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MySpace is a social networking tool that has gained popularity over the years. As is clear from the name itself, MySpace basically refers to a free personal web page that can contain information about you, your life and your business.

While some people may use MySpace only to make friends and interact with them, many others recognise its potential as a free web marketing tool that can do wonders to their web presence and help them to popularise their website and business. However, the best approach on MySpace is still considered to be one in which a person networks and interacts with friends as well as uses the platform to market his / her business.

Customising Your MySpace Page:

As with most other social networking tools, using MySpace is easy. You begin with creating a page for yourself and customising it by including information about you and your business / website such as Interests and Personality, Display Name, Background and Lifestyle, Companies, Networking, etc. Once you create your profile, you are all set to look for people you know and connect with them. You can even search for people you would like to know. This is especially useful for those who want to connect with their target audiences. You can send a friend request and wait for them to accept you. Friends can start communicating with one another and begin reading each other’s MySpace page.

Marketing with MySpace: If you have been wondering how to Market with MySpace, read on –

Once you have created a presence for yourself, you can start taking steps towards marketing with your MySpace page. This can be done using the following methods:

• Create a strong MySpace page: You are perhaps, the only person who knows your business inside out. Use the Myspace platform to talk about your core competencies. Make your page interesting, something that offers value to its readers such as a regularly updated blog. You can even upload images, songs and pictures. Be as honest and clear as possible and try to make your personal page warm and friendly.
• Search for your Target Audience: Send friend requests to people who may be interested in your niche business. Make your message friendly as opposed to filling it with marketing and promotional talk.
• Start Interacting: Once you have built up a decent friends list, you can begin interacting with them. Leave comments on their pages and include a link to your website. Doing so will drive traffic to your website.
• Send out Bulletins: The Bulletins tool on MySpace helps you to send out such updates which will be directly posted on the MySpace pages of all your friends. It is recommended not to overdo using this as people might start getting annoyed with excessive self promotion.

Some of the other tools that you can use include MySpace Groups, MySpace Events, Link Exchange, MySpace Music, etc. If you haven’t started yet, login to MySpace and explore its marketing opportunities.

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Tags: market with myspace, myspace, myspace events, myspace groups, myspace marketing, myspace music, myspace page, myspace search, myspace.com

Gone are the days when advertisers and marketers could simply rely on traditional media to create a buzz around their brand and products. With growing competition and a fight to succeed across all industries, the need of the day is to reach out to your target audiences across all media and platforms. The internet is one of the most popular mediums to target customers and Social Media Marketing is definitely the need of the day.

Also known as a form of internet marketing, social media marketing refers to the collective efforts of marketing and promoting a website or business through the use of a plethora of social media channels such as social networks, blogs, forums, social book marking, online communities as well as social media sharing tools.
Let’s look at Internet Marketers Top 10 Social Media Sites

1. Facebook: Facebook is a well known and extremely popular social networking website that allows you to connect with people all across the globe, no matter where they may be. Irrespective of whether you want to market and promote yourself or your business, Facebook offers you tremendous opportunities to gain exposure absolutely free of cost. http://www.facebook.com/

2. Twitter – Twitter is a free social media, networking and micro blogging service that enables individuals and companies to market themselves by reaching out to & connecting with thousands of people online. And all that needs to be done to accomplish this task is to answer a simple question – ‘what’s happening?’ http://twitter.com/

3. YouTube: Launched in 2005, YouTube is a video hosting and sharing website that enables users to upload their videos and share it with the rest of the world. http://www.youtube.com/

4. MySpace: MySpace is a social networking tool that has gained popularity over the years. As is clear from the name itself, MySpace basically refers to a free personal web page that can contain information about you, your life and your business. http://www.myspace.com/

5. Squidoo: Squidoo is an upbeat and popular publishing platform where users can publish content on topics of their interest on pages known as Lenses. http://www.squidoo.com/

6. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a platform that offers professionals the opportunity to maintain their professional profile and interact with other professionals in their own and other fields. Currently, over 50 million professionals are using LinkedIn to interact with one another and exchange information & opportunities on the professional front. http://www.linkedin.com/
7. Delicious: Delicious is a social bookmarking website that enables publishers to bookmark websites on the internet and see what’s new on the web. http://delicious.com/
8. Digg: Digg is a popular social bookmarking site that enables users to bookmark the latest News headlines, Videos and Images. http://digg.com/

9. Flickr: Flickr is a well known photo sharing site from Yahoo. It allows users to share pictures, with friends, family and other business associates. http://www.flickr.com

10. StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon provides a platform for sharing personal recommendations on stories, pictures, and videos etc. Helps to discover the best on the web. http://www.stumbleupon.com/

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Tags: internet marketers, media sites, sites, social media, top 10, top 10 list

In a very short span of time, Facebook (FB) has gained tremendous popularity, the world over. Almost everyone, web savvy or not is on Facebook and why not?

