My Online Business Journey

How Social Networking Grows Your Business

There’s no doubt, social networking gives you access to your audience but what else can you accomplish with this tool?

Social gives business owners the ability to:

• Build an online presence
• Increase website traffic
• Boost SEO
• Establish credibility
• Connect with your audience
• Glean valuable information to grow your business

Whether your online business is just starting out, or you’re a large corporation, adding social networking to your marketing strategy will help you promote and grow your business.

Options to Use Social Networking to Promote Your Business

There are a number of ways you can use social networking to promote your business. Let’s take a look at the most popular and powerful.

• Drive Traffic to Your Blog or Website – Post a curiosity generating or attention grabbing headline and include a link to your website.
• Promote – Launching a new product? Announce it via social networking sites. Offering a huge holiday discount? Let people know.
• Share Lessons and Experiences – Social networking is about connecting. If you have something relevant to your industry to share, share it. Start conversations and partake in them.
• Share Pictures, Audio and Video – Many social networking sites embrace visual forms of posting as well. YouTube of course is a video social networking site but even Facebook lets you link to and post audio and video messages. And Twitter developers have created picture and video sharing applications.
• Share Information – Post interesting and relevant statistics, quotes, or headlines and start a conversation. When appropriate, link to your company website.
• Advertise – Many social networking sites also sell advertising space.

02/15/2010 by Adriana | 5 Comments

Social Media, Website Traffic

5 Minute Social Media Tactics for Businesses

Building up an online presence is an ongoing process, one that requires consistent maintenance and patience. However, just because it does take some time to achieve your presence doesn’t mean to say that every single tactic and strategy you employ will take up your entire day. In fact, here are a number of social media tactics that take no more than 5 minutes each!

Tweet

Twitter has a 140 character limit, so there’s no space for essays. Of course, condensing your message down into 140 characters might take a few minutes to do, but a regular Tweet relating to your niche area, wider industry or some of your own specific business/website news can keep people informed. Make use of hash tags (for example #blogging) so that people seeking Twitter users who regularly update on a particular topic area can easily locate and follow you. Follow people in your niche and respond to their Tweets. It’s a quick thing to do but is essentially a micro-networking strategy.

Blog Comment

Find websites and blogs in a similar niche to your business. Read and comment on posts. Again, this is quick but is a great means of networking and getting your voice heard within your niche. Becoming familiar with other people operating in a similar area to you could lead to contacts and exposure opportunities.

Update your Profiles

If you don’t already have Facebook/LinkedIn profiles (or other social media website profiles) you should. Spending a few minutes each week making sure it’s up to date is time well spent. Bear in mind that anyone seeking more information about you or your business may well start with a search around Facebook or similar sites.

Check your Online Reputation

Google yourself or your brand name (or both)! Keep an eye on what’s in the top twenty or so results. If anyone mentions you on a forum or a blog and this comes up, get in on the conversation, whether positive or negative. If it’s negative, you can respond and handle the situation. If it’s positive you have the opportunity to thank people for mentioning your name and accomplishments.

Forums

A less spoken form of social media these days, the forum, has been somewhat overshadowed by Facebook and Twitter. But they’re still well used and very convenient discussion platforms from which to voice your opinion on an area you are knowledgeable in. If you come across forums relating to you niche, why not register and start taking part? A comment here or there takes just few minutes but gives you the opportunity to prove yourself an authority on your niche area.

There’s no such thing as overnight results where social media is concerned. It’s a long term process of building up a profile for yourself. But once you have done so, it really is an invaluable asset which will undoubtedly lead to some incredibly useful contacts and potentially to sales too.

This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh. Stacey is from Manchester, UK and works in Online Marketing at Tecmark: SEO Liverpool and Manchester.

02/15/2010 by Adriana | 2 Comments

Website Traffic

7 Steps to Bring Your Website Back to Success

If your website seems dead, don’t panic. With a little planning, patience and the right mindset, you can revive it back to success. Read on to find out how.

1. Do a thorough overhaul. Do all of your internal links work? Is everything pointing where you want it to point? Are your marketing strategies working to drive traffic to your website and social functions and features? This process should be taken care of thoughtfully and carefully with attention to detail.

One or two broken links may mean the difference in hundreds of visitors. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to go through every page of your website and make sure your links are working and if you don’t want to go through all of your marketing efforts to make sure your links are working, then outsource it to a virtual administrator who has careful attention to detail and move on to #2.

2. Start participating in relevant forums Network. Drive traffic to your website and engage people on your website as well. Be personable when you’re networking on forums. Create a profile, actively participate in discussions and be sure to create a link in your signature to drive traffic.

3. Participate in social networking sites. Just like you participate in relevant industry forums, do the same with social networking sites. Be sure to link to your website occasionally in your posts.

4. Send out invitations virtually and by word of mouth. If you want to get more activity and life on your social website, then invite people to stop by. You can lure them with promotions, contests or sweepstakes, just make sure you follow through once they’re at your website.

5. Blog all about it. Start creating a stir on your website. Blog about newsworthy topics, incite a heated discussion, post valuable content that people will link back to. And guest blog too, just make sure to include a link back to your social website.

6. Offer something free. Sometimes all it takes is a little incentive to get people motivated again. If your social website is gasping for breath, put some life in it by offering a few good freebies or a new feature that will add some energy to the website.

