eMarketing

Over the past month or two I’ve become a student of social networking on the Internet with the goal of more effectively eMarketing my business. Last Friday I attended an excellent all-day conference sponsored by the Key Entrepreneurial Development Center. For the past two days I’ve been attending a virtual conference on eMarketing for publishers. I’ve read books, blogs, tweets, web sites, and more.

With all of this studying and research I would have expected to be an expert by now! That is hardly the case. I have researched so very many social networking sites, methods of eMarketing, and read so many opinions about what works and what doesn’t, that my head is about to split! The fact is that anyone serious about marketing products or services needs to use the Internet. The key is to use it effectively for reaching a specific target market. Having a good web site is a necessary start, but somehow people have to get excited enough to find the site. With so many techniques available, and with limited time and money, here are a few things that I have employed:

1. Constantly updating the content and improving my web sites for search engine optimization (SEO).

2. Twittering – I honestly don’t yet know if Twittering is worth the effort but time will tell.

3. Exploring and using Google tools. For those of you not familiar to the vast array of tools available, set up a Google account (it’s free) and explore.

4. Using LinkedIn. I’m finding this to be a valuable site – especially since it implemented groups a number of months ago. Each group has a forum and there are often great discussions.

5. I have a FaceBook account but have done nothing more than to create a profile.

6. Blogging.

7. Posted press releases to public relations sites. Within days of posting a free press release on www.pr.com I received orders for two lamps.

One of the keynote speakers at the eMarketing conference last Friday said that to be effective one needs to spend between two to four hours a day on-line! I’m beginning to believe he is correct.

Will Limkemann
www.siqualtd.com

So perhaps I’m a bit slow catching on to the nuances of social networking on the web. I’ve had a Linked In account for quite some time, I’ve registered on facebook, and began twittering about two weeks ago (already have 75 followers). But I’ve just barely begun to understand the potential of these tools.

Take Linked In. I have 188 connections and (as of yesterday) belong to 4 groups. I had not really understood the potential until a friend recommended registering with additional groups. I was astounded when I realized that there are thousands and thousands of groups. For example, a search using the key words “home business” lists 400 groups. There are 3,610 groups for sales, 806 for manufacturing, and 1452 for insurance. Any given group can have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of members

I guess it’s time to get a bit more aggressive in the social networking world.

Will Limkemann
www.siqualtd.com