Holy Mackeral!
These eye-popping social media statistics from Pew Internet Research show why building your own Net Traffic Machine is the quickest, most certain way for you to create a strong online profit base.
Richard Dennis
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See that picture? That’s Alcatraz. If you use the social media wrong, you may as well be in Alcatraz. That’s how much chance you’ll have of building a good presence online.
You have no doubt seen many, many examples of social media online. This blog is social media. MySpace, Facebook, Digg … all social media where people get together and communicate with each other … as opposed to a static, never-changing webpage.
In many of these media, when you fill out your first form, their #1 question is something like: Are you here for
The idea is to help tag you for others. It’s also a lesson to you about why people are there. It’s helpful to understand the “social media mindset.”
People come to these sites for friends, relationships, networking, & dating. That’s interesting. Do you notice that one category not here is …
to be advertised to
No one goes to a social media website to be advertised to. They didn’t go to MySpace so that you could change their life. No one filled out a Facebook profile hoping you would show up and preach to them about how much you love some product or company. They didn’t go out on a quest to find a bunch of people they don’t know and will probably never meet and yet, those people ask them for money.
THAT is definitely not the purpose of joining a social networking website. They don’t show up, hoping to be hammered into submission. And yet … and yet … I sure see a ton of people trying to do just that.
If you try that, the game is over. They click away. It’s not what they want. You go someplace else. And yet I see it all over - Facebook pages, Myspace, blogs. You see people who have a company logo as their photo. Or they have a product as their photo.
Let’s review …
Networking. Friends. Relationships. Dating.
To be advertised to?
NO!!! Who wants to network with a company logo? Who wants a relationship with a company logo? Who wants to date … well, you get the idea.
The value of the social media is in building relationships. And what we have found … I work closely with Charles Heflin at SEO2020.com, presenting the Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine for you to assemble and use … what Charles has found over the years in his testing is, the social media don’t really give you very good leads.
Is that a bummer or what, after all the time & effort you’ve put into it?
You can certainly get site visitors from the social media, but that is not where you get your best prospects.
However … if you tightly define what your target market wants and then do your research and uncover content your target market will really value … and you link to it in your social media … then people will connect with you. They will want to build a relationship with you, because you give value. They’ll link back to you. And they’ll promote your links to others in your target market, who will also link back to you.
You can get a lot of inbound links to your blog (Central Hub) by promoting other people’s great content from your social media sites. And as far as Google and MSN and Yahoo & the other search engines are concerned, nothing impresses them more about a website than inbound links. THAT is a site they will rank high.
So you’ll get more searches. And you’ll get more click-throughs, more people to your blog. And those are REAL prospects, people who have been searching keyword terms appropriate to your target market. Those visitors are way more valuable than the ones who come straight from the social media. But … you made use of the social media to find them. That is how it ties together.
One more time. The social media mindset is, people come to your blog (Central Hub) to be entertained, educated, enlightened. They are NOT looking to be hammered into submission. They are not looking for a salesperson.
They are looking for someone they can trust. That is key. They are on the lookout for good people in their niche to build relationships with. They want to find specialists in their niche, people who share their interest, people they can learn from.
Let that be YOU! Let someone else go to Alcatraz.
Richard Dennis
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Your Central Hub needs great pollination … lots of bumblebees who will take your content again and again and spread it everywhere they go. How do you find those bees? How do you get them to your blog?
One of the content syndication tools I’ve used over the years has been EzineArticles.com. You can become a published author very easily at lots of different article directories, but I’ve never found any that come close to the results I get from EzineArticles. It’s definitely the Big Dog of article directories.
They currently have just under 150,000 authors right now.
150,000 authors!!!
All of them publishing articles. Now, I’m sure the vast majority have just a single article. On the other hand … lots of authors have dozens of articles. Many have published hundreds of articles.
In fact, as I write this blog post … there are currently more than 80 authors who have each written & published over 1,000 articles at EzineArticles.com!!
In other words, this is a website with tons of content. The value to you is, each article gets read by people. And in each article, you put an author’s resource box at the end, with a link to your website. So if they like your article, they’ll click through to visit your site. And some of them will drop into your Sales Funnel, whatever your process is. Whatever action you want people to take, some of them will.
