Fun Facebook Fits your Marketing Profile

Internet marketing has been revolutionized over a few short years by a phenomenon known as social networking. You probably wouldn’t have needed a crystal ball to imagine that the Internet would develop its social theme as more and more people realised the reach of the web, and became increasingly connected through the use of smart phones and other new gadgets.

Many people consider MySpace to have initiated this trend, but in recent times the buzz has all been around Facebook, and to many people MySpace has become “very 2005.” Facebook is now the number one social media site. Its strength seems to revolve around its platform, and its clean and tidy appearance; many people consider it to be more upscale than MySpace, for example.

Facebook was devised by Mark Zuckerburg, Justin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, who were student roommates at Harvard University. The site was initially intended for use by college students, but it quickly expanded nationwide through the school system, and eventually to everyone else. Zuckerberg’s original “Facemash” has now grown to over 200 million users. Some people put its current value at $5 billion.

Facebook is, simply, networking at its finest. Not only can you use the platform to interact with family and friends, but from a commercial point of view, it’s great for marketing as well.

One of the first things that you should do as a business marketer is to construct a profile. This needs a great deal of careful consideration, as your profile is a critical factor in your potential success. Incorporate a branding strategy, but make sure that you understand what environment you’re working in. Within social networking of any kind, commercial branding and marketing has to maintain a far more subtle approach, and it shouldn’t ever be “in your face”.

Facebook allows you to expand your network of friends infinitely. Start off by building a network of your actual friends, and then move on to establish contacts with “friends of friends”. You will discover that a concentrated effort will enable you to rapidly increase the number of your contacts. Make a point of never spamming anyone, and always keep your enthusiasm under control. Build relationships – not just numbers.

Within Facebook you will find that there are many, many online groups and there will certainly be groups which are associated with what you do. Every kind of professional service provider has at least one group of some sort, and ideally, you should belong to all the groups which are within your area of expertise. You can make all kinds of contacts in this manner.

If you cannot find a Facebook group that fits your vision, you can always create your own. You’ll need to work really hard to get new members, and to help you along your way, you should regularly publish unique content articles and give away high quality information, literally for free, to generate some fast moving buzz. You can create a Facebook “fan” page, especially if you find that your original page has reached its limit for membership, which is currently 2000. The fan page creates an additional subtle marketing opportunity, and it’s all a part of the process of getting people into your sales funnel and ultimately to your checkout.

If you have a blog and you regularly update this with great information, tips, tricks, solutions, assistance and generally good stuff – then you should syndicate it so that your posts appear on your Facebook profile page. The goal is to get as much exposure as you can, which in turn of course converts to readers, visitors and potential sales.

If you’re holding any events or creating a milestone of any kind within your business, you should create an event page within Facebook. By sending an open invitation, you solicit people to go to your events page and find out what’s going on, and they can then advise their friends, creating even further exposure.

Facebook should be an integral part of your business strategy, but you must also have your “fun” face on when you’re there. Warning – Facebook is addictive (not to me of course – but to many), so don’t let it take over your marketing programs altogether!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an accomplished Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps companies of all sizes reach their commercial targets. Want to get more information about online business building success strategies that really work? Then why not Contact VMF Today at=> http://www.virtualmissfriday.com

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Simple Twitter Tips that Attract Clients and Partners

According to Mashable.com, a leading authority on social media, there are currently over 12 million users on Twitter. Another resource called istrategylabs.com reports that 46% of Twitter users are college grads, and another 17% have post graduate degrees. Furthermore, 47% are between age 18 and 34, and another 31% are between 35 and 49. Males and females are evenly ranked, with women accounting for 53% of users and men 47%. If your target market falls within these demographics, actively participating on Twitter is probably worth your while.

Twitter is simply a micro blogging service. What does that mean? It means that you write short updates (140 characters maximum) called “tweets” and send them out to your followers. And it is a marketer’s dream come true – it’s an easy way to stay in front of your target market and showcase your authority at no charge!

The myth around Twitter is that Twitter users (called tweeple or tweeps) tweet about useless information such as what kind of coffee they had with breakfast. Yes, some of that exists and it is actually important as you’ll see below, but once you understand the power of connecting on Twitter, you may become a Twitter convert, just like me.

So, if you’re on Twitter or considering starting, the question becomes, “what do I tweet about that will make this a useful tool for me?” Here are some categories you can consider for your tweets. There are others but these will get you started:

Industry Tips

This is a big one. You are on Twitter to showcase your expertise, so industry tips act as your credibility builders. Here’s how to do it: Create a list of high value tips (remember – no more than 140 characters long) and send one or two out every day. If you don’t want to have to manually do this yourself every day, consider a free tool called TweetLater.com to set up your tweets in advance. If your tweets are really good, others will send them out to their lists as well. This is called a “re-tweet,” and it’s a super way to quickly build your list of targeted followers.

