CONTEST: I’m Giving Away $1,000 of Our Best Stuff!

GenNext Media’s website officially launched this past October and it has only taken a few months for us to break some very serious boundaries.

• By November we had a regular readership of over 1,000 people a month.
• We now have a full blown Internet Marketing Training Program.
• We have over 120 fans on Facebook.
• We have over 1,600 followers on Twitter.

We are ready to salute the end of 2009, the end of the BIGGEST decade for the Internet, EVER.

How? BY GIVING AWAY $1,000.00 OF AWESOME STUFF!

You have a business, right?

You need to CRUSH in the new year, right?

You have customers begging to be found, RIGHT?!

You know what needs to be done!!

Internet Marketing is the ONLY way to go in 2010!!

So here is what I have for you:

One lucky winner is going to get access to the ENTIRE Surefire Social Program. Plus a three month, all expenses paid, membership to the Total Access Club.

• That is an EBook containing our entire online marketing strategy for small businesses.
• Our premier book on researching your market and tearing apart your competition’s strategy.
• Over 40 hours of training and tutorials in step by step videos helping you to master marketing online.
• Access to our powerful Catapult program, which allows you to build a website for just $350 which will bring in business.
• Access to dozens of special outsourcing templates so you can hire the RIGHT people for the RIGHT price.
• Access to a huge library of Ebooks on topics from creating email marketing campaigns to marketing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other websites.
• And a ton more…

Normally, this alone would retail for $569.93. But we are going to take it to the next level. At the beginning of every month, for three months, we are going to do a webinar for five lucky winners (including the grand prize winner) to help them with implementing their Internet Marketing Strategy in 2010. During this webinar, they’ll have direct access to several Internet Marketing experts who will personally help them with any questions or needs they may have.

Just think, in a few months, you could have a TON of new leads and prospects from the Internet and you wouldn’t have had to pay a dime for them. Just a few minutes to enter this contest could be the defining moment for you in the coming DECADE! That’s saying something!

I’m Ready For This! What Do I Need To Do To Enter?

The rules are simple. Just leave a comment below and tell everyone how business has changed for you in the last 10 years.

If you want a second chance at winning, leave a second comment and tell us how you plan to tackle the next 10 years of business, how do you think you will be marketing in 2020?

If you want a third chance, introduce one of your friends to this contest and ask them to mention your name at the beginning of their entry!

Its as easy as that.

Monday, Jan 4rd, we’ll compile all the names into a hat and pick out the winners from the entries.

Hurry! We extended the deadline to Wednesday, Jan 6th! Get your comments in!

So hurry up! We will only accept entries until Sunday at Midnight EST. So if you want in, don’t hesitate for even a moment, and get started right now!

Official contest rules are posted here.

Social Media Marketing: 4 Reasons To Launch Your Social Web Campaign Now!

Social media marketing is the hottest “business reality-show” that’s generating leads for businesses of all sizes. As every business owner knows, leads are the lifeblood of their companies. Getting a consistent flow of profitable leads today is hard.

At a time when customers use social networking to search, discuss and explore new ideas and opportunities, “Companies have no choice. This is where their customers are going,” reported USA Today on August 27, 2009.

Advice on how to implement various social media marketing opportunities like Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and others abound. However, like any media campaign, you need to make sure your social media program is strategic, measurable and encompasses the entire spectrum’s of opportunities that are right for your business.

Four key reasons social marketing will lift your business prospects are:

• You can easily dominate your market at little to no cost. Because social media marketing is SEO on steroids, it has the ability to reach across all the important places for your niche on the Internet.

• Using the right content distribution and management strategy will get you a consistent flow of quality leads.

• You have control and can literally get started within hours if you want. Even better, you don’t need to go through a sales rep or purchase process.

• You can leverage expertise and become an authority in your niche with “followers” in social media groups. You business will be the “first call” when customers want to learn about products and services in your niche.

Bill Bean, president of Green Planning & Coaching noticed right away how adopting social marketing, “changed my approach to marketing completely! I had a website for 2-1/2 years that never brought in a single lead because I had no mechanism to collect email addresses of visitors, no analytics and no promotion through social media. I just launched my new website—and I already have prospects signing up for my newsletter. Amazingly, I’m also already getting responses to blog postings on LinkedIn and other green community sites I learned to participate in.”

