I’m talking about a complete revolution in how the human race communicates with one another. Technology is advancing at a break neck pace and it’s completely changing how not only individuals communicate with one another, but also how organizations get their messaging out to a broader audience.

Do you even realize how big this revolution is?

To get a feel for how big a transition we’re in now, lets take a quick walk through the history of mass communication.

Gutenberg Press

In the 1400’s Gutenberg is credited with developing the movable type printing press. He saw a way to make a profit selling Bibles because he could produce them much less expensively than before. Because before the printing press came along the only way to publish a book involved scribes meticulously copying the text of the book by hand to create a new copy.

It was a time consuming, labor intensive, expensive process.

But with Gutenberg’s press he could turn out multiple identical copies of a page incredibly quickly compared to the old way. This reduced his cost and increased his profitability.

It also had a democratizing effect on knowledge. Because as books became less expensive they became available to a much larger percentage of the population. And as more people gained access to more knowledge, the speed of the advancement of our understanding of science and technology began to increase.

Slow Improvement

Advancement was relatively slow at first. For example if you look at the printing press that Ben Franklin was using to spread the political ideas of liberty in the 1700s during the American Revolutionary period, it isn’t much different than Gutenberg’s original press. Printing technology didn’t really change much at all in those 300 years.

In fact it wouldn’t be until the 1900’s until the full potential of printing was realized. It needed technology like huge paper rolls and electrically powered digital presses before printing finally met its full potential.

That process took about 500 years!

Mass Media

About the same time printing was maturing other forms of communication were coming on the scene such as radio and television. Combined with printing these things became what we call mass media. It was a way to get information and entertainment out to the masses.

Some common features of mass media are

• Huge audiences
• Limited Competition
• High Barriers to Entry
• One Way Communication

The revenue models for mass communication were generally subscription and/or advertising based. Audiences generally had limited options (we had 4 TV channels when I was growing up) and there was little or no way for them to respond. Mass media is effectively one-way broadcast communication.

When the internet came along, the early practitioners initially applied the mass media model. They treated it as a broadcast tool and it was predominantly one way communication. There was a big focus on advertising for revenue.

But that model has some problems on the internet because the internet brings options

On the internet we see

• Much higher competition
• Fractured audiences
• Incredibly low barriers to entry

Enter Social Media

And now with social media everything is changing. We are truly in a communication revolution because now anyone can build an audience.

The barriers to building an audience have been completely removed. There is an overwhelming array of no-cost options that allow anyone to potentially reach unimaginably huge audiences today.

With social media today we have the potential to reach more people for less money than at any other point in the history of mankind.

Just Getting Started

But here’s the thing. As amazing and powerful as social media is today, we are just getting started.

Facebook has one billion users today. The company was only incorporated 8 years ago. It was only 6 years ago that Facebook was opened to the general public. Google+ has only been around for a year at this point and already has 400 million users.

Keep in mind that it took 500 years for full potential of printing to be realized.

We’re less than a decade into this social media thing. We’re just now scratching the surface. We’ve got a tiger by the tail and there is no telling how things are going to develop from here.

But I do know it is going to be an exciting ride.

Welcome to the communication revolution!

This article was originally posted here: Welcome to the Communication Revolution!
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

And keep in mind that half of the people out there are below average and far fewer people ever get past their headlines to hear what they have to say. For someone who is well below average, hardly anyone will get past their weak titles and see their content.

Fortunately this is one place where it’s not too hard to beat the curve.

Focus On Your Headlines

Because they are so important when it comes to getting more people to see your content, you should put some real effort into writing great headlines. They’re so important that master communicator Michael Hyatt says he often spends as much time on his headline as he does writing entire post.

I don’t go that far. However because I do recognize how important they are I put effort into writing my headlines.

But more effort alone won’t help you if you don’t know what makes a great headline. Fortunately there are a couple of free resources you can use to see huge improvements in that area very quickly.

Copyblogger

The first resource is over on Copyblogger. Master marketing copywriter Brian Clark put together a some of his best blog posts on the subject in one place to make it easy to get some of his best tips quickly.

You can find that page here:

How to Write Magnetic Headlines

I refer to that page and those posts regularly, especially when I’m writing something I want to get as much exposure as possible. In there you’ll find headline templates that will speed up your creative process.

