There are three simple concepts to using the Internet to get more leads or sales for your business and to make more money online. No matter what products have been launched over the past year or what social networks have sprung up, the same three concepts haven’t changed. We figured with all the hoopla going on right now in the Internet marketing world, it was perfect timing to unveil our new educational manual for accomplishing those three tasks, which are:

1) Converting those who visit your website or interact with you somewhere else on the web to taking action with you

2) Enabling yourself to be not just “found” or “stumbled upon” but ever present

3) Maximizing your sales potential by either making or creating something to sell on your own or promoting someone else’s product.

Stay tuned for Thursday’s launch, which will be ONLY between the hours of 10am and 3pm. Sign-up for the Tuesday Triplet where we’re describing the product launch process one step at a time while we’re actually doing it.

Last month (May 2010), I partnered with Zakary Barron of Constant Contact to offer a 3-hour workshop. He talked about email marketing, of course, and I taught WordPress, web video, blogging, social networking, and article marketing. We called the event “Profit Again in 2010.”

In one week worth of promotion, we packed a room of more than 100 people and we had 40 more on a waiting list. We just couldn’t fit any more into the room.

So, we’re doing it again! And, it won’t cost you a cent to attend.

This one-day-only event will be from 9am to noon on Thursday, June 24 at the Red Lion Hotel in Aurora Colorado, just off I-225 at the Parker Road exit.

Our room will only hold 125 and, as last time, it’s sure to fill up fast, so register now or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://tinyurl.com/29qr8tf

As last time, I (Marty Dickinson) will start the morning off where I’ll cover:

• The new evolution of websites and why it doesn’t make sense to use anything else for your business
• Hot strategies that are working this month for converting more of your website visitors to leads and paying customers, including less text and more video
• Updates on Google’s organic search mix and how real-time search and video is impacting your traffic today
• How the Internet marketing “heavy hitters” get more traffic to their websites using my “Traffic Triangle” process (You won’t hear about this at a Meet-up group!)
• How to get 300 minutes of benefit from every 30 minutes you spend on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin

Then, we’ll switch gears and Zak will cover the enormous power and process of more effective email marketing, including how to:

• Use best practices and winning strategies in your email marketing
• Get and keep quality subscribers
• ncrease your deliverability and open rates
• Create more compelling content
• Integrate video into your email campaigns

This is your opportunity to learn the true cutting edge online strategies for today in simple step-by-step sequences you will be able to apply immediately to your own business promotion efforts.

Learn from valuable case studies of how other businesses have effectively used these important Internet marketing and email marketing techniques to boost their business.

Join us on June 24th at the Red Lion in Aurora. You must RSVP to this free event and we are sure to fill the room before the date arrives. So, do not hesitate.

Don’t wait. Click Here NOW to Sign-up today and get ready to Profit Again in 2010!

WordPress got a bad rap when it first came out. Somehow WordPress became known internationally as simply “blog” software. That is soooo limiting to the true power of WordPress. We use WordPress for the entire website…including the blog part.

The website you’re on right now is using WordPress. Sure, this is the blog section, but go to any of the main pages you see on the left column and that’s just main website content. Still WordPress.

WordPress websites offer much more than the few five or ten benefits you usually hear about. A blogging software-based website is the new evolution of how Web sites are constructed.

Before we get into the meat of the actual reasons why WordPress is so great, let’s clear up another myth while we’re at it: A blog is a Web site…a Web site is a blog. There is NO difference.

It’s just that blogs have a few more cylinders under the hood, if I were to use a metaphor. In fact, I wrote a blog post a few months ago that suggested your WordPress website is the very heart of ALL of your Internet marketing efforts.

I don’t know why the power of WordPress is being so under-rated, because I believe this beloved software has paved the way for a new evolution of websites.

Here are 35 reasons why WordPress websites are better than traditional websites for authors, speakers and business owners today in a very trying economy.

