You would need to be living under a rock not to notice the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube icons everywhere. It seems like the whole world is jumping on the Social Media bandwagon and this is wonderful news if you are an entrepreneur! Social Media Marketing is the perfect platform for businesses that would like to market their products and services online.

Social Media Marketing is based on building connections and relationships with people who you resonate with. Then it can be used to market your products and services in a conversational way like we used to in times past when everyone gathered together on the front poach on Sunday afternoon to talk about their week.

The technical term is Word Of Mouth Marketing. Word of Mouth Marketing is the old fashion kind of marketing that has worked since the beginning of time. Studies show that this kind of marketing is 3 times more effective than other forms of marketing because people are jaded by traditional marketing. They believe less than 17% of the marketing messages they see but 78% of recommendations they get from their peers.

But STOP, before you get excited and just jump in and join all the social networks willy-nilly it is important that you do some research first. Each site will ask you to create a profile and you want to make sure that what you write will speak to the people in your target market. You want to attract those people who need and want your products and services.

Here are the 5 steps I take with all my clients to make sure we create profiles on the Social Media sites that do their job correctly.

Step 1 Decide – You need to decide who your Target Market is. This is one of the most important steps for any successful marketing plan but many entrepreneurs avoid it. Most marketing experts say it is impossible to market successfully to everyone. The sooner you narrow your focus and pick your specific target market the sooner you will see results.

Step 2 Discover – Discover the pain that keeps the people in your Target Market awake at night. What problems do they need solutions to? This step will help you decide what products and services you need to provide. This could also stop you from creating a product or service that your target market does not care about which could save you tons of time.

Step 3 Determine – What products and services do you offer that will be good solutions for the pain in your Target Markets? If you don’t have a product or service that will address this problem maybe you should consider creating one.

Step 4 Develop – Now it is time to create your Social Media Marketing Plan. Be as specific as possible. List the 3-4 social networks you will join, how much time you plan to spend joining the conversation and what kind of content you plan to submit. You also need to decide how you will measure your success.

Social Media is a long term marketing strategy so be prepared to stick to your plan for at least 3 months and then measure your results. Then you can decide if you will continue on your currant path or change directions.

Step 5 Do – The final step is to do your keyword research. Keywords are the glue that holds the Internet together so it is very important to have a clear picture of the exact words you need to use in your profiles and content sour sites y will be indexed by Google. Once you have your list of suitable words keep them by your computer and refer to them whenever you are writing anything for the Internet.

Lots of business owners skip this step because keyword research can be boring and it is somewhat of an art to do correctly. But if you take the time to do this step (or better yet hire an expert to do it for you) you will be rewarded with your site listings on the first page of Google!

I invite you to connect with me on my social networks by clicking on the Social Media icons over on the right of this page. A great place to learn more about Social Media Marketing is my Facebook Fanpage . You can also access it by clicking on the Fanpage box on the right. Here I post links and tips that will help you improve your Social Media Marketing Plan.  Also I welcome your comments so please feel free to write one below.

I just finished reading the book, Socialnomics about Social Media Marketing and in it Eric Qualman does an excellent job of explaining the fundamental changes in how conscious business owners communicate with their prospects and customers online.

The world is changing at a monumental speed and businesses who chose not to keep up will be left in the dust because the consumer is now in the drivers seat. They get to decide which marketing messages they want to listen too and they expect the opportunity to make their concerns know.

One of the best parts of the book are the Key Points sections at the end of each chapter. The author uses this section to summarize the important points of each chapter and this is a great place for me to go and get quick information points to use in my business.

If you are still not convinced that social media is something you need to invest in for the future of your business this is the book for you! It will definitely change your mind.

I just returned from The Radiant Success Event in Raleigh NC where I had the opportunity to learn from 5 incredibly successful entrepreneurs. Kathleen Gage, Denise Wakeman, Janis Pettit, Ellen Britt, and Marnie Pehrson were the main presenters and they each brought something totally different to the table. They were also transparent about what worked and what did not work in each of their own personal journeys to creating a successful online business.

They say one of the best ways to learn how to be successful is to surround yourself with people who have already achieved success in your niche. This weekend 70 entrepreneurs did just that as we all emersed ourselves in 2 full days of learning about the ins and outs of creating a successful online business.

Here are 5 tips I picked about how to create success in todays marketplace.

From Janis Pettit I learned how thinking small will hold you back. She called it the bottleneck syndrome where you imagine an hourglass shape is your business. At the top is where you are right now and at the bottom is where you want to be in the future. Between the 2 places is that narrow area you need to move through for success. And what usually holds you back in that area is fear. You need to let go of the fear for success.

Ellen Britt focused on the Zen of List building. She taught us that this is the lifeblood of our business. We need to be constantly building our list and then we needed to use a good autoresponder program to have consistent and quality contact with our list. Don’t worry about people who opt out of your list because you send them information. If they opt out that is a good thing because it means they are not your target market anyway.

Denise Wakeman rounded out the first day with how to use your Blog to create a 5 step system to leverage your expertise and attract more traffic and clients.  She showed us how to create content with our Blog and then re-purpose that content across other sites on the Internet for even more exposure. She also gave us an comprehensive list of ways to take one Blog post and syndicate it across the web.

Day 2 started off with a bang with Kathleen Gage’s presentation about how to build a sustainable business using continuity products and information products. She pointed out that everything begins with an idea and those that were successful were the people that had an idea and then took action. Kathleen also talked a lot about creating multiple steams of income so when a crisis such as 911 strikes you are not dependent on only one source of income.

