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Monday, February 19, 2007

Check The Sincerity Of Your Social Networks

"Creating Mountains Of Wealth Begins With PRE-QUALIFIED PROSPECTS!"

When I first read Robert Allen book about, "Multiple Streams of Income" I got to admit I was somewhat smitten. This was the guy who jumped up to 24k in one night on the Internet. The rest of the book reads like a fairy tale. You walk away from the experience with this unshakable belief that you can do this too......

Like I said, I was smitten.

But when you break down the math of how the income relates to the actual numbers that are involved the "landslide profits" it loses something. It loses a little of the magic that you once felt. You see Allen had a sizeable number to play with in the first place. He had a phenomenal audience OPT IN list in his customer database. The actual number was around 23,000 opt-in emails which meant he had permission to market to them. They knew who he was and he had developed a relationship with them.

He managed to score 1% of the money from this group of people. That is the MAGIC number that got him on a television show where he released an email to informed his list how to order an ebook that he wrote.

This sort of takes the fun out of it a wee bit -- doesn't it?

THE PROBLEM WITH THE YOUTUBE.COM PHENOM

Every one with a little budget suddenly wants to become the next www.youtube.com. They want to get awarded the next 1.65 billion dollars, (this was the amount Google paid for the network). Some of these social networks online are pretty good but most of them are just average. There are many people on these sites that are looking to hook up with other like minded people.

Podomatic, where I have a podcast show by the way, (http://www.911copywriter.podomatic.com/) has a lot of people who can join your friend network. After they join it you may or may not have a lot of contact with them. I know I don't on a general basis. Oh sure, they may come by to see if I have a new show posted or not. But that about as far as our friendship goes. Thats not much of a friendship.

I certainly could use their personal email addresses.

But what about groups like WWW.LINKEDIN.COM the quality of people there are matched on profession and where you went to school etc. I am not particulary convinced that this is a sincere networking tool either.

And MYSPACE.com. What can I say about this one? This site is based on who is hot or not and its somewhat of a dating/stalking site. Again. I am not convinved that the people who join your friendship database online give a royal hoot about you or not. Its very unlikely.

Here are a few more courtesty of TECHCRUNCH.COM

TRUSTED OPINIONA new social network named Trusted Opinion came out of private beta over the weekend. It has the single worst logo I’ve ever seen ( a circle with a check mark and some unreadable text), and a name that suggests they are a bland reputation based service like TrustedID. But actually they’re a new recommendation-based social network that has integrated both Flash and Ajax components very nicely.Your network of friends is viewed through a rotating, solar-system like visual module built in Flash.

JYTE
Jyte is a new service that leverages OpenID to allow users to start a discussion on any “claim” they care to make. Other users can then vote and discuss those claims.

TEXTMARKS
TextMarks will announce a new product tomorrow that allows publishers to charge people to receive breaking news and other information via text messages. It’s available now under a new “monetize” tab on the home page of the site.the battle rages on with

PHOTOBUCKET
Users are restricted from uploading their own audio files (copyright concerns drove this), but Photobucket says they may add a record button to allow a narrative of the photo/video stream in the future. For now, a selection of licensed stock music is available. Users can also add transition effects, text bubbles, frames and other effects to the mashup.

There is another video system that was just released that we tried to log onto over the weekend. This thing didn't seem to work. There was another mishap over the weekend as someone on the Myblog.com site spammed a bunch of its members......... I got 50 emails from people who I didn't know and some of them were in other languages that I don't speak... such as French and Chinese.

This takes me all the way back to Robert Allen once again. I respect what he has done and accomplish. However I do not think that marketing to your own extended database is much of an achievement in the grand scheme of things.

............. But how likely is it that you will ever top him or equal him using these frivalous social networks like the ones I've outlined.

Try to go for more sincere efforts and find genuine people in your niche.

Cantu writes for the 911copywriters.com blog. This entry was written on 10:16 pm on Feb 19, 2007.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Dreamweaver Users: Beware You Don't Get

"DREAMWEAVER USERS BEWARE: You Must Be Careful You Don't Get Blacklisted"

A friend of mine recently had his entire site blacklisted from the search engines. He managed to overlook a very simple and basic mistake on his pages. When he was copying and pasting his text into his web page he forgot to change the color on some of it. This type was the same color of his web page background color.

Can you guessed what happened next?

This resulted in his web pages looking like a SPAM attempt to trick the search engines with hidden keywords. Worse, because the hex numbers were the same he did this one three of four of his pages. This can actually happen to anyone.

Using Microsoft Word is important when you check your spelling and its also a great tool for gramatical errors. But when you copy and paste directly into a Macromedia Dreamweaver page you got to make sure that the type and the background color differ in contrast. If you fail to do this you are looking as if you are trying to pull one over on the search engines.

"Bad Magic Hat SEO Has Earned Its Name a Name For a Reason"

Up until just a few years back, (although it seems a lot longer) there were all sorts of "tricks" like this -- mini keyword stuffing being one of them. The search engines blew up and drew a firm line in the sand that nobody was to perform these unsavory tactics in order to get high search engine rankings.

