I’m really not a big fan of social media stuffs. But, I do still use, analyse, and study how Twitter and Facebook can be used to generate buzz and drive traffic to websites.

And that’s why I’m really upset to discover that Twitter, once the symbol of social media innovation and power, is now filled with noises, junks, and spam. If you’ve used Twitter for quite a good while, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Link spamming, automatic followings, sponsored tweets, and many others. [I’m not totally innocent in this regard, because I do tweet my own stuffs. Sometimes, even when the quality is sub-par.]

The implication of these behaviours is HUGE. It becomes very hard to get your tweet above all the noises and be heard.

So, what can you do?

Selective Tweeting

Choose carefully what you’re broadcasting through your account. Because, by tweeting selectively, you’ll reduce the amount of clutters and noises in Twitter. And thus, increasing your chance to be heard.

So, ask yourself these 2 questions before you decide to tweet. If you can answer any one of these two with a YES, then tweet you go. But, if you can’t, please, stop yourself from doing so.

1. Is This Really Cool?

This is the question that you should ask yourself before tweeting about an article, video, or any other stuffs, even your own one. Really cool contents are extremely helpful or useful to other people. It’s the kind of contents that you’ll regret for the rest of your life, if you happen to miss them. They are the cream of the crop. Crème de la crème. Best of the best.

Just a note though, really cool contents don’t have to be serious or complex. So, feel free to tweet about a good and funny YouTube video, if you want to, as this is helpful, in some way, to others (helpful in relieving their stress, for instance).

2. Is This Me? Human?

Social media is a place to gather and converse with your peers. So, talk. Don’t just hand out clickable links in your tweets like candies. Tweet about what you think, feel, and experience. Your followers want to hear them. That’s why they’re following you, right?

If you want to make money with Twitter in the long run, you’ll need loyal followers who listen to you. So, stop sending automated messages about your product or service (using those automatic Twitter tools). Because, sooner or later, your followers will stop listening.

What you need to do, instead, is building a good relationship with your followers. And to do that, you’ve to make sure that you’re tweeting about ‘you’.

So, Maybe I should Shut Up

Wouldn’t it be great if we can live in a quiet Twittersphere? Where all tweets are important, useful, entertaining, or simply, enlightening. Where everyone tweet only when they really need to.

This post is written to encourage and teach you how to tweet responsibly and profitably (in the long run), just like what a true marketer supposed to do. Hopefully, you’ve read it with an open mind and ready to make Twittersphere a better place for you, me, and other Twitter users.

Feel free to tweet if you find this useful, I mean it ^-^.

Related posts:

1. How to be the Furious Five of Twitter Marketing
2. What’s the Best Ways to Get Lots of Traffic to Your Brand New Site?
3. What’s Your KPIs?

Out of all the books that I’ve read in the past few years (and believe me, I’ve read quite a bit), The Game, the pick-up artist book by Neil Strauss, seems to be one of the few that leaves a lasting impression on me. I could relate to his character, a social retard who have not grown up and figure out how to deal with women yet. And, I was just excited to finally discover the ‘secrets’ to attracting women.

But, what’s even more interesting to me about his book is how this law of attraction is more universal than most of us like to think. Neil’s concept of attracting members of the opposite sex can also be used, with some modification, to help us attract and get more subscribers. Here’s how.

1. Select A Target

No, you can’t create something randomly and expect it to be successful anymore. In this highly competitive environment, you’ll need to differentiate yourself. Position your product, be it a blog or a course, as something new and fresh by first understanding who your market is. Male in their 40s? Or female in their 20s? Then, find out their needs and wants. The writing style and design of your squeeze page will be different depending on the demographic you’re going for.

2. Approach and Open

BAM! That’s what your headline should feel like. A punch on the face. You can’t ignore it and you have no choice but to react to it. Check out Blogussion article on the 5 major ways to write a punchy headline. People are pre-occupied most of the time; they are busy answering their emails, listening to music, or doing other stuffs while browsing. So, your job is to break their pre-occupation using your headlines.

3. Demonstrate Value

What’s In It For Me? Why should I read this? Why should I spend time on this squeeze page than this other one? This is why you’ll need an interesting and shocking first paragraph after your punchy headline. Your first paragraph needs to tell your readers what they’ll get by subscribing to your newsletter or email list, making them excited on what’s to come.

