SiteProNews |
- Add Guest Blogging to Your Article Marketing Strategy and Watch Your Traffic Soar – A SPN Exclusive Article
- Why Copywriting is the Litmus Test of Your Online Marketing Readiness
- 6 Essential Social Media Marketing Tips
- How to Webcast Videos on the Internet
- Why SEO in All the Right Places Doesn’t Cut It Anymore
| Posted: 10 Oct 2011 11:07 AM PDT 
Most webmasters don’t realize it but guest blogging is another type of article marketing, one which produces much better results if done properly. After all, what’s a blog post? It’s just another article, only it’s published on a blog. And what’s a blog? A blog is another place to publish said article – just like an article directory but with better quality traffic. Submitting articles to online directories is fine if you’re only after the link juice. But directories are not destination websites. The only time someone reads your article when it’s posted on a directory is if they come across the link while conducting a search. That’s all well and good if you have the number one spot, but if there are other articles that outrank yours on the index, the chances of someone reading your article are reduced. An established blog, on the other hand, is a destination website, which means there are people who visit that blog directly, and repeatedly, to see what new information has been posted. Your guest blog post will be seen by all of those regular visitors, whether they were searching for that information or not. Essentially, when you publish an article on a directory, your traffic is hit-and-miss. If it’s a hot topic and/or you rank well, you’ll get readers. But when your guest post is published you have a ready made audience arriving every day, ready to read the latest news. Obviously, since you’re not just haphazardly submitting dozens of articles, it takes a little more effort to include guest blogging in your article marketing strategy. Here are some tips to make it well worth your while: Choose Carefully: It’s important to choose your blogs carefully or you’ll just be wasting your time. You certainly don’t want your guest blog posts to be published on any questionable blogs. But even more important, you want to choose blogs that attract relevant traffic. For example, it wouldn’t make any sense for you to submit a guest post on dog training tips to a blog about SEO practices. First of all, they probably wouldn’t accept it. But even if they did, none of their followers would read your post because that’s not the kind of information they’re looking for. While traffic numbers shouldn’t be your main concern, the quality of the traffic coming into that blog is important. Look for activity in the comments section but also take a look at the SEO that’s been done. Are they pulling in targeted traffic that will be beneficial for you or are they using Justin Bieber and Britney Spears to drag in readers from all corners of the Web? Don’t Worry About Traffic: Comment activity is usually a good sign but quantity doesn’t necessarily equal quality. A lot of blogs have lower traffic or activity levels but the traffic they do receive is highly targeted. Never underestimate the power of SEO. Read the Blog: Now that you’ve narrowed your search, read the blog. Get a feel for the type of content they use, how they address their audience, and the type of information the audience is looking for. Is there a certain topic they talk about more than others, etc. Read the Comments: Before I submit a guest blog post I always cruise the comments section. Sometimes you can pick up a really great idea from the regular readers of that blog. At the very least you’ll learn what they like to talk about. Concentrate instead on writing an article that showcases your expertise as it relates to that particular blog. Write a Great Resource Box: Your resource box on your standard directory articles may seldom, if ever, be read. The reader arrived at your article looking for an answer to a specific question. If you answered it in your article, he’s satisfied and he’ll click away. If you didn’t answer it, he’s not satisfied, and he’ll click away in anger. However, your resource box in your guest blog post will get a lot more attention, especially if you’ve written a good quality, informative, relevant post. Make sure you include these 4 things in your resource box: 1. Your name – Use your real name to establish credibility and authority Think Outside the Box: There are thousands of guest blogging opportunities out there so it’s important to learn to think outside the box. It’s not necessary to look for blogs in your exact same niche. In fact, the whole point of guest blogging is to increase your visibility, so branching off into a related niche isn’t a bad idea. For example, maybe you normally blog about vegetarian recipes and you come across someone looking for a guest blogger on their Baby Care blog. What a great opportunity for you to attract new parents who might be interested in a vegetarian diet for their babies. Write a guest blog post about homemade vegetarian baby food and you’ll attract a whole new audience. Donna Anderson is a freelance writer specializing in SEO web content and article marketing techniques. Visit her blog at http://whitehatwriting.com for writing tips and article marketing advice and read her Squidoo lens to learn How to Write a Perfect Resource Box. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Why Copywriting is the Litmus Test of Your Online Marketing Readiness Posted: 10 Oct 2011 10:54 AM PDT 
