We are very grateful to all TwitFever.com members who made our previous launch a grand success. We had to stop TwitFever.com as Twitter decided to upgrade/change its API and set some strict rules and access limitations. Many popular tech blogs called it anti-developer move from Twitter.
With new Twitter API, most of so-called popular Twitter applications had to shut down its services – due to its high maintenance cost and the need to redo the entire app with new set of APIs. So we took some time and rewrote the entire application from scratch with new Twitter API.
Twitter API Changes
Adapting to change is usually hard for developers, as we need to rewrite the entire application from scratch once again. But if we take a closer look – Twitter set these limitations to avoid wrong usage of their service. Ofcourse these limitations would mean a lot of pain for developers using it for good purpose – but then, we need to bear it and do our best with the resources available.
Relaunch of TwitFever.com
We are very excited to announce the relaunch of TwitFever.com
With this launch we are eliminating a lot of drawbacks we previously had.
Now TwitFever is a full-fledged Twitter Client.
Mobile app for android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows coming soon ..
It has Retweet Club integrated into it.
Now you only get tweets from your niche – from Club.
You also get a lot of targeted, real followers.
Smart auto-follow feature – opt in/opt out option available to the user.
No auto-tweeting on behalf of members.
Everything is under control of the user.
Bots are blocked – 100%.
As always, we do not store your personal information.
We never store your Twitter username and password.
We do not sell or rent any of our members data what-so-ever.
TwitFever.com will instantly boost traffic to your content and add viral touch to it. Most importantly, your message/content will reach to highly targeted audience automatically. The followers you get from TwitFever.com are 100% real and are highly targeted too – similar niche.
Pricing
Since it involves very high cost of maintenance, we are compelled to charge $9 per month. But if you sign up in this early release, you’ll be a member free of cost for lifetime. But you need to sign up soon and submit at least 1 of your best content/tweet to the club before we start charging for the service.
Participate actively in the community and get the most out of it.
I wish everyone a MASSIVE success with their ventures/business/blogs.
..your success is our success
This is a guest post by Kenneth Javellana. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.
At the heart of every successful online business is good traffic. By that, I mean traffic that is high in both number and quality. You already set up social media accounts for cross-promoting your website. Basic link building techniques like blog commenting, forum posting, participating in guest posts, and link exchange are quite familiar to you as well. As a matter of fact you constantly do them to keep the traffic flowing. With everything set in place you can now move on to link wheels, a more advanced way of attracting high-quality traffic. Although its effects are not immediate, a link wheel proves to be beneficial for any online business.
The concept behind it
A link wheel consists of a set of websites with links flowing from one to another. These links will close in a circular pattern. In the middle of this pattern is your website. All other sites should be linking to it. Below is an example of a basic link wheel.
Now ideally, you should use Web 2.0 sites and link them towards a main website. Web 2.0 sites could be blogs, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, or video sharing websites – anything that promotes interaction. The purpose of building link wheels is to dominate the web with content. In turn, that will increase your brand’s visibility on search engines and the amount of traffic that flows to the target website. Web 2.0 sites also help to ensure that you bring in quality traffic to your website. Of course, proper implementation of a link wheel is necessary. All elements of a link wheel need to be related to the products you are trying to sell or the theme of the target website. This will increase chances of conversion and decrease your bounce rates.
There is no specific pattern when creating a link wheel. They can be made as simple like the illustration above or complex like by setting up separate blogs which Web 2.0 properties link to before linking back to your website. When planning to create a link wheel, just remember to stick to a pattern and use a variety of Web 2.0 sites. A Web 2.0 site must never be used more than once in a link wheel.
Benefits and uses
The main purpose of a link wheel is to generate traffic that is both high in number and quality. Where this traffic leads is entirely up to you. Internet marketers commonly use Web 2.0 properties to generate traffic for their websites. However, other business models also use it to strengthen their social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. A link wheel can therefore be used as an internet marketing strategy or as a social media strategy.
Now before you create a link wheel out of whim, look into your business model and analyze what you need the most. Is it traffic that you need or do you want to multiply your followers on social networks? Clearly define what you want to happen so that you can create an appropriate pattern. Slowly build your link wheel over an extended period of time to make it look natural. Once set up, give it some time and you will slowly find yourself nearing your goal.
