Whether you are a casual user who is on these sites for fun and connecting with others, or you use them as a business marketing tool for making money online, there’s no denying the power of social media. The world is now more connected than ever before. On any given day you might have an online interaction with someone from every continent of the planet.

So, what does all this social media stuff mean for you?

If you are a casual social media user then it means you can connect with people you have not seen or heard from in many years. It also means that you could use your connections to start an online business, whether you have ever thought about that or not. You don’t have to be full-time but you could earn extra money on the internet using social media in various ways.

If you are a business owner it means you have the opportunity to use the power of SMM to your advantage. You can reach your customers and potential market like never before. You can also tap into a whole new client base worldwide that you never could have done without social media. Even small local businesses can expand into a global market nowadays without needing an entire marketing team or a huge budget.

Of course, it will still take time and work. You can’t expect to just sign up for a few social networking sites and have your business explode overnight. You need to build up a following, be consistent with your efforts, have patience, and set yourself apart from everyone else in your niche trying to do the same thing. The key is to be unique, informative, entertaining, and valuable.

It’s a whole new digital world out there. Make sure you aren’t getting left behind!

• Ascertains a brand and raises awareness: Since the majority of the population is visiting social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can also create your brand name by letting people know about your webpage. As these are the names of some authentic social networking websites, having a business profile on such sites will help boost your brand image and also raise the awareness among the people.

• You may spy on your competitors: You can easily spy on your competitors by following them on Twitter or Facebook. You can easily see what the tools that they have up their sleeve are and that they’re using in order to keep an edge over others. You can adopt any methods you like that your competitors are using.

• You can track your customers: Almost everyone nowadays uses websites like Twitter and Facebook and therefore they are great places to track your customers. You may come to know what they like about your company or products and services, and also about the problems that they have with the services offered by you. Utilize their constructive criticism and use them for enhancing the quality of your products so that you can make more profits.

• Boosts customer confidence and loyalty: If you have a business profile in all the popular social media websites, you can speak to your customers more easily and frequently. This will boost the confidence of the customers and you can easily maintain a good relationship with them that is beyond the relation of a typical customer and business owner. This will also enhance your customer retention ability.

• Conduct market research: You can visit various websites and make sure they are on par with the others. You may speak to your competitors so that you can share your opinions on various social media websites. Use your new-found information so that you can boost your productivity and also keep an edge over your competition.

Therefore, if you are a business owner who wants to increase its visibility, you must use the social media websites to promote your business in a natural way. This will also help with your SEO efforts to boost the search engine ranking of your website. There really is not downside to utilizing social media for your business other than the small amount of time it takes, so go for it!

This is a guest post sent by Alex Brown of http://www.all360.net

Choosing the right social media tool

Choose a social media tool that you feel comfortable with. If you’re looking for a strictly utilitarian networking approach, you may want to try a website like LinkedIn, which allows you to make in rows with professionals from similar business backgrounds. You can upload a substantial amount of information about your employment history and knowledge in your field, increasing the likelihood that those who want to connect with you would share you interests. However LinkedIn’s reach is limited when compared to the millions and millions of users who utilize more informal social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. These sites tend to attract a much wider variety of followers (professionals and nonprofessionals alike) than those on LinkedIn, which means that you’ll have to work that much harder to establish your unique identity. Ultimately LinkedIn may give you a smaller but more traditionally professional audience, while sites like Twitter and Facebook have a looser feel but a much wider readership.

Update regularly

Once you’ve selected a social media tool, create an account and start posting! Use the site’s searching features to locate users who share similar interests or values, and connect with them. Don’t be afraid of contacting too many individuals — you’re creating a larger network for you business with every new follower. When posting content, share engaging information about your business with a link to your website included at the end. An easy way to reach people is to offer free tips related to the nature of your business. If you’re a financial consultant, give some basic money saving advice for the online entrepreneur. Build trust among your followers by presenting yourself as an affable and outgoing business person.

Separate business and personal personas

Bear in mind that your personal life and opinions should never be advertised on your business’s social media account. You’re trying to gain business contacts, potential clientele, and interested readers on the merit of your business and its ideals. You aren’t creating a social media account to win a popularity contest for your social life; you’re growing a business! In most cases people are following your business online because they enjoy what you have to say about your particular niche, so don’t throw them a curveball by impulsively posting your take on the political issue of the day.

