WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

With only a week left until our free webinar, we have just released the supplementary whitepaper “Blogging to Build a Reputation Online.” As we all continue to witness the rapid evolution of technology, blogging is proving to be more and more essential in order to establish a web presence. A company blog is undeniably a digital marketing tool that your business cannot afford to ignore.

Prepared by Eric Cook – a Certified Internet Business Consultant with WSI,  who is also hosting the free webinar of the same topic – this complimentary whitepaper will take you through the Ins and Outs of leveraging a blog to enhance your company’s image and solidify your expertise with your online customer base. A blog can give you, your employees,and your consumers the opportunity to post thoughts, share experiences and showcase what you know. You don’t even have to be a ‘webmaster’ to master the technique of blogging. It’s all about interacting with your audience to develop a relationship and build your brand’s credibility. Considering that many believe that “your reputation precedes you,” blogging is an outstanding way to ensure that your company’s reputation is a positive one!

Some key highlights of this whitepaper include:

• How-to’s for promoting reader engagement
• Tips for dealing with both the good and back feedback from your readers
• Techniques for measuring your blog’s return on investment

Click here to download your complimentary copy of our whitepaper “Blogging to Build a Reputation Online.”

If you have been monitoring the blogosphere closely and someone has just slammed and posted negative comments for your brand or your blog, how do you handle this? In short, helpfully, honestly and diplomatically. There’s really no fast and hard rules, but here’s a couple of tips that you can follow.

Wait and watch

Take a little time so that you can watch and gauge the reaction. If you confront the situation by just jumping in on someone’s comment that is just blowing off steam can create a major controversy. If no one is really commenting or paying attention to what has been said, it might be the best to let the person vent and then die out on its own. Bloggers can quickly move on to a new story that grabs their attention.

Ty to avoid rebuttals

A negative review of your services or products should not bring a strong response. By directly attacking the blogger will always bring others to their defence and just inflame the situation. Never try to take a strong position to bully the blogger.

Be concerned and helpful

If you are entering a blog as a guest you must show respect. This will result that you get respect in return. Always avoid sarcasm and try to always be genuine and helpful. A negative review should always be treated as constructive criticism. You can offer to help resolve the issue and to listen to the complaints. How you handle this situation can convert a foe into a helpful friend.

Be impartial

Try to stay away from arguments and negative opinions. Always use objective information where possible and third-party statistics and data to show your point of view. Links to other sites than your own can be very good convincers.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

It goes without saying that Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a very important thing to consider for yourself and your company. More and more people are doing research online, and more specifically the search engines, before they do business with a company or individual. Just as shoppers utilize review sites and comparison shopping engines, HR departments utilize Goolge search.

Follow thru

If you make promises and commitments, always follow through on what you have promised.

Recently, Time magazine released its picks for the Best Blogs of 2010. The list is filled with some unexpected surprises from all genres. Hollywood gossip and tech news are, of course, represented, but so are independent cartoonists and guides to greener living. But most importantly, this list of blog successes can also serve as a digital marketing tool for illustrating the best practices to creating a successful and influential blog of your own.

While the list is diverse in its topics, the one thing that every blog on the list has in common with the others is the presence of a strong narrative that speaks directly to their target audience. As with any great movie or classic novel, a strong narrative voice is essential in blog writing. Blogs that have soared in readership are the ones that simply tell a story in a voice that readers look forward to hearing day after day. Your company’s blog can achieve this, too! Let’s turn to Time’s list for some inspiration.

Zenhabits.net, at the top of the best blogs list, does how-to with style and smarts. The site is devoted to helping readers create a more peaceful daily existence. Created by author Leo Babuta, zenhabits features blogs on how to avoid stress and how to de-clutter your life but does so in a narrative that isn’t preachy or judgmental. The blog is a wonderful example of how to convey your message and purpose while also helping a reader or two.

For examples of one-of-a-kind web resourcefulness, kottke.org is an excellent place to start. Creator Jason Kottke covers all of the liberal arts, from architecture to Woody Allen films, while digging up unique trivia and bizarre factoids. Kottke can be used as a template for the “a little originality goes a long way” blogging motto. Plus it’s informative and fun, so the blog is actually contributing something to the blogosphere — a goal that professionals and business owners should all aim for.

Talking about high aspirations, the writing on Roger Ebert’s Journal is also very impressive. Despite losing his ability to speak due to cancer complications during the mid-2000s, Ebert’s voice has never been stronger in prose that describes everything from his passion for films to his health and travels. Ebert’s fighting spirit and frank discussions make his blog a real winner. What company blogs can take away from Ebert is that it’s okay to have a personality — in fact, it’s encouraged!

List-making blog success, however, is not just for the big guys. Any business – big or small – can turn its little blog into one of its strongest online tools and into a daily reading for customers!

