Social Media Marketing Plans: The Secret to Success is Integration

You have a small business, and need mass exposure to your target audience. Why should you use social media?

Social media has transformed the Information Age as its products flood into every aspect of normal life. This is a significant change from 10 years ago, when the passing of information was controlled by only the top few media publishing giants. However, since the birth of applications like Facebook and Twitter, power has shifted to the masses, and now your every day layman can control more information than ever before. What is unique about this transfer of power is that the information is presented then sorted by the readers. Users vote on the importance of the information they find, and through this sorting and voting, the best of the bunch is at the top of the list.

Social Marketing

Social marketing comes in many forms, and is creating household names out of companies that barely existed ten years ago. People converge upon Facebook to virtually meet and exchange ideas. Twitter is increasing exponentially in size, and businesses can use their “tweet” to get followers to buy their products and services. Companies that are the most favored tend to have many followers who in return promote their services from their own sites, which multiplies exposure and audiences.

Business Marketing

By integrating social marketing with your business, the result is online business marketing to your target audience. From this, you can offer free reports, free products or coupons to promote your business and encourage more traffic to your website. The key to integrating for every internet marketer is to turn saturated contact on the web into revenue. Integration allows you to connect with multiple levels of people and multiplies your target audience as opposed to just using one medium of communication.

Small Business Marketing Strategies

A website is the main thing to create when thinking of small business marketing strategies. A website allows your company information to be accessible 24/7, from anywhere in the world. With internet usage growing daily, people want to be able to access information from their keyboard. Customers expect you to have a website, and when they discover that you don’t, it ruins your credibility, and they move on to another source that is online.

Social Media Tools

If you are unsure as to how to get started, there are some social media tools that you can use to shorten the learning curve and speed you on your way to creating a bigger presence on the internet for your small business.

1. Social Poster: A useful application that allows the user to post anything from articles to media on over 160 social and bookmarking sites at once. A very efficient and fast way to get an instant internet presence for your company. (www.socialposter.com)
2. Tweet Adder: Easy application to gain a quick following. You will need a Twitter account, and then you can target your audience via geography or keywords to locate interested parties.

The idea is that social marketing is not just about using one tactic, or hopping from one to the other every few months. In order to maximize the best internet presence for your small business, you need to have a plan that integrates all of the applications together. Through this integration, you have the best chance of reaching the customer.

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 Social Media Marketing, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

Online Marketing and Advertising Is Too Expensive to Make a Profit – If you are only planning on one sale.

If you are looking to maximize revenue for your small business, these are two powerful tools that you must know.

If you are looking for strategic online marketing for your business, content development is key to gaining you website traffic. People won’t come to your site if it isn’t search engine optimized, and if they do get to your site, won’t buy if the information isn’t relevant. It takes time to invest in content development and then web distribution in order to net higher revenue. Another key component to work alongside content development is affiliate marketing, which can bring in substantial passive income when used correctly. These tactics used together earn a lot of profit for your business.

Content Development

Successful small businesses know that having relevant content is necessary in order to have an applicable site. Fresh content that is regularly developed can increase traffic to your site. This happens if your website content is written in order to be easily found by the search engines. When the spiders search for informative and keyword rich content, your website will pop up at the top of the list. If you always incorporate current trends in your related field into your content, this increases your business visibility.

Certain content development can also improve your online sales. If you offer free products or information on your site, people will learn to trust you and you will build credibility. Informative content means that people will stick around and buy something from you.

Once your content is developed to maximize your website traffic and sales, it needs to be distributed through various channels: websites, blogs, press releases, articles, etc. Your choice is dependent on which venue suits your needs the best. Just remember that the more ways you can get your content circulating the web, the better chances you have for high visibility and website traffic.

Product Development

Savvy product development can bring a fresh jolt to your business. It can generate passive income and identify you as a subject matter expert in the field. The key to successful product development is having a clear plan. You need to be able to describe in detail what your product is, and what it is not. This helps set parameters for your product and defines who your target audience is. As you clearly outline the benefits, you stay on track when it comes to targeting specific leads that have a need for your service.

Using Affiliates for Revenue

Affiliate programs are great ways to raise revenue, either by starting your own program or promoting products for someone else in return for a commission. The trick to really having a productive program is to find similar products or services that relate to what your business offers and promote them. This will allow you to not only continuously build your network of contacts, but your revenue will grow with every purchase.

