SEO Review

Twitter is a relatively new web 2.0 site that is starting to gain a lot of popularity. That means that a lot of people have heard of it, but it is also quite common to run into people who haven’t heard of it.. yet. Twitter.com is this social site that encourages users to post often about what they are currently doing.

A lot of people are using it to improve their marketing reach, by being an active twitterer they gain followers who are interested in what they have going on. This means people being exposed to their updates on a regular basis. For example, if you have hundreds of followers in Twitter and you decide to post an affiliate link, that means hundreds of people have instantly been exposed to your offer. In this article, I will discuss ways to maximize Twitter for your marketing as well as a big mistake you need to avoid.

In order to have a fan base per se of followers in Twitter, you must be able to keep their interest in you and what you are doing now. "What are you doing?" is the whole foundation of what Twitter is about in the first place. Make sure to post daily, if not several times throughout the day, updates about what you are doing. The magical thing behind this is that many of your contacts will be able to feel like they know you so much better, will trust you more, and feel much more comfortable about working with you. On the other hand, when you follow others you can learn about them and their possible needs.

The big mistake to watch out for is only posting affiliate links or offers on your Twitter page. This looks like Spam and many people will see you as just abusing Twitter for your personal gain. Think of it this way, if you would not want to invite your friends or family to keep up with you via Twitter, then you are going about it all wrong. As with anything you send out or provide, ninety percent should be content and ten percent (at most) advertising.

So this concept is quite simple… constantly post throughout the day what you are doing.. it is usually very simple and only takes a few seconds to post! Secondly, if you write articles or provide content online, provide a link for those in your Twitter posts. You may post many things within one day, but the last thing you post for the day is usually the most important because it will be there the longest. This means that your last post for the day should contain a link that you want your followers to see before your start Twittering again the next day!

Another part of Twitter is contributing. As with any social site it should be a give and take relationship. Notice that give comes first… the more you give the more people will want to work with you and the more attention you will receive. Make sure to read and follow other users in Twitter. If you read something interesting or helpful, then make sure to reply and say so, or even put a link for it on your Twitter so that you are directing others to more quality content. This can also be as simple as connecting with other users. If they know you are reading their Twitter page, they will be much more likely to check out what you have going on too.

To get started in Twitter you should first invite contacts who aren’t using Twitter and also find contacts who are already using Twitter so that you can start following them and also start getting people to follow you. Twitter has a nice invite and find feature that makes this incredibly easy. To grow your reach even more you can start following people who follow or are followed by the people who follow you.. or that you follow. You might need to read that sentence again.. but basically you can find other users to connect with that are already connected to other users.

Now for a big tip. If you really want to maximize the potential with Twitter, you should make sure to take advantage of any plug-ins or sites that support Twitter. Here are three, but I’m sure there will be many more in the future if not already.

Squidoo allows you to input your Twitter account info into your Squidoo account and then it can automatically post updates to your Twitter account when you create or update Squidoo lenses.

Facebook has an application called Twitter, that automatically updates your Facebook status when you make a Twitter post.

The other tool is a free WordPress plug-in called TweetMyBlog that allows you to create a two-way connection from your blogs to Twitter. TweetMyBlog allows you to use a widget on your Wordpress blogs that will display your current Twitter feed.. that way all visitors to your blog can look at the widget and see a running feed of your latest Twitter posts. If they clíck on that, they will be brought to your Twitter page. In addition, when you make a new post to your blog, TweetMyBlog will automatically make a post to your Twitter page with a link to your latest blog post. Imagine the extra exposure you can receive by using these tools that help people see more of what you are doing.

Lastly, have fun! Twitter is a social site… so interact and enjoy!

About The Author
Darren Olander is dedicated to teaching others how to create a success online through internet network marketing strategies. He is a site owner, article writer, coach & marketing consultant enjoying the benefits of working full time from home. Learn more about him at DarrenOlander.com.

Social Media, Social Networking, Leveraging Web 2.0 – it’s known by many names and it’s all the rage!

Let me start by saying I am a fan of social media, I personally choose to participate in social media. However when you read about social media, you often only hear one side of things – the message is clear – Participate or miss out! And while I do believe that is true, I think it’s not always that simple.

There is so much to read, so many different opinions. It can be overwhelming. First you have to decide which sites to participate in and then you have to create your account and learn how to participate. It’s often confusing.

