Your Own Short Link Service

Want to know how you can have your own short link service like bit.ly, tr.IM or tinyurl, built in to your own WordPress posted website? I have spoken before about the importance of links to help build your online business presence.

If you have a WordPress site then read on to find out about the power you have in your hand.

What is a link shortening service?

Many links to your website, your articles might be very long. Not that suitable for advertising, or for use in Twitter or Facebook either. A link shortening service is used to reduce the length of the link, but still when someone clicks on it, it goes to the same place you orginally wanted.

The trouble is the search engines rank the short link and the user who's going to click on the link doesn't really know where it's going to go.

How to improve this situation?

Why not have a short link service that uses your own domain name. Now admittedly this isn't going to work so well if you have a long domain name, but if you have short one, it's a great opportunity for you to keep your website address visible to everyone including the search engines. While some sites like Twitter have the “nofollow” attribute set on links, at least your domain name will appear in the search engine rankings, but also in the eyes of the tweeps = twitter followers. This is a great bonus. I have been using this technique on a number of websites and it's showing great results.

To manage this service you just need to install the pretty link plugin. Configure it, there are plenty of tutorials on this, then use it.

This plugin has a free and paid for version, but for this simple task, the free version is enough.

If you would like assistance in setting this up then contact me!

12 Traffic Conversion Tips

If visitors to your website don’t stay and read what you have to say or offer, is that useful? You can spend money on advertising to get them there but if they don't stay then you are just wasting your money and time.

For your site to be successful, selling things or capturing the details of prospects you have to do more than get visitors (traffic) you have to get them to take action. You turn a visitor into a buyer from a tyre kicker. After all the internet is not different to other business, it’s a numbers game. So converting them is easy…right?

It can be easy when you do the right things. Here are twelve tips on how to convert traffic. You don’t have to be an expert to do this. Just follow the tips.

1. Know your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and really know why your service or product is different from your competition.  In what way is it special, special enough, different enough that it’s purchased? When you get this you know your USP and define it into a couple of sentences.
2. Remember you are building a relationship so put your message across in an appropriate way .  There’s no need for a pushy sales pitch. Treat your potential clients like you would like to be treated, telling a story about it. High pressure selling is a thing of the past.  
3. If you need assistance from your market, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Create a survey about what you currently do or about an area you would like to expand into. This will help develop the relationship and deepen loyalty towards both your company and the product or service.
4. Make the offer simple.  If you are selling four different products, advertise them on four websites.  Do not use one website to offer all products as this will be confusing for the consumer.  Whilst this might work for the bigger retailers they are already established in the marketplace.  
5. Make your page clear and easy to read.  Use wide margins and don’t feel you have to fill every inch of the page with copy.  If you leave white space it allows the reader to focus on reading the copy rather than being bombarded with too much information.  
6. Do brag about your product especially if it has received good endorsements and ratings from your satisfied customers.  Let them do the bragging for you. Testimonials are great and whatever you do – don’t make them up.
7. Writing good sales copy is an art. Give your audience plenty of reasons as to why to buy your product or service.  Use a sales letter and squeeze page that contains lots of valuable offers and repeat this over and over again.  It is much better to have too many offers, as long as they are valuable and reasonable, than too few and leaves your audience in no doubt as to what your offer is and its value.  
8. Look for problems and solve them.  Once you have completed your sales page, have a good think about any other issues your product could help to solve.  Asking buyers for more information might help as they might have found ways of using the product that you never considered.
9. Use moderate highlights in your copy.  These highlights help to attract the reader’s attention.  Don’t use too many though as too much colour or highlighting can just annoy and confuse your readers.  
10. Package deals are very popular.  Once you have presented your USP, offer a special package that includes a free bonus/gift when customers choose to ‘Buy Now’.  If you advertise the offer is available for a limited time this creates an air of urgency and entices the buyer to act immediately. Don’t just say it, believe it.  
11. Request an order.  One of the oldest principles of generating sales is never to ignore orders.  Ask for an order and keep asking.  You can never ask too many times. In Internet Marketing terms this is referred to as a call to action. Use them liberally throughout your sales letter.  
12. Be polite and say “Thank You” to your customers.  This is most important and good manners will get you a long way even on the Internet. Remember we are building a relationship. Your buyers will feel appreciated and will be more likely to come back to you. 

Here’s a bonus tip:

- Be genuine, offer a meaningful guarantee about your product or service, something you can stand behind. Make it something that you know you can do.

Selling online, whether the sale is for money or a persons contact details, remember it’s about building a relationship. Think not just about this sale but also abou the ones that follow and know the lifetime value of the customer.

When Did You Last Take Action?

For any activity or project to be successful there’s one key ingredient – ACTION. While to make it useful it has to be the right action(s) otherwise any action step is meaningless. One of the best Internet Marketers James Schramko makes this point in a recent article.

So whether it’s organising a party, the deployment of a new process or technology, the development of an internet strategy, they all rely on a series of tasks. The tasks form the basis of you and your team taking ACTION.

Action Method

There’s nothing new in all this, everyone knows it. It’s whether we do anything about it is the biggest different. There are a lot of project management tools and methods available. From the simple todo list all the way through to the big guns, like Catalyst, Prince2 etc. There are lots of complex tools to aid and support the project also, probably the most popular is Microsoft’s Project. At KIX we’ve utilised all these methods over the years but found them too heavy for many projects. We’ve tested many and found most fall short. Until we came across Action Method from Behance. There’s more to be found on the what and how of Action Method on our site. Feel free to have a look.

It wont be for everyone, but it will be useful potentially for some people and organisations.

We wanted just to share this with you to help get you into the 2010 spirit of doing.

Take Action Now!