Join Me at the BlogWorld Conference 2010
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jun 10, 2010
The BlogWorld and New Media Expo and Conference 2010 is going to be the most important and opportunity-generating show it’s ever had. If you think my 3-hour workshops are “educational,” or you enjoyed watching Joel Comm speaking at AffCon 2010 in Denver, well, multiply that by about 100. The networking, the learning, the ability to talk with Internet pioneers is enough to keep you full of cutting edge tactics to try for the next six months!
Register Now through my affiliate link and use the discount coupon EBIRD. The reason you want to use the discount coupon (good only through July 15) is to get the best deal of course. The reason you want to sign-up through my affiliate link is because you will have the best experience at the conference! Here’s what will happen.
The show is on for 3 days, October 14, 15, 16. After each day worth of sessions, I will hold a one-hour group meeting with those who have signed-up through my affiliate link. Together, we will go over highlights from the sessions we attended and share contacts of interesting people we met.
It’s impossible for one person to absorb everything at a multi-day conference. And, I’m lucky if I meet more than about 20 people at an event like this because I get in such lengthy deep conversations with people that I forget to move onto the next contact! By sharing networking connections together, we will multiply our connections and network exponentially!
So, checkout the details, and
just sign-up. You’ll thank me later. Take advantage of the earlybird special discount and make sure to sign-up through my affiliate link. Then send an email to me that you have done so and I’ll add you to my list.
[Note: Yep, as an affiliate I'll be getting some commission for this sale, but I'll be putting that money to use...for you! More details later.]
See you in October at the BlogWorld Conference 2010.
Struggling Webmasters are Bringing Pain to their Clients
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jan 19, 2010
Apparently 2010 is not off to a good start for webmasters. Not since 1998 have I heard of so many webmasters baling from their client projects mid-way leaving their clients stranded without a completed website, or even worse, a completely “down” website.
Over the past two weeks alone, my company at HereNextYear that has worked with over 300 client projects over the past 15 years has received 4 new client calls where their webmaster has simply left them in the lurch. One disgruntled webmaster even attempted to discredit his client by getting the client site banned on Google search after a dispute.
Two of the other cases were as a result of fed-up business owners who had been waiting for six months…that’s right “6″ months…for their basic websites to be designed and launched by their webmasters. There was no giant back-end database here folks, we’re talking like 7-page content sites with a PayPal link!
Finally, with no hope of a refund in site, they both bit the bullet and came to us at HereNextYear.com to get the jobs done…in two weeks (our standard turnaround time).
The final example was a volunteer webmaster who did a superb job maintaining a site for a small church and just decided it was time to do something different.
On one side of the fence, this is a big shameless plug for my website implementation team at HereNextYear. We are still in the business of, like, actually completing websites for clients and helping them maintain them for years to come. We just had a record breaking sales month for December 2009 and are completely focused on doubling our client base by the end of 2010.
But, more importantly, I think everyone who has a webmaster should check in with them if it’s been a while. See if you can get a feel for the following so that you don’t get caught broadsided with a down site or a half-baked project:
1. How has the economy impacted his or her business?
2. Is your webmaster getting more clients or less?
3. Will their prices be the same for 2010?
4. How are things at home? Many solo webmasters become friends with their clients and are open to discussing this topic.
5. Does your webmaster still enjoy the work of web design, web development or webmastering?
6. Are you in good standing as a client?
7. Are there plans for the webmaster to grow his/her business, reduce to part-time or leave the industry entirely over the next few months or year?
Some of these are tough questions to get answered. But, I can tell you for sure that your business is on the line if you are aligned with a webmaster that is unsteady, changing their priorities, or can suddenly snap and move to Siberia!
Friends are friends, but business is business. Contact your webmaster immediately (if you have one) and establish a level of comfort that your website is in good hands for 2010. And, if something should happen, know that you have a place to call to get things back on track. Check out HereNextYear.com for all website and Internet marketing services you would ever need.