I am not saying this is an excuse not to participate. In fact I am writing this article to provide some helpful tips so you can participate.

I think attention to the details is really important, so I want to cover all the small items that people aren’t really talking much about.

Facebook: I started on Facebook as a way to connect with old friends. I had all kinds of games and the crazy apps (applications) that Facebook offers. When I started networking for business I realized that all my business connections were going to have access to all of this personal information – photos, wall posts, they’d know which Sex and the City character I was most like (if you’ve spent any time on Facebook you’ve likely seen this app on people’s profiles).

I understand that using social media to open up and connect with people is one of the benefits. Allowing prospective clients to get to know you helps build trust and relationships.

But do I really want people to see every little silly app I mess around with? Do I want them to see the crazy pics from high school that have been posted?

Ultimately I decided to clean off some of the silliness that wasn’t really important to me and I left the rest. I figured if I’m opening the door and letting people peek in, there is no point in censoring anything. So I jumped in and started adding "Friends" that were business connections.

Of course, if you are only using Facebook for business, then you don’t have to think about these issues. If you do plan to use it for both – just spend a few minutes thinking about what you do and don’t want to share.

Twitter: Make sure you think about what name is best for you. I chose EcomBuffet (my company name) but have now realized that people are searching for me by my full name and not finding me. I would have been better off choosing my name. Not a major issue, but something to consider if you haven’t picked your name on Twitter yet.

There are varying opinions about how often you can Twitter (or tweet) and not annoy people. Some people say once per hour, others say once a day. There is no hard rule about this. You do want to consider it carefully though. If you tweet too often, people may get annoyed and stop following you all together, or just remove their cellphone updates. That means when you have important updates, people aren’t going to get them at all or as quickly as they could have. You want to find a balance. For me, I have been tweeting about once a day. On some days when I have more to share, I may tweet a few times day. Every time you tweet, ask yourself if it is really information people will want to know. If you are sure every tweet is useful and serves a purpose then you can tweet a little more often. If it’s fluff and all self-promotional, then you should probably do it less (or not at all some may say).

Social bookmarking buttons: There are so many buttons you can add to your articles for people to bookmark or vote for your content. Digg, StumbleUpon, RSS Feeds, TwitThis etc – My concern is that we are adding so many different options and people become so accustomed to seeing them that they ignore them. And with so many buttons people may get confused and just ignore them. I don’t know what the solution is for this yet. I previously wasn’t using any of these buttons. I realize I am missing out because of that, so I am now going to selectively use them. I don’t have a perfect plan in mind, I am just going to play with using some of the more popular ones and see what happens.

MySpace versus Facebook: There is a lot of confusion about the MySpace versus Facebook issue. The general consensus is that MySpace has been trashed and isn’t worth the time. That isn’t entirely true. There are still people making money off MySpace. The key to remember is that MySpace is a younger crowd with a lower income and Facebook has a higher income and is older. The best thing you can do is study both – see what others in your industry are doing, see how you see yourself fitting in and most importantly, come up with a plan. So many people just jump in and set up a profile and then don’t know what to do next. Just being there doesn’t mean the money is going to pour in. You need to engage people, you need to come up with something that people will want to see, hear or read.

Is it too late to join now? The answer is no! Studies show that most of the social media sites are growing in popularity and traffic and participation is increasing month over month. Just remember, the rules change as these sites evolve, so be sure you are current on what is and isn’t acceptable participation.

Check it out; see how you think you can fit into the space. But remember it’s not all about how you will benefit. If you don’t have something to provide (information, resources, insights, news etc) then people aren’t going to be interested.

How does all of this really help me make money? Consumers are much more educated and demand much more than they used to. We are all hit with so many sales messages daily; we start to tune them out. What used to work doesn’t work (or at least not as well). In order for your business to succeed and grow, you need to adapt.

People are looking for more information and companies they can trust. Selling has become more about creating trust and building relationships.

Social media helps you connect and establish trust. Any one social media activity may not lead directly to a sale in any given moment, but it helps you establish a presence online; and in your prospects mind. If you get yourself out there and share information, you will improve your following and have a base of people that trust you that you can market to.

That covers it for now. Keep the questíons coming in!

