The Bay Area Internet Marketer’s Meetup is one year old this month so we’re celebrating with a birthday party! Come join us from 6 until 8 PM! NOTE the earlier start time.
Winemaker Paul Kreider of The Ross Valley Winery will be hosting a wine tasting event at our celebration. The Ross Valley Winery is located in downtown San Anselmo and Paul has been making award winning wines for over 20 years. Stop in and have a glass of wine with Paul at the winery on San Anselmo Avenue. Paul’s website is www.rossvalleywinery.com.
Dominique Lahaix, the Founder and CEO of eCairn, will be our special guest. Dominique will be showing us how to leverage the power of social conversations and turn those conversations into paying clients for your business. He’ll show us how he finds the right conversations to tap into using his powerful eCairn application.
Dominique is the Founder and Ceo of eCairn, a software company based in Silicon Valley, delivering an innovative social media marketing platform to agencies and marketing groups. He has previously founded and managed a software startup specializing in emailing optimization with clients like eBay, HP, Apple. Before, He has lead several organizations in Hewlett Packard Services (R&D, Consulting and Business Dev) and has 20 years of expertise in managing Technology organizations. He has published, lectured on IT strategy and KM.
Sphere: Related ContentIt’s true. Social Media is just an excuse for us to justify our aimlessly surfing the internet for hours and hours. I’m convinced its a conspiracy by those who want us to waste as much time as we can so we can go days without accomplishing anything.
I keep hearing from Social Media experts that you build your credibility and find new clients by commenting on other people’s blogs and forums. You start out by doing a Google Blog Search forkeywords related to your niche. Next you dig through the search results to find related blogs. Before you know it you’ve spent an hour sampling other blogs looking for something to comment on.
Finally you find a good blog and make your comment. Then back to the Google search results to find more related sites. You find a good article on one site and make a comment. That article leads you to another great site with relevant content. You spend an hour or so reading articles on that wesite which leads you to more articles on another blog. You make some comments on that blog which leads you to another blog from someone’s comment.
And then you realize you just spent 2 hours reading and commenting on blogs and news sites. Next you log into your Facebook account to see what your friends are up to. Your inbox is filled with messages from your "friends" who posted self promotions on your wall. Facebook is getting worse than the spam in your inbox. You get distracted playing on Facebook for a couple of hours and you realize you forgot to eat lunch.
After lunch you check your email and find more messages from friends. You spend 20 minutes deleting those messages and you’re Google Alert notifies you of a new blog post. You jump on that blog to make the first comment and spend another hour reading other blogs.
Does this sound familiar? It has to be a conspiracy but I haven’t figured out their motive other than to make us waste our time.
Sphere: Related ContentJohn Reese is about to raise the bar for internet marketing. A few years ago John was the first person to earn over a million dollars in one day when he released Traffic Secrets, the revolutionary program that taught you how to instantly generate tons of web traffic. Many of the techniques John taught us in Traffic Secrets still work today.
Now John has updated Traffic Secrets to include Web 2.0 traffic techniques. Take a look at this video that gives you a sneak peak of John’s soon to be released Traffic Secrets 2.0
I saw a post on the blog, www.boingboing.net about the Smithsonian releasing royalty free images from it’s vast collection of pictures.
Think about it. The Smithsonian is doing Web 2.0. As Tim Russert’s Dad, Big Russ, says “Ya gotta love this country”
Check out the Smithsonian images on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/smithsonian
Are you doing Web 2.0 to promote your business? What the heck are you waiting for? If the Smithsonian is embracing Web 2.0 then you need to get on the train before it leaves the station.
You’re missing out on a tremendous source of free web traffic and an easy way to build lasting relationships with your clients and prospects.
Click here to see how I’m using Web 2.0 to grow my business.
Sphere: Related ContentBlogging to one of the hottest trends on the internet. In case you don’t know what blogging is click here for the definition from wikipedia. Writing a blog for your business is a tremendous way to build a lasting relationship with your customers and prospects. A blog lets you demonstrate your expertise in your niche in addition to letting you express your opinions about current trends in your industry. By commenting on other people’s blog you can expand your potential client base exponentially as well as driving tons of free traffic to your blog.
I’ve been teaching a lot of classes on blogging and the biggest complaint I hear is “I don’t have time to write a blog and to find other blogs to comment on” Here’s a typical conversation in one of my classes:
Ted: You should write at least 3 blog posts a week and comment on other blogs at least 3 times a week
Student: I’m already working 60 hours a week and I don’t have time to write a blog
Ted: Is your practice currently full or do you have more clients than you can handle?
Student: No
Ted: Is your business making a profit or are you just getting by?
Student: Just getting by, barely
Ted: How many hours a week do you spend marketing your business?
Student: I don’t have time to market. I’m too busy running my business.
Ted: So you’re working 60 hours a week, just getting by and you don’t have time to market. Are you working with the right clients and are your charging enough for your services?
Student: I guess not.
Ted: You need to be spending at least 10% of your time marketing your business to your ideal clients. Your ideal clients will understand your value and pay you what your worth. By working with the right clients you will be able to work with fewer clients that will pay you more so you’ll be able to work less than 40 hours a week and make a lot more money. Blogging ss a free way to market your business and reach an unlimited audience. By reading and commenting on blogs that are read by your ideal clients you can build a deep relationship with them and demonstrate your expertise. New clients will find you instead of you chasing the wrong clients. By spending as little as 4 hours a week, you can reach thousands of potential clients via the internet. As your popularity on the internet increases and more people start commenting on your blog posts, you’ll forget that you’re actually marketing your business just by interacting with others.
