Why is it that some people are incredibly successful at utilizing the power of the Internet in their marketing while others can’t seem to figure out the winning formula? This article is about one of the essential ingredients of the formula, namely list building.

Ask anyone who has effectively integrated the use of the Internet into his/her overall marketing strategy and that person will tell you success in building your business, is about systems. It is the system of developing and maintaining a solid database that you’ll find most value.

Benefits of a System for List Building

Fact is, with a well-groomed database, you can increase your revenues and decrease your marketing costs. You can build customer relations and keep your name fresh in the minds of your market by keeping in touch. This establishes excellent position within your market.

Most people would be amazed at how simple it is to build an incredibly profitable database by applying a few simple strategies. Remember, simple is not always easy. It will take time, commitment and focus.

One of the most important things you have to consistently do is build your list of people who are interested in you and your information.

List Building Best Practices

Building a bigger list is not necessarily better when it comes to your database. Depending on your industry and what you sell, you may be well served to focus on the few dozen or few hundred who want to buy from you, rather than thousands who could care less about what you offer.

First you need to have the list building foundation in place:

• Develop a fully operational web site
• Have a way to capture contact information such as a sign-up form
• Give people a reason for leaving their contact information by way of an ethical bribe. This would include a free report or e-book, an article of interest to your target market or anything that is of benefit to the reader
• Develop a series of content-driven messages that address your customers’ needs
• Keep your name in front of your market consistently without being annoying
• Commit to the long-term

Next you can use 7 ways to build your list.

1. A traditional opt-in subscriber list through Aweber, Infusionsoft, Constant Contact, GetResponse or any number of providers. Keep the long-term in mind, as you begin to build your list. Some people look for all the free service providers. Free may not be in your best interest based on your growth projections.

2. Feedblitz or FeedBurner via your blog. Both allow you to build a list of readers who are requesting to receive your posts as you blog. Every time you post on your blog, those who have subscribed by way of the RSS feed will get your post delivered into their email inbox.

3. Friends on Facebook. Building a friend’s list is a great idea, but to get the most value you need to be a “real” personality on Facebook. However, be aware that not everyone is who he or she says they are. Use discretion with how much information you share.

4. Followers on Twitter. If you are only posting promotional information you are not creating value for others. Plan out your tweets to create the most value. You can use something like HootSuite to schedule out your tweets. This way you spend a few minutes posting tweets that will show up throughout the day rather than all at once.

5. Connections on LinkedIn. I really like LinkedIn due to the quality of professional relationships I can build. The key to success is to post high value information. Contribute to conversations; post information you find from other experts that would be of interest to group members, post questions, and always think in terms of how to build relationships.

6. Subscribers on YouTube. The more quality videos you post, the more subscribers you will get. Make sure to include keywords in the title of your video and throughout the description. This makes it easier for people who are interested in your content to find you.

7. Article marketing. This is one of the most effective ways to build your expert status as well as your opt-in subscriber list. At the end of your article, include a resource box that has some type of high value giveaway. When giving information away, think in terms of going above and beyond expectations.

Driving traffic to your site is an on-going process, as is building and maintaining a solid database. If you are serious about using the Internet in your marketing, you need to lay the groundwork to optimize your opportunities. By providing incredible value to your market you can and will achieve success in your business!

Discover how to build a profitable list by attending the Six Figure List Building Web Summit from the comfort of your office or home.

To understand how marketers are using social media, Social Media Examiner commissioned the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

In this report the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing is uncovered.
A significant 3800 marketers provided valuable insight you won’t find elsewhere.

In this free report, you’ll discover:

•     What social networks marketers will focus on in the future
•     The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered
•     How much time marketers invest with social media activities
•     The top benefits of social media marketing and how time invested affects results
•     The most used social media tools and services
•     Activities social media marketers are outsourcing
•     And much more!

Watch a quick video overview here:

Download the Social Media Marketing Industry Report today!

