Author Archives: Tom Antion

Easy Traffic and Critical Exposure for Your Website: The Facebook Comments Plug-in

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Lately, I have seen a ton of sales letters, squeeze pages and websites that are utilizing the Facebook Comments Plug-in. Simply put, it is a way for Facebook users to leave a comment on a webpage that will also show up on their user profiles. In essence, people visiting a webpage can add their two-cents and not only will it show up on their Facebook Wall, it gets sent out to all of their friends via the mini news-feed. Now all of their friends can click on the link as well, driving a wall of fresh Facebook traffic to the website. They can elect to leave a comment as well, creating an exponentially large amount of exposure.

This is the critical exposure needed to compete with the huge amount of competition for your topic. Or if you are having a time-sensitive event, this can help push it along in short order. The Comments Plug-in also has other factors involved such as: looking like there is a ‘buzz' going around for the website, getting feedback from your visitors, and using the amount of back links from all of those Facebook Walls as an SEO strategy. This plug-in is free to use and easy to implement. After filling out the variables in how the plug-in will look, your webmaster simply copy and pastes the provided code into the website wherever you want it to show up.

How can you encourage Facebook users to leave a comment? Ask for their advice for starters. People like to leave their opinions and feel as if their input matters. Since you can track who leaves a comment, or how many ‘likes' a comment may get, you can offer a prize for people leaving a ‘really good' comment. Facebook doesn't allow contests to take place directly on the Facebook site, so this third-party app is perfect for holding a sweepstakes. Social media is the future of the web, especially in conversation mode. A direct-to-dialogue approach will work wonders for your web business. At the Internet Marketing Training Center, we will show you how it's done.

The Importance of Opt-Ins and Free Gifts

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Creating Opt-Ins and Free Gifts

Creating Opt-Ins and Free Gifts

Creating Opt-Ins and Free Gifts

Giving away awesome free gifts in exchange for an email address is an effective way to increase your email list.

So why is it that no one is returning to your website, or worst, why are they opting out after they receive your free gift?

Could it be your free offer?

Below I will discuss two things to consider that will help increase your opt-in rate, and keep your subscribers.

Offer Free Gifts That Has Value!

Think about it, what good is a free gift if it has no value whatsoever?

Your free offer is basically more crucial than anything else you may have. It's your job to AWE your subscribers with your free product or information, similar to a first impression. By presenting your visitors with free valuable offers you are actually showing them that everything you present has value, even the free stuff!

By offering free gifts that has value can also reduce your subscribers opt-out rate. Most people will remain subscribers as long as they see some value in what your offering.

Making Use Of An Autoresponder

It's important to use an autoresponder to help manage your email list. An autoresponder will help you schedule a sequence of emails to be sent to your list automatically according to your preset schedule. I must advise NOT to use a free autoresponder due to poor quality and lack of options. Free autoresponders lacks professionalism especially if your not able to use your primary email address. Besides that, there's absolutely no assurance that your emails will be delivered on time, if at all.

It's been said that 95% of online businesses do NOT automate their marketing strategies. By simply using an autoresponder will increase your online sales and will make your marketing efforts a breeze to manage.

To learn more about autoresponders and the proper ways to use them, please visit the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia – http://imtcva.org , and remember to download your FREE career brochure!

Spreading Your Content – Finding Guest Blogging Partners

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Blogging is a very popular way to spread your information. With the competition for blogging traffic so high right now, beginner bloggers will have to work hard to get readers. You can help drive interested parties to your fresh content by writing content for other people's blogs. Some blogs in your niche have been around for years, getting tons of readers and subscribers. Writing fresh content for these blogs puts your expertise in front of the eyes of thousands of people and you get the links to your site. How can you identify blogs that may help publish your work?