This post was prepared by Kenneth Javellana. During his spare time, Ken enjoys writing articles that tackle SEO techniques and tips on blogging. He also writes for his business at BroadbandExpert.com, one of the top internet providers.
With 3 simple steps, add a StumbleUpon badge to your site so your visitors can easily submit your content to StumbleUpon and you can start enjoying additional traffic from StumbleUpon users who want to see content like yours! Simply copy and paste the code into your site and start receiving free exposure on StumbleUpon.
As you all probably know, StumbleUpon doesn’t crawl the web pages automatically. It only adds those pages which are added by its users. And then it rotates or displays these user submitted/voted quality content to its other users (who share similar interests). Providing quality content to its users and good traffic to the source. So everybody is happy.
Over years we have seen so many products claiming to generate huge traffic to our websites through Stumbleupon, but the trick is simple. Produce quality content (suitable for StumbleUpon community) and make it easy for StumbleUpon members to find and submit, vote for the story.
Having quality content is mandatory. Next thing is making it more accessible.
All these days we use to have a simple banner or a link to submit the article to stumbleupon, but now we can show a badge and encourage or remind our readers to submit and vote for the story, if they find it interesting.
Get your content discovered with SU Badges With 3 simple steps, add a StumbleUpon badge to your site so your visitors can easily submit your content to StumbleUpon and you can start enjoying additional traffic from StumbleUpon users who want to see content like yours! Simply copy and paste the code into your site and start receiving free exposure on StumbleUpon.
These new badges reflect a real-time count of how many times your page has been viewed by members of StumbleUpon’s community of over 10 million users. Show off your big numbers!
Users clicking these badges will be prompted to submit a page to StumbleUpon’s index (if not already in the index) so other users can enjoy your content or to view the ratings and reviews of your page from other StumbleUpon users. Your site will not be framed when users click any of these badges.
Reason for this post: I had seen these badges some time back, but had never used them. Out of curiosity, I took some time to put them on the blog and to my surprise – traffic from Stumbleupon has significantly raised. I still thought it’s a coincidence. But after watching for some more days, I thought I would recommend using this badge for all my fellow bloggers/webmasters to generate good traffic from Stumbleupon or atleast try this out and share the results with us, in the comment section.
The badges are somewhat similar to that of the TweetMeme/Re-Tweet Buttons. But what I feel is, the color is too dim to notice.
You can get the code for implementing the badge at: SU Badge.
The numbers really encourage visitors to take action and hit that stumble button. Try it and share your experience with us. “Simple Steps, extra Traffic!”
Bonus Tip:
You can even use the StumbleUpon URL shortener, it provides some easy, lazy way to hit the thumbs up button.
One common question we all hear, and at some point of time have asked – How to get traffic to our new blog?
Here are some examples of how I got my first 500 – 800 visits per day in my initial days of blogging:
I started it before I actually needed it:
1. Commenting on other blogs: I had spent some time in selecting a domain name(even though I din’t have much knowledge about selecting a good domain name at that time). And started participating in comment section of various blogs – niche which I was interested in. And included the URL of my blog in all the comments(not within the comment section). Tips: Do not leave your new website blank. Atleast have a single introduction page, or better if you can have atleast 10 good articles published.
2. SEO benefits: As I already had the blog up, most search engines had already crawled my blog and was visible in results page for some keywords. Tips: If you know your niche, then have atleast 10 good articles published – which are fully concentrated on your niche. Include keywords related to your niche and take time to carefully optimize those 10 articles, so that you rank high for some keywords.
3. Put up the email/rss subscription options on your blog: Even though I had a single page on my blog – where I wrote about myself(profile kind of), many people subscribed to it! I had 30 – 40 subscribers when I started blogging – when my first real article was live. Tips: Put a big and highly visible(yet not annoying) subscription link on your blog. I guess people who signup for your blog updates in the initial stage are email subscribers, so make sure you put email subscription option and highlight that its a free service.
4. Include your blog link in any social networking site you use. Tips: Have conversation with like minded people, who are interested in the niche your blog falls in. This strategy would help in more conversion rate, and you will enjoy the social networking as you communicate with like minded people.
