Keep It Real: Your Credibility & Ways to Improve It

The first key to Attraction Marketing is establishing yourself as a believable source of information. Whether your intention is to sell your own products, refer people to affiliate products, or sign up in your MLM downline, your credibility is critical. It’s your calling card.

As an Attraction Marketer, you want people to see you as a leader, someone who can solve their problems. If people don’t think you’re believable, they won’t become or stay attracted to you. If they’re not attracted to you, they won’t trust you. And if they don’t trust you, they won’t do business with you.

Just how believable are you? And how do you improve what Ann Sieg calls in "The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto," your "Credibility Ranking"?

Where to Start

Start by asking yourself "What do I bring to the table that is new and unique?" There are lots of marketers on the Web competing for prospects and leads, why should they go to you? Or, in business terms, What’s your value proposition?

Once you’ve figured that out, let people know, tell your story in the profiles you post on the web. And always keep in mind: be yourself. If you’re a single mom who’s balancing a job, family, and a part-time business, tell people that. If you’re a business person who’s leveraging your offline skills to develop an online business, tell people that.

The point is to keep it real. Your authenticity is what will initially attract people to you — either because they are just like you or because they can relate to you.

Your "Credibility Ranking" basically refers to how believable you are in the eyes of potential prospects. I’m not sure it can be measured objectively. It’s more like a quality that’s very obvious when it’s there and very apparent when it’s not.

Ways to Build Credibility

To build your Credibility Ranking, you’ll need to put yourself in places on the web that people can easily find you, be attracted to who you are, and view you as someone who knows what they’re talking about. Visibility builds credibility.

Here are a few free ways you can use to improve your credibility and attract potential prospects to you. You don’t even need to have your own website.

• Article Marketing: Write articles on subjects you’re passionate and knowledgeable about, include your author’s bio with your own link, and post them on a high-traffic article distributor like EzineArticles. Ezine publishers can pick up your articles and publish them in their ezines. Great exposure.
• Forum Posting: Contribute comments or questions to online forums. Be helpful or insightful. Focus on adding value to the conversation rather than selling yourself. People will be attracted to you (or not) based on how you conduct yourself. Remember: keep it real.
• Squidoo Lenses: Create lenses on Squidoo.com focusing on topics in your area of interest. This popular site offers very easy-to-follow online tools that anyone — non-technical or otherwise — can use to make their own webpages. Increases your visibility.

What It Takes

Building your Credibility Ranking will take more than just a compelling story and some well-placed web profiles. More than anything, it’ll take time. Cultivating the trust of your readers and prospects is an ongoing process and crucial to your success. Truth is, you’re never really done creating it. There will always be more to go

Find out more on establishing and improving your "Credibility Ranking," check out Ann Sieg’s free ebook "The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto."

Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp

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Over 20 Twitter Tools to Improve Your Tweeting

So, you’ve just started out on Twitter and you’re wondering how to get the most out of it. Or maybe you’re already tweeting but you’re still trying to figure out how Twitter can fit into your marketing strategy. Or, you just don’t get social media or Twitter at all.

Recently, I’ve been looking into how social media and Twitter in particular can fit into my marketing plans. I’ve come up with a list of Twitter tools that I hope is useful for everyone — social marketing newbies as well as social media fans. This is by no means an exhaustive list. And, it’s one I’m planning to update as time goes on.

For right now, here we go by category and listed in no particular order:

Follow Twitter

• TwiTip: Twitter tips in 140 characters (or more), edited by Darren Rowse of Problogger.net.
• Blog of Mr. Tweet: Fresh insights for understanding the Twitterverse.
• Tweedz: Message board featuring Twitter tips, news, and resources.

For Firefox

• TwitterBar: A Firefox extension that turns your browser’s address bar into a Twitter input screen. Great for tweeting a quick thought or the link to the webpage you’re viewing. A must-have.
• TwitterFox: This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.
• Power Twitter: This extension interacts directly with the twitter.com website to add lots more features to profile pages, including inline video, Twitter search and search results, and lots more.
• MyTwitterToolBar: This toolbar’s got links to over 100 Twitter tips, plus Twitter how-tos and links to Twitter-related services and tools. Oh, and you can log in to your account to check your tweets, replies, and Direct Messages. Full-featured? Uh, yeah.

Clients

• TweetDeck: The mother of all Twitter clients. This stand-alone application allows you to organize your friends into categories so that you can easily sort through your public stream and follow your most important conversations. Most importantly, you can group people together and search across Twitter. A must for serious tweeters.
• Tweetie (for iPhone): I was considering a separate category for Twitter mobile applications because there are so many. But this $2.99 application is by far the best of breed and well worth the price. It has been extremely well-reviewed and I can personally say that, yes, it’s easy to use and has all the features you’d want.

Backgrounds

• MyTweetSpace: What’s a Twitter page without a cool background, or at least one that expresses who you are? You can choose from a range of templates or create your own custom design. For free.
• TwitBacks: Another free Twitter background provider, TwitBacks adds some additional services for a fee: for 30 days (for $9.99) they’ll promote your services and profile on various websites. I use TwitBacks for my profile background.

