Month: May 2010

How To Connect With Your Customers Via Social Media

The development of new online destinations for information sharing and interactive communication by and between family and friends as well as professional associates is consistently cited as the driving force behind Web 2.0.  Termed “Social Media”, the trend has created abundant opportunities to distribute high quality health and disease education content, while creating community and entirely new opportunities for collaboration between your business and it’s customers. The Social Media Moguls website is dedicated to sharing those ideas with you.

One of the web’s most recognized information sources, Wikipedia, defines “Social media marketing” as a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube as well as many independent subject matter blogs.  In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees).

MOST ACTIVE SOCIAL NETWORKS

FACEBOOK – As the largest and most successful social networking media site in operation today. Facebook has 300 Million users worldwide  and continues to grow and add new members at an impressive rate. Members interact with one another by providing updates to their personalized pages which may include photos, videos, links to other sites, or “microblog” type status updates that let’s friends and colleagues know what you are up to.

TWITTER – Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.

YOU-TUBE – YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, UMG and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Alexa ranks You-Tube as the fourth most visited site on the web.

However, to capitalize on this emerging trend, your business needs to develop a comprehensive Social Media Marketing strategy. By developing and implementing a carefully planned social media strategy, you can take advantage of current media trends, to accomplish multiple objectives including broadening the reach of your brand and providing an interactive platform for communication with and between your business and your customers. My friend David Hindie has created a super easy to use,  step by step video course for using Facebook to market your business. I refer to it often and would highly recommend it.

As with all things web, things change rapidly and having and maintaining active Social Media Marketing strategy takes work and cooperative effort from multiple areas of the your organization including management, operations, and communications.  Through minimal effort you can yield extraordinary results and form an effective plan for increasing site traffic and brand awareness for your business

Development of the your business’s Social Media strategy is suggested as the first step in defining an online media plan to boost your online marketing efforts.  While social networking sites offer access to millions of targeted individuals, it should be viewed as a tool for driving traffic to corporate owned sites such as .ORG and .COM where similar features could be incorporated and where you can guide the visitor experience in a way that creates a deeper more meaningful engagement between your business and the customers.

Sign Up |HERE| to receive three Social media Marketing Reports, every small business owner should have.   Be sure to also Check us out online at: http://www.socialmediamogul.net

Hector V. Herrera, founder of Social Media Moguls, is a graduate of Georgia State University, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications. Hector is recognized as a visionary brand strategist.

Social Media Marketing Success Stories

Businesses everywhere are slowly but surely learning how to harness the power of social media for their branding efforts. Marketing with social media is a powerful strategy, but it is a process that requires time and patience. How are some of the big corporations doing? After a lot of experimentation, speculation and consternation – progress is being made. We put together a list of some well-known companies and their recent social media campaigns. Here are several Fortune 500 corporations that are successfully leveraging social media to their advantage:

Coca Cola

Coca-Cola made their social media debut a few years ago. They created a new office of “Digital Communications and Social Media” because they felt social media was the way to go. They still feel this way.

Clyde Tuggle, Coke’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Productivity said: “Mass media is declining in importance. Our future success depends on our continued ability to connect people to our brands and our company all around the world, one person at a time. Our new office of digital communications and social media will help us become even more comfortable and effective in these new spaces.”

Coca Cola began their social media efforts with CokeTag – a “personal, customizable widget for individuals, bands, bloggers, artists, and companies to share links to content they want to promote and drive traffic to anywhere on the Web.” A widget as a marketing tool is pretty original thinking by itself.

This January Coca-Cola launched “Expedition 206” on social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Three “happiness” ambassadors began an international journey to all 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold. Their mission is to seek out “what makes people happy” around the world. Throughout the journey, these “happiness” ambassadors will share their blog posts, tweets, videos, interviews and pictures so people can follow their adventures along the way. 


Ford Motor Company

Ford has been on the forefront of social media marketing ever since it hired Scott Monty back in 2008. Monty spearheaded Ford’s social media strategy with a promise to “create content, set it free, and allow anyone who is interested to be able to share it on any of the major platforms, on a global basis.” It has been working well.

Their recent Ford Fiesta Movement social media campaign was impressive. It was a grassroots campaign that promoted the new Fiesta model by placing it in the hands of 100 social “agents” and having them promote it through Twitter, blogs, video, and events. They generated 4.3 million YouTube views, 500,000 + Flickr views, 3 million + Twitter impressions and 50,000 potential customers – and 97% of them don’t own a Ford. They did this all without spending a dollar on traditional media.
Not only has Ford faired the recession better than the other American automakers, but they are also winning the buzz war on social media sites as well.

Nabisco Triscuit Crackers

This year Triscuit Crackers is teaming up with a nonprofit organization called Urban Farming to create 50 community-based home farms throughout the country. Nabisco – a subsidiary of Kraft Foods – has rarely ventured into social media – and never in an altruistic way like this.

