Welcome Twitter Followers
Welcome all new Twitter followers. Thank you very much for following me.
I’ve created this page just for you. Mainly, to introduce myself so you know who I am and what I’m up to on Twitter. Also, to provide you with suggestions on some useful Twitter tools.
To find out more “details” about me and this blog, please check out my About page. It’s got more than 140-characters’ worth of bio on yours truly (what I’m doing now, what I’ve done in the past, how to get in contact, etc). You might even still find me interesting after you’ve read it. 
Why I Tweet
- Network with people with common interests
- Meet people with different interests
- Provide value to others
- Receive value from others
How I Use Twitter
- Follow leaders in areas of interest (mostly, Internet marketing, blogging)
- Follow trends in those areas
- Learn from other marketers (what to do, what not to do)
- Add value by promoting my blog content
- Add value by sharing random thoughts, observations, quotes, etc
- Automate some useful info, like my latest blog posts
- Share info/tips/tools/strategies with other marketers
- Not auto-following. I stopped doing this after considering it for quite some time. This post by @johnreese sums up the issue pretty well. I will manually follow back, so please be patient
- Interact with “cool people” regardless of stated “area of interest”
- Have fun (duh!)
Who I Love to Follow (and Why)
To give you an idea of the people I truly love to follow, I’ve created “My All-Time Twitter #FollowFriday List. I certainly recommend following these folks for all the reasons I mention (and more). I plan to update the list periodically with more tweeple, both as an acknowledgement of who they are and what they provide, and as an means of promoting people who, in my opinion, make Twitter a better place.
Useful Twitter Tools
This one’s for you! I’ve compiled my list of 10 of my favorite Twitter Tools. And they’re all Free. 
I hope you find at least one new tool to enhance your tweeting.
(For a more extensive listing on this site and around the ‘Net, visit Twitter Tools and Resources. )
- Account Analytics: Twitter Analyzer: Get detailed analytics on your Twitter account. Great for getting a profile of how you use Twitter.
- Client: TweetDeck: My favorite Twitter client allows you to organize followers, keep track of your incoming and outgoing tweets, and more.
- Firefox Extension: TwitterBar: Turns your address bar into a Twitter input screen.
- Firefox Extension: TwitterFox: Adds a tiny icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their tweets.
- Firefox Extension: Power Twitter: Adds more functionality to Twitter.com profile pages.
- Browser Toolbar: MyTwitterToolBar: Adds instant access to links to over 100 Twitter tips, how-tos, and links to Twitter-related services.
- Productivity: TweetLater: A productivity tool for "busy tweeple." Schedule tweets, set up recurring tasks, and more.
- Video: Twitter Tutorial: Very informative three-part series for beginner, intermediate, and advanced users.
- Monetize: TwtAd: TwtAd merges pay-per-click with tweeting to enable you to earn money from your tweets.
- Monetize: Twittad: Twittad allows you to monetize your Twitter profile by allowing advertisers to place ads on your profile background.
Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp
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To Autopilot or Not to Autopilot?
Putting things on autopilot is all the rage these days.
Put Your Twitter on Autopilot!
Prospecting on Autopilot!
Generate Leads on Autopilot!
Put Your MLM on Autopilot!
Put Your Gmail on Autopilot!
Get Profits on Autopilot!
Put Your Blog on Autopilot!
What’s next?
Put Your Brain on Autopilot?
Put Your Life on Autopilot?
I’m all for automation. Taking the drudgery out of boring, repetitive tasks is one of the most useful things about computers and business systems.
Yes, I have a Twitterfeed that automatically updates my account periodically.
Yes, I do auto-bill pay.
Yes, I use an autoresponder.
Yes, I have a marketing funnel.
But all of the hype around not doing any work (or the thinking required to do that work ) can be dangerous or at least misleading.
Take Twitter, for example. A couple of people I followed were sending some automatic tweets. No problem. As stated, I do that too sometimes. I sent them a tweet to ask a question that only they could answer. Response? Crickets. No response at all. I soon unfollowed them.
Is Twitter becoming one big bot-fest?
Another example, Network Marketing. This is largely a "relationship business." Your success or failure in MLM is a function of your ability to forge significant and lasting bonds with other people.
Can a system or series of systems re-invent the way network marketing business is conducted so it is all "on auto-pilot"?
Some of it, yes. All of it, no.
The fact remains that at some point you will need to pick up the phone and actually speak to someone.
Or, you’ll need to actually respond to a tweet if you want to experience Twitter’s social value and potential.
Or, you’ll need to actually write your own blog posts every once in a while and not have all of them written by ghosts.
The value of putting some parts of your business on autopilot is that you can better leverage your time. You can add more of you , not less of you, to accomplishing your business’s most important goals.
I take my cue from commercial airline pilots themselves: Yes, they put the plane on autopilot once it’s in the air. But, for the really critical tasks–take-off and landing–they’ve got their hands directly on the controls.
Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp
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Build a List for Free Using Social Media
Building a list is one of the top priorities for any Internet Network Marketer. You can buy lists or rent lists. But building your own list is by far the best way to go. When you build your own, you have your own customers, or potential customers, not someone else’s.
So, where do you start?
Old-School Network Marketing List Building
In the old model of Network Marketing, you can buy leads from other people’s lists. There are some obvious problems with this approach:
- * It’s gets expensive
* You’re not necessarily getting "hot leads"
* Cold-calling to people who may or may not want to talk with you
What’s the solution?
