FINALLY! Social Media in Plain English

Editor Note: I’m proud to have Zeke on as a special guest blogger for us. He is an authority on social media and is a reputable marketing consultant based in the US. I’m sure you will enjoy this article. So Zeke…please take it away…

With so much information about social media, trying to understand it all can be overwhelming.

The goal of this article is to simplify social media marketing and show you how all the different elements in the social media world interact to help you get traffic for your website, exposure for your brand, and sales for your company.

1. Content
When trying to decide what kind of content you should make, my advice is simple:

1. Use common sense to determine which types of content just won’t work for your business model.

2. Try everything else.

3. Measure the results.

4. Keep doing what works and get rid of what doesn’t.

These are the most common types of content you can create:

Choosing a Top-Level Domain: .com, .net, .org, or something else?

Let’s say you’ve come up with a great new website name. It’s catchy and unique and you’re lucky because no one has registered it yet.

The only question now is what top-level domain (TLD) extension should you get? .com? .us? .info? There are a few hundred TLDs to choose from so how do you pick?

It’s always a good practice (if you don’t mind spending $35/year) to purchase the .com, .org, and .net extensions of your domain name – especially if you plan on building a large brand on the internet. Most of the major search engines give a lot of value to these three extensions when it comes to "exact match" searches.

Let’s say you own Example.com but you didn’t bother buying Example.net. Well someone could go and buy Example.net and just park the page or he or she could rank for your brand name or product. An example of someone else buying up a branded name is Twitter.ca. If you type in Twitter.ca you will not go to the Twitter service that you normally use – instead there is landing page.

Getting Your Local Business Found in Search Engines

Many local businesses around the world are looking to the search engines to help find customers.

The following steps will help these businesses increase the number of visitors to their website and therefore find new customers:

1) Get listed in the Google Local Directory

Google is the biggest player in the search world. When you use Google to search something like "eye doctor New York" or "dentist Fargo" there is typically a top 10 listing of results for local businesses at the top of the page.

Having your local business listed here is the cheapest and easiest way to attract new customers. You can sign up for the Google Local Directory here: www.google.com/local/add. It only takes a few minutes and it’s quite a simple process.

If you’re a bit more web savvy, David Mihm has a very thorough post on increasing your ranking for local listings.

2) Build a great website

What is the purpose of your website?

My guess is that you want more customers to contact you – therefore you should make sure that your contact information is very prominent throughout your website.

Use Pillar Content to Generate Loads of Link Love

That title might not make sense to a lot of you reading this post.  You’re likely asking yourself, "What in the world in Pillar Content?"  I define Pillar Content as some piece of content, not on a website’s homepage, that generates tons of links and influence. 

Many sites completely rely on a few pieces of Pillar Content to rank well and position themselves as an authority.  It’s a really simple concept but maybe something you have not taken much time to think about.

Improve on Someone Else’s Idea

The great thing about Pillar Content is you don’t have to be a genius to come up with lots of great ideas on what you should produce.  My first project in a new niche is always to read through as many of my competitor’s sites as possible.  As I go, I jot down what content they are promoting most heavily and also what pages seem to pick up the most links (whether they are gained actively or passively).

Success Begins With Your Words

This title may sound like some self development words of affirmations or chanting of positive words but it is not. You are about to discover how you can turn your words into a fortune indirectly. (Some of you may be able to do it directly.)

At the same time, you will end up overcoming your fear of writing.

Writing For Traffic

When it comes to getting traffic with Google AdWords and article marketing, it is all about words. Using your words, you can write persuasive PPC ads that get people to click and to visit your website. You also use words to write articles with interesting titles and compelling resource boxes.

Writing For Conversion

With your words, you can turn traffic into profits. Simply by writing in a conversational yet persuasive style in your affiliate presell pages, your sales pages, landing pages and email follow ups, you can get your visitors to make purchases and you will get paid for it.

Writing For Help

Inner Game Of Online Success

First of all, I am proud to announce to you the good news that there are no secrets to building and running a successful business online! There are no magic bullets, no big red buttons you can push to send money into your pocket.

Best of all, what you are about to read will surely help you succeed faster.

Education

If you have been online for at least awhile, I am sure that you have bought books from Amazon, courses from ClickBank and a whole lot of other stuff that is collecting dust on your shelves or collecting digital dust on your computer.

You are in the process of getting yourself educated so that you can have the knowledge of how to build and run a successful business online. This is a good thing, provided you will implementing what you are learn. If not, you need to practice more of what you know!

Action

If you have been to some personal development talks or some network marketing talks, you always hear about stuff like being self-motivated and taking massive action. Then again, what the heck is taking massive action?