We get asked this simple question very often by our clients who are local business owners or adults who are not as tech savvy as the younger generation.

To be honest, this question actually has several possible answers, so in the paragraphs that follow, you will find some short answers that will help demystify the Twitter phenomenon and make it less foreign to you.  But more importantly, we will make Twitter less intimidating for you so that you can go forth and enter into the world of tweeting with confidence, and capitalize on the enormous potential this social media platform offers.

Q. What is twitter.com about ?

A. Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ messages called tweets.  Tweets are short text-based posts that are generally publicly visible.  Users may subscribe to other authors – this is known as following, and subscribers are known as followers.

Q. What is twitter.com about ?

A. Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and currently has more than 100 million users.  It has been described as the text messaging service of the internet because of the short posts (max 140 characters) and the ability to converse quickly with specific followers.  Users tweet about anything and everything, at any time of day, to anyone anywhere in the world.

Q. What is twitter.com about ?

A. Interestingly enough, Twitter is mainly used by older adults who might not have used other social media sites before.  According to comScore only 11% of Twitter’s users are aged 12 to 17.  In addition, a 2009 study by Sysomos in 2009, found that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity on Twitter, and that New York has the most Twitter users.  Twitter also has a search function that allows users to look for tweets containing specific keywords.  What this all means for businesses is that it is relatively easy to develop a demographic profile of twitter users and then target your marketing messages to those users.

Q. What is twitter.com about ?

A.  Twitter provides real-time information.  It has become a source for news feeds and and current events.  The Twitter home page even has a trending function that displays the topics that are most tweeted at any given moment, and this information is also fed into the search engines, like Google, who are now trying to keep up by displaying the “Latest” information related to a search term.  For businesses, this can be a great source of market information.

To recap from the perspective of the small business owner – what is twitter.com about ?   Well, Twitter :

• provides a platform to target specific markets and niches;
• provides valuable and real-time market information; and
• offers the ability to reach an enormous number of people quickly, easily, and effectively.

So now that you know what Twitter  can be used for, the next question is HOW do you do it?  Well we’ve got you covered….Simply fill in your name and email in the form below, and we’ll give you access to a FREE  video and pdf course material that will quickly and easily show you “How To Use Twitter To Rapidly Expand Your Business & Social Networks”.

With this material, you’ll learn:

• How To Use Twitter simply and effectively
• The Best Twitter Applications you should take advantage of
• How to Get More Twitter Followers
• How to Automate Your Twitter Account
• How to Expand Your Business Reach
• How to Grow Your Social Network
• How to Make Money using Twitter

So, what is twitter.com about => opportunity!

disclosure statement :  In the spirit of full disclosure, please note that this is a product for which Groupe Synergos is an affiliate. we do not earn any commissions on this material, however, we may earn a commission from follow-on products related to it if referred prospects choose to purchase them.  Groupe Synergos takes pride in only endorsing quality products and supporting our advertisers is a WIN-WIN-WIN for our visitors, us, and them.  We thank you for your encouragement.

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obviously, before referring anyone to this site, we wanted to test it out ourselves so we paid our membership and browsed around for a couple of months to see how it was and here is what we found:

for every single coupon we found of interest – there were at least 50 of them – we discovered they were either expired (and still listed) or were not honored by the company who was supposed to honor them (eg. the promotion code not found)….this was not a good sign at all so we proceeded to advise Freebie Force on every occasion we encountered these problems. two months (and $20) into the membership and the only “Freebie” we were able to get was an open source ebook that we could have received by going directly to the site anyway, but worse yet, all the so-called discounts we previously flagged, were still listed!

so our advice is don’t waste your time or your money on Freebie Force and steer clear from anyone who refers this membership – we were referred by Mike Glaspie and tried on several occasions to contact him about it but to no avail.

Groupe Synergos value rating: 1 out of 5 stars

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this report was designed specifically for Travel Agents and answers this vitally important question to business longevity, because it is much more profitable to cater to repeat customers than to continuously attract and sell to new ones.

this FREE report is a Must Read for all Travel Agents as it will reveal the Secrets to Get Them Coming Back!

Simply fill out the form below to get immediate access!

