The “like” button is everywhere; it appears on every brand page, post, status, photo, comment, ad, and app on Facebook.  Though it appears on everything you post, not everyone is using it as much as they see it.  So if you’re asking yourself, ‘how can I change that’? Here are a few simple tips that can help:

1. Know Your Audience - Studying your fans’ activity on Facebook can help you gauge what it is they want to see and hear.  Catering specifically to your audience can help increase their involvement on your page.  Chad Wittman, founder of EdgeRank Checker, suggests, “Dive into Facebook Insights as much as possible.  Are your fans consuming content at work, on a mobile device or only responding to video? Do they prefer one or two posts per day?”

2. Update, Update, Update - In order to engage your audience, it is important to update the content on your page regularly.  No one wants to hear about what happened a month ago, or even last week.  People want to know what’s happening now, or in the future.  Keep them interested and invested.  Tip: Engage them by commenting on what they post.  Give them feedback, shoot them a “like” back, or just say “Thanks!”.

3. Choose Wisely - Social media expert, Dan Zarrella, who tracked and analyzed 1.3 million posts from the 10,000 most “liked” Facebook pages found that photo posts typically receive the most number of likes, followed by text, then video.  According to Zarella, “I found that for likes, comments and shares, photos perform best”.  Brief posts can be extremely effective; lengthy Facebook content often goes unread and discourages fan involvement.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

4. When to Post - What time of day and what day of the week you post matters! Your audience most likely isn’t on Facebook all day, every day.  Think about when you are most likely to check-up on the latest Facebook news.  Your answer would probably be: before work, during lunch break, after work, or on the weekends. This is when you can and should expect most people to be visiting your Facebook page as well.  ”Content posted later in the day (8 PM EST) gets more likes and shares…  Posts published on Saturdays and Sundays receive a higher like percentage than those posted during the business week”, said Zarella.

5. Just Ask - Promote your Facebook page on your website’s homepage.  There, simply ask your fans to check it out and like it.  There, they may just “like” what they see.

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• Services: Firstly, what internet marketing service does the agency actually offer? Are they only offering SEO and web page design, or do they also offer blogging, social media, and media monitoring etc. services. Ask questions suchs as what blogs, websites and social media accounts they run daily. Good internet marketing agency can surely offer immediately at least dozen of blogs, websites and social media accounts that they update daily. Check their clients from online to get a grab from their everyday work. Pay attention on how often do they update their clients websites and social media accounts. This is an important by not only showing actively on the business scene, but also for SEO purposes.
• References: You always want your internet marketing company to have proved their expertise. Ask for the company’s references. What kind of references they have, what exactly did they do to boost their previous clients internet marketing. If you’re looking for precisely an agency with SEO capabilities, have them show you an SEO win, or preferably SEO wins.
• Business sector: What kinds of businesses have your internet marketing agency candidate worked before? This is an important factor, since besides that you want to choose an agency with great previous results, you want your internet marketing agency to be familiar with your business. At the best case, the company should have good references from your business area. This is however a tricky issue since you do want your agency to be familiar with your business, but at the same time, it certainly isn’t in your interest if the agency is working with your competitor.
• Size: Among the business sector, the agency’s average client size is too an issue. Most agencies have segmented their clients on certain revenue per client. This means that your company may be too big or too small for the agency. For example, if you’re spending $500k/month on marketing and the agency is used to service clients with a $5k/month marketing budget, the agency is likely to be overwhelmed and understaffed to support your needs (much as they would love to work with you). On the other hand, you also might be too small for the company, in which case you might end up getting poor service and even poor results.

So choosing the best internet marketing agency precisely for your company may require actually quite a bit of time, so be prepared of taking several meetings and offers when searching for the best. However, well planned and implemented internet marketing will definitely get you greater online appearance and new customers. One last piece of advice, check out what internet servers does the internet marketing agency use in their offices. If its internet explorer, walk straight out and don’t even think about. Not joking, if the agency isn’t using a decent web server, it surely can’t keep up in the SEO competition, not to mention on the other internet marketing tasks.

