Social Media Tools: Using the Best Marketing Tools to Promote your Company

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Social Media Tools: Using the Best Marketing Tools to Promote your Company

Some of the best companies in the world today have learned that social networking outlets can make a big difference in how they advertise or market their products or services. One of the most affordable and effective tools that companies can use is the social media tools. These tools provide a unique method to market their company to a new audience that enjoys instant gratification and demands total access to people. Staying in touch with everyone else is the latest trend that people are demanding to be part of their everyday lives. Just a quick taste of this access has created a number of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Each of these sites is working hard to meet this growing demand by the public.

One of the best things about the social media strategies being employed is the cost associated with the tools. Almost no charge is involved in using the social media strategies and this savings can be used in other places where resources are short. Marketing your company can also be done by an Internet company that specializes in the use of social media strategies and social media tools. Making the switch over to online media networks can be scary for companies that are not ready for the change. Finding a company that has the right experience with these tools is important if you want to market the company the right way.

The number of companies that exist to help deal with social networking sites is growing each day. Trying to figure out which company should be used should not be as difficult as you might think it would be. The goal to using the social media strategies is to help your company grow and expand. Reaching a higher number of customers is an important aspect of building the customer base. Taking advantage of the new technologies that are constantly being developed concerning social networks is a key part of the social media strategies that companies can benefit from.

In the past, many companies would market their companies through radio and TV spots. These various spots were often hit or miss depending on whether the target audience saw the ads or spots. Using the social media tools that are currently available from various websites can make it possible for a company to generate new forms of revenue. Many of the websites can provide custom social media tools that will not only take advantage of the new technologies but that will allow your company to remain connected to customers. Gone are the days when people would have to wait for feedback from customers. With the new social interaction networks, it is possible to get instant feedback from customers.

Social media tools should be carefully examined before making a decision on what to use to help promote your company. The best marketing tools can make a difference in taking your company to the next level. Social interaction between your company and customers can provide the necessary help to make this goal happen.

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3 Advantages of Using Offline Advertising to Promote Your Business

admin    Banner Web Advertising     Advantages, Advertising, Business, Offline, Promote, Using

3 Advantages of Using Offline Advertising to Promote Your Business

When it comes to your online business, how much time do you give offline advertising? The trouble with many internet based businesses is that very little time or thought is spent considering the benefits of advertising in the real world, as well as the digital or virtual one.

Plenty of thought is invested in search engine optimization, reciprocal links, banner advertisements, viral advertising and social networking or blog links, but whilst these are all well and good, they are missing out on the huge impact that offline advertising can create. Although advertising forms which do not rely on the internet are often overlooked, they can have a huge impact, and help reach the target audience extremely effectively.

There are three specific benefits of using real world advertising, or non web based promotion, and these need to be considered carefully.

1. Quick results. Online advertising takes a very long time to really have any effect. Search engine optimization itself can take weeks before any real results are noticeable, and it’s never guaranteed. Banner adverts can take a long time to really start to be seen, and as far as building reciprocal links or blogs are concerned, these again take a long time to build up.

Non web based advertising, however, is in many cases instant, or at least, tends to have an impact much sooner. Visiting a local car park, for example, and slipping five hundred flyers under the windscreen wipers of the vehicles there could well result in enquiries. Even if you only have a 1% response rate, that’s 5 possible sales leads after just a couple of hours’ work. And this can be repeated at various car parks – not forgetting that this is only one advertising method.

Newspaper adverts reach far more people, and at much less time and cost. If a local paper has a circulation of 50,000, that 1% sales lead could potentially be anything up to 500 enquiries!

2. Longevity. Banner adverts rotate, web pages come and go, search results fluctuate. However, sticking a business card in someone’s hand, or a flyer under their windscreen, or an advert featured in the local paper every week for a few months helps to create ways in which your advert can be kept. Yes, many people will just throw the paper away, or discard the flyer – but you’re not looking to reach every single person – only those who could conceivably be interested in the service or product you’re offering.

If your product or service looks even slightly useful, then people are more likely to keep the advert. It could be dropped in a drawer, slid into a wallet or stuck to the fridge, and you may not get any immediate calls, but through offline advertising in this way, you have provided a tangible way in which potential customers can keep your business details to hand. This is in a much easier, less forgettable way than a banner flashing briefly on a web page that most probably was ignored anyway.

3. Effectiveness. For most people, banner adverts don’t provide a use or benefit, whereas a mouse mat or a pen does. So why spend time creating banner adverts for your customers when, assuming you have the chance to meet them, or cross paths with them, you could give them an item that they’re likely to keep, use, and which has your business details printed on it?

