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Showing posts with label entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Friday, 17 May 2013
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
10 Things Entrepreneurs Should Be Tweeting About
Apart from creating a vibrant branded Twitter account for your startup, business owners should consider creating their own personal account on Twitter. Fans and followers often want to connect with the person behind the brand.
Giving customers and prospects a glimpse into the entrepreneur's life and mindset can allow them to cultivate a deeper relationship with customers separately from the brand. The goal, of course, is to increase customers' loyalty to the brand.
Here are 10 things every entrepreneur can tweet about, which can allow your clients and prospects to see another side of you:
1. Personal news: Share the big events of your personal life -- vacations, weddings, births -- the type of info you'd share with close friends. It can help keep your followers feeling like they're "in the loop." You're also more likely to make a connection with followers who have experienced something similar.
2. Mistakes and lessons: Sharing mistakes and what you learned is a sign of growth, not weakness. Try doing a "What I learned this week" tweet and see how your followers respond.
3. Answers to questions: If someone asks a question on Twitter and you know the answer, share it. This can also be a way to develop a FAQ within your industry, which you can later point them to via a link.
4. Links to articles: They key to sharing articles is to also include your unique opinion. Let others know why you liked or didn't like an article.
Just remember that your opinion paints a public image, which means you should be cautious about which opinions you choose to share -- ideally only those which are congruent with your market. Keep the rest to yourself.
5. Pictures of unusual things you see: If something catches your attention, it's probably going to catch the attention of others, too. So why not share it? This includes visually impressive products, food and architecture.
6. Wisdom from the book you're reading: When you hit a "golden nugget" of wisdom in a book, share it. It not only shows that you're well read, but that you value wisdom. Those are two things that can only help your reputation.
7. Interesting advertising: When a billboard or any other advertising catches your attention, take a picture and tweet it. Everyone can benefit from seeing smart marketing.
8. Fun purchases: Sharing your recent purchases, such as music, video games or sports equipment can stir up comments and conversations from others that have bought similar items and enjoy the same kind of entertainment.
9. Share wisdom from outside the world of business: Quotes from sports heroes, military leaders and artists can teach us about innovation and leadership, which are essential to business success.
10. Your work: The greatest links you can share are links to your personal work, but don't limit that to what you do professionally only. If you have a hobby or passion for something creative, share it.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224972
Giving customers and prospects a glimpse into the entrepreneur's life and mindset can allow them to cultivate a deeper relationship with customers separately from the brand. The goal, of course, is to increase customers' loyalty to the brand.
Here are 10 things every entrepreneur can tweet about, which can allow your clients and prospects to see another side of you:
1. Personal news: Share the big events of your personal life -- vacations, weddings, births -- the type of info you'd share with close friends. It can help keep your followers feeling like they're "in the loop." You're also more likely to make a connection with followers who have experienced something similar.
2. Mistakes and lessons: Sharing mistakes and what you learned is a sign of growth, not weakness. Try doing a "What I learned this week" tweet and see how your followers respond.
3. Answers to questions: If someone asks a question on Twitter and you know the answer, share it. This can also be a way to develop a FAQ within your industry, which you can later point them to via a link.
4. Links to articles: They key to sharing articles is to also include your unique opinion. Let others know why you liked or didn't like an article.
Just remember that your opinion paints a public image, which means you should be cautious about which opinions you choose to share -- ideally only those which are congruent with your market. Keep the rest to yourself.
5. Pictures of unusual things you see: If something catches your attention, it's probably going to catch the attention of others, too. So why not share it? This includes visually impressive products, food and architecture.
6. Wisdom from the book you're reading: When you hit a "golden nugget" of wisdom in a book, share it. It not only shows that you're well read, but that you value wisdom. Those are two things that can only help your reputation.
7. Interesting advertising: When a billboard or any other advertising catches your attention, take a picture and tweet it. Everyone can benefit from seeing smart marketing.
8. Fun purchases: Sharing your recent purchases, such as music, video games or sports equipment can stir up comments and conversations from others that have bought similar items and enjoy the same kind of entertainment.
9. Share wisdom from outside the world of business: Quotes from sports heroes, military leaders and artists can teach us about innovation and leadership, which are essential to business success.
10. Your work: The greatest links you can share are links to your personal work, but don't limit that to what you do professionally only. If you have a hobby or passion for something creative, share it.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224972
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Facebook marketing: 5 effective ways to cater to your mobile audience
There are 1.08-billion active monthly users on Facebook, which is why your business would be crazy not to have a marketing strategy for this platform. However, many businesses don’t realise that it’s also important to cater to a mobile audience. Currently, there are 680-million monthly active users, and this number is growing. So here are five effective ways to improve your mobile Facebook marketing efforts.
Optimise all website content for mobile users
If you plan on sharing content on Facebook, you should realize a lot of users will click through on a mobile device. So you need to make sure all of your content is mobile optimized. This means you need to have a mobile website that adjusts your content for smaller viewing screens.According to a 2012 Mongoose Metrics report, only 10 percent of websites are currently optimized for mobile use. This presents a unique opportunity for you to boost traffic. A developer can help you out with mobile optimization, or you can choose an app to turn your website mobile.
It’s also important to note that the number of mobile users is growing, making mobile websites even more important to businesses. According to HubSpot, more smartphones than PCs were sold in 2011, and one in seven searches is performed on mobile devices.
Case in point: Kiddicare.com grows via mobile optimisation
A good case in point would be Kiddicare.com, an online nursery and infant supply company that experienced significant growth thanks to a mobile optimized website. Kiddicare discovered that seven percent of its traffic came from mobile devices, but its website was too difficult to use on a smaller screen. That’s why they decided to optimize, which was a process that took seven weeks from concept to launch. After the optimization, they predicted 20 percent of their revenue came from mobile users in 2012.
Build brand awareness with Facebook business pages
It’s important for every business to have a website, but it’s equally important to have a Facebook business page. This can drive more traffic to your website, which helps acquire more customers. Additionally, people search for local stores and businesses when they are away from home, and Facebook drives some of that traffic through its mobile app.The mobile business page on Facebook features recent photos, events, and check-ins, so it’s very important to use compelling images that look good in a mobile browser. Plus, as more and more people use the Facebook mobile app to interact with brands, fostering brand awareness is more important than ever. Ergo you need to carefully choose the content you share.
Case in point: Property Minder gains new Facebook fans
Property Minder is a web-service firm that offers services to real estate companies. The company used its Facebook business page to establish credibility in the industry. It worked on brand awareness, and subsequently gained new fans. It also had 584 whitepaper downloads through brand-awareness efforts.
Integrate coupons and promotions into your Facebook posts
Facebook users want to read informative and useful posts. Your business will be “unliked” if you’re too promotional. So the best way to overcome this is by integrating coupons and promotions into your Facebook posts. For instance, you can offer a coupon or run a contest via Facebook’s “Offer, Event+” function. You’ll be advertising, but users will also like the content.Promotional Facebook posts are also important from a mobile user’s standpoint. Conversion rates are 12 times higher with sponsored ads on Facebook mobile than with the desktop version.
Case in point: BellaSoleill increases sales
BellaSoleill is a Tuscan home décor retailer which decided to offer a special code on their Facebook business page for 10% off merchandise. This offer increased profits by $10 000, and it helped subscribers grow by 200% in only three weeks. This was all because Facebook users had to like the page to gain access to the promotion.
Create targeted Facebook ads to promote your business
Facebook was originally slow to adopt ads on its mobile platform, but it now nets US$305-million from mobile ads quarterly. These ads look and feel more like natural posts, which means more clicks for your business. Additionally, people using 4G phones can access Facebook feeds as quickly as someone on a laptop or desktop computer.The Facebook app is the third most downloaded app for mobile phones — it’s only behind Google Maps and YouTube. This means mobile ads on Facebook get a lot of views. You can used sponsored stories to drive more traffic to your business, because these stories have a click-through rate that’s seven times higher than regular posts.
