Monitter - a cool Twitter tracking tool

Monitter is an easy-to-use, free tool that helps you track mentions, hashtags and trends on Twitter. Just type in whatever you're ‘monitter’ing and track the data. 

Find relevant followers in your niche, hone in on conversations about your brand, and discover potential customers.

See it and rate it here.

Mike

Do you reach webmasters?

If you communicate to webmasters, you'll want to signup for the SubmitEaze affiliate program and encourage your list to try SubmitEaze.

SubmitEaze is a semi-automated directory submission software package that combines both website directory submission and article directory submission in one, easy-to-use package. Using SubmitEaze will result in more traffic, more sales, and more importantly: more money in your pocket.

Speaking of affiliate programs, just about anyone can put a link or banner on their site and sell software or electronic gadgets so here are two must join programs:

• One Network
• Buy.com (their buy.tv is revolutionizing the way consumer electronics are being sold; after you register with Commission Junction, join Buy.com's affiliate program and search the links for 'buytv')

If you want to get into specifics on how affiliate programs work and how easy it is to profit from them, join me on Cool Talk where you can ask me and my panel of experts questions via phone.


Affiliate Summit Social Media 2008

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Affiliate Summit Social Media conference in New York City. I came away with a lot of good information so here's a quick brain dump of the choicest bits compiled just for you:

To begin, if you think social media sites like myspace and facebook are for kids and teens only, you're wrong; 41% of facebook users are 35 years old+

As for DIGG, many folks agree that the true 'DIGG effect' is all about getting links. Don't expect the traffic to be high quality but do expect that once dugg, others will 'share' your link on their social bookmarking sites which will give you valuable inbound links.


You write great stuff. Now what?

If you write good content, share it via scribd, hubpages, and squidoo. This can be time consuming, so consider outsourcing (look on craigslist if you want somebody local) or hire a student intern.

Along those lines, consider putting up a Wiki. Don't know what I'm talking about? Start with wetpaint.

Also, anytime you post something of interest, post it to your Twitter account. Then, use either Socialmarker or the Firefox Add-On, Shareaholic, to spread your enviable message to the top 20 social/web 2.0 sites. CAUTION: do not post to more than 3 or 4 sites a day and try to mix and match Titles and Descriptions (metadata that the search engines crave)--again, consider outsourcing for this task.


Video Marketing

Clearly the drumbeat continues for using video as a marketing tool. If you can, come up with 'top 10' lists and record your reviews on video; then, use Traffic Geyser or TubeMogul to get listed in 20 or so video directory sites.

Another great tool for creating screen based tutorials is Jing or (for Mac freaks) Screenflow from Telestream. I know that once I start using these tools there'll be no turning back. And, BTW, I'll make my 'keyword research' video tutorial the first one you'll see--for a sneak preview, just play around with keywordtopia).

Also critical to your video marketing efforts: entering metadata (metadata includes the Title and Description that you include with the video--the search engines rely on this information to find your video and rank it appropriately).

Finally, don't feel pressured to create a regular stream of informative videos; consider that there are three sources from which to draw upon: 1) your own produced videos; 2) contributed videos from your visitors; and 3) collect videos from other sources. In essence, you want to assume the role of a 'curator'--there's a lot of great stuff out there related to your passion. Go get it!


More Tips

Find out which sites are linking to you and bookmark them using the social media sites. The idea here is that as the number of inbound links increase so does a site's Page Rank which means higher search engine rankings for them which then means more traffic and, ultimately, a great number of folks who will see the link to YOU.

Apparently, the best blogging platform to use when it comes to achieving better search engine rankings is Moveable Type. I wish I could offer more here but I'm just taking the word of the web 2.0 guru, Don Crowther, of StomperNet.

For reasons I don't quite understand, when posting URLs in Twitter, keep them under 20 characters (I suspect it's to assure that you don't get 'tinyURL'd' thereby eliminating backlinks back to the page/URL you're promoting).

Out of a desire not to overwhelm you, I'm going to stop here--I just looked at the rest of my notes and realized I've got a lot more to share. Stay tuned.

Mike

P.S. Here's a cool site I just discovered: Viewzi brings your favorite stuff together in one place in a new and highly visual way.







.

Affiliat Summit Social Media in NYC Oct 5th

Just got my press credentials to cover Affiliat Summit's Social Media Conference in NYC on October 5th. Looking forward to a great conference and sharing everything with you.

There's only room for 300 attendees; if you can make it to New York on October 5th I highly recommend this conference. You'll never approach Myspace, Facebook, DIGG, and Technorati the same....

More info here: Affiliate Summit

A better way to 'comment' on your blog

I love when things fall into place like this.

For weeks, I've wanted to find a better 'commenting' module for this blog (the default 'Comments' feature provided by blogger just wasn't cutting it for me...or you).

So here's what happened: I got an e-mail one hour ago from Jeff S. asking me to join his network on Plaxo (which, BTW, provides a very cool integration of Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Plurk and a dozen other social networking sites).

Even though I'm buried in social media I figured I'd give it a go because I noticed that a good bunch of my friends and colleagues were online with Plaxo.

Glad I did...

While setting up my profile on Plaxo I learned of a cool plug-in for blogs that makes 'commenting' much more usable. The plug-in is Disqus and according to them:

"Disqus makes your comments more interactive for readers and easier to manage for you — all while connecting your community with other blogs."

