Mary's Blog

According to Technorati’s February 2006 study, one new weblog is created every second which amounts to about 75,000 new bogs each day. With that much competition, clearly, not every blog will be successful, so what makes one blog climb in the SERPs and gain momentum with readers while others flounder? Let’s dig into the mechanics and marketing of successful blogs and how you can be one of them.

Shout out of the day goes to this article on successfully launching a blog at avivadirectory.

For those of you that have been watching the launch of RSS Pieces, you might have noticed that we came onto the scene strong. (Our site went live in August 2006 and our marketing campaign only began in early October and already we have posts and features everywhere) And, no, it’s not because we have a lot of marketing dollars to throw at this thing, it’s because we are using the following free techniques to drive quality traffic back to our blog. The same techniques you can use!

Make a good first impression

Write content that connects personally with your audience and introduce yourself with an about page and/or welcome message on the front page of your blog! People like to know who they are dealing with, so fill them in on who you are and what you are about. FYI: being humorous and humble will help people to relate to you better than listing every magnificent thing you have ever done or award you have ever won (Dude, only your mother cares about that stuff).

Be sure to launch your site with no fewer than 5-10 posts live. People come to your site to see what you are about. If all you have is one or two posts, they will see you as a flash in the pan. So, launch with a reasonable body of work that they can sink their teeth into. Having more than one post on various topics with varying writing styles will also help you to determine which types of articles and topics your visitors are most interested in.

Add at least one new post daily with at least 250 words. Be sure your posts are well written and the titles are catchy enough to spark people’s interest. Posts should be credible so you can build your authority. Wanna learn how to build credibility through content? Read my recent post: Don’t get caught lying on your blog.

Get people connected

Visibly display your RSS buttons on each page to increase the number of subscriptions to your blog. Blog subscribers are the key to a successful, consistently high trafficked blog. Beyond your natural RSS feed, offer an email version of your RSS feed. Both CopyBlogger and Aviva agree that an email subscription option can more than double your subscriber conversion. Another way to kick start more “referral” traffic is to clearly display Delicious and Digg chicklets so people can easily submit stories they found helpful to these behemoth social networks.

Build your network

Beyond, promoting yourself with ping services like pingoat and googleping, get out there and actually seed your own posts to social networks like Delicious, Digg and Real Estate Voices. For example, since I started submitting RSS Pieces posts to Real Estate Voices, I have noticed that a full 7% of all the traffic to our site is generated from Real Estate Voices. Amazing, huh? Well, that’s the beauty of an industry specific tool like that… it can really drive quality traffic back to your site. If you are having trouble getting “dug” on these social network sites, ask friends, family, the bum on the corner, etc to vote for your article. Worst they can do is say “no.”

Commenting on other blogs with quality, educational comments is the key to getting other “experts” and “blogmasters” in your niche interested in you. It is also a way to drive quality traffic from those authority sites back to your site. You must post valuable comments- not just “hey there, great post.” Some of the more popular blogs for engaging in the market are:

360Digest

ActiveRain Member Blog

The Future of Real Estate Marketing

The Real Estate Bloggers

Transparent Real Estate

Zillow Blog

A little bird told me that Jim Cronin is working on an Ultimate Guide to Commenting post that will shed much more light on this subject than I could ever hope to, so stay tuned and check out the Tomato often!

Include outbound links to other authority sites in each of your posts. Webmasters check their referring domains and backlinks often, so if you start driving some quality traffic back to them, they are more likely to put a link to your site on theirs! It also helps you build relationships with other authorities in your niche. Plugging yourself into the greater community is essential to getting recognized as an authority yourself. Never mind the fact that all those quality inbound links add value to you in Google’s eyes.

Market yourself

FYI: a blog is your own reality show where you are the superstar. Be a diva and get out there and promote your brand (i.e. YOU). Contact other “expert” bloggers in your niche and offer to provide them with a “guest” post (yes, you can actually guest star on someone else’s blog). For example, look at the great opportunity, Transparent Real estate gave me with this guest post. That post continues to drive a substantial number of unique visitors back to my site. Thanks PK, again!

Build your backlinks.

Not even going to go into this again. If you haven’t read my Ultimate Guide to Backlink Building yet, go for it! Most of what I have to say on this subject is there and my fingers are getting weary, so follow the link if you are interested.

That’s it, boys and girls. Those are my 5 simple steps to a successful blog! By devoting less than 1 hour per day to your blog marketing, you can grow your online presence and traffic substantially inside of 6 months.

How to drive local traffic to your blog

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:38:05 -0600

We all want big traffic, right? You know the kind of traffic I'm talking about. The kind that makes that Alexa graph climb and climb and your heart go pitter pat. If that's all you care about, you're in luck because the truth is any moron with a blog can build big traffic with just a little bit of effort and lot of targeted content. The rub is that big traffic typically means a large geographically diverse audience. Is that what you really want? Heck, no. What the savvy real estate blogger wants is big LOCAL blog traffic. So, how do you go about driving very targeted local traffic and even more importantly, how do you go about measuring what percentage of your total traffic is local?

1. List yourself locally

Let the local web know you exist. Make sure you list yourself in the following local directories. This is probably one of the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways to build your local business.

2. Comment on local blogs

Build your local credibility by commenting on at least 5 popular local blogs regularly. What kinds of blogs should you look for? Well, clearly you shouldn't go commenting on your competition's blogs, so my recommendation is to seek out popular non-real estate related local blogs. If that doesn't make sense to you, think about it this way; most of your future clients are already living in your local area. You want them to know your name and trust you even before they consider buying and selling a home. The best way to do that is to get out there- both physically in your community and virtually in the blogosphere. Commenting on other local blogs whether it be about a hot community issue or how you just learned to snowboard will help people get to know you. When you comment, you automatically leave behind your name and a link to your website, so there is no need to include it in your comment.

Examples of blogs to look for:

Look for local blogs on topics that you have an interest in or an opinion on. The more you know about the subject, the more valuable your commentary wll be be and the more other readers will be interested in you.

If you live in a waterfront community, look for blogs about fishing, boating, sailing, SCUBA diving, water skiing, etc.

If you are into golfing, look for local golfing blogs.

If you are an avid reader, see if a local library or book club has a blog.

Are you a couch potato? Not to worry, plenty of blogs have sprung up around popular television shows like the Sopranos and Dexter, see if there is a local blogger posting about a show you watch.

Where else to shop for blogs to comment on?

There are plenty of blog search tools out there, however these are some of the most popular and easiest to use. Use simple search terms like your farm area or areas of interest to find blogs that match your criteria.

Blogger

Technorati

Blog Search Engine

IceRocket Blog Search

Yahoo Blog Search

Blog Search

Feedster.com

How do you select local blogs to comment on?

This is simple, you look for three things:

1. Is the blog about something you can add valuable commentary to? If you are a seasoned boater and you live in a boating community- a local yacht blog is perfect for you.

2. Does the blog have a wide appeal and solid participation? If there ain't nobody but you commenting on the blog, move on! Find a blog with enough participation to make it worth your while. Remember the idea is to drive local traffic back to your blog.

3. Is the blog owner a credible resource you could recruit to post on your blog? Let's say that you find a local insurance agent that is blogging, you definitely want to start developing a relationship with that blogger. Not only can you grow your local network, but you might even be able to trade blogs for a day to grow your respective audiences.

3. Pepper your text with local keywords

When you write the content on your real estate blog or website, make sure it is laser focused. Come up with three to five local keywords or phrases you want that page to be searchable by and repeat those words or phrases throughout the article. Don’t keyword spam, but rather use the terms naturally throughout the article. For example, notice how I repeat the term “real estate blog” throughout this article. I use it naturally, when it makes sense, because I want to be searchable by that term. Consider using terms like your farm areas and local attractions reguarly throughout each post.

4. Checking your local traffic

Let's say that you have done everything you can to attract local traffic, how do you about measuring it? Most web metrics programs simply measure total traffic, RSS Pieces actually has tools right in the back end that map traffic based on geography through geo ip tracking. Our mapping system allows you zoom in and actually see where your traffic is coming from. It can help you to better understand your traffic and tweak your articles to attract more local hits. Just check out the image of RSS Pieces traffic from the last hour below:

OK, so you don't have an RSS Pieces blog and you don't have this super cool technology, what do you do? A tool like stats counter can help you to discover your local traffic.

