Traffic Fomula 2

A blog for the network marketer is much more then somewhere you put your latest article you found interesting. Todays network marketer must always have some edge to each touch they have with a lead or potential customer. If your web site looks like everyone elses then you are just another boring or web site. You have to have some pizazz that make people interested. Your site needs to give some energy off just like you would if you were talking to a prospect.

In order to do this you need to continually study the latest trends. Right now the last trend is the Nerve Center Blog that has been introduced by Mike Dillard in Traffic Formula 2 (TF2). Unless you have purchased TF2 you would not know what Mike has been discussing. His team has done extensive research and has proved many of the items that they recommend for your blog work and attract more optins to your site. This is the kind of trends you need to stay on the leading edge of to keep your site fresh and new.

I am going to list some of the items that have been recommended in TF2 for their “Nerve Center”.

First is to have a self-hosted blog. This is blog that is on a server that you own or are leasing. This is different than you using a blogging service such as WordPress.com or Blogger. Additionally the server that you use needs to have the correct software to install the tools they recommend. The software that you need is fantastico. The service they recommend is Hostgator since it already has fantastico installed and it is a very reliable and affordable hosting service.

Once you have the hosting server you need to install the wordpress.org software. This will give you a wordpress blog that is fairly easy to maintain for anyone that can use a common editor. The power of WordPress is in the tools that are offered for the framework. Three areas I want to talk about are Themes, Wigits and Plugins.

There are many themes that are available for free or for a small fee. The recommended free theme is Atahualpa and purchased them is Thesis or WooThemes. Two or three column. One large main column and then either one column to the right that is about 1/3 to total width of the page or two smaller columns that collectively are 1/3 of the right side of the page.

There are many built in wigits that are pretty easy to understand but there is one that is extra powerful and that is the text box. The text box can take HTML code that can be almost anything you could imagine. A text box can hold the HTML code for an Optin box that would normally be on your capture page. This can now be right on your blog. Additionally this box can be used to have any icon and link to your other sites like social media sites of FaceBook, Youtube, Twitter or LinkedIn. You can have the icon for that site displayed and when clicked they would be taken your social site.

Plugins could be talked about for hours. For the most part they are easy to install. The plugins I recommend are: Tweetmeme, Sociable, DISQUS, All in one SEO Pack, WP Google Analytics, Google XML Site map and Askismet. For the most part these plugs have good documentation and are easy to install. Just contact me for more information or if you have questions.

Now  there are a few more items that you need on your blog. Most of this is content that you need to write and some it of it is a little technical but fairly easy to do.

You need to have an optin form that your prospects can fill out. This information will go into your autoresponder and will begin to market to your prospect. A good series of auto responder emails will enable to you makes some affiliate commissions while the prospect gets to know you. That subject is for another article. Lets move on.

Your blog should have a picture or video of you where the prospect can get to know you better and see what kind of person that you are. This is all about attraction marketing so you need your picture to reflect the image you want to project, so keep that in mind.

Your blog needs to have a section that has your story of how you got to where you are. This story needs one that people can relate to but at the same time has some snap to it so that you are bringing in the kind of people you want in your business. Additional pages with testimonials and other information about you will allow people to get to know you better. All of this will build your image and rapport with your prospect.

The more the over all look of the blog represents that kind of people you are looking for the more optins of the right kind of people you will get. Be consistent with posting content to your blog and you will have a better following. Over time there will be lots of content and you will get more and more optins.

Please let me know what you think about this content. I welcome all comments. I hope that it helps you to be able to attain what you want out of this business.

You can get a copy of Mike Dillard’s Traffic Formula 2 by visiting http://www.MLMProMentor.com/goto/mlmtrafficformula2

Many times I have been asked “How can I add value when I brand new at marketing?” The answer is actually quite simple. All you have to be able to do is know one thing that someone else does not know. That means you can attend a training class, attend a webinar, read a book or listen to a CD and lean something about network marketing. Then you can right a post or article on that one thing. That’s it. You keep doing that and over time you will become an expert and also be perceived as one. Doing this will attract people to you. The key is to not stop. Continue to grow yourself and continue to learn. Follow these steps and you will be amazed what a difference there will be in 30 or 60 days.

I attended a conference a few weeks back and I had several people come up to and say my name as they introduced them selves to me. They would tell me they had been following me on twitter or facebook and had seen my video’s and felt like they new me yet I had no clue who they were ate all until I saw them. That is attraction marketing. Often it is a one way communication until they finally contract you. By this time they often already trust you and are willing to follow you lead. Attraction marketing really works. Just ask Mike Dillard.

