Internet marketing survey

One of the most common mistakes found on the internet today and mostly in the marketing arena, is marketers and small business people charging in to sell a product or service to a niche they didn’t research properly in the beginning. Some people are prepared to trust their hunches but I warn you this can most often be a fools game. Especially when the alternative is so easy.

If you take the time (which isn’t really much) to undertake a small survey, even just for several days, you can have more confidence in the next step of your promotion.

Time Wasters

There is little worse than creating a report, an eBook or stocking up on a product to sell on the internet (or in the real world for that matter) and finding out that all your time, money, communication and website preparation has all been for nothing.

Why Niches are Different

Some people want to just get regular information for interest only. Others have a passion for their hobby, need a partner, want to learn music, train their beloved dog or simply make money. It’s the people who are passionately interested in their hobby or interest you should be persuing.

Breaking Down the Niche

Some times you need to break down the niche even further to find those who are keen to purchase information or goods. Take the theme fishing. There are areas of passionate interest here that differ to other sub themes for fishing. An example would be fly fishing and deep sea fishing where there is a keen following to succeed in comparison to beach fishing where the audience is less likely to spend oodles of cash. It isn’t always the case but more likely most often the case.

The Marketing Survey

You can quickly upload an easy to prepare questionaire and either send it to your list (if you have one) or use adwords or Yahoo to drive a short burst of traffic to the survey to get the information you seek. You could for instance ask if they would like  any questions answered on the topic of the intended eBook,  guide or report you about to release. To increase interest in leaving some comments, you can offer a copy of what ever it is you’re going to provide the market. You can then use some of the information for sub headings and chapters within  the report or eBook.

The Value of Internet Surveys

You now have information from real people and who have an interest in your proposed niche. If you don’t get any response, you can safely bet that either you haven’t got a really good opportunity on your hands or something is wrong with the wording in the survey. If people reply with lot’s of various input and advice, this is most likely worth taking further.

Market Research Follow-up

If you proceed with your product or service, make sure you send a copy to those who contributed to your marketing survey with a request for their thoughts or testimonial on the item(s). You can then make them available on your site or mailing list later. Make sure you get their permission.

Try surveymonkey as a good starting point for internet surveys. There’s a free version and a Pro version for a pittance per month.

Anchor text and back links

How to use anchor text for backlinks

What is an anchor text link?

This term is often misunderstood with other things in linking but for the main, it means a link which indicates in its text that which you would expect to find on the landing page if you click on it.

So if the anchor text link on a website page stated the words ‘Australian venomous spiders’ what would you expect to find on the landing page that it linked to? That’s right! A landing page with content relating to Australian venomous spiders. It really is as simple as that.

Most search engines rely on these anchor text descriptions to identify the subject matter of a webpage. If the page however is misleading and the search engines find out (and they will) that page is likely to be penalized by dropping it to the bottom of the heap (supplementary pages). Learn more about search engines.

The sites you would find on the first page of Google will respond to such a search but only those that have been optimized and are recognized for their relevant subject matter will show. Meaning that there would need to be some kind of backlink,  part of the title, H1 tag or url that identifies the pages as ‘australian venomous spiders’. I should quickly add here that all of the above would be closer to worlds best optimizing practice. Remember – never cheat, you could be burned at the stake and your website hurled into pergatory if you are naughty.

How to Anchor Text

This is pretty straight foward really but some clarity never goes astray.

Let’s say your site’s domain name is http://aussie-venomous-spiders.com and you wanted it known for providing information on australian venomous spiders. This is how the anchor text should be structured.

Here’s a sample anchor text html

<a href=”http://www.aussie-venomous-spiders.com”>australian venomous spiders</a>

Notice I included the www in the link. I recommend you do that too.

Anchor Text Backlinks

When someone on another blog or static website wants to refer to your site they hopefully use a similar anchor text as above. This would then become a back-link. Why? Because it’s pointing back to your site.