Did you know that Pinterest is now the 3 most popular social media network in terms of US traffic! – Source: Experian
With over 11 million unique monthly visitors, Pinterest became the first website to eclipse the 10 million per month mark ever.

The demographics and stats are quite staggering

According to Mashable daily Pinterest users have increased by more than 145% since the beginning of 2012.
Shoppers referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to make a purchase.
Pinterest is retaining and engaging users as much as 2-3 times as efficiently as Twitter was at a similar time in their history.
1/5 of Facebook connected users are on Pinterest daily.

Benefits of Using Pinterest

• You can follow boards, not just people
• You can bookmark visually and find things easier
• It takes virtually no time or commitment to show what you like
• It’s a huge abundance of eye candy and it’s fun to use

Why Use it for Business?

• It provides an endless branding opportunity
• It gives you exposure to a totally new audience
• You can create unique customer experiences
• The traffic advantages
• Increased revenue, because people referred by Pinterest are more likely to make a purchase

Enjoy this Infographic about Pinterest as a possible Social Commerce game changer!
Let me know in the comments if you use or consider using Pinterest, and follow me on Pinterest!

With Social Media Small Business owners has the opportunity and ability to be more visible to their prospects and customers.

With this Infographic I would like to share with you the social media use by small business and how it has grown over the past few years.

Let me know in the comments section what you think of this.

Crowdsourced Logo and Graphic Design by crowdSPRING

Are you looking for a way to keep pace with the quickly evolving field of social media marketing? Do you want to fully embrace Social Media as a marketing tool?

More than ever, it’s critical to keep up with social media changes, to stay competitive and to learn the tactics and strategies that produce the best results and the greatest return for your business.

Has your business tapped the massive opportunities presented by social media marketing?

Recent Statistics on Social Media Adoption

Here are a few reasons why you should invest heavily in social media:

• Mass adoption of social media: Nearly 80% of all active U.S. Internet users regularly visit social media sites (Nielsen). While consumers spend 25% of their Internet time on social sites, Facebook has become the most visited website in the world. Your customers are there.
• Social media benefits businesses: Among marketers who include social media as part of their overall strategy, 97% agree that it provides benefits and value to their business (eMarketer).
• Social media improves branding: In a survey of more than 700 marketers, 88% of respondents found that social media helps grow brand awareness. It also benefited marketers by allowing them to engage in dialogue (85%) and increase sales and partnerships (58%). An additional 41% of marketers said it helped reduce costs (Wildfire Interactive).

These stats are just a sample of the power of social media. Do you want to fast-track your success? I want to recommend the Social Media Success Summit 2012, just announced by Social Media Examiner. I have attended plenty of their summits before and it really is the best value for money.

“Social media has changed radically in the last 12 months,” acknowledges Michael Stelzner, (CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner). “Google+ entered the stage, Facebook introduced Timeline for pages, YouTube unveiled their new layout, Twitter got a complete revamp and then there’s Pinterest. It’s a completely different world and there’s a need to discover new strategies and new ways to market your business with these platforms.”

Social Media Success Summit 2012

To equip you with the latest strategies for marketing with Google+, blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, Michael Stelzner and the people you trust from Social Media Examiner have recruited 27 of the world’s most respected social media experts to share their newest tips and advice at Social Media Success Summit 2012.

If you’re not familiar with these events, they’re large online conferences (so you don’t need to travel).

Typically, thousands gather at Social Media Examiner Success Summits to discover new social media tactics, network with peers and discover how other successful businesses are using social media.

What People Say About Social Media Success Summit

Last year, 3,000 people attended the online summit.

