5 Ways to Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic

One of the major problems many people face is getting traffic to a blog, and the truth in the online world is that traffic is very essential to any online business you do; it is traffic that brings about people that buy.

This post will be talking about 5 ways you can significantly increase your website traffic.

1. Blog Commenting

I just began to realize the power of blog commenting. Blog commenting is a powerful way to get traffic to your website especially if done wisely and on a large scale.
One major thing about blog commenting is that it also helps you build a great brand when people begin to see your comments every here and there.
It is very important to make use of avatars when trying to get traffic to your blog through blog commenting because this will help people take note of you when they begin to see you everywhere every now and then. Being the first person to comment also helps a lot because most people are likely to visit the websites of a few of the first commenters and they rarely visit the rest.

When commenting to get traffic, quality is better than quantity because a lot of bloggers will delete your comment if you write generic comments and readers tend to click on valuable comments more than any other comments because they believe someone with this type of great comment will also have something similar on his blog.

2. Guest Posting

7 of the top ten referrers in my analytics data are from my guest posts and all of them sent me over 150 unique visitors. Guest posting is really effective and the power of a guest post should never be underestimated.
One thing I have come to notice with guest posts is that people prefer quality over quantity; if your guest post is a great one then you will get more visitors from it than just writing anything.
Many people tend to write just any guest post because they believe since the blog is not theirs then their best post should be on their blog, this is not supposed to be because of several reasons. One major advantage of submitting quality guest posts is that it helps you build a relationship with the blogger and his readers but if you just write anything there is a probability of the blogger declining your post, and if he doesn’t his readers will not visit your blog. The better your guest post, the better your result.

3. Blogging Communities

This is one underutilized traffic generation strategy many bloggers don’t use, many bloggers tend to give excuses that they are busy, If you are busy then you might want to be submitting your guest posts to blogging communities every weekend.
Some of the best blogging communities are MMO Social Network and Blog Engage; these two networks have sent me hundreds of visitors over time.
One major thing to consider when trying to get the best from blogging communities is that you have to have high quality posts and you also have to build relationship because people tend to vote up people they know and if you have an high quality post people will be more inclined to visit your blog.

4.  Forum Marketing

There was a time I signed up to the warrior forums and with only 50 posts I had already gotten over 70 visitors to my blog, I didn’t post a link to my blog in my posts, it was in the signature.
You can get great results from forum marketing if it is done properly, one great thing to consider when trying to market your blog through forums is that it is very important to try as much as possible to help others and not just spam people for your benefit.
If your aim is to go to forums to go and spam then within a short period of time you will be banned but if you focus on helping as many people as possible the end result will be you lasting longer in the forum, having more friends and building more stronger relationship and you will also have more traffic and authority.
Some great forums to get started are the Warrior Forum and Digitalpoint Forum.

5. Mailing List

I wouldn’t have put this on this list but it is also a very effective way to get traffic to your blog. I was checking my overall stats today and I discovered that my mailing list has sent me hundreds of visitors, this is a good number because I only sent my posts to them a few times.
One of the major benefits of a mailing list is the instant result it provides, people tend to respond faster because they are closer to their email than any other thing.
I have also observed mails I sent and I discovered that your titles matter, I have had sent emails have as low as 15% open rate and I have also had emails have over 35% open rate but what matters most is the title. If you have a cool and attractive title then you will get more results than having generic titles.
Getting traffic to blogs used to be a difficult task and I started noticing a difference over time. It is the tips in this post that is helping me get thousands of visitors to my 3 months old blog every week, use them to your advantage and you will be amazed at how they work.

It is also important to know that getting traffic takes time and requires constant effort, if you are dedicated to making the effective use of the above tips then in no time you will be getting a lot of traffic on autopilot.





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How Embedding Content (to Third-party Services) Benefits Your Marketing Efforts

The problem of online content theft has always been hot. You may have spent weeks and months producing some great piece of content (be it a photo, a video or anything else), and once it is live online, before you know it, hundreds of website owners are already republishing it (with or without credit) and getting traffic, links and social media shares that were supposed to be earned by you.
There’s no escape… Unless you give away your content for free and even encourage people to republish and reuse it. Jeremiah Owyang had a great saying regarding this:

If you love it, let it go

If you can’t prevent people from stealing your content, benefit from them reusing it. Make your content easy to embed and re-blog and promote your brand through embedded content.
And if we take this idea even further, not only should you encourage embedding your content, but also you should distribute it to third-party service and encourage embedding from there. The most obvious (and popular) choices to upload and embed your content from are:

• Youtube for videos (and here are other video distribution sites by the way)
• Flickr for images (and more image hosting sites);
• SlideShare for slide shows;
• Proprofs for quizzes
• Scribd for PDF files and documents (and here are 5 more document sharing websites)

Benefit #1: Increase your content exposure to the service users

One of the biggest benefits is added audience reach into communities loyal to the hosting site itself. All of the mentioned services are highly popular and have hundreds of thousands of users.
Exposing your content to them is GOLD. It means higher traffic, more attention and wider viral spread.
Of course, getting popular there is not easy: but the more you try, the better your chances are.

