Yahoo Adopts Real-Time Search
Posted by Marty on Feb 23, 2010
It’s all over the news. Yahoo! has finalized a partnership with Twitter to incorporate Twitter’s tweets into Yahoo!’s search database. When someone adds a tweet about a topic and it immediately displays in a search on Yahoo! based on the keywords used in the tweet, that is called real-time search.
Some people believe real-time search will overpower regular search on main search engines, thereby forcing people to be active on Twitter and other social networks if they ever hope to generate traffic from search engines.
But, that doesn’t make sense for two main reasons:
1) It will be too easy for hackers to game the real-time search system so that only their massive quantities of tweets will drive the content generated for search engines to post.
2) Standard search content will always be a necessary component of search engines because tweets can still only be 140 characters in length. And, people expect that when they do a search, that a page will display with enough content for them to be informed.
So, yes, real-time content will be an important factor of search going forward, but that doesn’t mean stop making blog posts, adding pages to your site and optimizing both of those for search engines. Search engines including Yahoo! will still need your content beyond 140 characters.
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Profit Again in 2010 Workshop
Posted by Marty on Jan 7, 2010
Using the Internet to grow your business has dramatically changed since the beginning of 2009. If you’ve been misled into thinking all it takes to be successful online today is getting a few hundred followers on Twitter, spending hours a day “Facebooking” or gaining top placement on Google for your book title or business name, we’d like to offer you a reality check…and a path for hope…for the new year!
Throughout 2010 I will be offering a new workshop called, fittingly, “Profit Again in 2010.
If you’re not familiar with me, I’m a 15-year Internet marketing “lifer,” co-authored of “Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies” (Wiley 2009), and I’ll be using this workshop to update you on the radical progression of WordPress websites, blogs, traffic building, social networking, rss, podcasting, Federal Trade Commission restrictions and Google banning since just a year ago.
I don’t just “write and speak” about Internet marketing. I create and promotes my own products, manuals, and membership sites, with more than 100 of my own websites. Myself, along with a team of 7 at HereNextYear, Inc. have serviced more than 300+ clients nationwide.
For just one of those clients this past August, we launched just one website that enjoyed 99 product pages indexed on top of Google within 3 days. By the end of the first week, the site brought in more than $3,826 in sales. By Thanksgiving, the site delivered its first $100,000 in revenue.
Coincidence? No way. It’s the same process for any business, author or speaker…every time. All you have to do is find where you are in the process and plug in.
True success of any financial measure for your book, product or business will be no accident or stroke of luck. And, in today’s economy, you can’t afford to shoot darts at a wall in the dark!
You won’t find overnight riches or make that elusive “money while you sleep” with a casual, ho-hum approach.
And it won’t happen by changing a few meta tags on your home page.
What’s the answer? P.T.A.
1. Plug-in
2. Team-up
3. Accelerate
That’s right, just three simple steps.
First, you must identify where you are in the Internet marketing process and “plug-in” to that process. The success plan online is almost exactly the same for every business, author or speaker and hasn’t changed in almost 15 years! All you have to do is discover the process, find out where you are in that process and plug-in.
Second, team-up with those that can help you implement the process. Hiring a random website designer from Craigslist or someone from a foreign country just because you can get services for 20 cents on the dollar might have helped five years ago, but outsourcing today only helps you if you are an experienced Internet marketing project manager. You need to start now to form a devoted team that will be at your side for years to come to help you with technical challenges and smart and calculated marketing planning.
Third, only after you know the process and have a team to rely on can you expect to accelerate implementation and see the rewards.
Specifically, here’s what I will cover during any Profit Again in 2010 workshop, seminar, full-day training, or 20-minute speech:
-My 3-step process to predict whether your product or book can even be sold online or whether you should just throw it in the trash and move on
-Why Google has banned more than 150,000 websites for life in just the past month…and how to avoid being next!
-The FTC’s crackdown on misuse of testimonials and affiliate marketing and what you need to do to protect yourself from being accused of false claims…The CAN SPAM Act was only the beginning to this!
-Why every business owner, author and speaker should have “5″ websites or more…even if your competition already does!
-What keyword phrases the human population is searching online for and how you can stand in the way and benefit from that traffic
-The “new” evolution of websites and why it doesn’t even make sense to have anything else
-The secrets of social networking automation that only those with 2,000 Twitter followers or more even know about.
