Online Marketing & Social Media as Business Tools

Posted by admin | Posted on 16-02-2011

Category : Business, Internet

What Is Online Marketing?

Online Marketing is the interactive process of selling your company, goods or services over the internet. A good online marketing strategy will create a synergy between your company’s business model and sales goals and your overall website appearance and function. Some of the most commonly used online marketing strategies include internet advertising (hyper links and ad banners), the management of a customer data base and email strategies. Using a broad mix of components (see “Social Media”) the purpose of online marketing is to increase brand awareness and generate revenue through sales.

How Is Online Marketing Used?

Online Marketing should be a part of your overall marketing strategy. Although many companies still utilize more traditional methods of marketing, not having a strategy for online marketing means you are not reaching an incredibly large sector of the market. Online marketing should showcase eye-catching web design, develop and enhance your brand, utilize online advertising and ultimately, increase your sales. In addition to promoting and advertising your business, an online marketing strategy will allow you to conduct research revealing the preferences, needs and demographics of your customers. You can also post press releases and articles.

Why Is Online Marketing Important To My Business?

Online Marketing is important for the same reason a more traditional marketing plan is. How are you going to generate revenue without selling anything? Online marketing combines creative and technical elements so that you have a specific look and feel to your company while maximizing the broad marketing opportunities web technology provides. One of the most exciting things about online marketing is that you can reach your customers anywhere at anytime! Probably the most important reason to engage in online marketing is that almost everyone else does. If you don’t, all of your competitors will attract and keep your customers!

What Is Social Media?

Social Media is an internet based means of communication allowing you to interact with other people. There are various forms of social media. You may recognize the names Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Digg for example. These sites allow users to create a presence on the internet as well as post and exchange written content, pictures, video and audio messages, emails, blogs and podcasts. Social media is inexpensive and wide reaching, allowing you to connect with literally millions of people both nationally and internationally. Social media gets your message, business or products known in a web based interactive way.

How Is Social Media Used?

Social Media is used to create an online community, develop a following, exchange ideas and information and build relationships. It is also a great way to generate “traffic” to your website which is another way of saying that people are able to find you online and then go directly to your website. There are also many ways that Social Media can be effective for specific business purposes. A business can “gather links” which means you can provide a link to someone else’s website where they then promote you. You can also post other business links on your website. This encourages cross promotion and is a great way to attract more internet attention. Businesses also use Social Media to test a market or product, generate feedback, provide customer service, hold webinars, blast emails and post announcements or useful company information.

Why Is Social Media Important To My Business?

Social Media is an incredibly fast way to develop or increase brand awareness, improve your reputation or position yourself as an expert in a certain field. Social Media can also keep you up to date on industry news, provide you with an education that can be applied to your business model, and have related industry recommendations. It is also an excellent path for personal development. Finally, Social Media can build strong and numerous relationships, enable you to network with an international community, post testimonials about your products or services, advertise or promote and in general, build your business bigger, stronger, faster.

The Big Don’ts of Social Media Internet Marketing

Posted by admin | Posted on 25-01-2011

Category : Internet

Social media networks have a big effect in internet marketing. Many online marketers know just how powerful these channels are and beneficial to their cause. So just what’s the role of social media networks to online marketing? In a nutshell, social media networks allow marketers to personalize their brand by communicating with peers, customers and prospects. This revolutionary way to interacting in a virtual platform has helped many small marketers to launch their business properly. But there are some serious no-nos you should know about.

Not interacting

Social media (keyword: social) are teeming with diverse communities and individual groups all interested in various and specific set of topics. If you’re using these networks as your internet marketing strategy, plain registering, launching and letting everything takes its course simply won’t cut it. Interaction is required and the crux of social media networks. If you concentrate too much on promotion and getting sales, you’re potential customers will likely see your efforts as selfish. Take some to know others and build a lasting, trustworthy relationship with them.

Being inconsistent

One of the costliest mistakes marketers make with social media internet marketing is inconsistency. Customers and potential clients are privy to your dedication to the group. If you start showing some signs of irregularities, they’ll quickly lose interest. Try to be active as much as you can. Not only will this help improve your self-esteem as a marketer but get to know your peers and customers better.

