Friday, December 10, 2010

Social Media and Small Business

Copyright © 2010 Jim Edwards

Unless you've been hunkered under a rock or in the back of a cave, you've at least heard the term "social media." Depending on your perspective, social media either represents the fall of western civilization or the perfect marriage of people and technology.

The term "social media" actually refers to 4 specific types of tools.

The first type, "social connection sites" like Facebook and Linked In, allow users to make, share, build, and interact with social contacts online.

The second type, "social stream of consciousness" sites like Twitter, allow users to share their thoughts quickly and easily (regardless if anyone actually cares).

The third type of tool, "social bookmarking" sites such as Digg.com and Delicious.com, let users share and rate individual sites and other media.

The fourth type of social media tool involves sites like Kongregate.com or games such as Farmville which contain "social features" to link users together.

In theory, users of social media link up, interact, and use the sites and tools as their creators intended. And, if your intentions are strictly about keeping up with friends or professional contacts you actually know in the real world, you can easily use social media to do just that. However, once you try to go beyond just networking with people you know (and the people they actually know), the world of social media gets murky fast. Though powerful and effective when used correctly, social media quickly becomes a never-ending rabbit hole of time, energy, and effort, especially for small business owners.

If you want to use social media to build your small business, keep the following in mind at all times.

Create Dialogue

Most businesses mistakenly use social media as a one-way communication tool. In fact, this represents the core mistake anyone makes with social media. You must use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to create a real dialogue - a real exchange of communication. To do that, you can't follow 20,000 people or have 50,000 friends. Bottom line, if the communication isn't authentic, you're fooling yourself that it's actually worth doing in the first place.

Gather Intelligence

Members of your target audience hold the key to your success, not the other way around. Use social media communication to get direct input from people on your products and services. Get them to tell you their hopes, fears and problems and, more importantly, how you can help them. While building your following, you can use social media search tools (like twitter.com/search) to spot trends and problems you can solve.

Watch Your Time

Most of what you need to accomplish with Facebook and Twitter can happen in less than 15-20 minutes per day. Any more time than that is a waste of precious time. Until and unless you can track business directly to your social media activities, keep a tight rein on you time.

Share Value & Fun

The number one reason anyone sends their friends or comes back to you themselves is because of value. Always remember: nobody really cares about you and your business, they only care about what your business can do for them. Share information and news others can use and you'll build a list of meaningful contacts. Put out a stream of useless drivel or "quotes of the day" and you might as well not even sign up for a Twitter account.

Bottom line: social media tools are just that, tools. You will not get rich overnight just because you signed up for a Twitter account, nor will you get inundated with business because you hang out a shingle on LinkedIn. You can, however, experience real results if you use these sites as originally intended: to create meaningful connections with real people.

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Real world of Digital Marketing, log on to
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=> http://www.SmallBusinessMarketingWeekly.com

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Making Money: Giving Away Targeted Free Traffic

A new internet marketing system has been found that blends the two ideas, making money online and giving away free traffic into one new profit system.

The majority of internet marketing systems seen today have one emphasis that is very selfish. The selfish emphasis is the one-sided act of making money, which we all can understand the need for money to support our families.

However, we also quickly agree that there are many perplexing problems confronting internet marketers. These are equally serious which they wish to have solved. The greatest problem of all is the need to get increase targeted website traffic to their sites.

Therefore, it's no surprise that a new system has been created that has blended these two great marketing needs together. This is a celebrated solution that has taken a very long time to come.

The simple act of giving away free traffic has created this unique internet marketing profit system. Listed below are the profitable benefits with this newly revealed system. You make easy money giving away a free widget code that when placed on websites or blogs will bring thousands of targeted free visitors to those website and blogs:
* A unique system that could bring you hundreds of targeted visitors to your site every day on autopilot.
*Using this system is easy and fast.
*Most efficient way to get a viral flood of laser targeted visitors to your site.
*You can use this system to spread your marketing messages virally.
*Create an avalanche of free targeted traffic to your website in a very short time.

This system is powerful and there's nothing else like it! It's so easy that even a 9 year child could do it. This is an incredible system to rake in real profits over and over again. A system like this can no doubt profit all who get involved, especially since it is a free system.

