eSpire Marketing

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:

Twitter or Facebook? This fight has been brewing for the past year or so since Twitter had it’s big coming out party when Dell told everyone they made $1,000,000 on their Twitter account last year. I read the article recently 5 Reasons Twitter Will Take over Facebook while they made some great points. While this image might be a bit much I’m here to give you the 5 Reasons Twitter Won’t Take over Facebook.

1. Applications: While Twitter has cool outside ways to enjoy Twitter and post pictures and all of that jazz, Facebook has many more on site applications that are more relevant to its user base. Think about it, look in your latest news feed, you’ll see that 4 or 5 of your friends just played around with a quiz application to figure out which Harry Potter character they are more likely to be. It is so much easier to connect to all of the things you love, in so many different ways, through Facebook than it is on Twitter.
2. Search for Old Friends: Twitter has a great search engine for finding other people who are interested or talking about the same things that you are. Facebook needs to integrate that type of search technology into their site. BUT, when it comes to locating old friends, Facebook takes the cake. I constantly am looking for people that I know on Twitter, and since you don’t readily have all of their information available on Twitter, those old friends are hard to locate. Both sites need to take notes from each other’s sites to improve these features. Facebook has twitter dominated in this front
3. Picture Albums: The use of picture albums on Facebook is awesome. Once you post a photo album all of your friends can go back at any time to take a look at those old photos. Twitter has the ability to share photos (and videos) but only in real time. Once a photo has moved far enough down a users timeline, the photo is virtually lost. Again Facebook is killing twitter in the photo sharing realm.
4. 140 Characters or More: Well we all know that Twitter allows you to tell a story in 140 characters or less. But Facebook gives you the opportunity to share a story in more detail without having a blog. You can write and create entire notes on Facebook. If you wanted to do that on Twitter, you’d have to have a whole series of successive tweets, and the story is likely to get lost in most of your twitter followers’ timelines. Facebook 4 Twitter 0.
5. More Brands in More Places: While Twitter allows a brand to create a twitter page, Facebook allows brands to create all sorts of fun pages, applications, and you can even connect your website directly to Facebook. I know we all like to think that Brands follow consumers, and that is true for the smaller brands, but pop-culture and big brands, drive what we do. And let’s face it, being able to design a custom t-shirt on a website, and then send it directly for all of your friends to see on Facebook, is much cooler than just telling people about it on Twitter.

Both of these sites have a lot they can learn from each other. But for the foreseeable future, Facebook is King. And until it’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg decides to sell it and take the money, it’s going to continue to grow at a great pace. He and everyone at Facebook are cutting edge. Twitter relies on everyone else to come up with their ideas and try and implement them. I’ll leave the comment board for all of you to debate this further.

Hey everyone, I trust that you are all having a fantastic start to your week. I am as well, I am just looking for some content ideas from all of you. I want to know what you want to see on here. I have posted a bunch of social media stuff, small business tips, twitter reviews, and other content and now I’m asking for all of you to tell me which direction you’d like me to go with my next few articles. The person who’s idea I use will get credit for it on the blog and our twitter accounts.

Here’s how to give me your idea:

Email Me you ideas and give me your first name and where you are from. I get a lot of email from my readers and the number one thing I always want to know is their name and where they are from. I like to hear all of the fun an interesting ideas that you all ask me about. It’s really fun to get to know all of you a little bit better. So please email me your ideas and give me the above information so that I can give you credit.

If You Aren’t a subscriber Yet here’s how to subscribe
Click on either the orange RSS icon under the “RSS Feed” portion of the sidebar, or you can click on the Email Updates button directly below the RSS icon to receive free updates from eSpire Marketing. It’s as easy as that. I am planning on starting to do a lot extra for my subscribers since the list of them has gotten to be quite large. Thanks everyone!

Recently I purchased a Canon Vixia HSF10 for the extremely high price of $1299 at a local Best Buy. I was extremely excited to get the opportunity to use the brand new 1080P high definition camera. The camera is sleek and very easy to use…if you have a Windows Machine that is. I am a mac user. I love mac, they are in my and millions of other people’s opinions the best computing machine that money can buy. Apparently Canon missed the memo. I opened the box to find out that they only have exporting software available for windows computers!

Now I do believe that this is the 21st century; am I right? I guess maybe it was wrong of me to assume that a big company as large as Canon would have the common sense to send out cross compatible software, as not to pigeon hole a large portion of their potential buyers. I use Final Cut Pro for all of my video editing needs, as do hundreds of thousands of other users, large marketing firms, and big businesses alike. Let me tell you what I have to do in order to actually even begin to edit the hours of footage I’ve shot in the past days.