Spamming

Spamming has never been okay in the web. If you can get your ideas, products and services across effectively once, that would be great. Twice is okay. Thrice is still fine; but more than that is spamming. This sort of illicit activity is prevalent in social media networks, and you should be careful not line yourself with the offenders. Marketing shouldn’t be forced. Before sending any promotion or information to your potential customers, make sure they asked for it first.

Hoping to be followed immediately

The key in successful social media internet marketing is networking. If you’re just starting out, don’t expect everyone to follow you immediately. You must start a network from which you could benefit from. In short, before you become a leader, you should follow first. Since interaction is important in these sorts of channels, you should enter in the hopes of flying solo. You must be a follower first before your customers can follow you. You can even widen your network if you start following others.

How Social Media Marketing Can Build Your Business

Posted by admin | Posted on 14-12-2010

Category : Business, Internet

In conversation with other marketers, I am often asked how Social Media Marketing is useful to a website. I realize that not everyone understands how social media marketing (SMM) can affect a websites page rank, traffic, sales (the list could go on).

Content is an extremely valuable resource to all web users. By putting it to work for your website you can find yourself as the “Reliable Content Provider” also known as an “Authority” on that topic. You can use social media to give you that authority.

Recently, I implemented just a few of the social media techniques taught my Social Media Rockstars and promoted my website to top ten Google rankings – making it an authority site for a keyword related to my business. Here is my example of how social media marketing affects the natural search listing.

1. First, I had a business website that needed more traffic (what website couldn’t use more traffic). This is already a successful website for a few other keywords, but I wanted to spread the valuable content provided with this website.

2. I then researched a high traffic, low competition keyword that was related to my business website. You only want traffic that is looking or searching for what you can provide them. I do not want to falsely advertise with irrelevant content otherwise all my efforts with social media marketing would be a waste.

3. Next, I researched my market to find out what they were looking for and how I could best provide valuable content to the web searchers looking up that keyword.

4. Then I created multiple forms of content – content is information provided to a website searcher; this can be text, video, or audio. *Remember that relevant content is what you want to create.*

The content was broken down into one short video and 12 articles. 3 of the articles were 1000 words, and the remaining nine articles ranged from 300-500 words. Note: be sure that this content is in someway relating back to the main site that you wanted to increase traffic, sales, or reputation. Whatever your purpose, be sure that this content is helping.

5. Now you need to spread the content across the different social media sites. I added the larger articles to the more popular social media sites.

Of course the video went to you tube. And for the social media sites that allowed me to share a video along with my content I added the video to it.

These 12 articles and one video spread across 13 sites drove traffic back to my businesses website. The key here is to post your content on a site that has a high page rank. This will tell the search engines that the content is coming from a reliable and valuable source. In return, those high ranking sites give your site higher rankings (or a more trusted reputation) because it’s being promoted by a high ranking website. (Sort of like the popular high school student introducing the new kid – you start off on a higher social status).

Don’t stop there! With social media marketing you need to share the content. You can so this by using social bookmarking sites, posting the information to a blog and sharing the article links in a forum. People are always looking for free information. Share your free information with everyone you can. If it’s valuable and relevant to the web users you shared it with they will also bookmark it on social bookmark sites creating viral traffic.

Now if, you remember form the beginning my main purpose was to increase traffic to an already published website. I now have 12 articles, loads of social bookmarks, and a video linking back to my website. If I did my social media marketing correctly this will definitely increase the traffic coming to my business website.

But that’s not my only result: because I have all of these popular authority sites sending traffic my way, the search engines now see that I am providing valuable content. In return for providing this content and sharing it through social media marketing tactics I have boosted the listing placement of my original website. Now in the search results for my targeted keyword I have dominated the top 5 pages with articles, social bookmarks, videos, and more importantly my main business website.

With my recent efforts in social media marketing (with in the last month), I moved my business website from the 21st position in Google to the 8th. On top of that, I hold 14 other positions in the top 30 search results for my targeted keyword. All this and I didn’t use half of the resources available with social media marketing.

