Which Social Media Sites Should You Be Marketing On?

by Stephanie Foster

There are a lot of social media websites out there. You could spend hours each day on marketing on them, but which ones will give you the best results?

That depends on you and your target market.

No social media website is going to do you any good at all if you don't put some effort into it. If you just sign up and drop your link in, you probably aren't going to see much benefit from any of them.

Where's Your Target Market?

Start by figuring out which social media websites your target market is using. With the wide range out there, they may be using a few, but there are some rules of thumb, such as more professional networking going on at LinkedIn and sites such as Twitter and Facebook having a huge range of people on them.

Social bookmarking sites can also be a good choice, although it can be hard to say how the quality of traffic will be. A ton of traffic doesn't always mean a ton of conversions, subscribers or anything other than a ton of traffic.

How Do You Use Social Media?

How you use a particular social media site depends on which one you're using. What works well on one may not be the best way to build a network on another.

To find people on LinkedIn, you may be best off letting them find you. Become an expert there. Join groups. Answer questions. Show that you're an expert and build your references as a professional. It's social, but more professional than personal.

Twitter does well if you can provide interesting information in a small space. It's good if you're able to tweet regularly and be interesting in some way. Share good article links, make interesting observations, interact with people as they post interesting things.

With all sites, the challenge is to keep them from eating up too much of your day. It's very easy to get sucked into the various sites. If you don't want to waste a lot of time on Facebook, for example, don't start playing the games there. Sign up, connect with some friends and you can quickly tell who's gotten too much into the various games. They might invite you, but unless you have time to spare you're better off avoiding the games. Better to spend your time on things there that will benefit your home business.

Using StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and similar sites can also be a huge time suck. You can get some good traffic out of them if you build a good profile and connections, but you can also lose a lot of time wandering them aimlessly. Use them wisely and at times when you can't so easily do things that will more directly bring in business.

On any social media site, being overly promotional is not a good idea. People aren't there to have things sold to them. They're networking because they enjoy it, to build their own business, to get good information, that kind of thing. If you do nothing but say "buy, buy, buy," they'll unfriend you as fast as they can.

Instead, give quality information to bring people to you. If you sound like an expert and they need what you have to offer, they'll decide to do business with you.

How Many to Use?

You can't do a good job of using all social media websites, not even if you only stick to the big ones. There's too much to do.

You'll be better off if you can pick a couple to focus on. Get good at marketing on them.

Dividing your efforts dilutes them. There's a balance between being available on a variety of networks and being unable to keep up.

As with any other sort of marketing you haven't tried before, start by using just one social media site. Figure out what you're doing. Get some fans, friends, followers, whatever they're called. Get comfortable.

Social media marketing isn't something that comes naturally for everyone, but it's a big help for bringing in traffic and business if you use it right. Give yourself some time and really pay attention to the learning process. You might find it a lot of fun as well as profitable.

About the Author

Stephanie Foster runs http://www.homewiththekids.com/ as a resource for people who want to work from home on the internet. Learn more ways to build a home business on a budget at her site.

The Do's and Don'ts of Mobile Phone Web Design

by Julia Rivera

If you are wondering what makes a mobile phone web design effective, then think no more. There are a lot of things to take into consideration before making your own design but in fact there are only a few simple rules on what and what not to do in designing your own blueprint. The reality of the situation is that there will always be new phones to think about and new ways on how to go about with them however there are also unbendable rules to follow if you want your design to scoop the public's attention.

1. Customer Preference To put it simply, meet them. Nobody wants to visit a page that doesn't cater to his needs. So the first step to mull over is this: do the design from a customer's point of view. What do you need? What are you looking for? What's the fastest and easiest way to get to it? This would usually determine how the content is used, which options to take and how the whole design would look. Some people just want quick entertainment to pass away the time while they are on the train, some others may need to access their mail they suddenly remembered that they forgot to read an important document back at home. The goal differs from one type of audience to the other and is up to the designer on which is most suitable to attract them to the site.

