First, make sure you are signed up with Facebook and Twitter. If you’re going to be pumping out content, as you should be, and have a video camera, then get signed up on YouTube and Viddler (video blogging secret – use TubeMogul to upload your video to multiple sites just once – more to come in another post).

So you’re signed up, now what?

1. Start following people on Twitter and Facebook who are talking about your business area or industry. If your running a camping equipment business, then follow people talking about hiking, backpacking, camping, and any related gear manufacturers. If you’re running a  website on do it yourself plumbing, then follow people who may be talking about hiring a plumber, other plumbers, people talking about leaky faucets or any other related topic. Use a service like Tweetbeep or similar to get notified of people using your keywords so that you can follow them.
2. Once you’ve started following people, INTERACT WITH THEM! This is the biggest point – you have to engage yourself in order to see a return from your efforts. You can’t just add 100’s of people to your friends list and expect them to do business with you. Just like in the offline world, you have to do some networking, talk with people, and talk about your business. But don’t push your business too much! Engage with your friends and followers, help solve their problems, and help any way you can.
3. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your business/company on Facebook. Being a “friend” with someone on Facebook is great and all, but its on more of a personal level where conversations are about what you are doing this weekend. With a Fan Page you can keep the interaction more related to your business. Fan Pages give you the same features as a regular profile such as posting pictures, videos, and links but also allow for people to interact with you, which is what you want. Invite all your Facebook friends to be “Fans” of your business. Use your Facebook fan page as a way to drive more traffic to your actual website and also to make another connection with your followers on Twitter. If someone is looking for more information about your company, you can send them to your Fan Page AND to your website.
4. Like the West Virginia state slogan, declare yourself open for business. Many other entrepreneurs and social media “experts” will tell you not to advertise your business but to just let people come to you. This is all good and can be a successful plan, but I feel you still need to advertise/promote your business within the Facebook and Twitter scene. Cross reference your tweets and Facebook page, post links to press releases, your services, or your company blog. Offer your services to people who may be talking about what you do. Going back to the plumbing website, if someone is talking about installing a new sink over the weekend, @reply them or send them a Direct Message offering a link to your site and page on sink installation. If it helps them, maybe they’ll click on one of your ads, buy your service or product, or share your website with their friends.Example: One day I was searching Twitter (www.search.twitter.com) for the keyword “wordpress help”. I quickly came across a bunch of people looking for help with their wordpress theme, looking for a custom theme, or that had other questions. I started interacting with them and offered my services to help them get their blog up and running. The investment of an hour in talking with them gained me their business because we had established a relationship. In this area alone, Twitter has brought me 4 clients.
5. Keep rolling out fresh content. Being signed up for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube is not enough to get you more customers. You need to be pumping out content on those networks too. If your operating a Facebook fan page, then you need to be posting links to your blog, links to industry news, posting videos of your demonstrating products or reviewing a product, and pictures of your business or products.
6. An often overlooked tactic is to interact with other people ON THEIR OWN SITES. Take some of the interaction off of Twitter and Facebook and onto someone else’s blog or website. Start leaving meaningful and worthy comments on peoples blog posts and create a reputation on sites. Then, with any luck, you’ll start to get recognized on those sites and people will start heading to your own website, Facebook page, or Twitter account to learn more about your and your business.
7. BE PATIENT! This is the most important part of these tips. You have to be patient and can’t expect to all of the sudden see a 25% growth in business because you signed up for Twitter and followed a few people. You need to interact, build relationships, and then engage with them. Building a quality and interested list of friends and followers will take time. Building relationships is going to take time. And getting people to buy from you is going to take some time; but that time will come! Just be patient, keep at it (for however long it takes), and then you’ll start to see some rewards.

Are you interested in how your business can better use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to grow your business? Then feel free to contact me for some help!

What Do I Need To Launch an eBay Drop Off Business?

