Internet Marketing For Small Business

I just found this Facebook marketing tips guru who actually has really smart and doable tips. Her name is Mari Smith, and if you subscribe to her emails, she will send you 7 easy marketing tips for Facebook. I am up to day 4 so far find them very worthwhile.

Tip #1 is all about setting up your profile page properly. Tip 2 is your profile pic, Tip 3 is about how to make your blog posts appear in your Notes section of your site automatically, and Tip 4 shows you some cool business applications or tools that you can use with Facebook.

Mari also has a Free Facebook Tips ebook  (and non-free social media classes and VP courses.)

Mari is also a Twitterer and posts her Facebook tips on Twitter too. You can see them all by using this Twitter Search Tool and querying Mari Smith and new #FBtip = Mari Smith’s #FBTips

Did you notice this  # sign in front of a word #FBtip  – it’s a hashtag. Learn  what are hashtags here.

Tags: hashtags, Mari Smith, Facebook tips, marketing with Facebook

Twitter was quickly adopted by kids to broadcast what you are doing. Adults quicky called it fritter. But surprisingly Twitter has grown quickly among lots of time-challenged adults who dig the micro-blog limit of 140 characters and it has quickly become a tool of choice for social networking geniuses and advocates like Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrarytv.com and Chris Brogan who writes about social networking business strategies.

So – the bottom line is Twitter is yet another tool you can use to build brand, fans, and community. The question is -

Should you Twitter?

I think if you have a business or are your own business, like many artists are, then yes, I think you should consider Twittering, or definitely know why you are not. And here’s why. This is where the new business is going – it’s going to the web and since this is how they play, then if you don’t want to be left behind, you might consider playing there too.

The good news is Twitter is easy, Twitter is quick, and that makes it a good place to start practicing this new “dialoguing” business that’s changing the rules and the game.

How to Twitter?

Twitter is touted as mini-blogging or micro-blogging. You are allowed only 140 characters to write a post so they are very short posts, kind of like a Facebook status. You can update often throughout the day, and let people know what you’re doing. You can update from the web, or by texting from your cell phone.

But there’s no sense in jumping on the Twitter bandwagon if you don’t really know why you are doing it. To that end, I found this great article which outlines a Twitter strategy for bands. It is super comprehensive and smart, and explains how to make Twitter a part of your branding and marketing plan. It’s written by Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity, a music PR firm, but this strategy will work for authors, artists, filmmakers, photographers, entrepreneurs or the self-employed too.

In the Musicians Twitter Roadmap article above, Ariel interviews Laura Fitton, who explains how to use Twitter to create a community and promote yourself even if you are new to “social networking.” They talk about how to sign up and set up your profile, create the right brand, linke to Your Mobile Phone, how to find friends and follow them, who to follow and more, in nice and easy to understand English.

What to Twitter?

There are lots of gurus out there telling people what to Twitter. The thing to remember is that Twittering isn’t about the direct sell, but about building relationships and trust. This is becoming more important as the consumer public is becoming more knowledgable and wary of the hard sell or scams, and also more apt to do a ton of research online before buying. There is a general trend toward more authenticity and transparency too – fans want to know you and hear your thoughts and opinions, not those that your PR person made up.

One way to build fans and friends is to join in on the conversation. Do a search on Twitter using this Twitter search tool for words like your name, your book titles, your genre or your topic of expertise – and you can reply to people using the @ sign. Add your two cents worth, or point out a link to that subject on your or someone else’s blog.

Use twemes.com or tweetchat.com and do a search for hashtags – those are like Technorati tags for Twitter. What are Hashtags you ask? Click on that link to find out.

How to find Twitter Friends.

Social networking is all about friends. The more you have the better. The article above explains how to find friends. A new tool launched just 3 weeks ago can also help.

Mr Tweet helps you find friends by analyzing your current network and suggesting new friends and members whose feeds may be of interest. Just follow Mr tweet then wait for a DM, or direct message from the service. I did, and just got myself a load of new friends to follow.

Automate Twitter
But just a bit. Die hard Twitter users and social networkers frown on automation because it’s the antithesis of the spirit, which is all about communication, dialogue and transparency.

But I think setting your Twitter posts to automatically update your Facebook status is fine. To do that go to your Facebook account and install the Twitter application. Then set it to allow status updates from Twitter. You can change this anytime.

