Archive for August, 2008

Three Ways to Increase Your Site’s “Promotability”

Knowledge as to which sites you visit (and why) can help to a large extent to make your site worth accessing by people, your friends and colleagues. The site preferably should be as promotable as possible. The factor of promotability is far more superior and stands of greater priority than promotion. It can be implemented by the addition of extra site elements that practically cost nothing but provide you with greater dimensions of promotion. Standing out alone or as the first to offer a certain drawing card, makes you lay down the track for serious traffic.

Promotability Begins with Valuable Content
Your focus should center on the interests and requirements of your targeted visitors, for example:

  • Articles, book excerpts, tips, FAQs (frequently asked questions).
  • Reference information and resources (online and offline).
  • Checklists for the actions your customers take in relation to your
  • Products and services.
  • Educational information with applicable case studies.
  • Ratings, recommendations, and reviews.
  • Statistics, topical humor, inspirational quotes.
  • Sales and special deals on your products and services.

A greater number of changes, frequently altered features and a larger number of eye catching segments lead to persuasive trafficking as more and more people make return visits and bookmark your site. If your business is sensitive to alterations in seasons, it is advisable to monitor your content changes in relation to the existing time of the year.

Promotability is Enhanced by Interactive Features
Puzzles, riddles, quizzes, and contests are all excellent options for allowing your site give an extremely good feeling about your company to your visitors and encourage them to stick around longer and potentially convert into buyers. If fun does not relate well with your image, use of more appropriate widgets is advisable. A more dignified business does well with interactive features like surveys where you ask people to register their point of view on a topic of importance or concern and subsequently provide them with voting trends of other people, either instantly or after a certain date

You can exchange messages with others on a message board or forum. This might involve people describing problems and asking for solutions, people offering suggestions, recommendations and more.
Interactions and feedbacks are efficient modalities for you to boost up your return traffic.

You can offer a signup to receive e-mail announcements of additions to your site - new articles, new specials, contest results, further installments of your case studies, and so on.

Promotability is Ensured by the Latest News and Information
Syndicators can provide licensed, up-to-the-minute information in the form of localized weather reports, stock prices, currency exchange rates, sports scores or lowest airfare that get installed at your site. RSS feeds provide alternative sources of information where visitors can use your site as a single source portal that links them to a variety of helpful content. Make sure that the content suits your topic and that you have the permission of the author to publish the content.

The creation of an attractive and exciting site leads to higher number of visits. Once this is accomplished, you are ready to cultivate traffic by linking your site to others in a way that invites additional visitors.

Rockstar Internet Marketers Know that It’s Not Enough to Have a Website

Unfortunately, having a great website does not guarantee that people will visit it. It needs to be promoted and to be able to do that, you must be aware of effective promotional strategies that actually work! The Internet isn’t just a medium to communicate with people known to you. It’s a great platform to reach out to the whole world. If you have a great website and you’re wondering why there are no visitors, its time for you take it upon yourself to make sure that it reaches out to all who matter.

Spreading the word around

A promotional activity should not be thought of as a decidedly expensive activity. All you need to do is to use creativity and thought more than dollars! Expenses can be controlled and you don’t need to have a fortune to get started. To start marketing online you don’t have to have a website. A simple looking email holds tremendous power if used judiciously. It is instant, extremely economical and very, very reliable. Then, once you have spread the word around about your product, you can graduate to actually having a website. Your mastery of using email coupled with a good website can surely make a double impact! You can then focus on improving backend operations and fulfilling what your website has been promising.

Get the ball rolling

The will and strategy to succeed is more important than the means you choose and use in terms of equipment. You can join some of the hundreds of groups and forums on the net (like the Black Internet Marketing Forum at http://www.BlackInternetMarketingForum.com), float some information and set grounds for brainstorming. You will gain attention and you will get feedback from other forum users as well. Aside from the joy your receive from socializing, sometimes you can build great credibility, visibility, and traffic just by answering patiently and accurately to questions asked by other forum members. The usefulness of your information will ensure that you are remembered and your effectiveness grows by word of mouth.

The more you are visible, the more people will remember you. This will gradually ensure that people start looking out for you to have a solution to their problems. Eventually, you will become a valued contributor and you will be well on your way to becoming very established online.

Understand the character of Internet marketing

The Internet is like a small village community where people know each other by their names. It’s much more comfortable and effective talking one to one rather than making a corporate entry. Netizens are more influenced by your personality and character and your ability to deliver. Your personal expertise holds more value as compared to the brand of your company.

Having a personal tone while communicating over the Internet helps to release its full potential. It’s better to directly communicate with your name or alias rather than the name of a company. Always remember that its YOU who is out to make a relation, and people will be impressed by your personality. They will want to pick up the conversation some other time with YOU and not your company. This personal approach helps cut costs as well. One to one conversing is often much more effective, has a higher impact, and costs less as well!

Welcome the the Fraternity of Internet Marketers–Best Wishes to you as you optimize your time and maximize your profits.

The Rockstar Internet Marketer’s Definition of Internet Marketing

As many who have decided to become internet marketers have discovered, there is no formal training program or certification examination that you can pass to become an expert internet marketer. There are great courses provided by others who have learned from experience gained through tons of time and money but most of us seem prone to learn as we go, soaking up information along the way. This isn’t because we don’t want to benefit from good programs that teach the fundamentals and shortcut lessons that we need to know but the sheer volume of information and offers from less than expert providers makes us skeptical of all but the most famous (and expensive) program by the “guru” internet marketers. When you take first steps toward deciding to join this field, the first thing you need to know is what it means to be an Internet marketer. Reasonable people have differed in their definitions because what we mean by the term isn’t always clear to everyone.

Let’s start with what Internet marketing is not. It’s not being a con artist. It’s not being a spam king. It doesn’t just mean selling on eBay or having your own website and products. It certainly isn’t signing up for forums, social networks, and online communities for the sole purpose of hocking your wares with no additional contribution to the purpose or aims of the group that you joined. This last point is important because that’s the fastest way to lose credibility as a professional and does the most harm to your marketing efforts–it’s the equivalent of social spam.

In reality, internet marketers can pick and choose from a whole host of options available to help them make money. Many internet marketers make the mistake of selling internet marketing products to other internet marketers–a hugely saturated market. In fact, when you use internet marketing tools and techniques in non-internet marketing fields, your opportunities are virtually endless, and include one or more of the following:

• Selling digital downloads (information products like eBooks)
• Promoting other people’s products for a commission (affiliate marketing)
• Selling on eBay or other auction sites
• Running a membership site
• Selling your online services (writing, graphics, etc.)
• Owning a website that sells dropshipped or wholesale items

And this is just a short sampling of the profitable opportunities available to any marketer. If you’re new to internet marketing, you might be worried that you don’t have anything to sell. That’s okay – most people don’t start out with anything, and you never have to stock any tangible inventory of items if you don’t want to. Part of the attraction of internet marketing businesses is the option to produce and/or sell digital products that don’t take up space, are easily duplicated and transferred. You can certainly produce and/or sell physical products which are perceived as more valuable by some and are more trusted by some consumers depending in your market. the great thing is that the choice is completely up to you depending on what’s most appropriate for your interest and targeted audience.

Internet marketing creates no gender, age, race, or other boundaries for you. There are teenagers who have launched multi-million dollar companies as budding Internet marketers whose ideas sprung to life and catapulted them to instant success. There are also senior citizens and retirees who opted not to allow their earning potential to be dictated by a “fixed income” dependent on the uncertainties of a pension account or social security payments. Both men and women have achieved tremendous success in addition to individuals from every ethnicity, race, creed, religion and any other category you can name. When you know what you’re doing as an internet marketer and you become a trusted advisor for your customer base, the only demographic that counts is whether you’re making money or not.

You don’t have to do anything unethical or shady to succeed at Internet marketing, and in fact, launching a respectable business with a solid reputation is the secret ingredient that will allow you to hatch an empire on the ‘net to fulfill all of your dreams and those of your family. Stay away from spam-based tools and practices or “black hat” marketing techniques designed to artificially inflate your search engine rankings or to lure people into clicking on links to your website. No one likes to be tricked into joining an email list or misdirected to websites and search engines that they did not choose to join or visit. Given the huge potential for success on the internet and get-rich-quick attempts by many snake oil salesmen who call themselves internet marketers, the entire profession has suffered. If you offer your expertise and value freely in an effort to help people achieve their goals while maintaining contact via any number of internet marketing techniques, when you do offer products or services to your customer-friends, your credible acts will speak for themselves and you will ultimately secure a profitable place among the gurus.