Biz Tips Blog: Internet Marketing Tips

Ping.fm manages status updates

During last week's interview with MaryPat Kavanagh and Michele PW, the question arose about how to efficiently and effectively manage all your social networking sites. If you're participating on MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc., this can take a lot of time.

Each of the social sites mentioned above have an option for you to update your status, meaning what you are doing at that moment. Why would you do this?

Updating your status on a daily (or minute by minute) basis alerts those who follow you that you're active and participating in the conversation. But that's a lot of sites to update.

Enter ping.fm. You set up an account. Enter your log in info for each site you want to update. You enable your ping account and you're good to go. You can either update your status from your ping account or, like I do, enable the application on your Facebook account and update from inside Facebook. When I do that, my status update is immediately posted on the accounts I've set up: MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Ping.fm is in beta and you need an invitation to get set up. If you want an invite code, post a comment here and I'll send it to you.

If you're using ping.fm, what do you think? Is it working for you?

Radically Transparent Arrives in My Mailbox

I love coincidences.  A couple of weeks ago I listened to an interview with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim, and author of the recently published Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online (interviewed by John Jantsch). I ordered the brand new book and received it yesterday. I can't wait to get started reading it.

Today in my Feedblitz updates, there was a post by Paul Chaney about an online reputation management tool called Trakur, developed by Andy Beal.

Trakur takes Google Alerts to another level. Why use Trakur when Google Alerts is free?

Google Alerts only monitors content available through one of Google's search engines. Trackur monitors many more web channels than just Google. In addition, Trackur allows you to save items, sort them, share them via email, and subscribe to an RSS feed--Google Alerts offers none of these features.

I've set up a 14 day free trial on the keyword phrase "Blog Squad" so I can test how the tool works.  What came up in the initial search were blog posts, web pages, videos, photos on Flickr and much more.  Very complete.

The Video Education of The Blog Squad

Video is not the next big thing.  Video is the big thing right now. Everybody's doing it and The Blog Squad is no exception.

As you've seen from recent posts on this blog, on Build a Better Blog and Writing on the Web, we've been learning about video and how to use it to market our business services. I've even set up a blog just for posting our business blogging video tips.

As simple as a lot of the tools are now, there is most definitely a learning curve so I'm taking this opportunity to tell you how I've been getting up to speed on the video thing: what classes I've taken, what software I'm using and what equipment.

The first thing I've learned is that shooting the video is the easy part. With a Flip Video camera or a good webcam, it's almost as easy as point and shoot.  Of course, you need to know what you want to say and show so there is some prep involved, even for a 2 minute video.

Viva Visability!

Our good friend and colleague Nancy Marmolejo (author of the enormously popular ebook Make MySpace Your Space) is at it again. She recently rebranded her company and is focusing on helping professionals like you get more free publicity and visibility.  Her new teleseminar: How to Get Free Publicity and Attact New Clients With the Power of Your Expertise, starts April 1. Here's the info:

Get the Media to Do Your Marketing For You

Visibility Expert Nancy Marmolejo has just announced her latest teleclass to help entrepreneurs position themselves as sought after, recognized experts.

Nancy enjoys a flurry of free PR and effortless marketing, now she's ready to share that with others.

How to Get Free Publicity and Attact New Clients With the Power of Your Expertise, taking place April 1 and 8, will show business owners how to take what they know and turn it into a marketing strategy that will attract new clients and free publicity.

She created How to Get Free Publicity and Attract New Clients to meet the needs of people who want the information she teaches in a short time frame. (Nancy’s coaching program, Spotlight U, offers an intense 6 months of coaching and mentoring for a select group of entrepreneurs.)

Over 2 teleclass sessions, she’ll cover how to:

Facebook Apps for Business

I'm totally obsessed with Facebook (so is Patsi!). Prepping for our teleseminar with Facebook expert Mari Smith on Monday, I've been scrutinizing the best ways and applications to use Facebook as a business building tool. I know I have a long way to go and am looking forward to what Mari has to say on this subject as well.

Here are 7 Facebook Apps I'm currently using:

• Ad Manager - I'm experimenting with placing ads to build awareness of teleseminars and our white paper.
• Blog RSS Feed Reader - pulls the feed from this blog and publishes new posts on my profile. (Note: it doesn't always work. I've noticed that lately, I have to manually update the feed which defeats the purpose.)
• Business Cards - I've set up a "business card" that I can append to messages and wall posts.
• Events - a must use app. For every class, free or fee, I'm posting an event page and inviting my friends to attend.

