This is just a quick hit. Many people have been asking me lately to point them in the right direction for information on to use Twitter for business. This is the best post I think I’ve ever read on the subject. Great information as usual from Chris Brogan.

50 Way to use Twitter for Business

It’s funny to think how much the world can change in five short years. Where there once was nothing, there now is a new form of media and marketing that is essential to the success of practically every business around. Social networking has been alive and well in one form or another since practically the dawn of time. Known originally as “word of mouth”, the internet has taken that word and turned it into a typed, emailed, posted, IM’d and tweeted message. These new social platforms have basically taken the world by storm and completely changed the way that we get the word out about just about everything. For a growing business, this makes becoming savvy about Facebook marketing more than just a novelty, but an actual survival skill.

Facebook was originally started as a sort of exclusive social networking site that was only for the students of Harvard. Created by students, for students, it gave them a place to connect with one another and exchange information and ideas. Before long there were new networks formed and more schools on board. Today, Facebook is open to anyone that is over the age 13 and is estimated to have over 350 million active users around the world. These users are organized roughly by the networks to which they belong, which can be regional, social, political, religious or any other number of things. Companies have networks for their employees, retailers have networks for their consumers, music artists and bands have networks for their fans. Regardless of who your target market is, there is a network for that, and each network connects with endless other networks, making Facebook Marketing a goldmine for getting your company name and image out there.

The beauty of Facebook of an online marketer is that word travels so quickly across it. If Jane becomes a fan of your company today, it will be posted on all of her friends’ news feeds, with a link to your company. Anyone of her friends that clicks on the link, and becomes a fan now has an update on all of their friends’ pages, who then, in turn click on the link and share your company name and info with all of their friends. Unless Jane and her friend are only friends with all of the same people, this can get information to literally thousands of people in less time than it takes to make dinner. Just think, you can be a nobody at lunch, but a super star by supper. Few other types of marketing can offer that. Facebook marketing has an incredibly wide reach.

So how, as a small business can you take advantage of the viral goodness that is Facebook marketing?   How can you translate the social networking giant into more click-thru’s and conversions for your site? Much like any independent person wanting to connect with friends, your first step is to join Facebook. Set up a page for your company. Give information about your company and make sure that you include your company’s homepage. Once your page is set up, you will need to start connecting with others. Search for networks that you think would be interested in what you have to sell or say, and join them. Set up your own page, if you do not already have one, and start finding friends. Once you have a good base of people, become a fan of your own company. This will post information about your company on every one of your friends’ pages.

If you have an e-commerce business, a blog or an informational or lead generation website,  it’s only logical that you’ll need plenty of traffic to be successful.   Strategies abound for driving traffic and finding buyers.  This post is focused specifically on a few key content marketing strategies.

Content is King. Content is King. Content is King.

Writing is a creative process, it takes a little time, but once written it will spread virally to hundreds, maybe thousands of other sites and the benefits are permanent. The links back to your website from creating remarkable content can also be permanent.  Google loves freshly baked content and your search engine optimization (SEO) will improve as well.

Getting Started with 3 Content Marketing Strategies:

1. Article Marketing

Very simple. Write excellent articles on subjects related to your area of expertise.  “How To” articles are always a great way to start.  Oh, and spend almost as much time creating a great Title as writing the article itself.  Your article title should be compelling and make people want to click through to see more.

Article Title tips:

• Answer a question you get asked frequently:  “How to Write an Effective “How To” Article in 5 Easy Steps.”
• Use numbers: “7 Quick Tips for Keeping the Weight off this Holiday Season.”
• Use a little fear: “Don’t Become a Victim of Your Own Ingorance: The 3 Hidden Dangers of Not Getting Your Annual Physical.”

After your article is written it’s time to get it out there for people to see.  Here’s what to do with it:

• Post it on your blog
• Post it on your social media sites (Facebook and LinkedIn)
• Tweet it to your followers
• Submit to article directories like EZineArticles, Self Growth and Article Base.

Make sure when submitting to article directories that you take some time to complete the Resource Box.  The resource box is the section at the end of the article where you can promote yourself a bit, provide a short bio and a link or two back to your website or blog.

Article marketing is an excellent method of building high quality one way links back to your site and building your credibility online.  Writing remarkable content not only stamps you as an expert in your filed but over time can create an enormous amount of traffic to your site with pre-sold visitors.

Next action: Start writing.

