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By Ivana Katz in Web 2.0

Today one of the most popular ways to market any business online is using Facebook. Facebook allows you to put your business in front of thousands of people using different tools and if done properly you can establish a relationship and credibility with a large number of people who in turn will visit your website and purchase your products and services.

Facebook Marketing Begins with Your Profile

The first thing you need to look at when you start marketing on Facebook is your profile page. Does it look professional – at least to your professional contacts? If you are using Facebook as a social site as well then you can use privacy lists to determine who sees what and so still ensure that your professional contacts see a professional profile. It is from here that most of your other Facebook marketing techniques will flow.

Using Facebook Pages to Promote Your Business

In addition to your profile page you can also have a number of ‘Facebook Pages’ which are specifically for advertising your business and building your list of professional contacts (or fans). Facebook pages can generally include more advertising as it is all about your business.

For starters you should have your business name as the title, information about your business (such as what you do, when you started, etc.) and some contact details and your website address.

As with Facebook profiles you can also add applications that further extend the usefulness of these pages for marketing.

Facebook Groups

Once you have set up your profile and pages you may want to consider either joining a few Facebook groups or setting these up yourself. The advantage of joining groups is that they already have a membership that you can advertise your link to. The benefit of starting your own is that you will have more flexibility in how the group is run. Whichever way you decide to do it, Facebook groups are useful for promoting your website and business. Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are the new Google Adwords. They are a PPC form of advertising that is quickly gaining popularity and holds a number of advantages over Adwords such as better targeting based on information entered into people’s Facebook profiles.

Facebook Connect and Integration

Integrating your website with Facebook and using the Facebook Connect features can also help to improve your visibility on Facebook and also make your website easier to join and more exciting. Allowing your visitors to comment on Facebook using your website or to share links from your website on Facebook can help to spread your message virally.

Facebook Applications

Another popular tool you will find people using to promote their business (or even as a business in itself) are Facebook applications. Creating an application can allow you both to make money through the application itself as well as sending people to your website. Depending on the application you create and how you market it this can become very popular and even create a viral marketing effect.

Facebook is an incredible internet marketing tool and you should consider using it to promote your business using Facebook profiles, pages, groups, ads and their integration features and applications.

Ivana Katz of Websites 4 Small Business makes it easy for you to get your business on the internet. If you’re looking for a professional and affordable website designer, visit www.web4business.com.au and download a free website plan. Join our Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/Websites4SmallBusiness

By Pilar Torres Wahlberg in Web 2.0

It seems that you can barely log into the internet today without finding dire warnings about the privacy of your FaceBook account. Hundreds (and possibly thousands) of users have declared May 31, 2010 as “Leave FaceBook Day”. Since the dawn of the internet, privacy has been a concern. However, if you put a google search in for “Facebook Privacy Concerns” it returns 17,400,000 results while Twitter returns 15,500,000 results and LinkedIn at the bottom of the pile returns 667,000 results.

In a viewpoint, Facebook is approximated to have the largest number of users among the three. And truthfully, the three (although often lumped together) are really different and have different audiences. With that said, how concerned should you be about your FaceBook security?

Well, like anything else that’s on the internet, it’s not hack-proof. Even the strongest privacy policy isn’t going to protect you if someone really wants to get at your information. Changes on the privacy policy on Facebook however seem to be on a craze and they don’t really mind how many protests they receive, it is more like a “woops” to them. Then there is the audacity of Facebook founders to tell you that having multiple “online” identities is displaying unethical behavior? He’s simply letting you know that your account for business and personal account on Facebook must be one and the same or you don’t have the ethics. And the answer to that?

Probably not – most of us tend to like to keep our “personal” and our “business” lives (especially online) separate as much as possible. I mean seriously – do your children really care if the company that you are promoting has already reached 1000 blog readers? Do those people who follows your company really need to know that your grand daughter is a part of a cheerleading tournament? Probably the answer to both of these is “not so much”.

Given the number of issues that have come around you’ll find hundreds of articles including a very interesting one from the New York Times where they referred to FaceBook privacy options as “A Bewildering Tangle of Options”. Unless you are willing to spend the time to verify all of these potential options, you might just want to rethink your FaceBook account. However, keep something else in mind – deleting your FaceBook account borders on amusing and is certainly confusing for most.

