How to Drive Higher Twitter Engagement For Your E-Commerce Business?

If you have an e-commerce business, you need to have a strategy for driving higher Twitter engagement. If you have not, you are missing out on an opportunity to increase your sales, boost your reputation, and grow your business. 

Add A Photo To Your Tweet.

A photo can increase the amount of engagement you receive on Twitter. However, you have to take a few steps to ensure you're using the right size of an image. The ideal image size for a desktop is 1600 pixels by 900 pixels. It is also recommended to use a 2:1 aspect ratio or a 16:9 ratio for mobile. You can upload up to four images per tweet. In addition, you should make sure you include a caption. Captions are a great way to add a bit of interest to your post and draw more people's attention. Another tactic is to use hashtags. Hashtags are an easy way for followers to share your content with others. If you want to increase the number of people you reach on Twitter, it's important to follow the 80/20 rule. You should focus 80% of your posts on driving interaction and 20% on marketing your product or service. For example, if you're an e-commerce business, you could retweet customer photos to provide social proof of your company's existence. Also, you can link to a special promotion or feature of your product.

Add To A Trending Conversation.

If you want to increase your Twitter engagement, one of the best ways to do this is to participate in a trending conversation. Not only will you add value to the topic, but you will also be able to take advantage of the trending social media craze. This means interacting with your existing customers and gaining more visibility in your feeds can be a successful way to drive higher engagement with your target demographics. Moreover, you may even be able to find new followers if you're active enough. Luckily, there are a few ways you can do this. For starters, check out the hashtags that are trending. There are dozens of them, and you can find them by doing a quick search. You can even choose trending topics based on location and interest.

Have A Casual Back-And-Forth Conversation With Your Audience

A Twitter account can be a great way to engage your audience. You can post short questions about your product, spout customer testimonials and have fun with it. The best part is that you can reply to and follow others who are already a part of your social network. One of the most effective ways to get your foot in the door is to find out who your followers are and what they want from you. After all, no one wants to spend time writing posts or tweeting about stuff that doesn't excite them. While Twitter isn't the most interactive e-commerce platform, it isn't necessarily the worst either. You can enjoy a steady stream of new followers with proper planning and implementation. Using hashtags, you'll have a much easier time keeping your content fresh and relevant.

Find Out Who Your Competitors Are Engaging With

If you are looking for ways to make your e-commerce business more successful, consider finding out who your competitors are engaging with on Twitter. This can give you an idea of which strategies are working for your competitors and help you fine-tune your strategy if they aren't. You should even adopt their strategies if they work. However, you should also watch out for strategies that don't work for your competitors. You can also use a tool to find unfiltered consumer feedback about your business. When analyzing your competitors, you can look at their posting schedules and frequency and the pictures they use in their posts. Also, you can keep an eye on their followers and follower count. Using these statistics can tell you how many people are actually talking about your company's products and services on Twitter and how many are simply following you.

4 Steps to Create a Logo

Designing a logo can be a stressful matter for business owners. It can seem difficult to create a logo that captures everything about your business that you want it to, while also looking great and being memorable. In the past, firms had to hire outside help from expensive designers for logos, but now you can design it with a logo maker. Designing a logo has never been more easy, fun, and cost-effective! 

Learn the 4 steps to create a logo below. 

1. Choose the Look & Feel

First, you'll be given a list of different design examples of logos that display a look and feel. Some of these feels include active, fresh, sleek, fun, and retro with an accompanying example logo. You can pick up to three in this stage, which allows the logo maker to get an idea of the styles you prefer. 

2. Pick a Template

Next, a few logo templates will appear on the screen. These serve as a general outline of the format of your logo. Some options here will have an image on top with text on the bottom, text on either side of an image, or text within an image or shape. Most options are simple and straightforward, as any good logo should be, but you can change around nearly any aspect of these templates in the following step.  

3. Personalize Your Logo

This is where the real fun begins! During this stage, you can take the logo that the logo maker has made for you using your preferences, and tweak it further to get exactly what you are looking for. Play around with the colors, shapes, clipart, text, and more to your heart's content. 

Some people find it helpful to create a couple of different logos during this stage to get feedback from colleagues, employees, or friends and family members. Think about what kinds of products this logo might show up on, whether it's company clothing, business cards, mugs, or on social media. This can help you further narrow down the details of your prospective logo. 

4. Download Your New Logo

Once you have hammered out the details of your logo, it's ready to download! When downloading your logo, you will be given two logo files. One will have a solid background, and the other will have a transparent background, making it easy to put one or the other on whatever you need. 

From here, you can use your logo on your brand's social media pages or website, or you can put it on customized merchandise to sell to your fans! 