2. Straightforwardness Put only the basic controls when considering the mobile phone web design. People who have less time to appreciate art will appreciate your design being accessible and less confusing. Put the navigation bar on top and remember to always include the 'back button' on every page of the site so as the audience can do re-dos when they make errors. As much as possible don't repeat the navigation page of the design since a back can do the work or better yet 'return to homepage' link would be suitable in any case. Making the input boxes as simple as it can be will also fasten the pace and interaction of the person with the site. Abbreviate terms if possible. The best solution to avoid mistyping is to give the customer a selection that would be present every time they try to do a search. It is, after all, difficult to browse and surf the web using an error prone 12 button keypad.

3. Structure Carefully Of course, content will be important but getting the content that is exactly what the customer wants in your mobile phone web design will be the challenge. Screens are tiny and the keypad is worse than the crane game so knowing what content is required to be put it is critical. Present the content in the right manner in which the customer is interested and don't just place everything on the dashboard. Although difficult to do, letting an item stand out from the page during the customer's search time will assist them in going where they want and should go. Highlight buttons, bold face the links, italicize some complex terms and other effects that will distinguish one option from another will give them less time to think and more time to react.

About the Author

To find more information about mobile web design, mobile ecommerce, mobile marketing and more please visit Web design for Mobile

Eight Uses for Google's Webmaster Tools

by Willy Gissen

A lot of people know about Google Analytics, but Google's other major web-site support program, Webmaster Tools, can be even more useful. Despite the intimidating name, Google's Webmaster Tools is a user-friendly program designed to look at your web site's structure and provide some actionable feedback to make major improvements.

Here are some of the ways it can be applied:

1) Evaluate your web site's loading time.

Loading time is one of the 200 signals Google uses to determine its search engine results. While not as important as quality content, the measurement should be checked to maximize your web site's performance. Generally, 2.0 seconds or less is optimal for e-commerce sites, while Google recommends an ideal value of 0.5 seconds.

After gaining access to Webmaster Tools -- you need to insert some code in your home page to verify you are the owner, as instructed when you sign in -- go to the Dashboard and click on Labs, then Site Performance.

2) Submit an XML sitemap.

Most experts recommend you create both an HTML and an XML sitemap for your web site to make it easier for the spiders to crawl and optimize your search engine ranking. You can download a free program to create an XML sitemap, but you need to go into Google Webmaster Tools to install it. Go to the Dashboard and click on Site Configuration, then Sitemaps.

3) Increase your inbound links.

Inbound links are an essential parameter Google uses to determine your search engine ranking.

Go to the diagnostics section of Webmaster Tools and click on crawl errors. By clicking on the tab "Not Found," you will see inbound links trying to access a URL that does not, or no longer, exists. Create an ".ht access" file on your root domain and forward these links to a currently existing URL by using a 301 redirect.

Search for "creating an .ht access file" and "301 redirect" for further instructions.

4) Check your site's meta tags.

Meta tags provide essential information to Google spiders about the content of your site and what words will return a high ranking. These include title tags and meta descriptions. Title tags appear on the top blue bar of each page, and meta descriptions appear under your company's link on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Each page on your web site should have its own unique title tag and meta description.

Go to Diagnostics, HTML Suggestions in Webmaster Tools to evaluate your meta descriptions and title tags.

5) Evaluate your deep links.

On the landing page of your Google Webmaster Tools' dashboard, you will see a section titled "Links to Your Site." It will give the total number of your links in the headline and the locations being linked to underneath. This item is very useful for evaluating "deep links," inbound links to any page other than your home page. Google considers deep links an indication of a web site's value, and you should always try to increase their percentage.

6) Create a robots.txt file.

There are some files you do not want spiders to crawl, such as the RSS feed of your blog, if it resides on your web site. Creating a robots. txt file tells Google's spiders what URLs you do not want them to crawl. It is simply a text (Notepad) file titled robots.txt that resides in your root directory.

Google's Webmaster Tools automatically generates coding for this file if you go to Crawler Access in the Site Configuration section and click on the "Generate robots.txt" tab. The program instructions are self-explanatory.

7) Change your Google settings.

While most of these parameters should remain as the default setting, you may wish to review the geographic target for your web site, preferred domain and crawl rate.

8) Check your web site activity and interaction with spiders.

