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It’s not as hard as you might think. 

To begin, let’s look at the demographics of Web 2.0 social networking sites, Myspace.com, Facebook and YouTube.com. This will give you an idea on how to position your message in the Web 2.0 World.

The Web 2.0 Social Networking Revolution

Web 2.0 is a real revolution on the Internet. And these aren’t just college kids…

62% of MySpace visitors are older than 25 (40% are 35+), and 83% are makíng over $30,000 a year. Nineteen percent (19%) are makíng $100,000 and up…

On Facebook.com 46% are over 25 and 34% are 35+, but they’ve got deep pockets. Eighty-eight percent (88%) makë more than $30,000 and twenty-three percent (23%) makë $100,000 or more. 
In the years ahead these numbers will get ridiculous…

Social media giant Facebook is currently ADDING a million 25+ (non-student) adults per week to their rosters. That’s 52 million new users a year.

YouTube.com gets over 50 million unique visitors per month. That equals over half a billion a year.

Facebook and MySpace have the equal daily traffic of Google. Experts predict within the next year they will DOUBLE the daily traffic of Google search. 
So your prospects are there. The traffic is there. The spending power is there. So NOW is the time you want to establish your presence on the social networking websites. 

Web 2.0 Strategy: Why You Should Be a Maven, Not a Marketer

As a website owner, how should you position your message in the Web 2.0 world?

The increasingly savvy buying public will quickly shun marketers. Internet readers want information from the Internet. They don’t want advertising, marketing, or a “pitch”.

According to Schefren in his Attention Age Doctrine, the solution is to become a social media “Maven”.

A Maven is a trusted authority, like a friend, on the social media websites. As you gain their trust, your audience will return to you over and over again wanting to invest in your advice.

Five Steps to Becoming a Social Media Maven

Social Media Maven Step 1: Get in the Game

Begin blogging immediately. Create a video explaining how to solve a problem and put it on YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook with links back to your main website. Just those two things alone will establish more Web 2.0 presence than 90% of your competition.

Social Media Maven Step 2: Share your passion

Build your Web 2.0 website around your passions. Thirty-two year old Gary Vaynerchuk transformed his wine knowledge to his video blog. It now has thousands of subscribers and does $50 millíon dollars a year in wine sales.  http://tv.winelibrary.com/

Social Media Maven Step 3: Be Controversial

Your audience will remember you more when you challenge the status quo. Controversy sells. Think like the tabloids and the local news channels here.

Social Media Maven Step 4: Create World Class Content

You will drive repeat traffic to your website by offering top notch “how to” information. Gary’s wine tastings are highly educational on the benefits of wine, how to cook with wine, and how to choose a wine for your special occasion. Rich’s reports teach Web 2.0 marketing principles.

Remember, as soon as your audience feels that you are “pitching” them, you’ve lost them. So provide content not advertising.

Social Media Maven Step 5: Engage in the Conversation

Web 2.0 is a dialogue not a monologue. Internet businesses profit more when they observe and listen to their communities first before they broadcast their messages. Savvy mavens such as Gary and Rich encourage their audience to ask questions. The answers to these questions then become part of their user-generated content.

How Marketing in a Web 2.0 Social Media Environment Is Exciting.

Visualize it like a big radio or television station or movie screen where you’re the star. You’re building a fan base so you need to entertain, inform, and deliver consistently for your audience.

You have more publishing power at your fingertips right now than at any time in history.

So use it.

Share your passions.

Reveal your trials and tribulations

Tell your story.

And, watch how quickly your audience builds. 

About The Author
Master Copywriter, Gary Smith www.rightbraincopy.com has taught thousands of entrepreneurs how to write copy that persuades, motivates and inspires prospects to buy.

The ABC’s of domain names, which as a title may come off as a little corny to you, is an exercise that makes you think about your industry or business, what you’re doing in it, and how you go about doing what you do as it relates to domain names. The use of the ABC’s format is to provide a simple, back to basics approach to deliver fundamental concepts that provoke thoughts, ideas and questions on domain names and how they are a part of your world.

So, whatever all of that means - lets dive into the ABC’s of domain names and find their relevance in your line or work, personal life, hobbies, educational background, experience or special areas of interest to see what jumps out and comes naturally to you:

A: Advertising - domain names offer the perfect venue to advertise your product or services or to provide potential revenue by domain parking and/or affiliate programs.

B: Branding - the brand is in the name. Having a great targeted domain name can really build a brand, or can actually be the brand (eg: Google.com)

C: Community - the Internet is all about an interconnected community. Through domain names, you create a real destination and an identity for what can become a community.

D: Direct Search - having a generic word based domain name is your best path to direct search traffic. Direct Search is here to stay and will likely take an increasing share of the overall search marketplace. Direct search bypasses the likes of yahoo.com and google.com as the user types in the destination site directly into their browser (ie: www.computers.com).

E: Ecommerce - want to conduct business online - you need to start with one primary thing - a domain name. Ecommerce is one of the leading uses of the Internet.

