Daniel Hall Real Fast Books [ 27:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (72)

Daniel Hall, Real Fast Book creator and founder, is my guest for this week’s podcast. He shared a story he seldom tells, of how he earned a degree in nursing before going on to become an attorney and practice law. He did that for seven years before making the decision to come online. Daniel had also become an expert in how to speak on cruises, and his first book, Speakers Cruise Free: The Opportunity to Trade Your Talents for Free Luxury Cruises, was published in 2007.

I’ve been following Daniel for years, and now we are both on the faculty at the NAMS (Novice to Advanced Marketing) live event held twice a year in Atlanta. He always has a presentation that reminds me of just how smart and knowledgeable he is when it comes to helping others build profitable online businesses.

During this podcast interview Daniel opens up about the right way to choose a topic for our book, create an outline, get it written, and then move on to the all important task of marketing our books online and off. I know you will enjoy getting to know him and learning more about what it takes to write ‘real fast books’ to build your credibility and visibility on the Internet. His step by step process goes at just the right pace for you to accomplish your goal of writing and publishing your own book very quickly.

I can highly recommend Daniel’s training program from my own personal experience, and if you sign up for the program I am happy to provide you with an ISBN number from my own publishing company. Are you ready to write your book and take your life and your business to the next level?

If you need help with WordPress, here are some tips that you can use today to improve your site.

• Strengthen Your Footer. Make the best possible use of the space at the bottom of your theme to include important links, a short bio or other important information about your site. If there is a link back to the theme’s creator, I recommend deleting it unless you have made a previous agreement with them to retain it.
• Update Your Theme. Are your traffic numbers flat or falling? When’s the last time you updated your WordPress theme? The answers might be related. If your theme no longer reflects the current branding of your company, then update or switch to a new theme.
• Start Video Blogging. The current version of WordPress makes it extremely easy to post video content. I still use my Flip camera to record two or three minute videos.
• Improve Your Permalinks. By changing the URLs for the articles on your WordPress website to include fewer (but higher value) keywords, you may be able to improve the ranking of those articles on the search engines. I’ve had great success with this strategy for several years now.
• Leverage Your Images. Each time you upload an image, make sure to tag it with appropriate “title” and “alternate text” tags to assist your search engine rank. For example, this post uses the keyword phrase ‘need help with wordpress’. The “title” is also what appears when someone tries to “pin” your image to Pinterest.
• Enable Avatars. In order to make your commenting environment more personal, you can enable avatars in the >> Settings>>Discussion area of your dashboard
• Check Your Site as a Visitor. If you’re only viewing your site through your admin dashboard, you may be missing out if something weird happens to the display. Logout of WordPress then reload your site to verify.
• Clean Up Your Comments. While plugins like Akismet do a good job of filtering out blatant comment spam, there are also other plugins to help you get rid of commenters who spam through their author URLs and comment links.

Knowing something about WordPress will make a huge difference in your business. These are just a few tips to help you get started. To learn more about using WordPress for your business, download this Special Report from WordPress expert Paul Taubman, “7 Essential Plugins for WordPress“. Paul is also hosting a webinar training on Saturday, June 15 at 10 am EST. Sign up here for this complimentary training.

Lou Borton Video Marketing Expert [ 20:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (93)

Lou Bortone, video marketing expert, was my guest for this podcast. I first met Lou several years ago at a live event, and realized right away how talented he was when it came to creating videos and implementing video marketing as a business strategy. We are now both on the faculty of NAMS so I’m able to connect with him twice a year in person.

Lou has spent the last twenty years as a marketing and branding executive with national brands like Fox, Fox Kids, E! Entertainment Television, The Family Channel and NBC.  More recently, he has taken his marketing and branding experience online, where he works with coaches and entrepreneurs to build breakthrough brands on the Internet. He currently lives in Boston, and grew up in the business because his father was involved in this area. The business changed significantly once everything came online, and Lou has been right there through it all.

