WordPress Training Expert

Author: WP Training Expert

  • User Controlled Media: Win Or Bust?

    One of the major differences between mobile marketing and other forms is that it’s considered a form of user-controlled media. What this means is that mobile media is entirely based on an opt-in scheme. With other forms of advertising, customers usually don’t have much of a choice about whether or not the advertising is going to turn up in their lives. For example, should a consumer be watching television, commercials are considered an inevitable part of the process. The consumer can always mute the television or change the channel when the advertisements come on, of course, but there’s nothing the consumer can do about the commercial break taking place. Print ads and radio ads are similar – consumers can avoid them if they so wish, but there’s no way that they can “opt out” of the radio playing commercials or the magazine advertising products.

    With mobile marketing, however, the entire premise is based off of opt-in services. Should a consumer wish to join your text marketing campaign, they’re the ones that have to dial your company’s number to start receiving information. If the customer never does so, then you as the company can never send them advertisements through mobile means. Thanks to privacy concerns as well as the popularity of the “do not call list” in addition to other anti-advertising factors that have become prevalent on phones in the past few years, it’s entirely impossible to go about sending unsolicited advertisements to customers through mobile devices and have it be a legal operation.

    This presents a unique challenge to the company that is trying to get its message out through mobile media – namely, often companies must advertise the fact that they’re doing a mobile media campaign. This might seems somewhat counterintuitive given that this boils down to advertising the advertising, but the gains that can be reaped from using mobile media advertising are so attractive that any startup with the money to spend on a mobile media campaign will almost certainly see results.

    The great thing about mobile media is that it allows companies to get in contact with users the way that friends contact each other. Texting is considered a non formal medium of contacting, and being able to establish a rapport with customers on this personal level goes a long way toward building brand affinity and a more personal relationship with the customer.

    If you’re a startup looking to get into the area of mobile marketing, understand that the benefits might not be as immediate as those you might experience with other kinds of marketing. However, this avenue can give you a long-lasting personal relationship with customers. It really helps if you can find another company to help waylay the costs with you and enter into mobile marketing as a joint venture. If you do this, then you’re likely to see more immediate returns on your investment sooner.

  • The Rule of Five: Accomplish your Goal!

    Let me ask you and be honest with yourself here, are you getting the results you want in your business? If you are great, this message will be helpful in getting you to the next level. If you’re not, don’t worry, it will certainly put you on the right path.

    Now I’ve read the studies too that state the lack of capital as the main reason most small businesses fail however, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that although I can’t prove it, I believe one of the biggest reasons business fail or underachieve is due to lack of effective marketing.

    When I attended a seminar by T. Harv Eker a few years back, he mentioned and I quote “it takes creativity to make money”. In other words it doesn’t take money to make money; it takes creativity to make money. Now that’s a hard concept for most of us to grasp, it certainly was for me until I started reading a few Guerrilla Marketing books by Jay Conrad Levinson which primarily deal with using sweat equity and creativity instead of money to promote your business.

    Now why am I telling you this? Basically to lay the foundation for the gem I’m about to share with you here today. That gem is a simple yet effective technique I picked up from two of my mentors Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield.

    This technique is called the “Rule of 5” and what it means is simply doing at least 5 things every day towards accomplishing a specific goal.

    Now since learning this concept a ways back, I have expanded on it a bit to make it more relevant and effective for me. And my guess here is that there’s a good chance it will suit you as well.

    So here’s my adaptation that I call “Rule of 5 Marketing”. Essentially it means doing at least 5 marketing activities every day to effectively promote yourself or your business. You commit to this and you are virtually guaranteed success.

    Now that can mean making 5 phone calls to key prospects, giving a teleseminar to 5 or more prospects, sending out a press release to 5 publications that cater to your target audience or, whatever marketing activity is most effective for your business. Just make sure you do 5 things day in and day out, without fail because a big part of marketing is about consistency.

    And speaking of consistency, a great way to hold yourself accountable and to stay on track is to keep a daily journal where you log the 5 marketing activities you completed each day.

    If you find yourself slipping and not getting it done, I recommend you enlist a coach or a colleague to become an accountability partner for you – then you can phone them or shoot them an email letting them know you honored your commitment. This just adds that little extra something to inspire you to get it done.

    So commit to it, journal it and be accountable to apply the Rule of 5 to your marketing every day and watch your business take off.

