Thanks for revisiting my Blog. Please feel free to comment. In fact, I insist you take the time to leave me a positive comment, or even a constructive comment. -- Your Friend Dave Perry

What is the most important part of anything you write?

According to CopyBlogger.com, “On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece.”

If you are like me, you find it hard to get down to writing. When you finally do, the last thing you are thinking about is the headline of your article or ad. Maybe it time we take another look. It’s time to put our efforts where they will be most effective.

Like many things in life, 20% of the effort results in 80% of the results. This is the familiar Pareto Principle. In today’s web, where there is so much clutter and so many voices trying to be heard, the headline has become the most critical feature in our writing. The headline is like the infamous “sound bite” the news hounds clamor for. It’s an unfortunate reality in today’s information world that very few people take the time to read entire articles. The average person scans. I don’t know about you but to me scanning means I read the headlines, the sub-titles and the highlighted links. I will only read the body text if the headlines or subtitles draw me in.

To add to this, the search engines like Google and Yahoo, also place great weight on the content of the headline. A headline that contains your keyword or an associated keyword gives the search engine important information about the content of the blog or article.

It is well known that the headline carries a great deal of importance to Google on it’s Adwords advertising platform as well. Having a good headline will increase your quality score and CTR quicker than any other part of the ad.

CopyBlogger.com views the headline to be so important, that they suggest we should spend at least 50% of our time writing the headline.

I have always been a lazy but productive person. When I can adapt, modify or repurpose something that works, I will usually take that route. That is not to say that I will steal, plagiarize or copy anyone else’s work, but I will learn from other’s work.

Here is a very helpful article by Robert D. Boduch, which has helped me with writing my headlines.

This ebook, 7 Quick and Easy Headline Formulas is a wealth of information. It take us through writing headlines using the “The Ultimate Benefit . FAST & EASY!” to the ever popular “Fill In The Blanks” method. One of the 7 methods will be suitable for any skill level. And if this weren’t enough, there is also a swipe file containing 600 of the greatest headlines ever.

As Google tightens the screws on our market, it has become increasingly difficult to get your ad placed in a top 10 position in Google search at a reasonable price. The “screws” Google uses to remove the less desirable advertisers, is quality score.
Quality score is Google’s secret sauce, that is a combination of CTR, and a number of landing page factors. Google no longer uses only keyword analysis to determine your quality score, they are rapidly moving to metrics that rate your page for user experience.

User experience, in Google’s eyes, can be measured by factors like the time a customer spends on your page, or the bounce rate … how many people use the back button instead of clicking on your links. Google is now using these statistics to dynamically rank us against our competitors. This explains why our quality score can vary dramatically for the same landing page from campaign to campaign.

I don’t want to get into a long discussion here about quality score, only to say, we must know our competition better than ever before.

I have been using a great Adwords tool for a number of months called Adword Accelerator. This is a tool that has 9 Adwords tools built in. It can take you through all the processes from researching a campaign to building the adgroups.

I have produced a 15 minute video that shows how to do Competitor research in Adword Accelerator.

Adword Accelerator - Competitor Research Video

This video is part of my Team McLaren Adwords Coaching program

I also have a WordPress Blogging Training video series I will be releasing in the next few days. This video series will go through all the basic functions required for editing your blog. Watch this blog for more details.

Technorati Tags: adword accelerator, adword accelerator review, Adwords

I want to share these two money making twitter products with you. If you are on a tight budget, this is for you.

Step One – Rapidly build your Twitter Following

The first product is Twitter Traffic Machine. I have used the techniques in this training video to build my twitter followers to 52,671 as of today. (Before you look at twitter in the side bar and call me a liar, I must explain these followers are across a number of accounts. But don’t try multiple accounts without understanding how to do this correctly. I will share this in a future post.)

If you want to quickly jump into marketing online, invest the $27 in the Twitter Traffic Machine course. Start building your Twitter following exactly as Bill Crosby shows you in the video. Consistency is the key here. You need to spend 15 to 20 minutes every day working your account to see the amazing results.

This really works folks.