Never in the history of consumer selling have companies, from one-person shops to multi-national corporations, been handed such an effective, low-cost opportunity to carry out promotional efforts. Learn how to leverage this effective new tool for your business or you will soon be left behind.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to GenNext Media LLC. today.

Social Media Training and Analysis: Social Marketing Success in Only Two Easy Steps

Proper business marketing requires having a system for your content development and proper keyword use. Read below for some valuable tips.

Content Development

If you want a successful small business, you will need to have a set of certain marketing strategies in place. The first part of your marketing plan should focus on content development. Is it fresh and relevant to what people are looking for today? There are sources you can check, like Twitter and Twitturly.com in order to find out the latest trends charted for the day. Use these sources to incorporate imperative information into your content. It is important to follow the trends so that you are always on the forefront of what people are searching for. Are you offering something for free? Use your social media tools to give away such things like free information and reports, or coupons and special discounts. Items like these are great at grabbing the user’s attention, building your credibility, and leading to a sale.

When you are distributing your content on the web, the first thing to take note of is that your copy is search engine optimized. Your content needs to be written in a very specific manner so that Google can easily find your relevant article when keywords are typed into the search engines. When the keywords are strategically placed, your content will be among the top of the list and ensuring you more website traffic.

It should be noted that this web marketing strategy can be abused and therefore, work against you. Search engines are more advanced than they were several years ago, and merely stuffing the content with your keywords in inappropriate places will not get you more website traffic. The spiders that search for relevant content are able to find informative and well written articles while sifting out the ones that are simply packed with keywords but provide no substantial information.

Keywords

If you are looking for the right keywords to add into your content, you first need to do some research. Do a search to find out what other web surfers are using in order to find information on your page. This also works for phrases you want to include in your content. When you collect a list of relevant keywords, you can then implement them into your copy. Take note that they need to go in specific places: title, teaser, subheads, and sprinkled throughout the meat of the content. However, be careful not to go overboard on the density and get banned as a spammer. You need to make sure the keywords fit seamlessly into the copy without compromising the integrity of the information.

This system of online marketing is incredibly solid. If you follow these steps and develop a system that works for you, you will be able to manipulate the social media tools to work to your greatest advantage. It requires research and skillful writing, but when done correctly will increase your internet visibility and thus get your more traffic to your site.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to GenNext Media LLC. today.

Internet Marketing For Small Business: Don’t Be Left Behind With Your Traditional Marketing Strategy

Attention Small Businesses: The old way of doing marketing doesn’t work anymore. Still relying on ‘advertising’? You’re sunk – unless you learn the new way of reaching your market.

Imagine a 28 year old starts a business competing in your market. You spent years building a brand and reputation in your community. One day, you realize it is all taken away by this person who became an “authority” overnight. This is going to play out with businesses all across the country over the next few years. So what can you do to stay relevant?

Some business marketing tips just aren’t all that successful anymore. What worked for Internet Marketing for small business a few years ago is not necessarily what is going to pull in the customers and the profits in today’s social media-dominated environment. In order to stay in tune with your niche and prospective customers, it is important remain current with your efforts—from marketing communications to brand strategies. Rather than allowing your competition to pass you by, you can update your marketing strategy and keep your business relevant.

The new, effective marketing for small business is a shift in focus from “advertising” to “engaging.” What this means is that you are getting in the middle of discussions that are happening on the social web, building relationships and attracting customers—not because you have the best ad, but because you are offering valuable information to these conversations.

You may hear reference to the “distributed web.” This is related to the fact that people are going to search engines like Google and Yahoo and even YouTube to find solutions to their problems. As customers become savvier, they are beginning to see banner ads and other forms of advertising as gimmicky and even scammy.

In fact, consumer studies show that 78 percent of customers value peer recommendations versus a small 14 percent who trust advertisements. A move away from this type of marketing to a more social method is your ticket to staying relevant and competing with the big dogs in your niche.

