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Rap artist 50 Cent went on a Twitter tirade last night, spewing profanity and an endless stream of obscene photos after  apparently discovering for the first time that he has a Twitter account with over 2.9 million followers. Surprise! The rapper’s account is usually run by a PR rep, but at some point yesterday 50 Cent decided he wanted to have some fun/shoot himself in the foot/vent to his 2.9 million followers.

While it might not have been his greatest move, it did score him a new nickname: Twitty Cent

Sorry Fiddy fans, this was not a hack.  After numerous X-rated posts, Twitpic stepped in and blocked his account. This may have stopped him from posting any more Kim Kardashian burger buns pics, but it certainly didn’t slow down the stream of f-bombs and irreverent slams about pretty much everyone else on his record label (Kat Stacks, Fat Joe, Allhiphop, Soulja Boy, and Miss Info, to name a few).

Is this career suicide? Or a dude from the streets just being real? Check out the full train wreck and then let me know your take on this below.

In this post I am going to tell you about how you can split test your WordPress theme to get better results from your blog – but let me give you some background first on how this post came about.

Background: I was just consulting for a former student of mine. He has a great site called www.crazymikeapps.com – I was looking at his site and my immediate thought was that the black background looks cool, but may actually be hurting his user experience – which has a much bigger impact on all of his efforts on the site.  I’ll get into more detail on that later.

***Side note: We talked about a bunch of ways he might be able to improve his site, but this post is about split testing his theme so  I will focus on that.

Did you know that visitors will stay on a site longer with a white background more than any other color? In some niches or markets the opposite may be true, but from my experience the clean white look has always done best. There has been a lot of research on this topic and most of it points to white being the winner.

After discussing this with Mike I told him to test it, I recommended he test his current theme versus a new one with a white background.

I referred Mike to the “SES Theme Split Test” plugin. This plugin gives you the ability to split test themes.

With this plugin you can select two different themes and it will automatically rotate the themes which you can then track to see which theme you might be getting a better result with.

You do have to have a Google Analytics account to track the results.

I also recommended he switch to the Thesis Theme for WordPress to improve his page ranking and user experience.

This plugin will give him the ability to split test the new theme and look versus the old one. If the results are what I predict them to be, I think he will see an increase in time on site, a decrease in his bounce rate and his page views should increase.

All of those benefits will also help his page rank which is super important to his end goal of driving more traffic.

After discussing this with him, it motivated me to try a test for myself. If you follow this site and return in a few days, you may end up seeing a different theme. After hanging out with Chris Pearson (The creator of Thesis Themes) a few months ago in Austin – he convinced me that Thesis Themes are the absolute best theme for WordPress in the marketplace.

I won’t get into the specifics of my conversation with Chris – just know Chris is probably the most knowledgeable person I have ever talked to on the subject of page rank and SEO. Everything he said about his theme and the way it’s designed and why Google loves it made absolute sense.

I have been dragging my feet about making the switch to Thesis – but this split test is just the motivation I need to do it.

Hope that helps.

Once upon a time, I was just like the rest of the online marketers out there. Then I made some changes, and I guess you could say I saw the light. That’s the story I want to share with you….

In August of 2009, I was contacted by a friend on Twitter who wanted to organize a social media webinar. He had been hosting several webinars for business and thought it would be a good opportunity to get our names out there and provide some value.

Our initial ideas were simple. We would teach a lot of cool stuff we knew about Social Media and then offer my Twitter eBook for sale at the end of the webinar for those wanted to learn more. We decided to include my new friend, Lewis Howes, and all three of us were able to promote it using affiliate links and make some money.

Things were going as planned – we all had promoted the event and had 900 sign-ups.  The live webinar went great with more than 500 live attendees.  We gave out a ton of content and the audience gave glowing feedback. It was almost a complete success….

With 10 minutes to go, we were ready to wrap things up and offer the eBook for sale. I was ready to close when all of the sudden the host pulled the rug out from under me. Before I could get to the eBook he said, “We want to respect everyone’s time, so we’re gonna wrap it up – thanks for coming and have a good day.” I sat there wondering what the hell had just happened.

