• Social Networking Terminology
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: What is a Social Network
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success
• Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Introduction
• Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Foreword

“The process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition … and then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. In this way, individuals may be recognized as experts in their field, establish their reputation and credibility, advance their careers, and build self-confidence.”

While personal branding must be about your authentic self, it is also important to consider your target audience to define and put forth a great brand.

Source: Miriam Salpeter, “Social Networking for Career Success,” Learning Express, LLC, New York, 2011

Republished by Why Online Marketing

time and date
whom to invite
what to serve
how to set the table
where everyone will sit

Related Posts:

• Social Networking Terminology
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: What is a Social Network
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: Personal Branding
• Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Introduction
• Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Foreword

Individually, none of these tasks are impossible, but when you examine them as a group, they may seem overwhelming. The same is true about job hunting. If you are not a master resume writer, networker, interviewee, and online marketing expert, successfully landing a job may seem as difficult as hosting a Hollywood dinner party.

Take this analogy a step further: Would you want to host a big party without modern conveniences? For some, this includes sending E-vites and grocery shopping online; for others, it means being able to search for recipes and menus on the Internet, or using the latest in dishwasher and convection oven technology. Maybe you remember when planning simply involved thumbing through a pile of cookbooks, scraping food off plates, and spending hours up to your elbows in soapy water? Even if these are familiar rituals, modern conveniences allow you to meet your guests’ expectations more efficiently and with less work.

When it comes to your job hunt, there are tools and resources now available that no one dreamed of just two decades ago. Instead of waiting for the Sunday classified ads, the Internet offers constant access to job leads. Today, you no longer need to visit the library to conduct basic research about organizations-company data and information flood the Web. Networking no longer requires getting dressed to mingle in person with a bunch of strangers while balancing a drink and appetizer plate. Job seekers can take advantage of terrific networking opportunities from home, balancing nothing but a laptop on their knees.

However, along with all of these conveniences come new challenges. Just as easy access to amazing recipes and unique ingredients raises the bar for your dinner parties, today’s hiring managers have higher expectations of job seekers than in the past. This is not your parents’ job hunt, and you should understand how to use online tools to propel your plans forward. Once you tap into the power of social media, and understand how much easier it makes your job hunt, you will not know how you ever got by without it.

Source: Miriam Salpeter, “Social Networking for Career Success,” Learning Express, LLC, New York, 2011

Republished by Why Online Marketing

Related Posts:

• Social Networking Terminology
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: What is a Social Network
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: Personal Branding
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success
• Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Foreword

If you have not yet dived into the world of social networking and experienced how powerful it can be, you don’t know what you are missing. If you think LinkedIn is only for job seekers and Twitter for stalking celebrities, I have great news-these and other networks can change your life in ways you will never understand until you jump in with both feet and try them out.

You may be skeptical. I meet people who are all the time. Perhaps you don’t think sharing your personal or professional information online is going to help your career or business. Maybe you don’t have time and think social networking is for people who have noth- ing better to do all day. The truth is, social networking gets some bad press. Many think of it as a way to lose a job, not a tool for getting one! If this sounds like you, you are not alone. I challenge you to read this book, and to really engage in these online commu- nities. After doing so, I challenge you to tell me it’s not worth it. I’ve leveraged my own social network to write this book. It includes expert advice and opinions from over 100 of my colleagues and friends, other coaches, recruiters, human resource professionals, and others, all of whom I’ve met via Twitter or by reading their blogs. I share stories from people who have used social networking to get them where they want to go-and their advice can help you do the same.

This book is different from many you may have seen about social networking; I actively work with the tools I devote chapters to telling you about. I tell you that Twitter can keep you connected while I am watching my Twitter stream, which keeps me up-to-date regarding resources and information for this book. I am not researching this topic-I am living it! As a job search and social media coach, I teach entrepreneurs and job seekers how to optimize these tools, as I have done myself, for success.

When I started in social media, I was just one needle in a haystack, working alongside hundreds of thousands of career coaches. Today, reporters for major national newspapers and media outlets regularly contact me to provide expert advice. I created my online reputation and distinguished myself as a subject matter expert, and this book tells you how you can do the same thing (no, you don’t need to be a technical whiz to do it-I am certainly not one).

