Facebook Photos for Business: Improving Fan Engagement

For many small businesses sharing photos of the products and services they sell and/or develop plays an important part in building and solidifying their base of fans, potential and existing customers, on Facebook.
Some businesses are particularly well suited to take advantage of this opportunity. For instance, realtors, hair stylists, estheticians, travel agencies, pet stores and veterinarians, grocery stores, photographers, bakeries, sporting goods stores, environmental organizations, art studios, coffee shops and restaurants, home renovators, electricians, retail outlets, museums and the list goes on and on.
Any business that is able to visually capture images (photographs, drawings, etc.) that relate to what they do can use these images to their advantage on Facebook. Essentially, to tell your story with a picture rather than with a thousand words.
Images are more likely to grab our attention and create an emotional response. Words can do the same, once people have delved into reading what has been written, and assuming it is interesting to them. The challenge is to get people's attention so that we stand out from the crowd, so that they give us a second look as a product or service provider. A visual image can help do this.
In late August Facebook made it possible for users to add bigger photos (720 pixels to 960 pixels) that load twice as fast to their posts. The photos are displayed in a higher resolution too. (You can use images that are not photos by saving them in a compatible format for Facebook.)
Facebook's press release said the changes provide a "more streamlined photo viewer that features a cleaner interface that makes it even easier to enjoy your photos. The light box is now set against a simple white background that puts more of the focus on the photo, and less on the surrounding frame."
While one photo is great adding three or more can be even better! Consider realtors, bakeries, fine art studios or pet stores for example. Can you imagine how one or a group of three photographs can make a difference in their Facebook posts?  Fresh bakery items on display with a one liner about a special on scones and cinnamon bus. A new real estate listing featuring a few photos of the home plus a line or two detailing it's features? Cute puppy photos with information about a special on grooming or food supplies?
An interesting tidbit of written information may or may not grab someone's attention but add photos to the mix and the odds of it consciously 'being seen' go up exponentially. A picture is worth a thousand words.
When publishing three (or more) photos to Facebook, one photo appears larger and more prominent and two more photos appear smaller and to the right of the large photo. The smaller photos are roughly one quarter of the size of the larger photo. The impact of this type of visual spread with good images can be quite significant.
The purpose of the images is to not only grab someone's attention for a second but to grab it in a way that they consciously look at what you've posted - including any interesting information that goes along with the photo. Essentially, when you do this, you increase the possibility of fan's engaging with your brand.
Depending on the business, like a fine arts store or bakery, the images alone may be enough to create an awareness and emotional response with your fans. Ideally, initially, to engage them in such a way that they like, comment or share the post so that it is then viewed by their friends.  Long tern, so that the initial engagement over time results in them becoming your brand advocates and raving fans.
Personally, when I find a business or person whose posts are more often than not interesting, I will start to 'look' for their thumbnail, unconsciously, when scanning my news feed.
This latter point highlights the need to ensure your Facebook 'thumbnail' image is distinct enough so that when it is viewed in the news feed of fans and friends it is recognizable and distinct.

Sue is the owner of 911SmalBiz, a social media and internet marketing organization with a passion for helping small businesses increase their impact, expand their market share and improve their bottom-line.
Find out more about Sue and 911SmallBiz at: http://www.911smallbiz.com/ and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/911smallbiz

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sue_Cockburn

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Increase Your Profit Margins With Email Marketing

