Communication technology continues to improve from mere audio to visual connection with the introduction of video phones and the development of more compact video conferencing systems. While the technology of video phone conferencing is popularly appreciated in the business sector, the recognition for its value has also broken through the institutions of learning.

The concept of distance learning has been around for centuries and it has evolved alongside improvements in communication technology. In the past, books, workbooks, homework and other learning hand-outs were delivered back and forth through horseback and then snail mail. With the advent of the computer era, distance learning methods became more real-time with email and chat technology. Now, with low-cost video phone equipment and VoIP technology the classroom experience is extended to virtually any place and synchronized to any time.

Video conferencing has become a very helpful tool in distance learning.

1). Allows for a more interactive education. Early and modern educators believe that education, the imparting and acquiring of knowledge and abilities can be made absolute only through the exchange of many ideas. Individuals learn from one another. It is in this regard where video phone technology outstandingly equalizes the insufficiency of a remote setting. Video conferencing makes distance learning more fun, more alive and effective since the remote teacher and student can actually see, talk, react and respond to one another on-screen in real-time. The heightened sensory awareness of seeing and hearing a real person connecting to you always results in a more enriching and more interpersonal teaching and learning experience.

2). Grants access to opportunities for outside sources of information. Perhaps the most practical advantage of video phone conferencing is that it makes possible the development of a new skill, practice, or way of doing things using previously inaccessible resources. In the past, higher education or simply studying a new language was beyond the reach of many people considering the impracticality of far away distances, the inconveniences of taking a trip and other costly expenses a person would incur for the sake of learning. Nowadays, video conferencing has made it possible for experts in specialized fields to simply hook up into the video call and provide mentoring, students can take a trip to anywhere around Asia or any part of the world and gain knowledge of a new culture directly in the classrooms, students in rural areas can have the benefit of advanced studies from trained teachers in urban schools. Numerous opportunities are now available to nearly everyone with the advancements in distance learning methods.

3). Permits the use of mixed forms of information exchange. Unlike in the past where distance learning has been limited to print materials delivered by postal mail,  the newest technology in distance learning makes use of many other approaches to exchanging information by means of images, graphs, sign language interpretation, desktop add-ons and application sharing.  These new forms of online teaching have greatly assisted in closing in the online communication gap as both remote student and teacher  can clearly describe a point, convey ideas,  collaborate and further the 2-way interaction between one another. These approaches also benefit in such a way that they impart technological know-how where books, written materials or telephones cannot.

Distance learning programs rule out any excuse for lack of knowledge and education. Backed up with the technology it has today to connect people from far and wide, distance learning is now commonplace to this generation, easily available to almost anyone in almost anyplace at almost anytime.

5LINX Enterprises Inc. supports a number of Distance Learning programs across the United States through its Linx for Learning program. If you would like to know more about Linx for Learning or would like to start a VideoPhone Mentoring program in your community, please contact Jason Grilli at Perfect Pitch Marketing Group.

Video marketing and blogging is an extra winning combination to educate, entertain and connect to get effective online branding, prospecting, marketing, building expertise and growing your network.

Videos don’t need to be recorded with expensive equipment. Quality is as much about the information the video contains and not the superficial effects. Good quality videos are just like high-quality written content. To be effective as a marketing tool, video content will need to be well thought-out, adequately informative and convincing.

Think through the following guidelines prior to recording:

1) Target to your market.

• Who is your target audience? For your message to hit home it needs to be heard by receptive listeners.
• What do they need? What information can you give them in relation to your brand message?
• How do you connect to them? Your online personality will need to be expressed here.

2) Give attention to value entertainment rather than selling.

• What is the purpose of your video? What do you want your audience to do after giving them some information you think they need? Your message needs to be convincing enough to be able to convert your audience.
• How is your video valuable to your audience? What improvement, what help, what profit, what benefit do they gain from watching it?
• While you need to sound convincing and powerful, you need to do it with good-humor, holding their attention the entire short-span of your video.

3) Highlight audience participation.

Effective marketing values the customer. To add value to their viewing, get your audience involved. Make them feel that they are a part of something. Videos are interactive by nature so it’s easier to keep the communication two-way.

• Solicit viewer response by asking them to rate your video, leave comments, suggest opinions. It would be way cooler if they reply back to you in videos.
• Feature a blog contest to get your audience to share their own videos on a common theme.
• Ask them to submit lists of “Top Videos” or “Favorite Videos” of most helpful online business tools, topics, related blogs, etc.
• For more effective product endorsements, create videos of  live customer testimonials of people who have actually used your products

4) Grab attention, then maintain and sustain.

