Archive for the ‘Web 2.0 in General’ Category

If you want to be a successful Internet marketer and reach your marketing objectives, then you need a good Web 2.0 marketing plan. Throwing a few random ideas or thoughts together and charging out of the gate without any concrete goals makes as much sense as climbing Mt. Everest in January while wearing shorts and flip-flops.

In order to be successful, an Internet marketer will have a plan that incorporates both short term and long term goals. If you want a good Web 2.0 marketing plan that will work for you, then you have to know what’s going on with the social media around you.

A successful Internet marketer is someone who uses today’s technology to interact with potential consumers and offer them products or services. The marketer stays up to date with what the latest and greatest form of dialoguing is. Since today’s number one form of interacting with others is from a social networking aspect, it stands to reason the marketing plan would include using Web 2.0 sites.

So let’s get started on your Web 2.0 marketing plan:

Step 1: Let’s say one of your sites is one where you offer women’s cosmetics for sale. You decide you want to drive traffic to your site, so you create a Squidoo Lens. In that lens, you could talk specifically about one item in your cosmetic line and you write about it. Say it was lipstick. You create a lens about that, then another lens about the mascara and yet another telling about the benefits of the foundation.

You use the lenses by writing good content and having links pointing to your cosmetic site. Add pictures or images of whichever relevant product you’re writing about. You want to make sure the topics you’ve written with search engine optimization in mind are consistent. Not staying consistent in your niche could set off alarms with Google and once that happens, it could drop your ranking.

Step 2: Get the information out there. You can send traffic to your Squidoo pages and ultimately your business site by blogging about it as well. If you use Wordpress, make sure you get the plug in ‘SEO Friendly Images’ that can be a real timesaver for you. Now, take what you just did on Squidoo and repeat the process on sites like Twitter, Hubpages, Google Knol, and other networks to maximize your SEO potential.

Step 3: Tweak and tweak again. If your copy suffers, so will your business. Visitors don’t stay on sites that are too hard to follow, too much hype and not enough of a call to action. Be sure to tweak your links - meaning check your articles, your headlines, even your bio if you have one. Don’t have links that are broken. Remember - it’s the content that’s most important.

I saw an interesting tiny little tidbit in my Women’s World magazine last night. It was talking about self esteem and one of the ways it said to raise it was by logging into Facebook (or other social networking sites) and befriending people. It was said to raise your “social capital” and make you feel more connected with others.

But it’s not just good for raising your self esteem - it’s good for helping you connect to your customers, too. You can create a whole brand and image just on web 2.0 sites alone! In fact, it’s rare that I trust anyone anymore unless they have a web 2.0 presence I can evaluate.

You have to be very careful on these social networking sites. Watch what you say about religion, politics, and other inflammatory topics. You may think it doesn’t matter, but it does. You might go off on a rant about how you “can’t stand the US” and in your mind, you’re thinking US policies. In my mind, as a US citizen and reader, you just said you hated my country, and I’m a part of that.

Think of your social capital when you participate online in the world of web 2.0. Are you devaluing your “stock” or making it worth more by providing true value and insight? In every post or page that you create, ask yourself if it helps or hurts you social capital - your net worth int he eyes of the community.

Some things will be neutral and that’s okay, too. Just make sure it’s heavily weighted on the “value” side so that people don’t become bored and start to ignore you.

Tiff

Social networking sites are great for a lot of things. We use them to connect with friends new and old and we use them to build relationships with potential customers and even business partners. Many of us use social networking sites for promoting our products.

This is common and as long as it’s done right, can be a wonderful way to increase sales and income.

What do you promote on the social networking sites you participate in? Do you promote your own info products in digital form? Do you use your social networking pages to promote affiliate products? Maybe you promote tangibles such as books from Amazon.
Read the rest of this entry »

For example, Digg is a reference tool.
Squidoo and Hub Pages are free website facilities
Twitter is a microblog
Facebook and MySpace are personal profile pages

What categories would you divvy the world of web 2.0 up into?
Warning: I’ll be using this for future lessons!
Tiff

There’s a popular T-shirt that reads, “Your lips are moving, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah.” When it comes to paying prospects, you have to make sure ‘blah, blah, blah’ isn’t the message they’re hearing from you.

How many people do you know who multitask while being on the computer? I know myself, I have my TV on, my daughter’s Princess TV on, sometimes some music playing in the background, and kids running rampant.

When I land on your site, you’d better grab my eyeballs and pull ‘em through the screen or else I’m moving on!

Ever come across a website where someone was trying hard to sell their product or service? You read and quickly realize that while they’re using fancy pictures and a whole lot of words, they’re not actually saying anything.