These kind of back-links are very powerful and they are good practice. The more you have pointing back to your site from other websites around the globe, the better. Internal linking should not be overlooked using this practice either. Too many webmasters and designers discount the value of internal linking using anchor text. I have used some internal links in this article.  See my article on SEO and link building.

One more thing, the higher the page rank of the page pointing back to your site, the more significant effect it has. Higher page rank back-links will push your page (and site) up through the pages quicker than lower pagerank back-links. Here are ten simple rules for good SEO and increased website traffic.

It really doesn’t matter if the anchor text says either australian venomous spiders or australian venomous spiders for sale. The same outcome will be achieved. There is much more to this subject but for now we are only covering anchor text and how to set one up. If you’re hungry for more tips and information, register and download my free internet marketing course. There are ten chapters and each one is emailed to you every couple of days.

Find the best affiliate program

There are more affiliate programs these days than you can shake a stick at. So how do you choose what’s best for your site or blog post if you’re the owner of a blog?  Equally important, how do you do it easily and know that it will provide you a good reliable service? There are of course a couple of things you need to decide on before you go hunting but fortunately, not too many. I’m also going to provide you access to a little known service that makes this pretty easy. I like easy, I’ll bet you do too!

- Is your preference to digital downloadable items or tangible?
- Is your site product specific? ie. A dog site or a gardening site etc.

Once you’ve got those two elements figures out, here is what you need to know when choosing some of the major sites –

Customer service is paramount. Easily said and then forgotten most often unfortunately. If people have a good experience with affiliate programs on your site they will be more likely to trust your recommendations in the future. Some affiliate programs have better customer service than others. Some produce higher margins and others, better quality merchandise. Few have all three but they exist. You have to look for them.

How do you do that when there are literally tens of thousands of affiliate programs to look into and choose from? *I’ll show you a good tool that helps in a sec.

Let’s go back to customer service. Another benefit of exceptional customer service is going to benefit you as well as the buyer. When there are issues, you know they will be dealt with quickly. On the other hand, I’ve experienced those who don’t even reply to your queries. Because of this threat, I suggest you make contact with the affiliate before you do anything else to ensure they really do have a customer service facility and they reply within 24 hours. Even that’s too long these days. Remember, the ball’s in your court. Why? Because there are lot’s of programs to choose from so there’s no reason to get stuck with a lemon. If they treat you like a number, drop them and leave a comment on a relevant forum so others won’t make the same mistake.

I’ve included an affiliate link to those I’ve had good experiences with –

Click Bank – Great if you’re just starting out. They specialize in digital products or in other words downloadable products. Over the many years I’ve used them, they have never made a mistake with my earnings. That’s pretty cool I think. I did have an issue once with customer service relating to a serial refunder. I tried to contact them four or five times and no-one replied. They also didn’t seem to have a ticket category to deal with this kind of issue. That said the serial refunder did disappear. In the earlier days their customer service was outstanding. They have more than ten thousand products to choose from and promote.

Commission Junction (CJ) – An extraordinary amount of products and services to choose from. It’s also a very sophisticated system. The only headaches are clients who still haven’t come to grips with the fact we are all working on the world wide web and some reject your application if you don’t reside in the same country. However, that’s only a few.

Another issue can be closed accounts which will result in invalid links. If they are resurrected, you then have to put the link in again. This can be a right pain in the rear end so select your program partners here carefully. They supply an array of banners and text links and the reporting is pretty good too.

Chitika –  This is very different and operates a little like adsense except it’s usually text with images. It produces advertisements related to the content on the page and is usually very accurate.

You can also use it on pages that have Adsense on them if that’s your go. They have a premium product which is definitely worth using, even just to try out. It’s so sophisticated that it will remain suppressed when regular visitors arrive and only appear as a result of searched keywords. I like it better than Adsense because of its flexibility.

