What are HubPages?

If you own a website or a blog, Hubpages is something you have definitely heard about. Promoting your main website using hubs is essentially an effective method that many website owners use successfully. If you haven’t tried your hands at Hubpages, now might be the good time to get down and dirty.

What are Hubpages? Hubpages is a collection of articles or hubs, as they call them, and help you earn revenue as well. After registering and becoming a member you can write your own hub and promote them as you want. If you mention your main website in your hub or profile, you would want to promote your hub which will indirectly promote your website. Marketing your website using hubpages is a natural optimization of your website in search engines. Make sure not to spam your hubs or others. Spam is taken very seriously, and you may end up having your account banned.

How to use Hubpages? You can become a member of hubpages by registering and conforming your email. Once you become a member, you are all set to start hubbing. It would be convenient for other hubber to know more about you if you summarize the contents of your hub in your summary. It will give them the idea about what your niche is and why they should keep coming back to read your hubs. Hubpages can be browsed by hub ratings such as “What is Hot”,”What is New”,”What is best rated”. There is a topics tab that can b used to browse through popular categories and subcategories. If your hub appears in What’s Hot category, you will end up driving lots of traffic.

What can you find at hubpages? Hubpages has lot of traffic and people form varied interests and hobbies.

You can find discussions on Gift Baskets, How to Build a Gift Basket, etc

Why use Hubpages? Hubpages can be very motivating. It helps to:

• Promote your website - Hubpages are an excellent way to get relevant traffic to your website. You can place direct link to your website. It also helps your website in making it search engine optimized, because of hubpages’ own great web presence. You can promote your hubs using social bookmarking and media marketing websites like delicious, digg and stumbleupon. The best of all, you can track your daily visitors by plugging in your Google Analytics code.
• Make Money - Yup, that’s true. Hubpages lets you add your Adsense code. If any ads are clicked in your hub, you will paid commission for that click amount. You can also use affiliate accounts like eBayand Amazon. If you wish to use eBay and Amazon ID, you are required to have commission Junction account. You need to apply and activate for these accounts before you start using them.

You may or may not like Hubpages but you definitely would not want to ignore this social networking platform if you are planning on making money

10 Steps to Finding Your Target Market in Facebook

Everyone is talking about social networking, and many claim social networking to be the panacea for all of your marketing ills. Marketing on social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter can help you boost the size of your email list and help you grow your business. The key to success with this strategy is making sure that members of your target market are in your network.

Facebook is very strict and very particular about how its participants contact each other. Facebook limits the number of new invitations that can be sent in a given day or week. The exact number is a Facebook secret and unknown to the public, but if you exceed this secret amount you can get booted from Facebook. However, I think if you stick with no more than 10 per day, you will probably stay within their limits. Secondly, you are permitted only 5000 friends in Facebook, so if you're successful in this strategy, you may ultimately need to create a waiting list of friends

How do you find your target market in Facebook? Whether you're an experienced social networker or just a newbie, here are 10 secrets to growing your target market network in Facebook:

1. Update-to-date profile and/or Fan page: Before you begin a "friending" (i.e. request to become another's friend), be sure that your profile is up-to-date with an accurate description of what you do, your interests, and your contact info, including your web site URLs. If you have multiple businesses, invite people in your appropriate target market to become fans of your niche-specific fan page.

2. Follow the gurus. Follow leaders in your field/industry and "friend" them. Anytime you make a friend request, include a personal note, as that will improve the likelihood that they will accept your request. Say something like, "I'm a big fan and have been on your ezine/blog list for several years. I'd love to have you in my network in Facebook." Once they have accepted your invitation, make comments about their status updates to help you get on their radar and in front of their networks.

3. Friends of friends. Take a look at the people in the network of your industry leaders, as they are probably part of your target market as well, and send friend requests to those of interest to you. When you friend someone that you only know by association, send a personal note as well, like "I discovered your profile in 's network and would like to get to know you better by adding you to my network."