Allow yourself to experiment with social media tools and (if handled correctly) you’ll watch your business thrive, buoyed by feedback and interest of your online followers.

This is a guest post from Carol Wilson who writes for a business insurance site. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, and small business topics. She can be contacted at: wilson.carol24 @ gmail.com

1. Tell me a little bit about your Mom’s situation and what you’re doing to raise money to help her.

My mom was disabled years ago after a back operation for a sciatic nerve. Since she couldn’t work again after the operation, she had to start relying on a fixed income from social security. She couldn’t afford to keep living where she was prior to the operation so she found the only place that she could afford on the income from social security.

I’m also holding some other events in the coming weeks and months such as social media webinars and anything else I can come up with to try to help her out.

2. What are you doing to train for the half marathon?

I just started a program called Couch to 5K this week and that will have me running about 3 miles in about 2 months and then I will step things up from there. It’s going to be a long road and a lot of hard work, but it’s my mom we’re talking about so I have to do whatever it takes to succeed.

3. How did you get involved with social media and how did you decide to use social media to help your mother?

I’ve been involved with social media for a few years now. It started out with me just using social media sites for personal use but then I added it to the consulting work that I do for businesses. I’ve seen so many great things promoted successfully with social media, so it just seemed like a natural route to go in promoting the events for my mom.

4. How’s that going so far?

It’s going very well. The support I’ve received from people has been tremendous and it hasn’t even been a whole week yet since I announced the Tattoo Run.

5. You’ve got a social media seminar coming up with the proceeds going to help your mother, who will be on that seminar?

We have a great lineup of speakers on the webinar… Michele Price, Chase Adams, Nicholas Cardot and Christopher Porter, plus some of the other #UsGuys founders might join Chase and the rest of us as well.

6. What topics will they be covering?

The topics that will be covered on the webinar include community building with social media, connecting with your customers via social media and friendship marketing using social media. We might touch on some other subjects as well.

7. Why should people sign up?

People should sign up because they’ll be getting a ton of great content and information that they can implement in their social media strategies. I like to tell people that this webinar offers real social media advice from real social media experts.

8. What one piece of advice would you offer for people just getting started in social media?

The best advice I can give someone that’s just getting started in social media is to just get out there and network with people. Interact with the people that you follow and the people that follow you, participate in #hashtag discussions and definitely focus on the “social” part of social media. You’ll make a ton of great friends and have a lot of fun along the way.

9. If someone wants to use social media to help their favorite cause, what can they do?

The biggest thing someone can do is to show people that you care about them and that’ll give people a reason to care about you and the things that you care about.

Thanks for the input, Jeffrey. Now, I highly encourage everyone to head over to Jeffrey’s blog and sign up for the Social Media Webinar. You’ll learn something for a great price and help Jeffrey help his Mom. Oh, and seating is limited and going fast, so get over there and sign up now!

You’re not alone. Turns out you’re not alone. A recent survey says 72% of people who responded had strong feelings against auto direct messages, compared to 2% who liked them.

Now it turns out, you can opt out of a large number of these automatic direct messages by following the steps outlined on my friend Sean McGinnis’ blog: 312 Digital.

So, no need to be annoyed any further. Just follow the four steps, and in short order you’ll never be bothered by an automatic dm again (or at least not as many).

Sam, who goes by qstreet on Twitter, is a really wonderful person. She’s warm, she’s genuine, and she’s as open with her feelings in the virtual world as anyone I’ve ever seen. I might feel left out in a conversation or jealous of someone’s “overnight success”, but I tend to hide that. Sam will just say, “I feel lost”, which makes it a lot easier for the rest of us to admit the same thing.

Recently, Sam flew to Atlanta to meet one of the UsGuys founders- Chase Adams. Her blog post is about that experience. But more than that it’s about how to make your virtual experience more real. We hear a lot about “authenticity” in social media. A lot of the time, that translates to “don’t lie”, but I think as you read Sam’s post, you’ll see it means more than that. Being authentic, at its core, means going beyond being honest. It’s not merely “don’t lie”, it’s “don’t hide”.

