Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where you can post updates and follow people. You have a 140 character limit to your tweets and anyone who is following you will receive your updates. If you want to use Twitter to help market your online business then below you will find my top 10 tips for leveraging the power of Twitter.

1. Choose a good username. Your Twitter username should be relevant to your company or product. You can use your name if you are trying to promote yourself.
2. Build your follower list. Try following people who could benefit from your product or service.
3. Don’t constantly promote your product in your tweets, provide useful information and be seen as an expert in your area.
4. Fill in the bio section of your Twitter profile and make it count. When you follow people they will look at your bio to see if you are worth following back. Make sure to include the link to your website too.
5. Interact with your followers and join in the conversations. Answer questions and provide quality information.
6. Connect your blog and your Twitter account. Your new blog post will automatically be added to your Twitter stream and attract more readers. Be sure to place a link to your Twitter account on your blog too as this will allow more of your readers to follow you. There are plenty of plugins that will do this for you.
7. Incorporate SEO techniques into your tweets. It seems that the first 42 characters of your tweets are used in the tweets title tags so if you are using Twitter to gain more search engine results use this technique wisely.
8. Make sure your tweets can be retweeted. This is where others help to spread the word for you and in order to make this easy you should try to limit your tweets to approximately 120 characters. Retweets are a great way of spreading the word about your product or service but people need to find your tweets interesting and relevant before they will pass them to their followers.
9. Use hashtags wisely. Hashtags # are normally placed after tweets and these signify keywords. For example you could have #your niche which allows you to find all the tweets that have been posted related to your niche. Make sure you use these wisely and properly though as they have been used for a lot of spamming recently.
10. Follow your competition. This will allow you to see what they are working on and how they are interacting with their follows and promoting their products or services.

Twitter can be a very powerful resource for online marketing and if you use Twitter effectively you can generate a great deal of traffic for you website or blog and increase your sales exponentially. There are lots of great free Twitter guides online if you want to read up and brush up on your Twitter skills.

Until next time,

Spread the word.

Most businesses will have a website that contains all the important information about their company and the products and services that they offer. There are of course millions of other business websites online so in order to get customers, you will need to learn the art of business marketing.

Business marketing will often include having a company blog where regular updates are posted. These posts can be about special offers or problem solving tips that their products and services can help with.

Other business marketing ideas could include creating video tutorial that can be sent to existing customers or posted on websites such as YouTube or Google Videos to help spread the word about your business. Another popular method of business marketing is called article marketing. This is where you have a number of articles created using your company specific keywords. These articles are then submitted to article directories to help build backlinks and get more traffic for your website.

In 2009 social marketing has become extremely popular. This involves using websites such as Twitter and Facebook to create exposure for your business. Other social networking websites include Linkedin, Digg, StumbleUpon, and more. These websites are a way of getting exposure for your website and the content you place on these websites needs to be engaging and entertaining.

Business marketing on the internet is all about spreading the word and getting people to your website where you should then be able to convert them into paying customers. Your website should also contain an opt in subscription form so that you can capture potential customers email addresses. This is called building your list and your subscriber list is invaluable. Having a subscriber list gives you an additional way to communicate with potential customers and hopefully turn them into paying customers. If you have been online for any amount of time you will have heard the phrase “the money is in the list”. This phrase refers to subscriber lists and an excellent way to create your list is to give something away for free.

Business marketing on the internet changes every year as new methods of spreading the word is created. The basis of this method however, stays the same.

Until next time,

Spread the word

If you are selling a product one of the best ways to market is to create an affiliate program and allow others to do the promotional work for you. This is a great way to ensure that your product really does go viral and the more people you have promoting your product the more people will see your name. If you have a great sales page you will also get a lot more sales and that for many is the main reason why they are involved in internet marketing in the first place.

If you are not interested in setting up an affiliate program or if you offer a service then another great internet marketing method is to join a forum on your niche subject and start interacting. You should join in the conversations and answer as many questions as you can. If you can do this you will soon be seen as an expert in this area. Do not under any circumstances blatantly promote your services on the forum; use your signature line for this. Once you are seen as an expert you won’t need to promote yourself and you will find that anyone looking for your services will click on your signature themselves.

Article marketing is another component to internet marketing and a great way to get backlinks to your website which of course will help you to rank higher in the search engines. With article marketing you need to write articles on your chosen niche and them post them to article directories such as ezinearticles. Make sure to read the guidelines on the article directory websites and do a little bit of research into resource boxes as this is your promotional piece and where your backlinks come from.

These are just three easy methods of internet marketing and allowing your brand, service, and product to go viral. There are other methods you can use too and these include social networking and email marketing which we discuss in another post.

Until then,

Spread The Word

Marketing online is often called internet marketing and it can be an excellent way to get more people to your website, increase your sales, and enhance the branding of your company’s products and services. If you are just starting, your marketing online strategy then this list of 10 online marketing tips will definitely help.

1. Make sure that you have a web marketing plan in place along with an effective website design and development strategy.

2. Get your website ranked in the major search engines. You will want to try to get listed in the top five and for this you will need to ensure that you are practicing good search engine optimization techniques.

