The important thing is to spread the word to customers and prospects in as many ways as possible.  The bottom line is that even the best promotion will fall flat if not properly promoted. 

The Media ~ The success of any quirky marketing idea hinges on getting the media’s attention.  Getting media coverage is what every businessowner prays for.  It’s the end-goal of all that public relations stuff we do to get our companies, ideas and organizations noticed.

And it isn’t easy.  Far from it! It’s one of the few efforts we do to promote our business that we have little, if any control over -making it challenging and sometimes frustrating. 

Look at each media and determine which one(s) will work for you. Each media has a variety of strengths and weaknesses for youTo consider.  Price versus value versus number of people who would actually respond to or pay attention to the media you are considering are all important factors in determining your options.  At this stage it is important to develop a Media BUDGET – one you can live with and have a fair amount of certainty will pull the results you expect (return on investment).

Put Your Quirky Marketing Plan in Action and monitor the results.

More great marketing ideas can be found in the Quirky Marketing Calendar ~ How to Use Zany and Non-traditional Holidays to Promote Your Business 365 Days a Year!

There are so many ways to use the media and for most projects to be a success, finding the right outlet and the right message are critical.  And promotions generally begin with an offer.  That’s especially true of one-time projects, like one-time events, special promotions, milestones in business, etc.  Your promotion should be of value to your customers, relevant to your business and enhance your competitive edge.

It is important to develop a marketing strategy based on the understanding of your clients, your completion and your strengths.  Then you can plan your marketing activities and monitor the results. Monitoring is important so you can see what’s working and where you need to adjust your plans.

Developing your marketing strategy begins with identifying your target market. Within your target market is your Ideal Customer.  Who do you want to sell your products and services to?  What does your target market want and need? What are their concerns, issues; what influences them? Where does your target market hang out? How does your target market research products and services?  When are they most likely to use your product or service? Why would they want or need your product or service (their motivating factors)? Motivating factors could include price, quality, benefits, service, compatibility with other products and services, scarcity. Who is your ideal customer currently buying from?

Once you answer all these questions it will be easier to tailor a program that addresses the answers and fits your company’s mission.

Next you must determine where/how you will sell your product or service. What advertising mediums will you use?  What type of customer support will your business require? How will your customers pay for products and what delivery mechanisms do you need to have in place (such as mail order, digital product distribution, coaching, etc.)?

As you create your quirky marketing plan, each area and question should be addressed. 

In case you don’t know where to begin or are experiencing a challenge getting the creative juices flowing, here’s an exercise that I often use to get started.  Grab a pad of paper and a pen and start writing.  Write anything that comes to mind, write for about 30 minutes. Now stop. Look at what you wrote and pick one or two words or ideas and think about how you can use them in the marketing campaign you are about to embark upon.

Need some ideas to kick-start your marketing efforts? Check out Quirky Marketing Calendar ~ How to Use Zany and Non-traditional Holidays to Promote Your Business 365 Days a Year!

Twitter promotions you can do easily:

1. Via Sign-up forms ~ Post a link on Twitter inviting people to simply sign up for a prize drawing.

2. Create a Follower Collector contest and award a prize for the ____ follower (for instance Whole Foods had a one-millionth follower contest and a awarded a gift card and a million grains of qiuinoa.  Friends are encouraged to tell their friends to follow the target account.

3. Retweets are a fast, simple and easy way to spread your news virally to your followers followers. Everyone who retweets a promotional tweet is entered to win a prize.

4. Hashtags are another way to encourage Twitter users to promote your contest. Hashtags are intstant advertising because when the hashtag appears in someone’s twitter stream, anyone who reads it (their followers) can click on it and see all the communication that accompanies the topic.  Moonfruit used this strategy to promote a contest giving away a MacBook every day for 10 days to random users who added the hashtag “#moonfruit” to their tweets. Moonfruit reported a gain of 2,000 new customers in 24 hours.

   Some Tips to an effective contest:

Be open about the contest – transparency is key on Twitter and ANY social networking site.  If people feel duped, the long-term negative results can be significant.

Make it relevant. Does the contest relate to your product or service and more importantly to the end-user?

What are the goals for your contest?  Do you want to increase your database? Get more traffic to your website? Sell more product? Knowing the answers to these questions can help in creating a relevant and successful contest.