Oh, and if you’re serious about improving your writing you should subscribe to Copyblogger and make it a habit to read his stuff. His archives are a wealth of knowledge that will improve your writing across the board. You could dig through them and glean a tone of tips very quickly.

Impartial Analysis

OK. So now you have some understanding of what goes into making a great headline, and you even have some powerful templates to stimulate your creative process. But how do you know if your particular headlines are really any good?

There’s a tool that can help you with that. Check it out here:

Headline Analyzer

With the Headline Analyzer you can paste in your headline and then see how it scores.

A score of about 20% would be one of those average headlines we talked about at the beginning. You know, the ones that 80% of the people drift right past.

Your goal should be to get a score of 30% or higher. Obviously the higher the better. When you get above 50% you’ve got a solid headline for sure.

It only takes a few seconds to test a headline with this tool so greatly speeds up the creative process and helps you get to a more powerful headline more quickly.

If you’re like me, finding time to write is a huge challenge. You’ve got a business or ministry to run. So a tool like this can greatly increase your effectiveness and increase your efficiency at the same time.

To give you a feel for the process, here are the headlines I tested for this article followed by their scores:

“Why Your Headlines Are Repelling Website Traffic” – 14.29
“Attract More Web Traffic With Killer Headlines” – 0.00
“What Everybody Ought To Know About Writing Great Headlines” – 33.33
“Two Resources For Better Headlines and More Traffic” – 25.00
“Two Resources For Awesome Headlines and Killer Traffic” – 37.50
“Two Resources For Awesome Headlines and Free Traffic” – 50.00
“Two Free Resources For Awesome Headlines and Killer Traffic” – 44.44
“Two Free Resources For Awesome Headlines That Attract Crazy Traffic” – 50.00
“Two Free Resources For Awesome Headlines That Increase Traffic” – 55.56

It’s interesting to me that some of the ones I thought would do well actually scored very poorly. Normally if I get somewhere in the 33% range I’ll call that good enough. But since this article is about writing headlines I went for something above 50%.

And I don’t always run with a headline just because it gets a high score. It is possible to write a headline that scores high, but reads like gibberish. So use your brain when you’re using this tool.

Extra Bonus

Your headline is critical, but there is a whole lot more to writing great content that is both attractive to people and has great Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Those two things go hand-in-hand, by the way. When you write content that people flock to, it will naturally do well in the search engines.

The reverse it pretty much true as well. Write content with strong SEO characteristics and people will tend to flock to it as well.

If you’re new at this, or if you just want to improve your website’s performance in the search engine there is an incredibly powerful tool you can use to check your web pages and blog posts before they go live:

Scribe

Scribe is a premium service, and it’s not cheap. But when it comes to search engine optimization, your choices are limited.

• You can truck along doing what you’re doing and hope for the best – costing you exposure and business
• You can hire an SEO expert – crazy expensive and it is be hard to tell the charlatans from the superstars
• Or you can use the proven tool Scribe to show you how to do it right – very cost effective

I can recommend Scribe because I’ve used it. I’ve seen it in action on this very site.

That said, I’m not using it now. Turns out when I would run evaluations I consistently got evaluations scores right at 100%. That’s not a brag. It’s just that I’ve been blogging since 2005 and I’ve learned over time how to write well for the web. It turns out anymore I naturally write with good SEO.

That’s because I always write with my audience in mind. When you write for people, the SEO naturally follows.

But you may not have my years of web writing experience. If not, Scribe is an excellent tool to dramatically improve the quality of your content and see immediate returns with increased traffic.

This article was originally posted here: Two Free Resources For Awesome Headlines That Increase Traffic
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Unfortunately the stereotype is so ingrained that a pleasant encounter with someone in one of those fields ends up getting talked about.

The problem isn’t in any of those businesses, but rather in the way that far to many sales people have been trained to treat people. As a result they come across as pushy, manipulative, and demanding.

Demanding Doesn’t Work

I’m not sure if it ever did work. But it sure isn’t effective where social media is concerned. People aren’t going to be motivated to share your content to their network and expand your reach simply because you add, “Share or Like if you agree!” to it.

You might see some short term benefits by demanding or manipulating people. But in the long run it repels folks and is completely ineffective. –Chris Cree

It’s great to be passionate about something. And there’s nothing wrong with sharing that passion on social media.

