Understanding the Viral Marketing Power of Social Media

If you want to enjoy the benefits of viral marketing, you'll need to incorporate social media into your online marketing strategy. That's why it's a great idea to distribute your news releases through a PR service that includes embedded social media sharing buttons on each published document. After all, making your content easy for readers to share is one of the most effective viral marketing techniques that any business can use.

Understanding the Impact of Social Media

There are several reasons that social media have such a tremendous capacity to be effective. A few of the most powerful benefits of this type of online marketing include:

* Sheer numbers: A majority of consumers actively participate in social networking activities on a daily basis.
* Speed: Information distributed through social media outlets tends to travel from person to person very quickly.
* Credibility: Since people typically only to let individuals they trust into their social networking contact lists, it stands to reason that information passed through these channels is thought to have a certain level of credibility.
* Captive Audience: People who participate in social networking sites are there because they choose to be there. When your messages are presented in this way, they're being delivered directly to the desktops (or laptops or mobile phones) of a captive audience.
* Information Seeking: People who actively engage in social networking tend to utilize the sites and groups they participate in as resources for giving and receiving information. Social networkers who find useful information like to share it with their online contacts, and they also like to seek tips and suggestions from the individuals they network with in cyberspace.
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The Benefits Of Website Leasing

Website Leasing is a great way for small business owners to take advantage of getting their small business website online quickly while not using all of their capital in the process.

The Benefits of Small Business Website Leasing

1. Leasing a website allows you to spend less capital and utilize your capital for other business expenses, saving you money.

2. Leasing a website saves you time. Most companies offer a wide range of services meaning you do not need to seek out different professionals from multiple companies to handle your project.

3. Find a company you can trust! Make sure all of the fees are disclosed on the company website. Select a company that believes in ethical business practices.

4. Leasing a website can give you Flexible End of Term Options. Renew your lease, purchase your website or cancel your service and walk away. No strings attached.

5. By choosing to lease your website you are bundling multiple services and reducing the amount of your monthly expenses.

How It Works

Just like leasing a car, a small busines website lease agreement allows you to have a professional, search engine optimized CMS website built for your company now while giving you the opportunity to pay for it over time. At the end of your lease agreement you are given the opportunity to purchase your site and continue hosting it with your service provider.

How Much Does it Cost?

Different companies have different pricing structures. One of the best deals that we know of nets you a two year website lease agreement for as little as $24.99 per month. There are other costs associated with these types of plans including setup fees (typically a one-time payment).

What is a CMS Website?

A Content Management System (CMS) is used to structure your website's documents in such a way that you don't need to re-enter all of your information agai when it's time to change the look and feel of your site. All of your data is placed inside of a MYSQL database and this allows your data to be accessed quickly. Popular CMS platforms include Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal.

Why Is Search Engine Friendly So Important?

As a small business owner you should realize that 90% of people who use the internet use search engines to find what they're looking for online. Your business needs an online presence to allow your audience to find you quickly and easily.
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You’re a Retired Professional Athlete… Now What?

You were a professional athlete. You most likely spent your whole life working towards the goal of earning a living by playing sports. Some might say you were born with a ball (or a pair of goggles, or a joust, or running sneakers) in your hand. You spent your youth playing organized sports, missing out on weekends full of video games with your buddies because you had a weekend tournament, instead. Your whole life has been about sacrifice, for the game you love, and the game that eventually loved you back with money and fame. Now you’re retired, and you’re a little scared, confused even. Where do you go from here?

Some athletes choose to retire, move away from the spotlight, hang out with their family for a while, and make up for lost time. Others (not many) have made enough money in their playing career to support themselves and their loved ones for the rest of their lives without doing much of anything, and are content doing so. However, for most athletes, the money will run out, and more importantly, they aren’t happy just ‘doing nothing.’ Those are the athletes I’m speaking to now.

Building an Online Presence Will Help You Stay Relevant

The eyeballs are shifting. People are spending more and more time on the Internet rather than in front of the television, and that trend won’t change. If you want to stay relevant, maintaining a personal site and building an online presence is the best option. Through social media, you can interact with the fans who supported you throughout your playing career, while earning new fans along the way. The content you create is up to you. If you no longer want to talk about or associate yourself completely with your sport, you don’t have to.

