Here are the top 10 reasons for you to post, friend and tweet right now:

10. Everyone is out there. Social media sites are the new communities. It’s where people interact, voice their opinions, get their news and shop.

9. The world is your marketplace.Unless you have to physically hold your client’s hand or can’t carry online inventory, with a PayPal account and an “Order Now” button you can do business everywhere.

8. Give them something to talk about. One of the fastest ways to spread your words is with outrageousness. This creates stories to tell. People will love to read them and share them. If their friends love them and share them, the next thing you know, you’re Susan Boyle.

7. Word of mouth is back. Social media is the perfect venue for spreading the much-coveted (and free) word of mouth advertising. The social sites give you access to an audience that has an audience that has an audience.

6. No one is an expert. A handful of people have reached big audiences with their advice or product. But, because of the web’s sheer complexity, no one has mastered any niche. If you really know your stuff, go for it.

5. It’s cheap. If you want to spend the time and learn to do it yourself, you can set up your social media accounts for nothing. Well, it will probably require a few pots of coffee to get you through the process.

4. It’s an addiction. People are spending hours a day posting and tweeting. In the last century, this obsession was known as television. This time around it’s interactive, so get out there and interact. It won’t cost you $1 million for a 30 second spot.

3. Make a difference. Social media communities are at their best when spreading the meaningful – promoting a charity, sending prayers and good wishes and even just putting out positive vibe. Get those stories started yourself.

2. You can be brief. Especially in the social media communities, the shorter your message the better. Isn’t it a lot easier to write a 140 character tweet than a 500 word sales letter?

and the #1 reason to participate in social media:

1. Promote your business. Yes, you can do that here too. The recommended ratio of business to advice and information posts is about 10 to 1. Don’t be obnoxious, promote a good thing and people will buy.

The major social media sites already report over 500 million members. Do the math. You could probably find a few thousand followers among that population, and probably make at least a few hundred sales.

Are you struggling with what to say?  “Open the Door to a World of Mouth, Get Your Message Heard & Create a Following That Does Your Advertising for You” e-book gives you a blueprint for writing compelling copy for the web and for your social media.  Get your copy now at www.writeon800biz.com

Word of Mouth Advertising through Copywriting

Everyone in business knows the magic of word of mouth advertising. As a business owner marketing your company on the Internet, that’s the all-consuming attention you want to attract from a loyal group of followers. It’s also the kind of attention so many readers sparingly give.

Capturing this attention means creating copy that tells your readers what’s in it for them. Connect with them emotionally and they’ll be so interested in your words that they’ll want to take action – buy, know more, subscribe or contact you.

Use language to create curiosity and emotional appeal. People are usually inside their own heads. They’re thinking about the to-do list, the fight with their boss or what to have for dinner. Your goal is to get through the noise and get them to pay attention to you.

The first step to capturing their interest is showing that you care about them. Some of the best ways are to educate, entertain and create agreement with your readers. This builds rapport. Rapport will get your audience talking about you. That will ultimately bring you business.

You market yourself and your business by starting conversations. Sincerely provide your advice and create an audience of advocates. In the age of social media, this is what starts the nirvana of all advertising: word of mouth. Create this from a loyal following, and they’ll be better than any advertising money can buy. When they trust you and tell their friends, your reputation grows. Sales will follow.

The bottom line is this: just get writing If it’s overwhelming, pick one medium (website, articles, blog) and one social media site (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube). Do your research on what to write, read what others are saying, learn the environment and start to build your reputation with your words.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.” Why not both?

Get your copy of World of Mouth at http://www.writeon800biz.com.

But are you really getting the most out of your web site?  An analysis of your web statistics can provide you a wealth of information.  Most web hosting companies can provide you with stats on your site.  Another option is adding Google Analytics to your site.  (Google Analytics may be the easiest if you don’t have access to your web server’s control panel.)

One common question I get is “What do all these mean?”  Even though the categories are self-explanatory, what do they REALLY mean?