Now here comes the money… When Bill walks you through setting up your Twitter Traffic Machine, he has you insert your affiliate ID into your account. So as people follow you they also get an opportunity to purchase the product through you. For each sale, you make $11! You can make back your $27 in just 3 sales…How cool is that!

For your information, Twitter Traffic Machine is the number 2 selling product on Clickbank as I am writing this. Thousands of people attest to the value of this product. There is a 60 day money back guarantee so you can’t lose.

Step Two – Other Products to Sell

1. Check out Super Tips Viral Ebook. This free ebook is worth reading simply for the insight into viral marketing techniques and for the entertainment value.But here is the big payoff. You can buy the rights to distribute the book yourself for $10.
2. How do you sell on Twitter:

• Don’t spam your ads. Send one ad for each 4 or 5 pieces of content you produce. See the Twitter Traffic Machine to learn how to automate your content.
• Use a free tool such as AutoTweeter to send out your ads at about 1 hour intervals.
• Create as many different ads as you possibly can for each product and alternate them in the text file used by AutoTweeter.
• Find out how other people are advertising these products and what ads they are using. Now use a different approach. To find out how other people are advertising, go to http://search.twitter.com and search for the product name such as Twitter Traffic Machine or Super Tips Viral Ebook. To build a new, compelling, and effective ad, check out
  7 Quick & Easy Headline Formulas – Your Instant Reference Guide to Creating Dynamite, Attention-Getting Headlines. This is a free download on my website.

So here’s the budget:

Product                        Cost     Payback

Twitter Traffic Machine $27    3 sales

Super Tips Viral Ebook $10    1 sale

Total            =========

$37

Good luck.

If this article was of any value, or if you have any questions or comments please leave a comment or bookmark below.

Technorati Tags: automate twitter, social media marketing, Twitter

I received an email from an acquaintance of mine who has just recently started marketing some PLR products on the internet. The email I received from him was obviously from his personal email address book since I could see email addresses for his relatives in the “TO” list. The TO list included my address as well.

This is frequently a mistake newbies make. I wrote the following letter to him and I thought it would be of help to others.

First, I hope you don’t mind a little critique here. You sent this email out to your personal email list. If you are following proper email etiquette you should put all the addresses in the BCC field. Using the “Blind Carbon Copy”, each person will not see your entire email list. Some people view this as an invasion of privacy. If I were less than honest, I would copy your email addresses off the email you sent me, and start sending all your friends and family advertising. They would hate you for that. So always use the BCC for doing this kind of mailings.

In fact, in many circles this is categorized as SPAM. If you do too much of this through your personal email account and someone complains, you may find yourself suspended by your service provider. You should actually build a double opt-in list on an auto-responder service such as Aweber. But that is another topic for another day.

Have you got any other marketing methods you are using? I have been investigating some low cost. Here are some of my favourites which have a very low cost.

1) You should join the www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com This is a free course that focuses on selling in niches. They are in the preseason now and will be heading into the course in August. Dan Raine and Ed Dale are from Australia so you wont’ be able to enjoy there accent … but that’s life. I highly recommend the material.

2) I wrote a short course and blogged on how to use Twitter for sales. Here is the PDF Automating Twitter. It is based around a training product called Twitter Traffic Machine This short course is $27 well spent. It is huge value for the money. My twitter accounts are now up to 46000 people and I drive 100’s of people across my websites every day. (I should note that I am using some other techniques above and beyond the Twitter Traffic Machine techniques, but the TTM techniques are the basis for starting out.) You will drive significant traffic by just following Twitter Traffic Machine .

3) Check out ViralURL. The basic membership is free and there is an up-sell. I would highly advise taking the up-sell to Gold or Platinum. I have a Platinum membership which allows me to send out 3000 emails every 3 days for a year and I don’t get email from other members. The Gold membership is less expensive, however you get email from other members. I get about a 0.1% response rate for email I send out to the membership. Not bad considering the source. I would also advise you to create a new Gmail address for this account so you don’t risk cluttering up your personal account with unwanted email.

4) Lastly here are some valuable resources that I would recommend if you are getting involved with email marketing.

