When the social/business networking profile swings too far into the realm of being social, it can detract from the prime business at hand. Yes, it is nice to be funny, lighthearted, and decidedly non-serious…when you are not trying to sell something. However, if the social networking profile is intended to promote a product or service, not taking things seriously can negate your ability to effectively promote a business. Simply put, you are spending too much time socializing and not enough time selling your business. That is just not going to work!

On the flipside, you do not want to make the mistake the social networking profile being too stoic. Purveyors of social networking sites are not looking for products and services or at least not as a prime reason for visiting the site. Rather, they look for fun, interesting profiles. If the profile they come across happens to be for a business that provides something they would be interested, that would be a plus. Promotional and commercial websites can be dry. Promotions social networking profiles will falter if they come off as too dull. That is a fact because dullness becomes the governing theme of the profile. Needless to say, that can be somewhat of a turnoff to visitors.

So, what would be the proper happy medium to seek? Basically, it would a smart balance between the personal and the professional. And no, this balance is not all that difficult to reach. It just requires a simple common sense approach to crafting the profile. How can you develop such experience? Trial and error is often the best approach. If it takes a little time to get things down, so be it.

Again, you want the profile to be personal. A lighthearted touch with your blogging, messaging, and profile text content is definitely helpful in this regard. However, you will need to maintain the integrity of advertisements promoting your business placed on the profile. In other words, if you present a pictorial display of a “poster” promoting what it is you are selling, let it serve the same purpose that an ad would yield on a website. Don’t get cute with such displays. Let them stand alone on their own merits and let them be promotional and informational in nature.

Try to maintain a certain level of professionalism in how you present yourself on the social networking site. Remember, when your own personal credibility starts to suffer, you will find your ability to succeed commercially is undermined. In reality, you would be undermining yourself which is the polar opposite reason you would explore the commercial potential of a social networking site. In other words, you don’t want to embody poor concepts into the crafting of the profile. This will wreck the profile’s marketing potential.

Again, success on a social networking site is often little more that simple, basic common sense. As long as you understand how to balance your personal touch with your professional goals, you will find using a social networking site for commercial gain proves effective. And is that not the goal of developing the social networking profile in the first place?

Okay, the mere mention of checking out your competition may lead some people to roll their eyes. They might consider the process unethical. They assume that it infers they copy whatever strategy the competitor is employing. They might also feel that their competition does not exceed their current sales figures so whatever the competition is doing is unworthy of examining. Other simply maintain a “live and let live” attitude and approach their competition with complete indifference.

Such approaches miss the main point of performing research on a competitor. Basically, you will want to perform necessary research so that you can increase your knowledge base and your awareness of the industry. This way, you can operate your business in the most effective manner possible. Living in a proverbial bubble will not help you are far as SEO and internet marketing success is concerned. Let’s take a closer look at a classic model that most take for granted these days: pay per click advertising.

The reason pay per click (PPC) advertising is taken for granted nowadays is that it is nothing out of the ordinary. You will find PPC ads on millions of websites. But, when PPC first debuted very few people even knew it existed. Those that did know pretty much made a lot of money because the click payments were MUCH higher in the early days. In time, saturation lowered the pay rates although there are still people making six figures with such online marketing ventures.

How did many people originally discover the existence of PPC ads? They often did so by performing research on competing websites. Consider this a major lesson as to why it is so important to perform proper research into what competitors are up to. You need not copy what they are doing. You could even outright reject some of the concepts and strategies that they employ. But, the key here is that you stay in the proverbial loop so you know what is going on in the SEO and internet marketing world. When you are out of the loop, you end up falling behind. That is certainly not the position you want to be in while trying to succeed with an online entrepreneurial venture.

Skimming a competitor’s site and looking for things that standout. This might be the best steps to take to gain an insight into what may be an emerging trend. You need not perform all your research through examining what is on the competitor’s website. You could cross-reference whatever you see with any number of online marketing or entrepreneurial web news resources. Such a process can provide more than a little food for though in terms of how you wish to approach your own marketing and SEO ventures.

For those that might be pressed for time, it is always possible to hire the services of a firm to perform such research for you. Research sometimes requires a knowledgeable hand and those seeking to maximize the efficiency of the research process should look towards working with experienced professionals.

Sometimes, you will need to keep tabs on your competitors. Doing so can help you maximize your own business by staying knowledgeable in all facets of it. Consider that the greatest recommendation for performing competitor research.