• Space – you’re obviously going to need extra space to store any items that you are selling as well as to use for your other operations like photography, packaging, etc.
• A good digital camera – You’ll be handling all the photography for the auction listings, so a good camera that will take nice pictures and not be all blurry is a must.
• White Box/Light Box for Photos – A white box or light box is a lighting set up and background that will allow you to take great pictures even with a decent camera to help you remove any background issues or reduce the risk of a flash on the object. Here’s a simple design you can make yourself with some foam board, desk lamps, a piece of poster board, and some tape.
  
• Packing and Shipping Materials – If you already have a camera that you can use, then these supplies will probably be your biggest start up expense. You can drop your expense on materials by reusing any boxes you have around the house, old newspapers to pack your items with, and other similar materials (left over packing peanuts, etc).
• An eBay Account and eBay Store – Well, first, you need to be registered on the website, duh! Then you’ll want to sign up for an actual eBay store. This will give you the opportunity to customize the look and feel of your auctions and storefront much more than just as a regular seller. This can be a great advantage too if you start selling other items that you have an inventory of – you can then list them as store items and not have to worry about watching the auctions and relisting them weekly.

And the most important thing you need when starting an eBay business – knowledge and the ability to research. If you’re going to make any money when selling other peoples stuff on eBay, you need to be able to extensively search the site and find what similar items have sold for, determine what you can expect to get on your auction, and see what type of description will help sell the item.

Speaking of descriptions, you don’t necessarily need to be an antique appraiser or aficionado in any specific area in order to sell an item. You really just need to be able to effectively research the item by brand, model, or any other features. This will help you to write the best description that you can.

Another point would be to use the actual owner of the item as a resource for your auction listing. Since it is their item, they probably know things about it that would take you a while to determine. Have them help you with the description for the auction. With an accurate description coming from the owner verses a guess coming from you, you have a better chance of selling your item and achieving high bids!

So, now, how do you make money off of selling for someone else?

Simple. You charge a fee – this could be a flat fee or a percentage based off of the auction value. You’ll find in your research of similar businesses, that most charge a percentage of the total auction value. Meaning if something sells for $100 and they charge a 20% fee, then you make $20 for that item. You’ll also find that many of the franchise/”big box” businesses will charge around 35%-50%. So there is a great opportunity to take less of a percentage but possibly attract more business. It all just depends on the approach you want to take.

How do I advertise my newly launched business?

Just like you’d advertise any other business!

• Word of mouth will be your best marketing tactic. Tell your family, friends, neighbors, and anyone that you come across about your new venture and ask them to keep you in mind if they want to sell anything. You could even offer a discounted fee
• A professionally designed and informative website will be your second best asset in this business. Just by having your website optimized for search engines and out there with content, you can start to bring in some search traffic. This is how I’ve picked up 95% of my eBay selling service clients. They’ve simply searched Google for our county or city name and then put “ebay” or “ebay service” at the end of the search phrase to come across my website. Having a domain name with your location (county, city, or state) in the URL is extremely beneficial.
• Yard Signs are great because they are inexpensive and easy to set up anywhere you can. If you go the route of yard signs, be sure to include your website address or phone number, along with what your business does printed on the sign. You may also want to check with your local laws regulating yard signs during the weekdays and on weekengs. For example, in my area, they are not allowed to be out during the week along the roads and only from 6 PM Friday night to 6 AM Monday morning, giving you just the weekend. This covers those ‘open house’ signs and realtor signs, as well as any other advertising yard signs in medians, along roads, etc.

I’ve shared some great tips with you on starting up your ebay drop off service business, so now I hope you will go out and do it! Set up your website, get your equipment, and start earning money from ebay like so many others do!

Let me know what you think!

Buy in at Amazon – Entrepreneur Journeys: Bootstrapping: Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction

Twitter

Start posting updates on Twitter. Once you get started, use the Search area to find people talking about similar topics to you and start connecting with people. If you’re writing a blog too, use Twitter as a way to help get more readers to your site and increase interaction. The most important thing is that you are using it and being active. Connect with like minded people and users interested in the same topics to build your personal brand. If you’re really passionate about a certain subject, go and crush it and make yourself an authority in that area. The best part is that Twitter is a constantly updated stream, so you can always stay fresh on what’s happening.