Create a series of vlogs to prolong interest and keep your audience coming back for more. Just like written content, if a topic is too long, break your videos down into several parts and post them in succession.

• Make videos about progress reports, if you’ve installed a new plug-in for your blog that you think can be very helpful, make a video to talk about it. Make another video for a how-to tutorial, then a third video to report your progress.  I’m sure your audience will stick around to find out if the plug-in worked for you or not.
• For more fascinating product presentations, create a string of videos to promote a range of products movie-trailer style, spotlighting one product at a time.

Video marketing is all about creating video content that will attract and engage prospects. The whole point of using video is that it’s a different way, at times maybe an even more absorbing way, than written content, to capture the attention of targeted consumers. Make them listen to a strong message so as to convert them to actual buyers.

There are blogs that put video onto their mostly text blogs, and some blogs that will use text on their mostly vlog sites. There are a that few will make use of the two just about equally. However which way, video blogging or vlogging, is another creative way to take your blog to the next level.

The world is all set for more videos on blogs as we see video sharing sites on the rise everywhere and YouTube taking the #2 rank in search results next to Google.

To me, recording a vlog is very much like preparing for a TV or radio interview or public speaking appearance. In order to successfully get the right message across:

1. You need to sound powerful while engaging and entertaining your audience
2. You need to consider overall vlog quality output, because a poorly made vlog takes a direct hit on your brand image

I learned a few tips along the way as I got the hang of video recording:

1) Grab attention quickly and prolong interest.

• Keep the vlog short and direct by delivering your message within three to five minutes
• Hold attention by using a strong voice, change up your tone and pitch so that it’s not a dull monotone
• Keep facial expressions subtle: Smile, move your head and shoulders from time to time and use your eyes to emphasize your point

2). Look professional and comfortable.

• Portray yourself in a good way by dressing up properly, appearing clean and neatly put together
• Talk to your audience pleasantly, come across as agreeable and good-humored
• Whether you’re standing, sitting or reclining, position your stance in a relaxed and composed manner
• Stay focused on the video, as it will show if you are distracted

3) Prepare before recording.

• Rehearse before a take so that you sound articulate. Gather the whole idea of your message together and study what you need to say, otherwise you’ll falter and hesitate due to a lack of words.  A script works, but memorize it to keep things natural.
• Check equipment – Make sure batteries are charged, AC adapter attached, lighting is adequate, sound is clear, ensure the camera is steady (use a tripod if needed) so you don’t catch wobbly images.

4)  Record and prepare for publication.

• You can’t perfect a take at one go. It’s best to take several takes of footage and then edit using video editing software to change around scenes, correct sound levels, add in music, effects, titles and links to get one quality video recording.
• Post your video on your blog, on your sales page and share to other video-sharing sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, MetaCafe, Google Video, Yahoo Video, Revver, Vimeo, MSN’s Soapbox, to name a few

Blog content shouldn’t be just all text. Short and straightforward videos are just as powerful and even more engaging than text, since the greater part of the population like to watch than read. Try adding video together with your blog content as part of your entire online marketing efforts.

As an internet entrepreneur, I use Twitter and Facebook as part of my online marketing plan. In addition to these two social network sites I also use YouTube.

I know how YouTube videos can be a great time sucker sometimes. I go in there thinking to watch one video, but always end up watching several. Maybe because it’s easier and more amusing to watch than read, plus the TV-like craving that fuels attention is what makes YouTube a very influential and effective communication tool to educate, entertain and connect.

I find YouTube very useful as a communication tool to promote my baseball activities and as a business tool for branding and to market and advertise my products.

1. It’s fun and simple, but it also challenges my creativity as I get to mix in video, music and marketing all in one medium
2. It’s cost-effective. All I need is a videocam and a great marketing plan and I’m all good to set-up and broadcast
3. YouTube traffic is huge. It’s currently the third largest site on the internet

Here are some of the ways I get the most out of YouTube as a marketing and branding tool for my business:

Setting up your YouTube business account

• For great branding, it’s best to use your name or the name of your company for the user-name as this will be displayed in the URL of your YouTube account (youtube.com/profilename)
• For transparency, complete your business profile information. Put in a professional-looking picture or company logo, use appropriate keywords to describe your business, and put in a link back to your site in the Website section.

