With all the social media platforms on the Internet, it must be getting harder for small business owners to remain competitive. The revolution of personal profiles swiftly evolved to video sharing profiles and floodgates that paved way for Internet users to have at least 400 social media platforms at hand. Any online marketer can identify the value of social media advertising on the free platforms. However, online business marketers must have a targeted and strategic approach to social media advertising to combat limited time and broad options. Hence, they need to develop a social media advertising procedure composed of sites that Web site owners, advertisers and business owners must have to run a successful advertising campaign. So far there are six indispensable social media platforms and these are:

1. Linked In – One of the most popular business profile sites. It has a favorable rank in search engines and is an outstanding platform for sending activity updates. When optimizing your site profile, select at least one keyword you would like to be identified with. If you use it habitually without compromising consumer experience, you can watch your profile escalate on the search engines.
2. Facebook – Facebook does not have any ranking in search engines as it is a closed community; however, it is the ideal choice if you want to have a personal online profile. Using your business keyword for optimizing your Facebook profile can be a valuable marketing effort. Use one keyword to identify yourself with and include some personal distinction but avoid putting too much personal information.
3. MySpace – Unlike Facebook, it is an open community and has outstanding rank in search engines. MySpace allows any form of online enterprise to accomplish fully developed and well-rounded profiles. On top of using a keyword, you can search your target audience and generate an incredible network.
4. YouTube – We can all bet this is the most popular video sharing platform. It is one of the best mediums to generate a viral marketing campaign. YouTube is one of the great ways to make other site owners link to your website. Each video you make is an opportunity to optimize a different keyword. Include at least one keyword in each title and description portion.
5. Blog – A blog must be at the top of everybody’s list when creating a social media platform. Blogs can offer distinctive advantages over other social media platforms when it comes to Internet Marketing. Blogs are alluring as they are generally a combination of marketing and education online that most consumers trust. Every blog provides the opportunity to target a new keyword. Use a keyword tool and select one before writing. As it is in YouTube, include your keyword in the title and through your content but never sacrifice consumer experience. Be cautious of repeating a keyword multiple times to avoid spam.
6. Twitter – This is probably the latest craze in the Internet today that certainly ranks in the search engines. It is actually a microblog that limits your posts up to 140 characters only. However, it can be a remarkable tool for your business. Twitter plugins not only allows you to update Twitter but can also be passed on to your other social media platforms such as Facebook. Select just one keyword to be included in all your twitter posts. Also, personalize your Twitter background for a touch of personality.

Combining these six fundamental social media advertising platforms will make your online campaign hit the mark. The touch of optimization in each platform allows your social media to work hand in hand with your PPC campaigns and website to have a significant position in the first page of search engine results.

Social Media act as one of the valuable role in making your business famous and relevant to your desired target market. If you have several social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, De.li.cious and you keep exploring by introducing your product to the market and maybe you are also started to make your own business blog. In doing so, this would be probably a great marketing strategy. You have expanded your network and make some friends. There are several friends on your network are interested into your business services and products and some would offer in helping you spread your business or latest project and campaign.

You are totally overwhelmed by the continuous demand in updating your profile status on your several social networking sites and will stay in touch in the ever flowing conversation stream. If you have already plenty of networking friends, you are feeding with twitter direct messages and Twitter bots from the online marketers offering you strategies and key to increase your income. It seems that you are in a circus of social media, juggle on your Google reader with tweets and pings and Facebook status updates. You are getting quick look of your social media community and started to believe that it really does exist and very effective. There widely several applications and array that are enthusiast in helping you manage and build your social networks. Twitter and Facebook still incredibly powerful once you gets in to handle best practices and know how to manage.

If you are one of the most people with a computer and internet connection these days, you have developed strong marketing strategy towards your business through social media sites. In keeping your social media cool or attractive and, try to make use of the tools available in helping you maximize your efforts and integrate streamline.

