Building Mailing Lists, List Building, Social Media, Niche Marketing

Ordinally posted on: April 14, 2009

Several new programs and eBooks have just come out to help you successfully use Twitter in this Web 2.0 world. Here are two that I have noticed …

– ViralTweets (Free and upgraded versions)
– Garry Parkes just released his “Dominating Twitter”, Volume One

ViralTweets has recently been updated and offers both a free and premium version to it’s end users. The main difference being the free version is branded with the ViralTweets logo and website url and can be used on only one domain. The premium version allows you to remove that branded link, can be used on unlimited domains and has an auto follow feature.

ViralTweets lets online marketers and webmasters specify the tweet message that is sent out automatically as well as the page that the user will be directed to after the tweet is completed (i.e. free ebook, free online tools, bacially any squeeze page). For more information on ViralTweets or to get the software – go here.

Garry Parkes just released his “Dominating Twitter”, Volume One in which he shares how he grew over 17,000 followers. In his ebook he reveals exactly the secrets you need to know to build up a massive following in a very short space of time. It’s FREE!

To download Garry’s ebook, just click here or visit his landingpage at: www.dominating-twitter.com

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Of people who both blog and tweet, the majority would overwhelmingly prefer to have more blog readers than followers on Twitter. This is according to surveys conducted by Darren Rowse who runs ProBlogger and TwiTip.

This is not entirely surprising, since generally, much more effort is put into a blog post than a 140-character or less tweet, but there is certainly a gold-rush for Twitter followers. Jason Calacanis for one is willing to pay a pretty penny for them.

Rowse polled both his ProBlogger audience (which is presumably comprised mainly of bloggers) and his Twitip audience (which is made up of Twitterers). As expected, the Twitip crowd favored Twitter followers slightly more, but there was still a very clear majority wanting more blog readers.

There are certainly arguments for the value of both categories, and Rowse covers them pretty well here. There are some pretty

obvious ones for blogs:
- they require more time/effort
- they provide more info
- they are most likely not going anywhere, while Twitter may be hot right now, but who knows where it will be in the future?
- the more blog readers you have, the more times your posts are likely to be linked to on Twitter anyway

There are obvious benefits to having Twitter followers too though, particularly for marketers.

- More followers is a good indication that there is demand for what you offer as a business, and that people are interested in your product(s)
- relationships easier to form (yes blogs have comments, but typically not the real-time conversation factor, and people are at Twitter to talk…they’re not necessarily at your blog to do so)

Of course people who both blog and tweet know they don’t have to choose between one medium or the other. They compliment each other, and ideally can work to each other’s benefits. Twitter can gain you more blog readers, and a blog can gain you more Twitter followers.

It’s all in the execution. Write good content that Twitterers want to link to. This has plenty of potential for getting you more readers. Include chiclets on your posts, making it easy to share your content (this shouldn’t be limited to Twitter). Include a prominent link for people to follow you on Twitter (a Twitter logo here will help draw attention).

Link to good content from others when you Tweet. If people like what you’re pointing them to, you’ll likely gain more followers. Who would’ve guessed it all comes back to content? You could also mention your blog casually from time to time. This may increase awareness of it. Just because someone follows you on Twitter, does not mean they know about your blog. That said, you probably don’t want to ram it down their throats either.

By Chris Crum 2009

About The Author
Chris Crum is a staff writer for WebProNews and iEntry Network.

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If anyone is interested, I have a few ‘list building’ domain names that I would like to sell.

These names are already registered (so I can just transfer it / them to you), some names are registered already for several years (see below)

pricing is negotiable …..

http://www.AlexsListBuildingSystem.com (paid till December 2009) $50 OBO

http://www.AlexJeffreysListBuilding.net (paid till December 2010) $50 OBO

http://www.Building-Mailing-Lists.com (paid till December 2011) $150 OBO

http://www.List-Building-System.com (paid till December 2010) $150 OBO

http://www.List-Building-Formula.com (paid till December 2010) $150 OBO

http://www.MailingListSecrets.net (paid till December 2011) $100 OBO

http://www.Mailing-List-Secrets.com (paid till December 2011) $75 OBO

http://www.Profit-Pulling-Platform.com (paid till December 2010) $50 OBO

http://www.StartingMailingList.com (paid till December 2010) $150 OBO

I also have other domain names that I own related to internet access, broadband, credit reporting, digitaltv, computers, web templates and so on… If you might be interested, just leave me a comment below and I will contact you.