Because of this change in the online environment, you will see greater results for your small business if you focus on meeting these customers where they are. Utilizing content distribution and affiliate marketing are two simple and relatively easy ways to connect with your ideal customers and convert them into buyers.

How content distribution works

Content distribution is creating keyword-rich articles, audios and/or videos to provide quality content for customers and then distributing around the web in key places where your customers will be seeking information. The reason for the key-rich content is because search engine spiders are crawling around the web trying to find content that contains certain keywords.

You can find the best keywords for your business by utilizing free web tools, such as Google’s Keyword Tool, finding out what keywords your competitors are targeting and what your customers are plugging into the search engines. Once you have a keyword and phrase list, you place them into your titles, headings, tags and content and distribute them to a number of free article directories online. This is how you become a search engine spider magnet.

The search engines will find your content, place it into the search engine results, and the customers will eat-up the quality info you provide. Once you have established yourself as someone who knows your topic, the customers will then come to your business when they need a solution to a problem.

How to utilize affiliate marketing

What if you had dozens of people who knew your business and wanted to share it with others? This is basically every small business owners dream. Affiliate marketing can make it happen. Marketing 101 tells us that word of mouth is the number one best marketing method, and affiliate marketing is where it’s at.

Because people are more likely to trust recommendations over advertising, affiliate marketing is becoming one of the most effective methods for pulling in customers. The typical affiliate marketing program is based on the business owner paying affiliates who refer a paying customer to the business. Rather than having to pay people up-front for marketing on your behalf, you only pay when the customer makes a purchase. This is ideal for small business owners who typically do not have a lot of money to invest in marketing.

To ensure you have quality affiliates who will spread your message as effectively as possible, you can offer trainings and reports to keep them connected with your business. Furthermore, by doing this, you are creating loyalty and trust with your affiliates who will in turn do a better job marketing for you.

Is it possible to have free internet marketing? With content distribution and affiliate marketing it is. Thanks to a plethora of no-cost article directories at your fingertips and affiliates you only pay once you’ve made a sale, you can create a free internet marketing strategy that works.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to GenNext Media LLC. today.

2010: The Year of Innovation or The Year of Interruption?

As the holiday season comes to a screeching halt, I can finally catch my breath…or can I? Being apart of a social media marketing business has the ability to consume your every move, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Forget about the holidays! The distributed web knows no holidays! Whether it is Christmas, Hanukkah or New Years…the Internet NEVER stops. Therefore, neither can you. I guess it is the price we have to pay to do something we really enjoy and call it our job.

2010 is going to be the year of the distributed web, but I am not sure we can handle much more innovation. Between retweets, blog entries and scheduling pings, I don’t know how many more social media outlets I can handle! So, when does innovation go so far that it becomes an interruption?

Pete Cashmore, Mashable’s king of social media marketing, questions whether the “real-time web” could do us more harm than good.

I’d say, I would have to agree.

With the upcoming transition into the New Year just days away, I think it is that time to analyze your ability to plan, organize and remain productive with all the innovations and changes to the social media world.

• Create and Build Meaningful Connections. I know how cliché it sounds, but really, you cannot be friends with everyone, especially when you are trying to, effectively, run a business. Utilize sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook to foster close-knit relationships with people, in your niche market, who are seen as valuable connections and can help your business achieve its goals.

• Make the Most of Your Social Media Efforts. Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. MySpace. Friendster. I think you get the point. With the overwhelming presence of social media sites, it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE for a human being to effectively be present on all of them. Stick with the Big 3: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Concentrate your efforts and maintain a solid presence within these sites. If you have these areas under control, then you can begin to dabble in other areas.

• Do What the Analytics are Telling You. At GenNext Media, we check Google Analytics multiple times a day to stay abreast on what our market wants to read, and what they don’t. Once you realize that people are more interested in reading your articles on social media marketing vs. lead generation, you can concentrate the majority of your efforts in that area. After all, your overall goal is to give your followers what they want, right?

