SEO News: Expert Tips

SEO, or search engine optimization  is very important for businesses that have a website.  If your website is not properly optimized for search, you may as well just have a really beautiful billboard in the Sahara desert, cause no one is going to see it.  A website that is on page one of google and is also optimized for conversion can have a tremendous positive impact on your business’ bottom line.  The topic of marketing a business website is very intimidating for business owners and  understandably so.  The way the search engines work is changing faster than a business owner has time to keep up with.  However, a good SEO expert should be dedicating a large part of  his or her time to keeping up with these lightning fast changes to stay ontop of the industry trends.  Here are five tips to finding a great SEO expert that will be a priceless asset in building a healthy and vibrant Internet presence so that your business can flourish.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/05/7-seo-tips-small-business/

1.  Ask how long they have been in business and ask for referrals of some of his/her success stories.  Call the references and see if they were happy with the services provided.

2. Ask if they do the work themselves or if they outsource it.  You don’t want an expert who is going to charge you hundreds of dollars per month and then turn around and outsource the work to someone in a third world country for $5.00

3.  Ask if the SEO expert uses white hat techniques or black hat.  You will want to stay away from the black hat techniques that in the long run could get your website banned from the major search engines.

4.  Ask if you will be bound to some kind of a contract.  You should be able to pay month to month so that if you are not happy with the services received, you wont be obligated to live out a long contract

5.  Ask if they measure their results and share them with you.  There are many SEO metrics and your SEO expert should be able to keep tabs on the major ones and provide you proof of your progress.

http://news.yahoo.com/add-people-seo-tips-small-business-owners-must-123034622.html

The investment you make in finding an SEO expert will be well worth it.  A really talented and experienced SEO professional can really make a difference in how your website attracts visitors and how those visitors convert to paying customers.

Tweeting for Business

Twitter has become one of the most widely used and well known social media platforms. The US President himself tweets constantly, even had a special cell phone made so he could keep using his Twitter account when he got into office.  If the President uses it, is it good enough for your business? I’d think so. Twitter offers a very straightforward and easy to use interface. On top of that service is a whole slew of 3rd party products designed to work with Twitter and increase its functionality. In fact, there are so many of them now that it’s becoming a near-impossible task to sort through all the clutter to find the ones that are right for you and your business online marketing platform. In point of fact, doing that is becoming increasingly important as there are some Twitter tools that can get your Twitter account banned or cause your Twiiter name to lose all credibility.
Counter-productive doesn’t even begin to cover that!
Internet marketing is one of the hottest and fastest growing fields in the business world today. Companies large and small are realizing that an effective business online marketing model is not an option anymore; it’s an absolute requirement. Trying to exist as a successful venture in today’s business world without taking full advantage of the internet and social media is tantamount to corporate suicide. The number of clients and customers that can be reached exclusively on the net is a daily-growing number, with buzz words like “e-commerce” becoming commonplace throughout the US and many of the industrialized nations. Let’s take a look at a couple of the best 3rd party programs for Twitter I’ve found.
First, we have CoTweet. Serious multi-function product here, it allows for keyword and trend monitoring, multiple users supported, tracking for when tweeted links and ads are clicked. Tweet scheduling and posting across multiple accounts at once. This one is right up there with the most powerful and well-known of Twitter business apps, HootSuite.
Next, we have a cool program called MediaFunnel. This one offers a lot of the same functions as CoTweet but it adds something that I feel makes it worth mentioning. Aside from Facebook support(which is a fantastic idea) it also allows for multiple user types: administrators, publishers, and contributors. Contributors can post content from mobile devices for review bu editors or publishers, allowing for business agents in field to Tweet content back to the office as soon as they see it. There’s some serious potential there for expanding business and customizing the content put out to customers.
Lastly, we have a program called Trillian. This isn’t a Twitter-specific app or specifically a business app. Trillian is what is known as a meta-messenger, designed to create a service that can sign into all of your social media accounts at once. The program has been around for 10+ years now on PC and was released for iPhone and Android with great success 2 years ago. Able to connect to everything from Facebook to the AOL Instant Messaging service to an old service called ICQ. I personally use this app and have for more than 10 years; it’s a fantastic program and works incredibly well, along with good technical support. Given its versatility and wide range of connection options, it’s so far a largely untapped resource for business users pursuing internet marketing.