Facebook has revolutionised the way people interact and keep in touch with one another. Right from families and friends to colleagues and casual acquaintances, FB makes it possible to connect with people in real time, on a day to day, minute by minute basis.

However, Facebook is not just limited to Friends’ Lists. It is packed with a number of different tools that enable members to market themselves and their businesses well. Facebook Advertising is a good case in point!

Though there are conflicting views about this, many people feel that Facebook ads do a better job at targeting online audiences and are more effective than Google Adwords!

Given the tremendous pace at which the Facebook user base is constantly growing, it won’t be a surprise if Facebook ads will soon begin to challenge the online advertising dominance that has up till now been enjoyed by Google!

Let’s take a look at some of the factors that may contribute to this change:

• More and more people are joining Facebook every day, all across the globe, thus adding to its list of several hundred million users.
• The large user base spends several hours on Facebook.
• Facebook’s Ad design interface is clutter-free and easy to use.
• Facebook ads can be targeted closely to its members based on such factors as age, education, gender, location, marital status, hobbies, etc. This is the information that is provided voluntarily by registered users.
• Facebook estimates the number of users you can target with your ads based on different factors.
• Facebook knows who its members are and is aware of its user’s preferences. Such specific information enables Facebook to offer advertisers the flexibility and benefit of serving their audiences highly customised and well targeted advertisements.
• Facebook makes it possible to serve the most relevant ads to people based on their interests, thus improving the chances of arousing their curiosity in these ads.
• Facebook provides detailed Advertising Reports which help advertisers to understand how well their ads are performing. They can then make the required changes and check the improvements.
• Competition on Facebook may still be lower than on Google Adwords.

Google has spent many years perfecting its Adsense and Adwords tools. Despite that, it has been seen that Facebook ads and advertising on Facebook is definitely catching up and may even become much bigger than Google Adwords.

Whether or not Facebook ads will actually outshine Google Adwords is something we must all be willing to wait and watch. As they say, only time will tell!

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Tags: Facebook, facebook ads, facebook bigger then google, facebook marketing, facebook vs google, Google, google adwords, google marketing

Web marketers, all across the globe look for ways and means to enhance their web presence, popularise their business and gain positive online exposure. Some do it through their websites, while others prefer to achieve the same through regular and dedicated blogging. Whatever be the case, the motivating factor is always to reach out to a larger audience. Now, Google Profile makes this even easier!

Irrespective of whether you have a website or a blog, you can build yourself a highly customised web presence thanks to Google’s Profile feature.

What is Google Profile?

The Google Profile service launched by Google enables you to design your own Personal Profile page on Google that helps you to choose exactly what information should be provided when someone searches for your name on Google.

Simply put, your Google profile administers how you are presented on the various Google products. This is the information that can be seen by all other Google users.

By creating a Google Profile, you get to tell web searchers who you are. The great thing about this feature is that it lets you have complete control over the nature of information presented. If you do not want to make your Address and other contact details public, you don’t have to! Just mention your email id and you are reachable without being over accessible! Moreover, you can also control who can and cannot see your personal details.

How Does It Work?

Google Profile enables you to hand pick every piece of information that you would like to share about yourself, each time someone searches for you on Google, using your name or other keywords associated with you. This way, you provide the right information to people.

• Go to http://www.google.com/profiles
• Click on “Create my profile”
• Customise the page with the information that you would like to share about yourself with anyone who might search for you on Google
• Enjoy your very OWN and highly customised Google Profile!

Once you have logged in to your Google Profile account, you can start entering your details.

Some of the features under Google profile include:

1. Once you enable the ‘Send a Message’ feature, you can keep your email hidden and still, receive emails from other Google mail users.
2. You can make your profile more impressive by adding photos from Google Image applications such as Picasa or Flickr.
3. You can customise your personal profile page by adding a short bio about yourself.
4. You can add your most current contact details and control who can see it.
5. Using this feature, you can link to your other Google web properties on the net. This includes links to your Blogger blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages. Now all your friends need to do is to visit your Google Profile page and connect with you via different online tools.
6. The ‘My Places’ feature helps to share information about your present as well as past locations.

