Do you have a social media marketing plan for 2009?

Well another year is coming to an end, a year of hard work, scary decisions, exciting surprises and countless g-r-o-w-t-h opportunities (in more ways than one!) which makes it a great time to take stock of our businesses, see what worked (accomplishments!) and what didn't (lessons learned!), and map out a marketing plan for 2009 (let's dust off those business resolutions & wishlists!).

This year we saw how social media evolved from being a cool site for kids to hang out at, to a major marketing tool for corporations to engage with their customers. Are you making full use of this new trend? Nowadays a big chunk of marketing plans should be dedicated to social media, so I've put together a list of questions to help you get started on that:

Online Social Networks
Are you active in at least one online social network (signing up alone doesn't count!)? Selling is all about repetition - the more you connect with your customers -- in a helpful, friendly way -- the more they'll think of you when they're ready to buy the type of products you offer or refer you to a friend. Online social networks are perfect for this. These are some ways you could be using your networks:

• Facebook - update your wall & your status with comments, events and links of interest to your target market
• LinkedIn - showcase your talent in the "Answers" section, download your virtual resume, get testimonials
• Twitter - let others in your industry know when you attend conferences or networking events; comment on articles or breaking news

Make sure to also check out niche sites that fit closely with your brand, for example:

• A Small World - if you're targeting the luxury market
• MiGente - if you're targeting the Hispanic market

(For a more complete list visit this Wikipedia page)

Strategy: Schedule 15 minutes a day to participate in one or two sites of your choice.

Blogging
Blogs are a great way to keep your community updated on your business/industry, plus they're great for search engine optimization. Are you regularly updating your blog? How long has it been since you changed the widgets on your sidebar? Have you explored the different affiliate sales programs so you can sell complimentary products and receive commissions? Do you know what the best sources of ad revenue are for you, whether it's joining an ad network or striking deals directly with advertisers?

Strategy: Enter at least 1-3 posts a week. Designate a special time or day to do this and stick to your schedule. Freshen up your blog's sidebar once a month by adding a new poll, or widget or product announcement. Track your site's analytics monthly (or more often if you have a special campaign going on) to see if there are ways to increase traffic/ad revenue.

Online Directories
Forget the phone book. The new online yellow pages offer you lots of space to add company info (including video), feature special promotions, offer discount coupons, and allow customers to engage with you by writing reviews and posting pictures. Users can also send a link with your information to a mobile phone, and this is important because mobile is the next new internet frontier. Are you on these local online directories?
Citysearch (basic package is $149/mo)
Yelp
Superpages
Yahoo local ($299/yr)
Google local, maps
Local.com
Judy's Book

Strategy: Get on as many of them as you can, especially the free ones! Also check if there's any specifically targeting your industry, like if you're a restaurant there's MenuPages.com, etc.

Collectively these actions will help you build your online reputation the way you want to, and you won't have to wait around for the press to find you and write about you, when and if. The more you participate in social media, the more you'll get out of it, it's that simple. If you need help creating and/or executing a customized social media marketing plan for the new year, please contact me.

I'd like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season, and here's to hoping 2009 bring lots of good things to all of us.

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Mogulette Holiday Mixer

Nothing like throwing a party to get into the holiday spirit! That's why I decided to throw my 2nd annual Mogulette Mixer early in the month this year, and had a terrific time with a most talented group of businesswomen.

Luckily my mom was visiting and she helped me put up the Christmas decorations (thanks Mom! I copied the idea for the cute tree on the left from this month's Domino magazine). The orange-pine scented candles were aglow and classic holiday tunes played on the stereo as the first guest arrived, right on time. I was still arranging the baked ham and potato salad on the table (The Silver Palate Cookbook saved the day, as usual) when the doorbell rang.

Moments later more ladies walked in and the networking began in earnest. Marisa works in Wall St. and just started a blog, Jodi recently became a holistic nutrition and wellness coach, Alix is a writer & a journalist, and Simmy owns Nyingzemo, a company that makes Tibetan rugs with modern designs. There were about 15 women in total but the wealth of knowledge and expertise was huge.



