iZigg Mobile Media 90210 Text Marketing National Expansion is happening right now.

Live the dream of working for yourself and receiving weekly residual income payments. Just about every business can use text marketing and you can be the one to sell it to them. It’s easy, they want it and you’ve got it. Sign up today!

If you would like to order iZigg 90210 Mobile Marketing for your Business Click Here

Questions? Just call or text Clay Franklin at 408-768-7368

Text textmarketing to 90210

iZigg Mobile Media 90210 – National Expansion – Sell Text Marketing is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

Internet Marketers love to learn new things and generally love new gadgets and tools to make life easier.  Most work at home businesses can use new tools and gadgets to improve efficiency.  Here is a list of the top wish list ideas for work at home businesses and internet marketers.

Kodak Zi8 Video Camera is perfect for shooting videos for YouTube and doing ad hock interviews.  It has an external microphone jack and that really comes in handy during filming and interviews.  The video quality is good and it records in HD.  I personally use the Canon HF 10 camera, yet this video camcorder is highly recommended by my friends and is more popular than the Flip camera due to the external microphone jack and expandable SD/SDHC card slot up to 32 GB


Canon Powershot SD 1300 IS Point and shoot camera.  I have the older SD1100IS model and it works great.  I take it to all the Tweetups and to events.  It takes great clear pictures and does pretty good for video also.  It is really small and the battery lasts for months depending on how many pictures you take.  I find that I take this with me on every hike, bike ride or just about any day trip since I love to have a camera with me all the time.  I find that the Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera is awesome, yet it just too big to ring with me everywhere.  Highly recommended.


Canon Powershot G12 Point and Shoot camera.  This is a professional model and is even used by wedding photographers and professionals as the camera of choice when the Digital SLR is just to big and cumbersome.  I am getting this camera to have a little more professional shots while still having the small size and light weight.  It is a bit pricey, yet it is a high end camera that delights everyone that uses it.  It takes HD videos, and overall is highly recommended for the more discerning photographer.




Canon VIXIA HF 20 Video Camcorder is totally awesome.  It is a high end camcorder for the Internet Marketers that want the best in class for the gadgets and camera they use.  I have the older model and totally love it.  It has a long battery life, uses removable Flash memory SD cards to store the video on so it is very light weight and super easy to transfer videos to your Mac or PC.




Peachtree Audio iDecco Stereo integrated Amplifier with Tube Pre-Amp and iPod dock.  You want to listen to tunes in your home office and nothing does it better than this little unit with a iPod dock and a tube preamplifier.  This is a bit esoteric, yet I love audio and this is on my wish list.  Tubes sound better than transistors and they really help digital music sound more real and silky. It is a bit pricey, yet if you enjoy a really good sounding stereo system then this is the unit for you.  Just add speakers and you are set to go.  Highly recommended.


The Amazon Kindle is a really nice reading device.  The books cost less on Kindle than in hardcover.  My wife has one and loves it.  I find it is easier to read books on than on the iPad because it is specially designed to be perfect for reading books. It comes in a 9″ that I recommend, and a 6” that is less expensive and smaller for taking with you everywhere.  Highly recommended.



Facebook Marketing an Hour a Day by Mari Smith.  This is the book I am starting to read today.  Facebook has come very far in becoming a destination place and this book will provide the ideas to implement a Facebook Strategy for your Business.  I am very lucky to have an autographed copy by Mari.  Thank you Mari you are the best.  You can check out Mari’s Facebook Fan page to see a nice design and learn from the Facebook expert.



Influence – Science and Practice by Robert Chialdini.  This is a must read for anyone doing any selling or running a business. I just finished this book today and it is easy to read and understand.  The ideas presented here may save you money by understanding the key psychological persuasion tactics salespeople use to get the sale.  You will also be able to use the tactics in your own selling.  Highly recommended.



The Web Traffic Book by Ross Goldberg with Mari Smith as contributor.  I have this book on my wish list.  Ross Goldberg knows traffic and SEO and I expect this book to be filled with high powered tactics and processes to get more visitors to your web page, blog, Facebook Fan page or any internet location you choose.   I expect it will cover search engine marketing, research strategies, social marketing, video marketing, paid traffic, and linking strategies.



Step Into the Spotlight!- ‘Cause ALL Business is Show Business! by Tsufit is a fantastic book recommended to me by Coach Deb the owner of Quansite.  I have read this book and it is really good!   This is a good book to read twice, implementing all the strategies the second time through.  This is a very useful guide with new information and has easy to follow steps to branding and getting noticed.  Highly recommended.



