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Danny Sullivan and The Formation of a Local SEM Organization

By Todd Mintz in Marketing

It´s true that Danny Sullivan is indirectly responsible for the formation of SEMpdx (Portland´s SEM Organization). At the 2006 SES Seattle Conference, in a conversation with Anvil Media´s Kent Lewis, Danny inadvertently (for he´s too nice a guy to do something like  this deliberately) slighted our Rose City. When Kent relayed Danny´s comments to Scott Orth, the desire to form a local SEM organization that would be the envy of much bigger marketplaces was born. One year later, I can state unequivocally that being one of the founding board members has been an extremely valuable, enriching experience.

The purpose of my writing this article is to attempt to show others the value of what we´ve accomplished and hopefully encourage like-minded SEM´s in other communities to form their own local organizations. I know that SEO Meetups are forming many places and it´s wonderful that folks are getting together to talk shop and drink beers. However, Dallas / Fort Worth, New York, and New England are the only regions that I know about that seem to be doing what we´re doing in Portland (and if I´ve slighted your organization, it´s due only to my ignorance).

So, why are the benefits of such groups?

*  Exchange of ideas. SES Seattle 2006 was the first time I ever had an in-person conversation with another SEO (and I had been doing SEO since 2000). An SEO who doesn´t go to conferences has not likely met many (if any) fellow professionals. It´s really nice to hang out with people with whom you can openly share your work experiences and who understand what the heck you are talking about.

*  Business Referrals. Not everybody is an expert in all facets of SEM. Many SEMpdx members have more clients than bandwidth. It´s nice to be able to refer out potential clients to trusted sources.

*  Competitors Can Be Friends. All the original SEMpdx board members were with difference agencies at the time our organization was formed (though two of us are now corporate). Competing with each other for business is a little less onerous when you have strong relationships with your competition (and when they can also be a referral source for you).

*  Educating Our Community. Each board member knows that once our Portland Business Community sees the value of search engine marketing, they will be more likely to invest in the search process. To further this aim, SEMpdx hosts a series of monthly events along with our annual day-long Searchfest where business people interested in learning more about search can learn from the best minds in our industry.

*  Recruiting New Search Professionals. Our members who run multi-person agencies have to turn business away because they can not find enough qualified people to hire. There is an extraordinary lack of search personnel. We are using our organization as a magnet to attract potential employees (and any Portland people who are looking for search careers really should start hanging out with us).

*  Giving Back To Our Community. Each year, we designate a local non-profit to get a percentage of our revenues, plus we collectively offer our professional services gratis to that charity.

*  Increased Individual Visibility. Because our organization has become highly visible, each Board Member has become much more visible in the Portland business community, as well as in the global search community.

So, it´s great first step to organize and attend a local SEO meetup…however, the benefits of forming a full-fledged local organization can personally and professionally profitable for all involved.
Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx

Internet Marketing - 6 Important Factors to Good Product Launching

By Joel Christopher in Marketing

Whether you have good products or you are reselling products for other people, you need to have a good launch. When you are new in the business or making some expansion, this is the way for you to have a higher chance of establishing yourself. There are different key factors to consider in order for you to be able to handle a product launch effectively.

Connections

This is the first important key to a good launch. If you want your launch to come out fabuously, you need to link up with other people in the target market of your choice. Connectivity will give your launch event more exposure and significance. If you manage to get the approval of the bigwigs in your market and they view your launch as something worth customers’ time, it will be a big winner.

Maximization of Profits

The mazimization of profits is another important aspect of the launch. The thing is, you will have to spend a considerable amount in order for you to be able to gain much from the launch. But you must be able to do this in such a way that you will gain more favorable returns than the initial amount you had to invest or shell out for the completion of the launch itself.

Loud and Proud

A launch will not be a launch if it is not loud enough and soaring high. Rockets do not get launched at slow speeds. They are designed to break barriers in the atmosphere. In the same manner, your own business product launch must be like that as well. Make it loud and proud so that it will make waves and get attention.

Proper Planning

You cannot have a good launch if you did not have a good plan to back it up. Proper planning will not erase simultaneous problems that may arise when you actually go through the launch, but it will save you time and give you more foresight with what to expect. This is very important. Also, if you are in the planning stage of your launch, you must get other people’s opinion or feedbacks.

Good Mechanics, if applicable

If your launch has an embedded contest in it, make sure that the mechanics are clear and easy to understand for your target market prospects. Also, the mechanics of the game must be simple and not hard to incorporate. If there is a time frame involved, emphasize it. And give out good prizes for the game.

Thinking Beyond the Launch

Ultimately, you cannot really expect that the launch will bring you to sustained fame. Think beyond the launch and be sure that you have follow up projects at bay after you create that grand launch. Remember, you cannot just exhaust all of your energies to the launch and not have something to sustain it with.

The launch is an important aspect in the initial stages of your business as an internet marketer. However, this is just one small piece in the big puzzle that will contribute to your overall success. If you really want to be able to succeed in this thing, you need to be able to put all these together as consistently and passionately as possible.