Case in Point: Zappos.com increases annual ROI
Zappos.com claims that Facebook ads drive traffic in the US$10-million range each year. This demonstrates the obvious advantages of using Facebook ads. Plus, these ads can be targeted toward specific demographics, meaning you gain traffic outside your page’s own fan base.
Build a customer list and discover customer interests
From a marketing standpoint, one of Facebook’s biggest advantages lies in creating a huge list of followers with relatively little effort, especially if your business is already has a big name in the mainstream public. Then you can learn about customers by reading their comments and viewing the limited information on their profiles. You can also target potential customers based on their location. If you have a physical location, there’s also a check-in feature for mobile customers to share their patronage with friends.Case in point: Sugarbush Resort increases subscriber list
Sugarbush Resort had a goal of increasing their email subscriber list and Facebook fans to have more opportunities for targeted marketing. The company ran a sweepstakes on it Facebook business page and gained 3 000 likes in only one month. Additionally, they gained 2 000 email list subscribers. This helped Sugarbush in its mobile marketing efforts, too.
Mobile marketing is a constantly changing animal, but your business is missing out on a lot of traffic if you don’t implement a mobile strategy. Use Facebook in your marketing efforts and you’ll likely see a significant increase in sales and customer loyalty.
http://memeburn.com/2013/03/facebook-marketing-5-effective-ways-to-cater-to-your-mobile-audience/
Friday, 3 May 2013
10 big lessons for anyone looking to market themselves on YouTube
I was recently fortunate enough to attend two really cool Google events: Engage and YouTube All Stars. Getting the chance to interact with some of the intriguing innovations and latest news to do with Google is pretty cool. Getting the chance to do so with products developed solely to help any business out there succeed on and off-line is even cooler.
Engage was divided into three segments — Pitch Perfect, AdWords Bootcamp and Above & Beyond — meaning that you could tailor your experience according to your interests.
The presentation that stood out for me surrounded building and maintaining client relations, where Google’s Craig Wing made it clear that “when selling your business, you are not just selling your business, but you are in fact also selling yourself”. This is so true! Avinesh Pillay backed this up, saying: “even if you fail the pitch and you do not get the deal, do not fail selling yourself as you as a person will always be remembered”.
Those lessons are applicable to any business but are also clearly ones that the success stories at the YouTube All Stars event had taken to heart.
YouTube All Stars Event
At the event, YouTube showed how the likes of Caspar Lee, Rob Vamplew (Rob The Ranger) and energy expert Martin Lorton, make a substantial monthly income through Google AdSense and how people like acapella singing group The Soil achieved international fame after showcasing their talent on YouTube.
Peter Cilliers is another of these success stories. Cilliers started the channel Six Pack Factory as a way of chronicling his weight loss. It’s since become a serious money spinner for him. In one month, he made R80 000 from Adsense ads alone. He shared some tips and advice when to achieve success while earning revenue through your own channel on YouTube:
1.Take action and get started
Create an account and start uploading videos, no matter what camera or phone you are using. Just start and keep going.
2. Continuity is key
Do not be demotivated after uploading one or two videos with little interaction, sharing or no views at all. Sometimes it can take anywhere from six to 14 months before getting noticed and going viral. Tell people in your video to share, take action or when your next video is due to be uploaded.
3. Have a clear goal for your channel and videos
Before you start make sure every video you upload is towards your main goal for your channel and videos.
4. Be unique and different
If you are competing in a niche where someone else is already established (or not), you have to make sure that what you are presenting or at least the way you are presenting it, is done in a unique and different matter to ensure engagement and growth of your subscribers. Target a really microscopic, detailed, refined niche.
5. Interact with your fans
No matter how big you grow or small you still are, remember to interact with your fans and at the same time listen to them in order to make sure you give them what they want. Reply to comments, ask them questions, give away prizes, feature them in videos or Do Google Hangouts.
6. Customize / brand your channel
From the start you can brand your channel making sure the background is relevant and standing out. Also make sure your avatar is universal stays the same all over each and every social network. When you reach partner status ensure the added features compliment your branding.
7. CTA: Call to action
Ensure you use annotation features of YouTube and visual design and recorded movie effects to bring forth your call to actions. People will then tend to respond, as it is more user-friendly.
8. Never leave your videos open-ended
At the end of your video you can add annotations over nice CTA images to ensure the viewer does not end there but continues to other videos or engages more with your channel.
9. Use annotations
This function gets repeated a lot as there is so much one can do with it. For example, create a video with images which link to all your other videos via annotations over these images that form or look like navigation buttons.
10. SEO your videos correctly
Make sure you use the right title, description and tags relevant to your video and its content. Also make sure your custom thumbnail is relevant and attracts attention.
http://memeburn.com/2013/03/10-big-lessons-for-anyone-looking-to-market-themselves-on-youtube/
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
How to Increase Your Twitter Traffic
With increased traffic, you’ll likely make more sales. But, how can you increase your Twitter traffic? Here are some effective ways to do that.
A good place to begin is by letting others know that you are on Twitter. You can include a link to your Twitter profile in emails, blog posts, and your website.
Tweeting regularly also helps to drive traffic to your site. This will help you to gain followers who may visit your site through links in your tweets. Also be sure to have a link to your site on your profile.
Find quality accounts in your niche to follow and retweet some of their best content. Many of them will follow you back.
You will want to build good relationships with your followers. Don’t inundate your followers with promotions or too many links. Concentrate on posting helpful information and interacting with your followers.
Using Twitter can be a lot of fun, but it also takes hard work to use it effectively to promote your business. Don’t expect results overnight. It takes time to build up a respectable following of people who trust you enough to further investigate your business. If you concentrate on quality instead of taking shortcuts, you will no doubt find Twitter to be a very effective tool for reaching out to your customers.
http://newmarketspace.com/how-to-increase-your-twitter-traffic/
Monday, 29 April 2013
5 Underutilized LinkedIn Marketing Tools
When it comes to nurturing professional relationships and developing a community, LinkedIn is one of the best resources. But while entrepreneurs might already be aware of important features such as its custom groups or the Question and Answer section, there are a number of tools and features that the professional networking site offers that have gone mostly unnoticed.
I recently connected with Fenot Tekle,senior communications manager from LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions team. Here's what she had to say about how small-business owners can use LinkedIn to help take their ventures to the next level:
Entrepreneur: What LinkedIn tools are underutilized by small-business owners?
Tekle: We offer a number of tools that small-business owners should be aware of when considering how best to engage with professionals on the platform, including:
Entrepreneur: What's the best application for an entrepreneur to promote their business?
Tekle: The targeted status updates, a feature that increases the relevance of conversations between companies and members. Accessible from a LinkedIn Company Page, the targeted status update allows an entrepreneur to tailor relevant messages to professionals who follow their company.
Entrepreneur: For business owners, what's the most important metric to measure?
Tekle: Key metrics will vary from one company to the next, but, in general, business owners are interested in seeing an increase in engagement.
An increase in engagement is the beginning of turning followers into advocates for the business. Engagement analytics are accessible on any established Company Page, so it's convenient for business owners to track their progress.
Entrepreneur: What does an entrepreneur need to know to get the most out of LinkedIn advertising?
Tekle: Have a clear understanding of the target audience. There are many tools available to marketers to attract desirable targets, but campaigns will likely be most effective if business owners reach the right audience, with the most the appropriate content in the right context.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224337
I recently connected with Fenot Tekle,senior communications manager from LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions team. Here's what she had to say about how small-business owners can use LinkedIn to help take their ventures to the next level:
Entrepreneur: What LinkedIn tools are underutilized by small-business owners?
Tekle: We offer a number of tools that small-business owners should be aware of when considering how best to engage with professionals on the platform, including:
Partner Messages: Small-business owners can utilize LinkedIn's InMail messaging platform to deliver relevant messages to specific audience segments.