We discussed how he creates some gorgeous videos that share a message and a story. He approaches this from a marketing, rather technical perspective, giving each video a beginning, a middle, and an end in most cases.

I shared that I still use a Flip camera for my videos, using a variety of methods to record my messages within the video format. We also discussed how Skype video is being used by shows such as Oprah and some sports channels. Lou feels like this is good news for online entrepreneurs, as we do not have to have professional equipment in order to add video marketing to your mix. Even a cell phone can be used to record our videos. He agrees that they should be short, no longer than about three minutes. He recommends using a couple of free sites, such as Animoto, to get your video message out to the world. His advice is that ‘done is better than perfect’ in most cases and that people will not judge us by the quality of our videos. Just get it out there and share your message.

Lou also has a ‘done for you’ service where he can edit your raw video clips and create a professional video montage that will get your name and face out to the world in a way you will be proud to share.

Take your 10 question quiz to learn what your ‘video persona’ is and to learn more from Lou Bortone, video marketing expert and brilliant marketer. You may also download an eBook on how to get started with video by going here.

This is a guest post from my friend and NAMS founder David Perdew, as part of the NAMS 30 Day Listbuilding Challenge.

I loved being a photojournalist when I was in the newspaper business.

The camera acted as shield and sometimes I’d put myself in situations that any rational human being would think a little less than prudent.

Like many photographers, I thought the camera was really a bullet-proof vest. People couldn’t see me if I was looking through the lens. It was a little like legalized voyeurism.

Today, I’m an online business owner. I still feel like I’m behind the lens a little, watching the world through my computer. Unfortunately, we have to work pretty hard to remove the lens cover so our view can be pretty obscure.

There are ways to actually see what’s going on in my world just beyond the URL. And if you incorporate a few tools, you can watch people easily browsing through your site and learn their ways.

Having this capability is especially important at MyNAMS.com right now because in the beginning of the MyNAMS 30-Day List Building Challenge. I’ve set a goal for all the participants to increase their list by 1000 new subscribers in 30 days, whether they have a website or not.

But my goal is to increase my list by 1000 percent – kind of a wild and audacious goal. So, I’m very focused on discovering who’s coming to the site and how to capture them immediately with the right lead generator using as many traffic methods as we can muster.

And since I’m pulling out all the stops, leverage has become my driving principle.

There are four tools that we’ve implemented to give us more insight into the traffic behind our site. I thought I’d tell you about those today.

Zopim Chat Software: Talk to me  

When you walk into a car dealership, the salesman doesn’t head to the break room. Nope, they come straight toward you with their hand extended and a warm friendly greeting.

With Zopim chat software, we can reach out and touch our visitors virtually with a little nudge that says, “We’re here and if you need any help, please feel free to ask.”

And if we can’t sit at the computer watching the visitors come and go, we can set a trigger to engage them at certain points and notify us of the interaction request.

We’ve only been using Zopim for a couple of weeks, but I’m completely sold on it now.

I tried other chat software, but they offered too much or too little functionality for my taste.

One of my favorite features is that you can integrate it with your Skype so chats come directly to you via a virtual agent and because I have Skype on my iPhone, I can actually chat with customers while I’m away from the office.

So, what has Zopim done for us? Just look at the graph below. Zopim also tracks Page Views, Total Visits, Unique Visitors, and Conversations.

In the short time we’ve been using the chat software, we’ve seen page views go through the roof because users are a lot more engaged with us. We can see who’s on the site and what pages they are viewing. If they are on a sales page for more than one minute, we’ve set a trigger to ask them if they have any questions.

And finally, because it integrates with Zendesk, our support desk, visitors can send submit a chat (when we’re not there) and it goes straight to our support desk with a completed ticket.

Overall, Zopim is a hit with us. I don’t think we can do without it now.

Google Analytics: So much data and so little time

http://www.google.com/analytics

Neither I nor anyone on my team is a Google Analytics expert.

But we will be by the end of our 30-Day List Building Challenge (your link is: http://mynams.com/amember/aff/go?r=291&i=53 ) . There’s a gold mine in there.

