Archive for Social Media
My Top Twelve HIGH ROI To Do’s For Your Business in 2010, by Sheri McConnell
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Sheri McConnell is a successful entrepreneur I admire greatly. Here I share with you her latest article:
Create a Timeless and Focused Marketing Plan for Your Business
As you probably have heard by now—you aren’t in the business of (fill in the blank here). You are in the business of marketing. Your marketing must be automated and systemized. Period.
Create Passive, Income Generating Information Products
Create your own advances and get paid to create information products. Many, many target markets are considered “information hungry”.
Build Your Most Important Asset… Your List
Success on the Internet is about providing high-quality information, solving problems AND the list.
Use Social Networking Sites Such As Facebook, Linked In, My Space, and Twitter
Used strategically, social networks extend your brand and funnel thousands of new leads into your business funnel each and every quarter.
Create A Very Profitable Internet Launch for Your Information Product or Book
Set up correctly, these launches generate thousands and tens of thousands dollars of income, new leads for you, and all your partners.
Create Your Own Certification Program
Certification programs aren’t just for large companies. Solo online entrepreneurs can also benefit from building and creating a certification program within their company.
Build Your Own Virtual Team
Learn how to find, build, and manage a virtual team. The key to “leverage” is the team. We all have weaknesses. Don’t make the most common entrepreneurial mistake: thinking you can do it all.
Approach, Create, and Solidify Long-Lasting Joint Ventures
All successful businesses are built on thriving relationships–on and off the Internet. And with all relationships, you should focus on who and how you attract partners.
Know Which Publishing Options Are Right for YOU
Learn what your publishing options are and make a choice based on the path that is right for you based on your personality, strengths, and weaknesses.
Double Your List Size With A Virtual Event
One of the best strategies for growing the list is an online virtual event with multiple partners or joint ventures. Give customers free access and structure the event correctly and it is a huge list builder.
Develop Your Intuition
Most entrepreneurs spend so much time focusing on all the “outside” stuff that they forget to get help on learning how to “think” like a CEO. Your success and ability to run a profitable company depends on your leaning how to develop your CEO intuition.
Use Visual Tools To Set Goals and Stay On Track
All successful entrepreneurs incorporate visual components into their strategy planning. They spend as much time planning as they do in the marketing, operations, finance parts of their business.
Sheri McConnell is the CEO of Sheri McConnell Companies, Inc. and the president and founder of two national organizations, the National Association of Women Writers-NAWW and the International Association of Web Entrepreneurs-AWE. Under the same corporate umbrella she is also the owner of two high-level product and consulting companies: Create Your Group and My Millionaire Friends. You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and find out more about all four of her companies at www.sherimcconnell.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and two cats.
Why Small Business Can Use Social Media?
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This article is by our team member, Eleanor Marks Prior:
No business man would stop thinking about great innovations for their business. Whether you are in a small business or a big one, you are looking for advice on how to make more profits, or you’ve never stopped researching how other successful businesses are taking advantage of their success. We could never deny that the new online marketing techniques have a great role. There has been a lot of craze and hype in the media recently about the impact of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. While some of it is overstated much of what is going on could be called a revolution in the way people do business around the world.
Many people are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, for example, and are opening up accounts, but few have any real idea of what to do once they get into the Twitter world–and the same with Facebook. Especially when it comes to business many business owners simply get an online presence and hope for the best. Even fewer take any real advantage of YouTube as a free advertising vehicle, or even know about what article marketing is.
All these social media sites can help you drive masses of traffic to your website. This is much like people coming in off the street in a busy business district to browse in your store. Once they are in the door the chances that they will buy something are pretty good. The same thing can be done to attract people to your small business online. You just have to learn the ways of the social media and social networking world.
Many small business owners think social media is only useful for large brands, like Dell or Southwest Airlines. The truth is any small business that effectively invests time in social media marketing can improve customer loyalty and increase the best kind of marketing there is: word of mouth.
Social media makes businesses more accessible and personable to customers and potential customers. It enables small businesses to maintain long term relationships and connections, increase referrals and increase trust. Used correctly, social media is extremely powerful for establishing and growing an online reputation.
Advantages of Online Reputation Management for Companies
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Constantly maintaining online reputations is one of the reasons why Online Reputation Management exists. In real sense, Online Reputation Management (ORM) was created to help business owners and professionals deal with bad press.
Even a large company or a small one could not get rid of the receiving end of negative publicity. Remember that the internet never fails to forget. Everything we do online leaves a digital mark that will never go away. This gives a reason why Online Reputation Management serves as a necessity in the field of business today.