I assumed his office must have been on fire or something. I called him after to ask why he closed the webinar so abruptly. After some prying, he finally admitted that he was worried about losing credibility. He was scared to make the offer. In reality, we got them really excited, established our credibility and then left them to continue their learning… on their own.  We were rewarded with some thank you emails, but the major lesson learned is thank you emails don’t pay the bills.

It was a successful first webinar in the sense that we gave a lot of value, but at the same time we missed an opportunity to help people while growing our own business.

A couple weeks later I called Lewis, “Dude,  I think this could really work. Why don’t you and I promote this to our own network?  I really think we can help a lot of people and make probably $500-$1000 for the two hours of work of doing the webinar.” Lewis agreed and we set out to do just that.

One week later we began promoting our own webinar and had more than 1100 sign-ups within the first three days. The night before the webinar I called up my mentor and had a quick chat regarding the promotion.

Me: Hey, How are you? Got time to offer me some quick advice?

Mentor: Sure, whats up?

Me: Well, tomorrow we have a big webinar, and I’m not afraid of the audience or anything, but I was wondering if you had any advice to help me have better results.

Mentor: Great – first off how many people do you have signed up for it?

Me: Over 1100.

Mentor: Holy cow, are you serious… dude that is awesome. Not many marketers can do that – congrats on building a great list.

Me: Thanks, yeah, I was a little surprised by the numbers.

Mentor: What is the topic?

Me: Social Media Marketing

Mentor: What is your offer?

Me: We have combined our eBooks that normally retail for over $150 and will be selling it for $97

Mentor: You need a higher price offer.

Me: I do? Why?

Mentor: Because there will be a percentage of people who will want to pay you more than $97

Me: Ok, what should I offer?

Mentor: Well aren’t you offering “X” service to some people now?

Me: Yeah.

Mentor: Well offer that – but limit it to an amount you are sure you can service, that will help with scarcity as well.

Me: Ok,  I can do that. Thanks for the advice.

Mentor: When you craft that offer – make it irresistible.

Me: Ok. Good advice, thanks again.

Mentor: No worries, that’s what I am here for. Good luck.

So that’s exactly what we did.  I worked all night on the world’s worst-looking sales page and literally hit the save button as Lewis was delivering the webinar intro the following day. We went on to having around 500 people show up live and the webinar went great. We had a lot of fun and were able to teach a great deal in that hour. In our close we simply shared, “If you want to learn more, we’ve put together two packages, one for $97 which includes….and one for $497 which includes….”

We answered questions and then thanked everyone for coming and ended the webinar.

We then opened up the online order page and literally started screaming out of sheer excitement. In fact Lewis screamed so loud he woke my daughter who was napping. Normally my wife would have killed us, but she was so excited too. We had just brought home some serious dough.  I remember the three of us were hugging and dancing as we continued to check the online orders over and over again. We had done over 50 sales and there were 13 at the $497 price point (thank you, Mentor!). We couldn’t believe it. We literally had gone into the webinar hoping to make $500-$1000.

All in all it was one of the most exciting days in my marketing career. We did this webinar from my home office, so afterwards we were in my backyard jumping on the trampoline, still hooting and hollering. My neighbors must have thought we were crazy. To this day I still consider that moment to be one of the top three highlights of my career. To give you an idea of how much I value that day – it surpasses the high we got from doing a recent webinar promotion that netted somewhere around 90k in sales.

It’s so funny to look back now and think about how far I have come. On that first webinar we had a total of only four slides. (LOL! Yes, only four.) We used the web to show sites, which I won’t recommend doing now, but at the time it helped get us started.  Our presentation now has over 100 slides, and we rarely go to the web.

If you are interested in learning how you can leverage the power of marketing via a webinar – we are launching a new training this week. It’s called “Magnetic Webinars”, and to kick things off we are holding a webinar (of course) where we will reveal a ton of strategies to host successful webinars and make money. One of the things Lewis, Chris and I have done really well in getting such high attendance to our webinars is using social media. If you’re interested in learning some of our tactics then go now and grab your virtual seat.