Now … Ezine Articles is a free tool for you. The owner is Chris Knight. And the purpose of the website is, Chris Knight advertises on your articles. He runs Google Adsense and other ads on your articles. So it’s a big profit generator for him, because he has so many articles and so many visitors. You don’t pay anything, but you are giving him free content, building his income, in exchange for the targeted eyeballs he can provide.
Ultimately, you want to build your own future and build yor own income, and be in Chris Knight’s position, where you have others helping you build your resource. That is one of your goals for your blog, your Central Hub, to be in that position. Entice visitors to bring their friends. Get them to be part of your community and share their own thoughts and experiences on your blog in the comments section. Your blog becomes like a little cross-section of Ezine Articles.
The other advantage of EA is, Google loves it. If you target one keyword phrase in an article, your article will often get first-page listing in Google for that phrase. Which means, of course, that searchers of that phrase will click your link and go to your website … more new targeted traffic.
You can’t publish the same article article both in EA and on your blog, because you’ll shoot yourself in the foot (visitors want to see new stuff on your blog). And once you have your content syndication really working, it’s time to publish strictly to your blog and put all your great content there. But getting those visitors in the first place may well make it worthwhile for you to publish to EA.
It’s really important to build your own future and your own steady stream of new traffic. So your eye to the future is always to publish almost all of your stuff on your own Central Hub. The more you do, the more valuable resource you are building for other people … and the more attractive your website will be to your target market.
No matter what changes there are in your business life, so long as there is a strong market for this resource you have created, you’ll be in good shape long-term. And the long-term view is the most important one to always consider.
Richard Dennis
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I like a Wordpress blog for a lot of reasons. There are so many ways you can personalize a Wordpress blog, so many ways you can leverage the power of that website … all while having zero or very little technical knowledge yourself.
You want a Wordpress blog on your own webspace - not the one hosted by Wordpress. If they host it, they have control over it. And we have seen them simply delete blogs, seemingly on a whim. You sure don’t want to put yourself in that position.
So, I recommend getting webspace at Hostgator.com, for ten bucks a month. You get a lot more space than you’ll probably ever use, plus you can put up 50 blogs if you want to, each with its own domain name.
What I especially like about Hostgator is that in their Back Office, you can do a keyword search for just about any online action you want to perform and find a video on how to do it. Their videos will walk you step-by-step through anything you want to do with your webspace. And if you still have trouble, just make out a “trouble” ticket. They always respond within a few hours.
One reason I like a Wordpress blog so much is … Wordpress themes. Because Wordpress is an “open source” software program, lots of people create themes for WP blogs. A “theme” is the appearance of the blog
The attractiveness and appeal of a blog has a lot to do with the theme you choose. Does it appear cluttered? Or is it more like sitting by the ocean, listening to the waves lap up on the shore?
It just makes a big difference what the darned thing looks like, no matter which blog platform you choose. But with WP, a ton of themes are free and easy to load into your blog.
You can just go to Google and search
free Wordpress themes
You get a ton of results. Take a look at a few and see what appeals to you.
I admit to being a theme junkie. I’ve tried a lot of them. I find things I like and things I don’t like about each. But for the forseeable future, I have settled on my favorite over all the others I’ve tried …
I like it because “flexibility” is its middle name. Well, technically, “flexibility” is its first name. You have lots of different options within the theme. Heck, you even get a control panel just for this theme. It’s the first theme I’ve ever found with its own control panel … althought I’m sure there must be others. You can control & experiment with a lot of elements in the appearance of your blog.
There are also paid themes available. Here’s one I really like:
Looks great, lots of gizmos, well-supported, about $90.
Back in high school, I read a short story by Ernest Hemingway titled, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Hemingway blew his brains out long before anyone conceived of the internet, but his short story title perfectly describes what your blog should look like. Anything less, and you will not create the impression you want your visitors to have.
Many themes you’ll find have names that describe what they’re like: magazine theme, church theme, diary theme, blue theme, etc.
Ultimately, it’s the content you offer that will determine whether your blog is successful or not. But people do often judge a book by its cover, so it’s important your theme’s appearance not be a turn-off. I strongly recommend you do that Google search and look at a lot of themes, to get an idea what others are doing.
