Choosing Social Networking Sites Carefully

Everyone knows how big social networking is for business owners these days.  Social networking was originally intended to make it easier to maintain personal relationships, but businesses have made social networking a priority as well.  Premier sites have made it possible for businesses to grow their contact lists, manage their relationships and created the concepts of viral marketing.

Businesses of all sizes have taken part in social networking to promote their business in ways that they could never have dreamed of fifteen years ago.  Executives from all Fortune 500 companies promote their business on LinkedIn and companies with no marketing budget have the opportunity to make themselves front page news all over the country.

In order to make the most of social networking, businesses must learn to manage their social networking resources carefully.  It requires an investment of time and sometimes money just like anything else.  If a company wishes to benefit from social networking they must manage these resources carefully.

One of the mistakes that entrepreneurs often make is choosing the wrong social networks to invest in.  They end up spreading themselves too thin rather than focusing on the most appropriate sites.

Facebook is still the most popular social networking site and it’s free.  However, entrepreneurs must be careful not to make the mistake many others make investing all their time there.  Currently Facebook users are made up predominantly of people aged 25-54, with another 25% being 18-24.

In recent years more emphasis has been placed on business networking through Facebook.  Nevertheless, it is not as effective for professional networking as sites like LinkedIn, and Twitter is just as good a platform for many viral marketing programs.

A number of new sites other than LinkedIn have been created for business networking.  Some of the more popular sites include Xing and Ryze.  Xing is a great platform but it is difficult to get much of it without paying for the premium services.  Ryze is a good social network for new entrepreneurs, but it is not as popular as it was when it was first introduced.

These sites still can be worth joining even for users who aren’t interested in paying for premium memberships.   However, if they have a hard time finding and connecting with other users with the free plan, they should be careful before they invest a substantial amount of time and energy using them.

Businesses especially need to be concerned about the number of paid business networking sites that are almost completely inactive.  They exist only to continue scraping membership fees, mostly from new clients who don’t know what (or how little) they are actually getting from the services.  I won’t name any of the sites I have joined here, but I have run into a number of them.

The best rule of thumb is to focus on either the most popular networking sites or those that are most specifically targeted to a niche audience.  New businesses must always keep in mind that benefits from social networking only come with hard work.  They must approach social networking just like any other business strategy and look for the best return on their investment.

About the Author: Kalen Smith is the founder of Engineer-a-Business, a provider of business-to-business services and informational products for developing technology businesses. Read more about Kalen here.

3 Steps and 3 Resources for Finding Profitable Niches

Finding a profitable niche is the best way to make money online without working in a highly competitive market. For those who want to make money without competing with the “big dogs” then learning how to find profitable niches is a lesson that shouldn’t be missed.

Learning how to find profitable niches becomes something that every experienced internet marketer must learn at one point or another. Since one of the more lucrative aspects of internet marketing is offering your own products and services why not learn how to spot a valuable niche to take over? Simply being an affiliate your entire online marketing career can get boring and more competitive-so why not pave the way in your own niches? Generally speaking learning how to identify and exploit a new niche is relatively easy to do. Let’s take a look at a few simple steps to get started.

Step #1 - Start researching and communicating with consumers. If you’re going to uncover a niche a good way to get started is to find out what people want or need that they can’t currently get. This can be anything from a way to cure their headaches to a way to start their own lawn mowing business. Find information, a product or service that people want and see if there is a demand for it.

Step #2 - Find a way to get these people what they want or need. If you can’t offer the product or service to a hungry consumer base then someone else will-it’s just a matter of time. When you’re the first in a new niche that you think might be profitable it’s important you offer something that will fix their problem and fill their needs. Can you write an eBook and sell it to your market? Can you offer them a program or software application that fixes their problem? Figure out a way to generate something you can sell to this market that will fill their need and make you money.

Step #3 - Make sure you can make money long term with your niche. If you create a product and start offering it in your niche and you’re not making sales, there could be a problem. Assuming everything else is good (your landing page, your sales copy, your product, etc.) this might not be a “buying niche”-meaning you may have tapped into traffic that does in fact have a problem but they aren’t willing to pay money for the solution. If this is the case you’re in trouble and should evaluate any other potential niche to make sure it’s a “buying niche” before trying to break into it. This can be done by targeting what’s called “desperate buyers”-or people who have no choice but to pay for the solution. Niches that are an example of this include male enhancement, weight loss and acne cures but there are many others.

Learning how to find profitable niches seems simple and obvious on the surface but there’s a lot more than meets the eye. As you can see it really is as simple as finding a hungry niche and providing a solution, but it’s also important to look deeper and make sure that niche is willing to pay money for the solution and will be a viable long term strategy. There are a few tools that can actually make finding profitable niches a lot easier, let’s take a look at a few of them.

