Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz wrote an interesting blog post exploring the question, “Which Internet marketing channel would you choose if you had $1 million?” Or something along those lines.

This is an interesting question because most small businesses don’t have a million dollars to invest in their marketing plan. But by asking the question you can imagine what the most important marketing channels are for your business. Every business is different so the answer depends a great deal on what your individual goals are. But there are some principles behind each marketing channel that you’d want to base your decision on as well.

To sum up, Rand identifies the following Internet marketing channels:

• Display advertising
• E-mail marketing
• Pay per click advertising
• Online public relations
• Search engine optimization
• Affiliate marketing
• Social media marketing
• Viral content campaigns
• Conversion rate optimization

Some of these channels, like affiliate marketing and viral content campaigns, just aren’t feasible for most small businesses. But some of these are absolutely essential.

For instance, why you’d do away with SEO - search engine optimization - is beyond me. E-mail marketing is another channel that I’d say is almost essential no matter what your business is. The optional channels are PPC and display advertising. The rest of us could be left to personal preferences.

So which is right for you?

To answer the question, you have to ask yourself some very serious questions, starting with “What is your budget?” If you don’t have a large budget for Internet marketing - and most small businesses don’t - then you’ll be limited in what you can accomplish. You also need to ask, “What kind of time do I have for performing tasks myself?” Time and money are perhaps your two most precious resources. It helps, then, to identify early on just how much of both that you have to contribute to Internet marketing. Before you do anything else, those questions must be asked.

Next, what kind of internal resources do you have? If you’re not going to do it yourself then you’ll need someone who can do it for you. Will it be a staff person? Will you outsource it? *If you have more money resources than you have time or internal human resources then outsourcing it is your best option. If you are limited in money, but you have a staff person who is underutilized then you might dedicate someone internally to the tasks of Internet marketing that you have identified to be of interest to you. So you can see that it isn’t all cut and dry.

If you feel yourself to be in need of a second head then why not ask for an Internet marketing consultation to help you figure out the best direction to move?

WebProNews wrote an article in April where Chris Crum interviewed a few SEO/Internet marketing types and asked them how social media and SEO relate. The answers were diverse with a few saying social media is great for link building and some saying it has little to no SEO benefit. Some say that social media is best used as a branding tool. Then there were the specific social media site mentions such as Facebook is not good for SEO and Twitter is, etc. So what’s the answer?

Internet marketers have a tendency to disagree on just about everything. Ask any question and you’ll get ten answers from as many Internet marketers working the Web. SEOs, in particular, have vehement disagreement. One thing they can all agree on, however, is that both SEO and social media are important for Internet marketers.

Personally, I believe social media has all the benefits mentioned - link building, branding, off site marketing, and driving traffic - but it often depends on which social media site you are discussing as to which benefit is most prevalent. Also, how you approach marketing through those sites makes a difference.

To make the most of your social media campaigns, you should first identify what you hope to gain from the campaign and identify which social media sites will deliver those benefits to you. Then you can intelligently choose how to approach your marketing efforts through those media to make the most of the benefits you are seeking. Strategize then monetize.

Twitter has been providing real time communication for a couple of years now. Facebook has flirted with it, but they’ve just upped the stakes. Quite frankly, I like this.

This could very well lead to some stiff competition. Facebook has far more users than Twitter and the ability to use Facebook for real time communication with privacy settings could attract even more users. What’s more, it could lead to some Twitterers abandoning that service to migrate over to Facebook. After all, Twitter is quickly becoming a haven for spammers and not everyone who joins Twitter really dives in and makes the most of it.

Facebook is real social networking. Twitter is being used largely for mass communication, so there is a bit of difference between the two. I still think that savvy marketers will, and should, use both. Even small businesses. The power of local branding can best be ascertained by using the two in combination.

Chris Crum has a useful article at WebProNews on sponsored Twittering. It seems that popular entertainment blogger Perez Hilton makes a pretty good buck selling sponsored tweets. Of course, most of us aren’t Perez Hilton or enjoy his level of influence. That’s a different matter.

Today’s question is, Should you charge for sponsored tweets?