About The Author
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients improve revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Social marketing is a relatively new, often misunderstood form of online marketing that is reaping huge rewards for website owners who incorporate it into their marketing plans. I work with clients and customers who, while being very new to social marketing, are seeing results in the following areas:

1. Higher search engine rankings for their top keywords.

2. More rankings of additional keywords or "long tail" keyword phrases.

3. More link popularity from sites linking on their own accord.

4. More link popularity from social media sites.

5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting and interaction.

6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites (One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of visitors alone.)

7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique visitors month after month.

8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic, properly acquired, is very warm to your message and products.

The problem for most people when thinking about social marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction.

They assume established social marketers gained their "social authority" in a short period of time. This is simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites exists, it is an embarrassment of riches.

And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual process you manage with all your other responsibilities and grow as time allows.

What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time each day to get one more link, participate in one more conversation, or sign up for one more account on a social site.

A little goes a long way and social marketing is not an "all or nothing" situation. Eventually you will have established yourself on the major social media sites you need to be on. And you will have a schedule that allows you to keep up with your other work while adding this extremely powerful marketing method to the mix.

10 Steps For Starting a Social Marketing Campaign

1. Schedule a bit of time each day to do some new things. Don’t just say you are going to do them. Write the time into your day and follow through.

2. Sign up for the major social news sites: Digg.com, Propeller.com, Mixx.com. Don’t submit anything to these sites until you have filled out your profile completely and submitted news from elsewhere on the web to generate a real presence and avoid being labeled as a spammer.

In fact, BE a real presence and don’t try to push your own content onto the networks you belong to. It should feel and be natural and you will know what "natural is on each network by participating, commenting, voting and getting a general sense of what members think is good and bad content. Watch their comments and votes and you will know how to proceed with your own site’s content from there.

3. If you don’t have a blog, you must install one immediately. This is not an option. It is an absolute necessity on today’s web. I recommend Wordpress which can be downloaded and installed by you or your webmaster. Wordpress download

Option #2: Check with your web host to see if they have Fantastico available to you and, if so, that it installs the latest version of Wordpress. If so you are very lucky because the software can be installed by you very easily in just a few steps with Fantastico.

4. Once you have your blog set up, join the following networks. (These are blog communities that will help you generate visitors, authority, and links and most bloggers belong to them.) MyBlogLog.com (install the widget on your Wordpress blog), and BlogCatalog.com. (they also have a widget to install)

5. Join groups, make friends, and interact with other bloggers on these networks. Especially the people who would be most likely to link to your blog and send you traffic who write about similar things or have an audience similar to yours who’d benefit by knowing you. You can even start your own group, promote it in the network, and send "shouts" to the group when you have announcements or need attention to a new post.

6. Once you have established yourself on all the sites above, meaning you have a decent profile in each that shows you’ve been active and involved, move on and search for networks that are geared toward your particular market niche. There are a lot of new "vertical" social sites popping up that focus on much more narrow markets and their membership is far warmer to your kind of information than on the bigger, more general networks above.

Add a new site to the mix as often as you can and repeat the steps for becoming established there as mentioned in Step 2 above.

7. Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up tips from other social marketers and find new places you can sign up with to continue building your social authority. New sites pop up every single day. Follow places like Go2Web20.net to find new opportunities to connect with your market.

8. Remote blog. Join blogger.com and put content there that is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great content you find as you travel through all the social news sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over time.

9. Track your progress diligently. If something you are trying on a social network isn’t working, you need to know that in order to save time and move on to something more fruitful. MyBlogLog.com (above) has a tracking system which will show you where your traffic is coming from so you can avoid time wasting efforts and focus more on the sites that are really pulling in good traffic for you.

10. Don’t freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.

Social marketing, once you’ve established some authority, will replace some things you are currently doing to promote your site. Many people completely drop their paid advertising or PPC campaigns once they see the organic, natural traffic and search engine rankings pile up from social marketing.

Until then, just take it one step at a time and do some social marketing. A little goes a long way and before you know it, you will reach a point where a lot of traffic and lots of search engine rankings are piling up because you simply started doing something each day.

There’s a lot you can learn about social marketing. And not all of it can be found on free blogs.

About The Author
Jack Humphrey is the author of The Authority Black Book and the creator of a powerful social marketing community at SocialPowerLinking.com .

Embarking on an Internet marketing campaign doesn’t have to be difficult, tricky, or complicated. Here are a few simple ways (twenty in fact) that you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now!