Audio Technica AT2020 USB Computer Microphone High Quality Microphone for your computer.  It plugs into the USB port on a Mac or a Windows computer.  This is the same microphone I have on my desk right now.  It works excellent and produces great audio for live or recording purposes.  This is the same microphone Bob the Teacher uses for his Internet Marketing Training.  I have not personally compared it to the Blue microphone, or Blue Ball Microphone yet it looks great and works excellent. I use a Nady MPF-6 6-Inch Clamp On Microphone Pop Filter as you see in the picture with the blue light on the AT2020 behind the pop filter.




Audio-Technica ATR-35S Lavalier Microphone This is a great little microphone that is perfect for use with the Kodak Zi8 or Canon HF-20 above.  This is recommended by Mike Koenigs.  I have one and it is well built and works great.  I suggest getting some extra batteries when you buy this lavalier microphone.  I like this 10 pack of Everready LR44 button batteries.  Mike suggested having extra batteries in case you forget to turn off the microphone as it stays on until it is turned off.  It is very reasonably priced so not having an automatic off feature is no big deal.



SMK-Link VP4910 RemotePoint Presentation Remote This is on my wish list.  It is a remote control for computers.  It is used while making videos or presentations.  This presenter will change the slides and has a couple programmable buttons to do other things like change the speed of the tele prompter.  It’s a bit pricey yet it is the one I saw Mike Moenigs using in hid studio.  Mike also recommends the Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter and it is a lot less expensive.  In some cases you may be able to use your computers remote control like a Apple remote.  I ahve not used a presenter yet so I am not sure how much the presenter will differently, yet if Mike recommends it is must be the way to go.  Mike Koenigs is famous for his Traffic Geyser Video Distribution Software.  I am a member of Traffic Geyser and Main Street marketing Machines and presenters are a tool recommended in the training.


Dragon Dictate 2.0 for Mac I have this on my wish list to write articles and blog posts faster by just talking and having the computer do the typing for me.  Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 11 is the same voice to speech software for windows computers.  Technology is great and the thought of just rambling along and having all y words created into a document like a word document sounds exciting.




Apple TV I love my Apple TV.  I listen to my podcasts on my TV streaming from my computer itunes library.  It is great to watch your marketing or self help videos on your TV.  It streams any video you have added to your iTunes library.  I use it for streaming Netflix movies also.  It is a nice item to have in your office even if you just use it to get internet radio.  There are hundreds of internet radio stations all categorized by music type.  I wrote a Apple TV review “Why Buy the Apple TV – The Internet TV Player“.  This is not a huge productivity tool, yet it is a nice to have a would make a great gift.



Stanley Battery Operated Electric Stapler I just added this to my wish list because my old electric battery operated stapler wore out.  I love it and it saves you wrists from the continual stapling.. Perfet for any office home or enterprise.  Ergonomically correct way to staple and no wires because of the battery operation.



Swingline Commercial Electric 3 Hole Punch, 20 Sheet Capacity, 3 Hole, 74525 I have this hole punch and it is totally awesome.  I like to file my notes in binders so this is the perfect companion for just about any home office.  This is great for Internet Marketers because they need a way to organize all the training material and e-books.  This unit works perfect and is highly recommended.


Mobile Marketing M-Card Mobile Marketing is really taking off.  Go Green and get an electronic business Card called a M-Card.  I have one and love it.  Text message ClayFranklin to phone number 90210 on your smart phone to see how quickly your get my information.   Mobile Marketing is totally Awesome.  These plans start at under $15 a month with your very own Keyword at 90210 mobile marketing.  The very best present would be to buy your favorite Internet Marketer or Home Based Business person there own business with iZigg so they can add selling Mobile Media as another product they offer to clients.  Highly recommended.

Subscribe Now

What would you add to this list?

Internet Marketers Wish List Gift Ideas is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

The best WordPress blog plugins will help your WordPress blog visitors have a better experience, help drive more web traffic to your WordPress blog, help you build SEO Backlinks to your site and make your life as a blog owner easier.

Listed below are my favorite WordPress Blog plugins and I believe you will enjoy using them on your WordPress blog.

List of the 15 best wordpress blog plugins.

