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There are 6 Steps to Master LinkedIn that are straight forward and will benefit your LinkedIn experience fast. Your results will become apparent within two months when a few simple actions steps are followed consistently.

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Wordle Cloud of the Internet Marketing Blog – 08/15/08 (Photo credit: DavidErickson)

Marketing your small business is a daunting task for anyone who isn’t naturally inclined to have the salesman persona. That is why utilizing social media is so important to marketing and is creating a new revolution in the marketing business. By virtue of most social media marketing being free, the cost vs reward is absolutely stunning in how low it is. While social media guru’s exist to help major companies keep up with their social media tools, there are 5 ways you can keep up and stay on top of marketing and find yourself successful in no time.

• Use Facebook to create a page for your brand. By doing this, you are giving your brand a social media identity, and allowing for customers to find and follow you without you even lifting another finger.

• Create a Twitter account for your brand and keep up with it. Twitter has become a great tool for companies to utilize to keep an eye on their product and its reviews. Hashtags and linking to your products Twitter account, customers can honestly express pros and cons, which if responded to in a helpful manner can only improve your brands loyal base. Responding with witty asides has also become a go to for brands looking to create new loyalty as people tend to remember when a company can make them laugh, especially if they are self-effacing.

• Pinterest has become the new hot thing on the internet and should be looked at for sure. By creating a page for your brand you can create an image profile you want your customers to see. Again, adding in a little humor never hurt.

• Instagram is the new photo app for everyone. Create images that capture your company and share them with your audience. Following customers who promote you in some way also helps.

• Foursquare is a terrific tool for stores and business with a building. By creating loyalty giveaways and discounts you can keep customers coming back for more than just their mayor badge!

Once you master the 5 Steps to Marketing Success, your business will be better off than it ever was. These 5 tips are easy and will allow you to utilize the social media world and better your business.  Remember there are people out there like Abracadabra who will help your business with social media, but these 5 Steps to Marketing Success will help start you off.

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Pinterest is also one of today’s most powerful web marketing tools and with good reason. The site is growing in use by leaps and bounds with applicable stats boasting an upswing in visits to the tune of 125% since the start of 2012. That’s giving even Facebook and Twitter a run for their money as far as early growth rate!

Why Pinterest Works

The reason Pinterest works is that it taps into one of the internet’s fastest growing trends – visually captivating media. Members can use various “pin boards” to save, organize, or share images. The images are often visuals attached to useful links to recipes, decorating ideas, products, and more.

Plus, roughly 80% of the pins on Pinterest are repins, as opposed to content originally posted by the sharer, making it an easy process for a good post to go viral. This makes it a real must-consider for bloggers, business owners, and website owners looking to expand their reach and get their pet projects out there into the sight of the public – especially in regards to food-based services and other home-related products.

It’s already working wonders for major corporate brands like Whole Foods, Michael’s, and Better Homes and Gardens. It can do the same for you as well. Also, with the team behind Pinterest having recently introduced official apps for iPad, Android, and iPhone, the Pinterest revolution is only expected to continue to grow. Make sure you and your business are on board!

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Perfect Pinterest Pins for ROI is a social game changer on this ever growing social network.

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networking interfaces to come along in a long time – since Facebook and Twitter, even – so it’s no surprise that entrepreneurs and business owners are looking for ways to leverage its reach to their advantage. However, as is the case with anything else, there’s definitely an art and a strategy to boosting your ROI with Pinterest. Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to make this hot new trend work for you.

Up the Cute Factor

On Pinterest, cute photographs of children or animals tend to catch people’s eyes and get a lot of repins. If there’s a way to tie your product or your site’s message in with an image that’s completely “aww”-worthy, definitely do that.

Market to Women

Pinterest originally started out as a place women liked to hang out and share recipes or other items and it’s still used primarily by the ladies. Whether it’s all about food, decorating, or something else entirely, consider tailoring your Pinterest marketing campaign to appeal to women for best results.

Prioritize Image Quality

Pinterest is all about the image. Whether it’s a picture of an adorable puppy, an awe-inspiring hairdo, a beautiful travel destination, or a mouth-watering recipe, it’s the photo you use that will make your post go viral. Use large, high quality images. Never use anything under 300 pixels and use bigger if you can.

Add Descriptive Text

Even though the image you use is the most important factor in the success of a given post, definitely don’t underestimate how well a snappy or humorous caption can compliment your message. Be sure to use well-chosen hash tags to help Pinterest categorize your post and maximize your potential to get your message out there.

Add Your URL

Make sure you add your site’s URL to the description as well to make sure pinners know where to go for more of the same great information.

