Work From Home Toolkits: The Buzz About Google Buzz
It seems like the social media industry and the blogging community won’t be taking any rest this 2010. The blogosphere, the social networks, the microblogging services, the search engines and the social bookmarking sites are ready and pumped up to continue their battle for supremacy at the start of this decade. Most of these social media has influenced Internet marketing and has been used in running online businesses. They have been a significant part of our work from home especially in terms of traffic generation, sales and advertising. Today, as the year progresses, we get to see a lot of new websites, services and online resources that may continue to shape the world of Internet and technology.
Just a week ago, the search engine giant Google introduced its latest innovation and contribution to social media – the Google Buzz. Shortly after, it became the talk of the town and boy did it create a buzz? Google is now in the hot seat mainly because of criticisms, complaints and privacy issues that are being brought up to it by certain individuals or groups of people. However, before we get into those controversies, let’s take a look first at what Google Buzz is, how it works and what are its key features.
Google Buzz is described as both a messaging and social networking tool integrated into Gmail, Google’s web-based e-mail program. Some would say it’s like putting Facebook and Twitter features into Gmail. That means users are now able to share different kind of stuff from photos to videos to links, etc. They can post status messages and comments as well, just like what you can do in most social networking sites. There is also a mobile version of Google Buzz for those who are always on the go and would want to access their Gmail accounts through their phones and other mobile devices.
Some of the key features of Google Buzz that Internet users, including those people who work from home, may enjoy are auto-following, real-time sharing experience, inbox integration, excellent viewing of photos and watching of videos, the choice of sharing privately or publicly your posts, and others. In the mobile version, you can “geotag” your posts, which means that your current location or geographical information will be added to whatever you are posting – status messages, photos, etc. – after Google Buzz has confirmed where you exactly are. Google Maps is also integrated with the mobile version and that you can see what folks are buzzing near you through conversation bubbles over the map.
Although Google Buzz may look so fine and dandy and may become a potentially helpful tool for Internet marketers and folks who work from home, it has already been caught up in sticky situations and controversies in less than two weeks after its official launch. Most of this upset is due to the privacy issues
surrounding Google’s new baby. Apparently, some people have expressed concerns about how Google Buzz threatens the privacy of Gmail users. A woman even filed a complaint. Privacy groups are keeping a close eye too and others look forward to investigating the whole thing. These privacy concerns have already prompted Google to make some changes in Buzz like the auto-follow feature, which was modified and became auto-suggest. The option to turn off Google Buzz or completely delete your Buzz profile has been made a lot easier and was one of the major changes as well.
Aside from those issues, Google also received some harsh criticisms from other huge Internet players namely Microsoft and Yahoo. Some people say that the service is just a rip-off of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and shouldn’t be patronized. Other individuals describe it as lame and unnecessary. Nonetheless, despite all these that have happened in recent days, Google is still firm and continuing to roll out the Buzz feature in Gmail. How Google Buzz will fair off with the rest of the social media frenzy, it’s still too early to tell. But if it happens to be useful for our work from home, then why not?
Work From Home Toolkits: Basic Facebook Marketing
If you haven’t been doing Facebook marketing, then you may be missing out something in your promotional campaign. First of all, Facebook is a top social networking site. Social networks join microblogging sites, social bookmarking sites and others of that sort to form another effective advertising strategy – using the social media. So that fact alone makes Facebook a pretty much legitimate opportunity to do wonders for your work from home including getting targeted traffic, finding customers and spreading the word about your online business.
However, Facebook gives you more than that. In the recent years, it has developed other great options and features that anyone can use for marketing purposes. Some famous examples are the Facebook Ads, Pages and Polls. Those things are actually easy to learn and use but if you want to stick to the basics, the Status feature alone can deliver simple yet effective Facebook marketing.
Text
A plain status shout-out sometimes says or does it all. If, for example, you have developed newer products, try putting on your Status something simple like this, “Check out the latest addition to XYZ apparel. You’ll definitely gonna love this!” and you will still get those “likes” and comments, sometimes inquiries, as if you have included links, photos or videos, in other words, hyped it up. Just be quick with your post as well as direct and precise.