Therefore service business owners often question whether they are ready to launch a full-scale online marketing effort. Almost always, the question can best be answered by the copywriter – the resource charged with creating and implementing the business’s message strategy. Copywriting as a Litmus Test The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines a litmus test as, “a test in which a single factor (as an attitude, event, or fact) is decisive.” They give an example of a political party using gun control as a test for a candidate’s acceptability for office. Over the years, I’ve become convinced that copywriting is the litmus test of an online service business owner’s marketing readiness. For example: A few years ago I got a call from someone I’ll call Jeanne. She wanted me to write a sales letter for her new high-end coaching program. She had spent a few thousand dollars with a marketing coach who was helping her schedule the launch, with dates for preview calls, letters and joint venture partners. Now she wanted me to work on the copy for the sales letter. “Terrific!” I said. “I’ll just need some information.” Jeanne was scheduling a 6-month program. What topics would be covered each month? She didn’t know and she wasn’t planning to decide right away. Now I was hearing alarm bells. I asked Jeanne for some testimonials from previous clients. She didn’t have any. She had just left her corporate job. She wanted to begin a high-end program, working with a 12-person group over 6 months. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe your corporate background qualifies you for coaching. Let’s see how we can present your experience.” Jeanne’s life history was extremely colorful. She had come through some challenges and overcome setbacks. She could have published a memoir. But, she warned me, “You can’t use this in the copy! It’s all private. I just wanted you to have some background.” In the end, I couldn’t do anything for Jeanne. She just wasn’t ready for copywriting. But the truth is, she wasn’t ready to open the doors for her business. And, like many business owners, she didn’t realize I could have helped her develop a product strategy and brand so she could avoid arriving at a dead end in this way. Sadly, from what I can find online, she’s given up the business and returned to the corporate world. Copywriting Creates Action When we start to write copy, that’s where the rubber meets the road. The gaps show up immediately. Even if you’ve worked with half a dozen other consultants, you often won’t know what you need till you start to write. That’s because copywriting requires you to answer questions like What are you offering? Once you answer these questions, you know you are ready to share your service with the world. You have a solid offering that prospects can evaluate. Now you can begin creating your actual sales letter – your online advertisement – and get ready to enjoy the rewards. Are you getting the best possible results from your online marketing? Copywriter Cathy Goodwin creates compelling website content for business owners who are pressed for time. Discover how you can increase your online marketing revenue and attract more clients without killing your productivity or your bank account. Download your free 5-point checklist to assess your own website: http://www.CopywritingWithCathy.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| 6 Essential Social Media Marketing Tips Posted: 10 Oct 2011 10:47 AM PDT 
Being a success through social media is all about leveraging connections, and giving in to the fact that no website is an island. If you are completely self-absorbed and only socialize with others for your own benefit, then you will have a hard time building a loyal following. These next few tips will help get you moving in the right direction, so you can grow your network much faster by using social media. 1. Get To Know The Culture: Before you get too trigger-happy and start sending friend requests or following people all over the place, get comfortable with how people interact in your chosen network. Find out what people respond to and get a sense of the language and etiquette people use when communicating with each other. Generally people will sense a spammer from a mile away, and most often it’s because spammers don’t interact in the same way as normal people do (or most times, not at all). If you want to avoid looking like a spammer, then learn to follow this communication etiquette. 2. Don’t Grow Your Network Too Fast: Another thing that could make you look rather bad is attempting to grow your friend or follower count too quickly. Having 10 followers when you follow about 500 will make people think twice about what you’re on the site for, and they probably won’t want to know you. If you grow your friend count at a more natural rate then it’ll look a lot better, and you’ll get many more people interested in connecting with you in the long run. Also, another key to being successful with social media is having a good quality following – not just quantity. Having 50 friends that you’ve taken the time to become closely acquainted with (and turn into loyal followers) is better than a few hundred that only serve to clog up your list. 3. Show Interest In Others: One way you can grow your network really quickly is to simply show that you’re interested in what others are doing – not by sending out a stock email, but by reading a person’s profile, visiting their website and sending them a personalized message to show that you care about their ambitions. This will get the majority of people you send requests to accepting them, or people you follow to follow you back – hence, avoiding too much of a hit-and-miss approach for growing your network. 4. Respond To Comments: If someone writes on your wall, or mentions you in a tweet, take the time to write back to them. This reassures people that there is an actual person sitting behind your account, and helps grow the trust that followers have in you. Obviously it can become a little difficult to keep up with everyone once your network gets really big, but in the initial stages you should try to do what you can to make each of your followers feel extra special. 