Profit Again in 2010 Workshop
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Jan 7, 2010
Using the Internet to grow your business has dramatically changed since the beginning of 2009. If you’ve been misled into thinking all it takes to be successful online today is getting a few hundred followers on Twitter, spending hours a day “Facebooking” or gaining top placement on Google for your book title or business name, we’d like to offer you a reality check…and a path for hope…for the new year!
Throughout 2010 I will be offering a new workshop called, fittingly, “Profit Again in 2010.
If you’re not familiar with me, I’m a 15-year Internet marketing “lifer,” co-authored of “Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies” (Wiley 2009), and I’ll be using this workshop to update you on the radical progression of WordPress websites, blogs, traffic building, social networking, rss, podcasting, Federal Trade Commission restrictions and Google banning since just a year ago.
I don’t just “write and speak” about Internet marketing. I create and promotes my own products, manuals, and membership sites, with more than 100 of my own websites. Myself, along with a team of 7 at HereNextYear, Inc. have serviced more than 300+ clients nationwide.
For just one of those clients this past August, we launched just one website that enjoyed 99 product pages indexed on top of Google within 3 days. By the end of the first week, the site brought in more than $3,826 in sales. By Thanksgiving, the site delivered its first $100,000 in revenue.
Coincidence? No way. It’s the same process for any business, author or speaker…every time. All you have to do is find where you are in the process and plug in.
True success of any financial measure for your book, product or business will be no accident or stroke of luck. And, in today’s economy, you can’t afford to shoot darts at a wall in the dark!
You won’t find overnight riches or make that elusive “money while you sleep” with a casual, ho-hum approach.
And it won’t happen by changing a few meta tags on your home page.
What’s the answer? P.T.A.
1. Plug-in
2. Team-up
3. Accelerate
That’s right, just three simple steps.
First, you must identify where you are in the Internet marketing process and “plug-in” to that process. The success plan online is almost exactly the same for every business, author or speaker and hasn’t changed in almost 15 years! All you have to do is discover the process, find out where you are in that process and plug-in.
Second, team-up with those that can help you implement the process. Hiring a random website designer from Craigslist or someone from a foreign country just because you can get services for 20 cents on the dollar might have helped five years ago, but outsourcing today only helps you if you are an experienced Internet marketing project manager. You need to start now to form a devoted team that will be at your side for years to come to help you with technical challenges and smart and calculated marketing planning.
Third, only after you know the process and have a team to rely on can you expect to accelerate implementation and see the rewards.
Specifically, here’s what I will cover during any Profit Again in 2010 workshop, seminar, full-day training, or 20-minute speech:
-My 3-step process to predict whether your product or book can even be sold online or whether you should just throw it in the trash and move on
-Why Google has banned more than 150,000 websites for life in just the past month…and how to avoid being next!
-The FTC’s crackdown on misuse of testimonials and affiliate marketing and what you need to do to protect yourself from being accused of false claims…The CAN SPAM Act was only the beginning to this!
-Why every business owner, author and speaker should have “5″ websites or more…even if your competition already does!
-What keyword phrases the human population is searching online for and how you can stand in the way and benefit from that traffic
-The “new” evolution of websites and why it doesn’t even make sense to have anything else
-The secrets of social networking automation that only those with 2,000 Twitter followers or more even know about.
-How to get 300 minutes of social networking benefit for every 30 minutes you spend
-The Article Marketing Underground Triangle: How to write an article once and use what you’ve written for explosive reach to more than 30,000 websites, video directories and bookmarking sites for obscene traffic flooding whenever you want it.
-Plus, I will reveal my most closely held secret to managing what should be 10 hours a day of promotion productivity that gets accomplished in less than 60 minutes…every day.
As we roll out this essential program, look for specific dates and locations to be accessible through our main website at HereNextYear.com on our Workshops page.
50 Ways to Kill a Perfectly Good Seminar
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Nov 20, 2009
If you agree to speak at enough seminars, or attempt to start one and promote it yourself, the day will come when a seminar you are a part of fails completely and you’ve lost any investment you put into the event. You arrive and simply no one is there to fill the room.
Since the first paid workshop I conducted in 2003 with just 9 people in attendance (a sold-out room by the way) in November 2003, I can remember only once since did I “cancel” a workshop. And, I vowed to never let it happen again.