Today everything is completely digitized. Business has taken on a whole new face. Before, business activities used to be conducted face to face, whereas now all you need a website or a simple email address. Previously huge marketing campaigns used to take place physically by ads slogans, banners and what not. All this still takes place but it is done under a new façade. Now you have digital marketing which includes advertising using various online techniques. One technique is email marketing. Email marketing, as its name implies, is marketing your product or service using an electronic mail. There are various reasons why email marketing is so popular and why everybody, from small business owners to large enterprises are now shifting to email marketing.
Email marketing has many advantages such as its global outreach, lower marketing costs and its high degree of personalization. The main benefit as we have already mentioned is global outreach via emails. If you own a company and want to sell the product internationally then email marketing is perfect for you due to this very reason. You can attract more potential international customers. Now you do not have to worry about expensive international phone calls or anything else. Borders simply do not exist for you as of now! Every business wants to maximize its profits by cutting costs and increasing revenue. What if you can cut your marketing costs up to 50%?
Yes, this is certainly possible if you start email marketing. You would be saving up your resources by not spending on printing or broadcasting on television or other ads. You can increase your profit margins significantly by email marketing and you can also use the money that you have saved into project expansion or upgrading of machinery. One technique of marketing is getting personal with your customers in the sense that you send out a greeting to every person that you intend to target. Television or radios ads along with web banners do not do this. You can do this by either calling every potential customer or by sending an email. Targeting each customer like this will create a bond with them and will increase the chances of them buying your products. Moreover, you can choose your customers via email marketing.
Television ads and other means such as web banners do not target specific consumers. With this type of campaign you have the opportunity to choose who to send the message to and who to target. Consumers want instant replies or information on products they like. You are providing your customers the chance to respond immediately. This will definitely boost up your sales and as a result increase your profit margins. Moreover, emails are quite easy to compose whereas proper ads take days or weeks to create. Another benefit is that you can manipulate your email depending on the clients. Since it does not take long to compose emails, you can make categories of clients and send out specific emails to them. You can cater to the demands of the clients and you would know exactly what sort of marketing tactics will appeal to them.

Check out our site for more email marketing services information at Create Email Address
Dan Ray

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Can You Really Make Money With an Online Business in 48 Hours by Using Free Methods?

How nice to be able to quit that boring demanding job. Have no Boss. Work only two hours a day. Lay back and watch your cash register ring, except now its internet business, so its your inbox popping up emails that say you just earned USD450.89, every few minutes, right through the day, right thru the night, while you are enjoying your vacation or at night sleeping.
So everyone Google the web on how to start an online business, preferably using free methods. Guess what?
There really are ways to make money online by using free methods! Just follow these simple steps:
1. Choose a niche for your online business
People are buying nearly everything on the internet. But you will focus on only a few products or niches that you like, have a passion in, or where you are an expert by virtue of your experience. Choose a few products you like to sell in your internet business.
2. Choose a product for your internet business
Once you have decided what you want to sell in your online business, source your products. If you possess special expertise like a secret recipe on how to make a great cake, a Secret Cake Recipe Store may become your successful online business.
3. Your online business can sell other people's products too
Your internet business can sell other people's products too and they will be delighted to pay you a commission. This type of online business is called affiliate marketing. People are known to earn comfortable $10,000 a month running this type of online business.
4. Do up a Salivating Sales Letter
Next you craft out a salivating sales copy to use in your internet business. Your sales copy is going to do the selling for you. Remember you are not physically around to talk to your customer. The customer reads your sales letter and just feels she's got to have your secret cake recipe no matter what. Really impressive graphics definitely helps.
5. Set up a website for your online business
You will need to set up a website to house your online business. It costs something like $9 for a whole year to own a yourname.com. You do need a little bit of WordPress knowledge to set up a website.
You can Google and find whatever knowledge you require for free. Time needed varies, depending on how fast you can absorb the free knowledge. Your very first website will take you some time, but once you get the hang of it, it takes just a few minutes.
6. Set up a system to track your internet business customers
Your online business will have thousands of customers and queries. You need a system to answer all those queries, keep them company, build rapport and trust, until they love you, and you can sell to them again and again, so that after a while your internet business runs on its own and continues to make money for you, on auto pilot mode, while you take your vacation.
Now you are earning passive income from your online business!
7. Apply for a merchant account with PayPal for your internet business
Your internet business customers will be paying you online too. PayPal is easily recognizable and trusted by customers, and very popular with people doing internet business.
8. Here's the juicy part about internet business
Your tipping point comes when your online business is steady and running like clock work. And you are making money online, like $10,000 and more every month. That's one online business.
Now you clone another internet business, and another, and then yet another, like McDonald's opening branches all over the country and then all over the world. Now how does this feel to you?
You are in quantum jump mode. You earn massive income from doing online business! Can you imagine the feeling?
9. Next, do you prefer to collect your internet business paychecks Tomorrow or Next year?
Why do you reading for ways to set up your internet business fast? Because Time is Money. The faster you can get your online business running, the faster you are on your way to realizing your dream.
If you are reading this chances are you already know, inside you, you definitely want to own an online business, because this is the only ticket to speedily achieve ultimate financial freedom, and that each month of delay in getting your internet business running is each month of delay in receiving your online business paychecks.
Follow these easy steps and you will make money online with your online business in 48 hours by using free methods.
Stay focused and persevere. Soon you will see yourself as the next success story.