Ginny, left, is an architect and Lillian is Director of Admissions at Loyola School and also a writer.

Melody, left, who makes educational video games for children, chats with Karmina, who works for MediaLink.


Jen, above, has a PhD and runs her own management consulting firm, WhiteWave.

Donna, a therapist, far left, who's wearing a sweater she made herself, gave everybody a quick numerology forecast for the new year. Others in this picture: Jennifer, in the beige skirt is owner of Greenwich Jewelers, and Cecilia, dressed in black in the middle, has worked for many years at Brasserie Julien, which she co-owns with her husband but is currently looking for a job in social media. She snagged the grand prize at the raffle: a free makeup lesson valued at $150 from Laura Geller. I also gave away four free 1-week passes to the new, ultra sleek Equinox gym on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Other fempreneurs in attendance: Stacey, director of global production at Sesame Workshop, Stephanie, a web consultant, and last but not least BL Ochman, a social media consultant & blogger who is thrilled to be launching her new venture, Pawfun.com.

The business cards were flying left and right but some people ran out of them so to make it easy for everyone to stay in touch I have created a Facebook page, which everyone is welcome to join (females only!). I added more pictures there and will post upcoming events and other info. Hope to "see" you all there.


This was so much fun I hope to be adding more networking nights to the calendar next year, along with my regular workshops. Now the big question is, what will I do with all the leftovers?

Til soon!

Pondering Past and Future for Women In Media

Entrepreneurs from all over the tri-state area gathered in droves at the NY Xpo For Business 2008 last week, held at the cavernous Jacob Javitz Convention Center. WCBS sponsored the Working Women's Business luncheon at midday and had media mogul Cathie Black as a keynote speaker (I snagged a picture with her at the end, see below...apologies for my cellphone camera's fuzzy resolution). Ms Black, who is busy doing the speaker circuit promoting her now book, Basic Black, gave us some interesting anecdotes on Helen Gurly Brown, who paved the way for women in media by becoming editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and staying on the job for an impressive 32 years. Ms. Black, who oversees Cosmo as president of Hearst Magazines, told us how HGB, who is now in her late 80s, still goes into the office and writes letters to the editors around the world.

While we munched on roasted chicken and vegetables, she recounted the story of how back when HGB started out, corporate America was like an episode of Mad Men. There were absolutely no opportunities for women to advance their careers. As a secretary at an advertising agency, part of her job was to deliver her boss's itinerary every day to his home, and she would fill it with personal notes and light-hearted comments. As luck would have it, her boss's wife noticed her clever scribblings and asked him to give her a chance. That's how she got a job writing copy, and rose through the ranks to become one of the highest paid copywriters in the 60's. This original "sex in the city" girl also wrote various books - her first was Sex and the Single Girl - and was a big champion of women's sexual liberation.

As a blogger, I see myself as a pioneer of sorts as well, as social media is rapidly transforming the webosphere and we're still in the early stages of change. So during the Q&A I asked Ms. Black how her magazines, which include O, Harper's Bazaar and Esquire, were embracing user-generated content. Unfortunately she really didn't answer my question, but she did say that she spends 80% of her day on the digital side, and every one of their titles has their own site with blogs, video and games. Although not all of their digital properties are yet profitable, she sees profitability by the second half of 2009. The future, she says, is about "engaging the reader when they want it and where they want it".
What I was curious about was, when it comes to magazines, what is the future for bloggers? Forbes has created a Blog Network where they feature hundreds of blogs on their site and shares advertising revenue with the bloggers. MTV is doing the same thing except theirs is much smaller and more exclusive. Will Hearst follow suit?

Finally, a plug for fellow blogger Nichelle Stephens, whom I met at the table. She pens the Keeping Nickels blog and who also wrote a post about the luncheon. That's her on the left, with the glasses.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Building a Business Around an Online Community

I attended a Town Hall Meeting for Yahoo Groups this week and was so impressed with one of the stories I heard I had to immediately start writing about it. There is a woman that calls herself FlyLady who has over half a million -- yes 500,000+ -- members in her Yahoo group. Now that's pretty astounding. Yahoo was impressed too, and they even sponsored an event just for her members to celebrate that milestone, which they videotaped and showed to us. With a name like FlyLady I was thinking maybe her group was about hip hop dancing or something like that. Well, not even close. On the screen we saw a cuddly middle-aged housewife with the sweetest southern accent and an infectious smile thanking her audience and telling her story. Marla Cilley, as it turns out, built her huge following by helping women get rid of clutter. I kind of figured the topic was of some interest, given there are so many home organizing shows on cable TV (which I'm addicted to, BTW). But a club with 500,000-plus declutterers? Wow.

