When looking at real estate, it’s “location, location, location”, but in social marketing, it’s metrics, metrics, metrics. You won’t know if you succeed unless you have established a way to get metrics What are the metrics and how are you going to obtain them? The final, crucial step – measurement – can’t succeed unless you know what you are measuring against

2. Keeping it Social

Your social campaigns run on social content, not news energy. Keep it light, fun and engaging. Do it right – conversationally – and your point won’t get lost, it will get shared.

3. Use Simple Email Social Templates

Often, the best way to launch your social campaign is with email and as technology has progressed, they have become better and better launch pads. So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you start a campaign, you’ll want templates so that you can easily produce Facebook landing pages, create engagement and deliver messages with professional-looking “Like” pages. Approaches already proven effective can be easily uploaded to email, share and post.

4. Keep the Content Light on Sales and Heavy on Value

Okay, you are trying to sell; that’s no secret. But your content balance needs to be heavily tipped to the value you are offering your community. The best campaigns are thoughtfully prospect-centric – you know them – and the call to action seems more like a way to keep the conversation going.

5. Choose the Appropriate Channels

Businesses can use email to automatically share campaigns and messages to Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Linked-In connections, Google+ and email subscribers. Not to mention fan pages and blog embeds, two critical forums you should not overlook. Many messages can run the gamut, but let the nature of your message help determine which channels are most appropriate.

6. Get Your Video’s Going

Explore using video. The stats are in: viewers respond more enthusiastically and are more likely to share your message. Industry researchers such as Marketing Sherpa have reported that video in an email can lift conversion rates by 50%. Using email + video to kick off the conversation lets you show benefits instead of telling about them, and viewers respond to that. Meanwhile, technology has progressed so that everyone can afford to do it right.

7. Get to the Point

Sounds simple to set up parameters, goals and objectives for what is, ideally, a conversation, but never forget this is a campaign. And campaigns are based on their destination. What do you want out of this? Awareness? Directly drive sales? Drive page traffic? Or to tap into how your audiences feel about your organization – good or bad?

8. Use Creative Email Techniques

You want the ability to engage viewers directly from the email, rather than leaving the email to follow a link where it will play. This key feature keeps communication direct with customers and aligned with the accompanying email message. It will also let you look at all of their behavior – stats on what they clicked, how often and much more – so you fine-tune your future messages according to their likes and dislikes.

9. Look Back and Go Forward

Reporting, well integrated with Google Analytics, will show how campaigns drive page visits, shares, new Facebook fans and email subscribers so that you can not only track it all, you can exactly measure your success to fine-tune future campaigns.

For more information on Social Marketing or if you would like to start a Social Marketing program for company, please call eTargeting today. Click here to contact us today to learn more about what eTargeting can do for your company.

Here are 3 significant ways in which any online business can expect to benefit by using this particular promotional strategy.

Time Efficient
Typically this advertising technique involves little more than sharing your marketing message with a relatively smaller crowd who then spread the word. Working online offers the advantage in many cases of automating your efforts even further resulting in greater savings of time! As any entrepreneur will tell you time is money and therefore a precious commodity that should be used wisely!

Cost Efficient
In most cases advertising in a viral manner online involves distributing free reports or leaving business links at social site, forums, bookmarking sites or even blogging. In every case there is little or no out of pocket expenses making this advertising technique very cost efficient!

Energy Efficient
By leveraging the efforts of others you are able to channel the energy you have saved into other areas of your business. As an entrepreneur this is extremely important since most functions and/or business tasks are left up to you to complete. Avoiding fatigue in this way helps you maintain a mental alertness that can be use in more constructive and creative ways. Your mistakes will be minimized and your ability to produce more and stay motivated will benefit as well!

Remember when fatigue does set in your ambition will naturally decrease and as mentioned above and you will be more prone to making mistakes. What happens here is that not only do your miscues create business inefficiencies but they also require more time and effort later on to fix!

The biggest advantage viral marketing offers a business or person is its ability to leverage the efforts of others to spread your marketing message. When this advertising technique is put to use online the benefits it offers magnify due to the automation and global audience the internet can supply! The single biggest advantage this promotional strategy offers is the increase efficiencies a business can experience as reviewed above. It therefore stands to reason that if you can increase efficiency you will also boost productivity thereby leading to greater sales and profits. With that said there seems to be little reason as to why you would not want to include this very effective promotional strategy into your online marketing mix!

