Have you ever looked at a great website and analyzed what exactly is on it? This email talks about the extra pieces, besides the general writing, that make up a successful website. 

One such "extra piece" is the use of videos. Not everyone likes to read so if you give your visual visitors something to look at, such as How To videos or a tour of your store, they’re more likely to stay around and see what you’re about.

An essential item for a website’s success is testimonials.  If you have happy customers, put their letters or emails on your site. Potential clients like to know that others have gone before them and are happy with what you provide. The testimonials can also be videos if you have people who prefer to do it that way.

Another very important element, besides the written words (also known as content), is the use of graphics. I’m talking about eye-pleasing photos, charts, and clip art pictures that draw focus, make the web page interesting, and break up what would be considered a lot of text.

This next one is simple, yet so many websites overlook it – contact information. There is nothing more frustrating than looking all over a website and not finding a way to contact the site owner.

On every page of the website there should be an address, phone number, and email address.  This is crucial to good customer service, and it makes a site look more legitimate and less suspicious.

Many businesses have figured out that placing videos on their  website is a good move. 

Why? Because it builds the brand name, showcases them as an expert, puts real people behind the name, speaks to new customers, gives important information, offers real live customer testimonials, brings in new traffic, and increases sales.

 Here are some types of videos YOU could use to grow your business:

• Customer testimonial videos with real people giving their honest feedback. This is the social proof that will help you sell more products or services.
  

• A brief video introduction into what you do. This is like a video version of your elevator speech.
  

• A brief walkthrough of your website video. Show them the page tabs and the search function so they can find what they are looking for on your site. Also show them the contact page so they can ask questions or leave feedback.
  

• How To videos. Perhaps you can show potential customers how to use the product or you can explain how to purchase the best product based on their needs.
  

• Question and Answer videos. Take the typical questions you get and make a video answering them. This shows the customer you care, and also cuts down on your time having to repeatedly answer the same questions via email.

Video on your website can have a tremendous influence on your business, but there are some details you should know regarding how to get the maximum impact from your media efforts.

Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, I love your article (The Web is dead - Wired Magazine) and the thread of commentary also. But I see the cycle of open web and proprietary platforms in a slightly different light. Wouldn’t you expect people with a corporate mindset to bring their wizardry to bear on the vast opportunities the web offers, and somewhere along the line hit pay-dirt? So now they have. But is this the last phase in this technical evolution? Is the web dead?

                 
You know it isn’t, and as an editor of a technical magazine you’ve got to believe this is just the current state of affairs? Hey, just because it’s fashionable to move away from the wild and wooly web of five or ten years ago doesn’t mean everybody is going to jump on board. While the suits came up with a way to corner the web for profits and ongoing monthly income streams, others continue to search for creative ways to leverage the webs freedom. The long tail lives on, and of all people Chris, you should be the last person on the planet to overlook this fact.

After all, as you so eloquently note, in choosing to buy iphones and sign up for monthly app subscriptions or rent Netflix, the American consumer is trading money for time. There are a whole lot more people gaining access to the web right now, all around the globe, that will certainly bargain for
the exact opposite. They aren’t wealthy and would much prefer investing time to save money. In fact, I’m sure they continue to see the web as a fabulous opportunity to create new connections. Hell, there are still a lot of people just like that right here in the United States.

In time openness catches up with the trend towards dedicated platforms and the advantages of those walled gardens falls apart. People still do search. They sit down and seek information about what’s on their mind. They may get that information from a closed network, but they won’t know if they’ve got the best information unless they compare it with everything else that’s out there. On a dedicated network you are always limited. And although, those limitations may offer advantages by filtering out a lot of background noise, they also filter out more substantial things like the ability to make global comparisons.

                      
Then there is economics. Material resources are always scarce and wind up in bidding wars that make them expensive. The economics of the internet is different, it’s built on a resource that is almost free and infinitely available after you get past the entry threshold of obtaining a computer and access to broadband. So the cycle naturally works against walled in gardens.

As you’ve noted, these gardens are artificial enclosures, so eventually someone offers the same material for free. As free or even just substantially cheaper platforms come available than guess what happens to iphones? I mean why pay for Microsoft Office when you can get Open Office for free? Dedicated platforms for profit, where the company’s interest are more important than the community that uses the platform is a long-run, losing proposition.

