Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on network marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob or learn more about sales and marketing please visit:
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Why Is Social Media Marketing So Important?
November 20, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Social Media Marketing is a modified term of conventional Product and Service Marketing. Social marketing is not about advertising, at least not advertising on its own. It is the art of getting others to talk about your brand or products. Social marketing is the future so learning to get it right is very important.
It’s about finding your customers where they are. Social marketing is not simply buying a banner ad campaign that runs on a social network. It uses marketing techniques to generate discussion and promote information, attitudes, values and behaviors. The benefits of marketing in this way are far too numerous to ignore.
One of the benefits of embracing Social Media Marketing campaigns is Traffic from the Social Network. Traffic is great for any website where the business model is based on site session numbers, page views, advertising impressions and CPC metrics.
As with any form of internet marketing, your campaign needs to be really well thought out, and you must spend a fair amount of time on planning strategy and creating exceptional content. This is followed by promoting and monitoring and tracking the results closely. Take your time and consider your campaign setup carefully, but be sure to get out and participate in this Internet Marketing strategy. Social Marketing is critical to the Internet Marketing Mix.
Many marketers are unsure of how to approach marketing in the social networks or even if they should approach it. The primary aim of social marketing by its original definition is social good, while in commercial marketing the aim is primarily financial.
When compiling your Social Media Network Strategy always keep in mind your customer base and what they want. Do they participate in the social networks online and is this something they would like to see your business involved with. If the answer is yes you might want to start by adding a Blog to your website.
If your employees are into the social networking scene ask them to add articles to the Blog. Always remember to add the company logo, name and any other identifying features to the background.
Once you have that in place you could consider joining one or more of the social networking sites. Choose carefully because there are many out there with some being just a waste of your time. Facebook and MySpace are two of the more popular ones. After joining you can start a group or become a member of a group whose primary interest is your type of business, product or service.
This is a good starting point and once you begin to understand how Social Media Networking operates you can expand your involvement to other areas of interest. Remember Social Networking is the new wave and ignoring it as a strategy to add to your marketing mix could be devastating to your enterprise.
Social marketing is just a smart idea. It’s not just a slogan, public service announcement, or one-time communication or mass media campaign. Social marketing is a powerful tool that can improve an individual’s, a group’s, or a society’s welfare. Social marketing is a relatively new, often misunderstood form of online marketing that is reaping huge rewards for website owners who incorporate it into their marketing plan.
Web Traffic Tips – Use the Enormous Power of Twitter to Flood More Web Traffic To Your Website
November 2, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Twitter is the brand new social network traffic tool to hit the Internet marketing scene. Pretty much all Internet marketers are now using this and lots of marketers make use of the website every day, there are lots of substantial advantages for making use of it such as attracting web traffic and building your business. It s an excellent social network tool and website however it won’t be a ‘job-killer’ by sending huge amount of web traffic and making loads of sales unless you promote products which are connected to making money by using twitter.
Below are a number of methods to generate web traffic using Twitter:
1. Post links on twitter to your brand new products along with any blog posts. This does obtain a fair amount of web traffic (the more receptive your Twitter following is the more traffic you get).
2. You can also syndicate your blog posts using Digg along with all the other social bookmarking websites. This will assist you in generating far more traffic and also improve your search engine rankings.
3. Create a receptive list. Ask subscribers within your autoresponder mailing list to sign up to your ‘Tweets’ so that they keep up to date with what you are doing. This is terrific for building a better relationship with your subscribers, which means far more sales.
4. And don’t forget, that Twitter it is a fantastic tool for building your business if you wish to. The direct messaging tool within Twitter can sometimes be far more successful than email, it is a lot more likely that somebody will notice a Twitter direct message rather than your email you sent (which will probably be lost within all the other emails they receive).
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The Future Value Of Your Blog
November 2, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
All the hype about the sale of Weblogs Inc. to America Online (AOL) has given rise to the now famous question – How much is your blog worth? In acquiring Weblogs Inc., AOL has provided some concrete metrics to future valuation of blogs. How much will traditional media be willing to pay for a blog? Conversely, how much would you sell your blog for?
AOL-Weblogs Inc. Deal – Benchmark for Future Blog Valuation
Weblogs Inc was established by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey in 2003. It is a network of blogs which includes under its wings successful blogs such as Engadget and Autoblog. Jason Calacanis pointed out that Weblogs Inc. earns in excess of $1 million yearly in Google Adsense revenues alone.
AOL purchased Weblogs Inc. for a confidential sum assessed at somewhere between $25 – $40 million. After said purchase, Tristan Louis came up with a blog valuation scheme based on the deal. He created a chart of blog value using the value of each inbound link to Weblogs Inc. as the basis. It is common knowledge that blog readers follow links. Search engines also act as users and primarily determine blog quality rankings based on linkage data thus direct and indirect value links are a great proxy for value measurement. In the blogosphere, conversations that nurture connectivity represented by links and indexes like Technorati give a vantage view of the value of a blog.
Tristan Louis itemized the publicly available data (list of blogs indexed) at Weblogs Inc. network including the number of inbound links (Technorati blog numbers) per blog divided by the purchase price to determine the value of an inbound link to a blog. At the rumored price of $25 million, the estimated value is $ 564 per link. At $30 million, it is $677.57 per link and $903.42 at an acquisition price of $40 million. Interestingly, the consumer segment chalks up the biggest percentage of linkage. Engadget represents over a third of the overall network traffic.