Author:  Joel Chritopher is known worldwide as the MasterlistBuilder who can help you generate leads and increase you profits. Find out more at http://www.masterlistbuilder.com

The Four Fatal Mistakes Of Affiliate Marketing

By Damien Oh in Marketing

Affiliate marketing is appealing and attractive. It promises you great income without the need to handle any inventories or product shipping. You have seen plenty of success stories which suggest to you that you could be one of them too. You bought all kind of ebooks, software and system that promises to lead you to success, but after a while, you discovered that the business is making you a loss rather than a profit. So what really happens?

While affiliate marketing is truly financial rewarding, it is definitely not an easy task. The reason why so many people fail at affiliate marketing is because many affiliates make fatal mistakes that result from their ignorance of facts concerning how the entire business runs. Affiliate marketing is not about setting up a website and recommends a few products. It is about the skill of building a real long term business that can bring you profits even when you are sleeping.

Here are the top 4 fatal mistakes that most affiliates make:

Wrong attitude

The first fatal mistake that most affiliates make is to have the wrong attitude toward affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is never a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme and should not be treated as one. What successful affiliate marketers never tell you is that they have put in a lot of effort, time and hard work before they achieve what they have today. If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing, you must treat it just like any business and possess the right attitude and mindset. Only then can you achieve result that you want.

No passion/knowledge in the product

Next commonly made mistake by affiliates is to promote a product that they have no passion or knowledge on. In other word, they are not promoting something they liked. This is going to be fatal. The reason is simple. How can you recommend a product to anyone when you don’t even know what benefits the product can bring to your customer? If you have personally used and loved the product, you will be able to share, review and even give powerful testimonial to your customer on the benefit of the product. You will also be in a great position to answer the needs of your customer. The bottom line is: if you do not have genuine interest in the product, do not promote it.

Lack of consistent effort

Consistency is the key to success in any business. This applies to affiliate marketing as well. In affiliate marketing, most affiliates do not put in consistent effort to apply the strategies they have learn.

Lack of patient

Affiliate marketing though ideal as a business model, does not make you a millionaire overnight. Most affiliates do not have the persistent and patience to build their affiliate marketing. They often give up when they are not making any income. The truth is: it’ll take a long time to build up a full-time income with affiliate marketing and during this time, you are likely to face a lot of uncertainties and setback. The good news is, as long as you persist and consistently employing the right strategies, it is only a matter of time that you reap your rewards from your affiliate business.

All in all, affiliates that are doomed to fail in this business are those who do not exert enough effort to understand everything involved in the industry that they are in. Knowing the fatal mistakes that others make and avoiding them will prove to be useful to them.

Author:  Damien Oh is an experienced affiliate marketer. He provides a free ebook to help affiliates to succeed in their affiliate marketing business. Download it at his site http://www.ecsecretaffiliateweapon.com

Affordable Solutions For Internet Marketing

By Jim Pretin in Marketing

Do you have a website that is getting very little or no traffic at all? Well, there are ways that you can change that even on a small marketing budget. We will review each of the strategies you can use to promote your website, and then we will try to assimilate them into a single, uniform strategy that is both highly effective and affordable.

First of all, TV commercials, radio ads, and print advertising are very expensive. This is undoubtedly the best way to launch a business, but the costs are prohibitive. A full page ad in a prominent magazine or other publication can run as high as $50,000 per ad. TV commercials can run just as high; if the commercial runs during a popular television show or sporting event, the cost will be enormous.

So, if you do not have enough money in the coffers for traditional advertising, you will likely have to use online marketing. This is not a bad thing. Offline advertising (i.e. radio, TV, print ads) is sometimes not effective. Marketing on the Internet is cheaper, and if done correctly, can give you much more bang for your buck.

Obviously, the cornerstone of Internet marketing is search engine submission and optimization. There are hundreds of different search engines and directories on the Internet where you can submit your web site for a listing. This is fairly easy to do. Simply sign up for a monthly submission plan with a credible search engine submission service. There are literally hundreds of these submission services on the internet; you can find them by performing a search on Google.

However, be wary of submitters that claim to be able to submit your site to 75,000 search engines. Such services are scams, and they will submit your web page to FFA pages and bogus link pages that can actually get you banned from the search engines. You should only do business with submission services that submit to the major search engines and directories.

Now that we have covered submission, we need to talk about search engine optimization (SEO), which is even more important. To optimize a site, you need to maximize keyword density and optimize the positioning for the words or phrases that best characterize the subject matter of your site, and you need to use proper Meta tags so that the search engines can interpret your web pages.

If you do not know how to optimize your web site, you should search for an optimization professional on Google. Steer clear of SEO experts who want to charge $1,000 per month or more. Their goal is to bleed you dry before you figure out that they really can not help you get to the top of the rankings. Stick to providers who will optimize your site for a one-time fee.

More important than SEO is link popularity. Link popularity is the number of web sites that currently link to your site. The more inbound links you acquire, the higher your search engine ranking will be. There are more than a few ways to acquire links, but I have a certain strategy that worked well for me.

