Who would have thought 13 years ago that people would be able to call taxis with mere taps on phones and social media would become a new air?

Even today, the ever-evolving digital landscape is reshaping our lives, work, and connections, and the commerce industry is no exception. Online marketplaces now offer a wide array of products and services at our fingertips.

Recent statistics indicate that approximately 2.64 billion people worldwide (over 33% of the global population) are online shoppers as of 2023. Moreover, 76% of consumers check online presence before physically visiting a business.

As consumers increasingly turn to the internet for discovery and engagement, the significance of digital business listings goes beyond contact information. This post underscores the pivotal role of digital business listings in enhancing visibility, credibility, and accessibility, and ensuring the overall success of businesses in the dynamic online era.

Why Online Presence/Digital Business Listings Matter?

Establishing a robust online presence and maintaining accurate digital business listings is crucial for various significant reasons. However, some of them are mentioned below:

1. To Create Brand Awareness

Unlike just having a website, directory listings can rapidly increase brand recognition, leading to inquiries about your products and services. In simpler terms, by listing your business in pertinent online directories, you could receive inquiries about your products and services, often without knowing exactly where these individuals first learned about your brand.

2. To Improve Online Presence

Having optimized digital listings enhances local SEO, making businesses more visible in local searches. Additionally, online directories often provide valuable information about a business that potential customers may be seeking, thus, streamlining the process of discovery.

As the process of feeding information in a directory can be daunting, one can consider using templates of these directories because they can help organize information effectively.

3. Gives You Competitive Advantage

In today’s digital era, businesses without a robust online presence risk lagging behind competitors. Positive customer reviews in digital listings build a favorable reputation, setting businesses apart. Also, actively managing listings helps showcase unique selling points, differentiating businesses from others. Thus, a compelling online presence ensures a competitive edge, keeping businesses top-of-mind with their target audience.

4. Helps You with Organic Marketing

Utilizing digital listings eliminates the need to spend money paid on advertisements to promote your products and services. All you need to do is list your business name on the directory and the rest of the work is done by it. This approach enhances your organic marketing efforts, making online business directory listing a cost-effective alternative to paid marketing.

5. Drive Traffic to Your Website

Online business directories drive traffic to your website by displaying your URL. If someone finds your services interesting, they can click the URL for more information. Even if not clicked, having your URL on the directory provides a valuable backlink, enhancing your site’s search rankings.

The Bottom Lines

Now that you understand the significance of online business directories, ensure to list your business on relevant platforms. Embracing a quality digital directory is crucial for thriving in the competitive online era.

If managing digital listings is a concern, contact AMAZIO for assistance in attracting potential customers, regardless of your business type or online presence level.

In the dynamic realm of social media, where trends change as swiftly as viral memes spread, staying ahead requires more than just a casual scroll. Though, let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to share the latest memes and post engaging videos? But social media management is not just about that!

As of January 2024, Datareportal reveals that 62.3% of the global population is active on social media, totaling 5.04 billion users worldwide. In the past year alone, 266 million new users joined, and individuals spent an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes daily on social media.

Considering such facts, businesses should leverage social media’s growth by not just being heard but also making a lasting impact. This post explores top social media strategies in 2024 for capturing attention and fostering engagement in the dynamic landscape of social media.

Best Social Media Management Practices to Succeed in 2024

Although particular trends might change, there are fundamental strategies for social media management in 2024 that remain consistent:

1.Recognize Your Target Audience

Identifying and understanding your target audience is crucial for effective social media management. Knowing who your audience is, the platforms they use, and their content preferences allows you to tailor your strategy effectively.

This knowledge is also important for content creation, direct message handling, post planning, performance scaling, and more. Collecting this information involves surveys, analyzing past campaign data, using analytics tools, and monitoring competitors for valuable insights.

2. Share & Engage

On social media, it’s vital to engage actively with your audience, respond to comments and messages, and spark conversations. Simply posting content without interaction can make your brand seem disinterested.