Words of Caution:

  • Disabling your Facebook account and deleting it are NOT the same thing!
  • Links shared by other users after you posted them don’t get removed
  • Photos that you shared who others shared don’t get removed
  • There are other restrictions that can still cause you privacy issues.
  • If you get through the delete process and don’t stay out of Facebook it negates the entire process!!

With that here are some options to help:

  • a 33 slide show on how to lock down your privacy at Facebook
  • Video instructions on how to delete your Facebook account
  • Make sure you read some of the information and make an informed decision.
This article was brought to you by Pickaweb. Access our Free Jargon Free Web Marketing Strategy videos aimed at beginners. Check out our Professional Website Hosting Services. We also offer Reseller Hosting and other services such as Dedicated Servers, VPS Hosting, Domain Names, Web Design, Online Website Builder, Web Design Templates, Email Marketing, Data Backup and 0800 Numbers.

By Titus Hoskins in Web 2.0

Andy Warhol got it wrong, he meant to say 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes! That lower number seems much more appropriate in the fast moving world of Twitter, the souped up mass online messaging tool that never quits or takes a breather. But how effective is Twitter as a list building tool?

Recently, one well-known Internet Marketer deleted his Twitter account which had over 25,000 followers, saying his messages or tweets were no longer being read and the response rate was next to nil. While this seems a little drastic, for SEO reasons alone it would be very foolish to delete a Twitter account with that many subscribers.

However, does this marketer have a point? Do your tweets get read or are they lost in the endless flood of other tweets quickly passing through the system. There is probably a lot of unread tweets flowing in our cyberage wasteland and the effectiveness of tweeting has diminished drastically as countless marketers plaster this latest medium with their marketing sales pitches.

So is Twitter an effective list building tool or not? Yes and no, it would all depend on how you approach the situation.

Twitter is a quick and effective way of building a large list of contacts which you can send messages to in a spam-free way. Lists with millions of followers is not unknown – thank Ashton Kutcher. Even for the online marketer and webmaster, Twitter can be an effective way to build a list of contacts very quickly.

However, the real issue remains, are your messages or tweets being read? Sadly, in many cases, because of the transitory nature and the sheer volume of tweets – your messages are probably not getting read or are not seen by as many people as you would like to see them. Therefore, one could argue about the effectiveness of Twitter as a list building tool; what’s the point if your messages are not making contact with your followers?

The key to success here is the same as with any list – you have to build a loyal group of followers who are eager to read your messages. It’s the relationship, stupid.

Besides, many people forget that Twitter is also one of the most popular web sites on the net, so having your messages and more importantly your links on this popular site is a “must-do” for webmasters and marketers. For SEO reasons alone, Twitter is extremely important. Your links are indexed by the search engines, especially if your Twitter profile is seen as an Authority Account with lots of influence.

With this fact in mind, here are some simple Twitter list building tips:

  1. Make sure you build an attractive Twitter Profile targeted to your audience.
  2. Place links to your Twitter Profile from all web sites and other social media sites/accounts.
  3. One effective way is to use a Twitter bookmark on all your relevant content and pages.
  4. Attach a link to your profile in all forum posts and email signatures.
  5. Use your Twitter account as your main tool for contact with tech/customer support.
  6. Add your Twitter Profile to your marketing articles and blog posts.
  7. Offer free ebooks, courses and special reports to anyone who re-tweets your messages.
  8. Become active within Twitter, link to other related Twitter profiles and build a strong presence.

Having said all that, I haven’t used Twitter much, except for SEO link building purposes. I find most messages or tweets do get lost in the constant flow of tweets. If a tweet falls in cyberspace, and no one reads it, is it really a tweet?

Then again, as an online affiliate marketer I have found other list building methods much more effective than sending a tweet. At the moment, one of my most effective list building techniques is at the opposite end of the spectrum, one that’s totally anonymous and invisible. If you’re into affiliate marketing you’re probably already using this technique; simply promote or pick affiliate products/program which have a cookie attached to them, when someone clicks your link they are “cookied” with your affiliate ID. I like picking affiliate programs which have at least a 90 day cookie, you can quickly build up an invisible list of prospective customers and if they buy within 90 days, you are credited with the commission.