Sacrilicious Launches, Nicole and Mary Get a Book Deal and You're Invited!

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:16:50 -0500

Are you bad to the bone? I know I am. And I don't really think that is such a bad thing. For those of you that don't yet know, Nicole Nicolay (another totally scandalous blogger) and I have been in the process of writing a book called Sacrilicious: the art of shock and awe marketing. Well, as our manuscript grows, our publisher becomes more impatient and we get closer to the end, we thought we'd launch a blog and a YouTube channel (coming in the next few months) to grab some readers, some attention and, well, raise some hell. Of course, what ensued was pure mayhem. And when I say mayhem, I mean, that kind of mayhem where you are pretty sure you are going to hell and the only thing you start praying for now is that they serve good wine there. So, with our new Rosemary's Baby live on the NET, we are inviting contributors and readers to join in the fun on the Sacrilicious Marketing website. This is a main stream marketing blog that is designed to make you blush but to make you NEED to come back with a vicious jones to read our shockingly aweful yet deliciously sinful word on how to market yourself and stand out from the crowd.

If you'd like to contribute or you have suggestions for the site or want to send us love or hate mail, please contact us here.

Obviously, we are still adding all the content, but you can get the idea from the site as you see it in its evil little infancy.

Here are a few posts you might want to check out:

1. Seth Godin Corrected My Spelling of Sacrilicious: Marketers need to be more pop culture sensitive

2. Fashion Tip for Female Marketers: pair a pushup bra with a brain

4. 10 Ways to make yourself Famous on the internet

5. Coin Your Own Quote: Make people remember you by using great one liners

Sacriliciously,

-Mary

Now, since one does not kick off the sacrilicious without a totally taudry post... here are:

The Top 13 Celebrity Sex Tape Leaks of All Time.

1. Pamela Anderson

Pamela Anderson and then-husband Tommy Lee had various interludes from their honeymoon placed online by Internet Entertainment Group in 1998 as one of the earliest internet celebrity sex tapes.

Pamela Anderson and Bret Michaels (singer of the band Poison) had a sex tape released as a DVD on 7 September 2005. The footage had been circulating on the internet for many years.

2. Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes fame made numerous home sex tapes in the 1970s with early VCR technology. His exploits were immortalized in the movie Auto Focus.

3. Dustin Diamond of Saved by the Bell fame authorized the release of a 40-minute sex tape in 2006 in the hopes that it would bring in profits and provide a boost to his career.

4. Fred Durst, the frontman for the band Limp Bizkit, had a video of him and an unknown woman having sex leaked onto the Internet by a repairman who had been repairing his computer.

5. Kelsey Grammer sued Internet Entertainment Group under the mistaken impression that it had purchased from his former girlfriend Cerlette Lamme a sex tape the couple had made. He dropped the suit after IEG counter-sued and stated that it had not bought or possessed the video.

6. Tonya Harding and her husband Jeff Gillooly had a sex tape that was leaked onto the internet and subsequently became so widely available that the couple decided to legitimately release it on their own. It is commercially sold by Penthouse Home Video as the "Wedding Night" tape, although the wedding gown was actually a Halloween costume.

7. Paris Hilton and then-boyfriend Rick Salomon recorded themselves having sex in a hotel room, shot in night-vision. Hilton initially attempted to stop the distribution of the tape, but later agreed to its release. She now receives profits from the tape. Unusual for a celebrity scandal, the notoriety surrounding the tape only served to increase Hilton's fame. This footage, along with additional full-color footage, was released commercially under the title 1 Night in Paris.

8. Socialite Kim Kardashian confirmed the existence of a sex tape of her made by then-boyfriend Ray J. She threatened to take legal action to block its planned distribution by Vivid Video.

9. Joanie Laurer (better known as Chyna) and fellow professional wrestler Sean Waltman (aka X-Pac) appeared in a home sex tape sold under the title 1 Night in China. Unusually, the tape was not accidentally leaked, but was actually solicited to pornographic film distributors by the duo, possibly in an attempt at a career boost.

10. Rob Lowe faced controversy in the 1980s; he taped himself having sex with two young girls, one of whom turned out to be underage.

11. Nicole Narain and Colin Farrell have a 13-minute sex tape. Farrell confirmed the existence of the tape and successfully obtained a court order blocking its distribution, but in January 2006, copies of the tape appeared on the Internet.

12. Robert Ritchie (AKA Kid Rock) and Scott Stapp (former singer of the band Creed) appear in a sex tape from 1999 where the two engage in sex acts with four groupies. California pornography company Red Light District planned to release the tape in 2006, but one of the women involved filed to block it. Ritchie also filed an injunction, called Stapp an "idiot", and blamed him for the tape's leak.

13. Verne Troyer, actor and stuntman, is currently suing over the release of a sex tape between himself and a model, which he claims was stolen and is in the hands of the same film producer that released Paris Hilton's sex tape.

Top 10 Free SEO Web Tools

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:36:28 -0600

Just starting to understand how important SEO is to your overall web strategy? Well, fear not, I have put together a list of 10 of my favorite free web-based SEO tools that will help you to SEO your site like a pro. Why pay beaux coup bucks for something you can do yourself with the right tools? So, without further ado, here are my very favorite SEO tools for optimizing real estate blogs and websites:

We Build Web Pages: This tool allows you to compare your site against the top 10 listed sites in Google for a particular keyword or phrase. You simply enter your keyword and the system will begin comparing 9 different metrics for the top 10 rankings. This allows you to quickly compare the Yahoo rank, MSN rank, Google pages indexed, altavista pages indexed, backlinks to page, backlinks to domain, all in anchor rank, age of url, and whether or not the phrase is on the page. Check out the rest of their SEO tools here.
Read also: How to select 100% Yahoo! relevent keywords

Zippy: Zippy is a new meta search engine that queries other major engines and returns results in a format most suited for Webmasters and SEOs. The site was launched in September by the seasoned SEO Dave Naylor, and provides some valuable tools for site optimization.

URL Trends: UrlTrends allows you to see at a glance any of the information that you want to see about all of the selected urls. Whether you only want to see the PageRank of the Urls, or everything they monitor, you can now do so very easily.
Read also: URGENT: Get ready for the next PageRank update

NUAH: Super cool site. Crawls your entire site, see how many pages you have, their respective PageRanks, keywords and descriptions. Also has good sitemap generators for both Yahoo! and Google.
- Google Sitemap Generator: Create a valid Google Sitemap with no programming experience needed. Why should you install and configure a confusing python script when you can have Nuah.com to crawl your website and build a valid sitemap.gz file?
- Google PageRank Crawler: Easily get a big picture view of your Google PageRank for your entire website.
- Yahoo Sitemap Generator: Create a valid Yahoo Sitemap with no programming experience needed.
- Link Check Crawler: Let's face it links can expire, because invalid/expired links can effect both your search engine position and reputation we recommend you validate the integrity of your links with our Free Link Validation Tool.
Read also: How to increase visitor retention, leads and PageRank with links.

Widexl: I love this tool. I mostly use the Meta Tag Analyzer and the Link Popularity tools but each of their tools is powerful and useful. Widexl is a web developer’s best friend. They offer the following free hosted tools to assist in SEO:
- Link Popularity - How popular are you on the internet?
- Search Engine Saturation How many pages do you have indexed?
- Meta Tag Analyzer - Analyze the Meta Tags from your website
- Password Generator - Password Generator for Basic and Digest authentication
- Geo Tracker - Locate country by IP address or domain name
Read also: Ultimate guide to backlinks

iWebTool: I don’t think an RSS Pieces post would be complete without mentioning the backlinks and PageRank predictor from iwebtool. However, iWebTool has about a ton of other very useful SEO tools, that deserve mentioning as well such as a Google Banned Checker, Link Popularity, Keyword Suggestion, Search Engine Position, etc.
Read also: Where does your site rank in the SERPs?

Ezer: Need to check your Page Rank across all the data centers? This is a very handy tool. You can even get an idea of whe they are about to update PR with this tool.

Link Harvester: Are you looking to do some in-depth link analysis? If so, the Link Harvester is certainly for you. This tool is much more advanced than most link analysis software currently on the market. Link Harvester:
- quickly finds almost every single site that is linking to you
- reports how many pages of your web site are indexed
- reports how many links are pointing to any specific page
- provides links to the Wayback Machine and WhoIs source next to each domain
- reports the total number of inbound links, home page links, and deep link ratio
- quickly grabs the number of .gov, .edu, and .ac.uk inbound links
- indicates if a site links to your site more than 5 times by bolding that particular link in the list of results.
  Read also: See your site like a search engine does

HitTail: This tool is endlessly useful. I, personally, find that most people don’t understand the long tail search. HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. It presents these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site.

