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The Google+ Promise

By Tamara Jacobs in Featured

With the recent launch of Google’s social network there has been a lot of discussion over whether this Google venture will actually take off, and whether it has the ability to supersede the biggest social network on the planet, Facebook.

In many ways Google+ has advantages over Facebook. For starters it can use Facebook as its blueprint for what to do and what not to do. While Facebook saw a fast evolution of success, it still took a couple of years for brands to catch on to the commercial potential of the platform and for it to become an open platform (previously was exclusively for university students).

Another main advantage Google has over Facebook is that it’s the world’s largest search engine. Google currently accounts for two-thirds of every internet search. These features will be integrated into the social platform to expand its reach as well as what it can offer its users.

Many of Google+’s features will be the same as Facebook’s which begs the question, why would people want to change platforms? Facebook, in many ways, has become a social home for its users. People have been on in since 2004, and have connected with hundreds of new and old friends. Their photos and personal information are all there, so why would they start from scratch? Knowing this, Google+ has to differentiate their offering in as many ways as they can. A few unique features it has are:

1. Circles: ‘The easiest way to share things with college buddies, others with your parents and almost nothing with your boss.’ Divide people into circles ie. ski crew, San Diego peeps, Nan & Grandpa and communicate with them in a relevant, organised and focused way.

2. Hangouts: ‘Let friends know that you’re free for a video hangout any time, anywhere. Then catch up, watch YouTube or just hang out. With hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let specific buddies (or entire circles) know you’re hanging out and then see who drops by for a face-to-face chat.’

3. Sparks: ‘A feed of only the things that you’re really into, so when you’re free, there’s always something waiting to be watched, read or shared.’ If you’re into fashion, tell Sparks and it will send you stuff it thinks you’ll like.

Moreover, Google+ offers:

– Integrated Google advertising
– Excellent data and analytics
– Integration with Google Apps
– Customer sign up for specific channels
– Video chat and hangouts

– Segmenting and organizing brand customers/fans/influencers for insight

– Business user appeal
– Extension of SEO
– Encouragement for users to +1 search listings

– Could offer customized skin options for brands – like YouTube, unlike Facebook

– Hangout + YouTube Live integration (in progress) – watch and chat simultaneously

– future Maps and Places integration

– Search – Google’s universal search will be stronger than Facebook

– Users the option to subscribe to official Google blog, G+ developers and Google Labs

It’ll be interesting to see what’s in store for Google+.

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Article by Tamara Jacobs. Adaptive Consultancy is a London-based digital agency specializing in web development, design, ecommerce and internet marketing. Services include search engine optimization, paid search, email and social media marketing. For more on online marketing companies visit http://www.adaptiveconsultancy.com/

5 Simple Steps to Social Media Start Up Success

By Katrina Sawa in Featured

So many women entrepreneurs come to me and ask still “I don’t know how to start up a fan page for my business or how else to promote myself on social media.” It is for this reason I am writing this article today…there are just too many of you out there still not familiar with what social media and social networking can do to jumpstart your business.

So, let me put it like this. If you go to in person networking events and strike up a conversation with someone there who most likely could be your target market, at some point you’re going to get to the point where you might ask them if you can follow up with them, meet for coffee, would they’d like to receive more information about your services, or, possibly on occasion, you could have them commit to becoming a client right then and there if they really connect with you and need what you have to offer right?

Picture the same scenario happening not in person but in a chat room, forum, fan page or between private messaging on one of your social sites. The same situation can happen if you structure your social networking in a way that invites that type of conversation and interaction. The key is though to have a system on what to say to whom and when.

Then how to follow up and continue those interactive conversations privately so the prospect gets to know you, sees what kind of advice you can bring to the table, you start establishing that trust until then they feel comfortable taking some kind of action with you.

This can take one or two messages back and forth or it can take multiple, the point is that you become consistent about your online communication efforts and you do it in a way that doesn’t take too much time, which means you’re organized and you have a system. My business as a Big Picture Business and Marketing Coach actually does quite well from my social networking and marketing online. I get an average of 2-3 prospects per week and I really don’t do that much at the moment to be honest. The people that I do end up communicating with personally on sites like Facebook are either all hot or warm prospects and by the time we get to the messaging stage (which is where I step into the system) they have already identified themselves as needing my expertise and assistance. This low level of time investment for me to gain this small number of prospects however also results in anywhere from $4,000-10,000 per month in revenue for me now. How would THAT help YOUR bottom line?

So, in the system you develop you need to make sure you’ve built in the right information to attract the right prospects, not just everyone; this takes some creative copywriting, you don’t just want to say ‘hello, let’s be friends’. I teach this in depth in my group coaching programs and private mentoring and keep in mind this is just ONE marketing strategy out of hundreds that you may want to consider; don’t discount everything else just because this happens to be free and easy to do from home.

So there is much more to this that I can share in one article but here is my 5 simple steps to social media start up success:

1. Outline Your Goals – what do you want to accomplish by communicating online? Do you want more customers? Do you want more exposure for your website? Do you want to sell products? Do you want to just be social?

2. Choose Your Sites – you don’t just want to get a profile on every social site out there, you should be somewhat strategic where you put your information and how you spend your time based on your overall goals.

3.Determine Your Strategy – this is more than just ok I’m going on to my sites 3 times a week for 30 min each, you need more than a strategy than that. You need to know what to say and how to reach MORE target prospects or people and how to build a following, get people to interact with you, etc.