First, you need to make sure that the website the links will be pointing to is properly optimized. No matter how expansive your link building strategies are, they will be undermined if your website is improperly optimized. Really, you will not experience much success from a sparse website that has little value or content. The website will need quality text that is rich with the keywords that are commonly keyed into the various search engines. Adding audio and video files as well as a site map would not hurt either. The search engine robots generally favor such websites which is why these added components are so helpful and necessary. If you do not have a quality website designed then your link building strategy is not going to be worth much.

That said let’s take a look at what is needed to get the most out of your link building ventures…

Above all, you will need relevant links. You do not want to haphazardly place links on sites that are not going to deliver much in terms of value. Then again, you could randomly place links as a secondary link building strategy but you do not want it to be a primary strategy. Remember, you will want the search engine robots to smile upon all the links that you put out on the web. The more relevant the links are, the more likely this will occur. For those wondering what relevant links are, these would be links placed on websites that share similar subject matter to your own website. For example, if your website deals with sports memorabilia, any link placed on a site that is related to sports would be considered a relevant link.

You also want to look towards those sites that have high Google page rank. The greater the page rank, the more “search engine juice” your website will receive. Once again, that is not to say sites with low PR are worthless but their value will be limited. Adding links to sites that low in PR may or may not have much impact. Placing links on sites that have high PR will always have a positive impact.

One way links are much better than reciprocal links. When the search engine robots see you are trading links, they will downgrade the value of the links. Sure, they may not seem fair but that is the way the system is devised. By putting more value on one way links, the search engine robots can get a better gauge determination as to how popular your site really is. Hence, they prefer one way links.

Don’t dump a whole slew of links on the internet all at once. Yes, there are some services that can put up a few hundred links on various (low quality) sites and blogs within a week. Such “link spam” may not help your cause. Adding a few links a week for week after week will definitely have a much better impact since it will make a more positive impression on the search engine robots. This, in turn, will boost your site’s rankings and increase the success potential of your marketing venture as a result.

Google has PPC services that are fast and effective, and will help you to draw more traffic to your site in a shorter amount of time. The Internet is constantly advancing, and that is why the popularity increases every day.

Simultaneously, more businesses seem to be selecting this type of marketing platform in order to show off their unique services and products among the audiences of the world. The competition level is always rising, always higher. Because of this, it’s vital that you select proven and effective marketing strategies on the Internet, so that you can properly promote your business.

Google’s PPC system is one of the easiest to learn to use, and it may work more profitably for you than other PPC services. Your traffic can be targeted easily and directly. When an online searcher types in a keyword relevant to your company’s products or services, he or she may click through to your site. This system is called Google Adwords. In order to place your business in the top placements, you are bidding against people who are also trying for the best positions. If you work in a niche market, or if you can target a niche market for your products or services, you will face less competition and should secure more hits.

If you will be advertising a popular service or product, PPC services will cost more. There are many people in the bidding war for these keywords, so the price per click may be higher than they are if your business is in a smaller, more targeted niche.

One of the best things about pay per click advertising is that you are able to add, delete or adjust the keywords you use. Some traditional advertisements are not as changeable as PPC keywords are. You won’t want to leap in and do a lot of changing before you know the system, because you may be making changes that will actually lessen your chances of being seen.

Since you are effectively bidding on keywords, you will be able to set the limit to what you will pay. The benefit to this is that you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad and onto your site. If no one clicks your ad, the fee is not there.

As large as the business world may seem sometimes, the Internet brings everyone virtually the same chance at success in PPC marketing, although larger companies will always be able to outbid you on keywords. Your ads can reach anywhere and touch anyone. If you have a business site, then you can sell to online browsers. In addition, AdSense by Google will pay you when people click on ads on your site. This can help ease up the ad budget a bit.

All of your work and money spent in research and PPC marketing will be for nothing if you don’t have a professional-looking website. You’ll also want to do your research on keywords before you begin paying for advertising through any PPC programs. This will help you determine the best way to target your traffic, and how difficult that will be, depending on the popularity of your keywords.

Buyer keywords will give you returns as people click through your links to your website. Select keywords with less competition, if you can, with your products and services, so that you’re not paying an inordinate amount of money for keywords that aren’t producing. Utilize the proper software and systems to make PPC marketing work for you and your business.

You can use this popularity of membership sites to your own advantage by setting up and maintaining a membership site. You may want to consider your membership site your main business, or you may choose to supplement your existing online business with a membership site.

Your first step in starting a membership site is to choose your topic area. The best strategy is to pick the narrowest niche possible, while still having a wide enough audience to thrive. There are currently membership sites on such narrow topics as cross-stitch patterns and starting a cleaning business, so don’t worry about being “too specialized.”

