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This is the last part of a 4 part series on Social Media (links provided in case you have missed the first three):  WHAT, WHY, PAYOFF.

We have talked about the fact that social media is conversation online.  It is happening all over the internet and is discussions about content that is posted online or something that is happening offline as well.  Content that is produced by businesses to engage conversation can take the form of video, audio, or written including inside blogs, forums, all types of social sites and membership sites.

We’ve also discussed why it’s important to be ‘in the conversation’.  Businesses are increasing brand awareness, building significant followings, and producing more sales by integrating their company with social media marketing.

The ultimate goal of using social media for business is to get traffic to the website so that you can share more about your company’s product or service.  There are many social media tools available to do this.  The engagement you create with people in the social sites is what will help spread your message.  When people you are connected to approve what you are saying, they will spread the word just like offline word-of -mouth advertising.

HOW do you join the conversation?

Social media facilitates the communication between people online.  You will join the most popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and create a space there where you have the opportunity to build a large following.  Posting valuable content in these spaces is what will attract others to you, in addition to brand awareness if you are an established business.

Posting content regularly is necessary because people are not going to come back to the same stale content on a page.  Each time you post something, you will want to kick in your social media marketing plan for the content.  The more you attract people to the content, the more targeted people you will build for ongoing communication opportunities.

Triggering conversation about your business is accomplished by searching for what is being said and responding to it.  Answer questions, ask questions, give helpful information, provide valuable content.  These are all ways to join the conversation.

What you want to target is an opportunity to provide a link back to your website each time you post something in a social site.  That way, people can find out more about your business when they read something interesting that you wrote.  This is another ongoing task:  to search places online to engage with people and establish relationships.

People are always looking for new content, information about a product or service including features and reviews, help with something, answers to their questions, and discussion about experiences with products and services.  They want direct access to the business, possibly even the CEO.  The more you engage in the talk that is already happening online (about the market or industry itself and specific companies), the more you will integrate your business into social media and work toward conversion of engagement into sales.

When you give people the chance to associate themselves with you online, you are laying the groundwork for leveraging this communication for your benefit – at the same time, you are providing benefits to your following.  Social Media is about sharing and relationship more than it is about selling.  It is the model for the old saying that the more you give to others, the more that comes back to you.

The biggest takeaway today is threefold:

1)  You must be active every day.  Once you begin to participate in social media there will be conversation daily.  You need to be responding to this communication and adding to it.

2)  It is important to establish relationships, share valuable information, and not look for an immediate sale.  People want to know that you care and are genuine about the business you represent.

3)  Patience is required. Social media marketing is a process and most of the time it takes time and effort building a presence online before sales are realized.

To continue the conversation since the HOW is an ongoing adventure, we will be developing videos and written material for you to view and consider for your social media needs.

Come back often and discover new materials.  Better yet, sign up for our RSS feed and you will be notified when we have something new for you.

WHY

Yesterday we discussed ‘WHAT is Social Media’ (if you missed it, check out the post here) and scheduled the ‘WHY’ for today.

STRONG WHY:

Successful businesses who want to grow will keep up to date with marketing methods that will work for their industry.  Social Media is the NEW way to advertise or market a business, and it will work with any market because so many people now have access to the internet.  Let’s agree with the fact that, now, people go online to get information and to make buying decisions more than they go to the local newspaper or yellow page books.  That’s a fact.

The other part of the story is that we are living in the age of information, where we are able to access more information than ever before, and connect with people at almost every level of a business than ever was possible in the past.  People want to ask questions, have discussions, get feedback from trusted friends, and they are doing this on the internet.  CEO’s of major companies are present in social channels online, and talking with customers, prospects, or whoever is asking them questions.

The next consideration is that even if you are not participating, your customers and prospects are.  They’re already online, talking about the kinds of  products or services that you represent, maybe they are talking about you, and probably they are talking about your competition.  Chances are that your competition is there as well.  And every day that you aren’t, you are losing potential business.

What are people doing online when they are researching products and services they are interested?

Watching video clips

Reading articles on blogs, websites, and news sites

Visiting business social pages

Viewing images

Listening to podcasts

Talking in forums

Being active in communities

Businesses in every market are using all of the above to connect with people, engage in conversation with them, attracting new and loyal customers from this transparent new way to market.  On the internet, it is imperative to be genuine and reputable because if you are not, someone is going to tell the world about it.