5. Participate in forums: Forums are good place to meet like minded people and to share your knowledge and to gain knowledge from other participants. Use your blog link in the signature area of the forum and in your forum profile. Tips: Do not try to promote your blog in any ways. Because you don’t have an active blog yet and that may act against you. So be genuine in helping as many people as you can. This increases your credibility and builds a community around you before you actually need it.
6. Write Testimonials: As you probably read some books, attended some course, used some online services before you started your blog. Send your testimonial to those people, if you really like them and recommend them to other people. Again be genuine and don’t do it just to get a link back. Tips: See previous testimonials. If the owner of the product is linking to the person who gave the testimonial, then you can expect a link back, if he thinks your testimonial helps his business.
Take time and form a very good, real testimonial. Do not make it over hyped inorder to get through.
7. Public Speaking & Presentation: If you get a public speaking opportunity and/or you have to give a public presentation for a social cause, then at the end its not a bad idea to show your blog Name and URL along with your Name and designation or whatever. This will give people a way to follow up with you, in case some one is very much impressed with your presentation and want to get more from you.
Caution At this stage do not try to promote your blog in any ways, because it may have an adverse effect. Just enjoy the benefit of having a blog before its actually fully active.
Do not keep postponing the date to start blogging actively. no time is perfect time.
Imagine, if you are planning to have a blog and never actually taking your first step to find a good name, register it and write atleast 10 good articles – you would miss a lot of opportunity. You will have to leave comments on other websites/blogs as an anonymous guy, you will loose the SEO benefit etc to name some.
Do not plaster your blog with ads when you’re not yet blogging consistently, because this may give people a wrong impression.
I am not saying that – If you don’t start your blog/business now, you will loose money. But you will surly loose some benefits of starting it early enough. You will loose all the extra benefits I have talked above.
Finally Its a good idea to take some time out of your busy life and find a good domain name(which is the only thing probably which will take some time), register it, and try to write atleast 10 quality articles concentrating on your niche.
Often times we get a brilliant idea for a blog post, but only to know that – “It would have been great, if I had started a blog”. Let that not happen to you, start a blog early and learn along the way.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race. Stop thinking about all the details, just start a blog/business. You are bound to stumble along the way, but you will figure things out as you move along.
It would be better to make a mistake while blogging than to never start the blog. Learning never ends and if you are thinking of starting a blog or a business after learning everything, then take it from me – You are not going to start your blog or business. Because learning is a never ending process.
Many people start the blog on a free blogging platform like blogger and WordPress. And after 6 months or 1 or 2 years time, if the person keeps on blogging, then he is almost certain to start feeling that he did a mistake! Mistake of starting the blog on a free blogging platform.
But do not think it as a mistake anymore. While starting a self hosted blog is a smart idea, but we know the fact that many blogs die within 1 to 6 months, so its good to start a blog on these blogging platform and invest some time to figure out whether blogging is for you or not. And it will be a good thing to learn the most basic things using those blogging platforms and then move or start a new self hosted blog.
Many people may advice to have a self hosted blog from day one, and we respect that idea too. If you can dedicate more time to learn and if you are commented enough for your blog and blogging, then either way you can start your blog.
If you have a blog at blogger and want to transfer to your own self hosted WordPress blog, then here is a resource which will help you through the process.
For the text version of this tutorial you can follow this link labnol.org
And to be on safer side, do not forget to tell Google that you are moving your blog, at webmasters tool.
These are some of the free resources from most credible people. They are experienced and they know their stuffs. if you are a blogger, then these resources are a must read to get your blog to the next level or atleast to enhance your blogging experience.
1. How I got 100,000 subscribers in Two Yearsby Leo Babauta: Leo Babauta of Zen Habits(which has 130,000+ subscribers) has released a report on how he achieved 100,000 subscribers in 2 years time. Its a small ebook and can be read with in 25 minutes(I read it in 25min). You need to go through a email subscription process. I have subscribed and I am getting lot more freebie info in the emails too. And you will also get some podcasts by Leo. Worth subscribing and reading the free info. “Get Leo Babauta’s FREE Report and Podcasts!”