Branding and Blogging at the Social Media Telesummit

I just completed the Branding and Blogging session at the Social Media Telesummit. Whew! There's always so much to cover and so little time. Unfortunately, Patsi put her back out and couldn't join me so I had to go it alone.  I do want to thank Leesa Barnes for her exceptional organization, good humor and expertise in putting the telesummit together. There are 6 more days of programs you shouldn't miss, plus access to the audio, handouts and special deals from previous sessions.

I got off the phone from the session and noticed a post on Problogger about 4 Social Media Marketing Tips for Bloggers. Darren Rowse has posted a video about how to use social media to market online.  Well, it's all about having a consistent brand in the social media space and the best ways to participate vs. sell on these sites.  Since it's right in alignment with the presentation I just gave, I figure I should share the video!

Online Reputation Management

You know how when something is top of mind, you see it all over the place? Today for our Blogging and Beyond Mentor Program we're interviewing Steven Van Yoder, author of Get Slightly Famous.  We're going to be talking about how you need to build and manage your personal brand, or your online reputation.

And today I came across a post by Lee Odden about Online Reputation Management for Individuals. This is an excellent review of why it's so important to manage how you appear online, on your blog, your LinkedIn profile, on Facebook, on YouTube, etc.

When you Google your name (use quotation marks around your first and last name so you get appropriate results), what do you find?

If you're in business, you better hope it's all good!

It's not too late to join the Blogging and Beyond Mentor program and attend this VIP interview with Steven Van Yoder. Get the details here. Can't make it today? Mentee classes are always recorded and transcribed so you can study at your convenience.

Related Posts
Social Networking is Important for Professionals
Personal Branding Online

Public Speaking Can Boost Your Business

As business owners, Patsi and I have learned over the past few years that one of the keys to our success has been taking the plunge and speaking at conferences and to niche groups. Speaking has boosted our credibility and extended our ability to reach more people. In a nutshell, speaking has helped us build a successful business.

Last week we were invited to speak at a 3-day seminar coming up in August, about how to using public speaking to build your business. It's not a seminar for public speakers though if you are one you would probably learn a lot; it's actually focused on business owners, entrepreneurs and service professionals who want to, and know they need to, add speaking to their marketing toolkit.

Our friends Arvee Robinson and Lee Pound have come up with an incredible kickoff offer for their Speak Your Way to Wealth seminar in August.

7 Social Media Tools - Audio Replay

A couple of weeks ago Patsi and I joined Leesa Barnes for a discussion about social media tools. This was a preview call for the Social Media TeleSummit which begins on February 20. Leesa has given us permission to post the audio for your listening pleasure!

We discuss social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as microblogging, blogging and podcasting of course, video sharing and social bookmarking. What was meant to be a 30 minute conversation turned into nearly an hour! Leesa just couldn't get us to shut up! The Blog Squad will be presenting on Blogging and Branding on February 21 at 1 p.m. ET.

I hope you'll check out the line of up speakers for the Social Media TeleSummit. It's an amazing group and this promises to be a first rate event. Personally, I'm looking forward to sessions by Paul Colligan, Krishna De, Penny Haynes, Sherman Hu, and Yaro Starak among others.

Social Networking is Important for Professionals

On my morning power walk (still nursing a sore calf and not running), I listed to a podcast from the Personal Branding Summit featuring Liz Ryan, a former Fortune 500 HR executive and author of Happy About Online Networking: The virtual-ly simple way to build professional relationships. Much of her talk was about how companies can and should encourage employees to develop personal brands within the company as that benefits the company just as much.

Ryan spoke a lot about LinkedIn, a professional business networking site. From my understanding, she thinks this is one of the most important social networking sites for professionals to have a profile listing. 

There are hundreds of social networking sites on the Web so it's important to choose your sites wisely. Also keep in mind how much time you have to devote to networking.  Another tip from Ryan is that it's not too late to start building your online brand and it's your "old" network that will be the most helpful so start building that network now, not when you need something.

As I mentioned in my last post, we're interviewing Steven Van Yoder on February 13. Van Yoder is also a personal branding expert and we plan on finding out the top social networking sites for professionals and business owners and why it's so important to pay attention to your online brand and reputation.

BTW, here's my LinkedIn profile.