Social media is a two-way communication channel; engaging with your audience builds community, trust, and loyalty. To manage multiple accounts efficiently, which can be overwhelming, one can use a third-party social media platform with an inbox management feature for oversight of client communication.

3. Make Effective Use of AI

In the era of saturated platforms, maintaining an active presence on multiple platforms is crucial for brands. However, managing them can be time-consuming and costly.

This is where the importance of AI lies!

According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index, 81% of marketers see a positive impact from AI, freeing up time for creativity and improving efficiency. Thus, social media managers can use AI tools for tasks like caption creation, video editing, and efficient handling of multiple accounts, saving time and enhancing results.

4. Video Dominance

Try to use more video content on your social media! Videos grab attention better than images or text, and 66% say short videos are the most interesting. They convey messages effectively, showcase products, and create memorable experiences. Adding engaging videos to your social media strategy can greatly impact your brand’s success.

5. Be Authentic & Transparent

Show the real side of your brand, values, and processes. Share genuine, unpolished moments (like behind-the-scenes moments) that people can relate to. Authentic content not only connects with audiences but also provides flexibility to adjust strategies based on real-time analytics and feedback.

Conclusion

In summary, following these practices positions businesses for success and helps them stay ahead in this ever-changing social media landscape. Also note that social media management is continually evolving, so staying informed about the latest trends and tools is crucial.

Ground your 2024 social media management strategy with the remarkable services of AMAZIO.

Contact us to learn more about our services!

According to HootSuite, there are more than three billion people worldwide using some form of social media for communication. Of those three billion users, nearly all of them access social media via their mobile devices. What does this mean to a small business owner? It means, in our advancing technological world humans can access information and communicate with brands twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It also indicates social media is the most contemporary form of communication and with billions of people agreeing it’s the place to be, small business owners could miss valuable market share if their companies are not among the brands in the social media marketing space.

As a small business owner, though, you likely are wearing many hats and have little time to do everything in a day that needs to be done. You are also likely on a tight budget with a goal of turning a profit. Here are some tips to help your company with social media management.

7 Social Media Tips for Social Media Management

1. Start small and grow big. When social media first exploded on the communications and marketing scene, companies felt like they needed a presence on all social media channels. This is no longer true, relevant, or a smart strategy. According to Facebook, it has 2.41 billion active users. Naturally, you should start with a Facebook business page because it is the most popular platform with the largest audience. Facebook is also the third largest search engine, so you don’t want to miss an opportunity for your business to be found.

2. Choose a second social media platform. Depending on your business and industry, products, and services, you should choose at least one other social media platform to promote your business. If your goal is to earn media attention, Twitter is a great place to be. If you have really interesting products that can be photographed or you are trying to reach Generation Z, create an Instagram account. YouTube, which is owned by Google and the second largest search engine (Google is first), reaches audiences of all ages with video content. If you have content that would make for good videos, YouTube is a great option for your business.

3. Schedule time to map out a short-term strategy. Don’t look at social media as just “one more task” you have to get done. Businesses of any size should view social media as an investment, and in fact, one of the most important and cost-effective strategic marketing decisions you can ever make as a business owner. Without feeling overwhelmed, think about a short-term strategy, then learn as you grow.

4. Create an editorial calendar. This will help you remember when to post and what content you are posting. Three times a week is ideal. The important thing to remember is to not overload your followers with so much content that they become disengaged. Keep it moderate, especially in the beginning until you gain a following and learn more about your audience.

5. Social media is free. Yes, it costs your business absolutely nothing to set up social media accounts and post organic content. What does cost is choosing to do optional paid advertising on a social media platform. Even then, though, the cost is minimal and the ability to geotarget to a specific audience is paramount. Traditional marketing via television or radio advertising has tapered off significantly, and the shift is now heavy on the social media paid advertising side. The good thing for small business owners is that it doesn’t take a large budget to advertise on social media. For just $5 a day you can promote content to the audience specifically interested in what you have to offer.

