Promoting your BitWine business

6 Beiträge, 3 Meinungen

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The BitWine Widget

We have heard a number of our Advisors asking how they can promote their new BitWine business. For web authors, there’s a particularly easy way to do this.

Step 1: log in to your account and go to http://bitwine.com/tools/buttons to grab the html for your personalized BitWine button and signature link.

Step 2: incorporate your buttons and links into your website, blog, newsletters, articles, and email signatures.

Step 3: let your readers know that you are available to share your expertise with them in full video & audio via your BitWine button or link. They’ll love you for it.

- Paul [BitWine Product Team]

P.S. – Have you thought of some other great ways to promote your BitWine business? If so, share them with the Forum!

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Using your “MySpace” page to promote yourself

As a BitWine Advisor you can use your MySpace account, to promote your services. The process is very simple using the BitWine Widget.

Edit your account at MySpace, copy your BitWine Widget from http://www.bitwine.com/tools/buttons , and paste it into one of your MySpace edit fields that accept HTML (Such as “About Me”, “I’d like to Meet”, Interests…)

Save your profile, and verify that the widget is showing.

You can check out our sample page at http://profile.myspace.com/bitwine our widget will take you to Daniel our support expert.

Or Michael’s page http://www.myspace.com/mkemichael

Do not forget to invite your friends, and let them know that your are available for paid consultations, and that they can help you tell their friends about your new endeavor.

People prefer purchasing services from Advisors that were recommended by friends, the more friends you can reach via Social Networking, (Such as MySpace), the better your marketing is.

P.S When providing a service, make sure you press the “Start Charging” button on the BitWine Taskbar, without that, your service is rendered free of charge.

Thanks

- AC [BitWine Marketing Team]

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Using TripConnect.com to promote your service.

If you like to travel you try

http://www.TripConnect.com

TripConnect is a travel advice web site based on the idea of getting good advice from a network of friends and acquaintances. Membership is free, and you can build your travel profile and include a link and your BitWine Widget. To get started go to www.tripconnect.com and register.

At TripConnect you can get Free “Travel Advice From People You Know™” Sign up, link to friends, and consult your personal network to get travel advice on destinations around the globe.

Here is my link.

http://www.tripconnect.com/profile/alonc

If you are a Travel Agent you can add to your web site and to your TripConnect profile, the BitWine Widget (just paste the BitWine Widget into your TripConnect profile)

People can then contact you for paid trip planning, and other services.

Thanks

- AC [BitWine Marketing Team]

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Marketing Tips to Bring People to Your Site

If you’re wondering why the calls are not pouring in for your advice, consider this. BitWine is a very new service and consequently, very few web surfers will find out about it.

You also have to consider the competition out there (like Yahoo!Answers and Answers.com) who provide totally free advice from a lot of different “advisors” (most of whom are not that experienced in their chosen areas).

People will ask, “What is BitWine? Why should I go to BitWine? Why does this website have a name that makes me think of choosing and buying wine?”

I have to admit that I asked those questions myself, especially about the name of the service. But, as Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name?”

Actually, everything when it comes to your business name and services, and the only way to get your name known by the public is to spread the word yourself.

You have to devote a portion of your work day to marketing your business: not just one or two days a week, but every day. So, you have to come up with a plan to get your business name passed by word-of-mouth, first and foremost.

Think about viral videos and how they are spread throughout the Internet community.

In other words, you absolutely have to create a website from which referrals to your BitWine service can be made. On the first page of your site, you will place one of the BitWine widgets or buttons that link back to your BitWine account.

Your website has to offer valuable content to the viewer, or otherwise they will pass you by. You only have five (5) seconds in which to grab your visitor’s attention.

That’s right…five seconds!

This means you need some kind of hook right up front to get visitors to see what it is you offer. Think of yourself as a door-to-door salesman who sticks his foot in the door to keep it from being closed. In the case of your website, that door being closed is your visitor’s browser window.

