If you have been using Twitter for more than just the occasional glance to see what your friends are up to you, there is no doubt that you have seen a hashtag. As a matter of fact now that I say that you may not even know what I mean by the term “Hashtag”.

Let’s start there. A hashtag is nothing more than a word, maybe two with the “#” symbol attached to the front of the words. To make it even easier for you to get an understanding of which hashtags may currently be trending, login into your Twitter account and you will see a list of current hashtags listed in the right-hand column of your Twitter account. For example at the moment the top listed hashtag that I am seeing is “#nowplaying”.

By default your account will be showing hashtags that are trending on a worldwide scale, but you can narrow that down to your location or a location of your choosing.

Ok, so who cares?

If you are spending time on the Internet to make your living or at least supplementing your income, you care. Hashtags are nothing more than a way in which you can catalog or categorize your Tweets, so that they are more easily found by the people that are interested in your chosen topic. Additionally, due to the fact that hashtags tend to spread very quickly it is highly likely that your Tweets will be found by people that are not currently following you.

Trying to build a large following of Twitter users?

Do you have a specific event or marketing campaign that you are trying to promote?

Are you working to build some buzz around a new product launch?

The short answer is that hashtags are your key to building a large Twitter following, increasing the size of your blog subscribers, and as I would assume most business owners would be interested in, improving your bottom line.

And, now for the bad news: As with everything on the Internet, there are people that have begun to abuse hashtags and surprise, they have become a vehicle for spamming. If you want to maintain your reputation and build a reputable following online, never ever use hashtags in a Tweet that does not pertain to the content of your Tweet. This is nothing more than maintaining proper etiquette, integrity and plain being honest about how you conduct yourself on the Internet.

So, for those of you who are thinking ahead and asking yourself how you can leverage current trends to give your following, marketing and/or website traffic a boost, let’s discuss that option. You’ve done some research and found that there are a number of current hashtags that are trending and you are wondering which ones you can leverage. The simply answer to this question is that it totally depends on how you are using your Twitter account.

In my case, I happen to read a lot and absolutely love quotes from people in all walks of life and in many cases they make me laugh, give me new ideas or simply provide inspiration for the day. As such a large number of the Tweets that I send out are quotes that I have come across and feel that there is someone else out there that might enjoy the quote as well. Additionally, I spend a lot of time helping entrepreneurs and small business owners leverage the power of the Internet and Tweet on subjects related to this endeavor.

As such it would make NO sense for me to be Tweeting on the latest trends in the entrainment world, Tiger Woods or any subjects like this that are totally unrelated to my primary theme. Additionally, do NOT use hashtags in every Tweet that you send out. Use your common sense. When in question, ask someone that has more experience than you and simply be smart about how you are using your Twitter account.

Lastly, please, please make sure that to the best of your ability you are providing value to the people that are going to be searching on the hashtags that you are using in your Tweets.

While this is in no way an exhaustive discussion of how to use hashtags in your Twitter account and the Tweets that you are sending out, I think you get the idea. If you have additional questions please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know how I can help.

Have some great success in using hashtags to grow your business, please take a moment to leave a comment and share with us all. I personally, always look for tips, tricks and ideas for people that have more knowledge than I.

As always: To Your Success!

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In a previous life as a systems engineer protecting system data, having the resources to recover from a fatal melt down and frankly protecting clients from the headaches that come with lost data was a daily focus.  As many of you reading this, my daily activities rely heavily on the performance of Wordpress and its incredible reliability. To that point a significant chunk of my revenue is dependent upon Wordpress performing as many of us take for granted.

Let me ask you as question: When was the last time that you backed-up your database? How about your site files?

Do you keep your Wordpress up to date with the latest updates? How about any plugins that you make use of, do you keep them updated?

Let me tell you a quick little story.

A very good friend of mine uses Wordpress as the foundation for his website and as you would expect Wordpress has performed flawlessly. No real shocker there as that is the norm and pretty much what we have all come to expect.

