Last week I talked about how to get people on the  bus using video. The whole concept of video seems to seriously freak people out ~ myself included for a while, but now that I’ve been doing it regularly for a little while it’s just become another thing I have to do during the day. But anyway… while I was reading the surveys the topic of how to use twitter came up… a lot.

I did a couple videos over the weekend that work together to create a nice twitter action plan. I know I’ve discussed how to use twitter in a previous post, but I thought I’d lay it out in some really simple steps here, and let you watch the videos.

Twitter Marketing Action Plan:

What you’ll need:

1. Twitter account
2. 5 to 10 commentluv blogs you enjoy reading
3. su.pr
4. twellow.com

Let’s get started:

1. Go to twellow.com and search for people who are your target market.  This doesn’t mean they have to mention your exact blog topic, but they are people who would want to read your blog topic and get to know you better.

ex. ride on toys site ~ you could look for parents of toddlers ~ there’s plenty of them.

2. Follow 5 to 10 people from twellow.com (every day)

~ You can also just peruse your twitter stream and look for conversations that are going on. Stop by a person’s page if you don’t already follow them and check them out. If they seem interesting then follow them.  (do this 5 to 10 times a day)

3. Interact with your followers.

When you follow people they will most likely check you out and then follow you back. Now is when the real relationshipping part comes in. You need to talk to these people. You want to provide them with some quality stuff.

• have your blog posts automatically go to twitter (tweetmyblog plugin or tweetfeed.com will do this)
• if you do video have your videos go directly to twitter (there’s a place on youtube to do this)
• tweet links to seriously cool stuff
• tweet fun stuff your market will be interested in

You can use the commentluv blogs and su.pr to provide tons of great content to your twitter account, and leverage your time with blog commenting. After you’ve commented on a blog (getting a link back to your site) use su.pr to share the blog post with your twitter readers.

Su.pr also has a tweet scheduling tool where you can schedule your tweets to post later, so you are spreading your tweets out over the day instead of all at once in a few minutes. This is nice because you get to reach more people over the day. Not everyone is on twitter at the same time as you.

While sending quality  links and information is good, the way you really create relationships on twitter is by participating in the conversation and getting to know people ~ and letting them get to know you.

If you’re using tweetdeck ~ which is a desktop application you download to use twitter and facebook you can set up a whole column for people you really want to connect with. You do this by creating  a list in your twitter account, and then adding that list to your tweetdeck. (If you’re interested in a step by step tutorial on how I actually do this let me know I’d be glad to show you).

Your twitterstream can get really busy when you get a lot of followers, but that’s what makes it fun. Scan through your timeline and read what people are doing  ~ you don’t have to spend hours doing this ~ just take a glance and look for something interesting. When you find something you can reply to that person and make a comment. This will get you noticed by that person (provided they aren’t a movie star or blog star lol ~ most regular people welcome replies and to engage in conversation) and can start a conversation. The people you have actual conversations with are more likely to remember you, and you them.  Last night I got into a great conversation with Catherine Caine (who is a blogger I follow) just by making a comment about her new header.

The other way to build a relationship with people on twitter is to retweet their messages. The more your retweet for other people, the more likely they are to retweet for you. It’s a very reciprocal game over there ~ you have to play with others and others will play with you.

This may sound like a lot but it can really be done in 30 minutes or so a day. Check out the twitter action plan for more succinct time table.

Here’s the videos:

How to Get More Traffic Using Twitter:

How to get more traffic with blog comments:

If you’ve got more questions about twitter or blog commenting let me know and I’ll do my best to answer. I’d love to hear what strategy you’re using to increase your traffic with twitter  ~ leave me a comment and let me know.

Related posts:

1. How to Get People on Your Bus
2. How to Get People on Your Bus with Video
3. Twitter Action Plan

Last time we talked about using forums to build community. Today we’re going to talk about how to use ning communities. They are similar to forums, but have some big differences that if taken advantage of can really explode your reach.

What is a Ning community?

Ning is a huge site that allows people to start their own community without having to do any of the background stuff, like hosting, and programming, and all that stuff.

The rules are changing, but anyone used to be able to create a community there for free. It was a great tool to help build your own community ~ BUT ~ that’s not what we’re talking about today.

We’re going to look for communities within the Ning site that are in our niche, or where our market hangs out. I’m going to use twittermoms as my example throughout this post. It’s the Ning community I spend the most time in, although I could definitely spend more consistent time over there.  Each ning community may be a little different, because there’s different templates you can use, and you can customize what you want to show up on your front page, but there are going to be some parts that are on most if not all the sites.

Let’s look at the really killer features of a Ning community:

Main Page:

The main page is where you’ll see what’s going on across the community. This is all MEMBER CREATED content. That’s important because as a member your content can easily make it to the front page ~ because the front page features NEW content. So each time you create new content, whether it’s a comment in a group or discussion, or a new blog post it shows up on the front page for everyone to see.