Google Alerts is another great way to identify blogs where a certain topic is being discussed. After selecting a keyword phrase for your alert (and you can multiple alerts), Google will email you links everyday to blogs mentioning that phrase or topic. Now you know who to contact for a guest spot. Often, conducting a simple Google search for “Top 100 blogs on leadership skills” or whatever your topic happens to be, can help identify not only blogs relating to yours, but ones that are popular or have a high page rank. You want to write for blogs that have high traffic and a high page rank. Use http://www.checkpagerank.net/ to see how popular a blog might be before wasting your time contacting the blog owner. Having a popular blog link to yours will help with your linking strategy: one of the most important parts of getting good search engine positioning. We explain all the aspects of this article: blogging, writing, linking, SEO and social media at the Internet Marketing Training Center. Check out how you can use these techniques to effectively create a money-making blog or help someone else to make theirs profitable.

Certified Internet Marketing Training Center

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Why the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia?

Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia | Internet Marketing Course and Training Program

Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia

These days there are many individuals looking to earn a living on the Internet by simply working at home on their computers. If your one of these people more than likely you've done exhaustive research on the Internet in search of a genuine Internet marketing program to enroll in to help you get on the right track with Internet marketing. If you landed on this page and you're reading this article I have good news for you!

The Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia is by far the most unique and best Internet marketing training facility in the world! Let me explain.

First, IMTCVA is the ONLY “CERTIFIED” Internet marketing training center in the entire United States, recognized by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Second, the schools program was founded and created by Tom Antion, one of the most respected, top public speakers and Internet marketers in the world. Tom has dedicated his life to Internet marketing and training since the birth of the Internet back in the 90's.

Third, the staff at the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia is obsessed with staying abreast of all the latest Internet marketing techniques and resources of information in this constantly evolving business. You can be sure you'll learn the best “old school” techniques that still work, as well as the latest techniques that have proven results.

Lastly, each student can work at his or her own pace. Whether they're an online or campus student, the course can be completed in as little as 6 months, with an Internet marketing certificate upon completion. All students have the ability to interact with trainers and other students by phone, face to face, email, blog, wikis, discussion forums, text messaging, teleclasses and more, giving all students the best training experience around.

To learn more about this unique opportunity and how to enroll, please visit the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia – http://imtcva.org , and remember to download your FREE career brochure!

Internet Marketing is the Tool of Business Success

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Internet Marketing. Most people know about a few aspects of it. They see ads on Facebook and Google, they receive email promotions and download coupons. Beyond simply searching for information, if you have made any type of purchase online, then it was more than likely promoted via Internet Marketing. Millions of businesses, large and small, invest in online marketing everyday. The Internet can reach a worldwide audience for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. And unlike traditional marketing, the Internet can do so much more.

Company websites have the ability to educate and interact with their audience. They are more inclusive and interactive than any other type of media. One of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing goes beyond the sales process: customer service. In traditional marketing, ads run in newspapers and on television are the main vehicles for sales or promotion. Customer service is a separate area that follows the sales, usually with phone numbers to reach the company offices. On a website, the customer service experience can be instantaneous. There are live chat sessions, autoresponder messages and direct email addresses to department heads. A customer can leave comments on a blog, watch videos that explain the product better and receive newsletters with coupons good for future orders. This interactive customer experience is one of the main reasons why the Internet is growing rapidly as a place to do business. As people feel more secure with doing business online and as it becomes a part of their everyday lives, purchases will explode as the next few years go by. And companies will invest more and more money and time into using online resources to grow their sales.

As an expert in Internet Marketing, you have never been more in-demand than you will be over the next few years. This is the perfect opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an exploding market and career. While most careers try and figure out how they will fit in or adapt to the changing economy, there is no question where the Internet is taking us. And with new applications and tools being developed almost as fast as you can keep up, the demand for experts will grow quickly and dramatically. IMTC has the skills to put you at the top of the market. Find out how easy it is to take complete control of your future.

Good Website Copy Techniques: Creating Urgency

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The big money from what you write comes in immediately. Yes, some money will come in from people who don't respond to your offer right away, but the number of people who do that is virtually insignificant compared to the ones who respond immediately. It's your job to get them to act now! If you let them put your email aside with the best intentions of returning to it later the chances are they won't. They probably won't even remember where they put it and it's most likely they won't even remember having read your offer.

