Shortened URL’s totally drive me nuts.  Some people open each of them like a Christmas gift, not having a clue what’s in them but dying to find out.  For me, it’s more like lifting a box in the back of my garage and hoping there isn’t something living underneath it. Ambiguous shortened links are all over Twitter and they often turn out to be malware, phishing attacks, or just a crummy sales pitch.

Twitter is changing the game, and they’re taking control of shortened URLs.

They are doing this in a few big ways. All links will be auto-wrapped with t.co (a twitter domain).  But this doesn’t mean every link will end in t.co.  On Twitter.com you’ll most likely see part of the original link, the page title or the entire link if there is room. However, in a text message you may actually see t.co since there is an sms character limit.

Example: http://www.reallylongname.com/superlongdirectory/crazylongpagename.html will appear as reallylongname.html or reallylongname.com.

Twitter also changed the character limit to 140-characters after link wrapping.  This means if your update is too long with an included link, Twitter will wrap the link up to fit the 140-character limit (in most cases).

In the end this does a few important things. It protects you from malicious links that are potentially harmful, and it also puts an end to the obscure links you’re tired of.  All in all it allows you to browse Twitter and know what people are actually linking to, greatly enhancing your experience.

I’m a fan of this change, are you?  Do you see a way this could play for or against you?

Even though I have a bazillion filters and labels set up in Gmail, my inbox is a MESS. And it’s not the spam that’s overloading me; it’s the bacn (bacon).  It’s the emails from services that I may need, but not stuff I want mixed in with emails from my wife and co- workers.

I recently ran across a new email assistant called otherinbox.com.  And it’s surprisingly…GOOD!

Here’s the breakdown.

Signup with otherinbox.com and they’ll scan the entire existing contents of your email account.  They pull out the stuff that actually has worth and help you sort it with a handy system of categories. These categories get added to your email account as folders. Moving forward you can categorize every email you get to make go into the categories you want.

It also gives you new email address; xxxxx@username.otherinbox.com.  And you can make as many email addresses as you want to help you control the email you get. For example: make an address called amazonorders@username.otherinbox.com. This way all the emails you get from amazon.com will go into a special folder for that email.

In the end you get an inbox that only has the really important stuff.  And you also know where to find the emails you need ‘just in case’.

I’m going to give it a fair shot to see if this solution can really keep up with the massive amount of email I receive each day.

Have you tried this yet?  Comment below and let me know

I’m not going to surprise many people with this fact, but it needs to be talked about.

FACT: About 100% of consumers don’t trust advertising, according to a report sponsored by marketing solutions provider Alterian.

The report also discovered that less than 8% of people trust what companies say about themselves and more than 58% say that companies aren’t always acting in the best interest of the customer.

Here’s the dagger in the heart… ONLY 17% percent of people believe that companies actually care what the consumer is saying.

OUCH!

FYI: This should really concern you and you’re brain should be thinking of ways to change this. Why?  Well, if you’re like me, none of these things are true about you and you actually care about the customers you provide for.

My favorite part of this report is that it concluded that customers who are “actively engaged in the use of social media tend to be more positive about companies in general.”  33% of these social media users believed that companies are genuinely interested in them.

Why? These people are interacting with the companies they patronize on a more personal level (social media), thus they are more trusting.

That’s a lot more than the 1% of people not using social media!

This just goes to show that there is always a way to break through barriers that prevent your customers from trusting you, and as good marketers we must find them and make the most of them.

There is great value in meeting your customers where they are.  In this case ‘where they are’ is Twitter and Facebook.  ‘Where they are’ gives you a real opportunity to show who YOU really are and gain their trust.

Question: How are you using social media to increase trust with your customers?  I know some of you are getting creative, so I’d love to hear some stories.

Learn More:

Want to learn how to connect with your customers even when your advertising to them?  Check out my personal strategy for Facebook called ‘Facebook AdPower’ and discover the real way to gain trust and advertise at the same time!

