Never buy links. Period! You can be penalized for buying links, participating in paid “link building” programs, or having links from sites that Google has blocked, such as sites involved in link selling or any other activity in violation of Google’s guidelines.

A common legitimate link building activity is directory submission. Submission can range from just your name and homepage URL to an extensive business profile. Always make sure any content you post to directories is unique, readable and human friendly. Never submit strings of comma-separated keywords that will be seen as spam content.

It is always best to list your site only in the most important, authoritative and reputable directories. Avoid the “list your site in thousands of directories” offers. Most are a waste of time. Not all directories are equal, and many to the hundreds or even thousands of directories that some online services offer to post your site to are completely useless, or could even be on Google’s black list.

There are many other ways to quickly develop high quality links that work, including: professionally syndicated press releases, syndicated business listing services, submitting articles to or commenting on blogs and forums, starting your own blog, getting local government (.gov), educational (.edu), or business association links by working with those organizations, submitting product reviews and answers on sites like Yahoo! Answers and writing submissions in related forums and user groups.

Another important link building activities is participating in Social Networking activates such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, by far the best way to get quality links to your site is by writing good content. If it’s original, informative and interesting people will want to link to. If you haven’t got the skill or time necessary to write great keyword focused content and work to get it posted on important sites, let orangeJuice media help you.

Source: Attracta

For more information on the benefits of search engine optimization, visit orangeJuice media. orangeJuice media, an online marketing agency and a leading provider of mobile, local and social marketing solutions for business. Headquartered just outside of Portland, Oregon, orangeJuice Media provides services for clients in the Portland metro market and throughout the United States.

It’s Not a Trend

Marketing is one of those tasks in a business that is necessary but daunting at the same time. It may also seem as if a new marketing trend comes along all the time and if you tried every one, you and your business would be broke. This, however, is not the case when it comes to social media marketing. This type of marketing is not a trend and is here to stay.

What this means for your business is that you need to learn how to leverage the power of social media now or suffer the consequences of lost customers and a decrease in profits later.

It Creates a Sales Force

Still not convinced that social media is a powerful tool for promoting your business and boosting your sales? Consider that the average Facebook user has about 140 friends. Assume that one of your clients mentions that they just bought your product or used one of your services and how great it was. You just received a positive advertisement for your business that reached at least 140 people.

Then, multiply the 140 people the initial message reached by the 140 people each of these friends has on their Facebook page, and now we’re are talking about some serious numbers.

And, all you had to do is create the platform for these conversations to take place and your sales force to start spreading the word for you.

It’s Free

When it comes to the marketing budget, it is always music to a business owner’s ears when they find out that the use of social media marketing is free. You or an employee should put together a social media marketing plan and someone has to implement the plan, but other than the time it takes to do this, social media marketing does not cost you or your business a dime.

Stop fighting it. Join the millions of small, medium, and huge corporations that are using social media as part of their marketing strategy today. If you continue to fight it, you may as well just refer your customers directly to your main competitor that is using social media. If you are ready to stop fighting it, then learn more about social media benefits, how it can boost your business, and the ways that avoiding this type of marketing can make or break your business.

For more information on the benefits of social media marketing and how to use it in your business, visit orangeJuice media. orangeJuice media, an online marketing agency and a leading provider of mobile, local and social marketing solutions for business. Headquartered just outside of Portland, Oregon, orangeJuice Media provides services for clients in the Portland metro market and throughout the United States.

Tell Them What They’re Missing

By nature, people are social creatures, and they want to know what is going on. This is why when there is an accident on the side of the road, the people passing by feel the need to slow down and check out the scene. Move this to an online setting, and you can use the “train wreck” syndrome in your social media marketing.

Share with your followers what they’re missing, or better yet, what they need to know about your business, your products or services or your industry in general. When you are on the puts them in the know; then they are more likely to come back to you for more information. And, since you are the one that is in the know and putting them in the know, this helps to converts followers to buyers.

Find an 80/20 Balance

When you are sharing information on your social media networks, shoot for an 80/20 balance. Eighty percent of what you share should be relevant, helpful, and useful information that somehow pertains to your industry. In other words, this is your indirect sales method. The other 20 percent should be direct sales tactics, where you are sharing information about your business, products, or services. This can be discounts, coupons, sales announcement, or some way of directly promoting and marketing your business.

