Posted by admin on May 27, 2009 in
Web Advice First off, I need to confess that I must limit my time on Twitter. If I don’t, it easily grabs my attention off the things I need to be doing. Such is the confession of one who is easily distracted.
Friends on Facebook ask me, “What is Twitter?” because I use TweetLater.com to automatically update my Facebook status and I’m often RT (re-tweeting) or welcoming Followers, or in a conversation with someone that really confuses those outside the loop.
I’ve seen people recommend turning off this feature, because it of how it confuses Facebook-ers, but I’ve never let ignorance win out over the esoteric. (Look up those words if you want to understand what I just said.)
Use it. Let your friends on Facebook know you have a twitterverse beyond their knowledge where 140 characters become poetry to the initiated.
Those outside, just don’t get it.
I tweet to build relationships. I want to encourage people, help them out, and pray for them when the need it. I think it’s cool I can find a quote for @lensweet even though its been 10 years since I’ve read his books. I love the fact that at 4:30 on Valentine’s day I can ask “What do you give a wife who said, ‘don’t get me anything’?” and within 5 minutes I have a song, a poem, a plan to woe. Who needs a personal assistant? (If you do, you can find great ones on Twitter.)
Here are my tips to make the most out of Twitter.
1. You don’t have to follow everyone. Try to keep a balance between who you follow and who follows you.
- I don’t follow people who follow 1999 people and
a. Have only 50 followers or
b. Only have 1 or 2 twits (postings)
The first group is only interested in spamming the second… I’m not sure they’re interested in connecting. I want to get to know people, not just read they’re combing their hair. If they want to listen in on my conversations, I don’t care, but I don’t want to be following them if they’re not part of the conversation.
- I don’t follow people who sell themselves.
I’ll likely not follow people who use the precious 140 characters to spout barnyard talk. I mean really, this is poetry, express yourself with more of the 180,000 words in English
- I tend not to follow those not writing English – I need to understand in order to connect.
I’ll usually unfollow people who stop following me. You can automate this, but I like going through my followers regularly. I’ll pray for them… and unfollow the ones who have let me.
2. Don’t hide who you are. I’m not saying, “Share personal information that can identify you.” I’m saying, “If you’re there to promote your business or ministry, be upfront with it.” I’m @revtrev, so people aren’t surprised when I tweet, “Can I pray for you today?” I have our business information on my background, so they won’t be surprised when I mention ImaginePublishing.com or AskandImagine.com.
I like backgrounds that let me connect more with people. @edstetzer does it great. Next time I update my background, it’s going to be more like his. He has a longer bio, his websites, and his books.
Some people don’t like automated responses, and frown on including links in those automated responses. I love them and have three in my automated response. Not only does it bring great traffic to my sites, it connects me with like minded people. I follow every link people send me… I even let them know when there’s a typo in the shortened URL. You’re welcome @curtjonestweets (I use http://is.gd to shorten my URL… it saves characters when you only have 140 to work with.)
3. Connect with people
I’ve come across so many incredible blogs @strivingwife I only found because she sent me the link…. wait a minute, it could have been in her bio. I check out everybody’s website who follows me. I pray for every business, and connect with the ones whose services I need. BTW, if you don’t have a decent-looking site, we’d love to help tell your story with an incredible one at AskandImagine.com
Respond to people’s tweets – this is where the @ sign comes in on the posts. If you can help, lend advice. If you can tell a funnier story, commiserate. I really don’t know why people have an account and hardly ever tweet. I’ve got tweetlater to send me a daily report of @revtrev replies so I know when people reply to me.
Tweet regularly. I tweet from my iPhone and when I have time will read the tweets and respond when I can. I’m pretty much settled on the TwitterFon app. I play with vLingo because it records your voice for tweets. I’ve learned not to tweet and drive, even with vLingo. It’s usually faster to type it.
I guess the biggest frustration for me is getting @ replies to tweet I made and having no clue what they’re for. So I suggest, if you have the room, mention what you’re replying to. For example, @sugarjones tweeted something about knowing your old when dancing on the bar gets you thinking about health insurance. So instead of replying “Funny”, I added a bit before my story of realizing I’m getting older: @sugarjones Too funny… you also know your old when Emmit Smith doing a gray hair commercial flashes you back to when he was in college
Has Twitter increased our business? We’ve got connections for websites from AskandImagine.com and we’re talking to people about books for ImaginePublishing.com, I’ve got ministers all over the world reviewing my book, and people all over responding to blog posts. And we get reports of miracles happening weekly from prayers we tweet.
I love twitter because it gets results and it connects me with incredible people I’d never connect with any other way. You need to invest time in social networking and don’t expect it to pay off overnight. Connect with people your interested in and invest in them, then it pays off.