Benefit #2: Make your content “social-media-friendlier”

The users are just more willing to share the content from the sites they feel comfortable to use. Besides, most of those content hosting sites are social-media-friendly and encourage users to share your content.
ProProfs online testing site for example, prompt quiz takers to share their result right from the embed quiz:

Benefit #3: Repurpose your content

Those free content hosting sites give you great tools to make the most of your work by creating new content types:

• Create an embedded slideshow out of your photo collection;
• Create a .ppt slideshow out of your step-by-step guides;
• Create a pdf cheatsheet out of your data collection, etc

This will both increase your content exposure and (viral) reach and, well, re-purpose it. For example, I have mentioned this tip in one of my previous posts on adding “Save as PDF” button to your (most useful) posts:

• This makes it easy (as well as actually encourages users) to save your content locally for further reference (Then in case they have no Internet connection but want to kill an idle hour reading something useful, your article will get the second chance to get noticed);
• It makes your content print-friendly (which is essential for those who prefer to read “normal” books while traveling);
• This makes it easy to save an access from popular devices like iPad (which has plenty of widely used applications for reading .pdf files):

What are your thoughts on re-purposing your content to third-party services? Is it a win or a fail?
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Top 10 Free Online Proxy Websites

Apture™

by Talk Radio News Service

You can imagine how important Internet Freedom will be when you are in a country or area where Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and some other websites are blocked, and you have to use proxy tools to visit those websites.



1. Proxy Desktop Software

 You have to download and/or install a proxy software (such as Tor) on your computer.

2. VPN
Some VPN (Virtual Private Network) services also need installation, and some only need to build a Virtual Private Network connection, but most of VPN services are not free.

3. Online Proxy Websites
This kind of proxy tools is easy to be used, nothing to be downloaded or installed, but most of them have traffic limit and themselves are easy to be blocked too.
I mainly use Tor to visit those blocked websites, but sometimes I also use online proxy websites, especially when I am using public computers. Below is a list of 10 best free online proxy websites, which will let you unblock the websites by just entering their URLs, but there are pop-up ADs, so look out them.

Top 10 Free Online Proxy Websites:

1. aniscartujo.com
2. browse007.com
3. enoughschool.com
4. hidemy.biz
5. nobodycanstop.us
6. polysolve.com
7. schoolisgood.com
8. sslunblock.com
9. www.dtunnel.com
10. www.surfagain.com

Except Polysolve, Dtunnel and Sslunblock, all the other seven online Proxy websites are also available for you to watch YouTube videos.

Some even all of them may be blocked someday, and I do not want to check out these online proxy websites everyday, so if they are not workable, you can find some other online proxy websites on below website:
http://list.glype.com/

The above website will update workable proxy website list every day.

Again, just look out those pop-up ADs from those free online proxy websites, or you’d better install proxy desktop software or VPN on your own computer.
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Great Ways To Make Money On Facebook!

Making money with facebook! If you are a facebook user or have been around social networking sites for a while, you probably have heard that. But, is it really possible to make money with facebook? How would you go about making money on facebook?

Well, thanks to some very useful and user friendly applications, today almost anyone who has a facebook page, can make money in verity of ways. With one simple installation, you can be on your way to make money on facebook. Of course like any other methods of making money, specifically making money online, it takes hard work and persistency to be able to make a decent amount of money on facebook. Although these applications make it very easy to get on the path of making money with face book, its the strategy and a well thought out plan, combined with persistency and hard work, that ultimately factors in your success or failure in making money with facebook. Here are some applications you can use to make money on facebook.


1. Radical Buy   This is almost like a facebook made ebay. You can sell anything on your facebook page using this unique app. List an item and have it visible to all facebook users instantly. Now, the cool think is that you can offer commission to others who will sell your items on their facebook page, allowing you to reach more potential buyers. Of course that means, even if you don’t have any item for sale, you can show other peoples item on your facebook page and make money with the commission you get for selling there stuff.

2. My Merch Store   If you have red my 9 Website To Make Money With By Designing & Selling …  article, then you know about zazzle. Well, now zazzel allows you to create and design any product on their site(which is free) and sell them on your face book. Think about the potential buyer base for customized t-shirts and hats and etc, specially if you have a lot of facebook friends. You can also sell product created by other artists and earn a commission on those. So, even if you don’t want to deal with designing, you have a way to make money on face book using zazzle.

3. Cafe Press  It’s the same idea as zazzle, but with a much bigger and well known online store. Cafepress lets you easily sell any product from anti Obama Shirts to pro Obama Shirts, on your facebook and make money, whether it was created by you or someone else.

