The Hottest and Most Brilliant Business Tips for YOU – Human Digital Marketing and More

Our research ninjas at Credit Suite smuggled out ten amazing business tips for you! Be fierce and score in business with the best tips around the web. You can use them today and see fast results. You can take that to the bank – these are foolproof! Put heart and digital soul in your content with human digital marketing.

Stop making stupid decisions and start powering up your business. Demolish your business nightmares and start celebrating as your business fulfills its promise.

And these brilliant business tips are all here for free! So settle in and scoop up these tantalizing goodies before your competition does!

#10. Success with Social Media Marketing

Our first jaw-dropping tip is all about succeeding online. The Self Employed has a sweet infographic, all about social media marketing success – and 15 steps to take you there.

Of course it makes us happy to see the dual emphases on researching the competition and keeping track of metrics. Because they can help you in so many ways.

Why Do We Love Numbers So Much?

Well, maybe love is too strong a word. Let’s just say numbers are concepts with benefits. See, when you measure stuff, you get a handle on whether it’s big or small. Makes sense, no? And when you measure stuff over time, then you get a handle on whether it’s getting bigger or smaller.

With social media, using  metrics means you know as fast as possible if your newest campaign is a winner or a stinker. And by researching your competition and keeping track of those metrics as well, you can start making intelligent comparisons. Are you doing better than your competition, or are you just treading water? The numbers will tell the tale, so keep metrics!

Schedule That Bad Boy

We also loved the tip to use a scheduler. Egad, people, please use schedulers. They will change your life! Let’s say you market to truckers or nurses. You know how many of those folks are awake when most people are snoring away? Schedule so you don’t have to lose any sleep over that.

And also schedule when you get a bunch of ideas and the time and inclination to write. If you have 15 ideas, you don’t need to release 15 blog posts tomorrow. Release one, and schedule the others. Bonus if you’re going on vacation. The blog and your social media outlets keep going as if you had never left. And how cool is that?

#9. Best of Breed Marketing

The next awesome tip is about a bunch of awesome best practices in marketing. Small Biz Trends notes these tried and true tips can really help you make (and save!) money. We could not agree more.

Take Those Freebies Wherever You Find Them

As in, Google My Business. Don’t ignore this free and powerful marketing channel. You’ll get a lot more visibility online with it. And it only – seriously – takes you maybe an hour of your time to get started and then check and update it maybe quarterly. We ain’t kiddin’.

Distribute Those Eggs!

Also known as: don’t put all your marketing ‘eggs’ into one basket. What this means in practice is to, for example, market on a social media platform in addition to Facebook. And it also means combining offline and online marketing strategies. Your customers and prospects aren’t online 24/7 (even if they want to be). They drive, walk, shower (God, we certainly hope so!), and eat. Not advertising on the radio or billboards might mean you don’t reach them when they’re performing some of these offline activities.

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Bare your heart and digital soul with human digital marketing.

#8. Refer Me, Refer You

Our following life-changing tip concerns referral marketing. Word Stream points out it’s all about trust. Referral marketing is all about trust, because the concept behind it is you are working with people who know your prospects better than you do. You know, their parents and siblings, friends, children, coworkers, and neighbors. Those folks.

In particular, on top of trying to compete in crowded markets, new companies can suffer from a lack of trust. After all, should I trust your flashy new marketing materials, or what my brother tells me?

Well, what if your product got into my brother’s hands – and he loved it? With little to no prompting, if he thought I could use it, he’d probably tell me about it.

“Oh my God, this is the greatest desk chair EVAH! My back pain is gone!”

Or –

“I got a new blender and it’s so quiet. You gotta try this.”

Or –

“That new dry cleaner that just opened up? They got that port wine stain out when the guy down the street gave up.”

You get the idea. Oh, and by the way – the people who do the referring don’t have to be big social media influencer types. They just have to be willing to spread the positive word.

#7. Loving the Humble Hashtag

For our next sensational tip, we looked at using hashtags in marketing. Marketing Eye Dallas says they’re a great way to get attention for your brand.

We were especially pleased with the idea of optimizing your use of hashtags, depending on the platform. For example, hashtags are pretty rare on Facebook. So more than one or two is probably too many. But on Instagram, they’re common – and evidently a post with 11 hashtags should do well. However keep in mind – 16 hashtags will be seen as spammy. And on Twitter of course there’s the character limit.

So go sling some hashtags today.

#6. Zig When the Others Zag

This tip is so counterintuitive, but it works! Influencive notes there is a ton of sameness out there, in particular in the world of social media marketing. So, in an effort to create more human digital marketing, they say, do something different.

How different? As in acting silly, or doing an ‘ask me anything’ session. And don’t be afraid of failure! Of course, you want to exercise some prudence here, in the sense that you don’t want to bet the farm on a bold strategy (let’s see if it pays off, Cotton). But you can try something different and see what happens.

True story time.

These Advertisers Partied Like it Was 1999

Because it was. That is, 1999 is the year of a Screen Actors Guild strike.  It prohibited the use of live actors. So what did Geico do? They introduced the gecko. It’s wacky. It’s strange. And the truth is, apart from the name thing, it has little to do with insurance.

See, it used to be insurance was the kind of thing you advertised with earnest-looking middle-aged to old white men, droning on and on about keeping your family safe. There was nothing fun, exciting, or interesting about it. After all, it was (and still is)… insurance.

The gecko flips the script completely. So instead of doing the tried and true, Geico opted for the off the wall. Now, with no access to live actors, they could have gone the animation route. Or maybe pulled their TV ads and used print and billboards. After all, this is before a lot of people have so much as heard of the internet.