And what about apps? The deck is already stacked towards the eventual replacement of expensive apps with free apps simply because so many apps are close to useless

For example, I was at a party a few months ago when my friend’s phone farted. You can’t believe that a rude app is going to get a laugh more than once. That particular app may, however, serve as a great metaphor for many other apps now out there.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t deny that proprietary networks are currently gaining traction. I’m certain, however, what’s really going on here is that while the US works at monetizing the web with proprietary networks at the head of the curve, the long tail behind that head is globalizing. And, as others find uses and methods further down the tail, the US could be left holding a bunch of barking and oinking phones. Or maybe I’m overstating things. Yeah, we’re probably not going to be left behind, instead I’d wager on the re-emergence of web creativity and tinkering right here. So that means another iteration of the open-closed cycle is just around the corner.

    Please leave a comment below. Thanks.

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 I remember when I first found out about Linkedin groups, I got excited. I hoped I’d be able to attract endless sales leads just by writing about what I had to sell. I thought, “hey, here’s an opportunity to get my message out there.” Then I spammed a group for a few weeks and got almost no response. That was a few years ago.

       
I’m sorry and embarassed I started out that way on Linkedin, but that’s how it happened. The only thing that dismisses my behavior is that half the business people who come online do the same thing – just take a look at what’s being offered in most online groups, and especially on Twitter. It’s a common pattern. Yeah, there are blogs teaching social media skills so fewer newbies start out spamming, but it still happens – a lot.

Anyhow, once I got past my disapointment of not having generated any leads, I started to pay more attention to what else might work. I didn’t do a whole lot with social media in the following months simply because my business situation changed as the economy weakened. But when I did get back to Linkedin and groups, I knew I’d have to figure out a better way to engage with people. So I spent some time studying and here’s what I learned.

Back to School

There seems to be two schools of social media marketing. First there continues to be the direct marketing approach. These are cowboys who thinly veil their sales messages behind a half-hearted offer to be helpful. They do things lile posting free offers for webinars at the end of which they are going to pitch you heavily. Or they offer news messages that have a sales pitch tacked on. For example, I saw a message about a hurrican develoing in the Gulf of Mexico, that had details about where I could get flood insurance tacked on at the end. Basically, the marketing cowboys are always talking about their own needs.

But having said that, the thing about sales cowboys is they do get their message out there. That’s not inconsequential. After all, most of us turn to social media in an effort to satisfy our business needs. We are usually looking for information and advice.

When I need to buy something I often look online and when I come across a sales pitch that seems to meet all my needs, I listen – and, sometimes I buy. So, asking for sales, as cowboy marketers do, is a necessary part of the time invested on the internet or else the business features of social media just aren’t going to pan out. I mean, at some point, you have to ask for the sale if you intend to make any money. 

The second school of social media marketing, I’ve identified, is conservative. It says that short-term slaes efforts are doomed and totally miss the point of online community. In this philosophy, relationships are at the very heart of social media. People turn to internet groups looking for recognition, influence and the rewards of community involvement. So don’t piss people off by shoving your needs and your advertisements in their face.

Instead, since your looking to build relationships online, you have to invest time sharing genuine information about yourself. Even in online business situations, where efficiency is important, these relationships are significant. After all, people want to trust each other so they can comfortable act on information shared by others.

If you embrace the advice of this second school of online marketers, you have to answer questions, read other people’s postings with care and be willing to generously share your time and knowledge. Oh yeah, you also need to offer interesting and engaging posts of your own that enrich the whatever community you are in.

Many Good People

As I’ve continued to look for the best ways to enteract online, I’ve notice there truly are a lot of kind people, who are willing and even eager to help. They provide acurate information when they come across a person with questions. Also, I’ve noticed that people are pretty polite, which is really refreshing. What’s even more amazing, it that I have found there are also some marketers out there who seem to get it. As they offer their services for sale, they do so by consistently adding high quality value at bargain prices. Unfortunately, while I see these marketers occassionally, they are still pretty rare.

Twist Them Both Together

After more than a year of looking into this, what I’ve come to believe in is a combination of the two schools. I think what is sorely missing in social media marketing is a creative combination of timely and valuable sharing with compelling and valuable sales offers. I mean who gets upset when they are guided by a professional towards a deal that turns out to be a bargain?

                                                
So how do you go about consistently offering this combination of valuable sharing and sales? I think it starts with research. You have to spend a little time figuring out what you can say to a community that will be meaningful. In fact, what can you offer that is meaningful and also alittle controversial so it grabs attention? That’s what is too often missing online.

