Social networking is a great way to connect with prospects and friends.  Over the past few months, there have been a lot of internet marketers advising that Facebook is a better advertising spot than Google.  When you must advertise, it is good to have choices where your ads will be targeted but has Facebook gone too far to serve up data for their advertisers?  It would appear so, if the US Federal Government has gotten involved.

In a nutshell, here is what has changed.  Previously, Facebook flushed personal information from their cache each 24-hours.  The privacy policy revision states that it will be held infinitely and that advertisers may use it for targeted promotions.  Many internet marketers have picked up on this nuance and developed products for sale to help people get more bang for their advertising buck. 

Although Facebook users have the privilege of opting out, the user interface is confusing and most folks don’t know where to look for the opt-out.  Heck, finding your public profile link can be an absolute chore!  I do understand the genesis of Facebook as being sort of an online yearbook for a university.  This may explain the unwieldiness of it  but it doesn’t forgive the fact that we should be able to easily locate all news and important links by visiting out own profiles.  In other words, the obligation to track changes to the privacy policy of any social networking site is not the user’s.

Many Facebook users won’t care one way or the other.  Still, there are those among us who don’t enjoy unsolicited advertisements.  I’m sure one.  When I logged into my account today, I found a dozen ads that were geo-targeted to my location.  Local shops, product providers, service providers, Realtors and bars.  I’d rather not be bombarded like that.  I looked for a method of opting out and I just couldn’t find it! 

Facebook is not wrong to sell advertising space.  Their on-screen real estate is valuable and they must fund the site support.  All things being equal, Facebook ads are less expensive than Google Adwords. 

The fact remains that nothing replaces good SEO with a solid keyword strategy.  In my online branding business, I never advocate that my clients use paid advertising.  I will provide some consulting services to help them learn the SEO ropes.  It isn’t a big secret or anything.  Most of the information someone needs to learn SEO is available online for free.  With interest, the ability to read, and the willingness to monitor results and experiment, perseverance will take your site where you’d like it to be.

If you are using Wordpress as a basis for your business website, you’ll expose yourself as a newbie, possibly open yourself to online security risks, and lose potential SEO benefits the software provides if you don’t take time to learn how it works. While it is true that installing Wordpress is simple, setting it up correctly contributes to your website’s success, which also has an impact on your business success.

We’re talking business here, right? I do acknowledge that there are many extremely successful bloggers who established blogs on free sites, like Blogger, before Wordpress came of age. These days, sites like that are most useful in your SEO linking strategy and should NOT be the base for your primary website. This is also true of Wordpress.com, another free blogging platform.

For starters, free blogging sites offer limited theme and plugin options. The most important for you to understand about them, however, is that they own your content and can arbitrarily take your website down at any time. While “free” may sound good to you, building SEO for a website is actual time spent, whether you outsource the work or not. Why in the world would you choose to invest that much energy on a domain and content that you do not have complete control over? It boggles my mind…

Although Wordpress is a one-click installation on most hosting accounts, choosing a good theme, customizing it, knowing how to configure the software correctly, and selecting the right plugins are not one-click solutions. Knowing what to look for is not intuitive if you don’t understand how Wordpress works.

So here you are. You have a great business idea and you know you need a website to make it happen.  Everyone is saying that Wordpress is what you should use too. You’ve found a lot of helpful and free articles on the internet explaining how to install and set it up so why would you want to hire someone to do this for you?

Based on stories I’ve heard from my clients and some of the projects that I’ve been asked to finish, I can think of several reasons. Primarily, they come under the heading of insufficient technical skills or a lack of understanding about how computers and database applications work. If you don’t understand the underlying technologies of your Wordpress software, you can get into trouble which can affect your business plans.

Other things that make it easy to spot a newbie include:

Lack of Focus
Have you ever visited a site with frequent and unrelated posts designed to bring in affiliate sales? Offering too many different things or choosing too broad a niche can make your website invisible. Up-front keyword research, to isolate low competition keywords with adequate search volumes, is essential to your website’s success, whether your products are affiliate offerings or your own content, like an eBook.

Having Too Many Pages
While every place you go on the internet is considered a web page, Wordpress uses the term pages differently. When I wind up at a site where the majority of the content is pages, I know that the site was created by an inexperienced Wordpress user. The beauty of Wordpress is that it notifies search engines automatically when post content is updated.

Default Installation Content on the Site
Another dead giveaway is seeing the default installation content, like the blogroll or the standard meta login. Worse yet is spotting the “Hello World” post or the default about page on the site.

Categories
Visiting a Wordpress site with nothing categorized is a tell-tale sign of a newbie blog. So far as I’m concerned, no content should exist in the “uncategorized” category.

