Issue #2561
- WEALTHY: Keep your rental units full (Julie Broad)
- HEALTHY: The super fat-burning liquid (Jon Benson)
- WISE: Charles Kettering on keeping an open mind
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Measure the power of social marketing with the 3 O’s (Wendy Montes de Oca)
- A clever way to keep office chit-chat from interfering with your productivity (Jason Holland)
- It’s Good to Know… about traveling when you have a food allergy
- Add “ludicrous” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
Don’t Let Change Slip Through Your Fingers!
Change is coming to America in 2009 and what you do with it is up to you.
Barack Obama campaigned for President of the United States on a platform of change and was overwhelmingly elected because of it.
Now as he prepares to take office you need to accept two truths: First, change doesn’t happen overnight. Second, if you want change you must take responsibility for changing yourself.
What do you want to change about yourself in 2009?
While you’re thinking about it, please click here to learn how you can make change work for you in 2009.
Rental Real Estate 101: The Ultimate Real Estate Match Up
By Julie Broad
Renting out your real estate properties is a great way to make money – in almost any market. But if you’re just starting out, there are some pitfalls you need to be aware of. One of the costliest is tenant turnover.
To keep your units rented (and your cash flowing), you have to keep your tenants happy – and that starts with charging realistic rental rates. So before you place your “For Rent” advertisement, there’s some easy market research you can (and should) do.
To make sure you aren’t asking too much, or too little, learn what similar units are renting for within about a half-mile. Check for units that are of comparable type (condo, house, basement suite, etc.), comparable size (1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms), and comparable quality. To get these figures quickly and easily, check out:
- Your local paper’s online classified section
- Craigslist (craigslist.org)
- Rentometer (rentometer.com) – an online rental comparison tool with great U.S. and Canada content
- Viewit.ca in Canada
Craigslist tends to have the most rental units advertised at any given time. Because it’s free, just about every landlord seems to post ads on Craigslist these days. The problem with using Craigslist as a comparison tool – for landlords and for renters looking for a new place to live – has always been its simple forum-like format. It’s a pain to sort through the long list to find available rentals in a specific area.
But now that’s no longer a problem. A clever developer created a program that plots the local rentals on Craigslist onto Google Maps. MapsKrieg www.mapskrieg.com/view/) is currently limited to the major cities in North America – but for those cities, you can search a specific area and see all the Craigslist rental ads. No more scrolling through lists, cross-referencing with other maps to find comparable units on your street or on neighboring streets.
[Ed. Note: Renting properties is a great way to make extra cash in any market. For more strategies to make money with rental property, sign up for Internet Money Club member and real estate investor Julie Broad's free monthly newsletter. Get your free report for making money with real estate here.]
“Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier.”
Charles F. Kettering
Measuring Social Media
If you’re an online marketer or publisher, chances are you’re well aware of the power of social media optimization (SMO). If you’re new to the world of Internet marketing, you’ll be interested to know that this breakthrough method is a truly inexpensive (practically free) way to create buzz about your products, increase traffic to your site, build trust about your company, and boost your sales.
Today, I’m going to show you a simple way to get started in social media marketing – and an easy three-step process you can use to measure how well it’s working.
In a nutshell, social media is an interactive platform where people can correspond – via chat rooms, forums, bulletin boards, networks (as in MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, LinkedIn, Bebo), user-generated content sharing (as in Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit), wikis (interactive online encyclopedias), and blogs – with like minded individuals who share similar interests, whatever those interests may be.
Cutting-edge businesses and marketing-centric companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon to leverage the increased popularity of this phenomenon. Companies large and small got their marketers to create MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn profiles in order to have their fingers on the pulse of the market, correspond with consumers, and create buzz about their products.
Here at ETR, we’ve been on the Web for some time now, dabbling in all sorts of social media activities with content syndication, viral marketing, and online PR efforts.
Recently, we started leveraging the presence of our individual team members on LinkedIn. If you’re not familiar with this site, it’s a network community for business professionals. Users can set up profiles highlighting their corporate experience and areas of expertise.
