Twitter started when a group of programmers set out to write a script that would allow them to send SMS messages to a select group of followers. Pretty soon this unique method of social networking became known as micro-blogging and Twitter took off, and take off it has. Today you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn’t at least heard of Twitter. It’s used by celebrities, politicians, authors, executives, sports stars, moms, dads, middle aged the elderly and yes Teens are using it en masse. The bottom line is that everyone’s using Twitter, but if you want to use it effectively, you need to learn how to use the 140 characters to your advantage.

Why 140 Characters?

When the world began to catch onto and use Twitter, it was around the time that the world figured out that blogging was low-cost, easy and available to everyone. Back then it seemed as if everyone had a blog and today those numbers have drastically increased. The problem with blogging is that it tends to make the author of the blog long-winded. It’s hard to compress your thoughts into a few words when you have unlimited pages with which to publish your posts. The problem with that is that blog after blog, post after post – it tends to clutter up the blogosphere and the entire Internet for that matter.

In swooped the Twitter programmers who sought to tailor that communication down to only 140 characters. To give you an idea of what 140 characters looks like, consider the following sentence.

The problem with blogging is that it leads to long winded authors. Twitter taught the world and online marketers that shorter can be better.

That sentence is exactly 140 characters long. So you see that the Twitter limit is not THAT restrictive. You can get a lot of thoughts and ideas into 140 characters. You just have to be creative with it, and it pays to know a few tricks of the trade.

Important Words Up Front

The most effective Twitter messages are those that include a link to some type of valuable content. This could be an interest article, a blog, or anything else. To entice your Twitter followers to click on the link you provide, or to get your message across effectively even if there are no links involved, always put the main keywords up front. The first part of your message is always the first part to get read (duh) but using your keywords will also trigger the Twitter search engine and third-party Twitter tools like HootSuite to pay attention to your tweet and possibly put it in front of interested people who use Twitter.

For example, if you have a blog you want to direct your followers’ attention to and it’s titled ‘10 Ways to Use Twitter to Your Marketing Advantage’, you might say,

Twitter Tips for Marketers – If you use Twitter, you’ll want to click this link. http://thisisourfakeblog/3.17.13/10-ways-to-use-twitter-to-marketing-advantage/

Uh, oh, that sentence went over by 20 characters. If you want to check your Tweets before you actually use Twitter, you can use one of the many word and character counters online, like this one.

You see how the meat of our Tweet fit just fine. It comes in around 80 characters all by itself. To make our link fit, we’re going to have to shrink it down. Luckily, there’s a site for that too. It’s called Bitly, but you can choose any link shortener you’d like.

For this example, I used Google’s link shortener Goo.gl  to get this: http://goo.gl/zjIyb.

So, our Tweet now looks like:

Twitter Tips for Marketers – If you use Twitter, you’ll want to click this link. http://goo.gl/zjIyb.

That’s only 101 characters, well within the limit when you use Twitter, and it’s an enticing headline that’s bound to get a few clicks. We could even put a hashtag in there so that it looks like this:

Twitter Tips for Marketers – If you use Twitter, you’ll want to click this link. http://goo.gl/zjIyb.#twittertips

That Tweet is only 113 characters. You could name someone else in your tweet, add another hash tag or keep it short and sweet, just as people who use Twitter are encouraged to do.

Just remember, whenever you’re sending Tweets, think about what Tweets you yourself would respond to if you were in your followers’ shoes. Make your Tweets valuable, make them worthwhile and always put your best ideas and keywords first. If you set a good track record for quality Tweets, you’ll gain more followers and more online marketing attention overall.

Many people say they want to earn an income online, but few have an actual plan to do so. These days it’s easier than ever to make an income online, if you know how to go about it. Of course a lot of people try and fail, but there are tons of others who successfully earn a living online and those individuals have more freedom than you could possibly fathom. Some are able to work from anywhere, as long as they have an Internet connection and an Internet-ready device. They could work on the beach, in the middle of the ocean as long as they had wi-fi, and they could even work from home if they wanted. With so many possibilities out there, you can start earning an income online by using one or more of the methods below.

1.       Provide A Service

The easiest way to start earning an income online is to provide some type of service that’s in-demand. Do you have any special skills you can market? Can you write, take beautiful pictures or are you a wizard with Photoshop? Start searching on popular forums and on social networks to see if others exist who do what you do, and most importantly, start searching for potential clients who may want to pay for the services you want to offer.