Facebook Ads has become the golden child of online ads, and it’s become one of my favorite pastimes to talk smack about Google Adwords and their faded glory. Despite Google’s currently unexciting ad platform, they paved the way for Facebook Ads, giving Facebook some big shoulders to stand on.

i.e. Facebook has just instated their first Ad Quality Score.

Facebook has hit the same wall Google hit with misleading advertisers, ‘free offers’, and advertisers who break the already set rules.  What did Google do?  They set up rigorous standards for advertisers and slapped a bunch of ‘bad scorers’ across the face.

Well, Facebook has plenty of naughty little advertisers and they’re about to pass out some slaps on the wrist.

Facebook just sent out a letter notifying their advertisers that they’ve allowed users to rate the ads they’re seeing by classifying their dislike for the ad with 6 different opinion options.  Not only that,  the user response to the ads is what Facebook uses to score the ads.

Ads that over index in the categories of ‘misleading’ and ‘offensive’ are about to get smacked!  And if you don’t get your act in line within 14 Days then, “you may lose access to a dedicated account manager and beta tools, plus your daily spend limit could be impacted. Further offenses may result in permanent removal of your advertising privileges on Facebook.”

Here’s why they are doing a better job scoring than Google.

They are allowing the users to give the feedback.  I’ll trust the users to tell the truth about the ads long before I will some evil Google robot.

It’s great to see Facebook grow up to be such a fine young man

Does this concern you? Are you going to make some changes to make sure you don’t reprimanded by Facebook?  Reply below and let me know.

Learn More:

Want to safeguard your Facebook Ads from changes like the new quality score and anything else the might throw our way?  Then you need to get my Facebook Ad strategy guide, Facebook AdPower, that’s going to keep you on Facebook’s good side.

So You Want To Be A Social Media Manager?

To download your FREE interview with a very successful Social Media Manager and find out how she did it CLICK HERE (right click and “save as”)

Social media managers are in huge demand right now, and the trend is only rising. As social media becomes more powerful online, combined with businesses understanding the influence social media has over their customers….. means this trend will continue for a long time.

I’ve a friend, Kate, who capitalized on this years ago and has been reaping huge rewards ever since. Her story is one of the coolest I’ve ever heard.

Imagine… being in a position where you HAVE to make money, getting laid off, and struggling to find a job – THEN – finding it in yourself to make the decision to STOP depending on others for a job and discovering a niche so unique, it puts you in immediate high demand.

Click here to find out more about becoming one of the successful social media managers.

Why are Social Media Managers Needed?

As a matter of fact, social media managers are so in demand that Kate was able to quickly grow into a $10k/month business – working just part time, from her house. ALL SHE DOES is mess around on Facebook & Twitter. As you know, those profiles/fanpages don’t cost  A DIME. This means… if you have one connection that can turn into a customer you’ll start this business for nothing!

I posted a recording, on this page, of Kate talking about how she literally stumbled across this $10,000 a month opportunity just by playing around on Twitter, Facebook and some other social media sites. Now… you have to remember that Kate was able to accomplish this with NO formal training, NO website, heck she even had NO product to sell. What she did have was the smarts to quickly realize that she was able to make more money, on a part time basis, as a Social Media Manager than she could have ever made working full time for someone else.

If you are interested in finding out more on becoming a Social Media Manager click the button below:

Smart business owners are moving their marketing and advertising efforts to social media outlets and to social media managers. Expenditures for social media are climbing, and will continue to climb. Kate knew this early and decided to get ahead of the game.

You Will LOVE Her Story So Listen up!

