PMI Online Business

Twitter is an extremely popular social networking site offering many benefits to entrepreneurs. It is an excellent way to expand your network, share news, announce promotions and identify trends. Because its interface is quite rudimentary, Twitter allows individuals to create new tools, or “apps,” to improve functionality. The list of these supplemental Twitter tools is ridiculously long, but here is a quick introduction to seven of the most helpful tools, as chosen by the experts at PMI Education.

1. Twitter Grader: Twitter Grader uses a detailed algorithm to grade your users on a scale of 1-100. This allows you to see how engaged the people are that you’re following and decide if you want to continue to do so.
2.  Friend or Follow: This helpful tool tracks your contacts so you can see who your friends, follows and fans are on Twitter. One main benefit is that it helps you see who is following you that you aren’t following and who you are following that isn’t following you.
3.  HootSuite: HootSuite is an account manager with an extremely user-friendly interface. It offers a host of functions, such as tweet scheduling, link tracking and account overview. It also allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts at the same time.
4.  TweetCube: This free file sharing service allows you to tweet large files to your followers, such as audio, images or video.
5.  TwInbox: Microsoft Outlook users will find TwInbox to be incredibly useful, because it allows you to manage your Twitter account directly from your Outlook interface.
6.  TweeTake: TweeTake allows you to backup your Twitter account in a safe place. This includes tweets, followers and your own follows.
7.  Twitt(url)y: This service tracks what topics people are tweeting and linking to. This is a great way to identify hot trends for blog entries and future tweets.

Digital products are goods or services that a customer receives directly on an electronic device such as an MP3 player or computer. Examples are software, e-books and games. In the last few years, digital products have grown from a tiny portion of the retail market into a major source of income for entrepreneurs. While physical products, such as fishing poles and iPods, can be an excellent source of income, digital products offer unique benefits. The experts from Professional Marketing International have compiled this list highlighting the advantages of digital products over physical products.

1. No shipping. Because digital products are downloaded directly to the customer’s computer, there’s no inventory and shipping to worry about. You can create one product and then sell it as many times as you like. This means that the warehouse and shipping issues related to many physical products will not be a concern for your business.
2. Minimal customer service. There will be occasional questions about downloading and file formats, but customer service for digital products is generally minimal. You won’t have to deal with product returns – if a customer is dissatisfied with your product, you just refund their money and you’re done with it.
3. The business runs itself. Unlike a brick and mortar store with closing hours, your online products will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This means that you can potentially make money while asleep or out of town on vacation.
4. Big profit margins. One of the biggest advantage of digital products is the profit margins are significantly higher than they are with physical products. With digital products it is much easier to reach profitability. And if your product doesn’t sell well, your losses are much smaller than with physical products, where you run the risk of being left with thousands of dollars of unsold inventory.

Because online business owners are presented with an array of online marketing options, they may wonder if offline marketing is worth their time. Television, radio and print ads often seem outdated when compared to their online counterparts, but a study by Forrester Research suggests offline marketing is effective and leads to significant online sales. The study revealed that nearly 40% of online users make a purchase after being influenced by an offline channel.

One reason for the sustained impact of offline marketing is the modern convergence of online and offline mediums. Did you know that more people listen to digital radio on their PCs and TVs than on an actual radio? In a similar trend, 20% of television viewers now watch their favorite shows on their PC. This synthesis of mediums suggests that marketing in the future will follow a corresponding model.

The Forrester data found that TV ads prompted more online company and product searches than any other offline mediums. This is not surprising – TV returns an average of over $4 sales for every $1 spent, a higher average ROI than any other offline medium. Even radio ads, the great-grandparent of modern advertising, were shown to be effective. One reason for this is that radio ads allow marketers to target local and national niche audiences.

According to the experts from PMI Education, the results from this study do nothing to diminish the impact of online advertising. Rather, it shows the importance of both online and offline mediums, suggesting that marketers should consider a synthesized advertising approach. As demonstrated by the growing amount of television viewed online, the convergence of the two will only spread in the future. To take advantage of this, marketers should consider strategies which utilize the strengths of both mediums.

Simply put, webmaster tools are a set of tools designed to assist site owners with the management and promotion of their site. These tools help you develop a sitemap, list external links, see what keyword searches lead to the site and track other site statistics. Two of the most common webmaster tool providers are Google and Bing. Both of these services are free and quite easy to use. Due to increasing competition, they have broadened their product selection and improved their performance.

