SM Internet

Social media tactics revolve around being social. In most other aspects of business things get turned into numbers games, and that is the problem these days. You hear that Frank Kern is getting a 65% opt in rate, or that Jeff Johnson has lists of hundreds of thousands of people and you forget that these are actual people out there that have signed up and are buying.

The reason these guys are some of the main faces of internet marketing is because they are social people, you want to hear what they have to say. You are interested in becoming their friend, you would like to sit down to a drink with them or you would like to.

These guys have built their empires with their blood sweat and tears, don’t believe a word they say when they tell you its easy. Its not!

Each of them has struggled with the internet, but each of them stuck with it. Now they have a viral following. I don’t think you could be into internet marketing for 6 months without being tempted to get on one of these guys lists.

But their business nature is viral because they use social media tactics to really build a business model that uses the best kind of advertising… Word of mouth, certainly some people who read this article are going to look them up, and they will have another opportunity to build their list. Which is the idea behind social media.

Your goal is to go “viral”. You need to build up your network on sites like Facebook so that you are showing up on your friends and followers walls. When you show up on their walls, you will then have the opportunity to be followed by their friends and show up on their walls and so on and so forth making the whole thing go like a snowball, or viral as many people put it.

Other social media tactics follow the same principles. Your goals should be to not only grab the attention of a few “passers by’s” but to actually have those “passers by’s” actually enjoy their experience with you and tell their friends.

It sounds silly, but the idea behind social media is “being social”. No longer can internet marketers hide behind walls of internet squeeze pages and such, you actually have to go out there and meet people and speak with them. These days they can watch you on You Tube, or they can Digg your site, they can tweet about your site of follow you on Facebook.

If you think that social media is just a fad, think again… Its everywhere, there is literally a social media site for professional called Linked in, where professional meet to discuss jobs, the industries that they are in and post their resumes. There is a social network for internet paroozers… Called Stumbled upon, where you can go and check out what other people think is cool on the web, it a sort of bookmarking site, where you bookmark cool sites for others to check out and you check out cool sites others have out there. There is a social network for questions and answers… Yahoo answers is a place to go to ask and answer questions of all sorts from health and fitness to video games and romance questions.

Literally social media tactics spread throughout the web like a… well web. There is not a lot of places you can go these days where there is not a forum or discussion going on somewhere. Where you can meet up with someone from the other side of the world and discuss all kinds of cool different things.

It goes without saying that social media tactics are going to rule the web for now and times to come, like reality tv took over the air waves on the television, social media is taking over the internet. You need to adjust your social media tactics or understand that you are not going to be a successful internet marketer.

Social Media can be a chore if you make it one. A serious Internet marketer knows that time is the most valuable asset, so the goal is to show up for the snacks, not the 5 course meal, and limit this socializing to a realistic portion of your income generating activity schedule. You know how much time you can honestly spend, 1440 minutes per day, one sunrise and one sunset.

Social Media is a fabulous path to free personal branding, a great resource to quickly create the trust of the online community that can become a special source of your daily success in your business and your personal motivation and support by connecting as the real person that you are. This is a chance to be open and authentic, the best guest.

Make sure you use all the following online social media venues: Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, SecondLife, Reddit, Technorati, and Newsvine. Believe it or not, these are the bare minimum to have a profile on and be active on. Just think about all of them like huge parties where you can make contact with new friends, business partners and resources, and maybe even potential customers, all the time and keep the relationships going on your timeline.

The best part of it, is that you can be anywhere in the world where you can use your cell phone and you can access all the social media websites, update your profile and your status, with a simple text message. It is very important for you and your business to stay updated with all that’s going on and to keep your profile updated at all times, which will just serve as a gentile reminder for all your contacts that you are still around, still offering all those amazing stories and photos, creating products and services. They might not need anything right now, but there will be a moment for sure in the near future when they or a person they know needs what you offer. Then guess what? It’s a done deal for you, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Internet Marketer!

Six out of ten Americans that already use social media, connect with online businesses on these major online Social Media websites.

Make sure your profile is on all of these websites and that you keep them updated! We have a great opportunity in these challenging times to be real people sharing life’s adventures and have some fun with a platform that we can actually enjoy. Become an “easy”oligist, keeping it simple and keeping it real, being the best guest at the party of your choice.

The ironic thing about social media is that it is a reflection of who’s driving it. It is a reflection of its users both individually and as a whole. Individually, it is a reflection of what we want our business to accomplish for us and for those we seek to do business with. Currently, I’m not sure there is a better example of the “garbage in garbage out” principle being more accurately displayed than when a new online entrepreneur begins building their network and establishing their personal brand using social media with little or no planning.

The purpose of your social media efforts has to be more than sending random “buy my widget” or “make money by signing up now” messages set on auto-repeat every 15 seconds. That’s akin to social media telemarketing. It’s offensive to the very people who you need to trust you, causing you to quickly lose credibility and thus the ability to positively impact people along with it.

