I’ve been doing some experiments lately with both newly registered websites and existing sites - utilizing the power of Web 2.0 for traffic.

The sites I’ve been working with are not just of various age, but in various niches.

This all started as a challenge when a local business owner told me that I couldn’t get him any more work as a result of online marketing than he could get on his own, down a hick town backroad, through word of mouth.

I’ve never liked it when someone told me I couldn’t do something. This was no different.

This became even more a challenge because his ‘thought-stream’ was backed and confirmed by his young University educated daughter. A 20 year old small town girl who’s never entered more than 2 words into google at a time and whose primary use of the internet is socializing on FaceBook.

“No one uses the internet to find local business, Dad.”

(Ugh, small town mentality.)

If I could find the research I read last month - that states 60% of North Americans would rather search for a company online than pick up a phone book - I’d wrap it up in a big box with a bow and send it to them.

As I mapped out a “I’ll prove it to you” strategy - the latest of which is my newly devised transposting - I decided to see if anyone else was teaching how to do this….

I’ve been a few months away from my machine and I’m happy to buy a course or report on this to stay current as well as learn from others since I don’t know everything.

Scouring the Warrior forum, buying latest releases and reports from other marketers, bouncing from one marketing blog to another - no one is talking about this stuff. Unless of course Howie Swartz (sp?) or Frank Kern are teaching it in their exclusive classes. (Two guys I could listen to all day as they’re as close to Hollywood in internet marketing as you can get.)

As soon as I get my small town business man some work and money through online marketing (and put both him and his daughter to shame) I’ll be writing a short step-by-step and screen shot proof on TransPosting.

If you are interested in reviewing the report before release, please contact me now. When I write these types of short reports, I don’t wait around or pre-launch, etc.

Also, if you find anyone else talking about Transposting (not cross posting thanks I already know about that), please give me a head’s up.

Yours in marketing,

Laura Childs

Spent 5 minutes on Sphinn lately?

It’s amazing what you can find, new authors you’ll discover, and marketing or traffic generation techniques you’ll learn.

It’s a great place to spend your morning coffee break to see what the rest of the internet marketing community is buzzing about.

My personal tip to save time on Sphinn (or risk clicking and reading and commenting all day) is to choose one topic in the green navigation bar - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Search Marketing, Social Media, Online Marketing, Searching, Other - and browse the headlines. You can find me skimming through the Social Media tab from 9:30-10:15 am EST, Monday to Thursday.

Some of the faces you’ll find there are well known in the industry. Others you’ll be thrilled to discover.

Social Marketing on Sphinn

Today I landed on a Courtney Tuttle post and found it informative enough to share here. These are the basics of social marketing - build for your market, strategize your efforts, promote others.

Five Reasons I Used to Suck at Social Media (November 7) - “In the last few months, I’ve gone from getting almost no social traffic to regularly having 3,000+ visitor spikes.”

Good read. Especially helpful if you have been hearing all the hype about Web 2.0 traffic, have tried to generate your own Web 2.0 traffic stream, and aren’t seeing the results everyone else is. Courtney also comes clean about the huge waste of effort most internet marketers expend on getting to the top of Digg. Be sure, as well, to skim the comments left on the post.

I’d suggest subscribing to Courtney’s site as well - the traffic to that blog alone has steadily risen since April 2007 (launch) and is now in the top 25,000 visited sites online (according to Alexa).

A Bit on Sphinn’s Backend

Last year I told you about a Web 2.0, Open Source software, called Pligg. It was great then and it’s still great today. Not that open source programs don’t come with their own set of problems, but the programmers and volunteers behind Pligg are dedicated and hard-working.

Sphinn.com is powered by Pligg (as are a number of very busy and profitable Web 2.0 sites). Launched just 4 months ago, Sphinn’s current Alexa places it in the top 25,000 most visited websites.

If you’ve considered jumping on the bandwagon and having your own Web 2.0 site there’s no time like the present and there’s no better free program and support than Pligg offers (in my opinion anyway).

I have Pligg running on a niche site that I started last year - but did not launch - and loved playing around with it. Pligg has been updated since and is now easier and has more features. (see: Web 2.0 OpenSource).

Step aside from all the hype, excitement and disruption of Google’s OpenSocial project and what you’ll see is a time saving opportunity in the not too distant future.

At a gathering last night I became ‘as excited as Scoble*‘ trying to explain what OpenSocial meant to the online landscape. And yes, my personal show was complete with arms flapping, heightened voice tone, and even forgetting where I was in the point I was trying to get across.

My friends and associates (who are not geeks and many don’t even own a website) listened and watched for 5 minutes as though I had 5 heads.

Sigh.

Thankfully two entrepreneurs in the room ‘got it’ and wanted to talk more about it - making me feel not quite so ‘fringe’ and nerdy.

So let’s talk about what OpenSocial and those Scoble videos mean to you — the online entrepreneur with a well defined target market — and let’s do it in a less sensationalist manner than I displayed last night. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll write more about these videos tomorrow, but right now I don’t want you to miss it. Primarily because if you aren’t excited about social marketing yet, this Scoblizer vid will change your mind when numbers and concepts start flying.

Secondly because I expect a lightbulb or two to go off mid-video regarding how the social sites are inter-linked and connected and why (and how) you need to capitalize on that to ensure your marketing message is heard, is cohesive, is effective…

This is not ‘their’ starfish! This is ‘your’ starfish. (Click play, watch to the end and see what I mean.)

To save you hunting to find video 2, here it is… Read the rest of this entry »

I must admit I haven’t talked much about Facebook publicly (only in my email newsletters). And until earlier this month I also haven’t done much with my Facebook account…

Since the start of the year I have been focusing on Web 2.0 properties that (a) have a finely focused niche audience, (b) provide some sort of search engine juice as a result of my efforts, and (c) allow me to partially automate the content creation aspect.

Caring Less and Less About Search Engine Love…(b)

These days I’ve been caring less about the extra search engine ‘points’ by having off-site content. (If you don’t know why I’m caring less, check yesterday’s post.) As a result of reader comments and a few discussions in Facebook I woke up and realized that other marketers, entrepreneurs and website owners are seeing the same anomolies about site traffic as I am.

For example, Allan Cockerill (one of my Facebook friends and fellow bloggers - www.AllanCockerill.com among others) openly shared through a discussion that began: “Will Social Media Become More Important Than SEO…?”

Allan shared: “…1600+ visitors to my blog during September, using nothing but Facebook, Stumbleupon, Twitter and Digg…has me pondering the future.”

Laura said: “…the wake up call came when I noticed clickthroughs from Google down - even though I held #1 spots and even though the # of searches per month, per keyword, was constant…”

Read the rest of this entry »