Recent economic changes have proven that everyone-whether they know it or not-is a job seeker. You can no longer count on doing the same work, in the same field, for the long term. However, you can take control of your career and reputation in a way that was not possible just a few years ago.

Social networking can empower you to grow your reputation beyond your office, and to create a cohort of people who know and respect you from all over the globe. The power of that exponential network-and having people who take an interest in your
professional expertise and insight-is invaluable when you need to decide on a next step. Whether it’s by your own choice (you decide to make a move) or someone else’s (maybe you were laid off), creat- ing a network of colleagues online can prove invaluable.

Source: Miriam Salpeter, “Social Networking for Career Success,” Learning Express, LLC, New York, 2011

Republished by Why Online Marketing

When the economy hit the skids several years ago and people started losing their jobs right and left, I was astounded by the number of people who had no clue about how to find a job.

One man told me the last time he had looked for work he had simply picked up a copy of The New York Times, circled a few ads, made some phone calls and voila! He had a job. But looking for a job through Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? He admitted he didn’t know the first thing about social networking.

Related Posts:

• Social Networking Terminology
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: What is a Social Network
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success: Personal Branding
• Leveraging Social Networking for Success
• Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Introduction

As the bad times stretched on, I talked to dozens of unemployed people for my USA Today syndicated workplace column who were beginning to panic, and began lurching into the social networking arena with all the grace of Bambi on ice. They sent out mass LinkedIn requests to people they didn’t know, looking more like online stalkers than qualified professionals with valuable skills to offer. The employed were just as worried. They fretted about losing their jobs, so they decided to make some equally clumsy forays into the online world. There were half-hearted attempts to update LinkedIn profiles and sometimes idiotic tweets where they called the boss an ass and shared the fact they had a hangover from too many Jell-O shooters the night before.

For the jobless and the employed, venturing into the online social scene wasn’t always pretty.

Unfortunately, things haven’t improved all that much since the economy went in the toilet. Yes, employers are hiring again- slowly-and fewer employees feel like they’ll get a pink slip any day now. But that doesn’t mean all the important lessons have been learned.

Job seekers still tweet about the bad breath of an interviewer and don’t expect to be caught doing it (they get caught-they always get caught). Workers, exhausted by the daily grind, haven’t added any- one new to their online networks for the last eight months. In writing about workplace and career issues for more than 20 years, I’ve heard just about every excuse in the book as to why people mess up in their careers and job searches. But one thing I know for sure-excuses won’t get you a job or a promotion, and employers have even less patience than before for the ones who can’t get their act together.

Source: Miriam Salpeter, “Social Networking for Career Success,” Learning Express, LLC, New York, 2011

Republished by Marketing Now

Here are ten considerations you need to make as you complete your Internet marketing plan:

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• What is Internet Blog Marketing?

1. Objective of Internet Marketing Plan: What do you want to accomplish by using Internet marketing? To find new clients? Provide services and info to existing clients? Sell services or products? Educate your target market or your staff about your product or service? Create an online community for your target market? How much money to have to spend each month on this Internet marketing plan? Having a goal and budget in mind will make your marketing more effective.

2. Marketing Funnel: The most successful online business owners have a marketing funnel (think of it as an upside down triangle) through which they “funnel” clients. The process begins from the wide top of the funnel, representing low-cost products or free give-aways, and moving clients down through the funnel to the narrower portions which represent gradually increasing investments from the clients from your higher-priced products and services. What products and services do you currently offer? Are they at varied price points that would create a funnel effect? What plans do you have to increase your product or service line? Will those new offerings plug gaps in your marketing funnel?

3. Your Competition: Knowing and understanding where you stand among your competitors can you help you strengthen your marketing message. Do a keyword search for the terms someone might use to find your business online. Write down the URL’s of your top 5 competitors. How popular and relevant are their sites? You can check their traffic ranking with Alexa, http://www.alexa.com/#traffic, as well as see what other sites link to them. Does your competition offer something unique? Where are the gaps in the service or product offerings?

