2012’s social media marketing hits and misses

With social media, it couldn’t be easier for brands to connect with their fans and launch new marketing campaigns. Sometimes, they get it so right we have to commend them. Other times, they get it so wrong that we can’t help but facepalm in their general direction. Join us for a run-down of this year’s memorable moments, successes and mishaps of online marketing.

Hits

Samsung

With it being so easy to connect with brands these days, fans can get in touch with the wildest requests. One man this year visited the Samsung Canada Facebook page to ask for a free Galaxy S III smartphone in exchange for his crude drawing of a dragon. At first, Samsung declined the request but gave the fan a similarly child-like doodle of a kangaroo instead. The exchange went viral on Reddit and, apparently delighted with the free publicity the eager fan’s request earned, Samsung decided to fulfil his request after all – complete with custom dragon packaging, covers and wallpaper.

ASOS

Someone, somewhere picked up that this seemingly innocent blouse with contrast piping bears a strikingly phallic symbol on the chest, and what was seen could never be unseen. The hashtag #penisblouse began trending on Twitter and, instead of being embarrassed, ASOS cleverly turned the humorous situation into a sales pitch, asking users to tweet images of them wearing the blouse. Even the ASOS team behind the well-endowed creation joined in the fun.

Bodyform

When a disgruntled man took to Bodyform’s Facebook page to complain about the lies perpetrated by the brand, the post was a viral success. What was an even bigger hit, though, was Bodyform’s response.

 

LasVegas.com

When Prince Harry was caught with his pants down in Las Vegas this summer, LasVegas.com spied an opportunity to revitalise its ‘Know the Code’ campaign. The code being, of course, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’

The site blasted the ‘exploiters’ that outed Harry on Twitter and used the royal scandal to spread its #KnowTheCode hashtag. Tourism in Las Vegas reportedly saw a boost shortly afterwards, but there’s no telling if this was a direct result of the marketers or the allure of the crown jewels.

Oreos

Earlier in the summer, Oreo faced backlash for a post on its Facebook page that saw the famous treats don the rainbow colours for LGBT Pride Month. While Oreo was shouting about its proud support of love, critics of gay marriage began shouting back, threatening to boycott Oreo and parent company Kraft.

Others, who met Oreo’s posting with positivity, challenged the naysayers to boycott all companies that have positioned themselves in support of gay rights, including Google, Apple, Amazon, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Nike – the list goes on. Even just a boycott of Kraft foods would leave many cupboards fairly empty.

The stuffed biscuit remains one of the biggest brands on Facebook, with 30m likes and, with the opponents made to look foolish, Oreo (and gay rights) were the real winners this time around.

That Big Event in London

This pop-up brand began selling its ‘reality check’ souvenir tote bags and T-shirts online ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The stg£15 merchandise bore subversive slogans like ‘They’re all on steroids’, ‘It only took me three hours to get to work this morning’ and ‘I’m renting my flat to a fat American family’, though the latter in particular attracted the ire of Team USA’s supporters on Facebook.

However, the negative comments did not detract from sales and stock was flying out, with designer Toby Leigh saying plenty of American tourists with a sense of humour were even picking them up.

Susan Boyle’s PR team

An unfortunate sequence of characters, or a marketing genius at work? That was the question when the hashtag selected to promote a listening party and Q&A for Susan Boyle’s new album was #susanalbumparty. Twitter investigator Is Twitter Wrong? discovered that the hashtag double entendre did indeed originate from the officialSusan Boyle Twitter account, but was later changed to #SusanBoyleAlbumParty.

While it’s likely the PR gurus regretted their original choice, we still think they’re winners having achieved wider reach than expected with the dodgy one.

Misses

McDonald’s

What began as a well-intentioned hashtag ended up as a ‘bashtag’ when Twitter users hijacked the McDonald’s #McDStories tag with horror stories from the fast-food chain. References in the tweets ranged from obesity and diabetes to fingernails discovered in fries. Even McDonald’s couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle and, even though the campaign was pulled, the bashtag continues to be used negatively.

Starbucks Ireland

The Starbucks Ireland Twitter account got a little carried away with Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations this year, apparently forgetting that Ireland is no longer a part of the Queen’s realm. A tweet asking followers what made them proud to be British provoked backlash and prompted an apology from the coffee makers.

NBC

During the 2012 Olympics, one of the biggest trending topics on Twitter was #NBCfail, owing to the US network’s decision to delay coverage of some events for prime-time viewing, even though there was little viewers could do to avoid hearing the results of every event on various social media channels in the interim. NBC even live tweeted the opening ceremony hours before they would broadcast it themselves. To add more fuel to the fire, the opening ceremony commentators showed their ignorance as country’s names were mispronounced and presenter Bob Costas tried desperately to find something relevant to say about nations he clearly knew very little about.

American Apparel, Gap, Urban Outfitters, CelebBoutique and Kenneth Cole

Piggybacking on a trending topic is a common social media marketing ploy, though that doesn’t mean all trending topics are fair game. Here we have just some of the year’s misguided brands that thought tragic and devastating events such as Hurricane Sandy, the Aurora shooting and the uprising in Egypt were fodder for their marketing messages.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon café in Ranelagh, Dublin, made the headlines this year for breaking the golden rule of interacting with customers on social media: don’t resort to name-calling.

That said, the Dublin 6 café did sweeten its apology with special discounts on coffee for customers that quoted ‘Twittergate’, retaining some semblance of class.

Celina

But it’s not just brands that need to learn when to hold their tongues on social media, as one Facebook user who decided to use this platform to voice a complaint to Treacy’s Hotel Waterford has learned. Unfortunately, it seems this lady had been misinformed about the events that transpired on her fiancé’s stag weekend. The entire exchange is wonderfully acted out by Final Boss Media below, but beware: NSFW language comes with.

 

Death by social media

And finally, we’ll take a moment to remember those that were mistakenly declared dead by social media users this year. Morgan Freeman is constantly falling victim to these hoaxes, and this year he was joined by Mick Jagger, Bill Cosby, Reese Witherspoon and Keanu Reeves – all of whom are alive and well, I assure you.

Worse still are the tweets from users following the death of a high-profile public figure, confusing the dearly departed with someone else. To clarify: Neil Armstrong, astronaut, died in August 2012; Billie Joe Armstrong, frontman of Green Day, is still going strong.

These are likely the same people that were surprised to find out that the Titanic was real.

4 Unique Ways to Use Facebook for Your Business

Are you wondering how to best use Facebook for your business?
Should you open your personal profile with a Facebook Subscribe button? Would a Facebook Group work well for your business?
The simple truth is that Facebook Pages are not being seen as often in the news feed.
Facebook reported that on average, brands reach about 16% of their fans in a typical week through posts. This news has many people wondering if Pages are still a worthwhile endeavor.
Find out how to choose the best marketing strategy that fits your business by answering these simple questions.

#1: Have multiple employees?

If so, I still recommend having a Facebook Page despite the visibility issues. Let’s face it; every marketing channel has visibility issues. You will never reach 100% of your customers all of the time. Facebook Pages have advantages for your business that Groups and the Subscribe button don’t.
First, Facebook Pages are branded. You are using your company name and logo to increase your brand awareness, and your Facebook Page can showcase your brand personality as people read through your Timeline. Find out more about creative ways businesses are using Timelines.
You can also participate on Facebook as your brand by commenting on other Pages as your Page to increase visibility.

Use a Facebook Page for great branding and added apps.

Second, you can advertise a Facebook Page. Even with GM’s announcement that they will not be using Facebook Ads, they are still effective for other brands and companies. Test to make sure Facebook Ads are working for you and follow these tips on how to use Facebook Ads.

