Use social media to make your job search more effective and efficient. We can see that social media profiles have become an important part of our everyday life, whatever technology or platform you choose you’re likely to have a few different accounts online. You can create your own brand by making your profiles online, especially when working in digital it is very important to realize what you add online!

Dos

• Show your knowledge in your field and expand your network as social media is the best source. Be interactive and social. Make yourself available and participate in discussions; ask and answer the questions; share info that interests you to the people in your networks.
• Set up a LinkedIn account, with a strong summary adding good keywords and phrases and for skills employers would look for in your industry.
• Many jobs aren't listed on job boards, so there are chances of missing your dream jobs, this is the reason more and more employers are fishing for applicants on professional networks.
• Joining a group and participating in several groups related to your career interests in a good practice which will help you connected. You find such groups on LinkedIn; choose a few relevant groups and make intelligent comments to start conversations - check spellings and grammar before you hit it.
• Follow companies in your industry, and "like" them; that’s the best way you can keep track of what's going on in companies you may be interested in, and show your interest.
• Search for relevant keywords to what you're looking for, and connect with people who come up, with whom you have common professional or personal interests.
• Start a Twitter account; if you don't already have one – with a headline relevant to who you are professionally.
• Search for the keywords and relevant companies (and use Hashtag #), and follow them.
• Tweet and re-tweet links to articles relevant to your followers' interests.
• Comment on tweets and ask followers relevant questions.

Don'ts

• Don't forget that everything you put online stays out there somewhere, and anyone - prospective employers, former bosses, etc. - can see it. So any questionable photos, potentially offensive comments, criticisms against current or former employers, etc. may come back to haunt you.
• Don't use a physical attribute-flaunting photo better suited to a dating site than a professional networking site, on any website you intend to use to network and find possible job leads. Yes, that includes Facebook, which more and more employers are using to find more in-depth info on job applicants. You don't have to wear a 3-piece suit in your photos, but at least business-casual dress.
• Don't refer to yourself in your LinkedIn profile or Twitter headline as "unemployed" or "job seeker." Identify yourself instead as who you are professionally, in terms of the type of job you're looking for ("financial professional knowledgeable about investments"). It doesn't matter if you're not currently employed in that field.
• Don't throw every noun you can think of to describe yourself in your Twitter profile. Focus on the relevant ones you'd want an employer to see. Rather than, "Public relations professional, social media expert, reality show addict, chocoholic, wife, mother, sister" - stop after "social media expert."
• Don't forget to check out Google Plus, Pinterest, and other social networking sites too - Pinterest especially if your field is visual, like architecture or web design.
• Don't just broadcast stuff. Social media has "social" in its name for a reason, so interact with people in your network.
• Don't start an account and never update it. Keeping up with your social media accounts is time-consuming, but you generally get what you put into it. You don't have to spend time on every site every day; a few times a week is fine. It looks better to prospective employers to stay active on two or three sites than to have skimpy profiles on many and rarely visit them.

As long as you’re conscious about what you put online, you’re on the right track! If you have any questions, don’t be shy! Head over to our LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Google+. We practice what we moralize!, and drop us a line!

Search has become integrated into the fabric of our society. With more than 197.9 billion searches performed worldwide each year since April 2014, more or less 6.6 billion web searches will be performed every day.  That means on an average about 7,500 searches are performed every single second of a day. Moreover; users have grown to wait for that the responses to their search queries will be returned in less than one second. 

If you have ever come across, the various “SEO is dead”,  that claims to make the rounds play periodically in the digital marketing world, rest assured — SEO is both alive and well — and has not as many feared and been killed by social media marketing as a driver of web traffic.  However, in November 2014, Twitter announced that by renewing its focus on SEO, it has increased the numbers of visitors coming to the site tenfold — from 7.5 million to 76 million visitors in a month. 

The demand for search continues to be high; because of the people can now obtain in mere seconds information that 20 years ago would have required planning a trip to the nearest library, the usage of card catalog and the Dewey Decimal system and a physical search through halls of printed volumes — a process that could easily have consumed two hours or more. Through the new channel of search, people can now conduct many of their favorite searches, shopping, banking and personal transactions online—somewhat the things have changed the way our global population lives, interacts, and connects to each other. 

The dramatic shift in behavior represents what the investors are likely to label a disruptive event – an event that has changed something in a fundamental way. Search Engines have been always the center of this disruptive event, and having businesses on website con-tent appears highly in the search engines when people try to look for the service, product or for any resource that business provides is critical to its survival. This is the situation for every business now and then; as most of the paths to success, obtaining such prime search results in real estate is not a simple matter. However, this is how the search engine optimization works in promoting your business.

