What is Twitter? Well, on the Twitter login page it is introduced as: a service for acquaintances, family, and co-staff to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?The concept of Twitter at first glance appears to place forward a very unique method of communicating with people for casual banter. But, if you are marketing in any way on the Internet, this can be a powerful platform for providing information and for generating traffic.When entering a message (known as a Peep), the user is forced to communicate effectively, because the content is limited to 140 characters. It does not take long to figure out how to concisely get your Peep across.If Twitter is new to you, perhaps you have not yet grasped its right potential. It certainly has to be one of the best free traffic generators on the Internet. Its simplicity and accessibility has made this tool extremely attractive to over two million users, and that figure seems to be growing exponentially.Once you register to participate on Twitter (http://twitter.com), you will start to follow other Twitterers. But, the real key for you as a peddler is to generate your own followers. Thus, giving you the opportunity to get your message out quickly and easily.As with any marketing headline, the goal of the Peep is to capture the readers attention and lead them to where your moneymaker content is located (sales page, opt-in, article, etc). Within your 140 characters you hopefully entice the reader and provide a fleeting hyperlink.Beyond the linked message area, the perks of this site are multifaceted. The page starts with an automatic welcome that introduces you to the reader and invites them to become a follower. Next, in a personal information area in the upper right corner of the page you can embed a link to a web page and provide a brief bio.Of course, if you are going to encourage folks to follow you (or to retain followers), your Tweets need to place forward value. For the Internet peddler there can sometimes be a fine line between responsibly leading a name to more information or using a platform to blatantly spam an unwanted message.Take the opportunity to promote your Twitter page when possible. Place your Twitter link on your website, blog, ezine, article signature box, and so on. For example, this is my link: http://twitter.com/davidschaefer, and I encourage you to become a follower.Twitter.com includes a few more features not mentioned here – just stay the help section. And, everyday creative entrepreneurs are offering new harvest and air force to independently support and expand the use of Twitter. The most vital point is to take advantage of Twitters simplicity, effectiveness, and potential marketing reach.
Posts Tagged ‘Marketers’
Twitter is an Effective Tool for Internet Marketers
Saturday, May 15th, 2010More Best of From Marketers on RSS
Sunday, February 21st, 2010What is the top advice savoir-faire marketers can give you on RSS? We take up again with “the best of” on RSS marketing from US marketing leaders.
1. WHY SHOULD MARKETERS AND PUBLISHERS START CONSIDERING USING RSS ANYWAY? Answered by Bill Flitter, Pheedo
I’ll give you 7 reasons:
1. Sender ID 2. CAN SPAM ACT 3. Blacklists 4. Known Sender 5. Email Filters 6. Bonded Sender Program 7. Cost of Sending Email
These seven bits and pieces are a result of SPAM. The bits and pieces represent an effort being place forth to stop SPAM but it is still a huge problem. I do believe RSS will be around no topic if SPAM was eradicated. RSS has some distinct advantages over email marketing, which include:
1. 100% opt-in – no worries of legal threats by consumers.
2. One-click unsubscribe – RSS raises the bar. Marketers will need to reckon about what their sending previous to they hit the penetrate button. I reckon this is a excellent thing. There is no free ride with RSS. Consumers are demanding control (do-not-call list, CAN SPAM Act, Privacy Bills etc.) and RSS delivers that control.
3. 100% deliver rate – If I publish a feed or make known in a feed, it reaches the intended recipient. This is minus any technological hiccups. Point being I don’t have to worry about SPAM filters, Blacklists, Sender ID, etc. My largest worry now is whether or not I am publishing relevant content when my customers want it.
2. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ARE THE BEST WAYS COMPANIES CAN USE RSS TODAY? Answered by Bill Flitter, Pheedo
1. Outdoor Communication: Make an RSS feed on your site. If you publish a newsletter by now, making a feed from that information is simple. It takes small effort. I strongly encourage this practice if you are in the tech sector.
2. Internal Communication: Using RSS (with a blog) to collaborate on a project within the enterprise is more well-organized then email. The blog archives the project while RSS keeps everyone informed.
