7 Steps to Automate Your Online Business and Increase Sales

Today's entrepreneurs care about being passionate about work and knowing that it has a larger meaning. As entrepreneurs, we like our work to make some impact and help to make the world a better place. At the same time, however, we like our work to be successful. Doing well by doing good. With the worst recession in decades in our rear-view-mirror, today's entrepreneurs need to be extremely creative and do things efficiently. These 7 steps to automate your online business will increase sales and simplify your operations.

Automation is the key to building a successful business with fewer resources. To create awesome companies, as a team, and to use technology, ultimately to better the world is a common goal of today's entrepreneur. But at the same time, today's entrepreneurs don't have the financial resources available to hire a team of workers. So the more that today's entrepreneur can accomplish solo, the better.

Finding the formula to entrepreneur success is not going to be an easy journey or a simple task. You need to work at it. However, if you use these 7 steps to online business automation, you can start finding the success and building the future you have always wanted.

7 Steps to Building an Automated Online Business:

Here are seven steps that you can take on your journey to becoming a self-employed, free and highly successful entrepreneur without breaking the bank.

1. Build a WordPress Website

The most popular content management system available today is WordPress. As today's entrepreneur, you will want to select the right content management system to build your website. WordPress fits the bill. It's free, its secure, its customizable so you can implement these automation tips into your website and get close to reaching your goal of building an automated online business.

Choose a professional WordPress theme that is clean, fast, and responsive. We recommend StudioPress WordPress Themes. They are powered by the Genesis Framework, which in layman's terms, means that the behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts of your website will be search engine friendly, responsive with instant updates and airtight security. Don't waste time with the wrong WordPress theme. Choose a framework that is state-of-the-art and one that will update with the click of a mouse. Many sites are hacked (or just don't use WordPress to the fullest) because they have not been updated and with StudioPress themes, the act of updating your code to the most recent technology takes just a click. Updating to the current version of WordPress and Genesis a snap. Everything is integrated, so you don't have to call your developer. Save time and money.

First Impressions Count: Your website is only as good as your design and your web hosting company.

2. Build your Email List

Email marketing is a powerful tool that can extend your reach beyond your website and create new sales opportunities. If you're not building an email list, you're making a huge mistake, so get started right off the bat with your new business and begin building an email list.

Any networking event provides excellent opportunities to collect business cards, which can then be manually added to your email list. But if your like most entrepreneurs, there is not enough time in the day to attend every Chamber of Commerce event. So, in order to build your email list, you need to automate. The easiest and most effective way to automate your email marketing efforts is with Aweber Email Marketing. I have tried them all and I always come back to Aweber.

First, you need to determine who is your target audience. This simple exercise will help. First, answer these questions:

1. What do your ideal subscribers want?
2. What's the main problem they have that you believe you can solve?
3. What's your method for solving that problem?
4. What do you love to talk about more than anything?

Once you're done, you simply combine them all. These are the people you are catering to. This is your target audience.

3. Write Compelling Content

The most effective way to grow visitors to your website or blog is to write compelling content. Yes, that's right. The time you spent in English class in high school will finally come in handy. When you're writing content, you will want to think about the audience you're trying to reach... and call them out. Write evergreen content that helps, informs and satisfies your target audience.

• Evergreen content is timeless content that is still relevant. You could go through your archives, or you could also use a WordPress plug-in like Revive Old Posts to simplify the process. There is also a killer tool that I use called MeetEdgar that allows you to publish a post and then automatically recycle your top posts several times on a schedule.

The number of subscribers you have is directly related to...

1. Your ability to drive highly-targeted traffic to your blog.
2. Your ability to convert that traffic into FIERCELY LOYAL subscribers.
3. Your ability to get your readers to promote and refer you to friends.

Now it's up to you you to take action and build your email list with compelling content.

4. Build your Social Media Profiles

When it comes to online personal or business branding, the creation of social media profiles is absolutely essential. Think of each social media profile you create as a landing page for your brand. This landing page is possibly the first encounter that someone is going to have with your brand, and you will want that first impression to be golden and make the visitor want to know more about you.

