Making Mistakes with Social Media

It’s such a minefield, isn’t it? How do you set foot into the social media world without making mistakes, even if you are the most hardened industry veteran? The question often asked is how do you market using social media? The blunt answer is, effectively, that you don’t! At least you don’t in the more traditional sense of the word. Enter subtlety…

You may have read our blog on Monday (Top Hits on Microsoft’s Bing) on how Twitter was the second most popular term searched this year through Microsoft’s Bing search engine (Michael Jackson being number one). This shows the explosion of social media and the interest in this microblogging platform as a way of communication in the New World. Off-line marketers could be forgiven for salivating at the thought of engaging clients, both old and new through platforms such as Twitter and many have jumped headlong into the fray, blasting out and tweeting direct marketing messages to the world. This is a major mistake and one which is guaranteed to turn off both your existing clients and anyone who might be tempted to do business with you. Social media is not social marketing and it should be viewed from a very different perspective.

I mentioned subtlety and this should be your keyword. The fact that you are engaging in social media circles is effectively marketing enough for you. In other words, your presence is your marketing tool. By all means provide great quality information and get involved with a conversation relevant to your product or service, but never, ever direct sell something. Note that the minute you do this, you have lost all the credibility and trust that you have been working hard to build up through these social media channels.

Any messages that you send out into the social media world should be relevant to the people you are sending it to and the channels that you are using. If you come across, over time, as the purveyor of good news and information, relevant and usable and at no cost, you will build up a following of sorts, which will in time be convertible to sales. There is nothing wrong in sending interested parties to a URL, so long as the contents of the landing page are appropriate, relevant, educational, informative, enlightening or entertaining. This page should not be an out and out sales page, although subtle links to your more sales-orientated offers or solutions can be contained elsewhere on these pages.

Don’t try and short-circuit the process by paying individuals to authenticate your wares, one way or the other. Be creative and come up with a great, service orientated social media campaign and treat this form of subtle marketing correctly.

What lessons have you learned using social media?

Matthew Toren

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

Twitter Corporate Tools By the End of the Year

Twitter executives have indicated for some time that they are getting ready to go after some revenue making opportunities for a change, as they roll out what they promise will be a more robust, commercially orientated version of the platform. Their monetization plans have long been questioned as the micro-blogging site seems to grow in leaps and bounds with no clear commercial direction. It now appears that business users will be offered a slate of services, including targeted analytical data as early as the end of this year. Commercial APIs may also be introduced, potentially segregating the commercial Twitter market from the rest of the social network.

Brand building may remain the biggest potential here and Twitter is clearly aware of how it might make money itself as participants prosper and gain. There is much to be gained from a solidification, as Twitter has been criticized as being difficult to understand and work with from a business perspective.

As Twitter’s growth has been exponential, its teething problems have been readily apparent. Customer service and online support seem to be poor or even nonexistent at times and the service’s growth rate has often had negative impact on its up-time and general reliability. The service will need to clearly delineate its terms and conditions, especially if it is charging for the right to access. It will not be able to arbitrarily wipe out accounts with no repercussions, as has been the case recently.

It would appear that the business world will cautiously welcome a commercialization of Twitter, so long as the levels of support increase with it.

While they have not released full information about the set of tools likely to emerge by the end of the year, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone has indicated that they will enable the analysis of trends and provide comprehensive demographics.

What tools would you like to see on Twitter?

Matthew Toren

Try Brizzly to Manage Your Lists

Guess what? Twitter is making more and more sense, at least when you integrate some new applications and platforms. Brizzly, a web-based social media reader may be in beta – invite mode only right now, but it promises to elevate the usability of Twitter and even make it, dare I say it, more Facebook-ish.

Brizzly has a ton of features and essentially makes Twitter less clunky and more user-friendly. It displays tweets in line, but with expanded URLs, so that you can see exactly what you are being asked to click on – no more bit.ly calls and trojan invasions? Photographs are displayed fully in line, as are YouTube videos, which you can watch directly from the page without having to click elsewhere.

You can easily add people to your pre-existing groups, simply by clicking the user icon and adding. You can also make new groups on-the-fly and then add members to that. All your groups appear in the panel on the left hand side and you can add up to 50 users per group.

