5 Must Do's of Social Marketing

This is an excellent article I came across from site reference. This is a must read for all serious business owners on the web to help them generate online traffic to their website

5 Must-Do's in Social Marketing

by Jason Drohn


The deeper I get into social media the more I love it. Sure, 90% of all new visitors are finicky. They would rather stumble on to the next page than read what you have to say. That's OK.

I get the same way sometimes. It's that rush. You get that shot of adrenaline right before you see what Stumbleupon picks for you next! And if you experience what I just described - there are doctors out there. Good ones.:0)

Unfortunately, a lot of marketers treat social media as a dumping ground much the same way they treat television advertising and radio ads. They produce something, get it out to the masses, and forget about it. Their job is done. Why stick around?

In social media - persistence is everything. I'm not talking about hitting a girl you like over the head so that she comes home with you. I'm talking about joining the conversation.

5 (plus some) Must-Dos In Social Marketing

You Must Give To Get. If you ever want to see any sort of return from social media, you HAVE to give some to get some. That means trolling Twitter and replying to conversations you like. That also means digging a few stories a day that you particularly enjoyed.

If you want traffic from these sources, start by participating in the community...

Commit A Block Of Time. Time is valuable. Both to you and the people who follow you. Set aside an hour a day to build friendships through social marketing. Help promote someone else's work. Leave a comment on a blog post. Buy an ebook that someone is promoting.

Don't be afraid to leave a trail.

Be Transparent. Be truthful and honest. People are smarter than you think. When you incessantly promote your own work, people will unsubscribe and unfollow pretty quick. Remember, if something is valuable to you, chances are someone else might appreciate it.

Understand that the Internet is different. The web is a living, breathing thing. It isn't newspaper advertising; nor, is it a TV commercial. You can't control what your message is going to get morphed into. It's that simple. So be prepared for foul language and someone saying they don't like your product or anyone associated with it. It happens.

It sucks, but it happens.

Social Marketing isn't an analytics darling. Contrary to what a lot of marketers will tell you, the true benefits of social media don't lie in analytics. They lie in branding and promotion.If you land on the front page of Digg, your site will get 50,000 visitors in an afternoon. How many of those people stick around for more than 2 days? Maybe 200.

Instead, think of it as exposure. 50,000 were exposed to your message. The second time they come across it, they might stay. They might buy.When you walk into Macy's and see a $350 Ralph Lauren jacket, do you immediately buy it? No, you think about it. You visit it again. You check your bank account. You ask your friends. Then you make the purchase two weeks later.

Be Relevant Because if you're not, you're spam and we hate spam.

Stay consistent Building your business is all about brand recognition and for that to happen you must stay focused on your message an1d your audience.There are millions of blogs out there and it is tempting to sign up for hundreds, but it is better just to stay grounded and actively participate in only a few that way you can build a following easier because you're focusing your efforts instead of spreading yourself out too thin.

Another good idea by Seth Godin is to take into consideration the picture you use on your social media sites and what it says about you both personal and professionally.

Learn, Unlearn, Re- learn Learn - Spend some time up front to understand the basics. Know the technologies, the principles of communication, and the history of social media. Understand what your customers are using to solve their problems today and how your competitors are using social media to solve their problems.

Un-Learn - Whenever social media makes you uncomfortable, write down what it is you "know" is making you nervous. Based on what you "learned", consider "un-learning" or releasing this orthodoxy. You are going to have to change some of your long-held beliefs to be successful.

Re-Learn - Now that you've identified what's holding you back and created some holes of knowledge to fill, go out and re-learn what you're missing. You're obviously approaching advertising differently now, so now go do some research to see what tools and frameworks you need to apply going forward.


Social marketing will get better. It's still too new. As more time goes by, there will be more tools that help you slice up the metrics and more services that will be launched. The fact remains, you need to interact.


You need to participate.

And there's no better time than now to get started. Help me add to this list. What are some must-dos for social media promotion? You get your suggestion in this post and a link to your site!

Search Update

At IndieMart we are constantly trying to improve our site for both our merchants and their customers. We want the buyers on IndieMart to view the most relevant stores to meet their needs and find the best products as quickly as possible. We also want our merchants to create the best stores possible by making their store social media friendly and visually appealing. Over the next several months at IndieMart we will be working on our search algorithm to reward the merchants with the most engaging stores with the most cool features by awarding them higher rankings in our search results. We will also try to match buyers with products more effectively and present them with search results which will be more relevant to their needs. We have developed a set of parameters which we hope can fulfill these needs and improve the quality of our site for merchants and buyers. Without giving too much away, the features of your IndieMart store, and the amount of traffic you bring to IndieMart will be two of the determining factors in your stores ranking. Will give you more updates soon, stay tuned!