Here is one of my recent tweets that had a great response:

Connect Others: Be willing to connect others even if it has nothing to do with your business. What goes around, comes around.

About Your Business

Use this category sparingly. In other words, if you use Twitter as a place to advertise your products and services too much, people will stop following you. This is not what Twitter is about. It is really about raising awareness of you and your business and impacting others. Use the 80/20 rule here. For every eight tweets about things other than your business, you can post two things about your business.

Here is an example:

Hey Columbus: I’ll be on Fox tomorrow at 7:45 where you can see me interviewed about my new book, Flourish!

Re-Tweets

When someone re-tweets you, they are giving you the highest compliment you can get on Twitter! It means that the person who re-tweeted you thinks that what you said is worth sharing with their own list of followers. This is like having someone ask you to a meeting so they can introduce you their entire list of contacts. When you get a re-tweet, send them a short tweet thanking them! Re-tweet others who are tweeting things that you agree with or want your followers to read.

If you are not familiar with Twitter, the example below probably won’t make a lot of sense because of all of the abbreviations, but they are necessary given that you only have 140 characters. Abbreviations are outside the scope of this article, but just know that it’s really not as scary as it looks!

RT @getgreatcopy: New blog post: The Sixth Habit of Highly Effective Communicators http://bit.ly/ 175XGS Gr8 stuff Jan, as usual.

Quotes

Tweeps seem to love quotes. If you are also a fan of quotes, compile a list and send one or two out every day. Again, you can use tweetlater.com to set these up in advance so you don’t have to manually enter them every day. Simply set up these tweets for a month and then watch your re-tweets happen!

Here’s an example of one that I recently posted:

“The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.” Voltaire

Invitations

Invite tweeps to your free events. No-cost events like teleseminars are great to tweet about because people love to share high-value, low-cost information with their lists. When you offer something without a cost – a workshop, teleseminar or report, your tweets about it are likely to get re-tweeted, which provides you with greater exposure to your target market.

Here’s an example of one of my recent posts:

How 2 write your book in a weekend – free telesemimar w/ @donnakozik. http://bit.ly/ 127GtU

Personal

Include some personal things that are going on with your life. What you choose to include is entirely up to you; however, be sure to be relatable. You don’t have to share your deepest inner thoughts or too much detail about your family, but sharing something about what you did over the weekend makes you more relatatable. Remember, Twitter is about connecting with people. Other people on Twitter want to connect with people – not stale businesses. People often connect on a personal level over food, pets or hobbies. This is why these seemingly unimportant tweets are actually very fruitful. These are pretty safe personal topics. General things about kids are another hot topic under this category. Just be aware that anything you say is out there for the world to read.

Here’s an example I tweeted recently:

Interesting pop culture moment: Told a story to my sister, who lives in Vietnam & realized she doesn’t know who Sara Jessica Parker is!

As you can see, Twitter is simply an online forum for connecting with others in 140 characters or less. Big and small brands are using Twitter to connect and impact their target markets and locate joint ventures. Can you, too?

---

Meredith Liepelt, President of Rich Life Marketing, offers a free report called “101 Ways to Attract Ideal Clients, Build Your List and Raise Your Profile,” which can be downloaded immediately at RichLifeMarketing.com .

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Twitter "HOT"

Credits: Trovare le conversazioni più “calde” con Twitter

12 Ways to Use Twitter for Social Media Marketing By Ron Knight in Featured

Twitter is a wildly popular microblogging service. It involves writing Tweets, which are short updates of a maximum of 140 characters that tell your followers what you are up to. Although your Tweets are technically supposed to answer the question, “What are you doing?” Twitter has moved far beyond that. Tweets are used to share stories, link to photos, promote content, break news, and a whole lot more. Twitter has also become an incredibly important tool for social media marketing professionals. Here are 12 ways in which Twitter can be used in your social media marketing campaign.

1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest

As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven’t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media.

2. Building Your Network

Using Twitter is a great way to build your network because it allows you to find and follow people with similar interests. You can use Steeple to find people who live in your geographical area. You can also use other tools that help you find new people to follow based upon who your Twitter friends follow.

3. Build Relationships within Your Current Network

People in different networks often use Twitter to connect with their contacts instantly rather than using instant messaging for that purpose. Furthermore, many people use Twitter to connect with their network during events like conferences.