However, as he and I were working together to prepare for a major email announcement that was being sent out for him (to 9000+ contacts)  by a referral partner the unimaginable happened.  With the anticipation of hundreds of people hitting his website because they were driven there by a highly reputable collogue we discovered that his website was not working properly.

To make matters worse neither of us had been making any updates to the site, no changes: no Wordpress updates, no Wordpress plugin updates, no site changes and yet, the site was displaying a solid white page. Even with a minor hint of panic setting in, I made up my mind that I would simply get into the admin section of the site to figure out what was going on.

This is where things got very interesting (meaning more panic) as I discovered that they admin interface was giving the same results as the public side of the site.

With a string of progressively more stressful events, we finally had some good news. A few weeks back I had setup the Wordpress Database Backup plugin to automatically email me a copy of the database each day. That’s right, the extent of work that I have to do each day is simply save the backup that is waiting in the inbox of my email.

After opening my database management tool in the web browser, I uploaded a backup from a few days prior and we were back online. For what could have been a major disaster we were back online and running with a sigh of relief within about 20 minutes.

Wordpress Database Backup (WP-DB-Backup) has a great admin interface that will allow you to make quick backups of your Wordpress Database tables anytime that you are preparing to make updates, but more importantly and a feature I have not used consistently, the plugin will allow you to schedule backups that will be emailed to you on your schedule.

Even though the WP-DB-Backup plugin will allow you the option of saving the backup file to the server, I would strongly discourage you from leaving your database backups on the server. In a perfect world and if all is configured properly, then you or your technical support would be able to gain access to your database backups. However, in the middle of a major melt down I am not so sure that is a chance that you will want to take.

If you are running a Wordpress website that contains important information that you would not want to lose or that website is an important component of your producing income, I would strongly encourage take a moment to check out the Wordpress Database backup plugin (WP-DB-Backup) – Click Here to Visit the Plugin Website.

Additionally, if you have plugin that has been useful to you in helping maintain your Wordpress website please tell me about it as I am always looking for great new Wordpress resources.

To Your Success!

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All too often I meet with very sharp small business owners that do all the things you would expect when it comes to building a successful small business. These business owners are developing strategic relationships, monitoring their sales and marketing goals, keeping tabs on expenses and ensuring that forecasted cash flow is going to meet expected demands. While this list could go on, I am sure you get the point.

Why is it that these same business owners seem to disconnect their brain when it comes to their website design, performance and overall role in the business?

Why is it that many of these business owners fail to understand that their website presence is a very real and viable source of new prospects, sales and business opportunities?

There are countless small businesses that have a website presence that is nothing more than a destination driven marketing tool. To make things worse it doesn’t even fill that role when the sales team is actually in the physical presence of a prospect, because at that time they are handing them a brochure. Please don’t take that last statement out of context as I am a huge proponent of having printed materials to pass on to prospects, clients, and especially referral partners.

However, my point with regards to the above statement is that other than company employees, the only traffic that many small business websites receive is simply because the site visitor was prompted to visit the site because of some type of direct contact.

In my world that is a pretty sad statement.

Why is it that more small business owners are not outraged at the fact that their website is not actually creating new business for them? When did it become acceptable that, a primary channel for new prospects and business, perform so poorly, if at all?

In the above scenario, the company website has become little more than an electronic version of their company brochure. The website link is passed on to prospects through emails, over the phone, through a business card and/or included in other marketing materials. From a convenience point of view that is great because even when it is not possible to meet in person a new prospect can get an idea of what your company is about, details on products/servers, and maybe even put a face to a name.

The real power in a small business website shows when that company acquires a new customer that was not first contacted through the sales and marketing efforts. Now you are answering the phone to find that you have a new prospect calling you to ask about your products and services. Better yet, you may have a new client walking in your door asking to make a purchase. And saving the best for last, you are receiving commissions or revenue via your website, never having spoken to this new customer.

Let me ask the question that I started with; what kind of website does your business have?