• Learn how to write good marketing email. Email Promos Exposed (I don’t advise the up-sell on this one - Just take the free training)
  
• Here is a free PFD on my website for killer headlines 7 Quick & Easy Headline Formulas – Your Instant Reference Guide to Creating Dynamite, Attention-Getting Headlines
  
• Here is a free PDF for a Social Media Marketing Blueprint.
  

If I can be of any help let me know.

Watch your email because I will be announcing some new services that will be aimed directly at helping the new marketer.

Regards,

David Perry

For advanced users:

Here are some other interesting utilities that are worth looking at.

• Twitter Traffic Machine – An excellent set of videos explaining how to setup an automated Twitter account.
• TweetDeck.com – Desktop utility for consolidating your Social Media sites into one application.
• TwitterCounter.com – Chart the growth of your Twitter account
• Bit.ly – Shorten and track the links embedded in your tweets
• TweetLater.com – Automated messaging and account management. Free and paid versions.
• Twitter Fan Wiki – A wonderful listing of Twitter software tools
• TwitButtons.com — Create a Twitter button for your Blog or website
• FutureTweets.com – Schedule tweets or reoccurring tweets for the future
• Twitter FriendAdder – Automates the Following and Un-Following of new prospects. Try the free demo first.

[If you would like to see specific video instructions for setting up a Twitter account and automating it, purchase Twitter Traffic Machine. It will be the best $27 you will spend this week.]

I would appreciate any feedback you can give me regarding the usefulness of this blog post. If there are any omissions or errors, or if you are left with a burning question, please reply below. I am also interested to hear about your experiences on Twitter - good or bad. Please leave a comment below. If you have found it useful, then please bookmark it on Digg or your favourite bookmark site.Dave Perry

Follow Me on Twitter: @DBPerry

Dave Perry

Follow Me on Twitter: @DBPerry

Technorati Tags: automate twitter, social media marketing, Twitter

I received this email from a friend of mine this morning. I would like to share my response to them with you.

“Hi:

When [leaders name] was interviewed on the charge call this morning, he said that he was told that successful entrepreneurs spend more time working on themselves than on their business. What do you think?

Also what are some of the ways that you work on yourself in order to grow your business? I’ve been reading several business books. I’ve also started rereading “The Science of Getting Rich” and I’m working on the personal growth program. I’ve read several books by Robert Kiyosaki and some of Donald Trump’s books as well.

What other ways would you recommend?

Thanks for your help.”

Hello Name,

I agree completely. I don’t know if you read my story, but I burned myself out not paying attention to this principle.

I would also add, you should focus on being balanced -Body, Soul and Spirit. I spend an hour each day on physical fitness, and hour on reading scripture and at least and hour on personal development. This morning I ran 7 km (body). I listened to Mike Dillard’s Black Belt Recruiting while on the run (soul/mind), I read the book of Esther after my run (spirit), the remainder of the morning was spent distributing food to the needy (spirit). NOW I am sitting down to do my business. I try to incorporate all of these components into my day – each and every day.

I am do not always achieve balance each and every day, but if I have a choice, and ultimately, we all have the freedom of choice, I exercise each of these disciplines every day. I believe practicing balance is what ultimately brings success into our lives.

Stephen Covey, in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” calls the final habit, habit 7 “Sharpening the Saw”. Habit 7 is “the habit that makes all the others possible”. Stephen tells the following parable that pretty much sums up the principle.

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”

“You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”

“Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”

“Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen the saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”

“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

A word to the wise!!!

-Dave

House Keeping:

I’m sure we all know Aesop’s fable “The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg”. The moral of the story is “Don’t’ get greedy when you have a good thing going”. So it is in the Twitterverse, Twitter will allow us to advertise and to build a list aggressively, unless we get greedy. So here are the housekeeping details that will keep us on the profitable side of Twitter.

Always keep in mind that Twitter is a social media site. It will not tolerate abuse. If we abuse it Twitter will suspend our account and we will have to start over again. So here are the basic rules for maintaining a balanced Twitter account. I would suggest that you check each day if you are within these limits, if not you will need to remove people from your following list.

In reality, if these people have not followed you back after 1 or2 days, they won’t be responsive to your messages anyway, so you should remove them from your account and follow some new people.