Polls: This allows users to easily find answers to their business and market research questions. You can share a poll through LinkedIn's Facebook or Twitter integrations, or embed the voting module on your own website or blog.
Display Ads: Yes, businesses can advertise on LinkedIn. The display ads service allows advertisers to target specific groups of professionals through display ads on the LinkedIn platform.
Recommendation Ads: These ads display the number of recommendations that a small-business owner's product or service has generated on their LinkedIn Company Page.
Targeted Status Updates: Users can tailor the content in their status updates to specific types of company followers. Make sure the right people are seeing the right content.
Polls: This allows users to easily find answers to their business and market research questions. You can share a poll through LinkedIn's Facebook or Twitter integrations, or embed the voting module on your own website or blog.
Display Ads: Yes, businesses can advertise on LinkedIn. The display ads service allows advertisers to target specific groups of professionals through display ads on the LinkedIn platform.
Recommendation Ads: These ads display the number of recommendations that a small-business owner's product or service has generated on their LinkedIn Company Page.
Targeted Status Updates: Users can tailor the content in their status updates to specific types of company followers. Make sure the right people are seeing the right content.
Entrepreneur: What's the best application for an entrepreneur to promote their business?
Tekle: The targeted status updates, a feature that increases the relevance of conversations between companies and members. Accessible from a LinkedIn Company Page, the targeted status update allows an entrepreneur to tailor relevant messages to professionals who follow their company.
Entrepreneur: For business owners, what's the most important metric to measure?
Tekle: Key metrics will vary from one company to the next, but, in general, business owners are interested in seeing an increase in engagement.
An increase in engagement is the beginning of turning followers into advocates for the business. Engagement analytics are accessible on any established Company Page, so it's convenient for business owners to track their progress.
Entrepreneur: What does an entrepreneur need to know to get the most out of LinkedIn advertising?
Tekle: Have a clear understanding of the target audience. There are many tools available to marketers to attract desirable targets, but campaigns will likely be most effective if business owners reach the right audience, with the most the appropriate content in the right context.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224337
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
5 Online Marketing Strategies for a Tight Budget
In a world where attention is currency, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to attract the eyes and ears of your target market. Not only are you up against larger companies with nicely funded marketing departments, you're also competing with social media and a multitude of other distractions for the attention of your prospects.
But that doesn't mean your marketing efforts have to cost a ton of money or be overly dramatic in order to stand out from the crowd. Here are five creative and inexpensive ways to market your business in a digital world:
1. Get endorsed by a local celebrity.
Many business owners dream of having their product or service endorsed by a global celebrity. But instead of trying to get a superstar to support your business, try seeking out a local celebrity instead.
Who exactly are local celebrities? These are people your local paper is writing about -- perhaps an "unsung hero" such as a teacher or a resident who's doing something positive and newsworthy. Since they're in your neighborhood, these people should be relatively easy to locate and contact by phone or e-mail. Let them know you'd like to send them a gift, namely your product or service.
The only catch: you'd like to follow up with them in a few days to get their honest feedback. Their responses can make for useful blog or marketing content.
2. Create a LinkedIn group.
Not only is a LinkedIn group free to create, it can enable you to offer your professional network a vibrant, useful information resource all while driving traffic to your site and increasing sales. Just don't use the platform to hard sell anyone.
It can take time and effort to get one going, but the goal should be to help provide resources and start discussions on topics that can benefit your community. Groups should also be a place for your members to network with other professionals online.
3. Get published on niche blogs.
While it may be difficult to get on the front cover of a major magazine, you can create marketing opportunities by being featured in a popular niche blog. Identify three to five blogs that target your market then contact the creator and offer a few ideas of how you'd like to bring value to his or her readers. You can:
With more than 800 million unique visitors a month, YouTube can be a powerful platform for marketing a business online. To do so, go beyond simply posting random videos of your product or sharing your thoughts.
The marketing videos you create should include the following elements:
5. Write an e-book about the biggest issues in your industry.
No longer do you need a publishing company or thousands of dollars to get distribution for a book. Amazon, for instance, will let you upload a digital book for free, with a 33 percent take on every sale. The goal is not to make a profit from direct book sales but to use it as a lead generation tool, encouraging readers to opt into your website for further information.
Even time-strapped entrepreneurs who aren't great writers should consider this. You can search sites like E-lance or Odesk to hire an affordable ghostwriter who can help you convert your blog posts or audio recordings into book format.
When it comes to marketing your book, set the price between $1 and $5 -- which makes it affordable -- then use social media, video marketing and e-mail list marketing to promote it. To generate more leads, keep in mind that Amazon allows prospective buyers of your book to take a sneak peek of the first few pages. Be sure to embed links into these early pages so you can capture leads from people who were interested but didn't wind up buying your book.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226146
But that doesn't mean your marketing efforts have to cost a ton of money or be overly dramatic in order to stand out from the crowd. Here are five creative and inexpensive ways to market your business in a digital world:
1. Get endorsed by a local celebrity.
Many business owners dream of having their product or service endorsed by a global celebrity. But instead of trying to get a superstar to support your business, try seeking out a local celebrity instead.
Who exactly are local celebrities? These are people your local paper is writing about -- perhaps an "unsung hero" such as a teacher or a resident who's doing something positive and newsworthy. Since they're in your neighborhood, these people should be relatively easy to locate and contact by phone or e-mail. Let them know you'd like to send them a gift, namely your product or service.
The only catch: you'd like to follow up with them in a few days to get their honest feedback. Their responses can make for useful blog or marketing content.
2. Create a LinkedIn group.
Not only is a LinkedIn group free to create, it can enable you to offer your professional network a vibrant, useful information resource all while driving traffic to your site and increasing sales. Just don't use the platform to hard sell anyone.
It can take time and effort to get one going, but the goal should be to help provide resources and start discussions on topics that can benefit your community. Groups should also be a place for your members to network with other professionals online.
3. Get published on niche blogs.
While it may be difficult to get on the front cover of a major magazine, you can create marketing opportunities by being featured in a popular niche blog. Identify three to five blogs that target your market then contact the creator and offer a few ideas of how you'd like to bring value to his or her readers. You can:
- Demonstrate good will by offering the niche blog owner a small amount of your product or service for free, which they can give away to their audience as a gift. This is different than a product review, which only offers information.
- Send ideas for blog posts you'd like to write and explain why they would be helpful for their readers.
- Ask if you can interview them for your site. This might entice the blog manager to promote your content since it highlights his or her business.
With more than 800 million unique visitors a month, YouTube can be a powerful platform for marketing a business online. To do so, go beyond simply posting random videos of your product or sharing your thoughts.
The marketing videos you create should include the following elements:
- A keyword-researched headline
- A clear editorial message (don't try to accomplish too much in one video)
- A call to action (tell the viewer to do something, such as subscribing to your channel)
5. Write an e-book about the biggest issues in your industry.
No longer do you need a publishing company or thousands of dollars to get distribution for a book. Amazon, for instance, will let you upload a digital book for free, with a 33 percent take on every sale. The goal is not to make a profit from direct book sales but to use it as a lead generation tool, encouraging readers to opt into your website for further information.
Even time-strapped entrepreneurs who aren't great writers should consider this. You can search sites like E-lance or Odesk to hire an affordable ghostwriter who can help you convert your blog posts or audio recordings into book format.
When it comes to marketing your book, set the price between $1 and $5 -- which makes it affordable -- then use social media, video marketing and e-mail list marketing to promote it. To generate more leads, keep in mind that Amazon allows prospective buyers of your book to take a sneak peek of the first few pages. Be sure to embed links into these early pages so you can capture leads from people who were interested but didn't wind up buying your book.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226146
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Maximize Twitter to Monetize Your Brand
Twitter isn’t just about tweeting popular information or conversing with associates. It is about networking with as many individuals as you can.
But, therein lies the question: how do you expand the visibility of your brand? Excessive tweeting and even posting valuable information or helpful links isn’t necessarily going to improve awareness. There are certain tools and techniques that need to be applied to make the most of your online Twitter existence.
