Just recently Facebook gave the owners of Facebook Pages the ability to upgrade to the new format early. I recently had a few moments to play around with the new format and I think it is going to take a little getting used too but I think the new format could just be a welcomed change.

Here are some of my personal favorite features and benefits of the new Facebook Pages:

1. Use Facebook as a Page

This is just the best ever!!! (sounding like a little kid at Christmas) You now have the ability to use Facebook as a Page instead of your personal profile. This is great on so many different levels. At the top of the list is being able to exponentially explode your branding efforts for your company. You can visit other company pages and a make comments as your business which will help drive more traffic to your page as well as increase brand awareness. The second great part about this feature is that you can operate your page completely separate from your own personal profile. This makes life alot easier for those that manage several different pages.

2. Facebook Page Admin Page

As mentioned above, you can now operate your Facebook page as a separate entity from your personal profile. This also includes your very own Admin page that allows you to get updates on the other Facebook Pages that you “Like”! This means you can keep up with any pages that you are a fan of. The admin page also provides you with your Facebook Insights at a glance, making it easier to see just how your page is doing quickly.

3. Facebook Page New Layout

Facebook has now taken the Pages and given them the same layout as a personal profile. This is going to help with the interactivity of your Facebook page. This is because all links are in the same location they would be on a personal profile. Making ths business pages look like personal profiles will make people visiting your pages much more comfortable and thus encourage them to interact with your company or brand just as they would with one of their friends and/or family members.

These are just a few of the benefits of the new Facebook Pages. There are, of course more to be found! As I continue to test new strategies and methods I will share my findings. Facebook has changed the way that these pages work over the last few weeks. At first, I was extremely disappointed with the removal of the “Suggest To Friends” functionality but now with the ability to use Facebook as a Page, this will definitely replace that.

Overall, I am very optimistic about the new changes to Facebook Pages. It is going to take a little getting used too but in the end I can see these changes being very useful for any business that is wanting to use Facebook as a vehicle in their marketing efforts.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Who else has Internet ADD?

I do… I do!!!!

How many times have you sat down to do some work and ended browsing the internet? Next thing you know, you are looking for something completely unrelated to what you were supposed to be doing.

It happens to a lot of people. There are so many distractions that can get in the way of us being as productive as we can be.  The phone ringing, the television blaring in the background, the kids fighting in the next room and etc. It is extremely difficult to just sit down and concentrate on working on a project for a set amount of time.

Introducing “The Action Machine“!!

This is an amazingly simple but effective piece of software created by Derek Franklin. The Action Machine is designed to help you stop procrastination, achieve goals, and get things done.

Pros:

Cost: The investment for The Action Machine is a paltry $47 as of the time of this review. It could go up at any time according to the creator’s website. My personal opinion is that any tool that can help me to stop procrastination, is a welcomed addition. The ability to get things done in a timely manner and help with achieving my goals is priceless. I personally have tried everything from checklists to using a calendar for reminders… NOTHING HAS WORKED! Until now!

Focus: After using this software for a week I can honestly say that the biggest benefit of using this software is accountability. The way the software works is by allowing you to set timers for the tasks that you want to get done over the course of a day. So when you set the timer you mentally realize that you have a set amount of time to get that particular task done within the time that you have allotted yourself. This will help to keep you on task and hopefully help you reign in the Internet ADD that you may be suffering from.

Increased Productivity: These benefits are mostly interconnected. Once you become focused on completing your tasks within the allotted time, you will then notice that you have more time to accomplish other things. Let’s face it, there are only 24 hours in a day. It is recommended that you get at least 8 hours of sleep per day. This leaves you with 16 hours in a day. If you were to write down every action you completed during those 16 hours you would be able to see exactly how much of that time is wasted on tasks that are helping you to achieve your goals. Using The Action Machine, you will be able to gain back those valuable lost minutes, hours and days.

Achieved Goals: What if you had a pressing project that was due in a short amount of time? You would probably need to make sure that you devoted the majority of your time to tasks that would help you to meet your deadline, right? Imagine if you had a piece of software to make sure that you stay on topic. The sense of urgency that The Action Machine gives you would help to ensure that you meet your deadlines.

