Archive for September, 2010
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A few months back I began experimenting with Facebook Fan Pages.
I’ll share some interesting things I’ve uncovered so far, including why you may need a Facebook Page, and the tricks to setting up a Facebook page that people want to “like”. I’ll also share how to get fans and how not to get fans.
Why you may need a Facebook Page
Anyway, here’s why I’m experimenting with fan pages now…
As a email newsletter publisher going on 4 years now, I can attest to the difficulty of getting email through to subscribers. No, I’m not going to declare email marketing dead, however it has become increasingly difficult year after year, getting email through overactive spam filters. So I figured it’s time to give my readers another option other than losing touch with me forever. (Gosh no, how could they ever live with that?)
Of all the options out there, Facebook fan pages are, in my humble opinion, the best choice. 500 million people have embraced facebook and a whopping half of those people log into their facebook account every single day. Need I say more?
A fan page has advantages over growing a facebook friend’s list, as it is not limited to 5,000 friends. That makes it a solid long term solution to keeping in touch with people. Plus, getting fans seems to be easier and more streamlined than getting friends. A simple click of a like button is all it takes to gain a fan.
So lets get started with Facebook Pages, commonly referred to as fan pages…
How to set up a Facebook page that people want to “like”
There are a few tricks to setting up a facebook fan page for quick growth. Before I get to those tricks, let me show you quickly how to get started setting up a fan page.
First, you go facebook.com/pages/create.php? and this is what you’ll see…

At that page you choose a name for your fan page and select the type of page it is, then click “Create Official Page”. Your page is then created.
Incidentally, the name you choose at that page above is simply the title of your page. It has nothing to do with the actual URL of your page. Facebook will automatically assign a LONG URL to your page, such as this…
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jackie-Tulos/127869738303?ref=ts
If you want a shorter URL such as www.facebook.com/jackietulos you have to wait until you get 25 fans.
Once you get to 25 fans you will be able to go to facebook.com/usernames and select a shorter, more personalized username.
(It took be a while to figure that out!)
Now that you have a fan page, it is time to get down to customizing it…
After all, you’re going to be sending people to your fan page by linking to it from your websites and blogs. But you do not want people just landing on your fan page wall. (That’s right, your fan page has a wall all of it’s own. And in the beginning, it’s going to be a bit barren.)
What you want to do is have non-fans land on a customized page — a page that encourages them to “Like” you by clicking a like button that shows up there automatically. Then, and only then — after they have clicked your like button to become your fan, you reward them for their loyalty by giving them an instant gift.
So, how in the heck does one customize a landing page to do something like this? Well, the first step is to install something called a “Static FBML” application. (Don’t worry, this is easier than it sounds.)
This Static FBML application allows you to make your fan page look however you want, by inserting HTML code. Installing the application itself is easy. Simply head over to the free Static FBML application then click “Add to page”. It looks like this when you get there…

That’s it. Once you’ve added this application you can now customize your fan page.
You do that by clicking Edit in your FBML settings.

Note: If you don’t see FBML listed in your account, you did not do the previous step of installing FBML. See the step highlighted in yellow above.
When you click Edit in the FBML section you’ll see a box where you can enter a title and the FBML code.
The title you enter will be what appears on the TAB at the top of you page. Keep it short.
The FMBL code you enter can simply be html code from most any html editor you use. In my case I put together a quick page in my Frontpage editor then copy/pasted the html code from my Frontpage editor into that box. I may do something fancier in the future, but you can see what it looks like here:
And here’s the next important trick you need to know about…
Remember how I mentioned that you want to show different content to non-fans in an effort to get them to like your page? Then you want to reward them with a gift after they join?
(So that you fully understand exactly what I’m talking about, take a minute and come to www.facebook.com/jackietulos — you’ll see my message asking you to “Like” me. Immediately after you click “Like” at the top of the page, you see a link where you can get immediate access your Free SWOT ANALYSIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
Well you need to put special html code in your FBML box, in order to set that two step process up. Here’s the code…
<div id=”wrapper”>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
CONTENT FOR FANS GOES HERE
<fb:else>
<div id=”non-fans”>CONTENT FOR NON FANS GOES HERE</div>
</fb:else>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
</div>
Simply put, the content you want to show when non-fans arrive, goes in the area that says CONTENT FOR NON FANS GOES HERE.
The content you want to show after fans like your page, goes in the area that say CONTENT FOR FANS GOES HERE.
