Categories
Website How To's

Using Facebook for Blog Cross Promotion and SMO

I recently signed up for Facebook.com, a Social Network for everyone. My little brother in law sent me a message right after I signed up that said the following, “dude, you’re 30 years old…have two kids and are married….why are you on facebook?” I laughed as I read his inquiry. As I thought about it though, here are 4 of the main reasons I signed up for Facebook.com:

  1. My mentor, Mat Siltala, is a Facebook user. As an eCommerce Business Consultant myself who was taught by a great SEO specialist, I want to do what the best are doing. I read certain SEO and SMO Blogs all the time about different ways to get potential buyers to come to my site; if I don’t implement the ideas that are working for others, how can I expect success?
  2. Status updates. If you are a fan of Twitter (or know anything about it), then Facebook Status Updates are right up your alley. As you create your network of friends on Facebook, you can be kept up to date on what they are doing. You can also share information about your site, articles you’ve written that need bookmarked, etc.
  3. Free Classifieds. I just set this up today. Yet another free way to promote products to a specific target audience.
  4. TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC! In the past six months, after Facebook opened up to non-collegiates and developers, the site has more than doubled in number of unique visitors, growing from 23 million users in December 2006 to 47 million in May 2007.

So, there you have it.  Add me to your friends list and network yourself all over the web.

Categories
Digital Presence & Marketing Strategy

Video Marketing, are you using it?

I read a really good article this evening about using video in your marketing on your eCommerce sites, blogs, and other online business endeavors.

What we need are tiny, specialized sites that obsess about specific industries. Is there a good video every day about how to do better real estate sales? If there isn’t, there soon will be. Or for heart surgeons? For every segment where there is currently a trade magazine, I believe there’s an opportunity to build a blog-like, woot-like, ad supported page that finds the good stuff.

What I get from this is that, in order to market our services and products most effectively online, we need to have a specific section of our website, possibly on the home page, that’s dedicated to video content. We are a “specialized site that obsesses about [put your mission statement here – what you are focused on doing with your business].” Here are some questions for thought:

“Is there a good video…about how to [make wall murals an important decoration in your home]?”

“Is there a good video…about how to [learn what are the best Japanese recipes and how to use them]?”

“Is there a good video…about how to [find the best cometic gaskets for your racecar engine]?”

“Is there a good video…about how to [keep clogging strong by selecting the right clogging shoes]”?

“Is there a good video…about how to [find the best used paperback books]”?

“Is there a good video…about how to [put your keyword phrase here]”?

The author of the blog post I read, Seth Godin, is a nationally famous public speaker and marketing genius. As I write this article, his ideas about video marketing make more and more sense to me.

How can you implement his ideas on your website?

Categories
Digital Presence & Marketing Strategy

What is true Success?

This is a question I have quite a bit as a business owner and professional consultant. People measure success in different ways. Some say it’s all about the bottom line dollar amount a person makes; others say it’s knowledge acquired. At www.dictionary.com, it says the following:

  1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
  2. the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.
  3. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.

As many of you who I work with know, I truly believe that “Small Success leads to Big Success.” I came up with this saying because of my experience as a student with Prosper, Inc. I started knowing basically nothing about websites, SEO, or internet marketing. But, as I chipped away at things, did my homework as best I could, and stayed committed to proving that the system worked, I started seeing things happen. Was it overnight, absolutely not: the best things usually never are but success did happen. And then it happened again. And again. And then even more.

So many doors have been opened because of my involvement with Prosper as a student and then later on as an eCommerce Mentor. I’ve formed multiple eCommerce businesses, signed a legal partnership with an already established business as their Marketing Director and Internet Marketer, and I really feel that’s just the beginning. The knowledge I gained from my mentor has helped me become a better coach. It opened my mind to all the possibilities that are out there for entrepreneurs. I know now more than ever before that success is there for everyone if they are willing to do what’s required.

