The Internet is getting as real as it can get as more and more people jump onto the social bandwagon. In the past years we’ve seen a huge boom among people using the Internet to build relationships and make new connections. People today are more willing to build those relationships online than they have been in the past. Not only can this be used to help you connect with your target audience but it also lets them give you vital feedback too. People who use the Internet today want to feel as though their messages are being received and acknowledged – savvy marketers are finding ways to do just that with free tools like Hootsuite.

Try the Hootsuite social media management suite

Find platforms that are incredibly active

The blogosphere has become an intense social experience – so many small businesses are now starting to use social media. If you want to market effectively through social media, you need to find platforms that are incredibly active where you can connect with your target audience, and one such platform is the blog. Blogs are effective at increasing your ranking in the search engines, which in turn brings you more traffic, as well as helping you establish relationships with your audience through your posts.

Interaction on a blog tends to live and quite a social experience because readers can also express their views, turning blogs into a complex communication channel that can be utilized for an improved social media marketing strategy. To enhance the experience, you can link your blog to other social media platforms.

What social media sites matter most?

To start with, there isn’t much out there that’s better than Facebook for most industries. It’s a unique way to create a strong conversation with your prospects and customers by giving them what they want in the form of high quality content. It is a distinctive method for creating a meaningful conversation with your prospects and by providing them with the high quality material that they want.

Initiate a meaningful conversation with your customers

You need to focus on initiating a meaningful conversation with your customers and gives them what they want in terms of good quality content. It is an exceptional method for starting a lasting bond with your prospects and giving them what they desire via good content. In order to use the influence of social networks for marketing, you have to be there to connect with your fans and group members.

Social media marketing isn’t the only thing that you will need

Lastly, it is important for your business to realize that social media marketing is not the only thing that you will need. You have to utilize it along with other tools such as Twitter to tweet your blog posts and to get a button put up under each of your submissions so that they can be re-tweeted. There are tons of unique ways through which you can make the most out of social media marketing. You just have to be open to the right opportunities.

Anyone looking to build a successful online business for the long-term needs to invest in social media marketing in a big way. This type of marketing may be in its earlier stages but the evidence and growth that stems from it speaks for itself. If you want to create a successful online business of your own then you really can’t afford to miss out on the opportunities that are represented by social media?

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Our 68th podcast is an interview with Ed Dale, founder of the 30-Day Challenge. In this conversaton we talk about social media marketing opportunities, online reputation management and local search marketing.

Here’s the full Ed Dale interview transcript:

Ed Dale, Founder of the 30-Day Challenge

00:00 David Bain: I’m joined today by Ed Dale and Ed is a very successful internet marketer having already sold a portfolio of websites for several million dollars; and these days he is probably best-known for running the 30-Day Challenge, a high quality free introductory internet marketing course which has now been taken by over a hundred and fifty thousand people. Ed, many thanks indeed for joining me.

00:23 Ed Dale: My pleasure David.

00:24 DB: Could you perhaps begin by telling me a little a bit about your background and how you ended up getting into online marketing?

00:30 ED: Well, look, way back, last century… [chuckle] I had a very successful web development company which I ended up selling and that was certainly my first big break. And then… As you did… I actually came over to London and raised a whole lot of capital for an idea that we had and that all ended up pretty much in tears, great classic ‘.com’… we had a 150 people all over the place. And I suppose after that whole experience that left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, so I was thinking more on the lines of what can I do to help businesses knowing that I love marketing and so on. So I got involved, as sort of as an angel investor into different small businesses, coffee shops, soup businesses, a whole bunch of things. And that was great. But the trouble with small businesses is that they’re bit like the mafia in Godfather III. [chuckle] Every time you try to get out, they drag you back in. And so I was always just looking for what’s the best business opportunity out there, I was always interested and looking for it. And I went to a conference. I’d started learning how to do copywriting and I went to a Dan Kennedy retirement copywriting conference in Phoenix in Arizona, and ironical because, of course, he never did retire but anyway, but it was brilliant. It was a brilliant conference.

02:12 ED: And not only did I learn a lot about copywriting which I think is just one of the most important skills in business to have. More importantly, I actually met people there who were actually making money on the internet, selling real stuff to real people. My view at that time was that the only people who are making money selling stuff on the internet were people who were teaching people how to sell my stuff on the internet to other people and train them how to make money on the internet. And so I thought this is interesting so I’ll go home and try this. And it would be unfair me doing it because obviously I had a lot of the resources, so I got my sister-in-law and some friends and we thought, “Well let’s see if we can actually get real people to buy real stuff.” And the thing I did in hindsight which was a cool thing was that I decided that what we would do is we would have a very specific deadline and the… If it works that’ll be great and we’d have this little conference and we’d show friends and family and so on what we were up to and if it didn’t work, I suppose it’d be the shortest conference of all time, you know, “Thanks for coming, didn’t work. Yeah, stay safe on the roads.” And as it turned out, of course it did work and we did make a dollar and it was obvious that real people were starting to buy real stuff on the internet.

03:34 DB: So what year would this have been?

03:36 ED: No, no, no that was the… I suppose that was the key… Key understanding there that this was an… It had all the hallmarks of being the ultimate business because there was no stock, no silly teenagers. People actually read something that you wrote and pulled out their credit card over the other side of the world and paid you for, in those days e-books on different subjects.

04:04 DB: Yeah sure. No, sorry. I was just wondering what year approximately this would’ve been.

04:08 ED: Well, this is 2003, 2004.

04:12 DB: Right.

04:13 ED: Not that long to come into context of things but it seems like a lifetime ago now. And so, with that, that convinced me that that was… This was the business to get into and then we did.