This past weekend, I flew to the destination where I was invited to speak and even planned an extended stay with relatives. 18 hours before the event would begin, I received word that the entire event had been canceled due to lack of attendees.
The economy is a contributor maybe. People claim they don’t have the money to pay for “anything” let alone a seminar. People pull the “sales pitch” card that they don’t want to pay money only to get sold to. People will find any excuse, such as “too close to Thanksgiving” in this case, in order to prolong their education of cutting-edge material.
Have you ever wondered who is truly at a loss when a seminar bottoms up? Is it the speakers? Heck no! It was only a couple hundred bucks to fly out there and two nights in a hotel. I made that back in new sales from my websites before I even checked out of the hotel!
We just go back to business as usual and do what we do best. It’s the audience, I believe, that really loses out. They’re given the opportunity to hear genuine content about what’s working now…today, and they pass it up.
We as a society have completely lost the understanding of why we should attend seminars and it’s beyond frustrating for me. In fact, it makes me feel like I’m letting people down when I can’t get through to them the importance of their attendance.
I mean, I have a client that has just crossed the $100,000 mark of sales coming in through his shopping cart website. That means actually selling product online. And, we just launched the thing in August! Don’t you think people would be interested to know that there really are people making money on the Internet and how we made it happen?
We had 99 products for that site on TOP of Google’s organic search … in three “3″ days! Wouldn’t you think people would want to know how we did that?
I’ve always had an interest in what makes successful seminars happen. I’ve run “the pit” as we used to call it, at three Brian Tracy events full of volunteers who sold $100,000 worth of back-of-the-room product in under 20 minutes! I’ve served on the planning and promotion team for two Capital Factor events here in Denver that sucked who knows how many hours of devotion over 8-month planning periods. And, I continue to promote my own 3-hour and all-day Internet training events every few months.
It seems like everyone I meet who has a shred of public speaking experience gets this idea in their minds of one day promoting a conference of their own. Instead of using this post to suggest what you should do, I would like to supply a list of things you SHOULDN’T do.
Please accept this “tongue-in-cheek” guide as 50 things to do if you really want to Kill a perfectly good seminar. Use it as a guide when promoting your own seminar or as a checklist for meeting planners to consider before YOU accept the invitation to accept a speaking gig, meaning, if they’re doing any of these, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Or, you will soon find yourself speaking to an empty room.
- Don’t give enough time to promote
- Pick speakers who have a reputation for not promoting to their lists
- Encourage speakers to not talk with the other speakers during the pre-conference promotion
- Don’t have conference calls with potential attendees prior to the event
- Pick speakers that do not have a presence on social networks
- Do not replace a speaker that does not put a banner on their website to promote the event
- Do not offer bonuses of any kind when someone buys a ticket
- Don’t have an opt-in screen on the site. Just drive people right to the “Buy Now” button
- Don’t send any emails to the list you’ve attracted, even if you do have an opt-in field on your website
- Don’t have a blog for the event as people will certainly not want to know of your event building progress
- Announce on your site that networking breaks between speakers will be short
- Allow 60 minutes or less for each speaker and make it obvious to people that’s all they’ll get with each
- Choose a low-class cheap hotel in a bad neighborhood
- Make your price bigger than anyone else charges…”your” seminar is worth it after all.
- Don’t have a promotion team–you can do it all yourself anyway and keep all the dough
- Don’t offer the participating speakers 50% of the ticket price as referral incentive
- Rely solely on your speaker lineup to promote the event; surely they’ll send emails every day to their big lists
- Bank the success or failure of the event on 2 or 3 large groups coming together to fill your room at the last minute
- Promote to people who already know your product well, maybe even better than you!
