Saturday, October 6, 2012

Marketing Your Business With Instagram

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09:  In this photo illust...
NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09: In this photo illustration, the photo-sharing app Instagram fan page is seen on the Facebook website on the Apple Safari web browser on April 9, 2012 in New York City. Facebook Inc. is acquiring photo-sharing app Instagram for approx. $1 billion. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

While there is no capacity to allow links to various resources through the photographs, there is the option however to utilize hash tags in the comments section in an effort to further categorize any company specific photographs. These tags are extremely beneficial, as organizations have utilized them in marketing efforts to conduct sweepstakes and promotions involving users of this application. Many of these hash tag marketing efforts have gone viral and seen a tremendous uptick in user engagement and further brand communication. Since its inception, Instagram has continued to captivate millions of users and even been purchased by social media giant Facebook. In addition to its numerous features the service also has seen the birth of various spin-off services that allow users to turn their favorite Instagram photos into postcards stickers and even magnets.

The instantaneous effect and the unique set of editing features within this application really sets it apart from the rest. As such we have seen this social network skyrocket in popularity and various brands and corporations jump on this platform as a means of further interacting with their customer base. From a marketing standpoint, businesses now have another viable mechanism to promote their products and services while getting instant feedback from customers. Some organizations may see this as a more premature opportunity as they may primarily focus on more traditional avenues such as Facebook and twitter. The beauty of these social media applications in addition to some of the more prevalent Web 2.0 properties is their ability to cross-link with one another. By generating content for Instagram, companies also have a great benefit to their marketing campaigns as they can automatically set their uploads to be distributed to services such as Facebook twitter and even Flickr and e-mail. These integrated features are a terrific timesaver, as marketers do not necessarily have to visit each one of these sites individually to distribute this picture communication.

For businesses looking to utilize this social media application in their marketing campaigns is important for them to understand the effective use of hash tag keywords and the importance of consistency. While there are some resources available online today that will allow an organization to automate the posting process, having human interaction between this service and the content will be the best bet for any organization seeking to further interact with its customer base. On the Internet today customers and users want to interact with the real human being and not necessarily an automated system. Instagram represents another breakthrough in this fast growing and exciting social media landscape. The businesses that understand the marketing potential that services like this represent will be the ones who truly benefit from a greater return on investment.


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http://EzineArticles.com/7270192

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A Beginners Guide to Video Marketing

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase
Many internet marketers shy away from video marketing because they think it requires considerable technical skills and expensive equipment. This is a big mistake.

YouTube is now the world's second largest search engine. There are more daily searches on YouTube that on either Bing or Yahoo. If you are thus not actively marketing on YouTube, you are giving your competitors FREE reign of the world's second largest search engine.

The best thing about marketing on YouTube is that it is 100% free. If you are not engaged in YouTube marketing, it would be akin to Google offering you unlimited FREE AdWords advertising, and you said 'No Thanks'.

No only that, but videos posted on YouTube very often appear at the top of Google. Can you imagine, the massive traffic that would drive to your website. Best of all these videos don't need backlinks or SEO, they can get to the top of Google within 24 hours.

Video Marketing can be a very simplistic marketing method, once the marketers follow proven, tried and tested principles.

You don't need thousand dollar equipment or a PHD in movie making to become a proficient video marketer.

What you need is a step by step blueprint that will tell you exactly what to do. This will ensure you don't make costly mistakes, and that you get everything completed rapidly.

Video Marketing can be divided into 3 core steps;
  1. Video Creation
  2. Video Submission
  3. Video Marketing

Video creation involves the shooting of the video. The easiest way to shoot a video is using YouTubes 'Quick Capture' feature. In this process, you simply attach a webcam to your PC, and click the 'Quick Capture' button on your YouTube profile, upload page. You will be instantly recorded without the need for any expensive equipment or video editing software. This format is a great way to shoot videos quickly, and to build a relationship with your viewers.

Video submission involves the distribution to multiple video sharing sites. You should not focus solely on YouTube for your video marketing strategy. Consider submitting video to the other top 15+ video sharing sites such as Viddler, Revver, Veoh, Blip.tv, Metacafe and more. The fastest, easiest and FREE way to distribute your video to the top 15+ video sharing sites is by using a service called Tube Mogul. This will enable you to upload your video to each of these sites at the click of a button, and in doing so create multiple streams of traffic to your website.

Video marketing is the process of boosting your views by driving traffic to your videos. Article marketing, social bookmarking, blogging and forum posting are all excellent strategies for boosting your views.

You should make it a habit of posting videos regularly. Not only do you gain from the traffic, but you will get valuable back links every time you post a new video. That is provided of course that you included a live link in your description. This will boost the position of your site in the search engine rankings.

The beauty of video marketing is that you do the work once, and receive the traffic on complete auto pilot forever more. It is the nearest thing to passive income online because to make money online you need traffic, and this traffic is FREE and perpetual.

If you want to explode the traffic to your website using video marketing, then you should use a blueprint created by the video marketing gurus.


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http://EzineArticles.com/4220696
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Friday, October 5, 2012

Mobile Marketing: Alternative Marketing Revolution

Mobile Marketing for Small & Medium Business |...
Mobile Marketing for Small & Medium
Business | Colorado
(Photo credit: SocialMediaVIDEOmarketing)

The growth in mobile phone marketing is exploding exponentially upwards with a mobile advertising market numbering over five billion consumers, this is five times the size of the internet market and growing rapidly and yet there is still very little competition in this very lucrative market, due to a lack of knowledge and the necessary skills needed to successfully tap into this once in a life time opportunity. Many internet marketers have come to the realisation that marketing via mobile phones is in the process of superseding the internet and they are quickly educating themselves in the new technologies and processes of mobile marketing so that they don't get left behind in the rush.