Have a daily update about how your promotion is going. The number of contestants, visitors, any daily winners, etc. This is a great way to draw additional attention to the contest and encourage more participation.

Also, be sure you know the laws and regulations in your area or the area in which you are promoting the contest regarding online contests and promotions.Have the proper disclaimers, privacy policies, etc in place so you can host a “contest” without breaking any rules.

You can read the complete article at: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/verticalweb/200910_InternetRetailer/ (page 56)

I got the above Twitter graphics from the following sites:

 Twitter Follow me badge from Vincent Abry 

Twitter icon: via Problogger (Thanks Darran!) Be sure to check the site out as he has a list of 181 FREE Twitter buttons, badges, icons and graphics.

“Look for results that matter to you, to your company, to the bottom line  and especially to the customer.” 

A few years ago I had the opportunity to interview Dana Meade, Co-vice President for Zoomerang during a teleconference hosted by the Women’s Ecommerce Association (www.WECAI.org).  During our time together, Ms. Meade shared with our seminar attendees how using Zoomerang (or any survey tool for that matter) could help a company grow, or even get back on track when they were experiencing a “lull” in business.

An advocate for learning all one can about the people most likely to buy my products and services, surveys seem like the perfect way to get to know what the customer really wants – and doesn’t want.  Ms. Meade shared with our seminar attendees how using Zoomerang (or any survey tool for that matter) could help a company grow, or even get back on track when they were experiencing a “lull” in business. Zoomerang, an easy to use, Internet-based survey tool allows users to design and send surveys and analyze the results in real time.” 

In addition to promoting business, there are many other uses for surveys, including: Customer Satisfaction, Marketing, Media and Publishing, Political and Social Concerns, Parties and Events, Quizzes, meetings, and much more.  One of the reasons I like Zoomerang is that it has over 100 “ready to use” templates which you can utilize, or modify to suit your needs.  This may sound like an ad for Zoomerang, however – I have used a couple of the competitor’s tools and find Zoomerang to be the easiest to use and most comprehensive of all.

I have been using the tool to survey my customers since mid 2005 and have had much greater response than I did with other surveys we created and posted to our website.  The first online survey we created focused on the value our members receive from our Wire-side Chats (teleconferences).  We sent to our database of 300+ attendees asking for their opinions on the topics we had sponsored to date.  We also asked their input on which topics and experts they would like to hear from in the future.  We received almost 20% response rate – enabling us to plan future events to meet the needs of our customers – our membership base. In addition to the online survey, some members contacted us via email to further expand on the topic.

There are several benefits to using online surveys for your business. In addition to helping you grow your business, it is a great promotional tool, you can see how you “rate” with your customers and prospects and you can then use this information to increase loyalty among those same customers. Perhaps the best news is that the response rate for online surveys compared to printed surveys can be considerably higher – from 10% to as much as 50% response rate when other factors are taken into consideration.

Here are 15 tips to keep in mind when constructing and promoting your survey:

1.   Keep it short – a 5-10 minute survey is the norm, anything beyond 10 minutes and the abandon rate goes way up.

2.   Close-ended questions will give you more qualitative feedback than open-ended questions.  You can follow up with a why or how question.

3.   Put a great deal of thought into what it is you want to accomplish with the survey and what you plan to do with the information once you receive it.  If you don’t have an action plan, the survey is virtually worthless, except as an FYI.

4.   Avoid using jargon – make the questions clear and easy to understand.

5.   Give multiple-choice answers with a choice of “other” for those things that just don’t fit. Follow up with a comment box so the participant can elaborate on the “other.”

6.   If you use rating scales, keep them consistent – for instance if your benchmark is a scale of 1 to 5 with “5” being high, make sure the survey uses the same scale throughout otherwise you will find you are getting skewed responses because the participant is confused.

7.   Preview the survey to test for errors.  I just launched a Marketing survey and after 3 people had taken the survey I noticed a typo in one of the questions.  The beauty of Zoomerang (the pro version) is that you can go in and modify a live survey.  The 4th person to take the survey mentioned that one of the questions was unclear and although I thought it was clear, after reading her suggestions, I made some modifications, another benefit to online surveys which cannot be done once a printed survey has been mailed.

8.   If you find you are not getting a good response to your surveys, send reminders.  People have good intentions and you may have sent it at a busy time.  A gentle reminder will show you if the survey is being responded to.