The next step is to design a website, a social networking profile and then start driving traffic to that site through content marketing or paid marketing until the phone starts ringing, your inbox fills up and you start earning an income online.

2.       Sell Other People’s Products And/Or Services

Affiliate marketing is another easy and terrific way to earn an income online. Instead of creating your own product or coming up with your own service, you can market others’ products and services and earn a profit on every lead you generate. Use ClickBank or Amazon or some other affiliate network and use the same techniques as above to drive traffic to the offer. You’ll have to devise your own website and content marketing materials, but get creative and do your best to make whatever affiliate product or service you’re offering a must-have. If you work hard enough, you’ll start earning an income online in just a few short weeks.

3.      Sell Your Own Products

Are you good with woodworking, painting or do you have a great idea for a novel? Maybe you’re a great comic book illustrator or maybe you’re able to manufacturer those plastic fish that sing. Whatever you’re into or whatever skills you have, you can use those skills to earn an online income. You just have to get creative with it and you have to have the forward-thinking mentality that loads of people will benefit from your product, if you can manage to bring that product to market. If you can manage to develop the hottest new toy just prior to the holidays, a popular new T-Shirt design just in time for summer or you have the next great American novel dying to get out, you just might earn an income online that far surpasses your expectations.

4.       Earn An Online Income Through AdSense Or Similar Platform

If you can write engaging copy or you’re a photographer and have a few photos that would make an excellent blog spread, you might have fodder that can help you start earning an income online through online advertising. Instead of paying for your ads to show up, you can use Google’s AdSense platform to have other people’s ads show up for your content. If you’re publishing a blog, for example, you’ll want targeted ads to show up pertaining to your content whenever a visitor lands on your page. When that happens, and if the visitor happens to click one or more of those ads, you get a commission. This money can add up the more content you add and the more engaging that content happens to be. The key is to find something you enjoy writing or posting about so that you can start earning an income online doing something you actually like to do.

Now that you know that an online income is possible, the next step is putting your goals into action. Whether you have an idea for a service, product or you plan to earn an income online using others’ products/services or ads, all it takes is a little focus and a little more hard work and you’ll see that earning money online is not only within the realm of possibilities, but it’s also fun and incredibly rewarding.

The next best product won’t make a dent in this world unless people find out about it. If you have a product that you want to release to a worldwide audience, you need to use strategic marketing. This is a step-by-step process that ensures that all bases are covered and that your marketing message is being sent out efficiently and to the right targeted people.

Identify Your Target Market

The first step in strategic product marketing is identifying your target audience. These are the people who will be most interested in buying your product. You have to find out who those people are. To find these individuals, you might want to ask a series of questions.

·         What types of people will most likely buy my product?

·         What are these individuals interested in?

·         What other products are they likely to buy to compliment your product, or to substitute your product completely?

·         Where do these individuals spend most of their time online?

·         And finally, where do these individuals shop, both online and off?

Research the Competition

If you want your product marketing to be successful, you must learn to keep an eye on the competition. A strategic marketing plan is never created in a vacuum. It requires market testing and competitor product marketing testing in order to come up with a solid plan that will rock your target audiences’ socks off. Take what your competition is doing and make it better, and try to resonate with your audience just as your competitors are. That’s how strategic product marketing is done.

Once you know who you’re marketing to and why, and you’re sure you have a better plan than your competitors could ever dream to come up with, you’re ready to blast your strategic marketing message far and wide.

Email Marketing

Strategic product marketing focuses on maximum exposure using incredibly efficient means, and that describes email marketing perfectly. Using targeted product marketing messages, you can build a highly-targeted email marketing list that is comprised of people who are interested in and who hopefully want to buy your product.

If you already have a website, create a separate landing page (or develop a stand-alone landing page) and start driving traffic to that page via paid online marketing and by using a few of the techniques we’ll discuss in depth below.

It’s recommended that you segment your product marketing list according to where they’re at in the buying cycle. For instance, you might have a segment of your list that didn’t buy, one that did buy, one that bought in the past and one that’s likely to buy in the future. Then, send targeted messages to those individuals, always keeping to the theme of your strategic marketing message.

Forums and Review Sites

No matter what type of product you’re selling, your strategic product marketing plan should include one or more forums and/or review sites in your product’s niche. Even the most obscure products likely have someone talking about them on an online forum or review site somewhere on the Internet. The search engines are your friend. Find those discussions and start prodding those individuals to see if they’d be interested in your product. Then, if possible, steer those that may be interested in your product marketing idea towards your email marketing list for added exposure.