  • Social Networking: It’s Definition and How It Works

    Social networking is when people connect with other people on specific social websites. Social networking sites may be for specific interests like art, knitting or music, or they can be general social networking sites where anyone can join. With social networking websites you can connect with friends, family, business acquaintances and even with people you have never met before. You can actually connect with people from anywhere in the world and you can meet new people that share the same interest as you. There are millions of people on the internet that use social networking sites to connect with other people and develop relationships either as friendships or as business relationships.

    There are quite a lot of different social networking sites that you can choose from to join and many of them are for specific niches or interests. There are niche specific sites like Library Think and Ravelry which are targeted to connect people that have the same interests. Then there are some small scale general social networking sites like Adult Friend Finder and Orkut and then there are the very large social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

    Social networking websites are like huge online communities where people from all over the world can connect and communicate with one another on the internet. Social networking is basically as the name states – networking socially with people that you have things in common with. When you join a social networking website you create a profile where you list your personal details including your interests. When other members view your profile they will see what you are interested in and if they share the same interest then they will contact you.

    Making new friends and acquaintances is just one of the many benefits of social networking websites. When you can meet people that live on the other side of the world it is amazing to share stories and experiences with these people. You can live in Australia and can communicate with people in the United States or United Kingdom. You can develop friendships with people worldwide and you can also develop business relationships with people worldwide, including Japan, Spain, Italy, Germany and many more countries.

    If you have a specific hobby, interest or religion it is easy to meet and communicate with people that share these interests or have similar characteristics as you. You can meet people that are in the same business as you or you can even meet potential customers and develop a large customer base of people that you can sell your products to. When you meet people from all over the world you can learn new languages, new cultures and even new hobbies. There is no limit to what you can do when you join a social networking community.

    Whether you want to make new friends or learn about a certain culture or country you can do it with social networking. Whether you want to pursue a new hobby or build business relationships and find new customers you can do it with social networking. If you want to further your own knowledge or just have a bit of fun you can do it with social networking, so why not join a social networking website today and start taking advantage of the many benefits that they offer.

  • Keeping Your Family Updated Through Blog Newsletters

    If you are looking for a unique and easy way to interact with your extended family then WordPress is the ultimate solution. Creating an online family newsletter is a great way to keep your relatives up to date on your life. If you are considering doing a family newsletter, check out four reasons why WordPress is the perfect platform…

    1. Price – WordPress is free, you can even use their WordPress.com service to host your site for free. You also don’t have to pay any money to design your family website. WordPress has thousands of free themes that will change the whole design of your site with the click of a button.

    2. Dynamic Nature – WordPress is the ultimate tool to post dynamic content. What that means is it is made for publishing time sensitive content that is continually being updated. Out of the box with no settings tweaked WordPress will naturally publish your content by date, with the freshest news displayed.

    3. Easy Picture Galleries – WordPress makes it so simple to upload a picture. You just click one button and you can add a picture to your latest news posts. Take it one step further though and upload a number of pictures. WordPress has a built in gallery feature that will allow you to share all your Christmas pictures in one post. They will appear in a nice grid formation as thumbnails that expand when clicked.

    4. Add Authors – You can easily add other authors to your WordPress powered site. Why is this important? Well imagine you and your family live in NY, but your brother and his family live in LA. You can add your brother as an author and he will be able to add his own family updates and pictures. You can add as many family members as you want as well. WordPress will also show which author wrote what, so you won’t get confused on updates.

    These four reasons alone should be enough to show you that WordPress is the best way to deal with family updates and/or newsletters. The ability to add content constantly, have it organized and include picture galleries means that your family newsletter will never be looked at as boring again.

  • How to Customize WordPress contact forms using Contact form 7 Plugin

    Video: Customizing WordPress contact forms using Contact Form 7 plugin.

  • Must-Know Information To Succeed As An Affiliate

    The ideal world of affiliate marketing does not require having your won website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development and maintenance. This is one of the easiest ways of launching into an online business and earning more profits.

    Assuming you are already into an affiliate program, what would be the next thing you would want to do? Double, or even triple, your commissions, right? How do you do that?

    Here are some powerful tips on how to boost your affiliate program commissions overnight.

    1. Know the best program and products to promote.

    Obviously, you would want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time.