Of course, one could always combine this affiliate list building method with your Twitter account/followers, which would be extremely effective if anyone ever bothered to read your tweets and click your links. Now if everyone could just spare 15 seconds, you have a very slim possibility of becoming both rich as well as famous.

If you want to find out more about list building old school, try this handy eCourse: list building Or why don’t you simply follow us on Twitter to get other useful marketing and list building help: bizwaremagic Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

By Debbie Everson in Web 2.0

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is used to distribute news and content to websites and visitors. RSS Feeds are available in a light weight xml format and can be generated for a blog or a static website. RSS Feeds are chiefly used to syndicate content such as announcements, new articles, news updates, videos and job openings.

If you ever visit a popular blog, notice the variety of feed readers placed in strategic position to capture your attention. Their main aim is to encourage you to subscribe to the feed. When you click on the feed link, you are transported to a web page containing information to sign up for the feed.

Syndicate your website content to ensure that the latest information is always easily accessible to your visitors.

6 Simple Steps to Syndicate Your RSS Feed:

1. Apply Feed Reader Syndication. Some notable feed readers are Google Reader and MyYahoo!. All you have to do is, add a subscribe button on your blog and personalize it for the common types of readers available.

2. Include an Email Subscription Box. This is one of the quickest ways to get all the updates and latest information. Feedburner and Feedblitz provide email subscription capabilities and metrics. Visitors can simply enter their email address in the input box and subscribe to your blog’s RSS Feed. All the latest news and articles will be directed to the specified email.

3. Submit RSS Feed Directly To Major Search Engines. All the major search engines have made it really simple to submit your blog’s feed. All you need to do is log into Google, MyYahoo! and MyMsn and submit your blog feed to them. This is also one of the easiest ways to get your blog indexed by searchbots.

4. Ping Search Engines. There are a number of pinging services available online where you can enter your blog or feed URL and ping the search engines. A pinging service like Ping-O-Matic gets your blog indexed at multiple websites like Technorati, Feedster etc.

5. Use PHP Syndication. It is commonly known that searchbots cannot index JavaScript. So, if you want your feed links to get indexed, JavaScript Syndication is not a favorable option. Here, PHP syndicated code has the upper hand over JavaScript syndication. It provides backlinks and helps in indexing web pages.

6. Provide JavaScript Code for Syndication. JavaScript syndication is used to display a third party RSS feed on your website. There are a lot of JavaScript syndicators online, which provide code. Simply put the code in the sidebar of your website or blog and visitors can copy and paste it onto their website.

Statistics prove that RSS Feeds are useful in pulling a large number of visitors to a blog. Today no blog is complete without an RSS Feed option. Even Twitter, the micro blogging site provides an option to subscribe to individual RSS Feeds.

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Read my SEO Blog at http://blog. searchmar. com for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants. Visit http://www.searchmar.com

By Anton Pearce in Web 2.0

Not so long ago having an Internet presence for your business meant putting up a website. A website, while still an important feature of promoting your business, is no longer enough. To reach customers businesses must go where the customers are. Web 2.0 or the social web, is an essential feature of a successful marketing plan.

Facebook is the leader of the pack of social media. According to TechCrunch in November 2008 more than one in five people who used the Internet visited Facebook. The growth of Facebook has increased ever since. Facebook has become essential for business marketing. This new style of customer contact requires implementing new and innovative ideas about marketing.

Facebook is a great way to keep up with friends and family. But you don’t necessarily want your clients to see the baby pictures your mom posted. Businesses large and small should take care to present a well defined and controlled image of their products and services. Facebook fan pages are an excellent choice for business.

Personal Facebook pages allow you to share information about yourself and to connect with friends and family. Fan pages have many of the same features as personal pages. You can still share articles, photos, videos, and applications, but the fan page is organized around a theme. All of the content on your Fan page is related to your business.