4. Use groups. Look for groups that may contain your target market. In your search for groups, use keywords that describe your niche, your industry, your geographic area, the interests of your target market, or whatever other terms you might use to find members of your target market. Join and begin to participate in the group so that they begin to get to know you. Then peruse the member lists for good prospects, sic as the members you've connected with or have gotten to know. Since you won't be able to view the profiles of the group members because they aren't in your network, much of your decision-making about whom to friend may be based upon appearance or how you might be connected to them via other friends in your network.

5. Check your lists. Friend people that you already know from your high school, college, alumni associations, and places of employment if they fall within your target market definition.

6. Facebook-recommended friends. Facebook typically recommends friends based on your current friends list when you log into your profile. I've found these recommendations to be pretty solid. Take them up on their recommendation and add those folks to your network.

7. Add by interest or industry. Do a people search by job title, industry, geographic location, or interest. Those people with those terms in their profile will show up in your search, and you can request to add them based on common interests.

8. Build the relationship. Once you friend someone, you need to begin to get to know them and start them on the like, know and trust journey so that you become their top-of-mind expert in a particular area. Begin building the relationship by posting a quick "thank you" note on their wall, as well as a comment about something on their profile that interests you or in which you have in common. Watch for their status updates, as well, and comment on these when appropriate

9. Create a group. Once you've got about 500 followers, create a group for your target market. Provide the group with useful content and and ask questions to stimulate discussion and get the members to return to participate in the group. You can post articles, links to blog posts, or videos you have created. Invite group members to any free virtual or face-to-face events you're hosting.

10. Integrate into your plan. No marketing strategy works unless you consistently implement it over time. As a newbie to Facebook, you might want to spend as much as 60 minutes per day researching friends and participating in groups. As your network grows, you many spend only 15 minutes 3 times per week on Facebook. The key to success is to put this strategy on your calendar and make it a routine part of your ongoing Internet marketing tasks.

While social networking is an inexpensive marketing tool and can be effective in helping you grow your business, maintain your other marketing strategies, as well, and simply add this strategy to your marketing mix. A well-rounded Internet marketing plan that includes social networking and is implemented consistently will mean that your prospect well won't ever run dry.

posted by Donna Gunter from OnlineBizU.com

Top 10 Social Networking Tools

There are so many different tools & software out there when it comes to social networking. I figured I would give you a list of the top 10 – in no particular order :)

	Status Updates	Upload Photos	Upload Video	Add links	Add/Have Friends	Join Groups	RSS Feeds	Submit Articles	Mobile Updates	Send Email
Facebook	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
MySpace	X	X	X	X	X	X	X		X	X
Twitter	X	X	X	X	X	X			X	X
YouTube			X		X	X
LinkedIn	X				X	X	X			X
Del.icio.us				X				X
Digg		X	X					X
StumbleUpon		X	X					X
Squidoo		X	X	X		X	X	X
HubPage		X	X	X	X	X	X	X

Facebook: Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet. Example

MySpace: is a popular social networking site that offers MP3s, videos, blogs, photos, and profiles. In addition to this, the website also has an email system.

Twitter: is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Example

YouTube: People post videos on YouTube and watch and comment on the videos others have posted. The videos can be anything from a simple rant into a cell phone camera by a frustrated teenager to a favorite sports clip Tivo'd off of ESPN - and everything in between. Example

LinkedIn: is the world's largest professional network with over 40 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals. Example

Del.icio.us: Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web. Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community. Example

Digg: is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Example

StumbleUpon: connects you to everything new and cool on the Web. The Web site allows you to skip around the Web, stumbling upon random, cool and interesting Web pages that have been submitted to the StumbleUpon community. Example

Squidoo: is a hand-built collection of half a million pages built by people just like you. Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.

