Interest in using social media to help business has skyrocketed. It seems that everyone wants to be popular and have the most fans and biggest following. It is assumed by many that more followers equal more value. This has resulted in some unorthodox schemes designed to grab the user’s attention. While it is true that this could mean that more people want to share the information you post, it has very little correlation with an increase in overall interest in what you have to say. The value of social media is in its connection with other uses.
Building relationships should be the focus, rather than a media blitz designed to create a stir. When crafting your Internet marketing strategy, it is important to set realistic expectations. Managing your goals and following through when using social media to help business, will generate a loyal, quality following. In the long run, these are the users that will positively affect your top line and increase revenue. Social media marketing can be frustrating, especially when you are just starting out. Once you have completed a post, you can’t take it back. It’s out there for everyone to read, comment on and share. This makes it important to control your emotions.
Don’t post when you are frustrated, upset or feeling desperate. This will prevent you from making a bad decision that can detract from all of the good you have done. Using social media to help business is all about being making connections. Relationships are built over time. Education and communication are often among the goals of successful social media marketers. This can be time consuming, and it does not happen overnight. Don’t get drawn in by the push to see bigger results faster. This will only cause you to lose sight of your goals. Creating a consistent message and personality when using social media to help business is key.
Sharing experiences is part of building relationships, but think before you type. There are some things that just should not be shared. When in doubt, don’t. If the situation shared makes people uncomfortable, it can transfer to your brand. You will lose followers and potentially lose customers. When setting goals, be realistic. When using social media marketing to help business, focus on the reason you started blogging or posting in the first place. The more you post, the more feedback you will get. This helps you effectively tailor your campaigns to match the customer need. In the end, it translates to an enhanced online marketing campaign that captures market share and earns respect.
By: Liam McCauley
About the Author:
Liam McCauley is a business coach and mentor located in Charlotte, NC, who specializes in providing serious entrepreneurs the skills in marketing their home based business to build a profitable online business with multiple income streams. To contact Liam, please call (803) 412-1449 or visit http://meetliammccauley.com
You are a savvy entrepreneur and have implemented a variety of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to help you with site rankings and marketing. It is likely you have placed keyword rich knowledge based resources on your website and you may have used SEO strategies in your Meta tag and Meta title information. However, there may be a strategy you missed.
Optimized Photos
Using the ‘alt’ attribute when placing photos may provide increased exposure to your site. Like Meta tag and Meta Title information, this attribute is not visible to your site visitor, but it does allow you to place keyword rich descriptions to your photos that ARE indexed by many search engines. Obviously you would not want to ’stuff’ the photo with keywords because most search engines look for this type of abuse (one to three keywords or phrases is enough). We will look at how to develop the photo strategy in just a bit.
The motivation for Search Engine Optimization is to allow search engines to find as much keyword specific information about your site as possible. As a conscientious web site owner you try to find ways to help the search engine understand your site better. In turn, the search engine has the capacity to rank your site better as they begin to understand more clearly what your website offers.
How To…
The method of photo optimization has its roots primarily in HTML language. It might look like this - alt=”Precision Badminton supplies and instruction”
In this case following the ‘alt’ attribute the keywords or key phrase that can be indexed by the search engine is ‘Precision Badminton supplies and instruction’. I simply types in fifty or so characters and those relative few keystrokes have the capability of improving my site ranking, but I need to remember to do this with each photo I place on the site. By making it a regular habit to optimize your photos it will likely become standard operating procedure for all future photo additions to your website.
This technique doesn’t clutter up your website because it is placed in code that is not viewed by your site visitor unless they click ‘view’ then ’source’ from their IE browser or similar functions in other browser applications.
This may seem like a small step in promoting your website, and you may be right. However, when this technique is added to other successful SEO strategies the odds greatly improve that this strategy can only help in overall site ranking.
By: Scott Lindsay
About the Author:
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects.Make A Website in minutes with HighPowerSites or Build A Website with BuildAGreatSite.Start your own ebook business and Resell Ebooks with BooksWealth.
Many businesses are using social media networks for marketing purposes these days. Who can blame them? Social media is a quickly growing conglomeration of people from many countries, ages, and ethnicities who can potentially be exposed to your brand. Advertisers from the days when radio was the biggest medium would find it mind boggling that advertisers today can reach millions of people with very little effort. The difficulty with Facebook is consistently presenting interesting, informative content and interacting with people on a personal level.
