Quite a few people have been getting in touch with me and the support desk to ask questions about the Facebook Business Academy training that I’ve just opened up.

Facebook Business Academy – More Info & Sign-Up

So I thought I’d answer some of the most common questions quickly as the class is closing very soon…

Q: When does the training start?
A: You’ll have access to module 1 as soon as you enroll. The other modules will be added to the members’ area every 7-10 days. We go through the training together and there’s a webinar at the end of each module to answer any of your questions.

Q: Is this suitable for newbies?
A: Yes – it’s perfect for people that aren’t using Facebook at all for business. We cover the basics as well as much more advanced info for  people that want to know how to massively improve their success.

Q: What extra support do I get if I need it?
A: I PRIDE myself on my support! Included in your tuition you get unlimited Q&A with me and my team in your members’ area. You can also contact our support desk if you have any non-Facebook issues. You WON’T get stuck without the help or information you need!

PLUS every person that enrolls gets a 30 min private one-on-one phone consultation with me where we can discuss anything you need!

Q: Is this the full training?
A: YES, this is the full training, not a sample or cut-down version. This is the full course that will be sold for 5x or 10x the cost in a month or two. PLUS I’m giving all preview students access to the NEXT class too so you won’t miss anything and will get ANOTHER chance to attend the webinars and ask questions etc.

Q: Why is this discounted so much?
A: Because I want your feedback – and I want your success stories! Your success stories will help me sell the training at full price in a month or two.

Q: Is there a guarantee?
A: YES – try out the training and the webinars and everything for 30 days and if it’s not right for you, get every penny back!

The Decision!
So there you have it. If you want to tap into the 250 million people that log into Facebook every single DAY (by the way, you can do this for FREE) then this is perfect for you.

And there will never be a chance to get the training at 80% – 90% off again. It’ll go on sale again in a month or two for 5x or 10x the cost. That’s the normal cost, but if you want to get the discount you only have another day or two to sign up here:

Facebook Business Academy – More Info & Sign-Up

There is a LOT more info about what is included in the course on that page, so do check it out!

If you have any questions at all, just shoot an email to: support@guru.zendesk.com and my assistant Jenny will get right back to you!

Hope to see you inside the Academy!

James

If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s CRITICAL you know how to harness its power to build your business!

Did you know Facebook recently overtook Google as the number 1 visited site online?

Did you know Facebook sends more traffic to other websites than Google?!

Over 200 million people log on to Facebook…
every
single
DAY!

A lot of businesses still aren’t paying attention to Facebook and the huge untapped audience it has. This is great for you, though… it means it’s less crowded and also cheaper to reach your PERFECT customers!

There are SO MANY reasons to be using Facebook for your business… the ability to reach your PERFECT customer easily, quickly and cheaply (often for free) means it’s one of the very best ways to grow your business!

Most people don’t realize how BIG Facebook is, or how to really leverage it for your business. It’s NOT just a site for bored teenagers any more!

I’m getting ready to release some VERY comprehensive training about using Facebook for business the right way. The training is really in-depth, but here’s a bird’s eye view of what we’re covering:

• Setting up your business on Facebook the right way (hint, there’s a big pitfall here!)
• What and how to post for greatest awareness and interaction
• How (and why) to use Facebook to become the LEADER in your industry
• How to find your perfect customers on Facebook
• How to use Facebook Ads to advertise for a FRACTION of the normal cost
• Lots of sneaky ninja tricks that will help you quickly build a huge following of perfectly targeted followers that you can reach for free whenever you want!

A lot of people talk about how you can make cash from social media etc. but that’s NOT what this is about. This is serious training for serious business owners that want to know the RIGHT way to tap into this fantastic resource.

It’s also absolutely the most comprehensive and up-to-date training there is out there! PLUS I personally hold your hand through all of it and you can ask any questions at any time – you NEVER need to struggle on your own!

Here is the BEST Bit…

I’m looking to run a beta-test group to go through the training before I release this to the general public. All the content is there, and I’ll just want you to let me know if there’s anything I need to clarify.

To say thanks for your help, I’m going to offer it at 80%-90% OFF the regular price!

…so you get complete access to the full training PLUS extra help from me at a massive 80%-90% discount!

Right now I’m not taking sign-ups, but if you think this MIGHT be of interest to you, please fill in your details below to let me know…

You’re not committing to anything right now – I’m just looking to get an idea of numbers so I can manage my resources!

So if you think it’s about time you started taking notice of Facebook for your business or website (or maybe you’re on there but not having much success) then let me know you’re interested in the training and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready.

