Jonathan Perelman of BuzzFeed once gave a bold statement that “Content Is King, But Distribution Is Queen and She Wears the Pants.” It goes without saying that competition is rife in today’s online business world and that anything you are trying to do is already being done by millions of other business owners. So, how do you differentiate yourself from the rest? Of course the best way to reach millions of customers across the globe is to publish great content that gets shared on social media and one that helps to rank the site high in the search engine.

A serious dilemma that plagues most marketers and business owners is the question whether quality and quantity can go together. As a result, marketers are trying to find the right balance. They find that in order to produce quality content, they have to spend a lot of time on content at the expense of production. Doesn’t it feel like a fair concern?

The problem is that almost 64% of content marketers think they don’t use their content effectively. That represents a whole lot of web sites and online marketers. In most cases, some of them focus either on quality or quantity, but neither of the approaches can guarantee results. Any successful online marketing campaign must therefore focus on both if it hopes to cut through the noise and be heard. The good news is that customers nowadays prefer to get their information online. Close to 139 million people read blogs online each month and another 27 million pieces of content is shared every day. Research shows that the greatest amount of content is being shared through email, blogs, social networks and message boards.

However, there is a little problem here: today, there are close to 750 million websites and the number will keep on growing. As a result, the amount of content being published online is insane. What Google’s Panda and Penguin updates are essentially telling web site owners is that they should publish as much content as possible, but such content must be helpful to customers as well.

What about Distribution?

So far so good. Painful as it may sound, great content and more of it may still not produce the desired results (although you must do that), distribution will. How much time you spend promoting your content is ultimately going to make the difference for your online marketing campaign. So, you can spend more time on distribution than you are currently doing.

Starting an online home business is the goal of most people, at least those who are tired of the 9-5 work. The prospect of being your own boss and making lots of cash in online cash stream is quite attractive. The good news is that starting a home based business is something anyone can do, with little or no start-up capital needed. On average, people work on 2-3 careers in their lifetime, and the ultimate goal for most of them is to finally retire to their homes and work from there.

More and more people have become dissatisfied with their jobs and that is why the interest in starting an online business has increased tremendously. It may be confusing on where to start given the mountains of information available on the subject of home based online business, but that should not be a worry any more, now that you are holding this book. This is why I penned this book: to guide you in not only creating a profitable online business, but also to help you discover the right type of business for you.

While this is a great thing to do, it requires one to have clear goals before starting an online home-based business. The internet has certainly revolutionized the way we shop, and live. Today, more than ever, an individual can compete with the global organizations. However, the question you may ask is this: just how easy is it to get started? This book will just show you how to get started with your online business and make it profitable and sustainable.

The key to starting any online home based business is preparation and research-you need to know your target audience, know your product, know your competition, and secure the resources you would need. For a start, your objective is to start a simple, yet compelling business idea that leaves the potential customers desiring for more. There is no need to go for complicated stuff or a host of products. It is better to concentrate on few simple products for the start and build on that. One of the reasons why many people fail in their home based business is because they want to do and offer so many things at the same time.

Whether you want to create a series of blogs, start a consultancy company, sell items on eBay, create affiliate websites, create digital products like eBooks and software or you just want offer freelance services, the principles of success in online business are basically the same.

The best place to start is where you are good at and what you love doing. If, for instance, you love pets, why not start a blog and advice people on how to take care of their pets? Doing what you love would be more advantageous because you will spend many hours doing it without feeling tired or bored. So, take time to think about what you love doing, as well as what area you are expert in; that would be a good indicator of what sort of business you would excel at.

Rather than bore you with drab and endless information, this book has adopted a more direct approach to guiding you start a successful online business. It will show you what you need to know in a straight forward manner. What I respect most is people’s time, and I know you don’t have much time. So, just grab as much information as you need without being taken around in circles. Also, there are no restrictions on how to read this book. You are free to pick any chapter you like and begin from there. This is not a novel where you have to follow a plot.

Finally, this book has tried to keep everything simple and to the point. To ensure that you have understood everything in the book, there are chapter summaries at the end of each chapter to help you recap important ideas. There are also Quiz questions at the end of each chapter to assist in tracking your progress as well as keeping you engaged.

Any business must start with a plan, and the audience must also be defined elaborately if it is to succeed. Social media marketing is certainly a new form of advertising, yet it is now becoming an integral channel of marketing and advertising of business brands. Once you know your business objective and the audience, you can use the social media feedback cycle to identify demands, and offer solutions.

If you are to succeed in this, you must bear in mind the fact that all your efforts and expenses must have a good Return on investment. In order for that to be achievable, you must bear in mind the following secrets.

Choose Your Path

Just imagine that the world we live in is already so full of information that any information you need about anything is already readily available; it is a world in which there is information overload. However, being readily available is not the same as easily accessible.

The whole idea about advertising has always been to avail information to those who need it at the right time. Therefore, any successful social media marketing campaign starts with the end in mind, and this entails choosing the path you must trudge on. That is to say: what information do you want to give? What line of business are you doing? Once this is defined, you should decide how you want to deliver your message to the audience.

At the end of the day, he who delivers the most simple message, useful, timely, and short message carries the day in the marketing world. This is where you should let your creative juices to guide you. However, stay focused on the goals and never be carried away.

Define the Opportunity and the Audience

A message should have an audience, but if you don’t know what exactly your audience is, then you are in for a big trouble. A social media marketing campaign is not effective if it is not targeted. It is pointless trying to sell a Christian prayer book while most of your Facebook fan page/twitter followers are non-Christians. It doesn’t matter how interesting, timely or useful your campaign message is-if it is not targeted to the right people, you are chasing after the wind.

Defining the audience also means that you have identified their concerns, worries, and what they love. You’ve got to reach them and let them understand that you are there for them. As you do that, it would be more prudent to under promise and over deliver. In most cases, it is very tempting to overpromise and end up under delivering. Remember, the customers will judge your performance based on your promises.

Select Your Channels

Not all social media companion messages can fit any business brand awareness campaign. A lot of care should be taken to determine the best channel to use for your social media marketing plan depending on your brand or the type of products you are selling. The type of channel you chose will also determine the tools and apps you’ll use.

Feedback

Don’t forget to measure your results once you have gone through all these steps. You’ll want to select the metrics of measuring the results so that you can respond to the feedback accordingly. For instance, you can use polls, forums, surveys, or comments to get feedback.

Respond

Sometimes how you respond to market feedback can make or break your business. Customers should be made to feel that their comments/views/suggestions/complaints are being treated seriously. Your response can involve replying to comments, solving a certain complain, explain stuff, listening to them, or engaging them in a discussion.