Improve your following
One of the most powerful tools on Twitter is the hashtag (#). Ensure you use hashtags to grab the attention of others on special days like #FF (Follow Friday). This is a tool that allows you to recommend other Twitter accounts and mentionable brands.
It’s a great opportunity to improve your number of followers, and is likely to get you some recommendations as well. Remember, Twitter is a network that works well if you work with others. Competing will only hinder your efforts. Just be sure to leave room when making a recommendation so those you recommended can thank you or re-tweet it later (perhaps including it in their favorites).
Spark a conversation
When commenting on valuable content that has been tweeted, posted, or otherwise written, be sure your comment is thorough and self-explanatory. What made it valuable to your specific area of expertise? Don’t just recommend it; explain why it is your recommendation. You are working toward word-of-mouth marketing by recommending those that will return the favor — this will improve your visibility and expertise.
When re-tweeting, expand your material by adding in valuable commentary that can be linked back to you. Re-tweets are often limited to simply saying “what they said,” but it doesn’t benefit you as much as it could. Additionally, keep in mind that short URL’s should be used for the sake of space, plus it allows you to comment on it or clarify its purpose (be sure that you do so).
Mention to generate attention
Twitter feeds can be littered with a largely unorganized mess of conversations, which is why the @mention should be used to help clarify a conversation. It can be used in another way as well. Have you recently added new followers? Investigate them — what is it that they do? Brand? Professional experience? Application? Find something to initiate a conversation with them by @mentioning them as a recommendation, showing appreciation for the follow, or otherwise begin developing a stronger network with them.
As a helpful hint, when acknowledging an article, mention the author as well (using their twitter account). This is far more likely to get the author’s attention than simply mentioning or linking to their article.
Twitter has an array of tools, all of which must be used to maximize your networking experience. Be sure you make the most of your opportunity by mentioning, recommending and sharing others so they will share you too.
Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks, a word-of-mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops — taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy, buzz2bucks.com.
http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/05/maximize-twitter-to-monetize-your-brand/
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
3 days of internet marketing PLUS a holiday
Hey have you heard of this guy?
He’s running an internet marketing seminar next weekend (about how to start and run your own internet business from home).
Want to go?
Attendance is $197 at the door, or no cost if you register online. The p resenter is best-selling author Brett McFall, and he’s doing something pretty amazing – he’s giving every person a $2,000 holiday just for attending.
Even if you’re a tiny bit interested just click on the link below to see what I’m talking about:
http://tiny.cc/e93euw
Sounds like it’s going to be pretty interesting.
Regards
Chris
He’s running an internet marketing seminar next weekend (about how to start and run your own internet business from home).
Want to go?
Attendance is $197 at the door, or no cost if you register online. The p resenter is best-selling author Brett McFall, and he’s doing something pretty amazing – he’s giving every person a $2,000 holiday just for attending.
Even if you’re a tiny bit interested just click on the link below to see what I’m talking about:
http://tiny.cc/e93euw
Sounds like it’s going to be pretty interesting.
Regards
Chris
Thursday, 28 March 2013
The Complete Beginners Guide to Writing Articles.
Getting Started:
Do you have a passion? Are you particularly well-versed in a certain topic? Are you willing to invest time in doing research? Either one of these are all you really need, but if you`ve got all 3, then you`re definitely on the right track.
Grab a cuppa, a smoke, whatever you need to relax with, open up notepad/wordpad or even grab a pen and paper. Write down a 5-6 line bio about yourself and/or the product/program you`re promoting, this is commonly known as your 'Resource Box', and should be at the bottom of each and every article you write. The 'Resource Box' is THE only place you should promote ANYTHING at all in the article.
Next you need to focus on a topic. Start jotting down thoughts, and don`t worry about how mixed up they may seem to be at first, just keep going. If you can`t think of many things at first, save your work, and look it over another day, more ideas will pop into your head.
Once you feel you have enough, start moving things around until they really begin to make sense to you. Keep going until you`re happy with what you`ve got. Remember, articles don`t need to be mega-long, so long as they are helpful and informative. Write as you would speak, and make it personal, as if you are talking to a good friend. Let your personality shine through.
What to write about:
As I mentioned above, anything you are passionate about, or are well-versed on is a great start. You`re not passionate about anything? Not an 'expert' in any subject at all? Well do some research. Start by thinking about what YOU would like to read about, what kind of information would YOU find helpful? Thought about it? Go to www.google.com and type it in, see what comes up, start looking into the various things you find. You could even ask friends and colleagues what THEY would be interested in reading articles about.
What, still can`t come up with anything? It gets like that sometimes, so relax, take a deep breath, and start visiting forums/message boards. What questions are being asked? What do people need help with? Hang out in chat rooms, ask the same questions there, get as much feedback as you can, then start working from there. Eventually, you`ll find you`ve managed to write a GREAT article, in plain English, offering helpful/useful information.
Let a couple of your closest, most honest friends read through your articles for you. Don`t get offended if they make suggestions, some of them might even be good ones...hehehe, but make sure you stick with how it feels best for you.
So now what:
This is where the REAL hard work comes into play, cos now you`re ready to start submitting your articles to the world :~) Ok, if you want to go the easy way about it, stop reading now, go buy yourself some automatic submission software and get stuck into submitting your articles with it.
Personally, I prefer hard graft, and sometimes a bit of the personal touch. So for starters, I subscribe to a LOT of ezines that cover the topics I write about, then I offer the publishers my articles. Most of them are like me, and LOVE being first to publish well written articles. A nice personal mail usually gets that wheel turning ;~)
Then there`s all the article directories, and there`s TONS of them. It`s hard work submitting manually to them all, but then at least you know for definite that they WERE actually submitted. Don`t worry, I`m not going to make you search for them, I`ll list all my favourites here for you, and that`s gonna at least cut down a little on your work-load...hehehe
So here goes:
The first one is my personal favourite, as they make a webpage for your article and submit it to search engines for free. The rest are in no particular order
Good Luck, Happy writing and submitting, and have fun!
May you be prosperous in everything you do.
Anna-Marie Stewart Venton
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/5581/marketing/the_complete_beginners_guide_to_writing_articles.html
Do you have a passion? Are you particularly well-versed in a certain topic? Are you willing to invest time in doing research? Either one of these are all you really need, but if you`ve got all 3, then you`re definitely on the right track.
Grab a cuppa, a smoke, whatever you need to relax with, open up notepad/wordpad or even grab a pen and paper. Write down a 5-6 line bio about yourself and/or the product/program you`re promoting, this is commonly known as your 'Resource Box', and should be at the bottom of each and every article you write. The 'Resource Box' is THE only place you should promote ANYTHING at all in the article.
Next you need to focus on a topic. Start jotting down thoughts, and don`t worry about how mixed up they may seem to be at first, just keep going. If you can`t think of many things at first, save your work, and look it over another day, more ideas will pop into your head.
Once you feel you have enough, start moving things around until they really begin to make sense to you. Keep going until you`re happy with what you`ve got. Remember, articles don`t need to be mega-long, so long as they are helpful and informative. Write as you would speak, and make it personal, as if you are talking to a good friend. Let your personality shine through.
What to write about:
As I mentioned above, anything you are passionate about, or are well-versed on is a great start. You`re not passionate about anything? Not an 'expert' in any subject at all? Well do some research. Start by thinking about what YOU would like to read about, what kind of information would YOU find helpful? Thought about it? Go to www.google.com and type it in, see what comes up, start looking into the various things you find. You could even ask friends and colleagues what THEY would be interested in reading articles about.
What, still can`t come up with anything? It gets like that sometimes, so relax, take a deep breath, and start visiting forums/message boards. What questions are being asked? What do people need help with? Hang out in chat rooms, ask the same questions there, get as much feedback as you can, then start working from there. Eventually, you`ll find you`ve managed to write a GREAT article, in plain English, offering helpful/useful information.
