My answer: WHY are you doing them in the first place? If you can’t answer that, you’re wasting your time and the company’s money.

Sounds simple I know, but I’m stunned at how unclear many marketers are about their intentions/expectations/hypotheses for how social media initiatives might actually help their business. In short, if you can’t describe in two sentences or less (no semi-colons) WHAT you hope to gain through use of social media, then WHY are you doing it? Measurement isn’t the problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, any measurement approach will work.

Here’s a framework for thinking about social measurement:

1.       Fill in the blanks: “Adding or swapping-in social media initiatives will impact ____________ by __________
extent over _____________ timeframe. And when that happens, the added value for the business will be $_____________, which will give me an ROI of ______________. ” This forms your hypotheses about what you might achieve, and why the rest of the business should care.

2.       Identify all the assumptions implicit in your hypotheses and “flex” each assumption up/down by 50% to 100% to see under which circumstances your assumptions become unprofitable.

3.       Identify the most sensitive assumption variables — those that tend to dramatically change the hypothesized payback by the greatest degree based on small changes in the assumption. These are your key uncertainties.

4.       Enhance your understanding of the sensitive assumptions through small-scale experiments constructed across broad ranges of the sensitive variables. Plan your experiments in ways you can safely FAIL, but mostly in ways to help you understand clearly what it would take to SUCCEED — even if that turns out to be unprofitable upon further analysis. That way, you will at least know what won’t work, and change your hypotheses in #1 above accordingly.

5.       Repeat steps 1 thru 4 until you have a model that seems to work.

6.       In the process, the drivers of program success will become very obvious. Those become your key metrics to monitor.

In short, measuring the payback on social media requires a sound initial business case that lays out all the assumptions and uncertainties, then methodically iterates through tests to find the model(s) that work best. Plan to fail in small scale, but most important, plan to LEARN quickly.

Measure social media as you should any other marketing investment: How did it perform versus your expectations of how it should have? If those expectations are rooted in principles of profit-generation, your measurement will be relevant and insightful.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Twittering Away Time And Money

If you came here to find a list with an illustrated “it’s as easy as 1-2-3 checklist”, then it is time to adjust your expectations and focus on more tangible guidelines to provide a foundation for producing real SEO results.

Anything worthwhile takes time, energy and effort. To create top ranking results in search engines is no different. There is no need to try and trick search engines, just give them what they want and allow the algorithms to work in your favor.

If your method is ethical, the last thing you need to fear is algorithms. Remember, they work for you if you provide the right signals.

What ARE the proper SEO Signals?

The secret to SEO (if there is such a thing) is based on a trinity of relevance…

1. Build as many relevant keywords to relevant pages as possible.

2. Build scalable site architecture and naming conventions (think Wikipedia).

3. Make sure that humans and search engine spiders know about it.

For example, if you have 1000 pages and each one ranks for 5 keywords, then you have 5000 relevant keywords driving traffic to your website; as a result of that will produce x amount of converting visitors.

Getting from 5000 to 50,000 keywords or respective visitors requires a scalable relevance model. And to create relevance you must identify your market and craft methods to appeal to attain traction tactfully and efficiently.

Growing anything takes time and naturally you must feed a site of that magnitude (to reach 50K visitors or more with something fresh, new and unique or exciting if you ever want to see them again (not just more of the same old new same wrapped in a new dress).

So, instead of thinking of the marketplace from the ground up, you can apply the top down model and emulate formulas for SEO that already exist.

Which type of strategy would you use? More pages to create more traffic (which requires more links and more time) or less pages and a higher concentration of theming you’re content to rank for a specific keyword? It really depends on your competition and ranking objectives.

Not everyone purchases or takes the optimal conversion objective the first time they visit your website. In fact, many will never return, so which do you focus on?; first time visitors, repeat visitors or both.

You have to have the simplicity and the clarity to communicate benefits to first time visitors, yet offer enough substance for those coming back for a second or third time to evaluate your offer. Providing substantial value is one method you can use to evolve the context and engagement levels of virtually any website.

Between forums, social media, search engines, press releases, targeted promotional platforms (like classified), affiliate’s, b2b marketing and websites like craigslist, e-bay, Google product search or other targeted niche sites, you should be able to tailor a specific offer to each type of prospect to create a frenzy and achieve suitable conversion over time.