The difference in the two scenarios that I have described above is the difference in a website that is nothing more than a destination website verses a website that is attracting new prospects. So, the real decision you have to make is do you want an attraction website or a destination website.

The great part about this entire subject is that you get to make the choice. Yes, it is your choice!

The difference between the two websites is very simple.

Destination website (Online Electronic version of your marketing materials):

- Make the decision regarding what information you are willing to share via your website.

- Get a designer that can and will ensure that your website design matches your branding.

- Launch the site and send prospects, referral partners and clients to the site whenever required.

- At this point you’re pretty much done.

Attraction website (A sales/marketing tool that works for your company 24×7):

- Take the above steps and ensure that your site is Search Engine Optimized.

- Install Google Analytics to enable you to monitor your website performance.

- Keep your website content fresh and updated.

- Initiate a company Newsletter that is closely integrated into your website.

- Make adjustments, enhancements to your site based on performance data.

Before leaving the above comparison, let me state that these lists are in no way comprehensive and could have countless variations based on a company’s needs.

As you can see from the comparison above the website that is going to generate new prospects, revenue and business opportunities, is not a website that you publish and forget. For many small business owners the additional time and effort required to have a website that plays an important role in your overall business growth is simply not that challenging.

How many new clients per month and in some cases per year would it take for your website to have a significant impact on your bottom line?

Your prospects are online and in many cases searching for exactly what you are offering. If you are not going to make the effort the position yourself such that they can find your business website, your competition will. For many small businesses the amount of new business that they are losing because of the poor performance of their website, could easily equal their current revenue.

To Your Success!

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I am as guilty as anyone that may be reading this. Guilty of what you may be asking yourself? Reading any number of my articles/blog posts and you will see that I put a lot of focus on business, business growth, marketing and ultimately generating new leads and prospects. All of those things are very important and key to gaining new customers.

Let me put this another way: Website Design, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media as a whole and having a Marketing Strategy are all VERY important. However, if you forget the very simply and undeniable fact that your customers are people first, you will never have the success you deserve. I am willing to bet that I could ask any number of you reading this article: How much you care about your customers and I would get a resounding series of positive responses.

If that is truly the case, when was the last time that you really listened to your customers?

Every business owner in the world will actually listen to their customers to some extent and least the ones that are still in business. However, the point that I want to drive home today is that really listening to your customers is not as easy as you may think. The reasoning behind that last statement is that if you are really listening to your customers you are going to hear what is being said and what’s not being said. That’s right as business owners we need to hear what they don’t say, which ultimately is more important than what they actually say.

As I stated earlier I am as guilty as the next business owner, because let’s face it good listening skills are hard to come by. One of the biggest challenges with taking time to hear what our customers are saying is that there are times that we are going to hear the things that we don’t want to hear. Human nature is such that we all naturally gravitate toward the pleasant, complementary feedback that we receive, but that negative feedback is a little harder to swallow. Let me ask you this:

If you never receive any negative feedback, how are you ever going to improve on the things that you aren’t doing so well?

The truth of the matter is that while hearing the good things is nice, from the simple fact that you now know what you are doing well. Negative feedback will help us correct the things that we aren’t doing so well. And, ultimately if our customers don’t like the way things are going we need to correct them.

Let’s put this in terms that are more central to my typical writing. If you have a marketing campaign that you are spending good money on that is not generating the results you expected are you going to make a change? Let’s say that you have decided to use Google Pay-per-Click ads to drive more traffic to your site. You have your ads setup and you are getting new traffic to your site on a daily basis, but very little of that traffic is being converted into new business. Do you keep your ads the way they are or do you start making adjustments? Every one of us would be quick to make the required changes to improve the conversion rate associated with our Pay-per-Click ads.

Why would we not take into account what our current customers are thinking?

Monitoring our Analytics for our website and the results we are seeing as related to our Pay-per-Click Google ads is much easier to deal with, because we are dealing with lot of data and statistics. Ah, now switch gears and start thinking about taking the time to truly care about what our current customers, what, need and expect from us. Not so easy, is it?