My advice to you is to write articles and press releases and submit them to article directories and press release distribution services who will then distribute your articles and press releases to other websites who will publish them and in return link back to you. Also, you can submit your site to bloggers through a popular service called Blogitive (Blogitive will get blogs to post one-way anchor text links to your site in their blog, which will greatly enhance your search engine ranking).

If you are not patient enough to wait for your search engine ranking to improve, you can attract visitors to your web site instantly by using pay-per-click advertising (PPC). With PPC, you pay a certain cost per click to have an ad for your web page run at or near the top of the search engine listings for certain keywords. This can be extremely costly and ineffective. It is not uncommon for webmasters to blow thousands of dollars on PPC advertising and make only a few sales.

The best way to promote your site, if you are actually selling something, is through an affiliate program. You need to provide an affiliate code to other online merchants so that they will place your banner on their site; every time you make a sale that resulted from an affiliate referral, the affiliate gets a commission. Some internet companies have thousands of affiliates, and get all the business they would ever need or want this way; and it costs you nothing.

To recruit affiliates, you should submit your affiliate program to as many directories as possible (there are directories where you can list your affiliate program for free). The best way to find affiliates is by listing your program on forums or message boards visited by webmasters who are looking to generate additional revenue for their online business. You will have to consult with an experienced programmer who can set up the affiliate program so that the codes used to track sales for each affiliate will work properly.

So, to summarize, you should first optimize your website and submit it to search engines. You should then begin submitting articles and press releases to article directories and press release distribution services. You should also submit your site to Blogitive so that bloggers will write a review of your site and link to it, further boosting your link popularity. You might want to join a link exchange, but trading links often proves fruitless. Also, you should set up an affiliate program. And finally, you should budget a small amount of money to spend each week on pay-per-click.

If you are persistent and use all of these methods, you will continually increase your traffic over a period of time. It will probably take approximately 3 years of performing each of the tasks outlined in this article, on a daily basis, to get where you want to be. Just stick with it and your efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

Author:  Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

Using Your Content for Internet Marketing

By Carl Hoffman in Marketing

If you are currently marketing your business online and have not put a great deal of thought into the content on your website, you may be making an incredibly costly mistake. The content on your website is invaluable for a number of reasons.

First of all it gives visitors to your website their first impression of your business and the products and services you offer. Additionally, well written content can be instrumental in selling your products and services to your potential customers.

Finally, the content on your website can influence the size of the target audience you are able to reach by helping to improve your search engine rankings. With your content capable of doing so much, it is clear you should be hiring a professional content writer to assist you writing the copy for your website. This article will delve deeper into the importance of providing accurate, concise and informative content on your website when you are marketing online.

One of the most basic reasons why the quality of the content on your website is so important is because visitors to your website will likely form their initial opinions of your website based on the content on your website. If the copy is poorly written, does not hold the visitors attention and does not promote your products and services well visitors are likely to exit your website without making a purchase.

Conversely, if the copy on your website is well written, engages the reader and promotes the products and services you offer the visitor is more likely to investigate the website further to learn more about the products and services and may make a purchase. The content of your website will be one of the aspects of the website which is first noticed by visitors so it is important for this content to be well written.

Well written sales copy can also be very persuasive and may compel visitors to the website to purchase the products or services offered on the website. This is important especially if the main purpose of the website is to sell the products or services. The sales copy should accurately describe the products or services offered, stress the importance of these products and services and compel the visitor to make a purchase. All of this should be done without appearing to be blatantly advertising the products and services.

Writing this type of copy can be quite complicated and typically requires hiring a sales copywriter who is experienced and skilled at writing this type of informative and persuasive content. Sales copy written by an amateur or an inexperienced writer will not likely be as effective as copy written by a professional with a great deal of experience in Internet marketing.

Finally the content on your website is very important because it can greatly influence your search engine rankings. This is critical because high search engine rankings help your business to reach a considerably larger audience.

Internet users are typically looking for information quickly and want immediate results to their inquiries. Search engines understand this profile and write complicated algorithms which help them to supply the most relevant websites when a user searches for a particular word or phrase. This is important to business owners because Internet users realize the value of search engines and are likely to only visit websites which rank well in the search engines. This includes websites which rank on the first page or two of search results.

Your business might sell football jerseys and you may have a well designed website, a superior inventory and excellent prices but if your website does not rank well in search engines you are missing out on a great deal of free advertising. If your website lands on the third page or lower most visitors who search for relevant terms will not likely visit your website because they will have found what they were looking for on earlier pages. This is where the content on your website becomes important.

Websites containing content which has been optimized for particular keywords will likely rank well with search engines. Hiring a writer skilled in writing optimized content can help to improve your search engine rankings so you can reach more potential customers.
Author:  Carl Hoffman has over 20 years of sales and marketing experience and is considered an expert cook. he has many online ventures and author of countless articles on cooking, health, sales and marketing. You can vist him at Hoffy’s Kitchen.

Learning The Basic About Internet Marketing: Keyword Positioning

By Markus Skupeika in Marketing

Hit the Bull’s Eye in Internet Marketing.

How? Simply do your homework: Perform proper keyword research.