    There are several factors to consider in selecting such a program. Choose the ones that have a generous commission structure. Have products that fit in with your target audience. And that has a solid track record of paying their affiliate easily and on time. If you cannot seem to increase your investments, dump that program and keep looking for better ones.

    There are thousands of affiliate programs online which gives you the reason to be picky. You may want to select the best to avoid losing your advertising dollars.

    Write free reports or short E-Books to distribute from your site. There is a great possibility that you are competing with other affiliates that are promoting the same program. If you start writing short report related to the product you are promoting, you will be able to distinguish yourself from the other affiliates.

    In the reports, provide some valuable information for free. If possible, add some recommendations about the products. With E-Books, you get credibility. Customers will see that in you and they will be enticed to try out what you are offering.

    2. Collect and save the email addresses of those who download your free E-Books.

    It is a known fact that people do not make a purchase on the first solicitation. You may want to send out your message more than six times to make a sale.

    This is the simple reason why you should collect the contact information of those who downloaded your reports and E-Books. You can make follow-ups on these contacts to remind them to make a purchase from you.

    Get the contact information of a prospect before sending them to the vendor’s website. Keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. You get paid only when you make a sale. If you send prospects directly to the vendors, chances are they would be lost to you forever.

    But when you get their names, you can always send other marketing messages to them to be able to earn an ongoing commission instead of a one-time sale only.

    Publish an online newsletter or E-zine. It is always best to recommend a product to someone you know than to sell to a stranger. This is the purpose behind publishing your own newsletter. This also allows you to develop a relationship based on trust with your subscribers.

    This strategy is a delicate balance between providing useful information with a sales pitch. If you continue to write informative editorials you will be able to build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that may lead them to support you by buying your products.

    3. Ask for higher than normal commission from merchants.

    If you are already successful with a particular promotion, you should try and approach the merchant and negotiate a percentage commission for your sales.

    If the merchant is smart, he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose a valuable asset in you. Keep in mind that you are a zero-risk investment to your merchant; so do not be shy about requesting for addition in your commissions. Just try to be reasonable about it.

    Write strong pay Per Click ads. PPC search engine is the most effective means of advertising online. As an affiliate, you can make a small income just by managing PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords and Overture. Then you should try and monitor them to see which ads are more effective and which ones to dispose of.

    Try out these strategies and see the difference it can make to your commission checks in the shortest of time.

  • Eye-Catching Colors: A Big Hit in Printing Services

    People are basically visual creatures. They are easily turned on by what they see. The outrageousness of the design, graphics and colors teases their sense of sight. It sends excitement and thrill that generates more appetite to stare longer and be charmed.

    Among design, graphics and color, the latter is the most difficult to show accurately. This is because color perception can be affected by lots of factors. First, it depends on the structure of a person’s eye. The viewer may be colorblind. Colorblindedness may vary. It can be either slight or acute. Another factor is the impact of one color to another when placed side by side. This can happen either through reflection or visual illusion. How do this happen? To make a clear notion, you can practice this: hold a bright red colored paper or object right next to a white piece of paper. Do this near a sunny window. As you can observe, the paper turns into a pastel color of red which is pink.

    With regards to printing services, colors vary. Colors may not match especially if you use different printing services, some may use CMYK while others prefer Pantone colors. Colors may also vary between presses. It depends on the setup or calibration used. Thus, if your printed materials were printed on different machines or at different interval, the appearance may vary.

    To minimize inaccuracies and misrepresentations, you can use or ask your printer to use the Pantone Matching System (PMS) colors. With this printing process, the exact colors of your logo or graphics can be had. You can also select from a wide array of paper choices that have different textures and colors. However, this process is more expensive compared to the 4 Color Printing and is limited up to three colors only.

    4 Color Printing otherwise known as full-color printing or process color printing uses CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) inks in printing. They are printed as tiny dots called screen or line screen. These dots create a miniature rainbow of colors. If your printing job needs a wide range of colors like photograhy, you can use 4 Color Printing. One of the latter’s drawback though is that it is also limited in a way that it cannot produce metallics and very bright colors.

    If you want to produce ‘match proofs’ of your colors and to ensure that the colors are close to each other, compare first the colors of 4 Color Printing and Pantone. There are also books that show how Pantone colors will translate to CMYK. These books can help you translate Pantone colors into CMYK so that your print jobs can be had in the most economical way.

