Let’s look at how to use apps in your Web 3.0 marketing. In these instances of apps, we are looking for software tools, add-ins and fun programs that help us accomplish a few things:
• Increase the relationship building among your prospects/client • Aid in the experience your prospects/clients receive • Make communication easier and faster • Help with the fun factor in your marketing
Twitter Apps
One of the biggest problems marketers have with Twitter is the challenge of keeping up the large amounts of tweets and direct messages. This causes a delay in response time along with the chance of missing some critical information. As a result, Twitter has allowed developers to start building apps to aid in this dilemma – helping Twitter members organize and prioritize the hundreds or thousands of incoming tweets they receive every day.
My favorite Twitter apps include:
• Twitterific • Google Desktop for Twitter • TweetDeck • Tweet Later
Mobile Apps
We talked about apps extensively in the mobile chapter. There are thousands of apps for use across the most popular devices, including the iPhone and BlackBerry, among others. Many apps allow you to interact quicker with your Web 3.0 marketing sites. For example, there is an iPhone app that connects to your Twitter account, allowing you to tweet quicker! You can also shoot a short video or audio with your iPhone and have it tweeted instantly! Take this to another level with Ustream’s new live broadcast app! You can view, record and broadcast live!
Facebook Apps
I don’t consider Facebook a Web 3.0 company for one key reason: because the site is open to the masses. Remember: one of the key trends in the shift from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is the openness of the Web. Consumers are flocking to more exclusive and private social networks rather than simply doing all their networking on Facebook. The site is a powerhouse and generates a lot of revenue for our clients, but the whole point of this book is to talk about the next and coming trends and the trends that have already been in play that you don’t yet know about. Keep using Facebook, but know there is going to be a Facebook revolt in the very near future! While Facebook is not a Web 3.0 company, there are a variety of apps that help you use it as a Web 3.0 marketing tool.
Here are my seven favorite apps for use on Facebook:
• LinkedIn: This puts a convenient LinkedIn banner on your profile and a direct link to your LinkedIn profile.
• Books: This app allows people to see what you have read and are currently reading.
• Causes: Become an advocate of your favorite causes and charities, and even raise money right from your profile.
• Video: Upload video right to your profile with ease.
• Countdown Calendar: Use this cool app to have a countdown to anything you’d like, from your birthday, to an event you’re hosting or even to the New Year.
• Where I’ve been: If you travel, this is a must-have. It creates a slick map of the world showing the different places you have traveled.
• DivShare: Sharing MP3s, videos and other files is a breeze with this app.
Ask yourself a few questions. How many of your friends are on MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook? How many are making money on these social networking sites? I don’t know about you, but I have tons of friends and family that are using these networking sites just to find friends and post content.
What is Social Web 2.0?
Social Web Media 2.0 or web 2.0 are the social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and Squidoo. I have left out quite a few, but these are some of the most popular.
Many network marketers are using social networking sites to promote themselves in attraction sponsoring. Attraction sponsoring, created by Mike Dillard and Ann Sieg, is the idea of attracting prospects to you by offering something of value to their home based business. This in return will create a relationship because you are valued by the prospect and they trust you and your opinion or knowledge. The idea is to gain as much knowledge about network marketing and building a business that you position yourself as a leader on the subject.
Does this work with Web 2.0? Absolutely, because there is no other way to meet and reach the thousands or ten thousands of people other than the internet. These websites, MySpace, Facebook, and the others provide the perfect platform to allow network marketers to network. That gives them the ability to share their ideas through discussions, videos, and articles. More and more network marketers are sharing their knowledge, promoting themselves and positioning themselves as leaders in the industry. This creates an attraction to these leaders and puts them in the position of value. Now, prospects are looking for leaders to help them in their business and ultimately to become business partners.
Isn’t this what network marketing is about?
Network Marketing is reaching as many people as possible and add them to your business and then duplicate your efforts. YouTube gives you the videos to reach and train thousands. Facebook, MySpace gives you the open discussion platform to meet other like minded individuals. Squidoo, and other such sites gives you the ability to create web pages to promote yourself and other related topics to your business.
Jump on board now! If you are in the network marketing business and are not using Social Media Web 2.0, you will not take your business to the next level. There are lots of college, educated, savvy, business minded individuals that are no longer working for corporate America. They are working for themselves, creating a recession proof income, and having fun doing it.
For small businesses, Internet brings lots of opportunities to deliver their message to their clients. Small businesses are turning to web and are taking advantage of these new opportunities. Making a business website is not a piece of cake and certainly not everyone can do the job. However, the do it yourself trend had made people believe that they can create their own business website too even if they are not web designer or developer. Small business owners can certainly create their own website but what good that website design would be if it is not effective and does not bring any results back to the business.
While creating a website for business purposes there are many things to increase the chances of better returns from the website. Not all business website are designed the same way, but unfortunately people love to jump on the band wagons without understanding that they have other options which suite them better.
A business website needs to be concise and to the point. People do not have much time to spend on a website so your website should be designed in a way that makes it easier for people to explore it quickly. A business website should provide the visitors a chance to quickly get to the information they needed. This means that a business website design should have a very user friendly navigation, important pages and links presented on the top and a search box to the corner. So that the visitors can browse through the website or use the search box to look for the information they needed.
A business website is not like a personal blog, so it looks awkward seeing a list of social web profiles in the sidebar with almost every social media website included. As a small business you need to focus your attention on few social platforms and only offer the options where you are most active. For example Facebook and twitter are probably the busiest options of all so use only them.
As a small business you need to evaluate that what kind of pages you need on your website. Designing a practically effective and efficient website means to stay focus on your business goals. There are widgets to put almost everything, from NASA’s mars rover images to the RSS feed of local grocery store. These widgets are there but it does not mean that you must add them to your website. Please do not use your website look like personal homepage of some teen.
Instead make it focused and avoid putting on distractions there. Your website’s visitors are already quite distracted by many other things demanding their attention so you adding more to your website will take away their interest from the website to other things. This kind of behavior will stop them from learning more about your website and hence you will be hurting your business goals ultimately.
For a website design to be effective it needs to be supplemented with effective powerful and compelling copywriting. Make sure that the contents of your website follow the same style as your design which is to make things simple and concise and avoid distractions.