Category: Blogging

  • New Website Launched for BJA Partners | eTekhnos Web Design

    We’re excited to show off our latest website redesign for BJA Partners, based in San Diego!

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    The new BJA Partners website was recently launched in long-page format with a San Diego skyline graphic creating a local, modern feel that is easy to navigate.  The site is mobile-responsive, clean and concise, and provides a one-stop resource for potential and current clients.

    Visit the new BJA Partners site at http://www.bjapartners.com/

    BJA Partners also utilizes our social media marketing solution which includes posting relevant blogs on industry topics, creating and managing social media company pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and publishing personalized content from company outreach initiatives!

    Contact us to learn more about custom website design, SEO optimization, email marketing and social media solutions!

  • How To Turn Your Employees Into Your Top Social Media Advocates

    socialmediaavocacyAlmost every business today is on social media. Whether you’ve opted for a Facebook or LinkedIn company page, are active on Twitter or even post videos on YouTube, you’ve most likely bought into the need to have an online presence.

    But have you considered how a social media strategy that includes online employee advocacy can drastically impact your brand?

    Research shows that employees are the most powerful advocates a company has, and should be invited into the process of raising brand awareness. Let’s look at L’Oreal as a recent case study. Their digital marketing team implemented the use of the hashtag #LifeatLoreal in an effort to familiarize corporate with local level employees by documenting interesting or humorous happenings at the office.

    The benefits went beyond expectation – employees generated interest among their personal networks in employment with the company and along with another similar hashtag campaign, it increased L’Oreal’s unique Instagram impressions to 200,000.

    Other examples of companies doing social media employee advocacy programs well are Starbucks, who brought in $180,000 in direct sales in less than a month with their Tweet-a-Coffee campaign, and Zappos, who offer special social media training to their employees and have a leaderboard to show which employees have the most followers.

    Think about it this way, when your social media manager shares content on your company channels, your reach (how many people see your post) is limited to your followers. When your employees start to actively share, your reach is then increased to their networks as well.  This can quickly add up to more impressions and ultimately – conversions.

    In fact, leads generated through employee advocacy on social media convert seven times more frequently than any other leads.

    Convinced yet? Here’s where to start.

    Create an Engaging Company Culture
    Employees need to believe in what they’re selling.  Social media advocacy programs should be voluntary, and to attract the most possible employee brand ambassadors, you need to create a culture of trust and authenticity. Be real with your employees about why you need them and how their advocacy makes an impact on achieving important sales or marketing objectives. If employees enjoy where they work, feel appreciated and understand their value, they will willingly share your content with their personal following.

    Develop a Social Media Policy and Explain How It Works
    Too often companies resort to the negative when implementing social media policies at work. Instead of focusing so much on what can’t be said on social media, highlight the positive ways sharing appropriate content can have an invaluable impact on growing and engaging new audiences. Help employees who aren’t tech-saavy by outlining liking, sharing and commenting etiquette and if necessary, provide periodic, pre-drafted copy for them to include when sharing.  Of course the best shares are organic as employees get excited about a new service, special campaign or company outreach event. Give them the freedom to share their own content as well as what you make available.

    Start Small With Sharing
    Implementing a social media advocacy program doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start small with your initiatives. If you already post regular content on your blog and to your company social media channels, ask employees to share these on their personal accounts. For special campaigns, consider creating some extra Tweet copy and emailing these to your staff as options for sharing. Make it fun! Send email reminders when new blogs are posted and or create a hashtag specifically for your next company event or retreat that employees can use when they share photos.

    Set Goals and Track Your Results
    As an employer or manager, you need to know what’s working and what isn’t. Set reasonable goals. What do you want to get out of an employee advocacy initiative? Do you want to promote a certain product or service? Are you looking to expand brand awareness and turn leads into new clients from a previously untapped audience? Understand what you want employees to share about first. Then, identify key metrics that you will use to track the results. Examples of top metrics to follow are traffic driven to the website from social media, increased post reach, increase in sales, employee conversions from passive to brand advocate, a change in your customer base’s perception of your brand and any demographic change in customers.

