Nurturing existing relationships into referral sources is akin to growing a garden. Nothing worthwhile  happens overnight, but it’s well worth the effort when the fruits appear. Fruit from your own garden usually tastes better, is less expensive than buying from the store, and is just a few steps from your kitchen. Often your online neighbors (clients, friends and family) lend you the ground and even plant the seeds, but you have to provide the water (online content) and fertilizer (caring, reliable and honest service).

Online social networking sites act as little plots of land for your garden. Here’s my recommended list of sites to establish a presence on, even if you don’t update all of them regularly. I choose these sites because they tend to show up well on Google Searches (sooner than later), with or without long tail keyword research. If you have SEO information, by all means include it in your text.

 Social Networking

1.      Facebook Personal Profile

2.      Facebook “Like” Page (business)

3.      LinkedIn

4.      Biznik

            Blogs

1.      Twitter (it’s a micro-blog, technically!)

2.      Posterous (if you can use email, you can use this blog system)

Review/Recommendation/Misc Sites

1.      Yelp

2.      Google Place Page (see the article I wrote on Place Pages here)

  Every effective marketing plan in this modern age should include a corporate social media campaign, and I highly recommend the elements above to be included. Good luck!

At the risk of stating the obvious, it is important to be on the first page of a Google search. Quite often it’s easy to get there using social media, if only for your own name and/or the name of your company.

But these days, part of any effective marketing plan must include online visibility from a search perspective. And it has to be relevant to your customers, services and products. And most of all, to you as the one being referred.

Still dragging your heels? Here’s a few points to consider:

You may rely on referrals, but those referrals now rely on the Internet

A few years ago, some of my current clients would have told me they didn’t need a website. They got plenty of referrals. In fact, they didn’t really need any marketing at all, they were so busy. But all that has changed. The referrals have dried up, and they were left high and dry without any real marketing experience. These business owners eventually turned to traditional marketing, but it didn’t work “like it used to.”

Validation vs. Reality

Few people these days are unscathed by some kind of scam. It’s hard to know who to trust. Consumers often want to validate that amazing offer they just saw on TV, and these days, probably even what their friends are recommending. And certainly the post card a company sent them (assuming they didn’t just throw that out).

Even the best provider of a service on the planet is going to get checked over on the Internet first, these days, before a call is made to set up an appointment. What will the prospect find? Will they be able to validate some reason to use your services or purchase your products? Or will they decide you must be out of business since they couldn’t find a website (or you) after a cursory search online? It may not be true, but if someone can’t find you online, you just may not exist.

If you aren’t in the room with the prospect, how are you going to sell anything?

Think of the Internet as a room with 10 possible solutions in it to the searcher’s problem. Pretty simple math. If you’re solution number 11, you’re on the 2^nd page. Might as well be solution number 72.

These days there are all sorts of solutions to getting online visibility, even if you don’t have a website. While it helps to be adept at long tail keyword research, use the power of large sites like Google (Place Pages), Facebook (Like Pages) and Yelp (review website) to carve out a bit of real estate quickly.

Not sure where to start? Google Place Pages is pretty easy! To get started, search “Google Place Pages” and you’ll locate all sorts of information about it.

Once again we are having our now famous Canon DSLR 5D Boot Camp at EVS in Burbank for
film and television professionals.

Are you thinking about shooting with the Canon 1D, 5D, or 7D DSLR cameras? Are you going to use it for principle photography, 2nd unit photography, multi-cam, background plates or SPFX shots?

Don’t fumble in the dark. Learn everything you need in our Canon camera classes. A number of our graduates, now with Canon certification by The Association, have gotten work because they were trained on the Canon 5D. You can too!

Click here to access the Official Registration Page:

AT THE END OF THE DAY YOU’LL HAVE THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS AND MORE

1. What’s the best setup of the camera?

2. How does DSLR compare to RED in terms of quality?

3. Can I mix DSLR footage with the RED or film?

4. What are the best lenses to use?

5. Can I use a Follow Focus?

6. Can I use available light to shoot and lower my lighting budget?

7. What is the transcoding process?

8. Can I use HDLRs for Timelapse?

9. What are the limitations of the 4:2:0 color space?

10. What’s the best support & handheld rigging?

11. What should I look for when choosing a shoulder mount solution?

12. Should I shoot “flat” or not?

13. Can I quickly mount the camera on a car or boat?

14. Does the CMOS sensor overheat and affect the image quality?

15. How do I monitor the image?

16. How do I set exposure?

17. What’s the best viewfinder?

18. Does the new firmware provide histograms?

19. Are there any particular lighting setups that are optional for HDSLR’s?

20. Do I use Auto Metering?

21. What is my post workflow…the different codecs and frame rates?

22. How do I handle audio?

23. What kind of memory cards do I use?

24. What do I use to offload the cards in the field?

25. What are the absolute essential accessories for making an HDSLR cinema capable?

26. How do I address moiré and aliasing issues?

27. How do I manage the rolling shutter issue?

Click here to access the Official Registration Page

Wouldn’t business be easier if twice as many customers arrived at your door with half of the effort? Modern technology has actually made this possible. And the timing couldn’t be better.

Let’s face facts. Today’s economy demands a streamlined, effective business operation to keep costs low while maintaining a high return. Is your company still using a new customer acquisition strategy from the 1800s? Yes, I mean the telephone.

Like it or not, today’s effective marketing plan must take into account that consumers typically aren’t interested in being interrupted anymore. And unexpected marketing phone calls are an interruption. However, because consumers are researching answers to their questions on search engines like Google and Yahoo in record numbers, we may now weave long tail keyword research into a corporate social media campaign, and any company may take advantage of the consumer’s tendency to use Google to find solutions to their problems. Since social media doesn’t cost anything to use, it’s obviously cost effective!