Read also: RSS Pieces SEO Tools

Firefox SEO extension: When Aaron Wall of SEOBook says something is cool, we take note. I have been using this very cool SEO extension for Firefox (my favorite browser) for quite some time now and love it. I can click on the tool to display meta tags for any site I visit without having to switch to code view and scroll all over creation for them. It does much more than just that but that is one of my favorite features.
Read also: Do youknow the 6 signs of blog death?

Top 10 Free Programs and Websites I Can't Live Without and You Shouldn't Have to Either

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:43:50 -0500

Alright, it's the weekend and I totally don't feel like talking geek, SEO, blogging or real estate. So, here are some of the things I have found on the web that I couldn't imagine living without. These things either greatly entertain me or make my life/job easier and I think you should know about them too. Oh yeah, these tools are also totally free, which rocks, 'cause I'm cheap.

1. Hulu.com - watch streaming TV shows and movies for free

Hulu is just cool. Watch your favorite TV shows and movies online for free. Totally legal (because none of us would ever violate a copyright by using the torrents.) because they sponsor to usage of the copyright with ads! I use this all the time to entertain my son.

Prefer to Download Movies?

Speaking of the torrents, thePirateBay.org is my favorite, closely followed by seedpeer.com. For the uninitiated - Torrents are peer to peer networks (meaning my machine and your machine can search each other) where you can download movies, images, software, music etc. Because I go old school from time to time, I also like eMule (although it freaks me out it is written in Visual C++ which basically means that it s held together with rocket science theory, Miracle Whip and scotch tape.)

2. Actionext.com - create and listen to free music play lists

Actionext.com Killer site that allows you to search for songs, listen to them and create playlists. It also has an open wiki-like tool where you can get lyrics to the songs you are listening to. I love being able to find the songs, build the playlist, share the lists (see the embedded widget on the left of my blog - totally annoying, right? Another reason you should NEVER have music playing when a visitor lands on your site!!!) and even read the lyrics in one place.

Want to share music socially and see other's playlists?

Other music search and playlist sites you might like: 8tracks (another playlist site), Tagoo.ru (terrific site for finding hard to find songs online - lets you search and download from other people's machine's).

Try Blip.fm if you want to share music and fid other people that like the same kind music you like. It's life streaming for music - you can even connect it to your twitter account so you can share your music with all your followers.

3. Jing - record screencasts with voice overs and capture images from your desktop and share online

LOVE THIS. I can record screen casts with audio and publish them to the web. Very easy to use and high quality! Think of Jing as a supplement to all your chat discussions, email threads, forum posts and blog entries. It sits nicely on your desktop, ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment's notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content which you can paste into any of your conversations.

Download Jing now!

4. Skype - make free phone calls, conference calls and even video calls

We all love something for nothing. With Skype's free software - by the way, it works seamlessly with your internet connection - you can chat away with free Skype-to-Skype calls and never worry about cost, time or distance. Share the love and get your friends to download Skype so you can talk, chat or make video calls for nothing. You can also make local, long distance and international calls to phones and cell phones at great rates too. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing.

Check it out and SKYPE me at REBlogGirl or simply search for Mary McKnight on Skype! Click te logo below to download Skype.

5. Audacity

Do you want to import, export, edit, mix, record, add sound effects or analyze voice, music, sounds, etc? Then Audacity is the program you need.

Download it for free from Source Forge at:

Audacity at Source Forge

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
And more! See the complete list of features.

Other Stuff I Just Love!

6. Txt2day.com - free text messaging

Txt2day.com is the premier free manual messaging website. Send Free Text Messages. Add text messages to your MySpace. Works with most cell phone providers. Stop Paying For Texting! I use this all the time because when I text from my phone I make too many typos and I am usually sitting at the computer anyway.

7. Eyejot.com - record and send video to friends and family via email

Eyejot is a video messaging platform in which there is NO software to download. You record the message and the receipient of the message is notified via email that they have a new video message. It offers everyone the ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment. With no client to install, you can start using Eyejot immediately with any browser, on any platform. It even features built-in support for iTunes^TM (and iPods^TM), mobile devices and social networks like MySpace^TM. Watch Eyejot video examples.

8. Twirl - Funky desktop Twitter ap you can use to

Couldn't keep my Twitter conversations updated without this nifty little desktop widget! twhirl is a desktop client for the Twitter microblogging service. Most of the features available on the Twitter website are accessible through twhirl, too. Plus, a lot of usability enhancements have been added.

If you have an iphone- Twinkle is the way to go!

9. Spamyourenemies.com - I can't help myself - this is just fun to do when somone pisses you off

Spamyourenemies.com - If you are not that technical or not really that pissed off, this a great solution to a little immediate revenge. Doesn't really hurt anything, just fills their inbox with a whole bunch of weird spam. Of course, if the person you are spammng is more technical than your average lab rat, their spam filters will catch this before it annoys them, but it still gives you that sense of justice and self satisfaction you need in those moments of ire.

NOTE TO ALL - If you have ever been spammed, it wasn't me. This is just where I direct people that come to me and ask me to do something evil to their main competition's website. I'm a sociologist- I understand that if I don't give a suitable answer and they can't get immediate satisfaction, they may go to somone who would link bomb another site. I find this to be a reasonable compromise for all parties when therapy is not an option.

10. Rememebr the milk - Online to do lists!

The old-fashioned to-do list, which lets the brain concentrate on the task at hand rather than on others in the future, remains one of the world's best productivity tools. These fresh new sites let you keep track of your obligations and prompt you to keep up the pace.

RememberTheMilk reinvents the to-do list in a snazzy interface that lets you make lists in configurable categories, all laid out on the front page as tabs. Adding to-dos is easy, though adding deadlines, notes, and time estimates is unintuitive.

You can add to-dos using natural language such as "Call Ted next Thursday," sync with your calendar via the widely supported iCalendar format, and set tasks such as "Pay credit card bill" to recur. RememberTheMilk sends reminders through instant message, e-mail, text message, or a combination of these. You can also upload tasks via a special e-mail address that the site gives you.

It's a tremendously well-rounded free product, with neither more nor less than you need to get and stay organized.

Viral Marketing 101: Is your blog contagious?

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:17:44 -0600

Are you contagious?

Get your vaccinations and slip on the body condom, we are about to tour the infectious world of viral marketing. Viral Internet marketing is about harnessing the power of your existing visitors and social networks to explode your real estate blog community without spending a dime. Sounds pretty good, huh? Where do I sign up? Hold your infectious little horses, there are rules to this viral thing. And you gotta play by them to get the job done right.

What is viral marketing?

According to Wikiedia, Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of a computer virus. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. Basically, viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.Like viruses, viral marketing strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Examples of viral marketing

YouTube is the Mecca of viral marketing. What would Paris Hilton be without it? All her pseudo-ebrity moments have been caught on tape and passed around the Internet like wild fire all thanks to YouTube.

Need other more business oriented examples of viral marketing, well look no further than those silly Vonage commercials or:

Burger King's The Subservient Chicken
McDonald's "McRib Farewell Tour"
The Ring Two movie promotion used another blank-label videotape ending with www.she-is-here.com, a website where users shared their unexplainable experiences with the cursed videotape
Snakes on a Plane's "Get a call from Samuel L. Jackson" campaign put this little known film on the path to cult classic-dom.

The hallmarks of viral marketing

1. Harnesses the power of “free” and “giving to get”

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products, information or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, newsletters, wallpapers, ring tones, information, "cool" buttons, software programs, e-cards, etc. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling". "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will do it much faster. Viral marketing is about delayed gratification. You may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if you can generate a groundswell of interest from something free that will help you profit "soon and for the rest of your life." Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs generate leads. Leads convert to sales.

2. Easily transferred from one person to the next

Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. In order for your message to go viral, it has to be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, RSS feed, software download. Viral marketing works well on the Internet because web communication is instantaneous and inexpensive. The key to viral marketing is keep the message short and compelling. For example: Hotmail’s compelling and susinct viral message included at the bottom of each email is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com."