Miami Marketing Online

Advertising: the most common method for businesses to bring in customers. Probably one of the oldest practices in human history.   Evidence of Babylonians using signs on the sides of shops in 3000 B.C. shows how long people have been trying to spread the word that they have something other people want. The Acta Diurna was the first Roman newspaper, put out in 59 B.C., and you can reasonably assume a commerce-oriented culture like the Roman Empire or the Republic likely posted ads in the newspapers of the time.   In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press, allowing for mass production and distribution of printed advertisements and the more efficient production of newspapers. This was the dominant form of advertising for several hundred years until the advent of radio and television within the last century.   Now we have the internet. Cell phones. Tiny computers with touchscreens.   Since the explosion of the world wide web, so many new avenues for advertising have opened up. Social media allows for extensive and massive networking between people that would have been, in practice, impossible to maintain as little as 10 years ago. SEO exploded along with the ever-popular search engine market, becoming a profitable business in its own right. Viral video showed the world-changing potential possibilities of videos streamed over the internet, opening up the video marketing business. Smartphones like the iPhone and the Androids have even made it possible to stick advertising into customers’ pockets. Mobile marketing has become the primary way for app designers for cell phones to fund their projects.   So with all these options…   Which one is the best? What is going to most effectively spread the word?   Let’s do an experiment.   You’re riding down the road in your car and listening to a good song on the radio. Then it stops and an ad plays or the DJ starts talking about some product you have absolutely no interest in, which is probably 95% of all the ads you hear on the radio.   What do you do? Change the channel probably. Or turn it down. Or put in a CD.   You’re watching TV on the couch after dinner, enjoying your favorite show. Then a really obnoxiously loud commercial starts. What do you do? Change the channel. Or fast-forward through it because its recorded on TiVo or streaming from Hulu. In some cases, you might even be watching a digital copy of the show directly from your computer.

See the point of the experiment yet?   Direct mail advertising gets thrown away, rarely looked at.  Magazine ads are questionably effective if they are displayed well enough. Yellow pages and phone books? Who even uses them anymore? They are distributed all over the place and generally get piled into stacks to collect dust in a corner in the consumer’s home. Or thrown away entirely. That’s ad money wasted for all practical reasons. Sure, there are a few people that use them still but the overwhelming majority rely on the internet for their research needs for goods and services of all types.   In the here and now of the digital age, the way to get the word out is the internet.   Facebook and Twitter. Social media, the single easiest way to spread Mobile marketing and Video marketing out to the majority of consumers.

Google searches have SEO specialists worldwide working round the clock to continuously optimize SEO usage and make it more effective.

Why is this so?   Another experiment.   You’re surfing on Facebook and see an ad for a product that makes you laugh. You click it and see what it is. Someone just made money off that click, making the ad an automatic return for the business that posted it, whether you buy anything or not.   Your Twitter dings at you. You check it and it’s your favorite celebrity talking up an awesome product they just used. You check it out, clicking on links(that pay people), watch a video about another product, and eventually you buy the original product your celebrity mentioned.

That’s social media(with a celebrity) interlocked with video marketing and paid link advertising.

Put down where you can compare the two like that, you see where digital marketing on the internet shows obvious advantages over any of the older forms of media.

Case in point: the digital distribution service Steam just ended its Annual Summer Sale, which received virtually no televised advertising but totally massive social network coverage. These Steam sales are so profitable, even with the games selling for dirt cheap(which is why they are so successful) that Steam does two or three of them a year while still maintaining the most popular gaming service in the world and its many multiplayer gamers. Seems a bit more cost-effective that putting an ad in the paper that’s going to get thrown away.   See the conclusion here? Digital advertising isn’t the way of the future anymore.   It’s the way of the now.