1. Save Money – No longer do you need to send the most basic text changes to your designer or even have your designer add new pages for you. Make the edits yourself whenever you want and save the money you would’ve paid your designer for more important things by adding new pages on your own. Times are tight and managing your own content for your Web site is a great way to contribute to saving costs.
2. Greater Accessibility – Make changes or add content from any computer in the world with Internet access and a browser without the need for additional software or fixing firewall settings.
3. Speed of Communication – Since you don’t have to wait a few days for your designer to make those basic changes, the content on your Web site and be altered immediately by you, thereby giving your Web site visitors the most timely and current details possible.
4. Consistency - No matter how many pages you add in page template format makes visitors less confused
5. Better Time Management – Add content and then schedule those posts to publish on your site on whatever day and time you want. You could write an entire 12-week e-course, for example, break it up into 12 pieces and have each automatically post to the site at the same day and time each week for 12 weeks.
6. Ease of Membership Site Rollout – With the addition of a few plugins, a WordPress blog can evolve into a full service membership site with as many levels as you would like.
7. Social Networking Friendly – Automatically integrate your blog posts with social media like Twitter, facebook, Linkedin instead of having to go to each one, login, and make a post that you’ve just added something new to your website.
8. Engage with Current Media – Easily add audio and video to posts and pages.
9. Creative Welcoming – Integrate any design within an hour or two in comparison to other CMS (Content Management System) tools that all look alike because of their stringent design constraints.
10. Ultimate in SEO Friendliness – The construction of WordPress blog code is consistent and streamlined without excessive HTML code that Google finds very inviting for indexing. Plus, with the right setup, you’re able to customize every page or post you make to give you the highest possible probability of getting your pages in high search results positions.
11. Inspiring – Participating by adding posts and pages and managing your own content becomes “fun.” When you see the results from your OWN efforts instead of farming out everything, you become fueled even more to add more content.
12. Search Engine Magnetism – As a result of your inspiration to post content more often, your frequency of contribution will attract Google robots and other search engines like magnets. The robots will search your entire site every day looking for new content and new pages and changes they can index. New pages get indexed in hours or even MINUTES when you commit to adding new content over time. Many of our HereNextYear posts and WebsiteWaves.com pages have been published and displayed on Google’s organic search in under 30 minutes! Try that with a traditional Web site!
13. Growth potential - No need to update navigation when you add pages; links to new pages will be added automatically based on what “category” or categories you assign your posts and pages to. This all happens in the admin area instead of manually editing javascript menus and complex PHP include files.
14. Insanely Fast Learning Curve - Learning to edit content, post new pages, add photos and images is as easy (maybe even easier) than using MS Word. Figuring out these simple procedures on your own would only take a novice a few hours. With initial one-on-one training by phone from an expert WordPress trainer like we offer at HereNextYear, all of these functions can be performed by YOU in under an hour…even if you have no design or programming experience. There are two and three FULL-day classes just to learn the BASICS of Dreamweaver or FrontPage. I know…I used to teach them! WordPress blog software is by far, the easiest tool to learn how to maintain content on your Web site.
15. Improved Security – One of the subjects “against” WordPress or other blog software that use plugins (plugins are small add-on programs to enhance the capability of the blog software) is that hackers can break in to your Web site. But, the exact opposite is in fact true: If you have the right people involved in the setup of your WordPress installation, your blog site can be hacker-proofed even more securely than a traditional Web site. How can that be true? Because there is an actual process to “hardening” a WordPress installation. But, you just don’t hear designers or developers hacker-proofing traditional Web sites. See the difference?
16. Inspires Repeat Visitors – The fact that you are inspired to add new content frequently will also encourage and increase your repeat visitor numbers. When people like what you contribute to the Web, they want to know when you add more. That’s where RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) come into play along with automated notices by email that new posts have been made. These announcements trigger former visitors to come back to read the rest of the article, or in the case of RSS, visitors can subscribe to receive the entire post through their RSS reader or mobile device. This is not just the “future” of how communication will evolve in a few years, but this is NOW, TODAY. If you are not experienced with how RSS works, having a blog site will introduce you to its importance for sure.
17. Two-Way Communication with Visitors - Through the use of blog comments, you are no longer restricted to one-way “outbound” communication with visitors like you would be with a traditional Web site. Sure, you can always have a “contact us” page on your traditional Web site, but blog comments allow for anonymous two-way discussion between you and your readers. And, every time someone makes a comment to one of your posts, the inclusion of their content full of keyword phrases helps you to build better search positioning. It’s like getting free SEO help from the general public!