3. Capitalizes on human motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing campaigns take advantage of common human motivations. The two most common motivations are greed ad love. The hunger to be richer, more popular, more loved, and have more friends is pretty universal. Therefore, messages that promise that readers will save money, make money or grow their friend network will have the most impact.

4. Piggy-backs on existing communication networks

By nature, people are social. We thrive in social environments and seek out community situations where we can interact with others. This is the primary reason why the social web has become so popular. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or even thousands of people, depending upon thier position in society. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. The Internet is particularly adept at exploiting people’s social networks through permissions emails, e-mail aggregation tools, affiliate programs and social networks like MyBlogLog, MySpace, ActiveRain and WanaNetwork. By placing your message into existing communications channels like this, you can rapidly multiply its dispersion.

5. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites (example: blogtopsites). A news release or RSS feed can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals or websites and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. This is a prime example of someone else's newsprint or webpage relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own. This is the ideal viral marketing situation where you use other sites proliferate your brand or marketing message for you.

Example: Check out how popular the RSS Pieces Real Estate Blog Swap has gotten!

Top 10 ideas fOR real estate viral marketing:

1. Offer free services and information delivered via email

Free email marketing like newsletters, market reports and listing notifications are a great opt-in way of reaching visitors and prospects again and again.

2. Feature free personalized RSS subscriptions

Free RSS feed subscription (standard blog feature). High end blogs are starting to offer personalized RSS feed subscription where email notifications can be sent to subscribers for new listings that meet a their housing search criteria

3. Allow users to send personalized e-cards to their friends and family from your site

Let your users send free e-cards to their friends and family that use pictures of local attractions/photography, listings or the home they just bought. This is surprisingly easy to implement on any blog or website.

4. Provide an email to a friend option on listing pages

This is a great feature for couples that search homes from work and want to instantly email the listing to their spouse for review.

Example: MyRealtyBlog Listing Search

See how the listing page has an option on it to email it to a friend? You want to make going viral as easy as possible

5. Create your own reality TV show and upload it to YouTube

You must have some funny things happen in your office- get a digital video camera and record them as short clips. Or create your own reality show of either office happenings or a local review show of area hot spots like restaurants, golf courses and beaches. You can do this kind of stuff on a shoestring budget and get incredible results. Create your own reality show with enough humor, drama and character arch to engage people. Upload them to YouTube for best results and let your brand market itself across the Internet with video viral marketing.

6. Podcast interviews with local celebrities.

Make sure they are funny and upbeat, and then upload them to various podcast directories.

7. Announce & Host Events

Hosting a carnival, contest or other event on your blog can drive serious interest and backlinks for your site. Be sure to always make a quality graphic to go with your event. It incites people to use it to advertise the event on their own sites. If you run a contest- make sure to issue winner graphics, most winners will post the graphic with a link to your site on their own as a badge of honor.

Example: Funniest Real Estate Story contest

Example: Real Estate Blog Swap

8. Tickle the funny bone

People like edgy and funny. Try a humorous list of top 10 things to do in Town X during January. Or, let’s say you are a Florida Realtor: you could post a picture of an obsessed golfer searching for their bright orange ball under 2 feet of snow with a caption that reads “wouldn’t you rather be in St Petersburg, Florida?” People love to pass these kinds of posts on to their friends. Make sure that you provide some other valuable information about the local golf courses or an event coming to the greens near you as well. Make the post a double threat by giving the reader something to laugh about and providing quality information.

Ultimate guide to real estate podcasting, part 2

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 10:12:14 -0600

Real Estate Podcasting is easier than you would imagine. You can start your own high-quality real estate Podcast today by investing as little as $60 and 30 minutes of your time. I like making things easy, so I will how you how to use the same equipment for both live and over the phone interview recordings. There are plenty of other ways to do this, but I do think that this way is one of the easiest and most flexible.

Background:

Want to know what Podcasting is and how real estate professionals can use it as a marketing tool, read Ultimate Guide to Podcasting, Part 1.

Shout out of the day goes to this site on how to podcast.

Getting started with Equipment:

Digital Recorder: you will need a hand held digital recorder with either a USB interface or a memory card. My recommendations are:

Sony IDC-P320 $59.95

Olympus WS-100 $79.99

Olympus DS-2 $129.99

I, personally, use the Olympus WS-100 and love it. To hear the recording quality, listen to my live podcast with ActiveRain.

Telephone Recording Device: If you want to record podcasts over your phone you will need a device that will intercept the audio through the handset so it can be recorded on your handheld device or computer. I recommend:

Mini recorder control $17.99

*NOTE: if you use this kind of device, make sure the first thing you do is tell the person you are talking to that they are being recorded otherwise it can be construed as wire tapping.

Sound Editing Software: you will need a good sound editing software package to edit your audio easily if there is background noise or the voice volumes do not match. There are plenty of them, but I really like:

Audacity FREE

Blog: Having a blog with a podcast plugin the easiest way to publish podcasts to the web. Most blogs like Wordpress, TypePad and RSS Pieces have built-in free podcast publishing components.

1. Plan your real estate podcast:

Just like everything else in life is you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So, If you are going to record an audio tour to accompany a virtual tour or a tutorial about buying or selling a home, be sure to fully write out your ideas so you can record it once and not get stuck splicing a whole bunch of random thought together. If you intend to interview a client, local celebrity or industry big wig, be sure to provide them with the questions ahead of time and limit your interview to 5 questions. Keep the podcast entertaining by incorporating humor and personal conversation so you engage listeners.

2. Record the real estate podcast:

In person recording:

This one is simple: take your digital recorder, find a quiet spot free from outside noise and phones ringing and press “record.”

Over the phone recording:

This one is pretty easy as well: plug the telephone recording device into your phone and your handheld digital recorder. When you get your interviewee on the line, simply press record on your digital recorder and there you have it.

3. Pull the audio off your recorder and onto your computer:

Connect your digital recorder to your computer via the provided USB cable and transfer your file to your computer’s hard drive.

4. Edit the audio:

Open the saved file in Audacity. Listen to the file. If it sounds good, save it as an .mp3. If it could use a little work, you can use the tools in audacity to drowned out the background noises and boost voice volumes. I will post another article on editing audio with audacity later for now, here is a brief audacity tutorial I recommend. Here is a good article that shows some of the features of audacity and how you directly record on your computer with it.

5. Publish your real estate podcast:

Move your file to the server and link to it with your Podcasting software. RSS Pieces makes publishing your podcast very easy. Once you have the .mp3, you simply upload it through the file manager in your post editing window very similarly to how you would do it in other major blog platforms like Wordpress. RSS Pieces podcast publishing system pulls text from the post associated with the podcast and reads tags out of the .mp3 files (ID3) to assist in SEO.

Want to see how easy publishing a podcast is with RSS Pieces? Check out the screen shot below. Just click it for a full screen version! Or, if you want to experience it live, email me and get a login for our demo site.

Our podcast/vidcast publishing and hosting support are included in our service at no additional cost. You create them, we provide the technologies to get them out there! Our Podcasting system is so advanced that it generates a streamlined feed with enough information to support popular services like itunes and juice.

How to be search stupid: Working hard to hardly rank in Google with orphan and dead end pages

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:44:53 -0500

The first rule of understanding Google is that Google is not psychic. It doesn't know where your website or new pages are unless it can find them by following a link from a site already in its index to your new page. (yes, you can ping and submit a sitemap, but direct access from Google is not the same thing as a crawl!) So, now that you get someone else to link to you and Google has found your site, you need Google to crawl, index and begin to trust your site. That means YOU need to link to both other pages on your website and link out to pages on other websites.

Think of Google as the ultimate game of 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Somehow, your website should be connected to other important websites (i.e. websites that Google trusts) in order for Google to discover and begin to trust your site! One of the most critical things you should learn about SEO, is how to think like a search engine. Most people never consider HOW Google crawls the web, and because they never consider HOW- they never assist it in doing so. And that is one key to becoming a FOG (Friend of Google).

How a search engine crawls the web

Basically, a search engine crawls the web to discover new pages by starting with the websites it already knows and trusts and following links on these trusted pages to other pages. Search engines begin their crawl of the web with a list of completely trusted sites (i.e. sites that would never link to spam - we call these "seed sites") These seed sites are the MOST trusted sites in the search engine's index and where it will begin its crawl of the internet (essentially - seed sites are the Kevin Bacon of search - we all are somehow connected to them!)