Ordinally posted on: April 16, 2009

I just finished my very 1st video!!!
This is a big deal for me, the reason being that, since the time I first started the coaching sessions with Alex Jeffreys, and the video training classes with Dave Kaminski, I have set my goal for this year to move all my business projects and websites into the video marketing mode. I will soon add www.ThreeToedCrow.com as the main portion of this blog just for video marketing.

The video is entitled “List Building (Red Bull Edition) remix”
(Select the HQ option “watch in high quality”)

Why Video Marketing?
There are several reasons why I have chosen to go ‘head long’ into video marketing. As the years have past, I have stayed with static website pages. Traffic and sales on those sites are now almost non existant. By placing a video on the same site about that product or service, will keep the site visitor interested in what you are offering, thus increasing sales. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about …

Earler today a friend of mine asked me to make a video ad for his recording studio located in New Jersey. They use the new Pro Tools HD 8 by Digidesign. In doing a little research, I visited the Digidesign site, and on several of the pages within were very cool video clips of their new audio recording software- I almost wanted to buy it, it just LOOKED so good! And that’s the key! I could actually visualize it, see how it works, experence it … and it was good!

With the social media sites and video sharing sites available to everyone, you now have a viewing audience 2nd to none. You can showcase your site, goods, services, from several sites like YouTube and GoogleVideo.

One of my goals for this year (when I have time that is), is to go into all of the sites I have, decide which ones I am keeping, and then upload at least one video per site which targets that site.

Want to make web videos? As I mentioned, I took video training classes with Dave Kaminski. If you’d like more info on creating web videos, please visit CreatingWebVideos.com

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There’s a new web application on the block that has everyone talking and it goes by the name of Twitter. Twitter is fast becoming one of the more popular methods for communicating online and has a large number of loyal followers who stick with it despite the growing pains and competitors. While this article won’t cover everything possible with Twitter, it will give you a good starting point on how to start using it and how you can use it for your business.

What Is This Twitter You Speak Of?
So what is Twitter and how can it be of benefit to you or your business? Twitter is a free online micro-blogging application which gives you the ability to send out short messages (up to 140 characters) called “tweets” to people who are following you on Twitter.

You can send tweets either through your computer or by using your cell phone via a text message. These tweets/messages can be about anything you want and they can include links, as well.

Making Twitter even more useful is the ability to send a direct message to someone you are following (this is done by entering @username at the beginning of your message) or replying to someone’s tweet with your tweet. You would be surprised how common it is to reply to someone’s message then to have someone who is either following you or the person you sent the reply to reply to your initial message and so on.

People can follow you and your tweets by first signing-up for their own free Twitter account at the Twitter site then adding you to their líst of people they are following. Once you have created your account, you can either check your Twitter page (your personal page which appears after you sign-in at the Twitter home page) for any of your friends’ new messages or you can send out your messages. But it is much easier, in my opinion, to use one of the many online or desktop applications which give you the ability to do all of this and more.

Twitter As A Communication Tool
Twitter is a quick and easy way to communicate with family, friends, business associates, and also within a company setting. Being an online service, Twitter is available to anyone with online access. All you have to do is login to your account through any number of third-party applications developed for Twitter or through the Twitter site and you are ready to go.

Within a company setting, employees could have a Twitter account created for them with the option to have their messages protected. This means only people they (or you or the person in charge of creating the Twitter accounts) approve will be able to send and receive messages from them. The same thing could be done using an instant message program but with Twitter, there would be no software to install and it would be accessible from anywhere with an online connection. Additionally, the person who is in charge of the Twitter accounts will have the power to control who is and who isn’t part of this private Twitter network.

Even though there are tons of online communication applications available, Twitter can also be used as a way for people who are collaborating on a project to stay in touch with one another regardless of where they are. And depending on which third-party application they are using to Twitter with, these conversations can be saved for future reference. There are even some third-party apps which you can use to send files up to 10MB to anyone you are following as long as they are using the same application, that is. Still, a handy feature to have and one which may become a feature of Twitter if there’s a big enough demand for it.