Download the .mp3 HERE (right click and “save as”)

UPDATE: We’ve had a lot of requests for a transcript of my call with Kate.  I’ve done you one better… I’ve pasted my full report (that in the past has been sold) below JUST FOR DRIVINGTRAFFIC.com visitors. It outlines why their are so many people taking advantage of this opportunity in the market right now ENJOY:

This is a report I definitely didn’t see myself writing two years ago, but there’s no denying anymore just how important social media is to business and the potential that’s there both for the business, and for social media experts who really know and understand what they’re doing. I also know when you want to give the best information, you need to find the people who really are the best at what they do. But before I bring in Kate to help with this report, first we need to go over some really cool data I found from MarketingSherpa.
MarketingSherpa revealed some research on how tons of of big companies, big business, and a lot of small businesses are shifting a lot (if not most) of their advertising efforts and their marketing efforts away from the traditional offline sources over to the new world of social media.
This opens up some really cool opportunities for people like you who know how to use social media. Who wouldn’t want to make six figures playing around on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? Well for people who know how to do it the right way, this could be a reality. For those of you who are still somewhat new at this game, being a social media manager means knowing how to work with:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Blogs & approving blog comments

But first, let’s talk a little bit about why companies are shifting from traditional advertising over to social media and why this trend isn’t going to stop any time soon.

The Earth Has Shifted

The study from MarketingSherpa showed that many of these businesses were seeing some of their highest ROIs from social media. It also absolutely crushed the myths that:

• You can’t make money in social media
• That social media doesn’t work for more traditional brick and mortar businesses.

There are two main reasons for this shift.

One is that traditional advertising methods just don’t work nearly as well as they used to. Even traditional online marketing has changed greatly over the last few years.

Second, social media is new and DOES work. This combination is the reason why it shouldn’t be any surprise that the highest ROIs are coming from social media.
The thing that I found really interesting from this study was how they talked about how a lot of these companies were hiring social media managers freelance style, or were even bringing them on staff to be full time social media managers.

For most businesses, I recommend hiring freelance. In most cases, managing your social media account can be done in 15 to 30 minutes a day. It is not a big deal and it often is not a full time position, so you should try to outsource it to a social media manager who can handle your accounts.

One person who knows all about this shift is my friend Kate, who is a social media manager that has made well over 6 figures a year simply taking on clients and managing their social media accounts for them on a daily basis. In fact, she hired an entire team to help serve all the clients that wanted to hire her and she still brings in a 6 figure income. In fact, this person I am about to introduce you to, the one who has provided the “meat and potatoes” of this report, I once tried to talk to her about coming on board with us. She basically told me, in as nice a way as
possible, “Ryan, you can’t afford me. I am making too much money now.”

Traditional Media Is In The Toilet

Traditional media was becoming less and less effective for advertising even before social media began to take off. Personally, I have an
interesting perspective because I am in a local CEO group in Austin. This CEO group that I am with in Austin, I am there with literally one of the top dentists in Austin, one of the top electricians, with a guy who owns his
own auto body shop, as well as CPAs and traditional brick and mortar business owners. All these guys tell me firsthand how bad it’s getting using the old marketing channels. The funny thing is it’s almost like the late nineties again where anyone who knew even a little bit about computers could land a cushy job.

They’re all looking at me because I’m “the Internet guy.”

Nobody really understands it, but they are freaking out because the Yellow
Pages advertisements aren’t working anymore. Newspaper ads aren’t working, and all of the traditional marketing methods just aren’t working. Even if they don’t understand it, they are all thinking and believing that social media is the next big thing. You know social media gurus are in demand when you hear butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers saying every month:

“Ryan, who can I get to do this stuff? Who can run these things for me?” This is where social media experts like Kate come in, and why if you’re good at social media, you should take a look at the potential that’s available.

There are stats publishing from Forrester that say 99% of retailers are planning on developing an online presence specifically on Facebook by 2011, which is only about six months away (as of the time of this report). Those strategies are in development, and companies are looking for experts to help them out. That’s a lot of businesses looking to set up an online presence, and when
you’re looking at local businesses like chiropractors, dentists, butchers, mechanics, retail store owners, and others, but they not only often don’t know how to run a social media campaign, but many don’t have the time to be sitting on Facebook or Twitter looking for new clients.

Think About It!
Do you think medical professionals or their staffs have any time to sit down on social media, much less put together a social media campaign?

This really creates a demand for social media marketers. People are actively looking for experts right now. At the time of our interview, Kate was following up with 4 huge clients that had contacted her the past week. Three came from referrals and one came from a person who saw her on Twitter and wanted to know if she could take on another client.