When you set up your blog using Cpanel at Hostgator or other hosting services, your blog is formatted in the Wordpress Classic theme. Nothing wrong with that … but it’s pretty common and pretty uninspired and doesn’t have too much functionality. Yet, many bloggers just stick with it.
But there is a whole world out there, outside of WordPress Classic. You can find a dozen you like and upload them all to your blog, then sample and see what your blog looks like in each theme. So take a look and make some inspired choices.
Richard Dennis
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I’ve had great results over the years using article directories, especially EzineArticles.com. Dozens & dozens of my articles have been listed on the first page results of Google searches for the keywords I focused on. And some of those keywords would bring back millions of results, yet my article would be in the first few on the first page.
Some of these pages have brought my websites a steady stream of traffic over the years. And this is really targeted traffic - people searching the exact phrase I targeted in the article.
But … even though I’ve had several blogs over the years, I’ve never had my blog url show up high in Google search results. More likely, page 150 of Google or something like that, where nobody would ever see it.
A couple weeks ago, I started this Net Traffic Machine blog, focused on Charles Heflin’s Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine and my views on it and experience with it. So playing off the PITM, I named this blog Net Traffic Machine.
Yesterday, as sort of an afterthought, I Googled
traffic machine
Out of 660,000 results, my blog was listed #4 on the first page of Google. I was amazed, because I haven’t been able to create that before. Usually, Google highly values links from other sites. But in this case, there are very few links to this site so far. This made the listing a bigger surprise.
Now … reality … “traffic machine” isn’t a term that’s going to be searched a lot. But I think that because I now have such a better picture of what the search engines want - which I’ll be writing about here in detail, so you can get the same understanding - I can use what I’ve learned about keywords over the years and create many pages for my blog that will show up high on page 1 of Google for certain search terms.
When I also get the inbound links, using the social media as Charles outlines in his course, it’ll be even better.
Don’t you love it when a traffic machine comes together!
Richard Dennis
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The business purpose of social networks is to build relationships with people in your target market, who could become your customer and who may lead you to a lot more customers (their friends).
Some people just don’t get this.
They don’t do their due diligence to find where their target market is active. Instead, they just find a social networking website and immediately put themselves out there. Then another and another and another.
The fact is, you can’t effectively interact on more than a handful of social media. Maybe it’s just a couple or three, or five or six. But if you try to do more than that, you’ll get splattered all over.
And notice that word “interact”? That is really an important word. There is no sense in joining a site unless you are going to interact with others who come there.
And notice back back in the first paragraph, that phrase “target market”? The purpose for a business in social networking is to build relationships with people who will become your customers. That means you need to be able to describe your customers, and you need to know where they hang out. You need to go there and listen as they talk and find out what really excites them and what really frustrates them.
That knowledge puts you in position to be helpful to these potential prospects. You can research and find information that they’ll value - and build a relationship with them in doing so. You can answer their questions yourself - and build relationships by doing so.
As you build and strengthen these relationships, as you make yourself valuable to people in your target market, your business will build. That is the point of a social network.
It takes time and it takes commitment to do just one social network right. There’s no way you can be involved in even a dozen networks and still do justice to them and put yourself in the best light for the connections you need to really build relationships.
So don’t spread yourself too thin. Do your research, and find two or three or four places your target market gathers. THOSE are the networks you need to join. Then listen. Then interact. Give value.
That’s a plan that works.
Richard Dennis
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See that sunrise? It’s the start of a glorious day. Reminds me of Wordpress.
I don’t mind telling you, I love Wordpress.
I am that analytical personality … in areas where it’s fun for me to be analytical. When it comes to writing, I am very detail-oriented. I have to stop myself from investigating every nook and cranny when I’m working on an assignment … or I will happily research forever. A famous writer once said that a book is never finished, it is only abandoned. It’s true for a lot more than just books …
However, I am NOT at all analytical in areas where it’s not fun for me. Like putting up a website, for instance. Yes, I’ve forced myself to learn some HTML code over the years. But I hate it.
I’ve actually put up some rudimentary websites, from scratch. But I hate it.
I’ve even answered questions from those who know even less than I do about putting up a website. I REALLY hate that!
And all this is why WordPress is my darling. It is now so versatile, you can do just about anything with it, and all you need to do is learn which buttons to click. No techie stuff.