The reality is, just because you haven’t tapped into it, that traffic exists and there are consumers frequenting competitors sites using the sames keywords you could acquire if you apply SEO. You just have to create something worth entertaining to incentivise visitors and then once they do, give them a reason to come back or pass it on to others.

So instead of thinking about short-cuts, automation or bending the rules. Just consider, there are no real SEO secrets, just temporal algorithms that are bound to change.

Search results do not just magically appear on their own, you have to plant the seeds and tend the results to harvest the reward of traffic, conversion and engagement, that is the real secret of SEO.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Are There Any Real SEO Secrets?

Forums have been around in many forms since the dawn of the internet, they provide a means of conversation with like-minded people in a community-driven atmosphere of helping one another with problems. If you don’t know how they work, let me just tell you a bit about them.

First off, you have to find your forum in your niche, the best way to do this is type in subject forums as the keywords (replacing subject with your topic) into a search engine. Once you have found one in the topic you’re interested in, with a nice community going on, registration is the next step.

Registration is pretty simple, its just a case of filling your details in and perhaps entering a captcha (one of those funny sets of digits and numbers that tell the site that you are not an automated spammer!) You may have to click a link in your email to register the fact that you own the email address you registered with.

There usually is many sub-forums, i would reccomend finding one that usually reads something like “introduce yourself” and post a brief overview of what you are about and say hello. I would advise against just registering and posting “buy my product now” or “come to my website” etc. type comments as you’ll end up with a flame war – if you dont know what that is please do a search on it as its not a nice thing to happen to you!

Get involved in the forum, post replies to people’s problems to help with any questions that you can – its a community-type feeling that you will enjoy. Forums which are busy have the advantage of many more people in the nich you are targeting, so you can find out about some really exciting new widget thing in your niche that is very important to you, and also reply and ask more.

Some forums have a specific buy, sell or trade section where you can sell your products, this is the place to be if you want to directly pitch your product. Another way of pitching your product is to enter links to your website in your signature, this is shown directly under each post that you make and is updated automatically – be careful however, some forums dont like this and will ask you to remove them. Some have rules on the size of images or links allowed, please read these before adding it.

Some of the more advanced forums that run vbulletin have private messaging which can be great to directly carry out business to people privately on the forum, i’ve bought many websites and domain names using this – some sites like digital point have itrader which is also a way of showing how trustworthy the user is in terms of buying and selling, similar to the ebay feedback system.

One last thing to remember, forums are a great place to communicate rather than a place to pitch-fest – if you want to advertise on a forum, but you cant find any other method other than the ones i’ve outlined, contact the owners of the site and ask for banner rates, this is a great way of getting in front of these people, then you have the right to freely talk about your product or service which is a huge bonus compared to advertising on a static site!

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

The Forgotten Method of Marketing – Forums

How can you make the best use of Twitter in your business? It all starts with having followers in your target market. No doubt you’ve been inundated with email offers of things like “10,000 Twitter followers in 60 seconds for only $19.95!” Trust me — 1000 followers that are members of your target market are much more useful to the growth of your business via social networking than 10,000 followers that come from anywhere.

How do you find members of your target market on Twitter? Here are my top 7 strategies:

1. Add people you know in your industry. Twitter permits people to use fictitious names or business names as their Twitter identity, rather than their given name. So, it may be difficult at times to find the person you’re seeking, especially if she goes by “ShoeDiva” on Twitter and you know her as Miranda Smith. Try Twitter Search, http://search.twitter.com or Advanced Search, http://search.twitter.com/advanced to help you in your quest.

2. Find others with the same interests or serving the same target market. The online yellow pages of Twitter users, Twellow.com, permits users to list themselves by industry and interests. If your business isn’t currently listed on Twellow, take a few minutes to do that right away.

3. Follow those in the same geographic region. If marketing to your local area is an important part of your business, find local members of your target market by using Twellowhood.com or TwitterLocal.com and find the top movers and shakers in your region, as well as some members of your target market. If you want to meet fellow Tweeps face-to-face, search local Tweetups at TwtVite,com, or create your own gathering.

4. Get relevant recommendations. The free service, MrTweet.com, will provide you with info on recommended people to follow based on your current Twitter profile. You do have to follow MrTweet in order to participate. Once you’re logged in, you can see your recommendations, along with how these recommendations are connected to your list of followers. You can evaluate your recommendations, and MrTweet will make changes in your recommended list accordingly.