6. Be responsive. Social media has given consumers a voice. It is no longer about brands pushing the message they want consumers to hear, see, and learn. Consumers can now comment publicly on a business page or send a private message regarding a customer service issue. By responding quickly, the customer feels heard and serviced individually, which gives you the opportunity to build brand loyalty.

7. Analytics. All social media platforms offer free analytics so you learn demographics of those engaging with your social media accounts. This helps you, as a business owner, learn who you are selling to and what they like and don’t like.

If you’re ready to take the next step to propel your organization forward with its marketing initiatives, reach out and let us help guide you to see a true ROI through social media management.

Nowadays, whenever a person is in need of something, they first turn to the internet. For example, if I need a plumber to come and fix something in my home, I am likely to look for them on the internet. Or if I need to buy a new home, I’ll look online for real estate agents. Clothes can also be bought online, as can books.

In fact, there are very few things about which you may not be able to get information online. Even if you can’t complete the entire purchase, you’ll still be able to start the process online. And when you search for something online, the first thing the search engine does is give you resources which are located close to you which will enable you to get the product or service that you want. This is the reason why every small business needs to have an online presence.

Knowing Your Target Audience

If you’re selling your product online, then, of course, an online presence is undeniably needed. But even if you’re selling your product out of a store or providing a service from a certain location, having an online presence enables you to reach out to potential customers who are looking for what you’re selling, especially in your area.

Setting up a Website

An online presence allows you to provide information to your customers. Through your website, you can tell your customers more about your different products. You can give them the specs of your products and show them pictures. You can tell them about the different ways in which your product can be used. You can also provide them with testimonials of people who were satisfied with your product.

Setting up a Blog

Additionally, you can also have a blog on your website which gives more wide-ranging information. Whereas your website is going to give your customers basic information about your company and your product, your blog can do much more.

You can use your blog to tell your customers what you’re planning in the future of your company. You can also use it to tell them your views about something going on in your field. Or you can use it to show them new ways of using your product. Anything that’s relevant to your company or your product can be showcased on your blog.

And the advantage of having your blog is that when you add fresh information to it, you’re likely to show up more often in searches for something relevant to your field or product.

Starting Social Media Pages

Another important element of your digital presence is social media. Everyone has heard that social media is important for your business, but not everyone understands how it works. Many people think that as soon as you post something on social media, it’s going to go viral and people are going to start flocking to your website.

However, social media requires work, just like everything else. If you want to have a large number of followers, you have to be active on social media. You have to keep posting new content—written content, images and video. You have to start following people in your field. You also have to start following people who follow you. And if people respond to your posts, you have to respond to their responses and keep them engaged.

There are a number of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It’s probably a good idea to have an active presence on at least two of them. And remember that the more active you are, the more likely you are to get more followers and more customers. It is possible to build up a strong following until people start associating your name with a certain field/product. When this happens, you’ve become a thought leader in the field.

Contact us for more information about having a digital presence for your business.

[Continued from Part 1]

How to Stay On Top of Negative Reviews and Comments

It’s one thing to say that curating negative reviews is important, but another to actually know how to handle each complaint, tirade, or abusive message that appears on your product pages. Let’s take an in-depth look at the best tactics to stay on top of your negative reviews and know how to strategically respond to each one individually.

– Audit Your Reviews Weekly

How often should you manage your review feeds? The answer to this question is two-fold. First, there’s the risk of letting negative reviews fester and potentially influence future customers. Second is the effort to remain responsive and helpful to your customer base no matter what type of review they leave.

If you have the time and man-power, it’s smart to keep a daily eye on new reviews just in case there are important questions or concerns brought through the review channel that your brand can answer or resolve quickly. This is a great approach to customer service for customers who use reviewing as their way of reaching out for help. You can build some incredible rapport with the customers by responding to concerns hidden even inside positive reviews (ex: “I love this product, but one of the feet was cracked” “Let us send you a replacement foot, thanks for letting us know!”)

