Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

Using Facebook as a Fan Page

This is by far one of the most powerful changes, in my opinion, to fan page functionality. Why? Before this change, there were only a few ways to share your fan page with people who are not a fan of your brand on Facebook. The first was by sharing the page directly with your personal profile’s contacts. The second was by hoping that your page’s fans would share it with their contacts. And the third was by spending money with Facebook advertising.

Now, with the option to use Facebook as your page, you can do something that reaches out to Facebook users in your targeted audience for free. Here are easy steps on how to get your brand in front of a larger Facebook audience.

How to Use Facebook as Your Page

Almost 10 years after publishing its first review, the site is one of the internet’s success stories, in traffic terms at least. More than 50 million reviews have now been published on the website, which invites customers to share their experiences of hotels, flights, restaurants and tourist attractions. More than half a million properties have been reviewed there.

Having recently set up the 60 Days free trial through FlipKey by TripAdvisor, we’ve hit the ground running with an enquiry every few days. So as a two month trial would suggest, TripAdvisor is a powerful tool for not only your brand but also leads based on customer feedback!

Take a look at the business listing offer Today!

Smart article over on Small Business Bliss. You’ve probably heard it all before in a dozen different places, but maybe never as succinctly. Here are the basic reasons a blog solves all of your major online marketing needs in one simple, compact package. If you want to know why a blog must literally be the beginning and end of your basic online marketing approach, look no further.

Those clients of ours blogging successfully will know how important this strategy is, and those readers who arent clients of ours but blog successfully will also know. It really is the basis of your social media platform and essential.

Read the article in detail and talk to us about setting up a successful blog strategy.
5 reasons your business needs a blog.

Twitter is filled with potential for businesses, but a Twitter account is only as good as its content. Sometimes just observing how top businesses take advantage of this communication platform is a good way to learn.

Here are 20 popular retail brands’ Twitter feeds. Follow them on Twitter and watch their posts carefully — you might just learn a trick or two to improve your own business.

1. @Zappos. Zappos is well known for offering terrific customer support. One of the main ways it does this is through its Twitter feed from CEO Tony Hsieh. Zappos also runs @ZapposInsights for its membership site, where followers can learn how to create a strong company culture.
2. @BestBuy. The main feed from Best Buy with posts regarding company culture, upcoming events and deal notices. Best Buy also runs @GeekSquad for answers to customers’ technical support issues 24 hours a day and @TwelpForce with more tech advice from Best Buy technology experts.

Came across this informative article over on All Facebook about marketing your business page on Facebook.
Do it well, the benefits are:

• Engagement: Greater interaction
• Visibility: Facebook shows your posts to more of your fans
• Free fans: You get more fans for free — one Fortune 1000 company combining good advertising and engagement tactics got more than half of their fans for free.
• Testimonials: Your fans become so positive that they give spontaneous testimonials which convince fans who are still just prospects how great you are
• Reputation protetction: Overwhelming positivity on a fan page wards off negative attacks from critics and provides volunteer defenders

Read the rest of the post

If your business isnt already on Facebook, you are potentially missing out on a valuable free marketing channel. Talk to us today

Selling online is getting harder these days. As more and more big-box retailers shift their focus to ecommerce, remaining competitive takes more than low prices and a website. This is especially true if your products are not unique.One easy way to break out from the pack is with a blog.

Why a blog?

An ecommerce blog can really make a difference if it’s done right. That means keeping it updated keeping it fresh, and posting interesting and relevant material that your customers want.

How can a blog help your online store? Here’s 5 ways it can have an impact…

1. SEO SEO SEO

It’s no surprise that a blog can help with your search engine rankings. Google loves updated content. They also love content that is written in a way to be appealing to living, breathing humans.

Super interesting read over on iMedia Connection about the Facebook news feed algorithm (ranking of facebook news feed items).

“While the math and the rules behind the algorithm are a bit fuzzy, the premise is simple. Facebook doesn’t want any user bombarded with useless, irrelevant content. EdgeRank doesn’t just apply to user profiles. It’s also used for pages. The algorithm determines which users will see the content from the pages they “like.”

This may be news to many businesses marketing on Facebook, many must be thinking each and every status or page update they make is automatically displayed on their “fans” walls. Not the case. If you stop and think, some weighting or ranking has to apply otherwise a users wall would quickly fill up with not so relevant updates and be replaced with more updates before they could see the more relevant ones.

