How to Get More, Quality Facebook Fans For Your Facebook Fan Page | THE NET-TECH REPORT

The Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza

Facebook has been making a lot of changes to their platform, adding more features and functionality, to the point where your company’s Facebook Fan Page is almost an entirely different website than your company’s main website.

If you haven’t done so already, creating a Facebook Fan Page for your business is a great way to build your brand, as well as drive traffic and awareness towards your website. It’s free to set up a Fan Page so other than “time”, there is no reason why you shouldn't set one up. To make it even easier, Facebook provides online “wizards” that will guide you in setting it up.

While it is true that the more fans that your Page has, the more traffic you can potentially drive towards your external website, it is the Quality of your fan base that will provide you with the best traffic to your website. The more targeted your fan base, the better the interaction you will have on you Fan Page. Here are five tactics you can use to attract more fans on your Facebook Page:

• Community Influencers – Facebook enables you to invite your friends and contacts to the Page. Don’t spam your contact list! Use this feature wisely – who are the influencers in your community? Identify some of these influential people and invite them to not only “like” your page, but to invite others they know, as well. You may be surprised at how quickly your fan base can grow, with just a few of these Community Influencers “spreading the word”.


• “Go Viral” - …by leveraging your presence on other websites. Do you use other social media platforms? Use your profiles in other social networking sites like Twitter or LinkedIn to talk about your Page. Use your blog or website to make those you interact with more aware of your page. It may sound simple, but 63% of business owners who have this ability, fail to use – consistency is key!


• Provide Regular Updates – every time you make a post you provide an opportunity for you community to get to know you, and to have the opportunity to interact with you – and that is the point, after all. You want to have people responding to your content, commenting on it / “talking” about it with you on the page, and sharing it with members of their communities.


• “Buy Your Friends” – well, not exactly…but Facebook currently has one of the best, most highly targeted advertising platforms of all of the social media platforms out there. Because Facebook asks a lot of detailed information when individual users set up their own profiles, you have the potential to target “who sees your ad” to those whom you feel are most likely to actually be interested in your ad. If you want to find people who play tennis and went to Rice University, and now live in the Northeastern United States – you can.


• Widgets and Buttons - Facebook provides widgets and buttons that you can use on all of your external websites…and you can provide them to people to include on their websites, as well. By getting permission to place your button or widget on other websites, you are increasing the probability that more people will find your page and experience the content. If they like the content, they will be likely to join your page, and might even tell others about it as well.

Social networking sites like Facebook are continuing to grow in reach and popularity – two important factors in growing your business. In my opinion, there are very few businesses who could not benefit from having a Facebook Fan Page, so start taking advantage of them today!

For more information, please visit Chris's TNNWC Bio.

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How to Get More, Quality Facebook Fans For Your Facebook Fan Page | THE NET-TECH REPORT

THE NET-TECH REPORT: How To Write a Great Blog Post

The Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza

Last month I wrote about how to get great ideas for your blog posts.

Now that you're going to be blogging, and you've got some great ideas, you might be wondering how to go about actually crafting that incredibly captivating, Pulitzer Prize Winning blog post of yours! While it does take some practice and time for you to get a good feel for the sort of content your audience wants to read, don't wait! just keep it simple and keep these points in mind.

A great blog post must contain the content people want, and it should be written in the style in which your target audience want to read it. Your first job is to establish what the interesting topics are in your niche (see last month's article). You might already have a pretty good idea of what people enjoy, but if not go and do a little research. Visit other blogs which are similar to yours and identify the popular posts which get loads of comments. Aside from getting inspiration as to what people like to read, you should also get a feel for the structure of posts, their tone of voice, style and the sort of vocabulary they use.