3. Advertising: If the problem of SPAM doesn’t get solved soon, marketers will turn to RSS as a means to reach new customers. RSS has two distinct absolutes over email – one-click unsubscribe and 100% opt-in. Email cannot emphatically say that. RSS puts the control in the hands of the publisher and consumer. It will become a more effectual marketing channel because the market will demand that publishers be more conscience of the amount and relevance of the ads in feeds. Consumers will act as the filter. If the noise-to-value ration is out of whack, the consumer will simply vote with their mice.
3. HOW CAN RSS BE USED BY MARKETERS PROVIDING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS? Answered by Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting
My vision for the usefulness of RSS is to be a one-way form of communication – sharing updates, news, and tools with affiliates in an equal environment, since email has become too hard with all of the Spam and other assorted hassles.
4. ONE OF THE QUESTIONS WE SHOULD START ASKING OURSELVES IS HOW TO FULLY INTEGRATE RSS IN TO OUR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONAL MIX. HOW DO YOU SEE RSS IN RELATION TO OTHER COMMUNICATIONAL TOOLS AND APPROACHES? Answered by Jim Gray, Quikonnex
You’ve hit the nail on the head with this question. It is ALL about integrating new technologies into the marketing mix.
RSS/Blogs/Email/Instant Messaging are all just tools to those businesses can use to communicate with their customer base. People on the Internet jump on new technologies abandoning older system … this is incorrect.
If you’ve noticed, you may have recently receive postcards and information packages from some well know online marketers such as Armand Morin and Corey Rudl. They look at habitual ’snail mail’ as a part of their marketing mix. RSS should be viewed the same.
Right now, blogs and RSS feeds are hot with the search engines, so a website owner should have one… period. But, to use it exclusively would be a mistake. The perfect mix is to use an RSS feed for the one to many exchanges and to use email for one on one customer correspondence.
Analyzing the New Yahoo! RSS Report for Marketers
Friday, January 8th, 2010We were waiting for a touch like this to happen for a
long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market
RSS aggregators, irrevocably took a step forward and in print
their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS,
based on their usage data.
1. YAHOO!’S KEY FINDINGS
Let’s first take a look at Yahoo! key findings and what
they mean for marketers.
a] Awareness of RSS is reasonably low among Internet users. 12%
of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.
Even if RSS awareness is increasing, only few internet
users yet know what RSS is and how to use it.
For marketers, this means that simply placing an RSS button
on their site it not nearly enough, with the report irrevocably
demonstrating that marketers needs to use clear and
believable copy to get their visitors interested in RSS,
clarify RSS to them and get them to subscribe to their
feeds.
In addition it also shows that marketers need to make sure
they are using “user-friendly” buttons to generate
subscribers, such as “Add to MyYahoo!”, which consumers do
know.
b] 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on
personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without
knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.
This finding only underlines the above suggestions.
Stop touting your RSS feeds only using an RSS button, but
rather aim for a “subscribe feature” and then clarify to
the visitor how to use it.
Strong copy has never been so vital.
c] 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only
2% currently subscribe to podcasts.
Goes to show that podcasting still has a long way to go and
can right now function only as a supplement to your
existing marketing activities.
It might also give an indication that audio is not the most
appropriate format for much online content.
d] Even tech-savoir-faire “Aware RSS Users” prefer to access RSS
feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g.,
My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).
e] My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any
RSS-enabled product.
Both of the findings above, even if indicating that these
are the results Yahoo! would want to publish, show that
having browser-based RSS reader subscribe buttons is a must.
It also shows that the market is ready for the soon-coming
IE and Outlook integrated RSS features, which should really
boost RSS usage among consumers online.
Now, let’s take a deeper look at the report …
2. “UNAWARE RSS USERS” VS “AWARE RSS USERS”
The whitepaper makes a strong distinction between “Unacquainted
RSS Users” and “Aware RSS Users”, positioning the “Unacquainted”
batch as the mainstream Internet populace.