Then of course is the issue of link farms..... etc.

Now, my friend made a very honest mistake. But in a heartbeat his site tanked from view in the search engines due to a very minute detail. And it can happen to anyone. Working under tight deadlines and staying up late at night its easy to miss one or two critical details.

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Ted Cantu has written this article at 10:00 pm Feb 18 2007. He can be found at
SEO Search Quest in Farmington Hills, MI

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Avoiding The Spam Folder

"Heres How You Avoid The - Dreaded
Spam Folder - With Your Emails"


Heres a quick tip to ensure that your emails do not get accidently pitched into the spam folder. The email services are getting pretty picky now about what they accept. This can lead to your emails getting dumped right into the trash.

Here are three simple rules to live by:

1. Personlization Is Key
Make sure that whenever possible you use their first name and other bits of personal information. These can be extremely effective. When your recipient reads the email and sees their name on it this can have a positive overall effect on your marketing. Remember that people love to read and talk about their favorite subjects --- themselves! This can work too in your email mailings.

2. Treat the Title Like A Headline
Remember to treat the title of your email like a headline in a newspaper. Make sure that it is something that catches the eye and is worth reading. This is going to be extremely important as you build rapport with your customer base. The other thing I can tell you is that make sure you use a fair combination of upper and lower case letters. This is going to help you for the following reasons:

1. Your eye will travel up and down as it reads across the sentence --- this adds visual variety.
2. This will hold your readers attention.
3. This looks visually stunning.

3. Stay Away From "No No" Words
Steer clear of words that will take your email straight to the spam folder. Stay away from words like..... FREE... prescription drugs, WINNER, at no cost, you have won, new product....excessive exclamation points and punctuation.

Now.... a quick note on the word FREE. I have written chapters on the word FREE and how to effectively use it. There are some things you will want to take note of:

The concept of FREE can do absolutely brilliant things for your campaign. But you want to be careful of how you introduce it to your mailing list or you will get accidently tossed into the SPAM or trash folder by a spam filter.

Take note of the following spellings:

FR~EE
FR_EE
FR-EE
FR^EE

And you insert these into your titles and body copy in your email message. The concept of giving away something for free is a good one. This can actually build a lot of quick response and build rapport. Everyone loves to get a free tip or a money saving idea. The response for this is very good. As with any tactic - just becareful not to over use it.

** Take note too that this gets even trickier in this age of casino, porno, drug and prescription sites out there. Its difficult to market effectively. Those industries have made the SPAM community tighten its belt.

This entry was posted on Saturday, Feb.17th, 2007 at 7:04 am and is filed under #1 SEO Michigan You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response and link back to your site.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Avoid These Top Ten Sales Killers


"Avoid These Deadly Sales Killers - And Boost Your Sales Margin"

If you want to achieve astronomical results in your sales then listen up. Entreprenuer Magazine has recently posted a list of THE TOP TEN THINGS YOU MUST AVOID. We had some fun by upping the list a bit with our own real world results.

Here they are....


Sales Killer #1: Lack of professional appearance.

Sales Killer #2: Talking too much.

Sales Killer #3: Your vocabulary.

Sales Killer #4: Not investing time in building rapport.

Sales Killer #5: Lack of a qualification system.

Sales Killer #6: Not knowing when to stop presenting and close the sale.

Sales Killer #7: Ego.

Sales Killer #8: Not knowing how to close.

Sales Killer 9: Not paying attention to details.

Sales Killer #10: Poor fulfillment.


You can listen to the whole show here.....
http://911copywriter.podomatic.com/


Thursday, February 15, 2007

Link to Podcast Show on Podcast Alley


My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-081784b0d22a187c8c19eb6216f530fa}

Sales Modeling - Closing Tactics

"SALES SUCCESS BEGINS WITH YOU: Here Is How To Proceed at the Negotiation Table"

On a recent podcast I displayed a little known tactic that has never known to fail. Closing the deal on any new piece of business can always be at best unpredictable. You will not win every negotiation on the closing table but there are two things that can help.

1. Sales Copy
Your sales copy should be doing the sales job for you. When you are dealing with creating your sales letter one must afix a lot of attention to detail. The goal of writing good sales copy is to keep them hopping from one sentence to the next. For every piece of information you want to nail them with at least 5 benefits. There really is no overkill to this.

When you deliver the sales letter... ALWAYS print out two copies. Bring one with you to the closing table so there is no mistake about what the prospect is getting.

Flip it aroud for your prospect so they can see what your talking about. Read off your own copy and using your index finger... point out what the prospect is getting - outlining each benefit.

2. Body Modeling
We talked about how to model your body posture on our recent podcast. If your prospect is excitable you get excitable. If they are talking slowly then you do the same. You can even match their breathing rate so you are reaching the same tone. This is going to help you, "slip under the radar" and get into the prospects mindset...... IT is at this level of communication where things can begin to move and shift.