In a nutshell these are a few safe affiliate vehicles where you will find good, diverse products to promote. Don’t rush it. Take the time to get to know the programs and you won’t be sorry.

*Here’s the king of all affiliate destinations. You just type in what you’re looking for and bingo! A bunch of affiliate sites are provided all related to your requirements. This tool saves a lot of time and is very accurate. You can read more and join up here

Good luck and good fortunes.

Ray Baker

Search engine image

When it comes to optimizing a website or blog so that it gets a lot of attention from Google and the other search engines, there are a lot of things to think about.  Some of these things are really obvious, and others are obscure but nonetheless very helpful for good search engine rankings.

Here are ten tips that will help move your site up the charts:

Bold your keywords Use the bold tags around some of your target keywords on each page of the site. You do not need to use them every single time, but do use them consistently. There is a theory that bold keywords get more attention from search engines, and they also draw the visitor’s view directly, so it’s a good idea to use them for emphasis.

Link deeply.   Getting links to your site is great, but getting links coming in to a bunch of different pages on your site is 100% better. It tells the search engines that you have a lot of valuable content on your website, and it’s not all on the home page.  When all of your incoming links go to your home page, it looks as if they’re automatically generated or that your site is shallow. In order to get deep links, you should put relevant, worthwhile content on your internal pages. Articles, services, and online tools will draw people to your site, and have them link back to it from their websites.

SEO directory sites.  In the United Kingdom and in Canada, there are lots of directories for company websites based in those specific countries. If you can secure a business address in one of those companies, you can also be included on the SEO directory.

Social bookmarking.  If visitors like your page and want to be able to return to it easily, clicking on a social bookmarking link not only helps them do that, it also helps with your search engine rankings.  You’ll want to take advantage of a widget that you can add to your page or blog so it’s easy for visitors to bookmark you.  These are some of the most popular social bookmarking sites:  Digg, StumbleUPon, Reddit, Squidoo, Blinklist, and Blogmarks.net.  There are literally hundreds more.

Newsletters and articles for ezines.  Ezine publishers sometimes archive their ezines, and the links to your site might remain active and feeding your site traffic for many years.

Text links should always be first in the source code for any pages on your website. Sometimes websites will have image links in the navigation bar, but there should always be text links first as the search engines will only follow the first link they hit on for each page.   Also make sure that those text links are relevant and valuable to your site.

Multiplicity.  If you have one website, why not two?  If you have a number of different topics that could each fill up an entire site on its own, it might make sense for you to have more than one domain.  Wouldn’t it be great to come up first AND second on a search for your particular product or service?  Plus, you can list both of your sites on the directories for more traffic.

Exchanges.  No, not the tired and pretty much worthless link exchanges, but rather exchanging articles with another site. You can publish an article on your site that is relevant and worthwhile to your readers, with a link back to the other site.  They will also post your article on their site with links back to you.  Fresh content for both sites, and high quality links for both sites- a win/win situation for you both!

Title your links.  This helps readers to know where you are sending them, and also is figured into the page relevancy by some search engines.

Overdoing the anchor text is not a good thing, because it looks like it’s automated. You should change it up; use the company name, what your product is, sometimes your URL.  The key is to keep it changing consistently.  Your anchor text should be something descriptive of your site, or your company name or website address.

Use a site map if your site is big; link to it from every single page on the site. Search engine robots can then find all of your pages quickly and easily for indexing. Even smaller sites need a miniature site map, the navigation bar, for search engine reasons.

For more information on optimizing your site, check out your seo marketing checklist.

Computer screen

If you have a website, you need it to rank high in the search engines.  If your site ranks high with Google and Yahoo it means you have lots of traffic coming to your site, and more sales or advertising revenue.