Though the various tools you can use to make the process of distributing your articles more easily are invaluable in getting your content the most exposure, that’s only half of the story.

Getting article marketing to work for your site lies primarily in two things:

• The article you’re submitting
• The preparation you do before you a single word of your content is written.

Since those two determining factors make at least 50% of the difference in bringing you success, let’s take a look at what the most common mistakes are in that area, and how to overcome them.

Mistake #1 – Confusing the Reason to Promote with Articles with the Reason to Write Articles
There are three key benefits to promoting an article – branding, lead generation, and as a corollary, online promotion, particularly as part of your optimization efforts.

Yet there is only one reason to write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If your article is not geared towards this as its primary purpose, you will fail to see the three benefits of promotion – because no one will want to read your article.

How many links you’re able to generate by submitting your article to hundreds of sites will matter little if you’re unable to get them picked up by publications, or read by people who search for information.

Sure, if you know what you’re doing all those links pointing back to your site will count for something in your search engine results – but remember that generating links to your site is only one part of optimizing your site for Google, Yahoo or MSN.

To overcome this issue, you’ll need to figure out how to get people to read what is in your article, and then click through to your site from your resource box. The best start to a solution is to produce better content.

In the end it’s a matter of choice. You can get a little exposure from increased link backs, on a very basic level, or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra work.

Mistake #2 – Starting The Article Promotion without a Plan
Not every article can fulfil all three purposes of promotion. Some will work better for branding, others can generate leads and increase sales. But if you don’t start out with a plan for what the function of your article should be, you’ll end up unhappy with the results.

To overcome this issue, before you write a single word, decide what purpose the article is supposed to serve. An article meant to brand you as an expert should display your knowledge. One for generating leads may need to be geared towards solving a very specific problem.

An article that gets published every where and helps to make you known is not meant to have the same level of exposure as hyper-targeted content geared towards a narrow group of people. Learning the difference will help you know what kinds of articles to write.

Mistake #3- Publishing Content That Doesn’t Help Your Reader
Maybe you’re thinking: “All I want is links back to my site – any visitors the article generates is gravy.”

Well guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with readers. And all it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase yo ur potential audience tenfold.

So if you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that publishers want in their publications.

This also means obeying the standard guidelines, running a spell check, researching a good topic to write about, or even hiring a writer to produce articles on your behalf.

Mistake #4 – Failing to Maximize the Promotional Opportunities of Article Marketing
You already know that articles marketing can help you generate additional links back to your site. But did you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from articles in a variety of ways?

You can mention your desired keyword in strategic places, though you should take care not to overdo this. Some people will also tell you to make use of anchor text, which can also is an effective method. However, you should know that the majority of directories and publications aren’t able to support this.

There are alternatives to this method that are just as effective, if not more so, but they require more space to explain.

It’s not just about the links back to your site either. Part of doing well with article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with large audiences, or gaining the ability to leverage other brands due to the quality of your work.

Better search engine results are great.

But by themselves they don’t put money in your pocket – there are a myriad of factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity to increase your income, not just the number of visitors to your site.

Link Exchanges
If you are taking part in reciprocal link exchanges it is important that you 1) Exchange links only with related sites. If a site has nothing to do with your site a reciprocal backlink from it will serve little to no purpose and 2) Do not mass mail webmasters. If there is one thing that will guarantee i will ignore you it is if i receive an email that has been BCC’ed to a thousand other webmasters. You could also get other webmaster to ask for a link exchange by putting a contact form on your site and letting people know you are open for link exchanges.

Link Baiting
Link baiting is when you post something controversial, a flame or something very interesting on your site with the intention of getting people to blog about it or post it on forums. Link baiting is sometimes seen as “spam” but take no notice of that, It’s not, People are choosing to link to you, It’s up to them.

Providing Quality Content
This is my favorite way to get backlinks. Make a good site with good content. If there is one thing people like, and like to link to, it is a good site.

Posting on forums
I am hesitant to include this suggestion, But i will, and i will explain exactly what i mean. When i say by posting on forums read it as `join a forum and contribute`. It does not mean join a forum, spam your link 50 times and then leave. Most forums allow you to include a signature in your posts so it’s an easy way to get backlinks. If you become a trusted regular poster it will also mean you get a lot of traffic from these backlinks. Spamming not only make you look like an amateur, But it will be deleted that same day by a moderator, Probably before a google bot even gets to see it.

