eSpire Marketing

I was stumbling once again along the Warrior Forum to find an interesting thread where a person was asking is Twitter worth the effort?

Unfortunately the answer is not all that simple. First you have to ask yourself a few questions. One, who is your audience and are they on Twitter? Two, what are you trying to do with Twitter? Three, does Twitter fit into your time budget? And Lastly how will you measure Twitter Success? I’m going to be attempting to clarify each question for you throughout the rest of this article.

The first question is a question that everyone should always ask themselves before getting into any endeavors with their business or marketing plan. Who is your audience? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you had better find a new profession and quickly, this economy is not a forgiving one, and there is certainly no room for businesses that don’t know their market. Is your audience using Twitter? do a little bit of research behind this one. Use Twitter Search and search for some of your market’s main keywords, if there is a lot of conversation about your product, genre, or niche then you might be onto something. If not, don’t waste your time. There are plenty of other great places to spend your time trying to acquire customers.

If you decide that you’re going to set up a Twitter account for your business the next question to ask yourself would be, what are you trying to do with Twitter? Just like anything else you have to have a common goal in mind and a plan to reach that goal. Do you want overall brand awareness? Another place to share your blog links? Or do you want to drive direct traffic and sales through Twitter. Whichever way you decide to go there are a different marketing techniques and best practices in order to get you to that next level.

Does Twitter fit into your time budget? We all know that Twitter is a free service and that Dell claims they made $1 Million in sales on Twitter last year, but are you Dell? The answer to that question for most of us is a definite NO! It is going to take time to build your Twitter following, and in my experience from a direct sales standpoint with Twitter, it takes a longer time to actually get people to want to purchase from you. So figure out if it is worth your time to start the campaign before you do.

The last question you’ll want to ask yourself is how will you judge Twitter success? This should go hand in hand with the reasons you are joining Twitter in the first place, but if you aren’t getting those sales right off the bat, how will you measure success? How are you going to measure the amount of brand awareness Twitter is bringing you? These are generally answered through whatever analytics program you use for your site but make sure you have this in mind as well.

After you have asked yourselves all of these questions I think you’re going to be well on your way to getting started with Twitter. You’ll certainly be well ahead of about 85% of the Twitterverse anyway. The reason my company has stopped spending time on Twitter is because of the infestation of the spam community and the lack of sales directed through Twitter. It has however been a great traffic driver to specific content that we are trying to push. Now that you know the questions you should ask yourself, start answering them already will you!? I mean time is money people! Have a good one.

Extra, Extra, Read all about it! Facebook changed the home pages for every user once again. The New Facebook Layout now allows people the ability to check the “News Feed” and a “Live Feed”. The News Feed is a feed of all of the most interesting posts from the previous days activity, the live feed, allows you to watch your friends Facebook activity in real time. Why is this a good thing for you?

Think of it like this, before when you made a posting on your Facebook Page, or a status update that you really wanted everyone to have a chance to see, it was quickly pushed to the bottom of the pile by other status updates from other users. Now, your page updates, (contests, blog posts, and promotions) will still be able to be seen for a much longer time. This is about the single greatest thing that Facebook could have added for business promotions.

From what I can tell their doesn’t appear to be any real algorithm for success just yet for how to make it into these news feeds, even the Facebook Blog post at the end says “Raylene, a Facebook engineer, hopes this blog post made its way into your News Feed.” I guess it is once again even more important for you to post a lot of interesting content in order to reach your audience effectively. Good luck!

This is the First edition of “The Best Internet Marketing Blog Carnival” I’m pretty excited with what we’re bringing to the table this week. I’ve picked the best of the best articles from all of the submissions that were made. If your article didn’t make it in this time, keep trying, I am picky but that’s only because I want my readers to have the best!

Tim presents Link Building Factors & The Aspects That Really Drive Results posted at Search Engine Optimisation.

Case Ernsting presents Marketer’s Guide to Google Alerts posted at MetaSpring Blog.

BWL presents How I make money with my blog posted at Christian Personal Finance. Normally I wouldn’t post something like this because it appears to be spammy but this is pretty
detailed stuff.

Jason Small presents Top Facebook Fan Pages: 25 Most Fanned Pages posted at Social Media and The Big W.

That wraps up the first volume of the Best Internet Marketing Blog Carnival. Thanks again to everyone who submitted. If your submission was cut this week try another one for next week.

