Good vs. Bad Email Advertising

Good email advertising makes you read on. It is the type of email advertising that encourages you to click on an email because the subject line is enticing. Email advertising done right ensures you not only open the email, but also read it and click through to the site or purchase a product or service.

How do you get to that point? Any good email advertiser knows that you have to figure out how to inspire people if you want to get them to buy your products and services. How do you do that? It isn’t as hard as you may think. Here are some tips for creating great messages as part of your email advertising campaign. Keep in mind that email advertising should be included as part of a comprehensive Internet marketing campaign.

* First, get personal. It is difficult to connect with a target audience through a computer, but start by greeting your prospects, and then identifying with them. To do this, figure out what needs you can fulfill for your prospects, and then define them.

* Next, stay personal. People want to feel like you care about them, and are not just selling a product or service. One effective tactic is storytelling. People like to read stories – but only if they’re plausible. If you continue a storyline through the course of several email advertising messages, most people will keep reading just to find out what happens.

* Make sure your sales copy is not over the top. People don’t like to be harassed when they enter a retail store by sales personnel. The same is true of email advertising. No one wants to open an email message, only to be bombarded by a sales pitch right away or by a call to action BEFORE you get to know him or her. While your email messages should always include a call for action, make sure you approach your prospects gently – at least in the beginning when you are trying to establish a relationship.

How mobile websites differ from the standard
With a maximum of 4 x 3 inches of screen space, just about everything that’s on a website needs to change! It isn’t just that more scrolling is required for people to get the same information – some features don’t show up at all, and some essential parts of your website (like your ordering form or contact page!) may not work properly on mobile devices. You’ll need to re-design your:
* Information architecture
* Copywriting – should be condensed to main points only, no filler
* Call to action strategy. You’ll need to have a strong focus on ‘getting things done’ on your website – because your users probably will also

A good mobile internet marketing service will also collaborate with your web designer to make sure essential features are implemented – clickable phone numbers, an auto-redirect from your standard site to your mobile site when somebody types your main address in from a smartphone, allowing people to select from drop down boxes rather than requiring them to type on those eency weency keypads… etc!

Mobile Internet marketing is more retrospective
Standard Internet marketing is mostly about getting people to your site (assuming you’ve done a decent design job, etc!). Mobile Internet marketing is about keeping people happy on your site once they’ve already used it, so they come back again and again.

Pay attention to Google Suggest
One of the main drivers behind the implementation of the Google Suggest feature is the fact that the average mobile search query is 15 characters long, but takes 30 keypresses to enter! People truly hate those keypads, and so are using the predictive search function more and more. Pay attention to the keywords that pop up in Google Suggest if you want to get ahead in mobile search!

Mobile Internet marketing services are certainly in a brave new world … but if your business is one of the first to try navigating it, you’re guaranteed ‘pioneer’, ‘innovator’ and ‘awesome’ status!

1. How do the visitors get there?
Most targeted traffic providers run a wide range of very specialized websites, each with decent SEO results and solid through traffic already. When you buy targeted visitors, the visitors may either click on a link from a site that is an outlink-only site, or simply be redirected from a relevant but expired domain.

2. What makes the traffic targeted?
Your traffic will already be searching for keywords that are relevant to your business. Much better than paying for clicks from people who have no natural interest in your business!

3. Is the most expensive targeted traffic the best?
Not necessarily! Just like any consumer experience, pricing for targeted traffic is determined by a huge range of factors. Pricing doesn’t necessarily translate to quality.

4. How can I see how many visitors I’m getting?
Most targeted traffic operators give you their own stats package, and you can check their stats against your own web analytics also. Bear in mind that technical differences can cause some discrepancies.

5. How long does it take to get the visitors to my site?
That depends entirely on the targeted traffic campaign you have chosen. Some providers will offer you a time limit of 7 days, 14 days, 30 days … anywhere up to 6 months. Targeted traffic providers with a small network of specialized sites for redirection will take a little longer to deliver your visitors – that doesn’t mean they’ll be any lower ‘quality’, though.

