People are using the internet to search for how-to videos as well as informative written information (like this article). Although written information tends to be more thorough and more permanent - it stays on the page, while videos are fleeting - videos can grab people's attention and hold them on the page a few seconds longer. Here's how you can have a slice of that cake.
You don't need to film yourself (although that has certain advantages) and you don't even need a camera to make a watchable video. Here's how:
You need a piece of software such as "Powerpoint". That's probably the best known, but not the cheapest. I have something similar in "Open Office" called "Presentation". You create a series of frames or "slides" which are played back in sequence - just like the slide show on your photo watching software.
Spend time working out what you're trying to say. Bear in mind that this not like a page of information, because you can control what people see and the order in which they see it. Just as in a courtship, the sequence is crucial - begin by intriguing the viewer, then get them to like and trust you, then show them how your advice or your product is going to improve their life. Finally persuade them to take action.
Once you've worked out what you want to say, you just type out your message a sentence at a time - about one sentence to each slide, that is - occasionally adding effects (such as words whizzing into place) (if the effect enhances the message). Don't use effects if they don't enhance the message.
Use simple graphics (which are freely available) if they make your point easier to grasp. Don't use them if they're just going to distract or irritate the viewer, though.
When you have assembled all the slides and tested their effectiveness, rehearse reading out the text while the side show plays. The usual technique is to depart from the written text occasionally, in a casual, chatty way, to add a bit of friendliness to the presentation.
When you're word perfect, speak into a microphone and record the audio and visual elements together with screen recording software such as "Cam Studio" which captures what's on the screen.
Edit the presentation (cut off the start and finish, if necessary) on Windows Movie Maker, then save it using "tasks" on the toolbar. The finished presentation can be uploaded directly to Youtube from the Youtube site. Then you can use it on your website, blog, facebook page or whatever you like.
Don't forget to make your "call to action" easy and obvious, otherwise all your efforts will have been in vain!
Why teachers are well-placed for Internet Marketing
You may not know much about marketing yet, but generally:
- teachers are intelligent and receptive
- teachers are good at instructing and simplifying
- teachers are good at persuading
- teachers are aware of the power of words
- teachers are not easily fooled
- teachers can find time in the holidays
- teachers are good at staying motivated
Have a look at my e-zine article which deals with each point in greater depth. Find out about YourNetBiz.
Saturday 4 December 2010
Effective selling on the internet - four big money-making secrets
There's a fortune to be made selling on the web - and you can have a slice of the cake if you know what you're doing. In this article I will share with you four big selling secrets that will get that cash flowing in the right direction.
When someone lands on our website, how can we turn their interest into a sale? There's much more to it than charm and trust: we need a whole armoury of tricks and techniques to persuade the visitor to part with their cash. Here are four classic ploys that are so effective they're practically industry standards:
Immediate call to action
Make it obvious what you want your customer to do: if you want them to click on a button, make sure that the button is prominent and unmissable! Get them to take action immediately, not some time soon or next week, as they may never visit your page again.
How do you do that? Indicate that the product is in short supply - in fact time is running out fast: you're only going to take on a limited number of clients - you can't allow too many items to be sold... If the customer doesn't act now they're going to miss out on your hot product that everybody wants. No one wants to be left out, especially if it's smart to buy your product. If they don't act now they'll miss it and they won't be smart!
Stress the benefits, not the features
Your product may have any number of special features, but what counts is the ways in which it will make the customer's life better. People don't want to know what's in their breakfast cereal - but they need to be shown that eating it is their gateway to happiness, and belonging to that happy smiling family. They don't want to know the horsepower and thermal wattage of their electric drill - they just want to know that it will deliver the perfect, effortless hole (which will give them more time to enjoy the good life).
To emphasize the benefits, use pain
If you don't use that toothpaste, you'll have tooth decay and gum disease. If you don't use that disinfectant, the nasty germs will get you. If you don't buy the product that's cool to buy, you won't be in the "in" crowd.
Make it clear that if the customer doesn't buy from you, they'll be missing out and the pain will remain. If they do buy, their pain will be eased. It's even more powerful to play on possible pain than possible gain. When they buy from you, their worries will be banished forever.
When someone lands on our website, how can we turn their interest into a sale? There's much more to it than charm and trust: we need a whole armoury of tricks and techniques to persuade the visitor to part with their cash. Here are four classic ploys that are so effective they're practically industry standards:
Immediate call to action
Make it obvious what you want your customer to do: if you want them to click on a button, make sure that the button is prominent and unmissable! Get them to take action immediately, not some time soon or next week, as they may never visit your page again.
