The following is a guest post is from one of my favorite online marketers, Jessica Swanson of Shoestring Marketing. I’m sure you will find this article extremely informative and filled with great advice.

There are several steps that you must take to effectively market your business. If your ultimate goal is to be a master marketer and catapult your business to the top, then you must understand, memorize and implement every single one of these important marketing secrets.

1) You Do Not Need To Spend Money In Order To Make Money.
Nowadays, there are hundreds of places to market your business for zero-cost. In fact, I have utilized over 200 different free marketing platforms! The best news is that many of these free marketing platforms work better than paid marketing platforms. So, take heart in the fact that you can truly market your business for no-cost and reap huge rewards in the process.

2) Create Your Brand.
You and your business need to stand out from the crowd; ultimately, you want to be unforgettable. That being said, it is vital that you “create your brand.” You must take the time to create a memorable name, tagline, and logo for your business. Then, showcase your “brand” EVERYWHERE! As an example, I am Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer.” I use this tagline in all of my social networks, emails, reports, press releases, ebooks, signatures, websites, business cards, etc. Whenever I have a chance to showcase my “brand,” I seize the opportunity!

3) Set Up Your Business Foundation.
Every business needs a solid foundation before marketing begins. Without question you should have a landing page with an opt-in form, business website, email autoresponder campaign, professional picture of yourself, testimonials and free samples (i.e. a special report, ebook, e-course, audio class, etc). It is vital that all of your marketing efforts point back to a solid business foundation.

4) Determine Your Niche.
If you are going to be highly successful, it is important to find a niche within your industry. For example, “marketing” is a huge industry with intense competition. It would be next to impossible for a new business owner to break into the general marketing industry. In my case, I found a niche within the marketing industry that was underdeveloped and needed exposure: free marketing. In most cases, the smaller the niche, the more successful you will be.

5) Declare Your Expertise.
No matter what business you are in, you must become an expert within your niche. Remember that when people make a purchase or request a service from you, they are interested in solving a problem. If you can effectively communicate to your customer or client that you are an expert who can help them solve their problem, they will be much more likely to do business with you and your company. So, flaunt your expertise and show your clients that you truly can help them!

6) Tap Into 5 Marketing Platforms (at first).
When you first launch your marketing campaign, you may be tempted to join dozens of social networking sites, utilize several different free classified sites, and traffic exchanges, while juggling press releases, articles and blogs. Always remember that if you become a “Jack of All Trades, Master of None,” you will be overwhelmed and ineffective. Instead, pick five marketing platforms that resonate with you and become an expert marketer using these. (I suggest Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Article Marketing.) As your business (and profits) grows bigger, you can add more. However, rest assured that you can achieve a great deal of success utilizing nothing more than five powerful platforms.

7) Be Consistent and Patient!
This is the most important piece of advice for anyone launching a marketing campaign. Good marketing doesn’t happen overnight. In order for marketing to be effective, your prospective customers must see your offer again and again. So, make a promise to yourself that you will be patient and consistent in your marketing efforts. Those that do, realize huge rewards in their business!

Again, all seven steps are crucial to your business success. If you understand and effectively implement these shoestring marketing secrets, your business will quickly rise to the top!

Are you currently using or plan on using any of the methods mentioned in this article? Do you feel these tips can be beneficial to your success? Please feel free to leave your comments below.

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Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer,” has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven, NO-COST internet marketing strategies. To receive your FREE Marketing Kit, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for NO-COST, visit: Shoestring Marketing Kit

As promised, here is Part 2 of the list of free tools to help with your marketing efforts. In case you missed Part 1 of this list, you can see it here: Free Tools That Make Marketing Tasks Easier – Part 1

1. eBay Pulse
Wouldn’t it be great to know what people are searching for and more importantly, what they are actually buying? With eBay pulse, you can have that information at your fingertips. This is a very powerful tool and it’s something I recommend that every marketer use when doing market research. When you first go to eBay pulse, you’ll see a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay.
Click here for eBay Pulse

2. Google Trends
With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. You can enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most. This can also be used for niche research as it will give you insight on whether search terms on certain topics will trend up or down.
Click here for Google Trends

3. Google Docs
Basically, it’s a place to store your documents online, and you’ll have the added benefit that you and others can edit files at the same time. This tool allows you to create basic documents from scratch or start from a template. You can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc. So go ahead and upload your existing files. And best of all, it’s free.
Click here for Google Docs

