If you answered “Google,” you are . . . wrong. It’s Facebook and has been for a while now. Facebook is becoming the digital on ramp: Not only is it a place to see what your friends and colleagues are doing, it’s often the entry point to interact with your favorite brands or stores. I know if I’m looking to see if there’s a sale at any of my favorite stores, I check out their Facebook page first. Facebook is likely to have the most recent, topical promotions, contests and sales. Plus, a lot of businesses run Facebook-only specials.

For those of us old enough to remember AOL and its original “walled off” web model, it’s uncanny how much Facebook is sort of succeeding at that. You don’t have to go through Facebook to access content (the way AOL tried to force you) but you certainly can and because businesses are making their Facebook pages so engaging, Facebook itself IS becoming that digital gateway. Fascinating stuff!

Here are the top ten sites as ranked by Experian Hitwise for the week ending 11/12/2011.

Want more quick stats and useful info? Follow us on Facebook here.

Once in a great while, I send out an update. And by “once in a great while,” I mean something like “once a year.” A long time ago, I published an e-newsletter. Now I post tips here on the blog. (You can subscribe to it like a newsletter over on the right.)

It’s been a busy year at New Thought Marketing. Some highlights:

Mobile Apps

We’ve added mobile app development to our suite of services. Our first app (NameBuddy) is in the Apple app store and got a GREAT review on cnet. We’re currently in the early stages of development for a few more apps. As you’ve probably heard, more people are searching the Internet on their phones than on their computers now. Smartphone ownership and data usage have skyrocketed. There are so many opportunities for businesses to use mobile to increase their sales. We’re even testing out Facebook check-in deals for a physician practice client.

Mobile is probably the hottest and fastest-growing aspect of our business right now. We have a great development team, and our usual awesome designers and smart thinkers to help you develop a mobile strategy that works for you.

Social Media

We’re creating Facebook pages for clients (like this one) and running targeted contests and Facebook ads to drive engagement. We’ve seen strong results with Facebook ads. They’re inexpensive and offer endless targeting abilities. In a campaign we did last year for a major business association, Facebook was one of our best performing online ad outlets.

Online Reputation Management

If you haven’t claimed your business on Google Places yet, then quit reading this and go do it right now; it’ll only take you a few minutes. It will help you come up better on search results. Write a good description for Google Places and use that same description on other directory and review sites, like Yelp and Kudzu. (Make sure to claim your businesses on those sites, too.)

Then Google yourself and monitor your reviews on a regular basis (weekly for most of you). If you need help getting this all set up, let me know. We can do it for you or help you with it. We’ve had clients bring their laptops over and we divided up the list and got them set up in a few hours.

It’s a simple thing that many people put off but it’s really important you claim your pages and begin to ask your customers to write reviews. Word-of-mouth is still the top way to grow your business; increasingly, though, word-of-mouth is happening online. These are basic, easy tactics that every business should be doing.

Twitter

We’re still doing the occasional “Tweetorial,” helping business get set up on Twitter and learn the ins and outs of using it. Even if you don’t think you need Twitter, please go ahead and register for an account and grab your Twitter name (like www.twitter.com/sherean which is my personal one or www.twitter.com/newthoughtmktg) so that nobody else claims it. Same thing goes for Facebook. You want to set up your page and claim your vanity URL. (One minor hiccup with Facebook: you have to have 25 followers to your page before you can claim your company name/URL, assuming it’s available. You can probably ask your friends to follow you so you hit that platform quickly.)

Google+

The short answer is: wait. They haven’t rolled out their business offering yet. I do have lots of invites if you want to try it out and see what all the cool kids are doing.

YouTube

Video is a great way to allow prospects to get to know you. Did you know you can set up a branded channel on YouTube (like we’ve done here)? You can then embed videos on your website. The videos don’t have to be fancy. Just try not to say “um” or “you know” too many times and you’ll be fine! (I have a tendency to scratch my nose and play with my hair too much. So irritating!)

How to Keep Up with All This

There are a lot of inexpensive, effective marketing opportunities out there but it is daunting to keep up with them all and figure out which ones will give you a good R.O.I. We try to post links to smart how-to articles on our Facebook page, so follow us there if Facebook is your thing; we also opine on our blog. You can subscribe to our blog like a newsletter or it’s even available now in the Kindle store if you want to read it there!

Take good care,

Sherean and the team at New Thought Marketing

E-commerce sales are growing by about 19% per year globally (10% per in the States). Amazon is the top e-retailer, followed by Staples (who knew?), then Apple. That, and a whole bunch more in the infographic below:

He’s been accused of felony assault for attacking his wife in December, 2009. His previous wife requested a restraining order after he threatened to kill her. He hires prostitutes (or “paid escorts”) and flaunts his drug and alcohol abuse. Can you imagine if Charlie Sheen worked at your company and did any of those things? I don’t care if he was our top producer, he would have been fired at any company I worked for, and I’ve worked for some that looked the other way a LOT. (OK, maybe WCW would have let him stay, but I digress.)