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The work and support with Fundación Huerta Niño, a not-for-profit roots organization that currently supports more than 170 vegetable gardens in 23 Argentine provinces and benefits more than 10,000 children.  This is the first effort in New Wave’s resolution to reach out to children in need.

The foundation was chosen in conjunction with Help Argentina, a nonprofit organization that helps international donors to identify and support high-impact nonprofits in Argentina. Fundación Huerta Niño educates children in nutrition and environmental studies through the development of educational vegetable gardens in rural areas – many in some of the country’s poorest neighborhoods – aiming to help communities at risk grow their own vegetable needs.

“We’re really delighted to have the opportunity to support Huerta Niño’s cause. This is a first step in working with our local community on such an important project with the ongoing benefits that this project offers to our future generation,” says John Deutsch, CEO of New Wave Marketing.

With more than 12 years devoted to making community-driven vegetable gardens possible in some of the most under-resourced corners of Argentina, Fundacion Huerta Niño reflects the core values that also guide New Wave in its professional work: sustainability, accountability and knowledge. While the Foundation provides funding and coordinates professional assistance, the local families and schools are in charge of running and administrating them.  This benefits, educates and feeds children with their self-grown crops.

On an initial 12-month commitment, New Wave will be donating $800 worth of design, marketing and programming hours month-to-month to help Fundacion Huerta Niño spread their message and fantastic work while reaching potential new donors.

Mariel Matze, a colleague from New Wave’s partner organization The Argentina Independent, visited Soles en El Camino (“Suns on the Road” – one of the supported vegetable gardens). Her visit took place on a very special day, Beetroot Day, where she oversaw the work done by children ages 3 to 12. To read Mariel’s full article, please click here.

Soles en el Camino is a Buenos Aires-based orphanage.  The vast majority of the foundation’s projects are vegetable gardens located in rural elementary schools in vulnerable communities where serious malnutrition and poverty are everyday threats.

Those interested in donating to help Fundación Huerta Niño continue their work with Argentinean children can do so by following this link.

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The Enterprise Patient Portal is perfect for hospitals, healthcare organizations, and medical practices that are looking for a way to boost revenue while improving practice efficiency and making the most out of their EMR systems by providing a number of time-consuming patient services online.

For more information about the new Enterprise Patient Portal, check out the press release here.

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Don’t know where to start? Below are five steps that can get your business in the right direction:

1. Build a Website. This may be the most obvious step. After all, you can’t have an internet presence if you’re not online. You can either set up your own website or hire an established company to set it up for you. The website needs to have easily navigated layouts, be filled with useful and interesting information and be free of junk or unhelpful things. Avoid using anything that will discourage a customer from lingering; this is one time when some upfront paid advice from a web designer can be well worth it and will pay itself back in no time.

2. Make your Website SEO Friendly. The idea of search engine optimization (SEO) is to write your website’s copy (the content) in such a way that your site will appear high on the results pages of the major search engines (i.e. Google and Bing) when users perform specific keyword searches. The higher up on the results page, the more likely a user will click on your website.

3. Use PPC Advertising. Online pay per click (PPC) advertising has a large reach and is the way many sites thrive or even survive online. You can set a price that you would be willing to pay every time someone clicks on an ad that you write. You only have to pay this when someone clicks on your ad. If no one clicks on your ad, you do not have to pay. These ad formats allow you to set up a daily advertising budget and you have the freedom to cancel and restart your ads any time you want.

4. Use Blogs and Forums to your Advantage. Blogging is another way to drive qualified traffic to your website and boost your site’s ranking in the search engines and it is a great way to help promote your business or services – especially if you can show yourself as an expert and as someone who genuinely wants to help resolve user’s problems. Often you can do this for free. However, this option has one huge caveat––be sure to post in forums that are website promotion friendly if you intend on using your URL or emblazoning the post with your business details. In many cases, simply stating that you’re the founder/owner/director/community manager, etc. of a certain site can be sufficient to alert people to the good your company is doing online. Let them do the rest of the adding up and finding of you––consumers are intelligent.

