Fake News Sites Won't be Able to Use Adsense Anymore

A huge complaint by the main political parties during this election season has been fake news. Google, specifically has made headlines about fake news ranking high on Google News and has decided to take action. Originally reported by the Wall Street Journal, Google has decided to keep fake news sites from using Google Adsense.

You can look at the entire documentation here from Google but here are the important factors outlined on what is impermissible going forward:

“Google ads may not be placed on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about you, your content or the primary purpose of your web property.”

Google gave some pretty clear examples of what they will deem Misrepresentative content and they are as follows:

Not acceptable

Enticing users to engage with content under false or unclear pretenses (e.g. deceptively presenting fake news articles as real) “Phishing” for users’ information Promotion of content, products, or services using false, dishonest, or deceptive claims (e.g. “Get Rich Quick” schemes) Impersonating Google products Falsely implying having an affiliation with, or endorsement by, another individual, organization, product, or service

It appears that Facebook will be implementing new rules about fake news sites soon according to statements made by Mark Zuckerberg.  When they decide to release their guidelines we will report on it.

It is unclear who will determine what is fake news and how they will come to the overall determination.  There has been First Amendment arguments being made by parties as by prohibiting the sites violate free speech and it could have changed the outcome of the Presidential election.  Another arguments is that the audience should decide what is important to read and the public can rationally make their own determination on what is fake or not.   We will await and see how Google implements their new policy towards fake news sites.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/fake-news-sites-wont-able-use-adsense-anymore/

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Tips on Preparing Your E-Commerce Website for Cyber Monday 2016

Cyber Monday falls on November 28th this year. it has become the biggest online shopping day of the year. According to comScore and IBM, total digital sales were $3.19 billion up from $2.59 billion in 2014.  Furthermore Desktop online sales were up 12% from 2014 totaling $2.28 billion and mobile sales were up 53% consumers from 2014 to $838 million.  According to Forbes, there will be a 9.4% increase in sales for Cyber Monday with sales overall being higher than 2015.  You can review the Forbes article here.

Small and medium sized businesses should be prepared for their biggest sales day of the year.  If you’re an e-commerce site, you are fully aware of this and rest assured that you’ve already prepared and stocked with merchandise to handle the traffic.  Here is a list of last minute tips to ensure that Cyber Monday runs efficiently and without a hitch for your business.

• Inventory: Make sure you can handle the severe traffic. Don’t over-promote items if you don’t have it in stock. If you’ve run out of an item, make sure your website is updated as soon as possible.  Use social media to advise customers of any changes to your inventory.  Social media is becoming an important avenue for companies and it only takes a quick tweet to inform your base that an item is out of stock.  It will promote goodwill with your customer on a long-term basis.
• Have your logistics department prepared: Get your shipping department prepared.  A meeting should be conducted prior to this all important day to ensure that products will be shipped and make it to customers prior to Christmas.  Always make sure that you give your customers the option for express shipping as some customers need to receive the time to customize to re-ship it out to final destination.  Troubleshoot any problems beforehand and have back-ups for employees that are absent due to unforeseen circumstances.
• Buy ads on Social Media-  Buy online ads. Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers are going to be looking for sales and discounts. In many cases, they will search for those deals on search engines or on social media.  You should offer serious discounts to items that you will have difficulties selling after Christmas.  Offers should be given to customers as well for these items.  For instance giving gift cards along with items that you are aware that there will be difficulties selling.  Gift cards could be as low as $5.  The consumer will appreciate the rebate and will use it on your website on another item if they find something that piques their interest.

These tips will potentially snare some sales for your business.  If you are on top of your game you can make the most out of this years Cyber Monday.  Good luck and Happy Holidays from Falcon Consulting & Marketing!!

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/tips-get-ready-cyber-monday-2016/

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Using Online Reputation Management to combat Negative Reviews Online

In my lifetime the biggest company killer has been negative reviews of a particular company.  Whether it be online or newspaper reviews it is generally a huge issue to combat.  Also, it has become much easier for a potential customer to search your business.  The only thing that is needed is either a smartphone or laptop. With social media and the rise of review sites and Google reviews, it has been much more important to monitor your business’s reviews online.    I myself have had an issue with someone with my name that I have had to combat it in the past.  Small and medium sized businesses understand how difficult it is to generate revenue and maintain your place in the market.  They are certainly worried about how customers are reviewing them online.  The one thing that is most important is to be proactive and take charge of everything that is being said of your company online.  You have to take every comment seriously.  Your inability to do so will lead potential customers to believe that either the comments are in fact true or you do not care about your customers.  It can also lead to abuse by negative stalker reviewers as well.   Using my personal experience and having been a consultant for small businesses for several years on the topic, here are some ways to combat and even remove the negative reviews online using Reputation Management Services from Falcon Consulting & Marketing:

