Favorite blog marketing tips. Favorite marketing tools blog. Favorite marketing blog

How To Actually Get Paid For Social Networking

It's no secret that the fastest growing web properties are the social networking sites. Sites like Twitter, FaceBook, and Sokule are all the rave.

Part of the reason that these sites are so popular is that the Internet can be such a lonely place. People who run online businesses from home-based offices, as I do, sometimes want to just reach out to others who understand their world. So they drop by social networking sites "just to visit."

Marketers like me look at these sites with millions of users and wonder if they can't be used for something more than just socializing. We wonder if they can't have a business application as well.

Social networking purist will scream "NO." They will insist that you definitely should not sell on these sites. Others teach that you use these sites to build your brand, but lure people off these sites to your marketing site and into your sales funnel.

To those who wonder, "Can't I market while still being social?" my answer is "yes." The key is to do it in ways that feel natural (inoffensive) and in places where it's expected.

Let me give you two quick examples:

1) Many people on sites like Twitter and Facebook are constantly pointing out online videos to their friends. They notice videos on video-sharing sites such as YouTube that are inspirational, touching, or thought provoking, and they want to share them with their friends. They see music videos of their favorite songs, or maybe really sexy videos, and it's natural to share these with online friends that they know have similar interests.
What most people don't know is that there are many ways that they can get paid just by pointing out videos to their friends. I personally do this using the system at: http://GetPaidToShareVideos.com This system pay Google AdSense revenue, plus pays you in other ways just for doing something that you already do.

2) Jane Mark and Phil Basten noticed how popular Twitter was becoming, but also that Twitter wasn't designed for marketing. So they created a site very similar to Twitter, only it's set up to encourage you to market.

Key differences include that it allows members to add up to five links to their favorite sites, it allows members to add their Clickbank ID and display ads for Clickbank product on which they passively earn commission, and it allows members to earn a commission when free members upgrade to membership levels that make more tools available.

This site is called Sokule (pronounced "so cool"), and it is also set up to make it easier to gather a lot of followers. I have often told my students that they should not think of their Twitter following as a list - because they are not "a list." However, on Sokule, you can think of them as a list. Sokule is actually configured so that some levels of membership actually allow you to send a direct message to ALL of your followers.

You are only allowed to send a direct message to all of your followers once every three days, but that does make building a following much like building a mailing list on the platform. When you set up your Sokule account, you enter three areas of interest. Those following you can find you by searching the database for others interested in the same topics that they are interested in.

Presumably, those following you are interested in the same topics and would therefore welcome direct messages from you periodically. If not, they can always stop following you, just as they can on Twitter.

You can see how I've set up my Sokule profile page at: http://Sokule.com/postit/williec

These are just two quick example of how you can get paid for doing thing that you are already doing on the social networking sites. As you can see though, the key is knowing which sites to use.

It is possible to earn more than many "Internet marketers" earn selling affiliate products, just by "being social."

Check out the two sites above today, and I'll share other with you in future articles.

Willie Crawford is one of the world's leading Internet marketing authorities, and an in-demand joint venture broker. Most of his mentoring is done in a group setting on the member-only discussion forum at: http://TheInternetMarkeingInnerCircle.com Join that discussion to experience phenomenal business growth.

The MOST Powerful Marketing and Advertising on the Planet!

It sounds too simple to be true, but it really is... A well-targeted and timely PRESS RELEASE to the media is the most powerful form of marketing and advertising on the planet! A high quality press release, with the proper targeting and distribution to reach the correct media members, could have many businesses sailing on a sea of new sales and profits. Just one feature or a mention in a popular or targeted business publication has the potential to cause some business's phones to literally be ringing off the hook!

The next big question that arises, "How do you go about writing a quality press release that will grab the attention of the media and your particular audience?" Here are some tips to help you succeed:

* Pick a "Newsworthy" Angle. Press releases are not an advertisement. Do not try to sell your product or service. Do not use "hype" in press releases. Instead give the media what they want and they will give you what you want. Now, what the press and media really want is a story! Just provide the Who, What, When, Where and How with regards to the uses of your products and/or services in a story format. Show examples of ways that people have used your products and services to their benefit. If you can include some emotions in your story all the better. Ask yourself: "Would this be something that I might read in a newspaper?"

* Get a Good Start. The headline and the first few sentences of the first paragraph are the absolutely most important part of the press release. If you don't catch the reader's interest here you will lose your audience. The best way to do this is to use your most hard-hitting information FIRST rather than build to a climax. This may be opposite to what you would normally do when writing other material - but it does work! What follows in your press release are the details that SUPPORT your story or theme.

* Write to the Media. Remember, a journalist, editor or reporter, not necessarily a client, is reading your press release. It's not your job to sell them your product or service. It IS your job to give them an interesting story or piece of news that they will be happy to share and announce to their audience.

* Keep your release short and to the point. It should contain no more than about 500 words and no more than two pages.

Include your contact information. Provide full contact name, company name, full address, phone number, email address and Web site URL. The contact name should be someone who is knowledgeable and available to answer any questions by media members such as editors, reporters and journalists.

