myBRC, SBDC and Loconut

We are always on the look out for terrific new resources for you as business owners.
Here are three resources, about which you may not be aware and each is Perth, or Australia, based.

myBRC (Business Resource Centre) gives you access to premium content like marketing plan templates, audio and video interviews, cashflow management tools and step through guides on topics like setting your pricing. The opportunity to be involved in leading research on small business and provide your point of view on major issues. Membership to the myBRC Community Forums so that you can comment on issues and ask questions of your peers. The opportunity to subscribe to our monthly newsletter and stay up-to-date on what's relevant to small businesses in Australia.

With the Perth based Home Based Business Network you’ll be regularly updated on small business issues through their eNewsletters, keep up to date with the latest network events, and membership is free!
Also, as a member of the Home Based Business Network, you will have the opportunity to participate in the online Interactive Forum. You can ask and answer questions, seek advice and network with other business owners. The Interactive Forum is a great way to interact with others in a way that isn’t normally possible working from home. It’s one of the many benefits of becoming a member.

Loconut is WA’s online hub. It’s a locally owned and run website where Western Australian people, clubs, groups and businesses can communicate based on common interests. The level of participation is up to each user – active users set up their own page (my Place) to keep in touch and share photos with family and friends or use it to make new friends (commonly known as social networking). Others prefer to browse the daily updated local content to learn, participate in discussions or just be entertained. The most common way people use Loconut for their benefit is to set up their own home, called ‘my Place’ which can be as public or private as you wish.

Use Web 2.0 to Make Your Business Flourish FREE!

[Image] Social networking is a hugely powerful business tool. It is a magnificent way to develop new business contacts, get connected to potential clients, plus establish professional connections in your industry. When you are member of a social networking site, you are able to search in similar business fields and you can invite them to join your social group.

Many social pages allow you to add much of your own content, and incorporate feeds from your business blogs, expanding the audience for your information. Simultaneously, you are creating back links from highly ranked sites to your own web sites and blogs, which in turn, increase the visibility of your business within the search engines, such as Yahoo and Google.

Social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter and MyBlogLog allow for greater interactivity between you and your visitors. This is conducive to building a trusted business reputation and an online relationship between you and your community, with the potential of generating new clients and establishing joint venture relationships with complementary businesses.

To begin your explorations, search for a few of the more prominent sites and take a look around. You will observe varied terminology used for referencing social networking sites e.g. web 2.0, social media, social bookmarking, blogs, social networking. There are a number of social networks dedicated to business and others where the lines are blurred.

Read the rest of this article...

Croz is a talker and thinker. check out his website http://www.croz.com.au Also check out this website where Croz is helping a young lad earn one million dollars in one year http://www.thehappysecret.com

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Traits Of Successful Social Media Marketers

[Image] With many individuals finding great success with social media (and as an aside, a basic understanding of search engine optimization), they immediately consider themselves social media marketers and consultants (as well as seasoned SEOs) and offer to sell their promotional services. What skills, though, do successful social media marketers have that put these individuals above the average (or addicted) social media user, and better yet, above the traditional marketer? I asked several social media consultants, bloggers, marketers, search engine optimizers, and social media addicts about what they considered to be essential skills and characteristics of the most efficient and results-driven social media consultants. In the many paragraphs that follow, learn from many of the experts and hear what they consider success when using social media to engage with consumers about products and services.

Read this excellent article What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer? Posted by Tamar Weinberg

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Running a social media campaign

[Image] Certainly, there are quite a few ways to do short run marketing and advertising campaigns on social media with the goal of grabbing traffic. Depending on which of the myriad of routes you choose, they can all range in effectiveness.
In my nuanced view, however, running social ads, banners on MySpace, or even instream ads on a podcast alone don’t really qualify as running a social media campaign.

When I think of a truly effective social media campaign, I imagine something along the lines of what Cisco is attempting currently, or what Gary Vaynerchuk has done with his personal brand and produced media.

Source: Don’t Treat Web 2.0 Like Web 1.0 by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins

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Internet information and users behaviour

[Image] Information will be available anytime, anywhere, anyhow - but the real value lies in people.
People are now information publishers and relays, they’re giving it personal input and then make it worth to their friends and connections. They also become part of the influence information would have onto other people because they’re recommending it using social media tools.
What’s really important looking at the information sharing way of working in the new “social web” is whether information is consumed, used, and re-shared by adressees. Which means people are important, but the way they shape information to send it is way more important.