Marketing With Twitter
Herein lies the great thing about Twitter from a business perspective: the marketing potential it offers users. Sure, it is great to send messages and chat using Twitter, but it can also be a great marketing tool if used correctly. Have some breaking news you want to get out quickly? Send it out as a Tweet. Made an important update to your blog or web site? Let people know about it instantly with a Tweet.

Want to promote your project, book, movie, whatever by giving away a free download or preview? Send out a Tweet with a URL to the free download. Only want to market something to certain individuals you are following? Simply enter their username preceded by the “@” and you are set.

Another simple marketing tool available with Twitter is the ability to befriend people who are following someone you already follow. While this practice could backfire on you if you begin to add everyone you find following someone you are following, be picky and just befriend those who either share similar tastes that you do or work in the same field as you or already follow many of the same people you do. Otherwise, you could come off as a spammer which will be a hard image to shake.

Twitter Now And Beyond
Twitter represents a fundamental change in the way people communicate online. There have always been instant messengers and they have their place and purpose but they don’t provide the one thing which sets Twitter apart and that is the ability to instantly communicate with either a couple of people or potentially thousands without the need for proprietary software. No need to download this piece of software in order to communicate with this person or that organization.

Much like how blogging has become a staple of today’s society, Twitter and “twittering” is on the same path to becoming ingrained in today’s culture despite only being around for less than two years. So simple in its execution, powerful in the marketing opportunities it offers, and ease of use, Twitter will be one of the top web technologies to gain worldwide prominence in 2009.

If you like, you can follow me on Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/GeekEntrepreneu and clíck on the Follow button.

By Wesley Craig Green (c) 2009

About The Author
Wesley Craig Green is The Geek Entrepreneur, an entrepreneur who is a publisher, owner of an online classified ads network of sites, two web sites focusing on independent and digital comics and graphic novels. You can check out his personal blog, Geek Entrepreneur which is dedicated to entrepreneurship, blogging, inspiration, technology, and small business.

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Ordinally posted on: January 30, 2009

If you are an experienced webmaster then you probably know that creating back links to your website is one of the best things that you can do to improve your Search Engine Ranking Placement (SERP). Google openly discusses the importance that their algorithms place on back links and even recommend that webmasters who want to improve their traffic use back links. Both Yahoo! and MSN are starting to talk openly about the importance of back links in their search algorithms as well.

There are a number of strategies that you can use to create back links to your website. Some of these strategies include emailing webmasters and asking them to place a link to your website, submittíng your site to directories, distributing free reprint articles, and paying for links. All of these have their pros and cons, and some have a better success ratio than others.

How Many Back Links Does Your Website Have?
Take a look at your website and see just how many back links you actually do have. Do not do this for only one search engine, but for all search engines where you are trying to get good SERP results. To check your backlinks, simply type into the particular search engine’s box – link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com . Of course you will replace the yourdomainurl with the name of your domain.

The more back links that you have to your website, the better off you are. Not only do back links help your SERP, but also the visitors of pages where your back link is listed may just choose to visit your site.

A common mistake that new webmasters make is that they create back links, but they have all of these links pointing to their home page. It is great that you have 50 back links pointing to your home page, but take a look at other pages on your site. How many links are pointing to these pages? The answer is probably zero unless you have utilized deep linking in your link building campaigns.

What Are Deep Links?
Deep links are links that go to specific pages within your website. For example, let’s say that you have a home improvement website that has a large number of pages and articles on it telling people how to do projects. If all of your back links are pointing only to your home page and you have none pointing to specific article pages, then you are not getting the full benefit of your linking activities.

Think about it this way, if I go to your website and find a piece of information that I find particularly helpful or interesting and I want to tell other people about it, how will I do it? When I tell all my friends on my blog about this great page of yours, am I going to link to your home page? No, I am going to copy and paste the actual webpage address out of my browser, into my blog. That is deep linking and what is considered to be natural linking by the search engines.

What Are Natural Links?
Natural links are those links that are created by people other than the website’s marketing team. Suppose I posted a link in my own blog that said that the “most easily understood tutorial, I have read, for creating a php-xml parser” was: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0 , and I put my quoted text into the link. That is a natural link, because I created the link with no prompting from the management at SitePoint.com.

Difficulties In Creating Deep Links
There are a few problems that you will run into when trying to create deep links to your site. One problem is that if you ask a Webmaster of another site to link to you, they will most likely just link to your home page. When you submít to directories, the vast majority of them will only allow you a link to your home page, not a deep link. Even if they do allow you to submit a deep link, they will not allow you to submit 10 deep links.

