Saturday, October 3, 2009

Facebook Social Media Advertisers Increase 300% in a Year

The number of customers using Facebook's online-advertising system has more than tripled in the past 12 months. This means that more and more small- and medium- sized businesses are now using Facebook as part of their online marketing strategy. Lots of local businesses are now finding success in this advertising model. Facebook launched its advertising program in 2007.

The ads, which appear on users' Facebook profile pages (wall, info, photos etc.) allow 25 characters in the title and as many as 135 characters in the body of the text plus an optional photo. The targeting behind the ads is driven by the personal profiles of Facebook users. If you list The Simpsons as your favorite TV-show, you will probably see an ad from Foxtel sooner or later.

Wired's Fred Vogelstein thinks that Facebook is poised to take over display advertising the way that Google has dominated search advertising. Internet users behave differently on Facebook than anywhere else online. Most of them use their real names, connect with their real friends, share their real thoughts, tastes and news. This is what makes Facebook audience so appealing to advertisers. You have real people with personal qualities who can be divided into exact consumer categories. Google, Yahoo and other search engines, on the other hand know little about of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.

Doubling its membership in March, Twitter is growing even faster than Facebook. As you might remember, at the end of last year, Facebook tried to buy Twitter for $500M but failed miserably. If Facebook had secured Twitter's huge stake on the real time user generated information, they could have secured the dominant position in user generated live content. More and more Internet users are transferring their social habits to Twitter and Facebook from sites like Friendster and MySpace. In May this year, Facebook surpassed MySpace in the US, which was the last strong hold for the News Corp owned site. According Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg Facebook's revenue may climb 70 percent this year. Also last month, Russia's Digital Sky Technologies paid $200 million for less than 2 percent of Facebook, valuing the company at $10 billion. Earlier Microsoft had secured a 1.6% stake for $240 million.

How to Make Money Online by Turning Your Blog Into a Money-Maker

You’ve heard about the profit-making opportunities found online and you want in. But how do you get started? Where can you learn how to make money online? An internet marketing course will give you ideas and techniques for many different approaches. One of the simplest ways for beginners is to turn their website or blog into an online money-maker.

Also referred to as “monetization”, the process is simple:

1. Nearly all services have programs to help with design, so you don’t need to know any code.
2. Fill it with useful content- Make sure your content is useful and relative to your topic. Choose your keywords wisely and produce or choose well-written content.
3. Sell ad space- The simplest way to make money is to sell ad space through a service such as AdSense. This allows you to leave the ad management to someone else as you collect the money. Another option is to sell or trade space with other website owners hoping to promote their sites and/or create backlinks.
4. You’ll make money for every sale that comes through your site.
5. As you browse through these endless opportunities, you will learn how to make money online with greater efficiency – and you may even have fun doing it!

You’ve heard about the profit-making opportunities found online and you want in. But how do you get started? Where can you learn how to make money online? An internet marketing course will give you ideas and techniques for many different approaches. One of the simplest ways for beginners is to turn their website or blog into an online money-maker.

You’ve heard about the profit-making opportunities found online and you want in. But how do you get started? Where can you learn how to make money online? An internet marketing course will give you ideas and techniques for many different approaches. One of the simplest ways for beginners is to turn their website or blog into an online money-maker.

How To Protect Yourself So To Not Get Banned By Facebook

Nothing could be worse than getting your account suspended from Facebook. I mean there is surely other things that could be worse, but getting banned from facebook wouldn't be that great either. There is a ton of people that are in their late twenties that have been on Facebook since thier college years and would be devistated to get their accounts banned. To make sure this never happens to you, we will go through some of the things that you must be careful of what not to do.


It should come as no shock that Facebook despises spam as much as you may . Because of what had happened at Myspace, it should make Facebook even more aware and anal of the possibilities of spam on their website. A lot of people left myspace to go to Facebook because of this very issue of having to deal with a bunch of spam.

Here are some of the top reasons why you might get banned inside Facebook.

Make sure that you are not trying to add a lot of friends in one day. Typically if you add over 100 people or more a day that may be a little too many. Try to keep the amount of people that you add to around 50 or less, unless they were suggested friends .

The next thing you will want to make sure that you don't do is sending out the same thing on every one of your friends walls. Anybody who had a myspace account can remember this, getting all kinds of wall posts about random spammy looking things. This happened when one of your friends accounts go hacked and then the spammer went in there and posted random spammy wall posts. It is possible that you have something to say to all of your friends, but if this is the case just post whatever it is in your updates.

