Social Media Is The Marketing Power of YOU

By Luis Galarza - Internet Marketing.

A Beginners Guide To Social Media Marketing And The Effects Of The Power Of "YOU"!...

Picture by: Gary Koelling.

Before we get into how to use social media marketing, first of all you need to understand that of the heck is social media and why is becoming so important for any size business, online or offline to get involve in it. Web 2.0 which is the technology behind social media is more than just a fancy code word or lingo from the Internet, was the beginning to a new era of personal interaction, business transparency, and permission marketing, plus:

• Information distribution.
• Communication.
• Content interaction.
• Content creation.
• New Internet marketing strategies.
  
• Brand marketing.
• Buzz or viral marketing.
• Market authority.
• Credibility building.
• Team collaboration.
• Online reputation management.
• Journalism.
• Online content sharing.
• New laws of social ethics.
• New spam movements.
• New SEO strategies.
• New traffic generation tactics.
• Clever web innovations.
• And new money making markets and trends.
  

Please if I forgot any other benefit of social media please share it with us through the comment link above or bellow this post.



In Plain English.

This new communication medium is not other thing than the new way to create online content with easy to use publishing tools. This new Internet technology put the power of content on people "YOU", by helping you distribute, share, find new information that would it be hard or maybe impossible to discover without it.

In this new Internet you aren't just a reader anymore, you became an instant publisher...

Now social media marketing is the effective way of using web 2.0 tools to interact with potential customers and with net authorities that can help you spread the word about your company or product.

Here is a great video I found on YouTube that can help you understand this in plain English:



Hope this video gave you a clear "in plain English" explanation about how this new net evolution works.



The Power Tools.

One of the thing that make this sociology + technology era so useful and popular are the tools available to you, that can help you find, create, distribute, and share information in a very easy fashionable way. Some of those tools are:

1. Blogs services like Blogger or Wordpress.
   
2. Micro-blogging like Twitter.
   
3. Podcasting like BlogTalkRadio & Talkshoe.
   
4. Video sharing sites like YouTube and Revver.
5. Picture sharing sites like Flickr and Twitpic.
   
6. Social networks like Myspace or Facebook.
   
7. Social bookmarking like Digg or StumbleUpon.
   
8. Question and answer sites like Yahoo Answers.
   
9. Social commenting sites like Blerp.
10. Custom Social networks like Ning.
11. Content sites like Squidoo or Google Knol.
12. Content syndication technology like RSS and Atoms.
    
13. And much, much more...
    

There are tools that help you collaborate on a project, others let you share files and documents publicly or with a team. Also you can find tools that are targeted to professional and business use like Linkedin and PartnerUp.

Marketing That Works.

So, how can you make this new medium of communication work for your business? Is there a secret sauce for success? You may already heard many different marketers talking about the power of this medium, and how it can be use to make money online and send a lot of targeted web traffic to your blog or site. But...

The Fact is: "Traffic that comes from web 2.0 sites don't convert good. If you really want to make money online you need to focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing), which refers to PPC or pay-per-click advertising."

Now this doesn't mean that you need to stay away from using this new medium to generate quality leads for your business or product. You can easily use it to:


- Increase branding exposure.

- Generate extra traffic of pre-qualify prospects.

- Generate branding buzz.

- Build new business contacts.

- Connect with potential joint venture partners.

- Connect with potential link partners.

- Also you can have community authorities to recommend you to there audience.



This new medium can be really effective as soon you use the right strategies, which need to be focus on a specific goal. So, before jumping in and start creating a profile on every community network you can find, you need to have the answer for each of the next 2 questions.

1. What's your goal from the use of social media? Which is, what you really want to achieve from it. Then...

2. What strategies are you going to use to get to those goals?


After you answer those to questions, the next step is to write down a strategic marketing plan for each goal, this way your efforts will be focus on action steps that eventually will taking to your final goal. For example: If you want to use social bookmarking sites to gain exposure and one way back links to your site so you can increase your search ranking then you need to plan how you are going to bookmark your content, what type of sites are you going to share, which content will be better to bookmark and how many links per day are your going to share. All this and more needs to be in your action plan. Here are some bookmarking tips you can use right now.

