Is Traditional Marketing The Best Way?

August is winding down, and my daughter is now officially back in her Junior year of high school. We’ve had a lot of long and interesting conversations over the summer as she begins to lay down the path for her future.

On one hand I would love to have her do the traditional way – high school, great college for four years, and find a job. Yet in reality, I know most kids that opt for that lifestyle will find anything but success. It’s just not in the cards any more because we’ve changed as a society over the past decade.

And what is facing today’s high school and college students is also facing adults too.

If you plan on working at a company for years, doing one job until you retire, and then planning on a nice retirement for the rest of your life – well, you really are in for a surprise.

So like many people, you decide to start a side business, and hope it turns into something more. Something that will help you build a comfortable income now and well into the future.

Yet if you read anything on marketing, its very old school and very traditional. Five years ago, Facebook didn’t exist, and social media meant something entirely different than it does today.

If you receive an email, a postcard, or even a newspaper at home today, chances are you barely give it a second glance when it comes to finding people to do business with. Why rely on a business telling you how great they are, when you can find “friends” online that will gladly recommend someone they’ve had an excellent record with?

So how do you market a new business? How do you find relevant information that will help you build a business for the future?

It’s really not as hard as it sounds. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Small Biz Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Questions To Ask Before Creating An Autoresponder

Do you use autoresponders in your business?

Autoresponders are the best method I know of to connect and communicate with your readers. It allows you to give instant feedback to people on any subject matter related to your business, and be able to do so 24/7/365.

One of the most magical things that I love is when I’m able to write such a personal autoresponder that the reader can’t tell it’s an autoresponder. Instead, they send me a personalized message back, answering my questions and giving me more information about them.

That doesn’t happen by accident. I don’t just throw together a message, or add so much content they get lost in the message. Instead of create a series of notes that make it exclusive for whoever is reading it.

For those of you new to the online world of marketing, an autoresponder is an email message that is sent out automatically by an email system depending on when a person signs up to receive your emails. You can send as few or as many messages as you desire, and set them up to be sent at a predetermined timeframe. These messages give you more credibility, and allow you to make that initial connection with someone new, helping them learn more about you through a variety of media sources.

Before you write your messages, grab some paper and spend some time analyzing these 5 questions. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

The 5 Stages Of Writing The Perfect Blog Post

What does it take to write the perfect blog post?

If you’re not a writer, chances are it can be the most difficult thing in the world. All kinds of questions run through your head:

  • What do I write about?
  • How do I find the perfect picture/graphic?
  • What about keywords?
  • How do people find my post online?

And that’s just with the first post. A few months down the road, after you’ve written post after post, the questions become even more difficult.

  • What do I write about now?
  • Are people really reading what I’m writing?
  • Does anybody care about my blog?

That’s when the majority of bloggers give up. They let the questions win, and they move on to other endeavors. Yet that’s the time when you need to keep it up, because you’re finally starting to gain traction with your blog posts. Here are some ideas to keep you writing.

Choose Your Topic

With every post you write, you should have a topic or one main idea. Think of your products and or services. Think of your many clients, and how each of them came to you for a different reason. This is a great way to start coming up with topics.

Write From Different Angles

While its important to have your blog cover a topic thoroughly, don’t forget that every service or product you offer can be broken down in many ways. Don’t cover every piece of your business within one post; instead break it down into multiple pieces.

For instance, if you have a blog on dentistry, it’s easy to write to choose to write a post on a topic such as wisdom teeth. Yet even this one topic can be broken down many ways.

  • What are wisdom teeth?
  • Can you live with wisdom teeth?
  • Why do you need to have wisdom teeth removed?
  • What does it mean when the dentist says your wisdom teeth are impacted?

And so on. See how I started with one topic – wisdom teeth – and quickly found four different posts from four different angles?

Include The Complete Thought

Once you have your blog title and concept in place, write a complete thought from beginning to end. Just because you know you’ve written five other posts on this same topic doesn’t mean the reader will. They are entering this post for the first time, and need a complete message, from beginning to end.

Target It Towards One Client

Want an even easier way to write up a post? Think about one client you are currently working with. What do you talk with them about? How did you sell them on your services? Write a post directly to this one person, and chances are you’ll reach a dozen others with the same concerns, questions and thoughts.

Dig Deeper: How To Stay Out Of Blogging Overwhelm

Refer To Other Sources

Don’t make your blog posts a single read. Instead, use hyperlinks to bring them to other sources both on your own blog, and to other resources online. Not only does this provide them with even more content and details, it keeps them actively reading and clicking to more resources throughout your blog. The longer you can keep their attention, the greater chance you have of turning them into a client.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips Tagged With: , , , , ,

Goodbye Flip Video

As many of you know, I’ve been promoting use of Flip Video for years. It’s a simple video camera that takes great video, has pretty good sound capabilities, and is easy to plugin to your laptop or computer with a USB, and easily move your video over to YouTube or other social networks. Its cost made it one of the best blogging business tools around.

Yes, I know a lot of people are now using their smart phones for much of the process. You can completely bypass the USB, and send the video directly to YouTube from your phone. But for a variety of reasons, I still loved having a video separate from the phone.

Today Cisco announced it is realigning its business, and will no longer offer Flip as a product. So if you’ve been wanting one, wait no longer for they are about to disappear.

While they will support current owners, they will soon disappear.

Looking for an alternative? We also have a Kodak Zi8 video camera that we love. It’s similar to the flip, with its one big advantage of having a mic jack that allows you to plug in an external mic – perfect for improved sound quality when doing interviews or testimonials.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips Tagged With: , , , ,

The Best Social Marketing Tool Is…

So you are ready to spend some time working on social media this year. But what should you do?

Should you jump into Facebook, and learn all you can? With over 500 million users, that’s surely one of the best places to spend your time.

Or maybe it’s Twitter. It can be an incredible way to drive traffic to your sites.

Or is it YouTube? With millions of hours of video, you could quickly have a huge audience to your videos.

Yes, those are all great resources. And any one of them can leap you towards success.

Yet if I had to recommend one social marketing tool, if I had to start over today with just one tool, it wouldn’t be Facebook or Twitter or YouTube.

It would be a blog. Why?

Blogging is the perfect platform for all of your social marketing strategies.

It’s a way for you to control your content, prove your expertise, and make major headway into the search engines. You can speak directly to your audience, and provide detailed information to your specific niche or marketplace. Instead of listing all of your services, you can talk about each aspect of your services in separate posts, and tell specific groups of clients things that apply to them. In short, it’s a great way for conversational selling.

Then once you have a blog in place, the other social tools fall in to place. For example, you can incorporate Facebook into your blog posts, and give your readers an instant way to share your posts within their Facebook account.

So if you are going to invest in one tool, one direction for the New Year, what should it be? My advice would be to start blogging.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips Tagged With: , , , ,

How To Use SocialMention To Find Content For Your Social Sites and Blogs

TheSocialGhost.com shares tips and strategies for using SocialMention to find content for your social media sites and blogs.

Filed Under: How To Videos Tagged With: , , , , , , ,