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Use Social Media Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business

Lon Safko, author of The Social Media Bible…and Doug Bruhnke, CEO of Growth Nation.. teamed up today to present a special seminar on: Social Media Marketing and Growth, appropriately presented in the beautiful setting of Skysong, in Scottsdale.

Advanced Marketing Strategy to Help Your Company Grow

It was a well-attended, professionally produced seminar conducted by the man who wrote the book on Social Media, The Social Media Bible by Lon Safko.

Lon's style is to bring you the best strategies of social media and growth-oriented marketing by analyzing your existing marketing and integrating trusted networks, blogging, and Twitter into a new "killer - strategy"!

Social Media – The Big Picture

So you think you know Social Media? Lon Safko challenges us with questions such as these, see how many can you answer.

1. Can you explain what "The Fundamental Shift in Power"© means? Hint: traditional media; newspapers, magazines will soon be obsolete.
2. Can you explain why social media marketing is completely different from conventional marketing wisdom? Hint: It involves being honest as to who you are as a company or brand.
3. Can you name at least three tools designed to assist you with your cyber-surveillance
reputation management? Hint: Google Alerts is one.
4. Can you name the most valuable social network, from a marketing "Watering-Hole"
perspective?  Hint: if it was a country it would be the world's third largest!
5. Can you explain why email Segmenting, Day-Parting, and the "1.54 Second Rule"© are so
important?
6. Can you name any 3 of Fortune 1,000 companies actively branding themselves in a virtual
world? Hint: They have "stuff" in the middle and they taste really good with milk.
7. Can you explain 2 advantages to "In-Game" advertising?   8. Can you explain why all search engines give preferential indexing and greater SEO rankings to blogs through "Link-Love" and "Google Juice"?
9. Can you explain the best way to use social media psychology to defuse negative press? Hint: Transparency is key!
10. Can you name what drug in the brain is responsible for causing a video to go viral and
why?

I found  the answers to these questions and more during Lon's seminar at Growth Nations headquarters, located at Skysong,  (ASU SkySong is an innovation center designed to help companies grow by providing business services and programs offered or facilitated by Arizona State University. These services include access to new technologies, capital networks, business education and a skilled workforce.) It is an impressive facility.

Get yourself to a Lon Safko seminar as soon as you can, this man knows how to use examples even the most stubborn of "old-school"  marketers can easily understand. I guarantee you will gain a whole new perspective about Social Media Marketing, or what Lon has coined as "Digital" marketing and how you can develop a successful Social Media Strategy for your business.

THE FIVE STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Do you know how to develop a "killer social media strategy"? You will after a Lon Safko seminar!

Do you know how to integrate it with your conventional marketing? You will after hearing Lon demystify social media marketing strategies.

The Five Steps of Developing a Social Media Strategy According to Lon Safko

· Step One: Analyze Your Existing Media.
· Step Two: Understand "The Social Media Trinity".
· Step Three: "Develop An Integrated Strategy".
· Step Four: "Identify All Of Your Resources".
· Step Five: Implement Measurement Tools"

Lon Safko is my social media guru, I take every opportunity to attend his seminars and each time I see him he has a treasure trove of up to date info on how social media marketing is working for businesses of all types. He has a new book coming out soon which is a 2nd edition of the hugely successful first book, The Social Media Bible. My advice to anyone wanting to learn about how social media marketing can benefit your company, read Lon's book, watch his videos and attend his seminars.
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Posted Friday, August 13, 2010 in Blog, Social Media
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Social Media Analyst – the New Online PR Director

No question that the advertising departments will want a piece of this but keep your filthy hands off! Because unlike traditional ad media you don't have to pay for most of what you can do with social media, other than the pay of the person or company you hire to do it for you.

