Month: July 2015

FREE MARKETING: OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

The easiest type of free marketing is social media marketing. This has taken on increased importance in the wake of the Panda and Penguin upgrades to the Google search engine algorithm. Google now gives more weight to websites that have the most social approval signals, ranking them higher.

Like Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing can take a while to gain traction because it takes time to build a following of social media contacts, interact with them, bring them to your pages, then get them to give you social approval signals.

The best approach is to focus on multiple social media outlets, not just one or two, partly because the popularity of social media sites changes and what is the most popular one today may not be as popular tomorrow. Also, your prospective customers are also using multiple sites, so if focusing only on a few could mean you are missing a large segment of potential customers.

What are the most Important Social Media Sites?

Excluding Facebook and Twitter – which will be addressed in a separate article — the most important social media platforms that you need to be involved in today are:

1. YouTube – Video is the format of choice for web users today. Thanks to 3G and 4G networks and WiFi, nearly everyone has access to streaming video on their smart phones and tablets. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the biggest and most significant distributor of video.

2. LinkedIn – This site focuses more on business networking rather than social networking. But LinkedIn continues to be an important platform for reaching corporate and commercial customers.

3. Pinterest – Currently, Pinterest is one of the most popular social preference platforms. It allows members post links to things they like. If that includes one of your links, you can expect a ton of traffic to your landing pages.

4. Google+ – Google+ tries to combine all the best features of the other social media sites – such as email, social sharing, social preference – with killer apps like free video conferencing to make it the premier social media site on the web.

Social Comment Sites

Thanks to the spread of mobile media, social comment sites are growing in popularity. These include such apps as foursquare, Urban Spoon, Yelp and many others. Social comment sites let users post comments, reviews, images, ratings and other opinions on businesses they visit or any topic they like directly from their mobile devices.

This can have serious consequences, especially for the brick and mortar business owner, because if customers post negative comments it can not only hurt your reputation but also can continue to linger on the web for a long time. On the other hand, positive comments can help drive more foot traffic to your business.

For the web-based marketer, social comment sites’ benefits lie primarily with social approval signals they can provide. Positive reviews of your web pages can help boost your web page ranking on Google. You also should quote positive reviews on your own web pages, social media accounts, or even in advertising and marketing materials.

Value of Social Approval

Social approval signals can help your marketing efforts go “viral”, which refers to techniques that use social networks and other web tools to produce explosive awareness in brand or product awareness.

Like viral infections or computer viruses — which spread from computer to computer exponentially – social approval signals such as Facebook “Likes”, Tweets, Google Plus “+1’s” and others can spread the word your brand or products quickly.

Internet users now have the ability to share and spread viral messages they enjoy faster and with more people than ever before with literally the push of a button. One person can promote your posting to hundreds or even thousands of social media contacts, who can then pass the it on to tens of thousands or even millions more.

Google+

Google+ takes the best features of the internet’s most successful sites – including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even YouTube – and puts them all in one place. That makes them easier to coordinate on your Google+ brand page.

Google+ allows you to create individual Circles for friends, family, acquaintances, employees, vendors, or any category you want. You also can create sub-categories within these Circles to make it easier to communicate effectively with specific groups.

Hangouts is Google+’s free web-based chat program that lets you interact with other users in real time using text, video, or audio feeds that are connected directly to your Google+ home page.

Hangouts can be used for many purposes, such as providing live video one-on-one video customer service, answering customers’ questions, or showcasing your products’ best uses. You also can use it to host webinars, record them and then make them available online as squeeze page giveaways.
Hangouts also offers a feature called On Air, which allows you to link your Hangout to your YouTube channel, where it can be broadcast and recorded, providing access to your videos to an unlimited number of viewers via YouTube. Viewers can even submit live questions and comments via text.

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5 TIPS FOR INCREASING YOUR PROMOTIONAL EMAILS

Despite the rising popularity of such communication channels as texting, social media and even video conferencing, email continues to be an important and effective way to reach other people, especially prospective customers for the products and services your Internet marketing business promotes.

But the format of emails requires you to work a little harder to gain somebody’s trust. It’s very easy for your prospects to either delete your email without opening it or ignore it altogether.

