It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have and how benevolent you are, you can give things away for free, you can raise money for great causes, you can hold people’s hands but everyone at sometime needs to make a living.
The baker puts bread on your table, not to feed your family but to feed his own!

I am sure, if you own a bakery or a grocers then online marketing is not so important but if you have a product or service that has a website at it’s heart then you need to know how to drive traffic, create a contact list and to make sales.

Ok, so you have a great website that showcases your products or services or you have signed up for an online, work at home business that has provided you with their propriatory website to promote – what next?

It doesn’t matter what kind of online or offline business you have, if you sell from a website then you need to get it out there to the right target audience.

Not many of us are really clever enough to know, for sure, who will buy from us, I promise you, I have had many surprises! But somehow we need to work out how to get our business in front of buying customers. So a scatter gun approach is not really the way to do it, you need to target the right people.

So how do you recruit people to an online business. How do you get people to come to your website?
Online? Offline? Cold calling? Friends and family?

Let’s look at Friends and Family first.
If you want to lose friends then pitch to them, the same with family members. I don’t know about you but I would hate it if my loved ones avoided me because they felt guilty for not buying into my business! So that is a definite “no no”.

Cold calling? Hey! I’m into this online gig because I want to enjoy it, I want a better quality of life and cold calling just does not do it for me! So, for me, that’s out too.

Offline – now here’s a thing – yes it can work, even for an online business. You could:

1. Get out there to your local business networking events.

2. Build relationships with local business owners to encourage referrals.

3. Take stands at exhibitions.

4. Advertise in the newspapers.

5. Give out flyer’s in shopping malls and markets.

6. Carry business cards for those chance encounters!

Then there’s ONLINE.
Now this is where your marketing can really rock!

Here are my 5 very best online marketing tips.

1. Any good at writing?
You don’t have to be Jeffrey Archer but a good clear blog with all the right keywords can be a fantastic marketing tool.
The article should not be about your business but about something helpful for the reader. Of-course it should be linked to your business, for instance if you are a garden landscaper then an article or blog about growing roses would be good but a blog about baking a chocolate cake may not be.
You need to engage with the reader, they need to see you as a leader and expert.
Once you have constructed your blog or article you then need to add a clear succinct signature at the bottom, this is very important for obvious reasons.

I know what you’re asking….what do I do with my blog once it is finished?

Well if you have a blog section on your website then that is ideal as readers can click to your website to read the blog.

You would open your blog on your website, copy the URL or address and add that link along with a catchy intro like:
An easy way to bake a chocolate cake – if you love chocolate you’ll love this – http://www……
You would add it to places like Facebook, Twitter, Ecademy, LinkedIn etc that’s assuming that you are a member of all these social sites, if not why not???

If you have written your blog on someone else’s website, like Blogger, Ezines or another blogging platform like my site for business women, TheBusinessWoman then you need to make sure that all your website details are in your signature.

2. Twitter!
I know a lot of people think that Twitter is a waste of time well, I promise you that it is not, if you do it right.
A daily tweet containing great advice to followers who are your target audience can really boost your profile. If you have a good profile then people will see you in a good light and are more likely to buy from you. If you read my blog, How to market on Twitter, you will see how you can make Twitter really work for your business.

3. Facebook Fan Pages.
Create a fan page with the same name as your business then set to work making friends and then inviting them to become fans of your page. Once you have a reasonable amount of members you can create a badge to upload onto your website. This creates a sense of community and will give confidence to your website visitors. Of-course you also have your fans to market to as well.

4. Relationships.
Join groups and forums to get to know people, (not to pitch to them), once they get to know you they will eventually ask you what you do and then you can get away with a subtle pitch.

5. LinkedIn groups.
Join the groups on LinkedIn, you are allowed upto 50 group memberships. Of-course you need to find groups of people who would be interested in your sector and will be beneficial to you as well. Then once in a group you can upload your articles or blogs to their discussion pages. These are then sent out by the system to the group members in update e-mails. Some of the groups have memberships of thousands of people each so your one article alone can get you enormous exposure.

Pat Sutton – Internet Marketing Specialist – Official Blog Site http://www.PatSutton.com
Business Mentor with LifePath Unlimited – http://www.ThisBusinessRocks.com

How to market your website so that people buy from you!

A Retweet allows Twitter users to share their favourite tweets with their own followers.
So if someone has 10,000 followers and they like one of your tweets and they retweet it, then it will go out to all of their followers, good eh!

It is done by copying and pasting the original tweet and sending it out. It’s usual to put “RT” plus the originator’s username at the beginning of the tweet. Here’s an example:

RT@thebizwoman: How to monetize your blog!