1. Write a testimonial
I don’t know about you, but I think good service is very rare and should be rewarded! Write a testimonial for a company that has given you great service or an exceptional product – most sites will give you web links in return.

2. Get in touch with the webmasters
When you’ve created an authority post (one that took plenty of research and at least a few hours to write), let the webmasters in your field know about it. People like giving web links to content that is fresh.

3. Mentor somebody
‘Real’ companies don’t often consider this, as the people with the sites are the people that don’t need any mentoring! However, if you choose to mentor a blogger in your field, a school student or university student in your field, you expand your inbound web link possibilities.

4. Interview someone
People like the ego-boost that comes with being interviewed – do a favorable write-up and they’ll always link to your site from theirs.

5. Answer forum questions
It can be hard to find good, individually tailored expert information on the net, so many people end up posting their questions on forums. Answer questions on your industry’s main forums, and provide your web link on the answer.

6. Put a text translator on your site
It’s easy to forget that there are people in the world who don’t speak English … and that these people use the Internet! An instant audience broadener and web link promoter.

7. Join the Better Business Bureau
People are more likely to link to sites that they can see are considered trustworthy.

8. Donate to an online charity
Especially if they list contributors somewhere on their site, and provide web links to them!

Email marketing is more intimate
The least intimate interactions of all on the net are those on social networking sites like Facebook. Status updates are generalized, messages can be viewed by anyone, etc. Microblogging is necessarily a little more personal, and if you have a personal or company-based blog, this gets more personal still as it allows for individual comments and responses, and offer mostly opinion-based, individually toned content. However, email content can be fully targeted, customized to suit the receiver, and can start a dialogue if you let the user know where to direct replies.

Email marketing doesn’t depend on third-party sites
When you set up a Facebook page, you’re depending on Facebook to maintain a secure site, offer options that allow your company to act in a way consistent with your corporate value, etc. You’re also expecting that the site won’t find an arbitrary reason to take down your content (as often happens with YouTube), and won’t change their terms of service in a way that doesn’t suit you. Business email marketing depends on nothing except having a valid email address.

Business email marketing is more exclusive
If you save your best deals and price offers for your business email marketing, people will soon come to value those little segments of their inbox highly! Business email marketing offers the opportunity to give your communications real value, beyond being another ad that people have to endure.

They’ll take anybody
As a website owner, I’d prefer not to be listed on the same page with websites that install spyware, promote illegal activities, online pharma, adult or gambling sites.

Have a Premium membership option
Many sites where you can pay for better placement are frowned upon at Google.

Marketed on their link juice, not their traffic
Directories are great for link building, but should primarily be aimed at people! If a directory is well-trafficked, Google is unlikely to shut it down. If the site you’re considering a directory submission to is strangely silent on the matter of traffic and visitors, take it as a warning sign.

Marketed to webmasters, not site owners
Just like every other community on the web, webmasters have their own special places that they hang out. If directories have a lot of links placed in the ‘webmaster neighborhoods’, they are often more manipulative than useful.

They demand reciprocal links
If a directory wants you to link back to it, your directory submission is a waste of everybody’s time … including the site your submitting to!

They cater to many different categories
As we explored in earlier posts, directories about niche subjects are far more likely to be respected by Google (and not earn you a penalty for doing directory submissions to them!).

1. Have you put your contact information at both the top and bottom o the release? If any real journalists actually want to create a story based on your press release, they’ll definitely get in contact with you!
2. Is your title in the present tense? This helps the news feel new.
3. Is your title attention-grabbing and interesting? I find it useful to create three different titles for a press release, and choose from among them after I’ve finished writing.
4. Do you have a lead-in and summary? Offer a general introduction to the company, the industry, or surrounding current events, and then re-state your main piece of ‘news’ in the summary area.
5. Have you followed the inverted pyramid structure? Make sure that your most important information appears first, and that each following piece of information is less important. However, don’t include anything that isn’t at all important!
6. Have you included a company information section? If not, you’re missing out on SEO potential.
7. Make sure you’ve included at least one quote. If it helps, many people writing press releases simply create the type of quote that supports what they are writing, and have the appropriate ‘source’ authorize it.
8. Take out all first and second person references. Your release should be written in third person, apart from the quoted material.
9. Have you spelt out all your acronyms and abbreviations? Don’t assume that anything is common knowledge. If you use any abbreviations, simply spell them out in the first instance and put the acronym in brackets immediately following it.
10. Take out every single clichÄd word in your press release before submitting it anywhere. Otherwise it will look just like everybody else’s and is unlikely to get picked up.
11. Have you refrained from exaggeration? Both journalists and ordinary readers hate being marketed to under the guide of news. A truly newsworthy story might be ignored if you use marketing language in writing press releases.