Conclusion

Just because your playing days are over does not mean you have to leave the spotlight. In fact, your retirement is a chance to expand your brand, and to connect with the people who showed you support during your career.

Which retired athletes who’ve left the spotlight would you most like to see online? Which retired athletes have done a good job of maintaining their presence through a personal website and/or social media?
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Gary Vaynerchuk - Social Media Diva

Gary Vaynerchuk - Social Media Diva from Art of Talk TV on Vimeo.

The new web connects people - Now you can reach people directly!
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Study: Most Effective B2B Social Media Tactics are IT ‘Lite’

According to a new study involving more than 1,700 small business leaders, companies marketing to small businesses would be well advised to focus on social media tactics requiring little IT investment, such as webinars, podcasts and establishing a presence on top social networking sites, before pursuing more IT resource intensive initiatives such as creating a company-managed online community. The study, conducted by Business.com, finds that that four of the top five most effective social media tactics for engaging small business decision makers do not require significant IT investment or involvement. The exception – company blogs – should be backed by both a strategic content strategy and the resources necessary to create this content on an ongoing basis before it allocating IT resources to blog creation or management.

The small business social media study examined the social networks and other social media resources small business owners and managers turn to for business-relevant information. In contrast to the common perception of social media as inherently “social” or interactive, study participants using social media for business were much more likely to use resources which don’t require interaction, such as webinars and podcasts (67%) or reading product reviews (63%), than they were to participate in online discussions (29%).

The top five social media resources used by small business leaders are:

Webinars / Podcasts – small business leaders consider webinars and podcasts to great resources for professional development, industry research and learning about potentially-relevant products and services, saving them the time and expense of attending in-person training.

Ratings & Reviews – provide useful input into the business buying process, particularly those ratings or reviews provided by other small businesses using the product or service.

Company / Brand Pages on Social Networking Sites – social network participation is now mainstream for U.S. adults, with 46% using sites such as Facebook and 25% participating weekly. Small business leaders are increasingly turning to these sites to find the latest information about important vendors, products and services.

Company Blogs – small business leaders praise company blogs – at least, those that are “well written, current and with good thought leadership articles” – as great sources of information about business-relevant products, services and the underlying character of a company.

Social Media Search – while some of the business-relevant information on social media sites can be found through general search engines, a great deal cannot. Realizing this, over half of small business leaders using social media search for business-relevant information directly on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Business.com Answers, SlideShare and many more.

B2B social media marketing initiatives require Marketing and IT to work closely together to prioritize projects, allocate resources, manage execution and maintain new systems and features. One key implication from this study for companies marketing to small businesses is that Marketing can, and should, actively pursue B2B social media initiatives which require little IT investment before taking on more resource-intensive projects.

For example, rather than placing a company-managed online community the core of the emerging social media strategy – a community where, according to this research, it will be very challenging to build participation by small business leaders – establish a company presence on one or more social networking sites and focus initial community development efforts on those sites. By focusing first on external, IT ‘lite’ social media opportunities, companies marketing to small businesses are more likely to reach a far larger portion of their target audience in the short run, begin developing a following and learn key lessons that inform what social media features and functionality are actually necessary on the company web site.

Learn more about the given opportunities and what’s in it for your business with AAACBC Inc. - just get in touch
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Successful by managing an on-line platform or a blog

These days everybody can make a living by doing what he/she loves most. You might not make it to one of those featured on CNN or Today’s Show but you have a good chance to make a good living by doing what you are passionate about. The internet allows you with numerous FREE marketing tools and shareware to achieve your dreams. You can use community platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster to get in touch with peeps and use tools like Twitter, Tumblr, Ping to spread your message out there. All those tools and platforms are out there for FREE and wait for you to get used properly.

Using those tools will not guarantee your success they will just help you to achieve your goals.

First step to become successful in on-line business, you need to evaluate yourself truly and learn everything you possibly can about your passion. There is no way around it and you need to be willing to do what it takes – if you wish to be triumphant. You need to know and find out everything about your passion to become the best because competition is huge out there and only the finest will be successful.

Second step to take is you need to build yourself a nice home, it doesn’t matter if it is an informative blog or an instructive website or simply a community platform, you need to build your home in a way that it suites and serves your idea best around your passion. Your home is where you live and where you bring the peeps you met on the various community parties to hang out while they showed an interest in you or your passion already. The other peeps you met, you need to leave them alone, because you don’t go to parties to pitch everybody or do you want to be the geek. Just leave them alone, they might come later on by themselves by reading your web address on your detailed profile you set-up.