Facebook Likes

But people get into trouble when they put pressure on others to be equally passionate about it on Facebook or other social media sites. The moment you demand that someone Like what you share you put your Facebook friends in an awkward spot.

In the beginning a few might click Like. But they’re mostly doing it because they feel sorry for you. I mean if we’re being honest here, you ought to know.

Because in the long term it doesn’t work when you place demands on people to share your stuff. You end up running people off and repelling people just like a poorly trained obnoxious salesman.

The Better Alternative

There’s a better way. Instead of slinging out lame content and trying to manipulate people into sharing it, you can just put a little effort into creating something that people would want to share.

Yeah, it takes a bit more work to do that. But you won’t repel your friends.

And over time you will build a reputation for sharing quality stuff that stands on it’s own. You’ll attract far more Facebook Likes and see your stuff shared much more often that way.

This article was originally posted here: Don’t “Demand” Facebook Likes
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

I’ve seen it time and time again. Clients often will drag out launching their website because they have this mindset that it needs to be perfect before they’ll pull the trigger or let anyone outside their organization see their website.

The Perfection Fallacy

That perception expectation is wrong on a couple levels.

For starters, there is no perfect website. No matter how good your website is, there is always room to make it better. When you delay things because you want it to be “pixel perfect” you might as well be holding it up on until you have a unicorn sighting.

Those two things will happen at about the same time.

Not to mention the internet is evolving at an incredibly rapid place. No matter how perfect your website is today it will quickly be eclipsed by something new that’s impossible to predict.

But there’s an even bigger problem.

Delaying Your Greater Goals

Your focus on perfection is delaying your greater goals of reaching more people.

While you are laboring over every pixel on your website your competition is already reaching more people with their websites. Your delay is wasting time and distracting you from what you should be doing to grow your organization.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.— Voltaire

Strive for Excellence not Perfection

I’m not saying that you have to settle for junk. It’s just that you need to shift your focus slightly. Instead of trying to be perfect the goal should be excellence.

Your website is something that is constantly growing and improving. Get it to a good place then launch that sucker! Start publishing your great content. Keep adding to it.

Your website should be getting better and better every day because you keep adding to and improving your content. It comes back to something I posted on Facebook the other day:

It’s the small things which compound over time that make the biggest difference. Want to achieve excellence? Make today a little more excellent than yesterday. Build that into a daily habit and achieving excellence is assured.— Chris Cree

Put together a good plan. Then get it in action.

Practice What I Preach

That’s my own approach. And SuccessCREEations here is a good example of that.

Believe it or not, even though websites are my business, just like most folks I have trouble making time to work on my own website(s). We have so much client business that we need to focus on that it can take a while to get to our own sites.

It’s a classic case of “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes.”

Even so I do the work anyway, when I can. In the little spare time I’ve had this summer I’ve been working on a reboot of the website here. I wanted to incorporate some improvements like responsive design. Plus our business has changed significantly in the last year and our website needed to be changed to reflect our business better.

But between the wildfires and everything this summer has not gone according to my plans – at all! I wasn’t really ready to launch the new site yet.

However when It comes to websites I’m a chronic tinkerer. Historically this site is where I do my tinkering. And this weekend I broke something on the old site.

When I did that I had a choice.

I could spend time fixing what I broke. Or I could go ahead and launch the new site even though it’s not where I want it to be yet.

I chose to go ahead with the new site rather than spending time backtracking on the old one. That means there is still at ton of stuff left to do here.

I’ll get it done because I’m building a habit of making it a little more excellent today than it was yesterday.

And in the process I’ll practice what I preach.

This article was originally posted here: Launch Your New Website Even Though It’s Not Perfect
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Because SEO is such a huge business there are some pretty slimy marketing practices out there being used by unscrupulous people. Many of these “offers” may result in actually damaging your website’s rankings in the long run because of they often implement “black hat” approaches.

With these approaches the unsuspecting business owner may see some quick results with their pages starting to rank well. But then, after the shady SEO consultant is long gone with their money they can find their website gets banned completely from Google. And Google doesn’t really care that the company you hired did unethical things without your knowledge.

