Think you can do without social media as part of your marketing plan? It used to be that all you needed was the yellow pages and customers would find you. No longer. People, and potential customers may be talking about you online, and you aren’t even aware of it. The current business must be a part of the dialog, engaging with potential and current customers and influencing the perception of their brand. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘social media’
From Yellow Pages to Web Pages
Thursday, April 1st, 2010Tags: marketing, small business, social media, soho
Posted in Helpful Advice | Comments Off on From Yellow Pages to Web Pages
LinkedIn Police Nabs Profile Perpetrator
Thursday, October 29th, 2009As detective Adrian Monk obsessively states “here’s what happened”:
On October 22, 2009 Joe Pych, NextMark’s Founder was contacted via LinkedIn to let him know he had a new colleague. Surprisingly, it was a guy from the Netherlands who was claiming to be the owner of NextMark. There is only one NextMark, so it was pretty clear that a profile perpetrator was on the loose. (more…)
Tags: linkedin customer support, perpetrator, police, privacy, profile, security, social media
Posted in Testimonials | Comments Off on LinkedIn Police Nabs Profile Perpetrator
Top 100 Social Media Cheat Sheet for Business
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009Social marketing is on the rise and it’s here to stay. Are you still trying to figure out how to leverage social media for your business? You can start by learning the language with definitions from the marketing glossary, and then use this cheat sheet as a reference for most commonly used tools.
A few months ago a cheat sheet was introduced as a tool to help marketers get organized with Web 2.0 and social media marketing. Many new services have emerged since then. Therefore, several of those respective web sites have been added to this page as a quick reference linking to 100 free social marketing resources and online directories.
Bookmark this page or add it to your favorite places for quick and easy access to several of the top services by category. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, and some of these sites may not be the top choices internationally. However, it is a valuable resource for leveraging many of the top networks in the U.S., and can help you gain some international exposure as well.
Basic services must be free to qualify for inclusion on the top 100 list below. For your convenience, each title is linked directly to the respective site’s home page. I hope you will find this to be a helpful resource for your business. Feel free to connect with me (DeMartine) on LinkedIn if you would like to share other resources that are available online.
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Free Social Media Resources (Top 100)
Aggregation Tools (5): Bloglines, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit, YouBundle
Blogs (7): Blog.com, Blogger, Livejournal, Posterous, Tumblr, Typepad, WordPress
Blog Directories (10): Blogapedia, Blogarama, BlogCatalog, Blogdirs, Blog Flux, Bloghub, Blog Listing, Blogtoplist, BritBlog, Technorati
Bookmarks (12): Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz
Comment Systems (2): DISQUS, IntenseDebate
Free Directory Listings (25): Akama, Bateekh, BizHWY, Cardboard, CrunchBase, DMOZ, EVliving, GetFreeListing, Google Local, IllumiRate, Jayde, Jigsaw, Librarians’ Internet Index, Little Web Directory, Manta, MerchantCircle, NextMark, Simple Directory, Spoke, SuperPages, Tradevibes, TurnPike, WebBuyersGuide, Web World, Yahoo! Local
Marketing Trends (2): Google Trends, Universe Trends
Name Checks (2): Namechk, Usernamecheck
Post Documents (3): eHow, Google Docs, Scribd
Post Presentations (3): AuthorSTREAM, Myplick, Slideshare
Post Videos (2): Vimeo, YouTube
Press Releases: (4): i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, PRLog.org
Publish Articles (5): ArticleDashboard, Articles FACTORY, Ezinearticles, IdeaMarketers, Yahoo Articles Group
Social Networks (8): Biznik, Crowdvine, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, NowPublic, Plaxo, Viadeo
Twitter Tools (5): Grader, Ping, TweetDeck, TweetLater, Twitter
URL Shorteners (4): bit.ly, doiop, memurl, TinyURL
Wikis (3): Pbwiki, Wetpaint, Wikipedia
Tip: Since PageRank is important to your exposure on the Google search engine results page (SERP), you may want to check out the page rank for each of these services as well. That can be done for free online by using the PageRank Checker (higher = better).
Tip: adding your blog to the directories can improve your search rankings and exposure; the same is true for your web site and your business. That’s the reason for including 35 directory listings (25 free directory listings + 10 blog directories) in the top 100. You only need to do it once, so take advantage of them.
Question: Web 3.0 is to ? as Web 2.0 is to social media…
Your feedback is welcome!
Tags: blog, bookmarks, cheat sheet, free, Google, library, marketing, marketing trends, NextMark, resource, seo, social media, top 100, twitter, wiki
Posted in Helpful Advice, Technology, Weblogs, What's New? | Comments Off on Top 100 Social Media Cheat Sheet for Business
Run Your Vanity URL Check Across 122 Social Networks
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009Did you know that anyone with an e-mail address and access to the Internet can secure your brand's name using a free social network service?
Are you too late?
Someone from Singapore registered as 'nextmark' YouTube and StumbleUpon, but it's not me - I've never even been to Singapore! If a country as strict as Singapore has these 'squatters', then think about the trend that could easily take off.