Let a couple of your closest, most honest friends read through your articles for you. Don`t get offended if they make suggestions, some of them might even be good ones...hehehe, but make sure you stick with how it feels best for you.
So now what:
This is where the REAL hard work comes into play, cos now you`re ready to start submitting your articles to the world :~) Ok, if you want to go the easy way about it, stop reading now, go buy yourself some automatic submission software and get stuck into submitting your articles with it.
Personally, I prefer hard graft, and sometimes a bit of the personal touch. So for starters, I subscribe to a LOT of ezines that cover the topics I write about, then I offer the publishers my articles. Most of them are like me, and LOVE being first to publish well written articles. A nice personal mail usually gets that wheel turning ;~)
Then there`s all the article directories, and there`s TONS of them. It`s hard work submitting manually to them all, but then at least you know for definite that they WERE actually submitted. Don`t worry, I`m not going to make you search for them, I`ll list all my favourites here for you, and that`s gonna at least cut down a little on your work-load...hehehe
So here goes:
The first one is my personal favourite, as they make a webpage for your article and submit it to search engines for free. The rest are in no particular order
- http://freezinesite.com/articles.cgi?action=add
- http://www.searchwarp.com/Register.asp
- http://www.ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm
- http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
- http://www.ezinearticles.com
- http://www.netterweb.com/articles
- http://www.allnetarticles.com
- http://www.web-source.net/syndicator_submit.htm
- http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
- http://www.articlecentral.com
- http://www.certificate.net/wwio
- http://www.connectionteam.com/art.html
- http://writerexchange.about.com/arts/writerexchange
- http://www.content-exchange.com
- http://www.dime-co.com
- http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml
- http://www.womans-net.com
- http://www.writers-free-reference.com
- http://jogena.com
- http://businessknowhow.com
- http://www.selfgrowth.com/submit-article.html
- http://www.ezadsuccess.com
- http://www.opportunityupdate.com/doorwaytosubmit.html
- http://www.ezine-writer.com.au
- http://www.clickforcontent.com
- http://www.family-content.com
- http://www.boazepublishing.biz/articledir
- http://www.hitsnclicks.com/hnc/contribute/contribute.asp
- http://amazines.com
- http://www.mailbiz.com/mailbiz/magcat
- http://www.authorconnection.com
- http://www.HerAssistant.com
- http://www.ultimateprofits.com/index_author.htm
- http://www.webbers.com/newcontent
Good Luck, Happy writing and submitting, and have fun!
May you be prosperous in everything you do.
Anna-Marie Stewart Venton
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/5581/marketing/the_complete_beginners_guide_to_writing_articles.html
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
30 Amazing Marketing Tools, Tips & Tricks We're Thankful For
I asked a bunch of marketers what tools, tricks, and tips make them salivate more than a juicy turkey, and they came up with some awesome stuff(ing). (Getting tired of the Thanksgiving puns yet?) Here are some of the things that we're thankful to have as marketers -- because they make us do our jobs better, quicker, stronger, faster. I hope you can take away a few gems to implement once your holiday is over -- and that you share some of your little tricks with us in the comments!
2) Facebook Global Pages - These are a pretty new development , but this is so helpful for global marketers. Before, Facebook marketers had two choices: Have one Facebook page for an entire global audience, meaning it was pretty untargeted; or have multiple Facebook pages to accommodate a global audience, and then struggle to maintain alllll of those pages. Facebook's global pages mean marketers get the best of both worlds -- a central maintenance location with better targeting options.
3) Audience Targeting in Facebook Advertisements - There's more to love about Facebook. Their audience targeting in their ad platform lets marketers, well, create ads targeted at a specific audience. Pretty self-explanatory. But also pretty -- or insanely -- helpful. It prevents a lot of money from being wasted because ads are way more relevant. You can even target custom audiences from email addresses you already have in your database!
4) Twitter Hashtags - Twitter hashtags are insanely helpful for marketing a specific event on Twitter -- and eliminate the desire to create a separate handle for something. So when we host an event like INBOUND , we don't need to manage yet another Twitter handle, we can simply create an event-specific hashtag and monitor the discussion there. That is so much easier!
6) Evernote - Whether you use Evernote or another note-taking app, this is so helpful for writing or brainstorming content when you're on the go. For example, many of our content creators have their best ideas when they're not at their computer. On the train, making their bed, in the shower, what have you. Instead of powering up your computer when you have content inspiration, an app like Evernote helps you keep your ideas straight, and easily find them later when you're at your work computer.
7) Factbrowser - You know when you're creating content and you need a compelling stat or data point to make your point? Enter Factbrowser . It's like Google for data. Broken down by topic, source, format, region, and/or demographic. You're welcome.
8) CreativeCommons - You have three options for getting images for your marketing content: Spend money on a stock photography site, create them yourself, or steal them from someone else on the internet. Oh wait, you have a fourth option! It's CreativeCommons! They let you search for photos that are free and allowed to be used commercially, provided you give credit to the artist. We use it all the time -- including in this very blog post!
9) Final Cut Pro X - The new version of this video editing tool not only lets even the least experienced video editors create something amazing and professional-looking, but it lets you easily share videos to YouTube and Vimeo directly -- without having to save them to your computer and then re-upload them.
10) PowerPoint as a Design Tool - It's not just for presentations, people! Marketers can use PowerPoint as a design tool -- to create professional looking calls-to-action , ebooks, even infographics ... all without needing to call up a designer or invest in expensive design software.
11) Snipping Tool - The snipping tool is a Windows tool that lets you easily take screen captures -- this is amazing for creating tutorials on how to do something, or even to interface with your IT or Support team to demonstrate bugs that arise. Here's a great synopsis of how to set it up on your computer if you haven't already.
13) Free Site Crawl Tools - The more your site grows, the harder it is to get a full picture of all the pages out there -- and the problems they might have that are affecting your SEO. That's why free tools like Xenu and Screaming Frog are fantastic; they crawl your entire site, and spit out a spreadsheet of all the pages, URLs, and broken links on your site. It's a content or SEO auditor's dream.
15) VLOOKUP - Marketers can analyze data very quickly using a VLOOKUP in Excel, searching for and identifying all types of a particular set of data. It saves our event marketers, in particular, a ton of time.
16) YouTube Analytics - With YouTube Analytics -- which they revamped about a year ago -- marketers can measure the effectiveness of their videos just like any other content they create. Looking at metrics like drop-off time and engagement help you ascertain which videos resonate most with viewers, the ideal length for your videos, and what content within the videos is most engaging.
17) HubSpot Sources - I think our marketing team looks at our Sources dashboard every single day. Whether you're using Sources or some other analytics software, we love being able to see where our site traffic is coming from, how it compares to past months, and whether any specific channels are totally rocking -- or totally tanking. And a great little feature within Sources is the ability to set daily, weekly, and monthly goals so you can always see how you're trending towards reaching that goal.
18) Statistical Significance Calculator - Most marketers can't do this kind of math in their head -- if you can, call us, we're interested. For the rest of us, when you're running any kinds of tests in your marketing, statistical significance calculators help you know when your test's results are actually meaningful. That way, you don't end your A/B test before the results are relevant.
20) Filtering and Archiving in Gmail - If there's one thing I'm sure we all suffer from, it's inbox overload. Gmail provides life-saving filtering and archiving features so you can block out the messages that don't matter, and clear your inbox of message you do care about, but don't need to see right this moment.
21) Dropbox - Besides being a company with totally lovable marketing , Dropbox helps marketers that are frequently sharing big files from person to person. This is pretty common when you're doing any kind of design work, whether with a third party or in-house. Plus, you can access, edit, and save that content from anywhere.
22) HipChat - HipChat is an instant messaging client that lets a large team communicate with each other easily. This is especially important when working on campaigns across different departments, or across different sub-departments within your marketing department. For example, you could create different chat rooms for your email team, your content team, and your sales team -- and then only bring people into your room when you need their input, and leave them out when they don't need to be bothered.