WARNING: If their are children in the room you might want to read this later, the anger level could cause you to want to swear loudly

Step 1
After searching for two hours to see if Canon had gotten with the times and posted any sort of software to fix their compatability nightmare, I found only one feasable solution, import the live footage into iMovie then export it to Final Cut. Now that does sound like a pretty easy solution right? WRONG!

Step 2
After you have waited for 1.5 hours for your video footage to actually import to iMovie, the next step is to spend another hour or so “pre-editing” the video footage to be exported to final cut. This is an HD camera, if you don’t have the money to spend on a supercomputer like the big dogs have, this process will take FOREVER to do.

Step 3
FINALLY you are ready to export the pre-edited video from iMovie to send for the final editing in Final Cut. The next step is to wait 5 hours for your footage to export from iMovie into a compatible version you will be able to actually edit in Final Cut. I suggest going to the bar and getting a beer or two while you wait, maybe run some errands, by the time you get back your video might actually be ready to be imported to Final Cut for final editing. (NOT SURE HOW LONG THAT TAKES. I’m still waiting for this step to complete as I’m writing this article. It’s been 2.5 hours and iMovie still says I have 235 more minutes until I can edit the video.

Step 4
Go to Canon support once more just to double check that you didn’t miss something and there actually might be a better solution for the millions upon millions of Mac users. Fail miserably. Call Canon support to realize that they aren’t open again until Monday. Go get more beer or run more errands to settle your nerves.

Step 5
Tell all of your friends about this article and possibly even link to it. Post it on all of the major social networking and social media devices you can find.

Step 6
After you have finally spent however long you have spent finishing the final product, go back to where you bought the camera and return it. Purchase a Sony, they have better cameras, with better features, and have the common sense to have cross compatible software included with most of their cameras.

I don’t know that I have ever been so dissatisfied by a $1300 investment in my entire life. I expected to be able to use my brand new camera efficiently and with no problems. I WAS WRONG! DO NOT BUY THIS CAMERA MAC USERS! That is all. Have a better day than Canon or this camera are allowing me to have.

Recently I was meeting with a potential client and we were discussing a few things. Mainly, he wants to increase his rankings in the local markets for flower sales. I gave him my plan of attack and started to explain link building through blogging and why it is important that we do. I am actually working on a sample blog article for him right now so he may better understand the link building process and why it is what he needs to be doing.

Most small businesses feed off of the local market. Good news! Google now has rearranged it’s search engine algorithms to give local market small businesses a better chance of showing up in the search engine rankings. The number one way to gain higher search engine rankings is through link building. Blogs are probably the best and easiest way to acquire a good amount of links over time. Those links in turn will give you the extra “link boost” that your site needs in order to be in the ever so important top 3 rankings for the local market.

That part he gets, the part where I was starting to lose him was how to maintain a blog and how exactly I was going to use it to get people to link back to his site. I hope to answer that question for all of you by the end of this article. For an example I am going to use Reggie’s Tires a local tire dealer. Okay here I am at Reggie’s Tires on Main Street and I have my website all set up, my blog is all set up, now what do I do? I know that I need to create quality, interesting content, and content that people will find useful in order to receive any links from outside sources. So I come up with my idea for this article and it is going to be called “The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide to Buying New Tires.”

Now, while that might not be the most interesting article in the world to the entire population, it is very interesting to someone who is searching for a new set of tires online. Next you are going to promote that blog article in as many ways as you can possibly think of, email, social media, maybe you’ll even call a few people who you think might be interested in your article. After the people read your article they are either going to read it and find it useful and even possibly link to it, or they won’t. Let’s say you contacted 100 people and you got 10 people to link to your article (a pretty good number of links) Google is going to read those links to that article, and give Reggie’s Tires a boost in the search engines when someone in your area is searching for tires online.

Keys to Link Building Success

1. Create quality and useful content: Keep that content related to your site however. If Reggie’s Tires wrote an article about the “Top 10 deserts EVER” while he might have an opinion on that, a person who is potentially buying tires from Reggie, doesn’t care what his favorite deserts are.
2. Be persistent: In order to dominate your local online markets you need to have more links than the rest of the competition. Don’t expect to get 100 links from one article. Link building takes time, it’s also very time consuming, but just stick with it and I promise you you will see results.
3. Forget your Competitors: A lot of small businesses have the habit of focusing a lot of their efforts worried about what ‘the other guy’ is doing. The internet is the way of the future, if your competitors aren’t blogging yet, they should be, don’t let what they are doing deter you from grabbing the bull by the horns yourself. You’ll be ahead of your local competition if you are the first to act.

I hope that answers a lot of questions any of you might have. If you have more please don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll respond to it as quickly as I can. If you don’t have a blog set up, get to work, you’re going to come out of this economic downturn on top, so work hard and you’ll be FAR ahead of everyone else.