The first stat is unique visitors vs (total) visitors.  So what is the difference?  When a browser comes to your site the first time, they are counted as in the unique visitor and in the visitor total.  The second time (and beyond) they are counted only in the visitor total.  Are you providing current information that draws visitors back?  If you business is a one time sale, then unique visitors are the most important stat of the 2.  But even if that is the nature of your business, providing relevant content of value, even your old customers, can result in referrals and possibly repeat business.

The next stat to analyze is time spent on the site.  Sadly, by far the largest time block is less than 30 seconds for most web sites.  That means that most browsers spend less than 30 seconds before leaving your site and going to the next one.  Why?  Some factors that effect the “stickiness” of your site are:

• Lack of Content
• Poorly Organized Content
• Difficult to Navigate
• Overall Site Appearance
• Out of Date Information

Very few businesses have a monopoly on the web today.  The competition is fierce and you must be equally aggressive if you want to claim your piece of the pie.

Bounce rate is another factor related to time spent.  The bounce rate refers to the percentage of single page visits in which a browser left your site from the entrance page.  High bounce rates can be the result of ineffective headlines, poor keyword choices or poorly worded ad campaigns.

Another stat to pay particular attention to is the keywords section.  Most web site owners look at the keywords with an eye to which keyword brings in the most visitors.  But an equally critical piece is what keywords are NOT there.  When you did your keyword analysis, you should have identified the keywords that best matched your business.  If some of those keywords do not show up in your stats, it may be time to evaluate your content and have some additional search engine optimization (SEO) done.

Finally, review the referrers section.  For years this section was a measure of SEO efforts.  And while that is still true, with the importance of social media, this stat has become a measure for your return on engagement in social media.  The importance of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and especially you blog in your SEO plan have been well documented.  A successful social media plan will result in driving traffic to your web site.  The referrer stat helps you document the traffic that is coming from the various social media and identify weak areas.

If you have gone to the effort of creating a web site, doesn’t it make sense to get the most from your site?  Use your stats as a guide to maximize your traffic and your revenue.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com is a specialist in search engine optimization, web site design and social media marketing.  If you would like a free, no obligation SEO analysis, feel free to contact 800biz.

Facebook Privacy Setting

So the first step is to go to privacy settings under your account tab in your Facebook account. The first thing to review is the basic directory information. To begin, click on view setting. The things you’ll find here are the basic information that you want to make public.  For example, whether you want to allow people to search for you on Facebook, send you friend requests and messages, or see your friend list. By default, these are set for everyone to see and probably you won’t need to change these. If someone that you want to connect with searches for you on Facebook, this will allow them to find you and request you become friends. The next sections under the basic directory information are your work and education, your current city and hometown, and your interests and other pages. Once again, this is your choice, with your interests and other pages being the most questionable.

With the integration of Facebook and the search engines, your interests and the pages that you like can be used to design targeted advertising for you. While this isn’t new, it will become more prominent in years to come. Other websites you visit and searches you perform, may accumulate information about you and your patterns and habits so that marketers can laser target your interests. For example, let’s say you went on a website like BestBuy.com to shop for a 52 inch HD TV. A few days later, while reading an article on CNN.com, an ad appears for a 52 inch HD TV on sale in your area. Or maybe a text message gets sent to your phone with that sale. Instead of shopping for products or services, products and services will find you in the future.

Okay, so we covered the basic directory information. The next section on your privacy settings is “Sharing on Facebook.” You have the choice of allowing everyone, friends only, friends of friends, or customizing, who can see your information. There is also a recommended setting. What the recommended setting does is allow everyone to see your status, photos and posts, your bio, and your friends and relationships. It allows friends of friends to see your birthday, religious and political views, and photos and videos your tag in. And it allows friends only to post to your wall, to see your e-mail address, your phone number, and any other address or IM name.