Posted Friday, July 30, 2010 in Blog, Social Media
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Why I Gave Up Naked Blogging for My Internet Marketing Blog

Logo for the Addicted to Social Media Blog
Image via Wikipedia

But not the kind you're thinking. I'm talking about the kind of blogging or posting to a blog that just sits there naked, waiting to be found, blocks of text without links or related images, under the search radars, no matter how interesting the subject might be. We're talking about taking the proactive approach and making it happen with Zemanta, dressing things up with links and other cool stuff instead of the same old boring crap from me about how great I am or how much I know about social media marketing for small business.

I really had no way of creating any other kind of interest in what I had to say and no way to provide anything else of value or related interest for my readers until Zemanta came along. Well, that's all changed, thanks to Zemanta.

So What is This Zemanta?

Zemanta is a tool that looks over your shoulder while you blog and gives you tips and advice, suggests related content and pictures and makes sure your posts get promoted as they deserve to be.  Zemanta makes blogging a snap, one button publishing at it's finest. They are always coming up with ways to help make blogging easier and for small business owners worried about not having the time to network online with social media, Zemanta will change the way you think about blogging. They are continually engineering better and more creative tools to help you get the most out of your blogging time.

Six Things That Cause Bloggers Headaches – and How Blogging with Zemanta Can Put the Fun Back in Blogging

Blogging made easy, you get to focus on your content while Zemanta spreads the word and helps you to:
Link, Embed, Remix like a Pro, Easily Design the Post, and they care about Copyright issues.
Zemanta will Link You All Over and everyone knows that the key to better page rank is quality inbound links, right?? Well, what better way to get inbound links than to link out to relevant posts and articles related to yours?
Zemanta will help you Engage your audience longer, Link your old posts to keep visitors on site longer and will get you visitors from other sites.
Here is how you can get all the benefits of blogging with Zemanta - FREE and how you set it up on your own blog.
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Posted Saturday, July 24, 2010 in Blog, SEO, Writing Tips
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Shelter Animals & Pet Bloggers Using Social Media Networking to Speed Up Adoption Process

A cat at the Seattle Animal Shelter

Image via Wikipedia

What can the Likes of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, a Blog and other Social Media Platforms do for Our Shelter Animals?

Plenty, says I, and I am out to prove it! Payson Web, my social media marketing biz here in Payson is currently working with the Gila County & Central AZ Humane Society, Payson Shelter staff, to educate their personnel about the benefits of using social media marketing strategies to broaden their reach beyond Payson to the farthest corners of Rim Country and Phoenix/Scottsdale Valley of the Sun. Our goal is to raise awareness for our shelter animals to all who travel here for hiking, camping, RVing and recreation, and not just the residents of Payson and Rim Country, whether part time or full time. We can do this with projects like the one we are proposing with Twitter, Mattel and Puppy Tweets, Social Media to the (Dog) Rescue.

The welfare of our animals transcends county lines, tourists and residents, full-timers and part-timers alike. We must all do our part to promote the well-being and ultimate happy ending (adoption) to the stories of our shelter's dogs and cats and to assist in the efforts of the Humane Society Board to raise money for the new shelter.

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Posted Saturday, July 17, 2010 in Blog, Payson News
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Payson Web and Got Memories of Payson Open For Business

vhs to dvd

Image by Shira Golding via Flickr

Got Memories of Payson Opens It's First Retail Location in Rim Country!

Right off the Beeline Hwy as you head into town at 1107 S. Beeline, Suite 1.

Things have been rather hectic over the past couple of months but overall  it's been a great experience opening up a retail shop and moving the offices of Payson Web from the house to the back room of Got Memories of Payson.

This store is a very small retail gift shop even by Payson standards and where, oddly enough, the featured service has nothing really to do with gift items,  it's transferring old home movies to DVD format. 8mm, 16mm film reels both silent and sound, VHS tapes, Camcorder cassettes, Hi 8 Video cassettes, Memory cards, we are even getting into transferring audio to CD format from old vinyl records, cassettes and even 8 track tapes!

The Accidental Gift Shop!

The gift part of the shop came as an accident and only because there was so much room left over after the memory transfer end of the business was set up. We brought in home made sock animals, wooden toys and now we even have souvenir items.