The “home farming” campaign has a website that includes tools to advise visitors which vegetables and herbs are best to plant based on where they live. The campaign is being supported by PR, print ads, banner ads on gardening, women’s general interest sites, labeling on the boxes that sends customers to the website, blogs, Twitter and community forums. Another tool they developed enables users to find nearby community farms, and add their own home farms to a map. Forums and sharing tools are prominently displayed.
They also include free basil and dill herb seed cards on four million boxes of Triscuit original and reduced-fat varieties.

Pepsi

Pepsi launched their Pepsi Refresh Project in January and it has been a refreshing change from traditional soft drink advertising. Users submitted thousands of ideas to Pepsi on ways to “refresh” their communities and thereby making them a better place. There were 32 Pepsi Refresh Grant recipients selected in the month of January and up to $1.3 million will be awarded. There are 2 grants at the $250,000 level, 10 grants at the $50,000 level, 10 grants at the $25,000 level and 10 grants at the $5,000 level every month for 10 months. The winners for January will be announced this week.

The Pepsi Refresh Project also held a celebrity challenge on their Facebook fan page. In this contest Demi Moore beat Kevin Bacon and Pepsi awarded $250,000 to support Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) and $100,000 to SixDegrees.org, an organization that distributes thousands of $20 SixDegree.org Good Cards to recipients so they can support a charity of their choice.

Vesta Digital

Writer: Dan Chambers

http://www.vestadigital.com


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Affiliate Classroom 2.0

Product Name: Affiliate Classroom 2.0
Launch Date: August 11th 2009 @ 12 PM EST
Product Author(s): Anik Singal
Product Price: Coming Soon..
Product Guarantee: 30 days

Anik Singal will be releasing his latest product Affiliate Classroom 2.0 on Tuesday, August 11th 2009 at 12 PM EST.

On this page, you will find:

* My Affiliate Classroom 2 Review
* My Affiliate Classroom 2 Conclusion: Is It Worth Your Time & Money?
* Information about My Affiliate Classroom 2 Bonus

* Affiliate Classroom 2.0 Review

Affiliate Classroom 2 is the next generation of online training from Lurn, Inc. The original Affiliate Classroom debuted several years ago and approximately 70% of the graduates of that program say they had all the marketing resources they needed to make money online.

Affiliate Classroom 2 is an improvement and calls itself an online university for affiliate marketers. Created by Anik Singal over a two year period, the Affiliate Classroom 2.0 training course provides step by step blueprints on how to make money online using the tools, techniques and templates that Anik uses to earn millions as an affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Classroom 2 is a comprehensive e-learning suite that includes not only coursework – but the tools, community, support and added edge that entrepreneurs need to make it from “I want to start my own online business” to “I own my own, profitable online business.”

What Does Affiliate Classroom 2 Look Like?

Here’s what Affiliate Classroom 2 members area will look like to students:

Affiliate Classroom 2This is the main page that students will see when logged in to Afffiliate Classroom 2 members area. We’ll touch on each of the main tabs as I cover other areas of the application.

What Makes Affiliate Classroom 2.0 Different from Everything Else Out There?

1. The Affiliate Resume / Affiliate Certification

Since Affiliate Classroom started certifying Affiliate Managers in 2007, Affiliate Managers, Networks and everyone else in the industry has been asking us: Can you certify Affiliates?

Well now we can say: Yes!

Affiliate Classroom students receive a “Class” ranking. This tells them, us, YOU and everyone else they are in touch with what level affiliate they are using a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the cream of the crop Super Affiliates.)

Affiliate Classroom use a combination of testing and real-world action to certify affiliates and give them a class ranking. Here’s what the “formula” looks like:

Affiliate Classroom FormulaAs students complete coursework and meet milestones, they move their way up the rankings. A Status Bar at the top of every page within Affiliate Classroom 2 reminds the students of their Class ranking and encourages them to increase it.

2. An Insane Number of Training Courses

Affiliate Classroom 2.0 is loaded with great training materials that show students exactly how to setup their website, generate traffic and drive buying customers to merchants/advertisers in return for top commissions.

Affiliate Classroom 2 is promising over 250 training courses available by the end of the first year. However, they are no slackers even now because there are 62 Courses being offered at launch covering the following topics

1. Affiliate Marketing – this section includes everything from the basics to advanced business models such as:

* Is Affiliate Marketing Right for You? If it isn’t, don’t you want to know immediately before you waste your time and money on something you don’t really want to do?