4. Ether  Ether is a website that you can make money on by giving advice to people over the phone or by chatting. But now, you can use their new application on facebook to make money while giving advice to people over the phone. If you’re good at giving advice, this may be the way for you to make some extra money on facebook. Also if you know a second language, this app makes it easy to teach others and make money. You set the rates and Ether provides a number that individuals can call. The call will then be forwarded to your personal telephone number.

5.  Music Blaster   With MusicBlaster you can put a simple little music store on your facebook, and sell music from BlastMyMusic.com. You earn 5% for each song sold. The cool think about this app is the fact that you can help your favorite band or singer to sell their music while you make money, as well as helping them to gain more exposure.

6. Garage Sale    The name says it all, its the good old Garage Sale, but a “facebooky” Garage Sale. Simply add Garage Sale to your profile page and list every thing you want to sell. When someone buys something, Garage Sale automatically bills the buyer’s credit card and lets you when to ship the item. Your money is deposited directly into your Pay Pal account, or you can request payment by check. However they charge a 5% commission on the total sales price, but that’s all. No other fee for setup or anything like that.

7.  Shopit    Shopit is a free Social Commerce Network that gives users the ability to buy, sell or trade any product or service. Simply add a free store to your facebook and sell anything you like. Another easy way to make money on facebook.

8. FlameTunes    FT was founded in 2007 by an Iranian-American named Nima Khakpour. This app is more for the artists to sell their music. So, if you are an artist, FlameTunes enables you to sell your music on your facebook. You can also use it to sell music on myspace.

9. Lemonade   Remember when you setup your first lemonade stand in your community? Well, this app allows you to use the same concept, combining commerce and community, and have a lemonade stand in a digital (facebook) neighborhood. Basically you add what you want to sell to a lemonade stand, and put it on your Facebook. It’s free and easy.

10. Ebay   Who knew that was coming? Yep, you guessed it. Now you can have your ebay on facebook. This application allows you to add eBay auction listings to your Profile. Sell things to your facebook friends from crafts, jewelry to diary pages, undies and dinner dates or just whatever you’re selling on eBay! You also have the option to add a charity auction that you support, on your facebook profile. I think it’s a very smart way to combine eBay and facebook, and you don’t even need an eBay Account!

11. Lending Club   It’s almost like prosper, where you land money to others and make money with the interest you make from the loan. Not to worry though, lending club has all the detail covered. So, it’s completely safe, and the whole legal and trust issues are taking cared by lending club. If you can use it safley, it can be a good way to make money with your facebook.

12. e3buy Auction   Buy, sell or trade anything. Auction your used or new stuff. With e3buy you can open a customizes store, upload your logo and start selling things. unlike ebay, there is no commission or fee to be paid. it’s completely free to use. It is also fully integrated with paypal, so you can get paid fast.

13.Cash Cliques. This application will pay you to visit or click onto and leave a comment in a certain number of advertisement websites. Other than this pay-per-click scheme, you can also earn by referring or other people to visit the site.

 Facebook is definitely something that is taking the industry by storm. Everyone loves being on facebook and enjoying the different applications available, so why should you miss out on the opportunity as well? With the help of these applications, you can earn money and gain more contacts.
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5 Social Media Strategies to Expand Your Business

A great social media campaign creates viral exposure with the community performing most of the communication.
When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you’re on the right track, but at the same time, you’re limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn’t have to be the case.

If you’re a business owner, you know that working harder doesn’t necessarily mean better results – what if you’re working hard on the wrong thing?
Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot.

Strategy 1 – Great Content
The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. Content is king on the Internet. If you get this component wrong, it doesn’t matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what’s hot in your market and find an angle so you can distribute the best content.

Strategy 2 – Niched Network Nuances
The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people or yours.
People follow other people with similar interests. They’re on sites like LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg actively looking for new content. Put those two things together and you are on the right track.
Having 5000 connections on Twitter or Facebook is useless if you are connected to people who don’t want your broadcasts, and you’re just as useless to them if you don’t want theirs. If my interest is in improving my existing business and you’re trying to get me to sell your network marketing products, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. If I’m not interested, your continued broadcasts will be ignored.
The worst part is, if someone is not spreading your message, then the whole concept of this marketing goes out the window. If you are in network marketing, why not go after people who love the network marketing concept but can’t seem to find the right company? That’s a perfect match.

Strategy 3 – Simplify Sharing
You’ve got great content. You’ve got a massive, niched network. Why feed them content that’s hard to share? Does that report have to be in PDF format? If so, does it have to be behind an opt-ín wall if you’re spreading it among people who have Already opted in? Anyone connected to your business through its Facebook page, or your Twitter stream is also part of your opt-ín list. Yes, it would be best if they were on your email newsletter list, but what faster way to get them there than to show them you don’t need to hold them prisoner there?

