With
the
recent
advances
in
technology,
the
“American
dream”
has
transformed
from
thoughts
of
white
picket
fences
and
a
well‐paying
nine
to
five
job
into
the
idea
of
having
a
lucrative,
work‐from‐ home
and
make‐money‐while‐you‐sleep
type
career.
You
make
your
own
hours
and
have
yourself
as
a
boss!
T hat’s
the
dream
of
today.
Most
people
think
that
just
because
you’re
able
to
home
and
at
your
own
computer
means
it’s
going
easy.
Unfortunately,
while
it’s
certainly
possible
to
substantial
income
from
home,
it
requires
hard
dedication
and
an
unyielding
desire
to
succeed…
every
other
successful
endeavor!
do
it
from
to
be
earn
a
work,
just
like
No
matter
where
you’re
at
in
your
Internet
marketing
career,
it
is
both
beneficial
and
to
not
only
build
a
solid
foundation
of
the
basics,
but
expound
upon
this
as
well.
Without
this
founda
Week 9
necessary
Marketing: How to use social media to spread your brand
]
ocument
here.
The
abstract
is
typically
a
short
summary
of
the
co
tio n,
you ’ll
be
lost
and
con fus ed.
Tha t’s
where
this
guide
comes
in.
This
12
Week
Course
contains
the
information
you
need
to
be
knowledgeable
about
the
industry
while
also
learning
the
best
ways
to
use
different
tools
found
online.
W hile
you
don’t
ne ed
to
be
an
expert
in
all
of
the
fields
we’ll
talk
about,
you
will
at
least
become
a
“Jack
of
all
trades”
(so
keep
this
in
mind
throughout
the
training).
Welcome...
Social Media - You'd think that would be an oxymoron, such as "military intelligence", "open secret", or "deafening silence". So many people are pissing into the social media stream, and so few are profiting. But it is possible to get practical value out of social media-- let me provide a few tips:
Piggyback on trends: When Michael Jackson died, we had ads up in minutes. The ads were at first tame: "Is MJ really dead?" and then increased to vulgar-- "See the King of Pop's grand exit". By the time everyone else jumped on the bandwagon a day later, it was too late. By the way, we didn't make our money on ringtones, it was a direct social media deal.
Automate things that work: If you spot something that works, systematize it-- for example, automatically inject a "Dead celebrities" Twitter feed into ads. Be creative-- try "live internet suicide" and "13 year old reporting graphic sexual abuse". We don't do this, by the way-- this is a post for those of you out there willing to go that far. Call this technique "re-tweet in banner ads." Fake internet prophets: Notice fakestevejobs or how about doing a search on twitter for Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report – the top 3 accounts are fakes, yet still command over 600,000 followers. If you can mimic an outspoken individual or someone with an considerable fan base, it’s a social goldmine. Listen in to what’s popular: Tapping into what everyone is talking about is crucial to social media. Imagine you’re back in school and you’re trying to keep ahead of the curve with what’s hip. Luckily, almost every single social medium has a feed. This handy feature allows you to see a condensed version of
what’s new on someone’s blog, Twitter account, or Facebook page. Check out Google Reader and subscribe to a few news websites, and keep an eye on what topics are popping up the most. For example, compare the popularity of Michael Jackson versus Billy Mays versus Farah Fawcett over the last 30 days. Clearly, MJ is the winner of the dead celebrity contest. So that ought to give you an idea of what hot trend to be riding.
Conclusion: It's easier to ride someone else's wave than to have to create your own.
Social Media is about Relationships, not Keywords
Because social media is about leveraging relationships, you want to promote your business in every single interaction you have on the web. Do you have your website in your email signature line? How about also putting in your Facebook vanity URL, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other handles? If you're not doing that, you're wasting valuable opportunity to let people know about your business. And when people forward your email to other people, those new people will also see your signature line, so it's not just for people you already know. The exception is if you're promoting a product that you're not proud of-- in that case, the social media methods mentioned here won't work for you, as they rely upon long-term multiplication of traffic. If you have a shady product, your best avenue to make money is to make flogs. A flog is a "fake blog" that has a fake user review (usually about their dramatic weight loss or get rich quick profits). The more advanced flogs look like actual newspaper sites, complete with boxes for weather and sports scores.