Building up an online business is tricky. It is when you think you have the perfect formula for any real- time business to succeed, that you begin to realize your concept of traditional marketing does not work in online setting. While traditional marketing uses the gift of gab, Internet marketing utilizes the perfect combination of words or terms, unique for a particular website. In fact, the written word plays a pivotal role in online success.

On the internet, keyword positioning is strategic step: it can make or unmake your dream of hitting it big in a realm, where making money has limitless boundaries and anybody, sans MBA can challenge the masters. Search Engine Optimization, where keyword positioning is a primary factor, is the vessel that takes you to your destination.

By definition, keywords are searchable words or terms that refer to a specific subject matter. The main purpose of selecting keywords properly is to ensure that when an online user searches for a product, he types on the search bar keyword or phrases that are relevant to the information he seeks, AND exactly the keywords or phrases that would bring him to YOUR website - obviously, with the end-view of making a purchase.

Targeting keywords for your website is a challenging task, but there are proven ways on how to come up with a list that can work. Here are a few tips:

What to target:

Target keywords based on the names of your product, the brands you carry, nature of your service, or by the use of terms that are popular among online users when they search for products or services similar to yours. Targeting only keywords that are highly relevant to your business assures you that the traffic you need is already sifted from the time-wasters.

You can avail of all the help you need online. There are tools available online that rank keywords according to the number of clicks they generate or how in demand these keywords are among the present crop of searchers.

Internet Marketing Service is an umbrella of strategies, such as article marketing and link building to name a few, but each of these strategies is anchored on pre-selected keywords and keyword phrases. The success or failure of the total marketing campaign begins on keyword positioning.

How to target:

1.)Analyze keyword demand.

This is simply determining, which keywords search engines have ranked high, depending on how many times these keywords were used by online searchers when they accessed search engines for information. However, it does not stop there.

The trick is not simply to determine, which keywords ranked high, but how these keywords relate to your present needs. Are these the keywords that can generate the desired traffic to your website?

2.) Create your own list of keywords based on your products, services and ideas.

As apples cannot fall far from the tree, so do your keywords. They should describe your products or service, not your competitor’s.

3.) Be challenged by the best.

Who are your competitors? Which keywords have delivered to them the most number of traffic? Make a list of these keywords and decide which ones you could target as well.

4.)Conduct a performance review.

Determine your past performance among search engines and find a list of your own keywords, which performed well in the traffic department. If you did it once, you can do it again!

Internet Marketing may be highly competitive, with strategies that never remain constant, but it has never swerved away from the basic: choose good keywords and these will take care of your online success.

Author:  There are dozens of ways to run a successful internet marketing service than you know. Discover the secrets to local discount florida internet marketing with Markus today.

5 Steps for Generating Targeted Leads

By Brian Lam in Marketing

Anyone can just use cold calls to try to generate leads. But who would want to waste time on such unproductive actions? Wouldn’t it be better if you can have a steady stream of hot leads, leads that not only include contact information but give you an idea of what the prospect needs, the problem they want solved? Most importantly, they want what you have to offer and are ready to buy.

You have a web site and thousands of people are visiting your site each week. If everything is working properly, you should be generating dozens of targeted leads with hundreds of people on your marketing list to offer them what you have. But if not, then there are five reasons why your web site is not getting the targeted leads that it deserves to get.

1. You Should Collect Contact Information

Use incentives to collect the email address of every visitor. Offer them freebies such as articles, tutorials or a guide so that they will be motivated to give you their email addresses.

Most importantly, offer your prospects something related that they want. Plus, place your sign up form prominently at the top of your web page and also in your navigation bar at the side.

This way, you should be able to capture 10-20% of your visitors’ email addresses.

2. You Should Use Autoresponders to Collect Detailed Information

The most basic is to get their email addresses but wouldn’t it be more helpful if you have more information?

You can use an autoresponder to send a confirmation email where you ask them for more detailed information and some questions about what they are interested in will prove helpful in closing the future sale.

3. You Should Get People to Tell You How You Can Help Them

The internet is a great resource for free information and people specifically use that as their purpose.

To find solutions to their problems.

So in order to use this to your advantage, you will have to prompt people to contact you by including an inquiry form on your web site, especially on high visibility pages, at the bottom of your home page and other key pages.

Once you start receiving completed inquiry forms, you can sort through them to identify which ones are worth following up and try to close the sale through these useful information that you have gathered.

4. You Should Collect Feedback and Learn More About Your Prospect’s Needs

Some people buy immediately when being show the sales pages, others don’t even have an interest. But the majority falls into the middle. These are people who are interested but not ready to commit.

So you will need to capture them by using exit pop up to collect feedback and to find out what they are looking for.

By using an incentive, you can motivate them to fill up the form. When you have these feedback forms, you can follow up with them and ask them why they didn’t buy the services or products or just to get further information about the problems they want to solve.

You will be surprised at how many you can actually turn into clients by doing these.

5. You Should Send out Surveys to Identify What Sells

Having a newsletter has its advantages because you can leverage the trust of your readers to collect ideas on their needs. If you have been regularly following up with them, then it is more than likely that they will respond to your request.

