Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Viral Marketing - POWERFUL!
Viral marketing is one of the most powerful and free ways to promote your products and websites. Why is it so effective?
That’s because once your viral mechanism starts to spread, it may continue to reach more and more outlets indefinitely. Better yet, a one-time viral marketing effort may continue to proliferate without any intervention on your part.
The recipients benefit from the viral message, while you benefit from all the massive exposure. Viral marketing is a win-win situation for everyone.
The key to its success lies in the viral mechanism’s quality and its impact to the recipient. If the user finds it interesting or beneficial to others, sharing it is the natural thing to do, as it helps build relationships and makes the sender look good by sharing relevant messages.
Here’s some of the most effective mechanisms to use viral marketing to expand your reach and make truckloads of money in the process:
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 1: Excellent Customer Service
Bad news tends to spread like wildfire, as people intend to warn others of their unfortunate experiences to avoid it happening again. According to Joe Girard, each person knows around 250 persons in his lifetime considered important enough to invite to his wedding or funeral. That means even if just one customer had a negative experience with your product or company, it could reach hundreds of people quickly, especially if they use blogs or social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace to spread the word.
On the other hand, giving excellent customer service will reflect positively on your product or company. People will recommend you to their contacts if you treat them well. This will build up your reputation and establish your credibility effortlessly. Unlike any salesperson, we know and trust our friend; so getting a recommendation from a friend is much more believable and gets more sales.
Remember a time when you had an extremely good or bad experience? You can’t wait to tell your friends or loved ones, right?
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 2: Viral E-books
It’s easy enough for people to share viral e-books if they think others could have some use for them. To reinforce them to spread the e-book around, you can tell them they have giveaway rights to it. This would make it sound like a privilege, not an obligation.
If your e-book contains outbound links to other sites, find out if these sites have affiliate programs. You could monetize the e-book better by putting your affiliate links instead of the direct links to other webpages.
Once you’re done with the viral ebook, here are some of the ways you can make the most out of it:
- Submit them to the e-book directories. Simply search for “e-book directories” in Google and you’ll find a number of them to submit to.
- Use your viral e-books to build a list. Set up an opt-in form in your website and ask for your visitors’ name and email in exchange for the viral e-book.
Another way to build your list without requiring an opt-in is to put a free offer in the beginning of the ebook, or a ReadMe.txt with the ebook in a zip file, where they will be asked to subscribe to access more free gifts.
- Allow affiliates to rebrand the viral e-book with their affiliate links (better if the affiliate can also include their name and own site). This way, affiliates get an incentive for spreading the e-book (through affiliate commissions) while their referrals benefit from the information within it.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 3: Viral Articles
Your articles can become rapid viral channels as long as they give quality and valuable information. Once you’ve submitted them to the top article directories, ezine publishers could pick them up and share them to their list. Offline publications may even include them on their magazines, sometimes reaching several thousands (or even millions) of readers.
Here are other methods you could “viralize” your articles:
- Give permission to affiliates and JV partners to use the articles when promoting your products.
- Write custom articles for blogs and ezine publishers. This may sound like more work, but your articles may reach a wider and targeted audience, so it’s worth the extra effort.
- Share your articles to your subscribers and tell them to forward the message to those who might need it. You can choose to compile a mass of related articles into an e-book or presentation before sending to your list.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 4: Viral Videos
People can spread your videos around if they are entertaining or helpful enough. Ask them to pass the link to your video page to those who might enjoy or benefit from watching the videos.
Submit your viral videos to video sharing sites for a wider reach. This way, viewers may also use an embed code to post your videos on their site.
Remember to include your website or contact details along with the video; but do it subtly so it won’t have the perception of being too promotional.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 5: Viral Emails
Just think about what types of emails you forward to others. Jokes or funny messages are often being passed around. So why not include an element of humor into your emails?
You may also include breakthrough news or information to make your email valuable enough to be passed on to others, as people want to keep up with the current times.
Discounts or coupons on products could also be forwarded because it allows people to save money.
Anything that is exciting, controversial, or radical could be passed along, so incorporate any of these elements into your email message.