I LOVE that!
I recently took a course from Dr. Andy Williams, lessons about how to do virtually anything with Wordpress. OK, it got borderline techie, but I still put up with it. I understand a lot more now about how to use the software, and that should definitely get better results. Here is a recent article from Dr. Andy about Wordpress. Be sure to watch the video, too:
Is WordPress The Ideal Site-Building Tool?
Maybe the most intriguing feature of WordPress is, it is “open source”, which means anybody can take the software and modify it. And a ton of people have created modifications - also known as “plug-ins”, to do a host of really valuable tasks.
My blogs now use about 15 or 20 plug-ins to make promotion much easier and to make writing much easier … or entering a graphic or a video or audio.
It’s very frustrating when you know what you want to do, but you don’t know how. With Wordpress, I run into that problem very rarely.
My conclusion is, whatever you want to do online, you can do it with a WordPress blog. Get your domain name at NameCheap. Get your webspace at HostGator. And then find the video in the HostGator Back Office that shows you in 2-3 minutes how to put up your Wordpress blog, and you will be on your way.
Some people think that because they are not analytical personalities, this will be very difficult for them. Believe me - I am NOT an analytical personality when it comes to putting up a web page.
If I can do it, you absolutely can do it.
Richard Dennis
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For about 18 months, I’ve been using 2 vendors I really like for the essential services of domain names & webhosting.
Domain names:
The charge for a dn has changed a couple of times in the last 18 months, up maybe $1.50 per name. It’s currently $9.69 for a domain name. But like anything else, it’s not the cheapest service that you should seek out. You want one that is dependable and does what you want.
NameCheap has a back office with a great Control Panel where you can easily do anything you want with your names, especially:
1. Find new domain names (bulk search)
2. Change servers
3. Re-direct the name
Those are the 3 main activities everybody will be doing with a domain name, and it’s easy to do at NameCheap. Plus they have videos to walk you through these and any other task you may want to do. They also have been very quick to respond when I had a question or a problem.
There are certainly other good dn vendors available. I like NameCheap because they have been very dependable, and their Control Panel is easy to use.
Webhosting:
I like their “Baby” plan for $7.95/month (+$2.00 for a Dedicated IP). You get all the space you need and also, unlimited domains. So you can put up 1 blog or 50 blogs if you want. You get a Cpanel, which means it’s just 3 or 4 clicks to publish your Wordpress blog. You can sign up with HostGator and have a blog up and running in 5 minutes.
And HostGator has a ton of videos, showing you step-by-step how to do anything you could ever possibly want to do. Plus, if you can’t figure it out, just fill out a “help” ticket and you’ll get a response within a few hours. They have never left me hanging … my questions always get answered.
As NameCheap, I think HostGator is a great service. And for $10 a month, it’s probably all the webspace you will ever need. And as opposed to having a blog on a free site like blogger.com or wordpress.org, YOU have control over what you put on this blog and the promotion you do for it. You don’t have to answer to anyone or please someone else.
If you are planning to blog long-term, you definitely want a Wordpress blog on your own hosted webspace, and I highly recommend HostGator for this.
I could write a lot more about both these vendors. Neither has ever disappointed me, and I use them a lot.
If you have any questions, please comment below.
Take care,
Richard Dennis
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You need several very simple ingredients to be successful in social networking. Unfortunately, most business people start with a recipe that their visitors choke on and spit out.
Marketing in social media is 100% attraction marketing. People must come to you because you give value they want. You can never, ever advertise. You can’t treat social media as a revenue opportunity. You can’t treat your profile visitors as business prospects.
They won’t stand for it.
Your job is to educate, entertain, enlighten. Give value. Then give more value. Help people.
If you try to sell anything, you are dead in the water. Even if you just try to get their contact information right off the bat, they’ll be offended. They do not know you. They do not trust you. They are not looking to buy from you. As soon as they see you trying to make them do something, they will click away.
Is this so hard to understand? I mean, it’s exactly what YOU do!
Internet marketers see social media as just another advertising tool. You got no hope with that viewpoint.
IMPORTANT FACT: Time & testing have revealed that most of your direct visitors from social networks are NOT good prospects to begin with. Even if you have a terrific presentation, just a very small percentage will ever convert to sales.