Applying Tristan Louis’s Weblogs Inc, sale, Dave Winer has also sold http://Weblogs.com to Verisign for a rumored price of around $2 million. Blog entrepreneur Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media has signed a deal with VNU Media to publish Gizmodo (gadget blog) across Europe in six languages. VNU Media is a leading worldwide information and media company which owns ACNielsen, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, among others. With this deal, blog publishing has hit big time.
However, the value of a blog is not calculated based solely on links using AOL’s purchase of Weblogs Inc. Jason Calacanis, the man behind Weblogs Inc., disputed using links alone as proxy for the value of the blog network. He reiterated that the acquisition price was based also on the ever reliable revenue, earnings, management and other metrics.
Tristan Louis based his valuation scheme on links to a blog but he also acknowledged the significance of technology, talented management team, financial performance and growth. There is direct correlation between links, traffic, revenue and earnings capacity of a blog or blog network but it takes sound management to maximize all these potentials.
Value of a Blog – Some Metrics to Consider
How much is your blog worth? There is no one standard gauge yet. But one way to measure the value is to look at certain factors to gain a better perspective on how to measure the future value of a blog.
Aside from number of links as mentioned earlier, traffic level is a key factor in determining blog value. Highly trafficked blogs definitely have a bigger potential for earning compared with those blogs with few readership. A blog’s success is highly dependent on visitors/readers. However, ascertaining the value of traffic is a thorny issue. Some bloggers value traffic anywhere from $3 to $10 per hit a day. From this data, a blog with 2000 unique visitors (page views) would be worth between $6000 to $20,000. The downside to this valuation approach is that some traffic is more valuable than others. A personal blog might have 1000 unique visitors but more difficult to convert to revenue than a blog with 1000 readers that blogs on the topic of digital cameras.
Aside from diverse traffic streams that come from bookmarks, direct links or RSS subscribers will make risk of losing traffic low. Social bookmarking sites are inching their way to becoming prime sources of traffic, with peer referral at times carrying more weight than search results. There are a number of well known bookmarking sites you should link to. Top bookmarking sites include Furl, http://del.icio.us, Diggs, to name a few. By leaving an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, you can feed you readers’ desire for information. Visitors can get automatic updates whenever you provide new content. Having a fairly good base of bookmarkers and subscribers ensure a steady flow of fans and repeat readers – the all-important traffic.
In the blogosphere as in any other field, revenue or earnings is a major focus. a logical approach to blog valuation would be to base its worth upon current and projected earnings, assuming that your blog is earning something to start with. Again, there are varying views on how to use current earnings to measure a blog’s value.
Some bloggers opine you should expect six to eight months earnings as your blog value. A blog with a daily income of $150 would be worth between $27,000 – $36,000. Still, others determine a blog’s value as being two years of current earnings. A blog earning $150 a day would be worth $108,000. Again, there is a huge disparity between these methods of assessing value. Having diverse streams in the form of multiple affiliate programs also increases blog revenue. An affiliate program is an advertising model in which a blog owner markets via his blog a given product, on behalf of another company. The blog owner is reimbursed a percentage of all sales sold thru his affiliate link. Reimbursement rates can vary from 1% and upwards. Google Adsense is a prime example.
Visitors access blogs throughout the Internet primarily through search engines. If your blog does not have a post appearing in the top ten search engine rankings, the chances of visitors reaching your blog is low. A blog’s presence on relevant search engines is a significant medium for maintaining a blog’s success. Search engine ranking and pages indexed in search engines is critical for generating traffic to a blog. Having your blog among the top results of a search or receiving a high Google PageRank (a system for ranking blog posts) would increase your blog’s overall value.
High quality content will always be a key factor for determining a blog’s value. As has been said time and time again – Content is King. Moreover, search engines can only “read” a blog. What attracts a search engine are the words, the content of a blog that explains, informs, shares and educates readers. Good content increases blog value.
All these aforementioned objective metrics can be considered in assessing the value of a blog. Added to all these, a talented management team behind a blog, its underlying tools and blog technology in use can further help to estimate the future value of a blog.
How to Use Twitter to Generate Traffic
October 29, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Twitter is still a relatively new social networking site, and there are still thousands of marketers who are not using it to its full potential. Some are not using it at all. As with just about any other social networking site you can mention, you have to put in the work at the start to establish yourself as a credible, helpful contributor who is there to do more than just give a sales message and win customers. Using Twitter is an art form all of its own, and is totally unlike anything you will do anywhere else.
The short length of the messages you are allowed to send means that you have to approach the task in a completely different way. The underlying principle does not change, however, and if you are looking to build a long term business presence, you will need to take a long-term view and work to build up your network of friends. These friends can see your twits on their Twitter home page, so it is well worth making the effort to cultivate as many as you can. You are allowed to put links in your twits, so you will need to restrain yourself from getting carried away and posting links too often.
As ever, it takes a bit of work and a bit of thought to use Twitter effectively. Make sure that your twits are of value and interesting. If you can keep abreast of breaking news, and the latest trends in your area of expertise, you can build up a reputation as being someone to watch out for. This will keep you on people’s friend lists, and give you the chance to broadcast an occasional message about your own website or profile which will encourage them to visit. Driving social network traffic is never quick or easy, but you can build up a reputation which will result in regular visitors to your site, who have every chance of becoming regular customers.
Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com
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