For the small business professional who wants to expand their internet marketing skills and image on the net. Discover new marketing techniques, tools and strategies.
Looks like Affiliate Marketing going under the scrutny of the Fedral Trade Commission. i personally have always taught folks to brand them self and not try to look like you ARE the company that you get commissions from, but now bloggers and affiliate marketers will be forced to disclose they are indeed an affiliate.
Affliate Marketing and the internet has grown by leaps and bounds the last couple of years. I guess we should expect a few regulations. I'll keep you posted as rules are rolled out. As for affiliate marketing strategies? Create your own brand and image... make sure folks know they can contact you with questions, folks would much rather purchase from someone who they know like and trust.
A message from... Cindy McAsey-Marketing Strategies Coach
Taking Twitter to the Next Level
OK, so you’ve got your twitter account up and cooking, you’re using 3rd party apps to filter and aggregate search (I use tweetdeck) and you’ve got a tweeting routing down pat, now what?
Now it’s time to take a much deeper look into the social web and start looking deeper into conversation themes, discovering who’s influencing what, who’s saying what and how often, and what’s trending around a topic. There is a new breed of search engine forming around the “now search” that is plugging into social sites like twitter as well as blogs and social networks.
Below are three newish real-time search engines that allow you to take a deep look as what’s going right now.
OneRiot - this is essentially a bookmarking site for twitter. Users share tweets that contain URLs to web pages and this site keeps track and returns search results based on topics. This is a really great way to discover some new sites related to subjects and you can interact with the twitter shares right from the site by replying to or retweeting good stuff you find.
Topsy - lots of stats when you search including the a collection of authors by volume for each topic you are trending. Really like this to find people who are very active around a topic or who are your best retweeters.
crowdeye - currently a twitter only search engine it gives you results from tweets and retweets including graphs and charts.
Cindy McAsey Barefoot in the Garden
888.272.6701 ext #1
KEYWORDS: Marketing Strategies, Social Marketing, Cindy McAsey
A message from... Cindy McAsey-Marketing Strategies Coach
In the world of Social Media, there is no exact right way to get started social marketing. The strategies will probably have lots of variables such as:
1. Overall Goals - Are you looking to increase SEO, brand recognition, targeted traffic, conversions, etc.?
2. Finding Followers - Where can you go online to find the majority of your targeted demographic?
3. Available Manpower - Are you a one man (or woman) show? Or do you have people you can outsource to? Maybe you work for a company who has staff on hand to assist?
In a perfect world, you would clone yourself since you know exactly what you would like to happen within your social media campaign. However, we are far from a perfect world, so in reality, we are limited by time and resources.Depending on your resources, you may need to determine which methods to focus on first then build into your overall marketing plan.
Seek out Targeted Networks
You are ultimately after targeted traffic. There is no point in joining networks that have no interest in your niche or business. This traffic will more than likely never convert into a lead or even a sale. In other words you will be wasting your time.
You will need to research various sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc. to determine which site(s) have the audience more suited for your business or service. Choosing targeted networks to be a part of will increase your relevancy and provide you with a funnel of highly targeted traffic interested in what you have to offer.
Guest Blogging
Is one way to get started in the social media world, it might not be a bad idea to approach more established social media sites in regards to guest blogging for them. Guest blogging is basically offering to write a blog post that gets posted on their site. In return you usually get to post a small plug or snippet about you or your site at the end of the blog post. If you look closely at my blogs I have a few guest bloggers.
Guest blogging accomplishes a few things.
It establishes credibility for yourself on a large scale/established site
You get a nice link back to your site.
Social Bookmarking
Utilizing the various social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, delicious and Newsvine; you can not only create backlinks, but create a buzz about your site if you have linkworthy content. If your submission is linkworthy, chances it may be picked up by other bloggers and drive even more traffic to your site. Unfortunately, most social bookmarking traffic is not the highest converting depending on your approach, angle, and product or service offered.
Create & Execute a Plan
While there are certainly more available options than what I listed above, it is up to you to decide what methods are best suited for your business or service. After looking over potential social media options, I suggest creating a plan or map of potential sites and audiences to target.
Review your plan once it is completed and revise it if necessary. Be sure to eliminate any site(s) that do not suit your targeted audience. This will allow you to focus more effort towards sites containing people with interests related to your product or service which will increase the chance of a lead.
With your plan in place, it is time to execute it. Do your best to monitor traffic using Google Analytics or Veretracking. If you see a particular social media site driving more targeted traffic to your site, look at increasing your activity on this social media site while scaling back on social media sites not performing as well.
These basic social media marketing strategies should give you a great foundation to build your social media campaign on. Remember to track your progress and focus on targeting networks relevant to your niche, removing or reducing efforts on lower performing social media sites.
Cindy McAsey
888.272.6701 Barefoot in the Garden
KEYWORDS: Marketing Strategies, Social Media, Cindy McAsey
Surely by now you realize twitter is one of my favorite social networks. If you use the right tools it's one of the fastest ways to connect with folks in your target market (niche). One of the twitters applications (free) I have found very valueable is Tweetdeck. It's an adobe air product, downloads to any computer, connects & organizes your twitter information so you can effectivly market.
Here is a quick demonstration of the newest tweetdeck upgrade.
A message from... Cindy McAsey-Marketing Strategies Coach
So many times I've had frustrated people contact me and wonder why they aren't successful online. In fact I wrote a detailed article about this very topic over at http://barefootmlmtraining.blogspot.com. Here is another well known business person Gary Vanynerchuk (known as garyvee on twitter) who drives home the point so well.