That little thing called human interaction when it comes to relationships is something that many of us struggle with in all areas of our lives. I have a high level of confidence that there are few business owners that have not heard the cost comparisons of obtaining new customers verses keeping the existing customers, yet way too many of us spend a large portion of our efforts on obtaining new customers. All the while, we are barely if at all taking the time to listen to our current customers to find out what they need.

Ultimately, our customers are people first. They have needs, wants, desires, pains, and that ugly word “expectations”. Take the time to learn the skills required, to improve your relationships, both in business and your personal life and you will go further than you have ever dreamed. Be bold enough to care about what your customers need, what is causing them pain and how you can improve the products and services that you provide. If you are willing to be vulnerable and open yourself and your business to their feedback and criticisms, along with the praise, I can promise that you will not be disappointed.

Find your customers pain and provide the solution that best fits their needs and you will have a customer for life. Take care of your customers as people first and they will be loyal to you, provided you with referrals, more business and ultimately drive down your marketing costs.

In conclusion here are a few ideas that you may want to implement:

*Take the time to thank your customers for their business
*Send them a card to say thanks, wish them a happy birthday, or anniversary
*Take them to lunch and let them know you are trying to improve your business and that you value their input
*Feature some of your best customers in your newsletter, website, etc.
*Give them referrals for their business

These are just a few ideas. Be creative and think of different ways to show your appreciation for your customers. Do you have strategies that have worked for you? If you have other ideas for showing customer appreciation I would love to hear them.

To Your Success!

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Closely related to my last article on search engine optimization, “Search Engine Optimization, Keywords, Meta Tags & the quick fix”, strategies to increase blog traffic is a very popular topic when talking with clients and colleagues.

If you have a blog, have thought about blogging or wondered if blogging is right for you then this is the article for you. With that said, let me set the stage before diving in.

The amount of content that could be written about blogging, driving traffic to your blog and any topic that you may think of related to blogging would fill countless books. Needless to say my goal here is to to cover what I consider some of the most important strategies you will want to consider. If after reading you have some other words of wisdom that you can share I would highly encourage your comments.

Hosting Your Blog
One of the biggest mistakes that I see made on a regular basis is the simple decision with regards to hosting of your blog. Hosting your blog on your own domain with your primary website will search engine rankings, trust, links, publicity and ultimately your business. All too often I see sharp business owners that decide to host their blog on a hosted solution like Blogspot, Blogger, Blog.com or Wordpress.com. This is the worst decision that you can make.

While there are a number of blogging software solutions that you can choose from, WordPress is by far my favorite. WordPress is easy to install, has a very well documented system for creating your own custom design, there are countless templates to choose from and Wordpress is highly extensible.

Continually Monitor Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software like Google Analytics will tell you which posts your audience likes best, which posts aren’t being viewed and ultimately how your visitors are finding you on the search engines.

Additionally, you will want to know the average number of pages viewed, the time spent on your site, where your best quality visitors are coming from and the list goes on. Google Analytics and all that is provides is worth a lot more space than I have here, so come back soon as I will spend the time to give you the additional information that you will need.

An often overlook strategy is that by watching your analytics you identify posts that get search traffic for keywords that are not necessarily used very effectively in your post, paragraph titles, post title or tags. When these posts are generating large amounts of traffic for these keywords, this presents an opportunity for you to spend a few minutes updating the post to make more effective use of these keywords. Think about it this way: Your post is generating good traffic without having been optimized for these keywords and with a little time spent on search engine optimization you can significantly improve your traffic.

Tag Your Content
Tagging content is very valuable when it comes to moving your site toward getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon. While it is not smart  to submit every post that you create to these sites learning how to properly make use of this strategy can be huge when it comes to generating traffic to your site. Technorati is a great place where you can begin tagging posts. There are a large number of people that would recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you’re targeting. Some of the other sites that you will want to consider are  del.icio.us and Flickr and Blogmarks just to name a few.