4. Isolate the Target

A quick and easy way to grab the attention of our primitive and most decisive part of our brain is to use the word ‘you’ often in your copy (of your squeeze page). The old brain is self-centred and focused on what is good for you, hence it’ll often unconsciously prefer what better emphasizes how You can benefit. So, rather than using ‘we’, personalize your writing with ‘you’.

5. Create an Emotional Connection

Unless you can build rapport and trust with your readers or prospects, you can’t get them to subscribe. You need to show your the visitors of your squeeze page that you’re genuine, honest, and real. Tell them how you can relate to their problems and how, by subscribing, they’ll be able to solve those problems. Videos will help tremendously to create this emotional connection, as the visitors can listen to your voice and probably see you (if you record yourself).

6. Pump Buying Temperature

The visitors might already be interested in subscribing to your blog/list, but they just can’t seem to get themselves to do it. Hell, we’re all inherently lazy after all. So, your job is to make that decision to subscribe as painless and as smooth as possible.

You do this, as many marketing gurus probably have told you, by bribing them excellent quality freebies (in the form of eBooks, video tutorials, etc). This will usually give them the much needed final push to take the action to subscribe.

7. Blast Last-Minute Resistance

Just like a woman who’s afraid that you’ll be that guy who leaves them early next morning after she has given herself to you, your visitors have the same fear about subscribing to your email list.

Spam emails that contain links to viruses or hacks have been a bad enough problem without them putting their names and email addresses on some random subscription forms. So, you need to promise them, in your privacy policy, that you will keep their email addresses private and will not send any spam emails to them. And, of course, keep this promise.

These are a couple of tips to get more subscribers to your blog or, if you’re launching a product, your list of prospects. One thing you have to remember is to manage your expectation. Not everyone who visits your squeeze page will subscribe. You can get subscription rate of 1% or 20%, depending on how well you’ve optimized it.

So, be sure to split-test and tweak your squeeze pages to get maximum conversion rate.

Related posts:

1. 8 Ways to Building Lists of Subscribers Fast
2. How One Article Get Me 200 More Subscribers
3. I Don’t Need to Build a List?

Is there such a thing? A formula that you can use to turn your new blog into an A-list blog? This is the question that drives me to research on what recently successful blogs all have in common. One thing for sure, the quality of contents still play a huge role in their success. But what other factors contribute to the success of a new blog these days? What’s the winning formula?

The ‘Good Blog’ Formula

Let’s start by defining the old good blog formula,

Basically, all you need to do is consistently put out great contents. Great contents are original. Not a copy-paste articles from somewhere. They’re informative, meaning they’re helpful for the people reading them, and entertaining. There’s no point writing a great article if no one’s reading it (because its too boring).

Then, after writing your good old posts, you’ll need to do SEO (search engine optimization) on them, which include on-page optimization and link building.

This is the ‘good blog’ formula.

Unfortunately, this formula is not working that good anymore. The number of competitions have increased exponentially in the last few years, and yet most new bloggers seem to ignore them. It’s not enough to be good, you’ll need to be great.  So, these are some winning edge strategies to help you evolve your blog to the next level.

The Winning Edge

1. Personality

You can’t just publish plain content anymore. It’s not like the good old days where you’ll be one the two guys releasing a guide to search engine optimization or blogging. You’re competing with hundreds others to be heard now. So, differentiate yourself by instilling personality into every one of your posts. A blog with a strong personality will inevitably attract loyal readers.

A good example of this is Shoemoney.com. Jeremy Schoemaker always have such a strong opinion about anything that you just can’t ignore the guy, whether to agree or disagree with him.

2. Marketing 2.0

Your potential audience isn’t going to seek you out. That’s why you need to seek them out. If you don’t market your blog, your blog might as well be dead.

Unfortunately, the old marketing effort will not suffice in this extremely competitive age. You’ll need to mix your SEO efforts with social media marketing, forum marketing, Facebook advertising, and other advanced traffic driving strategies.

3. Multimedia

Written posts will not go away. But, in order to have an advantage over other blogs, you’ll need to start doing video and audio posts.

