Writing blog posts or writing articles for directories, which is better?
Hi –
Mark Hendricks here.
As you know, writing posts to your blog and also writing articles for submission to article directories are important to the success of your internet-based business in getting you traffic, leads and sales.
Here’s something you may not know… about me.
I’ve been doing business online since 1994, and in business since the late 1970s (yes, I’ve been around a while).
Through those years I’ve tried and tested all kinds of ways to get more traffic, leads, and sales for my businesses and for the other business owners I’ve advised along the way.
And there’s one strategy that stands far above all others in generating traffic, leads, sales, and most importantly, lots more profit in less time.
And that one strategy is mastering the art of the joint venture.
Now don’t get me wrong, blog posts and articles are a great tactic to use as part of your overall mix, that’s why so many people and companies do it.
However, learning how to create joint venture offers, find JV partners, and structure, implement and manage JVs to their fullest potential yields so much more power for your profit potential in an amazingly shorter time period.
So why I am telling you this?
I’ve got something special happening in September, and if you’re just a little curious about what I’ve told you so far, you’ll want to know all the details to take advantage of it.
Here’s where to find out more:
http://www.JVdealmaker.com/experience
As always, my best to you –
Mark Hendricks
HOW TO: Start Marketing on Facebook
The Social Media 101 Series is sponsored by Global Strategic Management Institute. GSMI’s Social Media Strategies Series are the leading educational events for organizations looking to advance their online capabilities. Learn more.
It’s no secret: U.S. consumers continue to spend increasing amounts of time on Facebook. Consequently, marketers — lured by Facebook’s suite of highly targeted marketing products and the site’s smooth ability to spread information across networks of friends — are investing increasing amounts of capital in the platform.
Facebook‘s proposition is especially attractive to small business owners, and not just because it enables them to hone in on potential customers through highly targeted, paid advertisements. Facebook also allows them to grow their business in a way that is familiar to many of them — through word-of-mouth marketing.
“Ask [small business owners] how they get customers, and they’ll tell you that someone walks in, has a great experience, walks out and tells a couple of their friends,” says Emily White, senior director of local at Facebook. “Now, that word-of-mouth marketing model is happening online, and Facebook is enabling to happen that at scale. Now [small business owners] aren’t just reaching a few customers’ friends, but all of their friends, mimicking these long-term behaviors in a way that small businesses can actually control,” she explains.
With these ideas in mind, we’ve compiled this six-step guide for getting started on Facebook.
1. Set Up Your Facebook Page
Setting up a public Page for your small business is as simple as visiting facebook.com/pages/create.php, selecting a category that describes your business and filling out a few basic details, such as the name of your business and, if applicable, its address.
Facebook will then send you to a template of your Page, which you can spruce up with a profile photo, further details such as hours (see Info tab on left-hand sidebar). You can also identify additional Page administrations (see Info > Manage Admins), add more multimedia and events (Info > Apps) and adjust the settings to control how users can contribute to your Page (Info > Manage Permissions).
It’s also a good time to post your first status update welcoming fans to your Page. You can share your updates with everyone, or target by location or language — a great option if you run a business in multiple locations.
2. Invite Your Friends
After your Page is set up, you’ll want to invite your friends to “like” your Page. Once you’ve amassed 25 fans, you’ll be able to set up a vanity URL, e.g. facebook.com/mashable.
Go to the Username page, select the Page name from the dropdown menu and then write in the name you’d like to use. Keep in mind that you can’t change the URL for a Page once you confirm.
3. Customize Your Page
There a number of apps to help you customize your page beyond the standard layout, which can be found in the Applications Directory.
There, you’ll find apps that will let you create polls, add more content to your Info tab, offer coupons, showcase your YouTube videos and more.
4. Convert Your Existing Customers Into Likes
Once you’re feeling confident about the look of your Page, your next step, Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow suggests, is to leverage all of your owned media assets — your mailing list, e-mail newsletter and signature, store window, website, business cards, etc. — to grow your fan base. Let them know you’re there, and provide an immediate incentive for them to connect, such as a discount or giveaway.
