SiteProNews |
- Free and Easy Link Building Tips
- Down The Mobile Anti-Marketing Hole
- Help! my email marketing sucks. (And how to fix it)
| Free and Easy Link Building Tips Posted: 18 Jun 2009 10:03 AM PDT Okay, you’re the proud mama or papa to your brand new website. Now what? This isn’t like the movies - just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. The Internet is a huge limitless space with ever-growing numbers of websites. You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines. And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites. If you’ve spent any time reading Internet marketing blogs you know that link building is a huge part of a marketing campaign. Backlinks - links that point to your website - are a major factor in determining your popularity or ranking with the search engines. And of course, just like in high school, you want to be popular. You can buy your way into links, but here we’re talking about a few free and easy ways. An obvious and natural way to build links is through content. When you start a link-building campaign for your new website, focus on attracting links that will add value for your website visitors and best represent your most important keywords too. It is invaluable to have visitors go to your site and share your content. Here are a few easy and mostly free ways to build links for your website. Blog-Based Link Building One way to get natural links back to your website is by setting up a blog for your company. Make sure you network online with other blogs that complement yours. If you share industry news and have useful and relevant content, you’ll attract links. Reference other bloggers in your content and link to other blogs in your industry. For blogs, content is extremely important. Every time you add words to your blog or website, you are presenting yourself to a potentially huge audience. How does your blog’s content reflect your company? This content could be the page that carries your company’s name around the Internet world. Cheap content is just that - cheap. Create content that people want to read and that will make them come back again and again. Reviewing products and services and posting those reviews on other sites is another way to build links. Your honest evaluations and smart opinions can also build your reputation as an expert in your field. Link Building with Social Media Another way to build natural links to your website is through social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. These sites allow you to set up a user profile where you can add information about you and your company including a link to your website. Some sites, Facebook for example, also have a way to promote your business with a page, ad or group. Just keep in mind that there are good ways and bad ways to promote your business on social sites and you should observe proper etiquette when you do. Link Building with Organizations and Directories If your industry has professional organizations or associations that you belong to, check with them and see if they have an online directory with links to member sites. They may or may not charge a fee for this. If they do, it shouldn’t be much. Check with your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Links from sites like these can be very helpful. Check with other local businesses and organizations that have lists of businesses and request links from them, too. Online directories are another opportunity to look into. Yahoo! Directory is a good one. If your business is in a specific geographical area, you might also find some local directories to submit to that will boost your local visibility. Links from Charities or Non-profits If your company makes charitable donations to organizations and non-profits, see if they have a “donors” list on their website and ask if they will link to your website. Links from Press Releases Has your business just started or have you just launched a new product? A press release is a great idea to announce your news. There are quite a few press release distribution services available and some have a free first time offer. Links from Partners If your website offers information about other partner websites like business directories, you should make sure to use all your linking potential. You could have a badge that your partner could put on their site linking to you and one for your site that links to theirs. If you have an RSS feed or a widget on your site that has good value to visitors, those can be taken from your website and displayed on another person’s website, linking back to your site. The Internet is constantly evolving and there are thousands of ways to build links. Look around at other websites and see what they have and how they work. Look at your business, think outside the box and you might come up with other ways to develop links. If it all seems like too much, there are many online consulting companies that can help with link building, SEO optimization and brandcasting. Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/ Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Free and Easy Link Building Tips |