43Things.com - This website is a great place to go to see what people want to learn more about or find a solution for. On the website there are different things that people want to do that they’ve collectively voted on. The larger the word or phrase in the tag cloud is the more people are interested in it. This is a great way to find out what a good profitable niche might be since people list things like “learn how to play basketball” and “finally discover how to make a gourmet pizza.”

Yahoo! Answers - Another excellent way to find out what people want is to go through Yahoo! answers and see what people are asking about. Users will post questions like “How do I fix my computer to make it run faster?” or “How can I make French fries at home?” While these questions seem basic and boring they are questions that a large number of people want to know the answer to. Perusing the questions and answers on Yahoo! is a great way to get ideas for possible profitable niches.

Ask500People.com - This website is a great way to take a possible profitable niche and see if there’s a demand for it. Let’s say you think it’d be a good idea to target a new niche that involves teaching people how to make their own chess boards. Heading on over to this website will allow you to post a question like “Would you prefer to learn how to create your own chess board or just purchase a low quality one from a store?” and then receive feedback one way or another on the proposed question. Think of this website as your profitable niche “barometer” allowing you to see what unbiased people think of your idea.

Using online tools and carefully researching different niches is the only sure-fire way for finding a good profitable niche. Once you discover how to find profitable niches over time it’ll become easier and almost second nature to identify potentially profitable markets. Making money from new niches can be difficult and there is a certain risk involved so try to minimize your losses and maximize your gains as much as possible. In other words, don’t invest too much until you know it’s worth the money.

Whether you want to find a profitable niche to create your own product in or a profitable niche to promote an affiliate product in the process and technique really is the same. Make sure there’s a need for the product and make sure people are prepared to spend money for the solution. Without these two requirements there’s little room to make money in a niche.

Jason Acidre is a Marketing Consultant for Affilorama, an affiliate marketing portal. They provide affiliate marketing education and advanced affiliate marketing tools for beginning and advance affiliates.

Business Podcasting Made Easy

If you spend any amount of time on the Internet, you’ve no doubt heard of podcasting. Several television and radio shows are available as podcasts, and some shows are created solely as podcasts. Aside from the entertainment podcasts provide, they’re also a valuable business communication tool. It doesn’t matter if you work for a large company, or are a small business owner, podcasts offer a way for you to get in touch with clients and customers alike. For both business and personal applications, one way to create podcasts is through the use of an audio conferencing service.

You may have to sit in on conference calls at work from time to time, or you may host them to keep in touch with clients if you run your own small business. They’re a money saving way to allow groups of people in different locations to communicate without the travel expenses meeting in person would require. They can also be planned and executed much more quickly than physical meetings, if the need arises suddenly. Along with many other features, companies that provide audio conferencing services usually include the ability to record conference calls, and then provide the calls to you as digital audio files. A quick and easy way to provide the recorded calls to the clients who participated, or to anyone else who has an interest in hearing or referring back to the calls, is to create a podcast.

Say your company conducts an important meeting that occurs on a regular basis, or the CEO wants to address all the company’s employees. This may not be possible because the company is divided into branches located in different regions, or key players may not be able to attend. Traditionally, this type of leadership communication has been accomplished through physical meetings, printed newsletters or mass emails. Printing hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of newsletters can be expensive, and uses a lot of paper, making it an unfriendly environmental practice. And chances are, that email blast is getting deleted before it’s even read.

Both of these approaches are fine, but there’s a big difference between reading a letter most people will assume was written by the CEO’s assistant, and actually hearing that person’s voice. Turning a regular company address into a podcast is not only inexpensive and environmentally friendly, it can help boost employee morale knowing the leader of their company took the time to speak to them, even if it is from a different location. Making the meeting or address available as a podcast later on allows those who missed out to stay up to date and not fall behind on new developments within the company. It’s also a way for a company to keep employees informed about company changes and happenings.

What if you just want to create your own podcast, business related or not? You can still use an audio conferencing service to make the recording. The only thing is you’ll need someone willing to sit on the other end of the line while you record your show or course. A call needs at least two participants. Then again, if you’re one of those people who still uses a landline in addition to a cell phone, you can set the entire thing up yourself. Just set one phone in a quiet location with no interruptions or you’ll end up with feedback or echoing noises on the line that will ruin the entire recording (the ‘Mute’ button works great for this).

Once your podcast is recorded, you can make it available through an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed on your own Web site or Intranet, or you can make it available through iTunes, where many people go to find podcasts of interest. Apple has certain requirements before a podcast can be listed in their service, the most important of which is that it cannot be hosted on iTunes, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the procedure to help ensure the process goes smoothly.