I think sending Twitter updates to your MySpace page is also ok, especially if you are like me and don’t go there very often anymore. Twitter has created customizable “badges” which are widgets that you can embed onto your MySpace pages as well as onto other websites and blogs, which will show your latest tweets.

My fave Twitter friends

I like having “friends” who are really smart and passionate about their subjects, go deep into it, and have no trouble sharing what they know. When I pop onto twitter via the web, I am always guaranteed a link to a fascinating article, post or news item from Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, or Ken Nichols to name just a few.

They are also good examples of how to Tweet useful tweets. I really don’t care that you are eating breakfast, or are tired, or are going somewhere – unless I am stalking you. If I just admire you, I’d rather you spare me and just tell me what you learned when you got there.

Twittering isn’t for you if:

• your audience doesn’t use it
• you absolutely don’t have time
• you don’t care about listening
• you don’t like sharing

Should Screenwriters Twitter?

How serendipitous is this? My new Twitter friend Jill Golick whom I met via Ink Canada Facebook Edition just posted an article called Twitter and the Wired Writer. How did I find it? She Tweeted it.

More Tips on Twittering Real Good from some bright minds
Check back often as I will be updating this whenever I come across a great article.

• How To Use Twitter by Guy Kawasaki, the power entrepeneur, explains how he uses Twitter as a Twool. Excellent advice and some more great reasoning on why you should use Twitter as a marketing tool.
• Twitter Power Guide eBook. For the more advanced Twitter user familiar with Google Reader, RSS and Yahoo Pipes, this FREE ebook is just out from Christopher Penn – savvy marketer, blogger, podcaster and podcamp founder. Not to be missed.
• To get up to speed with Google reader, here’s my How To RSS guide with Google Reader.
• Darren Rouse of Problogger and Twitip writes his thoughts on the blogging VS Twitter debate, and how the two platforms compliment each other.

Last but not least Follow Me on Twitter

What about the importance of the MSN Search Engine? How important is that in our Search Engine Optimization program and for getting traffic to our site?

While Google is the undisputed king of the searches, the MSN Search Engine still gets 5-10%. Considering there are millions of searches performed, that’s a lot.

It reminds me of an early internet marketing tale where Disney scrapped a web site built in Flash because the plugin only had 93% penetration. “Why would I not want to sell to 7% of millions of people?” was the logic. That’s hard to argue with.

So, yes and abs0lutely. Do optimize for the MSN Search Engine. And here are a few tips on how to do that from my bud Frank Carr. Frank writes about internet marketing and how to Earn Online Cash - because he knows how.

• The MSN search engine likes clean HTML code – so try and be error free
• MSN still takes meta tags into account especially the Description tag.
• Use strong and bold tags for your keywords.
• MSN doesn’t like subdomains as much as the others, so Blogger blogs will have some trouble, but doesn’t mind hyphens in the domain names.
• MSN isn’t concerned with page rank or authority, so an inbound link is a link is a link. And you want links.

I’ve just summarized a few of the tips Frank writes about in his article. Read the complete article Earn Online Cash By Optimizing for MSN Search Engine for more details and tips on how to get more traffic from the MSN Search Engine.

Tags: MSN Search Engine, MSN Live Search, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, internet marketing for bands

The do not call cell list is a way to stop telemarketers from calling your cell phone, or any other phone lines you have.

[ UPDATE (Jan 2009) The Do not call list can actually make it worse! Read CBC article here  http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/01/23/donotcall.html ]

You can reduce your number of telemarketing calls by registering to the National Do ot Call List (DNCL.) It’s free to register, and you can sign up your :

• residential,
• wireless,
• fax or
• VoIP telephone number

You can also file a complaint about telemarketing calls.

Canada’s Do Not Call List can be found here.

Being on the list will not stop all the telemarketing calls. You will still be getting fromCanadian registered charities, political parties, and candidates that are still allowed to call for donations. However you can ask the telemarketer to put you on their internal do not call list – which every Canadian telemarketer is required to maintain.

You may still be getting calls from organizations conducting market research, surveys, or public opinion polls. These are also exempt and do not have to have an internal Do Not Call List. becuase they aren’t asking you to buy anything.

If you like getting calls from certain telemarketers, you may give them consent to call you, even if you are on the National Do Not Call List.

The National Do Not Call List was created in 2006 when the Federal government passed a law to enable Canadian consumers to reduce the number of unsolicited telemarketing calls they receive.

