What Does A Blog Have To Do With Social Media?
Let’s face it… a social media marketer without a blog nowadays is like a computer programmer that uses a typewriter. Making money online requires:
- Trust
- Credibility
- Expertise
A blog can build instant trust and credibility online which ultimately leads to be seen as a trusted adviser. Once a you are considered to be trusted adviser, readers will visit your “online residence’ on a daily basis giving you the opportunity to deepen your roots converting your leads to prospects and prospects to customers.
Your blog is the headquarters and the brain of your operation. In today’s social media climate, most importantly, blogs have become the online residence of savvy internet marketers. In fact, top producers are outright saying “the days of making money in social media without blogs are goneâ€. So why would a social media marketer not own a blog?
If you asked “why wouldn’t all social media marketers go out and pop a blog online?†you would be asking the question to currently one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of the social media marketer when it comes to setting up their internet business.
Making money with a blog isn’t the real challenge. The real challenge is knowing how to get a blog up and going without running into the following brick walls:
- Installation (uploading to server & hosting)
- Setting up (choosing money making topics & categories)
- Set up first campaign (integration with Twitter, Facebook etc…)
- Daily maintenance (adding posts, videos, content, etc…)
- Linking Strategy
- Search engine optimization
- And much more
Now you see why, although a blog is accepted as social media’s “missing link†it is unfortunately “the†key to making it online as a social media marketer.
Today’s savvy marketers are avoiding the pitfalls and frustrations of traditional blogging problems and are surpassing ordinary marketers by getting their hands on the fully customized, optimized and ready to monetize blog. This is why once I discovered that a small group of innovative network marketers actually came together to create the solution of all solutions…
No more losing out of $100’s per day! The Push Button Money Blog is the first fully customized, optimized and self-replicating blog that clones itself in the push of a button offering a range of marketers relief. Whether it’s your first day in social media or you’re a guru with years invested, the ability of owning a Push Button Money Blog is quickly becoming the standard. One push of a button and 60 seconds later…
You could have created and setup your blog in the few minutes it took you to read this blog post….
If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you’re going to want to test drive your Push Button Money Blogging System for 99 cents (yes, as in less than a buck) Go to: http://www.EZ-Marketing4u.com.
Hopefully you have found this article to be interesting, informative and helpful. Please kindly comment, rate, Digg and share the “missing piece†with your audience. Or you can get a PBMB by clicking the red button in upper left corner of this blog, http://www.EZ-Marketing4u.com
Newsletter Marketing
Jim and Rick
I first heard about Jim Palmer back in 2006. At that time I was writing two monthly newsletters, one for our marketing business and one for our insurance business. At the time Jim was very helpful to me in providing content for my newsletter. After about a year, however, I decided I could do it all on my own and canceled my subscription to his service.
Fast forward a couple of years to September 30, 2009. Jim Palmer, now known as the “Newsletter Guru” was kind enough to fly out from Philadelphia to speak at our GKIC Orange County chapter meeting. He also shared his knowledge with Craig Valine’s GKIC chapter up in Pasadena. Unlike many “top notch” speakers (even those already in Southern California), Jim did not ask us to pay him anything. He paid his own airfare, hotels and other expenses and was one of the best speakers we have had for our chapter.
I am pleased that I was finally able to meet Jim in person. Jim is not only the Newsletter Guru, but a true gentleman, professional marketer and, more importantly, and the reason for this message, is that I believe that Jim is someone that can help you strengthen your customer relationships and make you more money!
You probably know that a newsletter is the most effective customer relationship tools available, but they can also be time consuming and frankly, a real pain! Well, Jim has developed the most comprehensive “done-for-you†newsletter service I’ve ever seen. It’s called Success Advantage 2.0 and I highly recommend you check it out. It’s much more than I was familiar with and I have resubscribed to his service again for my newsletters. Also, you must check out Jim’s hot new customer relationship business building tool, Newsletter Postcards. This is really slick!
If by any chance you’re still not convinced why you need a monthly print newsletter, then I urge you to read Jim’s hot book, The Magic of Newsletter Marketing – The Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life! This book sells for $19.95, but I have a limited supply for $10.00 plus shipping cost. If you are interested send me an email at ricka@spib.com, first come first serve until they are gone.