-How to get 300 minutes of social networking benefit for every 30 minutes you spend
-The Article Marketing Underground Triangle: How to write an article once and use what you’ve written for explosive reach to more than 30,000 websites, video directories and bookmarking sites for obscene traffic flooding whenever you want it.
-Plus, I will reveal my most closely held secret to managing what should be 10 hours a day of promotion productivity that gets accomplished in less than 60 minutes…every day.
As we roll out this essential program, look for specific dates and locations to be accessible through our main website at HereNextYear.com on our Workshops page.
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7 Steps to Getting Started for New Internet Marketers
Posted by Marty on Oct 29, 2009
Getting started on the Internet seems to most to be a hugely daunting task. But, with a few good guidelines, you will be amazed how easy and fun it really can be. Here are 7 steps to getting started for new Internet marketers:
1. Know What’s Selling Online – If nobody’s buying it and nobody’s made it yet, that most likely does not mean “opportunity” for you. So, don’t get fooled. If you want to know what people are spending their money on right now, today, one great way is to go to Amazon.com and search a category of interest. The results you get will be sorted showcasing the best selling products in that category.
2. Enjoy Being Online – If you don’t like candy, you’ll be miserable in a candy store. So, before you go putting time and effort into learning how to make money on the Internet, you must learn to enjoy sitting at a computer and typing things. Of course, I could also add-in there using your mobile device. Social media is a great way to learn to enjoy working online. Join Linkedin, join some groups and participate in some discussions. Create a Facebook profile and reconnect with friends. Start tweeting on Twitter and inspire people to “follow” you because the quality of your tweets are actually worth paying attention to. User your personal name for all of your profile account names such as Twitter.com/MartyDickinson so that people can easily find you in the future.
3. Engage Offline Networking – An online business is a lot like a traditional off-line business in that financial success in both requires “people” to buy from you eventually. Go to Meetup.com and search for a group that meets near you to discuss certain topics. I just launched a few days ago, a Meetup group of my own called “Ski With Marty,” for example. Business owners, authors, speakers, and anyone else who wants to network and get some exercise can hook up with me every Wednesday during ski season at one of our world class ski resorts here in Colorado. By the time we have our first networking event on December 2, my goal is to have 100 members in the group. Checkout Meetup.com/SkiWithMartyInColorado if you’d like to see a sample Meetup group page.
4. Love to Sell – To be successful in any business, you must adopt a deep-down belief that anything you choose to promote is not really “selling,” but more of a “recommendation” of something you’ve experienced to make other peoples’ lives better. The fastest and cheapest way to do that is to find other peoples’ products to sell, try them for yourself, and start recommending them to others. These are known as “Affiliate Products.” ClickBank.com is my favorite for finding digital, downloadable affiliate products to sell and you can often contact the product producer and request a “review copy” of their product, which is FREE of course. Their hope is that by you having the product in-hand, you will have a better understanding of the product and will give more accurate recommendations. Continuing with my example of Amazon in step 1, they of course have an affiliate program as well. But, they only pay 4% of the sale price. So, the only products worth promoting on Amazon, in my opinion, are larger ticket items (over $75).
5. Register Domain Names – Whenever I am asked “Where do I register a domain name,” I steer them to www.BestDomainPlace.com. That is a domain name that I registered to point to my affiliate account. When you register a domain name for promoting an affiliate product, use the URL Forwarding feature (free with BestDomainPlace.com) where a tutorial is provided. Promote your affiliate products in your social networks and whenever a related subject comes up at your in-person networking events. Last week I was talking with a parent at my kid’s school about Internet stuff and suggested she buy a domain name for her personal name at BestDomainPlace.com. Sure enough a few days later, I saw the order come in.
6. Offer Your Services – Everyone has something of value they can offer. What is the one thing that you are truly really, really good at? Connect with others on your social networks (because you enjoy doing that by this step) who are in a related area to the service you want to provide. For example, one of the services I offer is creating websites for business owners, authors and speakers. So, I went to my Linkedin profile, logged in, clicked on “Groups,” and search for “authors” then joined a group, “professional speakers” and joined a group, and then “small business” and joined a third group. Within about 60 seconds, I was connected with over 16,000 people around the country who were in my direct target audience for a service I offer. Now all I have to do is participate in the groups and offer valuable content and the contacts begin.