When you start using Social Media for your business, the most important advice you can take is to CARE about your message and CARE about the people who will see and respond to it.  That will lead to a very important WHY:  you will build a group of customers who will not only be satisfied with the service or product you provide them, but will become ADVOCATES for you by spreading the word through this very viral community of the internet.

It may seem overwhelming until we get to the HOW do you actually ‘do’ Social Media.  That’s coming in a future post (or available by clicking on the WWW (world wide web) picture on the top right of this page) – for now it is important that you understand the WHAT, WHY, and PAYOFF associated with social media marketing.

Tomorrow’s discussion:  PAYOFF, or ROI, with Social Media.

WHAT

The more you dig into the Social Media world, the more answers you may get in terms of definition of the term.  Collectively, they still add up to the same thing.  Social media is conversation that takes place online.

The internet is where people now go to get information on products, services, businesses, locations, directions, etc.  The internet is also where people are talking to each other about all of these things.

Social media is the communication between both individuals and groups – in all kinds of ways – all over the world wide web. The social sites that we use to engage in conversations are our marketing tools.  Tools will come and go, but this advertising and marketing method is here to stay.  Remember that the internet is still very young, and every day new people are getting access.

Social media is an opportunity for people to talk directly with major brands in a way that was never available before.  And small businesses can use social media exactly the way much larger businesses are doing – right now there is nothing to hold any business back from participating.

The cost of social media is measured more in terms of time than it is in dollars.  In order to effectively join this new way to market a business, and have success with it, there has to be a consistent and sincere effort to engage on the popular social networking sites as well as industry specific locations.

Advertising and marketing is no longer about pushing out a message, in the form of an advertisement, to a general crowd or even a targeted market.  People do not want to be ’sold to’ anymore.  Prospective buyers want information, referrals, testimonies, and conversation about a brand, service, or products.

Social media is about attracting a crowd, pulling them in to your message, by engaging them in conversation, posting valuable (helpful) content online, entertaining, educating, enlightening their market.

And it’s not only enough to provide this great content.  The other part of Social Media is the marketing of the message:  Social Media Marketing.  Helping the content to be seen to an even wider audience is achieved by consistent efforts to market the messages in strategic (non-selling) ways.

Promoting your business online using online social channels can include answering questions, listening to concerns, establishing relationships, asking for feedback, and building brand awareness.  The most effective way to utilize social media marketing is to constantly be in touch with the conversation that is already happening about your brand, and responding to it in a sincere way.

There are multiple returns for social media marketing efforts.  In addition to achieving a wider reach for your content that results in more visits to your website, there are search engine optimization benefits.  Social media sites are now receiving top search engine listings so that even more people find your business when going to Google and other search engines to find your product or service.

So there is a plan for Social Media and there is a plan for Social Media Marketing.  Both plans should be worked on a daily basis.  There are optimal ways to do each, and we plan to cover that here on this blog.

Takeaway:   Social Media is sharing information online.  A business can participate by posting content in all kinds of creative ways to engage new people to the product or service that is represented – not to sell, but to use the social space on the internet to facilitate communication that will lead to sales.

Tomorrow’s topic is WHY Social Media.

The web site hosting cost of GVO services is $1 for a 14-day trial, and the company is re-launching their new services today.  GVO is a 12 year old company that previously operated under the Kiosk name.  I have personally used the service for over a year and am very excited to now utilize all components.  GVO is much more than a web hosting service.  For web site owners who want to actively market their business online, there are additional tools that are needed to successfully accomplish that.  Let’s review them.

In addition to web site hosting, unlimited domain hosting, there is the need to get traffic to the website.  That is called internet marketing and there are an abundance of tips, tools, strategies, systems, plans, etc. available for use in these endeavors.  Many work well, though all require time or money and creativity is very helpful.

If you want to communicate with your visitors in the future, you must collect their email address so that you can bring them back to the site.  Without doing this the odds are that once they leave, they might not be able to find your website a second or subsequent time.  When you place a box on your website and ask the visitor to enter their name and email address, you will need an automated message that is delivered to that email address.  This is facilitated through what is called an autoresponder service.  You write a letter or series of letters and load it in the autoresponder, and when people subscribe to your list that letter will go out to them immediately.  From that point, you have the ability to email them again and again, sending a valuable message or possibly inviting them back to your website to view something new there.