After the podcast is recorded, edited, and made available for download or subscription, all that’s left is to publicize it. If you’ve created a podcast for business purpose, this can be as simple as sending out an e-mail to all the company’s employees letting them know when and where to access the podcast. For a program aimed at a larger audience, it may take a bit of marketing via a blog or social networking site like Twitter. Once you get the hang of it, creating podcasts will help you communicate more effectively, and reach a broader audience.

Amanda Mitchell is a freelance writer specializing in getting the most for small businesses.

Why You Should Be Blogging

The power of the internet is something any entrepreneur can appreciate. Anyone can now take an idea and turn it into a living and breathing thing with minimal start-up costs and resources. Not only can you launch a product or service right from your own home, but thanks to what some have called the social media revolution, you can also share it with millions of different communities at ease, giving your voice a platform that can’t be matched anywhere else. With such a great opportunity just sitting at one’s fingertips, it may surprise you to know that not nearly as many people take advantage of it. Everyone out there (you reading this right now – yes, you!) should have a blog. Read on to see just how blogging can benefit you, and why blogging is a must for any internet user!

Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or just a casual reader of the internet, running your own blog can benefit you in several important ways:

Regardless of technical experience, anyone can start a blog with ease thanks to popular blogging platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger, which offer free, low maintenance solutions. Having a blog has benefited me on several different occasions. For anyone starting out, the most important piece of advice I can give is to find something you really enjoy, and then create a blog around whatever that happens to be. Remember to keep it simple and make it fun!

This is a Guest Post by Steve Bellante who graduated with a Management of Information Systems (MIS) degree in 2008. He now works in the IT Infrastructure space while actively pursuing a couple of different entrepreneurial projects and other freelance work in his spare time. He has several years experience in the areas of web development, freelancing, and social media. His blog is TechLifeMashup.com

* Image: Courtesy of kpwerker

Kidpreneurs! Young Entrepreneurs with BIG ideas!

What’s necessary to become a truly successful young entrepreneur? The Brothers Adam and Matthew Toren, co-founders of YoungEntrepreneur.com, have stayed the course and prevailed in numerous business ventures throughout their lives. Together, they’ve consistently taken key steps leading to increasingly profitable paths in their highly successful careers, but surprisingly enough, it’s actually their early years of business which have inspired their most recent project: an entirely unexpected book on entrepreneurship written expressly for children! In this new book, the Toren brothers bring a candid, yet illuminative perspective to doing business in this remarkably original piece, Kidpreneurs.

There’s no need to be an adult to be driven towards an entrepreneurial dream, and there’s certainly no reason to wait until becoming an adult to learn - or at the very least to try out, the fundamental principles of business. It’s never too early to get started! Adam and Matthew invariably give their families the credit for continually encouraging all their business ideas from a very early age, and because of this incredible support they’ve received, they’re pursuing a means by which they can give back not only to their community, but to the youth around the world – the entrepreneurs of the future, this life-changing encouragement along with the practical knowledge to begin, expand, and succeed beyond their wildest dreams in their future business enterprises.

These two brothers have each invested several years of their lives researching and collating the very best practices in modern business, with the sole aim of teaching these valuable techniques and insights to others while nurturing their own ever-expanding empire of successful businesses. One of their favorite on-going accomplishments has been to assist struggling businesses by generously giving some of their own personal time to share pertinent details of their accumulated understanding. This entrepreneurial know-how, combined with a truly astounding altruistic nature, put the Torens on the path to found YoungEntrepreneur.com, the largest and most comprehensive social networking forum for young entrepreneurs anywhere.

The day Adam and Matthew decided to find a means for effectively passing on their collective savvy to their own children, the idea for Kidpreneurs began to take form. This book encourages a child’s desire to become involved with business early on by stoking their curiosity in uncomplicated, interesting and creative ways. It distills the complex concepts into the practical, creative, and ethical aspects of today’s business world; and with clear and expressive language, it conveys the crucial facts of modern business by using bright colorful illustrations, thought-provoking facts, exciting quizzes, and a variety of easy-to-understand sample business plans.

The fundamental philosophy that runs like a red thread throughout this book is simple: The future of our children, and all future generations for that matter, begins with us! Children of all walks of life have the right to have access to the skills and tools by which they might someday - through their own hard work and perseverance, obtain financial freedom.

If you’d to like begin an exhilarating business journey with your young children, pick up a copy of Kidpreneurs today!

We look forward to your orders, and if for any reason you’d like a particular copy signed or dedicated, please use the contact form located here kidpreneurs.org/contact and just let Adam & Matthew know!

If you personally know anybody with children 6-12 years old, Kidpreneurs would make an excellent gift - one which just keeps on giving! Please help us to tell others (via Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Your Blog etc) as now is the time to provide the leaders of tomorrow with the Entrepreneurial skills and know-how that’s available today!