Tips for my brokers; Craigslist, Facebook, websites, advertising and more!

I work 90% with brokers, 10% with clients, and I actually prefer to work with brokers, as I have contact with only one person instead of 300 clients. So considering there are 528 of you guys, I figured that I would post some tips and tricks for my brokers. I will break it down into sections to make it easier reading, and if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, let me know!

Advertising

Advertising can be a serious pain in the butt, and it is utterly necessary for a business like this one. I will give you a couple of suggestions that work for me. I am mostly just word of mouth now and do not need to advertise, as I have thousands of clients, but there are days when I do put my business out there again for new clients.

Craigslist
It is quite difficult to advertise with CL now, but there are tons of ways to get around being flagged or to prevent it from happening. CL is the 4th most visited site in the world, so that right there should tell you that you need to be on there! Here are some suggestions:

• Check out www.beatcraigslist.com to see the complete list of tricks; it is a great website that I came upon, and I already employ all that the author recommends. 
• Get IP address changing software such as HMA, and change your IP to the area that you are posting in
• CL now allows one to validate their account with Google Voice numbers, VOIP numbers and trackphone-like numbers. Take advantage of that to obtain multiple accounts. 
• Make certain to renew your ads every 48 hours, and change your IP after each posting
• Do NOT use the words "CPN", "AU/authorized user tradelines", "sweep", and anything like that in your title or it will get flagged. Use a different title for each ad. 
• Change your ad every 7 days
• Use clickable images in your ad

*For a more comprehensive list, check out the above website

Backpage
This is a very simple site to use and it is effective advertising. You can even set up auto-posting for a low price if you do not wish to manually post. You can even check out fiverr.com and have others post for you for only $5. Make sure to change the title of your ad every 5 ads that you post, and I advise only posting in major metro areas.

Check out fiverr.com for a bunch of gigs for only $5! This is also great for adverting!

Offline Marketing
Offline marketing is very effective also. I use this just as much as online marketing. A few examples would be:

• Business cards
• Postcards
• Rack cards
• Posters
• Loyalty cards
• Stamps with your business name 
• Brochures

Here are 2 sites that I use over and over again:

• Vistaprint.com
• Overnightprints.com

You can leave these materials everywhere (where law allows, of course):

• car windows
• trains
• buses
• hand to hand
• leave them in stores
• billboards
• posts

Social Networks

You most definitely want to promote on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and others. Make sure that you are doing it in a professional manner. This section is not only about promoting on social networks, but also presentation. My business is on Facebook, and Twitter. I am currently creating the other accounts to make sure that my online presence is huge. 

Presentation

Presentation is HUGE. Lets use Facebook for this. Take a look at your personal or business page, whichever you are promoting from (even if you are not promoting from your personal page, you still want to follow these guidelines). This is so important, there are actually videos on youtube to help you out with this. Here is a list of tips for ensuring your profile is professional and presented in a fashion to increase sales and engagement:

• delete anything negative- profanity, drugs, sex, unprofessional language, negative-attitude status posts or those posted by others on your timeline
• add a cover photo that is business-related, shows you actually conducting business, attention-grabbing, etc.
• post about your business, but not every 5 minutes; what is new? How can you help others? What is it about? Do you have specials? What are your services? How much do they cost?
• what does your "about me" section say? Add in a description of your services, business hours, cost, etc.
• post about current trends- do a Google search and then decide what you are going to post about
• find quotes related to what you do- on success, perseverance, sales, marketing, etc.
• what does your profile picture look like? Is it upside-down? Are you throwing up gang signs? Reevaluate that also. 

Check out my personal page and my business page to see physical examples:

My personal page: HERE

Business page: facebook.com/cpnpros

Promoting on Facebook without the "promote" button

Now that the "promote" button is gone, advertising on Facebook can be difficult. There is a "boost" button for business pages, but they do not allow a lot of words and business-types. You also cannot post about work-from-home or about how much money you make with this, so you have to be careful. You can most definitely get a lot of reaches using this method, though. Using the "promote" button, you were able to create a status post and then promote it so that it would show up higher in the status feed on your friend's feeds and stay up there. This was extremely beneficial, especially after tagging 100 people in a post, because it would not only show up on their feed, but on their friends' also. 