What I suggest as the best solution for this problem is to study trends that apply to your community and begin sharing what you learn about those trends when you post messages. If you really offer information about a new trend in your industry it is both valuable and should produce some controversey. Next, I think spending a little time learning the basics of sales persuasion can really add spark to your presentation. After all, currying people’s interest helps produce sales. So if you use these methods to shape a sales offer you set yourself up to succeed at both sharing valuable information and presenting useful sales offers.  

Think about the thing you enjoy most in life and then think about the people you would like to share that with. That’s the dream of social media that attracts people. Everyone has part of their life that they would love to do more with and that they would love to share with others. So they start a group.

But it’s not always a smooth ride. Passion is only part of how successful groups are formed and why they grow. Once the group is established, it takes incentives to attract other people. Let’s face it, why would I want to join your group is the question that comes up first. Yeah, you have your passion and you’ve done some leg work to start up a group, but after it’s launched what happened.

Here are four of the most common problems people have once they’ve started a social media group and how you can use each of these problems to leverage success.

Getting More People To Join

Here’s the biggie. What’s worse than arranging a party, sending out the invites and then having no one show up? It doesn’t feel good. But let’s look at that again. What was the invitation all about? Have you been presenting material, opportunity, news, and support in your area of interest that no one could miss and everyone wants. Probably not. So that’s the answer, plain and simple. Offer those items. But let’s look at those missing items a little closer so you can find a strategy for offering them.

First off, what opportunities do you think everyone wants? How about making money in their area of passion? Think about it for a minute; that’s the best opportunity out there. So let’s start by considering how you might monitize your group so that others can make money and so the group pays for its own growth, and so you can make some money too. That would be the easiest and best way to kick off a membership campaign.

So rather than getting busy calling and emailing and whatever else you are told helps boost community growth, let’s start by thinking about and researching how online groups are monitized. Here are some resources that can help.

 Ten Ideas To Make Money From Your Community

How b-to-b publishers are starting to monetize social media

More Social Media Innovators Choose Peanut Labs Alternate Monetization

Your Group Is Getting Hijacked

If you find some of your members spend all of their time promoting their business services on your discussion threads, then your crisis is structural. You must provide a place for your members to offer their services and set firm rules against self-promotion anywhere other than in your “services offered” area.

 Yeah, it’s annoying when an opportunist sees the purpose of your group as his personal advancement. Everyone else suffers and you lose control of your group. The next thing that happens is the quality of everyone else’s comments declines and before long your group is an advertising board.

 However, once you setup a seperate “services offered” area within your community, you become more attractive for everyone who wants to promote their business. You also become a referal service for your members. Everyone wins.

Here are a few resources that can help.

8 Tips for Managing a LinkedIn Group

Snakes on a Social Media Plane: When Your Brand Gets Hijacked

Not Much Activity – Getting Intense Participation
 

There are some fundamental reasons why people participate in groups. You need to focus on these reasons as you select your methods to increase participation. Basically people want: recognition from their peers; to participate in a fun group that offers them a sense of community and finally, to influence other group members.

 A simple competition can get good participation simply because group members like showing off what they know (influence). News about a groups members, even simple stories, helps build a sense of community and allows spotlighted members to gain recognition. Debates encourage recognition and influence. And, contact from the leadership members to the newer and less active members produces a sense of community.

Try to remember the primary reasons people participate and select tools and methods accordingly.

Here are several resources that should help you.

The Secret Of Awesome Content

Social Media Contests — Participation is Not Always Easy to Come By

Don’t build a boring online community

My Group Is Active But Chaotic

Try to view your group as others view it. What do they see? What is their experience like? What I’m getting at here is about structure. Is your group easily navigable? Do the rules make sense and are they easily available? Do people have fun or is it frustrating just finding out what’s going on among other members?

The design, and guiding rules of your site are important. Study how to arrange the site so it best fits the unique needs of your group and you gain an advantage that other groups don’t offer. That’s the opportunity you are looking for.

Here are several resources that can help you.

Social Media Policies of 113 Organizations

How To Handle Troublemakers

Improve your online community in five easy steps

I was talking with one ofthe support staff at my hosting service last month and he told me half of his callers needed help with lost files. We talked about the architecture of a filling system and the "Catch-22" nature of learning best methods. Yeah, you start out not knowing anything about your file manager, so you don’t even know what problems might develoip. So, you dive right in, set up blogs, sles pages, squeeze pages, static html pages and split test duplicates. It’s only after you’ve been doing this for a few months that things start becoming more difficult to find.