| Down The Mobile Anti-Marketing Hole Posted: 18 Jun 2009 09:31 AM PDT It started innocently enough. It was a cool June day on the streets of New York where outside of Penn Station some street marketers were passing out samples of Speed Stick antiperspirant. When I got to my hotel room and unpacked the cellophane bag I noticed that the promo included a 2D code I was prompted to snap and send to a short code. Ok, fair enough. The theme of the campaign is “Different Strokes for Different Folks,” to promote three kinds of Speed Stick for a range of sweating types (”what’s your pit type?”). And to the marketers’ credit the concept of the 2D code is aligned with the brand message. The offer suggests that by using the 2D code I will be able to “make a 2D code that belongs to you and you alone.” Eliding the obvious question of sentient beings (Why the hell do I want my own 2D code?) I decide to play the brainless toady brand marketers often imagine me to be and initiate the process. And while I am playing the doofus, how about if I also pretend that I am not versed in mobile media and marketing, and that a 2D code still looks to me like some silly screw-up of a digital image download. But, of course, without standardized 2D code readers embedded on phones, using this system in the U.S. is a bothersome kludge. You have to text “SPEED” to 87415 in order for the WAP push to initiate the process. I do so and get the link, which opens my iPhone browser to land on a Speed Stick page. I have a choice between getting a 2D card reader or getting my own 2D code. Choice #1 kicks me to the App Store to download a “BeeTagg” multi-code reader - which, according to App Store users, merits two out of five stars. Speed Stick really hasn’t told me much of anything about why I want this poorly reviewed reader or what possible purpose it might have on my deck. In fact at this point I am a few minutes into a process that has yet to inform me sufficiently why I really am here. Let’s pursue the other path down the brand rabbit hole. Back at the Speed Stick mobile landing page I try the other option to get my own 2D code (whatever the hell that is). Now I get asked for my mobile phone number and my email “to register.” What Speed Stick will be doing with both email and phone number, I don’t know yet. I get an email with a link and a password to enter. You’re kidding me. I have to copy or write down a password now and I still don’t know what I am doing if for? More to the point, this process has now kicked me around three media and multiple platforms: a print card, SMS, app download, WAP push, mobile Web site, email and finally a Web landing page. Is anyone keeping count here, because I lost track a while ago of how many things I had to click and places I had to input information to get to a payoff that is still ill-defined. So I get to the speed Stick Web page. Newcomers without login information get a “What’s Your 2D Code” prompt to find out what this is all about. The result is form to fill and a right-hand text description that easily can be mistaken for a useless Terms of Service agreement. For those of us who already went through all the above steps, we get to fill in our name and then get a pop-up with the same three graphs of unadorned explanation for what a 2D bar code is and can do. Finally, after all of that I get the privilege of reading a short story. I know, I sound cranky, but this has been a long brand adventure and I am getting hungry now. And then more forms; selecting a social network to send the code to. After this you can track how your code is being used. You can tell there is the core of a good campaign in here somewhere. Ultimately the idea is that people are passing their 2D code around and being ranked on-site for how many times they get hit. I am sure the program is still too young for us to assess numbers, but so far the top ten add up to about 60 scans total. I applaud those who were hearty enough to follow through on the whole process and get their own code. I couldn’t follow you. I gave up. I had to eat. Is this campaign just too clever by halves? I am sure that in outline and in pitch sessions it hit all the right buzzwords. The campaign aligns the technology with the brand message. It leverages numerous touchpoints (WAP, SMS, email, Web). It taps into social networks and uses viral distribution. It appeals to its male target’s native competitiveness and quest for popularity. If it works and catches on, the campaign harvests a crapload of data. The problem is, it’s a pain to execute. This campaign not only turns me off to the brand, it turns me off to 2D codes as well. I have never been a fan of slapping these things anywhere. I much prefer image recognition technology for this. UPC codes and the like were made for machines, not people. And most UPC codes are confined to packaging, where they can be tucked away out of sight or restricted to a single page of a magazine. 2D codes threaten to go everywhere. And there is nothing aesthetically pleasing or directly communicative about them. They are just a big fat eyesore that engineers and geeks might find energizing. The rest of us just want to peel them off of our otherwise pleasant-looking world. The prospect of a world filled with these things is too unappealing to ponder. As someone who wrote years ago about the mind-blowing prospects of connecting the physical world to the digital world via the cell phone, I am a big fan of the basic goal here. But well-meaning campaigns like this remind me how far we have to go before the process is smooth enough, and the technology is ready for consumers to consume. We need time to eat. Contributing writer Steve Smith is a lapsed academic who saw the light, bolted the University and spent the last decade as a digital media critic and consultant. He is chair and programmer of OMMA Mobile and OMMA Behavioral conferences from Mediapost and is the Digital Media Editor at Media Industry Newsletter (MIN) from Access Intelligence. Contact him at popeyesmith@comcast.net. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Down The Mobile Anti-Marketing Hole |
| Help! my email marketing sucks. (And how to fix it) Posted: 18 Jun 2009 08:14 AM PDT