1) Write articles: believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web site. Don’t forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like: Article City, GoArticles, Submit Your Articles and Ezine Articles.

2) Social bookmark *everything* – and I do mean everything – you can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem tedious, it’s worth it. You’ll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries.

3) List yourself in the best directories – you’ll have to pay for this but since most people don’t do this (since everyone’s looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org, botw dot org.

4) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org – it’s not easy to get listed there, but worth the effort.

5) Review: if you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an expert. In order to do this effectively 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 and Revoo to review products as well.

6) Offer a freebie on Craig’s List: you’ll be amazed at how much traffic you get from a single Craig’s List ad. The key here is to send people to a page on your site and make sure they have to sign up for something (like your email newsletter) before they can grab their freebie. That way you’re not just getting traffic, you’re also building your list.

7) Create a “recommended by” list on your Delicious page – you can do this by logging on and creating an account and there and then tagging articles, blogs and other content you think is important to your readership. Then offer this page as a resource site. You can add a link to this page in your email signature line or on your web site.

And speaking of your email signature line… do you have one? If you don’t, create one. Believe it or not, people do follow these links. You’ll be amazed how many folks read email signature lines. I have one and change it several times a year, depending on what we’re doing or promoting or what books I have coming out.

9) Lend a helping hand: you can be an answer person at Yahoo Answers – you don’t have to spend hours on there, but maybe a few minutes a week. Make sure and include a link back to your site following your answers.

10) Set up a social networking site using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Squidoo. It’s free and easy to do, just don’t forget the all-important link back to your site!

11) Make sure your blog has an RSS feed so if you capture a reader you don’t lose them if they forget to bookmark your site or blog.

12) 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. I dare you to find one that isn’t right for what you’re promoting. When you do find the right group, join and participate as you can!

13) Podcasting is another great way to drive traffic. Start a podcast by going to Audio Acrobat. There are other programs you can use, but I love Audio Acrobat. You can record the podcast over the phone quickly and easily and then hit the “send” button on your computer once it’s recorded and the system will syndicate it to 27 podcast directories including iTunes. It’s a great way to let people know about you and your web site!

14) Start a blog and then once you do, start commenting on other people’s blogs, linking to them from your site or adding them to your blogroll.

15) Inbound links: don’t squander your time (or a perfectly good link) on smaller low-traffic sites. Instead spend your time going after high traffic, high quality sites. Good sites should have a PR (page ranking) of 4-6 depending on the market. You can find out what a site’s page ranking is by downloading the Google toolbar which comes with a PR feature built in.

16) Start an email newsletter: while it may not seem like a newsletter that you email can drive traffic to your site you’d be surprised at the effectiveness of this type of promotion. If your newsletter (like your articles) is interesting and relevant to your audience, you’ll find that it has a huge pass-through factor, meaning that it is passed from one email subscriber to another. Also, if you have an email newsletter you should never, ever go to a single event without your handy signup sheet. Yes, you can even use offline events to drive traffic to your web site.

17) And speaking of offline efforts: if you’re ever quoted in a magazine or other publication, make sure and mention your URL as it’s appropriate to the topic. Don’t be too pushy about this, but do not forget to tell folks you have a web site that may be a great resource for the topic of your interview.

18) If you have products to sell, why not get a store on eBay? This site gets a tremendous amount of 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.

19) Load a video on YouTube and 57 other video sites (the rest listed on my Red Hot Internet Publicity blog).

20) While this isn’t a tip per se, it’s still important. 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 folks to sign up for something, your newsletter, the RSS feed on your blog. Whatever it is, getting their email address will help you remarket to them when the time is right. Studies show that visitors landing on a site often don’t buy the first time. That’s ok! You want to get them into your marketing funnel so you can market to them again and again – not in a way that’s obtrusive, offensive or downright annoying, but in a way that is helping them with their own mission.

An example of this might be an email newsletter. A helpful, informative newsletter is a fantastic funnel. A blog is another great way to keep people in your marketing loop without bombarding them with “please buy my stuff” email messages. Also, make sure you know what your traffic numbers are before you launch into any Internet marketing campaign. By traffic numbers I mean how many people are visiting your site. You want to know this so you can gauge a before and after view of your marketing efforts.

About The Author

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a book marketing and media relations expert whose company has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. Visit AMarketingExpert.com