Social Marketing and Blogs

For strategic product marketing to be truly effective on social networks and blogs, it needs to be incredibly subtle. You can’t blatantly sell on social networks, nor can you get away with it on your blog – not if you hope to gather a loyal following.

The idea with product marketing on social networks and blogs is to be helpful, offer valuable content and engage in the conversations. Listen to the concerns of your audience and go above and beyond to solve those concerns. Don’t sell, be helpful. Don’t blatantly engage in product marketing, but instead become a part of the community.

Banner Ads and Paid Marketing

The best product marketing utilizes all forms of marketing, including the paid kind. Don’t think of paid strategic product marketing as costing a lot of money. The idea is to earn a return on your investment. If you follow the rules, pay attention to your product market and competitors and if you conduct the proper keyword research, paid strategic product marketing can truly pay off.

Putting it All Together – Coming Up With a Strategic Product Marketing Schedule

Your strategic marketing plan should include a schedule whereby you advance your campaigns at various steps. For instance, you might choose one day a week to write new product marketing emails or blogs. You might set a particular day of the week aside to engage in social marketing and forum posting. And you might choose one day a month to review your strategic marketing plan to ensure you’re always staying on track.

The thing is, many times you’ll feel like quitting. When you come up with a brand new product and you put all this time and energy into developing a strategic product marketing plan that you’re sure is going to work, and then only to find limited success, you can oftentimes feel like quitting.

Make sure that you press on. Stick to your strategic marketing plan and don’t give up. The old adage is, the moment you feel like giving up, that’s usually when you’re ‘this close’ to meeting your goal. If you come up with a strategic product marketing plan that is developed based on your target market and your competition, you won’t fail as long as you keep on keeping on. Never stop tailoring your plan to meet your ever-changing goals and never stop trying to bond with your target audience. The sales will come secondary if you focus on your audience and their primary problems that you’re confident you can help them solve. This is how product marketing is conducted. It may take time, and it will definitely take a lot of patience, but the rewards can be huge if you simply follow the product marketing plan you establish for yourself.

Understanding The Motives Behind SEO

Before you kick start your search engine optimization campaign, you should spend a few minutes thinking about your motivations, as well as the motivations behind the search engines and the individuals you’re attempting to target. A great way to stay competitive is to offer a discount on your service or products but there are many other ways as well.

Your Motivation: Of course you’re attempting to kick start your SEO. You want fast results and what does that mean? It means more traffic to your website, more attention towards your brand and more leads in your company’s database. You don’t just want these things, you want them quickly. This is going to require you getting to know the other two elements in our equation: the search engines and your target market.

Search Engines: Google, Bing, Ask – These are giant search engines that rely on everyday users to remain afloat. When a user conducts a search using Google, for example, the search engine has an obligation to provide targeted, high-value search results that pertain to the user’s search query. If the user searches for ‘buy dog food bowls’, Google wants to display a quality and trustworthy site that will allow the user to purchase the bowls he or she needs. What the search engines don’t want is to deliver subpar or, worse, SPAM-type websites that offer little in terms of information or value.

Target Audience: If you hope to kick start your search engine optimization campaign, you’re going to have to understand your target audience and what motivates them to search for you. The average user might have a problem that he or she needs solving, a problem that your product or service will help with nicely. Once you’ve identified that problem, start thinking of search engine optimization keyword phrases that the average user might search for in order to solve a problem, find your product or purchase your service.

Five Methods To Kick Start Your SEO

1. Identify Your Competition: Once you’ve identified a few SEO keyword phrases, start searching for them in Google. Search for the phrases in quotes and begin clicking on the first few search results until you identify one, two or three competitors that are offering similar products and services. Even if you already know who your competition consists of, use the search engines to identify any that may have snuck under your radar.
2. Kick Start Your SEO by Borrowing: Once you have your competitors’ sites open, start paying attention to the content on the site, how it’s laid out, the colors used and the navigation. While you’re looking the sites over, see if there are any elements you think you might be able to do better.
3. On-Site Search Engine Optimization: Pay attention to the meta titles and descriptions that your competitors use. These are the snippets you see in Google. If you use WordPress, download a SEO plugin that will make implementing meta data simple and easy. Don’t copy the meta data, but try to make yours better, more enticing and more click-worthy for potential new leads.
4. Off-Site SEO: Find all the ways your competitors are advertising. Do they have social media profiles? What about a blog? Create your own profiles and blog and ‘borrow’ the elements you like to make yours even better than theirs. If you happen to be borrowing blog titles, see if you can add any extra knowledge to their titles and make your titles and content even more informative, entertaining and share-worthy. Don’t feel guilty about doing any of this. Major companies borrow from each other all the time. Think Microsoft and Apple.
5. Think Outside of the Box: You can kick start your SEO by piggy-backing off of your competition, but you must go above and beyond if you want to enjoy sustained and ever-increasing success. Think back to the motivations we discussed. Using the content, information and knowledge you borrow from your competition, think of how you can craft that content to appease the search engines and your target audience while delivering more traffic and leads to your business at the same time. This should be simple when you know your business and your target audience intimately. As for the search engines, keep your keywords targeted, use enticing meta data and sprinkle your keywords throughout your pages while keeping them natural-sounding.