5. Participate in Social Media. If your business does not have a Facebook  account, get one as asoon as possible. And make sure it is optimized to get the most from it. For Facebook, you can use ads, updates and Fan pages to keep fans posted on your business happenings. As a business, just be careful to get your business a Facebook Page and not a Profile; profiles are for individual people only and they are limited in what you can do as a business. Once you have created your page, keep updates relevant and interesting – you want users to be engaged in and share your content. And it doesn’t just stop there – you can continue onto Twitter, Google +, and LinkedIn. (Hint: these are great places to share information from your website, blog posts, and forums). Creating a coordinated social media and website traffic-building strategy for your business is a big task, and you can hire professionals to help.

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Below, are some tips to help your internet marketing strategy humanize your brand:

• Make an Awesome ‘About Us’ Page. The ‘About Us’ page appears on most every website, and presents a perfect opportunity to humanize your brand. It is a page dedicated to telling people exactly who you are and what your company represents. Put a face to the brand, and people will be more willing to trust and connect with your company. Make sure to avoid jargon that an ordinary person would not understand.
• Introduce Your Team. Your company is more than a brand, but its even more than you alone. Introduce your team to the world! Explain who they are, what they do for the company, and how they represent your company. Putting a face to the name can help build trust. For example, if you have a dedicated community manager running your social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc – let people know who that person is.
• Show Your Team Being Real. Let your fans, clients, and followers get to know yourself and your employees a bit better by posting photos of them doing real things. This is a great way to show users that you are real human beings, not just a brand. For social media, don’t use avatars, but photos of your real employees. After all, one of the best ways to humanize your brand is to put a human face along with it.
• Personalize Your Posts. When using your social networks, personalize messages. If you don’t have just one dedicated community manager, it may seem unwieldy to introduce the entire team — this is a common problem faced by enterprise organizations. Consider signing your social media updates if you’re one of many posting to a social account, particularly if you’re using it for customer support.  This helps remind people that even though they can’t hear your voice, there’s one real, live, breathing person that’s dedicated to helping them. The same goes for blog posts and emails, don’t just sign using the company’s name – because the company is not a person, but you and your employees are.
• Be present. Communication goes both ways. When someone comments on any of your internet mediums, whether on a blog post, social media wall, or via email, make sure to respond. Even better, respond using an actual employee account rather than the company one, to provide a real person’s voice to the response.
• Provide value. In addition to increasing revenue and traffic flow, the point of your internet marketing strategy should be to provide something of value to your users. Tell stories and use humor in content to make it more enjoyable and personal. You want your users to share and engage with your brand.

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A call-to-action, or CTA, is a banner, button, or some type of graphic or text on a website meant to prompt a user to click it and continue down a conversion funnel. It is an essential part of inbound marketing in that it actively strives to convert a user into a lead and later into a customer.

The main goal of a CTA is a click, and its success can be measured via a conversion rate formula that calculates the times the CTA was seen over the amount of clicks. Another way to test the effectiveness of a CTA is using a testing technique where several graphics are presented to a user and the graphic with highest success rate (the most clicks) becomes the default.

Below are five tips internet marketing CTA more effective at generating leads and closing them:

1. Use active text. Using powerful action verbs in a CTA has been found to be more effective than other types of text. Use words like, click, explore, discover, learn, find, and download, to increase user engagement. Make sure your CTA wording is clear and concise, so users are fully aware of what you want them to do.
2. Capture attention. Make your CTA stand out by using contrasting font and colors in the background. Contrasting colors draw attention, increasing the chances of visitors seeing your CTA. Also, be sure the background color of your CTA does not interfere with the visibility of the copy.
3. Chose size wisely. The ideal size of your CTA will depend on your website’s page elements. While a CTA should be large enough to grab the attention of your visitor, it should not be so large that it overwhelms the page and appears spammy. However, users don’t come to your website with the goal of searching out your CTA, so avoid designing your CTA too small.
4. Just ask. According to a recent social media study, posts that included “Like” or “Comment” received more likes and comments, respectively, than posts without the words included. By being straightforward and asking users to engage, chances are higher that they will. However, have a small number of distinct actions available in your CTA; too many and the user will become overwhelmed and continue on without engaging. For example, including the options of “buy now” or “contact us” in the same CTA, may confuse readers on which to do first.
5. Get ready to respond. Timing counts! If you’ve invested in moving a participant to respond to your social media call-to-action, you must be ready to nurture and convert them. Hubspot research discovered that 50 percent of leads are qualified to purchase but not ready to close the deal. Further, firms that responded first acquired 78 percent of sales started with an online inquiry.

