This is a phenomenal speech given by Gary Vaynerchuk at the Inc 500|5000 Seminar 2011.

It is just over 1 hour long but well worth watching. He does use curse words throughout but the message is undeniable.

1. Getting visitors to your website.
2. Creating valuable content.
3. Growing an audience via social media.
4. Capturing new new leads.
5. Converting leads into sales.

There is a new technology available that solves all 5 of these challenges and it will quickly become the secret weapon for savvy small business owners worldwide.  It will enable you to outsmart, outwit and outmaneuver your competition before they even know what hit them.

It will also enable you to generate huge buzz around your brand, product or services due to the viral social media nature the technology is built upon.

My partner and I created a comprehensive interactive demo that explains the power of the Viral Webinar Marketing platform.

When you click the link below, click the "Allow" button to start the demo right from within your Facebook account.

http://www.allencrawley.com

If you have any questions regarding this new marketing platform, feel free to contact me directly at (317) 268-2116.

Transcript of the video:

Chris: Hi everyone, this is Chris Jones.

Allen: And Allen Crawley, creators of the Google Places business blueprint.

Chris: We just wanted to take some time and share with you a great new feature that Google has just added to the Google Places page. Actually to be fair, it’s not really a new feature, one of our current members that’s in the UK had actually pointed this out to us on his Google Places page. However, we did some research and at the time it was not available to us. However, Google has just updated this and made this new feature available in the US and what they called it is the Place page posts. And as you can read here, this is from the actual Google Places tour.

Basically it’s a place where business owners can now place updates into your Google Places page, and here, this is my Google Places page and you can see I’ve just placed a quick post that says “Google Places has changed again”. You now have this nice update section where you can let everyone know what’s going on. Again, this is pretty much like a Facebook status update or almost like a Twitter feed onto your Google Places page so it’s a great feature and now I’m going to turn it over to Allen.

Allen: Okay so what we’d like to do is go ahead and show you how to do this in 3 simple easy steps.

Step one, log into the Gmail account that actually owns the Google Places page and in order to do that, go to Google.com/places and there you’ll see the red arrow on the lower part of the screenshot, it’s pointing to a button that says ‘Get started’ so just click the ‘Get started’ button and it’ll take you to this login screen. Here is where you’ll want to log into the account that actually owns the Google Places listing.

Step two, Then what you’ll need to do is click on the name of the listing that you want to add. We’re going to take a look at a screenshot here. If you see the red arrow on the left hand side of the screenshot, it’s pointing to Old Inc, that’s the listing that we’re going to work with here. So the name of the business is actually a link. You don’t want to click on the edit, you see the edit in the lower left hand area of that listing. Don’t click on that, click on the actual name of the business that you’re going to work on and then all you got to do is type in your post. It’s very simple.

Step three, You see where the red box is on this next screenshot here, that red box and the arrow is pointing to the place where you can actually include your updated post. You’ll see on here at the top part of this red box it says November 23, that is the current page post that’s listed on this Google Places listing and you’ll see an open box now with grayed out text, that’s where you can include your new updated post, and one of the things we want to point out here, expires in 30 days, you can update your post as often as you like.

Like Chris mentioned, you can treat it as a Twitter status update or even a Facebook status update. If you want to change it multiple times per day you can do that. If you wanted to change it to highlight specials that you’re currently running to draw attention to those you can do that. But it does expire after 30 days so if you do nothing but leave it up, it will come down after 30 days, and the right arrow you see 160, that references how many characters you have to place your update into that post. Like on Twitter you only have 140 characters, here you actually have 160 characters. Anyway, we wanted to point out where you can actually find that and the fact that each listing or each posting will expire within 30 days but you can change it as often as you like and you do have 160 characters to make your statement.

Back to Chris.

Chris: Anyway, we wanted to share this with you because again, we’re the creators of the Google Places business blueprint and as such, we do try to stay on top of everything Google Places related and so if you want to find out more about setting up Google Places for your own business, setting up Google Places for a client, how to start your own Google Places business and how to use Google Places as a lead generator, you can go to our site and join our membership program then we’ll walk you through all of these in depth, and you can find this at www.googleplacesbusinessblueprint.com and we’d love to see you there and hopefully we’ll see you on the inside.

If you are interested in a promo video for you, your company or products please visit my video production website at Monolith Studios.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released on August 12 results of a study on mobile QR code scanning based on data from its comScore MobiLens service.

Newspapers/Magazines and Product Packaging Most Likely Source of QR Code.

