Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

One idea that I have been considering is offering the setup of a website and blog at the same time. The main site would be powered by the Open Source CMS, Joomla and the blog would be powered by the Open Source blogging software, WordPress.

The reason behind this thinking is that a website is a great tool for demonstrating services and products to the public, but it is not a great interpersonal marketing tool. It is meant to demonstrate to the general public. The blog on the other hand is a tool which allows a person or business to get personal with the audience so that the reader begins to build trust with the author. This relationship has become the new method of gaining clients rather than the old fashioned method of selling.

This one-two punch method does two things. First, with an inexpensive website, services and products of the person or business can be marketed. Secondly, with the blog, the author can demonstrate to his or her audience that they are experts in their field and can provide the services or products in a value added manner. The blog can also serve as a newsroom where new and upcoming events and promotions can be brought to the public.

We have all heard the phrase now “Content is King.” However, if no one knows that the new content is there, it will not be found. The key is to syndicate content so that the Internet audiences can access it as soon as possible. So, how does one go about syndicating content? The major way is via RSS feed.

All new content management systems have a unique feature to them which is not inherent to traditional HTML sites, that feature is that they generate RSS feeds right out of the box. No extra coding is needed. The feeds can then be subscribed to, imputed into social networking sites and some email marketing campaigns. Blogging systems such as WordPress, have RSS feeds pushing out the newest posts which is why they are so important to search engine optimization and marketing.

The other way of syndicating content is through pingback. In other words, each time content is created or edited, the system sends alerts to the major search engines. Pinging the search engines could be compared to the kid in school who never stopped talking or always was the attention getter. Again, blogging software has this technology built in so the search engines are made aware constantly of new posts and changes.

Whether it be through RSS feed or pingbacks, both technologies play a significant role in search engine optimization. The more the search engines are aware of changes to your site, the more often it will come back to it thus improving your rank.

So, do yourself and your website(s) a favor, take advantage of one or both of these methods of announcing new content and you will see how much your traffic will increase.

Since I started the business back in 2001, I have struggled to identify the exact niche that I would set out to fill. The idea finally started to become clear to me back in 2005 when I looked back at what I really wanted to pursue after college, graphics, publishing, and web communications. So, from that moment I began to seek out ways to rediscover opportunities in those areas, but with current and upcoming twists.

Nowadays, just about everyone offers web design services, however, very few seem to specialize in content management systems, helping clients determine which system is best suited for their needs, and developing Internet marketing strategies using this technology.  The challenge is that every solution is different as each client has different needs. But, in general, the common factor in this early period of the 21st century is the need to be heard and visible on the Internet.

However, it seems like sites go up left and right, but there is very little emphasis placed on developing systematic approaches to Internet marketing tactics. In other words, incorporating search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging, social media marketing, and analytics should be as a whole rather than individually. There seems to be a lot of back tracking rather than developing a synergistic system from the start.

If we were to plan the end goal and develop an Internet marketing plan with all the pieces put in place at one time, we would not only get more results quicker, but also at a much cheaper rate.  Much like anything else that involves labor, doing more at the same time saves money rather than having to go back and retrofit at a later time for another larger sum of money. This is the technique that I am planning on marketing in order to save my clients marketing time and money.

There are three major parts that make up a quality Internet Marketing campaign. They are:

• Search Engine friendliness
• Social Media Marketing
• Email marketing

The main question that surfaces is which ones to use and in what order. The answer to this problem is not simple. If there was a simple recipe it would have been figured out by now. But a good strategy to use is:

1. Develop good content on your web site or blog
2. Include related keywords into the various pages and references to those pages
3. Utilize the different social mediums to announce it to the general public (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
4. Develop and email marketing strategy to grab the email addresses of those who have visited your site to keep them coming back.

This is just one strategy to use to develop a stream of traffic to your site. There are many other deviations, but to start this is a tried and true method.

Today we need all the help we can get to market ourselves to get our foot into the door. Whether it be into a new job or to impress a client. One has to come across as the “firstest with the mostest”. There are two major ways of accomplishing this unique marketing tactic.

First, the tradational Powerpoint presentation with voice narration. Unlike your hard copy resume, this method gives your potential boss or client an additional carrot to consider. When building your interactive profile, take an inventory of your personal skillsets. What do you want others to learn about you that is not already on your resume? Consider hyperlinks to websites that have influenced you. What you include is up to you, but make it more than just your resume in another format.

The second means of delivering  an interactive personal profile is through the development of a personal website that describes you and your background. The two things you would need to secure are a personal domain for yourself and a web hosting account. It is now possible to get a .me domain for your name rather than the traditional .com version.

Building a website is not a difficult take nowadays. Many web hosting companies now offer website building packages as part of their offer. Check a few out!. There are also a number of self-installing scripts that can get you setup a quick and professional site within minutes and a few hours of customization. The benefit of these scripts that that allow you to edit your website from any Internet enabled computer. Three of the most popular scripts are:

• Wordpress
• Joomla
• Drupal

Want to kill two birds with one stone? Why not do both and offer your Powerpoint profile as a download on your website. Doing this will prevent you  from having to burn CDs of your profile.