Your web marketing strategy should be aimed at intertwining fresh content development and the partnership of affiliates. You are limitless when it comes to affiliate programs, and should spend some time each week marketing for other businesses. On the same note, if you continually add fresh content to your social media outlets, your website traffic will increase, as well as your revenue. 

Business Marketing Services for the Social Web: Tools That Save You Time and Make Your Competitors’ Heads Spin

Are you looking for ways to increase your presence online? Try out the business marketing tools listed below in order to guarantee more website traffic.

There are certain tools that you can use for marketing your products and services. These tools are great time savers and will push you ahead of your competitors on the Internet front. Your business marketing plan should be to expand your target audience through the use of these tools. Listed below are ten different useful sites.

Twitter: One of the top five business marketing tools, Twitter is used by companies across the world to promote their business, share information, and give free products and services to encourage trust in their followers. Don’t know what to tweet about? Find significant URL’s from the other sites below that give value to your dialogues and posts.

Tweetadder: You will need a Twitter account, but once you have one, this is a great way to get a quick following online. You can market your business through tweetadder by targeting people by geography or keyword in order to identify interested parties. Then invite them to follow you. Typically, you’ll get a 20-40% response rate of those you ask to follow you.

Facebook/Linkedin: Start a local group for your niche. This will allow users to get to know you and your company online, while allowing offline networking. If you start the group as the administrator, then you will be perceived as the leader. Invite your competitors and other industry people to join. Remember, you are the leader and now have a group of names you are collecting and the promotional vehicle you now have for free. This is a great way to get exposure for your business.

Social Poster: A fast way to get instant exposure over a wide variety of sites is Social Poster. This web bases application allows you to post anything from articles to media on over 160 different social and bookmarking sites. By simply submitting your website regularly, you will get more traffic and a better page rank.

Ping.FM: This social network and micro-blogging service allows you to simultaneously post to multiple social networks. With just one update on Ping.FM, it sends the update to several different social sites at once, making your job a whole lot easier. Rather than spending time updating each social site individually, Ping.FM does the footwork for you.

Friend Feed: With this tool, you can consolidate the updates from social media and networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, bookmarking sites and any other type of RSS feed—all in real-time. By using this information stream, you can customize feeds to share with prospective customers as well as create new discussions and micro-blogs to share.

If you are looking for a way to better market your business, all of the sites referenced above are relevant sources for helping you to connect with prospective customers with ease and in a format that is appealing to them. One aspect of your product marketing plan should be to follow the customers where they are, and these sites can keep you relevant and in-touch on a daily basis.

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 Lead Generation Marketing, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

Social Media Training and Analysis: The reason why social media marketing does not work for most businesses is because of one word – Tinkering.

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.

Internet Marketing For Small Business: Don’t be left behind using traditional marketing and sales methods that are no longer working

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 Internet Marketing, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

Business Marketing: How to get more clients and bigger profits using new technology and applications to dominate your market.

Good news for the internet newbie: To the swift go the spoils. Master social marketing, and you’ll dominate your niche.

Entrepreneur hopefuls who are seeking for ways to succeed in online business may finally have a more level playing field thanks to social media. Reduced costs involved with social marketing and the ability to interact with customers easily through new technology and social media applications, make it possible for newbies to jump in and quickly become a trusted authority in a certain niche. This translates to more customers and increased profits in less time.

There was once a time when new business owners had to fight their way to the top and take a beating from competitors, but social media has changed all of that. It is a new game now, and if you can learn the ins and outs of successful social marketing, you can dominate your market.

Attract and convert customers

One word can describe the best philosophy for getting clients: relationship. If you can connect with your prospective customers, engage them and create loyalty, you are in an excellent position to convert prospects into paying customers.

But how do you build these valuable relationships? The answer is to go where your customers are. Use simple online research to identify a number of social media sites where your customers hang out. Search for forums, message boards, blogs and social networks where these people are asking questions, posting reviews and building relationships. Once you have found these sites, join in on the discussions. By posting thoughtful questions and valuable information to help others, you can become a part of the community.

It only takes a handful of quality communications with a group to become a valued member. When you become known as the person who brings something worthwhile to the table, you begin to establish yourself as a person of authority on the topic or niche. Then, and only then, can you begin to share your business subtly—through a signature link or a product mention.

Rather than approaching these social communities from a seller’s perspective, you approach them from a relationship perspective, which allows you to earn the right to present your products and services in time.