If your whitepaper is of such high value that you don’t want it to spread, well, that’s something different. But if you’re sharing it so other people will spread it, make it easy for others to share.
Send your su.pr link so all they have to do is click the Thumbs-Up button, put a few sharing links on your page, make it easy for them to Retweet, the easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it.

Strategy 4 – Consistency
It’s one of the things I know I need to do, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of how to brainstorm, create and distribute quality content consistently, and still give the best possible service and support to my customers and clients.
The other thing that helped a lot was getting over my perfectionism complex. Release your content as soon as you can. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve left on the table from my old fear of the typo and grammar police. Not to mention the fact that I felt like I was leaving my audience hanging.
You subscribe to something because you want to get regular updates. If your favorite daily news show started coming on once a week, you’d probably switch channels. If you’re inconsistent without explanation, your audience numbers will drop and your network will fade.

Strategy 5 – Think Engagement
Measuring your results by page view alone is a thing of the past. When the web was mostly text and images, it made some sense that how many pages a visitor viewed at your site was a true measure of engagement.
Nowadays this isn’t the case. You want to look instead at how long people are at your site. The exception, of course, is when customers are coming to your site to buy, and the order processing system takes them off your page. But if people aren’t leaving your site because they’re ready to buy or subscribe, you truly must look at why they aren’t paying more attention to your content, and what changes you can make to get them to stay.
This is critically important in understanding which content will go viral naturally. What posts are people staying on your site to comment on? When do they take a few extra seconds to retweet? Are they watching your videos all the way through?
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7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have

Facebook is one of the most popular Social Networks and quickly becoming a an interaction hub for great many people I personally know and work with. What have started as a college students network have grown into one of the most useful tools you can have for communication and for locating new people with similar to you interests.
But while standalone Facebook portal provides you with plenty options – its interactivity and usefulness factor greatly multiplied through the usage of the Apps provided by other developers. In fact as a blogger you have a superb way to promote your content on Facebook and get yourself additional audience…
More Traffic! Could You Use Some?
In this post I’ll discuss 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have.

Application chosen for this post are based on my personal view of their usefulness and my personal usage, so be sure to experiment as nothing should be taken for granted!

Notes

Notes is a superb application and one of the absolutely MUST have if you write to a blog or two And here is the reason why:

1. It allows you to basically subscribe to your own RSS Feed and will automatically import it to your profile each time a new post was made!
2. Every time a new post imported as Note – all your friends will get a notification that a new status update is made on your profile – increase your branding!

See image below:

Blog Networks

Blog Networks application allows you to claim your own blog and have it appear within the main Blog Networks interface. But how and where you will appear directly depends on your popularity!
More people subscribe to your blog – more popular it is seen and higher position you can get. Subscribing to blogs is very simple and it ads them to your profile. See image below and if you like my blog - Subscribe To My Blog!

Blogvote

Blogvote is a very simple application that does one thing – allows people to vote on blogs. Obviously your blog popularity will be determined by the score and probably number of votes. I can’s say for 100% because as you can see in image below – number of votes on my blog is pathetically small. So – do vote, good or bad, either way appreciated!

Twitter

Twitter application is great in one perspective – it ties very popular micro-blog network that is currently all the rage and allows you to post status update directly from Twitter. Basically – every time you make an update in Twitter – it will be imported as your new status in Facebook and also gives you an opportunity to post directly from Facebook to the Twitter.
See images below:

Friend Feed

Friend Feed is a swiss army knife of the the aggregation. Once you have setup your profile under the Friend Feed service properly – you can aggregate your actions and content from multiple sources into one location. And facebook app allows you t import all of that into your Facebook Profile!
Better yet, it allows you to see all the actions of your friends! In one single location, as long as they took the time to configure their profile. This is an app that will become the future of social interaction!
Talk about visibility! See image below:

Ping.fm

Ping.fm application allows you to do actions such as status update from Ping.fm application. This one is a MUST for every WordPress blogger and I have already explained why and how in my post on social influence and will not be repeating myself.
All I can add here is that by not using this service you are loosing out!

SubmbleUpon

And last but by no means least is StumbleUpon app. Every action you take via Stumble Upon bar is posted to your Facebook profile and shared with your friends! As you can see below – many of my own friends using this tool and falling behind is simply not an option.
StumbleUpon has a potential of generating to your blog massive amounts of traffic when you don’t abuse the system and Facebook app simplifies the process! Feel free to become my friend by clicking the image below:

Conclusion

As I have stated in the beginning of this post – it is not mean to be an All Inclusive list of the Facebook Applications but rather those that help you as a blogger to get traffic and recognition and have proven to work for me – in one way or another.
And that reason is what makes them in my opinion 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have
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Boost Traffic With Facebook

Are you on Facebook? You should be. Despite the stigma Facebook has as being a social networking sites for school kids it is a powerful ally for your marketing arsenal. Facebook is being utilized by online marketers young and old, and for you to benefit from the same you need be there.

