By W. J. Howard
Here's a snippet from an article on how social networking is changing the way we search the web:
“Search, as we know it, is dead.” What he means is that, with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?"
Interested in reading more, click here...
Tuesday
5 Fun and Free Ways to Get Leads to Find You in Facebook
No, Facebook is not a waste of time for business owners, and yes, there are ways to market yourself and your site without being logged in all day. Here are a few starter tips.
I'm so livid that I can still hear his voice in my head. Does that ever happen to you?
"You're completely f—ing nuts," he said. "You can't get anything from Facebook but a sheep thrown at you."
"No. YOU can't get anything out of Facebook because you have a time management problem." I hung up the phone, furious. I mean, how can you call yourself a marketer if you can't manage to gain from a site where the leads come to you?
Since he obviously won't listen , I'd like to tell you for free what I wouldn't tell him if he paid me. (No, he'll never read this - don't get me started on That.)
What follows are Five Fun and Free Ways to Benefit from Having a Facebook Profile.
1- Import Your Blog Posts, or Social Feeds
Make sure you already have asserted your own copyright and that you read their T's and C's before proceeding.
Another thing Jeff Pulver mentioned to me in Facebook is that your audience in Facebook and in the Blogosphere may be different, so this isn't for everyone. There's not enough space to go into it here, but several variations on this can explode your results.
2- Get to Know Clients, Colleagues and Mentors Better
Many people think of LinkedIn when they hear about this tip, another of my favorite sites. (Google "Vincent Wright LinkedIn" and you'll get tons of great, free information.) It's a great site to network at if you have a specific professional purpose in mind.
However, if you want to get to know people, with no particular agenda in mind, Facebook is better. It's not an either/or type of thing, they're just different tools.
Once you've made some type of connection with someone in Facebook, you can unobtrusively learn about your online pals, and use the little tidbits to make small talk about common interests, which can lead to conversation, which can lead to phone calls and other offline encounters.
The reason this is so powerful is that it mimics the way we get to know people in our offline lives.
Familiarity goes a long way to establishing trust. Add in the transparency that occurs from them seeing your news, and you're doing two things with your clients that your competition is not.
Who would you buy from, someone you trust, or a company where you're just another number?
3 -Participate in Groups
The emphasis is on participation. Interact and get to know people.
Be more concerned about connecting with others than about gaining site traffic. To get more involved, you can stop by occasionally and contribute content. You'll get the best effect from joining the discussion board conversations.
If you're looking for business related groups to start with, try Mark Joyner's Simpleology, Jeremiah Owyang's Web Strategy Group, Open for Web Business, or Facebook for Business.
Once people start to see your name come up in conversations, on their Facebook home page and in discussion boards, they click on your profile to learn more about you, which often begins interaction. Of course, they can also surf to your site through your profile. You can even start your own group, or a fan page about your business.
4- Upload videos
The kinds that seem to go over best are short, simple videos with just you, a plain or simple background (white wall or you at your desk). If you're a bit too shy for the camera, think about a video capture of your screen as you demonstrate something important (also called a screencast).
They can be up to 15 minutes long, in a variety of formats, and up to 300MB in size. It's free, and it automatically translates from their allowed formats into a format viewable by all browsers.
5- Share Links
When you share a link on your profile, your friends can get a notification of this, and they can also easily share it with their friends. Big deal right? But if you have 100 friends who average about 100 friends, the right link, exposed virally, can spread as if you emailed it link to 10,000 contacts.
As with email, not everyone will pay attention to it, and of those who do, not all of them will act on that information. But for the price of free, without spam? Can't be beat.
If that weren't enough, you can share links in Groups now on Facebook. So that means if you are an active participant in 20 groups of over 1000 people, you have added a potential 20K to your audience.
Hint: Link sharing works better when you're being helpful and have a track record of being an open, sharing person, not just constantly posting links from your own site.
And there you have it, five fun, free ways to utilize Facebook to enhance your business.
The next time someone tells you that Facebook can't help you, tell them to shut the hell up or talk about the things they know.
Okay, I'm kidding.
Just ignore them, and join the group of quiet marketers who are learning the laid back ways of social media marketing.
