Archive for November, 2009

Leveraging your business online requires several components. For the next two blog posts, I’ll be talking about the benefits of establishing an ezine for your business, and why you’ll want to publish an ezine. In subsequent blog posts, I’ll be talking about ways to build your email list.

So, why should you consider publishing an ezine?

1. Establish yourself as a trusted expert. People search online for information and will look to you, as a subject matter expert, to provide it to them. Every week (or whatever schedule works) provides an opportunity to build on this, while reinforcing your brand.
2. Build a relationship with the people on your list. It’s common knowledge that people like to buy from people they like. By using ezines to connect with readers in their homes, you can develop a relationship of familiarity and trust. Be sure to share a little about yourself or your company in every issue, whether it is an anecdote, event, or employee spotlight.
3. Keep in touch with prospects and clients. Consideration should be given to eventually developing two ezines: one for prospects and one for clients, as each require different information. This is a great way to notify your readers of weekly specials or upcoming product launches, offer new articles or customer stories, and provide links (or urls) to updated FAQs, blogs and splash pages.
4. Drive traffic to your website or blog. As noted in #3, remember to call attention to new blog posts or other changes to your website with links directly to those pages. Remind readers of your online newsletter archives. Promote special sales (maybe with discount coupon codes only for subscribers) with a link to the sales page. Use links to turn your ezines and newsletters into “silent salespersons”– driving traffic to your website and building your lists around the clock.
5. Build content on your website. Make a habit to adding your ezines and newsletters to your website in an archive area. This serves a several important purposes:

• Visitors can read an issue or two to determine if your ezine will be of interest to them, which could help to increase sign-ups and potential sales.
• If you optimize your article placements, you will not only make your website “meatier”, but you’ll also bring new traffic from the search engines.

Are you publishing an ezine for your business? If so, please feel free to join the conversation and share your tips by commenting!

• The Salvation Army’s Expect Change Blog » List Where You Can Find a SA Kettle http://ow.ly/EUnd @TSARedKettle #
• Sharing…Closing Techniques to Preframe the Sale http://ow.ly/EUjO #syc #
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• Sharing…Man Arrested for Not Tweeting? http://ow.ly/EGp8 #syc #
• Sharing..HOW TO: Use Twitter’s New Retweet Feature http://ow.ly/EGmk #syc #
• Sharing…What Can Your Clients Reasonably Expect From You? FreelanceFolder #syc http://ow.ly/EGfL #
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• Sharing…What I Learned From Writing 42 Guest Posts in 7 Weeks #syc http://ow.ly/EGdh #
• Sharing…Should Photographers Rethink New Media Rights? http://ow.ly/EGbZ #syc #fb #
• Sharing…How Businesses and Brands are Stuffing Their Facebook Pages for Thanksgiving http://ow.ly/EGjk #syc #
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• Sharing…Free Texture Tuesday: Tire Tracks | BittBox http://ow.ly/EGbe #syc #
• News from: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-20 – Sharing..5 Useful Yahoo! Pipes to Monitor Your Brand http://ow.l... http://ow.ly/163rF4 #

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Internet marketing for beginners is somewhat of an oxymoron. This is because while, in theory, the concepts behind Internet marketing might be quite simple, executing effective strategies can be extremely difficult. This can even be tough for those who are quite experienced in the world of Internet marketing.

With this in mind, this article will attempt to explain the concept of Internet marketing for beginners and will outline some basic strategies which can help a business owner to launch his own Internet marketing campaign. We will cover concepts such as creating a website, placing banner ads, sending out e-newsletters, orchestrating an email marketing campaign and optimizing your website for search engines.

One of the most basic steps for starting an Internet marketing campaign is to create, in my humble opinion, a blog website. If you don’t have a blog, or have a poorly designed website, you should consider creating or re-designing a website to adequately market your products. One of the nice benefits of blogging is that it’s very easy to add content. Most hosts, like BlueHost, offer one button WordPress installation. You can be blogging in minutes.

