Of course, running a blog competition is not as simple as posting what you want people to do. While there aren’t any rules, there are “best practices” that you should stick to. Whether you want to boost orders, increase your reader count, or simply gain new traffic for your marketing websites, these strategies are unlikely to fail you.

1) Incorporate Social Media
If you do not mind stretching the definition slightly, blogs are social media. However, while blogs offer the same connective features as other social media platforms, they lack the depth of a medium like Facebook or Twitter.

When you are piecing together your blog promotion strategy, incorporate social media platforms that allow a message to spread quickly. If your message can be summarized in 140 characters, make it a promotion that works effectively on Twitter. If it can travel through already established relationships, make it something that travels via Facebook. Running a great blog-based promotion is not just about attracting other bloggers, but about supporting your blog message with other promotional outlets.

2) Explain it in one sentence.
The kiss of death for any promotion is complexity. Whether it is a simple discount offer or a competition, the driving force behind promotional success is simplicity. If you can’t explain your promotion in one sentence, it is unlikely your audience will be able to, and as a result your message will fail to spread.

Remember, you should be designing your blog promotion with social media in mind. The vast majority of social media platforms favor short, snappy messages that don’t require excessive explanation. Craft a promotion that is easy to explain, not just easy to take part in.

3) Encourage other bloggers to spread the word.
The most successful blog promotions do not necessarily offer the best deals of feature the best prizes. Sometimes it is less about what is on offer, and much more about how it is offered. When you are creating a plan for your blog promotion, get in touch with other bloggers and let them know when it is going ahead.

Even a few small supporting blog posts can go a long way, not just from a direct promotional standpoint, but from an SEO standpoint. Every extra post, whether directly effective or not, is another link back to you, and every effective post is another source for direct, scalable promotion.

4) Make it relevant to your blog.
The most effective promotions offer something that can’t be found anywhere else. Successful businesspeople offer free consulting, authors and artists offer one-on-one interviews and lunches, and marketers offer potential marketing collaborations. Your promotion should not just be about attracting attention with a discount code or a free prize, it should be about bringing attention to your blog for the unique value that it can offer.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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How to Run a Blog-Based Promotion

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AirAsia is on Twitter and it uses the service effectively. Their account is half about customer service — flight re-times, schedule changes and potential upgrades — and half about special offers and direct marketing. It is hard to tell, but it seems like their overall social media presence is highly profitable, not just in customer service savings but in the direct effects of their flight sales and upgrade purchases.

That is just one effective Twitter presence, but it seems like every one effective account is overshadowed by the hundreds of ineffective ones. Twitter has generated a lot of attention, so naturally every business wants to be online, making the most of the audience that Twitter opens them up to. The problem is that so few know how to market effectively there. Instead of using Twitter to actually connect with people, it becomes an outlet for them to post direct sales links, affiliate sales pages and online products.

There is a great book called ‘Meatball Sundae’ written by the prolific marketing author Seth Godin. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, he is the guy behind Squidoo, one of the most exciting and successful online businesses. His idea is that meatballs are delicious, as are ice cream. Why not put them together?

As anyone with a sense of taste can tell you, when you put two good things together you do not always get a great result. A meatball sundae does not sound like a great dessert prospect. What about a great offline business — a signage and visual design business, for example — and a great online service like Twitter. Should those two business go together? Probably not.

Twitter is a useful tool for brands, and there is no doubt about that. The problem is that it is not a great tool for every brand. Just like direct marketers are not going to see the results that they want from Twitter, offline businesses and businesses that operate within specific confines are not going to get what they want with a Twitter account alone.

Experiment, analyze and calculate by all means, but some businesses just are not going to benefit from a Twitter presence. If you think you are one of the exceptions, a great strategy will go a long way to save you. Take a leaf from AirAsia’s book. Focus on customer interaction before the hard sale, post offers that you know your customers would like to hear, and do not resort to a hard sale if you do not find your results perfect. Social media does not thrive on the hard sell, and business that dedicate their entire social media presence to direct sales likely will not thrive either.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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Social Media is Not About Direct Marketing

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It is not difficult to see how community became the latest buzzword for online businesses. Over the last decade, the internet has moved from being a relatively closed system to a network that is remarkably open. While the 1990s had Geocities and personal web hosting, the late 2000s are dominated by completely free, entirely open networking services, designed to allow anyone, anywhere, to connected with anyone else. If the early web was based on isolation, the new internet is most certainly based on community.