Optimize your video content

Focus on the following pointers:

• For better search results, use video titles and video file names that are more keyword-rich and have more specific descriptions about your kind of business/product/service
• To drive volume traffic to your site, always upload your videos into YouTube with a link back to your website from the video page or put it within the video clip to get more exposure back to your own business site.
• Use tags that are appropriate to related videos, use as many tags you can relate to it
• Tag your videos using the same keywords you used in the video title/filename/description

The Video Channel is a great branding feature

Edit your channel in your profile page by changing the title, set the type of channel to label your business, fill-up the business description using keywords, add in related tags, allow comments, upload a custom background to polish your company image.

Using the YouTube marketing strategy

The marketing strategy of YouTube is to gain a bulk amount of viewers to cause hype and action within the video clip page. The more video views you have, the easier it is for the video to go viral. Therefore, as in any social media site, your YouTube strategy is to get those numbers and connections.

• Interact with popular related videos by posting comments on their videos or channels or rating their videos
• Generate interest to your YouTube page by making lists of favorite Videos or YouTube Videos
• Share the video using social networking sites. Share among your YouTube friends and their friends inside the YouTube community. Share through email

Measuring your video’s success

As with all other social media channels, YouTube is no exception. You need to understand how your audience responds to your content so that you know what’s working and what is not so that there is a guide for improving future content to target it to the right market. In addition to direct viewer feedback you get from video ratings and comments, YouTube has Insights to give stats to users. All the data is available for free.

• Insights – helps you identify total views, viewer demographics, video popularity, video life-cycle
• Forum Community – shows the expressed viewer opinions about your video by means of their rating, comments, and the number of times the video is tagged as favorite
• Insight Hot Spots –  helps you identify which parts of your video get watched a lot and which parts get skipped so you can analyze viewer interests and attention span

YouTube as one part of your online marketing strategy can really be a valuable source for website traffic.

The changing face of Social Media can make you the king of the business jungle.

It’s a running commentary that with it’s population of over 400 million active users worldwide, if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world. Those numbers, for one thing, make Facebook a more useful method of communication and marketing tool for businesses than other social media site. Plus, it has all these other incentives as well:

• Zero-cost to set-up and get free website traffic
• Facebook has the professional quality of LinkedIn, but it’s more relaxed and fun setting makes it less intimidating to connect with people
• Facebook has a Twitter-like simplicity in that it is an open platform where communication is free-flowing, the “Comments Box” allows users to easily comment, the “Live Stream” allows users to share and post updates in real-time
• Facebook can be an expansion of your blog or website as the interactive pages can be publicly seen by Facebook users and non-users, the HTML box can help a business get their own content onto their Facebook page, the simple tab applications allows the posting of events, photos, videos and music giving you the ability to create custom landing pages to promote certain events

Facebook can be one way to grow a business because of it’s ripple-like networking and advertising global reach, but like any of the other popular social media sites, a strategic marketing plan to target your promotional efforts to relevant customers is key to success.

1).  Start off a professional image with your Facebook Business Fan Page

For great branding, customize your Facebook fan page just like your website’s pages so that customers relate you with just one consistent identity throughout the web and can easily form brand awareness on product details, special offers, and business events in just one glance of your page.

• Fill out the information page with complete contact details, such as your physical office address, phone numbers, email address, web link, operating hours, and company stats.
• Attach your business logo in the profile picture
• Fan interactions with your page show up in News Feeds of their Friends, so actively use the wall features, photo, video, discussion, links and events tabs to interact with customers for greater branding exposure, to announce product line-ups and  new sales offers, create new buzz for the business and communicate effectively with them to value customer loyalty and manage customer expectations.

2).  Promote and advertise non-stop

Remember that with social media it’s very important to intermingle on a regular basis to build your community. Here are a few tips to promote your page on Facebook:

• Join Facebook Groups and Communities ~ Connect with groups or communities that will benefit your business to boost business exposure and gain potential customers. Become a fan of well-known experts in your field, you can gain exposure through a working association with them. The online world is always receptive to anything new and exciting.  Collaborate on innovative events/promotions with competitors or non-competitive businesses, either through sponsorships or joint ventures, which will create buzz within and outside the Facebook community.
• Share your page information on other websites by leaving your Page Badge, which contains your contact information on email and forum signatures or as a sidebar on your own website or blog
• “Suggest the Page” to your friends and have them invite their “Friends” to “Become a Fan”
• Use Facebook ads to promote your page. Facebook offers a range of cheap advertising programs to businesses with a limited online advertising budget. Find these ad programs on the business page when you click on “Promote Page with an Ad”

3). Monitor Fan Base Traffic

The Facebook Insights link provides businesses a basic structure for tracking their fan base. The data here will help you grow your fan base as it gives you insights on total page visits, how content and posting frequency influence fan interactions, where your fans come from and what sorts of fans to target.