1) All in one SEO.
This plug in provides Search Engine Optimization for your wordpress Blog.
I usually use the Thesis WordPress Theme with build in SEO on all my blogs.  If the WordPress Theme you are using does not have built in SEO features, then the All in One SEO plug in will help you site get found by the search engines.

2) RSS Footer Blog Plugin by Joost de Valk
Eavery blog has an RSS feed that sends out your blog articles to other sites. This plug in will add a footer to your feed that has a link back to your site so anyone reading your article from a RSS feed will have a link back to your site as well as creating a link to your site that is appreciated by search engines.

3) Google Sitemap Generator
Every Website needs a Site map to please the search engines.  I use comments to prioritize the blog posts for the automatic site map priorities.

4) Akismet
This comes with every WordPress blog and I love it for catching comment spam.

5) Backtype Connect
Totally awesome WordPress Blog plugin that pulls in mentions of your blog post as a comment.  This plugin shows related conversations (from other blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and more) inline with your own comments.

6) Broken Link Checker
Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.  This is a great blog plugin that finds any broken links on your site.  It works great especially if you have affiliate links on your site.

7) Do Follow
Removes the evil nofollow attribute that WordPress adds in comments.  This plug in gives SEO value to blog comments and rewards the commenter with a valuable link back to their site.

8 ) Google Analytics for WordPress
Great plugin if your blog theme does not have a Google analytics feature.  This plug in saves to the trouble of adding your Google Analytics code to your site editor.

9) SexyBookmarks
SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts  It looks great and is a bit more fun that using some of the other social bookmarking plugins.  This is a great social bookmarketing plugin.  The other popular one is Sociable.

10) Vipers Video Quicktags
Easily embed videos from various video websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo into your posts.  You can fully configure how the videos are displayed (width, height, colors, alignment on the page) and much more. Your site will even stay (X)HTML valid unlike with the code provided by most video sites.

11) WordPress Database Backup
This plugin will send you a email with a backup of your wordpress database on a regular schedule.

12) TweetMeme Retweet Button
Getting your Blog posts tweeted is a good thing and this plugin is familiar to your readers and will make it easier for your readers to retweet your post.

13) Thesis OpenHook ( For Thesis WordPress Theme users only)
This plugin allows you to insert arbitrary content into the many hooks that the Thesis Theme Framework provides. If you are not familiar with adding hooks to your theme, then this plug in is for you.

14) CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

15) Pretty Link
Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website!  This is a great plug in for tracking links on your site.  Wonderful for affiliate marketing webistes.  I use it on my What Laptop Should I buy site.

Speciality WordPress Blog Plugins:

1) Testimonial manager
No longer supported, yet it works great.  You can see an example at Jumper Insurance

2) Fast Secure Contact Form
Easy way to allow visitors to send you a question or comment by email directly to you with a Captcha form.  Not to be sued to capture email addresses for you list like Aweber Email manager, it’s just to get direct feedback.  You can see an example on the SMS Mobile Media Marketing & Internet Marketing Consulting page

3) Wibiya toolbar
Interesting new footer toolbar like you can see on the iZigg SMS Mobile Media Marketing 90210 page. (Update, I removed this social media sharing toolbar because it was messing around wtht my images on the site)

4) WPTouch
Add mobile phone automation to your blog with the WP Touch  WordPress Blog Plugin.  You will see that many sites like mashable use this plug in to provide mobile users a fast loading easy to read site that is mobile friendly.
There is a free version and a more powerful and flexible paid version.  Choose the one that is right for you.  If you are on a mobile phone, you are seeing WP Touch in action.  It has a button at the bottom that offers visitors the opportunity to turn off the mobile version so that is really cool.

Did I miss one of your favorites?  Add it to the comments below so the next reader will benefit.

The 15 Best WordPress Blog Plugins is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

SMS Mobile Marketing is the hottest trend for Business Marketing today.  It is not a question of if you are using mobile marketing for your business, it’s a question of when you will be using mobile marketing for your Business.

This is an exciting time for mobile marketing as the use of SMS text messaging for business is exploding.  97% of text messages get read and 83% get read withing 1 hour. 90% of marketing emails are not read.

iZigg has the most recognizable short code of 90210.

Today on the busy streets people are walking around looking at their phone.  “Go Where the Eyes Are” Get involved in selling Mobile SMS Marketing.
52,083 text messages are sent every second.

iZigg 90210 SMS Mobile marketing service is now available.
I have taken a leadership position with the company and am looking for people who want to sell 90210 SMS mobile marketing to clients or who want to build a sales team selling mobile marketing for business.

