There has been a lot of talk lately about the hottest new Social Networking site Pinterest. According to Compete, unique visitors to Pinterest increased by 155% in just one month from December 2011 to January, 2012.
Back in December 2011, Pinterest was one of the top 10 social networking sites sitting at #5 knocking out the big guns like Linkedin and Google+.
Can you use Pinterest for Marketing your Business?
This is the question on everyone’s lips……. And of course the answer is YES!! The way you use Pinterest is by posting (pinning) images and video’s to your pinboard or others boards. User can either upload their own images from their computer or from the internet either by using the Pinterest Bookmarklet or simply posting the URL.
Use Pinterest with Caution
Yes, your heard right…. According to Galen Moore of Boston Business Journal. Here’s what he reports after a short experiment with Pinterest and how Pinterest’s service agreement gives it the right to sell images that users upload.
Request an Invite to Pinterest
Oh, another thing…. you can’t just join up and you’re in, apparently once you request and invitation they will send you an invite within 48 hours. Really, what are they thinking? As one of the fastest growing Social Networking sites, as if they’re not going to let you in. Anyway check Pinterest out and make up your own mind.
Free Download | How to use Pinterest for Business
Before you request an invite take a look at the latest book by Magdalena Geogieva of Hubspot where she shares how to drive traffic and leads to your website with Pinterest.
You can download How to use Pinterest now and start using it to drive traffic.
Download the Ebook now by clicking on the book below.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of Pinterest! Is it for you and your business and do we really have time for another social networking site?
Posted on 27 February '12 by Sandy, under Free Books, Training. 25 Comments.
Guest Author | Michael Chibuzor
Use the power of press release distribution to supercharge your blog.
A friend of mine sold his blog and went to hunt for another secured 9-5 job.
What happened to him, why did he do that, isn’t there a way to come back strong and succeed as an internet marketer? I’ll be honest with you here. His blog was on the verge of dying. And because he wasn’t totally committed to achieving success with this, he had to flip his blog for $660.
In this informative post, I want to show you some strategies to leverage press release distribution and bring your blog alive. It doesn’t matter what level of success you’ve right now, when approached properly, you’ll see the result of a well-structured marketing system.
1. Develop A Thought-Pattern
I wouldn’t go ahead with other entrepreneurial press release strategies if your mindset is dim. Every blogger needs to think like a “success.” I’m not talking about temporal happiness that comes when you sell that affiliate product. My concern is what happens when nothing significant is happening in your blog?
The traffic isn’t coming as you want, the sales aren’t as consistent as those so-called marketing gurus displayed on their sales copy and no social media love from readers.
It’s a personal decision to develop those marketing guts that puts you ahead of every ugly experience. That’s the best way to start press release marketing – because your attitude will be greatly visible in your write-ups. If you’re frustrated, it will show when you write and vice versa.
2. Craft Attractive Headlines
In copy writing, attractive headline is the #1 factor that guarantees huge conversion or mediocre sales.
This concept of crafting a great headline plays a greater role in press release distribution. You’re not the only writing and distributing, virtually every business with in-depth knowledge of press release and its power is also distributing.
Often times, your release article will succeed and get shared on high trafficked news-portal. During these viral sharing processes, Google spider could discover your fresh content, index and rank your web pages.
When your press release article appears on Google top 10, your success depends on the headline – you either get clicks or no clicks at all.
Solution: Read intelligent titles, study to determine why you were piqued and use the same strategies to boost your press release campaigns.
3. Energize Your Press Release Content
When you finally publish your press release, don’t stop there. It’s time to do your traditional article marketing thing. First, bookmark the web pages on popular social bookmarking sites like Digg.com, Jumptags.com, Kirtsy.com, facebook etc.
Thereafter, start sharing on web 2.0 social sites; LinkedIn, Twitter and most recently Google+.
All these would strengthen your press release to bring in more targeted traffic. As a blogger, you need plenty of responsive readers to flourish. Strengthen your release contents today.
4. Collaborate With Guest Posting
Now, you can combine press release distribution and guest posting and achieve more success in your blogging business. Once your guest post is approved and going viral, top up the process with your guest post.
