For anyone questioning whether social media connections are advantageous, I have a success story! Today begins my newest contract with a San Fransisco start up that I acquired as a result of my social media efforts.

For anyone who has been following my blog you already know that I often post to a new citizen journalism website. I also have several other social media accounts including a Twitter account, a book club account, Facebook and many others. Recently these efforts have been fruitful in helping me obtain a new contract, proof positive that social media efforts help not just businesses, but individuals as well!

Over the course of the past few months I had gotten to know the community guru at allvoices.com, and had Read the rest of this entry »

Many of my clients excitedly call me asking “what about all this social media stuff, shouldn’t I be involved too?” What I inevitably reply is “Maybe”.

That might sound like a wishy-washer answer, but the fact of the matter is, it depends on the business, and the resources available to develop social media efforts.

Just like everything else, social media takes time and effort to develop. A business needs to analyze their needs, determine what markets they are trying to reach through social media, and then develop a solid plan that will most effectively reach these markets.

For markets involving 19 - 26 year olds and stay-at-home mom types and women ages 36-50, Facebook is the best networking community today. That doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow, however, and it doesn’t mean that you can just open a business Facebook account and Voila! your business is successful.

Instead it takes time and effort to build your account, add friends, get people interested in what Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s new media markets allow even the smallest businesses to get in on the action. What’s hot today? Podcasting!

If you are not familiar with what podcasting is, here’s an official definition from the Wikipedia.org website: a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers.

In layman’s terms - it is an audio recording that is made available to internet users through websites and other digital outlets.

For many, an audio cast is a fun, simple way to enjoy retrieving information that is important to them. Some people just don’t like wading through the mountains of text, Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s vast array of internet happenings, a successful website nearly always requires a blog, some social media efforts, and lots of TLC. Blogs are especially important for many reasons.

First, they create an atmosphere in which you can communicate with customers, potential clients and Read the rest of this entry »

The Pay Per Click (PPC) markets have generated quite a level of wealth the past few years. PPC ads can now be added to nearly any type of digital content there is, including mobile, RSS feeds, dynamically in the middle of content, as well as the typical text ads we are used to seeing on the side of nearly every website we can think of. If you plan to jump into the PPC world, however, you must be sure to plan your campaign well or the results will be unsuccessful.

Google AdWords allows you to choose locations for your ads to appear (they call it “positioning”) either based on a website URL you provide, or recommended sites based on key words and phrases. You will want to research websites where your target market network often. These are the sites for you to focus your PPC efforts on.

Targeting locational advertising gets you results far faster as long as you know exactly what your message is and what target market your products or services will appeal to.  If you need a large branding campaign, or one that will reach any market, then specifying key words and phrases works better, Read the rest of this entry »

One important search engine optimization mistake made by novice web creators is hyperlinks on generic or unimportant content like “click here” or “see more”. Hyperlinks are special content, according to search engines, and should be considered carefully.

Content with hyper links, or even content that is bold or in italics, will get more consideration from a search engine when determining relevance of your page or for a particular search term or topic.

Listed below are the types of “emphasis” content search engines consider more important than other content on a page:

• content that is linked to another page on your website;
• content that is linked to an external page (though this could reduce your page rank if you have too many);
• content that is italicized;
• content that is bold;
• words that are included in any heading or subheading block.

To get the most out of a search engine crawl you must carefully analyze the content on your page and Read the rest of this entry »