    Colors can capture the rage of an individual’s zeal and let him get lost in it. Be sure to keep your colors teasing and haunting!

  • How to Market on Facebook

    Video: Facebook Marketing

  • The Success Of Your Business Depends On Your Online Reputation

    One of the most important things that any business can have, whether online or not, is legitimacy. If customers think that a particular business knows how to get a job done correctly or sells flawless products, not only will they come back, but they’ll also offer your name to others. And all business owners crave that word of mouth referral like nothing else, as it’s marketing gold.

    But how to get that reputation? With online businesses, it can be a little bit more difficult to cultivate word of mouth recommendations simply because your customers might be from all around the globe, and thus are less likely to ask each other for referrals as compared to neighbors in a single community are. Like everything else about online businesses, it’s possible to get that reputation you want going, it just requires a bit of ingenuity and unconventional thought.

    One of the best ways to start building your reputation as an online business is to start off with a bang – give away free content. This doesn’t mean that you need to give out free products; though, certainly, if you can afford to do so, freebies are a great way to get a customer’s attention. What you can do, however, is start giving out your advice. If you’re a construction company, set up a “how to fix it” section of your site that anybody can visit. If you’re a shoe repair shop, make some videos about how to do simple things like fix shoelaces and upload them to YouTube. This is a great way to draw in potential customers who may not have originally been looking for your services, but advice – but these surfers can quickly become customers if they believe in the strength of your advice.

    Another great way is to get involved with online forums relating to the product or services that you sell. If you’re a car repair shop, consider joining some forums based on car repair and start offering up your free advice on the subject. Most of these forums allow their users to post “signatures,” which are little text/picture snippets that appear at the bottom of every post. If you use this opportunity to advertise your site, you’ll start generating interest when you build your reputation within that particular forum. Just be sure to actually contribute to the conversations in the forum itself, though – most forums have moderators and if your account is deemed to be producing too much spam, you’ll be removed from the community. Not to mention, people who only use forums to place advertisements and not contribute to the topics at hand are looked at with derision. Besides, if the topic of the forum is something that you are interested in – and assuming that you started a business in a particular topic, it hints that you are – you might even end up having fun by participating in forums.

    Fun? Online business? Who knew?

  • What Is A Niche?

    If you haven’t heard the word ‘niche’ being batted around by Internet Marketers then you haven’t been listening. Finding a niche has become the antidote to competing in overly saturated online markets.

    What is a niche?

    According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary a niche is described as “a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted… a specialized market”.

    Have you noticed that despite the closing of many businesses in these harsh economic times, the local hobby train store is still around? That the ‘hole-in-the-wall’ eatery is thriving? Or that trends such as scrapbooking can start with a bang and still close within a year when four similar businesses start up in the same area?

    The online business world reflects the same trends as experienced in the offline world – often with faster turnover and startup rates. Those who promote a product or site that targets a small, select audience can tap into a market that is otherwise not being served. Despite the limitations of the client base, the targeted nature of the business creates a devoted and active market – the aim of any business.

    HOW DO I FIND A NICHE?

    Finding a niche requires diligent research. Whether you have access to software that harvests and sorts information or you take a manual approach you must first start with ideas.

    With a pen and paper (or computer, if that’s more comfortable) brainstorm a list of businesses, products and industries. Create a list of keywords and phrases you think would be used by individuals looking for these items online.

    Use a software program such as Wordtracker or a free resource such as the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to find keywords for your niche that have a high amount of traffic.

    Although a program like Wordtracker makes it easy to find details such as how many sites compete for that market, you can also do your own research.

    Concentrate your attention on question phrases such as “how do I…” or “where can I…”. These questions will clue you into potential markets that need servicing.

    Next, look in Google Answers. Type one of your keywords into the search area. What questions are being asked and how much are people willing to pay for answers? If you find a group of keywords with a high number of questions then enter these words in your browser’s search engine.

    What sites come up? Do they provide answers or solutions to the problem? How are they making money? Can you see an opportunity to service these individuals?

    Finding a niche can open the door to a profitable online business. Research the market and be certain that your product or service is valuable to this group. Find forums or groups that target this audience and pay close attention to their concerns.

    If you can help these people you WILL make money. The best of both worlds!