Web Design Development Articles

How I got Banned from Facebook

When I was booted, I received no email, no msg, no confirmation. Just a generic link to the Facebook Terms of Service. For 3 weeks, I received no responses to any of the Facebook email addresses for disabled accounts. And then 3 weeks later, I get 1 email (see below), and my account is turned back on.

Since Facebook is a we-learned-from-myspace’s-mistakes kind of site, they are super, super, super paranoid about Spam. So the have a few strict published rules like:

1. No non-person profiles (you have to make a “fan page”).
2. No porn.

And then, they have serveral internal rules, which will cause you a lot of frustration if you don’t know about them.Those internal rules are:

1. No repeat messaging.
2. No over-inviting.
3. No scraping (copy/pasting emails from facebook).

Overall, I agree with these policies. Here’s the problem: They can’t manage 6 billion people’s behavior. No freaking way. So they have all these little internal Facebook Robots that are set to attack upon certain conditions.There’s no robot that can tell a business profile page from a personal profile page, which is why businesses still have profile pages. They can’t write a robot smart enough to figure out real person names from busines names. But for all their internal rules, here are the Bots!

The Facebook Robots

After researching other Facebook bans, here’s the robots I know about:

1. The Inbox Protector Robot: If you send messages to too many people using the compose tool within a 24 hour period, this robot boots you from facebook after you send to certain magic number of people. He causes problems when you are communicating the same information to a large number of people who really want the information.

2. The Friend Protector Robot: If you click the “Add a Friend” button on too many people within a 24 hour period, this robot boots you from facebook. She causes problems when you really do need to connect to a large number of people in a short period of time.

3. The Scraper Robot: If you copy (Cntl-C) information from too many friends’ profile pages within a 24 period, this robot boots you from facebook. He causes problems when you are not a spammer, but need key information from your friends’ pages.

4. The Anti-Porn Robot: If you post inappropriate material that gets flagged, this robot boots you from Facebook. She causes problems when you have a profile set to Adults only and someone still flags you, or if you are flagged by a jerk.

How Long Till You Get Back on Facebook

The best part is that the robots are set on timers. So after exactly 3 weeks, your profile is automatically turned back on. The email is signed from someone in Support, like “Bob.” I’m sure that for each bot, you receive a different kind of message. This is a generic email programmed to be sent out when they automatically turn your profile back on.

How to Avoid the Robots

You will get a Warning message as you approach the limit on the number of messages or friend invites. Heed that Warning! That Warning is also a cue to the timer in the robot to start watching you. If you proceed to hit okay, everything will seem fine for a little while, then suddenly, your login ability will be taken away. And you will have gotten banned.

How to Play with the Robots

You can safely test the waters by continuing to add friends (maybe 50 or so) until you get the Warning message. When the Warning appears, hit Cancel, do not hit Okay. Then, do not add any more friends for 24 hours. This will successfully navigate you away from the robots, and allow you to continue with normal profile activity. If you try to add a friend later and you see the warning, you’ll know that it hasn’t been 24 hours.

I suspect the Robots will continue to get smarter, and eventually control your every thought. In the meantime, you can enjoy playing with them on Facebook.

For more business coaching, contact Mark Berry at mark@littlelovecoach.com

Twitter is one of the fastest growing services in the web and with celebrities joining in it is sure to take off. Most people who are new to the service has one major problem , That is deciding who to follow . Most of them join the service because some famous celebrity is already on Twitter but there are many ways you can use service. Deciding who to follow depends largely on what you are going to use the service for. If you are interested in getting news alerts then your better off following CNN or any other major news network. If you are interested in getting the latest activities of your favorite actor or actress then you can use the service to do that. You can even use it to stay in touch with your family, well you have to get your mom dad and wife to  use it first.

Some people are using it as a medium to share things that are related to there day to day lives. For example if your a journalist then you can use Twitter to share an interesting article or a web page almost instantly via the service. The cool thing is because it limits your message to 140 characters you are automatically forced to be precise and concise with your messages. Advantage of this is if you are getting lots of tweets you can easily go through them without much of a hassle.

As you can see whom you follow on Twitter depends entirely on what is your purpose of using the service, Most marketers are using it because it gives them a tremendous advantage over other in doing sales and generating traffic to there website and sales pages. The thing to remember is if you are going to use it as a marketing tool be careful about spamming your feed with affiliate links.

The hardest thing that just about every internet business owner deals with is driving traffic to their website. Let’s get right into it.

Drive traffic using social media:

With a little hard work and time, it is possible to drive tons of traffic to your website using social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc! Even though they tend to have a lot of rules that they enforce, they are extremely popular social networking sites and well worth putting in the time to market your site to its members. Remember to play by their rules though.

