10 Popular Ways to Start a Home Business Online
There are many ways to start an online home business so you can be your own boss and not have to worry about the corporate grind anymore. Most of them can be done alone or combined to make more money. Some are more complicated than others but all can be done by just about anyone if you are willing to put in the time to learn and the dedication needed to build your business.
Below I have listed and summarized 10 of the most popular ways to start a home based business. It’s not an all-inclusive list as the ways to make money online are really only limited by your imagination and creativity. However, you can start with any or all of these while working on your own system if that’s what you want to do. You can combine them or put your own twist on them, or whatever else you can think of. The sky’s the limit!
Anyway, here is the list, in no particular order:
1) Content Websites – This is where you build a very large website with many pages and lots of information about a particular topic. The main intent is to cover everything there is to cover about the topic and become the authority site on the subject. You will go for top search engine rankings and earn money through various methods such as Google Adsense, paid advertising, affiliate programs, and others. This is one way to tie many different home business models together.
2) Network Marketing – Also called Multi-Level Marketing or MLM, this has been a popular way for individuals to start their own businesses for many years and still is today. It’s basically a way to tap into an existing business with a product line and marketing system to become your own independent business owner within the larger company. It often gets a bad reputation due to the shady operations of some companies, but a good network marketing opportunity can be a great way to start an internet home business.
3) Affiliate Marketing – Certainly one of the easiest ways to get started on your own online business and one of the most popular. Basically you promote other people’s products and get paid a percentage of each sale. The vast majority of affiliate programs are free and there are lots of ways to promote them for free. So, affiliate marketing can be a free way to make money without a lot of hassle to get started. But actually becoming successful at it isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. It does require plenty of learning and effort.
4) Information Products – Most people these days have read or at least heard of an ebook. They are the most common form of information products and can be a really good way to build a business on the internet. This is similar to writing a regular book except it’s totally online and much easier and cheaper. You can write about pretty much anything you want. However, you need to do niche research first to make sure you are writing something that has a market or else nobody will buy it and you won’t make any money.
5) eBay – No big revelation here. Everyone knows you can make money selling on eBay or even start a full blown online home based business on there. In fact, a large percentage of people who do decide they want to begin making money from home start out by selling stuff on eBay or other similar sites. Earning a full-time living doing it isn’t as easy as it used to be but it can still be done. If nothing else, it at least gets your foot in the door and leads you to other home business ideas.
6) Membership Sites – These can highly lucrative if done correctly and they can bring in a lot of residual income. What you do is start a private site that only members can enter with some sort of monthly value that makes people want to continue to pay every month in order to keep their membership. An example would be a membership site that gives members a new researched niche, website, keyword list, content, and so on every month. So all they have to do is put it all together and they have a new fully loaded site ready to make money for them each month.
7) Blogging – One of the hottest things on the internet right now is the potential to make money blogging. Everyone knows what a blog is these days and if you don’t, you can figure it out by doing a quick search on Google. Actually, you are reading a blog right now whether you knew it or not. There are numerous ways to earn money from a blog so that part is easy to find. The hard part is finding a good niche for your blog and building up its popularity once you have it built.
Site Flipping – This has skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years and it’s because of the great opportunity it presents for huge online profits from doing something a little different. The basic system for flipping websites is to buy a site that has potential but needs a little work, or build a new one from scratch, then increase the stats, looks, income, etc… And resell it for a lot more than it cost you in the first place. A lot of people have built very successful internet businesses through buying and selling websites.
9) Freelancing – Most people equate freelancing with working from home rather than being in business for yourself. But in reality you can run a home based freelance business. Yes, you will still be doing the actual work for other people but you do get most of the freedoms of being your own boss. You can even build up enough of a reputation to where people will be constantly coming to you for projects and you can pick & choose whatever you want to do.
10) Services – There are a lot of people willing to pay you to do certain things for them and you can start a service home business online. For example, you could start an article writing service or a link building service, or some other type of service. If you do good work and offer competitive prices, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting a lot of orders from internet marketers.
Okay, now you know the top 10 ways to start a home business online! Or at least ten of the most popular ways, if not the exact top 10. You should have no trouble coming up with an idea to start your own home based business now. As I said at the beginning of this post, you can combine many of these methods or do them alone. It’s up to you. Just get going on building a brighter future for you and your loved ones immediately!