You no longer need to fret about not finding yourself on Google searches whenever you search for your name!

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Tags: Google, google profile, google profile account, google profile marketing, profile

Most internet savvy individuals have their own blog today and this is the reason why, the internet is flooded with Blogs on every imaginable topic. Thanks to their ability to be updated regularly and the ease with which they can be maintained, Blogs have started occupying the same space & importance that was once reserved for websites.

However, simply having a blog is not enough. If you are interested in truly using your blog to market yourself, your brand or your product well, you must work on maintaining its quality and usefulness. After all, how else will you be able to break from the clutter and create a special space for YOUR blog?

Writing Good Blog Posts One of the prerequisites of owing a good, widely read and followed blog is to pay attention to the quality of content you post on it. You cannot have a mediocre quality blog and expect great results from it. The online visitor of today is smart and recognises quality. Hence, if you are interested in tapping into the most genuine and valuable reader base on the internet, it is imperative to write good blog posts that offer value.

Selecting a Relevant Theme: Before you create a blog for yourself, think about its purpose and relevance. It is recommended to build up your blog based on your niche industry. Since you know your industry well, you will be able to share value with your blog readers in the form of articles, reviews, feedback and opinion on topics related to your core competencies.

Planning in Advance: If you are starting a new blog, it is good practice to write atleast 5-8 posts in advance. These can be added over a period of time. However, if you already have a blog, you can plan each blog post before you actually make them live. Spending some time in planning what you want to say in your next blog post as opposed to immediate action can help to improve the quality of your posts.

• Use a strong, interesting and attention grabbing Headline and sub heads.
• Write short posts and space out the text by including lines in between each paragraph.
• Divide the content using bulleted points.
• Proof read your text before posting it to make sure there are no typos or spelling errors.
• Stick to the topic / theme of the blog when writing blog posts.
• Write a good introduction that tells the readers what the post is about. If you can hold their attention in the beginning, there is a good chance that they will read till the end.
• If you are new to blog writing, practice will help. Hence, try to read other blogs relevant to your industry and see how they are tackling different subjects. Write as often as possible and set goals for yourself.

Once you have developed a good quality blog, the next step is to start marketing it across different blog directories. Leave your valuable comments on other blog posts and add a link back to your own blog. Include your blog url in your email signature, website and other resources. Most importantly, have fun with it!

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Tags: blog, blog content, Blog Marketing, blog post, followed blog, good blog post

• Are you bored of your routine 9 to 5 job?
• Do you feel stagnated in your present career?
• Do you wish you had some more time in hand to spend with family?
• Are you dissatisfied with your current salary and see no chance of improvement?

More and more individuals today are faced with a similar dilemma. Unhappiness in your present job can sap you of all your positive energy, productivity at work and motivation to perform.

Today, a growing number of people are realizing just this and turning their attention towards more lucrative career options, something that can give them creative satisfaction, monetary fulfillment and flexibility at work.
Read on to find out the benefits of becoming your own boss –

• You are in-charge of your revenue:
Self employment offers you the opportunity to have complete control over your income generating abilities and the revenue you earn over a period of time. After the initial warm-up period, once you get a hang of what you need to do and how you need to do it, you have the chance to maximize your earnings with no one and nothing to stop you.

• You are Answerable to Yourself:
Being self employed in your own business, whether from home or an office provides you the freedom to work on your own terms. You become your own boss. From setting goals to meeting them and checking your progress, you become the BOSS.

• You Enjoy Flexibility:
Remember those days of employment when you and your colleagues constantly cribbed about the lack of flexibility at work. Well those days are over once you enter the world of self employment. Right from the work hours to the projects you take up, you are in complete control. Depending on what suits you best, you can choose your work location, work hours, and work policies.

• You Enhance Your Personal Life:
All work and no play can make even the best of workers lack motivation to perform. Now that you make the decisions, you have the opportunity to give your family quality time that they deserve. Right from planning family vacations to dinners and picnics, you can plan your days in such a way that you have ample time to rest, relax and rejuvenate, thus enhancing your productivity at work.

