The Smart Passive Income Blog » social media

Over-Empowerment, Entitlement, and Anonymity: The Dark Side of Social Media

Pat — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:52:17 +0000

This is a guest post by Danny Iny from Firepole Marketing, who caught my attention when I read a fantastic guest post of his on another blog. I’m currently taking a couple days off to enjoy time with my family for Thanksgiving, but I encourage you to read this important post about the other side of Social Media that’s not talked about very much. I’ve written about the Dark Side of Blogging and The Downsides of Working from Home before, but Danny beautifully captures the good, the bad and the ugly side of Social Media, and injects some interesting thoughts and questions that you’re welcome to chime in on at the end.

Happy holidays to everyone, and enjoy!

Don’t you love social media?

I certainly do.

On a personal level, it has connected me to dozens of new friends, hundreds of business contacts, and thousands of fans and followers.

On the community level, it has allowed people to mobilize, fight unjust governments, and rapidly spread the word to save lives from natural disasters.

And on the business level, it has turned the tables on giant corporations, and given consumers the power to unleash Dell Hell when treated unfairly.

What’s not to like?

Actually, quite a lot. Social media has a dark side. It can creep up on you and turn the nicest of people into angry, snarling monsters.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Think again…

The Good: Empowerment

Just to be clear, I’m not knocking social media.

I’m a fan (no pun intended) – not just because it’s fun, and it’s been good for business, but because it is built on a foundation of real justice and democracy. It has leveled the playing field; everybody is created equal, with the same voice, and access to the same megaphone.

Is the system perfect? No, of course not.

But the proof is in the pudding, and while social media has certainly been good to celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Kanye West, the greatest impact has been the empowerment of revolutionaries in the Middle East, and the facilitation of disaster relief in Haiti, Japan, and elsewhere.

And social media hasn’t just been good for celebrities, revolutionaries, and the people that nature places in harm’s way – it’s also turned the tables on the power dynamics between giant corporations and the consumers that they are supposed to be serving.

Communication used to be a one-way street – corporations would create and broadcast, and consumers… well, they would consume. If the consumers weren’t happy, there wasn’t very much that they could do about it, save maybe writing a letter to the editor of one newspaper or another.

Now things are different. An irate consumer can blog, comment and tweet on a whim. Their dissatisfaction can pick up momentum of epic proportions, and bring those giant corporations to their knees.

And it can all start with a single comment or tweet. That’s what I call power!

More Good: The Economy of Free

It didn’t take long for businesses to recognize the newfound power of their customers and followers, and understand that – just as an irate customer could destroy a business – social media empowered happy and enthusiastic customers to propel businesses to new heights.

In other words, it was more advantageous than ever before for businesses to get people to like them. And what’s the easiest way to make somebody like you?

By giving them things. Lots of things. For free.

That’s how the “economy of free” was born – businesses falling over themselves to give away valuable content for free, in hopes that people will like them enough to tell their friends. Hell, we do it too, with our free “Get More Cash” video training.

This is great, and democratic. More and more valuable information is available to anyone, which means that more and more opportunities are available to everyone.

Chalk up another win for social media and democracy.

The Bad: Entitlement

Somewhere along the way, people began to realize just how much power they commanded. And as Orwell reminded us in his classic Animal Farm, power corrupts.

Whatever is routinely given comes to be expected, and this was no different.

Free gifts began as a way for businesses to curry favor with their audiences, but somewhere along the way the gifts morphed into a tithe that the audience demands from the business.

It used to be that businesses would give away free content and information, with the understanding that at some point down the road, there would be an opportunity for something to be bought. Not a requirement, but an opportunity.

But now, it’s reached the point that many consumers are offended by even the hint of a sales message. If you suggest that people tweet or share (rather than just giving, waiting, and hoping), it’s considered to be in bad form.

And as consumers have learned, social media has empowered them to make their displeasure known…

The Ugly: Over-Empowerment and Anonymity

Consumers who feel entitled to free content aren’t any better than businesses who feel entitled to their consumers’ patronage.

But social media hasn’t just given rise to this massive sense of entitlement, it’s also created a strong sense of anonymity; even though we know that there are real people behind the egg-shaped Twitter avatars, it’s very easy to forget that in the heat of an annoyed moment.

Expressing your dissatisfaction with someone while standing in front of them and seeing their face is one thing, but shooting off an angry email or tweet is entirely another. In the first instance, you get instant feedback about how your words and actions are making another human being feel, but in the second, you’re just venting your frustration at a faceless entity that you feel has wronged you. There’s no feedback, and no sense that you’re really dealing with a human being.

This is the same phenomenon that leads us to be incredibly rude to telemarketers and telephone support representatives, but on steroids.

Now we have a mass of consumers who believe businesses should cater to their every whim, whether they’re paying for it or not! Here are just a few examples of behavior that this combination of over-empowerment, entitlement and anonymity creates:

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, regularly creates valuable free content for his list of subscribers. When he was invited to speak on a (free) webinar, he invited his list to participate, and he got spam complaints and un-subscriptions from people who felt that the webinar might have some sort of offer at the end of it (it didn’t).
We recently ran a survey of the semi-local business community, to gather data about what is really happening in the industry. We actually had one person call and leave us a voicemail because she objected to being asked demographic questions, like how old she was, her marital status, and so forth. Never mind that all of the data was collected anonymously, nobody forced her to complete the survey, and she was free to click away at any time. She left us a voicemail telling us that she felt affronted that we even asked the question.
After people sign up for our free video course, they have the option of “paying with a tweet” to get a bonus infographic and set of worksheets. Presumably, they would only want the bonuses after having watched the videos, and liked them (otherwise why would they want the bonuses?) – but we’ve received several angry emails from people accusing us of dishonesty and false advertising (these accusations are false – we advertise free videos, and we deliver free videos).
Maybe most shocking Rebecca Black released her song “Friday” on YouTube, and received death threats from people who didn’t like it. Now, I admit that I tend to like the MTV top-40 tracks that most people with self-proclaimed musical taste love to hate, and even I think “Friday” is a dumb and annoying song. But death threats?!

It feels like we’ve gone way past just the empowerment of consumers over corporations who treat them unfairly, and all the way to consumers who hold businesses hostage to their expectations, however unreasonable those expectations may be.

I think we’ve gone too far…

Don’t get me wrong – I really appreciate the input that people send me every day about what they like and don’t like about the content that we produce. I value the encouragement, and I value the constructive feedback.

What I don’t appreciate is the feeling of entitlement that is clearly evident in some of that feedback; they aren’t interested in helping us improve, or creating a better experience for themselves – they’re just venting their frustration about not being courted in the way that they think they deserve.

I hope other businesses and entrepreneurs will join me in saying “enough”:

If you don’t like my content or opinions, then you don’t have to consume them.
If you don’t feel that my bonuses justify a tweet, then don’t tweet – but I don’t owe you free content.
If you don’t want to receive the occasional offer between all the free advice that I send to my list, then please unsubscribe.
You don’t have to buy anything from me, or read anything that I write, but you don’t have a right to feel indignant about the fact that I have things for sale.
And most importantly, no matter what you may feel entitled to, you don’t have the right to be rude or disrespectful.

And even more importantly, I hope that other consumers of social media will join me in my attempts to be mindful that the people we’re dealing with are people – not avatars, not robots, and not algorithms, but people. They’re entitled to earn a livelihood, and they’re human beings who will make mistakes. They have feelings, and they deserve to be treated with respect.

What do you think? Am I being unreasonable? Please leave a comment and (respectfully) share your take…

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert marketer, and the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on how to build an engaged audience from scratch.

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Over-Empowerment, Entitlement, and Anonymity: The Dark Side of Social Media
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A Real Life Example (and Analysis) of Epic Content Gone Viral

Pat — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:52:12 +0000

I love to give advice here on the blog, but when people take action, implement those ideas and see massive results - I love it even more!

This is why I do what I do.

A couple of days ago, I received an email from Jim Harmer, an SPI fan who blogs at Improve Photography:

“Hey Pat. From your last podcast [session #23], I implemented your tips on how to drive more traffic to a website. Check out the JPEG screen capture that I attached to this email to see how your tips have impacted the traffic to my site in the last few days! It has been INSANE!!! One of the articles I posted a couple days ago has been shared over 1,000 times on facebook/twitter/google+.”

