If you’ve heard of Twitter, you’ve heard it all:
“It’s great! ” “It sucks!” “I get tons of views!” “It’s a waste of time!” “It’s where people post what they had for lunch ”

Forget it. Twitter is PEOPLE. Being real people. Some people are cool, some are dingbats, some are All Business All The time, some only ever talk about themselves.

But here’s the beauty of twitter — you are surrounded by real people. Think for a second… picture in your head someone you admire. I don’t mean like your mom, I mean like someone who you wish you could be when you grow up. Someone who is a few steps ahead of you on the career ladder. Got someone in mind? What would you give to be in an elevator with that person? What would you say if you could have their ear for a moment? (probably not “LOOK WHAT I JUST LISTED: http//www.buymystuff”)

Twitter is the elevator.

It doesn’t mean if the other person might not be a jerk, or might ignore you or whatever, but it gives you the opportunity to make a connection with someone who would otherwise be out of reach.

How do you begin?
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If you’re starting from scratch, you want to connect with a few people. Not a few hundred, a few. Think of magazines that you like, blogs you follow, people you admire, and maybe a friend or two. Don’t just follow a ton of Etsy people. The point is to widen your circle, not just move to a new location. Watch them have conversations — see who they talk to, and follow the interesting conversations. Want to talk to somebody? @reply them. It’s that easy.

After a while, widen your circle. Friday is the big day where people recommend others. Most people are kinda dumb about it and just list a crapload of people without giving you any reason whatsoever, but the good ones look something like this:

#FollowFriday @CopperLeafSt because she’s an uber-cool artist, and a fun person!

The point is to tell others about people you find interesting, and give them a reason to like them too.

How do you post links on Twitter?
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you don’t. Just don’t. No really, don’t. You will make more friends, more real connections, have more people genuinely interested in you, if you avoid spamming them. Really. People who are interested will click on your page, and you can put your link there. They’ll find it.

What if they don’t look?

Then they don’t. Breathe through it. This is about making meaningful connections, not annoying people.

But if I don’t post links, how will I make sales??

What is more valuable? Getting one possible sale, or getting a blog feature that might lead to many sales? Or developing a relationship with a mentor that can guide you through a solid marketing strategy? Or finding about a cool show that you’d just be perfect for? Or getting featured in a magazine? THINK OUTSIDE THE SALES BOX. I mean it.

You know how you always read the featured sellers & QYDJ people say that “word of mouth” has been their best marketing strategy?? And you think to yourself “well how the hell am I gonna get THAT to happen?” THIS IS HOW. But you ruin it if you spam links. People will talk about you all right, but it won’t be pretty. You may get lots of views, you may get lots of followers, but if the views are from bots and the followers don’t care about you, it’s not doing you any good.

get it?

The Real Things that can happen via Twitter:
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I use twitter a lot. I don’t have a billion followers, but the ones I have are quality. Here are a few of my experiences:

I follow a lot of business/ marketing people, because I learn a LOT from them, their blogs, etc. I’ve been a newsletter subscriber to one that I recently found on twitter. Turns out he’s coming to my state next week, and we’re going to do lunch. Someone who charges three figures an hour for business advice is going to be eating chicken salad with me soon. Is that valuable? um, hell yeah.

I work in metal, and follow/ am followed by people in the copper mining industry. A major copper blog did an artist feature of my work because we connected on twitter.

I met a super cool woodworker who I have collaborated with on projects. He’s also given me like a billion tips on how to improve the woodworking portion of my craft.

I connected with someone I admired who gave me a great lead on a killer gallery. In fact, I’ve had this happen with multiple artists. I make a point to give them suggestions, and they have returned the favor 10 times over.

And I’ve made amazing friendships with people from all over the world.

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Post provided courtesy of Copper Leaf Studios: http://coppermaps.com

There are many, many ways to get free, or nearly free, online traffic services which will send prospective customers to your business online. This article will show you how to access this river of prospective customers by taking simple actions to improve your business’ online presence. Generated content helps placement for your business in search engines. Better placement in search engines means customers will find you.

There are 5 simple secrets that, if you implement in your business, will generate leads, calls, and new business:

• create a blog
• write and market articles
• write press releases
• build your presence on social media business
• Use Google maps

These 5 secrets will help bring you more customer prospects to your door. Why? It’s the simple fact that you and your business must be on page 1 of the search engines and primarily Google. You already know this and you already search yourself. What the many business owners that I have talked to don’t know is how to get on to page 1. These 5 simple secrets will dramatically increase your ability to get on page 1.

Why Google? Well if you go to http://www.alexa.com, you will see that Google holds the number 1 position in the world for traffic.

