OK, we have this new opportunity going on that everyone is doing, but not everyone understands. I’ve joined Linkedin, FaceBook, and Squidoo. I blog and I podcast. I’m working up nerve to get on YouTube. But wait. What am I going to get for all this? How much time do I need to spend? Where does this fit into my marketing strategy?

There is no question but it’s a happening thing

FaceBook is adding a million adults per week to their rosters.

YouTube gets over 50 million unique visitors per month.

FaceBook and MySpace have the equal daily traffic of Google and that’s going to double!

So how do you get in touch with all those people? How do you make social media work for you?

Social Media is about collaboration

It is said you already know enough people to network out to any resource you need. Social Media is about becoming a strong link in that networking web in which information, resources, ideas, friendship and inspiration are shared.

Casual vs. Purposeful Interaction

The easiest two places to start are Linkedin, which is focused on business and job related networking, and FaceBook, which seems more animated with people sharing everything from Karma Links to Groups for specific causes. Posting on forums is both causal and purposeful. For these versions of Social Media you just have to show up and participate. It’s all very casual and conversational.

It’s the blogs and podcasts and wiki’s that are more purposeful. They can be specifically targeted and used to actively build your business.

You need both the casual interaction and the purposeful content.

People are no longer willing to be sold

However, because there is so much hype, so many “buy now” urgent sales messages with “last-chance-to-buy” calls to action, we, as a buying public, are no longer listening to or being swayed by that approach. We are becoming immune. Internet readers want information from the internet. They don’t want advertising or marketing or some sort of pitch.

Don’t sell yourself - Be yourself

You know about the Law of Attraction, where your personal vibration attracts to you the essence of the energy you are emitting. Just be yourself and the perfect people will find you. Notice exactly how you are sharing. Are you helpful? Supportive? Friendly? Are you putting out the vibration that will attract the people you want as clients and customers? If not, get conscious about what you say, do, and write.

Hang out with your target market

Narrow your niche just as you have for your business. If you are in business go where business people hang out and relate to each other. If you are in health and fitness, join groups where people with that interest hang out, just as you would if you were joining a networking group in your area that you felt would lead you to new contacts.

Listen before you leap

Listen to what is going on in the social environment you choose to join before you start to post. Ease into the conversations. Keep your comments relevant. Offer suggestions and resources but do not promote yourself. Join forums that allow you to put your web site in your signature so people can get to know you more. Ask questions. Answer questions. Make friends. Build relationships. Keep listening for what other people in the social environment need to hear from you. Engage in conversation. This is not about you being a teacher or lecturer or even an expert. It is about engaging in a conversation. It is about building community. It is about establishing trust.

Get them to invest in your advice

So here’s the plan. You go on these social media environments and start relating with others. You post short supportive messages to friends and acquaintances you haven’t talked to in a long while. You post new discoveries you have made that others might like to know about. You share of yourself and your insights. And gradually you will establish yourself as a go-to person. And at some point, they will come to you to invest in your advice.

The bottom line is trust

Haven’t we been taught over and over that we need to build trust with our prospects and clients in order to see them purchase from us? Every time I offer a new teleclass or ebook, it’s the people who know me that purchase, the people from my list that I have been developing relationship with over the years. Sometimes they tell a friend but the major purchases come from people who trust me because we have built a relationship over time.

Don’t say it till you mean it

I have found a weight loss program that I really like. It is multilevel marketing and my upline was eager for me to get two people under me so I could get my product free. But you know what? I wasn’t ready. I was about ten days into the program and was getting results but I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about it yet. My upline urged me to tell my prospects about what other people had achieved. But the people I want to reach, the people who know and trust me, only want to hear my personal recommendation.

After a month on the program I had results I was eager to talk about and share. I could come from my own heart, my own conviction and my own experience and really listen to and address the needs and concerns of my friends who I think might benefit from having information on this product. Please notice, I’m not going to sell them anything, I’m going to give them information so they can make an informed decision for themselves.

As one friend said, “Your word is gold with me.” What an honor. What trust. I want to always share from a place of personal integrity. I want everyone to know my word is gold with them.

Get yourself a platform for your passion

A blog can be up in five minutes. A podcast can be only 3-5 minutes long. Focus your content on something you care about, something you want to learn more about or help others do. Link that back to your web site where your services are listed.

Solve a problem

Look at your business. Look at your clients. What solution can you give them to a common problem that will bring immediate and noticeable results? Make a video with that solution and put it on YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook with links back to your main website.

Just having a blog and posting a video will help you establish more Web 2.0 presence than 90% of your competition. It’s that easy.

Social Media as a marketing strategy

Engaging in social media is both an Outreach Strategy and a Keep In Touch Strategy. You make new friends, develop relationships and support each other with your goods and services. After all, what are friends for?!

Cara Lumen, The Vision Distiller, helps proactive entrepreneurs translate their passion into a profitable presence on the internet. Her Magnetic Marketing Method guides you through internet marketing, content strategy, and signature product development and helps you become a true Success Magnet - http://www.caralumen.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cara_Lumen

Blogging is a great way to make money online. You can turn a blog into a complete home business. However, the fact is that many bloggers do not make money, simply because they don’t set a proper focus.