And here is the screen capture Jim sent along with his email, which is really what caught my attention:

This.

Is.

Awesome!

I replied with some congratulatory remarks, of course, but I was curious – what exact strategies did Jim put into place?

So I asked him, and this is what he replied with:

“I think what made the difference for me is when you were talking about “Epic content.” I have spent the last several months learning everything I could possibly learn about SEO and making my website as SEO friendly as humanly possible. I have gone to great lengths to get good backlinks and to optimize the site. While the site has seen a SLOW and steady increase in traffic over the last 6 months, it has never really gone viral. I was committed to writing one article every single day, but not necessarily to make each article “epic.”

After hearing your podcast last week, I sat down for five hours trying to write the best content that I could possibly come up with. It took me about an hour just to come up with a good subject, but when I saw the results of what putting out truly epic content can accomplish, I was amazed. The website traffic SPIKED to levels that I could never have imagined, and the traffic has stayed constant for several days now. That first article I wrote after listening to your podcast was shared over 1,000 times on Facebook/Twitter/Google+. It’s not that I haven’t always tried to write good blog posts, but I have never committed myself to spending several hours getting it PERFECT before.”

There’s a lot of fantastic advice we can take away from Jim’s reply:

SEO isn’t everything. I’ve said this before, but it’s really the content on your site that can take your blog and brand to the next level.
A content-based traffic strategy (i.e. Epic Content) is exactly what Corbett Barr from Think Traffic advocates and that’s exactly what we talked about in our podcast session together. It’s great to see someone like Jim take action and really implement this strategy.
Sharing (and sharing capabilities) are extremely important. If Jim simply published his post and didn’t have an easy way for people to share it (over 1000 times), his post wouldn’t have seen nearly the same amount of traffic.
The traffic will keep coming (for a while). The traffic to Jim’s post has stayed consistent for several days,which is consistent with my own experience with some of my most popular content. Of course, the traffic will naturally die off over time, but depending on how great the content is, it can die off relatively slow.

When I got this response from Jim, I thought to myself, “This would be SO perfect to share on the blog”, so I asked him a few more questions, interview style, so we could all benefit from his experience, and he kindly agreed.

1. What is the name and link of the epic post?

The first post I wrote after listening to the podcast last week was 22 Things You Can Do Today to Change Your Photography Forever. I have been writing daily photography tips at ImprovePhotography.com for about six months now and I have never seen that kind of traffic before.

2. How did you come up with the topic for the post?

As you [and Corbett] mentioned on the podcast, the format idea for this post came from the original on the ManVsDebt website. While this was a unique idea for the post, I have written lots of posts with catchy titles that flopped big time. What made the difference in this article is that I spent a lot of time writing NEW ideas that people probably hadn’t seen before on other sites.

3. Did you think that the post would go viral like it did?

I was hoping it would be a big post for me, but this technique brought WAY more traffic that I expected, and it has stayed fairly constant. While that first post was definitely a big win, the posts I have written since then have double the traffic that my posts usually got before I implemented this technique.

4. What do you think made your post go viral?

I tried to implement a lot of tricks to make this post work, and I think all of them worked together to make the post successful

(1) I have Facebook/Twitter/Google+ share buttons on the website so it is convenient for people to share. I find that about half of the people who share my posts use the buttons, and half of them just post it themselves.

(2) Without trying to be annoying about it, I simply asked people to share the post on social media. Since my post was a list of tips, I made the last item on the list a little bit of a joke asking people to share the post. Since the people liked the content, they were inclined to pay it forward.

(3) I intentionally mentioned other popular photography websites in the posts and linked to them. I smiled from ear-to-ear when I saw this method pay off when the writers of those blogs mentioned the article to their HUGE Twitter/Facebook followings. This has paid off for me nearly every time I flatter the “big wigs” in my niche by talking up their sites. FLATTERY GETS LINKS!

(4) Even if the content didn’t include the best tips ever written, most of the tips were unique. I read a lot of photography articles, so I know what people typically write about. When I started making the list, I promised myself that at least half of the tips had to be creative and unique stuff that weren’t obvious or cliche.

5. The content was epic, as we know, but besides that, what really happened after you pressed publish?

It was strange. I sent out the post around noon and I saw a good increase of traffic that day, but when I woke up the next morning, I had over 75 emails in my inbox of people asking photography questions, receipts from people who bought my eBooks, comments to moderate on the site, etc. It seems like it took about 15 hours for enough people to have shared the post that it could truly go viral.

6. How have you been trying to keep the traffic coming and consistent since writing your epic post?

At the bottom of that first post I wrote after listening to the podcast, I encouraged people to LIKE Improve Photography to get daily photography tips on Facebook. Since all my articles get posted on Facebook/Twitter automatically, I was able to add a lot of people to my new Facebook page.

7. What has been the result, besides the great exposure and traffic, of your post going viral?

Honestly, the biggest benefit was not that I had a lot of ads get clicked on–though that occurred. Nor was it that people bought a lot of my photography eBooks–though that occurred as well. The biggest benefit is that it really impacted the public’s view of my brand. Because people saw creative and unique content on my site as their first exposure to my growing site, I think I am seen more as an authoritative source of information in the industry rather than being just another photoblogger who tries to write controversial stuff to get attention. It really put a smile on my face when I read this comment from a new reader after he read my new posts: “Move over, Ken Rockwell (a famous blogger in my niche), there is a new guy in town who is much better and informative.” I personally happen to really like Ken Rockwell, but I was pleased to see that the article impacted the way that my industry understands my brand.

8. What other tips from the podcast did you find to be helpful?

The part about branding and differentiating your site was really helpful to me. On the podcast, [you] mentioned the importance of telling users what makes your site different. That made me think of a commercial I have been hearing on a podcast. On Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy podcast, he advertises the Ford Escape in repeated commercials. Every time I think of the Ford Escape, I can hardly say the name of the car without thinking “The All-New 100% re-invented 2011 Ford Escape with My Ford Touch technology.” This advertisement has impacted me by clearly stating what makes that product different than the other cars.

I have implemented [the] differentiation tip by always stating what is different about it when I write the name of my site. I NEVER say, “I run the Improve Photography website.” Now I always say, “I write daily photography tips at ImprovePhotography.com.” What differentiates my site from all the other photography websites? If you go to my site, you will learn a new tip every single day. Oh, and by the way, you have already heard me say “Daily photography tips at ImprovePhotography.com” three times in this Q&A. Did it impact the way you view my site?

A special thanks to Jim for sharing his experience with us! This is truly inspiring stuff!

He writes daily so I didn’t have time to catch him before he published the post after the one he mentioned here, but my advice to anyone who sees this kind of traffic and exposes themselves and their blog to a ton of brand new visitors from viral content is – make sure your next post is just as epic, if not - more epic, because that’s how you can easily show that you mean business and you’re always going to be providing high quality content that people should absolutely come back to read. It sounds like Jim already knew that though.

I love it!

Cheers, and have a fantastic and safe weekend!

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A Real Life Example (and Analysis) of Epic Content Gone Viral
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A Killer Combo for Smart Twitter Users

Pat — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:23:09 +0000

I don’t discuss Twitter very much, but I’m an avid user and have definitely experienced the benefits of having a Twitter account for my brand.

If you’re on Twitter, you’ll definitely want to pay attention to this killer app combo that was brought to my attention by my good friend Cliff Ravenscraft of PodcastAnswerMan.com.

He showed this to me the other day and it blew me away, and I’m happy to pass it on to you.

I’ll walk you through this 2-step (FREE) process to make it easy for you.

Step 1: Get a Report From Tweriod.com

Tweriod, which sounds like it would be an application that warns us men about our lady’s “that time of the month” via Twitter (which would actually be pretty useful), is actually a free application you can use to determine when most of your Twitter followers are active so you know the best times to send out your tweets.

Tweets come and go fast, so understanding when your followers are active on Twitter gives you the best chance of having your tweets read and any links in those tweets clicked on.