Please note there is a viral email that goes around saying you have to register by a certain date or you will get an onslaught of telephone calls. This is not true – and is a hoax. Learn more about it the Do Not Call Cell List hoax here, and also always check Snopes.com before passing any email forward. There’s a lot of baloney going around.

Tags: do not call cell list, do not call list, telemarketing rules, snopes, viral emails

Do you need a privacy policy for your web site? Maybe you’ve never thought of it?

Either way, it’s a good practice to have one on your web site. Especially if you are doing things like collecting addresses or using cookies. Google likes these too.

If writing a privacy policy makes you want to procrastinate by pulling out your eyelashes one by one, try this instant Privacy Policy generator.  

It takes the pain away and makes it easy.

Just copy and paste into your policy page.

[tags] privacy policy, privacy policy tool,  privacy policy tool,

When blogging, or using blogging software as your web site, you will have the option to organize your pages by categories, and by tags.

I was at first stumped by this prospect because man, there are so many topics when it comes to the Internet and web design. I scratched my head and experimented aimlessly until I came across WordPress expert Lorelle’s post on how best to use categories and tags on your blog.

She made it simple and I like it simple.

Lorelle said think of your categories as your “Table of Contents” and think of your tags as the “Index” in a factual book.

Bingo and beautiful. That’s something I can relate too and have lots of experience with.

You don’t want your category list to grow too large. In some WordPress themes like the Revolution theme, you have limited space for categories. So, label your categories with titles that suit a broad spectrum and range.

It’s different for tags, as normally you can have as many tags as you like, or at least more of them. With tags you can get into more detail. Pick tags that you are likely to use again.

Ariel Publicity has some great tips too on how to make sure you are tagging correctly to boost your brand in her super articles, books and blog posts. My favourite is…

“Always tag your handle (mine is CyberPR,) then you mark it with other tags – music NYC – and always tag WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE (Genres and other names of more famous artists)”

So to recap, in your tags always put:

• your band name – or company name – or brand name – or real name
• your location – because this is how people search
• your genre of music – or area of business or expertise – or style
• a description of your sound – or art that is suitable for that industry.

She says use tags consistently. That makes sense because if you are using tag clouds, the more you use a tag, the bigger that word appears in the cloud.

That is simple, non?

Tags: WordPress tags, WordPress categories, tags vs categories, Ariel Publicity, marketing for bands, Strange Duck Media, web design Newfoundland, Internet marketing for artists

Memorable business cards do help. My “Strange Duck Media” cards always illicit a response – usually “how cute” – which I am taking to be a positive reaction.

When I hand out a business card in a group exchange, I always notice that they stare at my card just a little bit longer, while others barely get a glance. They then look up from the card and stare at me – perhaps with just a bit more curiousity – and wonder who would choose such a company name for a company, and put Harpo glasses on a duck.

Well, I can answer who chose the name. I worked on the name with my sister, Helen Duma, a marketing guru (she used to be head of Alfred Sung marketing and discovered Monika Schnarre) – and that is precisely the reaction we were trying to get. I wanted to distinguish myself as the funny one full of funny ideas.

The why of it all is because I wanted to stick out from the crowd. Break from the pack. Be that nail that won’t hammer down. Fortunately, this is very easy to do in Canada, which for some reason lacks that extra oomph when it comes to marketing, self-promotion, and risk-taking. Well, especially in the field of business cards – which is still wide open.

And that’s how I became that Strange Duck. Odd bird. A Good Egg. I’m not sure why the English language is so bent on bird metaphors, but it is. We like our birds and fowl, and these expressions all means something that sticks out in a curious, but benign fashion.

Enough about me. Back to creating memorable business cards. Here are some ideas to try:

• Why not try a different card size? The standard is 31/2 x 2 inches. Go shorter and you instantly stand out. Don’t go wider, it doesn’t fit in wallets and people will get peeved.
• Same size but folded. This way you get twice the amount of space to write on.
• Try a different shape. You can round the corners. You can die cut the edges. I company that had the word Byte in it, had the card cut to look like a bite was taken out of the corner.
• You can get cards that are folded – that gives you more space.
• You can get cards that are perforated. They are bigger, like a postcard, but you can tear away a traditional business card from the body of the card. On the postcard part you can put a coupon for a discount, or an ad for an event, or a great photo that is memorable.
• Get moo.com cards. These are 2 sides cards that allow you to get different designs printed on your cards. That would surely impress in a crowd – each person you handed a card to would get a different design. Tell them to collect all five in the series.

