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In This Intensive 1-Day Marketing Workshop David Carleton and Bill McRea Will Show You Exactly How To:

- How to Build a Strong Marketing Plan

- Promotional Strategies on Steroids – How to Drive Massive Amounts of Traffic to Your Business

- Killer Advertising Strategies That Get Results!

- Drive More Traffic, Get More Leads, Generate More Referrals and Increase Sales Using the Awesome Power of Social Media and Video Marketing

- How to Automate Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

- Simple Strategies Designed to Get Your Website Ready to Capture More Leads and Increase Sales

- How to Generate Massive Amounts of Traffic to Your Website

If you’re really serious about growing your business then you must attend this workshop.

http://www.SanDiegoLeadGenerationWorkshop.com

The Workshop will be held at:

San Diego North Chamber of Commerce
11650 Iberia Place #220
San Diego, CA 92128

To Register, Read Testimonials or See a Detailed Agenda Visit:
http://www.SanDiegoLeadGenerationWorkshop.com
Seating is limited so please register today

There are many strategies out there today on how to use social media marketing.  From driving more traffic to your website to engaging with friends, fans and followers.  Whatever your social media objectives are and whichever strategies you decide use, there are definitely some key aspects that can “make or break” your social media efforts. 

I call them the “ATES” of Successful Social Media Marketing and I have listed the best and worst of them below: 

The 4 Best ATES – Do These 

LocATE – The first thing any person or business needs to do when deciding on a social media strategy is decide who you are trying to communicate with.  Will it be more social or business oriented, male or female, young or old, etc.  From a purely business standpoint, deciding on your “target market” will point in the right direction on which social media sites to spend your time on. 

Once you decide that, you need to then try to find the right people, conversations and groups to engage.  For example, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all have internal search functions that can help you locate people with specific backgrounds, interests and even geographic locations. Once you find a person or group of interest, simply follow, connect or befriend them. 

ParticipATE – Making friends online is not much different than making them in person.  The more you put into any type of relationship, the more you’ll get out of it.  Translation…make sure you spend the time to nurture your “friendships.”  How?  Join in the conversation – give advice, feedback, useful information, answer and ask questions, re-tweet, give thumbs up, bookmark pages, leave comments on posts, etc.  These are not hard to do and don’t take a lot of time, but can really help you gain respect within your “community.” 

AllocATE – This really goes hand in hand with participation.  You need to allocate enough time to your social media effort in order for it to give you whatever results you are looking for.  Social media is a courtship not a “one-night stand.”  I know many people are concerned that it can take up too much time, but that can only happens if you let it. 

There are ways to systemize and automate the process but not the message.  There are ready available tools and applications that can help you and many of them are free.  These include such things as TweetLater, TweetDeck, Ping.fm, Friendfeed and many more.  You might also want to consider using Virtual Assitants (VAs) to manage some of your social media tasks.  Just remember, there is only one you and you should never outsource your own “voice.”  

IntegrATE – If you are going to use social media as part of your marketing, you need to be sure to integrate it into your overall marketing plan.  Social media should be in addition to, not instead of other forms of marketing.  Fast and easy ways to get started?  Place social site widgets on your blogs, websites and e-mail signatures.  Use Twitter as a way of answering consumer questions or Facebook as a way of announcing live events or webinars.  Uploading short videos to YouTube or staring a Blog are both things that you can do for free but can drive a ton of traffic to your business. 

The 4 Worst ATES – Don’t Do These 

DominATE  Social networking is not about being the life of the party and dominating the conversation.  Posting 50 tweets in 5 minutes to take up all the space on the screen to get noticed will certainly do so, but you’ll also loose followers.  Good friends listen to others and don’t dominate the conversation.  

AlienATE – Goes hand in hand with dominating the conversation.  In this case I am talking about social networkers that are only there to sell, sell, sell.  All their messages are “buy this me and you’ll get rich” oriented.  If every conversation you participate in is about you and what you have to sell, make no mistake, you will alienate your friends and lose followers.  Can you make posts and comments about your products and services?  Of course, just don’t make them the only thing you ever post and post them infrequently. 

