Promote Yourself with Squidoo

Sure you are on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace and Twitter but have you heard of Squidoo? Well – you should because Google loves Squidoo so you should come to love it too.

Squidoo is a very popular publishing platform and community designed for you to create text about your particular niche in the market. The text published on Squidoo are called “lenses”.

Basically, Squidoo lenses are pages that resemble more like advertising flyers which concentrate everything you know about a particular topic of interest. Squidoo snaps it all into focus – thus the name “lens”. Think of it like the “Red Bull” of the internet.

Publishing on Squidoo is very simple to do. It’s also fun but very powerful in the grand scheme of all things Google. This is a new way to share your opinions, interests, create and promote your online identity and mostly – your credibility. What’s even better about Squidoo is that it’s FREE. That’s right –you heard it – Free. You can also (and are even encouraged to) earn a royalty for charity or yourself.

So, Why Should You Build Squidoo Lenses?

A Squidoo lens is a great tool that can help you:

• Market your online business
• Brand yourself and your websites/blogs as authorities in your niche
• Build traffic to your websites, blogs, on line storefronts, and online auctions
• Build your subscriber list
• Sell more of your products
• Build lots of deep links to the inner pages or shopping pages of your websites
• Build resource pages on each topic that’s part of your main niche
• Dominate the search engine results for various keywords in your topic
• Squidoo lenses are indexed and ranked by Google very fast

The important part is to get started. You can always edit and change anything on your lens. Then, when it’s ready, publish it and show it off to your friends and colleagues.
Click to start your first lens!

Branding Your Business

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.” -Warren Buffett – Branding

Branding has evolved over the years and has now become a common term used in marketing. Branding is essentially burning your company name or slogan into the minds of potential customers. Branding, love it or hate it, it’s there and we have to deal with it.

Branding is, by far, the single most over-used and over-hyped business-related concept. You’re going to the trouble of branding your site, so make sure that it keeps that consistent look and feel throughout.

Your Brand is reflected through these elements:

• Your Business Name:

  A unique name for your company can and should be memorable, but a simple name that describes the value your business provides can be just as appealing.

• Your Logo:

  Every business should have a logo but logo is NOT by itself your brand. The logo triggers an emotion in a customer’s heart about your business. Something they remember you for. Want to get inspired? See here
  thousands of logos: http://www.logopond.com

• Your Business Cards:

  That is one tool in your marketing arsenal you  shouldn’t go without. Every small business owner should have business cards. This is your first impression to a potential client. Your business cards are regarded as most effective especially when they are CONSISTENT with you website. Here are some examples of the coolest cards ever:
  

  http://creativebits.org/cool_business_card_designs

• Your Website:

  If you understand the dynamics of the ever evolving business world, you recognize that not being on the web is pure suicide. In this modern day, your Website acts as your digital image, working 24×7 and no matter how
  simple or complex your site is, consumers expect for every professional business to have at least some level of existence on the Web. As a quick tip – testimonials can always aid in building the brand of your business on the web. To make your web presence known, fast connect with this company and you’ll be up and running in no time: http://www.designbysatori.com

• Your 30 Second Elevator Pitch:

  This short and focused answer to “So what do you do for a living?” question should combine your passion of a small business owner with the VALUE your business provides to customers in order to deliver a profound and convincing persuasion.

Building your brand into a brand leader isn’t easy. The key to building brand recognition is to laser beam your attention on that ONE thing, whether it is: quality, charisma, variety, expert opinion, or stellar customer service, and
build everything you do around that core mission. Stay away from clichés. They are death when it comes to branding.

Shorten Your Links

When promoting your site on Twitter you notice immediately that you are limited to 140 characters. If you can say everything you want using 140 characters – Congratulations! You don’t really need to read this.

But if you happen to have a very long URL for your web site (which I would not recommend unless they are main keywords for your website; and even in that case I would keep it to 2 or 3 words separated by a “dash”) I bet those 140 characters are not merely enough for a short and sweet message you want to put out there.

 
What about promoting a particular page from your site? I mean, look at this monster: “http://www.whateveryourbusinessnameisandacoupleofkeywords.com/products/go.php?r=31&i=l4?. That in itself eats up more than half your Twitter word allowance.

People will more readily click on your links if they aren’t long and scary. In fact they might find them quite cute…well – sometimes…

So what to do? Answer – shorten your URL link for your site. There are plenty of sites where you can do this at a drop of a hat.

Here are a few of them:

• http://www.trm.im
• http://www.Bit.ly
• http://www.Tinyurl.com
• http://www.u.nu

Using these sites will shorten your URL and improve your click rate; and that’s what you want, don’t you? Take every opportunity to grab attention and boost your presence on Social Media Sites. I highly recommend you use one of these services for all your digital marketing endeavors!

Visibility On FaceBook

That is a very large number. Are you on Facebook? How about your company? If not, you are missing a huge opportunity.

Here are 15 must do things to create front-row visibility in Facebook:

1. Create a profile (obviously) and update your status often.
2. Upload pictures & videos (try to keep it G rated) and add tags, comments and share if possible
3. Use the share button every so often
4. Write notes and or comment on your own or your friend’s Notes
5. Tag the people mentioned in those Notes
6. Comment on Notes as often as you can
7. Import your blog (if you have one) into Notes
8. Share links with posted items
9. Join Groups and Create Your Own Group
10. Upload pictures, videos and links to Groups
11. Write on “Discussion Boards” for Groups
12. Write on the Walls of Groups
13. Become fan of Facebook pages
14. Write on the wall of a Facebook fan
15. Install Facebook applications and Write Reviews about them