This makes it unquestionably clear that B2C marketers,
targeting consumers, should take special care to promote
their feeds using “friendly” subscribe buttons.
On the other hand, if targeting a more tech-savoir-faire audience,
going the way of “RSS” and more complex RSS reading tools
might be a better choice. This might also verify more
effectual for targeting executives and other corporate
target audiences that might be using an enterprise-wide RSS
solution, such as NewsGator.
3. CONSUMPTION LEVELS
The whitepaper says that on the average “Aware RSS Users”
subscribe to 6.6 feeds.
The consequences of this are not as simple as they might
seem. Even “RSS Aware” users do not subscribe to “just
anything” and seems they only subscribe or keep being
subscribed to the content of highest relevance to them.
The message for marketers is to become even more relevant
and more focused on providing real value for their target
audiences.
RSS does not mean that end-users will start consuming that
much more online content, but simply that their primary
consumption channel will exchange. It’s up to you to make
place for yourself in this consumption channel, but you can
only do so if you become one of the key targeted content
providers for your market and can deliver consistently
high-feature content.
4. TYPES OF RSS CONTENT CONSUMED
Even in the world of RSS, mainstream media rules, with
World news and Inhabitant news both leading the pack at 52%
and followed by Entertainment at 34% and Weather ad 31%.
If we take a look at what lies beneath this we can see that
end-users still see RSS as a news consumption tool and a
tool to receive time-sensitive updates, such as weather
info.
The appealing part is that blogs achieve only 23% and
even if they are gaining quickly are still not part of the
mainstream.
Whichever way you look at this, the real long tail is still
far from fruition.
There are two are appealing categories listed in the
report: investment/financial info/banking at 13% and
Shopping/online commerce at 10%.
The popularity of these two shows that RSS in fact is
appropriate for delivering business info and that RSS can
be used for e-commerce. A strong case in point urging
e-retailers to start providing RSS feeds.
5. WHY END-USERS USE RSS
“RSS Aware” end-users subscribe to feed because of “ease”
or “convenience”, followed by being able to choose what
they read.
To marketers, these three should be the founding stones of
how to get their visitors to adopt RSS.
6. THE FAMOUS ORANGE BUTTON
Marketers, pay attentin to this.
Only 4% of total RSS end-users really use the orange XML
button, and only 38% of RSS aware users use it.
It seems the orange button isn’t dead … it was never
alive.
Let’s go on and replace it with a touch more
user-friendly.
And BTW — 22% of the people that clicked on the button
don’t even know what action they took after clicking the
button and 26% left the site. Goes to show the RSS button
is only losing us subscribers.
7. HOW USERS FIND THEIR FEEDS
50% use the defaults available in the RSS reader and only
13% use the search engines to find them.
Yes, it’s cruical to be in the RSS feed search engines, but
it would be even better if you could go your way to the
default seetings. And by all means, actively promote the
feeds on your site as end-users, according to the report,
actively tend to subscribe to the feeds on the sites they
find appealing.
8. CONCLUSION
To conclude this, here’s a direct quote from the report,
saying exactly what I’ve been trying to get through for a
couple of months:
“To spot RSS among mainstream Internet users, it is
elemental to effectively communicate the benefits of RSS
(ease, convenience, access to information of interest).
Internet users do not know how to use the XML button,
how to actively seek out RSS feeds, or even what the term
RSS means. Instead, they need a simple interface where they
can choose the information and content that wellbeing them.
This is where personalized start pages and browser-based
experiences can help go RSS into the mainstream.”
Robots.txt, An Online Marketers Friend Or Foe?
Monday, December 21st, 2009robots.txt is possibly the most miss understood file that a website can contain.
Many people reckon that by using a robots.txt file on their website they are protecting pages and folders from thieves and hackers. In fact it is perfectly the opposite! robots.txt opens up an enormous security hole that hackers and theives will use to easily gain access to the parts of your website that you don’t want them to.
What is robots.txt?
robots.txt is a file that you make and upload to your websites root directory that is used by search engine spiders to determine which parts of your website they should index and which folders/pages that you, the website owner,
don’t want listed in search engine indexes.
