While you’re building your following on Facebook it’s always good to not overdo it. What I mean if you start out trying to send invitations to all of your friends on the same day I can guarantee Facebook will think you’re spamming and block you. Once they start think you are spamming it’s a bear to get additional friends.
Make sure you follow my basic rule of marketing which is educate don’t sell! This is a long term plan not your typical instant gratification plan like most gurus preach. We’re trying to build a business here.
Follow these simple rules before you start promoting your Facebook pages.
With that being said here are my five easy steps for marketing Facebook:
Send invitations to your friends-sounds obvious but you would be surprised how many people open up their Facebook account and then email me asking who should I invite?
Add your Facebook url to your business cards-Start promoting your Facebook url when handing out your business cards at networking events. It’s amazing how many businesses are promoting their businesses using Facebook.
Put a link on your home page of your website-If you’re using a blog there is a really cool plugin called socail media widget. It adds all of your social media icons in the sidebar of your blog…very cool!
Use your Facebook link in your advertising-hmm didn’t I already mention this?
Poll your customers-Nothing like finding out what your customers want! There are some awesome plugins that do polls for WordPress blogs. Of course I would only recommend you setup a blog instead of spending thousands of dollars on a website that you’ll redo in a year. Of course I have a complete done fore you blog setup. Check it out!
Cheers!
p.s. Feel free to leave any comments and be sure to check out my latest product LittleBlackBookMarketing.com. It’s a complete Facebook Marketing course for only $37… You can’t go wrong with that right?
Would you like to target easy markets and achieve faster results? Sure who wouldn’t right? The two most important assets in every online business is the domain name and the hosting account. This is why I came up with a simple quick procedure for picking the right web domain name registration.
Research keywords
I always start by doing some keyword research using Market Samurai. My goal is to achieve quick, easy profitable front page rankings in the search engines. And since I’m so impatient I don’t like waiting months to see my site on the first page. I want result in hours, days or a few weeks.
Expired Domain Names
Next I look for expired domain names using a new tool called Domain Samurai. This is a whole course in itself (which I plan on teaching in the near future) but I really want to give you some tips in this area that will help you decide if this is right for you. Buying expired domain names is the fastest way to get a big jump on your competition. It is a well know fact that the main criteria Google uses to rank pages is the age of the domain, the page rank and the number of backlinks to the site. If you really want to get more into it there are a number of “on page” and “off page” characteristics also. I like to use the keyword in the domain because not many people realize how important this is. Using these tools it is a snap to find the perfect domain for your new web site.
Buy Your Domain Name
This is a very important and often overlooked step. No, not that you forget to buy your domain name but the registrar you select. I have seen some horror stories from people buying domains from companies or their web designers and then they go out of business. Only to be left with no access to your domain name. My first tip in this area is to ALWAYS register your own domain name. Don’t let your web designer register it in his or her name. My best two recommendations are Godaddy and Namecheap (yes, I will get a very tiny commission if you click on these links). Why do I pick these companies? Because you can buy cheap domain names, they offer great customer service and you have full control over your name servers.
Hosting
Finally, you’re going to have your web site hosted somewhere, you might as well pick a hosting service that is reliable and has been around for awhile. I recently had a customer change their hosting over to a “free” service and it has been down more than it has been online. Don’t pick some local web designer who is hosting it out of his garage. I’ve been there done that. It is more trouble than you want. Besides hosting from a reputable company like Hostgator or Hostmonster is really the best way to host your domain registration names.
Take Care,
p.s. Feel free to leave any comments and be sure to check out Domain Samurai
Last week I purchased Socrates WP Blog Theme from easyauthoritysite.com and I wanted to give you an update. I’ve been installing it on multiple affiliate sites some as old as three years. I had mentioned that I was concerned about lots of false promises made by similar companies with similar products.
Well I can now tell you that the support given by easyauthoritysite.com has been amazing. My first ticket was answered in less than two minutes. Now I suspect that isn’t going to happen every time. The second ticket was answered in less than an hour, maybe less I don’t really remember exactly.
I didn’t understand the Navigation system they used but Dan explained to me that Socrates doesn’t automatically populate the main navigation bar with the WP Blog Theme pages. At first I thought this was going to be a real inconvenience but now I understand how you can completely customize these links. This is a really cool feature because normally WP Blog Themes don’t give you that option.
