images from www.PhotoSpin.com

According to new data from a study from direct marketing agency Epsilon, open email rates increased 18.2% year-over-year, while click rates remained stable year-over-year at 5.9%. I find this very interesting for a number of reasons. It either means email is being written better and more enticing, or marketers are providing more relevant information to more targeted lists.

The study went on to reveal that “the top performers are those taking advantage of lifecycle triggers to send timely, relevant emails,” added Mabley, SVP of strategic and analytic consulting at Epsilon. “These marketers are capturing preferences — both explicit through preference centers and opt-in pages and implicit, such as Web activity, response and engagement activity.”

Ahh, I was right! Why did I think this? Because, I’ve seen the exact same results with my own email list. As, my email headlines become more clever (or more relevant) I see the open rates rise. And, as I focus my content more towards the exact reason (which I’ve surveyed to find out) why people opted into my list (home based business) – again, I see the open rates rise.

Another interesting finding was that the majority of Americans surveyed (87%) use email as their primary communication tool, and 74% of Europeans do the same. Plus, 56% of those who receive permission based emails from retailers do business with those companies. That’s good news for us marketers who base our business around building a list and building a relationship.

So – relevance, relevance, relevance. And, even better if you can use attention grabbing words for your headlines. Onwards and upwards and while you’re at it – Opt-in! : )

Here’s the entire article if you’d like to read more on Epsilon’s study.

I read this quote by Patricia Neal: “A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.” It really got me thinking.

I realized that is exactly the value of network marketing companies. It’s not the product. It’s not the company. It’s the people that you surround yourself with, it’s your mentor – the people who become a part of your life when you’re building your network marketing business.

Most people go into home based businesses dreaming of riches. But, as your success kicks in, it’s not the riches that make it all worthwhile, it’s the freedom and the growth that you experience that hooks you on this industry. And, the only way you get to experience that is to actually do it.

Some people call this “your why.” Why you are willing to go out on a limb, do the unthinkable, buck the system, walk away from traditional money earning methods. As your expectations grow, your why gets bigger and your belief in yourself just shines. You stand out in a crowd without even saying a word.

You are your greatest teacher, especially in this time of abundant information on the Internet. You’re also your greatest student. When you start teaching this to others you life will thrive. It’s the greatest feeling in the whole world.

Your RSS subscribers will boost your information-sharing. These influential users are the top contributors on the Web, Singer reports, and well worth wooing. “Reach them with messages worth spreading, and your content can resonate exponentially,” he notes.

“Social proofing” will help you convert your visitors to new community members. As you build up your subscribers/community members, comments, or Tweets, they “will act as ‘social-proofing’ elements to new visitors that your content is relevant, authoritative, and worth subscribing to,” Singer explains.

Your site will become a go-to online destination. As you cultivate a known reputation for quality, visitors will become conditioned to linking to your site. No more need to search them down! As Singer puts it: “Popular things just get more popular.”

“[T]he end goal is to create one popular area” to serve as the hub of your online identity, Singer advises.

The Po!nt: True fans can boost site SEO. Attract subscribers with dynamic content; they could help grow your site into a magnetic hub.

Source: Online Marketing Blog. Read the full post here.

image from www.photospin.com

Is Twitter Still a Useful SEO Tool?
So that leaves us with an interesting dilemma, should we scrap Twitter altogether from our SEO tool bag, or is it still a useful part of the conversation?

The Power of the Pyramid
The power of Twitter has always been in the pyramid effect of Twitter’s follower system. If I have 40 followers, and they each have 40 followers, and they each have 40 followers, the information quickly gets multiplied across 10′s of thousands of accounts. Even if this no longer has the effect of creating 64,000 incoming links to your site, it still puts your thoughts and articles in the hands of thousands of people.

Remember, the goal is to be a useful part of the conversation and SEO prominence rises out of that goal. If we publish good articles and people tweet them, they will find your site. Twitter still drives traffic, even if it doesn’t have the secondary effect of driving traffic through Google.

The Alternative Search Engine
Twitter is starting to bill itself as an alternative search engine. The new Twitter home page features the most popular topics by the minute and a very prominent search bar. A Twitter search is different from a Google search. A Google search is about long term relevance: Who’s the closest chiropractor, or who sells inexpensive silver jewelry. People are searching Twitter for a very timely type of relevance i.e. is it hot now? Jay-Z, Neil Patrick Harris, and Mad Men crowd the front page.