1. You need to go to their site and join up to become a member. They are free to join. Remember to read thoroughly their rules, paying attention to their position on SPAM, marketing etc, as you do not want to get off on the wrong foot with them. Browse the site and familiarise yourself with it and start to get to know the members. Search for members that you share a common interest with and begin to build a network of friends who will learn to trust you and want to know more about you. As you get to know these members you will find yourself discussing topics that may be related to what you do and they will more than likely ask you questions, so through this subtle way you will be able to build some contacts for your business. This is the social part and then there is the marketing side of it. For instance, Facebook now has paid advertising. You can submit your site, so long as it is within their criteria and you can nominate a daily spend for clicks of your ad, displaying to the members.

2. Look at what other members are doing to improve their position for paid advertising. Ask other members what they know that you can do that is within the rules, to promote to your market.

3. Join some groups. You will have noticed when you familiarised yourself with the site that there are lots of groups that you can join. Join up to some of these groups and participate in the variety of marketing and business group discussions. It will help you to forge trusting relationships with fellow like minded members. Share your knowledge and offer to help members whenever you can. This will help in the popularity ranks!

Backlinks:

Backlinks are one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website and get index fast by search engines, especially by Yahoo or Google. So here are some of the few tips that you can use to have some backlinks to your site and drive traffic to it.

1. Web Directories: One of the easiest way to have a backlinks to your site are by using web directories. Paid directories will provide you with good backlinks for your site for just few dollars. Or you can enlist your site to a free web directory services with no cost at all, like DMOZ.org, or freedirectorysubmission.com. Google “Web Directories” and you will find quite a large list of potential places to use.

2. Link Exchange: exchanging links to other websites or blog is another way, and perhaps one of the best way to acquire backlinks, you can do this by mailing the webmaster, and try to exchange links with each other, remember to make sure the blog or sites content is also related to your site.

3. Forums: forums can provides a great amount of traffic to your site, by signing up and adding your site as a signature. With thousands of users signing and participating in forums in a wide variety of niches, there is a big chance that your site will be spotted and surf. Or you can add your link to your post, just make it sure that the link that you’re adding to your comment is related to the discussed topic. Note: Be extremely cautious in putting or adding it in your comment because some forum sites are very strict in adding links to the posted topic, your site may be considered as a spam, and banned from their forums, or other users might mistaken it as a blog spam.

4. RSS feeds: Try to submit your RSS feed to search engines like Google and Yahoo, or you can try to add an RSS subscription link or textbox to your site, for your visitors to subscribe and have an update to your newly posted articles, feed site directories like Feedburner and Feedblitz, provides you a tool and options for you to manage your feeds.

5. Article Submission: Personally, I think this is the best way to earn a lots of backlinks and drive traffic to your site, not just backlinks but quality backlinks… Submitting a good quality article will boost a major amount of traffic to your site. One of the best sites to submit your article is EzineArticles, proven to be an effective way of driving traffic to your site, bloggers and webmasters always recommend this site for article submission. Other sites are goarticles.com and or squidoo.com. (Kind of like what I have done with this post here)

Search Engine Optimization:

Update your web site with good, new content. Search engine web “crawlers” constantly check for new content on your web site. This affects how your site ranks in natural search results. That’s why I often recommend a blog strategy for most sites - each blog post has it’s own URL and is an easy way to add new fresh content to your site. If you update it you can train search engines to index your site several times a day. Tell bots how to index your site and to alert you to issues that can affect your rankings. Tools you can use include a robots.txt file (see Robots.txt.org), a Google webmasters account (Google.com/webmasters). Submit and verify your site and then upload a sitemap. Repeat if your web site is redesigned or as it changes.You can also submit the same sitemap at Yahoo! SiteExplorer SiteExplorer.search.yahoo.com and MSN http://webmaster.live.com.

Offline marketing:

Taking your online knowledge and using it to make money and drive traffic from offline businesses and traffic is an absolutely wonderful thing to do. So if you have online expertise then you should take it offline and make loads of cash.
Though most Internet Marketers have been aware of how the Internet works and all the ins and outs of marketing online, most offline businesses don’t have a clue. This is especially true of local businesses. To many of them the entire Internet is a mystery. And to almost all of them, marketing on the Internet is a concept well beyond them.However, small businesses can really benefit from an online presence. And you, the online expert can help them get more customers and make more money.

