor, they don’t do regular updates to their Twitter account. The last update was actually back on May 22. Which makes me question if there is in-house changes going on since before that date there was at least two if not more daily updates. They currently have a total of 1,065 overall tweets and 145 followers. Their Facebook page was updated frequently like their Twitter account, but stopped for some reason on May 22. They currently have 535 likes which seems more about the norm. I think that they could utilize social media more by creating a Google+ page as well and a YouTube channel. This supermarket has the potential and uniqueness to really grow big if they utilize social media the right way.

Both companies can better use social media to differentiate their brand as well as advance their growth and goals. It will be interesting to see if they do change their ways of using Social Media and they grow and change from it.

Lowe’s Supermarkets. (n.d.). About Lowe’s Markets. Retrieved June 25, 2014, from Lowe’s Markets: http://www.lowesmarket.com/?page_id=65

Vista Markets. (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved June 25, 2014, from Vista Markets: http://vistasupermarkets.com/pages/home/about-us-2/

When is Internet Marketing Worthwhile?

In general the answer to this question is always but the answer is much more involved. Sure Internet marketing is worthwhile but as with any type of marketing it is only worthwhile if it is done well. For example you can spend thousands of dollars on a television marketing campaign but if no one sees your commercials or your commercials do not reach your target audience and generate sales, the advertising was not worthwhile. So perhaps a more appropriate answer to this question would be that Internet marketing is worthwhile when it works. This is a rather vague statement but this article will investigate the issue further and explain how you can make Internet marketing work for your business.

One of the most basic principles of marketing is to make sure you reach your target audience. This is so important because your target audience is the people who are most likely going to be interested in purchasing your products or services. It is much easier to sell your products or services to those who already have an interest in the products and services you have to offer than it is to convince those who are not interested in your products or services at all. As an example consider a business who sells fishing rods. You will want to market your products to those who enjoy fishing either competitively or as a leisure activity because among this audience you are likely to find people who may be interested in purchasing a new fishing rod. It would make sense to place an advertisement for your business on a website selling bait and tackle or a website which organizes fishing trips in exotic locations. Conversely it would not make sense to place your advertisement on a website selling telescopes because you are not likely to reach a large target audience here. There may be some stargazers with an interest in fishing but your advertising dollars and efforts would be better spent placing advertisements with websites more closely related to your business.

Another factor to consider when purchasing advertising space on another Internet website is traffic the amount of traffic the other website receives. This is significant because you want to place your advertisement on a website which is closely related to your own and likely to attract a similar audience but you also want your advertisement to receive a large amount of attention. For this reason it is important for your advertisement to appear on a website which receives a great amount of traffic each month. This will help to ensure your business is getting a great deal of exposure through this advertising.

When it comes to Internet advertising, there is a fine line between great advertising and spam. Some business owners get carried away trying to get as much exposure as possible and can sometimes go overboard and wind up being considered spam. Internet users who see your advertisement in a couple of key locations will likely notice the advertisement and may be compelled to visit your website immediately or may keep your website in mind for future use. However, Internet users who see your advertisement everywhere they look are likely to view your advertisement as spam. This can be harmful because they are not likely to visit your website because they expect it to not be worthwhile.

In any Internet marketing campaign it is important to carefully monitor the results of your marketing efforts and make changes to your campaign as necessary. This is important because you want to make sure your marketing efforts are paying off and the best way to do this is to evaluate the results of your advertising carefully. One way to do this is to place specially coding in each one of your advertisements so you will know which advertisements are generating business for you and which ones are not. You can use this information to decide whether you should modify the ineffective website or stop running these advertisements. If you decide to modify them you will want to continue to monitor the results to determine whether or not the changes made the advertisements more effective.

What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo to name a few. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

What IS SEOPressor?

The Mandatory WordPress SEO Plugin – What IS SEOPressor?