The footer navigation was another area of concern. However now I realize after playing around with it that you can completely customize where you want those nasty legal pages like the privacy, terms of use and the anti-spam pages. You can left or right justify these links in the footer by clicking the radio button and inserting the links (see image). The other advantage of having the footer links like this is you don’t have use the Exclude Pages Plugin.
I liked to use the Google Analytic plugin to track my traffic to my sites. Socrates WP Blog Theme gives you the option to insert the Google analytic code right into the admin area so you don’t have to worry about uploading that plugin. I struggled with this for awhile until I realized that’s just one less plugin for me or my VA to upload or configure.
So overall I’m liking this theme more and more. They have even added some more header graphics.
I hope you have enjoyed this review and please leave comments below.
Take Care,
I installed my first Socrates theme on an affiliate site my son is working on this morning. I watched the 20 min video showing how a compete WordPress site could be setup and monetized using this theme.
Would this be just another false promise? I thought if this theme worked as good as they said it does I could change many of my affiliate sites that have been sitting around collecting dust.
After I purchased and downloaded Socrates I watched the video that they made on their site at easyauthoritysite.com. It was a piece of cake to install. Just use your favorite FTP program or upload the zip file in the WordPress Admin area under Appearance > Add New Themes.
After activating the plugin I clicked on the link at the bottom of the left sidebar it took a minute to figure out where to go. I soon realized that you just need to click through each of the links in the sidebar. The first link was the Layout link. With 5 layouts to choose from it’s like building your own theme from scratch but without having to spend hours learning any programming languages.
Going down the page there is an area to add your Google Analytic ID. Since I use the Google analytic plugin I wasn’t sure if I should add it here or in the plugin admin. No instructions were given. The next areas are the monetization features. Is all you have to do is click on some buttons, copy and paste some code and now you have an advertising banner or Adsense bar.
Next you just add your social media links, Facebook, Twitter and your site’s RSS feed then save your work and your site is instantly monetized. This was as easy as I have seen. I tried the several others like Affiliate Theme and was never able to get the site looking quite right.
The next link is the Navigation area. Not sure if I understand their reasoning for this section because you have to manually input the Page urls for them to display properly. This also conflicted with a plugin I use called Exclude Pages plugin. I use this so that some of the pages I want displayed only in the footer won’t be used in the site’s main nav area. I hope they fix this area and make if a little more intuitive.
Then the next link called styling was a breeze. Just pick your color theme and your done.
The header section is one of the most powerful features in this plugin. There are a number of premade header graphics that you can customize slightly and in there members area on the blog I downloaded about 40 more that I could use for later niches. The biggest benefit I see is not having to wait for my graphics guy to make me a header for my affiliate site. I save time and money with this powerful feature. The site’s name and tag line are very customizable and worked like a charm.
Finally the last link is the background. I had picked out a nice looking background and was done in about 90 seconds. Would have been less but I was playing around with different looks.
Imagine having a text file with all of this information handy and you could have a complete blog setup and monetized in 10 minutes as Joel and Dan showed in the video presentation.
So here is their feature list:
Built in Header Generator
160+ Niche Header Designs (NOW OVER 200)
Custom Navigation Bars
Optional Built In Adsense and Clickbank Ad Bar
Social Media Slider
Choose from Dozens of Backgrounds On The Fly
Custom Styling and Color Options
Affiliate Program Integration
Custom HTML Rotator
Multiple Sidebar Layouts
Internet Marketing and WordPress Training
Monetize With Any Affiliate Program or Network
My conclusion is that this theme is worth every penny they are charging. In fact I can’t believe they aren’t charging twice or three times as much. It is really cool! I have hired my son to install this on multiple sites as I have purchased a multisite license. Make sure you go over to Joel and Dan’s site at http://easyauthoritysite.com.
Disclaimer:
I have not been paid to write this review and if you use my link I will get an affiliate commission. In my opinion this was the fasted way to customize a wordpress theme and you will save hours searching for broken or incompatible themes on the WordPress site.
