If you think Twitter, Facebook, and other online social media communities are only for teens, you’re missing out on valuable and free marketing platforms for your brand (book, business or product).

Further, if you’re not on social media, you’re risking losing your own potential clients/customers to those smart business people who are utilizing social media.

Which social media platforms you focus on depends a great deal on what your brand is. Here are seven excellent reasons why you must use social media no matter what you are promoting:

It’s the Most Cost-Effective Online Advertising.

The current most popular social media platforms being used for business are free: Twitter.com, Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com. (LinkedIn does have an upgrade that costs, but it’s not necessary to get this upgrade.) And this is ”relationship” marketing to targeted markets. “Free” is definitely more cost-effective than spending money on online advertising techniques such as Pay Per Click or banner ads.

You Can Have Global Reach With Social Media.

The world is now a global marketplace. Why not reach this global market? Many of the most popular social media platforms have this global reach, and you can see this clearly illustrated on Twitter. At any time of day or night you can see real-time “tweets” from people in Japan, England, the U.S., India and many other countries.

For example, if you have a book that might appeal to anyone in the world who reads in English, why limit yourself to just promoting in the U.S.? Thanks to Amazon people outside the U.S. can buy your book even if it is only available in U.S. stores.

You Can Attract Targeted Groups of People as Potential Clients/Customers.

Social media enables you to join groups of people with the same interests and goals. On LinkedIn and Facebook you can join groups as varied as Children’s Book Writers to eMarketing. If you choose groups to join based on your brand, you’ll be putting yourself in front of the exact groups of people you want to reach as potential clients/customers. This can pay off in increased sales for you.

Form Your Own Community by Using the Community Aspect of SMP’s.

Once you are active on social media platforms and have people who are your followers (Twitter), your friends (Facebook) and/or your connections (LinkedIn), you can start your own groups of highly targeted interests. You can create a niche market in your brand, book or business and share your knowledge with others who join your community.

These people can become your loyal followers, friends and connections – and they can help spread your marketing message to their followers, friends and connections.

You Can Use Social Media to Establish Your Expertise.

People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. By sharing your knowledge for free online with the people in the social media groups you belong to, you can establish yourself as an expert. This can pay off in increasing potential clients/customers’ trust in you.

And you can also receive invitations for blog “interviews” or BlogTalkRadio show interviews or podcasts. And these interviews lead to more free exposure for your brand and more free promotion for your expertise.

You Can Use Social Media to Find Cross-Promotional Partners.

Amazingly in the world of social media, people who would be considered competitors in the off-line world are teaming up to provide products and services to their combined clients/customers.

And these clients/customers are very responsive to these cross-promotions (often called joint ventures) – especially when introduced to a second expert by a first expert they already know, like and trust.

You and your cross-promotion partner can each get access to the other person’s “list” (the names of interested clients/customers collected at a website) and thus you’ve greatly expanded your potential client/customer pool.

With a Few Keystrokes You Can Announce New Updates of Your Activities.

Your updates on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn take seconds - and you’ve announced to your followers, friends and connections what you’re doing or what you’re offering or what you’re speaking on. And there are even online applications that allow you to update your status across several of your social media accounts at one time. So it is as easy as 1-2-3 to keep in front of your potential clients/customers.

In conclusion, once you become active yourself on social media platforms, you’ll find many more reasons to promote your brand, book or business on social media in order to attract targeted potential clients/customers. And you’ll look back at your pre-social media days and wonder how you ever did marketing without using online social media.

Click here to learn how Chi-Sky can help you with this.

Article Written by:   Phyllis Zimbler Miller  (c)  2009

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Marketing, Free Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Myspace, Organic Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Platforms as Marketing Tools, Twitter, Twitter Marketing

When it comes to pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the most important tools are targeted keywords and relevant landing pages. For targeted keywords, it is possible to develop dynamically inserted keywords simply by monitoring search activity on your site and in your ad campaigns.

Identify Targeted Keywords

Below are some practical tips to help you discover the key phrases consumers are typing into search boxes, and how that knowledge can be used to your advantage.

Here are some suggestions to help develop dynamic keywords:

• Create separate campaigns for product groups; ad groups within each campaign would represent actual products or product types/models
• Take advantage of the “search” function on your ecommerce site. Talk to your developers to see how you can dynamically pass pay-per-click keywords through the search function of your site, so that users will always see dynamically generated results as generated by your site’s internal search function

Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Dynamic keyword insertion allows you to insert the user’s actual, or close to actual, search query into the text of your pay-per-click ad. This is because search engines match users’ queries to the closest keyword on your list. You end up with an ad that very closely resembles the actual keyword phrase the user typed in, which attracts more user attention on the search results page. This will likely increase sales from your pay-per-click ad, as follows:

1. More attention = higher click through rate
2. Higher click through rate = higher Quality Score
3. Higher Quality Score = cheaper clicks
4. Cheaper clicks = more clicks for a given budget, which leads to more sales.

Be careful, though. You do want to improve your click through rate, but you also want quality clicks. Keep an eye on ads with dynamic keyword insertion to make sure they are converting users at the same or better rate.

The key is to supply the customer with immediate gratification. All the talk about relevant search engine results and “quality” ratings comes down to just that. Test the strategies outlined above and you’re like to see promising improvements in the performance of your PPC ads.

Proper Landing Pages

Always make sure you’re sending people to the most relevant page of your site. Remember, your home page is not usually the most relevant page. If someone is searching for “widget 123” and you happen to sell it, be sure to send that person to the “widget 123” page.

Click here to learn how Chi-Sky can help with this.

Tags: Dynamic Ad Text, Dynamic Keywords, Dynamic Text, Internet Advertising, Internet Marketing, Keywords, Landing Pages, PPC, PPC Advertising, Relevant Landing Pages, Targeted Keywords