In fact, the three main reasons that you CAN blog is intimately tied to the 3 main excuses we hear for why people can’t blog. These are:
* I don’t have the time to blog
* I can’t write well enough to blog
* I wouldn’t know what to write about.

All of these are very easily solved!

Don’t have time to blog?
The feeling that you ‘don’t have time to blog’ can arise from a number of different conditions:
* Being so overloaded at work that you don’t have time to grow your business: We all know that this is a recipe for disaster. When you don’t have time to ensure the future success of your business, a restructuring is in order
* Being unaware that you can have others do your blogging! There are literally hundreds of freelance websites (and a handful of worthwhile ones) where blog writers will actually compete to try to make your blog the best it can be. It isn’t advisable to use ghostwriters exclusively – you need a personal touch every so often – but this does cut the sheer number of hours right down.

Can’t write well enough to blog?
A lot of successful bloggers aren’t great writers. They make up for this in several ways, and still manage to pull some pretty impressive traffic numbers.
* Structuring their posts well: Subheadings, bullet points, lists – these are all tools that help effectively cover for less-than-perfect writing skills. In fact, even great writers that don’t use these tools rarely get read on the net.
* Including lots of value: New information, insider tips, photos, or humor – these all offer a lot of value to your readers, and will help cover for lack of writing experience
* Having your posts edited: A good editor is worth taking the time to find … they’ll take the meaning in what you are saying and completely repackage it into beautiful, flowing language.

Don’t know what to write about?
This problem will be very easily solved when you get into the swing of writing! Look at other successful blogs in your niche, and check out the topics they use as a basis for their blog creation. Alternatively, hire a writer to help you with this.

1. Have a goal
The goals of most banner ads is either to raise brand awareness or to create a conversion for the website. The conversion might be signing up to a newsletter, subscribing to paid content, purchasing something … or just about anything else.

2. Use your goal to create a call to action
In most advertising media, you need to tell people exactly what you want them to do – or they look at your ad and just look away. Tell people that you want them to click, where you want them to click, and what you want them to do after they’ve clicked!

3. Remember who you are talking to
Your strategy for banner creation will be very different depending on whether you are talking to teenage boys, Moms with kids, tradesmen, executives, small business owners…

4. Know why THEY will care
You care about your banner ad because of its potential to make you lots of cash! Understandably, that’s not why your customers will care. Remember exactly what is in it for the people looking at your ad. Spend some time visualizing yourself in their place, and imagining how the advertised product or service will affect their wellbeing.

5. Love your colors
One of the primary features of your banner that will do all that attention-grabbing work is the color. Use a color-selection tool available through Google to create a stunning color scheme.

6. Think outside your corporate box
You will want to retain some of your branding in banner ads … but amongst that, don’t be afraid to be different in your banner creation! A great banner creation idea that doesn’t quite fit with your corporate image could just be the best risk your business ever took.

Decide on your video type
There are three main types of videos produced for article marketing, in terms of their format:
* Screen capture
* Live action
* Animated
If you want to show people how to do something on a computer, screen capture will be your format of choice. You can use Camtasia, Live Demo, or IshowU on a Mac. Live action is the most common format (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), and animation is most often used for humor videos … but can get pretty expensive.