Her site (which actually could use a little de-cluttering itself, but maybe that's just me), is chock full of suggestions, advice and routines to help you live a more orderly life. I found one about instituting an evening ritual before you go to sleep, which sounds perfect for me. Usually at bedtime I'm struggling with my inner brat who refuses to go to sleep, which means I end up staying up too late and then tossing and turning until I finally, reluctantly succumb to the Dream Gods. The next morning of course I'm dragging my butt. Marla's bedtime routine has a series of steps that prepare you to wind down for the evening. She recommends straightening out the house, checking your appointments for tomorrow, setting out the breakfast things, taking a warm bath, reflecting on your accomplishments, and so on. But if you don't have time for all that, she has a short version: clean the dishes, lay out your clothes for tomorrow and brush your teeth. I can do that!

If you join the FlyLady Group you'll receive a barrage of emails daily, guiding you through your day. Housecleaning, decluttering, menu planning - she'll put you on a detailed schedule from morning to night but she makes it sound more like a fun game than actual chores. It's like having a personal assistant reminding you to take care of all the little things. My first thought was, when do I have time to read all those emails? Marla recommends spending 2 minutes scanning them and then deleting them periodically.

You'll find a ton of free information on the FlyLady site, but there's also plenty of stuff for sale - her CD's, books and decluttering products - all of which are pretty inexpensive. I guess when you have half a million members it all adds up. Plus she also does speaking engagements so I would venture to say this is probably a pretty lucrative business for her.

This successful entrepreneuress found her life's calling - decluttering - by giving and helping others - I like that business model!

Well, I have to go now. There's some dishes to be done, some clothes to be laid out, and some teeth to be brushed...over and out!

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Adding Pages to Your Blogger Blog

I love Blogger and how much easier it is to add widgets and gadgets to it than Wordpress, but one big gripe I have is that it doesn't allow you to add pages, which I've been wanting to do for a while. Luckily I found a way around this problem, well two ways actually, which I will share with you.

For both options there's 2 steps:
1) create the page, and
2) put a link for it on the sidebar.

The first is super easy. You just create a new blog post and back-date it so it's "hidden" in the archives. For example, I recently created a "Press" page for one of my clients so she could put a list of links to all the articles and blogs she's been mentioned in. Once I entered all the info on the post, I dated it to last January, so it won't appear as a recent entry. To add a link on the sidebar I clicked on the "Layout" tab and then "Page Elements". From there I went to the "Add a Gadget" list and selected the "text" option, where I composed a little ad with a link pointing to the new page. Voila!

The second option takes a bit more work but it enables you to attach a full website to your blog. I built my "Services" page using Google Sites, and as you can see from the image below, I was able to replicate the exact same 'look and feel' of my blog, to make it seamless.

Although overall it was pretty simple to set up, there are some tricks I learned. This application is for groups to build sites that many people can collaborate on, but it allows you to change the defaults so that 1) you make it available for the public (as opposed to only those in the group), and 2) you disable the sharing features, since you'll be the only one entering information.

To start out you'll need to go to Google Apps and open a free account. Then go to Google Sites and click on "create new site". It'll ask you to enter a name for the site and also whether you want it private or public. Next you'll need to select a theme from a number of available templates, but since I would be customizing mine I just chose the default option. From there you'll automatically be sent over to your new home page, where you can begin making your changes.

Since I wasn't going to have any collaborators on my site, I wanted to get rid of the links for Attachments and Comments on the bottom of the page. To do that, I clicked on the "more actions" tab and selected "page settings". Then I unchecked "allow attachments" and "allow comments".