HubPages: is a collection of articles or hubs, as they call them, and help you earn revenue as well. After registering and becoming a member you can write your own hub and promote them as you want. If you mention your main website in your hub or profile, you would want to promote your hub which will indirectly promote your website. Example

Another tool for Twitter...

Twellow has made it easier to find Twitter users you are interested in following. That is what Twellow has been about from the beginning, and this simply highlights the fact that the Twellow team is always looking for ways to improve the service.

There is a new feature on search results pages that shows any categories that might match your search terms. This is designed to make it easier to find profiles you are interested in, as well as let you see if there is a category that matches your interests without needing to scan the entire list of categories on the "All Categories" page. This will make Twellow easier to use and understand for a lot of people.

Twellow now has over a thousand different categories available for browsing and searching. What this means for Twitterers is that they have a great resource for finding Twitterers related to topics they are interested in. This makes Twitter more useful in my opinion, when you look at it from the "microblogging" perspective - meaning you're reading tweets for information as you would blogs.

The Twellow team is always adding new categories. A good way to keep up with what has been added is to follow Twellow on Twitter, where the new categories are regularly mentioned. If there is a category you would like to see in Twellow, but it not there, you can simply contact the team, and there is a good chance they will add it. Twellow makes Twitter more useful, I made sure to register and so should you :)

This info was originally posted by Chris Crum (WebProNews)

Tweet Tweet

So what is Twitter anyway? In a nut shell, it is place where you can update your status and let everyone know what you are up to, share links & funny antidotes and anything you can think of in 140 characters or less :)

It's actually rather limiting and not as interactive as Facebook. You can send someone a message or add a mobile image (with a 3rd party application) but that's pretty much it. So why use it?

.......Because it's another great way to get your name out there.

So.... how can I utilize Twitter for my business? Well it's funny you should ask because I was just about to tell you :) This is how I set up my Twitter and how I've been using it.

Do you have a Twitter Account?
If not, just go to http://www.twitter.com and create one. Follow the steps and add your business information. Make sure to add some personality to it :)

Setting up your Profile
You can change the background by going to "Settings/Design" on the top right hand corner of your screen. Here, you can select one of their default backgrounds or upload an image. Of course, that wasn't good enough for me, so I solicited the help of PimpMyTwitter.net. For $73, they will create a background masterpiece. Ask for Barbara, she is the lead developer and owner - and she ROCKS!

Checkout her work:

• GiftBasketGuru
• OhMyDogSupplies
• SEMGroup
• HornDog
• IslandChick

How to get Followers
In order for people to see what you are posting, you need to build a following. These are the steps I took to get my posse :)

a) Click the "Find People" link on the top right hand corner. Search for keywords that pertain to your business - like gift baskets, for example. Click the profile that has the most followers. If you click their "followers" button, you have instant access to all their tweeters and you can start following them. 9 times our of 10, if you follow someone, they will follow you back.

This can be a long process when doing it manually. There are desktop applications that you can get to help you manager your followers:

• Hummingbird
• TweetDeck
• Twhirl
• PeopleBrowser

b) Create an account on TopFollowed.com. It grows your Twitter network slowly through reciprocal following. Everyone who signs up for TopFollowed automatically follows (and is followed by) other TopFollowed members.

c) Add your top keywords to the WeFollow.com directory.

Have FUN!
Now what? You have a profile, you have followers - what do you do now? Just have fun with it! I personally ignore tweeters that just post ads and/or sales pitches. Its boring and doesn't really make me want to follow them. You need to develop relationships with your followers, keep them interested and wanting more. Yes, I post sales pitches like everyone else but I also post great articles I find, videos, or I repost (RT) other tweets that I find interesting. I also make a point to start a conversation with 10 random people every day.

The important thing to remember is to be a LIVE person and not just a commercial :)

How to get people to become a fan of your new Facebook Page

Now you have a Facebook Page, you need to get people to become a fan of your page to generate sales. There are several ways you can do this.

