Do you have a Twitter account?

Does having a Twitter account increase your chances of becoming an influencer?  It certainly helps.

Will the simple fact of having the account make you an influencer?  Probably not.  If you use your social accounts wisely and truly enrich people’s lives with knowledge, that’s when you can become a social media influencer.

According to Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella), if you are looking to find a social media influencer, then look to sites like Twitter.  Dan is an author and social media and viral marketing scientist; also a marketing manager and product owner at HubSpot.

I had the pleasure of attending a webinar on social media marketing today with Dan as the speaker.  If you couldn’t attend, you can still watch the free HubSpot video recording of the webinar with Dan Zarrella – The Science of Social Media Marketing

When you are planning a social media marketing campaign, you will reach more people if you befriend influencers and convince them to help spread the word.  These influencers are active on social media and tend to spread more knowledge than other users.  This is one reason they are influencers.

They have extended reach and people trust and listen to them.  Enlisting their help will help you increase your own reach.  Because other users look up to the influencers, they will tend to spread the word to their circle of influence also.  Thus, your campaign grows more viral.

Learn more about social media and how to spread your viral marketing campaigns further. Read Dan’s book “The Social Media Marketing Book”.

Technorati Tags: Business, Dan Zarrella, Marketing, Online Communities, Social Media, Social Media Influencer, social media marketing, technorati, twitter, Viral marketing

Image by bre pettis via Flickr

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Don’t you wish there was an easier way to make commissions in affiliate marketing?  Maybe you just aren’t using the right tools, or you need some useful tips.

Have you ever watched the home improvement shows on cable?  The host installs an awesome new deck or set of cabinets.  And, they finish the project quickly.  Inspired by the crafty host, you decide you can do the same.  Hours, days, maybe weeks pass and you still haven’t finished the project.

Maybe you might have missed the part where the host said something like, “Beautiful patio decks and cabinets will take forever to build if you don’t use the right tools.”

“Use the right tool for the right job“… that’s what my Dad always said when I was growing up.

It didn’t matter if I was tinkering with an old motor, making something for mother’s day, or helping my brother trim the hedges.  If Dad caught me using a tool that wasn’t right for the job he made me hustle and get the right one.  Usually these tools were very inexpensive, yet when I used them they saved me a ton of time because I could work so much faster.  It’s like that in affiliate marketing too.

It doesn’t matter if you’re following the blueprints given to you in a home-study course and have all the knowledge in the world about affiliate marketing.  If you don’t use the right tools it will take you much longer to achieve your goals.

So here are a few tools I personally use that will save you time as an affiliate marketer, and give you an edge:

• Use WordPress to create your blog.  You do have a blog, right?  I hope so, because a blog is one of the best ways to develop a following and build trust, which leads to increased sales.  A blog helps you establish a relationship with your readers.  They will learn to know you, like you, trust you.  Wouldn’t you rather buy from someone you know, like and trust?  WordPress is the quickest way to set up a blog and a WordPress blog will show up in the search engines more quickly.  Google loves blogs.

• Use Google Alerts and Google News to your advantage.  One of the fastest ways to find ideas for content for your blog is to go to Google News and type in search terms for your chosen niche.  You can also sign up to have Google Alerts send you an email with stories for certain phrases.  How about that?  Let Google simply send you what you need.

• Use and take advantage of the wide array of WordPress plugins to enhance your blog.  They have plugins for SEO, for including a newsletter subscription form, for bookmarking your site to social media, and almost anything else imaginable.   Plugins are tools that will ensure that your blog operates at maximum efficiency.

For the most part, the above tools are free (some plugins have a small fee).  All of them save you valuable time.

For one of the best “set it and forget it” tools for WordPress blogs, check out this plugin that will automatically insert Clickbank ads onto your blog:  WordPress Affiliate ClickBank Plugin.   Tip: just one of your Clickbank sales will pay you way more than someone clicking on an adsense ad.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, clickbank, efficiency, Google, save time, technorati, WordPress, wordpress plugins

Has social media really taken over our lives?

I was researching some statistics on internet usage and I thought it would be fun and useful to share with you what I found.  Actually, I was amused with my findings, but this is really a great example of how powerful the social web has become.

According to a recent survey by Crowd Science (see chart on right), driving while texting is our 3rd most favorite social networking activity.  Also, the report is that almost 1 in5 social media users use Twitter on a weekly basis.

According to the survey, the 2nd most favorite place for social networking site access is while in the toilet.  It also appears that some of us are even visiting social sites during religious services.  Oh, the sacrilege.

How many of us have been guilty of the above and below mentioned activities?  Come on, you can be honest.  Were you one of the survey respondents?