Direct Response Marketing In A Recession
Direct response Marketing in a recession can be one of, if not the best, types of marketing. Using direct response marketing allows you to precisely measure response and predict — with statistical certainty — the outcome of your future efforts. You can know for every dollar you spend, exactly how many leads you can generate, how many appointments you can set, how many closings you have made and finally the numbers of sales with the gross income created. By tracking those numbers, you can easily generate the true costs broken down by cost per lead, costs per appointment, cost per sale, and show the exact ROI (return on investment) for the dollars invested in marketing and training; as well as per hour spent on specific activities. If you aren’t tracking these, how do you know if you are doing the right things?
Many small business owners feel what they are doing is “working” without having tested it or tracking where they are at which indicates a complete lack of understanding of the basics of any marketing. Unless you are tracking and receive statistically reliable results, you don’t have any idea whether you are improving or going backwards.
During good times it’s not hard to live off the low hanging fruit. But when consumers cut back as they do in a recession, if a business does not adapt by knowing their ROI they could easily find themselves on the way out of business.
Combine Marketing And Software For Powerful Results
By combining marketing and software that is designed to save you time by automating many critical functions of marketing you will be able to leverage your efforts and create powerful results. Many small business owners would like to increase their sales with effective marketing activities, but often they indicate they just do not have time to implement the strategy desired. Proper marketing software can solve this problem for them by reducing the time necessary to do what needs to be done.
When evaluating marketing software do not be fooled into thinking that you need to pay hundreds of dollars a month to obtain the functions necessary to do the job. Also, do not purchase a bunch of separate low cost tools such as auto responders, or contact managers and try to piece them together to accomplish your goals. There are software programs available that any business can afford with integrated functions to automate marketing activities.
An excellent example of marketing software, that virtually any business can afford, is the Instant Sales System. It provides all of the critical elements required to automate most sales and marketing activities except for a built in shopping cart. However, it’s my understanding that a shopping cart will be added soon, probably within the next 30 days. It’s the most powerful system I’ve seen for the price.
A Customer Newsletter – A Powerful Marketing Tool
If you’re already producing a monthly customer newsletter, keep up the great job. If you’re thinking about starting one for your business, wait no longer – it will prove to be the best decision you’ve ever made!
Here’s why: Newsletters are cheap, they provide valuable information, and they keep your name in front of your customers, prospects, and former customers.
Why am I such a stickler about sending your newsletter on a monthly basis? Because testing has shown that newsletters lose their impact when they arrive with less frequency. Essentially, when you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. And while you’re out of mind, your customers are being bombarded with marketing messages from competitors.
Let’s look at how practical and profitable it is to mail your customers a monthly newsletter. Assume that your cost to design, print, and mail a monthly customer newsletter is $0.99 including postage, or about $12 per year. If you think that is unrealistic, visit http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?Clk=3278640.
In his book Automatic Marketing, author Benjamin Hart writes about the awesome power of a monthly newsletter and gives a great “dollars and cents†illustration of how important newsletters are to your business. He breaks it down as follows.
If the profit on your average sale to a customer is $100, you would have to make only one sale every 10 years to that customer to break even on your newsletter. But what if the profit on your average sale is $300 or even $l,000? If you’re a lawyer, a plastic surgeon, or a CPA, or you sell office supplies or printing to businesses, your profit per sale could easily be thousands of dollars. Maybe you run a restaurant, a dry cleaner, or a hair salon, and your profit per sale is only $20. But if you can get your customer to come in once a month, that’s $240 in profit per year from that customer—all for a marketing cost of only $10.
Can you see why sending a monthly newsletter to your customers, prospects, and former customers is like having an ATM machine with an unlimited source of cash that you can withdraw any time?
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Article by Jim Palmer
Jim Palmer, The Newsletter Guru, has been writing and designing newsletters for clients in just about every industry for nearly 30 years. If you’re ready to boost your profits by increasing your repeat and referral business, get Jim’s FREE e-course, The Awesome Power of Newsletter Marketing, at http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?Clk=3278640.
Twitter Page Backgrounds
Putting a background image on your twitter page will not only give it a more professional look but can be used to advertise your products or services.
