Very nice group of intelligent and inquisitive young men and women eager to learn about Mobile Marketing and how it relates to real world small business. Fun time for me!

Facebook fan pages are nothing without the fans, and attracting fans to a brand new fan page must be done quickly in order to spread the buzz about a product or service on the worldís largest social network. Anyone who has ever created a Facebook fan page knows that attracting new fans goes beyond just inviting people you already know because you soon reach a limit. Perhaps friends of friends will spread the word, but that only goes so far. Real Facebook fan page success happens when you reach thousands and do it quickly. But how is it done? The secret lies in a few trade secrets of the most successful Facebook fan pages:

Get Noticed with Keywords: New changes in Facebook fan pages allow you to maximize your online exposure with the use of keywords. By adding to your fan page specific words or phrases related to your business, using them in your URL and including them in your public postings and status updates, you can increase the likelihood of your Facebook fan page coming up as a search result on Google. The beauty of key words is that you are more likely to find people who share your passions and interests for a particular field, or attract shoppers searching for the exact product you sell. Once they find you on Facebook and click ìLike,î youíve got yourself a new fan and a potential new customer.

Reach Out with SEO: Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a proven strategy for increasing exposure of a website or brand name. SEO operates in conjunction with major search engines and takes advantage of search engine "crawling" that seeks out optimal search results in articles and blogs, and can be used to attract Facebook fans, too. By creating timely and relevant articles or blog postings with popular search phrases included in the title and throughout the text, you increase the chances of Google targeting your site or article in search results. Simply link readers back to your Facebook page with a "Follow Me on Facebook" button and the odds are in your favor that they will click "Like" and become a long-term fan. With SEO, it is important to make your articles engaging and informative; packing your text with keywords and phrases may initially capture search engine attention, but supplying well-written and attractive articles or blogs will make readers want to know more about you and your product or service. For writing help, visit one of the many online freelance writer forums and find someone to create affordable and effective articles for you.

Make the Most of Photos: Using photos to promote your page and reach out to prospective Facebook fans is inexpensive and highly effective. One means of using photos to get Facebook fans is to take a photo related to your fan page or business and tag the friends of your current fans. Considering that most people on Facebook have nearly 150 friends, you can quickly reach a large number of people in no time at all. Those friends of your fans will receive a message that they have been tagged in a photo. In nearly every case, they will be curious to see the picture and be led right to your fan page. Itís simple, but it really works!

Photos can also be used as a promotion gimmick that has shown great results. Ask your Facebook fans to take photos of themselves using and enjoying your product and offer a discount or special prize or promotion for those who post them on your Wall. Go ahead and tag their friends in the photos to invite them over to your fan page and see what happens!

Link Up with Successful Sites: Find a website that attracts the kinds of fans you want for your fan page. Contact the page administrator and offer a mutually beneficial link agreement, in which you promote their site on your website or fan page, and they will do the same for you. You can also post links on fan pages similar to yours to spread the word to like-minded Facebookers, which is simple and easy to do.

Spend Five Bucks: Networking sites like www.fiverr.com offer fan page builders unique opportunities to link up with thousands of potential future fans for just a few dollars. On fiverr.com, Facebook users with hundreds and sometimes thousands of friends offer to invite all of their friends to check out your fan page and it only costs you $5. It's a quick and simple way to spread the word about your new fan page at lightning speed!

Make Them Click "Like": If some of your fan page material is protected and accessible only to those who click the "Like" button, itís a great way to generate some excitement and encourage people to become fans. An effective way to do this is with coupons, giveaways and special promotions advertised on a customized landing page for first-time visitors to your page. If you can create enough interest and intrigue, youíre sure to collect new fans who are excited to learn more about what you have to offer.

Creating a Facebook fan base in a short period of time is not an impossible dream. Even for people with limited budgets and few marketing skills, it is entirely possible to spread the word about a new Facebook fan page without being a computer expert or knowing thousands of people. Facebook fan pages grow in popularity when you know the tricks of the trade. Regardless of how you choose to reach out to prospective fans, make sure that the Facebook fan page you are endorsing is full of entertaining features that will make people glad they found you. Post regularly, keep information current and timely and you will keep your new fans eager for more.

Bill Enross knows why Facebook is the hottest social media network in the world and how to help your business thrive with Facebook fan page applications and Facebook marketing tips. Call Bill at 508.203.1660 to learn proven ways to monetize Facebook and traffic generation techniques for Facebook that get results.

Establish a resources budget

Know exactly how much of your finances, human resources and time you are going to dedicate to your social media plan. Consider such things as how much you are willing to spend on ad campaigns; whether its better for you to hire a social media manager or assign an employee to the task ; and if you have to do it on your own decide which days and times are you going to dedicate to focusing on your campaigns.

