Content is King

• People use the internet for several reasons:

• • –To find information
  • –To disseminate information
  • –For entertainment
  • –To make money
  • –For community

• To attract prospects to your blog, it should be filled with content that fulfills their needs
• Good content also attracts attention from others in your industry
• Content written write will be linked to which will improve your standing in the search engines
• Well written content is shared on social media sites attracting followers and extending the reach of your brand

Getting Content for Your Blog

Writing Your Own Articles

Where to Get Article Ideas

Keyword Research

Developing Compelling Headlines

Using PLR Articles

Legalities of Using Content

For more information on generating content on your blog as well as marketing online and using social media effectively, visit the Social Media Video Library.

Learn How to Use Facebook to Your Advantage

Facebook is the leading social networking site on the internet and it is only going to get bigger. In this video you will learn how to use Facebook to network with prospects and potential business partnets as well as the best way to position your business for marketing success on the website. Text included at the bottom so you can print out and follow along.

What is Facebook?

• Facebook is a social networking site that was started by Mark Zuckerburg in 2004 while he was a student at Harvard
• The site has over 500 million users and the average user has 130 “Friends”
• Facebook is the second most visited site in the internet. The user base spends over 700 billion minutes on the site.
• eens and adults use the site to connect with friends, family, work mates, and to connect with brands.
• Businesses use the site to monitor brand interaction and reputation. Facebook makes it easy for businesses to market themselves on the site.
• Facebook is a self contained platform. If it were a party, this is where people would sit down for a meal and socialize.

Setting Up Your Facebook Profile

• Your Facebook profile is partially brandable. You don’t have control over how it looks, but there are apps you can use to extend functionality.
• Set up a separate Fan Page for your business. Do not use the name of your MLM program. Brand yourself.
• Upload a picture of yourself. Preferably the same branded picture you use on other social media profiles.
• Have fun with your personal bio. Be professional but don’t be a cookie cutter copy of other people in your industry. Show your personality.
• Let people know where else they can find you online.
• You can link to all of your sites on Facebook.

Setting Up a Facebook Fan Page

• When signing up for a fan page, use the Brand, Product, or Organization to get the best profile options.
• Use a branded photo or logo for the image.
• Use apps that add functionality to the page. For example, use the Welcome App to create a custom page for visitors.
• Fill out the all the company info.
• The mission statement should reflect what your fans can expect to get by being your fans.
• Integrate your business Twitter account into the page.
• Include links to other social networks your business belongs to.
• Add the fan page widget to your website.

Useful Facebook Apps

• Facebook Blog App – Allows you to post the RSS feed from your blog. Posts will be displayed on your profile.
• Twitter App – Allows you to integrate your Twitter profile. Tweets will be displayed in your status stream
• YouTube Box App – Post videos from your YouTube account to your profile
• Skype Me – Skype is a VoIP phone service that costs pennies to use. If you have a Skype account or thinking about getting one, this application will allow users to call you right from your Facebook profile.
• Promotions App – Use the Promotions application to set up interactive campaigns, such as contests or giveaways, on your Facebook profile or fan page.
• Extended Info – Although your Facebook profile does have space for you to tell people about yourself, sometimes what’s available in the Facebook options is not enough. Extended Info is an application that allows you to add additional, custom information to your profile. If you had a personal profile, this would be a wonderful tool for adding information about your business.
• Discussion Boards – an application that allows you to run a small forum on your Facebook profile.
• Welcome Tab for Pages – This application allows you to create a welcome page for people who visit your Facebook profile or fan page. You can add text, photos, and video. The page can be set as a landing page on your profile.

Facebooking

• Integrate the widget into your website and encourage web visitors to “Like” it.
• Your business profile and your personal profile should be separate. This is important if you share personal information. If you get friend requests from people you don’t know, refer them to your business page.
• If you wouldn’t say it to your grandma, don’t post it on Facebook.
• After you get 25 people to join your business page, you can get a pretty URL from Facebook (e.g. http://facebook.com/yourbusinessname). Take advantage of this when you qualify.
• Do not use the name of your MLM in your fan page name. You want your fan page to be portable.
• Use Facebook’s friend finder tool to find people you know and friend them.
• Your status updates should provide value to your readers. You are not limited to a certain number of characters so feel free to post information that is great.
• How much you participate on Facebook is your personal preference. But be consistent.
• Try to be on Facebook when your target audience is on Facebook. Popular times include in the morning before work, at lunch time, and after work.
• You will receive page requests all the time. Which ones you join is up to you. However, to maintain a professional front, don’t join the crazy ones. They show up on your profile.
• When commenting on blogs, if they allow you to connect using Facebook then do that. Your comment will also appear on your Facebook profile.
• Don’t friend spam. If they refuse or don’t respond, don’t keep asking.

