Category: Grow a Home Business

Keep your Hat White in Internet Marketing

August 17, 2015 jgardner

What Color Is Your Hat – Black, Blue, Gray Or White?

Many people wear hats of different shapes and colors in their lives. While most parents and business owners might just consider those hats to be a necessary part of a work outfit or a fashion statement, on the Internet, specifically with Internet marketing, they have a very different meaning.

Knowing the differences between the “hat” colors and the risks you take when you chose one over the other will help keep you out of Google death as you attempt to manipulate search engines. Google has a very short tolerance for unethical practices that attempt to work around their rules.

It is commonly agreed upon that the safest techniques to follow in your marketing campaigns are the White Hat strategies. If you remember the old cowboy movies where the hero always wore the white hat and triumphed over the bad guys who wore black hats, you will see the implied differences in hat colors.

White Hat

A marketer using white hat techniques is not malicious in intent or actual practice. They follow business practices that are considered ethical and acceptable by the industry and do nothing that could be considered spamming others. They are not trying to find and exploit loopholes in the systems.

Grey Hat

Practices start veering off the benign white hat techniques when marketers start pushing the edges of legality and use somewhat shady methods to get what they want on other sites or to get around Google’s rules. Some of these techniques used might be reverse engineering of copyrighted or trademarked software, or copying small sections of articles and passing them off as their own. They may have found a loophole that will be closed once Google figures out what they are doing.

Blue Hat

This term is used by firms involved in computer security and refers to hackers hired to unearth bugs in a system before it is launched. When the blue hat hackers find unprotected areas of a client’s security, they quickly close the hole in the company’s software or report it to the security team.

Black Hat

A black hat can be a person who breaks computer security without permission to vandalize a site, steal credit card information, steal identities or pirate another marketer’s proprietary information or processes. A black hat marketer is someone who participates in illegal ways of getting better search engine rankings including keyword stuffing, spamdexing, spam linking, scraped content and article spinning of copyrighted material, hidden website links, excessive cross-linking, etc., that is for rank gain rather than for a better user experience.

Again, it is usually better to keep your White Hat on or you’ll always be looking over your shoulder for the Google police.

If you’re wearing a Black Hat, you may find yourself with a spike in results, but it won’t last and is not a steady income you can count on.

Categories: internet marketing, website

Simple ways to leverage your articles

August 17, 2015 jgardner

How to Leverage Your Articles

You’ve gone through all the hard work of writing a great article and you’ve sent it off to an article directory. Is that it? Are you done with it? Not by a long shot. Don’t let all that sweat go to waste, use your article again and again to squeeze the most out of it them as you can. In other words, leverage your articles. If you do this you won’t have to spend so much of your precious time writing new articles.

Assuming you have a well-written article of at least 400 words, here are some ideas for getting the most out of that article:

* Start off submitting the article to EzineArticles. This is the biggest article directory, and it makes sense to start here. You’ll stand a better chance of getting traffic because of their traffic ranking. In fact, if you do a search of your targeted keywords, you’re more likely to find your article showing higher in the search engines on EzineArticle’s website than from your own website.

* If the article topic is something that would interest your list, you can send it to them in an email. This works better if the article is shorter rather than longer.

* Alternately, you can lightly rewrite it, being sure to change the title, and add it to your blog. Then instead of sending the whole article to your list, you can send them a short email and use curiosity or a call to action to send them clicking the link to read it on your blog. This strategy gets them to your blog where they might take further action; like comment on your post, click on your AdSense, or buy one of your products.

* If you’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the article, post it on a forum in your niche. This helps brand you as someone who is an expert as well as a helpful marketer.

* Have your own article directory on your website. Set up a page with a list of all the articles you’ve written in this niche. Each article can have a blurb at the end that tells people they are free to publish the article on their site as long as they don’t change the article and keep the bio and link intact.

* Rewrite your article and give it to affiliates so they can use it to promote your product. Affiliates appreciate having material they can use rather than having to come up with something from scratch.

* Repurpose the article by shortening it and adding it to your newsletter that goes out to your list. Valuable information never goes out of style.

* Take your article and split it into chunks to create an ecourse. You can easily add further detail to each chunk and end up with a 3-5 part ecourse.

* You may have written several great articles on a specific subject. Bundle them together and create a report or ebook to give away, sell, enter in a giveaway, add to another product as a bonus, etc.

These are only a handful of suggestions on how you can leverage your articles. Every time you write an article, use it as many ways as you can and you’ll find you don’t need to write quite as many new articles.

Categories: blogging

Why do Audio Interviews?

August 17, 2015 jgardner

If you’ve never done an audio interview before, you may have some of these frequently asked questions running through your mind:
Q: What exactly is an audio interview?

A: Basically, an audio interview is when someone asks another person some questions and they answer. The whole thing is recorded and can be played back later.

You know when other people have them on their blog, website, or sales page because you see the buttons – play, stop, pause – and maybe a little megaphone symbol. That lets you know there is an audio file to listen to.
Q: Why should I do one?