• Strive to be an Expert in Your Industry. Your social media presence is not about selling. I repeat, your social media presence is not about selling. Before you start tweeting, making updates and replying to your followers, you must decide what type of presence you want going to have within the distributed web. Don’t use your social media efforts to increase your bottom line. Be helpful, personable and informative and you will have no problem selling your product. Social media is an online community and you have to prove your worthy before anyone will do business with you.

As 2010 hits, we will be bombarded with the new innovations and technologies of social media. Now, you have no excuse not to be prepared! Don’t get overwhelmed by all the new bells and whistles being released to the distributed web, just stick to your plan.

What is your plan for the New Year?

How Well Is Your Business Adapting To Social Media: 4 Ways To Measure

How is your business marketing working for you right now?

If you are reading this blog you know that marketing as we know it has changed forever. New technology, new applications combined with a tough economy to completely change the game. This coming year will be the new beginning for many businesses…or the beginning of the end for some.

Why? Huge economic advantage awaits companies that can lower their average cost per lead and increase their average revenue per customer. New mareketing techniques in the distributed web, including social media marketing, will be a big driver.

The question is how is your business doing?

The begining of a new year is a great time to reflect on these areas of your business and set new goals for 2010:

1. Are you listening? Does your business have an active, pro-active strategy and plan to make sure you are observing all the relevant conversations occurring across the web? Winners in the new marketing paradigm will understand their customers and competitors better than anyone else.
2. Are you adding value? How well are is your business creating valuable content to educate and nurture your prospects so you can grab and hold their attention?
3. Are you participating? Being regularly involved in conversations makes you known, and if done well, liked in the community you are working within.
4. Measuring and monitoring! This ties it all together. Measuring key metrics like where your traffic is coming from and what are the conversion metrics. How is your list growing for various social networks as well as your overall database. If you are not growing, something is not working.

Gone are the days when you created a print or TV ad, agreed on a media plan, and ran it though the year. This requires and active, daily presence by your business. You need a strategy and plan to make it work.

What do you think?

Is Your Content Organized For Social Media Marketing?

Over the next year you are determined to get your business focused on social media marketing. That’s great. Now let’s spend a few weeks getting our content organized so we make it easy to become a content publishing machine.

At this point you should have done your research so you know the keywords and phrases that your businesses is looking to compete and win with. You should also have a Unique Selling Proposition that positions your product or service differently than the competing brands in the space. Now we need to translate that into attention getting, educational content that motivates your target customer to interact with you business and convert to a sale or a lead.

Don’t get stumped on content ideas you can use for “link bait”. So everyone is on the same page, “link bait” is content that is specially created to attract your best prospects and convert them to leads. It should have a high perceived value by the target customer because it gives them just the information they are looking for at the right time. It can be in the form of a whitepaper, video, ebook, webinar, special consultation…you get the idea.

Here are a few ways to think about developing solid content that will get your target customers attention and make them want to learn more about your business:

1. Answer your target prospects most burning questions. Whatever medium you use (Video, whitepaper, article, ebook), you want your content to be found when your prospects are looking for solutions to their problems. Answering questions you know they have is a great way to find yourself at the top of the search engine results page.
2. Create an innovative approach (a “system” or “formula”) and use various content to educate your target audience about this specially designed approach. Key in on why it  saves them money, time or get’s them more customers.
3. Tips and mini courses are another way to make interesting content and be able to educate your target customers.

Now you are going to have two types of content.

First, content on your “home base”, that’s your website and blog. For the most part, you want to have your “link bait” on your “home base”. Second, you will have content that gets published in your distributed network. That’s web 2.0 sites, social networks, article directories and other places in the distributed web that your target audience hangs out in. You will then use your distributed content and social media to engage with prospects and drive them to your “home base”.

Key in this example is you are not hard selling at any time. If you have “link bait” that answers questions or is helpful and additive to the discussion taking place in the various web communities you are involved with, this is a natural process and you are a helpful person.

