This meeting, although following the long established OMMG/Meetup format, saw the inaugual meeting of Smart Marketing Warriors membership organisation.
Blending the OMMG/Meetup format of a free flowing exchange of members problems, experiences and solutions with the Warriors structured delivery of useful internet marketing training was something of a problem in the time available and we continue to give a lot of thought to how we will structure the day in future.
For the moment we stayed on the well proven path and worked to the OMMG/Meetup format in the morning before delivering two valuable presentations in the afternoon.
Members problems assembled in real time onto a mindmap appeared to present a very varied range of issues. However, a few minutes thought boiled them down to some broad groups as shown here and enabled us to identify common problems as well as obstacles being encountered by individuals.
As expected, a number of them (6 to be exact) were clustered around the use of Wordpress which has become such a universal tool for building web presence and credibility.
Four more fell into the field of basic marketing processes. These will be dealt with in future through the methodical delivery of training via the Smart Marketing Warriors online course.
Of the remainder, Social Marketing was already lined up to be the subject of one of the afternoon presentations, and the others were either dealt with immediately or have gone into the lesson planning process as priority items for us to respond to as soon as possible.
Smart Marketing Warriors offers the combined experience of 4 established online marketers and in the afternoon Roger Bourdon, one of the founding partners, presented his experience of launching his first product.
Of particular note was the optimisation process of starting with the basic structure and then progressively improving the offer and the consequential improvement in the profitability.
Laurence Borel, an independent consultant in the field of Social Marketing strategies, then gave a presentation on Social Media and an insight into this hot topic which is clearly becoming a very powerful marketing tool – when used correctly.
Finally, we wrapped up with some members feedback which, together with the collection of problems identified in the morning session. has given us a clear steer on what members are looking for.
As our objective is to deliver what our audience wants (good marketing strategy, that one ) members can look forward to some good stuff in the near future.
The next meeting scheduled for 22 August will follow a similar format with a nominal charge of £7 (increased from £5 due to change of venue) for the morning session and an opportunity to take part in the more formal Smart Warriors presentation session in the afternoon.
Spread the Word!
Some OMMG members know that I am a big fan of XsitePro, having
created the OMMG website with this software when it was first
launched in 2005. Well, the latest version XSitePro 2.0 has just
been awarded the coveted "PC Advisor Recommended" Award.
These are just some of great things the reviewer had to say:
"Getting a good-looking site up and running within minutes is
very simple."
"Where XSitePro 2.0 really stands out is by applying this ease
of use to a wide range of additional features which, if coded by
hand or created using Dreamweaver would be considerably more
complex."
"This is one of the most pleasant to use interfaces for web
design that we've encountered."
To read the full review, click on the link below.
http://www.online-marketing-mastermind-group.com/xsitepro_review.html
This is not just another piece of website building software,
it's a total website management package.
To our success,
Richard
Spread the Word!
A revised format was used for this May meeting intended to prioritise members issues. Ten members participated. all regulars demonstrating a commitment to their own success.
Click to Enlarge
Mind mapping.
I used a new toy to map out the discussion subjects that members wanted to cover and that caused some discussion in itself. Buzan's iMindmap software generated the enclosed mindmap to help us to identify and then work through the agenda for the day.
It was the first time I've used it for the purpose but it was quickly evident that it was possible to add hyperlinks and any text notes to each branch while the conversation was flowing.
This not only gave us a quick reference to relevant websites if we wanted to return to the subject but has also been a great help in producing these notes of the meeting. (Just while proof reading this post it occurs to me that this is also a great way to keep the notes for the meeting simply by filing it with a date and meeting file name. )
So, from my point of view, it has already proved useful for this as well as for the original purpose of it's purchase which was to help me scope out and organise my thinking on several projects.
Here is an example of a web based interactive mind map product that offers you free basic use: http://www.mindmeister.com/19055588 This link will bring you into an interactive mind map dealing with Web Monetization (Gren 090525).
Another software tool that you might find useful for locating that 'must-have' information when you need it most is Info-Select.
Wordpress
Gren Bingham arrived late having spent some time throwing up an offer he has concocted for members and others to get a Wordpress blog created for the grand sum of $35. You can find his instant, Saturday morning, sales page at MasterOfWordpress.com. He also mentioned Article Helper Pro which is described in detail here Article Helper Pro.
As you can see from the Mindmap, many members questions centred on the use of Wordpress and we ran some practical, off the cuff, demonstrations showing how to deal with the problem. For member's future reference the 'how to..' solutions will be going up on Niche Market Blogger just as soon as I can.
For information on manipulating images in Photoshop and similar then try Jacks Tech Corner - particularly his YouTube channel for free video tutorials.
And for keyword suggestions for your blog categories and tags you should take a look at Google's Wonderwheel.
 1. Click the Show options after a search |
 2. Then Wonderwheel in the left sidebar |
Autoresponders.
One member had a question about autoresponders, particularly about whether to use an AR provided by their host. The consensus of opinion among those with some experience on the subject was the delivery of email depends greatly on deals done between the AR provider and the major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and has little to do with how good the autoresponder software might be.
It is, therefore, only the companies for whom the AR is the main focus of their business who are likely to allocate the resources to maintaining those links and agreements with the ISPs who are likely to achieve consistently good deliverability. This seems to come down to Aweber, Get Response and 1ShoppingCart.
The fact that you have to pay for them proves the point as no service provider that is not getting any revenue for the service can afford to allocate the resources to make sure that it works. A free service has absolutely no value to you if it fails to deliver your messages.
Pre-built sites.