Advertise your Page to get the Like, but the text can also provide an offer.

Third, you can run contests and have special apps that give your Page some bells and whistles. Facebook Offers and check-in deals are also perks that many companies can use in their Facebook marketing strategy that are only available through Pages.

Use Offers to provide a unique way for people to get discounts and offers from you.

#2: Want to brand yourself?

If you are the face of your company or you want to brand your name, you may also want to consider opening up the Subscribe button on your personal profile. Some people will want to connect with you personally rather than on a Facebook Page with a logo. Find out more about the Subscribe button.

If you are the face of the company, people will want to connect to you personally.

You don’t have to worry about your privacy because you can easily control who sees your posts.

Use your public posts to talk about your business and things that you would like to publicly share.

#3: Are you self-employed?

If you’re a solopreneur or branding your business with your name, deciding your Facebook strategy could be a little more challenging. Because posts from personal profiles are showing up better in the news feed, people who have their Subscribe button open on their personal profile are seeing more new subscribers than fans.
So does that mean you should ditch the Page altogether? Not necessarily. Take a look at some of the advantages of having a Page listed in point #1. If you would like to run a contest or an ad, or have special apps or coupons, then you will need a Page.
There is also the consideration of promoting your business on your personal profile. Facebook terms state that you aren’t supposed to “use your personal profile for commercial gain” as shown under their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, but this statement is not exactly crystal-clear.
To be on the safe side, if you are using your personal profile for business postings, I would talk more in terms of what you are doing in your business rather than telling people outright to purchase your products or services. A soft-sell approach usually works better anyway.

#4: Manage groups of people?

Groups are perfect for businesses that are “naturally” groups:

• Networking groups
• Groups of coaching clients
• Social groups
• School groups
• Niche-focused groups

We have a great post on how to take advantage of Secret Groups for your business.
I don’t believe that Groups work well to promote an entire company or brand unless your business is only about bringing together a network of people in some way.
There are a few reasons Groups will irritate your potential clients if you use them as your main vehicle for marketing on Facebook. Here are the main irritants:

• You may be adding people to the Group who don’t want to be added. Anyone can add other people to a Group once they are in it. And that can irritate people who don’t want to be part of that Group.
• Many people don’t know how to turn off the notifications in a Group and they may get irritated and opt to stop getting all the updates. If you do run a Group, make sure people know where the settings can be changed.

Make sure the Group members know that they can change their notifications.

If your business is about networking or bringing people together into natural groups, then Facebook Groups can be a great addition to your marketing mix. You can use Groups to communicate, schedule events, share documents and more.

Use the Events and Document-sharing features of the Group to enhance the experience.

A local group of business owners can be a great way to stay connected and promote your business news. You may want to set up promotional rules of the Group so that group members know how often and what to post.

Be a leader and start your own local group of business networkers.

You can also use Groups as an added bonus for your coaching business. Give your clients an inner circle where they can connect and ask questions and network together.

Use a Group to give an added bonus to answer ongoing questions if customers purchase a product.

Hopefully by answering these four questions, you can make the right choices on where you should be participating on Facebook to get the most out of your marketing strategy. And possibly these suggestions have sparked some new and fresh ideas to take your marketing to a new level!

5 Ways to Get Nothing Done

With rare exceptions, everybody wants to be productive. It means advancing your career, feeling a sense of accomplishment and even opens the opportunity for guilt-free vacations and rest. There are plenty of ways to circumvent your own productivity, though. If you’re bent on sabotaging your todo list, here are a few options to consider.

Set Alarms for Everything

When it comes to distraction, there’s nothing like having alarms go off while you’re working, urging you to do something else. It’s a great way to break your concentration and ensure that you have a persistent feeling of panic throughout the day.
Alarms are for events you can’t miss, not for tasks. The Pomodoro technique may be an exception if you’re using it to eliminate anxiety instead of create it. For everyday work, though, I’ve found it’s important to train myself to check my schedule consciously, and allow myself to dictate any anxiety surrounding due dates. Chances are you’re not going to forget the looming task due by the end of the day, and having your next task ding at you isn’t going to help get either one done.

Be Social

We all need a break now and then. Check Twitter, scan Facebook, and maybe fire off a few emails and texts to see how friends are doing. Keeping all of those outlets available all day is a guaranteed way to ensure that you’re never fully focused on what you’re doing. Chat rooms and IM are even better; it’s like a water cooler that comes to you.
When it’s time to work, shut off your Twitter client, turn off notifications on your mobile devices and close all those browser tabs that are going to tempt you into just “checking.” Go “dark” wherever you can. It seems obvious, yes, but I’m betting that I’m not alone in wavering on this.

Lump Your Tasks Together

If you want to end a day feeling like you accomplished nothing, make sure that all of the items on your to do list are “big picture” projects. Overarching concepts with no sequential set of smaller tasks are a perfect way to make any job seem overwhelming.
If, instead, you want to make progress and see results, you might want to break that “year end report” task into a series of smaller tasks that you can actually tackle. Mark them off one at a time, and keep moving forward. At the end of the day you’ll be rewarded by a series of checkmarks and an easy way to see how far you have (or don’t have) to go to finish the project.

Say “Yes” to Everything

If you say “yes” whenever someone asks you if you can “fit it in” or help out with something, you’ll easily ensure that you don’t get done what you already need to, with the added bonus of not helping anybody out successfully.
If you’re a little more thoughtful with what you agree to, you can keep life manageable and, ultimately, get more done. Remember, saying “yes” to one thing means saying “no” to something else, and vice versa.
Being constantly busy is not a sign of productivity. Being able to finish what’s on your plate and take a break is.

Don’t Sleep

Working all night to finish a project can accomplish great things. For me, even the next day is productive. Then, I lose two, maybe three days of productivity as my body and brain crash and struggle to catch up. Assuming that your life is a series of tasks and not one big, end-all job, maintaining a sleep schedule and finding a healthy equilibrium is vital to actually doing anything.
Set a bedtime. It doesn’t have to be strict, but let your mind stop for a while. Learning to clear my mind at the end of a busy day is a skill I honed, and I have no regrets. More often than not, my mind solves problems that were slowing me down while I sleep. Letting your subconscious do some of the lifting can help your conscious thoughts be even more productive.

Using Social Media to Increase Your Search Rank

The shifting rules of search mean that social media is more valuable than ever

The rules of search have changed. In fact, they change on a daily basis. But never so dramatic has rank been uprooted since the explosion of social media. Social media sites, especially the powerhouses of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, have become back-link central for affecting organic search results.

 Social media’s influence on driving business via the web is expected to surpass SEO in 2013, according to eMarketer. Web marketers and PR professionals must pay attention to how social media affects search, and ultimately how it can change the rules of online visibility and (online) brand engagement.

Changing the Game

Prior to Facebook’s takeover of the online universe (800 million active users today), online visibility in natural search was a sum of several, measurable components: SEO site compliance on site structure and meta tags/content, directory link submissions, and qualified and relevant site/blog linking. In 2010, the game officially changed, with Google’s support of social media—author reputation, bookmarking, and commenting, as well as a number of other social factors (likes, tweets, re-tweets, shares)—as a major factor in how it will rank websites and blogs in its algorithm. Real-time search in Google meant that search was only as valuable as the latest blog post, social share, and comment.

 Today, the line is blurring. And this causes some confusion for web marketers. Should they focus on optimizing and driving traffic to their social pages? To their web site? Where does their online brand live? How do they communicate their brand value proposition, whether their personal or corporate brand?