7. Produce a Product – If you have an idea for a product, someone else has surely produced something close. At a recent Affiliate Marketing Meetup session, a good friend and former client who went off on his own to make $40,000 a month selling affiliate products online said, “Start off small by creating your own e-book, but first buy a few of the top selling e-books for that topic and use the best parts of each to create your product.” Now, he wasn’t suggesting you just copy and paste other peoples’ books into you own. But you can use concepts of how items are presented and rewrite them with different words and different examples. And, of course, add-in your own best stuff to make the product truly unique and the best on the market. If it’s a digital, downloadable product, get it added to ClickBank.com so that other affiliate marketers will have the opportunity to sell it for you.
All of these steps and I haven’t even talked about “Starting a Website” yet. That just goes to show that there is so much you can do to get started on the Internet these days, in your spare time, on a shoestring budget. Then, when you earn a few bucks, use that income to broaden your reach…and that’s when a website, or 5, 10, 50 websites come into play.
The best time in the world to get started on the Internet is right now, today.
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New Way of Using Social Media to Promote Seminars
Posted by Marty on Oct 5, 2009
I’m slated to speak at the Thrive Super Conference on November 19, 2009 in Chicago. The organizer just sent an email to me to login to his promotional page at Ning.com. Now, I’ve used Ning to create a few of my own social network sites, but never to promote a seminar. It’s a great idea if you think about it. Here’s why:
1. You get to see the seminar is real – How many times have you just seen a sales page and wonder if it’s really going to happen? Wouldn’t it be nice to interact with the organizers and speakers to get a better comfort feeling that the seminar will actually occur before committing with your credit card? Of course.
2. You get to interact with the speakers – I know I said this in the previous paragraph. But, if the speakers are willing to dedicate some time of their day to answer questions and prove their willingness to be involved, I would figure there would be a much higher conversion rate of visitors to paying attendees. Doesn’t it just make sense that way?
3. Shows a hint of what you will see more of - People want to attend a seminar where they get to see what’s new. Using a “new” and current medium of interaction and promotion just encourages people that they will see and hear about more new things…and they will! It’s just not always so easy to convince them.
So, sure, I hope you will come say hi to me at the conference and you can claim your seat right here. But, go checkout Ning site that the organizers have setup for this conference and imagine how YOU might be able to use the site for one of your upcoming events.
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3 Trends I’m Seeing
Posted by Marty on Oct 5, 2009
Every couple of months I start to feel these sort of “hunches” about what’s happening on the Internet these days. So I do a little research and sure enough, trend tools verify my hunches. Here are three of those hunches:
1. More people are producing 1-way posts on social networks than actual discussions. “5 Ways to stop xyz…” and then a link to some blog post, is the commonality now. But, they’re also using post distributors now more than ever too like Ping.FM. I do the same, so I’m not going to claim good or bad, but I just think it’s interesting how the scope is changing.
2. More people are into DIY now. Everyone wants to do everything themselves from SEO to make your own solar panels. People are diversifying their skills at an alarming rate. Personally, I think this is a good thing as the economy tightens and wallets get lighter.
3. Putting two and two together, I’m also seeing more people interested in attending workshops and seminars again in hopes of learning how to do more themselves. This is great news to me personally, as I believe these get-togethers are just so essential to our growth as humans. And, for a while, no one was going anywhere it seemed.
So, just thought I’d point out those three trends I’m seeing and let me know if you’re spotting any new trends too.
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Searching for Targeted Followers on Twitter
Posted by Marty on Jul 23, 2009
Tonight I found an exciting tool called TweepSearch for intermediate Twitter users where you can search for a personal name of someone you want to follow, but more importantly, search for a keyword phrase….within the bio….of Twitter accounts. So far tonight, exactly 90 minutes after I began using this tool, I have followed almost 100 people in my target marketing and have been followed by about 30 of those. ‘Course, it is midnight right now, so I’ll bet I get more followers in the morning. But, here’s the important thing:
Sure, you can use all of these “cheat tweets” as I call them where you can get 100 followers a day or 19,990 followers a month, whatever dude. What’s really important to a business owner (like me and probably you) is that we get “targeted” followers rather than a bunch of competitors following us, for example.
