Online Marketing, Visibility and Business Blogging Tips from Denise Wakeman

What's the missing link to making money with social media?

The biggest question people have about social media is how to make money from it. The thing is that people are spending thousands of hours in social media, but aren’t making thousands of dollars from it.

As a businessperson, this isn’t a wise long-term strategy. We always have to be looking for the best possible return on our investment of time and money.

I have something that might help.

ATTENTION: If Your Subscribers Use Gmail Read This

If you have an email list then I'm willing to bet you have at least one subscriber who uses Gmail. Probably a whole lot more since millions of people use it as their primary email system world-wide. I do.

In the past couple of weeks I noticed in some of the emails I received, some URLs were clickable and others were not. I didn't spend enough trying to figure it out but it perplexed me, especially on the emails I sent out that had links to register for programs or product specials.

Thanks to a post on Alex Mandossian's Productivity Strategies Facebook page, I learned this is a bug, or maybe it's deliberate, that cropped up in February. Alex directed his readers to Frank Bauer's blog with a video explaining the problem and what to do about it.

Essentially, any URL that has a capital letter after the http:// is not an active, clickable link in Gmail. I sent myself an email to test it out:

You can see that the top URL is not active whereas the others are. The other variations are all active. So either use a lowercase letter or www right after the http://

I usually omit the www and I almost always capitalize words since the URLs read better and are better for branding purposes. I'll probably add the www. now so I can keep on capitalizing.

What does this mean? Take a look at the autoresponders you have set up. Until this is resolved by Google, you better make sure all your promotional links are clickable which means reviewing all your email messages. What a pain! Seems like a good task for a VA.

I have dozens of autoresponders each with multiple messages. But if those links are promoting programs or services or resources, then they sure better be clickable because most people will not take the time to copy and paste a link in to their browser address bar and you could be leaving money on the table.

Publicity Secrets to Boost Your Visibility on the Web

Finding new opportunities to boost your visibility on the web is a never ending quest. Blogging of course is an essential element, but sometimes I come up short on inspiration and how to tap into what my audience may want or need at a specific moment. Based on what I hear, you have probably experienced that once or twice yourself.

I was discussing this with Shannon Cherry aka The Power Publicist and she shared with me her secret for creating a steady stream of content that taps into current trends and is able to out scoop the media by doing it. This drives a steady stream of traffic to your blog.

Since I'm not a PR expert, I invited Shannon to speak to my Online Visibility Secrets students and share her secret tactic as well as others she uses to create massive visibility for herself and her clients.

Here's your invitation to a private, "invitation only" teleseminar...

The Dr. Pepper Method for Managing Social Media

I had an interesting exchange on Google Buzz the other day. In response to my post on Facebook Fan Pages, I had an exchange with Scott Medlock about the importance of being where your clients/prospects are in order to efficiently manage your social media activities.

Scott said that he used the Dr. Pepper method of 10/2 and 4 to connect on social media. Not being a Dr. Pepper drinker, I had no idea what 10/2 and 4 referred to and Scott was kind enough to elaborate:

Remember the old Dr Pepper line...Have a Dr Pepper at 10/2 and 4? I just have in my personal schedule to bring up a firefox that I've saved all my social accounts in as tabs. I bring it up around 10 2 and 4 every day, tab thru them and answer queries, check updates from people, and interact. Usually it takes 5-10 minutes.

That way I'm online and paying personal attention at least three times a day w/o allowing my social web activity to suck away work time. I sometimes get on later or earlier in the day. But I nearly always do my 10/2/and 4 to answer queries, etc. It works pretty well and keeping me connected.

I like this system! It's efficient and keeps one connected several times during the day vs. a once a day approach, or shotgun, the way I do it. I tend to dip in and out of twitter and Facebook several times a day but not in such a structured way. I may set up my calendar to prompt me at specific times instead of when I want to procrastinate or am feeling uninspired by my projects. :-)

How do you manage your time on social media? Or do you manage it at all?

Facebook Pages Are Fast Becoming Essential for Business

Do you have a Facebook Page for your business? I've had one for a couple years but only in the last year has it really taken off. With 400 million users, it's a force that cannot be ignored. That's where people are hanging out -- even in the demographic you serve, I'll bet. Heck, my 101 year old great aunt uses Facebook to keep up with her large extended family!

I read an article on Web Pro News that supports why you must have a page - Google Makes Facebook Pages a Priority for Businesses.

Google announced via Twitter this week, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine's real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google's real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others, and these real-time results are often featured prominently on the first page of search results for the hottest queries.

Content in Page updates is indexed by Google. Content on Profiles is not. It's another opportunity for you to be found via search by your ideal client.

I've found that "fans" like to interact, click the "like" button, comment on the links and status updates I post. They also click through to my blog posts which are automatically fed to my page through the Notes application.

The Blog Squad on Facebook

I post links to cool resources I find and articles related to business blogging, marketing on the web, social marketing and online visibility. It's the perfect venue when I don't need to write a whole blog post but I want more than the 140 characters that I get with twitter. And when you link your Fan page to your twitter account, your updates are automatically sent to twitter with a link back to your Fan page.