5. Follow those who follow you. It’s considered good Twitter etiquette to follow those people who’ve chosen to follow you. And, to prevent being labeled a Twitter snob, ideally you should be following more people than are following you. I have automated my ability to follow my followers by using a free version of TweetLater.com.

6. Look for keywords. Another way to find relevant followers is to keep track of people mentioning certain keywords in their Tweets. I do that through the free version of TweetLater.com. I use this same service to keep track of any mentions of me or my company on Twitter in the very same way I use Google Alerts.

7. Find groups. Twibes.com permits you to find groups by industry and interest and join them and/or see the members of each group. And, if you so inclined, you can create your own Twitter group, as well.

Remember, finding your target market is just the beginning. Once you’ve found them, you need to begin to build relationships with them. This means paying attention to what they say so that you can respond when appropriate either with a direct message (DM) or an @ reply that is public or retweeting (RT) their message to your followers when you feel someone has great info that would be useful to those who follow you. Take 10-15 minutes per day to keep yourself informed about what’s happening with your Tweeps and watch your business grow!

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

7 Strategies to Finding Your Target Market on Twitter

I have been a blogger, learning about blogging and of course learning WordPress for several years. I am in front of a computer so much that I have been known to take my shirt off for an hour or two so that I can take advantage of my monitors radiation to work on my tan.

Yes, I’ll admit it, I am a computer & internet junkie. I love to make money on the internet. I am so happy to be able to work from home, working my own hours, doing what I want to do whenever I want to do it. I don’t even miss that morning commute any more. It was really weird, when I first started to work from home I actually found myself checking to be sure I had everything before I made my new commute exactly 21 steps to my new office in a spare bedroom in my house, is that sick or what!

I even remember that I used to justify my commute by saying to myself (because I was the only one listening) that my morning trek was my quiet time. Yeah right, who was I kidding. If surrounding yourself with 20,000 pissed off caffeine junkies who are all late for work is your idea of quiet time; maybe you should plan your next family vacation to Iraq.

Let’s face it we all want freedom but we all know that freedom takes money. The more money you have the more freedom you have, period. To illustrate this point here is a saying from my dear old Dad. “Son, life is like a poop sandwich (not his exact words), the more bread you’ve got the less poop you’ve got to eat”. Wise words Dad, thanks.

Well, we also all know there’s a ton of money to be made on the internet, but the 64 thousand dollar question that eludes most people is, HOW? How in the world do you go out and get your piece of that mega Billion dollar pie?

The answer is WordPress! Why you may ask? Well, the answer to THAT question is; it can do everything!

If you want to build conduit sites, adsense sites, affiliate sites, of course blogs, sales pages, review sites, landing pages, redirect sites, full blown company sites and so much more I could write a book on it, then WordPress is your goose that laid your very own Golden Egg!

Do you know what the real definition of insanity is? It’s doing the same thing the same way over and over again every single day and somehow magically expecting the results to change. If it happens call me, I’ll be impressed and I’ll call the Guinness book of world records, because trust me they’ll want to know.

My point is; if you’re really interested in making money online then it would be absolute insanity if you didn’t want to master the one and only tool out there that can literally do it all for you. That would be like saying you’re a professional carpenter but you don’t want to find out how to use a hammer. Ridiculous I know, but it does illustrate the point.

So, what is the really cool tip and trick that you can put into action right now and start earning money within the next 1 hour? Yes, I just said that this one tip can have you putting money in your bank account within just one hour.

Well, first let me ask you just one little thing. And don’t worry this won’t drag on very long at all. I don’t need you to start wondering if Starbucks delivers just so you can finally finish this article.

My question is; do you think online video games is a big industry? I know what you’re thinking; What? does it take this idiot an hour and a half to watch the TV show 60 minutes? No, it doesn’t last time I checked I got it down to only 63 minutes.

Well, what if you could finally have the power to turn a WordPress blog into your very own personal online video arcade? Sounds too good to be true right!

Well it’s not too good to be true, WordPress just launched the plug in and I’m going to show you how easy it is to use right now.