Erasing Bad Reviews From the Internet Entirely- There are times that you can delete bad reviews entirely from a review site.  However, this can most likely only happen under certain conditions that are set up within the company’s guidelines.  You should definitely read their Terms of Service to see under what conditions it is possible to have the entire review deleted. The erasure of the review is subject to the discretion of the review site.   What we have seen is that normally if you can show that the person is a fake reviewer or the review is completely wrong then the review can be deleted.  Also under some circumstances you will be able to have the review expunged if you can prove that it is your competition or an ex-employee that is reviewing your business.

Burying negative reviews so to make it difficult to be seen- If the review site will not delete the review then the alternative would be to bury the review so it is so hard to find that it lacks the ability to undermine your business.  How do you go about doing this?  Have your happy customers make positive reviews of you on the same review site, on your website and social media sites.  Don’t be afraid to ask your previous customers for reviews as it may come in handy at times when you are not expecting it.  You should take a proactive role and make sure that if there is a negative review, you have already put in a system in place.

Respond to negative reviews online-  It is always best to attempt to respond in a positive way to a negative reviewer.  Try not to be forceful as you have to remember the public will be looking on how you are conducting yourself.  Your attempt to remediate the situation can sway your public perception if it is thoughtful and rational.  Maybe your attempts to fix the problem will have the result of the reviewer removing the review entirely.  In the alternative you will have a record for the world to see how you handle complaints and you take them seriously.

Please note that these methods are not exhaustive and there are other ways to combat negative reviews online.

Online Reputation Management can be a stressful and time-consuming project.  If you are an expert or novice at it, there are many pitfalls to responding to reviewers and/or attempting to erase the review altogether.  If your business is serious about customer complaints and worried about revenues decreasing as a result of the reviews, you can hire a professional to assist you with your Online Reputation.  Falcon Consulting & Management is a digital marketing agency located in New York City that has expertise in Online Reputation Management.  If you are in need of these service feel free to call us at 855-445-9530 or e-mail at sales@falconconsultingandmarketing.com.  We handle one client at a time and have helped many small businesses in your situation.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/using-online-reputation-management-combat-negative-reviews-online/

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Duplicate Content and What to Do With It

Duplicate content is content that appears in a search engine’s index or through page results more than once. Content can be duplicated either  intentionally or mistakenly.  The most common duplicate content mistake we have seen is when business owners design their website and in a rush to put up content cut and paste from other websites.  As a matter of fact it is said that 29% of pages have duplicate content.  Although by doing this you can finish your project of getting your website up the long-term damage to your website may be pronounced.  Specifically the search engines penalize duplicate content and sends a signal of poor creativity or downright plagiarism.  Your search engine rankings will suffer and your SEO campaign can be in jeopardy.

What the search engines do is when they crawl the vast amount of pages on the web, they determine whether the content is the same as something else out there.  It is the general consensus that the original content producer would be the person who hits the web first or the first article that is indexed first would not be considered duplicate content.

Although Google can penalize you for duplicate content there are ways to safely use material that is already out there on the web.  The best way is to give credit to the original producer of the material and put quotations around the material that you are using from the article.  It is not advisable to use the entire article as a quote but the common way of using the material is exemplifying or expounding on the premise of the article.  Also critiquing the determination of the article and using content from it is perfectly fine if you use the quotations.  The reason being is you will be using the material to further your original idea.

Also, try not to use material from your competitors.  Should Google crawl your page and decide at any time that you have duplicate content or attribute it to them, they will get all the credit and your business none.  There is not any benefit in producing this type of content as you will be losing time and effort to your fellow businesses in your niche.

The best advice anyone has ever given me in any walk of life is to be original and yourself.  This is what you should be attempting to do with your content.  Although you certainly should read what is already available for research, your goal is to write original content to communicate to your audience.  They will appreciate it more and you won’t ever have to worry about being penalized for a pure mistake.

If you are having trouble with duplicate content or need more original content produced for your business then Falcon Consulting & Marketing is the company for you.  We are a New York based digital marketing agency assisting businesses one client at a time.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/duplicate-content-and-what-to-do-with-it/

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What is Rankbrain and how it affects SEO?

