Social Media Marketing

15 Reasons Not To Use Social Media For Your Business

The author has a great reason why his 15 reasons are the worst ones for using social media for your business. This is a recommended read.

The 15 Worst Reasons to Use Social Media For Your Business

by Eric Fulwiler

I am a heavy supporter of social media as a valuable business tool, but only when it is used for the right reasons, and in the right way. Sometimes it’s easy to convince yourself that your reason for using social media for your business is right when it’s actually wrong. So, here it is, in black and white, the 15 worst reasons to use social media for business.

15. Because it’s free to sign up

14. Because you like the idea of going viral

13. Because you heard the buzz about the South by Southwest conference

12. Because you have friends who are successful bloggers

11. Because you can automate many social network feeds

10. Because the 400 million people on Facebook are a new population to advertise to

9. Because other companies have made millions of dollars on Twitter

8. Because the other companies who have used social media have received positive PR

7. Because you read that people trust social network contacts

6. Because you think it’s all return and no investment

5. Because you read a case study in which another business used social media successfully

4. Because consumers are spending more time online

3. Because someone told you that social media was the next big thing

2. Because everyone else is doing it

1. Because you should

For the rest of Eric’s article where he  tells you why these are the worst.  Click Here

Article Courtesy of

Steve Pohlit

New Digital Media, Inc

“Building Social Media Networks That Build Revenue and Profits”

Why ATT and Verizon Price War Important To Social Media

First the most important point: anyone using ATT or Verizon saves money right now. How is that relevant to a business devoted to social media marketing and social media network building?

Most likely you are using an iPhone or some other smart phone device for connecting to the Internet, retrieving email,  posting to Facebook, Twitter and more plus watching YouTube videos. The device (iPhone, Droid, Nexus, Blackberry …more) is a tool that has just become less costly.

I am very happy about that and remember when the base charges drop so do the taxes and fees on the services you have.  I know I am saving money now and you are too if you take action

As read on Mashable:

If you thought AT&T and Verizon weren’t at war already, today will change your mind. In an effort to undercut each other, both networks have dropped the prices of their unlimited voice plans, including the unlimited plans of iPhone owners (but with a caveat).

Verizon was the first to strike. Earlier today they revealed a new set of nationwide plans for unlimited talk and text. An Unlimited Talk plan now costs $69.99, a full $29 cheaper per month. Unlimited Talk and Text now costs $89.99. Family plans and low-end data plans have also been overhauled (the $19.99 3G data package no longer exists). These new prices will not impact existing customers unless they change their plans (which requires no contract extension or penalty).

It didn’t take long for AT&T to respond, though. It just announced its own price cuts, matching the price of Verizon’s unlimited voice plan ($69.99) and unlimited talk and text ($89.99). The iPhone, labeled by AT&T as a smartphone, costs $99.99 for unlimited voice and data, while texting plans remain unchanged ($20 for unlimited). And just like Verizon, AT&T customers can switch to these new plans, starting on Monday, without penalty or contract extension.

Click Here for the remainder of the article:

Steve Pohlit
New Digital Media, Inc

“Building Social Media Networks That Build Revenue and Profits”

The Benefits of Social Media: A Presentation

This is very well done and worth the time to review.

Surprising Examples of Using Google Wave

Mashable published an article titled “4 Surprising Google Wave Uses”

“Four uses in particular have stood out for their cleverness and high fun factor, and you probably didn’t see any of them coming. …. if you’ve been following Wave closely you might have heard of them.”

The jury is still out on Google Wave and I think part of that is because it is in beta and at most 1 million people have activated it and far fewer have really taken it for a test drive.  I never underestimate Google so while time will tell on how Wave evolves check out the examples reported by Mashable.  Click Here

To Your Success,
Steve Pohlit, President
New Digital Media, Inc

“Building Social Media Networks That Build Revenue and Profits”

Email Contacts Should Be A Primary Product of Building A Social Media Network

If you are on line for business and you are building a social network for business, you are nuts if you are not including a contact capture form on every page you are intending for people to visit.

