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By Phyllis Zimbler Miller in Featured

Getting started on social media can often be deceptively simple – What’s the big deal? You sign up. – or intimidating – Why am I being asked for my date of birth? – or overwhelming – How do I find people to friend or follow?

In actuality there are official and unofficial rules. It is easier if you start out knowing what’s what, and this is probably especially important if you’re more of an introvert.

Let’s imagine you already use email, search for information on Google, and read blog posts. But you’ve never joined any social media sites. How do you start?

1. Decide how comfortable you are sharing information about yourself. And the corollary to this – how wide a sharing of this information are you willing to do.

If you’re a book author and want people to buy your book, it’s a good idea to decide that you will share personal (although not private) information to as wide an audience as possible. If you only want to connect online with former high school friends, your target audience is much smaller.

If sharing information makes you somewhat nervous, think about what it means to be personal as opposed to private. Personal is a good marketing book you just read that you can recommend to help others; private is a fight you had with your business partner over implementing the marketing steps recommended in the book.

2. Ask online savvy friends that, based on your goal, which popular site they would recommend you first join. (And do start with just one while getting your feet wet in this brave new world.)

  • If your goal, for example, is to have a wide audience, then Twitter may be the best choice because of its “open to everyone” format. – If you only want to search for high school friends, then Facebook may be the best choice as you can confine your information to a very small circle and can search by name for those long-lost friends.
  • If you want to make connections to help with a future job search, then LinkedIn, whose format is set up for such a process, may be the best choice for you.

3. Once you have chosen the site you’ll start on, do a Google search for information on effectively using that site. That’s right, before you ever sign up, read some blog posts that provide guidance on effectively using the site.

Now this isn’t a research project that serves as an excuse for postponing actually joining the site. Just learn a few of the basic “rules.” And if you do this step, you’ll be way ahead of most other people who start on social media without first doing any research.

And why not learn this on the site itself? Because most of these sites have inadequate information for newcomers or an abundance of information that overwhelms newcomers.

Plus, to encourage you to sign up, the site’s home page says something like: To join now just do this. And it’s only after you’ve provided your name, email, password, etc. that you’re left wondering “What do I do next?”

4. If you’re starting on a site that doesn’t require your real name, choose a username carefully. You want to think about seeing this name used all across cyberspace as lots of social media sites pull information from other social media sites (with your permission, of course).

You may initially think, for example, of choosing the name of your first book. But what happens when you write a second book? Or perhaps using the name of the book won’t work well for a site that is focused on a non-book arena.

Keep in mind that whatever you do on the Internet can live forever. So this choice of a username should be considered carefully and for continued use in the long-run. (Once you’ve established a good online reputation with one username you don’t want to start at square one again with a new username.)

5. Immediately post a photo of yourself – a headshot in which sunglasses and a baseball cap are not blocking people from totally seeing your eyes. (This does not have to be professional-photographer quality but should not be blurry.)

This photo should be one that will also work on social media sites you will join in the future because you want consistency across these sites. You want consistency to help people recognize and connect with you on more than one site. (The same for your username).

Keep in mind that the photos for Twitter are quite small. And even if you’re starting on Facebook, only include a headshot of yourself. Do not include other people and preferably not animals and other props.

By posting a good headshot of yourself you’re signaling that you’re interested in connecting with people – real people such as yourself – and you’ll be off to a good start on your first social media site.

Now that you’ve read these five tips for starting on your first social media site, what are you waiting for? Join the cyberspace social media community today.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her free report on “Power Marketing’s Top 3 Internet Marketing Tips” – grab your report now from www.TeachMeToUseTwitter.com

By Neil Stafford in Featured

Everyone loves the Internet, but not everyone is ready to buy. There can be a level of scepticism you may have to overcome and one way to do that is let them see your face. Use online video and you have an advantage over your competitors when dealing with customers.

Successful marketing is all about establishing a relationship; and that is so much easier when they can see and hear you. You may be very comfortable online, but some people are still sceptical about doing business with you over the Internet and you need to persuade them to trust you before they will buy from you.