Since the beginning of internet marketing we have wondered what affects a company’s ability to be seen on the search engines.  It was easy to manipulate rankings in the dawn of SEO but now it is becoming more complex.  Google has put in safeguards in order to prevent internet marketing professionals from “rigging” the rankings.  Google has indicated to Search Engine Land that there are more that 200 factors that are used in the Google algorithm.  These factors also have over 11,000 variables that must be considered when measuring the algorithm.

Recently Google has confirmed the top 3 factors in determining the rankings on Google.  The three most important factors are.

1. Content- as we have articulated in many of our articles, content is king.  It is important not to skimp on quality when writing on your blog.  Google is now looking into not just hitting the necessary keywords but whether the material is valuable.  It is important to now take your time and research the material you are to write about.   Although you may be in a technical field, it is always important to write for the everyday man.  Keep sentences and phrases simple and easy to understand.
2. Link building- These are links pointed to your site.  Link building involves several sets of skills in that you have to be a content creator, salesperson, and psychologist if you want other people to consistently link to your site.  It is an arduous process for many and that has led to black hat methods.  Methods such as spamming has become prominent in the last few years but now Google has cut down on the practice by penalizing websites that use such methods.
3. Rankbrain- Rankbrain was thrust upon the masses in October 2015 as one of Google Hummingbird’s key algorithmic factors. It is Google’s evolving AI that helps refine search results and deem the most relevant pages.  Rankbrain attempts to find patterns among keywords and resolve issues with unclear queries.  It also looks for compelling content and determines how relevant it is for the particular search.  This means that writing valuable content is becoming necessary if not mandatory.  The days of keyword stuffing and having fluff articles will be less significant to Rankbrain and because it is an learning AI, it is always looking for material that answers the queries directly.

So what does this mean for content marketing and SEO?  From the 3 major factors it looks like Google has been making major attempts to curtail abuse by black hat SEO companies.  The best and legitimate way to increase your rankings and have a successful SEO campaign is to write valuable content.  Writing content that has long term benefit to the user is more beneficial than writing on current developmental news.  Of course, it surely doesn’t hurt in the short term to write about current trends in your business niche.  Especially if your company is involved and referenced in it.

Google is making it much more difficult to manipulate rankings.  The only way to legitimately have a successful SEO campaign is to invest in valuable content.  You can do that by doing the work yourself or hiring an in-house person to assist with your content marketing needs.  This can be become pricey to bring someone on and if you should decide to do it yourself, you will be spending plenty of time away from managing your core business.

In light of this it can be beneficial t0 work with a digital marketing agency that understands all of the factors that affect SEO that will be updated with new trends that will affect your online marketing campaign.  Falcon Consulting & Marketing is a digital marketing agency that can help any business with these needs.  We are a New York City based digital marketing agency that assists businesses one client at a time.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/rankbrain-affects-seo/

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Inbound Marketing For Doctors and Healthcare Practitioners

Let’s face it.  Obtaining new patients and the right price point has been difficult for the last 8 years more than anytime before.  Whether it be for urgent care centers or a reduction of choices due to buyouts of small healthcare practices it has become much harder to compete in the marketplace.  For some of the smarter savvy physicians, they are aware that internet marketing and inbound marketing in particular is a helpful tool in getting more potential patients.

To make it simple, inbound marketing is the opposite of traditional marketing has been. Think of the older strategies of marketing to include billboards, TV commercials, radio ads and direct-mail campaigns.  Inbound marketing, though, works by targeting a specific audience that’s already interested in your services. You bring this audience to your website, convert people within the audience into legitimate leads and thereafter make them patients.  Here are some great techniques we have noticed work well for healthcare practitioners to use in order to gain more patients

1.   Your website will be the foundation you need to implement a successful inbound marketing strategy. Having strong visual appeal and it being easily accessible are two main factors you must have on your website.  Also, we have seen that the consumer is going mobile.  According to new reports by 2017, 75% of internet usage will be through mobile and therefore you should have your website mobile friendly.   Remember, your website is the first impression to the patient.  The patient decides within the first second whether they want to purchase from you.  Therefore you must put your best foot forward.

2.  Putting up content on your website is critical.  Depending on where you are with your practice, you most likely have a website.  Although it is great to have the patient have a great first impression, you must have content to drive traffic to your website.  Your website is an organic aspect of your practice.  You have to treat it like that as you have to nurture you website with great content that is both informative and visually appealing.  Maintaining a blog helps with your SEO as Google crawls websites constantly looking for unique content to add to their database.  The more they find that you are a reliable authority, the faster your website will soar in the rankings leading to more leads.

