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We chose the Wordpress blogging platform over the others like Movable Type, Blogger and Text Pattern. Because it has a great template system, it’s easy to use, and great for SEO. We’ve taken Wordpress from okay for SEO to super for SEO. Most Wordpress Free Blog templates were not fully optimized, therefore we decided to do it our self.  Follow us on http://twitter.com/enthos

We also wrote a complete guide on how to fully optimize your copy of Wordpress including optimizing the templates, robots, click on the Menu Above, the simple SEO book, or click on the Orange Graphic to download an eCOPY for FREE  Blogs & Internet Marketing Book MARKETING is a CONTACT Sport by V.K. Singh and MyTypes.com.

Know a Mom who wants start a business or help make money for her family?  Check out MomBite.com:

Mommy’s Little Money$Maker:  The Mom’s Inspirational Guide to Making Money

Real Moms.   Real Ideas.   Smart Tips.

Welcome to the blog-based web site for Mommy’s Little Money$Maker, an upcoming book that is going to take your enterprising ideas to another level.  Get ready to  connect with  Jill R. Dickinson, the author,  and other Moms who have invented products, created services and incorporated their passions and interests into a thriving business that You Could Do!

I just Twittered about my friend Ben Hawes a Seattle Gutter Pro, who own the SeattleRainGutter.com website.  Why am I blogging and Twittering about him and his business?  He is not only an amazing guy, but a very hard working small business owner in the Pacific Northwest.  I am writing this blog, purely from the fact that he and has team did a great job!  They came over and took care of our Seattle Gutter issue couple of weeks ago.   They quickly identified where we had the problem and fixed it within an hour or two.  My gutters are old, and probably should be replaced.  Instead of over charging me and recommending that I get new ones, he fixed the problem and went around and touched up the gutters on the other side of the house too!

Now, it’s not a common thing that people are blogging or Twittering about a Seattle Gutters guy, but I have blogged about him before.  Ben use to live behind me, and is one of the smartest guys I know.  He knew that I SEOed MyTypes.com, and Twittered.  He also SEO’ed his own website SeattleRainGutters.com and he is #1 on Bling.com for the keyword “Seattle Gutters” and #3 on Google for “Seattle Gutters“, not to mention #1 for “Seattle Rain Gutters“.   He has actually told me that he gets a lot of business from his website and Google searches.  So Seattle area residents I highly recommend Ben Hawes and SeattleRainGutters.com.

For most of you who have realized, that I am not blogging much.  You are right, I am on Twitter quite a bit and whatever time I have free you can see me on http://Twitter.com/enthos

Best wishes!

Twitter maybe the best website/tool for you to build an online community FAST, no wonder it’s called Micro blogging. We have been fans of blogging for SEO, Search and Social marketing. They go hand in hand, and besides faceBook which to me is the best Social networking system in the world. Twitter is an amazing way to promote your website, blog or anything else by providing a short link in your micro blogging posts. This is done so fast and the communities in Twitter are so active that it’s mind boggling. Yes, Twitter also has amazing content naturally promoted and organized by humans, WATCH OUT GOOGLE! The search utility in Twitter is growing very fast, and finds human and member based information fast, very fast, and the most recent first.

This fast and update of information is really the key to Twitter’s success. And, it’s search functionality in my opinion will/could surpass Google’s influence. Three things to do on Twitter to be successful, also remember, you should have be blogging on your own site or URL to link to from Twitter:

1. Search for interests or hobbies you truely care about.
2. Read the posts and follow everyone you like, even people with thousands of followers
3. Post a lot, reply to their links, but with meaningful information, and you will get Followers!

