5 Warning Signs of a Weak Social Media Strategy

Planning, implementing and executing a successful social media strategy is easier said than done. There are many components that can influence how well your brand performs online. Here are warning signs of a weak social media strategy that you need to be aware of before your efforts turn upside down:

1) Lack of Focus on a Few Social Networks

There are many social networks that can be leveraged but ask your team: “Why are we using Facebook? Why are we on Twitter?” Facebook does have more than 450 million users but will this be a priority for you? It’s tempting to chase the new, shiny thing and jump on the bandwagon without investing enough in a few specific social networks.

Focus on a few social networks to create a strong presence in a few venues compared to near non-existence on 200 social networks.

2) No Responsibility for Executing Social Media Activities

Putting your brand out there on social networks isn’t just putting up a Twitter profile; it’s a culture shift. When there is exciting news within your company such as a new strategic partner or an event that was very successful, these kinds of milestones should be shared with your market. Your clients are looking to bask in the glory of your success; give them that opportunity.

Consistency is necessary for implementing a successful social media strategy. If there is little to no activity on your social profiles, prospects will perceive it with less value and go to the next popular profile: your competitors’ profile. Roles and responsibilities must be determined to have employees buy in and become an active part of the efforts online.

3) Daily Tasks are not Aligned with Social Media Strategy

Social media isn’t like traditional marketing channels. Your brand can’t simply have a Twitter profile and expect thousands of people to view your tweets and click your links. The reason why social networking is popular is because of the strength of relationships. It takes time to build and maintain those valuable relationships with your clients. Employees need to take the smaller steps to accomplish objectives.

Small steps include replying to conversations with clients and prospects, monitoring your brand keywords online, conducting competitive analysis, etc. But if there’s a solid strategy in place, consider how the current day-to-day activities are aligned with the goals of the strategy.

4) Metrics Are Not Being Measured

It’s important to have a few key metrics that will be used to determine if your brand’s social media initiatives are a success or need tweaks. Without metrics, your strategy means nothing. The results dictate what worked, what didn’t and what needs to change to positively influence those metrics.

5) There is No Social Media Strategy in the First Place!!

Steps like signing up for Twitter and Facebook is a great step in order to secure your brand’s name but your brand can’t just start posting haphazardly. Just because you have the accounts doesn’t give you a good enough reason to start posting; that is not a recommended strategy for managing your social networks.

Ask yourself/your team, “do we really have a strategy?” If you’re not honest about this, all of your hard work will mean nothing. If you don’t have a social media strategy , stop putting it off and get started.

Marketing through Social Media – Is This Strategy worth Your Time?

Social media has become a common buzzword lately and has gained a lot of popularity in the business world. Social media can be defined as any website where users can upload their own content and share it with the Internet. Sites such as Twitter and Facebook are very well attended and have millions of users connecting with each other day and night.

The big question is if marketing through social media is worth your time. According to Facebook, 50% of their users log onto the site every day; Twitter now has 15 million active members that actively post Tweets; LinkedIn has over 50 million members looking to network. If that isn’t proof positive that there is a huge opportunity in social media nothing will convince you.

What Social Media Offers Marketers

The question is how can you use social media to help grow your business? By being present on these sites, you are opening yourself to more possibilities in your marketing strategy. Facebook and Twitter are essentially viral by nature and if a user happens to like your product or service, they will announce it on their page.

When the announcement is made, it goes out to everybody on their friends list and their friends might announce it to their list, and so forth. By putting up strong content and sharing quality information, you can spread the word about your business very quickly.

Social media also gives you another way to stay in touch with your prospects and customers aside from email marketing and blogging. You will be able to reach more people when the time comes to start marketing your new product or service.

Marketing Through Social Media via your Mobile devices

Social media sites also offer applications that are designed for smart phones such as the Android and iPhone. These applications are used by millions of people and many users check these sites regularly throughout the day by using their phones.

