In 2012 Forecast Your Future With a Purpose

Ask almost any online marketer what they wish they could change about their journey and it would probably be something along the lines of better planning. When you’re first starting out, it’s hard to consider your future.

After all, you’re not even sure if you HAVE a future in this industry. You’re still struggling to make your first dollar online. But you do need to have a plan for your business growth, regardless of whether you’re new to Internet marketing, or a seasoned participant.

Where do you see your brand going in the next 2-5 years? Do you even have a brand? Some people start off flitting from one course to the next, without ever considering whether they’re learning something in line with what they hope their future includes.

What if you hate AdSense site creation, but you plunked down $47 for a course that teaches it because it’s been said to help people make an extra $500 a month? That’s a waste for those who have very little intention of growing their business with that business model in the coming years.

You should sit down and plot out a path for your business growth for 2012. Have one year filled with focus and accomplishments. Know where you’re going so you can plan how to get there.

It’s important that you fill your journey with things you like to do. It won’t last long if you dread having to sit down and work on tasks that bore or frustrate you all of the time. This is one of the pleasures of working for yourself – you get to be the boss and give yourself the job titles you want, and delegate the ones that disgust you to someone else.

Fewer people will be scurrying around trying to make ends meet. An emphasis is going to be put on focus and planning, so as a leader, in any niche, you should be teaching this as well – leading by example.

Start with branding. How do want to be known long-term? You can brand under your exact name, or by a pen name – or even a company moniker you create that has that special recognition factor built in.

Once you know how you want that to unfold, work on identifying your key competitors. What are they better than you at? What do you beat them at when it comes to marketing? Being able to recognize your own faults helps you get ahead in the end if you’re willing to implement changes along the way.

Implement changes by looking for cutting edge tactics that are sustainable for the long haul. You want to steer clear of flash in the pan strategies. The year of 2012 is going to see an influx of small business entrepreneurs taking their ideas online. It’s vital that you have the motivation and enthusiasm to win over your target market.

In 2012,  Be Long on Value and Short on Greed

You’re desperate for money. You’ll do anything to make $1,087 by next Monday to get your mortgage paid.   We all understand that.   But keep your ethics intact and realize that short of offering services to other successful marketers, you’re not going to become successful by being greedy.  Whether you are an author who wants (needs) to sell more books, or a local plumber who needs to find more home owners with leaking pipes, learning to give first will be a good start on removing quick cash thinking.

Quick cash thinking is a thing of the past.   Well, it should be.   Many are still clinging to it, but most successful marketers (if you are selling anything, you are a marketer) are fairly honest about how this is something you build up over time by giving value and putting greed on the backburner.

Quit thinking keywords and start thinking, “How may I serve?”   If you follow this formula, the money will automatically come your way because people will inherently trust what you are doing.

Over delivering is a tactic in itself – just not one that creates as much quick money as walking up and pick pocketing someone who’s not paying attention to their wallet (which is what scam artists do online).

How can you create big value in your niche? Start by giving away something to your opt in prospects that really represents the kind of value you want to be known for. No quit, sloppily slapped together reports that aren’t organized or that resemble nothing more than a sales letter.

Make sure your email autoresponder system is queued up with dozens upon dozens of heartfelt communications with your list. Don’t make it cold and pushy. Offer tips in each email you send out. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering, but it should be honest and helpful.

Blog like it’s a friendly, two-way conversation with your prospective buyers. Don’t speak TO them – have a discussion with them. Value their insight as much as you’d like them to value yours.

Visit forums and your competitors’ blogs to see what your target audience is discussing outside of your presence. Bring those topics back to your domain for a dissection by you and input from your readers.

Sometimes, put something together free for your audience “just because.” If everything you put out has a price tag on it, then it speaks volumes about your purpose. No one is saying you should work for free, but most leaders are proving their worth – and you don’t want to build a reputation as someone who squeezes every last penny out of your audience.

Greed is going to be so transparent in 2012 when it comes to online marketing – and a lot of that will have to do with how search engines rank sites because on quality content and sharing among your target audience.

Reach people where they are – on their mobile device!

Your customers read their text messages.

They use social media to find out what their friends are recommending.