 The good news is that technology has advanced so that web marketers can manage their content and sites through the use of simple and effective blogging tools. Further, that those blog tool properties, such as WordPress, support integration of social plug-ins, and necessary content for social sharing, including video, effective product/service literature, and tagged imagery. And so, marketers can use social and manage their web presence to support online brand consistency.

How to Take Advantage of Social Media

So how can you use social media to increase your SEO rank and ensure that the rank and ensuing traffic will convert to business? First, you must create and understand a parallel social media optimization (SMO) / search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. All creators of content on your team (copy, social commenting, videos, and imagery) need to be on one brand team. The approach must be holistic. A unified brand message must drive visibility across all content, all channels.



To define a common strategy for execution across standard search engine optimization practices as well as across social media content development and sharing, marketers must re-think keyword development. The questions become less about search visibility vs. obvious competition and more introspective in terms of what the corporate and executive brand mean. Ask your team questions such as: What is our brand value proposition? What do we want our audience to say about us? How will we incent out audience? How will we be leaders? Why will people follow us? Answering these questions will help you to zone in on your top branded, broad and narrow-based keywords.

Once these target keyword phrases have been developed, you will require an actionable task plan to follow and with which to measure effectiveness of you new blended social/SEO strategy. Within needs to be: content types and frequency, planned outreach per social channel, and media (social) buys/ads with effective messaging and resulting goals. Determining success in social affects search visibility such that quality of the author, relevancy of the topical content, number of followers, number of comments/re-tweets, number of shares of blog posts must be considered and followed for search visibility to pull from success in these metrics.

When determining how you will rank in natural search for branded and business-driving keywords, first do the ABCs of SEO work in terms of on-site optimization wherever your online marketing plan calls for conversion. Once that has been completed, reign in your social and search teams to determine your custom strategy and measurable plan. Remember that, just like traditional SEO practices, SMO work must be consistent, authentic, managed daily and measured for success.

7 Ways to Grow Your Business Doing Webinars

1. Webinars are a great marketing tool to get new customers onboard.
By doing an online presentation you give those who attend your webinar an excellent chance to get to know you, like you and trust you. You introduce yourself and your business to potential clients.
It's a powerful way to get people to know you and trust you enough to become your client, because a webinar is a live, interactive communication with you as a passionate expert.
When you communicate with your subscribers by sending a message or a Newsletter via email, it is certainly good for your marketing, but it is harder to get results and sell your products by doing only that. People buy from people they know, like and trust, and this is where webinars come. By doing an online presentation you build your credibility, you give people an excellent opportunity to get that feeling, to build a good rapport with them, to bond with them, to get your ideas across, to resonate to their style of doing business, so that they can start doing business with you.
When you host a webinar your audience immediately view you as a passionate expert about your services, they learn about your achievements, your experience, your knowledge in the field!
There's always an instant assumption that the presenter is an authority figure in their niche if they are able to host a webinar. So think about that!

2. Webinars give you massive leverage.
You can run a webinar with large numbers and there are no geographical boundaries. With a webinar you have an opportunity to spread your word and handle multiple clients at once and from all over the world, not just your own town, city or country, so you interact with a lot of people at the same time, while still offering great value.
You can find an expert oversees and invite them to speak to your audience on your presentation. This technology allows you to interview anyone you want for a training session. Or to introduce a new product that is coming on the market.
Do you see the leverage and the power? You leverage your time, your resources, your money, your energy, technology, internet - everything.

3. Use webinars as a tool to build loyalty with existing clients.
Webinars are an amazing way to add value to your existing clients because by running webinars you give people more access to you which means more interaction.
Not only webinars allow you to communicate with your customers on a more personal level, but they allow you to keep in touch with them after the webinar, because all webinar softwares send a thank you email after your presentation to each of the attendees and invite them to send you a question or feedback.

4. You create a point of difference by doing webinars:not many businesses are using webinars; and even fewer are using them well.
You can stand out by adding them to your service range.
When I spoke to business owners at the Women Mean Business event in Woolwich a few months ago, out of 11 entrepreneurs only 5 knew what webinars are. Although they were interested in doing them for their business, none of them were actually were doing them in their business at that point, although all of them wanted to.
By doing webinars you go a way ahead of your competitors and your business stands out from lots of others in your niche. This is a great advantage for you!
And this is why it is crucial. According to Google research it currently takes 10,2 interactions between a buyer and a seller before a buyer will open their wallet. So you need to make sure that as many interactions on the way to purchase are taking place with you or your company or your website and webinars serve this purpose very well.

5. Provide customer support or product support using webinars:use webinars to answer customer questions, explain how they can use the product more effectively, and get a feedback. Isn't that great to improve your service?
You can offer a more effective service to your clients & even sort out your customers' problems in a timely and efficient manner. And again this takes your business to a whole level because by doing so you create a point of difference.

6. You get more exposure for your business online.
This is what you need to do to achieve this. Record a webinar to create instant products: many webinar services have a recording feature built in, so recording your webinar is really easy.
How can you use the recording? You can send it to those who registered for your webinar but couldn't come, so they can listen to the recording and still benefit from your service.
I also suggest uploading your webinar recording to your YouTube channel to get people to see it, to attract new customers and get more exposure for your business.
You can make a video out of each part of your webinar presentation and upload them separately. Thus you will have a whole range of videos and all of sudden you end up with a lot of content by doing just one webinar.
What can you do with all this content? How do you make it work for your business?
You can upload each of your videos on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, your blog or website and because your social media accounts can be connected with each other, all your followers will immediately know and start looking at your content!
Do you see how you can leverage something you have done once?
You have run a webinar once, but you use your webinar presentation multiple times for a variety of purposes to promote and market your business.
One more thing. A webinar recording can be replayed over and over again, generating income for you on autopilot. You can have as many as 50 different automated webinars playing every day!

7. Webinars can help you sell more of your products and services.
At the end of a webinar, after you've spent 60 minutes giving great content to your webinar attendees, you can make a special offer to them.

Let's speak facts and figures here. Webinars typically outsell written sales letters 10 times over. Now what does that mean? When you send an email with an offer to buy something from you, you can expect on average 1 to 2% of sales. When you sell something on a webinar, a typical conversion rate is between 10 and 20%.
Let me share one of my real live examples. I was selling an online service for $27 via email. The email was sent to 1600 people, 20 people bought it. That means the conversation rate was 1,2%. If you want to get more sales, do a "show and tell" webinar, demonstrate live the benefits of your service and the solution it brings. And see your sales soar.
Another example for you. I recently hosted a webinar and invited an expert. That was a test webinar, where we tested a new product. She made an offer at the end of the presentation at the cost of $97. Out of 25 attendees, 5 people bought it. The conversion rate was 20%, which is a very good result. Now I know it works, I can do it on a bigger scale.
Furthermore, webinars allow you to sell high-ticket offers priced at $1,000 and higher, whereas it is difficult to sell products at more than $200 directly from a website. As long as you have a good offer and the targeted audience, it is normal to reach a sales point at between 8 and 10% at a $1,000 price point.
In figures that mean that if you have 100 targeted attendees on your webinar, you can bring in between $8,000 to $10,000 in sales from a single webinar! This takes some good practice of course, but it is worth all the effort, isn't it?
The fact that more traditional methods of promoting and selling products become less effective than before and the fact that more and more consumers prefer to browse and shop online, make webinars more appealing than ever before as a way to drum up and draw sales.

