Focused Online Marketing

LinkedIn Groups: An Untapped Resource

focused — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:03:38 +0000

Every business professional should have a LinkedIn profile to connect and network with others on the Internet. The one problem most people run into after they started their profile and connected with the people they know, is that they don’t know how to take their LinkedIn networking to the next level. LinkedIn groups is a great place to go out and meet new like minded people along with some potential new clients. Some of the groups on LinkedIn have thousands of members that want to help and connect with others. Another advantage to using groups is the discussion feature. You can basically post any question to the group and get some credible feedback from the members.

Go to LinkedIn, click the drop down on the search bar at the top right, click on groups, and start searching for groups you would be interested in. You will be amazed at the results and connections you can make within LinkedIn groups!

I Want A Better Facebook Business Page!

focused — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 17:03:21 +0000

There are millions of Facebook pages out there, and 9 times out of 10 the only difference in appearance between them are their profile pictures. That’s a good start, but is just one way to differentiate your business from your competition. If you really want to brand your business, make your company look more professional, and build another way of driving traffic to your website, then you need to create a Facebook FBML (Facebook Mark-up Language) page. (to see some examples http://www.focusyouronlinemarketing.com/portfoilo/ ) These are the tools the big companies are using effectively, such as Starbucks, Best Buy, Chick-fil-a. Your in luck though, we are going to teach how to add this tool to your marketing arsenal! Here’s how to get started:

login to your Facebook account
click on Ads and Pages
click on the edit page for the page you want to edit(if you only monitor one it will go to that one by default)
click on “applications”
scroll down till you see “static fbml” and click on add application
Then you will see it go to the top part of the applications, and you can click go to application
This is where you are going to need to learn FBML (a slight different version of HTML)…here’s a link to learn some basics http://www.mybusinesspresence.com/basic-html-code-for-your-static-fbml-pages-on-facebook/

Hope this helps, and for additional help please contact us at info@focusyouronlinemarketing.com

- Focused Online Marketing Team

MailChimp: Fun Name, Serious Tool

focused — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:47:08 +0000

Social media is a great stand alone marketing tool, but you really get some traction behind your marketing campaign when integrating your social media campaign with email marketing. Our company has tried Constant Contact, Aweber, IContact, and a couple others, and the one we like the best was Mailchimp (http://bit.ly/fuIxBz). Mailchimp has a lot of great features that integrate very well with social media campaigns and content syndication. Another bonus with Mailchimp is that it is free for up to a 1,000 subscribers and up to 6,000 emails a month. That is definitely a big plus for using this platform! Mailchimp also provides seamless integration with the eventbrite, which is one the top event management programs on the web. I would give Mailchimp a chance first before you try any other email marketing program. What you have to lose? It’s FREE!

Building An Effective Corporate Social Media Campaign

focused — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:56:34 +0000

Our company works with the small business owner all the way up to multi-million dollar companies and everything in between. Every client is different and every client needs to have a customised social media program to bring the ROI the company desires. With that being said, there are a couple things you should think about to build an effective corporate social media campaign:

Internal/External: this is definitely something you choose before starting a corporate social media campaign. Do you have people within the company who are competent enough to build a social media program? Do you have the resources? Should you hire an external company? This all depends on the size of their company and marketing department.
Goals: Define realistic goals behind the campaign. DON”T think that just because your company is on Facebook, that you are going to make millions of dollars. IT DOESN’T HAPPEN OVER NIGHT! Social media campaigns take time to develop.
Which sites?: Now that you have goals and picked an internal or external company, decide which sites you are going to use to accomplish your goals. There are many social media sites out there, and choosing the right ones are a big key to succcess
Metrics and Analytics: The company needs to define what type of metrics they will use to track their social media campaigns effectiveness. This can be things like fans, followers, page views, unique visitors, referral sources, Google Analytics, or even leads. There are many different types of metrics, the company needs to define which one is most important to the success of the campaign.

A social media campaign can be one of the best marketing tools when you use effectively. The more time you put into social media, the more you will get out of it. And remember, FOM, Inc. is here to help. If you have any questions please contact us at info@focusyouronlinemarketing.com

Free WordPress Blog vs. Hosted Blog?

focused — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:55:28 +0000

Anyone can go onto wordpress and create a blog with the example.wordpress.com url, but is your goal just to create a blog or generate business? Personally, I prefer the hosted blog for many reasons (as you can tell we like bullet points at this company ):

Better SEO: with a hosted blog, you can increase your SEO alot easier than with a free WordPress blog. You have more control over the metatags, headers, and keywords through the blog.
More versatility: with a free blog you can only choose from so many themes. A host blog give you the freedom to choose from thousands of themes for your blog. Here are a couple FOM, Inc. reccomends www.pagelines.com http://www.studiopress.com/ (if you like some different themes, please feel free to comment and them for others to use)
Plugins!: with the free blog, you don’t get access to plugins (or very little). The hosted blog gives you the options to use thousands of plugins. Plugins are great to enahnce your blog with sharing features, new widgets, and SEO functions.