Banner ads are another popular option for advertising your business on the Internet. Banner ads are advertisements which typically appear along the top of a website but it may also include smaller ads in other locations. Banner ads typically include graphics and text which entice Internet users to click on the advertisement. Once a user clicks on the ad, they are directed to your website. This type of advertising can be very effective when care is taken to place the advertisements on high traffic websites which attract an audience who may have an interest in your products.

Sending out e-newsletters can also be a part of an effective Internet marketing strategy. E-newsletters are essentially emails which may contain a variety of information including informative articles, useful quizzes, relevant advertising or any other information which is deemed worthwhile for the recipients of the e-newsletter. The importance of these newsletters is that they can be used as marketing tools which are not viewed by the recipients as an advertisement. One way to do this is to incorporate links or other soft sale approaches into the copy of the e-newsletters. However, care should be taken to keep these references minimal so the e-newsletter is not viewed as spam. Using a service like Constant Contact or GetResponse will ensure your E-newsletters get through to your readers. They even have archiving services giving your E-newsletters a longer life.

Email marketing campaigns can be another successful aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Email marketing essentially involves sending out emails to a group of individuals who may be interested in your products and services. Care should be taken in sending out these emails to avoid sending emails which are unsolicited and will be viewed as spam. One way to do this is to only send out the emails to users who have requested inclusion on an email mailing list. Another way to do this is to provide value in the emails as opposed to just including advertisements. This can be done by offering relevant advice in your emails and other useful information which may be of interest to the recipients of the email.

Finally, optimizing your website for search engines is a critical aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Search engines rank websites according to quality and relevance for particular search terms. Many Internet users appreciate the effort by search engines and use these search engines to find the best websites on a particular subject. This means the Internet users are likely to only visit websites which rank well with search engines. Therefore if your website is not high ranking, you are not likely to generate a great deal of traffic from Internet users who use search engines to find relevant websites. Top ranking websites are likely to obtain the most traffic from search engines and all websites falling on the first page of the search engine results will likely enjoy some degree of success in improving their traffic.

Join the conversation, let me know what you think by commenting.

• Sharing..5 Useful Yahoo! Pipes to Monitor Your Brand http://ow.ly/DNCm #syc #
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• Sharing..7 Ways To Make Your Site More Dynamic | Small Business Trends http://ow.ly/D3R4 #syc #
• Sharing…5 Tips to make Twittering more meaningful by increasing the signal to noise ratio http://ow.ly/D3iu #syc #
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• Sharing…3 New Social Media Studies Worth Reading | Social Media Examiner http://ow.ly/CMcJ #syc #
• News from: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-13 – Sharing..Kristen NicoleTips for Writing a Search Engine-Friendly… http://ow.ly/161I7s #

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Internet markets today understand the immense benefits of hosting their blogs on their own domain.

If you are serious about wanting to earn money on the internet, then you will need to set up a blog and host it on your domain. Outlined below are some of the main benefits which you can enjoy from hosting your own blog on your domain.

• If you have a blog hosted on your domain, you have control over everything about your blog. You can have your own layout and design for your blog, which means you can have a blog that matches your website logo. You can make your blog as unique as you want. This gives you an edge against other competing blogs in the same niche which may have similar layouts. You also have complete freedom to do anything you want with your blog. By hosting your blog on your domain, you can control your blog in many ways you want and you can add any features you want.

• By hosting your blog on your domain name, you make it easier for people to remember your blog.

• Hosting your blog on your domain means that you can develop and promote your own brand using your blog. You can make your blog headings similar to your website. In terms of search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising, this is very important because you will be advertising and optimizing your own domain and your own brand. SEO is also effective to do with your own domain name that includes your keywords. This will increase your blog’s visibility on search engines.

• By hosting your blog on your website, you have added security. This means that you don’t have to worry about losing your information or getting locked out of your account.

• You present a professional image by having your online business logo on your blog. This gives you ad edge against other competing website or blogs.