To get unlimited advice about "Web 2.0 and social media for small business" visit the IE Club.

Recommended Resources.

- Social Influence For Dummies.
- Blogging To The Bank.

- Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business Online.

TIP: Implement the sites that you already know how to use first, then make a schedule of how many time per day, week, and month are you going to use them. Another thing I recommend beginners is to use automation tools that can make your job easier, if you don't know where to find them I will give you a complete list of tools by the end of this week.

To your success,

Luis Galarza, Internet Marketing Consultant In Massachusetts.

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20 Bad Twitter Marketing Strategies to Avoid

So, You Want To Use Twitter As A Marketing Tool. Good, You Should, But Avoid These Bad Strategies!


Almost everyone know that social media has a huge Internet marketing potential, from beginners to advanced online marketers. The web 2.0 trend is so big that has become a whole industry all by itself... And my friend Twitter is one of the top social network sites available, and is a hot trend year.

This web 2.0 tool is completely free just like most social sites out there, and for that reason they attract million of members every week, and that's why marketer and online users and the bad spammers know that they can use it to engage with a lot of people in a short period of time. Specially in Twittervers, where the interaction is a little bit faster than other community sites.


The problem...

The problem is not the service, the problem are spammers, beginners that spam because they don't know better, and also getting advice from the wrong people.


Strategies To Avoid.

Here I collected 20 of the worst marketing tactics and tips I seen marketers use on Twitter. Please if I miss any don't hesitate to share it with us by clicking the "Comment button" located at the top and bottom of this article:
Read more »

Free Video Marketing Strategies For Beginners

By Luis Galarza - Affiliate Marketing Secret Training Guide Blog.

Are You Using Free Video Marketing Strategies To Bring Traffic To Your Web Site or Blog... Are You An Internet Marketing Beginner Who Doesn't Use Online Video As A Promotion Tool? I Got Strategies That You Can Use Today To Increase Your Web Traffic!

Dear web entrepreneurs, you need to start using free Internet video marketing to promote your online business, because maybe your competition is already using social video sharing sites like YouTube, Revver, Yahoo Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, and others to increase web traffic and develop an strong business base.

You need to know that Internet video marketing works... and here are three simple strategies you can start using right away to take advantage of this new powerful web 2.0 communication channel:

- Video Articles:
This is the most simple method of video marketing that you can use to build your brand, and send a ton of traffic to your blog or web site. Just think of your video marketing as article marketing... Instead of re-writing new articles, just turn your content into videos, and submit them to as many social video sharing sites as you can.

Remember to add your business name, your USP or Unique Selling Proposition, and your site or blog URL at the top right corner of your video, this because now that Google is putting advertising on the bottom of YouTube videos, and you don't want this ads to cover your business contact information. Also, is a good idea to add your business information at the end of the video.

- Quick Video Shows:
This is an excellent way to average the power of your video marketing campaigns by dividing your articles into mini video tips show, where you are going to provide useful quick tips that your niche audience will love, and be back for more.... This type of campaigns can become viral right away and because it can be created really fast you will give you faster web traffic results.

- Online Video Seminar or Webinars:
This campaigns are excellent to get you notice as an authority on your niche... This type of video campaigns can be as long as 2 hours, but they need be full of high quality information. The easy way to create this type of videos is by thinking step-by-step tutorials, that will give your viewers an A to Z training about a single topic that is relevant to your niche. You are going to spend sometime developing this type of campaigns but they are worth it.

TIP: I recommend you to use the video tips to start testing your market, and also check how other marketers in your niche are using free video marketing to promote their businesses. Then move to the ones with more content like the video articles... And create one seminar every other month or once a month, depending on your time and skills.


Resources:
- Tube Viral Training: Video marketing training course.
- Videoskin Templates: Excellent to make your videos look professional on your blog.