The problem comes when businesses take community for granted. Everywhere you look, there are businesses trying to become involved in social media that simply do not belong. Trade plumbing, retail, and industrial design businesses are scrambling to build a community around their work. The problem is not that people do not enjoy and value the business, but that there simply isn’t a need, or reason to build a community for it. The technology is there, but without the right execution, business communities are simply empty shells with relatively little growth potential.

The real payoff comes with selective community building. The technology boom of the late 1990s pushed thousands of ill-suited companies to invest in web presences, online interfaces, and new business models. While thousands succeeded, most did not. Their businesses simply did not benefit from the new developments, their cash flow did not expand when they moved online, and their offline power simply did not translate.

What is undoubtedly going to happen in social media is much the same. As social media grows to become more and more mainstream, businesses that simply are not suited to online communities will attempt to build their own. Unfortunately, most will fail. For every business that deserves and manages an online community, there will be hundreds that rush towards the latest marketing move without incorporating it into any long-term strategy.

If you run a small business, be it offline or online, and want to incorporate community marketing into your marketing strategy, take a step back and look at its value. For some businesses, particularly those that attract a certain type of customer, community marketing – particularly through social media –can be a remarkably powerful marketing method. For others, the expense simply does not bring in any real return, as a community simply can’t be created around each and every business out there.

Social media is a powerful tool for marketers, but it is not a fix-all solution. An online community can’t pop up out of nowhere overnight, and it certainly can’t fix a broken business model. While thousands of businesses will no doubt see the success that others are having with social media marketing and imitate without thought, most will fail. The successes will be those that apply social media tactics to their marketing strategy, look for unique ways to differentiate themselves, and treat community as a long-term earned goal, not a short-term solution.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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Internet Marketing: Building Communities Around Your Business

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The first, and most direct way, is to simply submit your website to gain popularity and potential links. All you need for this is a website, a social bookmarking account, and some content that has the potential to generate a massive amount of buzz and attention. Social bookmarking websites are good at smelling spam, so if your website is entirely commercial, you might find yourself having a hard time converting submissions into powerful links using this method. However, any links are good, and social bookmarking links are still worth the time, even if they do not spread.

The second method is to spread your links yourself, through a series of social bookmarking accounts and disguised resources. SEOs have been using social bookmarking as a link-networking tool for years, and it is still a highly lucrative resource. Using multiple proxies, and sometimes even multiple computers, you can create several social bookmarking accounts and use them for the sole purpose of submitting your own links.

Of course, you are unlikely to generate any spread links with a new account, but that is not the point of this strategy. Instead of focusing on viral content, this method brings non-viral, ultra-measurable SEO influence as a major goal. You control every single bookmarking account, leaving you with the potential to generate hundreds of backlinks in a very short amount of time.

There is a third way to create social bookmarking power, and it is a little indirect and sneaky. Social bookmarking websites love quirky, unique content, but sometimes that content does not exist in uninteresting yet profitable niches. If you can submit content on an interesting topic, let it generate a large amount of interest, and then modify your linked-to page, you can push something that’s particularly lucrative right to the top of the rankings, all by secretively changing your social bookmarking links.

Of course, these indirect and slightly devious methods present you with a real risk of having your content, and eventually your links, removed from social bookmarking websites. It all comes down to your business’ priorities — innovative businesses might value a wave of traffic more than a potentially small short-term issue. No matter which form of social bookmarking SEO you decide to pursue, all can generate massive amount of links in relatively short amounts of time, and all are incredibly valuable to SEO marketers. Look beyond the immediate effects of social bookmarking traffic, for there are hundreds of ways to turn attention into SEO power, regardless of where you operate.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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How to Use Social Bookmarking for Remarkable SEO Results

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But how can you test your social media campaign for effectiveness? While it is difficult to track social media on the level of PPC, or even an SEO campaign, it is still very possible. Using some simple tools, innovative tracking metrics, and long-term branding power, you can view just how effective your social media marketing efforts are.

