Feeds

[somarco]

What is RSS and why should I care? Does RSS, Feedburner, Digg, Twitter, etc build site traffic?

Which ones are best for generating traffic to your site or blog? Are some only for blogs while others are useful for sites?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[The New Guy]

What is RSS and why should I care? Does RSS, Feedburner, Digg, Twitter, etc build site traffic?

Which ones are best for generating traffic to your site or blog? Are some only for blogs while others are useful for sites?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I use some kind of news feed on all my sites.

They provide articles and information that change everyday depending on the feed you select.

I use general health feeds for health sites, and I use senior health feeds for my senior sites.

They even have feeds that are video feeds, and slide show feeds.

Here are some sample RSS feed sites.


Health and Medical Information Produced by Doctors - MedicineNet.com

Seniors News & Aging News from Medical News Today

Health News RSS Feeds on Yahoo! Health

The Voxant Newsroom

 

[Mark]

I'm learning a lot. I didn't use to know what a SEO was or a RSS. So it's all about getting on these search engines.

I have a RSS button on my explorer, but have never understood it or knew why to use it.

Twitter?? I still have to check that out. I do have an myspace account. I also have wordpress on my server, but not sure how to use it or what to talk about.
I'm taking notes. Yall keep talking.

 

[souldeux]

Social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Stumble, etc) increased traffic to my website by 30-40%. Twitter, when I use it right, can triple it.

RSS stands for "really simple syndication." Whenever you make a post on an RSS enabled blog, anyone who has subscribed to your page will have your post appear in their RSS reader. Think of it like this: people are wandering around with newspapers, but they're just blank sheets of paper. They decide what type of stuff they want to read about, instead of the newspaper company deciding for them. So they subscribe to blogs that interest them, and when one of those blogs makes a post it automatically pops up in their personal newspaper instead of them having to visit your site.

Twitter has been absolutely amazing for driving traffic to my website. I've also got two appointments today that I never would have gotten if I didn't actively use Twitter. I'm running out the door shortly to that first appointment, but give me some time and I'll write up a post about how I use Twitter for fun and profit.

My website at Georgia Insurance Options | Health and Life Insurance Solutions From Your Independent Agent is a Wordpress site. Wordpress is a blogging platform that helps you build a website and takes a lot of the hassle out of it. Personally, I used the "Arthemia Free" theme. When you first load that theme, it looks like this: AtlantaHUDHomes.info (the banners at the top have already been customized, but you get the idea). Compare that to my site and you'll see how much time I've put into it. WordPress is very versatile, too. These websites are all Wordpress sites, but look how different they are:

Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success From Copyblogger — Copyblogger
Screenz.de

These sites all use Wordpress in different ways to create the look that they want.

Go back to Georgia Insurance Options | Health and Life Insurance Solutions From Your Independent Agent and click on any article. At the bottom of the article, but before the Comments box, you'll see one button, a black line, and then a row of buttons. The lower row of buttons allows visitors to my site to add a social bookmark to their favorite social bookmarking service. So if someone clicks the far left button, they'll add a bookmark to Digg which will encourage other people to come read my article. Or, they can hit the single button above the black line and submit my article to 40 different social bookmarking sites at once. This increases traffic enormously.

Large post about using Twitter to follow, I promise.

 

[somarco]

how I use Twitter for fun and profit.

Can't speak for you, but when I make a profit, I have fun.

 

[Mark]

Nick, I like your website.

 

[GetInsurance]

Last night, on the show Fringe, the killer they were looking for was named Mark Rosenthal.......coincidence?

 

[souldeux]

Thanks, Mark

As promised, my take on Twitter:

For the uninitiated: Twitter is a web-based service where you can, in 140 characters, send a message to the world. That message will appear in the "public timeline" for everyone to see, but will only stay there for a few seconds -- Twitter moves very quickly, so after a moment your update will be replaced by newer ones. You've got more staying power with your "followers," the people that have, for whatever reason, decided that you're interesting and have assigned a higher priority to your tweets (a "tweet" is one of those 140 character or less messages). If someone is following you, then your updates will not only appear in the public timeline but in their list of updates just from people that they're following. Since the number of people any one person follows is relatively small compared to the total number of people using Twitter, your update will stay on a follower's front page for much, much longer. I follow 303 people right now, and any one person's update will stay on my front page for about 12-15 minutes as opposed to the mere seconds it stays on the front page of the public timeline.