Why?
Because they are not well-targeted. People on the social networking websites are NOT just regular targeted buyers who you can advertise to, as you would in other media. It’s a completely different market with different wants, needs and desires. You had better treat it as a different market, or you will fail.
To get really targeted prospects, you need to use social networks to build your online reputation, to leverage the search engines. This isn’t difficult to do. But the bottom line is:
Your job is to educate, entertain, enlighten. Give value. Then give more value. Help people.
So what should you do?
Choose a social networking website where people who share your interests hang out. Set up your profile. Go into detail. Answer all the “prompt” questions in the profile. Upload a photo.
If you don’t upload a photo, your chance of success is very, very low. People won’t trust you. Everybody else has a photo. Why don’t you?
It all comes down to trust. The social networking sites were set up for social networking. People resent anyone who comes in with some other agenda. And if you start out talking about the wonders of your free ebook, then they see you as just another huckster.
It’s obviously the start of a sales pitch. Visitors figure that if you really cared about a trust relationship, you wouldn’t start off selling to people you don’t even know. They’ll avoid you like the plague.
Social networks - and your blog is definitely a social network - are for networking socially. You’ve got to know the right recipe. Be friendly. Be helpful. Give great value. Be very passionate about whatever is your blog focus.
And never sell. It will not work.
Is the fog starting to lift?
Richard Dennis
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Social networking has always been such a tease. You look at the limitless prospect base having millions of conversations about millions of things everyday. You think you’ll just put yourself in the middle of all those talkers and start doing business.
But after a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and man-hours, you realize those talkers don’t do anything but talk and ignore you when you want them to buy.
Not too long ago, my friend Charles Heflin puzzled over how businesses could routinely get positive cash flow from social networking. Charles had gotten measurable ROI using social media for years. He wanted to create a formula so the process could be effectively taught to others.
So he focused on spotting the elements of online social media that don’t change, then developing an effective action plan from those elements.
Through rigorous testing, observing and implementing over the past two years, Charles reached some conclusions:
1. Your level of success in social media (measured by ROI) is directly proportional to
a. The speed at which you gain trust from visitors
b. The social nature of your products or services
c. The nature of your social network traffic conversion funnel (sales funnel – different from traditional internet marketing tactics)
2. Focusing on social network systems for incoming links to increase SE rankings is a short-lived strategy. We have evidence that Google values the level of “community”, “friendship” & “voting” within accounts that list your website link. They can easily spot footprints of social media black/grey hat tactics. Using social networks to build links will destroy your social media presence and your search engine visibility.
3. Social media networks (forums, blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, etc.) exist fpr two-way communication. They’d die without it. You must engage people within each network or you’ll get no value. Social bookmarking to increase awareness is not enough. You must also increase awareness of yourself (your brand) within your bookmarking, content, & other communities.
4. All content you post or promote must be educational, enlightening and/or entertaining. If not, your goose is cooked.
5. If you are an Internet marketer, you must unlearn everything you have learned. Success in social media is determined by your ability to educate, enlighten or entertain your target audience, not by how great a sales page you can write..
6. Sales resulting from social media interaction are proportional to the level of trust you get from visitors. Promotion doesn’t work. Branding yourself and building high search engine visibility put you in position to create trust. Visitors will find your “buy now” button without you shoving it in their face.
7. Strong social media communities change the focus from traditional SEO to community driven content delivery. SEO is automated through crowdsourcing. The focus on traditional (technical) SEO is melding with social rankings or “The New SEO”. Community trust leads to crowdsourcing and a dramatic increase in visibility across all major search engines.
8. Two social media elements lead to branding and ROI:
a. The ability to gain trust (by educating, enlightening or entertaining) and lead people off network to your blog or website. Your blog (or website) must continue the trend (educate, enlighten, entertain).
b. The ability of your blog (or website) to call visitors to action. Include an opt-in form offering a white paper, free report, MP3, video, etc., of high interest to your target audience. Maintain high trust and educate, enlighten, and/or entertain your audience throughout.
9. Listen to your target audience. Spot and understand their wants & needs before engaging them. Otherwise, you’re flying blind.
This is a good start with social media. There’s a lot more to come.
Richard Dennis
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