All commercial website owners want people to visit their site. Since you’ve gone to the trouble to produce a website, you have probably also made a little effort to learn something about how to get it noticed. In the course of your reading, you will have read about back links, but you may not know exactly what they are. This guide for building back links is intended for people like you.

Once you’ve published your site, you’ll then want to start the process of promoting it using SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You’ll maybe subscribe to newsletters by SEO gurus in hopes of gaining some valuable insights. Like many beginners, some of the best advisers will be useless to you because they use terminology you don’t yet fully understand.

By now, it’s understood that social media networking and marketing are invaluable to business. It seems this may be particularly true for small businesses, who are now turning more of their resources toward online and social media marketing.According to a recent study conducted by eMarketer, more than half of all small businesses (55%) consider Facebook beneficial to their business. Other social media sites that were ranked as moderately or highly beneficial include Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you are a small businesses owner who has not yet ventured far into the world of social media, you may wonder, “Why do they consider these sites important?”

First and foremost? Businesses look to social media marketing to generate leads. Almost 60% of the small businesses surveyed said that “Lead Generation” was positively affected by social media marketing. Another top-rated and highly important benefit is keeping up with the industry. Any small business owner will tell you that it’s hard to compete when you’re not sure what the competition is up to.

Interesting article about the power of email marketing, not the least of which is that 19 percent of shoppers surveyed said they visited a top retailer’s online storefront after receiving a promotional email from the company. Eight percent said they were driven there by search engine results, and only five percent said their decision to visit one of the top 40 retail websites was primarily influenced by social media channels such as recommendations on Facebook or Twitter.

Read the full article

We offer a self-serve email marketing system that makes newsletters and promotional emails a cinch. Join 200+ clients using Nextwave Mailer for their email marketing strategy, see the website for more info, or get in touch with us today if you’d like to discuss this effective marketing strategy.

Hows this for a low cost, easy advertising campaign that will generate buzz, create new customers, and develop new content for your products: the social photo contest. Create a photo contest campaign that includes your customers using/wearing/holding your product(s). It is inexpensive, easy to set up, and surprisingly effective. Talk to us today about how to go about this.

Converting visitors into customers is about more than just supplying great product information. It’s about more than a great design, simple navigation and customer service links. The basics–such as page design and content presentation are certainly necessary. But if you want to grow a loyal customer base for the long term, you have to reach even further.
Here are six ways to engage visitors and turn more of them into actual customers, bringing friends with them.

1. Serve up the ideal newsletter. Contrary to what some social media “experts” say, people still like to receive email from companies they love and from stores that carry items or product lines to which they’re devoted. By integrating useful tips and links to articles or invites to forums, you’re opening up a channel for conversation, of which customers will take advantage.

If there was still some doubt, PBL Media and Microsofts new joint-venture in Australia - cudo.com.au, has dispelled it completely. Online ‘group-buying’ and ‘coupon-retailing’ businesses are the hottest and newest, ‘new thing’ in ecommerce down-under. Microsoft and PBL Media, with Cudo, join a veritable crowd of both start-ups and established businesses trying to cash-in on the apparent popularity of group-buying services with consumers. Spreets, scoopon, offerme, ouffer, jumponit, ourdeal, crowdmass and eroo, are just some of the names in the crowd.

Some great promotional opportunities exist for businesses on these sites, especially if you are a service based business in a capital city or a manufacturer of a product that you are prepared to sell at a reasonable discount. Talk to us today about this interesting strategy.

Just read an interesting post for those clients just getitng started with their blogs. Perhaps a bit basic not for the more advanced bloggers but I’m sure you will be able to find some takeaway points to assist you in getting the most out of this valuable social media tool. Its called “Best practices for a killer corporate blog” you can see the post over on Imedia Connection.

If you havent yet taken the plunge into the personal publshing world of blogs then get in touch with us today for a free consultation. Blogs form the basis of a successful social media strategy and will only get more important over time.

Just came across a great blog post with some inspirational email marketing campaigns for online stores.
Twenty Email Marketing Examples for Design Inspiration

Build Links to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings Introducing Wordtracker’s Link Builder Tool

The surest way to improve your website rankings in the search engines is to get quality links pointing to your site.