• You Set Your Own Goals:
Working under someone has its limitations. However, once you start working for yourself and become your own boss, you have the right to set your own short term and long term goals for achieving success in all your endeavours. Right from the initial planning stages to the actual stage of achieving what you set out to achieve, there is no one you have to answer to and get your plans approved from. This ensures saving precious time which would otherwise be wasted in getting approvals.

The road to success in self employment is by no means easy. However, with a little bit of focus, dedication and motivation, you can become a successful entrepreneur – someone who is happy with that he / she is doing.

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Tags: be your own boss, boss, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, leader, Mentor

If you’re in the process of developing a strong internet marketing strategy to promote your brand / business, you must not forget to add Squidoo to this equation. Simply because, Squidoo works & is absolutely free to use!

First things first, what is Squidoo? Squidoo is an upbeat and popular publishing platform where users can publish content on topics of their interest. Also known as Lenses, these pages allow publishers to share their views, opinions and knowledge on something that matters or appeals to them.

Take for an example the lens of a camera. Just as a camera lens shows you a view of something, a Squidoo lens too, helps you to read about different topics and allows you to share your perspective on anything you choose. Squidoo lens can be about you and your hobbies, article overviews, about your products, blog & website, about your product reviews, RSS feeds or even about your business. And the best part, each lens is created by an individual.

To get true value out of your presence on Squidoo, do make sure that your content is well written and offer quality information.

How to Market With Squidoo?

• Say you are completely new to the online world and have no website. Inspite of that, you are looking at promoting your local business or products. Squidoo allows you to do just that simply by creating an informational lens about your business and providing details which can be searched by prospective customers.

• In the event that you have a website, you can link back to it using targeted keywords through your Squidoo lens, thus boosting your search engine rankings and driving valuable free traffic to your website.

• Once you have created a valuable Squidoo lens, you can Bookmark the same by adding its link on your website, blog, and social networking tools such as Facebook, Digg etc.

• Link back to your Lens by searching for other relevant lenses and leaving your constructive comments on their Guestbook, while adding a link back to your own lens.

• Follow the guidelines provided by Squidoo to promote your lens and improve its rankings.

• Join relevant groups on Squidoo related to your line of business. Doing so helps to improve the popularity of your lens and attracts the attention of other members in the group.

• RSS Feed Syndication is another very useful tool. By using it, you can easily syndicate your blog posts on your relevant lens.

Squidoo offer a large number of opportunities for marketing yourself and your business. If you haven’t already, start utilizing the power of Squidoo to further your online marketing efforts.

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Tags: lens, lenses, market with squidoo, squidoo, squidoo lens, squidoo lenses, squidoo marketing

If you thought that Facebook was useful simply to keep in touch with your family and friends, think again. Currently, Facebook (FB) is considered to be one of the most powerful social networking tools on the web that can bring about a much needed 360 degree upswing in your internet marketing efforts.

Let’s face the facts: In the face of hard-core competition across almost every industry today, web marketers need to be proactive with their networking efforts if they want to popularize their brand and invite free traffic to their website and blog.

Social network tools such as Facebook is playing an important role in attracting such useful web traffic and if used to its optimum capacity, it can assure new visitors to your online properties and generate repeat visitors regularly.

Social Connectivity Guaranteed: Facebook makes it possible to connect with a large network of people spread all over the world. Not only does this provide widespread exposure to your brand, it also promotes your products and attracts prospective customers who want to find out more about how you can help them and what your products can do for them.

News Feed & Facebook: The News Feed feature on FB is definitely one of the most valuable & powerful tools that can be used to get your message out there to all your friends and followers. As you login to your Facebook account, you will be greeted with the News Feed functionality which lists down and presents to you some of the most useful and interesting content / topics posted by your friends over a period of time.

While on the face of it, this may not seem exceptional, if you truly think about it, you will realize its REAL value.

By posting attention grabbing content about your Company’s products, events or other news items, you will be able to attract the attention of people in your friend’s list who will either comment on it, or show their appreciation for it. This way, you stand the chance of becoming the publisher of the most interesting content and thus, appearing on the News Feed pages of all your friends.

Leveraging Facebook News Feed

In order to leverage FB News Feed, you should make sure –

• Your posts present fresh, relevant content that is in tune with the latest happenings around the globe.
• Your posts are informative, attention grabbing and capable of delivering value to its readers.
• Your posts can capture the interest of the readers who would like to find out more details and thus, visit your website and read about your products and services.