Twittermoms has over 25 THOUSAND members. So your front page content ~ even if it’s as simple as participating in a discussion or forum shows up for everyone coming to the front page. Talk about powerful.

Members ~ you’ll also find a place to connect with other community members on the front page. On this site it’s on the sidebar ~ says “members” you can click the “view all” link and it will show all the members of the community. You can spend a few minutes each day looking at member’s profiles and adding a few friends. The more you connect and reach out in this type of community the better.

I believe Ning communities are much easier to create real relationships and friendships because they offer so many more ways to get to know people, and so many additional ways to interact.

Let’s look at them:

My page: When you join you’ll get to create your own page. On this page you have the ability to add content, let people know who you are, add an RSS feed from your blog, add blog posts, add videos ~ all amazing ways to connect.

You might be wondering how you’re going to create all this content on top of the other content you have to create.  It’s not as hard as you might think. Repurpose your content! You can use articles you write for EZA or other article directories as blog posts ~ you can use any video you uploaded to youtube here as well.

Remember, each time you do this your content will show up on the front page of the site. At twitter moms you have the chance to get 25K member eyes on the page, as well as all the traffic that comes to the site via other avenues.

These are targeted eyes too ~ which matters. Once you become active in the community people will begin to look forward to seeing your new content and will be on the lookout for it ~ they will also start spreading the word about it too ~ they may tweet, or FB it. (which is very easy to do at twittermoms ~ since it’s moms who use twitter!)

I hope you are beginning to see the possibilities that come from this type of community.

While there’s no “signatures” in a Ning community if you have a unique image put up for your page, people will begin to notice your picture everywhere. If you participate in conversations people will start seeing you around and want to know more about you ~ now you’ve got an entire page for them to get to know you and like you, and you can send them wherever you want from  your page. Very powerful.

Friend requests: It won’t take long and very little participation before you begin to get friend requests. When you’re logged in they’ll show up in a box on the right hand side of your page. You just click the “friends” link and it will take you to the request page. You can click on the people who have requested friendship and learn more about them.

Did you see how that worked? They asked you to be friends, and you looked at their page. If you do the same thing you will get the same results ~ not only will people accept your friend requests, but they will view your page when they do it (most of the time) and get to know you and what you’re doing in the process.

Groups  and forums: If you go to the top navigation bar you’ll see a “community” link. This is where you’ll find where and what people are talking about. Twittermoms currently has 471 groups ~ some are small an relatively inactive, and some are big and have lots of activity. There are groups on everything from Book Clubs to Ebay selling, to breastfeeding, to decorating cakes.  There are literally groups for just about everyone here.  Pick a few and start participating. Each time you do, it will show up on the front page of the site, and people will start to recognize your avatar ~ and feel like they know you. Talk to people directly ~ and just like forums, don’t drop links, but converse with and help people out! For a while the twittermoms book club was very active and we were having live chats with authors every week or two. Lots of fun!

Discussion Forums are a little different. They are more like regular forums. They are one thread of a conversation about a specific topic. It’s also a great place to start a conversation, or ask a question you have. Some conversations will take off, and some won’t but again… every discussion post shows up on the front page of the site.

What Ning community should I join?

Twittermoms is pretty much the only community I’m really involved in anymore, because all of the things I’m involved in are covered in this one community. That may not be true for you, so you’ll need to find a different community.

You can go to Ning.com ~ there is a search box, top right hand corner where you can put in keywords/topics and see what’s out there.  I suggest you look for communities that are active, and have at least 1000 members. You don’t want to be spending time participating and adding content if you don’t really have any audience within that community.

Remember… you don’t have to join a community that’s is exactly about your topic, but you want to join a community where your market hangs out. So let’s say you have an educational blog ~ you may want to join a homeschooling community, or even a community that revolves around healthier foods in school ~ you see your target market will be there as well. You don’t need to talk all about educating children, you can talk about food in schools, and when people come to your page they will see that you have great educational stuff on your blog, it’s a natural progression for them to move to your site.

Here’s some communities I’ve found on  different topics.

Fitness: Bookieboo Very active, lots of challenges, and plenty of twitterchats as well.

Law of attraction: Powerful Intentions very active ~

Law of attraction/EFT: Boundless living ~ great regular challenges and active friendly community

Mom Bloggers: Blogamama

Squidoo ~ Rocketmoms ~ this is an invite only group ~ I can submit your name if you want to participate.

That’s about it, the Ning community can be a very powerful way to build brand you and build traffic to your site. The key is consistent participation. You’ll need to come up with some sort of a plan, so you spend quality time there, but don’t end up spending ALL your time there. This is a great promotional activity, but you need to keep steady with your content creation as well.

