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  • 4 Things You Need to be Doing on Social Media — Now

    By now, if social media isn’t a critical element in your online marketing strategy, it should be. Having a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can add value to your product, to customer service and ultimately to your brand.

    But simply having an account and broadcasting company news isn’t enough. To attract and keep customers — and to build a strong brand online — business owners need to be active on social media. They have to provide valuable information and engage with their followers.

    Here are four things businesses should be doing on social media in order to grow the brand online:

    1. Engage with followers and provide customer service.
    Your customers are engaging with your brand wherever they are — including over social media. Don’t miss this opportunity to listen to what they’re saying to and about you, and to provide the best customer service.

    Why is this so important? Responding to customer questions and resolving issues over social media shows everyone who’s following you — and potentially anyone who is online — that your company cares about its customers, potential customers and goes the extra mile for people.

    Related: 10 Tips for Using Twitter Like a Pro

    Tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck can be handy for monitoring mentions of your brand over social media. As for when and who you respond to, set the tone early. If you reply often, people will expect it. If you don’t reply a lot, people will see that as well and might stop engaging with you as often.

    2. Crowdsource ideas.
    Use social media as a marketing research tool. Just as people can reach out to you, follow you and stay connected with you, business owners can do the same with their customers. Social media is a two-way street.

    Say, for instance, you’re getting ready to launch a new product. You can ask your fans and followers what they think about specific details like which colors they prefer or what types of features they want. Not only can you get real, valuable market research at no cost, you’re involving the consumer in decisions. Asking customers for their opinions can help show that they matter, and when they see their ideas become a reality, ideally you create brand and product champions.

    Read More (Source: Scott Levy, entrepreneur.com)

  • Characteristics and Benefits of Good Web Design

    There is a general perception that good web design pertains only to a good-looking site, graphics-wise. But good web design is far more than the looks. There are several factors contributing to the effectiveness of a website because good design is aesthetically-appealing, content-relevant, and technically-savvy.

    Characteristics and Benefits of Good Web Design

    Characteristics of a Good Web Design
    • Search engine friendly. The goal of developing a website is to drive traffic to your business. Even if you have excellent graphics and most relevant content, if you cannot drive traffic to your website, its purpose will be useless. Traffic can be driven through search engine optimization. SEO uses the right key words or phrases for your website. A good web designer knows how to identify the exact keywords for the topic of your website. If SEO is done properly, more users will visit your website and it will eventually be on top of Google searches.
    • User-friendly. Navigation is an important part in web designing. A good web designer must be able to consider the user experience that visitors of the site can have. There are websites which are too technical for ordinary internet users. Some may ask users to clear their cache or validate site security which may be difficult to comprehend. There are also websites which consume a lot of computer memory because of the media files embedded therein. Keeping the website as simple as possible helps in user navigation.
    • Relevant content. Do not underestimate the ability of web users to appreciate content. Although some of them rely on the graphic design to give good website ratings, many of them are actually reading. Thus, a good web design contains relevant information related to the keywords intended to cater to a specific group of audience. The content has to be engaging, entertaining and free of grammar flaws.
    • Active links. Links to direct site users to other pages or external websites should always be active. This is the part where the web designer conducts maintenance to check if all links are live and active.
    • Site structure. This spans throughout the coding and programming language the website is made from. The web designer should always consider the type of coding process to use as there might be compatibility issues with browsers and the JavaScript used to embed media files.
    • Contact page. It is important to include a contact page on your website so the visitor can get in touch with you in case of inquiries or site breakdown.
    • Internet service provider. The host of your website should have an excellent internet service provider to minimize instances that the site is down or under maintenance.

    Overall, good web design can impact the traffic on your website. It increases your chances of making it to the top of Google searches which means effective advertising for your business. It also benefits establishing good reputation in the online community, thus expanding your network of customers and business partners. Good web design is always user-centered and continues to improve based on the needs of its audience.