If you are graphically impaired and are not good with photo shop, or other graphic tools, it’s best to have someone that knows what they are doing prepare a custom design background for you. However, If you prefer to tack the free route consider going to the design setting on your Twitter page, select and import an image and then hit the tile option. Not the best, but it can be appealing.
Another free option would be to go to www.prettytweet.com. They provide a number of options including a design tool that allows some flexibility with lettering and colors on the site. The site provides tutorials and samples, so it is very easy to use. An example can be found at http://Twitter.com/rickarmstrong2.
Why Blogs Are #1 In Social Media
Ten years ago blogs were used as web logs or online journals. What made blogs different is, of course, everyone can see them. Blogs became the most social of all websites and have grown to over 70 million and have surpassed static web pages making blogs the most important social media platform in social media marketing, to say the least.
In fact, if you listen you’ll hear just about every social media guru say, “If you don’t have a blog you don’t exist online”. In other words, without a blog you can forget about being the life of the social media party and settle for being “that guy” that keeps showing up. No one knows where he came from and where he goes back to once the parties end.
So why a blog and what makes it the cornerstone of social media? The natural social flow of online traffic starts at Twitter and flows from Youtube and Facebook to ultimately ends up at your blog. Every other social platform is shared with millions of other faces while your social media blog, on the other hand, is all about you “featuring” some guest.
You see,your tweets (Twitter headlines) and videos (Youtube TV) and socializing (Facebook Lifestyle) are for the purposes of promoting your BLOG (which is all these sites rolled into one). All your content (posts, videos, pics etc) should actually be syndicated from your blog to the virtual world. I guess you can say that social media all comes down to understanding the core principle of the Social Flow Of Things. I recommend that before you go wasting your time, energy and a lot of money download Eric Williams, creator of the Push Button Social Media Money System and get his free handmade “Flowchart.” Or maybe you just want instant access to short training videos on Twitter, Facbook, Youtube and, of course, blogs.
The moral of this story is don’t be the jerk at the social media party. Party and socialize but be sure you have a place to lay your head online and if you don’t you just might be “that guy” flashing your opportunity every time you hear the word hello.
What Is Personal Branding
So what’s the deal with Personal Branding anyway? Is it an ego trip… you know , all about me, me me??
Well actually it is all about you but no ego need be involved. And you only need to use it if you want to SUCCEED in social media marketing.
Wikipedia defines it this way:
‘Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands. The personal branding concept suggests that success comes from self-packaging. Further defined as the creation of an asset that pertains to a particular person or individual; this includes but is not limited to the body, clothing, appearance and knowledge contained within, leading to an indelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable.’
So basically, Personal Branding is what allows you to create an audience and therefore, build a list of qualified people that are interested in what you have to say and, not only that, waiting for you to let them know what you have to offer. In order to have a valuable Personal Brand, you will want to give a lot of stuff away! What does that mean?? Be a resource for information and people will keep coming back for more. Once you have given away information, which has value, you can then ask for something in return… and ONLY then!
The purpose of Personal Branding is to promote yourself as someone of value that the people you attract come to know, like and trust. This moves you above and beyond your product or service which, therefore, positions you to be able to promote anything of value for the rest of time.
Instant Sales Systems
One of the tools we are finding to be of great value to small business owners is the Instant Sales System. We are offering it as well as other tools to help small business owners to increase their sales:
5 Ways to Inspire Confidence In Your Ads
There are actually more than 5 ways to inspire confidence in your sales letters and other advertising, but these 5 are some of the most effective.
1. Probably the most effective and therefore the most frequently seen way to inspire confidence is with the use of testimonials. What other people say about you, your products and/or services carries much more weight with a prospect than what you say about yourself. Personally I would recommend that you use testimonials frequently if not in all of your advertising.
2. You can use indirect testimonials by listing the specific businesses that are using your products/services. Or you could list the industries you serve, the types of professionals that trust you, etc.
3. Relay case histories of some of your customers. Explain how someone solved a problem, or derived a benefit from you. You could also provide before and after descriptions of customers.
4. Show pictures or videos of people using your products or services. The picture can show benefits and seeing is believing.
5. When possible, show important or well known people using your product or service. Be sure to have permission of the celebrity or important person first, however.
You can probably think of may other things you can do, but it’s important that you do something to inspire confidence.