I’m leaning against it for small business owners. Here’s why:

• You want your Twitter account to be about your relationship with your followers, not your relationship with your sponsors.
• You could get a reputation as a sponsor hound if you do it too often or choose the wrong sponsors.
• Your small business will likely suffer by accepting a few dollars for a sponsorship when you really want people to buy your products and services.
• Since paid tweeting is often paid by CPC, cost per click, unless you have a lot of followers - like more than 100,000 - you probably won’t make much on sponsored tweeting.

You have to decide when you set up your Twitter account just want you want Twitter to do for you. If you joined Twitter to promote your business then you shouldn’t use sponsored tweets. The only time I’d say you should accept sponsored tweets is when what you are tweeting about will interest your followers, then you should do it for that reason and not for the money. But be open about your sponsorship. If people find out that you are accepting sponsors and you haven’t been transparent then you could have some credibility issues.

It’s important if you are doing any social media marketing to ensure that your marketing messages are consistent. It’s easy to get off track if you have more than one person managing campaigns or accounts. For instance, one person on LinkedIn may be marketing one way while someone else on Facebook is doing something completely different. If you have your social media accounts managed in a decentralized fashion this way it is important to have regular meetings with one clear decision maker in order to maintain a consistency in your message.

The best way, however, is to have one person managing all of your social media accounts. Marketing is too important a task to leave to chance. So don’t let too many decision makers in on the process. You can others doing the leg work if necessary. But it’s important to know what you can outsource and what you can’t. To maintain a consistent social media message across the board, keep the decision making centralized and have clear guidelines for your social media workers at the grass roots level.

While readers of this blog will know, I don’t specialize in helping people find jobs … but I DO specialize in helping business owners use LinkedIn and other social media tools to find new clients and grow their sales.

That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Computer Education Department asked if I would conduct a training session in mid-May on using LinkedIn for finding a job. It’s not really that different than using it to find new clients (which I do every day).

The Science Museum is GREAT to work with - so professional, and training is what they do every day, so I also wasn’t surprised to learn that they were going to video tape the entire 2-hour workshop. AND, they are making it available for FREE on their website - so even if you missed the 2-hour workshop I gave to TWO sold out crowds last month, you can still take advantage of this great information.

Go here to watch the video (broken down into 4 parts so you can take breaks!) and let me know what you think and how you are using social media to find clients, new customers, or a new job.

Caroline
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One of the most misunderstood aspects of doing business online is the entire nature of it. Many businesses are still stuck in the 20th century where marketing is concerned. They believe that marketing is all about positioning their company in the market place. That is true, but online marketing is so much more than just market positioning. It’s content positioning.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. But in a nutshell it means that you’re in the content marketing business. You aren’t just marketing your business. You’re marketing your content.

Content is defined as anything that holds value for someone else whether they do business with you or not. That’s pretty well all encompassing isn’t it? I mean, an ad that simply says “Buy this widget” isn’t really content because it’s a sales message and that holds value only for you, the seller. But an article that explains the benefits of owning a widget like yours (sans the sales message) is content. So how does that benefit you, the seller?

It benefits you when the reader of your content has trusted you enough to visit your website (based on the value of your content) and decided to do business with you.

Your job as a business owner doing business online is to create valuable content. Make it valuable enough and people will do business with you because they trust you, like you, and want more value. That’s content marketing at its best.

We had a GREAT workshop last Thursday evening, hosted by BlueChip-Advisors, LLC. We covered LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter — how to use these sites to grow your business. The survey responses after the class indicated that everyone learned a TON and I am always amazed at how much I learn whenever I teach one of these workshops! (If I were more coordinated, I’d have snapped some pictures; I will try to do that next time!)

One of the participants in Thursday’s workshop asked me the question that I invariably get asked whenever I start to talk about using Twitter for business - that is, (and I’m paraphrasing here…), “Who the heck cares that someone I’m following ate a tuna fish sandwich yesterday for lunch???”

I used to answer that question with a smile and a nod, and agree that what someone ate for lunch yesterday probably isn’t the most riveting thing you can learn on Twitter.

Unless, of course, you happen to sell tuna fish for a living.