ProcrastinATE - If you don’t have a social media marketing strategy, what are you waiting for.  Social media is NOT a fad and many of your competitors are already engaging with your customers and prospects.  You don’t have to be an expert to at least get started.  Sign up for a Twitter and Facebook account and observe what others are doing.  Get educated on the basics and progress from there.  You can get my free e-book “7 Steps to Social Media Success” to get you started. 

ComplicATE:  Some people get so overwhelmed with social media that they do nothing.  You talk to one person and they love Ning, Plaxo and StumbleUpon.  You talk to others and they swear by FastPitch, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Which are the best for you?  The ones where your potential clients, friends or fans with mutual interests hang out.  Go where your clients, customers and prospects are. 

It’s not about quantity so much as it is quality.  It’s better to really engage in a few strategic sites and do it well, than have dozens of sites and never engage in any. 

For more information on how you can integrate social media into your current marketing efforts go to http://www.streetsmartsalesandmarketing.com/SocialMedia.htm 

To Your Social Media Success,

Dave

With the advent of such websites as LinkedIn, Facebook,
MySpace, Twitter, etc. many are calling Web 2.0
the Social Media Revolution.  It’s time to demystify
social media marketing

Social Media Myth #1 – Social Sites Are Just For Teenagers

Nothing could be further from the truth.  While there are
some sites like MySpace and others that were originally
created to cater exclusively to teenagers, many of them
are now attracting older participants.

And although there are literally thousands of social
sites out there today, once you determine the goals
and objectives of your social media efforts, you’ll
be able to narrow down the list to a select few that
will concentrate on your target market.  

Social Media Myth #2 – Social Media is Just a Fad

When the Internet first arrived on the scene, it was all
about providing information and selling “stuff”.  And
while that is still a large part, Web 2.0 is all about
users interacting with each other and consumer generated
content.

When 6 out the top 10 websites in the world are social
sites and they are getting 1 billion visitors a month
and growing, I guarantee this is not a fad. This is
Web 2.0, the future!  And the best part is, that you
have the opportunity to learn about it and get involved
in it while it is still relatively new. 

Social Media Myth #3 – Social Strategies Are Just for Big Companies

The Internet is the great equalizer.  You are what your customers
and prospects see, hear and read on line.  If you make great products
or provide great services and you can reach the right audience
through a compelling social media strategy, then your company
will benefit with more exposure, higher brand awareness and of
course increased sales.

My advice is not to worry about what the big boys are doing,
do what you need to do to grow your business and believe me
you need to be doing social media marketing.  Social media is a
great “guerrilla marketing” tool that you can take advantage
of and start reaping the benefits from very quickly.

Social Media Myth #4 – Social Media Marketing Will Cost a Lot
of Money to Implement

The good news is that creating and implementing a social
media-marketing plan does not have to cost a lot of money.
As a matter of fact most social media websites cost nothing
to join.

Now don’t get me wrong, as with anything, you’ll certainly
have to devote an adequate amount of time and resources to
be effective, but in actual hard dollars and cents, your
investment can be quite minimal.

Social Media Myth #5 – Social Media Marketing is Primarily
Used for Finding Friends and Sharing Video and Photos

While YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and other similar sites are
indeed used to find friends and share experiences, photos
and videos, many savvy marketers are finding that they can
connect with groups, users, fans and enthusiasts.

How? By providing free information that members might find
useful or enhance their experiences.  These types of sites
should not be overlooked as a way to open 2-way dialogs
with your target market

Social Media Myth #6 – You Have to be a Marketing Whiz or Computer Geek to Effectively Use Social Media

Once again, not true.  If you can surf the Internet, buy a book
on Amazon and read blogs, you have the skills needed to benefit
from social media.  Frankly, the most important thing you need
to help your company get involved in social media marketing is
the desire to learn and the time to implement some very basic
ideas and strategies.

Now, are there more advanced features on some of these sites?
Sure, but even those can be applied by just asking current
users or reading instructions that many of the sites themselves
provide.  I’m telling you, this is not rocket science!

To learn more about social media marketing go to
http://www.IncreaseSalesWithSocialMedia.com

To Your Continued Success,

David Carleton