Wide Range of SEO Providers

Now folks who offer SEO services fall across a wide spectrum. There are folks who do excellent search engine optimization work and will help your business bring in far more revenue than their fees. And then there are outright shysters who prey on folks who don’t know a search engine from a web browser.

And there is a ton of space in between full of folks who will provide some benefits.

The big question is this. How do you tell them apart?

One big way to evaluate an SEO firm is by their marketing methods. If a search engine optimization firm is using spammy tactics to generate their own business, then let’s just say they probably aren’t someone you want to do business with.

Contact Form SEO Scam

If you have a website, and if your website has a contact form then chances are you’ve received a message from one someone promising to improve your search rankings.

You can save a ton of money and avoid these scams by simply hitting the delete button in your email.

Seriously. Just delete them. An organization that would spam your inbox is not one that you want to partner with for something as important as search optimization.

Like many website owners I get several of these emails every month. Usually they are horribly written by someone who appears to not have English as their first language. It’s obvious they just copy and paste their pitch into your contact form and don’t have a clue about your business.

They tend to make outlandish claims and usually give you cryptic contact info to get back in touch with them. By cryptic I mean they don’t list the website of the company they work for – mainly because they don’t want you to see who they really are.

Usually I just hit the delete button and move on.

An Example

However last night I got one that was written a little better than most. (Actually they sent it to me twice just to make sure I got it.) It read well enough that I thought perhaps folks who don’t really understand this whole internet thing might appreciate the warning.

On the surface this email looks a little better than most. But when you look a little closer it’s pretty bad.

Take a look and then I’ll break it down for you.

Name: Maria wilson
Email: topseo.webmarketing@gmail.com
Website:
Message: Successcreeations.com Team,

I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Successcreeations.com

1. Social profile is not available in top Social Media websites.

2. Your site has 81 Google back links, this can be improved further.

There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.

Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings. Being at the top left of Google (#1- #3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company’s website traffic and online reputation.

Sounds interesting? Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you.

—————————————————————–
Best Regards,
Maria Wilson
SEO Consultant
(347) 329-2976
——————————————————————
PS1: This is onetime email and you may ask us to “REMOVE” you from our mailing list.
PS2: I found your site from online advertising but did not click.
PS3: We operate 24 x7. I will be happy to send you links to price list, money back guarantee, client rankings, client testimonials, “How we are different from others?”, and “Why should you choose us?” on receiving a response from you.
Phone Number: (347) 329-2976

Time: Wednesday January 4, 2012 at 12:01 am
IP Address: 203.129.198.51
Contact Form URL: https://successcreeations.com/contact/

Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.

SEO Scam Warning Signs

Here are some of the obvious red flags that I see with this email which seem to indicate that this is a total scam.

1. No website given

I like to research things before I decide to do business with someone. If I want to do business with a company for their expertise on the internet then I absolutely want to see their website before I’d even consider it.

2. No Company Email Address

By itself this isn’t a show stopper. Gmail is a great service and I get why small business people use it sometimes. However, when coupled with number 1 above, using Gmail is simply a way to hide who they really are.

3. Assuming Traffic Levels

It’s obvious they have no idea how much traffic my website gets, or where it comes from. I guess they figure that no one has “enough” traffic. But they aren’t talking about general traffic. They are specifically talking about social media and search engines. (Actually I get a bunch from both.) Fortunately they know the top two reasons why I’m not getting more. (Except they aren’t.) Which brings us to #3.

3. Social Profiles, I Have

The first “reason” they list is that I don’t have social profiles.

Excuse me??

I’ve got profiles on a ton of social media websites. For starters:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• YouTube

And it’s not like the links to those profiles are obscure. They show up in my sidebar right beside the contact form!

Obviously this email is a cut and past job and whoever submitted it didn’t read what they were pasting in.

4. Bogus Google Backlinks Number

Then they go on to say that my site “has 81 Google back links”. I have no idea where they got that bogus number.

Looking at my Google Webmaster Tools I see 41,825 inbound links. That seems a bit higher than 81. At least to me.

Heck, if you look at SuccessCREEations.com on Website Grader you see that there are 528 domains linking to my site. So really I have 6.5 times the number of domains linking to me than they claim total links and over 516 times the total number of links than they claim.

Unfortunately folks who don’t know how to look for these things may fall for false claims like this and decide to call them out of fear.