Start solving problems
You visitors will become regular readers of your blog when you start providing content that is wanted, needed and highly valued. The majority of your readers are going to be reading your blog to find answers to problems they are having, genuinely search out new information about their chosen profession/hobby, are searching for additional training on a particular subject or pure entertainment. As such avoiding off-topic posts like what your pet cat is up to today, will go a long way towards building repeat traffic and the great part is that it doesn’t take any extra time on your part. Time spent writing is time spent writing, so use your time effectively.

Effective Linking
There are a couple of different topics to cover here with linking. Creating smart and effective links between various posts within you site can create a number of benefits. By linking from some of your less viewed posts, with keywords as anchor text, to your more popular posts you can actually increase your overall site ranking on Google for those keywords. Additionally, you give your readers a reason to spend more time on your site thereby increasing the average time spent on your site by your visitors.

Secondly, when linking out of your blog posts to other sites be sure that you are aware how these links serve to improve the content of your post. You don’t necessarily need to link out from every post that you create. However, I personally tend to be overly generous with especially when I know that there are good quality articles posted by other bloggers that will be of benefit to my readers. By all means if you chose to quote, mention or otherwise make use of other online resources it is considered rude to not provide a link to their work.

In closing remember to host your blog on your primary domain, spend the time required to leverage the information provided by your analytics, make use of effective linking, content tagging and always strive to solve problems for your readers. None of the things that I have mentioned here can be considered the magic bullet that is going to make your site an over night sensation, but used consistently over time your site will pull in large amounts of consistent traffic.

Have some great tips that you use to build traffic on your blog, please take a moment to share by leaving a comment.

Have a question that you need some help with? Please let me know by leaving a comment.

If you like what I have shared here, please take a moment to pass along via your favorite social media site. Your participation is GREATLY appreciated.

To Your Success!

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I wanted to take a quick moment to wish everyone a VERY Happy New Year. May 2010 be your best year yet. God Bless – Wishing you a 2010 filled with Health, Wealth, Prosperity and Happiness!

I wanted to take a moment to tell everyone Merry Christmas and to express my gratitude for all the blessing I (and my family) have received this year. While, like many I have had some challenges during 2009 I can say in all honesty that I have far more to be grateful for than I deserve.

To my wife, my Sons, Mom & Dad, my wonderful sisters, my father-in-law, and brother/sister in law, you all mean more to me than I will ever be able to fully express. I Love You All & pray that God will bless you all beyond your wildest dreams in 2010 and beyond.

For all my friends, family, and site visitors I am grateful for each of you. More than any of you will ever know I am blessed to have you as a part of my life. Many times the smallest comment, word of encouragement or thanks means the world to me and reminds me why I do what I do.

For all of my new friends (family) that I have as a result of Zarvos Coaching, the Breaking Through Series and the incredible Vision in Action (VIA) leadership course, I am eternally  grateful to each and everyone of you. Many of you have been a tremendous source of  inspiration when I most needed that extra encouragement. I love you all and count myself blessed to have you as part of my life.

There are countless others in my life that I would like to take the time to thank, but that would require more space than I could possibly cover here in the space. I have no doubts that God has brought you all into my life and as such I am grateful for each and everyone of you. Merry Christmas to all and God Bless. I pray that 2010 will be a year of countless blessing of health, wealth and prosperity.

With Love and Respect,

Glenn

Inevitably one of the first things that comes up in discussion when talking to a prospect regarding their website, their website traffic (or lack of) and search engine optimization is Meta Tags. Unfortunately, if that is all there was to this daunting task of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) then my guess is that they would not be talking to me.

With major search engines such as Google, their database basically houses every page on the Internet that they know about. Furthermore, considering the fact that every website owner has their own agenda the major search engines like Google can’t simply trust that the Meta Tags of any give site are a objective representation of the content of that site. In short search engines like Google are primarily interested in having pages that are most relevant to any given keyword show up in their search results regardless of who may own that site.