The “GenX” Gap

The “Big Gap” describes the gap that exists between knowing that you need to get into social media marketing, and knowing how to actually do it. Many of these poor guys I know are hiring their nieces to do it. They are desperate enough to offer an employee who has no idea what they’re really doing $4,000-5,000 a month just to try and manage a social media campaign for their business.

That gap is what creates the huge demand for social media experts. They know how to Twitter and they know how to Facebook and that’s good. Having at least a basic comfort level is a good start, but they don’t really understand and grasp all of the strategies. I think that is where the big gap is right now.

While a business may have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account, that’s all great. Some have even uploaded a video or two to YouTube before. But as a business owner, if you have a trained professional to do it 10 times faster, it is 10 times more cost efficient, not to mention the stress relief because you have a professional handling it. What many business owners find out quickly is that there is an entirely unspoken etiquette in social media. I am sure a lot of people, if they have
tried it before, played around with it just a little bit and in time at all they realize there are these
weird symbols and letters and things – it’s like learning another language if you don’t have any experience with it.

Why not just have someone who knows all of that stuff and knows exactly what to do and how to do it in 30 minutes a day take care of it instead? That spells opportunity for social media managers.

Kate’s Story

Kate’s story of getting started in social media should be as encouraging as may be inspirational for many people. After I did a blog post a few weeks ago on social media, there seemed to be hundreds of questions and comments with people asking:

“How can I be a social media manager like your friend? How can I work for these companies and make 6 figures basically playing around with Twitter and Facebook all day?”

Kate employs an entire team to help out with her business, and she sometimes describes herself as being “gleefully unemployed” while
making 6 figures a year managing social media campaigns for other companies. She didn’t plan on getting into marketing or becoming a “social media guru,” but that’s part of what makes her story so encouraging, and I’ll let Kate tell her story in her own words right now.

“Busted-Out Ballerina” Hits Gold

Kate: Okay, very cool. I’ll just say thanks for having me. I am really excited. My background is very interesting. I don’t have a marketing degree, and I didn’t study business in school. I am actually a dance major, so I studied ballet; that is actually what I am qualified to be teaching. When I graduated, the typical schedule is that a dance teacher will teach at night and then have a job during the day if they don’t own their own studio. They would have an administrative type of job during the day, and that is exactly what I did.

I answered e-mails for a corporation, helped people with their log-ins, their passwords, their browser issues and that type of stuff all day long. Then I got the pink slip just randomly out of the blue. I had a couple of weeks to get myself together and figure out what the heck I was going to do after that. I was kind of burned out at teaching at that point. I just kept hearing all of this Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. I just got on Twitter and played around just trying to figure out what everyone was talking about, to figure out what the deal was with that. There we go! It has turned into a very lucrative full time business. From dance teacher to social media manager kind of overnight.

What Does a Social Media Manager Do?

A social media manager has several responsibilities, and these can vary slightly from one client to another. One of the first things that consistently comes up is dealing with “the overwhelm.” Many companies on Twitter often complain about overwhelm in handling
social media responsibilities. Deleting spam direct messages (DMs) from Twitter is a huge part of a social media manager’s job, and then forwarding the few messages that are important in one e-mail to the employer. The same can be important for Facebook, as spammers keep attempting to flood business accounts with unwanted messages, as well. Many people have stopped reading their DMs completely because of the sheer volume of unwanted messages that come into the account. A social media manager can wade through, delete all the unwanted messages, and forward any that might actually be important. The time and stress savings for this alone allows many social media managers worth the cost to companies. In many ways a social media manager can be thought of as an executive assistant to a brand.

Social media is trending these days for a brand, a company, a business, an executive, or a CEO. Being a social media expert means being a personal assistant for your social media. We are the first line of defense. Aside from handling DMs on Twitter, social media managers will also be asked to do a wide variety of other social media outlets such as:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Blog comment approval

Approving or declining comments on Facebook is another major function. This is a huge timesaver for companies. Approving comments to individual blogs might also be added in, filtering out the spam that automatic spam catchers can’t get a hold of, or even uploading YouTube videos and using them to get attention to the company. When batched together, all of these actions usually don’t take long, maybe even half an hour or less per client, but they are a huge time saver and then when you send one single e-mail with all the important messages and information that actually is worth seeing and responding to.

