Archive for Marketing
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part Three
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Well I owe this post to those who have been following my SEO and Wordpress site optimization. As stated in SEO Page Level Optimization I do not use the All-In-One SEO Pack anymore. I use the plugin called Platinum SEO Pack. It offers everything that the All-In-One does but it has even more. The neat thing about it is if you’ve already got your All-In-One configured, when installing this you will have an option to import all the All-In-One settings!
* Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines
* Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically
* Helps you avoid duplicate content
* Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page
* Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
* You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not satisfied with the current permalink, change it through Settings–>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about loss of Page rank or google penalty.Platinum SEO plugin will take care of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential feature, not present in All in one SEO
* Add meta description and meta keywords tags to Wordpress Categories and Wordpress Tag pages.
* Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page. These options are not available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set post/page level HTML meta robots tag useful?
You can download or install from this location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/
Thanks for reading my series. I will provide the links below if you missed one of them. The thing I would like to add about optimizing Wordpress for SEO is SEO in general is ALWAYS changing. You have to stay on top of it. By implementing the plugins and using the features of them you should greatly advance your SEO rankings.
SEO Page Level Optimization
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part One
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part Two
Enjoy!
Recipe For Successful Branding
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We all know that blogging and other marketing campaigns can really help us build up the buzz behind our brand. We know our goals are also similar in that we want to get people talking and spreading the story about our products and services. But it is going to take more than just blogging and marketing to make this kind of effort pay off. There are three main ingredients that help build and establish our number one goal for personal branding, Trust! We want to establish the kind of trust that will create a positive reaction in our clients and customers. The products and services that we offer need to have:
Quality
While branding builds the recognition for your product, that product or service must have superior quality needed to evoke strong positive emotions in your customers. Your brand cannot gain positive brand recognition if your products and services are don’t offer the kind of quality needed to elicit strong trust in your customers and clients.
Excellent Service
We recognize that customer service is everything in business and know it has been for a long time. When building a strong personal brand, customer service can increase word-of-mouth advertising. So this, in turn, boosts referrals and helps your brand to grow even that much more. Even in businesses that have no product or service that is sold directly, like blogging for a living, remember that customer service still is extremely important. The bottom line is that people will trust the authority of your blog if the posts are written with authority and integrity. A way that you can also build authority and integrity is with timely and well thought out responses to comments from the readers of your blog.
Value
And finally comes value. Value is a growing buzz word with customers and clients these days. If your product or service comes at a price, you have to make sure your buyers get the value they are after. Value should not mean cheap. It should mean quality for the price point. Even the information that you provide for free should have tremendous value. The information you share and provide needs to be accurate, informative, or entertaining. You want your readers to feel like they have gained some insight and have not wasted their time by visiting and reading. If they like the value, whether it is for free or purchasing a product and service from you, they will visit and buy from you once again.
Personal branding builds on all these important and key ingredients in a successful business and puts them in a package that your customers and clients can readily identify with. When you offer rock solid service, impressive quality and value, your products and services will begin to speak loudly. So later down the line when you have new products or services, they will be much more likely to have strong footing in the marketplace solely because of the brand you have built. This personal branding thus enables you to build on your previous successes and allows you to grow your customer and client base. Once this strong personal brand it set up, launching new offerings will become much more effective.
If you’ve found this post helpfull, can you please share it with your Facebook and Twitter followers.
Psychology of Personal Branding
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Personal Branding
We’ve all heard about Personal Branding. It is your unique selling proposition that will differentiate you from all others. The great thing about Personal Branding is that you don’t have to pretend to be someone your not. In fact, it doesn’t have to perfect either. You will attract people as long as you are genuine in your message.
Psychology
There are a lot of psychological factors in play that cause people to be “Attracted” to you. I don’t mean strictly physical appearance here, though that can have a factor. If you can figure out what these psychological factors are and feature or accent your strong points and identify where you can improve in the others, you will be able to separate yourself from all the others. This may take a bit of introspection on your part. The number one reason people are attracted to someone else is that they feel that they are just like them for a host of reasons. They are looking to try to identify themselves with others.
Characteristics
What makes people identify themselves with others is different for everyone. It can be a combination of many things. It can be, and not limited to, age, gender, physical characteristics, experience, vocabulary, exuberance, and presence. It can differ from day to day as well. It depends on each person’s frame of mind. So no matter what your brand or what your strengths or weakness are, there will be someone who will connect with you, start following you, and start studying what you are doing. In a nutshell, you can’t be everything to everybody, nor should you try. You just need to be YOU. However, there are things that you should try to do though that will attract more than just a narrow band of people.