3.  Using social media to increase your brand awareness-   Using social media is another important aspect that must be used by the practitioner these days.  Not only does using social media inform your patients and prospects on what is new with your practice but it is a tremendous tool in having your website rank higher with the search engines.  Google checks to see how many followers, likes, comments you have in your Facebook, Twitter etc sites and may increase rankings depending on it.  Social media can be about day-to-day interactions, as well as big ideas and awareness campaigns. You can create a Youtube channel which can focus on surgeries or have illustrations of how surgery can be performed.  Videos are amazing as they are sometimes used as illustration purposes by fellow physicians and that can assist you in becoming an authority in your field.

There are many other inbound marketing techniques that we have used to assist doctors and other healthcare practitioners that we have not covered, however we think the three above are the fastest to implement.  All our methods assisted with our clients achieve their goals of reaching more patients and generating more revenue and increasing brand awareness.  If you are a healthcare practitioner and need assistance with your inbound marketing needs, Falcon Consulting & Marketing can assist you with your needs.  We are a New York City based digital marketing agency that assists small and medium sized businesses one client at a time.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/inbound-marketing-doctors-healthcare-practitioners/

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3 out of every 4 Searches Will Be Mobile. Is Your Website Prepared?

A recent report by Reuters seventy-five percent (75%) of internet use will be mobile in 2017 according to media buying agency Zenith.  This is up 4% from 2016 as more people are using smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.  Zenith also predicts that by 2018 mobile advertising expenditures will exceed $134 billion.  The report also indicates that in only 4 years internet usage in mobile has gone from 40% to 70%.

So what does that mean to the small business?  You have to make sure that your website is adapted to mobile. You are missing many opportunities if your website isn’t mobile compatible.  Furthermore, your rankings suffer if your website is not mobile friendly as a recent release by Google in March of 2016 suggests.  Businesses should be mindful if they are running an SEO campaign in that it will not get the results desired if their website is not mobile friendly.

All growth in internet usage is in mobile, however most people are still using a laptop or desktop in order to purchase items via E-commerce sites.

With all this information, it is imperative for E-commerce and all websites to be mobile friendly.  For the E-commerce site it is  much more important as the vitality of the business depends on it.  Meaning you have be seen and ranked higher in the search engines to create more sales.

Hiring a digital marketing agency that understands what it entails to create a mobile friendly site is key to the startup.  If you have an existing website, you should consult with an agency to determine what changes need to be made in order to convert to a mobile friendly site that will not affect any marketing campaigns (SEO, PPC, SEM, Online Reputation Management) that you have going presently.  Falcon Consulting & Marketing is a digital marketing agency based in New York City that assists businesses one at a time with these needs.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/3-every-4-searches-will-mobile-website-prepared/

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Why Social Media Marketing is a Tremendous Tool to Generate Business

Businesses today are realizing that it is not enough to have a beautiful interactive website. You need a social media presence in order to keep engaged with your customers and prospects. Social Media is a group of mediated tools that allow people, organizations, groups, and businesses to communicate with one another through the exchange of information, interests, ideas, and pictures.

Social media works in two great ways for your business.  For one, it has now become the go-to word of mouth tool.  In fact, a business’s reputation can be directly affected by what is being said of them by people following them online.  Because of the anonymity of posts, companies are either getting honest opinions or are being stalked by people that have an agenda.  If is important to monitor what is being said and respond to negative comments being said of your company.  It is always a good idea to show that your company is responsive to complaints or suggestions.  Your brand will only become more familiar and friendly once you implement this strategy online.

Social media is often an exact reflection of what people are thinking in the real world as well.  The reason this is the way is because a large majority of people are now spending time on social media and it has become the fabric of our culture.  Because of this, businesses need to be responsive to what is going on there.  It is how we will be connecting with people for some time.

Social media is also terrific for improving your SEO. This is because Google searches for signs of authority.  Google looks at social shares, comments, likes and traffic. Being higher on the google searches and providing people alternative ways to find your business besides your website will bring more people asking for your services. A social media presence gives you another way to engage with your audience and build relationships. You’re not only more available to them through messages but also through posts, reviews, and tweets.

Engaging with your followers brings you a whole new light to your market. You will grow a better understanding of who your customers are and what they want. Even large corporations are taking advantage of social media.  That is because they appreciate the immediate feedback from their customers and can respond quicker to complaints.  Large corporations have hired an entire digital marketing staff to not only market their products but to also respond to their customers and troubleshoot problems with products immediately.