Of course, I like to go to the traffic section and see where our traffic is coming from. I can even tell which affiliates are actively sending traffic and what kind in the tool.

The real meat though is in the optimization opportunities that Google ferrets out.

In the “All Traffic” report, we get a lot of fast information:

A: Facebook is my number 2 traffic referral in this time period. But only 13% of those are new visitors, but they are highly engaged. We need to use it Facebook to attract more new people.

B: Nicole Dean  is one of my top affiliates and shows up as that 5^th source of traffic (consistently in the top 4 or 5). She’s delivering traffic that stays awhile and she’s delivering about 43% of new visitors. I need to send her a case of wine…

C: Sparkplugging.com, Kelly McCausey’s new blog, is driving some traffic. The bounce rate is high and the time on site low, but the percent of new visitors is through the roof with 80%. A good source of new leads.

D: Twitter (t.co) continues to be a good source of new visitors with good time on site, but a high bounce rate.

There’s much more that we can discover through Google Analytics. In fact, a person can go in there and never be seen again. There’s so much data being collected.

Visual Website Optimizer: Test everything with one interface

Visual Website Optimizer is awesome.

I hate testing.

My friend, Nicole Dean, says testing is sexy. I think she really means the results you get from testing are sexy, but I won’t argue with Nicole.

A/B split testing is a really simple concept:

Create two web pages

Make one thing different on the second

Send equal traffic to the two pages

Determine which one gets better conversions.

Simple idea, huh? And the concept is kind of brilliant. But the work is a real pain the rear. Hardly anyone does testing. It’s just too much trouble. The only people I really know that test quite a bit are the really successful people.

And there’s the clue.

REALLY SUCCESSFUL marketers test rigorously.

I’ve been searching for the right software and I think I’ve found it in VWO. Frankly, we’ve just installed it for the MyNAMS 30-Day List Building Challenge and plan to test our conversion pages thoroughly.

You’ll have to join us there to find out the results.

The concept is fairly simple, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the technical aspects of this.

After installing the VWO plugin, written by Andy Bailey of CommentLuv fame, I’m able to create control and variations of elements on the same page. Instead of creating a second version of the page (a new URL), VWO makes the changes directly on the page and serves different scenarios to a split traffic source.

You can make as many variations – or multi-variants – as you wish.

Come over to the MyNAMS.com site to see how this software helps us increase conversions.

Kissmetrics: But what’s that guy doing over there?

http://kissmetrics.com

This is another tool that we’re just installing. My friend and NAMS Workshop instructor Jack Born of  Box Shot King fame told me about this service. Kissmetrics collects everything.

Basically, they just grab all the data they can and then slice it and dice from a person’s perspective as they were going through the system.

Kissmetrics focuses on a unique unit of measure surprisingly called “People” – as in:

• What the person does before and after they become customers
• Usage patterns and customer segmentation
• How people interact with your business
• Reports about user behaviors on the fly

Removing the blinders

So, there are four tools that give us customer insight and help us know and serve them better, while building more and more opportunities to convert more lurkers into actual customers.

To help you build your list, I invite you to join us in the MyNAMS 30-Day List Building Challenge is an ongoing challenge. Come in and succeed today. As part of the challenge, David is touring the blogosphere and posting marketing and list building insights on different blogs. You can find the complete schedule of all the blog posts – past and future – here.

David Perdew is the founder and CEO of the Novice to Advanced Marketing System and MyNAMS.com and produces two intense workshops each year, including NAMS10 coming up Aug. 9-11.

Don Wilson Facebook Marketing [ 19:54 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (146)

Don Wilson, Facebook marketing expert, product creator, and all around brilliant guy is my guest for this week’s podcast. Don and I first met in 2012 at Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K a Day seminar in Las Vegas. He was very quiet and reserved, at least during the sessions, and he and I did not spend time talking that weekend. It was only after the event was over, and throughout the following year that I realized just how talented Don is when it comes to marketing on Facebook.