You must create urgency in their minds so that they pull out their wallet and buy it now. What are they buying?……well they're buying whatever you are pushing. You may just want them to pick up the phone and call. Or you may want them to buy something at your website. Whatever you want them to do you must get them to do it now!

URGENCY TECHNIQUES

Quantities are limited : “Our company seminars sell out fast and the space is limited.”  This tells the people that they better register now if they want get in.

You can do the same thing with consulting or just about anything that truly has a limited quantity– You can use phrases like this:

“Only three days left on my calendar.” 

“This product is discontinued and there are only 20 left.”

“I can only handle three more clients this year.”

Discounts and Penalties:  Here's an example of how you can use discounts to encourage people to sign up for your event sooner than later: 

“Register by 3/14 for the early bird price of only $295.  3/15 to 3/27 $350.00, and at the door $395.00”   i.e., you get penalized for waiting.

Deadlines:  A variation of the discount and penalty deal above is the deadline.

“This offer only good until 3/14.” 

“We will not accept any registrations after 3/14.”

Bonus:  You are rewarding the person for quick action:

“Respond by 3/14 and get two free backrubs.”

Multiple Bonuses:  “Respond by 3/14 and get three free bonuses” (list the bonuses)

 Want to know more about how to write compelling copy?

Become a Virtual Assistant – Your Own Stay at Home Business

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We are all looking for a career that we can do from home.For reasons such as taking care of elderly parents, watching your small children, living in a rural area without many jobs and even just to avoid the traffic jams, more and more people are looking for jobs they can perform from home. There are many ads out there for ‘work at home' opportunities that end up being simply junk or even worse, a scam. But one career stands out as the best work at home opportunity: Virtual Assistance.

What is a virtual assistant?A virtual assistant can be considered just like an actual, physical assistant that provides services to an employer. The only difference between the two is the fact that a virtual assistant does all of their work online, in a virtual environment. Since the work is completed in an online environment, a virtual assistant will find themselves doing tasks such as updating social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and more. Or they may update blog posts, do SEO work on their employer's website, upload and optimize videos, and any other type of marketing tasks needed to get done. Some virtual assistants have graphic design skills that are also valuable to an employer that has a business online.

Virtual assistants are attractive to employers because the employer doesn't need to provide any equipment for the assistant, they don't need to provide benefits, and they don't need a physical space to put the virtual assistant. People that actually are virtual assistants like the position because there's no commuting, they can work with multiple clients, and they don't need to be in the same state or even country as their employer. Right now and in the future, the demand for virtual assistants with Internet marketing skills will continue to grow.

The pay is good as well. Most assistants can keep raising their fees depending the level of their expertise. But where can you learn everything that you would need to be in demand? Here at the Internet Marketing Training Center we teach every skill set that is required to have your own home-based virtual assistant business. You'll even receive a certificate in Internet Marketing that you can proudly display to potential clients. Find out if a career in virtual assistance is right for you!

Blogging Tips – Be Yourself

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Blogging is the hottest trend to hit the Internet in years. Nearly 65% of people who read or get information online use blogs to get the information. Why? Because blogs are fun, personal and always fresh. If you look at ESPN for example, they link to many reporter blog posts that talk candidly about the week's sports news. If you visit Mashable.com to read the latest tech news, it's usually in the form of a blog post. Blogging is filled with variety and interaction. Often, the comments readers leave are more informative and entertaining than the original post itself. This only adds more fun and excitement to the post, making blogging more popular than ever.

If you are a business owner or are helping someone with their blogging duties, it can be a chore to think of something to say everyday. Here is a hint to better blogging: Be yourself and be personal. Being candid creates a rapport with your reader and makes it easier to think of things to write about. Even if no real news has come out about your industry lately, there are still opinions and thoughts to put on paper, so to speak. Whether those thoughts and opinions are your own or someone else's, it's often not too difficult to stir up the pot a little and get a conversation going. Reading an ongoing dialogue between a number of ‘experts' is what brings your readers back to the blog over and over again. Repeat visitors is what the search engines love.