These tips will kick start your search engine optimization, but you can’t piggy back on your competition forever. Once you see some success, and this should bring traffic fairly quickly as long as you’re willing to wait for the search engines to rank you, that’s when you’ll want to continue your success by creating more unique, high-value content. Go above and beyond and do things your competition can’t even imagine. Do that and you will manage to kick start your SEO and continue your success way into the future.

Do You Know Who You’re Marketing To?

The first step in this online marketing checklist is to define your target audience. Online marketing becomes infinitely easier once you know who your target audience happens to be. It’s not enough to know that your target audience is men over forty who are going through a divorce and that have six-figure incomes. You need to know your audience’s hopes, fears and overall motivations. What makes the average person in your online marketing target group tick? Once you know the answer to that question, you’ll have an easier time writing copy and coming up with engaging design that your prospective customers will surely respond to.

What Problem Is Your Audience Facing?

Your product or service should seek to solve some sort of problem that your target audience is facing. If you have the latest acne cream, you’ll of course be looking for people who are suffering from acne. It’s not enough to just find people suffering from acne, you want people who are at their wit’s end and who will do anything for a solution to their most pressing problem.

Have You Used Online Marketing Pain-Points to Hook the Prospective Customer?

Once you know what type of problem your target market may be facing, use pain points to drive your, well, your point home. Pain points are statements that drudge of feelings of despair in your reader, viewer or otherwise prospective customer. For instance, if your prospect is suffering from acne, you might use pain points like spending too much money on acne products that don’t work, or the use of acne products that dry out your skin or that make the problem worse. You could even mention the pain that acne causes, whether physical or emotional in nature.

Don’t just mention the pain points, but describe them, make the prospect feel them so that he or she becomes hooked on your message.

Have You Adequately Conveyed The Benefits Of Your Offer?

Using this online marketing checklist, you know what problem your audience is facing and you’ve used pain points to hammer your point home. Now you need to give your audience hope that there’s a solution to their problems. No matter what your product or service happens to be, provide your audience with the primary benefits of choosing you over the competition.

If we stick to our acne example, we might ask our prospects to imagine looking in the mirror and seeing a fresher face, free of acne or scarring? Of course you’ll want to be realistic and truthful, but let your audience know that your product or service can finally relieve them of their grief that they’ve felt for so long.

Are You Using A Strong Call-To-Action?

Whether your prospects are reading an autoblasted email message or they’re reading your latest landing page, you’ll want to provide a strong call-to-action with all of your online marketing materials so that your prospects know exactly what to do.

Call now, click here, visit this page for the latest information – Tell your prospects what to do and you’ll get much better conversions.

Are You Capturing And Nurturing Your Leads?

The goal of this online marketing checklist (and the goal of all of your online marketing materials) is to collect more leads for your organization. For those leads that don’t buy right away, you should have a system in place to capture those leads so that you can pitch to them later. Email marketing is great for this, but there are other ways to capture your prospects’ contact information.

With all of your online marketing efforts, determine whether or not you are capturing a new lead or nurturing a current lead with your efforts. If you’re not doing either, you may want to return to the beginning of this online marketing checklist and check things through all over again.

With this online marketing checklist, your online marketing materials will be targeted and prepared to take on even the fiercest competitor. And if any of your competitors are merely winging their online marketing efforts, you’ll surely surpass them. While these checklist items may seem like common sense, sometimes it’s worth it to return to a little common-sense thinking just to make sure that no details are missed.

Use this online marketing checklist for all of your online marketing efforts and you should see a drastic improvement in conversions and overall business.

