Internet Marketing - Easy as 1-2-3

Visit hundreds of internet marketing sites these days. They will tell you all the hundreds, if not thousands of ideas and ways they can sell you some product or service to have you making gazzilions of revenues through the internet. Half before lunch, ok, it's tough, so it might take you until after lunch to get the other half of the gazzilion! Yeah, right!

What they won't tell you is the cold hard truth. Being successful on the internet takes a special blend of many ingredients. These include time, education, experience, luck, and yes–money.

Every day, I see more and more potential internet marketeers who have obviously cut corners, rushing to market a product hastlily put together, poor marketing techniques, you name it.

Aside from having a lot of money to begin with, experience shows that gaining experience and educationing yourself about internet marketing topics are the Number One areas that anyone wanting to get started needs to focus on. In reality the more one learns about marketing on the internet, the more they realize that you are just touching the surface! And with the continuing advances in technology, it's changing every day!

Ok, admit — internet marketing is NOT EASY! It is not a piece of cake or the proverbial bed of roses. Now that we have admitted that part, what can be done then to advance or more accurately to accelerate the process? Here are a few tips that have helped mylearning curve:

Treat your growth to frequent "library time" on the internet. That is to say, just like going to a traditional library, you need to set aside some "quiet time" to surf the net with the express purpose of reading as much as possible about internet marketing topics. Simple searches on any of the major search engines will give you lots and lots of subjects that your can explore.

From the start, set up specific goals for yourself and your growth efforts. These should be short term, mid-range and longer term goals designed to continuously improve your knowledge. The quicker you become knowledgable and fluent with internet marketing, the sooner you will be having customers anxious to by your latest products and advice.

Obtain as much written literature and information on these topics as possible. Ideally, FREE information whenever possible. One faboulous resource for the full range and breadth of IM topics is Dotcomology. I personally use it on a continuing basis as a reference guide. You can get your copy absolutely free at the InternetMarketingUSA website.

Find and locate programs that include websites (already designed or customized for you) as a part of the program. Getting your own website on a reputable website hosting service is imparative.

Outsource portions of your work to supplement your own knowledge or expertise. Don't be afraid to use the expertise of others to excellerate your website capabilities. This is an ideal way to get your success on a fast track. Keep in mind you must shop around for reputable and low cost providers.

Get your very own newsletters and ezines going as soon as possible. The sooner you begin to share what you have learned, the sooner you will get your name and company "on the internet map". There are a multitude of benefits for this approach. To say the least, this is a great investment of your limited time.

Join internet marketing forums related to your specific area of interest and developing expertise. Start making many contributions to the various topics and postings to keep your self current on issues, build a reputation among your peers, and get your name and company on the search engines as content sources for other websites.

And lastly, stay positive and "have fun" with your efforts and activities. Maintaining an upbeat attitude not only helps you as you "learn the ropes" – it also comes through in your dealings with potential customers.

Original source: Internet Marketing - Easy as 1-2-3.
http://www.jretechnology.com

5 Mobile Video Apps to Boost Online Engagement

By Meaghan Edelstein
Published April 17, 2013

Do you want to use videos to market your business?

Are you wondering if there are simple mobile apps to make this possible?

In this article I’ll review five mobile video apps and share how they can boost your online engagement.

Vine, Twitter’s mobile video app, has business and marketing professionals considering the numerous ways video apps can be used to increase engagement.

Ekaterina Walter, social innovator at Intel and author of Think Like Zuck, recently predicted that “2013 will be the year of visual marketing”. Walter based this prediction, in part, on the fact that “…visuals and video done right are highly effective in cutting through the noise.”

This prediction has already proven true with a burst of new video apps and upgrades hitting the market. And some of these offer unique opportunities for savvy marketers.

Here’s five apps you should consider.

With only 140 characters to work with, it can be a challenge to create rich content on Twitter. To date, catchy headlines, creative hashtags, promoted tweets and images have been the best methods for grabbing attention on Twitter. But with the introduction of Vine, there’s a new way to generate and share highly engaging content.

Vine is a simple and fun way to create short, beautiful, looping videos for your friends and family to see.

Vine’s six-second looping videos are easily consumed and highly shareable. And as a result, these videos naturally boost engagement. Marketers can use them in a variety of ways. You can create mini-advertisements, behind-the-scenes tours, announcements, contests and much more.

Your followers can view and share your videos directly from within Twitter. And you can encourage followers to shoot and share their own six-second videos to further increase likelihood of engagement.