Think first of the phrase you want to rank well for; if there are only a few other sites using that phrase, it is relatively simple getting good placement with the search engines.  The trick is to be sure the exact phrase you want to rank for is in the <title></title> tag and in at least one other area on that page.   Not everyone catches on to this simple tip, and in fact many times when looking at someone’s page the keyword phrase is not included anywhere.  Be sure to include your phrase on your page, and also make sure it’s not included in a graphic of any kind- such as a logo.  Google does not read graphics and doesn’t know what words are contained in any graphics included.  Be sure to change the <title> tags on your page as well; you don’t want it just to say “Home” unless “Home” is your keyword phrase.

For more competitive phrases, you’re going to have to do considerably more work.  Here are some things that will help raise your rankings:

• Write a distinct <Title></Title> tag for every page, precisely describing that page.  Your title should be relatively short and definitely not more than eight to ten words.
• Add content, and pages, regularly. Shoot for two new pages a week to keep the content fresh. One page each week is okay, two is great, any less than that are you are not helping yourself.
• New pages should be compelling, unique, and a source of reliable information. If you want your site to rank high for alcoholic beverage recipes, then make it the absolute best resource for drink recipes out there on the web.
• Be sure to make your pages available through normal <A HREF> links.  Don’t use Flash links or JavaScript only
• Link to good quality sites which have content that is relevant to the readers of your site.  Ask, nicely, for a reciprocal link, but don’t demand it.
• Make your website design as user-friendly as possible. It should look good, give great information, and not have any annoying little ticks.
• Stop trying to trick the search engines into ranking you high.  If you build informative, high quality pages for visitors the rankings will naturally rise and stay that way.  Focus on quality and bringing the readers of your page excellent, compelling content.  Ultimately, your rankings and the money will follow.  Your site will not rank well if you don’t spend the time it takes to build a quality site; tricks might work temporarily but will not last.  Make sure that your site is better than all of your competition and eventually it will rank number one.  Google’s secret algorithm, which defines how sites are ranked, is a rapidly moving target.  Some tricksters think they can get shallow and shabby sites to rank high, and often they can on a short-term basis.  Google quickly figures these games out and weeds out the bad sites from the top rankings- after all; it’s their reputation on the line.

What constitutes a “quality” page to a search engine?  The same kind of things we look for: relevance to what we are looking for and the page is an authority on its topic.   If you do a search for types of bananas and get results for pages that sell jewelry—how happy will you be?  Likewise, if you do find a page about types of bananas, but the content doesn’t really tell you much- how useful is it?  Useful information is imperative!  Hopefully, your banana page will also be part of a larger site with lots of information about related items- maybe other fruits in this example.  It also is helpful if the page has been around for some time, loads quickly, and is free of broken links and cheap keywords.

Another article that might be of interest: Search Engine Optimization: The Weakest Link for Most Web Sites

Photo courtesy of Facebook.

Facebook Fan Pages are now being used by many businesses to advertise, often to the extent that it’s used as the company’s home Page, or to point users to the company website. This sort of strategy works well for small or local businesses, or those that cater to a niche market.  Facebook has made some recent changes that help companies gain search engine (SEO) traffic.

Another method of getting the message out to potential customers is through Status Feeds, invitations, and messages, which are considered the “viral channels.” Using SEO tactics on your Page can help your Page reach lots more potential “fans” for your business, including those that you have no direct connections to.

Here are a few ideas for Facebook Page advertising:

1. Pick a great name for your Page.

While the temptation is there to stuff it with keywords- DON’T! Titles that look like spam will hurt your Page’s natural (AKA “viral”) growth rate, whereby your fans pass on information about your business and your Page to their friends, and so on.  If it looks spammy, people won’t share it with their friends and will be likely to hide updates from their News Feed.

Likewise, really generic names, like “real estate” or “travel” will have a negative effect, because Facebook has caught on to these generically named Pages, and has started disabling the updates on them, effectively putting these Pages out of business.

The best strategy is to use the business’s real name and not to change it.  Changing the name later on will cost you SEO points and a Google penalty, so pick a name and stick to it.