The StumbleUpon is considered as the one of the biggest names in social media. Since, this toolbar provides an easiest way in rating the content of the sites, sharing it to several individuals, and even discovering some cool stuff that are quite based on its tastes or interest that can be applied in the sites. Just recently, there’s another service that keep on trudging towards the StumbleUpon social media discovery. This new tool provides a full fledged stumbleupon and twitter toolbar that already be known as StumbleTweets. This StumbleTweets is an extension of Firefox together with the iFrame that entirely give the ability to stumble the Twitter.

Since, the StumbleTweets usually mimics the core features of this StumbleUpon toolbar with some twitter twist. The core function of this StumbleTweets is having the ability to stumble through its links shared in Twitter. By just clicking the logo that been provided will eventually take towards a new random page. Upon arriving to another page, it showed several numbers of retweets that is the author of tweet with the actual tweet itself. The StumbleTweets includes useful sharing feature and retweet button that makes it quite easy of sharing the current tweet and links with its followers. On the other hand, the TwitThis button provides a venue in sharing the page that is quite currently on. One of this StumbleTweets features is to search within its toolbar. In which, this feature does not exist in StumbleUpon.

Aside of that, StumbleTweets came from the form of iFrame toolbar in order to allow the non-Firefox browser access be able to succeed in their social media activity. Although. This iFrame got a far less functionality; it also includes the ability of stumbling, stats the rewteets and even provides the ability to retweet the page that the user is currently viewing. This activity can entirely be activated through searching the StumbleTweets homepage. On the other hand, most of the comparisons of this new tool will eventually be made from the StumbleUpon that is the relevant competitor of Tweetmeme toolbar. This Tweetmeme IFrame can be activated upon clicking on the link from its Tweetmeme homepage that also displays the information of retweets and give a way in order to stumble the links. Using this stumble feature give a good results but Tweetmeme’s advances the retweet tracking technology making its offering quite little useful.

sources: http://mashable.com/2009/05/19/stumbletweets/

*Hoffman also says MySpace is like a bar and Facebook like a BBQ

The founder and current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of LinkedIn.com, Mr. Reid Hoffman, has revealed that in the last two years his company already generated over $100 Million in revenue.

Hoffman’s revelation was confirmed by Michael Arrington of Techcrunch who conducted said interview of one of the internet’s most respected moguls, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland over the weekend.

Arrington’s interview on Hoffman lasted for twenty minutes and mostly focused on the Linkedin founder’s fundraising activities, plans and company revenue.

Hoffman told Techcrunch his company has successfully raise over $100 Million and 80 percent of which is now kept in the bank. He said last year alone Linkedin generated over $73 Million in revenue.

Hoffman said Linkedin has grown tremendously with its membership growth of a million new members every seventeen days. The company, he said, has been profitable for the last two years. With Linkedin’s 350 people working everyday to keep demands meet, the company rapidly increased its professional membership. In fact, for the European market Linkedin managed to get over nine million active members.

When asked by Techcrunch’s Arrington what would the Linkedin owner do with the $80 Million plus in the bank he answered back to just keep them there while economy is doomed. He said its better to have a thick bank account while the economic status of the country is shaky.

Michael Arrington also asked Hoffman how he would be able to differentiate Linkedin from Facebook and MySpace and his answers were and I quote:

“MySpace is like a bar, Facebook is like the BBQ you have in your back yard with friends and family, play games, share pictures. Facebook is much better for sharing than MySpace. LinkedIn is the office.

Meanwhile, during the interview whether there would be merger between Linkedin and Facebook as what rumors online would want to implicate, Reid Hoffman categorically denied merger talks with the Facebook bosses.

It was learned that prior to Reid Hoffman’s successful founding of Linkedin he was the former Executive Vice president of Paypal. He was taking charge then of the Paypal’s business relationships, corporate and business development, banking and government relations.

It was also during his tenure at Paypal that said company successfully made partnership deals with Mastercard, Visa, Intuit and Wells Fargo.

Today, Hoffman is not only the founder and CEO of Linkedin but he is also setting as Board of Directors of Mozilla Corporation and SixApart.

