My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘blogs’

With the New Year right around the corner, we often resolve to improve our behavior, health, or personal relationships. Let me tell you, you’re wasting your time. I’m OK, you’re OK. It’s our Web marketing that’s a mess.

We’ve got out-of-shape Web sites, directionless Web marketing, and we’re lost at the search engines. It’s time to stop worrying about self-improvement and start worrying about Web marketing-improvement!

While every business has different goals and needs, please consider these twelve items in creating your own Web marketing plan for next year. Rearrange the order to fit your own schedule in 2006.

January: Set up a Web marketing budget. I know, this is your favorite part: the budget. However, once you’ve decided how much money you plan on spending quarterly or monthly, deciding what to spend your marketing dollar on becomes much easier. You’ll also want to carve out some time for your Web marketing endeavors. After all, a lot of the following to-do’s are more about time than money.

February: Audit your Web site (beginner.) Often we’re surprised or dismayed at the material that’s on our Web site: bios of ex-employees, links to sites that no longer exist, a 2001 pricelist. Spend some time reviewing the content on your Web site and get rid of anything that’s out-of-date or no longer expresses who you are. Nothing turns off prospects faster than a neglected Web site.

March: Audit your Web site (advanced.) Review your traffic reports and decide if your navigation needs to be updated. Maybe certain parts of your site are getting a lot of traffic and should be further promoted on the home page. If other sections or pages are being ignored they may need to be removed…or promoted. Fill out all the Web forms (contact, search, etc.,) and read the “hidden text” that appears on landing pages. Rewrite the copy that seems dated or incorrect.

April: Start reading blogs in your industry. Download a newsreader (I recommend NetNewsWire for Mac users) or set up a free account at Bloglines. To find blogs in your industry you can do searches at Technorati or check out BlogCatalog among others. Make sure you’re reading the blogs of your competition and your clients.

May: Start your own blog. You knew that was coming, right? Blogs are becoming an important, perhaps essential, part of business communications. No matter the size of your organization, a blog can be a great way to connect with your clients…and your clients-to-be.

June: Subscribe to your competitors’ email newsletters. This is a fantastic (usually) free resource of advice that is targeted towards your clients. Shouldn’t you know what your competition is recommending? Maybe they know something you don’t!

You probably know many of your competitors already and can visit their Web site to see if they offer an email newsletter. However, you can Google “your industry + email newsletter” to find some ezines that are new to you. (You should also be reading your clients’ newsletters as well; you can’t know too much about their business.)

July: Start your own email newsletter or jumpstart your subscriber rate. If you’re not publishing an email newsletter you’re missing out on one of the most cost-effective Web marketing tools at your disposal. Use an Email Service Provider (ESP) to manage your subscriber list and publish an ezine regularly.

If you’re already publishing an email newsletter try some new ideas to increase your subscriber base . Offer a free article for new subscribers, raffle off a prize to one subscriber each month, or advertise on a complementary newsletter.

August: Troll discussion boards in your industry. There are discussion boards on every topic under the sun, and certainly a few in your industry (or your target audience’s industry.) By reading posts at these discussion boards you can get an understanding of what prospects are looking for and create products or services that meet their needs.

By posting responses you can quickly establish yourself as an expert and create links that drive traffic to your Web site while improving your site’s ranking at the search engines!

September: Start listening to podcasts. The New Oxford American Dictionary named “podcast” its 2005 word of the year, so maybe you shouldn’t wait until September before you tune in.

Whether podcasting ever becomes a part of your Web marketing, it’s important to understand how podcasting works and how other companies (including your competition) use it. Visit the iTunes Music Store or a podcast directory like Podcast Alley and start sampling some podcasts. Not sure where to start? Adam Curry’s PodFinder show (available at the iTunes Music Store) highlights new podcasts each episode.

October: Consider starting your own podcast. I can’t recommend podcasting for every business, or even most businesses. I still believe there are more effective ways to communicate with prospects and clients. However, some businesses will benefit from offering a podcast. Keep in mind your target audience, and whether they will be downloading audio to their computer or mp3 player.

November: Submit some of your articles to article directories. A great way to increase your “findability” at the search engines is to have a lot of quality incoming links. One proven method to do this is to have articles you’ve written appear on other Web sites that link to yours. To get your articles posted at other Web sites check out article directories such as The Phantom Writers and iSnare.

December: Add share this page functionality to some or all of your Web site. As people suffer from information overload, they rely more heavily on the recommendations of friends and family. Make this word-of-mouth advertising easier by allowing site visitors to quickly “share this page” with a friend or colleague. You can even include your own marketing message embedded in the email that arrives at the friends’ mailbox.

Keywords and Ad Words aren’t the only way that search engines score relevancy; links to other similar sites are another important factor. Keywords have been so abused by some webmasters that links are winning much more relevancy points. Google is said to love them. It might sound strange to suggest that your users should check out your competitors, but they probably know about them anyway.