However, just for keeping negative reviews under control, weekly auditing is your best schedule. This ensures that negative and abusive reviews don’t have too long to sit, and most people will see weekly maintenance as relatively attentive for a brand.

– Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews with Diplomacy

For each review, make sure that diplomacy is your main strategy. Apologize for any trouble the customer has (even if their complaint is third-party shipping) and offer to help them make the situation right. Always take a diplomatic and friendly tone of voice, speaking for the entire brand when answering reviews. If the review is a complaint, offer to help them make it right. If the review is an abusive tirade, respond by saying that if they have any real concrete complaints, that you’d be happy to provide solutions.

– Offer to Resolve Complaints Through Customer-Service Channels

Some reviewers write one-star negative reviews as a way to hold your brand hostage for freebies. It’s important to keep this in mind before resolving review complaints in the public forum. Always resolve serious complaints through an email or live-chat customer service channel, not on the product review page. Give your first diplomatic response on the review page, then take it somewhere private.

Whether you plan to grant discounts, send a new components pack, or assist with a return-replacement process, it’s important to keep these things behind-the-scenes so as not to encourage the freebie-chasers who think they can get something from spurious one-stars.

Taking customer service requests into a real service channel also makes it safer for customers to share personally-related information about their problems and for you to hold longer conversations about finding a resolution. And if a troll tries to shake you down for freebies and discounts for bogus complaints, you can dismiss them without damaging your public reputation.

– Provide Practical Responses to Abusive or No-Solution Complaints

We’ve given you the tools to handle real complaints and attempts to falsify real complaints. But what do you do when the negative review is just a string of abusive vitriol without any real resolvable problem you can solve? The important thing to understand is that customers know the difference between complaints and pointless insulting statements.

To these, respond with peaceful diplomacy to whatevever content there is to respond to. If the review is just the word “Crap” over and over again, write back that if there’s anything specific they’d like to be resolved, that the company would be happy to help them with the problem. If the review is nothing but curse words and insults, politely ask them to articulate their problem, but there’s no need to be directionlessly offensive.

In fact, responding to abusive reviews with friendly diplomacy and a service-positive attitude can actually build your reputation with future customers who skim the reviews to see how you respond to real problems. your diplomatic response to non-real problems will be an admiral show of attentiveness and willingness to help with problems that are real.

– Take Steps to Have False or Pure-Abuse Reviews Removed

Finally, you’ll need to take steps to have those pointless or blackmailing one-star reviews taken down off the platform. If it’s your own native website, this will be easy to do, provided you are careful to leave real complaints up for validity’s sake. Most platforms like Amazon are willing to listen to appeals and take down any review that is clearly false, vulgar, abusive, or obviously for a completely different product. By removing these reviews from your interface, you restore your star-average and your rate of positive to negative reviews that help customers make smart decisions at a glance.

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If you’re working with a small specialized team, there’s no need to sweat the negative reviews. You don’t need an internal reputation management team to keep on top of negative reviews, stay responsive, and curate your review pages to filter out pure-abuse or trollish reviews. Here at Amazio, we’re dedicated to managing brand reputations amazingly. From your product review pages to your social media community, Amazio can help you stay on top of negative comments, providing customer service when it’s needed and review-curation when the time is right. For more information about having your reviews managed amazingly, contact us today!

[Edit Requests Welcome!]

Negative reviews happen to everyone. Even brands with flawless products and superb customer service get the occasional negative review. Some negative reviews are constructive or genuine requests for customer support. Some are blatant attempts to get freebies and discounts. Some are internet trolls just trying to do damage. No matter how dedicated you are to customer satisfaction, don’t be surprised when the occasional negative review rolls onto your page.

While it’s important to know when to not engage with an abusive complaint, it is also vital that every brand manage and curate their negative reviews to maintain your reputation and to properly serve customers with real complaints. Today, we’re here to offer a comprehensive crash-course in how to combat negative reviews online and control the conversation on your company and product pages.