Short-term testing:

For short-term social media marketers, the most important thing to monitor is the pure ROI (return on investment) that your social media efforts bring. Long-term social media marketing gives you the options of real branding and creating a two-way presence; in the short-term it is best to focus on pure returns.

Start by tracking using PPC monitoring software such as Tracking202. While this software was designed to measure the effectiveness of PPC campaigns, routing your social media traffic still gives you a good idea of which articles, links, and posts are worthwhile, and which are not. By measuring the sheer profit of each different tracking link, you can determine which social media platform is generating the best return for you.

Direct sales:

For direct sales through social media, it is best to generate some long-term relationships and real marketing buzz. Social media is not a great platform for the traditional “buy now!” direct marketing message — it is skimmed over or ignored — but a dedicated effort towards a sale can yield results. Monitor by measuring the effectiveness of individual actions. For example, a single tweet might bring in more money than a lengthy PPC campaign; scale what works and eliminate anything that is ineffective.

Long-term branding:

If there is one area in which social media excels, it is long-term branding. A common complaint against marketers is that their businesses simply do not bring in enough interest on social media platforms, and are crushed by the major brands. This is because social media is built on relationships. People, whether they see it or not, have indirect relationships with major brands such as Nike and Apple. From long-term exposure to their advertising, they become familiar with their brands and are more likely to embrace them in the online world.

For marketers, this means that you need to focus on generating a long-term connection. Cut the hard sell and focus on helping your potential customers. While branding, especially in an online world, is incredibly hard to measure, the long-term effects of it can be gigantic and incredibly lucrative.

No matter what type of business you operate, social media can help you expand your sales and increase revenue. However, the trade-off comes in terms of time. With a measurable, metrics-driven social media presence, it is easy to see what works and what does not. Invest in real social media results and you could see a wave of 100% free, ultra-targeted traffic for your online business.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

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Most modern cellphones and smartphones have the ability to send and receive email. Facebook takes advantage of this by allowing you to upload status updates or photos from any email account. By providing you with an email address contact unique to your account, the Facebook crew has given you the freedom to update your presence from anywhere with email access including most modern mobile phones.

Of course, if your mobile device has web access, you can access Facebook Mobile directly from your device’s web browser. This allows you to update your status and upload photos as well, but also adds access a variety of other features: browsing news feeds, viewing profiles, and handling requests amongst many others. In fact, if your mobile device’s interface and web browser are up to the task, you can do anything on Facebook Mobile that you could do on Facebook from a computer. You can even have a link sent to your phone that makes logging into Facebook Mobile a one click trick.

Loading up a mobile web browser usually takes time and can be somewhat of a resource hog, especially given the limited memory available to mobile devices. A more sophisticated way to access Facebook would be directly from a mobile application designed especially for the task. Not surprisingly, the team at Facebook has implemented this option as well. Facebook Mobile applications are as svelte as they are engaging. The iPhone and the Blackberry have well-designed software created specifically for them, of course, but equally splendid options exist specifically for Palm, Android, Windows Mobile, Sidekick, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson as well. If you are in the mobile majority, these applications are the top-notch choice for accessing Facebook away from home.

The time has come to unhinge yourself from your desktop and start enjoying the “social” part of social networking. No longer will you have to wait by your computer for that desirable contact to send you the request he or she promised or waste your lunch scrambling to get home because your work has blocked access to Facebook and you have to let all your friends know that the location for the party tonight has changed. If you are ready to liberate yourself while somehow, ironically, still staying connected, fire up your web browser and head to Facebook.com/mobile to start using one of these versatile social networking solutions. Stay connected, stay flexible, and remember who’s in control: you!

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

The Mobility of Facebook: Social Networking on the Go

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Of course, we have all seen powerful brands before, many of which existed long before social media came to play. In the 1990s, major companies were leveraging the internet to build brands that spread through word of mouth, creating some of the biggest companies around today. In fact, the leader of the modern internet, Google, was built through word of mouth, first in technology communities, then through high-tech PC users, and eventually to almost everyone with an internet connection.