So now what?

You can still find a plethora or tricks to keep your posts high in the feeds. Here are two articles that will help you out. I will list a couple of them here for you. 

Article #1  - Tips and tricks to get your posts on top of the newsfeed

Article #2  - Decoding Facebook's news feed algorithm 

• Avoid asking friends or followers to like, share or comment on your post. An algorithm change Facebook made in August to weed out spammy posts will now automatically lower those that beg for likes and shares. It also makes you reek of desperation, which just looks bad.
•  Get your friends or followers to like, share or comment on your post. While you shouldn’t ask for it, posting things your friends care about now has the opposite effect. Posts that get several likes or comments may even appear in your friends’ news feeds more than once
• Use trending topics. This is quite the opposite of a natural or “organic” method of improving a Facebook post’s popularity, but Facebook really wants to be one of the ways you get your news. Adding information about a trending topic can be one way to improve a post's visibility.
• Include plenty of links. Facebook’s algorithm considers posts with one or several links to web pages as indicative of someone who is sharing about a recent news story or has otherwise done a bit of research. Make sure you let Facebook turn your most visual or important link into a “preview,” which it automatically does when you copy and paste a website’s URL.
• Avoid using angry or negative language. A much-maligned experiment run by Facebook found that users who saw happy posts were more likely to share. The company has incorporated that experiment into its algorithm and currently makes posts that are overtly negative less visible. As your mother may have told you, if you can’t say anything nice, include a reference to a trending topic.
• Include multiple pictures in your post. Facebook thinks these kinds of posts are about a recent vacation or an important life event, and brings them to the top of your friends’ news feeds.
• Time your post sometime between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Most people are active at those times, with peaks right after 9 a.m. (when people arrive at work), 12 p.m. (lunchtime Facebook-time), 5 p.m. and before bed at 9 p.m. or later. Saturdays are also a popular time for Facebook use as well.
• Use it or lose it. Facebook gives users (and brands and media outlets, as well) more visibility if they use the service more often, as opposed to people who post infrequently. So make sure you post regularly – at least once or twice a day.

Blogs

I do not need to say much about this, but one of the most important elements to a business that markets online is having and maintaining a blog. Those who have websites but no blog will statistically receive lower sales than a company with no website but a blog. Google's Blogger is the best place to blog, as you will receive more traffic! A great thing they have is stats, where you can see how many people visit your blog, which post they say, what website they entered from, etc. If you are reading this, then you can see why it is important to have a blog. 

Websites

Do you have a website?

Is it a free site?

Examples of 2 free sites I created:
sotoservices4u.wix.com/sotoservicesphoto and guidophotography.webs.com

Paid site?

Examples of 2 paid sites I created:
 GetMCAtoday.com and TheCPNpros.com

*See the difference in the domain names? The more professional is the .com (or .info, .net, etc), not a ".site.com". If you are making as much money as you claim to be on your social networks and advertising, clients will wonder why you cannot afford a paid site. This is important. 

What I suggest: 

Godaddy.com

They recently had a great special that I took advantage of (created GetMCAtoday.com and TheCPNpros.com) where it was only $1 per month for domain, email and website builder, which in total equaled approximately $13.87. I do not currently see it on their website. Either way, they are great to use! With my last website, I built it with wix.com and then used Godaddy to point towards the site. Not only did I have to pay Godaddy for the domain, but I also had to pay wix. I did not like that. With these two sites, I paid for the year and used the website builder to build the sites and I had both up within 24 hours, (took me a couple hours to build each site). 

One last thing

Alright, one last thing that I would like to mention is that you must know what you are talking about when a client comes to you for more information. Make certain that you can answer these questions. If you need help, let me know. I am always here!

What is a CPN?

How does it work?

How can it benefit me?

Is it legal?

What can't I do with a CPN?

What is the turnaround time?

*if you offer sweeps:

What is an identity theft credit sweep?

How does it work?

What is required?

How long does it take?

What do you delete?

Comments, Questions, Suggestions?

TheCPNpros.com

info@thecpnpros.com

cthedreamworld@hotmail.com

518-708-7308

facebook.com/cpnpros