As of March 30, all of Facebook’s 845 million users have had to climb on board with these new changes.

Great news for you, Facebook has amped up their presentation with some pretty kick-ass features. What’s this mean to you as a business owner or marketing professional?

Facebook’s Timeline for Pages will help your business connect with a greater number of fans and gives you flexible tools to curate your unique social brand and share your story. That’s pretty damn rad.

Here’s 4 ways to get some extra mileage out of the new Timeline for Pages…

1. Facebook Cover Image

First up, your cover photo. If your business could be represented with a single image, this is where you’d post it. The cover photo spans the entire width of your page (851 pixels wide x 315 pixels tall) and should be a photograph that captures the intrinsic character and true quality of your company.

Calls to action are strictly forbidden; the point of the cover photo is to visually engage your community, not to assault them with in-your-face advertising tactics. Include your logo and a strong USP (unique selling proposition) or positioning statement, pop your company logo in the slotted profile picture location (125 pixels x 125 pixels) and you’re good to go.

2. Facebook Milestones

Milestones is a fun way to share your brand history and to mark the poignant occasions in your company’s future. You have the opportunity to share with your fans the wicked goals you have proudly achieved both in your business and in your community.

A super plus to marking Milestone’s is that these images also span the full width of your page (843 pixels wide x 403 pixels tall). Can you see where I’m going with this? The more visually appealing your page is, the more likely your target group is to like, share and interact with your product. “Scientists” confirm that Pages with a greater number of pictures generate twice the amount of traffic. Wunderbar!

3. Facebook Pin Tool

A cool new tool is the ability to Pin specific stories to the top of your Timeline. Let’s say you have some content that you want front and center for a short time, just right click the pencil icon in the top right corner of your post and that story will remain in the top position for one week. This is a great way to highlight weekly specials, lead generation tools and other calls-to-action.

4. Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights have been updated. This is your analytics here. Are you curious to know when your page gets peak traffic? What about how many times your post has been shared? And more deceptively (like a ninja), how are your competitors doing in social comparison? With Insights you can see how many fans have clicked on their Like box, what the most popular age group is for that company, when competitor posts are trending and the most popular times it all went down. Spy-work made easy!

Don’t be afraid of change folks, the team at Facebook is working hard to give you tools to better promote your business and communicate and interact with prospects and brand champions. Jump in, try it out, get your hands dirty and see what works for your business.

What are your thoughts on the new Timeline layout for Facebook Pages? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Why an Inbound Marketing Process?

First, inbound marketing is content driven. That means you need to be producing remarkable content that your target customer is looking for. Your content needs to educate, entertain and engage them.

A by-product of content marketing is that you begin to establish yourself as a trusted authority in your market. Being the trusted authority helps you overcome many of the typical objections you’re used to dealing with, such as price and trust issues.

Second, the inbound marketing process is data-driven. You can measure every single step of the process. Analyzing the data tells you what’s working and what isn’t and allows you to make constant improvements.

So how do you get started with implementing an inbound marketing process? Check out this awesome infographic:

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The age-old marketing model isn’t working anymore. Traditional marketing was all about how “reach” and “frequency” were the keys to success.

This “outbound marketing” is interruption-based and largely focused on methods such as cold calls, print ads, direct mail, attending tradeshows, etc.

The idea behind outbound techniques is to tell as many people as possible as many times as possible about your products and services and they would eventually buy from you; to get in front of cold leads and warm them up to the point where they would try your product or service.

Outbound marketing is largely a numbers game – you know you have to get in front of a certain number of people on average before one of them will show interest and identify them self as a prospect.

Traditional marketing sucks. It’s inefficient and expensive and unfortunately, it just isn’t working anymore.

Recent studies have shown that consumers are exposed to 3,000 advertisements a day. We’re so numb to this constant bombardment that old outbound marketing is no longer effective.

Yet marketers are still wasting time trying to get in contact with tons of people who may have no interest in their offerings.

So what’s the secret?

Stop interrupting what people are interested in and BE what people are interested in!

The Inbound Marketing Strategy

Inbound Marketing is the practice of bringing warm, qualified leads into your sales funnel rather than reaching outward to cold, questionable targets.