From: http://work-at-home-based-business.com
Read More11 useful tips for marketing your brand on LinkedIn
With over 135 million users, 59% of which are located outside of the United States and with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies using the network for marketing and recruiting purposes, LinkedIn has become a critical platform for building, connecting with, and growing your personal and professional networks.
As the leading business social network, LinkedIn offers the chance to connect with professionals all around the world and from all industry backgrounds. But how do you convert networks into customers, and ‘likes’ into sales?
1. Learn from your peers
Successful marketing is all about listening to what your market needs. The LinkedIn Groups feature provides a space where you can discuss issues with others in your industry and learn from their advice. You can bounce ideas off industry experts and stay informed on new developments. You also have an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in a certain industry/area allowing you to build relationships with current and prospective customers in a more organic and credible fashion.
2. Build on your niche
It doesn’t matter how specific your company’s product or service, LinkedIn allows you to connect with companies or individuals by industry, company size, geographic location, and more. By targeting your network-building, you are able to focus your time on building relationships that count.
3. Use Company Status Updates
You can post the latest news, product updates, videos and promotions on your Company Profile and instantly learn how it is being received with likes, comments and shares. Just like with any community, make sure your content strategy is relevant, adds value and promotes discussion. Use feedback to adjust your posting frequency or alter your content based on what is popular or what is missing.
4. Ask your audience
LinkedIn provides a channel to your audience, but communication doesn’t have to be one-way. You can use your Company Profile to ask customers what they think, and engage with issues they might face. Asking for feedback can provide a wealth of market information from your core audience. If your Company Profile is too limiting, consider setting up a group or groups that meet a particular need among your audience.
You can also use LinkedIn’s polling feature. LinkedIn Polls is just like any other polling service: everyone can ask any query, include possible answers (as much as five) as well as select how much time it’s going to run. There is an ability to share content out via your social networks or upload it on your website to acquire the highest possible voting power. Analytics data is what’s valuable here: you can break down voters by age, gender and even seniority.
5. Use LinkedIn Ads
If used correctly, LinkedIn Ads can offer a low-cost alternative to traditional advertising. Because of the number of LinkedIn accounts (135 million worldwide), each with detailed profile information, LinkedIn Ads can specifically target your demographic by industry, geographic location, seniority, age, or by LinkedIn Group in a way few other channels can.
6. LinkedIn Recommendations: Give Generously
Your LinkedIn profile might look great, and you may have hundreds of connections, but in a crowded market what is going to make your company stand out? How will potential clients and customers know to choose you above your competition? The answer goes back to one of the basics of marketing: a positive recommendation by others is worth a hundred times what you will ever say about yourself. The secret to attracting great LinkedIn recommendations is to offer them yourself. Businesses, whether suppliers, clients or partners, are far more likely to give you a positive recommendation if you offer one first.
7. LinkedIn SEO
When people search for your industry or product, how are you going to come out on top? Just following the basics, such as making sure your profile is complete and accurate can help, but spending a bit of time over the keywords in the Specialties section is also important for driving traffic. You can also customize your URL to give your company’s name rather than a sequence of numbers, which can help search engines to find you.
8. Enrich your profile with LinkedIn applications
You’ve driven traffic to your LinkedIn page with targeted ads, great networking, and an informative profile, but what now? You’ve got so much more great information that will benefit your customers, but how are you going to tell them about it? LinkedIn apps can help, giving you the ability to add your blog to your profile, upload presentations, add polls and your Amazon reading list, collaborate with document sharing, and many other ways of enriching your profile to help it stand out and offer new ways to engage.
9. Meet like-minded people at industry events
The LinkedIn events tool is a great way to easily search for relevant events (physical events, webinars, workshops, roundtables, etc) where you can meet your peers. LinkedIn search will display events related to your network connections as well as industry and geographic location, both past and present. Utilize this feature to extend your network face-to-face.
10. Integrate your LinkedIn presence into your other properties
Prominently display “Follow Us on LinkedIn” button on your other social properties to help grow your network.
You can also add “LinkedIn Share” button to your other properties to make it easy for people to share your content and help it travel father.