Last but not least was Marnie Pehrson. She is the creator of the longest running Article Marketing site on the Internet and she showed us how to use articles to build our credibility and visibility online that will lead to more opportunities and clients. Her explanation of how to do keyword research was very informative especially since good keyword research is the cornerstone of success on the Internet. She also pointed out how dangerous it is to think or speak negatively.

There were many more golden nuggets of information over the course of the weekend! too many to count actually. I will most definitely be on board for Radiant Success Atlanta in May 2011.

This week  a very prominent Internet Marketer has  launched a product based on the business model of outsourcing all the work for $2.00 per hour and this has caused quite an uproar among the virtual community  here in North America.

Here is why, obviously you cannot get quality workers anywhere in North America to work for anything close to that.

At first I just laughed it off thinking who could possibly believe that but when I read a Blog Post by Erin Blaskie about it I realized I had to put my 2 cents in as well. Like her, I hate for people just starting out online to be misled.

I am sure if they were to think it through they would realize that you can’t get something for nothing or even almost nothing but many people who are just starting online right now are desperately looking for a way to make a living due to the recent upheaval in our economy.

First let me say I am not opposed to outsourcing.

I coach my clients all the time to outsource any and all jobs they are not good at or don’t have time for so they can get on with what they do best. I have found a wonderful graphic designer based in South America and she makes quite a bit more than $2.00 per hour!

Second I love the fact that the global economy and the Internet allows people in developing countries the opportunities to provide for themselves and their families in ways that were never before possible. To many of them $2.00 is a Godsend and I am thrilled they can now make those wages and better their living conditions.

But here is the rub; his recommendation is to outsource everything to $2.00/hour workers in third world countries so here is the problem with his plan.

It is misleading and unrealistic! It is just ridiculous to think that everything you need to create a successful and profitable online business can be outsourced for $2.00 per hour. Will it work for some of the tasks? Yes, but for many things it is just not possible.

Here is why…

1. The language barrier – English is the second language for all of these workers and while they know it well enough to pass a test for English they do not understand our nuances and idioms and that makes communication about concepts difficult and tedious.
2. Time Zone differences – Many of these workers are on the other side of the globe so when you are working they are sleeping. This makes most jobs take longer.
3. Reliability problems – Because you will be hiring the lowest paid workers in a culture they often take on more work than they can handle (for all the right reasons for them) so your jobs will take longer.
4. Consistency – If you hire a company that then provides a team of workers it is very difficult to get the same person twice if you find someone you like. That’s just not how they work. You get whoever is free when you need the job done so one time you may have someone who is great and the next time someone who is not so good.
5. Cultural differences – People from other cultures do not have a clue what goes on in the head of people in the western world (how could they?)So to think you could hire someone for $2.00 per hour to do anything related to copywriting or marketing is just ludicrous.

So how does it work for him? He has the money to go to a third world country and to meet the people he hires in person so he can develop a relationship with them first.  Then he sets up an office and hires a manager for his projects and then he recommends hiring people for a month at a time so then he may get the work done for an average of 2.00 per hour. But do people just starting out have that luxury? I doubt it!

People starting out online need to find the right person for each of their outsourcing jobs no matter where they live and they need to be prepared to pay a reasonable amount of money to get the job done right the first time. Sometimes paying more to get something done correctly and quickly is actually cheaper in the long run.

I will leave you with this because it just happened to me.

I just purchased a new Macbook Pro and the only reason I did it is because of support issues on my Dell. I purchased their extra support package but whenever I had a problem it took me forever on the phone. Their support center is based in India and when I called we had a terrible time understanding each other. Plus the problem went on for quite a while and every time I called I had to talk to a different person. I had to start at the beginning each time and no one told me the same thing twice.

The Apple support is based in the US so this will not be an issue in the future. Did I pay more for an Apple product? Yes I did but it was worth it to get the support I needed and in the long run it will most likely cost me less because my support issues will take less time.

If you know me very well you would know I just Love, Love, Love my iPhone! It is never far from my side in fact I have been know to fall asleep with it on my chest as I listen to Pandora radio. For those of you wives who have a husband that snores, that is the perfect way to get to sleep so you won’t lay there dreaming of putting a pillow over his face.

But back to my story about how my beloved iPhone has let me down. Over the weekend I decided to attend the Radiant Success Event in Raleigh NC! My good friend and mentor Kathleen Gage is a co-presenter and I am excited for the opportunity to get to meet her in person. I will also get to meet Denise Wakeman, Janis Pettit, Marnie Pehrson, and Ellen Britt and I can hardly wait!

The cool part about this trip is that my nephew, Walter is attending Wake Forest medical school which I was sure was some where near Raleigh NC so I pulled out my trusty iPhone, went to my maps app and typed in Wake Forest and guess what. He was only 15 miles away from Raleigh! His mom and my sister lives close by me here in TN so I rang her right up to see if she would like to drive over with me and visit her son while I went to the conference for 3 days in May?

This was the perfect plan (or so I thought). I would have someone to share the 10 hour drive with and get to see my favorite nephew, plus his mom would get to see him as well!

Sadly, she could not get away that weekend but she said I might still be able to get over to see my nephew anyway so I emailed him to see if I could spend the night there before the conference. He emails his mom confused wondering why I would want to stay  2 hours away from the conference,

So here is the part where my iPhone let me down. Who would ever think that Wake Forest Medical school in NC would not be in Wake Forest NC? It is actual in Winston- Salem which is 100 miles away. I am just glad I finally found out the truth because it would be sad to be circling Wake Forest NC looking for a medical school after driving 10 hours only to find out it was 100 miles back in the other direction and then have no hotel reservation.

Our technology is all wonderful and it is amazing what we can do with it but there are just sometimes when we need to talk to a real live person to get all the details.