The reason that is important is to go to the next step in strengthening the relationship you are developing on social sites, you want to be able to deliver valuable content to the email boxes of those who are interested in your material. You spark interest in your material using your social media network, then you provide more value in the sequential delivery of information typically by email. Even on places like Facebook where you can message members of a group, use techniques to invite those members to a report or article where you have a chance of having them offer you their contact information. That list is a major asset in any business.

There are some techniques you need to know in order to implement lead capture properly and cultivate your list. Most of those involve knowing how to set up your lead capture page and then developing an autoresponder sequence that converts your list to buyers.

Even if your social network is well developed, all businesses need traffic.  Most marketers are under the impression that they MUST get their website ranked high in Google to get lots of traffic. But it’s just not so! Not that getting high search engine listings is a bad thing, but  imagine if you could get hundreds, or even thousands, of visitors to your website DAILY… and Google had nothing to do with it?

Here is a system you can copy  that produced 2,000 visitors, 600+ leads and $314.00 in one day… without ANY help from Google! You may NEVER have to worry about SEO, backlinks or PPC again: http://bit.ly/1iCONk And the BEST part? It’s running as a Wacky Weekend DIMESALE! The price is going up constantly but if you hurry you can grab it for … well, you don’t believe me if I tell you, so just head over and see for yourself: http://bit.ly/1iCONk

To Your Success,
Steve Pohlit, President
New Digital Media, Inc

“Building Social Media Networks That Build Revenue and Profits”

How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

The tools available to market products and services are numerous. Direct response marketing, Internet marketing, brand awareness campaigns and more are all labels for marketing programs. In every case, the goal is the same…increase revenue and profits.

My experience working with companies to grow profits is extensive. (Click Here for my resume) I have developed my views on marketing from actual experience implementing programs, monitoring the results and continuously testing ideas to improve response rates and profitability. Social media is phrase representing an ever increasing number of places people congregate. Social media marketing is just that..marketing to people using social media sites.

There are a number of credible people holding seminars, selling courses and offering consulting on how to do social media marketing. My recommendation to business is to focus on your business. My company will build your social media network and I will work with you to develop and implement your social media marketing program. These are two very distinctly separate tasks.

How we build a social media network is based on my actual results in developing several of my own business ventures and providing these services to clients. I have personally done the social media work staring February 2008 . Since that time I completed the detailed steps. I will highlight some of them in this article. From this experience I recommend what steps you should leverage to others and the tools I feel are a must have for developing your network. This is for people very serious about using social media as a business building tool.

Key Marketing Principle Reviewed

Marketing is primarily about attracting traffic to your offer and converting that traffic to customers. Many know this. Most ignore it. I never ignore it. For clarification it is not just any traffic but relevant traffic. What does relevant traffic mean? It means people already interested in what it is you have to offer.

The late Gary Halbert said if you are selling hamburgers, he would rather have a starving crowd than all the positioning of signs, building, location and all of the other things we normally address in marketing a physical product like hamburgers. It is every marketer’s dream to have a starving crowd. I am no different. The starving crowd is not right outside my door. I need to find them and so do you.

The Cloud

My view of the cloud is simply an image of all the people using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. So when I use the phrase the cloud that is what I mean.

The Goal

Return on investment in time and money is the goal. Sure I work on projects and products where I have expertise and interest. Sure I do things out of curiosity without having any monetization objective, but most of what I do is to drive profitable revenue doing business where I have a high personal interest. When I do this well, I am compensated by the marketplace for providing value. For me spending time on what I enjoy is not work. However, unless there is income flow, my enjoyment of a an area of personal interest is going to expire. Having said that, I will encourage you to make sure your attention span is long enough to allow your business to develop.

To achieve the monetization goal I am developing as large a portion of the cloud as possible that I can reach. I then continuously send messages intended to invite people I am reaching to consider my offer. Related to this goal is my objective to at also have as many people as possible give me their contact information. That action tells me there is some level of interest in what I am offering. For those experienced marketers reading this I am not sending out selling messages. All of the messages are indirect intended to create an interest in wanting more information. Many flavors of messages are used and I am always developing new ones to test.

