Internet Marketing Coaching

In days gone by we have relied on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or the Advertising Standards Board to ensure that advertisers and marketers were telling the truth. While this has worked ok for us thus far I can’t tell you how excited I am about the introduction of Social Media.

Social Media has given a voice to the everyday consumer, so if they are upset with the service they have received or the quality of product they can:

• Blog About It
• Micro Blog About It
• Twitter About It
• Facebook Post About It
• Plurk About It
• Myspace About It

Not only can you do this but this will also invite conversation from other happy or unhappy customers, thereby  creating an impromptu focus group aimed at heatedly discussing a brand, product or service.

For example, look at this “Fan Page” on facebook about Australia’s most loved communications company Telstra:

For me in my business if anyone asks me for a testimonial from a client or to talk to a client about what I do, I now suggest that they go to facebook look at one of the testimonials on my wall and talk to the person through facebook…

…Social Media Does Not Lie

I have been a twitter addict now for about 6 months (along with facebook and digg) and I can officially say that as of 2 months ago twitter has become my favourite social media platform.

It has nothing to do with the interaction (although I do love having @ reply and DM conversations with twitter users).

It has nothing to do with the 140 character updates (although I do love conversing in only 140 characters)

It has nothing to do with the fact that twitter can update your facebook status (although this does save lots of time)

It’s because 2 months ago I downloaded Tweetdeck and have been using it everyday since then. I do have to pass some kudos off to @problogger as he was the person that introduced me to Tweetdeck.

3 Reasons Why I Love Tweetdeck

1. Tweetdeck Finds @ Replies Via Twitter Search – This is a cool feature. I was finding that when using twitter on the web, some of my @replies and @ conversations were being lost. While this was not a major problem initially, as my followers grew it became a problem as more and more people were getting angry at me for not replying to @replies

2.    Tweetdeck Allows You To Not Get Caught Up In The Noise – I find that if I open a browser by default I log into my email, log onto facebook and activate my digg account. So by just opening a browser to view twitter I can get caught having conversations on two platforms and digging stories, which can waste many hours.

3.    Tweetdeck Makes DM’s Easy – I also found it difficult to manage my Direct Messages (DM’s) via twitter web but now I have a column in my Tweetdeck dedicated to my DM’s. Also to DM a person it’s easy as you just hover over their avatar and click on the DM button.

If you want to manage your twitter account I highly suggest you use Tweetdeck.

If you have missed the first 2 parts in this series click on the links below to read them now:

Setting Up Your Facebook Profile

Building Your Facebook Network

Once you have set up your profile and built your network it’s time to start leveraging that network to generate traffic to your website and convert the traffic into sales. There are a few keys to success here:

1. Status Updates – A Facebook status update shows up in all of your friends facebook home page like this:

Each of those blue links in the above image go out to a website the person owns or is promoting. As you can see, a simple status update with a “cloaked” link can generate traffic across to your site. In my case, any time I am sending out a newsletter, I’ve written a new blog post or launched a website I update my status with a few words and a link.

2. Facebook Groups – Facebook groups allow you to email all the members of the groups, so setting up a group about your chosen business or area of interest will allow you to build a list of people to email. Be careful here though as you don’t want to email to often. A Facebook group email can be good to launch a product, service or new website.

3. Status Syndication – This is very similar to status updates but instead of you just doing an update you can ask other people in your network to do a status update for you. This is a great way to leverage other people and their networks to promote you and your cause.

Keep watching this space for part 4 on Facebook in a few days time

If you missed the first part of this series about Setting Up Your Facebook Profile then you may want to read it before continuing.

Now that we have our profile set up properly it’s time to start leveraging our profile by building our Facebook network.  The size of your Facebook network on is measured by the amount of friends you have, fans you have and also groups that you control.

Building Your Facebook Friends

There are many different strategies for building your Facebook friend list, before we get into those though it’s important to know your outcome before you start. Are you just wanting to get to your 5000 friend cap as quickly as possible or are you trying to build a targeted group of friends who will visit your website and buy your products?

Size Does Not Matter, It’s Potency

You could end up having 5000 friends on Facebook very quickly but none of them may be interested in what you are talking about, none of them may visit your site and none may buy from you. I’ll say it again size does not matter, it’s about building a list of friends who react to your information.

What I would suggest to you is that while it may be an ego boost to have thousands of friends quickly it’s more important to have a group of friends who react.  Now that we have that clear, let’s look at some of the different friend building strategies:

• Friend Poaching: This is a widely used strategy, especially by people who are new to internet marketing and Facebook. Friend poaching is simply where you find a competitor in your industry and go through his/her friend list and add them as friends of your Facebook account.

• Friend Group Activity: One of the major ways to build targeted friends is by joining groups that are relevant to your topic/industry. As well as joining the group you must be active in the group, write on the wall, comment on topics and regularly visit the group. This way people joining the group will notice your activity, and then add you as a friend as they feel you have value to give.

• Friend Group Building: This strategy is where you start the group and invite your friends to join the group.  Then your friends invite their friends to join the group (hmm sounds a little bit like network marketing doesn’t it?).  As an administrator of the group you are able to promote to the members of that group via Facebook email and also have your profile in the news feed.  This can result in a quick growth in friends

Now these are just a few of the ways to build Facebook friends, watch this space for our next post in the series…

In the last 6 months facebook has been responsible for over 13% of traffic to my site and roughly 18% of our turnover.  With this said I thought it would be good to put together a series of posts on how to set up your profile on facebook and then how to leverage that profile for income and traffic.

Before we go into that though, anyone who saw me speak about 12 months ago would have heard me say that facebook was a great asset to your business, but should not be something you direct your attention to until you have focused on the foundational areas of your business and marketing. I still believe this and say this constantly to businesses that I consult with…

…here’s exactly what I mean.  If you are a business owner and you do not have a:

• Frequency Program
• Loyalty Program
• Quality Customer Service
• Internal and External Marketing

…then using facebook as a marketing tool in your business is something that you definitely should not do. It’s important to understand that you must do the fundamentals in your business BEFORE expanding into new marketing methods.

Key Elements Of A Facebook Profile

1. Profile Photo – Social networking sites are very much living breathing organisms that have unwritten “Social Rules”.  For example when you go out on a date it is customary for the male to open the door for a female. One of the “Social Rules” that most social networking sites have is:

If You Don’t Have A Profile Photo We Won’t Add You As A Friend

With the profile photo that you use it should be consistant across all social networks so you can build a consistant Social Brand. (I’ll talk more about why this is important in a later post)  The photo also should include you, preferably not a photo of a car or house, so they can see the person behind the profile.

2. Profile Information – Social networking sites have standard spaces for you to write about yourself. On facebook there is more space for telling people about you then other sites such as twitter. The more you put into your profile information the more likely someone is to interact with your profile. It will also attract more qualified and targeted people to your profile.

3. Photo Gallery – Social networking sites allow you to upload photos into a gallery.  Another one of the “Social Rules” with sites local facebook is:

The More Photos You Have, The More Likely I Am To Trust And Therefore Buy From You

So when setting up your profile ensure that you upload photos of yourself, your family, your friends and some of your social activities.

Now that you know these key elements it’s important that you go and audit your profile to see that it follows these guidelines. Watch out for my next post about facebook and building your network…