If done right, you can boost traffic to your site with the help of Facebook time and time again. Facebook is the largest social networking sites on the planet and has even outgrown Google’s traffic numbers.
Below are some ideas to help you boost your traffic with FB:

Facebook Ads

Facebook PPC ads are a cost-effective way to market your business. Bear in mind that the TOS are pretty strict and not every type of business is allowed to advertise. Work from home and MLM schemes will find it tough to get approved as there is so much rubbish among them.

Facebook Pages

If you run any business, regardless whether it offline or online based you should have a Facebook Page. You can design them at no cost to you. Once your Page is designed and launched you need to find fans. You can do so by inviting your existing Facebook contacts to take a closer look.
You can also network on similar niche forums on the site to grow your circle of influence over time. As more people take notice of you, they will join your fan club.

Facebook Groups

Joining Facebook groups is as easy as doing a keyword search for a related niche. If you are “peddling” electrical contracting you can join groups with like-minded people to extend your reach. By helping others for free you are likely to gain a steady following of people over time, people who will become your avid readers and eventually your clients.

Install Tracking

When you promote your message on Facebook make sure you use some kind of tracking stats to determine what works and what doesn’t. The easiest way to do this is by signing up for a free bit.ly account. You can use specialized URLs and track how many clicks you get, where the traffic came from and much more. Unless you know what works you will be wasting your time.

Network with Top Marketers in Your Niche

If it is possible to network with top marketers in your niche, do it. You need to understand that you can’t simply send them messages saying “hello,” “great to meet you,” and stuff like that. For you to be noticed by a top maggot you need to offer something; your time, your energy, your support, free work, etc. These guys are busy and they simply won’t respond to every Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to seek their friendship.

Design a Killer Profile

Unless your profile stands out among the competition you will only ever be another number in the crowd. The best way to stand out is to make your profile page in-your-face. Be outspoken, be hilarious, be grumpy, be different. Whatever it takes to achieve this. Today, it is getting harder and harder to be a unique entity because of the sheer number of people who market online.
Having said this, it isn’t impossible. You can put on your creative hat and start thinking about ways to attract people’s attention without being nasty, aggressive or abusive to them.
Have fun!
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Marketing Tips to Promote Your Business

After a tough 2009, the majority of small businesses have high hopes of emerging from the sales doldrums in 2010. Some 86% of small business owners expect 2010 revenues to be equal to or higher than 2009 figures,

according to research firm Ad-Ology. However, despite that glimmer of confidence, most small business owners don’t plan to increase their marketing budgets in the near term. In a February 2010 survey of small business owners called the Merchant Confidence Index, 46% of respondents said they expect their marketing expenditures to remain stable over the next three months, while just 29% expected to increase marketing spend.

Just because you don’t have a lot of extra money to spend on marketing and advertising doesn’t mean you have to sit back and hope for the best in 2010. In fact, there are many free online marketing methods small businesses can use to connect with potential customers. Below are eight proven marketing strategies you can use to boost customer acquisition and increase sales in 2010 – which will cost you only your time.

1.       Create a simple, clean website. There are dozens of self-service website creation services, such as Weebly, BlinkWeb, and Squidoo, which allow non-technical users to create simple, functional sites for free. Your site should include key words about your business so that people looking for your products or services can find you. 

2.       List your business on all free directory sites available to you. MerchantCircle, Google Local Business Center, Angie’s List, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, YellowPages.com, SearchLocal, and SuperPages are some of the online business directory services that allow businesses to create a free listing. If the site already lists your business, you can “claim” it by adding more details to the listing, such as your company website URL, a map, phone numbers, or business hours.

3.       Use email to stay in touch with your best clients/customers. You likely already have the email addresses of your best clients or customers, so use them! An email newsletter is a great way to connect with your loyal customers. Create an email that includes a quick update on new products or services, and perhaps a printable coupon or promotional code. You can also add an image, a link to your website or a video you’ve posted on YouTube, or a link to you’re a business directory page that includes lots of positive customer reviews. 

4.       Create business pages on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. Social networking is here to stay, so your company needs to join the fray. Start by creating a Facebook business page and a Twitter account in your company’s name; both are free. If you have video content about your business, create a free “video channel” on YouTube, while B2B companies should also create a LinkedIn profile that details your business profile, lists key contacts, and provides information about your products and services. Make sure to encourage customers to sign up for your pages by printing your Facebook address and Twitter handle on all business materials. 

5.       Get creative with promotions. Everyone loves a bargain, and people are increasingly price sensitive after recently living through one of worst recessions in decades. Try offering different types of promotions: downloadable and printable coupons people can bring into your store or office; online coupon codes redeemable for a one-time discount; a 10%-off coupon for signing up for your email newsletter or Facebook Page; a refer-a-friend discount; or a discount for writing a review of your business on a directory site like Yelp. You can promote these discounts via free or inexpensive advertising options: your email newsletter, in-store banners, Twitter, and Facebook.