If you join any of the above communities, shoot me a friend request! If you have any questions or want to tell us about your Ning experience, please leave a comment below!

Related posts:

1. Building Relationships and Community with Forums
2. Web Traffic Series: Traffic From Youtube
3. Web Traffic Tips: How to Use RSS

There comes a point in every marketers life where their point of view changes. They quit looking at the world and sales letters with the question “what can this product teach me”, and they move to the question “what can this process teach me“.

It’s a huge distinction, and when you get there it can be amazing! I rarely if ever buy products just because of the sales letter/sales process. I generally buy products now that I need to work the internet marketing strategy that I’m working, make it easier/make it quicker. Don’t get me wrong, I still go through sales letters, and click their links and follow their sales funnel just to see how they’re doing it, and if it would have worked on me.

There comes a point in time when you mind switches from consumer to marketer. When that happens you might as well forget about ever seeing anything through your consumer glasses ever again. TV is not the same, a trip to the grocery store is never the same, and an online sales page will never look the same to you again.

While this can be very annoying to family members, it’s when you’re business will really start to take off. You’ll begin to notice everything around you. You’ll start to think about why they did that that way, why did they put that there, why did they say that, why did they use THAT font! Because believe me, in the real brick and mortar world, nothing is done without a purpose and usually a lot of money invested in testing. While all this wondering is great, it will seep into just about every area of your business as well. You’ll start remembering things you’ve seen. You’ll start implementing sales funnels that had you to the point of clicking the buy now button. You will become an internet marketer ~ not just someone trying to make money online.

One of my favorite shows is “Shark Tank”. It started last season and in case you don’t know, these small business people come in front of these “sharks”. The sharks are millionaires who have money to invest in small business, and will look at your proposal and may or may not invest in you and your business. My poor husband hates to watch this show with me. At some point in the show I am invariably yelling at the TV.

Last week a guy came on. He had a pretty cool idea about a netflix type thing with ink cartridges for your computer. I HATE running out of printer ink so I was all about it. His entire business model was selling online. The whole process was automated through his website. VERY COOL for me! He goes on and on with his presentation. He didn’t have the numbers they were looking for, and we could all tell the sharks were going to say no. I’m thinking ~ ok, they’re going to say no, at least take advantage of the fact you have all THIS publicity and tell me the name of your DAMN WEBSITE!!

He didn’t. Well, let’s just say my rant went on for a while. How on earth can someone get on national TV to talk about their online store and not give the DAMN ADDRESS??? Before you say he probably couldn’t there have been plenty of other people who have given their web address on the show ~ and of course when you go to the site it has crashed from the load (but that’s a whole other rant lol).

We did end up finding the site, but hello I’m an internet marketer and I know how to find things. Why would you waste that opportunity for your business?

Anyway… this is what I mean ~ everything you watch and see becomes colored by your marketer glasses. The takeaway for me and my business was no matter where you are always take advantage of what is available to grow your business.

There will come a day when you can walk through a “perfect sales funnel” (which simply means the path a marketer takes you on to walk you to the sale), and instead of looking at it from the viewpoint of whether or not I’m going to buy this you are looking from the viewpoint of  OMG this would totally work on me. Then you write down the steps and you figure out how you can put it into action in your own business.

This happened to me last night.

I was on twitter, and saw this tweet.

TWITTER: No One Cares? | Alex Mandossian’s Blog http://bit.ly/57ZlEW

It was actually a retweet someone had done from the tweetmeme button at Alex’s blog. Here’s where the process starts.

1. Alex Mandossian is a trusted name. I like his stuff and wanted to see what he had to say about twitter. I clicked the link

(right there the funnel has begun, and I’ve taken the action he desired me to take ~ I clicked through to his blog)

Turns out it’s a guest post by Jeff Herring (the article marketing guy) It’s a short post. It appears the purpose is to get me to click the link in the article. I didn’t click the link (right away).  I read the article and the comments and everyone was talking about doing twitter by talking about LIFE. I kept thinking, what they heck? That’s not gonna work. So he created curiosity, not only in the post, but in the comments and I went back and clicked the link.

2. Click the link to the next step in the funnel ~ which happens to be an EZA article.

This is so smart of him because Jeff Herring is THE article marketing guy ~ that’s what he teaches, and what he does. How to use EZA to drive traffic and make money.

The article was really good and as I suspected there was more to life than I thought!! It made a lot of sense and was done in a way that made it memorable and easily implemented.  I read the whole article all the way to the resource box because it was that interesting.

3. Resource box. This is where you’re choosing what you want people to do ~ send them to a sales page, get them to your site, get them on your list. Jeff chose getting them on his list (which is always smart) Here’s his resource box.

To learn more about how to leverage Social Marketing tools for waves of traffic and more, get your FREE Instant Access to our Social Marketing Video Training Series when you visit http://SocialMarketingBlueprint.com/7laws.