This means that you gain more exposure and it enables you to stay in touch with your prospects and customers more frequently. Other features such as private messaging through social networking sites and SMS notifications also offer another opportunity for Internet marketers.

Using Social Media as Part of Your Overall Marketing Strategy

Social media is not a replacement for your existing strategy; it’s a strategy that can make everything in your business more effective. Many Internet marketers are allowing their prospects and customers to receive their information through multiple channels.

Why do this when you can focus on one? It is because people have different user behaviors. One user may like to receive content on Facebook while another one would like to stay in touch by subscribing to your blog with an RSS reader.

By pushing your content out onto multiple channels, you’ll be able to reach your contacts wherever they are, making your marketing through social media an effective way to promote your products and services.

So to answer the question – marketing through social media is definitely worth your time. Many Internet marketers are combining social media and email marketing as well as blogging to get the most out of their promotions and spread the word about their business very quickly.

Want to succeed as an entrepreneur? Learn the skills and strategies you need to succeed as an online marketer. Get in-depth advice on personal development, online promotion, social media, and web traffic by visiting http://www.hasseandre.com/

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More Marketing With Social Media Articles

You Don’t Need to Get Everyone with Your Internet Marketing Strategy

As a home based internet business owner you need customers. More specifically, you need an internet marketing strategy that will generate qualified leads who you can convert into customers.

A qualified lead is a person who has an interest in, and is eligible to purchase, what you are selling. The current methods many business owners use to get leads from the internet revolve around cold selling techniques such as: purchasing lists of email addresses and sending out sales letters about their products or posting sales messages on every social networking site they come across. The problem with this type of internet marketing strategy is that it is unproductive. Your prospect will just ignore you or, worse, label you as a spammer.

Attraction Marketing is an Effective Internet Marketing Strategy

Thankfully, there is an internet marketing strategy out there called Attraction Marketing that is vastly more effective at generating qualified leads. Attraction Marketing is a pull method that takes your personal brand and combines it with targeted marketing tactics to reel in people who need what you have to offer. You don’t push your sales message on them. Instead, you simply show them that you are the person they want to buy from.

This type of internet marketing strategy sets you up as a person of authority on your subject matter. People don’t like the hard sell process any more than you do. It makes them feel like they are being manipulated into getting something they don’t want. They prefer to make an informed decision to purchase from someone whom they know and trust will provide them exactly what they need. As a perceived authority in your field, people will naturally look to you as that person.

Using this internet marketing strategy requires that you focus on being a problem solver. Look at your target customer and brainstorm what issues they may be struggling with. For example if you’re targeting people who want to lose weight, they would probably need help figuring out what type of foods they should be eating.

This is where you would use your knowledge and expertise to establish yourself as an authority on your subject. Going back to our weight loss example, you would present an eating plan that maximized nutrition and promoted weight loss to your target customer. By focusing on solving the customer’s problem rather than “selling” to them, you show that you care about them and that you can be trusted to help.

Done enough times, you will eventually build a reputation as the person to go to for advice and information which in turn gives your customers the confidence they need to buy from you. Think about it. Who do you go to when you need help with a problem? Chances are you go to people who have a proven track record for solving problems.

There are several ways you can execute this internet marketing strategy. You can write articles that address your client’s problems and post them on your blog or distribute them through article directories. You can use YouTube to upload video presentations that provide solutions to issues they’re wrestling with. You can sign up for a social networking service, like Twitter, and post helpful tips. As long as you focus on providing value and solving problems you will get results.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet marketing strategy ideas.

Online Reputation Management is Critical for Success

Your brand is just like a person. What you do and say will either add to its reputation or ruin it. In a time when a tweet can travel halfway around the world in a millisecond, staying on top of how your brand is being received by your potential clients is extremely important. Unfortunately, very few companies, small and large, know what people are saying about their brands online and only do any type of online reputation management when it is too late and their reputation has already been tarnished by bad press.