Here’s what my code looked like after I included those tags…
<div id=”wrapper”>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
<p><b><font face=”Tahoma” size=”5″>
<a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.jackietulos.com/noworries.pdf”>Thanks! Click
Here For Your Free SWOT ANALYSIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).…</a></font></b></p>
<fb:else>
<div id=”non-fans”><center>
<img border=”0″ src=”http://www.jackietulos.com/lgfbbanner.gif” width=”544″ height=”574″></p>
</center></div>
</fb:else>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
</div>
Note: Testing your end result is a bit tricky and is best done from another computer or browser via a different facebook account. You’ll see what I mean when you start testing.
Once you’ve customized your page with that special code, you need to take one last very important step.
Go to your Wall and click on the “settings” tab. At the dropdown menu labeled “Default Landing Tab for Everyone else”, select your new page name from the list.
Now NON-members of your Fan page will see your welcome page when arriving, and they will be urged to Like your page. Again, you don’t want them landing on your wall, you want them to “like” you before they go anywhere else.
How to start getting fans…
The first thing you need to do to start getting fans is put a like button onto your existing websites or blogs. You can use a simple like button such as the one at the bottom of this page, or you can use something more elaborate, such as the box I have at the top right of this page.
Either way, it’s easy. Just go back into your fan page admin area and click the link called add a like button.
A new box will appear that allows you to customize a “Like box” to display on your website or blog. Change the Facebook Page ID code at the very top, to the unique page URL they assigned to your Fanfare. It will look something like this…
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jackie-Tulos/127869738303?ref=ts
Then you can select the other options and generate the code. A new box will then appear with the code that you can paste into any web page or blog you have control over.
If it does not fit right, you can customize the code a bit at your page. For instance, I changed the height of the box so it could accommodate space for 15 fans. Most of it is easily customized in the html code of your page.
Adding like boxes to your sites or blogs is just one way to start growing your fan base. There are many more ways to start adding to your fan base, including announcing it to any email subscribers or friends you may have, advertising your page on facebook, etc.. I’ll cover more of these strategies in an upcoming issue.
How not to get fans…
Once strategy people use to get lots of fans quickly is to basically, buy them. That’s right, there are a growing number of sites on the web where you can find facebook users renting out status updates and even guaranteeing a specific numbers of fans. The cost is as little as $5 for hundreds and even thousands of fans.
While I was intrigued by this idea at first, I did a little digging and discovered it’s not worth even the tiny price you pay. Here’s why…
For starters, it is against Facebook’s policies. But perhaps even more importantly, the fans you’ll gain in almost every case will be junk fans. Sure, they’ll show up on your site as “12,232 people like this. And to some people that sounds like instant credibility.
But the fact is, your fan base won’t really be following what you’re doing. It’s sort of like buying 100,000 junk email addresses that will never read your emails. So why bother.
Personally, I think I’ll just try to build a solid fan base of real people who care about what I’m writing. Here’s hoping you’re one of them!
I’ll be reporting more on my fan page results and techniques in a future gazette (and posting it to my fan page) so make sure to use the “like” button below and stay in the loop!
See ya in a few weeks…
Jackie
P.S. “Like” Jackie Tulos on Facebook and get your Free SWOT ANALYSIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)….
Helpful Tips On Keyword Density Thresholds And Content Stuffing
Posted by: Jackie Tulos | Comments (0)Do you know anything about keywords? They improve how the search engines perceive your content. But, too many can also get you a bad name. Keyword density is vitally important and you should learn how to get this right to achieve a perfect combination.
There are also other ways to optimise besides just keywords and density. Use keyword phrases. Nowadays, many keywords have become commonplace. Entering “chocolate” into a search engine, brings back millions of results. Someone can wade through the first ten pages (highly unlikely) and still not find exactly what they are looking for.
Now, they will try a different tactic. Instead of one word they will enter something like “chocolate peanut butter cookies.” This is definitely more specific. If you sell recipe books, it would be more beneficial to you to choose the latter phrase instead of just the former single keyword.
A Keyword Myth.
When it comes to online business development, you might think that common sense is the best approach to keyword selection, but you are not always right. You might mistakenly think that if a particular keyword is the right one to attract customers, you should use it everywhere. Theoretically, you are correct. And don’t forget, an “on point” virtual assistant can help you with all the details, if you need help moving forward quickly.