To launch your video arcade simply choose a cool looking WordPress theme from 1000’s of free themes online. Next just install the WordPress arcade game plug in and go sign up with Mochiads the people who will supply you with constant game feeds. When you’re taken to your welcome page just scroll down and get your games publisher ID. You then just type the ID into your WordPress dashboard so you can configure the plug in (You only click one button by the way, that’s how easy it is). If you have all your files uploaded and named properly then that’s it!! That’s all there is too it!

Ok, so you might be thinking, that’s great now I have a free game site, but how do I make money?

Well, if you have hundreds or thousands of people coming to your site every day to play free games you can load your pages with Google adsense, sell advertizing blocks on your site, put up your own ads for your own products (if you don’t have your own you should develop some, the profits can be huge) or put ads for products you affiliate. Literally, your choices are endless.

This system is so easy, you can follow all the directions I gave you and have it up and running in under 10 minutes.

Trust me, If I can do it, you can do it. You really can make a fantastic living online and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Of course people will tell you you’re crazy, but will it be the 1st time anyone’s ever said that to you? Remember; Today’s Mighty Oak is just yesterdays Nut who held his ground.

Visit my free games site here.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

How You Can Write Your Own Paycheck the moment You learn the Hidden Insider Secrets of Wordpress!

A word about spam.

Unsolicited email or “Junk email” also called “Spam” is living proof that email is a powerful way to reach an online audience.

Spammers know that for all the emails trashed in every bulk mail out, they will still get a few unsuspecting readers who will click on their links and make a purchase. While their shotgun approach is annoying to the majority of us they still persist because of that reason.

On the other hand, email marketing should not involve spamming a harvested collection of email addresses, but rather contacting a list of individuals who have actually said yes to receiving your material.

How to get people to subscribe to your mailing list.

There are some of the ways to get people on your mailing list.

The first and most obvious option is that they fill out a form on your website specifically designed for the job.
You can add a special offer such as a free report, a tutorial, discounts or even a prize draw in exchange for their contact.

The second way (if you are a local business) is to have some printed material such as a flyer with a special offer, competition or similar that people can fill out and return to you.

Hint: In all these cases, it is worth adding a note to your forms telling people that you will not share their email with other companies and that you will not swamp them with emails either.

The third way to get more subscribers is to actually purchase a list of verified email addresses from a reputable provider. They must be interested in your subject material and have opted in to receiving emails from you.
There are a number of companies that specialize in providing leads, but it is worth doing some homework to find out what value this method will give to you.

What makes a marketing email work.

These items are very effective in encouraging readers to continue to look at the emails they receive from businesses.

How to’s and tutorials.

People love do-it-yourself articles that show them how to solve a problem. The added advantage of posting material like this is that you are not only helping existing customers and encouraging loyalty (and repeat sales) but you can use opportunities such as this to address potential issues before they happen and so reduce calls for customer support.

Video and Audio content.

This is the best format for the above, as well as tours, testimonials…the list goes on. Video gets noticed and is highly memorable in comparison to text.
Audio sessions are great for podcasts too which means your listener can take your article with them.

A pleasant layout with some color.

This will help make your email stand out from your competitors and add to the reader’s enjoyment. You can incorporate a template and produce something really effective.

Nice pictures that are both relevant and of good quality.

A picture paints a thousand words – so make sure you include at least one to illustrate your point.
Include photos (they need not be professional) but in focus and a reasonable size. Hint: not too large though so they do not take several minutes to download.

Humor (in good taste).

A laughing reader is likely to be a repeat one.

You might want to enlist the help of a cartoonist to create something original. Add a funny video, quote or even a brief story.

Relevant news.

keep your readers informed on new products and developments and how improvements to your offerings will help them.

Competitions (with a nice prize).

You can gain a lot of interest from readers simply by creating a competition.

An opportunity to share an opinion.

People will often happily share their thoughts if you ask them to because it gives a sense of belonging and community. It is also a very cost effective way of finding out what your customers want. Make it fairly short and offer a prize draw or other incentive as a token of appreciation.

What makes a marketing email suck.

Hard sell.

“Buy now!!!” will soon become “Bye now.” from your readers.

An email every day.

This is the death knell for emails via annoyance and plain overkill – try and control your enthusiasm to market by limiting your email frequency. This will give you time to produce quality content too.
Quality beats quantity.

Bad layout (such as none).

Lots and lots and lots of text with poor spacing all crammed up with no places for the eyes to rest. (and besides who has time to read a newsletter that is 149 pages long during their morning break)?