More ideas for cards
Some marketers are advocating tools other than business cards. One career counselor I spoke with said if you are looking for a job, hand out “calling cards.” This is an old idea come around again. The counselor said going that extra mile to promote yourself is what counts, and to not be shy about your skills.

Be specific. Some experts advocate writing what you do on your cards goes a long way. Think about it this way – in a year when someone is cleaning out their desk and they see a card that says

Irene Duma
President
Strange Duck Media

It will mean nothing. Or they will wonder where they met the publisher of media for weird ducks.

But if I added

Irene Duma
President
Strange Duck Media
“funny videos that won’t put your clients to sleep.”

Well then, they might just put your card back in the pile. Or better- call for a video.

Your target demo
Always think of your target though when coming up with business cards. Is your card to impress clients? Of future bosses? Know this, and try to impress. People are judgmental – don’t turn off the person you are trying to impress. Once again, it’s all about research.

PS. Comedy helps. Don’t forget that “I write good. “
PSS. I got my cards from
MOO Business Cards – $21.99 for 50 unique, customized Business Cards, each one with a different design.

Tags: memorable business cards, marketing tips for small business

Hi friends, media peeps, small business owners, and starving artists. Here is an amazing list of over 400! tools for Photographers, Videobloggers, Podcasters & Musicians compiled over at Mashable.

Mashable, for those of you that don’t know, is a site dedicated to finding the scoop and the latest news on what’s happening in the world of social networks online – or in other words – what’s new for web sites and the Internet and ultimately we who use them. I know that’s simplistic, but as time goes on I see no need for differentiating web sites from social networks or 2.0 apps or other labels. It’s the way the web is growing.

But back to this amazing list. It has been compiled from previous posts written on Mashable and is a must see if you are a photographer, videoblogger, podcaster, musician, artist – or any other person who is producing your own media, or own publicity for that matter.

The list is lovingly divided up for Photography Gods, Video Gods, Musicians etc. I can spend weeks here exploring them all and probably will. Here are a few that are particularly calling out to me.

• MUSIC SHARING APPLICATIONS AND WIDGETS
• PHOTO PRINTING/BOOK CREATION
• STOCK PHOTOS
• VIDEO MASHUPS

Oh, but there’s a link to a whole new page that lists 33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online.

Gotta run.  Bob Wiseman is discussing his multi-media performance work at The Rock Can Roll Festival 4

There’s always something going on here in St. John’s.

Tags: tools for photographers, tools for videobloggers, tools for podcasters, tools for musicians, tools for bands, Bob Wiseman, Rock Can Roll Festival, list of tools, mashable 

As you know by now I love WordPress. It’s not just the best blogging tool but it also makes great websites for:

• filmmakers (PWK Productions, Down to the Dirt)
• authors Nino Ricci, James McCreath, Paul Quarrington, Moving stories Film Festival)
• and artists (Rachel Peters)
• NEW! videoblogging sites or web series (Funny hockey series, Ripper Hockey)

What I am wondering is why there aren’t more bands using WordPress to drive their web sites. Especially indie bands who are low on cash and can’t afford the fees to get their Flash-based web sites updated.

There are great WordPress Themes for bands here. Here’s a WordPress site I built for the Toronto Blues Band Porkbelly Futures.

When I go poking about different band sites, I keep seeing nicely designed sites that haven’t been updated in months. Their tour schedule is behind, there is no way to get updates either from RSS or email, and it looks deserted. What a waste.

In this day and age you can’t afford to do that. In the ever-changing landscape of the music industry, your relationship with your fans is what counts.

Now, I know how difficult it is to keep your site updated. I am guilty of this myself. But that’s why WordPress makes so much sense. Anyone in the band can update it even if you are a techno phobe. Best yet – you can do it from anywhere on the road as long as you are connected to the web. No fancy software programs necessary – just a browser and your Login password.

With the right plugins, you can even use your mobile phone to make updates. How? You can use for phone to send a message to Twitter and the Twitter for WordPress plugin will make it appear on your sidebar.

Here are more reasons why WordPress for Bands makes a lot of sense.