Allan See is full time making money online. The key ingredients to achieving success in doing online business is a businessman mindset and perseverance.
Businessman mindset means always ready to spend small dollars to reap big bucks.
Internet business owners are welcome to visit this site inboxwealthforever.com for ideas and fast ways to make your inbox sprout wealth for you forever.
If you are interested to discover easy and simple ways to launch your very own internet business to make money online, and you are determined to make passive and massive income, go to inboxwealthforever.com to get started now.

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Use a Strategy to Earn Money Online

If you have taken some time scanning through internet to look at internet or affiliate marketers and their success stories, you probably have asked just how they became so successful. Typically, a person's reaction to this is to either sit down and try to plan out just what to do next, or, simply start working online in a haphazard way - just trying one thing or another. What people typically miss or don't understand is that a plan is not enough. While some might luck into success, most will not. What is really needed from the start is a strategy for working online.
Many times, however, people confuse a strategy with a plan. Planning is the process of defining a set list of tasks to be completed in a certain amount of time. For example, you could plan to build a profitable niche website over the next three months. Though this is not a bad way of thinking, a plan is focused on a specific goal. What isn't taken into account is a broader perspective on building your online business through thoughtful growth.
So, just what is a strategy then? Imagine someone who is extremely creative or inventive but has no sense of organization or detail. Now, imagine a planner who can take a goal down to specific steps and dates. A strategy can be thought of as the combination of these two types of thinking. Strategic thinking must utilize some creative thought on what to do with planned goals to reach a broader end result.
A great application of a strategy would be to build an online business that reaches your goal of financial independence and working from home. How could you approach this? Think first of a time-line going from point A to point B where A is your current state and B is where you want to go. The planner would approach this time-line by setting a certain, but small number of significant goals to reach in a specific time. The creative thinker would then ask what they could do uniquely at each goal to grow the business.
Let's use the example that you want to focus on niche marketing. A strategy could be that you would first learn niche marketing by creating an information product of interviews with successful marketers who have developed niche sites. You as the interviewer start with little knowledge, but through the interviews you have started learning how to approach niche development, tips and tricks, and best topic areas. With that information you can create a simple, low-cost e-book to sell online.
Now, your strategy has just started to gel - learning the business through interviews, learning how to package an information product, starting to get your name known by others in that same area. This is an example of the creative thinking needed to build something successful. Next, you could start building your own niche websites and blog on how you achieved them using much of the knowledge you learned from your interviews. You've now reached even more strategic growth - others will want to learn from your blog while you learn even more with your niche sites.
As you can see this type of strategy to start learning and earning money online can continue to grow and blossom into a full-fledged online business. With some creative thought around how to learn, grow, and achieve, then plan some significant milestones, you can then understand how strategic thinking can lead to real success.

For more information on online marketing strategy please visit http://www.agilemarketer.com/.
Don James is an internet strategist and online marketer. You can learn How to Make Money Online and more at The Agile Marketer to build a successful online business starting today.

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How to Make Money Online Quickly And Perfectly

There are a number of fairly easy ways that you can quickly begin to make money online. You don't have to worry if you have got nothing to sell as there are many ways that you can sell indirectly.
A great way to start to make money online is through the use of affiliate marketing. It is an easy business model that most people can work with very easily. Affiliate marketing is essentially promoting someone else's product or service. It is a good way to start because it involves no direct selling or handling of goods. All you are doing is acting as an intermediate and promoting the goods or service. You just advertise the product and get a commission for every sale that comes through you. It is easy to get started, but can take time and effort to build a steady stream of income via this method.
Another way to start making money online straight away is by signing up to online survey sites. Businesses use information from online surveys to inform their customer service and future product development so they are willing to pay for people's time to fill out surveys. Things to note here are that you will sometimes start a survey and then be rejected if your first answers do not fit the profile they are looking for. But this is certainly an easy way to earn a bit of extra cash quite easily.
Blogging has become a very popular and common way to make money online. To get started all you have to do is decide on a niche and share your thoughts by writing updating as regularly as possible. This in itself does not bring in money, but you can combine it with affiliate marketing and using Google AdSense so you get paid when people click on ads. Choose ads that are related to the content of your blog.
Another very quick way to make money online is by selling things on auction sites such as eBay. If you have never tried this you will be surprised how easy it is. The site takes you through the whole process very carefully and it is in their interest for you to be a successful seller. Most people have a few things around that they don't need that will be of great value to someone else, so it is not necessary to have anything particular to sell to get started. If you want to make a business of it you can learn as you go.