The “Recommend” button can be prominently displayed on your website to give visitors to website a little bit of a nudge to recommend you on LinkedIn. The recommend comes in two formats: one for the company page itself and also one for the products and services page.
11. Measure your success
Make sure to track your performance as you go and make changes to your strategy based on that data. On your Company Page’s Analytics tab, you can now see how many LinkedIn members are visiting your Company Page and how many of them are following your company. You can also see what industries, functions and companies these professionals come from as well as track how they are interacting with your Careers Tab or Products and Services Tab, how many are clicking on your promotional banners, and how many choose to contact employees at your company. And for every one of these data slices, you can compare yourself against similar companies to benchmark your performance.
Just recently LinkedIn also launched a brand new Group Statistics dashboard that delivers unique insights into groups: demographics, growth, and activity.
LinkedIn can seem daunting at first. If you think of your social media marketing as an extension of your traditional marketing, you can start to think of ways to integrate your standard practices into your LinkedIn networking. You don’t have to start from scratch; much of your marketing media, from videos to presentations and documents, can be shared through your profile and used to reach new, targeted audiences, especially those you may have trouble reaching through traditional marketing methods.
By: Ekaterina Walter Jan 16, 2012
Read More9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website
Are you leveraging the power of social media on your site?
Together, social media channels and your website should work seamlessly to promote your online brand.
However, if you’re like most businesses, you’re probably missing out on potential interactions, impressions and ultimately sales.
In this article, I’ll dive into a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.
I’ve included examples from small- to medium-sized businesses that specialize in a whole host of fields to illustrate that you don’t have to be one of the big players to take advantage of these simple tips.
#1: Include Visible Social Media Buttons
This seems like a no-brainer, but double-check. Best practices suggest that social media buttons be displayed on the top, bottom or along the side of your home page. Links or buttons that remain in your navigation as the user moves from page to page are optimal.
To ensure that users don’t exit your web page altogether, you may want to create the buttons or links so that they open your social media pages in new windows.
Also, do not feel obligated to link out to all social media channels you’ve created or dabbled in. If you’re fonder of Twitter and have completely abandoned your Facebook page, there’s no reason to link to any outlet that is not being actively managed. In fact, linking out to inactive channels can ultimately cause more harm than good.
There are several ways in which to display your buttons or links and none of them are wrong. In this case, it is more of a design preference focused on how the user will be interacting with the site.
Below are some examples of ways in which websites have successfully displayed their social media outlet(s).
Big and bold button catches your eye.
This eCommerce site specializing in alternatives to dog and horse supplements only links out to Facebook and chooses to do so in a big and bold manner.
Subtle buttons suit some sites well.
This farm credit services business subtly displays their social media buttons at the bottom of their page.
Front-and-center buttons ensure visibility.
This artist decides to feature his along the top.
#2: Integrate Social Where it Makes Sense
If you use social media to keep your customers or clients apprised of your recent happenings and are actively managing your outlets on a daily or bi-weekly basis, it might be wise to showcase your Twitter feed or Facebook posts directly on your website.
Linking out or displaying inactive social media channels will only cripple your online efforts. If you choose to go this route, it is important that you maintain your presence.
Below are two examples of how vastly different businesses (a web design firm and an online gift card site) have integrated their social media feeds into their websites.
On this site, tweets are visible along the right-hand side throughout the website. Tweets vary from deals and contests to interactions with followers and customer service responses.
On this B2B site, recent tweets are found at the bottom of the homepage and are mostly comprised of industry-related blogs, recent events and projects in which they’ve participated.
These businesses vary significantly in what they do and the way they make use of social media, but both have found a logical method of incorporating social media into their sites.
#3: Include Up-to-Date Buttons
Social media changes fast—dare we say in real time? So if you added your buttons a year ago, they are probably palling around with the dinosaurs. Facebook fans morphed into Likes, group pages died, +1 is spanking new and LinkedIn improved significantly. Do research to find the most current social media terminology so you don’t get caught mumbling about “The Facebook” and “The Twitter.”
Social Media Examiner stays up to date.