This is of more use and is more advantageous if yours is the kind of business which is likely to find ways of meeting potential customers, rather than seeking them from many and varied locations individually. Trade shows, fairs or conferences can all prove valuable in this regard. Online services such as VistaPrint offer free gifts, or very reasonably priced gifts, which, for a few dollars, you can have emblazoned with your contact details, and distributed to likely customers.

This is a far more effective means of reaching customers, and getting your business name in their head, and of reminding them of that business name almost every day, than flashing banner adverts on random pages on web sites, or hoping that they’ll type in the right keywords and happen to click on your site’s link.

With careful planning and thought, offline advertising strategies offer a multitude of ways in which you can support the promotion of your online business, and although some of these methods cost money, they are often far more cost effective in the long term, especially when you calculate in your own time spent waiting for search engine optimization or reciprocal linking to have any impact.

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Promote Your Online Business Using Offline Advertising

admin    Banner Web Advertising     Advertising, Business, Offline, Online, Promote, Using

Promote Your Online Business Using Offline Advertising

When it comes to your online business, how much time do you give offline advertising? The trouble with many internet based businesses is that very little time or thought is spent considering the benefits of advertising in the real world, as well as the digital or virtual one.

Plenty of thought is invested in search engine optimization, reciprocal links, banner advertisements, viral advertising and social networking or blog links, but whilst these are all well and good, they are missing out on the huge impact that offline advertising can create. Although advertising forms which do not rely on the internet are often overlooked, they can have a huge impact, and help reach the target audience extremely effectively.

There are three specific benefits of using real world advertising, or non web based promotion, and these need to be considered carefully.

1. Quick results
Online advertising takes a very long time to really have any effect. Search engine optimization itself can take weeks before any real results are noticeable, and it’s never guaranteed. Banner adverts can take a long time to really start to be seen, and as far as building reciprocal links or blogs are concerned, these again take a long time to build up.

Non web based advertising, however, is in many cases instant, or at least, tends to have an impact much sooner. Visiting a local car park, for example, and slipping five hundred flyers under the windscreen wipers of the vehicles there could well result in enquiries. Even if you only have a 1% response rate, that’s 5 possible sales leads after just a couple of hours’ work. And this can be repeated at various car parks – not forgetting that this is only one advertising method.

Newspaper adverts reach far more people, and at much less time and cost. If a local paper has a circulation of 50,000, that 1% sales lead could potentially be anything up to 500 enquiries!

2. Longevity
Banner adverts rotate, web pages come and go, search results fluctuate. However, sticking a business card in someone’s hand, or a flyer under their windscreen, or an advert featured in the local paper every week for a few months helps to create ways in which your advert can be kept. Yes, many people will just throw the paper away, or discard the flyer – but you’re not looking to reach every single person – only those who could conceivably be interested in the service or product you’re offering.

If your product or service looks even slightly useful, then people are more likely to keep the advert. It could be dropped in a drawer, slid into a wallet or stuck to the fridge, and you may not get any immediate calls, but through offline advertising in this way, you have provided a tangible way in which potential customers can keep your business details to hand. This is in a much easier, less forgettable way than a banner flashing briefly on a web page that most probably was ignored anyway.

3. Effectiveness
For most people, banner adverts don’t provide a use or benefit, whereas a mouse mat or a pen does. So why spend time creating banner adverts for your customers when, assuming you have the chance to meet them, or cross paths with them, you could give them an item that they’re likely to keep, use, and which has your business details printed on it?

This is of more use and is more advantageous if yours is the kind of business which is likely to find ways of meeting potential customers, rather than seeking them from many and varied locations individually. Trade shows, fairs or conferences can all prove valuable in this regard. Online services such as VistaPrint offer free gifts, or very reasonably priced gifts, which, for a few dollars, you can have emblazoned with your contact details, and distributed to likely customers.

This is a far more effective means of reaching customers, and getting your business name in their head, and of reminding them of that business name almost every day, than flashing banner adverts on random pages on web sites, or hoping that they’ll type in the right keywords and happen to click on your site’s link.

With careful planning and thought, offline advertising strategies offer a multitude of ways in which you can support the promotion of your online business, and although some of these methods cost money, they are often far more cost effective in the long term, especially when you calculate in your own time spent waiting for search engine optimization or reciprocal linking to have any impact.

Using Banner Advertising to Promote Your Product Or Service

admin    Banner Web Advertising     Advertising, Banner, Product, Promote, Service, Using

Using Banner Advertising to Promote Your Product Or Service

Looking for an effective way to promote your product or service? Let me suggest that you consider the use of banner advertising. A banner ad is a graphic image that is either static or animated in nature. Such an ad may contain pictures of the product, descriptions of its benefits, descriptions of the service and benefits and/or the company name. If your ad contains animated objects or flashing words that describes the product, they generally are seen as more eye-catching. The link should not be broken so that your advertising strategy won’t be wasted. Your banner should be clickable, which is to say that it should be a hyperlinked, and should transfer the viewer who clicked on it, to a landing or sales page of the product or service. This link is critical to your advertising strategy.