Now, let’s get organized. When you go to publish your content and register for accounts around the web…you will need to register for just about everything (article directories, web 2.0 sites you build pages on). If you are just getting started, here is a list of content and other resources you should put into an easy to access folder so it makes publishing a breeze:

• 10-12 articles
• 250-350 word doc with your website/company mission
• Agree on passwords and usernames for all the accounts you will open up
• Have a short and long form bio for the “author” or your articles
• Have nice graphics of your “link bait” with a description of what it is and why it’s important
• Don’t be shy, create video either in screencast or headshot form. Do 5-10, 30 sec to 2:30 minute videos that you can use on social sites, your own website and on video channels like You Tube
• If you have a company/product PowerPoint, you can use that as well
• Put company contact info in the folder so it is handy
• Keyword worksheet so you know what your titles and anchor text should be

Now you, or someone you delegate this task to, can quickly build up your presence in social media presence. Add content to this folder on a regular basis and you will have a content publishing machine. Make sure you are monitoring what articles and “link bait” is getting picked up most and learn why so you can further hone your content to attract your best customers.

We have a complete step-by-step social media marketing program that walks through this process in much more detail at Surefire Social.

Now go do it!

Social Media Marketing On 45 Minutes A Day

Social media marketing takes time. From the business owner or CEO to staff at all levels, done right everyone has a role to play so your business can cover the most ground and have the largest impact. By the way, this routine will have a very positive effect on your business in many ways.

One of the biggest issues we hear from our larger clients, and the Surefire Social DYI customers alike, is the time they think it takes to do social media marketing. Let’s break this down and create a workflow that is manageable and sustainable for everyone. Here are 5 tips to a 45 minute per day routine that will pay off bigtime:

1. Set up workflow so you have all you need prepared in advance- Profiles, Pages, RSS Reader, URL shorteners, microblog distribution platform…all need to be set up and understood how to work them in advance. If you are a senior exec in the company, we also recommend that you have someone on your staff responsible for social media marketing keep track of all the content you are going to publish including articles, blog posts, videos , PR Releases etc in a Google Docs file that can be shared by all stakeholders. This provides stewardship and content that can be directly shared by you all in one place.
2. Develop a social media routine and put it on your calendar- You need to participate on a regular basis so put your routine on your calendar and stick to it.
3. Identify the pulse of the conversation and join in- You can’t be everywhere, but make sure you are where people are congregating and discussing topics relevant to your product or service. Make sure you understand the “pulse of the conversation” so you are posting comments and blog posts that are relevant and add to the discussion. Having the tools and workflow outlined in point 1 will help.
4. Spend and equal amount of time listening and posting- As business owners and executives we are naturally inclined to talk about our products and services and “sell”. Don’t do it. This is about education and nurturing potential customers. Even better, this is about a great opportunity to listen to the dialog among potential customers, competitors and partners so we better understand how to meet needs and sell more stuff!
5. Don’t get caught in the black hole of social media- It is easy to get caught up in the blogs, Tweets, forums and social networks because the opportunities and ideas can be endless. It’s important to stay structured and with purpose in your routine so you do not over invest time in social media. Having others in your organization also contribute will help your business cover more ground without over burdening any one individual.

If you follow these tips you should be able to invest 45 minutes every day to commenting on a few blogs that are highly visible, listening to the pulse of the conversations and posting a 250 to 450 word blog post. Even better, you will have a better feel for your market than you ever did. That is the key here. Social media mareketing makes you a better business person because it forces you to stop, listen and write down your thoughts.

No excuses…go do it!

Video Marketing: How To Get Jump Started For The New Year!

Let’s have a little me time shall we?

After all, you need to get yourself a Christmas present, right? Let’s make it something that will last throughout the New Year! Something that will help you grow your business and add another important layer of marketing to your social media marketing program.

I’m talking about video equipment and software so you can quickly produce and distribute video content across all your distributed platforms. And guess what, as much as businesses seem to talk about video marketing, not many are really doing it. If your businesses does it, you can really put yourself in a very strong competitive postion in several ways:

1. Search results- Search engines love video and it gives your business an opportunity to get a double listing if you are already ranking for your keywords
2. Authority in you market- In the attention economy you need to be able to get and hold attention with information and education marketing. Adding video to your mix gives you an entirely new dimension to engage your customers.
3. It’s cheap and easy- That’s right. Once you get the hang of making videos, and you have the right set up, doing new videos are a snap. All you need to do is create a quick script and you are off.