If you want to make money online quickly there are a few good ways to start. You can start to make money online simply and build up skills and knowledge as you go.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shohag_Max

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How Can I Start My Own Internet Business

As people search the internet to find the answer to "how can I start my own internet business" the answer they find numerous times are "get rich quick" schemes. Don't fall for them. To make money online it takes some money. As the old saying goes "it takes money to make money". Don't be discouraged though there are honest and legitimate business opportunities being offered on the internet. It just takes time to weed through the bad ones to get to the good ones.
I have found that through my years on the internet and by the way I have found some very bad opportunities and lost money (live and learn). In my journey I have found many good internet business opportunities and I was able to start my own internet business successfully. You too can do it. Over the course of my adventure I have found some real winners and again real losers.
There are many ways to find a legitimate business opportunity that you can start and be successful with. You have to be patient and not jump on the first opportunity that peaks your interest. Don't go for the ones that say you can make millions of dollars with no money. That is a scam. There really is no way to make money on the internet without spending money. That is just the facts. Whatever online business you start there will be work to do. It will take time to make money but it is possible. So how do you start your own internet business without losing your wallet? It's very simple. Decide first what you might like to do on the internet. Then ask yourself a few questions. Do I want to sell something or provide some type of service? Am I looking for work from home business opportunities? Do I have money to start a business? Do I have ample internet access? Am I motivated? Can I follow directions and instructions? Do I give up easily? These are legitimate questions you need to answer. It takes time to build a business. And it does take money. How much it really all depends on the online business you start.
Do you really want to know how to make money online honestly? Not by scamming people but really building a successful internet business. If so there is information you can find that is useful for your search for how you can start an internet business.
You can start right here to find out more about how I can start my own internet business and make money online.

Read more about home based business opportunities and find free resources to start and grow your business at Niche Business 101
Pat Turman is a and internet entrepreneur. She owns numerous online businesses She holds a BBA from an accredited University and numerous awards and certificates.

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Introduction to Craigslist

Craigslist is a social networking site about enabling users from all across the globe to trade, sell and give away for free all sorts of items. Craigslist was first developed by Craig Newmark in 1998 and blew up into an international success that has become a staple in those looking for various items, including work. People from all across the world use the services to connect with potential buyers and sellers in order to get rid of things they don't want without having to put it in the trash. One's man's trash is another man's treasure after all. Craiglist has expanded to number of services for many people across the globe. This short introduction will help.
Services

• Craigslist offers community services such as activities, artists, musicians, pets, volunteers and groups plus other various services you can take advantage of. The list keeps growing as they find new niches that people are in the market for.
• While under some controversy, Craigslist also offers hookups for members of the opposite or same sex for romantic encounters if that's your cup to tea. The personal ads are quite extensive.
• Housing, such as apartment rentals, rooms and full houses can be found on the market on this site for those looking for accommodations.
• Their For Sale section offers items that range from antiques to video games and everything in between. You are guaranteed to find exactly what you need if you know just where to look on this site.
• Craigslist also gives you opportunity to search for a large number of jobs in their Jobs section, where many people post who are looking for reliable or contract employees.
• As a bonus, you can also upload your resume onto the site so that potential employers can peruse your qualifications at their own leisure.
• As if it weren't enough, Craigslist offers services that you can look through to find just the right service you are looking for.

Craigslist is a legitimate site that allows you to flag any information that you find offensive or inappropriate and they will take the proper action to remove it from their site. Posting to the site is made easy through their step by step process and ensures that your positing is placed in the proper heading so it will get maximum exposure.
These sites seem to have popped up overnight and they continue to keep growing as time goes on. Craigslist can be considered a pioneer in this respect. Although, you must always be wary of online scammers that are using the site for less than respectable purposes. Make sure you do adequate research before committing to anything to sending any money online.

For more information visit Wikibin

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