Craft some interesting and informative guest posts and distribute across authority blogs. Ensure you’ve a well-formatted anchor text that links to your inner web pages. Most press release site doesn’t allow anchor links, so building relevant links may not be possible with it.
But guest posting is the best way to go. It’s ideal for serious web marketers and if you’re not taking advantage of it, now is the time to get started or outsource the project to competent hands.
5. Consistency, Consistency, Consistency
What else can I say? Garnish your every web efforts with consistency. In fact, wear a garment that’s labeled consistency and don’t give up. I started marketing on the internet in 2008 and made a whopping $0.00 that same year.
If I had given up, I wouldn’t have earned my first $3,980 in 2009. If you remain focused, gazing at the sky and doing what you enjoy the most (writing and engagement), I’m sure your blog would grow.
Several obstacles will stand on your way to the top, but it’s obvious, getting to the top would make you untouchable. So, a lot of things ought to touch and try to obscure your visions today, but don’t be moved. Keep spoon-feeding the media with your news worthy press release, and don’t forget to write guest posts continuously.
Take This Home
There you have it, the five effective strategies to supercharge your blog with press release distribution. If you take action and act on these nuggets, you would’ve made my efforts in writing this productive. I see you take action towards the right direction in your business this year. See you at the top!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Chibuzor shows you how to write amazing press releases to make money. He writes in his prweb coupon codes and g.neil coupon code blog and shares inspiring business promotion tips at prweb.com. These gneil coupon codes and prweb.com coupon code helps you save when you subscribe for a press release premium service.
Posted on 10 February '12 by Sandy, under Blogging, Guest Blogger. 42 Comments.
Guest Author | Easther Sudharta
One of the great things about blogs is it is much easier to drive traffic to a hub of great information compared to trying to drive traffic to a static website. There are a lot of great ways to drive traffic to your blog that any blogger can do, no matter how new the blog.
What You’ll Need to Get Started
Before we get started, let’s look at a few things I would like you to note in a text document, Word file, etc.
Blog Title, URL, and Description
Of course you know these things by heart, but instead of repetitively typing them out on every site you go to, jot your blog’s title, URL, and description (usually around 160 characters) in a text file. This way, each time you need it, you can just copy & paste it.
Top Latest 10 Posts
Think about the latest awesome blog posts you’ve written, or blog posts that are timeless. Try not to include something that has extremely out of date screenshots, tutorials on previous versions of software, etc. You want something that is pretty current. Jot down the URL, title, and description of these top blog posts. If you’re not sure which ones to choose, check out the top pages in your Google Analytics. If you don’t use Google Analytics, then sort your blog posts by the number of comments. These methods should tell you which ones are your best posts.
Armed with this information, continue on to some great ways to drive traffic to your blog.
Social Promotion
If you have a nice sized following on social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+, then you can promote your content to your existing audience simply by sharing it on your profile and move on.
But what if you don’t have a huge following? Or even an average following, for that matter? That’s ok – you can still promote your blog content to social media to drive traffic! Try the following!
• On Twitter – Using the list of top blog posts you created, think about a question that each one of those posts answer. For example, if I wanted to promote my post on Actionable Steps to Facebook Marketing, I would want to find people on Twitter asking about Facebook marketing. So I would set up a search in Twitter for Facebook marketing . Then I would see everyone tweeting a question about Facebook marketing. I could simply reply to them using their @username and say that I just wrote about Facebook marketing, including the blog post link in the tweet. Answering people on Twitter like this should create some good traffic back to your blog.
• On Facebook – Again, using that list of top blog posts, search for groups on Facebook that would be interested in your posts. When previewing the group, make sure that members are sharing links within the group and that those links have some likes / comments. If those points check out, then join relevant groups and share your top 10 posts in them. This should drive some additional Facebook traffic back to your blog
• On LinkedIn – Just like Facebook, search for groups on LinkedIn that would be interested in your posts. Verify that members are sharing links and that the links are receiving positive comments and feedback. Then join the groups and share your top posts in them to drive some LinkedIn traffic back to your blog.
Content Repurposing
Next on the list of traffic generators is content repurposing. This is where you take your top ten posts and turn them into multiple posts and/or new formats. Chances are, your posts are mostly text. If you happen to write long posts, then break them up into smaller bits and publish those bits onto networks like HubPages , Squidoo, or niche article directories. Be sure to include links back to your blog within the articles if possible, or at least in the author bio.