9.   Use an incentive to get people to respond.  In the marketing and networking surveys we sent, we used a “drawing for 3 books each week” through the end of the survey cycle of one month – an incentive we believe helped in achieving a good response rate.

10. You can promote the survey by sending a link to your email database, posting the link on your website and in your print materials (if they change frequently) and in your ezines and newsletters.  Zoomerang offers several ways to deploy the survey including uploading your email list to their server to send, giving you link to send to your email list and even using ZoomPro to fully customize and design the survey for you.

11. Partner with another company or professional to help promote the survey, increasing your chances of greater success which also give each of you the ability to use the results down the road.

12. Ask your customers to forward the survey to their own circle of influence.  It is amazing how many new customers you can acquire from this one little tactic.

13. Take a cue from the Fortune 500 companies- Gap and other stores are using sales slips to direct customers to their online surveys, by offering discounts for future purchases in exchange for their responses to their recent purchase. Technology is making it more affordable for companies to learn about their customers and how the company rates in the mind of those customers.

14. Collect contact information in the surveys, to help you compile and increase your database which then gives you the opportunity to continue to market to those same customers.

15. And finally, look for results that matter to you, to your company, to the bottom line, to the customer in particular. Jack Mackey, vice president of Service Management Group in Kansas City, Mo., a firm which conducts surveys for about 75 companies, says, “If you drive up the customer satisfaction to a high level, that’s where you get the loyalty effect.”

As an affiliate partner of Zoomerang, I invite you to take a look at all the options it offers. As featured on NBC News, Zoomerang — the industry’s most popular online survey tool — enables you to easily get fast answers to important questions.  There is a FR.EE version to test drive the tool and ZoomPro® which is what we use to deploy all our surveys.  If the above links don’t work, CLICK HERE.

With the end of the year close at hand, now is a perfect time to begin planning your cause-related marketing campaign for 2010. A well-planned CRM campaign can reap many benefits.  In addition to raising awareness and funds for both partners, finding the right partner can build a company’s image in the community. CRM partnerships can get lots of press, providing the company has a distinct marketing edge.  Employees feel proud to work for a company that supports a cause, which can give the company an edge in hiring and retention of qualified individuals. 

Cause-Related Marketing can boost sales.  A CRM partnership with a good cause can distinguish a company’s products and services from the competition. Several studies over the past few years have shown that consumers are attracted to companies that associate themselves with a social cause or issue. One survey discovered that when quality and price are equal: two-thirds of consumers would be likely to switch retailers or brands to one who associated with a good cause.  For many companies it has helped them create an alternative approach to brand advertising and has helped companies distinguish themselves from their market by giving consumers the opportunity to contribute to something greater than just the company’s bottom line. CRM can give your marketing campaign a personality making it difficult for the competition to duplicate.

“The company that gives, over time can achieve high esteem and success in the community, within their company and in the hearts of the Cause they adopt or partner with.” – Heidi Richards Mooney

Cause-Related marketing can reinforce the company’s mission and commitment to social responsibility. It can also help the company connect with specific geographic or demographic markets. Targeting specific populations through CRM is an effective way to reach and engage specific markets in using their products and services.  It is becoming increasingly accepted as an effective marketing strategy in the global marketplace. 

Ø       Did you know that Wally’s “Famous Amos” built his chain of cookie stores without paid advertising?  Instead he got media coverage by donating a percentage of his revenues to literacy programs.

Ø       Nabisco partnered with the World Wildlife Fund by changing the shapes of their cookies to portray endangered species.  They then donated 5 cents of every sale to WWF for a total of $100,000.

Ø       Companies such as Starbucks and Earvin Magic Johnson have formed alliances to increase economic prosperity in underserved neighborhoods through a joint venture known as Urban Coffee Opportunities. 

Ø       Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice crème was created to honor the band and it’s Vermont Roots and proceeds go towards the restoration of Lake Champlain. 

Ø       Estee Lauder Company donates a portion of their profits from sales of special products to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  And on and on…

So what type of self-marketing campaign could a small business participate in to support a good cause?
Ø       Ask Victoria Villalba of Victoria and Associates in Miramar, Florida.  She and her staff are the founders of the Preparing Youth for Industry Program in partnership with Miramar High School and Turner Vocational Technical Arts High School Annual Connections Program. These programs give students the opportunity to learn about business and industry with the help of local businesspersons and the staff of Victoria & Associates. 