Look at that ~ more FREE content, deeper learning, and in another format. This guy’s a genius! Well needless to say I moved to step 4.

4. Clicked through to the opt in page. Do I sign up or not?

Here’s the real conversion rate we’re looking for. Will people do what you want them to do at this point? Will they pull out their wallets or their email addresses?

Well with all the great content he’s already given me ~ although it was cursory so I had an idea of how it works, but I don’t have all the details ~ heck yeah I’m going to fill in the blanks!

Now I’m on yet another of Jeff Herring’s list.  I immediately got my pdf download, I also had immediate access to the 4 videos he promised me, it all worked like a chanp. Now Jeff is free to contact me at will because my name is now a double opt in on his list.

I have to say it was getting really late, and I was enjoying the process more than I wanted to read more information last night, but I did bookmark  the videos (which is my least favorite way to get info) and I put reading the pdf and watching the videos on my calendar for today.

I highly recommend you click the link from that tweet and then walk through the process. Try to keep your eyes in marketing mode instead of consumer mode. It doesn’t matter if you sign up for the videos or not ~ if you’d like more info about how to use twitter effectively I’m sure they will be of great use, if not, then don’t. We’re looking at this from a marketing perspective, not a consumer perspective. When you’ve gone through the process come back and let’s talk about it.

I’d love to hear from you on a few things.

1. Did this sales process work on you? Why/why not?

2. If you hadn’t had your marketer’s glasses on would you have even seen it as a sales process?

3. Where did the process “break down” if it did for you.

4. What could you develop from this process that you could implement in your own business?

5. Anything else you want to comment on?

Looking forward to the conversation!!

Related posts:

1. Web Traffic Tips: Article Marketing
2. How to Get People on Your Bus
3. The Sales Funnel Simplified

Social bookmarking though, not my favorite way to get links is a way to easily get links back to your sites. Before we get into this let’s get clear about what social bookmarking is and how it can best be used.

Social bookmarking:

Social: As with all web 2.0 stuff the content is user generated. People on the web bookmark sites they like, and then the sites they bookmark are shared with anyone who wants to see them. This is a social game, whether you think so or not, it is also a “community” thing. You have to be social ~ which means not only bookmarking your OWN sites.

Bookmarking: Like the “bookmark this page” button in your browser social bookmarking allows you to keep track of and organize different websites you want to be able to find again. Social bookmarking sites are different than saving sites on your browser because they are saved online which means you can get to them from any computer, and other people can also see the sites you have saved.

How to get started with social bookmarking:

I suggest you pick a couple (2 or 3) social bookmarking sites you want to use. Yes ~ there are millions available, but to do yourself and the site justice I suggest you pick a few so you can really focus and build quality links and profiles.

Here’s a couple good lists of the best social bookmarking sites available.

Top 20 Social Bookmarking sites. ~ this list is not just bookmarking sites ~ they include twitter and some other social sites I don’t consider bookmarking sites, but it’s still a good list.

About.com’s top bookmarking sites a quality list of bookmarking sites.

If you want even more bookmarking sites just google it.

Now before you go digging all your lenses and/or pages, take a look around the bookmarking sites you have chosen to use. Get a feel for them, what do most of the bookmarks focus on? What do they talk about? You want your content to fit into the site, not stand out like a sore thumb. Check out the front page of Digg, look at the pages that have thousands of diggs (votes) and see if your content will be a good match before you start submitting.

I mentioned before that social bookmarking is just that, social, and if you go in and just submit all your stuff you will get your account closed.

So let’s choose a couple bookmarking sites. The most popular is probably delicious. But you might want to choose some that use the dofollow attribute so your links will get a little more juice. Here are a few dofollow bookmarking sites:

spurl.net
diigo.com
bibsonomy.org
blinklist.com

I would probably go with delicious and then one of these to just keep it simple.

Set up an account.

The first thing you have to do is set up an account on the site. This means filling in your personal information

Some sites may ask for more or less information ~ just fill in the blanks. It’s all part of setting up a space for you to save your links. If they ask you for a website put one of your blog addresses or your lensmaster url in ~ it will just show up as a link to the site in your profile area ~ which is a good thing.

Once you get your account set up you will most likely have to download a toolbar or a bookmarklet. This is a small button or a toolbar that goes in the top part of your browser.

As you can see in the image above I have the bookmarklet for delicious, one for tagfoot (my primary bookmarking site) and the stumbleupon toolbar in my browser.

Here’s a quick video that will walk you through finding and adding the delicious bookmarklet to your browser.

Basically you need to go to http://delicious.com/help/bookmarklets and you will see some words that say “bookmark on delicious” left click ~ but hold it down. Then drag your mouse up to the toolbar and then unclick. You will leave the bookmarklet in your toolbar that way.