2. Blogging for Business

Blogging is another great way to drive traffic to your website.  Often taken for granted or deemed as not that important by those to unfamiliar with online marketing best practices.  The first recommendation I make to a new SEO consulting client is to get a blog integrated into their site if they don’t have one already.  It they do have one, my next recommendation is to start writing in it consistently.  Make the style all your own and don’t stress over getting everything perfect.

A couple of blog tips:

• Blog posts can be one sentence or two pages, it depends on your content and purpose.  Write concisely and build your post around one central theme.  Try to stay on track so you don’t lose your reader half way through the post.
• Blogs are not full length articles or EBooks.  Most blog posts are 300 to 700 words.  They can be longer (the one you’re reading certainly is!)  if the message you’re conveying simply takes more words to get across.  The point is to let the post be done when you’ve finished covering your topic. Don’t set measurements like, “I’m not gonna finish this post until I’ve written at least 800 words.”  When you’re done, you’re done.
• Make your blog easy for your readers to share (look in the upper right hand corner of this post for the “share/save” button) and also easy to subscribe to (now look to the right and you’ll see “Subscribe to RSS Feeds” and also “Find Us On Facebook.”

3. Participating and Getting Involved

Keeping your ear to the ground and being actively involved in the conversation has never been more important.  It turns out, whether you’re participating or not, the conversation about you, your company, product, service and competition is going on anyway.  Want some influence?  Get involved.

Here’s how:

• Start commenting on relevant blogs in your industry and/or where your prospective customers are hanging out.  You can find great blogs by visiting Technorati or Alltop and typing in related keywords to what you’re looking for.  Learn how to Claim your blog on Technorati by reading a previous post.
  • Become familiar with some of the higher authority blogs that allow comments by reading them for a week or two.  You’ll learn who you like and who you don’t pretty quickly.
  • When adding comments, what you don’t want to write is, “great post,” and that’s it.  Even worse is, “great post, now come look at what I’m selling by clicking here.”  What you DO want to do is add to the post; extend the conversation by adding your own thoughts and unique take on the author’s topic.  Even disagreeing or throwing in a little controversy is a great way to go, as long as you’re not being controversial just to get a rise out of everyone and you have a good reason for why you feel the way you do.

• Create Profiles and become active in a few social bookmarking sites.  Namely, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.  Reddit is also great.  Doing this will ensure that your website gets indexed by the search engines almost immediately if it hasn’t been already.  It also builds high quality, one way links back to your site which improves your SEO and can really drive a bunch of traffic as well.  Having unique and interesting content on your site will naturally earn you additional links from other websites and blogs that will want to link back to you.
• Create a Facebook Fan Page, optimize your profile and get involved in the LinkedIn community and start building a following on Twitter.  Each of these are immensely important to your success online but require much more time than we have here to go through in detail.  To start… get started.  Any questions on moving forward after that let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
• Use Twitter Search to type in keywords to find out what’s going on…right now. Again, participate in the conversation, comment, and get involved.  Twitter search is a great tool, take advantage of it.

Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of local business people at the Columbus Chapter of National Synergy.  They asked me to talk on the benefits of internet marketing compared to traditional marketing, how to get started, what the different strategies are and so forth.

Very cool!  Being a SEO that works primarily with SMB’s, this was right up my alley.  But, I noticed as I was preparing that my thoughts were running in a thousand different directions.  I had one hour to cover the entire spectrum of internet marketing.  I can spend one hour talking about title tags!

So, using my trusty Mindjet, I brainstormed and came up with what I felt were the most important areas of internet marketing for the beginning strategist.  I came up with SEO in plain English.  If you’d like a copy, just shoot me a quick email to david@netpointmarketing.com.

I gave my speech last Wednesday and I’m thrilled to say it was a great success.  I’m proud to share this comment from the seminar coordinator:

“I do not believe I heard one negative regarding your presentation yesterday.  For someone who can hardly turn on the computer and being involved with a company that runs everything through the Internet, it was especially interesting to me.

Everyone was so impressed that we all wanted you back as soon as possible and that is why we moved back the June speaker so we can have you next month.

Thank you!
Jon D. Megert”

So, now I’m working on Part 2… any thoughts?

For small business owners the internet has proven to be extremely beneficial.  Unlike traditional forms of advertising and marketing the internet provides several advantages that help small businesses reach more potential customers.

While traditional advertising requires organizations to spend thousands of dollars on branding and promotional activities, online advertising and effective search engine optimization (SEO) yield better results can be achieved with a much smaller investemnt. Moreover, results achieved online offer more lasting benefits than conventional promotions.

