Buenavista Golf Tenerife
John will be playing in the the third annual Circuit of Golf for Tenerife and La Gomera tomorrow, Saturday 4th July, at Buenavista Golf in the North of Tenerife. It´s the first time John has played this course and the team at Sorted Sites wish him well .
What´s on for the month of July is now out featuring a host of Cultural and Leisure Activities in Tenerife for July, including Eolica 09 and The Pretenders. Make sure you don´t miss a thing and check it out today!
Take a look at the Internet. Everywhere you turn, savvy business people are busy promoting their companies on blogs, FaceBook pages, Twitter, and a host of other social media platforms.
What about you? Are you actively using the social media to reach out to the online masses? Are you taking advantage of the various social networks to build your own online community of people who will help you spread your message to their friends and their friends’ friends?
If you aren’t, you had better ask yourself why not, and take a good look at the reasons that you come up with. They are probably just bad excuses in disguise and, by leading you to inaction, these so-called reasons are eating away at your business’ potential to reach out to the widest audience possible.
It’s time to unmask the 7 deadly excuses for not using social media marketing and start to see these little critters and see them for what they really are!
1. “I don’t see the value of social marketing.”
If this is the case, you might want to read why social networking is not a waste of time and also learn a few social marketing lessons from Barak Obama, who successfully engaged the online masses and went on to win the election and become the most powerful man in the world. If you happen to have no idea what social marketing is about, watch this slideshow and get yourself up to speed.
2. “I’ve already tried it, but it didn’t work for me.”
You see, social media marketing is not a magic formula for instant Internet traffic. If that is what you were expecting, it is hardly surprising that you were disappointed with the results. Rather, the social networks allow you to connect with thousands of potential customers online and get them to help you spread the word, as we already explained. Just like building your business network in the real world, this is not something that happens overnight, but comes as a result of a little effort, sustained over time. Think of it like planting a seed and watering it regularly. One day you will wake up to ripe fruit waiting to be picked!
3. “My niche customers don’t use social networks.”
Is that really so? What does it say when even undertakers are blogging about their business. Think about that! No matter what you do, or who your target audience is, a good portion of them are bound to be online and accessible through the social media. This doesn’t meant that all social media platforms will work equally well with all demographics, but it is just a question of taking a look at what the people you want to target are using.
The reality is that the only way you might get away with this excuse is if you do business exclusively with some remote part of the world that still has to get connected to the Internet. Either that, or if you are living in a dystopian future where soulless machines have taken over and make all the purchasing decisions for their human underlings!
4. “I don’t have the time to market my business online.”
How much time don’t you have? It will probably come as a surprise to you that 15 minutes a day is all it takes to revolutionise your social marketing and start making a difference. Get into the habit of doing a little bit of social marketing each day when you check your e-mail and ask your staff to do the same. Just like with the bucket that gets filled drop by drop until it eventually overflows, you’ll suddenly wake up one day and realise that your small social marketing efforts are paying off!
You don’t even have 15 minutes? Then take 5 and think about how important it is that you find that time pronto!
5. “We’re in the middle of a crisis. How can I spend more money on social marketing?”
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to spend a cent if you don’t want to! All the social networks that you ought to be using are free and you will also find plenty of free information to set you on the right track on this blog and other websites.
Of course, you can pay online marketing professionals to help you kick-start your social marketing or to teach you how to make the most of it - and this is one of the most important services that we, at Sorted Sites, offer our clients. What’s more, every cent you spend on social media marketing goes much further than with traditional marketing. This is partly because you can do the much of the day-to-day work yourself and, more importantly, because the whole idea behind social network marketing is to rope in other users on your social networks and get them to help you spread the word by word of mouth - something they do for free.
But still, if you have got absolutely zero budget, you can (and should) get started with social network marketing on your own and start building your own online community bit by bit, until you are ready to take things to the next level.
6. “I can’t measure the results of my social media marketing”
That is just not true. There are many ways (and online tools you can use) to measure how effective your different social media marketing tactics are, the simplest of which is simply to see how much traffic they are sending to your website. What’s more, with applications like Google Analytics, you can can track visitors to your site and see exactly how well they are converting into enquiries or sales. And best of all, you can even identify the weak points in your site where you are losing sales and tweak them as necessary to improve conversions. More about this in an upcoming blog post.
7. “FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr… I have no idea where to begin!”
It is true that with all the different social networks to choose from, you may feel overwhelmed at first, especially if you are not all that tech-savvy. But fear not! Like all things, getting your social marketing up and running will turn out to be much easier when you know how to go about it.
This is why we have put togeher a quick guide to getting your business started with Social Marketing. Follow it step by step and you’ll be well on your way to Internet marketing success!
So, there you are. The time for making excuses is over! Take the bull by the horns and get started using the social media to market yourself more effectively, like your competition are doing. It’s either that, or getting left by the wayside.