Imagine the countless possibilities for your business that lie within the Twitter population alone:

“And, with 75 million total accounts, an active user base of around 20% still leaves around 15 million highly active tweeters,”  see complete statistics here: The Metric System A blog About Data by RJMetrics. Plus, projections are already set to more than 26 million active Twitter users by end of 2010 (Mashable The Social Media Guide).

Those substantial numbers spell growth, and it’s potential growth no wise business person can simply ignore. If Twitter is not a part of your business marketing strategy now, I suggest that it should be, so you too can ride along with it’s growth.

Here are really good business tips to put into operation when marketing in Twitter so that it can be a really great business tool:

#1: SET UP A TWITTER ACCOUNT FOR BUSINESS ONLY

To help in branding, use a Twitter account with your business name. Don’t forget to put in the link to your business website. Separate what’s business and what’s personal. Make one Twitter account for business and another account for personal use and never link both to each other.

#2: EXPRESS SOME PERSONALITY

If you come across as too business-like, you’ll be seen as too stiff and hard-core and that turns people off. When you’re too open, especially when you tweet nonsense like “…eating jellybeans now,” or “…in bed and reading the papers,” you also come out as silly to your customers and peers. Set a balance between professional and approachable, an expert in the field who is open-minded and easy to talk to. Show a bit of personality to convey that you are real, share your thoughts on familiar topics like music, sports or relevant current events and give just enough personal information to begin rapport and maintain the business relationships.

#3: CREATE A TWITTER MARKETING STRATEGY

A single tweet can make and break your business image, so I think that from the very start you need to have as much control on how you influence people’s opinions about you and your business. In order for Twitter to be a really successful business tool for you, go into it with a studied approach using a pre-planned strategy.

If you have more than one online business venture, then you should manage different Twitter business accounts for each. There are great tools you can use to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Keep them all separate from one another so that you’re organized and you don’t confuse your followers so that your promotion and communication efforts specific to one business are focused to just that particular group.

Establish the following while planning your Twitter marketing strategy:

• · Target audience – Who do you target to be your followers? Where do you find them? How do you tweet to them? Who do you follow?
• · Manning – Who manages the account? How often and how much time should be spent Twittering? Guidelines should be ready in case staff members need to deal with negative customer reactions.
• · Interaction style – Replies and interactions will be decided in view of what business details can be shared to the public.
• · Monitoring results – What are your preset factors to determine success in Twitter? Is your Twitter strategy effective? Which areas of the plan are working and which are not? What Twitter tools do you use to measure stats?

#4: USE THE HELP OF TWITTER APPS AND TOOLS

There are very useful free and low-cost third party apps and services that work together with Twitter. Use them to get the most out of Twitter as a business marketing tool. Some examples:

• Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are desktop applications to help organize your tweets, manage multiple Twitter and other social media accounts, schedule tweets, track statistics,
• hashtags helps to increase your Tweet visibility, use Tagalus as a dictionary for hashtags, Twubs can help distribute information on a hashtag

#5: FOLLOW TWITTER DO’S AND DON’T’S

Twitter is designed to be a very open forum, but there are unwritten rules with which the Twitter community abide by to control misuse and abuse.

• Potential customers respond positively to a complete Twitter business profile as it conveys transparency, so put up your company logo or personal picture and give very clear details about what your business is all about.
• To perfect your business image, it’s a good idea to have your staff (especially the one’s managing your business account) read up on some Twitter etiquette on how to follow and un-follow, replying using @ replies or using a D message (direct message) instead, and using acronyms that people can easily figure out.

#6: TWEET ONLY ON WORK DAYS

Twitter may be hot, but people do have a life and they have other things to attend to than business in Twitter.  Send business tweets only on work days. Show consideration for weekends and holidays.

One very good marketing tip is to start a blog. Blogging is a necessary part of a company’s overall marketing plan as a blog can be several things for your business: a sales tool to promote products/offers, a communication tool to update customers, and a branding tool to build up reputation.