Lots and lots and lots of banners.

“Ohhhh my eyes my eyes!”
Save the flashing logos and bright colors for Las Vegas.

Poor writing skills and grammar.

Forgetting to check for spelling mistakes is more than just another annoyance (believe it or not, but people are influenced by this).
Poor spelling and grammar presents an unprofessional / lazy picture for your readers.

What to look for when choosing an email marketing service.

A good email marketing service should have a number of features that will allow you to tweak things so you can get the most bang for your marketing buck. Here are a few features to look for…

Firstly there needs to be flexibility and creativity to get your message across.

This includes the ability to combine text with pictures and video as well as some html so you can make your message stand out.
A good email is more than just a page of text – it needs to be memorable and the way to do that is by being visually creative.

Secondly there should be a way to find out if your email marketing is being received and read.

This feature is called tracking and basically means you should have a display somewhere that will show you exactly where your emails are going, what addresses are incorrect (your emails are undeliverable and bounce back) and what emails are actually being delivered, clicked on and read.

Thirdly you must be able to automate and adjust everything so once you create an email you can set it to deliver to your recipients at a set time.

This can also include auto responders (An email that goes to a visitor as soon as they fill out a contact form or make a purchase from your website) which help you communicate with your potential customer when you are not online. You should be able to do split testing too (in other words create two different emails and send them to selected groups so you can find out which one works best).

Fourthly you should be able to see how your email list is growing over time.

Data like this is not just for statisticians and geeks who like to crunch numbers – it will help give you an insight into what is working overall so you can refine your marketing.

Marketing is an art, but with the right tools and know-how it can work for you.
Here’s to your success.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Help! My email marketing sucks. (And how to fix it)

Instead, I realized today that rain is the best friend of the internet marketer for several reasons. Many of these reasons relate to my six year old son but let me explain…

As an internet marketer myself I walk around with a little blue pad with a list of daily, weekly and monthly tasks written down in order for me to be sure to complete certain tasks on time. Now I know I should be using some kind of PDA instead, but the blue pad is just annoying enough, sticking out in my pocket, to make sure that I don’t forget it’s there. PDAs etc are just too easy to ignore.

So, what are the reasons rain is the best friend of an internet marketer?

Reason #1: The Sun Isn’t Shining – Usually, I would be at my computer trying to finish all of the items on my little blue pad trying to ignore my six year old son’s pleas to play in the yard. Kicking a soccer ball or taking a swim in the pool on a hot, steamy day is difficult to deny. Rain sort of puts a stop to all of this frivolity.

Reason #2: Watching The Media – Rainy days are days for the movies…or so I was told when I was a kid. Now that I’m all grown up, rather than heading to a movie theater, I relaxed with a mug of coffee and reviewed a video directly on my computer screen. OK, it’s not as much fun, but sometimes watching great videos can be a great way to spend time on a really rainy and story day.

Reason #3 - No Distractions – As most of you, there are always distractions when you work out of your home. Postman, FedEx, gardeners, pool guy etc. all have a real need, for some reason, to ring my doorbell to tell me something I really have no reason to hear. On rainy day, no such thing. They all stay home!

Reason #4 - Creativity – Somehow, when all of these distractions; six year old son, no postman, no gardener, no delivery guy etc to bother me just when I need to really dig down deep and be creative.

Now, I fully realize that there may be many other businesses that may also do better in the rain while others may not do as well. However, anyone that works at home and needs to be fully focused can easily relate to this rainy day phenomenon.

On my little blue pad are numerous tasks that seem to just get done a bit better when the sun is hiding behind those dark black clouds.

A perfect case in point occurred today (which may vary depending upon when you reading this article) when I was finished with my blue list tasks (a topic for another article) and I still had some time to spend since in no way was I going out to play in the rain. So….I decided to develop a quick web page, create a free ebook for my loyal subscribers, add a post to my autoresponder and send out an email offering this free ebook to my entire list of subscribers.

Conclusion – This may not sound like much but if the sun was shining no such free gift would have been created and my loyal subscribers would have lost the positive information contained within that report. Plus, rainy days are just perfect for reading free reports…..

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Why Internet Marketers Love The Rain

That little nagging “New version of wordpress is now available, click here to upgrade” should be disabled was one of the sighted issue as a problem.