Here’s what some of them had to say:

• “Guaranteed to improve the way you approach social media. I’ll be back next year!” Derrick Sweet
• “Phenomenal topics and knowledgeable speakers. The ability to ‘catch up’ on sessions thanks to recordings was a selling point for me due to scheduling,” Erin Caples
• “This is the most comprehensive training I have yet seen on social media. The lineup of presenters was most impressive and the whole summit exceeded my expectations,” Suzanne Kiraly

Meet Your Presenters

Among the 27 social media experts who will be presenting at this summit are:

• Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group
• Chris Brogan, author of Google+ for Business
• Mari Smith, co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Brian Solis, author of Engage
• Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company
• Frank Eliason, author of @YourService
• Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and author of Launch
• Jay Baer, co-author of The Now Revolution\
• Jason Falls, co-author No Bullshit Social Media
• Mark Schaefer, author of The Tao of Twitter
• C.C. Chapman, co-author of Content Rules
• Dave Kerpen, author of Likeable Social Media
• Jesse Stay, author of Google+ for Dummies
• Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies
• Experts from Dell, Ford, LinkedIn, Citigroup, Citrix and many others.

Does your online marketing efforts look like the picture above?  It comes from the Internet Business Manifesto, by Rich Schefren, where he describes in very accurate details the overwhelm that most business owners experience once they venture into the world of Internet Marketing for the first time.

This article is aimed at business owners who run successful businesses, but who are looking or already trying to expand their business presence on the Internet in order to attract more clients. To be successful online, you need to have an effective Internet Marketing Plan.

What is considered to be an effective marketing plan?

An effective Internet Marketing Plan needs to be well-researched in order to guide a company step-by-step how to market its product or service to a specific target market. An effective plan will help a company remain focused on its marketing objectives.

Your Internet Marketing Plan needs to define the details of the following:

• market analysis,
• sales,
•  advertising,
• public relations campaigns

The most successful Internet marketing plans integrate both Internet marketing strategies as well as traditional (offline) marketing strategies.

Now let’s view the 10 steps to creating your Internet Marketing Plan:

#1 Market Research

Collect, organize, and write down data about the market that is currently buying the product(s) or service(s) you will sell. (From now on we’ll refer to your products or services as “product”.)

Some areas to consider:

• Market dynamics, patterns including seasonality
• Customers-demographics, market segment, target markets, needs, buying decisions
• Product—what’s out there now and what’s the competition offering? Conduct market research by using  Google to search on the types of products or services you want to sell
• Current sales in the industry
• Suppliers-vendors that you will need to rely on

Define your target market(s)—To be successful, focus on one or two small niche markets instead of a large general market. Niche markets have far less competition and they tend to be more profitable. If there is one thing you can do to help your odds of being successful in business it is to focus on one or two small niche markets.

#2 Product

Describe your product (or service). How does your product relate to the market? What does your market need, what do they currently use, what do they need above and beyond current use?

#3 Competition

Consider the following in your plan:

• Describe your competition.
• Develop your “unique selling proposition.”
• What makes you stand apart from your competition? Why are you special?
• Why should a customer choose to do business with you instead of one of your competitors? The better job you can do to differentiate yourself from your competitors, the more success you will have.

#4 Mission Statement

Write a few sentences that state:

• “Key market” – who you’re selling to – be very specific!
• “Contribution” – what you’re selling
• “Distinction” – your unique selling proposition – why are you different from your competition?

#5 Internet Marketing Strategies

Write down the Internet marketing and promotion strategies that you want to use or at least consider using. Don’t try to implement them all at once, choose 3-4 and measure the results.