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Landing Page Conversion Goals (Photo credit: 30 Lines)

Seeing to it that your landing page is properly optimized is an important part of any web marketing campaign. After all, making a sale on the internet is largely about the same things as it would be offline. It’s about building trust, making the experience easy on the customer, and convincing them of the value in regards to what you’re offering. Here are some simple things to keep in mind when making your page everything it can be.

Understanding Your Target Demographic

A good salesman always knows his customer inside and out. He not only knows what they’re looking for and what they need, but he knows how to trigger their emotions and help them understand what his product can really bring to their lives.

Simplify Your Landing Page

People these days don’t have a very long attention span when it comes to the internet, so it’s important that your customers can find what they’re looking for without a hassle. Use simple, easy to navigate site designs and be sure to test every link and aspect for functionality. Avoid adding too many distractions or unnecessary elements.

Build Trust

When it comes to making that jump between getting your customer interested and actually convincing them that it’s time to pull out their credit card and make a purchase, it’s essential that you build their trust. Using testimonials on your landing page is a great way to do this. Be sure to always respect the customer’s privacy as well and don’t ask for too much personal information.

Be Consistent

The most effective sales pitches are consistent from beginning to end, so decide on an angle early on and stick to it. Be clear in presenting the value your product has for your customer. Tell them exactly why it is that they can’t live without it. Do You Know the Key Elements to Keep Website Traffic?  The answer is YES!

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English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pinterest has become a social media powerhouse in a relatively short amount of time. Time so short, indeed that while the 25 and under crowd are eagerly sharing their walls of pictures, many older users who are still stuck on MySpace are clueless. The time is now to jump on this particular bandwagon to create infographics and marketing for your customers. But if you are one of those aforementioned MySpace holdouts, how do you make an easy graphic for your blog or Pinterest?

We will start with the easy one: Photoshop. If you have Photoshop, the world is your oyster, as it is the most comprehensive program for visual marketers around and its learning curve is small enough that anyone can produce something in a short time even if it isn’t mind-blowing. Yet, the potential for mind-blowing graphics is most certainly there with Photoshop, lets assume you have it but aren’t exactly familiar. First, create a blank background of whatever color you wish. Next, open up a picture of your product and use the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the product. Now drag it over to your blank image, press the arrow in the top left of

your tools and step one is complete. Next use the text tool to add whatever text you wish to add. Save and your done!

What if you don’t have Photoshop? Here’s a way anyone with a PC can use: MS Paint. Look for MSPaint under your accessories in the start menu. Open up a picture of your product and expand the parameters around it to your specifications. Now do some adding of text, and there you have a quick, easy infographic for your Pinterest or blog. Any marketer can become a social media guru with a little effort. Spend some time doing some DIY Easy Infographics for Pinterest and your Blog, and in no time you yourself will become a social media guru.

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Translating Your Social Media to Cash (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Translating Your Social Media to Cash is a debatable subject because while social media can drive traffic it’s benefits are indirect but very powerful.

By now, we’re all well aware of the fact that an effective, thorough marketing campaign involves social media in a big way and it’s not difficult to see why. Social media is more than just a fun way to kill time these days. It’s an important part of how people stay in touch with one another, share information, and get recommendations as to which new products and services to use.

However, while it’s easy to see how well your social media marketing campaign is doing in regards to shares, retweets, Facebook likes, and so forth, translating your results into actual cash can present more of a challenge. Here’s how to guesstimate the cost and return of your social media campaigns.

• Organic Facebook Impressions: Take the sum of your daily total impressions on Facebook and subtract the sum of your daily paid impressions. Multiply by $10.00 CPM. You can also take your number of tracked clicks from Facebook and multiply by the average cost of PPC clicks.
• Twitter Traffic: You can do the same thing to calculate in regards to your Twitter traffic. Take the number of your tweets x your followers. Add it to the number of your retweets added to the 12% value of your mentions multiplied by 310. Multiply that by $10.00 CPM. Alternatively, multiply your tracked licks from Twitter by the average cost of PPC clicks.
• YouTube: Multiply your organic views on YouTube by $.20 per view.
• Blog Traffic: Multiply your page views on your blog by the average cost of PPC clicks.
• Online Mentions: Track your total mentions of your brand online and multiply the value by the average cost of PPC clicks.

The value of these calculations is a pretty close estimate to what you would have spent buying that same advertising through traditional online means.