Just send about two to four times annually on an informal survey to your readers. Ask them for their ideas, what they think of your services, products, what they like best, what they dislike and what they need and want. Tabulate the responses and develop products and services they asked for.

Eventually, use these five methods and I’m sure you will be getting your stream of targeted leads very fast. Plus, you will be able to turn them into loyal clients of yours using the following up to grow your business.

Author:  Brian Lam is an experienced Internet marketing specialist. Get his FREE 13 part internet marketing training course which exploded his opt-in list by 1133% at Internet Marketing Solution center plus 3 FREE bonuses. Check out his blog: The Internet Marketer’s Life Exposed too. Visit: http://www.powerlistgenerator.com

Article Directory Owners Vs. Automated Article Submission Services

By Bill Platt in Marketing

Article marketing has been considered a useful method of promotion on the Internet, since the very early days of the Internet. By writing an informative article, writers have been able to get their sales message read by millions of online consumers, through their resource box that follows their articles. Until 2005, the whole point of article marketing was for the purpose of attracting huge numbers of readers as a result of the articles being published in ezines that had a large reader base.

A New Kind Of Article Marketing For Link Popularity

In 2005, Jason Bradley, owner of Article Dashboard, released his free article directory software. Websites that use his software are commonly referred to as AD sites.

During the same time frame, people began turning to article marketing in droves, based on its promise for building link popularity with Yahoo, MSN, and primarily Google. Most people who jumped on the bandwagon in 2005 to endorse article marketing for link popularity purposes promoted a very limited view of this promotional technique.

Their thoughts went along the lines of “the only purpose for article marketing is link popularity.” There was no other role for article marketing, they said. And since one only needed to type enough words to get a link into an article directory, the most common recommendation was that articles should only be 300-400 words in length.

It was also commonly recommended that most article directory owners do not review the content submitted to them, so it was not important that the article made sense or pleased the article’s readers. After all, the recommendation being made was not for the possibility of generating traffic from articles; it was only for the purposes of influencing the search engine algorithms, which are not capable of actually reading articles for grammar or understanding.

People flocked to this new kind of article marketing, and they were more concerned with “quantity than quality” – quantity of links that is.

Software Developers Rallied

With the mass deployment of websites under the Article Dashboard software, and others since, programmers jumped through hoops and developed new article distribution systems that relied on computers instead of people for the distribution process.

Soon, these programmers had systems in place to mass submit articles to the new breed of article directories. They told the new article directory owners that if they would add a simple script to their website, then the submission service would populate their directories with article content.

Hundreds of directory owners flocked to this new kind of article distribution system.

Early on, people who used article marketing to promote their businesses were elated. They were getting links all over the place.

The Realities Of Article Directory Management Sank In

In September of 2005, one company bought nearly 200 domains and installed the AD software on all of them. By May of 2006, their operation had never actually gained a foothold in the profit sector of the Internet, so they sold their domains to another company. In early 2006, I had documented a list of 180 websites owned by this operation. On a recent review, I was unable to locate a single one of these 180 AD sites still running the AD script, and most were offline completely.

In order to fully understand the job of the article directory manager, the manager must manually approve or reject every article submitted to an AD site. Many AD directory owners realized that the approval process was a long and tedious affair, especially when they were receiving hundreds of articles per day from these automated distribution systems. For testing purposes, I had set up my own AD site and subscribed to receive articles from these automated systems. I let go the approval process for one week and returned to find 800 articles waiting for approval. It does not take long to get overloaded with articles that require manual approval.

After only a few months of operation, many Dashboard sites stop approving articles for one of two reasons: 1) it took too much time to manage their article directory website, or 2) the amount of income generated from the process did not match the time requirements of the directory.

The Clash Of Titans
Things really began to change in the AD directory ownership game a few months into the project. Directory owners began to realize that in order for them to profit from their article directories, they must do something that brings readers to their websites and encourages loyalty from their site’s visitors.

Since most article directories rely on advertising to drive their revenue stream, the directory owners had to do something that the other directory owners were not doing. They had to distinguish themselves from the masses.

The AD owners who have survived the early explosion of AD sites have generally taken the attitude that they should focus on “quality over quantity”.

This one step has set the goals of the software developers’ article distribution systems and their customers (quantity over quality) in conflict with the best interests of the article directory owners (quality over quantity).

Directory Managers Began To Implement New Submission Rules

Early on, many of those article directory owners who were intent on survival took actions to reduce the garbage flowing into their directories. Directory managers noticed trends in the articles that consistently failed to measure up to their new standards.

The owner of Invisible MBA, an educational article directory, told me that he had to review ten articles to find one he wanted to use. He also regularly complained about people who did not follow even the simplest instructions about appropriate content on his website. He eventually resorted to banning 70% of the people submitting articles to his website, including the automated article submission services, because they simply could not follow his category guidelines for submission.

His whole issue is a common complaint among the article directory managers. They insist that writers should take the time to appropriately categorize the articles they submit. Since it takes so long to approve articles manually and to select the correct category, directory managers have resorted to deleting articles instead of categorizing those articles for the writer.

Article Dashboard, Article Garden and many others have taken the step to prohibit the submission of articles that only point to affiliate websites. Article Express had gone one step further to prohibit affiliate links, even if the affiliate programs are advertised from the writer’s domain.