Visit our site to learn more about how content marketing can make your business’ blog absolutely list worthy.

Did you know that your blog can be a powerful business tool to influence your customers? Blogs can build interactive conversations with targeted readers. Blogging for your business can get faster results than traditional internet marketing.

To blog or not to

A blog is an excellent tool to boost your online brand, increase your website’s rankings on the search engines, reach new potential clients, communicate with current customers and to publicize information about your company.

There’s 3 main factors you need to take into consideration if you want to start influencing people with your blog posts.

Build relationships, selling your ideas and leadership.

Build relationships

• Positive: Always avoid criticizing others and being negative. You can focus on how to do the best with something and by building others up. Give advice, solutions and tips.
• Interested: Always be genuinely interested in your readers and on their perspectives. What do they want to know? What do they find interesting?
• Solutions: Talk about solutions to problems that your interested readers might have. You can encourage the discussion by asking questions.

Selling your ideas

• Motivation: As you write each blog posting you should always consider why your readers would want to do something that you are saying.
• Explain your ideas: Real life examples and effective story telling can help to make your ideas visual and memorable.
• Arguments: Always avoid arguments even when your readers are making negative comments. Stay objective and to the point. Be thankful for new ideas, opinions and be respectful.
• Agreement: You can respond to comments by first identifying all the areas of agreement. Try to view things from your reader’s perspective.

Leadership

• Mistakes: Admit your mistakes and be open on how you solved your problems. This can be a motivating factor to others that are facing the same problems so that they can see what didn’t work and what did.
• Questions: Try suggesting alternatives and ask questions instead of telling people directly what they should and shouldn’t do.
• Benefits: Focus on the benefits that your readers might receive from your ideas.
• Respectful. Be respectful of your readers capabilities and their situations and how you can help them to succeed. You can encourage them to try new ideas and to empower action.

Successful blogging takes time and dedication any way you look at it. Not only can your blogging influence people, but you can build trust and credibility with your blogging as well. Be the expert in your industry and niche and others will return regularly to your blog to see what you are saying.

Content marketing, much like SEO and social media marketing, is a snap if you have the right tools and techniques to reach your desired audience. Read on for some “gotta have ’em” strategies for content marketing in today’s new media world.

Content Marketing Tools

The tools for content marketing cover a lot of ground, but don’t get flabbergasted. Multiple means of content marketing help your business’ visibility in the crowded content population. E-newsletters, company blogs, social media pages and press releases are some tools to help push your brilliant content to the front of your customers’ conscience. The more places for content to be read, digested and forwarded, the better. Social media is a fast-acting tool that encourages spreading the word. By discussing content with followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook, you can speak directly to your clients while delivering content right to your intended audience. Your company blog can be linked in tweets, while press release information regarding new services and products can be posted on social media pages. Homespun publications like emailed newsletters or e-magazines are another brilliant home for original content — as well as an invaluable tool for new clients.

Content Marketing Techniques

When it comes to techniques, there are dozens. But one of the most effective is ROI (return on investment) tracking. ROI tracking is a technique that allows you to peek in on how well your content marketing is working. Tracking should be implemented into all strategies with early reporting to establish basic baseline metrics (the barometer of how our content plans are performing). After taking a peek at our baseline metrics, we then can determine which content marketing strategies stay and which need to be tossed out.

Why Content Marketing?

All of these tools and techniques, however, are of little use unless we see why content marketing is important to your business’ digital marketing strategy. Content is the bread and butter of the Internet. If you don’t have anything unique or interesting to say, then you won’t gather readers or attract new customer. Likewise, if you don’t market your witty, wonderful, one-of-a-kind content, then it simply goes to waste.

Content marketing is a fun and exciting way to reach readers and, more importantly, buyers. Contact us now for more dish on the latest content marketing tips and techniques.

Can you afford to ignore internet marketing?

Gone are the days when business marketing was about creating a message. Today, success is pretty dependent on online marketing or better to say ‘Internet Marketing.’

In this era, almost every company has its online interface, which helps the company in attaining a local and global outlook as well as leaving an impact on all the web-surfers and web researchers who can turn into clients. Keeping the target users in mind, internet marketing is done in a comprehensive manner.

It incorporates several online marketing strategies, starting with On-line Competitor Analysis, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Management), Link Building, Content Marketing,  PPC (Pay per Click) Management and Social Media Marketing.

The goal is to improve your search engine rankings or ‘Your Popularity”

Content is a King

To make this statement more definite, I would change the phrase for – rich content is king. But what sense in creating the greatest content in the world if nobody can find and view it. If you want to run your online business successfully you have to be seen.

