Affiliate marketing posts from seasoned affiliate marketing pro Missy Ward.

Is Your Social Media Expert a Fraud?

by Missy Ward

Lately, I’ve received more and more requests to recommend “a social media marketing expert” (their words, not mine) to help create and manage their company’s social media strategy. Overall, it appears that the bulk of the people that have asked, have not been too keen on their existing expert.

Many have even felt duped by the firm they hired. After looking at a couple of the choices, it’s easy to see how the companies might feel deceived, based on the fact that they’ve hired self-proclaimed “experts” who I remember claiming to be experts in something else just a year ago.

A while back, I asked readers of my blog to provide some suggestions on red flags folks should look for when interviewing social media marketing companies. Here are some of their comments I received on my blog, Facebook and Twitter:

“When their email address is @gmail, @msn or @yahoo instead of a “real” company address. If you can’t set up branded email, I doubt you can test, measure and optimize social media campaigns.” – Anne Holland, WhichTestWon.com

“When the first thing they talk about for Social Media is Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.” – Patrick Allmond, AllAboutFocus.com

“When the expert negotiates their consulting fee in free food. If they don’t know how to command proper pay for their services, how are you to expect that they know how to generate actual tangible revenue for you?”– Lori Miller, Twitter.com/PokerVixen

“When you look at their Twitter account and it states they joined Twitter six months ago.” – Karen Rocks, SparkFireMarketing.com

“When they can only talk tools (Facebook, Twitter) and not strategy; when they talk nothing but buzzwords like “engagement, metrics, authenticity” without context.” – Davina Brewer, 3HatsCommunications.com

“When you can’t find anything about them on Google and their site is nothing more than a price sheet splash page.” – Anastasia Hilinsky, HilinskyConsulting.com

“When they talk in %’s instead of real numbers… 200% growth in Fans! (From 4 to 11)” – Kevin Webster, LevelAnalytics.com

“When they neither have an outline, nor a clear plan on how they will promote your business through Social Media” – Geno Prussakov, AMNavigator.com

“When they don’t inventory your current communication channels, know what UGC stands for and have never used PickFu.” – Pat Grady, RhinoFish.com

“If the social media expert insists that you can’t measure the ROI on Social Media, chances are, they don’t know what they’re doing.” – Derek Halpern, SocialTriggers.com

“When you search for the company name on Twitter (or any social media channel) and get no results.” – Sharon Mostyn, SharonMostyn.com

“When you also see them in forums complaining that they can’t get any traffic and are thinking of giving up.” – Malcolm McDonough, PregnantByDesign.com

“When they call themselves a social media expert in the first place.” – Josh Todd, InsideAffiliate.net

There are a lot of great firms out there, and it is my hope this will help separate the wheat from the chaff.

Missy is the Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine and is the VP of Operations for MoneyMindedMoms.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 13 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/45332687/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-13
FeedFront issue 13 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2010/12a>

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Use Joomla! to Explode Your Affiliate Income

by Michael_Wayne

Joomla is a content management system, similar to WordPress. The primary difference is that Joomla has a lot more built-in features & functionality.

With Joomla’s Extensions, you can turn your site into a social network, membership site, and more in minutes. If you’re looking for a new tool to increase your leads and sales, Joomla just might be the right solution.

The WordPress Alternative
Many affiliates avoid Joomla because it’s more difficult to learn than WordPress, and doesn’t seem to provide great built-in SEO. In reality, Joomla can actually provide equal or greater SEO results if utilized correctly.

There are also many SEO extensions available, such as SH404SEF, that give you granular control over your SEO and rival anything WordPress has to offer. While Joomla does have a bit of a steeper learning curve, there are a ton of tutorial websites available for beginners to help you get up and running fairly quickly.

Modules Make Split Testing Easy
Joomla has an awesome feature called modules, which are content blocks of code, widgets, or applications.