4. Target Market: Instead of trying to marketing to everyone (the shotgun marketing approach), find a clearly definable target market that you can easily describe and locate. Are they male or female? What age group? What industry? What socio-economic group? Where do they hang out on- and off-line? What do they read? To what groups and associations (real and virtual, personal and professional) do they belong? How much money do they make? Can they easily afford your product or service? What keywords are they using to search for businesses like yours online?

5. Solution to a Problem: The reason that someone will buy your product or hire to you to provide a service is to solve a particular problem that they have. What problems and issues plague your target market? How does your product or service solve that problem? How does your solution differ from that of your competitors? What makes you uniquely qualified to provide the solution to their problem?

6. Branding Your Business: Your domain name can either help you be memorable or cast you into a sea of “brandless” solutions. At a minimum, you’ll want to buy both your personal name as well as the name of your business in the .com version, if it’s available. Then buy the .com versions of your product names and program names. If you use a full-featured domain registrar, you’ll be able to point and mask these domains to internal pages of your web site, or use them as stand-alone sales letter pages.

You may also think of problems faced by your target market or solutions that you provide and buy domain names in the .com version of those as well. Internet marketer Dean Jackson brands his ebook on how to stop a divorce by owning the domain name, StopYourDivorce.com, This is a compelling solution to his target market-men who have been ignoring their wives’ complaints of marital dissatisfaction and come home one day to an empty house and a note telling him that she’s filing for divorce.

7. Assess your website. Your web site should be visually appealing, with one primary font for the text and a simple primary color scheme, along with an easy-to-navigate layout, and readily identifiable buttons to link to other pages in the site. Your content should focus on and address the problems of your visitors and how your product or service can help solve their problems. Rather than listing the features of your product or service, detail the benefits they’ll gain from purchasing your product or service. People rarely buy features-they buy benefits. Don’t depend on your web site designer to write your content-that is best done by you, as you know your business and your target market better than anyone.

Present a clear call to action that is clearly shown on every page of your site. In an online business, your primary call to action should be getting the visitor’s name and primary email address by asking him subscribe to your ezine or by giving him access to a free ecourse, special report, audio recording, or ebook. Lastly, provide an abundace of readily available information to demonstrate your expertise (articles, blog posts, free downloads, giveaways, contests). Your visitor is always asking WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)-make your web site about your visitor, not about you.

8. Online Business Management Technology: Do you have access to the appropriate services and technology that will help you sell your product or service online? At a minimum you’ll need a merchant account (permits you to take credit card payments) that includes a virtual gateway (enables you to process transactions online) and a full-featured shopping cart that will permit you to sell both physical and electronic products and create a series of autoresponders to follow up with buyers and non-buyers alike. Depending on your marketing plan, you may also want to investigate email newsletter distribution services, online appointment setting services, stand-alone autoresponders, blogging software, article submission sites, online press release distribution services, website content management services, and links exchange management services and software.

9. Internet Marketing Strategies: How will you create traffic to your website? There are countless ways to do this, including: pay-per-click purchases (in which you buy a keyword at a search engine and pay for placement on that search engine for that keyword and pay for each visitor who clicks on that link and is sent to your site); organic search engine listing ranking (in which your site comes up at the top of the non-sponsored listings on a search engine by having keyword rich descriptions in the page title and page desciption meta tags and then optimizing each page for no more than 3 keywords in the first 250 words on a page); well-written email newsletter that is published on a regular basis; submission of articles on topics related to your target market to article submission directories; regularly post entries to a blog aimed at your target market, full of content discussing issues related to that target market; series of podcasts containing interview with experts of interest to your target market; ongoing series of teleconferences containing value-added content for your target market; submission of online press releases with new tips information for your target market; exchange relevant links with others in different industries with the same target market;

10. Building a Team: You’ll never be able to do this all alone. The most successful business owners don’t even try. You need to add experts to your team who are great at what they do so that you’ve got the time and energy to go out and do what you do best-selling your products and services to your target market. Some great experts to add to your team include a virtual assistant or online business manager, an online business coach, a web site designer, a graphic designer, a writing expert (editor, ghost writer, proof reader or copy writer), a bookkeeper, and intellectual property attorney, to name a few.