2. Authority Rules: The 10 Rock Solid Elements of Effective Online Marketingby Brian Clark(copyblogger): You can read it in PDF format or on the web. Its completely free and there is not even a opt-in(subscription).Check out Authority Rules here.
3. The Winning Wayby Gyutae: The ebook is free, but you will have to subscribe to his email newsletter to be able to download it. Contains short tips. The ebook consists of 118 pages and it covers 500 different Internet marketing strategies and tips. Grab the ebook at The Winning Way.
4. Twitter Guide Bookby Mashable: The Twitter Guide Book, a one-stop shop for getting up to speed with everything Twitter, from managing your Twitter stream to promoting a business. You can download the presentation by signing up at slideshare.net.
5. How to Build a High Traffic Blogby Tim Ferriss: This is a must watch video about Building Traffic to your Blog. It is a 50 minutes video and covers topics like posting frequency to blogging tools and community building strategies.
Updated:[Adding some more valuable freebies] 6. 102 Proven Social Media Headline Formulasby Chris Garrett: In order to get more stumbles, diggs, bookmarks and tweets, writing a killer headline is a must. As the title of the ebook says, it has 102 headline formula. It contains 102 fill-in-the-blanks titles/headings. It hardly takes 15 minutes to go through it and lot more time to practice and implement it in writing our own killer titles. No opt-in required to download the ebook. You can download it at socialmediaworkbook.com.
Please share some of the free professional online information products.
Happy to share a moment of happiness with all the readers, who actually made it happen. With the completion of 1 year, our blog has been included in the Alltop® . Have a look at the end of this page blogging.alltop.com. Its a honor to get included in such reputed sites. We will surely work to provide value to all its users.
For those of you who do not know about Alltop, watch below video for clear explanation:
Here is a quote from their about me page:
The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer.
We do this by collecting the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic. We group these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. Then we display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph. Our topics run from adoption to zoology with photography, food, science, religion, celebrities, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, Macintosh, and hundreds of other subjects along the way.
If you want to add your blog to Alltop, all you need to do is fill this submission form. And wait for the Alltop staff to approve it manually. As its a manual process, it will take little longer before you hear from them.
If your blog is of good quality and if you are providing RSS feed, then there is high chances that your blog will be included in Alltop.
Till now I haven’t seen significant traffic from Alltop, the reason may be because, its been added recently and that our blog is placed at the dead end of the site. Lets hope for the best in the future. All things apart, inclusion in such websites is really a honor and a motivational factor to keep working.
And a good way to increase traffic to your blog. Remember, every small thing helps in getting good traffic to a blog. So if you have a good blog with RSS feed, then make it a point to apply for Alltop, killerstartups.com and other such sites which will increase your traffic over time.
If you know of any directories or feed aggregator, which can bring significant traffic, then please share it in the comment section. Many people do not have time to submit to directories and aggregtor sites, as they are busy with the content creation of their blog. While content is still King, marketing is the queen, so do not ignore marketing your blog. Whats the use of a valuable content which is not read by any or many. Do not waste your time in submitting to all the directories, instead pick only selected once and invest your time in submitting to them. Make sure you have been blogging consistently for atleast 6 months(this will increase your chances of getting included) and read their rules before submitting.
We have heard a lot about both Online as well as offline marketing.
Marketing strategies have been changing from the day it was invented. Its good to see many new and sophisticated techniques coming every now and then and solving many problems..and creating some!
First thing first..
What is Marketing ?
Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
Ethical / Unethical Marketing ?
With increase in the population and user demands, many businesses started appearing and the competition obviously increased among businesses. It increased so much that its now the matter of survival to most companies. So the only way left on their part is aggressive marketing strategies, which brings them large number of conversions. An example:-
We see in daily commercials showing, women with black colour skin complexion being harassed and the white women being respected, and the next thing is they show their cosmetics product and tell us to use it and to turn white! and to get the respect from the society. These kind of ads work magically and bring about many conversions.
On the other hand if they start showing ads with not so good looking women in the ad, people watching it, will take it easy and are less likely to purchase the product!
I don’t really have to tell you which ads would be more desirable to marketers.
But the question is..Do you think such ads are an ethical marketing?