5. Share Content From Other People: Re-tweeting or sharing content that other people post can do a lot to increase the trust and interest that your followers have in you. First, it indicates you are on the site to participate as a normal person would, and are not just there to send people to your own web links. Any relevant content you share adds value to those you share it with, and most of the time they will love you for it as much as if you had created the content yourself. Secondly, it hints to your followers that if any of them created a quality piece of content, then there’s a chance that you might take the time to share that as well. 6. Learn From Others: If you are still unsure about what you should be doing to succeed in social media, then one of the best things you can do is take a look at those who are already successful to see how they do it. Visit the people in your niche who have loads of friends or followers and watch how they interact with their network. Get to know the various techniques they use and you’re likely to find a way you can use them to grow your own following as well. Article by Brent McCoy. Millionaire Studio is an online entrepreneurship blog that features articles on online business, blogging, marketing and social media: http://millionairestudio.com/ Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| How to Webcast Videos on the Internet Posted: 10 Oct 2011 08:35 AM PDT 
Webcasting also has the benefit of connecting groups that aren’t in the same physical location at the same time to the same presenter and is often used at conferences, both for incoming and outgoing video communications. Live video streaming saves both the time and expense of flying a speaker to several locations and is an effective way for companies to lower their carbon footprint. Single camera webcasts can be very simple to produce but multi-camera webcasts require professional equipment and a technical director to perform the live switching. For the most basic webcast, a single camera transmits both the audio and video feeds to a computer that is connected to the Internet and the video is uploaded to a streaming server. The video is then embedded on a webpage for viewers to watch. Adding additional camera angles requires much more planning, communication, and equipment. Each camera operator requires directions and the technical director communicates with them using intercommunication headsets. Tally lights are also helpful for the camera operators to know which camera is live but the technical director can also communicate this verbally. The technical director operates a video switcher, which allows her to view each of the video inputs, and switch the output video back and forth between the different input signals. The video switcher is then connected to a specialized computer that encodes the video (and audio that is generally mastered on a sound board, independent of the video) and streams it to a streaming server. A streaming server is a server that is fast enough to deliver live video feeds – a standard server that is used for website hosting is not fast enough. Many video production companies use streaming service providers instead of running their own servers. There are even some companies like Ustream and Livestream that offer free video streaming, but they interrupt the video stream with commercials so paid services are a better fit in the corporate market. Top 5 tips for Producing Webcast Videos on the Internet 1) Don’t forget about the audio: Proper microphone placement is important and on-camera microphones are only useful for webcam-style presentations. 2) Avoid free streaming services: They interrupt the video stream regularly with commercials so your viewers will miss portions of your webcast. 3) Multiple camera angles are more engaging for your audience: Shot variety is one of the keys to retaining viewers and having multiple cameras means you can anticipate the next shot and not subject your viewer to pans back and forth searching for the next speaker. 4) Webcasting requires fast upload speed: Internet service providers brag about their download speed but don’t often advertise the upload speed, which is often a fraction of the download speed, but a fast upload speed is what is required to stream the video to the streaming server. 5) Plan your pre-roll: You should start your webcast well before the scheduled start time and provide a holding slide with audio so the viewer knows they are getting both an audio and video signal in advance of the start time. Shawn Lam is an award winning and professionally accredited Vancouver video producer, educator, and product reviewer who specializes in corporate video production, live video switching, and webcasting. He is a contributing editor for EventDV Magazine and served five terms as President of the BC Professional Videographers Association. You can contact his Vancouver Video Production company at http://www.shawnlam.ca/ Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Why SEO in All the Right Places Doesn’t Cut It Anymore Posted: 09 Oct 2011 10:00 PM PDT 
Making your website the best it can be for the search engines and your site visitors. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to alter their blank stares. After all, it’s an incredibly open-ended definition of SEO. Still, it’s the only one that truly encompasses what good SEO is all about, as well as why you need to do it. While my method of SEO has always been based on that principle, more people are coming around to it in the wake of Google’s Panda Algorithm. Pre-Panda, many people built thriving businesses using the following basic SEO process: * Buy a keyword-rich domain name that encompasses the products you want to sell. Voila! Instant Google Success! They’d repeat the process hundreds of times with different types of products, and then run on autopilot. While it might not have worked on every site they created, the sheer volume of websites they ran would be enough to make them a decent living. So maybe there was a secret formula after all? Perhaps, but after Google’s Panda Algorithm was implemented, many (but not all) who followed and succeeded with that formula for years suddenly lost a good chunk of their revenue. What Changed? My own speculation, based on numerous websites that I’ve reviewed where this happened, is that Google finally decided that there needed to be more to a website than having “SEO in all the right places.” And it makes sense. Why should one