------------------------------------ Michigan Health Insurance Is my main site. Check out the links directory, more than 9875 helpful links and growing.
I'm learning a lot. I didn't use to know what a SEO was or a RSS. So it's all about getting on these search engines.
I have a RSS button on my explorer, but have never understood it or knew why to use it.
Twitter?? I still have to check that out. I do have an myspace account. I also have wordpress on my server, but not sure how to use it or what to talk about.
I'm taking notes. Yall keep talking.
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Mark Rosenthal aka markingriffin
IMO/Ins Agent/Agent Trainer/Free Advice markcrosenthal@aol.comwww.realfastservice.com
Please visit mywebsite to learn more about me.
Email me for my Free Prospecting MP3 Tapes.
Social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Stumble, etc) increased traffic to my website by 30-40%. Twitter, when I use it right, can triple it.
RSS stands for "really simple syndication." Whenever you make a post on an RSS enabled blog, anyone who has subscribed to your page will have your post appear in their RSS reader. Think of it like this: people are wandering around with newspapers, but they're just blank sheets of paper. They decide what type of stuff they want to read about, instead of the newspaper company deciding for them. So they subscribe to blogs that interest them, and when one of those blogs makes a post it automatically pops up in their personal newspaper instead of them having to visit your site.
Twitter has been absolutely amazing for driving traffic to my website. I've also got two appointments today that I never would have gotten if I didn't actively use Twitter. I'm running out the door shortly to that first appointment, but give me some time and I'll write up a post about how I use Twitter for fun and profit.
My website at Georgia Insurance Options | Health and Life Insurance Solutions From Your Independent Agent is a Wordpress site. Wordpress is a blogging platform that helps you build a website and takes a lot of the hassle out of it. Personally, I used the "Arthemia Free" theme. When you first load that theme, it looks like this: AtlantaHUDHomes.info (the banners at the top have already been customized, but you get the idea). Compare that to my site and you'll see how much time I've put into it. WordPress is very versatile, too. These websites are all Wordpress sites, but look how different they are:
These sites all use Wordpress in different ways to create the look that they want.
Go back to Georgia Insurance Options | Health and Life Insurance Solutions From Your Independent Agent and click on any article. At the bottom of the article, but before the Comments box, you'll see one button, a black line, and then a row of buttons. The lower row of buttons allows visitors to my site to add a social bookmark to their favorite social bookmarking service. So if someone clicks the far left button, they'll add a bookmark to Digg which will encourage other people to come read my article. Or, they can hit the single button above the black line and submit my article to 40 different social bookmarking sites at once. This increases traffic enormously.
Large post about using Twitter to follow, I promise.
For the uninitiated: Twitter is a web-based service where you can, in 140 characters, send a message to the world. That message will appear in the "public timeline" for everyone to see, but will only stay there for a few seconds -- Twitter moves very quickly, so after a moment your update will be replaced by newer ones. You've got more staying power with your "followers," the people that have, for whatever reason, decided that you're interesting and have assigned a higher priority to your tweets (a "tweet" is one of those 140 character or less messages). If someone is following you, then your updates will not only appear in the public timeline but in their list of updates just from people that they're following. Since the number of people any one person follows is relatively small compared to the total number of people using Twitter, your update will stay on a follower's front page for much, much longer. I follow 303 people right now, and any one person's update will stay on my front page for about 12-15 minutes as opposed to the mere seconds it stays on the front page of the public timeline.
And that's the basics of Twitter. Your followers will read your updates, see what you're up to, and get your message. You have 140 characters to express yourself. When you first start using Twitter, it seems like the stupidest damn thing on the face of the earth. Check out this lighthearted, but accurate, blog entry about the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance
The big problem people seem to have when starting out with Twitter is that it's so huge, folks assume that there must be more to it. There's not. You post your message and read messages from people you like. That's it. Simple. There's no official number that I can find, but estimates are that at least ten million people currently use Twitter and over a thousand new accounts are activated daily. That's a HUGE number of people.
So now that you know what Twitter is, how do you use it to increase traffic to your website?
The biggest mistake you can make is to just start tweeting links to blog posts or articles nonstop. You will look like an advertiser, a spam-bot, one-dimensional, boring, and not somebody that anyone would want to follow. Look at this link:
This is Kevin Rose's Twitter page, showing all of his tweets (messages, status updates, whatever you want to call them). He is the #2 most followed person on Twitter with almost 92,000 people following him and reading every update he makes. But look at his messages -- he sends @ replies, which are messages directed at individual users, not just blanket "visit this link" things. He builds relationships with people, talks to them, and every now and then sprinkles in a bit of useful information. That's what you should do, too. Talk to people. Watch for interesting conversations and insert yourself into them. Become a member of the community, not just a billboard for them to ignore.