4. Good Keywords
A Windows software program for researching the best keywords for your web pages. Use it to find profitable products and ideas, analyze your competition and check the progress of your web marketing and advertising efforts to ensure the best return on your investments (ROI).
Click here for Good Keywords

5. Onlywire Bookmarklet
I’m sure you know how big social bookmarking currently is. It’s a great way to drive lots of traffic to your site for free. You really should take advantage of social bookmarking and begin driving traffic to your sites. Onlywire allows you to bookmark your sites across many different services with one quick and easy click. Getting it set up the way you like may take a bit of time because you need to register with many services but once you do, OnlyWire syndicates your content and articles to the web’s top social networking sites with a single button click. There is a free and a paid version. The difference is the advertising on the free version.
Click here for Onlywire Bookmarklet

6. Gigasize
This is a very handy tool that allows you to upload your movies, games, music and photos and store them online for instant access and sharing. GigaSize.com specializes in sharing files too large to email. If you’ve ever had a file to large to email, this solves the problem. Send your large email files on the net by uploading to Gigasize. This is the easiest way to upload, download and share your files.
Click here for Gigasize

7. SEO Book Keyword Tool
I use several free keyword research tools but one of them that I use often is SEO Book Keyword Tool. It offers rough suggested daily search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. It gets it’s results from Wordtracker and it provides links to other relevant sources next to the search results. This is a tool that is certainly worth checking into.
Click here for SEO Book Keyword Tool

8. Blogpulse
This is yet another great tool to find out what’s hot in the blogosphere. It has top links, top videos, key people, top blogs, key phrases, and much, more. It may take a little getting used to it but once you do, you’ll see how powerful this tool can be and you’ll be able to keep track of the lastest happenings in the blogosphere.
Click here for Blogpulse

9. Picresize
This is another favorite tool of mine. There are other free tools available to resize your images but I feel this is one of the best on the Internet. It’s very simple to use. All you need to do is upload your image, choose the size and that’s it. You’ll have your image resized in a flash. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the ease and benefit of Picresize.
Click here for Picresize

10. Mailinator
I’m sure you’ve come across many pages where they want you to enter an email address to see an offer. I don’t mind entering my email address if it’s something I believe to be of value but I do have a problem giving up my email address just to see a sales page. Mailinator solves that problem because it’s a free tool that allows you to create disposable email addresses. With Mailinator you can protect your privacy and avoid spam. There is no registration or sign up required.
Click here for Mailinator

I hope you will find some of these tools helpful with your marketing. If you have a favorite free marketing tool, please share it by posting it in your comments.

The following post was written by one of my favorite marketers, Jessica Swanson – “The Shoestring Marketer”. This article covers a topic that is near and dear to me: building relationships. I found this article both informative and useful and I’m certain you will also. So, lets get right to it.

A radical change has occurred in the world of marketing. Just five short years ago, most companies utilized only traditional forms of advertising including: TV ads, radio ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, etc.

As a result, most marketing consisted of advertising that interrupted whatever the consumer was doing. TV commercials are a perfect example of this advertising concept. As you watch your favorite Thursday night program, suddenly a commercial breaks onto the scene and interrupts you. Thus, the term “interruption marketing” was born!

Obviously, consumers began to rebel against interruptive advertising, because, let’s face it, no one likes to be rudely interrupted.

According to Kirby and Marsden (authors of Connected Marketing), 90% of people who can skip TV ads, do skip TV ads. In addition, 65% of people believe that they are constantly bombarded with too much advertising. So, as a small business owner, the first question that you must ask yourself is: “Am I rudely interrupting my prospects with directive advertising methods?”

As consumers pulled away and began to distrust directive forms of marketing, marketers were forced to make a change. No longer could marketers engage in the traditional, forceful ways of old; consumers were just too savvy for that.

As a result, interactional marketing was born! Developing relationships with your customers before they do business with you is an integral part of a successful marketing plan. No matter what business you are in, your motto should be: relationships first, sales second.

As a marketer what can you do to begin to develop relationships with today’s consumer? Here is a quick list to ensure that you are heading in the right direction:

1) Engage Your Prospects Through Real Conversations.
Today’s clients desperately want personal relationships with those they choose to do business with. As a business owner this is relatively simple to accomplish through some of the popular social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Ask questions, answer questions and provide helpful suggestions to your prospects on a regular basis. Marketing is not a one-way street. Today’s consumer wants to build a relationship with you.

