Internet Marketing with Tork Marketing

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Twitter is Like Waxing Your Eyebrows

Funny, right? Let's break it down:

Wax above, below and the middle (beware of the dreaded unibrow!)

This can be considered thinning out the herd. With Social Media in general and Twitter specifically, you need to weed through the chatter and get to the conversations.
Chances are, when you first started experimenting with social media, you went out and followed or connected with a lot of people - some you know and some you don't.
The first step is to cut that list way down to a more manageable level. Don't forget - you can always follow them again later. Maybe create a Twitter list with users that you are interested in but don't want to follow just yet.

Pluck stragglers

Once you have thinned out the herd, it becomes much easier to fine-tune your social media connections.
Start using a platform that allows you to manage all of your networks in one place (or as many as possible). Here at Tork Marketing, we use TweetDeck on our laptops and EchoFon on our iPhones. TweetDeck allows us to manage all of our identities on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in one intuitive platform.
As you are setting up your profile on the platform of your choice, this will give you another opportunity to thin your list. You'll notice that certain columns tend to fill up quickly, more quickly than you can keep up with them. If that happens, thin out the list by removing them as connections or separating them into Priority A, Priority B and Priority C lists.

Comb them up and cut them across to make them even (and weed out the long ones)

Start organizing your connections into categories: business, personal, family, keyword specific, geo-location specific, client specific, competitor specific, prospect specific, etc.
Use the columns in TweetDeck to separate your connections into categories that make sense to you. You can even use TweetDeck in conjunction with Twitter Lists so you can still monitor those people that you are interested in but you don't have to follow them yet.

Soothe with calming oil

This is when social media becomes fun, and don't forget about the all important lead.
Start by getting involved in conversations. Don't just preach about your products or services. Offer helpful advice or links to useful articles. Ask questions and be receptive to answers. Engage people. Allow some of your personality to flow through. Be genuine and transparent. Be polite.

Remember, like everything else in life, Twitter (and Social Media) is what you make of it. Your audience is there, you just have to find them. You'll meet great people that you never would've met elsewhere. You'll have access to experts in all industries. You can be an expert to someone else. Become a part of the community!

Friday, March 26, 2010

Learning Cache Control

Update 3/26/2010 6:50 p.m.

The cache-control had been set to private by the host (thank you to http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers for the great tool that I've been using for a few years now)
I added <% Response.CacheControl="public" %> to change it to public
Then I added <% Response.ExpiresAbsolute="5/31/2010" %>
According to the header check
#1 Server Response: http://www.uticahousekeeping.com/
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: public
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:45:38 GMT
Content-Length: 3028
Content-Type: text/html
Expires: Mon, 31 May 2010 05:00:00 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQCBDBCQQ=GFGHLLJCGKPEPJHJEJFBPNBG; path=/

But Google's PageSpeed tool still says:
The following resources are missing a cache expiration. Resources that do not specify an expiration may not be cached by browsers. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for resources that should be cached, and an expiration in the past for resources that should not be cached:

The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for the following resources:

http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js

Non-scoring information
The following resources are explicitly non-cacheable. Consider making them cacheable if possible:

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmwv=4.6.5&utmn=73339721&utmhn=www.uticahousekeep

So what am I missing? How do I fix this? Can anybody help me?

According to Google's PageSpeed tool:
The following resources are missing a cache expiration. Resources that do not specify an expiration may not be cached by browsers. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for resources that should be cached, and an expiration in the past for resources that should not be cached:

The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for the following resources:

http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js

Non-scoring information
The following resources are explicitly non-cacheable. Consider making them cacheable if possible:

So, I've searched and searched and found the following tutorials:

Using <% Response.CacheControl="public" %> didn't change the error in PageSpeed

Using <% Response.ExpiresAbsolute=#May 31,1996 13:30:15 GMT# %> caused an ASP error so the page wouldn't show up at all
Using <% Response.Expires=1440 %> didn't change the error in PageSpeed

When I contacted my website hosting company, IXWebHosting, their response was:

You are not able to change this value on a shared hosting environment.

Not the answer I was looking for...

Can anybody help??

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Thank You Page Dos and Don'ts

E-commerce websites should all have a thank-you page which is the last page your online shoppers see after they place an order on your website. What is important to include or not include on this page?

Dos

Do provide a confirmation of the order.

Do give customers another chance to review their order to possible spot errors before it is delivered.

Do give customers the opportunity to sign up for your newsletters, follow you on Twitter, and fan your Facebook page.

Do provide a reference number for the order.

Do list your contact information in case of problems.

Do link to the tracking page for the order.

Don’ts

Don’t use red fonts to make content stand out unless the customer made an error.

Don’t use confusing language such as ‘delivery summary’ or ‘acknowledgement’. Make sure that it is clear that they have completed their purchase.

Don’t post large security logos on your thank you page. The customer has already placed their order so they must not have been worried about the security of your website.

Don’t be afraid to personalize the page. Thank you pages can sometimes seem too canned and stuffy but make sure you say the most important thing, thank you.

Don’t try to squeeze too much information onto the page. Stick with what is important. Too much information can make it hard to find the important information.