I received a very clever email the other day. At first I thought it was some kind of joke or spam or something.

Why?

Because it was from top internet marketer Jimmy D. Brown, creator of the highly successful Membernaire. Why would a massive marketer like Mr. Brown be opening a ticket on my support desk?

That’s right, this wasn’t just any old autoresponder email plopping into my inbox resulting from me signing up to a mailing list. It was actually a personal message from Mr. Brown himself. Sheesh!

Jimmy told me that he’d written an article on his blog and linked to a great post that he’d found on my blog, he’d also included links to a few other posts on various other high traffic blogs.

He asked if I would be prepared to post his article on my blog so that we could mutually benefit from the traffic – what a fantastic idea!

So what’s in it for me (WIIFM) and what’s in it for him?

Obviously, Jimmy’s a pretty clever guy and if you run your own blog, regardless of the niche, take note and defintely try something like this yourself…..

Task: Find other bloggers in your niche and research blog posts that are informative, well-written and that have had a good response (check out how many comments have been received to that post). Pay particular attention to blog post titles such as

“6 Top Tips for…”

“27 Ways To….”

“101 Benefits of….”

these type of `list’ articles are very popular!

Benefit: Your readers will love the fact that you are presenting them with great content on the niche that they are interested in.

Task: Create your own blog post around the articles that you have selected, include an introduction and an explanation of why you think your readers will find the articles helpful.

Benefit: If you’re a blogger that sometimes struggles for article ideas this is an excellent starting point. Sometimes it just takes a small nudge in the right direction, a chink of an idea and you’re off and running.

Task:. Contact the writers of the blog posts you are linking to and tell them you enjoyed their post and that you have included it in a post on your own blog.

Benefit: It’s a fantastic idea to participate in the blogging community and what better way than to communicate with other bloggers. Most bloggers are delighted to get a ping back or link back from fellow bloggers. It puts you on the radar in your niche and you can build some great relationships. Who knows where it could lead!

Task: Ask those whose articles you have used if they would be willing to post your article on their blog, or at least link back to your article.

Benefit: Remember, this is all about traffic. If you linking to other blogs they will get a pingback or notification that you are doing so and they will come and check you out. If you are mutually linking, you will both benefit from the flow of traffic from both sets of readers and search engine traffic.

How have I benefitted from this?

Check out the three screen shots below. You’ll see that prior to Jimmy’s article and link to my blog, which he posted on 29th April, I was receiving no traffic from his blog at all. And the same goes for other contributors who also posted Jimmy’s article on their blogs, Terry Dean and Carrie Lauth. However, look at the spikes of traffic after Jimmy and the others had posted.

Traffic from Jimmy D. Brown’s Blog

Traffic From Terry Dean’s Blog

Traffic From Carrie Lauth’s Blog

Task: Ensure that you have some kind of sign up box on your blog to capture email addresses for your mailing list, together with a prominent RSS button so that visitors can subscribe to your blog feed. Give your visitors every opportunity to keep up with what you’re doing on Twitter, Friendfeed and other social networking platforms by displaying the relevant links and icons in prominent places.

Benefit: Why waste all this free traffic? If your visitors like what they read why wouldn’t they want to sign up for your free product or report.  If you’re publishing great content, they’ll want to know when you next post again and sign up to your RSS feed, perhaps.

Start to build a relationship with your visitors, make them regulars, get to know them via email, Twitter – communicate with them and build your following.

So, without further ado, my thanks to Jimmy D. Brown for including me – below is his excellent article. I hope my regular readers will enjoy the great content that he’s selected and if you’re a new visitor to my blog, welcome, and I hope you visit again

189 Internet Marketing Tips, Tactics and Techniques
By Jimmy D. Brown of http://www.JimmyBrown.com

“Have you ever wished someone would do all of the “research” for you so you could just cut to the chase? I know I have. There have been many times I’d like to not waste hours of my life sifting through low-quality articles and blog posts to find the occasional gem.

If only someone else had written this article for me to read a long time ago. Fortunately, I’m gonna save you the trouble of getting double vision from staring at your computer screen trying to find some good internet marketing reads.