With successful brand advocates come downright unsuccessful brands, and for every human-powered brand around, there are thousands wishing that they had the same level of consumer participation and flat-out discussion. These tips are great for building your long-term brand, and creating brand advocates, brand evangelists, and long-term users that love to spread discussion.

1. Do not plan for social media discussion, just let it happen.
In recent years, brand advocacy has moved away from traditional mediums and moved towards social media. It is understandable — social media is a major platform for branding, product discussion, and influence — but it is not entirely accurate. Brand advocates have existed much longer than social media. Look back to the early days of modern music and you will find artistic advocates. Look back over the last two hundred years and you will find political advocates.

Brand advocates do not come when you have got a platform for discussion; they come when you have got a reason for discussion. Build something that people can’t wait to talk about, and you will have an army of fans, all ready to spread the word.

2. Brand advocates can’t be bought, they have to be earned.
Offer a rebate and you will win the favor of the small number of customers that bother to cash it. Offer great products and you will win the long-term support of a great deal of happy customers. The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple wins customers. Microsoft gets customers, but they rarely build a long-term relationship with them.

Ponder this — How many times have you heard of someone switching from their Mac to a PC, and vowing never to buy another? It is a reasonably rare occurrence. Compare it to the number of people that switch from their PC to a Mac, swearing never to buy another PC again. The contrast between the two is not because of short-term incentives, but a better product, long-term company care, and the feeling of belonging to something that is worthwhile.

3. Professional networking can take your business a long way.
Give influential people free stuff. It is as simple as that. One of the greatest ways to generate real long-term fans is to get your product (or service) into the hands of someone they admire. As a small company, it is difficult to generate real brand advocacy, at least straight away. Brand advocacy comes with a great reputation, great products, and great customer care. If you can only offer the last two, get your products into the hands of someone who can do the first. If you can impress them, you will impress thousands of other people.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

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How to Make Brand Advocates Out of Regular Customers

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Today, businesses can take less advice from promotion-packed business books and a lot more from historic strategy. Social media gives small businesses the power to outshine their large opponents, outmaneuver major corporations, and with a bit of dedication and work, eventually beat their more powerful opponents. If you want to see your online business come out ahead of its bigger opponents, these four strategies will be worth incorporating into your social media marketing plan.

1. Small means mobile. Go where the big guys can’t.

For a major corporation, the cost of reaching a new customer and doing something special is outweighed by the returns coming in from their already large customer base. Go where they can’t. Reach out to customers by providing a special experience — perfect customer service and dedicated customer care — and leave the big businesses wondering how you snapped up customers through special treatment.

2. Big spenders do not look in small places.

Big companies ignore small marketing channels in favor of large-scale marketing opportunities. Rather than reaching out to potential customers through social media, they favor a mass media approach — banner ads, pop-ups, and email lists. Use your smaller size to your advantage and reach out to communities that are normally only peppered with mass marketing. With a personal approach, you will quickly pick up customers and clients that are otherwise left staring at big company advertising.

3. You are short on cash but high on time. Use it.

Time is the one currency that’s ignored by big businesses. For a major corporation, it is more cost effective to spend money to fix a problem than to spend time on it, and as a result customers with special requirements end up getting brushed to the side in favor of grand solutions. You have got time on your hands — use it to differentiate yourself from competitors that do not care about customers. When you can’t compete through scale and power, compete through personal service and time-spent.

4. Small businesses have personality. Corporations don’t.

There are exceptions to this rule. Apple Inc. is built on personality — an enthusiastic and quirky CEO, and products to match — but most large corporations are not. Sure, they have got branding, but it is rarely personal. Ronald McDonald has nothing on you as a person. When your company can effectively market through personality, you are one up on your competitors.