* What Affiliate Marketing Is and How It Works

* Affiliate Business Models

* Paid Search (PPC) Affiliate Business Model

* Natural Search (SEO) Affiliate Business Model

* Email (Opt-In) Affiliate Business Model

* Content Affiliate Business Model

* Comparison/Direct Sales Affiliate Business Model

* Community/Membership Affiliate Business Model

2. Legal and Ethical Considerations – this section provides you with “must know” information so you do not get into legal or ethical trouble as a result of just plain ignorance of the law covering:

* Legal & Ethical Issues in the Affiliate Industry

* Email Ethics and Spam Legislation

* Business Entities & Tax Considerations

3. Monetization – obviously the goal of setting up an affiliate site is to generate income. This section shows you exactly how to do that by discussing:

* Earning Commissions, CPA, and Other revenue sources

* Finding Products

* Finding Products that Fit Your Niche

* Niche Research & Selection

* Niche Research Tools: Free & Paid

* Merchants & Networks

* Finding & Evaluating Merchants

* Working with CPA Networks

* Working with ClickBank & Similar Networks

* Monetization: Choosing Affiliate Offers

* Monetization: Negotiating Commissions

4. Affiliate Websites – this section provides step by step training on how to setup your affiliate website the right way.

* Getting Started: Infrastructure, Tools, and Budgeting

* Building a Basic Website in HTML

* Choosing a Domain Name

* FTP, CPanel, and File Management

* Website Content & Copywriting Basics

* Copywriting – Articles & Blog Posts

5. Traffic Generation – without traffic to your affiliate website, it is impossible to make any money so traffic generation is one of the most important topics in the training. The following topics are covered:

* Traffic Basics: Types of Traffic

* Traffic Basics: Keywords & How They Affect Traffic

* Traffic Basics Metrics & Stats

* Free Traffic: Basic Models and Overview of Methods

* Free Traffic: Natural Search

* Free Traffic: Blogs and RSS

* Free Traffic: Opt-in and Email

* Paid Traffic: Paid Search (PPC)

* Paid Traffic: Ezine Advertising

* Paid Search: Principles and Best Practices

* Paid Search: Keywords, Bidding, and URLs

* Paid Search: Campaigns and Quality Score Issues

* Paid Search: Landing Pages and Websites

* Paid Search: Testing and Optimizing

* Paid Search: Intro to AdWords

* Paid Search: AdWords Campaign Setup

6. SEO Basics – search engine optimization is one way of getting free traffic from the search engines. But, to do so, you need to know the rules and how to use them effectively.

* SEO: Overview of Best Practices

* SEO: Keyword Research – Basic Methods

* SEO: On Page Factors

* SEO: Off Page Factors

* SEO: Link Building

7. General Marketing – No matter how great your website is, you still need to market the products you are promoting.

* Blog Business Models

* Content Marketing: Article Marketing

* Blog Marketing: Overview of Best Practices

* Blog Directories

* Web 2.0 Marketing: Overview of Best Practices

* Social Bookmarking: Why and How

* Viral Marketing: Video

* Email: Autoresponders

* Email: Incentivized Lists and “Squeeze” Pages

These first 62 courses appear to be a very good basic curriculum that will get you up and running and hopefully making some money online in a fairly short period of time.

3. More Supportive Content Than You Can Shake a Stick at

Not only is Affiliate Classroom 2 Training loaded with courses, we’ve also added a ton of great supportive materials.

Just take a look at the menu on the right – taken directly from the Training tab from Affiliate Classroom 2.0

Students can find everything from articles and case studies on a wide variety of affiliate marketing tools and techniques – to printable tip sheets and audio and video presentations that help reinforce the lessons in each of the courses.

Students can search the entire database of content by keyword – and – they can view lists of related content with each piece with the convenient list of “See Also” materials.

4. Fully Integrated Tools

Affiliate Classroom 2 ToolsAs if coursework, training and a ton of supportive content weren’t enough – we’re also filling Affiliate Classroom 2 with a great suite of tools.

Students can put their training to work using our keyword tools, URL tracking tools, a traffic-tracking tool that is easy to implement and understand, and a Datalocker where they can keep track of passwords, links and other files.

PLUS – Paid students have access to a fullyfunctional, hosting-included website builder. So there are no excuses – students can become affiliates right away!

5. A Community Built for Serious Networking

Affiliate Classroom 2 CommunityThe Affiliate Classroom 2 Community is more than just a forum… of course we have a forum…

But, we also have a way for students to build their professional, affiliate profiles. Along with their Class rankings, we track their:

* Websites
* Niches per site
* Promotional methods per site

We’re working to help them build their resume – to use when applying for program and negotiating higher commission rates – AND when finding other affiliates to partner with.

Students can find one another and create profitable “friendships” with other affiliates in the same niche or using similar promotional methods.
They can communicate with each other in the forum – and one-on-one through the internal messaging system.

* Affiliate Classroom 2.0 Conclusion: Is It Worth It?

Affiliate Classroom 2 is an excellent training course for those who want to start a profitable online business or bring their existing business to the next level. If you are pressed for time or are more comfortable using self-paced individualized training, then this is the program for you. Affiliate Classroom 2 is designed to be flexible enough to fit and schedule and learning pace. I highly recommend Affiliate Classroom 2.0 course.