See the advantages of Online Reputation Management for companies:
- It improves customer satisfaction by gaining insights from consumers about what is good and bad about their product or services. This increases perceptions of brand/ product by creating opportunities to listen to and engage consumers.
- It helps on gaining insights about their competitors and their customers’ perceptions about their products and services. This helps in the understanding of the relationship between user generated content and traditional forms of online media, e.g. news, print, etc.
- It maintains shareholder value by mitigating risk by having ears close to the ground where opinions about a business are being formed and propagated.
- They’re likely to be engaged in more effective Public Relations by understanding who the real influencers are.
- ORM takes a role in providing early warning systems for reactive and defensive PR.
- This may also help in reducing marketing dollars by learning how to reach out to customers more cheaply.
- May reduce internal costs by employing services which save time and effort, as well as money.
- ORM helps to identify gaps for products and services which can be developed for profitable niche markets.
- It gains insight into online networks and keywords and key phrases found in user-generated content, which can help to bolster natural search results about the person, product, or business.
Tips for maximizing the efficiency of your online reputation management endeavors:
1. Set up your social networking sites with your own name.
In other words, you need to create an interlinked “web” of these powerful social networks – that all point to you. This is profoundly important because it establishes your presence in the major search engines like Google. Using aliases, pen names or otherwise will not help establish your branding effectiveness.
2. Try to get the same username set up for all of your social media engagement profiles.
3. When you add any type of content to your social networking sites, keep your online reputation management plan in mind. You should add relevant materials.
Seeing the advantages of Online Management training, I can say that it’s a mistake for companies to launch an online reputation management campaign after the damage of bad press has already spread which is a mistake. Everyone must take a preventative approach to protect business.
This great post was contributed by Eleanor Marks Prior, Wordpress Whiz and Social Media maven.
What the BLOG???
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I just read this great article in Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero’s Ezine, Copywriting TNT. As a graduate of Lorrie’s Shefactor Bootcamp I’m a great fan of hers and wanted to share this post with you:
Blogs Are the NEW Secret Weapon for Reaching Your Tarket. Just like you, I hate being marketed to. Every day we’re bombarded with over 3,500 marketing messages. And frankly I’m sick of it! But blogs are different. Blogs are a two-way conversation between blogger and bloggee (plus all the readers in between). Through commenting and cross-linking, you can share feedback. You can build your network. You can become, dare I say it, an Internet celebrity!
See, blogs add humanity and instantaneous expression to the web. Like ezines, blogs are a way for your customer to get to know you.
However, unlike ezines, blogs help you with search engine rankings. Did you hear me? I said, unlike ezines, blogs help you with search engine rankings. That’s a big one.
Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week, even the FCC (Federal Trade Commission) all believe blogs are here to stay. Recently Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, started one. His initial post drew over 30,000 readers. A Microsoft spokesperson says Bill Gates is considering starting a blog. And filmmaker Michael Moore built a blog to promote his controversial movie, Fahrenheit 9/11.
But who has time to read a blog anyway? Exactly! The job of a blog is to cut through the information overload and deliver searchable, relevant and current content. BlogAds.com recently conducted a survey of over 17,000 blog readers. Here’s what they report:
- Blog readers are older and more affluent. 61% of blog readers are over 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year.
- Blog readers are more cyber-active. 54% of their news consumption is online. 21% are themselves bloggers and 46% describe themselves as opinion makers.
- Blog readers are media-mavens. 21% subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, 15% to the Economist, 15% to Newsweek and 14% to the Atlantic Monthly.
- Whether on the left or right, blog readers have traits in common that often are absent in today’s public spaces: passion and initiative.
- Blog readers have apathy towards traditional news sources. 82% say that television is worthless. 55% percent say the same about print newspapers. 54% say the same about print magazines.
- Meanwhile, 86% say that blogs are either useful or extremely useful as sources of news or opinion. 80% say they read blogs for news they can’t find elsewhere. 78% read because the perspective is better. 66% value the faster news. 61% say that blogs are more honest.
- Blog readers appear united in their dissatisfaction with conventional media and their rabid love of blogs.
Don’t you want to be a blogger too? How about looking at some samples of the good, the bad and the bizarre?
Model citizen blogs: http://www.marketingsecrets.com/blog/ – John Reese’s blog. Hey, the guy just made $1,080,496.37 online in a single day. Here’s a good rule of thumb. If Reese is doing it, you should be too.
http://www.talkbiz.net/ramblings/weblog.php – Copywriter Paul Myers keeps us up-to-date on SPAM and other Internet marketing nightmares.
http://www.bookedsolidu.com – Michael Port’s new streamlined and simplified community helps you get booked solid. His old site, Booked Solid Referral Network, was just too big. This one is amazing! You’ll love it.
