{SatyaColombo’s} Man on the Fly...

Describe benefits, not features

I know you’re rolling your eyes. This gets covered on the first page of Marketing for Blithering Idiots, but we don’t do it.

We get wrapped up in what we do, and we forget to translate that into what our customers get out of it.

The insanely simple and direct way to handle this is just to put a bulleted list on your sales page (or About page or Hire Us page, wherever it’s relevant) under the title:

Here’s What [My Product] Will Do For You

List out the seven most important wonderful things that your customer will experience as a result of doing business with you. Make sure this list can be seen “above the fold” on the screen — in other words, without the viewer needing to scroll.

Make them a nice mix of logical and emotional benefits.

Benefits are the little black dress of marketing: always appropriate. Try tucking them into your headlines, or writing entire blog posts around key benefits.

HELLO People - this is what it's all ABOUT... back to basics

- don't miss the rest of the article at http://www.copyblogger.com/marketing-basics/

and tell em I sent ya...! ;)

How did I do it?

Armed with this new knowledge I decided to take a different approach and move beyond my blog and create a social media footprint for my business.

Disclaimer: It’s very important to remember that there really is no right or wrong way to delve into social media promotion for a small business. You should feel confident in know that we are all learning. (Although, I hear that being a jerk does not provide very good results.)

My specific strategy might not work for you, but listed below is a good portion of the steps that I undertake to promote my small business online:

• FLICKR - post relevant, well tagged, pictures to FLICKR on a daily basis. That way when people are searching for a photo that is relevant to your niche, you will always be on top of the search results (if they sort by date). Sounds strange, but this part of my routine helped me to land a full page write-up on my business in the international publication, Islands magazine. Note: there are groups and all kinds of manner to get fully (socially) involved on FLICKR, but my plan did not include that much participation.
• YouTube - along with FLICKR, I started uploading videos to YouTube. Whether you make jewelry, are a plumber, or sell real estate you could start simply with a Flip camera and make some videos that show us how you ply your craft.
• Forum visits - I am fond of saying that no matter what business you are in, from pet grooming to selling shoes and beyond, there is most certainly a forum that covers your small business niche. Find them, be helpful and answer questions. For my own particular business, TripAdvisor is one of the most powerful sites out there, so I try to answer questions that are related to my destination. By being helpful, you can begin to gain the initial trust of those you hope will become your customers.
• Help a Reporter (HARO) - is an amazing, FREE email newsletter that comes out three times a day. It is broken down by category (e.g. business, health, lifestyle, technology, etc) and its purpose is to put reporters in touch with potential sources. Read: Free press.
• Twitter & Facebook - it’s hard to argue with the fact that Twitter and Facebook are revolutionary communication and social media tools. Some small business owners have remarkable results promoting their venture on these sites. At the moment I do NOT really use Twitter or Facebook for marketing my business. I primarily use Twitter for listening, learning, and engaging. So far it has proven to be an invaluable source for networking and hearing about potential opportunities for my business. Should you choose to use Twitter or Facebook for small business promotion, just be aware that you should really know someone well and be comfortable with them, before you start pushing your business. As I stated in a previous Twitip guest post, “It takes a long time to build up a loyal following and develop trust, but it only takes one Tweet to alienate every one of your followers.”

Well, that's the meat of it..

- to that i would add - Get your mission and your message down pat and damn clear, and get to understand your audience and market a bit more by doing the keyword and online research. If you want to know what i mean, read the SEO posts below....!

From blog network to social media agency

Peter Brady and his team at Orbital Media Network are responsible for four established blogs which cover luxury lifestyle lussorian.com, fashion Top Stylista.com, travel TripInspiration and project management ClaretyConsulting.com.

Brady says: “We started in 2003 with a a blog network, much in the vein of starting an online publishing house. In the last two years we’ve learned a lot and that’s why we set up a social media agency advising clients on social networking, blog management, online public relations and Search Engine Optimization, and we’ve grown that quite substantially.

