Moms Network

Although Facebook started out as a place for people to meet and share personal thoughts and opinions, it has gained major status as a way to promote your business. With a billion monthly users, Facebook is the most popular social media site. When used properly for your business, the effect could be quite substantial.

The idea is to get as many people to “Like” your posts and follow your pages as possible. But in doing so, remember the old adage – Quality, Not Quantity! You want your numbers to consist of targeted and responsive followers.




Below are ten mistakes many people make when engaging in Facebook’s vast social network. Some people may not even realize they are floundering so go over each fumble carefully to ensure that you are not part of the losing team.

1. Incomplete profile and Business Information – Not filling in all your information suggests that you have something to hide. Be sure to fill out every aspect of the information forms. Be forthcoming and give out all pertinent information.

2. Wrong Profile Pic – When you are trying to build a business on Facebook you don’t want to use inappropriate pictures for your profile. Don’t use a picture of your pet cat or your family get-togethers. Use a photo of yourself looking straight ahead. Do not wear sunglasses or avert your eyes in any way. Do not overdo on make-up or look like you are going to a party. Always smile and just be yourself. A picture can be worth a thousand words.

3. Too Much Posting – You probably have read that you should post regularly to your page, but by the same token, posting too much can have as many adverse results as not posting enough.

4. Lengthy Posts – Bite-sized posts are much more likely to get read and responded to than long, flowing text. Facebook research shows that if your post has over 100 but fewer than 250 characters, it will have a 60% better chance of getting a response. So try to keep your posts between 100-250 characters for optimum response.

5. Mobile Unfriendly – Mobile marketing is making a big splash in the internet world and you need to be prepared. You need to be aware of the size of your posts and images in that they will fit and be readable on mobile devices. Keep your photos about 600 pixels wide by 400 pixels high and your text should be no more than 100 characters long.

6. Too Many Links – Any post should contain only one option for your followers to choose. Including additional links or calls-to-action in your post could cause the reader to become indecisive and just move on.

7. Promoting Without Value – Posting blatant sales ads without any other value will just get your posts skipped or cause you to lose fans. Posting periodical promotions and sales can work for you but you must also offer something of substance and value for your followers. For example: if you are advertising a sale on jewelry, offer information on how to choose the right jewelry for different events and outfits.

8. Ignoring the Negative(and Positive) – If you receive negative comments or feedback on any of your posts, Do Not Ignore It. Post a reply but be sure you do not post negatively as well. Reply politely while explaining the situation. Always address positive comments as quickly as possible too. Do not let people’s comments go unnoticed, be they negative or positive.

9. Not Using Facebook Insights – Facebook offers a great feature called Insights. They analyze your page’s traffic, engagement, likes, Friends of Fans, etc. Do not ignore this information. Study it to find out what posts are being responded to, what time of day gets the most response, what days get the most response, and more. This will give you more “insight” into what to post and when to post it.

10. Too Much Automation – There are a lot of services, apps and programs you can use to automate your posting. While this could be helpful at times, do not get into the habit of doing it too often. You need to actually go to your page and participate in conversations and engage in people’s posts. While automation is a handy tool for helping in certain situations, it cannot replace us as live people!

The power of social media, if used efficiently, could be game-changing. But if you are inadvertently fumbling and cannot make the tackle, you are in danger of doing more harm to your business than good. Be aware of any mistakes you might be making and take the necessary steps to correct them. By doing this, you are sure to score!

About the Author:
Terri Seymour has over 15 years of internet marketing experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site for free articles, resources, information, resell ebook business opportunity and more. Get three free gifts including The Big Book of Social Media Tips.   http://www.SeymourProducts.com

If your website is your place of business you must build it for your customers’ needs as opposed to your own. Many people make the mistake of filling their website with useless graphics or meaningless text. Ask yourself this question, “Is this helping my customer in any way?”
When building your website, there are many small and overlooked mistakes you could be making. The list below covers some of the more common blunders that can easily be fixed.

1. No Consistency or Uniformity – Your website should remain uniform throughout. Do not make each page a different color or design. This will only succeed in confusing your customers and more than likely cause them to go elsewhere. Design your website to flow easily and consistently.

2. Confusing Navigation – Having a uniform design is one major step to user-friendly navigation but you must also use simplicity and cleanliness. Do not clutter up your pages with ads, graphics or flash. Keep your pages, clean, sleek and easy to follow. I have been to some sites that had dozens of banners lining up both sides of their pages. This is not only annoying but will cause you to lose most of your visitors quite quickly!

3. Ineffective Color Choices – Something seemingly irrelevant as color can have a lot to do with your site’s success or failure. Research the psychology of color and make wise choices for your business website. When choosing your color scheme, consider your target market, the message you want to send out and the color’s emotional effect on your visitors.

4. Click to Enter Site – Have you clicked on a link anxiously wanting to see what a site has to offer and then you see a page that says, “Click to Enter Our Site”? I have seen this numerous times and frankly it always baffles me why someone would do this. You have just seconds to capture a person’s attention so why would you put a meaningless message and extra click for them to deal with?