My Blog: http://www.redhotblogging.com – my blog today.
Bizarro Blog: Jeff Bridges’ site is considered a “blog.” He uses “hand-written” graphics that make it a unique and clever site! (Yes, really.) http://www.jeffbridges.com
I dipped my toe into the blogging pool a few years ago. Now I’ve decided it’s time to really learn how to do this stuff with an expert who will take me by the hand through the scary forest of the blog-world. I’m going back to school!
Christina Hills has opened another world to me using WordPress. I just attended her amazing, content-filled “Website Creation Workshop” studying her detailed webinars. Even though I have my own Blog, I’ve learned a ton since meeting this bright and intelligent guru woman!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Award-winning marketer, world-renowned copywriter and creator of “The She Factor®“, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero of Red Hot Copy has a reputation as the top female copywriter in the info-marketing industry. She has written award-winning home study courses, conducts a world-famous virtual copywriting training, holds live workshops, and is authoring the original book, The She Factor based on her own She Factor Marketing System. Lorrie is dedicated to teaching the world it is possible to shift from the hype-filled sales to a more modern version…marketing written with authenticity, trust, and rapport. Check out Lorrie’s websites: http://www.redhotcopy.com and http://www.redhotcopy.com/shefactorbootcamp1.html and http://www.redhotblogging.com.
Fan Pages on Facebook
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Eleanor Marks Prior writes about Fan Pages on Facebook:
Fan Pages on Facebook can be very beneficial to any website or company. According to “Mashable.com”, post’s growth figures of roughly 20% monthly, totalling a 200% in size annually. This would mean that this is a good place to build good networks, making a name and endorsing your services and products. And the process is easy, simple and free. In fact,
you can really become a fan of anything, whether it’s for someone famous or you may become a fan to something that you find interesting. Whenever you update fan pages, all of your fans see what’s new and they may comment, or they may engage in conversations, ask questions, and visit your website all at one central place. These features give any businesses a great advantage, it may be a small or a big time company, products or websites.
Advantages of Fan Page on Facebook?
- Search engines can index the page.
- Pages are public, you can get some nice facebook.com link credit for free.
- You can send “updates” to fans whenever you want. This is one of the greatest features It’s a nice way of building a database of interested users. You may send messages about new products, updated website, etc.
- You control the page especially from those competitors who would like to use your page. You are able to send messages, edit or remove sections, and control the information to an extent. You can also easily invite your target audience to your page. Facebook makes it easier to distinguish who exactly is in your target demographic.
- When someone joins your Fan page, It publishes on their News feed “Jane Doe became a fan of”. This gives you a chance to connect to more people from other networks.
- With your fan page, You establish a strong fan base during these initial stages of Facebooks growth and more importantly the development stages of Facebooks attempt to monetize their efforts, will provide you with a solid standpoint to operate from in the years to come.
- This lets you see exactly where your fans are coming from, their age, there language and so on. You can monitor the growth of your site and see exactly how many page hits your page is getting It’s safe to be said this is still really in the beta stages of production and in the nearby future there will be many more options that will help your develop your marketing strategies and advertising campaigns.
Your Facebook fan page is an extension of your brand and must reflect that. Remember that people are spending more and more of their time online today. Many businesses create their fan pages with great branding and content; but if you do not make any effort to connect and engage the fans, this may be gone to waste. It is really important that you give importance.
All of these will work well if you have a main goal or purpose to your fan page that keeps you focused. It will be easier to decide what to include as content on your fan page if you have set goals in place.
Want a Facebook fanpage now. Can’t do it? No time? Not getting the results from the venture that you wanted? Contact me for evident fan page success.
What a Social Media Marketing Specialists can do for your business ?
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A guest post from our Social Media and Wordpress guru, Eleanor Marks Prior:
We usually ask ourselves “how do we make our company, product or services more popular”? Without the right exposure, nothing will come out of a potential business opportunity since we could reach our right audience. There are many ways to market your product but only few ways to make a name, one of the easiest ways do this is through the help of social media marketing strategies. A social media marketing strategy will always be easier to Social Media Marketing Specialists. So most people prefer them to do the work in finding the strategies.
See the advantages of Having a Social Media Specialist:
- A Social Media Specialist will help you find the right strategies on the basis of your goals and objectives. (Since they know what to focus on, their focus will be to the appropriate social sites to reach your business objectives. No irrelevant work will be done)
- They will make sure that the social marketing sites they have set up for your company are all connected, this will help brand awareness.
- Provide reports showing Return On Influence and Return On Investment showing you the results of your social media efforts.