Google crawls the Trusted Seed Sites first, then starts crawling all the sites these seed sites link to

Trusted Sites: There are a few very trusted domains out there.

Example: DOJ.gov, LLI.org

When these sites link out to other sites they link to:

100% quality sites
0% spam sites

This second level of sites is called -1 Trust Distance sites. (1 link away from a Trusted Seed site)

After the engine crawls these sites, it then goes out and crawls all the sites they link to

Example: Wall Street Journal, Harvard.edu

When these sites link out to other sites they link to:

95% quality sites
.1% spam sites

This third level of sites is called -2 Trust Distance sites. (2 links away from a Trusted Seed site)

After the engine crawls these sites, it then goes out and crawls all the sites they link to and so on and so on

When these sites link out to other sites they link to:

70% quality sites
10% spam sites

As you extrapolate that out to -3, -4 Trust Distance, you will see more and more spam sites being linked to and thus the value of the site loses credibility and Trust.

Resource: Trust Rank Al gorithm

Why do you care about the inner workings of a search engine?

Because when you write for your site, you need to consider how Google is going to keep moving through your site. One of your jobs as a webmaster is to ASSIST a search engine to not just crawl you, but to crawl the rest of the web. You want to make your pages comfortable and reliable for a search engine, giving them plenty of places to move on to other pages on your site and other pages off your site. How do you do this?

1. Avoid Creating Orphaned Pages

An orphan page is a page that is not linked to by any other page on your site or on the internet (i.e. that cannot be reached from anywhere on the site or any other page on the internet) and thus cannot be found by a search bot unless it is linked to externally. Basically, this is a page that nobody can find, not even Google! Why? Because GOOGLE ISN'T PSYCHIC.

How to get your orphaned pages adopted by the Angelia Jolie of Search (Google)

EASY SOLUTION: immediately after you write your post - go over to your AR blog and link back to your new post in an old article or use a directory or RSS submission tool to build at least one backlink to your new post.

2. Avoid Creating Dead Pages

A dead-end page is the one that has no outgoing links, thus creating a "dead end" for a search engine. Dead pages are unnatural on the web (a web page should be connected to other pages) Most importantly, a dead page leaves both the robot and the visitor no choice but to abandon the site since they have no natural way to get off the page.

You're Invited to Real Estate's Yankee Blog Swap

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:00:36 -0600

On Tuesday, December 19^th, the real estate blogosphere will be turned on its head when 20 of the industry’s top bloggers swap blogs for a day. That’s right, you’ll be scratching your head saying, “who put the chocolate in my peanut butter” when you read your favorite real estate blogs. You’ll see New York’s Christine Forgione posting on Geno Petroche’s Chicago blog while Pat Kitano of Transparent Real Estate takes on Zillow. This is a can’t miss event!

So, which real estate bloggers will be participating?

Transparent Real Estate’s Pat Kitano vs. Zillow’s Drew Meyers

RSS Pieces’ Mary McKnight vs. Future of Real Estate Marketing’s Joel Burslem

St Paul Real Estate Blog’s Teresa Boardman vs. The Phoenix Real Estate Guy's Jay Thompson

3 Ocean Real Estate’s Kevin Boer vs. SLC Real Estate’s Nigel Swaby

Issaquah Undressed’s Larry Cragun vs. Maurey Properties’ Andrew Maury

Geno Petroche’s Geno Petroche vs. NY Houses 4 Sales’ Christine Forgione

Phoenix AZ Real Estate Blog's Jonathan Dalton vs. Bonnie Erickson’s Bonnie Erickson

The boys of Sellsius vs. Real Estate Tomato’s Jim Cronin

ML Podcast’s Michael Price vs. Famous Agent’s Elise Wright

My Tech Opinion’s Reggie Nicolay vs. Ubertor’s Steve Jagger

The Adventures of SuperBitch: How to become an online superhero

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:24:00 -0600

Online, you get to be a golden God. It's true. Online you get to shed your fears and insecurities. Online you get to be the superhero, rock star, diva etc. you were always meant to be. How else can you explain the phenomena of the early 90s web where every beautiful young girl seeking love on a dating site was an old fat furry man living in his mama's basement? Online you get to have a secret identity that can fight crime and still fry dinner up by 5. Now, I am not suggesting that all you old fat men try to be young beautiful girls. I can't see that one panning out in business, but there are ways to use a "persona" to create an identifiable brand for yourself. What I am suggesting is that you be bold enough to wear a cape and tights, wise enough to go with your gut, confident enough to persuade others what you are doing is the right course of action and most of all powerful enough to leap tall buildings and social networks in a single bound. Find your super hero persona and run with it. Even if it gets you into trouble. And believe me- it will get you into trouble, because every superhero has to go through an awkward adolescence to discover the limits and uses of his/her powers.

How to come out of your alter ego shell and become the superhero you were meant to be.

In order to turn yourself into a super hero, you need to exaggerate all your natural assets, gifts and skills. Make yourself almost cartoonish and completely invincible. Commit to your opinions and shed the fear of offending people with your comments. BE OUTRAGEOUS. Now, there are certain traits all super heros share and you need to bring them out in yourself to become this all powerful figure.

The Alter Ego

Every super hero has a secret identity or alter ego that walks among mortal men unnoticed. The use of secret identities dates back to early 20th century with characters such as The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro. This basically means, you have two personalities. When online you are the all powerful super hero you should be fighting online banalties and crime with the daring only the invincible can pull off. Conversely, in the office you can be the mild mannered secretary or executive. Online, I almost never go by my real name, I often use a pseudonym. For example in real estate Mary McKnight is REBlogGirl. In marketing, I am SuperBitch. I also have other pseudonyms in the other industries I work in. It helps me to create a persona and very clearly separate my industry specific pieces from one another and create a super hero mystique that is easily recognizable in the industry.

Though the reasons characters have for having a secret identity vary, some common reasons include:

Allowing the character to live a normal life when not fighting crime
Preventing the hero's enemies from seeking revenge on his alter ego or loved ones
Giving the hero an advantage in crime fighting (e.g. Batman, striking fear into his enemies)
Gaining insight into stopping crime (e.g. Clark Kent as a reporter hears immediately about crimes for Superman to stop)

The Back Story

All good super heroes have a complex back story. A backstory that explains the circumstances by which the character acquired his or her abilities as well as his or her motivation for becoming a superhero. Many origin stories involve tragic elements and/or freak accidents that result in the development of the hero's abilities. Some are born from aliens or spit out from the center of the earth like Superman and Vulcan while others began as mortal men that were transformed into superheroes by a cataclysmic event like Spider Man and the Hulk. You need to determine your back story before you can know your strengths because you back story could affect your online personality. So come up with how your super hero identity came to be. The psychology of the super hero is almost as important as his/her powers.

Motivation and Calling

Now you need to find our motivation. A motivation, such as a sense of responsibility (e.g. Spider-Man), a formal calling (e.g., Wonder Woman), a personal vendetta against criminals (e.g. Batman), or a strong belief in justice and humanitarian service (e.g. Superman) is essential. For me, my code and motivation is to rid the Internet of boring content. To fight back with lively, luscious media and content. Find your motivation and cartoonishly fight for it with every exaggerated strength you can muster. Protect innocents and rescue damsels in distress. Find other like-minded people caught in the net and make them your cheering fans.

Costume

All good superheroes have recognizable branding. They wear a cape or tights or a mask. You need to have good branding too. Make sure your brand is recognizable. Trick out all your social media profiles with custom branded backgrounds and be sure to include your branding in your email signatures. Even come up with a few catch phrases or tagline for your profile pages. I like to use the same branding for blog on my Twitter, Youtube and Myspace profiles s that as more people see me they come to associate my name with this purple branding.

Strengths and Powers

You'll need to come up with what your special powers, skills, equipment, etc are. It's important to know which of your skills or assets you will incorporate into your online personality. Although superhero powers vary widely, superhuman strength, the ability to fly, enhanced senses, and the projection of energy bolts are all common. Some superheroes, such as Batman and the Question possess no superhuman powers but have mastered skills such as martial arts and forensic sciences. Others have special weapons or technology, such as Iron Man's powered armor suits and Green Lantern's power ring. Many characters supplement their natural powers with a special weapon or device (e.g., Wonder Woman's lasso and bracelets, Spider-Man's webbing, Wolverine's adamantium, Daredevil's billy club, Thor's hammer, Gambit's staff, etc.) Obviously, my strengths are wit, manipulation, sarcasm and flirting. I play these attributes up online to provide almost an animated version of myself.