After a year you have so many files that you can’t remember all of them. When you try to locate a file you only vaguely remember and aren’t certain of it’s name, you flail about, becoming more desperate every 15 seconds or so. I know all about it. All of a sudden it’s obvious you need a system for organizing your file manger.

Well, here it is. This video is only 12 minutes long, but provides a simple method for working with the files and folders in your C-Panel. I wish I knew this stuff when I started out.

Please leave a comment below. Thanks.

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 All marketers use upsells after they’ve been in business for awhile. It’s the essential way to make money fast and one of the best ways to make extra money for your business. Upsell an existing customer while he or she is in the act of buying and you’ve got most of the work done with no effort, before you begin your pitch. But there are secrets to making it work.

Using Trends For Your Upsell…
 

Let’s give your buyers the respect they deserve. We have to assume they are on your site, have their credit cards out and are willing to purchase because they are using good judgement. They have done some reading, have need and decided to select your product by choice. Even if they are buying on an impulse, you have somehow gotten past that buyer’s alarm system. So you have already done things correctly. Why not take a shot at doing more things correctly? Why not ask if there is anything else you can offer?

But let’s set up your upsell offer so it is most likely to work. Let’s continue to give your buyers the respect they deserve. The upsell has to make sense. You can’t just slap something in front of your buyer and hope they take it. After all, they can just as easily click away from your page: then you lose the original purchase that you already lined up. Tie the upsell to the original product by using a trend.

Now I know most gurus will tell you to tie the upsell product to the original product directly. In other words make it a more advanced version of what the buyer has already selected – the bigger and better, new improved version for just a few dollars more. That’s the time honored marketing strategy of offline marketers too. But think about it. That type of upsell diminishes the value of the product your customer originally decided to purchase. Why should they want to buy anything once you’ve done that?

                                                                                  
On the other hand, if you use a trend to link your upsell to that original product, you don’t deflate your customer’s sense of value about what he or she already selected. So for example, if your sales page offers an exercise instruction program, then you need to find a trend dealing with health and exercise. Then find a second product you can promote, or develop your own second product, so that it satisfies another feature of the trend.

If you’re selling exercise instuctions then your customer is probably interested in looking and feeling better. So you look for a health trend that also emphasizes looking and feeling better. Maybe you find there’s a trend among commercial gyms to combine yoga with exercise and that they’ve been getting positive results. There’s your tie in. Use the trend to guide you to a yoga product that compliments your exercise product. Bam, you’ve got a winner upsell.

What The Offer Determines…

Think about the upsell offer you’re going to make. After all, the nature of the offer determines how your customer will judge your upsell. If you offer a product of way more value than the price you are asking, you’ll entice your customer. Your customer will scrutinize your offer, evaluating how much value is being offered. By making certain that you are offering way more value than the price, you not only entice your customer, you also enforce their choice to purchase the original product you’ve sold them.

The offer determines what your upsell copy can say on your upsell sales letter. So, in order to open up great copywriting opportunity to be persuasive, you must make a good match of products. Keep the quality and value high and you’ll have a ton of things to say in that sales letter. Use the trend to introduce the upsell and to position the second product. Then let the high value of that second product guide what you write in the rest of the copy. This is the best way to make extra money with an upsell, but make sure your copy triggers your readers to take action.

Quick Pitch To A Known Customer…

When you begin to construct your upsell, don’t forget the obvious – you are selling to a known customer. If you place the upsell after your customer has already entered his or her credit card number and pressed the puchase button, then you’re pitching to someone who has already bought from you. That’s a huge advantage. But don’t misuse your advantage.  

          
There are all sorts of things you want to avoid. For instance, you don’t want to offer your customer more than one upsell product at a time. What I mean, is don’t bring up a sales page that offers two or three choices. That would confuse the customer and testing proves that it produces worse results. Make sure that your copy is persuave but also sensable. And, make certain that the entire experience of pages and buttons your customer uses are well thought out and tested. If you do these things correctly, you’ve set up the best ways to make money with an upsell.

More Resources About Upselling…

Checkout “Free Trends Resources” at toddroyer.com (under Free Reports).

Apply emotionally persuasive copywriting to your upsell sales letters.

Use the best copywriting methods to trigger your readers’ to action.