I just searched Google for social media expert and found 83,600,000 results. So how do you know if the person you are getting advice from is a really a social media expert or just a wanna be? Here are the top 5 signs that you should look for:
The call themselves a Guru
Their followers are a bunch of self promoting spammers
They never post their own tweets and they don’t engage in conversations (sign of automation!)
They don’t exist when you Google them
They are telling you to use outdated tools or resources
If you are hiring a social media expert make sure you get some references and at the very least check out their own social media sites. Are they branded? Do they look professional? Use common sense and take the time to learn about who you’re connecting with.
Take Care,
P.S. Be sure to sign up for my market updates and I’ll let you know when my next webinar will be held on Social Media and Marketing.
When I first saw the video about the #Facebook #f8 developer’s conference held on April 21, 2010 I was amazed. I wanted to share this with you so I have summarized it here for you. Please leave your comments below after you read this blog post.
Wow! There are amazing changes coming down the pipes for Facebook. But even better the changes will improve our web surfing experience. It is called open graph initiative.
One of my pet peeves is going to a news site and having to sift through a bunch of articles that I really don’t give a hoot about. Wouldn’t it be nice to pull up CNN and on the home page are all of the relevant news articles that I enjoy keeping up on are right there? Facebook learned from connect that social experiences are a lot more engaging for most people. Open graph initiative is designed to use people’s social interactions to mold their user experience when visiting their favorite news or shopping site.
“The power of the open graph helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken.” Imagine visiting Pandora and it would already know how to program your station. Or visiting Yelp and having it know what kind of restaurants to display to you first. As a consumer, there are potentially many benefits of the initiative, making many experiences you have more and more relevant the more interactions you perform.
How many people are on Facebook? In 2008 there were 100 million FaceBook users. Today there are over 400 million users and it that number is growing fast.
It took only one year for 100 million people to use Facebook Connect on the Internet and on mobile devices. In case you are not aware of what Connect is, it is the API or programming interface that enables users to share their information with third party websites and applications. You probably use this if you’re using Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop for Twitter. Nine of the top 10 news sites use Connect. The reason Connect became so popular is for websites to validate user’s real identity while on their sites.
Policy Changes to Facebook
Permissions-Combine all the permissions into a one step permissions for Facebook Connect
Privacy information-It used to be you couldn’t capture and store information for more than 24 hours. Now if you are given permission you can collect & store user’s information for as long as you need. The benefit to you is a less expensive development cost because you don’t have to have programmers write special code paths or accessing the same API calls over and over each day.
Credits-One common currency to be used throughout all Facebook applications
Open Graphs
Imagine if you mapped out every connection on the Internet that you accessed over a day, week, month or year. It would look like a tangled spider web. Facebook is working on connecting all of these dots by working with companies to share information.
Facebook’s role in mapping out the Open Graph is to connect people and build relationships. Yelp maps out the part of the graph that builds relationships with small businesses. Pandora is mapping out the part of the graph having to do with music. CNN and other news sites maps out the news.
Currently programmers have to have code hacks to push information to one site or social service. There is no way to automatically and easily connect all points in the Internet graph. Open Graph will connect all of the maps to make a better social experience.
Imagine having your favorite sushi restaurant placed into your profile or sharing your favorite movie or songs automatically. All of this information can be called upon when you access certain web sites. You could see who else saw that blockbuster movie or how many of your friends also liked that restaurant you’re looking at online. You’re already reading and influenced by reviews. We read the reviews on Amazon or Yelp. Wouldn’t those reviews be more powerful if they were people you knew that are your friends?
Bret Taylor the founder of Friendfeed which was acquired by Facebook recently talked about the challenge it took Friendfeed to convert new users to active users. They discovered this magic number is 5 connections. After Facebook launched their Connect application users who signed up via Facebook were four times more likely to become active users of the site than those who used other methods to sign up. Do you have a membership site? Maybe you should be using the Facebook connect to log in.
Three new changes to make instant socialization
Social Plugins-Ways you can provide a customized user’s experience with a simple line of code added to your site. Using the new Facebook Social Plugins you can access any news site and it will automatically pull up your favorite news story without you even logging in or telling them who you are. After seeing this in action my first reaction gave me a chill up and down my spine.
CNN Face Book Plugin
Like Button- Allows you to share and tell Facebook and your friends what content you like.