Twitter’s following rules:

• New accounts can’t follow more than 2000 people until your follower count gets over 1850.
• Once your over 2000 followers, you can follow 10% more than are following you.
• For example, if you have 2000 followers, you can follow 2200 people.

You will need to remove people you are following that have not followed you.

• Use the free Twitter Karma tool.
• Sign in and select the “Whack” button – don’t worry it won’t do anything until you allow it to.
• The interface to Twitter Karma is not that intuitive so here are the instructions:

1. In the SHOW drop down box select “only following”
2. Check that only twitterers with a GREEN arrow are shown
3. Go to the bottom select “Check All” then “Bulk Unfollow”

• You should do this once every other day or when you are getting too close to your limits.
• If you are using an automated following tool like Twollo.com, you should make sure you have sufficient room to add new followers so the automated tool does not exceed the limits.

This series has only scratched the surface. We have covered the basics for setting up a Twitter account, producing content, finding targeted followers and managing the list. If you have followed these instructions and are building a Twitter following at 100-200 persons a day, you will be interested in the Part 6 of this series. In Part 6, I will give you a list of some interesting utilities that will help you further automate your Twitter account, and also allow you to start sending out marketing messages to your followers.

I would caution you to take this slowly. There are so many interesting Twitter utilities out there, that you could spend days trying them. I have evaluated many of these tools and have found a few that are worthwhile considering. Take care, not to spend all your time tinkering, or to attach so many tools to your Twitter account that it becomes unmanageable. The list of tools I will be sharing with you in Part 6, have been tested and are worth trying and will bring value to your marketing activities.

[If you would like to see specific video instructions for setting up a Twitter account and automating it, purchase Twitter Traffic Machine. It will be the best $27 you will spend this week.]

I would appreciate any feedback you can give me regarding the usefulness of this blog post. If there are any omissions or errors, or if you are left with a burning question, please reply below. I am also interested to hear about your experiences on Twitter - good or bad. Please leave a comment below. If you have found it useful, then please bookmark it on Digg or your favourite bookmark site.

Dave Perry

Follow Me on Twitter: @DBPerry

Technorati Tags: automate twitter, social media marketing, Twitter

Follow Interesting People:

Here is where you start building a list of followers. It is important that you look for people with similar interests to yourself. These people are most likely to be interested in your business. In other words, you would probably follow people who describe themselves as an “entrepreneur” rather than as a “comedian”.

By targeting people that share an interest in the product you want to sell, you will build a twitter following that will be responsive to what you have to offer. For instance, if you sought out people who were talking about football, you would probably find a good market for anything football related. On the other hand, if your tried marketing cosmetics to this group … well you get the point.

Consider this to be the “secret sauce” for your Twitter marketing success, so pay attention.

Method #1

• As you read tweets in the Twitter timeline, follow people with interesting tweets and who’s Bio’s look interesting and are related to your marketing niche. By interesting, I mean people that you might like to meet.
• You can also send them a Tweet to thank them for their tweet.
• This is the social part again.

Method #2

• Use Twitter’s search utility to find interesting people to follow.
• Go to Search.Twitter.com to do a simple real-time search of the timeline.
• For a more advanced search that will allow you to refine your search more, go to Search.Twitter.com/advanced
• Or for yet a different view of the world use Twellow.com a Twitter Yellow Pages service.
• Once you have located interesting people, simply follow them

Method #3

• Find a person using method #2 above who looks to have similar interests to you and who has build a large group of followers.
• Click on this person’s image to go to their Twitter main page. From here, click on their Follower link. You will then get a list of their followers. Look through this list for people that you would like to follow and follow them.

Method #4

• Get a free account on Twollo.com
• This utility allows us to search for fellow Twitters with a keyword and automatically follow them.

Here is the Game Plan:

The most valuable person to your Twitter account is a “friend” a friend is a person who you follow and they are also following you. The least desirable person, is the person who you follow but they don’t follow you back. Got that? I know there were too many “follows” in one sentence.