• Hosting your own blog gives you much more flexibility and extendability, meaning you can more easily monetize your blog, creating passive income.

Based on the advantages outlined above, if you are serious about your online business, you must consider hosting your blog on your own domain.

Join the conversation and let me know what you think by commenting!

Today, writing articles is one of the most powerful and effective ways through which one can improve a website’s visibility and ranking on search engines.

• Write many articles with a resource box and your website URL so that you can have many links pointing back to your website. Your articles will be further picked up and published by other directories or website, increasing the links back to your website. As you write more articles, you will be creating many links to your website.

• Anchor the text that contains your keywords in your articles with your keywords and phrases. This will enhance your website visibility and ranking for your keywords. The more of your keywords or phrases you use, the better. By using your keywords, you increase the chances of your article and your website ranking high on search engines when someone is searching for information relating to these keywords.

• Write high quality and captivating articles which many people will want to read and which e-zines will also want to publish. The more captivating your article is, the more likely it is to be picked up by many e-zines and websites. This boosts one way links to your website.

• Write and submit powerful articles so that you will be regarded as an expert in your niche. Once you achieve this status, many website owners will want to be linked to your website. Many websites will want to publish your articles on their websites. As a niche expert, you may also be requested to offer some reviews of products or of other websites, and when doing this you can include your website URL. This further increases the links to your site and hence your website popularity rank.

Follow the tips outlined above while writing your articles. Articles are a powerful tool for SEO and for generating traffic for your website. Articles are also not expensive. If you enjoy writing, all you need is time to write your articles. If you want to increase your ranking on search engines through writing and submitting articles, it is essential that you take article writing seriously and write as many articles as you can.

Let me know what you think by commenting!

• Sharing..Kristen NicoleTips for Writing a Search Engine-Friendly Introductory Paragraph http://ow.ly/BDpE #syc #
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• 09-11-06 21:02 New blog entry
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• 20 great corporate websites made with WordPress http://ow.ly/zWzq #syc #
• 10 Better Ways To Use TwitPic http://ow.ly/zR23 #syc #
• 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog http://ow.ly/zI2c #syc #
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• Hey #newmedialive (Mastering New Media Live live › http://ustre.am/2×53) (Mastering New Media Live live › http://ustre.am/2×53) #
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• I'm being interviewed by Virtual Coffee Radio on 11am PT #BlogTalkRadio – http://tobtr.com/s/767184 #
• @addSpace next time!! #
• is really tired of being sick – glad to see the dr today! Otherwise, a beautiful day in Carlsbad! #
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• 09-11-02 15:02 New blog entry
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• 09-10-30 21:03 New blog entry
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Thomas Mangum, Virtual Coffee, interviewed me today for his online radio show.

Thomas Mangum, Virtual Coffee Interviews Debra Simpson, Syndicating Your Content [ 30:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (227)

We discussed why you’d want to syndicate your content and some of the ways to develop your own intellectual property to sell online, as passive income.

Of course, I discussed blogging, in particular using WordPress as a launching point. I then shared about importing your blog into Facebook and Linkedin. I shared some tips on creating your first ebook to give away from your website as a list building tool.

Let me know what you think about the interview by commenting.

On Friday, October 31, 2009 episode of North San Diego Business At Large, Barbara Eldridge, founder of Mind Masters and Co-Director of the Mind Masters Entrepreneur Association, interviewed Tina Marino, who is with the HEIM Group.

Set Up the Business Right from the Start [ 58:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (66)

During the 1980s Tina was successful in selling businesses as a licensed business opportunities agent. She speaks to many groups, brokerage firms, attorneys, and other business owners regarding business tax and accounting issues; in addition, Tina has taught business accounting and tax classes at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

Tina gave some excellent tips, especially with regards to positioning your business for a future sale. I wanted to share this interview with you because she is so knowledgeable about small business and really added value to the show.

My thanks to Barbara Eldridge for guest hosting the show for me. Let me know what you think by commenting below.