This next part is where many veer off the track. You don’t want to be stuffing your content so that it appears to be a keyword sandwich. At one time, you may have gotten away with that, but search engines have evolved much like anything else. The engines know that a keyword would not ordinarily appear every third sentence in a content piece. This is generally called keyword stuffing.
Keyword Density.
A typical search engine is difficult for the average person to understand as it is composed of a tricky mix of algorithms. All we know is that it tells the bots to do their thing and they do it. They will look for keywords according to the individual requests and search tens of thousands of sites and blogs as they go about indexing accordingly.
The calculation of keyword density tells us how many of those words appear within a specific piece of text. For instance, if your article is around 500 words, bots will calculate how many times a certain word appears within that text. So-called Internet experts used to say that “safe” keyword density was anything between 3 and 10%.
But, search engines have their own ideas about what constitutes the proper density for their rankings. Now, it can be as low as 1-3%. This would mean that your keyword should occur only between five and 15 times in a typical 500 word article. Most err on the lower end just to be safe. Besides, in 500 words, encountering the same keyword fifteen times may seem a little banal depending on your subject matter.
Any professional virtual assistant will tell you that the keyword density also considers the number of words in the targeted keyword. What is called longtail online business marketing is now popular and can really focus in on your content to reach a tighter and more clearly defined market. An “on hand” virtual assistant can get this done fast, and to an excellent standard.
But keyword density also works for your website development in general. Using keywords in picture tags, as anchor text within content and as subheadings as well as headlines will also get you noticed. The content will get people to visit you over and over, but your entire website will be the linchpin that can help you gain and stay on the first page of search results.
You can gain plenty of advantage by promoting your product using written articles. Below are some of the significant benefits you can get from article marketing. For instance, if you want to promote a product about Traffic Siphon, instead of directly selling it, you can presell it.
Promoting affiliate products through article marketing can be an excellent way to make money online. There are many ways you can use articles in affiliate marketing and one of these is to create highly focused articles on small niches and then promote Clickbank and Amazon products. Clickbank is an ideal option to use with article marketing because it offers a myriad of information products such as ebooks and software products. Simply build a landing page for the item you have decided on promoting with article marketing and insert links into your articles to it. The traffic that drives through the articles to this landing page will be directed to the main product’s page. One of the easiest ways to make money on the internet is through affiliate marketing and article marketing makes it even easier because it can be used to drive traffic. Affiliate marketing requires targeted traffic to generate sales and obtain a good response. Another way you can approach affiliate marketing is by creating reviews on the products you are promoting and send the traffic straight to the main sales page. To make this business model a success all you need is to think outside of the box because article marketing offers a lot of latitude. When publishing your content online, you will find that it tends to stay there for a long time. This leads to plenty of returning traffic regularly from many sources. Publishing top notch articles will lead to your byline being distributed all over the internet as other webmasters and newsletter publishers use your articles. Articles that have been optimized for the search engines will result in lots of free traffic for your website because you will achieve higher rankings for the terms you are targeting and you will also be indexed faster. Search engines are always looking for highly relevant information and if your article offers that, then there’s no looking back. Once articles successfully rank for a particular term that is also profitable, they tend to stay there for quite a while. So if you want to keep getting targeted visitors to your site, without paying a penny, then article marketing can do that for you. So if you’re targeting a niche like Traffic Siphon, then you can easily use article marketing to create a list targeted towards this niche.
An excellent benefit to article marketing is that it can be used to increase the degree of your credibility in your niche. By reading your articles regularly, people will begin to consider you to be trustworthy which will lead to more people visiting your website. By publishing top notch, targeted articles once in a while, your targeted audience will turn into loyal readers who trust your word. This will lead to the point where you can recommend helpful products or services and people will buy because they trust you, which in turn will lead to you expanding your business. It might take a while to learn how to use articles effectively, but you will find the results are worth all the effort you put in.
All in all, the above benefits show us that article marketing is definitely a promotional method that you can trust. So if your target market is Traffic Siphon Review, you can easily become an authority in it through your published articles.
Amazing Considerations On Conducting Strategic Keyword Research
Posted by: Jackie Tulos | Comments (0)Keyword research is an essential tool. It gives you the opportunity to discover and research particular search terms which people specifically enter into the search engines when submitting any kind of search for information, products or services. This is extremely useful for optimising websites, because if you know what people are trying to find, then you can easily structure your site and its content so that the search engines index your chosen keywords. This will make all the difference in driving traffic toward your website. It’s not overly complex, and there are several really easy to use applications available to help you pursue this sort of research.