You may be new to the idea of marketing your products, courses, and other information on Facebook, and I understand that completely. But Don explains it in a way that you will see has huge benefits for your business. He truly has some unique insights into how people think and why they make the choices they do.

I asked Don about how and when he got started online, what his thinking and strategies are for his marketing techniques, and how someone new to this can get started right away. He shares some of the niches that are working well for him, along with his thoughts on how you can get started right away. You can also learn from Don directly with his Facebook Architect course. I know you will enjoy this podcast interview.

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Dennis Becker, Earn 1K A Day forum founder and creator, has become someone whom I consider to be a close friend and confidant. We met online just three short years ago, and then briefly in person soon after when we were both attending an event in Austin, Texas. As I began to see how knowledgeable Dennis was when it came to getting started online, I signed up for his products and finally became a member of his Earn 1K A Day forum.

I also became a good affiliate for him during that first year, and that’s how we first made a connection. It wasn’t until I began to spend more time in the forum that I appreciated what he had put together.

Dennis has gathered some of the biggest names working online today, including Jason Fladlien, Wil Mattos, Jenn Dize, Justin Popvic, James Schramko, and others, along with people brand new to the world of online marketing and everything in between. It’s become a safe haven for both novice and seasoned entrepreneurs to do what I call ‘think out loud’. We can share our thoughts, ideas, concerns, and dreams along with our product ideas, copywriting questions, and basic questions about how to make money on the Internet.

This week marks the sixth anniversary of the Earn 1K A Day forum. Very few sites make it this long and stay active, useful, and vibrant. It’s the people that make the difference, and Dennis attracts people who are in this for the long haul, not those looking to make a few fast bucks and then move on.

Even if you are not familiar with Dennis Becker, I’d like for you to take a leap of faith and join me in this amazing online group. In honor of the sixth anniversary celebration, Dennis is offering some amazing bonuses, including access to a thirteen week audio coaching program, almost a thousand products in what he calls the ‘Product Vault’, and more.

I’ve also put together a Bonus Package for the first twenty-five people who join through my affiliate link and still have some openings for that. This includes:

• 5 of my most popular information training products
• A six week ‘Summer Mentor Program’ to be held during July and August
• 2 one-on-one sessions with me starting in June
• An opportunity to guest post on my two main blogs (this is one of them)
• Google Hangout on your niche topic (I’ll do this with you)
• Mention of your blog in one of my emails (this is HUGE!)

By now you can see that I think the world of Dennis Becker and his Earn 1K A Day forum. That’s why I’d like for you to be a part of it as well and enjoy the benefits that I continue to receive from Dennis, the hundreds of other members, and the products, content, and materials that are shared with and available to us as members.

When you join the Earn 1K A Day forum through this link, leave a  comment here or email me directly to let me know you are ready to get serious about building your online business and I’ll add your name to my list.

Your Guest Blogging Strategy

When it comes to guest blogging, it takes time to learn the ins and outs of it and develop a strategy that works for you. Learn from those that have gone before you and made some mistakes doing it. Below you will find some common mistakes and blunders that guest bloggers make or have made. Now that you’re being made aware of them, you should avoid them entirely.