You can always count on an ecstatic, loud, hyper Gary V. to make his thoughts known. In this short to the point video is Gary's PHCC theory on business, blogs, and social media.
Patience
Hustle (”Work Your tail Off”)
Content
Community
Sit back and be ready for the inside scoop on what it takes to make it online...
KEYWORDS: Marketing Strategies, Cindy McAsey, Gary Vaynerchuk, garyvee
A message from... Cindy McAsey-Marketing Strategies Coach
This morning while I was reading an article about Twitter flat lining, (slow growth) over the last month something dawned on me... It could be way too many twitters have decided to automate their system too much, making it not near as effective.
I'll admit I used the auto DM feature for a couple of months and it was handy to know every person following you was getting a taste of my tweets. In fact many times folks would respond back to me so I would check their profile & start relationship bulding, it worked great for awhile. Like most other automated tools it had run it course for me anyway and I've now quit using anything automated connected with twitter.
Actually I feel most folks start using the auto DM feature to save time. I wanted to give new followers benefit sfor following me (free tools) and attempt to connect on a more personal level with out it looking like an obvious DM.
Here is the auto DM I ran on my twitter account for a few months...
"Hi, Here r couple of free tools I use; twhirl.org & tweetlater.com, saves time. Send me a DM & I'll check your profile."
I've gotta say this message did the trick "until" many twitterers caught on the the auto DM feature and many others started auto DM's. The sad part of the whole auto DM mess is many didn't understand how to attract new followers into building a personal relationship, by giving value first.
As an example here are some of the auto DM's I received...
Thanks for the following! Want to know more about the real estate market? http://spamurl... Get 25,000 Followers Quick! - http://spamurl... Please join me. I'd like to recruit you as a spymaster to my spy ring - http://spamurl... Thanks for following. Looking forward to your tweets. Please let us know what you think of our product http://spamulr Take the effort out of weight loss...
In the twitter community auto DM's are getting annoying especially if your account is growing at a fast pace. When you reach this point it's time to stop and focus on REAL relationship building.
Another automated twitter tool I enjoyed for awhile is auto following back those who followed me. This was becoming more of a hassle going in and un-following the folks who didn't take the time to add their profile picture or the obvious spammers who were following in hopes that my system had an auto-follow back. Today I go in and follow only the new followers who qualify.
My qualification rules for a follow in twitter.
Have a profile picture
Not look like an obvious spammer
If I was just starting out on twitter, I would probably use some of the many automated tools to get my system up and having enough followers to respond to my tweets. There comes a time on twitter that you just need to buckle down and build relationships with the twitter network you have. I think that magic number is different for everyone depending on your marketing strategy for twitter.
Twitter considers the threshold 2000 following/followers ratio to let you keep or freeze your account. You will need to keep your following/ follower ratio even going through the "2000" number. When I look at a new followers profile I also look at how many times they have updated their account. If they haven't had many updates but have a huge following/followers ratio I know they are automating their account to build it fast. Then I look tweets they've done if they are actually communicating and not just promoting (spaming) then I follow them back.
A message from... Cindy McAsey- Marketing Strategies Coach
The money is in the list. You’ve probably heard that before right? Well, that’s not exactly true. Not the whole truth anyway. The biggest obstacle you face and have to overcome when you publish a newsletter or put any free or paid information out there is the fact that people have gotten used to getting junk (from your competitors) disguised as helpful free or paid information.
Many writers put out sub standard information simply because they’re writing from a mentality of “I gotta get paid” and when you do that, you completely forget about the people you’re writing to and start to concentrate on you and what you want.
That’s a surefire recipe for disaster.
“Whenever you write anything for your subscribers, website visitors and customers don't write with the sole intention of getting a check. Getting checks is nice but your business lives or dies based on how many people believe you genuinely want to help them achieve their goals.”
Without an effort from you to show your readers that you value them enough to part with real information and that you see them as more than just a dollar sign, you’re going to be lumped in a group with all the rest of your competitors with a big sign on your forehead marked “Will Do Anything For Commissions”.
Responsive readers are born from conscious efforts to build a solid relationship with them. People connect with other people. Not mindless robots that only want commission checks.
Now don’t get me wrong....
I’d love for you to buy the products I recommend, but I’m not going to force that on you. When I do enough of the right things in your eyes, I will have earned the right to ask you for your money in the form of commission checks from other products and services.
The big thing is I have to earn that right by giving up good information that's of actual use to you. When you write anything you expect other people to read, the same thing applies to you. If you’re going to create information full of affiliate links then you’re completely missing the point of what it takes to get people to value what you have to say.
I’ve done that in the past and it is nowhere near as effective. If you want people to eagerly anticipate your next email with every intention of jumping on any products or services you recommend, you should follow the three secret rules because it is entirely possible to accomplish.
Evergreen Marketing Strategies You Can Take To The Bank
Before I get into the heart of this I want to make sure you completely understand the direction I’m taking. I have nothing against giving you specific techniques and strategies because they are important but they are never more important than the thought process that went into creating them.
I’ve do my best to give you the overall thought process I have when I sit down to write. By doing that, you will be able to learn how to come up with your own specific ideas based on the concepts I’ll show you.
Evergreen marketing strategy refers to the fact that I’m giving you proven concepts (that never stop working) based on the nature of the people you sell to. People can change a lot of things about themselves but their nature isn’t usually one of them. People can go against their nature (for short periods of time) but rarely can they change it.
In the future you should make a conscious effort to try and understand why something is done instead of just copying what you see someone else successfully doing. There’s always something more beneath the surface that you can study and learn from.
Stay tuned to this channel as I'll be sharing more about the 3 secret evergreen marketing strategies.