Speak to you soon!

James

You’ve got the content, you just need more readers and comments.

In this series of posts, I’m going to cover some really quick, easy and effective strategies for increasing the traffic to (and ultimately, the success of) your blog.

Follow these steps and you’ll be a blockbuster blogger in no time!

Particpating in Forums to Expand Your BLOG Traffic

One of the most tried and true methods for increasing traffic to your blog is to actively participate in forums that are of interest to customers and prospective customers in your market niche.

So let’s get started.

First, you need to do a little homework. Don’t worry; it’s not as bad as the stuff you hated in High School!

You’ll be investigating the relevant forums for your business market. A good place to start is www.big-boards.com.

You need to note down some important information about each forum you find here, so create a spreadsheet with columns for:

• the forum’s URL
• its primary focus
• its total posts
• its total members

A good estimate of the traffic statistics for each forum can be found by looking the website’s address up on www.alexa.com.

Using the information you’ve gathered, decide which forums to visit regularly.

TIP: It’s MUCH better to visit and participate regularly in a few forums rather than spread yourself thin over several forms.

Create a signature file to add to the bottom of each of your posts on the forum. This signature will direct readers of your forum posts to your blog. It needs to be intriguing enough to motivate readers to follow the link, but not so “hypey” that you look like a scammer!

Most forums specify the number of lines and the colors you can use in your signature… often something like 5 lines of text and a link to your blog.

Try to make your signature a bit different… a bit more useful than the average signature! For example, highlight

• the title and topic of your latest blog post
• your blog’s title, objective and / or slogan
• Your USP – The Unique Selling Proposition that sets you apart from the other people on the forum with similar expertise

Once you’ve chosen the forums you want to participate in, you need to build your reputation in that forum. The only genuine way to do this is to consistently provide high quality content.

Ask intriguing questions or provide good useful responses in your forum posts. You need to consistently give readers information they find valuable – e.g. identify and solve a common problem you know they are likely to be dealing with.

Once you have spent time posting to forums and building your reputation there, you should be beginning to see your blog traffic increasing. Best of all, these people should be really INTERESTED in your content, because it’s an extension of what you’ve been posting about on the forums. This means more engaged readers and more interaction (comments, etc)

TIP: Did you know that more comments and interaction on a blog will increase your Google search engine ranking? Google recognizes that if people are commenting, then the content must be worth reading… and it increases your site’s “authority” accordingly.

Ninja Tip: If you post about more “controversial” topics you’re likely to gather more comments. Right now, Google doesn’t distinguish between “positive” and “negative” comments… so any comment is a bonus! Don’t go crazy posting hateful stuff, obviously, but the more comments you can gather – good or bad – the quicker your site will zoom up the search engines, which will lead to more traffic in the long-run.

Give your forum posting a couple of weeks and then look at your website stats to see where people are coming to your site from.

You should see the forums in your “referring sites” section, and you can directly see how much traffic you’re getting from each one.

Find out the forums that aren’t getting you much traffic. These ones probably aren’t a good investment of your time, so you can reduce your posting on these sites.

Don’t worry if the numbers look small to start with. As you become more of an “authority” on the best forums, the more people will click on your signature links.

Also, don’t forget that each person that clicks through can become a life-long reader! People won’t click on your signature link every time they see it, but they might click through and then come back to your site every day from their bookmarks or your newsletter/feed.

In the next part of the series, we’re going to look at how to leverage the content you write on your blog to easily get you completely new streams of traffic!

Whatever your business, you should know by now that using Youtube (and video marketing in general) to promote yourself is a modern must-do!

But did you know there’s ways to embed make your videos look better when you embed them on a site outside of YouTube?

Unfortunately, most people don’t.

Well, actually that’s fortunate for you because now your videos will look better than everyone else’s!

Here are a few hints for fixing the common issues and distractions with YouTube videos.

The Search Bar

By default on all YouTube videos, that really annoying search bar always pops up at the end, allowing people to search for videos by OTHER people! Of course, you don’t want that at all!

To fix, just add “&showsearch=0” as a parameter at the end of the YouTube URL, and that search bar goes bye-bye.

So now your embed code looks something like this:

<object width=”640″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/wX57EYeZdwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&showsearch=0“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/wX57EYeZdwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&showsearch=0” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”640″ height=”385″></embed></object>

HD Video

Want a better-quality, better-definition video by default? The difference is definitely noticeable so make your videos show up in their best quality without the user having to select it in the YouTube player. Put in the following codes for each at the end of the video’s URL (in the same place as the example above)

For high quality add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18
For high definition add &hd=1

(you need to have uploaded a high quality or HD video for these to work, obviously!)