Now’s the time to jump into Vine because it’s easier to capture audiences’ attention. Early adopters almost always enjoy a higher level of exposure. With Vine, you now have an opportunity to stand out among the millions of tweets posted daily.

Happy valentines #valenvine vine.co/v/brMraJq2aW3

— London Lazerson (@londonlaz) February 14, 2013

According to Facebook, the use of images and video results in the largest visual impact on their platform.

Instagram increased the ease and popularity of photo posts.

However, the use of video has lagged. This can be attributed in part to the hesitation many feel when it comes to filming, editing and sharing video.

Facebook’s recent integration with iOS 6 makes the creation and sharing of video less daunting. If you are an iPhone user, you can record and post without ever leaving your Facebook app. This makes sharing video on Facebook instantly very easy, even for novices.

Video posts on Facebook encourage engagements in the form of views, shares, likes and comments.

The key with video on Facebook is creativity and consistency rather than fancy editing. With the iOS 6 upgrade, you can give fans exclusive inside access. Record major events and breaking news, then post immediately to your timeline.

To encourage community participation, create fun video challenges, ask for honest reviews and acknowledge those who take the time to post their videos to your Page.

One of the most enticing aspects of social media for business is its ability to expose a large number of people to your brand messages in a short period of time. However, as more and more businesses use social platforms, your messages are easily diluted.

Video offers a way to stand out from the masses, draw attention and leave a longer-lasting impression.

With the mobile app Socialcam, you can create videos with no length restrictions, use an assortment of filters and post to numerous social sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Socialcam allows mobile users to quickly and easily upload videos to social networks and share with others via SMS or email.

Lars Schmidt, senior director of talent acquisition and innovation at NPR, shared NPR’s strategy for exposing potential new hires to what it’s really like to be an employee at their organization.

“We used Socialcam to capture and share a more realistic perspective of what it’s like to be an NPR employee.” He went on to explain how, exactly, they did this: “We would record NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts using Socialcam, then push the videos out to our various social sites.” This visual element helped NPR “show the true experience, the energy and buzz of what it’s like to work at NPR.”

The Robert Cray Band jamming at NPR's Tiny Desk Concert.

The decision to create and grow a presence on social platforms should not be taken lightly. Platforms emerge constantly and it would be virtually impossible to build and cultivate communities on all of them.

However, there are key platforms every business should seriously consider: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and at least one video-based social network. Because video platform members feel comfortable engaging with and creating video, you’ll see an uptick in interest and views of your video content.

Viddy is a video app for both iPhone and Android that creates “a simple way for anyone to capture, beautify and share amazing videos with the world”.

A simple way to share well-produced, bite-sized videos with the world.

Viddy is also its own social network with major brands like Southwest Airlines and General Electric actively engaging through posting compelling video and running contests.

With a presence on Viddy, you can post your own 15-second videos, follow other members and be followed. There’s also plenty of opportunity for daily engagement in the form of comments and likes.

One of the most appealing reasons to utilize Viddy is that it’s integrated with Open Graph, allowing all actions on Viddy to be automatically published on people’s Facebook timeline.

This creates a unique environment and allows you to grow a community where it’s easy to encourage user-generated content.

People like, follow and subscribe to businesses because of a desire to connect on a deeper level.

Once someone has initiated an interest in connecting with your business, it then becomes your responsibility to build the relationship. This can be done through various activities and correspondences, video being one of the more successful avenues.

Videolicious is an extensive app with a variety of business-focused plans. You can edit videos and photos and turn them into film, use built-in video ideas and share across multiple platforms all at once.

Make and edit professional-quality video, automatically. Just choose your shots and Videolicious does the rest.

The app even provides extensive how-to’s for creating video thank-you notes, product reviews and news reports. And, if you want to boost views and engagement even more, there’s an option to promote your video content.

With a plethora of ways to engage via a video, Videolicious has the capability to drastically increase people’s affinity for your business.

As you can see, these tools offer a variety of ways to increase engagement on your social platforms. And as more marketers adopt these video apps, you’re sure to find other ways to improve your social media marketing with videos.

What do you think of the mobile app phenomena? Are there mobile apps you’re using that have helped move the engagement needle? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

About the Author, Meaghan Edelstein

Meaghan Edelstein is the Senior Social Strategist for Tilson PR and RingCentral. She is an event producer, journalist, attorney and owner of MobileDealin’. Follow her on Twitter @megse34. Other posts by Meaghan Edelstein »

http://www.jretechnology.com

How to Improve Your Social Media Calls to Action

By Heidi Cohen
Published April 25, 2013

Is your audience responding to your social activities?