TweepSearch does just that. Here, I’ll use an example. Here’s what it looks like:
One of my big targets is helping book authors with their Internet strategies. And, if they’re in Denver where I live, I should absolutely be interested in connecting. So, I went to TweepSearch.com and searched for “denver” and “author.”
8 pages of profiles popped up on screen at 20 per page. I could see the word “author” in their bio so I would scan their basic description and consider if each was a potential target for future business.
Here are 3 very crucial discoveries I made after that point.
1) I didn’t want to connect with just everyone with the word “author” in their bio. TweepSearch gives you enough of the bio where you can really tell who you want to follow and who you don’t. Like, someone who has no posts is a red flag to me. They don’t even want to participate on Twitter, so why connect with them?
2) Posts from the person I was newly following began appearing immediately on my Twitter account page, so I was prompt to respond. And, this action almost always resulted in a return follow. I could just sit there and watch my followers number go up! Interaction and replying to other peoples’ posts is so crucial!
3) Anyone I saw that had nearly no posts/contributions to Twitter, I bypassed as well. These are people who are glad to receive a follow but are only promoting whatever is in their profile page or bio. Twitter is supposed to be to meet people and be interactive with them. You and I don’t have time to waste on those that don’t understand the idea of getting to know people using social media.
TweepSearch.com is really a tool everyone on Twitter should be using. But, I’ve only heard about now by searching specifically for a tool to help me search for keywords with peoples Twitter “bios.” Twitter’s main search feature only searches post content. Real-time search engines like Collecta.com also only search through post content.
But, when you and I are trying to network for potential leads, we need to search for peoples’ bio info by keywords. Give it a whirl and let me know how it works for you.
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Getting Leads and Sales with LinkedIn Without Even Trying
Posted by Marty on May 1, 2009
LinkedIn has finally revealed to me how it can produce more leads and sales for a business and I did it without even trying. I started my LinkedIn profile in 2007 and setup my profile just like the pros. Got a bunch of connections and then just sort of left it be. I thought the whole purpose of LinkedIn was to just wait for connections to happen. Boy was I way off!
Since starting my LinkedIn profile, I’ve spent far more of my online social networking time with other systems like forums, Facebook, most recently Twitter. I’ve had leads, made sales, increased my opt-ins with every single one of those systems…but nothing from LinkedIn…until the last two weeks.
Here let me show you!
Today is Friday. On Wednesday night, I sat in my recliner for the second half of the Denver Nuggets once again destroying New Orleans in the basketball playoffs. During the last 10 minutes of the half-time report and commercials, I read questions people were making in groups I had signed up to be a member of (free member of course).
After the game was over I just sat in my chair for another 30 minutes joining another 3 groups and posting a few questions of my own and answering others.
The next moring, this is what my email box looked like:
#1 is a lead, someone asking me about what kind of Web site work my HereNextYear company does for clients. #2 is an opt-in to a subscriber list for my Ultimate Blog Setup Checklist site. #3 is a product sale where someone bought one of my e-manuals and #4 is an invitation to join someone’s linked in profile.
The rest of what you see in my email there are from comments made to the groups I belong to after I made comments to them. So, about 80% are people commenting about my comment.
What does all this mean?
It means the secret to using LinkedIn as a lead and sales generator is to participate. You need to do the following:
1) Create a profile in LinkeIn if you don’t have one already
2) Add links to your Web sites in your linkedIn profile so that when people do decide to find out more about you from your participation in groups that they will have a place to go
3) Click the “Groups” link from within your profile to search for groups where your target audience might be already members.
4) Join 10 or more groups if possible and choose some groups that have more than 5000 members. It’s okay to belong to some groups that have smaller membership numbers, but you need to be part of some larger groups just for sake of volume. For any group member that has the “email me every time a comment is made to this group” activated, when you make a comment, an announcement will go out to everyone on that group list. That’s what you see in my e-mail inbox image above besides the #1,2,3,4 is notices that comments have been made to the group I’m participating in.
5) Every time a notice DOES come in to your email, read the reply and engage in more conversation.
One conversation I was participating in is about LinkedIn spam. It was such a popular topic that there were 4 pages of comments within a week’s worth of discussion. I shared my opinion on the first page of the comments but then added more comments to make sure I had visibility on other pages too.
So, keep track of those discussions and participate frequently.