In my case, the settings are not ones that fit my needs. Since my Facebook profile contains my business information, I want my contact information available to everyone. So I chose the custom option which allows me to pick and choose who sees my information. At the bottom of the list, you will see a pencil with the words “Customize Settings” beside it.  That will bring up the menu list of the things you share, as well as what others can share plus your contact information. For me, I want my website, my phone number and my e-mail address visible to everyone.

If you have younger children, you should probably choose to make family only visible to friends. If you are a parent of teenage kids, you probably want to monitor their Facebook page, but not have others see who your kids are.

Another setting on this same page is your album privacy. Click the “edit album privacy” link to open all your photo albums. Once again, if you have small children, you probably don’t want pictures of the family vacation visible for everyone to see. But you don’t care if your friends see them. After all, that’s why you shared them. So change this setting for each album as you need.

The next section is applications, games and websites. Applications such as Farmville, Mafia wars, and the various quizzes, polls and other activities, all are created by third-party developers. They are not associated with Facebook. But, you agree, when you set up the application, to their terms and conditions, which means they have access to all of your profile information. But what is even more intrusive is the fact that these applications have access to your friend’s profiles as well. So even though I don’t take any of the polls, play Farmville, or send hugs or hearts, my profile information is available from my friends sites that do.

With the new privacy settings, you have the option to control what information is available to applications and websites when your friends use them. I chose to make none of my information available to third-party applications. You also have the ability to easily remove applications and websites. I recommend removing any application that you no longer use.

Under the same applications section, you have the option for instant personalization. On Facebook partner sites like Pandora and Yelp (with more being added all the time), your profile information can be pulled in to help design your browsing experience on that site. For example, you login to Pandora, and when it retrieves your Facebook likes and sees you are a fan of 60s rock, it can customize the music it serves up to you. By disabling the instant personalization you eliminate that.

Public search is another choice under applications and websites. This determines whether your Facebook profile is available for search engines like Google to read. Once again, in my case, I don’t have a problem with my profile being searchable. My company information is already all over the web. Also, from the search engine optimization standpoint, my profile provides another inbound link to my website, which improves search engine positioning. However, you may choose to be less visible online, and if so, disable the public search feature.

Do you have a friend that continually sends you invites for applications? While you don’t want to block the user, you now have the choice to block an invites that come from that friend. To do so, choose the  Block Lists section at the very bottom. Here you have the option to block users by name or e-mail or to block invites from a friend.

One privacy issue that was already available is the publication of your birth date.  While it’s okay to show your birthday (everyone likes to get the birthday wishes), you should display only the month and date, not the year.  You can change this in your profile page and click on edit profile (right under your picture.)  Next to your birthday, there is a dropdown box that gives you the choice of showing your full birthday, the month & day only or not showing it at all.

All in all, the new Facebook privacy settings should provide much greater control over your online privacy. But remember, this is only one site. There are hundreds of sites that capture your information, either through cookies, through giveaways or when you register to use the site. So unless you plan to be a web recluse, your information is probably are the out there in dozens of databases all over the web.

I hope this gave you a little insight into how you customize your Facebook privacy and the reasoning behind the vigilance needed to protect yourself online.

What's Your Social Media Game Plan

Every sporting team has a game plan, a series of scripted actions that hopefully will lead to the outcome they desire, a win.  For a football team, it’s inside handoff, a safety blitz or a post pattern.  In basketball, it may be a pick and roll or a triangle and two defense. Baseball players practice, the suicide squeeze while pitchers and catchers go over the pitch sequence for each batter.

The goal of having a game plan is to have a successful outcome, winning the game. And of course it doesn’t always happen, because the opponents have their own game plan. So it comes down to who can execute their game plan the best.

Isn’t the same true for your business? You have a desired outcome, either making more money, selling more products or providing a better service. So shouldn’t you have a game plan?