To learn how promote with online videos, I recommend you to check Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business Online 2008 Version. This is the number one Internet marketing training for over 10 years.


In Conclusion: Use your video phone or cheap digital video camera to start... Is about putting your content out there as soon as possible. Quality of the content will over come any video resolution problems!

To learn how can you be part of the Internet Entrepreneurs Club for only $2.95 click here.

To your success,

Luis Galarza, Internet Marketing Consultant Massachusetts.

About Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Internet Marketing and Small Business Consultant in the area of Leominster and Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Also, he had teach 100's of entrepreneurs how to make money online and offline without their own product.

A proud member of

The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs

.

Technorati tags: Luis Galarza, Online Marketing, Free Video Marketing, Video, Free, Video Advertising, Campaign,

Internet Marketing Plan For Beginners With Little Or No Money

By Luis Galarza - Affiliate Marketing Secret Training Guide Blog.

To Start Your Internet Home Business You Need To Know The Basics Of An Internet Marketing Plan For Beginners That Will Help You Start Promoting Your New Business Online With Little or No Money What's Over!

First before I continue with the basic step-by-step Internet marketing plan for beginners, you need to understand that to make the huge Adsense and affiliate commission checks, you will need to put some money into your business in order to help it grow smoothly, which little by little will turn into an online money making machine.

So, always save money to invest in your online business to keep it growing...

Many beginners always make a lot of big Internet marketing mistakes, and I don't want you to fail in the online marketing myth traps.


Here are some of the myth you should avoid:

- No researching the profit potential of the niche market they decide to monetize. This is suppose to be the first step you should make before even creating a web site or blog.

- Not writing a good strategic Internet marketing plan that will help you keep your strategies focus on your business goals.

- Spending too much money in web site design, development, and hosting. Now you can have a nice web site create for about $100 and even for nothing if you use free site builders.

- Thinking they need a top domain name to build a good reputation online.

- If you build it they will come... Without marketing your site you and whoever created your site are the only people that know about your site.

- Thinking they need their own product to start their own Internet home base business.

- Leaving SEO or search engine optimization for last... This is one of the worth mistakes you can make, you need to start optimizing your web site right from start.

- Thinking you need a lot of money before starting using Internet marketing strategies for your business. The Internet is an excellent communication channel that have many free and low cost marketing tools that you can use to test your idea, before investing a large amount of money.

- You need to learn how to use each of the elements and advertising tools that you have point in your Internet marketing plan. So, don't jump into PPC or pay-per-click advertising if you don't know how to use this marketing tool. PPC can eat your bank account if you're not careful.

- Join blogs, forums, and online clubs to learn more about the industry. And to find networking partners... Remember that running an online business is just like running an offline business, you need to take advantage of every networking opportunity you come across, and online is even easier to find a large amount of partners in your niche.

OK, now that you know some of the Internet marketing myth and mistakes many beginners fall in, we can start talking about the marketing plan.


First you will need some of the following tools:

1.- A free professional web site: You can get a Free Microsoft Live Basic Web Site, they will give you a free site with a free regular domain name (www.your-site.com). Yes, it's free, you only need an email account with Hotmail or MSN, and a credit card to verify your age, and done...

2.- A free Blogger blog or Wordpress: If you have a little investment you can get a low cost hosting account which includes free domain name to host your blog on your server. I recommend you to start with a free one so you can test how profitable your niche really is, and then go from there.

3.- A free Squidoo account: Squidoo is an excellent web 2.0 social media tool that has a lot of love from Google... And you can use this to gain more exposure for other top search keywords and you can make extra money at the same time.

4.- A need free classified ads and article directories: You are going to use this to attract more visitors to your site and blog... If you decide to use only a blog, it's OK. Just send the traffic to your blog.

OK, I hope this is not to many things to do, but the marketing strategy will work better if you have all this tools working passively for you.

Here is the step-by-step Internet marketing plan for beginners that you can use to start promoting your new Internet home business, plus you can make money online from multiple streams of income. This system work if you follow it the right way.