Success Tips For Creating Deep Links
Deep linking is quite a bit easier when utilizing free reprint articles as a part of your link building campaign. This is because you can put whatever link you want to put in the “About The Author” box. The About The Author box is required to stay intact in all websites that are using your article. If you intend on writing a large number of articles to promote your domain, then you will want to optimize your results by putting a different deep link into the About The Author box for each of the articles that you write.

Another method of doing this is free and easy, but requires a bit of time. Take keywords in each page of the text on your website and make a hyperlink on that word or phrase to another page on your site. This is very easily done if you know how to do basic HTML. The ultimate goal here is to have every page of your website linked to, at least once, by another page on your site. You will want to spread these out among your domain’s webpages, instead of having just a couple of pages linking to the other 50 pages.

Another reason to spread your links across all of the pages of your domain, is that users are likely to be turned off by a page that is almost all hyperlinks; those pages often appear spammy or cluttered. A good idea for any Webmaster is to create these internal deep links when you create a new page. It is much easier to spend a couple of minutes from the beginning, rather than trying to go back and do all of them at a later date.

Incorporate Deep Linking Into Your Linking Strategies
Deep linking is as important a consideration as back linking! It does not matter which page visitors use to enter our websites. If they like what they read on our internal pages, they are more likely to view other pages on our websites. If they view other pages on our website, they are likely to find our homepage, and we will get a chance to tell them why they should buy our products or services.

Deep links to our website help to ensure that the search engines will have good cause to show our internal webpages as well as our homepage. For every page in our website that gets great SERP, our chances of getting a sale are increased significantly.

We have 15 pages on our website, eight of which provide real content to our prospective clients. All eight of these pages have a significant number of back links pointing to them. 48% of our visitors land on our home page. 37% of our visitors land on our internal pages. As a result, 85% of our traffic lands on our website as a result of our back links, either directly or through our natural search placement in the search engínes. The remaining 15% arrive on our website through bookmarks, personal referrals, and paid listings.

Deep linking works. Give it a shot.

Written by Trey Pennewell (c) 2009 Links And Traffic

About The Author
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketíng. Learn more about our Pay For Results SEO services at: LinksAndTraffic.com. Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: TechCentralPublishing.com.

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Knowing how to drive traffic to your website and actually “driving the traffic” can at times be very different. I’ll admit, I have built sites for myself and others where I did everything I was told or read to do, only to ask “Where’s the traffic?”. I feel like I’m striving for the allusive prize in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” beating bloody coconuts together and getting nowhere fast… Or dare I mention the French Taunters … “Ni”

From what I’ve seen in the last five years when it comes to the Internet, no website can remain an island. Web sites must become “connected or webbed together” with others that are simular and/or stronger than itself. This way both spiders and surfers can be attracted by numerious sources which makes your material or services more easily found.

Personally I believe that tags still have their use (Yahoo!, MSN, …), blogs seem to contain ‘stickyness’ which is important to drawing readers and potential customers (WordPress appears to be one of the better choices expecially when your hosting it yourself), the term “content is king” at times tends to be a joke. Example, what about sites that get indexed in the top 30 when the webmaster hasn’t even uploaded any pages yet (doesn’t that just tick you off). And as far as Google’s natural search results go, well Google is Google! What works today …

If you are looking for an outside source for information, one that I think is worthy of mention is SitePro News. It often has good tips on how to better your site and it’s ranking in the SE’s.

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Ordinally posted on: January 5th, 2009

Rebranding, what a great idea! The ability to take someone else’s work and use it for yourself in some form or fashion, and/or sometimes even put your name on it (with permission no less). But what is proper eBook Rebranding Etiquette? I’ve asked a few people who are new to using or writting ebooks, and they say the equivalent of a shoulder shrug.

eBook rebranding has become a very popular way to offer one’s ideas and products over and over again. Usually when someone is offering a free rebrandable eBook, they spell out what you can and cannot say, edit or change. That’s pretty straight forward, even I can understand that. But what if there are no guidelines established by the author?

