Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

One of the most popular questions I have been receiving this year from clients, colleagues and online friends (some of whom I met on social networks) has been Is Social Media A Fad?

I even had a discussion on this same subject at a non-business event a few months ago. One of the participants found out what I did for a living and we had a great discussion of social media, how it affects the way we do business and if it is here to stay.

As someone who has participated in social media and social networking online for the past fifteen years and recently taught a social networking teleseminar, I know that social media is not a fad. However, I can see why this question keeps coming up over and over again. Social media and social web sites have become the “it” things on line in the past 6-8 months, just like blogging did a few years ago. And because of their “it” status there have been many articles in mainstream publications about social media and how business owners use it for business development.

As a result of those articles, many people who have never used social media before decide to give social media a try. But since they are new to the social media scene, they are not sure how long social networking is going to stay around for. They do not want to spend their time on something that may just be a fad, so they are looking to make sure that social media and networking are here to stay.

And from what I have seen in my many years online, I can tell you that social media is here to stay. Social networking started as soon as people started using the Internet. I remember communicating on Bulletin Boards, then through mailing lists, then message boards. I started using social networking as soon as I got online. The very first social networking medium that I ran was a message board.

Since then I have joined and left countless mailing lists, message boards and social networking sites. While the media that I use changes with time (new networking sites, new mailing lists, etc), social networking stays. While we might not use the same social networking websites five or ten years from now, we will still be using social networking. Just like I used it fifteen years ago. And this is why social networking is not a fad and is here to stay.

More social networking articles:

- Getting Results From Social Media Sites

- What To Do With Your Social Networking Traffic

Biana Babinsky

P.S. What do you think? How do you use social networking?

I am sure that by now you have heard about social media and social media sites. Lots of people are networking on them, talking about them and using them to promote their businesses.

Because there is so much information about social media and social networking everywhere, I have been getting lots of questions about social networking from my clients, members of my mentoring program and web site visitors.

Everyone wants to know how to get results from social media web sites. And by saying results the majority of business owners mean “more clients”.

So how can you, a coach, consultant or other business professional, use social networking to get more clients for your business?

What you want to use to use social networking for is to meet and connect with your target market. Just like with any other marketing technique, you want to get your target market to know you, so that they can do business with you.

My recommendations for using social networking effectively are:

- As always, look for where your target market is and go ahead and meet it! There are tons of groups on many different networking sites, and you can start by participating in a few different groups that your target market frequents. Don’t join every single group that you see - there are thousands, if not millions of those, and you will never be able to use all of them.

Instead, find groups where your target market hangs out and networks. Increase your visibility by participating in the groups.

Everyone knows the leader, right? The best visibility comes when you are the leader of the group, so start your own group where your target can hang out and you can demonstrate your expertise!

- What’s the next step for your target market? What step should people in your target market take in order to get into your sphere of influence? They subscribe to your newsletter!

Make sure that you offer people plenty of opportunities to get on your list.

- Explore social networking sites and use the available resources. Different social networking web sites have different resources for you to use, and some are not so obvious. Some offer resources to post your upcoming events, post your articles and blog posts, etc. Use the available resources to get more visibility and exposure for your business.

I discussed many more ideas for using social networking to promote your business during the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar last month. You can get the audio recording of the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar at http://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Biana Babinsky

One of the most important things that you can do to make your business successful is to build your list. When you have a large list of potential clients, you are able to sell more products and get more one-on-one clients.

So, how do you start and build your list to get more clients? Here are some of my articles to help you do just that:

- How To Use A Newsletter To Get Clients, an overview for starting and publishing an effective newsletter.

- Two Things You MUST Do To Build Your List, many business owners overlook these two things and are not able to grow the list as much as they would like.

- How To Get More Web Site Visitors To Subscribe To Your Newsletter, turn MORE of your web site visitors into subscribers by using these tips.

- How To Grow Your List, an article on growing your list and getting more subscribers.

Biana Babinsky

About Biana: Biana is the online business expert, who teaches coaches, consultants and other business owners how to build a large newsletter list and use it to get MORE clients. Get her Grow Your List Home Study Course at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews for more information on building your list.

You may have noticed this phenomenon as well. Many years ago it happed to a client of mine. My client joined an online networking group to promote his expertise and get clients. This was a group frequented by his target market, so it was an ideal spot for him to network and promote his expertise and his business.

He jumped right in and was fairly active in this group from the very beginning. He posted messages every other day, answered questions and networked with many members. He really enjoyed talking about his subject matter and it showed through his messages as well. He became seen as an expert almost immediately and he became to reap rewards.

As a result of his actions, he started getting traffic from the group. Every week he would check his web site statistics and tell me that he was getting a nice amount of traffic. The traffic brought him sales as well - he did two consulting projects with people who met him through this group. He sold his e-books and got quite a few people from the group to attend his seminars.

But as more new clients and commitments came his way, he did not have time to participate as much. Some of the things he was doing had to be cut from his schedule, so he decided to cut back on his social networking. He started to participate less and less in the group.