See how you can join the Mobile Marketing Revolution by calling 408-768-7368. Or you can send me a SMS text message to 408-768-7368 and I will see it immediately.

Call me or send a text message to 408-768-7368 so I can explain it in more detail to you.

If you are a business looking for a SMS Mobile Marketing service with a easy to remember short code, contact me to see what is right for your business.  There is no set up fee and no contract.
There are entry level plans all the way up to Enterprise level service with unlimited messages.

Call me today if iZigg SMS mobile marketing is interesting to you.

iZigg SMS Mobile Marketing 90210 is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

Why get the Apple TV?

The Apple TV internet TV connection device will change the way we watch TV.
Apple TV streams Video to your TV from your computer and uses digital HDMI cable to connect to your TV.  I see a Apple revolution going on with the constant stream of cool high technology products that revolutionizes the way we do things.

Take me for example.  I worked for Hewlett Packard Company for over 20 years.  I managed Intel Processors, Chipsets, Boards, components, packaging and DRAMS (memory chips for computers) and R&D to bring out the latest and greatest new HP Product.  I would never buy an Apple product when I worked there.  I use HP laptops, HP Officejet printer, HP high definition monitor and use the HP 12C calculator.

So what happened?
iPhones came out with the latest and greatest possible device capabilities of any other mobile phone.  I decided to get one right when they came out for $400 for my business.  I loved it.  I use it for Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, TV guide, remote control, camera and flashlight.  It is totally awesome.  I used it for many years and just got the iPhone 4 and it is so much better.

Buy the Apple Macbook laptop computer
Then I had virus protection that was slowing down my computer and I wanted to start making videos.  The Mac has iMovie with every computer and it is a great video editor.  I bought my first Macbook in 2008.

Buy the iPad tablet computer device
Then the iPad came out and it looked like a great way to read books and watch movies and get email and run social networks.  I bought a iPad for my birthday because I wanted something I did not need.  I love it now and use it all the time.

Buy a Macbook Pro 13″ laptop computer
I got fed up with my windows computer crashing all the time so I decided to switch my primary computer to a Mac in December 25, 2009.  I love it.  The build quality is great.  It does not crash as much and after getting used to it can pretty much do everything I did on my Windows machine.  I prefer Windows file management system.  It is a lot easier for me to find what I am looking for.   The Macbook Pro is a delight to use and is sturdy and is a wonderful laptop that I like better than Windows laptops.

Buy a Airport extreme wireless router
My old Linksys WRT-54G router was dropping the internet connection on wired and wireless connections and it was very frustrating.  I searched for a new router and decided on the Apple Airport Extreme dual band N router.  There was a close second with the D-Link router, yet I went with Apple because I like their products.  They feel substantial and well built and the technology does not seem to go obsolete very fast.  I brought it home plugged it in and that was about it.  No muss no fuss, it just started to work without any fancy set up or reading the instructions or anything like that. Apple tends to be a very customer service friendly company while carefully watching the bottom line.

Apple is the best run company in the world.
The best just got better.
Apple is leading the charge of implementing new useful technology for the masses.
Apple is setting the standard and raising the bar for other slower less innovative companies to integrate into this new standard set by Apple.  The are becoming a huge force in advertising with the iPad.  So much so that the publishers are not very happy with the way Apple is managing the information the advertisers get since it is less that they are used to.  The publishers are used to getting all the demographic information for the people that took action because of an advertisement they ran in a magazine.  Apple is renting the TV shows for a day or two for 99 cents.  At Amazon, you can buy the TV show forever for the same 99 cents.

Buy the Apple TV

For me, I am getting tired of paying high prices to the Cable company every month.  I get HD digital signals from a TV antenna on my roof so I get the regular 1, 4, 5, 7, 11 as well as local channels.  I can watch most TV shows online either with the iPad and the ABC application player and tv.com application.  Hulu.com has most major TV shows available to watch for free the next day.  Training for just about anything is available on YouTube for free.  It will be very useful and cool to be able to stream video from my computer wirelessly instead of unhooking the DVD player HDMI cable and connecting it to my laptop.  I think for $99 that the Apple TV is a perfect thing to buy to keep up with technology.

My Apple TV review based on the technology results in a Buy rating.

What do you think about Apple and the Apple TV?
Type up a quick comment.

Why Buy the Apple TV – The Internet TV Player is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

Click here to view the embedded video.