There are several strategies to consider including:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What this means is using optimization techniques so search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) will rank your website within the top 10 search results. By doing this you can get literally thousands of people to your website every day for free. SEO is a service that you need to outsource if you don’t have an in-house capacity.  Or find a free resource, Local Search e-course, if you are a self-help person.
• Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing. When you use this service you are bidding on keywords so that your website text ad is displayed when a person conducts a search on a particular keyword or key phrase. Google, Yahoo and MSN all have pay per click internet marketing services.
• Affiliate Marketing. This is where other websites owners market your products for you and you pay them a commission on each sale. This is an outstanding way to create a successful Internet business.
• Link Exchanges. This is where you and other websites exchanges links to drive traffic to each other’s website. Exchanging links with other websites is also a great way to get better rankings in the search engines. The reason for this is that search engines want to give top rankings to the websites that are most popular in their category/industry. The best way for the search engines to determine which websites are the most popular is to see who has the most links pointing at their website. That is why getting a lot of links pointing at your website is so important. Back linking is also a strategy to outsource if you don’t have the capacity.
• Article Marketing – Write Articles and distribute them online. This is a great way to get tons of one-way links pointed at your website (which search engines love!).  A good practice is to write one new article each week/month and you will soon end up with thousands of links pointed at your websites. Remember, the more links that point at your website, the higher search engines will rank your website. It will establish you as an expert in your field. The way it works is very simple. You write a 1-page article and use online article distribution services to distribute your article to hundreds other websites, blogs, and ezines (electronic magazines). People read your articles to learn about your products or services. Recommended services to use for distributing your article are Ezine-Articles, Ideamarketers and Isnare.
• Write press releases and distribute them online. Just like writing and submitting articles, this is a very simple and extremely effective way to get tons of links pointed at your website. It is also a great way drive targeted traffic to your website. For more information, please visit PRWeb.
• Advertise in ezines (also known as an internet newsletter or an internet magazine). This is another simple yet highly effective way to market your products or services online.
• Network using social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

The Internet Marketing Strategies are also available as premium services from Virtual Project Consulting.

#6 Offline/Traditional Advertising Strategies

Here are some offline advertising strategies that you could integrate with your marketing:

• Networking-Go where your market is, Chamber of Commerce, etc
• Direct marketing using sales letters, brochures, postcards, flyers, etc.
• Advertising-Print media, directories, billboards, yellow pages, radio, TV
• Training programs-Seminars that you give to increase awareness
• Write articles for magazines, your local newspaper, and other publications read by your industry. Doing this will help you to become known as an expert
• Direct/personal selling
• Publicity/press releases
• Trade shows
• Referral programs
• Co-marketing with businesses that share your target market
• Barter

#7 Pricing, Positioning and Branding

From the information collected, establish strategies for determining the price of your product, where your product will be positioned in the market and how you will achieve brand awareness.

#8 Budget

Create a budget. What strategies can you afford? How much can you afford to spend per month?

#9 Marketing Goals

Establish quantifiable marketing goals. This means goals that you can turn into numbers. For instance, your goal might be to gain at least 10 new clients each month or to generate 100 leads per month.

#10 Monitor Your Results

It’s important to test and analyze. Identify the strategies that are working.

• Survey customers.
• Track sales, leads, visitors to your web site, percent of sales to impressions
• Determine which marketing strategies are producing the most customers and which are producing the least customers
• Measure Return on Investment per each marketing activity

If you follow the 10 Steps above, you can create an effective Internet Marketing Plan full of tactics to deploy and metrics to use to measure the effectiveness of your marketing.

If your business is not marketing online currently, you are losing out on many opportunities to attract interested clients to your business. And within a year, with no online presence it will be as if your business doesn’t exist.

About the Author:

Linky van der Merwe is the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting, a web-based company providing comprehensive Project Management Resources information to the aspiring and existing project manager.  As a virtual project manager, she also serves clients as an Internet and Mobile Marketing consultant helping you to plan and integrate Internet Marketing for your business to attract many more customers.

As a valuable blog visitor, Linky now invites you to watch the 100 customers in 100 days WEBINAR, presented by Russel Brunson. As a certified Independent Marketing Advisor (IMA) working with Dotcomsecrets Local, she really looks forward to being of service to you.

Contact Linky for your FREE strategy session to assess your online presence and to help you establish a customized Internet Marketing Plan for your business.

Please contact Linky today at:

linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Have you heard the buzz about Social Media Success Summit 2012–the web’s largest online social media marketing conference? I have attended these Social Media Summits before from the comfort of my home and I can strongly recommend them.

Before I tell you how this virtual summit will help your business gain more exposure, increase traffic, cultivate loyal fans and increase sales, let me share a story with you.

Proof social media marketing works:

In October 2009, Michael Stelzner started Social Media Examiner, a blog for marketers and small business owners. Almost overnight, his site became one of the top business blogs in the world.