7. Be vigilant about participating and keeping the conversation going. Social websites fail when people stop talking to one another. Many people may still visit the site: however, if they’re only reading and not engaging with others then the silence can be deadening and one by one the readers will trickle away.

Give them something to be excited about. Give them something to discuss by participating and keeping the conversation ball rolling. One by one the conversations will pick up and you’ll have a website that no longer needs CPR or life support.

02/14/2010 by Adriana | 4 Comments

Free Niche Research

Free Niche Research: Body Shaper

Not sure why I thought of this niche: maybe because we just bought tickets to go to Jamaica, and I automatically thought of nice beach bodies. But of course, not everyone is blessed with a skinny, perfectly shaped body, and these body shapers come in handy sometimes.

Top 10 Highest Paying Keywords(from the Google keyword tool)

donna karan body shaper $4.61

flexees body shaper $3.85

body shaper as seen on tv $3.42

body shaper slimmer $3.24

body shaper slip $2.93

body shapers undergarments $2.75

women body shaper $2.75

long leg body shaper $2.72

full body shapers $2.55

body shapers $2.48

Top 10 Most Searched Keywords(all phrases are exact matches in Google)

body shaper 33,100

body shapers 18,100

body shapers for women 5,400

plus size body shapers 1,900

strapless body shaper 1,900

full body shaper 1,600

body shapers undergarments 1,300

body shaper undergarments 880

mens body shaper 880

plus size body shaper 880

Resources

I am not really sure you need resources for this niche. You may want to follow the news from manufacturers to see what’s coming up new and hot. You should set up a Google Alert for each of your keywords to give you a starting point for your content.

But, in this market I think your best content will be stories about feeling good about yourself. Think about the market and try to see why they want/need to wear these body shapers, and address that.
Bali Women’s Shapewear Cool Comfort Hi-Waist Thigh Slimmer, Black, X-Large
Possible Affiliate Programs
Amazon.com has body shaper for women, kymaro body shaper, body shaper for men (these look funny/weird: sorry guys!), body shaper slimmer and more.

CJ.com & Share a Sale are always great alternatives: you’ll just need to find a merchant you like and go with it.

Monetization Suggestions

This niche goes very well together with the weight loss niche, so you can create a site catering to both. Or, you an add this to one of your existing sites in that niche.

Of course, you can also just cater to the subniche, which has an audience that doesn’t seem to worry too much about the recession. You can use AdSense in conjunction with other monetization models.

People in this niche are usually very self conscious so you can also include content about self improvement. Building a list in this niche should help a lot.

Here are some domains available for this niche at this time:

BodyShapersForWomen.net, .org & .info with 5,400 exact searches/month.

PlusSizeBodyShapers.net, .org & .info: with 1,900 exact monthly searches

FullBodyShaper.net, .org & .info: 1,900 exact searches monthly.

StraplessBodyShaper.net, .org & .info, with 1,600 searches a month: how about that?

BodyShapersUndergarments.net, .org & .info, with 1,300 exact searches a month.

MensBodyShaper.net, .org & .info get 880 exact searches a month.

PlusSizeBodyShaper.com, .net, .org & .info get 880 exact searches a month.

There are lots of opportunities for you: go make some money in this niche.

Check out this keyword research offer, if you need some research in a specific niche.

02/12/2010 by Adriana | 6 Comments

Affiliate Marketing

How to Make a Living as an Affiliate Marketer

As the affiliate marketing industry continues to evolve, the question arises whether it still possible to make a living as an affiliate marketer. Of course, the answer is a resounding yes. Affiliate marketing is alive and well, and still a very viable way to make a living. Here are a few ideas to make a living as an affiliate.

Do your research. The best way to achieve success is to find a niche market that is in demand. This is going to probably take a bit of time, patience and careful research. There are many still available, so don’t despair. Diligence and creative brainstorming sessions will get you exactly what you’re looking for.

Make it easy on yourself. Choose products and services to represent that are top notch. Look for companies that offer:

o Sales pages that convert
o Quality products and/or services
o Good commission percentages
o Lifetime cookies
o Frequent payment plans (and that pay on time)
o Incentives and bonuses
o Promotions and marketing tools for affiliates to use

Build a content foundation. Content is the single most important tool you have as an affiliate marketer and that means your content foundation is important to your success. Have patience and spend the time and effort to create good, quality content your readers, and the search engines, will value.

Get involved. Yes, you can set up an affiliate website, write a piece or two of content each week and sit back, but you may not make as much money as you want. You can also get involved in your community, participate in social networking, blog, guest blog and make sure you’re noticed. The latter is probably the best way to make a living as an affiliate.

Utilize marketing strategies the pros use. Once you’re up and running, don’t be afraid to really get busy. Publish a newlsetter, advertise, and utilize content marketing strategies to build awareness and your bottom line.

Test and track everything. As you build and grow your business, some tactics and strategies will work and others won’t. Some will help you reach your goals and others won’t. If you don’t test and track your methods and systems, how will you know what is contributing to your success and what is holding you back from achieving your goals? The answer, you won’t. Test and track everything you do online for better business building and decision making.

Have a positive mindset. If you believe you can make a living as an affiliate marketer and you’re ready to put in the time and effort to make it happen, you can do it.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make a living. There’s no other way to live an ideal internet entrepreneur lifestyle. Take the time to set your business up right and the sky is the limit, all your business-building dreams can come true.

02/11/2010 by Adriana | 2 Comments