Across the board, directory owners have stomped on Private Label Rights (PLR) articles. When article directory managers began to realize that their websites housed dozens of copies of a single article, each of which had been signed by different people as the stated author, they realized that they had a serious quality problem. They instinctively knew that those PLR articles created a trust problem with their readers. When one article has been claimed to have been written by twenty people, it makes one wonder how the website owner can claim to have a quality website. And if the trust factor has already been raised as an issue, why would the reader want to trust anything else on that website?

Lee Asher who owns Articles-Galore and a couple of other AD sites was one of the first to come down hard on software submissions to his website. His guidelines state in no uncertain terms that if someone uses software to send articles to his websites, the person will have all of their articles removed from his website.

Some AD site owners have implemented minimum word count guidelines as a measure to break some of the junk article peddlers. After all, the people focused on writing articles for link popularity are driven by the concept of 300-400 word articles. I have seen word count restrictions that include the minimum of 500, 600 and 700 words. 80% of what is submitted to my AD site does not even have the number of words I require.

Proper Category Placements Is A Consistent Issue For Article Directory Managers

Article directory owners want to impress their readers and the search engines. But, they need the properly categorize articles primarily for their human readers, who are looking for specific information on their website.

In order to help their website visitors, the directory managers frequently update their category arrangements. For example, on my AD site, I provide several well-defined subcategories for the health category. In the cancer subcategory, there is a wide range of cancers that needed their own child categories. Since the AD software only shows 30 articles per listing page, and since there is one writer who has written more than 400 articles just on the topic of mesothelioma, it made sense to subdivide my cancer category so that it was not an advertisement for only one writer.

One of the main problems with the auto-submission software is that the software does not accurately address the up-to-date category hierarchy for each article directory. This creates a real quality issue for the directory owner and managers. In order for the directory manager to stay true to the formatting of his or her directory, he or she must either complete the category selections for the auto-submitters or delete the articles submitted through them. Manual deletions take as much time as manual approvals, unless the manager has to choose the category for the article, then it takes longer.

Article Marketing Still Works For Those Who Care About Quality Over Quantity

If you still like article marketing for its ability to get your business seen by ezine readers, then it is as effective as it has always been. If you only like article marketing for its ability to influence your link popularity, it can still be effective, if you do it right.

It is true that those automated article distribution services can get your article to a lot of websites, but on a percentage basis, how many of those submissions are getting approved?

For my own use, I use my own article distribution service to reach ezine publishers. And for mass directory submission, I prefer to submit articles to the directories by hand, because hand submission permits me to get the category right every time, which in turn permits my articles to get approved more often.

In the end, it is a karma thing – if I treat the directory managers right, they will treat me right by approving more of my articles. Since it is not uncommon for me to spend six to seven hours to write an article like this one, it makes a lot more sense for me to spend the extra time to get a wider reach for my articles, by honoring the desires of the more substantial article directories.

Author:  Bill Platt has offered article marketingservices at The Phantom Writers, since 2001. If you are interested in guaranteed link building services, utilizing articles as the foundation for the links, then Bill’s team can help you with that as well. If you have questions that only Bill can answer, give him a call at (405) 780-7745, between 9am-6pm CST, Monday through Friday.

AttractionAttraction Marketing With Personal Branding Online Marketing With Personal Branding Online

By Colin Meunier in Marketing

Are you still working and building your network marketing business the old way? Are you using out dated methods of the 1970s or even the 1990s, such as making a list of all the people you know and asking them to look at your home business opportunity? Have you got stuck in the rut of having to purchase over priced business opportunity leads and dialing for dollars only to get rejected? Let me tell you that they is a better way to build your network marketing business, using what is referred to as creating your personal brand online. Also known as attraction marketing

Personal branding is very important if you want to create substantial success in your online network marketing home business opportunity. All top leaders in the industry know this and have created a personal brand for themselves.

Personal branding is the complete opposite of what people have been doing for years in network marketing. You see instead of chasing people to look at your business like the old way, when you use personal branding to build your business you will have people chasing you wanting to join you in your business. That is a huge difference in marketing strategy.

Here are few tools you will need to implement a personal branding online:

Website - You will need a personal website that you can share your story and create your personal brand.

Auto Responder - You will need an auto responder to build your list for following up with your potential prospects.

Here are some important principles to keep in mind when creating your personal brand in order for it to work well for you.

You Inc. - This is where you establish you as the business. This is very important to know and realize that you are the business, and not the company you represent.

The expert status - You need to position yourself as an expert. This is basically showing people that you are a leader. It is very true that people want to join leaders and so if you establish yourself as a leader in a particular area or network marketing then you will have people wanting to be apart of what you are doing.

WIFM - This is what is referred to the “what’s in it for me” factor. You reader has to be able to read your website and see what is in it for them.

On your website what you do is write your story about you and how you can help people. Your story has to have the proper flow. You want to share some dirt on you. This is basically to show you are being transparent to people. People like to do business with people that are being real with them.