Modules can be placed in multiple preset locations, anywhere in your template. You can create multiple modules that display ad banners or affiliate links and place them virtually anywhere on your site.

The beauty of modules is that they are conditional. You can display them according to section, category, and/or by user state (registered user or guest). This basically provides built-in split testing!

Complete Editorial Control
Joomla provides complete editorial control. You can assign users to user-groups, such as authors, editors, publishers, etc., with ease.

Think of the possibilities: you could install and launch multiple niche content sites, set up unlimited ad modules, and have them display conditionally according to their author, category and/or section.

Also, Joomla enables you to display one set of ads for registered users and another set for guests. Your imagination can run wild with the number of different scenarios you could run to maximize your click-through rates.

List Building & Email Marketing
Administrative account management is built into the core of Joomla. The benefit here is that you’ll always have immediate access to your entire database of users. Joomla’s built-in “mass email” tool can send email blasts to all your users, in plain text or HTML.

You can also target by user groups, such as authors, editors, publishers, etc. It’s a great tool for marketing & connecting with your community – with their permission of course.

Endless Possibilities
Joomla has some affiliate-friendly extensions, including JomSocial, which lets you turn your Joomla site into a full-featured social network, and JoomFish, a tool that enables you to natively translate your site into almost any language.

Used together, they are great tools for targeting by interest or demographics, and for generating additional international traffic.

Joomla is an indispensable tool in my affiliate arsenal and if you give it a shot I’m sure it will be for you as well!

Michael Wayne is a blogger (MikeWayne.com), affiliate marketer, and President of MediaCraft Marketing, LLC.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 11 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/29057000/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-11
FeedFront issue 11 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2010/07

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I’ve Got a Few Free Passes to The Audience…

by Missy Ward

The agenda is up for the Audience Conference, which is taking place the day before Affiliate Summit East 2010 at world famous Caroline’s on Broadway in NYC on Saturday, August 14, 2010..

The Audience Conference is a one day event featuring an amazing line-up of brilliant minds and hilarious comedians.

Check out the agenda packed with the likes of Chris Brogan and Jason Calacanis, as well as a slew of funny people who have been featured on Comedy Central, HBO, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Last Comic Standing.

You get all of the speakers, a light breakfast, bar food for lunch, and beer/wine for just $129 – space is very limited.

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At the time of this post, I set up a “Friends and Family” discount code (AUDMISSYFNF) which will give the first 10 people who use the code, free admission to The Audience Conference. Good luck!
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Jeremy Schoemaker (@Shoemoney) Provides Free Legal Advice to Website…

by Missy Ward

Its a very scary time right now for affiliates. A lot of people are getting sued and on the other side people are having their hard work stolen and used by others for profit and not a clue what to do about it.

To make matters worse about the only information out there comes from bloggers or journalists who have ZERO real experience themselves in dealing with these issues.

Today Jeremy Schoemaker (@ShoeMoney) released an outstanding video detailing all of his legal battles throughout the last 5 years. Jeremy has defended himself against various companies over the years and has never lost a case. Mostly due to covering his a$$ making sure he was in full compliance each time.

Also in the video Jeremy takes you on the other side and shows you not only how to protect your own content but how to go after those who steal your work. Jeremy has pursued over 2 dozen people who have infringed on his trademarks and copyrights in the last year alone and in this video he walks you through each step of the process from initial contact to how to position yourself best to win jurisdiction hearings to winning damages, and even your attorneys fees.

At the end Jeremy also shares all of his policies and documents and gives them to you in downloadable PDF’s. Its great stuff.

Go here and check it all out now:

http://www.shoemoneysystem.com/legal/

(Yes, you have to opt in to see it but its well worth it and you can unsubscribe from Jeremy’s updates if you want later).

For a quick peak at Jeremy's video about what he's up to, click the link below.

Jeremy Schoemaker (@Shoemoney) Provides Free Legal Advice to Website Owners

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