This strategy is becoming more popular as marketers look for more efficient and more affordable ways to acquire new leads.

Some of the most popular Inbound Marketing techniques include blogging, interacting on social media, search engine optimization, and creating eBooks, white papers, webinars and interactive online tools.

All of these inbound methods pre-qualify the leads that discover your company. It’s permission-based marketing so you can be sure that your message is greeting welcoming ears rather than random suspects and prospects.

It’s the difference between being a welcomed guest versus an annoying pest.

By attracting warm leads to you, you save time and money as inbound marketing costs on average 62% less than traditional outbound strategies.

The most important part of a successful inbound marketing strategy is creating great content that will bring people into your sales funnel.

To do that effectively, you have to have a website that is optimized to convert traffic into leads once they land on your page and an email system that can nurture them and stay front-of-mind with them until they are ready to make a purchase.

One of the core components of effective inbound marketing is keeping an updated blog. Companies that blog get 55% more website visitors than companies that don’t.

By regularly creating great content, you’ll also increase your ranking in organic search results, create linkable content, and educate your audience.

All of these outcomes will help you bring in warm leads that have been pre-qualified through a Google search for relevant keyword terms or by reading similar content that links to your content.

New content also gives you the opportunity to bring your leads back to your site over and over again.

By sticking with these Inbound Marketing strategies, you’ll continually bring in new leads and grow in authority, however, it won’t happen overnight.

While Inbound Marketing will save you money, it does require a commitment to the process and some patience.

You won’t be the top Google result for your desired keyword terms overnight, but by making a long-term commitment to inbound marketing you will see results.

Despite what skeptics may think, there is a very real return on investment for offline businesses that are spending marketing dollars on online marketing. A big part of what’s driving that success is social media.

Businesses that are leveraging the Internet to extend their reach and engage with their online audience are beginning to see some nice boosts in their bottom lines according to this infographic from Kissmetrics. They’ve done the research and have some case studies that back up their findings. This reinforces the fact that offline businesses CAN profit from online marketing strategies when they’re well thought out and implemented properly.

One of the things I found interesting about this infographic was how a food cart in San Francisco used Twitter to communicate with the locals to let them know where they were going to be located and when. They now have a Twitter following of over 12,000 followers. This also resulted in over 224 Yelp reviews and a 4.5 star rating.

I also really like the example of how a new dentist office used Groupon to attract 320 new patients in a very short period of time. Although there’s very mixed opinions about using Deal sites like Groupon and Living Social, I think if it’s well planned and done right, it can be an incredible way to attract new clients and customers.

The other point that is driven home is the necessity of having a good search engine optimization strategy in place. Over 20% of the searches on Google are location specific. That means people looking for terms like “Edmonton chiropractor” or “chinese restaurant in Edmonton”.

Creating a successful online marketing or inbound marketing strategy for your business involves 4 major components: social media marketing, search engine optimization, blogging and a solid content strategy. This infographic does a great job of showing the impact that online marketing can make for offline, bricks and mortar businesses.

Are you using online marketing right now? Why or why not? What’s been your experience? Please share your comment in the box below.

If you want to increase response from your online community when you’re posting updates you need to make sure that you aren’t missing one of the fundamental elements of effectively communicating with your audience. Add one of these elements in and you’ll instantly see an improvement.

To start with, it’s important to understand that people go online for two reasons: to find solutions to their problems and to be entertained. Armed with this knowledge, we can now take a look at the kind of updates that you’re posting.

To increase response from your social media updates make sure you’re focusing the content you create around helping people solve their problems, eliminating their pain, lightening their spirits and encouraging conversation with you. When you do this you’ll see a major shift in how your online community reacts to your content.

Here’s a tip: If you can educate people and mix in some humor at the same time, you’ll make a much bigger impact.

Now let’s look at the three key elements that will help you to increase response of your social media updates in more detail.

Educate

This one is pretty straight forward, you want to teach people or show people how to do something. Focus this kind of content on helping people do something easier, teaching them more about your topic of expertise, or helping them to make a smarter buying decision.

This is a huge opportunity for you to highlight your expertise in your subject area. Make sure you are providing valuable information and knowledge to your readers, viewers and listeners. The more value you add to people’s lives, the bigger you make. This is a great way to increase response.