Your Voice
In your writing, your video, and communications you need to sound confident and sure of yourself. People are attracted to confidence, plain and simple. You need to be honest. If you need to write about a concept that you are not totally unsure of, let your readers know. By being honest and admitting some of your shortcomings people will feel an attraction because they know they are not perfect as well. You can divulge these with a pact to learn more about them and a promise then to write about what you learned. This will provide your readers with a sense of belonging while you discover together.
Where To Go From Here
Personal branding isn’t something that occurs right from the get go. It is something that evolves. You will need to take the time to learn to write better. We all do. What’s the best way? By writing of course. You also will need to read the writing of others, especially successful writers and bloggers. Try and see how they frame their ideas and concepts. Try and isolate how they involve their readers and try to start incorporating those concepts into your own writing. I know I tend to write more in an expository manner and it can become a little dry at times. So these little tips, which actually aren’t so little, will provide you with the means to create a Personal Brand that will shine above the rest.
New Media Business Opps
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Chris Brogan has a simple but powerful message to small business people, in this case a Realtor.
It is simple in that all he is saying is if I were a Realtor I would:
I’d write a blog about the location where I was selling. I’d take tons of pictures and post them on the blog. I’d shoot walking tour videos all the time with a Flip camera and post them. I’d shoot interview videos with people from my community. I’d host meetups and tweetups for local residents, inviting people who are house hunting. I’d find various niche communities (developers, stonemasons, parents) and start community platforms for them on Ning. I’d empower as many local businesses onto the Net as I could, and help them get successful. I’d encourage as many people in my community to join Twitter as possible, and I’d bundle them into a list.
Great Advise Chris!
So if your reading this right now, if I were a gambling man, I would bet that you are also an entrepreneur or are contemplating being one. I’ll guess you also know about Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, and other Internet sites useful to business.
There is one thing I can almost guarantee, is there are local businesses that for one reason or another recognize that social media is viable for expansion of their businesses. In fact, it can be much much more effective than printed advertising. In some cases they may already have some type of local networking going on right now and all that would be required is to plug in the social media portion. But they may not know exactly how to implement it.
What I’m driving at is it could be YOU that shows your local businesses how to go about doing this. Show and teach them about attraction marketing. Show them that VALUE means a lot to people. Teach them that Personal Branding will separate them from their competition. Teach them how to blog, how to set up newsletters, how to tweet, how to set up a Business Fan page. You see if they already have an advertising budget, all you have to do is say, “How would you like to learn how to cut your advertising budget almost in half and eventually double your business.” Make sure you have a business plan to be able to present to them, make it a fair price, and you will get customers. You can make money on the training and coaching, on potential products related to internet business, and the business model will not be much different from business to business. So once you get it under your belt, it will be easy! So for 2010, what say you? How many businesses will you help?
New WordPress Plugin – TribeWare.info
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Well, I’ve had people bugging me all week about the new plugin that I am NOW unveiling for use by everyone. On the right hand sidebar I have a widget I named “Tribe Ware – Single RSS”. The word Tribe Ware is for a blog I threw up to host the plugin and others I have on the way. It’s located at TribeWare.info At that site I have the instructions to install and configure it as well as a video.
It specifically will do the following:
1. Retrieve one of the last three posts from one of your syndication partners and display it.
2. Create back-links to those blogs.
3. Provide syndication of your partners blogs inside of your blog.
4. Promote relationships with other bloggers.
5. Open the avenues to your partners within your site.
6. Demonstrate to your readers that you are a part of a larger community promoting the same ideas and are open to showing your readers that there are other places they can receive value.
I hope you enjoy!
Curiosity is Cool for a Marketing Cat Like You
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One way you can get traffic to your blog is to get people returning to your blog over and over. You should have a heavy emphasis on your returning visitors. After all, they took the time to visit your blog before and if you can keep your content valuable there is no reason they won’t come back. Yes, people like the valuable information that you provide, but they also enjoy you. Gary Vanerchuck says in his latest book, CRUSH IT, that we have to admit there is a bit of voyeur in all of us. I’m not sure about that but I do know people are curious.