Trevor Lund is the Creativity Maven for AskandImagine.com. He loves connecting with amazing people like you. You can follow him on Twitter, become friends on Facebook, or Connect with him on LinkedIn.
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Posted by admin on May 27, 2009 in
Web Advice Word on the internet is to keep your blogs focussed on its purpose. I have www.DrinkFromtheDeep.com to blog about experiencing more of our supernatural Father; Living Creatively for my podcast – that’s a bit behind at the moment, RevTrev Reviews for my thoughts on books, DVD’s and occasionally music, and Streams of Consciousness for my random thoughts.
Of course, Twitter gets most of my random thinking, so if you’d like to keep up to date with everything, simply follow me there.
This blog is to help you navigate the many choices you have for online services. Most of these are offered at our web hosting service – IntegrityOnlineServices.com, but we’ll cover things like Joomla and Wordpress and other topics that are passions of mine.
With… I need to count… at least 21 currently active sites that include Joomla, Wordpress, HTML, iWeb, and automated sites – I’ve had my share of scams, hacks, frustrations and celebrations. Since I love sharing what I’ve learned, I thought I’d do this blog to give you my comments on what works and what I’d recommend you avoid. Hope you enjoy.
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Posted by admin on May 27, 2009 in
Web Advice If you’ve gone through the trouble of having a site set up, it’s worth going through the trouble of getting targeted traffic to it. This article is simply a start. If you want more information and the tools you need, why not try the free programs at WEBCEO . They are far more comprehensive than we can provide here and the course they offer is well worth the time to take.
Here are a few simple ways that you can easily do to get traffic to your site. Yes, it can be work, but pick and choose what suits your time and ability. The more you do, the more traffic you should get.
1) Write articles: This is a good tool for getting traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can bring activity to your web site. It’s worth the money to have them proofread by editors
and articles of 500 – 2,000 aren’t that expensive. Don’t forget to add your URL in your byline. You can use this free software to submit your articles to many sites:
SubmitYourArticles.com
2) Social bookmark: Bookmark everything you have online. People do come to your sites because of it. To understand more about Social Bookmarking, check out Social Bookmarking in Plain English .
http://del.icio.us/
http://digg.com/
http://www.FriendFeed.com
3) Pay directories: List yourself in pay directories since most people don’t do this (everyone’s looking for a freebie) you could improve your traffic by getting a listing:
http://dir.yahoo.com
www.business.org
http://botw.org/
http://www.undercoverthenet.com
http://www.Business.com
http://www.directorymaximizer.com/
www.FindItInCanada.ca
4) Free Directories: Be listed in these free directories, if they fit your market. We’re not in a position to say much about any of these, but look at the Google Page Rank of sites you’re thinking about being listed in. The higher the rank the more you want to be listed there. The Google toolbar will show the PR of the page. http://toolbar.google.com /:
www.dmoz.org
- it’s not easy to get listed here, but worth the effort.
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
http://www.411locate.com/add_list.htm
http://www.alberta.servpro.ca/can/signup.php?how_user_entered=free
http://www.bestyellow.com/addurl.html
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/directory/
http://www.directorydice.com/submit.php
http://www.ibegin.com/submit/
http://www.ifindinfo.com/submit.asp
http://www.ikarma.ca/signup/
http://www.kazeli.com/index.cfm/id/48/lang/english/
http://www.searchandgo.com/directory/submission-guidelines.php
http://www.spoke.com/solutions/getplay2.html?regfrom=see
http://www.submit-away.com/online_yellow_pages.htm
http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html
http://www.wowdirectory.com/add/263/11310.php
http://www.zoominfo.com/Registration/Register.aspx
5) Be the Expert: If you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon.com
and start positioning yourself as an expert. You’ll want to create an Amazon profile and make sure and sign each review with a reference to your URL (your web site). You can also go to epinions.com and revoo.com to review products as well or why not answer questions on Yahoo! Here are the links you can check out.
www.revoo.com
www.epinions.com
http://answers.yahoo.com/
6) Offer a freebie on Craig’s List: you’ll be pleased at how much traffic you get from a single Craig’s List ad. Make sure they have to sign up for something like your e-mail newsletter before they can grab their freebie. That way you’re not just getting traffic, you’re also building your list.
www.craigslist.org
7) Signature Line: Put your URL in the signature line of your emails. You’re emailing people you know, who will want to see your site. Also, emails get forwarded from friends to friends. We call this “a little viral marketing”.