]]> http://www.socialmediawatch.net/index.php/uncategorized/we-have-raised-over-100-million-in-two-years-says-linkedin-founder-reid-hoffman/feed/ 0 http://www.socialmediawatch.net/index.php/popular-social-media-stories/top-5-ways-on-how-to-get-job-through-social-media/ http://www.socialmediawatch.net/index.php/popular-social-media-stories/top-5-ways-on-how-to-get-job-through-social-media/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:28:29 +0000 Baby Jane http://www.socialmediawatch.net/?p=1674

“Planning a job is a little bit hard, you must know what job you want that you think suits your capabilities”

Basically on job plans – you need to develop your cover letter, locating a job place and submit your cover letter or resume to the designated establishment you want and after that, wait for a call and hoping that you are in the right track or there’s a chance for the job you want.

Nowadays, because of competitions and at the same time few jobs available, most of us are depending on the new and latest job search through social media. These 5 ways may help you find the best jobs for you.

1. People Search – In-order to get the “searching people”, you need to search first the top 10 or 5 companies that offers a job and make a direct contact to him or her.

2. Active User on Twitter – Connects directly to the person you want such as employees, recruiters or even the company that you’re looking for. This way, to get a better chance, you need to provide the full information needed by twitter, more chance more job opportunities offers.

3. Active User at LinkedIn (Business Site) – It is one of an online business site. Most of the users here are professionals. To get a job, complete your profile (full information) and starts build your network…

4. Make you own video resume and publish it to youtube – There are about 1,000 results for video resume at youtube and what are you waiting for? Make 1 for yourself.

5. Look for a job listing and subscribe – Check out some here Job-a-matic

Fark is a news aggregator and now one of the sought after social networking news sites in the worldwide web. News sources such as CNN, BBC News, Fox, Reuters, MSNBC, AP Wire, Bloomberg and all other online media news sources are trooping to this site to submit their daily and weekly news updates.

What is interesting about Fark is that if you are a confirmed user you are allowed to post your links as well as to comment on daily news submitted by other news sources. The only thing a user should remember is that any submitted link to Fark is still subject to administrator’s approval.

Fark, according to its founder is not a weblog but clearly a news aggregator and an edited social networking site. What you can see in its homepages are only brief content of the submitted news. However, when you also click the news source’s logo you will be directed to the domain where the news has originated. Even when your information at Fark is not the whole story of the news but through clicking the logo at the left side of the brief content, you will be directed in minutes to the news main domain.

Everyday Fark is receiving more than 2,000 news submissions from which would basically update the site’s loyal subscribers of what’s been going on in the world today. According to its founder, Fark has no meaning at all. It’s not even an acronym. The only idea there is to make Fark known as a news aggregator. The founder want that in the future when people think of Fark they would also think it’s all about news updates in the many communities of the world.

If you would love to monitor the news of the world you can better have the grasp of all these news through Fark. I call it “One-Stop-Shop” at Fark. Would you agree? It would be time consuming to visit these news sources one by one. I’d rather have Fark to save more time.

A top expert on social media has revealed some important ways how to measure your success in doing social media campaigns.

Katie Paine, KDPaine & Partners president said the social media is now taking charge of most of the bloggers and netsurfer’s time. In this way, the impact of how blogs and podcasts are marketed on the web is great if measured properly.

Paine said social media is more of transactional and you can count who visit your web site. This means if you blog about your product or services, you can easily drive traffic with the help of the social media networks.

She said the first step is to define the measurement of success, saying that most PR professionals are not well defining their goals on social media. Although they write blogs and podcasts but those contents were without clear objectives. When doing social media works, Paine said, an objective should be put in place like generating leads or increasing newsletter subscriptions.

The second that the expert is revealing is to define your audience. Many people are thinking that the net is one big happy family or unhappy if we are to know the other side of the coin. The most important thing is to figure out who will take charge of your created content and to measure the impact of visitors.

Paine added that the third way is to define the benefits. She said one should be able to determine the benefit factor because this is also important. Know how you will be able to increase sales and improve your reputation

The fourth way according to Paine is to define your benchmarks. Though we can’t have reliable numbers how many visitors our website has in a day buy your past performance as well as your reputation is a good indicator.

The fifth way that Paine suggested is to select your measurement tools such as Technorati, Sphere and Radian to keep records of your audience as well as how many engages you have in a day or during your campaigns. Using web analytics is also suggested by Paine like Google analytics, Omniture or Web Trends to record the audience actions.