Cross-Browser Inconsistencies
Although I’ve been tempted, I’ve never published a site with a “best viewed in …” message on it. Without inflaming the debate about which browser is better, and taking the high road, assume that you should not enforce the use of one browser over another. Over the past several years, I have learned that not all themes are created equal and solid CSS skills, as well as knowing what to look for in the theme, are necessary to resolve browser incompatibility.

After a free consultation, people often say that they can put up their own sites. After weeks of trying, some have come back to retain my Wordpress website development services.

Our blogs are intended to present us as professionals. The best advice that I can offer to you is that, if you are not technically adept, hire a professional who can deliver the website you want and help you learn what you need to know so you can build your online reputation and add value to your bottom line.

In my ongoing study of internet based businesses, I’ve subscribed to many newsletters and met online acquaintances through Skype. Occasionally, I will receive a Skype broadcast or email message inviting me to something like this:

Subject: Up to $15 per hour

This is something to get excited about! Here is a way that you can make $15.00 per HOUR by simply clicking on ads. I just did this tonight.

This is not your standard fly by night, run of the mill, surf site where your money gets tied up for weeks or even months so please hear me out and read this carefully.

I’m not excited. Are you?

I don’t mean to be disrespectful if this sort of offer is exciting to you, as each of us has different strengths and interests, but each time something like this is introduced, I wonder what would motivate someone to want to spend their time in this way. Equally pointless is taking online surveys “for cash.” These sorts of programs are aimless and, in my opinion, tend to stunt your creativity.

When I began my online journey and was more naive, I followed the recommendations of my “mentor” and tried ad surf sites. My takeaway from that short-lived cycle was that it was BORING! All of the ads seemed to make similar wild claims of instant riches without effort, suggested they were “the best ever” fill-in-the blank, and some even claimed to be the last stop in a quest to get income online. Pictures of fancy cars, palacial homes, and luxury vacations endeavored to lure in unsuspecting people who were trying to find a method to augment or replace income earned through traditional means.

The payoff at most ad surf sites is a point based compensation allowing the user to post their own ads at the same site which possibly will result to capturing a lead and/or new customer who might be surfing ads for similar reasons. Sadly, what passes for compelling landing page copy is nothing more than hype, in most cases.

An article posted today at the Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Interactive Advertising is down 5.3% from last year. The statistic is sourced from a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP study and includes both display ads and digital video advertising. However, when digital video advertising is separated into its own category it is on the rise by 38%.

In fairness and most likely, the drop in interactive ad agency revenue, which would be interesting to a firm like PricewaterhouseCoopers, has a lot to do with our ability to leverage free resources to get our marketing message out there. The risk of using free advertising sites is relevant to one’s niche and presentation skills, especially using video.

Although the Law of Attraction suggests that new business will find us if our intentions are clear, any business person will agree that advertising makes their business more visible. As business owners, we need to make wise choices, especially when it comes to advertising an marketing expenses.  If you are on a slim budget, putting your content up on YouTube fulfills the digital video marketing need.  The challenge is to get your video noticed, viewed, commented and recommended.  In a best case scenario, it will be interesting enough to go viral.

It is somewhat of a conundrum determining how to effectively advertise our business online and ways to make our advertisement stand out. Consumers don’t want to be “sold” anything and we are bombarded by advertisements everywhere we go so something about your video needs to be special enough to make it stick in the minds of your target market.

Using social networks give us a potential audience. However, making friends merely to push ads about your business idea can get you labeled as a spammer and your account could be shut down.Social Media Mavens, claiming to know the best ways to leverage those venues, have had their Facebook accounts shut down without notice, which must have been just a little embarrassing since this was their claim to fame.  Additionally, your new online friends will learn to ignore you if all you are doing is sending ads.  It is highly recommended that you develop relationships with your social networking connections and send advertisements to them ONLY if they express an interest in learning more about what you’re doing.

Print advertising can be expensive but it is a way to reach people who you may not encounter online.  Using free online advertising sources like Craig’s List is another way to get out your good news but there are  restrictions which you need to understand and comply with or you ad will be taken down at those sorts of sites too.

Having your own website, hosted on your own hosting account, is an essential tool for anyone in business. Up front evaluation of your niche and target market is necessary. People shop online first so knowing what your market is searching for is critical. If you aren’t good at copywriting, hire someone to do this for you so you have effective content on your page which will resonate with your market niche.

When you have your new website finished, don’t forget to use PRWeb to announce yourself and your business site to the world.  At no cost, you can notify a wider audience.  For a nominal fee, the reach becomes wider.  PRWeb ads convert to print advertising, in some cases and the wider the reach, the better are your chances to draw in suspects … er … prospects.