Visit Tweriod.com, sign in and after a few minutes (depending on the size of your following) you’ll get a self-DM (a direct message sent from you, to you) with a link to your detailed report.

Here’s part of the report that was generated for me:

From this information, I can deduce that the best times (for me) to Tweet are around 9am and 12pm. Conversely, I might not get as much oomph from tweets sent early in the morning, and after 2pm.

By the way, this could also be a good indicator of when blog posts should be published too.

Now that we know the best times to send our Tweets,

wouldn’t it be nice if there was a tool we could use to send Tweets at these times?

Step 2: BufferApp.com

BufferApp is one of the slickest Twitter apps I’ve seen in a while.

It allows me to first schedule when I would like tweets to be sent out during the day:

Then, it allows me to put tweets into a queue that will collect tweets and only publish them during the times that I previously set. I can add to, edit or reorder what’s in my buffer at any time. This is what my buffer looks like right now:

Here is their official description of the service:

“Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule tweets. Work out all your tweets at one point in time during the day. Then fill up your Buffer with your tweets and Buffer schedules them for you. Simply keep that Buffer topped up and you will then be tweeting consistently all day round, all week long.”

I’ve only been using BufferApp for a few days, and I love it!

You can add tweets into your queue and top it off directly from the Buffer website itself, or you can use an extension for your browser (Chrome, Firefox or Safari) to open up a lightbox from any website, with a tweet that you can tweet immediately or put into your buffer queue, like this:

You can even go into the Twitter website and see a “buffer button” on tweets, which you can use to retweet tweets that you like and put those into your buffer too for later:

You start off with 10 free slots in your buffer and can add more buy paying a small fee, or referring people through your referral link.

If you’re interested in BufferApp, please go through the links here in this blog post. (Here is it again) It’s not my referral link – it’s Cliff’s, who showed me this cool app so I wanted to make sure he gets credit for sharing this with all of us. He doesn’t know I’m doing this, so hopefully he’ll be surprised to see a ton of new extra spots show up in his buffer.

So What’s the Point of All This?

Cool apps – sure, but how do they help?

This is a good question to bring up because we can easily get distracted by new things like this. That said, this combo has actually helped me in several ways:

I can make sure I keep my audience engaged while I’m not actively on Twitter sending messages or retweeting things.
I can make sure I don’t miss the chance to engage my audience at those peak times of the day.
I don’t have to divide time on Twitter randomly throughout the day which can interrupt work flow on more important projects. I can schedule tweets ahead of time, which is perfect.
I don’t accidentally flood my followers with messages all at the same time.

I hope you enjoy this!

And if you haven’t followed me on Twitter yet, come by and say hi! Cheers!

What other twitter apps do you use?

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A Killer Combo for Smart Twitter Users
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7 Ways to Be Everywhere – Building a Brand Online

Pat — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:13:00 +0000

Last week, an SPI reader asked me the following question:

“Pat. You seem to be EVERYWHERE online. Everywhere I go, people are talking about you and your name always comes up. How do you do it?”

To be honest, I never believed I would become this successful online, especially with SPI – a blog in the “make money online” niche, which as you probably know is wildly over saturated. Although my success is partially accidental I know exactly why I’m here.

What it really comes down to is this:

If you want to become successful online, you must think about what you do as building a brand. In order to build a brand, you must do what you can to be everywhere.

A successful blogger is not just a blogger. True – it’s the blog where things get started. It’s where authority is constructed and content is published. But if you stick to just a blog, you’ll be just that – stuck to your blog.

Your blog or your website is only the beginning. It’s your hub, your homebase where people can go to find out more about who you are and what you do, but it’s also just one piece of the giant puzzle that is your brand – your omnipresent, influential and (if applicable), money making brand.

Below are 7 ways to simply be everywhere:

1. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

Before I get into more specific, actionable items, you must first realize that “being everywhere” isn’t going to be a walk in the park. It’s going to be uncomfortable at times because you’re doing things that you aren’t used to or even scared to do.

With that said, let me tell you this: the only thing holding you back is you.

In The 4-Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss gives us some exercises to perform throughout the book to help train our entrepreneurial minds. One particular exercise was to enter a crowded area and lay yourself down flat on the floor, looking upwards.

What’s the point?

The point is that it will train you to do things that you wouldn’t normally do, to get you to not worry so much about what other people are thinking and just take action – no matter how silly or ridiculous an idea may be at the time.

When I first thought about writing my first eBook, it was something I honestly did not want to do. I was afraid of the process and I didn’t know if it would sell even one copy. Well, I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to write that eBook, because it turned into a six-figure online business.

2. Keep Your Brand Consistent

The goal is to be everywhere, but the trick is to make it as easy as possible for people to recognize that you are indeed everywhere. This means using the same graphics and the same logos where ever you are online.

This is important, because image recognition is the number one way that people make connections in their brain. Huge companies know this, and even babies know this when they recognize the face of their mother for comfort and food.

This is why I do my best to brand each of my pages online the same. My blog, my Twitter account, and even my Facebook Landing Page all look very similar. My gravatar (which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar – the image that shows up next to my comments on any site that I leave comments on) even uses the same exact picture as in these profiles.

3. Explore Other Forms of Media

So you have a blog.

Have you ever thought about expanding your brand onto other media types such videos? How about podcasting? Live streaming? Printed books?

Only only will this help you get more traffic by reaching people you wouldn’t normally reach with a blog alone, but it will definitely expand your brand as well.

Darren Rowse from Problogger.net was the first person I knew from online that was “everywhere”.

I knew about his blog, but then I went to Barnes and Noble and saw his printed book in person. Seeing that book really changed my view about who he was and made him (and his blog) even more of an authority in the blogging niche in my eyes. He has definitely done a great job expanding his brand because he also has videos, podcasts and has done some live streaming in the past, not to mention an additional printed book that he just recently published.

He’s at the top of his niche for a reason.

For myself, I’m getting there. I have a great following on YouTube and am about to launch a podcast as well.

4. Get Onto Social Networks

This one should be a given.

If you’re not utilizing Social Networks like Twitter or Facebook as an extension of your blog (not just to spy on your friends, but to network with your audience and actually provide good, relevant content on), then you’re not doing everything you can to be everywhere. The thing is: THIS is where everyone is!

Plus, the simple viral nature of these sites alone does wonders to help expand your brand and get noticed by people who would never have heard of you otherwise.

Luckily, it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to setup a Twitter account (although it may take a bit more time to change the graphics and “brand it”), and I’ve laid out exactly how to setup your Facebook Page here.

5. Write Guest Posts on Other Blogs

This is huge.

HUGE!

Guest blogging is probably the easiest way to get a load of relevant traffic to your blog in the shortest amount of time. Beyond that, and even more important for your brand, you and your site’s url (and possibly your logo too) will be shown to tons of people who may have never heard of you or your website before. After getting published, you’ll be instantly known by that much more people when they come across the blog post live on the site or in the blog owner’s RSS feed.

There are several free guides about how to guest post online. My favorites are Glen Allsop’s Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide and Chris Guthrie’s Guest Posting [Ultimate Guide]. Yep – that’s two ultimate guides right there.

6. Over-deliver On Your Content

Okay, I have to mention by buddy Glen at Viperchill.com once again. He’s the master of over-delivering and a prime example of what can happen to a blog when you over-deliver on your content.

About 95% of the posts he writes on his blog are massive, tutorial-like blog posts that I’m sure take hours and hours of research and work. His posts are art in the form of words, and he goes into so much depth about everything that it literally makes me drool.

Recently, he just surpassed the 10,000 subscriber mark (although Feedburner is acting weird lately, but nonetheless), which means he earned about 9,000 subscribers in less than a year. That’s unheard of in the blogging world.

It didn’t happen because he writes blog posts consistently. He doesn’t – even though that’s “the rule” we’re all supposed to follow. It happened because his posts always over-deliver, and because they do, they spread like wildfire and his subscribership grows as a result.

When I’ve taken the time to write KILLER posts (and I mean posts that take days of research and just really have a ton of great content in it), I’ve seen all of my numbers grow as a result, including viral numbers like retweets and likes, which help expand my brand to people I’ve never reached before.