Building your social media presence should be done intuitively and straightforward.  It should reflect the values of your company and brand.  By being authentic it will not only help you in your ranking and SEO but also will allow you to build long term relationship with your clients that will generate business for you on a recurring basis.

Building a social media presence takes time and effort.  If you or your company do not have the resources or manpower to work on your social media then hiring a digital marketing agency would be a great idea.  Falcon Consulting & Marketing is a digital marketing agency located in New York City that can assist.  We help small and medium sized businesses with not only putting up post but also engaging your customers with content that will be SEO friendly.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/social-media-marketing-tremendous-tool-generate-business/

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Google Penguin 4.0 Update. How will it affect your SEO campaign?

Google’s 6th revision to Penguin has not come and is called Penguin 4.0.  On September 23, 2016, Google rolled out it’s latest edition.  This is what was released by them via their Webmaster Central Blog:

Google’s algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that make it possible to surface what you might be looking for. These signals include things like the specific words that appear on websites, the freshness of content, your region and PageRank. One specific signal of the algorithms is called Penguin, which was first launched in 2012 and today has an update.

After a period of development and testing, we are now rolling out an update to the Penguin algorithm in all languages. Here are the key changes you’ll see, which were also among webmasters’ top requests to us:

• Penguin is now real-time. Historically, the list of sites affected by Penguin was periodically refreshed at the same time. Once a webmaster considerably improved their site and its presence on the internet, many of Google’s algorithms would take that into consideration very fast, but others, like Penguin, needed to be refreshed. With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page. It also means we’re not going to comment on future refreshes.
• Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.

The web has significantly changed over the years, but as we said in our original post, webmasters should be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling websites. It’s also important to remember that updates like Penguin are just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine rank.

So what does that mean for the small business owner or SEO practitioner?

1.  Beware of black hat link building tactics- using services in order to link build should be cautioned.  Although we are not certain how it will negatively affect your site, we do know that it is real time so therefore you will see the results pretty quickly.  At the end of the day it will be very difficult to change the negative status and penalties of using these methods.
2. Google Penguin now impacts all levels like domain, folders, pages and probably also keywords and keyword groups. So anything that goes into the organic rankings will now be affected by the Penguin algorithm on a granular level.
3. Content and data-driven analysis along with knowledge in order to amplify to a targeted audience via multiple channels; social media, paid search, digital PR will be key.  You have to become more of a marketer instead of relying of tricks.
4. Write better!!  Content will become more important.  You have to be able to analyze your subjects and give more value via research driven content that the audience will find unique and useful.  Once you are able to get accustomed to writing in this fashion the better.

Google 4.0 will reduce the idea of using black hat methods and using internet marketing companies that use template boring material that just attempts to hit keywords instead of giving their customers value by writing great content.  Google Penguin 4.0 may become great for the client as it will make companies providing SEO services draft and post better articles in the small business owner’s niche market.

Falcon Consulting & Marketing have always used professional writers to draft articles that have complied with Penguin 4.0.  It has always been our policy to not just hit the appropriate keywords but to make sure that the material is worthy to be posted on behalf of a client.  We are a digital marketing agency located in New York City assisting small businesses one client at a time.   We are positioned to help many companies achieved their goals and comply with Google Penguin 4.0.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/google-penguin-4-0-update-know/

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Measuring Return on Investment (ROI) for Home Improvement Marketing

Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. ROI measures the amount of return on an investment relative to the investment’s cost. To calculate ROI, the benefit (or return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment, and the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

The return on investment formula:

Times have changed when you had only several directories or avenues that customers can find you.   Often times customers can find your website from one of your mailers that you do during the year. They can also call the number on your Facebook business page. Perhaps they find you on Google, then visit your Twitter page before calling. Besides that if you have any idea on using the local directories that are used in local SEO companies, you can also submit your company to multiple sites as well.  That makes it almost impossible to measure if say for instance you are using several phone numbers of gimmicks of that nature that were used in the past.  At Falcon Consulting & Marketing, we have be asked many times by our clients how to measure their return on investment (ROI).  Below is some ways we believe work best:

1.. Train your sales team to ask every new prospective customer how they heard of you before you can schedule an appointment. This allows you to track their ability to convert. It also can show you what is working for you and what is not. For instance, if you run a mailer and get 15 new customers scheduled from it but only 2 show, you may need to evaluate whether the design of your mailer is sufficient or in the alternative whether you are investment your money in the right technique.

2. You should have an employee or several in place that is able to analyze you referral sources. Break down each referral source by month and put the number of new customers from that source.