2) Focus On Solving Your Prospect’s Problems.
As a small business owner, you need to determine what problems your prospect needs solved – then work at providing the solution! Believe it or not, your prospects don’t care how successful, savvy or good-looking YOU are. All they care about is their own problems and how you can provide the solution. You must take the focus off of yourself and instead, convince your prospective clients and customers that you can help them.

3) Share Information.
Offer your prospects valuable information about yourself and your company. Give them a taste of what they can expect if they develop a business relationship with you. You can accomplish this by giving away free reports, free ebooks, free product samples, etc.

4) Use The 80/20 Rule.
No matter what platforms you use to interact with your prospects, always follow the 80/20 Rule (better known as the Pareto Principle). You should spend 80% of your time providing useful content, offering helpful suggestions and developing relationships and only 20% of your time promoting your company, blog, websites, etc.

5) Treat Your Clients and Customers Like Royalty.
Once you start bringing in new clients and customers, make sure to wine and dine them! Your small business will grow ten times faster if you create loyal, lifetime fans of your products and services. Why? Simply because your current clients and customers are 40% more likely to buy from you again and 60% more likely to send you referrals.

Again, today’s consumers are extremely distrustful of interruptive and directive forms of advertising. Instead, they are interested in developing a relationship with their business partners. So, provide your prospective clients with plenty of ways to interact, connect and get to know you. Your business will thank you!
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Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer,” has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven and completely FREE internet marketing strategies. To receive your FREE Marketing Kit, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for NO-COST, visit: Shoestring Marketing Kit

Today, I’d like to introduce you to our guest author, Harris Fellman. Harris recently launched CoupDeTwitter – a course on how to properly get started with twitter, get lots of followers, and turn those followers into cash.

He is by no means a Social Media Purist, but still he teaches what he considers the “right way” to interact on Twitter & other Social Media platforms (hint: it ain’t by spamming people with your offers). Harris has a number of years of success in the internet marketing realm and I feel very honored to have him as a guest author today.

With that … here’s Harris’ blog post entitled “How to Take Over Twitter”:

It’s everywhere. From blogs to newspapers to books at Barnes and Noble. And it’s loud. Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.

It’s Twitter. And whether you like it or not (yet) it’s going to be around in some form or another for a long time I suspect. Might as well get used to it, right?

A couple of months ago I was in the same boat many of you might be in right now, wondering whether all this Twitter madness was of any use to me at all or whether it was just a bunch of noise, literally. But I started to hear a lot of Twitter related stories and talked to people that I personally know who were using it in ways that I hadn’t considered before.

And the lightbulb finally went off for me. There was some serious power in Twitter! People were not only using Twitter to make connections and network with others, they were making money too. Some of them making LOTS of it as I came to find out.

The biggest thing that stood out for me is this…

From a marketing perspective, Twitter = Listbuilding. Plain and simple. Proper listbuilding is all about building a list AND building relationships with the people on that list. And in many cases the people I was talking to confided in me that their Twitter contacts were more responsive than even their e-mail lists were. As a long time email marketer, I was pretty shocked. But I started doing research and I discovered several truths that I want to share with you.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about using Twitter, and some rules of thumb to keep in mind along the way. But there are several crucial steps you’ll want to take note of.

Here’s how this works:

1. Get followers.

Sounds simple right? But there’s a lot of stuff out there that will make you think you can just automate the process and be done with it. BEWARE, Twitter is watching. If you do it wrong, you’re sunk. Account Suspended. Tweet no more.

2. Build a relationship with your followers.

Yes, that’s right, you’re going to need to start talking with your followers! You want to treat them like you would anyone you might meet at any other social gathering, stipulating that you’re not at a professional wrestling event and everyone is already yelling at one another.

3. Get them Clicking & ReTweeting.

Once you build that relationship with them you want to encourage (gently) them to start clicking links you provide with items of interest and most of all to get them Retweeting your posts. Why? Because the *real* power of Twitter is NOT in your own list of followers. Nope. The real power is in the power of the exponent. If you give things of value to the Twitterverse, the Twitterverse will return the favor… Tenfold.

4. Make money.
Last but not least. You want to make money, right? Of course you do. Once you’ve completed steps one through three, there are a ton of ways that you can start to monetize your followers…their followers and their followers followers. But also beware: Twitter spam is on the rise and people are becoming wary of anyone who just jumps into the pool and starts shouting Marco Polo at the top of their lungs. You have to be very careful to craft your Tweets so that people are still getting maximum value from you.