Be Innovative

Find new and exciting ways to use social media to convert your followers to buyers. If it is worth it to you to try a group-buy site, then try one of these campaigns. If you are trying to build your subscriber list as a means to converting more followers to sales, then run a contest that is only accessible on one of your social media networks. If your business is regional or has offices spread across the country, announce a “meet-up” on your social media networks for a particular region so your employees have the opportunity to meet customers and prospects face-to-face and vice versa.

Your use of social media marketing can take you as far as your imagination will allow you to go. While this is not a complete list of the ways that you can use social media networks to communicate with prospects and customers as a way to convert them into first-time and repeat buyers, it is a springboard for you to use to get your creative juices flowing.

For more information on the benefits of social media marketing and how to use it in your business, visit orangeJuice media. orangeJuice media, an online marketing agency and a leading provider of mobile, local and social marketing solutions for business. Headquartered just outside of Portland, Oregon, orangeJuice Media provides services for clients in the Portland metro market and throughout the United States.

Position Yourself as an Expert

Your first step in building credibility on social media networks is to position yourself as an expert in your field. There are a myriad of ways for you to do this. Each day, you can share a tip or piece of advice that is relevant to your audience. When you read a newspaper or industry news article, share to a little tidbit of information and the link to where readers can find more information.

Since you are not always trying to sell your followers something but are, instead, simply trying to share information with them, this is the key to building credibility with both your current and prospective customers.

Resolve their Problems

When you are sharing information, use the problem-solution formula. This formula entails that you state a problem in your status update that your customers are currently experiencing. Then provide the solution or a hint to the solution. Finally, provide a link that goes directly to the page where they can find the product or service, article, blog post, or wherever you want to send them for more information.

This also allows you to push them from your social media networks to your other forms of credibility, such as your business website or your blog. It may even send them to a site where you have a guest article posted, which is an additional endorsement for you and your business.

Join in the Conversation

You also build credibility with your followers by having conversations with them on social media just as you would if they were in front of you. Part of building credibility is being responsive to your customers, so if someone makes a comment on your social media page, respond to it. If a follower poses or asks a question on your social media page, answer it. When you are engaged as the business owner, or one of your employees are monitoring the social media accounts, it puts a person behind the business.

Consumers like to know that there are real people that they are dealing with behind a brand, business, organization, or company. Monitoring the conversations that are taking place and being part of these conservations is engaging to your customers and your prospects. Engagement builds credibility and keeps them coming back for more and more.

For more information on the benefits of social media marketing and how to use it in your business, visit orangeJuice media. orangeJuice media, an online marketing agency and a leading provider of mobile, local and social marketing solutions for business. Headquartered just outside of Portland, Oregon, orangeJuice Media provides services for clients in the Portland metro market and throughout the United States.

Levels of Engagement

Every company has levels of engagement. The goal for every business is to engage customers so much that they are loyal to your business and to your business only. The best example of a customer engagement strategy is a bank. The typical account a new customer comes in to open is a checking account. While the banker is opening the checking account, they are also telling the customer all about the benefits of opening a savings account.

A few weeks later, the customer receives an e-mail telling them that they are pre-approved for an auto loan with the bank. Then a letter comes in the regular mail to introduce the mortgage division of the bank. In the end, there are customers that wind up with all of these types of accounts with the one bank.

These customers are more engaged than customers that only have one of these accounts. The more engaged customers are, the less likely they are to walk away from your business. Instead, the more loyal they tend to be. You can engage your customers and prospects using social media using a similar marketing campaign strategy as the bank.

Share Your Expertise

Because many of the prospects that find your business on social media may have heard of you but have not yet worked with you, your first goal is to engage them by sharing your expertise with them. One of the primary ways to do this is to share information with them that reveals to them what an expert you are in your industry, in your field, and in your business. Share information articles, tips, advice, and industry news so that you can position yourself as the go-to person for anything that has to do with your business.

Provide Exclusive Discounts

Another way to engage followers on social media outlets is to offer exclusive discounts, information. or deals they can’t find anywhere else. While you will have some customers that visit your blog and also follow you on social media, you will also have followers on social media that do not necessarily your blog. Exclusivity via social media engages and audience that you may not be able to reach in any other way.

Social media is a very effective tool for engaging customers and prospects. The more ways you can engage these followers and the more social networks you can use to engage them, the more loyal our customers become and the more likely they are to remain loyal to your business.