The jury is still out on the gift shop, as far as how successful that end of the business will (or won't) be, the film transfer business so far is ok, more VHS transfers than anything but I am happy to report that even in a horrendously down economy there is light at the end of the tunnel for social media marketing strategies here in Payson. I will reserve that for another post.

Here are some of the highlights for Got Memories of Payson since the grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony last March 29th, as presented by the Rim Country Regional Chamber of Commerce:

I was the featured guest on a call in talk show, the Ken Brooks show on Payson's #1 radio station,  KMOG, 1420 AM. and had the opportunity to explain our services and field questions from their listening audience. People were asking intelligent questions about film transfer and several people came in the store right after the show with tapes and film. Ken made the show fun to do and never noticed my quaking knees!

I was able to make an arrangement with the Payson Roundup Newspaper for some good ad placement for the Got Memories of Payson store  in exchange for assisting the publisher with social media strategies. Thanks to the Payson Roundup these ads have worked very well to bring in business, it's  especially gratifying to see people getting those precious memories out of the closet, bringing them to us and entrusting our process to bring back those old memories on DVD.

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Posted Saturday, June 5, 2010 in Blog, Payson News
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99 Designs a Real Timesaver

99designs – 99designs.com
99designs is the largest crowdsourcing marketplace for graphic design. We allow website owners & entrepreneurs to hold a "design contest" to get a logo, business card, banner ad, twitter background, blog or landing page designed at an affordable price. We offer a 100% money back guarantee, have 40,000 satisfied clients and been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Good Morning America, INC Magazine, NY Times and more.

Dick Schaefer's profile on MyLikes

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Posted Wednesday, May 12, 2010 in Blog, Blog Design
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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Comments!

Images Can Make or Break a Blog

And thanks to folks like Jack Nguyen, a blogger and expert web 2.0 guy, we now know where to find all the free images we need to make our blog posts more interesting, more engaging and just more fun to read. His widely read blog, Online Marketing Blog is one of the more popular blogs in the blog community and we both belong to Blog Engage.

I like what I see when I visit this site mainly because I can add my own photos to their library and get exposure for my photography.
MorgueFile - Another great free image site that wants YOUR photos.
Flickr Creative Commons - The licensing is a bit tricky but necessary.
StockVault -Free for personal and non-commercial use.
EveryStockPhoto – a search engine for free images.

And while it would take a seriously awesome image to get a thousand comments, going viral I think they call it,  one never knows where or when the next image may just do that.

Remember Riley- The Smiling Dog?

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Posted Sunday, May 2, 2010 in Blog, Writing Tips
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The Gift of SEO Knowledge

A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.

Image via Wikipedia

Tips and Tricks on How to Rank High in the Search Engines

An SEO Christmas in April? It sure looks that way, what with this wonderful post by my friend Brian who runs the number one blog community on the planet, Blog Engage! It's web 2.0 at it's best, sharing information about one of the hottest topics on the web today, Search Engine Optimization – it's what gets you read if done correctly.

Saint David's Day

Image via Wikipedia

This is a gift from Brian to us all, bringing together in one place the top SEO related tips and secrets from some of the best bloggers in the Blogosphere. And ultimately my gift to new bloggers who visit me here on PW. The more you know about SEO the more successful you will become as a blogger,  especially if your goal is to make money online.

Take it away Brian! Top SEO Articles of all Time

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Posted Sunday, May 2, 2010 in Blog, SEO
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Welcome Visitors to Planet Gearth

Image representing Blogger as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

It's a Google World

And as a blogger, I am grateful to Google for providing me with all the tools I need to be a successful one. My definition of success happens to be measured by how much money I can make online. People say write to your audience and the rest will come, blah! I say write for Google, wait for the Index Fairy to sprinkle some Google Dust on my blogs, give me good PR (and yes, I do care about PR) and my future as a blogger is secure!

