1. Offer insight about your industry. When you’re online at your social networking site of choice it’s absolutely important to participate, but how you participate can make all the difference. If you’re merely commenting about what you had for dinner and your new car, then you’re not optimizing the site or your time. Instead, make sure to offer insight about your industry. This doesn’t mean every post has to link to an article or post of yours.

You can link to relevant content on other sites, offer quotes and data. So while it’s great to share your personality on these sites, it’s also important to establish your credibility and authority. Provide relevant and useful information, and people will automatically go to your site to learn more about you and what you have to offer.

2. Use attention-grabbing headlines. Embrace copywriting techniques and post curiosity-driven headlines. Use questions – for example, “Do you want to know how to make $100 in 5 minutes?” You can also use comments, controversy, how-to statements and other attention-grabbing headlines. Don’t forget scarcity and urgency too. “Only one day left to grab your copy of________”

3. Offer giveaways. People still like getting something for free and you can promote your freebies and giveaways on social networking sites. Reports, online courses or tutorials, blueprints, ebooks and video and audio content are all great ways to motivate traffic to your site.

4. Use special promotions for your unique social media audience. If you have Facebook fans, consider offering them special promotions for signing up and for being a fan. You can do the same thing if you have a twitter account and so on. Consider giving each new friend/follower a coupon via a direct message to them. That coupon will motivate them to at least visit your website and may turn them into a customer or subscriber.

Be willing to test and track to see what works. You can create a special webpage to drive social networking traffic to. You can even duplicate that page and use a unique URL for each site you participate on. This way you can track your traffic from each post and from each social networking site to see what works. It’s a great way to gain insight to your audience and to ensure you’re optimizing your time and efforts.

Video Triggers Purchases

Liking – It’s pretty simple; we buy from people we like. Video enables you to share your personality, which is subconsciously applied to your business. In the minds of your prospects, your personality is your company personality. This is particularly true of smaller businesses and is a tremendous asset. In fact, many experts agree that a small business owner’s biggest asset to branding their business is their personality. Use video to brand your business by placing your wonderful self in front of the camera and speaking to your audience.

Usability – Product demonstrations are a great way to showcase the usability of a product. You can use the video content to demonstrate both features and benefits, much like a well-written sales letter only in a more accessible format.

Authority – People buy from people or companies they consider to be an authority in their industry. You can use video to demonstrate authority by voicing or demonstrating your knowledge, by providing ‘how to’ content, and by sharing your company’s success through video updates.

Social Proof – Interview an expert or post video testimonials and reviews on your website and you’re tapping into the “social proof” trigger. We often make purchasing decisions based on the opinions of others, particularly if those “others” are celebrities or experts.

Video Encourages Sharing and Interactivity

People love to share videos they find both entertaining and informative. They forward videos from their cell phone, via social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, via email and even forward links verbally.

Social networking sites like Facebook also offer thousands of user created widgets, all designed to enhance sharing of videos and posts.

Video Helps Your Search Engine Optimization

Proper tagging, descriptions and incoming links all help enhance your page ranking, which in turn helps boost traffic. Additionally, all the incoming links from social networking will also help boost your SEO.

Video is one of the most powerful marketing tools an ecommerce business owner has access to. Once you understand how to use this powerful tactic, you will be able to provide valuable content to your audience, drive traffic to your website and increase your bottom line. To an internet marketer, it just doesn’t get better than that.

On the Internet you don’t have face-to-face interaction with people. You also have a larger amount of people to deal with at any one time. Most of the people you’ll meet are anonymous and this anonymity can often create a feeling of freedom in people. Meaning they may not moderate the things they say and often times may behave completely different to how they would behave offline. This can lead to a lot of negativity and often harshness.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid the negative situations that sometimes creep up in the online world.

#1 – Find the right networking group. If you love to visit a specific forum but find that you always leave there feeling worse than when you first logged in, it may be time to cut your losses and find a new group.

Some forums can be very exciting and fast moving but that also tends to draw a large variety of members. At the worst of times, people may get insulting or downright mean. This isn’t really a situation you want to be in, specifically when you need to stay positive in building your business.

The bottom line here is that if you don’t feel good, you should move on. Listen to your gut instincts about what you’re feeling and don’t worry if the specific forum seems to be “the place” to be – if the negativity is too much for you, you’ll be better off building your network elsewhere.

#2 – Read between the lines. Often times, when people write online what they say can be misinterpreted as “harsh” or “negative” when it may not be the case. Remember, online we can’t see people’s gestures or facial expressions so it may be worth not reading too much into what someone is saying.

If you’re in doubt you can always ask them to explain what they mean. You may find they didn’t mean to sound negative in the first place.