He didn’t advertise, didn’t rely on the press and almost none of his traffic came from search engines.

Now, after two years, he has 600,000 unique people visit his site monthly, more than 132,000 email subscribers and 80,000 Facebook fans. His site has become one of the top 1000 in the United States.

His secret: create valuable content his audience loves and apply intelligent social media strategies.

Michael’s story is not unique. A significant 68% of business owners and marketers plan to increase their use of social media in 2012 (2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report).

What’s the connection?

Your customers (and prospects) are using social media every day. Social media is a new marketing frontier because it bypasses all the costly middlemen and allows you to engage directly with your customers and prospects! You’ll never need to advertise. AND this presents an enormous opportunity for you.

So what’s this about??

Michael and his team have been working for months to bring the best minds in social media together in a fully online event called Social Media Success Summit 2012.

A significant 3,000 marketers and business owners from around the world attended his last Social Media Success Summit. Businesses were transformed. In fact, 98% of attendees said they’d attend again and invite their friends.

This summit’s focus is to empower you to implement successful social media marketing tactics, track and measure your social media ROI, and see how successful social media campaigns were executed.

Twenty-seven of the world’s leading social media superstars will be summit instructors, including: Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group), Chris Brogan (author, Google+ for Business), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Brian Solis (author, Engage), Jay Baer (co-author, The Now Revolution), Jason Falls (co-author, No Bullshit Social Media), Frank Eliason (author, @YourService), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner, author Launch), and experts from LinkedIn, Dell, Ford, Citigroup and Citrix.

Plus join Jesse Stay (author, Google+ for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author, The Tao of Twitter), Dave Kerpen (author, Likeable Social Media), C.C. Chapman (co-author, Content Rules), Kipp Bodnar (co-author, The B2B Social Media Book) and Amy Porterfield (co-author, Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies)–just to name a few.

This is the world’s largest online social media event designed to empower marketers and business owners to master social media marketing. And the great news is it’s a live online conference you can attend from your home or office.

For a limited time, until mid-April you can secure 50%-off tickets to this online event! Go here now to learn more === Social Media Success Summit 2012.

The following Infographic, “How Big is Blogosphere” from Company Invesp, will give you a good idea of the growing Blogosphere.  Blogging these days is not just about sharing content. Its much more than that. Its about analytics, trends, social networking traffic, revenues and much more.

Infographic by – Conversion Rate Optimization

Here are 5 reasons why your business should have a Blog presence:

1. Having a blog for your business is one of the very best ways to have global reach. It’s one of the best ways to build your credibility and your influence and to attract the right people to your product/service business.
2.  Blogging is the way that you actually create a powerful presence on the web. The blog is your home base. It’s where you create your point of distinction in the marketplace. It is also one of the least expensive ways to do this on the web because as you may know, a blog can be free or very, very low cost to setup.
3.  The blog is where you have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and expose your personality. It gives your audience the chance to get to know you, like you and trust you.
4.  Your blog is where you share valuable, useful content that can serve your potential customers. It’s where you send the content and information that will make their lives better and that solves their problems.
5.  Your blog is really a forum to foster interaction because blogs are interactive tools as people can comment on them. It’s where you can guide the public conversation and when it’s appropriate, you can take it offline into private email or client engagement.

In summary, your business blog can and will:

•     Expand your Web presence
•     Increase your search engine visibility
•     Help potential customers discover you and your business
•     Improve visitor loyalty
•     Showcase your professional knowledge
•     Enhance your credibility
•     Develop your relationships with existing or potential clients
•     Involve users in the discussions
•     Get immediate, undiluted feedback

 If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to the RSS feed for future posts!

This is just a quick note to direct you to the most Useful Posts of 2011 according to Who’s Blogging What.

It provides a summary of the most useful articles about Social Media, Search Marketing, User experience, Email marketing and Web Analytics. If you are interested in these topics please read more at:

Who’s Blogging What

Have a look at this amazing and informative Infographic: