You Just Have To Love Easy Web Traffic!

I know I’ve had a bit of a rant on Social Media Marketing recently but even at this early stage of sorting my own I now have evidence that it works. I’ll make this post a quickie…

I was just in checking my stat’s stuff for my sites. This is why I love our “Smart Mortgage Marketing WebSites” model.

I can quickly and easily check a whole gambit of stuff that helps me reach more people and get more people to find me but more on that later.

Not only can I tell how many visitors I’ve had, and on a daily basis, I can tell how long they stayed and which pages they went to and from.

A big thing is what keywords they used to find me in the first place – that is huge. It means that I can then tweak and refine the keywords my site is known for and increase the visitors to my site… exponentially.

Another big thing is where did they come from? Did they type my name in? That’s known as ‘direct’ traffic or did they see a link somewhere?

There are only 3 ways people are going to get to your site –

• Direct traffic
• Referring sites
• Search engines

Does that seem techy to you?

It’s not… If you can use Microsoft Word then you can do this stuff, it’s dead easy.

Actually, you don’t even have to ‘cause that’s a part of what the “Smart Mortgage Marketing WebSite” package does. We not only optimize your site but we monitor it ongoing… test and measure… and refine what gives results.

And that’s what our members enjoy… results!

This is the exciting news. I’ve been talking about setting up your profiles more effectively on ‘Facebook’ and LinkedIn’.

After checking my ‘Stat’s stuff’ this morning I found that I’m getting checked out via both Facebook and LinkedIn. Yup, the stat’s tell me exactly where and how many. I’ve had 9.8% of traffic through Facebook and a bit less through LinkedIn. Not bad considering I’ve only refined my profiles recently.

What is most interesting for me is the mix between the 3 primary sources of traffic – direct, referring and search engines. You don’t think I’m going to tell you the rest of my stats do you?

Our clients love the fact that they now understand it all – or is it the fact that they don’t have to understand it is what they love? Hmmm, I’ll have to ponder that one… you can enjoy it too – go to Smart Mortgage Marketing to find out more.

Have I made any money or picked up any clients as a result of this already?

No, give me a break… its early days yet but the extra traffic and exposure is always a good thing. All this will increase your favour and standing with the ‘Google Gods’. It’s also increasing the ‘authority’ of your site along with increasing the chance of other people picking up my content and referring people to us.

You’ll be amazed who and where other traffic will come from, but that’s another post… If you want to enjoy this lap of luxury in website world go to Smart Mortgage Marketing NOW! and look for yourself.

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that runs alongside even the best referral systems and generates an independent stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and positions them as the experts in their area and ends all those lame, frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit! valued at $350.

3 Best Tips For Using LinkedIn!

I started using LinkedIn about a year ago. Probably like most people I set up my profile and did nothing with it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what else I should do.

You do need to build up your connections. Check your friends ‘connections’ too and ask for the introduction to like minded people.

It is a valid networking and lead generation tool and I’ve generated 1 hot lead through it already so I’m good with that. A friend even had a job offer last month too!

Here’s the share on a few tips and tricks that will help.

First up is your Public Profile URL… Edit it.

The default link looks something like this – http://www.linkedin.com/pub/XX/xxx/XXX which is pretty ugly and random.

What makes a lot more sense is to use the word or term you want to ‘rank’ for with the search engines. So change it to something like this http://www.linkedin.com/in/thepeterbutler but it could be your business name if you like.

It will help in Google World. Your name should still appear in the search results regardless but if the text link contains the actual words, like your name or business then that’s all the better for the search results.

Increase Your Public Profile!

I’d also recommend placing this as a link on your website. The more links on your site to other sites about you will increase your overall profile on the internet.

A point to consider, when people click on that link and they’re redirected to your LinkedIn page the sexier URL will appear in the address bar, much more professional rather than some generic random line.

It’s easy to edit. Just hit ‘edit my profile’ and click on the text. Your name might be taken already so be prepared to slip in something that sets it apart. You can use a digit or perhaps ‘the’ as a differentiator.

I have both my LinkedIn and my Facebook profiles as links under a category link ‘social media sites’. My take is this, people want to do business with people and this shows them that humanness side. You should have decent profiles set up on both Facebook and LinkedIn.

Your Own Personal Built In Website Feature!

This is huge. Click on ‘Applications’ in the left navigation bar and you have 10 applications at this point ready to ‘plug in’ to your profile.

The biggest for me was the Wordpress plug-in. This feature means as I make a post to my site it appears in my profile automatically. So my last 3 posts are sitting in there with no effort, getting more exposure and all the while telling my story and adding to my credibility. That is a very cool tool.

Yup, it has a Built In Slide Show Presentation too…

The Slide Share Presentations will be my next set up – this will be a real boon for a lot of people too. I show my wares via Power Point so this will work particularly well for me.

What plug-ins will suit you?

Depending on the nature of your business as to which other plug-ins will be most useful to you. This is the short list of other tools – Google Presentations, Blog Link, LinkedIn Polls (cool), Trip-It, Reading List by Amazon and some online collaboration tools.

It seems the issue for most people is time, to learn how it all works or committing to ‘building that network’. It’s the same for me so my take is to do this stuff in my ‘slow’ time or at least not my ‘peak’ productive time. I’ve even sat there with my laptop while I catch a TV show to get through it.

So, go to it and get LinkedIn!

While your there let’s get connected too. The more ‘connections’ we all have the better.

Here’s my public profile link:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/thepeterbutler

See you on LinkedIn!

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that runs alongside even the best referral systems and generates an independent stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and positions them as the experts in their area and ends all those lame, frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit! valued at $350.

Excellent Guidance in Lead Generation…

“Peter is a rare jewel in the crown of the WA marketing fraternity in that he provides excellent guidance in that hardest of hard business developement jobs – lead generation.

The techniques he advocates help to differentiate your business, are measurable and cost effective – an attractive feature in our current financial environment.

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Peter to any business owner or manager who is looking for a marketing professional with original ideas and the skill and expertise to make them work for you.”

Tony Addiscott

Mobile: 0413 143 500
Fax: 08 9463 7852
Email: tonya@guidecommunications.com.au

Will Social Media Marketing Make You Any Money?

Have you been hearing all the hype
on Social Media Marketing?

Is it really going to make one iota of difference for you in business?

I’m sure you would have heard about the supposed benefits of social media marketing. I’ve had a Facebook site for a couple of years now and didn’t do a lot with until quite recently. I didn’t really ‘get it’ – how I could leverage it but now it’s starting to gel.

I also set up a “LinkedIn” site about a year ago. It was pretty dormant until I started to make it work for me too but more on that later.

The Facebook site I attended too a little more often simply ‘cause of the friend requests I was getting. Then as my ‘friends’ base grew, some of these I don’t even know but maybe they’re a friend of a friend, and then it started to get a little interesting. One part that was surprised me was the blasts from the past, some of which I’d rather forget and am in total denial about – “That must have been another Peter Butler, wasn’t me” – but the point is this…

In Facebook I started to read and track the dialogue on the wall, if you know nothing about Facebook, that’s the ‘posts’ on the page – ‘wall’ and saw some interesting dialogue and started making comments. Just in the last 2 weeks I’ve made contact with 2 people that will lead to a venture or at least an introduction to ventures.

Now you need to get this, my interaction on Facebook hasn’t been all about flogging me or my wares. I posted some photos of how I broke my $20,000 swimming pool 2 days before Xmas, and I mean broke it, like the Xmas that was only 3 weeks ago but that’s another story, it’s in the photo shoot on Facebook. A sad story and we don’t talk about that anymore…

This is about making you known and real to people.

Like I’ve said many times before “People want to do business with people” and it’s great to show our weaknesses, our strengths and most of all our ‘humanness’.

Facebook is a great platform to do that, getting personal but from a distance.

Now you can also plug what’s happening for you in business. Using the “What are you doing now” feature is one way to go about that. I try to be more factual than do the ‘sell’ bit. Some people are really ‘in your face’ but they don’t do it for long. Remember, nobody wants to be ‘sold to’.

That’s the ‘social’ side of Facebook but the side spin is you’re also creating a name for yourself too.

Here’s the sexy thing for business. You can post video’s, straight from YouTube, you can post links direct to your website and you can create a specific ‘page’ for your business too.

I’ve posted my video to my personal profile and I’m just posting it to my business ‘page’ as we speak.

“Groups” can be created, something like ‘Smart Mortgage Marketers’ or whatever Your Niche Is, but I simply haven’t had time to set that up as yet. I’ll keep you posted on tips and tricks with that too.

Want To Get the Google Gods To Smile Upon You?… Yet Again.

You can also customize your Facebook link to reflect you or your business that you can use in on your website. This can be a good thing with your profile showing up with the blessing of the Google Gods. Think about it, your name is in the URL link. It will show up in all the search engines.

When I search my name I’m now on page 1 in Google and nearly fill the page. Two of those links are my Facebook site. Not bad considering I only showed a single result on page 5 only a few months ago.

I’ve got my Facebook social link as a link on my main website too.

My Facebook URL is http://profile.to/peterbutler/ and I’ve also got this set as a link on my Smart Mortgage Marketing site under ‘Social Links’.

There’s a whole host of stuff you can do to promote yourself using Facebook but it does need to be in balance time wise as there are other “social media” marketing sites out there and other ways to promote yourself.

Is Facebook worth the time? So far it’s been useful to me, just got to manage the time aspect, it’s very easy to get side tracked.