Everyone getting involved with this miracle system will quickly make money giving away targeted free traffic, since the whole key to your success has to do with it being a free traffic system. Advertise to others and get them to do the same. When a referal upgrades in your network, you will make a hefty commission. Best of all, this can be an incredible call to action for you to join now while it's still free. Anyone interested in this new internet marketing system can easily get started now.


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Monday, December 6, 2010

Discover How to Get Started With Social Media Marketing

Over the past few years the main focus for many small business and home based business owners has been on social media marketing. The great thing about social media for business is that it gives you a way to be in constant contact with past, current and future customers but there is a problem with it and that is the fact that many people who want to get started just cannot decide how and where to actually get started.

Most of these business owners know that they should be using tools such as Facebook and Twitter to connect and build relationships with people but they cannot work out how to do it so that their online businesses will benefit.

Let's take a quick look at the best way to get started with social media marketing from a business point of view.

To begin with you must have a plan. This plan needs to incorporate not only how and where you intend setting up profiles but also the various methods you will use them on a daily basis.

So that you can set up a plan you must take a look at a variety of social sites and see what they have to offer. It is important to ascertain if your target market is active on any of these social sites and you can do this by checking out what your competition is using, as there is a good possibility that your competitors are already using some of these sites for their own online home based businesses, so by studying what they are doing is a good place to begin.

Once you have discovered which social sites would be best for you to be using your next step is to get your business profile on to each of these sites. Begin with the most popular ones such as Facebook and Twitter because with these it is highly unlikely that you will miss out on your target market.

After taking care of the larger and more popular sites you can then move on to some of the niche sites as well. When setting up your profile it is essential that you include a link back to your main website as well as a short introduction to what you and your online business is all about.

Remember that the main point of social websites is first and foremost the fact that they are social so it is very important that you don't come across as someone who is only interested in pushing their business and making sales.

To be effective with any of these sites you must become engaged with your target market on a more personal rather than on a strictly business and sales level.

After joining and setting up your profile you will then need to find and join groups that are being used by your target market and you can do this by searching through the various groups that are available. While not all social media websites have groups there are a large majority of them that do. Along with these groups there could also be communities and the best way to find them is by becoming "friends" or "following" people who think and are in the same business as you are.

By discovering what they are talking about and doing you will be in a better position to see how the whole community interacts and once you get the feel of the tone of the community then you need to become engaged with them.

This is the point at which you must begin to add valuable information to the general discussion. Keeping this in mind you can in a very subtle and minimal way include a bit of a sales pitch. Your main purpose there is not to sell your products directly; the goal is to become known and brand yourself and by building good relationships that can give huge benefits well into the future both with customers and other online businesses.

If you follow these easy steps you will quickly and effectively integrate yourself and your online home based business into the social sites community.

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Michelle Jayes writes articles aimed at helping people to build successful legitimate online businesses. Click here to follow her on http://twitter.com/MichelleJayes or visit her website http://www.online-income-business.com

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Give Importance to Search Engine Optimization

Making money online is becoming an increasingly popular routine thanks to the many Internet marketing experts that help ordinary people get started with their own website and online business. Compared to marketing in the real world, the learning curve is not too steep and you should be able to nail the basics after doing some online research.

However, that should not stop you from learning some of essentials in making money through marketing such as search engine optimization or SEO. Getting familiar with Seo isn't something that is very hard.

First off, search engine optimization only works if you have some content on your site. Your website must contain lots of text because search engines only crawl through text.

Because of this, your site must have different content not only for search engines but also for your own readers. Don't put random content that does not make any sense because your readers that find your website through the search engines may dismiss your site as a spam site. If your home page needs to make a strong impression with graphics, you can always put the rich content on other pages.

Once your site is properly set up with some interesting content, your task will now shift to refining the content. This part can be tricky because you need to add certain keyword phrases and scatter them throughout the article without degrading the quality of your content.

To make things easier, make a list of keyword phrases that best fit your site. Figure out what you expect your visitors to type in their favorite search engine so that they can reach your site. Type the keywords yourself to learn how compettive the results are. Choosing the keyword phrases that do not have much competition are the best way to go. If you find this process tedious, you can try a keyword tool such as the one provided by Google.

Once you picked around three to five unique phrases, start doing minimal edits by substituting phrases with the keyword phrases so the sentences still make sense. A good keyword setup is to have the keyword in the beginning paragraph and somewhere in the end. You may want to use the keyword phrase more often if you are working with a larger article.