Google Webmaster Tools provides graphs showing your Crawl Stats (Diagnostics section), Search Queries (Your Site on the Web section) and other parameters. It's a good idea to review them periodically to ensure your site is performing properly.

About the Author

Willy Gissen founded Cut-It-Out Communications, Inc., a full-service public relations firm based in Hartsdale, NY, in 2003. See his related essays at public relations review and his blog at NYT analysis.

Considerations About Article Marketing: Keywords and Duplicate Content

by Steven Esian

As you submit your article to article directories and ezines to progress your search engine optimization (SEO), you could believe that you will be able to use the same article and submit it to several directories. This, however, is not necessarily the case. Not only is this not as powerful as posting distinctive articles to different article directories, but the majority of directories separate out duplicate content and won't allow you to submit an article that has been submitted in another directory. To make sure that you submit articles that will be published, you will have to be creative with your article writing}.

As you compose your articles, it is imperative to include keywords that the average person is expected to look for whenever they're searching for the information that is included in your article. Picking out two to three keywords and including them a few times in your article, depending on the length, should be ample. If, for instance, the web site that you are optimizing is an internet site that distributes used car parts, you could submit an article about the cost rewards of employing used car parts rather than purchasing new. You may decide to use keywords and phrases like "used car parts," "car repair," and "work on your own automobile." If your article is well composed, informs your potential audience, and includes the keywords in suitable number and positioning, it has a smashing chance of being listed highly in search engine results.

This principle should be employed when submitting articles for SEO. Rather than submitting the precise same article to additional article directories, you are able to improve the potency of your tactic by somewhat altering the keywords in each different article. If we apply the preceding illustration, your subsequent submission could focus on "import car repair" and "foreign car parts." By posting articles with various keywords, you step-up the chances that people using somewhat differing search strings will find your articles. It also assures that your articles will not be disapproved for being duplicate content.

It is imperative to bear in mind that articles are worthless if no one desires to read them. Because of this, your focus whilst composing articles had better not only be on search engine optimization, but on your potential reader also. High calibre articles with absorbing content are in all likelihood to be distributed via social networking sites, among the most powerful tools in the search engine optimization battle. Whenever an individual recommends an article to five of their acquaintances, and each of those friends recommends to five others, and so forth, you are able to get an enormous number of visitors to your articles. If your article is evidently written only for search engine optimization, however, no one will prefer to read or recommend it, resulting in no visitors to your website or articles. The inclusion of keywords and phrases in your articles had better not make them sound robotic or unnatural. You had better only submit articles that are attention-getting and that you'd in all likelihood read. If you do not prefer to read your own articles, why should anybody else?

In conclusion: hold out the urge to submit articles that are keyword laden and of inferior quality. Concentrate on the audience, not the search engine optimization, and you'll be a great deal more successful. Visit Steve's website for a more detailed review on high quality inexpensive article submission programs.

About the Author

Steven Esian makes a lucrative living concentrating on article submission and marketing. His software of choice is Submiteaze. You can read reviews and he has arranged an exclusive discount for anyone wishing to trial or purchase SubmitEaze article submission software review.

Affiliate Programs - The Blueprint to a Consistent Payday

by Brian Lett

For anyone who promotes affiliate programs, please realize from this instance that if you want to experience any sort of long-term success, you are going to need a website. Of course, you cannot simply build a website and hope that targeted visitors will automatically show up. You can have the best looking website in the world. However, if you do not properly promote this website, no one will ever know that it exists. Below are some things that you can do to bring publicity to your website, and thus make money with the affiliate programs which you promote.

1. How many of you can tell me what the number one product is on the internet today? Any guesses? Well if you guessed "information", you were correct. There is nothing which is sought after more than relevant information on the internet. Therefore, when potential customers in your niche market are searching online, they are not necessarily searching for the affiliate product which you are marketing. Rather, they are searching for information on subject matter related to your niche. Thus, it is important that your website provide that information, otherwise, they will go elsewhere. You first have to get the attention of your market by giving them what they are looking for initially, then you will market to them. This will become more clear later on in this article.