Research the membership sites already out there, and find a topic that is related to what people are offering, but different enough that you can attract people to your unique topic. Focus, above all, on providing information on a topic that people are thirsty for information about, and that does not already have a great membership site. Avoid going head to head with gurus; it almost never ends well.

Next, you’ll want to decide how you’re going to manage your membership site. There are several membership scripts on the market, ranging in price from free to hundreds of dollars. While a free script will probably not fill your needs in the long run, there are scripts you can try free and upgrade to a professional, paid product or subscription as your site grows.

When you select a membership script, make sure it works with the payment processor you’re planning to use, that it effectively blocks non-members from joining, and that it can scale to handle a large number of members as your business grows.

Once you’ve chosen a topic and selected a membership script, it is time to start preparing content for your membership site. You should be prepared to spend several weeks or even months preparing a “base” of content for your membership site, and also have several months’ worth of content ready to add to your site, before you open it up to members.

Preparing content for a membership site always takes more time than you expect, so it is important to get your information ready well in advance and be ready with more content than you think you’re going to need.
When you open your membership site to new members, you will need to promote it heavily. Advertising, including pay-per-click ads, ezine advertising, and joint ventures with list owners in your field, will help bring members to your site. If you have a good product and a strong sales letter, and you bring in quality traffic, you can expect your membership site to build into a strong money-maker over the first nine to twelve months.

While a membership site is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it is a solid money-making venture that you will enjoy running and that will build your reputation in your field.

To use forums effectively in marketing your business, you should understand the basic rules of how to promote your business in forums. There are certain things that you should do and not do, to insure that you promote your business correctly, persuade people to check out your business, and stay in the good graces of the forum members.

Forum “Do’s”

The most important thing you can do in forum marketing is to choose the right forums. Use Google or another search engine to find forums that are closely related to your business field. For instance, if you sell reports on making money as a photographer, you should choose photography-related forums, rather than, say, entomology forums.

Once you’ve found forums that fit your business, read the FAQs and any rules that are posted in the forum, to make sure that you know what is expected, allowed and accepted. Once you understand the rules of the forum, you’re much more likely to promote your business well.

When you post to the forum, make sure that you are answering questions or giving information that is relevant to the forum you’re posting on. Answering questions is much better, in terms of credibility, than just throwing out information. Another advantage of this is that as you answer questions, you learn more about what your potential customers need and want.

Take the time to become known in a few forums, build your credibility and build relationships. Building relationships and becoming a well-known member of the forum is perhaps the most important thing you can do in promoting your business on forums.

Forum “Don’ts”

As mentioned, one of the most important things to not do is pick forums that are not related to your business. Choosing inappropriate forums will not only reduce the effectiveness of your marketing, but it will also waste your time.

Do not start out posting in a new forum without taking the time to familiarize yourself with the forum’s rules and with the community. This will not help build your business, and could get you banned from that forum permanently, if you break the forum’s rules.

When you post, don’t blatantly promote your business. Instead, offer advice and include your business web site in a signature at the end of your post. You might also offer a free report or ebook in response to questions about certain topics. But do not post a sales pitch; most forum members and administrators are very strict about not allowing sales pitches.

When you use forums intelligently and practically, you can, and will, reach people who are looking for solutions to their problems. If you offer solutions to the problems they’re having, and you take the time to become known and respected in the forums, you can easily build your business effectively through forum marketing.

What is the difference between a search engine and a directory anyway? A search engine uses a program for searching documents, mostly HTML, based on given keywords. It generates a list from its database put together by two programs, a spider, which fetches corresponding documents, and an indexer, which reads documents and creates the database based on their word and idea content. A directory, on the other hand, is a listing of submitted and approved websites. Basically, the main difference between search engines and directories is that the latter rely on submissions while the former have programs that scan the net for websites to include in their database. Keep in mind that search engines and directories are two different things, so it is best to come up with separate plans for utilizing the two methods for website promotion.
With search engines, it is all about keywords and HTML layout. You can look into discussions about keyword density, prominence, and placement to better equip yourself for targeting high search engine rankings. Remember that search engines can pick up your pages without you ever submitting them, so design your site accordingly.

As for directories, there are several steps you may have to undertake to prepare your website before submission in order for it to have a better chance of being approved. First and foremost, make sure that your website has been up and running for some time before you submit it. If you had recently made changes, again, wait a short while. You must know that some of the qualities of a good site, according to directory standards, are clean and attractive design, useful content, and fast loading pages.

Once you feel confident about your website, you can start the submission process. You usually have to start with picking out the category or categories which your site falls under. Think this through as this could have a great impact on your site’s exposure. Before submitting your URL, thoroughly read instructions, terms, and suggestions from the administration. Since directories depend on the information you give them, be as accurate as possible when asked for a description.

