The Open Source Marketer

The term social media can mean different things depending on who you listen to. Some say it involves user generated content (UGC). Some say it’s all about social bookmarking. Some view social media as a maturing of the internet. Some say it is a waste of time. In the next few articles we will look at some of the top social media sites like Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Twitter, FaceBook, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog to understand how they work and how you can use them to get visitor traffic to your website.

You see it doesn’t matter what anyone “says” social media is. What matters is how people are using it and what you can do with it as a marketer. Even if you don’t use every social media site out there, you need to at least know what they are about and how other people are using them. Social media sites are where people are coming together online to interact and that means you have an opportunity to get your website content in front of a bunch of people with little to no cost.

To get us started, here are seven things that social media sites offer people online

1. The ability to categorize and bookmark sites
2. The ability to share content and resources with others
3. The ability to communicate with others directly
4. The ability to create personal profiles
5. The ability to add user defined tags to content
6. The ability to group together by topics of interest
7. The ability to rate or rank the quality of content

In our upcoming articles we will examine each of these points as they relate to our chosen social media sites and we will discuss how we can use each of these capabilities to market using social media.

Until then I encourage you to visit Del.icio.us and learn what the site is about. Sign up for a free account and learn how to use the tool on a basic level. By using the tool and seeing how others are using the tool you will be better equipped to understand how it can be used to help you accomplish your marketing goals.

Meet you back here in a few days,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

There are a number of recently popularized social media methods of getting website traffic, but many of these methods involve activities that are very technology focused and don’t leave much room for real social connections or direct personal feedback. If you’re looking for a more personally connected way of generating website traffic, then consider starting a group meeting on Meetup.com. In this article you will learn what it takes to setup a Meetup group and start generating website traffic almost overnight. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, it’s Monday morning and your back at your evil J O B. You have your coffee, your blog, and an overwhelming sense that you can do better than where you are right now. Your tired of doing what you somehow find yourself doing at the moment. What you want to do is something fun and creative. You want to get paid for being who you are and not what you pretend to be. You ask yourself, “Why not Me”. How do I know this about you? I know this because that’s me too.

Most all of us have to do a self check at some point to understand who we really are and who we really want to be. The questions can be hard. The answers can be harder and not everyone will be willing to bridge the gap to make a change in their life. The truth is you were created with talents and abilities that don’t get utilized effectively and at some point you have to come face to face with that and decide what you are going to do about it.

You are reading this blog because you want to do something more or different than you are doing today. You believe you have the skills, the desire, and the talent to do more than sit in a cubical all day answering emails and filling out performance reports. Deep down you know that if you will just decide to push on your invisible comfort zone, then you will grow into the person you are suppose to be. All you have to do is decide and then take action.

To illustrate the point, here is a Big Idea interview with Alton Brown from the Food Network where he talks about when he decided to be who he really was and not just who he found himself to be. Alton Brown knew he wanted to do more than what he found himself doing and he decided to make a change. Now, after much work and desire, he is one of the most well known stars of the Food Network. If you need a lift today or a word of encouragement, then check out this very honest interview. It is one of my favorite inspirational clips. I guarantee it will be your’s as well.

Now, in all of this keep in mind that when we serve others we increase our value exponentially and push ourselves much farther than we would if we only tried to serve ourselves. So today, focus on how you can serve others and bring value to their lives. Decide to be more than you have been and be willing to feel afraid of stepping outside your comfort zone. You don’t have to be on the Food Network to be a success, but you do have to decide and then take action.

You can do it. You know you can and so do I.

See you on the beach,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

P.S. Even though I am not a big fan of using Blogspot as a professional blogging platform, I am a fan of FoodWishes.com where I originally found this clip. So a big thanks to Chef John.

In the last post we watched a video about keyword and keyword phrase research. We saw the combined use of WordTracker and Google Trends to come up with a method to find high search volume, low competition keywords and keyword phrases. In this next video we see the concept taken a step further with the use of the regular Google search.

Overall this quick hit method is a low cost way to dig into keyword and keyword phrases. It’s good to have ways to quickly test ideas without spending lots of valuable time on a concept. Since Google and WordTracker are already tapping into existing data you are much more likely to get a fairly accurate picture of what keywords are doing.

Give the video a squint and let me know what you think in the blog comments.

Dreaming up new stuff,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Keyword research is an extremely important part of optimizing blogs and understanding what words or phrases to use in blog posts or articles. Today’s post is a quick hit on combining WordTracker’s Keyword Tool and Google Trends to come up with a reasonable estimation for potential keyword search traffic.