Traffic is obviously what everyone is looking for when they first start up their site. People have high asperations for their sites when they first start them, but those dreams can quickly fade away and die hard, if you don’t start seeing some results. I was no different, I used to start a blog, fall in love with it, then just forget about it because I didn’t really care. Today I was searching around the local forums and found an awesome way to gain traffic to your site that not a lot of people use. Again I’m going to give props to another warriorforum.com user for teaching me this idea thanks to Kim Roach!

Step One

Go to google and perform the following searches -

“Daily Link Roundup”
“Weekly Link Roundup”
“Monday Link Roundup”
“Friday Link Roundup”
“Link Roundup”

Step Two

Find Blogs that are similar to your blog and contact the owner with some of your best content attached. Make sure you spice up the email a little bit with some information about their site, and maybe even comment on a specific article of theirs that you read.

By Buttering them up a little bit I can 100% guaruntee you that you will see more responses than if you were just to send them the content. It makes them feel good because it makes them feel like people are paying attention to them, and really care about their site.

Step 3

Go to Blog Carnival and find some blog carnivals that are related to you topics of discussion and submit.

Not only will you start to see an increase in traffic, but each piece of content that you get in either one of the daily link round-ups or a blog carnival is a solid link back to your site. It’s the perfect way to start getting more easy traffic to your site.

click here to see the original post on warrior forum

Starting this week I’m going to try something new that I’ve never done before. Every week I will be hosting a blog carnival right here on espiremarketing.org. The blog carnival will is called The Best Internet Marketing Blog Carnival if you are interested in submitting an article to be added to the blog carnival send your submissions here.

The Best Internet Marketing Blog Carnival will have everything from SEO, PPC, Social Media, Linkbuilding, and other Internet marketing news. I am starting this carnival because I believe it is important for each of you to find the best tips possible from as many sources as possible. As you know I always preach about how you should continue to learn, and seek out information. I hope that this blog carnival will bring a lot of great new ideas to all of you. Thanks everyone, now get out there and start reading and learning some more!

In a post from makeusof.com an apparently angry individual actually threatens to sue another site owner for tampering with the rankings. That begs the questions, do we have the right to sue for higher search rankings?

I think that this gentleman actually makes a compelling argument, even worse I think that some of our lawmakers might feel the same way. Could this be the potential knockout punch for affiliate networkers? It’s got me a little bit worried. I don’t know what the rest of you are thinking but I’d be very interested in finding out.

Below is a screen shot of the image from the original post:

Everyone right now is looking to be able to promote their business for little or no expense. Well these are some of the best places on the internet to promote your site, and leave your credit card in your wallet. Not only do these places appeal to the masses, but they also have some tremendous SEO value. I must say that I cannot take credit for this post however. A user jjrich developed the content for this article. Props to you jjrich and thanks for posting!

1. Reddit.com – This website can absolutely exploded your site with traffic, and it could start a chain reaction that leads to your site getting quite a lot of traffic. Check out how I got 3000 page views in 24 hours? To see the power of Reddit.com when generating traffic.

2. Digg – Best seo social site online. Can be used to get your site indexed on Google quicker within 24 hours but also can bring in tons of free traffic if used well.

3. Yahoo answers is best used when you are promoting something specific. Search yahoo for something related to your market and answer the question. This is important as you don’t just want to be another spammer, you need to show that if the person clicks on your link they will receive quality information.

4. Google, Yahoo and dmoz.org directory. I only found out recently, but having your site indexed on one of those major directories is a very powerful backlink to have and can do wonders for your Google search position. All are free to submit unless you go for the piad inclusion, it’s worth it if you have the money. But if not don’t worry your site will be eventually get indexed and you will have a very good backlink to your website.

5. Stumbleupon – I can’t get my head around Stumbleupon.com and that is why it is not ranked high. However, in terms of traffic it can bring in as much and in some cases even more then reddit.

6. Blogs – Blinklist.com – Mybloglog.com, Blogger.com – and Technorati.com. Again by creating your own profile and submitting your site, not only do you create an online presence so people get to know you, but you are placing a link on a site that will increase your page ranking and again will bring in more traffic. This will be less then the other social sites, but none the less it has an added advantage and that is the traffic will be more specific to your market.

7. Twitter and Friendster.com to keep your readers updated. Again, with the release of Twitter as a new form of marketing was created. By creating followers on your profile you can easier update your readers on your latest site news. Again another great traffic source.

8. Another good idea for free traffic is to search on Google for your market and then type in ‘directory’. This is quite simply the best way to get targeted traffic.