10 steps you need to follow to create a successful social media profile:

1. Your name - Be sure to enter the name you want to be found under.
2. Your username - Think about what people will search for you, and make sure that your username is included in the URL.
3. Your profile pic - Use a professional photograph, but not so much that you don't illustrate some personality. Be sure to stick with the same picture as your default photo from one network to the next. This way people easily recognize you across all social networks.
4. Your link - Make sure that your link is front and center so that people can find it quickly and click through to your website.
5. Your bio - Take advantage of this to share only the best about yourself and your brand. And always - always - link to your website or landing page.
6. Your interests - Look at these fields as an additional place to get some great keyword value. Find books, documentaries, and profiles of influential people in your industry and add those in these additional fields.
7. Your background - A customized background will allow you to share additional information that may not fit in the fields of your profile.
8. Your privacy settings - These vary from network to network, but you will want to make sure that the information you would like to be public is viewable.
9. Your activity - Once your profile setup is complete, your on-going mission will be to maintain a healthy level of activity on your main social networks, which for most will be Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Automate this! We like Buffer. It's inexpensive and a great way to keep your social media activity at peak performance.
10. Your promotion - your website!

If you are short on time, concentrate on the Social Media Big Three:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn.

Don't forget to interlink your profiles to each other. If you can share multiple links on a social profile, make sure some of those are to your main social profiles.

5. Sync your Blog or Website

Add social share buttons onto your page or automatically post on social media whenever you publish a new article. Additionally, with Step 2 (above) you will have the ability to create a blog broadcast with Aweber so that each time you publish a new blog post to your WordPress website, Aweber will use your post to create dynamic newsletter and broadcast your content to everyone on your email list.

Why? Because research shows that the lead nurturing process today takes seven to eight "touches". These seven to eight touches that it takes to qualify a lead are crucial components of the lead nurturing process, allowing marketing the opportunity to educate and inform prospects as they move through each stage in the buying journey. These touch points are opportunities to prepare leads for the final stage in the buying journey, the point of decision-making.

• Sync your social media profiles to landing pages that are specific to your visitor. Our favorite automation tool for conversion optimization is Thrive Leads Landing Pages. Build an automated sales funnel that runs a highly optimized.
• Sync your website with an opt-in form so that your visitors can easily subscribe to your newsletter:
• Aweber has many templates that you can use to add an opt-in form to your website.
• ThriveLeads has many different "triggers". Trigger options can be the following:
• Show on page load
• Show after a certain period of time
• Show when the user scrolls to a specific part of the content
• Show when the user scrolls to a percentage of the way down the content
• Show when the user is about to exit the page (exit intent) - this trigger option does not work on mobile devices.
• Show when the form enters viewport
• Show when the user clicks an element
• Displays on click.

Customize which opt-in form displays, when and where with ThriveLeads. You can organize all the forms you want to display automatically on the site into different Lead Groups. Within each Lead Group, you can create and edit multiple opt-in forms at once, set them to appear in multiple places, and set up A/B tests.

We "connect" our ThriveLeads form to Aweber's API so that when a visitor completes the opt-in form, their email address is automatically added to our master email list at Aweber. And from within Aweber, we have a blog broadcast setup so that when a new blog post is published, a nifty newsletter is automatically created using their templates and sent to addresses in our list.

And finally, we use Aweber's form templates to display a static and well-designed, professional opt-in form in the sidebar of our blog. Again, when a visitor completes the form, their email address is automatically added the master email list managed with Aweber.

6. Analyze your Competitors

Get insights into your competitors' strategies in display advertising, organic and paid search, and link building. SEMRush Online Marketing Tools automate your research and optimization efforts. SEMrush will make your job a lot easier by taking the guesswork out of researching the market and your competition. It takes the guess work out of your digital marketing time and helps you to know before-hand what works, and what is a waste of time.

7. Fill your Orders

If you are selling products online, you will soon discover that filling orders is time consuming. Automate your order fulfillment with Order Fulfillment by Amazon. With FBA, you store your products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and Amazon will pick, pack, ship, and provide customer service for them. It's a tremendous time saver for you as you grow your online store.Keep these steps in mind if you are looking to gain the freedom that most entrepreneurs want. These steps may just be your path towards a more successful online business.The better the experience and the more valuable each of these important steps are, the more ready your leads will be to make a buying decision, and the more likely they are to convert to paying customers. The result is a highly organized, efficient buying journey that runs like a well-oiled machine. And one item that cannot be automated is you! Your leads and customers will want to have interaction, of some type, with you - the company owner. Be professional and always follow telephone and social media etiquette when communicating with the public. Remember, you are building your brand. And your brand is an asset.