You see, with Twitter having opened up its search functionality to all users now, the implications are pretty darn powerful from a marketing standpoint.

Let’s take a different example - since I don’t know anyone personally who sells tuna fish, but I did have the opportunity to meet two gentlemen who work at Sturdiwheat in Redwing, Minnesota during the workshop Thursday night. Sturdiwheat sells pancake mix — really, really good pancake mix - in a lot of different varieties.

If Sturdiwheat takes my advice and gets a Twitter account, then does search on keywords related to their pancake mix products (pancakes, blueberry pancakes, strawberry pancakes, buckwheat pancakes - well, you get the idea), they are going to find a whole bunch of people who like to eat pancakes on Twitter.

Then they could follow all of those people who enjoy eating pancakes who are Tweeting about it. So, let’s say I’ve tweeted about eating pancakes, and Sturdiwheat follows me. When I get notified that I have a new follower, I’m going to check out who that is by clicking on their name (which would look like an “@” symbol and then whatever name hey choose for their Twitter “handle”). When I see that they have special offers for their followers on Twitter, I’m going to follow them back — and them I’m going to click on the link to their website that they post within their Tweets, and likely order some pancake mix to try it out at home.

This is how Sturdiwheat could start to build a community of pancake lovers online.

While you and I might not care very much about who eats pancakes, Sturdiwheat cares a whole bunch about that.

As people start following Sturdiwheat on Twitter, they will start talking about Sturdiwheat on Twitter. They’ll talk about how great the pancake mix is, it’s benefits, and what a great deal they got by being a Twitter follower. Then THEIR followers will see them talking about Sturdiwheat, and they will start to follow Sturdiwheat too. The’ll get the pancake deal, and they’ll talk about it to THEIR followers. It’s like that old Fabrege shampoo commercial in action (she told two friends, and SHE told two friends, and so on …)

This is how Sturdiwheat joins the conversation about their product, and their company, online (and how they develop their relationship online as well).

THIS is why Twitter is a big deal. A heckava big deal. It is NOT about Sturdiwheat blasting away at anyone who will listen about their product. It IS about Sturdiwheat building a relationship with like-minded people and then making them an offer for something they’ve already identified that they use and want. It’s target marketing at it’s finest … and did I mention Twitter is FREE?

How can you use Twitter in YOUR business? Come check out my workshop, coming up on May 27th, where we are going to walk through examples just like this one for Sturdiwheat for YOUR business (each attendee will leave with a plan for how they can use Twitter to find a new audience online). Get more details and register for the workshop on my website, but don’t wait too long - the last workshop sold out!!

Caroline
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Check out my Minnesota Social Media Workshops

Twitter itself is free and has no monetization in plan as of today. But there are countless services based on Twitter that are monetized and one service is offering Twitterers who have their accounts protected a way to monetize their Twitter accounts by taking paid subscriptions. That brings up the question, Will paid Twitter subscriptions be something new that future Internet marketers can use to offer premium content, much like a paid subscription e-mail newsletter?

I don’t know but it does seem that this might be a viable alternative to using Twitter as a free service. But you wouldn’t want to offer run-of-the-mill information as a paid service. That’s better being offered as a free service, like most e-mail newsletters. In order for the paid subscription idea to work you’ll have to have offer premium content that no one anywhere else is providing and that people will willingly pay for. That’s no easy task, but it can be done.

There was a time when Internet marketers would argue over SEO and social media and debate over which is more important. They still debate the question, but most Internet marketers today see benefit in both. Gone are the days when a respectable marketer would shout SEO and dismiss social media marketing altogether. You are just as likely today to meet online marketers who swear by social media and dismiss SEO.

But that isn’t smart either. The fact is, to succeed in today’s online world, you need both. You are competing against companies that have a sound social media marketing strategy and a good SEO team. Some of those companies have deep pockets. You need to be a bit more stealthy.

Small businesses can employ success SEO techniques in conjunction with strong social media presences and build good solid businesses. It helps to be patient, study the field, and don’t just jump in where you aren’t sure about. Just a few minutes a day and you can build a good business with both social media and SEO.