Social Media Primer

March 10, 2010 – 9:23 am

One thing is for sure, there are about as many rules or methods in social media as there are people.  I do a lot of research online about social media and what stands out to me is that what everyone is in agreement about is the importance and impact that social media is having on the majority of online businesses. It use to be www links on various businesses. Now, even the Forbes 500 companies have their follow me twitter and facebook links on their ads.  No doubt about it, if you want to succeed online you must get SOCIAL.

Inbound Marketing: A Social Media Primer – WebWorkerDaily

While we may not all agree on the “rules” when it comes to marketing, we can all agree that marketing has changed considerably in recent years, largely due to social media. “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs” by HubSpot’s Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah is a primer for those looking to learn how to make the most of social media to pull in customers.

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Targeted Traffic Gets Results

March 8, 2010 – 8:41 am

What Targeted Traffic is and How to Drive it to Your Website

Target Corporation
Image via Wikipedia

If you’ve been interested in Internet marketing for a while then you have no doubt heard about how important it is to drive traffic to your site.  But traffic alone won’t bring in the profits.  What you need is targeted traffic.

What is Targeted Traffic?

Targeted traffic refers to people who are already interested in what you are marketing.  Consider this:  Suppose you have a website that caters to some aspect of weddings.  If only a small portion of your site visitors are interested in wedding topics then you have a small chance of generating revenue from those visitors.  But what if the majority of your site visitors were interested in weddings?  Then you would have a much greater chance of generating revenue from those visitors.

How to Target the Right Traffic

In order to bring targeted traffic to your website, you will need to market to the group you are trying to sell to.  For instance, if your site caters to weddings, be sure and visit discussion forums that are about weddings.  Place a link back to your site in your signature line and when other members of the forum, who are interested in weddings or they wouldn’t be there, click on your link, you have driven targeted traffic to your website.

As you can see, the key to successful Internet marketing isn’t simply to drive traffic to your site but you want site visitors who are interested in what you are promoting.  So you need to look for places that people in your niche hang out online and market accordingly.

Building Your List

Since you are concentrating on getting the people who are actually interested in your niche to visit your site, don’t pass up this opportunity to get their email addresses when they do visit.  

Offer your site visitors an incentive to provide their names and email addresses by offering them something too good to pass up.  This could be a newsletter, an ecourse, an ebook, a special report or any number of things your site visitors would likely be interested in receiving, for free.  

This is not the time to charge; that will come later.  First, you want to get their names and email addresses so you can build a list that you can market directly to via email.  Then, instead of just having a massive email list, you’ll have a list of people that you know are interested in your niche and will be much more likely to generate profits down the road.

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Use PLR Articles to Drive Traffic

March 7, 2010 – 10:49 am

6 Ways How You Can Use PLR Articles To Drive Traffic To Your Website And Boost Your Internet Marketing Business

Private Label Rights (PLR) content is very popular on the internet today. PLR content is written by a ghostwriter and sold to other people to use as they wish.

PLR e-books, reports or articles are special type of license which you purchase where you are lawfully allowed to edit and publish the article as your own. Because you have the right to edit the article as you wish, it means that you can use it as web content on your site or add your links to your website and distribute it.

Outlined below are some key ways you can use PLR content to drive traffic to your website and boost on internet marketing profits.

  • Boost your article writing and submitting using some PLR content. All you need to do is to simply edit the PLR articles and customize them to make them your own. Using PLR articles saves you a lot of time in writing your articles. By using a PLR article, you can improve it and end up with a powerful article that will drive traffic to your website.

  • Increase your sales by developing your reputation as an expert in your niche. PLR articles make it so much easier for you to quickly build your reputation as an expert. Pass on some of the PLR content to your customers and build their trust. You can then make some one-time-offers or recommend some of your affiliate programs to them, thereby generating some sales.

  • Improve your search engine rankings by submitting your customized articles. By submitting articles with your resource box and URL, you basically create one way links to your website, which helps with search engines.

  • Create and market information products using your PLR content. Edit and customize PLR articles and compile them into an e-book or special report. It takes time to write an e-book, and it can also be costly if you were to hire a ghostwriter. You can therefore use PLR articles or e-books and add more value to them to create hot-selling e-books. You can sell these reports or give them for free on your website. When you give these articles for free, you can include your website URL in them. This in turn will drive traffic to your website.