    Read More (Source: webdesignservices.com)

  • 5 Top Benefits Of Using Google Analytics For Your Business

    Google Analytics can be a valuable tool for monitoring and tracking the efficiency of your online campaigns and get the best results in your marketing efforts. Whether you are a small or big enterprise, Google Analytics can be handy in providing statistics on the number of visitors to your site including information related to page views. Additionally, it can also give you an overview of the total number of new visitors who may have viewed your website. In short, it allows you to measure the online traffic to your website and helps in making further improvements in your advertising campaign. Google Analytics can be the best choice for marketers, as it is completely free and works well for small companies with small advertising budgets.
    One of the major benefits of using Google Analytics is to gain complete freedom in managing your website content. If you are not satisfied with the performance of your website, then you can make changes to your content as and when required. Additionally, this tracking tool can be used to drive targeted traffic to your website and improve conversion rates for your website for greater revenue. There are plenty of advantages of using Google Analytics as it helps your website to get a high ranking on the search engines and also boosts the productivity of your online business.
    Besides, companies who aspire to create a unique brand value for their products in the market can use this tool in real time tracking of the visitors coming to their website. Google Analytics can provide accurate statistics on the number of visitors who come to your website and the time spent by each one in viewing your website. In short, this tool can be valuable in measuring the bounce rate of your website that may be able to indicate the effectiveness of your landing pages in attracting the visitors. Generally, a low bounce rate is associated with more percentage of satisfied visitors, who are able to get more relevant and useful information from your website.
    Some advantages of using Google Analytics to succeed in your business:
    Target your online visitors
    By using Google Analytics as a monitoring tool, you can target a niche audience who may be keen on purchasing your products. You can provide greater online visibility to your business with more exposure to your company’s brand using this marketing approach. It helps you to keep track of the kind of visitors coming to your website and use popular keywords that may be used in the process of searching for specific products. Hence, you can cater better to the demands of the potential customers and stay ahead of the competition.
    Measure the results of your marketing campaign
    Google Analytics can be used to optimize your website performance and attract more number of customers for boosting your sales prospects. You can also use targeted keywords as part of your SEO marketing strategy with the help of the statistics derived using Google Analytics tool. There are different functionalities using which you can determine whether your marketing campaign will be successful or not. As a result, you can get lots of opportunities for growing and diversifying your online business with the help of this amazing tool.
    Read More (Source: Shobha Atre, fulltraffic.net)

  • eTekhnos is Growing Again!

    rockstar-banner

    New part time position in Keller office has been posted! We are looking for a great talent to join our team!  The position will start with 10-15 hour per week but will increase in hours – being able to work between 15-30 hours a week is what we are looking for. This position will be in the office with the ability to work from home when needed, flexible days and office hours. Not a sales marketing position.

    Position Description:  Benefits Technology and Social Media Support will be the primary focus of the position. Learning the process and ongoing support we provide clients will lead into managing client projects and relationships. Tasks included setting up social media profiles, posting content to blogs and other platforms, simple website updates, conference calls with clients and customer support. Communication, organization and follow through with clients and our team are most important and what we are looking for in a candidate.

    Requirements:  Experience with the web and PC clearly required, some background in pro tools like Photoshop or Dreamweaver is preferred but may not be required.  Attention to detail, great follow through and focusing on tasks are key.

    If interested: Email jeffh@etekhnos.com  your resume or detailed qualifications. Interviews will be scheduled for potential team members in the next 2-3 weeks.

    Our Company: We are the nation’s leading web design and social media firm for employee benefit professionals. We manage over 800 custom benefit portals for employers of all sizes for benefits, HR, enrollment and more. Visit us at www.etekhnos.com

  • 10 Basic SEO Tips To Get You Started

    Every business with a Web site should make Search Engine Optimization — trying to get your site as high up as possible on Google and Bing search-results pages — a part of their growth strategy.At its most basic, “SEO” means finding ways to increase your site’s appearance in web visitors’ search results. This generally means more traffic to your site.

    While intense SEO can involve complex site restructuring with a firm (or consultant) that specializes in this area, there are a few simple steps you can take yourself to increase your search engine ranking.

    All it requires is a little effort, and some re-thinking of how you approach content on your site.

    Monitor where you stand

    You won’t know if your SEO efforts are working unless you monitor your search standings. MarketingVox suggests that you keep an eye on your page rank with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.

    It’s also important to check your referrer log regularly to track where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they’re using to find your site, according to PC World.

    Keywords, keywords, keywords!

    You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Think about your keywords as search terms — how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it?

    The title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords, PC World notes.

    BEWARE: Putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get you labeled as a spammer, and search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites guilty of “keyword-stuffing.” Be strategic in your keyword use.

