As a business building tool for your relationship based business (is there really any other kind?) Twitter can be used to introduce yourself to people with shared personal and business interests, get into a “conversation” with them and ideally build a relationship with them as any combination of client, team member and friend.

As mentioned in the first article in this series regarding building your list of whom you’re following and your followers, there are automated ways to communicate with everyone, that there are pros and cons to automated tools, and they can always be augmented with manual (i.e. real interaction).

Direct Message Box

When someone is nice enough to follow you in twitter, even if in response to you following them, basic good manners suggest you thank them.  So please do respond to them.  If you are using automated means to build your lists, you will quickly be overwhelmed with too many messages to personally respond to.  This is when automated tools are helpful.  All of the twitter tools mentioned in the first article, Tweetspinner, Twello, and Social Oomph (my favorite) as well as many others will work.  No matter the tool you choose, they will each have a tool to automate your responses to your direct messages.  Part of setting up the automation in any of these tools, is preparing a list of 140 character responses, thanking those that follow you. The set up and configuration of your list might vary from site to site, but the idea is the same for every tool. In your 140 character messages, remember that folks are following you because you’ve expressed interest in what they are up to.  Continue that interest in your responses.  Remember, you are at the very beginning of building a relationship with them.  Don’t try to sell your opportunity too soon.  That said, feel free to include shortened links to your business sites (bit.ly will help here, shortening your links so you can make the best use of your 140 characters) in a context of shared interest, rather than premature, hard selling.

As you are thanking others for following you, you will receive many thank you messages as well. This is where the relationship building continues.  Reach out to those thank you notes that most resonate with you.  Ask them how they are using Twitter to market their businesses.  Offer an introductory free consultation.  Send them a complementary bit of content.  Check in with them occasionally to see how they are.  You know, just like you would with a friend.

Yea! Your list is building nicely, you’re seeing more traffic to your website, your conversion rate from Twitter is improving nicely.  Now your inbox is swamped.  These same tools will help you quickly purge your direct message box.

Tweeting

Because the purpose of social networks in general and Tweeting in particular, this is where the relationship building really begins.  Regular tweets are the ticket.  Ideally, several times a day.  Again, the tools listed above can automate this process as well with the usual pros/cons. Automated tools have a similar spinning message feature mentioned in the Direct Message section. This spinning messages will be in a similar format of a list of 140 character messages. To be compliant with Twitter rules (and thus keeping your account open) the ratio of marketing tweets to non-marketing is about 1:4.  Marketing tweets would include those that link back to your business sites, blogs, videos, etc.  You also want to build a long list of tweets, as Twitter doesn’t take kindly to excessive repetition of messages.  I would started with a list of 20 tweets, with a 1:4 ratio of marketing to to non-marketing tweets, and build your list 20 tweets a day and reload your list into whatever tool you’re using.  Another part of automating your tweets is to set up scheduling and frequency of your tweets.

As with everything discussed so far, just because you automate a fair amount of your Twitter marketing efforts, you and your followers will be well served with manual tweets from you.  Read what other people are tweeting about.  If someone shares something interesting to you, share the love and re-tweet.  Remember, this is a social medium.  So go be social!

Next Steps

Now that you have the basics of building your list of followers by following those with similar interests as you and building relationships with that list using a combination of automated tools and good old fashioned manual effort, you can start experimenting with marketing your business on Twitter.  As you become more comfortable with the tools, you will naturally progress to fine tuning your marketing message to better coordinate with your other marketing platforms and campaigns.

So go forth, get out there and introduce yourself to people, share your information, build the relationships and build your business and have a great time doing it.

There are multiple ways to get traffic to your website for very little cost that can make you money online.

Even if you only get a small percentage of your visitors to convert successfully, it hasn’t cost you any money just your time.

There are two hard facts of any internet business that you cannot escape.

To make money online, you need to generate traffic to your website and second, you need to convert that traffic into buyers.

You might try to do this directly by sending them to a sales page or you may do it indirectly by sending them to an opt-in page to capture their details or to your information site or blog.

First, you should focus on identifying your killer keywords – the ones that attract the right kind of people into you business.

Matching up searches with your content means the resulting traffic will be pre-qualified and pre-disposed to your offer.

If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income.