How to Use Instagram to Market Your Business

Photo sharing has been given a major social upgrade thanks to the introduction of Instagram. The Instagram platform has become hugely popular with more than 80 million users, who enjoy altering their photos with special effects and cool filters before sharing them with friends and followers.
Businesses can start using this new type social media as a way to market their company and build up a following. People love strong visual images, so posting pictures of products and even employees will make them feel closer to you. This type of marketing is what helps forge brand loyalty.
So how can your business use Instagram for marketing? Here are some examples:
Geotagging
In Instagram’s latest update, users now have the option to tag a specific location with their images, which are saved to a personal photo map. These can be shared with your followers.
This is great if you have a physical location or even if you travel around the city, state or country. If you have booths at local craft fairs or other vendor events, then you can snap a photo and tag your location to let your followers know where you can be found.
Inside Look
The whole idea behind social media is sharing. Your fans and followers are giving you a chance to reach them on a more personal level so make sure you are giving them the same. Take pictures of the staff in the office. Snap shots of upcoming products to give them a sneak peak. If you’re on the road, take some pictures along the way. Give followers a real sense of how things are behind the scenes to help them feel like a part of the brand.
Use Hashtags
If you use Twitter, you know how effective hashtags can be at sharing. You can use the same on your Instagram photos. Use hash tags that relate to your business or industry to make it easy for people to find you. For instance, if you make jewelry, you can use hashtags like #rings, #customjewlery, or #necklaces. Look up popular hashtags that are being used by similar brands and add them to your images.
Encourage User Images
People who are already using your products should be encouraged to snap a photo of themselves using it and tag it with one of your hash tags. This will show people how to use your products and show how many people are happy with your company.
Hold Contests
People love a chance to win prizes and using Instagram to hold a photo contest is an exciting way to give them what they want. You can ask fans to send in a picture of them using your product and then choose a winner from among them. You could also go a different route by asking them to send in a picture that demonstrates something more abstract, like what represents summer to them.
There are any number of ways to get creative and get more followers by holding a contest using Instagram. Your followers will share with their friends who will also want to join in the fun.
Market Your Events
If you are going to be at a trade show or convention, take pictures and tag your location to let your followers know what is going on for your business. If you are holding a big sale, snap a shot of your sales flyer for your followers to see. This is also a good way to make your followers feel more special because you can offer them a VIP discount that only Instagram users can get. Get creative with them!
Instagram was acquired by Facebook for about $1 billion. That is a sure sign that this is an important part of social media. When you implement it in your marketing strategy, it is one more important tool to have.
People love getting involved and sharing with the businesses they love. Take part in this era of sharing and you can broaden your reach and strengthen your branding with a few snaps of the camera.
Are you signed up with Instagram yet? What are you doing to market your business with the latest social app?

Outsourcing Using Odesk

Odesk is very similar to Elance in that you have the ability to post jobs and also set yourself up as a provider of skills etc etc. Signup is free but you do need to validate your credit card. Its a simple process whereby you enter the card details and Odesk will then debit a couple of transactions from your card. Once this is complete you enter the debited figures into the validation system and you will be good to go. It should only takes a couple of days to complete and is a smooth process.
Once you are all validated you can start posting jobs. This is simple enough to do and you have the option of using either hourly charging or fixed price NB most work is done on the hourly charging. Once posted you will start to receive offers for the work, you will be able to see the providers profile and feedback scores, as well as the Odesk competency tests that the provider has taken. ODesk provide a full messaging system so you can communicate with providers from within the Odesk site.
So moving on, when you have shortlisted the providers you can interview them, all of the providers I have worked with have provided their IM details or phone numbers so this is easy enough to do. This is a great opportunity to find out a bit more about the providers and to ensure that they fully understand the requirements. I also use this opportunity to get an estimate from the provider on how long the work will take, especially important if you are paying by the hour. Following the interview you can then choose to hire a provider, this is simply a one click task. It is worth noting that you can specify the amount of hours that a provider can work per week so at least you can control what is worked.
You've hired and the provider is good to go! I personally with other outsourcing sites have often wondered about what exactly the provider is doing and are they actually spending the time on my job that they have said? Odesk has this covered and it is one of the best features and one that certainly sets it apart from other sites. Providers on Odesk have a software application installed on their machines that tracks not only the time spent on the job, but also takes a screenshot of their system and uploads it to the work diary which you can then view online. This is really useful and gives you the confidence that you are paying for your work to be done and not subsidizing other people!
Odesk take care of all the billing for you so you don't have to worry. They notify you in advance on what they will be taking from your card and all the financial data is located in the "payments" section of your account.
The quality of providers seems to be very high. But as with any outsourcing always make sure you fully state your requirements and ensure that the provider understands what is expected of him/her otherwise you can run into problems. As a point of note Odesk will assist with dispute resolution only for hourly charged work, if you go fixed price, you are on your own!
Odesk is feature rich and is good way to build a remote workforce in a cost effective and efficient way and it is now the site of choice for all my outsourcing activity.

SEO tips and hints for startup businesses following the Google penguin and panda updates

One of the most widely used forms of online marketing is search engine optimisation (SEO). This is primarily because of its ability to reach large volumes of a business’s demographic and its relatively cost effective nature. When done properly, it can propel a business to the top of Google and other search engines and pull in plenty of highly targeted, organic traffic. However in this post Panda and Penguin world what can a small business do to get it’s self visible in the search engine rankings. Let’s now go over some SEO techniques along with some hints and tips for startup businesses.

Guest Posts

Creating guest posts for relevant websites and blogs can be an incredibly powerful way to build backlinks while generating direct traffic at the same time. It works by contacting a website owner or blogger in your niche and asking if they would allow you to create a guest post. From there, you will need to write a helpful and insightful article that will naturally pique the interest of their audience. This can have profound results when their audience shares your content with others and visits your website directly. Since a website owner or blogger’s audience is likely to trust that person, it tends to make it easier for you to gain their trust as well. Over time, you can expect a pretty serious SEO boost and improved rankings.

Video Content

Another idea involves creating video content. Due to the fact that humans are visual creatures and not always interested in reading long winded articles, videos can be very helpful for reaching lots of people while also appealing to search engines. For this technique, you will need to create a brief but quality video about the products or services that your business offers. In most cases, you will want to keep it somewhere between two to five minutes with no longer than ten minutes at most. From there, you should embed it within the content of your website and also on video sharing sites like YouTube. Doing so should help familiarize consumers with your products or services and should get indexed by search engines.

Integrating traditional PR

It can also behoove you to utilize traditional PR to get your start up off the ground and running. For example, you should build a relationship with the journalists in the relevant trade journal and local press. Advertising in there publications can be useful in building the initial contacts, they may also be interested in competition. An editorial like from one of these journals will almost always be high authority and relevance.
Along with this, it’s smart to take advantage of Google plus and author rank. These platforms were created as a way to rank the overall quality of an author’s work so that search engines can provide users with the best possible results. For this reason, you should sign up with Google plus if you haven’t already and fill out your profile and link it to you blog profile. From there, you can gradually build your credibility and your content should rank highly as long as it’s of good quality.
In addition, it’s critical that you track your SEO campaign. By utilizing a platform like Google Analytics, you can keep track of all aspects of your marketing and SEO. One of the best features is the ability to monitor which keywords are being searched for and which ones are bringing you the most organic traffic. After you learn what’s working and what’s performing poorly, you can tweak your SEO campaign accordingly. Consequently, you should be able to improve your efficiency and effectiveness while saving time.

9 Effective Ways to Use YouTube for Business

YouTube is the world’s most popular video sharing site. YouTube allows anyone to upload and store video for free. Videos can be viewed by friends or to the public and viewers are welcome to leave comments. YouTube was created in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees. YouTube is owned by Google and is the second largest search engine behind Google. Video is a very powerful tool for businesses of any size, but the user friendly, mass-market audience makes YouTube an excellent choice for small businesses. But like any business tool, it has to be used effectively to generate results.