To change the colors and fonts, click on the "site settings" tab and select "site appearance". The "change site layout" button allows you to tweak the dimensions of the sidebar and the overall page, which I re-sized to match the width of my blog's sidebar.

To replicate my blog banner I took a screen shot of it and cropped it using Microsoft Paint. Once I saved it to my hard drive I could then download it by clicking on the "change logo" link under "Header" and selecting "custom logo".

To match the background and font colors, click on the "colors and fonts" tab and enter the same hex code that you have in your blog's layout.

In the navigation bar I removed the "recent site activity" by clicking the "delete" link. The default title was "navigation", which I changed to "Services" by clicking "edit".

I also added a picture of myself to the sidebar and a link to my profile by clicking on "add sidebar item" and then selecting "add text".

Once all that was done I was ready to insert the copy for my services, so I clicked on the "save changes" button on the upper right hand side and then "return to site" on the upper left. That'll take you back to the main page, where you'll find an "edit page" button that will open up a text editor similar to the one Blogger has for entering posts. You can insert all kinds of things like images, calendars, videos , Google Gadgets, etc. but unfortunately it blocked me from entering html code with certain tags in it, like for affiliate widgets, so it's a little limited (hopefully Google will fix that soon?!@*#).

The last step is to add a link to it on my blog's sidebar, and that's it. I was pretty impressed with how much I was able to match it to my blog and how user friendly the software was. Now I'm planning on adding a few more pages, which I'll be letting you know about. I'd love to hear what you think of my new services page or if you've found another way to solve the Blogger "page issue".

'Til soon!

EconWomen Conference - Part 2

So I'm groovin' to the funky latin beat of Los Hombres Calientes, Vol. 2 in the background (music to blog by) and ready to keep yaking about yesterday's EconWomen Conference. Where did I leave off? Oh right. Wenda Harris Millard. Co-CEO of Martha Stewart. She had a lot to say about ad networks (similar to Adsense, ad networks allow publishers to make money by placing ads on their sites). The internet, she explained, is a brand medium, and there is concern on the part of brands with being associated with lower quality sites, or ones that don't fit well with their image, so they will have a preference over branded sites. Because the environment in which the ads appear is very important to advertisers, sites that are able to brand themselves will do well. But she warns you can't rest on your laurels - execution is everyting and publishers have to continue to deliver quality content. She told us about how big-name brand marketers like Dove (Unilever) are embracing the internet while others (Proctor & Gamble) are still sitting on the sidelines, experimenting. "You can't experiment anymore, especially since the forecast is for advertising online to match that of consumer magazines by 2010, and quickly surpass it from there," adds Wenda.

We heard more on the subject at the next panel, "Advertising, Ad Networks and Other Revenue Opportunties". Lisa Stone, CEO of BlogHer (that's her next to yours truly), shared how her company started out as a conference and has now become a full fledged organization that offers an ad network to its members but maintain high standards. "We have advertising guidelines that forbid pay-per-post and we request that bloggers bring in the best content for women", she says. As Lisa puts it, their members didn't want to write for magazines or newspapers, they wanted to write for themselves (here's to blogger's independence!), and BlogHer is providing a way for them to monetize their work. She sees a very positive future for ad networks.

Up next it was two media powerhouses: Cathie Black, Pres., Hearst Magazines, being interviewed by Tina Brown, back at work with the launch of her new Daily Beast. Tina Brown made a catty remark about being in magazine publishing in this environment (meow...I guess she learned her lesson...), which was blogged about in this piece on PaidContent.com.

The highlight of the panel that followed, which was on M&A and venture capital activity, was seeing Andrew Shue in the flesh, cute as ever. Yeah, that Andrew Shue. From Melrose Place. Elizabeth's brother. He is co-founder of CafeMom, an online community for mommies, although apparently he hasn't left Hollywood altogether. When he introduced himself he said he was formerly with D&D Advertising, and the whole room chuckled. I had to ask one of my table mates what he meant, and she quickly clarified that was the fictional company he worked for in the series (ok, he's cute and has a sense of humor).

