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Small Business Taxes Gone Wild In California

I estimate that 99% of Californians do not understand the implications of the new small business tax that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law yesterday. This law would mandates online sellers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com to start collecting sales taxes on items shipped to California if they have some sort of relationship with an affiliate. [...]

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You Got the Opt-in, Now What? Here Are Some Top Email Strategies

The first part of email marketing is to get your visitor to opt-in your email list. Once they opt-in, the visitor becomes a prospect. The second part of email marketing is to move the prospect along your marketing funnel towards them becoming a customer. An important element of that is relationship marketing done via trust. [...]

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Linkedin Company Page Follows the Leaders Facebook and Yelp

There was a time when Linkedin was cool. Well, maybe “cool” is too strong of a word for this early social networking site. Let’s just say that Linkedin was *the* place to network as a business professional. You sign up for Linkedin, you make connections with people you work with, you ask for a recommendation, [...]

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A Way to Promote Your Business with Facebook Events

Let’s assume you’ve already set up your own Facebook profile and a separate Facebook Page for your business. Maybe you’ve also created a Facebook Group that relates to a type of product or service that your business provides. What are some ways that you can promote the special events your business sponsors? One way is [...]

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How to Remove Antispyware Soft

Marketing online is fraught with risks. One category is business risk. The other category is technical risk. Business risk is when you try to execute a digital marketing strategy and it fails. Technical risk includes the risk of not implementing your websites and/or scripts correctly. But technical risk also includes the risk from cyber-attacks. One of the most common form is viruses pretending to be a friendly program ... like a trojan horse. This blog is about how to remove Antispyware Soft. … Read More...

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A Way to Promote Your Business with Facebook Events

Let’s assume you’ve already set up your own Facebook profile and a separate Facebook Page for your business. Maybe you’ve also created a Facebook Group that relates to a type of product or service that your business provides.

What are some ways that you can promote the special events your business sponsors? One way is by creating a Facebook Event. A Facebook Event is simply another type of Facebook page that describes an occurrence that will occur at a specific type and in a specific location. The “location” can be a real physical location or an internet web page.

You can use an Event page to promote a sale or limited time promotion that your business is conducting, or some other special event. This can be an effective way to publicize your business activities from time-to-time, because you can target people who are already connected to you or your business on Facebook. Since they’ve connected with you on Facebook, you already know that they’re interested in the kinds of products and services you provide.

Creating a new Event is easy. First log in to your business’ Facebook Page if you want the event to be sponsored by the business (or log in to your personal profile if you want to be the sponsor personally). Click the “Events” link near the top of the left navigation bar, and then click the “Create an Event” button at the top right of the main column of your events page.

facebook event button
Create a Facebook Event

You’ll then be asked to provide the name of the event, along with the time and place, a description of the event, and upload a photograph that relates to the event. You don’t need to include a finishing time if it’s an open-ended event. Finally, you need to decide which Facebook users to invite. You can either select individual guests from your friends list, or you can make the event completely public so that anyone on Facebook can see the Event and sign up to attend.

create facebook event page
Create a Facebook Event

As with any successful business promotion on Facebook, the key is to not overdo it. For example, it’s appropriate to create an event to publicize seasonal sales or other special promotions you are conducting. On the other hand, you’ll probably alienate some of your followers if you create a new event every single day to publicize special prices on individual products.

It’s human nature to like being invited to things. Invitations to join make people feel special, and makes them feel like they’re a part of something. After receiving an invitation, the act of clicking the “I’m attending” button to accept the invitation is an affirmation of that person’s connection with the business that set up the event. By accepting the invitation they’re indicating their desire to align themselves with the event you’re conducting.

Of course, it’s not always easy to turn your Events and the accepted invitations directly into sales. But you can always evaluate your data to see which kinds of Events are most popular, and whether your Events are becoming more or less popular over time. Done correctly, using Facebook Events can be a great supplement to your other promotional activities.

Here’s an example of a Facebook events page:

facebook events example
Create a Facebook Event

 

If you are new to using Facebook marketing, I recommend you pick-up a free guide at:

http://adpublishing.org/facebook-marketing-free-guide/

 

Honest Business, Internet Scams, and the FTC

It’s tough to run an honest business these days. On the customer side, you have the late payers, the non-payers, and the outright cheaters that suck away your profits. On the supplier side, you have the offline scammers, the online scammers like the Nigerian internet scam, and the outright hackers who consume your attention and resources. You have to deal with your competition. And now there is a new impediment to running an honest business — the FTC.

