In many ways Facebook, is a closed community…a place to network in your own way, with who you choose, where the masses can’t see what you’re up to.  A place where you can get to know people you have met better through the pictures they post & the thoughts they share

People present a different side to themselves when the doors are closed & they can control who is observing what they do.  In this way, you get to know people on a more personal level on Facebook than you would through an email & learn how they interact.

So, what are the benefits of being a member of Facebook & why should you be using it to build your network of clients & customers beyond just chatting with your friends?

- You can be yourself more & still be professional or put the other way around, you can be professional but also more personable & approachable which helps in building relationships with your clients.

- There are ways you can engage with specific groups on Facebook that you wouldn’t try on your website either due to the corporate image you want to portray on your website or the conflict between the different audiences that would access that.

- It’s easier & faster to get to know people you are trying to reach without being as intrusive as with random emailing or calling them on the phone out of the blue.

- It helps you establish common ground to facilitate a trusting relationship.

- You have a lot more leverage to introduce yourself to someone if you participated in several of the same discussions.

- You have a greater connection with someone on Facebook than on your website as contacts are reminded of your profile changes regularly, whereas a person has to make a concerted decision to visit your business site.

Facebook has a system that reminds users to care for & feed their relationships with people in a way your website doesn’t & enables you to “bump into” your contacts within this reminder system encouraging them to take more interest in what you have to offer more often.

As another marketer (sorry, lost my source’s details!!!) put it recently – “it’s intimate…Facebook feels like a bunch of small gatherings, even when there’s a conversation in a big group taking place among hundreds of people”.

“This makes people feel comfortable, when they’re comfortable they relax, when they relax, they’re more open. Meeting colleagues, potential clients and your favorite gurus is a completely different experience than when you meet them in a more public part of the Net – for better or for worse, you’ll often get the most accurate version of a person you can online”.

Beyond this & because of the perceived trust, Facebook friends are more likely to help spread your content, your campaigns & your promotions.

In fact, being active on Facebook can get you mentioned on fan pages, events pages & in groups that get trawled by search engines & can get you on that elusive first page of Google…that’s free advertising!

Facebook enables you to display your expertise instead of just talking about it.  The bonus is that if your peers comment favourably on your content on Facebook, potential clients have their attention drawn to this in real time & in a way that wouldn’t happen on a niche website.

From a marketing point of view, which other platform can give you potential access to over 400 million people to share your campaigns with – 50% of whom will log in once on any given day!  You don’t even have to actively market to them or spam your list – in fact you are normally frowned upon for doing so!

For more stats click here Facebook Statistics

It seems that traffic you get to your websites from Facebook are more likely to interact & participate in your surveys…probably because they came from an interactive source in the first place…

So…opened your eyes to how YOU should look at using Facebook for more than just whiling away the hours?

Watch this space as I am looking to run a series of Webinars starting in the next month looking at ways of using social media & other media to improve your marketing strategies for your on & off-line businesses – so sign up now to get automatic notification of these when I post it

www.refollow.com
To build your list, follow these simple steps once you have logged in:

-          Type in – people who are following certain users of interest (that are related to your business niche)

-          Select from their user list (sort by Tweet counts/friend counts)

-          <Select Page> – then <Block Follow>

Remember Twitter have a preliminary follow barrier at 2,000 users  & to break through this, your ratio of followers to following me has to be very close (ie. ratio of 100 followers : 110 following me)

It seems the debate rages on!  So here is my comparison…

After having done some pretty stringent testing on the Dim Dim format in comparison to the Adobe & GTW formats over the past few weeks, the feedback from my attendees is very positive.

We were able to set up 3 computers side by side to see what presenters & attendees were seeing respectively.

From my point of view, it is the case of getting used to a new format but it is very intuitive.

I’m signed up on the Pro Package & I can still email invitations out to potential attendees & reminder emails prior to the Webinar starting – you just have to play around with the preferences for that particular Webinar.