18. Increase Your Perceived Industry Authority – Making frequent posts and sharing your opinion on what’s happening in your industry offers so much more potential for establishing rapport with your audience than a traditional Web site could offer. Why such a difference? Because traditional Web sites just take too darn long to format. Even if you open Dreamweaver and copy an existing page to create a new one, you still have to format all that content, upload it to the right directory, assign page permissions, add the page manually to navigation….UGGG! A WordPress blog will allow you to add new pages in as little as five seconds! Period! And, that page can be set to appear in navigation on every other page on on your entire Web site in the click of a button. You just can’t afford to spend that much time to make that many additions of content pages in such a short amount of time with a traditional Web site. And, when you’re “reporting” on industry happenings, and giving your opinions, speed is of the essence. That’s the difference.
19. More Brand Awareness – Since the common approach with a blog site is to build out the site into an industry-specific authority resource with hundreds or even thousands of pages of content, the number of opportunities for the general public to see your brand identity is multiplied exponentially over and above the traditional 10 to 30 page Web site.
20. Immediate Identification of Hot Topics Among Your Audience – If you make 10 posts and get one or two…or even no comments at all, and then all of a sudden you post a topic that brings 20 comments, you learn immediately of an interest. This is a highly valuable opportunity that you normally don’t see with a traditional Web site, unless you pay for a bunch of custom programming to create some forms and surveys. The utility to allow blog comments is included with every Blog installation automatically with no custom programming required.
21. Better Anchor for Original Articles – When you publish articles to directories and blog networks, you first want to post it to your blog site. Why is a blog site “better” for this than a traditional Web site? Because of the automatic archiving feature within every blog setup.
22. Automated Syndication – Blog posts can be automatically converted to RSS feeds and syndicated to blog directories and other peoples’ websites.
23. Backdoor FREE Entry to Yahoo! Search Addition – When you submit your RSS feed manually to Yahoo! you don’t have to pay their $299 listing fee as your site will be indexed for free.
24. 24-Hour Listing in Bing/MSN – Adding the RSS feed to Bing/MSN is the fastest way to have your site indexed and it is common for even new sites to appear in Bing/MSN within 24 hours using this method.
25. One-Step Posting – It might sound like I’m repeating myself with “ease of use” or “ease of learning” already listed as a benefit, but this one is different. How many ways are there to add content to a Web site where you truly only click a single button to make the content appear live online? Only one that I’ve found and it’s through blog software. There are no 10, 5 or even 3-step processes to publish content live. It’s one single step.
26. You Control the Discussions – With traditional Web sites, the “old school” way of communicating with visitors was to add a forum or chat room. The problem with those was the need for maintaining the posts from spammers and removing discussions and predatory accounts that could threaten the integrity of your business. Blog sites changed all of that. You begin the topic of discussion. Your visitors make comments to the discussion you started. But, the comments people make are approved by you before anyone ever sees them on your Web site. It’s the best of all worlds without the worry of defaming your business with unacceptable posts.
27. Re-Ignite Your Ideas – By having the ability to add content to your Web site in a way that is easy, fast, and requires no technical skill, you will be amazed how ideas for “what to add” will no longer be a problem. In fact, you’ll be more worried about what to write about….first! Create content about industry happenings, product reviews, or educational steps. The limits are truly endless. You’ll never run out of things to add to your blog.
28. Increased Functionality with Lower Cost – Thousands of pre-written programs called plugins can increase the functionality of your out-of-the-box blog software. Traditional websites require everything to be programmed. Even if you find an available PHP or ASP script to work with a traditional website, there is usually significant integration work and customizing required, whereas WordPress plugins are usually a 3-click install process.
29. Multi-User Capable – WordPress offers multi-user capability so that larger companies with marketing departments, for example, can offer editing power exclusivity or even read-only mode to others.
30. Free Upgrades – Unlike traditional Web site software like Dreamweaver, PhotoShop or Flash, upgrades to WordPress blog software is free.
31. Universal Platform – With the economy the way it is, designers and Internet marketing service providers are closing their doors and disappearing even more quickly than when I got started in this business in 1996. You’ve got to be careful these days. With traditional Web sites, very rarely will a new service provider agree to pick up where the old designer or developer left off. The result is that the new provider will want to charge you for starting from scratch. Conversely, almost anyone with basic PHP and MySQL experience can jump into your WordPress blog site project in a moments notice if something was to happen to the helper(s) that got your blog site setup for you in the first place.
32. Safety – Add images and media by uploading to server from within your secret admin area instead of through traditional ftp and risking deleting important files or uploading to the wrong directories
33. Freshness – Easily change your site layout and appearance by swapping themes. Great for temporary changes for holidays or seasons.
34. Reduced Loss of Work – Your work is automatically saved as you type even if you haven’t published your blog posts live to the web yet.
35. Mobile Readiness - No need to produce a second Web site just for mobile users. WordPress automatically recognizes if a person is viewing the site through a Web browser or mobile device and configures the content to be viewed appropriately on either.
36. Ease of Printing – Designers are notorious for creating Web sites that are too wide to print. With a simple plugin, all your WordPress blog site content can be easily printed in easy-to-read format…without creating duplicate “printable” versions of pages. No need for sacrificing screen view design just so that people can print the pages.