Audio and video posts play a big role in many recently successful blogs, especially in certain niches. There’s no denying that if you’re blogging in the entertainment and technology related niche, you must do video and audio posts. In the blogging and internet marketing niche, however, multimedia posts are not the norm yet. So, let’s start doing them right now so you can get a head start.

4. Networking

A few years ago, it’s enough to write a post and do some basic on-page SEO to it. Someone somewhere will find your blog and become your readers. Now, you definitely can’t do this anymore. If you don’t spend time building a good relationship with other bloggers in your niche, by commenting on their blogs or writing guest posts, your chance of success is slim to none.

The Winning Formula

So, the ‘secret formula’ to a winning blog is

It’s possible to excel at all of the winning edge strategies. But, in reality, not many blogs able to do that. Some blogs are successful because of the advanced marketing strategies they’ve implemented, while others because of their multimedia use and personalities.

Fortunately, just by excelling at one of the winning factors, you can have a potentially successful blog in your hand. Hope you enjoy this post and have a nice weekend, guys.

Related posts:

1. Is Your Blog A “Me Too” Blog? Diagnose It Now!
2. The Secret of the Most Popular Blog Posts
3. 8 Habits of Highly Successful Bloggers

If you watched  the Academy Awards yesterday , you’ll agree with me in saying that it’s a shocker. When you thought Avatar, the best selling movie of all time, will win the most prestigious Best Picture award, it lost. I was really disappointed and upset with the result, mostly because I’ve put a huge bet on Avatar (which I’ll never do again), and secondly, because Avatar loses to a movie with a fraction of its budget, Hurt Locker.

So, in this post,  I’ll analyse some of the things that Hurt Locker did right to win the Oscar and how you can apply them to your blogging.

1. Designed For Critics

Hurt Locker knows how to position itself in the competitive film market. The director and script writer focused their efforts on getting the best acting (actor’s performance), story progression, and cinematography, elements of a movie that the critics love. And this proven formula seemed to work once again as Hurt Locker wins the Oscar.

So, study your market. You’ve to know who reads your blog (or who you want to read your blog) and what they love, so that you can create contents that are tailored for them. If your audience can relate to your writing, they’ll come back again and again to your blog, despite there are other bigger blogs out there.

2. New Perspective

How many movies have been made about the war in Iraq? Yeah, I can already recall five from the top of my head and I’m sure there’re a whole lot more. And Hurt Locker, is unfortunately one of them. But, unlike other war in Iraq movies that focused on the actions and shootings, Hurt Locker focused on building characters and the relationship between each one of them. It’s an interesting take on such an overused setting.

Sure, blogging and SEO (search engine optimization) have been dissected from almost every imaginable ways. But, some bloggers can still find sub niches within these two huge topics. You can, for example, write about blog designs, pay per click marketing, or social media. Or, rather than doing written posts (like almost every other blogs out there), you might want to publish video or audio posts. People always wants something fresh. So, if you can give it to them, you win.

3. Proud to be Small

Hurt Locker isn’t shy to be a low budget movie. In fact, one of the producers are so proud of it that he sent a letter to the Academy Awards juries, asking them to let Hurt Locker wins because of its miniscule budget.

So, never be ashamed of the size of your blog (ehem…that sure sounds awkward). There are advantages of being a small blog. For instance, you can test new ideas quickly and easily on your blog without the fear of disappointing your loyal readers.

That’s all folks. Remember to always design your contents for your target audience, try to write from new perspective, and always be proud of your blog.

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1. How To Find DoFollow Blogs?
2. 7 Little Known Tweaks to Improve Your Money Making Blogs
3. Top 6 Essential Free Blogs Research Sites

According to a Cambridge University study, watching uplifting clip from the Oprah Winfrey Show can make you a better person. As part of the study, 30 people watched an uplifting clip from the show and the other 30 people watched part of a nature documentary film.

Afterwards, they were paid to write an essay on what they watched and asked if they would help with another study, this time without being paid. About 70 percent of the Oprah watchers agreed to the further study compared to only 40 percent of the doco viewers.

Another Experiment

In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb told us about one interesting experiment involving numbers. The participants of the experiment were asked to state their social security numbers before specifying any random numbers, from one to infinity. And guess what, all of the participants stated numbers that resemble their social security numbers.