Weaknesses

All superheroes have a weakness to make them more relatable and fallible and mortal on some level. Find yours and exaggerate it. Be fallible- it helps people to emotionally connect with you. Show your weaknesses from time to time. An online personality is for the brave, the brawny, the bawdy- but the boring, not a chance. Assuming you have more personality than your average wet nap, you already have all the tools you need to have a successful online identity. For example, if you are a flirt, pen playful posts, if you are a little quirky, type those crazy thoughts you think on Twitter, if you have a biting wit, sprinkle sarcasm throughout articles, if you are a closet comedian, give readers a belly laugh with each post, the list goes on... The gist? Let the inner you bust out and go splat all over that blog of yours. People connect with writing that shows your inner self. They want to see you as human and relatable- warts and all.

Sidekick

Many superheroes work with a sidekick, somebody that supports their crime fighting ways and may even have super powers o their own. Find a kindred spirit online and recruit them as your trusty sidekick because 2 heads are always better than 1. Use each other to create Blip.fm wars or scandalous dialog on Twitter or combine your networks to get more Diggs to your articles.

Nemesis

Every superhero needs a number of enemies that he/she fights repeatedly. In some cases superheroes begin by fighting run of the mill criminals before super villains surface in their respective story lines. In many cases the hero is in part responsible for the appearance of these super villains (The Scorpion was created as the perfect enemy to defeat Spider-Man, and characters in Batman's comics often accuse him of creating the villains he fights). Often superheroes have an archenemy who is more troubling than the others. Often a nemesis is a superhero's doppelganger or foil (e.g., Sabretooth embraces his savage instincts while Wolverine tries to control his. Batman is serious and grim, while the Joker is flamboyant and views the world as one big sick joke).Larger than Life Personalities in Business and History. Now, thos of you that know me, know I have made some enemies out there and most of the time it was completely on purpose. It created warring factions of people in social media and it worked to my benefit. Basically, I was able to create more emotional engagement in my blog and my work because of this need people had to either align themselves with or against me. So, go out there, attack a few celebrities, industry pundits, executives or bloggers and see what comes of it. See if you can't create an allegiance against evil.

So, are you ready to be a superhero, a legend, a golden God of online media? Then start crafting your persona. Below you will find my secret super hero identity.

Mary's Secret Superhero Alter Ego

Super Hero name: SuperBitch

Back story: SuperBitch was born of mortal parents in a quiet little upper crust town in New England. Her birth name and alter ego is Mary. Amid the din of her suburban life and private school education, the tiny and well spoken Mary was playing with friends that wanted to raise some money from a lemonade stand in the neighborhood. When this first business sadly failed, Mary suggested that they sell tickets to an event the other neighborhood kids might enjoy. What do 10 yr olds want to see? It was all too clear to the soft-spoken and meek Mary, children want to see Barbie burn. After building a pyre and grabbing her Malibu Barbie, Mary and cohorts set her ablaze. A huge plastic-y flame burst forth and enveloped Mary, altering her DNA forever and creating SuperBitch, the sarcastic, witty, buxom superhero who fights online banalities, online meanies, Twitter stalkers, and boring blogs with lightning fast wit, salacious avatars and scandalous blog posts. She can also leap small buildings in a single bound, tongue tie just about any online pseudo-celebrity with a single email and turn an abysmal Alexa rank into gold in a matter of days.

Strengths: SuperBitch is a master at tongue tying bloggers, a mistress of attention grabbing, a dominatrix of web traffic, a ring master of networking and an Empress of shock and awe marketing.

Weaknesses: Geckos. The all powerful SuperBitch can be rendered harmless by any member of the lizard family, from a salamander to a Komoto Dragon. I also have a hot temper which tends to get me into a spot of trouble from time to time...

Sidekick: SuperBitch likes to kick back and relax with other Good Bitches on the Constellation GoodBitch in the galaxy of Sacrilicious and is often accompanied by her sidekick, NikNik. (Yeah, I'm going to get my butt kicked by NikNik for calling her a sidekick...)

Your Nemesis: BadBitch. BadBitch is SuperBitch's dark and evil twin. That lying, spamming, black hatting, Twitter stalking, net gossiping troll whose only goal is to bog down the Internet with boring content and social media slander. Unlike SuperBitch, she does not get along well with other Good Bitches.

Do you have a superhero alter ego? Please share it in the comments of this post.

Are you a good bitch or a bad bitch?

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:50:20 -0500

Some people hear the word "bitch" and get offended, I on the other hand, wear that badge proudly. Why? Because, just like there are good witches and bad witches, there are good bitches and bad bitches. Are you a good bitch or a bad bitch? I want to set the record straight, so there is no misunderstanding. Nicole and I are bitches. But, we're good bitches, I swear. Basically, that means that if we have an opinion, we'll defend it. You won't see us patting someone's feeling on the head in a comment if they disagree with us. You won't see us laying a dissenter down on the couch to discuss how the word "spaz" made them feel or massaging our words so they don't cut so deep. No, we are who we are like Popeye would say. We have attitude, we hold to our beliefs and we won't kowtow to social media etiquette. We'll tell you the way it is whether you like it or not. But, on the flip side, we are fiercely loyal, we will fight for others, we are "anti-meanies." And that, my little Pretties, is what makes us Good Bitches.

The Top 5 qualities of a Good Bitch

1. Stunning

A Good Bitch knows that wits and tits give her the edge, so she never leaves the house in sweat pants and never goes out on the town without her tackle bag of makeup. She is "Stacy's Mom," Gilda and Coco Chanel all wrapped into one package. Why would I place any value on female beauty? Because like it or not, pretty people get more attention. I'm not going to debate this. It is a fact, studies, science and math prove it and if you are ugly, just accept it and move on. (hey, this is a post about bitchiness, get used to it)

Resource: Do pretty people earn more?

Resource: Wikipedia entry on physical attractiveness.

2. Attention whore

Every good bitch is an attention whore at heart. She doesn't like to be the life of the party she NEEDS to be the life of the party. Not only does the GB like attention, she knows how to get it. She knows what sets the boys hearts a patter and what makes the women want to keep her close and under their watchful eye. A good bitch can instigate a good event that will eventually turn into a legend that everyone present retells at parties. A good bitch is almost a super hero, she is outrageous and contagious.

3. Loved or Hated but Never Ignored

You know that saying "you either love her or you hate her?" Well that holds true for the GB. She is someone you either love with all your heart and would gladly stalk online until she tells you "you're creepin' me out dude" or hate her and wish you could kill her then bury her in your backyard and dig her up occasionally just to make sure she is really still dead. Basically, nobody ever feels indifferent to the Good Bitch. And the kicker is, even if you hate her, you still pay attention to her which kills you... and makes you hate her more.

4. Irreverent

Nothing comes between a Good Bitch and her wit, not even her Calvins (strike that, I mean 7 Jeans or True Religion because a GB is stylish). The GB knows how to tell a good story and punctuate her points with humorous one liners that make everyone within a 10 mile radius blush and chuckle, then come back for more of her special vintage of infotainment.

5. Manipulative (I know this is a super-power, so we only use this for good)

OK, this one might be hard to explain, but a Good Bitch is a master craftsman and puppeteer. She can pull anyone's strings and get them to do just about anything she wants them to do. A GB will pour so much honey on you and threaten to lick it off that you never realize the vinegar you just swallowed. She will get her way and you'll give it to her and you'll actually enjoy giving it to her.

Bonus Trait: Passionately Loyal

Now, the truly spectacular Good Bitches. Those shooting stars among the constellation of Good Bitch that really stand out carry this singular trait. They are fiercely loyal. They protect their own, their young, their opinions and anyone else that runs in their pack even when they know that person might be wrong. They are loyal to fault and would take a bite out of anyone that messed with their homies. They are the COMMANDING OFFCERS OF THE ANTI MEANIES.

This post is dedicated to Jeff Brown (@BawldGuy) who has the most amazing BitchDar, I have ever seen. He can spot one from a mile away. He claims to have spotted both Nicole and I from 3,000 miles away. I'm telling you, this guy has a factory direct anti-aircraft BitchDar with all the bells and whistles.