You don't have to spend your day on Web 2.0 sites to promote yourself either. Often, when your profile is properly set up, it can generate leads for you with a minimum of upkeep- free. Not to mention advertising opportunities that are appropriate for some sites.
Try it yourself, then decide.
Confused about how to get clients, joint venture partners or more blog traffic from Facebook without violating their terms with traditional online marketing techniques? Go to http://freetraffictip.com/1-facebook to learn the advanced secrets of Facebook Marketing.
I'm so livid that I can still hear his voice in my head. Does that ever happen to you?
"You're completely f—ing nuts," he said. "You can't get anything from Facebook but a sheep thrown at you."
"No. YOU can't get anything out of Facebook because you have a time management problem." I hung up the phone, furious. I mean, how can you call yourself a marketer if you can't manage to gain from a site where the leads come to you?
Since he obviously won't listen , I'd like to tell you for free what I wouldn't tell him if he paid me. (No, he'll never read this - don't get me started on That.)
What follows are Five Fun and Free Ways to Benefit from Having a Facebook Profile.
1- Import Your Blog Posts, or Social Feeds
Make sure you already have asserted your own copyright and that you read their T's and C's before proceeding.
Another thing Jeff Pulver mentioned to me in Facebook is that your audience in Facebook and in the Blogosphere may be different, so this isn't for everyone. There's not enough space to go into it here, but several variations on this can explode your results.
2- Get to Know Clients, Colleagues and Mentors Better
Many people think of LinkedIn when they hear about this tip, another of my favorite sites. (Google "Vincent Wright LinkedIn" and you'll get tons of great, free information.) It's a great site to network at if you have a specific professional purpose in mind.
However, if you want to get to know people, with no particular agenda in mind, Facebook is better. It's not an either/or type of thing, they're just different tools.
Once you've made some type of connection with someone in Facebook, you can unobtrusively learn about your online pals, and use the little tidbits to make small talk about common interests, which can lead to conversation, which can lead to phone calls and other offline encounters.
The reason this is so powerful is that it mimics the way we get to know people in our offline lives.
Familiarity goes a long way to establishing trust. Add in the transparency that occurs from them seeing your news, and you're doing two things with your clients that your competition is not.
Who would you buy from, someone you trust, or a company where you're just another number?
3 -Participate in Groups
The emphasis is on participation. Interact and get to know people.
Be more concerned about connecting with others than about gaining site traffic. To get more involved, you can stop by occasionally and contribute content. You'll get the best effect from joining the discussion board conversations.
If you're looking for business related groups to start with, try Mark Joyner's Simpleology, Jeremiah Owyang's Web Strategy Group, Open for Web Business, or Facebook for Business.
Once people start to see your name come up in conversations, on their Facebook home page and in discussion boards, they click on your profile to learn more about you, which often begins interaction. Of course, they can also surf to your site through your profile. You can even start your own group, or a fan page about your business.
4- Upload videos
The kinds that seem to go over best are short, simple videos with just you, a plain or simple background (white wall or you at your desk). If you're a bit too shy for the camera, think about a video capture of your screen as you demonstrate something important (also called a screencast).
They can be up to 15 minutes long, in a variety of formats, and up to 300MB in size. It's free, and it automatically translates from their allowed formats into a format viewable by all browsers.
5- Share Links
When you share a link on your profile, your friends can get a notification of this, and they can also easily share it with their friends. Big deal right? But if you have 100 friends who average about 100 friends, the right link, exposed virally, can spread as if you emailed it link to 10,000 contacts.
As with email, not everyone will pay attention to it, and of those who do, not all of them will act on that information. But for the price of free, without spam? Can't be beat.
If that weren't enough, you can share links in Groups now on Facebook. So that means if you are an active participant in 20 groups of over 1000 people, you have added a potential 20K to your audience.
Hint: Link sharing works better when you're being helpful and have a track record of being an open, sharing person, not just constantly posting links from your own site.
And there you have it, five fun, free ways to utilize Facebook to enhance your business.
The next time someone tells you that Facebook can't help you, tell them to shut the hell up or talk about the things they know.
Okay, I'm kidding.
Just ignore them, and join the group of quiet marketers who are learning the laid back ways of social media marketing.