Entertain

Entertainment needs to draw your audience in. This comes more naturally for some than it does for others. The two basic forms of entertainment are humor and story telling.

Everyone enjoys a good laugh. If you look at the most viral content on the Internet, the majority of the time it’s funny. One thing to keep in mind here is that if you intend to use humor, a planned script or joke rarely comes across as well as something unscripted, on the fly or more natural.

It takes a true artist to plan and execute great humor. You’ll know you’ve done it right when your audience begins to share your content and it goes viral.

Another great way to entertain your audience is by telling stories. If you can share a story with your audience, not only will you entertain them, but you’ll also share a part of you on a more personal level. This is important because people do business with people that they know, like and trust.

Another idea for creating entertaining content is to try weaving in current events or comments from thought leaders in your industry. If a news story is starting to go viral and you’re able to react fast enough and produce a relevant piece of content around it, you may be able to capitalize on the trending story. Doing what you can to make your content go viral is a great way to increase response.

Engage

Engagement is getting your audience to comment on your posts and have a conversation with you around the content you create. The important piece that most people miss when it comes to engagement is telling your audience what to do.

Your content needs to have a call to action (CTA). If you want people to share your content, tell ‘em. If you want them to click your link, tell ‘em. If you want them to answer your question, tell ‘em.

Some ways to better engage your audience include asking people thought-provoking questions, posting polls, and encouraging people to comment on your content. When your audience performs your call to action, you’ve effectively moved them from being passive to engaged; yet another great way to increase response.

Engagement is essential because it brings your audience one step closer to becoming a client or customer of your business. The more engagement they have with us, the more they will get to know, like and trust us, and the more viewers, listeners and readers we will convert to customers.

So remember, if you’re not getting the response from the updates and posts you’re making, remember to incorporate one or more of the elements above into your content. When you start delivering what people are looking for you will see response increase and they will naturally share your content with others, which is one of the results of effective social media marketing.

What are doing to increase response from your online audience? Please share your comment in the box below.

More and more companies are engaging in Business-to-Business social media to help grab the attention of more potential clients and customers and the reason why is obvious. You simply can’t ignore the staggering number of users on the various social networks. But are they doing it effectively?

Marketing dollars are always spent attracting our target audience and taking some time to explore social media only makes sense. Facebook is quickly approaching 1 Billion users, Twitter has over 300 million users and LinkedIn recently surpassed 130 million users. That’s a lot of eyeballs!

One of the other great things about advertising and marketing on social networks is the ability to target your ads based on your target audience’s demographics and interests. That’s not something that’s available to normal PPC advertising models and it’s one advantage that makes Business-to-Business social media marketing all the more attractive.

What’s interesting in the data shared in this infographic though is that the Business-to-Business social media marketers aren’t using the networks quite as effectively as the Business-to-Consumer crowd. Only 32% of B2B social media marketers are posting daily as compared to 52% of B2C social media marketers.

Staying front of mind is key to effective marketing, so understanding where your likely customers are spending their time and getting in front of them regularly is very important. The more touch points we have with them, the faster they’ll learn to know, like and trust us which is key to making the sale.

According to the data sources, when asked to rate the effectiveness of their Business-to-Business social media efforts, more than half said that Facebook was “extremely” or “somewhat” effective. LinkedIn ranked second for effectiveness with Twitter ranking in third.

I also found this interesting. You would think LinkedIn would have been ranked as most effective as it’s the professional’s network, largely comprised of people in business. I would wonder if this is simply an indicator that these B2B marketers don’t entirely know what they’re doing with LinkedIn and Twitter.

Even more interesting is the fact that only 50% of Business-to-Business social media marketers are analyzing data to determine their ROI. But not surprisingly, the ones that do track their data are finding that online marketing is more effective than the traditional marketing they’re used to doing.

This totally blows my mind. If you are spending money on marketing and you’re not testing and tracking your results, how on earth do you know if you’re spending your money wisely? Marketing is like investing. If you put $1,000 into something, if you don’t get MORE than $1,000 in profits back out, why would you continue to spend money on it?

All-in-all, it’s good to see more businesses embracing social media marketing.