Activity streams plugin-A news feed that shows content delivered to your domain that is most relevant to your domain.
Recommendation plugin-They find the content that is most relevant to you
Login Plugin-If you use Facebook to login to your site it will show a picture of your friends that are also logged in or have joined this site. This is great social proof and will increase opt-ins to your site.
Social Bar-Shows all the plugins in one place that you can put on any web site. It docks to the bottom of the screen and integrates seamlessly into any site.
They can even use a set of meta tags placed within your site to customize the user experience. This is a semantic markup that collects information from the “like bar” and uses it to display content on your site. Imagine going to an electronic site and reading about the new iPhone coming out this summer. You click on the “like button”, your picture pops up on the site and from that point on you are sent updates from Apple whenever news is released about the new iPhone.
30 partners that will be testing this new protocol
Facebook Open Graph Parnters
Summary
The benefits if the privacy advocates don’t interfere are big! Not only will this make Facebook a direct competitor to Google but you will start to see more targeted ads delivered to your Facebook page based on your social interaction with other brands. This is the first step to intelligence computing. If you are thinking about or have ever thought about advertising on Facebook now is the time to start looking into this. The companies who figure this out first will benefit the most and be well ahead of the competition.
Take Care,
P.S. Sign up for my market updates and I’ll let you know when you can start using these Facebook plugins on your site.
A day doesn’t go by that I don’t get asked about the effectiveness of social media. So I got to thinking would you like to see a series of blog posts that discusses some case studies? If you think this is important the feel free to leave me a comment below. I would love to show you how effective Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are in the business world.
Are you trying to be a niche finder or a market finder? I have been consulting to on and offline business for over 6 years now. If you are an entrepreneurs, start up businesses or a service professional who is looking for more clients or just to grow your business then maybe you need some friendly advice. Most marketers who are niche finders focus on people already online and visiting forums, chat rooms and blogs. Most of my clients don’t even know what a forum is or how to use it.
I had lunch today with a friend who is a successful retired chiropractor. We were having a conversation today about competition. I asked him if he was ever concerned about how competitive his market was when he was practicing chiropractic. He summed it up like this; in our area only 10% of the people use chiropractic services. That means there are 90% of the population who don’t use chiropractic services but may someday need chiropractic services. So why should I focus on the 10% when there is a much bigger market.
There’s a lot easier way to find your niche and your market that you are passionate about. I have been watching how Robert Plank and Lance Tamashiro go about getting their markets using small niche websites. We have teamed up on a project called Niche Connnector that shows you how to find untapped niche honeyholes in less than 10 minutes. I hope you’ll check it out and leave me a comment on what you think about this post or what your niche finder techniques are.
If you’ve been thinking about adding an iPhone app to your Internet marketing strategy you might want to rethink your strategy. Apple announced today that they have begun “rejecting App Store software with “minimum user functionality,” the iPhone maker has now set its sights on applications that employ a “cookie cutter” formula.” This was reported this morning by AppleInsider.com.
Apple is concerned that the quality of these applications are no more than glorified web sites. Their intent for the iPhone application is to provide the user with a superior browsing experience.
So what does this mean to you? Well if you are using a template system and submitting your application to Apple there is a good chance that it will be rejected unless you have the ability to make an upscaled version that will give the user valuable content. Think about providing the user with more than RSS feeds, About page or contact page. You can read more about the annoucement here from AppleInsider.com
Are you trying to get on the first page of Google?
It’s frustrating isn’t it? There is so much information out there but how do you know if you are getting the right information? Did you know that most of the people that say they are search engine optimization experts (SEO) have outdated information!
I recently ran into a local web designer who was telling a friend how to get in the top three position in Google. After listening to the conversation for two minutes I realized the web designer was giving information that was about a year old. I asked him where he got his information and he told me he read an article in a tech magazine about six months ago. That is equivlent of going into the hospital and getting 20 year old treatment for your disease.
The search engines are constantly changing and if you don’t have the means to keep up then you’ll be left behind in the dust wondering where all your traffic went.
Is The First Page of Google Good Enough?
According to Dan Thies of SEO BRAINTRUST, using a combination of his own research and AOL Data, you need to change your expectations.