Do market research

It pays to get your facts right before you dive into the social media world. Research will show you who your target market is, what products and services they want, their demographics, what appeals to their emotional psychology (since this is what drives buying decisions), which social media platform they are more likely to use and the best platforms to engage with to deliver your business message.

Choose what suits your business niche.

A big mistake businesses make in social media strategy is spreading themselves too thin by joining every social media bandwagon. Each business niche is unique and every target market is unique too and some social media platforms just wonít work for certain businesses. Itís always best to focus on the top 2 to 3 social media that work best for your kind of business. A professional consultant would wisely choose Linkedin and Facebook Groups, while an interior decorator would best profile their expertise through YouTube videos and an entertainer would certainly find Twitter and Facebook fan page a good fit.

Have a social media policy

When you first start interacting with social media it looks easy and manageable, but as your business gets more popular, you can easily find yourself avalanched with a mass of followers. A wrong comment by your employee on your companyís social media account or their own personal account can be damaging to the companyís reputation and open the door to legal problems. If you have employees, itís therefore best to develop a policy from the get-go that governs their online communications. Have them read it and sign it.

I hope these pointers have opened your eyes to see the bigger picture of social media and how your local business can go about maximizing the potential of social networks by starting out with a plan before engaging in any action.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a collection of techniques that can be applied to a website to increase the search engine ranking of the site. Search engine ranking is the position that your site occupies when a search is done using keywords you are targeting on your site.

Why is search engine ranking important?

The higher your site's position in the search engine results pages (SERPs) the more people will see it and potentially click on your listing, bringing you more traffic. Google, one of the most popular search engines, list 10 search results per page. Most searchers never look beyond the first page of search results. SEO is important because if you can get your site listed in the Google top ten for your search terms you will get significantly more traffic than if your listing shows up on any subsequent pages.

SEO techniques fall under two broad categories, on-page factors and off-page factors.

On Page SEO

On page factors are all the things you can do on your website to increase SEO. The on page factors usually revolve around keywords, and you use these techniques to let the search engines know what you site is about. On page factors include things like the use of keyword and description meta tags, the use of the alt tag for images, HTML header tags, keyword placement, etc.

Off Page SEO

Off page factors revolve around backlinks, but also involve the use of keywords. Backlinks are the links placed on other sites that point to you site. Backlinks are also known as "inbound links", a term which is often easier to understand. Inbound links are those links pointing towards your site.

Steps You Can Take To Improve Your SEO

1. Always use keyword and description meta tags.

For every page on your site you should have meta tags unique to that page. Meta tags are HTML code found between the tags near the top of the page when you are looking at the HTML code. There's a good reference for using meta tags here: http://www.freelancedesigners.com/tools/meta_tags.cfm

For the keywords meta tag create a comma-separated list of keywords relevant to your site. Keywords don't have to be single words. They can, and should, be keyword phrases relevant to the content of that page.

For the description meta tag write a description of your site that would make someone want to click your link. This meta tag's description is used by some search engines, including Google, as the text description of your site. So it's not just for the search engine's benefit, it's also likely to be seen by a human and it may be the difference between that human clicking on your site's link or another site.

2. Where you have images on your site, always include an alt tag.

The HTML code for including an image in your page has an optional attribute called the 'alt' tag. It's short for 'alternative text'. It was originally intended as a text description to aid viewers surfing with images turned off or using a screen reader so they could get an idea of what an image was about, since they couldn't see it. But search engines also use the alt tag to find out more about what your page is about.

You want the alt tag to contain keywords relevant to your site and the image they are describing. Instead of just putting "header" in the alt tag for your header image, use the opportunity to tell the search engines what your site is about, with something like "Puppy Training Header", if your site is about puppy training. Don't over do it though, you want this description to be concise rather than stuffed with every keyword relevant to your site. Here's a good reference for learning more about image tags: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478181

3. Use header tags wisely.

The header tags H1, H2, H3 etc. are used by search engines to figure out what the important keywords for your site are. You can easily change the appearance of the header tags by using stylesheets, so try to use the standard HTML header tags instead of custom styles for your headers. Then just make sure you've got relevant keywords in the headers. The H1 header should contain the primary keyword for your page, the H2 header should contain the secondary keywords for your page, etc.

4. Get backlinks with relevant keywords.

Get backlinks. Lots of them. This should be an ongoing part of your SEO. The more backlinks the better, but you want to grow your backlinks naturally. It looks a lot more natural if you work on getting a handful of backlinks every week than if you suddenly got 10,000 backlinks overnight because you bought them from a link farm. The search engines are watching for these unnatural patterns, and you are likely to be penalized for engaging in such practices.