There are two main ways that you can use your online expertise. You can offer to build a Website for local businesses and/or you can offer to help being more traffic to their Website. If the business already has a site then you won’t offer to create one for them. You would simply want to offer to bring more traffic to their site by optimizing their content and by using some basic SEO tactics and finally joining your website or hanging up a sign in their business with your website. If the business doesn’t have their own site then you can offer to put one up for them. By actually signing up for our affiliate program and letting us do the work for you would be the easiest way!

You can either visit local related businesses in your area or you can simply write a form letter and blast out the letters to all the local (or non local) businesses in your area. You would simply have to do a little research to see which businesses already had a Website and which businesses didn’t. Then you would have one form letter for the businesses with a Website and for those without. You can even include in the letter that you will be calling to follow-up the letter in a few days.

All you have to do is write a couple different letters with solid copy and then follow up with a friendly phone call. Before you know it, you’ll have a booming offline business.

Guerrilla marketing: Guerrilla marketing is pretty awesome. Getting people to talk about your website is a big deal.
stickers - makestickers.com
direct mail - sendoutcards.com
billboards - look for available billboards and call the number listed on them…
infomercials - turn on the TV late at night and watch a couple infomercials… Learn by example.

Press Release
Just Google “issue a press release”

I hope you use some of these techniques and tactics to drive some traffic to your website.

Get Started with Twitter

It looks like Twitter has finally gone mainstream thanks to superstars like Oprah Winfrey coming on board. Recently, you might have read about Ashton Kutcher’s race with CNN to 1 million followers, which has also cause the Twitter userbase to increase dramatically. Now, since you are new to Twitter you might not see the significance of this, but let me take a minute to tell you why this is important.

1. Twitter is now becoming a way for everyone, including businesses and brands, to be able to communicate a message instantly with anyone in the world. This means that if you have a business or brand, that you can use Twitter to further brand yourself and increase your overall brand presence and awareness. Your customers, clients, and prospects are all on Twitter, so there is no reason that you should not be. Grab a guide or eBook that teaches you how to make the most of Twitter for your business and start capturing the attention of your audience.
2. There are many new services and systems that allow you to advertise on Twitter without having to spam or turn other prospects away. Most people on Twitter are tech-savvy and don’t want to see constant advertisements. However, with the emergence of services like Twitterhawk, you can select a target audience to market to without looking like a Twitter novice.
3. Thanks to social media and social networking, you can use Twitter to funnel people into your other modes of communication. I use Twitter to send people to Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, but you can send them to your blog or email signup form. The options are unlimited, but you’ve got to jump on board and learn how to take advantage of them. If you don’t know how to use Twitter in this manner, there are hundreds of guides that can help you get started with ease.

Twitter as a social marketing network and a place to find and follow friends, network yourself & even your business is a truly remarkable community.  The concept is truly awesome and is sometimes also called micro blogging.  Micro blogging (or minimalistic blogging) essentially limits the size of each contributor’s posts - which minimizes or condenses what people say into what’s most important.

Twitter limits each tweet (or post) to 140 characters including spaces, punctuation & links.  The concept has caught on and is now blazing across the internet.  Now people with short attention spans (and/or limited time) can check out the latest tweets without having to read/scan through an entire 500 to 1,000 word article to get to the real meat of what someone is saying.

Twitter forces its users to condense their comments to 140 characters or less … no one can get wordy, get on their soapbox, go off on a tangent AND, most importantly, no one has the time & characters to be truly boring.

If you are new to Twitter, it can be confusing and sometimes overwhelming.  So, here are some true Twitter-like tips for new users just getting started — each one 140 characters or less:

1. Tweet about things that interest you. People with the same interests will follow you to see what else you have to say.

2. Follow interesting people. When you find them, see who they follow & follow them as well.

3. Say “Thanks” when someone (or several someones) RT one of your posts. People see the “thanks” and go find the post that started it.

4. Don’t use Twitter to constantly sell your stuff. You are not a pimp. It’s the quickest way to lose people’s interest and their attention.

5. People do NOT want to know about your bathroom habits. There really is such a thing as T.M.I. (Too Much Information)

6. You never know who is twittering. Don’t tweet something you wouldn’t want your Mom, your boss, your spouse or your worst enemy to read.

7. If you get in a long 2-way discussion with one twerson - take it to DM. There’s nothing as boring as seeing one side of a conversation.

8. Need an answer? Ask the question! Tweeple love giving their opinions.

9. Be a real person - add your photo. It’s better than an icon, avatar or your sister’s cat. People want to see YOU.

10. Not sure what to tweet? Ask yourself “what’s interesting now” instead of “what am I doing now?”

11. If someone follows you, follow them back. They may have some really interesting tweets. Use an auto-follow software if needed.

