Archive for Blogging

7 Wordpress Twitter Plugins to Spice up Your Blog

Although I have been involved with Twitter from shortly after it’s launch there is so much to learn. People come up with different ways to use Twitter to market and develop a community of people and this is one great area of Twitter to follow. The other area of Twitter that is equally as great is all the plugins and hacks that are developed to make the entire Twitter experience more and more unique.

I want to list a number of Wordpress Twitter Plugins that you should know about for your personal Twitter experience.

Tweet Meme

You are possibly familiar with the little graphic that shows the number of tweets a blog post has and then you see a green button under that number that says retweet. This is the Tweet Meme plugin for Wordpress and it makes it easy for your visitors to tweet your blog to their Twitter feed.

Tweetbacks

With the explosion of blogging and Twitter this Wordpress plugin will import Tweets about your post as comments. You can display the tweetbacks nested in other comments on your blog or display them separately. The more comments you have on your site the better ranking your page can get in Google since it shows activity and value.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Twitter Tools integrates with Twitter by giving you the following functionality:

  • Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)
  • Create a blog post from each of your tweets
  • Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
  • Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
  • Post a tweet from your sidebar
  • Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
  • Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

Twit this

Place some simple code on your site to create a graphic or a text link that people can click to post a Tweet to their Twitter account.

Twitt twoo

Twitt-Twoo is a simple little plugin that will allow you to update your Twitter status right from your blog’s sidebar. AJAX takes cares of the hard work, and means that your page doesn’t even have to reload, allowing for quick and easy status updates. Displays your latest Twitter status, and when it was last updated.

Twitter Updater

The Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post. You can specify the text for the updates, and also have the option to turn the auto update on/off for the different post actions in the admin panel.

Twittar Wordpress Plugin

This Wordpress plugin will try to load the twitter avatar of the person leaving a comment on a blog post. It will try to match the email address in the comment to the Twitter account. If this cannot be done it will attempt to use the Gravatar. There are a number of other style settings you can use for customization.

Read more great articles at Bill Wynne’s blog. Get useful ebooks and other gifts for free. Bill has been a successful internet marketer for over a decade. Read articles on Add Comments to Blog and Online Article Marketing

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

7 RSS Traffic Tips for Small Business Owners

If you have a blog, you have an updates feed, most likely in the flavor of RSS feed, but quite possible in Atom feed. This is the file that’s linked to the weird-looking orange button you see on many frequently updated websites, such as blogs. These tips apply to both types of feeds.

Your feed’s job is to talk to other machines about your site on your behalf. Those bot to bot conversations increase your traffic and help more people see your site, either directly through feed reader subscriptions and listings, or indirectly by helping your search rankings. Do at least these basics to take care of your feed.

  1. No one loves RSS, okay? I never actually liked it much, but I always understood that it was necessary to grow my site. Stop trying to hug it, and start having a basic understanding of how it helps your business.
  2. If you don’t have a site newsletter, you can use RSS to make your blog posts into email newsletters, then put the email subscription box at the top right of your site, or otherwise unobtrusively remind people to subscribe. Aweber will create both the newsletter and the web form for you automatically.
  3. About once a week, make sure your feed is validating. Sometimes all it takes is a rarely used character in the title to break your feed. FeedValidator.org will help you with that for free.
  4. Submit your feed to the top RSS search engines and directories. There aren’t hundreds of them as there once were, but for the good ones remaining, like Syndic8, the links can’t hurt you.
  5. RSS is what helps your site speak to social media sites automatically, but what if you aren’t sure what is helping and how often? Try FeedBurner. It’s my opinion that the service has been on the decline since Google took it over a year ago, but before you judge by that, take into account the height it was at when the fall began.
    It’s still does a pretty decent job of tracking your traffic, and there’s no need to direct ALL your traffic through FeedBurner if you don’t want to, just use it to track sites that you give permission to repurpose your feed, like Twitter and Facebook.
  6. Google Reader. Yes, that’s the whole tip. Of the minority of people who use a Feed Reader to follow blogs rather than email, Google Reader is the top choice. Stick the button on your site, glance over your headlines in Google Reader now and again. Wouldn’t hurt you to share some items over there too.
  7. Should you use full-feeds or partial-feeds? It’s a controversial issue. I won’t go into as much detail about how my private findings differ wildly from conventional wisdom, just suffice it to say this. My solution with new sites is to offer both, and let readers choose when they come to your site, and allow the short feed to be syndicated by anyone, with a link at the bottom of each short feed post letting readers know you offer full text as well.

Learning about RSS may not be as big a deal as it once was, but don’t forget that your site’s feed is instrumental in helping your site grow.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Three Simple Words that Push People to Part with Their Cash

I was on a call with a top copywriting expert yesterday who talked about the three words that will always make people give you their money.

