1. Make sure you take the time to compose a Twitter bio that will portray the message that you want others to know about you. What do you want them to know about you that are pertinent to your online business or other wards? Your bio will inspire people to follow you or not. Take the time to make it count.
2. Have you made any tweets before following people and hoping they will follow you back? In addition to a bio that informs people about yourself you want to post tweets that will inspire people with trust and confidence in you. Your tweets should be about your business. Provide links to your blog, website or content that you penned to let people know who you are.
3. Build rapport. Many people make the mistake to just sell to the people that follow you on Twitter. You want to create a relationship. If you write or find articles that will benefit your followers tweet them. If you find something that you think your followers will like then tweet them. Links to YouTube videos or other helpful resources are good.
4. Your Tweets need to grab the readers attention like a headline or subject line. Show that you can grab people’s interest. Since you have a limited number of characters you can use you should shorten your links. We will discus programs that will help with your Twitter account in another tip.
5. “Share the Love” Re-tweet other people’s tweets and some will return the favor, which will expose you to other people who may then decide to follow you. When people do re-tweet your tweets then you should thank them. It only takes a minute to click a button and say thank you.
6. Reply to people’s tweets, give them a compliment or thank them for sharing. These people may also decide to send you @ messages, which will also make their followers aware of you. Remember that you are part of a community and you can build valuable relationships.
7. Follow all of Twitter’s rules about following and un-following. Don’t become too aggressive or your account will be suspended. Try to keep to a 1 to 1.5 ratio.
8. Don’t be known as a spammer. If it is your intention to use Twitter to market to people it is recommended that you only have one marketing Tweet in every 10 Tweets. If all you do is try to sell people something, they will stop following you. Doing nothing but marketing tweets could get you labeled as a spammer, which could result in being banned. Remember Twitter is about being social first and marketing, if you do any marketing, second.
9. If you are using Twitter to market then look into software to do your Twitter work for you. There is one free website that can really help you use Twitter with more efficiency, Hootsuite.com. This service will submit your Tweets to a variety of sites for you. You will also be able to schedule your tweets so you can take your time to set up a day’s worth or more of tweets.
10. There are a number of paid software programs that will find targeted followers for you based on keyword or associations. It will manage the following and unfollowing of the people so you won’t have to go through hundreds and thousands of emails clicking on the follow link. You can schedule tweets and much more. Review a number of these programs, automate Twitter and save your time.

Get to know Twitter better by downloading a FREE Twitter Video Bill uses Twitter to build his online empire. Find Twitter Tools online in addition to the Video.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

10 Simple Steps to getting More Twitter Followers

The general procedure involves making multiple posts on a forum board before you even setup a signature file, which includes a link to your site. Even if the particular forum you are using does not specifically mandate this, you will want to do this, anyway, as it will increase your credibility – which is your real goal.

Finding a forum related to your niche is relatively easy to do. Simply type the name of your interest followed by the word ‘forum’ into your favorite search engine i.e. if your niche is golf, type in ‘golf forum’ into your browser and you will likely get a list of active forums on the return page. Alternatively there are a couple of URLs that you can use to obtain the same information. They are “big-boards.com” which is currently the largest forum directory on the Internet or you can use “board123.com/forum_directory.php” which has some lesser directories but does contain some forums that the first doesn’t list.

Once you have chosen a few forums that you are interested in, you will need to find out what their rules are when it comes to signature files. Some don’t allow links and others do but may not accept these links to be of a commercial nature. It’s vitally important to stick to the rules of these forums or you will find yourself banned pretty quickly.

Once you have your list of forums that allow commercial links, it’s time to start posting! Right from the beginning, make sure that you post messages that are meaningful and relevant. Set yourself up as an expert in your niche and try to give value to the group by posting useful articles and lists that others will appreciate. Only once you have developed a good reputation on these forums which will take approximately one to two weeks of regular posting, you can begin advertising through your forum signature. If it is allowed, make your signature eye-catching by using an assortment of colors, words and symbols. Link your signature to an affiliate product or an auto-responder course purposefully designed to capture email addresses.

Repeat this process throughout all the relevant forums that you discovered earlier but ensure you pick forums that have high traffic, are used regularly and are audience specific to your niche. Not all forums are created equal and you do not want to waste time on those that are just too quiet to drum up any attention. Remember to add a memorable signature file so that you draw people to click on your link and you will find that this method will pay off considerably and much faster than other methods.

http://simplecashblogbonus.com

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Tips For Forum Posting

1. The inspection post

One of the easiest ways to make money with your blog is to review products that then pay you a commission for any sales that you make. The inspection post is one where you take a closer look at a product and review it for your readers.

An effective inspection post will cover the positives as well as the negatives. People want to know what’s good and bad about a product before they buy it and the more honest you are the more likely they are to buy the product through your affiliate link.

2. The insights post

Offering insights to your readers is a great way to write an engaging and interesting post. Sometimes you might have a great tip to share that doesn’t warrant a whole article but would make a great short post. Say you blog about cake baking, a useful insights post could be as simple as instructions on how to grease a muffin pan so that the muffins turn out easily. You can add even more interest by making a short video to show your readers how it’s done.

3. The index post

Readers love lists. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 15 Great Ways to Build Traffic to Your Website or the Top 10 Kitchen Utensils Every Baker Needs. Whatever niche you are in you will be able to compile a useful index post. These resource lists are popular because they are easy to scan and can help people find the information they need quickly and easily.

The other great thing about index posts is that they have the potential to go viral. People love to share index posts with their friends via Facebook, Twitter or the other social networking sites, compile a useful list and before you know it you will have a whole new set of visitors.

4. The interview post

Interviews are a great source of interesting and engaging content for your blog. You could offer to interview an expert in your niche, or the author of a useful book. It will take some work to set up the interview as you will need to contact prospective interviewees to ask them to take part. Once they’re on board you simply need to compile an interesting list of questions and ask them to complete the answers by email for publication on your blog.

5. The instruction post

People turn to the Internet when they want to know how to do something. So instruction posts can be really useful. Spend some time in the forums and see what problems people have and then create a blog post walking them through the solution step-by-step. Including screenshots or images can help to get your message across, and videos are even better.

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5 Blog Post Styles to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Never mind, you say, I can pay to be at the top of Google. Yes you can pay a lot to be a sponsored or pay per click website. Google makes a fortune from just that. However Google itself admits that its surveys show 72% of searchers ignore the paid listings and click on the natural listings, the listings that earn their position by being relevant.

Okay, you say, I’ll pay an SEO expert a lot of money to get me to the top. Yes, you can pay a Search Engine Optimization company, but the only guarantee is that you will pay a lot of money.

Let’s cut through all the spin. Search Engine Optimization is not a science. Websites really need to be designed for relevance to search engines using some common sense.

How do you define Relevance?

In a bookstore, how do you select a book about e.g. motorbike maintenance? You check:

• Titles,
• Front covers,
• Descriptions on the back covers,
• Size of each book,
• Tables of chapters,
• Samples of paragraphs, and
• Which of the books are more popular.

If the title of the book does not include the words “motorbike maintenance” there is every chance that you won’t find a lot of information about motorbike maintenance in the book.

There is usually a description of the book on the back cover. If that doesn’t mention “motorbike maintenance” either, you are looking at the wrong book.

But of the books with “motorbike maintenance” in their titles, some are larger than others. Some have more chapters and pages than others. You expect that the larger ones will have more information than the smaller ones. You also question the bookstore on which of the books are selling more. That is how you decide which book has the most information and is most relevant to your search. Is that science or common sense?

How does Google define Relevance?

On the internet, if you search for “motorbike maintenance” Google will list ten million results in the order of relevance to your search. To sort websites in order of relevance to a search, Google has used its secret algorithm to weigh up:

• Domain names,
• Titles of the websites (meta-titles),
• Descriptions,
• Page headings and sub headings,
• Menu and navigation bar (links to inside pages),
• Quantity of information, and
• Popularity of each website based on the number of other relevant websites that link to it (same as in popularity of books).

We know those factors which are similar to those you used to find a book. We only guess the weighting Google gives to each factor.

The factors

You want a website for your business or activity to be easily found by the audience that your website is targeting. So take into account the same factors that you use in selecting a book on that subject.

Domain name

If your URL (web address) includes some part of the expression “motorbike maintenance”, e.g. motorbikemaintenance.com, Google will rank it ahead of those names that don’t, (if everything else is equal).

Title tag

The website title meta-tag, that shows at very top left of the browser, is a very important item to Google, just as the book title is to you when selecting a book to buy. Amazingly, some web masters have simply put the words “Home page” into the title tag. That makes a web page very relevant to people searching the internet for a “home” but, not relevant to search for “motorbike maintenance”.

Also include other words that people might search for, e.g. “motorcycle repairs”. If you are targeting a particular region, e.g. Australia, that word is needed in the title meta-tag to capture searchers who qualify their search for the subject in Australia only.

Description

The description meta-tag is also an aid to relevance, just as the description of a book is there to tell you what the book is about. However the words in the title meta-tag and description meta-tag should also show on the web page itself, otherwise they might be ignored.

Headings

The headings of each web page take the same importance as the chapter names in a book. Page headings are more effective if they are succinct, leaving out words like “and” “the” “of” and “a”.

Hyperlinks

The navigation bar can be text with hyperlinks to the inside pages. The text can look like buttons or tabs with the help of CSS. Google ignores images and javascript navigation bars. In the body text of the home page more points can be gained for keywords if they are hyperlinks to inside pages. Points are also there for those who place a keyword in their email address, e.g. bikes@ instead of info@.

Size of Website

The volume of information counts towards the relevance of the website to a search, just the same as the size of a book. We are amazed at people who put up a one-page website and expect Google to rank it high for relevancy in front of a 50-page website. Look at page one of Google for any search. Are any one-page websites listed there?

Popularity

Google believes that if other relevant websites link to yours, then your website must be more relevant than those that don’t have such incoming links. However the test is relevance. A link from a motorbike club is relevant for a motorbike maintenance website. A link from a casino is not relevant.

Are You Relevant?

To be relevant to a search for any words, your web page needs to contain those words in its title, heading, hyperlinks and body text. Links from other relevant websites add to your relevance. Search engines use the same process that you use if you search a bookstore for a book on motorbike maintenance.

This article was not written to discourage readers from paying for SEO. However, it’s hoped that readers now understand more about what’s behind SEO. It’s not magic or science, but really common sense.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Are You Relevant to Google?

Here is a basic list of things that you must consider when creating your first and each subsequent website.

• The website needs to be clearly laid out, with separate pages for different topics within the overall subject matter.
• The site will need to focus on a specific subject which is aimed at a distinct audience.
• Both outgoing and incoming links to and from worthwhile and excellent top quality websites should be included.
• Diverse pages should link into each other where relevant.
• There should be plenty of superb content packed with useful information.
• Any affiliate or referral links need to be sprinkled throughout the web page in the relevant places; they need to be tested to see what works the best.
• The correct use of keywords and phrases which will help attract visitors and improve positioning within the search engines need to be used.
• And finally, you must include an internet site map to make it less difficult for visitors to move around the internet site and find what they need. This is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap just for the sake of having one.