Sneaky Tricks of Social Media

Social media managers should be expected to know enough to be able to distribute content so that it gets attention. One thing Kate brings up as a specialty is that when a blog post is put it up on Monday, she’ll make sure that it gets out a couple different times during the week and at different times of day to maximize the amount of eyes that may find it. It is not that shot in the pan, one-hit-wonder blog post. We increase the visibility of the content that you are creating. One way to guarantee yourself the best pay and reputation is to know how to help build social followings – it’s the most obvious and simple way to visibly point to evidence of your success.

As a social media manager, you will want to learn how to:

• Look for people who are in your audience
• Look for people who could make up a potential audience
• Locate your target market online and ways to reach them
• Facilitate some engagement with the target market

Getting active in social media means helping your clients to develop some relationships with people because we all know that that is the key or the trick of social media is to be engaging as well as sharing your content. By doing this, a social media manager gives the business the human touch that consumers really connect with. One of the best parts of acting as a social media marketing expert is that it is not time intensive when done right. Kate mentions that most of her clients take 15, 20, or 30 minutes a day or less. Once in a while a huge client takes 1 hour a day, but huge companies also pay a lot more. It shouldn’t take that long to find what you need, send the things your client actually needs or wants to deal with, and clean up the rest.

Getting To The Money

Knowing how to get started is a major question many of you probably have. Let’s say somebody wanted to get started and wanted to do this and do something online, or maybe even act as a social media expert just as a part time thing to help pay the mortgage or save up for a vacation, how would you get started?

First: Learn the basics. There isn’t a guide for the exact steps you have to do 100% of the time, but the information for what you don’t know how to do is all over the Internet on what seems like zillions of blogs. Learn online etiquette for social media, and make sure you understand the lingo, what’s considered polite or rude, and that you understand how each medium works.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all social media, but they’re not the same, and each has its own nuances that you need to learn.
Second: Study and test. Study social media blogs, free reports, and other resources that can help teach you how to effectively use social media. There are tons of free resources out there that can teach you more than enough to at least learn enough to start a social media company. Test out what you learn to see what works for you and what you can excel at. Third: Build your own brand. The easiest way to prove that you are a social media expert who knows how to help a company out is to have your own brand and following to point out to others.

Taking a Short-Cut To Start

Kate talked about perfecting her system for about a year and a half, and she’s an example of going through the school of hard knocks. She didn’t start out thinking that there was a business to be had as a social media expert, and the social media thing just started up as taking little side jobs.

Kate talks about this in more detail:

“Remember, I was just looking for little side jobs, and people were saying they needed help. I just sort of made this up as I went along going, ‘Okay, this will help people.’

Coming from the background that I did, I had to read all the blogs, and all the books, and all the everything which is a LOT of what these local business owners are going through themselves trying to figure this out. You could spend that amount of time really honing your skills. You could say I spent the past year and a half really honing in on how to do this job and how to do it the most quickly while remaining effective. It used to take me longer to do it, and now I have got it down really well: a year and a half, 18 months, coming right up on that to perfect how to operate in this business.”

That might seem like a long time, but keep in mind that it took about a year and a half to PERFECT the business – not just to get it going. When you think about how many people start a traditional business from scratch, and how long it takes to get to 6 figures, if ever, suddenly 18 months doesn’t seem like such a long investment. But when Kate was getting started, her first client hired her after only 5 days. The last day of the corporate job was December 31st, and she landed her first client on January 5th.

Start-Up Costs are Squat!

Start up costs are always going to be a major question with any business. The good news? Kate started her social media business unemployed, and really didn’t have to spend a dime. Obviously you need your own computer and Internet, but as long as you have that you really are set to go.

And if you don’t? You can even go to a public library and use their computers. Everything you need to be a social media expert is right there online, all you need is some drive, education, and access to the Internet to get started.