23) Stand-up - No, not the comedy. Stand-up meetings are daily meetings that are intended to be short, and keep you agile. We often do a 5-10 minute stand-up meeting in the morning on each of the sub-teams in marketing to catch up coworkers on what's happening, prioritize projects, and get any minutiae out of the way so we can all be productive during the workday. So the two members of the blogging team will chat with each other quickly to sort out their day, but they won't do a stand-up with, say, the marketing ops team, because they're working on different initiatives. It's a must for agile marketers, in my opinion.
25) Smart List Segmentation - You're probably not batching and blasting anymore, but if you haven't dappled in smart list segmentation, ohmygosh, you will be so excited when you do! We use our smart list segmentation tool -- which means the software knows when a contact on your list does something that triggers them to receive a certain type of email content, be removed from a list, or be added to another list. That's a whole lot of manual labor that you don't have to do anymore. Helloooo, friends, family, and hobbies outside of work!
26) CRM - This isn't exactly small potatoes ... but if we weren't using a CRM -- we use Salesforce -- we would be a fumbling mess of a sales and marketing organization. It helps us close the loop on our marketing analytics, it helps us organize our lead intelligence, and it enables our sales team. If you're not using a CRM yet, it might be worth it to look into giving yourself (and your entire company) a nice little present this holiday season.
27) Agile and Aligned Sales Team - I think everyone is thankful for this, but our sales team calls warm leads as soon as possible. They've found a lot more success with calling leads right away, instead of waiting a few days or weeks to call. It makes us thankful as marketers, because we know the leads we're working to generate aren't going to waste.
29) Ebooks - Ebooks are a great resource for getting a deep dive tutorial on a specific topic, but without having to invest the time (and money, if it's a free ebook) into an entire book. Plus, you can read them on your own time ... like maybe during a long flight home from Thanksgiving!
30) Webinars - Webinars are another amazing informational resource, but they let you actually hear the experts. This is awesome for topics that you need a little more hands-on teaching to grasp. Plus, you don't have to spend a bunch of money and time traveling to conferences to get it.
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33852/30-Amazing-Marketing-Tools-Tips-Tricks-We-re-Thankful-For.aspx
Social Media Tools
1) Social Media Publishing Tools - It's wonderful to be able to actually enjoy your time off as a social media manager -- and social publishing tools let you do that. We use HubSpot's social media publishing tool , and it's supremely awesome because it allows you to schedule not just text updates, but image updates, too. That means we don't have to sacrifice engagement on Facebook over the holidays or weekends because we're just scheduling text updates, or spend our holidays at the computer creating memes to keep engagement up.2) Facebook Global Pages - These are a pretty new development , but this is so helpful for global marketers. Before, Facebook marketers had two choices: Have one Facebook page for an entire global audience, meaning it was pretty untargeted; or have multiple Facebook pages to accommodate a global audience, and then struggle to maintain alllll of those pages. Facebook's global pages mean marketers get the best of both worlds -- a central maintenance location with better targeting options.
3) Audience Targeting in Facebook Advertisements - There's more to love about Facebook. Their audience targeting in their ad platform lets marketers, well, create ads targeted at a specific audience. Pretty self-explanatory. But also pretty -- or insanely -- helpful. It prevents a lot of money from being wasted because ads are way more relevant. You can even target custom audiences from email addresses you already have in your database!
4) Twitter Hashtags - Twitter hashtags are insanely helpful for marketing a specific event on Twitter -- and eliminate the desire to create a separate handle for something. So when we host an event like INBOUND , we don't need to manage yet another Twitter handle, we can simply create an event-specific hashtag and monitor the discussion there. That is so much easier!
Content Creation Tools
5) The Thesaurus - Ridiculous? Maybe. But holy cow do bloggers use this a lot. If you aren't leveraging it, get on it! We use this all the time in our "Title Brainstorms" so our vocabulary doesn't get stale (let's not call everything , "great," am I right?) and readers want to keep clicking on our headlines. Bookmark this baby on your toolbar for easier brainstorming, and more variety in your vocabulary!6) Evernote - Whether you use Evernote or another note-taking app, this is so helpful for writing or brainstorming content when you're on the go. For example, many of our content creators have their best ideas when they're not at their computer. On the train, making their bed, in the shower, what have you. Instead of powering up your computer when you have content inspiration, an app like Evernote helps you keep your ideas straight, and easily find them later when you're at your work computer.
7) Factbrowser - You know when you're creating content and you need a compelling stat or data point to make your point? Enter Factbrowser . It's like Google for data. Broken down by topic, source, format, region, and/or demographic. You're welcome.
8) CreativeCommons - You have three options for getting images for your marketing content: Spend money on a stock photography site, create them yourself, or steal them from someone else on the internet. Oh wait, you have a fourth option! It's CreativeCommons! They let you search for photos that are free and allowed to be used commercially, provided you give credit to the artist. We use it all the time -- including in this very blog post!
9) Final Cut Pro X - The new version of this video editing tool not only lets even the least experienced video editors create something amazing and professional-looking, but it lets you easily share videos to YouTube and Vimeo directly -- without having to save them to your computer and then re-upload them.
10) PowerPoint as a Design Tool - It's not just for presentations, people! Marketers can use PowerPoint as a design tool -- to create professional looking calls-to-action , ebooks, even infographics ... all without needing to call up a designer or invest in expensive design software.
11) Snipping Tool - The snipping tool is a Windows tool that lets you easily take screen captures -- this is amazing for creating tutorials on how to do something, or even to interface with your IT or Support team to demonstrate bugs that arise. Here's a great synopsis of how to set it up on your computer if you haven't already.
SEO Tools
12) Google Webmaster Tools - Google has fantastic free tools that help marketers with their SEO. You can check things like the number of indexed pages on your website, submit your site to Google so you're getting crawled and indexed, and even disavow bad inbound links .13) Free Site Crawl Tools - The more your site grows, the harder it is to get a full picture of all the pages out there -- and the problems they might have that are affecting your SEO. That's why free tools like Xenu and Screaming Frog are fantastic; they crawl your entire site, and spit out a spreadsheet of all the pages, URLs, and broken links on your site. It's a content or SEO auditor's dream.
Analytics Tools
14) Excel, Excel, Excel - Any report that can be exported into Excel makes a marketer's life so much easier, whether from a tool like Xenu, or when we use HubSpot. It's great to be able to have a spreadsheet of raw data that you can manipulate and analyze from different angles.15) VLOOKUP - Marketers can analyze data very quickly using a VLOOKUP in Excel, searching for and identifying all types of a particular set of data. It saves our event marketers, in particular, a ton of time.
16) YouTube Analytics - With YouTube Analytics -- which they revamped about a year ago -- marketers can measure the effectiveness of their videos just like any other content they create. Looking at metrics like drop-off time and engagement help you ascertain which videos resonate most with viewers, the ideal length for your videos, and what content within the videos is most engaging.
17) HubSpot Sources - I think our marketing team looks at our Sources dashboard every single day. Whether you're using Sources or some other analytics software, we love being able to see where our site traffic is coming from, how it compares to past months, and whether any specific channels are totally rocking -- or totally tanking. And a great little feature within Sources is the ability to set daily, weekly, and monthly goals so you can always see how you're trending towards reaching that goal.
18) Statistical Significance Calculator - Most marketers can't do this kind of math in their head -- if you can, call us, we're interested. For the rest of us, when you're running any kinds of tests in your marketing, statistical significance calculators help you know when your test's results are actually meaningful. That way, you don't end your A/B test before the results are relevant.
Collaboration & Planning Tools
19) Google Drive - You might remember them as Google Docs, but I digress. Google Drive is a fantastic collaboration tool -- something all marketers are familiar with -- that helps everyone see and update information in real time. In fact, this very blog post used Google Drive to collect the tools and tricks our marketers loved! Plus, it's fun to see other people typing, and then try to finish their sentences with silly words. Again, I digress.20) Filtering and Archiving in Gmail - If there's one thing I'm sure we all suffer from, it's inbox overload. Gmail provides life-saving filtering and archiving features so you can block out the messages that don't matter, and clear your inbox of message you do care about, but don't need to see right this moment.