Among the circles that I frequent, there has been a lot of recent discussion about all of the internet marketing scams. Each of us have our own opinions about what constitutes a scam but one thing is certain, new internet marketers are easy prey for Internet Marketing Sharks.

As a Realtor®, I was acquainted with many sharks. Although I found them difficult to work with, I understood their bravado and learned a lot from observing them. Unlike Internet Marketers, all Realtors® are bound by similar ethical guidelines that are policed by regional and local boards. One of the first things that good Realtors® do when they connect with a potential buyer is to qualify them for their ability to purchase in the price range they wish to shop.

Internet marketing has no enforced guidelines or regulations and the ethical choices are left up to the marketer. Internet Marketers rarely, if ever, provide a phone number to call but a credible marketer will and, if it is there and the marketer is credible, it will lead to more than a recorded call from some opportunity meeting in the past.

When considering the Reverse Funnel System years ago, I decided to use Google to locate all the people promoting the product. I found a page with a phone number and called to ask how much one REALLY needed to invest in this system to obtain the fantastic earnings that were described on their page. Not surprisingly, the cash outlay was vastly understated, as well as the amount of time that it would take to be in profit. I will always be grateful to these Internet Marketers for their honesty.

It is up to the individual to perform due diligence for any purchase. Not everyone will persevere at this task for the amount of time it takes to gather all the facts about a product that has captured their interest. New internet marketers may not be savvy enough to read between the lines of the product or service claims. When I hear stories about new internet marketers who have over-extended their credit resources to purchase a program they could not afford, it is heart wrenching.

All too often, a website owner may have only recently stumbled upon the business opportunity and are using a replicated page to position themselves as experts in a field they know nothing about. Tiny print might include language that stipulates no earnings guarantees or cautions that income results from the testimonials are not typical. This is only good information if someone takes the time to read it.

Internet Marketers are taught that people are looking for solutions. As an authority in our niches, I feel it is important to be sincere about all our offers, regardless of the impact to our sales volumes. We know that most shoppers choose to buy on an emotional level and that our carefully crafted sales letters are specifically designed to overcome any objections. Some marketers circumvent rational judgment by imposing a fear of loss system to enforce immediate action on the part of the buyer. Sadly, as P.T. Barnum observed, there is a sucker born every minute. Even more tragic is the fact that some internet marketers will not stand behind their products or promises.

I sometimes pull pearls of wisdom from entertainment sources and confess to being an avid fan of Star Trek Next Generation so I hope you will appreciate what I feel is a relevant reference from that show. In one episode, Data criticized his captor by saying, “It is a pity that you have used your superior language skills for mere hucksterism and the advancement of your greed.”

There is a reason that people distrust internet marketers. Do your business practices support of debunk this point of view?

In uncertain economic times, such as we are currently experiencing, it is easy to fall prey to the media hype predicting futures of doom and gloom.  It is not that they are lying but rather that media newscasters have penchant for sensationalizing the facts.  It is their job to keep the news interesting and, of course, in their best interests to achieve high ratings.

Success can be measured by data but often the value of the data used can be skewed.  Statistics can be presented for any given goal.  For instance, tonight I was reviewing a link that a friend sent to me.  They had been researching the meaning of IQ measurements.  As I scanned down the page, the percentile rankings increased.  It made me smile when I noticed that 99.5% of all people have an IQ between 60 – 140.  Even though the percent of people in that group seems impressive, what does the statistic tell us?

When I first began working online, the commonly cited statistic for failure was 97%.  More recently, this statistic has been cited as being higher.  Internet marketers who used this statistic have repeatedly suggested that they have helpful information which would allow me to become a member of the smaller group … the successful group.  Yet, even in our industry, these statistics are being sensationalized.  Is the intention to attract people who are bound to succeed or determined to not fail?

There is nothing to fear by pursuing a career as an internet marketer but, on the other hand, there is no magic.  When someone promises you instant wealth without putting forth any effort or claims to have all the answers that will help you succeed, they are sensationalizing their offer.  Inexperienced or naive internet marketers may buy into this belief and spend money but, ultimately, they will learn that their personal success has EVERYTHING to do with their effort and intentions.  Internet marketing is a business.  If you want to be successful, you must do what it takes to create that success.  Whether you like it or not, this requires some work.

When you are considering an online opportunity, you must know your reasons for wanting to work in that environment.  It is not about the products, the compensation plan or the upline.  The single most important question to ask yourself is this:

Why do you want financial freedom?

The law of attraction suggests that you will attract that which you focus upon.  If your motives for wanting financial freedom are completely self-centered, it is highly likely that you will attract other self-centered individuals into your internet business.  When your goals are larger than what the money will do for you, you begin to attract people into your realm who are helpful and interested in building enduring relationships that will lead to lasting success online.