Blogging has become explosive in recent years and many people are confused as to what all the hype is. Blogging allows you to quickly relay your message to a captive audience. By speaking directly with your clients or customers, you are establishing a positive relationship with them. Read the rest of this entry »

Is your social media program about asking, or answering?

Like Sonny divorcing Cher (or was it the other way around?) there’s a schism coming in social media between companies using it for marketing, and companies using it for customer service and CRM.

Thus, one of the first questions I recommend you ask about your social program is whether it’s true mission is to gain customers, or retain the ones you have. And at the execution level, it’s an important distinction.

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Do you ever get stuck for inspiration in terms of what to write about for your online articles, your newsletter or ezine or your business blog? Or what you could talk about in your podcast or your inline video?

Google just might have the answer for you – in this video I go through how to use the Google Wonderwheel search tool to help you with ideas for your topics.

Of course – model NEVER copy someone elses articles won’t you!

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The use of “estimate search traffic” button is an invaluable tool to use in your Google Adwords campaign. Most businesses misunderstand the importance’s of its function. There is more to it than thinking ok this will cost me $30 to $100/day for this “concrete floor coatings” in the paint industry.

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It’s not often that you’ll hear the advice to NOT bother with social media, but a new CMO Council report suggests that when it comes to customer loyalty programs, social media just doesn’t make sense.

While 60% of the 600 marketers polled, planned to make better use of the web and social networking tools, consumers say that’s not how to reach them. In fact, just 4% of consumers say they used social media–dropping to 3% when focusing only on blogs–to learn about customer loyalty programs.

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I have been in the Internet marketing industry now for the past 5 years. I guess many would consider me a newbie in some ways. I love reading all of these people who say they have been optimizing websites since 1994. In other words, back in the day they could keyword stuff with the best of them. While that’s interesting it literally means nothing today. In fact, I am trying to decide what is exactly important in today’s world of Internet marketing. Anyone can study what used to work and see how it was abused and eventually devalued by Google and other engines. What means something now is what works now and what might work in the future.

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Whether you’re just starting out, or re-evaluating your website strategy, it’s important for you to get your plan and budget right.

The rule “Build it and they will come” rarely works in the online space. For you to be successful with your website marketing strategy – you need to have a proper plan and be realistic about the real costs of doing it properly.

Too many business owners spend $1000’s on getting a fancy website developed, only to find they have no money left to promote it.

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I read a post today over at HubSpot’s blog, which I occasionally contribute to. The blog is intended to cater to the SMB set which are the primary customers for HubSpot’s inbound marketing platform. Today’s post, about Marketing Lessons from MTV’s Jersey Shore is interesting reading but it needs to be read with a degree of caution if you are an SMB that is trying to market to other businesses.

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I flew to St. Louis for the Glazer-Kennedy Info Summit. This is a 4-day event about how to create and market information products (think ebooks, teleseminars, coaching groups, membership sites, live seminars and more).

This is the second time I’ve made it to this event, and once again I took home a ton of fantastic ideas. So for the last month I’ve been going through my notes and getting started on some of the new products and services I was inspired to create.

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In looking at the problem I presented in part one of this test, I’m pretty sure most of you decided to set up your stand first at the marathon, where there was a guaranteed market for your product. What you sacrificed in numbers you more than made up for in quality of prospect. In fact, you probably thought the whole test was a little ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »