Dominate Your Local Market!

I have been a subscriber to SimpleTruths.com for a long time.

Their emails always bring something I've been happy to have.

Please take a moment from your busy life and have a look at this video.

It will surely brighten your day.

http://www.blessyoumovie.com/

And thanks for sending that, Frannie. Somehow I missed this one.

When I was working in the New York/New Jersey Metro Area some years ago, we had an informal group of web designers, producers, artists, programmers, etc. who got together to have dinner, network and shoot the bull. We called the group the Dirty Dozen although the numbers varied (I still own the domain DirtyDozen.info from the website we had).

In 2003, my wife and I packed up and moved to Danville, Kentucky. I don't miss the congestion, but I do miss those dinner get-togethers. The dinner was far less important than the people – those were some great people, most of who I am still in contact with today, though not as often as I'd like.

At that time, I also belonged to the Garden State Real Estate Investors Association, which was a tremendous source of shared knowledge with investors at all levels of experience. It was a very well-run organization and grew exponentially. When I get their announcement post cards even today, I am really happy to see the group is still thriving.

OK, enough about the past. A few weeks ago, considering both of the above examples, I decided to start the Bluegrass Internet Marketing Association (BIMA) with a website at www.BluegrassIMA.com. Same deal. I visualize it as an organization that will foster networking, mentoring and simple information exchange – a mastermind group of sorts, where people interested in marketing on the Internet can get together and learn.

You hear the term "masters" thrown around a lot these days. We are all "masters" in some facet of what we do. And we are all in need of improvement in technique, ideas and strategies to broaden our base of skills. We can share what we are masters of with others. That will only serve to strengthen us.

There is no competition at the level of creation. When you learn to create you control your own destiny. Harness the Law of Attraction, couple it with your creativity and there is no stopping you.

There's a lot to learn when you begin an online business or begin to use online assets to promote your traditional offline business. But the old cliché of "How do you eat an elephant?" is appropriate here. Taken in steps it becomes a simple process.

We'll be holding the first General Meeting of BIMA in Lexington, KY on Tuesday, February 12 at 6:30PM. For more information, head on over to the BIMA website and join us if you dare.

And please sign up for the email list if you want to attend. We have limited space this time and I don't anyone to get shut out. If it looks like we have too many for the facility we have lined up, I'll look for more space.

Come on out to the meeting on Feb 12. When you take your sweetie out for Valentine's Day, you'll have something new to talk about.

Whether you are a Realtor®, a retailer, a restaurant owner, or any other person who regularly does business face-to-face, you get a lot of your leads and customers email addresses from sources other than your Internet sign-up form. How do you stay in touch with them? They gave you their email address voluntarily, but when you try to import them into the database of most email autoresponder services, they have to go through the confirmation process. Why?

The reason for this is to prevent malicious sign-ups, whether by the mailing list owner or a third party. But when your customers give you their email address in your establishment, they are clearly giving you permission to email them. After all, if they didn't want you to email, them they would have left the email blank. And they meet the requirement of persons who you already have a business relationship with.

Using a double opt-in process to confirm subscribers from your web forms is a good idea. It prevents malicious and fraudulent signups. If you don't think that could be a problem, one of my websites was recently slammed with dozens of fraudulent email signups using my web form. Same addresses, over and over again, numbering in the hundreds. They never made it to my mailing list because they didn't {couldn't) confirm.

So, what can you do if a large proportion of your customers give you their email addresses offline at your place of business? My suggestion is to import your manually entered emails into a single opt-in (non-confirmed) list and your web form subscribers should be entered into a double opt-in list which uses a confirmation process.

So what software or provider reliably allows you to do that? AutoResponse Plus can make this easy. AutoResponse Plus allows you to set up auto responders that are either require confirmation or not. You can import your offline subscriptions by uploading a comma delimited list.

AutoResponse Plus has many features that help make your email campaign successful. Scheduled auto responses, email broadcast, signup tracking tags, link tracking, open rate tracking and features too numerous to mention make AutoResponse Plus worth you consideration.

AutoResponse Plus installs right on your web server and has a convenient and easy-to-use web admin interface. They'll even install it for you free of charge. If you are signed up for the BobStovall.com Tip of the Week, it is delivered using AutoResponse Plus.

Right now, the folks at AutoResponse Plus are running a special where you get a free upgrade to a 10 site license, a free upgrade to the RSS Publisher, two years of upgrades, two years of access to the member's area and a free upgrade to AutoResponse Plus 4 when it is available.

To get your copy of AutoResponse Plus, click on the link in the Bob Recommends section of this site.

Google is like the Holy Grail of marketing on the web. Rank well in Google and your profits are pretty much set.

But there is SO MUCH bogus information out there, often coming from the “gurus” themselves. How do you separate good info from bad?

Heard any of these before?

Myth #1: Google Knows All and Sees All
Myth #2: Google Will Not Rank Duplicate Content
Myth #3: You Must Get Links From Related Subject Sites to Rank
Myth #4: Your Site Must Focus On One Subject To Rank
Myth #5: High PageRank Means Good Rankings
Myth #6: To Maintain Good Rankings, You Must Add New Content

and…
MYTH #7: THE BIGGEST MYTH: Ranking In Google Is Hard!

Jonathan Leger has released a new FREE report that completely obliterates these myths about Google (and then goes on to show you what DOES work)

And did I mention he’ll pay you for referring other people to this powerful free report? And that he’ll pay you for anyone THEY refer as well? Find out more about that when you download your sample chapter from:

http://www.bobstovall.com/go/1.php

We’ve all seen some pretty “plain jane” websites that ran rings around much prettier ones. Same for products and info sites. Some of the most read, most visited, most profitable websites are just plain butt-ugly. But they work!

Now, I’m not advocating that you go out and intentionally create ugly websites, but I am suggesting that you put your development budget where it will do the most good. If it’s a question of getting your website up and running sooner, or waiting for fancier graphics or higher-quality web design… DON’T WAIT!!!

Get the information up there and start reaping the rewards. When you get started sooner, you are ahead of the competition. Get the jump, keep the jump and then work on improving the “look and feel” elements if you choose.

Today, Robert Plank posted an article to his blog titled It Doesn’t Have to Look Good, Just Be Good. It’s worth a read. The philosophy espoused by Robert in his article is one we’d all be wise to internalize and put to work. Content is still king and quality content always rules.

Every January 1st, millions of people make resolutions to achieve goals in the new year. But very few succeed. There are a lot of reasons for that, but you are the only one who can make sure “resolution inertia” doesn’t happen to you.

Here are a few things to think about as you plan your action steps to make 2008 your best year yet:

Your website – you do have one, don’t you? If you don’t, you are missing the most elementary step of your online marketing process. But what kind of website do you need? Information, eCommerce, Real Estate listings, a Blog? We have packages to suit your needs whatever they might be. Call us at 859.854.3243 for a free consultation.

Your email list – It amazes me how this vital piece of the online marketing puzzle is often overlooked. If you have a website, you need to be collecting visitors information and using an automated system to stay in touch with them. In fact, building an email list is so important that you should consider building a website or a blog just to have a venue from which to collect the name and email address of visitors. Using the right software can make this a simple task.

A blog – If you want to improve your visibility in the search engines, there is no cheaper or easier way to do it than by blogging. If you post regularly (news about your area, tips and tricks, events of interest, etc.) you’ll find that the search engines pick up the post from your blog quickly. Blogging is easy and effective if you use the right software and hosting solution. Let us show you how.

We’ll be covering a lot more essentials in the weeks to come. Watch your email box for our Tip of the Week starting soon.