Promoting Yourself on Facebook – Using Groups

Facebook is an incredibly powerful social networking service. Its interface and framework allow a single person to spread news virally through their social bookmarking service. Communities of friends in the Facebook Group apps are growing in popularity.  

As an author you should create Facebook Groups to further promote “brand” presence, promote news/events, share links,  and conduct discussions all in one spot to generate more excitement and build your audience. More than a fan site, Facebook Groups allows you to interact with your audience on a level that is comfortable and easy to maintain.

Unlike a blog, Groups is easier to maintain and keep fresh. You can assign mulitple administrators to help facilitate content growth. Now go out there and select a title, category and description that is relevant to your brand and start directing your existing friends to join your group. Then kick it into high gear, hang on tight, start adding content that stimulates interaction, and watch your group grow!

Raise Your SEO Presence with Google Local Search

Have you ever wondered how a local business got to be first in Google Local Search when you click on maps? Is it by address? Nope! Or maybe it is alphabetical? Nope!  It is based on keywords! 

Let’s say you are a dog groomer and your business is  Pretty Paws. No keywords in your business name…so how will people find you if they don’t know your business’ name? What if they were looking for a groomer on the net, would your name show up first? Top three? Probably not!  Google map search ranks sites based on keywords. It takes less than five minutes to do and is worth the effort to get your business listed based on YOUR keywords on their maps! 

Go to local search and take those five minutes to enter your business using your key words. If you were Pretty Paws your keywords might be: groomer, dog groomers, dogs, dog grooming, etc.  Follow these keywords with your town’s name…Dog groomer + Puppytown + WA

After you spend your five minutes, Google sends you an automated email with a pin number. They then call you, you enter your pin number and that is that for confirmation.  Within 24 hours your listing appears. Then you check to see if you selected the best keywords based on how you rank on the maps search. 

Isn’t that easy? Let me know about your experience!  Matter of fact, perhaps you should google yourself on maps using your keywords BEFORE you try this and then AFTER and see how it changes your rank on the Maps page for your community!

Publishing as a Marketing Tool

Good marketing begins with collaborative efforts and strong organization. What is more organized then a good book? Research shows that when there are solid connections between the customer and the goods and services they desire profits increase. The amazing growth of business information on the net is another market driver.

According to Osterman Research, email volume alone is growing between 35 and 40 % annually. How do you get in front of your niche in a way that demonstrates your creative new and useful ideas that solve the challenges that people face every day?

Creativity is only useful if it is channeled and directed. According to Warren Bennis, “Today’s successful companies live and die according to the quality of their ideas.” Creativity is critical for survival in any career. It is the life blood for constructing a competitive edge.

In order to succeed in the current market requires that entrepreneurs must drop their limiting assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors. They must critically analyze the connection between resources, needs and values. Entrepreneurs must harness their creativity and learn the techniques and behaviors that generate ideas.

Successful entrepreneurs tap into their creativity to throw off existing paradigms. They don’t allow themselves to be rule driven and they avoid preconceived ideas of what the world is or is not. Creativity and innovation are an integral part of entrepreneurship.

Presentation Skills

Talking Head presentation style is reminiscent of the college professor who began droning psychobabble in your survey course PSY 101 course and never stopped until the end of term. 300 students dutifully trooped in and out of the theatre style room TTH for a class in boredom. Many took the opportunity to do other homework, right letters home to mom and dad, to nap, or to zone out and doodle aimlessly. The point is that no useful knowledge was gained unless it was a promise to never take another course from that professor!

There is a time to talk and present information and concepts but it has to be skillfully interspersed with stories and opportunities for interaction with material and each other. Adults really prefer to learn when they can apply a presented concept to their business practices. They want to know how they can specifically take XYZ technique and use it.

Apply the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Silly) when presenting information to a group.

• Never have more than three to four points to make about your topic. 
• New knowledge must be built on old knowledge. 
• It takes time to make those links and build the connections. 

You only have a limited amount of time to get your audience’s attention and keep them engaged with the topic. Don’t waste it on talk that does not engage and motivate your audience.

