Miss Manners said it best when she stated, “Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.” Manners are important online, perhaps even more important than manners in person. Due to personal interpretation, feelings can get hurt and customers can be easily offended if the basic rules of netiquette are not followed.

Comment Carefully
As a business, your online presence should reflect your in house expectations of protocol. Simply put, if you wouldn’t conduct yourself in a certain manner with a customer in person, do not conduct yourself that way with your customer online. This can get tricky when managing social media platforms. When using Facebook and Twitter, it is extremely important to choose your words carefully. If you have a third party monitoring your social media accounts, make sure they have clear instructions on how your business interacts with customers. A business can gain more customers if potential customers witness great online customer service. Equally, a business can lose customers and quickly gain a viral bad reputation if they handle their social media interactions poorly.

Be Accurate
The Internet has made locating factual information very easy for your customers. Having an authentic voice and providing truthful information is paramount. Customers love the transparency that online interaction provides along with the connectedness they feel with the companies that provide their goods and services. By being accurate, truthful and honest a business will earn and keep the trust of their valued customers, while attracting potential customers at the same time.

Grammar Counts
When engaging with your customers online, proper use of English makes a difference. If your outbound posts, blogs, website and interactions contain a lot of grammatical errors and poor use of English, your customers will think two things. First, that your business is unintelligent. Second, your business doesn’t pay attention to detail. If your business makes sloppy mistakes online, your customers will have the impression that your business makes sloppy mistakes with their services. This is not the impression you want to give your audience. Using spell check and online grammar software can be a businesses best friend.

The trend of business interactions occurring via social media networks and email is on the rise. Business owners must embrace this new way of offering stellar customer service. Social media networks provide many opportunities for marketing that provides optimal results. An important factor to pay close attention to is minding netiquette manners. By following a few basic netiquette rules, current customers will remain loyal and potential customers will want to purchase your products and services.

Before thinking about how to use YouTube as a marketing tool though, take a moment to appreciate how revolutionary it truly is. Video advertising had long been the preserve of only major companies. Huge production costs and the high cost of television advertising conspired to keep it that way.

Then, sometime around 2006, the world reached a critical mass of high-quality, inexpensive video cameras, and sufficient broadband capability for people to share their videos. Suddenly the cost of broadcasting your video was zero! The only costs were production, which for many people were also zero!

Imagine going back in time 30 years and trying to explain to the ad men on Madison Avenue that you are your firm’s marketing department, that your budget for video production and broadcasting is $0.00, and that last year your videos were watched by millions of people.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, let’s look at a few ways to make sure that the videos you upload to YouTube are going to be the kinds of videos that people share, share, and re-share. A poorly executed video could actually be worse than no video at all.

When you make a video, make sure that it is optimized for maximum potential. You can optimize videos for YouTube much in the same way that you can optimize a web site for a search engine’s web crawlers, although the specifics are a little bit different. When you upload a new video, make sure that the title is descriptive, and make sure that it includes a keyword or phrase that you want to focus on.

You’ll also want to think about the length of your video. The most popular videos on YouTube have an average length of 2-4 minutes. If you opt for anything much shorter than this and your video may be looked upon unfavorably by the site’s search algorithms. Much longer and people will lose interest.

Additionally, address the other factors that the YouTube search algorithm weighs heavily. Much like any other search engine, it gives a lot of weight to inbound links. In addition, it relies heavily on user ratings and comments. So encourage people to rate comment on your videos, and to give them ratings. How do you do about doing this?

By getting involved in the community, of course. Much as you would with any other community, look for people who are posting a lot of videos, and whose videos are being linked to often. Watch their videos, and comment on them. Provide meaningful comments, and provide an occasional link back to your own content.

Also, be sure to link to other people’s videos and reference them in your videos and in your blog postings. They will appreciate the engagement, and they will link to your media in turn.

LinkedIn is the best of the social media websites for business to business sales. Contract workers and service providers have had incredible success using LinkedIn as a marketing platform. Below, are some tips to get started building a quality network.

1. Update your profile. An updated business profile is absolutely mandatory for those seeking to market on LinkedIn. Make sure to update your profile anytime you have changes in your professional life. When you send out notifications to your network, it is important to have an updated profile so that when they check, they see that the information in your notice and the information on your profile match.