Today this video has had 6,373,286 views.

It is only 33 seconds long.

Viral Videos are viral because people want to watch it.  I specifically went to You Tube to find out why Old Spice has been a trending topic on Twitter.  I found this Video and thought it was amusing, entertaining, great video effects and super short.  The Title is short “Old Spice Body Wash”.  The call to action on the YouTube video page is to Share the video,  join the Old Spice Facebook Fanpage and to follow Old Spice on Twitter.

If you want a video to go viral.

1) The video should be short or by someone very famous.

2) The video should be entertaining or funny.

3) The video should be on YouTube.

4) The video should have a keyword in the title

5) The video should be publicized a bit to get it started.  Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Press Release or if it is a highly searched keyword, it may just go viral by itself.

6) The video should be submitted to as many video sharing sites as possible.  I use a Viral Video submission tool that automates your video distribution to get distributed to all the best video sharing sites automatically.  Special $1 trial offer Automatic Video Submission tool

What other ways can you think of that helps a video go viral?  Leave a comment below.

Viral Video How Did Old Spice Do It? is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

How to use search engine keyword tools to improve web site traffic is a tutorial to help you get more visitors to your web site using keywords and keyword software to determine the best keywords for your blog posts and articles. I was going to originally call the article “Do Keyword Research in 3 Easy Steps”.  After you read the article you will see why I changed it to “Search Engine Keyword Tools to Improve Web Site Traffic”
Start your keyword research at the free wordtracker keyword tool.  This will give you an idea of the daily search volume for your niche keyword.  Once you find a good keyword phrase that you like, copy and paste that keyword phrase into the search box and search again to see what other phrases people search for.  Once you find good keyword phrases, go to Market Samurai to get the detailed information about the keyword phrase you are researching.  Market Samurai will provide all the additional information you need to validate your keyword as the correct one to use.  Market Samurai provides related keywords to consider and the trends for those keywords as well as the a magnitude of information to help you decide if you have chosen the correct keyword.  One thing that is really important for your keyword is the CPI index because it determines the commercial viability for the keyword.  Some keywords like “free” do not have a good CPI because generally we are looking for keywords that result in people paying money when they find what they are looking for. Market Samurai pulls information from Google, Microsoft and other search engines and databases to provide all the data in one concise place and saves you time.  Some of the information Market Samurai provides is available if you go to many places on the internet and do the research on each site, yet it takes a lot of time and energy.  If you do not have Market Samurai yet, you can check at the Google free keyword tool to see the trends for your keyword and to get synonyms for the keywords you are considering.  Market Samurai will provide a lot more information for you.  If you do not have Market Samurai Keyword, SEO,  Google Ad creator software, Google free keyword tool will help you with your keyword research.
Good keywords will bring traffic to your site or article and if you write a compelling content article or post, the people that find the article will be interested in learning more about you or what you have to offer them.
It is not necessary to get super high volume keywords with a lot of competition.  Even if the keyword you choose has 21 searches a day, when you multiply it out by 365 days in a year it is approximately 7,665 searches a year.
Combining keywords is also a great strategy.  In the article “Free Anti Virus Program”
talking about “Microsoft Security essentials”.  The keyword “antivirus” gets 889 searches a day, “Free anti virus program” gets 145 searches a day.  This article is not about getting money, instead it is just providing valuable information to my readers so using the word free was not a concern.
For this article, Market Samurai provided the detailed keyword information, “keyword tool” has 14,795 searches,  good up trend in volume of searches, a SEO value of $15,286.19 (The total value of traffic that a web-site that ranked #1 for a keyword in Google) “keyword search tool” has 891 searches, a bit of a drop off of the trending, cost per click of $4.38 and about 3 clicks a day for the number one spot if doing PPC and a SEO value of $1,639.08.
“Search keywords” gets 2,433 searches a day, 1,021 possible clicks from SEO if a number one ranked site, good solid flat trend, a SEO value of $3,004.27 and you may find that it was used it as the article title.  Now let’s look to add another keyword phrase to the title.  The only thing is that keyword gets more searches that keywords.
“Keyword research” gets 5,425 searches, not trending very well,  yet has a SEO value of $5,992.46.
“Keyword tools” has a high click through rate of 2.95%, good trend, SEO value of $1,298.35,  1,627 searches a day, SEO traffic of 683 a day and a total value of traffic from adwords of $91.20 for the #1 ranked Google Adwords advertiser.   “Internet Keyword” Has 266 searches a day so “Internet Keyword Tools” could be a article title and both keywords are in the title “Internet Keywords” and “Keyword Tools”.
I would like people reading this article to get the free trial of Market Samurai so adding Keyword Software may help draw the correct people to read this article since Market Samurai is a powerful keyword tool that generates keywords, provides all the details to compare keywords and get the commercial viability of the keywords along with a lot of other cool things like write google keyword rich ads for you.  Here are a couple of ideas for the article title: 
“Keyword Software and Keyword Tools to increase your web site traffic”.
“Search Engine Keyword Tools to improve web site traffic”
Search Engine Keyword has 2,433 searches a day, Keyword tools has 1,627 searches a day, “increase web site traffic” has 92 searches a day.  “increase website traffic” only has 53 searches a day so web site is better than website.  web site traffic has 178 searches a day.
“Search engine keyword tools to improve web site traffic” has 4 keyword phrases with a combined search of 2,433 + 1,627 + 92 + 178 = 4,330 total searches combined.
This is highly competitive and sometimes it is better to go for the lower volume search phrases and dominate the results on the long tail keyword rather than go for the high volume keywords with a lot of competition.  This will give you an idea of the way to think about keywords and how you can combine them.  You also see the power of using a tool like Market Samurai to get the real inside information about the keywords instead of just rely on the search volume a