Another important thing that you want to be careful doing when you are trying not to get banned from Facebook is sending out identical emails to all of your friends. There is a limit in Facebook on how many people you can send an email to that is identical. If this is something that you still really want to do, just make sure to change the title of the email so that it reflects differently to some of your friends.

The fourth thing to be careful about in being considered spamming Facebook, is sending out mass pokes or promotional links. It can be that you feel like poking all of your friends for fun, but just don't do it.

If you would like to learn more about social media issues and topics then visit our blog at Orlando social media consulting .

How To Generate High Volume Automated Traffic From Social Networking Sites

Marketers and big companies are raking in millions of dollars on sites like Twitter, Facebook, MyBlogLog, MySpace, Hi-5, Linked-in and FriendFeed, etc. Dell reported earning over $3 million from direct marketing on Twitter. What do these social sites have in common? Traffic and lots of it. What makes them so popular and how did they get all this traffic? HOW can you duplicate their success and high traffic stats without allocating hundreds and thousands of dollars for marketing? How can you achieve their ranking?

Internet marketing these days states that there should be a right blend of the traditional marketing forms and the latest social networking methodologies in order to obtain the best of both the marketing strategies. Though both the marketing forms are extremely different and unique in their own ways, there are a few advantages that social networking enjoys over the traditional marketing method. Lets see what these advantages are:

It is absolutely free: while some of the traditional marketing techniques like PPC, CPM etc, are paid services, there is no service in social media that is paid. It vows for completely free Internet marketing solutions
. This is one of the primary reasons why social networking has moved a step ahead of other marketing fundas.

Targeting your market is much easier in the social media than it is in the traditional internet marketing practices. Moreover, social networking provides an opportunity to the marketers to get up and close to their target so much so that they can even communicate directly with them asking for their feedbacks and suggestions. Here are some ideas for incorporating social networking into your mix:

1. Creation of social networking profiles—Register and create profiles with the heavyweights like MySpace, Facebook, and the other usual suspects, but also do create profiles with business-oriented such as LinkedIn and industry-specific sites. Don’t forget to look for local and regional, too!

2. Participate in these communities—One of the best ways to get the most out of social networking is to become an active participant in these communities. Just make sure that your posts add something of value to the communities so that other members are inclined to take you seriously. Most of all, take care to observe the written (and unwritten) protocols of these sites, and don’t feed trolls by rising to their bait.

3. Include your URL in your signature—After you’ve established credibility with the other members of the community, include the URL of your site in your signature. It’s a great way to increase qualified traffic, especially professional traffic, to your site.

4. Start your own community on your site and update it often to give your readers a reason to check your site regularly. Consider adding a forum where customers can ask questions and get feedback from you. Your blog posts can range from informative to promotional to humorous and you can whet your audience’s appetite to check back often by introducing exclusive coupons and sales.

Optimize your blog posts—This is a major aspect of search engine marketing. Optimize each blog post to make it as easy to find in a search engine as possible, but always remember not to overdo it. Obvious and repetitive keyword stuffing will reduce linking opportunities and turn off your regular visitors.

Include social bookmarking tools—When a reader likes your content so much that they want to share it with other communities, make sharing as easy as possible by putting popular social bookmarking tools at the end of each post. These include digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Facebook, and others. Pay special attention to the newer, industry-specific bookmarking tools, too.

On a more practical ground, it is seen that it is always much more advantageous to have a unison of the two or more online marketing strategies in order to ensure that your website is receiving complete online marketing treatment and showing positive results too.

Marketers and big companies are raking in millions of dollars on sites like Twitter, Facebook, MyBlogLog, MySpace, Hi-5, Linked-in and FriendFeed, etc. Dell reported earning over $3 million from direct marketing on Twitter. What do these social sites have in common? Traffic and lots of it. What makes them so popular and how did they get all this traffic? HOW can you duplicate their success and high traffic stats without allocating hundreds and thousands of dollars for marketing? How can you achieve their ranking? To find out how to generate traffic from social networking go to:

http://mysmartphoneapps.blogspot.com/2009/09/generate-automated-traffic-from-social.html

Three SureFire Ways to Get More Friends Online!

I am always amazed at how many friend requests I receive on social media sites that contain absolutely no context. In some cases there may be mutual friends that we share in common, but beyond that there is often no other clue as to why the other person wants to connect with me.

Many times it will not make or break whether I accept the request, but it is always nice to know the reason why someone is reaching out. Because it is such a simple thing to do, I encourage people to take the brief moment it requires to explain a bit about what has prompted their request.