When you read your optimized article and see that it still makes sence, you achieved to possess the basic knowledge of seo. The results will not be instant though and the best thing that you can do is to continue adding new content while using the same keyword phrases that you picked. To boost your website rank, you may think o use other online advertising methods so you get even more traffic. Keep your site updated regularly so your visitors can come back and possibly bookmark or subscribe to your site.


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For more search engine optimization content, please visit this blog: http://rekli.ra6.org

Saturday, December 4, 2010

How Does Your Attitude Impact Your Success in Business

It is an unfortunate fact that as a result of the recent recession, many business owners have been thrown into a state of panic about the future of their business. Yes, it is sensible to make ourselves aware of any financial issues which may or will affect us directly, but by adopting a negative attitude, we could in fact do more harm to the success and overall future of our business if we allow these pessimistic views to take over our business mind.

Fear can work both ways within our lives. At one end of the spectrum, fear can be the one thing which pushes us to succeed and can motivate us. At the other end, it can have disastrous effects as our fear influences our emotions within our business approaches which affect our managerial styling, shortchanging ourselves and our profits. In some cases we may simply shrug off our negative attitude as stress which comes hand in hand from owning our own business. However, if we are able to get to grips with the issues which are affecting our attitude, we can help improve the overall success of our business and reap the benefits of positive thinking.

It is likely that there may be a number of factors which have caused you to adopt a less than positive attitude but in order to effectively alter this attitude; you need to be able to identify what is going well with your business to re-focus your motivation. If you have been able to acquire new clients or leads or have witnessed a fantastic outcome as a result of a new marketing or promotional strategy, you need to focus on these positives. If you have been losing money as a result of the recession for example, look at what changes you made in order to keep yourself afloat and analyze whether these changes will be able to stay in place for a prolonged period of time in order to optimize your saved money.

During times of crisis, we often find although are not aware, that we constantly think or communicate negative thoughts whether these are thoughts about us as a person, or about our business. In order to adopt a positive attitude, you need to consider how your negative thoughts may be affecting the way in which you make business related decisions. Allowing our worries to diminish our ability to stay positive may result in us shying away from making any decisions which are considered too risky. Yes, it is understandable that problems within your business may make you more hesitant to take risks, but sometimes, taking a risk can help propel our business to where it deserves to be. These risks may be changing your marketing strategies, looking to build on your clientele or even looking to expand your business. By thinking positive thoughts about how these risks can benefit your business, you will learn to expect good things for your business, helping you to maintain a positive outlook for your business. Recognizing a great opportunity during these difficult times could be the one thing which keeps you ahead of your competitors.

Finally, the most effective way in which to help your business succeed as a result of your positive thoughts is to practice positive affirmations. Although at a first glance this may appear to be a slightly embarrassing task to tackle, filling your mind with positive thoughts can make you more equipped to rid your mind of the negative ones, helping you improve on your decision making and overall managing of your business. Draft a few empowering sentences which relate directly to what you hope to achieve with your business and any future aspirations you have for your company and repeat these as often as you feel you need to. Weak affirmations will only aid in placing doubt in your mind as an entrepreneur.

It is unfortunate fact how many business owners are allowing their negative thoughts consume their minds and ruin the foundations of the business. Although this is something which we may fear will occur to us, it is important to remember that in the event that our competitors face this feat that it can in actual fact, help us to succeed further. Now, that's something to be positive about, surely?


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Diana Samalot is mother of twin girls, writer, entrepreneur, master marketer and success coach. Using the proven system, training, coaching and world class support that the top 1% earners use will take your business to the next level whether you are seasoned or a newbie. Take action now and find out if you qualify to become part of her team of entrepreneurs and a millionaire by 2012, go to >>>
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Top Tips for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

Top Tips for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

Working online at a home business to earn a full=time living can not only relieve the stress and strain of working at a 9-5 job but it has obvious advantages such as freedom to be creative and be your own boss.

It takes a lot of courage, patience, and persistence to have a business up and running. Without the security of the corporate world where paychecks come regularly, having a business is indeed a challenging and risky endeavor.

There is really no formula for success, but there are some qualities you should be developing if you want to become successful as an entrepreneur and these are listed below:

1. Have The Right Mindset.

Dreaming big will never be considered a negative thing. In fact, a lot of success stories start with dreaming big. You have to have a clear image of how successful you want to be so that you can work towards this dream. Your success must feel very real to you when you start thinking about it. Once you have a definite idea of the success you want to achieve, see to it that you play back this image at every opportunity you get. This may sound weird at first, but a lot of personal coaches stand by this visualization exercise.