But the question is where to start? The first step in the process should be defining what outcome you want. Making a ton of money isn’t an outcome, it’s a fairytale. So the first step should be defining the goals for your business. Beginning by setting SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. There are many resources that discuss SMART goals and how to set them, so I won’t cover that here, other than to say, it is critical to know where you’re going and be able to measure your progress along the way.

So now that you have your goals set and know what outcome you want, its time to design the plays to make those happen. The first step is defining who is your target market. The second step then, becomes how do you reach your target market.

That’s where social media comes into play. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin have very broad demographics. Facebook currently has over 400 million people with the fastest growing segment being over 35 and female. In fact, Facebook is now the number two most trafficked site on the web. In March of 2010 during a one-week time period, Facebook actually got more traffic than Google.

If your business targets professionals with 100,000+ income, LinkedIn might be your best choice. While not as social a community, the LinkedIn users are categorized by their business and professions. So if you want to target marketing officers in the healthcare industry, for example, you can do that.

The incredible power social media offers to create a buzz in the marketplace is really at the heart of its strength and popularity. You can spend thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, in advertising, and only hope your message reaches your targeted customers. But with social media, you can target those customers, where they’re spending a lot of time with very little cost.

I’ve always said, if I could sell word-of-mouth advertising, I would be sitting on a beach somewhere with a cell phone saying “send me a check for $100,000, and I will deliver the customers to you”. But now, that’s not far from the truth (at least the part about word-of-mouth advertising.) Social media has elevated referral marketing or word of mouth advertising to a viral state. Now, we don’t have to be on the phone or at a party talking to a friend to recommend a business. We do that on our social media sites. And while we only talk to a handful of people on the phone or, at that party, our entire circle of friends will see a recommendation posted on our wall.

So unless your business game plan includes a social media plan, you’re more like the sandlot sports team drawing plays in the dirt. You might occasionally get lucky and throw a touchdown. But if you come up against a team (business) with a well practiced game plan, success will not likely be in your future.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com have over 10 years experience in website design, search engine optimization and social media marketing. With over 30 years in business and consulting, we understand your business needs and partner with you to grow your business.

I think the issue is that we’re taught to be modest, not to brag or boast. But that is precisely what we need to do when we talk about our website. If you don’t tell the browser why you are special, where your strengths lie, how do you expect them to know? And when they go to your competitor, and they do, guess who’s getting the business? Not you!

But the secret lies a little deeper than just telling people what you do. The key is to tell the browser, your potential customer or client, why what you do best is exactly what they want. Where so many businesses fail in their copy is in the “We” syndrome. We offer the best widget. Our service is second to none. Our attention to detail,  we treat customers like family. Blah blah blah.

Guess what? Your customer doesn’t care! Plus, your competitor says the same thing. All your customer wants to know is what’s in it for them. How does your widget make their life easier? What is your extraordinary service going to do for them?

Use action words. Paint your customer a picture of your business your product or your service. If they can see their self in the words you say, your chances of success just improved greatly.

Let me give you an example. I recently redesigned the site for visualimagesproduction.com.  My goal here is was not only increasing search engine ranking but also generating a greater call to action and ultimately more sales. Below is an excerpt from the homepage.

“When you choose Visual Images Productions, you can be assured your video will take you back to the momentous occasion for years to come. Relive the emotions. Every time you watch your Visual Images Production video, you are magically transported back to celebrate all over again. “

The image here is reliving the special occasion over and over again, because isn’t that what a video is for.

Whether your writing a description for your website, a direct mail piece, a newsletter or any other communication with customers, make sure you speak to them.

When you’re in a conversation with someone, do you find them more interesting if they talk about themselves incessantly? Or do you find them more interesting because they listen with interest and questioning about you? I’m reminded of the story of a man on a first date with a young lady and after several minutes of talking about himself he stopped and said to his date, “Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What you think about me?”