Should you decide to use banner advertising for the promotion of your product or service, I offer below some useful hints and practical tips for your consideration. Some may seem very basic but it is surprising how often the basics are forgotten:

1. Always post banner advertising on the pages of websites or blogs that are connected to the product you are promoting.

2. Always show the specific product or service you are offering in the content (graphic) of the banner advertising.

3. Always connect your banner with a direct link to the product that it is advertising. If, for example, you are showing the customers a soap product; the link should take them directly to the product sales page itself instead of your website’s home page.

4. It is advisable, where possible, to place your banner “above the fold” that is to say it should be seen when the page is first opened instead of the viewer having to scroll down. Again, where possible, it should be placed at the top part of a web page to facilitate the viewer’s eye. Animation also really helps the banner to stand out.

5. Try to use modern and catchy graphics as well as relevant key words and/or phrases in your banner advertising. The more individual the style, content and maybe animation of your banner the more your potential customers will be interested on your product or service. Any individual animated characters that you utilize in your ad campaign should always be identifiable with the product.

6. If you use too large or complicated graphics in your banner this could impact the time it takes for the web page to open. You want your ad to be large enough to be noticed but not too large as to slow down the page.

7. Carefully check your links before you publish on the web. Again brevity of connection is important.

It is vital for banner advertising to be effective to include interesting graphics and appealing words and phrases. Like many other things, the nature of advertising is changing, and you must be prepared to change with it. This dictates that vendors need to try new methods to promote their products and services.

How To Promote Your Online Business Using Banner Advertising

admin    Banner Web Advertising     Advertising, Banner, Business, Online, Promote, Using

How To Promote Your Online Business Using Banner Advertising

If you are looking for different ways to promote your online business and attract more customers to your web site, web banner advertising may be an option worth considering. Search engine advertising, or “pay per click advertising” as it is called, still remains the most popular website advertising solution. However, an alternative option to consider is to promote your website by utilising internet banner advertising. It is easier, cost effective and much cheaper than you think.

Banner advertising has the capability to provide more than just simple text based advertisements.

Banner advertising has the capability to provide more than just basic text based advertisements.  With this type of advertising you can have your logo displayed along with animation or even eye catching video. A well designed web banner advertising campaign will attract more attention and draw more customers to your website. When you choose this style of advertising, you are able to produce a media rich display that is more pleasing to the eye.

Advertisers using the search engine advertising (pay per click) method, will only incur a cost when the potential customer clicks onto their advertisement and goes into their actual website.  With internet banner advertising it works in exactly the same way.  Depending on your industry and the products or services you wish to promote, it may actually be cheaper for you to choose a banner advertising campaign over the more traditional search engine advertising option. Of course, you will have to consider the banner design cost for your web banner, but the benefits of improved brand awareness tend to outweigh the cost.

Use a mix of different size banners with your banner advertising campaign.

With this type of advertising campaign there are many banner sizes to choose from. These range from leader boards to sky scraper sizes. Another great feature is that there is no limit to the amount of text that you can use within your banner display. Unlike pay per click advertising, where your words and characters are limited to a certain number. This in turn only allows you to promote a reduced number of products or services and limits your advertising capabilities.

With banner advertising, your website will come alive with vibrant colors and exciting advertisements. Attracting new customers and building a solid database of existing customers is very important.  By using this form of advertising, you can successfully reach your advertising potential by drawing in thousands of customers to your website.

It can really be worth your time and effort to consider this type of internet advertising for your business. Developing your online business using web banner advertising is a smart choice for any website owner to make.

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37 Ways to Promote Your Website (2 to 37)

admin    Twitter Software     Promote, Ways, Website

37 Ways to Promote Your Website (2 to 37)

2. Write a Description META Tag.

Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page.

Don’t include keywords that don’t appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format:

<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links.”>

 The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.

When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (#1 above). Then I write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It’s no longer used much for ranking, but I’m leaving it in anyway.

I think it may have some minor value. So to summarize so far, every webpage in your site should have a distinct title and META description tag. If you implement these two points, you’re well on your way to better search engine ranking. But there’s more that will help your ranking….

3. Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3). Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags.

Don’t expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines — it won’t. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine.

(Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That’s a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

4. Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document — where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don’t want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don’t overdo it.

5. Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags. This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm — another clue for the search engine.

7. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly

       You want search engine robots to find all the                                                  pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don’t read JavaScript and Flash very well.

Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site.

Don’t set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters.

Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren’t indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

8. Create a Site Map. A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately.

Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing , following instructions on their sites. By the way,  Google Webmaster Central  has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

9. Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords. SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized.

Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let’s say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker to find the related keywords people search on.

In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword “teddy bear,” “teddy bears,” “vermont teddy bears,” “vermont bears,” “the teddy bears,” teddy bears picnic,” “teddy bears pictures,” etc. You’ll write a completely different article on each topic. You can’t fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.

10. Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors.

I use it regularly. WebPosition’s Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine’s preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. If you want more detailed information, consider purchasing my inexpensive book Guide to Search Engine Optimization .  

Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization.

11. Promote Your Local Business on the Internet. These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too.

When you seek links to your site (see #15 below), you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.

Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Maps Local Business Center and Yahoo! Local . That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search. For more information, see my book Top Ten Home Business Traffic Strategies at below.

12. Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content. Google’s “universal search” displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses (see #11 above), and audio clips. 

Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. For more information, search on “optimizing images” or “optimizing videos.”

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website (“link popularity”) as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines.

Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links aren’t all equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites.

13. Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking — and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory.

Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project, overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don’t get listed right away, don’t be impatient and resubmit, or you’ll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.

Yahoo! Directory  is another important directory. Real humans read submission, so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don’t have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping.

Yahoo! Directory Submit requires a 9 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.

14. Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.

Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don’t try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for “upgraded listings.” Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money — but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

SubmitWolf  is a directory submission tool I’ve used with good success . You complete a listing form in the software interface. Then they submit your listing to all the appropriate directories they know of, plus links to sites that require manual submission. It’s a timesaver and works well. Just be careful to submit only to actual directories, not “linking sites.”

15. Request Reciprocal Links. Find websites in your general niche and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one, see #24 below). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites — so you don’t send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door.

Your best results will be from sites that generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don’t have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages. 

When you locate sites, send a personal e-mail using the contact e-mail on the site or to the administrative contact listed in a Whois Directory. If e-mail doesn’t get a response, try a phone call. Warning: Only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with your teddy bear store.

One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It’s not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn’t cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it.

16. Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article.

This is an effective “viral” approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You’ll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site, Articlesbase.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.

17. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity.

Use a online news release service such as PR Web . Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily. Two additional linking strategies, discussed below, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage (#20) and to develop a free service (#23), which will greatly stimulate links to your site.

Social Media

Our next type of website promotion comes from the mushrooming field of social media, in which people are encouraged to interact with each other, and respond to each other’s blog postings and comments. You should be aware of four types of social media: (1) blogs, (2) social networking sites, (3) social bookmarking sites, and (4) forums.

Don’t be upset if the distinctions between types of social media tend to blur. Social media help promote your site by sending direct traffic, producing links to your site, and generating awareness.

18. Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site’s PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

19. Become Part of a Social Media Community. Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook , LinkedIn and Twitter.

In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don’t like). These include Digg , Delicious , StumbleUpon and Google Bookmarks .

Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).

One important reminder, don’t join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don’t hog the conversation.

Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation. By the way, to get started, why don’t you visit my social media pages and become a Facebook fan or a Twitter follower.

20. Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists — “old school” social media. The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.

Don’t bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don’t use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the “signature” at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

21. Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. I use a widget called AddThis.

When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage.

I use AddThis throughout my website, as well as in my newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

 Traditional Strategies

 Just because “old media” strategies aren’t on the Internet doesn’t mean they aren’t effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective.

22. Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. Make sure that all business cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company’s URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the http:// part and including only the portion.

23. Promote using traditional media. Don’t discontinue print advertising that you’ve found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad.

Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers’ attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals.

Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.

24. Develop a Free Service. It’s boring to invite people, “Come to our site and learn about our business.” It’s quite another to say “Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site.” Make no mistake, it’s expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, such as our Research Room , but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site — and a motivation to link to the site!

Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales portion of your site.

E-Mail Strategies

Don’t neglect e-mail as an important way to bring people to your website. Just don’t spam, that is, don’t send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship. Many countries have anti-spam laws.

25. Install a “Signature” in your E-Mail Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs allow you to designate a “signature” to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.

26. Publish an E-Mail Newsletter. While it requires a commitment of time, creating a monthly e-mail publication is one of the most important promotion techniques. It could be a newsletter (“ezine”), list of tips, industry updates, or new product information — whatever you believe your customers will appreciate.

This is a great way to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site, but aren’t yet ready to make a purchase.

If you have a very small list, some of these services let you use their services free until you grow larger. Blogs are very popular, but don’t really replace e-mail newsletters. You have to go to a blog to read it, while an e-mail newsletter appears in your inbox asking to be read.