Obviously, if you regularly tweet great content then people will pick up on it and retweet you. They will also retweet you if your tweets are relevant to them or even, dare I say it, complementary.

A good way to get people to retweet you is to ask to be retweeted.
This works really well if your tweets are for a good cause or are likely to be helpful to your follower’s audience.

Here’s an example:

Entrepreneurs – learn how to monetize your blog PLEASE RETWEET ME!

This is only about 66 character; very important if you don’t want retweets with clipped off ends as you are only allowed a total of 140 characters in your tweets.

It is always better to simplify the procedure for your retweeter.
There is a great little application called PleaseRT.me – http://pleasert.me/
You add your tweet and it makes you keep it short then it adds a plea for a retweet at the end of your message, (I’m saying “message” because I’m fed up of saying “tweet”), which your follower can then click on to easily retweet without all the copy and pasting.
You can try it out now by retweeting this post.

Let’s face it if you don’t ask you don’t get!

Pat Sutton – Official Blog, http://www.patsutton.com

Retweet – What does it mean and how important is it!

Thank you to all the people who have e-mailed me and commented on my websites about my first Twitter article. Here is a link to it, if you would like to read it again:
http://patsutton.com/index.php/archives/154

I am so pleased that you all found it so useful. With that in mind I have decided to write a sequel by way of your questions answered, hope you find it just as useful?

Here are some of the questions you have asked me:

1. What do I tweet about?
It is important not to be self serving. If you want people to follow you and to re-tweet you then the magic word is “quality”.
As an example: A gardening company would tweet about the best way to keep your grass nice and green or the easiest way to grow marrows…get the drift? Of-course, don’t forget to include where the tweet has come from. If you have a long website name then shorten it at “bitly.com”. If you are promoting a blog or website, try asking a question or excite them by announcing something new happening; you will find that more people will click through if they are curious.

2. The direct messages from people thanking me for following or just saying hello – should I answer them?
If, like me, you have a number of Twitter accounts then it would be a full time task to answer all your direct messages. I do sift through them and answer ones that are of interest but I am afraid that we are victims of our own actions – a lot of the messages that come into my inbox are automated so it can be a fruitless excersise and will fall on deaf ears I am afraid.

3. Is there a platform where I can manage all my Twitter accounts together?
Yes, there are many…I use Hootsuite which I believe is the best – you can add as many accounts as you want and you can tweet right out of the program to all or any of your accounts with just one press of a button. It also has the facility to feed your Blog or articles automatically to your Twitter stream.

4. Is it OK to ask questions of my followers?
Absolutely yes. I have asked many business related questions and had some really helpful replies. The best one was when I was told by my doctor that I had a slightly under active thyroid. He said that if I started medication I would probably be on it for the rest on my life. He told me that it is possible to treat the illness with natural therapies and change of diet so he advised me to give the natural route a go before resorting to medication.
After fruitless searches on Google I decided to ask my Twitter following on my “WomenSpeakBiz” account. I was in-undated with replies and helpful suggestions, it was overwhelming.

5. How do I know if people are mentioning my Tweets?
You can use “Twitter Search” you will be able to search for your Twitter name. It is not a bad idea to contribute to the conversations occasionally.
If you use TweetLater, (mentioned in my “How to Market On Twitter” blog), you can subscribe to a digest. They will send an e-mail to you every time someone mentions you or re-tweets your tweet.

6. Is there a more targetted or better way to follow people?
Yes there is, it is called Twellow!
Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people. The beauty of Twellow is that you can search by name, demographic, sex, business, geography, industry or just keyword.
As a Twitter user you are probably already on there but, it is a good idea to register. If you register then you will be able to update your profile and add yourself to categories so that people can find you easily.
I found the geographical search great as I have a social network based in Warwickshire, Uk and I wanted to follow people in the Warwickshire area so that they would, hopefully, follow me! Once they did follow me, my direct thank you message to them would subtly mention my social network and …. Bob’s you’re uncle, my Warwickshire Network would start to populate nicely!

7. What if I want to write more than the 140 character limit?
You have a platform called TwitWall. If you already have a Twitter account, all you need to do is to login to TwitWall using your Twitter userid and password.
Twitwall is a sort of Blogging companion to Twitter. Your submissions can be less formal than a blog but more comprehensive that a Tweet. Every time you write something on TwitWall it will feed onto Twitter complete with a link to your full entry. It is a great way of getting longer messages out quickly.

So why do we use Twitter?
Relationship building, profile building, sharing ideas, marketing, getting answers, staying connected, news, staying up to date, direct messaging, communicating……..
Can you think of more?

Pat Sutton is a professional blogger her website is http://www.patsutton.com

How to market on Twitter 2