BUT, it doesn’t take thousands to generate website traffic to your site.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, the holy grail is knowing how to generate low cost website traffic without having to run up a huge daily advertising bill.

Here I present to you my top 7 strategies to generate low cost website traffic that could help make money online for you.

1. Link exchanges

This is a well known and proven strategy. It’s rare these days to see a website without a link to another site.

Many business owners are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more visibility for their sites.

The more you create back links to your website from other pages, the more the traffic you’ll see coming as you’ll start to rank higher.

If you’re exchanging links with other sites, it’s important that the link is relevant. This usually means it is in the same niche or a relate niche as your own site.

This is more likely to please your human visitors as it provides additional information or services related directly to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links with authority sites or sites with high page ranks will also increase your traffic even more significantly, as it will boost your rankings in search engine listings.

This is known as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

2. Article Marketing

There are many electronic magazines (called ezines) and online newsletters around on the internet which provide free space for you to submit articles.

If you want to keep your costs low, you can write the articles yourself. But you can save time, by using the many freelance writers who are willing to create articles on your best converting keywords or keyword phrases. The fees are much smaller than you might think.

Write articles that complement your website, product, business or other offer. Write on topics that you have expertise on so you develop your knowledge researching around the subject and can come across as an authority.

Write articles that produce tips and guidance on the subject or your niche. Checking what has already been written means you can identify topics and solutions that are less competitive so your article will rank higher on your chosen keywords.

At the end of the article submission process, you can insert a “resource box”. It’s here that can say something about yourself or your business and provide your visitors with a link to your site if they want to find out more.

If they do go there, they are already impressed and predisposed to your offer, wouldn’t you say?

Once you have your article accepted in your primary article directory, you can also send variations to other article directories.

There is a lot of free article submission software available to automate the process and if you are doing a lot of article marketing, a great paid service I personally use is SubmitYourArticles.

3. Video marketing

Video marketing can send literally thousands Of visitors to your primary business. It really is the social medium of the moment. Just look at the popularity of YouTube! 5-10 minutes is all you need to get your point across.

You can either use a camcorder to video your own talking head or create a footage around your product or offer and add the audio later.

If you’re not yet confident on camera, you can also create a series of photos and powerpoint slides and record an audio commentary around that.

It’s important to put your website address in your titles along one edge of your screen.

Once you have a few videos made, you then need to drive traffic to them. The best way is to submit them to video sites. The most popular are youtube.com, metacafe.com and dailymotion.com.

To really maximise exposure and get the most traffic back to you website, you can use video submission tools. There’s a free video submission service, TubeMogul. An even better tool is a paid service I use is Traffic Geyser.

When you have registred on the prime video sites, the submitter tool will submit your videos automatically to various video sites and get you lots of traffic to your url.

4. Forum marketing

This is completely free – it only requires an input of your time. Do some initial sculking around to identify the kinds of problems people have in this niche.

Once you feel you understand the community, you can start to feedback a comment, start a post, here and there, using your knowledge and expertise.

You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

With every post, you can add a link to your site. But remember first to give value, not just blatantly advertise your site.

As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

5. Twitter marketing

Twitter and blogging go hand in hand. They help you build your authority and social networks within your niche.

Twitter has totally transformed the way that people communicate online and since it’s free, it really should be an indispensable part of your overall marketing strategy and link to your blog.

Twitter is free to join and you can get set up with an account in a matter of just a few minutes.

Twitter has proven itself to be incredibly addictive and, for business owners, very valuable too.

Technology such as Twitter has the potential to give us more than just an opportunity to tell others what happened in our day. It can be used to connect with people in a meaningful manner.

Imagine if you had cost-efficient and fast marketing tools that met existing customers where they are and that also helped you acquire new customers.

Imagine if you had the power to build a network of like-minded peers, a community of shared ideas and creativity.

6. Blog marketing

You blog should therefore be one of the main hubs for your business. It’s all about YOU Inc.

As your name gets passed around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list and RSS subscribe feed for people who regularly visit your site.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. A blog is like dating – you wouldn’t propose on the first date so why shove your sales pitch down a new visitors throat.

You can point your articles, videos, forum posts and social media activities all through your blog.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a blog but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many many sources of ideas and inspiration for your blog, which come from your day to day activities and your own personal development.

