If you have any online presence at all you have probably heard that you need to be on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or YouTube because if you’re not, you are missing the boat.
So what is all the hoopla about? How is telling everyone what I’m doing right now going to help promote my business? What should I write about? What if I’m new in business and I don’t have anything earth shattering to say?
Continue reading ‘How can Social Media Help My Online Business?’ »
Yes, well here we go again, another one of those, I’ve got a list of over “9,000? Twitter followers so I’m a social media expert marketing forms has hit my desk today. Come along it says, “to my affiliate marketing driven roadshow and in 4 hours I’ll make you the expert, but there’s more, if you sign away your hard earned money right now, i have an e-book special for you, yes just for you, an E-Book that I didn’t write by the way,but I’ll pretend its mine, and all it will cost you is $89.00.â€
I get emails like this every day, offering free product that I can sell or give away as my own, I get E-Books, money making ideas and lots of materials that I can re-brand, that’s not being an expert, that’s a faker.
Continue reading ‘How to Fake Twitter & Facebook Followers and Become a Social Media Expert’ »
Twitter has emerged as one of the most powerful social networking tools. Twitter is the home for many hip hop artists around the word. Even though Twitter is fairly new, there are already hip hop artists such as Sean ‘diddy’ Combs who had success with marketing on twitter. However, there as also been quite a few people who have made some mistakes when it comes to branding themselves on twitter.
I have compiled a list of the 10 most frequent mistakes hip hop artists make while using twitter:
It may surprise you that more searches for therapists occur online than through the Yellow Pages. Many therapists have already abandoned the Yellow Pages for being expensive and not yielding results. There are increasing numbers of people who say, “If your not on the internet, I’m not interested.” Look for this to continue to increase at an exponential rate.
Marketing yourself is a public service. This means letting people know how you can be of service to them. Your internet presence allows people looking for someone to help them solve whatever pain they are in. If you have no internet presence, many people will not find you and determine if you may be of service to them. Marketing is making your presence known. It is NOT a hard sell, trying to ram anything down anyone’s throat. Advertising is presenting yourself mostly to people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. This is why most print advertising does not yield clients.
An internet presence can be started (or expanded) for free, using these methods.
Getting yourself on free listing sites
Many sites have both free and paid listings. Generally, start with the free listing. I found my free listing showing on the first page of Google search within one week. Begin with seeing if your professional organization has listings. These are often free. Next check with other mental health groups you belong to and see if they have listings, ex. Anxiety Disorders of America Association. Some are free. Some have additional charges. Continue reading ‘Free Internet Marketing For Psychologists and other Therapists’ »
SocialOomph formerly known as TweetLater, is one of the industry leader’s in Twitter follower management systems. It is a web-based automation service that essentially does everything you can think of. SocialOomph has another feature that is very useful. You can set up a system for replying to people who start to follow you. SocialOomph formerly known as TweetLater, is one of the industry leader in Twitter follower management system. It is a web-based automation service that essentially does everything you can think of.
It’s very user friendly and it has two registry services: one free and with the professional you pay a very competitive fee. SocialOomph allows you to register and use a limited version of their services for free forever however I highly recomend that you upgrade your account to a full function account for the following reasons. Socialoomph : Much like Hootsuite, Socialoomph is also an all in one application and allows you to use Bit.ly to shorten your URLs. One of my favorite features is the ability to have your @replies sent to your email.
You can also schedule @replies and direct messages (DM’s) to be sent when you know the person is usually on Twitter. To be clear, the system does not know when people are online on Twitter. Scheduled tweets should not be used just for convenience. They should be used to increase the number of tweets you make, not to replace actual tweeting and not to spam but to enhance what you’re doing.
Twitter has quickly transformed into a marketing tool. Bloggers use it to market their blogs, webmasters use it to market their websites, Movie stars use it to market their movies, Affiliates use it sell their stuff and there is no end to this list. Twitter is going to deprecate the username/password authentication method. Twittergrader : a free tool which will give your twitter account a score. Quite interesting but more importantly will highlight if you are doing anything really bad. The smart Twitter’er will use this tool to make sure he/she is not doing anything wrong on Twitter, such as violating Twitters Terms Of Service. Using this free tool, twitter’ers receive a score up to 100, with 100 being the best. As of today, I have a score of 98. Not bad for a relatively new twitter’er, right? J
Twitter is a great platform and an unbelievable tool to build great relationships. That is what it is all about. Twitter Grader is similar to Twitalyzer but uses a different algorithm to calculate your score. Your profile will be ranked on its own strength as well as be compared to the 2 million+ users already analyzed by the program.