As a virtual assistant, you’ll want to optimize your own sites, and it’s also more than likely that several of your clients will ask you to carry out research for them too. If you discover that you’re performing keyword search often, then you might consider investing in a program that will take care of some of the time consuming steps for you. However, keep in mind that you should always understand how to do it without additional software assistance, as these programmes certainly aren’t foolproof, and it’s always a responsible practice to occasionally verify the results too.
Here’s a simple guide on how to perform a keyword search using Google:
1. Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You don’t need to be signed up for AdWords to do this. It’s an external search that you can carry out for free.
2. Enter the Keywords that you want to search for – in this case I am using “Virtual Assistant“, then type in the captcha character text (if necessary) and press the Get Keyword Ideas button.
3. You will be given a list of suggested keywords and related keywords from the starting keyword that you entered.
4. As you can clearly see, the application has given us a list which I have itemised by local search volume for April. This tells us that there is very high competition for the word Virtual Assistant, and it also tells us that there were 135,000 searches against this term in April. We’re searching for a keyword that we can utilise to become ranked higher up in the search engines so we can direct more traffic to our website. So if we take a look at this list, an exellent target is to choose a keyword with not less 100 searches a day. The competition for Virtual Assistant Services is still fairly high, but if we now go over to Google, we can take a look at our potential competition.
5. So, let’s do a search on “Virtual Assistant Services”, and make sure you use the quotations marks or you’ll get results returned for any combination of those words.
Here, as you can see this page tells us that there are 57,700 pages ranked for this combination of words. It’s not impossible for you to be able to compete with your page ranked for this specific word – you just need to put in a bit of work.
I’m not saying that this is the ideal term for you to attempt to rank your Virtual Assistant business. This is just an example of what you may want to check out. Be inventive and try to ‘think outside the box’ with your imagination. What terms do you think your clients would search for? You’re going to want to repeat this process to find several keywords that you can utilise for establishing your Search Engine Index niche.
More and more of us are doing business online now, and in order to attract customers we need to get people to our sites. Basically it is all about getting eyeballs on your website. There are some who have the financial muscle to advertise heavily in order to generate such traffic, but most of us don’t. Luckily, there are methods you can use in order to increase the flow of traffic to your site. You just need to have the correct mindset, and the willingness to apply the methods.. It is true that those who are prepared to spend heavily on internet advertising will reap rewards quicker, but by using these techniques, you have a chance of getting in amongst the big spenders.
One thing to do is to sign up for online forums. Pick an online community that matches the sort of demographic you’re aiming at, then you can join in and discuss the issues that affect that particular niche you’re targeting. In addition, because you know what you’re signing up for, you’re already prepared.
By using online communites wisely, it is possible to establish a reputation for yourself and your company. You can demonstrate your expertise in your chosen subject, by doing so you build trust with others in the community.
Also, make use of online newsletters. Include a catalogue of your products, along with informative and interesting articles. With an interesting newsletter, people will catch on, and recommend it to their friends to sign up. In turn, your traffic will grow.
If you can reach agreement with other webmasters, a great way to boost traffic mutually is to trade links. So long as both sides are making efforts to boost traffic, any visitor to one site may well visit the other site too. It can be of mutual benefit with two sites in the same sort of marketplace.
By writing articles you can attract attention of people interested in your product or service. Your article should include useful tips for others who are interested in your niche. Provided you submit quality content in your article, providing useful knowledge, you should see an upsurge in traffic.
There are sites on the web which offer free submission of your articles (ezine articles or Article Alley to name two); people who find your article interesting or useful may look into who wrote it. You should therefore add a link to your site along with a – brief – description of who you are or who your company is, so that people can click and check your site out.
Make sure the content on your site is of good quality. Google and other search engines index keywords and phrases; place relevant keyword phrases in your content/header/title/description and you will appear in searches without spending to advertise. People will notice if you provide entertaining and informative content.
These are some of the most commonly-used methods to help drive traffic to your site without paying for advertising. So long as you are willing to work hard at it, making good use of these methods ought to help you bring a lot more visitors to your site.
Ronnie Soo is a M3 Master Consultant with Wealth Masters International and a director of 5th Wise Monkey Ltd, we aim to support new businesses from start-up through to maturity.
If you’re going into internet marketing, beware of those who promise you can earn money quick . Only the correct training will help you to reach the rewards on offer.













































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