Once you have the bookmarklet in your toolbar you can go to any page you want and click the button up there. It will automatically bookmark that page to your account at delicious. Make sure you bookmark other sites, not just your own.

Stumbleupon

Stumbleupon is a little different. It is a bookmarking site, but it can also drive tons of traffic your way. (how great the traffic is is debatable, but it’s traffic). When you sign up for your account at stumbleupon you will have to download the toolbar. The toolbar gives you the ability to “stumble” through sites which is how the community works, and how you get traffic and everyone else gets traffic from SU.

Here’s a quick video about downloading the toolbar and how it works once installed. (Sorry about the toddler’s fascination with Lions lol).

Once you’ve installed the toolbar you can click the thumbs up button to bookmark your site or any other site you like. This will make it part of the stumbleupon community and it will be in the rotation when people click the stumble button ~ which is how you get traffic.

I HIGHLY suggest you stumble at least 5 or 10 sites in between stumbling your own sites. SU is pretty picky about being used for link building and will cancel your account if you only stumble your own stuff. With that being said ~ make sure you set a timer when you get ready to stumble because there is a lot of interesting stuff out there and you can easily get sucked into stumbling sites for HOURS. Yes, it does happen.

Using Stumbleupon at Squidoo

Squidoo has it’s own little stumble button which makes it really easy to stumble lenses. You still have to have an account at Stumbleupon, but you don’t need the toolbar to stumble a squidoo lens. I still recommend you get the toolbar because you want to be stumbling and using the community in addition to bookmarking your own sites.

Here’s a quick video showing you how to stumble from Squidoo.

Here’s one piece of advice about stumbleupon ~ the more you participate the more traffic you will get. You can’t just stumble one of your sites and expect tons of traffic to flood in, however, if you stumble other people’s sites, and your own, and you do it regularly and consistently (do I sound like a broken record or what???) which can mean 5 or 10 minutes once or twice a week, you can see a WAVE of traffic come in from SU when you do stumble your own site, or someone else stumbles it for you.

I love to use stumbleupon as a great pay it forward thing. I just stumble sites because I like them, find them interesting or want to give people a boost.  It’s fun for me, knowing they will get a boost of traffic because I stumbled their site.

I hope this has cleared up some of the confusion surrounding social bookmarking. If you are in a more advanced place and bookmarking at a bunch of sites you might want to grab my free report on how to make social bookmarking quick and easy. Some of the links may be outdated, but the process still works.

If you have any more questions about social bookmarking please feel free to ask them in the comment section. I’d love to know where you stand with social bookmarking!

Related posts:

1. Web Traffic Tips: Social Bookmarking
2. Need Help Getting Started Blogging?
3. Twitter Action Plan

So far we’ve talked about the basic ways to build links to your site.  We’ve talked about article marketing with Ezinearticles.com, we’ve talked about building links with mass article marketing, we’ve talked about building links with a blog, and these are the basics you need to do create the links that will help your lenses move up the search engine rankings.

As you may be starting to see, building your lens is really a small part of the process to make money with a lens. The larger, and more time consuming part is getting your lens to show up on the first page of Google so you can get free traffic.

Today we’re going to talk about building backlinks using web 2.0 sites. This is a step you will definitely need if you are targeting more competitive keywords, or if you find after a month or so your lens is not ranking where you want it, and you need more links, this is a good way to get them.

What is a web 2.0 site?

Web 2.o has come to mean many things, but in the most basic form it is a site where the users generate the content. Squidoo is a web 2.0 site ~ you generate content (your lens) for the overall site of  Squidoo.

Basically a web 2.0 site is a site where you can interact with others, (comments/guestbooks), write your own content, and you have the ability to change the content.

Why would I use web 2.0 sites?

Just like Squidoo, web 2.0 sites are generally authority sites. This means when you put your content on a trusted web 2.0 property you get a little boost or a bit of extra trust from the search engines.

These sites are free to use.

These sites are generally pretty easy to understand and it doensn’t take long to get your content on them.

They are another great place to get more links to your lens/site from different places on the web.

What web 2.0 sites should I use?

There are literally thousands of these web 2.0 sites out there. You can use any/all of them However, as a beginner it is probably wise to pick a few and learn the ropes with them. Once you’ve got a few under your belt you can then branch out and learn a few more.

Why should I use so many sites?

You might be asking yourself, why can’t I just pick one and make all my links from that one. It’s a good question, and here’s the answer (from my perspective). Google is pretty good at picking up patterns, I mean really, that is a huge part of their job. You don’t want all your links, and all your content to come from the exact same place because it leaves a huge footprint for google to find. When it comes to links and search engine ranking Google really likes to see natural links ~ links other people have created because they really like your stuff. When they see the same site used to create links to all your lenses/sites they are going to take notice and at some point they will probably penalize you for it, meaning your links won’t count as much.

