This eBook is fresh off the shelf. Published in Dec 2010 Jacob reveals the secrets of blog syndication. “If you can create an automated process to both grow your social following, increase your rankings in search engines, and drive direct traffic; then you make make money blogging.” This eBook discussed the secrets that only the professional bloggers know. Topics include:

• Growing your Twitter following on auto-pilot
• Growing your Facebook following
• Engaging your readers
• Syndication tools to publish your content across the internet
• Monetization methods and programs
• Email Marketing: Why and How
• Finding a niche
• WordPress Installation Tutorial
• Top WordPress plugins

After Jacob cracked the code with his successful blog, AndroidSocialMedia.com, he begin to document the secrets to making money online and the eBook “The Blog SEO and Syndication Formula,” contains the formula (that’s why its in the name of the book)

Visit our store to purchase the eBook.

In this modern world it doesn’t take a geek like me to convince local businesses and advertisers that they need to utilize the internet to interact with their customers. Small businesses across America who don’t have the resources to hire experts struggle each day to keep up with the best practices in online advertising; but what about the sales people? 14.5 Million Americans work in sales. In this fast as light (or Facebook) world how should sales reps be using these online tools to build their client list, customer retention, and generally increase productivity and reach? Today I want to outline a clear strategy for today’s modern sales person.

The Three Sales Objectives:

1. The first objective is to increase the total number of customers. Building your prospect funnel to eventually increase your client base will always be one of the strongest ways to increase your check.
2. Secondly we need to increase retention. Maintaining the customers you have in their current buy is crucial to your overall efforts. It doesn’t take very long in the sales profession before you realize that keeping customers is easier than getting new ones but the littlest neglect can lose you customers very quickly.
3. Your third objective is to increase the buy per customer. Driving each of your customers to give you a greater part of their total budget/buy is sales 101. Up sale the customer to the next promotion, the next product, or the next product category and you will increase your total billing without too much more effort.

The Four Online Activities:

1. Build an online presence. At a minimum expense you could obtain a complete website. In a society where high school students are trained to build websites it may cost you a lot less than you think to have a professional presence online. Build the website in blog form allowing you to post new information on a regular basis. If you are too cheap to pay for a website I suggest you turn to a free blogging platform such as Blogspot or WordPress.
2. Create valuable content. Ask yourself what type of content your current and potential customers need. What expertise do you have to share that would both educate your customer and drive them to buy more of your product? If you want to create a loyal following you must develop high quality content. This is where the blogging begins. Share success stories from current clients that are designed to give your client ideas and encourage them to do more business with you. It’s ok to recycle articles, news, etc. If you have access to industry updates, news, etc you can just share that information with your readers/clients. No need to rewrite everything. Just post your opinion about the information and give credit to the original source. Remember that your goal is to create high leverage online activities. The less man hours you have to put into it the better.
3. Build a list. On your site create an “opt-in” form that allows site visitors to choose to receive your newsletters. Also ask your existing customers permission to add them to your e-newsletters. Newsletters should be sent less frequently than blog posts. If you blog once per week you may send a newsletter every month. If you blog monthly you might send a newsletter every quarter. Utilize the newsletter to share industry news or share your insight into the market changes. This is your opportunity to show your expertise and create a raving fan that will always turn to you when they have a need within your product/service industry. Ask around about different economic email marketing services you can utilize to serve the emails. See resources below.
4. Syndicate Your Content. There is no need to spend all your time sending links and messages on Facebook and Twitter. This is NOT a productive activity. If you want to connect with clients and potential clients on the social networks such as Facebook and Twitter that’s ok but don’t add the time burden to your day. Since you are already writing content on your blog make sure to automatically feed your blog posts into Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other social networks you feel would be beneficial. Share news stories, industry research, etc on the social networks as well. Utilize a service such as Hootsuite.com or Ping.fm to post to all your networks at once. Both of these services also offer mobile solutions to allow you to share on the go from your phone.

The Five Rules:

1. How often you blog isn’t nearly as important as how consistently you blog. Start out slow, maybe posting a new blog once per month; slowly increase as you become more comfortable. Get in a groove so that your audience can come to expect a certain type of content and frequency.
2. Online marketing is a long term, low cost investment. Don’t expect to get fast results. Be consistent over time and only commit to a plan that you are willing to execute over time.
3. If your audience grows large enough you will be able to monetize your online presence. You will be able to sell ad space on both the site and on your e-newsletters.
4. Be personable. Nobody wants to do business with a robot. Your online content needs to reflect both professionalism and personality.
5. Get the help of an expert and continue your online education. Subscribe to my blog and the blogs of other internet marketing gurus. Reading the blogs of internet marketers provides free ongoing training.