- Don’t have a headliner who is a recognized industry leader
- Don’t have a celebrity speaker
- Don’t use the successes of your speakers in promotions; only feature their topic agendas
- Never tell a speaker to promote to their list; they’ll take it upon themselves to do it anyway
- Never join the email lists of your speakers to make sure they are promoting the event and call them on it when they don’t
- Pick an area of the country that has heavy hitters and frequent appearances from them in their own back yard
- Pick a date on the day of a major sporting event
- Pick a day that has a seminar just like yours but bigger on the same day or two weeks before or after
- Pick a date five days before or after a major holiday
- Don’t make your event sound critical or vitally important to attend
- Don’t provide sales copy for your speakers to use in their promotion efforts
- Avoid sending mailings to all businesses in a five square mile radius of the event
- And, certainly never follow-up those mailings with a cold call
- Do not alert all local meet-ups (at Meetup.com) that the event will happen
- Never offer a giveaway as a taste of what attendees will get
- Try to promote a big event when you haven’t successfully promoted a small one yet
- Don’t attend potential feeder association events to alert members that your seminar is coming up
- Make it obvious that you are really doing a “sell-i-nar” instead of a seminar; people never want to really learn anything but they love being sold to!
- Don’t offer an early bird price, because your seminar is so special people will be beating the door down to attend
- Don’t have a conference call so that speakers can introduce themselves to the other speakers and the team as this would only make them more part of a team working together
- Do not persuade speakers to interview each other and do crazy things like conduct tele-seminars with each other because that would be exposing them to each other’s clients and list
- Do not seek volunteers (like local Toastmasters members) to help at the event; they never tell anyone they’re helping at a seminar when they get the opportunity
- Do not have a tested method for taking online orders and orders by phone; they’ll always send you an email if there’s a problem
- Do not worry about having an affiliate program for affiliate marketers to promote your seminar
- Do not have a path and process to instruct paid attendees that they can now start recommending your seminar to others and get paid commission on the sales
- DO have a very scary photo on your website and never test a different photo; no one looks at them anyway
- Never track visitation statistics for your seminar website; you won’t have time with all those orders rolling in
- Don’t plan for how many visitors to the site you will need in order to get the amount of attendees you want
- Avoid those long sales letters for your event website; no one really buys from them anyway
- Definitely don’t use testimonials as no one reads them or watches them
- And above all, do NOT have a project manager on your team that relentlessly gets a ton of work accomplished quickly without whining about it; “get-it-dunners” are over rated
What else can you think of that will kill a perfectly good seminar? List your comments here and we’ll have a complete list!
Hopefully you know I’ve written these totally tongue-in-cheek. Turn each phrase around to the positive and you will have a recipe for success EVERY time you launch a workshop or seminar promotion.
Most importantly, though, it is always my intent to inspire others to attend seminars whenever they get the opportunity. Attend at least 4 conferences or seminars per year that are directly tied to your industry so that you remain on the cutting edge of what’s happening.
I make sure to spend an average of $20,000 a year just on furthering my own education and networking efforts by attending seminars and conferences around the country. That means actually BUYING…yes BUYING…what speakers sell from the stage. Attending a seminar is really just about being introduced to speakers so that you pick the ones you like and want to get to know more. You buy their stuff and learn more about the strategies that work for them.
But, when you decide one day to assemble your own seminar full of speakers, that’s a whole different game. My hope is that you will use this list in your seminar promoting efforts. After all, I don’t want to hear that you are responsible for killing a perfectly good seminar!
7 Steps to Getting Started for New Internet Marketers
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Oct 29, 2009
Getting started on the Internet seems to most to be a hugely daunting task. But, with a few good guidelines, you will be amazed how easy and fun it really can be. Here are 7 steps to getting started for new Internet marketers:
1. Know What’s Selling Online – If nobody’s buying it and nobody’s made it yet, that most likely does not mean “opportunity” for you. So, don’t get fooled. If you want to know what people are spending their money on right now, today, one great way is to go to Amazon.com and search a category of interest. The results you get will be sorted showcasing the best selling products in that category.
2. Enjoy Being Online – If you don’t like candy, you’ll be miserable in a candy store. So, before you go putting time and effort into learning how to make money on the Internet, you must learn to enjoy sitting at a computer and typing things. Of course, I could also add-in there using your mobile device. Social media is a great way to learn to enjoy working online. Join Linkedin, join some groups and participate in some discussions. Create a Facebook profile and reconnect with friends. Start tweeting on Twitter and inspire people to “follow” you because the quality of your tweets are actually worth paying attention to. User your personal name for all of your profile account names such as Twitter.com/MartyDickinson so that people can easily find you in the future.