Facebook

Besides being able to just keep updated and connected with your friends, Facebook is a great way to find new people, groups, and info about things your interested. One of the neat features of Facebook is their chat/instant message system. Now you can see which of your friends are on Facebook, chat with them, and quickly pass the down time at work. If you can’t find anyone on to chat with, then start flipping through pictures to check out what people have been up to, where they’re travelling too, and what they are doing. If nothing else, you could start playing one of those ninja games or whatever and try to recruit people.

LinkedIn

One of the most under-utilized social networks out there is probably LinkedIn because the power of finding connections on the site is huge. So, first, if you’re not on LinkedIn, then you need to be. Sign up for an account, join a couple groups relating to the college that you’re at or graduated from, and then find people you may know. As you build your connections, completely fill in your profile information, and then start looking for people outside of your immediate reach that you want to connect with. Have your connections make recommendations for you or give you “LinkedIn cred” by giving a testimonial about you. As you start interacting on a professional level, you can start to see the benefits. Looking for a new job? Hit up LinkedIn first. See if there is someone within your degrees of seperation at the company you want to work for. Build up a relationship and work the connection. LinkedIn is gaining a lot of steam lately with different bloggers publishing tips on how to better use the site, so search around and you’ll find plenty of help!

What Say You?

These are obviously just a couple of the sites out there. There are plenty of others that are niche specific or more general. Check them out and get your face all over the place!

What’s that you say? You want to get a blog or website set up but don’t know what to do? Well, let me help you!

With the great success that WordPress has been seeing, many businesses and entrepreneurs are starting to use WordPress as the full back end of their website or blog. So if you’re currently running a static HTML website or blogging at Blogger, it’s time to put on your big girl panties and get a real website set up – a real website or blog that you can quickly customize, change, and do naughty things to.

Now some people out there offering this same service are going to make your purchase your domain name through them, purchase your website hosting through them, and then on top of that, make you pay them. So basically what happens is when you order your domain name and hosting through their affiliate links, they are making even more money off of you than you thought.

While I think that’s a clever idea, its not the type of shit I’m going to pull on you. If you have your own domain name already or your own website hosting, then that’s no problem. But, if you don’t we can definitely help you get that set up too!

For $40 you get the following services:

• Installation of Wordpress on your hosting account
• Installation of the Wordpress theme of your choice*
• Basic plug-in installation and activation
  • All-In-One SEO Pack
  • WP-Spamfree
  • Google Sitemap Generator
  • TweetMeme button

But wait, there’s more!

If you really want to step your Wordpress website or blog up to the next level, these other services are available to you. Package them together and I’ll even cut you a sweet deal!

• Migration of post databases from Blogger or other blogging sites/software
• Wordpress Theme Customization
• Blog Tutoring

By the time we’re done working together, all you’ll need to do is start writing and your ready to rock and roll.

I love helping small business and entrepreneurs get their business online in the most effective way possible, and Wordpress really is it. So, contact me today for your Wordpress Installation and Set up service and we can get you rolling within the next couple days!

More Wordpress Resources

• Premium Wordpress Themes from WooThemes
• Premium Themes from Elegant Themes
• Wordpress Theme Directory
• Wordpress Plugin Directory
• Wordpress Affiliate Marketing Theme

*Theme of your choice should be chosen from the huge variety of free themes available. If you’d like a premium theme installed and set up, then please check out our partners, WooThemes and Elegant Themes, make the purchase of the theme you’re interested in, and download the install files. We’ll then get these files from you when we are ready in install the theme and set it up.

I started using Wordpress probably 4 years ago when I launched my first big blog, Dorm Room Biz. Ever since then I’ve been sold of the package and have not looked back since. I started out on Blogger but as soon as I played with Wordpress, the switch was a no brainer. Wordpress is great because you really need no programming knowledge or background to be able to get it set up and running on your domain name. This alone is what I think makes the package so popular. Taking that to the next level are the massive amounts of themes out there – paid or free – which are available as well as all the widgets, plugins, and little extra upgrades you can do to your site.