Sign up for Thursdays (9/2/10) Webinar here https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/685997355

Go here for a free ebook on how to crush it using webinars – http://magneticwebinars.com/

Are you using webinars to market your product or service? If you aren’t… then why not?

Have you been on one of my webinars? Do you like the way we run them?

Looking forward to your comments!

Sean

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Image credit: Steve Garfield

This is another installment of “I find cool stuff and share it with you” – cause I’m cool like that.

Recently my friend Trevor Mauch sent a message over to a mastermind group we’re both in with a link to create your own YouTube “search story”. It’s a fascinating tool that can be used to create a great piece of marketing for your business or brand in all of about 5 minutes.

What is a “Search Story”?

Remember the popular “Parisian Love” commercial that ran during the 2010 Super bowl? That was the the basis for the search story campaign. YouTube & Google have now made a tool for you to to use to create your very own search story.

To get an idea of how this can be used:

Here is the video I made to help promote a new service we are rolling out called  Free wordpress site.

You can see exactly how we implemented it here – www.FreeWordpressSite.com

Some guidelines you may want to follow:

(These 7 guidelines were provided to me by another great member of the mastermind, Dale Hensel, from Paper Assets 101 )

When creating your search story video, YouTube allows you to enter 7 search phrases that pull results from Google to create the video – so here are useful tips and guidelines.

1. Your Target market’s BIG QUESTION
2. Your target market’s REFINED QUESTION (when the big one doesn’t answer it)
3. The BIGGEST BENEFIT you can give them (if they had the answer now)
4. The next Biggest Benefit you can give them
5. EMOTIONAL HOOK (or heightened emotional state they are experiencing or seeking out)
6. Decision that you want them to make.
7. Fast forward to their dream as if it already happened

By structuring your 7 lines like this, you can walk someone through a sequence that ends with emotion, and a call to action and the benefit of doing it. For short videos that you can make, this is a huge marketing tool Google has handed us.

You can make your own search story here - http://www.youtube.com/searchstories

Go make your own video now and if you liked this post – share it!

Unreal Hail Storm – Baseball Size Hail [Video]

I found this on Break.com via Digg.

Unreal – Wait till the one minute mark of the video. All hell breaks loose.

Pool Bombarded by Incredible Hail Storm – Watch more Funny Videos

How to enter -

Simply leave a comment below with your best caption – a RT would be cool of you too!

I will leave this contest open for 48 hours – so on May 13th at 6pm Eastern I will announce a winner.

I used to receive around 200 DM’s every day. The majority of them were auto DM’s, spam, unsolicited invites to join a mafia family, slap a trout on someone, play a game, or take a quiz. Exactly the kinds of productive activities I normally engage in with my free time – NOT. I don’t have anything against these games and I actually think they are great if they help people get more out of Twitter, but plain and simple – I wanted my Direct Message box back, as I began missing valuable DM’s.

I began to click the links and search for opt-out links or instructions and put together a short list of the biggest offenders.

In 5 minutes or less you can re-claim your DM box! Here’s how:

Auto DM’s

Most of them plain suck. People have not figured out how to engage people with this opportunity and worse they are being used by spammers to send DM’s for every offer under the sun.

If you want to get rid of automated DM’s its pretty simple. The majority of them come from SocialOOmph.com and here is how you can stop them:

Go to http://twitter.com/optmeout and follow this profile.

Minutes later you will notice they are following you back.

Send a DM to @optmeout – Send anything (I used the DM “abc”)

Go back to http://twitter.com/optmeout and Unfollow and you will receive a DM that looks like this

140 games

Home to many of the quizzes, games, and yes, they have their own Mafia game.

Click this link http://lolquiz.com/optout

It will redirect back to Twitter and ask for you to “Allow LOL quiz access”

Click the allow button and your good to go.

Poll Pigeon

Home to many of Twitters top polls and another big offender of the DM box.

Click this link http://pollpigeon.com/optout/

Click the “Don’t send me any Direct Messages” button and you’re good to go.

Twables / FB140

Twables has a bunch of different applications but the most popular and annoying is an app that tells your Facebook Friends you’re on Twitter. When you opt in for this – It sends your followers a Dm that looks like the one below.