Blog marketing has advanced. With over a hundred million existing blogs and more being created daily, it’s not enough anymore to just build it, post good content and hope readers will come. Nowadays, you need to find your readers and really put effort to drive traffic to your blog. These tips are the standards in marketing a business blog:

1). It all starts with your blog domain. Your blog domain or URL must be definite to your market. It is what people will use to locate your blog every time they do a search so you would want them to locate your blog specifically. For a great branding and SEO strategy, choose a domain name that clearly relates to you or your product, so if you are, for instance, a baseball blog, you would want your URL to say www.allaboutbaseball.blogurl.com.

2). Write and post regularly. Content is the vital element to making your blog useful to your target readers. You really can’t go wrong with content that’s original and useful. Posting 3-5 times weekly keeps them coming back, maintains their interest and increases your chances to get noticed by the search engines to help buildup your page views.

3). Submit your blog to the search engines and other blog directories. Hit on the submit link of major search engines and blog directories and give them your blog URL and RSS Feed. This doesn’t guarantee that you appear at the top rank in search engine results but it simply lists your blog in their directory and when the search engines start their crawl process your pages get included in their search results.

4). Tailor templates to help brand your blog. The color scheme, font style, overall layout will convey the first impression on what your blog is all about.

• Put in RSS subscription option, social bookmarking links in highly visible areas
• Unique title tags because those are the words that will initially tell search engines if content is original and what will appear in the clickable link in search engine results page
• Sitemap to help readers and search engines access all the contents in the site
• Keywords listing to help readers easily find your content when they do a search
• Use your blogroll to get links from influential bloggers in your field and to help initiate an association with them

5). Maximize plug-ins. Make the best use of plug-ins provided by your blog software. Powerful plug-ins are:

• Comments plug-ins: the “Recent Posts” and “Popular Posts” act as sneak previews to what your readers can expect to read and what they can read back on if they’ve missed a visit to your blog, “Recent Comments” plug-ins can invite topic discussion, “Related posts” provide readers with easy access to more information within your blog
• there are plug-ins to help in SEO
• Allow automatic trackback. Trackbacks will allow you to let other sites know that you have linked to them, and lets you know when other sites have linked to you. Allow anyone to place a link to their site on to your blog because it’s other people’s stamp of approval on your posts. Trackbacks will always show a link back to your blog in the comments field of the post that it’s originally linked to.
• Allow ping function. The ping function will let all of the blog directories you’ve set up into your blog (ex: http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, or http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2) know that you have published a new blog post in your blog.

6). Tag Posts. Tags are like keywords/phrases and labels that describe your content to make it easier to find. Tags help display everything you’ve posted about that related tag when readers or search engines do a search so make sure each blog post have tags on them before they are published and think like your readers so use tags that your readers would actually use when doing a search.

7). Interact with comments. Comments are what make blogs alive because of the interaction from your readers. Make sure it’s a 2-way conversation by responding to their comments in a timely manner. It’s also important to screen comments so you have control over your reputation management.

8). SEO is crucial for sending traffic to your blog. Optimize your blog posts and pages for search engines by making use of related keywords, practice effective keyword placement, manage well-timed posting and invest in finding significant one-way links. Blogs naturally attract more search engine traffic because they’re already structurally built with simple navigation design so that all pages can be found and linked to easily.

9). Think outside of the box. In terms of creativity, always change your usual blog format from time to time to give your audience something new to experience. It’s a great way to maintain interest and create new buzz for your blog. Few examples

• Plan on a blog design make-over and hype it up
• Posts using podcasts or vlogs instead of the usual written format
• Invite guest bloggers for a fresh angle
• Run polls, blog contests
• Join in the latest list craze going on in the web in order to attract traffic to your site. Use your blogroll to link to more famous and influential blogs and websites for outbound resource links, create your own “favorites lists” in Twitter and link back to your blog

10). Work on networking. Growing your following is the only way to become better known online and with more followers to support your blog, the higher the chances for  traffic buildup.

• Initiate contact with related bloggers, associate with other famous bloggers in your field, mention authoritative groups or individuals you admire or have worked with in your blog posts
• Social media is a must so join the major traffic generators Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon

11). Form a link building strategy. It’s a slow progression but links are valuable so that search engines can find you. The more you make it easy for search engines to find you, the easier to get higher page results and the easier to buildup blog traffic. Link building can be done by trading links with other sites, link building software, being listed in E-zines, newsletters, directories, search engines, etc.

12). Grow the number of RSS subscribers to your blog’s feed.

• Let your readers know that they can subscribe so position your subscription link and subscription reminders in plain sight on every page of your blog, highly visible spots are at the top and in between blog posts.
• Offer perks for additional benefits readers can get for subscribing to your blog like a free ebook, free newsletter, or a free gift that’s related to your posts or anything that you think adds value to their subscription.
• Display your Feedburner badge, it’s a stamp of approval to let others know your blog has a good number of readers and is therefore worthy to be checked out.

13). Promote your blog and connect with other bloggers by using NetworkedBlogs app for Facebook. Set up the application by typing in your blog name, url, description and then claim the blog. Your Facebook page will show the blog feed, permit readers to rate the blog, gather new readers from the Facebook blogging community, and automatically post your blog contents to your Facebook page.

There are many other ways to promote your blog to buildup traffic but these tips are great to start with. I think the best formula to find out what’s really working for you is: trial-measure-modify. And keep blogging! … hard work, patience and persistence  are all part of the formula for success.  Do you know of any other awesome ways to buildup blog traffic? Let’s discuss… 

The clout of social media is really viral nowadays as we see small businesses from all over the world following a social networking strategy to promote their business online through social sites as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Multiply and MySpace.

Internet big-wigs did foresee this social networking development early on in the last year. With the ongoing rough economic times pressuring small business owners to take a hard look at their marketing budgets, I think it is only a natural progression to see start-up and small businesses change their marketing direction away from costly traditional TV, radio and print advertising and go the way of less costly, even free, social web tools, because all things considered, social media has proven it’s mark and is consistently proving that is  a low-cost yet effective way to promote a business, manage customer relationships, gain leads and uncover new channels for sales.

While many small business owners are reaping pretty healthy return of investments for all their social networking efforts, we also see a good number at the other end of the spectrum, struggling in frustration to get somewhere. Small and start-up business owners need to keep in mind that social media networking is time-intensive and chancy. Therefore, like any traditional or online marketing effort, it is always a good idea to start things on a balance, go into it with a focused and manageable strategy in place.

Here are a few tips to take into account before launching a social media networking strategy with the aim of meeting marketing goals in the end:

START SMALL. From the very beginning, plan a doable strategy, one you can actually manage and accomplish within realistic time-lines. Control the following factors at the onset:

1. the number of social sites you start with, it’s best to set up profiles in 2-3 social media sites initially and cross-promote across all the sites you launch in to keep them all connected
2. the time you spend interacting and link-building in them, you can start with a daily 2-hour schedule perhaps then convert to a weekly schedule
3. your branding components, which are your company message and personality, the key is to convey just one consistent brand image all throughout

The key point is to keep your social networking strategy at a scale you can manage, so start small and then grow it as you gather an understanding of best practices and techniques along the way which you can include in the process.

STICK WITH IT. Social media is time-consuming. Real results from all the efforts you put in may take several months up to a full year before showing any evidence of success. Steady persistence is key to:

1. Growing your network. A loyal group of followers is the only way to create an online presence. Without them, there is no one to act upon your call of action. Spend time bonding with your fan base/customers. Communicate with them constantly and keep them informed about any new company developments. Create buzz to promote business such as holding a unique contest or an exciting publicity stunt in your site to get new people to sign-up and existing members to keep coming back.
2. Building an expert reputation. An expert standing is a natural pull to people. When you are deemed as a leading expert or have a high-ranking blog/site, people will naturally refer to you first and foremost.  Collaborate on a shared venture like related affiliate programs, create multiparty webinars, or join blog carnivals. The strategy is to associate with prominent people in your field to get expert branding so you are further seen as an authority by your following.

INTERACTION IS THE NAME OF THE SOCIAL GAME. The only way to form connections is to interact with people. Two strategic points to keep in mind:

1. Always keep the flow of information 2-way
2. Interact on a regular basis

Social media can never work if you barely set up your business profile pages, start conversing a couple days and then walk out and come back a month later.

• Work together with your group of followers, share expert content and link-up to their content, request for links and reciprocate with your own links, refer their business and they will likely recommend yours
• Intermingle, initiate conversations and exchange ideas through blog comments or website forums remembering to always include a link back to your own content or site
• At the start, work at building relationships on a fixed schedule. Set a certain appointed time during which your following can expect you so that they are online at that particular time to interact with you.

Which road will you take?

5LINX® Enterprises, Inc., with it’s center of operations located in Rochester, New York, is a privately held company enclosed in approximately 50,000 square feet of facility regulated by a workforce of 175 employees that manages all it’s corporate activities consisting of network operations, call center, marketing, product development, and engineering.