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The Benefits of Using Infographics in Your Marketing Campaign is about how the social networks   like Pinterest have become visually based and discovery based rather than search driven. Everyone’s heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”

Well there’s one thing that’s worth even more – an information source that seamlessly combines the two. Such images are known as infographics.

Infographics are incredibly hot in the marketing world for a number of good reasons.

Let’s take a look at why getting to know infographics could be great for your business.  Infographics Appeal to Viewers on Multiple Levels.

Humans actually absorb information via a number of different ways. It’s been scientifically proven that infographics can convey your message more quickly and simply to your customer.

Infographics increase your chances of getting through to a larger audience.

Infographics present information in a visually engaging format that is fun for your reader to absorb, making them that much more likely to listen.

Infographics Are Easy to Share

With visually-oriented short-form social networking platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+ dominating the social networking landscape people communicating and sharing by way of images.

People are more likely to share an infographic.

Infographics maximize the  given message to go viral and reach more people.  Inforgraphics can be instructive, informational or simply fun!

Infographics Have Been Proven to Improve Return On Investment

Naturally everyone wants a high ROI in regards to their marketing campaign.  Infographics is one of the best ways to achieving a high ROI.

Studies show that when infographics are involved, phenomena like retweets, shares, and overall page views increase significantly – sometimes by 300% or more. That can add up to quite a few additional sets of eyes absorbing your image and possibly coming by to sample what you have to offer in your business.

Now that you know about The Benefits of Using Infographics what is keeping you from using it for your business?

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the ever-changing world of digital media and social media, it may seem hard to keep up with marketing without paying for professional help.  That’s why we are sharing 5 Digital Tools to Boost Your Brand, to help you do just that.  There are literally thousands of websites that millions upon millions of web users use every day to keep up with friends, meet new people and share their lives. This means sharing cool deals, great products and favorite brands as well. This is a boon to small business marketers as it means that there are so many easy ways to promote themselves and their customers will do the majority of the work for them.  As business owners, we sometimes overlook the obvious.  If these 5 Digital tools are not working for you, then they aren’t being used to their best capacity.  This would be a great time to revisit how you are using them and analyze why they are not performing in the way you expect.

Everyone knows Facebook is a great tool to use. The social media giant even provides helpful ads on the side of the page if you feel like paying for marketing. Considering the low cost and high reward, it is a great option. There is also the ability to create pages for your brand, thus not only creating awareness but also a fan base that you can reach instantly. Twitter is another great tool that is massively popular. By tweeting great deals or helpful hints have helped market many brands create a loyalty among its customers by being interactive and helpful.

Flickr accounts along with Pinterest are terrific for image marketing. Both websites provide a basic backdrop for you to build a visual representation of your brand, which can help bring new customers in and keep customers interested.

If you have a visual product and are not getting the most referral traffic from Pinterest there is something that can be improved about your Pinterest strategy.  Foursquare is also a terrific tool for brick and mortar stores that want to market to new potential customers. By providing loyalty discounts, Foursquare gives companies opportunities to interact with customers in an area that they surely will remember: their wallets.

Social media can be a driving force in any business when utilized correctly. By being smart and diligent, you can elevate and build your brand easier with 5 Digital Tools to Boost Your Brand.

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EXTRA! EXTRA ! Read all about it!  PINTEREST INTRODUCES THE BUSINESS PAGE !

 Now Pinterest has recognized that business can get more out of Pinterest  by announcing the Pinterest Business Page.  Smart businesses have been using Pinterest for some time developing a strong visible presence in a yet untapped, unsaturated market. Here are the 10 Keys to Claim Your Business Page on Pinterest.

  10 KEYS TO CLAIM YOUR BUSINESS PAGE

 Smart businesses know that Pinterest s a goldmine for referral traffic to their website.  We created n infographic to help you get on your way creating   10 KEYS TO CLAIM YOUR BUSINESS PAGE on Pinterest.  Pinterest is being used more and more by business and big brands.  Pinterest has realized that they have an up-tapped market to cater to in their business model.  Thus, The Pinterest Business Board is born.

There are many advantages to creating a Business Page on Pinterest so use our infographic and get yours today.  If you have any questions, contact us on Facebook and we would be happy to answer you.

Our personal favorite upgrade on Pinterest is that you can receive your business updates directly from Pinterest.  This will keep you up to the minute on every Pinterest advanced feature announcement!  Now that you’ve read the latest Pinterest news it’s time to get going and claim your valuable Pinterest business real estate online today!  Remember, PINTEREST INTRODUCES THE BUSINESS PAGE is your your free online real estate for the claiming.

LINKS for THE BLOG   pin It button, Follow button, Profile widget, or Board widget

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