27. Aggressively Ask for E-Mail Sign-ups. If you want to get subscribers to your e-mail newsletter, you’ll need to work hard at it. Include a subscription form on every page of your website. Promote sign-ups through free whitepapers, e-books, or other products.

If you have a local business, ask customers to sign up for your e-mail list to get “special Internet only offers.” Also ask other businesspeople when they give you a business card if you can send them your e-mail newsletter.

While only the e-mail address itself is necessary, I always ask for a first name also, so I can personalize the newsletter and the e-mail subject line with the recipient’s name.

28. Send Transactional and Reminder E-Mails. A transactional e-mail is sent to an existing customer to initiate, remind, confirm, or thank the person. Be creative. If you keep careful records, you can send e-mails to customers on their birthday to remind them to return to your site.

Subscription confirmation e-mails can also mention several popular products. You might remind customers that it has been three months since their last order and ask if it’s time for a refill. Thank you for your purchase e-mails can offer a coupon to bring your customer back for a future sale. Use your imagination, but don’t pester your customers. You’re there to serve them, not the other way around.

29. Send Offers to Your Visitors and Customers. Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list. Send special offers, coupon specials, product updates, etc. They often initiate another visit to your site. If you have a regular newsletter, you can include many of these in your regular e-mailing.

30. Exchange E-Mail Mentions with Complementary Businesses. You might consider exchanging e-mail newsletter mentions with complementary businesses to reach new audiences. Just be sure that your partners are careful where they get their mailing list so you don’t get in trouble with the anti-spam laws in your country.

I’ll mention renting e-mail lists in #37 below under Paid Advertising approaches.

Miscellaneous Strategies

Here are a couple of strategies that don’t fit elsewhere.

31. Announce a Contest. People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you’ll generate more traffic than normal. Make sure your sweepstakes rules are legal in all states and countries you are targeting. Prizes should be designed to attract individuals who fit a demographic profile describing your best customers.

32. Devise Viral Marketing Promotion Techniques. So-called viral marketing uses existing communication networks to spread the word exponentially. Word-of-mouth, PR, creating “buzz,” and network marketing are offline models. Promotion strategy #16 above, “Write Articles for Others to Use for Website and Newsletter Content,” is a kind of viral approach.

The key to the best viral marketing, however, is create something that generates buzz and is so cute / fascinating / fun / bizarre that it gets passed by viewers to their friends via e-mail and social networks — thousands of times — so that it propels more and more people to your website, and, hopefully, helps enhance your brand, produce sales, and ultimately boost profits. Internet marketers often seek to launch viral campaigns on Digg or YouTube.

Digg is a social bookmarking site with such power, that if enough people “Digg” you, you appear on the Digg front page and receive a huge number of visitors in a few hours. If your video goes viral on YouTube, you could get tens of thousands of visits to the site you promote in the video. However, viral marketing is difficult to do well.

Paid Advertising Strategies

None of the approaches described above is “free,” since each takes time and energy. But if you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic. Advertising is sold in one of three ways: (1) traditional CPM (cost per thousand views), (2) pay per click (PPC), and (3) pay per action (PPA) or cost per action (CPA) approaches.

Examples of the latter are affiliate program and lead generation programs. Banner ads get such a low click-through rate (0.2%) that I don’t recommend paying much for them. Banner ads typically cost about 50¢ to per thousand page views, except on targeted sites. 

Do some small tests first to determine response. Then calculate your return on investment (ROI) before spending large amounts. Here are some methods to explore:

33. Advertise in an E-Mail Newsletter. Some of the best buys are small text ads in e-mail newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in your products or services. Many small publishers aren’t sophisticated about advertising and offer very attractive rates.

More effective (and more expensive) is to send out an appropriate solo e-mail to the targeted list’s subscribers. These often get a good response.

34. Begin an Affiliate Program. Essentially, a retailer’s affiliate program is a CPA program that pays a commission to other site owners whose links to the retailer’s products result in an actual sale. The goal is to build a network of affiliates who have a financial stake in promoting your site.

If you’re a merchant, you need to (1) determine the commission you are willing to pay (consider it your advertising cost), (2) select a company to set up the technical details of your program, and (3) promote your program to get the right kind of affiliates who will link to your site. Software and service companies are available to facilitate the process.

The problem is getting enough affiliates who will actually work hard to promote your products or services. These “super affiliates” will probably consist of only 1% to 3% of your total number of affiliates.

35. Purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing , or Microsoft AdCenter. This strategy is way down the list, but it is vitally important. Most Internet businesses will want to explore using Google AdWords to drive targeted traffic to their websites.

These PPC ads appear on the search engine results page, typically both above and to the right of the organic or natural search engine results. Since they are keyword-driven, they can be quite relevant to what a searcher is trying to find.

