Search:
Site   Web

SiteProNews

SiteProNews

Article Categories



By Anita Buchan in Marketing

Article directories are packed with articles about how to succeed as an affiliate marketer. The number of affiliate marketing courses out there is growing all the time. And it sometimes seems like I can’t get away from sites offering to tell me how to make a fortune in fifteen minutes.

So why isn’t everyone a successful affiliate marketer? After all, there’s all this advice out there. Even if most of it is rubbish, with enough searching and by taking advice from reviews sites it is possible to find the good. But beginner affiliate marketers still make the same mistakes, time after time.

So, instead of an article telling you how to become a successful affiliate marketer, here’s one telling you how to fail. If you don’t make any of these mistakes, you’ll be doing better than 95% of beginning affiliate marketers.

1. Sit back and hope you’ll be lucky.

You might be. You might also win the lottery. But I wouldn’t put much faith in either happening. I am sure that there are people out there who have done nothing but thrown up a website and earned money from it. But there are far more people who have done nothing but thrown up a website and ended up only wasting their own money.

2. Promote products you don’t believe in.

Insincerity shines through. People can tell if you’re lying. The words sound rehearsed and often like a repeat of the sales pitch. You will probably also end up sick of it, and if you have any conscience at all, you should feel guilty about the fact that you are sending people to a poor quality product.

Another thing to avoid is promoting products you haven’t actually bought. Always read a product carefully before you start trying to sell it. Buy it through your clickbank account if you want some money off! But not knowing anything about a product will make you sound phoney, will mean you are unable to answer questions about it, and will mean you are reliant on the author’s own sales pitch for information.

3. Expect people to visit the collection of links you claim is a website.

People don’t visit websites with no content. Would you? They’re even less likely to come for a repeat visit, and you’ll have about as much chance of reputable sites linking to you as of winning the lottery. You won’t get listed in any directories either, and your search engine ranking will suffer. Good content leads to more visitors and more sales. Pre-selling something well can up the conversion rate dramatically.

4. Treat your visitors and subscribers as cash machines.

They’re not. By clicking on your affiliate links, they’re making you money. And why should they do that if you give them nothing in return? People don’t visit your website or subscribe to your mailing list because they feel like you deserve a bit of extra cash. They do so because they want something, usually information. You have to give that to them.

5. Give up.

Most affiliate marketers give up. They make mistakes, they lose money, they get discouraged, and they stop trying. The success stories are the ones who kept going, who kept believing that it was possible to make a living affiliate marketing. You need to believe the same, and be prepared to work hard for it.

If you avoid these mistakes, your chances of becoming a successful affiliate marketer increase dramatically. Committing any of them is likely to cost you time and money; but even if you have, they are easily fixed. Content can be added to a website, products can be researched more thoroughly, your sales pitch can be adjusted and you can always put in more work than you have been.

Does it sound boring? Yes. Is it difficult and often frustrating? Yes. But seeing your traffic increase, and then watching the sales start to come in is extremely exciting. That feeling alone makes it all worth it. And the money doesn’t hurt either! The hardest part of affiliate marketing is always getting started. When you are up and running, word will spread about your site and traffic will grow by itself.

Just don’t commit any of the above mistakes, and you will already be ahead of the pack.

Author:  Anita Buchan is a successful affiliate marketer who now wants to help others make the same money she does. For honest reviews of legitimate affiliate marketing opportunities, visit http://www.dont-get-scammed.biz

By Daryl Campbell in Marketing

In the b.i. days (before the internet), the success of a mom and pop store depended, among other things, on the big boys of industry. Once they came to town and set up shop, there was no more mom and pop. They were driven out of business by the sheer volume of the mega companies’ advertising and capital. Not a pretty site.

The internet has gone a long way to reviving the mom and pop industry. It affords many small businesses the opportunity to compete by using simple cost effective techniques repeated on a continuous basis. One of the techniques is viral marketing commonly referred to as word of mouth.

In the old days viral marketing for small business owners had limited appeal. Yes they could be successful in that particular city, town or even region but it’s still nothing compared to the global word of mouth that business owners can tap into right now thanks to the internet. Once you launch your viral marketing campaign, it requires very little follow up on your part and even this has been taken a step further with the emergence of Web 2.0.

Here are some new ways to get the best out of your viral marketing:

1. The Small Report.
There have been some excellent ebooks on the internet chock full of good information but let’s face it: many people are not going to read them due to the length. Enter the small report. Putting together a five to ten page report can be done in no time. The same goes for reading it. We suffer from information overload in this day and age so giving people useful information in smaller quantities makes sense.

Find a hot topic and write several articles on it. Place the articles in a pdf file with your name and contact information branded on the report. Tell readers they are free to distribute your report as long as they do not alter it in any way. Then advertise your report in forums on your website and anywhere else you can think of. People want information fast and utilizing small reports is a good way to give them exactly that. It’s also a good start to making money from your viral campaign.

2. Video
In 2005, Kevin McCarthy one of the pioneers of online marketing predicted that within a year there would be an explosion of online video. Prediction accomplished. The internet is at the dawning of the video revolution. It is becoming easier and easier to make a video and upload it to places like You Tube or Google Video. In fact Google bought You Tube late last year for 1.65 billion dollars. That’s a good indicator of how things are going.

Like the small report, try to keep your video brief and to the point. While people would rather watch than read, you still don’t want to overload them. The point of a using a viral video (like reports) for your business is to give visitors useful information but just enough. In the end you want them to get more information by going to your website

3. Folksonomies
Wikipedia defines folksonomy as “a user-generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve web content such as Web pages, photographs and Web links”. In plain english what they are referring to is tagging; a way to not only retrieve information you want but more importantly to share that information with others. Tagging is nothing more than keywords specifically related to bookmarking social sites like Digg, Technorati or Delicious.

As an example let’s say you join Technorati. You then make a video, tag it with the keyword phrase “funny online video” and upload it to your account. Now all individuals within the Technorati community will be able to access your video when they type in that particular keyword. This is very powerful. Tag viral and bookmarking social can put you in front of a large audience immediately.

No matter how new the strategies keep in mind if you want your viral marketing to truly take off then make sure its free. Charging money for your report or video will guarantee you a limited appeal. Free is a powerful psychological trigger for many of us so use it. Also make sure you are providing quality. No one is going to be in a hurry to pass around below average information.

The internet has in many ways leveled the playing field. Just stay alert to any new innovations and be ready to incorporate them into your internet web site marketing strategy. A smart viral marketing campaign can make any small business successful.

Author:  Daryl Campbell is a full time online business owner and internet marketer. Get more free tips, video, step by step coaching, tools and up to the minute internet marketing information to grow your business the right way at Internet Marketing Guide

By Lisa Barone in Marketing

I got one of those annoyingly oversized promotional postcards in the mail this week. Usually, I don’t pay much attention to these sorts of things, as I am part of that younger generation that disregards anything that is not immediately pertinent to my life, but this one got my attention.

It was from one of the major cable service providers congratulating me on my recent move and giving me all sorts of discounts and incentives to switch over to their cable company. I appreciated their congratulation (who doesn’t like a nice pat on the back?), but their efforts were somewhat fruitless:

  1. I moved in January. That was 7 months ago. I’ve moved on and so should they.
  2. I’m already a customer of this cable provider. Clearly we’re not as BFF as I thought we were.
  3. Even if I had just moved, they’re already late. Who moves without already making plans to have the cable set up? It’s one of those utilities I like to have as soon as I move in. If it came down to having water or TV/Internet, I’m going with the TV/Internet.

This is often the problem with traditional advertising: You tend to arrive a day late (or seven months late, in fact), uninvited and at a time when I am more interested in deciding what I want for dinner than setting up my cable. Another problem with traditional advertising staples like the so-big-they-don’t-fit-in-my-apt-mailbox postcards, flyers and brochures is that they’re boring. The only time promotional catalogues are fun is when they cause Jack Jack to violently slide from one side of the coffee table to the other and smack into the sliding glass door on the other end.