Once you’ve done that, you will want to take your blog posts and think about other formats they could be in. For example, you if your post has a lot of bullet points, you could turn it into a slide presentation and publish that presentation on SlideShare. If you use Microsoft PowerPoint, you can save the presentation as a movie file and publish the movie to YouTube. Then take your movie file and upload it to other video networks like Vimeo, Metacafe , Dailymotion, and so forth. Just be sure to include a link back to your blog in the presentation / video description. This could lead to additional traffic from all of these sites back to your blog.
Blog Directories
This is where the title, URL, and description of your blog will come in handy. Use this list of blog directories as your guide to submit your blog. Some directory listings like Alltop and Technorati will drive traffic to your blog, while others will simply help your blog’s search engine rankings because of the links you will build back to your blog.
Blog Commenting
Whether you are just starting out or just looking to boost your current traffic, blog commenting is the way to go. Find other bloggers in your niche through the above mentioned blog directories, check out their latest posts, and start commenting on them. Be sure to subscribe to their blogs via RSS and comment on their latest posts often – that will likely get their attention and potentially lead to traffic back to your blog from both the blog owner and other readers of that blog.
Forums
Blogs are not the only place you can comment. Chances are, no matter what niche you are in, there are forums built around discussing your niche. Find those forums using sites like BoardReader. Before you sign up, take a look at some of the most popular threads in the forum. Make sure that there are legit discussions happening (not just a lot of spam), and especially look at whether forum members have signatures beneath their posts which include links back to their site. If so, sign up, and start posting. Be sure to add your own forum signature with a link back to your blog – this will ensure that you start receiving traffic from other forum members.
Question & Answer Sites
Taking your list of top blog posts, look at sites like Quora, LinkedIn Answers, Yahoo Answers, etc. and find open questions related to those blog posts. After you give your best answer to the question, include a link to your blog post as a resource / reference for more information. This should help lead traffic back to your blog from both the person who asked the question and those that read the answers later.
Images
If your blog posts have images that you have created (screenshots, photos, infographics, etc.), then you promote your blog by posting those images on sites like Flickr, Picasa (now part of Google+), and the latest social networking sensation Pinterest. When you post the images, be sure to add a link back to your blog or the blog post that the image is posted in so you can get traffic from these networks back to your site.
What other traffic generation strategies would you suggest for getting visitors to your blog?
Easther Sudharta Online Business & Marketing Coach, Indonesian born, Aussie IT Coordinator with passion for travel & teaching you to develope your Online Game Plan to achieve your financial & lifestyle goals. Join her and her team here to start developing your Online Game Plan
Posted on 8 February '12 by Sandy, under Blogging, Guest Blogger. 52 Comments.
I’ve heard over the past few years that an Alexa ranking means nothing to your online status. Recently someone said to me “Simply don’t worry about it, no one takes any notice of your Alexa Ranking anyway”. I have to say that I totally disagree with this statement and here’s why!
Your Alexa ranking can position you as an authority when someone searches for your business. They want to know how long you’ve been online, perhaps take a look at any reviews that have been completed about your site. One reason someone would check your Alexa ranking would be if they wanted to advertise on your site.
When People Advertise
The lower your Alexa ranking the more visits your website is receiving. Which also means the closer you are to page one of the search engines, the more traffic is coming to your site. When advertisers are looking for a site to place their ads on, they of course would want a site with a large amount of traffic. Your Alexa Ranking helps searchers determine your site’s popularity and credibility. People tend to trust websites that have lower Alexa ranking, before they make any purchases.
Boost your Alexa Rankings for Page One Status
Back in mid-October, 2011 I was approached by Shirley Kerkow – The Inspirational Success Coach. Shirley wanted to move forward with her business plan and knew she needed a high ranking website, generating free traffic to make this happen.
At the time Shirley’s website was known as ShirleyKerkow.com and her Alexa ranking was extremely high, as you can see from the image below.