Your ranking in this list of paid text ads is determined by (1) how much you have bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses, (2) the click-through rate on your ad, and (3) your Quality Score, which reflects the relevancy and quality of your ad and the landing page it points to.

PPC ads can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. But I strongly recommend that you study this carefully and expect a learning curve before you invest large sums of money in PPC advertising. Read Andrew Goodman’s book Winning Results with Google AdWords (Second Edition, McGraw-Hill, Dec 2008, ISBN 0071496564).

36. List Your Products with Shopping Comparison Bots and Auction Sites. If you’re an online merchant, you’ll want to consider this. Shopping bots compare your products and prices to others. Some work on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis, others on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis, perhaps with a listing fee. Bots to consider include mySimon, BizRate , PriceGrabber , and Shopping.com . Shopping sites that include comparison features include: eBay , Yahoo! Shopping , and Amazon Marketplace .

37. Rent targeted, commercial e-mail lists. The last website promotion technique I’ll mention is renting targeted e-mail lists. We abhor “spam,” bulk untargeted, unsolicited e-mail, and you’ll pay a very stiff price in a ruined reputation and cancelled services if you yield to temptation here.

But the direct marketing industry has developed targeted e-mail lists you can rent — lists consisting of people who have agreed to receive commercial e-mail messages. These lists cost to 0 per thousand or 4¢ to 40¢ per name.

Do a smaller test first to determine the quality of the list. Your best bet is to find an e-mail list broker  to help you with this project. You’ll save money and get experienced help for no additional cost.

Realize, however, that due to the high cost of renting lists, many businesses won’t generate enough businesses to justify the cost. Run the numbers before you invest.

Free Traffic Go Here

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Using Social Media To Promote Your Brand

admin    Twitter Applications     Brand, Media, Promote, Social, Using

Using Social Media To Promote Your Brand

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are not only for teenagers. You can effectively use them to promote your brand. They are valuable and they are free.

If you are not connected to social media, you may lose your own clients and potential clients to those companies that are using social media to increase their businesses.

If you are confused about which social media sites to choose, it all depends on what your brand is. The information below explains why social media is so important to your business, not matter what you are promoting.

Most cost-effective online advertising

Currently, the most popular online media sites that are being used for business don’t cost anything. They are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (LinkedIn has an upgraded version that does cost money but the basic version is free). “Free” is definitely more cost-effective than spending money on online advertising techniques such as Pay Per Click or banner ads.

You can get noticed by targeted people whom you want as your customers

Social media has been aspects that are useful, including being broken up into groups of people with common interests. If you join groups based on your brand, you will be immediately connecting with your specific target audience, who will hopefully become customers. This can pay off in increased sales for you.

Forming your own community

After you have connected with the appropriate people on social media sites, you will be able to form your own groups with very specific interests. The result of this can be a niche market for your brand (goods and services) where you can share your knowledge with other members of your group. The members can become loyal connections and, eventually, loyal customers.

You can use social media to position yourself as a subject matter expert (SME)

If you share your knowledge free of charge with people who belong to your social media groups, those people will respect and trust you. The positive result of this is that those same people may eventually become loyal customers and may also bring in other potential customers. As an SME, you may also be invited to give blog interviews. The interviews will give you free exposure for your brand and thus, more free promotion for your expertise.

Social media can help you to find cross-promotional partners

What would generally be considered as direct competition in the off-line world is not thought of in the same way in the online world. It is common for online competitors to partner so that they can offer superior goods and services to their combined list of clients.

The clients are usually very receptive to the partnerships, especially since they are introduced to the partner from someone who they have already done business with and whom they trust. The partnership benefits both partners because you both get access to the other’s list (names and email addresses of clients) and greatly expand your repository of clients.

Social media allows you to have global reach

Considering that the world is now a global marketplace, why not have easy access to that market? Many social media sites have global reach. Wouldn’t it be great to promote your brand around the world and spark interest in your products and services on such a large scale?

You can announce updates of your business activities with a few clicks

With your vast connections on social media, you can let so many people know about what new offerings you have through your business. It is very simple to keep your clients and potential clients up to date on everything going on in your business. There are even online applications that allow you to update your status across several of your social media accounts at the same time.

In summary

You will find many more opportunities to promote your brand, goods, and services once you are connected to social media. You will start to wonder after that how your business ever did without it.

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Promote your music with no budget

admin    Twitter Software     Budget, Music, Promote

Promote your music with no budget

Do you create music and sell online? Maybe you sell on Spotify, Last.fm or some other online service. Maybe you have a band who tours small towns and mostly play on bars and don’t sell any CD:s. Well – either way, this article is for you.

I take examples from the Swedish electronic artist Pingo® who recently released an album directly on Spotify, through the online label SouthPole Radio. With no budget at all, the name is out there and sales and streams are made. This is how you can copy that promotion plan and do the same thing yourself with your band, your artist, your music.