Ø       And then there’s Thomas Whatley, CEO of American Ophthalmic in Winter Park, Florida, who partners with a local chapter of Meals on Wheels to serve the elderly.  During visits to Meals on Wheels centers, his company’s certified technicians check vision and the doctors make presentations about the aging eye.  He says that his efforts in the community have accounted for at least 25% of his income each year for several years.

Ø       Or how about Dr. Dora Vilk-Shapiro who manages a very successful dental practice in Coral Springs, Florida, while serving the needs of several community organizations. She has been involved in the Race for Education, collected food for Thanksgiving Drives and Toys for Christmas to help the needy and less fortunate. With the help of her able staff, has visited several schools to promote dental health including Jack & Jill Children’s Center in Fort Lauderdale, a program for low-income, underserved youth in her community.

How do you get started?

Choose the Charity or Non-profit Association you would like to work with. Find out what is needed in your community.  Identifying the right issue or cause is key to local success. It is important that both the nonprofit and the company understand each other’s mission, goals and objectives.  What causes is your company currently involved with? Do your employees volunteer their time and give money to a particular cause?

Determine your company’s goals in supporting the cause. Is it to increase sales, community awareness, image, employee involvement, morale or a combination of these?

Have a written agreement between the company and the organization which outlines the goals of both parties, what services/products are to be offered, the geographic area to be covered, starting and ending dates of campaign, use of trademarked logos, images and names. Collection and distribution of funds should also be outlined in the agreement including dates, tracking, amount to be raised, % given to organization, etc.

It is also important to consider the following:

1.      The organization’s reputation and public perception

2.      The organization operates in a professional manner

3.      The organization’s potential to become involved in controversial social or political issues, which may adversely affect the company

4.      The organization’s financial management and leadership

5.      The organization’s ability to reach the intended audience

6.      The organization’s legal standing (with watchdog groups, taxing authorities)

7.      Any legal issue that may arise from the partnership.  Do you need a formal document to use the organization’s name?  Is your company in any danger legally in the event of any wrongdoing by the organization?  Does the promotion meet all local and national regulations and laws?

Once you have done your due diligence in forming the partnership, you must monitor the effectiveness of your strategies.  How will you know if you are reaching your goals?  Is it by the number of units sold, the amount of monies raised, the amount of media exposure you receive?  The criteria you use to track your results will help you determine if and when you have achieved your marketing goals for the CRM Campaign.  The company that supports a cause can stand apart from the competition creating brand loyalty and support, build value and open the minds of the consumer. The results should create a win-win-win for the company, the organization and the consumer. 

One final thought: Remember to celebrate your success with the charity, with your customers, your staff and other key stakeholders. Thank everyone involved in the campaign for their contributions and commitment.  Thank the organization for the opportunity to help them fulfill their mission.

GET MORE BUSINESS!

2. Get automated.  Sign up for affiliate programs through Clickbank, Linkshare, ShareASale, Commission Junction, PayDotCom and others to make the program seamless. This will allow you to do the marketing so necessary to promote the products and make the sales.

3. Market through ezine ads. These ads can be place in your own ezine and in other popular ezines to drive traffic to your affiliate link.

4. Write articles on a subject relevant to the product you are promoting.  Submit these articles to article submission sites and ezines as well as posting on your own site and in your own informational distribution channels. Focus on publications your target market is interested in and reading.

5. Create an email course to which you put links to the product in each message.  This can be done in the body of the course (provided it is relevant to the subject matter) or in the resource box (signature file) at the end of the course. Set up your course using an autoresponder system by which it gets distributed automatically at set intervals when someone signs up.  An example might be a 7-day ecourse on relationships or book authorship, or even the topic of loosing weight. The Affiliate Masters Course by Ken Evoy is an excellent example of this method.  In his own words the Affiliate Masters Course “leads you step by step, day by day through a flawless process… … from developing a site concept … to brainstorming hundreds of profitable, related keywords … to building that themed site full of money-earning keyword-focused content pages… to attracting targeted, motivated traffic that clicks on your recommendations, and buys from the merchants you represent.”  And best of all, it’s free.

6. Get affiliates to sign up under you and let them do the work of selling.  The commissions may be smaller but the reach will be greater. This is an excellent way to build your passive income stream.

