OPT offers you top 5 tips that your competitors will already know! read on… It is fair to say that online pr is NOT the same as offline pr. The differences are significant.  And it is important to learn that both are pitched differently.  This is something successful marketeers have learnt over time and you can learn this from them. Online PR is a varied mixture of brand reputation monitoring and management activities and it’s main goal to influence media, communities and au

How about beginning a audio or video tutorial for your niche? Do you think that your audience will benefit from you offering them a mentoring service? Tips and Tricks for your specialist service? Whether your skills lie in being a creative or an expert in your niche (you could be a great golfer or know how and when to pot certain plants a musician, or a retail manager, etc) Think of the qualities you could share with other businesses in your field or your online clientele. Re

Sometimes, real life, meeting people, talking to people, finding out what they like, what they don’t like and what they want is invaluable. Invaluable to a business that is learning about its customers. Completely necessary for a product or service to be the best it can possibly be. So, actually getting up and out of the office, or your comfy office chair and shaking someone’s hand is gold dust! Too often we get stuck behind our computer screens, making friends and winning pe

Ok – so we now know how to set up an ad campaign on Facbeook. But where to drive them is just as important. Driving fans to a page that contains a “ Reveal Tab ” hiding exclusive Fan content is the most effective way to convert visitors to fans.  And now Facebook has evolved somewhat, we can now add custom tabs and pages and tailor make them so only fans who have ‘liked’ your page can see certain content.  Genius! Therefore, it would be a waste of an opportunity if you just d

Monday I spoke about split testing your ads. You get that now!? Then comes the content part. It is integral for you to think clearly about what you want to say on your ad. Firstly you have to recognise what you want to achieve from it. Sales? Promotion? Click throughs? Redirection? News? What do you want people to do when they have read it? Where do you want to take them? Now, have you looked at your keywords recently? If you have answered ‘No!’ then thats next on the age

Happy Monday people. This week we are going to chat about Facebook’s advertising platform and how to run a brilliant campaign that will increase sales, likes, click throughs etc.  We cover the basics here on the OPT blog so Novices, this is for you! So, why run a Facebook ad? The biggest plus? You can target specific demographics and the targeting options are wide.  You can really pinpoint who you want to hit as people share all kinds of information with Facebook about what t

What Actually Motivates Us To Share? We covered a few points on the motivation of sharing last week.  Here are a few more tips… 1.Interesting or Insightful Material. People share material because they have find it useful or think others might find it interesting in some way shape or form. We are motivated to show others the stuff we think they will love. Alternatively,  people might share content which is relevant to them only,  but not necessarily the recipient -showing off

Tweets that are filled with hashtags get 5% fewer click-throughs than those without hashtags. Say  Social Media B2B .  So why use them? I hear you cry.  Well, I can only take from this that you have to use them sparingly and at the right time.  Hashtags, when talking about a specific subject or event obviously help you join in the conversation and network with people that are talking about the same thing, but if you are using them loosely, for example, #ireland #typical #gras

Those that have been writing a blog for longer than 6 months will now realise that keeping your content, fresh, readable and interesting is a task in itself.  You will also know that the management of that content and the implementation is also a huge commitment, let alone time consuming. Well, there are a million or so plus other bloggers on this planet and you will already know (if you do your research well) that there are others doing what you do too! Instead of looking th

Monday, we talked about strategy vs plan.  Today’s post is all about the plan and what it should include.  This is based on a traditional Marketing plan.  Now we are talking about online business and PR here. Let’s not forget, but this kind of plan can be implemented as such, as long as the bones are all in place! It should include: Details of your product or service and its Unique Selling Point Pricing Target Market Analysis Sales and distribution plan Advertising and promot

We’ve talked about blogging this week.  You should now be at a point where you can safely post something up online consistently.  Sharing your blog is the next step. There are now great sites to help you distribute your blog. And this year is it ALL about GREAT CONTENT!  I’ll talk about this more in the coming weeks but PLEASE take the time and write good stuff!  Really give this a lot of thought and look at what your competitors are blogging about.  Make yours better, richer

If you are an advanced blogger, start thinking about your yearly campaign. If you remember, back when we were talking about ‘ planning your time ’ it’s so important to plan before you write. Anyway – back to you guys that are just starting out. You need to decide; a) What do you wish to achieve from your blog? b) How you wish your blog to be perceived? c) Will you write a monthly and give out a lot of info? d) Will you write a daily bite size offering? e) I

Welcome to 2012! How’s the head?! OPT have talked mostly about social media and how it can help your business.  We hopefully all know now that it is unavoidable.  You just have to make the decision to either employ someone to look after it or adapt and introduce new jobs into your daily routines. Let’s begin this year, by hammering home some mega easy and positive steps towards getting your business out there online in 2012. Honing its online presence and giving your baby a r

I would like to thank our followers and wish all our readers a very happy and restful Christmas and a prosperous New Year! I also hope that I have started an informative and exciting development service for you to add to your weekly reading lists. If you would like to provide content on this blog or collaborate in any way, shape or form. then please get in touch! Here’s to 2012! Andrea #socialcommunities #SmallBiz #thinkandtweetlater #Twitter #socialmediaplanning #onlineprtip

There are many pros and cons to choosing your own name for your business.  I have struggled with this question for years but stuck with my own personal name for many reasons. The most important being, that I had a ready-made audience. Obviously your name gives a certain personality to a company, product or service and many clients prefer that personal touch. Therefore it can work in your favour in many industries. If you remember my blog ‘The Art of Self Promotion (1 of 5) ’

If you are using the wrong domain name for your business, product or service, you should seriously think about changing it now! You could be missing out on quite a hefty amount of free marketing. Ask yourself these questions: Is it easy to spell and remember? Is it your own personal name that is hard to spell and remember? Does it contain a dot or slash in it anywhere? Does your domain name contain word repetition? And are the words spelled differently? Is it similar to anoth

We have discovered that your name is really important for online marketing but how does it actually affect your strategy? Simple.  A good name will allow you to be flexible and creative in your marketing plans.  This is not about design, although if you are a business that is lead by good design, this will also need to be reflected in your name. We loved this article” Pandecta Magazine http://www.pandecta.com , although written in 2009 – many of the issues remain the same. Bu

As mentioned yesterday, your business name/domain name could be the only thing that is holding you back from getting the traffic you need to succeed online. I have spoken with brand experts who believe that names should be almost a blank canvas, in which to build the image of your business upon.  Some swear by a coined name that are made up of ‘halves of words joined together. I believe that any name can be fabulous, as long as it is justified with an appropriate marketing s

As we hit the silly season, over the next 5 days I will be discussing the importance of your domain name and will be answering the following questions: How important is the name in business? How does the name of your business affect Online Marketing Campaign? Should you change your domain name? Should you use your OWN name for your domain? The name of your business could make or break your success. It should speak of the expertise, value and uniqueness of your product, servic

“Another fantastic, free social media tool that can boost your results and save you time”  OPT First launched as ‘Tweet Later” Social Oomph allows you to schedule tweets. Blogs and manage your follows among other things. If you are like us and manage plenty of twitter accounts, blogs and sites it is an essential part of your life! Also – it enables you to sit down at a convenient time and plan your weeks social media updates, then forget about them! We at OPT like it because