3. Analyze your advertising budget constantly.  You should consider how much it cost per advertising vehicle per month by how many customers you are gaining by it.  For instance, if you are paying $2,400.00 per month on your Pay Per Click (PPC)  and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns and retaining 12 new projects then the average would be $200 per new job.  Compare it to say your mailer campaign which can cost say $450 per customer.  You also need to take into account what the value is of the contract you will sign with the client.  If the six contracts has you gain $60,000 in revenue then you are only gaining only $50,000 on the mailers then that should be taken into consideration as well.  It is important to constantly do this as your techniques will need to adapt to current conditions.  You have to adapt to the times when it comes to advertising like anything else in business.  These numbers are crucial in determining where to place your marketing budget. Also as your marketing strategies grow, so will your ROI if you are doing things right if you are vigilant about it.

If you are interested in maximizing on your ROI and want someone to monitor it for you, Falcon Consulting & Marketing will be able to assist you with all your consulting needs.  We are a full service digital marketing agency located in New York City assisting small and medium sized businesses one client at a time.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/measuring-return-investment-roi-home-improvement-marketing/

Visit us at www.falconconsultingandmarketing.com

4 Ways to Generate Leads Using Twitter

Forget what some say, Twitter is here to stay and it is a great tool to B2B and B2C lead generation opportunities.  To date, Twitter has 316 million active users who post an average of 500 million tweets each day. It has also been reported that b2b marketers can generate 2.5x as many leads as someone who doesn’t have a twitter account.  Based on this there shouldn’t be a reason for not having a twitter account if you are a small business and all your competition does.  The length of a twitter post of 140 characters means that you need to get to the point and succinct in your message.  Once you get the hang of sending out a tweet (which shouldn’t take you long to do), you should start considering how to generate leads using twitter.  Below are four ways that we believe can generate leads for your business on twitter.

1.  Start conversations with prospects on twitter- If you are building a following of people who are interesting in your product or service, you can easily begin conversations with your target audience.  There are times that your audience may have questions and you can answer their questions without a hard sell.  Showing yourself as a thoughtful leader in your field comes off well with your twitter followers.  Try to answer your questions and you can retweet their request to the rest of your followers.  It will allow others to answer the question.  You can also direct message the follower so you can have a private conversation.  It is at this point where you can get more information about that person.  It will only help you in the long run when your followers or that particular individual is looking for the service in the future.  Also, everyone following you will see how you deal with questions and will be more receptive to you in the future.  It will be a win-win situation in the future.
2. Run deals and promotions- Raffles, giveaways, discounts are all great to do for your followers.  If you are having a forum or conference, it will guarantee people showing up.  Your audience will look into your products more by giving away deals.  Also they will follow you more intently if they believe you will be giving away more deals in the future.
3. Build relationship with influencers either locally or in your field-  You should identify key influencers on Twitter by watching who people are retweeting and following. A rule of thumb is the more followers, the more influential a person is. It is always a good idea to see how many people that person is following in relation to following.  If the ratio is close to 1:1 it is most likely that they do not have as much influence as someone who is only following a limited amount of people.  Replying to and retweeting relevant content from these influencers may alert these high value persons of you and they may like you or retweet something that you have posted.  A single tweet from this person can gain you many new followers and give you a standing as an influencer yourself.
4. Spend time every day posting-  It is important for your followers to know that you are engaged in the process.  If you go away for a significant amount of time, some will lose interest in you and unfollow you.  It will be hard to gain that momentum back after losing the time.  What should be done is find a time generally every day that you will have time and try to consistently tweet everyday.  Consistency is key on twitter.

By using twitter, you can have customers coming to you, which is what we all want.  Remain consistent and you will certainly see great results.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/4-ways-to-generate-leads-using-twitter/

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Why Hiring a Google Adwords Expert is A Good Idea

Have you been in your office thinking about why your Adwords campaign isn’t running effectively.  If so, have you thought about getting an expert to help you with your Adwords account?  Many small to medium sized businesses have and you are certainly not alone.  Some companies try to do it themselves and this is a major mistake.  Although it is cost effective to not hire an expert, you are still paying for your Adwords campaign per your budget and you can be losing money every month.

The system of Adwords as a beginner is very complex to understand.  It is intimidating just to look at it and understand the terminologies on the screen.  As a matter of fact, it has grown much more complex in the last few years.  For the businessperson, it is very time consuming and onerous to understand the Adwords system.  That is why it is easiest just to hire someone with the technical expertise to work for you.  It might cost you a few dollars in the beginning but your ROI will certainly increase as a result. Here are some of the reasons you should hire an expert:

AdWords Experts Get Better Results

It is obvious that you would want to get the best possible results from your campaign.  With the competition so high and the time to learn all the technical jargon in limited amount you would get creamed by your competitors.  An expert would know what you are looking for and how to maximize your investment.