I know you’ll enjoy reading Sam’s post, and I hope it will help you as you try to figure out this whole social media thing. Be sure to show her some comment love.

Sometimes I picture Twitter like making the jump to hyperspace on the Millenium Falcon. Except instead of stars flashing past, it’s tweets. I think this is one of the big reasons that people burn out quickly on Twitter. It’s not much fun if you can’t figure out a way to be a part of “the conversation”.

So, how can you fix that? How do you get connected? If you were in New York City and didn’t know a soul there, how would you make friends? Would you stand on a busy corner and start shouting information about yourself? “Hello, I’m Jill Manty! I have kids! I homeschool! I like social media! I write a blog! Anyone want to talk?” That may be an excellent way to see the inside of some of New York City’s finer correctional/psychiatric facilities, but you’re probably not going to make any friends that way (and if you do, they may not be the kind of friends you were really looking for).

Here are a few suggestions for finding your place on Twitter.

Tweet chats If you just stepped off the bus into Twitterland, and you aren’t following a soul, check out a few Twitter chats. You’ll find people who have similar interests and can most likely find a few people to follow and start conversing with. Make sure you follow anyone you interacted with after the chat is over and thank anyone who retweeted a comment or link that you posted. Include anyone you thank via the @ symbol when you post your thanks. For example, “Thanks for the RT: @georgemanty”

Some Twitter chats do fly by fast and furious, so consider using a program like Tweetchat. I suggest slowing the refresh speed to 10-15 seconds, especially for particularly busy chats. If you’re feeling like a particular chat is like trying to swallow the ocean, find one or two people who are posting things that you find interesting or entertaining and start up a side conversation (try to keep it on topic, though, unless you’re going to drop the chat hashtag- #).

How do you find a chat that interests you? Someone has created a Google spreadsheet of Twitter chats, and it’s kept pretty up to date. My personal suggestions? #tweetdiner, #blogchat, #leadershipchat and #usguys. But find one that works for you. There are chats on diverse topics from horses to food.

Lists Once you’ve found some people to follow, consider creating a list, so that you can more easily keep up with people. Personally, I still haven’t created my lists, so I’m not going to be able to give you a lot of firsthand advice. But there are lots of resources on the web about creating lists. For the basics, check out Twitter’s own help on the subject. For more on the topic, check out this resource. (I got that resource after asking a question on #usguys- see what a great resource Twitter can be? Thanks to Brandon Sheley for the link!)

You can also use other people’s lists as an additional way to find people to follow. Sometimes people will create blog posts about their own lists of people, like this one on New York’s Top PR Public Relations Firms and People. Or you can follow lists that people you follow on Twitter have created.

Hashtags People will hashtag all sorts of things that other people might be interested in. You can view the most popular ones at wthashtag.com. You can then choose to look at who’s using hashtags you’re interested in or just start using some of the ones that are popular that interest you. Over the past week, popular hashtags have included the always popular #facebook and #socialmedia, but also #iphone, #travel and #wikileaks.

Really, there’s just one hashtag I recommend using on a regular basis, outside of Twitter chats: #usguys. While there is an usguys chat, the usguys hashtag is 24/7 discussion on marketing, social media, leadership and pretty much anything under the sun. This morning there was talk about everything from the meaning of “lost his squash” to whether it’s appropriate to use “dude” for women. I set it up regularly in tweetchat or hootsuite to stop in and check out what’s going on throughout the day. It’s much more than a hashtag- it’s a virtual tribe of people who will help and support you.

Want to see what a big deal a hashtag can be? Using usguys as the example, people have created blog posts specifically around usguys, as well as a virtual usguys daily newspaper. Usguys helped get a blog off to a phenomenal start. I think you can see how being involved with a group like that would make Twitter a much more welcoming place.

I hope this helps you figure out how to get involved on Twitter. If you’re already involved, what are your suggestions for people who are new or frustrated with Twitter? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

We would greatly appreciate it if you would “like” us to become our fan, friend, follower, or whatever you prefer to call it. Here are a handful of reasons why becoming our Facebook fan will benefit you as well as us…

1. We will be able to get to know each other.
2. Get more advice about making money online.
3. Interact with other canimakebigmoneyonline.com fans.
4. Keep up-to-date with our new blog posts.
5. Because you love this blog and want to be a Facebook fan!

