The Cutting Edge of Online Marketing

By now, we all know the value of using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to generate leads and signups for our mailing lists as well as their well-documented place in the worlds of relationship-building and customer service.

On occasion, I am asked whether having a conventional website is even necessary anymore. We’ve all heard stories about the street vendors who use Twitter to update customers about their locations and small businesses who use Facebook to stay in touch with their customers.

There are even instances of B2B companies and consultants who conduct their business primarily on LinkedIn.

No one doubts the importance of Social Networking in your overall marketing plan, but there is a potential problem that you need to be aware of.

Social Networks are owned by private companies. Your presence on them is at the whim of their management. For a hint of the potential for a problem here, just ask anyone who has had their Facebook or Twitter account deleted by the service – often for trivial or frivolous reasons.

In most instances, a few days of wrangling with their support staff will get you back on, but in the case of Facebook, if your personal account gets flagged, all your business pages go with it.

That could be a problem for a business. If they have no website, they have no ready backup.

What if the Social Networks decide that they want to start charging fees for commercial accounts? What if those fees are exorbitant?

Or what if one of the networks you rely on suddenly becomes a LOT less popular (can anyone say MySpace?) Or goes out of business entirely? Not likely, but not out of the question either.

If you own your own website, you are independent of the whims, mistaken suspensions or deletions and uncertainty of reliance on a third-party for your Internet presence. Even if your hosting company suddenly went belly-up, you could easily find another.

What I am saying here is to be sure you have your bases covered. Use those Social Networks – after all, in addition to helping market your business, they are fun. But sure you have a backup plan. And that backup plan is owning your own website on your own domain.

This is just one of the subjects we will be covering in the Dominate Your Local Market Seminar at the Louisville Manufactured Housing Show. If you’re going to be in Louisville, stop by the seminar and then come my MHMSM.com’s booth #932 for answers to your specific questions.

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We are not going to re-iterate the importance of social networking to the future of your business here. I’d be happy to talk about that with you at MHMSM.com’s booth at the Louisville Manufactured Housing Show in January – or you can call me anytime at 859-544-9005.

Today’s post is about MHMSM.com’s Social Networking effort and how it can serve you, our loyal readers, whether you are a manufacturer, supplier, distributor, community owner, speaker, consultant or trainer.

Every featured article that we publish, every news item, every press release, every video, every classified ad and every job listing that is posted to MHMSM.com is also posted to our Twitter account and our Facebook Fan Page.

Every blog post to Tony’s Masthead, this blog, Tim Connor’s Words of Wisdom, the Industry Voices blog, Inspiration and Daily Business News are also posted to those social networking accounts.

Those posts to Twitter and Facebook often pop up near the top of Google searches for keywords found in those articles, items and posts.

What this means is that every time you publish an article on MHMSM.com or the Industry Voices blog, send us a news item, association news or events, press release or pretty much anything else we can publish, those items also end up on our Twitter page and Facebook Fan page.

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Right now, we have 496 Twitter followers and 31 Facebook fans, numbers that are increasing with each passing week. Visitors to our Facebook fan page often exceed the number of “likes” that have been officially tallied.

So just by submitting those articles, press releases, etc. to MHMSM.com and pacing it in front of our 102,000 pageviews for the first three weeks of November, you also get it in front of our Twitter followers and Facebook fans as well gaining the SEO that comes with them.

This is a “no-brainer”, folks. You know how important it is to get your company’s name and message out in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Remember that submitting to MHMSM.com is an easy way to get several kinds of exposure with one simple action.

“Social networking is that rare sector of the economy that seems to be booming in the midst of the recession.” ~ from Knowledge@Wharton article

With Thanksgiving Day just around the corner, a little reflection on the little and unnoticed things we have to be thankful for is a great way to spend a few minutes – or the rest of our life.

Counting our blessings and expressing gratitude for the many gifts that are bestowed upon us daily helps us put life’s troubles in perspective and realize the future is bright for each and every one of us if we allow it to happen and don’t waste energy resisting the inevitable changes to come.