Even with how easy it is to use Wordpress, the great dashboard and well designed admin panel, there are still a few things that can make it tricky for someone starting with WP but looking to do more with it. You really need to develope a base knowledge of php if you want to get into the depths of the themes, templates, and different lines of code. But a basic knowledge of HTML will help you at least do some basic customization like changing colors of text, background colors, etc. So while there may be a learning curve for more advanced things you can do with WP, there can be a steady progression to that level.

When I first started with WP, I didn’t know much about setting up and working with MySQL databases, so I needed help in this area. Luckily, I was able to find some people who were more than willing to help me set up databases, fix issues, etc. This was crucial when I experienced some issues with Dorm Room Biz and I thought I was going to loose all the content (150+ posts at the time). Then, in the days before the automatic upgrade feature of WP, I always seemed to have a problem when installing a new version, so being able to get help from an internet buddy on doing this and having them walk me through the steps was a perfect learning experience. These types of issues are pretty much gone, I would think, if you utilize the automatic install/set up feature as well as the automatic upgrade feature when new WP releases come out.

One of the most important aspects of blogging and Wordpress, besides the content of your blog, is going to be your design. While I haven’t actually created any of my own themes, I have taken some free themes and customized them pretty good to the point where you can’t really tell what the original theme looked like. Now, I’m a HUGE fan of the guys over at WooThemes and the themes that they are putting out monthly. If you’re not familiar with WooThemes and their premium themes, then check them out. I use them on many of my sites and for clients and then just customize the look and feel of them to be my own. It makes theme development and customization so much easier than starting from scratch, unless that’s what you want to do! If you feel that WooThemes might be a little bit to expensive for you, check out Elegant Themes. For $19.95 you get unlimited access to the themes that they put up, some of them are very good themes and basis to start with if you are going to customize it.

So there we have it, a few reasons why I use Wordpress today as well as a few of the struggles I had along the way to getting to where I am today with the package!

Now that that is out of the way, lets talk about your use of Twitter. Yea, you guys – State Parks and Campgrounds. Oh, what was that? You say you either A) don’t know what Twitter is or use it or B) your use is minimal? Well, that needs to be fixed.

I’ve noticed and started following more and more State Parks, Campgrounds, and Tourism site Twitter users in the last month then I could visit in a year. That is a great sign. So here is the deal.

I’ll quickly start with the basics. For those of you unaware, Twitter is a micro-blogging website that allows you to tell people what you are doing in 140 characters or less. However, you don’t always have to answer the question “What are you doing?” instead you can post links to your sites, interesting articles, and interact with other users. The last part of that is the most important. Twitter is a vehicle to interact with other users.

Now, moving on. If you represent a state park system, a local park, a campground, a tourism website, or similar organization, then you need to get on Twitter. Besides being the hottest thing since slice bread in the toaster and having millions of users, Twitter is the perfect location for you to be reaching out to potential visitors of your parks and grounds, getting your news out there, and advertising to potential visitors.

If you perform a Twitter search for “camping” or “state park” you’ll quickly find hundreds of users talking about different state parks through the country, people looking for activities to do in parks or cities, and people trying to find recommendations on places to go camping (with tents or RVs).

Twitter is a very powerful way for you to connect with your potential users and your market. You need to be harnessing it. One of my favorite things to do is assist people in growing their business, brainstorming ways to gain exposure, and helping people get on Twitter.

If you run a website for a State Park, a local campground, RV park, tourism spot, or any other related business or attraction, you need to get on Twitter. Contact me about details on helping you to do so!

What do you think? I’m one who usually curses in everyday life but does not write that way. However, I think I may take the posting in a different direction here and write as I would actually say it. So if the ’shit’, ‘fuck’, ‘ass’ or’bitches’ pops into a post, post title, or comment, please do not be offended. However, if you don’t think it’s a good idea, I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the idea!

Watch out for more updates coming soon!

HUGE NEWS! I’ve Sold Dorm Room Biz

Well, thanks for coming. Please subscribe to the RSS feed and you’ll be seeing a lot more updates coming through on here!

Thanks,

Chris