3. Learn about email marketing and learn to use it effectively.

4. Try to dominate your marketing niche but using affiliate, reseller, and associated programs.

5. Have an internet marketing coach or consultant run an analysis on your online marketing plan and strategy to see if there is anything that you are missing.

6. Learn about list building and start building a responsive opt in list. The bigger your list the better.

7. Use article marketing to help promote your business or product. Try getting listed in news stories too as this is a great way to build backlinks to your website and get your name out there.

8. Get some press releases written and published. This is another way of building backlinks.

9. Run some contests and giveaways on your website as a way to promote your name and your product. Marketing online is all about getting yourself and your products known and competitions and giveaways are a great way of getting attention.

10. Set up and run a blog. Blogging is a great way to interact with your visitors and is one of the best internet marketing strategies that you can use.

If you follow all of these tips you will be well on your way to creating an internet marketing strategy that will help to promote your business and increase sales substantially.

Until next time,

Spread the word

According to Alexa YouTube is the second highest trafficked website in the world and it is estimated that this websites gets approximately 60 million unique views per month. YouTube is also optimized for 18 different languages so you can get your message across to everyone.

When it comes to video marketing the key is to get your video on YouTube’s homepage. To do this you have a 15 days window of very strict marketing but it really is worth it. You need to keep your videos fresh and if it gets old the best thing to do is replace it with a new one. You also need to keep your videos real. You need to make your profiles look natural and real. People will always look at home many friends and subscribers and channel views you have.

With YouTube your power comes from views, ratings, favourites, and comments. You get honors for each of these and as a marketer it is important to focus on these if you want your video marketing campaign to be successful. The category that you submit your video to and the type of channel you create will have a lot to do with your success and the honors that you receive.

Here are some great tips for video marketing on YouTube:

• Share your videos. You can share via email or with the friends you have attached to your account. The more friends you have the more people you can send your video too.
• Use the bulletin boards. Posting a message will show your video to all the friends on your profile.
• Invite people to subscribe. This is a feature of your account.
• Add as many friends as you can as this is a very powerful way to get exposure on YouTube.
• Make sure that your video appeals to the community
• Share your video through social networking websites, you blog, and by email. Link to your YouTube video as this will help it to go viral.
• Use StumbleUpon and submit your videos to the video section of this website. You can then forward the video to your friends on StumbleUpon too.
• Use website like Digg and Delicious too.

These are some great ways of getting your video marketing to really work for you and to allow your video to go viral.

Until next time,

Spread the word

Tip #1: Get You Viral Video Seen

Did you know that there are tens of thousands of different videos uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis? With this number it won’t matter how viral you think you’re video is going to be, no one will find it. In order to get your video seen you need to follow some rules.

• Make sure that your video has a good concept and that the concept is not forced.
• Make your video short – if your story is long break it up into a series of videos
• Don’t make your video an outright advert
• Make your video shocking – this will make viewers want to investigate further

Tip #2: Get Your Video on the Most Viewed Page

The whole concept of internet video marketing on YouTube is to use this websites traffic power. There are something like 90 million videos watched on YouTube each day and many of these views come from people who click on the Video tab at the top of the page. Your goal in video viral marketing is to get your video onto that page. If you can manage this your video will no longer be a needle in a haystack. It will be listed along with twenty other videos on the most viewed page and this means you get a lot more traffic. In order to get onto this page you need 50,000 views. Here’s how to do this:

• Use Blogs – Find blogs that are relevant to your market and maybe offer to pay them to post your video on their blog
• Use Forums – Find forums on your niche and start a new three with your video embedded.
• Use MySpace – There are plenty of MySpace users that will allow you to embed your video into the comments section so take advantage of this.
• Use Facebook – You can share your videos on facebook with all your friends and this will also increase your video views. You can also post a video on facebook with a link back to your YouTube Video.
• Use Your Email List – If you have an email list you can send a link to the video

A little note about YouTube’s Most Viewed List, it only has a shelf life of 48 hours before it is moved to the Weekly Most Viewed List so make sure you do all the above as quickly as possible.

If you are planning on using internet video marketing as part of your viral marketing campaign then these tips will help you to make the most of it.

Until next time,

Spread The Word

If you want to find the best viral marketing strategy then you will need to create it yourself. There are plenty of people out there that assume that the best viral marketing ideas and techniques will just fall into their laps and while this may happen occasionally you shouldn’t rely on it. The best way to get viral marketing to work for you is to be creative and look for the best way of capturing your target audience. Once you have their attention you are half way there.

Viral marketing is all about introducing your brand to your audience and you need this to come across as you it is. An example of doing it wrong would be if you were selling something that was specifically for men and your marketing focused on women. Maybe you are trying to sell something that is rugged and tough and the last thing you want to do is have flowers and fairies in the background. You need to ensure that your brand statement is focused on your target audience as this will give you a great response.

The best viral marketing techniques today are the use of social medial websites. The whole point of viral marketing is to spread the word and social media websites are a great way to do this. Social media websites include the like of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, and more. These are extremely popular social media websites and if you are looking for the best viral marketing techniques then you should really target these first. Getting your latest blog post on the front page of Digg will get your huge amounts of traffic and if you can get people talking about you on Twitter then you know you are a success.

