Tuesday, January 25, 2011

49 ways to build your brand using online marketing

Building a brand from is not an easy thing to do, especially competitive market. What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below are some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques.
Video Marketing:
1. Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually descriptive videos and tutorials tend to do well.
2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something description or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site.
3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.
4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos.
5. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.
Conversational Marketing
6. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.
7. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.
8. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on their blogs.
9. Contribute to online groups like google groups and myspace groups.
10. Market yourself by adding a blog.
11. Use advanced techniques to gain RSS subscribers for maximum exposure.
Pay Per Click
12. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.
13. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.
14. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3rd tier networks.
15. Utilize keycompete to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.
16. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.
17. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.
18. Mind your ad quality.
Social Media Marketing
19. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.
20. To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather then trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.
21. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.
22. Create content to support edits in wikipedia.
Email Marketing
23. Team with companies with double opt in lists
24. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.
25. Try to leverage DBA lists
26. Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.
Mobile Search Marketing
27. Create a click to call campaign
28. Develop a mobile version of your site.
29. Include jump links below your content as normal navigation on a mobile search page can cause problems when viewing on mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization
30. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.
31. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for their given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.
32. Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.
33 Develop quality internal linking structure.
34. Create optimized html source code.
35. Create optimized robots.txt
36. Create optimized XML sitemap.
Affiliate Marketing
37. Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.
38. Evaluate your competitions affiliate program
39. If you do not have an affiliate option for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.
40. Incentavize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.
Banner Advertising
41. Examine potential sites demographics.
42. Get media break outs
43. Consider Portal Advertising
44. Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.
Application Marketing
45. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messangers
Contextual Advertising
46. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites like Text Link Brokers.
47. Consider Pre Sale pages or Hosted Marketing packages.
On to offline Marketing
48. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.
My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your sponsored reviews..

8 Effective SEO Techniques Every WordPress Blogger Should Use

At the same time we should never forget the power of effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the driving force it holds for the casual and professional blogger. It has become super easy to do through some excellent features and plugins for WordPress and its mastery can easily become second nature for the everyday blogger.
Let’s look at a few SEO techniques that can put your blog on the search engine map including some that most bloggers tend to ignore.

1. Effective Navigation Setup

Always ensure that your navigation links are properly structured and placed on your blog. Navigation links need to be relevant to the content they represent, should never be broken or point to pages that have no content. A crowded and poorly structured site navigation gets you nowhere with your readers and search engine crawlers.

2. Appropriate Tags For Images

Images play an important role in enhancing the look and feel of our blogs and can better capture the attention of our readers more than plain text alone. Images should be used sparingly and when used they need to be of reasonable sizes in terms of (kb) and should have title tags that describe the content they represent. Its very important to use titles that have a strong relation with the supporting post’s content.

3. Maintaining A Working Sitemap

A sitemap helps search engine crawlers to effectively identify pages and posts that should be indexed and made accessible to visitors through search engines. It is basically a file named sitemap.xml which is usually located within your blog’s root directory. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin will help you to easily create and update your sitemap when changes are made to your blog and it also notifies google and bing about the changes. This will significantly increase your site’s crawl rate.

4. Awesome WordPress SEO Plugins

SEO techniques like customizing post titles, description and keywords can be quite a huge task to do when using a bare WordPress theme. The free SEO plugin All In One SEO Pack can make the task 100 times easier and when installed presents options to easily optimize your blog posts and pages.

5. Using Pretty Permalinks

Your blog should never have URLs that look like this: www.yourdomain.com/?pageid=21, just like humans, search engine crawlers do not recognize this type of information and is thus useless. Customizing pretty permalinks in WordPress will allow you to use URLs like: www.yourdomain.com/great-post, which are 100% recognizable and will contain keywords for your posts that will make them easier to be found in search engines.
To change your permalinks go to Settings in your WordPress dashboard, then select Permalinks. Select the custom structure field and enter, /%postname%/ and click Save Changes. This will create a permalink structure of www.yourdomain.com/postname/ which is the most search engine friendly URL structure for your blog. In the case where you have been blogging for a while and would like to make the change, it is very important to use the Permalink Migration plugin to prevent your links from breaking and losing pagerank.

