Social Media and Social Marketing really is a new frontier on the Internet. There are so many ways you can use the major sites like Facebook, YouTube, EzineArticles, your blog, and Twitter. You are only limited to your imagination and creativity.
I continue to get a kick out of the people who say that Social Marketing is just a waste of time on the Internet. Didn’t someone once say that they could only see the need for a handful of desktop computers? We all know how that one turned out, right?
The power of the testimonial
If you want to sell a product or service, we all know that you have just got to have testimonials, right? Testimonials elicit the power of social proof. In other words, You could say your product is great, and some might believe that to be true. But many would remain skeptical, thinking that of course it is easy to say your product is great.
But when other people say your product or service is great, those statements become much more believable. Social proof is one of the most powerful forces in advertising. Why else would they put other people in ads? Especially famous people who have nothing at all to do with the product. This is the power of social proof.
Social Proof Meets Social Marketing
Now let’s take a closer look at the combination of social proof and social marketing on Twitter. There are two easy ways to find out what people are saying about you and your products and services on Twitter:
1) On the right hand side of your Twitter profile page you will see a set of navigation choices, They start with “home” and are followed by “@YourName” When you click on “@YourName” you will see all the tweets that included “@YourName” in them
2) Also on the right hand side is a search box. You can type in your name there and see all the times your name is mentioned without the “@” symbol.
How to Capture Your “Tweet-imonials”
When you see someone tweeting a positive comment about you and your products and services, there is an easy way to “capture” what is being said. Next to each tweet, on the right hand side, is a little button shaped like a star. When you want to save a tweet-imonial just click on that button and that tweet goes into your favorites tab in the navigation on the right hand side of your Twitter page.
How to Leverage Your “Tweet-imonials”
There are at least to great ways to leverage and get the most out of your tweet-imonials:
1) When you collect tweet-imonials by “starring” them, they will all show up in your Favorites link on your Twitter page. So when someone comes to your page and clicks on Favorites they will see all the good things said about your products and services.
2) Copy and paste the tweet-imonials onto sales pages and other pages in your website or blog. For this I would recommend getting permission from the person that said it.
Now you are leveraging your social marketing to create social proof which creates more profits for you.
The most important thing to remember when you’re setting up a website to sell your eBook, or any other product, is to build your list community. When you build your list community, you are building an asset, a database you can market to over and over again with products, services and information they need.
Your effective Ebook selling webpage should have only one option; you don’t see any links going anywhere else. The only option to give is for a person is to exchange their first name and primary email address for something of value. Your website isn’t about making an immediate sale, ot’s about building a list community.
A few more tips for your simple product selling website:
Be sure your headline speaks to your audience’s problem. Many times, websites talk about the author, or the product creator, but do not address how the site or the product can help solve a person’s problem. People buy solutions to their problems. Address how you can help solve people’s problems.
Give something away for free. Your web page is a “Get My Free Stuff” page where you’re giving people only one option, to opt-in , or join your list community for the free giveaway. So what’s a good example of a free giveaway web page? It doesn’t really matter what you’re giving away, you can give away a video, a special report or a top 10-list, just be sure it adds value to your audience. Do not be afraid of giving your content away.
Try different ways to grab attention. Don’t just use text in your website, use images, audio and video. I love using video in my opt-ins and my sales pages and I encourage trying them but always remember to test. Testing is the only way to truly know what is working best on your website and for your particular audience.
This kind of simple and effective web page is what you want to send people with all of your different traffic-generating activities, such as writing articles, speaking, live meetings, sending people to your free giveaway website during interviews. Once a person joins your list community by opting in on this simple webpage, you can then market your ebook or other product on the thank you page, in your autoresponder or in your newsletter.
This is one of the biggest frustrations I hear when people want to start an online information product business. Many people get stuck trying to determine what and how much to give away. They see everyone giving things away and wonder how to create a sustainable business this way.
“But everyone is giving everything away for free on the internet, I can’t make any money doing that!”
This is actually not the case with people who are being successful with an online information business. Let’s take a closer look at how to let this misconception stop you before you even begin.
How to stop before you even start
Look around at online entrepreneurs in your niche and feel discouraged that they are giving everything away. Convince yourself that there is no future in starting and growing a successful website with your product ideas.
Go back to your job and feel resentful when you see another person being successful online.
Look back in 10 years and realize you had a golden opportunity to be the architect of your own destiny.
How to begin the right way
Successful online entrepreneurs are not giving everything away. They are only giving away part of their information. Here are three of the six important steps to creating your information product and where to find the part you do give away.
First, write out your story. This is your experience, your credentials (if any) and why you became interested in what you are teaching.
Second, write out your Why Outline. This is a list of 5 -10 reasons why your potential audience would want to learn what your product is about. This is where you get your free stuff that you give away to build your list community. This also becomes a sales tool because in it you’ll offer your prospect the whole How To Recipe.
Third, write out your actual How-To Recipe. This is your particular process, your step-by-step instruction and this is what you get paid for.
So begin with these 3 steps today to create an information product out of your information, knowledge and experiences.
Realize that there is effort involved. You don’t just put up a website and create a product and become an overnight success.
You grow an online business just like anything else, with persistent, daily actions and keeping your eyes open to the opportunities rather than the obstacles. As I sit here in my Pjs about to teach a class from the comfort of my own home, I can tell you the rewards are worth it.
One of the greatest benefits of Article Marketing is the ability to direct traffic where you want it to go. I call this “Traffic Independence.”
