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Is Facebook Marketing a Necessity Or a Waste?

Facebook is definitely NOT a necessity for online marketers. In fact, contrary to what the majority of “gurus” are telling you, I think that most online marketers are better off WITHOUT accounts on social media like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc. Here’s why:

Social media is a time-eating machine.

It is so easy to get carried away checking other people’s profiles, reading their updates and having useless conversations. You’ll cover up time wasting with the excuse “But I’m Working On My Business! The Gurus Say That Facebook Is A Must!”:) The hours will fly by, more so-called “friends” will be added, but will it really contribute to your bottom line?

All this talk about “building relationships” and landing big clients due to those relationships – it all sounds good, but has these people tracked the TIME they spent on it? $1,000 paycheck sounds impressive, but quickly loses its appeal if it took 1,000 hours getting to it:)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that all social media is bad. Let me repeat what I said: “MOST online marketers are better off without accounts on social media”. MOST does not equal ALL. So who are those select few online marketers who do benefit from Facebook, Linked In and Twitter?

*They have a strict limit on their time spent on social media (for example, 30 minutes per day) and stick to that limit

*They have a plan before they log on

*They focus all their social media efforts on building their list

The money is in the LIST. It’s not in a number of “friends”, “fans”, “connections” or “followers”. What if Linked In closes your account for whatever reason? What if it goes out of business? What if it has a horrible server crash and data is lost? You must build your own mailing list of your contacts and have a backup copy on your own computer, so you don’t put your business at the mercy of the 3rd parties.…

Real Guitar Players Or Just Gamers

Rock Band 3 Guitar players have something to celebrate, with the forthcoming release of a brand new controller designed especially for the game in association with the company that is responsible for defining what half of the rock and roll guitars have looked like since the 50’s, Fender (the other half probably being designed by Gibson!).

Not only does the new Rock Band 3 Guitar controller do all the usual stuff that the regular controllers do, but now with the addition of real strings and a pickup (a sort of “microphone” for a guitar for want of a better description), means that gamers can take their skills from the virtual stage onto the real world stage by actually learning to play.

The fact that playing the previous versions of the Rock Band games has always had the stigma of being a child’s toy rather than a real instrument attached to it by serious musicians has always kept the game well and truly on the store toy shelf. The gap has been considerably closed with this new controller, the choice is now a clear one, you can keep on playing the game like you always did with the standard controller, or take things to the next level and become a real musician, how cool is that?

While all this sounds fantastic, what is the reality of the situation and how well is this all really going to work?

There are some issues with this new technology, for a start the new Rock Band 3 Guitar controller currently only works in pro mode which means that you can only play roughly 4% of the available games, this is something that most prospective buyers are hoping will be addressed before the launch, because otherwise it means that you will need 2 controllers to actually play all of the songs in the game.

While the available videos and previews make this guitar look like it does everything it promises and more, this is something we have seen recently with another rival product that promised so much in the demos but is getting terrible reviews right now, I am of course referring to the Power Gig guitar.

While I have seen this guitar I have not checked it out thoroughly, the complaints range from things like the game itself and the software in general are not good and look very dated, to complaints that the guitar strings have to be pushed down very hard to make the sensors pick them up. This last point may be something that will affect a lot of beginner guitar players on the new Fender guitar as well, any guitar player knows that you have to build up strength in your fingers to fret correctly and eradicate the buzz, and you will get pain and callouses on your fingertips.

This begs the question, will kids be turned off by this and just go back to the much easier option of using their familiar controller?…

Outsourcing Your Social Media Needs

A Social Media Assistant is someone who works with you to get your business on the move and out there for the customers the way you want it to be. They could be anyone qualified enough to do the job efficiently and effectively. These assistants can work from the comforts of their own office or home and usually contacts you via email or instant messengers. Usually, social media assistants carry out orders you are supposed to do but can not due to several reasons. These reasons involve:

Time – a key element to social media. A lot of businessmen do not have the time on building the website they need to make it profitable, so most businessmen turn to marketing assistants to make one. Another thing about time is that most businessmen are more focused on how to maximize the field to their advantage and this would usually take their time, thus, assistants are hired to take on other matters and leave all important ones to them.

Skills – there are skills that only marketing assistants have and most businessmen tap into these assistants to make full use of their skills and talents thus, promoting their business as well. The more businessmen invest on social media assistants’ skills, the more likely they acquire good results.

Coining social media assistants as mere “assistants” is really an understatement of the word. There are a lot of roles that an assistant can fit in to. Here are just some of them:

Creating your social media accounts. Time for business people is for brainstorming and for creative thinking. Spending time creating accounts in sites can be a daunting and manual task that you would prefer delegating it to an assistant.

Maintaining your social media accounts. If you created accounts to promote your product or service, then you can hire an assistant to maintain them for you. They can also maintain the accounts, update statuses and manually add friends or followers (prospects!).

Writing articles and press releases. You can task your assistant to write articles embedding links to your websites on key parts of the article. Press releases can also do wonders if you have a new product that needs promotion. This is a sure way in promoting traffic into your website.

Email Marketing and Ads posting. Other than writing articles and maintaining the website, assistants can also promote it through generating email and sending it to clients as well as posting visible ads.

A Social media assistant can do wonders to your online business. Qualifications need not be extravagant as long as they can keep up with you and the tasks you wish to be done in a matter of time.…