1. Invite all your Facebook friends to become a fan.
Login to your Facebook page and click the "Suggest to Friends" link. A list of your friends will pop-up. You can either manually select friends or select all and send the invite.

2. Add your Facebook link to your newsletter
Do you send newsletters to subscribers? Add your Facebook Page link with an incentive to becoming a fan. Maybe promote a 15% discount code to all new Facebook fans.

3. Add your Facebook link to all your outgoing business email
I personally monitor all my customer's tracking information and send a follow up email once it's been delivered - asking if they had any issues with the delivery or quality of the product. At the end of the email, I have a link to my Facebook, Twitter & blog. This way, customer know that I am on Facebook and are inclined to check me out.

Word of advise: The one thing that you cannot do is send spam invites on Facebook. If you start randomly sending invites to people who are not on your friend's list - your account will be canceled.

So be creative and promote your new Facebook page in any way you can think of! You'll be glad you did :)

Pimp My Facebook Page Please

So, you've created your Facebook page but don't know how to make it look even better! There are many different applications you can use. To edit your Facebook Page, follow these steps:

* Log into your page and click the "edit page" link under your profile picture.
* Click the pencil for the application you want to edit
* Select "edit"
* Make any changes you need
* Save your changes

To add new applications like RSS feeds, new boxes, video, etc, click the "edit page" link again and go all the way to the bottom of the page to the section called "More Applications". Click the pencil and then choose "Browse More". You can browse applications by page, category or do a search. Once you find the one you want, click it and then click the "add to my page" link. If it does not have that link (it may just say add to my profile) it means that it is not yet available for Pages.

A great application to use is the FBML (do a search and you will find it) This is what I used to create the MGBI Team box, and all the extra information in my Boxes tab. This application lets you use basic HTML. What's great about it is you can use the same application over and over again. Every time you want to create a new box, follow these steps:

* Go to the edit page
* Click the pencil next to the FBML box and choose "edit"
* At the bottom, click the "Add FBML box" link
* Click "edit" next to the new link

and you have a brand new box to add information. You can do this as many times as you need to.

Every time you add an application, it automatically gets added to your Boxes tab. If you want to move things around, you can drag and drop it from side to side or up and down. If you want to move a box to your wall, click the pencil next to it and select "Move to Wall Tab"

And that's it! Now you are ready to Pimp your Page! :)

Check out mine for an example of what you can do...
MyGiftBasketIdeas.com - Facebook Page

Beware of Fraud!

I just wanted to share (and maybe vent a little) about a growing trend with online stores. I have had three charge backs in the last three weeks. This is when the card holder is saying that they did not make the purchase and filed a claim with their credit card companies. I use PayPal as my merchant service provider and their policy is to hold these funds until the issue has been resolved - which can take 75 days! So, I was out almost $1000 in charges.

PayPal sent me an email each time asking for specific information to help with the dispute - which I sent. Each purchase was different dates, a different credit card, different gifts and shipping addresses. I just received an email that one has cleared (after two weeks), two are still pending.

After reviewing these orders, I found a pattern and wanted to share to try and help others in avoiding these charge backs. This is what I found:

• The phone number provided was a fax number or not valid
  
• The order usually involves more than one gift (one had 5)
• The gifts are always my most expensive ones
• They always use Next Day Air or Saturday Delivery (one had $250 just for shipping)
• The Gift Card message is simple like : Thank You, Happy Easter, etc... no names
• One shipping address was a UPS store, the other two were actual addresses

This is what I do to avoid any more issues....