1. Create a Branded YouTube Channel
This step is often skipped by small businesses. Your YouTube channel is basically your house for the videos you create and upload, the videos you have selected as favorites, and those that you have organized into a playlist. A customized channel gives you the opportunity to add and showcase your company’s branding with specific colors, information and links to your website and/or relevant social media pages. A channel also gives viewers an option to subscribe to your content with the click of a button. Plus, it helps them easily search for only your content.

2. Make Sure Your Content Fills a Relevant Need
If you are a steak house, create a video on how to cook steaks or sharpen knives. A great example of this is with the Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse. They have one location and have made numerous videos teaching people how to do a variety of useful things from how to properly use a knife sharpening steel to how to properly pan sear salmon. By doing this you create valuable information and interest in you and your company thus generating loyalty and trust.

3. Develop Videos that are Quick, Simple, Engaging, and Professional
Decent video cameras are no longer expensive, so you can make a professional video without breaking the bank. Pay attention to lighting the area, sound quality and shakiness of the camera. Your best bet is to use a tripod. It is important to plan an outline and a script prior to making your video. Much like writing a story, you will want to include a beginning, middle and end. Make sure your video has a purpose. Keep it simple and short. We recommend 2-4 minutes for a video.

4. Optimize Your Video
According to Wikipedia, “In April 2011, James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed that 30 percent of videos accounted for 99 percent of views on the site.” YouTube claims that more than 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute, so the number of specific videos on the site is constantly changing. It is important you do everything you can to make your video easily found. Utilize tags and keywords, choose a thumbnail that is enticing so people will want to immediately click and watch your video. The title of your video might be a “how to” and include keywords related to the video and your business, again, making sure your video fills a relevant need. For example, the “How to Properly Use A Knife Sharpening Steel” video by PrimeCuts TV and the Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse has over 18,600 views. They used the following tags:
• caminito
• cuts
• knife
• prime
• sharpening
• techniques
• tips
• tv

5. Consider Adding Subtitles
This can be particularly helpful for a “how to” video so that your viewers can easily take notes and follow along. Not to mention it is a huge asset for hearing impaired viewers. Demonstrate you care. Show you not only want to engage and entertain your viewers but also educate them.

6. Participate With Others on YouTube
Spend time looking around on YouTube and make “friends.” Visit the competition and see what they are doing well and not doing so well. Engage with others on YouTube and they will in turn engage with you and your brand, which helps spread your information.

7. Share Your Videos in Other Places
Share your videos on your website, blog, tweets and Facebook page. This is once again where your thumbnail, tags, title and keywords are important to further encourage interaction with your video and your brand. Videos are effective on Facebook landing pages welcoming people to your brand. Tweet the link of your newest video to your Twitter audience. Video blogs are becoming more and more popular. The possibilities are endless.

8. Call to Action
Always include your company’s website address in the video as you want to give the viewers additional reasons to engage with your brand. Other ideas for calls to action might include: offering a contest, discount coupons, or instructional guides. The Caminito Steakhouse might want to include something like, “Print out detailed written steps for how to properly use a sharpening steel and receive a free dessert at the Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse!” If you’re working on building your YouTube subscribers, your message might be “Subscribe to our YouTube channel and receive a free appetizer.”

9. Measure
YouTube offers free analytics tools that are simple to use, providing you with a quick snapshot look at the results of your video. The information is available with the Insights area. You can track the number of views, the demographics of the viewers, and also how people found your video. Again, these are free to use so don’t miss out on accessing this valuable information when measuring the success of your video.
These are just nine effective ways companies can use YouTube for business. Do you have other ways you have found successful? If so, please list them below in the comment section to share with others.

Social Media Users – 10 Secrets of the Best Social Media Users

If you’re still waiting to see if social media marketing is worth your time, I have one question for you, what are you waiting for? Forget about all of the talk predicting social media marketing is going to play a big role in the future; it already is.
Forward-thinking web development companies are using social media to gain invaluable connections with their audience and to increase their online visibility. And they’re reaping the benefits of their marketing efforts.
Authority, inbound links, visibility, and trust are just a few of the things active online brands are earning through this form of marketing. So, are you ready to jump aboard the social media train? Here are 10 steps to creating a successful social media marketing strategy.
1. Do Your Research- Every successful marketing strategy is based on good research. You can’t just blindly go to a social media site to submit your content and expect immediate success. You need to find social media sites that fit your niche. For example, if you’re trying to promote your medical business, you should find sites where health related articles tend to be popular.
2. Interact with the Community- The biggest rookie mistake in social media marketing is to completely ignore the community. It’s called social media for a reason. Take advantage of the social platform by interacting with the community. The closer you become with community members, the more likely it is that they’ll help promote your content.
3. Write for Your Audience- This is Writing 101, but many people tend to ignore it. If you want your content to go hot, it has to be tailored toward the audience on the social media site. When you’re interacting with the community, get to know their likes and dislikes. Also, take note of what type of stories tend to get the most attention. You’ll see patterns develop in the types of themes and content that consistently go hot.
4. Be Relevant- Relevance is the key to social media marketing. Don’t believe me? Just go to the front page of Digg or any other social site. The vast majority of the top content is related to late-breaking news. Be the first to break a story in your industry; or, give your unique insight on a hot news item.
5. Keep it Short- Internet users don’t like reading long passages of text. They tend to scan online content rather than taking the time to fully read it. For this reason, you need to accommodate their reading habits by keeping your content short and easy to scan. Brief paragraphs and bold, descriptive headings are great ways to make your content more scanner-friendly.
6. Focus on Design- When users come to your page to read your content, are they greeted with a clean, welcoming website design? If not, they might just turn around and leave your site. Remember, it’s not just enough to have great content; how you present it is important as well. Use a design scheme that’s easy on the eyes and that assists the reader in scanning the content.
7. Stop Trying to Sell- Another social media marketing rookie mistake is to constantly try to sell your products. Sure, the ultimate goal of marketing is to promote your brand, but you’ll never gain any respect on these networks if you’re constantly pimping out your products. Instead, contribute useful content that the community can learn from.
8. Create Great Headlines- I don’t care if your article is good enough to be the cover story in Time Magazine. If it doesn’t have a great title, it won’t get any attention on these sites. Think about it- thousands of users are submitting content to these sites all day long. What makes someone click on a post to read more? An eye-catching title.
9. Help Out Others- This goes back to #2 and #7. If you want to become a top user on a certain social media site, you have to help others out. Don’t just submit and promote your own content. Find useful articles from different sources that your audience will enjoy. By promoting content that’s not yours, the community will begin to see you as a great resource for relevant information.
10. Convert Hot Content- One mistake many social media marketers make is to not capitalize on hot content. If you’re fortunate enough to have a piece rise to the top, you need to make that attention last. How can you do this? By creating another great post to follow the hot one. That way, when visitors come to your site to read the popular post, they’ll see you have new content. Ride that wave as long as you can!
The bottom line with social media marketing is there are no shortcuts to success. If you put in the time and effort, your brand will experience numerous benefits. Set realistic goals for your marketing campaign, and stick with it to the end.

5 Hidden Features of Facebook

It’s a little like Facebook’s version of the Easter egg extra you can find in a DVD of one of your favorite movies. Only instead of getting inside director’s jokes that you might not have known otherwise, these features are here to make the experience of having a profile on Facebook one you can customize deeper while still protecting the privacy of. And that’s saying a lot considering that not every Facebook user has yet to convert their home page to the timeline and tailor it to fit their professional and personal needs.
Maybe you already know about these options and maybe you don’t. But employing a “blink and you miss it” tactic can have you missing out on some great opportunities for your account.