The Mission of SEO

Web searches are free to use and yet very informative; as there are many available search engines to find what they are seeking, so the burden is on the search engines to develop a related, fast and fresh search experience. Most of the part search engines achieve this by being professed as having the most relevant results and delivering them the fastest, the users will search thinking that they will get them to what they are looking in for and want it in the least amount of time.

As a result, search engines invest an incredible amount of energy, time and capital in improving their significance. Thus, this includes performing wide studies of user responses to their searches, comparing their search results against those of other search engines, and conducting eye-tracking through a click- rate studies and constructing PR and other marketing campaigns.

How will SEO help businesses to Grow?

The recent survey says that the digital market and marketing through search engines is adequately grown as never compared.  The basic marketing strategy is always helpful for many businesses to grow, but is it that enough or do they still need to spend more time on marketing strategy is the big question in many organizations, companies or businesses.

Here is the answer— you can generate good revenue primarily with the help of Search engines through paid advertising; though the majority of this revenue will come from pay-per-use or cost-per-click models, in which the advertisers pay only for users who click on their ads. As we know that the search engines’ success depends on the relevance of their search results, manipulations in search engine rankings result in non-relevant results, and these type of results are generally referred to as spam, and should be dealt very seriously. Each major search engine employs a team who focuses solely on the result or eliminating the spam from their search results; this is generally referred as “web spam” teams. However, this matters to SEO professionals as they use more tactics to promote the products or service, and they should not land the spam by the search engines, as this would carry more risk of incurring penalties for the websites they work on.  

The Human Goals of Searching

When we need some sort of information, or to know something it all depends on upon your search. The basic goal of any human search is to obtain the information relevant to a specific set of keywords or phrases you enter into the search field; which is also known as a query. A searcher may invent the query as a question, but the majority of searches are performed by simply entering word combinations, and leaving the search engines to do their work of determining the “objective.” One  of the  most  important essentials to build an SEO strategy for a website is developing a thorough understanding of your targeted audience, and  how they use  combined words and  concepts to obtain information  about the  services or products you  provide. Once you know how an average searcher or more specifically your target market utilizes query-based search engines, you can more efficiently reach or retain those users.

Search engine usage has increased over the years; however, the major principle of conducting a search remains largely unchanged. Let us understand the following steps most of the search engine consists:

1. Understand the user experience and the need for information, what they are looking in for, on the specific website, or for any navigational search; they might want to buy something, or it may be about the transactional query also; or about any course relates thing – as in informational query.
2. Most of the users formulate their need by using a string of words or phrases comprising the query. The need and the use of the search may use for longer queries to generate more specific results more quickly.
3. Users execute the query, check the results and if they seek additional information, they will try a refined query again.

When this process results in the acceptable completion of a task, you can create a positive experience for the user by the search engine, and the site providing the information or the result.

We learn more on Digital Marketing strategies and how to determine Searchers Intent and the challenges for Search Marketers and Search Engines in our next blog.

For many businesses, phone plays major part in daily operations.  This is because businesses need them in order to call out and to be in contact with vendors, business associates, and

Clients or Customers are also valuable in any business; as they open a door of communication by allowing them to contact the business at any time during its hours of operation. As important as the phone is, it is just as essential that in every businesses you should know the difference between what is good and what is bad phone etiquette.

Everyone who are directly involved with people and phone should know and understand how they need to interact with clients and business associates over it. This will either portray them in a positive light or a negative one as it depends how good you take them. This may happen with the people who are bad phone or call etiquettes or who are poorly trained employees, managers, or business entrepreneurs. Telephone uses have an extreme negative effect on their businesses when they don’t handle the calls properly. For this reason, it is very important that every company should focus on training their associates properly on good and bad phone practices.

When Is A Call The Right Way To Communicate?

The method of communication should be direct and appropriate to the audience, nature and the situation of the message be very clear to the person on other side. As we are aware that a call is the best way to communicate whether it is personal, professional or a business calls. Other period your task will be best accomplished with an instant message or SMS. And, even sometimes email will also be the best way to go.

Do’s

• Make sure that all the attendees attend the business call on time, and if it conference call then they keep their personal gadgets on silence and be clear on the meeting.
• When answering your business phone it is essential that you pick it up in three rings.
• Advise your recruits that the second or third ring is the ideal time to pick up the telephone.
• The person who is allowed to answer the phone should start with a positive greeting such as “Good Morning,” “Hello,” or “Good Afternoon,” etc. Following the greeting the person should proceed by saying his or her name and the name of the business or organization that is being contacted.
• Put on a smile before placing or answering a phone call.
• For clearness, the telephone should be held a distance of two fingers from the mouth when it is a hand set.
• Speak in a clear tone using a mild voice which neither too loud nor too low. Words should be enunciated and maintain your pace that people are able to understand what is being said to them.
• Ask for permission when you add to put someone on hold, get the permission first and give him or her option to leave a voicemail message. When taking them off of hold thank the caller.
• When a caller is speaking, listen to what he or she has to say without interruptions.
• Always return phone calls when you have promised for a return call. If a time frame was given then the caller must make every attempt to return the phone call as quickly as possible within that time frame.
• While transferring the call, inform the people on other side about the transfer; it is also important to explain the need for the transfer.
• Before transferring a call, confirm with the person to whom the call is being transferred; and this person’s name should be given to the party who is being transferred.