5. Pitch That Says Nothing

Then they go on with some boiler plate stuff that very carefully avoids actually saying what they will actually do to help my business. Sure it’s good to be in the first 3 search results. They say their clients tell them that.

But they don’t say that they had anything to do with those rankings.

6. Bogus Name?

A quick Google search of the phone number shows that number associated with some other names. So either Maria Wilson is a bogus name (my guess) or the company has some turn over.

Either way, that’s probably not a good sign of someone we would want to work with.

7. Intending to Spam

The first PS says that they fully intend to spam me unless I tell them to remove me from their list. I’m sorry, but spamming is not the right way to get me to do business with you.

Instead, offer something worth receiving and I might very well opt into your list on my own.

8. Outright Lie

The second PS is an outright lie. First I’m not actively advertising online. So they couldn’t have possibly seen an ad for my site.

Plus I have their IP address. My stats tell me how they found my site. And it wasn’t from an ad.

9. About that IP Address

While we’re on the topic of their IP address, it comes from India somewhere. That’s part of why I doubt “Maria Wilson” really contacted me.

A much Better Alternative

One thing I will say that they did get right is my site has plenty of room for improvement. There are lots of things I can do with my site to make it better. I know that.

But do yourself a favor. When you get a contact like this through your website, just delete it. Save yourself the aggravation, not to mention however much of your precious money they would chisel out of your business in exchange for something that could potentially harm your business.

And that’s not to say all SEO folks are shady. Not by a long shot.

Remember what I said early on in this article? There are some excellent SEO folks out there.

For example there’s a guy in Europe, Yoast, who knows SEO backwards and forwards. He’s the guy who has written one of the two or three best SEO plugins for WordPress. It happens to be the one I’m using here on SuccessCREEations. Yoast is well worth his fees.

Another high quality Search Engine Optimization service provider is Web Savvy Marketing. I do a ton of work with Rebecca on the WordPress side of things and I get to see first hand how well she knows her SEO stuff backwards and forwards.

Like all the best people in the SEO field, Rebecca has actual success stories to point to. And they are listed right on her website too. Imagine that.

Not only does Rebecca do great work, but in my experience she’s great to work with too. I highly recommend her services.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this. Avoid SEO Scams. At best they will waste your money. At worst, they might get you banned from Google all together.

Go with someone reputable for your Search Engine Optimization needs. It may cost you more up front, but the return on your investment will be so worth it.

This article was originally posted here: How to Save Money and Avoid SEO Scams
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Seriously.

Stumbling Around the Web

For those of you who don’t know, StumbleUpon is a fabulous social media sharing site. Their Stumble tool bar is a great way to browse around the web and find new thing online based on your interests.

As you go you can give pages either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Because it is interest driven people tend to see content they like. Plus they have some sort of learning algorithm so that it tends to show you more stuff that is similar to your likes and less of the stuff you don’t like.

You can also share websites directly with other Stumblers you are connected with, plus a whole bunch of other things.

StumbleUpon has been one of the big traffic sources to my websites over the years.

StumbleUpon Logo Horror

Up until yesterday StumbleUpon had one of the best logos in the whole social media world. I happen to like teal and green. The SU logo flowed from one side of the logo to the other like their service helps you flow through the web.

Here’s what they said about the redesign on their blog:

StumbleUpon Logo Change – We know this is a big change, and many of you (like us) had come to love our old blue and green logo. However, as we spoke with our members during our redesign process, we heard our old logo didn’t capture the true experience you had with StumbleUpon – the excitement you feel with every Stumble and the adventure that we take you on. (And just in case you were wondering, we didn’t change it because some users saw a similarity between our logo and Cascade Complete dishwasher packets, although the likeness is uncanny!) While our old logo will be missed, we have also heard from many of you who really like the new logo and feel that it represents what StumbleUpon is to you. We hope that you will come to love it as much as we do here. Plus it’s going to look GREAT on T-shirts and swag – stay tuned!

So. Let me get this right. The old logo “didn’t capture the true experience” with StumbleUpon. But this new orange eyesore somehow does?

It looks like a clogged pipe! Their marketing folks need some Drano. Talk about a focus group going horribly wrong!

I have no idea how many people are the “many” they heard from. But I find it incredibly hard to believe that most people would choose the new logo over the old one.