For more information on the benefits of social media marketing and how to use it in your business, visit orangeJuice media. orangeJuice media, an online marketing agency and a leading provider of mobile, local and social marketing solutions for business. Headquartered just outside of Portland, Oregon, orangeJuice Media provides services for clients in the Portland metro market and throughout the United States.

Social media is the electronic form of word-of-mouth advertising, but it spreads must faster, easier and a lot more people than the traditional offline method.

Your Consumers Use Social Media

No matter what product or service you offer to your consumers, consumers are talking about it on their social media. As the provider of the product or service, when you create an account on the major social media outlets, you are creating a platform for these conversations to take place. You are fostering relationships between you and your current customers. You are starting relationships with prospective customers, and you are listening in on conversations that consumers are having with or without you.

Your Consumers Share on Social Media

About one in five happy customers shares good news or appraisals on products or services with their social media contacts. Marketing 101 is that you, as a business, need to be where your audience is. Your audience is on social media. It does not matter if your target market is 13-year-old girls or 85-year old men. Consumers are social creatures by nature, so when they have used a good product or received a good service, they tend to want to share this with other people they know.

Social Media is the Part of the Marketing Puzzle

No one marketing tool is the one-size-fits-all solution to marketing your business, product, or service. Social media, however, is one piece of the puzzle that completes your marketing tool kit. When you combine your social media marketing efforts with all of your other marketing efforts, you have the opportunity to reach consumers, business owners, audiences, and target markets that you may not otherwise have the chance to get in front of and convert into customers.

Quite frankly, nobody buys so much as a pair of socks these days without turning to their friends on social media outlets to get their opinions, read consumers reviews and ratings, and get the good, the bad, and ugly details. Should they buy the white one, the black ones, which brand, and from where? From socks and underwear to technology and cars, take a look around and you’ll see all size companies using social media networks to advertise and promote their products, run contests, elicit feedback from customers, and interact with current and potential customers on a regular basis. When these conversations are taking place, you want to be right in the middle of the mix rather than left behind in your competition’s dust.

For more information on the benefits of social media marketing and how to use it in your business, visit orangeJuice media. orangeJuice media, an online marketing agency and a leading provider of mobile, local and social marketing solutions for business. Headquartered just outside of Portland, Oregon, orangeJuice Media provides services for clients in the Portland metro market and throughout the United States.

It’s no fun when your business gets bad-mouthed publicly on the Web. A few negative reviews can turn off potential customers from spending their money at your establishment.

WhirLocal is a new service that helps businesses collect customer reviews, and maintain a positive online reputation by addressing negative reviews privately.

What is whirlLocal?

Developed by thirdRiver Marketing, whirLocal enables your business to proactively collect customer reviews, then publish the positive ones on social networks, like Facebook and Twitter.

“A lot of companies gather reviews, in the form of surveys, questions, postcards, etc. However, in most instances they don’t end up doing much, if anything, with the review after they receive it,” said Tim Fahndrich, founder of thirdRiver. “They are often used for internal feedback only, which is great, but in many cases the reviews get filed away never to be seen again. We felt like there had to be a better way to leverage them on behalf of our clients.”

How does whirLocal work?

A business requests a review by handing the customer a review card which has a URL and QR code. The URL and QR code both link to a custom review page for the customer to fill out. The customer is rewarded with an email coupon if a review is submitted, and the the business receives email notification of the review.

Two things can happen from here. If the review is positive, the customer is invited to review on other review sites like Yelp, Google and CitySearch. The business can click “publish” to automatically send these reviews to its social network accounts, blogs, and other directory sites, creating unique content which adds to its search engine ranking.

If the review is negative, the fields on the form change to allow the customer to describe the bad experience and suggest improvements. The customer is also asked if he/she would like a follow-up phone call. Business can then begin to privately dialog with the customer to resolve the issue—no more public spectacles online.

“Many of the companies we show the system to like it just for that reason alone. In both cases, the business owner gets an immediate email with the content of the review, which provides an invaluable feedback tool,” said Fahndrich.

Who is whirLocal for?

WhirLocal is especially useful for small businesses that need an easy, automated way to collect and publish customer reviews.

“We have had some great success locally, especially with clients that one would not typically think rely heavily on reviews. Attorneys, insurance agents, mortgage brokers and doctors have really taken to this system,” said Fahndrich.

For more information on whirLocal check out its website: http://whirlocal.com/.

To read this article where it was originally published, click here:  SmallBizTechnology.com by Joseph Mutidjo.