Strategies for making your Fan page a success

Make your Fan page a resource

Consider your customers interests. What information do they need? Post articles and links to useful information on your wall. Your Fan page is an opportunity to showcase yourself as an expert. Provide these things for your customers and they will return to your page again and again.

Connect

Interact with customers. Make use of all of the Facebook tools. Respond to comments. You may not want to list your entire product line. A sample on your fan page could lead new customers to visit your website for more. Spamming is always a bad idea, but targeting offers to customers who show interest can lead to increased customer loyalty.

Be human

Pictures and personal information put a face on a company. As long as you present an image that enhances your business, personalizing your Fan page is a great way to get followers.

Be present

Fill out your profile completely. Keep article, photo and video content current. It’s not enough to throw up a page and be done with it. Make sure to respond to customers who become fans. Create a group for your business. You can also participate in groups related to your business.

Innovate

Facebook moves fast. Don’t be afraid to try the latest thing. Explore webinars, and other interactive media as options to improve business relationships.

Creating Facebook fan page is great first step toward integrating social media into your marketing plan. Don’t forget to provide links from your website to your Fan page. Make sure to connect your Facebook fan page to other social media so your network will grow. In no time your Fan page will be the central hub of your successful online marketing campaign.

Anton Pearce specializes in helping you to use internet marketing to http://www.antonpearce.com/“>get all the clients you need for your practice . Sign up for his highly acclaimed and miraculously free ezine and find out how to turn your website into an automated new client or; http://www.antonpearce.com/“>patient referral generating machine.

By Mark Etinger in Web 2.0

Whether you’re a national name or local start-up, it’s important to keep your brand on the tips of consumer’s tongues—or at least on the tip of their cursor. Reinforcing your name and your product is relevant in every stage of the business cycle, and a cornerstone of smart internet marketing. After all, brand recognition drives web sales. If your business offers e-commerce, know that smart internet marketing is a way drive revenue quickly and cost-effectively. Twitter trends are an overwhelming flux of seemingly irrelevant buzzwords.

Here’s a smattering of today’s top Twitter trends:

#breakuplastwords, #ihatequotes, #nowplaying, #OMGIKnowRight, #Justin Beiber.

It may be hard to believe these words are worth repeating, but this chatter could mean traffic for your website and business. How do you run with the word-flow without getting lost in a deluge of diatribe?

Five pointers for smart internet marketing with Twitter trends:

1. Ride The Right Trends - Not every high-flying topic is going to be brand-supportive, so choose trends wisely. Know what your bottom line is, and make sure your chosen keyword won’t detract from your brand equity.

2. Timing Is Everything – Just as today is a chance to introduce your business through exciting, new trend associations, yesterday’s buzz is just that—in the past. It’s best to stick to the day’s trends to attract as many eyes as possible.

3. Be Creative – Engage the banter around trending topics through clever promotional copy. If you own a cleaning company and wanted to catch today’s #nowplaying trend, think about unique plugs and points of reference for your brand. A client’s home entertainment center, perhaps. You could run with this: ” #nowplaying in your living room: Clean, Calm, Collected.” Just remember to link to your service.

4. Pace Yourself – Piggy-back on Twitter trends strategically. Don’t abandon straight-forward promotional tweets as part of your marketing mix just yet. You should still routinely communicate who you are and what you offer to your core market in plain Twenglish. Use trending creatively to boost short-term sales through web-exclusive incentives, or to remind consumers of recently-launched products.

5. Invent The Wheel (Or Word) If You Must – Don’t see enough opportunities to creatively spread the word? Take initiate to get new keywords trending by tagging a concept, category, or catchphrase. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start tomorrow’s top trend—and drive brand awareness through smart internet marketing while you’re at it. Don’t miss an opportunity to promote your brand and your product with personality. Don’t be afraid of using humor (carefully!) when there’s an opportunity to shine. Twitter’s snappy stream of top trends is a high-low stream of abridged messages—the perfect platform to stand out with short, sweet and smart internet marketing. Spread your message by turning your Tweets into a conversation. Make your 140 characters worth a thousand words by knowing which trends work for you, seizing its moment, starting a conversation—and most importantly, using it when it’ll help you most.