There are many ways to get backlinks. You can develop relationships with other webmasters to get traditional reciprocal links from other related sites. Participate in forums related to your topic and be sure to have a link to your site as part of your 'signature'. Write articles for article directories which include a link back to your site in the 'bio box'. Create Squidoo lenses or HubPages with, you guessed it, a link back to your site. If you have a blog submit your RSS feed to RSS Aggregator sites, and add it to your Squidoo lens or HubPage. Use Social Bookmarking services to bookmark your pages and encourage your visitors to do the same. Use Twitter to send out a 'tweet' when you post a new article. This is just to get you started, it's not an exhaustive list by any means.

Now that you have some ideas for where to get backlinks, it's important that you choose good anchor text for your backlinks when you can. The anchor text is the text that turns into the hyperlink (it's often blue, sometimes underlined). The search engines also use this text to figure out what your site, or page, is about. So where you can, specify what the anchor text will be. You want to use your main keywords, and variations on your main keywords. Try to vary it a little (that looks natural), while still keeping it relevant of course. Keep in mind that the keywords you use when you are linking to a specific page are not necessarily going to be the same as when you are linking to your homepage.

In some cases you don't have the option of specifying the anchor text. But don't miss the opportunity to specify it where you can. If you trade reciprocal links with another site, specify what you want your anchor text to be. The other webmaster will probably appreciate it because it saves them time having to decide what it should be. When you create Squidoo lenses and HubPages, or for your forum signatures you have total control over your anchor text. Use it wisely.

We've covered just a few basic, but very important, aspects of SEO in this article. This is a very good place to start if you want to improve your sites search engine optimization. Keep applying these techniques until it becomes second nature and you should see an improvement in both your search engine rankings and an increase in the traffic to your site.

So, if you're still having trouble grasping all of this, why not give me a call. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have – no obligation, no cost, no catch. If the only take-a-way you get from the call is a better understanding of how the Internet may help you grow your business, you'll be able to make better choices, and I will have had the chance to share information that I love to talk about. You can reach my office anytime at 508.203.1660. Thanks, Bill Enross

1. QR Codes are free.

In their most basic form, QR Codes are free to generate and cost nothing extra to print. Just add them to your existing marketing materials like any other image.

2. QR Codes provide an immediate response mechanism.

As soon as an advertisement or product catches their eye, consumers can snap and view. There is no delay between the interest and the response. This eliminates the drop in response rates that comes when people are required to type in URLs by hand or write down information to access later when they are sitting in front of their PC. You should think of QR Codes as the marketing equivalent of an impulse buy at the checkout counter.

3. They leverage today’s growing mobile culture.

The latest smart phones have been described as today’s laptop. People’s entire lives are stored on their phones, from contacts to music and family photos. The cell phone is the one device that is with people at all times. A jogger is out for their morning run and sees a QR Code on a billboard or bus bench. She stops, scans the code (which is stored on the phone for later) and continues running. Later at the office, they are able to view the content while on a break. Imagine a teenager visiting at a friend’s house sees a jewel case for a new album by his favorite band. By snapping the QR Code on the back, he is instantly directed to a mobile website where he can listen to audio clips, purchase songs and download them directly to his phone, or buy tickets to the latest tour. He can even access links that automatically Tweet the information or post it on his Facebook account!

4. QR Codes are trackable.

Not only are QR Codes trackable themselves, but they can provide tracking for other types of media such as billboards or magazine advertisements that are not otherwise trackable with proper tracking, the code can be printed on a piece of direct mail advertising, and if five different people access it, not only will you know it, you will be able to tell when and where those scans occurred! QR Codes can be set up to recognize the type of phone used to read them and provide content optimized for the exact model of phone used to give an end user the best possible experience.

On the subject of promoting and marketing your small business, consider putting together and then having a cell phone marketing campaign. It is not difficult and in fact is very easy to do. In fact, it may be on the list of the least difficult and most cost-effective types of marketing for you to put into action today. However, it could be a complete and utter waste of time and resources unless you decide to use it to its fullest ability.

In this article are a variety of pointers that businesses can easily perform that can take their cell marketing and advertising plans to another level:

1. Games or Polls

Text message polls and contests ( often called "Text-to-Win") have become increasingly popular with quite a few small business owners. This type of prize drawing calls for ways to get people to mail a message via their cellphone to a designated SMS (Short Message Service) code. By doing this, the person gets into your contest or drawing for a chance to win a prize. Once they do, you now have their cellular phone number so that you can keep marketing to these people.