2. Pick a great URL

Once your Page has more than 100 fans, you have the ability to pick a vanity URL. (Facebook calls it a Facebook username.)  This is a relatively recent improvement, and offers a good SEO opportunity because you can incorporate more generic keywords for SEO purposes.  By combining the company’s actual name with generic keywords, you can help drive traffic to your Page.

Be careful picking your URL/FB username, because it can’t ever be changed.  Make sure the name you pick will work for your business now and in the future.

3. Add your Keywords

Near the top of your new Facebook Page is an “About” box where you can add information about the business.  This is where you’ll want to load up your keywords.  Keyword-dense writing near the top of your Facebook Page is very SEO-friendly.  Facebook limits where you can put lots of information, and this area is highest in the CSS structure on the Page where you can add text.

To add text here, click the box under your profile picture on your Page, where it says “Write something….”  The character limit is 250, so be sure to use the best, most relevant keywords while choosing your message wisely.

4. Add text and links on the “Info” tab

Every Facebook Page also has an “Info” tab that has metadata about the business and the Page. Filling this information out completely will increase the content score of your Page for lots of Google searches. For instance, the address, city, and zip code are important when someone does a local search.  Company overview and products are important for product-specific searches.  The websites field allows you to add direct links to your site or to other important sites.  If this information is displayed on your Facebook Page, it makes it easier for potential customers to find you both on and off the site.

5. Add photos with captions and events with descriptions

Just like blog postings, the more often your content is updated and refreshed, the better your page will rank.  It is vitally important to constantly update your page with interesting and relevant information. When you share a photo, be sure to use the caption field to add a description of it, and use keyword-dense text.  When adding events, make sure you use keywords in the description field to help you rank higher.  Also, adding a discussion forum can help you to naturally rank higher for your specific keywords.  Content shared on Facebook Pages is indexable by search engines, so use that capability to your advantage.

For more information about SEO and Social Media, check out this article about Twitter followers

White hat RSS tips

What is RSS?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) was developed as a way of allowing content to be shared and syndicated across the Internet in the easiest way possible hence the name, Really Simple Syndication.  RSS first began to be developed in 1999 and since then it has gone through many tweaks and versions.  Currently, RSS can be used not only to deliver text-based content but also audio and video. Today’s web site owner needs to arm themselves with as many RSS tips as possible so as to fully compete for web traffic.

How Does an RSS Feed Work?

The key elements of an RSS document are the body of the content and the metadata that provide context and additional information about the content.  This information includes details on the author, the publish date of the content and more.  Publishers (those who allow your RSS content to appear on their web sites) often want content that is fresh and published within a specific period of time.

RSS content can also be delivered to individuals.  This happens when an individual subscribes to an RSS feed or channel.  Individuals gain access to RSS content via an RSS plugin: a web-based tool, a mobile device or a desktop-based program.  The programs that read RSS feeds are called by several names.

Most common names used for programs that read RSS feeds:

* Feed Readers
* RSS Readers
* Aggregators

Why All the RSS Hype?

RSS was initially used for bringing fresh and regular news content to web sites.  It allowed for regularly updated content to be delivered to web sites in an easy manner.  Although RSS is still used for this purpose, Internet marketers have discovered other ways that RSS can be used to drive huge amounts of traffic to their web sites.

One of the best ways to rise to the top of search engine results on the Google.com web site is by having a large number of links pointing towards your web site.  These links are known as ‘backlinks’.  Backlinks are one of the hidden ingredients needed for Google search engine success.  Web sites with a large number of backlinks are seen by Google as having more credibility than those that not many other web sites link to.  Therefore, one of the aims of the successful, business web site owner is to have as many backlinks to their web site as possible.  The more web sites that feature your content on their web sites through RSS feeds, the more backlinks you will have to your site and the quicker you will sail your way to the number 1 spot on Google.