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. They can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of things on this list, they may take a little time to put together but they are not difficult by any means. Once they are in place, you can tweak and test your site and add new content to keep it fresh and interesting which in turn will keep the search engines and your website visitors very happy indeed!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Constructing A Website That Works

Sometimes it is called the “semantic Web,” but perhaps the less-used term “everyware” is more descriptive. The new scenario is one of ubiquitous computing, the advent of cloud computing where a “thin client” (no- or low-powered PC, or even just a monitor and mouse) runs cloud-based applications using cloud-based data and services. The Apple iPhone, iPod and iPad are all examples of formerly standalone devices that were integrated into the Web, and connect people in a seamless, real-time and very simple way with – well, with everything, from libraries and department stores to other people, anywhere in the world.

From Read-Only to Interactivity

One of the Web’s true “parents” was Tim Berners-Lee, who had his own notion of how the technology and the Internet developed. The first phase of the Web had read-only capabilities. It was essentially a spectator experience until read-write functionality came along (sure, call it Web 2.0) that included services to enable contribution, collaboration, content creation and interactivity. The next step in Berners-Lee’s version vision, Web 3.0, is heralded as “new territory,” where users can assemble and run their own applications, create all sorts of cooperative and collaborative enterprises, and truly put their ideas in motion rather than simply uploading stuff to this, that or the other site.

People with money invested in other, still-useful devices – phones, PDAs, fax machines, etc. – don’t have to worry about Web 3.0 making them obsolete. In addition to letting users create their own tools, Web 3.0 is another step in the evolution of usage and interaction in which the Internet holds multiple databases and content that will be accessible to many non-browser-based devices and applications. The obvious uses will be video that streams from a PC to a TV, picture frames that receive wireless updates from an online or local photo app, and phones that display items recommended by your trusted sources – friends, review sites, experts – when you’re shopping.

From Data to Knowledge

In addition to the foregoing characteristics, Web 3.0 is also said to encompass other important advances. For one thing, all sorts of inputs are possible, which means all sorts of new combinations become possible. Content can be made even more broadly relevant when it’s related to GPS, so that social networking, for example, can be enhanced by knowing who is where and doing what.

More importantly, you will get more and better control of your data and be able to establish a number of personalization systems to “wrap” your personal information with different levels and types of protection – so that you can share it widely, narrowly or not at all. Over time, the accuracy of recommendations and trustworthiness of ranking systems will help us determine which data sources to take seriously and which to avoid.

From Business Faxes to Online Games

With the rise of “linkable web apps” you will be able to use all of your different desktop, server and mobile devices and applications – telephones, fax machines and online fax services, instant messaging, pagers – and control them from a single browser window on your desktop, smartphone or handheld device. All of it will take place in an always-on, always-everywhere environment, with functionality embedded sometimes in hardware, sometimes in software, sometimes in both – so that when you need to take care of business without downloading the capability, you’ll be able to do so.

Along with more of the visual and voice-based services that are already starting to proliferate, there will be more lifelike avatar interactions in the growing virtual social networking world. This will lead to social shopping trips and virtual reality gaming far beyond anything currently being done.

In mid-2009, the “Wall Street Journal” ran a story on the development of Web 3.0 capabilities and the promise of ever-greater interconnectedness among technologies, products, services and people. The story even gave us a yardstick by which to measure the success of Web 3.0, if in fact it does succeed. If, as the WSJ puts it, “computing could become as integrated and invisible as electricity and just as important” – and we can attribute it to the new and improved Web – we’ll know that the promise has lived up to the hype. Here’s hoping!

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What to Expect from Web 3.0

Cut expenses across the board

Cut marketing. Cut staff. Cut all expenditures! This siren call is the most common and foolish mistake. It’s common because it is a knee jerk reaction that requires no thinking. It’s foolish for the same reasons. Making across the board cuts is a political response. It’s not a smart business strategy. If cutting across the board in tough times was smart then raising all expenses in good times would also be smart.

Instead, review all expenditures and categorize each line item into A, B and C categories in terms of ROI. “A” items are those expenditures where you can measure a strong return. Continue spending and maybe even increase these investments. “B” items are those that you believe are good but you haven’t yet developed an accurate measurement. Continue these activities, improve the tactics and improve the measurement. “C” items are losers. Stop these completely.