So here is the plan:

• Follow interesting people
• 40%-60% of these people will follow you back within 2 days.
• Do your housekeeping (see part 5 for this procedure) and clean out all the people you are following but who are not following you back.
• Rinse and repeat. Follow more interesting people.

How Many People do I follow each day?

That is a very good question. The answer is as many as you can … within reason. In this case we are walking a fine line between using Twitter for what it was intended, which is to meet and communicate with friends on one hand. On the other hand, we don’t want to abuse the system by adding too many followers a once. This type of abuse has caused Twitter to put some rules in place to prevent over aggressive marketing people from spamming the system.

Here are some guidelines to keep you flying below the Twitter Spam radar.

• Add between 100 and 200 friends a day. From 40% – 60% of these people will follow you back and become friends.
  
• On a new account (under 2000 followers) you can follow up to 2000 people without having your account suspended, however, it is safer to maintain your “following” count 100 to 200 higher than your “follower” count.
  
• Once you reach 2000 followers you can follow 10% more people than follow you. So if you have 2100 followers you cant follow more than 2310 people.
  

If you will follow new people every day, your Twitter friends will increase at a very rapid rate. Using these techniques, I grew my account from 0 to over 1700 people in the first week. If done properly, these people will be very responsive to your tweets and when we start advertising, they will respond to your ads as well.

In part 5 we will put the last piece in place, House Keeping. As in all areas of our lives, if we do our daily housekeeping chores consistently, our Twitter account will grow to become exactly what we want it to be, an attentive, responsive group of friends. If we don’t, it may grow into an ugly, unpredictable beast that will break your heart. I’m exaggerating, but you understand the principle.

[If you would like to see specific video instructions for setting up a Twitter account and automating it, purchase Twitter Traffic Machine. It will be the best $27 you will spend this week.]

I would appreciate any feedback you can give me regarding the usefulness of this blog post. If there are any omissions or errors, or if you are left with a burning question, please email me. I am also interested to hear about your experiences on Twitter - good or bad. Please leave a comment below. If you have found it useful, then please bookmark it on Digg or your favourite bookmark site.

Dave Perry

Follow Me on Twitter: @DBPerry

Technorati Tags: automate twitter, social media marketing, Twitter

Creating Content:

I was cynical when I first heard about Twitter over a year ago. The stories I heard were about young people Tweeting about every moment of their lives. What time they got up … what they put on their cereal … what they had for lunch … and so on … and so on. I thought it was just a short term craze. But here we are today and Twitter is growing at 1000% a year! What is the attraction?

Twitter’s short, easy to create messages fulfill a need for the average person to stay connected. Tweeting provides a simple way to communicate without all the complexity of blogging or creating a websites. Content is so simple to add, it can even be created and sent over a cell phone using SMS messaging.

Simple communications, staying in touch, providing interesting content is the key to Twitter success. Even if you have not been successful with article writing or bloging, or you hate writing, Tweeting is so simple anyone can do it.

I am going to present three methods for producing content for your Twitter account. If you post good content to Twitter on a consistent, daily basis, you will be surprised how many people will read your 140 word posts. The secret to success is consistency.

I would recommend that you start tweeting your content to Twitter before you start inviting friends. The content you post will be seen by all Twitter users. Your content will build your reputation and provide an attentive and responsive audience.

Be Aware:

• All Twitter posts are public. Only say what you want to be heard in public.
• Once a Twitter post has been sent it can not be deleted or changed.

Method #1

• Enter your own updates several times a day. Greet the world a good morning. Tell everyone what you are thankful for . The universal law of attraction would dictate that by being cheerful and uplifting you will attract similar people to yourself. So be yourself, but this must be done consistently.
  
• Re-Tweet other people’s tweets that you find interesting. Always prefix the re-tweet with “RT @username” to attribute the tweet to the original tweeter. In the Twitter world it is a big complement to have your tweet re-tweeted.
  

Method #2

• As you “surf” the net during the day, select news articles, blog posts and other pieces of information you think would interest your followers and tweet the headline and link. Since you only have 140 characters to make your post, most twitterers (or twits for short), use a link shortening service such as Bit.ly.
  