    Link back to yourself

    There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site — it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages, SEO Consult says.

    You should make it standard to link back to your archives frequently when creating new content. MarketingVox advises that you also make the anchor text search-engine-friendly: “The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms.”

    As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate, and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking — you don’t want your visitors to get annoyed.

    Read More (Source: Bianca Male, BusinessInsider.com)

  • 5 tips for a rockstar web design strategy

    In an age of digital communities, your website should be more than “just another website.” It should be as distinctive as your business and offer a visually engaging and intuitive experience for your visitors.

    Your website is your digital stage. You don’t have to be a superstar to engage with your customers, but with the right strategy in place you can make that impression.

    1. The 10 second impression

    Your website should tell any visitor what your business is about instantly. The moment someone lands on any page, blog post or even a 404 error page, your website should make them want to find out more – not click away.

    2. Who are you?

    How does your brand make visitors feel? Your web design strategy should ensure visitors feel what’s aligned with your business personality. Achieve that cohesion by using complementary colors, typography, images and site layout.

    3. Where’s the “any” key?

    If a visitor can’t find what they’re looking for, they will look elsewhere. The evolution of web design has implemented standards of usability that people have become accustomed to – such as the location of the navigation menu. While you don’t have to be rigid in your approach (in fact, a creative approach is often the best one), your website should be easy to use and explore.

    4. No two websites are created equal

    You’re not in business to be like someone else, so your website should reflect your unique approach. A poorly designed or “identikit” website could actually do more harm than good. Consumers have always been visually engaged and in a digital era of instant web-access your design strategy is an ongoing investment in your business.

    5. Integrate and assimilate

    Your website may look good but if you haven’t integrated social media into your design strategy, you may lose potential future admirers. Your design should be consistent across all social media platforms and instantly recognizable as YOU. Incorporating cross-platform functionality into  your design is an essential part of your strategy. Using a Facebook “like”, “recent tweets” or “recently pinned” button on your website makes it easy for visitors to interact with you. A unifying design approach across multiple platforms reinforces your brand message.

    Read More (Source:  Jules Robson, waveapps.com)

  • The Benefits of Crowdsourcing for Small Businesses

    Small business owners live and thrive in a world full of buzzwords, trends and fads; and innovators are always looking for the next “it” when it comes to running your business. How many headlines do we see on a weekly basis claiming that your business will sink without marketing method X or that Internet innovation Y will make or break your business in 2012? The world of marketing moves quickly. It’s easy to get hung on marketing’s flavor of the week and obsess over whichever buzzword claims to rake in millions in minutes.

    A business isn’t built on buzzwords, unfortunately. What creates a successful business is patience, innovation and resourcefulness. Take away the smoke and mirrors and one quickly realizes that there’s no shortcut or quick-fix when it comes to entrepreneurship.

    That said, some buzzwords are worth their buzz. Some innovations are worth looking into, and aren’t be-all, end-all if a business wants to get on board; one such example is crowdsourcing. Low-risk, high reward, and flexibility. Sounds like marketing snake oil, doesn’t it? Think again.

    Crowdsourcing. You’ve probably heard the term thrown around on marketing blogs or perhaps just heard it in passing. It sounds like a token buzzword, doesn’t it?

    The concept behind crowdsourcing is rather simple. Need a task done? Outsource it. Who performs the task? The crowd; a group of workers as small or big as you’d like, and most of the time, you don’t necessarily even know who’s doing the work. Sounds problematic, doesn’t it? Worry not, as crowdsourcing allows you to make the rules and determine which work makes the cut. You often only pay for what you need, meanwhile also having the flexibility to do work that needs to be done quickly and easily without relying on employees or in-house resources.

    Read More  (Source: Brent Barnhart, ChamberofCommerce.com)

  • White House To Delay Obamacare’s Employer Mandate Until 2015

    White House To Delay Obamacare’s Employer Mandate Until 2015;
    Far-Reaching Implications For The Private Health Insurance Market

    Excerpt from The Apothecary, with Avik Roy – 7/02/2013

    The Obama administration has decided to delay the implementation of Obamacare’s employer mandate—the requirement that all firms with 50 or more employees offer health coverage, or pay steep fines—until 2015. The mandate was supposed to go into effect on January 1, 2014. This development will have a significant impact on the rollout of Obamacare, the private health insurance market, and the nation’s economy, as I detail below.

