5 Top ways to promote your business online

Everyone I know who has a business has tried five particular social networking platforms and end up doing only one and giving up on the rest.  A few continue with most, but nearly all give up on the one which actually is the best one to use.   I have ignored LinkedIn. I think this is the best platform to promote you personally, and your business second.

These are the top five social networking platforms which most businesses use:

Facebook
Google+
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter

There are very few people who are online who do not have an account with one of these social networking platforms which they either use occasionally or look at from time to time.

Having done this list and thought about the amount of time and in some cases money I have spent on each one. From the results which I have either directly or indirectly seen from each one, together with the number of years I have being doing this, I have realised Google+ is actually the other four rolled into one platform!  

But Google+ is the first one everyone gives up on first!

It is simple really. If you can't work your Facebook business page, you will not be able to work your Google+ and Google Brand pages. The same goes for Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and every other social networking platform you have an account with and use to promote your business or just to interact with others online.

For me, the penny dropped when my organic online business growth increased. In addition to good quality content on my websites, I realised Google also liked brands who had a good presence on Google+ and were able to develop and work with their Google accounts!

March 2016 - Investment No 9

And so I arrived towards the end of the next quarter.  Things were still difficult for me financially, but I had about £350 sitting in the dealing account from dividends and partially from the Pace shares. So I only had to add £650 top up. 

In April 2015, Pace and Arris announced a Recommended Cash and Share offer for the share capital of Pace.  This meant there was a "Scheme of arrangement" for the shares I held.  My Pace shares were showing a small loss, so I decided to stick it out.  Finally, in January 2016 I received cash of £323.30 plus 36 Shares in Arris. Arris was quoted in one of the US stock markets, so this was a share I would be looking to sell if I could show a profit, even if small.

Since the last purchase I received the following dividends:

GlaxoSmithKline - £13.68
Pace - £9.69
Total dividend income since  6 April 2015 - £182.04

I already had shares in mining, which was not doing well, so I figured the sector was low so perhaps this was a good time to buy more but in another company in this sector.   

I choose to purchased shares in Anglo American (EPIC: AAL).   Mining Copper, Platinum, Diamonds, Coal, Iron ore and Manganese and Nickel, the company had been around since 1917.

Which at the time of this post - 100 years

http://www.angloamerican.com/

December 2015 - Investment No 8

Another quarter was arriving, and this was still difficult, but I have about £250 sitting in the dealing account from dividends so I just added £750 so I would have enough money for the next share purchase.  Since the last purchase I received the following dividends:

GlaxoSmithKline - £13.68
Antofagasta - £2.36
Centrica - £16.03
Royal Dutch Shell B - £13.36
Total dividend income since  6 April 2015 - £127.35

Looking around I decided I wanted shares in a company which paid quarterly, but in a different sector than I already in.  Before the Banking crisis that would have been banks, so I took a look at the banks which were not under government ownership.  

I choose to purchased shares in HSBC (EPIC: HSBA).  The parent company of the HSBC Group, was HSBC Holdings plc.  One of the world's largest banking and financial services organisations and although they had been effected by the banking crisis as did pretty well every bank, they had not needed a bail out.



http://www.hsbc.com

September 2015 - Investment No 7

Time was flying by and another quarter was arriving.  Since the last purchase I received the following dividends:

Pace plc - £7.54
SSE - £40.17
Royal Dutch Shell B - £13.29
Total dividend income since  6 April 2015 - £81.64

I did not have enough spare cash to use to purchase another share, so I decided to sell the Persimmon Plc shares, Investment No 5.  These shares actually cost me £1,011.66 including all charges, and I received £1,162.49 after charges.  A net profit of £150.83 (15%).  Including dividends, I received the profit totalled of £204.03 (20%) . I thought it was pretty good for a share held for just over 6 months, certainly better than leaving it sitting on deposit. 

So I purchased shares in Centrica (EPIC: CNA).   They were due to go ex-dividend on the 1 October so I would receive this in November.

Centrica was in the Gas, Water & Multiutilities sector. The were focused on energy and home related services.  Key markets were in Britain, Spain, Belgium, Canada and the USA. 

https://www.centrica.com

June 2015 - Investment No.6

The end of the next quarter was approaching so added £915 to my trading account.  Cash was a little tight, so I decided to make up the difference with the cash balance from dividends received since my last investment.

Antofagasta paid another £7.42 which was less than 1% on my original investment and Royal Dutch Shell B paid £13.22, the first of 4 dividends for the year I hoped.

Looking around at FTSE100 shares I decided to purchase 72 shares in GlaxoSmithKline. The stock mark epic was GSK and the company was in the  Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology sector.

This share paid 4 dividends each year, and I had already missed the first 2.  As I was in for the long haul, I decided not to miss out on anymore in the future.



I also liked the corporate partnerships they were involved with:
http://www.gsk.com/en-gb/about-us/corporate-partnerships








http://www.gsk.com

Making comments on Blogs

Do you have a website?  Are you looking for more traffic?  One of the ways of getting more traffic is by having backlinks to your website, but most people think this is difficult to do, or they have to pay someone to do them for them.

When I suggested it to a friend, and she told me that she did not have time to set up a blog.  So I asked her why do you need to set up a blog to get backlinks to your website?  Oh she said, so I can blog about others and they can blog back and we can share back links.

Yes that is one way of doing it, but there is a really simple and easier way to do it.  If you do it yourself its free.

Go to someone elses blog.  Ideally one which is NOT a WordPress blog, as they will often have no follow attributes, and post a comment making sure you put your website address in the box which asks for your website address.  NOT in the body of your comment, as that is where a spammer will add it.  If you know someone with a WordPress blog, ask them if they have disabled the no follow attribute or added the plugin which allows comment following? If they have then make all the comments you want. 

For example all the comments on this blog have had the No Follow attribute disabled,  but I moderate all comments to make sure the comments are real comments and not spam.

And what does the blogger get out of it?  Two things, firstly feedback, all bloggers need feed back, so they know people are reading the blogs, and secondly traffic of their own.  The more comments, the more visitors.   Simple really. 

So go for it - make a comment against any of the posts on this blog and get a free backlink to your website.