More than 80% of people searching for goods and services start their search online. Therefore, if a small business can attract just a fraction of these potential customers to its website and convert then into buyers it will increase its revenues significantly.

Internet marketing, which includes SEO and SEM, requires formulating and implementing effective strategies to draw more targeted traffic that can eventually be converted into customers. Although every business must optimize their websites in the search engines, for an e-commerce website it is an ‘absolute must’. An e-commerce site is a website specifically built for the purpose of transacting business online.

Small business enterprises engaged in e-commerce face fierce competition today. To stay ahead of the competition they need to be visible to their audience and quickly draw their attention.

Ranking higher in the search engines is the first major task, followed by a successful branding/PR campaign. Internet marketing is a direct response medium. Branding is important, but improving your site popularity and getting more visitors to your landing pages is much more crucial in the beginning.

For a small business owner to achieve her highest and best return on investment, it is crucial to first formulate a strategy before starting an internet marketing campaign.

Only after a well thought out strategy and budget are in place should you then move forward with your SEO and SEM marketing plan. Never has it been more important to “measure twice, cut once”.

5 Steps to Online Marketing Success:

1. Know your Audience. This is the most important task since your entire internet marketing campaign is directed towards your niche audience. If you fail to know your audience you will target the wrong people and subsequently lose business. Keeping your ear to the ground and doing a little research will help you find the right strategy and make good decisions from the outset.

2. Set a Goal. Unless you have a well-defined goal, you won’t have any direction. As Tony Robbins writes, “it is no use climbing to the top of the ladder only to find out your ladder is leaning against the wrong house.”

Once you have your goals clear and know your desired outcome you can choose the optimal amount of resources and channel your efforts in the right direction. The budget for small business marketing can be estimated once the goal is set.

Goal Setting Questions to Answer before you begin:

* How many visitors do I need to get to my site to reach my financial goals? How many am I getting now?
* What is a good “Click Through Rate” for my industry?
* Are my website pages, products and services properly optimized on my site before I begin an off site campaign?
* What should I consider a successful return on investment?
* What percentage of my online marketing plan will be “organic,” or natural and what percentage will be paid search (i.e. Google Adwords PPC)? This is an extremely important question to consider as it will determine the specific internet marketing initiatives you will take. See number 3.

3. Select the right SEO techniques. There are several SEO techniques that will prove helpful for your internet marketing efforts. A mix of various techniques is necessary to have a balanced SEO campaign. Basic SEO will include a balanced combination of Niche Directory Submissions, Social Media Marketing, On Page optimization through effective Meta title and description tags, great SEO content, a working internal link structure and a site map to name just a few.

Other important techniques include link building campaigns and excellent Press Release and article marketing strategies.

Finally, and just as important, don’t forget to monitor your competition! Google your keyword search terms and see who ranks highest for your competition. Then, study everything about them.

-What are they doing differently than you?
-What’s working for them and where can you make changes to your strategy to achieve similar results?
-Use Alexa (www.alexa.com) and other traffic/competitive measurement tools to check up on your competition.
-How is their home page and product pages different than yours?
-What Keywords are they using that you are not?
-What Meta Tags are they using?

4. Measure the Results. Without measuring the results and properly analyzing how your website is performing you won’t know if your marketing efforts are bringing positive results.

However, keep in mind it can sometimes take 3 to 6 months to get tangible results from an organic online advertising and marketing campaign. Measuring the results periodically will help you identify if anything is wrong in your strategy or if you need to intensify your campaign.

Keep what works, change what doesn’t. Simple, I know, but you would be surprised how few companies and even SEO firms actually do this for their clients. I also strongly recommend incorporating a measurement tool such as Google Analytics to provide the tools necessary to measure your results.

5. Make proper adjustments. After measuring your results to determine what’s working and what’s not you will need to make adjustments. Again, internet marketing is a direct response medium and A/B testing is crucial for success.

Make changes to improve your results. This will be an ongoing process, not a one time deal. Google, Yahoo and even the smaller search engines continually change their search algorithms. So, what worked one month may not work as well the next. Simple testing and making minor adjustments when needed will keep you ahead of the curve.

Now, more than ever you need to have an effective Internet Marketing campaign in place. Traditional advertising continues to lose market share while online marketing continues to grow at a staggering pace.

If you’re not making excellent use of your online opportunities, I can assure you that your competition is. Stay on top of your game by following the ideas outlined in this article lead your company to new heights this year.