If you want to release your music on Spotify, please read my article ”How to get your music on Spotify – and earn money on it!”. Then head back to this text and find out how to start promoting!

Last.fm is a great place for an artist to write more about himself, push the music to friends and start a fan-base. MySpace is today also a very good artist platform. However, both of them lack a lot, specifically in technology, since both of the websites are a bit old fashioned and – especially MySpace – is a slow and heavy site with too much scripts and bad design. However, since the sites are used by so much people, they are still two sites that an artist should sign up on.

After adding your artist page to MySpace and Last.fm it’s time to create your own website. If you don’t already have one (you should!), then find a good webhost (I suggest HostGator, since it’s cheap and have very good service in different languages) where you easily can install a Wordpress blog. Hostgator (and many other hosts) have the cPanel. cPanel is an add-on many hosts have where you easily can install several different scripts and functions for your website. Wordpress – the blogging script – is one of these.

Before you buy hosting, however, you need a domain name. You can buy that online on any domain registrating company (I usually use GoDaddy). Choose a name that is as close to your artist’s or label’s name as possible. Try to go for the .com domain, but if that is not accessable, you can go for anything – if you have your band residing in any other country than USA, you should of course go for that country’s localized top domain.

Hosting and domain name is the only costs in this. The hosting is around per month, and the domain name is approximalty for a whole year.

When you have linked your domain with your hosting, head into the cPanel and do the easy installment of the Wordpress blog. After that, head into the Wordpress admin panel and choose a theme that fits your artist or label design. Now you have your own place on the ‘net and now the real business starts.

Use Twitter. Create an account if you don’t have one, and see to it that the Wordpress theme you are using also can handle a Twitter ”widget”. Installing such a widget in Wordpress makes your latest twitter end up directly on your website.

In Last.fm link your feed (the rss-link from your Wordpress site) to the site. You can add this in the Music Manager on Last.fm.

Now sign up for a YouTube account. Make a video. You can make any video you like to one of your tunes using a regular video- or digital camera. Either just film yourself singing, have a friend film you live or do a stop-motion animation (as Pingo® did) or anything else you can think of! There are lots free software out there that can help you with the editing and creation of your video.

Upload the video to your YouTube account and use the embedd link on your Wordpress blog. Write a news post about it, and see the news post end up on Last.fm too!

Now use your own network to promote your website. The nice thing with all this is that you now can sell your music as downloadable mp3’s via Last.fm, get payed for it, get payed for streams via Spotify – but only have to take care of two things: your news posts on your website and your small twitters via Twitter. Everything else is updating itself!

So next time you are on tour – create a banner that has your website’s domain name on it. Spread the word of your domain name to your friend. Make stickers and put on your car. Spread that domain name any way you can!

The beauty in this is that you don’t have to spread your Twitter (since that feed is visible on your website, people may sign up to your Twitter account when they have found your website), you don’t have to spread your MySpace, Last.fm or Spotify links (which all can be a bit weird to send out to people anyway).

So with a little time, only a few bucks and some tweaking – you can end up selling your tunes for your unknown band in no time, with just a single domain name to spread and a lot of sites promoting your music.

Good luck!

Buy Targeted Traffic to Promote a Product on Your Website Increase Web Site Traffic for a Product Promotion With a Traffic Service Provider

admin    Targeted Web Advertising     Increase, Product, Promote, Promotion, Provider, Service, Site, Targeted, Traffic, Website

Buy Targeted Traffic to Promote a Product on Your Website Increase Web Site Traffic for a Product Promotion With a Traffic Service Provider

Website traffic needs to be increased during product promotion. You can increase your web site traffic from new visitors when you buy targeted traffic services from a website traffic promotion company that offers targeted marketing services.

Buying targeted traffic to promote a product can increase web site traffic that will be receptive to your offer. A successful promotion will lead to significant return traffic – and successful financial returns. If your website is relatively new, a sharp increase in web site traffic can give you a jump start in gaining return visitors and gaining recognition with the search engines. A mature website can promote a specific product for instant returns from the purchased targeted traffic. A traffic service provider can provide new and mature websites with the spike in traffic needed to gain healthy returns from your product’s promotion.

A successful marketing strategy will consist of a mix of website campaigns to promote your website. A company to buy targeted traffic from can help you advertise each promotion by marketing your website to the target market that is most likely to buy your product. When you don’t buy targeted traffic for a product promotion, you are limited to sales from the percentage of website visitors that would be interested in that specific product. When you buy targeted traffic that is targeted for a specific product, rather than your website in general, you will likely generate a much higher return from your product’s promotional campaign.