Remember - blogs need to inform, but they should also be entertaining, so that your audience enjoys reading it. Sometimes, some of the best blog posts can even be on "random" topic...something that might have happened to you in real life, yet still relates to your topic (writing about a good / bad customer service encounter, for example). Writing about your own life or experiences makes the topic (and YOU) more approachable and readable; people love gossip and experiences. Let your personality shine through as much as you can. Make people feel like they "know" you – post pictures, videos, spontaneous thoughts about life, etc., and over time you will develop your own style.

Here are some top tips to keep in mind, when putting together your blog posts:

The title of your post is important. Ideally it should intrigue the reader and make them want to read your post. You can do this by making a controversial statement or simply by asking a question or making a thought-provoking statement – depending on the type of post it is you are making. For "bonus points" - include your keyword in the title of your blog post. This will help your content get ranked higher and provide a nice "back link" for your main site.

Keep your paragraphs short as people are generally put off by huge chunks of text. In our time-crunched society, people love to scan blocks of content, instead of savoring each bit of prose on the blog.

Use questions to engage the reader. By their very nature, questions force the reader to be more "active" with your content.

Add bullet points to highlight key information. These draw the readers' eye to your point, and make it easy for them to get the main idea of your discussion.

Add pictures and videos to keep people interested and to inject some personality into your blog post. Adding graphics makes the topic more engaging and gives the readers' minds something related to grab their attention, in case they start to wander.

Encourage readers to comment and give you their own thoughts. It's great to put your ideas out there, but the REAL value comes when you can start interacting with your audience.

Bottom line: Just do it! (Thanks, Nike) I've found that with blogging, there's never a perfect time to start, there's always another word or set of words to obsess over, and you are most likely your own worst critic.

For more information, please visit Chris's TNNWC Bio.

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THE NET-TECH REPORT: How To Write a Great Blog Post

THE NET-TECH REPORT: Affiliate Marketing for Business Owners

Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza

I speak with a lot of business owners who consider Affiliate Marketing as a way to grow their business. To be perfectly candid, most of them don't understand what they are asking.

Online Marketing in general, and Affiliate Marketing specifically, is a great way to increase your sales and market penetration. When business owners begin Affiliate Marketing, they should designate a person to manage this sales channel. An Affiliate Marketer is a person or company who markets your products or services, on your behalf, to their market. The Affiliate Marketer has already built up a relationship with people who know, like and trust them. Because of this, their market is more likely to "hear" the marketing message than if you approached this market directly.

Business owners implementing Affiliate Marketing will need define an affiliate program that will either pay the affiliate through a "pay-per-click" program (the affiliate receives money every time an advertisement is clicked) or a "pay-per-sale" program (the affiliate receives a commission every time an advertisement on their site generates an actual sale or subscription.)

Originally popularized by well known companies such as CDNOW or Amazon.com, affiliate marketing began just four years after the world wide web was launched. Google's Adsense is a very well known type of affiliate marketing, but is not really considered as true affiliate marketing as the adverts usually centers around the theme of the website they are displayed (known more as contextual advertising.) Most affiliate marketing programs will either use contextual advertising (this is where you see a hyperlinked word within an article you are reading) or banner ads. (Although in my experience, I see banner ads becoming less and less effective.) Overall, affiliate marketing is very cost-effective approach, and has the potential to generate good income for both parties.

So, what makes a successful Affiliate Marketing Program? Glad you asked...

Here are some things to keep in mind when putting together an Affiliate Marketing program for your company:

• Provide your affiliate partners with creative and promotional materials. It should be very EASY for them to market your products or services. The less work they have to do and the more money they can make, the more likely they are to promote the products or services.

• Don't try to sell everything to everyone. This is the quickest way to fail.

• Communicate with your affiliates by welcoming them to your affiliate program. Send out updates on products additions or changes. Give them tips and advise on how to be successful in marketing products. Consider setting a special support infrastructure that is only for your affiliates, (i.e., blog with updates, website with tools and supporting content, "leader board" showing who is producing the most sales, etc.)