Definitions

• Like = This is a vote for a page. Recommendations show up on your status page.
• Friend = To request a connection with another member on Facebook
• Unfriend = To disconnect from another member on Facebook
• Status Update = Short messages to your friends about your status (or thoughts and recommendations). There are no character limits.
• Farmville, Mafia Wars, and hundreds of others = These are in site games that will eat up your day if you let them.

Building Your Network

• Know who you want to network with. Determine who you target audience is.
• Use http://www.topfacebookfollowers.com/ to find people to friend.
• Some people friend everyone and some people don’t. Be careful if you post personal info.
• Go for quality over quantity. Take the time to get to know the people in your network.
• Join Fan pages of other business associates and contribute to their wall. This will help raise your visibility and attract more fans.
• Join Fan pages of your company brand and Like their news.
• Integrate your Facebook profile into other social networks and your website.
• Don’t be afraid to unfriend people who have stopped posting updates, only spam, or don’t engage with you. Quality over quantity.
• Make use of promotions widget to promote your product, service or business
• Use the testimonial widget and encourage colleagues and customers to write a testimony of you and/or your product, service, or business.
• This is controversial but you can join Like parties where members like each others pages. The Likes are seen by everyone in your network so you can really extend the reach of your brand if you do this.
• Send updates to your fans but don’t abuse this function because it sends a real email to them. Send out unique content to fans to encourage more people fan your page.
• Use the Welcome app to create a custom welcome page that encourages people to fan your page.
• Ask your Twitter followers to friend you on Facebook. Promote the link in your Twitter stream.

My Facebook Marketing Strategy

• Self promotion – to my blog, articles, etc.
• Promote other people

Facebook Etiquette

• DO NOT SPAM. Spam on Facebook comes in several forms. 1 – Only promoting your stuff 24/7, 2- Sending personal messages that ask people to visit your business or buy your stuff, 3- Sending fake event notification to people asking them that are really invitation to join your program, 4- Letting robots Failbook for you.
• However, don’t go the other way and never promote your stuff. Find balance.
• Log in regularly to check and respond to messages. 100% automation is not recommended. People want to talk to you, not a robot.
• Thank people for friending you and Liking your content.
• Comment on other people’s status updates.
• Engage in conversation.
• Be yourself. No one else can do the job
• Don’t argue on Facebook. You will end up on Failbook.com. Use the personal message function to disagree.
• Promote your Facebook account like any other web property you own.
• Don’t just talk business. Talk about your other interests as well. Be a real person.
• However, your Facebook profile is not the appropriate place for drunk pictures of you on Halloween.

Promoting Your Facebook Account

• Add the Facebook widget to your website
• Add a link to your email signature
• Place a link on your business cards
• If you do article marketing, link to your Facebook account in your resource box.
• Run specials or give away coupon codes to your Facebook friends to encourage other to join.
• Participate in Facebook forums relevant to your business
• Friend other people. Most people will friend you back.
• Engage, engage, engage
• Share your link on other social networks
• Make your fan page a place where people can get exclusive information if they friend.

Using Facebook Ads

• Facebook’s ad platform provides a great way to target consumers on the site.
• To avoid wasting money, you should know who you are targeting.
• Put some thought into the design of your ad. Use an eye catching title and graphics. Search on the internet for tips on designing a good ad.
• Choose Pay Per Click (PPC) instead of impressions or you will end up paying thousands and not getting anything in return.
• Set a daily budget you can afford.
• Ask you users to Like your Facebook ad. More Likes usually results in lower pricing.
• If you can, rotate you ads. Ads tend to go stale after awhile as members of the site get used to seeing them.

Visit the Social Media Video Library for more blogging and social media training. Contact me for a free 1 hour consultation on how to use Facebook and other social media tools to your advantage.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing is required if you want to appear on your prospects radar. Although people are using sites like Twitter and Facebook to socialize, they are still using Google, Bing, and Yahoo to search for information about products, services, businesses, and people. This webinar focuses on teaching you the basics of search engine marketing and search engine optimization such as keyword selection and optimizing your website.

About the Search Engine Industry

• Search engines have been around in one form or another for centuries. The most recognizable one prior to Google was the library cataloging system.
• The first search engine as we know it today was called Archie. It was created in 1990 by McGill University computer science students Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch. The number of files on the internet was so small that indexing was not necessary. They could be searched through manually.
• Although there are thousands of search engines today, there are only a few which are truly independent, Google, Bing, and Ask. All others get their results from them or are site specific.
• Yahoo! Is the oldest major search directory but Google is the biggest. Google averages over 11 billion searches per month.
• YouTube is the #2 search engine online with about 3 billion searches per month. It accounts for 28% of Google’s search traffic.