Now a well-known leader in today’s telecommunications industry, 5LINX® has been recognized throughout the years by many highlights in it’s line of business. Registering an 800% growth over the past 3 years, it currently holds distinction as being included in Inc.500 Magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in North America, an honor it has upheld for 4 straight years now. In addition, 5LINX® has made it into the prominent list of the Top 100 Companies in it’s hometown region of Rochester, NY.

5LINX® was set in motion in March, 2001 by three futurists, equipped with more than forty years of combined experience in the telecommunications and direct selling trade, who had the determined purpose of becoming a major player in the VoIP telecommunications industry. To attain this goal, their plan was to become a top supplier of cutting-edge VoIP technology by drawing on the skills and expertise of a network of independent marketers. These independent market representatives would shape 5LINX’s renowned sales force, with each individual substantially gaining from a business model very unlike the traditional, passive and conservative marketing style.

The 5LINX® business ideal is founded upon these five deeply-rooted principles:

1. Vision: The foresight for the imminent opportunity in the communications industry
2. Integrity: For the veracity that represents every 5LINX® product and service
3. Opportunity: The chance, the break, the possibility to succeed without limits
4. Freedom: The right and free will to determine your own success
5. Success: The motivation for the execution and realization of your own predetermined benchmark for profit and growth

To bring into fruition these five principles, the 5LINX® business model would require a marketing strategy that was not rigid and inflexible as the conventional marketing methods, but a plan that regards a yielding to change, making improvements from failures, and adapting the go-getting, can-do perspective.  It calls for a unique distribution method for it’s built-in income and business opportunity; a sharing, a giving out and spreading out of these resources to all who could do with the help it affords to change people’s lives.  The 5LINX® network marketing strategy brings into play the combined expertise and efforts of independent individuals.

It supports the company’s accepted wisdom: Representatives come first. This business philosophy clearly shows the company’s dependability and full-backing to the dedication and capability of it’s self-motivated sales force.  These representatives are separate and autonomous entities from the 5LINX company itself. They are not salaried staff, but highly self-sufficient, self-governing, self-directed, self-motivated businesspeople whose contributions and hard work are compensated by means of a fixed, clear-cut earning plan.

5LINX® is well invested on the growth of it’s distributor force. It ensures that every individual representing the 5LINX® name is well-equipped for success. Upon sign-up, these representatives undergo comprehensive training and are provided with business support materials that help them gather new customers and portray the right image. 5LINX® also ascertains the open communication policy among it’s valued sales force, a fact verified by the publication of the company’s own Vanguard magazine which is circulated three times each year for the purpose of imparting up-to-date information on the latest in the telecommunications industry, promoting upcoming corporate events, providing details about new products, announcing changes in procedures, and conveying the public recognition due to qualified representatives who have reached varied levels in building their businesses.

For very little risk and a very minimal investment, these decidedly proactive, hands-on, no-nonsense business men and women have taken the chance to start their own business and transform their life. Listen to the many lives which have been extraordinarily transformed by the 5LINX® business opportunity:

Some of the The 5LINX Success Stories

5LINX® believes that it is precisely this independence, this autonomy that empowers people. Granted with the freedom and the lack of restrictions to define their own success in life, people are enforced to look into themselves and own up to the responsibility of making changes and improvements.

The 5LINX® business opportunity may be your once-in-a-lifetime chance to create extraordinary income by getting into the full benefit of the VoIP wealth trend. Business ownership and financial success depends entirely on you. The choice to change your life is yours to make. Will you take the chance?

The 5Linx Opportunity Video

To learn more about the 5LINX® business and income opportunity or GLOBALINX® VoIP services, please visit JasonGrilli.com and Perfect Pitch Marketing Group or contact your 5LINX® National Director, Jason Grilli

Don’t sell, build relationships. That’s what we always hear about network marketing. It has been repeated a thousand times over by network marketing experts. And yes, as professional network marketers, we are called upon to honestly recognize and genuinely practice the value of building relationships as a way of life.

And yet, selling is integral to marketing. We should lay much emphasis, in fact, on the selling. We need to sell. It’s called for because it’s where the money comes in. It’s our way to make a living, and if we don’t make a sale, and carry on selling after a sale, then we lose the point of why we’re in marketing and why we’re making the effort to build relationships with those who are in business with us. So, selling is ever present in the network marketing equation. Yes, it is put aside somewhere in the back of our minds as we build relationships with potential leads because we don’t need to be too obvious, but it is our primary intention and fixed objective to close the deal. If we don’t get the selling part accomplished at some point with one prospect, we move on to the next prospect and play the process once again —why? — because we need to sell.