Each feature of Facebook can add tremendously to your goals of networking and attracting free traffic to your website. It’s all about how YOU utilize them and make them work in your favor.

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Tags: Facebook, facebook news feed, leverage, news, news feed

The WWW is one of the most powerful and effective resources available today. Breaking through the barrier of distances, the internet enables us to communicate with one another irrespective of where we may be based geographically. Thanks to the internet, each one of us can converge at a common meeting place and operate in our respective fields – whether business, management, trade, or service delivery.

An Internet Forum is one such point of convergence which can be used effectively for sharing of information and knowledge, as well as for self / business promotion. Your internet marketing efforts will be incomplete without marketing via forums. Before we look at how to conduct forum marketing, let’s briefly define what an Internet Forum is.

Forum: An internet forum can be looked at as an online community, a message board or a discussion board that is the venue for discussions and communications between members of that particular community. Discussions can range from any given topic covered by the community and can be started off by writing a post. These posts become visible to all members who may choose to reply to another person’s thread, thus presenting their thoughts and opinions.

Forum Marketing: Participating in forums is a great way to build your online identity and network with other reputed players in your field. Providing beneficial advice and objective opinions on topics of discussion helps to create a good impression and further your marketing efforts by driving traffic to your websites and increasing the popularity of your products & services.

Here are some tips for conducting effective Forum Marketing:

1. Forum Search: Conduct an online search using your niche keywords to locate the most beneficial forums. Join popular, relevant and good quality forums that fall in your industry of interest. Make sure that the forums regularly add new topics of discussion and have at least a few thousands of members. Forums that spam are not a good choice.
2. Join Forums: Once you have short listed the forums you would like to join, its time to register with them and create your profile.
3. Use a Targeted Signature Line: Once you are a registered member, its time to tweak your profile and make it as compelling as possible. Creating a targeted signature line is very useful as it appears at the bottom of each post you make. The simplest yet effective signature line is one that includes your name, a brief line that describes your line of business and a link to your website
4. Add Value: The way you participate in a forum speaks volumes about your credibility. Hence, it is important to read and follow the forum rules and regulations regarding posting replies. Next, make your presence felt by sharing useful resources, opinions and views on topics being discussed. Do not self promote as this is taken negatively.
5. Become a regular Participant: Don’t just create an account and leave it at that. Make it a point to login to each forum and read through the current discussions. Post your replies where relevant and maintain consistency in your participation.

Discover the wonders of Forum Marketing through self discipline, knowledge sharing and value addition.

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Tags: forum, forum marketing, forum search, join forums, marketing, marketing in forum

Marketing your blog or website is of utmost importance if you want to attract the attention of your target customers and drive them to your web resources. Once you have created a blog or a new website, the challenge now is –

• How to divert maximum traffic to your newly launched web property?
• How to get your blog seen and read by more and more people?

Feedburner Helps!

Your web marketing efforts need to be focussed, goal driven and direct. The good news is that a large number of online tools are available that can assist you in promoting your blog. All that is needed is to utilize them correctly and effectively.

What is Feedburner? It is one of the most widely used and trusted feed management systems on the internet today. Owned by Google, Feedburner is gaining in popularity almost every day!

RSS Feeds: RSS feeds are being utilised by more and more websites as it allows readers to subscribe to its content and stay updated with the content that is added to the blog on a regular basis. Moreover, if your blog provides RSS feeds, chances are that other websites who like your content may wish to use your content on their platform, thus driving free traffic to your blog / website in exchange.

Why Feedburner? While it is possible to make your content usable and capable of being followed by simply implementing RSS functionality, what makes Feedburner a good choice is the added benefits it offers to user and web publishers.

• Feedburner allows you to keep a track of all those people who are opted to follow your blog and read its content.
• Feedburner lets you know what your readers are searching for and which blog is the most popular among the readers.
• Feedburner helps you track your content popularity and find out which content is the most popular.
• Feedburner customises the user experience by giving them the choice to select the manner in which they would like to receive your content updates. Email subscriptions are a popular choice as they deliver new content directly to the subscriber’s inbox.

By creating an account with Feedburner, adding the code on your blog and allowing visitors to subscribe to your service, you can market your blog effectively and communicate with your target audience in the most cost effective manner. And the best part, you have access to real time statistics that will help you to track user behaviour.

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Tags: Feedburner, feedburner marketing, marketing, subscribe