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earlier this year we wrote a couple of EZines articles about the Global Entrepreneurial Movement and how over the next decade, there will be significant shift from the typical employer – employee model to a growing mass of self-employed entrepreneurs. President Obama, during his State of the Union address also stressed the importance of small businesses to create jobs. this will be a very interesting development because we know full well that the internet will be a major catalyst of this shift.

as people turn to the internet as the backbone of their small business, they quickly come to the realization that to be successful, one has to learn many new skills – copywriting, marketing, managing customers, managing systems, developing products, just to name a few. there is a steep learning curve and there are only so many hours in a day. as a result, it becomes evident rather quickly that leverage strategies are essential to success. we have been researching many of these strategies for an upcoming course we are putting together and one of those strategies is to leverage resources so that all the required elements of running a home-based business get done but not necessarily by one person. this is called outsourcing and we could easily see how this tactic will gain traction rather quickly.

imagine if you could focus on the tasks related to building your business, and not being burdened by the mundane activities related to running it, like acounting, dealing with customer support issues, fiddling with web page design, or SEO. look at all the activities you are doing in a day. how many of them are actually contributing to generating revenue and how many are just taking up your precious time that you could be using to do those important activities that generate revenues.

now some may think that outsourcing is for big business only but that is not the case,there are many people who would benefit from outsourcing some of their activities and on that same note, there are just as many who would love to get paid to do those activities.

many entrepreneurs enjoy running their own show because they just don’t want to manage people. this is a common misperception about outsourcing because there are strategies in outsourcing that don’t put us in a “people management” type of situation. it could be as simple as hiring on an ad hoc basis professionals for specific deliverables to hiring a “manager” to deal with all subcontractors or employees.

another common misperception with regards to outsourcing is that good people are hard to find. one interesting strategy to find resources for outsourced activities is to put the word out within your own mailing list. these people are already familiar with your business and you are actually giving an opportunity to develop a deeper business relationship with them. we have heard great success stories from people using this method.

the key to business success is to think beyond the limitations of the one person show. a great resource to start getting into that mindset is to read Timothy Ferriss’ book the 4-Hour Workweek.

once you’ve come to the realization that you are limiting your true potential, you will need to learn how to leverage through outsourcing. this course can help you do it. by subscribing below, you will gain instant access to a series of FREE videos that explain some of the concepts mentioned above in greater detail and also great advice on how to get started.
disclosure statement : in the spirit of full disclosure, please note that this is a product for which Groupe Synergos is an affiliate. we do not earn any commissions on these videos, however, we may earn a commission from follow-on products related to them if referred prospects choose to purchase them. Groupe Synergos takes pride in only endorsing quality products and supporting our advertisers is a WIN-WIN-WIN for our visitors, us, and them. we thank you for your encouragement.

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In this first video, we explain the reasons why some people should not buy Main Street Marketing Machines (MSMM) from Traffic Geyser.

In this second video, we explain the reasons why some people should buy Main Street Marketing Machines (MSMM) from Traffic Geyser. If you are researching this product or looking for reviews you need to watch this because we explain how selling services to the small business market is probably one of the most sustainable business models in the world.

Small businesses account for about half of the United States’ GDP. That’s about 7 Trillion dollars! Small businesses are the driving force for employment creation – remember my article on the Global Entrepreneurial Movement…And to top it off, approximately 70% of small businesses are not on the web yet, or want to increase their web presence, but they just don’t have the expertise or the time to do it. They are starving to spend their money to do this but don’t want to get taken to the cleaners by large marketing firms. Sound familiar? It is unreal how many small business owners we’ve come across who aren’t on the web and who ask a whole lot of questions when we tell them that we do internet marketing…

We felt so strongly about this that we are providing services in just that regard. We chose to do this because we can appreciate the realities of successful small business owners:

• When they know they need something, they act quickly to find the appropriate resources to get it done because their time is precious so they don’t mess around trying to do everything themselves.
• They are passionate about their business and want to do everything they can to make it successful.  They are not passionate about the mechanics of all the bits that have to be done to get there – they recognize that is not their core business, so they have no problem outsourcing.
• They are driven by results. If you can show them results, they will gladly pay for your services because ultimately, they know that if they don’t, somebody else will, and gain an advantage over them.

The other side of this coin is that we, as internet marketers, have a skill set that is perfectly suited to support offline local businesses.  It really doesn’t make sense not to if you are not completely consumed with focusing strictly on an online business.  These clients are a captive audience and can easily become recurring customers for related services.

Even marketers who are just starting out can offer services to offline businesses and it is probably a great way to get started anyway because you go from being a small fish in a big sea – getting chewed up by the big players – to being a big fish in a small sea (local market) where you can build credibility and a loyal clientele quickly.

So if you are intending to purchase a robot like Traffic Geyser, we recommend you consider upgrading to Main Street Marketing Machines the next time it comes available simply because it will not only help you make your business more versatile and profitable, but at the same time, it will probably give you sufficient volume of uploads to justify the purchase price in short order, not to mention all the other benefits that the folks at Traffic Geyser usually offer along with it.

If you missed out on purchasing MSMM, take this review as an opportunity to develop your own service offering to your local businesses.  Please contact us if you would like some advice or help to get started.

