The Mauco Blog

How To Grow Your Business Online

May 13, 2013 • Ademola Abimbola • No comments

How To Grow Your Business Online

As difficult as it is to grow your small business in the real world, it is similarly difficult to grow the same business online. But difficult as it may seem, it’s not impossible.

Growing your business online will help to keep your customers comming back even when you’re not offering them any deals or sales promotion. Growing your business online will help to build your brand awareness and online reputation. It will also help you gain loyalty amongst your customers and brand advocates. How do you grow your business online?

Know Your Target Audience Online

Knowing who your target audience involves knowing your customer demographics e.g. their gender, age, marital status, household income and location etc. This will help you tailor your products or services to meet their needs. To know your target audience online, you need to know where your target audience spends their time online. Conduct an extensive keyword research and use your targeted keywords to reach your target audience.

Tailor Your Offerings To Your Target Audience

Based on your knowledge of who your target audience is you will need to tailor your products and services to your target audience.

Be Consistent

Let your brand and brand messaging be consistent across all channels. So regardless of whether your audience are interacting with your brand via desktop, mobile or social media, their experience should be the same. Create consistent messaging throughout your buying cycle.

Build Your Brand Personality

Create links from blogs and forums to which you belong and let these links point back to your website. Get a custom domain and email in the name of your brand. If you really want to grow your business online you should avoid using free email and web hosting services. This would only affect your online reputation negatively. Focus on creating a professional website and adopt the same look and feel of your website on your social media.

Want to learn more? Checkout the following posts:

7 Methods to Grow Your Business Online

How to Grow Your Business Presence on the Internet

Ways To Grow Your Business Online

Implementing all these in your small business will help you grow your business online. If you found these tips useful, the please use the bottons below to share it with your friends and colleagues. Catch you later.

photo credit: SEOPlanter via photopin cc

In Branding, Business Success, Online Business • Tagged , ,

Benefits of Disqus Commenting System

April 1, 2013 • Ademola Abimbola • 7 comments

Disqus Logo

Engaging with readers through comments and feedback should be one of the most important goals of any blog.  One of the key features that promotes good engagement with readers is the comment box.

There are many different comment box and depending on the platform on which your blog is built, it may have its own default comment box. With time however, many bloggers discover that their default comment box is no longer adequate. This leads to many to search for suitable alternatives like Disqus, Livefyre, etc.

If you are like me and read many blogs, by now you are probably aware of the Disqus comment box which is gradually becoming one of the most popular commenting platform today. The Mauco Blog is now using Disqus.

So what are some of the reasons why I chose to adopt Disqus as my new comment platform?

Disqus is used by some of the biggest websites and blogs on the internet today. It integrates seamlessly into your current website or blog regardless of the platform of your blog. With a few quick and easy steps you can have your new commenting system up and running in no time… the only time consuming part would be exporting your comments from your existing comment box to Disqus. If you have accumulated several thousands comments already, this should take a while to export to Disqus.

Disqus is also a fully real time commenting box and this makes it the perfect choice for those who want to participate on breaking news,hot discussions, live events and video content.

Another important feature of Disqus is that it allows your readers to log in with with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Disqus and OpenID. This eliminates the need for you to create new accounts on every blog.

If you choose to sign in with Twitter or Facebook, you’ll also have the option of sharing your comment with your friends on Twitter or Facebook. This increases the viral promotion of a comment on your blog.

If the person commenting already has a Disqus profile, their avatar and commenting history on other websites will also be visible. This helps people find other blogs of similar interests with the possibility of cross promoting blogs.

These are some of the benefits I considered when adopting the Disqus commenting system. I want to interact and connect more with all readers of this blog.

Do you use Disqus and what are your thoughts about it? Do you have another commenting system that you recommend? Share your thoughts in our new Disqus comment box below.

As always if you find this post useful please share it with your friends using any of the share buttons below. Catch you later.

In Business Success, Internet Business Solutions, Online Business • Tagged ,

Facebook’s New News Feed Design and Your Business

March 15, 2013 • Ademola Abimbola • No comments

Since it was lunched 9 years ago, Facebook has undergone many changes. Whilst some of these changes are favourably received, others were not. This social media giant that boasts of a billion users has recently launched a new news feed design just  weeks after it had launched its Graph Search feature.