    The news was first reported by Mike Dorning and Alex Wayne of Bloomberg this afternoon. The ruling, they say, “will come in regulatory guidance to be issued later this week. It addresses vehement complaints from employer groups about the administrative burden of reporting requirements, though it may also affect coverage provided to some workers.”

    “First,” wrote Treasury official Mark Mazur in a statement, the delay “will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees.”

    Read the full article on Forbes.com

     

     

     

  • Benefits Portal Builds Direct Relationships

    Not only is self-service technology helping employer-clients control benefit administration costs, it might also be insurance carriers’ missing link to employee consumers once they leave the workplace.

    This potential is not lost on MetLife, a large New York-based provider of non-medical group benefits with accounts at more than 3,500 organizations. To better service the needs of close to 17 million employees working at its client companies, MetLife embarked on an effort five years ago to build an online employee benefits portal called MyBenefits.

    By all measures, the online self-service portal has been a hit. Recently, MetLife announced that the one-millionth employee had registered to access accounts online through MyBenefits.

    The portal enables employees to log in-either from work or from home-and get answers to frequently asked questions, learn about plans and coverage specifics, obtain price quotes for certain products, and enroll in dental benefits, critical illness insurance, long-term care, life insurance, auto and home insurance, disability insurance, and banking services.

    Users can also check their claim status for certain products, locate a dentist who participates in a MetLife preferred dentist program, or learn about retirement savings options. A popular feature is service e-mail, such as e-alerts that notify employees of claim updates.

    The first iteration of the MyBenefits portal was launched in June of 2000, according to Sachin Shah, vice president of MetLife Workplace Solutions. MetLife has upgraded the portal several times since that initial launch, with the most recent upgrade taking place in 2003. Shah estimates the site is being accessed an average 800,000 to a million times a month, and transaction activity has been almost doubling each year.

    There were three primary considerations in launching the portal, says Shah. First, customer companies were anxious to reduce processing burdens incurred by benefits administration.

    “Our employer customers-plan sponsors, or HR offices-needed to promote more self service, and reduce the related costs of the administrivia with benefit programs,” he says.

    The ability to lower administration costs has been a key selling point to employers, he adds. “In our business, things that we can do to provide employees a better way to manage their benefits, without having to call the HR office, are real winners. It takes work from employers, who would otherwise be getting phone calls and inquiries.”

    Second, organizations are gradually reducing their financial stake in benefits plans. “Employers are beginning to cost-shift to employees, and that cost shifting continues to grow, certainly on a dollar basis, because costs in aggregate for medical programs in particular have gone up,” he explains.

    “That cost shifting has required us to work with employers to begin to provide much more information to employees, and get them to become more aware of, and educated in, benefits offerings.”

    Third, Shah says, there’s a strategic shift occurring in the benefits administration marketplace. “Employers are getting out of the benefits administration business,” he notes.

    “Strategically, the marketplace is moving toward a world in which we have two customers – the employer, and more importantly, the employee. Making a sale to the employer is no longer a guarantee of revenue, as it was in the past. It’s just a point of entry. Ultimately, making the sale to the employee, and keeping the employee as a customer, has become our driver of revenues and earnings.”

    Read More (Source: Joe McKendrick, Insurance Networking News)

  • 7 reasons your Facebook page is a hot mess

    A state of disarray so chaotic that it’s dizzying to look at. A mess that is beyond the normal range of disarray. Visual clutter that draws attention to itself. It may sound like I am describing Lindsay Lohan heading into court on a Monday morning. But no, I am describing a Facebook business page lacking a strategy without consistent engagement but has potential to become super-hot. Could this be your business’s page?

    Facebook boasts the largest user base of any social network, so if your business doesn’t have a solid Facebook presence, you’re simply missing lead generation opportunities. There are plenty of ways to sabotage your success when it comes to creating Facebook content, and we’ve all been guilty of them at one point in time. Here are seven reasons your Facebook page might be viewed by your fans as a social media hot mess.

    1. You’re not using enough visuals

    2. You’re not using your real estate wisely

    3. You are not tying your posts to offers

    4. You don’t have an editorial calendar

    5. You are not paying to upgrade your reach

    6. You are not experimenting

    7. You are not having fun

    Read More (Source: Jason Miller, www.convinceandconvert.com)