Web Sites and RSS Traffic Feeds

1) RSS Can Be Used to Deliver Keyword-Rich Content

RSS feeds can be used to deliver keyword-rich content to other publishers that ultimately drives traffic to your site. Article RSS publishing can provide you with hundreds, and even thousands of potential backlinks.  Because of this, you can quickly propel your web site and thus your product or service into the forefront of search engine results.

2) RSS Content Works Effortlessly For Your Business

As an RSS content publisher, all you have to do is develop your content, publish it and let the backlinks work for you.

3) Publishing RSS Feeds Will Propel you Past Your Competition

You can quickly and easily get ahead of your most aggressive competitors using RSS because most web site owners still have not caught on to this valuable marketing technique.  Statistics show that the majority of your competitors will not be using RSS to its fullest extent or for maximum impact.

How Can I Use RSS?

If you update your web site on a regular basis, consider publishing the same content as an RSS feed for other site owners to use as content on their web sites.  Dealing with the technical side of article RSS can be quite complicated so I recommend getting some type of automatic RSS submission software.   This type of software allows you to develop your content, and once it is ready to be distributed, it will make the content available to hundreds of other publishers to use via RSS. Since everything you publish will have a link back to your web site on it, you will very quickly gain backlinks as people use your content.

What to Expect From Best RSS Automatic Submission Software:

* Complete automation of submissions
* Exposure of your content to other publishers
* Technical and Installation Assistance if necessary
* Use of software on multiple domains
* Back-links
* Traffic

We looked around and then we looked around some more. Later, we found this. This is submission with a difference. It has all the above qualifications and works extremely well with wordpress too. That’s not all..hmm, you’ll see what I mean when you visit this link. This is seriously special and advanced, voodoo RSS stuff. (I don’t think there’s anything else that can do this stuff yet…)

Make money blogging

It seems like just about everyone these days has a blog on the internet.   Blogging has certainly become very popular and everyone from individuals to multimillion dollar corporations appear to have jumped on the blogging bandwagon.  If you don’t know what blogging is, you just may be living in the dark ages.  Quite simply, it is a way to communicate information to others on the internet.  In the “old days” we wrote journals, now we write blogs.  Blogs can be personal stories or articles on any topic imaginable.   People use them to keep friends and family updated on their happenings and businesses use them to promote their products and services.  In fact, anyone who has a little desire and determination can make money from blogging.

Profitable Blogging, how to get started:   If you are looking to real in a profit by blogging on the internet, you will need to follow some key steps to get your blog up and running.  Look at these steps as the laying of a foundation.  Your money making potential will, in part, be determined from these critical first steps.

• First, you will need to decide what niche your blog is going to be about.  It is important to pick a topic that you are passionate about and one that others will be interested in as well.   Having a niche that you are familiar with and zealous about will make your job more exciting and easy.  It is difficult to be passionate about something you don’t believe in.

• Next, you will need to decide what platform to use for your blog.  While there are many free services available for you to use, most people prefer to set up their own and pay a minimal fee for hosting.  This will allow you to have complete control over your blog.

• You will now need to choose a domain name and register it.  It will be critical for you to choose a domain name that will relate to your niche and be easy for people to remember.

• Next, you will design your blog site.  When doing this make sure you use a simple yet catchy design that will draw people in.

• Now you will need to begin to post your blog entries.  Make sure that you spend a good deal of time on this step.  It is essential that what you are writing is valuable to others, while at the same time catches their attention.  Providing an entertainment factor to your blog can be very beneficial.

Make Money Blogging, How to Market Your Blog:    Once you have your blog up and running, it is time to get down to the business of filling up your pockets with some cold hard cash.  This part will be critical, and your hard work and determination will set the pace.  Keep in mind that making money takes time and you should not expect to be making a fortune overnight.  Remember, slow and steady wins the race.