7. Facebook marketing

Social networking has always been a main part of many internet marketers strategy. But most don’t use it effectively at all. They flood the likes of Facebook and Myspace with offers and promotions. This won’t work.

If you want to use social tools like Facebook to generate traffic to your website, you first have to identify the right groups and then invest something of yourself.

You need to be prepared to make a personal connection with other folks in the community. It’s all about relationships and connecting with people on a personal level.

Posting up useful content on social networks will get you some awesome rankings on Google. The search engines seem to put a premium on sites like Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Squidoo and Hubpages.

In all these free or low cost traffic generation methods, it’s all about giving value to your niche community.

Leads generated in this way will be far more valuable as leads back to you – interested, highly targeted, committed and profitable.

Related Twitter Marketing Articles

Some website owners are more frustrated about Google optimization than for other search engines. They feel it is harder to perform search engine optimization for Google.
 
Whether you are making direct sales from your website or sales lead generation (or both), optimizing for Google doesn’t need to be that hard.
 
In fact, in time you may find it easier to perform SEO for Google than for other search engines.
 
 
Remember that Google is Much Smarter than the other Search Engines
 
 
Since Google is more intelligent, you have to treat them differently.
 
If you’re trying to spam them, their intelligence is going to be a problem for you. If you’re playing by the rules and providing valuable content for searchers, then you should have no problem.  
 
What Google wants is valuable content that satisfies their users’ search queries. They want searchers to find what they’re looking for, not clicking the back button quickly, but who stay on the sites they visit.
 
There are some in the SEO community who believe time your visitors spent on your site is one of the calculations Google uses right now in their algorithm to assign organic rankings.
 
Whether this is the case or not is really irrelevant: we should all want to deliver quality content that meets our searchers query, keeps them on our sites and that leads to a conversion, a sale or sales lead generation.
 
 
Are You Optimizing for Yahoo! Search and Live Search, too? 
 
 
With Yahoo! Search and Live Search (formerly MSN) you need to have the keyword phrase you optimize for on the page. There may be some exceptions, but this is a solid rule to follow.
 
The order of the keywords makes a difference with them, too.
 
As an example, with Google, Blue Widget and Widget Blue are treated the same way. Not so with Yahoo! and Live, they are treated as completely different search phrases.
 
Given the very high market share that Google has, you may want to just optimize for Google and not Yahoo! or Live. After all, depending on whose numbers you’re looking at, Google’s market share is basically 60% to 70% of all U.S. searches!
 
(And there are hundreds of other much smaller search engines, with such small market shares that they aren’t normally worth worrying about.)
 
But if you decide to also optimize for Yahoo! Search and for Live Search, then you will likely have to create more pages, to cover all your keyword phrases.
 
So, as you create more pages for your keywords, you clutter up the Internet, unless those pages are really unique, valuable content.
 
And then there is that duplicate content filter that Google has…you don’t want to run afoul of that.
 
If you do optimize for the other engines, unless the additional content is very unique, you might be advised to keep Google out of those pages (using your robots.txt file).
 
 
Knowing that Google is More Intelligent, How do We Optimize Differently for Google?
 
 
With Google’s use of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), your pages do NOT actually have to contain the keyword phrase(s) you’re optimizing for. But your pages had better contain words strongly related to your chosen keyword phrases. 
 
In fact, it is common to see high ranking pages where the keyword phrase isn’t in any of the HTML tags and where it also isn’t in the page text, either. Common keyword density numbers for top ranking pages in Google range from 30% all the way down to 0% keyword density.
 
Why is this and how do we benefit performing Google optimization? 
 
Google is smart enough to understand similar words and phrases (now is when we get to use that word Synonym from English class). Thus, the actual keyword phrase doesn’t have to be on the page. But words related to the same theme as your keyword phrases need to be on the page.
 
But if our keywords don’t actually have to be on the page for Google to understand the page is about our subject (our keyword phrases), how does Google make that determination?
 
 
Off-Page SEO is the Key to Your Google Optimization and to Your Sales Lead Generation 
 
 
The links from other websites to your Web pages and what these links say about your pages is the KEY to optimizing for Google. Remember, links need to be pointed towards your interior pages, not just to your home page.
 
And those links need anchor text.
 