RSS Feeds
RSS feeds allow you to syndicate your content. This means other sites display your content on their pages via a feed which includes a backlink to the original article or page.

Submit Articles
If you know a lot about the area you work in (as you should) then writing articles could be very beneficial. Every time you write and submit an article that is one backlink, and the good thing about articles is they are often copied and used on other article sites, sent in news letters or posted on forums, Each time this happens you get another backlink.

Provide a link to me code
Put a page on your site that contains link to me code. This will be HTML code that people just have to cut and paste into their site to link to you. But don’t use all text. Provide a few banners, some buttons, Be creative. Sometimes if people are trying to find filler for their site they will be more than happy to include your sexy looking banner or button on their page. The trick is to make it easy for people to link to you.

Buy Text Links
If you have money set aside for your advertising you can also Buy Text Links from companies such as LinkWorth, Also good if you want to make money and sell text links.

Why do you need a logo?
In a way, a logo is a visual shortcut to who you are. Your logo will establish your corporate identity and credibility. It builds loyalty among your clients and employees. You invest in your brand image every time your logo is displayed on a Web page, on a sign, or in an advertisement.

A professionally designed logo enables you to be immediately recognizable and must be unique, memorable and simple. Such a logo will become one of your most valuable corporate assets over time.

How does your current logo stack up?
Run down this logo quick test:

• Does the logo have immediate impact?
• Is it good to look at?
• Is it distinctive?
• Does it create or evoke a positive image?
• Does it accurately represent the organization or business?
• Is it straightforward?
• Is it comprehensible?
• Is it memorable?
• Is it flexible?
• Does it copy well?
• Will it hold up to both large and small scale use?
• Will it wear well over time?
• Will you be proud to use it?

QR or “Quick Response” codes have been around for awhile, but seem to be interesting those owners of small and medium size business as of late. They seem to be adopting QR codes to show their customers that they are on the high end of technology. Besides, QR codes are interactive and fun.

It’s important to keep in mind that QR codes are just one type of 2D Barcodes, but at this time seem to be the most popular.

My guess is the majority of you come across at least one QR code daily. Perhaps you’ve seen one in a magazine, product package, billboard or a business card. They are finding their home everywhere.

The benefit of a QR code is that it gives business owners and marketers a way to get a prospect to take immediate action – easily! The problem with QR codes is when they do not give a customer value they can become frustrating. There is nothing worse than hyping a QR code, but the end result is something that could have been achieved without it.

Who are you trying to reach with your QR code? You must determine that before launching a campaign. Who is the ideal person that uses a QR code?

A recent webinar done by Merkle and Webtrends created the following profile of those that use QR codes:

• Between the ages of 25 to 54
• Mostly male with a baseline income of $50k
• Customer uses an iPhone or Android Smartphone

The overall QR users is affluent and younger, others may not resonate with the understanding of a QR code. Make sure that your target audience fits that profile, otherwise it may not bring you the desired result that you want.

When considering a QR code campaign, ensure that you are following best practices. Best practices include the following:

• Inform your audience of what to expect when they scan the code.
• Your QR code should be no smaller than 1 inch by 1 inch.
• Make sure the destination is mobile friendly. You don’t want them to land on a web page that does not render correctly using a mobile phone.
• Think about how your QR code integrates with the campaign. How is the user experience? Is it friendly or confusing?
• Test the user ease of your campaign and the functionality.

QR codes are catching on, as a matter fact we have gone from 1,000 daily scans to upwards of 25,000 daily scans. If your customer profile fits the above and you follow best practices there is no reason not to join the QR craze.

What can you use a QR code for? Here are some ideas:

• Business Cards
• Scavenger Hunts
• Contest and Promotions
• Gain Likes and Follows on Social Media Platforms
• Build Your Email List

Generate your QR code today – you might just be glad you did!

First and foremost, it is important that your company map out exactly what it stands for, who your target customer is, how you would like to be represented, and how you want your message to be delivered. Once that has been decided, define your brand – how you are going to help a customer identify your business with a given product, promotion or piece of advertising. Will it be with a logo, color scheme or a slogan? To make this as effective as possible work with focus groups made up of current and potential clients, as well as peers within your industry so you can come to an educated decision on which vehicles will work best to accomplish your goals and objectives. Also, remember to always keep your marketing tools up to date.

Next, focus on which marketing tools your company is going to use to deliver your message. If you’re not in a position to develop a complete set of marketing materials, then focus your efforts on one piece at a time. For instance, one of the most valuable tools in today’s market is a simple business card. With a business card in hand, an ambassador of your brand is effectively able to provide your contact info and exposure to the corporate brand.