The last method is about Analysis. Paine said research that is not supported with analysis is just like a trivia. You should figure our which social media tools are working better for you. This means you can easily identify which are to be minimized or maximized as far as your campaigns are concerned.

We all know that when Yahoo, Google or MSN places your keywords on page-one is essential for driving traffic to your website. Otherwise, your potential for traffic drops off drastically. But for those who are fortunately already in the top position, there is still something more you can do to secure even more traffic if you want to. Hard-hitting web players are now applying the tactic effectively, and it has to do with possessing more real estate on the results page of the search engine. If you have more of the real estate you will wind up steering further traffic to your website. The best way how is by holding a number of allied websites, and they have the aptitude to work collectively in order to bring in the most search engine real estate and earn from it. To start with, you can expand your real estate website through popular social media mediums such as MySpace, Facebook, Xing, and other business and communal blogs; any means to give their users and clients able to interact and interrelate with the company. Recently, many companies are opting to get underway the entire wiki website shaped around their products. By this, users and clients can generate and donate new content using images, text, video and audio, and employ online discussions with others who share common interests. Related and significant contents are logically optimized, so that regular changes brought about by various users incite search engines to index it. Utilization of wiki can elicit the best for consumers since they know best about the brand they’ll likely prefer than what companies may realize.

Email marketers and email subscribers are prone to meet issues regarding this. Electronic messages are habitually seized and more often than not, sorted inaccurately as spam mails. They are either bounced back to you or returned as delivery failure.

For the people who don’t have direct concern over this or have nothing to do about it merely deem it an ordinary inconvenience and annoyance. But for those whose direct concerns are jeopardized, especially where the message of the email involves an emergency or crisis, service information, billing, or any time-sensitive matters, the result could be terribly frustrating along with the critical consequences you would face.

This is terrible for a marketer because this means lost revenue and assets mislaid. Fortunately, now there are methods to evade the odds of delivery rebounds and decrease the likelihood of crashing into the trouble in the first place. The companies catering to ISPs (Internet Service providers) aim to provide excellent services to their subscribers and clients. Therefore, by earning their trust means securing your position as well. The company usually develops standard protocols concerning unsolicited massive emails. In order to communicate effectively with customers and subscribers, take into account the following: Make your lists and be responsible.

Make sure to remove from your lists accounts that have bounced back as well as requests for unsubscription. Never utilize obsolete distribution lists and spam-trap addresses that only intend to attract spammers and catch them. Keep low levels of complaint; check whether your recipients really want your messages.

The processing of complaints can be automated with the aid of service providers for email marketing that remove unwanted emails from your distribution lists. Be proficient; send only relevant email transfers. Slice distribution lists and tailor your messages each time possible. Make use of SPF or Sender Policy Framework. It is a technology used for email authentication, which can prevent forgery of addresses.

Remember that ISPs strain spam liabilities on your domain name and company, you don’t want to stain your reputation and threaten your IP. By following good practices and forwarding only valid emails, you will be building genuine reputation for your corporation, which will do you best for your future objectives.

There are approximately more than half the number of marketing executives who globally responded to IT as one of the best approaches to support any marketing strategy; this characterizes the fundamental relationship state between Marketing and IT. However, taken from an independent point of view, apparently Marketing and IT are two factors distinct from each other. IT is characterized by its chief command to control over the utilization of all technology. Therefore, exercising cost-cutting and reduction of risks, which seem to be intrinsic concerns in every proposed venture. In contrast, Marketing or the objective of which, generate business expansion, therefore any impediments to that end, no matter how reasonable, do not make a just alternative. In line with this, marketing makes use of the advances in technology because it proves to have made jobs easier.

The process of marketing will always call for a need to stay in tune with IT infrastructure. At a time when these two are independent from each other and each does its own job individually, coping with the ever mounting consumer data seem impossible although bearable, but it somehow served as a principal barrier to improving client and customer exchange. Now, the integration of Marketing and Information Technology have built customer value, and have truly made high-impact revolution and vast changes for trade and commerce worldwide.