Geico took an enormous chance. And it might have backfired spectacularly. But it didn’t, and now we also have Flo from Progressive, the Aflac duck, Allstate’s Mayhem, and more. Talk about turning your industry upside-down and bringing in human digital marketing!

#5. Reach the Heart and Soul of Content with Human Digital Marketing

Grab this mind-blowing tip while it’s hot!

Show your heart and digital soul with human digital marketing. Marketing Profs says content and marketing writers have got to dig through the clutter and, you know, actually write like they’re talking to people. Whew; I thought we were talking to machines! Er, wait a second….

SEO and Marketing Voice – the Digital Tug of War

We were so pleased to see this addressed head on in the article. Because the truth of the matter is, we have had the exact same issue forever.

What does this mean?

For SEO (search engine optimization), certain things have to happen to give Google the right impression about your content. One of the things which you need to do is use what’s called a ‘keyword phrase’ in lots of places in your copy (but not everywhere). This phrase has to show up in your first paragraph and your title, along with a few of your headings as well.

Can you guess what the keyword phrase is for this post? Drop your guess in the comments and we’ll tell you if you’re right (and win bragging rights!).

Drama and Storytelling and Google

So Google wants to be able to essentially match your content to the people hunting for it online. If Google doesn’t do a good job of this, then you’ll just take your searches to Bing or Yahoo! Hence of course they want as good a match as possible, and so should you. Therefore, if your website is about long haul trucking, then words like truck, long, haul, distance, road, highway, cargo, and freight are probably going to figure in there.

And words like zebra, spaghetti, and galaxy probably won’t be your content, or at least not more than maybe once in some offhanded fashion.

A problem arises, though, when you work to weave a story into your content. So maybe you were driving along and there was an escape from the local zoo and you almost hit a zebra! You lured it back to the zoo with spaghetti and then took a bunch of pictures with a Samsung galaxy phone.

No? Well, the story is fun and could be truly memorable. But it doesn’t fit the overall theme of your website. At least not according to Google, that is.

We highly recommending reading the article in its entirety. For the best content writing, you need to know how to balance the human aspect of writing and SEO.

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Bare your heart and digital soul with human digital marketing.

#4. Go on a Sentiment Analysis Journey

Check out this spectacular tip, all about using sentiment analysis in order to make your business better. Intellectyx tells us this fascinating tool – which is only getting better all the time! – can really help.

But first…

What the Heck is Sentiment Analysis, Anyway?

Think of it like gauging opinions. Probably the best analogy is the green-amber-red look of a traffic light. Green is positive, red is negative, and amber is either meh or mixed or it can’t be determined.

Green light: I like pie. Red light: the carpet company never showed up, made excuses, and we had to sue them to get our money back. Amber light: the coffee shop is okay. I like their latte but their muffins are really terrible, and their furniture is nothing to write home about, either.

Uses for Sentiment Analysis

The first, obvious, smack-you-in-the-head-with-a-two-by-four use for sentiment analysis is to monitor your brand. What are people saying about you? And dig not only into what they say about the brand, but also into what they are saying about your customer service, and even your website.

You can also use it to stay competitive. After all, if your prospects are singing your competition’s praises, and not yours, then you’ve got a problem. And it’s a problem whether your prospects are meh about you, negative, or you’re not on their radar at all. Of course these problems are going to have dissimilar solutions.

How do you get it? The article helpfully includes the names of some great software solutions. Perhaps the least expensive is Hootsuite, which is even more useful because you can use it for social media post scheduling. And that neatly ties in with our #10 tip, above. It’s a great way to do even more human digital marketing.

Listen. Analyze. Learn.

#3. Reach Out and Touch… a Prospect for Human Digital Marketing

It’s not your imagination: this winning tip can improve how you reach out to prospects. Mail Shake points out it’s a lot like meeting a baby for the first time. They’re usually kinda skeptical. And for good reason. They don’t know you from Adam. You’re not-Mom, or not-Dad.

So the same techniques hold true for prospects and for infants – spend time together. You can’t really expect an initial cold outreach to go well. They usually don’t (although they aren’t 100% useless – just don’t expect amazing results).

Rather, get to know your prospects, through everything from retweeting them to recommending them. And personalize your communications with them. Yes, more than the title of your email. One tip we really loved was to use different images for different prospects when emailing.

Your prospects are individuals. They’ll be a lot more likely to want to listen to you if you treat them that way.

#2. Go Local or Go Home

Our second to last unbeatable tip can give you a new perspective on marketing locally. Under 30 CEO offers some great ways to reach out directly to local customers.

Our favorite was the idea of hosting local events. Let’s say you own a nail salon. Why not host a demo one day, or maybe even a makeover? You could even make it the prize in a raffle.

Don’t have a business which lends itself well to local events? Then sponsor one which does!

We also loved the idea of supporting a local cause. Blood drives, sponsoring a Little League team, or making a big donation to a local charity all count.

#1. Flip the Script

We saved the best for last. For our favorite remarkable tip, we focused on easy goods to flip (resell). The Work at Home Woman says there are a number of ways you can make extra cash at home, and some of them might not be 100% expected.

Consider if you’re handy – can you fix older washing machines, or stoves? Or if you’re artistic – can you make homemade crafts?

But our three favorites all had to do with computers. Buying and selling domain names may feel like something for GoDaddy, yet you can do it, too. You’re not hosting the content; you’re just selling the domain. Or you can buy up an old website and spruce it up. Another option is to build up your own website and sell it.

For new business owners just starting out, you may need a side gig for a while, and these are some dynamite ways to pocket a little extra coin while you’re getting your entrepreneurial act in gear.

So which one of our brilliant business tips was your favorite? And which one will you be implementing now?

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Bare your heart and digital soul with human digital marketing.