Below are my top 20 Success Quotes (not in order of importance). Read them to yourself often and you will achieve true success:

  1. “Men are born to succeed, not fail.” Henry David Thoreau
  2. “Nothing happens until I make it happen.” contributed by: Scott Wilson
  3. “That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” Abraham Lincoln
  4. “People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.” Anne Sullivan
  5. “The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.” Mark Twain
  6. “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” John Wooden
  7. “Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” Henry Ward Beecher
  8. “It’s simply a matter of doing what you do best and not worrying about what the other fellow is going to do.” John R. Amos
  9. “There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.” Christopher Morley
  10. “What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?” Robert Schuller
  11. “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” William Feather
  12. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” Robert Collier
  13. “Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” Ella Fitzgerald
  14. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Albert Schweitzer
  15. “Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.” Lowell Thomas
  16. “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” Dale Carnegie
  17. “Success is never wondering what if.” Karrie Huffman
  18. “Success is getting what you want, and happiness is wanting what you get.” Dave Gardner
  19. “The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed.” Nelson Boswell
  20. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” Henry David Thoreau
Categories
Customer Engagement & Retention

Have you used Craigslist.org?

Wow! If you haven’t ever heard of or used www.craigslist.org, you are definitely missing out. I’m actually a rookie at Craigslist but so far am 1 for 1 in success. Just recently my wife and I finished building a home in Spanish Fork, Utah. We had debated back and forth about how to advertise our condo: did we want to sell or hold as a rental. Finally, after going back and forth, we decided to do a “creative” marketing strategy: we listed our condo on www.craigslist.org for FREE. Within a few hours we received 5 calls from local people who wanted to check it out. It was amazing response. More shocking than that was that our neighbors, who were also in the market for selling their condo, spent over $200 and it’s debateable whether or not they really had the response they “paid” for.

Since then, I’ve had two clients see similar successful results with craigslist. Here’s one of the Success Stories:

“Thank you for your recommendation to try Craigslist. We had an old truck that we had been trying to sell off and on for the last year. We put it out in the yard with a “For Sale” sign and also took an ad out in the local paper but had no success. After your suggestion to try Craigslist, we decided to give it a try, especially since it didn’t cost us anything to post it. We posted the truck on Monday night for $600 and within an hour and a half the first call came in and about an hour later another call. On Tuesday afternoon we sold the truck for $500, which is what we were hoping to get. So, within 24 hours we sold the truck and had received at least 7 phone calls and 4 e-mails. We sold the truck just as another buyer was pulling into the driveway. We highly recommend using Craigslist for anything you want or need to sell. We have already recommended it to several people.

Thanks again,

Mike and Kim H.

What experience have you had with Craigslist?

UPDATE

Here is some valuable information that may help for those that are interested:

Q: How much traffic does craigslist get?
A: More than 7 billion page views per month

Q: How does that compare with other english-language sites?
A: craigslist is #7, behind yahoo, aol, microsoft, google, ebay, and news corp

Q: How many people use craigslist?
A: More than 20 million each month

Q: How does craigslist support its operations?
A: By charging below-market fees for job ads in 7 cities and for broker apartment listings in NYC.

Source

Categories
Customer Engagement & Retention

Why is it important to Subscribe to a blog?

Have you ever seen this image:

Suscribe to http://mollermarketing.com

This is an RSS Feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. My new Twitter Friend Marek Wawrzyniak made a great post about getting more subscribers to your blog by making the RSS Feed image bigger. I think it’s a great idea and want to try it too. If you like what is said at Moller Marketing and want to stay up to date on new posts I make, simply click on the image and select Google Reader (that’s the one I use). Then when you go in to your Google Reader account, you will be able to see new posts I’ve made. Here’s what RSS means:

Click To Play

So, if you haven’t already, subscribe to email my feed and be updated on all the new stuff at http://mollermarketing.com.You can also enter your email address in the top left corner of this page and receive an email every time I make a new post.