How to use Facebook to Generate Traffic
Facebook is a relatively new social networking site, but the number of members is growing rapidly. It is another site that is worth using to try and increase your contacts, and even to try and drive some traffic to your commercial websites. As with many other sites, you need to be careful what you are doing. Facebook is not a marketer’s site, and it is so easy to get caught up in activities which will bring counter productive results, and even result in you being banned from the site.
The first essential is to get your profile set up properly. Make sure it looks professional and business like, and not like the profile of someone just looking for dates. Include a full description of what it is you can offer to your potential customers, and make sure there are links back to any of your own commercial sites. Once your profile is set up, it will act as your sales page. Don’t make the tragic mistake of using your business name as your profile name, as this is against Facebook’s terms of service. It would honestly not be worth doing anyway, as you will only gain traffic and customers from your written description.
With social networking sites, it is all about doing just that, networking. Make sure you respond to any friend requests, and send out your own. Growing your network is your long term ticket to building steady traffic to your commercial sites. Use the My Questions application to find out what people are looking for related to your business, but never spam. You can relate experiences about other people you have done work for, or sold products to, and then if they are interested they will ask you. At the very least, they are sure to visit your profile, and then it is only one further link to have them on your commercial site.
Entrepreneurs Must Master the Keyword Mystery and Use Them Successfully
Author : Donna Price
Of course, you realize that the Internet has become “The Place” to go if you need information about just about anything. If you are a business and have created your Internet presence, then you want people to find you when they are looking for the information that you have. No matter what type of business you operate you need to get traffic to your website. Keywords are an essential part of your website strategy. Using keywords effectively in your web content is your first step. “Keywords” sound so simple, but what exactly does that mean to use keywords effectively?
The term “keywords” comes up constantly on the web. But if you do not truly understand what it means then you are going to miss out on a ton of traffic and that can affect your business bottom line. Let’s define keywords. They are the words that people use to search for information on the web. Not all words are keywords. Common words like: “the”, “of” are typically not included in search results.
Think about your own searches. When you need information, but you are not sure where to find it, you use keywords, specific to what you are looking for. This is what happens when people are looking for you as well. Of course you can be easily found by people using your business name or web address. Keywords help you to be found when the searcher doesn’t know you or your company.
When a keyword is entered in the search engine, you receive a list of results. Many results list include millions of options. The question is where you are in those results and how deep will the searcher look through those pages. If you are on the 50th page, chances are you will not be found.
The search engines use bots and spiders to look around the web and index the pages that are found. These tools crawl around your site, looking at your articles, your headlines, picture tags and your pages of content, looking at the words that searchers use. If you are using the words that searchers use then your site gets ranked.
It’s not that simple- there is more! The next factor that these bots and spiders look at is the density of the word, or how many times the keyword is used. This is called “keyword density”. Your keyword density is used to compare you to others that are using the same keywords. There is a balance that you need to strike when using keywords. You cannot just repeat keywords with no relevant content. This type of strategy will be penalized.
The challenge is figuring out what the keywords are that your target market uses to find your business. For each business, there are many terms, phrases and words that can be used.
Without keywords, it is nearly impossible for you to be found on the Internet. While a wonderful resource, there are millions of resources there that are competing with you! You have to build an effective web strategy to really compete and be on the top of search results. Every type of entrepreneur can use keywords on their website. Using a wide net approach and trying to include all of the keywords, trying to appeal to everyone does not work. The result will be a lot of traffic but not qualified traffic, generic traffic that isn’t really your target market. And your efforts result in lost money.
Keywords are the tool on the web that narrows the field to those that are more likely your target market. You can test your keywords just like in your other marketing strategies. If you are not getting the traffic that you want on your site. Keywords are one area to evaluate.
Learn additional strategies for building a highly profitable and effective business from Donna Price, Business Success Coach, Author, Facilitator and Speaker at: Send Me The Resources for Entrepreneurs Report visit: To Learn More About Donna and her company; Donna is the developer and author of ‘Bizology.Biz: The Science of Building Thriving Businesses’, a comprehensive program for creatin
Open Business Models
Open business models, like the name suggests are business models that are open to change. They invite new ideas and concepts and continue to grow all the time. All companies wish to keep their internal information within themselves. But some companies decide to involve their employees, suppliers as well as customers to participate in deciding how the business takes place. This business model is a new trend and is working well for many companies.
These days when the market fluctuates more than ever before, it is a good idea to keep changing with the demands of time. Many businesses have suffered losses because their business model became outdated for the current scenario. Numerous businesses still are. It is not only about switching to a new technology but much more. It is how you go about doing your business.
Since early on, there are research and development departments within most companies that would do their research internally, with hardly any inputs from the people involved. Generally, the people who are connected to the business in any way seem to have good practical knowledge about the business, its strengths and weaknesses and areas of improvement. The idea is to utilize this knowledge which the customers, suppliers and employees would be happy to share. This is not to say that the research and study groups are no good. They are. Their perspective and vision is worth appreciation but their findings can sometimes be incomplete.
Even competitors are welcome. Many companies have found that they hold patents that they never use. Procter and Gamble surveyed their patents and found out that only 10% of them were actually useful to the company. In instances like this, it is a good idea to sell away the technology to somebody who needs it. Everyone doing their own research is no good. It is like reinventing the wheel. Getting maximum number of patents is like a rat race. It would never end and it would never be the solution. The solution is to join hands. Even if the research is done independently, sharing it would be mutually beneficial.
There is no point in being too possessive about intellectual property. Like any other property, say a piece of land, even IPs should be sold away if not being used. Imagine people holding big areas on land and not letting others live! Take what you need and leave the rest for the others. This model has been suggested by Henry Chesbrough who is the director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. His books are available for those who want to know more.
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