We would also greatly appreciate it if you could help spread the word about our fan page. It is a “social networking site” so let’s be social about it.

Here’s how you can do that:

1. Like our Facebook fan page.
2. Suggest it to your friends.
3. Give yourself a nice pat on the back for helping us.

Yep, it’s that simple!

If you have any tips for us to improve our fan page then please leave a comment on our wall.

Thank you very much!

Some say that you should definitely use an automatically generated “thanks for following message” but that you need to be careful about exactly how you write the message. Others claim that this is one step away from spam. Personally, I’m not sure.

On the one hand, when I receive those direct messages, they don’t really bother me (except the ones that overtly try to recruit me to follow them on Facebook or buy their product). On the other hand, I pretty much ignore them. They don’t make me feel warm and fuzzy or acknowledged or anything. I just think, “oh look, an automatically generated direct message”.

At this point, I don’t use a direct response message. But I wonder whether I should. What do you think? Are you bothered by automatic dm messages? Impressed by them? Would you rather get an automatic response than no response at all? I’d like to hear your opinions below.

The best and the worst aspect had to be all the different types of sessions you could attend. There were always at least 12 different topics ranging from podcasting to food blogging. I steered away from the specialty tracks like real estate and military blogging, but I still missed out on tons of great material. That being said, here’s a little of what I did get to see:

Standout sessions for me on Friday were Mari Smith’s “The Brand of You: How to Build a Profitable Social Media Based Business,” and a panel discussion with Wendy Piersall, Cecilia Mecca, Bridgette Duplantis, and moderated by Jeremy Wright, “Harnessing the Power of Numbers: Creating a Blog Network.”

Mari Smith is a master of the personal brand. Mari’s brand is Mari, from her signature “turquoise and bling” on everything – including the podium when she spoke – to her endearing Scottish-Canadian accent. Her biggest advice is to really interact with your audience. Get out and comment on blogs, answer questions on your Facebook page, tweet about interesting subjects. She advised everyone to use their name and picture as much as possible so people feel they are interacting with a real person. The exception would be if you wish to establish a company brand to possibly sell in the future, and even then you’ll want to provide a human face behind the name.

Now, she doesn’t mean get out there and natter on about nothing. Make your engagement worthwhile for the people you are interacting with. There were two things she said that stuck with me, “Don’t shout ‘look at me,’ shout, ‘how can I help you?’” and “It’s better to have 100 highly engaged fans/followers than 10,000 who don’t give a hoot what you say.” In other words, get involved with purpose and an eye for helping others. You can have thousands of fans and followers, but if they aren’t listening to you, it doesn’t matter. And they’re not going to listen unless you provide them with a good reason.

But the most noticeable thing about Mari is that she walks the talk. She was very gracious with those who came up to speak to her. Everyone got kind words and helpful advice with a genuine smile. She sat in on sessions with her colleagues, listened, and participated. There is nothing aloof about Mari Smith; she honestly wants to help.

The three ladies from the session on creating a blog network were also extremely helpful. In fact, the networks they created – Double Duty Divas for Bridgette and Cecilia, Sparkplugging for Wendy – were all about promoting those who participated. Their attitude is that those who blog within your niche are not competition, but opportunities for support and mutual advantage. While the Divas reward with promotion and bringing advertisers and bloggers together, Wendy – who recently sold Sparkplugging – paid her bloggers for their time and posted more content aimed at the home entrepreneur.

Putting together a network of bloggers can be a rewarding experience, but all three advised that you need to screen those who join you well. Establish guidelines from the very beginning to dictate the tone and style of your network as well as to ensure the network remains honest and transparent (the Divas do a lot of product reviews which requires full disclosure.) Stick to those guidelines and don’t bend. After all, it’s your network’s – and ultimately your – reputation on the line.

Whew! That’s a lot of information and I barely scratched the surface. Stay tuned for my next installment for Day 3.

Thanks for reading!
Sherry
Starting Fresh at Forty

Today is 10/10/10, and we won’t have another day as exciting as this until 11/11/11, so here’s Ten Top Ten Lists you might enjoy or learn from.