Like other forms of social media, Facebook is a very viral community where news and items of interest spread like a wildfire. This is perfect for businesses trying to spread the word with new products or special promotions. Want to know what people think about your brand or product? Set up a poll or quiz on your Facebook page. For example, today Nabisco cookies gave out a coupon for a free box of cookies to everyone who became a Facebook fan of their profile. PopTarts recently had a poll on their Facebook page asking what new flavor of pastry they should create next. When I see something of note such as this, I forward it on to my brother, sister, and my mom. For the average teenager or social butterfly with hundreds of friends, this type of sharing can have a huge positive impact on the company.
Part of the beauty of online advertising is that instead of hoping to hit your target demographic on television, web site advertisement allows your target demographic to come to you through search keywords. There are currently over thirty-five million Facebook users. Of that number, over half of them check their Facebook profile every day. People on Facebook are also becoming more and more willing to interact and “rub shoulders” with advertisers. As long as you aren’t spamming or overly aggressive in your marketing techniques, people are willing to listen to your messages about your product. The more entertaining, weird, funny, unusual, etc. you can make that message, the more chance you have of going viral and reaching an enormous audience through your Facebook page. One company that understands this is Victoria Secret. Their “Pink” page is marketed as the “effortlessly cool younger sister” of the Victoria Secret brand. Fans can discuss what they like or dislike about the products, post pictures, and get information about shows and new products on a page designed for today’s teenagers.
Local small businesses who do not take advantage of the Internet are missing the boat when it comes to promoting their products and services. Applying a few Internet marketing techniques can turn your web site into a lead generation tool providing you new leads and customers daily. This does not have to take a large amount of time and often enough this work can be outsourced while you are out performing the actual estimates and service calls.
Many businesses have taken the very first step of building a web site. Unfortunately many business owners stop there. Often times I hear complaints about low web site traffic and very little new leads being generated from their site.
More and more people are using search engines and the Internet to find local businesses. In fact, recent surveys indicate that more people are searching for local products and services on the web than in the “yellow” page books. Social networking systems like Facebook have millions of users. Local small businesses need to do a few things to take advantage of this. Here are three to get you started.
1. Adjust your web site to the ways people are searching for their services. That means optimizing the site pages each to the keywords your potential customers are typing in Google and other search engines to find the services you offer. This is called SEO (search engine optimization).
2. Record related industry videos and upload them to YouTube. Video is a great way for potential clients to find out about your business, get to know you, and showcase some of the work you have done for past clients. Google now owns YouTube so these videos often will come up higher in the search engine results than pages for the same keywords.
3. Start a Fan Page on Facebook for your business. Facebook is about people and interacting with each other. I can’t think of a better way to get the word out about your company and having others recommend to their friends.
If you are a small business owner, you need to apply these tactics now. This can make the difference in beating your local competition.
I just ran across this new affiliate marketing system called the Blueprint for Profitability. It’s looks pretty good to me and is a low cost option of $197 for the system (in comparison to the other subscription offers which charge you a hefty monthly fee). The author of this product Jeremy Palmer seems very real to me and I think this system is worth taking a look at.
Here are a few things that you will learn:
Uncover profitable niches you can easily dominate
Learn persuasion secrets that will prime your customers to buy
Find hidden (profitable) keywords your competition is missing out on
Unlock the keywords used to easily rank #1 on Google (alone worth the price of admission if this is true)
Effortlessly build a sticky site that will keep search engines and customers coming back for more
Master the sneaky social media tricks for quality backlinks, fast indexing, and tons of free traffic
Learn about the 11 fatal mistakes to avoid when selecting a niche (this is very important if you are going to earn money on-line)
Discover the 5 most important factors to consider for niche selection
Secrets for attracting the RIGHT customers to your site, and how to avoid the tire kickers
Forget everything you know about keyword research as I debunk popular keyword research myths
6 essential tips that will make you look like a copywriting pro
How to develop a site from the ground up - without touching a single line of code or spending a dime
Learn how you can attract thousands of highly qualified visitors to your site without spending a penny on advertising
Discover a social media service that will help you get dozens of high quality links to your site with minimal effort
Most of the so called Internet marketing gurus talk at you. They tell you what you ought to do. They say things like… “create an AdWords account”, “setup a blog”, “make a YouTube video”, and on and on - with no examples or actionable strategies.
The Blueprint for Profitability is a hands-on video training course (and case study) that will take you by the hand through Jeremy’s personal formula for building five-figure affiliate sites - using NOTHING but free traffic. This Blueprint is unlike any course you’ve ever seen.
All of this sounds really good to me but you have decide if this course is right for you. Check out the video and below and click on the Buy Now button below if you want to give it a shot.