So what does the new news feed design mean for you and your business?

The redesigned Timeline is a single column timeline. They have removed the boxes for photos, friends, map, subscriber information etc from the top of the page and moved it lower on the page. All these items will now appear in horizontally in a menu at the top of the page. Now adverts will occupy the whole right hand side. Your About Me info has been moved to right below your profile picture.

All posts are now on the right side of the timeline, with photos, music and other recent activity on the left. The size of photos and videos have been enlarged, making the quality of visual media more important than ever before.

Focus on high quality images. A picture is said to say more than a thousand words. Like Pinterest and Google+, Facebook has decided to give more prominence to your photos in its new design. Lay more emphasise by telling the story of your brand through more photos than before. Also remeber to use a more visually appealing cover photo that represents your brand.

Learn to post more about trending topics and sharing differen types of media content. Now is also the time for you to try Instagram app (if you have not done so already) to see how you can incorporate it into your social media plan.

The new facebook new feed design is an opportunity for businesses and brands on facebook to refine their publishing and engagement strategies yet again to ensure that they are still relevant in the feeds of their fans. You also need to be clear on what value your business and brand is providing your customers and fans on facebook.

So are the new facebook changes good or bad? Only time will tell. But meanwhile if you’d like to signup to join the waiting list for the new design, you can do so here

If you enjoyed this post, don’t be selfish, please share it using any of the buttons below. See you later.

 

 

In social media • Tagged , ,

Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Banking

March 7, 2013 • Ademola Abimbola • 1 comment

Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Banking

Mobile banking is the performing of finance related functions on a mobile device like a Smartphone or tablet. With the use of a mobile device, the user can perform mobile banking via call, text, website, or app.

There are both advantages and disadvantages of mobile banking some of which have been highlighted below.

Advantages

  • It utilizes the mobile connectivity of telecom operators and therefore does not require an internet connection.
  • With mobile banking, users of mobile phones can perform several financial functions conveniently and securely from their mobile.
  • You can check your account balance, review recent transaction, transfer funds, pay bills, locate ATMs, deposit cheques, manage investments, etc.
  • Mobile banking is available round the clock 24/7/365, it is easy and convenient and an ideal choice for accessing financial services for most mobile phone owners in the rural areas.
  • Mobile banking is said to be even more secure than online/internet banking.

Disadvantages

  • Mobile banking users are at risk of receiving fake SMS messages and scams.
  • The loss of a person’s mobile device often means that criminals can gain access to your mobile banking PIN and other sensitive information.
  • Modern mobile devices like Smartphone and tablets are better suited for mobile banking than old models of mobile phones and devices.
  • Regular users of mobile banking over time can accumulate significant charges from their banks.

In recent years mobile banking has become quite popular and convenient for many people. Have you tried mobile banking? Share your experience in the comments below. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and colleagues. Till next time.

 

photo credit: First Direct via photopin cc

In Business Success, IT Solutions • Tagged

Social Media Management Tools

February 28, 2013 • Ademola Abimbola • No comments

social media management tools

Social media has now become a necessity for many business. So it comes as no suprise that the new trend is for business to not only have a social media presence but rather for them to become social businesses.

The nature of your business and the target audience you’re trying to reach will determine the social network that your business should use.

In a bid to effectively manage their social media accounts across different platforms, many businesses often get lost trying out and comparing different social media management tools to find the right one that meets their needs. In the search for the ultimate tool, they often miss the point that it’s the not the tool that matters per se but rather the skill of the person in handling the tool that is of greater importance.

In the past couple of months I too have tried and tested several tools like HootSuite, CrowdBooster, Buffer App, etc in my quest to find the ultimate tool. Some have free or trial versions and others are paid. It’s my intention to write reviews of all the tools that I have tried so as to assist you in selecting the right social media management tool for your own business.

However, one thing that I discovered as noted earlier is that it’s not the tool that it’s important but rather the skill of the person handling the tool that is more important. Therefore my advice for small businesses is to select the social media management tool that meets your business needs the most and become as proficient as possible in using your chosen tool.

Do you use any social media management tool or platform? What features do you find more useful, and what features still need to be included? Share your thoughts in the comments below. See you later.

photo credit: ansik via photopin cc

In social media • Tagged ,