As the web gets more social, winning friends online can make you immensely influential. It all goes back to that basic truth about building authority:

What others say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

So, the goal in your social media marketing program is to make friends with influential people in your niche or industry who trust, like and talk about your business and expertise. Make friends with social media power users in your niche/market who can promote your content on Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. Make friends with people on Twitter who can retweet your content to their followers. Once that happens, other followers will start doing the same, and the benefits of authority really start to compound.

Key here is to target your activity in social media…go deep within a community versus covering lots of ground but not really getting to know anyone in the community (especially the people who run the community). Spend time searching the major social networks as well as local blogs and social networks to identify a handful of active communities you can participate in. You can search by geography as well as market niche and interest.

Start targeting influential communities and participate. Listen and try to give something to the community before you start to sell anything. Take conversations offline at the right time so you can discuss how your can help each other grow your respective businesses. That’s how this stuff works….

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.

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.

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

Yes, you read right. Free marketing by answering the questions your target customers have in the places they like to hang out in online. They are discussing and commenting on their problems and possible solutions in niche communities all over the web. You have an incredible opportunity to be the company or person that is there when they need you most.

Where Content is King …

The win-win marketing connection is—real-life focus group activity on a massive global scale that reveals highly targeted information consumers are looking for. The goal is to become the trusted source of information. This is much more powerful than advertising.

The key is to determine what SEO keywords and phrases to use for your blog posts, articles, videos and other media you distribute in these social community sites.

Next, determine how to write your articles so they answer issues people are looking to solve and also satisfy shopping needs they’re trying to fill.

… and Collaboration is Key

Here’s how you hang out, Internet-style:

• Join social-site sub-groups that reflect your interests

• Chime in with good ideas, comment with your opinion, provide a sound analysis of the problem situation or simply organize disparate info so it becomes coherent by providing a context for further discussion by group members.

• Or, ask outright, “Who’s doing social marketing? I am, and I’m looking to interview anyone who’s interested for my blog.”

I tried out my strategy. Lo and behold, Michael Licamele, VP Marketing for TotalMortgage.com responded. We got to chatting. The upshot? We’re going to team up and write a book on how social media is a great business marketing tool for real estate!

My partnering with Michael underscores an important cog in online marketing—collaboration is key. Collaboration makes it all work out in a highly targeted and interconnected global arena. Why? Because generating business leads is all about building good relationships.

There’s lots more business marketing tools for starting an online marketing company. You never know what you’ll discover, until you start trying different tactics.

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 http://www.gennextmedia.com today.

Whether your business is service-oriented (such as accounting, legal, architecture, business coaching, executive recruiter) or a retail store (specialty coffee, health food store, wine store), you have a huge new opportunity to compete with any size business in any market. Social media marketing is effective, and for the most part, free.

Business marketing strategies have never been more affordable and cost-effective than with today’s technology and new web 2.0 applications, like social media.

Many small businesses are experimenting with social media marketing, but do not implement a strategic approach to a campaign. Many are flailing from one new tactic to the other based on the “flavor of the day”.

3 SECRETS to success that we know work are:

Secret #1. Become an expert in your niche.

Participate in communities that have your target prospects and add value to the discussion with your unique insights and knowledge. Use content that you create and give it away, free, to people who are looking for solutions your company provides.

Secret #2. Create a solid keyword strategy and USP.

Also, make sure you thread that through the various levels of your distributed content and the social web. You need to be aimed at “owning” the right market. You also need to leverage your strategy across all your social media efforts to nets your linking strategy across pages, articles, PR and your website.

Secret #3. Social media marketing needs to be implemented as a comprehensive strategy.

All the pieces work together to combine into a powerful marketing program that is part SEO on steroids and part huge reach lead generation.

The key is having a systematic approach to providing valuable information and ideas to the right communities across the web. So, rather than interrupting customers in their tracks and trying to get attention, your targeted social web content will be considered helpful and put you and your business in an authoritative position with customers.

This is the primary “secret” to successful social media marketing—providing valuable free info to position article writers as authorities. You’re also in total control of creating your own authentic content. On the obverse side, giving people a “freebie” actually enhances cultivating trust, to enable easier and faster sales conversions down the line.

Take the time to develop a social media marketing strategy for your business today. Winners and losers in the “new normal” will be dependant on a company’s ability to adapt to these new marketing opportunities.

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: http://www.gennextmedia.com today.