21) Dropbox - Besides being a company with totally lovable marketing , Dropbox helps marketers that are frequently sharing big files from person to person. This is pretty common when you're doing any kind of design work, whether with a third party or in-house. Plus, you can access, edit, and save that content from anywhere.
22) HipChat - HipChat is an instant messaging client that lets a large team communicate with each other easily. This is especially important when working on campaigns across different departments, or across different sub-departments within your marketing department. For example, you could create different chat rooms for your email team, your content team, and your sales team -- and then only bring people into your room when you need their input, and leave them out when they don't need to be bothered.
23) Stand-up - No, not the comedy. Stand-up meetings are daily meetings that are intended to be short, and keep you agile. We often do a 5-10 minute stand-up meeting in the morning on each of the sub-teams in marketing to catch up coworkers on what's happening, prioritize projects, and get any minutiae out of the way so we can all be productive during the workday. So the two members of the blogging team will chat with each other quickly to sort out their day, but they won't do a stand-up with, say, the marketing ops team, because they're working on different initiatives. It's a must for agile marketers, in my opinion.
Sales & Nurturing Tools
24) Landing Page Creation Tool - Any marketer who has had to work with designers or IT to get landing pages created ... and found that it took days or even weeks to get it done, will be thankful for an easy landing page creation tool. We use HubSpot, and it makes our lives easier because we can create a landing page in less than 5 minutes. It makes launching offers so much easier, which means lead generation is made easier.25) Smart List Segmentation - You're probably not batching and blasting anymore, but if you haven't dappled in smart list segmentation, ohmygosh, you will be so excited when you do! We use our smart list segmentation tool -- which means the software knows when a contact on your list does something that triggers them to receive a certain type of email content, be removed from a list, or be added to another list. That's a whole lot of manual labor that you don't have to do anymore. Helloooo, friends, family, and hobbies outside of work!
26) CRM - This isn't exactly small potatoes ... but if we weren't using a CRM -- we use Salesforce -- we would be a fumbling mess of a sales and marketing organization. It helps us close the loop on our marketing analytics, it helps us organize our lead intelligence, and it enables our sales team. If you're not using a CRM yet, it might be worth it to look into giving yourself (and your entire company) a nice little present this holiday season.
27) Agile and Aligned Sales Team - I think everyone is thankful for this, but our sales team calls warm leads as soon as possible. They've found a lot more success with calling leads right away, instead of waiting a few days or weeks to call. It makes us thankful as marketers, because we know the leads we're working to generate aren't going to waste.
Educational Tools
28) Social Media - Social media is an amazing way to stay up to date on trends and news, so you can be the first to report on it in your industry. We try to follow people that are always tweeting out the latest and greatest marketing updates so we're in the know -- and can connect with primary sources, too.29) Ebooks - Ebooks are a great resource for getting a deep dive tutorial on a specific topic, but without having to invest the time (and money, if it's a free ebook) into an entire book. Plus, you can read them on your own time ... like maybe during a long flight home from Thanksgiving!
30) Webinars - Webinars are another amazing informational resource, but they let you actually hear the experts. This is awesome for topics that you need a little more hands-on teaching to grasp. Plus, you don't have to spend a bunch of money and time traveling to conferences to get it.
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33852/30-Amazing-Marketing-Tools-Tips-Tricks-We-re-Thankful-For.aspx
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Free Ezine Advertising That Works!
One of the best ways to get free traffic to your site, is to write articles for ezines. Now before you shudder and click away, it isn't that hard to write a good article. If you've got a bout of writers block, just search for info related to the subject you want to write about, then re-write it in YOUR OWN words and style, do not copy. Your article needs to be around 500 - 700 words, with short paragraphs, 5 or 6 sentences. DON'T try and disguise an advert as an article and forget about putting in your affiliate links, publishers will delete it straight away, if you want to use this approach to promote an affiliate program, you should really get your own domain as it looks more professional. Once you have put your masterpiece together, leave it a day, then come back to it and re-read it, you'll be surprised what other nuggets of info pop out after a nights sleep, and how many errors seem to jump out at you. When you're sure your article is ready, run it through a spell checker and format it to 55 - 60 characters per line so the publisher can just cut-n-paste into their ezine. Don't forget to put your resource box at the bottom of the article! This is what's going to get you a ton of free traffic to your site after all. Believe me folks, just one half decent article can get you alot of free traffic, I remember one article I wrote was published in a ezine that had a circulation of 500,000, if I wanted to pay for advertising in this particular ezine it would have cost me over $400! Not only does this technique save you money, it also gives you credability, and alot of ezines turn your articles into web pages that will remain there for years to come. Get published, get credibility, get free traffic for years to come! I think that's worth a little effort don't you?
Thursday, 14 March 2013
The 3 MOST Powerful Forms Of 'Viral Marketing' That Will PUT Your 'Opt-In' List Building Efforts On
EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it.
"The Money Is In The... LIST!"
I bet you've heard this catch phrase once or twice while surfing around on the Internet.
I know I have.
But, the question that usually arises is... "How do I effectively build one that won't cost me an arm and a leg in the process?"
Well, today's your lucky day because I'm going to highlight 3 of the MOST powerful ways to build your targeted 'Opt-In List' by using the Power of 'Viral Marketing' as your engine.
And the best part about using these 3 'Viral' methods I'm about to mention are... they cost virtually Nothing to produce, are Highly targeted, give You INSTANT Credibility and are in constant demand by website owners.
So, with that said, let's move on to what these 3 'Viral' methods are and how they will benefit you and your List Building efforts.
Method #1. Writing 'Special Reports'.
- Special Reports work great because they allow you to go into more depth about the Topic or Problem in question where you'll then be able to lead them to how your Product or Service(or Affiliate product) can fix there current problem.
- They give you Instant Credibility, which builds trust in your customer that you are knowlegdable in your industry.
- Website owners are always looking for quality **Free Stuff** to give away or offer to there Visitors and/or Subscribers.
This is where you could CASH-IN, especially if you make your special report 'Brandable'. This gives the website owner even MORE incentive to give your Freebie away if they can make Money in the process.
- And your Contact Information will always be inside, no matter what. Meaning, as your report is being passed around the Internet you'll always be able to lead your potential customer back to your website where they could sign-up for your newsletter and/or read up more about your Products or Services you offer.
Method #2. Putting Together A 'Free eBook'.
- Free eBooks work great as well and have the same benefits as I outlined through the special report.
The only difference using this approach is, you can put together a free ebook in less time then it would take to produce your special report simply because it doesn't even have to be your own material inside, it can be someone else's.
Just make sure you put together a free ebook with quality information inside.
- And they also allow you to target more then one Product or Service inside because free ebooks are usually a compilation of related articles targeting a particular problem leaving you room to diversify.
Method #3. Writing 'Articles'.
- Writing Articles is probably ONE of the Best and Most Effective Ways to produce a wave of Viral traffic to your website because every website owner needs FRESH content to feed to there visitors and/or subscribers.
- They also allow you to Target your audience's problem specifically that they're dealing with.
- And at the end of the article you have a spot called the 'Resource Box' to insert your personal Bio and/or Website information.
Just imagine if your article were to be picked up by some Newsletter Editor with a large list or High Traffic website and they use it as a 'Featured Article' in there publication, you could see an INSTANT Surge of targeted traffic to your website overnight.
That's where your 'Resource Box' comes in.(Take a look at how mine is formatted at the end of this article.)
Well, that about sums it up for the 3 MOST powerful 'Viral Marketing' methods being used today by most Internet marketers, and for good reason, because they work.
Now, with all that said, what do these 3 'Viral' methods all have in common that'll put your List Building efforts on 'Auto-Pilot'?