7. Create Raving Fans

It takes time, but if you continue to provide good content on your blog and build a nice community behind it, after a while you’ll eventually see that you and your blog may accumulate a number of “raving fans”. I like to think I have a few here on SPI, and I love each and everyone one of them to death.

Ravings fans should be treated like royalty, and you should go out of your way to make them happy. Do favors for them, or just spend time talking to them on Facebook or through email.

Why?

Because they are the ones who spread the word about you and your site. Some raving fans are more enthusiastic than others, but each one plays an important role in expanding your brand and influencing people who you alone cannot.

Let me say that again: your raving fans will influence people who you alone cannot.

This is why each and everyday I notice a huge influx of traffic from a few random websites that I’ve never been to before. My name and a link to my site show up on forums and blogs around the world not because of me, but because of my raving fans and their recommendations.

Thank you – you know who you are.

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

7 Ways to Be Everywhere – Building a Brand Online
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

The End of a Blog Post is Just the Beginning

Pat — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:05:09 +0000

The end of a blog post is just the beginning.

What I mean by this statement is that a lot of a blog’s success is not only determined by what you write, but what some of your readers do after they finish reading what you write.

Blog readers are divided into two groups: those who just read, and those who read and take action. One isn’t better than the other (since our primary goal is to reach and teach as many people as possible), but it’s obvious which group of people help to accelerate a blog’s success.

So how do we convert the “just readers” to become those who take action? We don’t.

Why?

Because what people do online usually reflects their personality, and we aren’t here to change people’s personalities for the sake of our online success.

So what can we do? How can we accel?

We can cater to those who do take action.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if you’re catering to those who take action, which in turn optimizes the performance and growth of your blog:

Are you writing content that’s worth sharing with others?
How are you encouraging commenting on your blog?
Are you making it easy for people to bookmark your post on social bookmarking websites, such as Digg, Stumbleupon, and Delicious, or share on Twitter and/or Facebook?
Are you making it worth their while to do more than just read?
Have you tried asking?

I’ve pondered these thoughts much as of late. This is what led me to redesigning the area after a blog post here on the Smart Passive Income Blog, which I’m actually quite proud of. It’s what I like to call the “take action area”.

Major props goes out to Brady and Brody over at BlazerSix for their wonderful web design work.

Have a great weekend! Cheers!

p.s. Thanks for all of the awesome comments about my eBook guide! I just released a printer-friendly black and white version for easy printing, so you don’t waste your ink. If you haven’t gotten my eBook guide yet, just enter your name and email below to get it for free! Killer content coming in the newsletter as well. Take care!

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51 Blogging and Online Marketing Tips for the New Year

Pat — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:01:18 +0000

Here are 51 blogging and internet marketing tips that you can use as inspiration for the upcoming year.

Mindset

1. Revisit your goals. Take a moment and rewrite your goals. You may find that they may have changed since the last time you really took a good look at them. If you don’t have any goals, than what are you working towards?

2. Remember where you were. Where was your online business or blog at one year ago? Are you seeing any improvements? If yes, be proud of how far you’ve come along and the fact that you haven’t given up. If you haven’t seen any improvements, why do you think that is?

3. You can always do a little bit more. If you’re up to it, try this 2-step exercise:

Raise your hand as high as you can.
Raise your hand even higher.

If you do this exercise, you’ll notice that you can always stretch your hand a little higher, even though you were told to put it as high as you can at first. When I did this exercise as a teenager, it changed how I thought about everything I did after that moment. It made me realize that I can always do a little bit more. Apply this to what you do online.

4. Take action. As I mentioned in my first law of business and success, every business in a state of motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. With that in mind, you can read and get inspired all you want, but nothing will happen unless you take action. Become the external force that is required to get your blog, business and life to exactly where you want it to be.

5. Flaunt your unique. In other words, know what makes you stand out from the crowd, and milk it. In order to succeed, especially online, you can’t blend in and just be another blog or website that talks about X. Your site can still be about X, but you should be one of the only ones that does Y, or Z.

6. No fear. Fear kills progress, and it kills business. When you’re reluctant to take an action or do something new, take a minute and think to yourself, “what’s the worst that can really happen?”. The worst usually isn’t as bad as you might think.

7. Failing is okay. We all want to succeed, but we shouldn’t ever be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process and teaches us valuable lessons along the way. Learn from your mistakes, and improve on your next attempt.

8. Don’t work more, work smarter. When we think of putting in the extra mile to get things done, we often think that means just putting in more hours of work. Instead, think of ways that you can work smarter, which will accomplish the same (or even more), in a considerably less amount of time. It may take a small investment of time in the beginning to figure out how to work smarter, but you’ll make up for that time (and stress) soon enough.

9. Give back. I truly believe in “online karma”. The more you help others and the more you give back, the more success you will find. If your primary motivation is just to make as much money as you can and do things just for yourself, you’re only going to see a limited amount of success, if any.

10. Just freakin’ enjoy what you’re doing! If you enjoy what you’re doing, it doesn’t become work anymore. You’ll accomplish more, and be happier. If you’re not doing something you enjoy, why not?

Blog Content

11. Be consistent. Write new content on a schedule. Whether it’s once a week, three times a week, or every day – pick a frequency and stick with it. It will not only help your readers know when to expect a new blog post, but it will help you consistently put content out there that Google will crawl to improve your site’s ranking and authority.

12. Be different. In most niches, there are a number of blogs talking about the same thing. Like I mentioned in tip #5, if you do what everyone else is doing, and talk about what everyone else is talking about, you’re just going to blend in. Give people a reason to notice your blog over the rest.

13. Use keywords in your title. It’s cool to have a clever title, but it’s inefficient to leave out important keywords. One of the top things the search engines look at when determining how relevant your site is to certain keywords is the title of your post. This is why so many bloggers who understand search engine optimization rank higher in the search engines for topics that online newspapers and companies write about, because they are so concerned about catchy headlines, with no keywords.

14. Use relevant anchor text for your links. When linking to another website or blog within your posts, don’t link to them in words like “click here for…”, or “which you can read here.” Use the phrases or keywords that are relevant to what you’re writing about. As far as SEO is concerned, it will help you a little, but for the websites you’re linking to, it will help a lot. It’s good practice.

15. Break up your post with different text styles. If you write an entire blog post in the same text the entire way through, it’s going to be difficult to read and hard to scan. Use different sized headers, bullet points, and numbered lists to separate your content and make it easier for your readers to consume.

16. Emphasize parts of your content with different text styles. If there’s a particular word or phrase within your paragraphs that you’d like to emphasize, make it bold or italic so your points are even more pronounced.

17. Use stories. People love stories because they can connect and relate to them. It makes what you’re writing about more real, and it often serves as proof for your points as well. Are you just telling people what to do, or are you illustrating how it worked for you? I believe that my internet success story is part of the reason why I’ve been able to amass a considerable amount of subscribers in such a short period of time.

18. Use data. Other people are more attracted to data and logic, rather than stories. Support your content with raw data, and your arguments will seem that much more believable. I use data all of the time, for example when I talk about my success from writing on eHow.

19. Write for your readers, not yourself. Unless you have a strictly personal blog, one of the biggest mistakes you can make while writing content is writing for yourself. Your audience should be your first priority, and you should do what you can to write about topics they are interested in. In the process, you’ll get more comments, more subscribers, and have more people linking back to you as well. Now who doesn’t want that?

20. Enjoy what you write! Believe me when I say that your readers can tell when you are just trying to finish a blog post versus really enjoying the writing process and having fun with it. I hope you can tell that I’m having fun writing this one

Blog Design

21. Perform the squint test. Go to your blog’s homepage and squint. By doing this, you’ll notice which parts of your design stand out the most. If the things you notice first aren’t the most important pieces of your website (featured content, opt-in/subscriber areas, about, etc.), then you have have to redesign a little. Advertisements are okay, as long as they aren’t the very first thing people notice (in which case, they’ll probably leave).

22. Work on your blog’s “elevator pitch”. Can new visitors to your blog understand exactly what your site is about in the first 10 seconds without clicking on anything? If they can’t, then more than 70-75% of people will leave almost immediately. In your web stats and analytics, check your “bounce rate”, which is the percentage of people who visit your site that leave without taking any action. To improve your bounce rate, work on your tagline and/or include an “about me” area on the homepage.