4. Re-Distributing Content from Your Blog or Website

Twitter can be used to redistribute content from your blog or website. However, you should take care to do this thoughtfully since many of your Twitter followers may already read your blog. For that reason, you may want to avoid using a blog plug-in that automatically Tweets your posts. Your best bet is to Tweet your content manually and customize each Tweet so it doesn’t get old.

5. Get Involved in Live Tweeting Events

Twitter launched at SXSW last year, catapulting microblogging conferences to fame. Live Tweeting events are great because they are a form of citizen journalism that allow you to connect with several new people in your niche while making active and valuable contributions to current discussions in your community.

6. Pitching Stories to Journalists on Twitter

You can send a direct message to a journalist who is following you on Twitter to pitch a story idea.

7. Communicating with Your Team

You can use Twitter as a company intranet that connects all of your employees. Twitter can be particularly useful in this regard if you have a virtual business with employees in different geographical locations. You can set your updates to private for security reasons. Anytime you are working on group projects, you can stay in touch with your team members using Twitter.

8. Brand Monitoring

Stay up to date with any mentions of your business on Twitter. If there is anything negative, you will be able to counter it quickly. You can also use Twitter as a way to receive feedback from your customers and improve your business. Just ask your followers to give their opinion on something. For example, if you designed a new website, ask your followers what they think about it and get their constructive criticisms so you can make your site design even better.

9. Acquire More Votes on Social Media Websites

If you have submitted a story to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or any other social voting website tweet a link to that submission to try to score more votes from your followers. If your followers like what they see, they are sure to vote for your content.

10. Hiring People

Looking for a programmer, designer, or writer? Whatever type of professional you seek, try finding them on Twitter. Simply send your followers a tweet telling them you are looking for someone for a job. They can either recommend someone to you or offer themselves for the job. Using Twitter in this way is ideal for finding qualified freelancers. It is much more convenient than putting out a classified ad.

11. Build Your Personal Brand

When you use Twitter to talk about things as mundane as what you ate for breakfast or how you are going to sleep early tonight, you make your followers feel like you are casual and approachable. Even those running a company that has a cold, corporate brand image could create more appeal and build a unique personal brand using Twitter.

12. Streamline Electronic Communications

When you use Twitter, you’re likely to find yourself using IM, email, and other electronic communication methods less. Twitter not only provides public chatting through Tweets, it also allows you to send direct messages. Twitter will help you streamline your electronic communications, allowing you to scale back online.

---

Ron Knight is a US based Internet Solutions consultant with many years of experience helping people and businesses out in establishing a stronger presence on the web. Many Internet Marketing Service companies have benefited immensely from his advice.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Un iPod Shuffle per te.

A proposito di blog contest eccone uno che sono certa vi piacerà, è veloce, semplice e da l'opportunità di portarsi a casa un utilissimo I-Pod Shuffle. 

Il concorso a cura del sito Informatica Pratica (ottimo sito, ricco di consigli utili che vi raccomando di tenere sott'occhio) richiede pochi minuti per attivare "l'opzione di gioco". 

Le regole per partecipare al contest: 

1. pubblicare un articolo sul vostro blog/sito/forum che parli del contest;

2. inserire l'immagine del concorso all'interno del vostro post;

3. Linkare l'home page di Informatica Pratica o la pagina del post (qui) oppure entrambi.

4. Segnalare il proprio articolo (con il link) tra i commenti della pagina del contest (qui). 

Per conoscere il regolamento completo del contest, vi rimando al link ufficiale del concorso.

Il gioco è fatto, ora non mi resta che augurarvi in bocca al lupo. 

Al femminile

Dal blog del consumatore ai blogger

Giù le mani dai blog!

La notizia di recenti sentenze “punitive” verso i blogger ha giustamente messo in allarme i tanti appassionati che stanno costellando la rete di ogni genere di blog.

Il primo campanello d’allarme è suonato nel 2006 quando il Tribunale di Aosta ha condannato un blogger ritenendolo colpevole del reato di diffamazione a mezzo stampa. Più di recente, il Tribunale di Modica ha condannato un altro blogger per non aver fatto registrare il suo sito in Tribunale.

Il denominatore comune delle due sentenze è di aver equiparato il blog ad un giornale e di conseguenza averlo assoggettato alle medesime norme dettate in materia di stampa, compreso l’obbligo di registrare la pubblicazione in Tribunale e l’applicazione di una pena più grave per il caso di diffamazione. Da notare che il blogger, equiparato al direttore di un giornale, dovrebbe perciò rispondere anche delle frasi diffamatorie inserite nei commenti pubblicati sul blog.

Trackback: clicca qui per leggere l'articolo completo. 

Fonte: TGCOM