Resources:

• The three most popular online email marketing systems are iContact, ConstantContact, and Aweber. They each charge based on the size of your contact list. The links in this article will give you a free trial of any of them. There are two reasons why you use software like this in place of just a contact group in Outlook. Firstly because it will facilitate automatic signups from your website and secondly because it will track which people open your email, when they open it, and what links within the email they click on.

Just happen to find a few of my favorite public figures and authors in the Social Media World. Here are the links:

Robert Kiyosaki

Twitter: @theRealKiyosaki

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/600.Robert_T_Kiyosaki

Facebook Profile

Facebook Page

John C Maxwell

Twitter: @johncmaxwell

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/68.John_C_Maxwell

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/JohnCMaxwell

Blog: http://johnmaxwellonleadership.com/

Tom V Morris

Twitter: @tomvmorris

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11478.Tom_Morris

Blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=tom-morris

Author of: “If Harry Potter Ran General Electric” & “If Aristotle Ran General Motors”

Robert G. Allen

Twitter: @bestsellerbob

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/25187.Robert_G_Allen

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-G-Allen/128014057753

Site: http://www.robertgallen.com/

Stephen R Covey

Twitter: @StephenRCovey

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1538.Stephen_R_Covey

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stephen-R-Covey/15653234806

Site: https://www.stephencovey.com/

Marcus Buckingham

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mwbuckingham

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18731.Marcus_Buckingham

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marcus-Buckingham/27029436532

Site: http://www.tmbc.com/

Ed Viesturs

Twitter: @EViesturs

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/67681.Ed_Viesturs

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ed-Viesturs/75109555243

Site: http://www.edviesturs.com/

Tim Ferriss

Twitter: @tferriss

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/210456.Timothy_Ferriss

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/timferriss

Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Anthony Robbins

Twitter: @tonyrobbins

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5627.Anthony_Robbins

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2217217024

Blog: http://tonyrobbinstraining.com/

J.K. Rowling

Twitter: @jk_rowling

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1077326.J_K_Rowling

Site: http://www.jkrowling.com/

I’ve been looking for this for years! Don’t you grow tired of the time you spend trying to syndicate a good blog post or article? You could spend 15 minutes submitting a link to Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.  For some time I have been looking for a service that would allow me to submit a link to all of these Social Bookmarking sites at once. Imagine the time that you would save.

At this point we have a great service for syndicating pictures and videos (pixelpipe) and a great service for updating our statuses on various sites at once (ping.fm). The good news is that FINALLY we have a Social Bookmarking syndicator. ONLYWIRE has come along just to end my nightmares! OnlyWire offers both free and paid accounts and so far my experience has been fantastic. They offer various tools such as browser plugins and more to help you readily syndicate content.

My very favorite part of the service is their WordPress plugin. I have removed my traditional “Add to Any” plugin that is most widely used on wordpress blogs to enable readers to syndicate a post/article and in it’s place I have placed the OnlyWire syndication button. In addition to having the same options to share a link with any one service users can also setup their own OnlyWire account to submit the link to all their social bookmarking services at once.

This is a huge WIN/WIN for readers and blog owners alike. Think how much more likely links are to be syndicated to various networks with the new ease of the OnlyWire system. I am encouraging all blog owners and internet marketers to subscribe to OnlyWire and install the plugin on their sites. The more users we can get plugged into the system the better it will be for all of us. Simply go to the bottom of this or any other post on my site and hover your mouse over the bookmark button. Create your own account and submit this article to all your networks. If you have your own blog go install the OnlyWire plugin to get your readers on the same service!!!!

Warning: Not all bookmarking services can be submitted to automatically. Sites such as Digg.com require human verification in order to finalize a submission. OnlyWire will automatically syndicate your link to as many social bookmarking sites as possible and then send you an email with notice should you need to manually finish the process for any specific services.

