Perhaps you spent a lot of time searching for just the right product only to have it disappear from the shelves never to return.  Sure you complained, but that did little to get the manufacturers attention. 

Now, thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, consumers are fighting back and this time, they’re getting heard!  Customers that want certain discontinued items brought back are finding them again through select markets.

“It’s literally reshaping how the market is driven,” said Karen Grant, a senior global industry analyst with the NPD Group, a market research company in Port Washington, N.Y. “Social media is changing how products are being developed, marketed and launched.”

Each portal has a domain name such as www.comstar.biz.  If you wanted to buy a different domain name, under a shared hosting environment, you would then need to buy another hosting package.  This could become costly for your business.  When you use a multiple DNN portal system, you have a single hosting account for your many domain names. Your site will have a portal for each domain name.

DNN Skins are made up of code that determines what the site will look like.  It’s the website’s look and feel.  Pre-made skins are templates and they can be bought online or web designer can customize one for you.  The skin is applied throughout the site so that all pages are consistent.

DNN is an open source CMS that can also be used as a web application.

DNN provides great benefits to developers, end users and decision makers to support a variety of web business goals.

Advantages for Developers

DNN is built on a Microsoft platform. It’s easy to customize and test apps by using an open API.

DotNetNuke also allows changing the appearance of your web site by adding DNN apps. There are as many as 10,000 commercial apps in the DNN product Store.  You can even build your own custom application.

Advantages for End Users

DNN is an easy to use CMS.  New users can learn to change content quickly, without extensive training or IT support.   The editing tools are powerful and intuitive.

Advantages for Decision Makers

DNN has low start-up costs because it is open source.  The Microsoft platform means your business can get begin implementing your ideas sooner rather than later.

DNN is easy for your employees to make changes and keep the site secure.  New modules can be added such as video, photo galleries, testimonials, and FAQs.

Successful web writing needs to be short, objective, and to the point.

Brief and to the point

A general rule to follow when writing for the web is that the word count should be half that of traditional marketing content.  Your goal is to have people find the main point of each paragraph as quickly as possible. Too much “flowery” language will turn them off.

Organized

Good web copy is organized as well as concise.  Divide your content into small pieces that follow a logical line of thought.  Bullets are useful and can easily summarize your message.  Keep your main message in the main 1/3 of the homepage.   Visitors will scroll down to find more details, not to find what is most meaningful.

Useful

Although a website can attract a visitor’s attention using visuals such as photos and/or videos, headlines are still important.  Headlines should still be used to “sell”.  Make sure the headline accurately portrays what’s coming up in the article or the next  page.  There’s nothing more annoying for the reader than to click on a link expecting to get more of the same information and finding something completely different.

Think SEO while you write

Today’s search engine algorithms are out to catch “the cheater”.  Don’t stuff your web content with keywords or you’ll get penalized.  Consider your keywords carefully and make them very relevant to your business, and your website.  Include them in the title and body of your article/page. Your copywriter should use keyword tools to find the relevant phrases that get searched in high percentages.

Hyperlinking

Web copywriters should understand the function and importance of hyperlinking. Hyperlinks deliver information to the reader without slowing them down.  Let’s say you point out an important statistic, but you don’t want to take too long to explain the details.  You simply link to the article or source that further explains it.  Opening that link to a new tab or window is user friendly and allows the reader to get back to the main page quickly.

Tip #1:  Set up to receive Google Alerts. Google Alerts crawl the internet for any reference to a topic you are tracking and will alert you in an email.  Let’s say, for example, you want to track your company name or product.  Anytime they are discussed, written about or posted, you are alerted.  The email updates are free and includes a link to that blog, website, news article or video that mentions that item. You can track multiple topics or keywords.  You can even track your competition!

Tip #2:  Always monitor your web analytics data. Stats are crucial when you want to learn detailed information about your website visitors.  Monitor results of your internet marketing campaigns.  You’ll want to know which sites are sending traffic to your site.  A better understanding of where your traffic is coming from will help you choose the right way to monitor social networks effectively.  For example, if a lot of your traffic comes from Facebook,  you’ll want to spend more time using those services.

Tip #3:  Now, you can search Facebook! There is a search box on the top right hand side of each Facebook page.  Search for your company’s name or product to see if anyone is talking about it.  The search engine, provided by Bing, will soon be integrated with Facebook updates and will put public updates into Bing’s search results.

Tip #4:  Speaking of searching social media, search Twitter and monitor any conversations about your business.  Bing is indexing Twitter updates and soon Google’s Social Search will be able to search Twitter updates, too.  TweetDeck is a Twitter tool that will help you monitor real-time tweets using a specific key word of your choice.

Tip #5:  BackType is similar to Google Alerts.  Many use BackType to monitor blogs.  You can receive emails with links to comments that include the topics and keywords you want to monitor.  You can go to those blogs and join in the conversation by commenting and linking back to your website or corporate blog.

Using multi media as a marketing tool on the internet includes things like videos, photos, and audio recordings.  Learning and implementing these types of things can be challenging for small businesses.  The up-side is they can provide great social media marketing results.

Tip #1:  YouTube is good social site for small businesses. If you already post videos to your blog, upload them to YouTube as you may reach a wider audience. You can now grab the “embed” code and put the video content in your blog posts or on your website. YouTube has the analytics tools to help you monitor the effectiveness of your video content.

Tip #2:  Consider opening a Flickr account for your business and post photos of your products, your customers, or both.  Flickr is site that allows you to share photos with others and allows you to participate in discussion groups that connect you to local markets.

Tip #3:  Another interesting multi media tool is BlogTalkRadio.  This is a great way to speak directly to your target audience and customers. Get creative and have fun with it!

Tip #1:  Connect your company’s Twitter account to its Facebook account so that tweets will appear as status updates there. This is very efficient because you Tweet and update your Facebook fans at the same time!

Tip #2:  Connect your company’s LinkedIn profile to your company’s blog. LinkedIn lets you publish small bits of your blog posts. This is an application that will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts.

Tip #3:  Install Twitter tools into your blog. I recommend you use the TweetMeme retweet button on your blogs.  This encourages your users to tweet about the blog posts. There is also ShareThis that allows your blog readers to share content on many different social networks all at once.

Tip #4:  Leverage your time and maximize your content! When you post videos on YouTube, be sure to blog about those videos.  And then, tweet about the blog posts on Twitter (which in turn should show up on facebook).   In the end, you’ve taken one thing and pushed it across multiple social networks.

That’s easy cross-marketing.