Are you using Marketing dollars are always spent attracting our target audience and taking some time to explore social media only makes sense. Facebook is quickly approaching 1 Billion users, Twitter has over 300 million users and LinkedIn recently surpassed 130 million users. That’s a lot of eyeballs!

One of the other great things about advertising and marketing on social networks is the ability to target your ads based on your target audience’s demographics and interests. That’s not something that’s available to normal PPC advertising models and it’s one advantage that makes Business-to-Business social media marketing all the more attractive.

What’s interesting in the data shared in this infographic though is that the Business-to-Business social media marketers aren’t using the networks quite as effectively as the Business-to-Consumer crowd. Only 32% of B2B social media marketers are posting daily as compared to 52% of B2C social media marketers.

Staying front of mind is key to effective marketing, so understanding where your likely customers are spending their time and getting in front of them regularly is very important. The more touch points we have with them, the faster they’ll learn to know, like and trust us which is key to making the sale.

According to the data sources, when asked to rate the effectiveness of their Business-to-Business social media efforts, more than half said that Facebook was “extremely” or “somewhat” effective. LinkedIn ranked second for effectiveness with Twitter ranking in third.

I also found this interesting. You would think LinkedIn would have been ranked as most effective as it’s the professional’s network, largely comprised of people in business. I would wonder if this is simply an indicator that these B2B marketers don’t entirely know what they’re doing with LinkedIn and Twitter.

Even more interesting is the fact that only 50% of Business-to-Business social media marketers are analyzing data to determine their ROI. But not surprisingly, the ones that do track their data are finding that online marketing is more effective than the traditional marketing they’re used to doing.

This totally blows my mind. If you are spending money on marketing and you’re not testing and tracking your results, how on earth do you know if you’re spending your money wisely? Marketing is like investing. If you put $1,000 into something, if you don’t get MORE than $1,000 in profits back out, why would you continue to spend money on it?

All-in-all, it’s good to see more businesses embracing social media marketing.

Are you using Business-to-Business social media? What’s been your experience with it? Please share your comment in the box below.

A lot has changed in the past century when it comes to media and communication. In the 1920’s commercial radio was born. In the 1940’s it was commercial television. Then in 1989 the Internet was born.

Traditional media has always been owned by a small number of large media corporations. If you want access to their readers, viewers and listeners you have to pay. For marketers and advertisers, the media or network they choose to advertise in is dictated by their budget, and the demographics and reach of that particular media.

The reach is the number of people you can broadcast to. With radio it’s the number of listeners. With television it’s the number of viewers that tune in. With newspapers and magazines it’s the circulation and number of readers.

But with the state of the Internet today, we no longer need to pay these media corporations to reach our audiences. You can find all sorts of readers, viewers and listeners from all different demographics on the World Wide Web. In fact, because our world is increasingly going digital, most of these traditional forms of media are experiencing major declines in viewers, listeners and readers.

The Internet Has Shaped New Media

Today there are over 1.8 billion people connected to the Internet. That makes up roughly 80% of the planet. There are over 6 billion mobile phone users. Most phones on the market today are smart phones which can also connect to the Internet. We now have the ability to broadcast worldwide without needing the permission of the media corporations that so tightly control traditional media.

If it’s news articles you’re after, most major newspapers also publish the news online. Not to mention that there are over 200,000,000 blogs on the Internet covering every topic imaginable. Anyone can create a blog, start writing articles and make their message available to people from all over the world.

What about audio broadcasting? You can purchase a USB microphone and start recording your own audio shows. You can then upload those audio broadcasts to iTunes in the form of a podcast and reach out to a potentialof registered iTunes users. And iTunes isn’t the only podcast directory on the Internet either.

The there’s video broadcasting. I’m sure you’ve heard of YouTube before. It’s only the #3 most visited website on the entire Internet. There’s over 2 billion videos viewed each day on YouTube and over 24 hours of video is uploaded every minute. You can create an account and have your own channel too.

Technology Is Advancing New Media

With technology advancing as quickly as it is, most new televisions have the ability to connect to the Internet. Now you have the ability to stream your videos to people’s living rooms! Did you know that less than 18% of traditional television advertising produces a positive return on investment? That means that over 80% of television advertising LOSES money!