Create bigger profits

In order to increase your business profits, it is important to get past the mind-set of doing anything and everything for one sale. Instead, your focus should be on the repeat customer. After all, it takes a lot of effort, communication and sometimes money to convert that one customer, so why not make it worth your while?

The way to maintain the connection with the customer is to communicate continually. Consider sending out a monthly e-newsletter to stay in touch with customers in order to keep you fresh in their minds. That way, when they think of something they need, they will come to you instead of the competitor.

Make your marketing communications more than just a sell message. Offer something of value—a whitepaper, special report, e-book or video—to build rapport with your customer list. By sharing with customers information they desire, you are further solidifying yourself as the authority on the subject in their minds. This way, they click on your link and visit your site when they are looking for solutions.

Business marketing is so much more than it used to be. Rather than pumping money into ads that may or may not work, social media technology and applications now provide you with low-cost methods that in many cases are far more effective in reaching customers and increasing business profits.

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 Business Marketing, go to http://www.gennextmedia.com today.

Lead Generation Marketing: Bigger Profits and More Leads Using the Social Web

Learn the secrets of multiplying your online business profits through list building with social media tools?

Lead generation for businesses is a key component for creating a powerful list of subscribers to whom you can readily send information. If you are looking for a way for your online business to flourish and your brand to become a household name, you need to incorporate this into your marketing plan. List building is useful in that it provides a bank of names of which you have regular contact; submitting relevant content that will increase your website traffic and lead to more profit for your business. There are various social media tools that can help you build a relevant list.

Social Media Tools to Build Your List

As far as lead generation tools go, Facebook and Twitter are the hottest applications to capitalize on. In order to gather a following for either, you must present relevant data to users who already show an interest in your products and services. The key here is quality, not quantity. By providing appropriate information, you can attract people who are interested in your services in the future.

A key application to use in conjunction with these tools is the friend adder. This tool is great for local businesses because it allows you to search for people with specific interests in the same city. You can then send friend requests and get them to follow you and your business.

Blogs are another great tool to showcase your business and generate a list. You need to provide relevant text that can easily be found through search engine optimization, and build your list based on the interest of the reader. When you sell your product, keep it informative but entertaining so that people want to continue reading. Once you gain a large following, search engines will put your blog at the top of the list when your keywords are typed in, thus getting you more traffic.

Relevant Content to Build Your List

The products you are promoting need to contain compelling content that grabs people’s attention. Use networking hooks that encourage people to repost and share with friends. Focus your content on your niche, and specialize in offering a service that other competitors don’t. When you provide a solution to a problem that other businesses in your community aren’t addressing, you will build your list that much more quickly.

Activate the List to Produce Sales

List building is a powerful way to market your small business. As your list grows, many subscribers will come to consider you as a source of linkable content, if you are consistently providing high quality information in your posts. Many web content users are always on the hunt for relevant content that they can refer to in their own posts. If your content is consistently being used, that increases your chances of website traffic as people click on the links to find out more information.

When it comes to sales, the key is the relationship. People want to buy products and services from someone that they know and trust. You need to create the kind of relationship where users rely on you for information in your niche, because you are the expert. It is also important to ask questions. Questions as to how you can provide more information for them that they can’t find online, or what help they need in deciding on a purchase are great ways to get feedback and build credibility and trust with those on your list.

Once you create a reputation as the subject matter expert in your niche and have built credible relationships with your subscribers, you will see how they come back to you consistently in order to buy your products.

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 Lead Generation Marketing, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

Small Business Marketing With Social Media: Learn the topics and strategies you need to increase visibility

Looking for ideas and topics to get you started in small business marketing? The social media sites listed below can help you to come up with the content and strategies necessary to get plugged into social marketing for your small business.

Small businesses are always looking for unique ways to reach their target audience and market their brand. There are some common tools you can find on the web, but a more thorough search will deliver mediums that work a bit better for local businesses. One of the first steps for social marketing success is to identify the right topics and content that will attract your prospective customers’ attention. By making use of the sites and tactics listed below, your lead generation marketing numbers will skyrocket as users search specifically for what you can provide.

Retweetist.com: This site follows all things Twitter and allows you to keep up with popular topics, trends and people by tracking retweets across the site. Follow them with your Twitter account for access, and you will be privy to the most important information and relevant discussions on the web that day.

Popurls.com: This is a one-stop shop where you can find the top entries from multiple sites that users are visiting. Find out what people are interested in and target those audiences based on the latest interests. Incorporate the top entries into your feeds to lead people to your site.

Alltop.com: This online magazine provides a plethora of popular topics on the web, with stories updated by the hour. This site is a relevant source of what is popular in the market place, and boasts easy search tools. It’s a great source for brushing up on new social media tools to keep your marketing strategies fresh and relevant.

Trendhunter.com: This online magazine is an “explosion of cool” and kept up to date by a global network of trendsetters. Get ahead of the game with the next big thing by tracking this site. The reason this site is so valuable is that it helps generate ideas, shape our social context, and stimulate creativity. This is a great way to figure out how to be more influential within your social media marketing and develop services to meet the demands you find on the site.

Trendistic.com: Look to this site in order to find daily trends in Twitter, complete with charts and graphs, and a list of popular topics. Tweak your feeds to be more relevant to the current daily trends and ensure more website traffic.

Twitturly.com: This site ranks and tracks what URL’s people are talking about on Twitter. It’s a quick reference to find out what information gets passed along and what doesn’t. You can also check to see how your information is ranking.

Makeuseof.com: This site has tools and resources that you can use and is a great source for finding anything from the top 5 things to do in an emergency to different ways kids can make money online. Find a significant URL to add value to your postings here.

Lifehacker.com: Another general site similar to makeuseof.com, this site has tips and downloads for everyday life.

Tweetgrid.com: An extension of Twitter, this search dashboard lets you search up to 9 different topics, events, people, groups, phrases, etc in real time. So, when new tweets are created, they will be automatically updated in your grid. This will help you stay relevant with your feeds and allow you to change them as the information deems necessary.

Tweetmeme.com: This site tracks what is cool and being talked about on Twitter. Everything is sorted by rank, so the things that are talked about most have the highest ranking. Tweetmeme.com tracks old and new content, and all media is categorized by blogs, photos, audio, and video. You can perform searches on this site for the highest ranking content and create similar posts that will guarantee traffic.

Twopular.com: This site pulls up trends on Twitter in real time. No need to refresh the page, and you can keep up by always having current information in your posts.

Twitturls.com: Works by grabbing the links that people post in their Twitter feeds and then counts them, scores them, and then lists them. Shows results by day and is refreshed every minute. Through this site you can check out the highest ranking links to see if you can make a posting relevant to your business.

Twitlinks.com: Features latest news that is for the more technologically inclined. Up to the minute tech links. Great for tech marketers who want to find small businesses online and offer solutions to their needs.

Twittersphere.com: A collection of the most hyped stories found on Twitter. Check regularly to see which stories get the most hits. Also a great portal for posting local specials relevant to your business.

Twitscoop.com: An easy way to stay on top of Twitter. Click on one of the words in the cloud map on the right and it shows you how many times the word has appeared in tweets. This is a great calculating tool for keyword research.

Sitevolume.com: Fantastic medium for pulling up keyword counts for 5 various sites. Simply pick a site you want to check, type in up to 5 keywords, and it pulls up how many times those words appear. You can check which words are the most relevant and incorporate them into your social media tools.

Twitgraph.com: Charts your actual usage of twitter complete with visuals. Use this to track what has been the most popular topics in your threads.

Killerstartups.com: Interesting site that reviews 15+ internet startups per day, then the readers vote on which one they think will be a killer. This site can be a great source for being the first to find upcoming needs for your products and services.

Any one of these web-marketing strategies will provide you with many avenues to get the latest topics and information that people are seeking. Because you want to meet a need or fulfill an interest of your prospective customer, it is vital to stay current with popular topics and informational trends. When you appear to be a business in-the-know, you will build credibility for your brand, while reaching a wider spectrum of the public. Keep in mind that it is important to measure your results. Also, make sure that you are having two-way conversations instead of only talking “at” your audience.

Furthermore, it is important to ensure your network is growing. Work on building relationships through credibility, dialogue and content relevancy. By following this structure to market your business, you will be maximizing the power of your social network, and expanding opportunities for your company.

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 Small Business Marketing, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

Marketing and Branding is Changed Forever with New Technology and Tough Economic Times: 5 Steps to Keeping Your Business on Track.

The Internet has done nothing if not offer millions of options for doing business. In any economy, the problem’s not having enough opportunity – it’s knowing what to do when. Read on for the 5 steps you MUST follow to succeed online today.

While the Internet is abuzz of how tough economic times may affect online business, the new technology and presence of social media offer a promising future for business owners who focus on social Marketing and Branding. Still, the challenge of increased competition and a need for growing revenue can leave executives overwhelmed, frustrated and unsure about the next step. The key to success is to have a solid marketing system in place that takes advantage of the current economic and online climates.

With so many options and potential directions to go within online marketing and branding, it is often hard to know what system is best. To help you simplify the process, here are five basic steps to keeping your business on track and moving forward:

1. Research and then research some more!

Don’t overlook the importance of your customers’ and competitors’ digital footprints. By engaging in research of these footprints you can identify customers’ needs and interests and then fine-tune your USP and brand in order to become the perfect solution for these needs.

From being able to reverse engineer customer search engine queries to better understand how they search to accessing new tools where you can find out what competitors are doing with their keyword and conversion strategies, the current digital world makes it possible to rise to the top of the competition more easily than in years past.

Research is the key to finding out what your target market needs, so that you can offer the solutions. You no longer must start at the bottom of the barrel and do your time. You can rise quickly to the top, using research methods that are 100% free—a major bonus in hard economic times. It pays to listen to your customers in the new social graph.

2. Leverage social web applications and technology

Once you have done the research and created a list of keywords and keyword phrases to pull in the customers, you are ready to put the research into action. Social marketing makes this step easy.

Search engines are doing their job to track and index social web pages, and you only must put the quality content out there to attract the search engine spiders. Using content such as articles, video, audio and blogs you can create a social web strategy with your keywords that can help you to make your mark at the top of the search engine listings.

As a member of the social web, you want to add something of value to make the most of your online relationships. The philosophy of sell, sell, sell is worn out and yesterday’s marketing tactic. Instead, listen to what your customers need and offer information and support, earning you the right to present your products and services when the time is right.

While you always want the information you offer to be fresh and relevant, you can maximize the effort you put into your content by reusing it in appropriate places throughout the web. Instead of plugging content into your website and waiting for customers to come, the social web allows you to get out there, get involved in various social communities and networks where your customers are, and interact in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Before long, you are viewed as the expert of your niche and customers will come to you.

3. Convert leads into repeat customers

It is important to create multiple sources for your business leads in both the online and offline worlds. Building your list is not as overwhelming as it may seem. Use conversion mechanisms and continually pump out marketing efforts to reach your prospective customers and turn them into paying customers.

When you have a target customer list, take advantage of free marketing opportunities through e-mail, or consider direct mail for customers with a physical address. Converting list members into paying customers is easier to do when you make an effort to develop loyalty and trust through communication with your list.

By appealing to customers’ need for information, you can get them to sign up for automated information products that help you to establish a solid relationship. From newsletters and whitepapers to ebooks and videos, the content can also serve as “bait” around the web to attract customers to your list. It’s all about giving the customer a reason to come back to your site again and again. When you offer them something of value and then follow up with repeat communications, people begin to trust you.

Interject personality and passion into your content to establish a rapport. Share a personal story, so that you can stand out amongst your competitors. At the same time, keep the content relevant and cutting-edge so the customers can view you as a real person with an interesting story who offers a valuable service.

Utilizing a lead generation program along with social media can attract customers to your site. These programs help you to separate the lurkers from the buyers, and who wouldn’t prefer to spend time and effort targeting the buyers? As more and more people are getting involved through various social sites, it makes sense to use a lead generation program to help you zero in on the people who are most likely to become conversions.

4. Maximize Monetization of the Customer

In a tight economy it is more important than ever to take a holistic approach to monetizing the customer. After all, with so many competitors online, you want to make the most of each and every buyer. The costs of time, effort and money are too high to be satisfied with a one-time sale. Today’s business must take a lifetime value approach and focus on making the customer a repeat customer.

Consider the additional products and services you can offer to your target market. Information products are a great, low-cost, or even no-cost, way to meet your customers’ needs. The idea is to search for the true need your customer has and provide the solution through your information product.

Social media offers an ideal way for you to identify the needs your customers have. By interacting with them on various sites, you can get a good feel for what solutions would be a hot commodity and then promptly offer those solutions. Whether you create e-books or facilitate webinars or both, you can leverage your good standing with customers who previously purchased from you and offer them additional products to keep them engaged.

5. Use a well-organized and accountable system.

Being organized is vital to good business. Establishing a productive system and sticking with it ensures you have momentum to keep your business going in the right direction. While it may seem overwhelming to create your own system from scratch, there are a variety of marketing systems already available online to help you efficiently and effectively connect with your target market through social marketing.