My Mistake
One thing that I may be guilty of but have remedied recently is letting people know more about me. I was remiss in stories about “me”. These stories are the things people like to read. They do it for many reasons. The number one reason in my book is curiosity.
Welcome Curiosity
Curiosity may kill the cat but it will not kill the sale and this is why. If you look at the experience of someone visiting your site, they not only look at the content but also try and make formulated hypothesis about the characters they read about as well. The truth is that people love stories. They like to relate to the story and the characters they read about. They like to read about preferences, history, culture, and practices. They want to be a part of the plot. They do this by finding and reading information about you and those who leave comments on your blog. See http://www.chriskilber.com/using-psychology-to-sell/. The better you are making yourself someone that your readers can relate too, the more they will return.
Curiosity Raises Questions
Curiosity also makes people ask questions. These are usually not questions verbatim to others but questions they ask themselves. If you can figure out what they may be and answer them you then positioned yourself as someone who has great insight and can be considered an authority in your potential customer’s eyes. If you are clever you can also craft your writing to lead people to ask questions to themselves and then answer them. Not only will this build insightfulness into your writing but they will also gain their trust.
Focus on Readers
An aspect of using curiosity in your marketing is that by focusing on the curiosity of your potential customers, you can use it to provide value to your readers that are based on their questions and needs. It will help you hone in on value. Traditional sales and marketing has you always focusing on getting the sale, the closing, or qualifying. These tend to devalue the customer which is the farthest thing from what you want to do.
Respect
Using curiosity helps reinforce that it’s the relationship, not the product that sells. It may surprise the potential customer in a positive way by re-framing their expectations and view of you. It shows the potential customer that you can focus on things outside of yourself and your product. The customer or prospect will also realize you have a process that respects the customer. By using this approach you will always have a reasonable and best possible excuse for a follow up call. Finally, you will gain enormous respect.
Summary
So you see curiosity can helps both the potential customer and you by staying focused on the customers internal and external questions that they may have. You can use this to come across as being insightful and an absolute authority in your niche.
Questions
Have you use curiosity to help attract customers or clients?
What was it specifically?
Do you have any examples that you particularly like best?
48 Wordpress Plugins I Can’t Live Without
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Down below I have the forty eight or so plugins that I use on this blog. I have a little blurb about what they do. Because wordpress is so customizable and most of the themes are different, there may be reasons to include one that are missing here and reasons I have some others don’t. But for the most part these are essential. I am almost positive there are new one’s out there that I should have but these have been serving me well. Feel free to suggest others.
Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. As a fan of SEO, I think it’s like putting together a three dimensional puzzle, I like this plugin and it is one of the mainstays of SEO for wordpress. Of special interest is the “Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page:” option. The plugin even has it’s own forum if you’d like to learn more.
(http://semperfiwebdesign.com/forum/)
CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
Comment Relish
Increases your readership and RSS subscription rate by simply sending a short ‘Thank You’ message to users when they first comment on your site.
Contact Form with Captcha
Simple Contact Form with Captcha Enabled
Custom Field Redirect
This plugin will do a 301 redirect on any page where you set the “redirect” key in a custom field. The value you set will be the URL to where the plugin will redirect you. In the dashboard when you create a post you have the ability to enter a custom field. If you create a “redirect” key is will go to the location designated.
Dewplayer
Insert Dewplayer (Flash Mp3 Player) in posts & comments. There are a lot mp3 players. This happens to be the one I’m currently using.
Disable Revisions
Disable revision functions in WordPress and delete all entries of revisions in database. It is extremely important to back up your database before install this plugin. I always hate when there ends up being 8 revisions of the same post. This should be a custom option built into wordpress to begin with.
Exclude Pages from Navigation
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.
Facebook Sharecount
The Facebook Sharecount plugin shows the number of shares on Facebook your posts get and allows users to share it themselves.
FeedBurner FeedSmith
Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
FeedBurner Widget
Adds a sidebar widget to easy customize and display your FeedBurner subscribers stats RSS button.
Get Recent Comments
Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.
Make sure you configure this plugin after activation.
Google Friend Connect Integration
Easily integrate Google Friend Connect with Wordpress. To get started, please enter your Google Friend Connect Site Id number in the GFC Integration admin page and choose whether to turn on the social bar or not. You can add Google Friend Connect gadgets to your sidebars by visiting the widgets page. For help and support see the official Google Friend Connect integration for WordPress page.
Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
Homepage Excerpts
Homepage Excerpts are great when your theme doesn’t provide this functionality.
LinkWithin
Displays recommended stories and associated thumbnails from your blog. This is at the bottom of all my single posts. It provides nice pictures you see below.
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
Saves your wordpress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer by installing this plugin. The reasoning behind this is your blog will ping technorati and many other ping services. If you edit your blog, let’s say a typo or misspelling or indentation etc, every time you hit publish you are pinging the services. You may be banned and didn’t even know it. When this goes, so does your SEO. Visit plugin site
One Click Plugin Updater
Upgrade plugins with a single click, install new plugins or themes from an URL or by uploading a file, see which plugins have update notifications enabled, control how often WordPress checks for updates, and more.
ONW Simple Contact Form
This Plugin creates a simple contact form.
Popularity Contest
This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. Once you have activated the plugin, you can configure the Popularity Values and View Reports. You can also use the included Widgets and Template Tags to display post popularity and lists of popular posts on your blog.
Random Pages widget
This is a widget that displays a list of random pages/posts on your widgetized sidebar.
Recent Posts
Returns a list of the most recent posts.
Robots Meta
This plugin allows you to add all the appropriate robots meta tags to your pages and feeds, disable unused archives and nofollow unnecessary links.
RSS Shortcode
Makes it easy to display an RSS feed on a page
SEO Smart Links
SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
SEO Super Comments
Use your blog comments to get more traffic.
SexyBookmarks
SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.
SimplePie Core
Does little else but load the core SimplePie API library for any extension that wants to utilize it. It is needed for the Single RSS Colleague plugin found below.
Simple Tags
Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3, 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags !
Single RSS Colleague
A plugin to feature a colleague or tribe member for syndication. You will find it under by social badges on the right hand side bar labeled “Visit My Colleagues”. I will be making this available to everyone sometime next week.
Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
Translate
Adds a sidebar widget to display languages into which you can translate your blog.
TweetMeme Retweet Button
Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.
Ultimate Google Analytics
Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.
What Would Seth Godin Do
Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors.
wp-cache
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. One note of caution. TURN this off anytime you are changing anything. Then when you are done, turn it back on.
WP-Cumulus
Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress
WP-DBManager
Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.
WP-PageNavi
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.
WP-Print
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
WP-Sticky
Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler.
WP-UserOnline
Enable you to display how many users are online on your Wordpress blog with detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).
WP Security Scan
Perform security scan of WordPress installation.
We Are The Future
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Seth on “ME”
Posted by: | CommentsI just love this.
Takeaway: People will only engage themselves in things that interest themselves.
Question: Do you think there are ways of engaging OTHERS in things YOU are interested in, even if THEY may not be?
101 Daily Traffic Strategies
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I’ve been on a campaign of sorts to get people to sign up for my “Daily 101 FREE Traffic Generating Strategies”. Over 100 of you have. I appreciate it very much. I’m going to give you a link to one of them as a sample below. I think you’ll find that these are much more than simple 2 or 3 sentence tips.
Some of the Traffic Generating Strategies use video and even audio in addition to in depth analysis of various topics whose central theme is to get more traffic to your blog. Each of the Strategies are worthy of posting or creating an E-book from. Some of the titles are, “Acknowledge and Engage”, “Commenting”, “Making Your Blog Exceptional”, “Making Your Opt In Go Viral”, “Personal Branding”, and “3 Essential Things You HAVE To Have on Your Blog”.
Here is a link to just one of the them. 101 Traffic Tips | #11 | Commenting. This is an example of only part of one. I also have ideas, commentary, and strategies contained in the Daily notification email as well. They are not simply an email pointing to the link. There is content there as well. As you can see, it is almost like having a blog behind the blog. There’s no reason you shouldn’t sign up.
You can sign up on the right hand side or at Daily 101 FREE Traffic Generating Strategies.
I have an ongoing CONTEST as well. I am giving away a copy of Jonathan Budd’s “Top Producer Mastermind Formula” valued at $500. When following the strategies of mine in conjunction with Jonathan’s you will have a winning combination and will become a Top Producer.
Let your friends know as well.
Have a remarkable day!
Einstein Like Wisdom With Jonathan Budd
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Johnathan Budd over at his blog shares an equation and formula that literally tells us how to achieve success and make your way to the top 3%. I recommend it highly.