Secondly Search Engine Optimization is not something that ever stops – Never! That is correct if you expect that your site will dive any substantial amount of traffic on a continual basis, then the task of Search Engine Optimization will never cease.  While it is often approached as a quick fix you should approach your search engine optimization as a long-term investment for your site.

Here are some things to consider:

* Make sure your Title tags, Meta Tags, Link anchor text and Alt tags all match with the visible content of the page.

* Ensure that your site is overly graphics based, as graphics cannot be read by the search engines. A common mistake that I see is a website that has been created with graphics that are nothing more than a graphical representation of text.

*Pay close attention to the keyword density of your website and be certain that you use clearly understood language and phrases that will get your website ranked well with the search engines.

* Thoroughly researched keywords and keyword phrases are worth their weight in gold and the key to Search Engine Optimization.

*Monitor your Analytics on an ongoing basis to understand what is working, what’s not working, where your traffic is coming from, how they found your website, your bounce rate, conversion rates and all that tells you if what you are doing is paying off.

* Be patient! More often than not it is going to be a good 9 months before you start seeing substantial traffic from Google’s organic search results.

Think about the simple fact that there are literally thousands upon thousands of new sites added to the internet on a daily basis. On the flip side of that coin there are literally thousands of websites that cease to exist on a daily basis. Then we have to contend with the fact that there is countless amounts of new information added to the internet each day. As a direct result of this activity the search engines like Google are constantly updating their databases and you guessed it: They are ordering that data in searches according to relevance.

The Importance of Keywords
Take a moment to think about the importance of keywords for example. There will always be new keywords and niches for you to find, optimize for and or monetize. Your SEO strategy should focus on and prioritize for the most lucrative target keywords for your website, products and services. However, with an active SEO strategy you will be continually making adjustments in your priorities based on factors such as: response rates, marketing material, prices, product ranges, stock levels and industry changes. With each shift in priority you will need to complete additional keyword research to find appropriate target keywords.

How about those all important Back Links?
First and foremost if you are hung up on link popularity – STOP. Let’s take a novel approach to this subject and think about your target audience and what it is going to take to get them to your site. What we are talking about here is really nothing more than good old fashion marketing – plain and simple. You have a business that you happen to be marketing via the internet and your website. Additionally, we are going to assume that you are better than your competition, but it needs to be marketed and yes that may cost money.

If you have been sold on the idea of simply obtaining back links to your website for the explicit purpose of SEO, then you are approaching the task from the wrong angle. While an effective Search Engine Strategy is going to take some time to work there are a number of things that can be done to drive traffic while your SEO has time to take effect. Today more and more Social Media (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Forums, etc) websites are playing a more prominent role in driving traffic. However, don’t forget the tried and true methods of newspaper, magazine, TV ads and other forms of advertising that mention your website.

End the end, the more visibility that can be created for your website, the more traffic your site will receive. With the correct planning and traffic being driven from sources where your target market can be found the better the quality of traffic, the lower your bounce rate will be and the higher your conversion rate.

Don’t forget that even PPC ads such as those offered by Google can help, because they put your site in front of people looking for what you offer. The primary objective is to get your website in front of your target market as often as you can, but regardless of how you market your site, don’t expect your website to become an overnight sensation.

A Quick Note on Social Media
There is little doubt that Social media marketing (SMM) on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Digg has exploded in the past year. But what exactly is it? And what’s in it for you? How does it work?

Here is an example of what can happen:
Someone making use of a social media discovers your story, likes it and then decide to share with their friends.  This simple act can cause your story and your site to ‘go viral’ and be shared with even more people. This is how sites will quickly receive hundreds of thousands of visitors, countless inbound links and launch a website or new product overnight.  Those inbound links will directly bring your site visits and indirectly help your SEO.