Why would not want pages indexed?
There are many reasons why you might not want search engines to index pages on your website, such as confidential membership pages or exclusive training pages and such like.
If you are an Internet Peddler selling your own ebook or other digital product, you wouldn’t want your thank you pages indexed either!
And this is where the misunderstanding comes to the fore, and robots.txt becomes your foe.
Many online marketers who provide ebooks or other digital harvest for instant download will list their download thank you pages in the robots.txt file because they obviously don’t want those pages indexed in search engines.
By using robots.txt this way though, you will be opening up your product to anyone who has a slight bit of knowledge about how the file works.
robots.txt is easily readable by any human that opens a browser and types in http://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt and if you have listed your thank you pages, all they have to do is go to that url and take your product(s)!
It’s that simple!
And I’m living proof that this works, as this is exactly what happened to me. I had listed my thank you pages in robots.txt and thought that they were safe from hackers and thieves, then one day I was checking my web site stats and BAM, a name had been to every single thank you page, and taken everything.
The moral is, don’t list any URL in robots.txt that you don’t want humans to have free access to. Use robots.txt with fantastic caution and secure your thank you pages using dedicated software.
Wordpress Content Generator © – Any Marketer’s Dream!
Sunday, November 29th, 2009No doubt that Wordpress Content Generator clearly gained popularity among many Webmasters in recent years simply because it is revolutionary. What if you could produce that precious ‘WebFuel’ for your Site (and much of it) in just few minutes? If you want to be able to quickly get more visitors to your Site(s) – read the following review. Basic introduction The secret of this advanced Wordpress Content Generator is it’s embedded engine – by providing it with your key phrases it’ll auto-scan the Internet for highly relevant sentences that are related to your topic. At this point – when all relevant information is collected, it’ll auto-separate and organize it under subtopics. Now comes the best part where all you got to do is to quickly construct completely fresh and unique article(s) that can be used somewhere. Main advantages The solution described in this review provides the following: * Enables to make contents that can be submitted on free article-directories and get hundreds of back links to your Sites.* The new contents are completely your own, so there are no plagiarism issues.* It helps on-line businesses to simply attract more visitors from SE.* It doesn’t require any special editing/writing skills.* Helps you to focus your time more on making cash rather than on writing.Summarizing this article Wordpress Content Generator enables you to promote any on-line business with significantly lower expenditure and at much higher speed. At this point the best advice would be to watch it in action and experience how it easily takes any on-line business to the next amount. Different users would probably find various advantages provided by this vital webmarketing practice simply because it is about providing you with a truly powerful webmarketing tool that can take any internet-based business to the next amount.
Wordpress Content Generator © – Any Marketer’s Dream!
Saturday, November 28th, 2009No doubt that Wordpress Content Generator clearly gained popularity among many Webmasters in recent years simply because it is revolutionary. What if you could produce that precious ‘WebFuel’ for your Site (and much of it) in just few minutes? If you want to be able to quickly get more visitors to your Site(s) – read the following review. Basic introduction The secret of this advanced Wordpress Content Generator is it’s embedded engine – by providing it with your key phrases it’ll auto-scan the Internet for highly relevant sentences that are related to your topic. At this point – when all relevant information is collected, it’ll auto-separate and organize it under subtopics. Now comes the best part where all you got to do is to quickly construct completely fresh and unique article(s) that can be used somewhere. Main advantages The solution described in this review provides the following: * Enables to make contents that can be submitted on free article-directories and get hundreds of back links to your Sites.* The new contents are completely your own, so there are no plagiarism issues.* It helps on-line businesses to simply attract more visitors from SE.* It doesn’t require any special editing/writing skills.* Helps you to focus your time more on making cash rather than on writing.Summarizing this article Wordpress Content Generator enables you to promote any on-line business with significantly lower expenditure and at much higher speed. At this point the best advice would be to watch it in action and experience how it easily takes any on-line business to the next amount. Different users would probably find various advantages provided by this vital webmarketing practice simply because it is about providing you with a truly powerful webmarketing tool that can take any internet-based business to the next amount.
