Pride Gift Giveaway
Happy Pride! It’s the last day of pride, so let’s keep it going! On June 25th I did live stream on my YouTube channel making some pride buttons and other UV resin rainbow crafts. I’d love if you took a look at that video, and even subscribe to my channel! I’ve been livestreaming for about a year now with the kind of stuff I used to write about here – crafts and manicures.
Read MoreA New Adventure in my Career
Since 2008, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in Performance Marketing at a variety of positions, and to work at home for most of those. I’ve been an affiliate manager and, for a time with FMTC, I was running all the sales, marketing, customer service, and social media. It’s been an exciting adventure, that’s for sure. For the last 18 months or so, I have been working on starting my own marketing agency, Blinkstar Media. The time has come, however, to put that on hold for awhile and start a new adventure working in direct marketing, going back to commuting to an office every day.
Read MoreFirst Foray into Striping Tape
An extensive search of my area and trips to 5 different beauty supply stores ended with my having to order nail striping tape on Amazon. Hence, it took awhile to get here, and then, since the instant motivation was gone, it’s taken me awhile to get around to using it. But now, I’m SO glad I have!
Read More3 Essentials to Effective Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is the new gold rush in the commercial world. And it’s not just big businesses that are whole-heartedly embracing online avenues, small businesses and even single-person entrepreneurs and freelancers now view the Internet as the de facto method for sales growth, exposure, and blog allegiance. Here are a few ground rules for responsible and effective Internet marketing:
Use affiliate marketing smartly.
Don’t litter your blog with hundreds of affiliate links and then get shocked when your readers are turned off. Pick and choose your affiliates carefully, as you would colleagues or partners in any kind of business environment. When you align yourself with an online merchant, you’re in a sense tying your reputation to theirs. If you’re against synthetic chemical-laden manufacturing, for example, and you’re considering affiliate links from companies who manufacture custom water bottles, make sure the company you endorse produces polycarbonate alternative bottles. The point is to make your links consistent, credible, and ethical. Nothing will destroy your credibility quicker than completely selling out your principles over a single affiliate.
Don’t be too repetitious.
Obviously, aggressive marketing requires certain levels of redundancy. How many times have you seen a company tweet the release of a new product a thousand different ways? Or send out multiple email newsletters in a single week? But don’t keep posting the exact same link to your Kickstarter page over and over again with no new information. This just makes you seem either desperate, dense, or dim-witted, depending on who your friends are. Always provide new information or a new context when reposting your own link.
Utilize several different platforms.
If you’re stuck on just Twitter or just Facebook you’re missing the point of social media. It’s not about one application, it’s about the totality of social media sites sharing, integrating and working together with powerful Internet tools like SEO. If you’re releasing a new project combine crowdfunding, viral video on YouTube, microblogging, podcasting, Fan Pages and whatever else you can think of. A successful Internet marketing campaign is rarely relegated to a single site. Diversify your portfolio, so to speak.
Do you consider yourself a self-promoter, a marketer, an advertiser? If the answer is yes, then you’ve probably dabbled in Internet marketing and will do so again in the future. Make sure you’re representing yourself and your brand effectively without being seen as distasteful, spammy, or tedious.
Read MoreHas Photo Sharing on Facebook Met its Match?
Photos are always an excellent way to attract more people to your personal website. Facebook has always been the best way to store your photos and share them with the people on your friend list. By sharing a glimpse into your personal life, your readers will associate a more human element with your website, blog, or company. Over the summer, Twitter unveiled a new photo sharing service that is set to rival Facebook’s dominance and make it easier to market your website.
Facebook has recently changed the privacy settings on how you can tag people and places when uploading a photo. The steps to posting a quality photo for your followers to see are more complex than they have been in the past making it a more selective way to share photos with friends and family.
Twitter’s ease of access and openness make it a simpler tool for people to share content quickly. Recently, bored New Yorkers stuck in their apartments due to Hurricane Irene used Twitter as an escape mechanism to deal with their boredom. As reported on Yahoo News, they posted pictures from the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” where the Statue of Liberty was destroyed by tidal waves.
If you are a marketer using an integrated social media campaign over several different platforms such as Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube; it has always been a struggle to seamlessly blend all of the social networks together. By posting a photo or video and sharing your location directly to Twitter, the need to market on other social media websites becomes less of an issue.
A couple of months ago, in order to share photos through Twitter, users had to use a third party service like Yfrog, Twitpic, or several other similar sites. Facebook had the advantage of offering a centralized photo sharing service that made it easy and convenient to store content. Now with a centralized gallery available on user’s profiles powered by Photobucket, pictures sent to these photo sharing websites are collected and stored in a gallery on Twitter profile pages.
Because tweets are searchable through Google, you can optimize your post with organic SEO keywords so it will appear higher in search results. Twitter’s new photo sharing service will soon be available on smartphones and will be easy for LG Android phone users to instantly upload a photo for their followers to see. This will give you the opportunity to perform important search engine marketing while at the grocery store checkout lane or out for a jog. You can easily attract new followers while away from your computer.
Facebook is still a great way to organize and store personal photos, but Twitter’s new photo gallery is an excellent way to make your content public as well.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 20: Fly, Fat A**, Fly (But not on Southwest)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
We’re a little late this week but got going relatively quick. We chat a bit about social media and taxes in this episode, and have a good time doing it. I think we were keeping Mike warm with our banter! The episode comes in at a chunky, too-fat-to-fly 32:30. In in this episode we discuss:
- Google Buzz is a Buzz Kill
- Audience Conference 2010 is now open for registration. This year’s theme is Comedy.
- Kevin Smith’s Social Media battle with Southwest Airlines
- SModcast – Listen to 107: Go F— Yourself, Southwest Airlines and 106: Thinicism
- YouTube Videos of Kevin’s Final Words
- Southwest Airline’s Blog: Not So Silent Bob and My Conversation with Kevin Smith
- Follow hashtag #noadtax on Twitter for updates on the fights against the advertising tax in multiple states
- More information on the tax issues going on in various states can be found at:
- Performance Marketing Association: California Affiliates – It’s Time To Get Involved
- PMA: Vermont Affiliates – Your Urgent Help is Needed
- PMA: You Can Help Fight the Advertising Tax
- Affiliate Advocacy: Tension Mounts in Maryland
- AA: Illinois Internet Sales Tax Bill Surfaces
- AA: Virginia Gains Momentum and Double Threat
- Stephanie Lichtenstein’s blog: Top Ten Things On My Mind This Month
- EDIT: The Sacramento and San Diego trips we talk about were canceled late tonight. The CA bill will be heard in the morning and we may make a trip on Monday for the house hearing. Stay tuned!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Or leave us a comment!
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