Third step is you need to work hard, hustle and get involved with like minded people. There is no secret. You need to engage into conversations in forums, blogs and in communities where those people are and publish valuable content around your passion by writing on blogs and/or uploading videos and/or pod casts and/or pictures for FREE. Share and give out as much valuable content you can – you will be rewarded with lot of eyeballs that you can monetize, other people will pay it back to you by doing business with you.

This is how it works out there, but make no mistake, it’s a lot of work and requires determination and patience to be victorious at the end.

Now good luck and just do it!

What’s the difference between winning and losing?

Living the life you’ve always dreamed of where you are 100% happy or dreading the sound of your alarm clock?

It’s a matter of hustle. A simple decision to work harder than everyone else. We live in a day and age where the cost of entry into business is ZERO. The only thing that matters is sweat equity.

But what motivates a person to hustle?

It’s not a switch that can be turned on or off. It’s not a gift that some are blessed with and others aren’t – it’s the passion for what you’re doing.

I’ve always been someone who has worked hard in everything I did, but most of the time I didn’t enjoy it, I just kept working because I knew that’s what it took to be successful. Until, I got into entrepreneurship. Every morning, I jump out of bed, because I love what I do – I live a fast pace life that is always changing and always pushing me to learn more. I’m passionate, and because of that, I can outwork anyone, anywhere.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the biggest advocate of this – he believes that the key to success is loving what you do. Gary is a prime example of loving what you do, and hustling because of it. So, quit going through the motions and getting discouraged when something doesn’t go your way. That my friends, is the type of shit that embodies a hustler.

Things happen, and when they do… move your keynote from that warm, well lit room, to the streets of where ever you are . . .

The Social Media Revolution

Take a few minutes of your time and think about the Social Media Revolution – it’s worth it, if you want to succeed and stay in business.

Just to give you an inside view how social media marketing work and how to use the tools available - I just wanted to present to you a few short videos to help you grab the massive potential of it. Take a few minutes to take a look at it by just clicking the links:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gza8dvN8Hkc

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Social Media is a “Thank You and Support” ecosystem in which you need to give away quality content (video – blog – podcast – etc…) for FREE to draw interest for your brand, your business, your services or your products. The word of mouth in Social Media is so much more effective and powerful then ever before thanks to tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Blogger and many more, which could be used for FREE by users to give them a voice.

You need to be aware of the fact that you don’t control the message any more – the users out there control the message and businesses need understand that. The game has changed considerably. So what companies need to realize is that they will just endure in this new ecosystem when they listen, react and communicate with their users and customers out there.

Basically they need to give a shit and care about their users and customers!

More content value you spread out there for FREE through Social Media, more people will talk about it – more feedback for your business will be a result of it, which will be converted positively into brand recognition and increases the potential to monetize.

Content is King - Marketing is Queen and runs the Household

But putting out valuable substance is just not sufficient to be successful, it’s just part of the way – now you need to hustle, spread the word become part of the communities relevant to your business and live in it. Be supportive and help people in those networks and they will pay it back to you multiple times. That’s the key and that's how it is.

Always keep in mind, the first step to be successful – the better your content is, more word of mouth you will obtain out of it, more it will profit your brand and your business.

Make money doing what you love most

Today you can get paid with doing what you like to do! There are huge opportunities out there and everybody can play the game, just do what you are passionate about and hustle. Hustle, work hard and give a shit. This is the most important message I could give you today.

You need to be visible and transparent, basically you need to brand yourself!

In the past it was necessary to invest huge sums in TV spots, radio casts, magazine ads to market yourself, in today’s world this isn’t necessary any more. Your customers are everywhere you just need to lead them to you, your products, your services and you need to care about them.

Be supportive, Be Passionate, Be Patient

To succeed in today’s altered business ecosystem you need to speak with your customers by producing quality content about your passion. In a second step you need to listen to them and most essentially you need to give a shit about them. You need to care about them, you need to interact with them.

You need to be patient and work hard to succeed in this new business ecosystem called social media or web 2.0

To create a successful business on the internet you need to be everywhere, be passionate and patient, you need to work hard and hustle, you need to spend 80% to 90% of your working hours in the web to produce quality content – answer e-mails – post quality replies to blogs related to your activity or business.