Non-profits that harness the power of public service announcements earn more donations and have more interaction with the local community than organizations that don’t use PSAs to their advantage. When you create a public service announcement, you create more exposure for your organization, but you also attempt to help the community in some way. For increased exposure and to convey the image that you truly care about the community you’re targeting, we recommend that you create a quarterly public service announcement. With the second quarter already underway, it might be time to start planning your organization’s next PSA.

Quarterly PSA – Earn More Attention From Your Target Community

When you set out to create a quarterly public service announcement, and you pledge to release one every quarter, you have a prime opportunity to make your organization one of the best known in your target community. Make sure that your organization’s name, logo and overall message are shown and conveyed in the quarterly PSA so that you get all the benefit from each one you publish.

The hardest part about attempting to create a public service announcement is actually coming up with the public service part. For this, you may use the four quarters of the year to get some ideas. For instance, the first quarter of the year ends the last day of March. When you create a quarterly public service announcement in March, you might want to mention things like spring cleaning, getting your car tuned up after it’s been in the winter cold all season long, or you may use your quarterly public service announcement as an opportunity to give all spring breakers in your area some travel and safety tips.

The PSA you choose doesn’t necessarily have to do with your organization (a church could release a quarterly PSA on choking prevention, for instance), but it should assist the community in some way.

Think safety, tips, tricks, secrets and other tidbits that the men and women in your target community may not have heard before. Tie it in with your overall message and you’ll have a quarterly public service announcement that gets you noticed and that helps your target audience in some way.

The following will help you plan your quarterly PSA so that you’re not scrambling each time a quarter ends.

How To Create A Quarterly Public Service Announcement

It’s recommended that you plan your upcoming PSA releases at least a quarter in advance. Since we are in the second quarter, you should be planning to create a quarterly PSA for release at the beginning of July, when the second quarter ends and the third begins.

The moment the third quarter PSA is released, that’s when you’ll want to plan your fourth quarterly PSA for release in October, and then you’ll want another one in January for the first quarter of 2014.

Create Your Script

Your PSA is going to use a script as a backbone. It’s recommended that you gather your organization’s key members together to discuss important points you’d like to discuss in the quarterly public service announcements. Have there been any recent tragedies in the area that could have been prevented with a good uplifting message? Or maybe you just want to send out positive affirmations because you’ve noticed that people are feeling a little down about the economy, unemployment, etc. Pick the best ones and start developing the advice, the message or the overall quarterly PSA into a full-length script.

Go for a thirty seconds or a minute if it’s a video or radio commercial or a single page if the quarterly PSA is going to be printed or viewed on-screen. Then, decide how you’re going to present the PSA to the community.

Always Go For Top-Quality

No matter if someone is going to speak the PSA aloud into a camera, it’s going to be acted like a sketch or it’s an animation type PSA, you must go for quality if want people to pay attention. You may find that your organization contains individuals with the skills necessary to put together a great public service announcement. If not, hire the job out so that your organization is always seen in the best light.

Then, just like clockwork, create a quarterly public service announcement at least a quarter in advance and then release a PSA at the beginning of each quarter. With great advice, positive messages and the occasional funny or thought-provoking message, you’ll position yourself right in front of your target community and you’ll get your message across consistently every time.

Pinterest is the latest social network to make waves with online marketers everywhere. Using the Pinterest tool, you can position yourself in front of hopeful prospects and urge them to share your content with other Pinterest users. As long as you know what you’re doing, and if you hop on Pinterest now before your competitors do, you’ll be well-ahead of the curve and in a prime position to take over far more than your share of the market using nothing more than the Pinterest tool.

Pinterest Marketing Strategies – Three Things to Remember

When implementing the Pinterest tool into your current online marketing campaign, you only need to remember three primary marketing strategies.

1.       Follow Others: Pinterest is a social network first and foremost, so be social and join the party. Find others in your niche who may be interested in what you have to offer and start following them. Keep tabs on what they’re doing, and don’t forget to include your competitors with this list. Keeping an eye on your target market and your competition puts you in a prime position to engage in the second Pinterest strategy: the Repin.

2.       The Repin: When you see a visually stunning Pinterest offering, don’t be afraid to repin it. The more you repin, the more traffic you will drive to your primary site or alternate landing page. Keep in mind that every time you repin media inside of the Pinterest tool, the user whose content you pinned will receive an automated email. In most cases, the person will follow the link to see who is repinning their stuff. This is an opportunity for you to collect more leads, earn more contacts and spread your marketing message even further.

