It’s important to remember to keep the human touch when you build your business.  Ustream can help you do that.

Building your business with the internet can mean that you gain your lead, build trust with them, complete a purchase with them and never interact personally.

Sometimes this works well for people.  They want to buy what they need and move on.

But when you business involves service (and even if it doesn’t), it is a good thing to remember peraonal, human interactions.

Ustream.tv, a website which allows you to stream live video to the internet in real time is a great solution.

With Ustream, you can interact with your customers, answer their questions and build your rapport with the;m.

I’ve made a short video on  how Ustream.tv can help your business.

When your customers have a question, need to see a demonstration, or just want to see who your are, Ustream is a great solution.

And if you’re feeling tech-challenged or don’t know how to apply Ustream to internet Attraction Marketing, I recommend Renegade Professional for your one stop shop for internet marketing training.

Social Media is the hot new thing on the internet.  New social media sites are emerging all the time.  But what is the social media definition?

What is the Social Media Definition?

Social media are sites where individuals can interact online.  They publish content in little chunks and make it available for everyone to see.  This means that the definition of social media includes a broad array of sites–from YouTube, EzineArticles.com, and flickr to HubPages, and Squidoo.  Comments, blogs, and forums are all social media sites.  Even wiki sites fall under this heading.  Anything where individuals are interacting.  Their interactions become content for the host site.

What is the Significance of Social Media?

Social media sites allow everyone to put their two cents into the pot of collective knowledge.  Want to write about “Top 5 Reasons to Enjoy a Long Drive to Work“?  elisabethkcmo at HubPages already did.  Maybe you have a new angle on that topic that you want to add–make a comment on her HubPage and join in the discussion.

With social media, every person has a voice.  Every person can make their own YouTube video and show the world their own unique vision.  Every person can write an expert article about their own unique hobby.  And then the online community reacts when they make comments and link to the content.

And with all that self expression, little tiny microscopic niche interests emerge.  Every person who likes videos of ant hills will find each other on YouTube.  You may have been the only person in town who collect clown noses before, but now you find there’s a world wide community of clown nose collectors.

Social media sites are changing the way we view knowledge, democratizing it and changing the idea of what an “expert” is.  On the internet, everyone is an expert and every one can weigh in on the issues.

The definition of social media sites would seem to be just what it says–social.  But what’s interesting is that social media is changing the way we do business as well.

How do Social Media Sites Benefit Businesses?

There are a number of ways social media sites can benefit businesses.

• They are a free, and easy way to publish content online which builds your credibility as an expert.
• The social media sites have a lot of traffic and this gives your media exposure.
• Publishing on social media sites can build links back to your website, increasing its worthiness to the search engine spiders.
• Social media sites are great ways to build relationships with your customers because they are so social.  Get your customers commenting on how to use your latest product and when you answer their questions online, you’ve built their trust that the product is for them.
• And best of all, social media sites give you one more way to attract customers and build your list.

In the new business world, a business must have a strong relationship with its customers.  Anonymous ads on a billboard do not build customer loyalty.  To counteract the anonymity of the internet, businesses must interact and communicate with their customers.  Social media sites provide the means for that communication.

Your email is full of emails from marketing gurus.  All of them teach many techniques, from PPC to building a blog, from emailing to properly constructing a website.  How do you know where to put your money?

You need to learn complete marketing strategies, not just marketing techniques.

To learn how to build your business, you need to think like a marketer.

A marketer understands that a business and its message are not separate.  The way you do business, the platform you use, the business model all reflect your marketing strategies.

REI has well informed sales people and printed sheets comparing the features of all their products.  When you buy a kayak from them, you feel like you made an informed decision.  REI is its marketing strategy.

A local kayak store, Rutabaga has a beautiful handmade wooden kayak hanging from its ceiling.  They talk to you about the beauty of kayaking as well as the features of their products.  Their motto is “We don’t sell boats, we sell time on the water.”  They have a lot of advertising about being locally owned for more than 25 years.  They sell the experience of kayaking.

Both stores are very similar, but both appeal to different crowds.  If I want a techie, informational experience, I go to REI.  If I want to feel good about buying locally, if I want to chat about the best places to kayak locally, I would go to Rutabaga.

Each store embodies their marketing.

So how can you learn marketing strategies?

Step One:  Download Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto

The free Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto gives the fundamental concepts of attraction marketing–giving valuable information to attract customers to you.  This type of marketing means that customers come to you, they request your help.  You don’t chase people down; you don’t badger them to buy.  Just like REI and Rutabaga, you provide your customers with the information they seek and the experience they desire.