If you’re reading this blog, it means you’re probably already experimenting with forms of Internet marketing and search engine optimization, which is good, we like that around here, but are you looking socially as well? Your competition has already begun testing social media optimization, have you? Have you thought about how you’re going to compete in the era of blended search results?

Michael Gray blogged about a YouTube video contest being hosted by Careerbuilder.com and Disney as part of Disney’s Dream Job Contest and reminded me a few of my own favorites I’ve been seeing lately. Here are three user user-generated video campaigns that have caught my eye as of late:

  • Heinz’s “Top This”: I hate ketchup but I love Heinz’s “Top This” ad campaign, mostly because it’s just so ridiculous. (And because lots of the commercials feature French fries and I really, really love French fries.) Heinz is doing everything right here. Timing is everything so they’ve launched their light-hearted ad campaign during prime BBQ season, there’s a brand-induced monetary prize ($57,000 for Heinz 57 varieties), and they’re taunting brand evangelists “hungry for fame” with ability to have their ad run not only on YouTube, but on the Heinz site and on national television. The only thing I don’t really like here is the separate contest domain, but that’s a personal choice.Why did this one grab my attention? If they can make ketchup interesting, you should be able to make whatever your company specializes in interesting. Hell, I think ketchup is completely disgusting and even I’m thinking about how I can top Heinz.
  • CNN/YouTube Debates: CNN is getting people excited, and more importantly involved, with the upcoming elections by asking them to submit a question to be asked during the July 23 Democratic Debate. According to the contest rules, the CNN political team will choose the most creative and compelling videos and fly the winner to South Carolina to watch the debate live. Once there, the winner will also be able to voice their opinion on the debate (and I suppose comment on the answer given to their question) via YouTube’s political video blog, Citizentube.Why did this one grab my attention? Because it’s getting the YouTube generation involved in the election, while bringing older generations into the YouTube mix. It also doesn’t hurt that when users search for [cnn political debate], which will be a very popular search term when trying to get the latest info on the debate, the video contest ranks fourth. All hail the power of high-ranking YouTube.
  • Denver Public Library: This is my absolute favorite because it’s proof that you don’t need a million dollar ad budget to take advantage of social media. The Denver Public Library asked library visitors to submit videos to YouTube telling others how they have fun at the library. I’m sorry, but tell me this isn’t the cutest ad campaign you’ve ever seen. And because participants had to include the phrase “Denver Public Library” in their YouTube description all those videos are now ranking quite nicely.A quick search for [Denver public library] shows that they’re doing a lot of other things right – they’re already showing up in Google’s local business results, they’re using Flickr well, and both their MySpace page for the video contest and their podcast page is ranking on the first page. Who says libraries aren’t hip? Admit it, you’re kind of impressed.

    Why did this one grab my attention? Because it’s the perfect example of the little guy using social media to engage and attract its audience. The Denver Public library is on YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Google Maps, Wikipedia, CafePress, and who knows where else. Because they’re not a giant corporation they’ve been able to embrace social media from all angles. I want to bear hug whoever is in charge of their Internet marketing campaign.

I won’t argue that social media is a perfect fit for each and every type of business; it’s not. However, I think the Heinz and Denver Public Library examples show it is pretty flexible. You just have to use a bit of creativity. In the days of blended search, social media should be part of any well-balanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization campaign. It’s not just about those links anymore, it’s about associating your brand with all different types of content and creating an engaged audience. Those little promotional postcards aren’t going to cut it anymore.

Author:  Lisa Barone is a Sr. Writer at Bruce Clay Inc..

By Jacqueline Dooley in Marketing

One of the compelling things about paid search marketing is that it’s extremely easy to start and manage a campaign. Search campaigns can be launched in mere minutes on all the top engines. So not only is it easy to do, it’s quick to have your ads up and running. These two factors can be a mixed blessing, however, particularly if you’re new to search marketing.

One of the hard lessons that advertisers learn when they take the plunge and launch a search campaign is that it’s not always easy to get consistent results over the long term. Even if you came out of the gate with a 2 to 1 ROI or greater, it is not uncommon to see your marketing return dwindle for a number of reasons including increased competition, poorly performing ads, quality score penalties or just a poor understanding of what metrics matter.

Here are a few things to look at when triaging a failing search campaign. Most of these things are easy fixes that can help breathe new life into a campaign and get your perfomance metrics back on track.

Evaluate multiple metrics. It’s easy to look at one metric at a time and jump to conclusions about your campaign’s performance. For example, a rising cost per click (CPC) may indicate that your ads are more relevant to searchers while decreased ad positioning could mean more competition. However, you can get even better insights about problem issues with your campaign if you look at how both metrics are behaving side by side.

Here’s an example of a chart that shows the CPC versus the average position. Note the trendlines in blue and yellow (trendlines are a great way to see how a specific metric trends over time, particularly if there are wide fluctations in performance). This graph tells me that even though my CPC has been going up, my overall positioning has trended down - indicative of a poor quality score. Some actionable items I can infer from this are to:

  1. Take a look at keywords and how they relate to my ad copy - rewrite as necessary
  2. Delete poor-performing keywords or increase their relevance to the ads themselves
  3. Delete poor performing ads. Don’t think about it, just do it.
  4. Evaluate landing pages against the keywords I’m bidding on and my ad copy - is landing page text relevant to the keywords? Am I sending people to a generic home page when I could be linking them directly to a specific page on the site?

Now let’s see what the trending looks like when I compare the CTR versus the average position.

This chart demonstrates that the campaign’s CTR has been going up since April 2006, but the average  position continues to decline. This would indicate that there’s more than quality score at play here - and competition is playing a part in the increased cost of my campaign. The action items I get from this are:

  1. Begin monitoring competitors for all major keywords/categories I’m bidding on
  2. Review past competitive data if it’s available to glean key changes
  3. Focus on keyword expansion and refinement - discontinue terms that are too competitive or expensive to maintain OR make the decision to invest more money per click in order to achieve higher positioning (I would only do the latter if there was a large margin for my client’s product and/or there was wiggle room to increase the current cost per aquisition of the campaign).

Other key features to consider when doing a PPC Triage include:

Landing page analysis and testing. I know this seems like it would be a no brainer, but horrible, conversion-fearing landing pages can sabatage a campaign more than any other single factor. Bad  landing pages are often the fallout of PPC convenience - that is, being able to get a campaign live in one-to-three weeks. My best advice to resolve this is to test, test, TEST your landing pages, Also, read case studies, statistics and anything that you can get your hands on that discusses what makes a good converting landing page and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to redesign and test your new pages. Did I mention you need to TEST your landing pages? Good. Go do it.

Engine-level analysis and testing. Not all campaigns work out well on all engines. We tend to group our campaigns into one keyword-centric bulk without really considering performance at the engine level. When reviewing how you can improve your campaign, take a look at all the search engines where your ads are running. Don’t just look at top-level data (volume, CTR, cost per click) look at your CPA then figure out how you can expand your campaign on engines that have low volume, but good ROI and vice versa. Don’t discount second tier engines such as Ask.com and LookSmart.

Campaign structure and set up. One of the first things I evaluate when looking at someone else’s paid search campaign is how they’ve set it up on the back end. If I log into Adwords and see that all the ad groups are contained within one campaign called “Campaign #1″ well, I shudder. You have much more control over your budget and targeting criteria if you break up your account into multiple campaigns which contain multiple ad groups. The more ad groups there are in a campaign, the better. Ad groups allow you to customize ad copy for distinct keyword groups and this just makes for a better, more relevant campaign.
Author:  Jackie Dooley is the owner and founder of Jacqueline Dooley Internet Marketing, where she works primarily with agencies large and small as a consultant on a variety of search marketing campaigns. Read more of Jacqueline’s bio here.