Mark Etinger – Ajax Union is an smart internet marketing and business development company. http://www.ajaxunion.com you can view our internet marketing and business development blog at http://www.ajaxunionblog.com

By Debbie Everson in Web 2.0

One interesting venue of email marketing already in existence, yet may be unknown to many, comes from an unexpected direction: photography. High-quality photography has always been associated with full-scale ad campaigns, found traditionally in billboards, posters, newspapers, and glossy magazines. But with the rise of the Internet as a powerful medium of marketing, even photography sites like Flickr have become a playground for email marketing campaigns.

Marketing with Photos at Flickr

Flickr is one of the most popular photo hosting sites in the Internet. While it is often synonymous with photography professionals and hobbyists, it is also a teeming community of marketers and potential customers. The demographics of Flickr covers a vast area not merely confined to people with photography interests. It is also a microcosm of the entire Internet itself, where people from all walks of life, and with diverse interests, upload captured snapshots of events, family affairs, and company products and services.

A picture speaks a thousand words, and can sell a million products. Flickr users can be potential customers reachable through email marketing with nice Flickr photos as a valued-added. The emphasis is on good quality photos, without which any email marketing campaign isn’t worth the effort. Why? As mentioned, there are many family photos and point-and-shoot images in the Flickr archives. It takes outstanding imagery to rise above the run-of-the-mill and be noticed by the entire community.

Tips to Market at Flickr

Ready to shine on Flickr? Here are some tips on how to go about it:

  1. Build up a portfolio of quality photos. Most Flickr users have an eye and taste for quality. Many of them will certainly ignore email marketing efforts based on poor photos. Hire a photographer, buy the best camera, or capture images powered by enchanting concepts. By whatever means possible, half of the email marketing challenge is solved when the photos are there.
  2. Tag for searchability. Flickr, like almost all online community sites, rely heavily on search tags to bring results to users. The most appropriate keywords should be used as descriptive tags to bring in the target audience. Further to this, keyword analysis should be conducted, to appropriately modify tags to suit the search patterns of users.
  3. Organize photos properly into collections, for ease of access by users, who can click on the photo galleries based on themed groupings descriptive of actual content.
  4. Grab attention with attractive thumbnails. From the photo collection, the best images should be selected as thumbnails, those tiny visual teasers that lure users to peruse the rest of the collection.
  5. Regular photo updates. As in blogs and websites, frequently refreshing content builds reputation for being a reliable and consistent source of fresh images, with the possibility of being visited more often or linked to by other blogs and websites.
  6. Treat Flickr as a social media playground. That means joining relevant groups and sharing tips, news and photos with the community. This builds relationships and reputation, and widens email marketing coverage further.

Summing up how to make email marketing work in Flickr, it takes nice quality photos, the will to keep going by regularly updating fresh content, and socializing with the Flickr community, to really reap the rewards of the email marketing campaign.

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Read my SEO Blog for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants and receive your free consultation.

By Martin Sejas in Web 2.0

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 4 years, you would know how popular and widely used Facebook is today.

Just a few short years ago, you had to encourage all your family and friends to join this social networking website (just after others convinced you to join). Nowadays, it’s rare to find someone who hasn’t got a Facebook account.

At last count, there were over 350 million users on Facebook and this number is continuing to grow. It overtook MySpace as the number 1 social networking website on the planet last year and is just behind Google when it comes to online traffic. You are then able to understand how important Facebook marketing has become for all websites.

It’s Not A Pitch Zone

The most important thing to remember about social media is that it is not a place to blatantly and endlessly pitch your product or service. If you do this, then you will not get any favours from social media users and will get largely ignored and even bad reviews.

What social media is used for is for building relationships with potential clients. There are a number of ways you can do this:

  • you can post helpful information (links) where you help them solve a problem
  • you can personally chat with them and assist them you can create content addressing the needs of users and posting it

The bottom line is that you want to be seen as genuine and helpful. This way, word can get out that you’re the real deal and before you know it, people will become interested in what you have to offer in terms of products and services.

Of course, the things you share on social networking sites such as Facebook shouldn’t be the nitty gritty stuff that you have to offer. You should share helpful information in the form of teasers that will interest people enough to ask and wonder if there’s more. Offering free stuff is great for getting attention too.