The top directories out there are Yahoo and DMOZ (also known as Open Directory Project or ODP). With ODP, it is not really as tough to get accepted, but there are so many submissions and they are usually short on staff which is comprised of volunteers. This is actually something you can capitalize on by volunteering to be an editor yourself and accepting your own submission. You have to realize that the Open Directory will not bring an amazing amount of traffic to your site, but it has its ways of influencing rankings, especially with Google. Remember, Google is like the godfather of all things SEO. It is always best to do things that are favorable to it.

Directories usually have a lead time after submission, so do not expect your site’s exposure to be magnified immediately. It may be necessary to submit specific web pages that can fall under different categories or to resubmit the actual website especially if you do a lot of tweaking or if you feel that the course of the site did a turn and it can now fall under a different category. However, do not be so aggressive about your submissions that you are practically spamming the directories. This may lead to detrimental consequences with regards to your active listings.

About YouTube

In the middle of February 2005 former employees of PayPal, Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, created YouTube. In July 2006, YouTube disclosed that over 100 million videos are being watched every single day, and that’s an estimated total of 2.5 billion videos watched in that same month. Also, it was further claimed that in May 2006 50,000 videos were uploaded in a day, and it had reached an astonishing 65,000 uploads in July 2006. YouTube stated that virtually 79 millions users have watched more than 3 billion videos in January 2008.

The Wall Street Journal, in August 2006, wrote an article about YouTube. It revealed that YouTube has hosted 6.1 million videos, and that it has 500,000 registered users. By April 9th, 2008, a search return in YouTube has resulted in approximately 83 million videos and about 3 million user channels.

Google Inc. announces in October 2006 that they will purchase YouTube for a staggering amount of US$1.65 billion in stocks. The purchase eventually pushed through on November 13, 2006. According to the regulatory filing of Google Inc., YouTube is presently non-profitable, stating further that the income that it generates is immaterial.

What is YouTube?

YouTube in its simplest context is a website that shares videos. Users can upload, view and share these videos. It utilizes Adobe Flash to show a wide range of user created video contents, which include music videos, TV clips and movies.

Unregistered users can view and watch nearly all videos on YouTube, however, only registered users can upload limitless quantity of videos. Uploading videos that contain harassment, pornography, slander, nudeness, encouragement of a criminal act, and commercial advertisement are not permitted.

Videos are classified by the use of titles and tags that are located to the right side of a video. In the second year of YouTube’s operation, additional features were provided to enable users to give their personal comments and subscribe to a video’s RSS feed.

 Who Uses YouTube?

The inclination for the Internet is opposing. Eyes are still tuned in directly at the television, but now it is through the internet as an alternative! What the Internet has to offer is a more personalized experience, because people have the option to choose what and when they watch. They can even involve themselves by expressing their personal opinion on what they’re watching.

Big players in the advertising industry are taking notice and are seriously considering what YouTube has to offer. Even the entertainment world is very much into promoting their new stuff on YouTube, such as uploading of teasers for new music videos or trailers of forthcoming movies. Charity institutions are also not left behind when it comes to YouTube, because they also create their own videos for campaign awareness with various messages. Even politicians are using YouTube to strengthen their campaign. Basically, YouTube is for everybody as long as you have a computer to use.

How to Use YouTube for Your Marketing Scheme?

Incorporating YouTube for your marketing scheme will give you unlimited possibilities. However, do not rush things and just create and upload your videos, remember that getting it wrong will hurt your brand. Bear these few tips in mind before you take the plunge:

1. Video campaigns that are uploaded on YouTube can be more viral, compared to sending links of your video on your website through email. It is better to upload it on YouTube and include your URL. This way your video will have a greater chance of being seen by a huge audience resulting in more website visits from users.

2. You can create concepts with YouTube in mind. For instance, you can run a contest and have the participants create a video for the best use of the products that you have. This will definitely amplify traffic to your website especially if you have prices to give.

3. You can Do-It-Yourself or hire an advertising agency to create a video. The catch is to create a video that represents your product in the best possible way, with the idea and focus for it to become a viral success.

4. Look for an opportunity to place ads on hot videos on YouTube.

5. More and more websites are already linked to YouTube, having your website listed will definitely improve and help your optimization strategy.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral Marketing is analogous to a computer or pathological virus because of its capability to replicate itself, thus making it possible to be propagated. It is a marketing strategy that utilizes pre-existing online social networks. The sole purpose is to increase awareness to a particular brand (products and/or services), person, organization, and anything or anyone who needs to be advertised. It can be done through word-of-mouth, media (TV, radio or newsprint), and through the Internet.