  • Use PLR content to provide an e-course or offer a newsletter. Building a list is very important in internet marketing, and you can use PLR content to offer an e-course on your web site. You can send regular emails to your list with a link to your website, and this increases the number of people who visit your website. Keep your list interested by regularly supplying them with useful content. As you know, your list is an important aspect of your business. You can send these PLR articles to your list in your niche on a regular basis. This will make them visit your site on a regular basis.

  • Create your own article directory in your niche using PLR content to improve the search engine optimization of your website. You can also add affiliate links or Google AdSense on your article directory, thereby increasing your website traffic and profits.

PLR content can be used to drive traffic to your website and boost your internet business’ profits.

 

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Affiliate Marketing Software

February 21, 2010 – 7:07 pm

Do You Need Affiliate Marketing Software?
As you may know, there is software on the market today to help you do a variety of things, do them faster, and do them easier.  While software is not an absolute necessity to the affiliate marketer, it may be worth taking a look at what some of the available software can do for the affiliate marketer.

Track Sales
Affiliate marketing software can be a big help when it comes to tracking sales and statistics that will be important for you to know.  This type of software makes it easy to keep everything in one place and since the interface is already built for you, all you have to do is fill in the blanks.  While you can keep track of the basics yourself by using a spreadsheet application, the right software can certainly make things easier for you.

Build Websites
Even if you don’t have a website when you first begin your affiliate marketing career, it’s important to have at least one whenever you’re able to.  Many affiliate marketers have several websites, although it may be counterproductive to have too many of them if you’re not able to update them regularly.  Although many hosting companies offer the tools to build basic websites, having your own software may be helpful if you’re building several websites or would like to experiment.

Keep Financial Records Straight
There is nothing more important to entrepreneurs than keeping accurate financial records.  Remember, you’ll have to report your income to the Internal Revenue Service if you make a certain amount and you’ll need accurate financial records to back that up.  You’ll need to keep careful track of income and expenses related to your business so this is something you should plan for at the very beginning of your business venture.  You can either purchase software to help you do this or you can keep the records on your own in any number of ways.  The important thing is to keep accurate records and keep all of your receipts in a place where you can easily access them.

Don’t feel as if you have to purchase affiliate marketing software right out of the starting gate.  Many successful affiliate marketers never buy any software at all and others swear by it so it really is a personal decision.  Often, you can find free trial downloads of affiliate marketing software so you can try before you buy.  This is a great way to find out if this is something that you will want to use in your business.  Also, read reviews of what other affiliate marketers are saying about the software they use. Do a search on “Affiliate+Marketing+Software” and you will find  many choices.

 

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Internet Marketing Abbreviations

February 20, 2010 – 10:50 pm

Internet Marketing Abbreviations to Know

Most industries have their own jargon and Internet marketing is no different.  Following, you will find a list of some of the Internet marketing abbreviations that are widely in use today.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization.  This refers to optimizing, or designing your website in order to get ranked high in the search engines. This is accomplished by the use of keywords and other cleverly placed content.  What most Internet marketers have learned though, is that if customers like your site, so will the search engines so don’t get too caught up in marketing for the search engines.

PPC – Pay Per Click. This refers to an advertising method whereby Internet marketers bid on keywords and then place ads based on those keywords.  The advertiser only has to pay when the advertisement is clicked on.  The premise here is that users who click on the ads are potential buyers; however, not everyone who clicks on an ad makes a purchase. For some Internet marketers, though, it is a profitable way to advertise their products or services.

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions. This is a list of predefined questions and answers that users ask most frequently.  Some Internet marketers choose to have a FAQ section on their sites. You might consider this if you get a large amount of customer questions.

 

A graphical despiction of a very simple html d...
Image via Wikipedia

HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language. This is one of the most popular computer coded languages in use.  Although you don’t have to know how to write html code in your Internet marketing business, you may run across sites or programs that will provide you with a small amount of html code to use on your site.  For example, when you sign up for the Google AdSense program, html code is provided for you to copy and paste onto your site for the placement of revenue generating ads.

IM – Instant Messaging.  You may have clients that wish to communicate with you through the use of an IM program.  There are many of these, which are free to download and use.  This is basically a private chat program although some of these applications work with voice and video also.

ROI – Return on Investment.  You will see this term used many times, especially when it comes to advertising costs or other costs associated with Internet marketing.  It will be important for you to know your ROI as you calculate how much you are spending on Internet marketing vs. how much you are earning.

There are many other Internet marketing terms you may come across as you launch your business.  This is just a small sampling.  If you do come across any terms that you do not understand, you can do a search for an Internet marketing glossary, which will have a more thorough listing of Internet marketing terms and abbreviations.

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