3.       Comment When Appropriate: Don’t just leave single word comments. Force people who read  your comments to stop and pay attention to the media the comment is referring to. Every piece of content you pin, repin or comment on inside of the Pinterest tool is another chance to engage a potential lead. If you can’t say something thoughtful or intriguing, go with funny. Funny always works, as long as what you say is funny. Be very careful that you don’t offend anyone in your attempt to make others’ laugh. As long as the comment makes people stop and read, you’ve done your job correctly as a Pinterest marketer.

That’s it. Just stick to those three basic strategies and make it a point to log into the Pinterest tool daily or at least every other day so that you know exactly how your Pinterest marketing efforts are performing.

Building Your Brand Within the Pinterest Tool

Your Pinterest board and all of your repins should follow the same basic theme. Your picture you use should either be your logo or your picture, so that other Pinterest users have no questions as to who you are. Keep your pins and repins relevant and in the same category so that prospects have no trouble finding you, and always go for quality over quantity. The more quality pins and repins you can show on your board, the more quality leads you’ll attract.

Avoid Self-Promotion

It’s not easy to avoid self-promotion when all you’re doing is trying to promote yourself and your brand, but you have to give it a valiant effort. Focus on pins and repins that provide value to your audience. Sure, you want to promote your own photos and other media, and you can definitely do that, but it’s best to keep a ratio going, such as one piece of media from your collection to every three or four that you pin or repin from others’ collections.

Keep Up-to-Date with the Latest Developments

Keep in mind that the Pinterest tool is still in its infancy. The site has kept to a core audience for much of its beginnings, but as the site is expanding, so is its audience. If you haven’t begun to engage your audience on Pinterest, the time to start is right now. If you have high-quality images and other media that you’d like to show off, Pinterest is where you want to be.

Your competitors may not have considered Pinterest yet, and that’s where you can benefit. Get started marketing with the Pinterest tool and you may find yourself interacting with an entirely new segment of your target market. Imagine uncovering a pocket of customers you never knew existed? Imagine boosting your business merely by pinning and repinning items on an imaginary corkboard. This is what the Pinterest tool can deliver and it’s recommended that you get started Pinterest marketing right now.

Companies who desire an edge over the competition know the importance of marketing software. With so many daily processes involved in the online marketing process, it would require way too many hours in the day to do it all manually. The following must have marketing software titles will keep your company on the edge of innovation allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business at the same time. Try one or more of the following marketing software titles if you want to help your company expand its brand message and get ahead.

Social Media Management

Do you really have time to log in to every social network and update, post and share on a daily basis? Of course you don’t, not if you run a successful business. That’s why it’s best to rely on marketing software to handle your social media activity. Tweet, post on Facebook and manage your conversations as if you were actually logged in. The following software programs are easy to use and are must have marketing software for any business that wants to connect with its audience in a whole new way.

• HootSuite
• Adobe SocialAnalytics
• Sprout Social
• Radian6
• Seesmic CRM
• Buddy Media

Web Analytics

Smart marketers track their click-through rates and conversions, but it’s a little hard to do that without marketing software. The following must have marketing software was chosen for their ease-of-use and their ability to help you track, test and take things to the next level.

• Google Analytics
• Adobe SiteCatalyst
• Crazy Egg
• GoStats

Content Marketing and Blogging

Content rules the search engines now more than ever. In order to remain in the search engines’ good graces, you need to publish regular, high-quality content that your audience loves to pass around. The following must have marketing software will keep your content coming and your audience engaged. These can also help you get a leg up in the search engine results pages, resulting in even more targeted traffic and sales.

• SEOmoz Pro
• Google Webmaster Tools
• SEO Book
• SEOQuake
• Web CEO
• Raven Tools

Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)

If you spend any time learning search engine optimization to further your company’s goals, engaging in PPC marketing is the next logical step. The following marketing software will automate most of your PPC marketing efforts, allowing you to focus on other more important aspects of your business.

• WordStream
• Acquisio
• Clickable
• BoostCTR
• WordWatch

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation makes easy work of lead generation, management and retention. With the following must have marketing software, you can segment leads according to where they are in the buying cycle, you can send targeted emails to certain lead segments and you can nurture leads over time so that they go from prospect to customer in just a few steps. In short, marketing automation is must have marketing software for any business who wishes to remain relevant in today’s day and age.