GVO offers an unlimited autoresponder service similar to Aweber or iContact.

People have experienced a surge in online Video the past couple of years and they like it.  Many would rather get information from a video than reading it.  Successful internet marketers create videos to advertise their product or service, focusing on solving problems or providing solutions.

GVO offers a Video lead capture system and unlimited Video hosting.

With the rising costs of just about everything in our present economy, it makes sense to save money on travel and meeting room costs, and host a meeting online in a web conference room.  These virtual meetings are very efficient because they save time, with access being very quick and easy wherever there is internet access and without travel time.

GVO offers your own Web Conference Room similar to webex.

Last, but not least, is the Downtime Witness software that GVO offers its members.  You can now monitor your website for any possible downtime, and monitor your competition’s website as well.

GVO offers you the Downtime Witness software to run, and the reseller rights to it so that you can help other people get access to it as well.

10-20-09 marks the re-launch of the 12 year old company GVO.  Along with all of the services mentioned above, there will be an education website named GVO Academy where there are live trainers in the room to answer anything from basic information to use these tools, to more advance internet marketing help.  Joel and Mark and all the folks at GVO are real people who put service and quality web hosting and internet marketing products at the top of their priorities.  Their hands-on approach, integrity, and accessibility are very refreshing attributes in the online marketing world.

To purchase all of these services separately, it would cost almost $300.00 per month and they would all have a different back office and be accessible from 4 or 5 different sites.  For the same quality services, GVO offes all of these in one place for a web site hosting cost of $44.95 per month after the $1 trial.

The foundation of every online business starts with great hosting, incredible marketing tools and systems! Without these components in place, your business can fall apart overnight.  First and foremost is the hosting itself.  You want your website to be consistently live on the internet, and the management of your hosting account to be user friendly feature rich.  The difference between the best web site host, and much of the competition, can be the difference  between your website being live 99.9% of the the time or down a percentage of time.  If your website is down, your  visitors can not access it.  One of the services GVO offers is a program that measures downtime.

Another difference when you secure the best web site host is that you get supporting services for your online marketing business.  A separate autoresponder account with services like aweber or get response (and others) is another cost that you will incur as well as another back office to manage.  There’s a lot of positive to be said about having your internet marketing tools in one place for easy managing.

Next on an internet marketer’s list is a web conference room.  If you are serious about building a substantial business online, you will need a meeting place.  Meetings are planned offline to discuss business, present a product, service, or business plan.  The same can be done online in a virtual conference room.  The technology is great and the rooms are accessed right from a live website, with no software to download.  A 10-person web conference room is included with a GVO titanium hosting plan, another testament to GVO securing the best web site host title.

Video is now a huge marketing success on the internet.  Google purchased youtube and now gives top search engine rankings to video content.  It is very easy to shoot a video and have it live on the internet in a matter of minutes.  A GVO web hosting account includes a video distribution website as well.

A beginner internet marketer will find the next GVO feature very useful, and seasoned marketers are always learning so they are most happy with it as well.  GVO has launched an education web site named GVO Academy.  There is live training and recorded training that will help anyone who wants to build a successful business on the internet by giving instruction, support, systems, plans, and even motivation.

Only the best web site host can offer all of these high quality services and in one location.  GVO is a twelve year old business with a new name.  The integrity of the company has been established.  The growth of the business that previously operated under the kiosk.ws name has been nothing short of impressive, with web site owners that range from people who are brand new to the world of online marketing, to some of the biggest gurus on the internet.  GVO provides the same exceptional service to all of them.

One thing that impressed me over a year ago when I first secured this best web site host was the live help that was available in the company conference room throughout the day.  If I was stuck on something, I didn’t have to fill out a support ticket and wait a day or a few days for a response.  I could pop in to the conference room and ask my question to a knowledgeable person who could help me right away.