Cut your prices

You will be asked to cut your price. Don’t act like that is a surprise. And don’t pretend that this is the first time. So prepare for an onslaught of such requests. Prepare to deal with the price issue strategically not as a prisoner. Don’t cut price – without an equivalent exchange in value or a reduction in your costs. For example you might allow a discount for early payment or a larger order.

Another way to deal with price resistance is to introduce a lower value product. At the same time introduce a higher value product so the original product which is now in the middle looks more attractive. This is a variation of the good-better-best positioning. If you can’t afford a Lexus you can always buy a Toyota.

Hide

Imagine how it looks when you stop attending trade shows, discontinue your advertising, shelve your newsletter, stop meeting with clients and avoid networking events. Imagine what your clients will think, what your competitors can say and what prospects might believe. None of it will be positive for you or your business.

When times are bad, people need to hear from you more often. Especially make a point of connecting with your best clients and advocates more often. Make your connections more personable so they can feel your confidence.

For the rest of your clients and contacts find efficient ways to stay connected. Maybe it’s a good time to launch your newsletter – or publish it more often. Explore the tools on the Internet that allow you to stay in touch with people easier and more cost effectively. It might be a good time to launch your blog, build your FaceBook page or post videos on YouTube.

A recession can be tough. No need to panic. It’s time to think and act smart with your marketing. Keep your business off the rocks while aiming for the deeper waters beyond. Don’t stop paddling until you are clear of the rocks.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

3 Marketing Mistakes That Sink Business in a Recession

Individuals today have a personal brand. Employers and colleagues will search on your name, so it is imperative that you keep this in mind when posting online. You must control your online reputation.

The web is not always a friendly place, so what do you do if you are not using an alias and someone is posting derogatory information about you, your company, your products, or your brand?

Monitor Your Brand

The first step in monitoring your brand is to setup automated notifications within the various search engines, either via email or an RSS feed. This way, you will know when you are being discussed, either in favorable or unfavorable terms. For example, the “Google Alerts” feature is a free service that will send email notifications to you when specific words or phrases appear in new search results. Simply use your name, company name, product name, or brand as the phrase being monitored. Ego Feeds work in a similar fashion, except the alerts appear in a custom created RSS feed that updates whenever new mentions occur. For more information about Ego Feeds, see a related article at http://www.feedforall.com/ego-searches.htm

Control Your Brand

The second step in protecting your brand is to take a pro-active approach to appearing in the top search results when your name is entered into a search engine. You can do this by offering interviews, reviews, SEO, and writing articles or posting blog entries. At the very least, make an effort to control the top search results for your name. This will ensure that when your personal brand is searched, those items will be listed in the top 10 search results.

Damage Control

If you find something that is damaging or harmful, do damage control. Control your responses, and behave in a professional manner so it is clear that you took the high road when the exchange is viewed by others at a later time.

Social

The final bit of advice is to simply keep personal things personal. While the social sites are great for maintaining friendships, they are not helpful for people who have an occasional lapse in judgment. Refrain from posting pictures that show anything that you would not want your mother or future grandchildren to see, or saying anything when you are mad or upset since we often say things “in the heat of battle” that we regret later.

The Internet is preserving and archiving personal history in a way that has never previously happened. Control your online reputation for posterity.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Online Reputation Management

What is Real Time Search? As per Google

“… new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just
seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.”

In other words, your tweets from Twitter and new blog articles will be appear as “Latest Results.” The latest results are featured in 2 ways.

• a. On the search results page below the “News Results” (if there are news results). This appears for very hot topics that are getting a lot of activity.
• b. The “Show Options” menu: click on “Latest” under All Results and the live search results will appear.

What Does This Mean for Small Businesses?