Don’t forget about social media. Maybe you’ve heard of Facebook? It’s the #1 most visited website on the Internet. The average user spends over 40 minutes A DAY on the network connecting with friends and sharing articles, videos and other things of interest. With an engaged online community, THEY will spread your broadcasts for you!

There seriously is no reason in today’s digitally-connected world to spend thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars to use traditional media to connect with potential prospects and customers. You can do this yourself for far less money and reach a much broader audience with a little bit of time and very little money.

The traditional media corporations don’t own the relationship with viewers any longer. You no longer need their permission to speak to people. YOU are the media. So GO, NOW and start broadcasting!

Are you using new media now? What are you using? What’s your thoughts? Leave your comment in the box below.

According to this inbound marketing infographic created by Voltier Digital, Inbound marketing is on the rise. “That’s great…” you’re thinking, “What the heck is Inbound Marketing anyways?” Welcome to the dawn of marketing you won’t hate…

Inbound marketing or “new marketing” is any marketing tactic that relies on earning people’s interest instead of buying it. It relies heavily on the use of the Internet. Communication becomes two-way and is interactive whereas old marketing was one-way and marketers and advertisers would broadcast out in hopes to elicit a response.

New marketing involves the use of creating content such as white papers, ebooks, podcasts, blogs and… heh… infographics in order to educate and entertain the audience. They also use social media to help spread the word and spread their content out on the Internet.

Inbound marketing focuses on adding value and getting found by prospects and customers. They “earn their way in” in contrast to outbound marketers who have to “buy, beg, or bug their way in.”

Inbound marketers also take advantage of various social media channels to spread their content. If they do a great job at educating, entertaining and engaging with their audiences, then there is a good chance that their audiences will share their content with their friends and followers too.

Using good content marketing also makes a big impact on a website’s search rankings. This can help to create buzz and and referral traffic as well as drive sales or leads.

With more and more consumers tuning out old media such as television advertising, radio ads and various print publications like newspapers and magazines, it’s becoming more costly and more difficult for businesses to get the word out about their products and services.

If you’re trying to market your business, then maybe you should consider using new marketing as you’ll see when you look through this inbound marketing infographic.

What are your thoughts? Are you using Inbound Marketing now? How have your results been? Please share your comment in the box below.

The truth is that anyone can become the Trusted Authority in their market. You don’t have to be the best, you don’t have to have the most knowledge, you don’t need any fancy initials after your last name.

Becoming the Trusted Authority is all about marketing. It’s all about positioning, and with a little bit of effort, anyone can do it.

Why on earth would you want to become the Trusted Authority in your market? That’s a great question and I can give you a number of reasons why you should work smart to become the Trusted Authority in your market.

Here’s just a few:

You Don’t Have To Compete On Price

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is they think they need to be priced lower than their competitors in order to get the business. This is a fallacy and a big source of headaches for people. 

When you try to compete on price alone you attract what I call the Wal-Mart shoppers. They don’t care about anything but the cheapest price. Service, selection and quality all become secondary issues when you’re competing on price alone. The other problem with these Wal-Mart shoppers is their blatant lack of loyalty. As soon as they find your product or service somewhere else for a little bit cheaper, they’re gone.

The truth is, people don’t expect to deal with the best and pay the least. We’re not programmed that way. If we know we’re dealing with the best in the industry, we know that we’re going to pay a price that is reflective of that.

You Don’t Have To Struggle To Get People To Listen To You

Talk shows, radio shows, even journalists and news anchors are always seeking out experts to comment on the stories they’re talking about. Why is that?

It’s because people listen to what the experts have to say. Just like people listen to what the Trusted Authority has to say. The opinions and advice of these experts has a lot of influence on other people’s beliefs, thoughts, opinions and best of all, buying decisions.

The Market Places Trust In You

Normally, we tend to have a certain level of trust for people, until they do something to lose it. Not everyone is so trusting but generally speaking, unless someone’s done something to lose our trust, we do trust them to a certain extent.

Unfortunately when it comes to consumerism, the default relationship between business and consumer is one of distrust. For a business, they have to earn our trust.