GVO also has available dedicated servers and upgraded plans for marketers with those needs.  One of the best featurs of GVO, the same as with kiosk.ws, is the $1 trial plan they offer.  You have the opportunity to evaluate all of the services discussed here for only $1.  I started with that same offer and have not looked back.  If I was to add up the cost of having to purchase separately an autoresponder, video distribution service, web conference room, and hosting, I would be paying well over $200 per month.  I pay only $44.95 for all of these services from the best web site host.

One last feature can be huge for anyone who desires another income stream to add to their financial portfolio.  I did not join GVO for this feature but quickly saw the benefits in terms of earning extra money, and the satisfaction of telling other people about a web host that can save them money and give them so many business services all in one place.  GVO offers a compensation plan for referring their service.  Their business model is a network marketing one because they like their clients to pass the word to new potential clients, and would rather pay them to do so than to spend money advertising.

I have always been a fan of the network marketing business model because that is what my primary business is based on, and because it is essentially a social marketing concept where people benefit from the knowledge and experience of others.  The same as telling a friend about a new restaurant, good movie, or great deal  at the shopping mall, we can refer the best web site host so that others can use all of the services in GVO to successfully build their businesses online.

GVO has produced 3 videos – as part of their re-launch – that teach valuable internet marketing lessons.  This is not a new company, just a new name.  GVO is the same great 12 year old product and service that was called Kiosk.

No matter what business you are in, if you are marketing a product or a service online, you will get value from these videos. I invite you to watch – and learn!  This company is so much more than website hosting.. as you will see.

Here is the link for Video 1. It’s focus is developing your brand.. getting your name out there.. through repetition.. so people naturally see you as a leader. This is important stuff. Enjoy!

GVO Launch Video 1

Video 2. The topic here is how to create a unique selling proposition.. make yourself stand out from the crowd in your opportunity.. how to become unique in your marketplace.

GVO Launch Video 2

Video 3. In Video 3 we learn how to collect leads using the power of the internet.

GVO Launch Video 3

Good news:  GVO is keeping the free trial that they had as Kiosk hosting.. so you can try all of their services at no cost.  I have used Kiosk web hosting – now GVO – to host all of my domains for over a year now and could not be happier.  This is a twelve year old company that has already established themselves, proven their integrity, and attracts brand new marketers all the way to famous (guru) internet marketers.

To learn more about GVO Web Hosting and how to get your no-cost trial, go here: GVO.

You may be familiar with Kiosk hosting.  It is the web site hosting that I have used for over a year now and very satisfied.  I was referred to Kiosk by a very successful online and offline (corporate) marketer.

Kiosk is re-launching as GVO – or Global Virtual Opportunities.  This is not your everyday web hosting company.  There are more pieces to the internet marketing world included with a GVO account.

Of course you have your web hosting.  With the Titanium package (that I have and recommend), you can host unlimited domains all in one place, with unlimited sub-domains, email accounts, and autoresponders.  You will have 15000 megs of web space, 200000 megs of bandwith, unlimited MySQL databases, and Web Host Manager.  Cpanel and Fantastico are also included.

That’s just the hosting.  There is so much more to the Titanium package.  Video marketing is huge right now and with GVO, we have Easy Video Producer that allows you to place professionally designed videos onto your web site with one click of a mouse.

There is no need to have a separate autoresponder account because there is one included, and it is similar to Aweber and other popular services.  GVO’s bulk email marketing software service is called eResponder Pro.

Have you joined the ranks of business owners using web conferencing for meetings?  It not only saves money traveling and/or renting space, it is convenient and people can log into the conference room quickly and easily from the office, home, or wherever they take their laptop!  A GVO Conference Room is included with your Titanium package.

Sounding good?  What if I told you that you can try it all for only $1.  Kiosk offered the $1 trial and they are keeping that offer with new GVO!  It is worth taking the time to evaluate because you may be already paying separately for all of these services, or wanting to start services like these for your business.  With GVO they are all in once place, inside one account, and for one low monthly cost.

If all of this is not enough, there is more.  GVO has a website monitoring service called Downtime Witness that you can use for free, and you can even re-sell it and keep full profits.  This service lets you know of potential web site downtime and also what other competitors are up to.  It’s like a virtual insurance policy for your websites.

Last, GVO will help you run your business.  They have LIVE business training, LIVE support (this company prides themselves on excellent customer service), and will even offer you ways to earn additional streams of income.  All businesses should have multiple income sources.

