Rather than using your Twitter and Facebook accounts in total isolation from the rest of your internet business, think about using them as complements.

It’s likely that your web 2.0 accounts and your web sites and blog were created at different times.

So you probably did not have the big picture in the beginning, and you did never plan how to interconnect these different ‘points of contact’ for your prospects and customers.

It is a good idea, though, to do exactly this: connect all your sites and web 2.0 profiles in a useful way. Deepen the connection with your visitors by giving them more ways to stay in touch with you.

For example, it has become common on news channels to refer watchers to company and reporter Facebook profiles and Twitter profiles.

The reason for this is simple: by getting people to follow them through social networking sites, those news stations gain yet another point through which they can advertise and engage watchers.

You can cross promote too:

• If you do print advertising, you might consider using it to channel traffic to your social networking site profiles.
• You can add a badge for your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever account to your web sites and blog.
• You can pull your blog’s newsfeed to your web 2.0 accounts.
• You can add links to your web sites and blogs to your web 2.0 accounts.

If you use this strategy, you can significantly boost the results from your marketing campaigns by sending visitors to your network of web 2.0 properties.

This will allow you to capture visitors by getting them to join your network, so that you can repeatedly pitch to them (rather than only once) in a low-pressure atmosphere.

Unfortunately, marketers often approach web 2.0 with the wrong attitude.

They hope that by simply creating a Twitter account, adding every person who is willing to follow them, and spamming blatantly commercial messages, they’ll make money.

In fact, this is one of the worst ways to make money with a social network, as potential buyers will see through it easily; and will choose to opt out.

On the other hand, marketers often miss the great opportunities that Twitter presents…

…such as doing market research.

In the past, it was very hard to observe your customers when they talked casually about your products or about competing products; however, this is exactly what you can do with Twitter.

In Web 2.0 Marketing Tip #7 I recommended that you use the Twitter search engine to find Tweets related to your business niche. The idea was to find people suitable as followers, or people to follow.

Today’s idea is to use Twitter search on your topics as part of your research about your business.

Regarding your own business you could search for keywords like:

• your name.
• your business / company name.
• your web site’s names and URLs.
• your product’s names.

Regarding your broader market use Twitter search for:

• names of competitor’s names, companies, products, and web sites.
• keywords related to your niche and to the problem your products solve.

Find out what people are talking about that matters to your business on Twitter!

Another approach you can take is to use the Twitter search engine to find Tweets related to your business’s niche. This is an easy way to locate people who might be interested in your products or services.

Once you have located some Tweets related to your niche, you can follow them back to the source, determine whether the person involved might be interested in your niche, and then invite them to follow you if so.

Initially, a lot of people you add may opt not to follow you; however, over time, if you accumulate 50 new followers each day, you’ll gain momentum. If you make interesting tweets, offer coupons, or tweet vital information, you might get re-tweeted, expanding your reach and possibly bringing in new followers.

You could try it out right now by going to Twitter.com, signing in to your account and doing a search for some important keywords related to your business.

As with any marketing campaign, you should monitor your Twitter promotional campaigns by tracking the results.

One free way to do this is to use http://search.twitter.com/ to find all instances of people talking about you or your business on Twitter.

Another tool you can use is called Tweet Beep: http://tweetbeep.com/. This service will automatically email you whenever something about you or your business is Tweeted.

Finally, you can check your website’s analytics/traffic statistics program to determine how much traffic you have received from Twitter.

If you don’t currently have a good traffic statistics program, you can get one for free from here: http://www.google.com/analytics. It will tell you where all your visitors come from, including those that come from your Twitter profile or your Facebook fan page.

Another interesting thing to track is if links in your tweets get clicked and how often.

I’m using http://hootsuite.com for this. It has lots of useful features for professional Twits.

If you’re into web 2.0 marketing, there’s no doubt you need a Twitter profile.

First go to http://twitter.com and look around.

Once you are familiar with the site, go to the sign up page (https://twitter.com/signup) and create one or more accounts. (See Web 2.0 Marketing Tip #1)

Once you have setup your Twitter.com account, it is critical that you spend some time to personalize your profile.

If you do not do this you will be perceived as spammer when you ask Twitter users to follow you.

When it comes to setting up a personalized profile on Twitter, there’s not much to do. It’s very easy and takes only 5 minutes.