How frustrating for a consumer!

The marketer failed by not making their point. You want to scream, “JUST SPIT IT OUT WILL YA!?”

Make sure your content says what you want it to say in a way that’s short and simple. There are too many other marketers vying for their attention. Give your customer what they want – answer the Who, What, When, Where and How (or Why) right up front, and then fill in the details.

And don’t be boring, either! Inject some of your personality into your writing and if you don’t have one, GET one!

Take on a dual personality if you want to – have fun with it. Think Rich Jerk. Be someone you always wanted to be behind the safety of a computer screen – or maybe someone you would never want to be in real life.

Tiff

Mention the economy and many consumers groan. They’ve learned to cut back, think twice before parting with their hard earned dollars. But what if your business depends on consumers and in typical trickle down fashion, you’re beginning to feel the effects of the economy?

Unlike the big boys of advertising (the ones with the equally big advertising budgets), you don’t have to be a millionaire to market your business. But if you want to succeed, you DO have to market.

There’s an old saying - If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If no one knows about your business, does it exist? Technically, yes, but without some type of marketing to bring in the customers (and keep them!), it might as well not exist because it won’t for long.

Getting the word out effectively doesn’t have to be an option available only to the bigger companies. One way many smart entrepreneurs are finding ways to cut costs is by turning to social media marketing – the wonderful world of web 2.0.

Social marketing is basically the new, improved version of traditional marketing, but it’s much nicer to your wallet.

Unlike traditional advertising, where business owners easily shell out thousands to ten thousands of dollars for an advertisement that may or may not reach their target audience, social media marketing can be used to put you ahead of the game.

You can reach billions of people with your product or services in a more cost effective manner than the old school way of shelling out more.

For example, now that MySpace is international, your advertising can circle the world in the blink of an eye. MySpace has MyAds geared to fit any budget limit. You choose what you want to spend on the advertising.

You can also grab a piece of advertising pie and let others help you distribute it at no cost to you simply by making a video about yourself or your business. When you’re finished with the video, simply upload it to TubeMogul.com. and they’ll take it from there, seeing to it that your video is sent out to the best sites.

In order to survive business-wise, entrepreneurs have to be like a chameleon and learn to adapt to their surroundings, to advertise outside the box. So when economy changes are not in your favor, rather than sticking with the same old, same old like traditional advertising, you learn to change with it in order to achieve what’s best for your business.

Another perk to using web 2.0 sites for your marketing is that most of these social networking sites carry a hefty PageRank (authority in the eyes of Google) and you can ride the coattails of their hard work.

Tiff

Whenever I recommend anything having to do with a real domain, I always get asked, “Will this work on Squidoo (or insert social networking site name of your choice here)?” People are in love with the idea of getting something for nothing, and that’s exactly what a web 2.0 business offers - a free platform.

There are pros and cons to running your business solely on the back of social networking sites. I’m a big proponent of using them, as you can tell, but I’m also an advocate for buying your own domain. It used to intimidate me - until I found out how easy it is to register a domain (under 10 bucks for a dot com and 99 cents for a dot info at GoDaddy).

Hosting was not complicated, either. Hostgator makes it very easy to operate your own domain. I use the Legacy File option which is very functional - you choose your folder to upload in, click upload files, and you’re done. You can also use an FTP program if you want to.

But the question remains - “Can you operate a web 2.0 business without taking the domain route?” The answer is simple - Yes!

It is possible and you can even have a great deal of success with it. Let’s look at the pros and cons of this option so you can make an informed decision:

Pros to running a web 2.0 business:

1.) It’s FREE! (And in the case of some sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages, Knol - you get unlimited pages)
2.) It’s easy (Squidoo has point and click modules to choose to build your pages)
3.) It brings an instant audience to your pages (because you’re part of the community)
4.) You ride the coattails of the site’s search engine ranking power

Cons to running a web 2.0 business:

1.) You’re at the mercy of the site owners. (If they close your page, alter its layout, etc., you have no control.)
2.) Marketing may not be accepted as widely (ie: Hub Pages, where your links are limited)
3.) It can appear unprofessional. (while web 2.0 platforms serve as good branding tools, some consumers consider this a pitstop only and want to go on to your “real” site if they’re going to trust you).

I’m sure there are many more you can think of yourself. My advice is to utilize web 2.0 platforms as your funnel to your main domains. From time to time I sell directly from these sites, but I always have links to my authority domains (like this one at TiffanyDow.com) for good measure.

My recommendation is if you have ZERO funds and are a newbie, start with a web 2.0 business. Branch out from there and get your own hosting and domain as soon as possible. Stick a good WordPress theme on your domain if you’re not familiar with web design.

Tiff