Are you using text messaging and social media marketing as part of your outreach to existing and new customers?

If you want to learn more about how you can integrate this into your marketing plans – just call us at 425-222-4955!

Over three million iPad owners already know the truth – that the iPad can be an invaluable tool for personal, school and business use.

Yep – they are sexy and hip.  But the beauty of the iPad isn’t only it’s entertainment value. It’s a “magical’ device that was designed for content consumption. The only place I check mail now is on my iPad because the workflow is 100% simpler then directly in Gmail. It’s faster, it’s easier and it’s better looking too. I can go through 100 messages on my iPad in 5 minutes, whereas it would take me 30 minutes in Gmail.

We do a lot of the market leadership, staying up to date kind of work with Google Reader – subscribing to the relevant feeds in our market, popping over to Twitter to share, writing a quick blog post.  I’m  putting together a Report that will be available shortly that will show you some of the ways you as a business owner can get the most out of your iPad.

In the video below, Ed Dale shares his “intake” workflow – that is, how he takes in the most important information in his niches and gets it out to his marketplace.

He uses the iPad (if you know Ed, that’s no surprise to you).

But even if you don’t (have one or want one) I’d like you to take the 16 minutes to watch this video – because all tools aside, it’s a real-deal peek into what it takes to BE a market leader.

How to take it all in and how to put it all back out there for your crowd and have them coming back for more.

Read between the lines, past the tech (the tech is incredibly sexy though!).

If you are using a Facebook Page to market your business, then please pay attention to this email because Facebook is making changes that directly affect you.

As of March 10th, Facebook is doing away with their “FBML” application. This is the application that allows us marketers to create “custom tabs” or “landing pages”
on our Facebook Pages.

The problem is, once the FBML application is removed you will need to use an iFrame application to create custom landing pages and tabs.

Ready for a slap in the face?

Facebook is NOT providing you with an iFrame application like they do now with FBML.

You will be responsible for creating your own (if you have programming skills) or you will have to choose one of the iFrame app services that exist (most have monthly fees.)

But here’s the good news…

You still have time!

According to our sources at Facebook, if you install the FBML application on your Facebook Page BEFORE March 10th, you are safe until at least the end of the year.

After March 10th, only the “Install Option” goes away.

So even if you aren’t ready to add a Custom Landing Page to your Facebook Fan Page right now, go ahead and add the FBML application to buy yourself some more time!

Reminder:  If you need assistance with your Facebook Fan Page and any features like I’ve described here, don’t hesitate to contact us for assistance.  Social Media is what we do!

So if you are one of those people who have a product to sell online and need a good salesletter, you SERIOUSLY need this product in your toolbox!

Click Here!

While social media like Facebook and Twitter are ‘free’, you have invested time in acquiring your friends, fans and followers.

Back in December I wrote about how you can backup your Facebook profile; and, said at that time I was testing a third party program called Backupify.
http://www.backupify.com/

Backupify is an amazing service which caters to backing up multiple services – Facebook being one of them.  Using Facebook connect, Backupify will regularly save all your photos, friends lists, events, links, notes, and statuses to the cloud.  The free version of Backupify can handle up to 2GB of storage.
Everything is stored on an S3 Amazon server and their privacy policy clearly states that any data you store on Backupify is yours, and they claim no right to it, nor do they look, sell, nor analyze it.  Also, if you’re extra paranoid conscious about safety, it can allow you to hook up your own S3 Amazon server instead of using theirs.

You can set up a Personal account that will protect your personal accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and more for free.  for high volumne or multiple accounts, there are Pro accounts for a nominal monthy fee.

All appears to be working properly though *knock on wood* I’ve not needed to restore any accounts.

As we head into 2011 Social Media becomes more important than ever.

Facebook becomes one of the most powerful forms to advertise on and build a community with.  Even recently it was announced by Matt Cutts – a software engineer with Google – says that Social Media sites will even help effect website rankings.  See what he has to say about that in this video.

I’m not sure how I like it, and I haven’t changed my profile yet – but if you want a preview of the changes before making a decision, take a look here

Preview New Facebook Profile

If you are logged in to Facebook when you view the above link (not required to watch the video and see screenshots) you’ll have the opportunity to click on the green button on the upper right corner of your screen that says:  Get The New Profile

Let me know if you make the change and how you like it!