Anchor text is the wording that people click on to go to your Web page, when the actual link doesn’t show your website url (and file name, if going to an interior page).
 
Anchor text tells Google (and to a lesser degree, other search engines) what your Web page is about.
 
Even if the actual keyword phrases aren’t used on your page, the theme of the page text should match the anchor text pointed to that page. You want the wording to be compatible and complimentary.
 
You don’t want to confuse Google as to your pages’ themes. That can cause real problems.
 
 
Quantity Versus Quality
 
 
When considering links to your Web pages, quantity is important. You will have to research your competition to give you an idea as to the number of links you may need.
 
Two tools you can look into are SEO Elite and OptiLink. You can Google both. 
 
But MUCH more important is the quality of your links. The better quality your links, the fewer you will need versus your competition.
 
Part of how you can evaluate quality of potential links to your site is that site’s home page Google Page Rank.
 
Now, Google Page Rank is on a page-basis, not a site-wide basis. But the home page Page Rank can tell you if Google considers that site to be an “authority site”.
 
You can install the free Google toolbar if you haven’t already and activate the Page Rank feature. While the information is literally months old, it’s the easiest way to view a page’s Page Rank.
 
You want some links to your site from websites with a home page Google Page Rank of at least 5.
 
One thing you do want to watch: Don’t have to high a percentage of your links containing the same anchor text. Aim for no more than 50% of your anchor text to any page being the same exact anchor text.  
 
 
Wrapping it Up
 
 
For effective Google optimization, start by pointing enough quality links to your Web pages. One-way links are much more effective than reciprocal links, where you link back to the site that has linked to you.
 
Stay away from triangulated or 3-way links schemes. This is where site A links to site B which in turn links to site C. This is a “no-no” which Google can catch and will penalize for.
 
Use your keywords as anchor text for your links. Hold down the percentage…don’t have 70% of your links to one page using the same exact anchor text!
 
Even if you don’t have the keyword phrases on your page, you can still have top rankings, as long as your links’ theme matches your Web page content those links are aimed at.
 
Following this strategy, you can also optimize your pages for more than one keyword phrase. And without creating dozens and dozens of junk pages, just to cover all your keywords.
 
You’ll be able to increase your online sales and your sales lead generation, more easily. 
 
I’ll be following up shortly with another article, with a specific checklist sharing how I structure my link campaigns for maximum results.

A survey of CFOs of small companies found that they spend, on average, at least 2 hours per sales tax return, per filing period. This number increases dramatically as the size of the company grows and revenue increases putting a greater burdon on any existing Online Sales Tax Solution.

This presupposes that they have good First Generation Solutions. Even with good First Generation Solutions in place, companies of all sizes spend many employee work hours in making sure that data is processed accurately, and transferred from one solution to another. A survey of small business managers found that they spend a couple of hours a day in transferring transaction and deposit data into their financial systems.

Larger companies were found to have many FTE’s dedicated to these functions. This data processing is necessary to address the back end functions of tax compliance – reporting, filing and auditing.

This high level of involvement, activity and knowledge is a strong indicator that something is wrong with the system. Are these people concerned with how authorization is processed by the financial institutions?; do they even know who all the players are in a typical transaction authorization process? No! and neither should they. Business executives should have to focus on building their business, and not on figuring out their response to the state tax auditor, explaining why a software developer does not know why a business must distinguish between a customer who purchased their doughnut at the counter, or ordered it while sitting at a table. Nor should they be treated as common thieves because they paid the correct taxes, just to the wrong county.

Recently, Next Generation Solutions have started to emerge into the market. The goal of Next Generation tax compliance solutions is to remove the pain typically associated with tax compliance, and, as a single source, provide for a single solution that addresses all the elements required for compliance. Next Generation Solution are deigned to automate processing of repetitive and time consuming tasks, and eliminating data and system gaps. This is a long winded way of stating that Next Generation Solutions provide for a seamless solution, which removes the entire burden of compliance from the retailer. By using a Next Generation solution, the retailer should be reassured that all their needs to address compliance are being taken care of, and they can focus upon their main goal, that of generating business.