We hate to admit it, and it is laughable, but it is with the selling part that network marketing has earned it’s unsavory reputation. We hear it being said about network marketers being two-faced, smooth-tongued, phony, scheming, and disreputable — and it’s for the reason that people have been traumatized of being duped, manipulated and lied to. Although we truly build relationships from the bottom of our heart, yet we are regarded with suspicion — alleged that we’re forced to suck up because we need the other person to make the sale. Those are pretty blunt assumptions but, hey, can we really blame the public for being cynical when alongside the legit businesses, there are the illegal MLM scams and the unlawful pyramid schemes?

Let’s just keep it real, we are notoriously branded thanks to it’s ill-repute. It is the usual first impression about the network marketing profession. We hear plenty of customer feedback about being manipulated and sold some crummy product, or being misled because of some false advertising, or ripped off because of some fabricated income report. Let’s blame it on the unprofessional, or the amateur, or the untrained, or the inexperienced, or the incompetent, or maybe they’re just downright rude salespeople. But it’s hustlers like these who give network marketing a bad name. Nonetheless, we also see their point: they need to sell, they need to make a living, they need to make money …they just do it by means of offensive in-your-face and thick-skinned money-hungry selling.

So now, let us be true to ourselves, when all is said and done, it is and will always be about the money. Selling is equal to marketing. But to add to the equation of selling and the resulting money, network marketing is also about giving. Sounds too cliché, but no, selling and giving really do go hand in hand with network marketing. It is because we build relationships in network marketing that we are obliged to be giving. It is the giving part which renders to the selling part the human aspect in network marketing. Giving is the reason, the excuse, and the justification for successful selling.

For the true and the legit network marketing businesses, that’s the whole idea behind building relationships. Giving is about working together with people. Giving is sharing helpful content. Giving is providing expert responses to questions. Giving is awarding a free offer or holding a contest as an additional benefit to customer loyalty. Giving is training, coaching, counseling your membership base. Giving is all about treating people right in this people business.  It is about imparting due respect and garnering respect, passing on trust and gaining trust in return, offering your loyalty and acquiring their loyalty in due time, to be granted the right to do business with them and then taking that right as the opportunity to sell.

Selling is supplementary; it’s an add-on, an accompanying extra, an additional benefit to all that you are giving. Money-making is consequential, a tangible bonus to your efforts in building relationships.

Network marketing is effective money-making because there is giving as well as selling. If the rules are played right, everybody can be really happy. Because whatever sale is made at the end of the day, you’re indebted because someone gave you something and at the same time you’re gratified because you gave someone something. I’ll say network marketing is out-and-out giving and just sort of selling. There is a great deal more to give than to sell. How? First of all, you’re selling a product, there in itself is giving as you’re supplying to a person’s need for something. In addition to that, you’re also giving an income opportunity — that’s equivalent to giving an advantage to someone who is disadvantaged in life. How can anyone question the authenticity of that?

All the giving is what makes network marketing so reputable, so highly-regarded, so honest. Giving + Selling = Network Marketing. Hey, maybe it’s an equation that’s on a par with the mechanical equation of kinetic energy. Yeah, go figure. Main thing: the giving plus the selling should be your fundamental guiding principle in network marketing, just as indispensable as the principle of kinetic energy is to the law of physics and to the law of life.

5LINX® Enterprises, Inc is built on this same equation of network marketing. 5LINX® is a leader in the telecommunications industry. The company distributes its products and services across the United States and in 20 countries abroad by utilizing a dynamic distribution model that brings into play the combined efforts of a network of dedicated independent marketing representatives. 5LINX® is proud to be a premier supplier of cutting-edge VoIP products and services such as the GLOBALINX® VideoPhone. But, foremost of all, it takes pride in being able to create opportunities for people to start their own business and giving them the resource to change their lives. The  5LINX® business and income opportunity has helped thousands of people from across the country to experience the benefits of entrepreneurship with very little risk and minimal investment.

To learn more about the 5LINX® business and income opportunity or GLOBALINX® VoIP services, please visit JasonGrilli.com and Perfect Pitch Marketing Group or contact your 5LINX® National Director, Jason Grilli