I was reminded today that being in the IT field for over 30 years does not make me immune from making simple mistakes when it comes to running a computer. I am just as vulnerable as the next person. I have to say I am usually very thorough in my testing but in the case of the webinar that was held tonight I forgot a critical step that made me loose all the work that had been put into creating the training. Ah such is the life of working with computers. Well on the the real training.

I had a guest speaker for my webinar training tonight that is known in many circles as Mr LinkedIn. That is because Mr Larry Beacham is been getting up-words of 40 leads a day from the great articles he writes on LinkedIn.  What I found so amazing after watching Larry go through what he does is how simple it was to do. There are two major things that he does that makes him successful in his lead generation. One is he is consistent. He writes 4 to 5 articles a week and by doing so he as creating a large following. Second he writes great content where 97% is free give away and only 3% is where he has a link or two to his web site or affiliates. That is it. It is that simple. Now do not get me wrong, Larry has perfected this and there is a little more to it but for the most part that is it. Wow how complicated we try to make thing sometimes when it is easy if we just follow a few principles of Attraction Marketing that Mr Mike Dillard has made so famous.

Well sorry that there is not a recording but I will have Larry speak again in the future and I will make sure the it gets recorded the next time so I can share the information with all of you.

Please share with me your comments on this post. Thanks again for reading it.

Bob Howard

Mike Dillard is doing it again. He has opend TF2 for one day becaue he realized how long it is going to take to complete and he wanted to give more people the option to get in the program and get caught up. So this is a chance for you to get this and not have to wait 2 or 3 months before it is availale again.

Don’t miss out. Get Traffic Formula 2 NOW!!

I am continuing to build out my Nerve Center according to Mike Dillard’s Traffic Formula 2. I changed the theme on this blog to Thesis yesterday and also add a video and a bigger optin button. I will be doing some other clean up of this form to make it more eye popping.

This Thesis Theme is really something else. There is so much flexibility with this theme without needing to program it is amazing. I think you will not regret using this theme.

Additionally I have added the TweetMeme plug in so that each post could be easily tweeted. This is a very easy plugin to install. It took about a day for my account to activate but once that was done it seemed to work just great. You can find this plugin by searching for twitter in the add new plugins in the dashboard of word-press administration panel.

I also added the SCO plugin to optimize my site for search engines. In this way I make sure I setup keywords for each of my posts that can be picked up by the search engines. This is different then tags or categories that are used by other word-press blogs out there.

Many more plugin and other information about building your nerve center will come as more is revealed in TF2.

As Traffic Formula 2 continues Mike Dillard and his team are taking the concept of a Blog that has been moving to a Central Hub all the way to  a Nerve Center. It is the Central Hub but much more important. The key difference is where the Hub was a glue that held it all together the Nerve Center has a new adhesion property to it to where it draws people in like a magnet and they stick like fly paper.

The primary purpose of the Nerve Center is to get people to Optin to your autoresponder.  This was a role that has been performed by the capture pages in the past but because of changes in the Internet and in how search engines work is changing to the Nerve Center. The Nerve Center will be where you give items of value away to get people to optin to you newsletter or autoresponder. It will be here that you tie all you content and social media accounts together. Because of the number of social media sites and the effort to keep up with them the Nerve Center will automation in it that will allow for the posting to these sites to be as automated as possible to reduce the time it take to maintain your relationships with your followers and friends.

Over the next few weeks TF2 will be going over the technical aspects of how to build a nerve center and you will see mine being built right on this site. Each of the recommendations that are made in TF2 will be made on this site as the information is released. Additionally I will be giving technical tips of how to do this although to get all the details of this you will need to purchase the Tf2 product which can be done HERE when it is available.

Here are a few quick highlights:

• Do your market research and select a good domain name for your branding. – Use GoDaddy to register your domain.
• Create a self hosted blog on a reputable server – HostGator is the recommended site by TF2
• User WordPress.org software on the site – This is open source free software
• Add an Optin Form on you page. Above the fold and catchy in nature. – To use a optin form you must have an autorespondor th will capture the information and will also supply the HTML code for the form. Use Aweber or GetResponse.
• Add social media tool bars to make navigation to your social pages easy. – Use free plugins
• Add Tweet and Retweet capabilities to increase traffic to your site. – Use free plugins

This is how far we have gotten with TF2 at the time of this post. Return for more information.

Comments are Welcome – Tell me what you think of my content.