WordPress is cheap.
It’s way cheaper to set up a WordPress blog for bands than to set up a regular web site. I know start up bands don’t have much money – so don’t go throwing it all into a web site that looks good but never gets updated, or doesn’t serve your fans. Build a WordPress site – save the extra for some other promo work – like proper press kits, EPKs or even a publicist.

WordPress has lots of tools to help you build a loyal fanbase.
Here I go again talking about the great community of developers that build plugins for WordPress that really allow your site to work hard for you. You need to communicate with your fans, and you need them to engage with you. This builds loyalty.

WordPress is built on a MySql database, which means you will be able to do things you can’t do with a regular HTML site. Powerful useful things. Not to mention you can update the look of your site in the future very quickly, easily and economically, so it makes long-term sense too.

Your fans can interact with you – or at least your site.
Do a “From The Road” series and let your fans comment on your web site. Add a guestbook or WordPress forum plugin and let them go at it. Write special blog posts where you ask there opinion on which album cover they prefer.

Google loves Wordress
Google loves web sites that are updated frequently and that’s exactly what blogs are built for – frequent updates. They also publish RSS Feeds (read my cheat sheet on RSS) and ping google too whenever they are updated (you don’t really need to know what that means other than it is a good thing and WordPress does it automatically.) If you comment on another WordPress blog you may get some traffic back to your site, and possibly even a backlink. And Google loves backlinks.

Here are a few WordPress Plugins that make your blog a ridiculously wonderful band web site.

• Discography 0.1. Every band site has a discography page. This plugin makes it easy for bands to store and display information about their songs.
• Gig calendar. Makes it easy to manage and display a calendar of your gigs within WordPress. It’s meant to be as easy as possible for both the musician and the fan. It even manages venue data complete with mapping and ticket links. UPDATE Jan 09 – just got a comment from Dan – he’s updated his plugin and it’s now WordPress 2.7 compatible. Go crazy.
• GigPress. Easy to use, intuitive. And very pretty. Automatically posts to your sidebar, though I wish the sidebar link went to the main post rather than the venue web site. Your post may have more info on it, like time and address and ticket prices, than the venue’s page.
• Event Calendar is another plugin that you could use to display your Tour Schedule. They are set to release a big upgrade.
• The Upcoming plugin from Yoast.com works with Yahoo’s Upcoming web site.
• Get a Twitter account and add Twitter Tools to your blog. The plugin will post and archive your tweets – so you get 2-in-one PR and an easy way to update your blog. What to tweet? Thoughts from the road, from the studio, last minute gigs, chats with other musicians. You can also get widgets that will allow your tweets to appear on your MySpace and Facebook pages – so with one tweet you’ve updated several sites. Remember – you can do this from your mobile phone.
• The MySpace crossposter is another time saver. Any posts to your blog will be immediately crossposted to your MySpace page.
• Play your music on your blog – or your podcast – with Audio Plugin.
• Sell your SWAG with this shopping cart plugin.

Here are some cool WordPress premium themes that are easy to customize and image heavy, so will work well for a band site:

• StudioPress Church – That’s right, the Church theme is one of the coolest for a band web site. Think of it as the church of rock and roll. But most of these themes will make great wordpress sites. Formerly called Revolution themes, these designs are upgraded constantly and come with support if you buy. We can customize them for you too. You’ll want the Viva Thumbs plugin to make adding the home page thumbnails a snap (especially if you’re on the road, this will save hours of time, otherwise you have to fiddle with custom themes and photoshop resizing…)
• WordPress Remix – This was one of our favourite WordPress themes for corporate web sites, but with the recent upgrades there are some great looks for bands. Try home page style 4 or 5. Has integrated galleries and events pages.
• Tribal Music by Gorilla Themes will need some graphic work to swap your own logo and background into the design, but you will get a cool site with built in music player from Mixpod so that you can stream your music.

More Best WordPress Themes for bands here.

To build a custom site like this would normally cost many thousands of dollars. With WordPress, not so much.

Why don’t more bands use WordPress? Why? Why?

Tags: Internet Marketing For Bands, wordpress for bands, cheap web sites for bands, web sites for musicians

I love taking photos and while I certainly appreciate purism, I also love playing with Photoshop and “colouring” my photos. It’s more like painting, and you can really get some beautiful effects.

This is my favorite tutorial on how to paint your photographs with Photoshop – Blurbomat’s How to Turn an Ordinary Photo Into an Extraordinary Photo. Read more