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so how do you embed audio in your content like this?

well it’s actually quite simple and with technologies today, you can create audio content just about anywhere! I created this message this morning while waiting in line for my latte! I simply recorded a voice note on my phone and emailed it to myself. I then copied the audio file to my server and plugged it into the html code to embed it on this site…it was that simple! I didn’t even have to convert the file format or anything. my phone creates .amr files and they are recognized by the Quick Time plugin. several other file types are supported as well such as (wav, midi, mp3 or aiff), so go ahead and have fun with it.

here is the code you need to do it like i did :

<EMBED height=”20″ SRC=”http://www.YOURFILENAMEHERE.WAV” VOLUME=”50″ loop=”false” controls=”console” AUTOSTART=”FALSE” width=”128″>

there are also some variations you can make to this to support different file formats and to adjust the autoplay functions. you can get more info about that from this link.

by the way, the audio clip from me was true! in this article, i just gave you a hint about what our new product will be when i revealed how i created that voice note. so if you’re not already subscribed to our newsletter, do it now so you don’t miss out on what’s coming soon!

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lets say you have a list of subscribers that you have growing on autopilot from a list generation site like Viral Secret, for example. the people on this list are by no means as targeted as your own website subscribers so they are far from being warmed up to you or what you have to offer, so how do you tap into them without blasting them with information they probably don’t want and then losing them forever?

my suggestion is that you treat this list as a unique pool that you only tap into occasionally to draw out the warmer prospects and leave the others for another time. i liken this to an apple tree whereby you make sure to carefully pick only the ripe apples without shaking the branches too much such that the other apples fall off.

let me illustrate this strategy with an example. suppose i am setting up a marketing funnel that starts with a report i wrote on a particular running technique and how it helps conserve energy and improve performance. those that obtain this report will then be provided with additional information and value with the intent that some will eventually subscribe to my virtual coaching service.

i have a mailing list from my generic list builder with thousands of names on it, but i know full well these people are not all into running, so i send an email to that list inviting those who are interested in running to sign-up for my report before i open it up to the masses. i effectively accomplish three things using this simple strategy;

1. i draw out the targeted leads from my fruit tree.
2. i don’t give my list the impression that i am spamming them because i am asking them to come forward to receive information.
3. i am giving this list a sense of entitlement or prestige because i came to them first.

contrary to targeted lists that you want to establish and maintain a rapport with by regularly reaching out to and offering great value, you want to make sure your untargeted list is not solicited too often.

so go ahead and use those list builders to grow your tree, pick only those ripe fruits every once in a while in an unobtrusive way and leave the others for another day. that way your tree will be with you for a long time and will provide you ripe fruit year after year.

oh, and if you aren’t subscribed to a list building network yet, go ahead and give Viral Secret a try. It doesn’t cost anything, either…here’s my link to get you started : http://www.TheViralSecret.com/21428

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so back to video editing and publishing. i literally put this video below together in 3 minutes, and then spent a few minutes publishing it on YouTube and Facebook. you tell me if the quality is good…

by joining animoto on the FREE membership, you can make quality videos like this with a few clicks of the mouse. your videos are limited to 30 seconds so you can’t put too much, but you know what? for marketing something, if you can get your message accross in 30 seconds, you are pretty much in the attention span window of opportunity anyway.

if you would like more info on how to put together an AniMoto video or help putting together a marketing campaign for something, let me know in the comments, and I’ll provide some additional tips to get you on your way to making fantastic vids.

Groupe Synergos value rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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here’s the link for the headline analyzer.  it will give you immediate feedback on whether your choice of words is having an emotional response, or impact on your readers.  it evaluates if you are touching Intellectual, Empathetic, and Spiritual hot buttons.

depending on your chosen audience, you may want to focus on one or more of those dimensions.  here is an explanation of each of them :

• Spiritual – you are seeking to have an impact on their beliefs and value system
• Empathetic – you are trying to tug at their heart strings. your words resonate and cause positive emotional reactions
• Intellectual – you are seeking to appeal to logic and reason

so try it out the next time you write an article title and see if the result matches your intent, or if the headline of your capture page elicits the emotions you are seeking.  have fun with i,t but remember that it is just a guide, so at the end of the day, don’t choose your words just to please the analyzer….make sure they make sense first and foremost.

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having said that, it would sure be nice to find a way to make your fanpage pop, build curiosity, and peak interest. enter fbml. fbml (facebook markup language) allows you to customize your page to make it your own – for example, check out this Victoria’s Secret fan page.

notice how there is no standard sidebar on the left and how this page contains whatever Victoria’s Secret wants – like a promotion or ad campaign…this page could even be set as the fan page landing page. if you have an autoresponder, you could even put an opt-in box if you like (we’ll keep that for a future article).

to find out how this is done, simply visit the Mashable article here and have fun with it

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