Photos
Although pure text can do Facebook marketing on its own, there’s no denying the significance and the factor that those still images bring into the table. Simply take some nice shots of your products and post them on your Wall and see those comments pour in afterwards. Consider polishing the photos a bit before posting, if it’s really needed, but don’t manipulate the image too much. You have to stay true to your products or else, you will confuse your customers and followers and that won’t do your work from home any good.
Videos
A lot of people are even more fond of watching videos than viewing photos so don’t forget to include those as well. It can be a simple video presentation of the product, an infomercial, a tutorial, or whatever. There are some products or areas like cars and real estate that are better represented with videos alongside their available photos. Interested buyers will really appreciate the inclusion of those videos because it gives the customers a chance to actually take a good look at those stuff, helping them make a decision.
Links
There’s a chance that you can catch fair reviews about your products or work from home as you browse through the Internet. Why not post those links up so that others can read those reviews too? Do the same thing for those videos or commercials that you found mentioning your business or the items you are offering. Links to those new posts or updates within your site should also end up in your Facebook Status if you really want your Facebook marketing to be productive.
Events
Last but definitely not the least is posting an event, which could be a seminar, an Internet marketing forum, a press conference revolving around the topic of work from home, an exhibit, the launching of your latest products or services and so many more possible events that you can share with other Facebook users who might be interested in going to those types of gathering.
3 Facebook Tools And Applications Used For Marketing
Marketing or promotion is very much important in one’s work from home. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that. If you have a business, whether online or offline, and you have products to sell and services to offer, the only way to earn profits is to have lots of customers. How will you do that? You advertise. You promote. Go out and market your products as far as possible. That’s why Internet marketers are always finding more effective ways to promote their online businesses and one of the latest trends they have discovered is the so-called Facebook marketing.
Facebook is well known as one of the biggest, if not the biggest, and most popular social networking site today. It currently has hundreds of millions of active users. If you think about it carefully, you’ll realized that’s a huge number of potential customers. It’s like fishing in the ocean and Facebook is that one part of the ocean where a gazillion school of fish are hanging out. That’s where you have to go. But now, Facebook marketing is even better with several of those features and options that you can use in your promotional campaign.
Here are three nice and quite handy tools and applications that any marketer can utilize to advertise their sites, products and work from home:
|:]Polls
Facebook allows you to create polls for your pages and profiles. Polls are fun and entertaining but are great marketing tools as well. You can find out what products your customers want, what they don’t like, what’s going on in their heads, stuff like that. Let’s say, you have just launched a new set of perfumes. With Facebook Polls, you can list those new perfumes and let everyone vote for the best scent according to their preference. But of course, before they can decide, they have to buy and use it first and find out for themselves. Now, that’s one awesome Facebook marketing technique right there.
|:]Pages
Another great promotional tool you can find on Facebook is the equally popular feature known as Pages. Others specifically refer to it as Fan Pages. The concept is that users can create pages for their favorite celebrity, favorite pet, favorite TV character, favorite merchandise, etc. and somehow connect with other people who share the same interest and exchange stories. But in relation to work from home and Internet marketing, a Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business as well as your products with Facebook users. In that particular page, fans, users or customers can start a conversation through walls and discussions, can upload pictures of the products and can post links to videos or articles pertaining to that item or business.
|:]Social Ads
If you’re planning to include Facebook marketing in your promotional campaign, then this should be one of your main choices. With Facebook Advertising, you can reach the target audience that you need and find real people, real customers that may be interested in what you have. Add to that, you can also create your own ads, which can either be text-based or more of an image type of ad. How about optimizing ads? That’s possible too and the steps to this Facebook marketing technique for your work from home is pretty easy to do.
It’s nice to know that Facebook is able to give these kinds of opportunities to various Internet marketers and people who work from home and make money online. However, just like in any other social network, always keep in mind to be extra careful with your account and what you do with those tools and applications because hackers are just waiting around the corner.
Great And Free Ways To Promote Your Blog
Rarely can you find someone nowadays who doesn’t know a thing or two about blogs let alone owns one. Blogging has been a major thing in the past few years and still is up to now. Many people from different walks of life across the globe have become part of the blogging community one way or the other. Their reasons may
differ. Some do it for personal reasons, others as a part of their work from home. There are also some who use it to promote their business. It can be a project requirement or school task. Whatever the reasons behind are, it shows how significant blogs are in this digital age of ours.