To make money on your blog you will need to do one of three things.  If you have your own product to sell, then your focus will be to promote your product/service and quite simply sell it.  Your second option is to contract with companies that sell products/services in your niche and sell these for a certain percentage of the sales.  The final way to make money is the most popular in the blog community.  You would be an affiliate marketer and refer people to products/services related to your niche and in doing so you would receive a referral fee.

Once you have decided how you are going to make your money, you will now need to focus on traffic.  Without traffic to your blog, you will not make a cent.  There are a variety of ways to drive traffic to your site, let’s take a look.  They include:

1. Google ad words
2. Article Marketing
3. Registering with Blog Directories
4. Registering with Blog Carnivals
5. Banner Ads
6. Email Marketing
7. Using Social Networks
8. Word of mouth, tell everyone you know about your blog
9. Print Medium; include your blog on your business cards and any other print mediums you work with.

In conclusion, making money from blogging can be very profitable for most people.  By following the above steps and mixing in hard work and determination you could have the recipe to becoming profitable.

If you’re going to do this properly and seek guidance here are the points I advise you to look for especially for producing income from your blog – training on aquiring or producing good content (this is key), where to get traffic (multiple sources),  step by step (preferably visual) instructions, choosing relevant products, establishing a relationship with your audience (people blow this all the time).  I’m very comfortable with this source of knowledge called 31 days to better blogging. I have also met the author and he is perhaps in the best position to teach you because he’s likely the most well known professional blogger on the internet. Read the overview and then download thirty one days to better blogging.

Image by reelseo.com

The available options for marketing on the Internet are continuing to expand, with various techniques that are available for growing a business.  If you want to get involved with one of the newest opportunities for Web 2.0 marketing, then using a video to reach others is one of the best concepts available.  This particular ideal allows you to get in touch with your target market, while making a direct connection with others that are on the Internet.

Because video marketing is one of the newest concepts available, there are still several approaches and experiments available for those that are interested in this approach to connecting with others.  Here’s a list of video sites to make your video distribution easier. If you are considering video marketing, you can expect to have some of the following advantages above other marketers:

- personalized connections
- more links to websites / social networks
- ability to send information to others in an alternative manner
- get ahead of other marketers with online concepts

If you are uncertain of whether video marketing will work for you, then the statistics can help you to define the effectiveness of this concept.  In a recent survey, more than 78% of Internet users stated that video added more opportunities for knowledge and learning.  63% stated that video was more effective then content alone for gaining an understanding of a business.  This was combined with activity linked to videos.  64% of respondents stated that they would take action after seeing a video.  44% of these users would visit the website of the individual while 21% would remember the video and would begin to investigate the opportunities available.

Because of the overwhelming responses that are linked to video marketing, you can easily begin to convert potential customers by creating the right video.  Of course, if you decide to take this approach, you want to make sure it is memorable with the correct types of images and information.  Having a script and organizing your video into a short excerpt that leads to conversions allows you to get better responses from potential customers, instead of being discussed in the wrong way.   If you’re looking for easy but advanced tutorials and coaching on optimizing video this is the best on the net.

Following are five tips to help you build the correct responses with video:

1.  Give basic information that others are interested in.  You want to use a video as a sales pitch or appeal to your business products or services.

2.  Link.  Making a connection from your main video to your website or blog can help you with the conversion of customers.  Every place that you decide to put your video should have a direct link back to your website.

3.  Know where to present your information.  You want to make sure that you create a strategy for your website.  For instance, if you have followers on a social media network, then using your video on this site will help to attract the right individuals.

4.  Use video networking.  You Tube and other video social networks are essential for your business success.  Making sure that you place your video in the network areas that are specific for media can help you to get the traffic you desire for your website.

5.  Building SEO traffic.  If you upload your video in any area, make sure that you include tags and excerpts that define your video and your website.  Doing this can help you to gain interest not only from others but can also provide you with the ability to work your way into the search engines.

