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Deepika Bajaj - Online Marketing Strategies - SEM, SEO, Web Analytics, Behavioral TargetingDeepika Bajaj - Online Marketing Strategies - SEM, SEO, Web Analytics, Behavioral Targeting
February 26 The business value of BloggingBlogging about blogging may seem a bit incestuous but as the lines between social networking, business networking and blogging become increasingly blurred you might want to think about starting your own blog as a means of generating awareness about you and your business. As with any comms medium there are some key rules and best practice guidelines you should follow - we've put together a ‘Top Ten' below. 1. Identify your audience and decide what you're going to say that will make them want to read what you write. 2. Choose a blog service that has features to help build traffic, such as trackers that identify recent posts and the most popular message threads. 3. Don't just vent marketing-speak about how great your business is, or chatter about news and current events for which you offer no expertise. Instead, aim for a fresh, unique take. Provide a perspective that is heartfelt, compelling, and has the potential to help you market yourself and your business.One way to get up to speed on what to say is to read other blogs and, in turn, offer your own viewpoint on an industry or business topic for which you know something about. 4. Building traffic between blogs is another central element to luring repeat visitors. Here, ‘blog-rolling' is an effective tool. This, in essence, is a set of links on your blog site that identifies other sites on the Internet - related to your business, industry or expertise - which you find valuable. 5. Emphasise keywords. Search engine hits are another element of generating traffic. One strategy to attract search engine interest is through careful use of keywords in both your headlines and blog copy. For instance, if your topic focuses on marketing a business overseas, use of the words "marketing" and "overseas" as often as possible and in varied permutations can help push your blog site toward the head of the search engine line. 6. Blog often. Nothing is more discouraging to prospective readers than returning to a blog site to find old or outdated material. So, be prepared to work at keeping your blog as fresh and current as possible. 7. Watch your traffic closely. Monitor the amount and quality of the traffic you receive. If things seem slow or stagnant, don't be shy about varying your themes or subjects to boost interest, but don't stray too far from your business or expertise. 8. Use a human voice - be yourself 9. Follow the New York Times rule... How would this post look if quoted on the front page of the New York Times? 10. Respond to comments, blogs work best when they are two-way If a starting a blog appeals to you, take a look here for a summary of five free blog services. Also, check your local newspaper - a lot of local papers are online now and some offer a free blog to local residents. For More Info visit: Get a free blog: here's 5 of the best servicesGet a free blog: here's 5 of the best services Live Spaces - spaces.live.com Windows Live Spaces aims to rival the dominance of MySpace in the social online networking world. It offers a drag-and-drop interface that can add everything from your favourite web sites to a photo slideshow, and it looks great. It is a little overwhelming if you just want to create a basic diary, though. You can tie it to your sign-in name, and your updates are available to everybody in your contact list. Blogger - www.blogger.com Blogger offers users a dedicated service and an excellent host of options to make your blog look slick. You can choose from lots of backgrounds and styles, with a variety of colours. Pictures can be uploaded from your desktop, and you have full control over their position on the page. Compared to MySpace, people are less likely to find your blog by accident, so you will be relying more on people linking to you. Facebook - www.facebook.com Registering with Facebook can be a disturbing experience. Within seconds of logging into the site, it knows more about you than your mother does, and wants every piece of information you hold dear. Beneath the M15 overtones, though, it’s a nifty way to stay in touch with people: a neat combination of Friends Reunited and MySpace. However, the profusion of different options means that the site is confusing to use and the actual blogs take the form of short messages nobody can find. You can import an existing blog, but nobody will be able to find that either. Wordpress - www.wordpress.com This site works on a similar basis to Blogger.com, but offers more control over your blog. There are more appearances and designs to choose from, and videos can be embedded from YouTube or other sources. However, the site has little community feel, and the controls are very fiddly for inexperienced bloggers. MySpace - www.myspace.com MySpace has become so popular