2. Connect with all of your current contacts. The larger your network, the easier it is to grow your network. Start out with your address book and send out requests to all of your current contacts. Take the time to personalize each of your introductions, and mention the details of your connection.

3. Ask for help expanding your network. Talk with your current contacts and ask them to forward your information to others. On LinkedIn, the best marketing strategy is a solid service record. Your current contacts will be able to vouch for your skills and service, giving you a leg up on getting new contacts.

4. Keep your communications concise and professional. Because LinkedIn is geared toward working professionals, it is crucial that you maintain that tone in all of your communications. Avoid bulk mail, and target your communications specifically to the individual. Make sure that you know what you want, so you can communicate it clearly. People in business are very familiar with the idea of reciprocal favors. Often simply making the ask is enough to get the help you need.

5. Put your reputation first. When asking for and performing favors, it is important to keep your reputation in mind. In business, your reputation is a commodity that is worth everything, and once lost it can be impossible to regain. Do not send on frivolous emails, and never send out spam. Provide excellent service to every customer, and enjoy the benefits of a sterling business reputation.

LinkedIn is a great forum for specific types of marketing. It is not the best for direct selling to the general public, but for business to business services and cross industry referrals, it can not be beat.

Television price points are very high, and even a group of small businesses would have difficulty putting together enough funds for a solid advertising campaign. With online video content now available, price is no longer an issue.
A business can create and display video content very inexpensively. In fact, the only cost is for the video production. If you are prepared to provide your own content without resorting to a production company, a video can be virtually free.

There are some common misconceptions about online video content that you should not fall prey to. High quality is always nice with online video, but it is not required. The content is much more important than the video quality. If you don’t own a video camera don’t let that stop you. A camera is nice, but not required. Power point and multimedia presentations are just as interesting when formatted as a video. The time is another concern many have, but the truth is that video production can be quick and seamless. If you know what you need to say, it is only a matter of moments to put together a reasonable video. Finally, don’t worry about slow loading times. Your website can load as fast as ever if the video is hosted on another site, like YouTube. An additional benefit to hosting externally is that you may get additional traffic generated by those sites as well.

The trick to effectively incorporating video in an online marketing plan is to tag it properly. Video have a title, which must incorporate keywords effectively, so that it shows up for search engines. Also, be sure to fill out a description of the video to encourage viewers to watch. If they know what to expect they are more likely to watch the entire video. Online viewers are more likely to watch video than to read text. Since this is the case, it only makes sense to produce and market a few of your own.

Video is a way to quickly build trust and provide information. As long as you don’t fall prey to the idea that it must be expensive and high quality, your company can produce several each year. By creating video content that provides customers with valuable information, how-to guides are always popular, you step up your marketing. Don’t let the price of television advertisements convince you that video is out of your price range. Video can be produced absolutely free, quickly and easily. As you expand to include social media as a marketing tool, keep in mind that sites like YouTube are very much in this category.

Online advertising is the wave of the future, and social networking is the advertising that generates sales without selling. Creating a business fan page gives you the opportunity to communicate effectively with consumers without pushing the hard sale. Gentle interaction that is genuine and helpful will go a long way toward bringing in customers. When you put together your fan page, put all of your company information in the info tab. Make sure the full company name, mission statement, brief product and service description, contact information and website are clearly stated. By providing the company information, you allow consumers a chance to briefly learn what your company is about and click through if they are interested in learning more.

Make sure you have a welcome that greets new visitors. Something special for first timers that lets them know they are appreciated and a bit of information about your company. A welcome video is a great idea, multi-media is more likely to capture attention and keep interest. In your welcome message, make sure you include some kind of action request. Ask visitors to become fans, sign up for an email list or leave a comment. Whatever action you ask for should open an opportunity for dialogue between your company and the new potential customer.

Create a tab for people to check out your videos and sign up to receive your tweets. Anything that improves communication between your business and your social network can result in sales. Make sure that customers have a place to say the good, bad and ugly about your company. Give them a reviews/testimonials tab to make their opinions known. Yes, complaints happen, but by addressing them in a professional manner you give other consumers the chance to see your customer service skills in action. Move the communication offline for complaints, but show consumers that you listen to complaints and respond timely. Enjoy all the positive feedback as well. Employees will enjoy reading a heartfelt thank you from the people they have helped.