But that’s different if you’re the undisputed authority in your market. People already have a level of trust for the experts. You still have to work hard to keep that trust, but it comes with the position to a certain extent.

People Are Eager To Do Business With You

Generally speaking, people don’t like to deal with generalists. There’s an assumption that a generalist knows a little bit about a lot of things and a specialist knows a lot about a few things. If we want something done right, we seek out the specialist.

You’re The Obvious Choice

This one kind of follows up to the previous point. If you’re the Trusted Authority in your market, people expect that their needs are going to be better met doing business with you than with someone else in the market.

We believe the expert or the specialist will better handle our concerns and solve our problems than a generalist will. Again, it’s kind of human nature.

These are five of the top reasons why you would want to become the Trusted Authority in your market. The reality is that there are all kinds of benefits to being the authority. These are just the top ones.

In order to start positioning yourself that way, you need to focus on creating good quality content and posting it to your blog or website. Then turn your focus over to developing a presence using social media and pull people in to your articles and information on your website from the various social networks.

What are your thoughts? Please share your comment in the box below.

To explain how this all works together, I like to use the analogy of fishing…

Your Fishing Boat

When it comes to online marketing, your fishing boat is your website or blog. I recommend to new clients that they build their websites on WordPress so that you can have a website with built-in blog functionality. Having a blog is essential for all businesses.

If we think about fishing, the whole purpose is to get the fish into the boat. We do the same with our online marketing. We want to get the people from our online communities back to our hub or our home base which is our website (our primary goal).

Once we get them back to our website, the goal is to get them to opt-in to an ethical bribe or click Like on our Facebook Page Widget. This allows us to identify them (our secondary goal).

Your Fishing Nets

The fishing nets we use are the various social media networks we are engaged in. The key is to remember that different people hang out in different networks (kind of like different schools of fish swim together!)

Your Bait

In order to catch the right fish, you need to use the right bait. The bait that you use on the social networks is usually teaser copy for blog posts. You can post all different kinds of content in the social networks, but for the sake of getting people from our communities back to our website we want to focus on teaser copy for blog posts. When you post a new article, video or photo album to your blog, then you post a little blurb along with a link back to the content on your website into the various social media channels.

So let’s see an example of how this would look:

Let’s say I own a carpet cleaning company (my favorite example!) I just finished writing a blog article on the Top 5 Ways To Protect Your Carpets From Pet Stains and Odors (my bait) and now I want to go fishing and pull some new people from my online communities (the nets) back to my website (the boat).

I prepare a few short little messages that I can post to my social networks and a short one to send out to my email list as well. Here’s what they might look like:

“I’m constantly asked by people how to protect their carpets from pet accidents, stains and odors. Anyone you ask has a different suggestion, but I’ve prepared my list of the Top 5. You can read it here: http://www.mycarpetcleaningwebsite.com/top-5-ways”

I take this message and I post it to each of my social networks that I’m involved in, as well as send it out in a brief email message to my email list. The key here is that I’m not selling. I’m providing valuable information to my various communities. My intent is to get them back to my website to read my new article. I make sure at the end of the article to ask the readers to post their comments and share the article with their networks (remember people need to be told what to do next).

To make sure this process all flows smoothly together, I’ve made sure at the end of my article to make mention that not all of these Top 5 ways to remove pet stains will always do the trick and that they may need to call a professional carpet cleaner to come in and take care of the really bad ones (I haven’t directly sold my own services, I’ve simply dropped the hint that they might need to do that at some point.)

Lastly, at the end of my article I have a little blurb that encourages people to opt-in to my ethical bribe. In this case, I’ve written a short report that’s called “The 7 Ways That Carpet Cleaning Companies Rip You Off”. In order for people to download my free report, they have to opt-in to my email list. This is how I’m identifying my traffic and building my email list at the same time.

As you can see, social media plays an integral role in your online marketing strategy. The question remains, how does more traditional offline marketing fit into this strategy? The exact same way. All of your offline or traditional marketing should also drive people back to your website. Social media marketing and email marketing all cost next to nothing but do require an investment in time. When we can capture people on social media or in our email list, it reduces the amount of money we need to spend on traditional offline marketing and advertising.

Do you agree with this strategy? Please share your comments and share with your friends on your favourite social network.