What is SEO/SEM

• SEM = Search Engine Marketing: Umbrella term for paid and free tactics used to raise visibility in search engines
• SEO = Search Engine Optimization: A variety of free techniques used to increase web page visibility in search engines.
• The goal of SEO/SEM is to rank on the first page of search engine results to attract the most traffic.
• The SEO industry began when search engines started indexing the web in the mid nineties. At the time, it was the realm of hobby webmasters. Today, it is a multimillion dollar industry with large and small companies dedicated to improving page visibility.
• Currently, the SEO industry is shifting directions because of the rise of social media. More and more people are using site specific search engines (Twitter, Facebook) to find information.
• - Why Should I Care?
• It is difficult to pinpoint the exact number of pages on the internet because the number changes by the minute. However, at last count there were over 110,000,000 distinct websites online. The average site has 50 pages which means there are at least 5 million pages online.
• Although Social Engine Search is rising in popularity, traditional search engines are still the first place people go to look for information.
• The majority of people do not click beyond the first 3 pages of search engine results for information.
• If you want to attract targeted traffic to your website, you must rank within those first few pages. Otherwise, you are leaving money on the table because your potential clients will not be able to find you.

It’s All About the Keywords

• The engine in search engines are the keywords.
• Keywords are the words and phrases people use to find information online.
• To attract targeted traffic to your website, it is import to use relevant keywords. These are the keywords your target audience uses to find information about the subject they are interested in.
• Not all keywords are the same. Some are research words and some are buy words.
• Research words are words people use when they are looking for information. They tend to be generic and non specific (e.g. refrigerators, social media marketing)
• Buy keywords are words people use when they are “shopping” and ready to spend money. They tend to be specific and can include purchase terms (e.g. cheap Maytag dryer, search engine consultant)

Keyword Research Basics

• Keyword research starts with your product. What are you selling? What words would people in your target audience use to find it?
• Strangely enough, your product is not always going to be the exact keyword people use to find info on it.
• For Instance, many of you are selling home based business opportunities. While that is a popular keyword, other keywords people use include work at home, home business, work online.
• A great place to get ideas about keywords is your competition. Read the articles on their site. What keywords seem to be popping up frequently?
• You can also view the page source of their web site to see what keywords they have listed in their meta tags.
• There are several tools online that will evaluate websites for keyword activity. Examples include SEM Rush, Compete, and Keyword Spy.
• Typically, you do not want to try and rank for singular or generic keywords (e.g. business, personal development). Not only are they nearly impossible to rank for but the traffic you receive from them is unfocused and doesn’t always convert well.
• The longer and more specific the keyword, the more targeted the traffic will be.
• Use tools to see how popular a particular keyword is. Keyword popularity tools include WordTracker, SEO Book Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Tool.
• Typically, the less popular a keyword is, the easier it will be to rank for it. When you are starting out, shoot for keywords in the low hundreds. (e.g. home based business = 3790 searches per day, online home based business = 155 searches per day and is targeted to people looking for internet opportunities)
• You want to rank for a variety of keywords associated with your business. However, start with one and its iterations until you get the hang of SEO/SEM.
• Branding with SEO means you want to be associated with a particular keyword set. When people think of you, they think of the keyword and your business.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

• The keywords need to show up on your website and often. However, overall keyword density should not exceed 5%. Going over that is considered keyword spamming and search engines will smack down your website.
• Your keyword should show up in the title tag of your sites and your articles. (e.g. Stacy Kinney – Social Media Trainer, or A List of Work at Home Businesses You Can Do In Your Spare Time)
• Your keywords should be a category or tag on your blog
• In your articles, try to get your keyword in the first and last paragraph, then sprinkle it throughout the rest of the content. Vary the keyword with other iterations of it.
• Use keywords in your image descriptions
• Use subheadings in your articles with the keywords. Wrap them in header tags (h2, h3, h4). Search engines put more weight on words within header tags.
• Offsite SEO is just as important as onsite SEO. Specifically, the links pointing to your website need to be abundant and optimized.
• Search engines consider links to your website to be a vote for your website as the most relevant site about a particular keyword.
• This is the primary reason why spammers do what they do. They are trying to improve their search engine rankings at your expense.
• The links pointing to your site should include your keywords in the anchor text. (e.g. <a href=http://www.stacykinney.com>Social Media Marketing</a>)
• Try to vary the keywords in the anchor text pointing to your site if you can to make your links seem as natural as possible.

