Online marketing is an endeavor that many people have embarked upon, but they have all learned that it's not necessarily as easy as it sounds. Well, not to worry, it's not that hard once you've gotten a grip on some of the aspects of online marketing that can be daunting at first. Let's take a look at a few of these aspects.
First is the need to figure out what your business is going to be that you're marketing online. Well, that's not too hard. What you want to do is find a niche in which to build your online marketing business first. This is quite easy if you have some time to conduct the proper keyword research with Yahoo Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool or if you have software like Niche Inspector, which can actually cut your online marketing research time down to minutes.
Once you've found your niche, find the top five or six forums within it (by going to any search engine and typing in "[keyword] forums"), then read what the forum members are saying about what they want or don't understand. Once you have an idea of what that is, fill the need! Sometimes you have to create an information product, but very often you can find an affiliate product to sell to them. Then, it's just a matter of putting your online marketing skills to work and writing a few auto responder messages, putting the form on a landing page, then putting it out there for everyone.
Okay, but wait. It's the online marketing skills that are missing, not having a product, right? Well, online marketing is a breeze when you've found a good niche. You know, one with a hungry market and few competitors, where you've already read in the forums there what they want. See, after you read what the folks in the forums want, you respond to them as you learn about them. Then you start adding your link to your signature in the forums so that people will start going to your site. Since these are most likely the first forums you found, they'll be the ones that are most likely to be found by others (and so will all of your entries). This is just one technique of online marketing that will surely drive traffic wherever you want it to go.
If you want quick traffic, you want to use Pay-Per-Click ads. Just be sure that you are sending folks to a landing page of your own and offer them something of value for buying from your affiliate site. Then redirect them there by having them sign in with their name and email so that you can send them reminders with your auto responder. A great product to use with this online marketing technique is Cam Studio. It's like Camtasia, but a whole lot cheaper. Adding video is a great way to get people interested in going to your site. And creating a video for them as an added bonus for buying from your link ads fantastic value to your product offer.
Promotional articles are a good way to get long term traffic and is an integral part (or should be) of your online marketing priorities list. Find the most searched keyword for your product and build your articles around it. Use it in the title and early and often in the body. Give good information, and you'll likely get published. Once again, send your people to a landing page with more information about the product that can redirect them where you want them to go. You don't want to send them directly to an affiliate page- that's tacky, unprofessional, and publishers don't like it.
With these techniques, you can begin to build your mailing lists and your online marketing business. Over time, if you keep at it, your seeds will begin to bear fruit, and you will find great rewards in the world of online marketing.
Transcription is the conversion to text format. This is a very important step in an online marketing strategy. It is a way to take what you've recorded and brought it into a completely different medium.
I do not suggest doing this yourself. You can have an assistant do it if they're familiar with this work. I suggest hiring a professional. It may seem pricey at first, but they can have it done in a couple days.
The main thing is that you want to find a transcriptionist who is familiar with teleseminars and can edit out your speech blemishes.
Another thing to look for is someone who can convert your teleseminar into an ebook. That's something you can sell or give away on your site. It adds value. An ebook is a book in PDF format. If you deliver an hour-long teleseminar, it will be quite a few pages. If they format it right, it will be very flashy. It will add a lot of value to that recorded element you're selling or giving away.
Here's the most important thing. This doesn't need to be something that your transcriptionist does. It's something that someone on your team can do or you can do, if you have the time. You can harvest articles from your transcribed teleseminar.
Each teleseminar you record will be several pages long. You can find larger topics for each of those. You selected five to seven big ideas. Each one of those can usually be an article. There may be a little formatting you'll need to do because you were just talking. You want to implement. You don't need to necessarily make it perfect.
Each of those articles can be submitted to article portals online. This is one of the best ways to draw traffic to your site. Each of the big ideas is one article.
Here's another tip if you're using someone to edit your audio. It isn't always necessary, but sometimes it is if you want to create an information product. You'll want to have the audio transcribed first then highlight the portions you want deleted and send it to your audio editor.
The transcription can then be presented as a standalone or episodic element that you will re-purpose. When you submit articles they can be episodic. They can refer to Step 1 or Step 2.
It's not always bad if it seems incomplete to have one article. You can refer people back to your site to find the others. You can say, "This is Step 1 of 5 in this series. Go to this site for the total." You're driving traffic to yourself. You're teasing them with information.
As long as your information is good, even if it doesn't make sense completely to give them one tip at a time, it will drive them back to the site. That is called "cognitive dissidence." You're giving them a little information, but not enough for them to be satisfied. You give them the solution by going back to your site.
Another important thing is to have your URL in the resource box. Most of the article portals do not allow you to have the URL in the actual text of the article. You need to make sure you have it formatted correctly in the resource box.
The URL you send them to should not necessarily be your branding site. It should be a squeeze or opt-in page where they can subscribe. The bait for the squeeze page can just be the entire audio and ebook of the same presentation.
The great thing about that is you give them a little piece of information. If they read it and went to your site, you already know they're interested. If you give them the full article or the fully transcribed audio and the audio itself, you know that they will be interested. They will not feel cheated because they will get the whole thing.
The articles are usually 200 to 600 words long. The article portal sites are basically archived articles. People can republish those articles as long as they include the resource link.
It is really important that you allow people to do this. These people could be bloggers, publishers of ezines or print newsletters, or just doing research.
It's a huge place where people can select free or cheap content to put on their website or ezine. A lot of people look for this because they don't necessarily want to be the ones creating the content.
It's also a great way to increase your search engine optimization because there is so much more content out there that's getting spidered with your name and keywords in it. It's an inexpensive way to gain web traffic and credibility.
Most of the sites are free. Obviously, you have to pay for labor to do that. It usually takes a couple of hours to submit to most of the important ones. You can do it yourself, but your time is valuable, so you don't necessarily want to do that.
Another thing to consider is a press release. Sometimes when you are speaking, you might not actually have something that you're able to publish to a press release, but they're great for attaining media attention as well as traffic. Some of these articles will be able to be formatted and repurposed as a press release.
Another thing is an ezine, which is an episodic monthly, bi-weekly or weekly publication that is sent out via email. It's a great place to repurpose the articles that you've already written. You can include a personal note, resource or link, but that article can be the content that you include in the ezine. You don't necessarily have to be creating more content each time.
Both Steve D'agostino & Caleb Scoville are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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