Full Website Redesign

The logo destruction is part of a grand redesign of the StumbleUpon website. I think I get what they are going for.

Seems like they want to make StumbleUpon as much the same as other social sites as they can. They’ve change their “Favorites” to “Likes” because, well, that’s what Facebook does.

They went with a white & gray motif, with a touch of orange and blue for highlight colors – reminiscent of Google+

At the end of the day I suspect this is a move to try to increase engagement on the website itself. Something tells me most folks use the toolbar nearly to the exclusion of the website.

Honestly I don’t begrudge them any of the changes to the site. I do miss the old ability we had (before their previous website redesign) where we users could customize our profile pages. But hey, the trend in social media sites today is away from personalization of user profiles and towards sterile sameness.

But the logo?!! What ever were they thinking?

Update: In the Mac App Store the iPad/iPhone customer reviews are running about 26 to 3 against the new logo with many folks clamoring to bring back the old logo.

This article was originally posted here: StumbleUpon Trashes Logo In Boneheaded Redesign Effort
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

But GoDaddy’s side is a little less obvious. Go figure.

Before You Transfer

There are a couple things you should do before you try to transfer your domain because if you don’t they will cause problems for you during the process.

Turn off Domain Privacy

If you purchased Domain Privacy through GoDaddy for your domain you should turn it off before you transfer the domain. That means you will have to find your Domains By Proxy login information. It should be in an email you got when you purchased your domain.

The good news is we include domain privacy with most all our domains with the purchase price. (There are a few registries that don’t allow/support private registration.) So if you’re paying extra for that service with GoDaddy you will likely be saving money with us every year.

 Disable Domain Locking

In order to transfer a domain you must turn off domain locking. This is a safety feature that most reputable domain registrars offer to prevent unauthorized changes. Just click on the little lock icon to the right of the domain in their Domain Manger list.

Verify Contact Emails

Double check that the contact email addresses associated with your domain are still valid. GoDaddy will email you some info that you need to get. So be sure the Administration Contact email especially is set to your current email address so you will receive what they send you. If it isn’t then correct it.

Give these changes a minute or two to reflect your setting changes.

Transferring the Domain

Now you are ready to actually transfer your domain.

You can start by going to our Domain Registration Page. Since you already have a domain, click the “Transfer Domain” link over the search box in the middle of the page.

Go through the process there. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Then our system will send you a transfer request email.

Transfer Authorization

But before you do anything with that you will have to send yourself an authorization code from your GoDaddy account.

Back in your GoDaddy domain manager click on the domain you are transferring. Then click on the link in the Authorization Code field that says, “Send by Email”. (See the screenshot to the right for the location of that link.)

Then GoDaddy will send an email to the address listed in your domain’s Administration contact that contains the transfer authorization code.

Confirm Transfer Request

Once you have that transfer authorization code from GoDaddy then you can go back to the transfer request email that our system sent you. In it you will find a link to either confirm or deny the transfer.

Click that link.

That will take you to a page where you have to input the GoDaddy transfer authorization code, acknowledge that you are accepting the transfer of the domain, click the check box to agree with our terms of service and click the button to transfer the domain.

You’re nearly done at this point.

Get GoDaddy to Complete the Transfer

(And this is the part that GoDaddy doesn’t seem to mention anywhere.)

If you do nothing at this point your domain will be transferred eventually. I’ve seen it take a week or so before I found this little step to get GoDaddy to complete the transfer right away.

Just log back into your GoDaddy domain manager and click the link for “Pending Transfers.” (See the screen shot to the right.)

Click the check box next to the domain you want to approve the transfer of and click the “Approve” button above the list of domain(s).

Then you should only have to wait a couple of hours or so for the transfer to be completed.

Like I said above, If you leave off that last step GoDaddy will take like a week to actually transfer the domain out.

Final Thoughts

To transfer a domain into our service costs $15/year (.com, .net & .org – specialty domains can cost more) which is the same as purchasing a new domain here. That price includes domain privacy, which GoDaddy charges an extra $10 per year for.

You don’t have to wait until the domain is about to expire to transfer it. Whenever a domain is transferred it automatically gets 1 year added on to it’s expiration date, regardless of how much time is left on the domain. If you’re ready to get started you can click here and begin the process.