1. The 10 Social Media Metrics Your Company Should Monitor— A pretty straightforward article. Whether you agree you can (or should) calculate ROI for social media, I think few of us will disagree that keeping track of blog interactions is a good thing.

2. Top 10 Expectations of Social Media in 2010— This one is fun because it’s almost the end of the years, so you can see if they were right.

3. Top 10 SEO Myths of All Time— #8 is my favorite since I deal with this one all the time.

Client: I got a call last week from a company that guaranteed my first page ranking.

Me: For pay per click?

Client: No I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pay per click.

Riiigggghhhhtttt.

4. Top 10 Google SEO Ranking Factors— Of course, this assumes that Google hasn’t changed anything in the past ten months— or the past ten minutes. But it’s still a pretty good list.

5. 10 Ways to Reduce Friction in Your Purchase Process— There’s nothing more frustrating than losing a client at the shopping cart. Basics on reducing those chances.

6. Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using Linked In— LinkedIn is an untapped gold mine for many. It’s worthwhile to learn a bit more about it and use that knowledge to your advantage.

7. Top 10 Ways to Tweak Your WordPress Theme— These are easy for just about anyone to do.

8. Top 10 Social Bookmarking Plugins for WordPress— Which is your favorite? I like Get Social.

9. Top 10 Funniest Fail Blogs— Every Top 10 list needs a little levity.

10. The 10 Best Top-Ten Lists And, of course, what’s a best top 10 list without a Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists

1. Twitter cannot be explained.

You really do have to learn by doing. I’ve looked at George’s Twitter account I don’t even know how many times and thought, “I don’t get it”. Now, I’m on Twitter, and I get it. I think it’s depleting my ability to focus for more than 45 seconds every time I log on but at least now I understand. So, if you’ve been putting off “doing Twitter” because you don’t get it, just go ahead and dive in. There are no Twitter police. No one’s going to yell at you for doing it wrong. Sign up, get an account and follow me. Then give me a shout, and I’ll follow you back. That’s the hard part. It gets easier from there.

2. There are people I won’t follow.

People who don’t have any tweets. People who write every tweet in a language other than English (no prejudice here, I just can’t follow you if I can’t read what you’re saying). People who regularly use language that will be a problem if my children are reading my Twitter stream over my shoulder, even though they’re not supposed to do that because it’s rude. If I go to look at your page to decide whether to follow you, and it looks like the script of a Quentin Tarantino film, I’m probably not going to follow you. People who refer to themselves as a “visionary”— no real reason. It just bugs me.

3. A quick method I use to determine who I’m going to follow.

When someone follows me, and I get an email saying that someone new is following me, I go to their profile and scan their tweet stream. If I get to the bottom of the page, and I’m not offended, that’s a good sign. But if I get to the bottom of the page and don’t see one thing I’d be interested in retweeting, that’s a bad sign. So, this is a lesson you can use to help you determine who to follow. It’s also a lesson in being someone that other people want to follow— be interesting. Or at least retweet people who are.

4. Hootsuite is my friend.

Hootsuite has been really helpful in being able to scan what’s going on with my Twitter account. There are a few things I don’t really care for. And I really need to do a bit more diving in. But, overall, it’s a necessary tool for me to be successful with Twitter.

So, that’s it. That’s what I’ve learned. For the most part. Any of you out there new to Twitter? Struggling with Twitter? Do you have Twitter questions? As we’ve established, I’m no expert. But if you leave a question in the comments, I’ll do my best to find the answer. And the most important question— have you followed me yet?

I didn’t want to. It was lame. I didn’t need it. Why should I? Then I joined about 18 months ago. How did I ever live without Facebook? And now I think that any business without a Facebook page is missing out on a monumental opportunity! Do you also want Google to exclude you from the search results?

I still don’t use Twitter a lot. Oh, sure I feed our Facebook page to it, but I leave most of the interacting to George. However, that will probably come to an end sometime in the next couple of months. Once I get a firm grasp on Linked In and Four Square— I need those for particular clients. But Twitter’s next.

So, why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to know it’s not too late. If you don’t yet have a Twitter or a Facebook account, it’s okay. You haven’t missed the social media parade. In fact, it’s really just getting started.