Upselling… here’s how and when to ask. 

 How to upsell your customers and clients

What not to do… the seamy underside of upsells

Whenever you come across another great resource, feel free to send me the link. And, please leave a comment below. Thanks.

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Traffic – 3 Rules To Live By…

The three most important ideas I’ve come across about IM traffic are these:

          1) Focus on free traffic and only buy traffic when it makes more 
               money than it costs.

          2) Have both short term/ big jolt traffic and also long term slow
               build traffic.

          
          3) Have at least 3 traffic strategies working for you at all times.

As obvious as the first rule seems, there is a little more there than may first be apparent. For example, in order for you to know when your bought traffic is profitable, you have to do accurate analytics.

That means you have to set up a reliable system that traces the traffic you buy back to the dollar amount of purchases that traffic produces. If you’re using 3 or more traffic strategies

(as you should be) then arranging your analytics so they segment the purchased traffic away from your free traffic is critical. You’ll have to carefully thing about how to arrange your analytics.

If that seems overwhelming, then don’t forget all successful businesses are built one step at a time. Every day work at one of these traffic methods and perfect one of them before you move on to the next. You’ll be surprised how you can accumulate tools, methods and strategies if you just do the work and stick at it.

Long Term – Short Term…

I heard Jason Fladlien talk about one of his traffic strategies a few weeks ago. I was impressed with how cleaver he was at building sytems. After I was away from his seminar and had time to think about his approach, I realized he had been teaching a long-term traffic strategy that involved giving away free reports.

I know Jason’s business was originally built on other long term/ slow building methods, especially article writing. But he also has grown his business quickly and that happened because he also worked with several fast big pop methods such as JV reciprical mailings, webinar hosting and product launces on forums especially the Warrior Forum.

I gues the point is that a combination of short and long term methods are needed to make an IM business grow. If you depend on one and not the other you are playing dangerously.

Those long term/ slow growing methds like blog posting and blog commenting, forum posting and forum commenting and using rebrandable reports are all dependable methods. The problem with them is they will only make your business grow to a certain size and then you will become stuck.

The short term/ big jolt traffic methods are the way out of being stuck on a traffic plateau. Nothing like grabbing a few hundred new subscribers in a few days time. It give your business a pop. The problem with these short term methods like JV mailings, webinar hosting and product launches is not that they don’t deliver a lot of traffic fast. It’s that the traffic you capture quickly may not stay attached. In other words, you’ll have to win these new recruits over pretty quicly or they’ll lose interest and unsubscribe.

When you use both long term and short term traffic methods simultaneously they reinforce each other and your business grows continually.

Again, it may seem a bit daunting to grasp all these methods all at once. And the only way you can avoid that overwhelming feeling of defeat is by keeping your focus on working at one piece of the program at a time and work continually one day at a time. You get there step by step. That’s how I’m doing it.

3 Traffic Methods Minimum…

If it seems overwhelming to contemplate all these ideas at once, then how will you ever fulfill the three methods minimum rule? The beginning seems so confusing until I remember to work at several strategies simultaneiously but only one of them at any one moment. That may sound a little contradictory, but it shouldn’t be.

What I mean is you can’t just work at one strategy until it’s complete and then pickup the next one. I’ve been working at three strategies all at once. In other words, all three of them are alive and at work in my businesss. On the other hand, I only work at one of those strategies at any one time.

I have to stay focused and it’s damn near impossible for me to focus on three traffic methods all at once. It’s a little bit like learning to ice skate – you have to focus on balance, leg movements and where you’re headed all at once.

But I was teaching a niece how to skate a few years ago and I remember telling her to just foucs on one of those things at a time. She held on to the rinks side boards for a while or else she held my hand. As she gained confidence in her balance she was able to focus more on the way she was using her legs.

Only after she had worked on both her balance and her leg motions did she bother to look up and pay attention to where she was headed. It was a process. I’m going through the same process with growing my traffic methods. I work at one method one day or for several days and then I work on another. It all fits together slowly. But it does work and that’s the secret to growing my business. And the same secret is true for your business too.

For More About Traffic See…

John S. Rhodes | Internet Marketing Juggernaut

Three Traffic Methods Using Social Bookmarking Sites

Studying web traffic – server logs and statistics terminology

Free Traffic Tips Blog

I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment in the comment section below. If you can think of anyone else who might benefit from this post, send them my way. Thanks.

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