Why Managing Negative Reviews Matter

Managing negative reviews is one of the most important and underrated tasks for your brand reputation. Negative reviews on your page bring down your overall rating and look bad to new customers who have no idea what the context of those reviews might be. If you want your brand and products to maintain a positive and hard-earned reputation and to give new customers an informative idea of what they can expect, you need to curate those negative reviews and [revent false negatives from impacting the conversation about your brand.

Every brand needs to put time and effort into curating reviews, both positive and negative. This ensures that you know what is being said about your products and that you are using reviews as another channel to provide answers and customer service when needed.

The Impact of Un-Managed Negative Reviews

Failing to curate your negative reviews is big mistake for any online brand. To customers, previous customer’s opinion of your brand matters more than all the promotional material and informative images your brand can generate. This can cause seriously destructive consequences for your brand reputation and product trustworthiness in a number of ways. It’s vital that you are aware of the potential impact of negative customer reviews so that you know how to approach each review individually based on customer need and how it can affect your online reputation.

– Make Your Products Appear Low-Quality

Unmanaged negative reviews can lower your star-rating, clutter your product pages, and make it seem like your products are low-quality when they are really not.

– Damage Your Brand Reputation

Negative reviews can damage your brand reputation in a number of ways. The reviews may claim that your service was no-good when the reviewer did not reach out for service. They can make it seem like many of your products (not just one) are untrustworthy and low-quality. And negative reviews sometimes blame your brand for mistakes outside of your control, as with third-party platform or shipping problems.

– Make Your Brand Look Inattentive

Failing to curate or address clearly wrong or abusive negative reviews can also make your brand seem inattentive, as if you don’t care about customer opinions, responses, and reviews no matter what they say. Customers are discouraged by the idea of a brand that would not respond if they gave a negative review with genuine problems you could solve.

– Confuse and Discourage New Customers

Lastly, negative reviews give new customers the wrong impression of your brand and products. Someone trying to make a smart decision about the best products in a large market may accidentally buy something lower-quality than your products because a negative review skewed their ability to tell the difference. A single passionate negative review can also act as a turn-off, making customers think that your products are inconsistent in quality and they’re not willing to take the risk.

[Continued in Part 2

Edit requests welcome!

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Does your business have an online presence? There is a huge difference in online lead generation and customer velocity between brands that have an online presence and brands that do not. And we’re not just talking about that social media page you post to occasionally or the handful of reviews on your Google My Business listing. We’re talking real presence.

Even for local businesses (especially for local businesses), attracting new customers is all about online visibility. If you aren’t on the front page or in the top-10 in a Google search for your business in your town, then you’re missing out on hundreds to thousands of new customers searching for exactly what you provide in your area. If you are not earning a steady increase in Google reviews from recent customers or building a community on social media, don’t forget that your competitors are doing just that. And reaping the rewards.

Without Online Presence, You Don’t “Exist” in the Digital World

The fact of the matter is that in today’s society, we search online for everything. People rarely shop based on “foot traffic” anymore. Even if someone is standing five feet from your door, they will check their phones for a quick Google search first. And if you don’t rank, you essentially do not exist. If you haven’t claimed your location on Google My Business, then you don’t show up on Google Maps, and customers won’t route to you.

You know how important Google rankings are because, like anyone else in our society, you use it, too. You use Google to find services and shops. You see brands that build a positive presence and community on social media. And you care about star-ratings and online reputations when you make your decisions. And so do your customers.

Selling Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

It should come as no surprise that brands with a lively social media community, great Google ratings, and well-managed reviews are thriving. They attract more attention and reel in new customers. They sell more, and they have a universally more satisfied clientele because your clients are part of a positive and growing community. The greater your online presence, the further your business will go on the concrete merits you have worked so hard to build. When you provide a great service and customer experience and new customers can rely on reviews to tell them that, your reputation and success will naturally grow.