3. Engage Offline Networking – An online business is a lot like a traditional off-line business in that financial success in both requires “people” to buy from you eventually. Go to Meetup.com and search for a group that meets near you to discuss certain topics. I just launched a few days ago, a Meetup group of my own called “Ski With Marty,” for example. Business owners, authors, speakers, and anyone else who wants to network and get some exercise can hook up with me every Wednesday during ski season at one of our world class ski resorts here in Colorado. By the time we have our first networking event on December 2, my goal is to have 100 members in the group. Checkout Meetup.com/SkiWithMartyInColorado if you’d like to see a sample Meetup group page.
4. Love to Sell – To be successful in any business, you must adopt a deep-down belief that anything you choose to promote is not really “selling,” but more of a “recommendation” of something you’ve experienced to make other peoples’ lives better. The fastest and cheapest way to do that is to find other peoples’ products to sell, try them for yourself, and start recommending them to others. These are known as “Affiliate Products.” ClickBank.com is my favorite for finding digital, downloadable affiliate products to sell and you can often contact the product producer and request a “review copy” of their product, which is FREE of course. Their hope is that by you having the product in-hand, you will have a better understanding of the product and will give more accurate recommendations. Continuing with my example of Amazon in step 1, they of course have an affiliate program as well. But, they only pay 4% of the sale price. So, the only products worth promoting on Amazon, in my opinion, are larger ticket items (over $75).
5. Register Domain Names – Whenever I am asked “Where do I register a domain name,” I steer them to BestDomainPlace.com. That is a domain name that I registered to point to my affiliate account. When you register a domain name for promoting an affiliate product, use the URL Forwarding feature (free with BestDomainPlace.com) where a tutorial is provided. Promote your affiliate products in your social networks and whenever a related subject comes up at your in-person networking events. Last week I was talking with a parent at my kid’s school about Internet stuff and suggested she buy a domain name for her personal name at BestDomainPlace.com. Sure enough a few days later, I saw the order come in.
6. Offer Your Services – Everyone has something of value they can offer. What is the one thing that you are truly really, really good at? Connect with others on your social networks (because you enjoy doing that by this step) who are in a related area to the service you want to provide. For example, one of the services I offer is creating websites for business owners, authors and speakers. So, I went to my Linkedin profile, logged in, clicked on “Groups,” and search for “authors” then joined a group, “professional speakers” and joined a group, and then “small business” and joined a third group. Within about 60 seconds, I was connected with over 16,000 people around the country who were in my direct target audience for a service I offer. Now all I have to do is participate in the groups and offer valuable content and the contacts begin.
7. Produce a Product – If you have an idea for a product, someone else has surely produced something close. At a recent Affiliate Marketing Meetup session, a good friend and former client who went off on his own to make $40,000 a month selling affiliate products online said, “Start off small by creating your own e-book, but first buy a few of the top selling e-books for that topic and use the best parts of each to create your product.” Now, he wasn’t suggesting you just copy and paste other peoples’ books into you own. But you can use concepts of how items are presented and rewrite them with different words and different examples. And, of course, add-in your own best stuff to make the product truly unique and the best on the market. If it’s a digital, downloadable product, get it added to ClickBank.com so that other affiliate marketers will have the opportunity to sell it for you.
All of these steps and I haven’t even talked about “Starting a Website” yet. That just goes to show that there is so much you can do to get started on the Internet these days, in your spare time, on a shoestring budget. Then, when you earn a few bucks, use that income to broaden your reach…and that’s when a website, or 5, 10, 50 websites come into play.
The best time in the world to get started on the Internet is right now, today.
Hot New Website for Coupons at Ask.com
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Oct 7, 2009
Coupons for any business and any product are getting hotter and hotter. Not only should every business owner be looking for a coupon before buying anything, we should also be offering coupons for practically anything we sell. This importance of coupons is evident in Ask.com’s launch today of Ask Deals, which apparently scours the web for you to find all available coupons and posts them for you.