over the last few years that it’s almost shorthand for social networking web
sites in general. The benefit of blogging through MySpace is its vast
interconnected user network – your musings will be read by your friends, their
friends, and weird Uncle Geoffrey. It suffers from a lack of options, though,
and this means that your blogs can become bland and one-dimensional, because
you have little control over their appearance. January 28 RSS Feeds - Let Us Learn the FactsWhat is
RSS? To begin with, it's one of those things everyone says is easy to
understand. However it is not so. Let's sign you up for the Excess Voice RSS FeedIf you want
to read the Excess Voice newsletter every two weeks you can either read it in
your email inbox, or read it in your web browser. Let's walk through the subscription processIf you have
a Yahoo! account, or even if you don't have one you can go to My Yahoo! and
click the Add Content page. On the right side of the 'Find Content' area you
will see a link, Add RSS by URL. Follow that link and, to add the Excess Voice
RSS feed, simply paste this url in the field option,
http://www.excessvoice.com/excessfeed.xml (Don't click on this link. Cut and
paste it.). What happens now?Now, whenever you go to My Yahoo! or Bloglines, you will see when the Excess Voice feed has been updated. In Yahoo it tells you how many hours or days ago the search rss feeds was updated. In Bloglines the feed name will appear in bold, and a number displayed after the name tells you how many items the feed has been updated since you last checked. (Bloglines is one such service.) What you see...When you check the Excess Voice feeds, you will see that with each feed, you don't get the complete content...you don't see the whole newsletter, the complete article or the whole review. You see the title and the first ten lines of the content. If you want to read the whole article, for example, click on the link and then it will navigate to the page on the Excess Voice site. Online Paid Advertisements - Know the Facts before You Take the LeapOnline Paid AdvertisementsOnline paid advertisements are advertisements placed by online advertising networks on webmasters WebPages with permission of the webmasters, so that the viewers of the website may click on the adverts and the webmasters get paid for ads when any visitor clicks over the advertisement. This is fiscally highly profitable for the webmaster - who owns the website. There are many programs that offer this kind of novel income opportunity. The webmasters get paid for ads that have been clicked by visitors to his site. Types of Online paid advertisementsOnline paid advertisements come in different formats and shapes, starting from banner ads. Other formats include pop-up ads, pop-under ads, text ads, and news letter ads. Each online paid advertising format is unique by itself, i.e., every ad format has its special purpose. Looking to each format in detail will give a clearer picture. Banner AdsBanners ads, as the name implies is a banner that has ads within it. There are different types of paid banner advertising. Some of the standard formats are horizontal banner - leader board (480x60) and vertical banner - skyscraper (120x600). Other formats include half banner (234x60), button (125x125), wide skyscraper (160x600), square (250x250), large (336x280) and small rectangle (180x150). The webmaster can choose to display between image ads and text-only ads on his/her webpages. If he/she likes to display image ads, then it will cover the entire banner. But if one would like to display text-only ads, you may have from a minimum of one text ad to four or five text ads within the banner. Banner ads are also displayed in paid email advertising. Pop-up AdsUsing Pop-up ads is a very conventional form of online paid advertising. Whenever a webpage loads, a pop-up also emerges. Before a visitor can see the webpage he has to view the pop-up -provided by the online advertising network. The online paid advertising networks such as Adsense, and Adbrite -, provide small HTML codes that can be into host webpages. Pop-under AdsPop-under ads are ads that are displayed when an user visits a website, but unlike pop-ups these ads tend to stay minimized so that the visitor does not get annoyed. On closing the active window, then pop-under ads will be displayed. This type of advertising is gearing up pace in the online advertising market, as it is quite non-intrusive and doesn't irritate the visitor or internet user. Many online advertising networks are currently offering pop-under ads and the webmasters are paid reasonably well when compared to pop-ups. What exactly is a Squeeze Page? List building is an important process for every online business, and squeeze pages are one of the best tools to build your mailing list.
