I’ve done two posts concerning Google’s +1 button, namely Google+1 Showing Others Their Stamp Of Approval and Which Is Of More Value A Tweet Or Google’s +1? The funny thing was that a lot of people were comparing the +1 to FaceBooks like button and I thought it was so much more than that. It’s still my opinion that Google will factor people’s +1s into their search algorithm.
Google+ changes all that now that they’re live and FaceBook should be worried because unlike +1 Google+ is their direct competition. I’ve only joined Google+ today and already I’m loving it better than FaceBook. While there are similarities it’s features are so much better. So much so that I’ve heard FaceBook are so worried they are working on some major revamping just so they can remain in contention. So let’s look at some of the features:
Circles: This is the best thing about Google+ and is one of the reasons it will leave FaceBook for dead. Once you’ve joined you can organise all the people you follow into ‘Circles’ As you can see I have one Circle just for my Blogger buddies. I’ve also got one for Family, Friends and Acquaintances. You can have as many circles as you want.
Selective Streams: This is directly related to your Circles. When you post something in the stream you can select exactly who sees it. It can be made completely public or you can select a particular Circle or even several Circles giving you complete control of who sees your posts.
Self Promotion: When adjusting your profile you can add as much of yourself as you like thereby selling yourself to whoever is viewing your profile. Make sure when you do this you do not forget adding links to those sites you wish to promote
Google+ Hangouts: This is so cool that it probably has FaceBook and Skype quaking in there boots. Who knows, perhaps Skype sold to Microsoft because they knew this was coming. When youstart a hangout you can invite up to 10 people to have a video conference and it’s absolutely free. Completely unheard of in FaceBook and you have to pay to use this feature in Skype.
Sparks: Is just like your news reader. Clicking this presents you a selection of categories of what’s hot now or you simply type in your search term to find what you’re interested in.
Creating your circle is as easy as dragging the photos of the people you know into the circle of your choice. If they’re not lucky enough to be a member yet you can invite them by clicking on the ‘Add a new person’ icon on the left while you’re in the Circle page. If it doesn’t recognise the name you just type in their email address. Nothing will happen though unless you complete one more step. Click on the Home icon which will take you to the ‘Stream’ page (FaceBooks newsfeed) where you will post something making sure you share it with your new invites. Google will then send them an email of your post complete with link for them to join.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m sure there is a lot more to learn but considering I’ve only just joined I reckon I’ve done pretty well. Heck I know more about Google+ than I do about FaceBook and that’s alone says a lot. If you haven’t joined yet do it now because this is one social media group you don’t want to miss out on.
Have you got anything interesting about Google+ that you want to share with everybody?
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Now, don’t you go shaking your head in dismay. Yeah, yeah I know I’ve done posts on Flexsqueeze before, but is it my fault that the FlexSqueeze theme is so good I can’t tell you all about it in just a few posts? For those of you who are not familiar with Flexsqueeze it is the most flexible WordPress theme that you will ever see. One of the biggest features is that unlike themes like Thesis it actually works straight out of the box.
What this means is that you don’t need to know html, php, css or even hooks to get it to do what you want it to do. It’s all done from within the WordPress theme and most of the changes can be done with a click of the mouse. This makes it the theme of choice for newbie bloggers and those who are not technically minded. My About page lists my nine blogs and checking them out will show you that each has its own individual look.
Great For Affiliate Marketers
Newbies aside this theme is great for the affiliate marketer and those bloggers looking to make money online. It’s agreed by many marketers that one of the most important thing to have is a squeeze or sales page and FlexSqueeze have several templates built in to help you design very professional looking sales page. My Become A Lotto Affiliate sales page shows you just how professional a sales page you can produce. Now I’m no web designer but I reckon I did a pretty damn good job with it.
Create Columns In Posts And Pages
Have you ever wanted to create columns of texts in your posts or pages but didn’t know how to do it? I’m not sure whether there are other themes that will do this but as I found out only yesterday FlexSqueeze does. This would be great for those bloggers who want to give their blog a newspaper or magazine feel about it.
This would look really great if you’re intending to have a full width blog without any sidebars. You can actually have two equal columns, three equal columns, four equal columns or an in-between configuration.
I can honestly say that FlexSqueeze has come a long way since I posted this video.
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That’s pretty neat isn’t it? It works best if you have a blog width of 650, perfect for the built in squeeze page templates, but I have to be truthful I had to play around with it a bit to fit it into this post.
So Many Other Features
You can separate parts of your post by using neat shadow effects.
You can make your testimonials stand out so that it looks a lot more appealing to your reader or potential customer.
John Doe – SomeWebsite.com
Perhaps you have a really important part of your post and you want to make sure it captures your reader’s attention. You could place it in a colored box! You actually have a choice of 4 colors, blue, red, yellow and grey.
If there are parts within the post that you want to highlight, where you would normally use bold or italics you can now highlight the text in bright yellow
There is so much that you can do. While you can use a lot of these features in your sales pages there is no reason why you couldn’t use them in your post occasionally for those very special post.
As you can see having FlexSqueeze makes your blog really unique.
Forget your normal indentations
Select from different styles and colors
OK, I think you get the idea, but just in case you’re still a little vague about what this post is all about, all it’s trying to say is FlexSqueeze Rocks!
If you liked this post then don’t you think it deserves a Tweet or something?