Miami Marketing Online SEO specialist

Negative SEO (or search engine optimization) sounds like an abstract concept because it is. SEO is a long standing and widely practiced combination of techniques used by webmasters since the mainstream expansion of the internet in the mid-90′s for ensuring a high ranking in the web-based search engines. It has its roots in basic keyword usage and meta tags hidden within the code of a page. One of the earliest tactics, now considered ‘black hat’ and malicious, consisted of tucking a giant pile of keywords down at the bottom of a page the same color as the background or set to be transparent. A user never sees them(unless they look really hard) but a search engine crawler algorithm finds them all the same. The objective of all of the SEO techniques is the same: draw more traffic from search engines and get the website seen more.
Negative SEO seeks the exact opposite.
This form of SEO is a relatively new process for forcing a website lower in search results, in turn lowering a percentage of the site’s traffic. These tactics range from basically passive attacks like users reporting a site as spam to massive large scale and well funded attacks like paid link campaigns in which a business will pay for a thousand or more new links pointing to a competitor’s site, causing the site to be flagged as spam and moved lower in search rankings. In the case of a large company like Microsoft or Newegg, this wouldn’t hurt much long term. But a small business that draws a lot of traffic from searches by users looking for local services could find this ruinous in the long term.
Now Google and most of the major search engines are looking at ways to mitigate this kind of abuse but there is no way they can cover all possibilities. In fact, the biggest worry about these kinds of tactics came when Google themselves issued a warning to webmasters about link schemes and the banning of sites using or the target of these techniques. There is also a couple of new algorithms within Google that can make it hard to fight having a website kicked lower in the search rankings.
< strong>Social Media Marketing & Networking – The future of marketing</strong>
Now that we know what it is, let’s discuss how to fight it. There’s a whole slew of websites discussing “traditional” methods of defense including coding tricks and requesting reviews from Google if a site is not showing up like it should as forms of defense. Here, we’re going to look at the new way of getting things done in the world and a new form of defense: social networking.
I have some personal experience with raising awareness via Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube. I have been participating in the “grassroots” campaigns of several of the activist groups in the US, helping to spread the word over the social nets I connect to. A simple link on Twitter, a You Tube video shared on Facebook; these little things are often all it takes if you have a large reader base. I do, so the message gets around. I share something on Facebook and 10 people re-share it. Each of those people could have 10 people re-share it. 10 iterations like that later and 1000 people have shared that picture and tens of thousands have seen it.
Social media and networking like this leads quickly to a new concept on the web: social media marketing. What better way to advertise than to have real people talking freely about a product or service and all their friends see it? More effective than a commercial and far less expensive.
And therein lies the defense against negative SEO.
A business in the current web-based business world would do extremely well by employing an aggressive and well thought-out campaign for social media marketing. Spreading the word on the growing list of social networking sites is the bar-none simplest, easiest, and cheapest way to advertise. By side effect, that company’s website would start showing up more often in searches naturally because it would simply be a more popular topic on the internet. While potentially time-consuming, this is an incredible simple and cheap way to advertise.

Have You Heard Video Marketing is Great for Business?  Find Some Advanced Strategies To Get Your Videos Viewed!

In this article I want to address some leading approaches for your on-line video internet marketing to guarantee the efforts put in creating your vids ends up with worthwhile views and therefore the return on your investment elevates the levels of both targeted traffic and prospects for your business.

Video Sharing sites are really just Social media sits, so GET SOCIAL!

Video web-sites are social networking websites. They have got all types of internal tools allowing users to rate, spread, like and bookmark the online videos. The thing you should be aiming to do is get acquainted with most people inside your niche on the video sharing site. There’s likely to be some reciprocal back scratching if you share and comment on their content.

Find videos inside your specialized niche and take part in the comments and various discussions going on there. Make friends; leave feedback, like, share, and so forth.  Invest a small tad of effort as often as possible getting to know the key players in your niche.

Never engage in self-serving promotion or push your videos upon other people.  As an alternative, simply just provide great content that people will find useful and valuable.  You are more likely to develop a great list of followers if you make a genuine effort to engage viewers with quality flicks. If you are consistent in your efforts and focus on quality and value, viewers will be happy to subscribe to your channel and share your videos with others.

Propel your video into viral territory (it’s a good thing)

Right now, the biggest goal of any online video marketer is to have your vid go “virus-like”. Exactly what this implies is that a video clip is so interesting, funny, weird, out-there or interesting that everyone who sees it tells his or her pals about it. These are the types of clips that rise in to the enormous amounts of views so coveted by video marketers.  Each and every movie marketer prays for a popular video clip to catch this type of virus!

This requires some authentic ingenuity to produce a popular film.  The 1st tip of almost all viral video clips is that it needs to be authentic.  It can’t be something choreographed or carried out with actors. Next, the idea has to be something that people find so entertaining as well as exciting that they are going to e-mail it to pals.