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In 2013, internet marketing vehicles, tools, and techniques will continue to change and increase, as it has in the years past. To help capitalize on the opportunities, here are five internet marketing trends from StartUpNation.com for this year that any company should consider when planning their marketing initiatives:

• Design. The best websites are those that are remembered, which is why design matters. It’s not a coincidence that the most successful companies (i.e. Apple) had the best websites. In 2013, take time to focus on a great design for all internet marketing ventures, starting with the company website.
• Get visual. 2012 was the year of the infographics, turning complex data into meaningful stories using graphics. 2013 is no different. Communication through visual mediums is increasing in it’s popularity, as Pinterest and the redesigns of social network sites like Facebook and Twitter have proven. Start figuring out how to make more of your marketing go visual in 2013, and the traffic will surely respond in your favor.
• Get mobile. Wordwide, there are over 5 billion mobile users, and 1.1 billion of those use smartphones. The iPad was the fastest growing technology product ever, and sales are projected to increase this year. If you haven’t already, your company should start planning how to connect with your target audience via mobile channels for your business. Make sure your website can be seen on all screens and sizes, so everyone can gain from your site – no matter what technology they use to access it.
• Be social. Facebook has over 1 billion users, and Twitter has over 500 million. The reach of social media makes it a golden opportunity for all businesses to increase their audience and growth, but it has been difficult to gain solid business value out of it. However, with a growing number of marketing platforms (such as Wildfire by Google) combined with more granular social media analytics tools (such as SproutSocial), extracting meaningful date from your social marketing will get easier over time.
• Blog and share. This year, blogging has proved its worth. Writing quality, original content can do as much for a business as any other internet marketing strategy. With Google’s search algorithm updates, it’s become extremely clear that quality and value matter. That means high quality content, combined with sincere, transparent social marketing is a combination for success.

For more information on this year’s projected marketing trends, click here.

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En New Wave Web & Marketing tenemos mucho que agradecer en esta época de fiestas. El año está terminando y no podemos estar más agradecidos de todo lo que sucedió! Y claramente no podríamos haber hecho nada de esto sin nuestros valiosos clientes, nuestro increíble equipo de trabajo y obviamente nuestros amigos y familia.

El año 2012 ha sido un gran año para nosotros.  A partir de todo lo construido este año, el entusiasmo y las promesas a venir, estamos realmente muy positivos acerca del futuro.

Para celebrar nuestro éxito y la época de vacaciones, nuestro equipo realizó una fiesta de cierre del año.  Hemos reflexionado acerca de todo lo ocurrido este año y todo lo que deseamos que suceda el próximo. Además realizamos algunos juegos relacionados con el marketing por Internet –  una especia de dígalo con mímica relacionado al SEO. Puede sonar nerd pero la pasamos genial!

Para el año próximo esperamos mantener a su negocio y a usted informado acerca de marketing, diseño y programación tal como lo venimos haciendo. De parte de todos los miembros de New Wave Web & Marketing, les deseamos una feliz navidad y un maravilloso año nuevo!

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Here at New Wave Web & Marketing we have so much to be thankful for this holiday season. The year is wrapping up, and what a terrific year it has been! Of course, we could not have done it without our valued clients, our amazing team of employees, and of course our friends and family.

2012 has been a great year for us. Building off of this year’s excitement and promise to come, we are truly optimistic about our future.

In order to celebrate our success and the holiday season, our team threw a wonderful holiday party.  We reflected on all that we’ve accomplished this year and what we look forward to in the year to come…in addition to playing some Internet marketing-related games – can you act out ‘SEO? Nerdiness aside, we had a blast!

We look forward to keeping you and your businesses engaged and informed in marketing, design, and programming in the coming year. From all of us at New Wave Web & Marketing, have a safe and happy holiday and a wonderful New Year!

Thanks for a wonderful year, and see you in 2013!

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