After some serious digging and stumbling across a cleverly disguised opt out link, I figured this one out and found out how to remove yourself from their list.

http://www.twables.com/opt <—– Click here to opt out of FB/140

In 5 minutes or less you can get rid of 90% of the spam you get now by doing the above steps!

The other day I was surfing around Facebook and I noticed something strange. In the language settings I noticed a language titled “English – Pirate” So I clicked it and to my surprise someone over at facebook has developed a language setting for pirates.

Not only have they developed the language, they have gone to great links to change almost every aspect of common text in Facebook. It’s impressive and entertaining. Some of my favorite lines are:

• What be troublin ye?  replaces –  What’s on your mind?
• T davy jone’s with it!  replaces – Delete
• 10 Sorry louts think they’re your mates. replaces 10 friend requests
• Shiniest booty – Fresh booty. replaces Top news – Most recent

The list goes on and on – even the notification emails are in Pirate. Check out this video I made to demonstrate how to change your language settings. Also about two minutes in, I play a prank on my wife with her settings.

Enjoy.

This post originally appeared on the MyTwitterexperiment.com, where I used to blog regularly about Twitter & Social Media and stuff in general. I have not written there in a while, it’s basically become an archive of my tweets. Maybe one day I’ll bring that blog back, but for now my focus is here.

Here is my office, this is where a lot of Twixplode was written.  This is the  place I come when I feel like getting out of the house and changing environments. It is a Co-working space in Columbus called the Sandbox.

Have you heard of Co-working? Co-working in simple terms is a shared office space. This office is full of Entrepreneurs, who are doing their thing. Mostly internet business minded people work here, its great to be in an environment like this. It has a very nice community feel to it.
Check out the video of my office space – it’s what I consider somewhat of a dream office.


Everyone here is on Twitter, into social media, in fact several of the businesses that operate from here revolve around social media. Its a fun time, I feel blessed to be surrounded by like minded individuals. Its inspiring.

If your in Columbus and want to learn more about the sandbox – here is there site – http://www.sandboxcolumbus.com/

If you are not In Columbus here – is a great resource to find a space-  more info on co-working. I highly recommend this type of office for Entrepreneurs.

Update – I am no longer working from the sandbox. In January I left for Argentina for 3 months and my partner Lewis Howes was traveling a lot as well. The next few months are full of travel as well, so it will be a while before I work from an office again, and at that point I will probably lease a space as my company has sort of outgrown a co-working space.

I cant recommend this type of space enough if you are running a small business or a one man show. I made so many great connections with up and coming & established movers & shakers that will be valuable in the years ahead.

5 Changes Twitter should consider – Part 1

Below, I present some changes that In my opinion would enhance the user experience and take Twitter to another level. I know any or all of these changes could be risky as Twitter has had no problems growing in its original state, but it does seem the growth has slowed and user retention seems to be an ongoing issue. In my humble opinion, the platform could be greatly improved.

Yes, I realize that some of these changes are currently available in third party clients, but as for me and many other users (especially new users), Twitter.com is the place we use to access Twitter the most.

I know some of these changes I propose may be not in line with Twitter’s vision, but I definitely think they would grow and retain their userbase if implemented – which is in line with the goal of Twitter growing and becoming a major player in digital media.

If Twitter’s ultimate goal is to be a global information network, then I think some of these changes will aid in that goal as well by attracting and retaining more users to fully realize their vision of being “the” global information network.

Twitter has now hired over 150 employees and is looking to double its workforce . I suspect some big changes are coming soon, so if you like the ideas presented below please ReTweet this post and maybe someone will take notice.

So here are 5 changes that I think Twitter should consider:

Chat

Take connecting on Twitter a step further.

One of the main criticisms for most people is that Twitter’s platform limits the ability to truly connect with people on a more intimate level. Think about it for a minute and I’m sure you have some Twitter friends that you know well and like, but really don’t know at all. How nice would it be to be able to take the conversation to a whole new level beyond a daily tweet here or there.