For businesses, it’s often not that beneficial to be an early adopter. The best time for businesses to adopt a technology is around it’s peak. It’s usually easier (and cheaper) to get training at that point. Your clients and potential customers are already informed about the technology, so you don’t have to convince them that they should WANT to “like” you on Facebook. And there are plenty of people who are already knowledgeable to whom you can outsource the parts of social media that you don’t like or don’t have time to keep up with.

So, if you’ve been avoiding social media, you don’t have to continue to do so. There are some very simple and very effective ways to use Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Linked In and more that will help you make money online and won’t keep you from actually running your business. I’ll be introducing some simple tips and tricks over the coming weeks and months. So, make sure to check back often. But for right now, go sign up for Facebook and Twitter— and throw in LinkedIn while you’re at it. Leave a note down below if you’ve signed up recently, or if you don’t yet have an account and let me know what was/is holding you back.

So, if you read last week’s post, I talked about 3 Things You Must Know To Be Successful Online. If you missed it, head on over there because it’ll really get you ready for this week’s topic…Social Media baby!

By now, chances are you have a good idea of what Social Media is. Heck, last year it was called Web 2.0 and like Gary Vaynerchuck, the premier go to guy for Social Media branding says, “It’ll probably be called something different next year”.

In a nutshell, Social Media is just a fancy word for social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Friendfeed, etc., where you can engage and interact with your audience in a more personal and “social” way. It’s been around for several years now and frankly, it’s not going anywhere. I mean it when I say this and I can guarantee you that any business that doesn’t get into the new age of how business is done and continues to stick with the old school methods, is going to be toast.

Point blank, bottom line. There’s a lot of information out there on how to do Social Media right and then there’s people like me who love helping you profit from it. I’m extremely passionate about Social Media and over the course of reading up on a lot of different information, here’s what’s stuck the most…

If all you want to do is sell, you better change your mind…FAST! Social Media isn’t just about selling to and/or getting customers where they’re spending a lot of their time. It’s a lot more than that. It’s about getting into the conversation that’s happening and being there. Sometimes people need advice or help with this. Sometimes they need extra assurance before they purchase something. There’s a number of different possibilities and when you can engage and interact with them, they’ll look to you as a friend, an authority, someone they can trust over time.

If all you do is sell, you’ve already turned them off by just your first tweet or status update. Offer advice, be helpful, and sure, sell from time to time, but don’t stray from the fact that your customers want friends. And when you can be their friend and build that relationship with them, it’s hard telling how profitable it’ll become.

Post relevant, entertaining, and valuable information. You don’t speak politics to an infant, do you? Then find your niche or niches that you love, know about, and/or do work in, and post about that. There’s so many times where I’ve followed someone because I enjoyed their tweets about personal development and they start talking about this dirty scumbag politician. I guarantee you 98% of the people that pay attention to them could give a care less.

Now, there’s times where you post about other things, hopefully positive (Did I mention more than enough negativity can bite you in the butt?). That’s understandable and you should post here and there about other things because it gives people a better sense of your personality, a big factor in why people pay attention to you to begin with. However, when you get way off topic and stray far from your niche, it makes people start to change their minds.

Always stay true to your roots and make sure that you provide some sort of value in everything you post.

Transparency is the new disclosure. Most people can sniff out liars as well as a bloodhound can sniff out a criminal a mile away. Always be truthful and honest in your ventures and activities. There’s been so many people who could of got far in what they were doing but no, they decided to lie about things and worse of all, cover them up. Guess what happened? Things get exposed and when you get marked as a liar and someone who can’t be trusted, that sticks in people’s minds and is hard to get rid of.

By being transparent, you simply be who it is you are and just do you. You’re no one else. You’re not proclaiming yourself to be an expert, guru, master, or wizard. Let others decide who you are by your actions and what it is you bring to the table (jump back to valuable content). We’ve all heard the saying “The truth shall set you free” and it will. It’ll not only set you free but also help you build deeper relationships and make a lot more money in the long run.

If you aren’t on Twitter yet then you are one of the few people who aren’t, and if you have never heard of Twitter then you must have been living in a jungle cave for the past year or two. Every internet marketer I know is on Twitter and it seems like that’s all any of them can talk about these days. But does anyone actually make money from Twitter? Have you?