- Give you assurance that goals will be achieved since they’re aware of your primary objectives.
- Allow you to have more time to improve on the other aspects of your business since someone does your work
- Gives great source to divert loads of traffic to your website which will make it popular and your services will be recognized easily. This can be controlled through strategic planning which will be easier if you’ll work hand and hand with a specialist.
- It is cost and time effective . It is known to be one of the most low cost methods of promoting your business.
As Internet usage continues to grow in other parts of the world and social networks, there will be no reason why you should be hesitant in doing what’s best for your company. Any business owner will think what’s more efficient and what’s best for their company to be reached by their target clients. Moreover, every business needs a successful and effective social media marketing strategy.
A social marketing specialist may help you in understanding the subject and find available tools, organize a well thought-out plan, and their experience in driving traffic through the use of the content. If all of these are achieved, your business is bound to succeed.
Eleanor is a Social Media expert, Wordpress guru and is currently getting ready to attend the Traffic Geyser Summit in San Diego next month. After finishing her training in supporting clients with their Traffic Geyser video and social media tools, she is set to meet the Traffic Geyser team and fellow Traffic Geyser Virtual Assistants.
Social Media Marketing – what a timewaster?!
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I just attended a very interesting webinar run by Jon Morrow (from the famous Copyblogger) and Laura Roeder (creatingfame.com), which went back to the basics of Social Media Marketing.
Looking at the comments during the webinar on Twitter (hashtag: #copybloggersm) some of the attendees expected to learn about innovative social media tools and secrets that no one knows about yet. Instead, Laura and Jon talked about the basics, that these people felt they knew already. But did they?
For me it was rather a timely reminder. How often do we “struggle” at keeping up with yet the newest and best Twitter applications and social media trends while actually we are wasting our time doing this. It’s not important to have a profile on every single brandnew social network just invented, it’s important to build deep relationship. Jon was very clear about that. How often do we feel we need to join every social network under the sun to be “in”? Not at all necessary, Jon explained.
Both Laura and Jon stressed that focusing on one or two channels is much more profitable when it comes to business. After all business nowadays bases on relationship building. Check where your target market hangs out – where are they? Are they on Facebook, Twitter or on MySpace? Concentrate your effort on this specific network and forget about others because they are not important to your target market. A little research is required (ask your VA to do the research if you are pressed for time).
If you have a blog, congregate your community there. Don’t get tempted to start lots of different channels to talk to your people, 
stay put and build the community of your blog before you rush out and build a forum because you heard someone else has a forum. How many “ghost forums” do you know that start off with a lot of noise and then develop into a ghost town with “new posts” dating back from half a year ago? Don’t create a forum when your community is less than 100 people, Jon recommended. Rather focus on your blog as point of contact.
Instead of getting nervous about having to create a blog post daily, rather write one really good one weekl. This will actually help you and your readership better than a lot of mediocre posts. Post this post out to your Twitter or Facebook friends, connect the social media channels. Your VA can automate this for you if you don’t know how to do it.
When you subsribe to other blogs to make new connections, don’t comment saying “good post” only. Give reasons or extend the subject of the blog post so that you add valuable information. This will give your comment an edge and start off new conversations.
Laura stressed that you need to remember that all social media channels are seen as customer service channels as well, so be sure you are contactable on your social networks. Check your messages regularly to avoid disappointment from your readership.
To eliminate the overwhelm in your inbox every morning, make a rule and send the notification of new Twitter followers to a separate folder. Go through these emails at a convenient time, not when you are already stressed out. Also make sure you don’t send direct messages from Twitter to your cellphone, otherwise you will be inundated with those, which will create overwhelm and stress for you.
Be authentic in social media. Jon mentioned Frank Kern and his personality. Frank is a character who shows what he likes and what he does. He is open about his life and what he is doing and his readers can easily decide if they like him or not. Not everybody may love you, but the people who have similar interests and behaviors will love you. So focus on being you, rather than being a bland nothing. Show your social media friends who you really are, what your interests are and what makes you tick. The deep bonding and relationship building will be much more profitable than being a bland marketer who sends out a lot of spam saying: “buy my products”.
Laura said that promotion is ok in social media and on your blog, but don’t overwhelm people. The 80/20 rule (80% valuable content and 20% promotion) definitely applies. Jon expanded on this saying that you even have an obligation to tell your target audience about valuable tools and products that are out there if it’s relevant to your audience. And I agree with this. If a social media friend tells me of a good program that would be beneficial for me I feel grateful. Promotion is not all bad, but do it right and be relevant with it.