* Affiliate Classroom 2.0 Bonus

I have prepare the biggest Affiliate Classroom 2.0 Bonus packages for you. My Affiliate Classroom Bonus package is absolutely RELEVANT to what you’ll learn from Anik Singal and they COMPLIMENT all the sneaky tactics of Affiliate Classroom 2.0

In other words you won’t be getting a bunch of outdated PLR junk to clutter up your hard drive and you won’t be getting a bunch of crap that distracts you with information overload. My Affiliate Classroom 2 Bonus will help you to make MORE money in the long run!

To see more detail information about My Affiliate Classroom 2.0 Bonuses package, please visit the link below:

http://affiliateclassroom2blog.blogspot.com/2009/08/affiliate-classroom-2-bonus.html

Inside A Social Media Newsroom

Social media strategies continue to prove their relevance in today’s Internet age, and as a result, the traditional online newsroom – a set of static Web pages that support one-way delivery of information that is protected by passwords and made available only to the likes of “official” journalists and industry analysts – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Taking the place of these old-school information portals is the new social media newsroom, a more dynamic, open, and flexible Web-based newsroom that encourages broad, bi-directional communication and information sharing among a more diverse audience.

With the new social media newsroom, a company’s official content is easily accessible to not just members of the media, but to all those the company wishes to communicate and share information with, including prospects, customers, business partners, and investors.

These potential targets can subscribe to, review, and utilize timely and relevant news and other announcements from the organization’s public relations department, as well as related image, audio, video, and other multimedia files.

But what makes the approach of the new social media newsroom so innovative and unique?

The answer lies in is its ability to facilitate collaboration and direct conversation with the end information consumer.

While traditional online newsrooms allow for only one-way information flow, social media newsroom readers are encouraged to participate in open discussions and freely share their thoughts, feedback, and opinions about individual news releases and other available content.

These comments are posted directly to the newsroom, for all visitors to see and reply to. Additionally, any content within a social media newsroom can be easily tagged, emailed, or added to any social media book marking site such as Technorati, digg, or del.icio.us.

”Corporations are eager to participate in the Social Media era but are still evolving from a broadcast-oriented, one-to-many paradigm, towards a model in which they adapt to a new reality – their voice is just one-of-many,” states Todd.S. Defren, principal at Shift Communications, a fast-growing, high-tech public relations agency with offices in Boston and San Francisco.

Delivery of online content that is more targeted is yet another major benefit of the new social media newsroom. Instead of browsing through pages and pages of outdated or useless content to get to what they want – as is often the case with traditional online newsrooms – visitors of a social media newsroom can easily access, receive, or share only the information elements that are most important and relevant to their specific interests and needs.

The new social media newsroom also allows marketers to more effectively interact with those who directly influence consumer perceptions and preferences. For example, quotes and comments from various company spokespeople that are published in blogs and other social media vehicles can be publicly tracked and monitored, then posted to the social media newsroom. This allows journalists and other site visitors to understand the company’s position on important and frequently-discussed industry issues, and to see what type of impact the company has on content across the Web.

Those companies that develop their own social media newsroom should also consider creating a secure, password-protected micro-blog that can be easily added to an RSS reader. This would enable media representatives to preview on-going story ideas created by the company’s public relations department.

SHIFT Communications is a PR agency specializing in high-tech public relations, consumer public relations and social media. SHIFT has San Francisco and Boston public relations offices.

Social Media Ethics: not That Hard, Really

Most of us in the PR industry are familiar with stories of well known companies using online media to deceive consumers and investors. Last year, Wal-Mart and Edelman received lots of attention for the “Wal-Marting Across America” flog (fake blog) which featured a couple traveling around the country in an RV, visiting Wal-Mart parking lots and rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi. Unfortunately, the couple were a professional journalist and photojournalist hired by Wal-Mart and Edelman.

And later in the year, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, attracted the attention of the SEC and the FTC when it was discovered that he was anonymously posting negative comments in Yahoo Finance forums in an alleged attempt to drive down the valuation of a company Whole Foods was in negotiations to acquire.

Unfortunately, many companies have been slow to learn from these examples, and we’ve already heard several stories of corporate social media deception in 2008.

So why do large, ostensibly responsible corporations persist in trying to “game the system?”

The film The Corporation, analyzes the publicly held company as if it were a psychiatric patient, and renders the diagnosis:


“the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a ‘psychopath.’”

In other words, our capitalist system encourages deception because the pressures to achieve revenue and growth are institutionalized, while moral behavior is not. So don’t hate the player, hate the game. OK, hate some of the players.

Some in our profession claim to be confused about the rules for using blogs and other social media in marketing and public relations. “This is unfamiliar territory. We’re on the frontier of communications. The rules are being written as we speak.” Nice Try. New media does not require new morality. Most of us know right from wrong, and just because we’re using a blog or an online forum doesn’t release us from our responsibility for ethical behavior.

