The Keen Marketer

In the world today we are in a re-creation mode…whether it’s government, economic, internet, and even right down to the households on main-street.  The same opportunity to re-create your identity awaits or rather demands your attention in an online presence for lead generation.

The online or internet information marketplace is evolving minute by minute exchanging ideas, methods, how to, strategies, and who’s who.  We all explore this web daily, but are you taking advantage of what it offers you and what you can contribute?  It’s time to claim your own piece of internet real estate.  The question is how to create a personal brand & online identity?  This is a big topic with many pieces so let’s look into the foundation of your personal brand, your conduct, and the methods or tools to build your brand identity.

Understanding the “how” actually begins with “you” as the foundation.  Ask yourself who you are, what you bring to the table, what are you passionate about, and direct those answers into the picture of you that will be created for the world to see.

Don’t take this lightly, dig deep and even ask others how they see in you.  Understand that you will attract those that have similar feelings, beliefs, values, passions, opinions, experiences, and relations with what you have to share.  Like attracts like.  The idea here is connecting with others in a way that makes them feel good about themselves, more positive, and part of something more than a single voice. 

Now you have the “you” template.

The next part is what I will call your “conduct” or the manner in which you share you and your value with others.  This seems like a no brainer, but we are human after all and that leaves room for discussing this point.  The goal here is to maintain a personal professional respect for yourself and your audience.  In other words everything you put on the internet is there forever…so ask yourself, would my granny approve?

Let’s just say that sharing your debut at the beach in a thong might not give a positive impression, get it, got it, good.

To add to your foundation you will need a central point of content, contact, and  interaction.  Most would refer to this location as your “HUB”.  I recommend that your “HUB” be your blog.  Now your blog can be a stand alone or a part of your website depending on what you intend to achieve.  A business will often promote their products/services and use the blog to provide information, their expertise, and solutions to customers.  An individual may just want to share ideas, connect with others, and establish their presence for personal efforts without a monetizing effort.  No matter your objective the “HUB” is where all points of your activity online return.

I recommend WordPress as a platform for either of these efforts.

After establishing your “HUB” your next steps will begin to build inbound links or “spokes” with other tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.  Each provides access to communities, connections, and more points to share you and your value with the world.  How to create a personal brand & online identity just takes some thought, common sense, and consistent action to develop and re-create “you” online.

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About the Author:
Karl Keller, professional career sales/marketing, first love baseball, taking leverage to main-street, family man, online entrepreneur & coach, global home business owner, outdoorsman, problem solver Website/Blog: http://KarlsBlog.info/blog
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Thank you Karl for your great tips on personal branding.  Might I add that a service like BrandingYouInc takes all the guess work out of doing right the first at such a low cost that it would be a “no brainer” not to take a look.

In this first part of an ongoing series we took a look at some best practices marketers can follow when implementing article marketing campaigns. This second installment of the series will examine a method for ensuring that the author behind an article writing campaign is able to remain productive in the face of a depleted idea bank.

As most marketers are aware, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of any Internet Marketing campaign. Developing a healthy set of backlinks gives your site more credibility with the various search engines, resulting in higher search engines result page (SERP) placement.

While all marketers chase after the coveted top position on these SERPs, most are satisfied with page one results. One of the most effective ways to help generate the requisite backlinks for these results is through the use of article marketing. In this second in an ongoing series on article marketing tips, we will examine some best practices that marketers should follow when writing content and posting articles for the purposes of SEO.

Write An Ongoing Series – When taking on article marketing for a new client, the ideas typically come fast and furiously. Initial articles providing general information about the client’s offerings often turn into more in-depth looks at their specific aspects and unique strengths. However, it is not unnatural for the article writer to begin coming up short of ideas for topics to write about for their respective clients. In these instances, it is always a viable option to go with an ongoing series of articles that focus on a particular facet of the client’s products.

For example, let’s say your client’s specialty is manufacturing office chairs. You have already written countless articles touting the features and advantages of their office chairs. Your search engine result page (SERP) placement is steadily increasing, but you feel like you have exhausted all possible article topics. This is the perfect time to tackle an ongoing series. In looking back at your articles, you notice one that you wrote about how comfortable chairs can positively impact your workday. The article was fairly general and merely took a broad overview of the benefits of a comfortable chair. It made passive statements about how the comfort of a chair can translate to a better mood, increased performance, stronger stamina, etc. This is the ideal launching point for an ongoing series!

In this instance it should be fairly easy for the writer to extract some of the points made in the previous article and write new pieces that elaborate even more on these advantages. Rather than settle for a sentence or two on how a good office chair can increase stamina, write a couple of paragraphs that describe how and why they do so, what this stamina means for the workday and how an uncomfortable chair can have the opposite effect.

The advantage here is twofold. First, the writer will be able to overcome their lack of ideas and sink their teeth into creating this new content. The ideas are already there, created by the writer; all they need is a little expansion and possibly a bit of research to flesh them out. Second, when a reader stumbles on one of your articles and is able to relate to or extract some value from the content, they will be very likely to seek out the other parts of the series, further strengthening their relationship with the brand you are marketing. These clicks can not only inspire better SEO value for your backlinks and article dissemination; they can often lead to conversions, which is the absolute end goal for internet marketers everywhere.

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About the Author:
Tim Kennedy writes on behalf of inSegment, Boston’s leader in search engine marketing online marketing, and the home of Boston SEO.
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Note by administrator:  Thank you Tim for a really good look at article marketing. YOur examples made the subject clearer for those that are only beginners.  That’s why online training is so important if one wants to succeed in this business.

Giving away something for Free has become the norm in order to attract people to your site. But there is a huge drawback resulting from  this giveaway tactic.

It’s losing it’s perceived value.

Every Tom, Dick and Harriet is bombarding you with free offers of some kind in order to capture your contact information.  So where does this leave you?  After all you’re after the same thing, leads.

There is an answer to this problem and it is in the way you have your visitors perceive your freebies.  You just have to make them more attractive to your audience.

How?  Well here are 8 different ways you can accomplish that”

• Put a value on your freebies. Let your viewer know that what they are getting is worth something.

• Don’t give away just one thing but several.  If they subscribe you could be letting them know that there are several bonus items they could be getting. Make sure to name them and the benefits of having them.

• Put a limited time offer on your freebie.  Scarcity seems to spur people on. They just don’t want to miss out on anything that could be good for them.

• Another way to use scarcity is to put a limit on the number of people who can get it for free.

• When giving a freebie, we don’t generally elaborate on the benefits or features of the item.  Be different and tell people what they would gain by having your free offer.

• Use great copywriting to describe your freebie.  Too often we see “get this free report by signing up here”.  Why not say something like,  “this never released top secret report”. Get the idea?

• What about testimonials for your freebies?  Third party endorsements carry much more weight than you telling people that your freebie is really great and that they should get it.

• A last but really great tactic is telling people how many people have already received your freebie.  The bigger the number, the more the perceived value as people will think they are missing out on something really great if they don’t get it.  But don’t lie!

Being creative about offering a higher perceived value to your freebies can only increase what you really want the most of, and that is traffic optins into your list.