Bloggers Vs Internet Marketers – Which One Are You?
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009What is the fundamental difference between a blogger and an Internet peddler? Is there any difference at all to start with?
Since I had nothing better to do today, I chose to take the risk of being flamed by despise mail by telling you exactly where the line is drawn. While these are examples from the extreme ends of the online publishing spectrum, I believe you’ll see my point by the end of this article.
Nowadays, nearly every Internet peddler I know has a blog. But, none of them like to be called a blogger. Most bloggers on the other hand reckon they’re Internet marketers. Those poor misguided souls.
Here’s what automatically different between a blogger and a real Internet peddler making a living online:
1) Living on Search Engine Traffic
The most obvious trait I’ve seen in a blogger is their over-reliance on search engine traffic. In fact, probably the only way they know of getting visitors to their blogs is by getting a “degree” in Google, and spending all their time trying to please Huge-G.
Internet marketers on the other hand see search engine traffic as just one component of their entire marketing campaign. They have access to a wider range of tools such as articles, joint-ventures, pay-per-click advertising and email marketing to mention a few. They have the knowledge to use them and they do so evenly.
2) Lack Of Control Over Their Mailing List
A further common trait of a blogger is the dependence on RSS subscription air force like Feedburner to build a database of potential customers. they’re content with the fact that by doing this they will never be able to send messages to their loyal readers other than what they post on their blogs.
When you get to a blog maintained by an Internet peddler, instead of seeing a “Subscribe by Feedburner” form, you’ll see a “special place forward” or reason to optin, followed by a customized form using Aweber or a similar service. By doing this, the Internet market captures the full details of his visitors and is free to send them emails that were never intended to be in print on their blogs.
The Internet peddler also analyzes his list to determine their wellbeing, and provides more value based on this findings. He masters his list and knows that they’re his most vital asset; not the blog.
3) Reluctance on Promoting Affiliate Harvest
I’ve seen so many bloggers state “That’s my affiliate link” right after they post it on their blogs. It’s nearly as if they’re worried of their readers finding out that they somehow benefit by putting that link up. They feel guilty making cash from others with an affiliate link, so they clearly brand it as such.
The Internet peddler but has no issues with this. His job is to promote harvest he feels will benefit his market, and he is not worried to get paid for it. In fact, the Internet peddler EXPECTS to get paid for his efforts, or he doesn’t bother doing it at all.
4) Just Publishing Vs Real Marketing
Most blogger are publishers. They focus on getting content up, and then wait for people to come and chew it up. “Build it and they will come”, says the blogger. You can’t really blame them for taking that stand, because they lack marketing and advertising skills. They really have no other option.
Internet marketers on the other hand know that the marketing graveyard is to the top with fantastic thoughts and brilliant content that never saw the light of day. They know that they need to get out there and market themselves, their harvest and their overall brand in order to survive in the long term.
5) Limited Knowledge on Monetizing Traffic
Bloggers know of only one monetization method: advertising. The simplest is of course some sort of contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Chitika. Some even go for blog advertising networks and selling text links on their blog, but at the end of the day, they’re still dependent of advertising dollars.
The Internet peddler has more tricks up his sleeve. He knows that advertising income is as stable as a melting glacier, and he diversifies his income by selling his own harvest or air force on his blog. In fact, most of them don’t even bother with contextual ads because they live much higher up the food-chain.
Let me just say that a right Internet peddler can make the same amount of cash from 3 pages of his blog that the average blogger does with 300.
This article may disgust you (if you’re a blogger) or may strike a chord in your inner melody (if you’re an Internet peddler). Bloggers may say “Oh… but I get tons of traffic, I make cash from Adsense and I’m doing fine. So what’s the problem?”
The problem is that Internet marketing is a precarious business. By observing both type of individuals all I can say is that in the next few years, the blogger will still be blogging. But the blogs they write for will be owned by a savoir-faire Internet peddler.
It’s just the way it works!