Nearly everyone can agree that stealing is wrong. (I say nearly, because I will allow that there are those who don’t recognize the right to own property). The Koran, the Bible and the Torah, for example, all have specific injunctions against stealing that are thousands of years old.

Is it reasonable then to conclude that it’s OK to take someone else’s iPhone, as these ancient laws could not possibly have foreseen the introduction of this product?

Of course that’s ludicrous. And it is no less ludicrous to say that social media is so new and mysterious that of course there will be missteps. When you deceive consumers, when you lie to inflate the worth of your company or its products, that’s wrong.

And it’s not like this area is unregulated either. OK, so there are some people who will do immoral things as long as they aren’t illegal. (Think stock option backdating here.) But the Federal Trade Commission regulates unfair business and competitive practices. And the European Union’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive bars companies from “falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer.”

Why wouldn’t these rules apply to social media? Were John Mackey and the Wal-Mart bloggers falsely claiming that they were not acting for purposes of their trade? Yes.

The risks of pursuing these deceptive strategies are great. In Mackey’s case, he invoked the ire of the SEC, not a good thing to do as the CEO of a publicly held company. In the Wal-Mart case, the retailer’s reputation, not very good to begin with, suffered an additional hit. And while so far most penalties have been non-financial, the shroud of mystery surrounding social media is starting to lift, so you can expect 2008 to be the year legislators start going after companies who try to play the “wild wild west” card.

So how do you avoid the ethical pitfalls presented by emerging communications channels? Behave ethically. Hire ethical people. Make ethical decisions. And the next time you’re in a meeting and someone proposes some bonehead marketing or public relations initiative that is deceptive, protect the interests of your client and your company and take an ethical stand.


Joel Postman is the principal of Socialized, a consultancy that helps companies make effective use of social media in corporate communications, marketing, and public relations. His background includes a decade of Fortune 500 corporate communications leadership, four years as the speechwriter to the CEO of Sun Microsystems, and experience in print and broadcast news. He is currently working on a book, titled SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate, to be published in November.


You may also find articles by Joel at the TalentZoo.com website under Very Public Relations.

Fighting Recession With Social Media – Part 2

Are more companies turning to social media in this economy? They should if they want to improve their marketing efficiencies, enhance their customer service experience, or develop their research techniques. Social media allows companies to engage with the customers instead of shouting about their own wonderfulness.

Ramp up your marketing

Companies ranging small and large are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg — and their tens of millions of users — to reach consumers. Instead of cringing at the idea of relinquishing control to social media outlets, smart executives realize that there is more benefit in joining the conversation than fighting it. Instead of controlling information about your brand, your social media strategy should be about engagement.

Advertising as we know it is expensive; social media is cheap. For this reason, the recession is bad news for traditional marketers, while the same environment is full of opportunities for social media marketers. Setting up a company blog or a Facebook page is significantly less expensive than traditional marketing. Even creating your own community web site can be significantly cheaper than traditional advertising campaigns.

Social media marketing is not without risk. While every company wants to generate buzz, online backlash can be vicious. Recently a Motrin commercial aimed at moms created quite a stir. You can view the ad on YouTube as did another 210,000 people. The ad makes the apparently condescending claim that carrying babies in a sling is a painful experience for moms. According to moms, the ad was wrong and they made it loud and clear through social media applications such as Twitter. Some moms found the Motrin ad outright offensive, and they were quite vocal about it. You can catch them on YouTube. Of course, the disaster doesn’t end there. It continues on a myriad of blogs, and carries on in a Facebook page dedicated to boycotting Motrin. The backlash ad on YouTube can be viewed.

What to do when your target rejects your ad? Turn to social media. Instead of rejecting the market reaction Johnson & Johnson could have used social media applications to learn about their market prior to creating and publishing the controversial ad. There could have been a Facebook page created to learn about young moms and pain. There could have been a blog inviting moms to provide video testimonials on YouTube. The lesson learned in this case is to use social media to learn about your market, or be prepared to be taught very quickly and painfully.

Reduce your expenses

Save time and money on travel and use LinkedIn to network. Instead of driving to the other end of town fighting your way through traffic use the largest business social network to build new connections and to nurture existing ones. Only attend your most valuable networking events, and transfer as much of your networking as you can to the web. LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Facebook are some of the best social networking applications.

Reduce your legal fees through a fairly new social media site called Docstoc. It is a place to find and share professional documents such as contracts, confidentiality agreements, intellectual property documents and more. Docstoc is a social community resource that enables anyone to find and share professional documents. The site provides an opportunity for individuals and organizations to share their professional documents. Documents available on Docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.

Decrease your recruiting costs as you hire your employees though Craigslist, which has quietly become one of the most visited websites in cyberspace. It offers a much cheaper way to recruit online, and your company can expect excellent response rates for your job posts.

