Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Condo For Rent? Use Social Media For Results

If you have a perfect vacation getaway for rent and you do not have a place online to publicize, you are already behind. When people consider a vacation, they go online to get as many details about a destination as possible. There next step is almost always "Where should we stay?"

Other than getting your condo posted on popular renting sites and waiting for people to come to you, why not take a more active approach? Create a Web site for your condo and list all information and pictures you can to give your future visitors all the information they need about your destination. Provide a guestbook online of people who have visited before, as well as an easy-to-use contact page for interested renters.

After building a Web site to promote your destination, use social media to find vacation goers where your condo is located and directly contact them. For example, use Twitter search to find "vacation Virginia Beach" to see if anyone is planning a vacation there. If so, direct message them a link to your Web site advertising your condo for rent. Write a blog about new additions, places to visit in the area and different seasonal or yearly events. Use Flickr and YouTube to post pictures and videos of your condo on your site to help provide information for your future guests. Finally, make yourself available by e-mail, Facebook and Twitter to any interested renters.

While it might sound like a lot of work, you'll find that social media and blogging is easy and yields results.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Condo-For-Rent?-Use-Social-Media-For-Results&id=2749198

Thursday, July 30, 2009

An Increasing Internet Culture – Social Media Optimization

Social media optimization is not a tool but it is today’s internet culture. With the social media sites on internet, people have got a good platform to become more social, more interactive and more communicative. Socialmediaoptimization doesn’t only allow discovering and reading the content and information but also encourages you to share the knowledge what you have. It is no more a one-way process but is a two way communication. http://www.webhostinglover.com

Social media optimisation stresses the fact that your target audiences are real people and you need to be friendly and real to them as you are with your friends and acquaintances. A great way to understand your target audiences is to engage then in an honest conversation and to know them. In social media optimisation, you have to provide your target people with grounds like video, audio, mobile accessibility, widget etc. There should regularity in updating the content and providing them a fresh content. You have to expand your network of influencers (bloggers, digg etc) and expand your network of content too.
Key factors in social media marketing are to focus on social media sites and knowing your target spectators. Apart from creating a quality content, you have to track and measure the conversion to calculate ROI. Social Media optimisation enables the advertiser to create a conversation with the target audience. Social Media can spread across multiple mediums very quickly, and increase your advertising reach. It also creates instant brand awareness. Socialmediaoptimization enables us to position your brand to your customers on their own terms and in their environment which results in a more authentic marketing message.
Social media optimisation works on the fundamentals of getting people into a conversation and winning them. It is really important to arouse their interests and encourage them to talk about themselves or the things they like. Don’t be afraid introducing a new topic and reward helpful and valuable users. http://www.seoguidelover.com

There is the need to prepare some ground work before you actually start with your social media optimization campaign. Before getting your Social Media Optimization campaign into full swing, your SEO campaign should be put into place to have the highest-ranking site for the keywords that you will be promoting. Once you have ranked your site for all of your important keywords you will be ready to receive all of the new searches. You may call social media optimisation a new approach to Word-of-Mouth medium. Social media optimisation allows you to efficiently spread the word and generate a curiosity and interest for a relatively unknown or a new product or service.
With every profit you have to be prepared for losses too. There are certain risks involved herein too. There is no guarantee that your submission will be popular and hit the first page of the social media site.
http://www.bignews.biz/?id=807696&keys=seo-guide-seo-marketing

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Twitter Marketing Tip - Twitter's Shocking Dirty Little Secret to Persuasive Marketing and Sales

Social media marketing and persuasion is the new craze. However, successful usage of tools like Twitter for business relies on a really powerful concept you'll learn in this article today.

There is a concept that I discovered on Twitter. It's a concept that I explained in one of my earlier blog articles. It has a bit of credibility right now because it got published in Psychology Today, not by me, but people talking about similar things.

It's called Ambient Intimacy.

You see, in this state in social media where people are more intimate with one another. When you're online, you're more friendly, open and vulnerable with strangers than you would be in real life. It's because theres an eradication of time and space barriers.

In that particular state, people are more open to you. Your prospects are more open to you in the same way as the top dogs of marketing or the top dogs in your niche. Because they're human beings, they operate the same way in ambient intimacy. They see the gatekeepers are removed and you can connect with them on an individual and human level.

It gets their attention. It's having a conversation with them that's relevant to them at that point in time. That's really easy to do because Twitter is almost like telepathy. When you tweet, you don't think about the consequences. As a result, you get a lot of uncensored thoughts flying around. As a result...