Read this series of articles on the topic of internet user experience written by Romain Péchard

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Competition for reputation is a significant driving force

[Image] ...the reputation stakes have never been so high. Indeed, the more intimately business seeks to address us through traditional relationship marketing, or the more powerful corporations seek to become through globalisation, the greater the scrutiny and responsibility required of them. A simple injustice or misconception can destroy a reputation overnight, or at the very least, insidiously undermine it. Consequently there is a pressing need to constantly re-evaluate a firm's activity across its entire enterprise so that the good achieved in one area does not conflict with the bad of another.

Learn more about how reputation is today's business critical asset

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Linking Strategies At Social Networks

[Image] ...you need to understand the audience of each social media site. What works as a headline for Digg often won’t work for Reddit. Tweak accordingly, but try to retain your keywords in the title if at all possible, because most of the resulting links will simply regurgitate that title.
Another key element for success on Digg is the summary description, because many people will vote for content based soley on the headline and the brief copy that describes it. Sometimes this may simply be your existing opening paragraph, but you might craft a specialized description that best appeals to the culture of the site.
Submitting your own content to social media sites is looked down upon (at least with your real name), so it makes sense to have a friend submit for you.

Here are another Five Link Building Strategies That Work by Brian Clark

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Return on Marketing Investment From Social Media

[Image] Aberdeen Group survey of over 360 companies shows ROI from Social Media. As the popularity of social media continues to change the way people interact with each other and with companies, The Aberdeen Group found that top performing organizations that are using Web 2.0 applications are getting better than usual Return on Marketing investment.
What do these companies see as the best technologies for Web 2.0 engagement?

Read on... The Business Implications of Social Media by Sally Falkow

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Marketing Ourselves To Social Network Users

[Image] Hundreds of millions of people are using social networks. So, while traditional media weakens and goes through painful transitions, marketers are trying to figure out how to reach these newly-formed, massive and networked audiences. Involver is one of the companies trying to provide an answer. Today, it’s the pilot program of what it calls a “video marketing platform.”
The word “platform” is used by tech companies to mean any number of things. What Involver means by it is that marketers can stick marketing materials inside of online videos, distribute those videos to social network users, and get quantifiable data back about how the videos (and marketing materials) were received, that helps them continually improve their marketing tactics.

Find out more about how Involver wants to help us with social networking

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Social Media In Plain English

This video is for people who wonder why social networking sites are so popular. We think one reason is because they help to solve a real world problem.


The Common Craft Show is a series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. Their goal is to fight complexity with simple tools and plain language. They call their format "paperworks" and publish a new video about once a month.

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Increased Use of Video-sharing Sites

[Image] 48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year. The basic findings in a national phone survey that ended in December show:
# 48% of internet users said they had ever visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube. A year ago, in December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
# 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site "yesterday" -- the day before they were contacted for our survey. A year ago, 8% had visited such a site "yesterday." Thus, on an average day, the number of users of video sites nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007.

Sourced from a memo written by Lee Rainie at PewInternet.org Online Activities & Pursuits. You can download the PDF Report of the findings at that web site too.
For your business, make greater use of this internet trend. Josh explains how you can do that, at this adsonvids.com.au introduction video

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What Is Social Networking?

[Image] Social networking websites help people connect with others who share their interests, build online profiles and share media such as photos, music and videos. The idea of social networks has been studied by sociologists for decades as they analyze the ties between people in families, organizations and even in towns or countries. According to Wikipedia:, “Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.”

Mark Glaser published Your Guide to Social Networking Online, and it has some great points for you about the history of Social Networking and an excellent overview.

The Internet Is One, Big, Social Networking Platform

[Image] JUST when you think you’ve got a handle on what the internet is or might be, it shifts. Those of us who have in middle life familiarised ourselves with Google and email while dismissing social networking as a passing fad for teenagers should be thinking again. The data suggest that social networking may turn out to be what the Internet is all about – its killer application – and that our children will think us stupid for not seeing this at first glance.

Read more... of this brilliant report by Margaret Simons at the webboard on www.creative.org.au

While you've been feeling a little heady at watching the speed of growth in the developing online communities, and wondering how you can most effectively get in on that act, to get your business in front of this large audience, ...the team at adsonvids.com.au have got their heads together and created a ready made business community with all the tools you'll ever need. Hop on over and watch the streamed video presentation by Josh, at adsonvids.com.au

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