These are my top 12 direct marketing principles you can use to make sure your Internet marketing really works for you:

1. History.

People want to know you are not going to disappear overnight so if you’ve been in business for any length of time then this will add credibility to you and your offers.

2. Statistics.

Use genuine statistics to give you more credibility by listing number of customers served, money saved, profits made, and so on.

3. Testimonials

I can’t overestimate the importance of these so get them from your Customers and Clients saying how you and/or your products have helped them. Get experts in your market to validate and endorse your products and services and if appropriate get celebrities who you either ‘rent’ for your marketing, feature at your events or use by association.

4. Demonstrations.

With the use of online video and ‘how To’ DVDs it is very ease to show a demonstration of your product both on and offline. You can even demo an ebook by printing it out and talking through what it contains live on screen. Camtasia is free software that lets you make a screen capture video where you can demonstrate your website talking though the sales letter or giving a demo of how easy it is to download your ebook. If you are in a market that isn’t really familiar with online buying this works really well.

What better proof that your product or service works than by showing an example of before and after. Many markets and products lend themselves to this treatment and it is very effective.

In our own business we use video to show how to confirm emails when signing up to our email lists, when demonstrating how to use our Membership site and examples of results in a number of our ebook markets.

5. Credentials.

What credentials do you have in your market? They don’t have to be academic, but can awards, accomplishments, membership to organisations that are relevant to your market. Both I and Neil Travers my business partner are CIPD qualified which is a training qualification we attained while working at the Bank.

This is ‘proof’ of our ability to run workshops that are designed to aid the learning and intake and retaining of information by attendees and gives us increased credibility in their eyes.

6. Publicity.

Reprints of articles about you in the press, or your articles being published in the media that lend weight to your credibility as the expert or authority in your market are highly valuable to you. Show your market that you are in demand, and have status as an expert.

7. Celebrity Spokesperson.

To be used with caution. It can be effective but can also backfire when the market remembers the celebrity and the advert, but not what it was advertising.

8. Guarantee.

If you can’t guarantee the product you’re selling then find something else to sell that you can guarantee. To really make your potential customers feel safe to buy from you you need to offer an ironclad guarantee.

9. Accessibility.

On your website have your full contact detail if possible as this will give a big boost to your potential customer confidence in you and your company. Using just an email contact is the worst and an email, phone and address the best.

Never give a PO Box as your address as it immediately makes people suspicious.

10. The Personal Touch.

Being visible in the business to your customers is a confidence booster for them. Make it personal so you are a real individual, anecdotes about you and your business, pictures and videos all make your customer more comfortable as if they have already met you.

11. Make A Damaging Admission.

No matter how good your product is it will have a disadvantage somewhere. Admit it up front and honestly comment on this fact.

Answer Questions and objections up front and when a customer asks them via email or the phone. People can call our office throughout the week and email at any time with questions and that makes them feel safe to buy from us.

12. Excess.

Use a combination of as many of the examples above in your marketing! What may seem like overkill to you may not be enough to overcome some people’s scepticism!

FREE for you. The Internet Marketing Review is the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. Just visit this special web page for more information: http://www.InternetMarketingReview.com/sya

By Paul Marshall in Featured

googleDo you really want your website on page one of Google for your chosen keyword phrase(s)? What do you want your online marketing campaign to accomplish for you?

I asked a potential new SEO Coaching client that first question last week. From my end of the phone call, it sounded as if he almost fell out of his chair!

I followed up by asking him if he could ever think of ANY reason for his website pages NOT to be found on page 1 in the Google SERPs (search engine results pages).

How ’bout you? Can you think of any reasons you’d NOT want your pages to be found for your targeted keyword phrases on page 1?

Keep in mind, I’m talking about your chosen keyword search phrases.

I can think of at least 3 reasons. Maybe you can come up with some of your own.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

A new addition in Webmaster Tools this week sees Google becoming your own personal usability and accessibility consultant.

Site Performance,  an experimental feature added to the Webmaster Tools console courtesy of Google Labs, provides detailed information about your site’s load time and gives suggestions for speeding it up. It includes a chart of your site performance data over time, which can help determine latency triggers.