SocialOomph is a tool that every twitter’er can use to their benefit, to keep track of your social contacts (and what they may be saying about you when you’re not there). If you want to generate an income on Twitter, SocialOomph is a must have tool. It makes life on Twitter so much simpler, so much more profitable.
When Lanty first launched the Auto Cash System back in January, he decided to close the door to new members after the first 1500 participants to ensure the 1 on 1 type of mentoring they were promised. This proved to be a good decision and really gave all of his members the biggest advantage to make money online. The Auto Cash System filled its members area to the 1500 members in just 3 short days, and just 4 months after that 837 members are earning a substantial amount of money online and the other 663 members are earning extra money and are well on their way to doubling their income in 2008!
After helping more than half of his members increase their monthly income so drastically in just 9 short months he decided to open the doors once more to the next 300 members. This is the last time Lanty is going to open the doors to the Auto Cash System and he has guaranteed that these 300 members will have the same results as his previous 837 members! Because of the previous success with this system, the remaining 300 spots will fill up fast, so don’t miss your chance to get in and start making the same type of easy online money as his current members.
Continue reading ‘Your roadmap to success is finally here!’ »
Maybe you haven’t been told this but traffic doesn’t simply come to your site after you have built it. You have to direct traffic to it. There’s hundreds of ways of doing this and the more ways you use the better.
New Internet Marketers are unfortunately left out in the cold when it comes to traffic generation. Gurus inform Newbies what to do but many times, don’t inform them of the HOW, WHEN or WHERE. Sometimes, I hate to say, that is on purpose. Personally, I cannot see the sense in it as there is plenty of Internet out there to go around!
Continue reading ‘Guaranteed to be The Easiest Way to Generate FREE Website Traffic’ »
Over the past several years, we’ve seen dot.com’s come and go. We’ve watched dot.com moguls go from rags to riches, and back to rags again. So what makes Twitter.com so different? Or, could it be that it’s future is not as bright as most think it is? Of course, if I was any good at fortune telling, I’d be able to answer that. I’m not, and I won’t try. I do know this for a fact though – Twitter.com has provided the network marketer with a seemingly endless source of customers. Hence, a marketer’s dream come true.
What a marketer does with his/her twitter.com account is altogether different from the normal method of internet marketing. Instead of flooding email boxes with ads, the typical twitter client can expect to see a myriad of ads when they log on to their account. What seperates the good marketer from the spamming marketer? A good marketer will know what to advertise. Know the users that are seeing the ads. Will distribute the ads evenly. A spammer? Well, the ads are not targeted, they are more or less grabbed from thin air and shoved in front as many people as they can get the ad in front of. All the while, having no clue as to what it is they are actually selling, nor to whom they are trying to sell it too. Shotgunning is what I call it. If you throw enough pellets out of the barrel of a gun, one of them is bound to hit something. The spammer’s mentality. Continue reading ‘Twitter: A Marketer's Dream Come True’ »
In the past year social networking has exploded in popularity. According to a recent press release and interview twitter reps stated the company now boasts 105 million registered users. Far less than the nearly 500 million that the number two website on the internet Facebook claims. But still more than a 400% increase year over year. Since its beginning twitter has been building their subscriber base and focused exclusively on improving the user experience, now they have recently announced they will start to monetize their service. The new advertising model will begin with a service that twitter calls “Promoted Tweets”. Which will initially be 140 characters tweets paid for by advertisers that appear at the top of twitter search results. Some of the big name companies that have signed on for the first phase include: Best Buy, Virgin America, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Red Bull. Twitters first phase will include tests to gauge user response to each tweeted ad and those with a low user response will stop being shown. Advertisers will pay for each clickthrough that comes from a Promoted Tweet, the ads will be pulled from tweets in the advertisers timeline and shown based on keywords the user has search for.