Now if you have 5 lenses out there, don’t worry about it! If you have a 20 or 30 I’d start to think about it, if you have 50 or a hundred, I’d be implementing this! Everything is relative and you have to judge where you are at in this process to know if it applies to you. When you start getting to the point where you have a lot of lenses, and websites to link to you will definitely want to create a wider linking network than just a blog.

Where do I start?

Here are a few good places to get started using web 2.0 properties. Now remember, no matter what site you are using the key to making this successful is to write good content and provide a benefit to your reader. The purpose of these sites is to link back to your money page ~ but you have to do it while providing some useful information to the reader.

These sites are NOT ads. These are content pages ~ so you will need more content, something informative like an article that will help the reader as well as move them toward your money page (be it a lens, a blog post, or a website) you are still trying to build links to push your “money site” up the search engine rankings with these sites.

*** Make sure you read the terms of service for each site before you begin. Each site will have it’s own rules and you need to follow them. I can’t write down all the rules for you here ~ just read them on the site, and make sure you comply***

Hubpages ~ This is a great site to use to begin. It’s easy to understand, very similar to Squidoo. There are rules about linking on Hubpages ~ so make sure you read the TOS before you get started. Hubpages does delete hubs and users who do not comply with the TOS.

Wetpaint ~ Another fun and easy to use site. You can use this in a variety of ways, but remember good content is key. Think about the benefits your products/service provides and write about that. Here’s a post I wrote about how to use wetpaint. ~ much like when writing articles for Ezinearticles.com.

Google Knol ~ There’s some contraversy about whether or not links are followed from here, but it is a great place to get a link up to get noticed and indexed ~ whether you get the link juice or not. Here’s a whole post I did on how to use google knol.

That’s all fine and good ~ but what do I write?

I know not everyone is a writer, but to succeed online you’re going to have to do some writing No worries, I’ve got some things that will probably help.

Tips for Creating Content This post will show you a few ways to create interesting content for your web 2.0 sites, as well as your lenses, blogs and articles.

Article writing software This is free software that will help you create articles quickly. Once you’ve created an article you can use it whole or break it up and use it for separate text modules or areas at hubpages or on any web 2.0 site.

Article templates When you are at a complete loss for ideas of what to write you can’t go wrong with an article template.  Now don’t think just because you’re not writing an article per se you can’t use these. These are awesome to create content to use anywhere.

Tips to make the content you have written work harder This article shows you how you can make one article do many things to help you get traffic to your site. You may not want/need to employ all these options but it’s a great exercise to realize how many ways you can use one piece of content.

I hope these tips and resources will help you to easily come up with more content to build your network. If you choose to purchase any products through links on this page I will earn a little income, hopefully you will too if you use the tools you’ve bought. It’s this income that allows me to keep providing all the free content on this site.

Related posts:

1. Web Traffic Tips: Niche Directories
2. Web Traffic Tips: How to Use RSS
3. Web Traffic Tips: Backlink Packets

today’s tutorial will show you how to add social networking buttons to the sidebar of your blog. It doesn’t matter which buttons you want to use, the process is the same for all.

Step 1.  Get Your Buttons

The place to grab these images is My Social Buttons. [edit: this site seems to be down. Here is another great selection of buttons]They have many networks to choose from, and many buttons for each network. I wanted an RSS, Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon button on my site, and I wanted one of those really cute ones ~ ya know? I decided on the heart shaped buttons and they had one for each of those and a couple other sites I’ve been debating about using.

2. Save The Buttons to Your Computer

Find the buttons you like and save them to your computer. (click save image as (in Firefox), then choose where you want to put it)

3. Host Your Chosen Buttons

Now you’ll have to host them somewhere ~ if you have your own hosting just go ahead and host them in your hosting. I created a new directory (folder) in the public html area of my site and then uploaded the images in there using FTP. If you don’t have your own hosting you can host them somewhere like photobucket or flickr.

4. Get the Button url

Grab the url for your images. You will need the url where your images are being hosted, whether it’s on your own hosting or someone elses.

5. Add the Appropriate Widget to Your Sidebar

If you have a self hosted wordpress blog go to the design/widget area and add a “text” widget to the sidebar you want your buttons to show up in. If you have a blogger blog go into the edit layout area, and “add a gadget”. Add an “html/javascript” gadget.

6. Add the Button Code to the Widget

Here’s the code you’ll need to use for your buttons.

<a href=”the url you want people to go to” target=”_blank”><img src=”the url where the image is hosted” border=”0″ alt=”text that tells people what the button is about”></a>

The first information that goes in after the “a href=” with be the address you want people to go to ~ so if it is a twitter button you will add your twitter page address there. If it’s an RSS button you will add the link to your RSS feed there.