Step 1.- Use the free web site as your main company site where all your products or services sales landing pages are going to be. Then you are going to add at least one article per week and then re-write those article and submit them to the article directories. Also, you are going to link to your blog using the main keywords that you want your blog rank for on the search engines.

Step 2.- Your blog needs to be updated at least once per day, you will not link to your main company site from the homepage of your blog, instead you are going to create a blog post with all your contact information, on this post you will have a link back to your main website. What you doing is giving a higher rank back link to your main site, because you will add a link to this post on the homepage of your blog.

Step 3.- You will add a direct one way back link to your Squidoo pages or lenses, and your Squidoo lenses will have one way back link to your main site. The more Squidoo pages you create the better. But, you are going to do this only with the ones with content that it's relevant to your main site niche market.

For example: If your main site is going to be optimize for the keywords "Weight Loss", and your blog can be optimize for a combination of the main keyword and some lower traffic keywords like, "Weight Loss Story". Then your Squidoo lenses will be optimize for as many lower and high traffic keywords (per lens).


How Will You Make Money Online With This Internet Marketing Plan?

Step 4.- If your web sites are targeting a niche that has digital information products or ebooks, regular books, software, membership sites, services, and physical products. You have a larger list of monetization opportunities that range from: Adsense, Affiliate Programs, CPA Networks, Clickbank, Amazon, Zlio, Contextual Ad Networks like Adbrite, Commission Junction, etc... Plus, your own products or services.

Test what's better for you, but here is a little strategy to get started:

Step 5.- Add Google Adsense at the top and bottom of your article on your main site. Don't put adsense on the main page, only on the article pages. You can add a little recommendation section on your main site's homepage for some affiliate product and link to pre-sell or review post on your blog.

Step 6.- Add Adsense to your blog on the top and on the left side of your content. Also you can use other contextual ad networks or CPA networks like Azoogle. Also put a widget from Amazon below the Adsense, and AuctionAds widget at the bottom of each post, you can also try this ads at the top of your posts.... Just test what works better for you.

Step 7.- With affiliate programs, don't link directly to the merchant, link to your pre-sell or review post pages this way you have double chances for visitors to click on Adsense or see something else they are really interest in.


Increase Your Web Site Traffic.

Step 8.- Now you need to write articles at least once or twice per week or more at the beginning, and post free classifieds ads for your affiliate reviews or pre-sell pages, and for your own products. Then Digg and StumbleUpon each article, and blog posts. Also, use Autopinger to ping your blog post right after you post it. And when you Digg or add them to any social bookmarking site, make sure you ping your RSS feed from each of those sites.

Step 9.- Because of the back linking strategy and the one way back links from articles, classifieds, and social bookmarks, your site will start getting a lot of traffic from the top search engines. And this traffic will increase by the month, then by the week, and then by the day.


I recommend you to check Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business Online 2008 Version. This is the number one Internet marketing training for over 10 years.


In Conclusion: This Internet marketing plan for beginners will not work if you don't provide high quality content on each site. Then test and track everything... You can check my post about Split Testing to learn more about advanced techniques and free resources.

To learn how can you be part of the Internet Entrepreneurs Club for only $2.95 click here.

To your success,

Luis Galarza, Internet Marketing Consultant Massachusetts.

About Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Internet Marketing and Small Business Consultant in the area of Leominster and Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Also, he had teach 100's of entrepreneurs how to make money online and offline without their own product.

A proud member of

The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs

.

Technorati tags: Luis Galarza, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing Myth, Internet Marketing Mistakes, Training, Marketing Plan,

How to learn more about Lean-Agile

Several people who have taken recent courses have asked "where do we find a discussion group where we can learn more about agile?"

Here are some answers.

First, find local people.

Agile Alliance has a list of agile groups. And the Scrum community has identified some local groups (often the same ones) here. In fact, the Scrum community has identified its community more broadly and specifically, here.

What are other ways to learn? Certainly there are many books. Here is a list, although not complete.