A squeeze page is a web page designed to do one thing and one thing only: to obtain or gently “squeeze” your visitors’ information so that you have their permission to email them with your newsletter or other information. Most squeeze pages will convert at 30 to 50% but a really good squeeze page might convert visitors at 60% or even higher. The conversion rate will depend not only upon the design of the page but also upon the quality of the traffic coming to the page. Here are the key components of a good squeeze page. An Attention Grabbing Headline Your heading or subheading should also promise to deliver something valuable that your visitors want or need. One of the statements I have used is “Learn the Secrets of Driving Traffic To Your Web Site Like Crazy!” If your visitors believe that you will deliver what you promised, and it is something they want, then they will sign up. It’s as simple as that. Offer a Gift Ten Effective Uses of E-mail ListsE-mail is revolutionizing the art and science of direct marketing by bringing marketers new opportunities and challenges. Try these attention-getting ideas to make the most of your e-mail marketing: 1. Sponsor a contest. Give away prizes in order to entice prospects. The gift doesn’t have to be large or expensive, although trips and cash tend to draw the most attention. 2. Publish an online newsletter. Develop a newsletter about your business or a related topic that will interest the people with whom you want to do business. 3. Publicize special promotions or events. If you are promoting a new product, hold an open house or participate in a trade show or cobranded campaign. Use your mailing list to publicize it. 4. Drive traffic to your Web site. E-mail, direct mail, and advertising all have a stimulating effect on your company’s Web site. Use your mailing lists to get the word out. 5. Make new product or personnel announcements and press releases. Got a hot new service? Product upgrade? Did you hire a new sales manager? Moving to a new location or changing your phone number? Mailing lists are the perfect way to distribute this type of information. Give your customers advance notice of what’s coming, and let the trade press know what’s happening. 6. Offer discounts. Everybody loves a bargain, and you can use your mailing list to alert customers and prospects to your latest deals. When the discount is offered exclusively to the mailing list, you communicate the feeling that your customers receive special privileges. 7. Solicit surveys. Mailing lists are an easy way
to solicit participants for a survey and to communicate survey results.
Send out the questions. Tally up the responses. Report back the
results. Readers appreciate having their voices heard.
8. Care for customers. Stay in touch with clients, cheaply and quickly. Thank them for their business. Ask their opinions about your service, your products, your Web site. “What can we be doing better to ___________?” You may not like everything you hear, but creating a dialogue builds loyalty and trust. 9. Encourage participation in government, civic, and community projects. Publicize issues and meetings, and solicit public support at hearings before commissions and boards, city councils, and industry associations. 10. Tell a joke. The Internet is famous as a joke-sharing medium. Get a jump on the competition by sharing good, clean jokes with your clients. It may not make a sale today, but a good joke can help your name stick in a buyer’s mind. Competitor Analysis and Marketing - Where are Your Competitors?Before the internet, there were a series of tools designed for comparing yourself to your competition. A competitive market analysis was a must for any company that wished to maintain themselves in the market. As in the field of battle, if you don’t know what your enemy is doing, then you are lost. Information is the weapon of our modern era. And the only way to have it in the world of business is with a competitive business analysis. What Is An Online Competitor Analysis?A traditional competitor analysis is a tool where a
series of factors are pre-established. That way, you only need to fill
in the required data or information and you will obtain a result of the
analysis. Purpose of an Online Competitor AnalysisThe main importance of an online competitor analysis is that it is able to determine what are the strengths and weaknesses of your competition. That way you will be able to attack it in those points where it won’t be able to react quickly enough. And, knowing its strengths, you can benchmark (compare) them with yours. Another factor to be taken in account is how effective is the website of your competitor. Designing an adequate webpage isn’t an easy task. It requires a good balance between content, images, colors, animation and sizes. Nobody wants a webpage full of text with no images. And no one wants a webpage where you can only see photos of the company but no information on their products. Additionally, it’s good to know how often your competition updates its content. Why? Because it tells you how much they care. An updated site with detailed content means that your competition places great emphasis on and invests resources in maintaining an online presence. But, if the website is outdated, or if the content doesn’t have much to offer to the potential customers, then it means that they don’t have a real interest in the online market. Either that or they are incompetent. Either way, no serious business should be done outside the internet, not if they want to maintain their position. December 21 Which free keyword research tool to use?Below are some Keyword Research Tools; apart from manual tactics:
Free Advice for Search Engine MarketersI read a Blog post recently that gives advice to advertisers looking for an SEM. The Blogger insists that in today's world an SEM firm must have a solid background in global equity markets and hedge funds. Before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars; consider the following free advice:
It could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Search marketing is complex, but that's not a good excuse to abandon common sense. December 18 The Secret "10%" of SEO Knowledge and How Information Spreads in the Search WorldThings in the 10% might include:
TechNet Blogs - Blogs
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