My Twitter Advertising Challenge

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Jan. 25

I got started with Twitter early on and leveraged smart strategies from day one. These strategies have propelled my following to over 17,000 on Twitter and have driven a significant amount of traffic to PPC Ian. That said, I’m always looking to improve and have set a challenge for myself. Twitter is hot right now so it’s the perfect time to revamp my Twitter account. Today, I’m going to outline the challenge I’m setting for myself and one month from now I’ll report back on the results!

Initiative One: Follow No More Than 200 People

PPC Ian Twitter

Right now, I have 17,060 followers but am following 16,826. My Twitter stream is basically unusable. I want to be able to log in to my Twitter account and make sense of things, only seeing tweets that are relevant and interesting to me. If I am following no more than 200 people, I’ll be able to use Twitter once again.

Why am I following so many people right now? It was actually part of my initial strategy. I went out there and followed a ton of people knowing that a certain portion would reciprocate and follow me back. I would then unfollow those who did not follow me back. I did this many times and was able to drive a significant number of followers with this strategy. It’s a great strategy I still recommend for building out your initial base of followers. More followers equals more social proof and brand equity.

How am I going to remove 16,500+ followers? I’m going to go through all my @ messages and find out who I’ve interacted with. Then, I’m going to put them on my Tweet Adder white list. (Tweet Adder is a really helpful Twitter utility that I recommend purchasing if you’re serious about advertising on Twitter.) After my white list is loaded with my favorite people, I’m going to remove 1,000 people each day (who are not on my white list) until I’m done. Sure, I’m going to remove some good people by accident, but I can always add them back later.

Will I lose followers with this strategy? Absolutely. That said, I don’t think I’m going to lose more than 5,000 followers. I’m ok with this, and believe that I’ll retain most followers.

Initiative Two: Redesign My Twitter Background

My Twitter background has not been updated in years. It still looks ok, but could be a lot better. I’ve decided to engage the same designer who designed and built IJL.net for me. I’m sure the results will be great. Also, I’m sure my new background will help drive even more followers in the future.

Initiative Three: Advertise and Gain More Followers

After I reduce the list of people I’m following, I’m sure to lose a few followers. I’m going to partially make up for this by running a paid advertising campaign on Twitter. I’ve had phenomenal results running Paid Like Campaigns on Facebook. I have not tried this yet on Twitter, but am quite excited. At the very least, I’ll get that cool “Verified Account” badge by signing up as an advertiser. Also, I hope to gain some serious experience that I can then leverage at my job. In my opinion, it’s critical for all PPC professionals to master Facebook and Twitter in addition to AdWords and adCenter.

Stay tuned, I’m hoping to have some interesting findings in my journey to optimize my Twitter account. Want to connect on Twitter? Please don’t hesitate to reach out, my Twitter handle is ianlopuch.

Image of PPC Ian’s Twitter Count © PPCIan.com and Twitter

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Epik, The Most Comprehensive Registrar Around

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Jan. 23

Over the years, I have written a multitude of posts here on PPC Ian about Epik. The most popular ones have been my introduction to my Personal Epik Product Portal Websites, my Epik Product Portal Development Tips, and of course my special Epik Product Portal Tips and Coupon Code. I’m a big fan of Epik, a big developer on the Epik Product Portal Platform (I now own 60 Product Portals), and am now officially on Epik’s Board of Advisors (check out my bio on the Epik Team page). I couldn’t be more thrilled when it comes to everything Epik and today I’m excited to give an overview of some new stuff going on at Epik that you’re sure to love.

Epik Is Now A Full Service Registrar

In July, 2011 Epik acquired its very own registrar, IntrustDomains. You can read all about Epik’s acquisition in this post on the Epik blog. Long story short, the acquisition on Intrust completed Epik’s dream of becoming the most comprehensive domain asset management platform on the Internet. We’re talking about the whole domain name lifecycle here: Acquire, build, manage, and divest. Epik is my registrar of choice and next I will show you how I’m leveraging Epik every single day to manage my domain/website portfolio.

All Domains From All Accounts In One Place

Check out the screenshot below, this is what it looks like when I log into my registrar account at Epik. You’ll quickly notice that there’s a world of functionality at your fingertips (I’ll get into that a bit later). First, however, I wanted to underscore an amazing feature that is really helping me out: Epik displays all of my domain names from all of my registrars. I’m able to manage all of my GoDaddy, Moniker, and Epik domains in one convenient location. Recently, I did a quick sort by expiration date and noticed that I had a good 30 domains at Moniker expiring in February. Last night, I leveraged this intelligence and logged into my Moniker account to renew all of the domains. Also, I noticed that I have a few GoDaddy domains expiring on the horizon and will take care of those shortly.

Epik My Domains

A World of Functionality At Your Fingertips

Epik makes my life easy. The screenshot below illustrates the menu that appears when I hover over a domain click the “manage” button on the main control panel (previous screenshot). Whether I’m looking to update whois info (such as toggling between public/private registration), forward a domain name, transfer domains in/out of my Epik account, renew domains, organize my portfolio, or virtually anything else I want to do, it’s all in one convenient location. Even better: I can select multiple domains at once and manage them in one bulk update. In short, Epik is one of the most user friendly registrars around. Even better, domain registration fees at Epik are cheap ($10/year) and you get all of this amazing functionality (including domain privacy and domain forwarding, if you want it) for free.