The Evidence is before Your Eyes!

Have you ever noticed that people tend to spend more time chatting on their cell phones and surfing the mobile net rather than sitting in front of their PC. It is an established fact that over 5 billion people walk around with a mobile phone - the market is five times larger than the internet. If you are seriously considering getting into mobile marketing, then I must congratulate you; as you will inevitably be getting in on the ground floor of this very lucrative business model; but first you will need to fully digest and understand just how explosive this mobile web marketing revolution really is:

Over 2 million smart phones have recently been sold by Apple while Google have recently released a report showing that over 160,000 Droid smart phones are being activated every single day, 24/7! Although the web is quite literally overrun with advertising, nobody has taken serious note of the alternative that is staring them in the face. There is still very little competition in mobile marketing. This massive market could be yours to fully exploit at will!

The statistics show that over HALF of all new Internet connections are from mobile "smart-phones" over 5 billion mobile phone owners are carrying miniature computers around with them in their pockets or handbags 24 hours a day seven days a week. Furthermore, statistics prove that over 90% of people keep their phones within 3 feet of themselves 24/7. And yet it is a fact that the majority of online marketers simply have no idea how to market to people who aren't glued to their PC.

The Facts About Mobile Marketing

Do you realise that with mobile advertising your Ad is going to be the ONLY Ad on the Page! For this very reason the conversion rates achieved with mobile marketing completely blow those achieved on internet marketing right out of the water. Imagine just how easy it would be to grab a person's attention without the distraction of numerous AdWords and flashing banners on the page. YOU are the one and ONLY call to action on the entire page!

With this form of affiliate marketing you do not need to learn any new tricks! ClickBank, CPA and the building of marketing lists work in exactly the same way on mobile as they do on your PC. (But it's a lot easier to do on mobile)....Once everything is fully implemented and running there is no need to constantly make changes as what works with mobile marketing STAYS working. No constant changes to 'algorithms', no 'spiking keyword bids'...etc...etc..

So What are You Going to Do About It!

It must be perfectly obvious to you by now; that now is the right time to take decisive action if you really want to break into this very lucrative area of mobile web marketing. Nobody has an absolute advantage over you at this present moment in time...but you will need to move very quickly, if you really want to find yourself in the exclusive and enviable position of being able to seize upon the prime assets within the mobile phone advertising market as this web marketing phenomenon explodes right around the globe!

You still have a little time left, but not very much...

The advent of mobile marketing has just begun... history tells us that it is always the early adapters to new technologies that reap the massive rewards on offer. People, who procrastinate and put things off, content to watch from the sidelines, eventually find that they have left it too late, to make any sort of impression. They find that the entire landscape has changed; the goal posts have shifted. They suddenly find themselves faced with insurmountable competition from those who were intelligent enough to jump in at the start. They have been left out in the cold!

Head on over and check out the sensational mobile monopoly system, you will be very impressed with what is being offered.


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http://EzineArticles.com/4851472

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Using RSS Feeds to Drive More Website Traffic

English: This icon, known as the "feed ic...
English: This icon, known as the "feed icon" or the "RSS icon", was introduced in Mozilla Firefox in order to indicate a web feed was present on a particular web page that could be used in conjunction with the Live bookmarks function. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera and some other browsers have adopted the icon in order to promote a de facto standard. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

RSS feeds are basically like keeping a constant eye on an aspect of a remote web page. You may want to know when your favorite website is updated. Perhaps you need the latest weather updates. Regardless of the desired information, you simply need to set up an RSS feed to the desired site. You then need to gather all of your RSS feeds so they will output their information in one place such as your home page. This allows you to continuously monitor a wide variety of pages without having to manually check them.

The other aspect of RSS feeds involves advertising. If you would like to increase traffic to one of your current blogs or websites, you can publish an RSS feed on another website. Consequently, all visitors to the site you publish will see the ad for your web page; they will know exactly what is happening on your site at any given moment. The goal is to have your RSS feed published on as many different pages as possible. If you convince enough people to add your feed, then you can create a large network that customers will come across often.

Regarding the technical aspect of RSS feeds; they are based on XML code. If you wanted a live feed from another page in the old days, you had to manually paste a large piece of XML code into the code of your existing site. This was very cumbersome and beyond the abilities of most bloggers at the time. RSS makes XML simple and easy to use. Nowadays, you no longer need to paste XML code. You can simply follow a series of links to have an RSS feed on your "feed aggregator" page or software, or have your feed published elsewhere.

The meaning of the term RSS tends to change occasionally. However, the term currently refers to "Really Simple Syndication", according to Wikipedia. To view a feed, you will require an aggregator. This can be a site such as FeedBurner, Technorati or Del.icio.us (pronounced delicious). These sites are very helpful to personal Bloggers, individuals who read many different blogs or feeds, and people who use their website or blog as a business. These sites refer to themselves as "communities", and they often function as both aggregators and feed publishers.

FeedBurner claims to be the "biggest and baddest" feed publishing network. Having your feed "burned" can result in a massive increase in traffic, almost instantly. Simply by choosing FeedBurner to publish your feed, you automatically gain access to many new marketing channels. Most likely, you will discover many channels that you didn't even know existed. Technorati is more of a blog-hosting site. However, its potential as a feed publisher and source of major traffic shouldn't be underestimated.

Del.icio.us markets itself as an "online bookmarking" utility specifically designed to attract end users, rather than publishers. This means that publishing your feed on this site will encourage more people to visit your site.

All in all, publishing RSS feeds from your site can greatly increase your web traffic and your online business. They are one of the most effective ways to let as many people as possible know what is happening on your website or your online store.

Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/976529

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