6.       Search online for all businesses like yours. Use Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other search engines to find similar businesses in your city and in other areas to get a sense for what marketing tricks your competitors are using. Check out their social networking pages and their websites, and try searching for their latest promotions. Sign up for their email newsletters. Armed with this free competitive intelligence, you can see what’s worked for companies you admire, and fine-tune your own marketing strategies to compete with them.

7.       Show your expertise. There are many sites where experts can provide answers to people asking questions about anything under the sun. Yahoo Answers, MerchantCircle Answers, and LinkedIn Answers are some of the most popular question-and-answer sites. Search all of these sites for questions related to your business or service expertise, and then provide answers to them. Offer thoughtful, expert advice people can really use; that’s great PR for your business in and of itself.

8.       Create some online marketing videos. Most people prefer to 'see' something rather than 'read' something – so create some videos for your business! There are several sites, such as Jivox and Spotzer, where you can create simple marketing videos for free using stock footage, then add your company’s URL, phone number, address, and clickable coupons. You can also shoot marketing videos yourself using an inexpensive hand-held camera, and then polish them with free online editing tools like JayCut. Post your videos on your Facebook Page and on YouTube, and use them on your website and in your email marketing campaigns.

Small business owners are a creative and hard-working bunch, used to doing a lot with few resources. In 2010, take the time to invest in the growth of your business, implementing a few creative marketing strategies that deliver real results in return for just a little elbow grease.

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101 Ways to Promote a New Blog

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.

Content
1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas.
2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome.
3. Release a manifesto.
4. Release 2 manifestos.
5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people.
6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories).
7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you.
8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your niche.
9. Check out the most popular content on high trafficked blogs. Create similar content but applied to your own niche.
Facebook
10. Start a page.
11. Make that page awesome.
12. Start a group.
13. Make that group awesome.
14. Create a Facebook app for your blog.
Fundamentals
15. Wait. After you’ve taken action it can take a short while for traffic to arrive.
16. Be patient. Some bloggers may seem like overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
17. Motivate yourself.
18. Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
19. Have an interesting story and overall purpose.
20. Embrace the Law of Reciprocity. Everything you give will come back exponentially.
21. Make blogging easier.
22. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic. The more you do each day the faster your blog gets traction.
23. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
24. Turn off your computer, do some cool stuff, turn on your computer again and blog about it.
25. Understand the importance of context.
26. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
27. Make it a numbers game. Decide upon a definite plan of action (eg. 20 blog comments per day, 1 guest post per week etc) and stick with that.
Online Video
28. Create videos and distribute them through tubemogul.com
29. Or for wider video distribution trafficgeyser.com may work for you (expensive though).
30. Respond to YouTube videos with your content.
31. Include your full blog address at the TOP of your video descriptions.
32. Take your time with devising video titles and tags.
33. Convert your video to multiple formats, with slight editing changes, and upload it to video sites multiple times, targeting different keywords. The content remains the same but you can test what videos and titles work the best.
34. Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
35. Start the first live show in your niche (Ustream, Justin.tv and LiveStream are popular choices). Make sure you record the shows too so they can be distributed as a podcast later on.
Other Blogs
36. Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. But still provide value.
37. If you can’t be the first then comment anyway. But try to be the first.
38. Stumble and Digg cool blog posts you find and let the blogger know via a comment. If you have something worthy on your blog, they’ll probably reciprocate.
39. Use google.com/blogsearch to find fresh blog posts and then leave intelligent comments.
40. Link to blogs of a similar size. They’ll notice and then good stuff may happen.
41. Write a guest post for a large blog. You may not always get published, but when you do the traffic spike will be significant.
42. Write a guest post for a small blog. You’re more likely to get published and build relationships with the next wave of A-List bloggers.
43. Write some more guest posts. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
44. Join a blog network.
Paid
45. Start a StumbleUpon Ads campaign.
46. Get reviewed.
47. Buy some ad space.
48. Send out a press release.
People
49. Attend relevant meetups.
50. Tell your friends and family about your blog. Have them tell everyone they know.
Podcasting
51. Start a podcast and submit it to the iTunes directory.
52. Convert audio files to video files (just use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and send them out via tubemogul.com
53. Submit it to some other podcast directories.
Search engine optimization
54. Write linkbait.
55. Have any video or audio content transcribed and posted to your blog.
56. Register your domain name for 10 years.
57. Take advantage of sites scraping your blog’s feed by interlinking posts. Simple way to get deep inbound links.
58. Use Thesis.
Social networks
59. Join every social network you can.
60. Or, just join a couple and be really active.
61. Become active in relevant ning.com communities.
62. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit them to Scribd – include your blog url in the description and document itself.
63. Add your Scribd documents to relevant groups.
64. Submit your best posts to blog carnivals.
65. Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting intelligently.
66. Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
67. Create lists on Amazon.com
68. Write reviews on Amazon.com
69. Better yet, create video reviews for Amazon.com
70. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo Answers, leaving your website as the source.
71. Or on Mahalo Answers.
72. Or even through LinkedIn Answers.
73. Start your own Slinkset, and feed your RSS feed into it automatically.
74. Submit your site to alltop.com
75. Write an article aimed at Digg (okay, that article won’t help much).
76. Also, befriend one of the many Digg powerusers.
77. Create a new thread on a forum and write up a really great guide with no self promotion. Simple way to be seen as an authority figure and to elicit comments on your writing (don’t forget that signature link though!).
78. Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
79. Or have Bookmarking Demon do it for you (certainly a bend in ethics though).
StumbleUpon
80. Become an active stumbler to understand what stumblers like.
81. Friend people who stumble your content (they may just want to stumble more in the future)..
82. Have other people initially submit content (or “Discover” it as it’s known).
83. Place a Stumble button in your post template.
Su.pr
84. Sign up at su.pr and use it for all your short url needs.
85. Post content to your Facebook and Twitter stream.
86. Install the WordPress plugin to automate the process.
87. Identify the times that result in the most clicks and schedule tweets for them.
88. Setup your blog as a promoted website.
Twitter
89. Include hash tags (#tagname) in your tweets.
90. Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
91. Place a Retweet button in your post template.
92. Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people.
93. Send @replies to relevant, popular and interesting people.
94. Tweet links to your content at multiple times during the day.
95. Love a product from a company that’s on Twitter? Review it and they may just notice and tweet about the review. It’s happened to me.
96. Sponsor some tweets.
97. Find cool people in your niche who live nearby and organize a tweet up (a meet up where you invite anyone on Twitter).
WordPress
98. Install All In One SEO Pack.
99. Automatically ping lots of ping services.
100. Create a theme, include a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
101. Create a plugin and release it for free. Add a link to your blog within the admin area. If it’s a good plugin people will love you for it.