Integrated Marketing Strategies – Building and Maintaining Brand Awareness Pt 4

Your website should still be the center of your marketing efforts; however, to make this happen you now have to have a marketing plan that drives traffic to your website. How do you do this? Through a variety of tools that include some variations of the following:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Press Releases
• Social Networking
• Blogging
• Article Marketing (to include possible syndication)
• Newsletters
• Internet Advertising
• Video or Podcasting
• Viral Campaigns
• Pay per clicks
• E Books
• White papers

The key to marketing success is learning what people are looking for and where they are looking. The internet has become ubiquitous in our world. A smart marketer will build a keyword-rich webpages and websites based on those words.

The future of information marketing is in the social networks that are popping up all over the internet. Facebook, Biznik, and other networks are growing in popularity. Engaging prospects and customers on social sites has now become a critical part of a focused marketing plan.

Just because you launch an awesome site and announce it in social websites does that mean you will get the traffic you are looking for? Of course not! If only it were that simple! Planning and creating an amalgam of methods that reaches out to the world at large and begins to create an audience. Your marketing plan must:

• Catch the audience’s attention
• Generates interest
• Provides useful or helpful information that solves a specific customer problem
• Create and opportunity for your target audience to take action

One inexpensive way to do this is to create newsletters, eBooks, and white papers. But how do you get those to your audience? How do you create the audience? Through opt-in methods that are permission driven. Give them something of perceived value to get their name and email address in order to build a database of contacts. A good newsletter contains relevant information that benefits your audience. It also helps that audience to learn more about you and your company so they can build the trust required to potentially make a purchase in the future. Newsletters and eBooks help personalize your business and create a positive perception of you and your business when done well.

Integrated Marketing Strategies Pt 3 – Building and Maintaining Brand Awareness

Public relations is a marketing and management tool that attempts to promote a company’s image, product or service and to counteract negative publicity on occasion. To do this public relations use news releases, feature stories, newsletters, to reach different media and audiences. Public relations is do is targeted at establishing goodwill and warm fuzzies. It is a valuable tool for reaching a broad audience cheaply with your message.

Successful public relations campaigns:

• Set realistic goals
• Provide valuable pertinent information from an expert source

Brand marketing done effectively implements a clear, consistent message. People often purchase an item based on the perception that the product or service will be the same each time. A simple effective message that comes through loud and clear through its delivery is incredibly effective. Think of Nike’s latest branding message of “Just do it!” Short but effective, we know exactly what they mean.

So how do you plan to integrate your brand image into a message that conveys itself both on line and in print? Once internet brand marketing was nothing more than a website that you hope through random luck someone visited. In today’s internet world there are a variety of marketing methods you can use to market your business and develop your brand on online.

Integrated Marketing Strategies Pt 2 – Building and Maintaining Brand Awareness

I have a son who at a young age wanted to start a business painting 911 curb addresses in the neighborhood. We lived in an area where the snow plows regularly scraped the numbers off. His startup wasn’t a bad idea. He just wasn’t sure of how to close the sale. He had stencils; he had the pre-requisite black and white cans of spray paint. He beta tested his process on our curb and on the neighbors’. He had practiced all his techniques but his “elevator speech.” His father pressed him to try and “sell” him a painted curb. My son inhaled and began with a stammer, followed by a stutter, and then a long string of “ahhhs and uhhhs.” His dad asked him, “Do you know what you want to tell me?” Long pause followed by a deep inhale and a sob. His dad asked him, “What are you selling? Why do people need to buy what you are selling? Why are you the one to hire for this service?” My son paused for a minute and then said through the curtain of frustrated tears, “Dad, I don’t know why they should hire me. I guess ’cause I do a good job.” Shrugging his shoulders he turned to walk away. His dad stopped him, “Boy! Are you a man or a mouse?” My son without missing a beat said, “I don’t know dad, but I sure like cheese!” He had no clue what his message was or how to get it out effectively…he just knew he liked money.

Integrated marketing is about building and maintaining brand awareness and identity. Good integrated marketing sends a coordinated series of different but related messages through different kinds of media thus increasing the chance or reaching and persuading the target audience. Perhaps the most critical part of an integrated marketing campaign is to maintain a consistent theme in your message.