• You can automate this by using a utility called TwitSnip. This utility allows you to select text on a web page and convert it into a tweet and post it to Twitter all with the click of a mouse. You can get it here http://twitter.grader.com/twitsnip.
  

Method #3

• Set up a RSS (Real Simple Syndication) news feed to your Twitter account. Websites with RSS feeds are usually identified with the symbol. See a short video overview of RSS feeds HERE.
  
• Create a Google search in Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) for a topic that would interest your followers. Set it to “Deliver to Feed”
  
• Use http://www.TwitterFeed.com to translate the RSS feed into a Twitter tweet. Alternately, you could use TweetLater.com ’s Premium (infer paid) Account to tweet your feed.
  
• Here is a list of sites other than Google that have RSS news feeds that can provide interesting content – “Top 100 Most-Subscribed-To RSS Feeds”
• For the technically capable, you can also use Yahoo Pipes to aggregate information off the Web. I would only recommend this if you have some interest in software programming.
• CAUTION: You should select the search terms carefully and only tweet one or two news items every other hour or so. If you are not familiar with news feed, you should watch the feed for a few days in a “Feed Reader” such as Google Reader. You can watch the content and see if it is appropriate for your tweets. If it’s not, you may refine your keywords by adding negative keywords or phrase match types. This could be interpreted as spam if you tweet too much of this type of content.
  
• To learn more about refining Google searches check out these resources:
  
  • Google Search Basics
    
  • Google Advanced Search Basics
    
  • Lynda.com
    

If you will use some manual and automated method for producing content, and do this consistently every day, you will build an attentive, responsive following. You will be able to promote your other Social Media sites to, as well as market your products.

In Part 4 we will look at three methods to invite people to follow you on Twitter. You will also learn one important secret to producing a list of followers that will respond quickly to what you have to say.

[If you would like to see specific video instructions for setting up a Twitter account and automating it, purchase Twitter Traffic Machine. It will be the best $27 you will spend this week.]

I would appreciate any feedback you can give me regarding the usefulness of this blog post. If there are any omissions or errors, or if you are left with a burning question, please leave a reply below. I am also interested to hear about your experiences on Twitter - good or bad. Please leave a comment below. If you have found it useful, then please bookmark it on Digg or your favourite bookmark site.

Dave Perry

Follow Me on Twitter: @DBPerry

Technorati Tags: automate twitter, social media marketing, Twitter

Twitter Setup:

By going to Twitter.com you can get started very quickly by signing up with your name and email address. If you are unsure about how to use twitter, go to Lynda.com and watch the video course. It will get you up and running quickly.

Considerations:

1. Use a Twitter nickname that presents the image that you are trying to promote.
2. Since you can’t use spaces in your nickname, use Capital letters to delineate the words. For example; which is more readable “winatthegame” or WinAtTheGame”?
3. Use a good picture of yourself.
4. For your website you will use your Blog URL if you have one, or your business landing page.
5. Make sure that “Protect My Updates” is NOT checked.
6. Set up a custom background that reflects your business image. You can use http://www.twitbacks.com or http://www.MyTweetSpace.com
   to create and upload a custom background for your Twitter page.
7. You will want to limit the email you receive from Twitter. Go to Setup -> Notices and select the email you want to receive. At the very least, you will want to turn off the New Follower email. If you are aggressively adding new followers, you will receive a large volume of email.

You will find that setting up Twitter is easier than you think. If you watch out for the issues listed above your account will be set up ready for a massive group of followers to come and visit you. Next in Part 3 we will discuss two simple ways to produce content for your twitter account and one automated method to produce content. See you next time.

[If you would like to see specific video instructions for setting up a Twitter account and automating it, purchase Twitter Traffic Machine. It will be the best $27 you will spend this week.]

I would appreciate any feedback you can give me regarding the usefulness of this blog post. If there are any omissions or errors, or if you are left with a burning question, please reply below. I am also interested to hear about your experiences on Twitter - good or bad. Please leave a comment below. If you have found it useful, then please bookmark it on Digg or your favourite bookmark site.

Dave Perry

Follow Me on Twitter: @DBPerry

Technorati Tags: automate twitter, social media marketing, Twitter