Account Management

• TweetLater: Bills itself as a productivity tool for "busy tweeple." Humor aside, this is truly a great tool for marketers to manage their Twitter account. Schedule tweets, track keywords, track multiple accounts, follow and un-follow automatically, and lots more.  I use it to help keep automate parts of my account that would be too tedious to do manually
• HootSuite: Another productivity tool that allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, schedule tweets, and measure your progress. This service also has a feature that allows you to add small ads into the links you post on Twitter. Nice user interface on the dashboard.
• FriendorFollow: Use this tool to find out who you’re following but who’s not following you back. Or, who’s following you but you’re not following back. Once you know who’s doing what, you can decide what you’re going to do about it.

Feeders

• TwitterFeed: Ever wonder how to automatically post your blog updates to your Twitter account? I did until I found TwitterFeed. I would have put this tool on the ‘For Bloggers’ list below, but it can be used to feed Twitter way more than just your blog posts.
  
• FriendFeed: This is another service that allow you to post content you find on various parts of the Web to your Twitter account. I haven’t actually used this tool yet, but it also promises to allow you to share your information to multiple locations.

For Bloggers

• Twitter Badges: Twitter.com provides custom widgets, or badges, that allow visitors to your blog or Web profile page know what you’re up to at the moment. I use one style of badge here to display the latest tweets from my Twitter account.
• Twitter Buttons: Get a custom "Follow Me on Twitter" button to post on your blog or Web profile.
• Tweetmeme: This tool tracks the most popular links on Twitter and posts it to their website. Why is this listed in this section? Because, you can add a Tweetmeme button to your blog — with JavaScript or a WordPress plugin — that allows visitors to instantly re-tweet your page.
• TwitterCounter: Add a button to your blog or Web page that keeps track of how many Twitter followers you have at any given moment. This service also allows you to chart the number of followers for any Twitter account — yours or anyone else’s.
• Twitter for WordPress: A plugin that allows you to share your latest tweets on your WordPress blog.
• Twitter Friends: Another WordPress plugin that allows you to post your Twitter friends in your sidebar in the same way that they appear on your Twitter homepage

Searches and Directories

• Twollo: This service allows you to locate people with the same interests as you and to follow them automatically. Looking for people in your target market? Then this is the tool for you.
• Twellow: It is what it sounds like: the Twitter Yellow Pages. Search by people according to interest, geographical location (or, TwellowHood, as they call it), by who they follow, by who’s their friend, and more. Very useful for finding other people you want to contact.
• Twitterholic: According to their site, "Our twittastic robots scan the Twitter public timeline for new twits to tweet. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database."  You use the tool to see where you (or others) ‘rank.’
• TwitterDigest: Allows you to read Twitter updates by account in a manageable fashion. Get a daily digest of the people you’re most interested in following either by RSS feed or on a website you can visit regularly.

For Facebook

• Twitter: Inside of Facebook,  you can send a tweet to Twitter. And, you canalso set it up to update both your Twitter page and your FB status automatically.
• Twitter Updater: Automatically updates Twitter whenever you change your Facebook status.
• Selective Twitter Status: If you’re like me, then you like to keep your tweets separate from your FB status, but have the option to update both at the same time. By adding "#fb" to the end of a tweet, this app will also update your FB status.

Monetize Your Twitter

• Twitter Traffic Machine: This 6-video tutorial by Bill Crosby will not only help you get more followers, you’ll also learn how to manage your account more effectively and earn referral fees doing it.
  Click here to check out my review.
• TwtAd: TwtAd merges pay-per-click with your tweets to enable you to earn money from your tweets.
• Twittad: Twittad allows you to monetize your Twitter profile in two ways — by allowing advertisers to place ads on your profile background or by getting paid to advertise your own product.

Please feel free to drop a line to let me with the Twitter tools you use and why you use them.

Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp

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How to Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

Attention all bloggers. News alert.

Just learned that Darren Rowse over a ProBlogger.net is going to be launching his third tutorial "31 Days to a Better Blog" on April 1st. UPDATE: Darren’s pushed back the start date to Mon, April 6th so there’s even more time to sign up.

Darren’s done this before — in 2005 and 2007. This time, he’s presenting it as a "challenge" for beginner to intermediate bloggers , though he says that much of it will be relevant to advanced bloggers as well.

Here’s how it works: Each day, starting on April 1st and ending on May 1st , Darren will post an installment that is one part theory, another part practice (a task or homework).

You can follow "31 Days to a Better Blog" on the blog or via his RSS feed. Or, you can register and receive a daily email alerting you of that day’s post and containing additional information not contained in the post.

I just signed up to receive the emails. Now, I’ve just got to clear my April calendar. Seriously, what better person to learn from than Darren Rowse, a guy who’s turned his blogging hobby into a full-time business ?

And, what more appropriate info to pass along in my first post to this blog?

Here’s to better blogging.