• Always pay them on time and in full. They are building your revenue. Take care of them. Consider paying your affiliates once every two weeks instead of once a month.

• Don't relax just because you have a few affiliates who are heavily promoting your products and services, and making sales. They may decide to jump ship. Actively recruit new affiliates to grow this into a strong sales channel for your company.

Affiliate programs works best when affiliates choose products, services and companies that match the content of their web site and would interests their readers. The affiliate wins because they are able to sell things to their visitors without having to run an e-commerce business. The business owner wins because they get increased sales, and the web surfer wins because the affiliate web site directs them to things that they are interested in, which can be easily purchased.

Successful affiliate marketing program takes time to build, but with a bit of effort, it has the ability to increase the Internet sales noticeably.

For more information, please visit Chris's TNNW Bio.

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THE NET-TECH REPORT: Affiliate Marketing for Business Owners

NET-TECH REPORT: Planning and Marketing Your Small Business Blog

Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza

How To Plan Your Blog

The basics of blogging include simple things like your writing style, the topic category or “theme” of your blog, and the content of your blog. Planning your blog can be difficult if you do not know what you want to talk about. It will be even harder if you don't know how to write!

However, you can overcome these things quite easily with a little effort and creativity. Don't like writing? How about “speaking” into your computer using voice-activated software like Dragon Naturally Speaking? Not sure of the specific topic you'd like to focus on? Browse through Technorati or AllTop, find an area that interests you, and check out other blogs to see what other bloggers are saying.


Blogging Categories

Generally speaking, there are three types of blogs:

• organizational
• businesses
• personal blogs

Organizational blogs use blogs to communicate either externally with the public or internally within an organization. This kind of blog is designed to facilitate internal communications among employees, colleagues and other organizational personnel. Organizational blogs can publish information that is of interest by the public, i.e., seminar schedules, meetings, and announcements for their clients, customers or members, etc., but not always. One of my old employers, Sun Microsystems, was well-known for hosting hundreds of employee blogs (including the CEO) on their website, for anyone to see.

Business blogs are typically used for promotion purposes and are focused on sell more of their products or services to their customers. Companies will try to use these kinds of blogs to increase their reputation and authority with vendors, customers and partners. They do this by publishing content that expresses their expertise and knowledge within a specific market portion, niche or industry. If you make it “all about you” or continuously exhort readers to “buy my stuff,” it will back-fire and you could quickly loose your audience. Well done blogs, however, are great for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, as search engines tend to see business blogs as containing relevant and timely content.

Personal blogs are more reflective of the author's “non-professional” or personal life -- a distinction that continues to erode in our massively connected society. Normally, personal blogs are used to publish articles that voice the author's points of view on a variety of topics, events, articles, etc.. Bloggers who publish personal content usually do it because they enjoy expressing themselves and interacting with people about their daily lives. This type of writing tends to document their everyday lives. And the writing style is more stream of consciousness and reflects their moods.


Your Target Audience

Your target audience and blogging style go hand in hand. The moment you think of creating your own blog, you must first realize who your target audience is: What do they want? What do they care about? What problems do they have? Your blog should provide quality information and be interesting enough to establish communication and readership. Successfully identifying your target audience will help insure a good experience, for both for you and your readers.


Small Business Blog Marketing: What Does It Entail?

Blog marketing can be intimidating for anyone that has never even blogged before. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You have to update your blog on a regular basis in order to keep your readers happy. Doing so will keep them coming back for more and to see what you have new to say.

(Ask me how I know! ;) )

A small business blog will generally focus on things related to or about your business. It is definitely a great tool that you should use to get your business more recognition. It's not an overnight solution, however, and does require time and patience. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone is going to find it and read it. You are going to have to make it known. Although there might be good reasons to have your company blog elsewhere, most will reside on the company's primary website.

Your blog's success can be greatly enhanced by following a plan for your blog. It doesn't matter if you are selling a product or a service; a well-managed blog can be very beneficial to you business.