23. Make it easy for people to subscribe. People are lazy, so the more searching, clicking, and scrolling have to do before they can subscribe, the more chances they have to skedaddle. (I love that word.) Put your RSS feed button (and any other buttons you want them to click on) on the homepage, above the fold, at the top where it can easily be found.

24. Avoid clutter. I know you’re trying to make a buck with all of those advertisements and affiliate links, but seriously – there is a thing as too much clutter. People are becoming smarter and smarter as more and more people go online these days. They aren’t just going to click random ads that blink, turn and twist anymore. Keep your site clean, and people will be more likely to stick around and respond to what you have to say.

25. Show yourself! If you’re hiding behind a logo, or even a caricature, I can’t help but wonder why. Your blog is yours, and you shouldn’t be afraid of showing your face. If your blog took off and you were asked to do an interview for a television station, would you hide your face behind a cardboard cutout of your logo or a caricature during the broadcast? You want your blog to take off, don’t you?

Getting Noticed

26. Comment on more blogs. Find other blogs in your niche and leave useful, insightful comments on posts that interest you. You probably comment on a few already, but look for other “rising star” blogs that seems like it has good content. Many of these blogs will appreciate your comments and begin to notice who you are. Kind of like how I’ve started to notice Howie, Ms. Freeman, and Azad on mine. Thanks guys!

27. Write guest posts for other blogs. This is probably the best technique for getting lots of traffic and subscribers, in the shortest amount of time. Write a killer blog post on other blogs in your niche, and you’ll begin to become a part of the network and community yourself. In addition, you get some nice search engine love from any links back to your own site, which most host blogs of your guest posts will allow.

28. Participate in forums related to your niche. Here’s a quick tip. Type in “forums:keyword” into Google, and you’ll see a number of forums related to your niche, usually listed in the order of most popular at the top. Join them, because part of the community, and be sure to include your link in your signature so people can click over to your site. If you become a knowledgeable authority for a particular topic in the forum, chances are people will head to your blog for answers too.

29. Do interviews. There are tons of people who host shows and podcasts, and some of them are probably related to your niche. Contact the hosts (contact info is usually on their main page, their itunes page, or through a voicemail line in their show), tell them a little bit about yourself, and offer to do an interview if they are in need of content for a show. Now, you will be speaking live to this person and they will be asking you questions, so you may have to step out of your comfort zone for a bit. It’s good practice, and again – what’s the worst that can happen? If you have a website about something, you obviously know a lot about it, so don’t be afraid, and get some exposure!

30. Write about something controversial. One way to get noticed is to go against the norm. Not all websites may be fit to do this, but if you can spark up a heated debate, you can get your readers involved and grab some new ones at the same time.

Networking

31. Join a mastermind group. If you hang out and chat with like-minded people with similar goals, you can’t help but improve what you’re doing online. Every mastermind group I’ve been in has been such a blessing, and I attribute a lot of my success to ideas that came directly from those meetings.

32. Utilize meetup.com. Meetup.com is an awesome site where you can type in any topic and find groups of people in your local area who are interested in the same topic, and when and where they meet next. I’ve been to a few meetup.com meetups for “internet business” here in the San Diego area, and I’ve met some great people, all doing different things online. It’s pretty cool!

33. Go to a convention. For almost any topic, there are conventions where mass amounts of people gather who are interested in that topic. For comics and fantasy stuff, we have Comic-Con. For LEED, there’s GreenBuild. For bloggers, there’s the Blog World Expo. Although there are usually speakers and experts who present new ideas, the biggest benefit from attending these conventions is the networking that takes place between the attendees. You can be sure I’ll do my best to buy my ticket for the Blog World Expo next year.

34. Online Groups. Many of you may not live in an area where you have easy access to groups of people interested in what you’re interested in, so a live mastermind group or a meetup.com meeting is out of the picture. But, there are online groups that you can utilize to get your networking on. You can get connected with people in forums related to your niche (see #28, above), you can find groups on yahoo, Facebook, or even pay to join a like-minded community like I do with the Internet Business Mastery Academy.

35. Utilize Social Networks. Social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, are excellent ways to connect with people in your niche. A lot of deals and joint ventures sprouted from connections from within these social networks. If you aren’t utilizing either Twitter or Facebook for your blog or business (or both), why not?

Twitter

36. Get Targeted Followers. So you’re on twitter, and have 10 followers (2 of them happen to be family members). That’s ok. Here’s the trick for getting targeted followers for your niche, if you didn’t know it already. Find a top player in your niche by doing a twitter search, and follow that person’s followers. That’s it. Some of them will automatically follow you back because they have auto-follow on, but others will visit your profile, and if they like what you’ve tweeted so far, and your bio, they will follow you back too.

37. Twitter Bonus Trick. Using the method above, you can use this bonus Twitter trick of mine (3:36 YouTube video) that I use to increase the amount of people who end up following me back.

38. Use a nice, personal photo for your profile picture. If you’re on Twitter and haven’t changed your profile picture yet, you’re using their little default birdie picture, which just screams “PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW ME OR READ ANYTHING I TWEET!”. If you have a logo, that’s better, but most people will respond to you (and click on the links that you tweet), if you have a nice picture of your face.

39. Use a custom Twitter background. If you visit my Twitter profile, you can see a custom twitter background in action. It’s just a background picture, so you can’t have anything clickable on it, but it’s perfect for quickly showing any new visitor to your profile exactly who you are and what you’re about. Some people put all kinds of text in their background, but personally I like to keep it clean and simple. If you’re a designer out there, my background is simply 259?×?1707, and the right edge of the vertical image matches the twitter background, which you can customize as well. One of my favorites is Darren’s from Problogger.

40. Track your links and test your copy. Use a url shortener such at bit.ly, to not only shorten huge urls that you don’t want to eat up your 140 character limit, but also to track the links you tweet as well. Test different kinds of copy each time you tweet any links to see how your particular group of followers responds to each.

Facebook Pages

41. Setup a Facebook page. If you haven’t explored Facebook as an extension for your blog or business yet, I would definitely do that as soon as you can. I don’t want to make any predictions, but I think Facebook has a lot more in store for us as they begin to cater towards businesses and non-personal type accounts. Although everything you need to know about how to setup a Facebook page is already written on my blog, I will reiterate a few important points below.

42. Utilize a Facebook landing page. If you’re trying to get fans for your page and you don’t have a landing page, you’re wasting your time. A landing page will drastically increase the number of people who become fans. Without it, visitors will end up on your “wall”, which is ugly and doesn’t tell people what they have to do. Trust me.

43. Engage in conversations. Because of the way Facebook works, it’s really easy to engage in multiple conversations, with multiple people at the same time. This is why I like Facebook better than Twitter, and the people who click over to your webpage from Facebook generally tend to have a lower bounce rate and stay on the site longer as well. Ask questions, write compelling thoughts, and your audience will respond. Some of the comment strings on my Facebook page are 30-40 comments deep at times.

44. Encourage others to post links and start conversations too. Another cool thing about the Facebook page is that your fans can post links and start their own conversations as well. This is a nice way to reward those who are your fans who may have something to add from their own sites, or who just have questions they need help with. You have full control of what’s shown and what’s not, so if anyone posts something naughty, you can simply remove it from your wall.

45. Don’t get lost in Facebook. Although I love Facebook, it’s really easy to get lost in it, especially if you have a personal account where you can see that your friend from high school has just gotten engaged. Remember, it’s important to engage with your fans, but your blog or website should be your primary focus. It is where you will be linking to from your Facebook page anyways from time to time.

Take it to the Next Level

46. Expand into other forms of media. So you have a blog. Have you ever thought about expanding your content into other media types, such as video, audio, or even going live? If you really want to take yourself to the next level, you’re going to have to branch out. Even just one episode or video a month is great practice.

47. Create information products. So you have a blog. Have you ever thought about expanding your content into information products that you can either giveaway or sell for an extra income? Now’s the time. You can create eBooks, audio, video, or a membership website, all of which are great information products you can use to expand your brand and increase your reputation and authority in your niche.