Have you integrated the right calls to action into your social media strategy?

A call to action is a way for you to entice your social media audience to focus their attention on the next action you want them to take.

Here are seven steps for crafting calls to action to get your social community to do what you’d like them to and transform your social media marketing to get the results you want.

Your call to action should encourage readers to engage with you further.

You’ll want to break the activity into smaller steps that make sense to your audience. You can lose prospects at each step of the process, so you want to make it very easy for them.

Make readers an offer they want. What will get prospects to commit now? Your offer will vary based on your business and where the prospect is in the sales process. You can consider offering white paper downloads, ebooks, ongoing emails, discount coupons and/or free consultations.

You’ll need to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” This is what your prospects want to know.

And your request must make sense to them. This means not asking prospects to purchase if they’re still in an information-gathering mode.

So you’ll want to assess the tradeoff prospects are willing to make. From a participants’ perspective, going to the next step means they have to consider if it’s worth their effort and social capital. Consider the 90%/9%/1% ratio of social media engagement.

On social media platforms, participants tend to follow a 90% view, 9% share and 1% create.

Skip the promotion. People active on most social media platforms are focused on socializing and aren’t prepared to buy.

Among the exceptions are blogs, Tumblr and Pinterest. These social media venues encourage sales by providing valuable content that persuades, not merely promotes.

For example, below are three sample implied calls to action. King Arthur’s Flour offers recipes with enticing photos and explanations of baked goods with links to their product.

King Arthur’s Flour blog has several calls to action above the fold.

By contrast, Target uses Tumblr to show customers the fashion backstory and how to style their clothes. There’s no “Buy, Buy, Buy” in their content. They use social media sharing and notes to build customer excitement and engagement pre-purchase.

Target Style’s Tumblr for their Spring 2013 Collection featuring Prabal Gurung.

Remember, you want to give your readers a reason to act.

Provide sense of urgency. Remember you’re not just competing against other retailers for the same item or other tradeoffs; your bigger opposition is customer inaction. It’s much easier for prospects to click to the next shiny item. Tests by Marketing Experiments proved that increasing the urgency of the call to action improved response.

Make people an offer they can’t refuse. Give them a one-time offer to encourage a response. Realize, however, they may only buy when you provide coupons going forward.

Like other aspects of your content, formatting matters! Here are some points to consider.

Use a contextually relevant presentation. Your offer should make sense based on the social media platform where it appears. Use a consistent voice and language to represent your 360° brand.Make your call to action stand out visually. Use color, typography and wording to enhance presentation of your call to action.Qualify your offer. Make readers feel that opportunities are limited or time-sensitive. For example, “There are only 100 tickets left”.Limit selection choices. Don’t give prospects too many options or you’ll suppress response because readers will put off acting because they need time to consider your offer.Place calls to action in multiple locations on your pages. Take the “Don’t make me think” approach. Don’t assume using only one call to action will yield optimal results. For example, put social sharing buttons at the top and bottom of articles.Keep calls to action above the fold. Make your call to action visible so your offer isn’t dependent on participants scrolling down. Similarly, have a persistent banner or other calls to action below the fold.Put call-to-action options in order of importance. While you can present more than one call to action, make the hierarchy of importance clear to participants. The more important option should be bigger, shown first or be given more prominent positioning.Include social sharing. Ask participants to share your offer with their social network by using social sharing buttons. L.L.Bean Million Moment Campaign uses social media calls to action on Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Foursquare, as well as at live events and on their blog.

This is one of the biggest reasons calls to action don’t work. Send prospects to the appropriate step in the purchase process.

Make sure you use the same wording and graphics. The goal is to show continuity. Don’t let the reader think that you’ve sent them to the wrong place or they’ll leave.

Use of implied call-to-action on King Arthur Flour recipe for Morning Glory Muffins.

King Arthur’s Flour links to Morning Glory Recipe have a consistent look and feel.

Tailor landing pages to increase results. HubSpot research found that using more landing pages yielded better results. This makes sense because it translates to more targeted offers.

HubSpot chart showing the increase in the number of landing pages results in increased leads.

Every element of your call to action can be tested. When testing, only modify one factor at a time or you won’t know what caused the change. Among the attributes to test are:

Text. Check the text on buttons as well as information surrounding the call to action.Color. Take a holistic view of color. Consider the text and button colors, the background and the use of white space around the call to action.Graphics. Test the use of photographs and other images.Size. Assess the size of the call to action relative to the rest of the content.Placement. Consider where on the page the call to action appears.

