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Author Archives: martinbrossman

About martinbrossman

http://www.ProNetworkingOnLine.com
Success Coach / Trainer / Author Learn more on my Linkedin Profile: http://linkedin.com/in/martinbrossman or call me at (919) 847-4757

Resources for Starting an Online Business

August 11th, 2011 | Posted by martinbrossman in on-line Business Tips - (0 Comments)

Business networking sites:

www.linkedin.com – must join – business networking group, free for basic service

www.comeoninside.com – on-line free business networking for businesses within your area code

 

Social networking sites & related resources

Facebook.com – free online community where you can create a business page

Twitter.com – microblogging platform that can promote your business as you give value

www.search.twitter.com – For searching posts on Twitter by subject

Bit.ly – URL shortener with analytics

GooglePlus – google.com/+ free online community by invitation, similar to Facebook

www.HootSuite.com – Manage status updates for several sites at once: Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin

 

Selling Products or Information Online

1shoppingcart.com—add a shopping cart to your website or open an e-commerce store

Kajabiapp.com—create private membership site for your content and sell access to it

 

Social bookmarking :

stumbleupon.com, Digg.com, delicious.com, sharethis.com – allows users to bookmark blog posts and share them with others

 

Blogging Sites:

Blogger.com – Google’s Blogger site – easy to use and can add adsense

WordPress.com – High flexibility blogging resource — can add to your own website

Feedburner.com – Add your blog site to for statistics & distribution

www.blogcatalog.com – Place to list your blog

socialspark.com – place to get others to blog about you or your product

 

Blog Readers / News Aggregators:

bloglines.com – a program to keep track of blog, podcast or any RSS feeds

feeddemon.com by NewsGator – a downloadable reader

 

Tracking your presence on the Web

www.google.com/alerts  – A free service to keep track of the appearances of you or your business on the Web ( use quotes) || www.trackur.com – a more extensive fee-based version

www.SocialMention.com – Free for finding out about conversations in social media

www.infousa411.com – The directory for many directories!

 

Directories:

www.google.com/places/ – Free, make sure you claim your listing

www.infousa411.com – The directory for many directories!

 

Keyword research: gkwords.com and Google.com/trends

 

E-mail marketing

ConstantContact.com—popular e-mail marketing at monthly rate

Icontact.com— another widely used e-mail marketing service, monthly rate

Aweber.com—opt-in email marketing system, monthly rate

MailChimp.com—send out up to 12,000 emails per month free

 

Self Publishing

www.Lulu.com, www.createspace.com & www.CafePress.com

 

Press releases:

www.pr.com and www.prleap.com – free press release sites .

Fee-based services: prsurvival.com, prweb.com, BusinessWire.com and www.prnewswire.com

 

Video:

YouTube.com – allows for your video to be viewed without paying for the hosting

Vimeo.com – a low cost hosting site for longer videos. http://www.footagefirm.com/

 

Photo/ Photo Sharing:

Flickr.com – method of sharing photos with friends & family

Picasa (picasaweb.google.com ) – Google’s own photo-share

Photos and Audio: Bigstock.com & iStockPhotos.com / ccmixter.org

 

Useful Blogs & Podcast:

http://blog.pronetworkingonline.com/ – My blog

www.chrisbrogan.com – Social media guru… has great info on his blog

www.CreateBusinessGrowth.com – Blog about useful info on building your business

www.InquireOnline.com – my podcast with something you can use today.

Blog.lindacraft.com – Linda Craft and Team blog – example of a good business blog

www.marketingpilgrim.com – Andy Beal’s blog

http://usinglinkedin.wordpress.com – Help with using Linkedin

 

Other:

EzineArticles.com, hubpages.com, www.squidoo.com – place to post or submit articles

www.craigslist.org – Free classifieds & more

 

Information and services including Social Media Consulting:

www.ignitesocialmedia.com & www.connectiveinsights.com – Social Media www.ProNetworkingOnLine.com (my business site)

 

Terms to know: Blogs, Podcast , RSS feeds, Blog Reader / News Aggregator,

Social Media, wiki, forum, mashup, social network, widget, vlog, Microblog & Avatar

www.wikipedia.org—a contributed knowledge base where you can look up these terms

 

List compiled by: Martin Brossman – Martin@CoachingSupport.com , (919) 847-4757 – My latest book: Social Media for Business: The Small Business Guide to Online Marketing – available on-line at TheSocialMediaForBusinessBook.com

On Facebook: http://www.FaceBook.com/MartinWBrossman See all my training at http://www.ncsmallbusinesstraining.com

 

Facebook for Business II: Turning Your Customers into Your Sales Force

May 11th, 2011 | Posted by martinbrossman in Courses - SM | Facebook Training - (0 Comments)

Advanced Facebook by Martin Brossman

Prerequisite: Facebook for Business I

This course will teach you how to take your revenue-generating strategies to the next level by converting one-time customers into repeat customers, increasing average order size, and making it compelling for your customers to refer their friends to you.

Topics included:

  • How to run contests and promotions without violating Facebook guidelines
  • Using Facebook paid advertising to discover and tap niche markets
  • Increasing your customer response rate by posting at the right time of day/week
  • Building custom “landing pages” for people who find your web site via Facebook
  • Optimizing your Facebook page for the search engines

We will show you how using these simple techniques can regularly generate word-of-mouth advertising. In Facebook II, it is assumed that you already have a Facebook page set up. Sign up today.

 

Why you cannot use a facebook personal profile as a business page.

April 19th, 2011 | Posted by martinbrossman in Facebook - (0 Comments)

Martin BrossmanAnother question is: Why it does not help your business to use a personal profile as a business page.