Putting it all together

Are more companies turning to social media in this economy? They should if they want to improve their marketing efficiencies, enhance their customer service experience, or develop their research techniques. Social media allows companies to engage with the customers instead of shouting about their own wonderfulness. It offers ways to business to partner with the community in an effort to develop a better product. In the end everybody wins because both the company and the consumer end up with a better product.

Virtually all companies can benefit from using social media not just to create awareness, but also to become part of the conversation. Managing your corporate reputation is impossible without social media, and ignoring it can be outright devastating. Instead if fighting against it, embrace it as it rockets your business forward as it deepens your relationship with the only reason you are in business for, your customer.

Social Media And The Book Publishing Industry ? Doom Or Salvation?

Social Media has a stronger impact to books than the movable type had, launched six centuries ago. Social Media makes information producible, accessible and spreads it easily, quickly and without barriers of entry. Is Social Media the paradigm shift which will the publishing industry alive? In any case changes will come. Big changes.

The Publishing industry provides the creative with resources not available to them, namely: production of books, the distribution, the pricing, marketing and sales.

Book Production

Looking at the emerging landscape of online publishing all of the mentioned contribution is available to authors online and seems much more economic by nature than the capital-intense publishing industry – it seems digital content makes production a commodity. Making use of online collaboration and web 2.0 technology lots of crowd-sourced book sites like FastPencil allow authors to skip the traditional publishing route entirely (and control their own promotion) to self-publish their eBooks. FastPencil claims this allows authors to have access to the broadest distribution possible as well as the promise that the digital files will be able to adapt to any eReader that is introduced in the future. Another company called Blio is intending to offer publishers/authors the opportunity to create digital files at no cost that can preserve the format of previously tough-to-digitize tomes such as cookbooks. On top of that as a author you can:

Embedded multimedia – inserts web pages, videos, and other interactive content into selected areas of text toenhance meaning.
3D book view which includes realistic page turning
Reading out loud: TTS (text-to-speech) or a synchronized audio track
Translate to or from English in an imbedded translation window

This is all pretty impressive stuff and can create a user experience much more enhanced and engaging than paper books. Presumably this in the next years to come this will put some traditional offline publisher under pressure.

As part of the digital publishing revolution the way a story of a book is told even is about to change; transmedia is the buzzword here. Readers and writers engage and connect with each other to create the stories which are delivered then in systematically dispersed junks across multiple delivery channels. You can choose between chunks of text, watch a video story update or even, as in Girl Number 9, catch up on Twitter, where you can interact with characters and receive clues and updates. This means basically books are changing from being content sandwiched between two covers and organized by chapter to a many-to-many interactive storytelling. I like that.

Book Distribution

A trend noticeable is distributors or retailers are becoming book producers the same time. AmazonEncore for instance is not just a huge book store and recommendation engine to unearth exceptional books but they also partner with authors through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store,Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers. So if you can produce you eBook for free and get marketing and distribution support by your retailer, who needs publishers?

Having mentioned the Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, obviously the upcoming launch of the new iPad (any future mobile device really will turn into an eReader) and the trend to eBook distribution/consumption in general (in Dec 09 the number of digital books sold on Amazon surpassed the paper editions) shines a brand new light on the traditional publishing industry. New technological capabilities enable companies like Wired Magazine (see the video of the iPad version of the magazine below) to raise the bar of publishing (multimedia) content to a new unmatched form. This will certainly provide the users with a new level of experience of information consumption and will make the switch from print to digital media consumption easier, more tantalizing and much more readers will use it. Especially if you compare this approach to the content you get by using some clunky black and white eReader.

Book Sales and Marketing

No doubt publishers are facing are tough time with pressure coming from authors, distributer/retailers as well as readers. To me it seems the current value chain for publishers is breaking. The landscape of content/books will get a lot more crowded and there’ll be a lot more competition for eyeballs. Authors can self-publish books and utilise social media  and word of mouth marketing to sell their books. Distributors are beginning to dictate pricing and thread the availability of books on their platforms as seen in the case of Amazon vs. Apple vs. Macmillan (seeApple vs. Amazon: The Great E-book War Has Already Begun). Also they have a huge information head start when it comes to customer needs or buying behaviour (they collect and utilise all the buying behaviour data online). Not to mention the ever demanding hunger of readers for  new authors, different formats and sophisticated multimedia content. This is true especially for next generation of book buyers won’t understand why they can’t access any information they want in a digital format.

Social Media and Book Publishers

Book publishers are at an enormous advantage to corporate or consumer brands. They have a vast amount of content, they have an existing, passionate community who want and love their products. On top of that, book fans are author/brand loyal groups of people. Books raise discussions and bring people together…and online can help augment the book experience by bringing the readers into the inner workings of the publishers and authors on a daily basis.

So what to do here are some simple social media ideas to think about if you’re a book publisher:

Become a social brand

Set up social monitoring systems around the places your customers (readers, authors) hang out. Listen what they talk about, find topics which would make a good book and find emerging authors.