When you are marketing a blog, you can take an approach very similar to what you do with your website. Who is your target audience? What are the keywords you want to try and rank for? First write for your readers, and then write for the search engines. If a human being doesn't find your blog interesting, then (eventually) neither will the search engines.

If someone comments on your blog -- rejoice! And interact with them on the blog. Respond to the comment and engage in a dialog with your readers. This makes the content come alive and can take your original article in a whole new direction.

So how do you get it noticed by potential readers? Build links and get it listed in directories. Find other blogs or websites that interest you, contact the webmaster, and ask them for a link to your blog. Allow your audience to link to your blog. Comment on other people's blogs and use it as a link back to your site. (HINT: This is a GREAT way to build links and gain potential readership.)

Directories can be a big part of small business blogging. You can get your blog listed in some directories under various categories (NOTE: Some of these are free and some are paid. Check and see which will work better for your business.) Follow all of the application steps and submit your blog to relevant directories.

Small business blogging is not rocket science. Be persistent, and don't give up. Remember that you are not only sharing information that your audience wants to know, but that you're also sharing things that are of interest to you and that you care about. So don't forget to HAVE FUN with it! :)


For more information, please visit Chris' TNNW Bio.

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NET-TECH REPORT: Planning and Marketing Your Small Business Blog

NET-TECH REPORT: How To Plan Your Blog

Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza

Blogging is a great way to not only establish your credibility in a particular market, but also to connect and interact with your audience as well. But, as with most things, to be successful with it, you should have a planned approach to what and how you will blog. Generally speaking, there are three types of blog categories:

• organizational
• business-oriented
• personal blogs

The first category, organizational, uses the power of blogs to communicate either externally with the public or internally within their organizations. These blogs generally facilitate internal communications among various stakeholders (i.e. - employees, colleagues, etc.) Organizational blogs will typically also publish information that is of interest to the public, such as seminar schedules, meetings, announcements, etc.


Business-oriented blogs will typically promote a company's services or products, as a way of generating market interest to help increase sales and profits. Business blogs generally try to increase a company's reputation and authority within a market, by publishing content that shares expertise and knowledge of interest to a specific market portion, niche or industry.


Personal blogs are probably what most people are familiar with. In fact, almost all of the original blogs started out as personal blogs. People didn't quite understand how to leverage this tool to promote products and services. (It was a quaint, innocent time back then!) Typically, on a personal blog, the blogger will share his or her thoughts and opinions. One of the things that really distinguishes personal blogs from the other two types is that the blogger typically really enjoys sharing and documenting their everyday life, their stream of consciousness thoughts and even their hate for "...that @^%$#^ music those hooligan college kids are playing, while they are on my lawn!"


(I'm not kidding about that - Yikes!)



The Target Audience


To really be successful with your blog, however, you should understand who your target audience is. Knowing this will help you structure your content and craft your style. You should know what they want, need and desire to read about. The blog you create and the content you publish must provide quality and value to the readers in order to be effective in establishing communication and expanding your readership.


The type of blog you want to create essentially creates its own target audience. For instance, an organizational blog is meant for those who are members or clients of a certain organization. Although the target audience may be limited, as long as you keep developing good, quality content for your target audience, then in all likelihood, you will attract more readers. But be careful what you wish for! You still have to interact with your readers, or else they may go somewhere else. Over time, if you stick with your plan, you should see your readership grow.


If you identify your target audience successfully, you will be more successful in targeting the message you want to share, and with a readership of people who are really interested in your topic. Some of the greatest rewards of blogging come from interacting and gaining new insights with your blog's readers.


I hope this article gave you some good insight into how you should think about planning your blog. If you'd like more information, feel free to contact me directly at ckauza 'at' FettMarketing.com. Next month we'll talk about small business blogging.


For more information, please visit Chris' TNNW Bio.

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NET-TECH REPORT: How To Plan Your Blog