Lately, I’ve had clients contact to me say that their Facebook Pages have disappeared – and it’s seems that learning how to backup our important social media accounts is a priority.  We’ve all invested time in building our profiles and pages – and think about it – there’s a lot of data we’ve accumulated:  photos, posts, video and CONTACTS.  Our Friends and our Fans!

There are some outside services provided to backup your social media properties – but in this post, I am going to address Facebook only.  I’ll talk about services like Backify in another post after I’ve had time to work with their options.  Backify will allow for multiple social media backup options.

Facebook is rapidly changing and we shouldn’t depend on them to protect our important data.  However, out of the many Facebook’s new features, one of the most useful feature that Facebook has rolled out is the one that allows you to download your complete profile as a backup. This backup includes all your messages, Wall posts, photos, status  updates and profile information. At this moment not all Facebook accounts activated with this feature but once the feature rolls out to your  account, all you need to do is follow the guide below to get your complete Facebook profile backup.

How To Backup All Your Facebook Data And Download It?
First, login to your Facebook account.

After logging in, go to Account Settings using the top right menu.

On the Account Settings page, scroll down to find the option that says, Download your information. Click on the learn more button and then click on the Download button on next page.

After clicking on the download button, Facebook will send you the  download link to the email address associated with your Facebook  account after the backup is ready.

Click on the link sent to your email, enter your Facebook password and click on the Download button to download  the backup zip file that has all your Facebook profile data.

Below is the official video tutorial that explains the above procedure:

I just followed the above procedure and it worked great.  I now have 12.5 M of data stored in a zip folder on my desktop – all my Facebook goodies backed up and safe.

I’d love to hear if you were able to backup your account easily, also and leave a comment below!

I read an article on Wired about a month ago, and thought that adding live chat to Facebook was very interesting.

However, this morning, when I opened my Inbox to literally hundreds of emails that at first were notifying me I had been added to a live chat group then followed by people’s comments who ranged from being happy to outraged they had been added and wanted to know how to get out – started my day with a deeper investigation to what this new option was all about!

Here’s the short story version:

Did you know you can create your own chat rooms in Facebook now?

You can invite your own friends in, find more friends with common interests.

Create own rooms to push your products or review others.

Family friendly, work safe chats.

Here is a link to this new feature:  http://apps.facebook.com/livegroupchat/

Now here is the inside lowdown:

Should you find yourself added to a new chat group that you do not want to participate in, watch this short video explaining how to opt out:

http://www.screencast.com/users/galacon/folders/FB%20Chat/media/5e01a35a-0165-470c-8585-08dfc32c4cbe

NOTE:  The above video was provided by the live chat group who received the hundreds of How To I Get Out of Here posts on their wall, explaining what their options were

If you follow my blog, you know that I do not recommend GoDaddy hosting. However, I know that many people have blogs using that company.

I just got a phone call from a colleague to let me know that GoDaddy did get hacked again this morning and asked that I let everyone know.

They’re cleaning all websites and request that if you are using Go Daddy hosting or know someone who is, please have them change their FTP password ASAP which is where is appears the hackers got access.

Here is a blog post about this and Go Daddy’s Statement here:

http://wpsecuritylock.com/go-daddy-fixing-hacked-websites-for-customers/

And if you haven’t already read my post about hosting companies – what to look for and who I recommend, here’s that link:

http://www.susangilbert.com/how-to-select-a-good-hosting-company-not-all-hosts-are-created-equal/

Reading a recent article on Mediapost, I found myself silently cheering because I loved what I was reading; and, know that what I was reading is truth.

Yet, if you read the one comment, the person who commented, did not understand what the article was saying.  And that is the truth as well.

