by Emma Cameron

How To Be Successful At Blogging

The internet has been transforming the ways in which we can make money. Blogging being one of them. Blogging has been around since the start of the internet, but just recently, blogging has really transformed into a money making machine. There are tons of bloggers around the world who have thousands, even millions of followers, who flock to their blogs to read their newest posts every single week. Making these influential bloggers tons of money and success.
So what is their secret to gaining thousands of followers and running a successful blog? Well its a little bit of luck, and a ton of strategy. Check out some of the strategies that these bloggers do on their blogs!

Become An Expert In One Topic:
Become an expert in one or two topics and use your past experience and knowledge to make quality content. People go to blogs usually for advice or to learn something new, so being an expert in a topic is very important and will make you seem more credible. Anyone can copy information from online and repeat it back to the public. So back up all of your content with real life stories and knowledge. This will definitely set you a part from other bloggers.

Be Consistent With Your Content:
The one thing consumers love is consistency. Create a weekly schedule where you post creative content on certain days – for an example post on Monday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s. This will allow consumers to know exactly when new content will be up and will help you stay on top of your posts.

Make Your Content Entertaining:
The way you decide to write your content is one of the most important decisions for your blog. If you are writing about more formal or informational based topics, it can be easy to get caught up writing very factually and dry. Most people like to read articles and blogs that are entertaining and fun. Even if you your topic isn’t traditional entertaining, throwing some life into it will keep your audience engaged.

Use Social Networks To Promote:
Social networks are a great way to get your blog and content out there and give you more exposure to new readers. You should have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn account, that should also be linked to one another. The more social media sites that you are on, the bigger your reach will be.

Give People Value:
One of the most important things your blog should be providing their readers with is value. Value will help you attract and gain interested readers who will continuously return to your blog each week to view your content. Make sure you are providing new information and new content for your readers, as well as being consistent with the value of your content that you are putting out.

Offer Free Stuff:
People love free things. So you need to provide your followers with tons of free content. You don’t have to make all of your content free, but in order to build a loyal following you need to offer free content that can be consumed easily. Your free content doesn’t always have to be articles, you can provide free videos or e-books – which will definitely receive positive attention from your followers.

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SEO
 by Mitchell Cameron

SEO – Top 5 Benefits and Advantages

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has become a very popular online marketing strategy because of its effectiveness. While the benefits of SEO are vast, here are some major advantages of implementing this into your marketing campaign.

1) SEO Increases Traffic

Top positions on the search engines pages receive a majority of the traffic and clicks. So ranking in these top positions can result in significant increases in the amount of people that view your website. SEO also focuses on creating informative and keyword relevant title tags and descriptions. These show up in the result pages when people search. Having optimized tags and descriptions helps to increase click rate. This also promotes increases in qualified web traffic. People will see your page more than your competitors and you can target the right types of people.
2) ROI

SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results, regardless of what type of industry you are involved in. Agencies are able to track nearly every aspect of their strategy. They can track things like increases in rankings, traffic and conversions clicks. Analytics also provide the ability to see demographic information and other engagement metrics for people who have visited your website. Determining these things can help you again target qualified customers and determine if your online efforts are yielding you profit.
3) Cost Effectiveness

SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. It targets users who are actively looking and searching for your products and services online. This is an inbound strategy which helps businesses save money. This opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling or contacting. While cold-calling can still be an effective strategy, the leads generated cost more than leads generated by an inbound strategy like SEO. Again the prospects generated from SEO are more qualified, resulting in cost-savings for companies.
4) Increased Site Usability

SEO makes your website easier to navigate for the search engines. By doing this it simultaneously helps make your website easier for users as well. SEO consists of rearranging the site’s architecture and links to make pages within the website easier to find and navigate. This not only makes it easier for search engines to locate your site and find pages. It also makes it easier for users to find information on your website as well. Have you ever gone to a web page and thought to yourself that this could have been easier to use? Well SEO helps takes care of this problem.
5) Brand Awareness

Top position rankings in search engines result in significant impressions and clicks. Having your website in these top positions on the result pages translates to more exposure for your brand. Being on the first page for your targeted keywords for one thing helps users to associate your brand with those keywords. It also associates trust. Companies on the first page are generally perceived to be more trustworthy. The more your pages and content rank in high positions in the search engines, the more chances you have for users to see your content and associate with your brand.

