Bretts Marketing Bytes

Archive for November, 2009

Do you tweet on a regular basis? Why not get paid for it!? With Ad.ly, you can! ( I know that sounds like an infomercial, but it is true, and I just had to write about it. ) I signed up here as soon as I read about it.

This service is really easy and totally cool. Essentially all you have to do is sign up to be a publisher, and advertisers find you. They will send one tweet advertisement per day from your account. You don’t have to do anything. The best part about it is that they are expecting some large advertisers to pay out big. That means people like us get paid well for tweeting.

The best part about it is that you don’t have to have a huge following. In fact most people who have 200-500 followers will make out better than others. This is because the advertising is built on a quality score similar to other online marketing.

The quality score is based on “real followers” not bots that auto-follow. Since most of us with a lower amount of followers have real followers, we are better off.

I would recommend this to anyone. What a great idea. What’s the worst that can happen. Sign up, its free. If you don’t like it, then cancel. I signed up right away.

Click here to sign up. Good luck and I hope you make a million dollars.

Update: Another good one to join is Sponsored Tweets

Google is finally fighting the spam that has plagued the Google local channel for sometime. According to some experts, there are 5 new guidelines.

1. The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name. For example, you cannot use product descriptors such as, bulk silica gel.
2. PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.
3. A property for rent is not considered a place of business. Please create one listing for the central office that processes the rentals.
4. You must use a shared business email account if multiple users will be updating your business listing.
5. If possible, use an email account with a domain that matches your business URL. For example, if your business website is www.menssilkbowties.com, a matching email address would be you@menssilkbowties.com.

If you haven’t signed up for Google Local yet, you can do so by going to the Google Local Business Center.

XML  is the format that Google, Yahoo and Bing wants us to submit our Sitemaps  to them so they can crawl the deeper pages of our blog.

Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing.  However, a Sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire blog or website.

This article is about generating an XML Sitemap for your Wordpress blog that auto generates every time you post a new article. This requires a little FTP knowledge and that is about  it.

• First of all you will need to download an XML Sitemap plugin.
• Follow the directions on how to install the plugin. Follow the configuration instructions and viola, you now have a dynamic XML  Sitemap for your Wordpress blog. Now what?
• Once you have the Sitemap ready to go, you should submit it to Google webmaster tools, Yahoo and Bing so that you can track results.

It’s really pretty easy. I absolutely love this plugin. XML Sitemaps are an absolute must for every Wordpress blogger.

Everyone is so hyped up about Facebook and Twitter for business. While these are great tools, they are often more effective when used in conjunction with a blog.

Facebook and Twitter are like a big cocktail party, while your blog is like your home. When you go to this cocktail party and meet someone, if you like them, you might invite them to your home to learn more about you. If they like you , they will hopefully do business with you, refer you to someone or subscribe to your blog.

Your blog is the place to bring people to learn more about you or your business practices.

What can a blog do that Facebook & Twitter Cannot

• Position you or your company as an expert
• Educate existing and potential customers
• Help with Search Engine Optimization
• Help your company to be more transparent
• Spread a message longer than 140 characters.
• Separate you or your company from the competition

Listen to Seth in the video above. Do it even if it is for yourself. Eventually people will start reading it.