Screen capture recording tips
To get the best out of your screen-capture style video article marketing:
* Speak slowly – about 25% slower than usual
* Edit everything at the end, don’t go back and forth deleting to try and get it right the first time
* Imagine a friend sitting next to you while you’re talking
* Keep your mouth about 3 inches from the mic to avoid windblast distortion

Live action video recording tips
Live action is much more common, and also a little harder. Here’s how to do it well:
* Use Windows Moviemaker or iMovie on a Mac to edit your videos
* Aim to do voiceovers after the main video has been recorded – it will be easier to hear you when speaking into a mic in a quiet room, rather than out in the noisy world.
* Cerate a storyboard for your video
* Use a tripod to avoid camera shake
* Keep your camera angle simple
* If you don’t pay attention to anything else, pay attention to your lighting!

File types
For screen capture videos, the most common formats are SWF and FLV – SWF is smaller, but lower quality. It is also more common. For live action movies, .wmv, mpg and .mov (Quicktime format) are the most common.

Video article marketing does have plenty of potential, but is certainly a learned skill! Get expert help to save time in the learning process.

Make sure you don’t sacrifice user-friendliness for keywords
A site that has heavy keyword density but makes no sense (and provides no value) to a human reader because of that density will ultimately not perform. NEVER sacrifice readability for keyword insertion!

Determine if there is a market need
On the Internet, supply of just about everything is virtually unlimited, and the people looking for services are very selective! If your business is based on providing free credit reports, anything ‘adult’ related or Forex trading tips, it may be best to seriously reconsider whether there is enough demand to keep your business going, with such heavy competition.

Ignore the bad neighborhoods
Links are one of the major bases of SEO success … but links from bad neighborhoods will only damage your reputation with consumers (that’s assuming that Google doesn’t penalize you for them!).

Make sure your domain name reflects both your branding and your business
In fact, it is best to have branding that reflects your business, in SEO terms. For example, having a lawn mowing business named ‘The Big Green’ is certainly cute. However, when it comes to SEO, a domain named www.BGlawnmowing.com will always rank higher than www.thebiggreen.com.

Look into social media
Much of the tension between marketing and search engine strategies comes from the need to use keywords in prominent places in the only thing that users interact with – the content. You can get around this dilemma (and still get great Google results) by undertaking a social media strategy. People don’t care about keywords in social media … they care about what their friends are doing. In this arena ‘The Big Green’ could do quite well, where boring old ‘BGLawnmowing’ would fail miserably. Don’t fall for the idea that social media and search engine strategies are separate – one can definitely affect the other.

1. Curves and organic shapes
Blocky is out, voluptuous curving is in! Use organic shapes and curved areas within your pop under ads to help put an instant contemporary stamp on your ad.

2. Careful coloring
People are no longer content to simply echo their corporate colors in their pop under ads … and I, for one, have been rejoicing with every broadened color horizon! Colors can be the most powerful part of an ad – they can evoke tropical holidays, delicious fruity smoothies, warm earthy forest walks or silent underwater escapes. When the only colors in your ad are the red and blue that are in your logo, it’s a sad waste of a popunder!

3. Awesome photos
People might not have the time to read a paragraph of copy in a pounder ad, but they can get the gist of a photograph in less than half a second. That half a second may convince them to look a little deeper, and perhaps even click through to your website.

4. Incentives, specials, promotions, freebies
Ads are no longer for information – that’s what Google is for. Ads are now for giving you a reason to buy for a particular brand over another brand, and for most people, the most powerful reason is monetary. So increasingly pop under ads are being used to build awareness of awesome specials and even deliver exclusive freebies.

5. Interactivity
Whether it’s a cool Flash game or a survey, interactivity is a great way to get people engaged with your popunder ad.

Keep the most modern popunder tips in mind as you’re designing, and you’ll keep your business image fresh and current, and most importantly, boost response rates!