Nonetheless, this is absolutely web-based marketing but it leaves a great impact on mass, which is considered the major USP of Internet Marketing. This cost-effective marketing tactic is absolutely measurable focuses on driving web/customer traffic and converting that into revenue influx and visitor count.

A linking strategy is an absolute must

Back links are the life blood of a successful site and although you might not actually see them, the search engines do and reward you as links back to your site are seen as subtle endorsements and can be built up with a strategy of regular blogging, using social media and on-line press releases article directories, etc.  The more links to your site, the more Google see you as popular and relevant to their searcher.

Before You Do Anything, Do Keyword Research

Yes,  it is very important. Besides, keyword research does not mean that you should guess which keyword sounds good and will be ranked high in the search engines. Judging by my experience they are the worst ones.

Again work with the professionals who have access to tools providing you with information on specific keywords and the number of clicks that they attract. Also find out what keywords your competitors are using AND which words get clicked on.

How do you stay ahead of your competitors?

Though, nowadays, millions of pages are online and many of them share category listings and key words with your site, It becomes very difficult to stay ahead in the race… Internet Marketing is the only solution that can help you in emerging as the winner.

For impact internet marketing, you must have the idea of your target client or target ‘persona’ enabling you to communicate with ‘relevance’ using persuasion architecture within your website to achieve those sought after conversions. This helps professionals in preparation of a well-versed strategy.

Internet Marketing should always be done with a progressive approach

Implemented by almost every entrepreneurial organization, internet-marketing tactics are considered great not only for the budding enterprises but also for those who are in queued in the list of big guns… and those smaller companies who have the drive and will to take on those ‘big guns’!

If you too want to give a boom to traffic count of your site and increase revenue generation, understand what your competitors are doing on-line in order to develop and commission an online marketing strategy that will allow you to pass your competitors and win the much needed market share.

Contact us today for a Analysis Report. This report will help you understand what you top ten competitors are doing online and what your target audience is searching on Google.

New trends in online marketing are constantly popping up

Trends are getting more savvy and unique and include Internet-video marketing, Internet-social network marketing and many more. Many experts advise that blogging is the most important of these trends and if not included in your Internet marketing strategy, you are missing out on an extremely important part of your traffic building opportunity.

Here are a few tips on how you can implement blogging to its full prospective within your Internet marketing strategy.

The key is to make blogging work for your business by understanding who your target market is.

Implementing blogs should make you more flexible and the objective is to encourage additional traffic to your website by providing information to a wider audience then you would normally reach.

The first tip is, ‘Make your blog interesting’.

Insure you use engaging headlines on your blog. This makes your blog more searchable. When your post has a memorable and engaging headline, you engage the interest of many web users. With that, the user will find your blog and pick up more about your products or services.

Once catching their interest, they hopefully will make a purchase and you will have a new customer. The key here is to use a memorable title to entice prospective customers to your business. Blogging as a part of your Internet marketing strategy might seems easy, however, you will need to quickly determine what works and what doesn’t.

The second tip, ‘Keep your blog short and simple’.

Blogs should not be story-like or boring. Choose your words carefully, use bullet points and  be honest. Provide benefit after benefit on your product or service. Web users want rapid gratifying differences that convince them to purchase your product and require reassurance that their buying decision is correct. With a simple, popular and obvious blog post, you are able to increase traffic to your website that should naturally lead to more business.

The third tip, ‘Words are powerful’.

Do not use egotistic and hard-to-understand words. Be aware of your customers and the language that they will understand and respond to. If you intend to attract customers globally, you must be aware of the limitations in the basic understanding of the message that you are trying to convey.

Use elementary English words that explain clearly and are accepted by many. Do not use conditions that users cannot understand. Enormous or complicated words that are hard to pronounce do not assist with brand recognition or create an affinity for your product or service.

Write your blog with a personal touch. Write as if you are talking to someone. Write in a simple yet interesting manner to gain the attention of your prospective customer.

The final but most important tip, ‘Imaginatively make use of graphics’.

If you wish customers to purchase your product, they must identify with your products ability to satisfy their need. In order to do so, customers must be able to see your product or service. Add cinema and or radio to the mix and be honest. If you are marketing clothing online, ensure customers are able to see what they are buying and also freely obtain what they see.

Many valid studies with regard to online purchasing, conducted over the years, confirm the large number of complaints received from disappointed customers who have been lost to this particular channel through misleading copy and advertising. Add fun and engaging graphics to your blog.,but do not over-crowd it as it is the clean look that counts when communicating visually.

‘Blogging is not only popular but is proven as a valid Internet marketing source of additional traffic and new business’.

Blogging only functions when you implement its limitless potential. So, if your intention is to take your business online or expand your online presence, strongly consider including Blogging as a communication tool within your Internet marketing plan.

After all, you have nothing to lose by trying it!