Edwin Huertas, one of ETR’s search engine marketing specialists, answers select questions on LinkedIn that are related to his area of expertise. He also uploads blog posts about a variety of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC), and social media practices. This helps create buzz about ETR (through Edwin’s profile and position at ETR). Plus, he sometimes supplements his posts with links back to relevant articles on our website – which helps drive traffic to the ETR site.
This is a practice you can emulate easily. Simply register as a member of one of the social media groups. Then begin to participate in the discussions. For instance, if a LinkedIn member posts a specific question about SEO, Edwin will try to find an article on our ETR site that addresses that issue. He then answers the question in his own words, but recommends that the member also read the ETR article, which has more valuable information. By answering questions posed by your fellow members (making sure you add relevant links back to content on your website), your posts will begin to generate “free” traffic.
Another site that works well for us is StumbleUpon.com. This site directs Internet surfers to Web pages based on the surfer’s pre-selected categories every time they click on the “Stumble” icon on their toolbar.
You can install the StumbleUpon toolbar on your own computer and recommend articles on your own site. This allows you to give any page a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” rating. It also allows you to include a brief description and category for your submission. If you rate your article, it will appear in the StumbleUpon rotation – which, again, means ‘free’ traffic to your site.
Getting started is super-easy. But the key to making social media work for you is the same with any marketing medium: You need to have a way to find out if it’s working.
Although many marketers have been going all out with their social media efforts, most haven’t a clue as to how to actually measure the campaign’s success or failure.
Let’s say Early to Rise just published an article on goal setting for 2009. The article is followed by a related product ad in the ETR issue, as well as by a separate e-mail promotion for a related goal setting product, like our Total Success Achievement program. Product sales are generated from the e-mail and from the ad. Meanwhile, the social media aspect takes over.
The article content is syndicated via RSS feeds, as well as top article directories (like EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, Buzzle, and others) and user-generated content networks (such as Digg and Reddit). Readers may also discuss the article on goal setting and self-improvement blogs, forums, and bulletin boards.
So how could you measure the social media aspect of such an effort?
It’s easy. By using the same metrics that are used to measure a public relations effort: Outputs, outcomes, and objectives – what I like to call the “3 O’s.”
1. Outputs (measures effectiveness and efficiency)
For our example, I’d look at Google Analytics for spikes in traffic to the Early to Rise homepage in the days following the article’s publication. I’d look specifically at traffic sources, visits, unique visits, and visit percentages. I’d also look at referring sites and search engines to see whether the traffic is coming directly from social media platforms. And I’d look for an increase in new ETR subscriber sign-ups (leads) during that same time period.
2. Outcomes (measures behavioral changes)
For this metric, I’d look at feedback from our customers… e-mails, phone calls, comments posted on our ETR member forum. I’d also do some reputation monitoring by searching the Web for keywords like “ETR,” the article title, and the product name to see if others were talking about it in chat rooms, external forums, and bulletin boards.
3. Objectives (measures business objectives/sales)
The most obvious and directly related metric is direct sales of the product that are tied to the editorial. Orders generated from an e-mail link or ad link are coded for tracking, so attributing sales to those sources is definitive. If the sales come from a product page on our website where the true “source” cannot be tracked, I’d look at the sales during the corresponding dates of the campaign for correlations.
Finally, for each of the above, I would compare the current campaign data versus the year-to-date (YTD) average and year-over-year data to clearly illustrate pre- and post- campaign performance. In other words, I’d check out website traffic, unique visits, specific product sales, etc. – all for the same time periods. That way, I’d have an established benchmark against which to measure our current social media efforts.
Social media is a low cost and effective way to spread the word about your company and products, as well as to conduct market research. By understanding the “3 O’s” and how they work, you can actually quantify your efforts with hard data… a critical component for any direct marketer.
[Ed. Note: You don't need a whole lot of money to get an Internet business up and running... or to market to your potential customers. Of course, marketing is only one part of getting your business to start churning out cash. With a membership in ETR's Internet Money Club, our panel of experts will guide you through every business-building step... and keep you energized and motivated.
If you're interested in an automatic income stream that can generate profits for the rest of your life, there's probably NEVER been a better opportunity than this one. Learn more here.]