RESOURCE- http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ 
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How To Maximize Your Facebook Fan Page To Generate Real Results

For companies interested in getting into the conversation on social networks and going where their customers are, the one area to definitely consider is Facebook. One of the most popular social networks, the one advantage of going onto Facebook is that you’re able to interact with the customer’s profile and also create your own presence. A couple of years ago, Facebook did something quite ingenious…rather than just setting up an account and having company employees respond to customers using their personal accounts (or even making up new accounts – which apparently is against Facebook’s policy), now you can create what’s known as Facebook “fan pages” or business pages, as they are sometimes referred to as. Basically you’re establishing a Facebook entity where it’s your corner of the social network that your company can use to promote your own brand and get better acclimated with your customers.
FACEBOOK FAN PAGES, GROUPS & PROFILES? I’M CONFUSED.
Before we get any further, it should be important to note that Facebook does already have multiple options for people to make their presence known, including profiles and groups. So what’s the big deal about using a Facebook fan page? Well I’ll explain…if you have a brand like Coca-Cola, Kohl’s, American Airlines, etc, you don’t really have a individual that represents your brand, like you would with Mashable (which has Pete Cashmore), Mr Clean or another company that has a imaginary or real spokesperson that people can readily identify and associate with your brand. So unless you meet this qualification, then the best bet is to go with a fan page. Moreover, you’re probably going to want to curate more than 5,000 fans to your page, right? Setting up a profile won’t satisfy your needs since there is a limit on the number of fans you’re able to have on your profile. Score another point for the fan page. Now what about groups? I think of Facebook groups has more customer-created and not something that a brand would necessary create. Look at the types of Facebook groups out there – in fact, just do a search for “I hate” and you’ll see some interesting ones like “I hate Hannah Montana” or “I hate the new Facebook” or even “I hate Coca-Cola”. Think of these Facebook groups as your communities that you, as a brand, should look into and evaluate whether you should be involved. But it’s over there that you won’t be able to manage what’s being said – they’re a unionized group and you’re only there as an observer…
WHAT YOUR FAN PAGE MEANS TO YOUR BRAND.
So if you’re not allowed to properly play in their playground, then may I suggest Facebook fan pages? Set up shop on Facebook and essentially create your own “profile”. It’s here that you can post your press releases, blog posts, videos, photos, etc and share with your customers. People on Facebook will flock to your website to leave comments about how cool your product is or provide you feedback when they think you’re doing something wrong. You can also leverage your soon-to-be growing fan base by enticing people to join through contests run through your page. Just look at what Sears is doing on their page. In order to get exclusive discounts to their Sears store, all you’re going to need to do is to be a fan of their page. As a result of that, the company can now send you messages on a periodic basis alerting you on new things, sales, discounts, coupons and other news related to Sears – it’s almost like a opting-in for email, but on a social network!
IT’S MORE THAN JUST A BORING FAN PAGE.
Facebook fan pages will also let you create other sections on there using a special programming code called FBML and you can embed special pages just for your own use. In Sears’ example, they’ve set up a whole tab promoting the NCAA basketball tournament. And it’s not all static text and images. Instead, they’ve made it a bit more interactive with a custom look complete with video (see image on left). Sears has converted a regular, probably boring, fan page into something where it will entice customers and fans alike to come back and check out what’s new. The new tabs serving a variety of campaigns is something that should be regularly refreshed so people won’t be coming back for the same boring thing over and over again. On Kohl’s Facebook fan page, they have leveraged it by creating tabs to promote a line of clothing by Lauren Conrad, along with contests for recipes and even a PR section to tout the company’s green initiatives.
CAN YOU SEE YOUR FAN PAGE? WILL OTHERS?