After all, we’re all on the same path working to reach relatively the same destination. We all want to be successful and fulfilled as we each define it. It is far easier to do it together by building a functional network of mutually supportive people than by committing what I call “self-branding suicide”.

Know this, that large numbers in a network mean absolutely nothing if you can’t do anything with them. They are good only for eye-candy and ego stroking. If you cannot effectively communicate and leverage your network at any given time toward a mutually beneficial action then you have no real usable network at all. You have useless numbers. If you spam them and you lose no-one then you have the first sign that NO ONE IS LISTENING! I have found however that these symptoms reveal a deeper issue found at the core of the business foundation, and even more specifically, the online entrepreneur themselves that must be rectified.

Diagnosing The Dysfunctional Home Business Cycle

But why do people, especially new MLM, Internet and affiliate marketers in the first year, do this? Primarily because they’re taught to. After feeling that they have bought into a lie, that the pursuit of a career had paid them in wasted years and less time with the people they love, they vow like an abused spouse, never to let that happen again. With this as a main motivator, they jump into their online venture with a mindset of “this is about me getting what I want now - it’s my turn!”.

Unfortunately, there are those that have sales copy written specifically to prey upon and attract those who are feeling exactly that (which ironically are most potential entrepreneurs) instead of offering something of more substance. This new entrepreneur seeking training is then coached to build a business foundation that utilizes that same selfish ideology as the motivational gas in their online business engine which in turn attracts others the same way. This type of training is prevalent unfortunately. They say this is the coveted “duplication principle” however WHAT you’re duplicating is far more important that the act itself. This cycle seems to be prevalent with any new entrepreneur who seeks training, whether it be a new Internet or affiliate marketer seeking training, an MLM or other business opportunity newbie.

Only You Can Identify & Alter The Cycle

There are plenty of mistreated children who grow up to unknowingly train their own children to mistreat the following generation. My point is this; there is a stark difference between healthy duplication and a dysfunctional spiral which, at the end of the journey, makes one feel that they were taken advantage of, despondent and stupid for ever hoping for something more fulfilling in their life. Many of those involved in MLM’s and business opportunities are caught in this same cycle but it doesn’t have to be this way. The immediate results for business opportunities that aim for this large demographic is that it attracts large numbers because the marketing is geared to identify with their emotional desire to stand up and take their life back, but unfortunately, it helps them neither heal nor become successful.

Your self-branding should ideally be an accurate reflection of who you are and what you want your business to accomplish BOTH for you and for those you seek to do business with. So often many do not take off the rose colored glasses to accurately estimate “what’s in it for them?” apart from giving them the same Kool-aid that they themselves are gulping down. The great thing about many business opportunities is that you have almost total control to brand yourself and create your own strategy for delivering value. Unfortunately if you are standing behind a company that simply does not deliver anything other than the “expectation to make money” it is almost impossible to break out of the cycle and represent the product or service.

I see this all the time with affiliate marketers who lose large chunks of their emailing opt-in lists because they over promoted a product, training or service that had a high-payout for them but did not deliver on their promises. They allowed the organization they promoted to use them along with their email list of potential customers and left them by the side of the road when they were done. This is where the affiliate would say that it is merely a numbers game of getting more potential customers, or the MLM opportunity that preaches that its all about getting more recruits, sponsoring more people, when actually it’s not. It’s not about numbers but about delivering something of value that improves the lives of those you share it with. I’m talking about choosing a deliverable that bolsters your credibility and doesn’t threaten it.

So What’s The Antidote?

So how do we go about correcting our unhealthy business owner perspectives? It’s actually simple if you’re ready to take the leap of letting go of a few deeply held false ideologies. Are you ready? Ok, here it is….your primary goal should not be first and foremost about making money. You gasp, I know but read on and I’ll explain. The key is finding something other than money that you can become passionate about. This is because the desire for money alone will NOT make your life to magically feel more successful and fulfilled. I’m not kidding - it’s true! The next two paragraphs will convince you.

If you’re like most online home business owners I’ve coached, you began your entrepreneurial journey when you decided to stop trading hours for dollars but (because you didn’t know any better) immediately ignored what would truly fulfill you and instead convinced yourself that it was money that was the missing piece all along. No my friend, there is something larger missing and it involves what I call emotional currency.

You need to realize that the most fulfilling currency in your business life is one where you are deeply, emotionally satisfied that your entrepreneurial efforts make a difference. From my experience I will tell you that if you commit to passionately pursue that, the by-product will result in reaping more financial reward than you ever expected. You need to identify with what you really want to achieve with your business efforts. It starts by asking yourself:

• Other than money, what do I want my business efforts to accomplish that would fulfill me?
• What type of reputation do I want to work toward earning in the online community that would deeply satisfy me?
• Expand on the previous question: If successful, what will that reputation look like?
• How should I approach my marketing and branding efforts in light of the answers to the previous 3 questions?