By Bill Platt in Marketing

Article marketing has been an effective method of website promotion that has literally been used since the inception of the public Internet. I have been online since November of 1995, and even in those early days, I would read people’s articles and click the link in their resource box to learn more about their website.

The Early Days of Article Marketing

In those early days, there were a few players who recognized the value of article marketing. The two writers who were most influential to my use of article marketing, as a promotion method, were:

  • Dr. Nunley (http://www.DrNunley.com) has been online since 1996, and this website was registered in Oct. of 1997. Dr. Nunley was influential in that he taught me the power of syndicated article content.
  • Wild Bill Montgomery (http://www.MakingProfit.com) started his website in Nov. of 1998. Wild Bill offered one of the very first article distribution websites. I received his daily mailings for nearly a year, until he shut his article system down. I subscribed to Wild Bill’s mailings, so that I could locate articles for my own publication and website, and later to distribute my own articles.

It was in the aftermath of the demise of Montgomery’s article distribution system that I wrote my first script to enable me to make better use of this promotional method for my own articles. That original script was adapted later to became the foundation for my article distribution service a couple years later.

How Article Marketing Came To Be Regarded As A Powerful Tool

For several years, article marketing remained a promotion technique utilized only by a few hundred people who fancied themselves as decent to good writers. These individuals were able to generate quite a buzz for their own websites. The buzz in turn created streams of traffic to their websites, and more importantly, sales.

Their articles were picked up regularly by ezines, which need good content to retain the attention of their readers. Publication of the articles in ezines resulted in thousands of website visitors in just a few days. My biggest ezine publication event resulted in 16,000 visitors in the first 96 hours after publication. I regularly see thousands of visitors in three-to-four days, due to publication in individual ezines.

Articles that I had written in 1999 still reside on websites where they were originally published those many years ago. And, I still see regular traffic from the placement of those articles. Yes, and I still retain link popularity and good search engine rankings, as the result of the placement of those articles on third-party websites.

Many writers were seeing the same results as I had seen, and they told others about their great success. People began to pay attention and take advantage of the technique for their own promotion.

A New Breed Of Article Marketers

In late 2004, the market changed when people decided that the only goal of article marketing was for the purpose of link building for link popularity purposes.

A few new distribution systems popped up only targeting placement of articles on third-party websites. With these new systems, the article writers had to put their own articles into the distribution services database, and they had to select a general category for the placement of their articles.

Suddenly, with these new fully automated systems, computers were left to answer the most important question of category placement. These new systems left this important question to the computers to solve.

People were being removed from the article placement process, because people cost more money to employ, leaving a lot of results to chance. But, the new breed of article marketers did not care. They liked the lower cost of human-free article placement.

The Four Primary Players in of a Successful Article Marketing Campaign

There are four primary players in the article marketing game. First of course is the writer. Then there is the distribution person or service. Third is the website owner or ezine publisher. And the final element is the person who will read the article and act upon what they read in the article.

Sometimes the writer is the same person as the distribution person. That is fine. The website owner or ezine publisher is actually the most important person in the link building process, because he or she wants to be sure that the fourth person, the reader, will be happy with what they are publishing.

Believe it or not, the website owners and the ezine publishers are frequently very selective about what articles they are willing to accept from a writer or distribution service. After all, if the readers are not happy with what is published on the website or ezine, then the reader will not feel a need to return to either one. Webmasters and ezine publishers, who are committed to success, will be even more selective in their article choices.

To see what website owners really think of many of the automated article distribution systems, read this: http://www.articledashboard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4679

Any writer or article marketer, who does not pay attention or consider the needs or desires of webmasters or publishers in the process, is condemning their article marketing campaigns to failure.

Twisted Logic

When this new breed of article marketer began showing up at my article distribution service, I found myself in many strangely naïve conversations.

People would enquire about the value of our service. Naturally, I would mention publication in ezines as a method of driving thousands of targeted visitors to their website. Then I would mention the value of links on third-party websites, which results in the double benefit of targeted traffic from the third-party website and link popularity for search engine rankings.

Frequently, people would tell me that they literally “do not care about placement of their articles in ezines.” They continued to explain that they were only interested in placement on third-party websites for the purpose of influencing their search engine rankings.

Wow! Every time I heard someone make this claim, I would think to myself about the shortsightedness of this approach. In my experience, link popularity and search rankings were a long-term benefit, and the publication of an article in an ezine is what was generating the most immediate and largest amount of click-through traffic to my websites.

But, who am I? I am just some guy who had been using this marketing technique for five years at that time, and I was a person who had been providing distribution services to other writers for several years. Why would anyone want to hear my thoughts on the subject?

The Proclaimed Death of Article Marketing as an Effective Promotion Tool

I have been hearing rumors for years of the death of article marketing as an effective marketing tool. Here are a couple samples:

What I find somewhat funny and disconcerting at the same time is that most of the people making this proclamation actually admit that they have only tried article marketing with “one or two articles”. In their wisdom, you should ignore people like me who have seen success with this promotion method, and you should follow their advice to abandon all hope for article marketing as a method for website promotion.

I have asked a few people to better define the status of article marketing:

  1. Does article marketing not work? Or,
  2. Did article marketing just not work for them?

The Nail in the Paid Links Coffin

On April 14th, 2007, the Google Guy (Matt Cutts) spoke out against paid links. A firestorm of complaints from webmasters followed Cutts’ initial comments.

On June 12th, 2007, Cutts’ original comments became official Google policy as shown here (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-ways-for-you-to-give-us-input.html)

Vanessa Fox (formerly) of Google summed up the issue very succinctly, “Links that are purchased are great for advertising and traffic purposes, but aren’t useful for PageRank calculations. Buying or selling links to manipulate results and deceive search engines violates (Google’s) guidelines.”

Confusion Ensues Over Paid Links

With Google officially stomping on “paid links,” a lot of confusion entered into the marketplace. The confusion really hinges on one simple question: What kinds of links does Google consider to be paid links?

Many people have extrapolated Google’s campaign against “paid links” to suggest that anytime someone pays money for a link building activity, then the links created during that activity will be construed by Google as a paid link, and that link will be discounted or ignored by Google. But, that simply is not the case.

Some have even chosen to lump “article marketing” as a “paid link”, thereby decreeing that article marketing is truly and finally dead.

But all one has to do to gain a different point of view is to listen to Matt Cutts’ comments from the SMX Search Marketing Expo in Seattle on June 4th, 2007 (http://videos.webpronews.com/2007/06/04/smx-seattle-matt-cutts-on-duplicate-and-paid-search/).

Within this video, Matt Cutts said, “If you are going to syndicate your content, try to make sure people know that you are the master or source of it. You can do it with a link from the article or link from the video, or stuff like that…”

The End of Article Marketing As We Knew It…

I don’t know about you, but I read Cutts’ last comment above as an indication that Google still considers article marketing to be a valid and Google-approved method of building links to one’s website.

But, no matter how we cut it, we have in fact passed “the end of article marketing as we once knew it.” Here is why:

  • Some people will never have the chance to read this article and make their own mind about whether what I say has merit, or not.
  • Some people will simply trust the fear mongers who have been trying to declare article marketing dead for years.
  • And, some people will decide that they are not willing to take the chance that I might be right.

Going forward, we will see a fewer people using article marketing as a promotion technique.

The fact is that many people have quit using article marketing as a promotion technique. This outcome will only strengthen the hand of those of us who continue to utilize article marketing to promote our websites. After all, with fewer people using articles to market their websites, we will have fewer writers to compete with, in order to get attention for our own articles.

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.

By Ross Dunn in Marketing

SEO Meet SMM (Social Media Marketing) was the most information-dense seminar that I attended at SMX Advanced, a multi-day conference geared for advanced web marketing professionals. As a result, it has taken a while to view my footage and pick out all of the best tips to share with you. The SEO Meet SMM seminar was paneled with an all-star cast of Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel and Cindy Krum. Between these three incredibly bright people, and my own experience and research I have put together this whitepaper on how to use social media marketing (SMM) to your advantage. I believe this is the most current (timely), accurate and cutting edge information available for those who want to start marketing in this field.