The bottom line is this. Tell people how your business can make their life easier, how your product can save them time, money, stress or whatever it might be. When you do you set yourself apart from the masses, because it’s not about you.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com have over 10 years experience in website design, search engine optimization and social media marketing. With over 30 years in business and consulting, we understand your business needs and partner with you to grow your business.

Ten years ago, we focused on adding meta tags to our websites to get them ranked.   Five years ago, it was about linking strategies.  Then content became king.  And with each change, SEO specialists like myself adapted.  So how to you drive traffic to your site today?

The evolution of search today has taken on a real time emphasis.  Looking for the news? Today the news finds you.   Of course, you want the latest information on whatever you are searching for.  Nothing is more frustrating than going to a website and finding information from 2006.  Even if it’s still pertinent, chances are you will go on to a more current site.

Real search or live search focuses on delivering the most recent information.  And that information is frequently not from a website.  The most recent information is more likely a blog post or even a Twitter tweet.  Yes, I said a Twitter tweet.  Here’s a good example:

A Google search for “Iceland Volcano” resulted in a section for Latest News – that contains a live feed changing every few seconds.  The listing below shows results from just minutes before.

Twitter Results in Google

Directly below the Latest News is a section for Video results that displays YouTube videos of the Iceland Volcano.  What every happened to the Google we all knew that took 90 days to get your site found?

Video Results - YouTube

So should you abandon your website for a blog, Twitter account and YouTube channel?  Not yet.  I look at the social media like a big funnel.  Twitter, Facebook and YouTube should be funneling people to your blog and your blog should be funneling people to your website, where browsers can find out details about you and your business and hopefully take action (but that’s another topic).

Another reason you can’t abandon search engine optimization (SEO) and your website is the permanency of social media.  You might be ranking well with your current article, post, tweet or video, but as more recent media are found, yours will either drop in ranking or disappear all together.  So you website is the anchor. A well designed, search engine optimized website should remain fairly stable (even in competitive keywords.)  For example, search for “Tucson Interior Design” in Google.  Of the top 4 results, 3 of the sites are ones that were optimized by 800biz.com several years ago.  With little or no changes, these sites have maintained their top ranking consistently.

So for now, SEO is still alive and kicking.  But today, you there are more pieces of the online marketing puzzle to put together.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com specialize in website design, hosting, search engine optimization and social media marketing for small and medium businesses.

Let’s look at Wordpress.com first.  Wordpress.com allows you to create your blog and have it hosted on the Wordpress site.  You can create an account and have your first blog in the blogosphere in a matter of minutes.  No programming knowledge is needed and you blog can be visible to the search engines, Technorati and the Wordpress blog directory.  You have a choice of templates to change the appearance of your blog, it’s layout and even include different widgets.

What’s a Widget?  A widget is an add on feature that will enhance the usability or appearance of your page.  Some common widgets are calendars, images in the side bar, videos and even social media badges.  Available widgets are based on the theme you choose.  Not all themes have the same widgets available.

There are several limitations to a Wordpress.com site.  One limitation, your blog address is www.yourname.wordpress.com.  You can have your own domain name attached for an additional charge

The limited number of themes available is another limitation of a Wordpress hosted site.  You have less than 100 themes to choose from and editing the theme requires knowledge of CSS Stylesheets and purchasing the custom upgrade.

Another limitation is access to plugins.  Plugins are like widgets since they add to the functionality of your blog.  How a plugin differs is a plugin can be added to any theme.  Wordpress.com sites do not allow plugins

Finally, your content is not in your control.  Your account is controlled by Wordpress.  You are subject to the terms and conditions of Wordpress and if, for any reason, they choose to remove your account, all your content will be lost.

Now let’s look at Wordpress.org.  Wordpress.org is also free but it requires a website  hosting account.  A large percentage of hosting accounts include a Wordpress add on.  If not, a free version of Wordpress can be downloaded from Wordpress.org.  To install, you will need FTP (file transfer protocol) to your hosting server.  FTP is a program used to upload web pages, images and other files to your server so they will be web accessible.