Online Sales of Downloadable items

As far as we know, we are the first and only company to offer customizable stores to sell your downloadable files. The time has finally arrived!!!! Now you can sell your music,ebooks, ringtones and any other downloadable file you have the rights for. Downloadable sales are transacted a little differently then physical sales on our website and this article will hopefully help in explaining the differences. When you sell a physical good, you collect the money in your PayPal account and then remitt the money to IndieMart. Downloadable files work a little bit differently. When a downloadable file is sold from your site, for example a song you created, the transaction takes place on the IndieMart payment gateway. IndieMart holds the money for the merchants and remitts it to them after there is a balance of $25 or more owed to the merchant and only after the merchant requests IndieMart to do so. As a result of us processing all the transactions we are able to keep our fees very low for the sales of songs. If merchants were to sell songs for $1 and use their own payment gateway, they would be lucky to recieve 60 cents from that money. IndieMart only charges 15 cents per transaction and 5% of revenue. Compared to other sites that sell downloadable files, this is almost 1/3 of the price. Also these other sites don't give merchants their own URL or customizable site to sell from. This is truely a revolutionary moment in the selling of downloadable files on the net.

New Features

Over the last week we have introduced a few new features for you free store that I will discuss now. While we are going to be adding dozens of features over the next couple of weeks to get ready for our full scale launch out of Beta testing, these features currently being mentioned now are available for all store owners on IndieMart as of this moment.
We have introduced a new messaging system where customers can message stores and ask for more info about the products. As well the store owner now have a comment system underneath there products so buyers can comment on what they like about the product and how they feel the product can be imporved. This can offer valuable advice to the store owner in determining which products are getting the best feedback. We have also added a rating system where IndieMart users can vote on their favourite products or stores and give them positive feedback.
This is only a small sample of the many features we have launched and the many more features we will be launching. Stay tuned as we are coming out with something soon that we feel will revolutionize the online music and ebook industry!!!

indiemart.com 's first ever video blog by co-founder Dallas Gains

Please understand this wasnt done by professionals and we hope you enjoy :)

As always all the best and optimal business growth from all of us here @ indiemart.com



co-founder
Dallas Gains and the indiemart.com team!

htttp://www.indiemart.com

Getting to know the Indie Wizard

We developed the Indie Wizard to help our merchants as quickly and effectively create free online stores. While the Indie Wizard isn't meant to increase traffic to your store (don't worry that is coming up), it is a quick way for you to get a professional looking store. By filling out all the information on the Wizard you give your store a much greater chance of ranking highly on our search results. The Wizard consists of 5 points to help you get started to selling goods. By using the wizard you will go step by step to simplify the process. The first step is to upload a logo, while the second step is to pick a premade theme. Also you can customize a theme by yourself if you know CSS coding. Step 3 takes you to our customized layout page where you will be able to add any social media sites, create a blog and move modules around. Step 4 is uploading your products and the final step 5 is turning your store from private to public. Assuming you have all your files on your computer and are uploading no more then 10 products, the Indie Wizard can get you a create looking store in under 15 minutes. Of course the more time you spend on your store and the better it will look. I recommend at least 1 hour setting up your store which will include products, blogs, and connecting to your Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or YouTube.

Websites to judge the effectiveness of your marketing

Creating a website isn't enough if you want to be successful on the Internet now a days. 20 years ago, you but up a site and you were basically the only game in town for selling a certain product online. Now the online marketplace has become more competitive and tougher to make sales then off line. Yet some individuals make great money selling online with low overhead and great margins while others struggle to make even one sale. While may goal of this blog isn't to necessarily give you marketing tips, but to present you with websites that will help you score your efforts (Albeit on a scoring system they have created)
The first website is www.websitegrader.com
IN their own words they say It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective"
The same creators of website grader also came up with a grader for your Twitter page. Which should be an indication to you just how important a Twitter page is.
You can find it http://twitter.grader.com/ basically this tool allows you to judge the effectiveness of your twitter page vs. over 2 million in their system based on their predetermined metrics.
The final website that I will mention is http://www.seomoz.org/ which is basically an easy to use SEO optimizer where you can rank various aspects of your website and see where you need to improve. It is available for free and an upgraded version for a fee.
Knowing how effective your marketing is to search engines is key. Every social bookmark you create and every social media page you start for your business shouldn't be judged only on how much referral traffic it brings in, but also on the residual traffic that search engines will drive to your site due to your efforts.