2. Have Passion for Your Business.

If you don't love what you do, you won't get anywhere with it. Therefore, it is necessary that you find what you are passionate about and work with it. Think of all the people who hate their jobs now, do you think they will climb ranks if they are not dedicated to their jobs? No.

As an entrepreneur, you will have to put in a lot of hours to make your business grow. If you love your business, then you won't mind putting in 15 hours per day to it. Overnight success is not something that can be experienced in a business setting. It takes hard work and patience to grow a successful business.

3. You should always been keenly aware of your own strengths and focus on those.

No matter how good you are, there will always be something you will be weak at. Instead of focusing on being a jack-of-all trades, you need to hone the skills you are really good at. You will be more successful if you put your efforts to the stuff that you do best and ask other people to join you and make up for the areas you are weak at.

4. Don't Think of Failing.

One quality of an entrepreneur is having the ultimate belief in his goals. If you have a great business idea, for sure, you will be able to make it a reality. With your capabilities and extreme faith in the idea you have, you'll have an easier time attaining any goal you set for your business. Just see to it though that you carefully balance your confidence and the risk your idea brings to your business.

5. Plan, plan, plan.

Having a vision is not enough. Sure, you see what you want to have in the next 5 years, but do you know how you will get to that vision? Similar to architects and engineers who want to build the tallest building in the world, you need to have a set of plans to work on. Concrete goals as stepping stones will bring success to you faster than you think. Make sure you write these goals so that it doesn't end up as wishful thinking. Without a plan in place, failure will be waiting for you.

6. Work!

Just because you don't work a 9-5 job doesn't mean you won't work if you want to be an entrepreneur. No one achieves success by sitting around all day. A lot of successful entrepreneurs will tell you that they have had to put in a lot of hours at the beginning of any business endeavor. Unlike being an employee where you can relax after a day's work, expect to think business every hour of the day when you become an entrepreneur. If you enjoy what you are working at...it will not seem so much like work.

7. Network.

Networking is utterly important in the business world more than anywhere else. Especially for small businesses, you'll need all the help you need. So don't immediately disregard the woman sitting next to you at a conference or the gentleman you've met at a trade fair, because you'll never know how these people can help you or vice versa. Having a good network is

necessary in business because a lot of opportunities will come knocking from your contacts.

8. Keep an Open Mind.

Sure, an MBA from Harvard is ideal, but you won't need it to succeed in your own business. Think of all the successful entrepreneurs who weren't able to complete their education. How did they manage to be successful in their chosen businesses? Simple. They kept an open mind and were willing to learn every aspect that can bring good to their business.

Don't stop asking questions and be open to new knowledge as they come. With the fast changing world of today, you'll get very far if you keep an open-mind.

9. Have Faith and Perseverance.

Nothing in this world comes easy. This is most especially true for those who want to chase success. Success will not always come easy...despite all your hard work and dedication. For an entrepreneur, this means setbacks, problems, or worse bankruptcy. But successful entrepreneurs don't treat this as a major thing. In fact, they are the very first ones to get back on their feet and start anew.

Persistence is an equally vital quality for any budding entrepreneur today. All disappointments are temporary so you must learn to bounce back from it as soon as you can. Perseverance will bring you success.

10. Be Disciplined.

One of the most important traits in order to be successful this way is self-discipline. Yes, there are times when you don't want to do work, but you must get up and get to it whether you like it or not, because everything that will bring good to your business is important. Remember, the price of success is expensive and it's in doing what others don't like to do and going an extra mile to fight a winning battle on your own.

Admittedly, being a successful entrepreneur isn't easy. It takes all of hard work, patience, and persistence to be one. With these ten tips, you'll have a clearer idea on how to be a successful entrepreneur.

Now, there is no reason for you not to apply these tips and start your journey to success.


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Kathy Dobson is a free spirited entrepreneur and business owner committed to helping individuals discover personal and financial freedom through learning the art of outsourcing.
Grab your free outsourcing ebook and guide:
http://www.empoweredoutsourcing.com/EmpoweredOutsourcing.html

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Facebook For Marketing: It's The Next Big Thing

Why You Should Use Facebook For Marketing

Facebook is ruling.