With that in mind, here are a few tips that will help you stand out from the pack:

Always personalize. This applies especially to a site like LinkedIn. There, you can send your request with the option of leaving the canned, generic response in the message body. This is something along the lines of "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." Pretty unremarkable, right? However, the majority of requests I receive use it. It seems to say that the person couldn't be bothered to add a personal touch to their message. At the very least, address your request using the person's first name.

Explain why you want to connect. This is probably the most important part of a request. Online, it's common to associate with people you might not necessarily know "in real life." This is all the more reason to let the other person know why you think it's a good idea to connect. A simple message saying you noticed you have several mutual friends, or you admire their work, or that you are interested in finding out more about their industry will suffice. As long as you are shedding some light on your motives, the other person will usually be more than happy to accept. It's just good social etiquette.

Follow up after the acceptance. This tip is for bonus points. Don't let your interaction stop after your request has been accepted. Take the time to comment on or send a message regarding your newly formed connection. This can go a long way towards making you stand out from the rest in the other person's mind. They are more likely to remember someone who expressed appreciation for your newfound relationship--instead of simply boosting their number of connections, never to be heard from again. Now that's building "social capital."

Social Marketing Applied

Health promotion campaigns in the late 1980s began applying social marketing in practice. Notable early developments took place in Australia. These included the Victoria Cancer Council developing its anti-tobacco campaign "Quit" (1988), and "SunSmart" (1988), its campaign against skin cancer which had the slogan Slip! Slop! Slap!.[2]

WorkSafe Victoria, a state-run Occupational Health and Safety organization in Australia has used social marketing as a driver in its attempts to reduce the social and human impact of workplace safety failings. In 2006, it ran 'Homecomings', a popular campaign that was later adopted in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, and named the 2007 Australian Marketing Institute Marketing Program of the Year[3]

DanceSafe followed the ideas of social marketing in its communication practices.[citation needed]

On a wider front, by 2007, Government in the United Kingdom announced the development of its first social marketing strategy for all aspects of health.[4]

Two other public health applications include the CDC's CDCynergy training and software application,[5] and SMART (Social Marketing and Assessment Response Tool).[6]

Social marketing theory and practice has been progressed in several countries such as the U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and in the latter a number of key Government policy papers have adopted a strategic social marketing approach. Publications such as 'Choosing Health' in 2004,[4] 'It's our health!' in 2006; and 'Health Challenge England' in 2006, all represent steps to achieve both a strategic and operational use of social marketing. In India, especially in Kerala, AIDS controlling programmes are largely using social marketing and social workers are largely working for it. Most of the social workers are professionally trained for this particular task.[citation needed]

Get lot´s of highly targeted visitors with Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a fantastic way for ranking well and direct traffic both direct traffic and good rankings. Social bookmarking sites directly show what people are looking at. They are aware marketers use it but know most sites that are bookmarked multiple times are genuinely useful.

Taking advantage of this will help to get your sites ranking well for their keywords.

Firstly, you need to open an account on some social bookmarking sites. Adding manual social bookmarks will take a lot of time, so look at software such as OnlyWire which automates the submission process. This will make your life a lot easier.

When you have your account set up, find some other marketers, friends or family who can set up their own account with Onlywire.

Then you merely swap bookmarks. You bookmark their site and they bookmark yours.

Most marketer's sites are only bookmarked once, with the occasional one gaining more than one bookmark. The search engines will know this and so pay attention to sites with multiple bookmarks.

This simple method can easily get you several bookmarks and will give your sites a boost in the search engines.

You can easily outsource social bookmarking your sites. This will very quickly add up if you are creating a lot of sites. You can find people on forums such as Digitalpoint who will do it very inexpensively for you, but it is still going to add up.

You can use the same technique to web sites such as Stumbleupon and Digg, both of which are potential sources of massive amounts of traffic. The sites expect their content to be more newsworthy and interesting. It is possible get the thousands of visitors in a few hours with a well written article.

Setting up multiple social bookmarking accounts yourself and bookmarking your sites is possible. However, these sites are smart and will realise what you are doing unless you hide behind proxies. This can be done, but often the hassle isn't worth it, particularly when it is easy to network with other marketers.

Networking with other marketers and trading bookmarks also has a side effect of building your network of contacts. Potentially, these could become lucrative joint venture partners in the future.

Social bookmarking is a great way for you to get traffic from both the search engines and social bookmarking sites. This will increase your search engine rankings and from this, your traffic.