Your squeeze page (or opt in page) is your way of introducing your visitors to your email list, and as such, it needs to have a few specific elements in place in order to convince them to sign up. People get a lot of email each day, and convincing them to sign up for another mailing list isn’t always easy, but if you have all the right elements in place, you’ll get as many new subscribers as you can.

Headline

Right at the top of the page, you should have an attractive headline. Your headline should be brief – one sentence is enough. It should also be catchy. For example, instead of something like “These five training modules will help you learn the PHP programming language” you might want to use something like “Learn PHP in just FIVE steps”. That way, the viewer will get excited about your list, and they’ll be more inclined to sign up.

Bullet Points

Instead of forcing your readers to wade through paragraphs upon paragraphs of text to find out why they should care about your list, give them the major highlights of your product in a bulleted list. That way they can get a clear picture of what you’re offering right away. To be clear, include the paragraphs that describe things in more detail, just do so after the bulleted list.

Opt In Box

You should have an opt in box for your list right at the top of the page. You don’t want to make your readers scroll down the page if they know they’re interested in signing up. The further down the page you put the opt in box, the less likely your readers are to sign up for your list. Keep that in mind as you lay out your squeeze page.

Putting these elements in place on your opt in page will help you get more subscribers to your list. Email marketing is getting more and more challenging, but by setting up a strong squeeze page, you can still use it effectively. Remember, include a strong headline, a bulleted list of benefits to the customer, and put your opt in box near the top of the page. Doing those things will help you to be successful with email marketing.

There’s no question about it, email marketing is extremely challenging. A lot of emails wind up in spam folders without ever getting looked at, which means that all the work that went into that email was for nothing. If you want the time you spend creating your emails to count, you have to take a few steps to ensure that your emails will get read, rather than deleted, or flagged as spam.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that you’re never going to get everyone to read your emails and respond to them by buying your products and visiting your site. Almost everyone gets a lot of newsletters, and other promotional emails in their inbox every day, and they’re just not going to read every one. You can increase the chances that yours will get read by working to build a relationship with your subscribers.

In order to build a relationship with your subscribers, you have to give them some really strong reasons to keep opening your emails. For starters, be sure to do more than just send advertisements to them. Send out emails with interesting information about your niche. Link to any news that might be of interest to your subscribers, and maybe even give them your take on it. Do everything you can to both inform, and entertain your readers instead of just advertising to them. If they see that you’re sending out great information, they’ll be more likely to keep reading your emails as they show in their inboxes.

It’s also a good idea to engage your subscribers in a conversation. For example, you could include a poll in one email, and the results of that poll in the next email. That way, you can get some useful user feedback, and engage the reader. When you ask your subscribers questions, and include them in what’s going on with your company and your products, you create a feeling of inclusion in the reader. If they feel like a part of your company, and they feel like they’re engaged by your emails, they will be more inclined to keep reading your emails.

It can be tough to keep your emails from getting lost in the sea of messages in your subscribers’ inboxes, but if you work to inform and engage your subscribers, you’ll find that they pay attention to your emails.

Using a forum to market and monetize your website is a great idea. There are two different ways you can do this, one is by marketing on other people’s forums, and the second is to create your own forum.

Forums are a great way to market to a very specific area. Sure, you sometimes see a forum that is about general topics, but mostly the topics discussed are very narrow minded (in a good way). For example, there are massive forums on cycling, soccer, social networking, making money online, or knitting.

There is really no limit of what a forum can be about, if there are passionate and interested people about a subject, they will most likely find their way to a forum to discuss the topics.

Using Other People’s Forums
The easiest and cheapest way to market your website via forums is to use someone else’s already established forum. This way, the cost of entry is much lower, in both monetary and time terms. All you need to do is register on the forum, read the rules, put your website in your signature with a catchy phrase that will entice people to click on it, then start posting on the forum. It is important to engage in conversation, rather than spamming the established members already (they will not take kindly to that). Engaging and holding an intelligent conversation is essential here, because this is the first time your potential visitors will ever see what you have to say. Make sure you add value to the forum and post several times a day or week in order to maximize your results.