We recently published http://www.aip-propertygroup.com/ a Fractional Ownership Site, which allows family, friends and other parties to own their ideal property in the sun! This new and exciting way to invest in property is catching on fast. Make sure you check out this great site and be sure to check in on their blog too!
Winners
What a great day it turned out for the start of the 3rd Tenerife and La Gomera Golf Circuit for 2009 on Saturday, with glorious weather and some fabulous golf being played at Golf Las Americas. The mens winner was Vicente Ruiz Toledo with 39 points and the ladies winner was Marta Ascanio Arroyo with 37 points.
Natalie & Beatriz
We would also like to thank Beatriz and Natalie for organising such a great day!
Next up on the calendar for Golf 2009 is on 13 June at Tecina Golf in La Gomera and bookings are now being taken for this next tournament. Contact Maria for bookings at:
Hotel & Golf Reservations: 902 222 130
Hotel Reservations: 902 222 140 or email tecina@fredolsen.es and Maria Luisa at mariag@fredolsen.es
Book Online with the Tenerife Golf Association
Are you following us on twitter?
You can see all the photos from the Golf Las Americas tournament on Flickr
Sorted Sites are proud to be one of the sponsors of the Golf Tournament. John will be playing at Golf Las Americas which is a par 72 course and there will be 180 competitors, with the first tee off at 8am. Whilst we will be keeping you posted on Twitter, if you have any questions or queries about the course and the competition, please call:
John on 639 702 649 or Natalie on 922 753 613.
John Beckley at Golf Las Americas in Tenerife
In 2005, Forbes nominated the fish hook as one of the top 20 tools in human history. Ingenious, yet relatively simple to make and use, this tiny device revolutionised the life and diet of the costal and riverside dwellers who adopted it back then in the Stone Age.
Then, a good few millennia down the road, along came the net, and fishing was never the same again.
Now, what has this got to do with Internet marketing?
You see, if you rely solely on your website to generate sales, you are fishing for customers with a hook. It can work, you may be catching something, but at the end of the day you are severely limiting your potential. Meanwhile, there are others out there who are using the latest technology to haul in the real catches with their nets spread across a multitude of blogs, forums and other social media sites. Think about that!
In today’s Internet, your website is no longer the only place where online business happens, but you should be generating sales through a wider discussion about your company and products on a variety of other websites and social media. True, people will still come to your site to get in touch with you and complete the deal, but when they do so, many of them will be already sold on your products by the comments, reviews and other social chatter they have encountered on the wider social networks.
What it all boils down to is that online business is becoming increasingly decentralised. It’s not just about having a great website any more.This is the way forward for online marketing as we see it.
What you have to aim for is to create widespread discussons about your company and products, and to do that, you have to get out there and interact with your potential customers. It’s not terribly hard work, but it desperately needs to be done if you want to continue to make sales in the new online world.
An easy and painless plan to revolutionise your social marketing
You don’t need to invest massive amounts of resources and money to make social marketing work for you efficiently. All you have to do is to fill the bucket one drop at a time.
We strongly suggest that you get all your staff involved in the online social arena, not just the marketing department (there’s just too few of them). Ask each and every employee to set aside 10 to 15 minutes a day to follow our blueprint for making social network marketing work for your business. This could possibly be first thing in the morning, just after checking their e-mails. During the allotted time, they will write about the latest relevant news on your Twitter account, upload some new images to your Flickr account, post comments on your company Facebook page and reach out to the online multitudes through the other social networking sites.
Your staff must even - horror of horrors - post comments on other blogs and forums. Yes. You heard right. In fact we cannot stress this enough, because participating on other websites is an excellent way to get your company’s name out there in front of their visitors, so that you can then lead these people back to your blog or website with a well-placed link.
As you can see, your website remains the focal point and ultimate destination, and as such, you should keep it clean, easy to navigate and full of good quality product information. However, what you have now is a fishing net of social networking platforms that feed into each other, generate discussion and interest, and finally funnel visitors to your site to get the business done.
By building your social network bit by bit, you build up an ever-expanding net that is attracting potential clients from far and wide into your own online community. Best of all, several of these people will become converts and in turn help you to attract even more people simply by talking about your business on their own social networks, extending your catchment area even more.
How’s that for effective online marketing? Hop aboard now and make sure you’re not left stranded! 15 minutes a day is all it takes.
Streamy Welcome from Streamy on Vimeo.
This weekend I will be test driving Streamy it looks a great way to read and share the news.
I have just discovered that you can embed Flickr slideshows in your website or blog. Go to the photo set or group you’d like to embed, click slideshow, on the top right click share and then copy the HTML code to be pasted straight into your blog post.
Embed Flickr slideshows in your Blog like this:
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