“This will increase your conversions significantly,” Lazerow says. “Since your Page is a ghost town at this point, you need to give people an incentive to connect at the onset. The best way to do that is to give them a ‘thank you.’”
5. Engage
As you build up your fan base, you’ll want to provide a stream of interesting content that will entertain and engage your fans.
Anna Strahs, the owner of a gluten-free bakery in Richmond, VA, attributes half of her business to Facebook. She says she keeps fans coming back for more by posting pictures of the items she’s baked that day.
“When we post pictures of specific items, we immediately get orders for those items,” she says — and it’s no wonder, because they look delicious. Strahs says she will also post little quizzes in exchange for free baked goods, which winners can pick up at one of two farmers market locations two days each week.
Her advice? Post often and make the posts count. She emphasizes that beautiful images with contextual captions go a long way. “The whole point is to get people to comment and interact with your Page so it shows up in others’ newsfeeds,” she explains.
It’s also important to keep content fresh, update in an authentic voice and to evolve your Facebook strategy over time.
Remember to keep track of analytics on your Insights page to see what kinds of posts performance best in terms of engagement. And seek feedback directly from your fans. Are you posting too little or too often? What kinds of things would they like to see?
6. Advertise
Once you’ve converted most of your existing customer base into Facebook fans, you’ll want to start reaching others through targeted Facebook ads, which is still the most effective method for increasing your number of “likes,” says Maureen Mullen, chief researcher at luxury think tank L2.
You can target users in your immediate area by gender, age, alma mater, employer, and even those who “like” your competition. You could also target users on their birthdays, offering them a free ice cream cone, for instance, if they stop by your store that day. You can also target existing fans with coupons and other incentives to encourage them to stop by your retail location or place an order.
Facebook also has a Sponsored Stories product that enables you to reach the friends of your current fans. In your advertisement, a user will see that one of their friends has endorsed your company, essentially enabling a fan to market on your behalf.
Additional Resources
As you grow your fanbase and look for new customer acquisition strategies, you may want to look into Facebook Deals, which lets you reward fans for checking in to your retail location using Facebook Places, and thereby notifying all of their friends that they stopped by.
You might also want to consider working with one of Facebook’s preferred app developers to further build out your Facebook Page with customized modules, such as appointment bookings or integrated e-commerce opportunities. You could even look into advertising opportunities with major game developers such as Zynga, which has partnered with large and small businesses alike to advertise products to its large userbase.
What other tips do you have for business owners who are just getting started on Facebook? Let us know in the comments.
Disclosure: Buddy Media is a Mashable sponsor.
Series Supported by Global Strategic Management Institute
The Social Media 101 Series is sponsored by Global Strategic Management Institute, a leading source of knowledge for today’s leaders. Learn more by visiting GSMI’s website, liking it on Facebook and following it on Twitter.
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Lots to learn here – FREE audio
I love it when people read my blog posts, there’s always
something in them that benefits the person who
reads them.
And today is no different.
You will see all the topics listed below the following
information….
If you’re a paying member of ISS you can login here
to listen to the Q and A audio from last night, download
it or listen online:
http://internet-success-system.com/amember/basic/teleMMsessions.htm
If you’re not a paying ISS member you can listen to it free for
the next few days, but you can online listen online and cannot
access all of the other audios that are available for online
listening or download to paying members.