Don’ts

• Wait for the person, who is answering the telephone as he or she should never answer on the first ring. So as callers do not expect this and will be taken off guard.
• Make sure that you are not on any activity while you are planning for business calls.
• Do not answer the phone when you are eating, chewing, or drinking.
• When on any emergency, and if you must leave the phone line, then never leave the line open; instead place the person on hold and check back with him or her frequently – preferably every 45 seconds.
• Never use the words like, “I don’t know” when talking with someone on the call. The ideal response to a question where there is not a definite answer is to say “I’ll check on that for you.”
• When talking to a client or a customer never say anything that can be taken as impoliteness. The person who answers the phone should always talk to the caller in the way that he or she would like someone to speak to them.
• Do not use slang when speaking to a caller. Swear words should be avoided, and may be illegal under certain circumstances, according to Federal law.
• Don’t even argue with a caller.
• Do not transfer a call without informing the person on the phone and asking permission to do so.
• When ending a phone call, do not hang up the phone without a positive closure such as “Thank you for calling,” or “Have a Good Day.”

The hardest task for any business today is ROI, through promoting; or marketing is the other thing to look in. Today the business entrepreneurs’ of any size are concentrating on getting the best of ROI of social media marketing. But oftentimes we hear complaints rather than the achievement in favor of media marketing. This makes the business owners feel like they are spending more money in media marketing but not getting any return on their investments.  However, the actual problem lies with a lack of understanding about the social media marketing, the process and the strategies that help businesses in the long run.

No one can guarantee a high ROI from social media marketing right from the gate; same applies to any marketing strategies.  Unless the customer purchase something from your business and indicate that specific marketing channel they came to you, nailing down the exact ROI will be tough and tricky for other marketing campaigns.  As per the recent survey, there are billions of active users on social media channels today. The number of people saying that they turn to social media to get their news, the traditional outlets has doubled since 2011 and increased from 9% to 40% of sales.  With the help of these social media channels, the customers have the privilege to directly interact with your business; as this is the direct line to them instead of waiting for call lines to get connected or reaching out through a 1-800 number; and be tossed around customers services executives just to get the question answered. These direct channels help your customers to share their experiences and your content on their own pages which will help you to grab more customers and get the best exposure and the opportunity to reach out the customers who may not have heard of your business before.

“Unlike trade shows, events or magazines that require considerable investments, even small companies with limited resources can use it to reach big audiences around the world.''

However, customers like access to businesses that are user-friendly, more interactive, and more secure. So they prefer using the regular sites they use. When businesses connect with their customers online, that means they are helping their customers’, care about them and welcome their feedbacks at any given time. This gives business owners an opportunity to involve more followers in future. Introducing exclusive offers and benefits to their online community may also help businesses to get good number of customers; but they need to be invited on appropriate time, this is when the consumers actually feel that they are personally invited in the business, and they will develop strong relationships with the company, which, in turn, builds customer loyalty.  When you grab your customers’ attention and loyalty; they will less likely think to go and shop at your competitors’ stores.  The very next step is to imagine how much money one customer could spend at your store over a lifetime. As this figure will be your customers lifetime value (CLV).  That means your customers lifetime value can be defined by the net worth, or the dollar value of a firm over a specified time.  Make sure that more loyal your customers are over their lifetime, will certainly profit your business and help you gain their relationship; this is the time when you can imagine the actual ROI of your business that you would receive if you have several loyal customers.

Understand the below mentioned four actions that will help you to increase your social media growth efforts:

• Define your social media campaign goals clearly
• Use the right social media insights and metrics to measure campaign success
• Understand your target demographic
• Set-up proper goal tracking in Google Analytics

The most important facet of social media marketing is that it provides intangible benefits that are impossible to get from a traditional marketing.  Good planning and strategies will always result good but social media allows you to build the right network, brand your business, earn strong links from highly regarded sources, and most significantly you can interact directly with your consumers at any given time; and this is an invaluable tool that every business owner should be taking advantage of.

“[Social Media Marketing] is a two-step process: the first step is to recruit, engage and build trust; the second step is to target your advertising to the people with whom you’ve built that relationship.” - Ernoult

At its best, the social media marketing can increase your business visibility, give you a bigger chance to reach out the right crowd and engage your current and future customers.