Wait a minute, isn’t the FTC supposed to protect honest consumers and businesses from unscrupulous scammers? Before 10/5/09, that would be true. As of 10/5/09, I’m not so sure. You see, the FTC released a new guideline on Monday that affects how businesses can use endorsements whether online or offline.

The document is here:

http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf

I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one online so I can’t provide any legal advice. What I am is a marketing specialist. As a marketer, I know that in order to sell products via copy, you need a good headline, a description of the problem or pain, your solution, your benefits, social-proof via endorsements or testimonials, and a call to action thrown-in with some scarcity. If you miss any element of that marketing chain, your sales argument becomes weaker. In other words, the prospect is less likely to buy from you.

From what I’m reading about the new FTC ruling, sellers who use endorsements no longer have a “safe harbor.” In other words, I will need to go to great lengths to add disclaimers about the testimonials and endorsements. The worst part is that this also applies to my affiliates who may not be as diligent. As I understand it, even if my affiliate breaks an FTC rule, I will be liable. Ouch!

Yes, I know that there are real scammers out there online and offline. Yes, I understand the argument that this type of regulation was designed to catch the bad guys. But on balance, the FTC has thrown the baby out with the dirty bath water. Besides, consumers should also be responsible for their own behavior. Come-on, who in their right mind believes that an acai berry – a blue berry cousin – for goodness sake, can make you lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks? Do we need the FTC to protect us from being gullible?

What is an honest business to do? I suggest you consult with your attorney today regarding this new FTC guideline. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t give legal advice. And if there are links on my site, they are likely affiliate links where I get compensated in some way if you buy through my links. Any testimonials on my site are for informational purposes only. Your results will likely vary because you are a totally different person than the one giving the testimonial. In fact, just don’t even read the testimonials. The same is true for any endorsements. Who cares what others say anyway, right? “If you were a sheep and noticed that the sheep in front of you just jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?” Anything else that I need to disclaim in case the FTC is watching? ;-)

What is Twittering and Why Should You Care



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Why indeed? What is Twittering? … Isn’t it just another social networking site?

I think Twitter is a little more than that. Twittering is a way of networking with other people, that much is true, but you could also call it a phenomenon. Sharing knowledge, advice, updates and much more in just 140 characters is a challenge that thousands of new people are taking up every single day. Twitter has hit the headlines more and more in recent times, and revealing just a few of the stories that have been published should give you an idea of just how important this site can be to you. Tweeters, by the way, call their form of communication, “tweeting.” You send tweets of 140 characters or less.

When the Presidential race was on, both candidates were making good use of Twitter to garner support for their campaigns. Barack Obama is still the most followed person on the whole of Twitter… although he hasn’t been tweeting much since he started running the country. He still has well over 1,417,890 followers at the last count however.

And celebrities are using the site more and more too – to connect with their fans, promote their careers and much more besides. Some of these have been proved to be fake, but there are plenty of real celebrity Tweeters out there too.

The NBA basketball star Shaquille O’Neal or Shaq also has a huge number of followers on Twitter. Shaq has more followers than Obama at 1,259,460 He often responds to messages and takes part in conversations as well. American actress Demi Moore proved that Twitter can be much more than just another social networking site by helping to prevent an apparent suicide bid by another user. She has 1,195,969 followers.

You can see how Twitter has pervaded the lives of many different people. You can make a difference with this site, and you can also use it for many different purposes including marketing. But the main thing to remember at this stage is that you can reach a huge audience. It may not be anywhere near as big as the one the Real Shaq enjoys, but you can still end up with thousands who will read every tweet you write.

Twitter is not just for the rich and famous – although judging by the number of stories along those lines that have been hitting the headlines recently, you may wonder.

But no matter what line of business you are in; whether you are based primarily online or you have offline interests as well, you CAN benefit from having a free account on Twitter.

Watch the video and click on the link below. You will be taken to a system that you can put to work right away to start building your own Twitter following.


Click Here to Sign Up for FREE!

 


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