Bear in mind your audience when you make this modification, though. Higher quality = longer download times, so if a lot of your audience is on a slow connection you might want to stick with normal quality.

Related Videos

At the end of your video, by default, YouTube will pick a bunch of related videos (usually by OTHER people) to show to the viewer. The same as for the search bar, you want to GET RID of the related videos to keep people viewing YOUR content, and not your competitors.

(Related videos usually equals competitors’ videos because, well, they are kinda related… you just don’t WANT your viewers to know about them!)

So get the related videos window out of there! Again. the code goes in the same place as the search bar removal code: at the end of the video’s URL. Add the following code to the aforesaid location:

&rel=0

That’s all you do. Attach that code to the player, and that cluster of “related videos” that shoots across the screen at the conclusion of your movie will no longer show up!

Captions

You can also remove the YouTube annotations on a video. You might not want to do this for your videos, but if you’re embedding someone else’s and you want to turn their annotations off by default, add this to the end of your URL in the same place as before:

&iv_load_policy=3

And, ta-da! No more captions!

That’s All Folks

So there you have it… a few simple tricks to make your videos look better (and work better!)

Take them and use them on your sites and you’ll no longer be stuck using poor quality videos or find yourself sending visitors to your competitors’ videos!

If you want to make an impact online, you need people to know you exist, right? That’s what social media is for! For people and companies to digitally scream “Hi, world! Look at me!” and hopefully pick up some raving fans along the way!

If you want people to really remember your name or your company’s name, you need to establish a standard username (or profile name) across a variety of social media sources. But there are SO MANY social media sites out there – how can you decide on a great profile name without spending hours visiting each one to see if it’s available?

FIRST of all, research your current or proposed name online using Knowem or Namechk. Knowem is likely your best choice for this – not only do they search the largest number of sites, but they also have paid-for ‘do it for you’ services which will register your username and fill out your profile on all the sites it supports for you.

You DEFINITELY want to use the same profile name (or as close as possible) on the different sites because you’ll want to start establishing your “brand” online and have a cohesive presence across all the different sites. Checking your username first means you can choose one that is available on the maximum number of sites.

Researching your name first also means you won’t go and register your name on a bunch of sites, only to find it’s already been taken on others… meaning you have to start again! If you use Knowem you’ll also see whether your name is likely to be accepted on the different sites (e.g. is it too long or too short?) so that can save you loads of time too.

THEN you can use something like LastPass (which is free) to automatically fill in profile information on all the social sites you join.

TIP: Be sure to put the URL to your site someplace in your profile! Unless someone has made it their life’s purpose to own a bit of your wares, they will not feel like searching for you on Google. The more convenient and accessible you make your site, the more likely people are to visit. PLUS this is another link to your site, which will give you some “SEO juice” and push you up the search engine rankings!

After you’ve decided on a username, you should secure your name in as many places as possible… not only for the SEO value, but also to prevent problems later. If you decide to join another site you weren’t part of initially, someone else may have your username by the time you decide to open an account there. Even if you don’t think you’ll use a Flickr page at first, get it anyway just in case you want to use it later. I can’t stress enough how important this is. A little time spent now could save you big headaches in the future (plus, you’d be surprised where you can pick up followers!)

Here are some of the sites you’ll definitely want to make accounts on (in no particular order):

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Flickr (most important if you’re doing anything at all creative)
• LinkedIn (most important if you’re working with businesses)
• Some kind of blog (Wordpress.com and Blogspot are good choices)
• StumbleUpon, Digg or Delicious (for sharing your favorite bookmarks and resources with your followers)

There are other networks you can join based on your company’s specific niche. For example, if you sell art you should also make a DeviantArt account. If you want some kind of local special interest group started, check out Meetup.com. Promoting a band? Put some music on Pandora Radio and Last.fm. There are way too many niche social sites to list here, but your main priority should be launching a name on the really popular sites (the ones I’ve listed above).

TIP: make sure you use those cute shiny buttons on your site to link to whatever social networks you’ve joined. Put them on your website and you’ll pick up some extra followers that way.

There’s PLENTY of pricey web software out there that will supposedly make it a breeze to do anything and everything you need to enable you to run your sites.

But what if you’re just starting out… or don’t want to splash all that cash just yet? These days there’s actually some great free alternatives…

You like free stuff, don’t you? Everybody like free stuff! So why throw money at developers for software when you can get programs that are just as good or better for nothing? As a business, you’ll need to spend money now and then, but don’t do it on stuff if you don’t need to!

Here are some of the freebies you can make use of when putting your online empire together:

FTP

For FTP, your best choice is FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org)! The software itself boasts several features (besides the lack of a price!) like being user-friendly, cross-platform capabilities, remote file searching, and file name filters. Just download the software (you want the CLIENT software) and you’re good to go. The FileZilla Client is for all operating systems, but the server is only for Windows, for some reason.

Another good free choice for business-related file sharing is Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com) which you can even use from a mobile device. Dropbox doesn’t upload files to your web server, instead it allows you to have an “online file locker” that you (and other people you allow) can access from anywhere.

Images

Need to tweak some images, but don’t want to shell out for Photoshop? Not a problem. There are actually quite a few worthwhile image editing programs available at zero cost to you. Some of these include GIMP (Windows and Mac OS X), PhotoScape, and Paint.NET…these are pretty much the only good ones; all others are either only free trials or aren’t much better than MS Paint. My favorite is GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) which is very good… but it’s still free, so don’t expect the same quality as Photoshop (it costs several hundred dollars for a reason).

Not quite sure what the “dog balloons” on the GIMP homepage are for (see the pic on this page too) but still, while the creators are putting out great free software I’ll just let them get on with it! Maybe they’re like that annoying paper clip that shows up in MS Word to ‘help’ you.

HTML Code

Unless you’ve the patience beyond that of the gods themselves, or you’re a computer geek, you’re not going to want to be writing code for your site by hand. Dreamweaver costs about as much as Photoshop, so if you’re looking to not wring your wallet dry, check out some of the free alternatives – all of which are good…

Kompozer (http://www.kompozer.net) is an excellent example – it’s a small application, but it’s easy to use if you need to get a web page up fast. CoffeeCup runs a close second to Kompozer, but is a little on the large side as far as the application itself. There are OS-specific programs available too, like EditPadLite for Windows (http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html) and TextWrangler for Mac (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/). My favorite is still Kompozer, though, as it’s the most widely used and supported.

Video

If you want video on your site, you’ll need something to tidy it up with; after all, raw video often looks rather crappy. Yeah, you can sell your body to science if you want to be able to afford Adobe’s video-editing applications like Premiere… or, get something free instead!

CamStudio (http://camstudio.org) is a great free choice for video creating and editing needs (especially the popular “screen capture” style vids); you can even turn the finished AVI files to SWF format for streaming media purposes. CamStudio is OK for user-friendliness (not as good as it’s bigger brother Camtasia, but hey it’s free!) and does have with an extensive help file in case you still don’t know what you’re doing.

Did I mention all these are free? I think I did! So download it and check it out… what do you have to lose, right? It’s for Windows only, though – sorry Mac users!

Windows users can also try Windows Movie Maker, which comes with Windows. It’s pretty basic and doesn’t do screen capture videos… but it might be just the ticket for what you need, so don’t overlook it!

I’m sure you’ve heard of YouTube – but did you know it’s the SECOND most popular search engine (after Google, obviously!)? Yes, that means you NEED to take notice – and you NEED to be on YouTube in some way or another!

YouTube is no longer just a place to find videos of puppies doing funny stuff, or bad wedding videos… businesses large and small are using it to connect and engage with their customers in a way that a website on its own never could.

Follow these tips and you’ll be creating great videos in no time PLUS find out what you need to do to get your videos SEEN by your customers!

Give Your Videos a Purpose
First of all you need to make sure your video has a purpose. You want your video to make the viewer DO something… e.g. buy something, learn more, subscribe to something, etc. The purpose might be as simple as getting the viewer to feel a “connection” with you. But your videos should always have a purpose, or you’re wasting your time, and your viewers’ time!

Businesses videos on YouTube are a little like longer adverts… except that on YouTube people need to choose to watch your video, instead of the advert interrupting something they’re already watching (like the final episode of LOST!)

An Introductory Video
When you first register with YouTube, you set up what’s known as a channel. This is what people can “subscribe” to in order to receive updates whenever you publish a new video.

You need an initial video – think of this as the introduction to you and your business. You are looking to make a connection with the viewer. Don’t be afraid to talk about your personal side. What got you into the business? What are some of your hobbies? Why is it so important to you to help the viewer? These kinds of videos are always good for letting people know a bit more about YOU… so they can distinguish you from the other faceless corporations out there!

You can set your YouTube channel up so this video is always the one that appears first on your Channel page, so the visitor only needs to hit “play” to watch.