It’s important that you are compassionate and kind as you develop a social community. You will develop a following, but you must spend significant time Tweeting, to really be effective. Here is a great article I got from Twitter today: http://socialmediarockstar.com/10-simple-ways-to-show-kindness-online

By the way, I would love for you to follow me @Enthos , I just became active last week http://Twitter.com/enthos

For other topics on women’s business and stay at home Mom’s check out my wife’s book site at http://Mombite.com and our blogging and marketing book at http://Mytypes.com

So I am on the lookout for the business value of Twitter and how it can provide an ROI and/or traffic.  I have been blogging little about anything of value, but have read many more articles on the subject than I am quoting.  Remember these and other Internet marketing ideas are covered heavily in our Marketing book, so download for free. 

The one dimensional IM style live blogging of Twitter has gotten in the way for me.  But, I am starting to become a believer and many other online marketers and business people are definitly seeing similar evidence.  In fact some internet marketing people from Amex and Dell have seen an ROI on their Twitter efforts.  Check the link to the following article just published in Media post, below is an excerpt:

“My personal favorite example comes from American Express, specifically its OPEN Forum. The OPEN Web site combines professional editorial, consumer-generated content and product marketing. To tap Twitter, American Express co-opted the popularity of its guest bloggers like Seth Godin, John Battelle and, in particular, Guy Kawasaki, (who wrote about Twitter on the OPEN Forum site just last week ).

Analyzing the traffic patterns of the OPEN Forum Web site reveals some great data. Every time Kawasaki posts a blog to the site, traffic doubles. Looking at daily traffic patterns since the beginning of the year, nearly every peak in visitation to the site corresponds to a post from Kawasaki. This is significant for a site that is already averaging over two hundred thousand visits each month.

So how is American Express promoting this great content - banner ads? SEM? SEO? None of the above. Instead, the brand relies on Kawasaki’s existing Twitter celebrity, knowing that his tweets reach over 100,000 followers, who will then retweet the post to their followers. All of this activity drives traffic to the OPEN Forum Web site, where American Express can convert them into the right card product. One of the most telling statistics, however, is that Twitter is now the top-ranked traffic source for OPEN Forum - 11.7% of traffic to the site comes from Twitter versus 9.1% from Google and 4.5% from Guy’s personal blog, GuyKawasaki.com. The data show that American Express is cracking the code on getting hard ROI from Twitter.”  See more and visit full article from Mediapost.com

You notice that in the examples the website or communities talk about blogging and the onslaught of traffic after each post.  While Twitter and faceBook are hot ways to generate traffic.  The end result should still be providing great content and a destination for your community to visit and get value on a regular basis.  The more we focus our community to a specific niche of targeted content the better.  Fresh or current content is not only king or sticky as we use to stay in the earlier internet era, it equals community if provided via blogging or social marketing.   People often ask me how often should I blog or update content to my site, I say for blogs it’s optimal to blog 2-3 times a week, and once a week is paramount.  For websites, it’s important to update on a weekly basis, and it’s often made easier by adding summaries of blogs.  So keep blogging and you will always get customers and traffic.  The key is to do it with a smart SEO, Search and Social marketing focus.  For all the basics on everything you need to know and do on SEO, Search and social marketing, especially blogging, download our Marketing Book.

The hype cycle around Twitter rose to the top of everyone’s attention last week.  Especially with the competion of the most followers won by Ashton Kuthcer, beating out CNN with one million followers first.  In the recent months, I may have written an article of two about Twitter and it’s Live blogging.  I have not been a huge fan, as I love faceBook and Twitter is too one dimensional at best.  However, I do love the name, It’s the best name to come along in a long - long time.  A great brand name can also make a website very popular.  And, “this happens to be major reason for it’s popularity” as mentioned to me last night by a media planner for one of the largest Interactive agencies in the world.  He goes on to say that his company told him and his peers to start using it to spread viral marketing.  While they are using it, He however prefers faceBook as do I. 

I do believe Twitter has promise as a live search and information service.  I also have talked about how Google needs to watch out, and how Microsoft needs to buy it, not later, but now.  The longer they wait, the more it will cost.  Regardless of who buys it, they need to leave it alone and let it do it’s thing.  In Microsoft’s case, they should extend their search engine on it, no matter what it’s called.  They need traffic and cool brand association and Twitter will provide that.