How Much Money Can YOU Make?

Isn’t this the big question? One of the biggest myths out there right now is that you can’t make money off of social media, and that’s just not true. Kate started out charging $25 an hour, and the rates have gone up since then as she has gotten better and better at what she does. Many companies charge $40, $50, or even $65 and up per hour now as social media experts, and the demand just keeps going up. The market hasn’t even begun to grow or hit its full size yet and the demand is going to continue to grow. Another way to charge, and one that many people in the business (including Kate) use, is to charge a flat fee per client or per company. Many companies are happy to pay $500 to $1,000 a month as a flat fee just to have all the social media stuff taken care of, and it doesn’t matter if you can do the daily work in 15-20 minutes, just as long as it gets done. Many companies or experts charge something like $500 for basic daily
clean up and services, then charge higher amounts for actual “social media campaigns” designed to increase followers and exposure. It does not take many clients at those levels of flat fees to have a very healthy full time income, and for FAR under 40 hours a week.
I just think that’s really cool. It’s really something to see the look in people’s eyes when they realize, “Wow! I can have one client or two clients for 30 minutes to an hour a day, maybe two hours, and be bringing in a couple grand a month?”

And the answer is YES!

Most people are amazed at how crazy the market is for social media experts right now. Individuals can easily make 6 figures once they’ve done the work to establish themselves, and many really successful social media marketers, like Kate, eventually build and train a team, make 6 figures annually, and then only work an hour or two a day because they want to enjoy their new wealth and life. It’s not a pipe dream – this is an emerging market where a LOT of people are doing just that. One of the biggest questions is pricing. Aside from many preferring flat monthly fees, you can even set up billing at a “continuity program.” This means that all the businesses are charged once a month automatically via credit card, so invoicing isn’t even required – which eliminates a lot of headaches. Send a monthly receipt with a thank you note, and this not only can be the easiest way to handle billing, but also the most profitable.

Be a Freebird… For Real

One of the great benefits of working with social media is that your business doesn’t have any of the conventional boundaries. Consider this:

• You don’t have to live in any specific geographic location
• Your clients can come from anywhere in the world
• Payments can be automated online

These are all great advantages of the social media business. In fact, not all your clients even need to be from the same country. There’s no reason a social media expert in the United States can’t work for clients in Canada, Australia, Belize, or the United Kingdom, as well.
Clone YOU! – And Take HALF. Once you are an experienced social media expert and have a thriving personal business, you can choose to take the business to the next level by hiring and training freelancers. Doing this allows you to take on more clients, earn more money, and free up more of your own time. Kate has already built a business with several employees, and it only takes her an
hour or two a day to manage them and make sure everything is being done as it should be. Then they use their training to do the client work. Some people even go so far as to eventually hire a manager to manage all the freelancers, freeing up even more of their time to find clients and expand the business, or simply to take some time off and enjoy life.

Why You Will LOVE This Career?

Maybe one of the absolute best things that comes from interviewing successful social media marketers like Kate is seeing how many of them absolutely love their jobs. For many people, it doesn’t get any better than social media marketing. While the high pay and great hours have already been covered, there are several other reasons to love working as a social media manager.
A brief list of advantages includes:

• You can work from home.
• Do what you want, when you want.
• Choose how to use your own time.
• Freedom of long lunches or going for long walks whenever you feel like it.
• The freedom of earning major income from small time investment.
• Fun for people who like messing around online and with social media.
• Not a difficult job.

A nice little bonus for social media marketers is that many become mini online celebrities of sorts. At the South by Southwest conference we were hanging out, and I’m not trying to sound cocky, but I know my stuff and I have a big following. I’m not some anonymous guy who just broke onto the scenes. But no one cared who I was, but Kate was being grabbed for interviews, people wanted to talk to her, have pictures taken – she really was a celebrity during the tech shows and it was really cool. It also might be really important to remind people that Austin, Texas, is a really tech-savvy, up with the current technological advances type of city.