I have been on Twitter for a while now and I have yet to see how you can really make money from it even though everyone keeps talking about how great it is for business. Don’t go thinking I am some newbie that doesn’t know anything either because I definitely am not. I have been an internet marketer successfully making money online for over 6 years.

Sure, I’ve heard a few stories here and there of people who have used certain methods to make money on Twitter, but they are few and far between. And even those “success stories” are usually only small sums of money. Plus, when you consider the excessive amounts of time most people spend on Twitter to make that little bit of money, you could utilize several other marketing techniques to achieve better results in the same amount of time.

Then there’s the argument you will hear from the Twitter faithful about how great it is for traffic. Is it really? Not if you really think about it…

Say you have 1000 followers and you “tweet” your newest blog post in hopes that your followers will go check it out. Chances are most of them won’t be on Twitter at the time you tweet it so hardly any of them will see your tweet anyway. However, let’s be really conservative and say half of them are on, so 500 might see it.

Now, most of the remaining 500 are probably following hundreds, if not thousands, of other people, so your tweet will most likely be pushed down almost instantly and very few of them will see it. But let’s be really conservative again and say half of them do see your tweet. We are down to 250 now.

This could go on and on but let’s estimate highly again and say that 10% of the remaining 250 actually do click the link to go to your blog post. You just go a whopping 25 visitors! And probably none of them will actually be targeted visitors that will do anything to actually make you money once they are at your blog.

However, I am feeling generous so let’s say you have Adsense displayed on your blog and normally get a 5% click through rate. Well, 5% of 25 is 1.25 – so you would get just one click. If you’re lucky, you might make 10 cents or so. In reality you probably wouldn’t make anything though because “social traffic” rarely clicks on ads, and traffic from Twitter is considered social traffic.

So, can you make money from Twitter? I doubt it! And even if you do there’s a strong chance you could have made a lot more by using other internet marketing techniques instead.

If you don’t want to take my word for it then give it a try and see how it works for you. If you do figure out how to make money on Twitter then I would love to hear how. Just don’t waste too much of your time trying!

Let me end by stating that I am not saying you shouldn’t use Twitter. I get on there almost every day so that would be very hypocritical of me. It does have some advantages and there are several tools you can use to automate it so you don’t waste all your time there.

The point I am trying to get across is that you shouldn’t be spending too much time on Twitter because it’s really not very productive for your business. There are many other ways to make money that are much better than Twitter and several marketing methods that will bring you a lot more traffic.

By the way, since we’re on the subject of Twitter… You can follow me @trentab to get real tips on how to make money online.

1. Replace relationships
2. Provide people with an opportunity to escape from reality.

Neither of these purposes is ideal for our personal growth.

That got me thinking about the impact of social marketing and the Internet in general on our business success.

The truth of the matter is that many of the most successful websites manage to achieve the same purpose that a good tv show does:
They replace your relationships and provide you with an escape from reality.

While this is a good thing to keep in mind when trying to make a successful website, it’s also important to keep this in mind to keep yourself productive. Don’t spend all your time online. Don’t let your online activities ruin your relationships or keep you from having any. Don’t use it to constantly escape from the REAL world. Otherwise, you will never have time for the things that are really important in life.

Social media marketing is a fantastic way to drive traffic to a blog or website. On the other hand, social marketing can take up a lot of your time.

So, what’s an Internet marketer to do?

Schedule the amount of time you spend online. This is especially important for interactive time (social media, email, forums, commenting on blogs, gaming, etc), but also true of all your time online. If you want to make money online you need to focus the bulk of your time on activities that actually make you money. Checking email usually doesn’t make you money, writing a tweet about your favorite song usually doesn’t make you money, etc..

If you are working a 9 to 5 job and trying to make money online you can easily spend all of your spare time on activities that don’t make you money and don’t help you in other areas of your life. If you are trying to make money in your spare time it’s crucial that you spend most of your time doing productive activities that will lead to making more and more money online.

Life Is To Short To Twitter It Away

Take the poll below and let me know which is your favorite.