Kiosk is a 12 year old company.  They already have an excellent, proven track record providing web hosting on the internet.  GVO takes this company to the next level and invites you to join them and their services for your business needs.

To learn more and get your $1 trial, visit GVO WEB SITE HOSTING.

Do you prefer the free side or the paid side of web site advertising marketing? Your paid choices are buying search engine ads such as on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and a list of others, or purchasing banner ads on websites that relate to your market. Alternatives include solo ads to ezine lists, paid submissions to press release sites and business directories, and of course buying leads. I prefer the free side of web site advertising marketing. It may not involve money, or at least much less of it, but it does involve some work.

The free side of marketing online, through search engine traffic, consists of optimizing my website for the search engines to reward it with a high search engine ranking, and supporting that with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. A website can get a large amount of traffic from the search engines because that is where people go to look for information about a product or service. When the website is in the top three or four spots on the first page of Google and other search engines, it can enjoy great traffic.

All of this searching and ranking centers around keywords. Key words are phrases are what people type into Google and other search engines when they are looking for information. The search engines find websites to return search results for people. The way they find the websites is through the keywords the website uses on their pages. The work involved on this free side of internet advertising, also called natural or organic, is all centered around optimizing the website for both the search engines and the visitors they will send. The goal is to make the website the authority in its market and then search engines will bestow their respect, and people will be happy with the information they find there.

We can not say too much about the importance of thorough keyword research in web site advertising marketing. Finding the best words that people are searching for when they want information about your website’s product or service is key to getting the traffic you are after. Once the keywords are established, and it is advised to continue to look for good keywords, the information in the code behind the website will need structured properly. Search engines look for certain criteria when they come to visit a website. They want to see that the title matches up with the content of the website, and they like to see keywords in the title and even in the website url. They look for a meta description that is relevant to the content of the website and includes keywords. They look for h1/h2 tags which support the overall content of the website.

The content for the web site advertising marketing should be valuable. It can consist of educational, enlightening, or entertaining information. It is best to add fresh content regularly since it is appealing to both the reader and the search engines. There are many strategies that can be utilized for maintaining the content on a website, including all of its pages. A site map is valuable to the navigation of a website, and it should not be challenging for a visitor or the search engine to move around the website. Linking is another aspect the search engines regard in a very important way. External links with keywords as anchors back to the website are very valuable. Also, the source of those incoming links and their popularity on the internet are evaluated by the search engines.

So we know that optimizing a website is based on the search engine queries that the website wants to rank for so that it can get a share of the traffic that is searching for those keywords. It may sound simple enough, but when you consider the competition that might exist for the same keywords, the process can become quite a challenge. It is important to lay out an SEO plan and to stay consistent with implementing the plan. Ongoing work such as creating new keyword-rich content, and continuous link building, is essential for getting to the first page of Google and other search engines, and staying there. There are tools that help us find the number of searches per month for a given key word or phrase. We can test this with statistics to back up our research.

If your online marketing includes the free side of web site advertising marketing, you now have an idea of what you will need to target in order to get the traffic that you want to go to your website. You can combine key words and phrases that you carefully research until you get the numbers of searches that you desire. You can work to get those top spots in the search engines so that you secure the majority of the traffic you know is generated with your keywords. You can build your website to an authority site that people get to know, like, and trust. This is the way that you turn traffic into new business and repeat business. It is how you find success on the free side of internet marketing.

To learn more about optimizing your website for traffic from the free side of search engines, visit our web site advertising marketing page.

Blogging and Social Media have come a long way.

Blogs evolved from the concept of an online journal. When first conceived, they were used mainly by people to keep personal notes, post pictures and ideas. Blogs were seen as something housewives and artists used to create online presence. This is no longer the case. Now, almost every business, either online of offline, needs a blog.

Social Media was much the same way. Viewed at first as a tool for students to connect, Facebok is now successfully used for online business marketing. Other social media sites are catching up fast. Sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and flickr are becoming business essentials.

So what can a blog and social media do for your local business website?

People like to feel they know the people they are doing business with. They like to feel they can trust the business. They like to know the business is community oriented and involved. For a traditional business this concept is sometimes hard to convey. A blog on a business website, and integrating social media, can inform customers of current news or offers, educate, and entertain visitors.

