The biggest question people have about social media is how to make money from it. The thing is that people are spending thousands of hours in social media, but aren’t making thousands of dollars from it.

As a businessperson, this isn’t a wise long-term strategy. We always have to be looking for the best possible return on our investment of time and money.

I have something that might help.

I recently came across this new training program, “From Platform to Profit” which focuses on teaching a specific system of content syndication to help improve search engine ranking, build expert status, send more traffic to your website, and help you generate more leads into your business.

It’s being taught by two well-known online marketing coaches, Denise Wakeman of the Blog Squad, and Dr. Rachna Jain of The Mindshare Corporation. The focus of this 4 week training is to help people create a content syndication strategy that works.

People are spending hours and hours on Facebook and Twitter, but ignoring the other 10 kinds of social media sites you can use.

This means that you’re not using social media as well as you could be.

And don’t worry, even if you’re not super technical, the training is designed to be easy to follow and easy to apply.

In just a few weeks, you’ll learn how to convert your text content to multiple formats, and, just as importantly, how to efficiently send your content around the internet. Done correctly, content syndication has the possibility to move your business to a whole new level in terms of recognition and opportunities.

Learn more here: From Platform to Profit

We all struggle with keeping our website and blog visitors on our sites.  If you use Google Analytics, like I do,  the Bounce Rates could really use some improvement!  But I just recently found a easy and free way to keep visitors on my site and it’s called Skysa!

Do you see the floating bar at the bottom of my blog; that’s my Skysa Bar.  And it is fully customizable.  I have added my social media links, an RSS ticker that reflects my last few blog post titles, an events area, comments, a share button and more.

There’s many reasons to use Skysa with your website. You can add or improve social features, engage your website visitors, collect valuable member information, and more.  Skysa is designed to help websites keep visitors longer, and build more traffic through socially engaging Apps.  Once you add Skysa to your website you never have to update the code to get new features or updates.  You can easily change the look and features of your Skysa Bar from your dashboard on Skysa.

Keep those visitors on your website and blog longer by engaging them in additional features and content – Add your Skysa Bar today!  I love mine.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with your online friends and contacts by clicking the buttons below or to the right.  Thanks!

With the job market being tough and cruel these days, many people think that there’s no way they’ll be able to compete in such conditions. Hiring Managers and Human Resources Professionals are stunned that sometimes, a part-time receptionist position (with no benefits) can garner hundreds of responses. And with the economy making a steady, but slow recovery, there seems to be no relief in sight for many of the unemployed. What are these people to do, when unemployment runs out and there’s just not enough work? Why look for other means to make money.

Perhaps you’ve seen the ads – work from home, stuffing envelopes, making crafts, etc.? More often than not, these are scams. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But not all online jobs are bogus. Many people are now joining the virtual workforce – thousands of skilled, willing and able people hiring themselves out to companies and individuals on a freelance basis. It used to be, you had to have some kind of skill – computer programming, graphics and design training – to be self-employed. But now, with the convenience of the internet and technology, people are actually hiring their own assistants – workers who may be located in another city, state or even county, who can perform basic tasks. These people set their own hours, their own rates based on their skills and do work for other busy professionals. Being a personal assistant has its perks, but it is a job like any other.

So how does one start? Of course, if you’ve had any experience in this field, then you’ve got an edge over other people. If not, then you can get training from some schools and even online schools.

Finding jobs can be a bit tricky, but sites like Elance, Guru, Two Minute Commute and Odesk has hundreds of job postings for virtual assistants. Just like any job, you’ll have to put your best foot forward – put together your resume, references etc. You’ll most likely have to put up a profile that lists all your experiences, skills and educational information. Competition can be tough, but you’ll have to persevere.