nd free keyword tools.  Market Samurai offers a free trail and if you decide to buy it you only pay once and there is no recurring charges.  It is also low priced compared to the other keyword tools I have evaluated.  I will get a small commission if you buy from the link in this article and that is how I pay the bills.  Hopefully you received valuable information in this article and will try Market Samurai by clicking here now.

Inside your article be sure to repeat the keyword right away in the first sentence and then use it again once in the article or add a few other keyword combination’s that relate to the topic that you have found in your research.  I always go to Market Samurai to finalize my keyword research to find out the value of SEO for the keyword, the cost per click people are paying for the keywords in ads, the trend lines for the keywords and also to get additional keywords that are related to add into the article or blog post.

Some good keywords to start off your article include “How to…” “7 easy tips to …” “Best way to …”

If you found this article useful, go get the free trial of  the best keyword research tool available to help you write great headlines and keyword rich articles now while it is on your mind.

Search Engine Keyword Tools to Improve Web Site Traffic is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

Things to do to move your internet business forward using web site analytics

1)    Look at your web site for usability for your customers.  Is it too busy?  Is there a clear call to action?  Are there too many ads? Will anyone come back or sign up to the RSS feed because they enjoyed the time there and they found a solution to their problem or question.  Action: Remove some ads from your site if you have more than a couple, be sure that your site looks pleasant to the eye and has a clear call to action on each page or blog post.

2)    Look at your Blog theme or website design.   Is it clean and pleasant to look at?  Action: consider getting a nice clean theme for your blog.  Often a premium theme is better than a free theme and has better coding.  Action: Look at changing your blog theme if it is not easy to look at and pleasing to the eye.  For my site I plan to start using the Thesis blog theme or a Studio Press Theme with clean code and pleasant colors and a nice look.

3)    Check the code of your site.  Google and disabled people like clean code and it is to the benefit of your web site purpose to have clean code.  Action: go to W3C.org and validate the code on your site for HTML and CSS.  Be sure to correct all errors and do not worry about the warnings as much.  If you are able to clean the code all the way be sure to add the W3C Validated HTML and CSS logos on your site.

4)    You are using Google analytics right?  If not be sure to get a Google analytics account and add the code to each of your sites and then add the tracking code to your conversion pages. For web sites you can add it just before the last body tag or in your footer so it is on each page or if you have a blog, you can use a blog plug in like Google analytics plug in. Google Analytics is the best free analytics tool available.  There is a great resource to learn about Google analytics at http://analytics.blogspot.com/.  Action: Verify that you have Google analytics on all your web pages and conversion pages and use analytics to track your conversions.

5)    Do you understand “Why” customers come to your website?  Write down the target person that you expect to arrive there and what they may expect to get while there.
Action: Write down the “why customers come to my site”.  Write down the target audience with as many demographics as possible.  Now look at your site through the eyes of your target audience.  Are they getting what they want when they arrive at your website or blog?  Is it easy to navigate and find the solution to the question or problem they are trying to solve when they get there?  If it is great, if not make the necessary changes to have a fun exciting site for your customers that is easy to navigate and without too many distractions as mentioned in number one above.

