SocialDzine

Pinterest!  Everyone writing about it waiting on an invitation wondering how use it.

Post your email address in the comments below and I'll send you an invitation :)

Pinterest just captures my interest in two ways: It's a great visual social tool for promoting and sharing also a great way to create an online vision board.

Pinterest speaks to my intellectual and spiritual side.  From marketing aspect a picture is worth 1000 words.  Use images and videos to share customer experiences, new-product and sales flyers.  You can even pin a product and by adding a price into the description it will end up in two categories on your board and "gifts".

Let me show you a few cool examples:

Lets say you work for a jewelry store.  Pinning images of beautiful rings is a great way to share your inventory, but by adding the price to the description it will end up in two locations on Pinterest instead of one giving it that added exposure.

Now you might have a little sticker shock, but to be honest... how many people do you think "Won't" like this?  The point is to expose it to one maybe two people that will.  This works great for bloggers as well.  If you have an image on you blog in your post, you can use it to pin and it will link back to your blog.  This gets you more visitors, increases your fan base, etc...

PInterest is fun for the causal user as well.  It is a great opportunity to create an online vision board.  Visuals are a wonderful way of goal setting.

So get your pin on! 

Ping.fm might just be the greatest social marketing tool out there and it's completely free... not free for basic users, free for so many posts, etc... It's FREE!  

Ping.FM is a tool that allows you to connect all of your social networking sites together.  You can add your LinkedIn, Myspace, FaceBook, Twitter, Identi.Ca, Flickr, Ning and more... nearly 20 more.  Now, what do you do with all of them?  Worst part of social marketing is the separation of audience members.  When you are using social networks to market a product or service, key is to reach as many people as possible, right?

Ping.fm allows you to post a message and it will then disburse that message across all the social networks you have attached AND selected to get that message.  You can even use your email to send Ping.fm a message and with a special character in the beginning of the message, do the exact same thing without ever logging in.  Now if you're a microsift user and have Outlook you may already know that you can schedule messages to go out at a later date.  FREE.... 

I've had many people ask me "Why Twitter?"  Twitter has numerous useful components, linking it to Facebook, LinkedIN, etc... along with the ability to share with thousands of people you don't know.  It can be a little tricky, you have to know all about hashtags and trends, but once you get the hang of it, it's a very COOL TOOL!

That brings me to this new tool I found, and it's in BETA which means you can try out a lot of the features for free right now while they fix any bugs.  It's called Schmap.IT.  Schmap IT logs into your twitter account and breaks down all of your followers.  It gives you detailed information like marital status, children, gender, geographical location, employment and much more.

You can target tweet people that love travel, wine, sports, stocks, social networking or even knitting( if they are on twitter, lol)

Having the ability to tweet specifically to twitter users that would be interested in your specific offer is very valuable.  Using hashtags is a great tool, but if you can direct message someone about a sale coming up, a new service you're offering or even a Merry Christmas to get you back on their radar is priceless to marketers.

They also have a great promotion going on right now, when you sign up they will give you an affiliate link and let you promote it and in exchange give you a FREE full analysis of your followers.  What could be more valuable than to know all this information about your twitter followers to use in 2012.  

Hope you love the COOL TOOL as much as I do and happy tweeting.

There is a common misconception about starting an online business.  First let me point out that it's very different from starting an actual brick and mortar.  If you're willing to take the time to learn your way around wordpress you can start a company for less than $100.  If you just don't have the time or patience, companies like us can develop the site for you and give you a few lessons to get you going for a fraction of even of running a business for a month.