Google page 1 is where all customer eyeballs go. As the old real estate saying goes, ‘location, location, location’ so is this true with Google. And ‘location’ for Google is page 1. There are three parts to page 1 of Google. The top and right are the sponsored links, also referred to as pay-per-click. Businesses such as mine create Google AdWords campaigns and pay Google each time a prospective customer clicks on our ad. Underneath and to the left of the sponsored ads is Google maps. Page 1 only lists 7 businesses in the maps – so it is prime real estate and your job to get to be one of the elite 7 on page 1. Underneath the maps is the organics section. There are typically 10 organic listings. To have your business in this section is all about the content you are publishing on the web, where you send it out on the internet, and how well it relates to the search terms the customer has typed into Google.

Content created about you your business posted on your blog, written in articles, produced in press releases, shared in social media using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other highly ranked sites all work together to get you listed in the top 10 organic section on page 1 of Google.

Over time, you will experience a snowball effect and ultimately it will lead to more leads, more website visits and more phone calls.

The longer you wait, the more chance your competitors will beat you to page 1.

You may have heard of domain forwarding, but do you know what it really means or how to use it?

Unless you’ve been under a rock…for a while, I’m sure you know what a domain name is. Simply put, forwarding a domain name is like the signs you see at the end of streets, pointing to the house that’s for sale.  In this case, it’s the sign that tells the internet where to go to find your site.  So, instead of saying, “visit my site: http://sallyurbans.crossfirelite.com”, you can say, “visit my site: http://sallyurbans.com”.  When people type in http://sallyurbans.com, the internet will see the directions and take the visitor to your site!

Why this is such a good thing.  Basically, what is easier to remember: sallyurbans.com or sallyurbans.crossfirelite.com?    That’s why domain forwarding is a good thing.

Don’t have a domain?  Get one now!  GoDaddy is offering some specials on domain names!  Click here!

Well, we’ve joined the world of Twitter and will be tweeting our new posts!  Be sure to follow us!

eWiro’s Twitter: Click here!

Have a great day!

By David Hale

This is a very easy and efficient strategy to draw in an avalanche of highly targeted traffic and readers to your blog. I will notify you in the beginning, that it does require a bit of time in order to realize the gain in traffic. Although, after you are completed, you will agree that it was all worth it due to the increase in subscribers and traffic to your blog.

Here we go:

1. To start, you want to find who your competitors are that have blogs with high readership and ranking. These bloggers must be directly related to your niche. Your mission – if you wish to accept it – is to draw all of those readers to your blog.

To find out who they are, use the free tools our friends at Google share and input your main keywords. After the list of blogs come up, check out those on the first three pages that directly relate to your niche and assess the content quality. The key information you want to obtain is how many RSS readers (if available), traffic

regularity and content quality.

Use these tools to help you out:

Alexa.com Traffic Details

Blog Juice Calculator (compare and contrast the result with those of your blog. You want to ensure the other blog is equal to or higher in ranking than yours):

Xinureturns.com (one of the best tools for a blog overview):

You want to develop a list of the top 5-7 blogs as a minimum. You may know who some of the movers and shakers are in your niche. If you do not, you need to real quick. Just make sure the other blogs are authority blogs with high Alexa and Google page rankings.

2. Next, you want to bookmark the blogs and check them out every day for updates. If they have an RSS feed, subscribe to it so you will know when it is updated. Your next mission is to run to that blog as fast as possible to read the update and make a top notch comment. Don’t write a comment for the sake of writing, but make it meaningful. Remember, your mission is to make yourself out to be a mover and shaker too. Make your posting relevant and valuable. Strive to be one of the first 10 comments to get the greatest benefits.

3. Lastly, keep doing this every day and you will eventually see a dramatic growth in your traffic, readership, and hopefully sales. When you see that happening, you know that you have diverted the traffic to your own site. Just make sure that every one of your comments has your name and blog URL. People will not only get to your site this way, but it will also build backlinks to your site.

I routinely do this on 10-15 blogs per day. Make it part of your schedule and you will stick to it. Just keep think of how many backlinks you will have in the end, not to mention the increased traffic.

If you are out to attract prospective customers and develop your online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about Internet marketing.

A great way to further promote your blog or website is by using Yahoo! Answers.  Everyday people are posting questions of all kinds of subjects on this site.  Why not use this as a FREE opportunity to show your knowledge in your field?

Answering Yahoo! Answers questions is really easy.  Run a search on the topic you blog/site is about and answer the open questions you can answer best!  **Be sure that you are posting links to your blog/site as a reference!**

Before you know it, people will be coming to your blog for more answers and your articles!