Read it here:
Finally… The Answer To Why 80% Will Fail, 17% Will Make A Little Money, And 3% Will Become Financially Free Revealed…
avdngc35×8
How to Market Like a Spartan
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300
One of my favorite movies within the last few years was a movie called 300. It depicted a group of Greek warriors led by 300 Spartans who fought against a Persian army of an almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans did not flee or surrender, even if it meant their deaths.
What’s In You?
I believe that inside of everyone there is someone who is rooting for the underdog. The movie was also symbolic in that Greece stood as one of the last bastions of freedom and democracy against it’s antithesis, government, represented by Persia’s slavery and tyranny. The Spartans were an example of the power of a patriotic army of freemen who were defending their native soil. The bravery of the Spartans stands today, as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.
Qualities
What made the Spartans so brave? Courage? Of course. Resolute Character? More than likely. Boldness? Most certainly. The list could go on. We have dauntlessness, fearlessness, daring, firmness, prepared, seasoned, gallant, heroic, determined, spirited, valiant, purposeful, and stout. But even though they all had these qualities, what and who did they did it for?
Why did they do it?
They did it because it was ingrained into them from when they were able to think on their own. It was their way of life. Their duty was to nurture their way of life surrounded by their families and friends. This meant having to defend themselves against others who would want to take away that life. That very existence, noble indeed.
What about your world?
In the world of online marketing, mostly because the playing field is ever changing, I don’t know if we ever can really NOT be labeled as a NEW marketer. Things are changing all the time. So things you learned last month may not be as applicable or as relevant as they are today.
Take Action!
If you educate yourself to not only learn the application of the new concepts you study, but to understand the reasoning behind them, you stand to educate yourself at a little different level. It is at this level that you can utilize your time at it’s best best efficiency which will result in increased achievement. If you understand the rational and underlying principals in your marketing techniques, it stands that new implementation of new ideas will manifest other ideas and techniques. Ideas and concepts will start to automatically come to you.
Conclusion
To get to that point you are going to have to ingrain learning and self development into your lifestyle. You are going to have to grow. Daily. Unless you had Spartan like parents and were raised in a family that teaches marketing from the get go, the only path you have will be to always be trying to learn something every day. What this entails is being courageous and persistent. This is not unlike the Spartans. You have to learn never to give up. Courage and confidence can be taught and learned. When you mix the two, you will be a Spartan in your own right.
Questions
What are you learning new today?
Is your education on a different plane?
Do you learn things well enough to be able to teach them?
What’s stopping you?
Can Your Marketing Have a MVP Season?
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I’m a fan
I’ve been a fan of baseball for all of my life. I can also proudly say that I’ve been a Twins fan all my life as well. This year has been an interesting year for the Twins. The manager has thrown over 20 different pitchers on the mound this year and for the most of the year they have had a .500 record.
But…
But as many pitchers as the Twins have used, we are at the end of the season, the Twins have won 9 out of the last 10 games, and they are only 2 games out of first place with only 8 games left to play. And 4 of those games are with the first place Tigers! It is the classic definition of a pennant race. While I don’t watch as much as I once did, I do get to watch one game a week.
Remembering my Grandparents
As I stated above, I’ve been a Twins fan as far back as I can remember. I remember as a kid listening to Halsey Hall and later Herb Carneal to the game with my grandfather, Adam. That’s one of the things I remember most about my grandfather. He seemed to know everything about baseball and especially the Twins. He not only influenced me as his grandson, but my grandmother, Grace, who will be 98 this year. She still watches the Twins and is very opinionated about them. I think she would have made a great baseball manager. I remember asking my grandfather how a team could be 1 ½ games out of first place. Did they play only ½ a game and it counted? He just answered that if a team was 3-0 and a team was 2-0 which one should be in first place and by how much. The formula works this way; Games Behind = ((difference in wins) + (difference in losses)) / 2. Well at that time I didn’t even know what a fraction was but learned the importance of math at an early age.
I played to…
I did play a lot of baseball as a kid and never was stellar at it. I wasn’t bad either. I did learn it took a lot of skill hitting. I was good at hitting when I was hitting against the neighborhood kids in the local sandlots but going against pitchers at the higher levels, that ball came mighty fast. Hitting a baseball thrown at 85 mph is not easy.