7. Write an ebook and give it away.  Market your distributors throughout the book or at the end in the resource section.

8. If you have your own products to sell, offer one of your affiliate products as a back-end sales item.  For instance if you sell an eBook or other informational product, when you’ve made the sale, mention your affiliate links in the thank you, in your autoresponder message, when you ship the product, any way that will give the customer another opportunity to purchase from you.

9. In addition to using the marketing tools provided by the distributor to promote the product or service (which can include brochures, copy, graphics, media releases and more), create your own.  Think about it, everyone else is probably using the same materials as you, so when you create your own, you stand out from the crowd and have a better chance of making the sale.

10. Create a content-rich site filled with resources that keep the visitor coming back often.  Sales will go up as relationships develop and soon, the visitor or prospect becomes a lifelong customer.

11. Give the product your own stamp of approval.  Write personal recommendations based upon your own research and experience with the product.  Endorsements motivate people to buy.

12. Optimize your website.  Have pages with product reviews.  Study and research keyword phrases and learn the process. Or hire someone who is skilled at Search Engine Optimization freeing up your time to explore other avenues of promotion. If people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.  Update your site often with fresh content. This not only helps with the natural search engine indexing, it gives visitors a reason to return again and again.

13. Most Affiliate Marketing Experts will agree that you must spend 75% of your time promoting Your Affiliate Program. It’s the difference between success and failure for the affiliate.

These 13 tips will help you successfully market your affiliate programs. Although there are many other ways to market your affiliate programs, if you only did these and did them well, you would make money – lots of money.  And isn’t that the point?

In my next post I will share key takeaways from the South Florida Internative Marketing Association, recent workshop on Affiliate Marketing.

“When it comes to creating a viable marketing program, affiliate marketing has become a major ingredient in promoting your products and services on the net.” Heidi Richards Mooney

  This past week I have been doing a lot of research on affiliate marketing for a new Gift Guide being created by WE Magazine for Women. I have signed up with several affiliate publishers (companies that sell products and want people like me to promote them) via Linkshare, Clickbank, PayDotCom and Commission Junction. In fact, when you click on any of the links above, it has the potential to produce income for me via their generous affiliate platforms.  And for you too when you sign up with them. BY the way, there are many many individual companies you can sign up with to promote their products to your audience, these are just my top four because they have so may publishers just waiting for people like you and me to promote for them.

In fact, when it comes to creating a viable marketing program, affiliate marketing has become a major ingredient in promoting your products and services on the net. More and more companies and individuals are getting into affiliate marketing as a means of creating a robust income stream. Amazon.com, and eBay are both good examples of distributors that have built an incredible arsenal of “salespeople.”  In fact, in most major industries it has become the norm to have an affiliate program. And you don’t have to be a BIG company to make money in affiliate marketing.

Just what is Affiliate marketing and how does it work? According to Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia), “affiliate Marketing is a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder’s-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per Sale).”
 
Affiliate marketing is, in essence a partnership.  The partnership is between the advertisers or merchants also referred to as affiliate merchants or distributors (those selling the product or service) and the salespeople also known as affiliates.  The affiliates are the ones who publish and sell other people’s products, either on their website, on their blog, in their ezine or by way of other email marketing venues.

There are many benefits of affiliate marketing which includes creating a sales force beyond ones own capabilities and reach, the ability to automate the process to make tracking and reporting easier and the fact that the affiliate merchant need only pay for the performance of affiliate partners. The main responsibility of the affiliate is to direct traffic to the site of the distributor.  The distributor then handles the order, the payment and shipping of product. .. and pays the affiliate for finding the customer.
 
Finding the Right PARTNERS

The real job in becoming an affiliate is much more than simply signing up for a program.   It begins with finding the right partners’ products and services to promote via your circle. This is the key to making lots of money in the affiliate marketing business. 

What should you look for when checking out affiliate opportunities?  It’s important to learn what you can about the distributor before signing up with their program. Without doing your due diligence beforehand, you may find yourself with a company that does not pay on time, is unreliable, doesn’t have the supporting materials and infrastructure necessary to help you promote their products and services or they simply go out of business. 

Is the product one that is in demand?  Is it something you can easily market?  Is it congruent with the means to which you will promote it such as your website, your email newsletter, etc? One of my five websites is a retail flower site (www.EdenFlorist.com).  I have joined several affiliate programs and marketed them through that site.  One of them is Ice.com. Why?  Because they sell jewelry and flowers and jewelry naturally go together.  I probably wouldn’t sell a water softener solution or barbeque grills because to my customer base, there is not an obvious connection.