Cons:

Scheduling: This is more of a feature request than a con for The Action Machine software. Mainly I wish that there was a way to setup my schedule and tasks for an entire week. This software is a tasks based program. Meaning you create tasks and determine the amount of time that you would require to get that task done. Personally, I would prefer to be able to sit down on a Sunday and plan out my entire week.

Customized Report: Let me clarify this for you… You see the software has a reporting function that summarizes all the tasks that you have done and presents it in a nice little tidy format so you can see what tasks you spent the most time on. This is a great function! The only problem I had is that I would like to customize the report to be able to either use it as a billing tool for clients or to break down the tasks into buckets or categories. This would be great way to know what areas I spend the most working in.

Summary:

I give my highest recommendation to this software. One of the pros that I didn’t mention above is the simplicity of The Action Machine. It is extremely easy to use and the installation was a snap! You really can’t go wrong with buy The Action Machine. It can be a great addition to your arsenal of tools.

Rating: 5/5

My suggestion to you is to take action right now! Go and grab this great little piece of software now!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Social Network Marketing is the easiest and fastest way to drive traffic to your site. Sounds like a pretty bold statement, right? Well in this article, we will be discovering why this statement is true. For the uninitiated, Social Network Marketing is the use of social networking sites to bring attention to your business. It uses the power of word-of-mouth and relationship building as the basis for driving traffic to your site. The two largest and best sites for driving free traffic to your site or business are Twitter and Facebook.

Two of the fastest growing social networking sites on the internet is called Facebook. This is a site where you can connect with old friends, network with new people, and overall just eavesdrop on the lives of the people in your network. The reason why I called out this site is due to it’s enormous growth over the past few years. Sites like these are always being created and as a result marketers are able to reach more people and in much faster way than before. Facebook is probably one of my favorite ways to market using Social Networking sites. this is because of the sheer amount of members it currently has. This is also due to the multitude of way that one can market to potential customers. These ways include paid advertising, Facebook pages, Facebook groups, and Facebook Events. In a later article, I will cover these in more detail but for now, these are the best ways I have found to really get the most out of Facebook for my marketing needs.

The other site I recommend is Twitter. Now there has been a lot of people jumping off the Twitter bandwagon as of late. In my honest opinion, I can definitely understand why. It is hard to really target your potential customers within Twitter. It is possible and with a little practice, you definitely use it to drive enormous amounts of traffic to your site. If used correctly it can be an excellent list building source. Some of the best ways to market in Twitter is through the use of ‘hash tags’ (#socialmarketing) which are basically used to call out trends. A trend is a topic or subject that is being discuss in Twitter. The use of a hash tag can really help in your marketing efforts if used the right way. Overall, it takes a little longer to really get to Twitter to become a huge source of free traffic, but it can be worth it in the end. As with anything, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained!”

There are a ton of other sites that could be used in your social network marketing strategy. These sites could include Myspace, LinkedIn, and others. All of these sites have their pros and cons. My advise to anyone thinking about using these sites is to first read the TOS that each site has. This will tell you what you are able to do and not do. This will ultimately make sure you stay out of hot water. Next I would suggest that you simply jump in with both feet and get started.

Finally, I would suggest using sites that can be used simultaneously when first starting out. A perfect example of this is Twitter and Facebook. When I say, using them simultaneously, i am referring to the ability to post to one site and have it show up on the other sites as well. If this ability is not available natively, I would suggest locating services that would help you accomplish this same thing.

Social network marketing is a strange beast. There isn’t really a right or a wrong way to do it. Most of what you learn will come through the School of Hard-Knocks. This is ultimately the best knowledge you can gain.

Popularity: 3% [?]

As most of you know, I have quite a few different businesses that I am involved in. They range from marketing all the way to services for high school student atheletes.

Elite Xposure is a company that was created to help local Las Vegas students to get exposure to college coaches. We are made up of a group of friends that saw a huge gap in the number of quality high school athletes that were making it into college. We decided that there had to be a way to help these young kids get the attention of college coaches without being the number one player in the country.

We developed a site in which we film the athletes in a personal one on one interview. We also film their games for them and use that footage to create a highlight reel that the college coaches can watch on the internet. There are also some great benefits to our service that the student receives as well.

We have just signed a new client who we think is going to have a great future. What increases his chances is that he is going to have more exposure. Meaning the more people that know he exists, the better his chances of going to the college of his choice.