It’s simple enough to put the power of viral marketing into your customer service, e-books, articles, videos and emails. Do it consistently and you’ll have more and more targeted visitors flooding your site.
That’s because once your viral mechanism starts to spread, it may continue to reach more and more outlets indefinitely. Better yet, a one-time viral marketing effort may continue to proliferate without any intervention on your part.
The recipients benefit from the viral message, while you benefit from all the massive exposure. Viral marketing is a win-win situation for everyone.
The key to its success lies in the viral mechanism’s quality and its impact to the recipient. If the user finds it interesting or beneficial to others, sharing it is the natural thing to do, as it helps build relationships and makes the sender look good by sharing relevant messages.
Here’s some of the most effective mechanisms to use viral marketing to expand your reach and make truckloads of money in the process:
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 1: Excellent Customer Service
Bad news tends to spread like wildfire, as people intend to warn others of their unfortunate experiences to avoid it happening again. According to Joe Girard, each person knows around 250 persons in his lifetime considered important enough to invite to his wedding or funeral. That means even if just one customer had a negative experience with your product or company, it could reach hundreds of people quickly, especially if they use blogs or social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace to spread the word.
On the other hand, giving excellent customer service will reflect positively on your product or company. People will recommend you to their contacts if you treat them well. This will build up your reputation and establish your credibility effortlessly. Unlike any salesperson, we know and trust our friend; so getting a recommendation from a friend is much more believable and gets more sales.
Remember a time when you had an extremely good or bad experience? You can’t wait to tell your friends or loved ones, right?
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 2: Viral E-books
It’s easy enough for people to share viral e-books if they think others could have some use for them. To reinforce them to spread the e-book around, you can tell them they have giveaway rights to it. This would make it sound like a privilege, not an obligation.
If your e-book contains outbound links to other sites, find out if these sites have affiliate programs. You could monetize the e-book better by putting your affiliate links instead of the direct links to other webpages.
Once you’re done with the viral ebook, here are some of the ways you can make the most out of it:
- Submit them to the e-book directories. Simply search for “e-book directories” in Google and you’ll find a number of them to submit to.
- Use your viral e-books to build a list. Set up an opt-in form in your website and ask for your visitors’ name and email in exchange for the viral e-book.
Another way to build your list without requiring an opt-in is to put a free offer in the beginning of the ebook, or a ReadMe.txt with the ebook in a zip file, where they will be asked to subscribe to access more free gifts.
- Allow affiliates to rebrand the viral e-book with their affiliate links (better if the affiliate can also include their name and own site). This way, affiliates get an incentive for spreading the e-book (through affiliate commissions) while their referrals benefit from the information within it.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 3: Viral Articles
Your articles can become rapid viral channels as long as they give quality and valuable information. Once you’ve submitted them to the top article directories, ezine publishers could pick them up and share them to their list. Offline publications may even include them on their magazines, sometimes reaching several thousands (or even millions) of readers.
Here are other methods you could “viralize” your articles:
- Give permission to affiliates and JV partners to use the articles when promoting your products.
- Write custom articles for blogs and ezine publishers. This may sound like more work, but your articles may reach a wider and targeted audience, so it’s worth the extra effort.
- Share your articles to your subscribers and tell them to forward the message to those who might need it. You can choose to compile a mass of related articles into an e-book or presentation before sending to your list.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 4: Viral Videos
People can spread your videos around if they are entertaining or helpful enough. Ask them to pass the link to your video page to those who might enjoy or benefit from watching the videos.
Submit your viral videos to video sharing sites for a wider reach. This way, viewers may also use an embed code to post your videos on their site.
Remember to include your website or contact details along with the video; but do it subtly so it won’t have the perception of being too promotional.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 5: Viral Emails
Just think about what types of emails you forward to others. Jokes or funny messages are often being passed around. So why not include an element of humor into your emails?
You may also include breakthrough news or information to make your email valuable enough to be passed on to others, as people want to keep up with the current times.
Discounts or coupons on products could also be forwarded because it allows people to save money.
Anything that is exciting, controversial, or radical could be passed along, so incorporate any of these elements into your email message.
It’s simple enough to put the power of viral marketing into your customer service, e-books, articles, videos and emails. Do it consistently and you’ll have more and more targeted visitors flooding your site.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
I'm Bored Because They're Doing All My Work!