Justin Morneau became an MVP
So why all the nostalgia with baseball and my grandfather? Well the skill needed to play at a Major League level is not easy, even for the ones playing there. The Twins have as a first baseman, Justin Morneau. Justin has played for 7 seasons for the Twins. He first came up with the Twins in 2003 toward the end of the year and the next year was slated to play first base for the Twins. But in 2004 he struggled during the year and only after 74 games was sent back down to the minors. He did manage to play the whole year with the Twins the following year, 2005, but only hit .239 with 22 home runs. So he did show some potential but nothing phenomenal or something to write home about. The next year, 2006, the first baseman hit .321 with 34 home runs, 97 runs scored and 130 RBIs. That won him the American League’s Most Valuable Player honors.
How did he do it?
So what happened between 2005 and 2006? Well it’s not so much about what happened between those years as what has happened over the years. Baseball players are not simply handed a baseball glove and a bat and told to go out on the field. Major league teams have batting coaches, pitching coaches, fielding coaches, dieticians, doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, physiologists, coaches, and many people with a lot of baseball experience. It was the combination of the organizations support staff, some experience, and some talent that earned Justin his MVP honors only 2 years after being sent down to the minors.
Did you pay your dues?
So it is with online marketing. There is no way anyone can just simply decide to start online marketing and be successful with it right from the get go. You are going to need a plan, hopefully from someone who has already had success. You are going to need some training, some coaches, a mentor, and hopefully an organization or team that can help you learn the ropes. Without any of this, the odds of success are not very high. I can’t say it won’t happen, just that the odds are against it.
What you need to do!
If you don’t have a coach or mentor, get one. Follow and study those who have proven track records. Don’t fall for the flashy promises of a Lamborghini and Lear jets. Take action. Track what you are doing. Refine. Seek insight if you don’t understand something. Practice. Split Test. Training is tax deductible. Take advantage of it. Learning online marketing is a process. Staying on top of new trends in marketing is a process. You are going to have to take batting practice every day if you want to be able to keep up with the pitches thrown your way. By keeping at it with the major leagues as a goal, there is no reason you can’t have your own MVP season. Play ball.
House on Marketing
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House
Hey, do you all know the character on the FOX network’s show called House? Hugh Laurie plays an eccentric, grumpy, though poignant, and articulate, doctor lacking in bedside manner. In talking to friends and other people, I’ve found that either you like his character or you hate him. He has a condescending and somewhat biting style that pierces and cuts to the chase. But is his demeanor really brash? I like to think he’s saying what others are thinking. In the end, he always is the one who diagnoses the ailment and saves the day or should I say patient? Does it matter how he accomplished his goal, to save a life?
Being Honest
How’s this related to marketing? Well we all have first of all have to be honest with our potential customers, affiliates, and others about our products and most importantly, the chances of success when joining our network marketing organizations. Are the promises of 25,000 dollars a month realistic? Are the fist-full’s of cash and Lamborghinis realistic? Is it really turn key and does it only require a limited amount of knowledge? Does it grow itself without any human interaction? Is the marketing really provided by someone else?
Promises and Reality
We all know the promises and even after years in the business, we are still somewhat seeking the ‘Holy Grail’, so to speak. There are even examples of diamonds in the rough of those who have had their dreams realized. But as Dr. House would say:
1. Your prospects really don’t care what you have to say, really!
2. When you’re selling an Network opportunity, the product is secondary!
3. Logic does not win the day when it comes to motivating someone to enter your business.
4. People listen to and respond to hearing negative things.
5. Most people are highly skeptical about the industry.
6. 97% of everyone who starts an online business fails.
Just Tell the Truth
So just as Dr. House can save the day, what or how can you save the day or bottom line when it comes to attracting prospects as your customer or affiliate? Being honest can go far. Choosing the correct marketing style and tactics can go far. Implementing strategies that speak to the items Dr. House espoused above will go far. We don’t need to be as brash as Dr. House when explaining the honest realities of our industry, but we do need to address them. By doing so we can attract prospects with our honesty, and additionally weed out the meek tire kickers by making them aware of the work involved with having your own online business. I think Dr. House would make it big in the network marketing industry.
Discover How To Create Irresistible and Tempting Titles
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What’s in a title?
How you title things make a tremendous impact on whether people will read or consider reading content. In this context, content is in the form of emails, blog posts, tweets, Ezine articles, and other forms of communication that you want others to read. In all cases the main goal is to get people to open, click, or otherwise save or bookmark for reading later. Let’s examine some of the forms of communication.