If you have a nice blog and you really want to share it with others either to earn income or avid followers but don’t want to spend a dime for it, you are in luck because there are great and free ways to promote your blog that you can learn starting with article writing and article submission. It’s not that far different from blogging because if you look at it, you are just doing the same thing, which is writing. You write for your blog then afterwards, you write an article related to your blog and submit it to top article directories. For example, you run a blog dedicated to anything sports. If you’d like to promote that blog, what you can do is write an article, say, about the health benefits of doing sports and recreation. Once finished, send it to online publishers and directory sites. It’s pretty much the same thing but never send an article that’s already been posted in your blog. In other words, your blog posts must be uniquely different from the articles you submit to article directories.
Another one of the many effective ways to promote your blog is through posting in forums. Most online forums are free so that anyone can register and join. You can take advantage of that opportunity. Just make sure that your chosen forum is under the same niche as the theme of your blog. If your blog is about gadgets, why would you sign up for Internet marketing forums or those about work from home? How can you discuss and promote your blog there? One more thing to remember is to read and follow the rules and regulations of the forum carefully because there are moderators and other members who are keeping an eye on you. You don’t want to get banned and waste this opportunity, do you?
Aside from forum posting, you can also promote your blog through social networks. The hundreds and thousands even millions of users make these social networking sites a perfect place to pull off a promotional stint for your dearest blog. Having accounts from various networks including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and others will give you wonderful opportunities to take your blog and share it with everyone on your list.
Exchanging links is very common in the blogging community. There are blogs other than yours that you may find very interesting and want to include in your blog roll. All you need to do is come to an agreement with the owner of that particular blog. Then, you can proceed by swapping links. The idea is to get traffic from each other’s blogs. Most folks who work from home and make money online have done this several times.
Those are four ways to promote your blog that don’t require you dishing out some cash yet work nicely. However, if you have some extra money and are willing to spend it for paid marketing of your blog, then the decision is yours to make. You just have to make sure that it’s pretty much effective or else, you will regret it.
Social Media Marketing Tips: Learning What To Do
When it comes to marketing tips, techniques and strategies, one can learn a lot from the Internet. Either through reading articles and blog posts, communicating with the experts and fellow Internet marketers, joining groups and forums for discussions, listening to audio podcasts and watching video tutorials online or other ways to learn information, you can definitely find something that will help you devise your ultimate marketing plan and campaign. How about you try focusing on social media marketing and see how it can effectively help you and your work from home reach the goals you have set?
When one talks about social media marketing, there are several things that come to mind. The most common ones are microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk, social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and Multiply, and social bookmarking sites which includes Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. These are just some of the many famous online rendezvous that different individuals are joining in today. However, aside from the purpose of letting people around the globe meet and share with each other, these social media serve also as productive venues to work from home and run an online business.
Several Internet marketers have included social media marketing in their promotional campaign and have scoured the online community and the blogosphere for such related marketing tips. Here are four tips on what you should do when you’re promoting your site or work from home through social media:
<<Have A Solid Strategy Or Plan In Mind>>
If you think joining these social networks and sites, adding friends and people in your list and advertising to those individuals your online business will be all that is needed to succeed in social media marketing, then you’re wrong. This promotional method requires as much observation, planning, analysis and strategy as other means of marketing your brand. If clear and precise results is what you want for your work from home, then plan out your marketing campaign very carefully.
<<Share Your Content>>
When you submit some of your articles to top article directories, you are sharing them to everyone who might be looking for useful information. But how about your blog posts and certain website content? How can you make them more available to the online community? Well, there are plug-ins from social media sites that you can use and integrate in your blogs and sites. These so-called extensions or widgets make it possible to easily and quickly share your content.
<<Make Your Website Easy On The Eyes>>
You may wonder if this is really included as one of the social media marketing tips. Isn’t this supposed to be a tip for web design? But if you really think about it, who would bookmark a site and share its content if that site is very much painful in the eyes? Who would recommend a blog that is difficult to read? So creating your site simple yet good and readable can affect your social media marketing as much as it is an issue of web design.