site do better than another just because they read up on SEO and knew the best places to stick their keywords? It shouldn’t. And by allowing exactly that to happen, Google was enabling sites with old-fashioned, by-the-book SEO to beat out potentially higher quality websites. The result was Google not always giving their own users (the searchers) the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally blaming Google here. It has to be a daunting task for a machine to know the difference between an okay (but great with SEO) site and a great (but perhaps not so great with SEO) one. Especially when so much of how Google tried to determine relevancy and quality was based on links – and even more on anchor text. It simply became too easy to game that system. Giving Google What They Wanted I certainly understand and even empathize with those site owners who’ve lost a significant portion of their income. They were just giving Google what it wanted. And because it worked so well, they had no reason to go above and beyond their basic formula. Why build a brand for your company when a keyword-rich domain would provide a better return on investment? Why spend time becoming an expert in your industry and educating your target market on the intricacies of your products when you could hire someone to write low-quality “SEO articles” and submit them to article directory sites instead? Interestingly enough, many of the business owners I’ve talked to who have been getting by with formula SEO all these years have told me that they have tons of happy customers. Yet there are no obvious signs of this online, such as glowing reviews on Google Places or other online review sites (there aren’t bad ones either). How are customers even supposed to remember the name of a company called something like WoodAndMetalDiningRoomChairs.com? (I just made that one up.) Mainly, customers found these websites through Google, made their purchase and received their merchandise. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there was also no personal connection made. This is further illustrated by the fact that if you look at social media sites, you won’t see much chatter about these companies. In fact, many of them don’t even use social media, or simply have cursory accounts. Again, they didn’t need to. No Marketing Budget A marketing person, plan, or budget was never necessary nor even a consideration. Sadly, for those companies, they don’t have much choice anymore if they want to stay in business. But ironically, now that they really need a marketing budget, there’s no money in the till to go toward it. If I’ve just described your business and websites – even if you haven’t lost a portion of your revenue (yet), you may have thought you could hire a new SEO company to mix in a little extra SEO mojo and fix up your Google problems. But while they might find some on-page or off-page things you could be doing better, I wouldn’t count on that to bring back your lost traffic and sales. So What Should You Do? You need to seriously rethink your online strategy. You need to stop saying, “Well, it always worked for me in the past.” You need to build a brand and you need to market the heck out of it. You may even need to consolidate all your related keyword-rich domain websites into one big brand website. (Don’t do that last one without consulting a professional.) You need to learn everything you can about social media marketing and start doing it. You need to get in contact with your happy customers and ask them to write reviews online as well as to evangelize about you to everyone they come in contact with. You need to also keep in contact with them in a variety of ways. All of those things are going to make a much bigger difference over the long haul than rewriting your title tags or adjusting your keyword density. The big takeaway here is that while your website may already be the best it can be technically for search engines, it’s time to make it the best it can be for your users. Both parts of that equation are equally important. It’s not going to be quick or easy, but if you want to stay in business, it’s probably going to be necessary. Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen. If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future! Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
There’s been a lot of talk lately that article marketing has gone the way of the Do-Do bird, especially since the Google Panda update. As I see it though, the value of article marketing hasn’t diminished at all, the process itself has just evolved. Add guest blogging to your article marketing strategy and bring it back to life.
Online marketing requires considerable planning, especially to those promoting a service. Service business owners and independent professionals face multiple challenges of promoting themselves as well as communicating the value of their services.
When you go about marketing your online business through social media, there are a few basic guidelines you should aim to follow. These can be applied to forming connections in social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, as well as in social bookmarking services like Digg, StumbleUpon or Reddit – although, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent.
Webcasting, also known as live video streaming, is one of the fastest growing video production services. Companies are increasingly using webcasting as a means of communicating that is more engaging than a conference call. The reason that webcasting is so much more effective as a communication tool, as compared to a phone call, is that part of all messages is delivered in non-verbal communication that isn’t transmitted using audio alone.
When I teach my SEO classes, I begin by telling the students all the things that SEO isn’t. I’ve always felt that it was important because they’re often expecting to hear some secret formula for SEO success. And why wouldn’t they, with all the | You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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