The Oprah’s experiment coupled with the case study from The Black Swan convinced me that we’re so easily manipulated by our surroundings, whether we’re aware of it or not. Of course, this can be both negative and positive. On one hand,  we might now feel very susceptible to product advertising and marketing in general.

The Positive

But, on the other hand, we can use this knowledge to motivate ourselves and thus grow our online business, possibly by watching motivational videos and listening to motivational speeches. Because, if the above experiments are true, we’ll inevitably be motivated to take necessary actions to accomplish our goals.

So, I guess it’s time to delete the songs in your iPod and substitute them with Anthony Robbins’ motivational audios. Yeah, and watch Oprah.

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Guess. Guess. It’s not hidden or mysterious. Believe it or not, the ultimate trap of making money online that most of us have fallen into, at one time or another, is staring right at us. And yet, we can’t seem to notice it. So, what is it?

It’s information.

Information is a double-edged sword. We can’t dismiss it, as we need to know how to do something before we can actually do it. For example, we need to understand the concept of search engine optimization before we can optimize our site.

The Pleasurable Trap

And yet, when we are presented with too much information, we somehow lose the will to act. We convinced ourselves that by having the knowledge, we are superior. And to be even better, we need more knowledge and so we try to find more information. We read the blogging tutorials, watch the list building videos, buy the product launch training course, and so on.

Contrary to the norm, it is pleasurable to be in this trap. We don’t take any actions or do any work, and yet we feel better about ourselves.

Dealing with D.I.C

But, if you are really serious about making money online, you’ll better get out of this destructive information cycle. And get out fast. As the longer you stay, the harder it is to succeed.

The first step to get out of the D.I.C is to realize that you are in one. Just like drug or alcohol addicts admitting their addiction, we first need to admit that we’re addicted to information.

Then, it’s time to take some radical actions.

By doing the steps above, you should have more time and a less cluttered mind to start working toward your goals, be it making money online from blogging, affiliate marketing, or any other methods.

If you found these tips useful, you should probably subscribe to my blog via rss or email. Just so you’ll get easy updates on new articles about persuasion, influence and marketing. Cheers.

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2. 7 Little Known Tweaks to Improve Your Money Making Blogs
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I received an email from Frank Kern yesterday. At first, I thought…“Huh, another sales pitch…?” But then, because the email was from Frank and all, I opened it. And I’m glad I did.

The email contained a link to the recorded video presentation by Frank Kern called Core Influence, created in early 2008. In it, Frank talked about how to achieve success by knowing what you really want and who you really are, and knowing what your market really want and who they really are. It’s a fantastic video that goes far beyond the superficial making money online talks that the gurus are selling, and into the realms of subsconcious bond with your true self and customers.

It’s a great video and I can’t recommend it more. Check it out here, Frank Kern’s Core Influence. Btw, you need to sign-up to watch it.

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“Wait, blog’s not ready yet, I need to add this fancy plug-in to it. Another month, please.”

“Can’t start my list-building, I need to redesign my squeeze page and add follow-up emails to my auto responder. Another month, please.”

We are all too familiar when this happens. We tell ourselves that we are making things perfect and that it’s gonna be the best when it’s done. But deep inside, we know that’s not true. What we are doing is just…

Avoiding the possibility of Failure.

We’ve been brainwashed with the ‘boy wonder’ success stories, perpetrated by the media . You know, the typical tale of how a man/woman from a small town and without any [insert the field they excel at] background is able to be a champion in their chosen field. The media had used this storyline for Tiger Woods (when he won his first major championship at the age of 21), Steven Spielberg (when he made his first blockbuster movie), and so many other successful people that it’s hard to list them all.

The problem is, by trying to be them (perfect), we are not avoiding the possibility of failure. On the other hand, we are sabotaging ourselves from the possibility of success. Who ever guess Google will be this profitable by providing ‘free’ search engine service for the masses? Who knows Facebook will get this big when there are tons of other social networking sites competing for the same market? NOBODY.

Learning From The Giants

Both Google and Facebook founders believe in their respective products, long before it was launched. So, they do what they do and succeed. But, does that mean it could have gone the other way and fail? Of course. But, that doesn’t stop them from trying.