The other big thrill was listening to blogger extraordinaire Heather Armstrong tell her story. She started her blog Dooce when she was single, thinking that only a handful of friends (and, as she puts it, a few guys she slept with) would read it. She would complain about her job and call her boss names, for which she subsequently got fired. Heather later got married and had a baby, so her posts became about the isolation that new moms go through and her own struggles with post partum depression. The beauty of it was that new mommies all over the country were sharing her same angst and, through her, found a voice for what they were feeling. Page views went through the roof, to the point where Dooce now supports her whole family. Her experience really inspired me to keep writing, and more often. Hope it does for you too. Blog on!

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EconWomen Conference, New York

It's 1:30pm and I haven't had lunch so I'm trying to make a healthy choice from the sumptuous array of sweets at the EconWomen Conference, where a who's who of women in media are converging for an afternoon of kick-ass panels. I opt for the fruits and nuts but also sneak in a few of the checkered shortbread cookies, and settle in my seat.

Wenda Harris Millard, Co-Ceo of Martha Stewart Omnimedia, kicked things off on a humorous note. In his opening comments her interviewer mentioned that MSO had recently reported earnings and that they had been flat, but she quickly pointed out to him that "flat is the new up." Love it.

Wenda then went on to say that the internet is a medium made for women. "Technology has given women a new voice, and they're screaming," she says. The media veteran believes there is an appetite for intelligent, integrated marketing, and that is the direction she's taking MSO.

"Women are seeking the comfort of home, and we're all about how to have a beautiful life every day, so we're well positioned to capture this trend", she adds. Yesterday they announced they invested in a company called Pingg, which makes online invitations, and they're adding their "secret sauce" to it (watch out Evite). They did this because they found out their readers throw an average of 17 parties a year (who'd of thought that the dainty handicrafters were such party animals?). So now they can plan them on Martha's site. And they're not stopping there. Wenda says their big franchises are food, weddings, and holiday celebrations, so they're looking to invest in other properties in those areas (and she's open to suggestions). It's nice to have money.

It's past midnight so I'm going to bed now but I'll continue blogging about some more very useful insights I got at this event tomorrow. Stay tuned for stories on Andrew Shue (who was one of the hotties on Melrose Place and is now a web entrepreneur), Tina Brown (formerly of Vanity Fair and Talk Magazine), Joni Evans of WowoWow.com, Lisa Stone, CEO of BlogHer plus many others. Good night all!

My Favorite Web 2.0 Video Channels

I recently had the opportunity to speak to Shoba Purushothaman, the CEO of The NewsMarket, a site makes video press releases available to news organizations as well as bloggers to download for free. So say you're writing a post about Chrome, the new Google browser. To give your story a little more depth you could add the video press release to your piece for your readers to click on. This makes it very easy for bloggers to add professionally produced content to their posts. "New technologies are allowing publishers to get more sophisticated with their content, and there is greater consumer appetite for video," says Shoba. "We're in the business of matching content creators and content consumers", she adds, and to that end they've created a section called the Video Cafe specifically tailored to bloggers. She points out that tech, auto and social causes are their most popular buckets.

After speaking to her I was curious to see what other outlets provided high quality video clips. Whether you want to stay up to date on the latest web 2.0 video tutorials, or you want to add them to your posts to enhance your story and make it more professional, I found an number of sources, which I've listed below. By copying and pasting their html code you can embed the videos on unto your post so your readers don't have to navigate away from you. Here's a little roundup of my favorite web 2.0 channels:

YouTube is of course the end all and be all for video but it can be cumbersome to sort through it all, so I've selected some channels I like:

The Google channel has the latest downloads on, what else, Google products & how-to's.

Check this one on how to use Google Maps...it's super cool:



The CommonCraft channel has the most clear and easy-to-understand tutorials I've seen on the web. Here's one on Twitter in Plain English:



If you're writing about breaking news, YouTube's Associated Press channel has videos on an eclectic mix of topics, including tips on buying stocks (it'll soon be time for some quality bottom fishing, if you have the stomach for it...). The bad news is they're all jumbled up together and there's no categories, but you can search or choose from the 'most viewed' and 'the most discussed'.