With the tools available online, conducting online reputation management and catching problems before they turn into major issues is so easy. Here are a few online reputation management tips that will help you maintain your good name.

Online Reputation Management Tips

Register Your Domain Name – Even if you don’t plan to use it, you should register your name as well as the name of your business. In addition to cybersquatters who will register your name in order to profit from it, people who are dissatisfied with you will also buy your domain name to start a website that trashes you. Unless your name is trademarked, do not expect any protection under the law. Your best defense in online reputation management is to buy your domain name and use it if you can.

Register Your Name on the Major Social Networks – In addition to getting your domain name, you should also register your name on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These popular mediums make it only too easy for other people to pretend to be you or a representative of your company simply by registering your name. This can lead to confusion and as well as a hit to your reputation if the person is a troll. You can use a service like Knowem to quickly see if your username is available so you can register it on the networks that are important to you.

Check to See Who is Using Your Username – Along those same lines, if you find that people are using your name, or your company’s name, then check out the accounts to see who has usurped it. It could be that the person has the same name as you or a similarly named business which just means you probably should have been a little quicker on the draw in registering on those networks. However, if it is a troll or cybersquatter, you will need to take action to prevent them from ruining your reputation.

Handle Posers with Grace – If you find someone is imitating you or using your username to trash you, you have a couple of options available. Your first step would be to ask the person nicely to stop using the account and maybe to turn the username over to you. If that doesn’t work, you can contact the administrator of the site to see if you are able to get relief through them. Those with legal grounds, such as trademark infringement, can get the courts involved. If none of those avenues are successful, you will need to create an official account and advise your clients that the other account is a fake.

Track Your Brand with Google and Yahoo Alerts – Google (Google Alerts) and Yahoo! (Yahoo! Alerts) offer a valuable service for online reputation management where you can track all mentions of any keyword that shows up in the search engines. Whether someone is singing you words of praise or dissing you with complaints, you’ll be able to keep track of the conversation going on about your brand almost from the moment it starts.

Set up searches on Twitter – Twitter also offers the same service on their website which is another reason why you should have a Twitter account. On this social networking juggernaut, you are able to use tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to monitor a particular keyword. This will allow you to connect with people who are talking about your brand and to solve problems as quickly as they arise with the online reputation management tools available.

Optimize Your Name in the Search Engines – While we are on the subject of search engines, you need to optimize your websites so that they are the first things that show up on the results page of a search engine for your brand name. For example, when you search my name, my blog is the first result. There are many companies that learned the hard way and have found both competitors and detractors showing up as the first result for their personal or company name. Invest in learning SEO techniques or hire a SEO company to ensure that you rank well for your own name.

Respond to Positive and Negative Feedback – We all like to have people say nice things about us but no person or company is immune to negative feedback. Whether it is someone patting you on the back or trying to stick a knife in it, you should respond to comments make about your company. It is important that when talking to people who are complaining about you that you remain professional at all times and work towards making things right. The last thing you want to do is aggravate the situation by causing an argument.

Add Positive Feedback to the Testimonials Section of Your Site – When you do receive positive feedback, don’t be shy about pointing it out to others. It is a simple matter to take a screen shot of Facebook and Twitter statuses saying good things about you and adding them to a testimonials page. You can also link to blog articles that say good things about you. This will add to the good will of your brand as well as make potential customers more comfortable working with you.

When it comes to online reputation management, you have to pay attention. It takes years to build up a good reputation and only seconds to ruin one. As unfair as that it, if you are serious about building a successful business, make managing your reputation a priority. You’ll be rewarded with passionate clients who believe in what you do.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter, online reputation management, and other internet business tools.

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Follow Up to Previous Marketing on LinkedIn Article

Last week, I wrote an article detailing how you can start marketing on LinkedIn by pimping out your LinkedIn profile to make it more attractive to prospects. This week, I’m going to show you a few different ways you can begin attracting people to your business by connecting with them on this frequently overlooked social networking website.