Okay, so I just couldn’t stop at 35! There are just so many reasons why WordPress is a great fit for practically every situation.

Did I miss any benefits of WordPress blog sites over traditional sites? Let me know and please contribute to this important post.

If you have been wondering how converting your traditional Web site would be of benefit, this post was made for you! If you would like to talk more with someone about how you go about converting a traditional Web site to a WordPress blog site, contact us at HereNextYear immediately at 303-743-0832

White papers have become increasingly popular over the years. They are usually more step-by-step and how-to oriented and more detailed than a “free report” but not as long as an entire e-book, but longer than a typical article you see on the web.

People who hate writing…simply love writing white papers because they’re so easy and fast to produce. Subscribers love them because they have (or should have) exceptional value in a small package, usually 3-20 pages.

For those reasons, I believe every Web site should have a few whitepapers to give away as incentive for a subscription to a list. And here are three steps to get you started.

1. Choose a HOT Topic for Your White Paper

No matter what industry you’re in, there is a hot topic out there somewhere. You need to choose one that appeals to a broad audience. My 101TrafficMethods.com whitepaper is a good example. Everyone in the Internet marketing industry wants more traffic to their Web site, right?

Having a bit of intrigue in your headline is a good idea too. Words like “taboos” and “secrets” and “avoid” bring a little edge to your topic. You want your headline to make people think, “oooo, what’s that?”

2. Format Your Whitepaper with Purpose

You can’t just haphazzardly throw together a bunch of text for a white paper. You do want people to actually read what you’ve painstakenly written.

-Choose a format that allows for simple reading and fast writing, trebuchet font or verdana are best.

-Describe the problem and why you chose to write the whitepaper in the first place.

-Use short paragraphs, highlighed titles and sub-titles.

-Present 15 to 25 steps or points or more that describe what people can do right now to help with the problem, even if that means not hiring you to help them….anything less is just an article.

-The first point should address the most common expectation.

-The last point or step should be the most important toward getting people to do something next. Give them a reason to pick up the phone and call you. Offer a free consult by phone or even in-person.

-Print the document to a PDF (using Adobe’s full version or some other free online PDF creator) and post the PDF to your website where you will direct people to the url such as mywebsite.com/mywhitepaper.pdf

3. Send More Emails to Reinforce the Whitepaper

When I first released a white paper to my subscriber list, I had them go sign-up for it. Yes, even though they were on my list already, I had them sign-up to be on another list. A segmented list.

Once they received the first email providing them with a link to get the white paper, they were invited to check out a few follow-up emails that would help them more with the topic that was discussed in the white paper.

But, I encouraged them to read the white paper first so that the follow-up emails would make sense.

So, create short educational messages about how to put the information in the white paper to best use and to get people to actually take the actions you’re suggesting.

Article marketing has been the renewed HOT item in the Internet marketing world. And, I really think that if you don’t add article marketing to your list of traffic builders, you’re leaving a huge opportunity on the table.

In fact, it’s so hot we’ve re-added article marketing to our list of HereNextYear services.

First of all, what is article marketing? It is the idea of writing a 400-600 word article and getting other people to post that article on their Web sites, blogs, or article directories.

What’s the benefit to you? When you include a signature line in your article with a link to your Web site, you have yourself what is called an “inbound link.” Google looooves inbound links. And, if you have enough of them, Google will start giving your Web site better positioning in search results.

So, the motivation for article writing has always been about “getting better search positions on Google.”

But now there’s another motivation for getting into article marketing. Twitter and Facebook!

See, when you get articles listed on other peoples’ Web sites, the Web site owner will likely distribute his new posting of your article to his Twitter followers and Facebook boards.

I’ve even seen cases with my own article promoting of Twitter getting my article listed on Google….”before” the blog post or Web page has been listed by Google!

Now that’s exciting to someone wanting to get the word out fast about a product or service!

Here are 3 tips for getting article marketing to work for you and your business. All three of these come from our experiences in just the past month related to promoting articles.

1) Write articles frequently – Sending one or two articles anywhere isn’t going to cut it. Plan for one article per week to be sent to your network. The distribution of articles on the web is definitely like a domino effect that increases your benefits with every day your articles are submitted to new networks.

2) Create multiple versions of your article – Use our free headline generator in the Level 1 membership area of the HereNextYear site to create multiple headlines. Then create multiple versions of your content and signature lines for more listings on Google.

By changing your wording, Google will not see your multiple submissions as attempts at duplicating content. Having 200 of the same article on other peoples’ Web sites won’t hurt you, it’s just that Google probably won’t include the pages of sites in their search results for more than about 5 or so.

Changing your content, however, allows you to write about the same topic using different words, and still get dozens and even hundreds or thousands of the same article to appear on Google’s search, just different renditions of it.

3) Automate the submission process for your articles – Search Google for “article submitter” and you’ll find several article submission systems to try. There are many available ranging from free to a couple hundred dollars a month.

Most important is to look for one that updates their directory lists frequently.

If you don’t want to bother with all that, consider our
Advanced Article Marketing program just launching June of 2009.

Yeah, it’s a sales letter, but also goes more into some depth about where article marketing is today and the benefits if you’re curious.

I also have a bit more depth on that page of what I was talking about above where Twitter is posting references to my articles on Google faster than Google can index a traditional Web page.

Article marketing is back and is bigger than ever. But, like anything else in this business, you have to “take action” or it won’t be good to you at all.