Word Press Sociable Link Poster for Social Networks

There is a new plug in out for the Word Press Blog. It is called Sociable and is located at: http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/.

You can download it from there and load it into your plugins directory on your server. Then you need to run the install for it and activate the plugin. At that time you will run their setup program and decide which of the social network links you want on your post.

I use all of them but you may only want to run specific ones. There are check boxes for the ones you want.

What Sociable then does is place links to all the chosen social networks so that your users can repost your blog posting to their own social networks. Of course this ends up in getting you links. The full list of networks is below:

What I am suggesting for all my customers and also doing for myself is registering at all these social network sites. Then as you post articles you can click on each link and post that article to your account at that social network. You will be amazed at how much traffic this will get you. Here is the complete list. Please contact me if you would like more information.

• Print this article!
• Digg
• Sphinn
• del.icio.us
• Facebook
• Mixx
• Google Bookmarks
• MySpace
• BarraPunto
• Bitacoras.com
• BlinkList
• blogmarks
• BlogMemes Fr
• BlogMemes Sp
• Blogosphere News
• blogtercimlap
• co.mments
• connotea
• Current
• Design Float
• Diigo
• DotNetKicks
• DZone
• E-mail this story to a friend!
• Fark
• Faves
• Fleck
• FriendFeed
• FSDaily
• Global Grind
• Gwar
• HackerNews
• Haohao
• HealthRanker
• HelloTxt
• Hemidemi
• Hyves
• Identi.ca
• IndianPad
• Internetmedia
• Kirtsy
• laaik.it
• LinkaGoGo
• LinkArena
• LinkedIn
• Linkter
• Live
• Meneame
• MisterWong
• MisterWong.DE
• MSN Reporter
• muti
• MyShare
• N4G
• Netvibes
• Netvouz
• NewsVine
• NuJIJ
• Turn this article into a PDF!
• Ping.fm
• Posterous
• ppnow
• Propeller
• Ratimarks
• Rec6
• Reddit
• RSS
• Scoopeo
• Segnalo
• Simpy
• Slashdot
• Socialogs
• SphereIt
• StumbleUpon
• Symbaloo
• Suggest to Techmeme via Twitter
• Technorati
• ThisNext
• Tipd
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Twitthis
• Upnews
• Webnews.de
• Webride
• Wikio
• Wikio FR
• Wikio IT
• Wists
• Wykop
• Xerpi
• Yahoo! Bookmarks
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Yigg

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The WOW Factor

You have an awesome product.

You have a web site that is easy to navigate even though most of your customers can’t read above a 6th grade level.

The search engines love you. You have top positions on Google, Bing, Yahoo and all the others.

You have an affiliate program that tracks everything. You know what ip address a hit came from 3 years ago and where it came from and if it was a hit from a direct call, a search engine, a normal link or an affiliate.

Unfortunately your conversions suck and you aren’t making any sales to speak of.

What’s the problem?

Well if we eliminate price points that are out of whack and that maybe nobody wants what you are selling then the last problem is what we call the WOW factor.

When a visitor hits your site he should immediately see something that makes him say out load. “HOLY SHIT” Come in here Mary and look at this!”

If you aren’t making your customers say “WOW!” when they hit your site then you are losing customers.

You might ask what is a wow factor?

Some examples of the WOW factor:

The Oxi Clean commercial done by the late great Billy Mays. When that tank of blue water instantly turns clear everyone who sees it says “WOW!”.

The Robert Palmer Videos like “Addicted To Love” and “Simply Irresistible” with the models all having that same look and clothing. It must have been good because to me it seems that “Deal or No Deal” on the Game Show Network has now ripped off that look.

Not to beat a dead horse but the Michael Jackson Video “Thriller”

Python Video when they put up one of the first live sex shows on the Internet from Amsterdam.

All these things have a shock factor that just make us want to see more. If your website isn’t doing that then you need to think about what would make people just blurt out “Holy Shit” when they see it.

One thing to remember when trying to figure out your WOW is to make it relevant to the product or service you are marketing. So don’t show a laundry WOW on a site that markets novelties.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t need a tour or a lot of technical or personal information on your website it does mean that before you get them to take a look at the details you are going to have to instantly capture their attention.

I see a lot of adult oriented sites that open with a picture of a nude woman… well you know… big deal we have all seen that before. Novelty shops all show their products. Big Whoop there…

Come up with something original and you will at the least get people to look deeper into your site. You may even want to set a cookie to have them bypass the WOW and go straight to the content once they have seen the WOW the first time. Of course they may want to show their friends so maybe a bypass would be easier..

I am now experimenting with multiple sites,  one is just set up for the search engines and the WOW and the other is the in-depth details and content. That way your customers that just want to get to the meat of things can go to the secondary site where they get that info and can order.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

You only get one chance to make them say WOW so spend at least as much time figuring out what will do that,  as you do building links, doing search engine optimization and tweaking the technical portions of your site.