What’s social media?

It’s word to mouth on steroids, if you have something to say and if it’s quality, because quality is always king, it gets expanded in so many directions and this is the real power of it because everybody has a voice and not certain select fields.

You need to treat social media like twitter – facebook – tumbler – flickr – youtube like a party and not like a presentation. You don’t use them to talk about business or pitch everybody. You try to get into conversation like you do on a party in the real world those media are just a translation into the virtual world and you should use it like that.

To communicate, just do it.

The game has changed and you need to deal with it!

What people need to understand is that the way we communicate is so different.

Today’s traditional businesses need to understand that, you don’t control the message of the brand any more, users control the message and they are the one who talk about it and how you respond to them, that’s the game, not the other way around.

The idea is to listen to the users out their all the time. That’s the game and not what you tell them.

It’s all about listening, it’s all about caring but most of all you need to be good at what you are doing. Talk about your passion whatever it is and live in the communities where they talk about it to really get in their.

Find your niche if it is your hobby or whatever it is and communicate with people out their. If you put exciting, silly, interesting stuff out their that people like and it goes viral, let me tell you something, you will have hundred’s or thousand’s of people watching it and you can make ten or hundred of thousand’s of dollars with virtually everything.

With product placement on your video pod cast because everything what’s relevant in movies and television is relevant on-line, because if you get the eyeballs, and the only way to that is to have a lot of passion and chops for that subject matter, even a bottle of water can be monetized.

Just make the connection.

That’s the world we live in dude and to me that’s fascinating and exciting, but make no mistake it is hard work, hustle and about connecting.

We help build Brand Equity

PERSONAL BRANDING

Our personal branding clients are hungry and dedicated to building their personal brand, both on-line and off. We work closely with each client to build a custom strategy aimed to achieve the most effective form of success.

CONSUMER BRANDING

AAACBC works with brands who are willing to move forward and are open to new ideas. Our main focus is to build and strengthen your brand as well as expose you to a broader audience while being cost effective.

BUSINESS EQUITY

We partner with start-up's to help build their brand, network, and marketing initiatives in exchange for a small piece of equity. We are looking to work with passionate entrepreneurs with a strong vision and a burning desire to succeed.

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10 Web trends to watch in 2010

(CNN) -- As 2009 draws to a close, the Web's attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010?

While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:

read more

Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.

Social Media Revolution

Gary Vaynerchuk Teaches Basic Social Media Principles to CNN

Plan Your Viral Marketing Campaign Carefully

You’ve likely heard about viral marketing. That’s where you tell a couple of people about something and they tell a couple of friends who also tell a couple of friends and the message is carried on "ad infinitum" with each level of messaging spread further and wider than before. It’s about like network marketing with the multi-level payout structure.

But if that’s the way it works, can you plan a viral marketing campaign? Isn’t such marketing better left to its own devices?

There have been marketers and search engine optimization folks who successfully planned and managed a viral marketing campaign and saw great results. The key is in the understanding of human nature. If you know what motivates people to act and tell their friends about something that excites them then you can dangle a carrot in front of their faces and watch them clamor to get it. That’s basically what viral marketing is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out as planned.

People are unpredictable. What you think will excite them could be a flop. And what you predict will fail could be a huge success. You can bet that most viral marketing campaigns go nowhere for that reason. But when you hit the payload, you know it will be worth it. So planning is a big part of developing and launching a viral marketing campaign (like all forms of online and offline marketing). My suggestion is really know your audience before you think about a viral marketing campaign, understand not only the demographic information, but what type of delivery device will get a good response (video, publicity stunt, etc.).

"Just plan it well"

AAACBC short intro

AAACBC Inc. is a global consulting corporation committed to small and medium size companies. Individually tailored solutions are made available to SME’s all over the globe at very reasonable terms and conditions to assist these entities with AAACBC Inc.’s expertise and understanding to assure them a thriving expansion.

Our team of experienced international professionals is dedicated to support our clientele from daily operations to financial issues, over business development tasks, up to marketing & communication topics. Our IT development team is bristled with specialists in a verity of fields of activity to assists small and medium size corporations to develop individual programming solutions as well as to implement tailored web design solutions as needed.

To learn more about our company just visit our website