I also like that you can create simple widgets to import into your social media accounts

In terms of the private & public chat option, you can actually hide this by moving it out of the attendees screen & over to the right of your screen, which we didn’t realise initially.

Where GTW misses out is that you can’t upload your PowerPoint files into the system & so the video playback doesn’t transfer so well.

Where Adobe scores higher than Dim Dim in my view is that once you have uploaded the PowerPoint presentation, the presenter can see the main slide show view with the notes section for each slide by the side.  Dim Dim either doesn’t do that or I haven’t worked out how to do that yet.

However, Adobe’s PowerPoint slide viewing area is smaller than Dim Dim’s & one or two of my attendees complained that it was too small.

Where GTW & Adobe do really well is that you can have more than one presenter on all their packages – but in Dim Dim you have to be on the Webinar package to do that (which is still cheaper than the others anyway, so not really an issue).

Where Dim Dim does really well is their customer support.  GTW were accessible but didn’t carry through on their promises, whereas Adobe weren’t as accessible.

So after my recent weeks of trials, I would recommend…. (drum roll, please)…………… Dim Dim (click on this link to find out more):

www.dimdim.com

Cheers Olli

I have highlighted the hardware…so you can acquire the footage

I have highlighted the software…so you can upload the footage

I have highlighted the uses of the footage…so you can increase your sales conversions

& I have highlighted the methods…to show you how to do it!

So, click on my On-Line Video page in the page menu at the top of this page.

Enjoy!

This can be in the form of interviews, short education clips or even just you voicing your opinion on camera.

Up to now, the “go to” equipment for doing this quickly & easily has been the fabulous Flip Cam

Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black) (US Link)

Flip Video Ultra High Definition Camcorder With 8GB Memory – Black (UK Link)

But now there is a new player on the market, the Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera:

Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera (Black) (US Link)

Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera – Black (UK Link)

It does exactly the same hassle-free, simple job as the Flip Cam but with the added advantage of having an external microphone jack.

This enables the user to plug in a high end microphone to enable professional sound quality in your interviews.

Check it out here:

Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera (Black) (US Link)

Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera – Black (UK Link)

Let me know your thoughts & comments

Rob has a project promoting services & working with his sales team for Utility Warehouse – very successfully may I add!

Click on the link below if you are interested in an exciting & lucrative affiliate JV with Rob:

www.telecomplus.org.uk/robnugent (then navigate to the “earn with us” link)

But hurry as there is only a small window of opportunity as Rob is working to a deadline!!!

I then speak to my mentors, bounce ideas around with my business partner & do some more research…before breaking through the block to take “the Next Step”.

When it comes to “the Next Step” in marketing, Perry Marshall has come up with a simple 6 step system that helps you:

• assess the effects of your marketing campaigns,
• understand what is going on in your client’s head (both  internal dialogue & core buying emotions),
• understand the power behind the  Adwords you choose to find the least expensive but highest converting ones of all the hundreds that come up in your searches

The system basically takes the guess work out of optimising your marketing strategy in order to dominate your niche.

This was recommended to me as “the most effective A-Z marketing blueprint available anywhere…Guaranteed”, so I thought it only right to post a link to find out more here:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/next-step

Enjoy!!!

What I wanted to share is a method for keeping your brand design costs down & getting a larger than normal library of potential logos for your project.

Go to www.99designs.com & open a new contest.

What 99designs.com allows you to do is set up a contest for designing your logo – you put up a “prize”, which is “won” by the presentation you like the look of the most.

What I like about this is that whereas if you approach one design house, you will normally get 3 or 4 designs to choose from & all will have been developed by the same designer.  This enables you to get various designers’ interpretations of your tender proposal & if you put a reasonable “prize” up for grabs, you will get a large number of designs to vet.