2. Do you know what a, "Call to Action" is? If you have a website, make sure that you have one. Essentially, a "Call to Action" tells your visitor what you want them to do next. Often times a visitor enters a website not knowing where to look or go next. Your "Call to Action" is what directs them to where you want them to go. This is extremely effective, and under utilized by most website owners.

3. It is absolutely critical that you develop your website with members of your niche market in mind. Make sure that your pages possess content which is highly relevant and informative to members of your niche market. Your website will be regarded as a valuable resource if you take these steps.

4. This fourth point is a big one, so please pay close attention. Essentially, the prior three points should be in place for this fourth point to have effect. At this stage, it is important that you make the most out of the traffic which is arriving at your website. The way that you will do this, is by collecting the names and email addresses of visitors to your website. Relax, we are going to do this in a legal way. How we will do this, is by offering something of value to our visitors, such as software, a newsletter, an eBook, or an online course. As you can see, all of these will need to be delivered to their email address. Therefore, in order to receive your no cost offer, our visitors will need to provide their email address. Just make sure that whatever you offer is something of value to your niche market. Doing so will enable you to build your customer base, and will give you a market for your affiliate programs for years to come.

5. Pay attention to the analytics. You have to determine which marketing methods work, and which do not. A great way to do this is by installing Google Analytics on your website. This is a cost free service which is absolutely invaluable. It enables you to track and record where you visitors come from, and what they are doing once they land on your website. Such information is valuable to the success of the affiliate programs which you promote because you will find that visitors who are more engaged become the best customers.

About the Author

When internet promoters publicize Affiliate Programs , they tend to place too much focus on the product and not enough focus on their own marketing efforts. The fact of the matter is that you will find a myriad of amazing products on our Affiliate Network, however, your success will come down to your marketing efforts.

Make More Money Online by User Testing Your Business Website

by Colette Mason

For any serious, professional, website investment, the user testing phase has become an integral part of the path to making more money online. Before your site is published, usability testing gathers feedback from the very people it is intended for -, with its main objective to ensure you're creating a website that has an intuitive and easy to use interface, targeted to all users. But how do you reap the fullest benefits from your user testing sessions?

1. Choosing Your Subjects

The results of your session well depend largely on the people you test it on. Do not get people who may be biased, such as family, friends and workers from your company. People who have prior exposure to your project may yield flawed results and rate your site high in web accessibility when in fact, it is not. Assemble a focus group, people who fit a specific profile, to be the subjects. You can ask a market research firm or a temp agency to source out your participants. Subjects must not know the name of your company or other details to maintain objectivity.

2. Before Starting the Usability Testing Session

The atmosphere of the web usability study session must be as normal as possible. To achieve the best results, participants should be at ease and feel like they are using the site at home or work. Make sure the participants know the exact location of the testing session; if necessary, meet them at local stations. Do not use technical terms such as "usability testing" or "market research' as these will only cause confusion and create tension. Inform your subjects beforehand of the length of time the testing will take and the type of tasks they are expected to do. When the participants have familiarized themselves with the environment, it is time for the signing of legal documents. Use simple English language that is easy to understand and make your forms as short as possible. Legal papers can add to a subject's nervousness. Assure him that the tests are completely confidential and you only need his permission to use the information generated during the test as part of the results.

3. Starting the Usability Testing

Acquaint the subjects with their surroundings before going to the main tasks. Tell them the name of the website and the URL and get their initial thoughts, like what they expect from the site or what they would like the site to be. Record the terms or phrases they use; this shows you value their opinions and feedback. These terms may also be used as pointers for future references in functionality and navigation concerns. Next, let them visit the business website they'll be testing. Find out what their initial reactions are before allowing them to get familiar with the site. Such inputs may give you ideas on how they evaluate a site for web credibility. Make sure your participants understand they will get some simple tasks to attempt, and that crucially, it's not them that's being tested.

4. Choosing Tasks

Choose tasks that your potential customers will consider important to their decision of whether to purchase or not. These play a major part in ensuring the success of your website. Such tasks are: buying products, paying bills, contacting the client, etc.

Encourage the participants to give suggestions of other tasks they want included. You can determine their expectations and requirements from their suggestions and set new functionality and priorities.