If you are planning to use social media marketing the overall quality of your content is critical, the better your content the more likely the chances of it being passed along.  However, please keep in mind that even the most brilliant content will need a push to get going, the bigger your network on these social media sites the better. You really need your network to help you give your content that initial push, thereby increasing the odds of your content going viral. Please, Please, Please remember that people do not want to be sold to, and that your initial social media marketing should be more of a conversation than the sale.

What has been your experience with Search Engine Optimization?
Having success with Social Media Marketing, take time to share with us what is working for you.

To Your Success!

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There is this funny sequence of events that seem to keep showing up and as such I figured it was time for me to simply put it in writing. Considering that I spend a considerable amount of time helping business owners leverage technology for their business development needs, you can imagine that one of the more common topics of conversation center around Social Media. Additionally with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn being so popular I tend to field lots of questions related to how best to leverage these sites as part of their overall marketing and business development. At this point I have lost track of the number of times I have been asked the question:

What would be better for my business a Facebook Fan Page or a Facebook Group?

Not so surprising is the fact that I had this question come up again this afternoon with a client. Typically one of my first questions back to them is: Why do you think that you are limited to one or the other? In reality if you have the time and resources to do so, I would recommend creating both in order to leverage the strengths of both of these tools. For most small business owners this simply is not practical which brings us to the point of this article.

While I had planned to do some writing today, this was not the topic that I had scheduled to write about, but that has never stopped me before.

First and foremost there are two major differences that I like to make business owners aware of:

1 – Facebook Fan Pages are indexed by the search engines and therefore visible to people searching the Internet via Google and other search engines. As such your entire page is visible to Non-Facebook prospects via the Internet.

2 – Facebook Groups allow you to send out “bulk invites” to all of your Facebook friends (you can easily invite all of your Facebook friends to join the group).  With Facebook Fan Pages you only option is to manually invite your friends to join your Facebook Fan Page. Therefore as you can easily see groups are better for viral marketing. This becomes even more powerful when you learn that any group member can also send bulk invites to their Facebook Friends.

Now before you get too excited about the viral marketing abilities of creating a Facebook group I would highly recommend that you learn about some of the other details that may very well have an impact on your decision.

The primary reason that you have the viral marketing capabilities of the Facebook Groups is simply due to the fact that Groups are tied to your Facebook profile. As such if you are interested in having some separation between your personal Facebook Profile and a Facebook Group that you have created for marketing your business, this becomes difficult.

What is the point of creating either a Facebook Fan Page or a Group if you don’t or can’t communicate with all of your members? With communications being such an important aspect of any of your marketing you will want to make note of the following details on communicating with your members.

With Groups that have fewer than 5000 members you are allowed to send messages to all members and that message will appear in their Facebook Message Inbox. Facebook Fan Pages allow you to communicate with all of your members regardless of how many members you may have as fans. The difference here is that your communication will go to your members update section of their profile. For me personally this was a serious concern, but after some research it does not appear to make a major difference.

Something that many people do not realize is that both Facebook Groups and Fan Pages allow you to use advertising as promotional tools. Keep in mind that Facebook ads are a paid feature, but are very useful for attracting membership. A big plus of running an advertising campaign when you have a Fan Page is that when you’re ad appears on someone’s page, if one of their friends is a fan of your page that friend’s name appears below the ad as “Jane Doe is a fan”.

Another big plus for Facebook Fan Pages is that once your page has acquired 25 fans, you can create a custom URL. If you have read about the importance of having search engine friend URLs you will understand the importance of having a URL like www.Facebook.com/businessName. With the groups your only choice is the typical Facebook URL that no one would ever remember and isn’t so great for the search engines. For those business owners that understand the importance of branding, search engines and simply having user-friendly URLs there isn’t much else to say

That brings us to the fact that Facebook Fan pages are indexed by Google and other search engines while Facebook Groups are not. While I made mention o f this before I think it is important to note that if someone finds your Facebook fan page from outside of Facebook, they can see the full page and all the information even if they are not logged in. With Facebook Groups your visitors must already be Facebook members to see the details of your Group.