It really made me think hard about the headlines I’d been using in my ads, email and even on twitter. This guy was talking about using curiosity as a driving force in your marketing.

Let’s name it curiosity marketing.

Before I give you the three words, let me explain a bit more about curiosity marketing, how people decide to buy things and how your headline and buyer keywords can tap into each step along the buyer’s decision making process.

Killer Headlines

For curiosity marketing to work really well, your headline is the one of the entry points into your sales funnel. Your sales funnel should mirror buyer decision-making processes, which we’ll talk about in a bit.

The headline needs to hit a number of buttons. It doesn’t always have to hit them all, so don’t make your headline needlessly complex. It needs to grab attention first and foremost.

If you were marketing on dog training, you might use a headline like “7 Free Tricks to Stop your Dog Barking”.

What makes this an effective ‘killer’ headline?

  • Intrigue. The headline is kind of intriguing since you don’t say what those tricks are so people get curious and want to find out what those tricks are.
  • Incentive. The information is “free”, which could remove one obstacle to someone taking a look. If you hook people up with a great deal, they like you and trust you more.
  • A Solution. It offers a solution through use of the question “how” and the answer “tricks”.
  • Tangible. The number ‘7? adds something tangible and definite about what you’re offering.
  • Targeted. The headline is focused on one specific problem, undesirable dog barking, so people searching specifically for help with this one problem, will be highly targeted prospects.

If you were into dog training or were a dog owner searching for a solution to why your dog won’t stop barking, you’d probably click on this, right?

Thus the point of your title is what? To take your visitor to the next step, which is to click your ad, open your email, visit your blog post, read your article.

What you do after they get to your page or blog or whatever comes next in your sales funnel, is partly on how you satisfy the original curiosity and sell them on the next step. (It’s kind of funny to think how the marriage analogy would go in those terms!)

The Buying Decision Process

At this point, you are not expecting someone to buy straight out. People buy from someone they know, like and trust.

Would you ask your girlfriend to move in with you after one date? You’d wine and dine her a few times, and ask after the relationship has developed over time. So now when you pop the question … she may surprise you – your most wanted response!

In marketing, your most wanted response at the start of the buying process is simply that targeted prospects click on your ad, open your email or click the link you give in twitter.

OK, so that got me thinking about what would work in our industry – marketing to the home business opportunity seeker. I’ve always known the importance of researching your buyer keywords.

In other words, you have to identify what people who are looking for a home business are actually looking for … and then draw them in using curiosity.

Identifying Buyer Keywords

The killer keywords are always the starting point of course. What is it that people looking for a business opportunity might be searching for – what solution are they looking for? What’s the problem or situation they want to resolve? What’s their most wanted outcome?

I think it was Perry Marshall who said if someone is out shopping for a drill, they are not searching for a drill they want a hole.

If someone is out searching for dog training, they most probably have a specific and immediate problem they are trying to resolve, like “my dog keeps barking every time we leave him alone in a room and it’s driving us mad, not to mention the complaints from the neighbours!”

Your headline still needs to be relevant to your target audience, but curiosity marketing is about taking people to the next step. How can you entice someone to take the next action step in your sales funnel and ultimately towards a buying decision?

Creating Your Sales Funnel

One approach I have found works really well for creating your sales funnel is to mirror the decision-making processes in your buying chain. In my game, I try to identify probable steps that someone looking for a home business would take.

Once you are clear about what is your ‘most wanted response’ from them at each step, you should be able to more easily identify both headlines and buyer keywords according to where a person has got to in making a decision to buy.

The first step in the sales funnel is to get people INTO your sales funnel. And this is where curiosity marketing to a targeted audience can be really effective.

You’re at the top end of the sales funnel where there is the most competition usually so you’re ad or email has to stand out in the crowd – in the search engine advertising or email inbox.

Throw in an incentive on the back of a curious headline and your click rates will soar. Offer your visitors valuable information – the 7 free tricks – and use curiosity to sell them on taking the next step into your sales funnel.

This next step might be to give you their contact details in exchange for your newsletter and/or a free report so you continue to provide them with useful information. As a follow up, you could offer a low cost product like a training guide or video bootcamp or perhaps a basic subscription.

There’s no limit to the length of your sales funnel. People who have bought on one step are your prime prospects. They are buyers.

Upsell – offer them your next product or an upgrade or extra related product. They are now buyers who like your information or your products and trust its value to them.

A buyer is a buyer is a buyer – Not sure whose quote that is (maybe Russell Brunson told me).

So curiosity marketing is all about taking people to the next step in the buying chain.

My headline on this article (and I’ll tweet and email on this too cos it’s fun!)

What three words will always make people give you their money?