First of all using a personal profile as a business page is against the Facebook terms of operation and may at sometime just be shut down with the loss of all  your “friends”. See Facebook’s terms of operation: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php
Here are a few of the statements from this page that relates to this:
– “You will not create more than one personal profile.”
– “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser)”

To understand the difference read what Facebook says about the difference between a personal and business page:
“What is the difference between a business account and a personal account?”
“Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.”
– From Facebook (see link above)

The benefits of having a Facebook Business page:
– Business Pages allow an unlimited number of that can “like” the page while the personal has a cap at 5,000.
– Pages and posts from Business Pages are indexed by search engines like Google.
– You will be appropriate to your customers and not invading their personal space.
Remember they can be clicking ‘Hide’ and you don’t know it.
– You get more stats and info on which content is being viewed, shared and interacted with to produce better content (e.g. 784 Impressions 1.66% Feedback).
– Your FB business page interacts better with the FB paid ads.
– You don’t run the risk of just being shut down and losing all your contacts.
– You can have several administrators with out giving out your personal password.
– People can check out content on your page before they commit to being liking it.
– You don’t have to spend time approving people that want to ‘Like’ it but you still can remove post or ban people.
– A nice business “Like” button can be added to your business page that show people who are their friends already like you business page and other content.

How can you convert your Facebook personal profile to a Business Page?
Terry Crosby has done such a great job explaining it I am just posting the link to his page for you to read.
http://terrycrosbyblog.com/facebooktutorials/facebook-now-allows-users-to-convert-their-personal-profile-into-a-business-page/

The other way is to create a business page off your real personal page (don’t worry all your content will be protected) by:
1) Sign-in under your personal page.
2) Go to: http://Facebook.com/Pages
3) Pick the best fit and set up your business page.
4) Sign back into the personal page that you used as a business page. Tell your “Friends” a number of times that you are moving over with a link to the new page. If they don’t follow then I will bet they are already ignoring the personal page that you used as a business page and don’t worry about it.
5) Have great content worth their attention.

Let me here from you? What have you learned?
– Martin Brossman NCSmallBusinessTraining.com
Here is my FB business profile if you liked this than please ‘like’ my page:
http://Facebook.com/MartinWBrossman

 

 

Advanced Facebook for Business and new items as of 4-17-2011

April 17th, 2011 | Posted by martinbrossman in Facebook - (0 Comments)

Advanced Facebook for Business - Martin BrossmanA few new advanced features and tips re Facebook for Business as of 4-17-2011. Compiled by Martin Brossman

  • > In the status line there is a new status feature to ask questions on your business page. People can put in their answers or add their vote to an existing answer. Here is a link to a Facebook blog explaining it more: The Wisdom of Friends (and Others Too). “Questions will also enable you to cast a wider net. Now, when your friends answer one of your questions, their friends can answer it too.” – Facebook.
  • > Insights used with the analytic on your own website gives you feedback on what people are giving their attention to. Schedule time to look at both, notice the topics that draw interaction; pay attention to what content gets the most responses and the words people are drawn to.  Look at the “Interactions” areas to learn what people are most looking at and responding to. Use this with the keywords people use to find you.”External Referrers” show how people are getting to your page from outside sites. If you find a site other than yours is referring a lot of people, make sure to thank and/or help them. Here is an explanation of Insights from Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1103 Another good resource for understanding Insights: http://www.cloudave.com/11566/more-data-on-facebook-insights/ and http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts/7788-from_data_to_decisions_understanding_facebook_analytics
  • > “Using Facebook as YOUR BUSINESS” feature is a great new tool. You can now speak on other business sites as your business. This is a wonderful way to acknowledge other quality businesses  and make sure your comment is a welcome post, not a hidden advertisement, since that will just make your own business look bad. You can find this on the right side when viewing your own business page.
  • > Getting and selecting a “Username” for your business page. After you have over 25 people that ‘like’ your page you can get your own user name. Make sure to keep it as close to your business name as possible and simple. Then instead of a longer URL address with part of your business name and numbers you will get a simple address like my FB business address: http://Facebook.com/MartinWBrossman (I use my name since that is my business name as well).  Here is a link to FB help that talks about this: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=900
  • >Posting content from your phone to your business page. You can find out how to do this by going to your business page and selecting the “Edit Page” on the upper right side; then select “Mobile” and the email under “With Mobile Email” is the one you want to use from your phone to post content to your business page.
  • >Using Facebook Places for your business if you have a physical location so people can check in. You may also use a in-store QR code to make it easier with a smart phone. “For companies that have a physical location it makes sense to have a Facebook Place in order to track the people who are stopping by your store, office, or venue. As such, Facebook has released a new guide for businesses to learn how to merge Facebook Pages and Facebook Places into a single Page.” From this blog post: http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-places-business-2010-08
  • >Add a ‘Like Box’ to your website so people can see the friends of theirs that ‘like’ your page and it invites them to ‘like’ your business page. Here is the link to get the code to add to your page and make sure you take out the example and add your own FB page: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/
  • Your Business profile picture can be up to 180 X 540 pixels and Facebook will use at 90px by 90px area of the picture as the square photo used when you post. It does not just grab the upper square part so I recommend reading this post for more details:
    http://www.makeitinmusic.com/facebook-photo-strip
  • Places to post your Facebook page for people to find it: Your website before the break; on your insideareacode.com page like inside252.com or inside919.com ; your linkedin profile; make sure to add the address in your shop or on printed content when you say join us on Facebook; and using a QR code to name a few. More important is making sure their is useful content on your page when people come to visit it.

These are a few “Advanced Facebook” topics and tips for businesses using Facebook for business. There are many more and if you have one you like please share it below.
– Martin Brossman http://NCSmallBusinessTraining.com

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