So you're using Twitter to build genuine relationships. You've gone to Twitter Search to find people talking about health insurance, life insurance, annuities, whatever and you've answered a few questions without pushing a product on them. You will start to gain a little respect in the Twitterverse (the world of Twitter) this way, and it'll keep you from looking like you just have something to sell. Look at the difference in these two pages:
The first page is someone who just spams "affordable GI plans" all day. A total of four people are following her. The second link is my page, where I have individually helped people with their health insurance questions and not tried to sell them anything. And I have over 200 followers. People will message me with health insurance questions on their own now -- I don't have to go looking for them. Slowly, I am becoming one of the "go-to guys" on Twitter for health insurance questions. Why? Because I'm not pushing a sales pitch.
Now, here's the key to using Twitter to drive traffic to your website. If you watch the conversations long enough, you'll start to understand what issues have people worried or confused with regards to their insurance. Twitter is amazingly fast and emerging trends pop up there before anywhere else. Remember when the United Air plane went into the river? That story broke on Twitter before it broke on the news -- because people who were on the plane were tweeting from their cell phones! That's amazing! And it means twitter is an awesome tool for learning about what is running through the mind of the public at large about insurance. Those trends, those things you see, those common questions and problems -- those are the things that need to be on your website, because those are the things people are worried about now. And then, when you go to help them and build that one-on-one relationship, you don't just give them a 140-character answer -- you give them a link to a 800 word blog entry that will answer their question much more completely. And then that link will be spread around, and all of your followers will see it as well. Each and every time I respond to a health insurance question with a link to an article on my website, for the next 15-30 minutes traffic on my site increases up to 300%. That's GREAT!!
The reader's digest version: watch Twitter to figure out what people need help with and then help them. Take those same questions and answers and use them as a springboard for an article on your website. Then take that article and use a link to it as an answer to that question when it comes up again. Rinse and repeat -- and watch your traffic climb.
I know that got long winded, but I really really love Twitter!
Last night, on the show Fringe, the killer they were looking for was named Mark Rosenthal.......coincidence?
How much was the reward and I might turn myself in? I use to watch that show, but don't anymore. I hope they made me look good on the show. How did I kill the person? Something cool I hope.
Originally Posted by somarco
There are no coincidences.
Mark sells life insurance, and he is a killer.
Small world, huh?
I've been know to talk clients to death. The question is did they buy the life insurance before or after they died?
I think it helps to sell insurance if you are a killer. Sometimes I give the client that look and then they buy the insurance.
Mark Rosenthal melted your brain?
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OK, I have twittered (or is it tweeted?). Now what?
It asked me what I was doing now. I figured they really didn't want (or need) to know, so I listed a current project (finding health insurance for a guy who has been turned down by almost everyone due to BMI).
Will I now get a bunch of fatties tweeting (or twittering) me?
Last edited by somarco : 01-29-2009 at 09:57 AM.
Reason: Posts merged
When you're reading Twitter, you're twittering. When you're posting messages, you're tweeting
You're off to an awesome start, actually. You did the three big things right off the bat -- you put up an avatar, added a bio, and added a website. If you don't do those three things, people are much more reluctant to follow you.
When you first get started, it's slow going. It takes time to build up a base of followers, but it's a lot like building your book. The people you follow will refer you to other people who will follow you, and it grows a bit like that. I suggest hitting Twitter Search and typing in a word or phrase that interests you. It doesn't have to be health insurance -- find someone talking about your favorite band or restaurant and jump in. It's like client service: if you focus only on yourself and talking about what you do, then nobody will listen. If you focus on what everyone else is talking about, then they'll flock to you.
Don't be discouraged if it takes a while for people to notice you. There are millions of tweets flying around out there, but if you keep at it you'll start to stay at the front of peoples' minds.
By the way, Bob, I noticed you're following @healthinsgal. Her update stream is one of my favorites to follow, and she's so friendly, too. I'd also like to pass along a message: @LousieNorris wants you to follow her. She asked me a week ago to talk you into getting on Twitter :P
Nick, that was a great post about Twitter. You really explained without going into a lot of technical jargon. However, just for the record it was the plane that landed in the river was US Airways, not United Airlines.
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I like your blog, too.
Last edited by arnguy : 01-29-2009 at 12:24 PM.
Reason: Posts merged
When you want to follow someone, you have two options. You can go to Twitter Search and search for LouiseNorris, click her name, and click follow in her profile. Alternatively, to go to anyone's profile, you can type http:// twitter.com/ anyusername. So, my page is http:// twitter . com / nlperry. I've put spaces in these links so you can see how to write them, but if you condensed them and clicked them they'd go directly to individual pages. On those pages, you just look for the button that says "follow" and you're all set!
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