QR Code Users Most Likely to Scan Code while at Home or Store.

comScore's study found that in June 2011, 14 million mobile users in the U.S., representing 6.2 percent of the total mobile audience, scanned a QR code on their mobile device. The study found that a mobile user that scanned a QR code during the month was more likely to be male (60.5 percent of code scanning audience), skew toward ages 18-34 (53.4 percent) and have a household income of $100k or above (36.1 percent). The study also analyzed the source and location of QR code scanning, finding that users are most likely to scan codes found in newspapers/magazines and on product packaging and do so while at home or in a store.

“QR codes demonstrate just one of the ways in which mobile marketing can effectively be integrated into existing media and marketing campaigns to help reach desired consumer segments,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “For marketers, understanding which consumer segments scan QR codes, the source and location of these scans, and the resulting information delivered, is crucial in developing and deploying campaigns that successfully utilize QR codes to further brand engagement.”

I'd encourage you to read the rest of this informative article which includes detailed demographic statistics:

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/8/14_Million_Americans_Scanned_QR_or_Bar_Codes_on_their_Mobile_Phones_in_June_2011

Did you know that...

• 73% of new mobile phone buyers report that text messaging is the most important feature of their phone?
• 5.8 Billion text messages are sent every single day... just in the USA?
• 97% of all text messages are opened?
• 83% are opened within the first 15 minutes?

John from Duct Tape Marketing posted a short but very informative article on 6 Creative Ways to Use Text Messages as he sees it.

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2011/06/17/5-creative-ways-to-use-text-messages-in-marketing/

Here's a quick summary of just 6 of the many ways your business can use text messages in your marketing:

1. Newsletter Sign-up
I like this approach because you can put the code on a business card or slide when speaking and make it very easy for people to subscribe with their phone on the spot.

2. Real Time Appointments
Services such as salons, dentists and even restaurants can use text to fill gaps in the appointment schedule and offer busy customers the ability to come in now if it works.

3. Share Your Slides
I speak to lots of groups and without fail someone always asks if I’ll share my slides. I have no problem doing this, so I’ve started to set up a short code word for each event and I simply say text “event name” to the code and people get a message that allows them to download the slides on the spot while I’m standing up there in front of them.

4. Instant Polling
A number of web based technologies such as Poll Everywhere have cropped up of late making it very affordable to poll audiences by having them use SMS and their own mobile device.

5. Coupon Distribution
Creating membership type levels where people can get special treatment or special announcements is a great way to build community.

You can use SMS to allow people to join your “first mover” club and then routinely send them coupons, gift certificates, special previews, and advanced education and information only available to club members.

6. Group Texts
Don’t forget about the wave of group text services that are cropping up as a great way to communicate with your staff, customers, partners and suppliers. The key feature these services offer is that the group text becomes a conversation for all and most allow you to go beyond to text and add images (MMS).

Click here to read John's entire article.

In order to use text messaging, you have to have an opted in list of people who have asked you to send them text messages regarding your offering. Very similar to how you would use email to market to your prospect and customers. There are many ways to build an SMS list but I'll have to save that for a future post.

If you would like to share ways in which you use SMS Text Messaging please leave a comment below.

Wendy Kenney wrote a great post with 9 marketing ideas to help you with your summer slow down.

Many business owners say that their sales slow down in the summer for various reasons. But just because it’s summer doesn’t mean it has to be slow for your business. Here are 9 summer marketing ideas that will help keep your business sizzling all summer long. - Wendy Kenney

The following are my favorite of the 9 she provides with some additional commentary by me. You can click the link above to read her post in it's entirety.

1. Celebrate a celebrity’s birthday!

Make your business the official birthday headquarters for a much loved celebrity. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 star, Johnny Depp’s birthday is June 9th. Put together a giant birthday card or banner and invite people to sign it. Name a menu item in his honor or offer a special promotion. And even if the celebrity’s birthday isn’t in the summer, you can still celebrate it, Lady Gaga’s birthday is in March, so why not have a quarter of even a half birthday celebration just for her? Publicize your party on social media, in your email newsletter and in a press release. The ideas are endless as to how you can capitalize on this, and so is the fun.

2. Fly a flag!

Along those lines, July 4th is a perfect time to hang an American flag outside of your business. Flags become landmarks because they are so noticeable. Install several flags at your location and watch your sales soar! If you don’t have a physical location, why not give away miniature US flags when you attend summer networking events, sales calls or mixers?

3. Showcase a product offering of the day, week, or the month.

For example, Old Navy regularly has an item of the week- this week it’s summer dresses. While they discount summer dresses, all other items are at regular price. Old Navy knows that when buyers come into their store, they most likely will be more items than just the featured one.