    Share Your Success
    Finally, share your success with the people who made it happen! Did you meet a sales goal because of increased employee advocacy? Did you hit record high website traffic? Tell your employees. It’s important that employees see the impact of their advocacy, understand their role and contribution to the brand and that they also understand what works and what doesn’t. Top influencers should also be rewarded. Always recognize the people who are doing an awesome job at representing your company in front of their peers.  Not only does this inspire further action, it brings you full circle by contributing to an engaging company culture.

    Want to learn more about engaging your employees as social media advocates? Set up a call with our team!

     

    By Kate McGaughey

  • 4 Easy Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn | Employee Benefits Technology

    As employee benefit agencies, we know it can be hard to figure out the best way to leverage social media for your company, so we’ve made it easy.  Follow these four steps to get more out of LinkedIn today!

    LinkedIn infographic

    Want to learn more? Go in depth with our post 5 Ways to Optimize LinkedIn for Your Benefit Agency.

  • 5 Ways to Optimize LinkedIn for Your Benefit Agency

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    Photo by Sebastiaan ter Burg

    LinkedIn is fast proving to be the foremost social media site for B2B marketing. Employee benefit agencies that rely on cultivating relationships in order to market a product or service may find utilizing more fast-moving social platforms like Twitter or Instagram challenging, but LinkedIn provides a space for professionals to interact with one another, share original industry content and create brand awareness for their company that results in leads and network growth. We’ve put together a list of five simple ways you can start optimizing LinkedIn for your business today:

    1. Create a Personal Profile

    Even if you don’t plan on doing much posting of your own on a personal profile, this step is imperative because right now LinkedIn requires that you have a personal account in order to make a company page. Your profile should contain a professional photo of yourself, your name, job title and ideally your work and educational experience as well as any relevant accomplishments or projects.

    1. Set Up a Company Page

    Now that you’ve created your personal page, you are able to set up a page that specifically provides information about your company to LinkedIn users.  This page should contain your company name, logo, a link to your website, and a short description of your business that includes relevant keywords that are specific to what you do. Keywords can be in the form of phrases such as “Maryland insurance broker” but should shy away from staying as vague as “insurance company.” This helps your page receive a higher ranking in search engine results. Finally, ask employees who have personal LinkedIn profiles to list your company in their work experience, helping ensure that you can be found easily when people search for your business.

    1. Share Quality Content

    Sharing content ensures more opportunity for people to visit your company page and then hopefully website to follow up! Posts can be a mix of your original content and outside articles, videos or podcasts that are relevant to your industry.  Recent studies show that the best time to post on LinkedIn is Tuesday through Thursday between 7-9am, noon and between 5-6pm.  In addition, data revealed that posts made on Tuesday between 10-11am have the most clicks and shares. For best engagement results, companies should make it a priority to post on their LinkedIn page once a week, but no more than once a day.

    1. Join or Create a Group

    LinkedIn Groups provide a place for professionals to connect with peers working in their field or with similar interests where they can share helpful content, reviews, ask questions, post job openings and make new connections. You are able to either search for groups to join or create your own group based on your topic of choice where you can invite people to become members.  These groups are useful for connecting with prospects and establishing your company as an industry expert.

    1. Make Personal Connections

    By utilizing not only your company page but also your personal profile, you can enrich your business’s success by connecting with prospects and clients. Start slow by inviting 3-5 people to connect with you per week.  Follow up with a thank you message and a quick introduction when they accept your invitation.  Did you write a blog for your company or on an industry topic?  Post it to you profile. As you continue to share content, consider submitting it to LinkedIn Pulse’s editors to have your blog post featured.  This translates to much more visibility for your company! Finally, don’t be afraid to engage with others.  If you see content you like, write a comment or send a quick message to the author.  Other LinkedIn members are interested in the same thing you are – building mutually beneficial relationships!

    Generating brand awareness for your company on social media is becoming more and more important in our highly digitalized economy. LinkedIn offers the perfect space for your company using a B2B marketing model that is based largely on relationships to thrive and establish yourself as an industry expert while expanding your network of prospects and future business connections.

  • We’re Going All In with Employee Navigator – here’s why you should too

    For the 1st time in over 8 years eTekhnos has partnered with and offered benefit firms outsourcing services with an Online Enrollment solution. Over the years we consistently evaluated and worked closely with many platforms but stopped short of offering direct assistance with implementation and ongoing service. Why? The easy answer is because no solution seemed to fit the all-around needs of the benefit firms we work with – robust enough for most groups, affordable and boasting a short implementation process. Employee Navigator is the first platform that checks the boxes of what we have been looking for in a technology partner.