Designing a Logo Just Got Easier

The logo maker software is straightforward and intuitive, and anyone can make an eye-catching, professional logo in a matter of minutes. Some people prefer to stay closer to the templates the logo maker recommends, and others like to take their time and let their creative juices flow. 

Either way, you can relax while knowing that logo design no longer has to be a stressful, expensive endeavor.

5 Reasons To Run A Background Check

You might have come across the term ‘background check’ in context of employee recruitment or security purposes, but these are not the only reasons to perform this. Companies often perform background checks on potential recruits and check public records, before hiring them. A background check is basically a report on an individual that reveals his/her criminal record, education history, financial history and other public records.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

5 Reasons to Perform a Background Check

Online security and background checks have made it easier to get hold of an individual’s bio data, check public records and uncover information that you might not be able to get otherwise. Here are the top 5 reasons why individuals and organizations conduct background checks on others. 

1. To Make Employment Decisions: A background check can reveal a lot about an individual and holds an important place in most employment decisions. Firms want to make sure that they are hiring trustworthy employees to keep everyone safe. They want to keep workplace violence, theft and other security-related issues to the minimum by not hiring unqualified individuals possessing unsatisfactory past record. HR managers often perform background checks on candidates, before making employment decisions.   
2. For Litigation Purposes: These checks are a valuable tool to criminal defense attorneys who can use them in courts, in favor of or against an individual. Information from these inspections can be used to lend credibility to a person or an argument, prove his/her honesty, or for verification purposes. The same information can be used to prove the opposite, making Kentucky criminal background checks (or similar criminal background checks in your area) incredibly useful in a court of law. 
3. Relationships: Background investigations have found their way in the world of relationships as well, and are not only confined to private companies and government organizations. People nowadays have become more cautious of whom they spend their time and live with. They would like to make sure that their ‘significant other’ is trustworthy enough and does not have a questionable background. In this regard, a background investigation is often the most reliable method of checking whether you are with the right person or not.  
4. For Security Purposes: This is most applicable in government organizations, where candidates are appointed on sensitive government positions. Before being appointed to such positions, officials must get security clearance, which can be done through a background inspection.
5. Before Commencing a Business: When starting a new business or striking a deal with someone, people want to know whether the person they are dealing with is honest and reliable. They would like to ensure that their money is not falling into wrong hands, and thus run a check to verify the identity and background of the other person. Background checks are also performed by investors when they want to invest their money in a company or before handing it over to complete strangers.

Background investigations are a reliable source of information and could save you from a lot of trouble in future. Even though some people might consider them as invasion in their privacy, these checks can actually prove to be quite useful in this age of constantly rising crimes and scams.

3 Internet Marketing Ideas for Tech Companies

Have your marketing brainstorming sessions hit a dead end? Are your current strategies to market your technology falling short of set goals? Here you will find some unique marketing strategies and ideas that will help boost your online visibility and presence, attracting the right potential leads.

Why Should a Tech Company Market Itself?

No matter the niche, every organization needs marketing. Marketing is the fuel that drives more traffic to your organization’s website, staying at the front in your customers’ minds, creating new subscribers, leads and customers. Without an Internet marketing strategy, potential customers may not even know you exist, even as they look for products and services you offer.

With great marketing, a tech organization like yours will reach more potential customers, educate the leads on why they should take on your services and create long-lasting, mutually beneficial business relationships. Of course, the main challenge is finding out what online marketing ideas will take your tech organization to the next level.

1. Exchange Your Best Content for Email Addresses

If you do not want to offer your most valuable content to people free, you really do not have to. Instead, consider sending your content by selectively choosing emails or requiring email addresses first in exchange for the content. This strategy will prove valuable in the end.

For example, if your organization has a cloud application that integrates merchant credit services for small businesses, you can have a detailed guide to using the application. Restrict access to the guide until visitors to your website enter their name, company name, email address, or any other information you want. Many users  don’t like to enter a long list of information to get your  content, so  be selective in what you request.After entering the information, the visitor is automatically subscribed to your mailing list or you can channel them to a specific email campaign depending on their niche market.

2. On-Site Forms for Leads

However, you do not need to rely on a single contact form, email address or phone number to attract leads. You can use many alternate methods to convert potential subscribers or customers into leads. Pop-ups are great because they are attention grabbing; unfortunately, few Internet users like them.

If you are not a fan of pop-ups and do not want them on your website, consider adding a Contact Us box on virtually every page on your website. The contact box allows potential leads to have a method of contacting you whenever and wherever they are on your website.