How can you measure your results? You want to track the impact of your social media calls to action back to your original objectives. Here are some metrics to track:

Impressions are the number of people exposed to the call to action.Click-throughs are the number of people who take action.Click-through rate is the percentage of people who checked out your offer out of the number of people who saw it.Completions are the number of people who filled out your form and submitted it.Completion rate is the percentage of people who complete your form out of the number of people who clicked through.

Are Your Social Media Calls to Action Working for You?

Social media calls to action are a necessary element of any social media marketing implementation. They nudge prospects, customers and the public to take action that’s trackable.

When a call to action is in alignment with your business goals, it can help you get measurable results that support your key marketing objectives.

What do you think? Have you used social media calls to action? If so, what were your results? If not, what has held you back from doing so? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

About the Author, Heidi Cohen

Heidi Cohen is an actionable marketing expert. As president of Riverside Marketing Strategies, she increases profitability with innovative marketing programs. Heidi shares actionable marketing insights as HeidiCohen.com's chief content officer. Other posts by Heidi Cohen »

http://www.jretechnology.com

How to Target Facebook Ads Based on Purchase History, Lifestyles and More

By Jon Loomer
Published April 29, 2013

Would you like to get more out of your Facebook advertising?

Did you know you can now target Facebook ads based on people’s purchase history, job roles and other external insights from major data providers?

Facebook continues to roll out advertising tools that allow marketers to target their ideal customer in ways not seen before.

Within the past year, Facebook has launched Custom Audiences, Conversion Tracking, Sponsored Results, Lookalike Audiences and a whole lot more.

Partner Categories is the latest tool added to your Facebook toolbox. Here’s what you need to know and how to use Facebook’s Partner Categories to reach the audience you want with your Facebook advertising.

Facebook partnered with Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon to make Partner Categories a reality. These partners provide data on Facebook users’ online and offline activities away from Facebook to create more refined targeting opportunities.

Up until recently, you could target ads to Facebook users based only on the information they provide in their profiles (age, gender, school, location, employer) and both precise and broad interests.

One of the previously added features—Custom Audiences—changed that, adding the ability to combine your offline customer list (email addresses, phone numbers and Facebook UID numbers) with your Facebook advertising efforts.

And now Partner Categories enters the fray to provide access to even more data for Facebook marketers.

Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon provide more than 500 categories that you can target associated with things like purchase history, job role and lifestyle.

There are more than 500 Partner Categories to choose from.

Instead of giving you a list of all 500-plus categories, here are 10 examples that provide a glimpse into the power of Partner Categories:

Household size of 6 (8,842,800 users)Upscale department store credit card user (34,618,400 users)Home office supply purchases (2,638,300 users)Aftermarket vehicle purchase over 48 months ago (11,952,800 users)Baby food & products buyers (10,497,100 users)Casino vacations (4,242,000 users)Dog owner (12,643,500 users)Fitness buyers—runners (5,950,600 users)Teacher/educator (223,000 users)Donate to veteran causes (7,016,400)

As you can see, these partners are providing Facebook with a ton of data. Individual categories can include up to several million users.

And Facebook will continue adding to this list.

I know what you’re thinking: AHHHH! Advertisers know how much money I make? What I’ve bought? PRIVACY ALERT!

Rest assured, advertisers know nothing about you as a user. As Facebook marketers, you simply tell Facebook to target users in a specific group, and they do it. It’s the same as when we target women who are age 35-44, live in San Francisco and work at Facebook.

There are no lists of users. There’s just a category name and the number of people who are in it. Facebook does the rest.

When ads are displayed that utilize Partner Categories, users will be able to get more information about what company shared their information and how. Read this post from Facebook about advertising and third-party partners for more info.

It’s all about relevancy and efficiency.

Stop wasting your money advertising to people who don’t care about your product, service or niche. Focus on those most likely to relate to what you have to say.

This also opens up opportunities for selling on Facebook. Imagine you are in the travel industry and offer packages for seniors. You could target users in Datalogix categories like this:

Take cruises (13,020,0400 users)Affluent baby boomers (17,098,700 users)Leisure travelers (22,800,900 users)

You could then target those who qualify in all three groups, and your list is cut down to about 4 million users.

Or maybe you sell new Ford trucks valued over $30,000. You could target users in Datalogix categories as follows:

Pickup truck owner (17,904,500 users)Make is Ford truck (10,647,400 users)Vehicle age is 6-10 years old (31,187,100 users)Price is $30K-40K (2,249,400 users)

If you cross these categories, you end up with about 37 million users.