As explained in Google’s official blog post about it,  the Site Performance console includes examples of specific pages and their actual page load times, plus Page Speed suggestions that can help reduce latency.

I was pretty shocked when I logged into Webmaster Tools today to find my blog pages take an average of 6 seconds to load. Google states that this is slower than 83% of sites! The Example Pages and Page Speed Suggestions revealed the culprit was a banner ad that was not optimized and a couple of extra DNA fetches on some pages so I was able to fix the issues pretty quickly.

The load time data is apparently sourced from aggregated information by users of the Google Toolbar but it’s important to remember that it’s all averaged. A specific user may experience your site faster or slower than the average depending on their location and network conditions.

As a Labs tool, Site Performance is still under development and Google are seeking feedback on it via the Webmaster Tools Forum.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Hi Kalena

I had a big discussion last night with my husband and my son-in-law who has done some work on my husband’s web site.

Jason (my son-in-law) has used WordPress for the site. There are currently about 79 pages on the site. In our conversation I was pretty adamant that I wanted to be able to SEO all the pages. I don’t want to rely on WordPress and it’s blog meta tags to get ranked.

Shouldn’t we be better served by a web building program than a blog program like WordPress? I understand that WordPress has an all singing all dancing SEO plug in but is that really the best option?

I know that you use WordPress for your blog. And it seems the right thing to do. But do you also use it for your main site? Any advice you may give me would be most appreciated.

Thanks so much.

Vicki
———————————————————–
Hi Vicki

Actually, sites built with WordPress are perfect for SEO purposes. We are actually thinking of switching our Search Engine College site over to WordPress because of the SEO benefits including deep indexing, cross linking, tagging, filenaming and various SEO plugins that pretty much make other CMS packages obsolete.

You and your son in law should have no trouble optimizing your husband’s WordPress site and hopefully achieving some good ranks and traffic as a result. There are a number of fantastic SEO plugins for WordPress and people are raving about how SEO friendly the WordPress Thesis theme is so you might want to check it out.

You might also want to my review my favorite WordPress plugins. Add to that list the SEO Smart Links plugin and you should be set.

cheers
Kalena

Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Send it to kjordan [ at ] sitepronews [ dot ] com and you might see it featured here.

By Jackie de Burca in Featured

If I had a pound for every time I saw a Google Adwords account stuffed full of broad match keywords, I would be lazing around on a tropical beach. Before entering into advertising on Google Adwords it is a must to understand the differences between the keyword match types as well as the amazing scope for serious money making long-tail keywords. This system for finding the best Google Adwords keywords can be applied across all PPC advertising campaigns on other search engines.

If you are setting up a new campaign or a brand new account start with your own website using the Google Search Based Keyword Tool. This tool is excellent as it scans the content of your website, picking up keywords and providing data on monthly searches, competition, suggested pay per click bid amount, and shows your ad and search share where appropriate. These will be keywords that are not already in your account so if you have an existing account it can highlight these ideas.

This tool can be found at http://www.google.com/sktool/# – you need to enter your website name if it is not already there and you need to be signed into your Google Adwords account to access the fullest information.

There are numerous keyword tools available but as this is free and as it scans your website it is a logical starting point. There is the option to save the draft keywords and export into a spreadsheet format. They can also be added directly into your adwords account, however if doing it this way put them into a temporary ad group so that they can be split properly later.

Apart from associating with your website the Search Based Keyword Tool has a command which is found at the bottom of the page called “Or see top keywords across all categories”. Click on this blue writing and choose the box at the top of the page which says “Words or phrase”. Here it is best to start with a core competitive keyword such as “bingo” as then it will come back with a lot of information.

Drill further down into important keywords next by using the Google Insights for Search tool. This gives an expansion of whatever keyword you enter providing more keyword ideas but importantly you can see at the same time geographically where these keywords are most popular. Additionally this tool gives the historical trends of the keyword currently going back to 2004.

Google Insights for Search can be found at http://www.google.com/insights/search/# .When using it for the first search in the filter leave it as Worldwide as this can supply you with some surprising trends. Then do the search again but choosing United Kingdom or whatever territory you wish.