The Specifics

The work is done by my company New Digital Media, Inc. I work with all clients directly. When the scope of the work is defined some of the tasks that I previously have done personally are leveraged. The staff working wih me is very experienced and they actually develop their own network which I encourage. We share social media network growth tips.

Our primary focus is on growing Twitter and Facebook accounts. Within Facebook we work with client to grow friends and when friends are at a certain level we build a targeted group. As a group is being built we implement a messaging strategy to the group. We are gradually expanding our focus into several other social media sites. However, for now Twitter and Facebook is out primary focus.

The goal of the network is to drive interested people to a landing page or a product sales page. As appropriate, we advocate the destination to be a blog article. As articles are added they serve as desitinations for new messages to the network. In certain cases we will promote a client through our own network which is quite large.

We use a combination of tools to assist us in growing accounts. Most of these tools are used with Twitter. There are no automation tools we use to grow Facebook friends and groups. We use an automation tool to assist us with posting messages to Twitter and Facebook. This tool has the capability to post messages to LinkedIn, MySpace and more. The primary tools we use and recommend if you are doing this work yourself are:

Hummingbird for growing Twiter followers

Tweet Later – message management

Tweep

Instant Capture Pages

Blogs – WordPress format exclusively This Site Shows You How To Set One Up – Free

Autoresponder – Aweber

Web Hosting – Host Gator

Each person in the company uses at least two computers. It is not practical to run our automation tools and do our other work on one machine. This can be done but it will affect productivity by at least 50%.

Effectiveness

The following Twitter accounts were developed in six weeks. digialmediabiz 9735 followers. buildprofits 8694 followers So those are a couple examples of accounts growing.

Size of our total network – very large

On Facebook we grew the group Deliberate Creation to over 2,500 members in three weeks. This happens to be a very niche market and we were very pleased with how rapidly this developed.

Return on Investment – we have numerous success stories for ourselves and for clients. However, it has taken quite awhile to systematize what works. Additionally, we are constantly monitoring the rules of the social media sites as they can change and we want to be in compliance. For these reasons, I highly recommend looking at our company to help you grow your network which allows you to focus on growing your business.

Based on Twitter’s current algorithms we can build an account to 10,000 followers in about two months. Facebook has a limit of 5000 friends and it can take 6 months or longer to hit that level. Remember once built, these assets are in place for multiple purposes.

Personally my network is used to market consulting services, New Digital Media and several other ventures. I noticed the most significant improvement in what we do once I developed a laser beam focus on our objective and finding the right staff. Both are in place. The difference between my company and most of the people who are experienced, is we do it for you and hand over the results. Along the way we teach you so you are in a position to continue the process or have us continue. If you are a large company, I will teach your in-house staff how to do this.

Fees and Referrals

Our fees are quoted for each client. I pay referral fees that average 15% of fees collected. This percentage varies depending on the scope of work performed. Currently we have capacity for a limited number of clients. With the marketing we are now doing to create awareness of our services, the door for new clients may close quickly. If you are thinking about working with us, I suggest you contact me now.

Contact Information

Steve Pohlit, President
New Digital Media, Inc.
727-587-7871
Email

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Connect with me on Facebook Click Here

About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies. Steve is business owner and an expert business consultant, direct response and social media marketing and social networking security expert . Steve is focused on helping companies improve their business performance. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

Why Social Media Is Important

Let’s look at what people think about most of the time.

We think about doing our work so we make money or in increasing numbers we think about finding work so we make money.

We think about our relationships. Our thoughts may be how loving that relationship is or possibly how troubled we are.

We think about taking care of basic tasks like, eating and taking care of things related to how we live.

In summary, whatever you dominant thoughts, dreams, goals, including your business goals…you are able to connect with others using the powerful tools of social media. Most of the social media sites are free to use. However, your most precious commodity is your time.  Start or continue your adventure in social media  with a clear definition of what you want to accomplish.