How to Build Quality Backlinks for your Real Estate Blog, Part 1

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:58:57 -0500

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks, links from other sites to your real estate blog, help to improve your credibility with search engines, online visibility, content reach and traffic. Therefore, building quality backlinks is just as important to the health and well being of your real estate blog as the content that you write. So, let’s take a good hard look at not only why and how search engines value backlinks but now you go about building quality backlinks through an easy to follow link campaign.

Why do search engines measure backlinks?

In simple terms, search engines consider each backlink a “vote’ for your site. It is a way for Google to determine the overall authority and popularity of your site.

Tool: See how many backlinks your real estate blog has

Not all backlinks are created equal

Here is a simple example of how Google does not value all links the same. One of my competitors has around 10K backlinks pointing to their site. RSS Pieces, on the other hand, only has 3.5K. However, both sites have a PageRank 5 and both sites show up well in the search results for our prime keywords. While, my competitor, should have greater authority with Google based on the volume of backlinks, the quality of most of those backlinks is so low (multiple sitewide links from client sites with PR 3 or below with low quality anchor text) that Google de-weights the overall value of those links to the point where they are meaningless. So, the lesson to take away from this is that it is not the quantity of the backlinks that matter- it is the quality. Shoot for fewer backlinks from quality sites (PR 4 or above within the same industry or geographic area) with solid anchor text.

How does Google determine the value or quality of a backlink to your real estate blog?

Authority. Search Engines weigh the value of backlinks by the authority (PageRank) that the site linking to you has. In simple terms, just as you probably weigh Simon Cowl’s vote greater than that of the wild, wacky and possibly drunk Paula Abdul on American Idol, a backlink from a PageRank 5 or above site will be considered more valuable and authoritative than one from a PageRank 3 of 4.

Anchor Text. Anchor text is the textual content in a link. The more descriptive and keyword rich the anchor text, the more relevancy and value that backlink. For example, a link that reads: real estate blogs and real estate training to RSS Pieces is actually more valuable than a link that reads RSS Pieces or Click Here.

Deep Links. Links that reference that your inner pages or actual real estate blog articles are also valued more highly than those that just reference your home page. This shows Google that your site is NOT superficial and does contain highly relevant and useful content. This is where providing quality content and staying off of people’s blogrolls really pays off.

On page relevance. This one is self explanatory. A link on a page about Cape Coral Real Estate to a Cape Coral Realtor has greater relevance than a link on a page about Seattle Mortgages/Real Estate to a Cape Coral Realtor. Again, can I say “I told you so” about blogrolls linking hundreds of geographically diverse real estate agents… (sorry pregnancy makes me very saucy).

How many other links on the page. Now, just because you get a link from a PageRank 6 site doesn’t mean you get the entire possible value of that link. The value of the link-votes is divided among all the outbound links on a page. Think about it: a highly Pageranked page with 50 links on a blogroll just isn’t as valuable a backlink as a lower PageRanked site with only a handful of outbund links on it.

Here is the breakdown on the actual algorithm used to determine PageRank and how the backlinks are weighted into that algorithm:

Read also: Google’s Algorithm Explained

Simplified PageRank algorithm that shows how Google weights backlinks into PageRank

Assume a small universe of four web pages: A, B, C and D. The initial approximation of PageRank would be evenly divided between these four documents. Hence, each document would begin with an estimated PageRank of 0.25.

If pages B, C, and D each only link to A, they would each confer 0.25 PageRank to A. All PageRank PR( ) in this simplistic system would thus gather to A because all links would be pointing to A.

But then suppose page B also has a link to page C, and page D has links to all three pages. The value of the link-votes is divided among all the outbound links on a page. Thus, page B gives a vote worth 0.125 to page A and a vote worth 0.125 to page C. Only one third of D's PageRank is counted for A's PageRank (approximately 0.083).

In other words, the PageRank conferred by an outbound link L( ) is equal to the document's own PageRank score divided by the normalized number of outbound links (it is assumed that links to specific URLs only count once per document).

In the general case, the PageRank value for any page u can be expressed as:

i.e. the PageRank value for a page u is dependent on the PageRank values for each page v out of the set B_u (this set contains all pages linking to page u), divided by the number L(v) of links from page v.

Stay tuned for the next installment in this series where we start talking about how to build a quality backlink campaign that will boost PageRank (your authority with Google), traffic and search engine positioning.

How to generate more buyer, investor and foreclosure leads from your real estate blog

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:12:10 -0500

One of the things that drives me craziest on the Internet is there is a lot of GOOD advice out there- but there is a distinct lack of explicit practical advice. Meaning, everyone wants to tell you that you need to generate leads from your real estate blog but they don't tell you how to specifically capture each type of lead. So, let's hit it. This post will show you how to use two conversion psychologies called "the cult of me" and "self qualification" to generate highly qualified investor and foreclosure property leads.

Goal: To attract more investors contacts

Strategy: Create a list of Top 10 Best Buy, REO, Foreclosure or Investment properties that you require users to register to receive. This will require 3 steps:

1. Create the list

2. Create a call to action button and lead conversion form

3. Create a blog post announcing your offering

Real Estate Investor Profile: The average investor that will find you online fins you because they are looking for information on investing in real estate. That means they probably are not a professional investor and are most likely a first time or part time investor that recognizes they need the help of a real estate professional to identify savvy investment properties.

Real Estate Investor Psychographics: A first time or part time investor is typically "new money" meaning they are self made and proud of what they have become. They feel good about their accomplishments and want to use what they have to make more money. They can be shrewd can like to be appreciated for their accomplishments. They often also like o feel like they are masters of their destiny's and like to have hand in making decisions that affect their future.

Implementation:

1. Create the list of best properties

The list MUST have value, so put some time into this. Cull through the MLS for foreclosure, investment, first time buyer, fixer upper, etc best buys. Put together a list in Microsoft Word where you take some of the MLS data like images, MLS#, Street Address, Description and your remarks on why you consider that particular property a best buy. Also, make sure that you fully brand the document with your logos, phone numbers, address and websites. Then save the document into a PDF and save to your drive in an easy to find location. You do not want to immediately publish this to your blog, because you want to create implied value and make people register so they can receive it.

Read akso: Top 5 Easy and Effective Listing Posts You Can Write for Your Real Estate Blog

2. Call Investors to Action with a button and a blog post

We will use the tried and true "fear of loss" psychology to get an investor contact.

A. Create a button or (steal the one below) that reads "Top 10 Investment Buys of the Month." Publish this button either at the top of your blog above your blog posts or in the side bar. Typically you can put this button inside a widget area so you have complete control over it now and in the future.

Steal these buttons:

Feel free to copy and paste these buttons into your blog and simply add a link to your conversion form for investors, foreclosures or other special offers

B. Write a post that publishes a couple of lesser but still interesting properties (as time goes by, you publish the previous month's list) talks about how you have compiled a list of the best foreclosure, short sale, tenant building investments, etc of the month that either have cash flow from day X, $X equity or are more than $X undervalued. Talk up how great these properties are how everyone needs to get this "exclusive list." Say something about how only the first 25 people to sign up for this list will get it (that doesn't mean you have to actually adhere to it - it is just a way to get people to act quickly). See, how that creates the need to act- the fear that they if they do not act, they will lose out on this great list of properties and someone else might scoop them up before they have the chance?

3. Create a conversion form using The "Cult of Me" psychology

*Note: If you don't have ability to create custom conversion forms like RSS Pieces, then simply link your buttons back to your contact form and you can skip this part as it does not apply to your blog platform.

The number one thing you learn about people is THEY LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES. Hey, it's true- number uno is always ME! So, when you start thinking about conversion you need to think about it from the perspective of the "cult of me." This means, get people to answer questions about themselves that make them feel good about themselves!

What kinds of questions could make someone that feels good about their accomplishments and their status feel even better about themselves? Ask them things that directly relate to their accomplishments. Forget about whether or not you NEED this information for the form. That's not really important. Make them think you need it. (The only things you really need are their name, email and phone number - but you want to make sure they provide you with good contact info= so ask them things they WANT you to know about them). Starting to make sense yet?

Psychological Question Examples:

Please note: The following questions are simply examples of what you might want to ask. I explained the psychology behind each question so you can model other more relevant questions for your conversion forms.