• Marketo
• HubSpot
• Silverpop Engage
• NetResults
• PlanPlus CRM

Video Hosting Management

Video marketing software will help you publish, host and produce valuable video content for your audience. Nothing engages quite like video and the following must have marketing software will make video marketing a breeze. You don’t even need to be technically inclined or a natural videographer to be successful at using the following selections.

• Vimeo
• Brightcove
• Viddler
• Wistia
• Brainshark

Conversion Rate Optimization

Some call it cheating, some call it gaining an edge. Whatever you want to call it, conversion rate optimization marketing software will ensure that your goals are met and your bottom line expanded upon. The following must have marketing software titles are chosen according to effectiveness and popularity over the following year. If you want higher conversions, more sales and increased revenue, put one or more of these marketing software titles to work.

• Google Website Optimizer
• Adobe Test & Target
• ThomasNet Navigator Platform
• Unbounce
• Visual Website Optimizaer

Crowdsourcing

Smart marketers know that they can’t do everything on their own, even with must have marketing software. When you need a dedicated team of professionals on short notice, or even when you want to hire someone short or long-term, the following marketing software is a must.

• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• oDesk
• Elance
• 99Designs
• Guru
• CrowdSource
• PeoplePerHour.com

Email Marketing

Whether you are using marketing automation or you’re attempting to do it manually, email marketing should always be part of your overall marketing plan. Email marketing allows you to engage in personal communication with your prospective customers, as long as you do everything correctly. The following must have marketing software will help you build targeted email marketing lists and manage those lists so that you turn your subscribers into paying customers. Try one or more of these marketing software platforms until you find one you’re comfortable using over time.

• Constant Contact
• AWeber
• MailChimp
• Vertical Response
• CheetahMail

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Producing regular content can become a problem over time as your content begins piling up. Content management systems make easy work of writing, posting, editing and managing the look and feel of your website. Furthermore, most content management systems are inherently search engine friendly and they make searching for content incredibly easy for your website visitors. The following must have marketing software platforms are easy to implement and use for web marketing and content marketing success.

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal

Conclusion

You now have an extensive list of marketing software programs that can help you manage the day-to-day processes that are involved with your current marketing plan, while allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business at the same time. The above platforms have been tested and work for countless other businesses. In fact, your competitors may be using one or more of the above must have marketing software platforms as we speak.

As an online marketer, you should always be looking for ways to tweak your campaigns as new technologies are released and as new techniques are developed. This is especially true for your mobile marketing campaigns as we are on the verge of a mobile marketing revolution. Mobile is set to overtake regular computing by 2015 and you can remain on the cusp of innovation by attempting to tweak your mobile marketing campaign according to the latest breakthroughs. One of these breakthroughs that is set to hit stores next year is the Braille smartphone. If you want to keep in the good graces of your customers, particularly those customers that are visually impaired, you may want to begin thinking about a Braille mobile marketing campaign.

The New Braille Smart Phone

So that you know exactly how to tweak your mobile marketing campaign, let’s take a look at the new Braille smartphone to see what you may be up against. The new phone is the brainchild of an Indian-based startup called Kriyate and it works by using repressible Braille display.

The new smartphone will use a grid of pins instead of a screen. These pins will move up and down so that the user can touch them and read the information being conveyed, say in a text message or in an email.

If you want to tweak your mobile marketing campaign to target the visually impaired, you’re going to have to start thinking about Braille and how you can effectively use the language to spread your marketing message.

Mobile Marketing Campaign Options

Targeting the visually impaired via Braille is going to require you to construct text-only ads and messages that cut out the fluff and that don’t leave a whole lot to interpretation. You can’t use images to get your messages across, not with these types of smartphones. In order to tweak your mobile marketing campaign for the visually impaired, you’re going to have to learn to write precision-targeted campaigns that get right to the heart of the matter in as few words as possible.

Actually, that’s what you should be doing anyway. You shouldn’t be relying on your images to get your messages across, but they help. You should be using your words, targeted words, words without a lot of fluff and that tell your audience exactly what you can do for them and exactly what you expect of them.

If you can do that with regular ads online, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to recreate those ads for a visually impaired audience. And if you get used to writing targeted ads, you’ll be able to tweak your mobile marketing campaign no matter what new technologies or techniques are released.

The Visually Impaired Smartphone Train – Tweak Your Mobile Marketing Campaign Accordingly

Kriyate isn’t the only company targeting the visually impaired. Qualcomm is also coming out with their “RAY” smartphone that offers calls, texts, navigation and more with vocal readouts.