In the end the awareness and reach of a business is very much determined online today. Marketing is a very important part of the future growth of a business. At Mirza Int’l we are up to date on the best business practices today to ensure sustainability. Contact us to get a quote.

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 by Mitchell Cameron

How Do I Package My Content As A Market Ready Product? (Video)

Often times businesses will have a bank of content that can be packaged and sent out to their networks. Check out the video below for some ideas how to package your content!

 

You want to make sure that you are pumping out lots of great content but you are also

positioning them as products. So you could do a video course series or an e-book or

you can even do an audio program. But the point is that you have to make the decision

to actually do it, then you can figure out how. Once you have made the decision, how is

the easy part because you can even create your next e-book in a PDF format. Of

course you can make the decision on whether you want to get it all designed – make it

look nice. But that is the point, you have got to make the decision to be able to do it and

then position as products and packages. So once you are able to do that, things are

going to absolutely change for you. Now people will perceive you as an expert, you can

now literally say you are the creator of product “X” or you are the author of e-book “Y” –

you can do so much about it. Now we have got our guy, Tim takes care of all our audio,

video, and all of our production stuff. So I have left his contact details below so you can

always reach out to him if you have any questions about it. But really just take the

initiative – take the first step and make it happen. Create products, and get them out

there and then put them on the platforms. Either give them away for free or sell them – it

really depends on what your motive is. But you can do both, if you are giving them away

for free it might be a really great plug for your business. You really want to think about

how you are going to approach this, but you have got to strategically plan this stuff. So

just make sure that once you make the decision, you are planning out the entire

campaign in a very strategic way.

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 by Emma Cameron

How To Wake Up Early & Get The Best Sleep

If you are not a morning person, it can be extremely hard to get out of bed in the morning. This can put a damper on your day and the quality of work that you put out. Fortunately, there are ways to develop habits that can make you into a morning person and can help you wake up easier and feeling more refreshed!

Get Into A Nighttime Routine:
Developing a regular routine will help you fall asleep and stay asleep all night long. Try different activities that can help you relax before bed. This can include taking a hot bath or shower, reading your favourite novel, writing in a journal or writing down a to-do-list for the next day, or meditating. These activities can relax you, and can help you to transcend into sleepiness.

It is also very important to know what time you will be waking up the next day. If you know you are having an early morning, try doing your nighttime routine earlier, so that you can get the required 8 hours of sleep. Also, it is important to keep a regular bedtime and wake-up time even on your days off. This will help your internal clock remain consistent and maintain a regular routine.

Make Sure All Electronics Are Off:
Electronics can reduce the amount of melatonin that our body produces while we sleep – due to the bright lights that they give off. This interferes with our quality of sleep and makes it harder to fall asleep. Turn off your cellphone (or put it on Do Not Disturb mode), computer, television, and tablets 30 minutes before you sleep. If you need to be on your phone before bed, make sure that you have the brightness down so that you aren’t absorbing as much bright light.

Quit Hitting Snooze:
It can be tempting to continuously hit the snooze button in the morning – and trust me, we want to as well. When your alarm clock goes off, try putting on a lamp or opening your blinds to let some light into your room – this will help get you moving. Also try doing some light stretches while in bed – stretch your shoulders, arms and lower back. This will get you energized for the day, and won’t make you feel like you have to immediately get out of bed when your alarm clock goes off.

Let Light Flow Into Your Room:
The sun is one of the best ways to gain energy, especially in the morning. Open your blinds and expose yourself to the suns rays for a few minutes. If you are waking up before the sun has risen, turn on bright lights or purchase lights that simulate the sun’s rays. Sunlight and bright lights have been known to improve your mood and boost alertness.