The second piece of information ~ after the img src part is the address where you have the image hosted, whether it’s on your own hosting or a free image hosting place.

The last piece of info you need to add is the alt text ~ make sure you tell them what to do with the button, this will show up if your images don’t work for some reason ~ or if someone has images turned off on their computer. For twitter you would probably put “follow me at twitter” for RSS you could say “subscribe to my RSS feed” etc.

7. Save Changes

After these quick 7 steps you should have your social networking buttons in your sidebar! If you’ve had trouble completing these steps or you have questions, please feel free to ask them in the comment section.

Related posts:

1. Social Bookmarking ~ How to Get Started
2. Web Traffic Tips: Social Bookmarking
3. How to Install WordPress For Your Niche Blog

Have you ever been to a free teleseminar?

Do you know why people offer free teleseminars?

It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts, that’s for sure!!Teleseminars can be a great tool to use to build your brand ~ become an expert on any given topic. They are also great for promoting a product you have, as well as building your list.

They are also a fantastic way to CREATE your first product.

It may seem scary to think about putting together a free teleseminar, but there are a ton of reasons you should, and tons of ways hosting a teleseminar can move you and your business to the next level.

I was looking around for information on how to jump into this arena, because I KNOW the value of them, and wanted to know the best way to go about setting it all up.

I happened to run across a special offer Bob the Teacher is running and wanted to share it with you as well, it’s what I’m going to be doing all day today ~ as soon as I finish this post!

Bob has an entire course on how to create teleseminars and use them to build your business. It’s called “Teleseminar Formula” It is 8 modules of information on every aspect of using teleseminars.

He is getting ready to launch a brand new version of this product and so for the next 48 hours he is giving away ~ YES ~ giving away access to his current program. I am taking advantage of it right now ~ and you should too!!

Here’s the link to get FREE access to Teleseminar Formula.

Here’s just SOME of what you can learn from Teleseminar Formula:

• Why teleseminars are the fastest, easiest way to product creation, affiliate profits, and stronger customer relationships

• 7 Ways To Use Teleseminars To Build Your List, Increase Your Profits, And Gain Momentum

• Teleseminar Tools And Resources (Both Free And Affordable)

• How To Record Your Teleseminar For Multiple Purposes

• How To Receive And Answer Questions During The Call

• Important Dos and Don’ts Of Live Teleseminars

• How To Handle What-If Scenarios Like A Pro

• How To Generate Immediate Response With Your Audience For Higher Profits

• How To Turn Your Teleseminar Into An Ebook
• How To Use Your Transcripts To Generate More Traffic
• How To Use Your Teleseminar To Deliver Content On Your Blog For Weeks
• How To Turn Your First Teleseminar Into A Profitable Series

You see what I mean ~ you can’t beat this. If you are thinking about using teleseminars in any way I highly suggest you take advantage of this offer for the next 48 hours.

If you love what he’s teaching, and what you’re learning you may decide to grab the next version of the training, but I’m sure you’ll be able to take what you learn here and run with it if you want!

If you do, please send me an invite to your first teleseminar ~ I might like to come!

Related posts:

1. Jimmy D Brown is Retiring All His Products
2. Unrealistic Expectations ~ How to Break Them and Move Your Business Forward!
3. How to Stay Organized in Your Affiliate Marketing Business

Whether you’re working on Squidoo lenses, hubpages or even niche sites getting indexed is key. So let’s talk a little about getting indexed, what it is, what it means, how you know if you are, and how you can get indexed if you aren’t.

What is “getting indexed”?

Getting indexed simply means that Google has decided to add your site/page to the “index” of sites they have of all the known sites on the internet. So once Google has you in the index they actually know your site exists.  Until you are indexed they don’t even know you are there.

What “getting indexed” is NOT.

Getting indexed does not mean you are going to show up on page 1 of Google for your keyword. That is something totally different. Being indexed just means they know you exist.  Getting to the front page of Google takes a little more convincing that you are a great site and a good resource for their searchers.

How do you know your site is indexed?

There’s a couple ways to tell if your site is indexed or not. All of them involve asking Google in one way or another.

1. You can simply put the full address of your site in the google search bar. You may come up with something like this:

As you can see ~ a squidoo site came up and lots of things about frying a turkey came up, but my lens did not come up.

Let’s try something else:

2. You can put site:yourulr.com in the search box of Google

Now we get this:

Now we can see that this lens has actually been indexed and Google knows it exists.

I highly recommend using the site: function when searching to see if your site has been indexed, it will make it very obvious if your site has been indexed or not.

Here’s what it will look like if your site has not been indexed:

This message from Google means it is NOT aware of your lens, and your lens is NOT in the index.  Bummer.

What can you do to get your site indexed?