Using social media channels effectively

Engage with communities and leverage the influencers. Books are an emotional topic and readers trust the recommendation of peers much more than ay advertising. When it comes to book there are countless vibrant online communities, forums and bloggers consisting of deeply engaged readers and authors. So for new books for example find the bloggers opinion leaders and reach out to them. Do the same thing on Twitter and LinkedIn to create buzz and word of mouth campaigns. Make use of facebook fanpages for each author and create facebook groups around topics and feed them with your content arsenal. Leverage live streaming – now within facebook – and provide weekly live readings of new books/authors. Have your authors interviewed on a regular basis and publish the content on internet radios or video portals.

Create platforms  and a social media hub

The re-thinking of becoming a social brand as well as providing the authors with resources requires undoubtedly social media platforms. The publishers website needs to become a social hub where the authors will be promoted and can execute their own social media marketing. Obviously the authors can use their expertise in their field to produce excellent content for their publisher site inherent blogs for any kind of inbound marketing and/or SEO strategy. Create forums covering topics or authors – readers are very much interested in authors, they want to interact with them and authors have much more to say then what is published in their books. Enable the offline interaction – let your fans know where your authors are, where to speak to meet them in flesh!

Involve the reader into book development process

Monitor the social web to find hot topics for books. Enable authors to produce transmedia content or ask your community what to publish next to help developing ideas.

Create new formats and test them

Utilise technology to empower production of books in different formats and for different channels. Paper books, eBooks, mobile apps, multimedia, etc. and test what works best for which topic or audience. Not all will work the same way but publishers must have the flexibility to quickly produce and disseminate content/books to emerging upcoming distribution channels.

Define the niche

You’ll need for the different content/book topics of your authors different social media strategies. Since you’ll have completely different audiences with corresponding different user/reader behaviour you’ll need to adjust the strategy accordingly.

And then?

When you got your head around that, you can begin engaging in the communities in earnest. Invite your authors into the discussions. Invite other passionate folks at the company. Stay friendly, and stay passionate and you can be sure your audience and community will grow over time.

For more information about social media and the book publishing industry please visit my site.

I am a social media strategy/technology consultant and trainer who helps companies to engage with their online customers through a compelling social media or personalisation strategy.

Trivani quick review and top producer marketing secrets

Trivani International, their is no doubt that Trivani is going to be the next big thing in mlm, direct sales or network marketing. Everybody is going green, people are buying chemical free products and willing to spend more money to do so. When you can attach a great product to a great income opportunity anything is possible; however, they have went a step further by launching a humanitarian aid mission and the opportunity to sponsor a child as an independent distributor. This is a powerful concept which will create a massive opportunity long term to create passive residual income, and help others around the world at the same time.

If you want to build a Trivani business, or any other mlm business you need to learn the secrets of the top producers. MLM and network marketing has changed forever and the days of recruiting people at shopping malls is over. Now I am not saying you can’t hand out business cards at shopping malls anymore, it’s all about the numbers, but the online marketers will blow you away and you wont stand a chance to compete, compliments of the Internet and Google.

Marketing online can be very difficult and expensive if you don’t know what you are doing, not to mention every lead you generate whether online or offline has a 95% percent failure rate. What that means is 95 out of 100 people will say no to the Trivani business opportunity, if that is what you are marketing, I know it sucks but that is just the bitter truth, It is a numbers game when you are prospecting un-qualified people into your business.

Their are two big problems most network marketers face when trying to build their business,

Lack of Leads Lack of money

Most people run out of leads and money before they even recover their initial investment, and when that happens they also run out of steam and hope. They want their Trivani International business to succeed, they dream about the freedom and security of being their own boss but without proper guidance their dreams are dashed and they fail, just to look for the next best thing they hope their friends and family will want to be a part of. The bad news is, it has nothing to do with the Company or the product it’s all about Attraction Marketing.Top producer secrets, to succeed in any mlm business you must change how you market, you need to get out of the 90’s way of marketing, forget everything you know about marketing your Trivani business and follow these steps if you want to be a top producer.

Stop Marketing a company replicated website Brand yourself, Not your company Learn to build an online list Learn to Monetize that list so you can profit from the No’s Become magnetic, Attract People to you Educate yourself with free trainings and live training webinars Learn the principles of Attraction Marketing Learn how to promote yourself properly on social networking sites Learn the rules of pay per click marketing on Google and yahoo so you are not flagged or charged more per click for your campaign Surround yourself with leaders who truly want to help you succeed

These are just a few techniques that the top producers use, and you can begin marketing online with any budget even free, as soon as you get the proper guidance, believe me I struggled for over 6 years doing everything my upline told me to do including buying leads and I could never make more than a couple hundred bucks a month consistently until someone finally showed me how, So in closing make sure to sign up for free training and get involved with weekly live webinars, question and answer sessions and you will be on your way to building a successful business with Trivani.