The Hope Strategy
I see many internet marketers do a very strange thing. They wait until their traffic is down and then decide to do something about it. In a mild panic they wind up playing “traffic and marketing a la carte” and just pick something off the traffic and marketing menu, throw a lot of money at it, and hope something works.
Not the best strategy in the world for a sustainable and profitable long term business.
The Traffic Independence Strategy
Their is an Indian saying that goes something like this:
“Dig the well before you are thirsty.”
What this means for traffic is you need to be generating traffic before you need it and on a consistent basis. This is what you can do with article marketing.
One of my sources of traffic and list building is doing joint ventures with other online entrepreneurs, most often in the form of trading teleseminars. This is a great way to create traffic and build your list. The only downside is you are depending on someone else to do their job. While the vast majority do, some don’t.
When you write and market articles you are using the traffic independence strategy. Craft a great quality article with a title that pulls the reader in. Deliver good content that gives your prospect at least one gold nugget of immediately usable and actionable information. In your resource box invite them back to your web site for more great information from you in exchange for their email address. Then in your links send them where you want them to go.
Do this over and over again, stacking one good quality article upon another, and you will have traffic independence.
Once you have created an eBook out of your articles, you can quickly and easily repurpose and repackage it into an ecourse. All it takes is the following three steps:
1. Break each chapter into an ecourse episode
You break each chapter into an e-course episode. In other words, it’s one autoresponder message for each chapter, for each tip. You want to have both in your arsenal of products. You want to have e-books and you want to have e-courses.
With an autoresponder, this is how you create it. The reason I said not with a simple one is because a simple autoresponder technically means something that sends one message, like when you send an email to someone and you get back a message that says, “I’m on vacation for the next two weeks.” That’s a simple autoresponder set up to send one message.
With the sequential autoresponder, what you’ve got set up is a way to send a series of messages. You could set up an e-course where they get a new message or a new chapter every week to take action on. So over time they’re taking action. You break it up into separate e-course episodes with one autoresponder message for each chapter.
2. Sponsor each installment
This is something most people don’t do, and if you don’t do this, folks, I promise you, you are leaving money on the table. You sponsor each episode, whether this is a free e-course, which is how you can make money with free e-courses, or a for fee e-course.
In the beginning of the text in the autoresponder message you can just put in some kind of brackets like this:
===========================================
Today’s installment sponsored by (and then you say who it’s sponsored by)
===========================================
Make sure it’s related to what you’re doing, whether it’s yours or another affiliate. Don’t leave that money on the table.
3. Create a follow-up email series
This is the second thing people fail to do with ecourses and it’s just silly to fail to do this. Create a follow up email series. Why stop with the 7 you promised them? Why not add a bonus episode? Surprise them, give them a little extra. With autoresponders and ecourses it is very easy to over deliver to your prospect or customer.
Article marketing works best when you have a high volume of articles. One of the best ways to increase your article volume is to write about myths in your niche, the things people believe that are just not true.
But how do you discover the myths in your niche?
How to identify myths in your niche
Here are three strategies to identify myths in your niche.
1. What are the commonly held mis-beliefs in your niche?
One of the ones in my niche is that you can’t make money with articles. You can’t make money with article marketing. I love that myth. I love busting that myth.
Step back and consider. What are the ones in your niche that are commonly held misconceptions or commonly held beliefs?
2. What questions are you frequently asked by your list community, your members, your clients?
What questions are you frequently asked that reveal a myth? Those of you that have been following me for a while know I laugh every time somebody asks me about duplicate content because of the big myth about how deadly it is and what you’ve got to do to avoid it.
A lot of times in frequently asked questions, there is a myth in there that you can pick up and exploit for the good of you and for the good of your clients, giving them the right information and demonstrating that you’re in fact an expert in your field.
A little known way to discover myths
3. Pay attention to the questions asked by other people on teleseminars and at live, in-person seminars that reveal a myth.
Many times when I speak at conferences or go to conferences, one of the things I’m listening for are the questions that come from the audience.
Those are great articles. Those reveal a lot of myths and that’s even a great place to discover products in your niche. What are the questions that people are asking? What do they need?
You can build products, articles, content, and teleseminars all around that. They will also reveal different myths and misconceptions that you can write about and show your expert ability.
Forging new paths always involves trust. How many times have you given up wonderful experiences and opportunities because of doubt and fear? Even when you were first inspired to grab those experiences and opportunities, sometimes you let the fear and doubt take over. You let those negative emotions change your mind.
You decided not to take the opportunities and experiences life put in your path. Like talking to a certain someone, taking a lower paying job that you would have loved more (which probably would have led to something better because when you do what you love, the abundance follows), failing to tell someone you love them, not doing something you’ve always dreamed of that’s “out of your comfort zone”?
We’ve all done it, but if you want to create the life you desire, you’ve got to cultivate trust in yourself. By being aware of your inner self talk, you do have the ability to turn the momentum around. You can let the Universe bring the perfect people, wonderful opportunities into your experience. You just have to TRUST the Universe and open your eyes to what it’s bringing you. And then not allow the fear to get in the way.
Decide to TRUST a little bit more, and doubt a little bit less.
Think of what you DO want to create in your life as a seed that you’re planting. You have to water it with your trust, your belief, and your faith. Feed the trust with positive attention and actions and see what wonderful experiences and opportunities you create!
Deciding to live big and follow your dreams is scary, not just for you but for people around you who are allowing fear and doubt to control them. Remember to water the seeds of your dreams with positive nutrients so they can flower into something beautiful.