Here is a video from the guys over at the Thirty Day Challenge that highlights some of the issues you need to consider when doing keyword research. The video also points out some good ways to correlate keyword data into a better visualization of historical visitor traffic for a given set of keyword s or keyword phrases.

Try the WordTracker Free Keyword Tool for yourself and see what results come back for your keywords of choice. You will be surprised at what you can find. However, as the video explains, you need a reasonable way to estimate the real long term potential for search traffic. Pit your keyword or keyword phrase against some long term trends using Google Trends.

The WordTracker keyword tool was a big help to me when I wanted to optimize one of my sites. Using the tool I was able to discover people really were not searching for the keywords I thought they were. It helped me to understand what was really being searched for and I was able to tweak the keywords on my site to match. Although the overall change was small, the increase in traffic from using the right keywords was measurable literally overnight. The project now get regular search visitors for the keywords and keywords phrases that is was not getting before.

While I didn’t use Google Trends at the time to cross reference the keywords search history, I did use Google’s adsense keyword tool to get an idea of adsense competition versus general search traffic. This gave me a rough estimate of what to expect for my keywords and keyword phrases. The adsense keyword tool is not nearly as easy to understand visually and it doesn’t give you the big historical picture that Google Trends does, but it does give you the adsense competition for keywords and phrases so a combination of all three tools might not be a bad thing.

Just remember, a little research up front can save you a lot of time and effort later on.

Keep on keeping on,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Related Article:
Learn To Use Google Trending For Your Marketing Efforts

Recently I bought a new car and I used an online lender to fund the deal. Throughout the whole process I noticed that the lender was using sales techniques that all of us could learn from. So, I am going to highlight seven key points from the experience and examine how we can use these techniques in our own Internet Marketing efforts.

1. Getting Started Is Easy

While I was researching my choice of cars I decided I wanted to walk into the dealer with pre-approved financing. So, as I was shopping on Cars.com I noticed a banner ad that said I could apply online for financing with RoadLoans.com. Unfortunately I don’t remember what attracted me to the banner ad because, I normally never click on banner ads. I know that a banner ad means a sales pitch and like most people, I want to buy but I don’t want to be sold to. Maybe it was just the fact that I was in the market for what they were offering and I transferred the trust I had built up with Cars.com to Road Loans as one of their sponsored advertisers. What ever the reason, I clicked through.

It’s important to note that I had already filled out an online application with Capital One’s Auto Financing, but I didn’t like their rates. But since I had completed their loan application online I already knew what kind of questions would be asked of me. I found that the Road Loans application flowed well and was easy to follow. I had the entire application completed in just a few minutes. I also use RoboForm so that helped the process a great deal as well because I didn’t have to fill in all of the fields manually. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently received an Associate Programs newsletter from Allan Gardyne. In the newsletter he linked to an interesting new product he is selling called SpeedPPC (Speed Pay Per Click). So I clicked through to see what the software was all about and what I found was not only an attractive product offering, but also an article about super affiliate marketing that I just had to highlight for you.

After reading about the software and it’s affiliate program I started poking around the affiliate site to see what type of affiliate tools were available to promote the product. Allan has been making money on affiliate marketing since 1998 so I know he has some things to teach me, so I use his writings as a model for learning more about successful marketing online.

As part of his affiliate tools I found an article entitled, “How to promote SpeedPPC like a super affiliate”. In the article Allan gives some universal advice that I believe you can apply to just about any product promotion or online sales process you might be planning. Take a look at these pearls of wisdom and commit them to memory. Print this page if you have to and pin them on your cork board until they are second nature. Read the rest of this entry »

Should you pay to attend training events? At first glance you might not think the costs are worth the expense but then you might not be considering the unadvertised advantages of the event either. In this article we’ll take a look at why you may want to consider the power of a good idea, ways to make your money back on the deal, and what after hours gatherings can do for your network of contacts. These factors will tell you if an event is “worth it” or not.

Paying for training is a topic I used to consider pretty seriously because, conferences, seminar, training events, boot camps, and two day courses can all cost money you never seem to have. That’s not even considering the plane tickets, hotel, food, and rental car. Everything can add up pretty quickly and if your not careful an initial look at the figures can potentially scare you off of the idea all together. So to help relieve those fears, let’s take a look at a few key concepts that can help you decide on the value of an event. Read the rest of this entry »