We will cover the “social triad,” which is Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs.

Stay tuned for more information on this exciting new seminar. For those of you who are out of the local area, we will be recording this event for future posting on this blog.

We all know what Facebook is and what it’s for…socializing. Google wants to get more “eyeballs” viewing and using their own site so they came up with a way for their following to “socialize” on their site.

Here’s how it works. When you first sign up to Google Plus, you have started your own social space. You can then send out invites to the people you want in your social network. You can then divide each group of people into distinct categories such as; friends, family, co-workers, customers, etc. These groups are called “circles.”

There is a second part of Google Plus called Hangouts. This is a place where you and your groups can share videos, pictures and various files.

Another part of Google Plus is a section on managing all your multimedia items such as videos, pictures documents and anything else you want to share with others.

Google Plus has originally been by invite only from a small amount of  “early adopters” but in the recent weeks, it is open to everyone.

If you want to experience a demo of this new feature of Google, click here.

One of the main reasons is that the big search engines such as Google is using social media connections as one way to measure popularity of a site, therefore putting greater “importance” of that site in page rank.

In other words, if you have a site that is popular with your visitors and they are in turn referring to as massive amount of more people to read your blog, you will soon realize a higher page rank because of that popularity or authority that you carry from that site.

When blogging, mention your other social media sites you have such as Facebook or Twitter, and then, in turn, link from those sites back to your blog. This forms a “link wheel” of sorts. Once you get your blog and your social sites linking to each other, you have made it possible for your blog to further rank high within the search engines.

In the end, it is all about the mass attention you can get with your site. You have to effectively do many things simultaneously to get your popularity up there.

In our next blog post, we will go over some of the things you need to do simultaneously to get the job done.

Blogs, of course, provide a platform to “converse” between the blog owner and the blog visitor. Facebook, as of this writing, is the best way of getting your message out to your target market. Twitter is what is called, micro blogging. The main benefit of Twitter is that you can communicate with your target audience in real time.

Check out the video below:

Twitter has only started an advertising platform in 2010 and it seems to be  growing trend. What is unique, however is the active Twitter user base is quite small. Remember, there are over 300 million registered users but only a fraction are active and that fall into the demographic of “intent to buy” mentality.

Twitter, being the social network site that it is, will have a challenging time for businesses who desire to marketing in front of this audience. Only the early adopters will be taking advantage of buying from the ad space being offered on Twitter from their advertisers.

Some advantage for advertising on Twitter, is the immediate feedback the advertisers will receive from sending out timely “tweets.” It also gives added credibility to the “buzz” when combined with other channels of advertising.

It may seem that advertising on Twitter can be a valuable addition to your marketing arsenal. Be aware that the Twitter audience can be a fickle one since they are not used to being pitched with ads because it was originally intended as purely a social medium to communicate socially.

Many social media networks are going to have a tough time on selling lots of products if they want to go direct. Social media in it’s current form is strictly for social gathering purposes only and there is a fine line of “selling” from these sites.

Sooner or later most popular social network sites will be filled with online “commercials” and will eventually deflect many people who got on those sites for social purposes only.

It is important for your business to get a Facebook page right away. Now at some time in the future, Facebook may die out and some other social website may take over, but in the meantime, you should make every effort to have a presence there as soon as you can. There are many reasons for this but the main reason is to generate relationships with your customers and influence their buying habits, hopefully to buy your product and service.

Getting on Facebook is not going to make your business rich overnight. It is all about cultivating relationships now so that you keep customers coming inside your sales funnel on a consistent basis.

Here is a video that covers the valuable aspects

Social media is the movement for conversing with each other through many channels on the internet. It could be from an RSS feed from your blog, interacting with many members from a particular social media site like Facebook, even exchanging referrals of products and services to buy through simple emails in your inbox. Whatever we think of social media, always remember the purpose is to connect with other people.

As mentioned before, social media is not a platform to sell on, rather, a platform to meet other people and start a two way conversation about likes, dislikes, philosophies, common interests, favorite sports, fashion, celebrities, etc.

When a group is formed or joined for the purpose of sharing like interests, you are experiencing social media at its best.

Your blog is a social media source as well. Blogs may be the only social media channel that will outlast many of the other forms of social media sites for years to come. Why is that? Blogs are a great source of content in all forms. Text articles, video, pictures, audio, profiles, calendars, events, it all seems to converge nicely with blogs. No other social media site can be used as a total content management system while serving as a hub for social media at the same time. And the best part of it all is that anyone can master the art of publishing a blog within a matter of hours.

Blogging will last for years to come so plan out and implement your plan on the content you want your blog to have and align it with your personality. You can’t go wrong because someone out there will want to partake in consuming what you have to offer on a regular basis!