Below you’ll find some great “tips based” blog posts that are filled with meaty ideas. Some of these authors you’ve probably heard of, some you might not have heard of. All deserve to be included for providing some golden nuggets in their content.“

10 Ways To Make $10K Per Month
By Jimmy D. Brown
http://www.jimmybrown.com/10-ways-to-make-10k/

27 Ways To Get Your Blog Readers To Comment
By Nicole Dean
http://nicoleonthenet.com/2008/blog-readers-commen/

11 Steps To Getting More Blog Traffic
By Alice Seba
http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/blog/blog-traffic

21 Ways to Add More Subscribers
By Terry Dean
http://www.terrydean.org/21-ways-to-add-more-subscribers/

10 Free Ways To Drive Traffic To A Brand New Website
By Lynn Terry
http://www.clicknewz.com/633/traffic-tips-for-new-sites/

100 Free Blogging Tips
By Carrie Lauth
http://carrielauth.com/blog/free-100-top-blogging-tips/

5 Simple Ways To Increase Click Through Rates
By Zac Johnson
http://zacjohnson.com/5-simple-ways-to-increase-click-through-rates/

5 Simple Steps To Effectively Promote Your Affiliate Products
By Paula Brett
http://paula-brett.com/blog/5-simple-steps-to-effectively-promote-your-affiliate-products/

]]> http://paula-brett.com/blog/189-internet-marketing-tips-tactics-techniques/feed/ 29 http://paula-brett.com/blog/seth-godins-most-popular-posts-of-2008-in-order/ http://paula-brett.com/blog/seth-godins-most-popular-posts-of-2008-in-order/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:34:12 +0000 Paula Brett http://paula-brett.com/blog/?p=405

You may remember back in July that I alerted readers to Seth Godin’s new Triiibes project.  Seth Godin, the creater of Squidoo, writes such an inspirational blog – indeed it’s one of my favourites – I always come away from it shaking my head in sheer admiration.

Seth has posted his most popular blog posts, (measured by click popularity) over on his blog – starting with

1. Are You in the Tribe?

2. Email Checklist

3. Scarcity

Why not check out the other 17 here and if you’re not already an avid reader of Seth’s blog, why not add it to your feedreader?

Apologies for not posting for so long everyone, it’s been a bit like a madhouse here, what with Christmas coming up.

I actually have 7 draft posts in my blog dashboard, all half written and then put on the shelf  to `finish later’.  My New Year’s resolution will be `get yourself organised, Paula, and stop getting distracted’!!! I promise

Anyway, I’ve got lots to tell you about, what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks, not least that I’ve been spreading my wings a bit, getting out and about the internet more than usual and I’ve been meeting some interesting new people.

But first, though, I wanted to give you all a heads up on something that you can jump in on right now…. to get some traffic to your blogs. It’s actually something that a new online aquaintance,  Eoin O’Leary told me about…

Take a trip over to Jack Humphreys blog, Friday Traffic Report, and check out his Technorati Favorite Blogs Exchange.

All you need to do is leave a comment on his blog and follow his instructions.

More posts coming…… honest!

In today’s Web 2.0 online environment, it’s almost impossible to land on a blog, newsletter or current website without seeing an invitation to get the webmaster’s information via RSS.

If you are one of the thousands of new Internet Marketers just dipping their toes in the fast-paced waters of the Internet, you might not understand the valuable uses for RSS (Really Simple Syndicaton) and how syndication can improve your sales and drive traffic to your offers. Believe me, you are not alone.

Every new process, or revamped old process, develops it own set of terminology and buzz words, so let’s take a look at some of the RSS terminology first.

• Syndication:

Syndication, according to Wikipedia, means that you allow your website, or a portion of it, to be available for other sites to use. This usually means “…making web feeds available from your site, or blog, in order to provide other people with a summary of your website’s recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts).”

Different types of syndicated content can be found all over the Web, including newspapers, commercial websites, blogs or product offers from Internet Marketers. It has become a free and easy form of advertisement that increases targeted traffic and expands your site’s exposure across normally unreachable online platforms.

Web syndication by online marketers is removing the hesitancy web surfers have with providing personal information to invisible marketers, like name and email address for signing up to receive a newsletter. Those surfers expecting to subscribe to an RSS feed instead are growing in numbers and will soon be in the majority. Don’t ignore them!

RSS and Atom are the two main syndication formats.

• RSS Feed:

To start with, an RSS feed notifies you when a web site or blog you are interested in has been updated. There are two kinds of RSS feeds, static and dynamic.

When you see the latest scores for your favorite team or are continually checking for bargain airline tickets for your vacation to Disney World, that information would be a static feed from a sports news media or an airline/ticket site.

Info from a dynamic feed would depend on your search terms to provide specific information to add to your data stream. A dynamic feed would be one from a website you are watching for new content or notices abou new products. It would give you notice of the change on the website.

• Feed Reader or News Aggregator:

Those two terms are merely names for the software that allows you to get the RSS feeds from websites or blogs that interest you and have it displayed so you can read it and use the information the way you want to use it.

At the moment I use Googe Feedreader and you can find an article about how to use it here but you can find 12 or 15 feed reader options at: http://blogspace.com/rss/readers.

• The Big Question…What is RSS?