F: Friends & Family - connect with your friends and family with domain names - either by email, your favorite websites, or photo sharing sites and videos, etc.

G: Global - synonymous with the Internet - domain names (particularly .com) have mass broad appeal on a global basis, with global potential.

H: High Returns - where else can you buy a piece of virtual real-estate for $8.00 and sell it within a matter of weeks or months for over $1000? Fund.com just sold for $9.99 Million in March of 2008.

I: Investment - domain names are appreciating more than any investment for the price. Similar to investing in stocks, bonds, real estate or insurance - domain names offer what I believe to be stable long lasting appreciation with the potential to create astonishing returns. Want to learn more about domain investing - you can always check out www.domainprofitsbook.com.

J: Justify - Justify your web presence and online business with a great domain name that demonstrates who you are and what you do.

K: Keywords - domain names can be based upon major key words for your industry or target market. Just the same, the key words you use in your Internet marketing can be generated from the domain name you choose and how it relates to your target industry/product/service/noun/verb.

L: Localization & Location - targeting niche audiences by location and a specific geography has proved to be a very strong, identifiable marketing opportunity for anybody online. Embracing localization for your domain investment objectives is a great path to consider.

M: Monetization - making money and creating multiple sources and streams of income are the cornerstones to the potential and reason why people buy savvy domain names.

N: New Markets to seize - new products and services are always being launched, just as new companies and markets are being formed. Finding with a good strong domain name to capture the essence of your business or target market for your online presence is always a great starting point.

O: Organization - a domain name is the perfect way to identify with your organization. Whether it’s a product, service, or brand - your domain name is your face on the Internet.

P: Profits - Domain are a great way to make money and profits. Invest wisely and you can find yourself with a great windfall.

Q: Quest - Like any business venture, you are on a quest to explore, learn and make money.

R: Revenue - domain names offer a myriad of ways to generate revenues. There are numerous ways and avenues to generate revenues with domain names, however, in some cases are closely held ideas and resources. Becoming educated about domain names and being focused on creating a long lasting business is a great path towards generating revenue.

S: Search Engines - Search engines are the gateway to choices on the Internet and essentially, a directory of domains classified by the type of information, product or service they offer. Search engines are a powerful marketing tool and a source of traffic for the domain name owner.

T: Technology - simply, without technology, there are no domains, websites, search engines, email or the like. The beauty of domain names is that you really don’t have to understand or learn too much technology to get started, or to make money.

U: Unique Users - people coming to your website/domains generate traffic. The more unique users that visit your website - the more traffic they create. The more traffic - the greater the value. The best way to create long lasting value with domain names is creating a venue where a consistent and growing base of unique users visit your domain name/website.

V: Virtual - Domain names are virtual real estate. Some represent ocean-front property while others can represent sky scrapers, apartments or vacant land in the middle of a barren desert. Build your portfolio of virtual real estate for the longer term or flip your domain name for a quick sale and profits.

W: World Wide Web - The world wide web and its beginning started with domain names and/or their underlying numerical identities. With the advent of the world wide web, email, search engines and the increasing convergence of communications and media - business and industry has created high demand and appreciating values for good domain names.

X: The X Factor - there is a mystique and certain unknowns regarding the true value of domain names, how to create revenue and profits, and what strategies are best to create traffic to your domain name or website. The more knowledgeable and prepared you are to dive into the domain name world - the better off you are in managing the X Factor when it rears its head.

Y: You - buying, selling, and owning domain names is a reflection upon you, what your goals are, where your interests lie, and how you want to make money with this virtual real estate. You need to decide what your objectives are and how you are most comfortable in approaching your investment and dedication towards making money with domain names.

Z: Zeal - approach your domain activities with passion and enthusiasm. The more positive your thinking and focus is with domain names - the better you will be able to manage it, be prepared, and have an open mind to seize new opportunities and make money with your domains.

We hope you enjoyed this article and find that each time you read it you take away something new and different that can add value to your world of domain names. 

——————————————————————————–

About the Author: This article is written by Chris Kern. Chris has been a serial entrepreneur, corporate finance specialist and domainer for the past 13 years and is the author of the authoritative resource book on domain name investing “How To Make Money With Domain Names”

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4. More link popularity from social media sites.

5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting and interaction.

6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites (One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of visitors alone.)

7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique visitors month after month.

8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic, properly acquired, is very warm to your message and products.

The problem for most people when thinking about social marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction.

They assume established social marketers gained their “social authority” in a short period of time. This is simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites exists, it is an embarrassment of riches.

And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual process you manage with all your other responsibilities and grow as time allows.

What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time each day to get one more link, participate in one more conversation, or sign up for one more account on a social site. 

A little goes a long way and social marketing is not an “all or nothing” situation. Eventually you will have established yourself on the major social media sites you need to be on. And you will have a schedule that allows you to keep up with your other work while adding this extremely powerful marketing method to the mix.