Creating Your Own Forums
Another way you can use forums is to create your own forum to allow your followers to engage with you and one another. This will help create a sense of community around your site, especially if you are already getting comments. The problem with this method is that you need to have viewers already to leverage them into becoming forum members. This is usually one of the later aspects of a website to come along, simply for that reason. But once you do have established readers, it could be a great way to promote your topics, engage in conversation, and even get new ideas for content and products.

Facebook and Twitter have become a part of the lives of a great number of people, so it only makes sense to try and use those services to get your message out to your target audience. So all you have to do is sign up for them, and put up a few links to your website, and the traffic will just pour in, right? Wrong. There are a lot of things to consider before diving into marketing your site through socian networking services.

The most important thing to remember whether you’re thinking about a Facebook or Twitter account is that there has to be an actual human being running the account. There is plenty of software out there that will post updates about your website to either service automatically, but that software should be used alongside a person making regular updates, not instead of a person making regular updates. Just remember, the key word in social networking is “social”. People use Facebook and Twitter to connect with other people, and giving them that connection is a big part of using social networks effectively as marketing tools.

When using Twitter, make sure you take the time to talk to your followers. If someone @ replies you, be sure to answer their question or address their statement. Same thing goes for direct messages. If you have a healthy number of real tweets crafted by a real human being, your followers are way more likely to click on links to your site when you tweet them.

Facebook works a little differently. When you’re setting up a Facebook page, you should take a minute, and think of something elated to your niche, and create a page about that rather than about your specific website. For example, if you have a website that sells luggage, start a Facebook page about travel. Once the page has a good number of fans, start throwing in some links to deals on your site in between posts about travel. That way you’re certain to reach your target audience in a meaningful way.

If you’re careful to give your social marketing campaign a friendly, human feel rather than just letting software post updates to Twitter and Facebook for you, you will drive more traffic to your links, and get more attention from your target audience. With no sign up fees or other costs involved, Facebook and Twitter can be affordable, and powerful marketing tools if used correctly.

Facebook can be a great platform to market your business or products on if you do it right. The biggest thing to remember is that Facebook is a social network where two way engagement is important. People who spam Facebook with links, and information that looks like spam are going to be classified as such and potentially ignored or even shut down by Facebook.

The problem with Facebook is that you need to have a very engaged audience in order to be profitable through the social media part of it. That is what we are going to talk about today – the social aspect of Facebook, not the advertising platform.

On Facebook you have two real ways of marketing for free to individuals. The most prominent now is through Facebook Pages as they are called. The other is through Facebook Events.

Facebook Pages are the best way to promote and connect with your readers or fans online, except through mailing lists. Facebook pages are a great way to promote your content because you can easily share links to your website, interact with fans and hold contests and more.

It is important to remember that your Facebook page is only a compliment to your site, not your only site. Due to the interaction levels being so high, it can be easy to use Facebook Pages as your only source of interaction and content creation. Spread the love around to other social networks such as Twitter and see your brand grow even more so.

The best way I have found to get my Facebook page numbers up (right now it is around 1,400 for a pretty small community’s website) is to hold a “fan drive.” A fan drive is simply a plea to get people to “like” your pages in order to achieve a goal. My goal was 1,000 fans in one month and I would donate $150 to the local Hospice. Within two weeks my page had over 1,100 fans and I was writing a check.

Those 1,000 fans are worth so much more than $150, and the cost was well worth it.

Depending on your situation, there are other ways to get people to join if you are not working on such a local level. For example, giving away an iPod or something to a random fan is a great way to get people to join, even small things like books and gift cards are a huge motivator.

Be creative when using Facebook to market your product or page, but remember, don’t be a spammer or you will lose fans a lot faster than you gained them.