1. Comment on other blogs
With a couple of caveats: Only comment if you have something relevant, funny, or interesting to say; and always be respectful even if you disagree.
2. Link out to other blogs
Blogs are likely to notice who is linking to them, investigate their identity … and often return the favor!
3. Publish your content on a weekday
More people are online on weekdays, and more people are likely to see your content when it is fresh, and right up the top of the ‘Newest Updated’ results in Google, Technorati, and other content aggregators.
4. Do your own web site linking!
Internal site linking is critical to your Google rankings, but even more, it gives the people that are already engaged with your content an opportunity and a reason to go deeper into your site and find more relevant information.
5. Trade blogroll links
Create a blogroll of sites that you read and recommend to your own blog’s readers. Ask the sites on this roll if they would be interested in linking back to you.
6. Edit and proof every little thing you write
A piece with typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors doesn’t make you site look like a link-worthy domain. Polish it all up!
7. Hold a competition
Competitions are exciting, especially when they are skills-based rather than chance-based. Many people will link to competitions to let other people know about them, especially if they have a decent prize!
8. Create a walk-through
Information is easy to find on the net … but comprehensive, valuable information on a particular difficult topic isn’t always so easy. People really value walk-throughs, and they are good fro attracting more web site linking across the net.

Start slow
Human relationships always progress slowly. You would never reveal your deepest secrets to the girl that sits next to you at work, or let your boss use your PIN to grab you some cash form the ATM when he goes out of the office. Similarly, know when to stop asking questions on your email marketing subscription form.

But not too slow!
This, though, is the great marketer’s dilemma:

The more you know about someone, the easier it is to deliver value to them

So if you know nothing about your subscribers apart from their email address, you’ll have no choice but to send out generic emails, which naturally deliver little value to the majority of subscribers … and may even cause some to unsubscribe before you get to the juicy stuff that they prefer. Then you won’t get the chance to put more advanced email marketing tips into effect.

So, what sort of information is it appropriate to ask on a subscription form?

* Name: This will often give you some information about their cultural background and sex. Make these tentative entries in your database for this subscriber.
* Zip code: Much faster than City and State – just as much information for you
* What do you prefer to receive emails about? List options such as general company news, specials and promotions, competitions, expert columns, etc. List different subject areas if appropriate to your site.

For an initial meeting, this is probably enough!

Aside from remembering your basic manners (pleases and thank yous!), and keeping your branding consistent across the subscription form, this will be one of the most useful email marketing tips for your entire campaign.

Is the directory unique?
Is it structured like, designed like, and filled with the same quotient of websites as every other directory in its niche? A directory that is hand built, created for a specific purpose and human-edited is more likely to be a value submission to web directory than a straight DMOZ clone.

Offers something useful
You will certainly find a use out of any directory … boosting your link profile! You need to ‘swap hats’ for this exercise, though. If you were looking for information (on any subject), would you find this directory useful? Does it include good quality sites, is the information easy to find, and does it provide plenty of supporting content beyond a simple link?

Refuses certain classes of sites
If your business isn’t in the ‘adult’ industry, chances are that you would prefer not to be listed alongside those sites in a directory. Even if you don’t really mind, Google is likely to.

Professionally created
A couple of good signs that the directory you’re considering is a professional:
* There are no deliberate spelling mistakes in the domain name (kwik instead of quick, etc)
* Designed well
* Has a Contact form, Privacy Policy, etc

Does the directory itself rank well?
You should at least check when submitting to web directories that it ranks for its own name. Failure to rank for its own domain name is a sure sign that the site has a Google penalty of its own, and that will certainly not help your rankings!

1. Keep cash out of your mind
In order to make money from niche blog promotion, you have to ignore the idea of money. At least for a while! Always make sure your traffic levels and your community come first. This is the same thing that Google is always telling websites – if you want to rank highly, you have to create value for the visitor. Well, as Steve Pavlina says, if you want to make a million dollars you need to figure out how to create a million dollars worth of value!

2. Get to know your readers!
Invite them to email you; ask for comments, respond to comments when you do get them. Knowing your audience is the key to promoting anything.

3. Make your ‘timeless’ content great
timeless content will continue to draw traffic for many years after you’ve written it. As such, make sure it has lots of value, and you’ll get plenty of traffic.