#3 – Find a mastermind group. Mastermind groups can be a comforting place to find support and build a strong network, as long as you choose a group of like-minded individuals. Researching and taking the time to find the right mastermind group is worth the time, as the right group may help your business grow in leaps and bounds.

A good mastermind group is worth its weight in gold. You’ll be able to connect with people who are positive and there to help each other. The negativity and playground games get left behind and you can get down to the business of building your business.

#4 – Ignore the situation. There is always someone who ruins it for others. Take the strength away from negative types by simply ignoring them. Enjoy your networking group and look over the few bad apples. With any luck, they’ll get tired and go find a different playground to spend time in.

#5 – Build yourself up. Negativity can be found everywhere we look for it. So perhaps it’s time to look the other way – to positivity. Work on yourself first by visualizing and living the life you want to live. Stay positive about your business and you’ll attract more like-minded people your way, making the negative ones seem insignificant.

Local Internet Marketing Boston

eMail

Email is a great, cost-effective way for get your name out there, contact potential customers, and keep existing customers up to date and coming back. And while developing an email list may take some time and effort, sending out an email once you have a list takes very little time.

You can get email addresses by simply asking for them on your webpage about a related topic to your products, asking for them from your customers when you take an order, or offering a free product or service in exchange for an email address.

Many people get emails by offering people products in exchange for the email addresses of their friends, but these are often far less useful than when people give you their email addresses themselves. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the friends really aren’t going to be interesting in what you have to offer.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is also a great way to get word about your business out there, and it generally costs you nothing.

The key to starting word of mouth business is not only to tell people to pass the word on to their friends, but more importantly, to treat the customer right so they want to spread the word.

Social networking sites are a great way to start a word of mouth campaign about your business. These are sites like Twitter, Facebook, and other sites where people can ad their friends, music they like, and businesses or products they might be a fan of.

Then, if someone is a friend, the site will often automatically suggest they become a friend with or a fan of the same things. Soon, you’ll have a bunch of people who are all fans of your business – then you can use the page to send updates to all of them about new products, services, and promotions. It’s all free and pretty simple to get started.

Blogging

Blogging is another way to get people interested in your products and keep current customers up to date. Starting a blog is simple, there are tons of blog sites that will pretty much set the whole thing up for you. The trick is actually getting people to read it.

You can use different SEO techniques including microblogs like Twitter, but you also need to provide quality content that people actually want to read. Start your blog by not only talking about your business and ideas, but also those of other people. If you refer someone to a good article or great deal, they’re much more likely to keep reading.

While you may decide to spend some money on your advertising, you can still supplement with these methods to boost your exposure even more.

The first thing to note is that social networking shouldn’t be looked at as a negative thing. It’s simply the next stage of internet business and as savvy online business owners, it’s up to us to stay connected to the latest trends and changes in this field.

However, it’s also important to note that too much of a good thing may also lead to a negative outcome, such as not making the best use of our time.

If you’d like to use social networking in your marketing but are worried about the time issues associated with it, here are a few tips:

#1 – Set a schedule. Set out a set time each day – say 20 or 30 minutes – that you dedicate to social networking. Try to stick to the same schedule each day. This way you get your dose of social networking without it overtaking your business or life. The schedule should be personal to you and you may find that 30 minutes is too little or too much, but whatever the schedule ensure you stick to it.

#2 – Know your goal. Before you get started ask yourself – what would I like to achieve from this? Do I want to gain more clients or customers? Do I want to just have a little fun and connect with friends and business acquaintances? It’s important to know your goals with social networking because this will help you put the whole thing into perspective.

If your goal is to get more clients, then you’ll need to look at your social networking time as an investment and track the outcome. If you just want to have a little fun, then it’s something you can do without worries once you’ve finished your business tasks for the day.

#3 – Don’t juggle too much too soon. Trying to be involved with all aspects of social networking may seem a little daunting (and time consuming). Instead, research and find one or two methods you really enjoy and that seem to work for your business needs. Then stick to those methods for a while until you’re confident you can handle more.

#4 – Prioritize. Unless you’ve proven that social networking is a big part of your overall business strategy and success, it may make sense to prioritize your fundamental (i.e. money-making) tasks first. Once you’ve completed the activities for the day that you feel will help your business succeed, then you can move on to your social networking time.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the social networking time trap. That’s why all of the steps above work hand in hand. If you don’t know your goals with social networking, it’s easy to waste time, and you also won’t know where your priorities should be. And if you do too much too soon it’s easy to not stick to your schedule and spend too much time on social networking sites.

Use the tips listed here as a starting point to where you want to go with this new media. Then set yourself a schedule and stick to it. Remember you’re in control and you don’t need to get carried away with social networking – unless you’d like to, of course.