(I’m sure you can tell I started this post from my iPhone.  Hint: look at the top and bottom of the images.  Yes, I was in the car, BUT I was parked for most of the time.)

What’s the 4th most favorite social media activity for Twitter and Facebook users?  Answer:  After sex posting; more than 1/3 of users according to a recent Retrevo (see chart on left) survey.  Wonder what those people say? It appears that the once popular term “kiss and tell” has been replaced with “kiss and Tweet”.

By the way, this survey also included high rates for driving while texting.  Wonder how many have had sex while driving while texting?  Maybe a future survey…..

The Retrevo survey also found that for individuals under the age of 35:  39% of Twitter users and 27% of Facebook users checked the sites at least 10 times every day.

Also, did you notice that evidently 35 seems to be the cut-off age for the “younger crowd”.  That should make some of us feel younger.  Ah, the magic of social media.

Technorati Tags: Crowd Science, facebook, Social Media, social networking, social web, Text messaging, twitter

Image via Wikipedia

Some people may ask if commenting on other blogs is actually important.  In a word: YES! Commenting will help increase your blog page rank and increase your blog traffic.  An increase in page rank will naturally increase your traffic because it means Google and other search engines have decided that your content is more relevant.  Thus, your blog will place higher in related searches:  meaning people will be more likely to click through to your pages and posts.  Commenting also places your links on the pages of the blogs you are commenting on.  Thus, more eyes will see your links and click over to your blog.

Size up the competition

A great way to get traffic to your blog is to comment on related, high page rank (Google PR), popular blogs.  You have a great blog, now it’s time to meet the competition and read what they have to say.  Just because a blog may be a competitor does not mean they can’t or won’t help you.

You can build your own reputation and increase your own traffic by linking to, quoting, and making comments on other related blogs.  By participating in the conversations, you become part of the community.  The web is becoming more and more a social occasion.  The more people feel some kind of connection with you, the more they will listen to you.  This will help you to quickly become regarded as an authority in your are of expertise (niche).  And, all this will get more people clicking on your links.  Bloggers love comments because readers who are engaged in a discussion in the comments section will return to the page again and again:  repeat traffic.

Also, don’t forget that there will be other readers that like reading the comments but don’t participate for whatever reason.  These “comment readers” can be interested in your comments and click through to your site to see what you’re all about.

A word of caution:  avoid “comment spam”.  Don’t place comments just for the sake of advertising.  It’s not ethical; please don’t do it.  Protect your reputation; that’s what we’re trying to build up, right!  Avoid placing comments that don’t relate to and enrich the conversation.  Bloggers appreciate good comments and may want to link to your site directly through a link exchange.  Now, you’ve made a friend that will consistently send traffic to your website.

As we’ve learned today already, keep in mind that we want these comments and links to be with sites that get more traffic than we do.  The more visitors that a site gets, the more visitors we could have coming from there to our site.

Tip of the Day

Comment on blogs that are relevant to you and also have a specific plugin installed – CommentLuv.  Yes, I recommend you to have it installed on your blog too.

• Once you publish a post on your blog, go to Google.com
• Perform a search using your keyword plus specific operators

For instance, if you are looking for blogs that talk about “health insurance”, then perform one of the following searches:

health insurance & “title=”CommentLuv Enabled”"

or

“Enable CommentLuv” + health insurance

How’s that for a simple and effective strategy.  If you follow this simple strategy for each blog post – your blog will begin to get at least 10 incoming links to EACH of your posts.  You will begin growing like wildfire.  Your authority will grow proportionally to your effort!

Congratulations.  Enjoy your more Authoritative blog!

Technorati Tags: Blog, blog comments, blog traffic, comment luv, Google, Google PR, keyword, PageRank, repeat traffic, technorati, Web search engine

Do regular blog posts increase traffic and page rank?

In a word, yes!

Regular blog posting is very important.  If you don’t post regularly, then it kinda defeats the purpose.  Blogs are intended to be updated frequently.

If there’s no new information presented on your blog on a regular basis, then people will stop visiting.  There goes your traffic down the toilet.

If there’s nothing new for the search engines to spider and add to their index, then they will stop visiting your site as often as they have been.  Your page rank will start to fall because if the spiders don’t index your site very often, then they evidently don’t find you very relevant.  There goes your page rank down the toilet.

However, if you post regularly (once a day is a good rule of thumb; but at least once a week), people will keep coming back to see what’s new – more traffic.  Also, the search engine spiders will return more often to see what’s new – more page rank.  Getting indexed regularly increases your page rank, therefore you have a more prominent spot in people’s searches, so this increases your traffic.

See, regular posting to your blog is THE most important part for page rank and traffic.

Technorati Tags: blog posts, page rank, search engines, technorati, traffic