3. Create and Publish Educational Content

If you have not started, this is the best time to start producing content for your website in the form of videos, guides, whitepapers, or posts. Whether you are providing software or hardware solutions, there is a lot to benefit from content that educates customers. The content you post or send to your customers should answer their questions and help them make smarter buying decisions.


Content should not be hyper-focused on your organization’s products and services, it should be relevant to your niche and, most importantly, what your leads are interested in. For example, if you produce networking hardware, you can provide content that will be most helpful to individuals looking for networking solutions. Some of the topics you could focus on include guiding on how to set up networks, blog posts on wireless network security, a video on how to install the equipment or a review of time-tracking software like Clockspot.

Typically, the content should not push visitors into buying your product, but should help you to rank high in search engines and attracting more customers. In fact, 37 percent of marketers agree that blogs on business websites are most valuable in content marketing. This means that you should post your content on a regular basis for the campaign to be successful.

Stay-at-home Jobs – Some People Love Them, Some Don’t (Guest Post)

Working from home is a subject that is met with both positivity and negativity for different reasons. While some believe that it is a great thing that people are able in this day and age to complete their work duties from the comfort of their own homes, other consider that this is not a beneficial thing due to the fact that it brings with it some disadvantages.  Both sides could be considered correct depending on which you choose to lean on. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have some arguments for both for and against working from home. Many people want to learn more about what it means to work from home and they would surely love a couple of reasons for which it’s a good or bad idea. If you’ve already decided that you want to work from home you can try this out.

Let’s go on and see what the disadvantages are. We’re starting with the negative aspects then hop over to the pluses to see which side makes a better point. In the end you can draw a line and decide whether or not a stay-at-home job would suit you.

• You don’t get to chat with your office friends if you work from home. If that’s something you like doing, this may be considered a downside
• You have to constantly find the willpower to start work each day since there’s no schedule to tell you that you have to start at a precise hour
• It can be challenging to maintain the same work ethic when there is no one around to correct you or your work
• Speaking of correcting work, your boss won’t see how hard you are in fact working and will only judge you based on your number, so if you don’t put out the same performance each day he’ll think you’re slacking
• You have to re-arrange a significant deal of space in your home to accommodate your home office especially if you have a lot of things that you need around you for work

Now that we’ve seen what the downsides are to working from home, let’s take a look at the positive aspects.

• You can save up a lot of money on gas and other expenses that come up when you have to commute to work
• You get to spend more time home with your family and also take care of the household more since you can set your own schedule to a certain degree
• You can work without distractions like office chatter and commit fully to your tasks for the day
• You can sleep in more since you don’t have to wake up as early to get to the workplace
• You can wear whatever you want and sit in whichever position you see fit so that you are in your most comfortable state

How to Choose Keywords for SEO (Guest Post)

We all know how important it is to use the right keywords for your website. Identifying the most relevant keywords and key phrases can be essential for the success of your website and therefore business, so it is something you should totally treat seriously. Before doing such a thing, it is advisable to know the SEO process well so that your results could be useful.

Step 1. Have a keyword list

Place yourself in the shoes of your target consumer. If you would like to reach your website, what kind of words would you choose to search on Google? Also keep in mind that many users do not use a proper sentence structure or grammar rules. The order of the words is not necessarily the right one, so be prepared for such exceptions too. Use brainstorming for finding the right keywords and write down anything that comes to your mind. For example, people are more likely to look up “seo Chicago in IL” than write “SEO companies offering service in IL”.

Step 2. Research other keywords

You can use special analytic programs or Google’s suggestions to find alternative keywords. Take the list you have in Excel and start looking up each keyword there. But don’t press enter! Let Google suggest you other words there and write down those too. For example, wordstream.com offers a free keyword research tool which you can use. Also keep an eye for the most popular search terms out there.

Step 3. Careful with the pitfalls

Pay attention to possible pitfalls! These are vanity keywords, most of them formed by one word, which are really generic and descriptive. If you have a political campaign, probably you shouldn’t invest in generic keywords such as “senator”, “politics” or “election”, since they are too broad to bring you useful visitors.

Step 4. Test the SEO keywords

Take the list you made with the useful keywords for your website and test them. Check out the terms that belong to your analytics and which have good test results on WordStream.com. Rank them and see which ones make it to the top of the list. The next step is to buy pay-per-click ads only on the search engines that bring most traffic to the website. Then all you have to do is to sit back and see how do these keywords perform.

Step 5. Do weekly reports

Every week you should do a report and see how your website is going. In this way you can track any changes, whether for good or bad, and you can prevent other future lows. Compare the results to the baseline you had in the beginning in order to see if the SEO tactics are successful.