The reason is simple…

You have the wrong kind of traffic coming to your blog (or website)!

Most make money online bloggers write post after post aimed at other bloggers and internet marketers, and they try to get as many readers as possible through social websites and other things like that. However, this is not a very good strategy if you really want to make money from your blog.

The people you are targeting with your blog posts are the exact same people who are doing the same things you are trying to make money online and they are definitely not the ones who are going to click on your ads or buy your recommended products. They know what Adsense ads are and they are probably promoting the same products you are on their blogs. So why would they take any action that will make you money? They won’t!

If you really want to make money online then most of your traffic needs to come from search engines because the average person doing a search won’t have a clue what Adsense is so they will gladly click on your ads. They also don’t know what an affiliate link is so they will buy products through your affiliate link if it’s going to help them make money online.

So what do you need to do?

Stop wasting all your time getting traffic through social sites and writing your posts aimed at other bloggers in the same niche as you!

You need to start getting keyword rich inbound links with the sole intent of ranking highly on the search engines (specifically Google) so you can start getting traffic from searches. Let’s say, for instance that you want to rank highly for “how to make money online” then you need to start acquiring backlinks with that as the link text and variations of it.

Want to know what kinds of inbound links you should be getting to maximize your search engine rankings? Read my recent post on finding the perfect backlink. And read Ryan’s recent post on the subject: What Links Can You Point at Your Web Site?

You should also do some keyword research on all the various searches related to your niche and start writing some posts about the different topics that are being searched so you can get rankings for lots of long-tail keywords. The traffic you get from those posts will start adding up and can turn into a lot of visitors and a lot of money!

Getting traffic that actually makes you money isn’t rocket science, it’s really quite easy. All it takes is the discipline on your part to build backlinks and write specific keyword rich posts.

I have been meaning to review Aaron Wall’s SEO book ever since I interviewed Aaron last year. I am finally getting around to it.

First of all I want to say it’s REALLY, REALLY loaded with information! His ebook had over 300 pages and his training program has more information than his ebook ever had.

The SEO Book training program covers A LOT more than just Search Engine Optimization. In addition to SEO, the SEO Book covers:

• Copywriting


• Social Marketing


• Website Usability


• Website Monetization


• Blogging


• and more!

Aaron uses a combination of articles and videos to teach you how to rank high in the Search engines. He also teaches you just about everything imaginable about marketing a product or service.

Not only that, but the SEO Book has a private online community where you can ask and answer questions of both Aaron and other members of his program. The community really blew me away. I have been a member of many paid online communities and none of them were as good as the one that Aaron runs. The most amazing thing to me about the community is how active Aaron is in it. The last time I checked Aaron Wall had 2,799 posts (16.26 posts per day). If you want to get direct advice from Aaron then you should sign up soon, because I just don’t see how Aaron can continue to be so active on his forum and continue to take on new members. It doesn’t seem like a very scalable business model to me.

Anyway, if you are new to online marketing or you want a great place to learn about online marketing (especially SEO) then I recommend that you click here to join the SEO Book Training Program. It is one of the best deals on the Internet for beginners to learn how to make money online.

http://twitter.com/georgemanty

My wife Jill told me I should use Twitter a year ago. Considering how big it has gotten, maybe I should have listened to her. One of these days I am going to remember that she is always right

I wasn’t sure what to do with my Twitter account, so I thought I would ask you what you would like to see me do with my Twitter account.

Here are some ideas I have come up with so far:

Twitter my wife’s labor
My wife Jill is due May 15th and I was thinking maybe I could twitter the whole labor. Now, sure if she finds out, she will probably kill me. Considering the way she reacted when I had a long conversation about golf with her OB-GYN when she was in labor with our second child… I guess twittering the labor is out…

Twitter my random thoughts through the day like…

“Had yogurt for lunch… when nobody was looking drove to Taco Bell and ate a REAL lunch.”

Twitter what I am doing in my business
That could be useful, but could also be boring. For instance, it could look like this:

“Spent five hours debating whether to use twitter for marketing, networking, fun or not at all.”

What should I use Twitter for?

What would you like me to use Twitter for? Or maybe the better question to ask is, “What could I use twitter for that would make you want to follow me on twitter?”

Please let me know…