Marketing has changed so dramatically with the widespread use of social media.  A few years ago, most people wouldn’t have thought to use short videos on a YouTube branded channel to find interested prospects who would turn a book launch from easily forgotten to wildly successful.  But the article referenced above and the YouTube Channel I’ll post here as well, shows that a series of short, branded and focused videos can sell books (excerpt below from the Mediapost article):

“Bender’s first idea to market the book prompted the grandparents to shoot an iChat video and become spokespeople. So he talked them through recording it. In the first video they would explain how to pre-order the book. He got back the video and realized grandma had never disconnected the sound and camera after shooting the prepared remarks.

“It was perfect because in that extra footage, my grandma looks in the camera, talks on the phone, and my grandfather dances in the background,” Bender says. “We uploaded the video to YouTube and it got a really big reaction.”

That “big reaction” sent pre-orders for book sales rocking. The video got picked up by AOL and Huffington Post and Random House had the second most successful prelaunch for a book behind “The Girl With The Red Dragon Tattoo,” according to Bender.

The grandparents became the spokespeople in the marketing campaign. They’re family. It’s real. It made the campaign ambitious and natural. Random House ran ads for the book based on the videos of the grandparents. Awkward Family Photos has been on The New York Times bestsellers list for more than 16 weeks.”

Take a look for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/user/AwkwardFamilyPhotos

Or watch this one which has had over 130,000 views to date:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you are considering the development of a professional web site then don’t underestimate the importance of a good web hosting service.  Not all hosting companies are created equal!

First of all, do not ever – in any case – choose a free hosting account provided by your ISP, etc.   Some main reasons are:

-Generally the service provider will force you to display their advt. or banner in your website. They want this in exchange of the free service.
-In 99% cases free hosting services will not provide you with unlimited bandwidth and disk space.
-They may not give you FTP access. Means, they will force you to edit your site with online editors only.
-You may not install new CMS or Blogging software like WordPress

So what should you look for in a paid and professional hosting service?

The most important thing you must keep in mind while choosing web hosting is “the reliability and up time”. Your site will surely lose many visitors if it is down frequently and does not load fast. So, always go for hosting with the provider which has reliable uptime and has good record. The uptime must be at least 99.9%.

I believe the second most important thing to look for is if they list an 800 support telephone number that is available 24/7.

Always choose service provider giving unlimited band width, data transfer and disk usage. You must have FTP access, PHP, SSL, SSH,.htaccess and the flexibility in installing scripts and software (CMS, blogging and others) which will allow you to grow your online presence.

Most people can use a shared hosting account (the least expensive).  Others may find that a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or a Dedicated Server is necessary – but for the average website a shared account is just fine.  However,  inquire with your prospective hosting account as to the secu

Here are my favorite two hosting companies.  Click on each to find out more:

Bluehost

Hostgator

Staying both inspired and continuing to believe in yourself are two ongoing skills that all authors, entrepreneurs and creative people need to embrace in order to overcome self-doubt – especially when the going gets rough (which we all experience at one time or another). I wrote “The Land of I Can” to assist with that journey and the ‘download’ process of that message arrived in my head all at one time and complete in it’s message. When I listened to this talk offered my Elizabeth, it gave me pause to remember that process while giving me an ever deeper insight how others have had that similar experience.

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

“Why do I have to list my book on Amazon?” is a common question when I am working with an author and their website development.

Amazon is the Good Housekeeping seal of a approval and lends credibility.

While many authors try to bypass Amazon for their books because of the huge percentage they give up on their book sale to do so, another reason has now surfaced as to why you must have your book for sale on Amazon.

Amazon and Facebook have now partnered for more exposure of books and demographics.

Read the full story here at Mashable

Take 10 minutes right now and watch Will’s insights on the power of believing, the power of “I Can”, the power of focus and how he moves past fears. I particularly loved his approach of building a wall one brick at a time.

Confucius said: “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right”.

Even though I believe in all things ‘online’ and own a Kindle, ebooks will never replace the printed book for me.  I have a treasured library of antique books along with current hardcover favorites.  There’s something so tangible about a ‘book’ in your hand from the smell of the ink to the tactile experience of turning the page.

It appears I’m not the only person who feels that way.

Take a look at today’s Mashable article:  Reading Faceoff: E-books vs. Print Books and click on the Poll results in the middle of the page.

At the writing of this post, these are the results:

Fast Company has joined the social media bandwagon with “The Influence Project”.  Why?  Because social media platforms work!