You need to get your viral marketing campaign to as many places as possible and this includes both the big and small areas. There is a lot to learn about viral marketing and the purpose of this blog is to share all this information with you and more.

Until next time,

Spread the word

The top five viral marketing strategies are:

• Give away products or services
• Make it as easy as possible
• Offer Rewards
• Keep it interesting
• Be controversial
• Create your own buzz

If you want your viral marketing campaign to be successful then using these top 5 strategies is sure to help.

Giving away a product or service appeals everyone’s greedy side.  People love getting things for free and this is the most powerful way to attract attention.  The more benefits that your product or service offers the more attention it will get so make sure you give away something that people will love.  This will help to spread the word.

You need to make it as easy as possible for people to get your free gifts.  If you are giving away the product in return for signing up for your newsletter then all you need is a name and email address.  Don’t over complicate your sign up form with fields such as address or phone numbers because people won’t sign up.  When you send out your newsletters you can include some really helpful information and encourage your subscribers to forward the information to their friends.

Offering rewards is a great way to get new referrals.  If you receive a new prospective client or customer through a referral make sure that your reward the referral and they will continue to spread the word about your product or service.  There are plenty of companies who have a referral free and this is a great way to spread the word about your product or service and make your viral marketing campaign a huge success.

Make sure that the product or service you are offering is interesting.  People are tired of subscribing to lists only to receive crap.  They want something that is going to benefit them or solve a problem.  Forums are a great way to find out what people are looking for so be sure to visit them regularly so that can come up with ideas on how to help your market.

If at all possible try to be controversial.  Controversy gets people talking and people love to gossip so take advantage of this.  You don’t need to be rude or hurt anybody to be controversial and if you can pull this off this is one of the most effective and simple viral marketing strategies there is.

Creating your own buzz is all about getting the word out there.  Your own blog is a great way to do this and if you can get people reading and enjoying your blog you will have a community of readers that you can communicate with.  Don’t forget though; in order for blogging to work you have to be active.  Answer any comments you get and if there are any questions be sure to answer them.  By being actively involved in your blog you will help to build the momentum of your viral marketing campaign.

These are the top five viral marketing strategies that you should be aware of and in the next couple of posts we will focus more on exploring viral marketing processes even further.

Until next time,

Spread The Word

In the everyday world away from the internet viral marketing is called “word-of-mouth” but on the internet it is called viral marketing.

One of the first great examples of a viral marketing campaign has to be Hotmail.com. This company’s viral marketing campaign was really quite simple and it involved giving away free email addresses and services. They attached a simple tag to every free email that was sent and it spread the word about what they were offering. If one person signed up for a free hotmail account and then they sent say 10 emails everyday to different people, at the end of the first week 70 people will have seen the marketing message from hotmail, and many will have signed up for their own free account too, spreading the message even further. That’s how it started for Hotmail.com and I don’t need to tell you how many free emails they have given out over the years.

Hotmails viral marketing campaign is a great example of how proper viral marketing campaigns can really put you and your business on the map.

Like all marketing campaigns there are some vital elements that you must include in your viral marketing campaign and these are:

1. Give something away for free be it a product or service – free is the most powerful thing you can have in your viral marketing campaign. Remember Hotmail gave away free emails.

2. Make sure that it is easy for people to pass it on to others – Remember Hotmail has a very short message at the end of their emails. Keep your message short and sweet and easy to forward.

3. Ensure that the scale of your product or service can easily go from small to very large

4. Your viral marketing campaign should exploit common motivations and behaviours. Remember greed drives a lot of people as does hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. Design your marketing strategy to exploit these things and you are on to a winner.

5. You should use existing communication networks – most people today use social networks so make use of these in your viral marketing campaign.

6. You should take advantage of other people resources – Affiliate programs as they allow for your links to be placed on other people’s websites. Article directories are great too as are press releases. All these things get your marketing message out there and in front of people.

By ensuring that these elements are incorporated into your viral marketing campaign you will be sure to have success.

Most viral marketing campaigns are carried out online but you can use them offline too.

Viral marketing has often been called refer a friend and in the early days this type of viral marketing campaign was an email marketing campaign. It received a great deal of attention and today this method of marketing has expanded. Now you can use your viral marketing campaign in a number of different ways and the most popular method of viral marketing today has to be Twitter and social networking.

A viral marketing campaign is all about getting yourself and your product noticed whilst not having to do all the work yourself. The aim of a viral marketing campaign is that news of your product or service spreads quickly and easily and this is why you need to ensure that your campaign is well researched and put together.

Your viral marketing campaign should encourage people to spread the news and information that they receive from you. There are a number of things that you can do to ensure that your viral marketing campaign is extremely successful and we will delve deeper into these in the follow up posts on this blog.

This first post is really just an introduction and to explain exactly what a viral marketing campaign is.

To sum up, a viral marketing campaign is a marketing tactic in which you use strategies that will encourage people to take about and spread the news about the product or service that you are offering.

Tomorrow we will talk about viral marketing and its advantages.

Until next time,

Market Wisely,