The possibilites are endless when it comes to how you can market yourself electronically. Just think outside the box and you’ll quickly find yourself working with those you want to be in with.

One thing I’ve learned in the year or so that I have been learning about Internet marketing and that is that sharing knowledge and experience with the general public is the secret to getting professional attention. Sharing of expertise is a form of pre-selling rather than outright selling of a product or service.

People are more willing to give you a chance at performing your skill if they have read your work or heard you speak in public. This is  reassurance to your audience that you know your area of expertise. There are a number of different mediums that you can use to deliver your expertise. Here are a few.

• Constructing an informational website on a specific topic
• Writing an ebook on a topic and distribute it for FREE or for a nominal fee
• Writing and submitting articles on article databases such as eZinearticles.com
  or Articlesbase.com
• Writing blog entries on a specific topic on your own or someone else’s blog
• Recording and publishing podcasts on topics of interest.

Once your articles and posts have been scoured by the search engines, you’re on your way to getting notice as an expert in your field. The trick is to continuously keep turning out information so that the web gets saturated with your name and keywords. Also, don’t forget to keep marketing your website or blog’s address.

It has been almost half a year since the economy fell from its height several months ago. Many people are out of jobs, jobs threatened of being cut or wage reductions. The grave thing is that no one knows for certain when things will begin to turn around. However, we all still need money to pay the bills that keep coming regardless of whether our job is there or not.

There is a source of income right now that if tapped can bring us from that walking on eggshells feeling to one of security. That source of income is the Internet and the selling of knowledge. With so many out of jobs and seeking education, the sales of information based products is on the rise. With a little time and investment, one can create a secondary income that could outweigh your primary over time.

It has been hypothesized that in this new millennium, that the single full-time job or income may disappear and be replaced with two or three different streams of income. The single guaranteed incomes of yesterday are a thing of the past. At first, we had single person incomes, then two person incomes. Now, it is quite possible to see multiple streams of income with the tools available on the Internet that allow for continuous money making 24 hours a day.

Whether we be seasoned professionals or graduates just out of high school or college, we need to begin to see the need to diversify our careers and move from looking for the safe haven to creating our own financial safety net so that we can continue to live comfortably when one stream of income may get tough.

Many of us use the Internet everyday to shop and do research. However, because of our “old” training forget to look to the Internet to market products and ourselves. Not only does it it help market ourselves directly to others searching, but we don’t have to actively do it ourselves either. The Internet can be considered the only 24 hour employee that does not need to take coffee or lunch breaks. Hence, it is working for you all the time. So, why not employ the Internet to help us with our never ending need for more income.

There are many different ways to go about using the Internet to earn an income. The most common is opening an online store of some sort and sourcing physical products to sell. The other option is selling information based products. Both can be sold either individually or through a shopping cart based system.

Either choice, when marketed properly, can earn you a healthy income. You are no longer just marketing to a local area around you. The whole world is your market. Those looking for your products will find you rather than you having to search them out on your time. Just make sure that your product is of value to your customers and is available at an affordable price. Also, don’t forget to allow a way for your customers to reach you as this WILL help increase your business online.

It has always been acknowledged that the greatest way to get business and acknowledgment in a field is to pre-sell yourself. The traditional ways of doing this was through public speaking and writing articles. Through the use of these mediums, people remember you and when they need your services they will call on you to render your expertise to them.

The newest way to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise is through the web. The Internet offers many great avenues through which one can publish their knowledge on a particular subject whether it be on a career or a hobby. Web sites on a particular niche that you are familiar with is a great method of getting published and sharing your background at the same time. However, unless someone has the newest Internet enabled phone, getting access to that information  could be a challenge.

Publishing ebooks is the answer to getting your knowledge published on the Internet as well as into a format that could be taken offline to read later on just about any device that can open an ebook or digital document. To some, this is a topic that is hard to comprehend. I have found this myself in talking with people new to the concept. So, What is an ebook?

An ebook is basically the digital equivalent of a traditional printed book which can be read on any computer, mobile device or dedicated ebook reader. They are typically written using a word processing program on a computer or hand-held device, saved as a standard file such as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file.

The great thing about ebooks is that you can embed hyperlinks into them which readers can then click to gain access to websites. Because ebooks can be handed from one person to another, it is a great form of marketing one’s products or services while explaining the topic in detail. This will not only establish yourself as an expert in the topic, but also lead your readers to your website(s) or blog for more information.

Creating ebooks is quite simple. All one needs is a word processor such as Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Write, AbiWord, or Corel WordPerfect. You simply format your document the way a book or report would be written and then saved as a PDF file that can be universally be read. If your word processing program doesn’t have the ability to save to PDF, there are many FREE utilities that will do it for you, such as CutePDF.