Question: Who would I target this one at?

Answer: People looking for buyer keywords, marketing strategies, conversion tactics, sales training.

Oh, and I guess you want to know what are the three words, yes?

STICK ‘EM UP!

Jay Allyson – Online Entrepreneur & Home Business Coach – GetRichLifestyle.com

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Internet Marketing Blogs that Beg to be Bookmarked

Let’s face it, Blogs on the topic of Internet marketing are a dime a dozen. Everyone and their dog seems to have one. I’ll be the first to admit it takes a lot to impress me. Some blogs are just boring and uneventful. But then there are some that make me want to come back again and again.

So, what are the qualities of a great blog? Well, for me it’s one that offers me something of value, whether that be in the form of valuable information, or points me in the direction of free products or services. It’s all about me. By the same token, I do appreciate a blogger with a sense of humor or strong personality. If you’re stiff and mechanical it’s just not for me. Show me who you really are and what makes you tick.

One final point. Don’t forget about design. Blogs that are easy on the eyes, uncluttered and simple get my vote every time. If it has a black background and white text, I’m out of there in a big hurry.

So, who has some of the best blogs online today? So glad you asked. Listen closely as I enlighten you and point you in the right direction.

1. Willie Crawford:

An experienced online marketer, Willie is considered one of the world’s leading Internet marketing experts. Listen to Willie, he "walks the talk" and can teach you a lot about the world of online marketíng.

He also has a radio show at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/WillieCrawford

2. Michael Fortin Blog:

Copywriting and marketing tips from a man who is too brilliant for words. Michael is an expert copywriter who has done work for John Reese and many of the other top marketers. Without good copy you can’t sell a thing, so learning all you can about persuasive writing is a must for your to do list. Also see: http://www.copywritersboard.com

3. Skip Mcgrath:

If Ebay is your thing then Skip’s blog is a must. An expert at selling items on Ebay, and an experienced author of several books, Skip covers all of the ins and outs of earning money with Ebay.

4. Jensense:

Jennifer helps you to make sense of contextual advertising and helps publishers to earn more money. Topics include Google Adsense and other similar contextual ad programs.

5. Marketing Pilgrim:

Originally launched by Internet marketer Andy Beal way back in 2005. This blog covers the latest marketing news, reviews and other items related to online advertising.

6. Yahoo Publisher Network:

Everything you ever wanted to know about Yahoo’s Publisher Network but were afraid to ask. All of your questions are answered here.

7. Matt Cutts:

A Google employee since 2000, Matt discusses all things Google on his Blog. He also covers search engine optimization and other interesting gadgets he runs across online. If Google is your thing, all is revealed here.

8. Bruce Clay:

Since 1996 way before it was cool to be on the net Bruce Clay has been teaching those about search engine optimization and online marketíng. He really knows his "stuff" and you can tell that by his concrete informative posts which go into great detail.

9. Clickz:

Clickz always has the latest dish on Internet marketing. Serving news and expert advice since 1997.

10. Jim Edwards:

Jim Edwards blog "I Gotta Tell You" is a multi-media blog. Covering numerous topics related to makíng money onlíne, Jim always has a funny story to tell. He has a strong personality, so if you like that you’ll enjoy Jim’s blog.

11. Marnie Pehrson:

Marnie is the creator of IdeaMarketers.com and covers all things related to article marketing and other online marketíng strategies. Again, she’s been online for years and has much wisdom when it comes to gaining traffic from your short articles.

12. Google Adsense:

If you use Adsense by Google to generate an income you’ll want to subscribe to this blog. Tons of tips and tutorials to improve your earnings.

13. Search Engine Diva:

Ginette Degner has been providing search engine optimization and Internet marketing consulting for over 16 years. She’s good and also has a great sense of humor.

14. Income.com:

When you talk about Internet marketing you can’t forget about John Reese. The only online marketer I know of who made a million dollars in one day when he launched his Traffic Secrets course.

15. Joel Osborne:

Joel has been making a living online for the past several years and has numerous web sites and products. Another expert when it comes to learning how to improve traffic and sell online.

16. Jonathan Leger:

Jonathan Leger has been earning a living online since 2004. His blog discusses search engine optimization, Adsense and online marketíng.

17. Pay Per Click Journal:

This blog is written by the website marketing experts at Brick Marketing. They cover all aspects of pay-per-click search engine marketing.

When it comes to marketing online there are plenty of blogs that can keep you up to date on the latest and greatest trends. This is just a small sample of what’s out there. Make sure that no matter whose blog you’re reading, that they thoroughly know and understand the topic they’re discussing. If not, you’re just wasting your time, and if that’s the case you might as well be reading your dog’s blog. But who knows it just might be more interesting.