4. Create a press kit and go looking for advertisers
Create a PDF package that lists the benefits of advertising with your site, and send it out to companies that might be interested in buying ad space. Do a little work now to create passive income later.

5. Keep searching
Don’t make the mistake of believing that these are all single-time activities! You’ll need to keep up with them to stay ahead in your advertising profits.
6. Diversify your income

Don’t forget that selling advertising space isn’t the only way to make income from your blog promotion. Selling ebooks, courses, webinars and membership forum access can also make you money.

7. Be patient
Patience, young Padawan! Success in niche blog promotion will not happen overnight … but it will happen.

1. Curves and ‘swooshes’
That Nike swoosh is coming back in banner ad design with a vengeance! It’s fairly easy to incorporate into your own ads – instead of cutting out your advertisement image along its edges, or creating a square border for a photo, let part of your image ‘hang off the side’ of the ad, and overlay a curve or swoosh on the edge that is protruding into the ad. Easy!

2. Orange, blue, black and white
This four-point color scheme can be used in your banner ads in a few ways. Either pop the orange, blue and white together, the orange, blue and black together, or simply the orange and blue. I still don’t recommend blue and black as a color scheme (too hard to differentiate, especially on a screen), and blue, black and white has a stuffy, corporate look nowadays.

3. Deals in the ads
Ads are not just about ‘creating awareness’ of your company any more. People are aware of far too many things. You need to give people a real, concrete reason to look at your ads – and that means including a freebie, deal or discount. Make sure you include the actual words ‘Free’, ‘% off’, etc within your ad to draw attention.

4. Sans serif fonts
If you want to be seen as a contemporary, up-to-date type of company, your banner ads should use mostly sans serif fonts. Some minimal usage of handwriting or picturesque fonts is also appropriate – but mostly the clean sans serif lines will rule in banner ads for a while.

Incoming search terms:

• banner designs websites 2013 trends
• swoosh advertising banners

Create a series of blog posts
When people discover the beginning of a series, there’s a far higher likelihood that they’ll return to find out what the rest of the posts say. Your series could be structured in any number of ways:
* As a miniature workshop
* As the coverage of a time-limited event (like the NBA Playoffs, or the presidential election)
* As a traditional story – usually from your own life, and usually with some sort of helpful point!

Create experiential posts
Most companies create quite a lot of content that is aimed at building them up as experts in their field. However, when people are flicking through your blog archives, you’ll often find that the titles with a personal flavor are those that are most clicked and commented on. People love to find some human interaction within the cold world of the computer monitor. Give your story a point, and it’s a sure winner.

Ask your readers questions
This is a quick and easy trick that article marketing services use to drive engagement. When you ask your readers a question, you force them to either think critically about their topic, or relate their own experience to your services. People like feeling smart when they know the answer to a question … and that can drive plenty of traffic!

Structure your writing
Every writer should do this … few actually do. Your writing should be structured, with an introduction, sometimes a conclusion, subheadings, and bulleted lists within those subheadings. Article marketing services know that people will find your information more valuable, and be far more inclined to pass it onto others, if they can place it within a structured framework in their minds.

Know what people are interested in
People in general are always interested in money, improving their health or relationships, and that three-letter word that starts with ‘s’ and ends in ‘x’! However, there will also be plenty of micro-buzz within your industry. A couple of months ago in SEO firms, everybody was talking about the effect of Google’s personalized search on the results that people see. In the construction industry, 3D modeling software has been a niche but important buzz topic for a while. You can probably already think of a couple for your own industry – and it’s very helpful to tie your search engine marketing campaigns to something very hot, very current, and very short term like that.

Know where people are going
Many novice search engine marketers send people to the home page of the website. More experienced campaigners have special landing pages set up, that allow people to navigate back to your home page from them but aren’t part of the regular site information architecture. Make your landing page tightly correlated with your search engine marketing copywriting, and the buzz that you’re trying to pick up on.

Know your visitor goals
If ‘visitors’ is the goal you have in mind when designing your campaign, ‘visitors’ are all you’ll get. You won’t get leads, bites, or purchases. Aim high, and think about how your copy and design can lead people to the goal.