Here's an example of a stay-at-home dad who is now a professional blogger on parenting topics. By running ads to your Facebook fan page, you're likely to generate more fans at a lower cost per visit. Users are more likely to stay on Facebook, than leave. And when they become a fan, you have the opportunity to connect with them right there, instead of just sending them to a page and not being able to see them again. If you're truly about building a lasting business, then you want to invest in building up long-term relationships with your users.
Conclusion: You want to connect your niche idea to as many people as you can, leveraging your existing trust. In the next section, we'll discuss how to multiply across multiple social media sites.
Multiply Like A Virus
We mean viral marketing, not virus marketing! But the analogy works. Start by creating rich profiles at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo, and Yahoo360, but don't just copy the profile information exactly. Make each profile slightly different, not just because of duplicate content penalties that come from SEO, but because each social network has a slightly different bias. A rich profile means putting in as much data as you can: videos, photos, blog posts (More on that below), links, and descriptions. Don't just put in the URL and a one sentence description-weak. Even Google.com let's your create your own profile now. Having one of these on your side gets you priority on Google – Which is crucial to upholding your reputation and eliminating irrelevant / negative results. You always want to rank not only for your product name, but your name as well.
Make sure to grow your profile across each network, then chain them together. Networks like Facebook and Linkedin can be tied to your Twitter account, which eliminates the need for you to waste time having to update your profiles when you want to post a new message. You may want to consider creating multiple profiles on each network. For example, you should create a Facebook profile and a fan page. But wouldn't a fan page also be redundant? Not necessarily-- you might create multiple fan pages, one for each product that you're selling. Plus, you can run Facebook selfserve ads to your fan pages, which you can't do for your profile. Conclusion: Don't force people to use Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Yahoo360, or whatever site-- put yourself on all of them and meet people there. Use a service that allows you to update once and have it automatically update all your statuses.
Now Tie Your Profiles and Sites Together!
If you’re promoting something you’re already an expert in, tie your blog to your page. Social media only works when people can see what you have to say, and the more places you’re able to show it off, the better. There’s a reason why Facebook is the leading social network on the web – it’s just so versatile. They’ve provided an easy way for you to link your blog to your pages wall. Check out these steps: 1. Log into Facebook, and click your 'Applications' toolbar in the bottom left, and find the ‘Notes’ application
2. On the right-hand side is Notes Settings, click the 'Import a Blog' link
3. For the Web URL field, enter the RSS/Atom feed address for your blog, agree to the terms, then click 'Start Importing'
4. Make sure that the feed imported correctly, and click ‘Confirm Import’
See? Not hard at all. It’s easy to get the word out about things like Michael Jackson’s funeral arrangements and free funeral advice. Now your Facebook page is automatically kept up to date with your blog posts! Cross promote your profiles on all networks, chances are your friends use other social networks as well. Think of each connection as another possible source for people to see what you’re talking about. Don’t just think about multiplying by yourself – There’s a reason why it’s called Viral Marketing. If you find yourself writing an email that could just as easily be turned into a blog post, why not do it? We have a couple folks that format blog posts, too. My blog posts take only a few minutes to write. I just write an email and then they format it, look for funny pictures, stick in links, and so forth. Thus, when you might be thinking-- "Damn, I don't have an hour to mess with writing a blog post", instead, you say "Oh, ten minutes? No problem-- let me crank one out real quick." Consider the bang for the buck that is possible. Conclusion: It pays to reduce the time and effort required when you want to get a message out
Often large brands will...