Before you begin, consider your reasons for starting a blog. Are you promoting a business, or do you simply want a place to host a personal online journal? Are you blogging to market affiliate programs, or do you want to feature banner and link ads to generate income? If your needs are fairly simple, one of the many free blogging services will probably be perfect for your needs. For bloggers with more complex needs, you may need paid blog technologies and Web hosting services. Blogs serve as excellent content management systems that can be created in a matter of minutes and are easy to use. The following tools are among those used most often by avid bloggers.

Popular Blogging Tools

WordPress is one of the top blogging tools, voted a ‘Forbes Favorite’ by Forbes.com. The open-source application offers a wide range of applications and is the perfect choice for users who want to host their blog on their own website. If you’re looking for a high-quality blogging tools that offer a wide range of features, WordPress just might be the perfect choice for you.

Blogger is extremely popular for both business and personal blogging. Provided by Google, this free service offers great features such as free hosting, the ability to add banner and text advertising links, and a great range of beautifully designed templates.

TypePad is owned by Six Apart, the same company that offers the popular blogging tools Moveable Type and Live Journal. Basic membership starts at five dollars a month for a hosted blog and offers the ability to post via email or mobile phone.

Moveable Type has gained popularity for use as a business blogging tool. Free options are limited, but paying members have access to improved support, design options, and posting access. Beginners often report difficulty with this blogging platform, but many intermediate and advanced users are committed Moveable Type fans.

Live Journal is a wonderful option for users who prefer community-based blogging. This popular service offers both free and paid options with the ability to connect to friends and join community groups.

Top Blogging Promotional Tools

Once you’ve started blogging, its time to promote your weblog to the world. There are a number of great services that have emerged specifically to track the millions of blogs that are updated every day. Other great ways to advertise your blog include social bookmarking sites and blogrolls. A blogroll is basically a list of links to related blogs. The following are some of the most popular blogging promotional tools.

Technorati is one of the leading trackers of weblogs. By signing up and adding Technorati links to your blog, you can gain traffic from searchers who use the service to find blogs of interest. This is a great way to locate niche blogs on highly specific topics.

Del.icio.us

is one of the most-used social bookmarking sites of the Web. Users can add interesting links to their del.icio.us bookmarks and share their lists with other users. The service also allows users to ‘tag’ links by subject, so related posts can be found quickly and easily.

Digg allows community members to rank stories, websites, articles, and blog posts. You can add a links to your blog that allow users to quickly submit the content to Digg. Stories are promoted on the site based on user-rankings and popularity.

No matter what blogging technologies you choose to use, always remember that the key to a great blog is interesting content. Write about the things that interest you and that you are passionate about. Express your personality and become an active participant in the blogging community in order to benefit from all that weblogs have to offer.

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Of course, if you have the most informative site online, your job is half done. One of the keys to bringing in new links is having a well-designed site. If you go after link exchanges and your site looks like it belongs in the last decade, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find any takers. People don’t have all the room in the world to add links on their site. You need to provide a site that is worth linking to. On the flipside, you should find link partners with quality sites of their own.

Link popularity is not just about quantity, but quality. Certainly, it is a good idea to have a great number of links coming in, but search engine spiders also take into account the quality of those links: i.e. how many sites link to the site that links to you. Spiders hold a premium on sites that link to you without a corresponding reciprocal link. When search engine spiders surf your site, they’re looking for the type of content that you have on your site and the number of links going both in and out.

An easy way to start building link popularity is to add your site to a number of directories. These directories may or may not require a reciprocal link. The higher the quality of the directory, the more the directory listing will be worth. Really, you should spend a good amount of time adding your site to as many directories as possible. Look for other immediate avenues for link building as well—post in forums, on blogs, or create a blog of your own. All of these will be indexed by search engines, which will help increase your ranking.

One of the major advantages of having a blog is you have one more place to add a link to your site. In addition, you have one more place where you can trade links—contact other bloggers in a similar field and trade links. You should not only be looking to increase link popularity for the host site, but for blogs and other sub-sites as well.

It is absolutely imperative that your site is useful. The more content you provide, the more you can get a foothold in your industry. When you write new content, promote it: Digg.com the article and add the article to directories and other sources. Websites can then potentially place the article on their sites, linking to the site where the article originated. A link doesn’t necessarily have to be permanent—a temporary link to an article can help search engine ranking as well.

What this all means is that link popularity is an evolving process. You should always be corresponding with site owners looking for a link trade. And you should be frequently providing new content to ensure that your site is worth the link.

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The Google News Team has an interesting blog post about the “truths and myths” of how Google includes and ranks articles.

