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Goodbye Banners, Hello Webisodes!

By Chris Young in Featured

RECENTLY I WAS LUNCHING WITH a friend who is high up on the ladder at a Fortune 100. We started talking about the changing business of advertising. In the middle of telling him about how we’re producing and distributing branded original content across a network of sites online, he asked me a very simple question: “Why video content?”

Admittedly, he’s not in the marketing side of things, but he went on to say that he knows who he is (and who his company is), “I’m the producer and seller of Product X, which does A, B and C,” he said, “not the producer of great video content.”

So I said that that was great — and then explained that unfortunately, no one outside of his company knows who he is. I gave him a textbook speech on “brand” and how no one knows if he’s high-end or low-end, all about quality or all about convenience. Then I explained that the worst part is that when he does tell people who he is (mostly via banner advertising), fewer and fewer people tend to trust him. In fact, Don Tapscott’s book “Grown Up Digital” points to a whole generation that is amazingly adept at detecting, filtering, skipping and blocking ad messages all together.

The old screenwriter adage “don’t tell me, show me,” is extremely relevant, and branded entertainment is something advertisers have been doing successfully for years. Just as they embraced running TV spots online, advertisers find it a natural progression to embrace other proven “offline” tactics like product integration and show sponsorship, and bring them online.

Unlike ads, branded content engages people with good story-telling, while at the same time showing your product in action. Rather than telling people the features of Product X, you get to illustrate authentically, without heavy sales spin, how Product X fits into a particular lifestyle.

I pointed out that Honda, which recently produced a “Dream the Impossible” documentary series, states in one of its videos: “Honda is an engine company.” But even as an engine company, Honda strategists saw the potential of tapping into the power of story-telling and communicating personal narratives that correlate with their brand.

Where banner ads simply flash a message, and rich-media ads only invite interaction, good content and Webisodic series hold the customers’ attention for minutes at a time, lure them back for repeat exposure, and communicate much more than the often forgettable “buy me” messaging of a traditional 30-second spot.

In today’s digital environment, where empowered consumers dictate their media schedule and only flock to brands they can relate to and connect with, offering your client base quality and entertaining content is a better way to connect and stick out from the clutter. What’s more, the best of traditional Web advertising still applies. In terms of distribution, content can be super-targeted to the right eyeballs, significantly reducing waste. Could you imagine if television networks, rather than shooting a number of shows out to a diverse audience and crossing their fingers for big pockets of success, could target each of their shows to the people who wanted to watch and enjoy them?

As an example, I pointed out that Honda could easily distribute full episodes of their documentary series around the Web and target them using contextual and behavior methods to get in front of their core target; 25-to-49-year-olds with a youthful spirit and who are comfortable with technology.

Finally, I pointed out that unlike banner ads, whose success is often judged by how many clicks a unit got (a metric that has yet to correlate to brand lift), content can be tracked on a whole new set of much more in-depth metrics.

“You can see how long people are engaged with content, where they rewind or fast-forward, how many times they watch and re-watch content, as well as where and when the pass the content to friends or re-post the content to their own social media sites,” I noted.

I would have continued — but my friend stopped me at that point by yelling over me, “I get it! Goodbye banners, hello Webisodes.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Exactly.”

Chris Young is chairman of Digital Broadcasting Group. He was previously executive vice president-rich media at DoubleClick. Prior to that, Chris was CEO of Klipmart.

Build Authority Before Links

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

Rome was not built in a day, neither was a top ranking using SEO. Each keyword has a threshold that search engines and the competition have set, finding it and surpassing that mark is the true objective of search engine optimization.

Just like climbing Mount Everest (conquering a competitive keyword), takes planning, preparation and execution. One of the common misconceptions about search engine optimization is that once you acquire the most competitive keyword in your industry the floodgates will open and your job marketing your product or service is done.

Autoresponder Series – Why Email Autoresponders?

By Gary Packer in Featured

It doesn’t take much to realize why an autoresponder is of such importance to anyone running an internet business, providing it has all the required features and it’s an easy to use variety. Having an automatic email response system set up which successfully responds to all incoming emails 24 hours per day, seven day a week – 365 days a year, is without question, a big advantage in the world of online business.