You can begin to introduce scenarios into the picture at this point on what life will be like once your prospect experiences your products or services......

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Ted Cantu is the creator of http://www.1seomichigan.com he has contributed to several blogs and podcasts such as…..http://911copywriters.podomatic.com. He served as a top rated art director for Interactive Web Marketing groups in Chicago and New York City.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Affiilate Program Is Released !!


"Top Profit Generating Web Site Program Is Now Available -- Over The Top Affiliate Program Has Been Released"

#1 SEO Michigan has released its SEO Affiliate Program. We just got word this morning that we can go ahead and start accepting sign ups. Due to a number of stalled efforts - incompatible server space - programming language problems --- we haven't been able to release it as planned. Now our tech people have put the right components in order and we can begin to accept sign ups.


Our affiliate program is unlike any other affiilate program of its kind. The first thing you will notice is that our payout is really high. In fact we are giving away 50% profits to all of our partnerships. This is for a limited time.

We have a reason for doing this. First of all, its unprecidented. This type of generous payout structure is a bit unhead of. Owner Ted Cantu explains,

"There are plenty of programs out there that pay 10% of the overall sales..... Which is fine for middle of the road companies but we believe that we are delivering something pretty unique to the market place -- quick and fast results... We are dedicated to delivering fast results".

This vicious, fast paced approach to getting high search engine rankings is outstanding. Our partners are backed up with a guaranteed payment. In fact, they can even log into our system and track their own sales. To get more information on the
911 Copywriters Affiliate program you can look it up here.....

The program is free to join but you do have to have your own web site. Due to the technical restrictions of our system we are lot allowing MLM type web sites at this time, (Market America, PrePaid Legal, Avon, Web Malls etc.).

We provide all of the web graphics that you will need to attract sales. The participants will be very pleased to see this system in play. It is state of the art and is the mastermind of Internet experts Derek Ghel and Corey Rudl.

We welcome all participants. We would like to also welcome especially those in the fields of advertising, marketing consulting, business coaching, web site companies.

Here is what the official word is on
www.1seomichigan.com

"Here are just a few reasons why you will want to sign up today....
Add Value and Revenue To Your CompanyGenerate new streams of income
Stay on the cutting edge of technology with no out of pocket expense
Add to your existing services
We guarantee our work 100% – which ensures your payment
WebCrush has the highest payout for any SEO program on the market
We provide you with web banners, artwork and marketing material
You are able to add value to your business by promoting our products
There are no out of pocket expenses for our basic program"

These guys are also tops when it comes to web video, mobile web video and podcasting.
#1 SEO Michigan is also supporting all of its members with marketing help on how to promote their services to all sign ups.

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We can be found at
http://www.1seomichigan.com/. Cantu can also be found at http://911copywriter.podomatic.com/

COPYWRITING 101 PODCAST


Click here to get your own player.



New Cantu Podcast on copywriting - just released.... Check it out!!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

New Directory For Web Developers

"Brand New Directory Shows Web Developers Where To Get Essential Google Data"

There are so many books out there on how to get high search engine rankings. But the problem is that the industry changes so quickly leaving a lot of developers dumbfounded.

Worse, there is a lot of misinformation out there about how Google works and ranks their pages. So how do you keep on top of it all?

You can start by going straight to the source......

We got a directory on our site that you can access:

http://www.1seomichigan.com/seo_resources_michigan.html

We are focussing on Michigan developers but anyone is free to use our links that we collected. In the upcoming days ahead we will be adding more to them.

These include SEO Resources, Google API's, Google Web Toolkit, Google Search, Search Engine advice, Scripts and Flash, PHP, XML scripts and a whole lot more.

If you get stuck on some of the terminology -- no worries.... We included a link to an online dictionary and glossary.
http://www.searchenginedictionary.com/

You can find the keyword tracker here....
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Walled Lake Michigan, and is a member of Automation Alley. We teach and train companies the value of having solid SEO ranked pages and develop content for mobile media.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

SEO Michigan - New Mobile Services

Cutting Edge SEO in Michigan - #1 SEO Michigan is a dedicated,
precision-based team of designers, web content providers,
SEO - SEM, online marketing , programmers, and copywriters.

When it comes to creating high ranking web sites you've come to the right place! Our expertise in search engine marketing far exceeds what passes for common SEO from our competitors.

We position you with cutting edge new technologies including podcasting, blogging, RSS, iPOD web video, (and other hand held devices) and target your web site for more exposure in the niche market of your choice.

Get more information here.....

This new SEO group in Michigan is the invention of Ted Cantu -- who has brought you Eclyptico graphics and 911Copywriters.com. This new SEO group is focussing on some interesting niche markets including manufacturing and high tech companies.

This group has expanded to include a network of professionals. They are growing and looking for strong partners. Watch this space to hear about more programs and services.
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We can be found at
http://www.1seomichigan.com. Cantu can also be found at http://911copywriter.podomatic.com/

Get Into Real Online Marketing Action