AdWords Experts Reduce Costs In the Long Run

For the small or medium sized business, cost is one of the biggest factors.  It can be the difference with having a meal with your family out or having the same bland casserole at home.  Everyone wants to save money, and being risk averse means there is a thinking that hiring an Adwords Expert would cost too much.  This would be opposite than the truth. By working with the experts, who can help to streamline the company’s campaign, it actually reduces costs. Experts would maximize your lead generation and reduce waste in your overall Adwords campaign.  In essence, the fee paid to the Adwords expert would be the substitution for the waste by doing it yourself.

AdWords Experts Change and Works Your Campaign Constantly

A campaign that doesn’t change can be a dead campaign in the long run. Your AdWords campaign needs to be active and it needs to change.  There is a need for it to reflect the overall market and changes to it. Campaigns left alone will end up costing the business much more than hiring someone to manage it.

An AdWords Expert Are Hired to Drive New Leads and Conversions to You

When the campaign is run the right way, it will help to bring in new business. It will bring in new leads and inquiries.  You will be able to start a new sales funnel with prospects coming in.  As an owner or executive you have an obligation to do all you can to generate more revenue and you should do all in your power to do so.

You’ve Found One of New York City’s Best AdWords Experts!

Now that you know why you should hire an AdWords specialist, you might be wondering where you can find one of these experts. Fortunately, for you, we are the perfect place. We are true AdWords experts and we can assist businesses generate more revenue and get more clients or customer.

Hire Local Google New York City AdWords Specialists Today

It’s time you hired New York City’s best Pay Per Click (PPC) experts. Get in touch with Falcon Consulting & Marketing today to learn more about AdWords as well as how we will be able to help your company. Call us Monday through Friday from 9AM to 5PM at 855-445-9530 or e-mail us at sales@falconconsultingandmarketing.com. We look forward to helping you.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/why-hiring-a-google-adwords-expert-is-a-good-idea/

Visit us at www.falconconsultingandmarketing.com

Audit Reports of Website Improves Effectiveness of SEO

Much in the same way we go to an accountant to audit our accounts and determine our financial welfare, the same can be said to do an Audit report regularly on your website.  SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  needs are constantly changing as the Google, Yahoo and Bing algorithms evolve and shift. It is easy to get complacent and fall behind your competitors this way. An annual SEO audit can help keep your website maintain its effectiveness, remain current and avoid negative ramifications of algorithm changes that may put you in conflict with the search engines and get your penalized.  Once your website gets penalized, it is very difficult to fix the issues and get site to rank again.

For many small to medium sized companies, audit reports will give you important information as to how your website is performing and you will be able to focus on of improvement. For more complex websites or if you have been penalized by the search engines, you will have to use automated tools in a more extensive audit. Tools-based audits are designed to provide data that can be used to make impactful changes to your website.

The most important focus should be making sure that when you get the audit report you are able to interpret it.  Not being able to interpret it or a misinterprentation can be worse than not having an audit report.  If you are not familiar with audit reports or need assistance interpreting it, Falcon Consulting & Marketing are experts and Audit Reports.  We understand the rules and changes to SEO and will work with you in identifying the issues in your site and how we can use the audit report to increase more visitors and revenue for your company.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/audit-reports-of-website-improves-effectiveness-of-seo/

Visit us at www.falconconsultingandmarketing.com

Using Social Media To Increase SEO Results

Many in the industry see Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media marketing as totally two different marketing genres and therefore they use different strategies around it. It is Falcon Consulting & Marketing’s position that the two just like everything else you are doing with your online marketing should be aligned and helps each marketing approach symbiotically.

As an New York City Search Engine Optimization expert we are often asked, “How can we integrate both of them and how are they related?”

The answer is clearly one answer for both questions.  That is  both are related in that they are content marketing techniques. Posting unique, high quality, optimized-for-search-engines content is one of the keys in both SEO and social media strategy elements. As a jumping off point for your marketing, here is where we believe you can increase your SEO results by working diligently on your Social Media Marketing:

Build and Grow Your Social Media Following

The search engines look at your social media following to increase your Domain Authority.  Simply if you have more followers than your competitors, your will get an uptick in Domain Authority increasing your rankings.