Infect The Communities Because those community sites usually have a link from the brand's home page, getting yourself prominently listed can be almost as good as getting a link from a category page on bankofamerica.com for example. The Bank of America community is Google PageRank 7 and it's not hard to get yourself listed there with enough postings. Sometimes the community will not no-follow the links, meaning that the link juice will flow to your site, because you put your links in your profile. This is not the same as commenting on blogs to get to the top commenters section-- those usually no-follow links. This is about taking advantage of loopholes that corporate IT isn't aware of-- or at least their internal SEO person doesn't understand. Hewlett-Packard has a community, too- and American Express used to have a great one.
When we tried this technique a couple years ago, like clockwork it would give us immediate rankings on terms of intermediate difficulty. Often the loopholes are found and closed, so you just have to try it.
Note: link to Blitzlocal.com isn’t no-followed—it passes juice from B of A’s PageRank8 website
Conclusion: Large brands will suck blood (or link juice) from community sites that allow you to post profiles that don't have no follow links.
Twitter friending rules
Twitter, for the most part, is a massive waste of time. So how can you use Twitter effectively? And Facebook, for that matter?
Some folks use massive auto-follow program, similar to the old days of MySpace trains-- where the number of friends is what counted, even if they were all robots. Don't do this unless you just want to boast that you have 10,000 fans. Some folks game the system by following a ton of folks, then unfollowing those who don't return the favor. That's the binge and purge method-- you eat until you puke, then stuff your face again. At the end of the process, you seemingly have a large fan base, yet don't follow many people. So clearly you must be popular. Twitter does have rules on how many follows you can do each day. Still-- a terrible strategy. Others just follow whoever their friends follow. An acceptable strategy, as these are likely to be people you know and are interesting to you. And you have a better likelihood of actually interacting with them, as well as them paying genuine interest in what you tweet, amongst the heaps of garbage that float down this vast river of tweets. But the best strategy? Follow those people who are popular in the niche that you're blogging about. Create a list of them, comment on their blog posts, follow them. When they follow you back, then send them a Direct Message. Then friend them on every other profile you have, which then gets injected into the feeds of other people they know. When you have critical mass, now you're one of those people who are prominent in your topic.
Thus, you are establishing a clear focus on what you're tweeting about. You're about ONE thing, not the pasta you had for dinner, the fact you're going to bed, the inside joke that nobody else gets, or something off topic. If not, you might listen to the radio on auto-scan mode, where it changes the station every 3 seconds—It’s torture listening to random drivel. Instead, stick with one station and have that be consistent across your blog, social media profiles, email signatures, and so forth. Other people will clearly understand you as THE person who is all about your particular niche.
You can't be known for 27 different niches-- people's brains cannot digest that. Now what about people that fan you? Most of them are irrelevant. You can safely ignore most of them. But from time to time, go through your list and see if they are saying something about your topic. Discard them if they:
Have a blank profile picture Follow more people than follow them Ever tweet self-promotional items-- it's a spam channel or bot or idiot-- all the same, anyway Have thousands of tweets-- odds are they're spewing drivel about what they ate or something
Are we real friends or just social media friends?
Other Twitter tips Always make sure you have a good avatar. It should be square in order to maintain aspect ratio and it should be visually memorable. Block spammers who follow you, you don’t want your follow count to be inflated by spammers. Do NOT send auto Direct Messages—it’s spam and it pisses people off. Reply often, but be sure to make your replies meaningful—you want to add value, not noise. Use your real name as your Twitter handle, and if you refuse to do that or your name isn’t available use a memorable short handle. Don’t claim to be an expert in your bio—strive for accuracy while still being modest. Having a custom background is key-- don't choose a default background, make one that has your other profiles in them so you can cross-promote. Sure, it's an image, but people can at least see the url of your website and go check out what you have there. Conclusion: Don't make friends with everyone-- as in the real world, make real friends with the folks who count in your niche and extend that friendship to facebook, email, and even in person!