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 by Basim Mirza

Increase Instagram Followers [Video]

Instagram is a new mammoth that adds to a business’ brand, increase instagram followers and you’re well on your way to attracting qualified leads and connecting with prospects. Check out the video below to learn more on the steps you can take to increase instagram followers.

How do I grow my increase instagram followers and get great engagement?

 

 

One of the great things you can do is just be yourself, be personal. Forget about your business when it comes to Instagram. Instagram is a place where you need to connect with people on a personal level. Now, at some point you can tie your business in and let people know what you do, but that is not what its about. You want to create visual experiences for people that get them to reciprocate. If they feel personally connected to you in someway, they are going to show some love and that is really the key. What worked for me is that I went out there and I started making sure that I got pictures with every celebrity that I knew, and that worked for me – not saying that to toot my own horn or anything like that, that I hangout with celebrities. But you know, maybe that might work for you, go out there, get to know some influencers, get to know people that other people know – they can recognize their face. You would be surprised what that does. I took a picture with Jenny McCarthy and that did so much for me. So what I am saying is find something that works for you, it could be something really visual. If you run a spa company you may actually have lots of really beautiful images that you could take of like stones and aesthetics. But you could do some really cool stuff that get people to say “hey that looks so cool, that looks so nice!”. That is what you want, and the beautiful about Instagram is that people reciprocate, so when people like your stuff and when they start commenting, do the same thing for them. Show the love back and when you start to do that, you are going to start building that community around you as well.

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seo strategy
 by Basim Mirza

SEO Strategy: Profit From Rankings [Video]

Your SEO Strategy is a gateway to all kinds of exposure from search engines. Take our word for it, with the right approach you can have your brand in front of MILLIONS of eyeballs… for free. Check out the video below, as Basim show’s you below how to do this organically!

How Do I Build a Profitable SEO Strategy For My Website?

 

The beautiful thing about SEO is that you can really play into this and you can really build your content in such a way so that you are attracting lots of people through those search engines. Google mainly because Google is the biggest mammoth out there. So you have got to think about how you can look good, not just in front of Google – like where Google actually rewards you for your content that you are putting out on the website – but also the users who are actually searching on Google. What you want to do is plug into the people that are searching through the long-tailed keyword, and maybe in some cases the short-tail. But mostly long-tail, where they are basically typing “what is the nearest restaurant near me that gives sushi?” or whatever. So you want to plug into that and you can use organic content to actually do that. You can actually base your articles and even videos like this, you can plug into SEO. Not social media, don’t worry about the social media part, focus on your website. HubSpot actually did a study where they found if you have over 311 index pages on Google, you are going to increase your traffic by over 230 percent. So that is crazy! If you actually follow through on that, you are going to start seeing those kinds of results as well. So follow through on that because most people don’t and I think we all know that. So really just see and think about how you can create lots of unique and valuable content to pump out through your website or blog or resources section. Add value and the traffic is going to come.

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 by Mitchell Cameron

Decision Making – How to Develop a Strategic Outlook

Most businesses face challenges day to day that overwhelm them and can take their mind from thinking long term. Strategy decisions should be made with the future in mind but instead businesses solve immediate challenges quickly. Gut reactions are rarely the optimal solution to any problem and can affect the longevity of a business.

As detailed in a new book, “Smart Decisions” by Dr. Thomas N. Martin, decision makers need to develop strategic decision making early in their career to be successful today.

It is easy to overlook strategic decision making but here are a few ways that businesses can focus on long term strategy:

1) Brainstorm Alternatives

Brainstorming and writing down alternatives allows for more people to contribute to a problem. This will force you to step outside your comfort zone and come up with new ideas and solutions. It is often better to brainstorm alternatives in a group so that there are many different viewpoints considered. Instead of just reacting a business can choose a better alternative that may be more sustainable long term.

2) Evaluate alternatives.