As you begin your work in internet marketing you will start hearing the word “niche” a lot. A niche is a specific topic or area of discussion which tends to be unique and of interest to your market. Finding a good niche in our current condition is very difficult. There are far too many people with blogs that discuss social media, internet marketing, and network marketing.

This just means that it becomes that much more important to make yourself stand out. Here are some simple helpful hints to help you in the process of finding your niche.

1. Remember that any niche will do. Just because your end goal is to build a list of high quality contacts and build relationships of credibility and trust does not mean you have to write about mlm, social media, or the like. Open your mind to a broader range of possibilities.

2. Make a list of your greatest areas of expertise. What things/subjects do you know more about than most average people? Perhaps something in relation to your current profession or one of your hobbies?

3. Do not rule out any ideas just because there might be only a small group of people out there who are interested in your expertize. These might be the most valuable ideas because they have little niche competition. Your audience is the whole world afterall and there are likely to be millions of people out there who are also interested in the same thing.

4. Consider your ability to create never ending content about your niche. You have to be able to write new articles about the subject for years on end. Is your niche that broad?

5. How difficult would it be to produce products in reference to your niche. A long term strategy will be producing a product that you can launch to your audience as they grow.

6. Make sure it’s fascinating to you. If you choose a subject that you are passionate about others will feel that and you will be more likely to stick with it.

7. Some of the best niches talk about ways to feel joy or eliminate pain. These are the two most powerful motivators for mankind. Weightloss sites quite overdone but that would be a good example of a niche driven toward eliminating pain and finding joy.

I hope these quick ideas will be helpful in finding your niche!

Jacob S. Paulsen

When helping my clients set up their own blog they often ask me what they should be writing about. Today’s blog post is to answer that question.

Determining your content will also help you configure your site categories. The WordPress blog categories are designed to help search engines categorize your content and are therfore crucial.

Before we get into the specifics of your content let’s outline the general ideas. I suggest you consider the following types of content:

1. Informative. The greatest reason why people will visit your site will be to learn and discover. In the beginning of creating your site you should determine your own niche. What specific topic or arena can you be an expert in? Write content specific to informing or educating your readers on that topic.

2. Entertaining. Your readers need to enjoy their visit to your site. Entertaining content should still be specific to your niche or topic but should be light and easy to read.

3. Personal. Your readers need to get to know you. They deserve to know who you are and what you are about. Share your goals, trials, and life especially as it pertains to the niche/topic.

Hopefully you noticed that all the content on your site should be specific to your niche. I would also suggest mixing informative, entertaining, and personal content together as much as possible.

Now let’s get more specific. Once you have found your niche and have discovered how you want to break that niche into categories you can begin writing posts. Try to think ahead by writing different types of posts and they apply to your different categories. Don’t post too often at first. 3 to 4 times per week is plenty to show people what you are about without asking them to make a daily commitment to you.

Be sure to use various mediums including audio, pictures, video, etc. This does wonders for search engine optimization but more importantly will allow you to attract all types of readers.

Be consistent. Your readers need to form a relationship of sorts with you. This is done by giving them good information. Your credibility will come from your ability to do that consistently over time.

Jacob S. Paulsen

Recently I teamed up with Business partner Andrew James to create a set of tutorial videos on how to purchase a domain, set up a hosting account, install wordpress, and setup your own site/blog. WordPress has proven itself to be the most powerful online tool in creating a fast, user-friendly, website or blog that gets quick results with the search engines.

Many people may think that wordpress is only a good platform for blogging but I have also found it ideal for maintaining a great website. The platform is easy enough for anyone to use but versatile enough to accomplish anything. With millions of people out there designing themes (templates) and plugins/widgets for the wordpress program there is absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t use this program for your website or blog.

The whole idea of hosting, php, and mysql can really give people a technology headache and so this playlist of videos is designed to walk you through it step by step. The links below will give you a discount to HostMonster.com or Godaddy.com depending on where you choose to set up your hosting account. In our tutorial we used HostMonster.

I plan on doing more detailed tutorials later on about different wordpress things but for now this will get people rolling.

This is a compilation of 7 different videos which run a total of 55 minutes

Here are a list of sites that I have created for myself or others using the wordpress platform. (Just to give you an idea of what you can do.)

www.jacobspaulsen.com

www.jpsquaredinc.com

www.carryutah.com

www.webcastrooms.com

www.androidsocialmedia.com

www.vaidiamante.com