This article was originally posted here: How to Transfer Your Domain Away from GoDaddy
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Big News

This is huge news because their +1 recommendations will influence results that everyone sees when they search with Google. With Google sending such a massive amount of traffic to most websites (we get about two thirds of our traffic here at SuccessCREEations from Google searches) anything that has the potential to shake up the search results this massively is huge.

If you have a website which is important to what you do then you need to know about this.

Google +1 Button On Search Pages

A few months ago Google added their +1 button to the search results pages. As they roll it out users have to opt into using +1. You can do so by going to the Google Experiments page and clicking the “Join the experiment” button by +1.

When you do that you will then see +1 buttons next to each entry on Google search results pages. When you find what you are searching for with that keyword you can click the +1 button and it will change color to make it easier to find again if you ever go back to that page.

+1 Button For Websites

Then last week they made their Google +1 buttons available for owners of websites to place them right on their pages.

Really this makes more sense when you think about it. How many people are going to go back to the search results page after they find what they are looking for to click a button?

People have gotten used to clicking social media buttons with Facebook and Twitter. Google is wisely tapping into that behavior by making their button available for websites. They’ve got an easy Google +1 button generator for website owners to get the code for their own sites.

And if you use WordPress then I recommend the WordPress Google +1 Button plugin. The plugin makes it easy to adjust the settings and add the +1 button to your site without having to know any programming or deal with the manual button generator that Google offers.

Search Getting Social

This is blurring the line between social media and search. Google has made it clear that they will be factoring in +1 recommendations into their search results.

Users will be able to see what has been recommended via the +1 button including by people inside their social circle. It should help users filter out some of the noise in the search results as the more relevant results naturally bubble up to the top of the results.

Therefore you are going to want to integrate the +1 button to your web pages. If you don’t, and especially if your competitors do, your website will likely have a much more difficult time ranking well in the search engines.

A Couple of Caveats

In order to use the +1 button to recommend pages you need to have a Google account. If you use most any Google service like Gmail, Google Analytics, Adwords, or even YouTube then chances are you already have one.

To me this makes sense. You can’t recommend things on Facebook or Twitter without a user account. Why would you be able to recommend anything to Google without an account there too?

The other thing that should be noted is that this isn’t available to Google Apps users yet. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

We use Google Apps here at SuccessCREEations. Have for years. Yet the +1 feature is not available because we can’t enable Google Profiles with Google Apps accounts. Google really should allow Apps administrators choose whether they want their users to have profiles. It doesn’t make sense for Google to shut out this segment of their user base, especially when Apps users tend to be even more loyal Google users.

Already Making a Difference

The +1 seems to already be making a difference in search results. I’m starting to notice some differences in search results when I search for the same terms in a browsers logged in with my Google Apps account versus my plain Gmail account.

I think you are going to want to add the +1 button to your website sooner rather than later.

This article was originally posted here: Search Gets More Social With Google +1 Button
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

When I first started online Go Daddy seemed like the obvious choice when I needed a domain. Since then I’ve bought dozens of domains from them. That’s not a huge amount, really.

I know people with thousands.

Go Daddy Marketing Practices

Since then I’ve grown weary of their marketing practices. Seems like they subscribe to the philosophy of “whatever works.” Like a Las Vegas casino, everything on their website is designed to extract as much money as possible from visitors as possible.

And the more inexperienced and naive the visitor, the more money that can be extracted, buyer beware.

Using Sex To Sell

It starts in their advertising where they use sex to sell their products and services.

Their “Go Daddy Girl” campaign got rolling in 2006 when they made a Superbowl commercial which was so suggestive the it got rejected by the TV network. They got tons of publicity when they “complained” about the rejection and then had to “rework” their commercial to make it acceptable.

What they did was tell people in the ad to go to their website to see the “unedited” version.

While the whole thing was brilliant marketing (I’m sure it brought them tons of business and customer awareness) it was thoroughly repugnant. That they still use the same approach in their ads seems to indicate that it works.

But that doesn’t mean I have to keep spending my money with them, not even for my domain names.

Upsell Hell

Then there’s the whole issue of their website. They use sex and low priced domains to draw people in. But in order to check out and actually pay for your inexpensive domain you have to run the Gauntlet of Upsell Hell.