Niche market research becomes a cinch.

Twitter is short and real-time. At 140 characters, you don't really take a lot of investment in writing something. It's three seconds or five seconds and then a tweet goes out.

It's really good to actually read the minds of the people you want to connect with. You may be tweeting something about WWE wrestling or what you ate yesterday, non-marketing related stuff. Then you join the conversation, add the reply name, and they'll say, "Hop into the conversation." You can say, "Hey, I like WWE wrestling, too. I think this wrestler is sucky," or whatever. The conversation starts from there. Friendships start very fast.

The end result is marketing persuasion at its finest.

Twitter marketing is indeed one of the most effective way to generate hot leads and qualified traffic to your sites, because your prospects are just plainly in love with you!
http://ezinearticles.com/?Twitter-Marketing-Tip---Twitters-Shocking-Dirty-Little-Secret-to-Persuasive-Marketing-and-Sales&id=2437747

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Social Media and Search Engine Optimization Strategy Blend in Workshop Offered by the Direct Marketi

a href="http://www.toprankmarketing.com">TopRank® Online Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) are continuing their partnership by delivering the second in a series of educational workshops on social media marketing, Social Media Smarts: Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Tactics. Next month’s workshop blends components of social media and search engine optimization into the program.

Leading the workshop will be Internet marketing veteran and recognized social media evangelist Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing. Odden will introduce participants to the marketing opportunities available with social media through best and worst practices examples.

“The Social Media Smarts workshop is distinctly different from many other social media training events because it focuses on both strategy and tactics,” said Odden. “Plus there’s a keen sensitivity to leveraging SEO and increased search engine visibility.”

Social media empowers today’s marketers in the face of slimming budgets. By properly leveraging a balance of social media and SEO, marketers gain competitive advantage through customer engagements and social interactions within the online marketplace.

The Social Media Smarts workshop will provide attendees insight into: blogging and blog marketing, social networks, microblogging, social news and bookmarking, video sharing, image and audio sharing, wikis and social media analytics. Content included in the Social Media Smarts workshop has been featured on Mashable and Online Marketing Blog.

“Are you kidding? Lee Odden knows more about online tools and strategies than most ever will,” said John Jantsch, owner of Duct Tape Marketing. “But, he also has a great knack for sharing, demystifying, and teaching these seemingly technical topics in ways that allow anyone to make practical use of them.”

Rounding out the workshop is a social media strategy exercise that will empower attendees to create their own social media strategy and develop a framework for building a business case within their organizations.

"Attendees will experience real-world examples from a consultant consistently positioned on the front lines of social media and SEO.”

The second in a series of Social Media Smarts workshops offered by Lee Odden and the DMA will be conducted in New York, June 4th and 5th, at the Microtek training facility in lower Manhattan.

Join Lee Odden and the DMA at:
Social Media Smarts Workshop

Direct Marketing Association Seminar Center
1120 Avenue of the Americas
Between 43rd and 44th streets
13th Floor
New York, NY 10036

June 4 – 5, 2009

Register for the 2-day seminar online:
Social Media Smarts Workshop
Save $250 by using the discount code “Social” when registering

About Lee Odden and TopRank Marketing
TopRank Marketing is a leading Internet marketing and digital PR agency, offering strategic SEO and digital public relations consulting, training and implementation for Fortune 500 companies.

Lee Odden, CEO, is a veteran online marketer with over 10 years of SEO and digital PR experience. Lee has been cited for his expertise by The Economist and DM News as well as numerous books and industry web sites. He is the editor of Online Marketing Blog where he writes about the intersection of search marketing, social media and online public relations.

Website: http://www.toprankmarketing.com
Blog: http://www.toprankblog.com

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
The Direct Marketing Association is the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process. Founded in 1917, DMA today represents more than 3,400 companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 48 other nations, including half of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations.

Website: http://www.the-dma.org
http://ezinearticles.com/?Making-Extra-Money-on-the-Stock-Market&id=2352524

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Twitter For Beginners

As Twitter continues to grow in popularity at an alarming rate and new users are starting to come on board, it can be hard to figure out where to get started with Twitter. While it is a communication medium like email for example, it is used in an entirely different way. Twitter is more sociable and fun rather than practical and actually understanding the main concepts and principles of Twitter can take a little while.

So in this article I'd like to try and give you a beginners guide to Twitter and in doing so to give you a basic guide to what Twitter is and what Twitter does so you can more easily get involved.