6)    Have you requested feedback on your site from your visitors or from people you know in your target market?  Often time’s candid feedback can be very useful in determining if your site meets the needs of you target market.  Action: Set up an exit survey on your site so that visitors can provide feedback on the results of their visit or go to a forum in your niche and post a request for site feedback.  You may be surprised at the results.  Take action based on the survey or site feedback and then continue to request site feedback about each three months or if doing a exit survey continue to use the exit survey, yet use a script that only asks each participant each three months or so.  This way you do not bug your visitors with a survey with each visit.

7)    Are you selling something or looking for your visitors to take action on your site?  If you are, try Google web site optimizer to test two different pages to see which one performs better.  Only have one thing be different on each page that you are testing so you will know what the change is that is performing better.  Action: Set up Google Web site optimizer on your web site and test two different web pages to see which one performs better and then make the better performing site the main site and make another change to test.  Keep testing and making changes and you will see improved performance or conversion with each change.

8)    Be sure you know what the success metrics are for your web site.  Are you looking to capture email subscribers?  RSS readers?  Sell a product?  Increase the trend of repeat visitors?  Be sure to start to measure the success of your web site using analytics.  Use the “So What” measurement.  For your metrics, it they increase in a way you desire, is it making you more money? Are your readers happier?  Be sure that you work to improve things that have a good “So what” factor.  Google analytics can measure conversions for you by adding a code to the thank you page for a new email subscriber or a sale.  Feedburner can measure the new RSS subscribers.  Action: Write down your success metrics for your web site and start to track it.  Then take actions and test to see if it improves the results.  Remember that when you have the data, you need to analyze it to turn the data into information.  Use the information to make changes and then rinse and repeat.

9)     If you are not familiar with all that Google analytics offers, I suggest you go there and spend some time reading and watching the tutorials.  Google analytics is very powerful and there is no reason to go buy Click tracks, Click Tale or other expensive web analytics tools until you have exhausted the resources and information Google analytics provides for free.  Google has a blog at analytics.blogspot.com that has good information and inside the Google analytics page; there is an abundance of information and tutorials.
Action: go to Google analytics and watch the tutorials and read the articles.  Go to the Google analytics blog and read up on how to better utilize Google Analytics to improve your web site performance.  Sign up for the free version of Clicktale and get a video of each of your visitors actions while on your site and a heat map of where they move the mouse.

10) Check out additional resources to learn more about web analytics and how it can improve your understanding of why customers are coming to your web site, what they do when they get there and how to improve the site and increase traffic.  Action: spend time reading up on additional web analytics tools and resources including heat maps, split testing, conversion tracking and start to measure the statistics of the analytics you are getting and turn it into information to improve conversions and traffic.  Leave a comment below and let me know what you think about Google analytics and how it has helped your business.
Here are a few good resources:
http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog/ultimate-list-of-top-29-tools-for-competitive-intelligence/comment-page-1/#comment-174
http://www.compete.com
http://www.alexa.com

http://snipurl.com/yahoowagroup

http://analytics.blogspot.com
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash
http://www.liesdamnedlies.com
http://epikone.com/blog
http://blogs.commerce360.com
http://lunametrics.blogspot.com
http://blog.instantcongition.com
http://snipurl.com/neilmason
http://webanalytics.wordpress.com
http://clayfranklin.com/10-easy-ways-to-improve-web-analytics

10 Tips to Improve Your Web Site and Measure the Results with Analytics is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

10 Things You Can Do With Little Effort to Improve Web Analytics

1) Be sure to understand the reason for your web site. Is to sell something, capture email addresses or just to provide valuable information to your target audience. If there is no money involved then it is just a hobby. Action: Write down the reason for your web site.

2) Be sure that I am contributing content that is deserving of the world to read. Then measure your successes by looking at how many readers subscribe to your RSS feed or email feed for your site to see how valuable the readers see your site. Action: have a call to action to encourage readers to subscribe to your blog at the end of each article or post. Start to track the numbers of RSS readers each month.

3) Start to get your readers to comment on your blog by asking questions or having a controversial story that gets your reader engaged. Measure the numbers of comments as an indication that your readers are enjoying your site. Action: Have a call to action in your blog post or article that encourages readers to comment. One good way is to ask a question to elicit a response.