Acquire Those Highly Valuable Links

An additional sure-fire traffic driving technique is to point your video clips to your online web-site.  If you are utilizing Facebook . com, Twitter and any additional Website 2.0 properties, inform every person presently following you about each of your new videos. You can post your videos instantly on a few internet sites like Hubpages for example.  Another good strategy is to submit your video clips to social bookmarking sites like Diggs and Reddit.  Signing up for these accounts is very simple.  Think of your video links on the various different sites discussed above as footprints in cyberspace all pointing back to your main website.  When you share your video using these various strategies you diversify your linking profile which is very important for improving the ranking of your website.

Do not Count on Being an Overnight Success

Online video marketing isn’t really as quick as simply putting several videos on a hosting site and wishing for the targeted visitors to flood in. Inside this article, were going to outine some more enhanced strategies for trying to get your videos viewed and shared.

Are you completely stumped still?

Many people are, however that does not stop them from trying. In case you want to see what is popular to get some ideas, take advantage of You tube or just about any alternative online video site and find out what popular video clips are trending in your niche market. I’m talking about the ones with 5 million hits.  Pick up a pencil and paper and start jotting down ideas!

Marketing Beyond Youtube . com

As a final point, You tube is undoubtedly the most popular video site, but your video clip promoting campaign has to go past just You Tube. Plaster these videos upon every single internet site it is possible to. Here are several other high-ranking video clip websites you can take a look at, check them out by typing their URL into any search engines browser.

Daily Motion

Blip TV

Metacafe

eHow

Viddler

Vimeo

Alright friends, that just about wraps up this simple tutorial on advanced video promotion. Try to remember these tips.  Video marketing for a number of you that are just starting out might be really overwhelming.  Nonetheless, as you advance and get more familiar with the steps in video marketing you’ll start to find the tasks you believed you wouldn’t get the hang of, starting to be common everyday duties you complete without giving it a second thought.  Being consistent and working hard to establish your presence will really pay off.

Before using email marketing, develop a test email and send it to a family member or friend. Your special someone can see just how the email looks and supply some valuable feedback. Using this method, if any changes should be made, it can be done before sending the emails out to customers.

To have folks to opt-in allows you the permission to be able to send e-mail marketing messages directly to them, offer an incentive. Have a discount or even a coupon using one of your product or service. Incorporate a whitepaper or newsletter about your niche or market. Give your prospect something in return for having access to their inbox.

Be consistent. Always employ exactly the same company logo and colors as part of your email. Ensure that the font you utilize is readable. After a number of messages, people will commence to recognize your business brand whenever you send an e-mail, and often will take notice. Familiarity is important in virtually any business, especially email marketing.

Your e-mail marketing efforts give you greatest results when you coordinate all of them with your whole advertising campaign. Don’t work against yourself by unnecessarily duplicating your efforts in numerous different marketing channels. Be sure that your using email, social networking, and traditional venues which are especially made to work nicely together.

Be persistent with all your e-mail promoting messages. It will take as much as twenty emails to 1 prospect prior to capturing their attention. Try telling an excellent story through your messages. Hook them with an interesting message in the headline and let it unfold over a series of subsequent messages.   Running contests that span several weeks are a good way to do this.  You really need to give your reader a good reason for opening up your marketing piece.

Google places is now Google+ Local.   It has recently gone through a transformation to something with much more potential.  It is an application powered by Google Maps that works with the phones internal GPS navigation technology.  It is a very compelling service for users, too.  On Google Places+ Local, businesses have a great opportunity to describe their products and services to their potential prospects on line and on the go.

Google places is a search tool for businesses offered by Google to show up in local search results for your business type within any particular city.  It is a free service that allows business owners to list their business on Google Places, now referred to as Google Local.  It has become an essential tool in increasing popularity of a business on the Web to attract local consumers.  It is a location-based marketing platform that allows your business to rank in Google’s organic local search results.

Oddly enough very few businesses have claimed their Google places location online.  Maybe this is just from pure lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding the power behind its potential.  For businesses that jump in now, they will have a great advantage over the ones that haven’t claimed their page yet.   As local search becomes more and more relevant for location based businesses, it’s critical to take advantage of local business marketing.  Avoiding it will cause you to miss out on great revenue opportunities.  Google places is a great service for local businesses because it targets prospects within a specified location.  It is essentially a local business directory with directions, contact information and reviews.  It is getting to the point where it’s key to the online success of any local business. Google + Local is growing as a point of traffic distribution, particularly for mobile searches.

