TrafficTsar Web Traffic Generation

Twitter is still a new entity in the battle for traffic and because of their inexperience Twitter may handle things in less than ideal ways. The following is an article from ClickZ net addressing Twitter’s less than ideal handling of spam.

Pay particular attention to the last paragraph - I expect to see a policy like this implemented by the Twitter folks sooner rather than later.

 ClickZ asked Omar Zaibak, author of the Blue Falcon Marketing blog, to answer these five questions about Twitter spam and what marketers can do to avoid getting labeled a spammer.

Q. How would you define “spam” on Twitter?

A. Any tweet that is highly irrelevant and useless to the user it is being sent to. This includes both the text within the tweet itself, and any webpages it may link to. Keep in mind what one user may consider spam, another may find quite useful.

Q. What are two to three things that a business — whether it’s a Fortune 500 or a small-to-medium sized one — should do to avoid being labeled a spammer on Twitter?

A. Businesses must understand why their customers and prospects follow them on Twitter. This is needed to consistently send tweets that are useful to their followers, and avoid being seen as spammy. So what are two things to avoid?

• Avoid repetition. This includes tweeting the same or similar messages and links over and over. to a similar message, or linking to a specific webpage over and over. Repetition is often associated with spam. Keeping tweets unique, original, and useful to followers is the recommended strategy. 
• Avoid over exposure. Keep a balance between the tweets that promote your specific brand and products, and those that do not. Your followers can still find value in your tweets, even if they do not mention your company, products, or services. Just make sure they address the needs and interests of your followers.

Q. Are there innocuous mistakes someone can make that can backfire? If so, please walk through an example [real or hypothetical].

A. The biggest mistakes I see on Twitter is people following everyone they can, and following everyone that follows them. This happens to be the exact approach spammers take.

Keep your profile focused within a certain niche, and only follow people that are associated with that area. Your Twitter profile is a brand, and is shaped in part by who you follow and who is following you. If you are too loose in who you associate with, you will dilute what your profile stands for and could be viewed as a spammer.

An example of this is people using the Twitter Traffic Machine, which is an automated way of gaining followers and is appealing to new users. One of its main drawbacks is it automatically tweets repetitive messages advertising the tool to all your followers. Such tweets are a red flag for people who have used Twitter.

My recommendation is to build relationships naturally on Twitter, and to avoid a heavy dependence on using automatic tools to build up your list.

Q. Is there anything that Moonfruit, which ran the Macbook Pro laptop give away contest, could have done differently to avoid having #moonfruit (apparently) pulled from Twitter’s Trending Topics? Or do you think Twitter should have handled the incident differently?

A. Moonfruit’s campaign was highly successful and illustrated the potential of Twitter as a marketing platform. Their success was largely based on a clear understanding of their followers, and serving their needs in a clever and interactive way. I don’t consider this campaign spammy at all because it was very relevant and interesting to their followers. Could Twitter have handled this differently? Absolutely. The biggest issue I have is they abruptly removed the trending without the proper communication or feedback from both Moonfruit and its followers. However, the only way Twitter can evolve and mature as a platform is from learning from mistakes such as this.

Q. Twitter apparently just killed the accounts of an undetermined amount of spammers. Do you think that’s an effective move? What else do you think Twitter should be doing to combat spam?

A. Shutting down spam accounts is a step in the right direction, but does nothing to address spam in the long term. These spammers will simply create new profiles and start over again. This is akin to playing a game of whack-a-mole and is not effective.

Twitter should integrate a spam filter into its interface and APIs. A key advantage of this is empowering users themselves to decide what is and what is not spam. It is impractical to think that Twitter themselves can manually eliminate spam, there is simply too much for them to handle. The best solution I see is to give each user control of their spam settings, which has proven a very effective strategy for combating

Technorati Tags: social website traffic, twitter, twitter spam, twitter spam handling

When a newcomer to promoting a web business or starting a work at home business online begins this venture what are the most common mistakes they make? This would include any business that involves internet marketing but especially the work from home income opportunity type.

The failure to modify, and test.

You MUST, and I do mean MUST… Test your strategies, looking at the results, and then make modifications again and test again.

Also, most people come into the business with the theory, I’m going to start making $10,000 this month. Unless they have a huge budget to start with, it’s not going to happen.

Internet marketing is a game of education, practice, testing, and as my fiancee tells me "Try and Try Until Success".

I spend a fair amount of money on education every month, simply because I don’t want to learn all of it by trial and error.

But even with everything I’ve learned, I still test, and test, and test.. and try new things, and change that, and keep on keeping on..

While the internet itself may be new, there’s nothing new about internet marketing. At least there wasn’t until recently. When people began selling things online, they used the old tried and true methods that the pen and ink guys had perfected in the brick and mortar world for ages. They wrote their compelling copy for a sales page or a site, then put together an email campaign and hoped to drive visitors and website traffic for sales. If the email bombed, no problem. Make a few changes, hit a key and off it went again. That was Internet Marketing then. 

Internet Marketing now has evolved, just like the net itself. Web traffic now depends on website ranking in the search engines. Let’s be real here - that’s search engine - Google. There are all sorts of ways to get better website ranking. Much has been written about search engine optimization, and while important, that is only one part of the internet marketing equation. 

The net has evolved into a place to get information, socialize with people who share your interests and immerse yourself in live or streaming media. Each of these areas can be used to help your website ranking.

Article marketing can give information. Video marketing can entertain, inform, brand products and more. Podcasting can do everything video can and is an excellent way for the camera shy among us to reach our audience.

Unlike most search engine optimization techniques which often take months to show results, article and video marketing can improve your website ranking and web traffic overnight. They are two of the most powerful tools in the internet marketer’s arsenal. ANd the best thing about them is they don’t require a huge cash outlay or a long learning curve.

In this blog we’ll explore the ins and outs of article and video marketing and how it can help your site rise in the rankings to get more traffic. The equation is simple. Better website ranking = more web traffic and more web traffic = more sales opportunities. In the end that’s what we are here for - more sales, more money and the lifestyle that can make possible.

Technorati Tags: article marketing, internet marketing, video marketing, web traffic, website ranking