04:27 DB: Okay, excellent. And with a lot of positive effects, obviously. And one of the things that I’m aware that you’re known for certainly is developing a big portfolio of websites. And would you say that… I mean, for instance, a lot of listeners to my podcast are actually marketing managers as well as business owners and that there are some people looking to earn maybe a part-time income, but a lot of people are working in perhaps a larger business. So would you say that building a portfolio of websites is a reasonable strategy for an existing brand, a bigger business as well to look at?

05:09 ED: Okay. Well, let’s look at the word portfolio for a second because for the longest time that was exactly how you would do things because traffic was super easy. You could pay Google 5 cents a click, you could throw up 30,000 key words in a day and was, it was all honey and manna from heaven, it was wonderful. Now you have to be a lot more sophisticated about it because traffic is hard and traffic is expensive. So it’s very important that you understand the strategy. I suppose to break down the various businesses, if you look at a lot of the people who are in a business and looking to promote their online business, do they have to promote online? Absolutely because, bluntly, bottom line they are promoting online whether they are actually doing it actively or not because your users, your clients, your customers are creating your online presence if you won’t.

06:04 ED: It’s amazing when I speak to companies about this stuff and I actually just show them, “Look, did you know you’re being reviewed?” Restaurants are used to getting reviewed. Hotels are used to getting reviewed. Nobody else is. Not dentists, not accountants, not lawyers, not graphic design firms. They’re not used to getting rated, but they are. Everybody’s getting rated. There are reviews everywhere. People comment about good and, more importantly, bad service all the time. And so, if the company is not creating a presence in having a strategy for their presence and their online reputation management which I think is one of the hugest big growth and crucial issues, it’s a big deal.

06:46 ED: The other side of it, of course, is on the traffic side. And, yeah, where are you in Google? Google is the new yellow pages. Google is the new who’s who. Where are you? Where do you exist? When somebody types in if you’re a dentist, when somebody types in “dentist London” where do you come up? Where are you? And, typically, a lot of these businesses… Because why would they know about SEO? Why should they know about SEO if they’re in the business of being dentists, not SEO experts? But, sadly, there’s a bunch of little, easy, simple things that you could get any sort of surly teenager to do, [chuckle] and you’ll be instantly that much better. Here in Australia, we have this horrific, and it’s particularly bad in Australia and in the UK as well, I might add, where savvy SEO-based directories are actually taking up most of the traffic for particular business search phrases. And then, of course, the grand irony is they effectively charge you for entry in their directories, or worse, send your traffic, traffic that should have been coming to you, to your competitors all for the lack of just the most basic of basic stuff, and this is not thousands of dollars of stuff, David, this is stuff that you can do. It takes you two hours max, totally free, as I say, any surly teenager who can pimp their MySpace page could do it.

08:18 DB: So you touched on reputation management there, is there a bigger danger for negative reviews out there about your business or someone perhaps getting a hold of their Facebook and Twitter account and doing things that they think are proactively promoting their business, but actually coming across as spamming? Well, what would you say is the biggest danger there?

08:41 ED: I think, without question, negative… Allowing negative reviews and comments and so on unchallenged. If they’re actually out there and actually have a Twitter account, they actually have a Facebook page and they’re trying, then that is… That is, let’s face it, much better than 95% of businesses are doing at the moment for all the heat and light about online which I would imagine less than 5% of businesses actually have some sort of proactive strategy.

09:15 DB: Right. You have to give it a go and then learn on the move then.

09:17 ED: Yeah, exactly. So it’s much better to be giving it a go and maybe making the occasional error than sticking your fingers in your ears and going, which is the typical response, “I’m not listening, I’m not listening, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Because they’ve got so much… And I can’t blame them for that. They’ve got so much on. Let’s face it, they’re just trying to deal with the global financial crisis and economies and all these sort of thing and they’re just trying to deal with the customers they have and you’re saying to me this is whole other layer I need to now understand? The way I… The analogy I give, David, is when I was renovating our house, I’m the least practical person you will ever meet in your life. So all I heard when the builders were talking to me was “Blah, blah, blah, blah, $2,000 extra. Blah, blah, blah, blah, three-week delay.” That’s all I heard, right? And this is effectively what’s happening with business owners. And ultimately it will… Typically it comes from pain, doesn’t it? And they’ll be such harsh and vicious reviews or more. Because think about it, it’s… I think of a whole bunch of sayings. The first one is, “People always slow down for a car accident, but never for the beautiful sunset.” “The market goes up by the stairs and down by the elevator shaft.” It is anytime they’re… If somebody had a bad experience with your business, they’re going to want to vent and they’re going to vent online.

10:49 ED: And, currently, we’ve got this huge social shift going on because typically, and obviously I’m massively stereotyping here, people believe what they read. We’ve grown up, most of us have grown up being in an environment where there were only four channels on TV and there were newspapers. And, typically, if somebody said something on the newspaper or on radio or on the television and it was fact, regardless if it was fact or not. And of course now, we’ve got a million publishers, even a billion publishers of information and, quite often, the stuff that’s published is trash and these reviews undeserved. But unanswered or uncombatted or at least try to listen to what the market is saying about your product or service and sticking your fingers in the ear and going, “I’m not listening, I’m not listening,” is not a strategy that’s going to get you much past March 2011 because it’s happening.

The 60th edition of our podcast brings you week #22 from the original 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan. This video talks about soacial media marketing strategy.

The recording is taken from our original 2007 seminar. At the time it sold for £399 as part of our 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan home study package. Now, for the first time we’re giving it away for free via our internet marketing podcast.

Why are we giving all this great video content away for free?

Although these videos still offer a lot of great tips, internet marketing methods change over time. We’re going to be launching a brand new version of the plan soon, and we’re sure that by sharing these original video recordings for free, you’ll be persuaded to jump on-board when the new paid-for version launches! Stay tuned to our newsletter to find out more.