Is there a cost to become an affiliate?  The cost of becoming an affiliate can vary from free to a one-time payment or even a monthly subscription.  Make sure that if you are paying to belong to an affiliate program the potential for making money is greater than the cost to be an affiliate.  This is something that you may have to “test” for a couple of months to see if the commissions start “rolling in.”  If not, move on to a more profitable program.

Before joining an affiliate program, make sure they have a great payment structure.  Is it 1%, 10%, 50% or more?  The amount of money you can make will be in direct proportion to the demand for the product and the means in which you promote it. Although I would not entirely discount a program where the commission is 10% or less, the effort to make a sale is the same as with high-commission programs, therefore wouldn’t it be better to put your efforts in marketing a program where you have the greatest opportunities to make the most money? Equally important is how often you get paid.  Is it monthly, quarterly or when you reach a certain dollar amount?

How are the statistics reported to the affiliates?  Is there a thorough statistics page that lists the number of click-throughs, number of sales and amount earned?  Is it broken down per month?  Is it updated automatically and frequently?  If you join an established, reputable program, these things should already be in place.

Are there some examples on the distributor’s site of how these affiliates are marketing their products? Another site I run is a membership site – the Women’s ECommerce Association, International – www.WECAI.org – our mission is to help women do business on and off the WEB, therefore two of the more than a dozen affiliate programs we promote are a domain seller (with their program, we are known as resellers) www.wecaidomains.com and an email distribution service called Group Mail Pro. Each of these companies provides me with the tools I need to promote and sell their products. And WECAI makes money.

Does the distributor provide affiliates with a wide variety of text links, banners and graphics for the affiliate to use to market their products?  How are other affiliates doing with the distributor program?  Are there testimonials; and is there a way to contact these affiliates to see how they are doing? Does the distributor offer other support such as monthly or weekly tips in the form of a newsletter or email campaign?  How is the customer support?  You can test this by sending the distributor a message or query to see how long it takes for them to respond. If they do not respond within 48 hours, consider another program.

In my next post I will share 13 Tips to PROMOTE the Distributor (or Publisher)

Do you Like Networking? Or do you find it difficult to talk to people when you attend networking events?

Are you hosting and event?  Are “new” faces a  part of the guest list?  If you want your guests to get to know one another better during your event;  then try an great activity for finding out more about everyone using general interview questions.  The object of this activity is to encourage guests to talk to one another and “guess” where they are FROM.  This works best when your guests don’t know one another very well (if at all) and it is a fun way to connect and start the relationship-building process.  The interesting thing is that many people will be from a certain geographic location and find it rewarding to discover others who are also from that same area.  The “hometown” can be defined as the city, state, or even country of origin.   

You will need a list of interview questions to be handed out to participants during the social (networking) part of your event.  The only rule is that participants should ask a series of questions to uncover the “hometown” before either guessing the answer or asking the final question, “Where are you originally from?”    

It is also a good idea to ask questions that may be more specific to your guests.  Although it is really more fun to just “pop the question,” you may also consider sending this to your guests prior to the event, so they can be prepared.  I also suggest you keep the number of questions to around 8 to 10 so that your guests will have time to meet a few people. To help you get started here is list of suggested questions:

      1.         What type of food is your hometown known for?
      2.         Do you have a state motto – if so, what is it?
      3.         What flower is associated with your hometown?
      4.         What is the weather like?
      5.         What is the geographic landscape (mountainous, desert, flat, surrounded by water, etc.)?
      6.         Is it a small town or large city?
      7.         Is there a certain type music that is preferred by the people from your hometown?
      8.         Are there any famous people/celebrities from your hometown?  If so, who?
      9.         Do you say tomato or toe-maaaahhhh-toe?
    10.       What is your hometown best known for (attraction, activity, etc.)

As the hostess, you may also want to include “prizes” for the person who guesses the most hometowns.  Once the activity is over, you can also ask how many people are from a certain area, and if anyone wishes to share a story allow time for sharing.

Variation:  Instead of the using the topic “where are you from” you can change it to be “what was your previous career (job)” and create a list of questions that would help the audience to guess the answer.   

