The CEO and founder of Wordtracker.com, Mike Minhdel is teaching. Learn from the best!
Do yourself a favor and explore the cloud options that are out there.
Small businesses often overlook resources they need for their online presence and day to day operations. Do you know how many awesome tools you can find in Google Apps Marketplace? Many are free.
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.Pema Chodron 
People like you and I, those of us taking risks, investing everything we have into our business and building a personal brand, know it isn't enough to want success. We have to innovate, think, connect, share what we know, and be relentless in our pursuit. Being able to see progress and feel momentum gives you hope. However, you can have hope even when no one else does or when there has not yet been progress or momentum.
Knowing when to cut your losses is important as well. Sometimes it is important to shift your hopes elsewhere—often times refocusing elsewhere, depending upon the situation.
Are you putting your best content on your website but getting dismal traffic?
Are you writing blog posts, pouring your heart and soul into your content and getting no response?
Does your website have a high bounce rate? Is traffic coming from qualified prospects? Are you converting your traffic?
This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online marketing. The nuances of building an online presence is changing.There's more competition, more noise, more channels, and more vulnerabilities than ever before. On the other side of the coin, there's more more opportunitity than ever before.
This is a big game. There's a lot at stake. The influencers gain more influence. Influence = traffic.
You might have really useful information but it is buried. With authority sites taking the first few pages of results, coupled with affilate marketers hijacking traffic on niche topics, it is a daunting task for the average small business to be found in search.
Here's a few things to commit to if you want your business found in search:
Don't get lost in the sea of information. Keep talking about your business, your passions and what you value. Fight for it. You deserve it. Whew. I just needed that little pep talk!
Shannon Evans who co-authored a book on local search recently published a post about how horribly wrong Google got this. The sentiment from her post was that Google is punishing people who opt out of Google Buzz.
Fast track: from total newbie to experienced blogger: 1. Get a big picture view.
2. Create a social media profile that is the best representation of who you are, who you serve, and what is unique about your services. 3. Perform keyword research and tweak your profile to make sure you are speaking in language that resonates. 4. Define topics near and dear to you. (not more than 4)
5. Set up Google Alerts around those topics
6. Use Google Reader to subscribe to the best complimentary blogs.
Little by little there's a move from reading, to posting notes in Google Reader. Confidence expands and those notes become paragraphs. There's movement from one paragraph to three. Writing in a blog is no different than posting a pararghaph or two in Google Reader.
Using Posterous for blogging helps to make it easy...it is just like writing an email. Blogging has become a common practice and sharing quality content across social networks is no big deal. If the big picture becomes obscure or lost, don't worry. It is still there and will come back into view. It will become even stronger and more clear. You will discover more about what is important to you and to your readers if you stick with the basics.
Get a feel for social media marketing and experience it first hand. Once you get in the habit of reading, thinking and sharing , the rest is easy. Online marketing isn't a static process and the chances of being motivated by a formula and list of instructions, is slim to none.
But almost without fail, when you find your tribe, your topics and your voice, you will develop a genuine love for blogging and social media marketing.
I've been evangelizing lately about "Social Search" vs "Social Media".
Robert Scoble started a Buzz this morning listing the top 6 things that are a real buzzkill.
I used a broad category word "photography" to see what my social circle has to say.Tried and true principles need innovative applications. Would you agree that the goal is to keep elements of traditional marketing, the principles we know are universal and effective, and apply them in new forms. Pitch Engine is a great example of this but how many companies are in a position to utilize the service?
It is rare to find an organization that has digital assets organized in a manner to leverage for a 2.0 press release. Too much emphasis on Tweeting and not enough on creating content that is clear, compelling and news worthy.