For a certain kind of fashionable product or of-the-moment star, a #1 Twitter search ranking may be more valuable than a #1 Google rank. Twitter the search engine can drive real organic traffic to your site and you may find that traffic from Twitter converts at a higher rate than traffic from Google. Analytics may tell you to dump Google SEO altogether and spend your days on Twitter.

It’s a New Idea, So It Has to Be Good
Twitter, like many new technologies, hasn’t found a final resting place yet. Most of us in the internet community recognize that Twitter is important because lots and lots of people are using it. Businesses are tweeting, grandmas are tweeting, Steven Colbert is … well, he’s doing it too. There’s a danger in jumping on the bandwagon of all new internet technologies, but we’re pretty sure this one is going to be around for some time. As it evolves, it’s more useful to be part of the conversation than start fresh from scratch. Set up a Twitter account. Make a new post for every article you write. Collect some followers and see what happens. The rest of us are waiting to see too.

Great post from one of my Linked-In sources, Zeke Camusio
http://www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog : Thanks Zeke!

This is an amazing story of a 14 year old Malawian boy who built a windmill to power his family’s home during a famine. He had to drop out of school due to hunger. And, yet he found a library (if you can call it that), taught himself physics, built a windmill even though his family told him he was crazy, and pulled his family out of poverty.No excuses folks. You can do whatever you think you can.

When I tell people I’m an Internet Marketer and I work from home – they look at me like I have 3 eyes. They say things like “no one makes any money on the Internet.” It amazes me! And, these people aren’t trailer trash – I mean, we’re talking college degrees, graduate degrees, high 6 figure earners.

If I told them how much money I make working from home on the Internet – they’d never believe me.

I came across this video today that shows the statistics of just how many people really are online and it’s growing every day. The truth is, Internet Businesses are like the wild west. They’re the new frontier. A lot like franchises were back in the ’60s. Think Round Table Pizza, McDonald’s, Burger King. Those guys really cashed in back then.

So, why is it that people don’t see this HUGE opportunity? You tell me. I don’t get it. They participate in social media every day, more and more. It’s just some of us get paid for having “fun” online.

Oh well. All the better for those of us who do. The key is in learning the new platform and partnering with the right mentors to ensure that you get as fast of a start as possible.

Buckle your seat belt, should you decide to ride! I know a few good teachers : )

“When you first start playing in the social media sandbox, you feel compelled to collect,” says Mark Goren in a post at the Daily Fix blog. “Subscribers. Followers. Friends. The more the merrier—at least that’s what it feels like at first.”

But consider this:

• Just because someone subscribes to your blog, that doesn’t mean she reads it religiously. “Consider how many unread items you have in your own newsreader,” he notes.
• A Twitter follower, meanwhile, can easily miss your thoughts unless you tweet at the precise moment he happens to be reading the stream.
• And how many times have you become a Facebook fan without ever returning to that specific page?

In other words, it’s a mistake to assume your large network automatically equals a large audience. Rather, you earn “must-read” or “must-view” status by engaging your subscribers/followers/friends with content they actively seek.

And if that content is compelling enough, they’ll further expand your potential audience by sharing it with their networks.

“[T]he real win,” argues Goren, “is when you entice people to share, no matter the network they’re sharing on or the method used.”

The Po!nt: It’s not the size of your potential audience that counts, but how well you engage them. “Don’t fool yourself by counting people if you’re not connecting with them,” Goren says.

Source: Daily Fix. Click here for the full post from MARKETING PROFS.

My Running Pal - Gemma

Today I downloaded the Shake It Photo – Oh My GOSH. It is so much fun. If, like me, when you were a kid – you were a huge Polaroid fan, you’ll love this little app. Basically, you just use your camera on your iPhone like you normally would, then you pull the photo into Shake It Photo and watch it develop just like a Polaroid print in front of your very eyes. On your iPhone.

How cool is that? Check it out. www.ShakeItPhoto.com

3 How To On Twitter Today:
And, It Doesn’t Include Tweeting

1. Create Your Twitter Account
2. Personalize / Brand Your Profile
3. Follow and Be Followed.

How To On Twitter – Create Your Account (www.Twitter.com)
Takes seconds to set up and is very intuitive! Choose your name carefully as you can’t change it.  For companies, personalize it  – ACMEJoe. For home based businesses, like me, use your name or your blog name.