Further Promotion
Press releases Any time you have something honestly worthy of mention, it’s time to submit via the free press release sites. The trick to press releases is not to sound overly self-promotional with highfalutin’ sales language, but to provide factual specifics about what just happened and why it's noteworthy. If you can include a quote from one of your respected friends in the niche (gathered from your social media efforts followed above), that gives you credibility. Treat it like a news story, but from a slightly favorable angle. This process will take you 20 minutes to run through once you're efficient-perhaps a lot longer the first time around. You can shortcut the process by using automated tools and services (often not as effective because of captchas and posting to the wrong sites-- but search for "free press release services"). Or you can hire someone-- pay then $10 per submission that they run through the process below. List of free press release sites: free-press-release.com prlog.com i-newswire.com prurgent.com pr.com 24-7pressrelease.com (NOTE: Submit only one per day, or they will ban you!) pressmethod.com pr-inside.com bignews.biz Create a folder named Press Release Sites. Use Firefox 3.0, and massbookmarking (CTRL+SHIFT+D on Windows). Then, you can recall each one by going to Bookmarks, then the folder you put them in, and hitting 'Open all in tabs'.
Next, go to docs.google.com, and make a new spreadsheet. This is handy for tracking the status of your releases and sharing your progress with others. Place the PR site URLs along the top, and use the first column to write down the title of your press release. You can store the master copies of these in docs.google.com as well, so you’ll always have them, and others can view/edit them. When submitting press releases, do the following: First, make sure you have accounts on each PR website listed above, and assign a forwarded email to it-- for example: Shoemoney will get Subject_PR@shoemoney.com Then forward all email on that account to your master inbox. Open your press release in an editor, and split it up into defined sections (Title, Summary, Body, Closing Words, Tags, and Contact information). It's good to write 2 or 3 variations of the same story, since search engines hate duplicate content. Open all of the press release websites in new tabs, and usually start by submitting to Free-Press-Release.com, they're highest ranked, and publish the quickest. Copy all of the info into their respective fields, and enter the CAPTCHA security text. Submit, and go to the next tab, rinse and repeat. (Some websites will give you the permalink immediately, while others simply say 'We'll review it'. It's good practice to 'roll' out your press releases in different intervals, and most websites have a 'publish at' time - Try to spread out publications over a 3 day period.) After submitting to each website, make sure you update your spreadsheet with the permalinks that you were given, or just mark them as 'Pending'. Keep track of everything you do, so it’s easy to remember what you’ve written about. Once you have the URL, add it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl (This step isn't crucial, but gives you peace of mind that Google will review it.) Check every day to make sure the press releases have been published, or if they were rejected. If they were turned down, don't worry - most websites will tell you why and let you resubmit after you've made the appropriate edits. You can see the status of your releases on the control panel of every website.
Conclusion: Don't be afraid to toot your horn, but have it sound like someone else is doing it and that it sounds objective
Local Directories If you're a local business or selling anything that is local-- could even be flowers, doesn't have to be something like what BlitzLocal does-- dentists, doctors, lawyers, roofers, massage therapists, then you want to show up in local search results, which is both organic search and map results. If you're not local, which means that your niche is nationwide-- skip ahead to the next section. Here's what to do: It isn’t necessary, but for a little help - download this Macro tool created by Max Darby, it’s incomplete but helps with quickly recalling information if you’re mass-submitting to a large number of directories. Here’s how to use it:
1. Extract the zip file to a folder 2. Open Macro.exe from where you unzipped it. 3. It will open as a small window with text input boxes with each category (There may be more on some of the sites but this is just a helper tool to speed up the process on some of the more repetitive sites). 4. Fill in each field as necessary–Each one corresponds to the number listed below it 5. Using your Numpad (if you use a laptop, hold your function key and use the emulated numpad which is usually marked on the keys MJKLUIO789) – Make sure to have Numlock OFF. 6. Now going through the registration process or the listing information page, you can easily recall the information for most general forms by tapping the numbers on your numpad.