48. Hire some help. As one person, we can only do so much. Even if we put in more hours and work more efficiently, we’ll eventually reach some kind of plateau. Hire some people to do some of the mundane work that you don’t really enjoying doing to get to that next level. For example, if you spend a lot of time editing and submitting videos, or social bookmarking your blog posts, you can easily find cheap help from places such as Elance.com or oDesk.com to do those kinds of things for you. Soon, you’ll end up with your own virtual assistant team you can go to for anything when you need it.

49. Work 1 hour extra for yourself a day. Maybe you work a 9 to 5 job, maybe you don’t. Either way, try and devote at least an extra hour a day to you and your online business. Yes, finding an extra hour a day may be close to impossible, but if you really want to “crush it”, you’re going to have to hustle and sacrifice a little. Gary Vaynerchuk suggests working in the late hours of the night if you have to, and I totally agree with him. Do what it takes to get to where you want to go. Even just an hour a day would be huge for the growth of what you do online, especially if you know exactly what to do with it, which I hopefully have given you some ideas for in this post.

50. Be confident with every decision you make. Excuse my language here, but if you go into something half-ass, you’ll see half-ass results. Whenever you make a decision, small or big, go into it knowing that it’s the right decision, because you made it. Even if it ends up being a wrong decision, at least you know that it wasn’t from putting less than all of your effort into it. You can then learn from your mistakes, and put confidence into your next decision. You don’t want to end up with a

And Lastly…

51. Shoot for the stars. Seriously, try to be the best. Wait, let me rephrase that…

BE THE BEST.

Know that you have what it takes to be a top player in your niche, and don’t think anything less of yourself, ever.

Here’s to your success in the upcoming year.

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51 Blogging and Online Marketing Tips for the New Year
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THE Blogger’s Guide to Facebook

Pat — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:16:02 +0000

Over the last month, I’ve been trying to figure out how to best utilize Facebook as a blogger. To be more specific, I wanted to focus on what Facebook could offer me as far as:

Getting traffic to my blog
Interacting and building relationships with my target audience
Helping to establishing myself as an authority

These three things are all important aspects of becoming a successful blogger, as you probably already know.

I tried to look for posts from the big time bloggers specifically about Facebook and how one could utilize it for their blog, and if it was even worth it. Well, I couldn’t find any definite answers, so I figured I’d just do it myself, see what happens, and report my findings back here for you. That’s kind of what I usually do on this blog.

Anyways, the following is a compilation of what I’ve learned, which I hope many of you can use as a guide if you’re at all interested in using Facebook for something useful other than poking your old high school friends, or showing off your latest Bejeweled Blitz scores and Farmville achievements.

Why Facebook?

Before I get into the actionable, how-to type stuff, it’s important to understand why Facebook should be paid attention to in the first place. Here are some astonishing statistics:

There are over 300 million active users (that’s one for each U.S. citizen!)
It has an Alexa ranking of 2, just behind Google.
On average, people spend 20 minutes a day on Facebook. (Average time spent on any given website: 10 seconds)

Additionally, check out the trends below. I have to credit TechCrunch for this eye-opening comparison:

Craziness.

So, what’s in it for us bloggers? Can we benefit from this rapid expansion into the Facebook platform? I say absolutely, and I have some initial data to prove it.

After just one single month, Facebook has proven to be a notable traffic source for The Smart Passive Income Blog (click chart below to enlarge):

Probably the most notable part of this data is that the traffic from Facebook included those with the most pageviews (3.25), the most average time spent on the site (05:14), and the lowest bounce rate (49.55%), and by a significant amount too. As time goes on, I expect my traffic to increase, and I’ll make sure to keep a close eye on what happens and report back to you. So far, I’m fairly convinced. If not for the quantity of traffic, at least for the quality.

Now, realize that in a perfect world, I would have 1000 Facebook accounts and methods in place to control variables that could have an impact on my data (not to mention, more time) but of course that can’t happen. You can interpret these numbers however you wish, but honestly you won’t know what Facebook can do for you unless you give it a shot yourself. Getting on Facebook is NOT a “Magic Button” for your blog. I’d be weary of anything that claims to be just that. It does take time and it’s another platform you’ll have to “deal with”, but Facebook might be one that you don’t want to miss out on.

The rest of this post is dedicated to helping you get the best bang for your buck if you do choose to get into Facebook a bit. If you’re not convinced, please don’t waste your time with the following information.

Personal Profiles vs. Groups vs. Pages

There are three basic ways to connect and engage with people on Facebook:

Your Personal Profile
A Group; or
A Page

Your personal profile is basically your primary account, where you can interact with friends and family. You may wish to just use your personal profile to advance your blog (which many people do), but knowing that you’re going to have to talk about whatever niche your blog is about from time to time, understand that this may end up annoying your friends and family who really just want to see pictures of you passed out in Vegas. For this reason, you may want to consider creating a Group or a Page for your blog, to keep things quasi-separate.

Mashable has a fantastic post about the differences between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page, so I won’t repeat what they outline, but their bottom line is:

“Groups are great for organizing on a personal level and for smaller scale interaction around a cause. Pages are better for brands, businesses, bands, movies, or celebrities who want to interact with their fans or customers without having them connected to a personal account, and have a need to exceed Facebook’s 5,000 friend cap.”

Because of this, I created a Page for the SPI Blog. It works JUST like a personal profile, so it was easy for me to get used to, and the interaction with my fans (friends for Pages are called “fans”), has been quite good.

You can’t convert between Pages and Groups once you’ve made your choice, at least not at the moment, so choose wisely. The rest of this post will be primarily geared towards Pages, not Groups.

How to Create a Facebook Fan Page

Here’s a video about how to create a Facebook Fan Page. I apologize for the music and intro in the beginning, this was one of the first videos I did. In my later videos, I skip that and go straight into the content.

(if you cannot view the video, please click here to view it on youtube)

Here are a few important things to consider when creating your Page.

Put Some Thought Into the Name Of Your Page: Once it’s created, you can’t change it back. Also, Facebook Pages get picked up by Google, so keep that in mind. My Facebook Page for SPI is ranked #3 in Google for “Smart Passive Income”, for example.
Are You Going to Upload a Logo, or a Picture of You?: It’s really up to you, but think about this: if you were a fan of a website or a blog, which would you rather interact with? A logo, or the actual person you’re engaging in conversation with?
Send Out Status Updates Before You Try and Get Fans: Why? Because you won’t get any fans if you have a blank wall. At least mention how stoked you are to finally have your Page setup, or how excited you are to talk to your fans in the near future.
Change the URL of Your Page So It’s Easier to Work With: It’s a lot easier to say, “check out facebook.com/smartpassiveincome”, instead of “check out facebook.com/awdoihaiwduh82320983o4h3 or whatever the url ends up being. You can customize it by going to http://www.facebook.com/username. Please note that you can only do this once you have at least 25 fans. Again, put some thought into the customized URL. Most likely, the same address as your blog will be your best option.

The Facebook Landing Page

This is THE most important part of this whole guide. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, this is it.

In order to convert people who head over to your Page into fans, you must use a landing page. Without it, new visitors will be taken straight to your wall, which is ugly and doesn’t really tell people exactly what to do. They’ll see all of these conversations going on, links and pictures everywhere and they’ll probably end up leaving because they have no clue what to do, or what’s in it for them to become a fan.

You can create a special area on your Page, a landing page, that only new visitors will see first. You can put whatever you want on this page, including exactly what your blog is about, why they should become a fan, and exactly how to become a fan as well. If you have a newsletter or some type of free gift for an opt-in / email list you’re building, you can easily throw that in there too. You basically have a blank html page (about 760 px wide) to work with, so it’s up to your imagination. To show you the difference…

Before, when new visitors would come to my Facebook Page, they would see this:

Now, they see this:

I could probably do more with the copy and the design, but after 3 versions of the landing page, this one seems to convert the best for me. Besides that, which of the two do you think converted more fans?

The second one, by a landslide.

