Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Services

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/4ZmX4)

Coaching Services


Coaching services are one on one sessions where you will work directly with myself or one of my associates to get you started with your online business.  Sessions are 30-60 minutes once per week.  During these sessions we will work with you to define and execute your business plan.  In essence we are going to help you with understanding both "what to do" and "how to do it."  We will also give you access to our personal team of resources to help with things such as building websites, graphics and setting up campaigns.

Initial phone conversations are free of charge.  Subsequent calls are Fee based and $125/30 minutes.

Internet Marketing


Internet Marketing tends to be an all encompassing term used to quantify many different aspects of promoting "stuff" on the web.  We work with clients to help them market their products and/or services using many different mediums including:

  • Article Writing - Writing and distributing content using across article networks.

  • Banner Advertising - Creating banners and distributing across content networks.

  • Blogging - Set up of blog platform with hosting.  Blogging strategy ie; how to monetize your blog and drive traffic that pays.

  • Email Marketing - Setup and creation of campaigns.

  • Press Releases - Creation and distribution of press releases.

  • PPC - Setting up and managing campaigns.  Key word selection.  Landing page optimization.

  • Ezines - Selecting e-zines and targeted mailing lists to distribute content through.

  • Social Media - Selecting social media sites, profile set-up and content creation.

  • Video - Defining your video strategy and then distributing your content across 30+ video sites including YouTube.


Network Marketing


Many people promote MLM products and build large businesses using the web.  I currently promote two health and wellness related products online.  If you are interested in starting an online business by promoting one of the products I currently sell then we can discuss getting you started.  We will show you how to market the products and bring people into your organization.  Services include:

  • Enrollment

  • Training

  • List Building

  • Internet Marketing - All services covered under this section

  • Social Media - All services covered under this section


Social Media


Social Media and Social Networking derserve a category set aside just for them alone.  With all the Buzz out there around this topic if I didn't have a category set aside people would think I don't know what the hell I am doing ;-)

Although there is certainly cross-over between the activities covered under Internet Marketing, there is much to know about "How" and "How Not" to use Social Media as a method to branding and eventually selling "stuff" on the Internet.  Here is how we help clients leverage Social Media:

  • Strategy - Developing a plan and process for utilizing social media.  Selecting the social sites to be used supporting your branding and campaign efforts.

  • Creation - Creating your "social properties" on the web.  This can include profile setup and administration.  We will help you understand which social sites to place your content and why we select these particular sites.

  • Execution - Developing a plan and process that "directs" your fans / potential customers from one social site to the next.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

My Top 10 Social Media Sites

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.rayforrest.com/201/my-top-10-social-media-sites/)


social-media-sitesThere are literally hundreds of Web2.0 and Social Media sites out there and more are being developed every day. These sites are interactive and let the users and the communities within in them contribute and publish content for the world to see.  Most of the sites offer you the ability to rate, share and discuss the content with other users giving it the ability to make content "go viral" across the web when you have tons of people all raving about a particular piece of content at the same time and sharing it with others.  And with all of these sites content is grouped and categorized by popular interests such as "health & fitness" or "finance" allowing users to easily find content that is specific to their search. Why is this important...well if you are trying to drive traffic around a specific group of keywords, these social media sites are highly regarded and have the "google juice" necessary to get you some high quality backlinks and push you further up in the search rankings.

The list is subjective and based on research from a number of sources including: stompernet, quantcast and alexa ratings. So here we go....

Social Media Sites


#1 YouTube -  www.youtube.com


Nothing beats video.  I recently saw a statistic that boasted that over 50% of all the content on the web is now video.  That is an amazing statistic.  There are a lot of people that shy away from video as part of their marketing and SEO efforts.  So that means its an opportunity and something you can use to your advantage.  So get out there and make a short video of whatever it is you are doing and get it online.  Stats: 72M visitors per month. Page Rank: 6.

#2 Blogger - www.blogger.com


Blogger.com has quickly become the free blogging platform of choice.  Google owns it (no surprise there).  Its free to sign up and start creating content that quickly gets indexed and viewed on the web. Want to be seen...put your content on blogger.  Stats: 20.1M people per month. Page Rank: 32

#3 Twitter - www.twitter.com


If you haven't heard of twitter then please continue to stay under that rock that you've been living under.  Yes, everyone uses twitter from politicians to pop stars and athletes.  For a low-cal diet of micro blogging and pointing people to more substantial content this is the place to be.  Stats: 26.5M people per month.  Page Rank 25.

#4 Wordpress.com - www.wordpress.com


This is a free blogging platform that is a favorite amongst the people.  Made for the people, by the people.  This opensource platform has tons of great functionality and content from the wordpress network of blogs is picked up all over the web from other sites such as google and facebook.  Stats: 188.6M people per month (across all published blogs). Page Rank 11.

#5 DIGG - www.digg.com


Digg is the social media and bookmarking site on the web. Its a great place to be seen and heard.  The site lets users share and promote content from anywhere on the web and google loves it...need I say more.  Stats: 28.2M people per month.  Page Rank: 53.

#6 Hubpages - www.hubpages.com


Hubpages is a leading online publishing platform with an active community and easy to use tools for content creation.  With an engaged and active community you have the opportunity to leverage this social media site to drive traffic and rank in search engines.  They also like to make it easy for you to monetize your content.  Stats: 13M people per month.  Page Rank 125.

#7 Squidoo - www.squidoo.com


Basically the same as Hubpages.  If your an expert then you can place your content HERE.  Squidoo lets you create a "lens" (there term for an article of piece of content) for the world to see.  They have a user friendly format for building a lens using different types of content such as text, video and graphics and pulling it all together.  And of course the more positive reviews you get the higher your rankings.  Stats: 10.2M people per month. Page Rank: 166.

#8 Zimbio - www.zimbio.com


Zimbio is one of the fastest growing online magazines and social media sites.  They boast over 18M readers per month.  The site tends to focus on the hyper-active pop culture segment which includes entertainment, style and current events.  However they do not limit their content to these categories and as a marketer you can submit your blog relative to your niche and they will include your content on their site, as long as it is good ;-) Stats: 18M people per month. Page Rank: 107.

#9 Wetpaint - www.wetpaint.com


Wetpaint is a fast growing social media site that promotes users, companies or anyone for that matter promote their brand by building community sites that are engaging and interactive.  You can set up a community and let the users post content to keep them coming back for more.  Stats: 6.4M people per month.  Page Rank: 1,329

#10 Propeller - www.propeller.com


Propeller is AOL's social media/news and bookmarking site.  Its very easy to submit your site or article and content ranks well in the search engines. Unfortunately their traffic has been declining.  Keep an eye on this one.  But for now it's a "must" use social media site for creating backlinks and SEM.  Stats: 500K people per month.  Page Rank: 3,533

I hope you like this list of sites to use as part of your online advertising strategy.  Now I have a special bonus for those of you that read this entire article.  You can get a FREE report on how to MONETIZE SOCIAL MEDIA .  This report was created by Perry Belcher who has been killing it in the social media space.  Enjoy....Ray