4) If you have something to sell on your site, it is important to measure the conversion rate for your visitors. Google’s webmasters tools has the ability to capture the conversion rate for your site for free. Action: Set up Google webmasters tools and start to measure your conversion rate. Extra credit Action: set up a split test to drive improvement in your conversion rate.

5) Start to use a keyword report to see what keywords people are using to find my blog. Compare your articles to the keywords people used to come to your site and determine if you are using an optimized keyword strategy for your site and how you can improve your articles to better meet the needs of your visitors. Action: Review your site analytics from Google analytics or other source each month to track and improve your keyword strategy for your site based on what keywords people searched for to arrive at your site and the bounce rate for those keywords.

6) Be sure to measure your bounce rate by keywords. If you have a high bounce rate for a particular keyword, possibly you want to drop that keyword or enhance the value your reader gets when they arrive at your site looking for the answer to their problem or need when they searched for that keyword. Look at your top 20 entry pages, top exit page and top pages with high bounce rate and then take action to improve the value provided to your reader on these pages or evaluate changing the keyword for the page to better match what visitors are looking for. Action: Track your bounce rate by keywords each month with the goal to reduced the bounce rate on your targeted keywords by providing better value based on the desired results your reader is looking for.

7) Be sure to set a goal for your website for the next 30 days. The goal should not just be “get more visitors” because morevisitors are not a good business goal. Set a goal like get more comments because it shows reader engagement or set a goal of more RSS readers because it shows that your readers want more of what you have to offer. If you have a site that makes money, measure the income generated and set a goal to increase the income. Be sure to measure increased income against the conversion rate so you can work on conversion rather than just getting more visitors. Track things that will tell you why you had a spike in sales. When measuring conversion, you have a better idea of how well your sales funnel is working. Action: Write down the goal for your web site for the next 30 days and have tracking in place to measure the results so you will know what worked and what did not.

8) Be sure to turn your analytics data into information. The web is full of data, yet it is the wise person that can interpret the data and use it to modify the web site and predict future behavior. There are many tools to help know what your readers are doing on your site. What are the hot spots by using a heat map program or use split testing to determine what page converts better. Action: Analyze the data you get from your web site and pick a few key comparisons that you can track over time so you are dealing with information instead of just data.

9) Measure you web site ROI by tracking your goals. Did you get more work, sell more products, or get more speaking requests? Measure your ROI against your costs like time to build the site, cost of advertising, opportunity cost and numbers of visitors. Then make small changes and track the improvements. Action: Set up metrics to know how much time you spend on your site, how much money or time you spend on advertising so at the end of the month you can compare the investment to the desired results.

10) Set up feedburner for your RSS feed so you can track the subscribers, stories they read and other relevant data that you canturn into information that will improve your sites success. Action: Set up Feedburner for your site and look at all the data available to you and find out what articles are being read more often so you will have a better idea of what your visitors are looking for and interested in. Provide more of the information that you find they open and read and less of the information about what never gets opened and read.

Sign up to the RSS feed for this blog.
What is your favorite way to measure your site performance?

10 Easy Ways to Improve Web Analytics is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts

Get your free Anti Virus Program from Microsoft today by downloading Microsoft Security Essentials from Microsoft.com.

I just downloaded Microsoft Security Essentials and am running it on my PC.

I have used Trend Micro Internet Security Pro and it works great and has a lot of features. It has a firewall and advanced features.  It does require some maintenance like to set up approvals for your back up server and approve cookies for your favorite sites like Facebook, Twitter and your favorite Internet Marketing Blog so you do not need to log in with each visit.

TrendMicro and Zone Alarm are very powerful anti virus programs.  I found a discout link for Zone Alarm ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2010 – Save 50% and a discount code toTake 10% Off Trend Micro AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2010 Now! Coupon Code: trendtav If you prefer to get the Trend Internet Security I have a coupon code for you to Take 10% Off Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 Now! Coupon Code: trendsecurity

I just installed Windows 7 on my computer and my Trend Micro free trial expired so I am trying Microsoft Security Essentials and so far I like it. It installs fast, does not require any set up and according to the reviews is not a resource hog on your computer.  I especially like that it is free and highly rated. If you do not have a router on your system, I suggest you get a antivirus with a firewall like Trend Micro Internet Security or Zone Alarm.

If you would like to get Internet and Social Media Marketing tips, sign up for my email newsletter on the right, or if you are reading this somewhere else it is at http://clayfranklin.com

Free Anti Virus Program is a post from: Clay Franklin Strategic Thoughts