If Kate can start in a really competitive tech city and start with nothing and get to six figures in a year and a half, imagine what you could do in a city that doesn’t have that level of online competence and competitiveness!

Does Kate Have Tools She Can Share with Us?

Kate has offered to be very generous and share some tools that can help the most green beginner become a social media expert in a very short time. She is cleaning up some of her training videos to make them simpler to understand and easier to follow so anyone can receive the same training she gives to the freelance social media experts who do the client work for her company.
If you’ve signed up to get this report, you should already be on a mailing list that will help you stay up to date with any updates we will release on these new tools.

Even better, while Kate is not hiring, if you go through the specific training she offers, there is always the chance of getting a little bit of freelance business from her as the business continues to expand. Sometimes when a new client is landed, there is some more freelance work available for trained individuals.
Once the new training videos are out, you will definitely want to take a look at those.

Want To Learn More?

For more information on how to become a social media manager click the button below to watch a free video.

Enjoy,
Ryan

P.S. Comment below and let me know what you think about the interview, and if you want me to do more of these in the future.

Ok, I just found the perfect new employee for you.

He/she has no college degree, spends 75% of their day on social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.), and demands to work from home.  Oh and they want you to pay them to Facebook and Tweet all day.  Do you have any opening for them?

Well, you should!

It’s definitely a unique age we live in where the kind of potential employee I just described has a bright future in social marketing.  In fact, in all likelihood they could be the next vital cog in your company’s success machine.

How, you ask?

Marketing Sherpa just released a new report that shows an increasing trend in companies that outsource their Social Marketing Responsibilities.

It’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘outsourcing’, but it’s brilliant. Social Marketing can seriously boost the brand and success of your company.  I mean, without Social Marketing, a lot of companies can’t even get their feet off the ground.

So finding someone with a love and knack for Social Media is a great opportunity for you to take your social marketing to the next level.

Heck, it will probably save you a few bucks too. The article I referenced for this post suggests hiring someone internal to do the job.  But why would you when you can hire a specialist to do it for between $500 and $1000 a week. (FYI: that’s a deal)

In fact, I have a friend who’s working the other side of that deal…getting paid $500 – $1000 a month to manage social media for local businesses. It’s a pretty sweet deal for her. She gets to make 6-figures a year with just a few clients and gets to play on Facebook and Twitter every day.

If you’re into social media, maybe you should consider a career change.

So what do you think?  Would you trust someone to run your social media accounts?

With the mass influx of businesses onto the social media platform, providers don’t really have the option to ignore it.  Facebook has ‘Business Pages, LinkedIn has company profiles, and so on.

So what’s Twitter’s response to its competitors? (In 140 characters or less)

The Twitter Business Center

I’ll be the first to say, “It’s about time!”  I’ll also say it’s a respectable offering to all the loyal Tweeters out there.

At this time Twitter is in a beta testing period, and will only be offering access to the Business Center to a select few. However, as testing continues they will extend the invitation further.  For those of us who haven’t been fortunate enough to get the fancy invite, here is what you can expect if everything goes according to plan.

Account verification will be given to all business centers members. This will eliminate impostors and increase trust in your followers when they know it’s really you.  And, you don’t have to jump through a million hoops to get verified. Fill out a simple form, and presto, your legit.

Multiple Contributor controls will be included in the new center. This gives the ability to add multiple users to a single account to allow each user to tweet on behalf of the business.  This one has been around for a few months, but it’s a nifty tool to add to the kit.

Direct Messages can be sent by any of your followers.  You’ll no longer have to follow someone back to enable this function.  HUGE. But honestly, this could be huge in a few ways. Hugely annoying for those of you with a big list, trying to remain private.  Hugely awesome for those of you who are just getting started and want to connect with your followers.

All in all this is a Business Center that many of you would benefit from having access to.  I’m still curious to see how the Business Center will look once it comes out of beta testing.

If and when you get an invite to the new Business Center, how will you put it to use? Comment below and let me know…

This is one of the reasons that Internet Marketing still gets my juices flowing.  When it comes to online marketing, even the craziest ideas are worth testing because some times those crazy ideas wind up converting.