12. When someone else says something inspiring, interesting or fun; Retweet it to your tweeple. Don’t forget to give credit to the originator.

13.  Think Golden Rule-If you can’t say something nice, you may want to rethink your tweet. Lots of people may judge you by that single comment.

14. Shorten your links using a URL shortener. Some Twitter application, such at TweetDeck or HootSuite, even have them included for convenience.

15. If you decide that you really like Twitter, check out different Twitter applications & tools. It’ll make your tweeting time more efficient.

16. Be willing to offer something of value, give of yourself, learn from others and then retweet it. It’s really NOT all about you.

17. Tell a clean joke. Show beautiful photos. Inspire someone. Share funny stories. Condense your life into 140 characters at a time.

18. Most of all, have fun! The networking & business building (if that’s your real goal) will come naturally if you tweet right & give it time.

And there you have it!  With these basic tips in mind, you are ready to start your Twitter adventure - in 140 characters or less!

Internet marketing has become a mandatory thing for most of the businesses who aim to strike big and expand their business globally. It implies online marketing of products/services of a company on internet. It is also known as e-marketing, I-marketing and web marketing.

No matter how good your product and service is, without making it popular you cannot expect the profit outcome as intended. This service has become important part of marketing strategy. The cost has to be affordable and well-structured that it can convey the information to the target audience. The online media has many advanced features where you can easily get data about the responses shown and give response. Basically it is communicative and interactive medium. Internet marketing has changed the way people used to do shopping and perceive internet. The customers now don’t need to visit a shopping mall just for buying bunch of flowers, or anything else. You just have to locate your product of requirement, go through the details, place an order and get the item delivered at your doorstep.  This concept has become a medium for electronic consumer relationship management.

This particular web service field is experiencing greater amount of technological advancement and innovation in recent times. Thus leading to greater amount of business development and advertising that helps in converting prospective client to your customer.

One can find many websites on the internet who despite of having good range of products or services fail to leave a mark of the customers due to ineffective internet marketing. Therefore it is necessary for every company for developing good business relations with the clients. Webmasters make use of services of search engine optimizers and search engine marketers who can detailed knowledge about the search engines. Lack of proper search engine techniques may not provide the user higher rankings.

Many times you may even get internet marketing very cheap or free of costs also. Millions of people surf through the internet looking for some products or services. If your website is marketed well, it would be brought to the surface of online visibility.

A website gets online exposure and is available round the clock. You can reach to millions of customers through your site in short span of time. In internet marketing emails are used for speedy communication.

It has much greater scope and advantages for its users. Unlike regular marketing practice this field of marketing also gives your business the required exposure to the target customers.

Learning technology and other aspects of internet marketing can be a difficult process if you don’t have someone to guide you through the process. In fact, many people become so discouraged they completely give up and decide they would rather do something else. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There are many internet marketing trainers who can help you to sort out the online business and help you to get started right away. They will go over the basics of marketing on the internet and help you to decide which direction to take.

Without someone to take you step by step through the process, you can end up spending lots of money and wasting months of time. It is much easier to follow the footsteps of someone who has gone before you.

You may be wondering how you can find a technology and marketing mentor to help you get started quickly. One of the best ways is to ask others who are already successful online. Most likely they will have an affiliate link promoting the person who helped them to get going with their internet business. By referring you to their technology mentor they will earn some commission and feel good about pointing you in the right direction.

Building an online business gives you the financial freedom that allows you to spend time with family, friends, and your community. You can travel anywhere in the world and still be in business, as long as you have an internet connection. The result will be a rewarding life that gives you the opportunity to live the life of your dreams.

There are so many articles being written telling marketers what TO do with their marketing efforts. But how many do you see that say, “Don’t do this or you’ll end up like a fried egg?” It’s just as important to know what NOT to do as it is to know what TO do. So this article is going to be my little warning shot across the bow of your marketing efforts. I hope you will take these words to heart.

First do not…Do NOT believe that the only marketing worth anything is the kind you pay for. Let me tell you something. I am as cheap as they come. I spend maybe $200 a month on advertising. Know where most of my traffic comes from? My articles…and they don’t cost me a cent. There are many forms of traffic generation that don’t cost a penny that are quite effective. The key is knowing how to use them. So don’t get suckered into the belief that the only good traffic is the kind that you pay for. It’s simply not true.

Second do not…Do NOT think you have to do everything yourself. I know so many marketers who simply don’t trust anybody with their business. I should know because I was one of them. I had to do it all on my own. Ever see some of my early ecovers? It took me a long time before I was finally able to crank out something that was presentable. All that time, I could have just paid to have a professional do it for me. Okay, you don’t have to do it all on your own. Get help where you can afford it.