9. Reviews. Another way to get massive traffic is through review sites (but only submit if you are prepared to take a beating, not everybody is nice lol). Such as Reviewmyweb.com and Xomreviews.com/. You can even extend this further by joining sites as such the digital point forums and asking people on the forum to review your site. However, if you really have a unique product submit your site to killerstartups.com and if selected this will increase your sites visibility online – and it 100% free.

10. Finally number 10, to get your site instantly indexed on Google submit your website to stat sites such as Cqcounter.com,Alexa.com, Websiteoutlook.com and Siteanalytics.compete.com. These sites are constantly indexed by Google and by referring your sites to them. You increase the chance of your site getting indexed by Google, create more backlinks, increasing your Google rankings and in doing so (if you use the this and the tactics above) drive a hell-load of free traffic to your website.

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Everyone seems to finally be hopping on the bandwagon with the free product giveaways, it worked well when I did it as I was just getting on Twitter. I wasn’t exactly sure how well it would work, but I more than exceeded my goal which was relatively low, and ended up adding well over 1000 new followers. Spreading a Free product can be done just as easily. Follow this Surefire Way to Spread Your Free Product Virally, and you’ll have online success in no time at all.

1. Figure out your Target Market: Find out who your target market is. That can be your entire customer base, or just a select few of them. Either way you decide to do it, make sure that you know who they are, if you don’t know who you’re dealing with in any marketing idea, chances are it’s going to die hard and fast.
2. Give Something People Want: Look, I’m sorry this might seem like a pretty basic idea, but you won’t believe how many emails I get from people asking me why their idea flopped, then I find out they were giving away a wiener whistle to their target market of Business Executives. Okay that was a bit of an exaggeration, but comparable ideas have come across my inbox. Give away an appropriate product for your target audience i.e. a free webinar on real estate investing to real estate investors.
3. Determine the Info You Want From Them: Okay now that we’ve got the prize all figured out, determine why you’re even giving the product away. What sorts of information do you want, what is the goal of the giveaway? Do you want their email address? Do you want more Facebook Fans? Whatever it may be decide what it is and work it into your plan.
4. Set Your Plan-But Make it Easy: Okay now we’ve got your target market, the product you’ll be giving away, and the goals of the campaign, now it’s time to set up the plan. Let’s say for instance you want to get more email addresses, it’s pretty simple, but just have them sign up for your email newsletter to get the free gift. Or if you want more Facebook Fans make sure they have to become a fan to get the gift. Make it easy, if it takes too many steps, it’ll never work for you.

MOST IMPORTANT PART BELOW:

5. Let them Spread the Word For You: Look I am assuming that most of my readers are pretty intelligent and creative thinkers, judging by the emails you send me. Most people’s plan will fail, if they don’t let other spread the word for you, you are more than likely going to flop, especially if you don’t have a blog with tens of thousands of readers. How do you do that? When they sign up for your email newsletter, have them forward it onto 5 firends. When they become a fan of yours on Facebook, have them automatically update “I just entered to win a free (Blank) JOIN NOW”

If you follow this plan, I am 100% certain that you can and will have great success with giving away your free product. I have seen it work on hundreds of occasions, it’s not spammy, it’s easy to do, and people find real value in it. They will love spreading the word for you especially if they find value in the product you’re giving them for free. So get out there and start giving, that’s the key to a healthy online relationship with your target market.

While browsing through the threads at Warrior Forum a member made a very interesting statement that sparked a bit of controversy.

That brings up the question. Is he right? Are eBooks dead, or will they be in the near future? Answer: Not a chance! With products like the Kindle and other copycats on the rise, eBooks are here to stay.

The users main argument was that one could find the same information on Google, or by checking out forums on a particular subject. Yes, all of those things are correct, but when you purchase a product you expect to get some added value in exchange for the dollars that you spent. That means, people will pay for a product instead of taking the free product, because they expect that purchased product to have added value, that the free one might not have.

It’s simple really. But that’s just me, what do you think?

With so many people integrating Facebook connect to thier websites the question that comes to mind is; Has Facebook become the new open id? I would argue that it is quickly becoming so.
Facebook has become such a part of the way people interact online, that many websites are integrating Facebook connect to their site. For instance, The Huffington Post, one of the most popular and contraversial websites uses Facebook Connect to post comments made on the site back to the commentors Facebook page. It’s a great way for businesses to allow their user base to spread the word about their site to the Facebook world.
If you haven’t heard about how to use it, Google it. It really could help you get that extra bump in exposure that you so deaparately need.