No matter what product or service you are selling, you can get the best results by looking into specialized marketing trends.  The newest and hottest available option for the Internet is video marketing.  Understanding how to set up your personalized video and linking it to your business is the beginning to driving traffic to your site while getting the best results for your needs.  By doing this, you will automatically be able to build traffic into converted customers. Here’s a really special service you can try free if you don’t want to get technical with Vegas or Camtasia software just yet. If you get the hang of it (which you will) you can then move to professional level. They even supply the music!

If you don’t yet know what a Twitter follower is, you will soon find out. It seems everywhere you turn today, Twitter and tweeting are the new buzz words.  Twitter, a social network that has only been around for ahile, has tremendous popularity worldwide.  Everyone seems to be excited about this up and coming way to communicate with others.

Twitter is a social network, where participants can send and receive short messages from other Twitter members.  Unlike other social networks like Facebook and My Space, Twitter is designed so that it can only be used as a SMS or a short message service.  Every message that you send is limited to 140 characters per post.

While Twitter is commonly used by individuals to stay in close contact with friends and family members, it is more and more often being used by companies and organizations as a way to market products and services.  Companies like Dell and Jet Blue use Twitter to market their services and even Barac Obama and John Edwards used Twitter as a marketing means while on the campaign trail.

Now you might be wondering how exactly does this all work?  How do you get people to read your Twitter messages and how do you actually market yourself, products or services?  It is really is quite simple.  It all comes down to getting twitter followers.

Twitter Followers:   Twitter followers are people who sign up to get all of your messages as you send them.   So the trick is to simply draw people to you and get them to sign up for your updates.  There are a variety of ways to get individuals interested in what you have to say.  Your main goal will be to find people who are willing to link to your profile and from there they will sign up to follow you.   Let’s take a look at some different tips that you can use to get people to link to your profile and follow you on Twitter.

• Include a link to your Twitter profile in your email signature.  This is a great way to get your information out.

• If you are on other social networks or have a blog, use this as a means for advertising your Twitter profile.  Make sure you provide information and a link to your Twitter page.

• Let people know you are on Twitter.  Give out your information  as much as possible.  Talk about it at meetings, luncheons and any other associations you have with other people.

• Add your Twitter information to your business cards and any other documents that you distribute.

• Purchase a banner and advertise your Twitter profile on it.

Twitter Marketing:   As you are driving people to your Twitter profile, keep in mind that in order for them to sign up for and to continue to read your tweets you will want to be providing them with quality content that spikes their interest.   Depending on what kind of product, service or social medium you are looking to promote, there are some great ways to get the word out.  Let’s take a look at different information that you can include in your tweets for marketing purposes.  Keep in mind that depending on what you are selling or promoting, some of these may not work for you.

• Tweet to your follower’s about upcoming sales and promotions.

• Tweet to your follower’s information on new products and services you are providing.

• Provide links to your web site for such things as updated news stories, sales, promotions, customer support and anything else you deem will attract their attention.

• For conferences and events you can tweet live updates and last minute changes and opportunities.

• Provide quick product descriptions and customer reviews.

Overall, it is clear to see that Twitter, when used wisely, can be a very critical social medium tool in marketing your products and services.  Along with all of the above tips, it may also be useful to find the top Twitters and follow what they do.  They are always looking for new ways to attract followers and to market themselves.  If you follow their lead, you just may pick up some additional ideas.

Here are two tools which have become popular. Each one is suited to different operations and that’s why I’ve included them both.

The first is a maketers dream because of its set and forget style of operation. It’s a system that allows you to create a lock-up style of marketing business via Twitter and is highly effective in finding targeted followers for that purpose. When I tried this set-up, I was impressed. Check this follower system.

The second piece of finding followers software is more for control type people (like me). I like to ensure I’m not overdoing it and I like it easy. Plus every month (approx.) they release a new tool. They don’t have a sleek marketing message but this software was also equally impressive and worth a visit. See what they have to say about themselves here.