Some of the facts that stand out include “Having an image next to your article improves your ranking MYTH. While having a good image with your article does improve your chance to get your picture shown, it has no impact on the ranking of the article itself.”

“Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News TRUE Currently, the Google News crawler only visits each article URL once. If you make updates to the article after we’ve crawled it, they won’t be reflected on our site.”

Google says it is working on being able to re-crawl articles that have been updated but currently does not re-crawl update articles.

It’s a myth that timing of an article improves ranking. Google says,” Whether you publish before, after, or in the midst of when other publishers post articles won’t affect your article ranking. Our algorithms take a number of factors into account when choosing the best articles in a cluster.”

Having a sitemap will not help your rankings but there are reasons to have a sitemap. “First, sitemaps give you greater control over which of your articles appear on Google News; they tell us specifically which articles to crawl.”

“Second, sitemaps allow you to specify meta-information about individual articles, such as their publication date, or keywords that help inform which section of Google News the articles should appear in.”

Redesigning a site could affect coverage in Google News. “If you drastically change the structure of your site or your page layout, the crawler may have trouble navigating the new design. When in doubt, check out the section in our publisher help center about changes to your site or contact the Support team.”

Using AdSense on a site will not improve article rankings.” We try to stay as objective as possible, and giving sites with our ads product a boost, well, that wouldn’t be very objective!”

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Microsoft’s search engine has a strong first month, taking away market share from rivals Google and Yahoo. But experts doubt it will last.

———–

This expert expects it to last for a long time and I expect MS to at least catch up to Google in the next year if not exceed it’s market share. — Joe

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1. Get your own website and domain name.

It looks cheap and marks you as a “newbie” when you post a long affiliate link in your ads. With domain names as inexpensive as they are now you can purchase your own domain name. You can then either forward your URL to your affiliate link or set yourself up with some free hosting and establish more of a web presence. Your best bet is to write a benefit-full description of your affiliate program and link to your program via an HTML link that is part of your description.

2. Build your own list.

Stop relying on one-shot ads to make you money. Real businesses have repeat customers that they cultivate in order to make more profits. You must do the same. Make a commitment to establish relationships with your customers and especially with visitors to your site. Create an email list to keep in touch. Send out periodic tips or articles and focus on helping your customers. Only promote your affiliate links in unobtrusive ways; don’t make your emails one big ad.

One of the best ways to build traffic to your list is to write a short report that describes the benefits of your affiliate program. Make this report available only by email. When someone sends for your report, they are added to your list and you can continue to communicate with them.

3. Build traffic to your own site and list.

This is where you really make your affiliate links your own business. By having your own site and building your own list you are building your own business and brand, not just marketing someone else’s. By doing this, you can market to your own customers over and over again. Do not overlook this point: When your ad redirects a customer to your affiliate link, you have lost that person as your own customer because you lost the ability to communicate with them on a repeat basis. When you direct customers to your own site and list, they build a relationship with you.

There are many ways to build traffic: write articles, post in forums, market in safelists, advertise offline, etc. My advice is to pick one traffic-building method, work on it for awhile, and master it before moving on to something else. If you focus on offline advertising, write and rewrite your ads until you determine how to get the best response. If you market on safelists, make a list of the top 50, and send your ad to 10 each day. Keep testing to make sure your safelists are responsive.

These three strategies will help you build and grow your affiliate marketing business.

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This simple and easy to use contextual advertising programs allows businesses to purchase advertisement links on relevant website all across the World Wide Web.

Tips for achieving great results with Google AdWords are common, but many simple secrets to success are overlooked. Learning some of these top Google secrets can improve your chances of building a thriving business through keyword marketing.

Top 5 Adwords Secrets

1. Write Compelling and Keyword-Rich Ad Titles

In order to reach the right audience, you need to focus your AdWords campaigns on well-chosen keywords. However, it is also important to create interesting titles that grab reader attention and inspire them to click on your links. By creating titles that successfully incorporate keywords into intriguing titles, you can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your AdWords marketing campaigns.

2. Track Your Adwords Results

Once you’ve created an ad, you need to track the success in order to gauge the return on your investment. If an AdWords ad is a great success, you should apply a similar strategy to future campaigns. If an ad performs poorly, you will know that you need to adjust your AdWords strategy and technique in the future.

3. Use Calls to Action

You can’t just expect readers to click your AdWords links if you don’t give them a good reason to. Asking your readers to take some sort of action is a great motivation tool and can significantly improve the click-through rates of your ads. Phrases such as “Buy Now,” “Download Today,” and “Sign Up for FREE” have proven to be very effective attention-grabbing calls to action that inspire readers to click.

