8 Tips for How To Market Yourself Online and Help You Get a Job

There are new rules to the job hunt and savvy people, those who utilize technology and networking, are the ones who are at the top of the game.   Here are 8 tips to market yourself online and gat a job.

1.  Create your own website or blog.  Creating your own website or blog is a great way to share who you are and what you’re about to prospective employers.  They’ll be able to learn a lot about you online and get a feel for your personality, professionalism, and goals.  Take great care to be professional.  Don’t use your website or blog as a place to vent or complain about anything.  

2. Be positive, share information about your industry, and make sure it’s a professional, clean and easily navigated site.  If you’re seeking a job in technology then you can get more advanced with your website.  

3.  Showcase your talents and strengths.  Be sure to have an about page where you can publish your bio, portfolio, resume and contact information.

4.  Update your website and become active online.  Connect with and join job searching forums and associations related to your desired industry.  Post on those forums and blogs and share your interaction on your own website or blog by linking to them, republishing your comments, or listing the forums and associations in your blog roll. Become an active member of the online community and always behave professionally.  You never know who is reading your comments and you want to put the best foot forward at all times.

5.  Utilize off line networking tools as well.  Just because you’re not presently employed, doesn’t mean you can’t have business cards or attend industry functions.  Attend seminars and webinars in your industry.  Pass out your business card with your contact information on it and by all means include your website link in your contact information.

6.  Participate in social networking and add value. Don’t post about what you had for dinner but rather the great article you read in your leading industry magazine and your thoughts regarding the article.  

7.  Provide your contact information on your website and in your forum or blog signatures.  If they don’t know how to contact you and can’t find the information quickly and easily, they won’t contact you.

8.  Respond immediately when someone contacts you.  Consider actually setting up a unique email address for job related inquiries and website emails and create an autoresponder for that email.  That way each time someone contacts you they receive an immediate and professional response that says you’re happy to have received their email and will get back to them as soon as possible.  

The same holds true for your phone number.  If you’re going to be unavailable to answer the phone then make sure your voice mail message is short, and to the point – professional.  No one wants to listen to all two and a half minutes of your favorite song or your dog barking in the background.  

The key to marketing yourself online is to put yourself out there and to be active in your industry’s community.  Be positive, proactive and professional.  It’ll pay off!

Ten Easy Ways to Improve Your Website and Help Increase Sales

A good website can be a great tool for boosting your sales.  On the other hand, a poorly made website can turn customers off to current and even future products.  Here are some tips to creating a website that will help you, rather than hurt you.

1.  Consistent look.  Have you ever noticed, while every page of a magazine looks slightly different, there's generally a consistent organization, color scheme, and overall look to the whole magazine?  This helps users who read the magazine find exactly what they're looking for quickly and easily.  In the same way, if you keep your web pages consistent, your customers will have an easier time finding things.  

2.  Test different browsers.  So, you've set up your website and it looks exactly how you want it.  Then your customers start getting upset because they can't find items, figure out how to order, or even see simple parts of your page.  The likely problem?  Their browser.  Contrary to popular belief, not everyone uses the same program to surf the web.  It's recommended that you design your page so it can be seen well on most, if not all Internet browsers.

3.  Support.  While it's great to have an awesome website, if it goes down or has other technical issues, you're not going to be making any money off of it.  Plus, it will probably upset your customers as well.  Once you get your website up and going, be sure to keep it going and get issues and bugs worked out as quickly as possible.

4.  Keep it simple.  Your site should look good, and can have some special features, but if it's too complicated or the colors and designs are just too much, you're likely to lose customers.  Try to keep it simple with just a few special touches.  Keep it appealing without being overwhelming.

5.  Keep it coming.  It's great to get information from a website, but it's a pain to go check for updates all the time.  Keep your users updated by adding a newsletter or RSS feed.  This is a great way to keep them updated and introduce new products.

6.  Get feedback.  Running a business is all about helping the customer, so why not improve your site by asking your users what they want.  You can add a quick survey or just a suggestion box to the side of each page.  

7.  Make searching easy.  If you have a lot of information on your website, try adding a search box so visitors can easily find what they're looking for.  A search box will help them find what they want and keep them coming back in the future.

8.  Have content.  If your website is mostly links and advertisements or sales pitches and products, there's not going to be much on there to inspire people to stay at your website.  You have to have quality content on your site.  Plus, if done right, good content can also help you get links and go up in the SEO rankings.

9.  Have discussions.  Almost any website can be benefited by adding a message board.  This is not only a great way to answer people's questions and keep them coming back, it can also be a great way for your customers to get to know you and trust you as an expert.