How To On Twitter – Branding Yourself
Social media is all about My Story Marketing and the Law of Attraction so be YOU.

Choose a background image, don’t use a Twitter background because you’ll look like everyone else. Get a free background from www.twitterimage.com or upload one of your favorite photos.
Also, don’t use the generic twitter picture, select your own photo instead or avatar instead www.faceyourmanga.com or www.mywebface.com

There are a lot of spammers in Twitter and after awhile you’ll learn to avoid the followers that use the Twitter icon or vague images that don’t fess up to who they really are. Keep it re al. Show your face.

Add your business website to your profile.  Its subtly there if people want to know more about you.

How To On Twitter – Following and Be Followed

Daily, you’ll sync up with people you’re following and those that are following you. Your goal is to build a two-way relationship. So, look for people who actually communicate back with you and if after a few days someone doesn’t reciprocate, drop them.

1st Day Only – Daily Routine:

Find someone (an industry expert or ghuru) and follow their followers. I started with Tim Ferris, The 4-hour Work Week, because I’m a huge fan of his and he has a big impact on my industry. Your goal is to build a team as large as you can, this is a numbers game: 18,000 followers will get you around 100 – 200 leads per week.

What to look for:

• People with common interests
• People within your industry

Pick 3 people, then look for people within the first 5 pages of followers. Click “Follow”. This will give you a total of 15 pages to start with.

CAUTION: Twitter is very careful about people being overly aggressive. Do this everyday but don’t over do it and build your tribe.

This should only take you about 15 minutes and will be part of your daily ritual. Twitter is a great way to bend the rules of business in using a social marketing for reaching out to new customers.

That’s it for today!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twitter Terminology for Dummies:
Following – someone you’ve selected to follow:

• Someone who you secretly want on your team or in your business
• Someone you want to build a relationship with

Followers – somebody following you

@username + message – goes to all of the followers of that person.
D username + message – only goes to that person. Private.

Top 10 Twitter Words, David Letterman style – on Twitter terminology. Pure fun. Part of Steph Robey’s How To On Twitter series for beginner Twitterers.

http://www.MeetStephAndDave.com?t=10TwitsTG

How To On Twitter – Top 10 Twitter Twibutes to Twitterology

I’ve been up to my eyeballs lately in Twitter. Attempting to break down what at first glance seems like such a simple thing: A How To On Twitter.  My goal is to reach the most phobic of computer users, this may not be you but what I’ve discovered along the way should be interesting to anyone, Twitterer or not.

During my research I find myself in stitches over the vocabulary people use within this social media. The thing I love most about Twiterers is how creative they are and I’ve tried to give credit where I could.  Hats off to @twittonary. He’s one clever Twordsmith.

# 10     Twaffic         Twitter traffic. Duh! (@twittonary)
# 9       Twitterfly      Being a social butterfly on Twitter. (@twittonary)
# 8       Tweetheart  That special Tweeter who makes your heart skip a beat. (@twittonary)
# 7       TweeterboxesTwitterers who tweet too much. (@twittonary)
# 6       Twit             English: A foolish Twitterer.. @amtrack
#5        Twang         A southern Twitterer. (“Right nice twang y’all posted there, @billybob.”)
# 4        Nest Ass    The shape of your butt from sitting at the computer twittering all day (@mmlinke1)
# 3 –     Deja-Tweet The overwhelming feeling that you just saw that same tweet, from that same person, 20 minutes ago. (@errandsultd)
AND     Regurg-a-Tweet The act of re-tweeting a tweet that someone originally tweeted about you. (@errandsultd)
# 2     Chirpes      A Canarial Disease for which there is no known Tweetment TeresitaMercado
AND     Nesticillin     The only known cure for Chirpes @mmlinke
# 1 – Twoops – When you accidentally send a private message through your public Twitter stream (@twittonary )
AKA Mistweet – A tweet that one regrets later (@twittonary)

Now, I think it’s time for Tweehab    Twitter + Rehab: Taking a recovery break from Twitter   @lmull3

That’s my how to on Twitter and tweeting twords in the twittersphere. Feel free to add yours in my comments.