More Tips for Marketing on LinkedIn

Search For and Connect with People

LinkedIn has a search function that allows you to look up members in specific industries, companies, positions, educational levels, by name, and even by keyword. Some of these features require you to upgrade your LinkedIn account to the Pro level in order to use them. But you will be able to find and contact people who have a need for your products, services, and opportunities.

Join Groups Filled with Your Prospects

Like most social networking sites, you can connect with like-minded individuals on LinkedIn by joining groups. Use the search function to find groups related to your interests or business type. Not only will you be able to interact with potential prospects but you can often trade ideas on how to make your mutual businesses better and more profitable.

Alternatively, Start a Group for Marketing on LinkedIn

If you can’t find a group that fits your needs or you have a unique idea for one that will attract people in your target market to you, then start a group to use for marketing on LinkedIn. The one caveat to this is that you need to be prepared to run the group. A lot of people get caught up in the excitement of building an online meeting place that draws people to their business that they don’t realize the work involved in maintaining the group and keeping it relevant. If you are willing to put in the time, then you can definitely reap rewards from your efforts.

Use the Event Feature to Network Offline

LinkedIn has an event feature that lets you post information about events, both online and offline that you may be hosting. Additionally, you can find events that other people are hosting which will provide opportunities for you to meet with potential prospects in person.

Answer Questions in the Answer Section

Perhaps one of the best places to meet and impress prospects as well as do marketing on LinkedIn is through the Answer section of LinkedIn. This is the place where people post questions ranging from seeking business advice to how to better use LinkedIn. Taking the time to answer questions in this section helps to position you as an expert and encourages people to seek you out whenever they need help again. This can be just the thing you need to open the door to a long term relationship.

Direct Ads Campaign

If you’ve got money to spend, the LinkedIn will happy to post your marketing materials on their site. They have options for both companies with large budgets (over $25,000) and people with small budgets. Click on the Advertising button at the bottom of the LinkedIn site for more information on their program.

Because LinkedIn is a business oriented site, it makes the perfect place to look for prospects interested in joining a home based business opportunity. Take some time to get to know this often overlooked social site and you may be surprised at how much you get out of it.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using LinkedIn and other internet business tools.

(photo credit: nan palmero)

For more social media marketing tips including marketing on LinkedIn, read other articles I’ve written about using social media outlets to build your business.

Take Advantage of LinkedIn Marketing

The last few weeks I’ve been blogging about green topics and figured it was about time to get back to the main crux of this blog, Social Media Marketing. Today, we are going to take a look at LinkedIn marketing and how to use LinkedIn effectively.

LinkedIn is a place for businesses and professionals. It mostly used by people to connect with human resource managers, recruiters and companies who may be hiring for open positions. LinkedIn marketing is also a good way to get connected with other business owners and to find entrepreneur types who may be interested in starting a home based business rather than rejoining the corporate grind.

The only drawback to LinkedIn marketing is that you are limited in your ability to contact people on the site. With their free account, you can only email up to 3 people per month through the site. Therefore, you will need to either upgrade your account or look for other ways to contact your prospects. Do note that you can write off the fee for an upgrade as a business expense on your taxes. Talk to a qualified accountant about how this works.

But don’t let that stop you from taking advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer. Here are some tips on how to use LinkedIn to your advantage.

LinkedIn Marketing Tips

Fill Out Your LinkedIn Profile

One of the tenets of attraction marketing is to position yourself as an expert in your field. This is the angle from which you should approach your LinkedIn profile. You should list job experience and other relevant information that helps paints a picture of you as the person to go to for information about your business opportunity. Depending on the industry your business is in, this may require some creativity on your part.

Build a LinkedIn Marketing Profile for Your Business

LinkedIn also provides an option to build a profile for your business. You will be able to submit a description, categorize it by industry, and even add a link to your business’ webpage. When people do a company search, your business will display in the results depending on the criteria they use. Be aware, though, that you must have an email address that is associated with the company.