In order to maintain credibility within this ever-changing realm, it is important to stay with the times. However, staying up to date with your terminology does not mean that you need to jump on every platform that springs up. It is important to be tactful with your social media choices and do your research before blindly forging into unknown territory.
#4: Include Share Buttons
If you sell a product or run a full-fledged eCommerce site and you haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you are missing out on a whole host of potential social impressions.
Share buttons should enable website-goers to seamlessly share or recommend a product.
If you find yourself hard up for a broad solution for this, check out AddThis or ShareThis. Both provide efficient and easy-to-use solutions for social media sharing across eCommerce sites with the added benefit of analytics to see how the content is getting shared.
As illustrated below, these buttons are easy to see.
The easier you make it for customers to share your product, the better.
Similar to eCommerce sites, if you have resources, articles, a blog or other valuable content on your site, you should attempt to make it as simple as possible for readers to share it with others. Social media share buttons should be displayed somewhere easy to see. Nicholas Creative does a decent job with this, as seen on their blog below.
If you enjoy an article, you won’t want to keep it to yourself.
#5: Use Analytics
Pay attention to the way in which individuals are using your social media buttons by tapping into Google Analytics. How many people are actually clicking on your outbound social media links?
An easy way to explore this is by setting up Event Tracking in Google Analytics. If you’re unfamiliar with Event Tracking, Google provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate the correct codes into your site.
Google Analytics allows you to track the number of individuals who click on outbound links by setting up Event Tracking.
If you find that few individuals explore your social media outlets once landing on your page, perhaps your social media buttons aren’t in a convenient location. It’s always best to have actual numbers to back up your choices.
#6: Pay Attention to Terms and Conditions
This goes hand in hand with staying up to date and knowledgeable, but I continue to see major brands using social media in ways that violate platforms’ terms and conditions.
You cannot use Google+ for contest entries, a personal Facebook page shouldn’t be used to operate a brand and there are certain rules to adhere to when running a promotion on Facebook.
The way you use social media reflects on your website, as well as your brand as a whole. If you’ve accidentally violated some terms and conditions in the past, delete those pages and do not link out to them even in the interim.
I’m not sure what Pita Pit is doing with this personal Facebook page or if it was created by an unaffiliated party. Whatever the case may be, steer clear of using a personal page as a brand page.
#7: Don’t Over-Do It
You want to make sure that compelling information is easily shareable, but littering social media share buttons all over your webpage isn’t the way to go. Before adding share buttons to a page, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would find worth sharing?”
If you find yourself on your “About Us” page and don’t see any added value to website-goers being able to share your administrative assistant’s contact information, then forgoing buttons in this instance is totally acceptable.
#8: Stay Knowledgeable
Don’t get it twisted. With the changing social media landscape and array of rollouts these days, it is easy to confuse social media features. Keep in mind:
- You won’t be directing individuals to your Facebook page by installing a Facebook “Like” button on a specific website page. Instead, you are allowing individuals to “Like”/share the information, content or product that is found on that specific website page. There is no correlation between Liking a specific website page and directing users to “Like” your branded Facebook page.
- Similarly, directing individuals to your Google+ brand page is different than adding a +1 button to a page. At this time, there is no correlation between the two.
As illustrated below on this pool supplies website, social media pages and social media share buttons can be found on the same page. Verbs such as “Tweet” and “Share” often help distinguish between share buttons and social media pages.
Be sure you know the difference.
#9: Use Social Media Insights Alongside Google Analytics
Many types of software allow you to see your social media insights alongside your web analytics in order to pick up on trends and to better understand the successes or failures of campaigns.
SproutSocial allows users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information from specific timeframes side by side. Being able to see the way in which your social media and website analytics relate proves useful in establishing goals, measuring successes and identifying areas in which you can improve.
Here’s an example of the correlation between website traffic and a social media campaign via a SproutSocial report.
There you have it—a quick-and-dirty guide on immediate steps you can take to make your social media and business website play nice.
By: Mallory Woodrow via The Social Buzz LAb
Read MoreHow To Achieve Mobile Search Ranking Clarity
Mobile search results not only produce different rankings from desktop search but can also vary based on the mobile device type that the query was performed on, as has been written about here at Search Engine from myself and Bryson Meunier among others.