Playing with the human emotions? Yes…No.
Answer varies from person to person, depending on their perspective.
Some people may say that this kind of marketing is not at all wrong, because we all see it almost daily and are used to it!. We are so used to it that we think that its not a big issue.
While some people say that this kind of marketing is completely unethical, as it plays with the emotions of people for meeting marketers selfish goals. There are many others who defend that this is a ethical marketing and the best way to get a conversion.
Its interesting to hear all your ideas and thoughts. So please please please share your thoughts in the comment section of this article.
Target Audience(Target marketing):-
Marketers target group of people who are more likely to purchase their products, hence making them more profits.
Some examples:- 1. Ads showing more imaginary adventures, cartoon etc may target children. 2. Quick Money making ads may attract more of business people. 3. Cosmetics ads for girls. 4. Body building ads for men. 5. Speaker systems for music lovers. etc.
As all these production industries have a lot of competition, they need to reduce the price inorder to sustain in the growing competition.
Desperate buyers:-
There are products like medicine which will be purchased by people as they are in a situation where they can’t give more importance to money(when compared to their health). They are in a position where purchasing the medicine becomes crucial. In these kind of situations marketers may take advantage of the situation of people and may try to mint more money. Making use of the desperate situation will get them more conversion and hence more money. But again the question arises in our mind..Whether its Ethical or unethical marketing ?
Obviously, I’m not speaking about all emotional marketing. Most of the marketing involves interaction with peoples emotions, but I am talking about the one’s which is too low in its purpose and aims only at the sale of their product(conversion).
Impatient Aspirers
Impatient Aspirers are a group of target customers who have some what same taste and status. Watch the funny video below. Please do not miss watching the video. Its funny as well as insightful, and worth thousand words.
Marketing and Blogging:-
There are many ways of monetizing a blog. One way is to write an ebook and sell it on your blog. This is a popular and proved to be efficient way of making money online. Now to get most money out of the ebook, you need to sell as many copies of ebook as possible. And to do so, you need to Market it properly(if you do not have an already well established blog).
Landing page should be more engaging and trust worthy. When someone lands on your landing page and reads about your product details, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect. Attention getting strategies and tactics can be helpful if the product, service or information lives up to the promise.
Rather than trying to sell an idea to the masses, you sell something desirable to people who already want and have a need for it. It’s much easier to fulfill a need than to create one.
So there are many many marketing strategies and as far as I know many people are trying and succeeding with newer marketing strategies each day. So, as a marketer we need to be innovative, creative and responsible. As a customer we need to be more cautious and clear about what we want and what we do not want.
Word of Mouth Marketing:-
Over years we have seen many MLM’s(Multi-Level Marketing) or Network Marketing coming, growing, glowing and going! What makes people join MLM’s ?
Its the money. The easy way to start earning money, by referring other people to join under you.
So, from where do MLM companies get the money from?
Most MLM companies sell products. By purchasing which people become their members. These MLM companies remove the middle man between the product and the customers, hence saving a lot of money.
Another big saving comes from the marketing effort. There is no need to get a VIP or a celebrity to endorse the products. So a lot of money is again saved. These MLM companies then distribute the money saved, to all its members, by following some of their rules/policies. So, how do these MLM companies do the marketing ?
Its done by the members of MLM. These members do the marketing on behalf of MLM company through WORD OF MOUTH, these products will be sold and new members keep joining(thus products are continuously sold), everybody(most of them) make good income.MLM is just an apt example for the WORD OF MOUTH marketing.
Here is a list of WORD OF MOUTH marketing, that you can choose, test and implement on your blogs, to increase the traffic and conversion rate significantly.
Word of mouth marketing:
* Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.
* Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.
* Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.
* Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.
* Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
* Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.
* Influence Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.
* Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.
* Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.
* Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.
* Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends, to your product or service.
More on Marketing Strategies(mainly to increase your blog traffic) coming soon..so please subscribe to our free email/rss updates and stay tuned.
Please do not forget to share your thoughts about current marketing trendz. What Marketing strategies you are following? What strategies worked and which did not work for you? Whats Ethical and Unethical about it? Please share your opinions in the comment section below and involve yourself in the conversation going on here.