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a format for delivering regularly changing web content and is making it easier for you to stay informed by receiving the lastest content from your sites of interest. You don’t have to visit each site individually and do not have to join each site’s newsletter by providing your private information.

More than several big name sites, like Yahoo News, the BBC News in the UK, the US government and more newspapers and other news media than you can shake a stick at, are providing free RSS news feeds for delivery to anyone. They are not doing that for no reason, but because they recognize the extended reach their message will have and the benefits that reach will return to them. Copy success!

Internet Marketers are starting to add an RSS feed to their websites and blogs. Look for a button or link that says “XML,” “RSS” or an invitation to “Syndicate This Site” if you want to start receiving their information via an RSS news feed.

Almost any information can be used to publicize updates to your website or blog… photos, summaries of your latest update or simply the title of your update with a link back to the original source.

RSS benefits both the readers and the publishers of the feed. When you update your blog post, add new content to your website or want to announce a new sales price or special bonus for your readers, they all wil know immediately about the change or special offer and can decide if they want to visit your site or not.

Internet Marketers can reach a much wider audience for their products or services because web browsers are becoming much more likely to subscribe to an RSS feed and avoid the email clutter that clogs their inbox after subscribing to a few newsletters.

All the benefits of RSS feeds are not restricted to your subscribers, but have some powerful results when used as a marketing tool. When you use an RSS feed to market your products, you are attracting visitors and customers who are interested in your products and want to receive your information. This Win-Win process protects you from a spamming accusation.

The new techniques and requirements of using RSS to get your message circulating may still intimidate or confuse some of your customers. It is a good idea, for customer service, to offer both the RSS feed and emai notification of your website, blog or product updates. You do not want to immediately exclude a set of customers who prefer one method over the other, regardless of the reason.

As a tool to increase targeted and focused traffic to your site, RSS feeds work great for this top-of-the-list marketing need. If the content update interests your reader, many will want to read the complete story on your website and will click the link to do just that. When that happens, they arrive at your website already interested in your product… marketing gold!

Getting comfortable with this vibrant and ever-changing Web 2.0 tool will expand your reach and increase your conversions. More and more people are switching to RSS feeds everyday to make their lives less cluttered and to put the information they receive in their own hands and not those of random marketers. Don’t ignore this grass roots movement… join it!

Why not try it out by subscribing to my feed?

Related Article: Catch Up on Your Favourite Blogs in One Place

I’ve been thinking about Twittographics (Twitter demographics) for a few days. In fact, ever since I read a few blog posts about the metrics that define the style of Twitter user you are …  read more

Are you Squidoo-ing? If not, you should be. It takes very little effort and the publicity and money you can make from it make it well worth your time.

Some people call Squidoo Web 2.0, while others call it a Social Networking Site. Whatever you might want to call it, it was created a few years ago by marketing genius, Seth Godin. Since that time many people have taken advantage of the site to help their Internet Marketing businesses and many other types of ventures.

It’s really very easy to set-up a Squidoo lens. All you have to do is go to Squidoo.com and sign-up. Then you can start creating a lens right away.

You can create a lens on any topic of your choice. It can be all about you or you can create the lens about a product or service of yours. It’s completely up to you.

You need to be careful, though… you have to put good content on each one of your lenses or your pages might be seen as SPAM and then you’ll probably get kicked off Squidoo.

Some people spend a lot of time working on their Squidoo lens(es). These people (called lens masters) might try to get a high ranking on Squidoo and a high ranking on Google and other search engines.

If you want to do this, then you are certainly welcome to do so. It’s comforting to know that Squidoo is once again favoured by Google. However, a few months ago all the spam content on Squidoo caused lenses to dramatically drop in ranking.

The one rule you want to follow is to include an important keyword in the title of your lens and then in the modules within the lens. This will let the search engine spiders find your lens and rank it according to the keyword / keyword phrase.

You can also visit other people’s lenses and leave comments for them and rank their lenses. Hopefully they’ll see you left a comment and they’ll visit your lens. This will help you in the rankings on Squidoo.

Lastly, update your lens at least once a week and preferably every other day. You don’t have to make any major changes but you should change something just to keep your lens fresh.

There are many great reports and books on the market that will help you succeed using Squidoo. But just having a lens or two will give you one more spot where you are marketing yourself and/or your products. And you can never have enough marketing opportunities.

So from now one when anyone asks you, “Do you Squidoo?’ You better be able to answer, “Yes.”

If you’re looking for a detailed plan that will show you how to use Squidoo to crack the first page of Google, I can highly recommend the following two eBooks by Tiffany Dow and Lucia de Syracuse – both packed full of excellent info.

Social Networking on Squidoo

Ultimate Squidoo

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