Additionally, if you are in network marketing, be sure that the name of your company is in compliance with their rules. Some network marketing companies do not allow the parent name to be used in any marketing materials or websites you create.

Add Your Blog and Twitter Account to Your LinkedIn Profile

Adding your blog and Twitter account to your LinkedIn marketing profile is easy and provides additional exposure to your other web properties. To add your blog to LinkedIn, sign in and then click on Profile. Click on “Add Application” and a list of items you can add to your LinkedIn profile will display.

If you have a WordPress blog, then select the WordPress option. For all other blogs, select the BlogLink option. On the next page, make sure the “Display on my profile” and “Display on LinkedIn homepage” is checked and then click Add Application. You will then be asked for your blog address and the application will automatically display the posts from your blog.

To add your Twitter account, go back to your profile. Make sure you are on the Edit My Profile tab. Click on the Add Twitter account option and fill out the information. Your latest tweets will then be displayed on your LinkedIn profile.

Customize Your Links

You probably already know that you can add links to your website and blog to your LinkedIn account. What you may not know is that you can customize the titles of those links to actually reflect the name of your site. On your profile, click Add Website. From the dropdown box select Other and in the box that appears enter the name of your website.

Add Recommendations from Clients or Business Partners

In marketing, social proof is very important. People take what others have to say about a person, company or product into consideration when making purchasing decisions. Connect with customers and other business associates on LinkedIn and ask for recommendation through the Ask for a Recommendation link (found on the Edit Profile page). These will display on your profile once they have been completed.

Add Presentations Using Slideshare or Google Presentations

Additional LinkedIn marketing you can do is to upload a business presentation to your profile using a Slideshare account or Google Presentation. Since there is no video widget available on LinkedIn at this time, a presentation is the next best thing. You can make your own presentation or check with the network marketing parent company for presentations you can distribute.

Create Your Profile in Multiple Languages

If you are targeting a non-English speaking demographic, such as the Spanish community, you can create a LinkedIn profile in another language. This will make your profile more accessible to people who may have difficulty with your primary language. You will also extend your exposure on the network.

Now that you have your profile attractively put together, next week I’m going to detail some ways you can reach out to others on LinkedIn.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including LinkedIn marketing and other internet business tools.

(photo credit: Mario Sundar)

For more social media marketing and LinkedIn marketing tips, read other articles I’ve written about using social media outlets to build your business.

Search Engine Marketing Speaks to Customers

In last week’s article, Search Engine Marketing – An Internet Marketing Strategy that Needs to Be in Your Toolbox, I talked about why your internet marketing strategy should include search engine marketing.

Between newspapers, education, business websites, personal blogs, social networking, and online magazines, the amount of information available on the internet continues to grow exponentially. Users turn to search engines to sift through it all and find the information they need to solve a problem they have. Search engine marketing is all about making sure your site gets listed within the first few pages of the search engine result for keywords that bring qualified prospects to your business.


Make no mistake, search engine marketing is complicated endeavor. In fact, a whole million dollar industry sprang up around the concept of optimizing web pages so that they rank well in the big three search engines. However, I’m going to share a few simple search engine marketing tips that will give your website the boost it needs to rank well and generate leads.

Search Engine Marketing Tips

Choose Your Keywords Carefully – Keywords are the foundation of your search engine marketing strategy. So to say it is important that you choose the correct keywords to target is an understatement. You are going to have to do some research here and find out the keywords your customers are using to source the products, services, and information you are selling. Luckily there are several tools online that can help with that.

- Aaron Wall’s Keyword Tool will tell you how many times a specific keyword, and variations of that keyword, have been used for in all of the search engines.

- Google’s Keyword Tool will generate a list of keywords based on a starting word you input.

Keyword research is an art in and of itself which we will cover more in-depth in a later article.