4. Schedule Your Time – this is huge, so many people waste countless hours every week because they don’t have a strategy on what to do on social media, they aren’t focused and yet they don’t see the value in investing in learning more how to do this effectively but I think I’ve shown you above what could be possible for you if you paid more attention to this aspect of your marketing right?

5. Provide Consistent Interaction - you’ve got to be consistently out there, talking, typing, texting, blogging, commenting, messaging, posting, liking, following and more!

This marketing strategy doesn’t have to take a lot of time when you have a system.

A small team or at least one person to help you manage some of the front end communicating could provide you many leads for your business and pretty quickly at that. But trying to do this on your own I can tell you will be extremely time consuming and more difficult than you think to reach thousands each month which is what you want to build a bigger business.

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(c) Copyright 2011 K. Sawa Marketing International. Katrina Sawa is an Award-Winning Author & Speaker who’s helped hundreds of small business owners take dramatic steps in their businesses to get them to the next level in business, revenues & their personal life. Get her Free Entrepreneur’s Success Kit at www.JumpStartYourMarketing.com!

The New (and Ancient) Social Network

By Doug Rogers in Featured

You’re punished! Go to your room!!

For those of us who grew up during the Leave-It-To-Beaver or Brady-Bunch generations, these words resonate as an all-too familiar admonishment for the wrong doings of Theodore Cleaver, Jan Brady, and millions of other kids in America. It was the common penalty for the common misdeeds of the day. And being banished to the lonely solitude of one’s bedroom, isolated from one’s friends and family, was a powerful and effective consequence. Yet for today’s youth, being sent to one’s room would be met with no more than a shrug of the shoulders. In fact, most kids would probably be confused by their parents’ punishment choice of sentencing them to the most comfortable,
pleasurable, and socially connected place in their entire world – their own bedrooms.

By now it’s cliché to state that today’s youth is the most socially connected and culturally aware generation in mankind’s history. The statistics bear out what we already intuitively know: these kids are wired in. Over 85% of teens have their own cell phones. Even for kids between ages 10 and 14, cell phone ownership exceeds two-thirds. Three-quarters of kids between the ages of 8 and 18 have TV’s in their rooms, and the rate of bedroom TV’s for kids under 12 is 55%, and growing fast. As for computers, we know that (at least) one-third of kids have their own desk-tops or laptops with Internet access. And that doesn’t count the “smart phones,” or “X-Box Live” systems (where you can merrily engage in simulated mortal warfare with a fellow teenager somewhere in, say, Europe).

HubPages Equals Free Traffic

By Jack Humphrey in Featured

Many of you may have heard of Squidoo which is a competitor of Hubpages.com. Basically both of them are a “free-hosted community of content producers”. Both Squidoo and Hubpages can be “grouped” into the Web 2.0 movement – where user generated content rules.

If you are already familiar with Squidoo, the your entrance into working with Hubpages will be very straightforward. Both Squidoo and Hubpages SHARE REVENUE with their content creators.

What Makes Them Similar, Yet Different?

From HubPages.com: “Hubpages purpose is to provide easy-to-use tools and traffic to help anyone to produce content and monetize their knowledge by creating webpages. There will be monetization programs to choose from consisting of products, advertisements and lead generation tools that each person can easily incorporate into their pages.

Hubpages will split revenue with the content creator. The pages are organized in the Hubpages website based on algorithmic quality index that promotes the best pages throughout the hierarchy (based on tags) of the website.

Each author will earn a reputation score called a HubScore that can be referenced to meter the quality of the content by an author. Hubpages will be positioned to take advantage of the significant numbers of new web content providers that want to supplement their income through content like many people do on eBay by selling goods.”

From Squidoo: “We divide up the money we receive in a very public way. First, we pay our bills. That’s direct out of pocket expenses like rent and servers and salary and benefits expenses (our CEO doesn’t take a salary, and neither does our board of directors).

Then, with no other deductions, we pay 5% of our post-expense revenue directly to the charity pool, 50% directly to our lensmasters and retain the rest to pay off investors and employees.”

So, other than the obvious revenue sharing, is there any other reason to consider using Hubpages? YES! As Hubpages is considered an authority by Google, you are able to make money with the Google Adsense that is on your hubpage.

Developing content on Hubpages should become an important part of your overall web marketing / promotional strategies.

In addition to your actual ‘hubs’ ranking on the various search engines, you can link directly to your other websites! And guess what? These backlinks are being ‘counted’.

So Hubpages can help you strengthen your entire marketing presence and ‘network of sites’. One of the best things about creating Hubpages and Squidoo lenses is that it can be outsourced.

Outsource the writing, and by doing so, you free up your time to create more Hubpages. Another great aspect of any free content hosting site, is that they have already built-in traffic from other members, and if you are applying your linking knowledge to this, you will be creating tons of back links…Power Linking!

Web 2.0 properties such as Hubpages and Squidoo have become an important part of our overall traffic strategy and works well in any niche market.

Remember, your competitors are most likely NOT on Hubpages so it is still a ‘land grab’.

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Jack Humphrey is one of the web’s leading social marketing experts. He teaches his social media marketing tactics at Social Power Linking and blogs about social marketing and blog marketing at the Friday Traffic Report.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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