Epik Domain Services

An Amazing Selection of Development Options

In the screenshot below, you can see Epik’s suite of domain development packages. I personally developed 60 of my own domains on Epik’s Product Portal Platform. However, you can quickly see that Epik offers much more than Product Portals. I’m talking about lightening fast web hosting (several different hosting packages), SiteBuilder, LeadGen Portals, Recipe Portals, and Video Portals. When it comes to making money online, Epik has you covered!

Epik Platforms

Offer Your Domains and Websites For Sale

Looking back at the first screenshot in this account, you can see that all of my domains have an “on sale” price tag next to them. I have listed many of my domains and websites for sale on the Epik Marketplace. I’m in the domain game to make money. Most of my money comes via passive income from developed websites and I’m holding onto most sites for the long term. That said, I’m definitely exploring the idea of selling domains and websites in 2012. If I’m able to earn cash by selling virtual assets, I can funnel those earnings into other passive income instruments (dividend-paying stocks or even the development of more websites). Epik owns over 20,000 domains in their own portfolio so they know all about selling domains. Leverage their expertise and platform to sell your domains/websites today.

Sell Your Domain

So, there you have it, the most comprehensive registrar around! The crazy thing: I barely scratched the surface of the Epik platform with this post. If you’re looking to acquire, build, manage, and divest domain names, Epik has the entire lifecycle covered. Open your account at Epik today!

Images in this post © Epik and PPCIan.com

Posted in: Domains | Tags: , | Comments: 2 comments so far, join the discussion!

Uncover Hidden Tricks With Google Instant

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Jan. 21

It’s the weekend so it’s time to relax. It’s time to have a little fun and stop taking things so seriously. In that light, I wanted to share some really cool “hidden tricks” today with Google Instant. Some of my team members actually shared these with me on Friday and I was so excited about it. I absolutely can’t get enough of Google’s humor. For SEM geeks, like myself, this stuff is too funny.

Below, you will see two screenshots. The first is the search engine results on Google when I type in “askew”. As you can see, Google Instant technology actually makes the page go askew for the word askew, how cool is that!

The second screenshot shows the search results for the search term “do a barrel roll”. This one is so crazy, you just have to see it for yourself. Type in “do a barrel roll” on Google Instant and the entire page does a barrel roll. Obviously, my screenshot is just a moment in time during the barrel roll process.

Bring these into work on Monday and you’ll be the hero of your SEM team. Do you know any hidden tricks with Google Instant? There just have to be more. I have not yet taken the time to search for other Google tricks, but definitely looking forward to uncovering more of them!

Screenshots in this post © Google search results

Posted in: Search Engines | Tags: , | Comments: 6 comments so far, join the discussion!

Knowing Trends In Online Marketing

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Jan. 20

Are you in the corporate world of online marketing? Want to make a strong impression at work? My tip of the day: Get to know industry trends. Of course you first need to become an expert at your own business, and of course grow your numbers. Once those are on the right trajectory, however, your ability to effectively collect and communicate industry trends will help your business (especially senior management) dramatically. All companies want to benchmark themselves against others and project the future. A solid understanding of industry trends makes all of this possible.

Marin Software Whitepaper

When it comes to pay per click, how do you get solid benchmark data? You can gather some high level information from services like Compete, Hitwise, and Quantcast. Also, you can request benchmark data from your Google and Yahoo! account management teams. I highly recommend both of these strategies.

Now, there is a third way to get benchmark data, one that’s low work on your end but super high leverage. I’m talking about benchmark reports published by SEM platforms such as Marin Software. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you Marin Software’s Q4 US Online Advertising Report. I just downloaded this report (it’s free) and can say without a doubt that you do not want to pass this one up! Following are some of my favorite highlights…

  • Marin’s whitepaper offers 13 pages of outstanding data
  • Marin compiles data from over 1,000 advertisers and agencies who spend a collective 2.7 billion in annual spend
  • The whitepaper features some really interesting CPC and match type trends (we’re talking about specific and actionable PPC statistics)
  • It breaks down trends by industry: auto, B2B, education, finance, healthcare, retail, and travel
  • In addition to computers, Marin covers smartphones and tablets
  • In addition to discussing AdWords and adCenter, Marin covers Facebook trends too

Download Marin’s Q4 US Online Advertising Report tonight and go into work tomorrow as a PPC industry trend guru!

Image in this post © Marin Software

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Don’t Check Email Right Before You Go To Bed

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Jan. 18

Today, I wanted to share a quick tip that will help you in business and life: Don’t check your email right before you go to bed. If you’re already in bed and have your iPhone right near you on the nightstand, resist the temptation!

Email

Last night, I made the mistake of checking my email right before bed. After a really long day at work and a long weekend (I worked most of last weekend), I was not in the frame of mind to deal with the email. However, I checked my email and found one that worried me. It was not a worked-related email, but rather a personal one. Upon reading this email, my mind went racing and I lost some serious sleep. Moreover, my day today got off to a rocky start. I missed out on sleep and more importantly had not “solved” the dilemma presented via the email.

However, after thinking about the email throughout the day today, the “solution” came to me. I’m really proud of the solution and feel like it’s a great one. At the end of the day, I think the solution would have come to me quicker and I would have gotten much more sleep had I not checked my email right before going to bed.

Going forward, I am going to resist checking my email right before going to bed. I hope to get more sleep this way and also make optimal decisions in life. Of course, this does not mean I will avoid checking my work and personal email at night. It just means I will have a cutoff time when I stop looking (probably around 9:00 pm or 10:00 pm at night). Today was definitely a learning lesson for me and I hope this tip helps you out too!

Image of Email © iStockPhoto – barisonal

Posted in: Attitude | Tags: | Comments: 2 comments so far, join the discussion!