Third and final do not…Do NOT limit yourself to just one payment processor. This is a real sure way to kill your business. There are a lot of countries out there who don’t accept certain payment processors. If you’re using that one, you are effectively telling that part of the world that you don’t want to do business with them. So use as many as you can. You’ll find that your sales WILL increase because of it.

There you have it…3 ways to really kill your business. So don’t do these things.

End of lecture.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

In this new age of technology, viral marketing is a powerful tool for creating a positive image for your brand, product or service. It has helped thousands of e-commerce marketers to do well in their online businesses by spreading their marketing message for free throughout the Internet.

Viral Internet Marketing Methods and Techniques

There are two types of viral marketing campaigns - incentive based and service-based. In the incentive based model, internet users are motivated to share the information regarding your products with others as they are rewarded with gifts. In the service based model, users share the information about the products and services to others in order to obtain a particular service that is promised.

Run an effective viral campaign to spread your marketing message, through viral advertising media such as text, image, video clips, interactive Flash games or audio clips. For successful viral advertising, you can utilize existing communication networks to spread your message.

Article Writing as Potent Viral Marketing Tool

Article writing is one of the popular viral advertising techniques used to spread your advertising message. Publish interesting articles with search engine friendly content on the most popular social networking sites and other online resources. Quality content builds valuable back links and inbound links.

Grow Your Online Business

Implementing an effective internet marketing strategy, you can enjoy several benefits:

• Increase your brand and product awareness
• Attract a large number of targeted customers at a low cost
• Rapidly increase web presence
• Establish your business reputation
• Boost your credibility
• Increase sales and capture qualified online leads
• Earn credibility

Find Professional Experts to Carry out Viral Marketing Service

It is best to entrust your viral advertising requirements with recognized SEO companies active in the field. With their professional expertise, these companies can adopt the best marketing strategies to spread your message and improve your web presence. Viral internet marketing is virtually a free service, since the advertising is largely done by word of mouth.

Starting out in internet marketing can be difficult enough, but once we toss in the alphabet soup of coding languages HTML, XHTML, PHP, XML, SQL, etc.. it gets even more confusing. There are many mistakes that brand new internet marketers (i.m. from here on out, because I am lazy) make that could be avoided if they just knew what to watch for. Conversely, there are many missed opportunities based on the lack of knowledge that may have made them a lot of money.

So, let’s outline just a few of these and see if we can’t help you avoid the same mistakes many of us have made. Of course, there are plenty more, but these are the biggest ones to look for.

1. Mistake - Most new i.m. feel they are entitled to something. This is a common mistake because it leads to new i.m.’s giving up when they don’t see any money coming in right away. You aren’t promised fame and fortune at the offset. Like everything in life there is risk and reward, but you have to work for them both.

2. Mistake - Most new i.m. do not understand niche’s. Do your research because joining the wrong niche can lead to losses. You have to understand the market that you are working with before working with it. It is a sad thing to watch a new i.m. jump in somewhere and then lose out because they didn’t research their niche prior to investing in it. This can also be a missed opportunity because when you make this mistake someone else may be capitalizing on your mistakes.

3. Missed Opportunity - More than just peddling other people’s goods, you can move the information you learned. You can take that information you have learned and package it for resale. The market for this is huge. Think about when you were starting, you wanted the info because you were dying to make your first million. Here is your chance to start working towards it.

4. Mistake - Unplug! Sometimes we get so bent on making money online we over do it. You will spend too many hours in front of your computer and end up burning out and getting discouraged. “A watched pot doesn’t boil” was my mother’s saying. She knew what she was talking about though, watching your accounts will not make them grow.

5. Missed Opportunity - Invest in your marketing. Starting out you may not have much there to help you invest, but as you earn something, you have to invest in your marketing to put it out in front of everyone else. Although it may be possible to make money without an investment, I believe it is just that much easier when you do invest.

6. Mistake - Put some work into your marketing. This sounds like a redundancy, but it isn’t. You have to offer some real content with your sales approach. You cannot expect to get someone ‘on the hook’ without offering something worth biting. Just putting “Make a billion dollars in your sleep” isn’t going to catch the better part of society for you.

7. Missed Opportunity - Keywords. I can’t say this enough. A well researched and used keyword can mean the difference between 1 sale and 100. Broad or general keywords typically result in no traffic to your ad. You have to put together specific keywords to reach your target market.

There you have 7 of the top mistakes/missed opportunities I have seen people make. I hope that this list helps you, no matter what level of the game you are at. Sometimes, even veterans can make these mistakes.