For those of you who aren’t yet convinced that Twitter is the real deal, that it can help grow your online presence, and can help you network, easier than any other social networking site on the web. This is my attempt to give the extra push you need to become an avid Twitter user.

1. Instant News Feeds- Twitter has instant feeds into anything that is happening in the real world. For instance, when the United Airlines flight landed in the Hudson river a few months ago, it was a Twitter User that sent the news out into the world first. He took an eyewitness photo of the scene, and he was the source that the media was using at first.
2. Constant Entertainment- Twitter is big pretty much all over the world. For all of you insomniacs out there, twitter is your social networking haven. No matter what time day or night, Twitter constantly has thousands of users updating their twitter accounts 24/7 365.
3. Get to Know your Favorite Bloggers- Some of Twitter’s most avid users are some of the internet’s best bloggers and writers. With Twitter you get to find out what your favorite blogger is up to in between each blog post. Their updates give you a glance into the person behind the blog. Twitter makes it easier than any other social networking site.
4. Get Other People’s Opinions- So you just read a story that you can’t quite figure out? Hit up search.twitter.com or check Twitter’s top trending topics to get great candid advice from the twitterverse. A lot of times on a blog you will get a watered down opinion from someone but on Twitter, users will tell you what they really think.
5. Find New Sources for Info- With the power of retweeting through twitter, people are spreading new sources and new great information, from all over the internet. Sometimes even the big time bloggers and media miss out on some great information. Why not use Twitter to introduce you to some other great minds.
6. Get Connected to People in Your field- Again Twitter is probably the easiest social networking tool for looking to network with people in your profession. For example, I have made countless numbers of strong connections with people in my field (internet marketing) or a related field, that I have been able to work directly with in order to achieve a common goal.
7. Get Fresh Ideas- Twitter gives you access to some of the worlds most creative minds. Whether it be a new recipe for dinner, a new contest idea, or a new way to organize your life, Twitterer’s are coming up with new creative ideas on a daily basis that you have at your disposal right at your fingertips. Cool huh?
8. Stay Connected with Your Community- By following people in your local communities you can have better access to more opportunities to participate in your community than ever before. Take this scenario for instance; It’s Saturday afternoon and you’re sitting around being lazy and bored. So you get on Twitter and check out what some of your local twitter friends are tweeting about and you see that there is an Arts Festival in town that you didn’t know about with free entry for the first 500 people. You hop in your car and head to the participate in the festivities; Problem solved!
9. Get Closer to Your Friends and Family- Let’s face it, life is busy, we’d love to be able to keep in touch with our friends and family more but simply don’t have the time. With Twitter, that problem is solved as well. You can log on and see that your friend Suzy’s daughter just got accepted to Harvard, or that your brother just started putting up a new fence at his house, Twitter makes getting closer with your family and friends easier than any other social networking service.
10. Share your knowledge with the world- Most of us don’t consider ourselves experts in everything we do. But just like you look to others for cool new ideas and advice, others will look to you. Share some of your ideas and advice with the world, while you might not think it’s that big of a deal, others might.

Twitter is a great tool for many reasons. From staying connected to friends and family, to coming up with your next fun project, Twitter is a social tool that is more powerful than any other social networking tool on the internet. It is the most powerful because it has broken down the barriers of the friend request. You don’t have to ask permission to read someone’s updates, you can do that by simply choosing to follow someone you find interesting. Check it out. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Until next time….

Everyone loves to win free stuff right? Well I think that’s pretty undeniable. Well Wendy Limauge a.k.a TheComputerLady has brought the twitterverse a great new service. Twitter’s Tweeting is a website created by Wendy that exclusively deals with contests that happen through Twitter. I asked Wendy if I could ask her a few questions about her site and her twitter experiences. She was so kind and accepted my invitation for an interview. This is what The Computer Lady had to say.

Why Did you decide to start your Twitter Tweeting contest site?

I started this site because I found that Twitter contests were becoming popular and I wanted a site to post all of the contests I found.

What value do you gain from twitter tweeting? (relationships, networking, etc)

I have met a lot of people on Twitter I would not have otherwise met and I continue to meet new people because of Twitter. I also have found great ideas from people on Twitter for promoting my sites.

I have also learned that if I need help with something that I can’t go to Google or another search engine for the answer that I will put out a request on Twitter and someone will have an answer that will usually solve my problem.

What advice would you give to a person who is interested in becoming a twitter user?

Don’t send too many Tweets out at first. Just site back and watch how it is done. Learn how to shorten your links with Tinyurl.com. Do a search at http://search.twitter.com and put words in for hobbies you like, your business, and other keywords that will help you find people to follow that have common interests.

What is your favorite part of using twitter and having your twitter contest site?

I like using Twitter because I know someone will be online that I can chat with at any time during the day or night. It is night to know there are real people out there on the other side of my computer. It makes the Internet more personal.