Question	Psychology
How much money are you able to put down?	This let's them tell you how much money they have made that they are willing to put toward making more - it let's them show their success and show you they are savvy enough to understand they need to use that money to make other money.
How much money do you want to invest in total?	This let's them tell you how much money they could lose without impacting their lifestyle
How much return on the investment do you expect?	This let's them tell you their expectations for the investment and their overall self worth. It also let's them tell you how demanding they are.
How much time are you willing to wait until ROI?	This let's them feel as though they are making a decision that impacts their future and that they have a perceived control over how their money will work for them

Preface the form with text makes the reader self qualify.

So, create text that tells people who is most qualified to receive the information you are providing. For example:

Please note that those investors most qualified to receive this information would be:

Investors that can provide a down payment of 20% or more
Investors that expect to more than 90 days before ROI
Investors that expect to devote more than $X/mo towards their investment

There may be other or more relevant criteria you want to include here but these are a few examples. The more qualifying the criteria you include, the better your results will be.

4. At the end of the month or the beginning of the next month, publicly publish you list on your blog as a post

Show the properties that sold with big "sold signs" across them. This shows readers for the next month what they will be getting and what they could be missing out on. It is a good idea to publiuhs the call to action button for the next month's list at the bottom of this post.

To see an examples of sites using this technique, please visit:

Buffalo Niagara Falls Real Estate & Home Sales in WNY

(NOTE: within 1 day of using this call to action method, Colleen received 3 leads from it and a request for her best properties list)

Sure Fire Formula for a Successful Blog Post

Mary McKnight (Fuel Records) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:53:47 -0600

Wouldn't it be nice if you had a sure fire formula for writing killer real estate blog posts that drive huge targeted traffic and search engine interest? I know I would. So, over the past few months, I have been experimenting with my copy writing style and linking formulas to see what gets the best results. I looked at what it takes to interest both people and search engines and came up with a very simple formula that will guarantee readership and search engine placement for your real estate blog. Sounds pretty far-fetched, right? Not really. Now, I'm no copy writing or SEO virtuoso. I simply combined the trusted copy writing formulas newspaper and magazine writers have been using for decades with the key components outlined in Google's own Page Rank algorithm to come up with a combination that has worked for RSS Pieces. Want to learn how you can use this success formula to build traction for your real estate blog, read on.

Anatomy of a killer real estate blog post that drives huge traffic:

Write a keyword rich title that expresses benefits
Open your real estate blog post with a keyword rich and benefit expressing sentence.
Use your keyword or phrase at least 4 times in your post.
Link to at least 3 other websites that will offer readers more information on the given topic.
Link to at least 3 other posts on your own blog that will give more insight on the topic.
Engage readers with a controversial or "how to" article penned in a conversational tone
Format the post with heading tags, bolded text, numbered lists and/or bullet points
Close with a call to action asking readers to subscribe to your blog, contact you, fill out your lead generation tool or search for a home
Select 100% content relevant keywords for your meta data tag

For more copy writing tips, visit CopyBlogger

1. Write a keyword rich title that expresses benefits

What a search engine wants: According to the GoogScore algorithm worked out by Randfish, keywords in the title of your post are essential. That means that if your post is about buying condos in Cape Coral, you need to use the terms "Buying," "Condos" and "Cape Coral" in your title.

What people want: People like to be able to easily scan a title and figure out what the article is about. So, instead of coming up with a clever metaphor and play on words, go for the obvious title. Try to include a specific benefit in the title as well. Readers like to know what's in it for them when they read an article. They want to know that the article will in some way make their life easier, faster, better, richer... So, let them know exactly what the benefit of reading the article is. The more specific the title is the more readership it will get.

For example: How to buy condos in Cape Coral for $50,000 under market value

Google's Page Rank Formula

2. Open your real estate blog post with a benefit and keyword rich first sentence

What a search engine wants: Search engines place greater value on the words closest to the top of the page, so you will need to include your primary keywords in the very first sentence.

What people want: The purpose of the first sentence in your article is to make the reader need to read the second sentence. So, coming up with a killer first sentence is key. You need to engage readers with your first sentence by either asking a leading question that expresses the benefits of reading the article or summarizing the key points of your post.

For example:

Wouldn't you just love to buy a luxury condo in Cape Coral and save more than $50,000?

Learn a Realtors secrets for buying luxury condos in Cape Coral under market value

Formula: Include at least 2 keywords in your title and 1 benefit

3. Engage readers and search engines with emotionally engaging, keyword rich content that contains at least 3 internal and 3 external links

What a search engine wants: All search engines really care about in your posts are keywords and links. So, pepper each post with the keywords you want it to be searchable by and link out to other resource sites that would provide further information on the topic you are writing about. You also want to link to other posts on your own site that might add further value to the topic and keep visitors on your site longer.

What people want: People want to be emotionally engaged by your post. That means that your post has to either answer an urgent need a readers life or generate strong feelings on a particular issue. So, creating controversy or penning a great tutorial post are the best ways to enagage a reader.

Formula: 3 links to reference websites and 3 links to other articles on your own site

4. Format your real estate blog post so that it is easy to scan and uses heading tags and textual formatting to denote which content is most important

What a search engine wants: Search engines use formatting tags like Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, bolded and italicized fonts to determine which words and phrases they should place greater value on when indexing your blog. So, use heading and formatting tags liberally when writing your posts.

What people want: People like to be able to scan over large bodies of text quickly to find what they are looking for. Make the copy easy to read by breaking it up with numbered lists or bullet points. Use a bolder font for topic headings and always include lots of white space. The easier your posts are to read, the more reads they will get. Visitors feel overwhelmed when they are faced with text that seems to go on and on forever, so use formatting techniques to break up the text into easily digestible chunks.

5. Close your real estate blog post with a call to action and direct readers to your lead generation tool

What people want: People like to be told what to do on the web. It creates comfort and a sense of purpose. So, at the end of each post, guide readers to your lead generation tool, RSS subscription page or back to your website where they can contact you or search for a home. Simply create a 3-5 sentence call to action for each of your target readers. Generally, those will be buyers, sellers and investors. The place a link to your applicable lead generation tool. You'll be amazed how this will improve lead generation on your site.

For example:

Buyers: Ready to start your dream home search? Contact me and I can guide you on finding the perfect home in Cape Coral to suit your lifestyle and needs.

Sellers: Ready to sell your home? Get started by finding our what your home is worth by clicking here.

Investors: Like what you've read here? Well, subscribe and get all the latest news from this blog delivered direct to you RSS reader or email.

6. Select 100% search engine relevant keywords for your meta data

What search engines want: Search engines don't care about what you want to be searched by, they care about how relevant your content is to the keywords in your meta tag. So, don't guess at what search engines are going to like, use a keyword generator that looks at the content and selects keywords to 100% relevancy. To ensure that the terms you want to be searched for are included in the results, pepper your post with those key terms.

Tool: RSS Pieces Keyword Extraction Tool

To use this tool, select "term extraction" and either enter the url with your content on it or click the body text option and paste your content into the input box, enter 2-3 terms that give the general theme of the content like "real estate" and "buying homes" then click "go."

Mary's Blog

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Top 5 secrets of successful blogs and how yours can be one of them

How to drive local traffic to your blog

1. List yourself locally

2. Comment on local blogs

3. Pepper your text with local keywords

4. Checking your local traffic

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1. Hulu.com - watch streaming TV shows and movies for free

Prefer to Download Movies?

2. Actionext.com - create and listen to free music play lists

3. Jing - record screencasts with voice overs and capture images from your desktop and share online

4. Skype - make free phone calls, conference calls and even video calls

5. Audacity

Other Stuff I Just Love!

6. Txt2day.com - free text messaging

7. Eyejot.com - record and send video to friends and family via email

8. Twirl - Funky desktop Twitter ap you can use to

9. Spamyourenemies.com - I can't help myself - this is just fun to do when somone pisses you off

10. Rememebr the milk - Online to do lists!

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How to generate more buyer, investor and foreclosure leads from your real estate blog

Sure Fire Formula for a Successful Blog Post

Anatomy of a killer real estate blog post that drives huge traffic:

1. Write a keyword rich title that expresses benefits

2. Open your real estate blog post with a benefit and keyword rich first sentence

3. Engage readers and search engines with emotionally engaging, keyword rich content that contains at least 3 internal and 3 external links

4. Format your real estate blog post so that it is easy to scan and uses heading tags and textual formatting to denote which content is most important

5. Close your real estate blog post with a call to action and direct readers to your lead generation tool

6. Select 100% search engine relevant keywords for your meta data