Content Crooner

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Your prospects may know what your product or service is, but they won’t buy from you unless you establish a solid online identity. A comprehensive blend of classic and neo marketing tactics, including the latest in social media, creates a solid online identity and an unbreakable brand.

The more places you pop up on the Web, the more clients you’ll get. People are comforted by being able to easily find your and your company’s names. When they fail to find your name within the first page of the search engine results they’ll automatically doubt your legitimacy. Read on to learn about achieving a lucrative presence on the Web.

Social Media Still Sizzlin’

Despite some residual skepticism, social media is indeed still firing on all four cylinders. While you may occasionally hear some folks refer to social media as impotent, that’s probably because they’re expecting immediate sales from it. They call it “social” for a reason. Think about the total number of friends you have. Have you made all of the friends within the last six to 12 months? Of course not! Social media mirrors real life in that it takes time to build up a number of meaningful relationships.

When used right, social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz will improve your sales. One of the leading ways they do this for you is through data mining and prospect-list building. Don’t count on your one-time social media interaction to get them to visit your site and buy. Instead, count on it to help you create a lead generation machine.

Caveat: Again, executing a successful social media campaign takes time, making this endeavor a bit risky for first-year businesses looking for quick cash. Because it does have lucrative potential though, single-operator companies should start off by dedicating about an hour a week to their social media marketing. After you start to get some positive cash flow going, you’ll then eventually want to hire someone to take over that portion of your marketing. Remember to stick to your core capabilities and your highest-income producing activities.

Financial Gold-mine Forums

It’s actually not all that often that we hear about businesses using online forums to improve their sales. This makes it worth discussing again. Although online forums have seemingly been overshadowed by the latest wave of social media tools, they can still do wonders for creating a solid online identity. Forums provide an ideal virtual environment for positioning yourself as an expert in a niche.

Remember, it’s all about positioning, not prospecting. Create threads within various forums that provide useful information and insights subtly related to your product or service. Likewise, comment on other people’s threads within forums, planting your business’ name in as many places as possible.

You’ll not only create the opportunity to set yourself up as an authority, you’ll also have the chance to plant links back to your website or promotional landing page. This does two stellar things: 1) Provides more ways for people to find your website and click through; 2) Increases your inbound link count which helps boost your search engine ranking. Sweet, right?

Profitable Public Relations

While having your name register under a number of different business projects helps build credibility, having your name paired with benevolent acts will take your business credibility to a whole new level. Of course, we should all be on the lookout for ways to contribute to philanthropic endeavors anyway, but showing your online audience that you care about your community will make them want to do business with you.

Don’t just donate—any business can write a check:

Scenario 1)

• You: “Hello everyone, we’re proud to announce we wrote a check for our local Habitat for Humanity chapter.”
• Prospect: “That’s nice.”

Scenario 2)

• You: “Hello everyone, we’re proud to announce that we had our entire staff visit our local Habitat for Humanity chapter and helped them build a new home for a family of six.”
• Prospect: “That’s awesome! I feel I can trust your business to treat my needs with great care.”

Get out there and get involved with local non-profit and charity organizations. Not only will you accomplish something that you can genuinely feel good about, you’ll also create the perfect opportunity to draft a press release about your involvement. (Click here to get sales-boosting press release writing tips.) Submit that press release to as many sources as you can throughout the Web and you’ll crank up your credibility in no time.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!