Instead of just thinking of your brand, your customers and clients are always thinking of the people behind the business. These small differences might not count for much offline, but in the world of social media, where word of your personal service can travel, they count for more than you can imagine.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

Four Social Media Strategies Small Businesses Can Use to Beat Their Bigger Rivals

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However, not every social media product launch is a success. By the very nature of social media, some launches end up more successful and noticeable than others. If you are planning on launching a product and want to use social media for promotion and publicity, these four tips will help you lower costs, maximize marketing power, and create a scalable long-term marketing asset.

1. Start building a long time before you launch.
One major problem that affects social media marketers is a premature product launch. Social media runs on buzz, and when you do not give your community enough time to generate that buzz, your product launch is destined to be a failure. You need to dedicated months, sometimes even years, to the launch of a product. Build real relationships, plan out interviews months in advance, and offers samples of your new product to top bloggers, social media users, and online presences.

2. Capture email addresses if possible.
In marketing circles, Twitter gets a lot of attention, some of which is relatively undeserved. While Twitter is a great short-term marketing platform, it is not fantastic for building deep connections. Twitter is naturally a low-commitment platform, which means that users tend not to put a huge amount of value on the average tweet. If you are capturing potential sales using Twitter, be sure to market your product through a more powerful platform. A good way to start is by capturing email addresses through social media websites, and then marketing directly to them when your product is available.

3. Do not spam, do not push, just encourage.
In email marketing, a bad user experience just means a lost sale. In social media marketing, a bad user experience means a lost sale, and a potentially devastating round of negative publicity. When you push someone towards a sale in a domain as public as social media, you risk them responding negatively. Your focus as a social media marketer should not be on pushing sales and creating short-term profits, but on encouraging users to try your products, report on what they find, and become long-term customers.

4. Remove gatekeepers.
For decades, direct mail marketing campaigns were the most effective way to sell products. Why? Because they were relatively long, yet they had no real barrier to entry. All that was required to become excited about the product was to open the letter. Now, users open a browser instead of an envelope, and read through marketing pages instead of printed letters. Social media does not favor difficult sales processes. Remove every potential gatekeeper — sign-up pages, introductions — and focus on offering your product directly. The quicker the transition from link-to-sale, the more effective the campaign.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

Using Social Media for Product Launches

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While it might seem like this change is useless to marketers, it is really quite a lucrative opportunity. As people begin to embrace online-based events, the potential for marketers to create events for their companies, products, and even brand new media launches increases dramatically. These four tips will help you boost attendance at events by organizing through social media.

1. Host a competition.

Nothing builds anticipation like the chance to win something. One of the best ways to have your event spread virally is to offer incentives for people who do so. Even a relatively simple prize can motivate people to spread the word. Pick something that is valuable to your audience, let people gain more chances to win the more often they spread the word, and watch as buzz about your event snowballs through different social media channels.

2. Start early, and build up hype slowly.

Think of how hype builds for a blockbuster movie. It starts slowly — people notice small signs, viral marketing campaigns take place, and small details are released — and slowly builds to a crescendo. Events work best when you give people time to plan. Start building buzz early, but ensure that there is enough promotional presence immediately before the event. Best strategy: roll out posters and fliers early, then start a competition, bonuses, and cool additions a week or two beforehand.

3. Invite social media power users.

If you are a social media newbie, it is unlikely that your information will get very far. At the higher levels, particularly for promotions, social media can be incredibly difficult to master. Do not put all of your marketing muscle into promoting your event yourself. Instead, contact social media power users and key presences with a special pass to your event. If they like what they see, you could have a hugely influential online platform for marketing your event.

4. Make it more than an event.

The easiest way to market an event is to have a prior reputation, and the easiest way to generate that reputation is with a smash hit. For your first social media event, focus on creating something that is truly unforgettable for people. If you are launching a product, give every guest a swag bag, free sample, and information on how to get their word out there. An ultra-successful event is worth more than just the immediate marketing value; attendees will share their stories and thoughts, and you will generate a completely organic second wave of marketing, all through people that will stay with your company, product, or purpose long-term.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s!  We’re having a white Christmas this year,  with several inches of fresh new powder. Absolutely gorgeous.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

Four Tips for Organizing Parties, Events, and Launches with Social Media

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