1) Facebook Email
Under your contact info tab on your Facebook About page, you’ll find alongside any other email addresses you have featured one that features your public username followed by @facebook.com. Before you worry that there’s a special inbox to your Facebook email filled with messages that you haven’t been receiving, keep in mind that this address is for your Facebook messages inbox (that tiny conversation bubble sandwiched between the friend requests and notifications symbols at the top left hand corner of your page. Any messages you get to the username@facebook.com address will be added there with a little red number that will pop up as a reminder of how many you have.
You can also send messages to the @facebook.com address without using Facebook. Traditional email systems like Gmail can receive and send these messages. Responses sent out via username@facebook.com are formatted to look like they came directly from the social media site with your profile picture, name, and message all included.

2) Custom Username
We spoke about this one a lot in the first of the five hidden features. A Facebook username can be created by logging into your account settings tab and clicking on the bar marked “username” which customizes the web address for your profile, making it look a little something like (to borrow the name of the company I own) https://www.facebook.com/mycorp.
The trouble with the username is that you can only change it once. Until recently was the opportunity made available to switch it over a second time and it’s doubtful that third time will be the charm here. When creating a username for your account, it’s suggested to use a variation based off of your own name which makes it easier for friends to find you and to list your account on a professional networking website or on a resume. You can also use periods when creating said username.

3) Life Events
Yet another reason to make the switch over to the timeline if you haven’t already! On the Facebook timeline you have the option to write a status, post a photo, check in to a place, or create a life event. Life events are open to everything from the school you attended to the places you’ve travelled to and even with the relationships you have with other Facebook users. While you might not feel inclined to feature all of your life events that Facebook offers the ability to feature (first tattoo? new license?) you still have the option there to write about and share with close family members and friends.

4) App Settings
This one might not be a hidden gem on Facebook but it makes for an interesting timeline of its own to see just how many apps you’ve authorized to interact with your account. Under the account settings tab is where you can find and clean out the app settings if they no longer apply to being used with your profile. Kind of like viewing a blast from your Facebook past if you were really into the apps. Pieces of Flair or Bumper Sticker, anyone?

5) The Facebook Archives
Under the account settings tab, click on general settings. Underneath “language” you should be able to find a button marked “download a copy of your Facebook data.” Here’s where you can get a copy of your Facebook history downloaded featuring the posts you’ve made on your wall, the photos you’ve shared, the names and email addresses of your friends, and more.
There’s even an expanded archive download available that includes as Facebook puts it, “historic info like IP addresses we store about your logins to Facebook.”
Definitely far from a blink and you miss it moment.

Making Money Using Facebook - Internet Marketing

We Internet Marketers are always researching the most profitable ways to make money online and promoting our business to targeted people. Facebook is the most powerful social media system that we can use today, totally free, so why not use it in our advantage to promote our business?
So... How do we make money online using Facebook?
Interesting question, Facebook can be treated as a direct portal that will drive targeted visitors into your webpages, where you promote a product or where you just want to get more people signing up into your lists. Facebook CAN do that in a very powerful way... let me introduce you the Facebook PAGES!
What is a Facebook Page? It's just like your personal profile, but will be treated as a stand-alone "Profile" where you can promote your business. You won't have any "Friends" in a Facebook Page, instead you will have "LIKES", and those Likes will come from people visiting your Page and finding the content interesting for them.
What is the Power of this, you might be asking? When someone Likes your Page, he will start receiving on HIS wall all the comments and updates that you make into your PAGE. So with a single comment you can reach hundreds and hundreds of people.
Just imagine you have a Page with 100 Likes, 100 persons that are connected to your business, regularly checking your updates. When you post something new, this post will get posted on all those person's Walls. And what can happen next? EVERY friend of those persons might be watching his Wall, and they WILL notice your post as well!
Are you beginning to see the power of this? a single post can go VIRAL very easily!
But please notice that it is not that easy to achieve this task. As any real and well planned Internet Marketing strategy, you have to invest time and effort to build a good-looking Page with good content, that attracts people's attention. If you are serious in this business, you will find Facebook as a fantastic source to promote your business.
Now let's discuss how to get Likes...
First of all, you need to know right away that this process takes time, you won't get 1000 Likes from one day to another.
You can buy traffic you might think, let me tell you that I tested this myself and it didn't work. I bought 1000 Likes to my Fan Page and I found that all those people were unresponsive, but unresponsive at all.
So, my best advice to you is to just work on it by yourself, and be patient.
Let's review some quick TIPS about how you can promote your Fan Page to the Facebook community:

1. Recommend your Fan Page to your friends, using your main Profile. And tell them to spread the word. This maybe is the fastest way to get some activity into your Fan Page, but it will only depend on how much friends you have and how cool they might be to help you out.
2. Join related Fan Pages. Just search for them, find those that have daily activity, both from the owner of the page and from people posting comments on it. Like those Pages and post comments on them. But beware, please DO NOT make spam promotion because it is very annoying, just add some value into your posts, share with the community links, videos, some articles made by you maybe, and I assure you that people will notice your Fan Page when they see you contribute good things to them.
3. Make Posts in your Fan Page regularly. Same as point 2, but with your Fan Page. Dedicate no more than half an hour a day doing this, just seek for some valuable content that people might see helpful, and share! If you have an active website with good content, you will already have LOTS of information to share in your Fan Page. Same applies with videos, articles that you might already have.

After you get some people Liking your Fan Page, you will start generating automatic traffic each time you post a comment on your Wall. Those people will have your post commented on their wall, and their friends will notice it as well. Viral Traffic for free!

Top 10 list of the best home based business ideas, 2012

If you are looking to start up a home business then look no further than this top 10 list of the best ways to make money online, from home.
I hope you’ll find something to inspire you to startup today. There’s no time like the present (and don’t forget about me when you’re sipping pina-coladas off the deck of your yacht ;)

1. Specialist consulting

If you have experience or skills then one of the best ways to make money is by providing niche industry wisdom and expert advice. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in.
Start blogging about what you know. Offer to help people by providing knowledge. Answer questions other sites, blogs and forums.
Once people recognize you as an expert they will trust you, and you can start leveraging that trust to make money by offering services and consulting in your niche.

2. Boutique online store

Do you have a passion for designing cushions? Do you love making gourmet cupcakes? If there is something you love doing, then do it online.
Set up an eCommerce store. Blog about what you do. Make your content exciting and visual so that your passion transfers to visitors who just have to buy.

3. eLearning content

If there is a subject you are knowledgeable in, or know plenty of people who are knowledgeable about something, then use that to make money.
Set up a subscription based service to train people. Offer them courses, complete with exercises and marked online quizzes. Award them with certificates upon completion.

4. Specialty reviews

Do you love fine dining? How about wine tasting? Does staying in luxury hotels appeal to you?
Start up a blog and begin reviewing local products and services. Do a good job and local merchants and retailers will quickly catch on to the value of being reviewed by you. Leverage that demand to make money, as well as using ads and affiliate links to generate additional cash from readers.

5. Innovative local services

There are a million and one things that get in people’s way each day. If you have a smart idea about how to help, then set it up.
idea: If you have a pickup you could offer to pick up people’s old furtniture for free. It saves them time and money taking it to the dump. You can then resell it via your website.
idea: People hate queuing at local grocery stores after work. Why not let them pre-order from your website and have it waiting for them. They don’t have to pay for parking, fight with crowds or wait in queues. Well worth the small amount you charge for the service.
With limited resources, you’ll have to start local. But franchising to different towns and cities is a great option for growth later down the line.