Equipment (your Christmas Present)

For simple video production capability you will need 5 basic pieces of equipment and two types of software for the complete package:

• An HD camera- if you can find it, get the Kodak Z
• A light weight camera tripod
• A green screen for background (Optional)
• Basic three stand lighting set (Optional but highly recommended)
• Lapel microphone (optional but recommended)
• Screencast software for your computer (Here’s a great post in Mashable with reviews and links)
• Video editing software (see reviews of top options here)

We recommend going to B&H Photo to buy your equipment as they seem to have the best prices and availability. The total cost for all this equipment can range from $600- $6,000 depending on what type of camera you buy, lights etc. But for $600 to $1,000 you can have a great quality video set up that will make you proud.

What to do with your new equipment?

Here is the first thing you should do to get your video marketing started. Launch a video campaign that drives people back to your site (to sign up for something so you get a lead). What should the videos be about? How about answering the 10 most frequently asked questions you know your top customers have when they are searching for solutions that you provide? Just make them 30 second to no more than 2:00 minute videos. After you do those, make another 10 that are questions your top prospects should be asking. This gives you a great opportunity to give your own perspective and differentiate your product or service. Then put some simple royalty free music in the background and your logo and web address on the video using the video editing software…and you are ready to publish.

We use both Traffic Geyser and Tube Mogul to distribute our videos…they make it easy to distribute videos to all the video distribution platforms including Your Tube.

That’s it. You have everything you need now to start 2010 off with a great new marketing tool that will generate more leads and more customers while making you an authority in your market. Have fun!

What do you think?

Secret Local Business SEO Strategy Using Google Maps

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Google Maps is a great service, right up there with its competitors at Yahoo!®, Mapquest®  and others. However, one extra twist that’s going on at Google is that you can include your business address & information, and it gets integrated into the Google Maps search results via a tab near the top of the page.

Even more important, with the move to Universal Search, Google started integrating other types of search queries on their main web search, including local search results. The local listings are being driven by companies listed in maps.google.com…this was most commonly referred to as the 10-pack or 10-box. But here’s an update, as of November 2009, Google has removed 3 of the 10 box listings to make local search even more competitive – the 10- box is now the 7-box!  Here’s an example of a search for “Florists in Reston Va”

We’re going to briefly cover how to get your business website listed in Google Local Maps. But first I want to tell you why this is very important if you run a local business.

Very recently, and I mean very…as in April of 2009 Google started displaying local search results for NON-local search queries! So, knowing how to work Google local maps is very important to your local business ranking.

It’s most likely that these non-local search queries are pulling map results based on the searcher’s IP address. Example being if I’m looking for ‘florists’ on Google I’ll likely get a local search “7-box” listing. From an organic SEO marketers perspective this is not great news since it’s pushing their listings potentially off of page one (listed BELOW the 7- box)…however for a savvy SEO/SEM marketers, they’d have already taken advantage of this and be in the 7-box listing.

Ok, so now you’re ready to begin. You want to go to http://maps.google.com and then click on the link shown below (Put your business on Google Maps)…

If you don’t have a Google account you will need to sign up for one. Once you have a Google account you can then click the Add New Account button and then follow the steps.

For the Company/Organization section it is *VERY* useful to ensure you’re focused on your geo- targeted keyword phrase. Also keep this in mind when filling out the Description box. Make sure you work-in, naturally of course, the keyword phrases/terms you want to be pulled up for when someone does a search. This is one of the major criteria for getting pulled into the Local 7-box on Google queries.

One other thing to note. If you have a consulting or other type of service business, make sure to put in your local number as it may encourage potential customers to call. If you do not have a local number consider getting Vonage or Skype and requesting one. Do NOT use an 800 numbers as Google prefers you have a local number.

It’s also a good idea to have pictures, logos and even video if possible in your listing so that you take advantage of all the ways you can reach potential customers and differentiate your business.

One last thought, make sure to test the keywords you want to use to see if the Google 7 box appears for them before finalizing your keyword choices. You will have a better chance of appearing in the 7-box if your keywords already trigger the 7-box to show up.

Now go do it!

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