What kinds of work can you expect to get? Really, anything! Some people may want some simple, basic tasks – checking email, compiling lists, and organizing address books, research. Placing phone calls and scheduling appointments are a common task. AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine (via Tim Ferris’ The Four Hour Workweek website) recounts his experience of hiring a virtual assistant, who he had do everything from paying his bills to, “finding my son a Tickle Me Elmo.” Many companies also hire virtual assistants to do tasks which take too much time and resources of their on-site employees, such as creating labels for mailing, scheduling meetings, sending out marketing emails – there is a virtual buffet of work for virtual professionals!

Of course, you’ll want to stand out from other applicants – anyone can type into an excel spreadsheet or pick up a phone. One surefire way to do this is to find your own niche – a corner where you and only you rule this market. For example, if you have any medical background, you can do work with patient’s records or doctor’s offices. One hot niche is Internet Marketing and many businesses are clamoring for well-trained marketing assistants. Online marketing has grown exponentially in the past few years, and thus, these skill sets are becoming much more important than ever. Many of the earlier marketers learned on the job, but now many companies cannot afford to pay for their employees’ learning curve, which is why people who possess skills such as blogging, article submission, social networking, affiliate marketing, video editing and marketing support are in demand. Which is why many training centers offer such courses. VAClassroom.com offers one of the most comprehensive online courses, and is recommended by many professionals, both by virtual assistants and the companies that hire them. The course they offer is comprehensive and offers more than just reading materials – you get full access to their site, which includes a FREE 60-Day Trial to the popular VAClassroom Training Membership Program. Members can attend monthly meetings, participate in the discussion forums, watch videos and even join the virtual marketplace where they can network and possibly find jobs.

Another great resource is VAnetworking.com.  This is a community online for virtual assistants and virtual entrepreneurs to connect, share, discuss, promote & network their businesses.  They offer a free membership, discounts on virtual assistant business products and services , an RFP system for both Virtual Assistant and potential Virtual Assistant clients through their VAInsider club,  weekly online, live seminars with industry experts who’ve “been there, done that,” inclusion in the largest Virtual Assistant Article Directory online to help prospective clients find you faster and many other features.

So, check out VAClassroom.com and VAnetworking.com today and see how you can take full advantage of your full potential!

With so much competition and rivalry going on these days, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized. While there are so many methods and schemes used by e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make the big “cha-ching!” Viral Marketing, also known as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. Many forms of media are used to reach out to the public, without actually promoting the product.

Basically, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand, logo, product description or any other content to help promote the company and its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because of the relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as a spammer, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing campaign gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentives they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. Which generates a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most businesses are catching on to the effectiveness of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Along with other methods to promote their site, like Search Engine Optimization, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, or a funny story, many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz.

Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize viral marketing and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.  And you can also help it work wonders for me by clicking the Re-Tweet button at the lower right or by sharing this article through your Twitter or Facebook accounts.  Thanks for making this post viral!

If you have been following my blog, you know that I have been attending the Niche Affiliate Marketing System Workshop in Atlanta, GA.  Today is the last day of the workshop, which has been an incredible experience.  Yesterday, the instructors produced a product for the attendees to sale through their affiliate links and turned it into a contest to see which one of us could sell the most products.

As we frantically, blogged, tweeted, sent facebook, email and text messages across our various networking platforms to try and make sales, a couple from Venezuela was quitely connecting to their multiple lists and making sales.  Here is a video from Rafael, the winner of more than $25,000 in cash and prizes for making the most sales in a 24 hour period with our affiliate product at NAMS.

Wow, isn’t his story great!  We are so excited for Rafael and his wife and the great new affiliate marketing business he began this weekend.

Even though the workshop is over, it’s not too late to learn from all the outstanding instructors about how to build a booming affiliate marketing business, how to build a massive list and drive traffic and dollars to your website.  The recordings of this weekend are going to be available for a short time.  So hurry and go to NAMS4U 2 GB Flash Drive to get your set before they are all gone!

I’m still at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) in Atlanta, GA and yesterday was full of great speakers and valuable content for everyone attending.  Here are some of the highlights of Day 2 on my journey to Making Money on Auto Pilot!