    Employee Navigator is a solution that helps eTekhnos and the benefit firms with whom we work to compete with Zenefits and other similar platforms.  It allows us to engage clients and prospects with technology for enrollment, HRIS and ACA tracking in one simple and cost effective option. In addition, eTekhnos has our own support contract with Employee Navigator so we can handle the burden of support calls and issues on our clients’ behalf.

    The below Whiteboard video highlights the key features that inspired us to make this important business decision and partnership.

    As always, when we support a technology solution we also provide firms with supporting marketing and client presentation materials:

    1. Product demos with clients and prospect
    2. Full group implementation
    3. Ongoing support and updates by our team
    4. Renewal edits and enrollment reporting

     

    For more information on if Employee Navigator is right for you, connect with us today!

  • 4 Reasons Why Blogging is Important for your Business

    There is some debate out there as to whether blogging is still relevant in today’s social media marketing environment.

    Regardless if you are a small business, or a multinational company, blogging is integral to your online content marketing strategy.

    Here are 4 reasons you need to blog:

    1.  Drive traffic to your website

    2.  Increase your SEO/ SERP

    3.  Position your brand as an industry leader

    4.  Develop better customer relationships

    Drive traffic to your website:

    Your blog gives you the opportunity to create relevant content for your customers. Use this as a marketing tactic to drive traffic back to your website.

    Make the blog on your website the foundation for all of your social media platforms.

    Your business might be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or anywhere else. Post links  – with relevant visuals – of your blog articles to your social sites. Give your social followers a reason to click through to your website.

    Additionally, post inbound links directly in your blog articles, to drive traffic to specific landing pages of your website.

    Increase your SEO/ SERP:

    Blogs increase your SEO. Fresh content is still a key to beating out your competitors in the search engine results page.

    Use keywords in your articles. List out the keywords, topics, and categories you want your business to be found with. Use these words, and related expressions when writing your posts.

    Of course, whether you actively seek these out or not, blogging regularly about your business, industry, product or customer lifestyle will naturally increase your search keywords. Being intent about your words will only increase results.

    Keywords and topics on your website are a significant way in which Google (and other search engines) find your site for these searched words.

    Position your brand as an industry leader:

    Well written articles demonstrate your company as an industry leader. By posting topics which resonate with your market and show your knowledge, you are marketing your skills for your business, service or product too.

    If you are a retailer, for example, write blog posts about your products. Your customers will get to know you as the knowledge source for the products they want.

    If you are in B2B, post articulate, well researched articles about your service. Become the hub, or the place to be, for your industry.

    You are building trust, too. The more you can show that you are well-versed in your field, the more likely your consumer will trust you to supply what they need.

    Your customers additionally benefit from the learning you provide them.

    Develop better customer relationships:

    Blogs provide another source to deepen the connection with your customer. By connecting directly on your website, your clients are able to get to know your business or product from the comfort of your online home base.

    Use this. Again, build trust by being a source of information. Consumers like to be informed, and appreciate that you are the one teaching them.

    Additionally, just as on your other social sites, respond to comments and interact with your consumer. If they have questions about a product you are writing about, respond to them directly on your website. Unlike many social sites, a blog is generally searchable on your site for some time. Your website comments last longer than on a Twitter response or Facebook post. Other customers will see your interactions too.

    Source: Wishpond
    Written by: Krista Bunskoek, PR and Content Marketer @ Wishpond

     

     

  • Tips for an Awesome and SEO-Friendly Blog Post

    Writing a blog post -like all other writing- is a skill. In order to keep your reader interested, you should think about structuring your text and writing in an appealing style. You should help your readers to grasp the main idea of your post by providing headings, subheadings and clear paragraphs. If people understand and like your text, they are much more likely to share, like, tweet and link to your post. And that will increase your rankings! So, in order to improve your ranking in Google, you should definitely try to maximize your writing skills!

    For some, writing for SEO purposes and writing to attract and keep attracting your audience could appear as two contradictory goals. However, I totally disagree. Indeed, if you not only want a good but also an SEO-friendly blog post, your text should be written in such a way that the words you want to be found for have a very prominent place. And, using your keywords too often severely damages the readability of your text. So, you definitely should not do that!