I have been reading some great articles about the best uses of Twitter, and I can certainly say that it’s not fully tapped or utilized for this yet.  Twitter is about live blogging and instant information broadcasting.  It will soon become the instant information source, surpassing Google, CNN, or anything else.  One of the best things is that it has a large commercial application for large brands to provide a platform for their message to their prospects, clients and users.  As we wrote in my book and our tagline for the site MyTypes.com was, Blogcast your brand.  So it really is the fastest way to blogcast your brand.  FaceBook on the other hand may help you with much deeper development of your community and client base. 

What’s really interesting about Twitter, is the fact that it truely can democratize information as Google has started to do.  Here is a great article from eMarketer about the numbers of Twitter, and yes why it’s worth tweeting:

“Twitter lets people know what’s going on about things they care about instantly, as it happens,” Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO, told The New York Times. “In the best cases, Twitter makes people smarter and faster and more efficient.”

A survey of Twitter users from MarketingProfs backs Mr. Williams’ views. On a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1 for strongly disagree and 5 and for strongly agree), the phrase “I find it exciting to learn new things from people” averaged a score of 4.65 and “I value getting information in a timely manner” averaged 4.58.

“Above all, people on Twitter are truly motivated by learning new things and getting information real-time, as it’s developing,” said Ann Handley of MarketingProfs.   See full aticle here

If you have not updated your professional blog or social network within a week, it’s time to do so.  Because if you don’t, people might think you are not serious about your web presence.  I am as busy as anyone, and we all can find excuses to not do it.   Besides the full time job, the two young kids at home, wife’s new book MomBite.com and social marketing to help with, (not to mention the physical exercise and church activities), who’s got time to regularly blog or manage their social network presence? 

It certainly is not me, but I do it anyways, at least once a week. So the rule of thumb for blogging and social marketing is to update your content at least once a week, so this does not make the presence stale.  Twice a week is impressive, and once a day maybe too much.  The key is to never compromise the quality of your content.  There is a site called DailyCandy.com that does a good job with daily content, and TechCrunch.com does a great job with up to the minute news and blogging.  Unless you are trying to be a breaking news blogging service, I say once a day is too much. 

Here is an excerpt from a great article on how to manage your social networking sites and adding content to them on a regular basis.  You can go to the full article from iMediaConnection by clicking here, but here is the net of it: 

Social application marketing (SAM) is about using tools to create multiple layers of distribution that can be grouped by process. That way, you spend less time talking to a machine and more time engaging with your desired audiences. There are a number of process steps.

1. Set up two email accounts. You’ll need Gmail and Yahoo Mail email accounts to activate and manage your profile and tools. I recommend setting up folders for each tool or application you create in order to quickly locate credential documents, as well as sort notification messages you may want to archive from each social network or tool site. Using a web-based email service also keeps your corporate email account clutter free from Twitter and Facebook account notification emails.

2. Claim your identity. Think of securing a username on a social network as owning a domain name for your company. In fact, screen name claiming needs to be integrated into your domain name buying process. You need to protect your online identity so that others don’t try to hijack your brand, product, or service name. To streamline the process, don’t check individual sites to see whether or not the name or names you need are still available, but instead look at 104 different sites at one time using UserName Check. The service doesn’t include every tool or network you may be considering, but it will save you a lot of time in the selection of your organization’s ID. If you’re planning on really locking down your identity, you’ll need to secure your i-names which are digital identifiers for individuals and organizations that begin with “=” for people and “@” for an organization. I like 1id.com, an accredited i-broker.