When you have exhausted the research using these tools, saving the information on a spreadsheet as you go, then the next step is to split the keywords into core competitive keywords and long-tail keywords. Core competitive keywords being the obvious ones that everyone bids on such as “car insurance” and the long-tail keywords being more specific versions of these such as “cheap car insurance london”. The reason for doing this is so that when it comes to allocating budget it is possible to ensure that it will be done more profitably.

Next you need to divide them up into related keywords that can be developed into the ad groups of one particular campaign. So an insurance company that does many types of insurance will have car insurance, motor insurance, commercial insurance all as separate campaigns. In retail it should be according to either brands or stock type, such as dresses, jeans, shirts etc.

If you have enough space in the Google Adwords account ideally there should be a separate campaign for Exact Match keywords, another one for Phrase Match and another one for a period of time for Broad Match keywords. The official limit is 25 campaigns within the account. The reason for doing this is again budget management. The exact match keyword is the ideal situation as this word or phrase of words is all the potential customer has typed in, therefore the keyword and ad text can be 100% controlled to mirror the thought process of the potential customer.

When campaigns have been set up very well then budget can be allocated appropriately to long-tail Exact Match keywords and core competitive Exact Match keywords. The Phrase Match keywords means that someone has typed in something either before or after the keyword, which in some cases can be fully relevant to your products/services but in other cases not. By adding in negative keywords this can be controlled to some degree. In the case of Broad Match keywords these can sometimes be dangerous, as this match type is more of a loose association with the keyword or phrase you have entered.

Finally make sure you develop more long-tail keywords by adding words such as “cheap” at the beginning and end of the keyword phrase, unless of course this is not appropriate. The same applies to “online”, “buy” and “sale” to name a few. Developing the best google adwords keywords this way will both save you a lot of money and increase profits.

Jackie de Burca wants to help you make more money by understanding how to find the best google adwords keywords. Use the google search based keyword tool and google insights for search as part of this process.

http://www.cwa-europe.com/paid-search/finding-the-best-google-adwords-keywords/76-17.html

By Dave Davies in Featured

SE-TacticsWelcome to part two of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last article we discussed the variety of

Firefox extensions used for SEO. In this article we’ll discuss some of the free and affordable tools you can use to better your organic optimization efforts. By affordable I mean for virtually everyone so I’m going to set the bar at $100/yr or ownership. Admittedly, we use tools that cost more than this but many of those tools will be out of some people’s price range.

Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help insure the successful optimization of your website.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Today Yahoo launched its 2009 Year in Review which features the top trends and web searches made on Yahoo for 2009.

Categories included in the Year in Review include:

  • Top 10 Searches e.g. Twilight
  • Farewells e.g. Michael Jackson
  • Sudden Fame e.g. Susan Boyle
  • Mad Science e.g. Hubble Telescope
  • Obama in the House e.g. Health Care Plan
  • Market Darlings e.g. Twitter
  • Financial Hangovers e.g. Stimulus Plan
  • Bloggers Roll e.g. Huffington Post

Each category features a Top 10 list of the most popular searches queries for that topic. Search query trends were measured by various factors, including total volume and growth versus previous periods.

Yahoo has also created a competition for the Year in Review called Your Moments, where you are invited to share your meaningful moments of 2009 via Twitter using the hashtag #myyearyahoo.

So what were the top ten most popular searches on Yahoo in 2009?

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

After 4 years in the #1 spot, Britney Spears moved down to the #5 position. However, the majority of top 10 search queries still relate to the entertainment industry, suggesting that we consistently like to escape from reality. Sad but true.

What were your memorable moments of 2009? Please add your comments below.

By Chuck Matthews in Featured

PHP is a programming language that allows your website to go beyond a basic HTML document, and create an interactive experience. Open source means that the source code is available to someone with proper access to the site, so that they can easily make changes. When the Internet was first getting started, most of the pages on websites were basic HTML documents. Meaning that when you visited a page (about.html, for example), you downloaded all of the content of the page into your browser.

How Do I Know if I have a PHP Site?