That was the opening to my program at the South Florida MPI Chapter meeting this past Thursday.

Let me start by saying if you are a professional speaker and you get an opportunity to speak at an MPI (Meeting professionals International) meeting, consider yourself very lucky.  Meeting professionals are the folks than plan meetings. That includes hiring speakers.

A BIG thank you goes to DeAnne Connolly Graham of Welcome Miami Magazine for asking me to present my program “How to Leverage Social Media to Promote Your Business” and to Judy Goldman of Panache Party Rentals (MPI President) for her hospitality.

Me, DeAnne Graham and Rita Wells of Laughing Matterz

It was an amazing event. Not because I was the speaker (although that was a thrill for me).  Because of all the wonderful people I met!

In this program I talked about Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube  and Twitter (the new darling of social Media). Did you know that Facebook is the largest social network on the planet (with 355 million users)? If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world. MySpace once the leader in social media is still in the top ten with 100 million, YouTube has 124 million users and Twitter has somewhere around 24 million (that number is expected to double by the end of the year).

Here some of the tips I shared with the audience:

With so many social networking sites, it is difficult to choose which ones to participate in.  My suggestion is to find out where your clients and customers hang out and go there.  If your customers are mainly on Facebook, then they will likely look for YOU on Facebook. I suggest if you aren’t sure where to start, you pick one and immerse yourself in it. Get to know the players.  Start conversations with those you link to or want to link to.  Ask for advice.  Ask to be introduced to others. Learn the etiquette.

There are so many sites for every need. In the meetings industry for instance there are Niche social networking sites such as imeet , event crowd, mpi meeting spaces, crowdvine and upcoming.org.

Other examples I shared included: Sermo.com which is geared to the medical industry, AdGabber.com social network is used by those in advertising, Boomj is for Baby Boomers and Generation Jones and WiserEarth.com is an online space for the social and environmental movement.  If you have a very tight niche and want to find networks to meet your needs, go to: www.Go2WEB20.net the repository or directory of just about ALL the social networks online today.

Craigs list is more than a site to buy and sell products. They have a personals section called “Missed Connections.” If you’ve met someone and didnt’ get their contact information or would like to reconnect and don’t know where to begin, Missed Connections is a great place to start.

We talked about creating FACEBOOK FAN pages. Most people don’t know where to find the link, let alone how to set up. At the bottom of every page of FACEBOOK is a category called ADVERTISING. Click that and it takes you to a page with lots of choices. The second choice at the top of the navigation is PAGES. Click there and it will walk you through the steps. If you cannot figure it out, I found this great tutorial by Mari Smith (the queen of FACEBOOK) ~ How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page. It is a perfect step-by-step tutorial.

We talked about blogs. Did you know that this site and 5 other sites I own were all created using Wordpress.org?  That’s right! According to the latest Technorati state of blogging report, about 12,000 new blogs are started each day, which translates to 1.4 new blogs each and every second! And about 25% of those are abandoned!

I shared the story of Darran Rowse of Problogger.com and how he started out blogging just for fun only to find out that the people following him were becoming his FANS and his fan base was growing so much he quit his day job to pursue blogging full time!  Problogger is all about how to blog! I recommend everyone become a subscriber or follower.

With blogging you can establish yourself as an expert like Darren did, which helps you build your brand and sell more products and services.

There are other high-touch ways to promote your business online such as video email using services like Hello World, or post Videos promoting your business to sites like You Tube and Google Video. For a great example of how one company has used video to promote their products go to Will It blend.com and check out Blentec’s series of videos promoting their blenders. Blendtec has become a legend because of the types of things they blend in their blenders including golf balls, bic lighters and one of their most viewed videos on is the iphone with more than 6 million viewers to date.

You can go to Internet Video Magazine for a huge list of Free Video Hosting sites.

And then there’s TWITTER. When I first heard about Twitter a little more than a year ago, my reaction to it was similar to what I am sure some of you are thinking. What a complete waste of time!   People like productivity guru Tim Ferriss (author of the 4 hour work week) called Twitter “pointless e-mail on steroids.” And I couldn’t have agreed more.  What a difference a year makes! Like me, Tim Ferriss has now joined Twitterville.

According to a new study by Pennsylvania State University, 20% of all tweets on Twitter specifically mention company and product names, as users request product information or supply responses to such requests.