4. Start or join a Meetup group based on a favorite hobby.

Sometimes as business owners we have a rather myopic view of the way that we network. We go to chamber events, networking groups, business groups, etc. But why not join or start a group related to your hobby, and let business leads become a byproduct? That’s what Farmers Insurance Agent Jayson Hoffer has done and I’m guessing it’s been both a fun, and profitable experience. Jayson is a member, now organizer, of the Valley Gun Group, an active Tempe, Arizona, Meetup group with 282 members. I recommend that if you start your own group for hobbyists, make sure that you state up front in your profile that you are a business owner. And furthermore, don’t sell. Use the opportunity of the meetups to get to know people or to advertise your business by sponsoring the group.

Again, to read the complete article, click here. Be sure to read the comments left by other small business entrepreneurs describing their special marketing ideas.

My question is, why pick one over the other? Guy Kawasaki did a great job summarizing the pros and cons of a fan page in his article on the American Express OPEN Forum.

http://www.openforum.com/articles/ask-the-wiseguy-facebook-fan-page-or-website-guy-kawasaki

However, my main concern with facebook Guy does touch on in his article. Ultimately you are subject to the whim and whimsy of facebook. FB could make changes that can negatively impact your business if FB is the only "website" you have. One day facebook could decide to trash fan pages altogether leaving you scrambling to find an alternative or build a website from scratch. Would FB do something like this? We certainly hope not but my point is you have very limited 'control' of this platform.

You should have both a facebook fan page and a website, but not just any website. You should have a Dynamic, Direct Response, Lead Generating Website (not a static, boring online brochure).

Here are some of the pros of having a facebook fan page as Guy explains in his article:

1. Instant gratification. You get 25 friends, a Facebook vanity username, and boom, you’re in business. It’s still easier to get a Facebook vanity URL than a good domain name. Either that or God was with me a few weeks ago because Facebook.com/enchantment was available when I looked.

2. Built-in functionality. The social networking functionality you’d want on a website is built into Facebook: commentary, discussion, visitor posting of photos and videos, and reviews. This means you don’t have to figure out how to add this functionality to a website or pay someone to add it for you.

3. Limited flexibility. Facebook fan pages don’t provide the total flexibility of a website, but that is an advantage for people like me because it prevents us from going nuts with features and design. Basically, there are tabs and sub-tabs to play with. A side benefit is that people don’t expect a unique/cool/whatever website because they see that all Facebook fan pages have a similar look and feel. As my boss at Apple, Mike Murray, used to tell me, “Discipline sets you free.”

4. Flexibility. Within the limited flexibility of Facebook, however, there is substantial flexibility. You can choose from hundreds of Facebook apps to add functionality. If you can’t find what you want, then you can ask someone who knows a lot about Facebook like Mari Smith to recommend a developer. That’s what I did, and she sent me to Hyperarts Web Design. Two weeks and $2,000 later, you’d have a custom looking Facebook fan page that looks like this. I would have had to spend more than $2,000 just to buy the domain that I wanted for a website.

5. Curation. Facebook is a more curated environment than the wide-open web. People have to join Facebook, and most people care about their identities and reputation. You can also block orifices and complain to Facebook about them. On the web, it’s much easier for anyone to litter your website with trashy comments, photos and videos, and it’s much harder to get rid of them too. For the better, Facebook is a controlled environment.

6. Inherent spreadability. The best part of Facebook is that there are, depending on who you believe, about 400 million members. In other words, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world—behind China and India but ahead of the United States. Every time people do something on your fan page, they spread the word about it to their social contacts. This is the holy grail of marketing: unconscious word-of-mouth advertising! I like this a lot better than hoping people will click on a “Like” or “Tweet” button on a website or forward a website’s URL in an email.

Here’s a tip for you. I discovered that you can create a “reveal” Facebook tab. This is how it works: People must “like” the page in order to see its content. I did this with the PDF version of my first book, The Macintosh Way. If people “liked” this page, they were presented with a link to download the book for free. It generated thousands of fans. If you have something you can give away such as a PDF, song, or discount coupon, you should try this.

7. Gratification. I’m a shallow person: I like to increase the number of followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook. Just as there are only two kinds of people on Twitter (those who want more followers and those who are lying), there are only two kinds of companies with Facebook fan pages: Those who want more fans and those who are lying.