Free Wordpress Plugins: Top 3 Plugins For Internet Marketers
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009The free open source blogging platform Wordpress continues to be a standard tool for internet marketers who want to make websites quick. Though feature rich, an out-of-the-box Wordpress install lacks some features that many internet marketers rely on. Fortunately, there are many free Worpdress plugins that provide these features. Here are three of the most standard.
Keep in mind, previous to you install any of these plugins, you’ll want to make certain you have the current version of Wordpress installed to avoid any errors or possible vulnerabilities. The newest upgrade of the platform can permanently be updated at Wordpress.org’s main site.
All In One SEO Pack – Even if blog traffic can come from many sources besides the search engines, there’s no doubt that free natural search engine traffic is still very vital to the success of any website or blog. With the All In One Seo pack plugin, your Wordpress blog will be involuntarily optimized for onsite SEO. This plugin saves hours of time over tweaking themes, options and individual plugins to acheive the same results.
Please note that because the search engines evenly exchange the way they rank pages, you’ll want to have the most current version of this plugin. Check back frequently on their main site to make sure your plugin is up to date.
Adsense Plugin – This plugin has been around for a while, but it is upgraded to work with the current version of Wordpress. Seems the popularity of adsense never goes away, even if the earnings per click have gone down over the past few years. If you want a quick and simple way to get adsense or even Yahoo Publisher Network ads showing up on your Wordpress blogs, and you want an simple way to control where they show up and how they look, this is a must have plug-in. The learning curve is very quick with this plugin, and users will delight in tweaking the settings to increase ad clickthroughs and profits.
Remember though, Adsense isn’t your only option for monetizing your blog. You can also run paid ads yourself by dealing frankly with other sites that want to make known. Though more profitable, it is also more time consuming.
FeedWordPress – Feedwordpress is a plugin that takes rss feeds and makes full pages out of them on your blog involuntarily. It should not be used alone, as your site will start to look like a scraper site. When added to a blog with original content though, it can greatly increase traffic to your site.
A couple of warnings though, the learning curve with this plugin is high and you need to make sure you have consent to use the rss feeds you program this plugin with. Most sites that have rss feeds available also provide a copy of their terms of service for using the feeds, so be sure to check those out. Not complying with a further site’s TOS can lead to nasty emails or even a stop and desist letter, so consider yourself warned.
Do You Splog or Blog? – Affiliate Marketers with Wordpress Beware
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009If you are just getting started making an affiliate marketing business online one of the simplest was to do so is to get a blog at Wordpress.com. It’s free, it’s simple, and you can be up and running in minutes. But, an affiliate marketing blog on Wordpress.com can be shut down previous to you can say why. Why? because of the Wordpress definitions of a spam blog that are evenly overlooked. So, do you splog or blog? Are you a splogger or a blogger?
A blog that is operating with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs fall into the Wordpress category of “splog.” Wordpress defines an affiliate marketing blog as one it will ban. Wordpress states:
Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs. To be clear, examples like people writing original book or movie reviews and between them to Amazon, or people between to their own harvest on Etsy do NOT fall into this category. We’re only talking about blogs that are primarily designed to promote different affiliate programs.
If this is your blogging strategy, get thy self your own domain and hosting company and get Wordpress installed on it. By doing so you avoid the risk of having your website removed. Nick at Wordpress Support told me that the Wordpress.com Terms of Service do not apply to the self-hosted version of Wordpress that you download at Wordpress.org. That software is free for you to use as you please with no restrictions or requirements regarding splogging or blogging in any way. Excellent news for those of us on our own websites. Excellent information for you if you are just getting ready to build a blog and use it for affiliate marketing information and sales.
As for affiliate marketers by now established on a Wordpress.com host blog site, certainly you have concerns about moving to a new website as that would entail varying all of your URLs and losing the pagerank and traffic avenues you have established with your links. I suggest you write to the folks at Wordpress and question them what you can do to comply with their terms of service to avoid being banned as a splogger. Do it now. It will give you peace of mind and if you are at threat you can start restructuring your site to comply with what Wordpress will require of you to be able to keep your blog.