If you are in the habit of one click installs and upgrades then I am sorry to say, you are going to run into problems and some of these problems could seriously ruin your blog. Instructions are there for a reason, so follow them. Don’t click that upgrade button until you have done the following:

Backup your database – this is very important, you should always backup your database before attempting to do any major changes to your blog and that includes and especially upgrading.

Equally important is to always backup your wodpress files. Again as #1 with all major changes, make sure you have a copy of all your blog files backedup – use an ftp and download all your files onto your hard drive.

Verify your backup – You should give step more importance and verify that you have all the blog files saved. Tedious I know but trust me, it will save you a lot of time and heartache later on should anything go wrong with the upgrade. A visual inspection of files on your hard drve in comparison to those on your server should surfice.

Deactivate ALL the plug-ins. This is where most people fail – you must deactivate all your plug-ins as they may conflict with the upgrade process.

Once you have all the 4 steps above covered and completed you are now ready to upgrade your wordpress installation. Now feel happy to go back to your admin panel and click on the “Automatic upgrade” button.

Sometimes and on some servers this does not work and this is due to the server set up by your host and is not a wordpress issue. In this case you will need to perform the upgrade manually. The guys at wordpress.org have this topic covered in more details and you can read up on it here>>>http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress_Extended.

If you have any issues or problems with your upgrade feel free to leave a comment or raise a new topic in the forum and I will be to happy to assist you in any way I can.

To your blogging success, good luck

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

How To Upgrade To Wordpress 2.8 – Read This First!

1. Success mind set.

Don’t gloss over this strategy — it may be the most important of all. If you truly want to succeed in your business and are passionate about what you do, nothing will hold you back. This often means that you have to step out in faith that you’ll succeed, and most importantly, believe in yourself as a success. Sure, you may stumble, or even fall, but you must be willing to pick yourself back up and persevere — even without a safety net hanging under you.

2. Target market.

The biggest mistake that business owners make is wanting to sell to everyone. If you’ve tried this, you have no doubt discovered that casting your net around everyone is a very difficult task. Narrowing that group to a more manageable number will actually serve you much better, believe it or not. If you can identify a smaller group of hungry prospects who are willing to pay for the solutions to the problems that keep them awake at night (or those who are willing to pay for more information about a hobby or interest that occupies much of their free time) AND who are reachable in groups (associations, membership sites, magazines, newsletters, discussion forums or lists, social networking groups, etc.), then you have made a key discovery that will catapult your business forward.

3. Client Attraction Device.

You’ve heard it said time and time again that “the money is in the list.” This still holds true today, as well. Without a list of interested prospects to whom you can market, you don’t have a business. The quickest way to begin to develop a list is to give something away. Yes, you heard me correctly. If you have content you have already created, dig through that to see if you have something appropriate for your chosen target market.

If not, identify a problem of your target market, and create some content that answers one of those problems. Perhaps it’s a checklist, a Top 10 list, an ebook or special report, an audio interview, a pod cast, a video — do whatever is easiest for you. Just ensure that it is in a plug and play format , i.e. don’t make your prospect download some weird software that’s not commonplace to read and view this material.

Make sure that your Client Attraction Device has some valuable content in it. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to read a free giveway that only serves to remind me that I have a problem and offers no solution unless I pay for it. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate your expertise by giving “how to” information away. Trust me, if you are truly good at what you do, there’s no way that you can share everything you know on a topic in one short information product. Your Client Attraction Device starts your prospects on the like, know, and trust road that is imperative for them to travel before they will decide to buy something from you.

4. Email marketing system.

You must have some way to collect your prospect’s information and a system by which you can stay in contact with them. The best way to do this is by purchasing email marketing services. Do not use a free service for this, nor try to send emails out of your Outlook program. If you want to be a serous online business owner, invest in the most important asset in your business — your email marketing system.

5. Blogsite.

A blogsite, which is a web site/blog hybrid, is the quickest way to build an online presence. The two most popular blogging platforms, the fee-based Typepad and open source software Wordpress, can be used to create a blogsite very quickly. If you want either of them customized with a particular look or feel, that may take a bit longer and require a greater investment. However, either will work well to get you started, and both will permit you to enter your email marketing system’s signup code onto a page so that you can immediately begin to collect contact information from prospects who have requested your Client Attraction Device.