#1 position gets clicked about 40% of the time
#2 position gets clicked about 12%
#3 position gets 8% of the clicks
If you are on the lower third of the page (default 10 results in your display) you can expect 2-3%
page two and beyond is less than 10%
What does this mean for you, the small business owner or an independent service professional? First page is not good enough. The battleground is for the top 3 results to get significant traffic to your web site. This requires a different mindset.
The good news is you don’t need a SEO budget of $4,000 per month to get there. As long as you work smarter not harder. I know it’s a cliche but it gets the point across.
The key to top ranking is picking the right keywords and knowing what your market wants. Pick your battles! When you are going after a very competitive market don’t try to attack it head on. Start by taking small bites and work at it over time.
So what does that really mean? Go after what is called tier two or tier three keywords. Some people like to call them long tailed keywords.
Lets use a hypothetical example. For example if everyone wanted to rank for the keyword hammer and that keyword would potentially get 1,000 searches a day, in the number 1 position you would get 40% or 400 visitors to your site.
Compare this to a secondary keyword like blue hammer that would only get 500 searches per day but would still bring you 40% of the traffic or 200 visitors with a lot less work.
Doesn’t this make a lot more sense? I know you are really busy trying to grow your business and don’t have a lot of time to watch videos from search engine gurus or sift through pages and pages of Internet content trying to figure out what would work for your business. Why don’t you let me do the work for you. Sign up on my list and tell me what exactly you are looking for in your business and I’ll customize the content to be delivered right to your email.
Last year the Association of National Advertisers polled its members to determine how marketing and advertising budgets were being affected by the economic climate in the country. The ANA found that businesses marketing departments are still under a lot of pressure to reduce costs and spending. This is bad news for advertiser but at the same time it opens the door for some creative marketing opportunities.
Here are the top four ways business marketers are reducing costs and spending remain the same:
81% are reducing departmental travel and expenses
74% are reducing advertising media budgets
71% are challenging agencies to reduce internal expenses and/or identify cost reductions
64% are reducing advertising production budgets
It’s not uncommon for training seminars to charge $900 to $5,000 plus add on about $1000 for traveling expenses, hotel rooms and food. In fact if you take a search on the Internet you’ll see Dale Carnegie – How to Sell Like a Pro seminar for $1,750. While companies are reducing travel and expenses they still need the training and updated information
What if you could provide a program to off line businesses that provide the same information, get the same results and has a better ROI without having to pay huge seminar fees and all those travel expenses.
Here are some possible solutions that could make you money and save money for off line businesses:
Assemble a panel of experts and do a Webinar series over several weeks
Provide an online training course on video
Provide an online training course on audio
Offer an in-house training seminar
Provide 1-on1 coaching
At a time when 30% of respondents from the ANA survey are planning to reduce their budgets by more than 20% companies will be much more receptive to maintain the same level of training but at reduced fess. The forecast for the rest of 2009 and going into 2010 isn’t looking any better.
If you would like me to keep you up-to-date on the latest search engine optimization, social media or Internet business best practices the fill out the form below with your name and email.
Last week Google hinted that we should all be expecting some major changes in its main Web search results. Google is working on a new top secrete update to search technology that mostly affects its indexing process. Nicknamed Google Caffeine , it is considered to be next-generation of web search architecture. In addition to shaking up the results, it may also pave fresh roads toward the goal of real-time search results. Early reviews in preview SERPs show that there will be detectable differences in the results pages for many terms and brands, so those tracking their SEO campaigns are well-advised to follow this update intimately. As Google Caffeine prepares for release, here are some observations:
Substantial displacement is uncovered amidst big brands for some broad terms. After going over a number of high-volume category level terms, Search Insider found many big brands have swapped places in the results for individual key terms, while others have risen to new heights, and others have gone down to new lows. This may completely change the way SEO is managed with many web masters and SEO experts. Many fortune 500 companies are generating millions of dollars per year in revenue for some of these category level terms. The financial impact has yet to be seen.
Nicknamed Google Caffeine , it is considered to be next-generation of web search architecture. In addition to shaking up the results, it may also pave fresh roads toward the goal of real-time search results.