If you have a son or daughter in the Las Vegas area and they are a high school student athlete, contact us to day so we can discuss the possiblities that become available when you use our service.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Just an update on our newest eCommerce site…

We launched this site on Aug. 24th and so far we have grossed over $500 in sales. This is way better than we had anticipated due to the stiff competition in this market. We are going to be launching a new promotion to see if we can get even more highly qualified and targeted traffic to this site. It will be hosted on Facebook, so it will be more viral in nature.

Stay tuned to this blog for more information coming soon!

If you would like to become a fan of Scented Bargains on Facebook then click the link below:
http://bit.ly/cQL05

This is an exciting time! We will be posting some of the ways that we were able to get a considerable amount of traffic from Google within a short amount of time!

Popularity: 3% [?]

The one true goal of an aspiring affiliate marketer is to find that one golden market that they can use to earn a big paycheck. Most people that are new to affiliate marketing think that there is some sort of magic formula to finding that golden market. The truth of the matter is that there isn’t a magic formula, it is just plain ole’ fashioned good marketing. These are marketing techniques that have stood the test of time and have continued to do so for a countless amount of years. There are some methods that have worked in the past and still work to this day in the online affiliate marketing arena. Armed with the 3 tips in this article, you will now be able to increase your affiliate sales and survive in the competitive world of affiliate marketing.

Are you ready for the 3 methods?

Here they are…

1. Unique Product Pages

Make sure that you are creating unique and useful pages for each of the products you are promoting. Don’t lump every product you are promoting onto one page. This will only make people click away from your page in a hurry. They get confused and the only thing they can do once they get confused it move on or hurry and click the back button.

If you really want to set yourself apart from the average affiliate marketer, you could even create a separate site for each product. There are many hosting services that offer reseller plans that you can use to host as many sites as the plan will allow.

When creating your sites or pages, make sure to always include product reviews, so that your visitors will know just what this product can do for them. It is advisable that you own the product before writing the product review so that you can give your own personal endorsement. You should also include testimonials from the product owner’s website to further add credibility to the product you are promoting. Make sure that you have the permission of the customers to use their names, photos and testimonials on your sites or pages.

2. Giveaway A FREE Reprot

To be a successful affiliate marketer, you should also have a free report to give to your visitors. Your visitors would get a helpful report that relates to your target market in exchange for their name and email address.

Then you would set up an autoresponder series that continues to provide quality content while still promoting your chose affiliate product. You should insert your affiliate link in these messages to ensure that you get credit for the sale. According to the research done, most sales are made by the 7th contact with a prospect. So make sure that you have at least 7 messages setup to automatically go out to your subscriber list.

When a visitor reaches your page or site, they can either buy or leave. By having a way to contact them you increase your chances of making a sale. Make sure your messages don’t sound too much like a sales pitch. Your messages to should key in on the specific reasons they would want to purchase the product.

Whatever you do don’t try to sell them on the features of the product. You focus your attention on the benefits they will experience by purchasing the product you are promoting. Using these benefits in the subject line will also increase the chances of your message being read. Keep in mind that since most ISP have SPAM filters, it is not a good idea to excessively use the word “free”. Your overall purpose is to convey to your list that they will missing something big if they don’t follow your advice and purchase the products and services your promote.

3. Generate Targeted Traffic

As an affiliate marketer, you don’t want to waste your time or money by writing articles, using pay per click, and etc. The best way to avoid this is by generating targeted traffic to your sites and pages. If you send a visitor who isn’t interested in your chosen market then they will be one of the people who will leave your site never to return. This would be an absolute waste of all the hard work that you put into getting them to the site in the first place. Writing articles is one of the best ways to get that targeted traffic you want. Once you have written an article you can then search for ezines, newsletters, and etc. to get them publish.

Writing at least 2 articles a week will help you generate as much as 100 visitors a day to your site or page. On average, 1 in 100 will purchase your product or service, so generating 1000 visitors a day could result in 10 sales a day!

The tips in this article are not hard to do. They do require you to roll up your sleeves, create an action plan and then implement that plan, but once you get going it the rewards will make it all worthwhile.

Go and get started now! Find a few different programs and use these tips on those programs. When you find a winner, start the process over and over again. One day you will look back at your path to becoming a successful affiliate marketer and realize that it wasn’t hard as you originally thought!

Popularity: 24% [?]