Recent Press

I would just like to share some recent press that we have recieved in the month of January. The biggest news comes from a website called Killer start ups. YOu can check out the editorial here http://www.killerstartups.com/eCommerce/indiemart-com-creating-a-store-made-simple
I must admit it was a great review and one I am more then happy to mention, written about us on a top ranked website. Another article which featured IndieMart was on feed my apps which is basically a website which compiles interesting webpages and applications from the internet. We are planning something very big in the media which I am not at liberty to speak of at the moment, but hopefully it will come together in the next 4 months.
Nothing pleases me more then having independent websites give us positive reviews which validates all the hard work our team at IndieMart has put in to try and put out the best possible product. Hopefully we can have many more positive reviews in the future and like always I will be happy to share it with you.

Even Lower Fees

In our about us section we have made a promise to keep our fees as low as possible. Due to our strong growth in our first few months of operation we have reassessed our objectives and decided it was possible for us to decrease our fees even further. Under our old fee structure, free stores were able to list up to 10 products at one time and were charged 2.9% per transaction while premium members were able to list unlimited items and charged 0.9% per transaction. Now free members can list unlimited items and are charged 2.9% per transaction while premium members can list unlimited items and all transaction fees are waived. We would like to thank all the merchants that have signed up and made this possible. As we grow and generated more revenue we will try to pass any savings as possible to our merchants. Our goal is to create the best selling experience possible, we hope this move is one step closer to that goal.

Ways to help you Customize

IndieMart is adding features every week, which is a good things because your free store can look as good as possible. However we understand that customizing your store can be a difficult task so today I will write a few quick tips on how to customize your store to start selling online as quickly as possible. Some people might ask if customizing your store is even important? It is one of the most important things you can do for your IndieMart store. Before customers see you product and buy online, they look at your store, this first impression is very important.
Currently we have premade themes were you can choose colors and displays for your boxes, or create your own customization. When choosing premade themes you still have the ability to move around modules and add or delete any modules you may have. These themes are more to help you choose combinations that look good and flow with your website.
The modules can be moved around or changed in the customized layout tab. This tab is very important because it will help customers stay on your page. You can upload or write a blog, put a introductory text about your product, attach your social media sites on this page or move the modules around. You want your web page to be as informative as possible and at the same time having them create a attachment to your page. By adding social media sites, even if the customer doesn't buy from your site, they might add your Facebook fan page or start following you on Twitter. This is very important as you not only want sales but also to create brand awareness for your product.
The add product tab is where you can add your products to the website. You have the ability to upload multiple photos of your product and we suggest you take a look at it. The more photos you upload, the greater the probability of a customer buying your product
The last topic today is the Google Analytics tab on your dashboard. It is important to add a Google Analytics code because knowing your traffic volume and where your merchants are from will help increase your sales. Using Google Analytics was an easy choice for us to incorporate because their statistics are extremely complete and offer a great geographical description.
By spending some time on these tabs, you will be able to increase the attractiveness of your store, and more importantly the time people spend browsing your site. Which will hopefully lead to increased sales, which is probably the reason you wanted to sell online in the first place.

Highligthing products

Every once in a while I like to highlight certian products on the site that I feel have caught my eye. Now to be fair this is usually going to be something handmade and for some strange reason I have a love affiar with glass or ceramic objects. I have no idea where this came from, but I really enjoy looking at handmade trinkets. Today I am going to highlight a store out of Bolivia which you can find here.
They make hand crafted minature homefronts out of ceramics, which in the stores own words can be best described as latin folk art. There are over 10 products to choose from so picking onve you like shouldn't be too difficult. The close up photo reveal very nice detail on the homes. If your into these sort of trinkets, this would be a nice pick up for yourself or gift for someone you know.