The Net Effect – How Your Blog, Social Networking and Websites Work Together
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Apr 30, 2009
Web sites used to be designed with the primary intent to push pages of content onto the public through search engines. But, when social networking began, the traditional Web site became more of a second, higher-level form of introduction. First people would meet each other on the social network and then your newly found friend would eventually click on something to get to your main Web site.
But, traditional Web sites still today are too slow to keep up with the traffic and conversations that result from the many forms of social networking available on the Internet. When someone becomes introduced to you on Twitter, Facebook or Linked-in types of sites, and THEN they visit your Web site, they are usually wanting to interact with you more.
If you don’t know how to use Dreamweaver or have given up trying to learn your high-end Joomla or Drupal install, it’s just not that motivating to offer to pay someone to make changes or additions to a Web site every day. This potential for interaction is gone unless they pick up the phone to call you or send an email to you.
I’d like to suggest that the importance of a blog has reached a whole new level. Your blog is now at the heart of your entire social traffic flow as shown in this diagram:
Whatever interaction you have on social sites eventually should flow to your blog where you can encourage further interaction. Then, once someone is ready to really look at the services you offer, they are directed to your main Web site.
Note too that the “Net Effect” of using your blog as the very heart of your social gathering place is your ability to add new content quickly and even automate it to be pushed right back to the very social networks you are already receiving traffic from.
Join me on my new Linked-in Group where discussions are already underway for a variety of subjects related to how blogs interact with social networking. We’re calling it
The Social Blogger Group at Linked-in:
I hope to see you on Linkedin soon!
Why Your Goal Should be to Get 2000 Followers on Twitter
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Apr 21, 2009
If you don’t already have 2000 people following you on Twitter, that should be your primary focus until you have exceeded the 2000 mark. Get there as fast as possible now so that you don’t have to worry about it later. Why is this so important?
- Size does matter – Many experienced Tweeters will automatically follow you once you follow them. They will checkout your profile later and likely unfollow you if you look like you’re just starting out with 100 or less followers.
- Twitter limitations – You can only follow more than 2000 people after you have more than 2000 people following you. Twitter does this to prevent people from abusing the system as it’s easy to just click the “follow” button over and over again in hopes people will follow you in return. Hey, we’ve all done it sometime in our Tweetlives.
- Proof of higher stature – One of the great uses of Twitter is to follow people you admire. But, if you follow someone with 50,000 followers, you probably won’t get much notice or attention when you have only 100 or 200 followers. Sure they’ll follow you, but that’s likely just an automatic setting and you will probably get unfollowed within a few weeks.
- Better results – If you Twitter for business, you can expect on average to get one or two people clicking on a link you might feature in any given Tweet. With 2000 followers, you will start to see higher clickthroughs ranging between 15 and 50 of your followers clicking on links per Tweet.
- Inspiration – When you get more results from your Tweets and find yourself meeting and conversing with high profile people in your industry as a result of Twitter, you will be inspired to participate more in Twitter. And, that’s what your 2000 or more followers will be expecting of you.
For almost everyone I’ve met or talked to about Twitter that has less than 500 followers, the entire process seems like such a waste of time for them. But, something changes when you get to 1000 followers. You begin to see Twitter in a different light; one that offers the true potential everyone is always talking about.
If you have less than 2000 Twitter followers, take the challenge right now to develop a plan for getting 2000 and more followers on Twitter.
How to Get 2000 or More Followers on Twitter
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Apr 21, 2009
I’m not quite there yet, but by the end of the month, I surely will have 2000+ followers on Twitter. It took me a while to learn how the big boys Tweet and I think I’ve got it now. There are a few tools to use, a few things to automate, and a few tricks to get you ahead that not a lot of people are talking about. But, I’m going to divulge the secrets right here for you for free in thanks to all the people who have helped me for free with my own Twitter journey.
Here’s the summary of steps you will need to get 2000 or more followers on Twitter, beyond just the basics of setting up an account and without tweeting day and night hoping people miraculously follow you by the hundreds, because it just doesn’t work that way:
Get a free account at TweetLater.com – Certainly one of the most essential Twitter tools available, here you will be able to add a setting to automatically follow anyone who follows you as well as create automated posts ahead of time. Here’s a screenshot to show how a post is added and scheduled for delivery to Twitter in 5 steps.