Ms. Rosendahl has over 19 years experience in systems analysis, hosted applications, and management as well as 16 years experience in web hosting and Internet marketing. Ms. Rosendahl has a Bachelors from Houston Baptist University with a double major in Computer Information Systems and Business Management. Stephanie is the founder and CEO of Austin web hosting firm - GreenHostIt.com green web hosting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9774525

Top 12 Social Media Automation Tools To Use in 2018

Social media is all about being quick and responsive these days.1

If you want to save your time while working on your digital marketing strategy, then you should take the assistance of some social media automation tools.1

In this way, you would be able to make the most of your time and resources. Thankfully, there are tons of readily available tools that can help you.

Start this year by bringing a much-needed change to your marketing strategy and use some remarkable automation tools. From posting your content, to performing social media listening – these days, there is a tool for everything.

To make things easier for you, I have shortlisted the 12 best social media automation tools that every content marketers should use in 2018.

1. Agora Pulse

Agora Pulse has perhaps the most comprehensive feature-set out of any of these social media automation tools. Not only can you plan and schedule content across six different social networks, but you can also track your performance, collaborate with your team, and set up an evergreen sharing schedule for reposting content time and time again. This is a huge time saver!

• Agora Pulse enables you to engage with prospects and followers all from one place
• Publish social media content according to your schedule across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube
• Re-publish timeless content on a recurring and never-ending schedule, based on topic categories
• Collaborate with your team members
• Track the power of your social content with smart analytics

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most widely used social media automation tools out there. There are so many features that Hootsuite can help with that if you have not learned the full scope of this social media automation tool, then I recommend you start right away.

Hootsuite gives us the ability to keep track of various social media channels at once. It can also help you perform brand monitoring with its real-time updates. Knowing when your brand is mentioned allows you to know what consumers are writing about it instantly. This can be used to collect user-generated content or avert a crisis.

• Hootsuite supports all the leading social media platforms with an easy to use post scheduler.
• The tool has inbuilt analytics that can help you determine the best time for content posting.
• It also has an advanced search that comes with tons of features (like sentiment analysis, location based search, and more).
• Users can check their brand mentions, reply, post content, and do so much more under one roof.
• The tool can also help you search for influencers.
• It has an advanced analytics feature that can be used to generate in-depth reports.

3. Buffer

I have been using Buffer for over a year now, as I have found the tool quite useful and extensive. You can easily put your posts in a queue across different platforms using its user-friendly interface.

Buffer is also known for its comprehensive analytics. If you want to know how your social media strategy is working, then the tool will certainly be of a great help. The tool keeps upgrading on a regular basis as well. There are different packages that users can pick according to their needs.

• Besides posting your content automatically, it can also suggest the best time to post.
• You can work on dedicated campaigns right from its dedicated interface.
• Even if you have posted the same content, the tool generates customized links to analyze them separately.
• It is pretty user-friendly and has its own analytics section that can be used in different ways.

4. Crowdfire

Earlier, Crowdfire was merely a tool to manage Twitter and Instagram followers. Though, it has recently got a major update and has come out to be one of the most advanced automation tools in 2018.

It doesn’t matter if you are managing a brand’s presence or would like to boost the reach of your personal content, Crowdfire will certainly meet your requirements.

• Crowdfire also allows you to find those Twitter users who are inactive so that you can unfollow them if you want to.
• You can also analyze the following of any other user with its “Copy Followers” feature.
• The curated posts feature finds the best content you can share with your audience.
• The tool can automatically perform cross-platform content posting and suggests the ideal time for posting it as well.

5. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is another highly useful tool for content marketers. As the name suggests, the tool can easily be used to schedule your posts on different social media platforms pretty easily. This will help you manage multiple accounts in one place. Over 60 posts can be scheduled at once using its interactive interface. You can also use it to make your social media calendar or directly answer queries from its interface.

• Apart from scheduling your content, you can also analyze which content worked well in the past and publish your previously posted content again.
• It has plenty of remarkable features like re-queue, WordPress compatibility, staff management, etc.
• The tool can also be used to perform customer support pretty easily.
• It is easy to use and is cost-effective compared to other options as well.

6. Socialert

Most marketers complain these days about the presence of so much noise on social media. In order to perform brand monitoring and keyword analysis, they often need to spend a lot of time and effort. This is exactly where Socialert can help you. The tool will make the process of social media listening effortless with tons of added features.