<<Communicate With Your Readers Or Followers>>
Responding to comments, questions and feedback from your readers and customers is quite similar to what you do with your social media marketing campaign. The bottom line here is communication. Take time to answer inquiries. Address concerns and deal with negative comments as professional as you could. That’s equivalent to communicating effectively to those folks in your social media accounts.
Having this social media marketing as one of your advertising methods will be a tough one. But you know that succeeding in this challenging task will greatly benefit your work from home. So explore and learn more marketing tips if you can in order for you to come up with a nice strategy.
Work From Home Toolkits: Article Marketing With EzineArticles
What’s nice about the Internet is that it’s not just a place to find opportunities and aside from being a pretty huge library of information, it’s also a magic box packed with tools and resources that are, for the most part, free to use. Isn’t it amazing? Though we can’t deny that it’s also home for malware, scams, fraud and those sort of things, you have to remember that it’s what makes the whole online world full of wonders because it’s very much similar to real life than you can ever think of. It’s good to know that amidst those risks and challenges, you can still count on various Internet tools to help out your work from home.
One great example would be the famous article directory site everyone knows as EzineArticles. This particular site or resource has become an integral part of the success of so many online marketers especially those who do article marketing for a living. Dubbed as one of the leading article hubs today, EzineArticles can surely help you from the actual writing process up to the time you submit and publish your articles.
Of course, the best part of that experience is that it’s free, free to register, free to submit. There are also options for paid membership and services, only if you want to. If your biggest concern is categories, you won’t be disappointed. EzineArticles have article categories ranging from health and fitness topics to gaming news to finance issues to online business stories and work from home tips. You will definitely have a wide selection.
Other features provided by EzineArticles to its members are blogs, article writing shop section, newsletters and others. With all these opportunities for article marketing, bloggers, writers and Internet marketers alike have no reason not to continue writing and submitting articles. But they have to do it right or else this top article directory won’t be much of a big help especially with articles that are getting rejected. Probably the first thing you can do to avoid that is to come up with great and unique articles. Something that’s relevant to your niche and interesting enough to your target audience.
What most article directory sites like EzineArticles hate are errors within articles. Since you are regarded as a professional, these online publishers expect your article marketing to be a product of a true expert. So spelling and grammar flaws clearly have no room in these sites. Better check those carefully before sending. Aside from that, most article directories will show no mercy if you mess up by submitting an article to a wrong category. If that site forbids links within the article body and they have stated that in their terms and guidelines, then that’s what you should follow.
EzineArticles may not be that much different compared to other article directories out there but it’s one of the best tools any Internet marketer can have. Moreover, the site ranks high enough in the search engines. That’s pretty important when you’re doing work from home and article marketing.
Work From Home Tips On Article Submission And Article Directories
Before the dawn of Internet marketing, the term ‘article’ was commonly referred to as somewhat a transcript or something of that sort taken out of a book, journal or magazine. A certain entry or content that is being cited or put into discussion. The said term is also associated with matters concerning laws and regulations. However, when people started to work from home and decided to run an online career, articles were seen on another perspective. All thanks to article marketing.
The concept of article marketing revolves around the fact that Internet marketers can advertise their products, gain traffic for their site and make money online by writing articles and sending them to article directories or posting them on a blog. If one has to divide the whole article marketing activity into two. The results will likely be the part where article writing is done and the other part where article submission is performed.
Most folks focus on article writing more than the part of sending those write-ups to the article directories and online publishers. But the latter is just as important as the first one. No matter how great the articles you have come up with, if you mess up in your article submission task, those articles will not be able to serve their real purpose. That’s why you also have to pay attention to some work from home tips regarding effective article submission and other details in relation to it.
One good tip is to check and scan over the terms and regulations of the article directories and sites you have chosen. Although most top article publishers have certain similarities, there will be a few things different. For instance, one site allows a number of links inside the body of an article while others do not. Some things may be considered a violation on one site but totally different on the other. You have to be very careful and in order to do that, you need to pay attention to the details of the guidelines.