The best way to get your site indexed is to provide Google some links to find it from a site other than your own. What does this mean? It means creating content on other sites that link back to your own site.

Here are a few places you can create that content:

1. Ezinearticles.com ~ put a link in your resource box that leads back to your site/lens. Make sure your site is directly relevant to what your article is about.

2. Free ad blogs ~ there are tons of them around.  They are generally set up on the wordpress platform. You simply sign up, then you have access to write a post. In this post you can create a link back to your site. It’s a really good idea to use the keywords you are targeting in your site/lens as the anchor text (the words people click on in a link) for the links back to your site.

3. Free blogs ~ a free blog is a great way to create a link back to your site. There are many many free blog platforms you can choose from, any of them will work.

4. Hubpages ~ another free platform where you can put a link back to the site you are trying to get indexed.

5. Wetpaint ~ another great free platform where you can put links back to a site you are trying to get indexed.

The key is to get some links out there ~ this is how Google finds sites. It sends its little “spiders” out to follow all the links of the web, it goes from one site, follows links there to another site, and so on and so on. When you have links from multiple sites (especially authority sites like the ones mentioned above) it shouldn’t take long for Google to find and index you.

I was indexed but now I’m not!!

If you find that you were indexed and now you are not, just go about the process of creating more content on multiple sites to let Google find you again.

BONUS

This may sound like a huge pain to do all this, but there is another bonus involved. All of these links you are creating back to your site to help it get indexed also count as “votes” when Google tallies the votes of related sites when deciding what to choose for the front page of the search results.

When you are creating your links back to your site make sure you use the keywords you are targeting in your site as the anchor text, and you may find you site is not only indexed, but finding its way t the top of the Google search results for your chosen keyword.

No related posts.

I’m giving away a copy of my ebook Quick Easy Social Bookmarking. It will help you create a system to quickly and easily bookmark to over 50 sites.

It’s very simple to enter.

Step 1: retweet this EXACT message on Twitter. Simply copy and paste the text below and post it to
your Twitter account. If you don‘t have a Twitter account, you‘ll need to get one for free here: http://
www.twitter.com

RT @momtohanna is giving away FREE copies of her quick and easy social bookmarking ebook. Find out how to get yours http://budurl.com/5wya

Step 2: Follow me on Twitter. You can follow me by visiting the link below and clicking on the „follow“
button below my picture: http://www.twitter.com/momtohanna

I will be delivering the download link via direct message ~ that’s why you have to follow me, so I can send you the link Make sure you check your DM box for the message.

That’s it, simple as pie.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Social Bookmarking ~ How to Get Started

As internet marketers, unless you can afford to outsource, there is going to be some mind numbing work involved. You know the stuff I’m talking  about ~ bookmarking, RSS submission, Directory submission, any other time consuming, tedious, repetitive task that has to be done.

I know I dread this type of work, and look forward to outsourcing it all very soon. However, I know many of you are not at the point where you are ready to outsource, so I’ve got a few tips tday to help you get through the mind numbing work.

If you are submitting to a lot of different places I suggest you bookmark all the pages in one folder and then open them all in new tabs at the same time.

I found doing this today cost me about 1/2 as much time as it was working from a list i had and opening every site separately. You don’t know how to do this? No problem here’s a book I put together that explains the whole easy bookmarking process.  It focuses on bookmarking sites, but you can use the process for any type of site.

The next thing I realized today while doing hours of this mind numbing work is it’s a great chance to listen to the audios I have collecting dust on my computer. My daughter was playing a game or watching a movie so it was the perfect time to put on headphones and listen away.

However, I wasn’t really in the mood for marketing materials today, so I headed over to Itunes. I know I’m way behind on this boat. I don’t have an ipod or an mp3 player, but we have downloaded entire seasons of The Shield from itunes (since we don’t have cable). I didn’t realize how many cool and FREE podcasts you could get over there.

So I looked around for a while and found some pretty cool stuff to listen to ~ subscribed so I could find it again, and the next thing I know, my mind numbing work for the day is done.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t listen while I’m trying to write articles or blog posts, I get way to distracted, but while I’m simply copy/pasting urls into another place it’s a perfect time to catch up on stuff I never have time to listen to.

This mind numbing work is really the nuts and bolts of building your site, it’s where your backlinks come from and it’s stuff that just HAS to be done. I know it is the crappiest part of my day, and it’s the first thing that I will sacrifice if something better comes up. That’s not in the best interest of my business though.

So finding some way to make the bad stuff enjoyable is a great way to make sure it gets done. I know I certainly won’t be dreading it next time knowing there are some amazing podcasts waiting for me to listen to.

Do you have any tips or techniques you use to help get through the boring tasks of internet marketing? If you do please feel free to share in the comments section! I look forward to hearing about them.

Related posts:

1. Social Bookmarking ~ How to Get Started