But your dealership is in Milwaukee, WI. If you target only men within 25 miles of Milwaukee who fit within these categories, the new audience is 71,500.

That’s right. Just over 70,000 Ford truck owners in the Milwaukee area (that’s a lot of Ford trucks in the Milwaukee area!) who may be on the lookout for a new Ford truck. You can target them.

Powerful, right?

First of all, this is only available to advertisers within the U.S. for now. If you’re outside the U.S., stay tuned.

Second, Facebook says they are rolling this out to both Power Editor and the self-serve ad tool. I only have this within Power Editor. If you want access to all of the good stuff, you should be using Power Editor anyway.

While creating an ad, go to the Audience tab. Under Precise Interests is a Categories box. This holds both Facebook Broad Categories and Partner Categories.

Partner Categories are found in Power Editor under Precise Interests.

As mentioned earlier, you can grab categories from Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon. Just know that you can only pull categories from one of those partners for an individual ad.

Expand Acxiom, Datalogix or Epsilon to view the categories contained within them. Then select any of the categories that you want (again, only select categories within a single partner group).

Here’s what it would look like based on the travel company example from earlier.

Click on the categories you want to target. Make sure to pull from only one partner per ad.

Hover over a selected category and a tooltip description will come up. Here’s the description for “Affluent Baby Boomers”.

Hover over a category once you’ve selected it to get a full description.

You can choose to target people who like ANY or ALL of these categories by clicking on the drop-down to the left…

Target either ANY or ALL of your selected Partner Categories.

If you don’t feel like digging through all 500-plus categories (it’s admittedly a bit clunky to expand and collapse repeatedly to find what you want), you can also start typing a keyword in the category search.

I started typing “Marketing” and the category “Sales/Marketing” came up.

Instead of collapsing and expanding, type a keyword in the search to find your ideal Partner Category.

Partner Category targeting can then be used in addition to your other targeting like age, gender, location and interests.

Partner Category Reminders

To recap, here are the main things to remember if you’re going to start using Partner Categories today:

Target users based on buying activity away from Facebook.Use Power Editor.Only available in the U.S.Target multiple categories, but only one partner at a time.Use Partner Categories in addition to other targeting.Nothing changes regarding privacy.

Now, it’s your turn to give it a try!

Is Partner Category Targeting Effective?

This form of targeting on Facebook is too new to say just how effective it is yet, and it will largely depend on the quality of the data. But there’s certainly potential here.

What do you think? Have you used Partner Categories? What results are you seeing? Let us know in the comments section below!

About the Author, Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer’s blog was named to Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013. Follow him for advanced topics focused on Facebook advertising and metrics. Other posts by Jon Loomer »

http://www.jretechnology.com

LinkedIn Visual Profiles: This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published May 4, 2013

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

LinkedIn Introduces Visual Profiles: “For the first time, you will now have the ability to showcase your unique professional story using rich, visual content on your LinkedIn profile. This means you can illustrate your greatest achievements in the form of stunning images, compelling videos, innovative presentations and more.” This new feature is rolling out now to LinkedIn members in English-speaking countries.

"To begin sharing your achievements and creations on your profile, simply select Edit on your profile, then follow the prompts in your Summary, Experience and Education sections."

Pinterest Improves New Look: Pinterest adopted a new look in March, and has now added a few more features, thanks to feedback from users. These new features include See It Now, Pinned From, Mentions and Find Friends. ”You can see which of your Facebook and Twitter friends are on Pinterest.”

Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

Google+ Sign-In Brings App Activities to Google Search: “Soon, if you search for a site or app on Google.com (and that app has integrated with Google+ Sign-In app activities), you’ll see popular and aggregate user activity to the right of search results.”

More Google+ activities are being integrated into search results.

Vine Gets an Update: The new Vine app has a few new features. “You can now shoot with the front-facing camera” and “switch back and forth between the regular and front-facing camera as many times as you want.” And Vine now supports mentions.

"To mention a user, type @username and select the name among the suggestions you'll see."

Twitter Ads Are Available to All U.S. Users: Twitter is ending their invite-only period and opening signups for their self-serve ad platform to all users in the U.S.

Twitter ads are available to everyone in the U.S.

Interesting social media news to follow:

About 30% of Facebook’s Advertising Revenue Comes From Mobile: Facebook posted its first-quarter 2013 earnings and this shows that mobile advertising on Facebook has increased.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

About the Author, Cindy King

Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

http://www.jretechnology.com