Set up a social networking site using Facebook.com, Linkedin.com, or Squidoo. It’s free. And it’s easy to do. Just don’t forget the link back to your site. Once again, Common Craft has a great Plain Speech video you can check out to learn more about social networking .
www.facebook.com
www.LinkedIn.com
www.Squidoo.com
www.myspace.com
www.Twitter.com
9) Make sure your blog has an RSS feed. If we set up your site, we installed one so anytime your page is updated, your subscribers will know. If you capture a reader you don’t lose them if they forget to bookmark your site or blog. For more information about RSS watch the RSS in Plain English
video on YouTube.
10) Join relevant groups at Yahoo groups. You’ll find everything from groups on growing your small business, writing books, finding your passion, even underwater basket weaving. Find one that is right for what you’re promoting. When you do join and take part in as you can!
http://groups.yahoo.com/
11) Podcasting is another great way to drive traffic. There are tools you can buy to streamline the process, but it’s easy enough to do-it-yourself. View this videocast that Revision3 has produced in Episode 4 of Systm on podcasting to have all the information you need.
12) Start a blog and start commenting on other people’s blogs, linking to them from your site or adding them to your blogroll. Here’s another Plain English video
hosted on YouTube to bring you up to speed on Blogs.
13) Start an e-mail newsletter: If your newsletter is interesting and relevant to your audience, you’ll find that it has a huge pass-through relevance. This means that it is passed from one e-mail subscriber to another. Also, if you have an e-mail newsletter you should never, ever go to a single event without your handy signup sheet. I recommend Aweber to handle your e-mail lists.
14) Products: Why not get a store on eBay? This site gets much traffic and on your sales page you’re allowed to list your URL. It’s another great way to get an inbound link and a way for people to find you.
http://www.eBay.ca
http://www.eBay.com
15) Load a video on YouTube and 57 other video sites. You can find them all in this article .But they’ve missed one that may be the audience you’re looking for: http://www.GodTube.com
Here are a few more that stand out as places to consider. Hey, you’ve done the work to do the video, might as well get it watched. Hope you didn’t forget to have the URL in a corner:
http://www.break.com/
http://video.google.ca/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&tab=soapbox
http://www.mixpo.com/
http://vids.myspace.com/
http://www.ourmedia.org/
16) Off-line efforts: If you’re ever quoted in a magazine or other publication, make sure and mention your URL as it’s fitting to the topic. Don’t forget to tell people that have a web site that may be a great resource for the topic of your interview. Always include your URL in off-line advertising
If you’re going to go through all the trouble of getting traffic to your site, make sure your site is converting this traffic into something. Get people to sign up for something, your newsletter, the RSS feed on your blog, don’t be afraid to offer them quality information, products or services for the information you’re asking from them. Once again, we can set this up for you if you want just go to www.AskandImagine.com to set up your site. Or you can just go to Aweber
to set up an auto responder.
Marketing through PPC…
Here are some thoughts on Pay-per-click advertising. WebCEO’s courses
have much more to say, but in case you’re just looking for some tips, here they are.
1) Test small first.
Lessen your risk by testing a marketing approach on a small-scale first. If it works, then increase the scale and create momentum.
2) Be consistent.
Create habits for testing and following up.
3) Set a budget.
Decide what you can afford to spend on advertising monthly. In this way you can set and manage your expectations.
This should also prevent you from trying opportunities you cannot afford.
4) Diversify.
Spread your efforts as much as you can over many different sources. This will also lessen your risk and help you to discover what works.
Remember that if one internet marketing method that you try does not produce results, you have not failed. This just means that you are one step closer to finding something that DOES work.
Instead of just using the big three:
http://adwords.google.com/
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/as/
https://adcenter.microsoft.com/
Also consider solutions like ones like Exact Seek:
http://www.exactseek.com/featured_listings.html
5) Learn how to write effective copy.
The skill that will pay off in internet marketing is copywriting.
It is especially important to learn how to write headlines. There is good information online that is free on headlines and copywriting. Just do a Google search
6) Take action, test, and track.
Tracking is essential because you need to know the results of your marketing efforts.
Once you start getting results, you can employ simple tests to see if you can improve. Often this testing involves strategies that are free.
One such strategy that comes to mind is split testing. You can do this for free, and it can provide great returns.
Split testing involves making slight changes to a landing page or adwords ad, often just wording the headline, and testing it against a current version.
Google has free analytics to help you track how people move through your site. Sign up for it here: www.google.com/analytics
If you need help getting it on your site, contact us .
Trevor Lund is a writer and multipreneur. He’s the Lead Dreamer for Immeasurably More , a Publishing Coach for Imagine Publishing
and the Creativity Maven for Ask and Imagine . Follow him on Twitter , Connect on LinkedIn , or become friends on Facebook .
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