How To Market On Facebook

The great thing about Facebook is that from the outset, it has encouraged all users to use the website as a means of sharing information and marketing whatever they please. As a consequences, it has created various ways for users to do this. You are not obliged to use every single one of them but a combination of them can only improve your Facebook marketing.

Pages

This is probably the marketing tool out there on Facebook. On its website Facebook describes Pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” It is specifically designed for promoting a business and everything it has to offer. People can then become a Fan of your page and when they do this, they let their friends know that they’ve become a Fan of your page via their News Feed. The potential for your Page to gain a lot of popularity in a small period of time is great.

Of course, it all depends on the content you put out there for people to use. You need to give them a reason to become a Fan of your Page and a reason for them to keep being one.

Events

This allows to create events to be held at a certain date and time. Depending on what type of business you are, you can create one to be held locally or internationally. It can be any one of the following:

  • seminar – it should be introductory and free but you could promote a paid one too
  • webinar – an online seminar and where anyone worldwide can join
  • product/service launch – you may be about to launch a product or service and this is a way to gain attention

The best part about creating an event on Facebook is that it can go viral and before you know it people will be attending your event in droves.

Advertising

Finally, about a year ago, Facebook introduced an advertising service where people can put ads promoting their website or their Facebook Page and they pay per click (PPC) or impression (CPM). It works in a similar way to Google Adwords.

The best thing is that you can target your bads based on both geographical locations and social actions. For example, if you were a wedding photographer and wanted to promote your services, your ads can be set up to appear only to females between the ages of 24 and 30 and whose relationship statuses indicate they are engaged.

It must be noted, however, that Facebook Advertising is still in beta mode which only means that it will only improve in the near future.

Embrace Facebook

If you wanted to market your website online, you would be absolutely nuts not to use Facebook marketing as one of your key strategies. Just be careful not to get caught up in it too much because it can become a very time consuming activity.

Martin Sejas is a leading online marketing consultant based in Sydney who specialises in helping local business use their websites to get more clients. Register for a free consultation today.

By Joanne S. Black in Web 2.0

Believe it or not, social networking isn’t the next best thing…You are! It’s the personal connection that still seals the deal.

The Internet, social networking, and other breakthroughs in technology have fundamentally changed the way we do business. New technology drives communications, messaging, and information access at warp speed, and our clients expect immediate access. This pattern of ever-increasing speed and sophistication not only creates an intensely competitive marketplace, but places further demands on us to act and react quickly.

The rise of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and LinkedIn have lured many sales pros into scaling back their personal interactions and relying on social media to get more “qualified leads.”

It’s time to get real!

Social Media Is a Powerful Tool for Three Things and Three Things Only

  1. Search engine optimization: Use your key words and raise your presence on the web.
  2. Find out who people are: Learn about a person’s background and your connections.
  3. Find out who people know: Look for close connections that you can leverage

Some salespeople tell me they actually get clients through social media. Well, maybe if you have a commodity business.

Could it happen?

Yes.

Do I rely on it?

Absolutely not! I only count on what I bring about—through a proactive, intentional, referral strategy with personal introductions.

Why Social Networking Your Way Won’t Bring You More Leads and Sales

The most important business decisions are still based on personal relationships. There is significant research about why customers make buying decisions. Bottom line: It’s because they like and trust the salesperson and his organization. Think about it. We’re selling services, investments, systems, products… we’re asking for people’s time and money! Why would they work with someone who hasn’t been referred?

There’s a saying in sales: Clients buy with emotion and justify with fact. If our clients don’t like us or don’t feel comfortable with us, they won’t buy from us. You can wow your clients with technology know-how now and try to win them over later, once they find out you’re honest and reliable. But the reality is you need people to start liking you within the first few seconds of your relationship. You need to start off on the right foot. Fancy gizmos won’t make that happen. But a trusted referral and a personal connection will.

That’s why Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, in his commencement address to the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania in May 2009, urged college graduates to step away from the virtual world and make human connections. “Turn off your computer. You’re actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us.”

That said, a social media presence is a must-have in today’s world—but you need to change the way you’re social networking.