Here’s where I post these to “give you a little sample of ISS”:
http://internet-success-system.com/teleandlwm.htm
Here’s the topics for the May 24 session:
RSS – what is it, how do you benefit from it as a publisher and a consumer
Where to get a free RSS reader and how to use it
Free Wordpress plugins to use RSS feeds to pull content into your
Wordpress pages and posts
Using RSS publishing for your lists, sequential followups and
broadcast messages too
How to target your audience and develop a blog or website around
their interests
How to SEO a blog or website that has many related topics
How to use Google’s Wonder Wheel to create the SEO structure of
your blog or website
How can a complete “non-techie newbie” get started
Where to find lots of free tutorial videos on most any internet
tech question
The big mistake most people make when learning from
video tutorials
Why every internet entrepreneur should learn basic website
and blog skills
Why people don’t appreciate free solutions to their problems
What exactly does make it possible to make money online
Where do you start and what product do you select to market
The three basic ways to make money online (or offline too)
Why you should learn to make html pages even though you
publish on a Wordpress blog
Free and low cost WYSIWYG html editors to try
A tutorial video that shows exactly how to build a simple html
website step-by-step
The reason a lot of people really screw up their Wordpress-based
websites and blogs
What you must do on your Wordpress blogs to help your visitors
take the desired action you want them to take
Using “social direct marketing” to make sales
As you become more advanced in your internet business there’s
a new problem you’ll start running into
How to attract buyers to your website rather than “tire kickers”
What’s the real purpose of your website or blog
Why “working on your blog” is a big waste of time and what you
should be doing to get more results
Content is NOT king, there’s something else that works so much
better (and it’s not relevant content either)
How to increase your persuasive communications skills
The amazing importance of words and how to use them to get the
results you want
What search engines are really trying to do and if you understand
this it’s easier to get the traffic you want from them
The little secret to getting other people to “Like” and “Thumbs Up”
your postings on social sites
Understanding the power of sharing positive things with other people
The story of “The 360 Degrees of a Circle” and why you should know about it
- – -
Give it a listen and make sure you’ve got a pen and paper while you
listen.
As always, my best to you –
Mark Hendricks
.
I’d like to introduce you to a mentor of mine
I’d like to introduce you to a mentor of mine.
He’s retired now.
Actually, he’s kind of semi-retired now.
You see, he really doesn’t need the money… he’s
produced well over $400 million of revenue over the years,
and he’s living the really good life for himself these days.
But, you know what they say… once an entrepreneur,
always an entrepreneur.
He recently wrote a book that detailed exactly
how he and a friend did their business. I just
went through it again in the last few days, and
I think it’s time to let you know about him too.
The title may surprise you – so I think it will
be good to let you discover it for yourself,
after you click the link below.
It’s a business that anyone can do.
You don’t need big bucks for startup capital.
You don’t need a diploma of any kind.
And you don’t really need any special training.
(he provides all you need in his book)
Here’s a link to everything (don’t be put off by the
old style look of the site, it’s so much more
important to learn the strategies of what and how
he amassed his wealth, and how he is willing to
teach you everything he’s learned along the way):
http://hunteridge.com/a/bam.htm
I hope you’ll spend a few minutes watching
the video and reading the information on that
page (it’s the real deal, from a real deal
entrepreneur).
As always, my best to you –
Mark Hendricks
.
The Story of the Seeds
A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.
Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different.
He called all the young executives in his company together.
He said, “It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you.”
(the story continues after the video…)
The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. “I am going to give each one of you a SEED today – one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have just given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.”
One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.
Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.
Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.
By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim still didn’t have anything growing and he felt like a failure.
Six months went by — still nothing in Jim’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn’t say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil – He so wanted the seed to grow.
A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.
Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach. It was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room.
When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful — in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, but a few felt sorry for him!
When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.
Jim just tried to hide in the back. “My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown,”said the CEO. “Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!”
All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front.
Jim was terrified. He thought, “The CEO knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!”
When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed – Jim told him the story.
The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim.
He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, “Behold your next Chief Executive Officer! His name is Jim!”
Jim couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t even grow his seed?
“How could he be the new CEO?” the others said.
Then the CEO said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead – it was not possible for them to grow. All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!”
* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.
* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.
* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.
* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment.
* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.
* If you plant hard work, you will reap success .
* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.
So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.
(your thoughts are welcome below…)
- – -
(author unknown)
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