With Wordtracker’s powerful new Link Builder tool, you’ll be able to:

• Find hundreds of top quality link prospects
• Uncover your competitors’ linking strategies (and beat them at their own game)
• Analyze sites that rank well for a particular keyword
• Plan and create your own high impact linking campaigns
• Drive more traffic, sales and revenue for your business

This Link Builder tool offers 7 day free trial (credit card required), a 30 day money back guarantee and the cost is $59 per month, not much if you consider other forms of attracting traffic. And unlike pay-per-click improving your search rankings means you dont have to pay for every visitor delivered to your site. Yes it takes some time and effort but in the long term its a must to not have to rely solely on paying for visitors.
Follow this link to find out more info and/or sign up for the free trial

Instead of putting an entire offer or promotion in your email, use teaser content that points to more information on your website or blog. This has the added bonus of providing customers and prospects with more of a reason to click a link and make their way over to your site. It also creates the possibility of up-selling other products and services on your website.

Inbound Marketing University has some great free classes for business owners wanting to know more about marketing their business on the internet. You can stream them free over the web or download them all to watch offline. There is even an exam at the end if you wish to get certified but you dont have to complete it.  Watch the classes to increase your awareness of the various strategies your website will need to be sucessful. Indeed unless you have a large marketing budget it will be up to you to put some of these strategies into place and refine over time.

Am I marketing my product differently based on unique audiences?

Am I creating valuable content for my site?

Am I blogging effectively?

Am I converting enough of my visitors to customers?
These questions and more are be answered in the 17 free hour long classes each covering a particular aspect of online marketing.

Found this great collection of Facebook marketing links on insidecrm.com
View here

Creating a Facebook presence has become a must-have for brands these days. Most companies decide to establish themselves with one or more Fan pages. As opposed to personal profile pages, these pages are specifically purposed for companies, brands and famous people; their key measure of success being the number of “fans” that a page has.

There are many features and customization options on Fan pages including the ability to customize photos, layouts and the tab structure. With so many options, it can be a bit mind-boggling to determine an approach for how to lay out your page.

Click here to view the page above on Facebook
A review of existing Fan pages indicates that there are a number of different approaches that one might take. The choice of which approach to take should be based on the company’s product and service profile. Here is a breakdown of some approaches to consider:

Up-sells increase average earnings per sale, and a properly executed up-sell can even increase your conversion rates. Compelling up-sell offers should cost no more than 30 percent of the price of your primary product. And, when choosing your up-sell offers, always select products that complement your primary product offer. Talk to us today if you arent sure how to utilise this function within your strategy

During the holidays, ecommerce merchants have advantages over their brick and mortar counterparts. Convenience and round the clock shopping are two of those advantages.

But those who wants to expand sales would be well served to look at their disadvantages as an online merchant. One of the areas The Nielsen Company explored in a recent holiday survey was those disadvantages.

They found that consumers don’t want to pay additional money for shipping and handling and they will, in some cases, avoid shopping online for that very reason. If you dont already, this info should have thinking about offering free shipping, at least when customers spend over a certain amount or what about free shipping possibly just for the Christmas period?

Other consumers feel the need to see or touch a product. This, too, is an obstacle that could potentially be avoided with the use of a zoomable images, product video or demonstration. Reviews and detailed descriptions can also assist in this area.
By understanding your company’s disadvantages, you may be able to lessen them.

Online advertising expenditure in Australia for the third-quarter 2009 (3 months ended 30 September 2009) totalled $466.25 million, the largest quarter ever recorded. This is an increase of $13.25 million (or 2.9%) from the second-quarter 2009 (3 months ended 30 June), and is an increase of $15.0 million (or 3.3%) from the third-quarter 2008.

View the report here

As the Internet matures so does the sophistication of online shoppers. Studies indicate that today’s shoppers expect retailers to provide not only textual product information, but also detailed, zoomable images, videos, and alternate product views. A superior customer experience separates the best-of-breed retailers from the rest of the pack. Nextwave Commerce, our flagship software offers zoomable images for more informed purchase decisions.

The aim here is to do everything possible to simulate actually being in store and holding the product.

See some live examples of zoomable images here.(mouse over product image for zoom)

http://www.bagladies.com.au/shop/all-bags/my-other-bags-are-prada/

http://www.serenaandlily.com.au/shop/Gift/Gypsy-Tote/ 

http://www.swankyandswish.com/shop/Womens/womens-eyewear/Brown-Sugar-Gold-W/ 

http://www.bubsboutique.com/shop/boys/baby-boys/rock-baby-onesie-white/ 

If you arent already using zoomable images talk to us today!

Stumbled on a wealth of reading material for our Nextwave Commerce clients.