Some 70 percent of shoppers trust consumer opinions posted online. Facebook has more than 350 million users. By some estimates, Twitter will have 26 million users by the end of this year. And YouTube is the third most popular website on the Internet, bar none. Social media cannot be ignored. It is just too pervasive, too ubiquitous. But from an ecommerce marketing standpoint, social media is often too little understood. The need for a clear explanation about what social media is and how to include it in your marketing was made clear to me last week, when Practical Ecommerce and HubSpot hosted a social media webinar. The event attracted dozens of questions before the broadcast and hundreds of...

Continue reading The PEC Review: The Social Media Marketing Book

Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy for people to come together and share opinions, experiences and thoughts on a number of topics. Smart companies understand this and are using the power of social media to connect and inform their customers, and potential customers. Referred to as "Social Media Marketing", it's a smart way to open the lines of communication between you and your prospects. Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging, micro blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking communities such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and music uploading sites, discussion forums, photo sharing and more. With so many different sites and ways to participate, it can be difficult to keep track of all your efforts. Participating in social media doesn't take a lot of money, but it is very time consuming and businesses want to know that all of this investment in...

Continue reading Are Your Ears Burning? - 20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing

One of the most useful tools to come along in recent years for online marketers is URL shorteners.There are sites where you can paste a long, ugly URL into a form, and the site will give you a much shorter URL to use in your emails, newsletters and promotions.There are also scripts that you can install on your server, that allow you to generate shortened URLs, which is what I prefer, due to the great control it gives you.In case you are not using the tiny urls, you're probably losing a lot of sales and traffic. The benefits of using shortened URLs typically include: • They allow you to conserve space when posting to micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter, where each of your posts is limited to a mere 140 characters. • They look more professional than long, unwieldy affiliate URLs (especially if they have your domain name in them)....

Continue reading URL Shortening Services are Holding You Hostage - Fight Back!

The social media movement has expanded the number of people we can reach and connect with on a personal level. The new relationships and connections we create with people all over the world can have a profound effect on our personal and business growth. We learn about cultures and nations that we were, perhaps, previously ignorant of. None of this is a new concept, but what may be is how quickly you can destroy your business by using social media incorrectly. Transparency is a Utopian Concept Not too long ago, Michael Fortin wrote an article titled Don't Be Transparent, Be Authentic Instead. That article is an important read for any social media wrangling business blogger and you can search for it online. That article is the tip of the iceberg in the concept of 'transparency' being too Utopian to work within the jaded confines of our society. Of course,...

Continue reading How You Use Social Media Can Kill Your Business

When George Clooney was recently asked about his take on Facebook at the Toronto Film Festival, his response was short: "I'd rather have a prostate exam than a Facebook page." Now, that's probably understandable when movie studios (his potential clients) have his number on a speed dial, and pesky paparazzi (freebie seekers and unqualified prospects) chase after his every move. But unless you already have more prospects and high quality clients than you and your business can handle, your approach to Social Networking should be drastically different. Frankly, a little over a year ago I considered online networking a total waste of time. Fortunately, I was able to recognize how wrong I was. And I wasn't the only one that had a change of heart on this.After Dell revealed they generated a cool million dollars in extra sales in 2008, (ahm, make it a cool $3 million by June'09!), many...

Continue reading You Aren't George Clooney - Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear

It is no real secret that a well written topical blog can significantly help out your website - so why aren't you doing it? The most common reasons I hear for not starting a blog involve a lack of time to write posts, and limited ideas to write about, but taking that extra time to get some useful content out there can do wonders for your search rankings among other things. An established blog that is updated regularly gets spidered by Google often, and increases the chances of new search rankings considerably. I have seen multiple situations where regularly updated blogs wind up ranking #1 in Google for relevant phrases literally within a couple hours of posting. It usually takes a well established website and blog to make this happen, but there is big potential if you do things the right way.While blogs work best if updated multiple times per...

Continue reading Blogging Your Way to the Top

Twitter is one of the fastest growing marketplaces on the Internet. The reason why so many people like Twitter is because it is actually the perfect communication tool for people who don't understand and don't want to learn about Internet technology and the technological geek-speak that goes along with it.A few years back, I asked someone for his dad's email address. The son replied telling me that you just email his name. The son was clueless that there was an actual email address behind the shortcut for his dad's name. He did not understand email, and he did not care that he did not understand it. He was able to use it in a manner that was easy for him, and that is all that really mattered.What makes Twitter so popular to the masses is that one does not have to be tech-savvy to use the service. The new user...

Continue reading How to Build a Profitable Twitter Profile

Twitter is the current top "hot property" on the Web, but its popularity and how to use it has mystified many business owners. Many people think that they want to, or should be using Twitter, but simply do not understand the platform, its use, or its place in building web exposure. This article will demystify Twitter and help you to learn how to use it in the workplace and to promote your business. First, I have to say that I had been confused on how to use Twitter to benefit my own business until I downloaded TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop application that allows you to review and post status updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I consider it a "must have" application for anyone who wants to make sense of Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to sort the people you follow on Twitter into groups, allows you to limit...

Continue reading Twitter Demystified for Business Users

Seven is a magic number. Why? Because there are seven simple strategies every small business can employ to jump on the social marketing bandwagon. The best part: most require only a moderate investment of time and/or money.1. Start Blogging - Blogging is old news to many. Not quite the distant past, but still not the future... sort of a Web 1.5. Is blogging what's 'hot' at the moment? Well, no. It certainly doesn't compare with chasing a link from the front page of Digg. But blogging is alive and well! It continues to be a great way to get interactively connected with your customers. 'Dialoguing' is the reason social marketing exists. How much time you invest in your blog is up to you, but you'll get out what you put in. You don't have to drive yourself crazy putting in daily entries, but you should establish a regular schedule for...

Continue reading 7 Things You Can Do Now To Benefit From Social Marketing

Social media is here to stay. There. I said it. It will be around in some form for years to come. Do you really see Facebook, Twitter and Web videos going somewhere?Or do you just see them evolving and becoming part of a larger system the same way business blogs did? Great. Then we can start figuring out how to use social media to our benefit. Now that we're past this issue of whether we are in love with MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, etc., and we realize that we're focusing on whether these tools are useful or not, (not on whether or not they give us the warm fuzzies), there's still a fundamental question. This goes for whether you're using Facebook pages, Facebook ads, or a regular Facebook profile.How do you know if sites like Facebook are for YOU? How can you tell if a social networking site can help...

Continue reading How to Tell if Facebook is Worthwhile for Your Business or a Waste of Time