1. The first step in this process is to open each page from the list below in separate tabs in Firefox (Recommended!) or whatever browser you might be using. I recommend Firefox is a handy plugin called Snaplinks, which allows you to open link en masse by dragging while right clicking: List of Local Directory Sites
To make this step easier in the future after opening the tabs save them as a bookmark (Ctrl + Shift + D in Firefox) this way you can recall them quickly like in the press release section.
2. Next step is to create a new e-mail address as a catch-all: Then create a forwarded email account such as businessname_listing@gmail.com. This makes it easier to keep up with all the confirmation emails that will be sent in the registration process which is the next step. 3. You will need to open another tab with your new email address. A few of these sites will use your directory information as your registration. 4. After each site registration, go to your tab with your email opened and if need be, activate the confirmation link (If using Google you will need to
contact the client your are listing beforehand to make them aware of a phone call confirmation or a post card containing a confirmation PIN).
5. If you have confirmed all the emails for user registration, then create your listing or profile on the sites. Enter in the appropriate information on the forms needed and if it has more options such as metatags or detailed info fill this in as best and as logical as possible. 6. After you have went through each site you will now need to keep up with where you listed these sites. You should add your sites/listing status and link in an excel document with site in one column of cells and your links/status in the next. Some of the sites will have an immediate link some will take up to 2 months to show up. If you do not have a link add that you have listed the info and it is pending. Please Note: Some of these directories take up to 60 days for approval and most will take at minimum 2 weeks to show up in search queries so be patient if you do not see these immediately this is where having a single catch all email for your listings comes in handy since you can see updates for each listing, when you know the listings are approved add the link to your excel document to keep up with where the clients are listed. Conclusion: If you're local, you have to deal with a separate local search algorithm and getting up into map results, So get listed!
Bonus tip: Build sites for high profile friends in exchange for links This is almost cheating, it works so well, But it will only work once you've followed all of the previous steps in our guide. Once you have built up a blog that has 50 good posts, 20-30 guest posts on blogs that are at least PR4, 10-15 press releases, and 1,000 friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn-- then you can reach out to the other folks who are powerful in your niche and offer to build them a site. You see-- by now, you already have an impressive site. It ranks well, looks good, is well followed, gets lot of traffic, has important people guest posting on it, and so forth. So other folks will ask you how you did it and perhaps if you can teach them. To that you say, "Of course!" And in return, you suggest that you guys (or girls) exchange guest blog posts. You share what you've learned here with the Shoemoney Xtreme Internet Marketing Guides-- as well as additional tips that you've learned along the way-- and get them to link to you.
Most people who are experts in a niche (unless it's blogging or internet marketing) don't know about online marketing. They might know a lot about baby's dresses, the best holiday vacation in Australia, mountain bike parts, or skin rejuvenation creme-- whatever the topic-- so if they even have a site, it's probably some crappy thing on blogger.com, typepad, livejournal or 37 other free blogging sites. So you offer to build their site for free in exchange for some favorable mentions and a link in the footer. You could even copy the site you already made and just pay someone $100 to re-skin the theme to their liking. Conclusion: Practice the golden rule-- Do unto others before they do unto you. No, just kidding-- that's the affiliate marketers rule. Seriously... Do favors for important people so that they will speak kindly of you and link to you.
Final words
We've been through 9 intense weeks together-- by now you have all the building blocks to have a site that generates traffic for your chosen niche. In these final 3 weeks, we will cover how to operate as a business:
To measure how you're doing so you can adjust To find partnerships with the right people so you can scale your operations without requiring your daily involvement And to launch your business with a bang!
ShoeMoney Action Plan: Week 9
Subscribe to popular trend feeds and monitor what's hot Use trends to your advantage to promote your favorite category Set up profiles on prominent Social networks Make sure all of your social network profile are unique Chain together your social profiles Have your profiles update with your Blog / Twitter feeds Build a network of quality connections, not spammers/noisemakers Choose and focus on one topic for writing Submit articles to press release websites for further promotion List local business in online directories Build / Skin a high-profile experts website in exchange for links