I find that getting fans on Facebook is more gratifying than getting followers on Twitter for two reasons: first, on Facebook you pretty much know that a person made a manual decision to “like” your page. You’re never sure on Twitter if your new followers are bots, spammers, clever manipulation of Twitter’s database, or 50-year-old men with a 18-year-old, hot-babe avatar. Second, the follower count on Twitter for anyone who was on the Suggested User List is meaningless. The number of Facebook fans is a much more accurate proxy for the quality of your fan page interactions—or the offer on your “reveal” page.

8. Free. It’s hard to argue with free. I’ve paid nothing to Facebook for all the wonderfulness that it’s provided me. In fact, I would be happy to pay Facebook just as I would be happy to pay for my use of Twitter because both companies provide such valuable services. Until Facebook asks me to pay, I’m more than willing to let it run ads on my fan page. I don’t even want a cut of the ad revenue—keep it, Facebook, you earned it.

Now, What are the dangers and disadvantages of a Facebook fan page strategy vs your own website?

1. You are supporting Facebook’s inexorable ascension to worldwide domination. Is this different from using Windows? (Something I don’t do.) Or buying an iAnything from Apple? (Something I do quite regularly.) I’d rather ride a tsunami than build my own sand castle. Heck, if Facebook helps my book and your product succeed, maybe it deserves to achieve worldwide domination. I don’t care if Mark Zuckerberg is a punk or if Facebook is leaking my data (What is it going to leak—that I like hockey?). All I care is whether Facebook works as a marketing platform. “It’s not personal. It’s just business.”

2. You’re putting all your chips on Facebook. This is true. If Facebook pulls a “MySpace,” your fan page might disappear one day. The odds are, however, that my book will go out of print before Facebook dies. If it does go out of print, then the fate of Facebook won’t matter. On the other hand, if the book achieves critical mass (hopefully, in part because of its Facebook fan page), it won’t matter if Facebook dies. In other words, I don’t care if Facebook implodes as long as it doesn’t implode right away. It won’t.

If you have a long-term corporate perspective as opposed to my short-term, product-introduction orientation, then Facebook’s longevity is a serious consideration. But in the long term, we’re all dead anyway, and you can always start with a Facebook fan page and create a website later as your sales ramp up.

3. Gurus will tell you that won’t get the black-magic SEO juice, brand awareness, inbound links, street cred, etc. of a website. Also true. But then again I can allocate the time, effort, and money that I’m not investing into making a website into other efforts to make the book successful. When all is said and done, either a product sells or it doesn’t. I doubt that the cause of failure will be using Facebook instead of a website although I am betting that using Facebook will help make my book more successful than using a website.

Be sure to read the entire article here: http://www.openforum.com/articles/ask-the-wiseguy-facebook-fan-page-or-website-guy-kawasaki

Be sure to "Like" us on Facebook at facebook.com/AllenCrawleyConsulting

Be sure to leave your comments below.

I love Linkedin and I believe it is the undisputed champion of social networks for getting business. Linkedin is not a place for spammers. Use Linkedin to develop relationships with your target audience, engaging them in group discussions, and asking and answering questions in the Answers section of the site. It is also an invaluable research tool.

Here are some interesting excerpts from their post:

While Facebook has the highest engagement rate of the "big five" social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube), the highest percentage of online consumers think having a LinkedIn account is important, according to an April 2011 study from ROI Research and Performics. The study found that 59% of online consumers rate having a LinkedIn account 4 or 5 on a five-point importance scale, compared to 53% giving this level of importance to having a Facebook account.

Twitter and Youtube also beat out Facebook

Twitter (58%) and YouTube (55%) also had a higher percentage of online consumers ranking them as important. Interestingly, although MySpace is widely regarded as having lost significant importance to consumers in the last several years, its importance percentage tied Facebook’s (53%).

LinkedIn Jumps in Importance Since 2010

In 2010, only 41% of online consumers gave LinkedIn a four- or five-point importance rating, meaning this figure has grown 44% in one year. Twitter has grown 45% in this rating, from 40% to 58%. MySpace appears to be rebounding in perceived importance, as 39% of online consumers in 2010 but 53% in 2011 giving it a four- or five-point rating, a 36% increase.

Meanwhile, the percentage of consumers rating Facebook as important dropped 5% year-over-year, from 56% to 53%.

To read the entire article visit MarketingCharts.com.

"When running your business, a comprehensive plan that takes into account all aspects of your operations is essential in keeping you ahead of the competition. A carefully executed marketing strategy is critical to that success. From analyzing the effectiveness of your current marketing plans to mapping out how to maximize your expenditures on future strategies, the following Enterprise Marketing Budget Strategy can help you quickly chart a road map to long-term success." -Tiffany Callaway