Next Step, Make Sure You Turbo Charge Your Internet
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Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Tom Challan - This is a guy you WANT to follow...so step up and get moving!
If you are not a member of The Better Networker site, you need to be. It's insane! Anybody that's somebody is on this site, working towards living the dream. And you have gurus such as Tom that will show you how (and Mike Dillard of course, and if you don't know who he is...you're just lost or not serious about your business) So catch up at: http://www.betternetworker.com
You won't regret. Don't forget to connect with me once your out there: Kimberly Guest following the leaders!
See ya there!
Monday, March 1, 2010
25 Phrases That Make Your Business Sizzle
Ever wonder about the secrets that only top-paid copywriters use to write the perfect copy that pushes your hot buttons—the very same headlines that get you to buy something on the spot, or, at least grab your attention immediately?
We’ve assembled the top 25 in this list. Armed with this arsenal, you should be able to compose smashing copy in no time. Use these 25 phrases and—presto!—your headlines, your titles, your sub-titles, and every word of your ad copy will draw readers to you like a compelling, mysterious, magnetic force. They will be putty in your hands. You will own them. Take a look:
You—everyone wants to hear that there’s something in it for them.
Answering —we all have questions, and we’re always looking for the answers to a problem or a challenge we face.
New—we want the latest and greatest—the most up-to-date things we can get our hands on.
Now—not later, not tomorrow, not next week or years from now. We want everything now.
Protect—there are so many things in this world that threaten our safety, security, happiness, health, reverie. Anything we can do to safeguard what we have is appealing.
Easy—it’s human nature. Why would we want things to be hard?
Quick—patience may be a virtue, but no one wants to wait. We don’t have time for the slow boat.
Fast—same as quick…only, it may be faster…
Only—there’s only one…it’s singular, unique, special, coveted.
Amazing—not ho-hum…we want our lives to be amazing…to experience extraordinary things. This implies so many things for so many people.
Win—let’s face it, who really wants to lose?
Save—we all want a deal—to make our money go twice as far…that way, we can have twice as much.
Yes—the first time we heard the word no as babies we cried…get the picture?
Find Out—take matters into your own hands…be empowered…don’t let anyone hold you back from what you deserve.
Break Through—we all hit a wall, and we don’t want to go around it. Whether it’s one word—a noun—or two words—a verb phrase—we tend to pay attention.
Guarantee—someone else is taking the risk if something doesn’t work.
How To—curiosity may have killed the cat, but it certainly drives half the population to open a tabloid at the supermarket check-out line.
Wanted—it’s in demand…who wouldn’t want it?
Do You—of course you do…if it’s the right question. Do you want to make more money? We all would.
Which of these—you mean I have a choice…and it’s not a rock or a hard space, but actually a choice between two desirable things? Thanks!
Advice From The World's Leading Expert In—we common folk can’t afford to pay the world’s biggest expert, so if we have the chance to get some free advice from this type of expensive consultant…we’d at least like to hear it.
Your—possession of you…what you deserve…what you wish you had, but just needed to win or be given it for free.
Money—it changes everything. We want it, we work for it, and we always wish we had more.
People—we want to be included, so when others say something, or many of them are knocking down doors to get it…shouldn’t we?
Secrets—like buried treasure, don’t we all want to uncover these? We want to know why that movie star always has perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect tan, perfect clothes, perfect teeth, perfect eyes, perfect lips, and perfect body…and we want to know what we can do to have the same. There’s a reason why I don’t have what I want…I need to learn the secrets.
Remember, your business ad copy should read like headlines from the major magazines. Don’t the phrases above sound familiar? Let these words work for you in a world of mere whispers and whimpers or emphasize them boldly and reap the rewards!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sites not doing so well on google? Try this...
So you've built a great new website, and you've uploaded it onto your shiny new domain. Everything is looking good. You sit back and wait for the search engine spiders to come visiting, checking your web stats package every hour to see if there's been some activity...
A question many affiliates ask is how to get the search engines crawling your website in the first place. Do you have to submit your site to the search engines? Can you just get some links to it and let nature take its course? Do you have to create a... (gulp) ... sitemap?