One key thing to point out in order to maximize your Facebook fan page is to make sure that it’s FOUND. Yes, just simply setting it up and telling your friends and co-workers about it doesn’t make it an instant hit. That is, unless you’re verbally telling a million friends. But realistically you’re going to need to find some way to promote it without it sounding intrusive or pushy. The first thing you should do is to put links on your website and blog clearly and conspicuously so that people know that they can be friends with you on Facebook. And don’t make it marketing speak either. Make the copy clear and explicit: “Follow me on Facebook”. If you make it too wordy or full of buzz, then you’re going to confuse people and they won’t know what you’re talking about. If possible, include the Facebook logo next to the link – people will automatically associate the Facebook logo with your Facebook fan page. Bonus! Oh, and did you know that Facebook even has custom widgets that you can install so people can be fans of your page right from other sites you own – including your company website? All without going to Facebook directly! Make it easy for them!
INTEGRATE OTHER CONTENT. SHARING IS CARING.
In a Mashable post a year ago about five elements of a good Facebook page, one recommendation is to leverage existing content produced by customers and fans. They reference a Coca-Cola duo who enjoyed the soft drink so much that they produced some interesting content and created their own fan page. It has, in fact, become such a hit that not only is it one of the largest product fan pages on Facebook, but it also caught the attention of the folks at Coca-Cola who then decided to work with the duo instead of demanding the page be turned over to them. Rewards and VIP treatment was bestowed upon the creators and Coca-Cola did a great thing by deciding to work WITH the duo to make sure that they both reaped the benefit. If you’re seeing a fan page that promotes your brand or product better than yours, then don’t be in a hurry to quash them. In fact, you might be smart because you don’t want to anger someone who has been an ardent fan of yours. That negativity could sway others to go the opposite direction causing you more grief than good. Work with other content creators and curate their information on your fan page and make it a resource for people to find.
INTERACTION AND CONVERSATION SHOWS YOU EXIST.
Once you’ve started getting people to interact with your fan page, then you should look closely at what people are saying and what types of people are interacting with your site. Washington, DC’s tourism fan page has ballooned to include over 140,000 fans so there are some clear demographics about who visits and what types of things they’re interested in. Facebook also includes statistics that you can look at if you’re an administrator to gauge how many new fans are there, who’s leaving, the gender balance, etc. Very informational things that you can use to tailor your content to meet their needs. Maybe you’re going to talk about cars, beer and sports on your fan page, but then look and see your demographics leaning predominantly female. That would be a big shift in your strategy, but you can easily make corrections on the fly or in near real-time to find what suits a majority of your fans. In Washington, DC’s case, they are posting photos, news and links to things people are interested in concerning the city – whether it’s new exhibits, cherry blossoms or television movies that involve the city.

Other brands that have seemed to maximize their fan pages are finding success in engaging in posts people make on their fan pages. Take Kohl’s page, for example (shown above). As you can see, they have nearly a million fans on their page, but in practically every example shown above, a representative from Kohl’s (using the Kohl’s profile to post) is responding to anything negative or positive in a way to show that there is someone behind the browser showing concern about people’s feedback. There are examples where Kohl’s has responded even to people’s post on the Facebook wall about how they scored a deal shopping at the store or to thank someone for shopping in preparation for their vacation. It’s customer appreciation and Kohl’s is definitely leveraging it in their situation. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, they are also responding to people’s complaints about issues relating to coupons or store complaints in a way to give customers another excuse to show why they’re fans – that Kohl’s is a company that cares.
STILL NOT SURE ABOUT USING A FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
If you want to basically put a stick in the ground and let people know that you’re serious about talking with them in a social network, then I’d suggest you get a Facebook fan page. Don’t worry if your numbers don’t happen right away. But if you’re not sure that Facebook is right for you, then I leave you with these statistics taken from their website and included in Steven Fisher’s post on Grow Smart Business regarding this very topic:

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

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