Business cards are most impactful when the logo is prominently featured and includes your associate’s contact information, title, website URL and Twitter handle, among other things, and the font is easily readable. It’s also important to develop a consistent message to deliver across all channels at all times. This assists in building a recognizable brand that consumers will automatically associate with your company.

It’s also important that you consider your geographic location. If your company is located in a bustling community with a large amount of foot traffic, it may be a good idea to create a large banner to place on your store front which features a special offer or promotion. Using this type of tool assists in generating awareness and not only helps to attract new customers but retains existing ones by providing additional incentives to keep them coming back for more. Alternatively, if you have a business specializing in lawn care or real estate, then perhaps creating a lawn sign to place on your client’s property may be beneficial as the property serves as a testament to your services.

Another low-cost promotional tactic is a well-crafted brochure to feature within the office or give to potential customers/clients. A high-quality brochure enables your company to relay in-depth information, such as the company’s mission statement, pricing, services, accreditations, certifications and more. Additionally, they give your organization an extra level of credibility since consumers have come to expect printed material from companies with whom they are doing business. Also if you truly want to make your brochure buzz-worthy, try to integrate an offer or coupon into the copy of the brochure itself.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that creating an effective marketing strategy will take a considerable level of effort to organize and execute. However, having an assortment of customized marketing materials will attract your desired target customer and leave them with the information and incentive they need to revisit your company in the future.

In the United States, 87.4 million people own smartphones. And, in 2012, smartphone sales are expected to top sales of personal computers. As smartphones allow people to connect with businesses in new and exciting ways, businesses in turn need to become savvier about going mobile.

For example, a small home health care provider recently utilized smartphones to expand to 400 patients across four major counties  in Utah. Its employees previously struggled to keep up with all the paperwork and regulatory requirements, so the company decided to go completely mobile, equipping its entire staff with Microsoft Windows Phones. This allowed the staff to visit patients and instantly update their condition and treatments.

For small businesses, embracing the smartphone age is becoming crucial for success. Here are some easy ways small businesses can go mobile in 2012:

• Invest in smartphones – Transitioning from a flip phone to a smartphone makes it much easier to run a business on the go. Providing easy access to email, calendar information and the Internet, smartphones increase productivity and can provide peace of mind while out of the office. Today, smartphones are more affordable than in the past, so now is a perfect time to take advantage of their capabilities.
• Consider industry-specific devices – Numerous mobile technologies, from smartphone applications to tablets, have been created with specific industries in mind. For example, rugged tablets that can withstand the elements are available for those in the construction industry and tablets created for the health care industry can be sterilized between patient visits to avoid contamination.
• Make websites mobile-compatible – In an era in which most consumers first go to the Internet to find local service providers, it’s crucial that small businesses have a polished and informative online presence that’s friendly for mobile consumption. Even for business owners who aren’t tech-savvy, starting a website is feasible. A quick Internet search will reveal numerous free or low-cost website templates. You might also choose to work with a Web developer to ensure your business’s website is smartphone-friendly.
• Get social – Popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it simple to connect with customers in a casual, but also personal, manner and also embrace the mobile population that frequents these sites on smartphones. Consider leveraging one or more of these platforms to further establish your business’s online presence and create positive buzz around new offerings and special deals and promotions.

Finally, niche marketing while not unknown to the offline world, is taken to new heights online where automated internet tools allow an internet business owner to target these highly targeted online niches and exploits them. Firstly, an internet business that sells an online service like service that can be highly automated can potentially outperform an offline business. The benefits of operating an internet home business include enormous profit potential, easy access to highly successful affiliate programs, and an effective means of advertising your service or product.

The key point in building up your internet business, and effective money generating business website is to know who are your potential consumers, or will be; to clearly understand their needs, and turn them into loyal and paying customers who provide the basis of your business survival, let alone thriving. The more you know and understand about your potential customers, the more you are to focus in building your business website to cater for their needs, thus the more successful your business as it goes in the long run. Word of mouth tell all your friends about your website you never know they may tell someone who tells someone who purchases something from you or decides that they too want to get into the internet business and they may join you in building your down line and sign up for one or two of your programs.

In conclusion, participating in internet business or internet marketing forums and helping others along is a good thing. No matter what product or service you sell, developing a support system is critical to the success of your internet home business.