Community events, charities and even small events hosted by the business such as celebrations, birthday parties, and classes, can be advertised. Pictures can be posted, including those of customers enjoying the events. If the business participates at a community event, such as a cleanup for example, post the event with pictures. Blogs and social media are a way for your customer to get to know the business and what you do in the community.

Blogs will bring traffic to your website. While your business may be a traditional local business without online sales, it is still important to bring traffic to your site because your customers are online even if they aren’t buying a product or service from you online. Traffic means people who are interested in stopping by the physical store are stopping by your website to see what you are all about. Blogs that are updated frequently will help improve search engine ranking and will increase your traffic and potential client base.

Blogs and social media give you a real time connection to your customers, more so than your website does. They should be kept current, updated on a frequent basis. A customer can go to your blog or Facebook page and see what is going on now. Where your website may be static and offer great information, the blog and social media is where they get current communication from your business.

Four years ago, in a BusinessWeek article for May 2, 2005, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm, it states there are 9 million blogs with 40,000 new blogs each day. These numbers have grown significantly since then.

More and more businesses are reaching their customers through their blogs. Facebook, a social website that loves pictures, has more than 120 million users log on every day. Twitter, the micro blog that likes video links, is fast approaching with over 3 million “tweets” being sent a day. Can your local business really afford to miss using these valuable tools?

Many web site owners struggle with keyword research. They may not realize the difference the right keywords to website can be. Would you be surprised to hear that your keywords can be responsible for you getting significant traffic to your website every day, or not getting much at all? The fact is that finding, and using, the right keywords to website can be remarkable.

When you think about the fact that marketing online revolves around people searching for information and knowledge and things to purchase, the words they search become very important. These are what online marketers call keywords. There exists what we refer to as money keywords for every market.

Money keywords, or profitable keywords, are special because they are targeted, they get a lot of searches every month, and the competition has not saturated the words. Money keywords are key words and phrases that you, the website owner, can rank for at the top of the search engines. That means the top results on the first page of Google and other search engines.

Here are 3 tips to help you find the profitable keywords for your website, along with some strategies that show the significance of keywords to website.

1) You now understand that doing business online requires a visitor finding your website and purchasing your product or service. Unless personally invited to your website, they find it by clicking on an ad of some form, or searching for information in Google or other search engines and seeing your website displayed at or near the top of the first page (this is traditionally where people will click).

So how do you claim the top spots in the search engines? You need to optimize your website so that the search engines like it and reward it by listing it high in their search results. So the first step is to secure the right keywords to target.

Your keyword research should involve finding the money, or profitable, keywords to target since these are the words that people already search and that you can rank for in the search engines. The keywords will be used on your website and in all marketing that you do off-site.

2) It is beneficial to get into the mindset of the potential buyers of your product or service. What kinds of words do they use that relate to your business? What are the problems they are having? What are the answers they are looking for? What are common words or phrases that are associated with your market?

When you start to gather ideas, you can feed them into keywords to website research tools that will return even more suggestions to you. It is possible to quickly build a long list of potential key words or phrases. If you are doing PPC marketing, you might need long lists of keywords.

However, if you are optimizing your website so that it will be found in the free side of the search engines, the organic or natural side, you don’t need as many keywords to website. The key here is to target money keywords, or profitable keywords.

3) Once you have a large group of keywords, next you want to qualify them for the results they can produce for you in the search engines. It is important to determine that the specific keywords to website are getting a lot of searches every month. This is the first requirement of a money keyword.

Next, you must determine how competitive those keywords will be. For example, a keyword may get a ton of searches every month but there are already close to a million websites that are targeting those keywords. In this case, it would be very hard to beat out all of those websites to claim a top spot on a Google search result.

You see the importance for your keywords to website have a lower competition level. If fewer websites are using the keywords, and they are getting lots of searches, you will have a much better, and quicker, chance of ranking high for the terms.

If you combine the mindset of the potential buyer with thorough keyword research that digs down into the keywords to website search, and is able to secure the money keywords for the market, you can set up your website to receive a constant flow of traffic every day. If you are not confident in determining the money keywords for your website, this part of your marketing work can easily be outsourced.

To learn more about how your website can rank high in the search engines, and have a constant flow of targeted traffic to your website, visit our keywords to website page.

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