That is absolutely right. With Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's declaration that the social networking giant is aiming to reach a billion users in 2010, you now have an idea where you need to be if you're an online marketer: placing yourself right in front of Facebook's global users. Facebook for marketing is definitely in!

Having reached the 500 million user mark, the young founder had this to say about hitting 1 billion users: "it is almost a guarantee that it will happen". Needless to say, with Facebook's global dominance almost complete, you know you need to be riding in its great wave of success.

To date, Facebook is down to just four countries where they are not the leading social network -- Russia, Japan, China and Japan. Considering Facebook's huge web traffic and increasing number of users, Facebook definitely stands out as one hell of a marketing opportunity!

Facebook for marketing

CEOs, marketers, salespersons and bloggers alike talk about "tightening their belts" as a way to signify cutting back on essentials. But one area you surely do not want to miss and cut back on is marketing.

It is the very same thing that supports your sales efforts, so when marketing budgets are cut down, you can almost immediately see a very extreme decrease of leads and sales count.

But with a free online tool such as Facebook that's seen to be the next internet superpower in the next few months, your marketing efforts and budget don't need to suffer or even go to waste! When you are in front of millions of users, you are bound to reach a huge portion of your target market! This is why it is very important to tap Facebook for marketing.

Why? Because that is where they hang out.

Earlier I wrote about Facebook vs. Google and how marketers should pay a lot of attention to the former. If you happen to miss this one out, you can read it here.

Facebook is very huge, and it's just getting even better. It's ready for global domination, and we have to be there when it happens. If you are already marketing on Facebook today, well that's great for you!

As for the rest of you who are just starting out on this, take advantage of the great power and dominance of this social networking giant.

It is bound to give you a very HUGE and positive results.


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Have You Ever Thought About Utilizing Facebook For Marketing? Elmar Sandyck Is An Expert Internet Marketer And You Can Get More Online Tips And Techniques By Visiting http://www.InternetMastermindSecrets.com

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Using Keywords for Search Engine Optimization

A site has to be found to get traffic. This is a simple truth on the internet. Search Engine Optimization is the method of accomplishing this. Without it, getting your site noticed is very difficult. You want two things to happen: getting to the top of the first pages of search engine results and high page rank.

Most people equate keywords with search engine optimization and that is very important. Using the right keywords in the best placement is crucial. Keywords must be relevant or you could be penalized by the search engines. All your work in getting your site up will be for nothing if you use irrelevant keywords simply because they get a lot of searches.

Choose keywords relevant to your niche that are used when people search for information on your topic. Keyword research and being intuitive about how people use search engines will yield the keywords that will bring traffic to your site and put your site on the first page of search engine results.

A few years ago, everyone was saturating their sites with keywords without regard for quality and readability of the content. That just doesn't work anymore. Using a keyword too much is known as keyword spamming and is death to a site. Search engine optimization requires that content be relevant, informative and readable. It doesn't help if visitors to your site don't have any reason to stay and read your content.

One thing many don't know yet and others are beginning to learn is to use variations on keywords. This helps with readability and search engines now look for these variations. Instead of using an exact keyword 15 times in a 500 word article, use it about 6 times and use variations several more times. Use keywords and variants in a natural way so the content is not awkward to read.

The use of keywords for search engine optimization has many theories regarding placement. There isn't just one hard fast rule and it is really a matter of which you prefer. Some people prefer the primary keyword used in the first and last sentences and 3 more times in between. Others want the primary keyword twice in the first paragraph and twice in the last paragraph and once in each paragraph in between. There are other placements that can be used but these are two of the most common.

If you are using a secondary keyword, it should be used less often than the primary keyword. Two or three times is usually enough for search engine optimization purposes. More keywords can be used but, again, you don't want to overload with keywords. That can prove to be more harmful than helpful. The result of using more than 3 or 4 keywords per article can be content that appears written for search engines and not people. Changes in the way search engines look at sites now favors content that is meant to be read by humans, not software.

Learning about how to find the best keywords and how to use them are important. It can mean the difference between getting a lot of traffic to your site or never being found by people searching information in your niche. Getting your site up high in search engine results where it is seen quickly is the whole point of search engine optimization.

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For more search engine optimization articles, please visit http://onewaylinks.ra5.us .