So what’s it take to get fired these days? Threaten a woman? Nah. That’s kid’s stuff. TALK BAD ABOUT YOUR BOSS? Oh no you didn’t. Apparently, that is the line in the sand that CBS and Warner Brothers drew.

The New York Times nails it here.

Advertising is usually one of the first things businesses cut during a recession and one of the last things they bring back. So it is encouraging to see that overall ad spend was up 8.7% in 3rd quarter 2010. It wasn’t just the Fortune 1,000 driving the growth, either; small businesses are spending more, too.

Yesterday, we defined positioning and explained why it’s critical for your business. It is probably the most important thing you can do to grow your business. In fact, is the foundation upon which all your marketing and business development efforts are built.

Still unsure? Let me give you some examples. When you think of Volvo, what one word comes to mind? Was it “safety?” Volvo owns that attribute. If Volvo were to come out with a sports car, it would just seem wrong. They’ve figured out that there is enough market share doing safety. They don’t need to do speed.

Now, think about Target vs. Wal-Mart. Where are you going for stylish dorm accessories? Target, right? Who has the lowest prices? Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has tried to roll out designer lines the way Target has, but the impression hasn’t stuck. People have it firmly in their minds that Wal-Mart equals cheap, not necessarily stylish.

All right, let me give you some local examples. The recruiter that specializes in sales management positions in the Southeast. Think that’s too restrictive? Think again. When she’s at a networking function, it is easy for her to explain what she does and easy for the person she just met to remember. Much easier than “general recruiting.” The security company that is the only one in town with nothing but 5-star reviews on Kudzu. (Much stronger to be that specific than to say: “we have great customer service.”)

So before you spend another dollar on a website or a brochure, take some time to figure out who you are. Your marketing dollars will go much farther when you have a focused message.

If you were to ask me to name the most important thing you can do to grow your business in 2011, I would probably tell you to figure out who you are and who you want to be when you grow up. Sure, I might suggest you develop deeper relationships with your customers through social networking and other tools. But just like it’s difficult to have a romantic relationship without having a strong sense of self, the same is doubly true for business.

We define positioning as the one simple statement that sums up who you are and what makes you unique. It’s important that your differentiator is a meaningful one. I often joke that New Thought Marketing is the only consulting firm in town whose founder is a red-headed, half-Persian female. That’s unique. It’s different. Heck, it might even be memorable. But is it MEANINGFUL? Of course not.

And here’s the kicker: if you don’t define yourself, your competition will define you. The minute one of your competitors claims to be the “fastest,” you are by default, slow. The minute they claim to be first to market with something, you are behind.

Once you have a good handle on who you are, it makes it so much easier to develop strong, effective marketing pieces. We build everything around communicating that differentiator in both words and visuals.

Sometimes, this is difficult. Often, you do the same thing as your competitors, only you’re “better,” or have better people, etc. Dig deeper. If you really do have the best talent, then you must have a great story behind how you’re able to attract and retain such top folks. Maybe your positioning strategy is hidden in that story.

Tomorrow, we’ll give you some examples to get you thinking.

Is that like an IED?  Not exactly.  IMP, that’s an Internet Marketing Professional.  While we may be able to extract significant “damage” to a client’s competitor base, no road-side bombs are employed.

It was a sort of an epiphany that some people may not understand what an internet marketer actually does, and the mind through which we operate.  Here’s my answer:

Intelligent – Internet marketing professionals are intelligent.  We have to know what the current trends are in the market, what’s going to impact a targeted market, and what the new strategies and technologies are to make that impact.

Methodical – Believe it or not, there actually is a method to our madness.  While some people just throw out marketing efforts, hoping to make something work, Internet Marketing Professionals are armed with best practices, current market trends, and a plethora of analysis to make sure the efforts made on behalf of our clients are successful.

Poetic – Yes, poetic is a great description of an Internet Marketing Professional.  What we do can be compared to writing a great poem.  It may never end up in a classic literature textbook, but our goals are the same.  Poets and IMP’s are both driven by what will move someone.  In the case of Internet Marketing Professionals, we want to move someone to a specific action, and that is practical poetry (even if it doesn’t rhyme).

Have you taken the time to talk with an Internet Marketing Professional to discuss how to move your business forward?  If not, reach out, and let’s make something great happen for you!

Written by Josh Decker

Last week, I introduced you to Josh, our new search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, and I promised you we’d be rolling out search engine packages. We’ve put together basic packages where we make sure your pages are set up with the appropriate tags and content/copy. Our packages are a la carte so if you only need us to do the set-up, we can. Or if you need monthly link building, we have that, too.

We’ve also heard from a lot of you that you’d like a Facebook page, but aren’t sure how to set it up. Take a look at the pages we’ve done for Atlanta Women’s Specialists and Happy Baby Solutions. Looking for a more custom look? Take a look at this custom welcome page Kemba, our creative director, designed.