There are discussion groups, especially on Yahoo. Here are my top four:

scrumdevelopment
extremeprogramming
agileprojectmanagement
leandevelopment

There are other very good ones.

And there are some good blogs as well. Carnival of the Agilists highlights better blog posts. And the Scrum community has listed a lot of great blogs. And don't forget the blogs in the Blog Roll to the right (some repetition in these lists).

That should get you more than started.

Proposed Reading List

For the CSM Class in NYC on Sept 5-6.

A teacher recently told me this: “To know and not to do is not to know.” And we know from many teachers that we learn best by thinking a bit and then practicing some, and then thinking some more and practicing more. This is embedded, as one example, in the Deming Cycle.

So, I have already suggested that the best way to learn for you, right now, might be to practice for a while. A short while.

Next, one needs to say that each of us is different. So, if we want our learning to be effective, we need to consider our individual needs and abilities. Some of you think in concepts, some in pictures, some with stories, etc., etc. Some of you understand (or have no interest in) User Stories, for example. Others have pressing needs to understand engineering practices.

Also, now that you have been infected with the Agile virus, you can read almost any book from an Agile viewpoint. War and Peace by Tolstoy is one of my personal favorites. This might be the best way for you.

Now, after all these explanations (and you might say, excuses), here are some suggested readings.

I have these books on my website, with direct links to Amazon, so you might want to go there: http://www.kittyhawkconsulting.com/id15.html

User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn. Great book on how to write and use User Stories. And once you feel you get the ideas yourself, go to his site (www.mountaingoatsoftware.com) and download some of the presentations on this subject. To use for your discussions with associates.

Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn. Here he discusses planning poker, and lots of other subjects around Release Planning and Iteration Planning. Again, he has very useful presentations on this subject as well.

The New New Product Development Game by Takeuchi and Nonaka. Article. This is where Scrum started. To me, it is essential that we view our selves as creating new products. Passing this one around starts to get light bulbs turning on.

Extreme Programming Explained (2^nd Edition) by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres. Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries and Ward Cunningham are the three guys most responsible for extreme programming. Kent is an excellent writer, and his discussion of values, principles and practices is wonderful. (Be aware that some people prefer the 1^st edition (2000), but that is now hard to find.)

The Knowledge-Creating Company by Nonaka. This is a HBR article that summarizes many of the key concepts in the book (of the same name) by Takeuchi and Nonaka.

The Concept of Ba by Nonaka. This is an article that summarizes some of the key concepts that are discussed in the Hitosubashi on Knowledge Management book, edited by Takeuchi and Nonaka.

Fearless Change by Manns and Rising. This book is about introducing a new idea into any “group” (such as your company). These ladies are actually Agilists, but the book is about introducing any idea (not specifically Agile). The book presents a little theory and lots of patterns on how to influence various people so that Scrum/Agile/Lean will succeed in your group. The majority of these patterns you know, but the reminders, tips and tricks are very valuable. Arguably, this is the most important book for you right now.

The Power of a Positive No by William Ury. Bill co-wrote Getting To Yes. This book, about saying no sometimes, is essential. Almost everyone in Agile that I know is not practicing sustainable work because they can’t say “no” enough. Frankly (although Bill is a friend) the title is a little hokey to me, and the basic idea seems obvious (you have to say “no” before any “yes” can have meaning). Again, in theory there is no difference between theory and practice…in practice, there is. As you read the book, I think you will learn useful ways to say "no" almost as often as you should. Priorities.

Working with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. This book has lots of ideas about how to deal with legacy systems. Michael is an excellent Agile Coach (a bit more in the XP flavor).

Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones. The first chapter of this book is an excellent introduction to Lean. Some of you will be amused to learn that Ohno, whom many credit with inventing Lean, said that he learned it all from Henry Ford’s book Today and Tomorrow.

Implementing Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Excellent source for taking Lean ideas and applying them to software development. This is their second book. Not a bad book for you to read first, in fact.

Godspeed on your journey.