3. Register your identity and store your account information in an excel spreadsheet. When you’re registering 75 or more profiles and over 4,000 screen names, you will need to archive the username and password information for each account. When you archive account credentials, be sure to include links to login pages along with the username, password, and name of the service or site. You will also need a column in your spreadsheet for application keys you’ll need to remember for activating distribution tools (I’ll get to that in just a moment). One additional tip when it comes to registering screen names:  Don’t use the same password for every account. Minimize unauthorized access to your organization’s accounts by using multiple passwords. That way, no single password grants an unwanted user universal access to all your accounts.

4. Populate your profile. Here comes the content (translation: here comes trouble). The best advice is to plan ahead. If you need legal reviews, disclaimers, insurance modifications (strange, I know, but trust me; this happened to a client), a corporate blogging policy, or even an online community guideline document, get them in place early so you can quickly plug in content from a Word document or spreadsheet. Content fundamentals you’ll need to have at the ready to decorate your profile include: An avatar or image, an “about” statement, links to sites, historic info (jobs, titles, timeline for the launch of a product), and links to third-party content you want to plug in.

5. Dashboard the process of updating your social network profiles. Browser plugins are nice if you’re just going to use one or two bookmarking tools, but if your organization is managing 15 to 25 profiles, you need to automate the publishing process across your accounts so you can spend more time talking to customers. This where many advertisers get stuck. They either don’t have a publishing strategy or they are overwhelmed with how to quickly recognize a follower. I use two tools to automate publishing and simple “reply to” messaging: Ping.fm and TweetDeck. These tools turn your content into software. Use them to leverage the power of a distributor to reach more audiences.   See More of full article..

As always, don’t forget to download our marketing book on blogging and you can always buy a copy at Amazon.com!

The world of SEM Tools is vast and can seem complex, so I wanted to simplify things for people.  Before I go in to my details, I think it’s important that we understand that the best three tools really are from Google Adwords and Google Analytics (especially because it’s free), Yahoo Search, and my recent favorite of MSN Ad Intelligence with Excel.  Go to the article from SearchEngineWatch.com if you want to go read their take on all the SEM tools.  But, I recommend reading the couple of paragraphs on what you need to know about SEM Tools.

I recently got a demo of MS adCenter Ad Intelligence tool’s new features coming soon.  It’s more robust and has some interesting features on keyword intelligence that are quite amazing.  I obviously can’t get in to the details, the features will be released in the upcoming adCenter release, just within a month or two.  It’s suppose to be one of the biggest releases for Microsoft’s adCenter.  If you have not downloaded the excel Add-In tool, you can go ahead and do that by Clicking Here Excel Add-In

One of the biggest problems with the tool was that it was previously not available for Excel 03, but that was fixed weeks ago.  The industry has largely hailed this tool and it’s integration with excel as the best keyword and user behavior tool out there.  Now if Microsoft just solves the search query problem, we would all be very happy! 

As far utilizing the tools the key thing is to remember, that Search Engine Marketing is all about understanding the search engines.  So you have to understand the basics of their algorithms, their user behavior, and how then rank ads.  Let’s not forget it’s all about keywords, keywords and more keywords.  For SEM Tools the most important first step is understanding search keywords and thier CTR’s, their volume, and obviously their price.  But what’s really important is to understand the back end conversion on your own site and how those search keywords are converting for your business. 

You would also be surprised how much search engines look at the landing pages of the Ads.  More and more relevancy of your ads text matching your keywords and your landing page content the better.  Of course, Google still looks at Landing page Title tag as the most important, and heading tags and content on or near the top of the page as possible.  They all look at it basically the same way, the more relevant the keyword match, the higher your ad shows up and lower your bid prices.  This was more of a myth in the past, but you really have to pay attention to keyword relevancy in your ads and in your landing page.  If you can automate as much of your keyword inserts from query as possible via variables the best.  

The article above mentions other great SEM tools for bid and budget management and better reporting.  Tools such as Overture’s, 360i.com, and eFrontier obviously have internal data insights not just their technology to enhance campaigns.  So for big spenders, these tools and SEM services go hand in hand and should be utilized and managed properly with every eye of details and trends through smart analytics work.