To conduct a successful Internet marketing campaign, you need to integrate your plan into the overall marketing plan/business vision that you have for your service business. Some businesses will thrive off Internet marketing alone; however, for most, Internet marketing simply complements and enhances your offline marketing strategies.

Republished by Why Online Marketing

Yet internet marketing failures still vastly outnumber those who have succeeded in internet marketing. For every story you hear of someone making $10,000 a month at internet marketing there are hundreds of untold stories of those who failed to
make a profit or only made a few dollars and then quit. Why do so many fail when the potential to succeed is high?

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• 10 More Steps to Internet Success
• 10 Success Factors Of Wealthy Infoproduct Marketers
• Your Guide For Blog Marketing
• What is Internet Blog Marketing?

1. Failure to plan – No matter what type of business you are running you need a business plan with well-defined goals. What are your short-term and long-term goals? What steps do you need to take to meet those goals? Write out your plan and review it frequently. You are running a small business. Treat it as one.

2. Failure to work the plan – So you already have a business plan? Are the following it? A plan means nothing if you don’t follow it. Work the plan every single day. Revise it if necessary but don’t detract from it.

3. Making goals too big early on – Many internet marketing failures try to do too much too fast. You are not going to create the ultimate web site for dog lovers overnight. Start small with dog training tips and add content daily. Those 1,000+ page web sites took months or years to build, so will yours.

4. Lack of knowledge – Would you be a successful plumber without knowing anything about plumbing? No. Then to be a successful internet marketer you need to learn internet marketing. Find a successful mentor willing to help you and you will be way ahead of the crowd.

5. Not investing in your business – You won’t get any support or very much web traffic on with a free web host. Many times, the best ebooks, scripts, and tools are the ones that cost money. You can run an online business for next to nothing but you’ll achieve faster and more profitable results by investing in the right tools.

6. “If I build it, they will come” – You can have the most comprehensive and informative website on natural healing in the world but if you don’t promote your site and work to drive traffic to it no one will know about it. There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You should be using several of them.

7. Lack of patience – You will not be making $10,000 a month when you start. Internet marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time and testing to build your web traffic and increase your conversion rate. In the beginning you might actually lose money and this is when too many people give up without giving their business time to grow.

8. Wrong niche – So you wrote that ebook on underwater basket weaving and you’re wondering why nobody is buying it? Find a niche but make sure it’s profitable first. Too many times people create the product first then try to figure out how to sell it. Find out what the people want then give or sell it to them.

9. No Uniqueness – There are a million low carb diet books out there, what makes yours so unique? Why should I buy your widget when Bob’s widgets are just as good and he’s been selling widgets a lot longer than you? Stand out from the crowd and get noticed. Know your competition and do what they do better or do something totally different.

10. Lack of commitment – To be successful, you must be committed to success. Behind every success story there are many hours of work and dedication. You’ll need drive and determination if you want to be the next internet success story everyone is talking about.

Print out these ten reasons for failure and post it next to your computer monitor or tape them to your bathroom mirror.

Everyday review your online business and make sure you are not making any of these mistakes. Do this and you are well on your way to being an internet marketing success.

Republished by Why Online Marketing

• 10 Steps to Creating Your Internet Marketing Plan
• 10 Reasons Why People Fail At Internet Marketing
• 10 Success Factors Of Wealthy Infoproduct Marketers
• Your Guide For Blog Marketing
• What is Internet Blog Marketing?

1) Find a Market – Find a market before you decide on a product. If you pick a product first then find out later there isn’t a market for it, you will have wasted a lot of time and money. So be sure to look for the market first. Also try to find an area that inspires or excites you. If you find your passion then it’ll be easier to stay motivated when building your business. Use Google to search different keywords. Try searching with Yahoo to see what else is selling. Check eBay for all their different categories. And use ClickBank to look for interesting markets. When you locate a market and find out what people want, all you’ll have to do is sell it to them. After your first internet project is up and running, and is profitable, then you may want to start looking for your next market. Remember it’s very easy to jump from one project to the next before the first one is finished. So try to find a market or project that you really like and stay with it until its making money.