If your competitors have a higher ranking than you, linking to them can often give you a higher relevancy score with the search engines and the subsequent increase in traffic will make it worth your while.

Alternatively, you can link to your own site by creating a subdirectory. This is like building another web page, but the URL will include your keyword. So if you were selling stuffed toys, the new URL would be YourDomain.com/stuffed-toys/stuffed-toys.html.

You could then write a short paragraph on the home page, describing the new page and including a link. You’ll get big relevancy points for this!

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal linking means forming partnerships with other sites who place a link from their web pages to yours. You give them a similar link in return.

When you look for people to swap links with, make sure that you don’t reduce the quality or content of your own site. You don’t want users to click straight through without reading your content; you want them to buy first. One way to stop them from running away too quickly is to create a “Resources Page” and link to that page from your homepage. This doesn’t take away from the content on your homepage and the links are just one click away rather than being buried deep within the site, giving value to your partners.

In any case, you want to be sure that your site is more than just a page full of links. If your site contains more links than content, it will not be attractive to webmasters, search engines or users.

Picking Your Partner

Your link partners should be sites your target market will visit. Think about your product and its subject area and brainstorm to determine where people interested in your product might be looking online. For example, if you’re trying to sell a book about blackjack strategy, it makes sense that the people visiting online casinos would make great customers. Online casinos then could be good partners.

Identify top-ranked, high quality casino sites and find the email address of their webmasters. You can also identify your competitors, see where they trade links and then follow suit.

Tips for Talking to Webmasters

Before you contact webmasters, place a link to their site on your home page or resource page to assure them that you will actually provide a high quality link. Create a subject line that will encourage them to read your message rather than deleting it. You don’t want them to think you’re message is Spam. (Something about their site or product is sure to capture their attention; they will probably open and read it, thinking that you’re a potential customer.)

Begin your message by talking about your visit to their site and what you found interesting about it. Detail your product or service in one line and ask them to exchange links with you.

Tell them in detail where you have placed their link and emphasize that it is only one click away from your homepage. Tell them that if you don’t hear back from them within 2 weeks, you will consider that to be a negative response and that you will remove their link from your site.

When most people think of Internet marketing, they think solely of websites. Are they right or wrong? Well both. While websites are a key component of Internet marketing and in many cases are the only Internet marketing tool businesses use, they are not the “be all, end all”. They are not required for Internet marketing. However, I do highly recommend them as they are best suited to sit at the core of your Internet marketing plan, the hub so to speak, but that’s a topic for another conversation.

So here are 7 killer Internet marketing tools that you can implement on a shoestring budget without having to have a website of your own:

1. Email Marketing &ndash When properly implemented, there probably isn’t a quicker, better, and less expensive way to stay in front of your prospects and clients than to leverage the power of email. You can literally touch an unlimited amount of prospects and clients with a single click &ndash how’s that for power?!

2. Blogs &ndash Blogging is a great tool when you would like to step it up a notch and stay in constant contact with your prospects and clients. Some ideas on how to use it might be to post what’s new with you or your business, post informative content as a value-add to your clients, or hold and interactive forum with your clients geared towards understanding how to better serve them.

There are a handful of free or low cost blog hosts out there that really make this process simple (e.g. Blogger and TypePad).

3. Article Marketing &ndash This is a phenomenal approach to bringing notoriety, interest and ultimately leads for many types of businesses. It can be used as a major differentiator or value-add on why someone should buy from you instead of your competitors. Whether your clients are local, regional, national or global — articles are portable and usable in all situations — that’s part of their charm.

4. eZines &ndash Much like blogs and article marketing, eZines are great way to stay in touch with your prospects on a more scheduled basis. Additionally, they are probably the forerunner in helping you develop a list of prospects to market and sell your wares.

5. Affiliate Programs — Get others promoting and selling for you. This tool can become the equivalent of having both a full blown marketing and sales staff that gets paid on performance. They don’t promote and directly lead to a sale for you, they don’t get paid. For the do-it-yourselfers, there are plenty of tools out there to help you set up this type of program. For everyone else, there are excellent service providers out there who can coordinate and manage this process for you (e.g. Clickbank and Commission Junction).

6. Viral Marketing &ndash Again, a great approach for getting others to promote and help create a buzz about you, your business, your products and/or your services. The best, most genuine way to get this started is by creating raving fans out of your existing clients and then helping them help you spread the word.

7. Public Relations &ndash If I tell you I’m the best at what I do, you’ll take it with a grain of salt. Maybe you’ll believe me, maybe you won’t. However, people tend to believe what they read. So if a respected publication tells you that I’m the best at what I do, that usually holds more weight and adds instant credibility to me.

Spend some effort here. Become a resource for the press. You help them and they can significantly help you.

I highly recommend you spend some time with these. Explore how you can implement one, some, or all of these Internet marketing tools to help explode your business.