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Most people who become bloggers do so with high expectations of striking it rich. You can’t even blame them because the net is full of people promising they can show them how to make a whole lot of money online, saying that all they need is a blog or a set of websites. A few have actually done it and they get a whole lot of traffic because people think if they stick around long enough some of that fortune will rub off on them. Others haven’t come anywhere near making a decent online income but they write as if they hold the key to financial freedom. Unfortunately they manage to fool a lot of people, all those newcomers who come online to hopefully improve their financial status.
Many who fail to reach their dream of financial freedom continue the online life because they’ve come to love blogging. After all it has so much to offer, you get to express yourself, to share your knowledge with others and the interaction with your commentators is truly sublime. Unfortunately the rest will give up in disgust once they’ve come to realise it wasn’t as easy as they were made to believe.
Now, I’m not here to tell you that I have the secret because I haven’t and saying any different would make me as dishonest as all the rest. However, over the years I have discovered certain things that every blogger needs to know if they want to make their blog a success.
Traffic
This is the most important part of making money online and yet most of those people selling their ‘secret to success’ fail to mention it. All they tell you is get your niche online and the money will start to flow in. Start up another ten and you will increase your income tenfold. Unfortunately no traffic means no customers which means no money and ten times nothing is still nothing.
Getting traffic is possible though but it takes a lot of work and a fair bit of time to drive traffic to your site. What makes things worse is you don’t want just any traffic, you want targeted traffic. This means if you have a blog that is selling computers you don’t want people coming over who are looking to buy dog collars.
The way to get targeted traffic is all tied into the keywords you use in your domain name, your headings, blog titles and posts. Even that is not going to work unless the search engines think you have something of value, and the way to do that is by getting backlinks via blog commenting, forums, writing articles but most importantly by writing brilliant content so other will link to it. My post How I Am Marketing My Online Lottery Niche highlights some of the strategy I’m using to market my latest blog.
A Product To Sell
Most everyone will tell you to make money online you need something that you can sell, preferably your own. Unfortunately most of us don’t have that and so we do the best we can by placing Adsense ads on our sites or by promoting other peoples products as an affiliate. I’ve had a bit of success selling products like FlexSqueeze (a brilliant blog theme), Market Samurai, web hosts and a few others. The problem with those products is once you sell someone a product they’re no longer a potential customer, at least not for that product, which means you’re forever looking for new customers.
In my post The Secret To Online Success Is Passive Income I outlined a few methods I used that were making me money on a regular basis. I also spoke about my latest venture, one that I am confident will be my biggest earner because I am now selling a product that people buy on a regular basis, lottery tickets. I am now in the process of driving traffic to Buy Online Lottery Tickets with the knowledge that every time I gain a customer I will make money whenever they purchase a lottery ticket online. I’m also offering others the opportunity to become a MyLotto affiliate giving them the same opportunity to make money online, knowing that I also make a percentage of their sales.
Building Your Brand
At the beginning of the post I said the most important facet of making money online was driving targeted traffic to your blog, well that’s not quite true, there is something way more important. The most important part of your online businesses is YOU! You are the face of your business as everything you do online affects the way others perceive you. That being the case it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your blog because if your online profile is suspect you’re screwed.
By everything I’m including blog commenting as this is by far the most popular method used by bloggers to market their blog. I’ve known this from the beginning and I am constantly surprised by the amount of people who fail to use commenting to their advantage. This is probably because done properly it takes time and many prefer quantity over quality failing to see that a lot of poor comments only serves to hurt their brant. If you’re not sure what constitutes a good comment I suggest you read Teaching People The Proper Way To Comment as I used this post to grade people on the quality of their comment.
One thing to remember while online is that unlike the offline world you have time to think before responding to any negative comment, or feedback on one of your products, that you may receive. Never, ever, let anger cloud your replies because once you blow up online you reveal to everyone your loss of control and lack of professionalism. Two posts taking about this subject that you may find interesting ate Kristi’s 3 Questions To Ask About Offensive Content On Your Blog, although you can apply this to a lot more than just blogging.
Social Media
Social media is an important facet of your online business and one that I still have a long way to go as far as online promotions go. It’s also very important as far as branding goes and so you have to be very careful how you conduct yourself when using them. Something that many people fail to realise is that almost everything you do online is open to public scrutiny and that being the case acting in a manner that can be seen as untoward by others can cost you business. So be very careful what you say online or even what you link to. You may think that something you saw online was extremely funny and so you tweet the link to all your followers not thinking that many of them may find it very offensive.
When it comes to social media it’s my opinion that ChingYa would have to be the online social media guru, blog posts like her 7+ Major Tips In Enhancing Your Upgraded FaceBook Page just goes to show the wealth of her knowledge. You could do a lot worse than going over there and learning from what ChingYa has to say.
Phew, I don’t normally rave on like this but I reckon I just had a lot to say, and even so there is probably so much that I left out. This is where you guys come in by using the comment section. What are you doing to make your blog a success? What have I missed out and how can we help each other to attain our goals.
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Circles: This is the best thing about Google+ and is one of the reasons it will leave FaceBook for dead. Once you’ve joined you can organise all the people you follow into ‘Circles’ As you can see I have one Circle just for my Blogger buddies. I’ve also got one for Family, Friends and Acquaintances. You can have as many circles as you want.
choice. If they’re not lucky enough to be a member yet you can invite them by clicking on the ‘Add a new person’ icon on the left while you’re in the Circle page. If it doesn’t recognise the name you just type in their email address. Nothing will happen though unless you complete one more step. Click on the Home icon which will take you to the ‘Stream’ page (FaceBooks newsfeed) where you will post something making sure you share it with your new invites. Google will then send them an email of your post complete with link for them to join.
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