Include pictures that show both your products and your employees. By putting a face with the company and showing what you do, you create a positive image. Update your status regularly, so that visitors know your page is active. By following all of these steps you allow social media to sell your company without directly pushing sales. Simply showing off your expertise and interacting with people can go a long way toward building a customer base. The person asking the question may not buy today, or tomorrow, but when they are making a purchase, they will come back to the company that provided helpful information.

Blogs show up in search engines, allowing those looking for more information about a topic related to your company to find you easily. The more people that find you the more potential customers you reach. Blogging about the subject matter that is the object of a search tells a potential customer that your company shares their concerns or is familiar with their needs.

On your company’s blog you can publish articles that are designed to provide customers information about your latest product offerings, current sales or promotions, upcoming news and events, projects and any other business plans. Those interested in your products will find you more easily because of your blog and allow you a better method for connecting with them.

A blog is a fabulous place to answer frequently asked questions in greater detail. A traditional FAQ is written to be as brief as possible, but a blog allows you to provide much more information and respond to customer inquires directly.
Quality content is the key to a successful blog. Publishing articles that demonstrate your expertise and answering consumer questions builds the reputation and credibility of your company. The better the reputation you earn the more people will be encouraged to visit your blog and through it your company. A blog is also a great place to display testimonials and awards. Blogs are more than a constant advertisement. They are a place where your company can interact with potential customers and build a community of dedicated online followers.

Because comments are available for people to either post or read, they are more likely to peruse a blog versus a catalog. The ability to offer feedback makes customers feel valued and more committed to your product or service. It is important to reply to comments on a regular basis so that people know they are being heard. This has two benefits. The first is simply that interaction builds trust which builds loyalty. Customers that are loyal will contact your company first for any product or service needs. Another benefit is that you are able to respond appropriately to customer needs. By interacting with customers you find out the features or products they are looking for and can work to provide them.

Quality content on a blog can also improve your page rankings on search engines. The bottom line is that with online marketing the most difficult piece is allowing customers to find you. Anything that can make it easier for customers to find your website is a valuable tool. Do some research and make a complete list of keywords that people might use to find your website. Make a couple of those key words a topic for each article. This should help build better rankings almost immediately.

Over the years, SEO marketers have done efforts to increase their backlink count to thousands of links. Today, however, it is relatively harder to generate backlinks, owing it to the fact that search engine algorithms change from time to time. Recent search engine algorithm updates has decreased the possibility of links found on article directories to be counted as valid backlinks. In simpler terms, if you submit an article to top directories and your website link is posted at the bottom of the article, search engines may or may not count that as a valid backlink!

It means, for today’s SEO marketer, generating backlinks would have to mean more than just submitting pieces of content to article submission sites. The solution is to let your SEO content become popular online in the most “natural” way possible. Letting your content spread virally is important because it lets the search engines know that you are not manipulating the search algorithms. Instead, you are pushing your content ethically and it is sparking genuine interest from internet users.

It is always helpful to find high-traffic blogs in your niche and contact the blog owner so that you can offer to post a “guest blog post” on their blog. If you build a good relationship with five to ten blog owners in your niche and then regularly post your content on their site, you will generate a lot of incoming links.

Submitting to social bookmarking sites is also very effective for backlinking. Once you have a new blog post link, submit it to social bookmarking sites such as Stumbleupon, Digg, Twitter, and many others. Search engines love to crawl these bookmarking sites, and if your link happens to be present there, it will also be indexed fast. Plus, the link you posted as social bookmarks may count as backlinks too.

Outsourcing also works for building backlinks. You can hire SEO experts, then arrange to pay them a fair price for generating a set number of backlinks. Choose a provider who has the ability to make things easier for you on the SEO side, while you focus on other important aspects of your business that you know best

There are two ways by which article marketing can help you gain more website visitors. First, submitting articles to popular directories can help you get “direct traffic”. By direct traffic, we mean that people are finding your articles posted online and then they visit your website after they read your article resource box. This requires some SEO because you need to optimize your online content so that people can find it online when they use the search engines.