After some time he reported that he was getting much less web site traffic from the group, now that he participated less. Once he stopped participating in the group, he stopped getting any traffic from it.

Things like that happen to business owners all the time. We get busier and stop participating in social networking groups, and stop getting the traffic from them as a result.

But there is a better way! You can continue to receive benefits from a social networking group, such as leads and sales, long after you stopped participating in those groups. To do that, you need to actively promote your newsletter while you are still a member of the group. That way, some of the members of the group will get on your list and you will be able to keep in touch with them long after you leave that group.

I still get sales from people who met me in groups that I haven’t been to in years. And one of my new one-on-one mentoring clients this year is someone I met in a group that was closed down four years ago. This person was on my list for many years, she has been to my teleseminars and now she is working with me one-on-one.

So if you want to keep in touch with people you meet through social networking for a long time, make sure you promote your newsletter! Promote it in your profile, link to it from your signature, post a link to it from your “About” page, etc. The more visible you make your newsletter, the more people will get on your list, and the more people you will be able to keep in touch with even if you stop using some social networking groups.

For more help with getting clients from social networking, join me for the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar at http://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Biana Babinsky

About Biana: Biana Babinsky is the online business expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other business owners how to use social networking to get clients. Join her for the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar to discover how to use social networking to get newsletter subscribers and clients for your business. You can learn more and register at http://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Yes, you read correctly. According to the article, Google to Connect Friends Across the Web, Google is working on a service that will let any web site become a social networking site. All you will have to do is embed some code into your web site, and your web site visitors will be able to connect and interact with each other.

Imagine having your web site visitors meet each other, interact, chat. What do you think?

Biana Babinsky

About Biana: Biana Babinsky is the online business coach who teaches her clients how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her online business mentoring program to discover how to use the Internet to get over 98% of your clients! Join now at http://www.MarketingSalad.com

Don’t forget to join me for FREE Avocado Consulting Affiliate Marketing Training tomorrow! It takes place tomorrow, Tuesday, May 6th at 5pm Eastern (NY) Time / 2pm Pacific (CA) Time. If you register, but are not able to attend, you will receive the audio recording of the call.

The call is free to attend but you need to be Avocado Consulting affiliate in order to join us. If you are not an affiliate yet, you can become an affiliate at
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

Once you become an affiliate you will receive information on how to attend the training.

Biana Babinsky

P.S. The call is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 6th. Make sure that you can join us on the call — register for the affiliate program now at

http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

Many years ago I was working on a web site project for a client. It was almost done, but there was an important part that I needed to completely finish the web site. The client needed a programming script for the web site. I wrote her a script that did everything but one thing that she needed.

It took me a long time to troubleshoot the script, but I still could not get that one thing to work. I really wanted to be done with the web site, so that I could move to the next project, but before I could be done, I needed the script to work. After spending another week on that script, I finally asked another web developer about the issue I was having. In about an hour I had a working script!

I was very excited, as the project was done! I billed the client, we checked and released the web site and I moved on to the next project.

As you can see, taking the next step is great and liberating. If you are stuck trying to figure something out and you can’t move on, here is what I recommend. Take some time and decide what this next step should be. Then, decide if you can take the step on your own, find an expert to ask questions about taking the step, or hire someone to help you with it.

For example, take a look at the next step that you should take in marketing your business. You may want to start a blog, but aren’t sure which software to use. Or, you may want to do article marketing, but aren’t sure how to get started. In this case the best way to take the next step is to find an expert who can answer your questions and recommend the best way to do that.

For the past few days I have been helping members of MarketingSalad.com, my online business mentoring program taking the next step to accomplish their goals. I am dedicating this week and next week to this task, so if you need help in finding the next step to take, come join us at http://www.MarketingSalad.com!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other online business owners how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her Online Business Mentoring Program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn how to market your business better online!

Do you need more clients for your business? Getting more clients is a goal of many business owners, but not all of them are able to bring more clients to their businesses. This is happening because many business owners are not using the right marketing techniques for getting clients.

Many business owners market randomly, instead of concentrating on effective marketing strategies that have been proven to be able to bring in clients over and over again. I recommend that you use these three marketing strategies in your marketing plan no matter which marketing techniques you use and no matter what kind of marketing you do. Doing this will result in more clients for your business…

Continue Reading 3 Keys For Getting More Clients

Many coaches, consultants and other service business owners spend a lot of time and effort on writing their articles. They create a nice introduction, include interesting content, and tie everything in the article together with a great conclusion. Once they have created the content, they think that their great article is done and start submitting it to article directories…

Continue Reading How To Get Results With Your Articles

Are you afraid to market your business because:

- You don’t think anyone will take your seriously?

- You don’t think that potential clients will ever pay your rates, even though your rates are reasonable?

- You are not confident about what you are offering and you think others can do it much better than you?

Continue Reading Become More Confident! Article