The importance of Next Generation Solutions is best understood in light of the sense of complacency companies are lulled into when, as modern businesses, they use technologies to help management work more efficiently. Management tends to set a goal of ‘figuring taxes on transactions, and these First Generation Solutions achieved that goal. Management mistakenly assumed that using some form of tax solution achieves the goal of accuracy and efficiency. The availability and use of First Generation Tax Solutions tends to lull the business owner to believe that they have taken sufficient steps to maximize efficiencies and reduce liabilities.

In fact, tax auditors will not forgive a retailer for incorrect taxes calculated and paid, even if a reliable First Generation Solution was in use and relied upon. First Generation Solutions that generate tax forms, means that these forms need to be printed, reviewed, signed, inserted into an envelope, and mailed – in a timely manner. In addition to these hard costs, there are soft costs, which are more difficult to quantify. Forms engines might save some time by eliminating manual entries, however they do not save time over fully automated systems. For example, printed forms require higher levels of review maintenance and human intervention, to distribute, complete, physically manage, and store. The information in the form has limited access and visibility – limited to those individuals with actual access to the physical document. A Next Generation Solution should perform all of these tasks electronically and automatically. By automatically generating and performing an e-filing on behalf of the retailer, and storing the form in information systems readily available to the retailer, the Next Generation overcomes all those deficiencies associated with printed forms. The retailer need not be concerned that they have to activate the function enough time in advance to accommodate internal review and approval processes as well as postal delivery delays.

Printed Forms also do not indicate incorrect or incomplete data until physically reviewed. More concerning is that printed forms can be modified or changed – erroneously or intentionally, so that even if the form
is generated electronically

from a First Generation Solution, there is no guarantee that it will not be changed, and filed with the incorrect data. More concerning – that the correct return be filed with the incorrect agency, or the incorrect form will be filed – any of which might automatically trigger an audit. Electronic forms of Next Generation Solutions have built-in, auditable, internal rules of logic that prevent these types of errors and events from occurring. In effect, the systems receive all data directly from the transaction engine and transaction tracking engine, assuring the use of only transaction data, without external intervention, and that it is filed on time, to the correct recipient. While Next Generation Solutions will allow manual bypasses, these are more difficult to implement, and will always record and indicate not only what change was made, but by whom, and when.

A reproducible, auditable trail is the true differentiator between First Generation Form Filing tax solutions and those of fully automated Next Generation Tax Solutions.

Next Generation Sales Tax Solutions are the true sales and use tax compliance engines. The ability to determine the accurate tax rate in real time, factoring complex issues such as transaction nexus – where the transaction takes place, and taxability of the given product on a line by line item basis in that given nexus, is but one of the issues the engine needs to address. Another point of complexity is the ability to provide transparent, valid audit trails, providing documentation for each and every decision pertaining to the transaction made at any given point of time during the life-cycle of the transaction. The Next Generation Tax Solution provides a unified, single point of access, data-set that seamlessly integrates with all tax calculation, collection and payment modules, rather than requiring different audit trails for each of these steps, leaving to the auditor the act of reconciling these different trails, hoping that the benevolence of the auditor will lead to the desired results.

Next Generation Solutions should focus upon flexibility, maintainability; integration and reliability. Performing only two or three of the functions associated with tax compliance, while admirable and more advanced than what First Generation Solutions typically provide, will still not achieve the goals of the Next Generation Solution. The solution needs to perform all four of the functions under one package. The Next Generation Solution should be flexible enough that it allows for adaptability across different systems, allowing to address many different needs of the retailers.

In sum, the perfect Next Generation Solution would be (i) hooked straight into your transaction engine; (ii) provide the information necessary to assure that the correct tax is being calculated; (iii) save the transaction and tax data for further reference; (iv) be hooked into systems that will allow it to track the transaction through its life cycle; so that (v) any changes made to the transaction are reflected in the system; (vi) on a periodic basis as may be determined by statutes and regulations – compile the data necessary for filing; (vii) generate a return and report necessary for complying with statutory filing requirements; (viii) make the return available for review and approval by the retailer; (viii) file the return automatically and electronically straight into the systems of the state taxing agencies on the required date, helping the retailer avoid fines, penalties and interest associated with late filing; (ix) obtain from the retailer funds necessary for payment of tax proceeds; and (x) pay the taxes owing on a timely basis, applying electronic funds transfer methods to assure timely payment at the last possible moment without incurring penalties for late payment.