You can see mobile results directly from your desktop for feature phones at http://www.google.com/xhtml and for smartphones at http://www.google.com/m, but the rankings don’t quite correlate to what you would actually see on those device types.
So how can one qualify those different mobile results without having to do an actual search on those different types of mobile devices themselves?
An easy way to do so is by masking your desktop browser’s user agent by using the User Agent Switcher plugin on Firefox.
For a features phone, you can use simply use the feature phone user agent Google uses for its mobile crawler:
SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Feature Phone Google Results
For a smartphone, you can use simply use the smartphone user agent Google uses for its mobile crawler:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Smartphone Google Results
Then you can use a rank checker within FireFox such as the SEOBook Rank Checker tool to gauge how you rank in feature phone, smartphone and desktop results.
You will see some similarities, but you will be amazed when you see actual ranking differences from desktop to feature phone to smartphones.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
By Michael Martin via The Social Buzz Lab
Do You Make These 5 Social Media Mistakes?
Personal Brands are taking their brands online as a marketing strategy. It’s easy to set up and is designed to be user friendly. The space is really enticing but there are hazards when taking your brand on social media sites. If you have social media sites, check out this five common social media mistakes that businesses are committing when taking their business online.
Flooding/Spamming – it’s great that you are sending out helpful messages but don’t overdo it. Customers hate it when you flood their emails about promos, or flood your Twitter or Facebook account about everything and anything. We don’t need another quotable quote.
Often, the mistake is not purposeful spamming, rather it’s that we get so busy and then remember our social networks and flood them with a series of posts that occur all in the same day, or worse yet, within the same hour! Avoid posting them all in a day and then being idle for days at a time. Create a calendar to schedule your posts if you have to. This will make your social media site active at all times and your connections will see you as consistent and engaging.
Posting inappropriate content – this is common sense. You wouldn’t want your customers, clients, supervisors or colleagues to see things that can destroy your brand reputation. However, there are things that may arise like a colleague posting a video about the crazy things they do at work or post comments on Twitter that other connections might not get (like inside jokes with other employees). Keep a forever vigilant “brand listening station” set up so that you’ll be aware of any posts that show up with your name associated with it.
No social media presence – it’s great that you now have social media accounts and you did well in gaining followers – now what? A common mistake is to get into the social media platform just because others are doing it. Posting on Twitter or Facebook every once in a while is alright depending on the purpose and strategy that you have in utilizing the social network, but being idle and posting once a month is not. Before getting a social media account, plan how you’re going to use it and what you would like to gain from additional brand awareness.
Deleting comments – social media sites are a good place to get feedback and ideas on how you can improve your brand. If someone voices a sincere dislike or concern about something you are doing or you are associated with, as long as it doesn’t infringe upon privacy, do not delete their comments.
Mismanagement of site – remember that your social media site is a platform for your brand. Whatever is posted or talked about there reflects your brand. If you are going to let someone handle your Twitter or Facebook account, make sure that you train them well. Teach them how to use the sites and let them read about good customer service practices (even if you’re not online to gain customers – customer service principals deliver vital communication and listening skills that will be an asset). Educate them that it’s not just about posting anything to make your site active. They must know how to address connections when interacting with them.
Your online first impression is even more lasting than your offline first impression. What do you do to ensure that you manage it well?
January 19, 2012 By Maria Elena Duron, The Personal Branding Blog
“Ask On Google+” Links Appearing In Google’s Search Results
The invasion of Google+ into Google’s search results continue. The latest Google+ification? Now Google’s encouraging people at the end of its search listings if they “Want to ask your friends about” what they were Googling.
Want To Ask Your Friends?
Tom Critchlow tipped me off to spotting this in his search results. I checked, and I found the same thing happening for me:
You can see that I’ve done a search for “sopa,” and at the bottom of the results, I’m prompted:
Want to ask your friends about sopa? Ask on Google+
While I see this, some of my other Search Engine Land editors do not. So, it might not be happening to everyone. It also doesn’t happen if you’re signed out of Google.
Good Idea, But Not For Every Query
The feature is helpful, in that I’ve written before that people do turn to their social networks to get questions answered. It makes huge amounts of sense to provide this type of prompt, especially if a search engine can detect that someone is having particular difficulty with a question.