A: Audio is a very popular medium right now with internet marketers because it gets them results. It turns out people like to listen to what you and your interviewee have to say. In fact, a lot of people would rather listen to you than read what you’ve written.

Audio interviews can help you pre-sell an affiliate product, sell your own product, get students into a coaching program, and brand yourself as an expert. Your interview can even be a quickly and easily created product to sell or give away.

Recorded interviews are your virtual real estate.

Q: Who should I interview?

A: You ideally should interview someone who has some knowledge of your niche. If your niche is gardening, then you could interview an expert in square foot gardening, rose gardening, or herb gardening. You could also interview gardening product creators or someone who has used certain products very successfully.

You can also turn the tables and ask someone to interview you. Let them ask you the questions so you’re positioned as the expert.
Q: What should I ask them?

A: Before you decide what to ask them, decide what you want the outcome, the end result to be. If you’re an affiliate and you’re going to interview the creator of the product, you’re going to ask them questions surrounding the product. If you’re interviewing someone in order to create a product, then make the subject surround a subject of your choice.

The interview can last anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, depending on your circumstances. Typically, you write out the questions beforehand and send them to the interviewee so they can prepare. Sometimes the person being interviewed will write out their own questions.

Another option regarding questions is to survey your readers in your niche. Ask them what they’d most like to know and give them some general topics to choose from.
Q: What skills do I need?

A: Interviewing is a skill that improves with practice. Try interviewing your spouse or your best friend and record it to see what you sound like. Pay attention to “ya know”, “um” and any other audio bad habits you might have. Practice good segues so you can go seamlessly from answer to next question. Listen and analyze other interviews to help you decide what makes for a good interview and how to sound somewhat professional.

You’ll also need to have a recording method that will do a good job recording you and your interviewee clearly. Other decisions will be where the recording will be stored and how you will get it to your subscribers or customers.

Incorporating audio interviews into your marketing plan makes good business sense. You don’t have to be an audio expert; just come across as a real sincere person with something interesting to say.

Categories: audio

Tips to get more traffic for your Blog

August 17, 2015 jgardner

There are many things you can do with your blog to help you get more traffic and make more sales, and I’ve listed 7 blogging tips here just to get you started.

1. Post lots of content, and do it often. For one thing, readers like to read blogs that have fresh content published regularly. It’s hard for a reader to get into following you, if you only post once in a great while. They don’t have to be monster posts, they just need to be timely and relevant. Also keep in mind that search engines also like to see you publish fresh content often.

2. Put your longtail (phrase of keywords relevant to your topic in search) keywords in your post titles so that people searching those words on a search engine will find your post. It’s nice to have as many people as possible read your posts since you’ve gone to all the work to write and post them – so think of your current readers as well as what you need to do to bring in some organic traffic.

3. Before you even put together a blog post, decide what you want the outcome of that post to be. Is it to promote an affiliate product or your own product? Is it meant to stir up a little controversy so that you get lots of comments and it goes viral? Is it to establish yourself as THE expert? Is it to leak some information and prime the pump before your product launch? You can give solid, valuable information in your post as well as have it point in the direction you want your readers to go next.

4. Keep your blog design pleasing to the eye and structure it so the person coming to your blog isn’t confused as to what he or she should do. What do you want them to do? Read your post then subscribe or buy something? Read your post, laugh at your wit, then go away? Whatever you want them to do, don’t have your blog layout so confusing they don’t know where to turn next.

5. Use PLR (Private Label Rights) to help you post more often. A PLR article might give you a spark of an idea for a blog post or you might take some PLR and lightly rewrite it to add your own personality. Either way, it can help you take action and get you publishing your blog on a regular basis.

6. Learn from other great bloggers how to blog. There is always something to learn, whether you’ve been blogging a short while or a long time. Subscribe to the best blogs, listen to what they have to say, and analyze everything about those blogs so you can make yours better.

Some blogs I would suggest you follow include:

Copyblogger by Darren Rowse
Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn
Firepole Marketing by Danny Iny
Social Triggers by Derek Halpern

7. Find out which WP plug ins will make your blog friendlier to the search engines as well as to people.

Some of the plugins friendly to search engines are:

All in one SEO

Yoast SEO

These are some of my favorite blogging tips. There is always more you can do with your blog to make it better, even if you’ve been blogging for years. So keep on learning, testing, tweaking, and posting.

Categories: blogging

Sound

July 26, 2015 jgardner

The sound of your videos or podcasts you are producing to create your message is critical. If people can’t hear you or there is too much noise in the video or podcast, they will turn it off quickly.

So, it is best to start with good sound procedure and checklist for each of your videos and podcasts you produce.

insert a video here

as well, for a good overview of how to set up your sound to rock , here is a tutorial from David Taylor on Youtube who created a tutorial for writers on how to use Audacity to broadcast. He goes over how to

[svpVideo v=1]

Categories: broadcasting, sound

Periscope is awesome!

July 20, 2015 jgardner

As a business, you always have to (at least) be aware of the opportunities to be engaged with your customers. Now, in social media, you can connect in real time with APPS for the smartphone that livestream YOU broadcasting your MESSAGE. Do it strategically with social engagement but decide first whether your customers are on that platform or aren’t they?