Let’s see how you can turn your blog into a money-maker, by focusing on that, and by planning and writing great content.

I’ve been blogging since around 2002. The biggest error I see new bloggers making is that their blog lacks focus. Each blog you create must have one, and only one, single laser-targeted focus.

Get that focus right, and you’ll make money. So for each blog, decide what your focus is. Obviously, for a money-making blog, that focus must be income. You must decide HOW you will make income with a blog before you create it.

Many bloggers choose to monetize their content: that is, they sell advertising on their blog. Other bloggers sell a product, or a series of products if they’re affiliate marketing.

Begin by choosing one single focus.

Now let’s see how you can plan and write great content and make money from your blog in four easy steps.

1. Plan your content a year in advance

No content, no blog. Equally, the more content you have, the more money you will make, so plan your content a year in advance.

This sounds like a huge project, but it’s not. Start by listing 12 topics (related to your blog’s subject) you want to cover in your blog over the next year.

Then take each topic, and list five to 10 article titles related to that topic. Just brainstorm, away from your computer if possible. You’ve now got between 60 and 120 article titles.

These articles will form the basis of your content.

2. Research keywords your readers are using to find you

Next, research keywords related to your blog’s subject matter. For example, if you’re writing a cooking blog, research “cooking” keywords. If you’re writing a “dog training” blog, research “dog training” keywords.

Collect as many keywords as you can. As you begin posting content to your blog, keep an eye on your logs to see what keywords and phrases people are typing into the search engines to find your blog posts. Keep all these phrases - they’re gold.

With dozens and even hundreds of keywords, more article titles will occurs to you. List them with your other article titles.

3. Ask your readers questions, and answer them

Blogs have been called a conversation. Not all blogs lend themselves to a lot of interaction with your readers: if you’re promoting a series of affiliate products, for example. However, most blogs benefit when you ask your readers what they want to know, and answer their questions on the blog.

Reader interaction is an easy way to develop new ideas for content, so list all the ideas which readers give you with their comments to your postings.

4. Set income goals for your blog, and achieve them

Finally, and most importantly, set income goals for your blog. You must have income goals. They inspire and motivate you. In the beginning, be thrilled with the first dollar you make with your blog - then set higher income goals each month.

Now you know how to plan and write great money-money content on your blog - start writing!

Discover the secrets to making money blogging with Angela Booth’s blogging bestseller, “Blogging for Dollars” at http://www.abmagic.com/Blog/blogging.html This ebook package gives you everything you need to build a highly successful blog.

Angela is a professional blogger who’s been blogging since 2002. Her blogging ebook has a companion blog, the Blogging for Dollars Blog at http://www.dollars2blog.com/blog/ which keeps you up to date with what’s happening in the world of professional blogging.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Angela_Booth

If you take a look back at the happenings and the events on the web just a couple of years ago, you can see and remember how simple it once was reaching the top positions in the main search engines. A few years ago, the meta tags would be considered very important parts of every website and nearly no webmaster would think someday the links would be the determining factors playing roles in the way websites are ranked and categorized online.

This has really been creating some great changes in the way webmasters were creating and promoting new websites because soon everybody noticed that the search engines had been embedding a new formula to their complex searching algorithms and that was to count the number of the links pointing to the websites and then evaluating them in order to set the appropriate rankings for.

By searching the web for some terms like links and the related words, you might become extremely surprised to see how the links have been affecting the whole online world and the way websites are connected to each other and how the small clickable text anchors can create some boost in the way certain websites will be ranked in the major search engines and this is an important matter.

As a matter of fact, some new ventures and online businesses have been introduced by the professional promotional companies and the advertising firms which are active in better developing and introducing the websites for their customers on the web. For instance, many people are now full time employees at such companies working on the ways for adding new links to some websites.

New paid packages have been offered by some companies containing many one way inbound links which might be purchased and so many other programs which once would be like a fictional dream to the webmasters but at present, the links are playing important roles on the web and the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as the other ones give rankings and placements to the websites based on the number and the quality of the links pointing at them.

In most cases, the links established are being used for the sake of boosting the search engines rankings and the popularity criteria of the websites but there are also many other cases in which the links created and made active will be primarily employed for driving traffic to the websites. In either case, they are being added to the web portals and the online pages for making websites popular and highly visible online by means of pushing new visitors to them.

In today’s enhanced search engines world, the links are also considered helping hands for the big search engines finding and indexing new web pages created online. You know, many webmasters and the companies no longer submit the newly built websites’ addresses to the search engines manually, and instead, they try adding some new links pointing to the homepages of the sites on some frequently visited websites and then after a short time, the new web pages will automatically be visited and indexed by the search engines robots.

Web links can be called the scores and the bonus points one website is giving to the other and there are several ways for obtaining them online. Some links can be more beneficial than the others in terms of quantity and quality but please note that the high number of the links might not always be regarded as a guaranteed basis for a website’s performance on the web.

The links if used and added properly and in the correct format, can help websites reaching good search engines placements and rankings provided that they are added gradually and naturally and then, the effects of them can easily be noticed after some time, as they will be counted and viewed by the main search engines as well as the other web portals and directories as the popularity items for sites.

Offering great points for reading and learning about the websites and the online blogs. Web Approach Blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Standing