In other words, instead of “fly fishing” for new customers one at a time on the phone, create a net made out of useful online content and attract a bunch of fish who are looking for your “bait” right now. If you take the strategy a few steps further, you can create not only a net to capture new customers, but a series of steps to help your fish swim upstream, through all the noise and chatter online, and actually make it to your pond. By the time they call, they may have educated themselves through your excellent and informative content (your private stream), and hopefully they are prepared to do business.

Does it work that way all the time? No, of course not. But wouldn’t it be preferable to have interested customers calling you and asking questions about your product or service, rather than you call uninterested cold prospects who are annoyed that you have their number?

Direct Response TV Ads are usually associated with the shouting, British pitchman who you couldn’t ignore in a nuclear blast. But there’s also the soft spoken cosmetic ad in which women share their experience of nearly being lifted up to heavenly embrace with Favio. Both are Direct Response TV spots. But they are radically different. The rules that apply to one don’t apply to the other. Or do they?

Here’s 6 tips to make a DRTV ad that’s a good fit for your customer.

1) Start with your customer and what they need. This will determine the spin of the infomercial. If your consumer is looking for ways to lose weight, you might add a line “and lose weight effortlessly” to a bicycle commercial.

2) Understand what presenter they’ll respond to. Consumer analysis will tell you keywords to use that your consumer is interested in. Women might buy a car wax (for their husband to use) if it’s “environmentally friendly”.

Even if the product isn’t the best on the market, being “environmentally friendly” positions it as the responsible wax to buy.

Social Media allows slightly interested prospects to gradually become interested enough to contact you.

Compare this to the encyclopedia salesman, who used to go door to door peddling his wares. My father did this for a time, and explained the procedure. I don’t recall what the pitch was, but the salesman generally walked out with a sale and probably a few referrals, all in one visit. Probably he’d never see the family again. Why would he? Neither he nor the family expected to see him again. The sale was done.

These days we have lots of options. Asides from the fact that we’d probably think twice about allowing a stranger in our home, we are probably going to resist buying right away until we have had a chance to “Google” for the real scoop.

By properly engaging in a corporate social media campaign, you can provide the backup data needed for a prospect to verify you are for real, and validate their purchase with you. From the viewpoint of the seller, social media also provides a kind of consumer analysis through the feedback customers tend to leave behind on sites like Facebook and Twitter. By consistently dripping out your latest news, articles and relevant information, clients come to know you and your company. Once they are comfortable you are for real, they may reach out to you, virtually closed on doing business by the time they request an appointment.

Skip the Pine-sol. That’s the power of social media, baby.

While I was wildly deleting spam emails this morning, Chris Abraham’s blog post title caught my eye, just in the nick of time. I found it to be a great article, and wanted to share it with you all. It has to do with the importance of blogging.

For many small business owners, blogging is a little more than scary. If they even had a marketing department to help them, it’d probably take a ransom note and the threat of their website disappearing into the “Internet ether” for them to really get involved. Well, I’m here to deliver that note, because if you’ aren’t blogging, disappearing is probably what a website faces as a result. Well, disappearing of the first few pages of Google searches, anyway.

Chris brings up some great points in his article, titled, “8 Reasons Why Now is the Best Time to Start Blogging,” and anyone interested in blogging (or social media in general) would find it worthwhile. One of the points that really resonated with me is how much dedication and work is involved! Blogging and leveraging corporate social media really takes discipline and hard work. But that’s just part of being in business, and always has been.

The good news Chris brings is that those who take a business-like approach and are disciplined about blogging will probably beat out their competition. There are so many tools available now that make it easier to handle the logistics of blogging and leveraging social media. The Association is using Topic Optimized Marketing, but there’s no lack of tools.

Now’s the time to start blogging! If your company hasn’t started taking advantage of long tail keyword research coupled with today’s’ blogging technology, it might be time to write your own ransom note. I suspect a lot of company websites will be held “hostage” by those companies who start (or have already started to) engaging in blogging. Where will your company show up?

Having a restless spirit has led Snehal all over the world in search for a better way to tell his stories. He grew up in Chicago where he worked in television and film from the age of seventeen. He spent a number of years in Mumbai, India directing commercials and working on features. Snehal now resides in Hollywood, working furiously.

The Association’s resident expert on the Canon DSLR 5D camera, Snehal is a featured instructor at our Canon Boot Camp, providing training and certification on the 5D (and other models) to both still photographers and seasoned cinematographers alike.

Should you become part of the Facebook movement?

The real question is, are relationships important for you to develop new business? If the answer to that question is “yes,” then absolutely, sign up for Facebook and be part of the “club.” The benefit from online socializing can be quite dramatic.

Besides, isn’t it more fun to conduct business on the golf course or by the pool, than at a stuffy meeting with all sort of rules? Facebook is that golf course or poolside conversation that can lead to something like a business deal.

There are sure to be exceptions. If you don’t own a business, and you don’t get extra credit (commissions) for bringing in business from your relationships, Facebook isn’t going to do much for you as far as your income goes. It is possible you will get a job if someone “discovers” you on Facebook, but that’s a different topic.

Worried that your particular target market isn’t represented on Facebook? Perhaps they are somewhere else. Everyone isn’t on Facebook. Yet. But because Facebook provides incredible visibility on Google (done the right way), and the folks connected to your target market probably are on Facebook, there’s no real reason to skip having a Page representing your business.  Facebook “Like” Pages are also great place to include your long-tail keyword research phrases.

Any way you look at it, Facebook should probably be part of your market development strategy.