You don't have to spend your day on Web 2.0 sites to promote yourself either. Often, when your profile is properly set up, it can generate leads for you with a minimum of upkeep- free. Not to mention advertising opportunities that are appropriate for some sites.
Try it yourself, then decide.
Confused about how to get clients, joint venture partners or more blog traffic from Facebook without violating their terms with traditional online marketing techniques? Go to http://freetraffictip.com/1-facebook to learn the advanced secrets of Facebook Marketing.
For a fabulous, easy start Facebook video, visit my mentor Travis Greenlee on Facebook (free facebook account required):
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1005374648866
Thursday
Frustrated Business Owners Ask Marketing Guru Why Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Work
In a recent brain storming meeting with a group of small business owners, one of the owners asked me to explain why traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore. As the marketing guru in the group, I gave them 3 simple reasons why and how to overcome their marketing problem. I am George Ishee, Founder and President of PlumTree Marketing and I had a group of frustrated business owners sitting on the edge of their seat to hear the answers, the pressure was on.
I began by telling them the first reason traditional marketing doesn’t work is the small business owner doesn’t really know much about marketing and relies on the salesman of the marketing media’s to tell them what they need. The problem is they use the “trust me” method which is give me your money, I’ll run your ad and trust me; the leads will come rolling in. They strong arm you to spend your whole budget with them and you guessed it, it doesn’t work. I advise that instead of spending all your money upfront, ask for 20 recent advertisers and contacts. Call them and ask them how their ad did. Ask them what worked and what didn’t. Understand the market that you are playing in. Then run an ad with that media company but only for a short period and test it. The rule is test, test and test.
The second thing I told the group of business owners was that it takes five times as much money to get a new client as it is to get another order from an existing customer. Who is more likely to give you another order than your existing clients who already know and love you? You can sell them another product you have or cross sell up-sell or resell them again. I told them to take 80% of their planned budget and use it to make a 3 contact (letter or email) follow campaign and make the first contact simply a thank you for being a customer. The second contact is to offer another product or resale, and the last contact is to ask for 3 referrals. I told them this should go out to every customer who has purchased from you in the past 5 years.
Finally I said that they need to implement an automated system that will nurture there suspects, prospects, and customers and then they could watch their lead generation grow. Finally I said they needed to get out of the lead generation mode and let a system do it for them so they can do the things they like best in their business like delivering their products and helping customers. Now these same business owners can use these simple ideas to bring in more leads, customers and referrals.
George Ishee is the Founder and President of PlumTree Marketing. To learn more about how to make marketing work for your business, visit http://www.plumtreemarketing.com or send a question to sales@plumtreemarketing.com
I began by telling them the first reason traditional marketing doesn’t work is the small business owner doesn’t really know much about marketing and relies on the salesman of the marketing media’s to tell them what they need. The problem is they use the “trust me” method which is give me your money, I’ll run your ad and trust me; the leads will come rolling in. They strong arm you to spend your whole budget with them and you guessed it, it doesn’t work. I advise that instead of spending all your money upfront, ask for 20 recent advertisers and contacts. Call them and ask them how their ad did. Ask them what worked and what didn’t. Understand the market that you are playing in. Then run an ad with that media company but only for a short period and test it. The rule is test, test and test.
The second thing I told the group of business owners was that it takes five times as much money to get a new client as it is to get another order from an existing customer. Who is more likely to give you another order than your existing clients who already know and love you? You can sell them another product you have or cross sell up-sell or resell them again. I told them to take 80% of their planned budget and use it to make a 3 contact (letter or email) follow campaign and make the first contact simply a thank you for being a customer. The second contact is to offer another product or resale, and the last contact is to ask for 3 referrals. I told them this should go out to every customer who has purchased from you in the past 5 years.
Finally I said that they need to implement an automated system that will nurture there suspects, prospects, and customers and then they could watch their lead generation grow. Finally I said they needed to get out of the lead generation mode and let a system do it for them so they can do the things they like best in their business like delivering their products and helping customers. Now these same business owners can use these simple ideas to bring in more leads, customers and referrals.
George Ishee is the Founder and President of PlumTree Marketing. To learn more about how to make marketing work for your business, visit http://www.plumtreemarketing.com or send a question to sales@plumtreemarketing.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)