To gain direct traffic, it is important that you write your articles to attract both the search engines and people. Lots of marketers optimize their content for the search engines but the articles they post are barely readable. Instead of doing that, I suggest you study a little bit of copywriting so that you will know how to arouse attention, provoke interest, intensify buying desire, and prompt your readers to action. There’s more to writing articles than piecing together some long tail keywords and talking in circles. You have to actually help your readers get valuable information that they want and need.

Your article headline is extremely important because both the search engines and people will take a look at it to decide whether it’s worth the time and exposure. The search engines will check if your title is keyword-rich. If it is, and there’s lesser competition for that phrase, your article has a higher chance of ranking higher in search results. In fact, lots of web pages which rank number one in Google and Yahoo are not formal landing page sites, but article pages in popular directories. The key to doing this is to put your keywords on the first two or three words of the article title.

The second way through which article marketing helps you get website visitors is “organic traffic”. Organic traffic means that people visited your site because it appeared in the search engine results and they ended up clicking on it. This is much more difficult to generate than direct article traffic, because organic traffic actually means your website homepage should rank for more popular keyword phrases with heavy competition.

The main strategies for gaining organic traffic include effective keyword placement on your landing page, and building backlinks. “Backlinks” refer to webpages that link to your site. In this area, article marketing can help because if your articles get picked up by other blogs and publishing platforms, your website links will also be published along with the articles. The more websites or blogs that link to your own homepage, the higher your backlink count. The higher your backlink count, the greater chances you will have of higher search engine rankings.

In order for article marketing to be effective, the articles you submit to informational sites need to be related to your business. With many article repositories, information about the company can be included at the end of the article, known as the biography section. In this section, a link to the company’s home page can be included and when visitors like what they read, they can click on the link and head straight to the site.

Many businesses also provide information directly on their website, using article marketing to attract visitors directly to their site. The key here is to have quality articles that directly relate to the content of the page as well as containing a sufficient number of keywords to attract search engines. Typical articles will be between 300 and 500 words, with a keyword density of between two and three percent. Translation: a 400 word article will contain the keyword between eight and 12 times. Anything less may not be considered worthwhile content and anything more may be seen as spam.

Articles published on you site also have to be completely original, meaning you can’t simply copy articles from somewhere else on the internet, which also be a violation of copyright laws, and needs to be relevant to the information or products on your site. For example, if you have a website related to travel you could offer articles with information about luggage, rental cars, travel companies and just about anything else pertaining to what people might need to go on vacation.

Don’t be discouraged if the number of hits doesn’t take off right away. As it is often said, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are successful websites. Article marketing will help the search engines tie the information that the human users are searching for to the quality information contained in the articles on or about your site.

A couple of areas of your website are more important to search engine spiders such as the title, textual content and the overall body of the article. If you sell used cars for example and your site name is something like Bill’s Get Around search engines, as well as people may have trouble understanding what it is you do. This may be a clever name for a used car lot for sure, but not for attracting attention.

When you hand out business cards, yes, you will have to do some of the old fashioned type of marketing at least until your visitor flow pays the rent, you don’t want to have to explain what it is you do. Your business cards are like billboards along the highway. The less said the more likely people you give them to will read them. Complicated and overly clever billboards are not completely read as people are not going to take their eyes off the road to read the fine print at the bottom. Likewise, if the landing page of your websites tries to be overly explanatory, search engines and visitors may simply not care.

Clever names may also hint at what you represent, but possibly only to you. For example a business named Thyme and Again may make people think of spices when you are selling used watches and wanted to play on time in the name. Search engines may see it in a similar fashion. They see the term thyme and think spices and when all they see on your site is watches, they probably won’t include you in their listing. If you do get listed, will visitors be looking for old clocks or spices? You’ll only find out based on how many leave before getting past the landing page.

If you are still having trouble finding an appropriate name for your online business, enter your site’s purpose into a search engine and see what pops up based on your keywords. While you can not simply use another site’s name…that would be illegal…you can see how they developed the name for their business. You will also see many examples of how the name has nothing to do with what they sell or do, which could help you find the best name possible for your new online business.

However, if the site is listed on the first or second page of the results, take a look around to see what they are doing right. You will see if their search results were organic or paid for, and decide what may be right for you.