2) Find a Product – After finding a market you’ll need to find a product to sell. You could search the internet to see what other people are selling to get some ideas. Or buy resale rights to a product. Maybe you can sell an affiliate product. Remember you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Find a product someone else is selling and make it a little better, different, lower in price, or add a bonus whenever someone buys from you. If you choose to sell digital products you will find many extra benefits such as: no shipping or handling, low start up cost, your profit margin will be close to 100%, your customer will get their product right away. And a lot of it can be set up automatically so there’s less work for you. Make sure to take full advantage of the automation possibilities of the internet.

3) Get a Domain Name – You’ll want to have your own domain name. Try to think of a few different names because your first choices may not be available. Choose a short name and it will be easier for people to remember. If possible get domain names ending with .com or .co.uk. You should also try to get a name to match your product. And maybe use keywords in your domain name to get a better listing on search engines.

4) Hosting Companies – The purpose of hosting company is to keep your website running properly. They will make sure everything is working properly so your customers can navigate through it and buy your product or service. This is a very important responsibility. If your website isn’t working properly or not at all then you are losing money. You may find some free hosting companies, but you really do get what you pay for. So it may be better to use a paid hosting company.

5) Create a Website – Create a website so your customers can buy your products 24 hour a day. You will be competing with lots of other website’s so try to make yours unique. If your site takes a long time to download your potential customers will go somewhere else. Graphics are nice to look at but slow to download so have more text and less graphic. Remember its words that sell products. To get ideas for you website search the web and look for sites that you like. Make sure your website is easy to navigate. And if you are short on time and have the money you could hire a professional to build your site. Or if you want to save money you could do it yourself.

6) Payment Processor- To collect money for your products you will need a payment processor. Make sure that you accept credit cards because most transactions will be made with them. You should also consider other options as well, like accepting cheques and postal orders. And you may want to use PayPal. The more ways you can collect money the more sales you’ll make. And if you’re selling a digital product you may want to use ClickBank.

7) Auto responder – If you want to make your internet business easier, then you’ll want to automate as much as possible by using auto responders. You can automate a lot of your every day business tasks leaving more time for you to concentrate on more important things. Here are a few examples: send out email advertisements to everyone on your list at predetermined intervals. Automate the delivery of several different mini courses all at once. Send out sequential emails automatically whenever someone buys one of your products. Have all of your digital products sent out automatically. And with auto responders you can collect names and email addresses and add them to your list of customers and much, much more.

Free Advertising – This may be a good way to start out if you are limited on funds. But this will be slower than paid advertising and will take a lot more time. And time is money so figure out how much you’re worth and monitor your time. If you are spending a lot of time with free advertising and not getting the results you like, then you may want to try something else. Keep in mind when using free advertising someone else may also place their ad with yours and this is not very professional. Also when you join these free advertising lists it usually means everyone on that list can send free advertising to you. So you may get a lot of unwanted emails.

9) Paid Advertising – You may get better results with paid advertising. And at first you may think blasting your ad to as many people as possible will make you the most money. But this really isn’t a good idea for a couple of reasons. First a lot of people won’t have an interest in your product so they’ll probably not even read your ad. And second you may be accused of spamming which is something you never want to do. So always try placing ads with your specific targeted group. And always test your results to make sure that its cost efficient.

10) Collect a List – This gets 5 stars. Start collecting your list of names and email addresses as soon as possible, add to your list often, and cherish your list because it will make you money over and over again. Whenever you need extra money you can send an email promoting a product to your list. So you’ll want to collect names and emails addresses by offering free e-books or a mini course, by having them join your newsletter and of course whenever they buy your great product.

And remember to always invest in yourself. Invest your money for quality information that will help expand your business, and invest your time to thoroughly read the information.

Republished by Why Online Marketing