Once you've done this once, you'll wonder what you were ever worried about. But for now, here are some ways to get your pages indexed in the search engines.
One good way to get the search engines crawling your site is to set up a Twitter profile.The search engines love Twitter and the spiders spend a lot of time hanging out there. Once you've set up your profile, try to find some active members of the Twitter community to "follow" — which is basically like adding yourself to their friends list. This provides a link back to your Twitter profile, and allows the search engine spiders to start crawling your Twitter profile. Now just post a link to your new site and you should see little search engine bot footprints all through your stats in no time.
This used to be a good way of getting your site indexed back in the day, but these days all the major search engines find your site by the link method we talked about above, so there's not really much point.
You can also access this same information (and a bunch of other stuff) by signing up for Google's Webmaster Tools. Once you verify your site by adding a snippet of code to your HTML or uploading a file, you'll see an option to see which pages have been indexed by Google. This is pretty much the same as doing the site:yourdomain.com trick, but Google can also tell you if they're having difficulty crawling any of your pages, and the nature of the difficulty. This can be pretty handy for checking the overall health of your site structure.
A search engine spider may visit your site but fail to index some of your pages for a number of reasons:
It sounds like a complex and painful procedure, but once you get past the fancy words it's really just what we were talking about before: Making sure that your important pages are well-linked and easily accessible, and that the spiders have enough "energy" to reach your important pages.
Here's an example of a site that hasn't been "pagerank sculpted". It has a lot of links arriving at it's home page, and then from the home page you can access the usual range of pages: A links page, a privacy policy page, a "contact us" page, a reviews page and an articles page.
From the articles page there are links to a bunch of articles. This is the main content of the site. The owner of this site expects that most of his traffic will arrive through through these articles, because they've been optimized for very popular keywords.
As you can see from the darkness of the shading, these articles aren't getting much PageRank flowing through to them. The PageRank is being split between the links at the top, but because the "articles" page only gets one fifth of the available PageRank, each of it's children (the articles) only receive one-tenth of one-fifth.
Chances are, until the website owner starts getting a lot of good links (and a lot of PageRank) to his home page, some of his articles might not be indexed because there's simply not enough PageRank flowing through to them.
Of course you probably want these pages indexed eventually. So it's a good idea to link to them from one of your less-important pages. It's just a way of telling the spiders which pages to pay attention to first.
A question many affiliates ask is how to get the search engines crawling your website in the first place. Do you have to submit your site to the search engines? Can you just get some links to it and let nature take its course? Do you have to create a... (gulp) ... sitemap?
Once you've done this once, you'll wonder what you were ever worried about. But for now, here are some ways to get your pages indexed in the search engines.
1) Get a link
Search engine spiders are just basically tireless wanderers. They wander around the internet following links and seeing what they discover. Therefore the most straightforward way to get your site indexed is to get a link from another site. There are a couple of caveats here: The site that links to you has to be indexed by the search engines itself, and the link can't have a "nofollow" tag on it (if you want to get into Google).One good way to get the search engines crawling your site is to set up a Twitter profile.The search engines love Twitter and the spiders spend a lot of time hanging out there. Once you've set up your profile, try to find some active members of the Twitter community to "follow" — which is basically like adding yourself to their friends list. This provides a link back to your Twitter profile, and allows the search engine spiders to start crawling your Twitter profile. Now just post a link to your new site and you should see little search engine bot footprints all through your stats in no time.
2) Submit your site to the search engines
Many of the search engines have "submit your site" pages where you can enter your site's URL and some other information as a suggestion that they include it in their index. It's not a guarantee that they will index it.This used to be a good way of getting your site indexed back in the day, but these days all the major search engines find your site by the link method we talked about above, so there's not really much point.
How to know if your pages are indexed
A quick trick is to go to Google and enter site:yourdomain.com into the search box. Google will return all the results they have for your website. The same trick applies for Yahoo and MSN.You can also access this same information (and a bunch of other stuff) by signing up for Google's Webmaster Tools. Once you verify your site by adding a snippet of code to your HTML or uploading a file, you'll see an option to see which pages have been indexed by Google. This is pretty much the same as doing the site:yourdomain.com trick, but Google can also tell you if they're having difficulty crawling any of your pages, and the nature of the difficulty. This can be pretty handy for checking the overall health of your site structure.