The Concept
Social media marketing is a method of promoting your brand (be it yourself, a product, a service, or a company) by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks (such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Myspace, etc). This may seem overly elementary but “making yourself known” is the kicker because each category of social media has a different, sometimes intricate method for effective promotion.

Business from Social Marketing is Indirect
A key concept to social marketing is that it is not designed to immediately provide business but instead it provides the visibility your brand needs to ultimately convert fans into buyers. I often get clients saying “I don’t think being on MySpace will sell anything”. The truth is that often they are correct. Having a commercial presence on MySpace that provides great content and interesting free tools (aka. widgets) serves to raise the awareness of your brand so that users remember your service for later and/or provides you with a podium to share the benefits of your brand. In short, it is important not to forget this essential concept: social media marketing drives brand awareness which later translates into sales.

Social Media Categories and Associated Strategies
Here is an introduction to the various top portals segregated into their appropriate categories and mated with a recommended strategy. Please keep in mind the following is only a partial listing of some social media sites. If you want a more comprehensive (but unorganized) list check out this list of web 2.0 sites which includes social media properties (very extensive list).

I have organized Social Media Marketing into the following categories or themes:

  1. Social Networking Sites
  2. Business Networking Sites
  3. Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking Sites
  4. Content Voting Sites
  5. News Sharing Sites
  6. Collaborative Directories
  7. Video Sharing Sites, and
  8. Photo Sharing

1) Social Networking Sites
The following social networking sites experience a volume of activity unrivaled in the social media marketplace. These sites provide it all; personal blogs, videos, music, classifieds, mail, and much, much more.

  1. MySpace: this site offers the widest variety of tools and social networking capabilities.
  2. Facebook: great for connecting with old classmates and creating a personal profile.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Each of these sites allow you to create a powerfully diverse and engaging web presence complete with photos, articles, and bookmarks. MySpace even provides the ability to ‘skin’ your profile! In other words you can actually brand it to make it totally unique; a powerful marketing capability (To view a great example see Starbuck’s MySpace account). Assuming the site is already done it is best to then start linking to the site from key areas of the Internet so the search engines will have no problem finding and indexing it. You can do this by linking to it from a social media section of your website; a section that I believe will be part of the status quo structure (as ubiquitous as the About Page) of all new websites in the near future.

2) How to Market on Business Networking Sites

These sites are devoted to networking business people and provide direct access to upper level management / executives for sales people and for those looking to create industry connections.

  1. LinkedIn: the premier business networking site where job profiles are shared, jobs posted, questions asked and then answered by industry professionals (my current favorite).
  2. ZoomInfo: a search engine index of company names and people. Find yourself (if you are there) and claim your space or create your profile.
  3. Spoke: a database of contact information for people at all levels of business.
  4. Jigsaw: a database of virtual business cards that can be traded and shared amongst members.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Create a personal profile on each of these sites and connect, connect, connect. The concept is so simple I could almost stop there but it is important not to forget that some of these services also allow for interactivity in forums and Q&A sections. I recommend participating as often as possible in these interactive sections in order to gain positive references and to further expand your network.

3) How to Market on Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking Sites

Here are a number of websites that specialize in social bookmarking. When you register with the service the service will collect and organize the sites that you choose to bookmark and allow you to share them with other others. The social concept allows each service to create content-specific directories of user-selected content; which states (theoretically) the content is of a high quality.

  1. Del.icio.us: bought by Yahoo in 2005, Del.icio.us is the web’s leading bookmarking site.
  2. StumbleUpon: in the past when my best content got ‘stumbled’ by users I found this community to offer the highest quality response in terms of traffic and buzz.
  3. Yahoo! MyWeb: Yahoo’s huge following has made MyWeb a popular bookmarking property and a top property for promotion.
  4. Backflip: started in 1999 (or possibly earlier) this site is the one of the granddaddies of bookmarking but it came on harsh times and was sold to passionate employees who maintain it now. This is not a leader in the industry but it was my first bookmarking site way back in ’99 so I feel I owe Backflip a little time in the limelight.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Create a personal profile on each site and then spend some time using them as though you were a potential customer of your own service. In other words, search for terms you target in your SEO campaigns or ask questions you or your target market asks regularly. After a while you will see a trend in the results you receive that you can use to your advantage.

For example, after typing in “marketing tips” on StumbleUpon you may notice that many of the articles that are getting positive reviews are written like tutorials whereas the other articles are getting little or negative feedback. This type of observation will give you the insight you need to write quality articles that are more likely to get positive ratings; which ultimately translates into increased traffic to the article source (your website perhaps). In addition, you can go back and bookmark tutorial content you have already written (as long as it is still viable).

If you are not writing your own content at the moment it is still advisable to find other great content and bookmark it for your profile. Why? If you create a reputation for providing excellent bookmarks it is more likely you will get additional, positive attention when you ultimately feature content of your own.

4) How to Market on Content Voting Sites

The following are the top sites used for people to vote ‘on the fly’ for any content they find useful online. The resulting vote then adds the content or increases its visibility within each resource so that others have a chance to read the content. Once something has received a certain number of votes (this is a moving target) the visibility of the content may gain momentum as others have a chance to read and vote on it.

  1. Digg: currently one of the most popular social media websites in the world and has been known to show a high degree of technology-based news.
  2. Netscape: is in many ways a successful clone of Digg but Netscape has been accused of providing more entertainment news rather than technology news.
  3. Reddit: the news here is more politically inclined and the site has a very strong following.

Associated Marketing Strategy
First a caution: it is crucial that you pay attention to the etiquette of these content voting sites; otherwise your promotions could backfire and/or you could be banned. To read up on etiquette visit the associated help files for each site (i.e. How Digg Works) and the FAQ – these will give you the necessary background info to get you started.

To make these sites work for you I recommend participating in each group for a while in order to pick up on what articles do well and don’t do well in your selected industry. In addition, creating a respected profile by bookmarking new and interesting content and posting thoughtful comments on other people’s bookmarks will go a long way to improving your chances of success on these sites. Once you have a respected profile you can ask other respected users to check out your new content to see if they deem it worthy of a thumbs up. Whatever you do, I do not recommend voting on your own content due to the obvious bias and potential damage it could do to your profile’s reputation.

5) How to Market on News Sharing Sites

These sites serve as private news hubs where information is collected (aggregated) from blogs or other syndicated content that the user has decided he/she wants to be kept up to date on. The users are also provided with simple methods to share their chosen feeds with other like-minded users.

  1. Technorati: the grandfather of the lot, Technorati is a search engine that specializes in providing current content from millions of blogs from all over the world.
  2. Bloglines: subscribe to feeds, groups, or websites and share your favorite content. Bloglines also allows you to create a custom blog within your profile.
  3. Newsvine: this excellent site is similar to Bloglines in that you can submit your own articles and have your own blog hosted within their system(s).
  4. Google Reader: add a multitude of feeds, categorize them and share them (if you wish)

Associated Marketing Strategy
Each of the above sites has varying characteristics that should be considered separately when marketing:

  • Technorati: first setup a free account at Technorati and claim your blog. Once it is claimed ensure that you tag each of your blog postings using categories or labels depending on the blog software you are using. If your software does not offer tagging functionality Technorati has a tagging help page that will provide you with instructions to add custom Technorati labels to each blog posting. Once your blog is set up appropriately try to use descriptive keywords when tagging your posts so your content is more likely to be found.
  • Bloglines & Newsvine: create a profile of your favorite web feeds and articles including your own (if they are of a high enough quality) and share them with the community. Create a custom blog and separately post teasers of your articles that link to the main article on your own site.
  • Google Reader: create labels (aka. tag) using keyphrases that are popularly searched and then share the labels with the general public; label sharing is found in the “Settings” and then “Tags” area of Google Reader. Then attach top quality content from your own site and other sites that you find in your day-to-day online activities.