In order to build and grow your following base, you simply need to:
Try to post engaging and relevant content to your followers.  It is important that you attempt to post regularly.  We advise to try to maintain a schedule on posting.  Say for instance if you have free time on Wednesdays and Thursdays before lunch every week then that should be the time that you should post.  Maintain that schedule.  It is also important to communicate to your audience when they ask you questions and maintain high levels of customer service.  Also, a simple tool you can use is post polls for your audience to answer to keep them engaged with your brand.

What you should not do under no circumstances is pay for likes.  Google has been penalizing businesses that have been doing this.  Once you are penalized it is really difficult to correct the problem.  As an established New York City digital marketing agency that focuses on SEO, we do not do this at all.

Share your content to all your social media avenues

Sharing content creates a high domain authority backlink from say a Google plus or Facebook back to your website.  By people thereafter sharing your backlinks, it will give your website a higher domain authority and your keywords will rank higher.

Remain consistent and maintain your stamina!!!

Nothing can be done is the short term.  You have to remain vigilant in your marketing campaign and that is the only way you will see consistent verifiable results.  If you do it with all your social media platforms you will definitely see results in your rankings increase and your strategies will align more easily.

If you do not believe that you can afford the time to align your social media campaign to your search engine optimization, then you should hire a professional digital marketing agency like Falcon Consulting & Marketing to guide you through it.  Digital marketing agencies like ours have the resources and tools to help you reach your goals in increasing leads and revenue.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/using-social-media-to-increase-seo-results/

Visit us at www.falconconsultingandmarketing.com

Starting a Business in New York? Here is What You Need to Do

We here at Falcon Consulting & Marketing primarily achieve success for our clients by maximizing their advertising dollars by implementing strategies to increase their Return on Investment (ROI).  Before you are able to get to that point in the game, one must actually open up a company.  Opening up a company is a painless experience if you know what you are doing.  Also, with a little forethought, it can set you up for any potential litigation or bad-will in the future.  Being an entrepreneur is a wonderful thing for many.  You get to set you own hours and can guide your future the way you would want to.   It is an exciting experience and we have worked with many individuals that have deciding to leave their secured job to the small business life.

Here is what we believe start-up companies should do when they are ready to start their business:

Choose what type of business structure you want to be:

In New York, your choices are: sole proprietor, partnership, corporation (C corporation or S corporation) or limited liability company (LLC).  You should speak with a CPA (certified public accountant) to see what structure is the best for your tax situation and speak with an attorney to discuss various structure options.  There are costs associated with choosing an LLC that goes above and beyond the Corporation and other entities.  Also, you should look into a structure that is flexible as your business grows. For example, if you hope to attract investors,  an LLC  or corporation might be the better business entity. If you are opening up a not for profit organization 501(c)(3), there are more rules involves and that would include the purpose of your organization.

Everything should be done via  a written agreement  and signed by the business partners.  You are working with other people that even though you might have a great relationship with someone now, you never know whether there will be a misunderstanding in the future that can jeopardize your capital investment and salary.  Also an agreement should set forth what everyone is responsible for and how you can terminate or opt out of the agreement.  With business, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

Choose a name for your business

Corporations must contain the word “corporation”, “incorporated” or “limited”, or an abbreviation of one of such words.  Also, the name of the corporation cannot be the same as any other New York corporation, limited liability company or limited partnership.  If it is even similar to another name, the State will not allow you to pick the name and you will have to search again. The resource that works very well New York Corporation Database.  You can find it online via the Department of State website.  It is very easy to use and you will get an idea pretty quickly on what names are out there to use.

Apply for a Tax Identification Number with the IRS

Here is the link to the IRS’ How to Apply for an EIN (with separate instructions for Corporations, International Businesses, Partnerships, and Small Business/Self-Employed).  Your applying by telephone is sometimes easier than via the online method.

Open up a bank account

Once you have your federal tax ID, you should open bank account(s) in the name of the business.   Generally the bank will need to see your legal business formation documents.  You should include your corporate by-laws which indicates who has authority to act on behalf of your corporation.

Get the necessary permits to run your business

It is important to know whether you can conduct business in New York without a permit or license.  You should contact the Department of State to see whether you need a permit to work in your area before you start anything.  You should be familiar with this before expending money on incorporating your business.

Once you have done all of these steps then you are ready to be your own boss.  If you have any questions or need assistance please contact Falcon Consulting & Marketing.  We are a New York City based digital marketing agency that has helped small businesses one client at a time.

https://falconconsultingandmarketing.com/starting-a-business-in-new-york-here-is-what-you-need-to-do/

Visit us at www.falconconsultingandmarketing.com