Awesome! I couldn't ask for more (although we all know 'more' will be coming from Disqus and a hundred other start-ups before we can say "great, just what I needed").

Bottom line is this: WE are all going to kick the tires on this one as soon as they work out an integration issue with blogger.

Stay tuned.

Mike

Instant viral traffic generation in just a click...

Did you catch last week's 'Stump Markus' broadcast? If you did, then you surely walked away with at least 3 actionable items to jolt your online business.

Here's a rundown of the topics we covered last week followed by a link to the recording and a list of sources mentioned during our talk:

• Instant viral traffic generation in just a click...
• How to spot broken links on your site instantly...
• How to easily maintain tabs on Firefox...
• 59 things you should be doing but probably aren't...
• List of algorithmic pieces influencing search engine rankings at Google...
• Adding the power of a message board to FaceBook.

Listen here:





Sources:

ShareThis:
http://sharethis.com

AddThis:
http://www.addthis.com

HotScripts:
http://www.hotscripts.com/search?q=tell+a+friend&cat=All&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0

Michel Fortin:
http://www.michelfortin.com

Chris Jordan's Running The Numbers (just a cool site!):
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

WordPress redirect plugins:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection

TabScope:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4882

59 things you should be doing but probably aren't:
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/03/the_internet_marketing_list_59.htm

Find and fix broken links:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/broken-links.html

Search engine ranking factors:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

SuccessChef.com:
http://www.successchef.com

Get your memorable Facebook profile, page or group URL:
http://apps.facebook.com/webaddress/companies

Michel Fortin's Licoricce:
http://companies.to/licorice

Enjoy!

Mike

P.S. The Cool Site of the Day VIP program is so close to being launched. Check your inbox later today or tomorrow ;)

Facebook, Search Engine Traffic & More...

All sorts of things going on today...

First off, I finally started editing my Facebook page. I'll have a lot to say about 'Web 2.0/Social Marketing' stuff in the near future but for now I suggest you put up a Facebook page. It's a good way to connect with friends and business contacts.

I also added Twitter to my Facebook page (you'll see that gadget located halfway down the right side of my Facebook page). Twitter is simply a way for people to see what you're up to and for you to see what other people are up to (by doing so, you may see an opportunity to contact someone to discuss a project you're working on).

Bottom line regarding the above: just start playing with these tools (if you aren't already). Their usefulness will become apparent.


Cool Site of the Day VIP Program

I'm still working on launching the Cool Site of the Day VIP program. I've got most of the details ironed out but am considering hiring a copywriter to optimize the intro page. BTW, if you think this is something I should open up to the group (over 7,000 of you!), by all means, post your opinion as a 'comment' below (if you're reading this on the blog). This might actually be a great way for us to learn A LOT from each other.


Copywriting (very important topic)

Speaking of copywriters, here are some very useful TAGS from my Del.icio.us account:

• The Gary Halbert Newsletter - Gary was considered by many to be one of the best copywriters out there. He passed away at a way too early age. Another copywriter who is legendary is John Carlton (be sure to sign up for John's '7 Marketing Strategy Lessons')
  
  
• GoCopyWriting
  
  
• Visuwords - tell me this won't help with your vocabulary.
  
  
• GetMeContent - haven't used them yet but it seems like a good place to outsource writing projects (I'll be writing about the importance of outsourcing in a future post)
  
  
• Copywriter Catalog - recently started by a nice guy, Jason Leister. Wish I could remember how we connected.

Shoemoney

I recently told you about WebmasterRadio.fm. Well, lately I've been tuning in every day; there are two shows worth checking out: Affiliate Thing (hosted by Lisa Picarille of Revenue Magazine and Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit) and The Shoemoney Show hosted by Super Affiliate Jeremy Shoemaker. I listen during breakfast and lunch.


Affiliate Opportunity

I was listening to one of my favorite marketing geeks, Markus Allen, the other day (this guy lives and breathes marketing - offline and online). He's rather cynical about a handful of things related to affiliate marketing but one product he's absolutely behind is CGI Connection. Now, before I get into why you should be marketing CGI Connection, I want to point out that I stand behind all the Affiliate Opportunities listed on the right panel of the coolsite.com blog.

With that said, here's why I love CGI Connection: I'm not only an affiliate marketer for this great product but a customer as well. Here's what the guy behind CGI Connection, John Saya, offers: royalty-free web software scripts. Use any of his hundreds of scripts to simply make a better web site. If don't know how to program (like me) but need an easy way to get cool software onto your web site then CGI Connection is like a dream come true. So, become a customer AND an affiliate. You can't go wrong (especially if you take advantage of WMC to drive traffic to your affiliate link. See how it all ties together?)


Web Marketing Concepts

Speaking of which, if you're using Web Marketing Concepts to generate search engine traffic to your web site, here's an update I just got from the developer, Jim MacKinlay: when you set up your domain and 10 subdomains, only insert 200-300 keywords initially and then return to add the remaining keywords (to get to 500) about a month later. Any questions, feel free to contact me. And, oh yeah, that 'process map' for WMC is coming!

Finally, please answer my super short poll about font size preferences (left panel).

Thanks for reading,

Mike