6. Online real-time tutorials and lessons

Google+ offers incredible resources for video conferencing and online hangouts. Why not offer one hour lessons by video online? People can sign up on your website and access live tutorials and lesson, possibly followed by some Q and A for added interactivity.
You don’t have to charge much, and as the word spreads you could end up with thousands of students attending each lesson.

7. Niche blogging

Blogging is a great way to make a residual income. It’s definitely a medium term investment though, so it’s only viable if you are passionate about your niche topic.
Use social media, SEO and Internet marketing to build up traffic volumes, engage with readers and earn their trust. Make money from advertising and affiliate links.

8. Remote PA

If you’re planning on working from home full-time, then why not offer to help people who can’t find enough hours in the day to do everything they need.
Preferably offer services that you can perform online such as research, administration, writing, editing, and so on. Otherwise, focus on the local market… especially if you need to run errands.
The more you can work online, the more scope there is to hire low maintenance virtual office workers to expand your business.

9. Discounts & deals

Times are tough. People appreciate finding high quality services and products at low prices. Scour the web for the top deals and pass them on to your readers. Make sure you do it in an exciting, interesting and unique way – there is a lot of competition in this industry.
Alternatively, start local. Approach local merchants and retailers and get them to run specials which you promote. As you build up a following, the tables will turn and it will be merchants who approach you to write about their specials. Leverage that demand to make money.

10. IT

Do you know how to build mobile apps? How about games? Are you a guru in a forgotten programming language? Are you an incredible graphic designer?
Hardcore IT and technical skills are well suited to online home based business. All the coolest companies were started in garages, bedrooms or dorm rooms by IT nerds.
Use your website to show off your abilities. Convincing clients to take you on is difficult at first, but, providing you do a good job, referrals will keep new clients coming in.

How To Make Money From YouTube - Do You Know That YouTube Surpasses Two Billion Video Views Daily?

Though many people have heard about ways and means as to how to make money from YouTube, the fact is that not many people know what exactly it is all about. They may have some sketchy details but most certainly they will not have the right knowledge to put such sketchy details into practice.
However, the fact of the matter is that there are many ways and means by which we can learn how to make money from YouTube. This is because of the simple reason that the sheer viewership of YouTube is mind boggling to say the least. Each day more than a billion people visit YouTube for either listening to their favorite album, or for the purpose of watching their favorite movie or even for the purpose of learning something more about their line of business and commerce. Hence, there is no denying the fact that YouTube is the best place to be in if a person or company is looking for viewership of their products or services. It is the right place for people to make some great money, provided they know how to go about it. This article is basically aimed at making people aware about the various ways and means by which people can learn more about the different ways to make money using the sheer viewership strength of YouTube.
If you have a website having a great product, service, concept or business ideas, then the best way you can translate it into money is to make more and more people visit your website and see the details. Towards this objective, YouTube is indeed a great way of driving more traffic to your website. All you have to do is to come up with a smart and sleek video promoting your website or the products and services that you have on it. The next thing is to upload it onto YouTube. Upload is free on YouTube and hence you need not spend any money to advertise on it. You can also include a link in this video which will take the viewer to your website. The more number of people liking your video, the better are the chances that they will visit your website to gather more information. This could ultimately result in higher sales and revenue for your products and services.
If you do not have your own website, you need not bother. You can create your own videos sharing information about your affiliate products and services. As mentioned above, you can also have a link which will take the visitor to the affiliates' website. If such visits results in sales, you could be paid a commission, which could create a lot of additional passive income for you. Hence this is considered a very simple but effective answer to the question how to make money from YouTube.
If you have your own products and services, you can upload videos talking about your products and services. If people like your video they are certain to click on the link and gather more information about your products and services. This indeed is a great way of advertising your website and could be the perfect answer to the query how to make money from YouTube.

New privacy fears as Facebook begins selling personal access to companies to boost ailing profits

Facebook is embroiled in a new privacy row after it began selling access to users in order to bolster its profits.

The social networking site is allowing companies to trawl through its 900m users looking for email addresses and phone numbers so it can better target adverts.
The changes mean that if you hand over any details when you buy something - as many consumers do - that company can now track you down on Facebook.

The measures appear to be a cynical attempt to sidestep restrictions imposed on Facebook by US regulators due to earlier botched privacy changes.
They have already sparked calls for an official investigation by campaigners who claim that the public have not been properly notified.

The new measures, which have been in effect for weeks, will affect consumers who have handed over personal data when they buy something, which is the majority of people given the rise of Internet shopping
Retailers will then be allowed to compare their own databases with the information on Facebook.

For example, an airline will now be able to target adverts at a consumer who had recently taken a flight to Barcelona.

A mobile phone company could also advertise upgrades to somebody who was nearing the end of their contract.
Another disturbing element is that the adverts could appear on a user’s computer even when they are not on Facebook.
The social networking site is also increasing its monitoring and will work with US-based company Datalogix to see what consumers are buying.
Facebook claimed that there are safeguards attached to the new measures.

Phone numbers and email addresses will be replaced by hash symbols so nobody actually knows who the person is, even if they can track their behaviour.
Users will also have to give permission but campaigners in the US have said that changing the settings is ‘confusing and ineffective’.
The Electronic Privacy Information Centre and the Centre for Digital Democracy have already asked watchdog the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the arrangement.
In a joint letter they said: ‘Facebook did not attempt to notify users of its decision to disclose user information
‘Neither Facebook’s Data Use Policy nor its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities adequately explains the specific types of information Facebook discloses, the manner in which the disclosure occurs, or the identities of the third parties receiving the information.’
Facebook is under pressure to improve on the £1.1bn it makes each year from advertising after its disastrous stock market floatation which saw its shares fall by more than half their value.
Last year it was forced to overhaul its privacy policy after the FTC ruled it had been lying to its users for the past four years.
The serious violations included allowing other companies access to users’ personal information - even after they deleted their accounts.
Under the tough agreement - which applies Britain - Facebook agreed to independent periodic monitoring for the next 20 years to stop it from re-offending.
It also vowed to obtain users ‘express consent’ before making privacy changes.
Facebook privacy engineer Joey Tyson said: ‘As we pursue our goal of making the world more open and connected, we have designed our service to show ads that help people discover products that are interesting to them.
‘We also recognise that our users trust us to protect the information they share on Facebook.
‘Maintaining that trust is a top priority as we continue to grow.’

Finding fame, and sometimes fortune, in social media

Those who have become 'internet-famous' offer insights to the use of Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr for self-promotion.

Social media has made it easier than ever to catapult from obscurity to prominence. In recent years, the web has blossomed into a more egalitarian version of American Idol, where nobodies compete for attention alongside somebodies.
Today, a teenager posting webcam videos to YouTube can get a movie deal. (For example, Fred: The Movie.)
A 30-something posting one-liners on Twitter can land a TV show on CBS: $#*! My Dad Says. Bloggers creating internet memes are being offered book deals at a dizzying pace.

However, alongside breakout web celebs — not to mention actual celebrities with huge online followings such as Rihanna and Katy Perry — there's a new class of microstars who are highly popular and viral, but have no aspirations of going to Hollywood.

 How they became internet-famous — and made comfortable incomes — offers insights to those who are unsure of how to use Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr to promote themselves or their projects.

The mobile phone quipster

Tattoo photos and stories posted by Kimber Turner on Tumblr.

Like many teenagers, Joey Mueller, 19, spends much of his time texting on his iPhone. But when he taps out a 140-character message and presses send, he's talking to nearly 400,000 people.
Mueller created his Twitter account, @itisjoey, in 2010 as he was travelling to compete at the World Horseshoe Tournament in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He figured using Twitter to comment from a big event might help him draw an audience.
"I didn't get any followers or anything," he recalls. "I guess it wasn't interesting."