All you have to do is

1. Login to your Twitter account and go to your Twitter settings page.
2. select a pre-existing background (or create a customized one),
3. select your avatar thumbnail photo,
4. then fill in some short “bio” and “about me” information,
5. and of course add your internet business web site URL.

As far as your avatar goes, it is probably a good idea to use the logo for your internet business; and it may also be a good idea to create a custom background that also includes your logo.

Regarding the bio section create a bio section that briefly explains

1)    what your business does; and

2)    what the purpose of this Twitter profile is (i.e. to give away free stuff, to hold contests, or to provide free information).

Now that you’re ready to enter the world of web 2.0, it’s important for you to spend some time carefully thinking about your web 2.0 identity.

Before you create a Twitter account, launch a Facebook fan page, and begin to market your business through web 2.0 channels you need to know what image you want to project.

The first thing you will want to do…
…is decide whether you should market your business

• as your business,
• as yourself,
• or as both.

Each of the three options has benefits, but it is ultimately up to you to decide which will work best for your particular situation.

Once you have selected your route, you should create accounts on web 2.0 sites and setup a profile that reflects your choice.

For instance, a Twitter account for your business should focus exclusively on business activities—and not your personal life.

1. an inexpensive, entry-level product,
2. a sales page, and
3. a check-out system.

All you need to do now to make more cash is direct additional traffic to it.

While posting on Myspace Forums was a good way to start, there are still a lot of options available for traffic generation.

One such option is Twitter.

If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s a social networking service that allows you to add and remove friend as you would on Myspace or Facebook.

The difference is that the main purpose of Twitter is to send out 140-character “tweets” to your friends; and, in return, to read what they are tweeting about.

Of course, Twitter can also be used to make emergency cash.

1. To do this, you’ll need to start by creating an account if you do not already have one.
2. After that, you will want to begin adding people who might be good targets for your sales campaign. You can do this by searching to see who is tweeting about topics related to your product. You can then add them.
3. After a week or so, if you worked diligently, you will have hundreds of followers.
4. What you should do next is begin making tweets that do not directly pitch your product. Instead, they should simply communicate interesting and useful information about your product niche.

Your goal in this whole process is to spur some interest in your twitter profile.

There you will place a link to your salespage. That’s right: instead of using your profile to conduct a massive pitchfest, you will use it to draw people in naturally, so that they view your profile on their own terms—and then decide whether to buy.

5 minutes ago I uploaded a custom background to my Twitter profile.

http://twitter.com/RalfSkirr

I’m using it now to add a blog news sidebar to my Twitter page.

You can do the same with your own Twitter profile. Login and use the menu to go to:
Settings - Design - Scroll down to ‘Change background image‘.

There you can upload any image from your computer as new background.

At Twitter ‘going viral‘ usually means that your Tweet gets re-tweeted by others. The more ‘generations’ of re-tweeting a post of yours gets, the more people will see your message.

The author, Dan Zarella, unveils his detailed research about:

1. What phrases work best as ‘call to action’ to make your Tweets go viral?
2. What is the best time to post your viral Tweets?
3. What’s the most important thing your post needs for best chances to go viral?
4. How to increase your rate of ‘virability’?
5. What types of content make the Twits fall in love with you and get them to re-tweet?

It’s really a great article, very focused and with clear instructions how to make your marketing messages on Twitter successful.

Read it here:
http://www.copyblogger.com/go-viral-on-twitter

Does internet marketing work? The short answer to this question is yes, but there are plenty of fantastic examples of how it works.

A good one is to consider the election of Mr. Obama.

Regardless of whether you are from the U.S. or not, and no matter what side of the ticket you were rooting for, one thing has to be said. Mr. Obama’s ability to use Internet marketing, including internet marketing methods, helped him win this election, according to many professionals.

Mr. Obama’s campaign is the most successful internet marketing campaign ever conducted.

The e-strategy blog called his campaign “The Perfect Political Storm”.

They wrote:

His brilliant use of the Internet and his get-out-the-vote efforts will be studied as a textbook example not so much of a multichannel marketing campaign as an every channel campaign. The campaign will be studied within the political world for bucking history and actually getting young voters to cast their vote.

Obama used the many, many tools in Internet marketing to help him to win his election because he and his campaign moreover knew the importance and success it could bring.