Google places is even available on your Android or iPhone device, so people can find your business on the-go. As a matter of fact, a growing number of online consumer searches are being initiated from mobile devices and not desk top computers. Google places service is a way to take the market share of local search traffic from Facebook/Foursquare and other social networks in the location space.   It helps both businesses and consumers find one another through recommendations and more.

Google places has changed the rules of the game with regard to local search.  The key to success on Google places is to really maximize the opportunity for content that Google allows the business owner on its places platform. The very first step is to set up a Google account, from there; Google walks you through the rest.  There are methods however to really “turn up the volume” on your Google Places page. Google Places Optimization is different than traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Many business owners don’t have the time to learn the very specific steps in the process, but a good SEO expert will help you fully optimize and maximize your places page for ultimate online exposure.

Google + Local can be a very powerful addition to your online marketing strategy. Combining it with a well thought out Google friendly website and a few SEO backend strategies on both your webpage and your places page, you can really expect your business to gain some serious traction online.  It is very important for local businesses because it will capture more visitors and leads, and what business couldn’t use more of that? Like it or not, online is where most consumers begin their search for products and services. Missing out on Google + Local means missing out on the life blood of your business.  More customers!

Google places is now Google+ Local.   It has recently gone through a transformation to something with much more potential.  It is an application powered by Google Maps that works with the phones internal GPS navigation technology.  It is a very compelling service for users, too.  On Google Places+ Local, businesses have a great opportunity to describe their products and services to their potential prospects on line and on the go.

Google places is a search tool for businesses offered by Google to show up in local search results for your business type within any particular city.  It is a free service that allows business owners to list their business on Google Places, now referred to as Google Local.  It has become an essential tool in increasing popularity of a business on the Web to attract local consumers.  It is a location-based marketing platform that allows your business to rank in Google’s organic local search results.

Oddly enough very few businesses have claimed their Google places location online.  Maybe this is just from pure lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding the power behind its potential.  For businesses that jump in now, they will have a great advantage over the ones that haven’t claimed their page yet.   As local search becomes more and more relevant for location based businesses, it’s critical to take advantage of local business marketing.  Avoiding it will cause you to miss out on great revenue opportunities.  Google places is a great service for local businesses because it targets prospects within a specified location.  It is essentially a local business directory with directions, contact information and reviews.  It is getting to the point where it’s key to the online success of any local business. Google + Local is growing as a point of traffic distribution, particularly for mobile searches.

Google places is even available on your Android or iPhone device, so people can find your business on the-go. As a matter of fact, a growing number of online consumer searches are being initiated from mobile devices and not desk top computers. Google places service is a way to take the market share of local search traffic from Facebook/Foursquare and other social networks in the location space.   It helps both businesses and consumers find one another through recommendations and more.

Google places has changed the rules of the game with regard to local search.  The key to success on Google places is to really maximize the opportunity for content that Google allows the business owner on its places platform. The very first step is to set up a Google account, from there; Google walks you through the rest.  There are methods however to really “turn up the volume” on your Google Places page. Google Places Optimization is different than traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Many business owners don’t have the time to learn the very specific steps in the process, but a good SEO expert will help you fully optimize and maximize your places page for ultimate online exposure.

Google + Local can be a very powerful addition to your online marketing strategy. Combining it with a well thought out Google friendly website and a few SEO backend strategies on both your webpage and your places page, you can really expect your business to gain some serious traction online.  It is very important for local businesses because it will capture more visitors and leads, and what business couldn’t use more of that? Like it or not, online is where most consumers begin their search for products and services. Missing out on Google + Local means missing out on the life blood of your business.  More customers!

Blogging is an excellent way to share your experiences with people and prospects on line.  A business blog is an informal, easily maintained method for regularly communicating with your customers and prospects on the net.  A business blog offers a more approachable, informal information-providing approach in which customers find pleasure in getting to know your company, and learn about your products, achievements, and innovations.

Blogging matters to business because it can represent your company in a positive light. It can help establish you as an expert in your field.   Business can also use blogs to advance their business interests.  Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having a web presence. For small business owners without the time to learn web html or the money to hire a  designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get your  company’s name out on the Internet.