In each case where you create a unique blog or share a label make sure to link to these pages from a social media section of your website and/or site map. These links will provide the search engine spiders with crucial access points to your socialized content. After a while, gauge the success of each social site for driving traffic or backlinks by checking your backlink reports (Yahoo or Google webmaster areas) as well as your own website analytic reports and add more backlinks to one if it is standing out as a particularly positive performer. These extra backlinks should not be from your own site but from offsite areas such as forum signatures, online bios, syndicated articles, etc.

6) How to Market on Collaborative Directories

These directories are compiled with recommended sites or content maintained by online volunteers. 

  1. Wikipedia: an online reference/dictionary where the content is created by volunteers.
  2. Open Directory Project: the oldest human-edited directory of websites.
  3. Prefound: a directory of shared favorite sites from a wide variety of categories.
  4. Zimbio: a directory of fed content from external and internal blogs and shared favorites.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Each of the above sites has varying characteristics that should be considered separately when marketing:

  • Wikipedia: check to see if your company name is already in the Wikipedia index. If it is make certain that the link to your website is active and the content within the profile is correct. If a profile for your company is not online yet then sign up with Wikipedia and create a profile while making sure to provide an encyclopedic viewpoint. Wikipedia discusses in detail the type of writing that will be flagged as spam so don’t waste your time being promotional because your write up is likely to be flagged as spam or removed if you are. What you want is a link to your website from Wikipedia and a profile that properly describes your offering and company history. You can add links to external websites but do so sparingly.
  • Open Directory Project (ODP): check www.dmoz.org for your website listing by typing in your company name or the name that you are most likely to be listed under. If you find your site listed make certain the listing is accurate. If you do not find your site listed then you need to submit it by finding the most appropriate category (only one is generally allowed per URL) and submit your listing via the “Suggest URL” link at the top of the page. If you need to make an alteration use the “update listing” link where you will have to explain the reasons for the change – they have to be good to have any chance of success. I also suggest checking for a “weblogs” or “newsletters” category for your industry where you can separately submit your blog(s) and newsletter(s). Links from the ODP are useful because they are often well indexed by search engines and offer direct unblocked links to your website.
  • Prefound: create an account and document sites and content related to your profession that you find particularly interesting. Befriend users within Prefound community that regularly contribute to categories related to your industry. When you write a blog and you believe it has enough merit to benefit other users then ask others within your community to consider your content for addition; it is generally not a good idea to add your own content but on occasion, if your content is extremely relevant I see no reason to avoid doing so.
  • Zimbio: while setting up your account you will be prompted to enter the URL of your own blog. Once you have completed the setup you will have access to a list of your recent blogs which you can then, one by one, categorize into their various ‘wikizines’ which are essentially topic-focused pages within Zimbio. Now, don’t just use Zimbio to publish your own work but try to find other great content out there which adds value to the site. There are easy “add to Zimbio” buttons you can add to your various browsers to populate your profile with new content regularly. If you create a clean mix of both external and personal content you will have a far higher chance of creating a useful profile at Zimbio.

7) How to Market on Video Sharing Sites

Video sharing is one of the foremost methods of social marketing and it requires different technologies from the previously discussed content-based social marketing formats. The following are some of the top video sharing sites:

  1. YouTube: YouTube is the premier video sharing website exponentially out-distancing its competitors in terms of traffic and popularity.
  2. Metacafe: claims a global audience of 16 million unique visitors and offers a free video editing package to its users along with decent payouts to those whose videos appear on the front page.
  3. Break: similar to Metacafe, this site is well laid out and offers payments to users for videos that appear on the front page.
  4. DailyMotion: it has a jam-packed home page and according to Alexa it has a very strong following.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Videos have the power to catch on and travel through millions of desktop screens within a matter of hours. I am not going to tell you how to create a quality video but as the incredibly popular Apple videos have shown, even a commercial video can perform famously online. What I can tell you, however, is that whatever you do create for video sharing sites should be uploaded to as many sites as possible – there is no harm in doing this. Furthermore, when you upload each video it is crucial that you creatively populate the video title, description and keyword/label fields with words that both ignite the interest of viewers and allow the video to be found. Did what I just say sound familiar? It should, after all optimizing a video for the Internet is currently no different than optimizing a page was using META description and keyword tags back in 1997. Just do not assume that spamming is just as successful as it was back then; these days you have to craft your tags very carefully in order to be found in the dirge of competing content.

Once you have uploaded all of your videos embed a copy within each of your online blogs. Which video source to embed is up to you. You may want to mix it up and use YouTube on your main site but some of the others on your satellite blogs (i.e. Newsvine, Bloglines, etc.). Another option would be to create a slick introduction to your video from each of your blogs and then link them to your main blog where your video is embedded.

8) How to Market on Photo Sharing Sites

Digital cameras are everywhere from pocket sized point and shoots and cell phone cameras to popular digital SLRs that appear to be around the chest of every tourist. Unfortunately all of these pictures take up a great deal of digital space that the average amateur photographer cannot accommodate. As a result, the photo sharing marketplace has exploded to provide numerous homes for avid photographers to host their stash of family, business and artsy pics. The following sites stand out as serious performers in this socially-driven field:

  1. Flickr: extremely popular and by far the leader in this industry to date.
  2. Webshots: has a strong following and requires free software download to upload photos.
  3. ShutterFly: offers an excellent interface with image editing tools and a whole host of photo-related services.
  4. PBase: has been around since 1999 and offers decent functionality to a moderate user base.
  5. SmugMug: according to Compete.com it has experienced rapid growth over the past year (41.6%) – great design!

Associated Marketing Strategy
Pictures are optimized much the same way as videos: carefully craft a title, a description and keyword tag that best represents the image and piques the interests of your target viewer. But the question that I often consider is, “what is the best way to make photos generate business?” My first recommendation is to use pictures to show your interest in your field. For example, if you sold cars you could benefit from posting your photos from the most recent car show you went to along with a note that you will soon have the cars available on your lot. In this regard it is useful to provide a link to your own website so viewers can investigate you when their interest is piqued. Showing that you are interested in your industry and that you are active within it implies a level of knowledge that many viewers may find comforting.

Don’t Forget to Create a Plan
Now that you have an idea of the various social web properties and their potential marketing application(s) it is important to identify what you want to get out of social media before you market in this space. Be sure to ask yourself the following questions:

What is your ultimate goal?
Consider the objectives that come to mind. Here are some examples of common answers and what they might mean to your planning efforts:

  1. “I want people to know my name and acknowledge my expert status.”
    In this situation you may want to drive traffic to your main website bio where you feature your services, testimonials or even your resume. Using social media you can build your online reputation by participating in sites that appear to have a strong following of potential customers; provide answers to their questions, find associated content that you know will help them and bookmark it. All-in-all you want to make friends and create a personal profile above recrimination.
  2. “I want my company name to be found within all of the major social media sites when my industry-related keywords are typed in.”
    There are a variety of ways to achieve this end result but I expect the most effective is to create quality content that no one can help but link to. That is far harder than it sounds but the fact is that company names don’t rise to the cream of the Internet crop without blowing people away with helpful and thoughtful content. Once you create the content use a blog to disseminate it quickly while placing a snippet (say the first 3 paragraphs) into your social media profiles in such sites as MySpace, Bloglines, and Newsvine along with a link to your main article (where readers can continue reading). By only providing a teaser for your article and pointing readers to your website for the full article you will be emphasizing the original posting on your flagship site as the original article and as well, you will heighten its visibility.

    TIP)  Be sure to work hard to create a network of friends within each social community. You can leverage this community by letting them know you have just released an article they may be interested in.