Remember, your brand is the portrayal of you & your company that is seen by anyone that comes into contact with you – it stays with you forever, so take your time & invest some capital to get it right…

E-marketing can consist of several marketing strategies including anything from advertising to affiliate programmes & is evolving as one of the most powerful & scalable approaches to marketing.

E-marketing goes beyond just putting up a website & requires the business building a relationship with its customers, finding out what they want, using that information to give them what they are looking for & rewarding their loyalty for returning to purchase from you.

You can have the slickest website on the web but if you can’t drive people to see it, you are effectively keeping your business card in your pocket.

Here are some free or low-cost approaches & tools used in e-marketing that you can adopt immediately to increase your online profile, improve your search engine rankings & drive targeted leads to your website.

1. Post Quality Articles Online
Well studied & articulated articles are a good media to showcase your expertise in the field of your interest.

Write quality articles & post them on various article publishing sites like ezine.com etc. & ensure the articles contain your signature & a link to your website.

This tactic will increase your web presence, search engine ranking & in turn attract quality web traffic.

2. Create a Blog

Even if you only add a paragraph every few days regarding information related to your industry & add a link back to your website, you will drive lots of potential customers & traffic to it.

Portals such as Blogger.com & WordPress.com offer free blog services

3. Comment on Other Blogs

Leave quality comments on other blogs, which are also related to your field of interest – this showcases your knowledge & by putting a link back to your website underneath your comment, people will come back to your site to see what else you have to say.

4.  Keep in Touch With Previous Clients

Continue to provide quality to all customers both active & inactive by sending them regular emails.  The majority of business (around 80%) comes from clients who have already bought from you.  Build a relationship & offer quality & pertinent new offers

5.  Participate Pro-Actively in Networking Sites & Forums

Networking sites or social media sites are the fastest growing means of business marketing on the internet & by utilizing the major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter & MySpace, you can reach large groups of potential customers very quickly.

Keep a close eye on this website over the next few weeks as I am hoping to bring some live Webinars to my subscribers presented by experts in social media marketing

6.  Use Email Signatures

Use simple links or banner ads in your email signatures; add personalised greetings &  launch email campaigns (use autoresponders) to grow awareness of your site.

To be honest, whilst there are many aspects I like about Google Chrome I have found that it has been crashing a lot, which is really irritating.

As a result, I have just downloaded Mozilla Firefox, which is a browser I know many Internet Marketers already use.  To be fair, the early signs are positive & I can see why it is so popular.

Exploring the browser plug-ins, I have already found some other extremely useful tools that can really boost your Internet Marketing armoury too.

First up there is Keyword Spy – this is really cool & gives you a real insight into the techniques used by the most renowned Internet Marketers!

Keyword Spy lets you find out the keywords that the most successful PPC Adwords advertisers are using plus lots of other important SEO parameters  (such as Google Page ranks & Alexa ranks) of popular sites, either on the pages you visit or in the search engine pages.

You can download it for FREE here:

Keyword Spy Download Page

Secondly there is Seoquake – this is a Mozilla Firefox SEO extension, which as they describe is “aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization (SEO) & internet promotion of web sites.”

This add on allows you to obtain &  investigate many important SEO parameters of any internet project you are studying, save them for future reference & compare them with the results obtained for other, competitive projects.

Mozilla suggest that “beginner web masters & seos will find SeoQuake useful for estimating effectiveness & competitive ability of their SEO efforts.”, whilst  more experienced users will find SeoQuake “a powerful & indispensable tool for analyzing optimization &  promotion level of internet web-projects.”

You can download that for free here:

SeoQuake Download Page

SEOpen is another gem for all skill sets & provides quick access to some web-based tools to help with search engine optimization.

You can quickly check inbound links, PageRank, http headers, amongst other things by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or using the included toolbar.

You can download that for free here:

SEOpen Download Page

Keep your eyes open for an updated version of their Niche Watch Tool too!

Enjoy using Firefox & boosting your SEO skills!