What does this mean for the tens of thousands of marketers and advertisers already using the free social media network to sell their own products? For one it means increased competition for clicks from prospective customers. Twitter and its promoted advertisers have the obvious advantage of being able to show ads on search results based on specifically targeted keywords, while individuals are only able to use their own timelines. Many people are viewing the new Promoted Tweets system has an increase in Twitter spam which may lower clickthrough rates across the board. In addition to individuals promoting their own links, there are several companies which have been offering paid tweets for awhile now. You may have heard of a website called RevTwt which provides a service where users tweet ads with links and get compensated from clickthroughs or paid a flat fee per ad tweet based on their number of followers. Another site called Sponsored Tweets is attempting to create a market place similar to an auction site where you can bid to place tweets on celebrity accounts and accounts with large numbers of followers. Celebrity tweeters set a minimum price to tweet on their accounts ranging from just a few dollars to over $10,000 per tweet. A site called Ad.ly offers a similar service, however each of these services are only beneficial to you if you have followers.
Each of these third party services don’t set prices based purely on follower counts, but also on follower quality. Tweets on accounts with a large number of spam and/or bot followers are worth less than accounts with highly engaged, trusting followers. If you are looking to advertise on twitter and you can’t afford Promoted Tweets, follower numbers and quality are still the most important aspects of marketing on twitter.
There are several popular methods for acquiring and keeping followers. Each of them with variable and disputable degrees of success. The most popular method is to follow tweeters whose timeline or profile contains keywords related to your business and hope they will follow back. People now are even more reluctant to follow accounts which might be spam accounts and you will lose followers quickly if all you tweet are ads. Many marketers prefer a mass approach that focuses more on getting large numbers of followers as opposed to lower numbers of targeted followers. This approach will focus more on accounts with the highest likelihood of following back while tweeting less niche specific content and more messages that would appeal to a larger audience.
These types of strategies reignite the debate of whether you should follow back everyone who follows you or only a select few who you think are especially interesting. Many people have to decided to unfollow the majority of their followers to weed out spam tweets and more closely follow real people. Tweeters who follow a small amount of people believe that having more people following you without gaining something in return i.e., a follow back, makes your twitter account look more interesting and garner more respect among prospective followers. However a recent survey has shown that the majority of people don’t use the number of followers as a deciding factor in determining whether or not to follow someones tweets. On the other side many individuals and companies alike believe not only is it polite and good business practice to follow everyone who follows you, but they are more likely to remain your follower. They also maybe more tolerant of ads and sponsored tweets being shown on your account. Advertisers know this and will typically pay more per tweet on accounts where the tweeter follows less people, they don’t care if it costs you followers, they’re just looking for the highest clickthrough rate possible. Tweeters wanting to only follow a fraction of their followers argue that it quickly becomes too difficult to follow every tweet in your timeline when you follow back everyone. However this argument becomes immaterial after you follow as little as 500 active tweeters because it is impossible to keep up with that many tweets and most business tweeters, even those who don’t follow back, still follow thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people.
On my own business twitter account I have chosen to follow back everyone who follows me and to unfollow those who don’t. There are several reasons why I chose this strategy. Another blog put it a little harshly but accurately when it said they only have a limited number of spots to follow others, so if they don’t get a follow back it’s a waste of that spot. The second reason is that despite all the direct message spam out there, I would like to connect with my followers and give them the opportunity to DM me if they wish. Lastly, it fits with my strategy of acquiring new followers using the targeted following method and requiring a follow back. I’ve talked to many people who have had both success and failure with all the methods described in this article. No matter how you decide to acquire followers it will be small businesses and individual marketers, who were initially drawn to Twitter because of the platforms free nature, that will be hurt by the new advertising model.
The simplicity of Twitter is what helped make it one of the most popular and powerful online social media sites today. If used well, Twitter can be an effective and invaluable marketing tool that will let you reach a vast audience of potential customers and clients. The 140-character limit imposed on tweets forces your messages to be concise, and in this media-saturated culture, that is exactly the type of easily digestible format that people crave. Here are 5 tips for taking advantage of Twitter in your marketing strategies.
1. Enhance the reach of your business blog
The more popular your company’s blog becomes, the higher its standing will be in search engine results, and thus the more exposure your brand name will get to potential customers. Twitter provides a great way of increasing your blog’s reach. Use twitter feed to give your followers immediate access to your main blog page.