Radio Free Enterprise

Networking of all kinds fascinates me. Whether it be business networking groups like BNI, network marketing companies like Mary Kay or Isagenix, or social networking applications like MySpace and LinkedIn, this type of distributed messaging really piques my interest.

While researching a post on the use of social networking sites for marketing purposes, I came across a company that is not only doing it but teaching others how to supercharge their sales through the intelligent use of these sites. They’ve even coined the term Social Marketing.

Stomper Net has posted this video as a viral marketing device for their services. Whether or not you choose to employ their services, I highly recommend you spend a few minutes watching it.

The first few minutes are a little hypey, and the animation is a little cutesy, but once you get to the statistics on the growth of social networking sites and how marketers are using them to explode traffic on their sites, the video becomes nothing short of compelling.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Recent posts have gone from monkey to donkey, and now I’m moving from TWiT to Twitter.

I am seriously investigating Social Networking as it relates to Small Business Marketing. I’ve been on LinkedIn for a couple of years and am now experimenting with FaceBook, MySpace and, most recently, Twitter.

As with all Social Networking tools, Twitter can be a little difficult to explain to those of us who were born before 1990.

In a nutshell, Twitter allows you to let everyone in your group of friends know what you are doing from minute to minute.

This may not sound appealing to those of us who feel the Internet age has left us naked from a privacy standpoint. Sadly, this is something that we’re all just going to have to accept and, in my opinion embrace, since the idea of personal privacy is not just going the way of the Dodo bird, it’s already long gone. And Twitter is less invasive than many other Internet information sources. What you post about your life and actions is up to you. You only need tell the people you want to tell, what you want to share, when you want to share it. Some people go crazy, posting info ever time they have a meal or leave the house. Puh-leeze resist the urge to do this.

Instead, look at Twitter as a great free tool to help stay top-of-mind with your sphere of influence. Twitter posts are short text messages (limited to 140 characters) which can include links back to your blog, website, ecommerce site, etc. which can also potentially increase your page rank on Google. I have just started “Tweeting” but intend to tweet every time I post something on my blog or do something else I think the folks following me will be interested in knowing.

Just for kicks, why not set up your own Twitter account and choose to follow my actions. I’ll do the same for you and we’ll figure out whether this thing has any longterm value together.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I’ll explain in a moment, but first a quick Economics lesson.

Economists talk about how every person, corporation - and living creature - arranges their affairs in the fashion that best suits them as part of what is called their Personal Utility Function. In other words your purchase decisions, choice of employment, food selections, etc. are based upon your personal tastes and beliefs regarding your likes and dislikes.

It has been shown that even an amoeba will move from a nutrient-poor environment to a nutrient-rich environment in pursuit of its own Personal Utility Function. But does that mean that animals engage in commerce? Read on and decide for yourself.

In this story from Time Magazine’s web site, researchers describe how female Indonesian Long-tailed Macaques engage in prostitution in exchange for grooming services from males. There is even a sliding price scale which reacts to the number of females available and other factors in the immediate environment.

I’ve often said that the Personal Utility Function aspect of Microeconomic Theory is almost a law of Nature. I guess the fact that monkeys are engaging in the world’s oldest profession proves me right.

In this 4:30 video Bill McIntosh shows us his 2007 1099 earnings report from Google. It’s kind of difficult to make out when he holds it up to the camera but it appears to show that he made over $3 million just from people clicking on Google AdSense ads posted on his website(s?).

No real information here but it does introduce you to him and gives you the opportunity to visit BillMcIntosh.com where you can learn more about him and register for his free newsletter. While there, you may also want to add him to your MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter friends lists. That’s what I did!

In this 7:30 video Aaron Wall discusses why new internet marketers are best off starting marketing by creating a blog.

Many people reject the idea of Network Marketing (sometimes called Multi-Level Marketing) out of hand because they think it is some kind of “pyramid scheme.” In this 6:09 video, Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad) explains the benefits of Network Marketing as a business model.

In this 5:15 video Internet Marketing guru Jim Edwards teaches you how to build your email marketing list by publishing a free multimedia Mini Course.

If you are a complete novice when it comes to driving traffic to your website from search engines like Google, you ought to check out this short video.

This 2:08 video was produced by vm-people, a marketing company based in Berlin, Germany. It’s a creative piece of work that quickly explains what viral marketing is and how it differs from more traditional channels.

Oddly, though the video is in English, their website content is in German. The links on the pages however are in English. Huh? I’m sure that communicating with your target market in multiple languages helps build sales, but just one language at a time please!

In this video, Seth Godin gives you four mind-blowing examples of what works and what doesn’t when marketing a product. And he starts the show with an explanation of how sliced bread didn’t start out being the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Seth is a great presenter and a great thinker. This 18:58 video is definitely worth the investment of your time (not to mention the price of admission).