How to get ALL your pages indexed
Getting the search engines to visit your site is one thing, but getting them to visit and index all the pages on your website is a different matter. When you check how many pages of your site are indexed, you may notice that some of them are missing.A search engine spider may visit your site but fail to index some of your pages for a number of reasons:
- 1. It ran out of steam.
If you don't have many links to your site just yet (and consequently not much PageRank) you might find the search engine spiders "not bothering" to dig too deeply into your site.
- 2.You're using duplicate content
If the search engines think that the content on your page is pretty much the same as content on another page (this could be on your website or on a completely different website) then it probably won't show up in their listings.
- 3.Badly organized link structures
Remember that the search engines find pages on your site by following links. A page on your site with more links to it is going to be easier to find than a page with only one link to it, buried in the deep recesses of your site. If a page is important, make sure it's easily accessible.
Suggestions for getting your pages indexed:
- Use unique content.
Make sure all your content is at least 25% different to other content on the internet, and preferably at least 50% different. This is particularly true if you're using PLR content on your site — don't be lazy, reword it!
- Get more links to your site:
The more good links you have to your site, the more "energy" the search engine spiders will have to explore your pages. You can tell how strong your links are by looking at your PageRank. The higher your PageRank, the more chance that the spiders will go deeper into your site.
- Get links to your internal pages.
Rather than just having every link pointing at your home page, try getting links that point to your internal pages as well. This is called "deep linking" and it's a very useful strategy.
Think of it this way: Instead of conducting an all-out assault on your front door (and only getting as far as your living room), deep-linking means the spiders will also try the back door, the laundry window, and the ranch slider. They'll see a lot more of your house as a result!
Pagerank sculpting
PageRank "sculpting" is where you design your site so that as much PageRank "flows" to your important pages as possible. This means that these pages are more likely to appear in the search engines.It sounds like a complex and painful procedure, but once you get past the fancy words it's really just what we were talking about before: Making sure that your important pages are well-linked and easily accessible, and that the spiders have enough "energy" to reach your important pages.
Here's an example of a site that hasn't been "pagerank sculpted". It has a lot of links arriving at it's home page, and then from the home page you can access the usual range of pages: A links page, a privacy policy page, a "contact us" page, a reviews page and an articles page.
From the articles page there are links to a bunch of articles. This is the main content of the site. The owner of this site expects that most of his traffic will arrive through through these articles, because they've been optimized for very popular keywords.
As you can see from the darkness of the shading, these articles aren't getting much PageRank flowing through to them. The PageRank is being split between the links at the top, but because the "articles" page only gets one fifth of the available PageRank, each of it's children (the articles) only receive one-tenth of one-fifth.
Chances are, until the website owner starts getting a lot of good links (and a lot of PageRank) to his home page, some of his articles might not be indexed because there's simply not enough PageRank flowing through to them.
Tip 1: Use "nofollow".
Does the website owner really need all that PageRank to go to his privacy policy and contact us page? Not really. So a good idea is to either remove links to these pages from his main home page, or use "nofollow" in his links. "Nofollow" tells the search engines not to bother exploring through this link, and means they can direct their attention to your more important pages. By blocking off those three unimportant pages, the website owner can increase the amount of PageRank flowing to his more important pages: The articles page and the reviews page. Of course you probably want these pages indexed eventually. So it's a good idea to link to them from one of your less-important pages. It's just a way of telling the spiders which pages to pay attention to first.
Tip 2: Get deep links:
To add even more punch to this strategy, the website owner should work on getting links to his article pages as well as his home page. This benefits the article page itself, as well as any other pages the article might link to. You can see here that the PageRank spreads out through all pages the article links to, increasing the chance of those articles being indexed. Create a sitemap
Sitemaps help search engine spiders find pages on your website by listing every single page that you have. XML sitemaps can also include information like the importance of the page that can help the spiders know which pages they should pay most attention to. If you're having difficulty getting all your pages indexed, it may be worth creating a sitemap.
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