When it comes to categories, take note that you should submit it to the appropriate one or at least to the nearest or the most relevant. Most article directories do not tolerate submissions that fall into wrong categories. Your articles will get axed from their site right away and sending it again may cost you some amount of time that you could have already used by doing something else with your work from home.
Common work from home tips regarding article submission and article directories also tackle that issue of duplicate content. If you are running a blog or a website and if you are posting articles on that blog, one thing that you should not do is send that same article to various online publishers. Search engines like Google are very good at identifying such duplicate content so if you don’t want to risk your site, start writing separate articles or at least edit the previous ones you have made.
But if there’s anything that you should really keep in mind, it’s how to be effective and consistent in your article submission tasks. Write more articles so that you can submit more. More submissions mean more chances of traffic and more possibilities of earning huge profits online.
Work From Home Toolkits: Giving Facebook Marketing A Try
Social media marketing. This is another element responsible in turning the wheels of online businesses and work from home, contributing to the smooth run of the whole world of Internet marketing. Social networks, microblogging sites, social bookmarks, if you use these online resources effectively with your home-based job, there’s a great chance that you will be heading closer to your dreams and goals, which is, for most people signing up for this, financial success.
Perhaps a huge majority of the global population are using, or at least have heard about, Facebook, which joins today’s line-up of famous and fastest-growing social networking sites. Aside from being a social hub where people can meet old and new friends, Facebook is also a place for online job opportunities to grow.
There’s a bunch of reasons why folks should try Facebook marketing but it all boils down to one thing. Facebook has many options, features and tools that you can use to draw traffic, find customers, advertise your products and other significant things you do for your work from home and marketing campaign. It’s quite logical for online marketers to extract whatever they can from this popular social network.
Your Facebook marketing kicks off when you are connecting with different kinds of individuals and growing your friends list. It may include colleagues, immediate relatives, hometown buddies, online friends, fellow Internet marketers, potential customers, etc. You can add almost everyone you like. Your friends list in Facebook is quite similar to your email list and that’s the purpose of connecting with as many people as possible, aside from social and personal reasons.
Adding friends is a bit basic but if you have products or services that you would like to advertise, one way is through Facebook Ads system. Even the biggest corporations and companies are starting to use the said system. Why not? Facebook boasts of a million users all over the world who are logging in to the network every hour of every day. Now, who wouldn’t take advantage of that opportunity?
Not only that, Facebook features make really good marketing tools. For instance, you can upload pictures of your products on your profile. That way, people who are interested will be able to take a look on what you have to offer. Let’s say you work from home by baking cakes and accepting orders. If you have a Facebook account, you can take pictures of your finished cakes and post them on your profile. Surely, people will leave comments, inquiries and maybe specific orders. And to think, that’s just one way you do Facebook marketing.
Another way is through videos. Facebook allows you to upload short clips as long as it’s original and does not infringe copyright laws. If you’re running a cake business, you can create brief instructional videos on how to bake a certain type of cake or videos about baking tips and other details. Post those videos in your profile and your loyal customers and avid fans will definitely check them out.
Speaking of fans, if you think that there’s already a huge following for your business and that pictures and videos are not enough, what you can do is create a fan page or an open group focusing on your work from home and your products. With Facebook groups and fan pages, you can still add people, pictures, videos, links and other stuff. But if you think you are that creative, you can also make use of Facebook applications and games.
Those are just some Facebook marketing tactics that you can try for your work from home. The said social site is always developing and the people behind it are aiming to make it better for its users. Who knows what more one can do using Facebook as a marketing tool in the near future?
Acts That Can Damage Your Twitter Marketing Campaign
It’s no secret to almost everyone especially to Internet marketers, both veterans and newbies, how social media marketing can be a very effective advertising campaign for one’s work from home. What’s even greater is that it also helps online businessmen get huge amount of targeted traffic to their sites and develop useful connections with clients, potential joint venture partners and fellow marketers. One fine example is Twitter, which is technically a microblogging site but possesses as well features and influential powers similar to those of social media and networking sites. Indeed, Twitter is at the top of its game.