10.  Have fun.  If you don't like your website, and don't like working on it, it's going to show through in your work.  Just because a topic might be able to make money, doesn't mean you will find it interesting.  Try to create websites that you have an interest in and want to keep going.

Successful Advertising through Social Networking Sites

To run a successful business, whether it's traditional or online, it helps to keep up with current technology.  More importantly, learning to use the latest technologies to your advantage.  One great tool that savvy business owners are using to promote themselves is social networking.  

Social networks are websites that let people join, find their friends, and share information with each other.  Most people use these sites to find friends they haven't seen since high school or stay updated on what their friends are doing in real time.  Most people have heard of popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, but there are many others out there that are much smaller, but perhaps more useful.  

LinkedIn is a site that is smaller, but gaining popularity.  The beauty of it is that it's geared specifically for business networking, rather than simply networking with family, friends, and people you haven't seen in years.  This is a great place to get started networking.  If you decide you want to branch out to other sites, there's nothing stopping you from joining later.

It's easy.  When the first social networking sites started, only very few people used them.  However, they've gained popularity because anyone can use them.  While they include more advanced options for the technically savvy user, pretty much anyone can get down the basic idea of these sites with very little time and training.

Everyone's doing it.  Because they are so easy to use, everyone is using these sites.  And they're talking about them to.  It's hard to turn on the radio or TV without someone directing you to their MySpace page or talking about the latest post on one of these sites.  Instead of going through all the work of gathering emails and contact info to develop your own network, you can market through ones that are already there.

So, social networks are obviously a great way to connect with business partners and customers you already have, but how can you use them to expand your business?  Easy - once you develop a network of people with similar business interests, you can post things to everyone on your network.  Not only will they pass it on if they are interested, but their contacts will see it on their page and will look at it too without your contact having to do anything.  Pretty soon, your content and marketing materials are spreading through the Internet like wildfire.  

An important thing to consider when venturing into social networking sites is not to spread yourself too thin.  If can be tempting to use every single networking site in order to reach every single potential customer, but if you're using so many outlets, you're going to use up a lot of extra time and resources to reach just a few more people.  A more intelligent plan is to focus all your resources on one or two sites.  That way you can launch a targeted campaign that will probably give you better results.

What Is Viral Marketing and How to Use It to Your Advantage

The words viral marketing can sound a little disturbing, but it's an unfortunate name for an extremely profitable marketing scheme.  Whether it's referring to people or computers, the word virus has never really been a good term.  It's something associated with destruction and death, but that's not what viral marketing is about.  If used properly, viral marketing can be a valuable asset.

The basic concept of viral marketing is that you start small, but employ others to help you spread your product or ideas.  Think about someone getting a virus - at first only that person gets sick, but they also spread it to three of their friends.  Then each of those friends spreads it to three more people.  Eventually a large percentage of the population has been infected with the same virus.

Now, imagine that virus is your advertisement or product.  You start by adding a few customers, then eventually, everyone has been exposed to your message.  Viral marketing is just a method of not only sending someone information about your product, but also giving them the incentive to pass on your materials to others that they know.  Assuming each person it reaches passes it on to more than one person, the number of people who hear about your products and services will grow exponentially and reach thousands upon thousands of people.  Even if just a small percentage of the people you reach end up becoming your customers, you still have the potential to make a large profit.

To have a successful viral marketing campaign you need to have a good product, a good copy, but most importantly, a good incentive to pass the copy or product on to others.  So what exactly makes a good incentive program for viral marketing?  While all incentives are different, most of them have one thing in common - they're free.  Whether it's a free service, a free product, a free newsletter, or even a free ringtone, free brings people in.

Before picking an incentive, you need to make sure it's something you can afford based on your product and potential income.  There's always the chance that if you have a great incentive, your message will get passed on, but you still don't have good sales numbers.  But assuming average sales, you should still be able to make a profit from your campaign, deducting the cost of the incentives.

A good viral marketing campaign not only has good incentives, it also makes it very easy to pass the information from person to person.  It may be a button added to your website or social networking page; it has to be something easy, fast and virtually effortless.  The easier it is to pass the idea on, the better it's going to work.  It works even better if it uses the resources of others instead of your own.

If you're looking to expand your business exponentially like viral marketing campaigns can, be sure you can handle the amount of business you'll be getting if your campaign works.  Having thousands of people use your product or come to your website isn't much of a help if your website crashes or you can't properly distribute your product.  If you are going to market virally, get ready ahead of time for a rush of business.

Viral marketing may sound a bit like a "get rich quick" scheme but it has proven it's effectiveness over and over.  But it does require thought, planning, and sometimes a substantial investment.