Targeted press releases to the media have helped thousands of companies succeed. They are the most powerful form of marketing and advertising on the planet! Remember: One article is all it takes!

For more information on how you can get a quality targeted press release written or have your press release distributed to the targeted media contacts in our 600,0000 press and media contact database, please visit our Advanced PR department at Majon International.

Matthew Hesser is President and CEO of Majon International, one of the most popular internet marketing and advertising companies on the internet located at: http://www.majon.com To get a high quality targeted press release written and/or distributed to the press and media, as well as get GUARANTEED media and press coverage for your business please visit: http://www.advanced-pr.com

Running an online business can involve so many tasks that you should automate where appropriate. There are literally thousands of pieces of software available that make the job of growing and running your business much easier! On the other hand, there are many pieces of software that can make your job easier in the short-term but that do more harm than good in the long-term. This is the topic that I'd like to share two recommendations on today. These recommendations are tempered by ten years of experience as an internet marketer. One of the biggest challenges faced by most webmasters, that I've talked to, is attracting enough qualified traffic. It's a problem that has an incredibly obvious solution to me. The solution is simply to go to where the traffic is and redirect it. As an example, sites such as Ebay (TM), MySpace (TM), and the major search engines get the majority of online traffic. That means that you should go to those places too, and get in front of that traffic, and redirect it. There are dozens of easily implemented ways to redirect that traffic. Let's look at just two of the easiest methods. The single easiest, free, long-term technique that I've used is article marketing. That's why I've written over 500 articles on internet marketing, and spread them throughout cyberspace. Article marketing can be as simply as generating quality content that the search engines (and your visitors) will love and then feeding it to them. Let's think outside the box for a second on this topic, and redefine articles as pieces of information that your ideal customers are looking for. That opens up a whole new world of possibilities for you. For example, now I can think of my recipe database as a database of articles. It would be more accurate to define it as a database of content, but I'm approaching it as many would approach articles because I want to share with you how I use this. I use automated software to post many of my recipes online to attract my ideal customers... people online looking for recipes who will also buy my cookbooks. I simply use a piece of software that can grab hundreds of my recipes (text files on my computer ), insert them into a template, and upload them to my websites. That means that I can generate a QUALITY, very focused, useful website that the search engines and my visitors LOVE … in mere minutes. The software that I use to generate hundreds of highly focused, quality web pages, in mere minutes saves me HUNDREDS of hours per month, and generates an incredible amount of traffic for me each month. Can you see that by using this software, as I do, you can take a batch of articles (or content) on any topic and create a highly focused, traffic generation website in a fraction of the time? The "secret" tool that I use for this is at: http://quickqualitycontent.com/ I mentioned earlier that places like MySpace.com can send you major traffic. Let me briefly explain automating part of the process there. MySpace is a social community where much of the focus is on building a "friends" list. You are allowed to invite any of the MILLION of members to become your friend, and part of your network of contacts. A recent press release stated that there were 106 million MySpace accounts as of September 8, 2006, and that the site attracts 230,000 new members per day. A "web metrics report" that I recently read put MySpace.com as the sixth most visited site on the internet. You really can't afford to ignore such a HUGE concentration of traffic. You want to build a list of people interested in your topic, and then invite them to join your friends list. You can then send them messages, or post bulletins, using MySpace's internal system. There are people who have built friends lists of over 100,000 targeted contacts. Can you imagine being able to compose a simple message and then in a few seconds send that message to your list of friends and have it magically appear in their MySpace inboxes? Assuming your list is highly targeted... perhaps a list of MySpace members interested in collecting comics, or any of thousands of other niche topics, your "bulletin" would generate a nice stream of traffic. The key to making this a productive way to generate targeted traffic is to use software to build, manage, and contact your friends list. Without the software, you would spend an inordinate amount of time just tracking down appropriate people to invite, sending the invites, approving requests others send you asking to be added to your friends list, etc. The software that I've tested and recommend for automating traffic generation through MySpace is at: http://trafficgeneratingmonster.com/ You do need to be very careful that you don't violate the MySpace terms of service. Also you shouldn't invite inappropriate people, or an inordinate number of people at one time. You should not abuse the system! Just the two pieces of software that I shared with you above EASILY generate tens of thousands of website visitors for me every day. Most of that traffic is generated by my articles. There are countless other simple, automated, and semi-automated methods of generating website traffic that do work. They work very effectively, and can work long-term... as long as they are not abused. Take a look at these two tools today. Study the tutorials available for free that explain how to use each tool. Allow the tutorials to spark hundreds of additional ideas and angles. If I can do it with a topic as mundane as recipes, I’m sure that you can do it in your niche.

More Details about website traffic generation here. Willie Crawford has been teaching Internet marketing for over 9 years. Take advantage of his uncanny insights and unusual candor by subscribing to his free, information-packed newsletter. Also visit his top-rated blog. Do both at: http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/

Building Blog marketing tips. Constructing and marketing blogs. Creating blogs | More marketing tips | More marketing tips2

Herman Dreyer
Email: dreyer_herman@yahoo.com