Problogger, Darren Rowes talks about using “outposts” of social media sites to tap into promoting your blog posts. Remember that once you publish your blog posts, you can attach links to other social media sites to get the attention of those sites and attract visitors.

1. You need to carefully plan out your marketing strategy
2. Use the social media. “Plug in” your blog to the social media sites that make sense to your business.
3. Join in the conversation. Comment on other blogs and make new online connections.
4. “Stand out in the crowd.” Have a unique angle or twist to how you present your product or service.
5. Create videos. Videos is only getting more popular on the internet and if you put out more videos, it will only lead to higher rankings to your blog.

We have a video that goes in detail what we mentioned above.

Here’s how it works. Set up posters to hang on the walls of your business, flyers and brochures on your counters, and set up small print ads in local newspapers, all with a “QR” code and a short message of enticing your customers with smart phones to scan the code to get a discount or some free gift.

The beauty of this method is that the customer is now automatically “opted in” to your virtual mailing list. You can then send out weekly promotions of what your business offers. You can also sell affiliate products to supplement your current product sales through this method.

Mobile phone growth is exploding around the world and it only will get larger in the next 5 years. There are over 73 million smart phone users and, according to emarketer.com smart phone users will exceed 109 million. This is just in the USA alone!

Currently, there are over 200 trillion text messages being received everyday. 27% of that figure are using the smart phone to surf the internet, and 23% of that figure are using social media. When marketing your business online via blogs and smart phones, you are tapping into where your new and current customers are right now. The old marketing methods teach, “get your product in front of the largest target audience.”  It has never been more true to get online in order to get in front of your audience.

It is best to combine several outlets for promoting your business. As mentioned in this blog, if you put your business on social media sites like, Facebook and Twitter as well as starting a blog.

In addition, you should have a Google Places listing and also local listings in as many online business directories as possible. Additional presence in business review sites such as Yelp, Angies List, and Local (dot) com.

These are at minimum the places you should be when getting an online presence. Most of your competitors who are savvy on the internet will at least have listings and social media sites in place.

When you get online, you have opened up a whole new world of marketing. Even the smallest businesses who are market savvy have a separate “department” that solely manages the internet part of their business. Smart business people know that they have to be in front of their customers on the internet because that is where they live and socialize.

When starting up your online presence, make sure you plan out carefully. Many businesses fail because they don’t plan, in advance, all the social sites, review sites, directory listings and the rest of the online placement of their businesses in key areas.

We are still in the “wild west fronttier” when it comes to online marketing of offline businesses.

Twitter is the popular thing to do now with personal friends and business associates. For personal friends it allows constant communication on a daily basis. For business it helps to keep customers alerted to discounts and promotions on a daily basis.

So how to take advantage of Twitter for your business and your blog? Quite simply, send out a “tweet” on a semi regular basis to keep your customers “in the know” about what’s going on. The moment you make a new blog post, send out a “tweet” to direct your customers and followers to your blog post. What people do on Twitter to get the word out is to take the URL link to the exact blog post you made and enter it in a link shortener such as bit.ly and insert this shortened link in your Tweet message. This is a common practice among Tweeters. This method is very effective since your Twitter audience is constantly online and will take in all messages and most likely communicate back to the sender.

Another important tip is not to “sell” anything in Twitter messages. Twitter was made for social networking and should be kept as such. In other words, use Twitter to communicate your promotions and also direct them to your blog and your business location but not sell. Selling should be done at your place of business or in your blog. Twitter, as well as all the other social media sites prohibit putting selling messages in your communications. This would be defined as “spamming” these sites if you do so.

So remember, use Twitter wisely. It is only to be used as another form of communicating to your customers and potential customers by informing them of who you are and what you do. If used properly, social media can be a big boost to your business.

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Yahoo
4. Youtube
5. MSN
6. Wikipedia
7. Amazon
8. eBay
9. Bing
10. My Space
11. Craigslist
12. Twitter
13. WordPress
14. AOL
15. Ask

According to eBizmba, they took the highest average of Alexa.com for each of these sites. Alexa is a popular site that gives world rank to every website online. Of course, any site that is new or did not rank at all because of the webmaster not making a concerted effort at SEO will not be listed, and will show “no data available.”

We are not surprised about the current popular list here. 3 of the sites are search engines. 2 of them are social network sites.

We were not surprised to see the world’s most popular blog platform, WordPress in the list this year. As you know, WordPress blog platform is the platform of choice for many large companies as well as small and medium concerns. It is also wildly popular with personal use for families and friends.

In our opinion, most of these sites will continue their popularity way into 2012. Knowing that these sites are popular world wide now, you should focus your efforts on marketing your business by being on these sites. Whether it is a directory, social network, or online store, you need to get some online presence in each and everyone of these sites.