The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto is a course book on marketing strategies that make you proud.  You can sleep at night knowing that you are valuable to your customers.  And the most of the strategies are free or nearly free, and very doable even for beginners.

How successful is your writing?

If you have trouble getting your readers to take action, you need advanced business writing skills.

Too often, business writing is writer-centric.  You write about what matters to you about your product.  You write about what you want your customers to do.  You write to show how much you know so that you look good to your customers.

How’s it working for you?

Let’s take a moment to think about the real world.  Have you had experiences talking to someone who can only talk about themselves?  They may have interesting things to say, and you may enjoy talking with them for a while, but when you leave the conversation, you realize that they never once asked about you.

Imagine this person even more.  If you do manage to mention something going on in your own life, they change the subject to something similar that happened to them.  And then, they give advice that they could have used, but often it is completely unhelpful to you.

Those people can not imagine what you need.  They may have the perfect advice for you, but you’ll never know it because they don’t listen long enough to you to know what you need.

These people need advanced conversation skills.

Advanced business writing involves learning to write so that the other person feels heard.  You write as if you are talking to a real person with real, exact needs.  You write about solving the problems they have–not giving the solutions you want to give.

This seems easy.  It seems fundamental.

But advanced business writing is tricky because we have so many conversations going on with ourselves that we can’t hear the other person.

When I began building a website to sell essential oils a few years ago, I wrote what I wanted to hear.

For me essential oils are medicinal.  They are natural.  They are powerful.  And they are more convenient that other herbal remedies I have used.

I didn’t have any major health concerns, so I was enamored with the idea of these natural, powerful, medicinal oils.

But my readers didn’t care about that.  They thought natural was good, sure, but getting rid of allergy symptoms was most important.  If you could do it naturally that was an extra bonus.

My readers did care about convenience but they assumed that all medicines should be convenient.  They were used to taking a very convenient pill and saying that essential oils were more convenient than making an infusion had no meaning.  They would never use infusions.  Convenience was not a selling point.

I didn’t know my readers and while I wrote great things about the essential oils, I never got my readers into action.  They just didn’t care what I had to say.

Advanced business writing, really getting into the heart and mind of your clients is a necessary skill for building your business.  It will attract clients to you and build loyalty to you.  This attraction marketing, like good conversation, will make the reader feel important, understood and appreciated.

If your content could use some advanced business writing skills, I urge you to listen to this interview with David Garfinkel.  David teaches copywriting (writing which call the reader to action) in a simple to understand and implement way.

When I began my business, I was schooled in all the classic ways to find customers.  The basic theme was GET IN THEIR FACE.

I was taught to approach people in the grocery store.

I was told to put my business card in magazines in the newsstands.

I was told to have samples with me everywhere so that if I was in line at an amusement  park, I could speak with people while my kids went on the roller coaster.

I bought newspaper ads.  I went to expos.  I made cold calls.

And in the end, I spent hundreds of dollars making people run away from me.

Marketing by Un-Attraction–the Old Standard

One of the greatest marketers of our time, Seth Godin, in his book “Permission Marketing” describes in the evolution of marketing.

In the old way of marketing, which Seth calls “interruption marketing”, all marketing is in your face.  Commercials come on during your favorite show; billboards are placed to block your view of the countryside; and of course, you pitch your products in the grocery store line.

In this new age of internet, now we as marketers need to get people’s permission to market to them.  We must earn the right to market to them or they will vote with their exit click.  We can no longer use interruption marketing.

Marketing by Attraction–The New, Better Marketing

Seth Godin describes the new way of marketing “Permission Marketing”, and Ann Seig picks up on this and carries it farther to “Attraction Marketing”.

Attraction marketing is finding customers by attracting the people who are looking for you.

You are a beacon that they follow.

You provide answers that they need.

You make yourself useful so that people trust you and the products you offer.

In attraction marketing, you are not convincing people that they need to buy from you, you are helping them and they are grateful.

How do you become a beacon?

You must discover what solutions people are looking for, provide the answers, and make yourself “findable”.

And “findable” in this day and age means learning how to use the internet for your business.

Ann Sieg has made this whole process clear in her new  free e-book “The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto“.

This is a book for everyone who wants to grow their business–but not chase down their customers.

Find out:

• How to stand out among your competition
• How to get the attention of your customer base
• Why using the internet to reach your customers is vital to your business
• How to become trusted by your customers so that they come to you for advice
• What is your most important marketing job
• What is one of the best ways to increase your lead flow to your business
• 133 ways to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Ann Sieg provides an excellent book explaining Attraction Marketing and why it is absolutely necessary to understand these concepts and implement them to be successful in business today.

I highly recommend her free e-book “The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto” to get started attracting your business to you.