4. Create Landing Pages

When readers click your AdWords link, they want to learn more information about your offer quickly. Don’t simply direct your links to your home page or product pages. Create a specific landing page for each ad that spells out the details of your offer, why it is a great offer, and how it can benefit the customer. Using AdWords links to directly communicate your sales pitch to the customer is one of the best ways to increase online sales.

5. Focus on the Unique Qualities of Your Business

What sets your business apart from the thousands of merchants promoting their products and services on the Internet? In order to get the attention of online viewers and generate lots of link clicks, you need to stand out from the crowd. If your business offers a unique service or has an original tag line, showcase your originality in your AdWords message. The sheer volume of online advertising makes it easy to blend in, so you need to find a way to be distinctive and interesting.

Finally, remember that true success often comes with trial and error. By planning your AdWords campaigns and tracking the success of your ad links, you will be able to plan and implement highly successful keyword marketing campaigns. Be patient, stay motivated, and stay open to new ideas in order to build a bright future in online marketing.

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Google made the change around February 8th, but it would be a month before a WebmasterWorld forum member discovered the change by sifting through several hundred pages of the AdWords FAQ.

Judging by the suffering ROIs expressed by commentators in a previous article regarding Google’s new quality initiatives, not everybody is convinced cracking down on advertiser quality will help Google’s bottom line, or advertisers’. MSN, with its significantly higher ROI may be looking mighty attractive to advertisers lately, even if the volume is less.

But lower click volume for higher ROI is Google’s apparent goal. The philosophy is high quality advertisers provide higher incentive to click and better relevancy to searchers, and justify not only higher cost-per-click, but also an elitist placement scheme.

Google’s relative silence about the change, though, leaves lots of room for speculation. They’re usually much more upfront about things that are not their core algorithm. It makes one wonder if Google is better-dealing smaller search marketers, who helped propel Google to glory well in advance of major brands, for big-budget clients. They do have shareholders to think about these days, and also the leverage of market share to make demands even in open auction settings.

At any rate, affiliate marketers will from now on have to not only pay special attention to their web sites for organic search reasons, but also for paid search reasons. Load time requirements shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, it’s been an algorithmic factor for some time.

The quality score is either negatively impacted or not impacted by load time, not positively influenced. It’s determined once a month, which leaves an obvious question; If my quality score is lowered, but then I fixed the load time, will I have to wait another month to see my quality score raised back to normal? Or, can load time, a good score for which doesn’t raise my quality score, restore the score to the original at all?

Google issued some tips for improving load times, which is all we get for now:

· Use fewer redirects.

· Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.

· Do not use interstitial pages.

· Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.

· Contact your webmaster or webhosting provider to discuss other ways of improving your website’s load time.

A word of warning: Watch out for dubious claims from hosting companies guaranteeing faster page load times, especially if they’re based on geographical proximity to Google’s servers. “Watch the hosting space, companies may be marketing higher Google AdWords quality scores guarantees with their hosting agreements.”

Where there’s opportunity, there are opportunists. Some of the more skilled of them are working for el Goog these days.

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Choosing a Video File Format

If you are creating your own viral video, you need to choose a file format before adding the video to your site. Common choices include Flash video format, Windows Media format, Real Media format and Quicktime format. While all of these formats are perfectly good choices, Flash videos are often preferred because more browsers are equipped to view them.

How to Embed a Viral Video

Once you have selected a video to feature on your website, you need to use the correct object tags to embed the file on to your Web page. Begin by inserting the following code on the page where you want the video to appear:

Now, let’s break down the elements of this HTML code. In place of the URL value, you should insert the specific Web address where the video can be found. This may be on your own server or on a free hosting site such as YouTube, StreamLoad, or Google Video. Replace the XX values with a specified height and width of your video. Finally, replace VALUE with either of the following:

True – This causes to video to begin playing immediately when the page is loaded.

False – This indicates that the video should only be played when the user presses the start button.

Important Factors to Consider

Before you begin embedding clips for your video marketing campaigns, there are a few important things to consider. First, always remember that your page design should account for the size of the video. Create a specific area where video can fit on to the page.

One of the biggest concerns with online video is file size. Some viral video clips are huge! This can be a major problem for both Web publishers and users. Large files take up more server space and eat up bandwidth in a hurry. Users often lack the patience to download enormous video clips, especially those accessing the Web through a dial-up connection. If a file is significantly sized, always give your viewers the options of starting or downloading the clip at their own discretion.You can also conserve server space by hosting your video marketing clips of free sites such as YouTube and Google Video.

By carefully choosing great viral video clips for your website, you can draw in new viewers, increase the entertainment value of your site, and take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing. Before you begin, spend some time practicing embedding video objects on to test pages. Once you have mastered the skill, use it wisely. Not every page needs a video clip. Instead, create a specific section of your site that offer viral video clips that appeal to the needs and interests of your audience.

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