You know how to market your product or service, but do you know how to market yourself?

You are the critical factor to successfully selling your product or service, so make sure your marketing and message aren’t outdated.

It’s not just social networking.
Facebook is no longer a site only used for reconnecting friendships or indulging your teenager’s need for constant communication. As of April, Facebook now has 200 million users, and its fastest growing segment is 35 years old and older. If you don’t have a page on Facebook, you’re missing out on an easy advertising medium. It takes just minutes to create a Facebook page, and soon, you can be establishing yourself as a leader in your field, developing your personal brand and creating more visibility for yourself, your product or your service.

Sign up with LinkedIn so you can easily be found with a Google search. LinkedIn is a business networking site where you can personalize your own page, broadcast your professional history and post testimonials from others. The contacts you link up and interact with, the more expansive your network. View LinkedIn as an opportunity to build your contacts, expand your network and increase your credibility.

Twitter began as a way to easily stay in touch with family, friends and business contacts by answering a simple question: What are you doing? But, now, Twitter also can be a marketing tool. Users “tweet” by sending short messages via mobile texting, instant message or the Web. Savvy business owners tweet to draw attention to a product, event, resource, blog or Web site. Use Twitter to find out what people are saying about a competitor or you. Show the human side of your business by discussing the good things people in your company are doing. Find out your contacts’ interests, or share some of your own. Get feedback on a problem or answers to questions. Organize meetings or “Tweetups.” Or, follow your mentors by seeing what they are tweeting about.

Don’t throw in the kitchen sink.
If you are pulling out your résumé or portfolio to land that next big project or make a career shift, focus on accomplishments and work samples related to the position you are seeking. Prospective employers or business partners don’t want to be inundated with a chronology of everything you’ve ever done. Follow the same process for your references. Specifically select those relating to what you’re pursuing, and don’t use the same three references for every new opportunity. Take time to tailor your self-pitch.

Be yourself.
People can sense fake a mile away. Skip the stilted business-speak and give a real sense of your personality with natural conversation and writing. If you think it doesn’t sound like you, it probably isn’t you.

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Q: Do you need guidance with setting up your Personal Brand?

Q: Do you have questions on How, What, Where and Why?

Q: Are you afraid that your personal information will end up in the wrong hands?

If you can answer YES to any of these quesstions you need to schedule a FREE 15 minute conference call with myself to discuss your concerns, fears and reservations with social media. Embracing the technology is part of the battle, but let me assure you that you will reap the benefits of having the ability to showcase yourself as a Brand, targeting millions of businesses and people that need your services or products, even if they do not know it yet.

Click here NOW!

It’s time to take a step back and think about why you built a website in the first place.

“We have to have a website — everybody does!” This is the mentality of many business sites.

With that goal, inevitably you’ll end up with someone in upper management complaining that the site isn’t getting enough results to justify the expenses, although no one is sure how many sales or leads are attributed to the website. Or the CEO wants to know why the site’s PageRank is only a four, and traffic patterns don’t match last year’s numbers. Suddenly, everyone’s scrambling around to “fix” something that may not even be a problem. Sound familiar?

The problem is that many sites are built without a clear goal in mind. It sounds silly, but it’s true. It’s time to take two steps back and take a big-picture look at your website and what it can do for your business.

So what’s the goal of your website?

• To inform?
• To build a community?
• To gain valuable market research?
• To reduce support and customer service costs?
• To reach a broad audience with a message?
• To find sales leads?
• To conduct e-commerce?
• To entertain?
• To gain advertising revenue?
• To brand your company?
• To brand yourself?
• To attract attention?
• To build trust?
• To reduce paperwork?
• To reduce printing and mailing costs?
• To pre-qualify leads?
• To recruit new employees?
• To ??????  (insert your need here)

These are just some of the many possibilities. Remember, the Web is not just a marketing tool — it’s a business tool as well. While it is perfectly okay to have an Internet billboard that simply contains contact information, why settle for that when your site can do so much more? Even the smallest local business can utilize the power of the Internet to be more efficient and to build revenue. Once you start thinking about it, it’s easy to get excited about the potential for your site.

Once you have an idea of what you need the site to do, you’ve got to agree on some measurable goals. Too many people think traffic is the goal of a website. But think about it; would you rather have 1,000 people visit your site and do nothing, or have 100 people visit your site and take action? Does a PageRank of 7 mean anything to the real profitability of your company? These abstract, relative numbers don’t make a difference by themselves, and should not be the ultimate goal of any website.

More important are goals like new sales leads, an increase in average consumer satisfaction, decreased support calls, more sales, increased newsletter subscriptions or completed surveys. These are all measurable goals that DO mean something to your company.

Next, identify your target audience. Narrow this definition down to fit your unique customers. It’s time to think like your target audience. What do they need? What problem does your your product or service solve for them? Why are they even visiting your site? If you can’t get into their mindset, organize an informal focus group and ask them what they want. It’s that easy! Let them poke around your current site and give you feedback. Usability issues can be identified during this process as well.