Summing up, it’s important to go back to the basics of social media. Deep connections are better than shallow ones. Yep, we all know that, don’t we? But do we actually adhere to this?
Focus on a few networks or social media channels to learn all about your target market and the problems they need to have solved. Engage with people rather than sending out spammy messages. Show your personality, you will attract people who are like you and you can create a vibrant community.
Don’t jump on every new social network, go where most people of your target market are. Connect with people who are important to you and don’t try to reach “everybody”. Less can be more and quality goes over quantity. We all know that, don’t we? So let’s start doing it. 
Check out Jon’s Twitter profile on http://twitter.com/jonmorrow and Laura on http://twitter.com/lkr.
22 tweets a day? Are you serious?
Posted by: | CommentsLooking at this interesting article http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4594/Is-22-Tweets-Per-Day-the-Optimum.aspx it appears that posting about 22 Twitter messages daily is the figure to aim for if you are a serious Twitter user. Some people even send 150 tweets out daily. Where do they get the time from to do that? And what are they tweeting about?
If you are anything like me you probably don’t do that. I’m glad to have the time to post one (!) per day, so I’m a bit more like Barack Obama who posts 0.38 tweets daily.
The NY Times sends around 39.04 updates out daily, but I understand that, of course. They’d have a lot of things to post about and there are always fresh news in the pipeline. I guess if I was the NY Times I’d probably post even more! But then no one would buy their newspaper, so cancel that idea.
Over the past few days I’ve made an effort to tweet more often. The only thing I’m concerned about is the quality of posts. I don’t think a post saying “I’m having a sandwich” is great for networking. If you post a lot describing your daily life, starting from “walking the dog” to “giving the dog dinner” and “brushing the dog”, lots of people will take you off their list. Or maybe they enjoy perving into the intimate details of your dog’s life and help you count the flees he’s battling.
So what on earth do you post about when you need to send 22 messages into the Twitter realm? After all, you are looking at brand building, making a connection with potential clients and joint venture partners, driving traffic to your website or blog or trying to sell your services and products.
But be aware: a lot of Twitter fans don’t want to hear your sales talk anyway! I have to admit that I won’t follow people who post only one update about their “great” product, follow thousands of people and expect you to follow them. No way!
Then the others I don’t like are the people who have their sales pitch in every tweet they post. So boring! Actually, I prefer the “making a sandwich and cleaning the benchtop” crowd over the sales people who can’t even relax on the toilet without thinking about selling something to you.
How about you? What do you do? Do you send 22 tweets a day (sounds like 5+ a day, a New Zealand campaign about eating more veggies) into Twitter heaven? What do you say in all these posts? Where do you find all the content to post great information?
Social Media Marketing Certification
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I have something to celebrate! After attending the Social Media Marketing programme with VA Classroom, I’ve gained certification as a Social Media Marketing Consultant.
I decided to study Social Media Marketing more closely as I believe that for a large amount of small businesses social media marketing is a vital tool to get free exposure to virtually millions of potential customers.
With Social Media you are able to dominate your niche without spending a fortune on marketing, all it costs is time and your knowledge (or the time of the VA you may hire to help you out with the Social Media tasks if you are too busy).
Social Media Marketing is also exciting because you can prequalify your customers. You build a relationship before any services or products are exchanged and this relationship often turn into longterm business relationships and further sales. The customers get to know you, like you and trust you. This is important to be able to move your customers through your marketing funnel. Without trust people are often to shy to take up on your offers.
Social Media can take this shyness away because your potential customers already value your opinions, your knowledge and your ability to solve their problems. By participating in Social Media you are able to post little gems of your knowledge and advice on certain topics without giving it all away for free. Your participation makes potential customers realise that they NEED your advice and your products.
The seven modules of the programme covered:
- Social Media and Strategy and Action Planning
- Social Network Profile Set-up and Management
- Twitter Marketing
- Facebook Marketing
- Online Video Marketing
- Online Reputation Management
- Social Media Content Marketing
If you are keen to learn about these exciting topics yourself, you can enrol in this interactive programme yourself.
The course is self-directed and can be done from home and you can decide when you choose to study and for how long. It is taught by video with detailed resource guides and extensive links and information. Additionally, you become a member of a very active Social Media Club Forum that can be used by all members to exchange ideas, post questions and get further advice.
This course is particularly interesting for:
- Virtual Assistants who want to offer these services to their clients,
- Public Relations and Marketing professionals who haven’t been exposed to Social Media yet, but know they need it for their career
- Entrepreneurs who want to be able to create their own successful social media campaigns by themselves and need more in-depth training.
I’ll go and celebrate now! You’ll hear again from me soon! 
Cheers,
Heike