However, there’s no particular intelligence going on behind this prompt. It shows up for every search, which means you can have lots of fun with it. For example:
Somehow, I think if I ask my friends on Google Plus, “How do I search on Google,” they’ll laugh at me. This is, by the way, an actual popular search that people do. If you don’t know how to search on Google, or want to search better, see our How To Use Google To Search page.
Here’s another fun one:
Given the sometimes fanboy nature of Google Plus, I’m pretty sure if I ask, “How do I share a link on Facebook,” I’ll be told to go back to Facebook.
This was my favorite:
How do I make friends on Google Plus? “Ask on Google+,” I’m encouraged!
Asking Your Question
If you do click on the “Ask on Google+” link, a little overlay window appears:
That’s filled with the text of what you want to ask, prefaced by this:
Hi there! I have a question about….
For fun, you can do this search on Google+ to see who is actually asking questions using this standard greeting (so far, not many people).
After you post the question, it appears at the top of your Google+ stream and is shared with whomever you indicated:
Helpful, But Feels Like More Google+ Intruder
Like I said, it is a useful feature for any search engine to offer, perhaps long overdue. But some more intelligence behind when this prompt it appears would be useful. And it still comes across as yet another way that Google+ is injecting itself into Google’s search results.
I joked today that seeing how Google+ keeps creeping into Google’s search results makes me want to change the lyrics of Bedroom Intruder to begin, ”It’s climbin’ in your Google, it’s snatching up your results….”
Jan 20, 2012 by Danny Sullivan via The Social Buzz Lab
Social Media: It’s About the Relationships!
At a recent Independent Schools conference, I was talking about social media with a Head of School (not my own) who said dismissively, “Oh, we outsource all our social media.” I didn’t say anything, but inside I just cringed.
Outside social media consulting firms can certainly be valuable for independent schools if you need assistance with crafting a social media strategy. But if you are using an outside consulting firm just to post content for you, essentially pushing press releases or school news on an otherwise static page overseen by someone outside your organization, you are missing the boat! Using social media to build relationships is CRITICAL to schools, and that means active involvement by school administrators, faculty, and staff.
Many schools think that they are “doing social media” simply by putting promotional content or announcing school events on a school Facebook page once a month. I suppose that doing something that is better than doing nothing, as long as the content is updated regularly. (Having a Facebook page or twitter account with old, out of date content is worse than not having an account at all.) But if you aren’t using social media outlets to build relationships with your constituents, you are missing most of the value!
The Head of our Lower School, Catherine Koos (@ckoos1), first showed me the power of building relationships with a school community on Facebook. She has a school Facebook page under Misses Koos on which she publishes pictures and videos of Lower School events during the school day and actively engages parents in conversation. She uses a Flip camera or her iPhone to upload content to Facebook quickly and easily. Our parents love seeing what their children are doing throughout the day! Several of our Lower School teachers also have class Facebook pages (overseen by a school administrator, and developed using school guidelines) that they use to communicate with their students’ parents (not the students themselves) and extended family members (like grandparents.) They might post pictures of student work, share high points from the day, or post a “thank you” picture of a present given to the class – like a picture of a child reading a book in a bean bag chair donated to the classroom. We also have a school Facebook page with regularly updated content – including pictures and videos of events that are posted on the same day, often within an hour of the actual event – and an alumni Facebook page. Our webmaster manages the school Facebook page but individual teachers and Catherine Koos manage their own pages.
Social media is a great way to:
1. Publicize all the great things happening at your school. Not once a month, but every day!
2. Build relationships with local media outlets. We have networked and built relationships with local reporters through Facebook and Twitter. In addition to promoting our own school events this helps us stay abreast of what other schools in our community are doing.
3. Build relationships with your school and local communities. This includes students, parents, grandparents, neighbors, local businesses and the general public. Independent schools know how important it is to build positive relationships with parents and other the school community members. This builds school loyalty, improves retention, encourages donations, and makes parents feel really good about their decision to send their child to your school. Remember, people are much more likely to donate to an organization to which they feel emotionally connected. Furthermore, Facebook is a great way to connect with geographically distant grandparents and other relatives. My grandson attends an independent school in New Hampshire and while they have a Facebook page they don’t update it very frequently. I live in Florida, and I wish I could see more of what he is doing at school and get to know the school better. Would having a closer relationship with his school make me more likely to donate money? You bet it would!