Now Fast Company magazine wants to include your photo in the November 2010 issue, as part of a neat project it calls the “2010 Most Influential People.”  This is a terrific chance to generate publicity from a magazine with a circulation of more than 538,000, as well as knowing how influential you really are.

Sign up here where I have just influenced you, and you can begin to influence others:  http://fcinf.com/v/apb5

This is what they write on their About the Project page:

“We started with a simple question: Who are the most influential people online right now?

That’s what The Influence Project is designed to answer. By participating, you will have your picture appear in the November issue of Fast Company magazine as part of an amazing photo spread. The more influence you demonstrate, the bigger your picture will be.

You may discover that you’re more influential than you think.

Influence is not only about having the most friends or followers. Real influence is about being able to affect the behavior of those you interact with, to get others in your social network to act on a suggestion or recommendation. When you post a link or recommend a site, how many people actually bother to check it out? And what’s the likelihood of those people then forwarding it on? How far does your influence spread?

This is the type of influence we’re looking for. We want to find the most influential person online.

Who knows? It might even be you.”

Go here now to get a unique URL which you can then share with your followers via email, at your website and blog, and on the social media sites.  It took me only a few minutes to sign up and upload my photo. I’ll look for you in the November issue!

Go to http://fcinf.com/v/apb5

Spread your influence!

A client sent me this video because he knows I’m an animal lover.

However, this wonderful dog and his human parents demonstrate:

• Acceptance
• Love
• Focus on your strengths

Take a couple of minutes to watch a video that so perfectly shows what is possible when theses principles are applied to anyone’s life!

Some of you may have found your pages on Facebook all disfigured this morning. The images on the pages got resized to 399px in width.   An associate of mine  found information in the forums that apparently Facebook went through and cached the pages and somewhere there must have been a glitch in their caching and it resized and saved all the images as 399px wide even it they were setup as 520px.

At this point we are still trying to figure out how to advise people deal with this issue and are hoping that Facebook will correct this soon. For everyone to go in and change all the images would be a huge task to accomplish and if Facebook fixes this on their end it would be a lot easier.

Change is ongoing as this mammouth social media sites grows and expands.

Here are the first ten, and there is a pdf  report available at the end of this post where you can read all 50:

1. Make the videos viral, and spread them to as many websites as possible.

2. Use other social media sites like Twitter and Digg to post your videos.

3. Create well thought out, professional style videos that are edited properly.

4. Make sure the sound on your videos is clear and mixed and edited well so users can clearly hear it.

5. Keep content funny, engaging, and informative so viewers will watch it from beginning to end.

6. Try to keep the videos you create clean without too much controversial material.

7. Embed your logo and website into the video somehow. You can do this with text at the end or beginning, or by including your logo or URL throughout the entire video.

8. Have goals for your YouTube videos, but remember that there are thousands of videos on the site, and some have millions of hits while others only have a couple hundred. Set realistic goals.

9. Make sure you have good camera and editing equipment which is available in even many of the small recorders.   If you don’t want to sink the money into these things, consider hiring a professional or calling the film department of your local college.

10. Keep the resolution of the video as high as possible, so it’s as clear as it can be.

Read All 50 Social Media Tactics for YouTube

This web site that contains amazing knowledge data base – so much so it’s made Google obsolete!

Take the 13 minutes to watch the video – lots of cool things you can do with this site whether it be for science, finance, medicine, etc.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

This is an amazing free website! It instantly calculates so many things; math, science, chemistry, physics, financial data, weather, nutrition, health, history, people, etc.

Watch the video to see some of the cool information it is capable of showing you.

Here is the link to the actual site after you view the introduction: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

The bar has been raised for search engines!

It’s often the perspective given that makes a difference – not the situation itself.

As on Online Marketer since the late 90′s, I’ve seen many changes in publishing both online and offline.  Ebooks have been around in Internet Marketing for years.  Now the traditional book market enters in the ebook format and new devices like Kindle, Nook, Ipad, etc bring it mainstream. Along with that comes controversy.  Good or bad?  It’s often just your point of view as the view below demonstrates.

What’s your point of view?

Please comment here!