Facebook has a new feature, Facebook Questions, which it envisions as being a valued place where people can get advice and product recommendations from friends and other members (blah blah blah). I know what you’re thinking—the web does not need another Yahoo! Answers. But hey, if Q&A sites like Aardvark, TripAdviser, and Quora are utilizing the Facebook network why shouldn’t Facebook?

Facebook Questions isn’t up yet, but below is an example of what it will look like. Facebook describes it as a cross between Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers, but as you can see from the image below, answers can reach Wikipedia-length proportions.

Everyone on Facebook will be able to see your question or respond to it. Facebook friends will see your questions directly in their News Feed. Which poses the question: Is Facebook Questions going to be appreciated or downright annoying?

Using the service is pretty easy. You can either type your question directly into a search box found at the top of each page, use the Questions dashboard, or ask a question via your profile/homepage.

Like Yahoo! Answers, once you post a question on Facebook it will be available for everyone to see. The main difference between Yahoo! Answers and Facebook Questions is that Facebook’s service will not be indexed by search engines, though that may change.

Google-Owned Aardvark Q&A

If you can’t wait for Facebook Questions to go live, check out Google-owned Q&A service Aardvark. When you ask a question on Aardvark it sends it to registered users with experience on the topic, users with similar tastes, and friends of friends in your network who may be able to help. You can share your “Vark” Q&A’s with Facebook friends and friends of friends. Tags within the profile of your network are used to determine whom to route a question to (activities, interests, places, local information, products mentioned, skills, academic information, professional experience, organizations, political information, etc.).

Other sites using Facebook as the base of a Q&A service include TripAdvisor (enables Facebook users to ask their friends questions about specific cities) and Quora. Google Social Search isn’t a Q&A service, but it will give you content posted by people in your contacts list that is relevant to your search. This allows you to review what they have to say without broadcasting your business to your entire network.

SEO Revolution Blog

Nielsen Company reported Monday August 1 that Android smartphones topped iPhone sales for the first two quarters of 2010. Within that time smartphones running Google’s Android operating system made up 27% of sales, while iPhone accounted for 23%.

While iPhone4 got the big song and dance in the media, Android phones quietly gained popularity and market share. Overall, however, more smarthphone users still own iPhones than do Android-based phones. Both fall behind Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry which still runs the show, accounting for one-third of smartphone sales over the last six months thanks to all the QWERTY addicts. It’s interesting to note that Nielsen also did a brand loyalty survey in which 58% of RIM users said they would probably try another phone/carrier with their next purchase.

Another report by Canalys shows that shipments of phones running Google’s Android operating system grew 886% worldwide in Q2 2010!

SEO Revolution Blog

Today I am having a guest blogger, Ricky Breslin, take over and discuss his specialty – lead generation. I love Ricky’s approach as it is very much like my own; no-nonsense and full of real examples instead of posting theories.

Theories suck.

Take it away Ricky …

Want to see the inside of actual lead generation campaigns, using real money, with a nice pretty little picture? I know, this will be really weird considering that people never use real numbers and only talk about fictitious “businesses” they run and how successful they are.

(Please note: I do promote 1ShoppingCart & Aweber in the post because I actually use them and believe in them. If you click the links I would earn a small commission. If you’re not cool with that, just go directly to their website and order and you’ll get the same results)

Alright, now let me show you what really goes on behind the scenes of a real business trying to make real money online.

Okay, then – let’s roll!

There are 4 basic parts to successful lead generation.

1. Landing page with good call to action
2. Qualified traffic
3. Good follow-up
4. Simple A/B split testing

Don’t overcomplicate this.

The easy part is driving traffic, because you can buy it. Usually, if you’re doing lead generation with follow-up, the hardest part is figuring out if the campaign you’re running is actually working. If you’re straight up asking for the sale, it’s simple. Here’s why I’ve found this to be true…

Let’s make this easy. If I buy 100 clicks for .00 each, I just spent 0. If I’m selling a product for and have a 3% conversion rate, then I just made 3 sales, which means I made 0.

That’s just simple first grade math.

If this is the case right out the gate, then I’m going to try to scale this bad boy as hard as possible and really push it. This is all easily done with Google AdWords.