Manifest Mastermind, the business I started in 2008 was marketed entirely using social media marketing.  You can attract more people to your business or area of interest using social media.

Your Next Steps:

Register at The Social Media Source for Social Media Marketing Tips

Follow me on Twitter and I will follow you http://twitter.com/SMediaSource

Sending you energy of peace, happiness, prosperity

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit

Steve is the Founder of Manifest Mastermind which now includes training on using social media. The Social Media Source is a resource site for growing your network on line to help you achieve your goals in the areas of financial prosperity, health and relationships. Friend Connect Central is you social media hub…the place for connecting your blog or website to the world.

Steve is also the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate.

FREE Reports:

7 Steps To Manifesting Your Dreams

How To Make More Money With Your Business Now and Long Term

Social Media Blueprint

A panel discussion of Social Media experts formed at JV Alert conference addressed a question on the business of Social Media. A key point  made is that Social Media is a tool.

That excellent reminder serves as the starting point for this summary on How To Use Social Media to Start and Grow a Business. Social Media is a general term for community based Internet sites with the biggest ones being Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and very fast growing ones like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Generally, my first response with a question like “how should I use Social Media?” is “what is it that you want”.  My business Manifest Mastermind guides everyone in our free course as well as paying members to begin with a clear definition of what it is that you want and  then they are asked why.

Applying this to Social Media and using my own experience as an example, my initial goal was to understand the primary options for Social Media sites. My conclusion was that I could spend my time for entertainment or for developing business.  Very soon I further clarified Social Media for me which was that I wanted to know if Social Media was a valid tool for building a profitable business.

Social proof that Social Media is an effective tool for building a business is Manifest Mastermind. The time line from business idea to business launch was four months. This actually could have been shorter if we would have been able to allocate more financial resources to it.  We spent a lot of professional time and very little cash in developing this business.

When possible I would advise others to outsource more but we proved that a business could be successfuly launced with very little money.

Social Media Blueprint:

This is a top level summary of the Social Media Blueprint I recommend. This is  based on my actual experience with Manifest Mastermind:

1. Have a clear definition of what you want and why.  Are you using Social Media for business or pleasure?  If you intend to use Social Media sites for developing  business there will and should be pleasure because Social Media is about developing relationships with people interested in who you are and what you are doing.

2. Identify what Social Media sites are best for your business. Actually this is fairly easy with the top three sites for business being Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  There are an ever increasing list of social media sites. Start with the ones that have the market. LinkedIn is growing fast and can be another one that is important for you going forward.

3. Form relationships with those most likely interested in that what you are doing.  I am sure you have heard the advice to define your target market. This is no different. How do you find your market on Social Media sites? There are several ways. A primary one is doing research on: who is talking about your business topic (Twitter); who is joining groups related to your business (Facebook); and, who is adding video content related to your business (YouTube).  I advise a filtering approach. Invite people into your world and then invite them into a network focused on your niche business.

4. Ultimately you must capture those with an interest into your own list. We use traditional Internet Marketing guidance on bringing people to our list and then offering value to demonstate why they benefit from spending money with us.

Next Steps:

Manifest Mastermind’s business purpose is to help others create their own success stories. Success stories happen in the areas where people are clearly focused on a prioritized list of their own dreams. Dreams fall into three main categories: financial, health and relationships.  They are never mutually exclusive. Our guidance is based on The Law of Attraction and the Mastermind Principle.  Guidance is developed with experts advising us on particular topics.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit
The Profit Expert

Steve is the Founder of Manifest Mastermind and  President of International Business Consulting Resources. My firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. FREE Reports:

How To Make More Money With Your Business Now and Long Term

7 Steps To Manifesting Your Dreams

Follow Me and I Follow You http://Twitter.com/BuildProfits

Connect with me on Facebook Click Here

About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies. Steve is business owner and an expert business consultant, direct response and social media marketing and social networking security expert . Steve is focused on helping companies improve their business performance. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