Here’s a video of the exact process to create a landing page on Facebook, and how to set it up as the default page that new visitors will see first:

(if you cannot view the video, please click here to view it on youtube)

As mentioned in the video, you will need to insert a piece of code in the Static FBML application for your Page. My landing page is basically a large jpg file with all that text included, and only a snippet of html text at the bottom, so there wasn’t much code required. I could probably make the landing page look a lot better, and I may even hire someone on elance.com to do that for me for $50 or less. As you can see, I have not yet included an opt-in form for an email list, which is definitely something you should consider placing in there if you have one. I’m working on it

PLEASE don’t let the design of my particular landing page tell you that this is the only way it should be done. I mean, check out these other awesome landing pages below:

Lastly, if you want to use the “become a fan” button that Facebook uses in your landing page copy, you can just right click and save the .png file below.

UPDATE (4/20/10): Facebook has changed the “Become a Fan” button to a “Like” button. This isn’t to be confused for the “like” that you can click under a friend’s comment, picture or link. I don’t know why they used the same terminology to replace “become a fan”, but that’s just the way it is I guess.

So, when you visit a Business Page that you haven’t “liked” yet, you’ll see this button below, which you can borrow for your own landing pages that you create too.

Keys to Getting Facebook Fans

Besides the landing page, there are a number of things you can do that will increase the number of fans you get. Here are my top 5 tips in another video I just filmed the other day (he first tip I mention is to create a landing page, which we’ve already discussed):

(if you cannot view the video, please click here to view it on youtube)

Here’s an outline of the other tips mentioned in the video:

Place a Link to Your Page on Your Blog: You can place a link to your fan page on your blog either in the area where you also have an RSS button, or at the bottom of your posts, where readers are more likely to engage with you after reading your content.
Place a Link to Your Page in any Forum Signatures You Have: Make sure to take advantage of your presence on forums related to your niche by placing a link to your Page in your signature, so it’s done automatically for you after each of your posts. Take advantage of html to make a nice looking anchor text (preferably with a call to action), back to your Facebook Page.
Include a Link in Any Videos or Guest Posts You Do
Advertising Your Page on Faceboook: It does cost money, but you can get highly-targeted followers to your Page and blog by advertising with Facebook.

Linking Back to Your Blog and Getting Traffic

Your blog is where you eventually want everyone to end up, so you want to make sure you provide enough opportunity for your Facebook fans to click on over.

Static Links

Static links are links to your blog on your Facebook page that are not part of the conversations and interactions going on. There are a few opportunities to place links right on your wall for everyone to see.

1. Inside the “Info” tab there’s a spot for your website address. Links in the “overview” area will not be clickable.

2. On your main page, right underneath your profile picture, there’s a perfect spot for a quick intro and a link back to your blog. Just hover over this spot to edit.

Links Via Conversation

The more exciting way to get traffic to your blog from Facebook is to share a link with your fans via your wall. This way, it will be shown on every one of your fan’s personal news feeds. You can also share videos, pictures and events in the same manner.

Besides a “broadcast” to all of your fans, you can insert links within the conversions that are already going on on your wall.

If you want, you can use your favorite url shortener to make them look nicer if they are too long, and you can track how many clicks you get at the same time. Personally, I like to use bit.ly.

As with anything that involves you wanting to get people to click something, your copy will have a lot to do with how many people actually click on the link. Test out different ways to present information to your Fans, and I’m sure you’ll find a way that works best for you.

Oh, and as always – spamming is bad. Go easy with your links, but don’t feel like you aren’t allowed to post any links at all either.

Other Multi-Media For Your Page

There are many other applications on Facebook that Pages can utilize (Groups cannot utilize applications at the moment). For example, you can setup an RSS feed tab, which immediately pulls the latest blog posts from your blog’s RSS feed and places that into your Page. The same goes with YouTube and Twitter, and I’m sure all of the other social networking and bookmarking websites as well.

Only a limited number of tabs show up on your Page (the rest are hidden, but can still be accessed), so you’ll have to choose your primary tabs carefully, although they can be rearranged later. Personally, I have a Twitter and YouTube Tab on my Page, as you can see below.

Cool Resource

Involver.com is a company that does complete brand marketing for companies on Facebook. They have a number of different applications you can choose from for your Facebook Page, and the first two you use are free. After that, you’ll have to pay. It’s hard to choose because there are so many cool applications you can use for your blog, such as a twitter feed, RSS feed, YouTube channel, Flickr, Slides, PDFs, file sharing, and more. My advice to you: choose wisely.

Facebook On Your Blog

There are a number of things you can do on your blog itself to optimize your Facebook experience.

The Fan Box

You can create what is called a “Fan Box”. A Fan Box is a widget that you can display on your blog that shows either your latest updates, pictures of your fans, or both at the same time. On the right hand side of my blog, you can see my personal fan box.

The Share Button

On your blog posts, you can insert a button that will share your post to the friends on Facebook of whoever clicks on it. It’s sort of like the Tweetmeme / Retweet button, which you can see at the top of this post on the left hand side. I have yet to try this out, but I might incorporate it into my next design. As far as this kind of “push-button sharing” is concerned, more people are using Twitter instead of Facebook, at least for now.

Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect is an advanced feature that I won’t be discussing here. It’s a bit complicated. If you’d like to read more about Facebook Connect, or even implement it on your website, you can click on the links below:

All of these Facebook sharing devices (and more), can be found here on the Facebook Widget Page

Thanks!

Well, that was a super long post, but I think it should give you a good start with getting used to Facebook and how to leverage it specifically for your blog. Until next time!

I wish you nothing less than success! Cheers!

p.s. If you found this post useful, please share it on twitter by clicking the button below, and as always, you can subscribe to the blog by clicking here. Thanks!

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THE Blogger’s Guide to Facebook
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Discover How Facebook Can Snowball Traffic to Your Website

Pat — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:20:54 +0000

Facebook. I hear that word everywhere now: on the radio, on television, and even in conversations while I’m standing in line at the grocery store. Facebook seems to be taking over the world…and judging by the numbers, that statement isn’t that far off.

Over 300 million active users (that’s one for each U.S. citizen!)
An Alexa ranking of 2, just behind Google.
The fastest growing demographic is people age 35 and older.
People spend an average of 20 minutes a day on Facebook.

A couple of notable points here:

That’s a LOT of people. A lot.
The fastest growing demographic (35 years and older), is probably the same demographic that has and is spending the most money.
Guess what the average time people spend on a given website is…10 seconds. Facebook: 20 minutes.

Ridiculous numbers. Ridiculous.

I guess this is why we’re seeing more and more companies today ditch the website address on commercials and are putting in their Facebook addresses instead. It makes perfect sense, and it’s a sign that we should be doing the same thing.

How Facebook can Snowball Traffic to Your Website

I’ve been doing a little research with Facebook and how it can be used as a promotional platform, and what I found out wasn’t necessarily “new” to me, but seeing how Facebook could work from a marketing perspective really opened my eyes, and was the reason why I started the Smart Passive Income Fan Page.

First of all, it should be pointed out that you can’t use Facebook to sell or promote anything directly to your fans. Well, let me correct myself. You can directly sell stuff to your fans, but you shouldn’t. In fact, the Facebook Terms of Service as of October 12, 2009 says you are indeed allowed to directly promote and sell products to your fans (of a Facebook Page, not a Facebook Personal Profile), but my point is that if you go into Facebook hoping to hard sell your eBook or whatever it is you have for sale, you’re going to upset most (if not all) of your fans, you’re not going to convert very well, and you’ll just end up wasting your time.

The idea is that the Facebook platform allows you to directly connect and interact with people who are interested in you and what you have to say. It’s all about establishing that relationship and gaining people’s trust, which is probably the most important asset in any online business today. If someone asks you a question via Facebook and you answer back, that person is more likely to do business with you in the future. It’s in the same realm as Twitter as far as how it should be used, but Facebook has a lot more features, obviously.

Phil’s Fly Fishing

To get an idea of how powerful Facebook can be for a blog or website, let’s make one up for fun. Meet Phil.

Phil loves to go fly fishing. Actually, he loves it so much, he created a website, philsflyfishing.com, where he talks about fly fishing in North America and sells some gear too. To promote his website, Phil decided to create a Facebook fan page.