  3. “I need to get the word out on my product/service.”
    News releases are not mentioned within this article but I would be remiss not to mention them. Use PRWeb.com to submit a carefully crafted press release to the web. Next go to each of your established profiles and tell your friends about your launch and perhaps even offer them a free product or trial of the service. Whatever you do the ultimate goal is to make it unavoidable for them to help you market it.

In each of the cases above I also recommend participating in answer forums like the LinkedIn Answers area or Yahoo Answers where people (and in turn their businesses) can prove their worth to questioners. In fact there are people whose sole income comes from impressing people in Yahoo Answers and getting their business. Indeed, each of those programs offers a point system where, if you are providing top answers you can rise in their ranking of your industry brethren which will increase your company’s visibility significantly.

How much time are you willing to commit to social media marketing?
This is a crucial question because it will determine just how big you want to make your social media plan. If you are doing this yourself then force yourself to set a few hours aside every day or every two days to keep your profiles active. If that is too much work then consider hiring someone to help you keep the profiles fresh OR just select the top social media websites to market. Whatever you decide to do start out small and then increase your social marketing workload only when you know you have the time and patience to do the additional work correctly.

Get Out There and Participate!
As I researched this whitepaper I found myself blown away by the shear number of social media websites that appear to be prospering and are regularly adding new incredibly creative methods to share and receive great information. This whitepaper will likely be out of date within a few months (at best) but for now I am confident it will provide many with the necessary roadmap to get started in social media marketing.

Author:  Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement. Celebrating its tenth year in business, StepForth is one of the oldest and most trusted brands in search engine marketing.

By Maciej Galecki in Marketing

Central Europe is a very attractive market for western companies, which can find here an emerging market, develop their business, create crucial contacts and get profitable agreements. However, to achieve this one needs to reach his new contracting parties apace and at little cost. Crucial contribution to achieve all of these can be made through search engines and search engine marketing adjusted to Polish proceeding conditions.

The popularity of different search engines among Polish internauts The popularity of search engines in Poland is frequently measured. Recent information can be found on different web sites such as ranking.pl or Megapanel PBI/Gemius. The analysis confirms that Polish people use not only global but also local search tools. The very recent research (from May 2007) shows distinctly that the most popular search engine is Google.

The popularity of search engines in Poland (according to domain) compares the domains which drive the most visits on Polish websites. The comparison of search engines according to most popular search engines that are used, show very similar results. In Poland there is a local version of Google which improves in ranking of popularity since it appeared (e.g. in 2004 the popularity was estimated at 42%, a year after more than 69%, while now it is more than 86%).

The second place (receded from the first one) belongs to Onet Szukaj (Onet Search), very similar to WP which occupies the third place (it uses the technology of Netsprint.pl) and gained its popularity through long time of being present at the market. These search engines are parts of important portals (www.onet.pl and www.wp.pl accordingly) from which Polish Internet began, and which offer to their visitors, through many years of their development, several services (email, chat rooms, instant messaging, news etc.). Among the internauts who use these search engines are both very loyal users and those who are just real beginners. The fourth in the ranking is Interia.pl - the search engine which is the part of well a known Polish portal which uses Google technology. These are followed by MSN, Szukacz.pl, Yahoo, Gooru, Altavista and others… but because of a rudimentary market share, are showed here only to present a complete data. Summing this up, when planning SEO / SEM activities in search engines used by Polish internauts, there are three which are worth to pay attention to:

- Google.pl, - Onet Szukaj, - WP / Netsprint.

The way of using search engines by Polish internauts The tendencies observed in the way search engines are used in Poland overlap with those of international users. The Polish use search engines much more often, more effectively and frequently. They not only make more accurate and detailed queries but also perceive the listings as a reliable information not just random combination of links. They are able to notice the differences between organic listings and sponsored links, which they are (surprisingly?) willing to click since it is one out of two (beside button) most popular (and well tolerated) ways of online advertising. According to Gemius (2006) 82% of search engines’ users click on paid links. Polish internauts, as well as international ones, concentrate on the first three pages of searching results and usually they click on top three links. The research of Visual attention to Online Search Engine Results illustrates these observations in details.

How long a statistical Polish internaut spends on searching on Internet? According to the research of Gemius (held in December 2006) the average user uses Google (since it is the most popular search engine) about 5 hours, 5 minutes and 39 seconds monthly. However, this time is not only spent on searching but also on using mailbox on gmail.com, Google Maps, or services such as blogger.com. On average the internauts spend 3 hours 2 minutes and 29 seconds on the search engine’s website. In comparison, Onet search engine is used 32 minutes and 47 seconds monthly, WP search engine 21 minutes and 58 seconds, while Szukacz.pl is used only 5 minutes and 26 seconds a month. Taking into consideration the average duration of page view internauts use Google similarly to other search engines, however the number of page views per user is different. Google search engine has here predominance. On average there are 101.18 page views monthly, while for the second Onet and fourth Interia it is just 18.27 and 17.83 accordingly.

The most popular keywords in Poland It is well known what Polish internauts use to search through the Internet and how they do it, the only question is what they generally look for. The most popular keywords in search engines are regularly updated - e.g. in case of Onet on a weekly basis. The most popular subjects searched for in polish search engines are erotica, entertainment (for example, surnames of popular stars, music files, funny videos, etc.), season entries - connected with current events in the country, or information such as weather, train timetable, loans, work and… search engines! Car related phrases and tourism are very popular as well.

The use of search engine optimization and search engine marketing in Poland More than 75% of Polish companies (a poll made by Bluerank) use search engine optimization (web positioning and optimization) to improve the visibility of company website at the search engine ranking pages. In addition, half of the examined companies have executed advertising campaigns (PPC) with the use of sponsored links on Polish and international search engines. Polish experts claim that the budget use for this kind of advertising reaches 20% since SEM is the leader of e-marketing. It is because of low costs and efficiency but first of all, perceived by common internauts as practical and useful (according to Gemius actually 29% of all users like paid links and click on them).

The most competitive branches in Poland when talking about SEM activity are finance, tourism, car industry, IT, entertainment, healthcare, real estate and e-commerce. Because of this competitiveness the costs of advertising are much higher than in the less popular areas. The cost of promotion is changing also because of the time period. During festive time, such as the second half of December, the costs increase because of huge popularity of sponsored links, especially in the retail area. Tourism has its ‘raise and fall’ depending on season. The holiday time is very crucial (June-August), New Years Eve, as well as winter holidays (February). Finances are in good condition through the whole year (there is always competition) but taking into consideration IT there is minor stagnation between II and III term, so it means the sponsored links might be cheaper at that time. There is a great dependence not only according to the branch but also country, habits of a certain community and calendar of events.

Advertising opportunities in Polish search engines The most diverted offer of search engine advertising in Polish Internet has Netsprint.pl/WP, which offers to advertisers not only PPC campaigns and banners but also very recent “phone link” (pay-per-call solution) and many others - unusual ways of advertising on the search engine results pages with the content modified according to requirements of the campaign. A very good example is the action called “AIDS search engine protection“. Netsprint is a quite flexible partner in this kind of negotiation, in contrast to Google.pl which is constrained to follow strict rules of the corporation and not to come forth obligatory limitation in the field of SEM.

The great advantage of Polish Google (in comparison with the other already mentioned here search engines) is large simplicity of usage - not only for internauts searching through the Internet but also for advertisers who conduct PPC campaigns. The administration panel is comprehensible, intuitive in use and useful. It gives a wide range of possibilities in setting up the advertising campaign - especially while targeting. Netsprint’s panel is the least useful but there is a possibility to get free pieces of advice from search engine’s consultants.

Google does not offer all of the ways of advertising which is used for example in USA. Polish SEM activity with the use of this search engine is mainly focused on AdWords. AdSense is not so popular - mainly because there is not enough websites and unsatisfactory quality of them in the Google network. In Poland, there are not only popular and worth reading newspapers, magazines or professional bulletins, but also different private, “hobby like” websites with low popularity and high risk of fraud clicks, which expose advertisers on incidental expenses.