So it’s really not that surprising that Twitter marketing campaigns were developed. After all, this is a fine and effective online tool that’s free to be used by everybody. No reason to waste that great opportunity, right? You should be squeezing and making the most out of your resources every chance you have especially in these rough times.
“Tweeting your way to success.” That has a pretty nice ring to it and surely, your work from will agree as well. But establishing an effective Twitter marketing campaign can be very challenging. There are do’s and, of course, there are don’t’s. Here are the acts that fall under the category of don’t’s and thus, you should avoid committing:
Flooding instead of Tweeting
It’s not a good idea to flood your followers with posts that are irrelevant to your work from home. You also have to consider that when you do that, you will be an inch closer to spamming and that could lead to followers “un-following” you and worse, your Twitter account being banned. So just post enough tweets for a day and let your followers’ feeds breathe for a while.
Having Zero Tweets
If oversupplying tweets is not good, having no tweets at all is no better. As an online marketer, you would expect your customers and followers to wait for certain updates from you like new products, latest services, answers to queries, more information and other important stuff like that. So if you continue having zero tweets, you leave the folks following you with no choice but to drop you. Now what kind of Twitter marketing campaign is that?
Performing with Lack of “Tweetiquette”
You know you can’t just go tweeting all day long without actually taking note of the necessary terms and rules to follow. Some need not to be spoken because they are known “netiquette” already like no spamming, no using of All Caps, etc. It wouldn’t hurt to be sensitive of the rules.
Just Tweeting and no more
If you think your Twitter marketing campaign for your work from home is done by just tweeting for updates, announcements or news, then you’re wrong. You should be able to contribute to the community by doing other things such as re-tweeting some messages, replying to questions, sharing relevant information, asking questions yourself and initiating healthy discussions.
Using YouTube For Your Own Work From Home
Internet marketers and businessmen can enjoy the almost limitless possibilities that various online resources offer in aid of their businesses. Take for example, the largest video sharing site, YouTube. It was first intended to provide users the capabilities to create, upload and share their videos as well as view and comment on videos of other people. Now, it has become an effective tool to use in marketing all sorts of businesses including work from home.
Thus, video marketing was born, which is quite similar to what television ads and commercials do, but with more possibilities and features. Businesses, large and small, are able to seek help from YouTube and other online video sharing sites regarding exposing brands, advertising products and services and providing help and information to customers.
Think of this: if you are just starting to work from home, you may not have the needed resources to pull off or afford a single TV commercial. Even placing ads in radios and print media like newspapers and magazines are known to be very costly for some Internet marketers and only large-scale businesses are able to do that. But with Internet and YouTube, that dilemma becomes a thing of the past.
However, we shouldn’t forget that YouTube is just another online resource and it will not be effective if you don’t do your part well. The success of video marketing lies largely in the hands of the Internet marketer himself, on how he develops strategies, how he formulates his marketing campaign and how he prepares himself for unexpected challenges. YouTube is just a tool, the will and brain behind it is still you.
Therefore, you need to know how to utilize these video sharing sites wisely and, of course, effectively. There are various ways to make the most out of YouTube for your work from home or online business and that includes brand awareness, product promotion, and customer help.
For instance, if you decided to sell your craft online, you can use YouTube to expose that newfound business of yours. Just make a video about your brand. You can start by saying a few things about yourself, what you are as a businessperson, etc. Then, introduce your business and products. You can then include contact details like phone number, e-mail address or website URL somewhere in that video. Upload it in YouTube and other similar sites so that people from all corners of the globe will be able to see it.
You can also create a YouTube video focusing on your products alone. That’s already product advertising and video marketing rolled into one. Try your best to produce a great video, one that makes your product very much interesting. You can highlight specific details such as benefits, features, prices and others. Just be creative and if you’re done, upload it to the YouTube site.
It would also be a good move to add videos in your YouTube channel that tackle and answer questions about your products. You can also make instructional videos like how to use this or that, where it is used best, the do’s and don’t’s of using the product and the like. There really are many great ways to use this Internet tool for the benefit of your work from home. Even other businesses especially the big ones use YouTube and other video sharing sites to do a bunch of stuff, aside from those mentioned above, like direct selling, employee recruitment, product training, and important announcements.