10 Steps For Starting a Social Marketing Campaign

6. Once you have established yourself on all the sites above, meaning you have a decent profile in each that shows you’ve been active and involved, move on and search for networks that are geared toward your particular market niche. There are a lot of new “vertical” social sites popping up that focus on much more narrow markets and their membership is far warmer to your kind of information than on the bigger, more general networks above.

Add a new site to the mix as often as you can and repeat the steps for becoming established there as mentioned in Step 2 above.

7. Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up tips from other social marketers and find new places you can sign up with to continue building your social authority. New sites pop up every single day. Follow places like Go2Web20.net to find new opportunities to connect with your market.

8. Remote blog. Join blogger.com and put content there that is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great content you find as you travel through all the social news sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over time.

9. Track your progress diligently. If something you are trying on a social network isn’t working, you need to know that in order to save time and move on to something more fruitful. MyBlogLog.com (above) has a tracking system which will show you where your traffic is coming from so you can avoid time wasting efforts and focus more on the sites that are really pulling in good traffic for you.

10. Don’t freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.

Social marketing, once you’ve established some authority, will replace some things you are currently doing to promote your site. Many people completely drop their paid advertising or PPC campaigns once they see the organic, natural traffic and search engine rankings pile up from social marketing.

Until then, just take it one step at a time and do some social marketing. A little goes a long way and before you know it, you will reach a point where a lot of traffic and lots of search engine rankings are piling up because you simply started doing something each day.

There’s a lot you can learn about social marketing. And not all of it can be found on free blogs. 

About The Author
Jack Humphrey is the author of The Authority Black Book and the creator of a powerful social marketing community at SocialPowerLinking.com 

Check out our other posts on Social Marketing

Look, I don’t really think that the mySpaces and Facebooks of the world are that important for the typical small business as they stand today. There may be very practical business reasons for some to actually use these and other, what are called social networks, for business gain, but most people that have jumped on the social network bandwagon have found themselves left with a “is this all there is” kind of feeling.

To those, I say this, the value of the current public social networks for business folks is not what you can get out of them for gain today, but what you can learn by using them for practical gain tomorrow. That’s why SpacebookedIn makes sense for you now.

The Facebooks of the world are busy teaching millions and millions of business folks how social networks work, how social networking works, how shared applications can be viral and ever-present. The real payoff in my opinion is that the wave to come after the Facebook bubble bursts is the “personalized business network.” Once everyone of your customers and prospects knows how to use what are easily replicatable social networking tools, like building profiles, sharing video and connecting based on mutual interests, your job of building your own social business network around your own very specific community of niche will get a whole lot easier.

2008 will be the year of the personalized social business network. So, if you’ve decided to take a pass on the whole social networking trend, I would suggest that you use this handy list to start learning to ride this bike with the training wheels on.

Ten ways to get started with Social Networking

1) Read 10 blogs - sign-up for a Bloglines account and search for and subscribe to 10 blogs about social networking - you can return daily to your page on Bloglines to find and read all the new content on your 10. Of course you can add blogs about your industry and interests here too.

2) Comment on 10 blogs - posting relevant comments to blogs you read is a very simple form of social networking. It’s also a good way to get some extra visitors your site or blog.

3) Join Facebook - Join and create a profile. Find and friend some of your existing contacts using tools on Facebook. You’ll be surprised how many people you already know have Facebook accounts. Facebook has some real value for you because of the rich set of tools and large amount of active users. This is a great place to experiment with how people interact in social networks. Once you get your feet wet you may also find that Facebook is a great way to connect with business contacts you may never bump into otherwise.

4) Create a mySpace page - this service is really embraced primarily by musicians and the younger set. It also happens to have a large underbelly contingent so be warned, but it is a great tool for learning how to build a presence outside of your web site.

5) Join LinkedIn - this is a service that’s been called Facebook for business. It is really about meeting and connecting with like-minded business folks. It is a great service for people looking for a job or to make connections with people who may be out of reach without an introduction.

6) Visit Ning - this is the largest custom social networking service that allows you to create your own community using a variety of tools that can be branded to match your current site.

7) Create a Workbench profile - this one’s a little self-serving as this is my new social business networking site but it’s a good example of the personalized business community that’s the next wave for small business.

Create a Twitter account - this tool is pretty silly on the surface, it allows you to type in 160 characters or less what you are doing right now. It feels like a giant waste of time but a very large and active community has grown around this kind of micro-blogging and you should understand how people are using it.

9) Create a StumbleUpon profile - This is a social network built around discovering and recommending sites that you like. Active stumblers can send a lot of traffic your way.

10) Create a Digg account - this site allows you to keep up to the minute with what’s happening in the world of business. Users submit and vote on what is believed to be the most important content.

You might also consider Mixx, Squidoo and Flickr as places to find and develop niche related communities when you’re ready to really get out there.

Think of mySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook as your labs - get in there and experiment for the future. then start planning your own personalized social business network.

About The Author
John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. You can find more information by visiting DuctTapeMarketing.com

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