Android even released an app last year helps the visually impaired see their phones better by making fonts larger and by issuing voice commands.

While these technologies are still new, we are bound to see more just like them in the coming months and years. As an online marketer, you should never stop attempting to tweak your mobile marketing campaign. Keep up with the latest updates in mobile technology and keep an eye on the experts and your competitors who may be tweaking their mobile marketing campaigns as we speak.

While it may have been fashionable to keep a supplemental mobile marketing campaign a few years ago, today it’s a necessity to have a mobile campaign to spread your message far and wide. With more smartphones in use and with more mobile devices coming out all the time, you can’t afford to be left behind.

While Braille smartphones are still just an idea, they may hit store shelves soon. You may want to think about how you’re going to tweak your mobile marketing campaign when they finally do come out. Then, when other technologies and techniques are released and hailed as the next best thing, you’ll always be one step ahead, as all of your mobile marketing campaigns will be altered according to what’s working and what’s bound to be working next.

The visually impaired should be able to smartphones, too, and if you play your cards right and tweak your mobile marketing campaign accordingly, those visually impaired individuals may also be able to read your ads and marketing messages all in Braille.

Keyword Targeting

For an example of how to keyword target, we will use Google Adwords. Let’s say that you have an optician practice and you want to send out targeted ads to people looking for new eyeglasses. By focusing on keywords such as ‘men’s designer eyeglasses’, you hope that your ads will show up when search engine users type that very query into the search box.

Now Twitter and Facebook are trying to get into the keyword targeting game, and it looks like Twitter is beating Facebook to the punch.

Keyword Targeting with Twitter

Twitter recently announced that it was moving towards keyword targeting, which will allow advertisers to target certain Twitter users based on the Tweets they send (and the keywords included with those tweets), as well as their location (based on geotargeting).

As Twitter describes it, “Let’s say a user tweets about enjoying the latest album from their favorite band, and it so happens that band is due to play a concert at a local venue. That venue could now run a geotargeted campaign using keywords for that band with a Tweet containing a link to buy the tickets. That way, the user who tweeted about the new album may soon see that Promoted Tweet in their timeline letting them know tickets are for sale in their area.”

Some marketers are skeptical as to whether or not keyword targeting will work with Twitter. According to them, a tweet and a search engine query are two totally different things. For one, most search users search because they have an intent to buy. It’s no big deal for them to see keyword targeting in the form of advertisements – they may even appreciate it.

What about Twitter users. When a person tweets, they’re trying to involve themselves in the conversation. They don’t particularly want to be sold to in that moment. In fact, placing an ad in front of everyone’s tweets as you attempt to keyword target with Twitter might only serve to annoy your audience rather than snag them.

Still, Twitter feels confident that keyword targeting will work on its platform. The platform released a statement that read, “In our tests with a small group of advertisers and agencies like Everything Everywhere (@EE), Microsoft, Japan (@SurfaceJP), and Walgreens (@Walgreens), users were significantly more likely to engage with Promoted Tweets using keyword targeting in timeline than other forms of targeting in the timeline.”

Keyword Targeting with Facebook

Ever since Facebook launched its IPO, it has been searching for a way to satiate investors with a true monetized advertising platform. Will keyword targeting save the day?

Facebook has attempted the online advertising game with Facebook ads, but the platform has yet to take off, at least when you compare it with Adwords.

Many people are used to thinking about how to garget with Google, but not many people are used to how to keyword target with Facebook. That means that Zuckerberg’s social giant is going to have to think of something big if they want to make a dent in the keyword targeting game and Adwords’ share of the market.

It’s clear that Facebook and Twitter have both borrowed heavily from Google in a number of ways and it looks like emulating Google’s keyword targeting is the next logical step. It’s still too early to tell how the average user will tolerate targeted ads based on the content they input. With the majority of Twitter and Facebook users taking to the platforms to communicate with friends and family, or to keep tabs on their favorite celebrities, many users may find keyword targeting intrusive.

The lesson for marketers is that, whether you are attempting to keyword target with Google, Twitter or Facebook, make sure your ads are highly-targeted (meaning that the user will find them highly-interesting) and pray that you’re not intruding on their social networking time.

Twitter is forging ahead with its keyword targeting program and all marketers now have the ability to keyword target with Twitter, as long as they are identified as a brand. Hopefully Facebook will come up with a solution soon. Until then, we’ll watch Twitter to see how it performs and we’ll put most of our current efforts into learning how to better keyword target with Google.