As you scroll down the page, earlier tweets are automatically added, giving you a constant flow as you move down. Within the page or within your groups, if one member suddenly develops Twitter diarrhea, you can “mute” him or her temporarily, rather than actually removing them from your account.

On the right-hand side, direct messages appear in a chat format, or a running thread and you can also include photos in your direct messages. Brizzly has also developed an API called “Lets Be Trends.” Current trends will appear within this box and you can expand by clicking on “why” and see exactly what is happening in the real world. Add your own definitions and trends and related news items will appear within the content.

If you conduct a search, your history can be saved and you can also save drafts so that you can work on formatting later on. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, Brizzly handles them all within this single interface.

While it is basically designed for use with Twitter, Brizzly may also be used with your Facebook account to group together and show you threads and comments about stories that you are currently interested in.

Have you had a chance to try Brizzly yet?

Adam Toren

How To Live The 4 Hour Work Week

Still Doing It All Yourself When it Comes To Blogging? You Need To Read This – And It’s FREE

I recently stumbled across this great little report called Secrets of Outsourcing Experts Revealed – and I had to let you know about it straight away.
You see, I come across SO MANY bloggers who are going out of their mind trying to do everything themselves – from building their blog to customizing their design. They get home from work at around 7.30pm, eat, touch base with the family – and sit down to work on their Internet marketing . . . sound familiar? I know – I’ve been there – and this little gem is specifically for those of you who do it all themselves – and wish you didn’t.

The Secrets of Outsourcing Experts Revealed is not just another report about outsourcing. It melds together leading experts such as Tim Ferriss, Jeff Mills and John Jonas, all of whom have outsourced their entire businesses and live the lifestyle they desire, working as little as 4 hours a week. The report is packed with insights from these leading Internet marketers – they reveal their screwups, and their successes – and what they’d wished they’d done in the beginning. They also wish they’d had the kind of knowledge about outsourcing delivered in this report – and these guys know what they’re on about. One of the things all of them agree on is they wish they’d outsourced more of their businesses earlier – and that struck a chord with me because, like you, I know what it’s like to be drowning in a ‘to-do’ list for my online business.

The report is by Tyrone Shum, a young entrepreneur who has already cracked the secret of outsourcing successfully and now rakes in a cool 6 figures a year while working only 4 hours a week. He has implemented the strategies covered in his report, and knows exactly what (and what NOT) to do.
This is a perfect example of learning from someone else’s mistakes without making them yourself – the report covers the pitfalls and ripoffs people like John Jonas have already experienced – so you don’t have to. Know exactly where to go and how to begin outsourcing from the start – and I recommend doing it as soon as your business can afford it; according to the report, you can begin hiring staff from as little as US$125 a month part time – and think of the time that will get back for you…

I was literally bowled over by the amount of information and knowledge in this report – the more so cause it’s absolutely free. I personally would be happy to pay for this sort of information, so grab it while you can. All of the information you need on outsourcing are in the report, so take a little time right now to download it. After all, if it’s good enough for John Jonas, Tim Ferriss and Jeff Mills, it’s worth your time to look into.

YOUR DOWNLOAD LINK TO THE REPORT

To download your own copy of Secrets of Outsourcing Experts Revealed
report, please visit the following page:

Free Report Click here

For best results, I recommend you print out the report and find a nice and quiet place to sit down and read it from start to finish without being interrupted. That way, you’ll get to enjoy the interviews and have a much better overview of what it takes to outsource your Internet business. You’ll probably get loads of ideas from these Internet marketing experts and start jotting down ideas right away – I know I did. So far I’ve noted dozens of ideas for my own business.

Not everything in the report will apply to all of you, but there’s a lot of information to work with as you grow your online business. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about leveraging your time. Think about the parts of your business you don’t really like, or that take you far too long (like technical stuff if you’re a copywriter – or content creation if you’re a techie). Do you spend time writing invoices, when you should be strategizing for growth? This is exactly the sort of thing you can outsource – and you’ll get stacks more ideas about leveraging your time in this value-packed report.

If you’re thinking about outsourcing, I recommend you read this report first – doing it the wrong way can cost you a lot in time, money and lost business revenue. Check out this report – you’ll be glad you did.

Free Report Click Here

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