Optimize Your Web Pages for Your Chosen Keywords – It is important that the search engines associate your website with the keywords you have picked out. Therefore, for your search engine marketing to be effective they need to show up in the right places on your web pages.

- The title of your articles should include the keyword, preferable within the first 4-5 words and you should use your keyword within the first few and last sentences of your article.

- The keyword should be sprinkled liberally throughout the written content on the page. You want to shoot for a keyword density of 2-3% but definitely no more than 5-7% of the total amount of words on the page. Over usage of keywords can get your website flagged as spam and kicked out of the search results.

- Video and audio need an accompanying text description. Search engines can’t parse video or audio so you need to add keyword rich descriptive text that tells the search engine what it’s all about.

- Images should contain keywords in the alt tags. Not only does this allow your images to get ranked in image search engines but it helps impaired users understand what the image is about. Special browser read the image text and tells the user that there is an image and what it is.

- The categories and tags you use should be keyword rich.

- The description meta tag of both your website and individual web pages should include a keyword rich narrative of what the user will find when they click through to your website. Search engines use this description on the search result pages.

Build a Portfolio of Keyword Rich Backlinks – Offsite optimization is just as important to search engine marketing as onsite optimization. When you or other people link back to your website, you want to make sure they use keyword rich anchor text. This also helps the search engine associate your web page with your targeted keyword.

For example, if you are using search engine marketing to rank high for the keyword ‘home based business’, you want to make sure that when your website is referenced that the keyword ‘home based business’ is used when linking to you. Search engines interpret these types of links as a vote that your website or web page is the best source of information on that particular topic.

This is, by no means, is an exhaustive tutorial on search engine marketing. However, using these tips will get you going in the right direction towards dominating the search engines.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.

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Don’t Forget Search Engine Marketing

Despite the growth and popularity of social media, search engines will continue to be the start point for most people looking for specific information. This is especially true as search engines, like Google and Bing, have begun including results from social network sites, like Twitter, in their results page. What this means for you is that a good search engine marketing plan should be on the table for your business.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

The definition of search engine marketing, also known as SEM, is optimizing your website and internet marketing strategies so that your site ranks high in the search engine for targeted keywords. If you remember, keywords are those words and phrases your prospects use to find information related to the product and services you offer.

For example, people looking to start a home based business may enter the keywords, ‘start a business’ or ‘home based business ideas’. Unless the results they get have a lot of spam in them, most people will not continue past the first 1-3 pages of the search results. Therefore, the goal of your search engine marketing efforts is to get your website to rank within those first three pages, preferably the first page, for the keywords your target audience is using.

What You Should Know About Search Engine Marketing

Now before you rush to your website and start loading it up with keywords there are a few things you should know about search engines that will make your search engine marketing more effective.

* Search Engines are Dynamic – Google, Bing, and Yahoo are selling a service just like you. They want to provide their users with the most relevant results for their search terms as they can. They are constantly evaluating web pages to make sure they are still good enough to be included in the search results pages. This means you must always be doing some kind of search engine marketing to maintain or improve your position in their indexes.

* Search Engines Don’t Rank Websites – Now this may seem like crazy talk especially after that long explanation on how search engines rank websites based on keywords. In all actuality, search engines rank individual web pages. This is a good thing because you can target a wide range of related keywords to maximize the amount of search engine traffic flowing to your site.

* All Keywords Are Not Created Equal – Ranking well for specific keywords is at the heart of your search engine marketing strategy. However, not all keywords are the same. Some keywords will send you prospects who are only doing research on a topic and others terms will send you people who are ready to buy or invest in the product you are selling. You need to rank for both and build a sales funnel that will send them to your “Buy Now” button.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.

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Increase Traffic with Social Media Marketing

As an internet business owner, getting traffic to your website is an important component for generating sales and leads. It’s really all about the numbers. The more people you attract to your website, the higher the likelihood that you will make a sale or convert a prospect. Social media marketing can help you increase website traffic by getting your name in front of as many people as possible as well as boost your search engine rankings.