Mike Fuller is an online business & Marketing Coach teaching the fundamentals of attraction Marketing and self branding. Mike is the founder of http://make-money-online-official-blog.blogspot.com/and http://www.AdvancedMLMSolutions.com Where he offers free training and live weekly webinars to struggling network marketers.

Social Media Strategy, Keeping Your Brand Alive

Your business can grow in leaps and bounds through the help of the social media strategies that your company will implement. Through the views posted by your network, you can informally brainstorm for new ideas, new products and new brands. Your consumers will be able to come up with new ideas wherein you could use for your brand.

Social media strategy does not totally veer away from what has been the usual practice when it comes to traditional media strategy. Traditionally, corporations, businesses and organizations need to hire an entire department to handle marketing concerns. This department will need a considerably substantial financial support and of course, a much longer time frame to come up with their marketing strategies. Of course you will still spend money when it comes to paying the people who will do all your social media campaign but it will not be as much as what you would spend for its counterpart in the traditional media.

With the tightening, cut-throat competition between businesses, companies and organizations are finding better and creative ways to tap its potential market making it wider and more accessible. Selling is the process by which one person persuades or convinces another person or group of people, to think or act in accordance to his wishes.  But beyond selling, there is a greater need to keep the market hooked on your advocacies, products and services.

Even upon conceptualizing the product, you can make use of social media to conduct a feasibility study or any survey that will help you custom-fit your product to suit the choosy and critical taste of the public. Just create a survey and send it via email or post it at all social networking sites for people to answer and give back to you.  It is imperative to note that the social media’s greatest advantage is that it is public. Meaning, everybody embraces it as if their own. You will also readily obtain the result of the survey from a wider coverage, at faster speed, and possibly at lowest cost.

Keeping track of your brand’s performance on the market can also be done through the social media strategies that your company has planned to do. Another social media benefit is that it is interactive.  Once you start a conversation, others may join and talk back.  You can really get the pulse of your customers first hand because you can get to interact with them. And because social media sites value the importance of privacy, users feel free to talk especially in the network that they trust, giving honest feedback, opinions and suggestions.

Your business can grow in leaps and bounds through the help of the social media strategies that your company will implement.  Through the views posted by your network, you can informally brainstorm for new ideas, new products and new brands. Your consumers will be able to come up with new ideas wherein you could use for your brand. In doing such, they will embrace the brand as their own because they will feel that their voices and opinions matter to the brand owner.  This will provide you the arms to battle another market with either a better brand or a totally new product.

Involvement breeds loyalty.  If you keep your consumers involved in your business employing the social media strategy, you will keep them, not only loyal to your brand, but also to your name – all of these you can do through the help of a social media strategy.

Vizeum, part of Aegis Media launched in Australia through a major partnership venture with FRANk and we have happily rebranded as FRANkVizeum in our Melbourne office. In Sydney the brand remains as Vizeum.

Similar to FRANk, Vizeum was set up as a challenger brand, to help clients interrogate the way their brands are perceived in the marketplace. Its thrust, first and foremost, is to understand what stimulates people and drives motivation to consider and engage with the brands they buy.

The Electric Light Of Twitter-Part 1

Start a tweet circle. What’s a tweet circle you ask? This is when you take 3 to 5 followers, and get to know them well. Start RT’ing [RT is for retweet in Twitter language] them on a regular basis.

If you are into Twitter as the new web 2.0 thing, or for making any kind of money online, or for other types of internet marketing, than here is something that worked for me…

Start a tweet circle. What’s a tweet circle you ask? This is when you take 3 to 5 followers, and get to know them well. Start RT’ing [RT is for retweet in Twitter language] them on a regular basis. Compliment them on their content regularly and then ask them to RT your content. This intern will make your tweets viral as each person has their own different list of followers. Thus, your tweet is broadcasted to a larger audience. Know that the shelf life of your tweet isn’t very long, so this can become a very powerful tool to make money online.

If your a grass green newbie, you shouldn’t advertise your front end opportunity all the time like you see some of these people out there. You should rarely tweet about your op and instead lead them to your blog or some other page where you will get that chance. But, when you do tweet about your op, run 5-6 tweets of content, and then in a subtle manor, tweet your op LAST. Why last? Because when someone checks your profile, that is the tweet that will be posted largely at the top of your profile page. Believe me, it will stick out and is the first thing seen.

Twitter is on to network marketing. Having been slapped myself, I can tell you that they are cracking down on Internet marketing and making money online off of their site. Just because you see someone else do it doesn’t make it right. Don’t worry, they will get slapped too. So be cool, be social, have fun with your tweets. Instead of tweeting, “Make A Trillion Dollars Online.”, Say something like, “Don’t Miss Your Child’s First Steps While Your At Work, Learn How…” in a subtle manor. That should keep you under the radar. And besides it’s more palatable.

For further information and to become a member of Thomas’ elite group of marketers, please email at agentoffortune1@gmail.com, or call directly at 440-458-8631 in the United States.

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