There are a vast amount of autoresponder programs which can be set up on your own computer or on your own local server. Alternatively, there are many forms of autoresponders which can be hosted via remote servers although it should be taken into consideration, such services do cost money and on occasions, it can become very costly.

Obviously, for those wishing to avoid additional expenses, using your own autoresponder program, either on your PC or on your local server is the option of choice.

As mentioned above, opting to use your own autoresponder program will end up saving you a considerable amount of money while at the same time, saving you a lot of valuable time. Understandably, allowing an autoresponder to sift through responses and reply to incoming mail frees up a lot of your time which most businessmen can then put to better use on other aspects of their business.

Yes, sure we’re all entitled to our own personal opinions but, the fact is, with online businesses, lists of clients are what generate income. The more leads you get, the longer your list of clients become and the more clients you have, the more money you’re going to make. So, what has this got to do with autoresponders? It’s a proven fact that autoresponders are capable of generating thousands of leads in minimal time. It only stands to reason that the more customers you have, the more money you make.

In order to get the most out of an autoresponder, it’s fundamental that you include a subscription box within your website. By doing this, you’re making it convenient for visitors to sign up for you newsletters in order to learn more about the various products and/or services you offer. As soon as a visitor signs up, you can have your autoresponder set up in such a way that it automatically sends out an email while at the same time, it adds that address to your client list. This is an essential strategy in today’s world of online business management.

If you find yourself continually searching for new ways to improve your online business then you’re not alone and you can be rest assured, millions of others have already realized that autoresponders are one of the most essential, and valuable, tools available.

Firstly, as you won’t be required to personally reply to every email, your workload will shrink, thus allowing you time for more important demands.

Secondly, as your list of clients continues to grow, so too will your profits. The ultimate result of acquiring an autoresponder is that they boost income which far outweighs the initial cost of purchasing one.

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Gary Packer has been using the internet almost since the beginning. He has worked in Design Studios in London and has worked extensively on advertising projects for TV. During the last 4 years he has turned his attention to creating an income from the internet. For FREE internet-marketing related information and e-courses, please visit Internet Marketing Strategies .

One Size Does Not Fit All when It Comes to Writing Copy

By Karon Thackston in Featured

I shake my head every time I read one of these blanket statements. I’m amazed at how so many people still think that one size of copy still fits everyone. It’s just not true.

Here’s an example. A while back, I read, “Prospects hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages, especially on a home/landing page.” This is coming from Internet Marketing Report in relation to business-to-business (B2B) websites. I’m sorry, but I completely disagree.

Just because a website is B2B does not automatically mean every single one of its visitors will “hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages.” The product or service itself, how familiar the product or service is to the market, the target customer’s preferred communication style and a dozen other factors contribute to the decision about whether or not long copy or short should be used.

On the other hand, we have direct-mail experts who’ve taken their style of copywriting (sales letters) online. And, just like the ultra-short copy suggested by the Internet Marketing Report article, long copy has its audience.

If you ask direct marketers, they’ll swear that the long, scrolling, often hype-filled sales letters are the end-all, be-all of copywriting. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. The same reasoning applies to those who say you must use a sales letter as opposed to those demanding short copy.

DISC Helps Us Understand

You may have heard of the DISC model that categorizes people into four primary groups (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance). There are others as well, including Myers-Briggs. No matter how you group people, the point is that everyone is not the same.

So then, how can one style of copy possibly fit everyone? It doesn’t. There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, you have to know your target audience and communicate with them in the way that they will be most receptive.

For instance, people high in Steadiness traits on the DISC model prefer longer copy. What’s more, those high in Steadiness make up over 40% of the population of the U.S. Those high in Compliance crave details. They, too, would want longer copy. Dominance types want the bottom line first and possibly details later if they deem them necessary. And Influence? Those high in Influence move at the speed of light and make decisions on a whim. They aren’t much into details either.

Combine with these four styles the additional factors that being male or female add and you’ve really got your hands full. Want to get extremely precise? Toss in some persona/profile elements that deal with lifestyle, convictions and more. It’s enough to make your head spin at times.