Four seemingly simple steps, and they’re not rocket science, but they do take some finesse and time to do properly. If you’d like to learn more about how to properly implement these 4 steps, I welcome you to join me and my Coup De Twitter system. It will teach you how to do Twitter the RIGHT way as well as 7 easy ways to make money with it plus a handful of advanced tactics as well. Please visit Coup de Twitter to watch a free 35 minute video that I have prepared for you (no opt-in required).

Thanks for reading – if you liked this article, let me know on Twitter – my ID there is @harrisfellman.

Harris Fellman
CoupDeTwitter.com

The following is a guest post by one of my favorite online marketers, Jessica Swanson of Shoestring Marketing.

Twitter is one of my all-time favorite places to market my business, Shoestring Marketing.

In addition, I encourage every small business owner to jump head-first into Twitter in order to develop strong business relationships and find new customers and clients.

However, one complaint that I often hear from my own clients is that Twitter is intimidating, confusing and even a waste of valuable time. I want to put these complaints to rest once and for all.

I have compiled 7 Golden Twitter Rules that, if you follow, will catapult your business to the top of your industry in no time at all!

1) You Must Have a Profile Picture.
If you are going to use social media as a marketing tool, take the time to find a picture of yourself for your profiles. Social media marketing is about interactions and building relationships. People want to “see” that there is a real person behind your business.

2) Go Ahead And Brag!
Obviously you know that you shouldn’t jump on Twitter and start shouting “Check out my product…it’s really the best one in the world!” However, offering value to other Tweeters is one of the highlights of Twitter. So, go ahead and let people know about a blog you posted, an article you wrote or a webinar that you will be hosting.

There are only so many Tweets in which you can tell your followers what you are having for dinner until people start to unfollow you. YAWN.

3) Autofollow Those Who Follow You.
I have an app from www.Tweetlater.com that allows me to automatically follow everyone who follows me. I then get to know whom I am following through their Tweets. If I think they are annoying, I unfollow them. But, how in the world can I make a decision to follow someone based on a 140-word profile? For all I know, this person could be the next Faulkner with some of the most profound Tweets known to mankind.

I truly believe that it is in good taste to follow everyone who follows you and then unfollow those who you just don’t groove with.

4) Interact With Your Followers.
Twitter is truly about building relationships with others. You need to answer questions, make comments and interact with your followers. I believe that if you are not able to interact with your followers, you shouldn’t be using Twitter as a marketing tool.

By the way, if you ever @ me, I will always interact with you! I love meeting and talking with new Twitterers!

5) Don’t Obsess About Those Who Unfollow You.
First of all, you do not have time to monitor and keep tabs on everyone who is unfollowing you. Second, you really shouldn’t care who unfollows you. If someone doesn’t like your Tweets, then they SHOULD unfollow you. You are not on Twitter to make sure that everything you say appeals to every single person. You are on Twitter to connect with new and interesting people. (Of course, if you find that dozens of people unfollow you every day, then you will need to reflect on what you are Tweeting.)

6)Your Tweets Do Not Always Need To Be Witty And Profound.
Obviously, in the ideal world this would be the case. But, the last time I checked, most people on Twitter are not professional writers, bloggers or word-smiths. They are just regular people making connections. Of course, you should strive to add value and interact with people. But, don’t worry so much that every Tweet is a witty comedy sketch. Just be yourself and have fun!

7) Always Remember That Twitter Is About Common Sense.
When you first become involved on Twitter, you will encounter all sorts of different people. There will be Twitter newbies, Twitter veterans and Twitter know-it-alls. Don’t let the know-it-alls scare you. To succeed on Twitter, you simply need to interact with others, ask and answer questions and be nice! Don’t worry so much about “the rules.”

Twitter is an amazing and powerful marketing tool. However, believe it or not, besides spamming and other illicit behaviors, Twitter is mainly about using common sense. Interact, be nice, ask questions, listen, and add value. And of course, just be yourself and have a little fun!

Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer,” has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven, NO-COST internet marketing strategies. To receive your FREE Marketing Kit, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for NO-COST, visit:
Shoestring Marketing.com

Normally, I don’t get excited about this type of opportunity but this one really got my attention.

I just became a shareholder in me2everyone and I never had to pay a single penny for the shares! It can only be described as the gold-rush for 2009. This company is going to be huge and shares will soar in value over the coming months! You can register for free and it never has to cost you a single penny!

me2everyone is going to be a cool new virtual world where you can meet friends, chat, shop, play, watch videos, create an art gallery, open a virtual newspaper, play the free inworld lottery and make money from your own online store! You and everyone you know make the decisions, shape the world, create real incomes and share in the profits. It’s a new place where you meet new people or invite your friends. Learn new skills or expand your business. Find the love of your life or help the planet.