5. Elusive Contact Information – You want your visitors to feel that you are there for them when they need you so be sure to have easily accessible contact info for them to use. Some sites unfortunately do not provide contact info of any kind and the first thought that brings to mind is that they do not want to be known or bothered. That will not work for a business.

6. Forced Music – Do not force your visitors to listen to music or a sales pitch or watch a video. Too many sites have automatic music or videos when you land on their homepage. Give your visitors the choice to listen. Do NOT force-feed them these audios or videos.

7. Content Full of Ads – One thing I find very annoying is reading an article and having to go through several ads within the article. I don’t know who came up with this idea but I find it to be very annoying and distracting. In my opinion, providing helpful, clean content is much more effective than filling it up with ads.

8. PDF Files – When providing information and content to readers, do not use surprise PDF files. PDF files can clog up a person’s computer and become very troublesome. If you do have a PDF file available, be sure to let the person know it will be a PDF so they are aware.

9. Empty Palace Syndrome – Building a beautiful palace and not putting anything in it would not be very practical or effective. Think of your website in the same way. Do not focus everything on design and then forget about content. Content is crucial to your success so build a simple, easy to use website and fill it full of up-to-date content.

10. Non-Usable CAPTCHA – I find these to be one of the most annoying things used by many websites. I have had to leave numerous sites because the CAPTCHA was not readable or working properly. If you find it necessary to use this annoying feature, please be sure to check it and make sure it works and can easily be used.

11. Registration Required – Do not require your customers/readers to register for your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Then, be sure to use a simple, clear, concise form. Keep the clicks to a minimum and do not ask for a person’s life history.

12. Hard to Read – We have all seen the sites that have harsh background colors with a non-contrasting text that could not be read. Be sure to provide easy to read text. The best color combination is the standard black or dark gray text on a white or light pastel background. This is the easiest on most eyes. White text on a black background is very hard on a lot of eyes so that might not be a good choice. Also, consider your font. Use a simple clean font without all the curlies and cute designs.

Although this list is a small portion of things to consider when designing and building your website, these tips should help steer you towards more popularity with your visitors and an increase in your business success.

About the Author:
Terri Seymour has over 16 years of internet marketing experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site for three free gifts including The Big Book of Social Media Tips and How to Market Your Online Business for Free: http://www.SeymourProducts.com

Why you aren’t making money online   Every year more and more people are coming online to become the next internet millionaire. They have high expectations and think they will be making money in no time. Well, if you are one of those people, I am going to give you 5 reasons why you aren’t making money online so you can save yourself a lot of time and embarrassment. 1) No Ambition You are trying to find a way to do nothing all day and still make money. Good luck with that! It’s not going to happen. If it was really that easy then everyone would do it and we would all be rich. Yes, there is such a thing as passive residual income, but it takes a lot of time and hard work before you can reap the rewards of that. 2) You Have a Lot to Learn You might have graduated from Harvard at the top of your class but that doesn’t mean you know anything about making money online. Learning about all the various ways to make money online in addition to the many internet marketing strategies, and everything else involved with running an online business isn’t going to happen overnight. There’s a steep learning curve involved before you can become successful. 3) You Need a Mentor (or a better one)You either don’t have anyone successful to mentor you, or you are currently listening to the wrong person. There are several internet marketing gurus and A-list bloggers that beginners always seem to find somehow. The only problem is the majority of them don’t actually teach you anything useful about how to make money online. And if they do they expect you to pay astronomical amounts of money for a small amount of their time, or buy their new products that they come out with constantly. If you really want to learn how to make money online you must follow people that will give you useful information without trying to sell you a new product every week. Find someone who truly wants to help you and see you succeed. Yes, you might have to pay them for their time. They need to make a living too, but you shouldn’t have to pay insane amounts of money for very little in return. There are also plenty of internet marketers who give out all the information you need for free on their blogs. 4) You Aren’t Listening When you are actually given quality useful information by someone who truly knows internet marketing, you don’t listen to them for whatever reason. In order to be successful at making money online, you need to listen when other successful people give you useful advice. Don’t just shrug it off because it can be the difference between success and failure. 5) You Have No Patience You’re trying to get rich quick and that is a losing battle. There are a few ways to make money online fast but most of them are unsustainable and only bring in small amounts at a time. Certainly not the amount of money you can make a living from. You need to realize right away that earning a living on the internet is an uphill marathon, not a downhill dash. There are very few rare exceptions to this rule so chances of you being the one are slim to none. If you don’t have a lot of patience you will get frustrated and quit. Don’t take this article personally. The point of it is to explain some top reasons why many people are unable make money online even though they come into it with the best of intentions. Avoid getting sucked into these pitfalls and you will have a much better chance at becoming one of the success stories who are able to make their living online! About the author: Trent Brownrigg has been teaching aspiring entrepreneurs such as yourself ways to make money online with your own internet business for several years. Visit one of his websites at http://intmktr.com to learn more.