As a business tool, Twitter can help you: Find new clients, Make new contacts with other business and thought leaders like Tim Ferris or Peter Shankman of Help a Reporter Out,
With Twitter you can be the first to know breaking news and news in your own industry.

Twitter helps Drive traffic to your Web site, lmprove your writing and my personal favorite, learn about new tools such as Utterli (share text, posts, video from your mobile phone), roboform and Twitter Feed.

If you have not gotten enough social networking online you can even meet people in person via a Tweetup, or the Social Media Club of South Florida or even Refresh Miami.

And there are even Social Networking Gadgets that will help you exchange information with people you meet in person. My favorite is POKEN.

If you want to become a Social Networking Guru, start connecting, lead a forum or group, use Google Alerts to see what they are saying about you and your company, Check out usernamecheck.com to see if your name is available on the top 60 social networking sites… Join in the conversations, don’t just post information, talk to people, Answer questions, Focus is the key,  check out go2WEB20.net for a list of other social networking sites that might lend themselves to your goals,  Use Ping.fm to make sure the search engines are finding out about your blogs,  and if you do all this you will get slightly famous or maybe even really famous!

Another cool social networking platform is Internet Radio. In fact, you can host your own Internet Radio program for free on Blog Talk Radio.

AS I mentioned earlier, Sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook, eCademy, Xing, RYZE and hundreds more exist and there is really no way of knowing which ones are going to work for you until you actually participate.  And more pop up every day!

Thank you to Alan and Kevin from the Kovens Center for making my job easier. These guys are the best Tech people I have ever met on location! And to Jean Harris, Director for hosting the event. And to Tiffany Kennedy for being the best MPI Liaison I ever met!

Tiffany Kennedy, Nathalie Cortes and John BuschmanAnd to MPI for having the confidence in my abilities. I was truly honored to be among the BEST meeting professionals in the country.

MPI Audience members…

Here are the things Website Grader “grades” websites on (what I really like is that Website Grader offers suggestions for optimizing the site and improving rankings):

On-Page SEO ~ this is the process of putting the right keywords in the right places.  The report gives the Metadata results which includes Page title, meta description and meta keywords. The report also tells you if information is missing which gives the web owner more opportunities to “correct” those pages.

In addition it talks about Headings. Here’s what it says “Similar to how newspapers and magazines use headings and sub-headings to help readers, websites can use special tags in their HTML. These tags not only help human readers read the content, they also help search engine spiders better understand the content on a page and what is most important.”

In the Image summary it shows how many were found, if ALT Text is used on the images and where.  Since spiders cannot crawl images, using ALT Text on images makes it easy for those spiders to “read” the text of the image to know what it is.

Website Grader grades interior pages as well, letting you know what, if anything is missing.  If you don’t have keywords or a description for certain pages, it will show up here.  Keep in mind they only grade 3 or maybe 4 pages so you will have to go back in and see that these two important components are filled in.

Your site is graded on “readability” which means it measures the approximate education level to which you are writing.  It is suggested that the content be “simple so that a majority of the target audience can understand it.”

You are graded on Off-Page SEO which is includes all the things you do to promote your website beyond the design. This includes number of inbound links to your site, relevant directory registrations, such as Yahoo, DMoz and Google and getting more pages indexed in the search engines.

You are graded on the age of your blog as well as expiration date (or renewal date) of domain registration.

You are graded on your Google page rank (generally 1-10) with 10 being the best.  It will also tell you what your Google page rank is.

Website Grader tells you how many pages have been indexed with Google and the last date Google crawled the site.

You are graded on your Alexa ranking – the ranking of your site in comparison to all the others in the world.

If your site has a blog you are given “extra credit” and if your blog is ranked by Technorati all the better.

It shows the last 3 articles published and if the have been listed on “Digg” including the number of diggs the post received.

Website Grader looks for an Rss Feed and some sort of conversion mechanism (such as a sign up form).

You are given a grade for the types of keywords used and their relevance as well as your overall score summary.

I strongly recommend every website and blog owner use Website Grader  and check your grade periodically to see where you are improving and where there are opportunities for improvement. I know I am going to start doing this at least weekly.

To learn more about optimizing your site, check out the Internet Marketing Kit by Website Grader

And be sure to read  my article, Why, Where and How to Advertise your Business Online for links to valuable online directories.

 ecn7mgqf28