How do you do that? Indicate that the product is in short supply - in fact time is running out fast: you're only going to take on a limited number of clients - you can't allow too many items to be sold... If the customer doesn't act now they're going to miss out on your hot product that everybody wants. No one wants to be left out, especially if it's smart to buy your product. If they don't act now they'll miss it and they won't be smart!
Stress the benefits, not the features
Your product may have any number of special features, but what counts is the ways in which it will make the customer's life better. People don't want to know what's in their breakfast cereal - but they need to be shown that eating it is their gateway to happiness, and belonging to that happy smiling family. They don't want to know the horsepower and thermal wattage of their electric drill - they just want to know that it will deliver the perfect, effortless hole (which will give them more time to enjoy the good life).
To emphasize the benefits, use pain
If you don't use that toothpaste, you'll have tooth decay and gum disease. If you don't use that disinfectant, the nasty germs will get you. If you don't buy the product that's cool to buy, you won't be in the "in" crowd.
Make it clear that if the customer doesn't buy from you, they'll be missing out and the pain will remain. If they do buy, their pain will be eased. It's even more powerful to play on possible pain than possible gain. When they buy from you, their worries will be banished forever.
Wednesday 7 April 2010
Make Money Online with Twitter - The Wise Person's Start Up Guide
It's the fastest growing social network and a great way to keep in touch with friends - we know that much. But with all those tweets flying around, surely it's impossible to keep up with more than a handful of followers? Well, yes you can, but the methods are probably different from what you think! This article shows you how Internet Marketers use twitter to promote their business and build success while they sleep.
Internet Marketers don't just tweet for fun - they use twitter to collect followers, to establish a rapport with them, to build trust and to be genuinely helpful (by responding to other users' questions and proposing solutions to their problems). And serious twitter users don't just send out general tweets to everyone - there are techniques for getting straight to the hottest prospects!
Setting up your twitter account for Internet Marketing
1 use the name you need to be known by.
2 upload a personal photo - users need to see that you're a real person.
3 use a non-standard background to stand out from the crowd.
4 spend time on a great profile with a link to your website or blog.
Collecting Followers
Follow others, see who they follow and collect like-minded people who are suited to what you are selling. You're looking for people who already want your product. Most people will follow you back (perhaps using an automated tool like socialoomph). Some may even read your message, read your profile and click your link.
An automated system such as twollo will find people and follow them for you. Once you get going with interesting and retweetable tweets, using the kind of keywords that people might be interested in, even more people will decide to follow you.
Responding
When someone follows you, send them a welcoming message that is intriguing enough to make them want to check you out (but don't try to sell them anything at this stage). Socialoomph will do this for you automatically.
When you follow someone, they will usually send you a welcoming message, thanking you for the follow. Send them a message back - unlike normal tweets, these direct messages appear in people's e-mail as well as within twitter.
Whenever anyone sends you a direct message, send them a direct message back. You want to get into conversation with people, after all.
How to tweet and get into profitable conversations
In my article titled "Making Money Online with Twitter - Advanced Tweeting Techniques" I show you what kind of thing to tweet, and I show you how to find conversations that will lead to conversions!
Internet Marketers don't just tweet for fun - they use twitter to collect followers, to establish a rapport with them, to build trust and to be genuinely helpful (by responding to other users' questions and proposing solutions to their problems). And serious twitter users don't just send out general tweets to everyone - there are techniques for getting straight to the hottest prospects!
Setting up your twitter account for Internet Marketing
1 use the name you need to be known by.
2 upload a personal photo - users need to see that you're a real person.
3 use a non-standard background to stand out from the crowd.
4 spend time on a great profile with a link to your website or blog.
Collecting Followers
Follow others, see who they follow and collect like-minded people who are suited to what you are selling. You're looking for people who already want your product. Most people will follow you back (perhaps using an automated tool like socialoomph). Some may even read your message, read your profile and click your link.
An automated system such as twollo will find people and follow them for you. Once you get going with interesting and retweetable tweets, using the kind of keywords that people might be interested in, even more people will decide to follow you.
Responding
When someone follows you, send them a welcoming message that is intriguing enough to make them want to check you out (but don't try to sell them anything at this stage). Socialoomph will do this for you automatically.
When you follow someone, they will usually send you a welcoming message, thanking you for the follow. Send them a message back - unlike normal tweets, these direct messages appear in people's e-mail as well as within twitter.
Whenever anyone sends you a direct message, send them a direct message back. You want to get into conversation with people, after all.
How to tweet and get into profitable conversations
In my article titled "Making Money Online with Twitter - Advanced Tweeting Techniques" I show you what kind of thing to tweet, and I show you how to find conversations that will lead to conversions!
Make Money Online with Twitter - Advanced Tweeting Techniques
Twitter is everywhere, but how can you use the power of twitter to build your online business? In this article I show you how to tweet for profit, and how to turn other people's tweets to your advantage.