6. Internal Linking To Related Articles

Linking to other related posts within your blog will help to direct search engine crawlers to other pages of your site and also provide an opportunity to enforce what those pages are about. This will also encourage readers to click through to other pages in your blog which is always a good thing. Appropriate link titles should be used to describe what the pages are about.
If you wish to automate this process you can use the SEO Smart Links plugin that will automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with related posts, pages, categories and tags within your blog.

7. Usage Of Valid XHTML Mark-up

A poorly coded site can lead to crawlers completely abandoning your blog depending on how bad your site’s markup really is. Bad markup can stop a crawler in its track because it may not understand what your site’s code is really doing. Use the W3C Validator to get an idea of the status of your blog’s code and it will also show you what needs to be corrected.

8. Improve Your Blog’s Loading Times

Google now uses your site’s loading time as a factor for determining authority and placement in search results. The reason for this ties with their ultimate goal of providing the best user experience through search and a slow loading blog can scare readers away. To reduce your blog’s load times, ensure that you use a trusted and reliable web host, install the caching plugin, W3 Total Cache, use only necessary plugins and widgets and use a moderate amount of images on your blog.

32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011

Hiding Stuff On-Page 
There are a hundred ways to hide keywords and links from your users' view and still have them reside behind the scenes on a web page for the search engines to crawl. Some of these methods are smarter than others, but the collective mind of Google's web spam team is smarter than all of them. From just plain silly to downright sneaky, numbers 1-5 in this list of SEO tactics to avoid, we cover off some of the most well known methods for hiding copy and links. At best, you could experience a small, temporary boost from some of these tactics. At worst, you'll land yourself a penalty.
Do not...
1. White text on a white background (I know what you're thinking, but black on black won't work either.)
2. Hidden text over an image
3. Hiding text with CSS 
4. Linking/keywording in tiny text (font size '0' doesn't work either, smarty pants)
5. Linking from a hyphen, period, comma, or any other little character
Keyword Stuffing
There are a number of ways to overdo your keyword usage beyond the hidden methods mentioned above. Here are a few to give you an idea of the type of things to avoid.
Do not...
6. Use the Meta Keywords tag. This is a giant waste of time.
7. Use your Title Tag as a place to list keywords.
8. Fill up your Meta Description with keywords, forgetting about click-thru rates
9. Name your images with the character limit in keywords
10. List every city and zip code within a 10 hour drive
11. Put 2000 words of keyword rich content below the footer
12. Keep track of your keyword density (Thankfully, I've heard a lot less from eager website owners on this topic in 2010 than I did in 2009.)
Link Network Schemes 
If your link building plans involve any of the following, you need to do a little more research on link building. :)
Do not sign up for...
13. Link Schemes
14. Reciprocal Linking
15. Link Farms
16. Link Wheel
17. Link Exchange (unless it is a real and substantial business partnership or relationship)
18. Three Way Linking (or Two-way, Four-way or any other way)
Other Link Types to Avoid
Ah links. It isn't just the networks that are a waste of time. Here are some other link acquisition tactics to avoid.
Do not...
19. Forum/comment spam (thanks Rob)
20. Submit to thousands of directories for $12.42.
21. Segment your content and launch sub-domains so you can link to yourself
Publish/Index as Many Pages as Possible 
Just because you have 4 million pages doesn't mean they should all be indexed. Just because you have come up with a list of 800,000 keywords and misspellings to describe pepper mills, doesn't mean your e-commerce site should have a web page to represent each. Quantity is not quality. More pages in the index does not mean more traffic. Here are a few SEO tactics to remove from your to-do list.
Do not...
22. Try to get the search engines to index all of the search result pages on your site.
23. Publish a new page for every single keyword target.
Google Local Tricks 
Google Local is still fighting spam that works, which I won't be covering here. Lets not perpetuate the issue, right? Here are a few things that they've figured out and should be avoided altogether.
Do not...
24. Place location keywords in your places page categories.
25. Create a bunch of Google Places pages that all list the same physical address.
26. Torment your customers so you'll get plenty of (negative) reviews. (this one got a lot of attention late last year)
27. Provide different keyword rich business names to local sites.
Random Uselessness
Take these ideas straight to the curb. No recycling please.
Do not...trash
28. Measure your website's strength or success with PageRank.
29. Find out which pages are ranking well and never touch them again.
30. Blindly target keywords just because your competitors are.
31. Submit to hundreds of search engines automatically for $9.99.
32. Use robots.txt to control robot access (I've harped on this before)
If anything here is on your 2011 SEO tactic list, go ahead and cross 'em off. See how I'm helping you out?! No doubt I've missed a bunch of old-school spam. For example, I'm certain I haven't covered every type of link scheme that has ever existed. Let us know what I've missed in the comments below.
 source: seomoz