1. Go into the process blind – The worst thing you can do is go into this blind without doing any research!  You need to do your due diligence and spend some time researching blogs so that you can find ones that will be a good fit for you.Find out what the site owner expects of their guest bloggers. Find out their guidelines – can you include links to your site, do they have certain formatting rules you need to follow, basically find out everything you can BEFORE you submit your pitch to them.You should also find out about their traffic and you can do that via Alexa.com. And don’t forget to go to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to see if the site is being talked about and to check out how many friends/followers they have.
2. Shameless Self-Promotion – Guest blogging is NOT a platform to blatantly promote yourself, your products or your website!  This is a sure way to get a bad rep as a guest blogger and more than likely the site owner won’t even publish your content (or will delete it once they catch wind of the self-promotion).When writing your content focus on what you can add to the site that will help build them up. By taking the focus off of yourself and instead focusing on providing quality content that the audience will be interested in, it helps build your credibility and leave people wanting to know/learn more about you.
3. Not solving the issue – People are looking for answers to their problems. Look for ways you can provide answers to a specific issue the readers may have. Even if you come up with something that is on the unusual side share it because it might peak their interest.
4. Unresponsive to comments – Guest blogging isn’t just about writing a great piece to share. It’s about getting the audience to take action and interact with you (and others) in the comment section.  Most readers will want to know more about you and interacting with them in the comments can be a great way to give them more insight to who you are. Provide relevant comments and try to keep that interaction going – don’t just reply with a ‘thank you for your comment’, take it further and mention something they said in their comment, ask them a question if appropriate. Make the comment section as interactive as you possibly can.
5. Not continuing the journey – Don’t guest blog once or twice and stop. Keep it going. When you’re guest blogging on one site, think about the next opportunity.  You can even set up a guest blogging tour.   Obviously the more you guest blog, the more you’ll get your name and business out and establish yourself as an expert and the go to person for your niche.

Learn about Virtual Book Tours with D’vorah Lansky:

Recently my good friend and colleague D’vorah Lansky and I got together for a Google Hangout to talk about her incredible new book, 21 Ways to Launch a Successful Virtual Book Tour. D’vorah has been a trendsetter with blogging and book tours for several years now, and explains how this works when you want to build your credibility and visibility online.

D’vorah offers virtual book tour workshops and courses for authors, entrepreneurs, and virtual professionals. She has taught hundreds of people, across the globe, how to conduct successful virtual book tours. You can purchase her newest book on Amazon at this link, and learn more about what else she has to offer online entrepreneurs and authors by visiting her site.

Blogging 101: Responsibilities of a Guest Blogger

Blogging 101 is that you want to ultimately be known as a good guest blogger so that it opens the door for other guest blogging opportunities. You will find that reputations online are even more important than those in the physical world. To be a good guest blogger, here are 7 things you should do:

1. Research – One of the biggest mistakes guest bloggers make is not taking the time to research potential guest blogs. This is an important step because you have to make sure your content matches the focus of that blog.

There are three things you should always know before you pitch a blog owner: what their guest posting guidelines are, what they/their site stands for and what their audience is interested in.  This is even more important if you’re choosing a sub niche.

2. Follow the rules – This is something we were taught as children but it’s worth mentioning. If you don’t follow the rules, the blog owner isn’t going to be happy, obviously. So do your due diligence and make yourself familiar with what is expected of you as a guest blogger and do it!
3. Check the reputation of the blog – This is important because your reputation and credibility are on the line. Any site you guest blog on, you’re linked to. So if you post on a site that turns out to be sketchy, that’s going to be bad news for your credibility and reputation.Also, this means that if you didn’t do your research about a blog and it isn’t very influential in your niche, it’s probably not going to give you much of an ROI (return on investment).And last but certainly not least, if you guest blog on a site that isn’t relevant to your niche, you’re certainly not going to get any targeted traffic which is often one of the main reasons for guest blogging.
4. Build a relationship – Don’t make the mistake of appearing as a guest blogger and then never being in touch with the site owner again. Participate actively on that blog by commenting frequently, but please make sure you leave comments that are relevant and add to the conversation.  This will help keep your name in front of them and their audience.
5. Interact with the audience – It’s really important that you are actively participating with the audience. This means if someone takes the time to comment on your content, you need to make the time to comment back! And do it in a timely fashion.
6. Write outstanding content – Give the audience something new.Whatever you do, do NOT make the mistake of taking old content and using that for a guest blogging appearance!  You want to write brand new, unique, top quality content to use instead.A good rule of thumb to follow – write the same quality of content you would for your own site.
7. Recompense – This simply means to return the favor. In other words, help promote the blog owner’s content (not just your guest post but their own content too).   Share on your social media networks like Twitter or Facebook.

Get started as a guest blogger today with this step by step program.