Find out how using "real" events connects you to your customers
Discover if having multiple personalities online work for your brand
Is social climbing the best way to reach your target audience?
Check out how to quantify the effectiveness of your online engagement

Whether you're on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or MySpace, the personality you shape online is not only part of your overall brand, it's also an interactive experience for you and your business. Thus, it's important that you invest some time working on your social media personality so you can effectively converse with your target audience. Keep in mind the tips below while embarking on your social media adventure, and you're likely to impressively increase your brand visibility without even engaging in an online marketing agency:

Have a human face

The point of creating a personality online is to encourage dialogue from your customers, so don't be afraid of posting "real" events that happen in your life. Think along the lines of "driver just cut into my lane without signalling" as opposed to "bad traffic today". The former connects people and this will encourage dialogue. Through the dialogue, you'll be able to build opportunities by connecting them with your business.

Stay consistent with your avatar and profile bio

The first rule you have to take note about your avatar and profile bio is to stay consistent with them throughout all platforms. Having multiple personalities do not work in social media. If you confuse your customers, you lose.

But to start creating a profile bio and to upload an avatar is not as straightforward as it sounds. You have to realise that putting up a company logo or a picture of the president sends entirely different messages to your customers. Creating a Facebook "group" or "fan" pages also requires different branding approach.

Consider putting up an inviting avatar with one or all of the following attributes (together with great content): a smiling face, a full colour photo, or a cool logo created by your website designer. For social platforms such as Twitter and MySpace, you may also engage a web designer to create a background graphic that reflects your brand.

Don't just focus on social climbing

While building up your online personality, it makes sense to connect with people having thousands of "followers" or "friends". However, it is actually better to connect more quality audiences.

If you are using Twitter, utilise the search function and type in keywords associated with your business. Send a personal "tweet" to everyone talking about your keywords. People will interact with you and check out your Twitter stream.

If you're using Facebook, create a "group" or "fan" page and post regularly to engage with your "friends" and "fans". You will be surprised to see your reach grow at an exponential rate.

Analyse what your brand is all about

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building the personality of your brand. Explore and carry out a research on any of the social media platform to find out about others' experience with your product. Be aware of your brand offline as well and analyse whether they match. For example, if you keep talking about your impressive customer service on Facebook without ensuring that your staffs actually give quality service, your customers will not react well to this inconsistency. Customers will think that you don't keep your promises and may instead post some negative comments online.

Focus on return of engagement

The point of engaging in social media is for return of engagement. Here are a few ways to quantify the effectiveness of your online engagement:

The number of incoming traffic from links
How many people subscribed to your RSS feed
How many people on your list of friends
The number of trackbacks to posts
Use conversation tracking tools such as Twitter Search
The number of comments on posts
The number of increased sales and general inquiries

Although the above tips will help you start getting a foothold on social media platforms, there are plenty more you have to do to attract the right type of audience. In the end, you know your brand better than anyone else, even more than your digital marketing agency. Find other tips to fully utilise the benefits of internet marketing, then apply what works best for your brand.

About the Author: Christina has 8 years experience working with companies such as HSBC, Bayer Healthcare and Packard Bell and is currently a web designer at Online Marketing Company – Conversion Hub. She is also a SEO consultant for a certified SEO company Singapore.

Did you have a dream as a child to open up your own shop to the public, to find long lines at your registers, to hear the sound of chatter as mothers and fathers kept their little ones near and entertained, while your staff served up some old fashioned service?

Well, the next best thing has arrived with the internet. You can be a web shopkeeper now, with a plethora of advantages over the real world variety. There are a number of solutions available online to become a web shopkeeper now. If you don't mind sharing a cut with the big dogs, you could run with eBay or Amazon and sell your wares. If you don't like the idea of storing things, they now have eBay drop off stores in most major cities.

Of course, if you want to create your own goods for sale and don't want to necessarily go the eBay route, then there's always stores like Etsy or CafePress. These provide the web shopkeeper with a venue to sell their own creations (in the case of the Etsy types of stores) or create your own identity using their tools and materials (in the case of the CafePress model). That is to say, in the latter model, you would use their t-shirts and customize them using their software and art. Either venue will help you become a web shopkeeper now, with a few clicks. These models are pretty unique in that they allow the creative type of web shopkeeper focus on their creativity, while the business end of things is already in place. You will, of course, share some of the profits with the hosting company, but you will become a shopkeeper sooner.