10 Blogging Myths You Must Ignore

There are many blogging myths that, if followed, will lead to the death of a new blog. Many new bloggers read and follow these rules religiously because they heard it from someone they respected, but the end result is that they quit out of frustration—the frustration of not getting results from their efforts.

From building a successful blog and observing other successful bloggers, I have realized how dangerous and deceitful these myths can be, so I’ve decided to bust them in this article. Some of these myths will be shocking, and some will spark debate, but they represent what I’ve learned from experience.


Myth #1: Content is king

How can this be a myth? I knew it’d surprise you, but the majority of bloggers have been made to believe it. Yet highly successful blogger and copywriter, Brian Clark, says himself that a word has no life of its own if it is not read. It doesn’t matter how great your content is: you need people to read and share it. The truth is that even if people share your content, or a post on your blog goes viral, you still need a community to give it a lasting boost.

Through the emails I get, I’ve been able to discover lots of awesome content on my readers’ blogs. That same content might have gone viral if it were published on mine, since I have a stronger audience. But they don’t, and no matter how great their content is, it still can’t go viral, or bring them success, if they have no audience.

Many new bloggers spend the whole of their time crafting great content, based on the “content is king” myth), yet they can’t achieve anything, why? Content is not king!

Myth # 2: Marketing is king

I know I’m not the only one who disagrees with the myth that content is king. Yet many who doubt that content is king argue that marketing is king. It’s not. You can’t market nothing, and no matter the type of marketing you use, if you have a mediocre blog, you will end up with little in the way of results.

I once wrote a guest post that sent me over 1000 visitors in a day (before I wrote the guest post, I was averaging 150 visitors a day). But after two days of attracting those 1000+ visitors, my blog returned to the 150 visitors a day average. I was of course disappointed. But I realized that the traffic had fallen because I didn’t have solid content to back up that initial guest post, and sustain those traffic levels.

It doesn’t matter what your marketing budget is: if you don’t have solid content, it will end up being wasted. So marketing is not king.

So if content is not king, and marketing is not king, what is king? You might not expect this answer, but I believe the blogger is king. The blogger should be able to strike the right balance between content and marketing—this is the only path to true success.

Myth #3: SEO is bowing to social media, so neglect SEO and focus on social media

While Stumbleupon or Digg can send you 1 million visitors in one day, have you ever sat down to think about the value of those visitors?

Online success has nothing to do with the quantity of traffic you receive—what matters is its quality. While a social media site can send you several thousands of visitors in one day, the same number of visitors from a search engine may be far more effective. I discovered Problogger from Google, and I discovered Copyblogger from Google, but I can’t remember a blog I discovered it from a social media site, and now read loyally.

Also consider that more traffic from search engines can lead to greater social media success. I wrote a post on success quotes weeks ago, but I got little to no social media traffic to it. I spent a few days doing some SEO for it, which generated more search engine traffic, and that lead to thousands of visits from Stumbleupon thereafter.

In a nutshell, social media traffic hardly leads to more search engine traffic, but more search engine traffic leads to more social media traffic. After all, more visitors means there are more people sharing your content (social media), but more visitors won’t lead to an increase in your search engine rankings (more backlinks do this).

Myth #4: Social media is useless

I have heard this myth more than once. Most of the bloggers who promote this myth are bloggers who rely on search traffic.

While I said earlier that SEO does not trump social media, Im not trying to rule out the importance of social media. There are a lot of bloggers who started with nothing, but have been able to take their blogs to celebrity status using social media sites. Things are becoming better with the advent of Twitter and others—what matters most is not social media traffic, but how it’s being used.

You shouldn’t just focus on gaining more social media traffic; rather, focus on converting the traffic you do attract into repeat readers who will yield more dividends for you in the long run. Social media is the future of the web. A good blogger will not put all his or her eggs in one basket—we have to adapt to these kinds of changes and make them work for us.