We still think blogging is a great way to promote your business, and we are glad to see that we are #8 on Live.com for the keyword “blogging“.  It’s one of the top 5 search keywords for blog.  At the center of our Marketing book, “Marketing is a CONTACT Sport” is blogging and SEO via blogging regularly.  As you are already starting to see that I am also blogging about my wife’s book and blog site at http://Mombite.com.  Here book is titled ”Mommy’s Little Money$Maker: an inspirational guide for Stay at home Mom’s to start a business or earn a part-time income”.   If you know a Mom that needs/wants to earn a part-time income and wants to stay at home, this book is full of smart successful ideas. 

Here are some recent posts: 

I started writing about blogging, Google and it’s power back in 2003.  At the time, I was blogging on Blogger and had a Wordpress blog too, especially as it was the way to SEO your site.  Blogs are the key to SEO, but now it seems Social marketing via faceBook and Twitter are gaining prominance as source of organic traffic.  We have been spotting trends earlier than most, but may not be the case on social marketing, and it’s power for overall Internet Marketing.  To make a bold statement, I think faceBook could eclipse Google in it’s ability to help marketers in the future.   Blogs are already a great source for organic conversion and traffic, second only to Google and keyword search conversion.  Blogging is a well known SEO and marketing tool, and SEM is an integral part of it, see our marketing book for full impact of it all.

MyTypes.com was reserved as a URL on Dec. 2005, as we wanted to create a social network for small business and professionals.  We were aware of faceBook, back in the fall of 2005 and MySpace was the real leader in social networking.  We played around with a lot of tools and technology, and chose Wordpress and stick to blogging to promote businesses.  Now we think faceBook is the next big thing in Internet Marketing and it’s impact on driving organic traffic.  For smart marketers, we think that creating a faceBook fan page or a related faceBook group should be as important part of their marketing efforts.  If you want a full basics on our thoughts, do download our Marketing Book, especially it’s focus on blogging.

http://www.marketingvox.com/facebook-overtakes-google-referrals-on-some-sites-043476/

Facebook Eclipses Google Referrals on Some Sites

I have been blogging about faceBook for a long time, and have thought a number of posts to blog about.  This article today from Forbes is very interesting.  The slant is that faceBook has a long ways to go before it becomes profitable.  What get’s lost is that faceBook is a great medium for highly targeting cheap inventory for Advertisers to build a brand to a targeted audience.  I high recommend that if you are trying to get the word out about your product, and even get good conversions that you try faceBook advertising.  We have been doing it since last fall for a couple of our projects, but right now for MomBite.com my wife’s stay at home Moms book called Mommy’s Little Money$Maker.  Without giving away any secrets, she has done quite well with it.  Here is an excerpt from the Forbes article and a link to it, enjoy:

Facing Up To Facebook’s Value

Taylor Buley, 04.07.09, 06:00 AM EDT

It takes a lot of ads to make all those friendships pay off.

How many Facebook users does it take to make a profit? Based on the advertising rates Facebook proffers, the number would be hard to overstate.

As a social network, Facebook.com has been a remarkable success. The site is gearing up to announce its 200 million milestone, roughly two-thirds of whom come from outside the U.S. Its fastest-growing segment is not across younger demographics, as one might expect, but women 55 years and older.

Operating at such a large scale isn’t cheap. The social network has 11 offices worldwide and more than 800 employees. Outsiders have suggested that Facebook’s burn rate is north of $200 million a year, a point that Facebook executives won’t comment on. If the company’s burn rate is even half that–say a mere $100 million a year–then it would make sense that it’s seeking additional funding. A company spokesman tells Forbes that it is not actively seeking venture capital. But additional money could come from other sources.

In the meantime, here are some ways Facebook could raise $100 million:

–Show 34,100 ads to each U.S. woman on Facebook aged 35 and up, or convince all U.S. men aged 35 and up to click on 28 ads each.  CLICK HERE FOR REST OF ARTICLE