SEOPressor is a simple WordPress plugin now used by more than 100,000 websites all over the world for their on-page optimization needs. Simply put, this is a tool that can definitely elevate the standard of your website, in the manner that it helps your website reach out on the Internet. The simple logic here is that if your website can reach out to more people, it will have more publicity, and more publicity means more traffic — exactly what SEOPressor helps you achieve. As you get even the top position on Google within your niche, which is something that SEOPressor has achieved time and again, it’s only natural that your business prospects are only going to improve.

The one fact is—you are going to optimize your website in some way or the other, with or without a software application. But if you are planning to do things manually, the big drawback is that you won’t get the time to pursue your main business itself. SEO is a highly time-consuming activity, and you will find yourself wasting a great deal of time in blogging, marketing with articles, submitting to directories, sending emails to other webmasters for sharing links with them and so on.

Naturally, these things are going to take a lot of your time. Now just think—if you would just delegate all this work to a tool like SEOPressor, won’t you be saving some immense amount of time? Time that you could better use in increasing your business?

Probably it is this thought that is making a lot of people invest in SEOPressor today. The following are some time-consuming things that SEOPressor can do for webmasters:-

1. It finds out the hottest keywords on the Internet and tells you how you can use them. It keeps monitoring the keywords and continuously makes suggestions. It also tells you what density you should use the keyword in and what special formatting you need to keep it. All these things could be very time-consuming if done manually.

2. The program also looks at the tags you have used and makes suggestions on how to improve prospects. It makes suggestions on which tagging formats should be used—H1, H2 or H3—and carries it out by itself.

3. If you run a blog, SEOPressor will look at your individual posts and suggest changes if anything is wrong. It also tells you the value of each of your existing posts. So, it’s not just about optimizing your on-page needs but it is also about actually suggesting changes. SEOPressor is essentially like having an SEO Professor right beside you, teaching and guiding you.

Facebook: A Popular Social Networking Website

Individuals, of all different ages, enjoy meeting and communicating with other internet users. Despite the fact that individuals of all ages use the internet to socialize, there are certain groups of individuals that do more than others. Those groups of individuals include students, both high school students and college students. For that reason, it is only fitting that there should be a social networking website that has a focus on these particular individuals. That networking website is known as Facebook.

Facebook may not be as well known as other popular social networking websites, such as Yahoo! 360 or MySpace, but it is still popular. That popularity is mostly among high school students and college students, mostly because Facebook focuses on these individuals in particular. With Facebook, you are required to register for a specific network. That network can either include the high school or college which you attended or are currently attending. Once you have joined the website, you should easily be able to make contact with others who are in the same network.

The network in which you join can be considered an advantage of Facebook, as well as a disadvantage. See, Facebook does not work like most other social networking websites. Instead of being able to communicate with all site members, you are limited to contact with those that are in your particular network, the high school or college you that selected. The creators of Facebook state that this is for your own safety. Although it is safer for your profile and personal information to be viewed by a small number of individuals, you may not necessity want it to be that way.

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Although a large amount of focus is placed on high school students and college students, Facebook has added another popular feature to their website. That feature is workplace networks. By joining a specific workplace network, you will be granted access to other community members who work for the same company as you. This feature is nice, especially since many companies have become large corporations or expanded across the country. You may be able to make contact and become friends with a long-distance coworker that you never knew you had.

Another aspect of Facebook that you may find inconvenient is their lack of available information, before you decide to become a community member. When viewing their online website, which can be found at http://www.facebook.com, it is hard to tell whether or not the site is free to use. Most online social networking sites will make this known right upfront, but Facebook does not. Aside from the price, you should easily be able to obtain additional information on Facebook, before making the decision to become a member. This additional information may include how Facebook works, why you should become a member, how the invite process works, and general rules and restrictions that are in place.

If you are interested in joining the Facebook community, you should do what you should do with all other social networking websites, research. By taking the time to research and examine everything that Facebook has to offer, you should be able to decide whether or not this popular networking community is what you were looking for. There is a good chance that it will be, but if not, do not worry. There are literally an unlimited number of other social networking websites that you can join.