Prize drawings deliver such great results for the reason that access is definitely rapid, instantaneous and the confirmations happen to be pretty instant as well. Not only this, but they also increase shopper discussion and entertainment while helping to create your new customer database (or list) simultaneously so that you can market to all of them later on.

A majority of these special offers also deliver top results due to the fact many people help to bring other people directly into your business so they can buy your goods and services. They can be ideal for word of mouth marketing promotions and are particularly powerful when it comes to generating news along with anticipation with regards to your business.

Be sure that you provide an enticing prize so you get hold of many people that want to enter as possibly can. Remember that an excellent "attractive prize" doesn't have to be an "expensive" prize… simply just some item which all of your subscribers will see some appeal using .

2. Mobile Social Groups

Text message Groups (often known as Mobile phone Clubs) are an easy way to establish client interaction along with developing your collaboration even more along with excellent promotions as well as marketing and sales communications. It usually is as easy as customers opting-in in order to get regular text notifications on their cellphone regarding new products, in-store sales along with cellular coupon codes intended for in-store redemption.

If you're a brick and mortar business, Mobile Clubs could be a fantastic way to stay in touch with all your purchasers and be sure everybody is simply up to date regarding what is going on in your company.

At the time you start a Mobile Club, you are able to include text message notifications (also called SMS Notifications), which in turn allow for you to engage with clients with focused facts to keep your brand on top of their minds. SMS Notifications are usually fundamentally speedy textual content concerning beneficial newer services, a purchase you may well be having at the store, or maybe bursts of up-to-date information to maintain your opt-in list up to date for a unique topic of great interest.

This process will definitely continue to keep these people returning!

Give some thought to it… are there any aspects of your small business that might genuinely really benefit from a simple yet effective, real-time, conversation approach designed to develop customer commitment along with help the bank balance on promotion concurrently?

3. Text Polls and Voting

Do you need suggestions or perhaps ideas on your new product lines from your shoppers or maybe the general public on the whole? Textual content voting could possibly be your solution mainly because it means that you can engage with customers and find invaluable feedback on products and services or maybe the store experience.

The simplest way to supply customers what they want could be to ASK them what they really want. Cellular promotion makes it possible for you to complete this approach without difficulty in addition to efficiently by means of Text message Voting. Consumers lug around their mobile phones using them virtually 24 hours 7 days per week thus marketing to all of them on their cell device is actually not really difficult at all.

On top of that is the fact people like to provide their thoughts and supply recommendations on product or service which they pay for. By permitting these people to actually vote on particular components of your small business, you set about to generate a level of confidence with them that will take you a long way.

Not just that, then again text message voting helps to assemble your own list of clients since people that most likely are not at this time on your list are going to be incorporated when these people place their votes!

Your Smart mobile phones are readily available throughout the market place and currently are excellent breeding grounds with regards to mobile phone marketing. It will help you with economizing your time, energy and effort as well as your cash reserves.

People do not need to go to their home pc to be able to search for and purchase their favorite items from stores. This new consumer can carry out all sorts of transactions while resting in their easy chair. This new way to market is using text based messaging using consumers mobile phones. It makes use of mobile e-mail marketing and advertising, mobile phone text messaging, mobile phone as well as internet sites, location specific promotion along with mobile app advertising. The foreseeable future of advertising is definitely going to be mobile phone promotion. The massive amount and sheer size regarding the sales volume will be tremendous. It is rapidly approaching par with e-commerce.

Our modern society in which most people live comfortably right now has grown a lot more mobile. Most people currently carry a cellular phone along with him or her. The best way a person can be contacted by you is actually simply by way of a text message to them. This exact same tactic is now being implemented by local business using mobile marketing. The main target associated with mobile promoting is currently relating to:

* Typically the target might be about apps a smart phone uses or other interactive gadgets that are speeding up ideas and conversations
* Customer care for almost all sorts of things.
* Better video cameras for the end users as well as standardization regarding products and more sharing platforms for social interaction.
* Q-Codes, Short codes for discounts and freebies through real time mobile coupons.
* Soon even your Health care provider will offer their services through mobile devices making it easy to shedule and touch base for critical care needs.

A lot more local small businesses are beginning to choose to provide information regarding their particular expert services via mobile message texting. Their target customers then receive messages with regards to the hottest tv show, or movies or release of new clothing styles. These are all announced via a simple sales message to let folks know about the particular release date.

The volume of traffic your web page receives by way of mobile phones is now being tracked by the major search engines in order to start ranking these mobile ready sites. Mobile phone marketing and advertising can save you a small fortune when compared with other styles of promotion or advertising.