Outside of YouTube there's the AllBusiness.com's Video Library. Here's one snippet on Why Search Engine Spiders are Important






TED.com offers a diverse library of videos from their annual conference, which brings together some of the world's most interesting people including Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, etc. Here's a clip on how Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia, one of the most referenced, most highly trafficked sites on the web:





Expert Village has an Internet channel with some useful how-to's. There were a slew of Facebook tutorials on the welcome page, and the one I looked at was well edited and to the point.

Where do you go for quality online video? Please share!

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Strategies for growth in a slowing economy

Yikes, what a mess! The havoc in the stock and financial markets made it really challenging to stay focused on my work last week. I spent 14 years of my life at Lehman Bros., so it's not only the pain of seeing the place I called "home" crumble after such a long and rich history, but through the years I also accumulated company stock, which is now, well... worthless. Ouch. Big ouch. Just the thought of opening up my account to see how much I've lost sends chills up my spine.

It still remains to be seen how the economy will be affected by the ongoing saga in the financial sector, but if history is an any indication the market has always found a way to bounce back up from past meltdowns. However, it's the negative perception that stays on consumer's minds and affects their behavior and their wallets. So how will small businesses weather the current maelstorm? Well that was the topic of a blogger's roundtable luncheon I was invited to recently. The host was Steve Strauss, small business expert and "Ask The Expert" columnist for USA Today. Other fellow bloggers included Yvonne DeVita who pens the Lipsticking blog, Jay Heyman of Porte Advertising, Peter Piazza who writes about printers and scanners for About.com, Bob Phibbs who wrote this post about the event, and Gene Marks who writes for Forbes.com and Businessweek.com.

One success story I was able to share with the group is about The Bridal Garden, a non profit boutique that sells designer wedding gowns at 75% off retail prices. My long time friend Geraldine Brower (that's her on the right), who is the shop's Director tells me that her business has grown exponentially in the past two years as more people hear about it and tell their friends. The store started out twelve years ago as way to make extra money for Sheltering Arms, a non profit organization whose mission was to help disadvantaged children and their families in the NY area. "The concept at the beginning was to get New York City girls to donate their dresses after they got married, so we stockpiled gowns for a year to have enough to open the store," explains Geraldine. But they soon had to find other ways to get inventory, so they branched out and called on stores and designers to get them to donate dresses. "Back then the Bridal Garden wasn't the only way that Sheltering Arms raised funds so I didn't take a lot of chances. We wanted to build the business slowly and steadily so it wouldn't falter," she adds.

Since then the store has changed hands and it now benefits the Brooklyn Charter School. They no longer have the backing from an umbrella organization and need to be self-supporting. That has forced them to put all their efforts into making enough money to cover the costs. "Before it was just a sideline. I was director of development and I was doing a lot of other things; now I'm dedicated to the shop full time, and we've built a strong business. We were up 20% last year and another 20% the year before," says Geraldine.

When I asked her how she did it she says it's been a combination of things:

Keep your costs down
"Our expenses are really low. For every 3 dollars that comes in, one dollar is pure profit. That's the result of growing slowly. If you have the time to invest in a business and don't want to risk money, you can do it on a shoestring."

Step up the media appearances
"Recently we were interviewed on Eyewitness News and they put us in the backs of taxicabs in NY City for two weeks. The segment we were in played over and over and was seen by 1.1 mill people, according to the networks stats. That was about 3 months ago and since then our sales are up 35%. I pitched the show a few different ideas and they ultimately liked this one, which had a "weddings on a budget" theme. We had been written up in Newsweek magazine and often TV follows print so that helped us get recognition with this story."

Embrace the internet
"The internet has been the most effective marketing tool for us because people in the marriage demographic use the internet for everything. Whenever anyone calls for an appointment we ask them how they heard about us and it's usually one of two ways: they either do a search and we come up, or they read about us in blogs where brides communicate with each other.