I see far too many blogs that are very ‘clinical' in nature: they are just spouting boring facts or re-hashing the news of the day. That's not what people want to read. There are millions of blogs to compete with – you can't be boring and expect results. The more personalized the post and the more candid your writing becomes, the more interactive and fun the blog becomes for your readers. Fun blogs make money.

Use your blog as a daily diary.That's what they were originally intended for anyway, but it seems that most bloggers have lost their way. Learn to ‘lighten' up your writing by being yourself… and watch the results roll in!

Do you have what it takes to be a professional blogger?

Getting on the First Page of Google – Is It Still a Reality?

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You see ads and claims all of the time of services that can get your website in the first page search results of Google. Since there are only 10 results per search word or phrase that can occupy that space, that can be a tall promise. Taking in consideration of just how many websites there are on the web, can you really get a website on the first page of a search result?

Let's look at how it's done and what alternatives are available for better search engine placement:

Pay Per Click – you can ‘buy' your way to a first page listing with Google Sponsored Ads. Depending how much you're willing to spend per click, you can have your ad appear above anyone else's.

Other listings – Google has alternative search results for videos, images, books and blogs. Using specific keywords for this media, you can have elements of your webpage appear on the first page of these various results.

Niche keywords phrases – competing for general keywords such as “diamond jewelry, public speaking or life coaching' can be tough. Thorough research in other phrases people search for can land you on the first page of results. Try ‘long-tail' phrases such as “how to keep children of off drugs, corporate training for public speakers or handmade sapphire bracelets.” There is less competition for these phrases and you can still reach your target market.

Third party websites – some websites that have been around for a long time have a lot of clout with Google. You can get higher search positioning with articles, Youtube videos or being a guest blogger that will link to your website than you may get with your own website, especially if it's new.

As an Internet marketing professional, working with a business or even creating your own home based business, you'll need to answer the question: “How can I still get a first page listing with Google?” At IMTC, we teach you these various elements to better search engine placement whether you use just one or a combination of all of the above techniques. Being able to answer that question will make you more valuable in the workplace and steer you clear of scam services that promise the moon. Find out if a career in Internet Marketing is right for you.

A Career in Social Networking: Really? I Already Know About Social Networking

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Yes. Almost everyone is familiar with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. A majority of us are on these sites daily having fun and making friends. For business however, it's serious business. Companies large and small are spending time and money on social media marketing, even in the face of declining budgets for television, newspapers and other traditional media. Why? Because social networks are where the customers are. People log in to their Facebook accounts nearly everyday if not more. They are there when they are looking for friends, looking for information and even when they are looking for something to eat or someplace to go see a band. Marketing on social networks is dynamic: businesses can deliver specials, coupons and hours of operation. Fans can get instant updates as to what tonight's special dish is, what products are on sale and even what other customers are saying about the business.

Look around and take notice: just how many businesses are NOT using social media to reach out to their customers? Very few.  And who is running these campaigns and managing the day-to-day updates and operations that keep the message flowing smoothly? Internet Marketers. People who know more than just posting and sharing photos. You have to know what to say to your fans and when to say it. You have to know how to ‘push their buttons' so they act on your message. In most regards it's similar to traditional advertising, just more far-reaching and much more cost-effective.

Why is that important to you? Because this is a seriously in-demand career with a lot of benefit. Companies are realizing very quickly that there is a large gap between their growing demand and skilled employees that know how to do it right. The ball is in your court. In an era where many jobs are being outsourced or eliminated completely, Internet Marketing will continue to grow. At the Internet Marketing Training Center, we teach the skills that you need to make a career like this for yourself. Maybe you didn't realize that making a great living was possible with something fun like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin? Well, now you do…