5. How to Express Tasks

People respond and perform in more natural way if they are given scenarios instead of instructions. In phrasing the tasks, it is more effective to say "Scenario A has occurred, and you need to ring the company urgently - find the telephone number" rather than "find the contact us section of the site".

6. Presentation of Tasks

Give participants one task at a time. Simultaneous tasks may intimidate them, or alter their normal approach to the testing. If you require the subjects to use inputs from outside the test (e.g. a brief email giving them a login to the site), give them these details in the form and order they will be presented. This will provide useful feedback on all elements of the process, rather than simply the site.

7. What Your Behavior Ought To Be During Testing

Always keep in mind that the object being tested is the website, not you or the participant. All input is treated as important; this needs to be clearly pointed out to the participant. If there's a task or a step they can't do, they must be informed that it's not their fault. During the test, it's important not to be "seen or heard". You must not do the following actions: provide clues, suggest directions or react to what they say or do. These could alter the test results. So remain neutral - so no shaking your head or huffing. It's a real no-no. The only time participants should hear from you is when they need help in giving an opinion or clarifying a response. Because they have invested much time and money in the project, clients often find it hard to keep quiet during tests. If your client wants to be present, put him in a separate room and provide an audio/video link.

8. When the Usability Testing Is Done

Upon completion of all tasks, gather and document as much information as possible. Ask for overall impressions of the website and detailed feedback on each task. You will be able to measure their experience, whether expectations were met and if their views have changed during the process. Never ignore suggestions, welcome them. These insights improve your business website usability and accessibility. Plus it creates goodwill between the participants and you, the usability tester. Finally, ask the participants what they remember about the site structure and its functions. If they can recall these clearly, it's a confirmation that the site navigation is logical and intuitive. This helps identify any labeling issues you might have missed.

About the Author

If you would like to discover more ethical, fast, fun, customer-focused ways to make more money online, visit the www.websitesuccesssystem.com. The Website Success System is a step by step guide on how to build a good website for your business.

How Do You Get Ideas from Other People's Content Without Plagiarizing?

by Stephanie Foster

Some days one of the hardest things to get is an idea. It doesn't matter how much you love your site, your topic or anything, sometimes that first idea is just really hard to get.

A favorite way of mine to get ideas is to read what others have written. But there's something you have to be careful of. You do not want to plagiarize anyone. But there are a few simple ways you can avoid this problem.

Discuss Their Article and Link to Them

If you really like what someone else has written, there's nothing stopping you in most cases from linking to the article, crediting a few key points and adding in your own thoughts. It's a great way to share quality information.

You may get some attention from the original author when they note the link to their site. This makes for not only great inspirations, but a pretty good networking tool.

Disagree with Their Article

Disagreeing with what someone else wrote can be fun. If you're going to link to their article and explain why you disagree, you might just get some conversation going. Or a bit of anger, whatever. It depends on how you write your own article and on the personality of the person you're disagreeing with.

You'll note however, that I said if. Linking isn't something I always do.

There's good reason for that. Sometimes what I'm disagreeing with is when I feel someone is promoting a scam or something mighty close to one. If I feel the article is promoting something I don't care to link to, I won't.

In that case, my own article is likely more general. It doesn't need to go from point to point countering everything.

It may also not even appear to be disagreeing with anything in particular. When I've read something I've disagreed with, sometimes the resultant article is strictly about my point of view.

Read Only the Titles

You can get a lot of ideas just from the titles of other articles. Read the title and create one of your own.

When I do this, sometimes it won't even be on the same topic as the title I read. The other title just gets me thinking on a topic of my own. It might be the type of the title, it might be just one word that makes me sit up and say "hey, that's an idea!"

Read Forums

Reading on forums is a great way to find out what questions people are asking about your niche. If someone is asking the question on a forum, you have a good chance that someone else is asking it on the search engines.

You'll notice that a lot of these ideas I use are for generating ideas to write about another day. Many times when I can't think of a topic to write about, even with a topic I'll struggle more than usual with the writing. Taking a day to generate ideas rather than articles means that the days I'm more into writing are more productive because the ideas are all there.

About the Author

Stephanie Foster blogs at http://www.homewiththekids.com/blog/ about how she earns money working from home. Learn how to repurpose your own content at her site.