The Risks of an Untended Online Reputation

Another, unfortunately negative, factor of online presence is the fact that it will build itself without you. But not necessarily in a good way. An un-curated Google review page will tend to skew negative, as people are more inspired to leave reviews about unhappy experiences than they are to pop in for a quick 5-star rating. Trolls who just like to cause problems and competitors who are threatened by your quality of service are far more likely to flock in to leave negative reviews than casually happy customers.

Even a few negative reviews, left unmanaged, can start to unfairly plummet your online reputation. You can absolutely deal with these reviews in a way that will remove fraudulent and abusive reviews and even turn-around unhappy customers. But it takes time, skill, and constant attention.

But I Don’t Have Time to Build an Online Presence

Of course, we also know that small and local businesses often don’t have the time or the on-staff team to focus on reputation management. You’re too busy rocking your industry and serving customers to comb every review you get, build a multi-channel social media campaign, and analyze your results to constantly up your game.

But we do. Here at Amazio, we offer an all-in-one online presence managed service, complete with a cutting-edge reputation platform for you to keep an eye out your growing success while we do our special thing for your brand. You can focus on doing what you do best: running your business, with all the oversight you could want on how we are working to fully represent your brand, build your online presence, and curate your reputation to the highest degree of quality and customer satisfaction.

Contact us today to find out more about the Amazio online presence platform and reputation management services. We are here to help with your presence management so you can focus on rocking your industry.

[Edit requests welcome!]

Everything is connected, and nowhere is that more true than online. It’s not enough to be present on directories and various platforms: you have to engage with your followers and post high-quality content on a regular basis, and you have to manage the reviews people leave about your business. Failure to respond to a message on Instagram, for example, could contribute to a bad review on Yelp. What if someone forms an opinion about your business based on reviews on a new platform you didn’t even know existed?

Admittedly, it’s not easy to keep up with it all when you have a business to run! Still, it’s becoming more and more essential, which is why more and more businesses are turning to someone who can do it all for them. Amazio is that someone. You don’t have to hire a social media manager, then ask Dave in HR to watch out for bad reviews, then spend your evenings and weekends trying to figure out if the ads you’re running on Facebook are actually reaching your audience.

There are so many benefits to hiring an all-in-one service provider who can take care of all of those things for you. Your company needs to shine online, and our services reach far beyond your website or social accounts. Here are some of the ways we can help:

Online Presence

Different people use different means of finding the goods and services they need. From Google to Bing, Yelp to Facebook, you need to be everywhere. If you’re thinking, “But I have this and this and this, do I really need that?” You do if potential customers are finding your competition on that. We make sure your business is listed everywhere it needs to be, across more than 100 platforms and directories, and that the information your soon-to-be clients are finding there is accurate and up-to-date.

Social Media Management

Which platforms are most popular among your ideal customers? Where should you spend your time? How many accounts do you need? Whatever we decide, we’ll make sure your pages and profiles are alive with engaging content that positions you as an expert in your field, the go-to for solutions and information. We’ll interact with your followers and answer their questions so they know they’re heard, cared for, and valued as a member of your online community.

Reputation Management

Businesses are run by humans, and humans make mistakes sometimes. Unfortunately, you won’t always know a customer is unsatisfied until they leave a 1-star review and some scathing commentary. Reviews like that can’t go unaddressed: your reputation is at stake. About 84 percent of people trust online reviews as much as they’d trust a recommendation from someone they know, and people may put more trust in a negative review than a positive one.

Even when negative reviews are warranted, you have to admit to your mistake and try to make it right. Doing that publicly (at least in part, though the details may work themselves out privately) may not only win back the customer you would have lost, but you may attract new customers who appreciated the way you handled a difficult situation. Of course, none of that is possible if you’re not aware of the negative review in the first place.

Our managed services takes care of all of this and more. We track what’s working and what’s not, and our intelligent platform displays all your analytics in one dashboard for a smart snapshot of what’s happening for you online.

Relieve your workload and take advantage of our expertise. For more information about our managed services and how we can help you strengthen your online presence, please contact us.