From my perspective as the tech guy, I look at all the advancements made over the past few years that will allow us to do more business with less effort as the economy and out industry bounce back.

In the Masthead blog today, Editor L.A. ‘Tony’ Kovach writes about Kitchen Utensils plus What’s New for Manufactured and Modular Housing and how old habits ned to change to move forward once again.

Maintaining old habits is a form of resistance to change, but old habits cannot be broken as Tony illustrates. They CAN be overridden with a new habit and that is the goal that we must aspire to.

It takes effort – conscious effort – to override a habit. Constant vigilance is the only way of assuring that the old habit doesn’t resurface and become dominant yet again.

Resolve now to make the effort to build the new habits required by the new world we are entering. Resolve now to stop wasting energy resisting change that must come of we are to succeed in the global economy. Resolve now to make the changes that are necessary if we are to be the major housing player in the new marketplace instead of an afterthought.

But some old habits, approached with new resolve can be very good for us. Take, for instance, the reemergence of the Louisville Manufactured Housing Show and the Pennsyvania Manufactured Housing Association’s HomExpo 2011.

These shows are a return to the root of the industry’s more glorious past and can prove a stepping-stone to a more prosperous future – IF we take advantage of them and ensure their success with our participation.

So while you’re counting your blessings, express a little gratitude for the hard work that went into bringing these two shows – and others like them – back to life. And if at all possible, make the commitment to support them by your attendance. Yes, some old friends are no longer with us, but these two shows present a golden opportunity for the survivors to network with the survivors and jump start the process of rebuilding your business.

When you are gathered around the table this Thanksgiving, give a little thought to wonderful industry you are a part of – the one that can be a shining star in the constellation of affordable housing in our country and around the world.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones.

This post is a follow-up to my November Article, Making Websites More Effective and covers an aspect of an effective website – and therefore a more effective online marketing and lead generation strategy – that I think is critically important.

In the article, I considered how using the latest technology would make your online presence more effective.

But the other side to the story is that if the website is hard to update, or if you have to hassle with a less-than-cooperative web designer every time you need to update it, you just won’t do it.

I’ve seen dozens of good websites fall by the wayside as a customer service or lead generation tool because the web designer disappeared or was just plain too difficult to work with.

You know from dealing with your customers and prospects that making it easy for them to buy is an important step in the sales process. Make it painful enough and they will disappear forever taking their money elsewhere.

The same is true for you as a businessperson. If vendors and suppliers make it difficult enough for you, you give up on that vendor or supplier or maybe on the whole project.

This is one reason that we now produce all of our client’s web pages using Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla! and CMSBuilder. Using a CMS takes the adversarial relationship with an uncooperative web designer out of the equation. It also makes it easier and less expensive for you to make simple updates to your website. But you can read all about that in the article.

Your job is to make buying easier for your prospects – my job is to make your website, email marketing and social networking easier.

We’ve made a special offer at the bottom of Making Websites More Effective to save you some serious coin. I hope anyone in need of our services will take advantage of it.

That’s it for today! I hope you and your families have a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving and I’ll see you in Louisville!

How long do prospects give you when they visit your website? 30 seconds? 45 seconds?

I’m always looking for new ways to get my message across to prospective clients. When this tool that I’ve used with great success before was recently updated, it really caught my attention.

If you’re a good marketer, prospects might spend 60 seconds on your website. But they’ll spend 60 or more MINUTES with you on a teleseminar or webcast.

That’s just one reason why teleseminars may be the most underutilized tool in marketing today.

But it’s not just having a tool that’s important…
…it’s knowing how to use it to drive sales.

That’s why Rick Raddatz has re-tooled and relaunched Instant Teleseminar as Instant Teleseminar 2.0

It now comes fully-loaded with a training system to get you up and running with profit-building teleseminars.

Sign up for the 21-day trial and participate LIVE in the “7 ways to Build Your Business with Teleseminars” workshop, coming LIVE on November 16th.