Blogging started its rapid ascension about 10 years ago as services like Blogger and LiveJournal became popular.  It’s is a great way to grow a business, promote a cause, or spread new ideas, because when you take an educational approach to marketing, you gain the attention and trust of people who might otherwise simply ignore old-fashioned advertising.   Blogging is all about content, persistence, and professionalism.  It is a wonderful way to express your opinions to the general public and exercise some imagination while doing so.  You may be wondering what to write about and if you do decide to start your blogging campaign ..will people actually read your content and find it interesting?  Well… you won’t know that until you give it a try.  Here are a few tips to get you started in the right direction:

1.  Choose interesting topics.  It doesn’t have to be a topic that is totally unique.  Maybe you can write about a different perspective on a “not so new” topic or provide updated research and information about a topic having to do with your industry.

2.  Limit the length of your posts to about 150 – 250 words.   Most internet surfers are browsing through information and you don’t want them to click away before     they are done reading your post.

3.  Consider your format  Organize your information in a way that is easy to read.  Use bullet points, images, videos and break up the text using paragraphs.

4. Write headlines that catch a reader’s interest  Use keywords in your headline and make it interesting.  No one will be interested in reading an article with a boring headline.

5.  Be consistent  You should really be updating  your blog weekly, if not daily to keep readers engaged and interested.  It would be pretty bad to have a reader come back to your blog after one month and realize there is no new information just the same old stale stuff he read weeks ago.

6.  Proof read and edit  Go through your article with a fine tooth comb once you are done writing and when you’re sure it’s all correct, go through it once more.  It is very unprofessional to put out content with grammatical and spelling errors.

7.  Reply back to comments To keep your loyal readers, you definitely need to respond back to questions and comments in a timely manner.

8.  Include images and videos in your posts  This keeps the reader more interested and engaged. It also breaks up the text, making it easier to read.  Make sure your images are relevant to your topic.

9.  Keep you commitment  By being consistent, you have already taken the most important step to making your business blog a success.  It will solidify your brand, bring awareness to your company and establish you as a person your prospects know, like and trust.

10.  Be responsible with your links  Only use links that take your reader to other good resources that have to do with the topic at hand.  Your readers will appreciate the added resource and be back for more of the reliable information you provide.  As you continue to write, your research and blogging skills will improve.

Does social media overwhelm you? Confused about the how’s and why’s?   Its fun, but can be a tremendous time suck if you don’t have a plan.   These few steps will help you to understand how to move from the social media overwhelm of “so many people and so little time,” that often leads business owners to fatigue and a sense of irrelevance.    Remember, all of these social media sites are simply marketing tools. Rather than sinking into social media tiredness, (which countless business owners have done), I’d highly suggest you get some help and education on how to set things up and how to create a social media marketing plan that works.  Creating a blueprint of what your social media marketing goals are is important.  It really helps etch out a solid scheme of what you would like to get out of your efforts and how much time you need to invest on these platforms.  With a little bit of planning ahead, social media can be much easier to manage.  It’s also helpful to choose only the social platforms that are really beneficial to your business model and stick with those.    It’s probably a good idea to just start out with three profiles max and see how it goes.  Make a spreadsheet of your different social media profiles and put a daily topic you would like to talk about next to each.  Do some research on each topic or set up a Google alert so that you don’t have to search for the information, rather, it comes to you.  Organizing your thoughts and topics ahead of time takes a lot of the guess work out.   Next, you will want to respond directly to people who have engaged in conversation with you.  Don’t always sound like a robot either.  People like talking with real people, not machines. There are many tools available that help you organize your tweets and posts ahead of time.  Take advantage of these time savers and keep your sanity.  Some people suggest the use of a timer to set a predetermined span of time they are willing to dedicate to maintaining their social media presence.  That’s probably a good idea if you find managing your time is your challenge.

While social networking can be fun and useful, it’s important to remember that it’s still important to have a real life in the real world. With so many great sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more – it’s no surprise that things can get a little out of hand!  The most common objection I get from small business owners and entrepreneurs is that social networking is a time killer for them.  To stay committed and consistent, have a simple plan or schedule which specifies how much time you are willing to dedicate to specific social media activities, and actually FOLLOW the plan.  This will keep you on track and purge any social media overwhelm.  Get a plan, follow through and enjoy connecting with your followers.  Avoid the social media overwhelm!