The advantage of search engine of Onet (in comparison with WP) is an advanced possibility to target ads and well described user profile. According to the data from a search engine - among the total of 11 million of Polish internauts, 650.000 use exclusively Onet (Megapanel PBI/Gemius research from 2006/2007). A very unique feature of this portal is a section called Onet.eu, which is intended to visit by Polish people who live in the United Kingdom. In case this is an interesting target group, it is worth to take into consideration contextual advertising there through OnetKontekst.

Search engines and SEM in Poland - predictions for the future For a few years now Polish search engines have been trying to follow the example of American companies and developed markets of Western Europe. When improving local search engines and ways of SEM advertising, Polish people follow the best practices of Google in the range of searching and advertising products. This trend should remain and hopefully soon in Poland there will be a lot of high budget campaigns in search engines. However, even today we can observe constant, increasing need for Polish SEM agencies’ services among foreign companies. Those SEM agencies are familiar with the specific character of Polish market, they are relatively cheap and have all the competencies needed to promote foreign brands, products and services in search engines in Poland.

Author:  Maciej Galecki (LinkedIn profile) is the CEO of Bluerank - Polish SEM agency specializing in search engine optimization and paid listings campaigns for worldwide customers concentrating on the activity in the Eastern Europe. She invites Polish speaking readers to comment on this article on her company’s SEM & SEO blog.

By Jimmie Oakley in Marketing

Spam or Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, which are generally undesired. The most widely recognized form of spam is Email Spam: otherwise referred to as Unsolicited Bulk Email or Junk email. Email Spam is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantially identical form to many recipients simultaneously or over a period of time. Spam or Junk email can be either commercial mail such as an advertisement or noncommercial such as a chain letter or a joke.

The origin of the term “spam” is rather interesting as it actually came into being long before email reached it’s current popular form. As you know, spam is a form of canned meat sold by Hormel. The term “email spam” actually originated from a Monty Python sketch. During the 25th show of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a three and a half minute sketch was played. The scene was set in a restaurant referred to as the Green Midget Cafe in Bromley and centered around a disagreement between a waitress and a customer. Almost every menu item had spam as one of the main ingredients. The customer did not want anything with spam in it: thus, an argument ensued that repeated the word spam some 132 times.

The menu is shown below so you will appreciate the humor aimed at Hormel’s now famous spam.

Egg and bacon Egg, sausage and bacon Egg and spam Egg, bacon and spam Egg, bacon, sausage and spam Spam, bacon, sausage and spam Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam Spam, spam, spam, egg, and spam Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam Lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce garnished with truffle paté, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam Spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam (this is only in the radio version’s menu, but the TV version features a character called, “the Hungarian”, trying to order it)

The phenomenon, some years later, of marketers drowning out discourse by flooding Usenet newsgroups and individuals’ email with junk email advertising messages was named spamming, recounting the repetitive and unwanted presence of Spam in the sketch.

There are several types of spam in use by spammers all over the world. Not one single country or location can claim fame to control the wide use of spam. According to Sophos, a security software developer, the major sources of spam from April to June of 2006 were the United States (accounting for 23.3% of messages sent), while China accounted for 20.0% and 7.5% from South Korea. By continent, Asia leads the pack at 40% followed by Europe at 27% and then comes the USA at 26%.

And according to information compiled by Spam-Filter-Review.com, email spam can be broken down by category. Products leads the way with 25%, then Financial scams at 20%, Adult-19%, Scams in General-9%,Health-7%, Internet-7%, Leisure-6%, Spiritual-4% and all other amounted to 3%. My personal experience is that I receive on average of 5-6 Financial scams daily and sometimes more. Fortunately for me my ISP spam filters eliminate the majority of the hundreds of spam emails daily before they reach my Outlook in-box.

Spam violates the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) of almost every ISP (Internet Service Provider). If you are considering a bulk email campaign, be aware that you are putting yourself in jeopardy of loosing you ISP account as most will enforce their AUP. And all it takes in most cases is just one complaint from a disgruntled spam recipient.

The quantity of spam is staggering. Sometimes it depends on who you are but Bill Gates receives 4 million emails a year and most all of them are spam. And then the guy who owns acme.com receives over one million spam emails per day. In the year 2005, 30 billion spam emails were sent every day, 2006 it grew to 55 billion, 2006 it jumped again to 85 billion pre day and in February of 2007 it is shown to continue it’s growth to more then 90 billion spam emails per day. It is speculated that over 90% of all emails sent are spam emails!

Although spam laws are being passed in most major countries, it is obvious that another deterrent needs to be developed. Countries taking affirmative legal action by passing anti-spam laws include:

-The Untied States-CAN_SPAM Act of 2003 -Australia-The Spam Act of 2003 -The European Union-Directive-Article 13- The member countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Even though there is a concerted effort throughout the world to curb spamming, legislative efforts have been for the most part ineffective and counter productive. As an example the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that each email have a way for the recipient to opt-out of the senders list. Most believe that if you opt-out to a spam email, you are doing nothing more then confirming to the spammers that they have reached a working email address. In 2002, the Center for Democracy and Technology found that 16% of websites tested with opt-out requests continued to spam.

To Spam or Not to Spam: well, you be the judge for yourself. The biggest concern I think one should have is loosing their ISP accounts. I have heard of spammers just going form one to another or having multiple ISP accounts to insure that they will maintain up time.

Author:  Jimmy Oakley-Author-2007- Jimmy is an Internet Marketer that discount markets the Premier Email Marketing and Internet Marketing Courses online. The courses he markets are continuosly updated and never outdated. Learn the right ways of marketing on the Internet by visiting http://www.makeyourlivingonlinetraining.com now and learn Internet Marketing techniques found nowhere else.

By Todd Brabender in Marketing

The call came into my office and the voice on the other end was very energetic, almost giddy: “I have finalized my marketing budget and need your help launching an advertising campaign for my new product,” he breathed. “Congratulations,” I replied, “but before we implement an ad campaign, I want to make sure you have explored potential PUBLICITY opportunities that could generate some cost-efficient media exposure first.” Then, silence. “I never thought about that,” he sighed. “Frankly, I don’t know much about it.”

He is not alone. It’s a common conversation. Although many entrepreneurs or business people know a bit about publicity or media exposure, the majority of them simply don’t understand the full benefits of “publicity placements” or how to go about generating them successfully. Publicity placements have always been a cost-efficient way to market a product/business and generate clients or customers, but because of lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding of what publicity is and does, many entrepreneurs don’t take full advantage of publicity opportunities — and that can lead to missed marketing chances.

I recently surveyed a few dozen business owners and entrepreneurs in some newsgroups and business chat rooms about their knowledge of “publicity placements” in the media. I found out that only 37% knew that a simple “product profile” in a magazine was generated as a result of publicity efforts. Most thought the company had paid the media outlet to run the feature, much like an ad. And of that 37%, less than half of them knew HOW to generate a similar placement.

Another interesting fact, because of the recent slowdown in the economy, expensive advertising budgets have been slashed. As a result, many businesses, like your competitors, are turning to publicity/PR campaigns as a more affordable means of marketing to compete with other companies. Here are some ways to use publicity placements to help your business:

Editorial Placements/Media Notification

What some entrepreneurs might not realize is that we see editorial placements from publicity efforts everyday in the media: product profiles, feature articles and contributed by-lined articles in magazines, newspapers, trade industry newsletters or on TV/radio/cable newscasts & shows. This is not advertising, this is “EDITORIAL Placement” or “Media Notification” of a product, business or industry expert. Notify the appropriate media that your newsworthy product is on the market or your business is offering a unique new service and let them run a feature placement that will spread that message to your consumer market. These placements can detail your product or business very effectively, giving consumers some objective, pertinent information that may well entice them to become future customers.