Myth #5: More traffic = more money

This is probably the greatest myth of all. If it takes Darren 100 visitors to make $1000, it will take me far more than that number of visitors to make the same amount.

A lot of factors come into play when it comes to getting the best from your traffic and one of the most important is the authority and reputation of the blogger. If people see you as a mediocre blogger, attracting more traffic won’t make much of a difference, but if people see you as an authority blogger, you get a bigger bottom-line impact from every new visitor you capture.

I know some bloggers whos sites have less traffic than mine, but have several times the number of subscribers I have. What matters most is not the sheer number of visitors, but your relationship with them.

Myth #6: Not responding to comments means you don’t respect your readers

I have always wanted to be a successful blogger, but I never knew it could be a burden. With countless emails unattended to, and comments awaiting my reply, developing quality content starts to become a burden. Replying to comments doesn’t generate traffic: quality content does!

One of the best decisions I’ve made in my blogging career was to make sure I only reply to comments that really need a reply—after all, my content is what my readers want. This decision sparked a lot of debate. Some of my readers stopped commenting and one of them even went to the extent of ranting over my decision.

Yet, months later, the average time people spend reading my posts has increased from 2 minutes to more than 7 minutes.

Don’t waste your time doing things that are not necessary because people think it is a must. Rather, spend your time on what matters:
developing great content that will keep your readers coming back. If you always strive to give your best, your “true” readers will stick with you, and invite their friends. But if all you can manage is to write sloppy, slap-dash posts, even those commenters you’re always replying to will eventually stop reading your blog.

Myth #7: Longer posts bring more traffic

I have been a victim of this myth not once or twice, but several times. I have observed some successful bloggers who write longer posts and this led me to write single posts as long as 5,000 words. Even though I fell for this myth, I was fortunate to learn an invaluable lesson in the
process: your best post is what comes freely from your mind, nothing else.
It doesn’t matter whether a post is short or long: its success has nothing to do with its length. What matters most is the uniqueness and consistency of the blogger.

A good example of someone who has great success with short posts is Seth Godin. Seth can write successful posts as short as 100 words. Someone who has great success with longer posts is Glen Allsop. Glen rarely writes posts less than 2,000 words, yet all his posts go viral and bring the desired result.

From these examples we can see clearly that what matters most is finding your voice. If you do better with short posts then stick to it; if you have more success with longer posts, don’t look back!

Myth #8: Selling ad space is the best way to monetize a blog

Another blogging myth that dominates the blogosphere is the belief that selling ad space is the best way to monetize a blog. In fact, I think selling ad space is one of the poorest ways to monetize a blog.

The problem is that many people are only blogging for the money—they are not ready to focus on building a true community with which they can later turn their blog to a business. You won’t make any real money from your blog until you have a community, so, instead of spending your time on ads that don’t work, focus on building a community. Once that community is there, you won’t find it difficult to make money blogging.

I’m not trying to rule out the possibility of making money from online ads—in fact, there are several successful bloggers (like Darren) who are making thousands of dollars from selling ad space every month. But the reality is, Darren has several hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to his blog and unless you have visitor levels like that, you shouldn’t expect to make a solid income from selling ad space.

Myth #9: The best way to get traffic is by implementing as many tactics as you can

While there is nothing bad in learning and trying many traffic generation tactics, you should also remember that the greatest traffic-generation secret is to master that which you know.

I regularly hear people advise learning various traffic generation tactics. I’ve tried several tactics, such as blog commenting, guest blogging, forum posting and other methods, but only guest blogging seems to be working for me, and the moment I dropped other methods and started focusing on guest blogging I began to get incredible results.

If you’re a new blogger, try to start with three or four tactics.
Observe which one works best for you and stick to it. Drop other
tactics: they won’t take you far.

Myth #10: The key to blogging success is getting backlinks from an A-list blogger

It doesn’t matter if you’re expecting a link from an A-list blogger or a major media site: your success shouldn’t rely on any one person other than yourself.

Recently, I was reading a blog post by Brian Clark in which he said he didn’t get links from any A-list bloggers before his blog became a success. Stop waiting for the golden bullet (or link): don’t let your success depend on anyone but you! The key to blogging success lies with you, it lies in you giving your best and being consistent with it.