In your search for a reputable distributed web marketing system for your business, there are certain programs that will stand out above the rest. For example, GenNext Media’s system helps business owners to create a firm foundation based on smart strategy and positioning—all the while taking advantage of what the social web has to offer. It is important to have a system in place that encompasses research, lead generation, value-backed information and social web outreach.

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 Marketing and Branding, go to http://www.gennextmedia.com today.

Social Marketing for Business: Hit pay dirt following these three simple (not easy) steps

Whether you are just getting started in social marketing or have been testing out the waters with few victories, the one thing you need to achieve social marketing success for your business is a game plan. Randomly joining social networks and submitting content without purpose can be time-consuming and ineffective. However, don’t think that your plan must be complicated and professionally-designed in order for you to succeed. In fact, these three simple (although not always easy) steps, can help you to hit pay dirt in no time.

Step One: Set a Firm Foundation with Solid Keyword Research and a USP.

It is imperative to identify a keywords list and use those keywords to attract search engine spiders. There are free tools available to make finding the right keywords for your business a snap. One such tool is the Google Keyword Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Here, you can find the keywords people are plugging into the search engines as well as what your competitor websites are using.

Once you have identified the keywords and phrases best for your niche and business, you must add them to everything you do: domain names, blogs, article titles, and content. The search engines will pick up on these keywords and with quality content you have a great chance of receiving a higher ranking, which will put you at the top of the search engine results—right where you want to be.

Finding the right keywords to use helps you to create the all-important Unique Selling Proposition (USP). As you consider being unique and setting yourself apart from the competition, it makes sense to choose keywords that are popular yet do not have the most competition. For example, a website selling wheelchairs could focus on “wheelchair” as the top keyword, but there would be significant competition for that keyword. However, using the words “quickie wheelchair” helps to gain more targeted traffic and side-steps the primary competitors.

In addition to targeting unique keywords, you will want to offer a unique selling proposition. This means you want to offer a solution to your target market that somehow stands out and is different than what you competitor’s can offer. Whether it is a special service, bonus products or a cutting-edge solution, make sure you are offering you customers something of value that is solving a problem or meeting a need.

Once you become familiar with the Google Keyword Tool, you can begin utilizing more sophisticated tools such as Market Samurai, Niche Bot, Wordtracker and many others. You will also want to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer to reverse engineer your competitors’ sites. With this you can find out who their customers are and then target the high PR value sites for you own linking strategy.

Step Two: Establish Your Marketing Branding and Communication Touch Tones

Developing a brand for your business is one of the most important steps you can take in securing customers and making the sale. Your brand is the essence of who you are, how you differ from your competitors and why a customer should choose to do business with you.

So what is a brand? It’s more than your name, motto or the colors of your banner. It is a culmination of all of the different aspects of your business. In order to create a brand you must consistently communicate your business mission and purpose as well as promote a consistent image, personality and voice to your target market.

The idea of communication touch tones goes hand-in-hand with your brand. To have a cohesive brand that works, you must fine-tune your communication styles so that the customer can hear something about you, read a tag line, see a logo or banner ad, and know it is your business. This consistency and uniformity throughout all of your social marketing communications creates trust and loyalty in your customers—these are the keys to a solid business.

Furthermore, you want to ensure your brand identity can be differentiated from your competitors’. You want to stand out and offer something unique to customers. Focus on really plugging in your primary and secondary target keywords to reach your desired customer.

Step Three: Implement Social Media Layers Effectively

It is far too easy to get distracted when it comes to social marketing for business. The social media networks are seemingly endless and there is always a new guru touting the best new method for conquering social marketing once and for all. Here’s the thing: if you can just buckle down, create something of value, know your target market and develop the content pumps for distribution, you are well on your way—no guru necessary!

As you are searching for the right venues for your content, try to start by identifying two of the most appropriate social media sites for your niche and target market. Explore the forums and blogs to find out which ones seem to be more active. Ask yourself: who are my ideal customers? Which social media sites do they use? Once you have narrowed it down to two sites, become a member there and follow other members who seem to have a great following and have similarities to your niche or marketing style.

Get a handle on what works for specific social media sites and then prioritize the ones you have chosen. The next step is simply pumping out the high quality content to these sites in order to quickly establish your reputation as a business that offers something of value.

Keep in mind that social media sites are not the place to spam, posting copies of blogs or articles from other sites or just offer remixed articles. Be original. Be unique. And set yourself apart from the competition with creative and compelling social marketing campaigns.

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 Social Marketing for Business, go to http://www.surefiresocial.com today.

« Previous Page