Those are just a few things that come to mind when thinking about using a free blog vs. a hosted blog. Some good hosting sites are www.bluehost.com and www.hostgator.com . Hope this was helpful with your quest to start an amazing blog!

YouTube Marketing 101

focused — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:22:36 +0000

I see alot of business owners who have a YouTube video, but don’t seem to get a lot of traction from it. There are millions of videos on YouTube, and you need to find a way to get your video to stand out. Here are a couple things you should do when trying to market a video:

Review Content: Is your content engaging? Would you sit there and watch your video? Is it too long? (2 minutes is the sweet spot ) These are things you should review before your post your video.
Correctly Submitting your video: Did you add the correct tags and title? Many people will just upload a video and not change the title or tags associated with that video. This is a big no no! One of the most important things about your video is the title and tags.
Submitting your video to other video sites: there are hundreds of video sites out there, and expanding its reach could be very beneficial for your company and your oganic SEO. Ex. www.dailymotion.com www.clipser.com www.veho.com
Embed on website: you can easily add your video to your website, all you need to do is copy and paste the html code into your website. This is a great way to drive traffic to your video, and vice versa.
Connect social media sites: you can automatically connect your other social media sites to YouTube. This is great to save time, and to make sure your video in every place possible.

Turn Your LinkedIn Connections Into An Email Marketing List

focused — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:22:18 +0000

We all have a bunch of LinkedIn connections just sitting out there in the social networking world, not really doing too much. If you are not really active on this site, but want to still leverage your network, then I have the solution for you!

I am going to give a quick run down on how to take your connections you have on LinkedIn and turn them into an email marketing list in less than 15 minutes.

Login to your LinkedIn account
Click on contacts at the top
Scroll down and click on “export connections” on the right hand side
This will export your connections into a CSV file on your computer
upload the CSV into your email client

AND YOUR DONE!

IF that way doesnt work for you and want to really get fancy with your social media marketing, then try to use the LinkedIn Outlook toolbar. To do this, you will need to login to your LinkedIn account, scroll all the way down and click on tools. This will bring a page where you can download the LinkedIn outlook toolbar. This will help sync all your LinkedIn connections into your Outlook…pretty cool, huh?

Stay tuned for more helpful tips!

The Top Three Mistakes Business Owners Make With Social Media – 1. Being A Salesperson

focused — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:27:16 +0000

Many people believe that using social media is another way for their company to push their products and services onto their consumers… that is completely the opposite of what social media is all about for the business owner. As a small business owner using social media, you want to become the resource and expert within your field. You want to become that company that people turn to online that they like and trust because of the content you provide. Think about it…would you as customer do business with someone who is constantly pushing and shoving products and services at you? I doubt it. Remember to think of who your target market is, what types of people are in my network, and what content would be helpful to them. This will help build your brand and name as the resource in your industry..and ultimately..convert those people who find you an expert into life-long customers.

Why Your Small Business Should Use Social Media

focused — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:03:23 +0000

Talking with many small business owners over the past couple months, I have realized that there is a lot of skepticism around using social media as a marketing tool. I have one thing to say to people who don’t think isn’t worth putting their time into social media – you can’t afford not to be using social media. It’s free marketing and advertisement for your company! You can increase your brand image, customer interaction, and rankings on Google by using social media. As a small business owner, the best part about social media is the interaction between your company and your network. Social media allows the business owner to respond to complaints, thank customers, and gather information all for free. No other form of marketing is going to allow you to do this. Read this report on Mashable about some real results small business owners are receiving http://bit.ly/9vZ7JK

How to Grow Your Facebook Fan Page

focused — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 06:54:57 +0000

Facebook Fan Pages are really starting to pick up steam with their growth with small businesses. Most small business owners are still trying to grasp the personal page, but the ones that are utilizing fan pages are starting to see benefits. This blog entry is going to be short and sweet when it comes to small business owners growing their Facebook Fan Page quickly and efficiently.

The answer to quick Fan Page growth…suggest to your friends and ask your friends and fans. There is a link under your picture that says “suggest to friends”, and this what you need to click to quickly build a network. People who are your friends are more likely than not become a fan of your page because they know you. Since they do know you, they might be willing to suggest the fan page to their friends then. And then their friends suggest it…and so on and so on. It can become somewhat of a snow ball effect, and before you know it you will have a strong Fan Page network. This is something that seems pretty obvious, but many people don’t utilize this way to grow their Fan Page network.

Stay tuned on how to grow your LinkedIn Page…