But if you want to use social networking sites to propel your business to the next level, your best bet is a lesser known site called LinkedIn. It’s a social networking site that is designed just for business-minded individuals like you who don’t want to be bothered with all the useless frills and apps that come with other networking sites.

Not only is LinkedIn preferable for business users because you don’t have to worry about all the junk, but you also don’t have to worry about all the people that are not relevant to your business. It may be a smaller site, but when it comes to your business contacts and clients, quality is far more important than quantity. Plus, if people are talking to you through LinkedIn, they’re more likely to think you’re a quality contact too.

If you’re starting a viral marketing campaign, LinkedIn can be just the ticket you need to get things going. The best viral products work on already existing networks. LinkedIn is a great network to start your campaign on, especially if your products serve people in business rather than the general public.

LinkedIn can help get you noticed on search engines. These pages actually get pretty high SEO rankings, so taking advantage of that can put you at the top of search engines. When you sign up on LinkedIn, use a name based on your own name, or even keywords that pertain to your business. That way, if someone searches that term, your page will come up.

Find customers. If your clients are regular everyday people, then you might not have huge success using LinkedIn to find customers. But if you cater to people who are in business themselves, then this network is a great place to find new customers. Just check your contact’s networks for people that might be interested in your services and send them a message or a contact request. Just try not to compete with the contacts you’re finding them through; that’s likely to lose you more clients than you make.

Keep up customer relations. In today’s market, customer service is key, particularly if you do business online. If you don’t provide people with the kind of relationship they want, they can find ten other people who are willing to. LinkedIn is a great way to communicate with your customers and help keep them happy. If they’re happy, you’ll not only keep their business, but they may just recommend it to their friends and business associates.

When using social networks to promote your business, it helps to only use one or two instead of spreading yourself too thin. If you only pick one, LinkedIn is a great choice.

Not only is LinkedIn preferable for business users because you don’t have to worry about all the junk, but you also don’t have to worry about all the people that are not relevant to your business. It may be a smaller site, but when it comes to your business contacts and clients, quality is far more important than quantity. Plus, if people are talking to you through LinkedIn, they’re more likely to think you’re a quality contact too.

If you’re starting a viral marketing campaign, LinkedIn can be just the ticket you need to get things going. The best viral products work on already existing networks. LinkedIn is a great network to start your campaign on, especially if your products serve people in business rather than the general public.

LinkedIn can help get you noticed on search engines. These pages actually get pretty high SEO rankings, so taking advantage of that can put you at the top of search engines. When you sign up on LinkedIn, use a name based on your own name, or even keywords that pertain to your business. That way, if someone searches that term, your page will come up.

Find customers. If your clients are regular everyday people, then you might not have huge success using LinkedIn to find customers. But if you cater to people who are in business themselves, then this network is a great place to find new customers. Just check your contact’s networks for people that might be interested in your services and send them a message or a contact request. Just try not to compete with the contacts you’re finding them through; that’s likely to lose you more clients than you make.

Keep up customer relations. In today’s market, customer service is key, particularly if you do business online. If you don’t provide people with the kind of relationship they want, they can find ten other people who are willing to. LinkedIn is a great way to communicate with your customers and help keep them happy. If they’re happy, you’ll not only keep their business, but they may just recommend it to their friends and business associates.

When using social networks to promote your business, it helps to only use one or two instead of spreading yourself too thin. If you only pick one, LinkedIn is a great choice.

If you’ve taken the time to build up a huge following on Myspace that might be something that you don’t want to hear. Could it really be possible that the king of social networking has been de-throned? Is it even really work marketing on Myspace anymore? My answer is yes! It is defiantly still worth marketing on Myspace.

Though it is very true that Myspace has lost some of it’s popularity due to the Facebook and most recently Twitter phenomenon there are still insane numbers of people using Myspace every single day. So if you’ve worked hard to have a huge friends list and made your profile look perfect you don’t have to despair because there is still a lot of marketing to be done on Myspace. Facebook is very adamant about keeping their site as free from marketing as possible. Yes, you can market on Facebook but Myspace gives you a whole lot more freedom and that’s why it’s still the best for marketing your business.

If you really want to get the most out of social networking though I would recommend that you’re a part of all of them. Each social network has their own particular strengths and weaknesses so joining all of them is really best. Obviously there will be people who are on Twitter who aren’t on Facebook. There will be avid Myspacers who aren’t on Twitter and so on. At the end of the day the more people you can reach about your home Internet business the better!

Social networking is one of the best ways to build your business online. Learn how to use all of the social networks and start growing your business online today!

Well, let's compare this to an off-line business. What you have done is set up your business "store" and put the open sign in the window. Now its time to start bringing in some potential customers. If you opened your store in a busy mall then you could naturally expect to receive traffic from mall foot traffic. But wait, what if you opened your store on a quiet back street? You may have a great product and great parking but no one will find you. This is the situation you are in with your website, no one knows where your website is and therefore there is no traffic and no conversions.