1) Add a new Tweet
2) Shorten any long urls you might be pointing people to
3) Publish right now or
4) Set a specific time and date by clicking on the calendar image
5) Include distribution of your Tweets in your rss reader
Tweet Later screen shot for adding a new Tweet automatically
Add a custom background (theme) to your Twitter profile – Every highly followed Tweeter I’ve come across has a custom background (also known as a theme) promoting their Web sites and products. Using default settings for Twitter backgrounds just looks like you’re not a seasoned Twitter user. Adding a custom theme increases Twitter followers all by itself by giving you the opportunity to show creativity while remaining professional
Plan for 3 sets of 5 Tweets minimum per day – You won’t have to do this forever. Remember, we’re just trying to get you to 2000 followers within a short amount of time. Use your TweetLater account to add scheduling Tweets so that you hit 3 different groups of people at different times throughout the day. I usually focus on the 8:30-10am, 2-4pm, and 8-10pm crowd.
You can post about several topics such as:
- Trade news
- Industry facts
- Links to tips and article pages (not on your Web site)
- Links to tips and article pages (on your Web site)
- Fun posts/attention grabbers
- Product reviews
- Web site reviews
- Questions.
Use IFollowBack.com – This free utility allows you to see profiles of Tweeters who agree to follow those who are willing to follow them. So, by simply going through one profile at a time, you can find people who you are interested in following or who might prove to be even potential customers for you. The prerequisite for being part of this rather secret program is that you have to be willing to follow others who choose to follow you.
Lots of people get hung up with this concept of “being followed.” I got an email once from a guy I followed and he literally said “Who are you and why did you choose to follow me?”
Geez! Pretty harsh ‘ay? Just goes to show that not everyone grasps what Twitter is really about. It’s about exposing yourself to a larger amount of people than you could ever meet for the same price FREE!
Use FriendOrFollow.com – This free tool allows you to see all the people you are following who are not following you. Sure, someone might follow you initially but they can “UNfollow” you anytime they want to. You will need to delete several unfollowers so that you have room to follow others while on your way to acquiring 2000 followers of your own (people following you).
I’ve been suggesting for a while now that using Twitter is a great way to get started on the Internet without spending a penny. If you use those five components together, you will be on your way to getting 2000 or more followers on Twitter.
SEO and Social Networking Training Class in Denver Feb 25
Posted by Marty Dickinson on Feb 11, 2009
SEO and Social Networking training class in Denver Feb 25 will be led by “me” Marty Dickinson. This is a special one because the entire class is entirely “hands-on.” No need to bring your laptop because every attendee will have a computer to use anyway. Limit to class size is just 20. The Google SEO class will be in the morning from 9 to noon and then Social Networking setup will be the afternoon. Register for one or both. Check out the press release we ran a couple of days ago that goes into some detail about why we chose New Horizons as your learning center for this event.
If you know of someone who really needs to learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for getting pages of their website on Google, suggest they attend this class. Perfect for web designers who have not yet learned about SEO. Also great for the non-technical business owner who would love to learn to optimize their own pages but just doesn’t think they have the technical skills to pull it off. You will be using LIVE data on pages of a website and shown how to optimize them. Then you will actually upload those to a real live web server so that you can go back to your business that night and work on your own pages without worry of breaking anything!
Class #2 is a set-up class where we will target 5 of the most prominent social networking sites: FaceBook, Twitter, Linked-in, Squidoo, and MySpace. Bring a photo of yourself if you have one.
With the other 27 class sessions we have planned for 2009, I can’t promise I’ll be doing these two classes again soon. So, if either or both of these classes would save you some money from paying someone else to do it, or you want to learn the inside secrets to making all of these things work together, this is your day to attend.
It’s time to learn how to do these Internet tasks on your own. That’s why we’re creating DoItMySelfInstitute.com. Be one of the first to attend. Hope to see you there.