It was the success of their blogs that enabled Brady to attract big-name clients to his social media agency. Orbital Media Network has the kind of client list most could only wish for, including Adidas, Pretty Polly, Island Records, Oxy Skin products and the Trinity newspaper group in the UK.

When was the last time you saw the use of THAT 3-letter word in a social media for business blogging headline... anyway, hopefully that one doesn't backfire ;)

read on at the wordtracker link... !

here’s a good example from a sports injuries site:

Encouraged by some success for searches related to Tiger Woods' knee injury, during the Beijing Olympics Sports Injury Bulletin created a new Olympics injuries category. They wrote articles for athletes with injuries who were expected to make the news. One example being Serena Williams' knee injury and the following grab shows the site coming No.1 on Google for a search with Serena Williams injury.

That Serena Williams page still delivers traffic and it will deliver a lot more when Serena’s injury makes the news again.

Beats Wikipedia too … and CNN, the BBC, USA Today and ABC News

Interestingly, if you search for Serena WiIliams injury, you’ll see that Little Guy Sports Injury Bulletin beats pages from Big Guys including wikipedia.org, encyclopedia.com, cnn.com, bbc.co.uk, usatoday.com, and abcnews. Which is nice. See the following image of the relevant Google results page:

I pulled out the meat of the method here, but there's a slew more on this article over at wordtracker - just check the link above to continue... it's worth it.

Keyword research is easy, it just take practice - like anything... you don't learn to ride a bicycle by reading about how to do it

Remarkably, the most successful products and services tend to be either high in fidelity or high in convenience -- one or the other, but not both. In fact, products attempting to be both typically end up with a confused brand, like if McDonald's (MCD, Fortune 500) tried to do gourmet meals.

This impossible place of both fidelity and convenience is something I call the fidelity mirage. And Starbucks chased it big-time.

After a decade of stupendous success, Starbucks ran into trouble in 2007. Fewer people were coming into its stores. Profits sank. The stock dropped by nearly half through the year. In early 2008, Howard Schultz, who'd built the coffee chain into a global phenomenon, took back the CEO job he'd relinquished eight years before. Almost everything he said about what went wrong points to one simple explanation: Starbucks chased the fidelity mirage.

(yeah i wasn't so sure about that freeze-dried instant starbucks coffee idea, not sure they're going down yet though either ; )
CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE

by Helen Leggatt

While email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% "realistically" plan to use it), social media isn't far behind. Over half (56.3%) "realistically" plan to include it in future marketing plans, found the Center for Media Research.

Social media head-to-head with email marketing - at least in terms of marketers using the system, not in terms of time/money spent. Still, overwhelming majority of businesses not on board yet... now is the best time to start!

Click link for the full article

Google web search results can be limited by timeframe using the "search options" link on every page, but one startup company CEO discovered today that searches can also be limited to results indexed minutes or seconds ago by making a simple change to the search results page URL.

Startup search engine Omgili's CEO Ran Geva wrote on his company blog today that time-limited search results pages include a parameter called QDR - perhaps standing for Query Date Range. You can change the number following the letters qdr and change the timeframe for your search.

Whoa baby - THAT's worth a shot... : )

When we come to a new place, one of our first queries is, “what are the rules of this place?” When my daughter and I go to a hotel pool, she reads the sign very closely to see what’s allowed and what’s not. (The last pool had a long rule about “no urinating, no expectorating, no drawing water into your mouth and making spouts.” My daughter is 7. The word “expectorating?” Really?)

What we call social media has no clear set of rules of the pool. When we see new people do it poorly, we roll our eyes, we sharpen our blog posts, we tweet them into submission. But why? How can we expect people to simply “get it” when we don’t even agree internally.

CLICK THE LINK for the full article from master of social media ceremonies (and occasional lifeguard) Chris Brogan

"Your friends are global… you can send them links… but what if the action is on your screen? ... Point out a quick suggestion to a colleague or pass on that funny moment from an IM chat, post images to MySpace, eBay, forums or via email..
Skitch is the Internet age's Camera and it Rocks!"