The day started with Mark Hendricks setting the stage for the attendees by revealing to us that our subconscious mind is our Secret tool to our success.  And it’s yours too!  He sang a song for us and then had us sing with him and the song was called, “One Step at a Time” and the second line is Makes all my Dreams Come True!  So we all were charged up and ready to grow our businesses, one step at a time.

The rest of the day was full of great social media instructions, questions, answers and strategies from 5 top Internet Marketing gurus.  The purpose of this session was of course, to teach the participants about social media strategies and using this medium to build your online business, but also, they recorded the entire session and gave it to us to make available to you; our readers!  Here’s the link for you to read all about the session and see if it’s something you would like to add to your marketing education Strategies 4 Social Marketing. (ps, I’m on the video, so be sure to watch it!)

Bob Jenkins of Bob the Teacher is so great and just gave an enormous amount of great quality information.   Some of the topics he covered were:

• How to Stand out online
• Top 7 social media platforms
• Top 20 social media traffic tactics
• Super ninja traffic secret

Here’s a video snippet of Bob in action.

Joey Smith shared his Twitter Cash Machine with us and how to use Twitter for affiliate marketing.

And I ended my day making some great new friends and potential JV (joint venture) partners during dinner.  One of the great things about attending conferences, workshop and trainings is the people you meet and the relationships you build at them.  I was lucky enough to win a prize at NAMS.  I won a great CD from Denise Wakeman.  Here’s a photo of Denise at I at the workshop.

Denise Wakeman & Terri Brooks

Be back tomorrow with all the great happenings of today.  Actually, Denise is doing a blog session and is currently putting up three blogs in the “hot seat” and telling us what’s good, bad and…not so good about them.  It’s a great learning tool for all of us.

Be thinking about attending NAMS in August!  It will be one of the best investments in your business you could make.  I will have a link for you to get registered tomorrow.  NAMS sells out very quickly, so if you want to attend, you need to register as soon as I share the link with you!

Please ReTweet this post and share it with your online friends by clicking the buttons at the bottom and the ReTweet button to the right.  Thanks!

That’s my goal…to make money on auto-pilot.  So I made a great business decision to attend the Niche Affiliate Markeing System workshop in Atlanta.  I’m actually at the workshop sending this post because it’s been an amazing workshop so far!

Yesterday was a jam-packed day with Lynn Terry and Jeff Herring helping us to get started with Affiliate Marketing and understanding how to profit from it.

They shared these steps to beginning which are:

• Get an Idea
• Register a Domain Name
• See if there’s a need for what you want to offer by checking what people are searching.  You can use a free tool call http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com.
• Once your keyword research is complete, (based on your results) build your site with WordPress and then begin to promote your long-tail keywords (that you identified with your freekeywords tool).  Using sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and social bookmarking.

We also wrote an article (which I’ll post later on EzineArticles.com) to prove that “content is everywhere.”  Questions, answers, interviews, reviews; all of these areas can produce content.

Tomorrow  the instructors will be building a product for us to market and sell through our “Affiliate” link and the title is Strategies 4 Social Marketing.  This is going to be a great session, so stay tuned.  (I’ll try to send you the link later today to purchase this product)

Stay tuned…more from NAMS3 to come.

Keyword Research – It’s not that hard, according to Nick Stewart creator of Nick’s Traffic Tricks.  I recently stumbled upon Nick’s site and fell in love with all the great information he shares!  He shows how to easily get traffic to your site and he gives a ton of information away.

So today when Nick sent me an email about his Keyword Research ebook, with the link to download it immediately without signing up for anything or entering my email address, I didn’t waste a minute in getting my copy.  Then if getting it free wasn’t enough, he said I could give it away to you!  Isn’t he nice? 

So here’s a link to get your copy and starting driving outrageous traffic to your website and blog!

http://tastingtheinternet.com/freedownloads/KeywordResearchBasics.pdf

Oh, and be sure to visit Nick’s site at http://NicksTrafficTricks.com and tell him I sent you!