Don’t view social media as just another checkbox on your marketing “to do” list. Tap the power of social media to build those critical relationships!
Written by: Brendan J. Schneider- Social Media Today
Read MoreThe complete list of Things NOT To Do on Social Media
Eleven Things NOT To Do on Social Media
Here is the complete list of Things NOT To Do on Social Media
- Do Not share pictures, photos or artwork that could potentially incriminate or embarrass you. I know, this one sounds like an easy one, but you would be surprised. Or maybe you wouldn’t be! The most recent example is former Representative Anthony
Wiener. Whether you think you are sharing it publicly or privately, it is in the cloud forever! - Do Not self-promote or only promote yourself or your brand. The people that do this on social media remind me of the stereotypical “used-car salesman” or Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati. If you do not know Herb, Google the name or find videos of the show to watch. The point is, you should promote others more than yourself. For every post promoting yourself, promote others 10 times as much, at least!!
Do Not re-share or re-post links without checking them out first on your own. When you do this, it is damaging to your reputation online; always verify before you re-post!- Do Not ignore comments, responses or conversations by your followers. The quickest way to lose followers or friends? By ignoring them! It is rude and disrespectful.
- Do Not jump into the social media pool without a plan! Social media requires planning and takes time and is not to be entered into lightly.
- Do Not set it and forget it. Creating social platforms and not using them is worse than not doing it at all. Social media requires daily attention either by you, an employee or a consultant that you have hired.
- Do Not be negative. This is another simple one; there is enough negativity in the world; we do not need it in the social media world, and in truth, we don’t want to hear it.
- Do Not share too much personal information. Social media and social networking allow us to build business and personal relationships; provides opportunities to connect and share and learn. But, we truthfully do not want to know every personal thing going on in your life, at least not in a public format.
- Do Not respond to comments or posts out of anger or resentment. It only takes a moment to ruin your reputation online; so calm down and think clearly before you respond to criticism or something negative.
- Do Not copy material and use it as your own!
- Do Not forget, these ARE real relationships, with real people. Treat them as such.
6 Steps to Getting Started With Google+ Step 6
#6: Play around
Nothing helps you get started better than spending some time on Google+. In addition to following people, be sure to +1 their posts and comment on them. Try resharing posts to specific circles of people. Experiment with hangouts.
Play with the type of posts they share on Google+. Some people are simply reposting their blog links. Others are finding Google+ to be a phenomenal tool for sharing pictures and videos.
In a recent discussion on experimenting with different types of posts, Wendy, director of social strategy for the American Red Cross, said she was “trying out a ‘no links to RedCross.org or posts specifically promoting Red Cross campaigns’ approach on the Red Cross Google+ brand page. We’ll see how it goes! I think it’s important to offer something different on each platform.”
Play around with it and see what works for you.
Give Yourself a Head Start
Anything worth learning takes time. And Google+ is definitely worth learning. So give yourself some time. Using these 6 steps will definitely shorten your learning curve!
After you’ve gotten familiar with Google+ as a person, then repeat the process in making a Google+ page for your business!
From Social Media Examiner Jan 11, 2012
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6 Steps to Getting Started With Google+ Step 5
If you’re not following people, Google+ can be a boring, barren wasteland. So start circling all sorts of people who seem interesting. The search field in Google+ keeps getting better. Here are some ways to find interesting folk:
- Search for people with the same occupation
- Search for people interested in the same cause communities
- Search for people with the same hobbies
A search on the word “geek” brings up people and pages that fit. And it shows posts using the word “geek” in them.Bonus tip: Search for shared circles.
A quick way to find lots of interesting people is to import other people’s circles. As people share circles, you can incorporate those circles into your existing circles or into a new separate circle.
But you might be waiting a long time to see a “shared circle” show up in your stream. To jumpstart this, simply search on the term “shared a circle with you.” This pulls up the shared circles. You can add a term to narrow those shared circles to ones you find interesting.
This search for “shared a circle with you” shows the most recently shared circle was a circle of bacon lovers!Read More