Today we are going to look at some techniques you can use within the body of your promotional emails to make them connect better with your customers so that it’s easier to get them to follow your call to action, whatever it may be.

Body of the Email

The body of your promotional emails needs to be as concise and to the point as possible. Remember, the average person gets dozens of emails in their inbox every day. If they open yours at all, they will probably junk it if it is packed with dense copy and long, drawn out sentences.

Most people scan – rather than read – emails. So you want to use short sentences or even brief phrases or bullet points whenever possible. This makes it easier for your reader to capture the essence of your message as quickly as possible. 

Using Attachments and Links

The biggest selling point of email over most other communication methods – such as texting or instant messaging – is its ability to attach documents such as Word files, audio files, videos, slideshows and others.

These can be attached to the email using the “Attach Files” function. When the recipient gets the email, attachments will be listed both under the header and beneath the text copy when the email is opened by your reader. Clicking on either will open the attachment on a separate screen. 

Including Links within Email Content

Within the body of your email, you also can include links to web pages, addresses and other locations.

When the reader clicks on these links, they bring the reader to your intended destination.

A word of warning: It’s very important to double check to make sure your attachments and links work properly. Test them before sending out your emails to make sure they work. There is no faster way to lose a prospective customer than to forget an attachment or include a broken link.

Emoticons and Their uses

Emoticons are those little smiley faces that can be inserted into the body of your email. Examples include , , :) and :D.

Depending on your intended audience, emoticons can be either light-hearted and entertaining or unprofessional and distracting.

When you talk to somebody face-to-face, you can use gestures and body language to provide non-verbal meanings. Sometimes emoticons can be helpful substitutes for these non-verbal cues. 

Should You Use Emoticons?

A good rule of thumb is to avoid be cautions when using emoticons in business communications. In some cases, they can distract your reader from your central message.

Plus, they and can strain the operating system of older computers, causing them to run slower and potentially causing ill feelings towards the email’s sender.

If you’d like to learn more about email marketing, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Social Media

With media that’s updated as often as social media is, timing can be most important to helping you get the word out about your services, products, or promotions. The internet moves fast, and so an update can easily be left behind or swamped among other updates. Adding a strategic timing element to your social media updates can help to greatly reduce the possibility that you won’t see any results and increase the results that you do see. For different social media networks and services, different timing strategies might be needed.

Blogging

The best time to update a blog is in the morning, preferably between the hours of 7 and 9 AM EST. This way, your blog post is guaranteed to show up in feed readers (and inboxes, if you have an RSS to email autoresponder campaign) soon afterwards and stay there the rest of the day, waiting for the time when it’s most convenient for readers to look at it.

In general, it’s best to have a regular update schedule for your blog – something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesdays and Thursdays. This means that readers can be assured there will be brand-new content if they go to look at your website this day – they’ll come to expect it and it will be part of their routine. Internet usage is generally higher during the work week than it is on the weekends, so you may want to make sure your blog posts, especially blog posts you want to receive a higher amount of traffic or comments on, go up during the week.

Facebook

Most posting on Facebook occurs during the week; however, if you’re posting information or content that you’d like to receive a higher number of “likes” or “shares”, it’s best to post on the weekend. One reason for this is that over half of US companies block Facebook at the work place, so while users might be browsing other sites, they aren’t browsing Facebook during work hours. Saturday has actually more activity than Sunday, so try to update on Saturdays, and The most effective times of day are morning, afternoon, and evening (approximately 11 AM, 3 PM, and 8 PM EST).

Twitter

Twitter is an extremely effective way to share tips and content, especially when used correctly. Twitter users are generally updating their status and checking their stream several times a day, which means you can share your content several times a day with brand-new people seeing it each time. It’s best not to do any more than three or four repeated tweets (i.e. tweets with links to a blog post or a news update) per day, as any more than that will likely make followers feel as though they’re being bombarded. A good strategy is morning, midmorning, afternoon, and evening (approximately 9 AM, 11 AM, 3 PM, and 6 PM EST). You can also use a tool like 14 blocksto figure out when your followers are online, and adjust your tweeting schedule accordingly.