Use Your Judgment

Before you buy into a blanket statement about consumers – whether it pertains to writing copy, setting prices or anything else – use your judgment. Does what’s being suggested really make sense for everybody? Is it possible that all people across the entire globe respond in the same way? No.

We all communicate differently. We shop differently. We make decisions based on different criteria. We respond to different stimuli. If there’s one common denominator, it is that we’re all different.

Karon Thackston – Looking for a better way to learn web copywriting? Karon’s SEO copywriting course teaches you how to improve conversions and rankings. Complete with assignments and feedback. Get the new 5th edition today at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.

Top 5 Tools to Analyze Your Website

By admin in Featured

When you manage a website there are some things that you need to know. For example, might it be a good idea to ask yourself questions such as; is the site effective and does it accomplish what it should? Getting answers to such questions is not always the easiest thing in the world. That is – at least not if you haven’t looked at any website statistics. Thankfully there are several great tools on the market that can help you understand how your website is performing. If you know this, you’ll be able to optimize and make the site more sticky and converting. To help you get started we’ll list what we believe to be the top 5 tools to analyze your website.

1. SEO Analyzer:

The SEO Design Analyzer from Raven is free to use and it will give you tons of useful information. Simply type in your URL and you’ll get the data you need to get a good understanding of what you’re doing right and what needs to be better optimized. It’s all very easy and it only takes seconds to get the results.

Some of the information that you’ll get to know are the download time, obsolete HTML, inline styles and at the end you’ll get an overall score for the design. One big plus with this tool is that it covers as good as every area of an average SEO process. If you really want the best of the best you might want to take a look at the SEO Pro version. It will cost you $100 a month but the features that are included could very well be worth it – depending on your requirements. Take advantage of this tool and create a user friendly site with top conversion.

This is perhaps not a web analytics tool in its full meaning as it’s probably better explained as a log analyzer. Nevertheless it is very useful and as it’s an open source program, it’s free to download and use. Due to, or thanks to, its popularity, it comes in several different languages, making it easlily accessible for people all over the world.

What it actually does is “generating advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics graphically” in a HTML report. AWStats surely will give you everything you might be looking for in a statistics tool. Most log file formats are supported by AWStats – such as Apache, IIS (W3C) and WebStar. Take advantage of this tool and get an easy overview of who your visitors are, what search engines they’re using and what time of day they’re visiting your site.

2. Website Grader:

The Website Grader is somewhat similar to SEO Analyzer and it will also provide you with all the necessary data you need to optimize your site. It’s free to use and we must say that we are impressed with the detailed data that appears after only a couple of seconds. Even though your site might be strong, it will always have some weak links that could be worth improving.

Some of the results that you get are heading summary, image summary, number of del.ici.ous bookmarks, on page SEO and off page SEO. Are you for example using too many images and not enough metadata? Website Grader can help you understand all these things for free and when done you can show your visitors the site’s score, with a badge from Website Grader. Try it out – we think that you might really like this tool.

3. AWStats:
This is perhaps not a web analytics tool in its full meaning as it’s probably better explained as a log analyzer. Nevertheless it is very useful and as it’s an open source program, it’s free to download and use. Due to, or thanks to, its popularity, it comes in several different languages, making it easlily accessible for people all over the world.

What it actually does is “generating advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics graphically” in a HTML report. AWStats surely will give you everything you might be looking for in a statistics tool. Most log file formats are supported by AWStats – such as Apache, IIS (W3C) and WebStar. Take advantage of this tool and get an easy overview of who your visitors are, what search engines they’re using and what time of day they’re visiting your site.

4. Crazy Egg:

The Crazy Egg tool comes in three different versions; standard, plus and pro. The standard version is free and the others cost a bit, but they are in no way pricey. With the help of this tool you’ll be able to see what your visitors are doing on your site – right down to their precise mouse movements. In fact, what we loved the most about this tool is the heatmap.

With the heatmap you’ll be able to see what’s hot and what’s not on your site via an image showing you where your visitors are the most active – every click by your users is recorded. Its simple design makes it very user-friendly as well. The standard version will give you plenty of useful info but if you really want to dig into the core of your site, we would recommend you to pay for the plus or pro version.