You may find you need a formal usability analysis, a redesign or new content sections. Sometimes it’s even better to scrap the old site and start over from scratch. The important thing is that when you build a great site that keeps your users in mind, it will be easier to get good links, good rankings and all around good results. Your company and your customers will benefit.

If you want success online, contact us for a free 30 min conference call

I am holding an interactive poll to see what the views for business in 2009 truly are.  Out of the responses, I will pick a winner and that person will receive a FREE gift. There is one rule to this poll. Here it is ….

Your answer/reply must be in good taste, must be honest and not offensive in any manner.  Other than that … whatever your heart tells you when you read the below poll question:

POLL QUESTION: What efforts will bring the most fruit in 2009?

Simply reply to this post with your answers.

What are they? I call this “The low hanging fruit”. It is the bits of opportunities that hang directly in your face just waiting to be picked. There are many out there, but where and what are they?

I am curious as to what others think their low hanging fruit consists of. Is it adsense, adwords, blogging, twitter or social media, facebook, myspace or something else that just seemed to work like Godspeed after implemented.

Reply to this and share your fruit of opportunity.

1. Write when you are inspired. it’s 1:35 am and I’m at the laptop. If I don’t “put this down” now – it’ll be gone when I get up at 6:30. Writing shouldn’t be hard. For me, my best creations come between 3 and 7am. (so I’m a little early today)
2. Tell’em “How-To” do it! I love how-to articles! You can tell a reader step-by-step how to do anything.What expertise do you have to share? Turn what you know into an interesting how-to article. Examples: “How Dancing Will Grab Womens Attention,” “How to Find the Best Vehicle for Your Lifestyle,” and “How to Overcome the Fear of Rejection.”
3. Use real life examples. I know many of us are solo professionals, consultants, coaches, etc. and feel strange writing about our clients, BUT where else can you get a real life solution to your readers problem?Keep in mind:
   • Perfectionism and procrastination will keep you from writing. Sometimes good enough is just… good enough!
   • Offer good useable information – not just fluff. And get to the point already! Reading online is hard enough, let alone trying to reach something that holds my interest.
4. Keep your articles to 300-500 words in length. AND forget about all the grammar and usage fluff you learned in school.Writing for the web is a whole different animal. Your style must be conversational. Like your best friend is sitting next to you. Write like you talk so people will know, like, and trust you. Keep sentences 10 words or less.
5. Direct response article writing. Your ultimate goal is for the reader to respond immediately to your article. Click on the link in the resource box and go to our website. Period.
6. Make sure your website is in check. There is nothing worse than having a curious prospect click to respond and the link is outdated or broken.

Action Steps:

• What would it take to write an article regularly? Make it happen.
• What info of value will I provide?
• What support systems do I need in place?

It doesn’t have to be highly complex or profound – just do it! Make it happen!

Jason Trump is the Head Web Guru of JTdesigns.com a web development, coaching and marketing firm, and is known as the guy to call when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Contact Jason today at www.JTdesigns.com

The critical point that is commonly overlooked in a ranking-centric mindset is that no number of high search engine positions will address the real problem if your website is not serving as an effective marketing and sales tool. And, as I have said many times before, the overall net effect of raising your conversion rate from one to two percent is the same net effect as doubling your traffic, and it is almost always easier. Increasing the number of visitors to a site that does not convert them effectively is like pumping high performance gasoline into a car with engine trouble – it might help the car to run a little bit better, but if you’d done repairs before adding the premium fuel, it really would have hummed.

While some search engine marketers were simply offering placement for keywords chosen by their client, other SEO’s realized the value of researching keyword phrases and built strategies that were focused on attracting a specific target market. This is why you would sometimes hear conflicting stories about the effectiveness of search engine marketing. People often had their sites optimized for the wrong phrases. These might be keyword phrases that attracted no traffic all or perhaps even keywords that attracted high traffic but the wrong audience. If targeted traffic was important for success back then, it is absolutely essential that we optimize for targeted traffic now. The reason is that as the web continues to age, peoples behaviour appears to be shifting again.

Plan for the current shift in online visitor behavior

The early online consumer compared to today’s average user was thriving on search engine use most of the time. They’d search out one site then search out another site and literally travel all over the place half of the time, unsure what they were even looking for.
Back then people “surfed the net” but todays online consumer is not surfing as much. Today’s online consumer is becoming educated much more quickly and a whole new trend of online branding is becoming more increasingly important according to a recent survey.

Volume traffic is decreasing.

A California-based research company that measures Internet audiences, recently stated that “nearly 52 percent of Web surfers arrived at sites by direct navigation and bookmarks, compared with about 46 percent during the same period last year.” Even compared to just last year, clearly more people KNOW where they want to go and are directly entering the web address into the browser.

What does this mean ? To me, it is a great indicator that people who have been online for a while, are developing business relationships. People just don’r need to “surf” as much because once customers start doing business online and they like the service, why should they change? If they are happy buying a product from www.barnesandnoble.com, are they not likely to go back and just type in the web address or use a bookmark? As the web continues to mature, watch and see if a whole new wave of branding does not become of major importance on the Web of the future. Businesses who have chosen domain names that are easy to remember and have some branding built in, may see some significant increase