The world goes to the web to learn what it needs to, in today’s culture. More so, the Internet provides an easy, affordable way to reach millions of people every single day. No other medium offers this.

How did Obama use internet marketing to win the Presidential Election of the United States?

Using internet marketing tools, websites, and even things like GoogleAds helped him to make it happen.

First of all he had his own website.

http://www.barackobama.com

Besides giving information about his campaign the very purpose of this site was (and still is) to get people to subscribe to his email newsletter.

Once you do this you’ll get regular promotional emails. And most often you will be asked to support him with donations.

Before you enter his web site you are forced to see the name squeeze page. (If the president elect can do it, then you can do it too to build a list of prospects.) The design and content of the squeeze page changes often, but the purpose is to get visitors to part with their email address.

Social Networking For The Campaing

Next he (or rather his campaign) created a Barack Obama profile on ALL major networking web sites. That includes the 2 most used web 2.0 sites that we people from the so called ‘Internet Marketing Niche’ are using and promoting: Twitter and Facebook.

Barack Obama on Twitter

In fact, http://twitter.com, a useful tool that allows individuals to put out a 140 character message about what they are doing right now was used by Mr. Obama as one of the many methods of internet marketing.

By gaining a huge following and communicating through them in short clips, he could converse with everyday people, put his message out and do it all without spending a penny for it.

http://twitter.com/barackobama

At the time of writing this, January 5 2009, Barack Obama has a following of 154,537 people on Twitter.

I’m working on it too, hehe. I ‘collected’ my first follower on Dec 27 2008 and today, 9 days later, I’m at 946 followers.
http://twitter.com/ralfskirr

Barack Obama on Facebook

Another example of this is Facebook. Everyone on the web knows that Facebook.com is a haven for younger generation individuals who like to find each other and chat. The trend has grown. In fact, businesses, politicians, and even employers are using it as a tool to connect with others. Mr. Obama’s Facebook page was yet another form of internet marketing that helped him to get his message out.

http://presby.facebook.com/barackobama?q=barackobama&ref=ts

You wouldn’t believe it, he’s already set his eye on the significant year 2012.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BarackObama2012/40275089374

And here’s me again. http://www.facebook.com/people/Ralf-Skirr/1019486454?

There’s A Marketing Lesson To Be Learned…

I’m not throwing my own accounts in for promotional purpose only. I’m throwing it in to bring your attention to a very important fact:

You and I are nowhere near the multi million dollar budgets Barack Obama’s campaign had, right?

Yet the very cool thing is – we can use the very same web sites that powered his campaign and it doesn’t cost a dime.

I have my own Twitter and Facebook account just like the President elect has, and you can do it too. It’s on a smaller scale, but that’s a good thing because your personal or business goals are on a smaller scale too.

We’ll come back to that in the next part of the IM Strategy series.

Barack Obama’s Personal Blog

Just like many small business internet marketers he’s keeping a blog too:

http://www.barackobama-2012.blogspot.com/

As you can see, there are excellent ways that internet marketing works. For most of the general public, you aren’t trying to win the presidential election. Nevertheless, these tools can still be used to help virtually anyone to gain success in getting traffic to their website.

Here’s just a few of the profiles Obamas internet campaign has created. You could – as part of your own internet marketing strategy – make use of the same networks.

Barack Obama on Facebook
http://presby.facebook.com/barackobama?q=barackobama&ref=ts

Barack Obama on MySpace
http://www.myspace.com/barackobama

Barack Obama on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/barackobama

Barack Obama on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom

Barack Obama on Digg
http://digg.com/users/ObamaforAmerica

Barack Obama on Twitter
http://twitter.com/barackobama

Barack Obama on Eventful
http://eventful.com/performers/barack-obama-/P0-001-000000162-8

Barack Obama on Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama

Barack Obama on Eons
http://www.eons.com/members/profile/barackobama

Here’s an excellent visual representation that illustrates Obama’s campaign.

It’s worth checking out, you could easily create a similar map for your own campaigns. Pay special attention to the social networking illustration on the right.

See it in full size as PDF.

That’s it for today, tomorrow we’ll finally reveal the 3-step-internet-marketing-strategy. We’ll explore these three parts and find out how you can put them to use no matter what type of Internet marketing business you have.

As usual: Your Comments Are Welcome…