I made sure we had a very good site with a lot of keywords in it (like discount, wedding dresses, charity, resale store) so it comes up high in the rankings. We've also appeared in many blogs, like Wedding Bee, Junebug Weddings, Yelp.com, Citysearch, and more opportunities arise as new new sites pop up. Brides write in and start a dialogue. Brides are telling their friends about us and more designers are coming onboard. We now have name recognition and people know who we are - we're very mainstream now. It helps to have a really good product at an inexpensive price and to provide good service. Shoppers can also feel good about knowing that by buying our gowns they are helping children and contributing to a good cause."

Do you have any small business success stories or tactics to share? Please do!

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The Makings of a Media Mogul

I recently met Tom Schlobohm at Digital Wednesdays, a weekly gathering for media professionals at an outdoor lounge called ONO that's in Manhattan's still trendy meatpacking district but feels more like being in South Beach. After chatting for a little bit he started telling me about the house he was looking to buy with 3 friends near the beach in San Diego so he could live there one or two weeks out of the month and then the rest here in New York. Now at first blush Tom doesn't look like a trust fund baby or a Hollywood movie star (though he could fit right into Entourage), so I asked this very young-looking 28-year-old what he did to be able to afford such a jet-set lifestyle. Well it turns out Tom caught the entrepreneurial bug early in middle school, first washing cars in the summer to get his first bike, then shoveling snow to score his first computer. At 13 he ran a direct mailer where he mailed out coupons 3 times a year, during his breaks. After 3 years he made enough cash to buy a pair of skis and spend a whole summer in France.

This mogul-in-the-making started his first online business in high school, promoting search engines and online offers (meanwhile at that age I was busy trying to figure out what lip gloss would match best with what pair of jeans...). He acted as an affiliate and helped companies with their search marketing campaigns. His take? $130Gs...enough to pay for college! By 18 Tom was already living "the life" - he bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee, went glacier skiing in New Zealand and then island hopping in Fiji.

From there he started a co-location hosting company and had a couple hundred servers throughout the country. One year out of college Tom had enough to buy an apartment and a rental condo, the latter because he wanted to learn about the real estate market.

LiveGrad.com
About 6 months ago Tom started his newest venture, LiveGrad, which focuses on education leads. "We generate leads and get qualified applicants and send them to the schools that hire us. We focus on adult education, like continuing ed or MBAs or doctorates. Our target is people that are already set in their careers but don't have a bachelor's or associate degree, or want a Master or an MBA. Or maybe they want to go back to school to switch careers. It's generally people that already have jobs and are in the workforce," explains Tom.

It's quite a big market. Today the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that only 28% of Americans hold college degrees, and they're execpting that percentage to climb. According to the U.S. Department of Education, between 2005 and 2015, postsecondary enrollment is expected to increase 11% for those under 25 and 18% for those 25 years of age and older.

LiveGrad fends off competition by doing the groundwork. "The big thing is lead quality, so we have a call center that helps us firm up the person's interest and make sure they're in fact a qualified applicant. We've been able to find a niche and continue to grow. We're good at pay-per-click and organic search in Google, MSN and Yahoo!," adds Tom.

Using Facebook Ads
In addition to search engine advertising, Tom occasionally uses Facebook ads. This past summer he was looking to hire an intern and went with Facebook because they allow you to do a highly targeted ads, more so than other ad networks. He wanted to recruit a technology programming student from 4 specific schools, so he ran the ad and found someone from Cornell in just 3 days - for just $47. "I was able to target only current students in the schools I wanted and also only juniors and seniors. Facebook has a big student population and the information is very accurate because it's user generated. People fill out the information themselves. You can specify location, state, city, keywords or what university or schools they're in because all that information appears on their profile," says the native New Yorker.

For his business he mostly advertises through Google, MSN and Yahoo! but says that if you have a product or service for a very targeted group, Facebook works well. You can search by keyword or by company name so can you can target people that have worked at a certain company or that have a certain interest, or even alumni. Tom points out that it's expensive but it works well if you're looking to reach a very specific target market, like at a company or a specific school.

Tom says he'd like to build LiveGrad up and sell it in a few years, but beyond that he can't say. My guess? I see him featured in Entrepreneur or Inc. magazine pretty soon - but you read about him on the Mogulette Blog first!

If you have you any thoughts or comments on using Facebook ads, please share...we'd love to hear from you.

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