InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Targeting 500 Million of Your Best Prospects – Best Practices for Facebook Advertising

Join Margie Schneider, VP Operations of TenGoldenRules.com, as she presents, “Targeting 500 Million of Your Best Prospects – Best Practices for Facebook Advertising”. This webinar will review best practices for advertising in Facebook using enhanced filtering. Learn how you can leverage the unique advertisement features Facebook offers to reach your desired audience.

This presentation will explain the following topics:

• How to Successfully Set Up Facebook Campaigns
• Proven Methods for Using Facebook Filters
• Advanced Campaign Filtering Strategies
• Best Practices for Testing Ads
• Tactics for Gaining "Likes" and Reaching "Friends"
• Understanding Facebook FBML Landing Pages vs Website Landing Pages

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, August 18, 2010 12:30pmEST – 1:30pmEST. To register and for more information please visit: Targeting 500 Million of Your Best Prospects – Best Practices for Facebook Advertising

Google’s Struggle With Social Networking

Once all a buzz, this week Google announced that Google Wave was no more. They no longer plan to develop it as a standalone product. It seemed as if Google Wave never really took off, as many people struggled to find meaningful ways to use it. I wonder if it is because many people use existing communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook, and Google Wave was just too much to integrate into people's lives. Also, it was exclusive at one point, and many people did not have access to it, which may have hurt the success of Wave as well. Google is continuing to work on launching a social product, although so far, they haven’t been very successful yet. Another Google product, Google Buzz, hasn’t gotten much traction either, even though it is integrated into Gmail - which many people use daily as their email client.

I personally use Google Buzz since I use Google Reader and like to share blog posts with my followers there, but only those who follow me on Google Buzz see it, which isn’t many. Because many of my friends use Facebook and Twitter, I see more response there when it comes to sharing news or interesting blog posts. Unless Google can find a way to integrate through Twitter and Facebook, it’s likely that they won’t see much success – unless they create something bigger and better than these two very popular social networking tools.

10 Powerful Social Media Tools to prepare for a job interview or sales call

Before you go to to your next job interview or sales call get prepared!



You can know an amazing amount about a company and the person you are meeting by spending about 15 minutes online searching. Here are some powerful tools to find out a lot of info about the company, and the person you are about to meet.

Oh, first a handy tip. Take screen shots (use the 'print screen' button on your keyboard to grab the images) as you do your research, copy these images into a PowerPoint presentation and keep it in a file you will take to the meeting. If the opportunity arises, share some of the knowledge you have about the company and show the person how diligent you were. You should keep personal and company information separate, many people would be surprised and possibly uncomfortable about how much you can dig up about them personally.

1. Get to know their website. A good place to find recent information is the News or Press Release tab and read recent newsletters stored on the website
2. Do a Google search for the company and the individual you are meeting
3. Google the company name plus 'reviews' and 'comments', print out any negative information you find, and if it is appropriate share this info. with the person you're meeting. They might not have Googled themselves and they might need an Online Reputation Management program.
4. Find the person you are meeting on LinkedIn. Do any of your friends know him or her? This is a great opportunity for your friend to put a good word in for you. Plus, knowing a bit about their history might keep you from putting your foot in your mouth like I once did. I met an executive at a packaged goods company and I went on and on about how much I knew about banking before I found out she worked in the banking industry for ten years - oops!
5. Check them out on Facebook. Does the company have a Facebook Fan Page?
6. Is the company and/or the individual active on Twitter? Are they current? Is there any news you can learn? What are they passionate about? Colleges? Sports? Volunteer Activities? What common interests do you share. Do a search.twitter.com for their name as well, what are other people tweeting about them and the company? Post a Tweet and ask if anyone at the company is listening to test if they're monitoring Social Media.
7. Check their Compete.com traffic, Google Page Rank, Alexa Score, SEMRush.com for number of SEO results, How many links do they have to to their site? SpyFu.com will tell you about their Pay Per Click advertising activity.
8. Check these scores for their competitors.
9. Are they blogging?
10. And perhaps my best tip, from my friend Harvey Mackay, download the Warm Call Center Toolbar, it is amazing what this tool will reveal about the company and the individual!

Good luck and please comment below:

- What tools do you use to prepare for an interview or a sales meeting?
- Did you try any of these ideas? What did you find out?

Good Luck crushing it in your next meeting!