You can see above that Shirley’s site only had one other site linking into hers and that her Alexa ranking was 25,208,668. This being the case she wasn’t getting a lot of love from the search engines or from anyone else for that matter. Shirley and I worked together ad implemented a plan to follow, so she could make her business work for her and so others could find her on page one of the search engines.
To explain the process in full would take another post altogether so, I will do that sometime soon. However, one of the main things we did was to change her domain name from ShirleyKerkow.com to the keywords she wanted to rank for. The keywords are inspirational success coach and now her domain name is InspirationalSuccessCoach.com.
90 Day Alexa Ranking
It took some work, however 90 days later and lots of amazing content posted, the InspirationalSuccessCoach.com has come from 25,000,000 with 1 backlink to an Alexa ranking of 827,347(and dropping), 33 sites linking in.
Plus Shirley ranks in her home country Australia at 17,869. That’s an awesome result and to top it off Shirley’s website also ranks on page one of Google globally for her keywords. Congratulations Shirley!
Lower your Alexa Ranking with these Tips
♦ Open an Alexa account and claim your website.
♦ Download the Alexa toolbar and keep an eye on your Alexa rankings and see site information of your competitors.
♦ Ask your clients to write a review on Alexa for your site, giving some positive thoughts on your website what they liked about it and the services you offer. This takes less than a minute to complete with a check box system.
♦ The Alexa tool bar can also come in handy when commenting on other sites within your niche. I know I am flicking around different sites all day and if I come across a site within my niche that has an Alexa ranking under 100,000 or lower, I will definitely take a few minutes out to read a post and make a valid comment.
Notice I said valid comment? Don’t leave comments on others website that says “Great Post….. I’ll be back” This is another post altogether…. Just make sure your comment is valid to the article and either asks a question of the writer or make reference to a particular paragraph in the article.
♦ When adding content to your website make sure you express yourself as you were speaking to your customer/reader. This is a crucial tip for bringing prospective clients back to your website. If they know they are getting YOU from the heart, they will be back to read more of your quality content in the future.
If you continue to add this quality content to your website, packaged with all the right SEO strategies and sharing tools it is possible to improve your Alexa ranking and start getting the traffic your business requires for success.
To all those “nay sayers” out there, do you still think your Alexa ranking doesn’t matter? Share your thoughts in the comment box below, I’d love to hear what you think……..
Posted on 5 February '12 by Sandy, under Master Marketing, Training. 54 Comments.
For over a year now I’ve been sharing Simon Sinek’s notes to Inspire Action. If you don’t know who Simon Sinek is here is a brief run down on who he is and what he does.
Simon Leads Leaders to Inspire Action
Simon Sinek is an optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people. With a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people go home every day feeling fulfilled by their work, Sinek is leading a movement to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. Tap into Simon’s Ted Talk below and see if he can Inspire Action in you.
Inspire Action….. Do YOU?
I work from home and I’m not surrounded by a constant plethora of inspiration. Like many leaders I subscribe to Simon’s Inspire Action notes which are available via his Start with Why website. Not only have I been sharing his notes to Inspire Action for over a year now, Simon’s notes still Inspire Action for me in my everyday life, even though I have read every one of them to date.
Here are some of my favourite Inspire Action Notes
True leaders do not work to do better than anyone else. They work to do better than themselves. And that’s what makes them better leaders.
When you delegate tasks you get things done. But when you delegate responsibility, others get done much more than you ever could.
In times of uncertainty, the leaders who stand out are the ones who remain certain of their decisions.
Profit comes as a result of being good at what you do. Trust comes as a result of being good at why you do it.
The ability to see order in chaos is called creativity.
We can teach only if we are willing to learn.
Problems only exist for those who don’t look for solutions.
Give people a reason to come to work, not just a place to go to work.
Are you ready to Inspire Action?
I highly recommend you head on over to Simon’s site, Start with Why and subscribe by clicking on the “get notes” icon as shown in the image below. I use these notes not only to inspire action myself, I also post them on my website occasionally within in a post or use them on Twitter and on my Facebook group “Creating Entrepreneurs One Step at a Time” to inspire action in others.
As Simon says “A mentor is not someone who walks ahead of you to show you how they did it. A mentor walks alongside you to show you what you can do.”
Posted on 30 January '12 by Sandy, under Great Leadership. 31 Comments.