Using Social Media to Build Your Online Business

Posted by admin | Posted on 07-12-2010

Category : Internet

Social media is a completely different layer that has been added to the web, hence the web 2.0. Social media is becoming mainstream and in a couple years we won’t even be able to imagine a time when we couldn’t interact with all the screens and mobile content surrounding us. It is indeed a misnomer, but to suggest that the platforms that enable conversations between people and between people and brands are not viable ad opportunities is ludicrous. Social media is all about sharing and connecting. It is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value. Twitter is just one of these web 2.0 Twitter is a perfect platform for micro blogging. Allowing you to post comments with just a few words. Ping.Fm another great tool that allows you update your post to all of your social networks at once. Social Social media provides the tools for people to collaborate and get around barriers for communication, build trust. Social Media is a collection of online tools and sites that function on the premise that people are interested in talking to and engaging with other people. The fact is that social media tools differ significantly based on culture, Internet access and online behavior. Community Community members respond quickly to request to test new tools. Community members provide reflections on their activity, which stimulates change within the group. If you use monitoring to discover a real community, perhaps one you didn’t know existed, then you’ve found a treasure trove of real opinions, reactions, reviews, etc. Social Media IS NOT SEO, but search engines DO look kindly upon blog posts/community comments/online noise. Conversation Conversations in these types of communities tend to be regulated by the needs of the community’s creator or sponsors, they are less transparent, and less valuable to the participants at hand. The ability to actually listen in on market conversations made possible by social media will drive a sea change in the market research industry, one that today’s early adopters are starting to understand. When you engage in conversations in social media it may seem overly labor-intensive compared to launching an ad campaign. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge. I can meet many real people and have real conversations, but it will go nowhere if we don’t connect. Relations Social media needs to be all about relationships. Which in business terms, translates to turning relationships into clients or resources. Most association executives and show producers have realized that relationship building is their greatest priority, few have tapped into the power of social media or adopted a practical plan to incorporate these solutions. Some companies will be hard pressed to understand that its more about relationships and intangible aspects of SM rather than the numbers. Social Media is not just another media. Social media is defined by the act of sharing content in and between social networks regardless of the content type

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Business Internet Money Online Opportunity Again

Posted by admin | Posted on 29-09-2010

Category : Internet

I’m so excited today because it’s another day to make money through business internet money online opportunities. I am going to discuss a very important part of any Affiliate Marketing Plan, the Marketing Campaign. You might be asking, what is an Affiliate Marketing Campaign? Simply put it is where you put together your plan and execute it. I will explain the steps to accomplishing the creation of an outstanding campaign.

An Affiliate Marketing Campaign has the following basic elements:

(1) ”An Industry Niche Market” – This is the lodestone to your campaign. You must identify a product you want to sell that people want, e.g. “musical instruments” or “relationship support” or “internet money making”.

(2) ”Keywords” – These are the keys to ensure your success, i.e. “learn how to play an acoustic guitar” or “how to get your Ex back” or “how to make easy money on the internet”. The more unique your keywords are, the better opportunity to pull consumers toward your niche market lodestone.

(3) ”Articles to Explain Your Niche Market and Utilize Your Keywords” – Your articles are critical to drawing your customers to your product or merchants products. Establish a system to create them, review them, post them. The quicker you can do this the quicker you will see results.

(4) ”Websites and Landing Pages for Your Product or Merchant’s Products” – Your websites and landing pages are those windows that explain to your consumer or buyer what they need is available through you. This is how you can make money by connecting buyer with seller.

(5) “Post Your Articles that Link Your Web Sites to Your Products or Merchants Products” – Add your articles to article engines such as Ezine Articles, Buzzle and Article Alley. There are many out there and the more you write and submit the better chance to get your customers to find your product and buy baby buy.

The basic elements for an Affiliate Marketing Campaign are straightforward enough. The key is that you will have to keep repeating the process until you see results. Hopefully you will get results instantaneously and that is great. But keep doing it and you will succeed. It’s all a matter of time and you will have mastered how to make easy money on the internet.