Photo credit drewleavy flickr.com

American's Online Habbits

According to a recent Nielsen study, social media now consumes 23% of our time online. Tracking 200,000 American users from June 2009 – June 2010, time on social networks grew 43%! This now passes email usage which declined 28% for the year to 8.3% from 12% although it does still dominate on our mobile devices. PCWorld.com attributes the decline in Yahoo and Google to the fact that Facebook allows people to post direct links to articles or videos so people don’t have to search for them. According to PCWorld, the study also revealed that twice as many Americans over 50 visited social networks thank kids under 18.

Facebook Connection Targeting

Looking for a creative way to increase your conversion rate in your Facebook PPC campaigns? Here’s a quick tip on using the connections filter.

One of the three types of connections you can target is, “friends of people who are already fans”. As a result, the ad will show up with an endorsement from your friend, incredible right? You will not find a more powerful type of ad in Facebook’s arsenal. I’ve included an example of what the ad would look like below and yes I’m a fan of the Captain.

If you decide to try this type of ad let me know how your connection targeting goes.

Google Me vs. Facebook

The Internet is a buzz with a possible contender for Facebook. The 500,000,000 member social media empire is starting to hear footsteps and I for one am grabbing a front row seat for the fight.

Can Google even compete with Facebook? There first attempt at social media started with a huge buzz and then fizzled. I really wanted Buzz to hook me like Facebook did but after a couple of weeks I was bored. Will Google’s next attempt at social media be any better? If I was Google and I’m not, I would duplicate Facebook as close as possible. One of Facebook’s biggest problems has been privacy and Google is no stranger to privacy issues either. But if Google can hit the ground running and offer better privacy to their users then Facebook could lose some of its market.

I’m pulling for you Google, there needs to be more than one empire in the social media circle. At the very least, the competition between Google and Facebook will create new advances in social media which we haven’t even been able to dream up yet.

Twitter and Facebook - Now What?

Okay, despite my greatest effort to avoid the issue, too many people are focused on Twitter and Facebook. How can you use these tools to build a business? I'm here to tell you to calm down, take a deep breath, and realize that social networking can certainly help you with your online marketing but isn't all it's cracked up to be.

What do I mean? We'll if you are trying to earn a million bucks using social networking sites, then I'm here to tell you that you are going to be disappointed. Personally I think Facebook is a great tool for spreading the work and creating awareness. In fact, I recently spoke to an individual who heads up social marketing for a packaged goods company.

His company uses Facebook to create groups around product themes and launch events. For example, developing a video contest where people use his product and submit videos. By having a fan page, you can reach a large network of individuals and create something of interest. The tie back to product sales may be a little loose, but using Facebook to "spread the word" is really the essence of the social networking tool.

This is very similar to what Nike did years ago by giving athletes and jocks a free pair of Air Jordans. They were influencers and Nike understood that once an influencer puts something on, others want it. Think about Facebook this way and you should come up with some pretty innovative marketing ideas.

As far as Twitter is concerned, I'm at a loss. This is like Cirq De Soleil - taking the best part of the circus and making it the show. Twitter is the same - taking the best part of Facebook (updates) and building a site around it. If you're popular enough to have hundreds of followers, indirectly mention a website or product you're using and you'll drive traffic.

That's about the full extent of social media right now. If you have additional uses or successes, share them in the comments...

Facebook and Twitter... Reaching Your Audience

Today just about everyone is writing about Facebook and Twitter. I have to tell you... I'm a skeptic. It's not that I don't think that both are great for communicating, but just like Myspace, are they really all they're cracked up to be from a marketing perspective?

I recently spoke to a customer who said, "I love facebook... I spend about $5,000/month and pay only $0.50 per click." When I asked him how many sales he had generated, his answer was, "I don't know." Even though it was a single conversation, I have a feeling that many marketers who think that Facebook and Twitter are such good ways to promote themselves have little or no data to confirm their success. Or, as the example above shows, think success equals traffic.

To be successful with your online marketing, you need to find new sources of traffic - this is true. However, you must focus on the return of your investment. Are you advertising on Facebook? Using Twitter to build a list of followers? If you are, than ask yourself, is the return I'm getting greater than my investment in time and/or money?

My personal perspective, as I learn more about Facebook and Twitter is that it's great for sharing information about you, your products, and or services. However, if you want to sell directly, you'll be greatly disappointed.

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