6. Stay in touch.

Whether you do this by submitting regular blog posts or publishing an email newsletter (or both), you need to reach out and touch your prospects at least weekly (or several times a week if you are blogging). Give them some insights about what’s happening with you personally as well as sharing some aspect of your expertise with them by creating a content-rich article or answering their questions. And, don’t forget to sell — offer some product or service in each email newsletter, or submit regular blog posts that remind your readers about what you are selling.

7. Social networking.

Never before have we had the opportunity to connect with others online easily and inexpensively as we do now with social networking. Create profiles on the social networks) used by your target market, do research to add friends/followers in your target market, and use the status updates to be useful to your followers, i.e. by sharing resources, asking questions, and updating them about how you help clients/customers.

8. Drive traffic to your site.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but my favorite starts with writing an article. Once it’s written, I publish it in my ezine, my blog, and to my web site and syndicate it on article directories all over the Web. Then I have the option of making a pod cast with the content; creating a screencast video or “talking head” video from it; writing and submitting a press release; creating a teleclass; create a Q&A radio show interview opportunity; breaking up the points as separate Twitter posts, or Tweets, and tweeting them to my followers; or sharing it on my Squidoo lens or other information-sharing portals. The point here is to work once and profit, profit, profit. Repurpose one article as many ways as you can to drive traffic back to your blogsite and thus get more and more prospects to sign up on your list and ultimately convert them to customers.

The advent of the Internet makes it easier than every to create and promote a business online with very little startup capital. And, if done correctly, the strategies will results in you filling your business in 60 days with eager and willing prospects ready to buy what you are offering.

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

8 Secrets to Fill Your Business in 60 Days

I was watching the News last night and they were talking about the Lakers big win and how unruly people went out of control and started destroying things in plain view for all the news cameras and security cameras to see. Then they followed up with asking people to go to their twitter account and comment on what they think about these events. As you can see this type of social media is very popular and being used now in ways we never thought possible. When the television starts telling you to use twitter you know we are on to something big here.

I am not going to give any real meat here on social networking but wanted to touch on one aspect here which involves the URL which is most commonly used for the micro blogging sites like “spnbabble” and “twitter“. When postings to sites like this since the character limit is 140 then the need to shorten URLs comes into play as some URLs are so long that it can take up the majority of your message. So sites like MyOpenID start appearing all over the web allowing us to use our own tiny URL to help manage this shortening of URLs.

What I find interesting here is with all this new technology like the open ID URLs we are missing some opportunities here. The idea of the open ID is to allow you to shorten a URL and make the URL look clean. It also masks the actual URL until you arrive at the site. You should also be aware that these tiny URLs are not exactly SEO friendly so it is important to come up with a few ideas on how you can make use of this technology so that it gives you an advantage in the online market. Here are a few ideas:

1. Use the tiny URLs to direct people to your affiliate pages.

Most affiliate sites all use a common string of words in the urls which show a users ID name or number. People are catching on and when presenting your product in a creative way to get people to click on those links they stop as soon as they see the actual URL. Though you may be offering the greatest thing in the world, you are losing potential business because people know this is just another money venture for you. So, use a tiny URL which has a social media appeal to get them to click.

2. Use tiny URLs to link to other resource sites

If you have a lot of great sites to link to on your web pages or blog but don’t want to give up too many links for the SE’s then use the tiny URL and save yourself the time of having to block the search engines from counting those links other sites.  A one way link is very valuable now and if you are not linking to other sites as a trade off then why give it away?

3. Use tiny URLs to make use of many online marketing tools out there.

There a ton of sites popping up where you can use your open ID URL to make use of their services. These services often have ways of automating sites out there like twitter.com and can be a very useful in gaining new followers, etc. An example is tweetlater.com which allows you to create an auto response to all your followers. It is a one time message thanking them for following you and allowing you to link to any site using a tiny url and maybe your one chance to sell an item or get a new subscriber.

If you have not currently signed up for an open ID you should do it fast as your favorite names can be taken very soon here. After you sign up for one make sure to go to SPNBabble and create an account there and connect your open ID and micro blog accounts so you can make use of micro blogging on 1 site but having it appear on several others automatically like Facebook and Twitter. We have also created a wordpress plugin for this to save you even more time of having to bookmark your blogs to micro blog sites.

Can you think of more uses for a tiny URL?

Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

The Power of a Tiny URL