An important concept to keep in mind about traffic generation is to go where the traffic is and where you can redirect the traffic to you. Let's look at some ways an offline business would generate traffic that we could apply to our online business.

Offline, business owners will network, join the local chamber of commerce, and other networking organizations to get the word out about them and their business. You will find them with small kiosks in malls and display booths at trade shows and community events.

Now how would we apply this concept online? Online this would be comparable to:

(1) Joining social networking sites. Creating profiles and adding your website url on social networking sites gets you in front of the traffic these sites generate.

(2) Building your own satellite sites. These are high PR (page ranked)sites such as Hub Pages or Squidoo that allows you to add your own content to their site. Creating these satellite sites are much like the kiosks at the mall, all directing traffic back to your website through the content and the links you have placed on your profile and satellite sites.

As an online business owner, you will need to create profiles at high pr social networking sites and create satellite pages directing traffic to your website. Sounds, good so far, but creating, maintaining and updating these off page traffic generation sources, while beneficial to your business can be labor intensive without the right tools.

Use the free tools listed below to redirect traffic from high page ranked sites to your site.

Google Gmail:

Create a Google Gmail account. It is fast and easy to set up. Keep it separate from your regular email. You will need it to confirm emails from the social networking sites and to "dump" the occasional or regular emails they send you.

Firefox Browser:

Next download the Firefox browser. It's free. It does not interfere with internet explorer. And best of all, it has many add-ons that you will find useful. You will need its multiple tab feature to jump back and forth between opened tabs to make your online business more efficient.

Go to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Roboform:

Roboform is a password manager. The trial version is free. You will need this to save you logins and passwords to all the social networking sites you create.

Go to: http://www.roboform.com

HelloTXT:

HelloTXT is a micro-blogging and social networking status updating site. Join the site. There is 28 different sites to sign up with inside. Join each one and make sure to confirm the link inside each email you will receive from each site. Add each site to your HelloTXT profile. Now you will be able to update all your social networking profiles from one interface. Fast and easy. Over time you will build up your website presence and receive traffic, both, from the links inside your profiles and also from the search engines because of the page rank juice of the links leading to your website.

Go to http://www.hellotxt.com

Follow the process above. Do not put this off, schedule it. This kind of traffic is time consuming to set up but very easy to maintain with the tools above and following this traffic generation process will prepare you for the next step.

In the next article we will be discussing how to multiply the power of the traffic you will generate by using bookmarking and pinging. Apply what you've learned here and expect to receive more traffic and buying customers soon.

But how exactly do these sites help your site and its rankings? By sending huge amounts of traffic and getting you a good ranking on search engines.

There are two types of social sites. One is social networking and the other type is social bookmarking. Social networking sites provide you an easy way to connect with people who share similar interests like you. Sites like MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster are popular among users. These sites have a huge user base and provide an excellent opportunity for advertising your site. There are also specialized social networking sites like 43Things, MomJunction, Mothersclick which cater to specific interests.

Some social networking sites group people with common interests, but some sites are "traditional networking sites" and allow you to search for friends based on your interests. In any case you will always have a larger audience for showcasing your site. Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to post your advertisements and promote your products, provided you are not spamming. If you have a really good site, you will surely find a large visitor base just by showcasing your site on your profile.

Social bookmarking sites provide you easy way to store, organize, manage your bookmarks as well as share them with your friends. You can bookmark any URL or page you liked and even mark them for public or private viewing. Social bookmarking sites also provide you with the option of tagging your bookmarks. Some of the bookmarking sites link directly to your URL’s thus helping your site in getting valuable back links and quick indexing. Sites like Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious are known to send huge traffic to your site. If you manage to get on the front page of these sites, you should be prepared to handle a huge number of visitors to your site.

Search engines spiders love social sites and usually follow links on these sites. This means if you have your site link on social networking and bookmarking sites, your site will be indexed quickly.

If you happen to be using WordPress for your blog, you should use some good plugins like Socialmarker, Socializer and Addthis. These plugins provide your site visitors a quick option to bookmark your site. Getting bookmarked from different users and different bookmarking sites will definitely help your site rank better on search engines. Some plugins like Onlywire automatically bookmark your post to 20 different bookmarking sites as soon as you publish your post.

It is a known fact that the video and photo sharing sites like Youtube and Flickr are visited by millions of people everyday. If you think out of the box and use your creativity, your published video will get your site the traffic you've always wanted. Some video sharing sites like Metacafe also pay you a part of their revenue just for publishing your video.

Like it or not, social sites have become an integral part of the internet. You need to use this opportunity to you advantage before it is too late.