To promote your website and increase web site traffic it is necessary to run multiple promotional campaigns to your website’s traffic potential. An easy way to increase your visibility on the web is to run individual campaigns for each product on your website to individual target markets. When you buy targeted traffic from a traffic service provider and a flat rate is given for the audience that is reached, it’s relatively easy to figure out the return on your investment. Simply compare the cost of the traffic produced to your total sales and determine your net profit. Due to the low cost of reaching hundreds or thousands of customers when you buy targeted traffic services, your return on investment can be substantially higher compared to other marketing campaigns.

Your product promotion will not only increase web site traffic and facilitate product sales, it will also give you the opportunity to analyze your product mix. By running individual campaigns for each specific product, you will be able to analyze the data from the collaborated sales results. You will be able to determine the strong performers in your product line and determine whether or not you have defined your optimal target market. Promoting a product when you buy targeted traffic will also give you an opportunity to test the product on different target markets to determine which market gives you the highest return.

Buy targeted traffic and see how well your products perform. You will increase your web site traffic and earn a healthy return from your sales. Your satisfied customers will recommend you to their friends, and your sharp increase in traffic will bring you years of happy financial returns.

To Promote Your Brand Use Social Media

admin    Twitter Applications     Brand, Media, Promote, Social

To Promote Your Brand Use Social Media

You’re missing out on valuable and free marketing platforms for your brand (book, business or product) if you think Twitter, Facebook, and other online social media communities are only for teens.

Further, if you’re not on social media, you’re risking losing your own potential clients/customers to those smart businesses people who are utilizing social media.

Which social media platforms you focus on depends a great deal on what your brand is. Here are seven excellent reasons why you must use social media no matter what you are promoting:

Reason 1: It’s the most cost-effective online advertising.

The current most popular social media platforms being used for business are free: Twitter.com, Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com. (LinkedIn does have an upgrade that costs, but it’s not necessary to get this upgrade.) And this is “relationship” marketing to targeted markets. “Free” is definitely more cost-effective than spending money on online advertising techniques such as Pay Per Click or banner ads.

Reason 2: You can have global reach with social media.

The world is now a global marketplace. Why not reach this global market? Many of the most popular social media platforms have this global reach, and you can see this clearly illustrated on Twitter. At any time of day or night you can see real-time “tweets” from people in Japan, England, the U.S., India and many other countries.

For example, if you have a book that might appeal to anyone in the world who reads in English, why limit yourself to just promoting in the U.S.? Thanks to Amazon these people outside the U.S. can buy your book even if it is only available in U.S. stores.

Reason 3: You can attract targeted groups of people as potential clients/customers for your brand.

Social media enables you to join groups of people with the same interests and goals. On LinkedIn and Facebook you can join groups as varied as Children’s Book Writers to eMarketing. If you choose groups to join based on your brand, you’ll be putting yourself in front of the exact groups of people you want to reach as potential clients/customers. This can pay off in increased sales for you.

Reason 4: You can use the community aspect of social media to form your own community.

Once you are active on social media platforms and have people who are your followers (Twitter), your friends (Facebook) and/or your connections (LinkedIn), you can start your own groups of highly targeted interests. You can create a niche market in your brand, book or business and share your knowledge with others who join your community.

These people can become your loyal followers, friends and connections – and they can help spread your marketing message to their followers, friends and connections.

Reason 5: You can use social media to establish your expertise.

People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. By sharing your knowledge for free online with the people in the social media groups you belong to, you can establish yourself as an expert. This can pay off in increasing potential clients/customers’ trust in you.

And you can also receive invitations for blog “interviews” or BlogTalkRadio show interviews or podcasts. And these interviews lead to more free exposure for your brand and more free promotion for your expertise.

Reason 6: You can use social media to find cross-promotional partners.

Amazingly in the world of social media, people who would be considered competitors in the off-line world are teaming up to provide products and services to their combined clients/customers.

And these clients/customers are very responsive to these cross-promotions (often called joint ventures) – especially when introduced to a second expert by a first expert they already know, like and trust.

You and your cross-promotion partner can each get access to the other person’s “list” (the names of interested clients/customers collected at a website) and thus you’ve greatly expanded your potential client/customer pool.

Reason 7: With a few keystrokes you can announce new updates of your activities.

Your updates on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn take seconds – and you’ve announced to your followers, friends and connections what you’re doing or what you’re offering or what you’re speaking on. And there are even online applications that allow you to update your status across several of your social media accounts at one time. So it is as easy as 1-2-3 to keep in front of your potential clients/customers.

In conclusion, once you become active yourself on social media platforms, you’ll find many more reasons to promote your brand, book or business on social media in order to attract targeted potential clients/customers. And you’ll look back at your pre-social media days and wonder how you ever did marketing without using online social media.