Know your campaign goals
Search engine marketing campaigns can very quickly get out of control if you don’t set a goal for the campaign, and a time limit by which it should reach it before reviewing your general strategy. It’s easy to get caught up in bidding wars … but definitely not good for the purse strings!

1. Use plenty of tags
Most people use only a tenth of the available space for tagging your video. Given that whatever is said or pictured in the video itself isn’t indexable (yet!), YouTube searchers depend on tags to lead them to the correct video.

2. Use different styles of tags
Basic descriptive tags are great (such as ‘car’, ‘smash’, ‘ford’, ‘flipping over’ etc), but you should also use emotive tags to help catch searchers that know what experience they’re looking for … but don’t know the exact content that will give it to them. If you were promoting the car safety video above, you could use emotive words like ‘painful’, ‘expensive’, etc. Your video will hopefully suit tags like ‘funny’, ‘sweet’, ‘cute’ etc better, though!

3. Use adjectives in your tags
As above!

4. Watermark your video
Especially if your domain name is short and sweet … you may as well get Internet marketing value from every avenue you can!

5. Check out Google Suggest to help you title your video
Type the first few letters out of a couple of keywords that are related to your website into the Google search bar, and note what Google Suggest says in the drop down box underneath. You can get a good idea of what people search for this way, and show up higher not only in the YouTube results, but in Google results also.

6. Don’t forget your category descriptor tags
For those who really know what they are looking for, this is a great way to help them find you!

7. Use the 80/20 rule
Most businesses will be aiming to create informative content … funny video Internet marketing content is far too hit-and-miss. Put 80% of your possible information on a topic into your video – leave 20% for your website.

Get links by doing blog reviews or website reviews
All sorts of blogs and websites want to get opinions out there on the net about their site. In these reviews, you can be completely honest … but if you choose to criticize and you’d like to keep your website linking from their site, do at least be constructive!

Review products and services
When people are looking for a particular product or service on the Internet, they are instantly hit with a flood of marketing garbage as soon as they hit the ‘Search’ button on Google. Start a company blog and review products or services that are related to your niche. Here are some tips for writing a highly trafficked (and popularly linked-to!) review post:
* Actually buy the product or service!
* Take photos to support your review
* Take video to support your review, if appropriate
* Give an honest opinion
* Make your opinion easy to find and assess – use a star rating system for various aspects of the product or service.

Host your own user reviews
If one opinion is good, then many opinions is many times better, in website linking terms! People love the ability to get their opinions off their chest … whether they be positive or negative. Host your own user reviews of non-competing products and services, and people will be happy to boost your website linking numbers.

Review products on other sites
Sites like ePinions get a lot of traffic, and if you write an ‘expert’ style review, the website linking that you provide along with your review is likely to attract real traffic from real people.

Be consistent
Make sure that every piece of communication with your email advertising subscribers is consistent. Pay attention to your:

* Logo placement
* Color schemes
* General branding
* The tone used in your copywriting

Being inconsistent builds mistrust in your subscribers. People will feel like they didn’t really get what they signed up for, and will often simply unsubscribe.

Set up some expectations
Either on your sign up page or in your welcome email, let people know what they can expect. People are looking for a specific service when they sign up to an email list … surprises are good for Christmas, but not necessarily valuable on the web!

Most importantly, set up some expectations in your subscribers’ minds about how they’ll benefit by staying subscribed to your email list. If you’ll be sending out special member-only promotions, let them know (and try to give them some indication of the frequency). If you are going to teach them special techniques that can’t be learned elsewhere on the web, let them know. If they will get hilarious content delivered direct to their inbox, let them know, and if it’s going to be bone dry and completely corporatized stuff, then let them know as well. Though you might want to think of a nicer way to word that last one…!

Have some manners
Many of us are trying to find our way around manners on the web; they are completely different to the type that our parents taught us, after all. It doesn’t matter if you type with your elbows on the table, but there are still some courtesies you need to remember in your email advertising!