Nice looking pre-built sites at knock down prices was the subject of another discussion. For $29 it looks like http://www.quickweightlossonline.com/ is a steal with 3 Clickbank affiliate products built in for you to change to your Clickbank id. Indeed it is a good example of the exchange of time for money that in exchange for your money you save the time of having to learn how to build such an attractive looking site.
This serves as an example of the jigsaw of internet marketing where you need all parts of the jigsaw to be successful as the site in itself still needs traffic to convert into sales. They are therefore good value for beginners who are going to focus their learning time on how to generate traffic. They also serve as a good model to emulate as it does not take a moment to find that such sites are frequently now built using Wordpress.
From the index page just hit View / Page Source from your browser menu to see the source code and then Edit / Find and input 'wp-'. This will find those tell-tale Wordpress files that tells you this is a blog.
This is no bad thing as it means that all you need to do is to install it on yet another domain name, substitute the content for a different subject, change the images and the anchor text for the navigation and you have as many sites as you like for different niche subjects.
Lead Generation
Roger Bourdon gave us a run-down on the methods he is using to generate page one positions on Google for his local, real world customers as well as the methods he uses to generate leads and customers for his web site development business. Fair to say that he demonstrated that there is nothing new in the world and the diamonds are usually under your feet.
Roger also contributed some useful information on ImpactWebAudio in the discussion about teleseminars and podcasting. Principally, that ImpactWebAudio takes the user through the process of getting their audio recording published on the web rather than simply leaving you with a recording. At $37 it is another example of 'you get what you pay for' - though that is not to say that you can often avoid paying for products simply by using Google to search for 'free 'whatever you seek'.
Looking forward to seeing everyone next month with updates and progress reports!
 Bruce Bird is an information publisher and online marketer specialising in helping individual entrepreneurs, small and medium size companies to get online quickly, easily and effectively. Visit his blog and signup free to get marketing strategies, insights and response-boosting tips! Go now to http://BruceBird.com |
Spread the Word!
I have just exchanged emails with a UK marketer I have a lot of
respect for.
His name is Michael Green, and you may remember that he is the
brains behind the phenomenally successful Money Tree Challenge
last year and the 20-20 Challenge the year before.
Michael is soon to launch a new product called Google-1st and
since I have promoted his products in the past, he wanted to
tell me about it.
We all know that having a top page #1 listing in Google drives
traffic to our websites. And traffic usually equates to money -
unless you are doing something wrong!
Well, how about having five of the top ten listings? Or seven? Or
even NINE of the listings on Google's first page pointing to your
website?
Imagine the traffic that dominating the search rankings like that
will bring. And then imagine the income that you can make from
that traffic!
It would be nice to get just to one listing on the 1st page of
google with any of my sites - the thought of getting NINE is
mind boggling.
To demonstrate this, Michael gave me a three-word phrase that was
related to his offline business. It is a popular phrase for that
market - not particularly long-tail - I typed it into Google and
it returned over 30,000 competitive pages.
He asked me to concentrate on the 1st gage listings and WOW!!
There was only one listing that DID NOT point to a page on his
website.
To prove the point, he gave me a few other non realted keywords
and told me to check them in Google. Sure enough, he dominated
page one of Google for each of them.
Finally, he gave me the absolute primary keyword that his offline
business (nothing to do with Internet marketing) aims for. This
keyword returns over 9 million competing web pages and there was
his business website at number #1, #3 and #5 on page one of
Google.
Michael told me that before he started using his special
Google-1st techniques he had never been on page one for that
keyword, but now, after barely five weeks he is dominating
Google.
As I said earlier, Michael is soon to launch Google-1st - a
detailed product that gives the exact methods he uses, in a step-
by-step, completely structured fashion. He has documented
everything he does on a spreadsheet and is describing each stage
in the process in crystal-clear detail.
If you've read The Money Tree Challenge, or the 20/20 Plan,
you'll know that Michael is very good at explaining complex
processes clearly.
I am privaleged in that Michael has described most of the process
to me and I can tell you - without giving anything away - that the
process is easy. It is complex, in that there are a lot of
necessary steps that have to be linked together in the right way,
but each step is dead simple. Absolutely anyone can do it.
And best of all there is nothing extra needed. Absolutely all the
tools you need are either free, or you have them already.
I have to admit, my very first thought was that Michael had gone
over to the dark side and donned a black hat. At first I couldn't
see how such consistently extraordinary results could be gained
without using shady and dangerous black hat methods. But I can
assure you that this entire process is 100% white hat. It is
completely and utterly above board.
In fact, it is based on giving the search engines (yes, it works
for Yahoo and MSN too) exactly what they want. You feed them
exactly what they crave and they reward you with high rankings
and free traffic.
Sounds like a good plan to me!
Now here is the deal. Michael traditionally pre-launches his
products and Google-1st is no exception. If you order it now,
before the official launch date, you'll get a substantial
discount on the price. After launch the price will rise, but
right now you will get to lock in a great saving.
And after launch, numbers will be strictly limited so that those
of us who will be using the methods won't be overwhelmed by too
much competition.
I've always said that SEO should stand for search engine
optimism, because most people who do it have no idea what works
or why. Now, Google-1st takes the optimism out of the search
engine optimization equation.
The Google-1st Toolkit is remarkable because it provides a
guaranteed white-hat method to get your website on Pg #1 of
Google (and the other search engines), without paying a penny!
As you can imagine, this is likely to be the hottest product of
the year.
Learn more about Google-1st and preorder your copy now at …
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=K9ZoJ&m=1bJjWZLtosen2b&b=ryUzgVekOPVqyq_PbjttnA
Richard