5. Mint:

The Mint analytics tool will cost you $30 per site but it will be money well spent. With Mint you’ll get data such as number of visits, unique referrers, most popular pages and much, much more. As this is a tool that you’ll have to pay for, you can expect a little extra – and we can promise you that it will deliver. Mint uses a plugin system, called Pepper, which allows adding extra extensibility to your base script.

We understand that it might seem unnecessary to pay for something that you can get for free elsewhere but remember that $30 is still a cheap way of getting that much data and your site is worth all the attention it can get. All-in-all, mint is a very good analyzing tool.

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This is a guest post written by Chris Reynolds from Web Hosting Search. Chris is a writer, developer and an enthusiastic designer who loves to blog about the hosting industry and has a special interest for website analytics. WHS is a well respected guide on trustworthy hosting providers worldwide and their reviews range from simple cheap hosting to more advanced dedicated hosting solutions.

A Twits Guide to Twitter Promotion… 10 Top Tips

By Mike Gracia in Featured

If you are not using Twitter effectively, you are missing out on a serious opportunity for promoting your business. For those that do not already know, Twitter is an online service, designed to let family, friends and workers chat and stay in touch. Twitter famously asks the question; “what are you doing?”

Click Fraud on the Rise Again

By Mel Strocen in Featured

The latest report by Click Forensics shows that click fraud is once again on the rise, jumping from 16% in the 3rd quarter of 2008 to 17.1% in the 4th quarter. More alarming, however, is the continuing growth of Botnet click fraud which has grown steadily from 9% in the first quarter of 2007 to 31.4% in the 4th quarter of 2008.  

The report cited other interesting stats as well.  The average click fraud rate on PPC ads in search engine content networks like Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network rose to 28.2%. A significant hit for any advertiser in a recessionary economy. Surprisingly, Canada topped the list for click fraud (7.4%) originating outside the U.S. while China came in at a lowly 2.3%.

To read the rest of the report, visit: http://www.clickforensics.com/resources/click-fraud-index.html

Rumor Has it – Google to Buy Skype?

By Mel Strocen in Featured

Rumors seem to be making the rounds again about a possible eBay sale of Skype. With Skype revenues up and eBay revenues down, a sale doesn’t seem out of the question especially when it’s obvious Skype has never really fit well with the eBay business model.

Google buying Skype has been reported before, but the latest round of rumors seems to have originated in the UK and spread from there. Buying a leading VoIP service like Skype might not be a bad move for Google. Chances are, however, that if they do decide to buy they won’t be paying the $2.6 billion that eBay paid for Skype.   For cash rich cos. it’s a good time to swoop in and take advantage of cos. reeling from the economic downturn.

Newbies Hints and Tips : Building Your Opt-in List

By Ron Woodham in Featured

The first and most important point to understand is whenever you sell, or give away any item online, you MUST get your customer’s name (first name will be fine) together with their email address.

So before you allow a new customer to download, for instance, a free e-book, they have to supply you with their name and email. It’s not an option to let them have the e-book first and ask them for their name and email later. This simply won’t do. It’s a bit like tipping money down the drain, and then trying to retrieve it later only to find it’s gone beyond the u-bend!

So what’s the best way to capture these names? When you create your website, one of the best ways to begin is by using what’s called an “opt-in” form for your customer to complete. All you need at this stage is their first name and their email address. Once they have submitted this information they will be taken to another page where they can click on a button that says something like: “Click here for your free e-book”, or if you are selling a product the button would say “Buy Now”, etc. Then your autoresponder will swing into action and bingo, the new customer is added to your list.

Your own customer list is a very valuable commodity. Yes, you can always buy a customer list, but none of these names would be “hot prospects” – until they have actually ordered a product from you. So your own opt-in list will always be worth much, much more – after all it’s full of hot prospects who know your site.

Once you have a growing List, you will need to keep in regular touch with them. A weekly or fortnightly newsletter should do the trick nicely. However, never bombard your customers with products to buy each time you post a newsletter – they will very soon get fed up, and leave! It’s very important to develop a good and friendly relationship. A good rule of thumb would be offering a new product once every two or three months. In the meantime your newsletters could offer FREE goodies, such as the occasional free e-book, or other useful information.