The idea of viral marketing is to get people to voluntarily spread your marketing messages for you. Viral promotion can be created in any conceivable form; the popular ones are through articles, newsletters, videos, games, e-books, software, applications, images, and yes, even text messages. Viral marketing is somewhat based on a humans natural behavior. For instance, a person will probably tell three of his friends about a product or service that he likes, and more than ten people for those he doesn’t like. So, it goes without saying that you’d rather be among the three rather than the ten.

How to Use Viral Marketing to Your Advantage

The goal is to create a winning viral marketing program that will appeal to individuals with a soaring social networking potential. The idea is that this viral marketing campaign should be able to identify with the greater population of this network, thus giving a higher possibility that it will be passed along.

There are several methods you can employ for you to have an effective viral campaign to showcase your company, your talent, your website, your products and/or services. These methods should be free for all because, basically, you want it out there. Restricting it will not help as it’s obviously against what viral marketing is all about. Here are some popular methods:

1. Email Signature – The most common and simple of all viral marketing methods. Most email providers allow its users to create their own signature. The idea is to create a catchy tagline with your URL on it which will catch the attention of the readers. This is very effective especially if you’re sending out emails that contain useful information that has a high probability to be passed around.

2. Giving Away Freebies – It can be anything from games, videos, applications, screensavers etcetera. Even bigwigs on the World Wide Web are giving away freebies such as e-mail accounts, private messengers, and a lot more. It is very effective, as who wouldn’t want to have something for free? People tend to talk a lot about things they got for free – and what better way to be known than to be talked about?

3. Penning an Article –With the ever growing need for information, there will always be thousands of topics that you can write about. Your articles should at least be relevant to what you offer. There are a lot of article submission sites on the Web. Submit your work there and grant permission to reproduce so long as the original “resource box” is intact.

These are just a few of the hundreds of possible ways you can utilize the power of viral marketing. Your real goal here is to create witty, cool and exciting content that has a “shareable characteristic”. You have to create a feeling of “must-have” for your target audience, and to able to hold on to that interest. In the end, creativity is what sets apart the losers from the winners (harsh, but true). You have to have a level of inspiration that can help your campaign seize the opportunity that the Internet has to offer.

In the world of the internet, freebies work just as well. Even blogs with no actual product to sell are doing it. Giving away something generates excitement and, let us just face it, it is so much fun. Anyway, it works too. You should see the hits all those homemaking blogs make on something they call “Freebie Friday”.

If you do decide to go the freebie route of website promotion, here are some ideas on what to give as freebies:

• Do you have your own product or service? Why not start with that? For example, let’s say your website is all about baby care and you have an online shop that sells baby items. You could raffle off a gift pack. If your website is about graphic design, perhaps you could also raffle off your services. You could promise a custom-made blog header or message board siggy. The service option is really good because it does not require any money spent, just some of your precious time and talent. The gift pack, on the other hand, can be viewed as an investment. You can actually make it work for you by giving away left-over, but still good stuff.
• Give away something that you own, which you think others may still like. This is usually what those homemaking blog authors raffle off. Sometimes they have a book that they have two copies of or a house ornament that they have used for years and are tired of. Sometimes they have old unused presents from way back. You can do something similar.
• Everybody wants a promotional T-shirt. Why? Because they can be certain that they are not available in stores and only a chosen few have them. If T-shirts are too dear, think of something in a lower scale. Perhaps bookmarks, pencils, stickers, buttons, mugs.
• Downloadables are great freebies. Ebooks are the “in” thing in freebie-world with practically everybody coming up with one. Basically, it is a simple process of compilation. It takes nothing but your time and then you can boast about having an ebook to your name. Other downloadables are software and designs. You do not even have to come up with them yourself. You can simply scour the web for freebies related to your website or business and have the link to them ready on your own site. You can even make this a mainstay lure feature. Have a regularly updated list of freebies somewhere on your site and see how powerful viral marketing is when free stuff is involved.
• Coupons are useful to many. These are something a lot of people can relate to. It can be for your own products or services or something that you found on the internet.
• Gift certificates are always welcome. They can be for an online shop or an actual store with branches in many areas. It is simply a matter of tapping into one’s resources and connections.

Now that you have ideas for giveaways, how are you going to go about it? You can have contests or plain raffles. You can have specific requirements, perhaps in aid of boosting traffic. You can even do a seasonal thing. Give away pencils right before school starts or T-shirts for Christmas. Of course, there is the standard giveaway for every purchase. It is up to you. Just spread the word that your website has freebies up for grabs.