You want to establish a like, trust and relate factor. People want to know they can trust you. They need to be able to relate to you and your life, and of course they need to like you

You can share your story of where you grew up and what kind of troubles or adventures you have gone through in life. Then you can not just stop there. You see many people just put up a personal website and talk about their family and their dog etc. but you need to have a purpose to it. Remember the what is in it for me factor. Why are you sharing that stuff?

Then you can go into your business life and what you do for business and how you will be able to help people when they join you in your business. This is very important as this is why they are on your webpage.

Author:  Colin Meunier is a Successful Home Business Coach and Mentor. To learn more on how to start or become more successful in your home business online Visit: http://www.WhoIsColinMeunier.com & http://www.colinmeunier.com/blog

Integrating Mobile in the Marketing Mix

By Cindy Krum in Marketing

How will the evolution and acceptance of mobile communication impact the bottom line of your marketing program? The answer depends largely on your ability to effectively integrate mobile into the marketing mix by leveraging the correct mobile channel and offering a compelling mobile marketing message.

You must begin by establishing whether or not mobile is appropriate for your marketing campaign. Mobile marketing is a great way to connect with your customers, and allow them to interact with your brand in a very personal way, but it is not right for all marketing campaigns. You should evaluate how your target market is using mobile technology and how mobile marketing will uniquely allow you to reach your marketing goals.

Mobile marketing is still in its infancy, so it is best used to promote special offers and create ‘buzz’ but it can also be effectively used for brand awareness and reinforcement. With more tech savvy customers, mobile marketing can be used to introduce new brands and expand your customer base, but that is usually a riskier venture. Despite popular belief, mobile marketing is not just relevant to the younger demographics. In-fact, the most active population group using mobile phones is 25-45 years old, so don’t limit your mobile marketing initiatives to the younger demographics. It is important to make sure you have a good idea of how your clients are using mobile technology, and if you don’t know, it will be valuable to do some market research or perform a survey of your clients’ mobile habits.

Once these questions have been addressed, and you have established that it makes sense to include mobile in your marketing mix, you can get started planning the mobile campaign. You must begin by establishing which mobile channel best suits your marketing goals and your target market. Once all these things have been accomplished you should determine what your mobile marketing message will be and how you will integrate your mobile marketing campaign into the rest of your marketing efforts.

Mobile Channels & Messages

Mobile Web: One of the simplest ways to begin mobile marketing is to ensure that your website is usable on mobile devices. There is no need to go out and purchase a new domain or create a mobile-specific website. In most cases, you can make minor changes to your existing site to ensure that it will work on a mobile device. In general, websites translate best on mobile if they are primarily built in html or xhtml. Anything that takes a long time to load on your traditional computer will take even longer to load on a mobile device, so avoid excessive use of flash, action script and large images. Other than that, the best advice is to test your site on a variety of different mobile devices to see how it looks, then make updates accordingly.

Tip: Integrate your mobile marketing with your mass media and outdoors marketing by placing banners and ads that reference your mobile friendly site in places where people might have idle time with their phone, like at bus stops, in subway stations and on billboards.

Mobile E-mail: Many people are accessing their e-mail on mobile devices, so it is also important that you optimize your e-mail campaigns so that the e-mails can be read on mobile devices. Be sure to test your e-mail messages on a couple different mobile devices before you send it out. Make sure that you are using compelling subject lines (that won’t be sent to peoples SPAM folders), with the important information in the first 30 characters. Some Mobile devices don’t display a ‘From’ line so if there is room, include your brand name in your ‘Subject’ line. Always send a text alternative to html e-mails, and include a link to an online version of the e-mail that people can click if they are having trouble viewing the e-mail.

Tip: Integrate your e-mail campaign with your website by mentioning any promotion you are sending in e-mails on your home page, and include a link to the online version e-mail.

Text Messaging (SMS): Text messaging is a great way to reach customers with promotions, whether you have their phone number or not. Rather than coming through as a call, a text message will show up on the mobile phone as a small note on the phone, similar to a short e-mail. Text messages can only include 160 characters of text, but many phones will activate text to make it clickable, if the phone recognizes the text as a phone number, web link or short code.

If you don’t have access to your customers’ phone numbers you can use your other marketing channels to encourage customers to interact with your brand by sending text messages to a 6 digit number called a short code. This type of mobile marketing is frequently location based and can have a very short life cycle. A good example would be a coffee shop with a sign in the window that says “Text the word ‘coffee’ to 123456 to receive $1 off your purchase today.” When users send the text message a computer replies with a code or password they can give the cashier to receive the discount. This is a great way to build up a list of mobile phone numbers that you can use later with other more targeted text messaging campaigns.

If you already have access to a list of mobile phone numbers, you can send them a text message directly. If you are using a list of mobile phone numbers that you have received from a previous text messaging campaign, like the coffee shop example, you can send a follow up text message. For instance, a week after participants got the $1 off of their coffee purchase, you can send them a text message directly, that says “We have missed you. Come back this week and get a free coffee and $2 off the purchase of any 12 oz bag of ground coffee.” Participants may be charged for the text message by their mobile carrier, so be sure to make the offer attractive enough to get their attention.