One thing that I find very useful to overcome the fear of failure is to think like software companies. Remember how long Gmail is in the beta phase? Google, one of the largest online company in the world, released an imperfect(beta) product before releasing its full version a year later.

Microsoft, one of the largest software company in the world, also did this by releasing the beta version of Windows 7 before launching the full version a few months later. The success of Gmail and Windows 7 is the result of continuous testing and tweaking at the beta phase of each products.

Putting It Into Practice

To put this concept into a more practical sense, every time I get into the pattern of negative what-ifs, I always answered them with “So what?”. “What if this fail?”, “What if people don’t like it?”, “What if the conversion rate of this page is not high?”. “So what? So what? and So what?” I can tweak it later. I can reset the project. And I can modify it to fit my readers’ expectation.

So, what can software companies teach you about success? Start today. Start blogging today. Start driving people to your squeeze page today. Then, if you are not satisfied with the outcome, tweak and modify them. Never be afraid of failure because you’ll always get the chance to fix it.

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I recently discovered this video sharing site called Blip.tv. It’s not a new site (been online since 2005) and, at first, I thought it’s just another Youtube clone, with a slight twist to its concept. How? For one, Blip.tv doesn’t accept a one-off video. If you want to post a video to the site, make sure it’s a series of videos that can be released on a regular basis.

Interesting. But not as much as how it’s taking the video sharing and advertising concept to the next level.

When you register as a new blip.tv member, you can tick the ‘Enable Advertising On My Show’ box. This will allow blip.tv to put advertising on your show and thus let you get the 50/50  advertising revenues share that they’re offering. The ad revenue itself is calculated based on the number of views on your videos.

And it doesn’t stop there, blip.tv will also help distribute your videos to other video and social networking sites, like Youtube, AOL video, MSN video, Facebook, MySpace, iTunes and even TiVo. They will then add up the number of audience from blip.tv and all of the other sites into what they called as TPA (Total Potential Audience). So, rather than relying on one venue, such as Youtube, to build your audience, the video creator will be able to utilize multiple venues to get more views and thus obtaining higher ad revenues.

Now, if their claim that a show with 100,000 views a month can pay off someone’s rent is true. And, that someone’s rent is $600/month. That means, if you’re one of the Youtube’s reasonably famous personality, you’ll be able to earn approximately $3,000/month (500,000 views/month). And if you’re one of the top dogs, you’ll be able to earn approximately $12,000/month (500,000 views/weekly show). And, we haven’t even included the number of viewers from other sites and blip .tv itself.

So, as you can see, doing your own online show can be extremely profitable. No, you won’t be able to earn that 6 figure income. But,  if you can do what you love and earn a reasonable income from it…why not do it?

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Almost 4 months. That’s how long I’ve stopped blogging. But, I’m back!

A lot of things happen these past couple of months. Some are good and some…not so good. The good ones include spending the holiday with my parents and sisters in Europe, having some crazy fun time with my college friends, and watching Avatar (not disappointed with the final product, despite the ridiculous pre-launch hype).

But, as if to balance out these good experiences, I’ve also gone through this real bad one. My laptop’s broken in the holiday. And since I use a password database software to remember my passwords, losing access to my laptop and its hard drive means I don’t have access to my passwords. My blogs’ passwords, my emails’ passwords, everything. And that’s why I can’t update my blog until I’m back to Australia two weeks ago.

I’m not a whiner and usually able to look for the positives in bad experiences. So, instead of complaining, I used the 4 months time to reflect on this blog. What’s lacking? What needs to change? How to get more traffic and subscribers in this new year? And a whole lot of other questions. Based on my answers to those questions, I’ve decided to update this blog. These are some changes that’s made and will be made to the blog.

Firstly, as you can see, I change the blog’s theme as I find the old one too plain and sterile.

Secondly, I’ll change my typical list-type posts to a shorter and more opinionated ones.

Thirdly, I’ll add a couple of mini weekly video tutorials starting next week, with topics ranging from traffic generation, social media marketing, to list building.

Finally, I’ll do a weekly video podcast starting next week. Be sure to drop in your questions, if you have any, using the contact form.

So, stay tune for more electrifying contents to come.

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