* Thank your subscribers for signing up
* Give them what you promised them as soon as possible – if there was a report to be downloaded or a freebie to be had, don’t make them wait
* Offer your contact information so people can contact you with any concerns … sending no-reply emails with no web address and no contact point is the height of online rudeness.

Email advertising is a fairly new field for many businesses – remember these basics and you should be able to keep your subscribers long enough to get a little better at this tricky discipline!

The directory is selective
Ideally, your web directory shouldn’t let just any old site in. You don’t want virus-laden sites, sites that could be illegal in some countries across the world, and sites without any real content sitting next to your business site. A couple of good examples of selective directories are Yahoo and DMOZ; the reason they are selective is because humans actually go to the site and review it before inclusion.

Built for people to use
If the list is actually useable for humans, the search engines will view it in a much better light. The ‘link juice’ that you get from those web directory submissions will be worth much more.

Specific in nature
We already have a general list of every site on the web … it’s called Google. The more general a web directory is, the less valuable it will be to list your site on it. General directories can still have some SEO value, but you’ll get both real human clicks and traffic, as well as a link popularity boost from the specific directories.

The directory itself has a good link profile
If plenty of other sites around the net feel that a directory is worthwhile enough to link to, you will get much better SEO value from your web directory submission to it.

On a trusted domain
The ultimate example of this is the Yahoo Directory itself. Your web directory submission to Yahoo is valuable because the www.yahoo.com domain already has enormous trust and authority.

Writing services
Some press release services can create a topic for your release all on their own. They’ll even write quotes to assign to your company’s representative or manager – and thereby remove you completely from the press release creation process! For some companies this is a relief … but in terms of quality of press releases, it isn’t ideal. Outsiders can only say so much that is newsworthy about your company. Try this with the wrong topic, and you’ll end up wasting a lot of money. For good quality press release writing, the writer should meet with you and have access to all pertinent details.

Syndication services
Press release syndication takes a long time, a lot of legwork and sometimes specialized lists that the company pays for. Even if you outsource nothing else to your press release service, you should have them handle the syndication.

Online publishing
It’s the same deal with online publishing – it’s time consuming and costly if you don’t have the correct procedures in place. Also, if you aren’t experienced with online press release publication it’s likely that you’ll end up either submitting to a lot of sites that aren’t useful, or paying for services that you don’t need to.

Quality assurance
Good press release services will offer you the option of writing your own press releases, and having them do a ‘QA’ check on it. This might include:
* Editing and proofing
* Reviewing the title to help with ‘catchiness’
* Checking on the order of information
* Putting the release into the correct formatting
* Checking character counts for each section for online publication

Press release services are worth their weight in gold, and it is well worth your time shopping around to find a good quality one.

Incoming search terms:

• four core players in affiliate marketing

1. They have an understanding of fair pricing
People with little experience in blog advertising (either hosting it, or doing their own) usually have little concept of fair pricing in blog advertising. The lack of a realistic price for services will be a negotiations killer very early in the piece.

2. The technical details can be difficult
The technical specifics of targeting different IP addresses, which ad formats will work best, allowing scripts, etc tae a long time just to grasp their definitions … let alone make judgments on what will be best for your blog!

3. Because if your attention suffers, your blog suffers
And if your blog suffers, then the core offering at the center of that blog advertising campaign is devalued. If your blog isn’t at its absolute best, there is no sense engaging in heavy advertising and marketing for it. If people see it at less-than-its-best, you actually have the potential to create negative publicity. Not ideal!

4. Systems to make it easier
All businesses develop systems for their core activities to make them more efficient and cost effective over time. If you pay somebody the equivalent of $40 per hour to do a task that would take you three hours at $20 per hour of your own labor … the smartest option is clear!

5. For in-house advertising, the pitch is crucial
If you’re thinking about running advertising on your blog, you need the professional’s help to cerate the ‘pitch’ for potential advertisers. Once this has been created (and uploaded to your ‘Advertising information’ page), it can pretty much be forgotten. But having that professional help to begin with can really bump up your blog advertising profits.