If you are visiting a site, and you see that the page name ends with .html, this means that the page is most likely a plain old HTML page. If the page name ends in .php, then you the site is a php based site. Other dynamic programming languages include .jsp (Java Server Pages) or .asp (.NET or Active Server Pages). Occasionally you’ll see sites that end in .html that have dynamic code embedded in them, but this requires some tricks to accomplish on the server.

We have several sites that use static HTML pages and have great results. There are some pages that have dynamic content, but most of the pages are built in straight HTML. It’s great for search engine optimization, as some of those pages have been active for years. However, as the number of pages grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to update menu or navigation items, because it means you have to open each page, one at a time, and modify the contents.

Advantages of using PHP

PHP works a little differently. Instead of downloading the entire page (with the navigation, content and everything in one file), php allows you to embed programming code that isn’t displayed to the end user. This programming code allows you to tell the page, “Insert the top navigation here.” Or, “put the content for the page over there.”

PHP allows you to personalize a page, for example, or automatically detect that a user is coming into the site from a mobile device and display a different version of the site that is optimized for their Blackberry or iPhone. PHP keeps most of the code for the site “behind the scenes” so that the page that is displayed to the end user loads quickly and doesn’t require the browser to do processing work — the work is handled instead by the server.

PHP Is Ideal For Working With Databases

One of the biggest advantages of a programming language like PHP is that it allows you to easily interact with a database. If you’re unfamiliar with databases, think of a database as a souped-up form of an Excel spreadsheet. You have columns (i.e. page name, content, title) and rows. Rows typically would hold information that is organized by column headings.

PHP makes it easy to read information from a database, and then display information onto a web page. So, if you’ve ever used a site where you type in your zip code to find a store location near you, the system likely is taking your zip code, performing a database query (i.e. find all stores within 10 miles of the 80303 zip code) and display the results so that you can find your way. In order to do this, we have a geolocation database that allows us to tell the approximate distance between two zip codes.

You could do the same thing by building out a series of web pages that has each location. And while this is fine for three or four locations, as the number of locations increases, PHP allows you to automate the process.

Keep Content Organized

One of the ways we’ve been able to streamline the process of building websites is that we’ve standardized our process using our PageDirector content management system. There are many, many ways to build websites. Each designer seems to have a slightly different way of putting a site together. We are frequently asked to work on sites that other people have created, and in order to make simple changes to the content or navigation, we often have to dig around in the code to find where things are located. This takes time and isn’t very efficient. The PageDirector system, however, keeps all of the content for the site neatly organized in a database table. So that anyone can easily find the content and make changes quickly and easily. One of our clients said to me in an email to me yesterday, “It’s really efficient and a simple tool to use PageDirector. It makes my life easier being able to update the website fast.”

How Does It Work?

When someone clicks on a link to go to a page, the system pulls the right content from the database, grabs the menu items from another location, and on-the-fly creates the page for a person.

Summary

PHP is a server-based programming language that allows you to create an interactive experience for your site visitors, and keep content and other information organized within a database.

Chuck Matthews – PHP is a programming language that allows your website to go beyond a basic HTML document, and create an interactive experience. PHP is a server-based programming language that allows you to create an interactive experience for your site visitors, and keep content and other information organized within a database. This article explores some of interactive applications that can be developed using PHP applications.

By Ben Kemp in Featured

Blogs-&-PodcastsWordPress STD’s (Security Transgression Defilements) are a common occurrence. WordPress-powered websites are far from being immune to hackers, although the latest release/s address many earlier security issues. WordPress, like other content management systems and forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, is a major target for hackers and spammers. Basic prophylactic measures, or condoms for WordPress STDs, need not be complicated or expensive.

Those involved in hacking WordPress usually want to use the sites as concealed (cloaked) link farms. Its rare that actual damage is done to your site, and often the site owner remains blissfully unaware that there’s been any interference. Some of the link injection systems are extremely sophisticated! Testing for enemy action can be as simple as opening your site and choosing View / Source and reading through the content of the <Head> section down to, and including, the <BODY> tag. The link injections I’ve seen are usually immediately after <BODY>. Is there a long string of HTML code containing links to dozens of sites you know nothing about? If there is, you’ve been violated, and have a WordPress STD (Security Terminated Deficiency)!

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