Membership is free and every member automatically becomes a shareholder in me2everyone Limited. Personally I have 250 shares in the venture and I am going to increase my shares very soon. This is an excellent chance for all of us to make some real progress in 2009 and beyond! Please do not miss it.

If you are looking for something really good in 2009: something that changes your view on the world, then you really have to spend just one minute and look at this website.
Click here to visit me2everyone

PS: The team is getting ready to launch version 1.5 of the website – but there’s still a chance to get involved and benefit from the pre-launch offers. With zero cost to join, a committment to translate the website into 38 languages, from a debt-free company; this is something that you really have to take a serious look at.

Everybody’s been talking about Twitter. You can’t get through a newscast these days without someone mentioning Twitter or Tweets. Barack Obama tweets. But what exactly is this new social marketing tool, and how can you use it to grow your business?

Twitter is like a blog on a microscopic scale; instead of writing whole posts and your mailing list being notified when a new post goes up, a tweet (what a Twitter post is called) can only be a maximum of 140 characters, and the people who are following you get your whole tweet at once, instead of having to go to your website.

Twitter has now become huge. Companies like Apple, Intel, H&R Block and Zappos are all on Twitter. As mentioned above, so is the new President of the United States.

So how do you leverage this phenomenon? You need to get up and running on Twitter, asap. And you need to build your list of followers. While that may sound like something out of a bad science fiction movie, its actually just building a list of people that want to receive your tweets, much like you built your mailing list for your blog.

1) Import Your Contacts
When you sign up for Twitter, make sure you import all of your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, your address book and your mailing list.

2) Write Your Profile
Make sure that your profile is complete to make it easier for people to find you, and use the same keywords in your profile that you do on your website. Always include a link to your website (including the “http” to ensure that it’s clickable) – you’re trying to build your business, after all. You can also personalize the colors and the sidebar of your profile page.

3) Understand How Twitter Works
Twitter is not another marketing tool that you can out and out manipulate; it is a social marketing tool that will only be useful to you is you actually become part of the community. It is not a place to spam, and don’t actively promote yourself.

Build a standing in the community by replying to other tweets (retweeting), share cool stuff, and build trust, then direct your followers to a blog post, filled with useful information, and only then use that post to get followers to take action. Trying to take people out of Twitter right away and into a sales pitch will get you labeled as a scammer.

4) Build Your Audience
To build your audience above and beyond your initial contact list, you’ll need to look both inside and outside Twitter.

Outside of Twitter, you can put a link to “Follow me on Twitter” in your email signature, forum signature, website, blog posts, and any other way that you communicate with people (where appropriate, of course – I don’t think the IRS wants to follow you on Twitter.)

Inside of Twitter, it’s all about following people. You can find other users that you admire, and see who is following them; you can also see who is following your friends; use Twitter directories to find members who are likely to follow you; use the search feature to find profiles of people you want to follow – and follow all of them. They will, in turn, follow you.

5) But Watch How Much You’re Following
While you’re building your following, you still need to maintain a balance between people you follow and people that follow you. Follow too many, and you’ll be seen as a spammer; don’t follow enough, and you look elitist. You can do this by growing slowly; don’t add 500 new friends in one day. Add 50 at a time and give them time to start following you so the balance is maintained.

You can also use a tool like “Friend or Follow” to balance out your lists; it will tell you who is following you that you’re not following yet, and vice-versa. It will also let you keep track of those who follow you, so you follow them and then they stop following you. They’re most likely spammers; don’t use this tactic or you’ll get the same reputation.

6) Be Someone Worth Following
Be witty, and post useful information. If you’ve got a niche, make sure that you’re talking to them. If you have news, tweet it. You can also use the tools on Twitter to take your blog posts and automatically tweet them.

You can tell people what you do; always be upfront with people. You just have to avoid the obvious sell, people can see that coming from a mile away. You can promote your business and celebrate your victories (XXX is happy to get the YYY account!), but don’t try to sell anyone anything.

7) Follow Wisely
And, in this sense, ‘follow’ has a broader meaning. Look to the experts in your category who are also on Twitter, and learn from them. Find 10 to 20 users you admire that have more than 300 followers, and try to learn how they did it. Take their ideas and make them your own.