In essence, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Every Twitter user has their own little tiny "blog" that they can add messages to of up to 140 characters in length. They can also send messages of the same maximum length to other Twitter users and these messages will then appear on their recipients blog. Each of these little messages is known as a tweet.

As well as adding tweets to your blog, sending them to other people or even reading other peoples Twitter blogs, you can also "follow" any Twitter user of your choice. When you "follow" someone, their tweets then start to appear on your Twitter page. In this way you can keep up to date with what all your friends, family and business contacts are doing in one place. By simply following all your contacts and keeping an eye on your Twitter page you can see live what everyone you know is up to.

When Twitter first launched, you interacted with the service using the Twitter website but now you can interact in virtually any way possible. As examples you can access your Twitter feed live from a variety of desktop applications so you don't have to be logged into the Twitter website. You can also send and receive tweets via text (sms) message directly on your cell phone.

Twitter is part of a movement known as "life streaming" where part of the aim is to simply reveal your actions and thoughts live as you go about your day. Initially this meant that people would add such interesting messages as "Just eating some cereal" or "Paying for gas". These days such messages are understandably frowned upon though the more interesting tweets are welcomed.

This is a good way of not just staying in contact with people, but also learning about other people in quite a deep way. If you know what movie they've just watched or what they're doing on the weekend you feel more of a part of their life. Twitter is as much about conversations and communication as just sending a practical email to someone.

The general advice for a new Twitter user would be to simply try it out and see if you like it. Some people love it, others loath it and you won't know until you try it. Just sign up for a free account, find your friends and "follow" them, then get involved with the conversation. When they tweet, tweet back.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Twitter-For-Beginners&id=2250124

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Use Twitter to Make Money Online - What You Need to Know

Microblogging has become one of the biggest trends in both social networking and making money online. The website Twitter is one of the biggest and most widely used microblogging sites on the internet, and can be a powerful marketing tool if used properly.

Using Twitter to make money online is all about driving traffic to places where people will take an action that will put cash in your pockets. More importantly, the traffic that you generate using Twitter is some of the best web traffic that you can have visiting your site. This is because if someone visits your site due to something that you mention on Twitter, then you aren't a 'total stranger' to the person. This means that you have a higher degree of trust with them, and trust always = more sales.

One of the most effective tricks of using Twitter to make money online is to use Twitter to drive people to articles that you've posted on your blog(s). Blogs are very dynamic and allow you to constantly add new and relevant content on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. If you offer people good content on your blog, then they are likely to tell others and return themselves. However getting people to your blog originally can be tricky.

Twitter can help you generate traffic by allowing you to let all of your followers know that you've posted something new and letting you link to it. A good tip while doing this is to post the article name as a question that will arouse curiosity. One example might be, "Are you using the #1 trick to making money online with Twitter? (insert your link here)".

This tip can also be used when using other people's articles through your blog. Simply tell people that you ran across a great article and link to your blog. Then have a blog entry that summarizes the article or promotes it briefly while linking to the original post. This will get people to your blog and often they will read other posts, ads, reviews, etc. before clicking through to the main article you are referencing.

This is just one of many ways to use Twitter to make money online by driving traffic to your blog. Use it as an idea and get creative in your own way because the possibilities are endless!

http://ezinearticles.com/?Use-Twitter-to-Make-Money-Online---What-You-Need-to-Know&id=2191899

Friday, April 3, 2009

Using Social Media - How Can it Help Me Be Found Online?

Social media is a great way to drive traffic to your website. However if you don't know how to use it, you can feel like you're wasting your time.

How can social media help me be found online? A lot of people have that question when they first start using online networking sites. One thing that can help you be found online is a profile that contains the keywords you wish to be found in.

As an example, maybe you are a virtual assistant. You'd want the words virtual assistant to be in your profile several times. Another good thing to put in your profile is the particular area of expertise you have. So if you're a financial planner, you would want to populate your profile with the words financial planner.

Also, be sure to post information relevant to your niche. When you post information that is related to your niche, people will perceive that you are knowledgeable about your area of expertise. They'll also be grateful to you for giving them the information they need to solve a problem.

Finally be sure to link your profile to other social media sites you may belong to. This is one way that you can use online networking to drive traffic to your website. Social media is a great way to drive traffic to your website if you know how to do it. Just take your time and have fun. Social media is something that you have to take time to develop.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Using-Social-Media---How-Can-it-Help-Me-Be-Found-Online?&id=2168876