Internet Network Marketing List Building
There are lots of free ways to attract leads to you on the Internet. The benefits of these attraction marketing methods are:
- * They’re free
* Your leads are already interested in what you’re providing
* You’re calling people who would welcome hearing from you (and may have requested that you contact them).
How exactly is this done?
"How I Built My First List"
Mike Klingler’s three-part video series "How I Built My First List" demystifies the list-building process by showing you step-by-step how he built his first list of 1,172 Prospects in 3 Days days when he was a newbie by using methods that are free and available to everyone.
Central to Mike’s approach is applying the concept of "leverage" to developing content that grabs the reader’s or viewer’s interest.
In the videos, Mike shows how he used the following techniques to generate interest and list members:
- * Leveraging a social movement
* Leveraging timely content
* Leveraging a well-known person
The most useful part of the series is that Mike breaks down how you can use these same methods to build your own list.
Use Social Media to Build Your List
Mike focuses in detail on social media as a means of list-building: Articles, Videos, Twitter, social networks.
"How I Built My First List" takes you beyond the obvious "socializing" aspect of social media and reveals the specific ways to use attraction marketing techniques to create an online presence that attracts prospects to you and build your list.
Video #3 is my favorite one. Here, Mike outlines how to use Twitter to develop relationships and potential prospects. He provides a wide range of specific examples of the type of tweets that attract prospects, how to create an "attractive" online presence, and how to leverage that presence into leads for your list.
The power of using social media to build your list is that even before someone joins your list, they have developed a relationship with you and vice-versa. They’re not just a name on a list, but a person that you know. More importantly, you are someone that they know. And that relationship strengthens your ability to market to that person over time.
The Value of Your List
"How I Built My First List" is probably the most comprehensive tutorial on free list building available.
Building a list by first developing relationships is powerful and will give you added leverage in marketing to that list over time.
As you continue to add people to your list, you will be continuing to develop those relationships. As your list grows and the relationships strengthen, you’ll have an increasingly powerful tool that will enable you to market effectively to an ever-growing number of people.
Want to fast-forward your business and your list-building efforts?
Then "How I Built My First List" is the video series for you.
Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp
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Essential WordPress Plugins for Marketers
Here’s a list of WordPress plugins that an Internet marketer shouldn’t do without. They may not be "sexy" or give your blog that "wow, that’s cool" factor, but these WordPress plugins are essential to the business of your blog.
Utilities
Improved Plugin Installation
Take the hassle out of installing plugins with this time-saving gem. Simply install its bookmarklet on your browser, then when you find a plugin you want to download, click the bookmarklet and it will install that plugin with one click. Make this the first WordPress plugin you install and you’ll be happy you did.
Maintenance Mode
Doing a massive upgrade of your site? This plugin puts up a "Down for Maintenance" splash page asking readers to check back later. Saves you the embarrassment of readers seeing your blog with, err, its pants down.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
All in One SEO Pack
Improve your SEO immediately by installing and using this plugin to add unique titles, descriptions, keywords and other search-engine friendly elements to each post or page. Greatly enhances your visibility on search engines.
Google XML Sitemap Generator
Make it easy for Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com search engines to find your blog by sending them an XML file of all your posts each and every time you update. Another plugin that will help you get on the good side with the search engines.
Statistics and Tracking
WordPress Stats
WordPress’s tracking application let’s you track the overall performance. Find out the number of visitors, pageviews, source of traffic, etc. This comes packaged with WordPress-hosted blogs; for blogs you host yourself, you’ll need to install the plugin and get a WordPress API key.
Google Analyticator
Google Analyticator easily adds Google Analytics tracking support to your blog so you can get comprehensive statistics of your blog’s performance. This is Google’s tracking application, which provides the same type of data as WordPress stats, only much more extensive. You’ll need to register with the Google Analytics site and get a Google UID (user ID).
Content Distribution
FeedBurner Feedsmith
Make it easier for your reader to get your content by syndicating it with this RSS feed plugin. FeedBurner can track all of your feed subscriber traffic and usage, and apply a variety of features you choose to improve and enhance your original WordPress feed.
AddtoAny
There are lots of really good social bookmarking widgets that allow your readers to bookmark or share your content on Digg, de.li.ci.ous and a range of other social sites. After trying several others, I’ve chosen AddtoAny because it has a great interface and appears to have the most comprensive listing. Let your readers promote your blog and gain more reach.
Yet Another Related Posts
Add more value to your readers by linking to other, related content on your blog. This plugin takes the tedium out of adding each related link to each post by automatically adding a "Related Posts" section at the bottom of each article.
Affiliate Links
GoCodes
If you have any affiliate links on your site, you’ll need GoCodes. This plugin enables you to mask your affiliate links so they can’t be swapped out or modified, which would cost you commissions. It also allows you to track the click rate of your links. Very useful.
Advertising
Easy Adsenser
Add Google AdSense ads to your posts with this aptly named plugin. Allows you to add AdSense blocks in numerous parts of your posts and will automatically check that you don’t exceed the maximum of three AdSense blocks per page. Nice addition if you choose to ad advertising to your blog.
Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp
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Autoresponder Email Deliverability Tips
Filed under: Autoresponder-email, Internet Marketing
Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.
Permission
Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.
Subscriber Addresses
When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.
List Maintenance
Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.
Message Format
Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.
Content
Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.
Website URL:
Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.
Words/phrases:
Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.
Images:
Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.
Attachments:
With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.
Reputation
Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:
- * http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com
Relationships & Whitelisting
Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.
Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.
By Tom Kulzer
CEO, AWeber