But what if you’re driving traffic to squeeze pages and only asking for an e-mail address? How do you know it’s paying off for you? Sure, you can forward the visitor straight to an offer after you get the visitor’s e-mail address, but what if you’re losing money, even though you’re getting a 30% opt-in rate and a ton of e-mail addresses?

THAT is what I want to explain to you today. I want to let you in on how to do and track lead generation if you’re just asking for an e-mail address (which can kind of suck).

To do this I use 1ShoppingCart, Aweber, and AdTrackz. You can use any tools you like, but these are what I use and they work great.

Here’s what to do…

When I create my campaigns I’m cool with breaking even every time. If I make a profit it’s great, but I’m cool with breaking even.

So, let’s start with the keyword “how to golf.”

I would take that keyword and create a campaign in Google AdWords for it. And let’s say that I pay .50 per click for that keyword and I drive each click to a well SEO’d page that Google likes.

It’s got all the fixin’s: great design, big call to action button, great copywriting, high quality images, good video, etc.

Now, let’s say I spend 0, which buys me 1,000 clicks. Out of those 1,000 clicks I have a 30% opt-in rate, which gives me 300 leads.

Now, I’m using double opt-in, so in reality, only 80% of the people will double opt in and go to the free video or whatever you’re giving away. So I REALLY got 240 straight-up leads – so basically I paid .08 for a real e-mail address from a real human being.

Except that you also have the people who unsubscribe right after they get your free stuff because they couldn’t care about you, your life, your products, or your business. I’ve found that about 5% of all leads do this.

So that leaves us with 228 real, breathing human beings on our e-mail list, at a cost of .19 per e-mail address at the end of the day.

Can you see why people go broke online and give up? They aren’t going this far, they usually give up after this step because they think they lost. But not us, we keep rolling.

Now, I’ll usually follow up with 5 e-mails, for which I use Aweber. And THIS IS THE KEY right here: in each e-mail you need to tell great stories and always do a soft pitch at the end of the story, offering your product as the solution to problem that you’ve described.

Don’t be afraid to tell your readers about your products. If your products are good, they NEED to be told as long as they work and are what you say they are.

So here’s what to do next…

We NEED to know if you’re follow-up is allowing you to break even. Remember, we spent 0 to generate 228 e-mail addresses. We need find out if it’s even possible to get our 0 back.

Here’s how to do that…

In 1ShoppingCart create an AdTracker for your follow-up for that campaign. So I would create “AR1 – How To Golf Campaign,” “AR2 – How To Golf Campaign,” etc.

What’s great about 1ShoppingCart is that their AdTracker tracks EVERYTHING down to the dollar once the person clicks. It’s beautiful.

But don’t be lazy and use the ugly link the AdTracker spits out. Make sure to make it a “Pretty Link” with AdTrackz. I recommend that you create a folder on your server called “link” for tracking purposes.

So if you have 5 follow-up e-mails for this campaign, your links will look like this…

http://www.domain.com/link/1.php (AR1 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/2.php (AR2 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/3.php (AR3 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/4.php (AR4 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/5.php (AR5 – How To Golf Campaign)

Now your links are “pretty” because your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker link is wrapped in Adtrackz, and you can track all your follow up e-mails down to the dollar.

I recommend that you send the e-mails 5 days in a row. So let’s say you just did all that. You’ve logged into 1ShoppingCart and found out that out of those 228 people, you made a total of 4 in sales from your soft pitches. Do you quit there?

I wouldn’t, although I would consider that a success because we got pretty close to breaking even and didn’t lose much money.

But the part that’s not truly quantifiable is what these e-mail addresses are worth to you 3 months, 1 year, and 3 years down the road.

Here’s where it just gets funky. Sure, the math is right in front of us in black and white, but consider this…

1. Maybe your customer buys an affiliate product related to your product because they like and trust you now.

2. Maybe your customer buys another product from you that wasn’t related to the one they originally opted in for.

3. Maybe your customer clicks on an ad in your website.

4. Maybe you have a big Christmas sale and your customer buys that.

5. Maybe your customer tells 8 friends about your website.

6. Maybe your customer posts your website or one of your blogs on their Facebook or Twitter page.

Why do I mention all of these possibilities? Because, at the end of the day, math only takes you so far in this game. Yes, it’s absolutely necessary to be on top of your numbers like crazy, but never forget that part of this game is an art, and that you can be as creative as you want.

