While I have little doubt that some of the many social networking sites will cease to exist, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the use of social media will continue to rapidly grow to the point that it becomes a major part of our daily interactions.

The following video provides some great facts about social media and puts into perspective why every business should have some type of social media strategy.

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Regardless of where you go or what you read, one thing that constantly sticks out is the importance of selecting the correct keywords, and that is what this article is all about.

Before selecting the keywords you would like to target, ask yourself these questions

• Who is my audience
• What are they looking for
• If I was searching for my product what would I search for
• Who is my competition
• What keywords is my competition targeting
• What is my budget

Once you have written down your answers on a piece of paper, its time to get to work.  Start by writing out a list of all words related to your business, even if there are hundreds of them.

Then look at your answer to question number three. What are the most important keywords your customers will be looking for? For example if you are a mortgage broker in Toronto, and your specialty is mortgages for self employed people, the search string “Toronto self employed mortgages” or “getting a mortgage when self employed” would be much better than just “mortgage” or “self employed’”. Get the idea? These keywords are called longtail, and they are much easier to target and bring higher quality traffic  than high value keywords such as mortgages.

Use a good keyword research tool such as Keyword Elite to check out the number of searches for these keywords. If you are a Center Point Media client we will do this for you as part of your web marketing plan.

Next step is to compare your keywords with those of your major competitor in your niche to see how they rank for these keywords. A major mistake that many businesses make is they just copy competition keywords. You want your business to be unique and so should your keywords be.

Choosing the right keywords is probably the most important part of your online marketing campaign. Remember, the closer you are to the search string your customer is looking for, the better your chances of making the connection.

However, since you’ve already asked us this question,we may as well share a few things we have learned about selecting the right Internet Marketing solution for your business.

Over the last few years, Internet or Website marketing has dominated the internet completely, and with the enormous growth of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, it is more important than ever before to have a website that is properly optimized not only for the search engines but the social media sites as well.

The term “Website Marketing” actually covers a broad spectrum of services including;

• Search Engine Optimization
• Lead Capture
• Social Media Marketing
• Press Release Syndication
• Keyword Analysis
• Article Marketing
• Competition Analysis
• Meta Tag analysis
• And above all, constant monitoring.

Now for the money question which of these services is best suited for your business?  Over the years we have learned that there is no single solution that will meet all the needs of your business exactly.  It is always a combination of services which makes up a successful Internet marketing campaign.

For example, if your business targets a specific niche in a particular city or province you will need to identify which keyword potential customers are using to search for your products or services.

Once that has been accomplished, you will need to optimize your website to target these keywords by adding them to your websites content and Meta tags. Then you start building links and social media channels targeting your preferred audience and regular visitors.

By using the organic search results, social bookmarking and networking sites, and lead capture methods, you should start seeing targeted traffic generated for your site. If your site is well designed and builds trust, you can expect to start to see an increase ins sales. This whole process is not instantaneous and it can take three to six months to get your website on the first page of Google, and that is only possible through good SEO.

There are thousands of local websites on the Internet, and each of them has their own set of unique Internet marketing needs. When we first speak with clients we ask them  to write down all the different things they would like to achieve with their website.

In most cases going through the list  helps the business owner to set priorities that should be targeted – like building traffic, creating a brand image, popularizing your service, getting affiliates, selling ads, and so on  It is that set of priorities which we will use to develop a customized Internet marketing solution for your business.

Recently I have been testing a number of new strategies to generate traffic using Twitter.  I have decided to share a couple a great Twitter tips that you can use right away to build your followers and generate some traffic to your website from Twitter.

1. Post something on your blog related to Twitter or something that your followers might be interested in and will want to share.  This blog post is an great example of how this would work.
2. Optimize your blog to work with Twitter.  There are a number of excellent free Wordpress plugins such as Twitter Tools, TweetMeMe and Twitter Widget Pro that will help you integrate your blog into Twitter or your Twitter posts into your blog.
3. Optimize your blog to get visitors to sign up for your mailing list or subscribe to your blog. This provides another way you can connect with potential customers and grow your Twitter following.  You can even use services such as Aweber to send out an email and have it post to your Twitter account.
4. Take advantage of the @ reply feature on Twitter such as @centerpointseo if you want to send a reply to me.  Using the @ reply feature has a number of distinct advantages, it gives you and the person you are replying to greater exposure and Twitter users are more likely to check a @ reply that an direct message.
5. Use the following little trick on your blog to get more traffic to your blog.  Once you have created your blog post add this powerful little link to the bottom of the post.  To see how it works click the link below

Click here to tweet!

Want to know how it works?  Just right click the link above and select “Copy Link Location” if you are using Firefox or “Copy Shortcut” if you are using Internet Explorer.  Open your favorite text editor such as notepad or Textpad and paste the link in to the text editor

You can download our FREE eBook,
“Web Site Marketing – 21 Common Web Site Mistakes That Could Be Costing Your Business Money“ today. The easiest way to get it is to subscribe to our mailing list using the form below – you’ll see a link to the guide once you confirm your subscription.

This completely FREE guide will give you the information you need if you or your company either already have a web site or are launching a new web site in the near future.

In this eBook, you will find the answers to the following questions:

• What are the most common mistakes made by small business web sites?
• How can I improve our online sales?
• How can we make the Internet work for your business?

Subscribe Today and Download Your Copy:

One of the biggest challenges for small business owners is to make sure that customers are saying positive things about your company when talking to their friends and coworkers. It is estimated that over 80% of regular Internet users, use some type of social networking site. Many of these social media sites give people a place to share their positive and negative opinions with hundreds or even thousands of people with one click of the mouse.

Negative comments made by a customer who has a large number of online friends or followers can make a huge impact on your business. Therefore, it is important that you listen for any online chatter that may affect your brand.

Keeping up with everyrhing that is going on the major social media sites may seem like a daunting task. The good news is that there are a number of free tools that help you monitor your brand online.  Clay McDaniel recently wrote an excellent article for Marketing Profs that covers 13 Social Media Listening Tools.

Check it out, and use it to find a strategy that helps you learn from what your customers are saying.

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