Video and images may be displaced for more text links. The long term impact of video and images shouldn’t be affected because of the popularity of video on the Internet, but it may take an update or two before this returns to normal. Some social media sites may benefit while others may see a decline in favor. Big brands may sooner or later feel the recursive impact of the change, sites like Facebook and Technorati mostly have benefited. You may see Wikipedia slightly less emphasized throughout the results. Twitter may see a big adjustment in this update.
Technorati mostly have benefited.
For SEO marketers, the same principles will still be applied. Natural search engine is affected by 1) On and off page factors 2) user behavior; and 3) the level of algorithmic bias toward your site. The last one can’t be controlled, and you should be forwarned to stay away from any SEO expert who says it can be controlled; User behavior can be difficult to control unless you know how to market to the right consumer.
Remember on and off page search engine factors such as title tags, urls, meta descriptions are in our control, and if there are no changes in this area, best practices still apply. Staying focused on core elements such as good content, grammar, link architecture, flow and structure will still be a sustainable long-term natural search benefit. A good point to remember is don’t panic, and take a reactionary approach that might jeopardize the future of your business.
For those who are already taking the core concepts and using best-practices approach, relax, sit back and observe the change. For those who use “black hat” concepts, I would strongly recommend shifting back to the core concepts and best practices.
If you would like me to keep you up-to-date on the latest search engine optimization, social media or Internet business best practices the fill out the form below with your name and email.
Unless you’ve been on the space shuttle in the last year Twitter is one of the hottest social media trends of 2009. When the media and celebrities start talking about how to use Twitter and other social media it is apparent that it has hit the mainstream. Twitter has been the topic of discussion on several day time television shows such as Opra and the Ellen Degeneres Show.
Have you ever been to a party and said or done something you regretted the next day? Well, this is happening every day on Twitter. In 2009 it was reported in the news that an employee called in sick for the weekend and then posted some pictures of himself at a party on Facebook. His employer saw the pictures and he was fired.
Sophos, a security software company, found that 63 percent of companies were afraid of what their employees were choosing to share on social networking sites. This lead to many IT departments filtering the URLs and blocking employee’s access to many of the social networking sites.
As of August the NFL does not have a policy on how to use twitter or any of the other social media networks for the players and coaches. But for fear of leaking strategic information such as injuries, plays and assignments the NFL is in is in the process of developing one. According to the NFL, cellphones, computers and P.D.A.’s cannot be used by players, coaches or other club personnel on the sideline, in coaches’ booths or locker rooms from pregame warm-ups through the end of the game.
Here are my suggestions on how to use twitter and not embarrass yourself or get yourself fired from your job.
Don’t use Twitter to broadcast your social plans for the evening. At least don’t give out too many details.
Use good judgment when Tweeting jokes and quotes
When at work don’t tweet about how bad your boss is, how ugly your co-workers are, or if you’ve been drinking, taking drugs or hungover
Health care workers must be careful not to disclose any patient information that would violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Be careful about posting pictures of your children. It’s unfortunate that we have to watch out for sick predators that use the Internet to stalk their prey.
Don’t post personal information such as home address, phone number or the type of care you drive. There are people out there that will use this information for identity theft or burglary.
Don’t share your social network site’s passwords with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You never know if the relationship is going to go south and your personal pictures are going to end up sent out for everyone to see and read.
This is one that people don’t think too much about but be careful how much financial information you share. It’s easy to get sucked into conversations about investments, realestate or banking. Remember all this information is out there for anyone to see.
If you would like to learn more about how to use Twitter then consider taking my 5 day mini course on How To Use Twitter And Grow Your Business. Fill in your name and email address below and lets get started.
Do you have other examples? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.
I know you are interested in building a list and we’ve talked about adding opt in forms to our sites. Have you noticed a trend lately that there are no name fields on many of the opt-in forms the marketers are using?
It’s getting harder to collect emails nowadays so the more you can do to optimize your forms the better you will be in the long run.
If you’re worried about lack of personalization with out having the visitor’s name, Ryan makes a good point. How many emails do you start by just diving in and writing. For me it is about 50/50. If I really know the person lots of times I skip the name and just get to the point.
My Missing Link traffic tip for today is to consider removing the name field in your opt in forms and use lots of graphic arrows pointing to the email field. Here are some examples.
Video Squeeze Page with graphics pointing to the email signup!
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