A word about spam. Unsolicited email or “Junk email” also called “Spam” is living proof that email is a powerful way to reach an online audience. Spammers know that for all the emails trashed in every bulk mail out, they will still get a few unsuspecting readers who will click on their links and make a purchase. While their shotgun approach is annoying to the majority of us they still persist because of that reason. On the other hand, email marketing should not involve spamming a harvested collection of email addresses, but rather contacting a list of individuals who have actually said yes to receiving your material. How to get people to subscribe to your mailing list. There are some of the ways to get people on your mailing list. The first and most obvious option is that they fill out a form on your website specifically designed for the job. The second way (if you are a local business) is to have some printed material such as a flyer with a special offer, competition or similar that people can fill out and return to you. Hint: In all these cases, it is worth adding a note to your forms telling people that you will not share their email with other companies and that you will not swamp them with emails either. The third way to get more subscribers is to actually purchase a list of verified email addresses from a reputable provider. They must be interested in your subject material and have opted in to receiving emails from you. What makes a marketing email work. These items are very effective in encouraging readers to continue to look at the emails they receive from businesses. How to’s and tutorials. People love do-it-yourself articles that show them how to solve a problem. The added advantage of posting material like this is that you are not only helping existing customers and encouraging loyalty (and repeat sales) but you can use opportunities such as this to address potential issues before they happen and so reduce calls for customer support. Video and Audio content. This is the best format for the above, as well as tours, testimonials…the list goes on. Video gets noticed and is highly memorable in comparison to text. A pleasant layout with some color. This will help make your email stand out from your competitors and add to the reader’s enjoyment. You can incorporate a template and produce something really effective. Nice pictures that are both relevant and of good quality. A picture paints a thousand words - so make sure you include at least one to illustrate your point. Humor (in good taste). A laughing reader is likely to be a repeat one. You might want to enlist the help of a cartoonist to create something original. Add a funny video, quote or even a brief story. Relevant news. keep your readers informed on new products and developments and how improvements to your offerings will help them. Competitions (with a nice prize). You can gain a lot of interest from readers simply by creating a competition. An opportunity to share an opinion. People will often happily share their thoughts if you ask them to because it gives a sense of belonging and community. It is also a very cost effective way of finding out what your customers want. Make it fairly short and offer a prize draw or other incentive as a token of appreciation. What makes a marketing email suck. Hard sell. “Buy now!!!” will soon become “Bye now.” from your readers. An email every day. This is the death knell for emails via annoyance and plain overkill - try and control your enthusiasm to market by limiting your email frequency. This will give you time to produce quality content too. Bad layout (such as none). Lots and lots and lots of text with poor spacing all crammed up with no places for the eyes to rest. (and besides who has time to read a newsletter that is 149 pages long during their morning break)? Lots and lots and lots of banners. “Ohhhh my eyes my eyes!” Poor writing skills and grammar. Forgetting to check for spelling mistakes is more than just another annoyance (believe it or not, but people are influenced by this). What to look for when choosing an email marketing service. A good email marketing service should have a number of features that will allow you to tweak things so you can get the most bang for your marketing buck. Here are a few features to look for… Firstly there needs to be flexibility and creativity to get your message across. This includes the ability to combine text with pictures and video as well as some html so you can make your message stand out. Secondly there should be a way to find out if your email marketing is being received and read. This feature is called tracking and basically means you should have a display somewhere that will show you exactly where your emails are going, what addresses are incorrect (your emails are undeliverable and bounce back) and what emails are actually being delivered, clicked on and read. Thirdly you must be able to automate and adjust everything so once you create an email you can set it to deliver to your recipients at a set time. This can also include auto responders (An email that goes to a visitor as soon as they fill out a contact form or make a purchase from your website) which help you communicate with your potential customer when you are not online. You should be able to do split testing too (in other words create two different emails and send them to selected groups so you can find out which one works best). Fourthly you should be able to see how your email list is growing over time. Data like this is not just for statisticians and geeks who like to crunch numbers - it will help give you an insight into what is working overall so you can refine your marketing. Marketing is an art, but with the right tools and know-how it can work for you. Mark Spivey is a musician, graphic designer and Virtual Media Consultant who provides easy to use, powerful, cost effective streaming video solutions for business and home use including video email, interactive live broadcasting and video marketing. To find out how your business can benefit visit http://www.attainresponse.com/markspivey email: markspivey@vmdirect.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Help! my email marketing sucks. (And how to fix it) |
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