After you’ve created your PDF, how you choose to market it is up to you. You may simply choose to give it away free as a promotion or sell it as a product on an online store, eBay, or dedicated web page. 

For more information about the process of writing, promoting and using ebooks, download the Ebook Creation Toolkit.

I hope that you all begin to explore the many uses of ebooks in marketing your skills and hobbies and make a little money too in the process.

by: Hugh Macken

If you’ve heard of Twitter, but haven’t seen a need for your business to take it very seriously, allow me to urge you to give it a second, more careful, look.

But before you dive in blindly, allow me to introduce you to a global technology phenomenon that individuals and small businesses, probably just like yours, are already embracing in surprising numbers.

The reason?

They recognize that marketing and communications, like everything else in business these days, has evolved. Dramatically.

And micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are central to that evolution.

So meet Twitter, not a person, but a free social and professional networking platform that allows individuals and companies (“Tweeters”) to send 140-character messages, (“Tweets”) to anyone who cares to receive them (“Followers”) multiple times a day.

There is good reason why that probably sounds like the most clever waste of valuable time that one could possibly conceive. The reason is that it can be a complete waste of time.

But only if you fail to realize that the twitter.com website itself makes a terrible first impression and is not terribly useful on its own.

However, used with the right third-party applications, like TweetDeck.com (which is free), your Twitter account can be one of the best marketing investments you can make.

But don’t just take my word for it. Leading analysts are beginning to take note.

None other than The Nielsen Company’s Michelle McGiboney recently opined, Twitter “…offers a variety of ways for marketers to reach their customers, and it’s a tool that businesses will have to learn how to utilize to their best advantage.”

Ms. McGiboney is right on target. Sadly, though, some small businesses have already written off Twitter as a transient fad unworthy of their time, thus never learning how to use it to their company’s advantage.

But its rising popularity among all age groups is, I believe, likely to entice skeptics to at least give it a try. Many are already doing exactly that.

Data recently released by internet analytics firm Compete.com, claims unique visitors to Twitter increased a whopping 1043%, year-over-year, from 1,725,977 users in May of 2008 to 19,728,619 in May of 2009.”

That’s a bit of a spike to say the least, and a spike whose source may surprise you. While it is true that the 18-25 year old segment has signed on in large numbers, according to Compete, their usage intensity pales in comparison to Twitters’ most loyal age group of – are you ready? – 35-49 year-olds who, incidentally, also comprised roughly 40% of the site’s audience as of February of this year.

Although not every age group has embraced Twitter with equal enthusiasm, Twitter’s broad penetration within the US has been impressive, with many staking their place on the global stage for conversation that Twitter provides. From President Obama in the White House (whose Twitter username is @barackobama) to Christa’s Bistro & Deli (@christasat126), closer to your house, chances are someone you may least expect is already tweeting away on Twitter.

The prospect of a large and diverse US audience is ideal for big business and government, but for small businesses on Main Street looking to find customers, usually the right audience is every bit as important as a large one. Being a small business itself of only about fifty employees, I suspect Twitter is keenly aware of this. So are savvy small business owners who have already found clever ways to nail the hyper-local dimension of the network.

One well-known example is CoffeeGroundz Café (@coffeegroundz) a small coffee House in Houston Their website, coffeegroundz.net, is worth checking out. They claim to be one of the first companies to have taken a to-go order using Twitter. Now clients not only place orders for pick-up, some customers at the café actually place orders from the comfort of their seat in the café. CoffeeGroundz’s Operations Manager J.R. Cohen, has also successfully hosted charity Tweetups (social gatherings promoted via Twitter) to raise money for worthy causes.

Another case study comes by way of Namecheap (@namecheap), an internet company that claims to rely heavily on word of mouth marketing, a strategy similar, at least in that respect, to many businesses on Main Street. Namecheap marketing specialist, Michelle Greer, has used trivia contests every hour on the hour (she used the free app from TweetLater.com to schedule the tweets) with the first replies winning a one-year domain registration. As a result of a dramatic increase in Twitter followers, Namecheap’s traffic increased by 30% when they ran a promotion in earlier this year. Growing and engaging a solid Twitter following has become so central to their sales growth that they were willing to shell out more than $15,000 worth of prizes during their most recent trivia contest, which ended yesterday.

There are countless other examples like these where small businesses needing to find new ways connect with their customers in an ailing economy discovered Twitter was just what the doctor ordered.

To be sure, Twitter is not a panacea to cure all that ails Main Street, but for the price it is definitely worth giving a fair shot.

Before you do, though, recall what I alluded to above and what Time magazine writer Steven Johnson wryly observes as well: Twitter “makes a terrible first impression…[but] it turns out to have unsuspected depth.”

New York native Hugh Macken is an internet and social media analyst with Marshfield, WI-based VMR Communications, LLC. He welcomes your comments at hugh@i.am or on Twitter at @hughmacken