A simple way to gain the trust of a customer is to provide them with an escape route. Show them you are not there to trap them. Keep a clean List and always elaborate your email and newsletters by providing detailed information on how to unsubscribe from the list. Guarantee them that they may unsubscribe whenever they want to. Many people are wary that they might be stuck for life and would have to abandon their email accounts when they get pestered with spam.

You must never lose the trust of your customers. If you sell your List to others and they get spammed, you’ll end up losing many of your customers. A good clean private list will earn you a good reputation and drive in more traffic.

On the subject of spamming – many email providers are becoming very vigilant, and if they suspect you are spamming, your List you may get stopped altogether. Having what’s called a “Double Opt-in” system prevents this problem at the start.

This simply means that after your customer has supplied their name and email address, they receive a message from your autoresponder telling them an email has been sent to them. They need to open this email and simply click on the link provided, which in effect is confirming their permission to join your List and receive emails and promotions from you. Most people operate the Double Opt-in system these days.

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Ron Woodham retired at 65 and set up his own Internet Business. He spent 9 months teaching himself how to create and build websites from scratch, and now shares his knowledge through his Building Blocks for Beginners.

Visit his website http://www.newbieplace.co.uk for the full story.

5 Content Creation Tips For Your Blog

By Pete Moore in Featured

One of the biggest problems with blogging is to be able to create content consistently that is both useful and helpful. So I am going to share with you some tips for creating content on hot topics your market will find both useful and helpful.

Market Related Forums

Busy forums related to your target market are an absolute gem of a place to find information to write articles on for 2 reasons.

Before I tell you why I must point out the word BUSY, you should be gathering a list of popular forums within your niche anyway because they are useful for so many reasons. Don’t waste your time with forums that aren’t regularly posted to, I would say a free public forum should be updated hourly at the most any longer than that don’t bother.

Back to the 2 reasons, first a popular forum will be full of posts asking How do I …..? or Does anyone know how to….? type questions this tells you what your market wants to know about. Second knowledgable people in your market will make helpful posts and from the feedback/ replies of the other users in the forum you will be able to see what are the hot topics.

If you can’t get article/ post ideas from the popular forums in your market then there is seriously something wrong.

Other Blogs

As I mentioned in the forums section above you should be gathering a list of the top blogs targeting your market. Not just for competitive reasons but also for ideas on what works in your niche.

Other blogs can give you an indication of what is hot in your market. This is especially useful if the niche you’re in, is something you’re not personally interested in, which by the way is something I would advise against for your first blog.

Article Directories

Article directories are another golden source of information for ideas. The thing you should be looking for here is what articles are being read the most. The top directories like ezinearticles.com will tell you the most read and downloaded articles in your category.

This will tell you what topics are hot in your market and they can help you learn how to write a good and informative article.

Google Alerts

Google being the smartest search engine in the world from a marketing/ webmaster point of view has a utility called Google Alerts.

If you’re not taking advantage of this great little tool or worse haven’t even heard of it I suggest you get yourself over to (URL) after reading this article and find out more.

Google alerts will send you an email with links to stories for keywords you specify on a hourly or daily basis, this is so useful because the quicker you react to big news in your market by publishing a post on your blog the more likely your traffic will increase and your visitors will come to you because you’re “in the know” giving you expert status (priceless).

PLR Content

Last we have PLR content or Private Label Rights content. I love PLR because I am not a natural writer, actually I hate writing which can be a big disadvantage on the internet.

PLR is great because you can have pre written articles or ebooks that you can put in your own voice. Granted a lot of PLR is questionable quality BUT I would rather have something to start with rather than a blank notepad file.

You can then put in your own voice and do your research to better the quality which to me is fantastic.

I hope these tips have helped you see how you can get an endless supply of ideas for updating your blog consistenly with quality content your visitors will find both useful and helpful.

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Pete Moore is the business development manager for Public Domain Resource so go and grab your FREE Public Domain Profits Report

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