• You can easily track hashtags and keywords on a real-time basis. The tool will let you know whenever a certain keyword is mentioned so that you will never miss a conversation.
• In this way, you can easily collect user-generated content, perform brand monitoring, look for industry-related influencers, and so much more.
• It can help you quantify the reach and impressions of your content. You can filter results on the basis of time, location, sentiments, etc.
• The tool provides in-depth reports that can be exported in a CSV format.

7.  BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo is one of the best ways to discover the trending topics and posts related to your domain. Searching for viral content and the analytics to go with it has never been easier. This will help you know what is trending related to your domain and how you can make the most of it. All you need to do is provide relevant keywords to automate your research. The tool might be a little expensive compared to other applications, but it is certainly worth every penny (if used wisely).

• You can filter the results on the basis of certain location, domain, platform, etc.
• Buzzsumo tracks different platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and more to quantify the overall reach of content.
• Besides content, you can also look for influencers and focus on building your relationships with them.
• It also has tons of other features like a content analyzer, question analyzer, Facebook analyzer, and more.

8.  Scoop.it

With Scoop.it Content Director, content can be curated from other sources and shared with your opinion. Your posts can be shared across social media platforms with the push of a button. You can easily look for trending topics by providing relevant keywords. If you are looking for new ideas and would like to stay updated, then Scoop.it Content Director would be an ideal tool for you.

• Carefully curate trending articles on the basis of different parameters.
• It is also integrated with WordPress blogs and websites.
• It has a smart content calendar that can help you publish your own posts easily.
• Measure the ROI of your content by applying various filters.

9. Pocket

In a nutshell, Pocket is like Pinterest for content. It is a freely available Chrome extension that can help you save any content. Already used by millions of users the world over, the app has saved over 2 billion posts so far. You can put the content of your choice in your Pocket account and access it anytime and anywhere, as per your convenience.

• Lightweight tool, which is freely available
• It is integrated with 1500+ platforms like Twitter, Pulse, Flipboard, and more.
• The tool also has an iOS and Android app besides a Chrome extension. Therefore, you can access the saved content as per your requirements.

10. SocialPilot

Bring all of your social media platforms under a single roof with SocialPilot. It also provides an easy way to collaborate with an entire team and work on a dedicated campaign. It supports a maximum of 200 social media accounts with a sharing of 500 posts. The bulk uploading of content and the maintenance of a social media calendar certainly makes it an automation tool of the future.

• The tool provides an easy way to work with your team and collaborate with different users.
• The mass planner can be used to schedule your content in bulk.
• The Custom Facebook Branding feature can help you configure your account easily.
• It has a browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), and mobile (Android and iOS) apps as well.

11. Sprout Social

SproutSocial is a complete social media toolkit that comes with tons of amazing features. It can easily help you automate your content posting, work on customer support, engage with your audience, and more. The number of social media platforms might not be as extensive as other tools (like Buffer or Hootsuite), but it has distinctive features for social listening and competitor monitoring as well.

• It has a user-friendly interface that can help you schedule your content in advance.
• There are unique tools in the kit that you can be used to serve dedicated purposes.
• The tool can also help you track keywords and identify influencers.
• It has an inbuilt analytics feature that can be used to calculate the overall reach of your content.

12. Mention

Never miss a conversation on social media with this remarkable tool. Whenever someone mentions your brand’s name (or any other keyword), you can get to know about it instantly from this dashboard. In this way, you can easily perform brand monitoring, competitor analysis, and so on. You can also use it to get in touch with your customers and resolve their queries on the go.

• It has an easy to use interface that can help you monitor your brand’s mentions at a glance.
• The tool can also help you identify influencers and get in touch with them.
• You can monitor your keywords on a real-time basis.
• Perform competitor analysis and generate more leads by discovering their unhappy customers.

Wrapping up

These social media automation tools are designed to be helpful and are sure to save you time in 2018.

Whether you are a small business owner or a social media manager in a large corporation, these tools will be of great assistance to you. If you think I have missed your favorite social media automation tool in this post, let me know about it in the comments below.

Guest Author: Along with social media marketing Pankaj Narang is determined to shape his ideas into perfect products. CoFounder of Socialert, he believes in coming up with engaging tools to redefine the face of social media marketing.

Source: http://www.jeffbullas.com/11-best-social-media-automation-tools-smart-content-marketers/