After the brainstorming phase a business must consider each alternative’s immediate and future consequences. Decisions made for immediate relief often solve short term problems, but rarely add long term value. An organization must consider how each alternative will not only solve the problem at hand but also the benefit long term.

3) Learn from mistakes.

There is a famous saying that goes “fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice shame on me.” This statement outlines how in general you should learn from your past mistakes. Take calculated risks but learn from these experiences. Learning and experience is required to succeed in business.

4) Ensure the quality of available information.

Many businesses today use data in order to make operational decisions. It is important to make sure that this data is accurate and comes from a good source. Often data will not be complete and sets can be missing certain demographics or historical information. The best analysis done on bad data will still yield a bad decision. When looking forward you must consider the quality of the data used.

5) Identify your top priorities.

Sometimes when faced with a problem it is hard to determine what is the most important. Sometimes this can result in a decision not getting made or an opportunity being missed. Always identify your top objective for any specific decision, and use that to drive you in decision making. Always try to identify these as fast as possible to not waste time and don’t forget about forward thinking.

6) Factor in your personal values

Personal and organizational values are important when trying to make any decision. When trying to think strategically it is important not to lose sight of your core values. If the organization does not keep their values in mind it can face short and long term operational problems. The culture and identity of a business must be sustainable and therefore these things must be considered when making decisions.

7) Always have a backup.

Contingency plans are a great way to protect you from risk. Often it is hard to be certain that a decision will solve a problem so an organization must be ready for anything.  A proper analysis should be made but then the best options should be available as a backup to decision makers. Having a backup plan will ensure continued success long term.

8) Communicate and implement the solution.

It does not matter what alternative you choose if it is not implemented properly then the company could face future problems. The best businesses map out steps that the organization will take to solve the problem and ensure continued success. They will also monitor and manage the solution. Communication is very important during this time and it is important to keep open lines of communication throughout all business channels.

Business decision making has to consider both the present and the future. Dr. Martin outlines this and with these things in mind an organization can be more sustainable long term.  Strategic decision making is something that organizations can use to make sure they are profitable into the future.

In the end the long term stability of a business comes down to the decisions made and who makes them. Marketing is a very important part of the future growth of a business. At Mirza Int’l we are up to date on the best business practices today to ensure sustainability. Contact us to get a quote.

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Facebook PPC
 by Basim Mirza

Facebook PPC: 2 “Traffic Boost” Case Studies

Facebook PPC (Pay-Per-Click) doesn’t have to be a headache, it can be both lucrative and fun. We’re used to paying fractions of pennies for results on engagement, which really means that you can get engagement for small online advertising costs. This can lead to targeted leads for little acquisition costs.

Facebook PPC Case Study #1: $0.001 Per Result.

 

Facebook PPC

Many times we’ll find ourselves paying fractions of pennies for results on engagement, which really means that you can get engagement for little Facebook PPC advertising costs. It’s just a matter of making the decision to do so.

 

Facebook PPC Case Study #2: Driving Killer Conversions.

 

Facebook PPC

Facebook PPC

We’re going to break down the 3 key metrics you need to watch when evaluating your results. Whenever you’re looking to drive a successful Facebook PPC campaign, there are 3 metrics to keep your eye on.

Cost Per Result
This is fairly obvious, yet overlooked. Driving this number down is the key to having a cost effective and efficient campaign. If you ignore this, you won’t like what you’ll see in your credit card statement. Another important aspect to this metric is that you can watch your campaign and anticipate costs as it’s running. If you know that a certain approach is expensive, you can bail early and try another approach. Savvy marketers use A/B testing to make this happen, which in the most simplest form is just comparing one strategic outcome to another.

Conversion
This is the most relevant (and most important) metric. It determines how your traffic responds to your marketing promotion. Conversions is your campaign objective. For some it will be impressions, but for others it could be the actual contact information of a web visitor. The latter requires tracking of some form so that you know when a person has successful went from facebook, and opted in. Therefore you should make sure you’ve added Facebook Pixel Tracking to the thank you page of your campaign(s).