Now work backwards; reconstruct your business foundation to reflect those answers. THAT in-turn will produce a fire-in-the-belly that you cannot extinguish. It results in a business foundation that is tied so closely into who you are that you don’t need a pep talk to get excited about it. The end result is that it begins to provide emotional paychecks which fulfill you before and after the money pours in.

Translating That Into A Successful Marketing Strategy

There are myriads of people who give up following their financial dreams because they feel emotionally bankrupt. Realize that they are all incredibly hungry to deposit this currency into their emotional bank account. When you stop and think about it, it is a pretty simple undertaking to stand out from the crowd because people are very hungry for unique, credible and trustworthy resources. Practically 95% of online business marketers form their sales discussion from the same faulty perspective. You’ll see headlines such as “secrets from the guru who made 5-figures in first month, make money online using this double matrix” or “use this software to trick Google to making you big money” and so on.

If your business involves marketing a product with competition then you want the 95% to continue to do what they are doing. Write your ads, sales copy and articles from the perspective of your new healthy foundation and you will immediately stand out. Identify with those you want to attract to your product or service.

If you’re goal is to attract others to your business opportunity, training or service, know that the 95% with an unhealthy foundation know that they are missing something. They are not your competition;, they are your prospects. If you create a healthy foundation and portray a healthier, more functional and fulfilling alternative that involves emotional currency, you are immediately more appealing. There are also so many people publicly branding themselves dysfunctionally that it’s an instant delineator, setting you apart from the spamming masses.

If you commit to establishing your unique healthy foundation which seeks primary compensation from emotional paychecks you will not only be more satisfied, but you will also be fishing with different bait than most others. People will come to work with you because they believed you were personally offering something different before you even presented your business opportunity.

1. Social Media is Not Going Away
Contextually, things have not really changed. In the early 1990s the debate was similar as it today. School administrators were adamantly against allowing access to the Internet - the big fear being pornography and predators. If you fast forward, it seems as though we’re confronted with similar issues today. Can you imagine a school not being connected to the Internet now? Impossible!

However, in pure numbers and usage there has been a big change. For example, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, almost ¾ of seventh to twelfth graders have at least one social media profile, and the survey group used social sites more than they played games or watched videos online. Also, you cannot ignore social medias like Facebook have grown to over 500 million users in 7 years, and I haven’t even gone into the details of sites like Myspace, Tagged, MyYearBook, Ning, Hi 5, and LinkedIn. Social media growth is exponential.

Also, here’s something else that endorses social networks are here to stay. Not to long ago, some public schools in the UK had an Internet “lock down”, and the students basically rebelled. Marks, absenteeism & attitudes changed during this “lock down”. Unlike the teacher who had positive results with her pilot “Facebook” program, the kids who went through this “lock down” period seemed not to take responsibility for their actions.

Bottom line - social networks are here to stay. Parents or teachers should get on board - learn it & teach it.

2. Kids Are Better Learners When Engaged
A 3rd and 4th grade Minnesota teacher started using blogs in his classroom in 2007 as a way to motivate students to write. The results were amazing. Students loved it.

In many examples, students have shown to become keenly aware that blogging is not just writing on a piece of paper that gets handed to the teacher, and gets handed back with a smiley. They know that blogging is a shared concept, and friends or other people may even stumble across their writings. There is a concept of power in that notion.

Kids are enthusiastic about in-class blogging. In the pilot Facebook project previously mentioned, students got to school earlier and the overall quality of their work increased.

Parents and teachers - when kids are engaged, they learn better. We need to become engaged before we help them become engaged.

3. Safe Social Media Tools and They’re Free
A teacher started using blogs to teach kids, and ended up developing a ‘social media platform’. His platform allowed him to monitor and approve everything that the kids were posting online, and kept kids safe from inappropriate advertising. This teacher then developed a similar web-based tool, which teachers use today. The tool is called kidblog.org.

Kidblog is one of the hottest Web 2.0 tools in K-8 education, which allows teachers to easily blog with their classes in a teacher-kid-friendly environment. Teachers tend to gain a sense of the interaction taking place as the students navigate their way through their class members’ blogs, and teachers can also invite other classes and guests to participate in the class’ discussions, thereby broadening the readership audience and increasing motivation for students. Multiple teachers can also collaborate within a Kidblog class and share moderation responsibilities.

From a safety perspective, teachers have full administrative control over all comments, posts, and privacy settings. The administrator has the ability to preview and approve (or unapprove) content published by students (and other visitors, if allowed by their privacy settings). Kidblog endorses privacy & does not collect any personal information from students.

Kidblog also never subjects students to advertising, so teachers can feel comfortable knowing that the publishing environment is free from distractions.