Once you have the website completed, then you can promote the website on search engines, other websites (through link exchanges and providing written articles to them), on public websites like MySpace, Yahoo 360, and YouTube, on forums, blogs, chat rooms, and other online community gatherings, newspapers and magazines (through press releases and short announcements).

Also, you can host a SkypeCast (like a public chat) where you can discuss questions and issues that your visitors have, and also to promote your BitWine service.

You might also get your local TV news station to do a short piece on your services, if they feel it would apply to their audience.

Next, you need to print up some brochures that explain your services, and, of course, mention your website and BitWine location. These, along with business cards, will be passed out at networking activities like business meetings, Chamber of Commerce mixers, and anything else you can find in your local business section of your paper.

Post your business cards at places all around town like copy shops, restaurants, and any other business that has a place to post them.

Remember, you’ve got to prime the pump to get the water flowing, so get out there and get the word out about your services. Offer first-time visitors some kind of incentive to refer their friends to you.

You will know when you’ve done your marketing right when the trickle of calls turns into a waterfall.

How to Proactively Market your BitWine business on-line for FREE.

When I talk to advisors who are successful with BitWine the main theme is proactivity.

BitWine is a tool, a store front, and, an on-line yellow-pages, but, there are many listed in that book and you need to work on your own marketing to be successful.

There three key words are for today are:

Amazon Askville: http://askville.amazon.com

Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com

Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts

In Amazon and Yahoo you can search for people that are asking questions in your domain of expertise. Once found you can post a short answer and a link saying “if you want more specific advice call me at: http://www.bitwine.com/users/YOUR BitWine ACCOUNT” (here is mine http://www.bitwine.com/users/alon). By helping that person, you may show that you have the knowledge to provide the full answer in a paid fashion.

(To get your BitWine link login to BitWine and click here http://www.bitwine.com/tools/buttons)

Google alerts like the two above requires an account, all are free needless to say, but it provides access to an important personal marketing resources. Google alerts can send you and e-mail whenever someone writes in a Blog a key word that you define.

If you are a Nutritionist you may want to create alerts for IBS if you are a software programmer maybe LSL and so on, the you ask Google alerts to send you the alert as it happens. When you get the alert you read the Blog posting and you write back a meaningful response plus again your promotion part “if you want more specific advice call me at: http://www.bitwine.com/users/YOUR BitWine ACCOUNT”.

The response must be meaningful or the Blogger will delete your comment as spam. You must try to be the first to respond as people do not read more than one or two comments. Yiu must use different and relevant comments.

Those concepts can be implemented in other places as well but the more you persist the better your chances are to be known and get business.

In my next post I will talk about using original content as a promotion method.

Remember be Proactive and Persistent, there are no short cuts.

Alon BitWine Marketing Team

Using Mom Junction to promote your Coaching, Spiritual and Nutrition practice on BitWine

Mom Junction is a social-network for moms (or any person) that need or are able to offer help to fellow members. Mom junction just added a new service for Question and Answers, on top of the standard support groups that people can create, invite or join.

http://momjunction.com

Once you join you can define your profile

Within your Mom Junction Profile there are many fields you can use.

I used the filed called “I Support or volunteer for these organization” to post my BitWine “call me” button code. (Which you can get at http://www.bitwine.com/tools/buttons)

This is my Mom Junction Profile (you may need to be registered to Mom Junction to view):

http://momjunction.com/members/viewprofile.aspx?alert=Your%20updated%20profile%20has%20been%20successfully%20saved!

Once you register and start using the Groups and Questions & Answer part, you are welcome to be active and help people while promoting (offering) your BitWine services using yiur BitWine link, plus you get e-mail notifications such as:

“I have two small children, one is 2 and the other 4 months, and my husband works nights. Since I’m alone most evenings, putting them to bed is a nightmare. Does anyone have any tips on making bedtime a little easier?”

As Coaches you can provide basic tips but in cases where different Nutrition for the kids or Life Coaching for the mother can help the kids go to bed or the mother, you can think about offering your additional professional services along a hint with a basic advice.

Instead of waiting for people to find you, you can now proactively find the people with the problems that need advice in your domain of expertise.