Social Media Marketing – Advice on Using Twitter From John Reese

You probably know John Reese is a very experienced credible and successful Internet marketer. I have benefited a great deal from John’s courses and newsletters. This message from John came to me by email and I am posting it here. Like John I have been skeptical about Social Media marketing including Twitter. One thing about John is that he tests everything and you will see he has been accumulating data on driving traffic to his sites and particularly his blog using Twitter. After you read John’s message come back and take these action steps:

1. set up your account at www.twitter.com
2. look up www.twitter.com/buildprofits and follow me
3. look up www.twitter.com/johnreese and follow him
4. follow John’s guidance in adding people to follow
5. notice how people post to Twitter and start posting regularly.
(I use Ping.fm to post to Twitter and Facebook. It is supposed to update my accounts at LinkedIn and MySpace but I don’t see that working well. Maybe you will have more luck.)

Two final points from me:

1. this is part of my signature on my outgoing emails:

Network with me on

Facebook: http://facebook.com/stevepohlit

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepohlit

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/stevepohlit

Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/buildprofits

2. Notice how I discovered valuable content written by an authority on a topic where I have some experience added comments and now publish it on my blog – with no changes to the original message. This is another way of generating valuable content for your blog (hint, hint)

————————————————-

Email from John Reese starts now:

If you haven’t yet created a Twitter account
you’re really missing out.

This service has exploded in growth
in the past few months and I don’t see
it slowing down anytime soon. There
are now MILLIONS of users and it’s
becoming mainstream.

I’ve been running some interesting
tests and I’m already seeing some
great traffic results — far greater than
the traffic from Facebook or any
other “Web 2.0? service.

Facebook and the others certainly
have their place, but Twitter is more
powerful. At first I didn’t really “get it”
but now I do and my traffic stats
don’t lie. IT WORKS.

As a communications tool, Twitter is
probably only 2nd to Email right now.
It’s a great way to network with people
as well as to drive visitors to any of
your sites, blog posts, etc.

BUT DON’T WAIT…

Create a Twitter account NOW and
start ‘following’ people you want.
Others will eventually follow you in
return. Observe how others post
and you’ll quickly learn the culture,
etiquette, and uses for Twitter.

It’s not rocket science. In fact,
it’s a lot of fun.

You really need to start today because
the sooner you start the sooner your
followers list will start growing and more
people will see your posts — which will
then virally grow from there.

*******VERY IMPORTANT********

MAKE SURE TO FOLLOW ME!

(I’m actively posting all the time.)

Create an account then go here:
http://twitter.com/johnreese

Click the “Follow” link that shows
under my photo.

That’s it. Everytime I post you’ll
see it in your main “timeline”
area.

* After you click to “Follow” me
look at the right-hand side of
my profile page. Click the blue
“Followers” link and you can see
all the people currently following
my posts. Follow some of these
other marketers so you can get
involved.

Twitter is extremely VIRAL.
When you make posts (called
“tweets”) they can be exposed
to all the friends (followers)
of others. Then they can choose
to follow you.

I think Twitter is going to really
evolve into a “must use”
marketing tool. It’s a great way
to announce you’ve just made
a new blog post, released a
new product, or anything else
you’re up to.

I’m already seeing 400+ visitors
each time I make a tweet that
I’ve made a new blog post.

So trust me, this is no flash in
the pan. In fact, this may be
one of the most powerful marketing
tools ever — it just depends how
it evolves.

But so far you’d be crazy not to
use it. It’s producing great results.

Take 2 minutes to create an
account — heck you’ll want to
do it now so you can at least
get your name before someone
else takes it. Or your company
or product name, etc.

Just go to http://www.Twitter.com

Then visit my page at:
http://twitter.com/johnreese

———————————————

Info courtesy of Steve Pohlit

Sending all my readers the energy of vibrant health, happiness and prosperity.

Steve Pohlit
http://www.stevereports.com

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871 Remember many of my business building articles can be found at Steve Reports and my prosperity building tool is Manifest Mastermind