Do Unto Others …

It’s human nature to want to get something for nothing. With various software available, it’s not hard to “personalize” someone’s rebrandable eBook. Lots of links in there to “stuff” maybe you yourself sell. Hummm, what if I just … Even if you’re an honest person, it still might cross your mind. Ok well it did mine anyway . This concept reminds me of an old tee shirt I had with a picture of this lil’ guy on it along with the words, “Do unto others, then split!”.

Now picture this – “IT’s YOUR REBRANDABLE E-BOOK!” What’s mine is yours right bro! Wow, not such a good idea now is it? This time these are your affiliate links within, I mean that was the reason you wanted people to use it and pass it on to others, right? ‘Intellectual Property’ no matter how loose that term might be to you, is still someone else’s work. Like I always tell my 9/yr old son, “If it’s not yours, don’t touch it!”. Or better yet, “Do unto others (ebooks) as you would have them do unto you(rs) …”.

Rebrandable eBooks are a vehicle, a means to an end, a tool in your marketing arsenal. If you’re using someone else’s eBook, use it wisely! Remember there is “someOne” always watching. Do unto others …

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When I woke up this morning and started thinking about last night’s coaching webinar w/Alex, the first thing that came to mind was “Linking, Twitter & Blogs… oh my!, Linking, Twitter & Blogs… OH MY!” Linking I get. It was one of the things I was going to focus on today. Linking with other sites and ‘social networks’ like DIGG, MIXX … fast exposure on Google, okay. Visiting and posting on similar blogs in which helps in building a reputation, exposure… it’s the people not the product, important I get it, but Twitter?

I spent (maybe wasted) an hour or so there today trying to figure out what benifit this could provide, and mainly try to find others in the “Fortunate 500″. I honestly don’t have time to just hang out there and chat. Uses: Potential customers? OK… Search Engine spiders finding my Twitter page? Alright … Can someone please comment on what else I seem to be missing here?

Blogs and blogs of blogs …
These things are amazing! I knew about blogs helping in SE rankings, but I wish I had used more of these like we are using them now. If I had, my business would look quite different I believe. I think Alex’s point about using the YouTube method and keyword searching for other potential blogs to post on was right on. Confession- I’ve never been one for casual conversation. Writing articles, now I could get into that, but to talk just to talk … I’m finding it difficult to just jump into an existing conversation (blog post). Anyone else out there feeling the same way? Show of hands … Well I guess it’s time to go knock on a few blogs and say “hello”

Oil Rig Hopping (or as I’ll call it “Crosstown Traffic”)
The Interent can be large place (like an ocean), but put in prospective, it can actually be rather small. [Que drums, background vocals and kazoos] “It’s like Crosstown Traffic …” You can be talking with, buying from, or selling to, someone next door or across the planet with a click of a mouse. Just like writting lyrics to a song, you need a hook to catch the attention of your listeners. In Internet marketing it’s very similar. You need something to attract people (potential customers or “fish”) to your PPP pages.

“Net Work” a fisherman’s story
I personally have always made the mistake of using the “shotgun” approach to fishing. Give a lot of options/choices, let ‘em have it (kaboom!) and then wait for the fish to float to the top. Doesn’t really work =( You really need one strong net, one good hook to be an effective Internet fisherman. Target your audience, cast your hook and – happy fishing.

* Kazoo background melody in Crosstown Traffic provided courtesy of the Jimi H. Experence

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Ordinally posted on: December 22, 2008

Something I took away from Alex’s coaching program last night (Module 3)

Failing Forward … Can failure be good? People, in general, hate to fail … I hate to fail. As we’ve all heard before in one form or another, “failure’s not an option”. (Failure – an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; a subnormal quality; an insufficiency). The key factor that is missing here however is what happens after a failure.

At the point of failure, if you choose to give up AND/OR are unwilling (or able) do learn from your mistake(s), then that becomes TRUE failure … BUT to fail, only to then press on AND learn from the mistake AND continue to move forward, then that becomes a VICTORY or as Alex Jeffreys used the term in last nights coaching session – “failing forward”.

In online marketing, to fail forward is to succeed! If you don’t fail from time to time, you cannot really learn from experence, and the reward at hand is not quite as sweet. If you cannot learn, then you cannot progress, you cannot teach (others from your experences), you cannot fully enjoy.

I admit when it comes down to it, we’re all here to succeed. Remember what I said at the outset, (People, I), we all hate to fail. But small failures accompanied with a tad of humility and the ability to ‘fail forward’, can open doors that we once thought impossible!

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