3 Ways to Get More Leads and Sales with Social Networking and Referral Marketing

  1. Develop a social media strategy: Like a sales plan or a marketing plan, write your social media plan. What is your goal? Who is your audience? What do you want to communicate? Leverage social media as part of your go-to-market strategy. How does your strategy link to your customer’s needs and your business priorities?
  2. Establish relationships: Take the time to build your personal connections, pick up the phone and talk to people.  Just because you have a name in hand, doesn’t mean you have a relationship.
  3. Communicate useful information: Social sites are not for selling. They are for establishing connections, identifying ways to collaborate, and providing value. What tips can you provide? Link to other sites you strongly recommend. Get recognized as the expert and build your web presence. Be a resource.

To Trust You Paves the Way

The most energizing and exciting part of our work is the relationships with our clients-the interaction. We enjoy learning about our client’s business and matching our solutions to their needs. In an era dominated by ever-expanding technology and social media pressures, always remember that personal connections, referrals, and earning trust count most.

America’s leading authority on referral selling and founder of No More Cold Calling®, Joanne Black helps salespeople, sales teams, and business owners get more referrals and attract business fast without increasing the cost of sales. Discover how to turn prospects into clients more than 50 percent of the time in any economy with her No More Cold Calling sales programs at http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/products.html.

By Debbie Everson in Web 2.0

A recent post from the official Twitter Blog tells of how much the number of tweets has grown in the past years, minus spam. From 5,000 tweets daily in 2007, to a sudden leap to 300,000 the following year, and a huge 2.5 million messages in 2009. The bottom line today: an average of 600 tweets every second!

While there are no conclusive breakdown of figures to explain that immensity, one is left with a feeling that if the law of statistics and probably do not exclude Twitter, then this social media behemoth is indeed a rich goldmine just waiting to be tapped by savvy e-mail marketers.

With all the world using social media, it’s an easy step for e-mail marketers to integrate their campaigns with Twitter. Despite its 140-character limitation, and the low-key “thin” APIs, the elements are already in place that allows e-mail marketers to wage a successful campaign here.

Wearing Two Marketing Hats in Twitter

Unlike traditional email campaigns, many marketers may still be in the dark of how to go about integrating email campaigns in the Twitterdom. They may scratch their heads because of the alien nature of the social media service when compared with traditional email systems.

After all, the messaging system here is a far cry from traditional email. There are short tweets instead of multi-paragraphed messages. There are text-based posts rather than graphic-rich communications. Subscriptions here are of the form of followers and following. And most importantly, messages here are sent and received in “real-time”.

The last characteristic is an important difference when conducting the marketing campaign, because it urges e-mail marketers to evolve in order to tap into Twitter’s immense customer base. The nature of communication in Twitterdom is more suited for customer relationship-building — it is active and two-way. Users participate through questions and feedbacks, contrary to emails which simply park the message on inboxes and wait for what happens. As such, marketers must learn to “listen” to customers to deliver the campaign suited for their specific preferences.

Integrating Twitter with E-mail

E-mail marketers must go the roundabout way in the Twitterdom to conduct their campaigns. It’s all about luring customers with interesting tweets that link to email sign-ups, and emails that link to Twitter. Here are some ways to do this:

  1. Create useful tweets with links to the full article’s landing page. In the landing page, there can be an option to sign up to get the full version of the information. If the information is valuable enough, Twitter followers can be made instant email subscribers in this manner.
  2. Create Twitter pages for every products or services offered, for fine-grained user segmentation that allows delivery of better-targeted campaigns.
  3. Dedicate an account solely for customer support, and man them with qualified personnel to handle customer questions, requests and feedbacks.
  4. Promote the Twitter account on other marketing channels, for example, as a signature in e-mail campaigns, a footer in newsletters, or a website link, or by quoting customer tweets in other social media accounts.

This unique nature of real-time social media services like Twitter urges e-mail marketers to re-think their ways and perspectives in order to come up with cross-channel marketing campaigns. Failure to do so is a big loss and a denial to tap into a huge customer base all ripe for the picking.

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Read my SEO Blog for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants and receive your free consultation.

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