1. Customer Experience.

Consumers are much more savvy and they are going online for more information. A quick Google search will provide them possibly more information about your company than you might have thought. A business cannot control what a person tweets about. As we see in the example below, tweets are posted when they mention a topic, business name, a name, etc. See:

Image Courtesy of: Lifehacker.com

Most tweets, blog entries and company mentions will show up under “Latest” and not on the main search results page. However, if a consumer wants to see more information about you, they have the option at their fingertips.

2. Reputation Management.

Not every business is on Twitter or has a blog, nor do they necessarily belong. However, ignoring your “Latest” news can present a problem. If a consumer is singing your praises, or worse a bad comment is written and you do not respond, you are adding fuel to the fire. That customer has been given a chance to continuously go on and on about your company/brand whereas the praise singer just got deflated with no feedback from you. Failing to monitor your reputation online could result in some missed opportunities or a poor company image that leads to reduced sales.

3. Spam.

Yes there will be spam because spammers are going to jump on this like ants at a summer picnic. While Google will make every attempt to try and control spam, the current algorithm for posting in real time makes that nearly impossible. How will this affect a small business? Spammers could very well keyword stuff tweets to get ahead and push your company lower on the tweets area. This is going to happen. There is no control right now, but the key is to try and stay ahead of them.

4. Search Engine Optimization.

Will real time search improve page rank? This remains to be seen. Will keyword laden tweets that are tweeted over and over from different accounts and push a company to the top of a searched term make a difference? Will this be seen as spam? Keyword laden tweets will give great results for a specific term, especially for those difficult to rank terms, and even if your company is atop of tweets for a short time, you may reap some rewards.

Real time search is not just the posting of tweets. It also posts company mentions from blog articles. So if your company has a blog, you may want to check out your “Latest” results.

In small business branding we have to consider social media marketing as an extension of your brand in the same way that we do traditional advertising. For some businesses, it is a time of uncertainty. As stated earlier, not every business needs to be on Twitter. A “crickets” account is worse than no account at all. But can you still just ignore the social media community?

The good news here is that, if you are able to squeeze in an extra hour as a small business owner, you can go and see what terms are popular in your industry, see what is being said about you, and see if you need to move full steam ahead in 2010.

Most smal businesses will need to do so because social media marketing has just started to make a big impact and getting in now will make a world of a difference in a year or so.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Google’s Real-Time Search Impact On Small Businesses

I want to list a number of Wordpress Twitter Plugins that you should know about for your personal Twitter experience.

Tweet Meme
You are possibly familiar with the little graphic that shows the number of tweets a blog post has and then you see a green button under that number that says retweet. This is the Tweet Meme plugin for Wordpress and it makes it easy for your visitors to tweet your blog to their Twitter feed.

Tweetbacks
With the explosion of blogging and Twitter this Wordpress plugin will import Tweets about your post as comments. You can display the tweetbacks nested in other comments on your blog or display them separately. The more comments you have on your site the better ranking your page can get in Google since it shows activity and value.

Twitter Tools
Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Twitter Tools integrates with Twitter by giving you the following functionality:

• Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)
• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
• Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

Twit this
Place some simple code on your site to create a graphic or a text link that people can click to post a Tweet to their Twitter account.

Twitt twoo
Twitt-Twoo is a simple little plugin that will allow you to update your Twitter status right from your blog’s sidebar. AJAX takes cares of the hard work, and means that your page doesn’t even have to reload, allowing for quick and easy status updates. Displays your latest Twitter status, and when it was last updated.

Twitter Updater
The Twitter Updater automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post. You can specify the text for the updates, and also have the option to turn the auto update on/off for the different post actions in the admin panel.

Twittar Wordpress Plugin
This Wordpress plugin will try to load the twitter avatar of the person leaving a comment on a blog post. It will try to match the email address in the comment to the Twitter account. If this cannot be done it will attempt to use the Gravatar. There are a number of other style settings you can use for customization.

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7 Wordpress Twitter Plugins to Spice up Your Blog