I am writing this post specifically to those that are already members of the best marketing system on the planet and that is MLMLeadSystemPro. For those that are not members, this system is all about marketing YOU as a leader and attracting people to you even if  you have no experiance. That is it..bottom line. Become a member and you will see what I mean. You can do that by visiting my site. MLMProMentor.com

What do you do with your optins that do not leave their phone number. If you are like most you let the autoresponder send them emails but basically you do nothing.  That is a problem because most people are surfing around the Internet they run into your site and optin but then they are off surfing again and they forget all about you. Yes, you send them emails from your autoresponder but they optin to many sites and get lots of email they do not read….So what are you going to do about that. How do you make sure they do ready your emails. Remeber of they are not reading them then you are unlikley to get any of the affiliate commitions that are marketed in those emails.

This is a common problem and one that is correctable by doing just  a few things. Go down your list of leads and look for those with no phone numbers. Take the email and search for that email in Facebook. What I have found is about 70% of the emails you will find. Send an invitation to those people with a note. The note should say something like “Hey, saw you visited by web site and wanted to connect with you. Will you be my friend” What you will find is that a good number of these people will accept the invitation. This is great. Now make sure that you do regular posts on Facebook so that they can see that you are a real person and have a real life. What will happen is these people will start reading your autoresponder emails and you will increase you affiliate commissions as they get to know you and trust you more.

That brings up another point. How do you know if they are reading your emails if you are only using the standard emails that MLSP offers. That is a good question. What you want to do is add additional emails in the autoresponder that are HTML emails which allows the tracking of the opening of the email. What I do is that I add emails that have a more personal touch to them. One example is after a week I send an email that says “Bob Here, you have been getting my emails for a week now and just wanted to make sure I was doing all I could to help you market your business on-line. If you have any questions please give me a call or shoot me an email” . This sort of short and quick emaiols you will be surprised how many people will reply to. Those emails will allow you to connect further with them. That is what it is all about guys…connecting. So if you are not doing this then start.

That it for now

Bob

The topic for the second webinar was Market Research. If you do not know what your competitors are doing you will most likely not be able to compete against them in a profitable manner. They are doing the research also so why would not want to know all that you can about your market or sub-market before you start marketing.

Make sure you document everything you are doing because competitors change and it is important to know who has staying power week after week and what their ad say and what their products are.

The ultimate goal is to determine the motivation of the customer so you can create marketing ads that they will be moved by to take action and purchase your product.

The high level steps of how to do your market research.

• Create a list of the top product and solution that your product offers
• Break these down to sub-markets
• Research words in Google for each of the sub-markets
• Study the paid ads and top-5 sites that are found in the searches
• Use Alexa to determine the traffic ranking for each of the sites
• Note the products that they are marketing
• Check the top-5 organic ads in the same way as the paid ads.
• Research the products you found in the earlier steps using Amazon and see how the products ranks by volume and by customer surveys of how they like the product.
• Reach the top forums and posts for your market and read what  people are saying about the market to see if  there is a highly sought after solution.
• Di-sect the web sites of the competition and look for weaknesses in their site.
• Look at magazines in the market and see what is on the cover or lead articles.
• Look to see if they have self liquidating offers
• Do they offer affiliate programs
• What are the prices of the products
• What products they offer
• Do they have upsells
• What didn’t you find? Are there products missing?
• What questions did not get answered
• What did like or dislike about the product from the forums or reviews
• Traffic sources
• Advertising gaps

Tons of great information and much more to come. Get your copy when the final CD series comes out.

That’s it for now.

Bob

Because I kept running into conflicts with other webinar’s I have moved this one to 10pm. Hopefully it will remain at this time and will not change. You can register for the webinar each week by going to the Traing and Webinar’s page on my blog.  BobHowardMarketing.com

Talk with you on Thursday.

Take care

Bob

If you can not close the sale you can not make money. Many Internet marketers think that when using the Internet that you don’t have to talk to people because people will just buy or sign up. Anyone that has been doing Internet Marketing for any time knows that this is just not true.

Before people will listen to you, before people trust you and before people will buy from you or join your primary business, they must know that you care about them and what they are doing. That means you must develop a relationship with that prospect. This can be done with out talking to people as Mike Dillard continues to demonstrate but it takes being an expert in copywriting.  Since most of us are not, that is not really an option. You MUST call your prospects and talk with them. Show them that you care about them and what they are doing. CONNECT with them. That is the key. When you learn how to connect with your prospects you close rate will dramatically increase.

Cedrick Harris spends a great deal of time learning and teaching himself how to connect with people and as such he has one of highest closing ratios in network marking if not highest ratio.

This is key. Learn how to do this and your business will grow fast than you imagined.

Until next time

Bob