Reach
This number is the third thing you should be looking at. It can be subjective, and you don’t really know what kind of reach you’re getting. What you do know about are the results acquired from it. How much traffic you’re grabbing from the reach is what’s most important. However without reach there is no campaign, so it is a “chicken or the egg” scenario.

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Search Engine Optimization
 by Basim Mirza

Search Engine Optimization Checklist

If you want to win big online, then you must consider improving your use Search Engine Optimization to improve your ranking. It really isn’t that hard, especially if you know the blueprint. Of course we’ll be giving you the complete checklist so you don’t have to go crazy. Don’t take our word for it though, try these tips to better your results online. You’re at the right place if you want to increase exposure and improve traffic. When search engines like Google or Yahoo see you’re making an effort, they’ll give you the props! When they like you, your impressions and clicks increase!

Use the Search Engine Optimization checklist to improve SEO ranking online.

  1. Have a Primary Keyword
    This isn’t hard at all. There’s a difference between “on-page” and “off-page” SEO. Your primary keyword must be set on-page. Once you do that search engines recognize your intent.
  2. More Than 300 Words
    Keep adding content until you’re over 300 words. No seriously, this is a big one. Do not neglect this. Having more content is valuable, and won’t be ignored! Avoid being lazy and take the time to write great content.
  3. Use The Description, Title, & Headlines
    These are all ways to get on search engines. In fact this is the first place you should start. Your keyword should be prominent in all three. You’ll be rewarded for getting your primary keyword as the first few words in your title.
  4. Credible Outbound Links
    Link your article or page to a resource away from your website. Do that and you’ll benefit.
  5. Short and Simple Sentences
    Keep it simple. If you follow the principles of Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests you’re on the right track!
  6. Low Keyword Density
    You should have your primary keyword placed a few times across your content. Keyword density score helps measure that. It can be subjective, but to give you a sense this article is 0.7% in keyword density, which is awesome! We mention our primary keyword 5 times, can you guess which one it is? Don’t worry, we’ll reveal the answer in a bit!
  7. Placement of Primary Keyword
    There’s a few places where you’ll need your primary keyword. Your subheading should definitely include this. Your “Heading 2” (in HTML we call that <H2>) can have your primary keyword placed. You should also have it in the first paragraph setting as well. You’l have maximum impact on rankings this way!
  8. Credible Back-Linking
    Not the only way, but one of the strongest way to boost your Search Engine Optimization. By having forums and blogs mention your primary keyword and back-link to your specific article or page, search engines will crawl your listing. Just be smart with this. If you don’t understand it then don’t do it. You must make sure the content is authentic and raw! One of the more advanced ways to achieve authenticity and greater output is spinning content, and distributing it on a mass scale. Again, this is pretty advanced so just stick to writing authentic content if you’re not sure about this.
  9. Auto-Pinging Search Engines
    You can let the search engines know about your site! That’s right, who would have thought you could actually communicate with them!? Here are a few sites where you can submit your link: http://www.bulkping.com/  and http://www.pingomatic.com will get this job done for you!
  10. Alternative Tags For Images
    Every image you put online has an “alt-tag”, which is what helps you get on places like Google Images. Use this because it’s another source for traffic! Not everyone is looking articles, many people (millions) are going through images as well.
  11. Call To Action Link
    Don’t shy away from this. If you have something to sell, let it be known! Put a hyperlink to the page where people can contact you. You’re building internal links and that also helps your search engine ranking.
  12. Primary Keyword in URL
    Our primary keyword is “Search Engine Optimization” for this article. We’ve gone ahead and actually put it in the URL. We’ve found this to be a massive way to get the attention of search engines (especially Google). Make sure your permalinks include your keyword.
  13. 301 Redirects
    If you’re updating an article or page you’ve published before. You could be put in a position where you’ll have to redirect your old URL. Doing this will ensure that traffic to the old URL gets redirected. Besides, you don’t want anyone lost right?Need help with your Search Engine Optimization? We can help with that, contact us to get a quote.
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