With Facebook Groups the creator and/or admin has much more control over who can join. Groups over you the choice of having your Group completely open, where anyone can join, or they can be set to secret so that only people specifically invited even know the group exists. Facebook Fan Pages however are completely open and that is the only choice you have as a creator/admin. Anyone can find the page and anyone can join. Keep in mind that even with Facebook Groups that are open you can require that new members must be approved by the administrator.

For me personally, one of the biggest pluses offered by Facebook Fan Pages is the fact that Fan Pages are highly customizable. They’re far more options that can be added to a fan page such as having an opt-in box, selling from your site directly from your site, application API for Facebook Connect, etc, etc, etc. Please keep in mind that some of these options will require a high level of technical savvy or a good friend who you can call on to help. However, for a professional business that is trying to leverage the marketing potential that is offered by having a presence on Facebook this is a VERY important point to remember.

Have you created a group or a fan page for your business? Please leave a comment telling everyone why you made the choice that you did.  Have both? Great let everyone know how you use them to maximize the benefits of each.

To Your Success!

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For years I knew that networking, more specifically business networking was a much better way to do business, but at best I was inconsistent in leveraging my network of contacts. Sure if you have been in business for any length of time you know that networking is all about leveraging your business and personal connections to bring you a regular supply of new business.

Do you really know and understand just how important word-of-mouth marketing can be for your business? Did you know that word-of-mouth marketing has been known to turn a business around from failure to success overnight?

Simple concept – right? Well like I started out saying: If you have been in business for any length of time you also know that networking to create referrals and ultimately more business is not so simple. Why? One of the most important aspects of the whole process, which is often overlooked, is that it involves relationship building.

The most commonly understood version of Word-of-Mouth marketing, Business Networking and generating Referrals is often associated with being a member of Referral Club, Word-of-Mouth marketing is actually much bigger than that.

And you will be happy to know that you don’t have to take my word for it. According to Wikipedia.org:

“Word-of-mouth marketing, which encompasses a variety of subcategories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing, as well as ambassador programs, work with consumer-generated media and more, can be highly valued by product marketers.

Because of the personal nature of the communications between individuals, it is believed that product information communicated in this way has an added layer of credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe WOMM than more formal forms of promotion methods; the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals tends to believe that the communicator is speaking honestly and is unlikely to have an ulterior motive.”

Wow! So, do I have your attention now?

This is no secret, we hear all the time that word-of-mouth marketing is the best marketing because it comes with credibility, creates customers that stick with you and costs you little to nothing. Any time I tell someone that they scratch their head and get that serious contemplative look and there is no mystery to what they are thinking: “How do I generate word-of-mouth buzz for my business?”

Word-of-mouth marketing can be generated, and very effectively so, but you must do things right in order to make it happen. What if you had a way that you could learn all of the best techniques, strategies and secrets of Word-of-Mouth marketing thereby enabling you to generate a higher quantity and quality of referrals?

Additionally, what if you were learning to leverage the internet, technology and social media to increase your business and the number of referrals that you could pass on to your referrals partners?

Enter The Prospection Network: http://bit.ly/8AQR47

So what is the Prospection Network? The Prospection Network was started by Steve Lawson as a way of making professionals more successful by economically providing the knowledge, tools, and connections to grow their business.

If you are an advisor, salesperson, or entrepreneur, then there is no mystery to the fact that you face a lot of challenges in growing a successful and profitable business.  The Prospection Network addresses those challenges by providing solutions that:

*Generate a non-stop flow of prospects
* Improve the quality of prospects you meet
*Build your credibility
*Differentiate you from your competition
*Provide an Advisory Board that maximizes your success
*Keep you on track performing the tasks that make you most profitable

While I could write a small book about Steve’s success in helping small business owners grow their business I would simply recommend that you take some time to check out the Prospection Network website as everything you could want to know will be found there.

If you are an advisor, salesperson, entrepreneur, or small business owner of any kind I would highly recommend learning all that you can from Steve and the Prospection Network. Check it out: http://bit.ly/8AQR47

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