Email Subjects
The title is contained as what in email parlance as the subject. Subjects are treated a little bit differently based on who the email is coming from. The difference is based on one thing. That is trust. If the email is coming from someone they trust, friends and family for sure, they will open. But there is also information that was requested and comes in the form of newsletters, RSS feeds, and other aggregations of information. If someone doesn’t recognize the senders name they are typically going to look at the subject and make a determination as to what they are going to do. What the subject contains will determine the reader’s next actions. If it’s from you, you want to have as an inviting subject as possible.
Blog Post Titles
A blog post title works in the same way as a subject line in an email. Your objective is to get people to read your post. Hopefully, when your blog post is syndicated throughout the Internet via Twitter tweets, Facebook notes, blog backlinks, email bodies, and other forms of electronic communication it will compel people to open and read it. Another factor that has to be considered in blog post titles is the SEO factor. Your title should both contain a keyword or two and also be relevant to the content that is contained in it. If you have a title about cars, your content better not be about plants. I’ll talk about some of the psychological factors below.
Ezine Articles
Titles should work the same way as blog post titles but should probably have more of an emphasis on keywords than actions or questions contained in the title. Most people simply do not search Ezines. They use Google and Google recommends the Ezine articles to them. The more SEO friendly the title, the better the ranking and higher it’s possibility to be towards the top of the search. I also recommend your resource box contain a link to your blog.
Twitter Tweets
Now tweets per se don’t have the concept of a title but it should be contained some where in the 140 characters. Having important attention grabbing phrases that are contained in the actual article with the title in your tweets will help people feel compelled to click them and follow the link over to the source. Using certain psychological keywords will raise the probability of the tweet being opened. They will grab the attention of the readers.
In all these examples, if you understand underlying psychological impulses and urges you can use them to your advantage. So if we ask the question, what do people want?, what do people respond to?, what do people have an interest in?, and are people interested in?, this should provide us with some clues to help formulate a title. Here are some different types of titles that you should strive for?
Types of Titles
- Tell them something true about them and then tell them to take action.
- Create compelling curiosity.
- Make claims that are almost unbelievable. (Be able to back them up)
- Create something of high interest to target direct interests.
- Use humor. If you can make them laugh they will click.
- Inspire and motivate them. If they feel good about themselves and they will act.
- Make them mysterious. People like mysteries.
- Appeal to their logic. Restate something they believe strongly.
So these are the categories or types of possible titles or subjects that can be used. Now that we know what it is we need to formulate what words can we use that will compel people to act. We need to use words that influence, persuade, and motivate people to act, (click, read, signup, etc…). This can be accomplished by using words that can help people image something. They are words that describe things in ways that make them bigger than life. They are words that evoke emotion. Here are some words that will practically compel people to their natural predispositions to investigate things that are curious, humorous, mysterious, logical, interesting, and bold. This of course is not an exhaustible list. They contain:
Words to Use
| irresistible | untold | boggle | double |
| triple | quadruple | unstoppable | potent |
| banned | phenomenal | willing | calculated |
| psychological | seduce | spell binding | unable |
| magnet | effortless | insatiable | secret |
| record-breaking | amazing | cutting edge | incalculable |
| absolute | thrilled | legendary | boost |
| enhance | improve | benefits | enjoy |
| reduce | release | loosen | combat |
| discover | achieve | counter | increase |
| how-to | discover | master | create |
| generate | optimize | enliven | improve |
| advanced | cultivate | progress | revamp |
| refine | upgrade | align | balance |
| cheerful | enthusiastic | inclined | zealous |
| attract | allure | induce | invite |
| tempting | follow | substitute | uncomplicated |
| simple | agile | knowing | powerful |
| able | clever | straightforward | intricate |
Conclusion
The list could go on and on. Using these words in your titles and subjects along with a keyword will work wonders for your traffic. Take the time to craft titles that will draw people into your world, get them to click it, and then read it. Spend more time on this aspect of your writing and you will be guaranteed to see results.
What other words do you like to use?
What are some titles that you’ve used that have worked for you?
If you enjoyed this article I would appreciate if you click the link below to tweet this post. I’ll use these concepts as examples to craft the tweets for this post.
CLICK HERE PLEASE TO TWEET WITH A CUSTOM MESSAGE
Thank you.
Ian Brown