Getting Backlinks

• You can generate links to your site in a number of ways.
• Post articles to article directories. In the resource box link to your website using keywords as the anchor text.
• Comment on blogs. Leave your name plus your keyword (e.g. Stacy Kinney – Social Media). Using keywords only will make you look like a spammer.
• Participate in forums. Place your link in the signature box.
• Guest post on other people’s blogs. Place your link in your author bio.
• Write content that people want to link to.
• Exchange links with other people in your industry.
• Create a giveaway product that links back to your site. Example, WordPress theme.
• Get interviewed by other people in your industry.
• Submit your site to web and blog directories

The Truth About Pagerank

• Pagerank is the thing that put Google on the map and made it the giant that it is today.
• Google uses over 200 factors to rank web pages. The number it spits out sits on a scale of 1-10. This scale represents where the site sits on the first page of the Google result pages. So a Pagerank of 10 sits at the #1 position in the results.
• When Google introduced the concept of the Pagerank, webmasters went nuts. It was supposed to gauge the trustworthiness of a particular site but it quickly become a status symbol. However, the search engine giant continued to promote it.
• Years later, though, Google is trying to mitigate some of the consequences that have occurred because of Pagerank by downplaying the importance of it.
• The truth is, it really is not important to your success. As long as you are showing up on the first two pages of the search results for your keywords, you will get the traffic you need to be successful.

Integrating SEO Into Social Media

• Google and Bing have started integrating social media into their result pages. Google has contracted with Twitter and Bing has a partnership with Facebook.
• Optimizing your social media profiles for search engines is pretty simple. Just use your keywords whenever you can.
• Use them in your bio and descriptions of the content you are linking to.
• Use them in your tweets and/or use keyword hashtags
• Try to use keywords in the anchor text when linking from Facebook.
• On LinkedIn, instead of using the default anchor text for your links change to keywords.
• Make sure you are using keywords in your article titles because they are often the only thing that will show when retweeted or Liked on Facebook.
• Bing shows Facebook content according to how many Likes it has. Encourage your followers to Like your content. Integrate social media tools on your website to make this easy.

Definitions

• Backlinks = Links pointing to your website from other sites on the internet.
• Target Traffic = Traffic that is searching for your category product or service who are more likely to buy or join
• Anchor Text = The words that sit inside of a hyperlink
• Web Directories = These are directories that list websites by category. There are general and specialized directories for both blogs and regular websites.
• Meta Tags = HTML code that is read by search engines which provides additional information about the website. There are several different kinds including a description tag and a key word tag.
• Title Tag = This is HTML code that tells the search engines what the title of the page is.
• Header Tags = HTML code that defines what words are the headers on the page.
• SERPs = Search Engine Results Pages; The pages that display the results of your search query.

Tips and Tools

• Your search engine marketing campaign should be slow and steady. Doing too much at once will cause the search engines to flag you as spam.
• Organize yourself. Come up with a content and linking schedule that you can do on a regular basis. (Example: Each week, post 1 article to blog, 2 articles to article directories, comment on 5 blogs)
• SEO changes constantly. Read blogs of SEO leaders to stay on top of what is happening in the industry. Search Engine Watch, SEO Moz, and Search Engine Journal are good ones.
• Make sure the theme for your website is SEO compatible. This means that title tags are in the right places and that there are back end tools which will help you with your SEO.
• Use plugins that assist in SEO such as All In One SEO Pack


Visit the Social Media Video Library for more blogging and social media training. Contact me for a free 1 hour consultation on how to use search engine marketing and other social media tools to your advantage.

A term only coined relatively recently in marketing terms, viral marketing is the act of business promotion using social networks such as Facebook or YouTube. A successful viral marketing campaign will result in millions of viewers hits on your video, massively increasing your company’s exposure to potential customers.

Though viral marketing is relatively cheap and can be quite effective, it is not that easy to achieve. However, the tips explained below should help you…

The predominant factor that must be adhered to is that your video must be entertaining. The video must be informative, controversial, remarkable or just plain funny. You must cause the audience to want to show their friends or co-workers the video, thus starting the chain.

Money is not important. You do not need an expensive set with big Hollywood actors; you just need a camera, an idea and a few takes.

Even though YouTube will allow you to upload videos of up to ten minutes and one hundred megabytes; a long video will only put people off, depending on the content. Try to limit your video to between thirty seconds and two minutes.

A detailed and precise description will go a long way to increasing your videos exposure in the event of a user search. Making sure the correct keywords are used relating to your video will mean that viewers are more likely to watch it.

Users can easily tell if a video is just a marketing exercise and if you make a video that attempts to deceive the audience into thinking that the video was consumer generated, and you fail, you will have the reverse of the intended outcome to which you sought after; meaning you will possibly gain negative feedback.

One popular way that companies have pushed their way into viral marketing is by creating a series of linked videos, thus enticing previous viewers back and then, ideally, giving them more reason to send the link on.

Probably just as important as making a good video is actually telling people about it. There is no use in making a great video if nobody sees it. Add links to the video from your websites homepage, or other pages, incorporate the link into your email signature and send internal memos to employees notifying them of the existence of the video. You must start the ball rolling yourself, but once it does, it will be a steep slope down!

Find Out More : Viral Videos