The most profitable option, though maybe not up front, will be to make your own shop from the ground up. Granted, there are open source or free programs for just about every problem you'll face in setting up your shop. The biggest problem will probably be finding the right software for your store. You want your brand, not their brand (the software company's) showing through to your customers. So long as you can do that, it should be a go.

Finally, once all of this is in place, your domain name is purchased, products described and shopping cart hooked up, then it's a matter of driving traffic through your “doors.” This is typically called “search engine optimization.” There are myriad ways to optimize your web shopkeeper site for the major engines, but focusing on Google and Bing will go a long ways in keeping your customers clicking on by.

Visit http://www.ShopkeeperUSA.com for a peak at the new generation of ecommerce web shopkeeper software for your new business.

Shopkeeper is an all-in-one ecommerce solution that provides sellers with a complete website and a store with shopping cart. The entire site can be managed from your browser including uploading pictures, setting prices and managing orders. It's one of the best ecommerce web sites out there. Plus, it is amazingly affordable!

About the Author: Dan Marx provides creative business services for startups on how to start a business on the Internet and make money. Did you find this article helpful? You can find out a lot more by going to http://www.DM-Creative.com where you find ideas, products and services geared toward helping you succeed online.

Online marketing, is not the easiest thing to learn, especially if you are not familiar with the terms that are used and you know nothing about online marketing, other than the strategies of the old school.

Some marketing strategies that has been around for awhile, but might be new to you, are as follows: SEO, (search engine optimization) when I decided to put a halt to all the marketing madness and develop a business from the ground up and throw all the old school marketing out the window, it became abundantly clear to me, that I had a lot to learn.

It all started by my inquiring about marketing on the Internet and one thing keep coming up was, search engine optimization, also known by “SEO”. I soon realized that this was the way to go, if I wanted to build a business on the Internet. I also understood that I had to have my own website, that is, if I wanted to implement search engine optimization in my marketing plan.

So, I was faced with a decision to make, do I get a website or a blog? After careful study I opted for a blog for the following reasons; a blog is very popular with search engines, because they are designed for fresh content articles, articles about your personal life or a subject that you are a expert in or a authority on the subject, this is what the search engines look for. Fresh content is king!

Now the question is, since I know nothing about search engine optimization, how do I start my marketing plan? I started by subscribing to all the SEO newsletters I could, in order to gain as much knowledge about the subject as I could, this was very helpful in understanding the concept of Seo marketing. While reading and studying all the new found information from the Seo companies, a subject that caught my eye, and that was on “Google branding”.

Google branding might not be a phrase with which you are familiar in the home based business industry. However, this idea can teach the home based business person a valuable lesson when it comes to creating a brand for your business. Because Google is the most recognizable business of the decade, you might be wondering how your small home based business can learn from a multi-billion dollar company. You can in the way in which they made a name for themselves.

There is a reason that the current marketing students are learning about Google in their college classes. There is a lot they can learn from the giant. The first thing that is important to note about Google branding is that the way in which the search engine works these days is that it puts a lot of emphasis on branding. Because of this, how can a small home based business such as your own compete with the giant brands of the world? The first step to competing is to create a brand for your home based business.

You want to do this by promoting yourself over your business. You want people to feel as if they know who you are. You can do this through blogs and social media sites.

The whole point of branding your company is that you want people to see you as the only place to go for that particular business. It is not about beating out your competitors, it is about making a name for yourself and your company.

Once you have established a brand for your home based business, you can be successful with Google branding. The reason they felt the need to run their search engine this way was because it basically is a way to weed out companies with irrelevant content that could not be trusted.

Because Google is the most popular search engine, you need to do everything you can to get to the top of their search engine results. This is the best way to drive traffic to your site.

They constantly are changing the way in which their search algorithms work, and the newest change as been toward Google branding. You can use this to your advantage just by letting people get to know you. The more they feel they know you, the more likely they are to trust your home based business. It can get you to the top of the list.

About the Author: Hello, my name is Dan Atkins, I have worked from home for the last five years. I have an one online health and wellness business blog, and nine Squidoo lenses, five Hubpages and five Wetpaints. I enjoy Internet marketing and helping others to be successful in business. Sign-up and get your free information in “starting and marketing your own home based business.” http://danatkinsbiz.com “Success comes to those that get the most traffic.” To your phenomenal success, Dan Atkins danatkins62@yahoo.com