With the Internet being a ubiquitous (ever-present) part of our daily lives, getting your business online is essential for any company. Whether you’ve been in business for 10 years or 10 minutes, your potential customers will most likely ask for your URL or email address. If you haven’t started building your website or getting on Facebook, then don’t worry; it’s not too late.

If you’ve been around for a while, then it’s easy enough to translate your branding and marketing online. It’s just a different medium, and it’s important you synergize what you do on the web with your brick and mortar business, to maximize your branding efforts. If your web marketing is part of your initial marketing strategy, then it’s important to get your branding done before you make any designs or buy up any online real estate (i.e. your domain name.) This will save you money in the long run, as you won’t have to change your website address or completely redesign your pages.

What you need to get started is a basic website. First, take care of the practicalities – get your website address or URL. (visit GoDaddy.com through our link in the sidebar) Hopefully, your business name hasn’t been taken by anyone else yet. If your first choice has been taken, then try to come up with something that’s easy to remember. Next thing you have to think about is the hosting – this is where you’ll be parking all your files for people do download onto their computers.

Next, you’ll have to think about the design and functionality of your site. Do you just want your information there, or do you want the extra bells and whistles – shopping carts, videos, payment processing, etc. (visit our Services page or contact us to help with this step) Do your homework and find out what people (your customers) would look for in a webpage. Do check out your competitor’s site and try to see what (and what doesn’t) work.

You’ll also need some compelling content for your site. With design and content, it’s always a chicken-and-egg argument and it really depends on you and your timeline. Of course, designers will probably ask for an outline to help them get started and give them an idea of how long programming will take. When creating content, you have to make sure it’s appropriate for your website and audience, while taking into consideration SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the keywords to be used.

When everything comes together, make sure your website is fully functioning and bug-free; there’s nothing worse than going to a website that doesn’t work. A good design company will include this in their services, including testing across different web browsers. And so do we

After you’ve gone through the site, you’re ready to publish! Start letting people know that your site is up, whether through email or just telling your customers when you see them. Integrate your URL into your collateral to make sure everyone knows where to find you on the web.

We’re happy to work with you on building your online presence, just give us a call at 865-223-5804 or contact us by email.

Being successful in any venture means offering a product or service that is not only exceptional, but offers value that your competitors cannot. This, of course, can be difficult, unless you’re offering something truly unique. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go out there and put your product or idea on the market – consumers are always on the lookout for new and better things. With over 6 billion in the planet, you’ll be able to find someone who will want to buy your product. The key is finding that group of people – is your niche.

A niche is defined as a narrowly defined group that has the same interests and will want to buy what you are offering. A niche market is that group who will have a reason to want your product or service and are compelled to do business with your company for one reason or another. What makes it different from a regular market group is that they are often small enough so that your competitors will miss them, but they can produce enough business to sustain your products. Niche Marketing is hot business these days and more and more marketers are turning to niches to sustain their business.

The key to niche marketing is to be specific. Don’t just target a broad audience – but look for your audience within an audience. For example, merely targeting “retirees” is too wide. There are many types of retirees, not just based on age or location. There are people who may have retired to start their own business, or those who love activities like gardening, traveling or cooking. The possibilities can be endless, just from this market alone.

So how can you find this niche market? There’s no exact way to do it and it’s not always easy, but if you follow some simple tips, you’ll be closer to defining the niche that’s right for you:

1. Find out what you have to offer – make a list of the advantages your product or service has. If you have to, create a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis to find out how you size up against your competitors. Then start thinking of which groups of people can benefit from these.
2. Get out there – you have to pound the pavement and knock on some doors to find out what people need. You don’t literally have to get out – join various groups and gatherings related to the general group of people you want to target. Talk to people and try to get a pulse of what’s happening.

The best way, however, is to come up with a great product or service and one you enjoy providing. Finding your niche market will help you focus your attention and maximize your resources (particularly your marketing dollars) towards getting ahead of your competition and increasing your sales and profit.