It Is a Great Time to Start a Business… And Let Me Tell You Why
Can’t think of a worse time to start a business than today? Well, consider this…
- William Hewlett and David Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939, while the Great Depression had been underway for a full decade…
- In September 1945, Masaru Ibuka started Sony after his country had been devastated by war and was occupied by a foreign power…
You see, a business start up can not only survive, but thrive in times of economic crisis.
YOU can do the same. And thanks to the Internet your journey to a bright financial future will be a lot easier – and faster – than Sony’s or Hewlett-Packard’s. You can be making $100,000 to $25 million a year in no time with your own business with our proven strategies and coaching.
Quick Productivity Tip: The Shy Person’s Guide to Locking Out Time-Wasters
Office chit-chat can provide a much-needed break during a long workday. But if you’re not careful, it can bring your productivity to a grinding halt. Before you know it, instead of finishing important projects, you’re politely listening to a half-hour tale every Monday morning about Bob-in-Accounting’s weekend adventures.
The best way to kick these time-wasters out of your life is to be direct: Tell them to stop. But if you’re shy or just don’t want to be that assertive, try this: Put on headphones – but don’t turn on any music. Idle chatterers will stop calling to you across the office, and they won’t stop by your desk anymore. Because the music is not on, you can still hear the important messages that come your way.
(Source: Lifehacker)
How to Drink More Water
Drinking plenty of water aids digestion and gives you the energy and hydration necessary for exercise. Plus, it helps suppress appetite and speed up your weight-loss efforts. But it can be a chore to down enough water to make a difference.
If you are having trouble drinking enough water during the day, try this: Grab some Stevia (an herb that is used as a sweetener) and pour one packet into a quart of water. Then put about 10 frozen blueberries or raspberries into the bottle. The juice of the berries will seep out and mix with the Stevia, creating a natural and totally healthy sweetened water drink.
[Ed. Note: Drinking water can help you lose weight - but to really shed the pounds, you need to build muscle and burn body fat. Discover a complete system for dropping fat and building muscle that's guaranteed to work for you in nutrition and fitness counselor Jon Benson's book, 7 Minute Muscle. Try it for 60 days and prove it to yourself.
And for a FREE source of nutrition and fitness advice, check out ETR's natural health newsletter.]
It’s Good to Know: Food Allergies Don’t Take a Vacation
Traveling, especially overseas, can be tough if you have food allergies. Language barriers, incomplete food packaging labels, and being unfamiliar with local delicacies could land you in the hospital.
Whether your poison is peanuts, shellfish, milk, eggs, soy, or wheat, here are five recommendations from Budget Travel:
• Research local foods before you go, using guidebooks and cookbooks. Then create a personal “menu” that won’t trigger your food allergy.
• Carry a small card or printout that lists (in the language of the country) the foods you’re allergic to. Show it at every restaurant you visit – and not just to the waiter. He might not know all the ingredients in the dishes they serve.+
• Don’t forget your medication. Bring it with you everywhere! And check out the medical facilities in each city you visit so you know where to go in case you need emergency care.
== Highly Recommended ==
How to Rig Life in Your Favor Starting This Month
Every industry has trade secrets. Insider tips and tactics for rigging life in your favor, giving you the advantage in almost every situation.
What’s more, Early to Rise has access to and friendships with many of the world’s recognized experts in just about every imaginable business and personal niche out there.
And crazy enough, I want to give you these insider secrets for FREE. No kidding. Call it an ethical bribe, but you won’t let anyone pry your fingers from the information in this FREE book once you take a look at what’s inside. I guarantee it. You can take my word or you can check everything out for yourself by clicking here…
Word to the Wise: Ludicrous
Something that’s “ludicrous” (LOO-dih-krus) – from the Latin for “to play” – is laughable because of its obvious absurdity or incongruity.
Example (as used by Bruce Handy in a New York Times review of Have You Seen…? by David Thomson ): “Thomson has set himself an almost ludicrous task and pulled it off: He has written a volume of 1,000 short essays, each 500 or so words long and devoted to a single film, which in sum constitute both a de facto history of the art form and a snob-friendly, intellectually luxe consumer guide.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
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