Here are a few suggestions for using social media marketing tools to increase website traffic:

Social Media Marketing Tips

Create Profiles at the Major Sites – Your first step to social media marketing success is to build profiles at the major social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These sites provide a platform for you to network with people who may be interested in your business. Don’t forget to include links to your website. Facebook and LinkedIn specifically allow you to submit the RSS feed of your blog which will help generate website traffic from people visiting your profile.

Bookmark Yourself – Another social media marketing tactic to get traffic to your website is to submit links to your website and articles to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon and Blinklist. When submitting sites, be sure to write an attention grabbing headline and description as well as use general and specific tags to categorize the material so it appeals to your target audience.

Submit Content to Targeted Social Sites – There are a number of social media sites and forums that cater to specific audiences. Many of them allow you to submit original content that is useful to the members. Submitting posts that tap into the needs of the community is a good way to get more website traffic. Be sure to close your articles with a strong call to action that directs the reader to your website.

Use Social Media Marketing Widgets – Your website should be outfitted with bookmarking widgets that allows visitors to submit your site and content to their favorite social media websites. WordPress has a number of plugins such as Tweetmeme, Sexy Bookmarks and OnlyWire that visitors can use to promote your website and increase your website traffic. If you don’t have a blog, or don’t use WordPress, tools like ShareThis and AddThis will work on any website.

Interact with Prospects – Possible the best social media marketing tactic you can use to get traffic to your website is to socialize with people. While the previous suggestions will help you spread your name around, you’ll make yourself more memorable if you actually interact with the members of these websites. You don’t have to have to be active at all of them. Pick one or two that you enjoy using and just starting connecting with people. Show an interest in what they have going on. Not only will you convert a prospect but you’ll make a friend and that is what social networking is all about.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using social media marketing and other internet business tools.

How well you market your business directly determines how successful your business is. With so many people online these days, internet based marketing has become an integral part of an effective marketing campaign. If you are not using the internet to promote your business then you might as well be flushing cash down the toilet.

Whether you are just learning how to market your business or you’ve been doing it for years, here are few tips for running a successful internet based marketing campaign that will attract customers to your business.

image courtesy of mbowlersr

Do offer a compelling reason to do business with you

The first question your customer will ask themselves when they come across your internet based marketing campaign is, ‘Why should I do business with you?’ You must provide them with a good reason otherwise they’ll just click on over to someone who will.

When crafting your offer, one thing to keep in mind is that your customer is not always motivated by price. People make purchases for many different reasons and only a few of those reasons deal with money. Entice your customers with an offer that benefits them in several ways and they’ll be happy to give you what you’re asking for.

Don’t launch without a plan

A good way to waste time and money is to just run out into the internet and begin haphazardly doing whatever seems like a good idea at the time. Not only is this the least effective way to run an internet based marketing campaign but you could end up sending out the wrong message and damage your reputation in the process.

Take a moment to think about the goals you want to achieve and carefully research the best internet marketing methods to use to accomplish those objectives.

Do track your results

An internet based marketing campaign is only successful if it gets results. And the best way to ensure you get results is by monitoring your progress. You can use something as simple as a spreadsheet program to track how well your marketing activities are doing at generating business. Drop anything that is either hindering your growth or just plain isn’t working.

Don’t get involved with social media to spam

Social media is all about the conversation. While a certain amount of advertising is acceptable, charging into a social networking website and immediately spamming members with your sales message is an unforgivable faux pas.

While your internet based marketing campaign must include time spent networking on social media sites, such as Twitter, focus first on building your reputation. Remember, most of the members on those sites have never heard of you. Make a good first impression by giving something of value to the community before presenting your sales message.

Running a successful internet based marketing campaign is really just a matter of using common sense and being consistent. Use the old adage of treating others the way you’d want to be treated and customers will be lined up at your door in no time.