What I’ve just explained to you is exactly how I create and track all of my lead generation. It’s one of the best ways I know, and I hope you can take something away from this you can use.

I’ve also attached a screenshot of my 1ShoppingCart account so you can actually see how they break the numbers down; it’s pretty cool.

And the nice part is you start to notice cool trends and things that work and don’t work with your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker data. This data allows you do more of the stuff that works for your market.

At the end of the day just remember that this game is never pretty, in fact it’s usually an ugly mess until you get all this stuff figured out. But once you do, everything is a lot more fun.

Originally Post: http://www.rickybreslin.com/blog/the-ugly-side-of-online-lead-generation/

SEO Revolution Blog

Since June 2nd, a lot of people have been saying that the Impressions/Clicks have dropped for their website, according to Google Webmaster Tools, and for no reason. So what happened? No one really knows. A notable decrease in clicks has been reported, while no notable amounts of traffic or revenue are lost. Google Analytics even [...]
web1syndication.com

Twitter is one of the hottest social networks these days with thousands of users following each other. Using Twitter seems to be the most fashionable thing to have happened to the masses and we are all enjoying every bit of the twittering moments. It is one platform where people of different likes and origins unite to discuss their thoughts and aspirations.

However, despite all the hype, it can also be a place where there is a lot of people talking but not a lot of people listening!

But, did you know that Twitter also helps in getting traffic to your blog or website?

Tricky thing!

Twitter

Well, that’s true! Twitter is the most popular micro blogging system that helps in gaining traffic to your blog (but yes, you need to take help from some SEO experts). However, there are certain rules to be followed. I will mention some major points for you so that you get an idea.

Twitter allows only 140 characters per message, which is why it is called a micro blogging system. Twitter is so simple to use and it is even easy to find friends and a great way to start communicate with them. This is the main reason that this particular social networking website has become so popular.

Twitter is the only place where you can hang out with people and also tell them what you are doing and how you spend your days. Starting from very light-hearted communication to blog sharing and information transfer, everything is possible on this social network. You can as well build a community of your own and have thousands of people following you, while you also follow others.

This is how traffic is generated, and traffic means profit in turn.

However, there are certain areas in this social network that needs to be optimized to drive more traffic from twitter. So, what are the steps to be taken care of, for fetching more traffic from Twitter? Some important points are mentioned below:

Tip#1: Create your Twitter Profile

Your Twitter profile should be interesting enough to grab user’s attention. The cover page determines what kind of personality you are having and also reveals your interests. If you provide the best information about yourself, you will likely find more like-minded people following you. Add your picture or something that’s interesting and might grab attention to your profile as well. Choosing an appropriate username is also very important.

Tip#2: Give the Link to your Website/Blog on your Profile page

Linking your blog or website to your profile page with proper heading and description of the content in the particular page can help in generating roe traffic. As Twitter is a great way to interact with people and make thousands of friends, you simply cannot miss out on this. This is the best way to let people now what you are capable of doing and how. Your username should speak about your interests too.

Tip#3: Interact with People

Twitter is a platform where people follow each other while sending messages. So once you receive a message from someone, never miss the opportunity. Always make it a point to interact with people who have expressed their interest in your profile. After a few moments of casual talks, you can get back to business, but informally.

Tip#4: Find Like-minded People

As there are thousands of people on Twitter, you can easily find some friends sharing common interests and having similar thoughts, in order to find them you just need to choose from a few options. Whether you want to search on twitter or on some other networks or invite some friends via email or check for the suggested user options, it’s all your choice. Also, you can use all these options together.

Tip#5: RSS Feeds are great help on Twitter

Display the RSS Feeds of your blog or website on Twitter to get more traffic. As you publish an article on your blog, you can tweet and inform your friends and get it done automatically. This will generate traffic and your followers will target your writings and make it a point to see what you have written.

Always monitor your Twitter account and be consistent – that’s the way to tweet!

tweet

Other posts that might help you to increase your website traffic:

• SEO Tips for the New Year
• Affiliate Marketing
• Boost Your Web Traffic Now

SEO Revolution Blog