Joey Mueller, aka @itisjoey. Photo: Twitter

Now a sophomore majoring in graphic design at the University of Minnesota, he decided to avoid personal messages and focus on observational humour.
Mueller says his personal Tumblr website already had 75,000 followers. He added a link to his Twitter account. Immediately, his follower count jumped. Then a curious thing happened: the numbers kept climbing. In 2012, he hit 440,000.
I'm not sure why," he says. "Sometimes I think I got lucky."
Mueller says he has never purchased followers. He says that posting from noon to 6pm, when people typically spend more time online, helps. He also routinely adopts popular hashtags, especially political ones, which he says helped get him retweeted by organisations including Move On.
The fame hasn't gone to his head, he says, or at least his parents keep him down-to-earth. "They're like, 'You know, you're not really famous. Stay in school."'

The tattoo chronicles
Kimber Turner was bored. In the spring of 2008, when she was a 22-year-old journalism major at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Turner completed all of her courses online. Which is to say, she spent a lot of time on her laptop.
Turner started killing time online by collecting found images of tattoos borrowed mostly from body modification websites. She decided to post the photos on a Tumblr account she hastily titled with an obscenity common among youthful creators of Tumblrs — personalised web pages where ephemera is deposited. In a few months, Turner had 300 followers. Other Tumblr users began emailing pictures and explanations of their own tattoos to her.
"Everybody wanted their story out there," Turner says. "People just really liked how interactive it was."
She said in 2008 she received 200 submissions a day. Four years later, she gets 350 a day. Images are contributed by fans all over the globe.
Today, Turner has more than 695,000 followers. For comparison, when Texts from Hillary went viral on Tumblr earlier this year, it attracted 45,000 followers in a week.
Her secret? Volume. She publishes about 50 photos a day, one every 30 minutes, to keep fans coming back. She also follows Tumblr's other popular users
"There's so many people on Tumblr who post all sorts of random things," Turner says. "Having a focus really lets people connect, and it's a great way to stand out."
Although she took various odd jobs after graduating in 2011, including one as a receptionist for a seamstress, ads on the site earn her $60,000 annually, she says.
"When I realised it could very well just be a full-time job, I nearly had a heart attack," she says. "Now I make more than my parents."

The hyperlocal radio DJ
Jaime Black, 29, says he has been a "huge radio nerd" since he was 15. He cut his teeth at an alternative rock station, Q101 in Chicago, where he graduated from an internship to a weekend producing job.
On the side, in 2005, he began podcasts about Chicago's underground music scene. Called Dynasty Podcasts, the episodes — 10 to 15-minute interviews Black records with local artists and club owners — were made available as MP3s on his website. The response was modest.
Five years later, when he created a SoundCloud account, he saw just how broad his reach could grow. He has amassed more than 43,000 followers on the audio-sharing website, which has been called the "YouTube of audio".
"I was very fortunate to get there early," Black says of SoundCloud, which claims to have 20 million users. "I might have beat some of the larger radio stations to SoundCloud. I didn't see that much non-music content when I started."
Today, Black posts two to 11 shows a week, which he records with a hand-held Olympus digital recorder. His philosophy is, "make it easy for people to discover the content and know right away what it is".
"I'm sharing it on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest," he says. "I don't just post things without putting some effort into the presentation. All the imaging is uniform. All the metadata is uniform."
In 2011, Black started running local event promotions, just like a radio station. He turned Dynasty Podcasts into a full-time job and said he earned $500 for one hour of work.
"A few years ago it was like, 'Oh, how cute, you have a pretend radio show,' " Black says. "And now, we just did a promotion with Supercuts."

The metropolitan paparazzo
Whenever a new digital service is started, there is a race to claim user names. In January 2011, Liz Eswein, then a senior at New York University, claimed one of the better Instagram user names: @newyorkcity.
"People have said, 'Oh, I thought the city of New York was running it.' " Eswein laughs. "It's like, nope, it's just me."
It is difficult to tell that the feed is not maintained by someone in the mayor's office. Eswein, 23, posts only photos taken in and around the city. Using her iPhone 4S, she sticks to snapshots of familiar landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Central Park, and pictures taken at local events such as the US Open and New York Fashion Week. One of Eswein's recent snapshots of the Plaza Hotel earned 13,330 likes.
She says she often sees comments from users across the United States and as distant as Australia, South America and Greece.
"Instagram is a great way to see different parts of the world through your phone," she says, "Everyone has a special place in their heart for New York City."
Soon after starting the account, Eswein began attending local Instawalks, where users gather to socialise and take photos. The gatherings publicised her account among the app's power users.
By April 2012, @newyorkcity had 195,000 followers. It jumped to 422,000 after the release of an Instagram app for Android phones. (For some perspective, Lady Gaga's account currently has about 440,000 followers.)
In March, Eswein founded a business with two Instagram users. They now consult with brands, including Evian and Samsung, that are looking to engage users on Instagram.
Does she also keep a personal account on Instagram? "Yeah, but I don't use it at all," she said.

Benefits of Membership Sites

Five Benefits of Owning a Membership Site

If you have been paying attention to the buzz surrounding the subject of membership sites on the internet, you will have heard about the many benefits of owning one. On the other hand, if you are new to the concept, you may be wondering what the big deal is. In this article, we will go over five of the benefits to owning a membership site.
You may only charge your customers twelve payments, and after they have paid those payments, grant them a lifetime membership at no additional cost. You may opt to charge a yearly renewal fee, or you may decide to have the payments charged to them on a continual monthly basis for as long as they remain a customer. Whichever method you choose, you are creating residual income for yourself.
1. Passive Income: The first and most obvious benefit of any membership site is the passive income it generates from membership fees. The definition of passive income is “income derived from investments in which the individual is minimally involved.” To be successful, a strong initial effort is needed to get your site running and a passive income stream flowing. After that, you may well find yourself earning more and working less.

With a passive income, you can make money 24 hours a day seven days a week. Unlike a service based business, with a business that generates passive income, you can take your family on vacation and still make money while you are away from the office.

2. Residual Income: Membership sites also enable you to earn residual income. Residual income is income that keeps coming in to you on a regular basis. When you create a membership site, your customer will be paying a monthly membership fee for a time period that you designate.
3. Inexpensive To Start: Another great benefit to a membership site is that it is relatively inexpensive to start. Of course you will need to put some money into it, but if you can do the web design work yourself and choose to market your business using free marketing methods, you can get your site up and running for less than $200. That includes the domain registration, hosting account, membership management program, and any additional tools such as an autoresponder.

4. Expert Status: As your membership grows in popularity, so will your reputation. You will begin to be seen as an expert in your field. Subscribers will automatically look to you for advice and inherently trust your judgment. Essentially, you will be building and promoting your own brand. When you have a recognized and trusted brand, you dramatically increase your ability to offer other products and services under that same brand name. Because your brand is proven and trusted, your new products automatically become trusted as well.

5. Built In Affiliates: By offering an affiliate program, your customers will be able to earn income through the referrals they bring to you. If you are consistently providing your customers great content and quality information, they will most likely be happy to tell others about your site; couple that with the fact that they can make money doing that, and they will be shouting your praises from the rooftops.

When the majority of your customers are helping you to market your membership site, you will be able to reach a much greater number of potential customers than you would ever be able to reach through your solo marketing efforts. This, of course, will lead to a greater number of new subscribers and a larger income.

These are just a few of the benefits associated with owning a membership site. As you develop your site, you will see the full potential of what a membership site can offer you.