END INTERVIEW

If you would like to submit a twitter contest you may do so by clicking on that link. Wendy also runs a regular sweepstakes website known as Sweeties Sweepstakes and also Sweeties Swag where you can also find non-twitter specific contests and sweepstakes. And she also regularly updates her twitter account with all of the contests she has running on her websites. Thanks Wendy!

Till Next time….

The use of twitpics is generally designed to be used for fun purposes. To really emphasize what it is that you are doing at that moment in time and to share a little bit better who you are as a person and what your are involved in during your day to day life. I’ve used twitpics before and have had a great deal of fun using them. They break up content a little bit more along a person’s feed. So, as a marketer how can we use twitpics to our advantage, and what sorts of benefits might we gain from using them in our updates? Well that is what I want to take a look at right now and discuss a little further in depth.
Power Twitter is a cool tool to use for anyone who is a Firefox user and also a twitter user. What it does is it adds a search bar to your main twitter page and also uploads twitpics and video links directly on the person twitter feed. This is a great tool that I believe should be utilized by people who are advertising and attempting to sell through twitter.
Say you have an email blast that you are sending out. To this point you are only able to send this creative work inside the email campaign to the specific set of people on your email list. Now with twitpic you can take this technology to upload this photo and give everyone in your follower base the image that everyone else gets to see along with your promo.
This will do more than just add a pretty picture to your ads:

• It will bring attention more towards your tweet on a page. We all know how important it is to be able to attract the eyes of more people with your ad. That is 80% of the battle in marketing. Take advantage of this.
• Increase Click Through- These two things generally go hand in hand. The more eyes on your ad the higher the click through rate.
• Increase conversions – This isn’t rocket science everyone knows that all three of these things together work together to increase sales and increase conversions and revenue

Thus far it is not possible to take a Twitpic and make it directly clickable to a specific link. But you may add your advertisement information on that page and even a link to the original ads landing page. It is a basic principle but one that I have not seen this in use yet, and I think people are missing out on a great tool to use to their advantage.

Till next time…

Networking, or as I will call it in this article “twitworking” is something that is very new to the internet. Email has been around for years, social media sites such as Myspace and Facebook have been around for a little while now, and each of them have their pros and cons.

Email – Is great for communicating with people whom you already know, either they are your friends and family, or a co-worker. Email will always serve its purpose for communicating online with those groups of people.

Myspace/Facebook – Both are great services, but again you generally must know the people and get through the road block of friend requests and other loopholes. They, or derivations of them, will continue to exists as long as they continue to bring people together.

And then there was Twitter. Twitter is a service unlike any other. There is no friend request needed to communicate with a person directly, and you don’t need to know their email address. With twitter you can search other people’s tweets to see what they are talking about. Say you are in the fashion field to contact them all you would have to do is simply search for people talking about fashion, and then send them either an @ reply or a direct message. It’s that simple.

In my time as a twitter user I have come to know dozens of people, in the same or related fields to mine, that are more than willing to discuss issues related to work, and make deals directly through twitter. In the eyes of the SEO world I am somewhere near the bottom of the totem pole. Not many people will know who I am. But I was able to get in contact with some of the people that I see as the leaders in my field and start to build on these relationships with them. On top of that I am able to use twitter to connect with thousands of other people just like me who are looking to learn and discuss the very same issues that I want to discuss.

I’d love to hear what everyone else has to say about this subject and get a discussion open about how twitter has helped you gain strong relationships with people in your industry or hobby that you might not have been able to get through other services. Send me an @ on twitter or leave a comment. I am looking forward to everyone’s thoughts on this subject.

Till next time….

Contests through Twitter. They are something that not everyone takes advantage of but something that I believe everyone should take full advantage of. With times being tough in the financial markets and everyone looking for ways to save, it’s a good thing we have places like Tweetcontest to turn to brighten up our day with free stuff.
Rusty and Ryan the founders of Tweetcontest, started with twitter when they created tweetbomb. A fun thing that happens once a day in the twitterverse in which everyone following tweetbomb sends out an @ reply to the person of their choice at precisely 3:33 PM EST. I have been an avid tweetbomber for a couple of months now and I must say it is a lot of fun to see the reactions people give when they find out they’ve been bombed.
Somewhere along the way they decided to start a new service known as CustomizedGirl and Total Assault, and the prizes range from Gift Cards, to Guitar Hero, to DVD sets.

If you haven’t checked them out yet make sure you do. Follow them @tweetcontest and get in the game. You’ve got nothing to lose. It costs you nothing, and you have the chance to win some really cool prizes and for businesses it could be a great way to drive traffic to your site and generate some strong brand awareness. Thanks Ryan and Rusty for starting tweetcontest and keep up the good work. And for businesses it could be a great way to drive traffic to your site and generate some strong brand awareness.