    In this post, I would like to give some tips on writing blog posts that are both very readable as well as SEO-friendly. I genuinely think those two goals should (and can easily!) go hand in hand!

    Elementary writing tips for good blog posts

    Before anything, your blog post just has to be a good piece of writing! A lot of bloggers just begin to write after creating a new blog post. They just type what comes to mind. For some, this may be sufficient, because they are natural writing talents. Others may need some help. I always follow the next set of ‘rules’ myself.

    1. Think before you write!

    Think hard about the message of your text. What do you want to tell your readers? And what is the purpose of your text? What do you want you readers to do at the end of the page? Write down the answers to these questions before you begin writing.

    2. Write down the structure of your blog post.

    Every post should have some sort of introduction (in which you introduce your topic), a body (in which the main message is written) and a conclusion (which should summarize the most important ideas or deduce some new idea). Write down what you want to write in all these three sections. You now have some sort of summary of your post. The real writing can begin!

    3. Use paragraphs.

    Everybody uses paragraphs, but make sure to use paragraphs that make sense. Do not start a new sentence on a new line, just because it looks nice. There should be a reason for making a new paragraph. Every paragraph should have a main idea or a main subject. Ask yourself what the main idea of each paragraph is. You should be able to grasp that main idea in only one sentence. If you need more sentences, you simply need more paragraphs!

    4. Use Headings.

    If you want people to find their way in your articles, you should use subheadings. Subheadings will lead people, help them scan your page, and make the structure of your articles that much clearer.

    5. Use signal words.

    Signal words help people to scan through your text and help people to grasp your main idea. If you, for instance, have three reasons for wanting to sell a product, you should use signal words as: First of all, Secondly and Finally. Also, words as Nevertheless, Surely and Indeed also give a clear signal to your readers. Readers will instantly get that a conclusion will follow after words as Thus, So or Therefore. Signal words are thus very important to structure your text.

    6. Let other people read your post.

    Before publishing your post, let someone else read your post first. Ask him/her whether or not he understands the main idea of your post. Correct typo’s and sentences that are not formulated correctly.

    by Source: Yoast.com

  • 5 Benefits of Blogging for Your Small Business

    If you run a small business, chances are you are wondering if blogging is worth the time and effort. The short answer is a resounding YES! Blogging on a frequent basis is a relatively easy, inexpensive way to enhance your inbound marketing efforts, drive traffic to your site, and attract more perspective customers.

    The Case for Small Business Blogs

    Here are some of the most important benefits of having a blog for your business:

    1. Boost Search Engine Optimization-Search engines love fresh content. What better way to provide frequent content than with blog posts. By blogging consistently, you give Google and other search engines new content to index and you create opportunities to plug in those all-important keywords to increase your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPS).
    2. Develop Relationships with Potential and Existing Customers-Blogging allows you to connect with your site visitors. This can be accomplished by asking your readers questions at the end of your posts to get the conversation going or by simply allowing comments and feedback. By reviewing and responding to readers’ comments, you can create a rapport with your audience, build trust, and gain valuable insight into what your customers are looking for.
    3. Establish Your Business as an Industry Leader-No matter how small your business is, you can build trust and clout within your industry by providing valuable, expert information in your blog posts. Over time, you become a “go to” resource for helpful, informative content, which can ultimately lead to higher customer conversion rates. This is especially important for small businesses looking to gain credibility to compete with larger companies.
    4. Connect People to Your Brand-Blog posting allows you to show a personal side of your business that perspective and current customers won’t see through outbound marketing techniques. Blogging gives others a sense of the corporate standards, vision, and personality of your company.
    5. Create Opportunities for Sharing-Every time you blog, you create an opportunity for your audience to share your blog with others. Whether they link to your blog post, tweet it, or email it to others, it’s free marketing and it further validates you as a credible business.

    From a practical standpoint, blogging just makes sense. With minimal effort and expense, you can build credibility, boost search engine rankings, increase website traffic, and foster relationships with potential and current customers. This is an opportunity no small business should pass up.

    Read More – By Kelly Thomas Mango

    We are here to help with your blogging needs!  Rockstar Technology can drive traffic to your site with a new blog that can be integrated with all your social media outlets!