And that's the basics of Twitter. Your followers will read your updates, see what you're up to, and get your message. You have 140 characters to express yourself. When you first start using Twitter, it seems like the stupidest damn thing on the face of the earth. Check out this lighthearted, but accurate, blog entry about the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance

Influential Marketing Blog: The 5 Stages Of Twitter Acceptance

The big problem people seem to have when starting out with Twitter is that it's so huge, folks assume that there must be more to it. There's not. You post your message and read messages from people you like. That's it. Simple. There's no official number that I can find, but estimates are that at least ten million people currently use Twitter and over a thousand new accounts are activated daily. That's a HUGE number of people.

So now that you know what Twitter is, how do you use it to increase traffic to your website?

The biggest mistake you can make is to just start tweeting links to blog posts or articles nonstop. You will look like an advertiser, a spam-bot, one-dimensional, boring, and not somebody that anyone would want to follow. Look at this link:

Twitter / kevinrose

This is Kevin Rose's Twitter page, showing all of his tweets (messages, status updates, whatever you want to call them). He is the #2 most followed person on Twitter with almost 92,000 people following him and reading every update he makes. But look at his messages -- he sends @ replies, which are messages directed at individual users, not just blanket "visit this link" things. He builds relationships with people, talks to them, and every now and then sprinkles in a bit of useful information. That's what you should do, too. Talk to people. Watch for interesting conversations and insert yourself into them. Become a member of the community, not just a billboard for them to ignore.

So you're using Twitter to build genuine relationships. You've gone to Twitter Search to find people talking about health insurance, life insurance, annuities, whatever and you've answered a few questions without pushing a product on them. You will start to gain a little respect in the Twitterverse (the world of Twitter) this way, and it'll keep you from looking like you just have something to sell. Look at the difference in these two pages:

Twitter / Donnahirsch
Twitter / nlperry

The first page is someone who just spams "affordable GI plans" all day. A total of four people are following her. The second link is my page, where I have individually helped people with their health insurance questions and not tried to sell them anything. And I have over 200 followers. People will message me with health insurance questions on their own now -- I don't have to go looking for them. Slowly, I am becoming one of the "go-to guys" on Twitter for health insurance questions. Why? Because I'm not pushing a sales pitch.

Now, here's the key to using Twitter to drive traffic to your website. If you watch the conversations long enough, you'll start to understand what issues have people worried or confused with regards to their insurance. Twitter is amazingly fast and emerging trends pop up there before anywhere else. Remember when the United Air plane went into the river? That story broke on Twitter before it broke on the news -- because people who were on the plane were tweeting from their cell phones! That's amazing! And it means twitter is an awesome tool for learning about what is running through the mind of the public at large about insurance. Those trends, those things you see, those common questions and problems -- those are the things that need to be on your website, because those are the things people are worried about now. And then, when you go to help them and build that one-on-one relationship, you don't just give them a 140-character answer -- you give them a link to a 800 word blog entry that will answer their question much more completely. And then that link will be spread around, and all of your followers will see it as well. Each and every time I respond to a health insurance question with a link to an article on my website, for the next 15-30 minutes traffic on my site increases up to 300%. That's GREAT!!

The reader's digest version: watch Twitter to figure out what people need help with and then help them. Take those same questions and answers and use them as a springboard for an article on your website. Then take that article and use a link to it as an answer to that question when it comes up again. Rinse and repeat -- and watch your traffic climb.




I know that got long winded, but I really really love Twitter!

 

[somarco]

the killer they were looking for was named Mark Rosenthal.......coincidence?

There are no coincidences.

Mark sells life insurance, and he is a killer.

Small world, huh?

 

[Mark]

Last night, on the show Fringe, the killer they were looking for was named Mark Rosenthal.......coincidence?

How much was the reward and I might turn myself in? I use to watch that show, but don't anymore. I hope they made me look good on the show. How did I kill the person? Something cool I hope.

There are no coincidences.
Mark sells life insurance, and he is a killer.
Small world, huh?

I've been know to talk clients to death. The question is did they buy the life insurance before or after they died?

I think it helps to sell insurance if you are a killer. Sometimes I give the client that look and then they buy the insurance.