EduCyber Presents Growing Your Business on the Internet Series:
Thursday, October 22^nd
"The Yellow Pages Aren't Working! Now What?"
Seats are filling up so sign up now!

Are you discouraged by your ever-decreasing responses to your ads in traditional media, like the Yellow Pages, directories, direct mail, newspaper and radio advertising?

Over 40 million internet users say they use the net to research good and services they need to buy. Shouldn't your business be represented?

Join us on Thursday, October 22^nd for an in-depth look at promoting your business with New Media. Could these be the right vehicles for giving your business a shot in the arm?

• Ezines and blogs
• Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites
• Banner ads
• Pay per click advertising and more!

Call 303 268-2245 to Register

Business Owners Ramp Up Their Internet Marketing Knowledge Through AdvanceMy.biz

"Drive thy business or it will drive thee." - Benjamin Franklin

Business owners know they need to keep moving their businesses forward to find new clients and new markets. Those who are serious about online marketing face the challenge of either researching the internet to learn about Search Engine Optimization, Facebook and Google Adwords, or paying consultants to do the work for them. Many are frustrated by wanting to promote online, but don't know where to begin.

Brian DeLaet of Educyber understands their frustration. "Internet marketing changes constantly, and most business owners don't have the staff to constantly research the best ways to market online. That's our business. We're on top of all the latest trends in online marketing and we make that knowledge accessible to business owners through our new site, AdvanceMy.biz."

AdvanceMy.biz is an online site for business owners to learn how to promote their business online and learn from each other's problems and also from their triumphs. The AdvanceMy.biz staff and our affiliate internet professionals provide an evolving curriculum of the latest in internet strategies and tools that will quickly ramp up your online marketing efforts.

The courses are geared to three levels -- the total beginner, who's looking to get started, the intermediate web marketer looking to gain more knowledge, and the almost-expert who wants to create and run an online campaign.

To celebrate the opening of the site, new members pay 1/2 price for the first two months. Sign up at http://www.advancemy.biz. Questions? Email info@advancemy.biz.

Email Scams Proliferate

Lately we've been getting bombarded with email scams. Beware and DO NOT click on these unless you communicate with network administrator (call us if you don't have a network administrator: 303-268-2245).

One message has a title like this: A new settings file for the <youremailaddress> mailbox has just been released and it was a bogus link that you are supposed to click on. DO NOT click the link!

The second message we've seen has this subject line: Important -- System upgrade and it also has a link that you should not click under any circumstances.

Beware, be aware, and be safe on the Internet.

Tools to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

Question 7 from 10 Essential Questions for your Social Media Marketing Campaign: "What tools are available to make my time in SMM more efficient?" can be answered in different ways.

There are tools and then there are tools. Every day there are thousands (yes thousands) of blog entries and tweets about all the wonderful tools available to help you leverage your Social Media Marketing time to maximum advantage.

This isn't another one of those messages. Instead, let me tell you about two that I use and point you in the direction of finding others.

The tool that I use to tie things together is Friendfeed. Friendfeed lets you tie your various social media accounts together in such a way that you can post once to one account and the post will automatically be updated across all your accounts. What does "all your accounts" mean? Friendfeed can talk to your blog, to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to name a few. If you use pictures, it can talk to Flickr and to Picasa. If you are into bookmarking and news, it will talk to delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg and Google Reader. In fact, there are currently 58 different sites that can be tied together through Friendfeed.

That sounds a bit overwhelming. It doesn't need to though. You can start with just a couple and still save time by using Friendfeed. Then when you're ready to add, you can do so and tie them into Friendfeed as you add them to your repertoire.

The second tool I use and like is TweetDeck. While it sounds like it is just a Twitter application, it actually ties into Facebook and MySpace as well, allowing you to post once but push it to all those accounts. I only use it with Twitter but even then it helps. I have a personal account twitter.com/edubrian and a corporate account twitter.com/educyber and I can post to either or both at the same time through TweetDeck.

The power of TweetDeck comes from being able to create groups. I follow more than 1400 people but it works its power even if you follow a handful. For example, you can create a group called "My Industry" and add the people from your industry into that group. You can create a group called "Customers" and add your customers to that group. And so on. The simplicity of that makes life easier and will likely encourage you to follow more people because the flow of Tweets becomes more manageable.

What else is there?

Here are just a few links I found:

42+ Social Media Marketing Tools

4 tools for easier social media management

35+ Social Media Tools That Make Life Easier

Mixing Personal and Business in Social Media

Question 8 from 10 Essential Question for your Social Media Marketing Campaign: "How personal does the SOCIAL part need to be?" is one of those "It depends" kind of questions.

While delivering a seminar on Facebook not long ago, one of the attendees remarked "But what if I don't want to connect with people from my high school? There's a reason I don't live there anymore." That made me stop because until then I'd been a proponent of "laying it all out there."

The easy answer to the question is it can be as personal (or impersonal) as you want it to be. Here are my tips for determining how personal you should be:

1. It's called SOCIAL media marketing so you should share some personal information
2. Go ahead and post your birth DAY but not your BIRTH DATE -- why make it easy for identity thieves?
3. Post negative comments with extreme caution -- they can come back to bite you if you're not careful
4. Tell us about your family in the same way you'd share with someone at a networking event
5. Keep your marketing goals in mind lest you find yourself adrift in social cyberspace
6. I aim for around 30% personal and the rest focused on business but that shifts from Facebook (much more personal) to Twitter and LinkedIn.
7. At the risk of repeating myself, establish a goal and stick to it. Post it on your monitor so you stay focused and don't end up with 100% social and 0% marketing.
8. Be creative. Look for ways that your social life mixes with your business goals so that while posting personal information, you're also drawing attention to your business or business goals

© 2009 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at www.educyber.com/edunotes . Visit us on the web at www.educyber.com or call us at (303) 268-2245. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.