Phil setup a free fanpage (I’ll show you how to do this in a video later), and named it Phil’s Fly Fishing Fan Page. He inserted some company information, a link to the website, and uploaded a few photos just for fun. At this time, Phil has zero fans.

Phil wrote a new blog post about Brown Trout and included a paragraph at the bottom explaining that he created a Page on Facebook and he would love everyone to become a fan. The next day, Phil has 5 fans.

When Bob became a fan of Phil’s Fly Fishing Fan Page, a notification was sent to all of Bob’s friends that he became a fan of Phil’s Fly Fishing Fan Page. Since Bob is a fly fisherman, many of Bob’s friends were fly fishing enthusiasts too. When they saw that Bob became a fan of Phil’s Fly Fishing Fan Page, they clicked on the link and became fans too. Two days later, Phil has 15 fans.

When Joe, Bob’s friend, became a fan too, a notification was sent to all of Joe’s friends…and so on and so forth. This could go on forever, but I’ll keep this part short. Because of the notifications that are automatically sent out, fan pages can go “viral” fairly easily. In addition, if you’re in a specialized niche, you’re more likely to find a string of people interested in the topic just from this process. Let’s say that Phil now has 25 fans.

Some more cool stuff…

Phil’s been updating his Facebook Page with some really interesting material. For example, he posted a link to the biggest fish ever caught on a fly fishing setup, and a notification was sent to all 25 of his fans with the link. Sam, another one of Phil’s fans, commented on the link saying something like, “That was the biggest fish I’ve ever seen! Thanks for the link Phil!”.

Now, all of Sam’s friends get a notification that Sam commented on Phil’s link, and the whole “viral-like” goes into effect once again. Some of Sam’s friends notice his interesting comment, and make their way to Phil’s fan page. Phil now has 35 fans.

And even more cool stuff…

Bob, one of Phil’s first fans, is actually headed to Canada for a vacation. On Phil’s Fan Page, he asks, “Phil, I’m headed to Canada next week, do you know any good spots near Ontario to go fly fishing?”

Phil responds with, “Hey Bob, I actually have an entire section on my blog about Fly Fishing in Canada, check out this link here. Have fun!”

When Phil does this, not only do the rest of Phil’s fans get a notification of the response, but they get the link to blog as well. Some of them actually find he’s selling gear, and make a few purchases at the same time. Nice.

Getting even more ULTRA targeted fans…

Phil decides to actively search for fans of his Facebook page. He creates an advertisement like the one below:

He also makes sure this ad gets shown to EXACTLY to who he wants. He knows that most of his customers are over the age of 50, male, and in the U.S. and in Canada. So that’s exactly who he targets:

Oh yeah, and he targeted people who have fly fishing in their profile. How ninja is that? He set the bid price to $0.30, which means that every time someone clicks on that ad, which get’s shown to males over the age of 50 who like flyfishing, he will pay $0.30.

After a week, his ad was shown 113,890 times and clicked 370 times, which means Phil spent $111.00. Phil now has 462 fans. (Don’t forget – those fans notify their friends when they become a fan.)

So he has 462 fans. What’s the point?

How Can Phil Leverage his Facebook Fans for Business?

One day, Phil decides to offer a promotion for some of the gear on his website. He updates his fan page status with the following:

He could take it even further and say the discount is JUST for the fans on Facebook. They’ll feel special, and if any fans comment, their friends will get notified and possibly see the deal too.

Conclusion

I hope you can see how powerful Facebook is.

Phil’s goal was to eventually make sales by first establishing a relationship and a fan base for his website first.

For me and my Facebook Fan page, my goal is to connect with as many people as possible, funnel them here to my blog and subscribe for more content. As you know, I’m not currently selling or actively promoting any products, which makes it even better because I think people know I’m in this to help people.

I’ll be creating some videos about how to exactly create a Facebook Fan page and even a highly targeted ad to go along with it, so make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’re interested in that, since I will probably not be putting that content here on the blog, at least right away.

It’s up to you if you’d like to create a Fan Page for yourself. I just wanted to illustrate exactly why you might want to do this in case you were wondering. Cheers!

photo courtesy of allriversguideservice.com

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Discover How Facebook Can Snowball Traffic to Your Website
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A WordPress Plugin For Instant Traffic in 5 Minutes

Pat — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:02:19 +0000

Just a week ago, I added a new WordPress plugin to my blog’s arsenal. It’s called digg digg.

It could also be called awesome awesome, because it is. It’s an all-in-one plugin that allows you to easily add the digg and retweet button onto your blog posts or page. You can see it in use on the upper left part of my posts when you’re on the website. It also has reddit and buzz.yahoo.com, but I don’t use those right now. It’s customizable with a few different options and it was exactly what I was looking for.

A couple of months ago, I would never of thought of adding a retweet button to my blog posts, but now because twitter is growing at such an alarming rate, I thought I’d give it a shot. Twenty-five minutes after I posted my first post after installing the plugin, I saw this in twitter:

This is a screenshot of a search I did for anyone who “retweeted” my article. You can see 5 on the screen, but actually it was more like 8. Let’s crunch some numbers:

Time it took to install the plugin: 1 minute
Time it took to configure the plugin settings: 5 minutes (after some trial and error)
Total number of people who retweeted my post: 8 people
Total number of people following those 8 people: Roughly 40,000 People

So, in just 25 minutes, that retweet button alone magically allowed me to send the link to over 40,000 people’s twitter accounts. If any of those people retweeted it, then the numbers would grow even larger. I’m hoping you can see, 1) the power of the retweet button, 2) the power behind using twitter, and 3) how things could go viral rather quickly and easily.

There are a couple of other implications here that I’d like to point out:

Your blog post title is super important: I honestly spent about a half hour thinking of a good blog post title, and came up with The Obvious Part of Online Marketing that Most People are Missing. I think anyone who reads that headline or title is very tempted to open it because they want to know what that obvious thing is.
Your connections through Twitter are highly targeted: Your twitter account should, in theory, have people in your target audience following you. For me, I have mostly internet marketers and bloggers following me, in addition to a few personal friends, since I’m using myself as a brand. What are the chances that the people following my followers are also in my target audience too? Pretty darn good. So, any retweets from my followers will just expand my reach into my target audience, and hopefully bring in some new readers who don’t know about me, who might end up subscribing to the blog and give me a bigger online presence footprint. See how that works?

So if you think twitter is lame, you might want to think again. Digg is just as important, but I’ll get to that in a later post.

You can get the Digg Digg plugin through your WordPress Plugin search in your admin panel. If you’re using another blogging platform, you may want to check your plugin database for a twitter retweeting solution.

It’s almost the end of the month, so stay tuned for my September monthly income report!

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A WordPress Plugin For Instant Traffic in 5 Minutes
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Think of Social Media Like This, and You Will Make Money

Pat — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:00:22 +0000

Every once and a while I’ll come across a video on youtube that I’ll want to share with you, usually because it’s contains some valuable information. Here is the first one, and it’s a great lesson given by Perry Belcher about how he thinks Social Media should be used to make money:

My Reaction

I definitely agree that Social Media is like a giant party. The part that intrigues me most is about trying to sell something to someone without any prior relationship. I hate it when people come up to me and try to sell me something or make me do something without even introducing themselves or establishing a relationship with me first.

For example, on eHow (which is kind of like a social network as well), people are messaging me all of the time, asking me to read their articles and rate and comment on them. Honestly, I delete those messages right away. Introduce yourself first, tell me something interesting, and I’ll rate and comment on your articles without you having to ask. That’s just how I feel.

Advice for Bloggers

I think a great piece of advice here is to treat your blog like a home that you would want to invite people to.

You wouldn’t want to bring a guest to your dirty house would you? So why should our blogs be unorganized, cluttered with ads, and uninviting?
Your house is an expression of who you are, right? So why not show a little bit about who you are with pictures and an about me page, like I wrote about in a previous post.
Lastly, you wouldn’t invite a guest over without offering them something would you? This is where great content, free tips, resources, links, and even contests come into play.

The making money part comes after all that, and could happen more organically and naturally, instead of forced and impersonal.

Your Reaction?

What’s your opinion about Perry’s take on Social Media. Do you have anything to add?

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Think of Social Media Like This, and You Will Make Money
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