I know you’re probably thinking that it would be hard to implement with the number of friends you have and might become overwhelming, but Twitter could limit the service to invitation only – where someone would have to invite you or has to be invited to be able to chat, just like Gmail does.

To take it a step further, they could limit it to 50 new connections a month, which would accomplish two things. Number one, it would make it more sincere if someone accepted your invitation or vice versa. Number two it could provide an excuse or reasoning to offer if someone was disappointed you did not accept his/her chat request.

This should not be just any regular chat, but a chat system similar to Gmail’s with voice and video capabilities. Chat would provide an additional way to make deeper connections and enhance user experience.

Link posting limits.

Tired of seeing 1 million links in your home stream?

80% of the tweets that come across my home screen are links. I can remember when the ratio was the opposite and people used Twitter to communicate. It seems anymore that everyone wants to share something or a spammer. This is where limits could be nice. This could be accomplished in a few different ways.

A set limit - 15 links a day and you’re done, or it could be broken down by hour, where you can only post 5 links an hour with a cap of 15 daily. Spammers would hate this as it would force them to open more accounts to reach there same level of link penetration.

Ratio of links to other tweets – Example 1 link to every 3 other tweets. This would force those hellbent on sharing every top 20 list they can find to actually converse with people and respond or engage with those that follow them and interact with them.

Home Screen Options

This would take lists to the next level.

Can you imagine having the ability to determine what you see when you click the “home” screen link? How nice would it be to have the option to see your favorite list? How nice would it be to be able to set a default “home” screen option of the content that appeared there?

The list feature is a great one, but it would be really useful if you could set a certain list as a default to display when you click your home button.

Be honest with yourself, how often do you check your lists? If you’re like me – not enough, and this change would make seeing my favorite tweeters’ tweets an easy one.

I remember when I had a few thousand friends and I could actually pay attention to the home screen. I used to sit there and hit refresh every minute or so and enjoy seeing what my friends were up to. I would jump in and out of conversations and find some great things to retweet.

Photos

A picture is worth 860 more words than a tweet.

This really needs no explanation, but Twitter should implement the ability to add a photo section to your profile.

Photos are probably the most viewed medium on Facebook, and probably where people spend the most time as well. Photos give you the ability to share your life beyond 140 characters. I love sharing photos, but would also love it if people could come to my profile and check my photos without having to search for a Twitpic link.

Speaking of Twitpic – this and many other apps are a few of the obstacles that Twitter faces. The developer community has created some amazing add-ons or features that have made Twitter what it is, and by implementing a change like this they risk pissing off the developer community. Also some developers are crushing it and a change like this could affect their livelihoods – so a fair solution would be to buy out Twitpic. In my opinion, failure to implement enhancements like this it is hurting Twitter & its users more than it is helping them.

Advertising

Targeted advertising based on real conversations.

I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but get over it! Twitter needs to make money and I’m guessing the recent search deals will only go so far. This could be achieved in an unobtrusive manner that would not harm the user experience. If you own a business, think about how exciting it could be to be able to have your ad displayed based on keywords in a user’s stream.

Twitter could really step their game up and become a player in the ad space. I know my clients would be thrilled at the prospect of targeting users based on what they are tweeting about.

Think about it. You tweet that you are hungry for pizza, and a local pizza place ad pops up with a coupon for mentioning you saw the ad on Twitter. You mention to a friend that you need to get an oil change, a haircut, new car insurance, etc., etc. The possibilities are limitless and could be an exciting platform for advertisers.

I drew several comparisons to Facebook in this post for good reason. I think Facebook does an incredible job at rolling out changes and making the user experience a more user-friendly one.

It’s obvious Facebook is doing a great job when you look at time spent on the site.  According to Alexa, Facebook users spend almost 3x as much time on the site when compared to Twitter.

There are several reasons beyond these changes that can’t be ignored that lend to Facebook’s numbers, but nonetheless I think these changes could help bridge the gap and drastically improve the user experience.

These are just a few modifications I see that could drastically improve user experience, make Twitter more profitable, more fun and make it a platform that is here to stay and compete with Facebook from a user experience standpoint.

I think these changes would drastically improve the platform we love called Twitter. What do you think?