I learned quickly that I'd better take ownership of our brand name on the social networks and get those user IDs and vanity URLs secured. The only problem was that there are hundreds of online networks and I only knew about the obvious ones, like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Delicious and Digg. Fortunately, I found out about a great tool while attending the VT/NH Direct Marketing Group conference earlier this month. It's called namechk.
This tool will enable you to check the status of your company name (user name or vanity URL) on 122 social networking and bookmarking sites. It only takes a minute, and you'll be able to see whether or not your name is available for each and every one of the servcies listed.
Here's a snapshot of the namechk grid using LinkedIn as the example below. Go to namechk to run your own audit. This is a valuable service.
The provider of this service also has a feature where you may request additional services to be added to the list. For example, you may want to request the addition of Plaxo or Vimeo since I know many of our marketing blog readers and mailing list seekers use those tools for business networking and video publishing. Feel free to share your thoughts on this tool.
Tags: brand, linkedin, marketing, namechk, protect, social media, URL, userID, vanity, vanity URL
Posted in Testimonials | Comments Off on Run Your Vanity URL Check Across 122 Social Networks
Join NextMark on LinkedIn
Monday, May 11th, 2009Are you trying to figure out how to leverage social networking for the list industry? Well you're not alone. The NextMark Group on LinkedIn is open to list industry veterans, list brokers, list managers, and their clients to discuss the future of direct marketing as it relates to mailing lists, digital marketing, insert media, search engine optimiation, social media, and more. The group currently has 224 active members from more than 40 million around the world. We hope you'll join!
Tags: business, group, groups, join, linked in, linkedin, social media
Posted in Culture and Society | Comments Off on Join NextMark on LinkedIn
Social Media Cheat Sheet
Monday, May 4th, 2009This cheat sheet has been revised. Please click Social Media Cheat Sheet for the updated version.
Are you spending too much time trying to figure out how to leverage social media for your business? Maybe you are just waiting to see some quantitative results before diving in. You know there's value in doing it, but the perceived ROI doesn't look very good when senior management's time is at stake.
This marketing blog will help you get organized before you dive in. Just save this page to your favorite places for quick and easy access to the top services. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list since there are hundreds of social networking sites that may not be as effective for business. It is also important to note that the services listed below are most recognized in U.S. and may not be the top choices internationally. I hope you find this resource helpful.
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Aggregation Tools: FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit, Ping.fm, Socializr, Socialthing!
Blogs: Blogger, Typepad, WordPress
Bookmarks: Delicious, Digg, Livejournal, Mixx, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Yahoo! Buzz
Free Business Listings: BizHWY, Cardboard, Crunchbase, Jigsaw, MerchantCircle, NextMark, Tradvibes, and many more out there!
Post Documents: Google Docs, Scribd
Post PowerPoint Presentations: AuthorSTREAM, Google Docs, Myplick, Slideshare
Post Videos: Vimeo, YouTube
Social Networks: Crowdvine, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo
Twitter Tools: MyTweeple, TweetDeck, TweetLater, Twibes, Twitter
URL Shorteners: bit.ly, budURL, Snurl, TinyURL, tr.im, Twurl
Wikis: Pbwiki, Wetpaint, Wikipedia
Be careful which URL shortener you use as it may affect your future search rankings.
Your feedback is welcome, and encouraged, as to what works best for business. As NextMark's Director of Business Development, I've found LinkedIn and YouTube to produce the best marketing results.
Tags: cheat sheet, delicious, executive, marketing, roi, social media
Posted in Industry Observations | Comments Off on Social Media Cheat Sheet
Find NextMark on Facebook
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Did you know that as of this month (April 2009) there are over 200 million active users on Facebook? That's double the number of users the company had just eight months ago. That's impressive considering that Mark Zuckerberg and three of his buddies launched the application from their Harvard dorm room in February 2004. Within a year there were a million users and it took off even more rapidly from there.
After reading Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business, I decided to create a page for NextMark. Although this network is more appropriate for consumer marketing than business-to-business, it is still a good place to be. Most of our blog traffic comes from LinkedIn and other networks, but the Facebook page is a great way of keeping others informed about what is going on here at NextMark. We have some nice pictures of our data center posted on our company page, an active poll about Barack Obama's use of Twitter, live updates from our blog, cutting edge videos from our YouTube channel, and more. Direct marketers are facing some real challenges right now, but many of those who have embraced social network services appear to be more optimistic. Only time will tell how well these outlets deliver in terms of paid advertising ROI but the effort to create a page on Facebook is minimal and time well spent for your business.
About 4 million users become fans of Facebook pages each day. We'd love to have you as a NextMark fan. You are also invited to join the NextMark groups on Facebook or Linkedin and keep up on what's happening with next generation marketing. We hope to see you there!
Tags: facebook, fans, find us on, social media
Posted in Culture and Society | Comments Off on Find NextMark on Facebook