These editorial placements are looked upon much more credibly than ad placements. That is not a slam on advertising. Paying for advertising placements is indeed an effective way to market your product. But the fact is, a positive editorial placement such as a product profile in a magazine or a newspaper can be much more persuasive than a glossy, over-hyped advertisement - and a fraction of the cost. My point is that editorial placements are an often time overlooked marketing vehicle for a business, and that entrepreneurs should understand the full benefits of these placements to make the most of their marketing efforts.

Editorial placements are a wonderfully reciprocal way for you and the media to work together for the betterment of your business. The media needs to fill its pages and airtime with interesting information — and you need to get the word out to your market. Research the media market to find those media outlets and editorial contacts with which you can forge that mutually beneficial relationship. But you have to do your part and do it right - or the media will forge that relationship with your competitor. Make sure your media message is solid, contains newsworthy angles and isn’t disguised as overly commercialized ad copy. Have high-quality photos and media samples available and do all you can to make the media’s job of featuring your product as simple as possible. It also helps to have some sort of clipping service in place to track your placements and get you copies so you can use them in your secondary marketing programs.

Expert Branding

This type of publicity placement generating takes advantage of the expert knowledge within a particular business. It is an effective tool for entrepreneurs whose businesses are more service related, like consultants or specialists. Expert branding basically treats the expert like a product. Alert the media as to your expertise on a specific topic and avail yourself to serve as an expert interview resource for future articles or news feature segments. Additionally, the expert should write a few brief articles on a specialized topic and make them available to editors for review and possible publication. The challenge of this type of publicity placement is the tedious task of finding out which outlets accept “expert editorial contributions” or contributed by-lined articles in their publications. Again, it comes down to meticulously researching your media market to find those media outlets that may be in need of the editorial content that you can provide them.

With some creativity, expert branding can be effective for product-based businesses as well. One client of mine runs a fresh wild salmon distribution business in the Pacific Northwest and was looking to íncrease consumer awareness of his products. Based on his more than 20 years of experience in the wild salmon harvesting business, we are expert branding him as a viable interview resource to health/food editors for features detailing the differences and benefits of wild salmon over farm-raised fish, as well as other related topics. In this case, my client (the expert) is identified and quoted in features and the name of the business and even a link to a website are often included for consumers to check out. This is great credibility building exposure at little or no cöst.

Overall, when using the media to help market your product or business, take advantage of as many Free media opportunities as you can. If you lack the expertise or time, a PR agency or publicist can generate the editorial placements for you. But the fee you pay them is a FRACTION of what it would cost you to buy similar sized ad placements. And those publicity placements typically lead to a much better consumer response right out of the gate - which is just what you need to boost your business to the next level.

Author:  Todd Brabender is the President of Spread The News Public Relations, Inc. His business specializes in generating media exposure and publicity for innovative products, businesses, experts and inventions. http://www.spreadthenewspr.com todd@spreadthenewspr.com (785) 842-8909

By Kristina Mills in Marketing

Claude Hopkins is widely recognised as the father of advertising. His insights are so simple yet so profound and they apply just as well today as they did decades ago when they were first used.

Here are three lessons, in Claude’s own words. Please note that due to the era that it was written in, the language may be a little dated and that he uses the word “man” instead of “people”.

1. An advertiser suffered much from substitution. He said, “Look out for substitutes,” “Be sure you get this brand,” etc. with no effect. Those were selfish appeals.

Then he said, “Try our rivals’ too” - said it in his headlines. He invited comparisons and showed that he did not fear them. That corrected the situation. Buyers were careful to get the brand so conspicuously superior that its maker could court a trial of the rest.

2. Two advertisers offered food products nearly identical. Both offered a full-size package as an introduction. But one gave his package free. The other bought the package. A coupon was good at any store for a package, for which the maker paid retail price.

The first advertiser failed and the second succeeded. The first even lost a large part of the trade he had. He cheapened his product by giving a 15-cent package away. It is hard to pay for an article which has once been free. It is like paying railroad fare after traveling on a pass.

The other gained added respect for his article by paying retail price to let the user try it. An article good enough for the maker to buy is good enough for the user to buy. It is vastly different to pay 15 cents to let you try an article than to simply say “It’s free.”

So with sampling. Hand an unwanted product to a housewife and she pays it slight respect. She is in no mood to see its virtues. But get her to ask for a sample after reading your story, and she is in a very different position. She knows your claims. She is interested in them, else she would not act. And she expects to find the qualities you told.

There is a great deal in mental impression. Submit five articles exactly alike and five people may each choose one of them. But point out in one some qualities to notice and everyone will find then. The five people then will all choose the same article.

3. If people can be made sick or well by mental impressions, they can be made to favor a certain brand in that way. And that, on same lines, is the only way to win them.

Two concerns, side by side, sold women’s clothing on installments. The appeal, of course, was to poor girls who desired to dress better. One treated them like poor girls and made the bare business offer.

The other put a woman in charge - a motherly, dignified, capable woman. They did business in her name. They used her picture. She signed all ads and letters. She wrote to these girls like a friend. She knew herself what it meant to a girl not to be able to dress her best. She had long sought a chance to supply women good clothes and give them all season to pay. Now she was able to do so, with the aid of the men behind her.

There was no comparison in those two appeals. It was not long before this woman’s long-established next-door rival had to quit.

The backers of this business sold house furnishings on installments. Sending out catalogs promiscuously did not pay. Offering long-time credit often seems like a reflection.

But when a married woman bought garments from Mrs. —, and paid as agreed, they wrote to her something like this: “Mrs. —, whom we know, tells us that you are one of her good customers. She has dealt with you, she says, and you do just as you agree. So we have opened with you a credit account on our books, good any time you wish. When you want anything in furnishings, just order it. Pay nothing in advance. We are very glad to send it without any investigation to a person recommended as you are.”

That was flattering. Naturally those people, when they wanted some furniture, would order from that house.

There are endless phases to psychology. Some people know them by instinct. Many of them are taught by experience. But we learn most of them from others. When we see a winning method we note it down for use when occasion offers.

These things are very important. An identical offer made in a different way may bring multiplied returns. Somewhere in the mines of business experience we must find the best method somehow.

Author:  Kristina Mills is a successful and internationally acclaimed Copywriter, Internet Entrepreneur, Author and Speaker. Kristina has also pioneered many business success stories. This is an excerpt from Scientific Advertising which is FREE when you subscribe to Words that Sell ELetter. Just go to http://www.wordsthatsell.com.au and fill in your details.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Subscribe to SiteProNews Articles

Receive New Articles As They are Posted

Webmaster Headlines

10,000 iPhone Apps - TechCrunch

Google's Gatekeepers - NY Times

Google Is No Longer Silicon Valley's Legal Defender - TechDirt

Not even a recession can stop search
- iMediaConnection

Another Microsoft Yahoo Deal in the Works? - ReadWriteWeb

Google Breaks Speed Record... - Search Engine Round Table

Why Social Media May Not be Right For You!
- Marketing Pilgrim

Yahoo: Search the Web Through a Vertical Lens - Yahoo! Search Blog

The Biggest Web Site Usability Mistakes You Can Make - Search Engine Land

Baidu's Search Revenue Drops 10-15% After Paid Ad Scandal - Search Engine Land

RecentSiteProNews Articles

RecentSiteProNews Articles

How Yahoo! Walked Away from $44.6 Billion

Market Intelligence and SEO Tools

Google unleashes its new Webmaster Help Group

Increase Your Adsense Cash

10 Free and Easy Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking

How To Pick The Right Way For You To Go In Internet Marketing

SiteProNews Blog News

Blogging - A Global Phenomenon
If you haven't read Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, you should. The Blogosphere...
more >

Google’s New PPC Keyword Tool
With very little fanfare, Google has launched a new keyword tool this month. The tool helps AdWor...
more >

Google Releases Guide to SEO
Google has raised the collective eyebrows of the SEO industry this week with the release of their fr...
more >