Next…
Once that connection is made, viewers and subscribers will start thinking about paying more attention to what you have to offer. This is when you can begin talking about the problems they might be facing and how you can help them solve these problems. But remember… nobody wants to be lectured to, so keep it light and short to maintain interest. 4-5 minutes is an ideal length for a video on YouTube.

Technical Stuff You Should Know
As part of the video upload process, you’ll add a description for your video. Make sure your website url is in the first line of that description, so that the viewer can quickly go to where you want them (e.g. your blog) where you can ultimately make the sale.

You also need to add “tags” which are single words (or phrases inside “quotation marks”) that help describe the video. These keywords will be used by viewers (potential customers) to find your video; either through searches on YouTube itself or the more frequently used search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

The absolutely MOST effective use of your time (much more than creating a “perfect” video) is choosing what tags to include with your video! Choose words and phrases that relate specifically to your video, and phrases you think people are searching for.

Videos I see rarely have ENOUGH tags, or they are too general…
Bad Tags: Health, Doctor, Skin
Good Tags: “solving skin rash”, “skin rash treatment”, “skin rash cream”, “skin rash remedy”, “sooth skin rash”, “skin rash cure”, “skin rash face”, “skin rash arms”, “skin rash body”, etc!

(DO include general tags, but you absolutely must have the specific ones too. With the above tags, the video stands a high chance of showing up when someone searches for “skin rash face” – which 6600 people per month do, by the way!)

To summarize: Include a good description with your keywords sprinkled throughout. And spend some time researching and thinking of tags to include with your video!

If you have videos on YouTube already, you can always add tags by clicking on the “edit” tab on the video’s page.

Annotations
Although you can’t modify the video once it’s uploaded, you can add what’s called annotations to the video so that it is kept up to date. Annotations are similar to comment bubbles you often see on websites giving tips when your cursor hovers over a keyword or button.

The annotation can be set up to run through short sections of your video or throughout the entire video.

They can be used for LOADS of different reasons – for example:

• reminding viewers of your url
• reminding viewers to “like” or comment on your video
• asking open ended questions that get the viewer thinking
• making funny jokes about what’s happening in the video
• correcting a mistake you made when creating the video

Finally…
It’s NOT important to get it right the first time!

Don’t think your video has got to be perfect! It’s MUCH more important to get going.

Get something up there, and you will definitely get better with practice.

So go, upload that first video and begin exploring all the tools YouTube provides!

Here’s another clip from my “Burning Questions” Webinar. Brian asked for advice on promoting his health site.

I gave him LOADS of ideas – most of which are applicable to ANY site, so make sure you watch it to get some ideas for YOUR site!

You can watch the rest of the 2hr webinar absolutely free (and get downloads too) by going here: http://www.WebsiteMarketingGuru.com/questions

You can also watch the “How Do I Promote My Site” video on YouTube.

Keeping all your social media sites updated can feel like a lot of work! It’s almost impossible to keep every site updated with new, interesting information.

But there’s an easier way to do it! Services like Ping.fm and Pixelpipe allow you to simultaneously publish across hundreds of social network sites at once, without having to visit each one – it’s a MASSIVE time-saver!

Here’s how it works…

Ping.fm is a free service provider site that has support for more than 40 different social networking sites. You can send the same update to all of your social networks at the same time, all from within the Ping.fm site. You can post text updates or images and (soon) video updates too!

Pixelpipe is another service provider. It allows users to publish text, photo, video and audio files to more than 100 social networks, social media sites and blogs. The extra benefits of Pixelpipe are that they support posting to more sites, plus they have mobile and desktop applications you can use to post – which can be very useful.

There’s loads of other services like these two, but these are my favourites!

Don’t forget, you can gather followers on almost ANY social network or Web 2.0 site! I definitely DON’T recommend visiting and posting to each one individually, as this can be a HUGE time-suck! You might not get many followers from each site (particularly the smaller ones) but think of each site as a little stream leading to the big river that leads to your blog (or your website or store!) Every little bit helps and can add up to a LOT of visitors!

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of Ping.fm, PixelPipe or any other services you use!

Here’s a clip from a recent webinar I held where subscribers got to ask any question they wanted about their website and online marketing. Navid asked whether the search engines preferred particular domain name extensions (e.g. .com or .net or .co.uk) and whether this would affect his search engine rankings.

Watch the video to see my response! You can watch the rest of the 2hr webinar absolutely free (and get downloads too) by going here: http://www.WebsiteMarketingGuru.com/questions

You can also watch the “Do Domain Name Extensions Affect My Rank” video on YouTube.