Recent Success and Milestones

First of all I would like to thank everyone who has made our first 6 weeks very successful. I am very proud of the growth we have achieved over this little bit and hope we can continue to growth from there. We have been featured in two prominent internet websites. Killerstartups.com and Feedmyapps.com both gave us great feedback and it is encouraging to get some recognition from other sources around the web. You can check out the killerstartups here and the feedmyapp here. Secondly today we are in the top 325000 website worldwide as traffic measured for the last week by Alexa. Considering we Started off in 4 millionth positon 6 weeks ago, this is growth I am very excited about. I hope our growth can continue at this pace and that some of you are able to become a part of it.
Thank you from the entire Indiemart team!!!

Big Stuff on the Horizon

Without giving away exactly what we are going to do, I am going to share with you a couple of improvements that we will be doing to our site over the next couple of weeks. Our goal it to create the best shopping/selling experience possible. While we feel we are off to a good start with our website, we made a promise early on we will never be content with he statusquo. One improvment which we will be implementing is to help you market your site as soon as it is launched. Once you decide to put your site live, you will be able to send dozens of people to it. Another improvement which we are working on is a step by step guide in how to customize your store. It can be a little overwhelming seeing all the features for the first time in IndieMart. We want to guide you through the store creation process as easily as possible. Dare I say it, we even want to make creating a store a fun experience for you guys. There is a whole lot of stuff coming down the pipe as well, but I am not going to lie, some of it is top secret stuff and I can't talk about it just yet!!!! But when it does come out, you can be sure that I will be the first one to tell you about it.

The Shirtjunky Store

Today I will do a feature on one of our merchants. To call their t-shirts funny would be an understatement. I really like their sense of humour as the t-shirts are affordable, look like they are really good quality and are very witty. My personal favourite is I eat out, it is really cleverly done. They have been selling online pretty quickly, and at $15 it appears to be a pretty good value. Their blogs states that the quality of their cotton is "Our fabric is 100% mercerized poly/cotton for a extra soft hand feel, wrinkle resistant fabric. Guaranteed to be the your softest most comfortable shirt you ever wore."
I am a big fan of high quality soft t-shirts, as I love vintage feel. Hopefully they will be able to grow as I always enjoy small companies with different ideas trying to succeed.

New Music Podacast by DJIAM

Recently DJIAM got a free store on Indie Mart. This is truely one of the more talented DJ's I have had the pleasure of listening to. THe podcast is a little long but you can download the song for free here. It has a really cool Euro beat to it, and from what I am told this style is all the rave in Europe now. I haven't heard this catch on in North America yet, but these guys have a really fresh sound which I think will take off. I really like the way they customized their store and I think they have a future in the North American Market.

Importance of Website Promotion

I thought I would share a summary on why website promotion is so important and the benifits it can bring. Not only do you increase traffice to your website but the right type of promotion will greatly help by increasing traffic that search engines send to your site as well. It has been documented that search engines account for over 90% of the intial traffic to a website, this is a valuable tool which should be exploited to it's fullest. The following summarry is taken from SEO providers and their take on how to quickly and effectively start your website promotion
Beginning a website promotion, you should start by listing your website with the web’s most popular directories. This way you are able to hook a large amount of traffic and visitors and it has a hand in ranking you through the search engines. You always want to be sure that your website is listed with as many of the major directories as possible. The second step you will want to take in website promotion, is get to know the search engines and make them work for you in a way that brings in more visitors and traffic to your website, If you have already placed your website with directories and have started to see an overall increase in traffic, then you have laid an important piece of the website promoting puzzle.
Next, you need to familiarize yourself with keyword optimization, SEO and Meta tags. I know these words may seem a little like their out of your league at first, but they really are not that difficult to understand what each one means. They will all lend help to your website and the number of visitors that will be drawn to visit it. You will also want to understand why links that are popular are used by search engines and how it determines your pages and their rankings.
After you feel you have learned all of these things and how they can make for a website that is high in visits, keep in mind that there are still even more things that you can do to increase the amount of traffic after the fact. Website promotion is also associated with keeping your website updated with fresh, informative content. This will keep the visitors you already have, returning often to your site and will keep your traffic up. Promoting your website is easy and you will learn the ropes in time.
Following this advice can help you on your www.indiemart.com site or any site which you may own. The amount of sales you are able to generate on your website will be a direct result of any work you perform promote your site. These are just a few quick easy steps to get you started to good sales growth. Building your online site is a slow process, but like anything after you put in the work, you should start to see slow growth over time.