Google webmaster tools have a solid reputation among website owners. They make is easy to track your site’s performance and searchability. By offering Google search-related information, these tools provide many benefits to entrepreneurs. Most importantly, you can find out what keywords are relevant to your site, which assists you in optimizing it for greater traffic. Check out the Google webmaster center here.

Bing launched its webmaster tools a little late in the game, but they offer a fine selection of functions. Like Google, the Bing tools allow you to add a site map. New features also include geographic targeting and top search queries. Bing’s tools make it possible to monitor multiple sites and can be an excellent choice for many site owners. Check out the Bing webmaster center here.

Webmaster tools are essential to efficiently running your site. The tool kits offered by Google and Bing are both provide excellent options. Professional Marketing International recommends you take the time to research these tool providers before you decide which is best for your site.

Facebook is a social media giant with over 400 million active users around the world, providing entrepreneurs with an unparalleled marketing platform. One of the most remarkable Facebook statistics is that more than 200 million users log on to the site on any given day. And each user clicks about ten pieces of content each month, meaning Facebook is generating millions of ad clicks every week. With this in mind, the internet gurus at Professional Marketing International have compiled these suggestions for tapping into the Facebook phenomenon.

 Accessing the Facebook Community

One of the quickest ways to access the Facebook community is to create a group or fan page for your business. Whether you offer products or services, you can customize your own page and begin gathering fans. This is an excellent way to spread the word about promotions, announce major events and maintain a relationship with your network. Because Facebook doesn’t allow entrepreneurs to market to groups and fan pages they didn’t create, this is by far the most effective way to get a direct link to a loyal community of fans. Creating a group or fan page is easy and Facebook provides instructions every step of the way.

Facebook group and fan pages provide entrepreneurs with amazing marketing opportunities that aren’t just limited to fans in a regional area. Consider this – each day more than 20 million Facebook users become fans of various pages. All told, Facebook pages have created more than 5 billion fans. This is an incredible opportunity to grow your network and introduce new contacts to your business!

Targeting Your Ads

In addition to your group and fan pages, you should consider Facebook’s PPC ad options. Despite its immense collection of users, Facebook offers incredibly accurate targeting tools to help you maximize your marketing success. A keyword box is provided where you can enter the words you’d like to target. Facebook will also suggest related keywords for you to use. These keyword suggestions often provide ideas you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

 The most important part of ad targeting comes with the ten elements Facebook provides you with to help you target your marketing: location, age, birthday, sex, education, workplace, relationship, interested in, languages and connections. A successfully targeted ad uses a combination of these elements, which is called “layering,” and utilizes maybe five or six of the targeting elements to narrow your ad to an accurate profile of who your customer is. Facebook’s easy-to-use interface allows you to experiment with these components until you find the most effective combination. For example, you could target your ad to men in California, between the ages of 18-24, who speak German, have a college degree and are interested in surfing. This flexibility helps you maximize your success and get the most out of Facebook’s marketing platform.

 As you go through the targeting process, Facebook provides you with an estimate of how many users would be reached. As your category selection narrows, the number of users goes down. A good number to shoot for with your first campaign is 65,000. In subsequent campaigns you can always expand or tighten that number. Facebook also provides you with data on those who clicked your advertisement, including what other kinds of advertisement they also clicked on. This information is extremely helpful as you optimize your ad in the future.

Landing Pages

Facebook allows your ads to direct users to any legitimate landing page you choose. Many entrepreneurs use a squeeze page that enables them to collect the user’s name and email address from the get-go. Just make sure that any promise made in your ad is delivered on your landing page. Facebook will check this and cancel any ad that they deem misleading.

 Another strategy that PMI Education consultants suggest is to link to a Facebook group or fan page for your business. This can be beneficial because some users are leery of leaving the Facebook site when they click on an ad. The disadvantage to this is that your group or fan page will still be a Facebook page with a lot of other ads and distractions. The user may even be intrigued by a competitor’s ad that they see on your own page. In this regard, using a landing page outside of Facebook may make some users a little uneasy, but it gives you more control and removes these distractions.

Conclusion

Facebook is a powerful marketing tool with incredible staying power. The current lack of advertiser competition provides entrepreneurs with amazing opportunities. By applying these strategies, you can effectively reach your target audience and drive major traffic to your website.