Periscope is a new APP for free livestreaming through Twitter in realtime but does your audience even now about it? ! However it is very fun.

Listening to @Kim Garst at Boom Boom and next up, @theJasonHodge on Periscope. Periscope is addictive!

Explore the World

Categories: periscope

How to Encourage Kaizen in your Workforce

July 5, 2015

Kaizen is ‘continuous improvement‘ and is a popular subject among businesses and managers. Kaizen basically means that the best way to affect big change in an organization is to encourage lots of small, incremental changes that can improve workflow, profit margins and everything else. By continually improving in small ways, you can create change throughout your whole business that will result in much more efficient and effective operations.

But kaizen works best when it is applied at the individual level. In other words, if you can help your staff to work better on their own and to improve the way they approach problems and their regular workload, then you can make your entire organization more effective. A chain is as strong as its weakest link and a business is really the sum of its employees.

If you try to come from above as management and enforce continuous improvement, then chances are that it won’t go well. Your staff might be resistant to small changes and you might be too far removed from the process to really see where the problems are occurring or where things need to be improved.

On the other hand though, if you encourage your team to improve themselves they will be far more motivated and they will be able to make changes that really have an effect on what they’re capable of and how much they’re getting done.

So how do you encourage this continuous change in your team?

The Environment

The solution is actually to give your staff more space and to provide them with the environment and the tools they need to continuous improvement.
What this means first and foremost is that you should create a blame free environment. This means that your team should feel comfortable to try new methodologies and systems without thinking that you’re going to punish them if their new ways of working don’t work as well as they should have.
Giving your staff a sense of ownership over their work is also an important step that will motivate them to be better, as is making sure that you aren’t micromanaging them to the point where there is no flexibility.
Finally, get your team to monitor and report on their performance and to show you how profits are increasing or satisfaction is increasing. This shouldn’t be used to apply pressure but by monitoring metrics they will get the feedback to see what works and what doesn’t.

Categories: Employees Tags: Tags: employee, kaizen

Pinterest Analytics

June 9, 2015 jgardner

Have you checked your Pinterest analytics? Did you know that Pinterest had measurements and analytics that you can use in your marketing strategy? This is a screenshare of my Pinterest Business Analytics from September 2014.

According to Pinterest here are some of the marketing information you can get from your Analytics.

Profile analytics show you how Pins from your profile are doing.

Filter by device: You can use the dropdown menu to filter profile data by device. Learn what people are seeing, clicking and Pinning from a particular device (like their phone), or from all devices combined.

Impressions

The number of times a Pin from your profile has appeared on any feed. You’ll see it first as a daily average, but you can use the graph to look at specific dates. Use the date picker to see data across different time periods.

You’ll also see the top 50 Pins with the most impressions, and the boards with top Pin impressions, for the past 30 days.

Tip: You can use this data to see which of your Pins are getting the most reach across Pinterest, decide what Pins will appeal to your audience, and add more Pins to your profile to increase impressions.

Repins

The number of times someone added your Pin to one of their own boards. Repins are how Pins get shared across Pinterest. You’ll see it first as a daily average, but you can use the graph to look at specific dates. Use the date picker to see data across different time periods.

Note: We started collecting profile repin data Feb. 1, 2014. Your data will go back to that date.

You’ll also see the most repinned Pins from the last 30 days and the boards with the most repinned Pins from the last 30 days.

Tip: These popular Pins on Pinterest can help you think about what content to create in the future.

Clicks

The number of clicks and unique visits back to your website. You’ll see it first as a daily average, but you can use the graph to look at specific dates. Use the date picker to see data across different time periods.

Note: We started collecting profile click data Feb. 1, 2014. Your data will go back to that date.

You’ll also see the 50 Pins with the most clicks, and which of your boards have Pins with the most clicks, for the past 30 days.

Tip: These Pins help you drive traffic to your website. You can use this information to think about how you might organize your products and other content on your website.

All-time Metrics

An assortment of metrics, including:

Your all-time most repinned Pins: This goes back to the beginning of your Pinterest account.
Best in search: Pins that are ranked highly in search. You can improve the search quality rankings of your Pins by writing quality descriptions, using Rich Pins and making sure all of your Pins link back to somewhere meaningful.
Power Pins: Pins with all-time high engagement from Pinners, using a combination of likes, repins, comments, sends and more. This goes back to the beginning of your Pinterest account.

Categories: Grow a Home Business, Pinterest Tags: Tags: analytics, pinterest

Youtube Card

June 9, 2015 jgardner

Before Youtube Cards were implemented by Youtube, when you created a video, you had to put a link as a visual link in the end of your video.
Now, Youtube has realized that there was a need by their customers to have a Call to Action in their videos so they created the Youtube Card.

In the Youtube Card, you can have a link to your website or thumbnails of your other videos that a viewer can click on to watch more videos.
I am creating some trainings on how to setup and marketing using various social media platforms from Facebook to Twitter to Youtube so I will have more information on these trainings later. Have a look at this Google post on what a Youtube Card is!

Categories: Youtube Tags: Tags: marketing, Youtube