There is a dizzying array of offers and options presented before a domain name can be paid for. Those of us with some internet savvy can sort out which of those options are a good idea (almost none of them) and which ones should actually be considered (really there’s only one of ’em in most cases).

Unfortunately those who don’t have experience end up buying things they don’t need. A $7.49 domain can end up costing the unsophisticated shopper a couple of hundred bucks before it’s all over.

Alternative Domain Name Registration

I’ve finally had enough. I jumped through the hoops required so that I could offer an economical domain alternative to Go Daddy. We offer the most popular domain names for $15 per year and we include domain privacy with every domain at no additional charge.

Domain name privacy is the one thing that is usually worth getting (amongst all the Go Daddy upsells) because it protects your personal information and keeps people from using your domain registration information to spam you.

Our check out process is straight forward and simple with no convoluted upsells. We’re content to get fair compensation for superior service.

And we don’t use sex to sell our stuff, though that should be able to go without saying.

Oh, and Go Daddy? They charge an extra $10 per year for domain privacy. So we’re even less expensive than them because it would cost you $17.49 for what you get from us for $15.

Easy Domain Name Transfers

If you’re sick of Go Daddy’s marketing practices you are welcome to transfer your domains over to our service.

I am.

As my various domains get close to expiring I am transferring them so I don’t give Go Daddy any more of my money.

You can too.

Just click here and select the “Transfer Domain” tab, put your domain in and then click the “Next” button.

You might even just feel a little better about your website as a result.

This article was originally posted here: Economical Go Daddy Domain Name Alternative
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.

Having a dynamic viral Facebook Fan page is a critical must-have piece of marketing for most any business today.

Most people have figured that they need a Facebook page for their business. However few are building in the features that make them truly magnetic so that they actually attract fans and reach more people. The reason they don’t add these features is because it is really hard for the average person to do. Or at least it used to be anyway.

Let me explain.

Viral Features

What I’m talking about here are especially things like pre-like images and share buttons. Pre-like images are basically just a splash image that is shown to people who haven’t “liked” your fan page yet. When folks click the Like button the main tab content is revealed. Having a good pre-like image taps into people’s curiosity and encourages more likes.

Share buttons allow fans to share your page with their friends on their own Facebook walls. They’re a great way to get viral exposure to your page because they make it easy to share with others.

In fact, take a look at the image to the right there. That’s the Welcome tab for our EmmanuelPress Facebook Page. Here are the the interactive features we’ve got on that page:

1. Share Button – Makes it easy for fans to share the page on their own walls
2. Hot Spots – Link to other important places off of Facebook
3. Embeded YouTube Video – Embed a video welcome for your fans
4. Twitter Stream – Automatically updated from your Twitter profile
5. RSS Stream – List your latest articles automatically
6. Chat Box – Encourage interaction right there on your welcome tab.

And those are just some of the things that can easily be added to your Facebook fan page with this service.

Best Part

But the best part is that these features are now drop-dead easy to add to your Facebook page.

Or, I should say, drag-and-drop easy.

How?

With a service called Lujure I put together our page for EmmanuelPress in just 6 minutes and 2 seconds!

And it was only my second time using their service.

Not only that, but I recorded the whole thing on video, so I was talking while I was doing it (just for the extra distraction.) I wanted you to see how easy it is to put together a fairly complicated Facebook page for someone who was still pretty new to their service.

See for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyjTM2lA28s

Lujure

As you can see in the video, Lujure makes that whole process incredibly easy. I was able to add 6 great interactive features to our Facebook Page without having to do any programming at all. And I did it in as many minutes.

Lujure has several price points including a great Business Plan for people who create and/or manage Facebook pages for other businesses. That’s a great option because you can create as many Facebook Fan Pages as you want with it and it is completely white label (unbranded) so that no one has to know that you are using Lujure. It can be your own secret weapon to speed up production so you can create way more pages in the same amount of time.

They even have a free option so you can create a single tab and “try before you buy” so you can be sure it is all I’m saying it is without any risk at all.

Either way, Lujure will make your life so much easier when it comes you creating a Facebook page that sets your business apart from the competition. Go take a look for your self.

I think you’ll be glad you did.

This article was originally posted here: How to Make a Magnetic Facebook Fan Page in Under 10 Minutes with Lujure
Plus you can find more great articles at SuccessCREEations.