A Wordpress.org site is attached to your own domain name so you have full control of your content and site.  Many domain registrars, like Godaddy, also offer web hosting.  For someone that doesn’t understand the whole web hosting and domain process, many companies, like 800biz.com, offer a inexpensive package that includes domain purchase and configuration, web hosting and Wordpress setup.

Regardless of where you decide to host your site, you can expect to pay a monthly hosting fee, ranging from $9 up.  But remember, you get what you pay for – the lower price sites offer less support, no automatic backups, limited access to your site and more.  So choose your host wisely.

With a hosting Wordpress site, you have hundreds of templates you can choose from, many of which can be modified with your own graphics.  You can also modify the colors and appearance by changing the CSS stylesheet.

With your own site, you also have access to the entire Plugins Library.  There are plugins for just about everything – social media, search engine optimization, videos, polls, site review, keywords and much more.  A word of caution – read the review of any plugin before you install them.  Some plugins have not been thoroughly tested and may cause problems with your site.

My favorite plugins are:

• All In One SEO – This adds search engine optimization to your blog post
• Askimet – This helps cut down on the spam comments
• Share to Any (Add To Any) – This is one of my favorite plugins.  This plugin lets you or your readers share your blog post to hundreds of social media site and social bookmarking site.
• Socialable – This adds the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc to your blog, making it easier for people to share your content to their friends and followers.

As you can gather from this information, my recommendation is to host your blog on your own domain.  Yes it will cost you a little money.  But unless your blog is for personal use only and not business, the small investment a blog and a hosted account requires should be a no brainer.  Because you do get what you pay for.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com specialize in website design, hosting, search engine optimization and social media marketing for small and medium businesses.

You Don't Need A Website UNLESS...

Wait, did I just read that right, you’re asking?  A website designer saying you don’t need a website – something must be wrong.

Well, there are cases where a website is a waste of money.  First of all, if the goal of having a website is just to check off the appropriate box on your business plan, you don’t need one.

You don’t need a website just because your brother in law, the unemployed college drop out says so.

You don’t need a website if you think a website is the new yellow pages and everybody looks there.

The bottom line is, you don’t need a website if you not committed to making it the important marketing vehicle it should be.  So where do you start?

During the last 10 years, I have seen the evolution of websites, from simple 3 page sites with a waving cactus graphic, to multi-media sites with intricate flash graphics, to the mobile web we see on our phones.  Search engine optimization has been the buzz word for the last several years.  And it remains a critical element of your website.

But in today’s internet landscape, SEO is only a piece of the puzzle.  Does your website content call browsers to take action?  How are you building your brand?  Are you the expert in your industry?

In the coming blog posts, I will discuss online marketing and how to create a comprehensive program to get maximum exposure.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com specialize in website design, hosting, search engine optimization and social media marketing for small and medium businesses.

According to Hitwise, Facebook managed received more visits than Google during the week of March 7th through March 13th, making it the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.

While this in no way sounds an alarm about the Google search dominance, it does reinforce the idea that social media, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are important elements of an online marketing program.  With Facebook and YouTube as the numbers 2 and 4 overall sites on the web (according to Alexa.com), can you afford to ignore that  kind of traffic.

Another thought-provoking stat – The average visitor to Google spends about 9 minutes a day on the site.  The average visitor to Facebook spends almost 40 minutes a day and the average YouTube browsers spends over 22 minutes a day.  This is like having a billboard on the freeway with traffic whizzing by at 70 miles per hours or having the same billboard on a busy street during rush hour where a driver is creeping along and has time to look around and actually read the billboard.

Google is for hunters on a mission.  Bag the site your searching for and move on.  Social media sites are more like home – prop your feet up and relax.

If you aren’t using social media or are totally confused by it, take heart.  There are painless ways to ease into it without taking the head first plunge into the abyss.

Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com specialize in website design, hosting, search engine optimization and social media marketing for small and medium businesses.