Here’s one such example…

Some dude out there thought it would be a good idea to use a ‘Mad Libs’ style optin form, and he was really, really right.  The optin form asked the same questions that most optin forms do (name, email, phone, etc), but he switched the format to read like a narrative.  It even operated the same way as a standard optin form. You can click each field and tab through.  It just looked different, and honestly, it’s way more fun to fill out.

I haven’t tested this form style (I plan to), but someone else did. They put the ‘Mad Libs’ form head to head with against a standard opt-in form. Guess who won… Yep, the ‘Mad Libs’ form supposedly increased conversion across the board by 25-40%.

This is living proof of why we should all be split-testing everything we do, because you never know until you put it to test.

So here is my call to action.

Don’t settle for the predictable results you’ve been getting for the last 2 years.  Turn on your idea factory and start split-testing, because chances are you’re not at full potential.

If this doesn’t get you excited, then you might want to split-test some career options

-Ryan

P.S. What have you tested lately? Comment below and tell me about it…

Learn More:

Want an insider’s look at all my extensive split testing? CLICK HERE to access 43 Split Test where I uncover all the test results, revealing the best ways to increase your conversions. NOTE: “43 Split-Tests” is currently off the market in preparation for the release of “43 Split-Tests 2.0″ on May 26, 2010.

Local Businesses Need YOU...

Do you have ANY idea how much smarter you are, at least marketing wise,
than any other business owner in your town?

No?  Try talking about what we do as marketers to the local yokels and
watch their eyes glaze over and their greed glands start to water, even if
your explaining basic opt-in strategies and simple autoresponders, they will
think your a genius, I guarantee it.

A few of my students have really caught on to this and are making a FORTUNE
right in their own back yards.

One guy in Florida is selling the “brain dead” simple service of setting up local
mom and pops in Google local, Google’s simple local listing tool.

He does a really great job and ads photos and some interesting copy for each listing.

His fee: $200 for about 20 minutes work so he can do 10-20 a week. Plus, he
uses an outside sales person on commission and never even sees the customer.

Another sharp student in Atlanta sets up and maintains local businesses Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube accounts then updates them from time to time.

Her fee: $175 a MONTH minimum and she has built up to over 100 clients in just a few months.

Do that math!

Lastly, this one really killed me. One of the more clever guys I’ve seen offers a
“Who’s talking about you” service for local businesses that send alerts to the
business any time they are mentioned online in a search engine, social media etc…

He charges $79 a month for his service and relies largely on the free Google
Alerts and Twitter Search service for most his information. I don’t know his
numbers, but he has 6 full time salespeople on staff and has had for a while.

The big point is, you ARE smart. Smarter than most of the businesses owners
in your area and NOW is the time to share your skills and collect some great
fees in the process.

Best Wishes,
Ryan

P.S. Comment below and tell me if you offer a local service, have a question or
just want to be heard. Go ahead, brag a little…

You gotta love the irony of this…

I just sent an email out to my list promoting my latest course on email marketing (“13 Sneaky Email Marketing Tricks”) and the link in the promo went to the WRONG WEBSITE!

Seriously, this really did happen, but fortunately it wasn’t my fault (for once!) Check it out:

(And for the record, the correct link is: http://www.SneakyEmailTricks.com)

NOTE TO CYNICS AND SKEPTICS: I know that more than a few people will accuse me of staging this or even speculate that sending out an email with the wrong link …

I’m only gonna say this once: This email screw-up was not…I repeat NOT staged or planned in any way.

It also is NOT one of the 13 “sneaky email tricks” we discuss in “13 Sneaky Email Marketing Tricks”, so if you comment and say that on this or any other blog or forum all you’re really doing is proving that you 1) don’t (or can’t) read or 2) are so dang cynical you probably can’t be saved and should seriously consider a different business.

Here’s what this IS: It IS a good example of turning a lemon into lemonade.

Just remember that in all aspects of life, successful people see opportunities in everything…even their own personal screw-ups. )