Security!
I already have this set up on my site and noticed that it has prevented some thieves from using my store:

• The EXACT name of the card (including initials)
• The ENTIRE billing address needs to match
• The CVV security is enabled (this is the 3 digit code in back of Visa, MC, or Discover and the 4 digit code for AMEX)
• Phone Number is required
  
• Email is required
  

Some customers will not like providing phone number or email addresses. I add a little note during checkout to insure that their information will not be shared. I state that the phone number is required by UPS (which is true) and the email is so that we can send their tracking information (which is also true)

Now, for a little extra security - with all this information I have, if the order seems "shady", I can do a little investigating to make sure. I use anywho.com to check the number. If I can't find it, I call the number - if they answer, I make an excuse as to why I called. I also verify that the address is not a UPS store. I also look up the address in google maps and use the satelite view - this helps to see the exact location. If either of these are bad - I email the customer and ask for either a valid phone number, or a new address because we cannot ship to UPS stores. If they are thieves, they will not answer my email and I just cancel the order and credit the card.

I assume that the reason they choose the fastest delivery service is to get it to the destination as soon as possible before the credit card owner sees the transaction on their card. I get the UPS store, but I'm not sure how they are getting away with sending it to valid addresses. I saw a report on dateline once where scammers find unsuspecting people on dating websites and ask if they can have stuff shipped to their home.

In any case, these last few weeks have been an eye opener. The higher my Gift Basket Delivery site is ranked in all search engines (which is great) the more fraudulent purchases I'm going to get (which is bad).

Hopefully this vent-a-blog will help you to avoid having to deal with charge backs :)

Why you should be using Facebook!

Question: Do you want to start networking your business on Facebook but don't know where to start?

The first thing you need to know is you don't have to use your personal Facebook account to do it. I was hesitant to use Facebook as a marketing tool at first because I didn't want my customers to see all my personal information and status updates - I wanted to seem professional. So I did some research and found that I could create a "Page" that is completely separate.

So how do you create a Facebook Page you ask? When you log into your profile, scroll down to the bottom of the left hand column. There should be a link that says "Create a Page for my Business". Click that link and follow the instructions. If you don't see the link on your profile, you can also go here: Facebook Pages

Once you create your business page you can:

* Upload Videos
* Upload Images
* Create events (i.e. 15% off July 4th weekend)
* Create a discussion
* Add links
* And so much more!

Check out My Facebook Page to see what I did with mine. Also, become a fan and get access to great discounts - hint: We give away a free gift basket every month :)

Have More Questions? Just send me a note and I will be happy to help in any way I can :)

Welcome Friends!

Well hello there! :)

First I want to introduce myself. My name is Lisa Bevan and I've been in the gift basket industry for almost 3 years. I know that is not a long time compared to most. But I feel as though I have learned alot in these short years.

I was born in MA but my family moved to Canada when I was 5. I moved around a bit in Canada and after college, decided to move back to the US to start a new life. I ended up in Columbus OH, it's been almost 11 years now. My specialty is IT Consulting. Mostly building online applications and websites. Sound boring doesn't it? Well it IS! That's why I needed to find something new and exciting to do so I started my own online business. My company is called MyGiftBasketIdeas.com

Why gift baskets you ask? It all started Christmas of 2006. I needed to send gifts to my clients but was having a very difficult time finding what I was looking for online. This gave me an idea - if I'm having a hard time, how many other people are having issues finding exactly what they are looking for! So, 2 months later, MyGiftBasketIdeas.com was born! :)

When I was starting out, I was pretty much on my own. I had the knowledge I needed to start an online business (i.e. website design, SEO, adwords, etc) but I was green when it came to gift baskets. I would have loved to have had access to some kind of support system with experts that could answer my questions and help me find suppliers and things that I needed. Instead, I had to learn through trial and error. That's why when I heard about the Gift Basket Association, I was thrilled! I joined the same day and have already met some great people in the industry.

The owner of GBA, Debbie Pietro-Quintana contacted me and asked if I wanted to contribute to the GBA family by sharing my trails and tribulations of social networking. So here I am! :) I know this is a new concept to most of you, but trust me - Social Networking Works!

So that's it! I will be blogging several times a week on social networking and anything else you would like to know about selling Gift Baskets online. I hope you enjoy my rants... and PLEASE - if you have any questions.... big or small.... don't be afraid to ask... that's what I'm here for!