I tend to do the techy stuff like the video’s and stuff in my “primetime”, my most productive time, but I leave the chit chat and “friends’ list building for when I’m fatigued later or in the evening.

Have I made money from it yet? Not yet, but I most certainly will. When I check my Google Analytics I can see that traffic has come direct from Facebook so it is definitely working already. The more traffic the better always.

So what about “LinkedIn”?

As I said I also set up a “LinkedIn” site about a year ago but I certainly haven’t valued it as I should have. I’ve now invested time and started to make it work for me but that will have to be in the next post.

You’ll love the “toys” they’re adding that can help give you leads and also to improve its functionality.

Because “LinkedIn” is a professional platform there seems to be a high level of integrity too with protecting clients from abuse and the making “friends” or “connections” process.

I’ve generated 1 hot lead through it already so I’ll share that in a later post.

PS: My apologies if you’ve recently been getting random mostly empty emails from me, I’ve been doing some updating on the site and the automatic posting feature sent out an email with every minor tweak I did, woops, sorry about that!

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that generates a stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and it positions them as the experts in their area and ends all lame and frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit!

Oh My God People are Contacting me and leaving messages!

Oh My God People are Contacting me and leaving messages!

This was my early morning thankyou email from a client we’d just done a website for. David O was ecstatic after 8 years of having a website that suffered rigor mortis (it was stiff and dead)

______________________________

Oh My God People are Contacting me and leaving messages

I received these two comments last night from my site…………WOW……

David O

Nice Site layout for your blog. I am looking forward to reading more from you.

Tom Humes

Very interesting analysis. Moves my thinking along in terms of helping clients measure the impact of the leadership development work that I do, mostly with non-profit social service organizations. Thanks.

Larry Wenger, MSW
Workforce Performance Group

David O

______________________________

You need to realize that David was so excited because we had only re-published his site 2 weeks prior and after 8 years of disappointment, well, I’m sure you can see why he was over the moon.

You need to understand this. To be indexed by Google, found by the search engines and then these articles even found by humans in that time frame is nothing short of miraculous.

How did we do it? I’ll cut straight to the chase.

The Wordpress Platform!

…and our little box of tricks and very sexy plug-ins and how we use them. You didn’t expect me to give all our secrets did you?

Why was David so excited even though we told him to expect this sort of thing?

Because he’s been told similar things in the past. David had spent $18,000 over the past 8 years with 4 different web developers with all the promises in the world and none had delivered.

Here’s the thing…

• Did any of those websites generate leads? – No
• Did they capture lead details? – No
• Was he able to relate to his prospects and clients through his website? – No
• Did he actually make any money through those websites? – No

If you answered no to any of the above then you have to question everything you’ve ever been told about website world. The problem with most web designers is that they are not marketers.

It’s not their fault, they know how to do sexy graphics and know some code and stuff but they don’t understand marketing. And especially direct response marketing. For the most part all you end up with is a very sexy online corporate style brochure… and that’s it!

It won’t actually make you any money. Makes you wonder why you would bother doesn’t it. The whole point of a website is to build your business so you make more money through…

• Generating leads.
• Generating fresh and qualified leads consistently.
• Capturing the prospects details so you can market to them consistently.
• Being able to relate and respond to your prospects and clients.
• Actually make money.

So David was well on his way to achieving that with his new style website based on the Smart Mortgage Marketing model. Already he had 2 people respond to the information that he was able to post easily and quickly on his own to his own website, he was rapt.

He was able to respond to these ‘comments’ and start a relationship with these people. That seems to be a fundamental flaw in most peoples thinking with websites and business today. So many people have forgotten the basics…

People want to do business with people!

That’s what this style and model of website will achieve. It’s all about being able to relate to your prospects and clients. The side spin to this is other people visiting his site will see this and it starts to bring the barriers down and the trust factor up. The world will see that you’re a real person who knows what they’re talking about and not some big impersonal corporation.

The Google Gods will smile upon you!

Not only that but it means that the Google Gods will smile upon you because you have a web 2.0 based website platform. Without going all techy it basically means the search engine world will love you and your site which means that more people will find out about you.

And that’s without any marketing per say. This style is the way of the future for websites but more importantly for NOW because you really don’t want to get left behind and have your competition getting the jump on you.

David is now able to run direct response marketing pieces, both online and offline and direct people to his site, qualify them, capture their details and market to them at will.

How good is that?

I’ll keep you posted with David’s progress as it all really starts to snowball for him.

“Breaking News”! I’ve just done an interview with David so can listen in to what David actually had to say! Click here to Listen!

Do you want these sort of results? Jump on this NOW and get your own FREE Marketing and Website Audit Here Right Now!

Make 2009 Your Best Year EVER!