Top Ten Things Google Does for an Aspiring Blogger

What does Google do for a blogger, let me count the ways!:
1. First and foremost you go and get yourself a free Google account and start off with Gmail. Google is not just the number one search engine, no!, the whole world is a better place because of them. They brought us Gmail, email with no more spam, no more Nigerian letters, no more phishermen in your favorite blogspot!

2. And with Gmail comes a cool Calendar, Google Documents, etc. Why, you could run a corporation on the free tools they give you! And for just a few bucks a year you can change the world with Google Apps!

3. Google was a green company before green became a color, well almost. I know they make a lot of green for themselves but they sure know about the true meaning of web 2.0, (information sharing) and there is a rumor that Matt Cutts has green eyes too.

4. It's empowering to create a blog with Google Blogger, your own personal website with free, unlimited hosting, beautiful templates and other cool stuff, not to mention it's the easiest blog application to use that there is. If you think it takes too much time to blog, think again!

5. You can dress up your blog's posts with Google Images and YouTube videos that are relevant to your blog's theme and topics. (BTW for you new guys, Google owns YouTube)
4. Connect your blog with your Twitter account automatically. Instead of copying and pasting code into your blog to see your most recent tweets, just click a button in Twitter's Goodies tab.
6. Use Google's Adwords, Keywords tool to determine what people are searching for so you can target your writing topics to those searches.

7. Use Google Adsense to monetize your blog. Adsense for Content, Adsense for Search, Adsense for Feeds, Adsense for Domains, WOW! Watch those Googlebucks ad up!

8. Take advantage of Google Analytics to measure your blog's performance. Tweak this, change that, next thing you know you have become the next rising star in the Blogosphere!

9. Create a Google profile for the rest of the world to see that you are a blogger of some repute!

99.9% of Google's Tools are free for the taking!

Who else can do that, WordPress? Nope, Tumblr, again no, Typepad, nyet, not that there is anything wrong with any of those blogger platforms, I LOVE WordPress for example but Google is my choice for what I call Turnkey Blogging. Google does it all for me, and I would be willing to say that if man blew it up and we had to start over again, Google would have all the resources to re-create our planet – the right way.

Oh, I almost forgot! Number 10 in our list of The 10 Top Things Google Can Do for a New Blogger?

Google creates a legacy for the common man. Think about it.

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Posted Saturday, May 1, 2010 in Blog, Google
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Mining the Thesaurus for Online Gold

How to Buy a Domain Name
Image by Chris Pirillo via Flickr

Thesaurus as a Writing Tool for Bloggers

There have been many occasions when I have consulted a Thesaurus:

When I am online and creating a post for one of my many blogs and I need a word or phrase that means the same as one I have previously used,  maybe just to keep me from repeating myself, or using new words to travel a different route to emphasize the same point. It's handy to have Thesaurus in your favorites or bookmarked so that when you are doing the actual writing you can consult it quickly.

So how do I use it to mine online gold, you ask?

I have a dog-eared copy of a paperback Thesaurus for domain name searches. You can come up with some killer names that mean the same as some very popular domain names that are not available for you to register. Reason I use a hard copy is because you can thumb through pages, instead of doing a search for one word at a time. Maybe they aren't what we call "natural hit" domains but they can make you some money with a good one if it describes your niche, especially a short one!

If you peruse a Thesaurus long enough you start to get ideas for blog posts too, many times I have taken it to bed with a highlighter!  If you are experiencing a lull in your writing you might want to thumb (oops there's "thumb" again, let's see what alternatives the Thesaurus can offer me that make sense for this post.)

Ah, there we are, had I been able to scroll down further when I took this screenshot and still shown the word "thumb" you would have been able to see another list of verb suggestions for thumb, meaning in this case, to thumb through a book. The word I chose was "explore" so then my sentence might look like this: If you experiencing a lull in your writing you might want to "explore" the Thesaurus for post ideas.

With ideas come inspiration, with inspiration comes writing, and with writing comes online gold in the form of traffic, backlinks and advertisers!

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Posted Saturday, May 1, 2010 in Blog, Writing Tips
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