I'm assuming here that you're familiar with the basics of twitter. If you haven't already got started and would like to know how to optimize your twitter account for Internet Marketing, read my article entitled " Making Money Online with Twitter - The Wise Person's Start Up Guide".
Tweeting (sending out updates)
If your tweets invite responses, people will be more likely to answer! Just as you would at a party, ask questions and try to appear more interested in the other person than you are in yourself. Find out about them and look for ways to help them.
Interesting tweets often include links to other things available on the net: articles, pictures, videos, websites, blogs... Use these kinds of tweets in addition to your sensible advice to establish your reputation as an expert in your field - the kind of person who can help others.
When you read a really interesting tweet that you want to share with others, you should retweet it. People love having their stuff retweeted; it's flattering.
If you don't see anything to retweet and can't think of anything yourself, use sites such as "stuff to tweet" or digg, where you are bound to find something interesting, but (unless it's really brilliant) try to keep it relevant!
Don't use tweets to plug your own stuff more than once in a while, or people will feel you're too pushy. When you do promote your own site, be subtle, but make sure you mention some kind of must-have free offer - perhaps a pdf report. Ideally this free gift or report holds the answer to someone's problem, so you have a legitimate reason for suggesting they check it out.
Getting into discussions
This is the important part: use "search twitter" to listen in on other people's conversations. Type in a keyword that's important to your business and find out who is discussing it already.
If you use the advanced search facility you can specify strings of words, and maybe a question mark as well - so you can find who is asking a question about your area of expertise. Results come up not just of people (anywhere in the world) who are asking right now, but also an hour ago or last night or a week ago.
Remembering that you're helpfully offering expertise (and not trying to puff yourself up or hard-sell your product), you can join in these conversations and suggest solutions to the problems that people are discussing.
At the same time, other wise twitter users will be doing the same thing and searching for what you're discussing. They may well decide to follow you, or send you a direct message asking for your opinion.
Links
Needless to say, your site and your blog will invite people to join you on twitter, and your twitter profile (and many of your direct messages) (each of which is a URL in its own right) will link to your other stuff. This is all good for Search Engine Optimization.
Use what you learn
You will inevitably gain valuable insights from listening in on conversations and finding out what people are tweeting about. These insights will help you add focus to your business and they will provide you with material for new tweets, blogs and articles!
I'm assuming here that you're familiar with the basics of twitter. If you haven't already got started and would like to know how to optimize your twitter account for Internet Marketing, read my article entitled " Making Money Online with Twitter - The Wise Person's Start Up Guide".
Tweeting (sending out updates)
If your tweets invite responses, people will be more likely to answer! Just as you would at a party, ask questions and try to appear more interested in the other person than you are in yourself. Find out about them and look for ways to help them.
Interesting tweets often include links to other things available on the net: articles, pictures, videos, websites, blogs... Use these kinds of tweets in addition to your sensible advice to establish your reputation as an expert in your field - the kind of person who can help others.
When you read a really interesting tweet that you want to share with others, you should retweet it. People love having their stuff retweeted; it's flattering.
If you don't see anything to retweet and can't think of anything yourself, use sites such as "stuff to tweet" or digg, where you are bound to find something interesting, but (unless it's really brilliant) try to keep it relevant!
Don't use tweets to plug your own stuff more than once in a while, or people will feel you're too pushy. When you do promote your own site, be subtle, but make sure you mention some kind of must-have free offer - perhaps a pdf report. Ideally this free gift or report holds the answer to someone's problem, so you have a legitimate reason for suggesting they check it out.
Getting into discussions
This is the important part: use "search twitter" to listen in on other people's conversations. Type in a keyword that's important to your business and find out who is discussing it already.
If you use the advanced search facility you can specify strings of words, and maybe a question mark as well - so you can find who is asking a question about your area of expertise. Results come up not just of people (anywhere in the world) who are asking right now, but also an hour ago or last night or a week ago.
Remembering that you're helpfully offering expertise (and not trying to puff yourself up or hard-sell your product), you can join in these conversations and suggest solutions to the problems that people are discussing.
At the same time, other wise twitter users will be doing the same thing and searching for what you're discussing. They may well decide to follow you, or send you a direct message asking for your opinion.
Links
Needless to say, your site and your blog will invite people to join you on twitter, and your twitter profile (and many of your direct messages) (each of which is a URL in its own right) will link to your other stuff. This is all good for Search Engine Optimization.
Use what you learn
You will inevitably gain valuable insights from listening in on conversations and finding out what people are tweeting about. These insights will help you add focus to your business and they will provide you with material for new tweets, blogs and articles!
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