Tip: If you are working with a pre-existing list of mobile phone numbers it is best to let people opt in to your marketing messages by sending the recipients a text message that says something like this: “Our customer database lists this as your mobile phone number. Reply with ‘OK’ to receive coupons & other marketing messages at this number.”

You can also encourage people to respond to the text message with their e-mail address to have coupons e-mailed to their mobile phone or personal computer. You must refer them to a website for full terms and conditions, but that can be part of an acknowledgment message, sent after the e-mail address is collected. You should also allow people to opt out of your text messages by including something that says “Text message ‘STOP’ to 123456 to stop receiving our messages.”

Picture Messaging (MMS): Picture messaging is more versatile than text messaging and can be used in much the same way. It is less widely used, and can cause users to incur higher charges from the carrier, so it is important to ensure that your marketing message is well thought out and valuable to the recipients. Picture messages can include pictures, graphics, animations, text and sound. Picture messages are traditionally sent from a mobile phone number to an e-mail account. Picture messages can be received on traditional computer e-mail accounts, but are best viewed on a mobile device, because of the size of the images that are sent. Like in text messages, most phones will recognize and activate text to make it clickable if it is a phone number, web link or short code.

Tip: Use your website to encourage users to sign up and receive new product notifications or birthday e-mails on their cell phone. Be sure to include links to the website in the picture message that encourage the recipients to view the site from their mobile phone.

Location Based Marketing: Many smart phones are equipped with technology that allows messages to be sent to the phone via Infrared technology beams (IR) or Bluetooth. These two communication technologies have limited range, which allows you to set your marketing message to constantly send from a physical store location, but it will only be received when the customer is within range. This is another great way to take in-store promotions one-step further and remind customers of advertised deals or create special incentives for mobile users.

Marketers are also using GPS enabled cell phones to send users targeted e-mails or text messages based on your location. These types of communications can be considered very intrusive and personal, so it is important to tread lightly and best to reserve this type of marketing for customers who interact very frequently with your brand.

Mobile Pay-Per-Click: As on the traditional internet, search engines offer paid listings that display along side the regular search results. These advertisements only cost money when users click through to get to your site, hence the name ‘Pay-per-Click.’ You bid on keyword terms that are related to your product offering, and when users search for those terms, your ad is displayed. You are given a certain number of characters to describe your products and you can link the advertisement to any page on your site. Mobile Pay-per-Click is new, so there is less competition on keyword phrases and prices are still very reasonable. In most cases the search engines and third party providers are still testing different means of displaying these ads, so now is a good time to begin learning the ropes and building up history with the Pay-per-Click providers.

Tip: Be sure to update your Pay-per-Click advertisements when ever you run a special promotion or marketing campaign. Sometimes you will need to change the text of the advertisement to reflect the new marketing message or promotion. Other times you will need to bid on different keywords that are associated with the promotion.

Mobile Banner Ads: Mobile banners are small graphical advertisements that that link to your site, and are shown on other sites as a means of generating revenue. They are purchased from a third party provider on a ‘cost per million’ basis. The number of times your ad is shown is called its ‘impressions,’ and you pay weather your ad is clicked on or not. The third party provider will allow you to select different filters that affect how, when and to whom your ad is displayed. The number of filters you set will also effect your cost per million (CPM).

Some mobile sites have begun to sell banner ads much in the same way banner ads are bought and sold on the traditional internet. Frequently, traditional banner ads will not display correctly on mobile phones, so some companies have systems in place that identify whether you are on a traditional computer or a mobile device. This way they can serve ads that are specifically formatted for your screen. In other cases, mobile banners are put on websites that are specifically designed for mobile access. In either case, mobile banners are a good way to generate brand recognition, and let people know that your site is accessible on mobile.

Tip: Since you are paying by the impression it is important that banners do a good job of re-enforcing your brand without users having to click through to your site. Banners should always have the most updated marketing message that is being used in your other marketing channels.

Evaluating Mobile Success:

The final aspect of any marketing campaign is the evaluation and tracking of success - and mobile marketing is no exception. It is important to let your efforts run for enough time to get a true read of the success of the campaign because mobile marketing is new to consumers, and ‘buzz’ is frequently a large part of any mobile marketing campaign. It is also best to do a couple different one-time promotions before you do a full assessment of the success of the campaign, because that gives consumers time to catch on and create buzz.

When you are evaluating your mobile campaign it is also important to remember that your mobile marketing efforts can affect the success of other aspects of your marketing campaign. Pay attention to how mobile could be creating indirect benefits to your sales volume both online and in stores. There are a variety of methods of tracking and measuring the success of your mobile marketing campaign, and there are even web analytics tools that can track the online portions of your mobile campaign. It is best to use a combination of what is available to ensure you are getting the most accurate results possible.

When done correctly, mobile marketing can do a lot to affect the bottom line of your marketing campaigns, but it is crucial that you use an integrated marketing strategy, effectively leverage the correct mobile channel, and use an appropriate marketing message.

Author:  Cindy Krum is Senior SEO Analyst with BlueMoon Works and a regular speaker on social and mobile marketing at search and online advertsing conventions.