BroadVision Marketing Blog

Plenty of business people are not using LinkedIn to the best of their ability because they don't know how to make it work for them. LinkedIn reported that it has reached 135 million registered users as of November 3, 2011, up from 100 million the end of March 2011, consisting of people from more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Why are people flocking to LinkedIn?

Topics: marketing, San Francisco Bay Area, Petaluma, Lewis Howes, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, social media marketing, Branding, Marketing strategy, Leadership

 

This video is a few years old, but the basic ideas haven't changed. You can use Microsoft Office as your RSS Reader, but that's a different video.

This is short and silly. Enjoy and learn:

[kkytv id="0klgLsSxGsU" width="600" height="385"]

 

Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.

Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

Related articles

• Am I the Last One? RSS Feeds (elearningcentralia.wordpress.com)


• Information overload? - Use of RSS web readers as content filters (marketing.yell.com)

Topics: Using Different Media, San Francisco Bay Area, Petaluma California, News aggregator, Microsoft Office, Really Simple Syndication, RSS Feeds, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, LinkedIn, Business, Marketing strategy

Social media has come to mean an array of activities from your website to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and beyond. But the foundation of all social media is your website and your blog.

With the infinitely vast ways your website can stand out which you can do yourself or spend anywhere from a small amount of money to the big bucks, there is no excuse to not to have the best website you can afford. WordPress is the going concern for the bottom layer of the site. On top of a basic WordPress foundation, you can add different skins that will change the look without changing the computer language at the foundation.

Furthermore, when the foundation gets a makeover, you can safely download the new version without losing what is on the skin above. This way you can keep up with the latest and greatest improvements.

Topics: Using Different Media, Petaluma California, Web search engine, WordPress foundation, WordPress, Marketing in Petaluma CA, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

I thought I was finished with the idea of do it yourself social media work, but apparently I am not. There are some other things that you need to know to find yourself on the top page of many search engines.

Last week we totaled up the amount of time you could take doing social media marketing, without LinkedIn and some other places. We saw how you could spend over half of a 40-hour work week. If you were worth $30 an hour, it would have cost you $2888.00 a month to pay yourself. Your time and your worth are your value added when you do it yourself.

Topics: BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, social media marketing, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

I am going to go deep now into the world of Business Social Media Managing for those of you who want to do it yourself.

We have already decided that to write 3 business blogs a week will take approximately 6 hours of your time for a monthly total of 24 hours. Hypothetically speaking if your time is worth $30 an hour, blogging for yourself could cost you $720 a month.

Topics: Using Different Media, Pinterest, Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Realtors, Sun Tzu, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging

I am still on a kick about what it really costs to work on your social media marketing. We are assuming right here that you are going to do all the work on your social media yourself rather than have someone in your office or having an external marketing firm do this for you.

We have determined that writing your blog yourself, if you are worth $30 an hour, is going to cost you $720 a month with a time cost of around 24 hours.

Topics: marketing, Pinterest, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, social media marketing, Blogging, Twitter

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Being Social"] [/caption]

Do you see yourself as Mr. or Ms. Business Blogger, along the same lines as the  “Cherry Ames, Companion Nurse” stories by Helen Wells? Writing a business blog is a good step in the right direction, but if no one reads your blog, you have just wasted a lot of time.

How do you get that great article you wrote out there? Blogging and social networking are both parts of the same strategy. You have to go out and promote your blog by being social. There are many different ways you can use to get your word out. We are just going to look at four.

• Twitter is a quick way to let people know that you are in business and that you have a live website, as opposed to one that is static where nothing new is ever going on. You can tweet about your new post in such a way that people will be interested in reading about it. Remember that no one wants to be sold on social network. They do want to learn things and be entertained. If you are offering information, make that obvious in your tweet. Oh yes, it’s a good idea to put out around 10 tweets on various subjects a day and then spend some time actually on Twitter to show that you are a real person.

Topics: Using Different Media, Google, Corporate blog, Social network, Helen Wells, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Blogging, Twitter

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="350" caption="Image via CrunchBase"] [/caption]

What is the ultimate purpose of social media? You want to use it to get good solid leads that will convert into customers. Basically, social media tells you your leads are getting interested in you and your company.

You use social media as a business process, which means that you develop a process in writing that you follow and test regularly to hone it. The sales department and the marketing department, as two very different entities, need to sit down together and discuss what criteria a lead must meet before being passed from marketing to sales. Furthermore, marketing needs to follow-up after the lead is passed on in order to find out if the sale occurred. Also in order to keep the customer for life, the marketing department needs to stay in touch with the client for future sales.

Topics: marketing, Company, Squeeze page, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, Twitter

Guest blogger Judith Delaney, Social Media Strategy Coach and Service Partner with BroadVision Marketing

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Social media, a computer and more"] [/caption]

What is Social Media?

Some will answer immediately with “ Facebook”; others may throw in Twitter and YouTube.  The fact of the matter is today’s social media encompasses a broad sweep of online activities.  Oh to be sure they include Facebook and Twitter and YouTube; but social media is also email, employees, SaaS, LinkedIn, blogs, cloud computing, mobile tablets, natural disasters, board of directors, shareholders, e-discover, rating sites ( Klout), smart phones, etc. etc.

Topics: Social Media, LinkedIn

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Story Time"] [/caption]

Are you still worried about spending too much time writing your blog and not enough time doing your work? Not to worry, there are still some more good ideas around.

Let’s take a quick look at why you need some good ideas. First, there is the fact that you want to be consistent about publishing.  Your readers will quit coming to your site if you don’t put up work in a timely fashion. Whether you write three times a week or once a month, you need to be there when they come. People get very put out when they look up information and are sent to sites that haven’t been active for years.

Topics: WordPress, Arts, blog, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, Blogging, Twitter