Should you ONLY participate in LinkedIn groups with the intent of getting sales or leads? YES is my opinion! That’s why we spend time on the Internet for social networking. But, the WAY in which you do it is important too. Don’t just be salesy about it. Simply make comments and share your opinions and expertise. When you write good responses, people will send you emails saying “Hey, great comment to that question and thanks for the help.” And, that’s when you know you’ve made a great first impression. Someday, a person like that could turn into a client, an opt-in, or even a recommender for your services.
And, that’ is the power of how LinkedIn can help you get leads and sales without even trying.
Join me on my new Linked-in Group where discussions are already underway for a variety of subjects related to how blogs interact with social networking. We’re calling it
The Social Blogger Group at Linked-in:
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The Net Effect – How Your Blog, Social Networking and Websites Work Together
Posted by Marty on Apr 30, 2009
Web sites used to be designed with the primary intent to push pages of content onto the public through search engines. But, when social networking began, the traditional Web site became more of a second, higher-level form of introduction. First people would meet each other on the social network and then your newly found friend would eventually click on something to get to your main Web site.
But, traditional Web sites still today are too slow to keep up with the traffic and conversations that result from the many forms of social networking available on the Internet. When someone becomes introduced to you on Twitter, Facebook or Linked-in types of sites, and THEN they visit your Web site, they are usually wanting to interact with you more.
If you don’t know how to use Dreamweaver or have given up trying to learn your high-end Joomla or Drupal install, it’s just not that motivating to offer to pay someone to make changes or additions to a Web site every day. This potential for interaction is gone unless they pick up the phone to call you or send an email to you.
I’d like to suggest that the importance of a blog has reached a whole new level. Your blog is now at the heart of your entire social traffic flow as shown in this diagram:
Whatever interaction you have on social sites eventually should flow to your blog where you can encourage further interaction. Then, once someone is ready to really look at the services you offer, they are directed to your main Web site.
Note too that the “Net Effect” of using your blog as the very heart of your social gathering place is your ability to add new content quickly and even automate it to be pushed right back to the very social networks you are already receiving traffic from.
Join me on my new Linked-in Group where discussions are already underway for a variety of subjects related to how blogs interact with social networking. We’re calling it
The Social Blogger Group at Linked-in:
I hope to see you on Linkedin soon!
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Calculate Number of Characters – Great for Twitter, Google AdWords
Posted by Marty on Apr 30, 2009
Here’s a nice little script for those lazy moments where we just don’t want to open up MS Word or Open Office to dump our sentences into a document just to calculate the number of characters.
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Why Your Goal Should be to Get 2000 Followers on Twitter
Posted by Marty on Apr 21, 2009
If you don’t already have 2000 people following you on Twitter, that should be your primary focus until you have exceeded the 2000 mark. Get there as fast as possible now so that you don’t have to worry about it later. Why is this so important?
- Size does matter – Many experienced Tweeters will automatically follow you once you follow them. They will checkout your profile later and likely unfollow you if you look like you’re just starting out with 100 or less followers.
- Twitter limitations – You can only follow more than 2000 people after you have more than 2000 people following you. Twitter does this to prevent people from abusing the system as it’s easy to just click the “follow” button over and over again in hopes people will follow you in return. Hey, we’ve all done it sometime in our Tweetlives.
- Proof of higher stature – One of the great uses of Twitter is to follow people you admire. But, if you follow someone with 50,000 followers, you probably won’t get much notice or attention when you have only 100 or 200 followers. Sure they’ll follow you, but that’s likely just an automatic setting and you will probably get unfollowed within a few weeks.
- Better results – If you Twitter for business, you can expect on average to get one or two people clicking on a link you might feature in any given Tweet. With 2000 followers, you will start to see higher clickthroughs ranging between 15 and 50 of your followers clicking on links per Tweet.
- Inspiration – When you get more results from your Tweets and find yourself meeting and conversing with high profile people in your industry as a result of Twitter, you will be inspired to participate more in Twitter. And, that’s what your 2000 or more followers will be expecting of you.
For almost everyone I’ve met or talked to about Twitter that has less than 500 followers, the entire process seems like such a waste of time for them. But, something changes when you get to 1000 followers. You begin to see Twitter in a different light; one that offers the true potential everyone is always talking about.
If you have less than 2000 Twitter followers, take the challenge right now to develop a plan for getting 2000 and more followers on Twitter.
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