- They're in HIGH demand by website owners.
- They're HIGHLY Targeted.
- They give You INSTANT Credibility in your industry.
- They have YOUR Contact Details leading to Your website.
...and Most important of all, they're all FREE!
Just think for a minute, by using only ONE of these methods listed above, how it could put your Opt-In list building efforts on 'Auto-Pilot'.
This article represents just a summarized version of all the different List Building techniques available online, But, in my opinion, these 3 are the most effective.
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-3-MOST-Powerful-Forms-Of-Viral-Marketing-That-Will-PUT-Your-Opt-In-List-Building-Efforts-On&id=78342
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Free Internet Marketing: Replace Your Income Using Only Free Online Strategies
I started internet marketing in January of this year and, despite earning enough money to allow me to quit my job and do this full time, still feel like a newbie. In this business, you quickly realise how vast and the internet marketing arena really is. Because of the sheer scale of the internet and the number of money-making strategies to reflect this huge amount of opportunity, the average newbie will spend months just getting to grips with most of the general profit avenues internet marketing has to offer, and they will find themselves divulged with offers of brand new internet marketing software, internet marketing books, internet marketing tips etc. However, it is essential that the newbie always bears in mind that the quickest, simplest and easiest way to make money online is via free internet marketing.
There are many free internet marketing methods to make fast money online. For example, a newbie could collate free information about blogging, and then set up a free blog at Blogspot or Wordpress; the newbie could then insert some AdSense for free and get about optimising the pages so the search engines would attract visitors. Or the newbie could try affiliate marketing; the newbie would simply go over to Clickbank, get a free affiliate code, choose a product to affiliate for, and then start hitting free internet forums targeted for their product to promote it in their profile signature. And this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to free internet marketing.
The internet marketing Gods reward those who are innovative. So why not see how creative you can be? You could try and link several free blogs to articles and to forum postings. Create a large network that is earning money for you on autopilot. I know of several individuals who do nothing more than post in forums all day long and earn a small fortune from it. There is absolutely no reason why you cannot replace (and even improve) your full-time job income using simple free internet marketing methods. You do not need the latest internet marketing software to make cash.
Whenever a newbie asks me how to make money online, I strongly urge them to do it through free internet marketing methods. I tell them to research all the free internet marketing methods they can through internet marketing forums, make comprehensive notes, then compile a plan, and then follow through with it. Never allow yourself to get distracted. And here is my golden rule - if you cannot replace your full-time job income through simple free internet marketing methods, then you should not consider moving any further in the internet marketing world. This is basic stuff. Just because they happen to be free methods, don't make the mistake of thinking that somehow limits the amount you can earn, because there is no cap. Some people have become multi-millionaires through using free internet marketing methods.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Don't buy into the hype of aggressive sales letters, don't allow yourself to get magnetised by the latest software releases. Focus on the established free methods of making cash online, take consistent action, be open to constructive criticism, and it's more than likely you will eventually become a very wealthy individual. This is the bread-and-butter of internet marketing and, in time to come, you will realise that the expensive courses only really provide tips, tricks and refinements to the education you gave yourself from free internet marketing methods.
There are many free internet marketing methods to make fast money online. For example, a newbie could collate free information about blogging, and then set up a free blog at Blogspot or Wordpress; the newbie could then insert some AdSense for free and get about optimising the pages so the search engines would attract visitors. Or the newbie could try affiliate marketing; the newbie would simply go over to Clickbank, get a free affiliate code, choose a product to affiliate for, and then start hitting free internet forums targeted for their product to promote it in their profile signature. And this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to free internet marketing.
The internet marketing Gods reward those who are innovative. So why not see how creative you can be? You could try and link several free blogs to articles and to forum postings. Create a large network that is earning money for you on autopilot. I know of several individuals who do nothing more than post in forums all day long and earn a small fortune from it. There is absolutely no reason why you cannot replace (and even improve) your full-time job income using simple free internet marketing methods. You do not need the latest internet marketing software to make cash.
Whenever a newbie asks me how to make money online, I strongly urge them to do it through free internet marketing methods. I tell them to research all the free internet marketing methods they can through internet marketing forums, make comprehensive notes, then compile a plan, and then follow through with it. Never allow yourself to get distracted. And here is my golden rule - if you cannot replace your full-time job income through simple free internet marketing methods, then you should not consider moving any further in the internet marketing world. This is basic stuff. Just because they happen to be free methods, don't make the mistake of thinking that somehow limits the amount you can earn, because there is no cap. Some people have become multi-millionaires through using free internet marketing methods.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Don't buy into the hype of aggressive sales letters, don't allow yourself to get magnetised by the latest software releases. Focus on the established free methods of making cash online, take consistent action, be open to constructive criticism, and it's more than likely you will eventually become a very wealthy individual. This is the bread-and-butter of internet marketing and, in time to come, you will realise that the expensive courses only really provide tips, tricks and refinements to the education you gave yourself from free internet marketing methods.
Jack Silver is an internet market based in the U.K.
Jack quit his full-time job earlier this year to pursue his profitable online home business. The lure of working in pyjamas and drinking Kenyan coffee all day proved too good to resist.
Jack quit his full-time job earlier this year to pursue his profitable online home business. The lure of working in pyjamas and drinking Kenyan coffee all day proved too good to resist.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Free-Internet-Marketing:-Replace-Your-Income-Using-Only-Free-Online-Strategies&id=241499
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Six figure Blogger David Risley gives us Great Insight into becoming successful at Blogging.
From Innovative Social Media
This morning I listened to David Risley’s podcast of his Six Figure Blogger Blueprint, which I really enjoyed.
You can pick up a copy of the .PDF and Mp3 by signing up for David’s Newsletter.
The main thing I took away from the Six Figure Blogger Blueprint was that most bloggers suck at marketing, and that is why most fail at becoming a successful blogger.
Risley lays it on the line in this podcast and explains that to make money as a blogger you have to think of blogging as a business.
Below are the 25 most important points that I took away from the Blueprint:
1. Sell your own products.
2. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, i.e. don’t just rely on ads for monetization.
3. Be an Internet Publisher, not just a blogger. Publishers make money.
4. Risley makes $15,000 x $20,000 a month, sometimes more.
5. A blog builds attention and generates leads (email subscribers).
6. Once leads are generated give them great free value and don’t be afraid to sell to them.
7. Leverage the social web (Your blog is the hub, social media, youtube, etc, are the spokes.)
8. Sell to those with fears or desire.
9. Talk about what you know, and what people care about
10. Create an ideas file for ideas of new blog posts.
11. Whatever you market focus on your benefits.
12. Market to emotions, but provide solid reasons for purchasing people can use to justify the expense.
13. People want to be: Rich, Thin, and Beautiful, so target your marketing at these desires.
14. Over half of Risley’s annual income comes leveraging from his email list.
15. Send cool non-blog (exclusive) free stuff to your list to make your leads feel special.
16. Use Tube Mogul and distribute videos to all channels.
17. Get the All in one SEO plugin for WordPress.
18. Google Adsense = The Blogger Welfare Program.
19. Affiliate Marketing is a great way to make cash if you don’t have your own products (or even if you do).
20. Get the Max Blog Press Ninja Affiliate WordPress Plugin.
21. Aweber has a great Affiliate Program with monthly payouts.
22. Set up an Affiliate Program.
23. Google Sitemaps Plugin.
24. Develop Pillar content, and submit it to aggregators like Ezine Articles.
25. Create backup content so you always have fresh stuff on the blog to keep people coming back.
Another notable point is that the only Blogger David Risley references in this Blueprint is another one of my favorite bloggers, Yaro Starak. Yaro is the chief Blogger over and owner of Entrepreneurs Journey and the author of the Blog Profits Blueprint…but that’s another post.
http://www.arbitragemagazine.com/blog/25-tips-making-money-online-learned-figure-blogger-david-risley/
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