The Keen Marketer

Making your site somewhere people want to go can be a challenge for many people. But these 6  tips for better traffic will make your job much easier.

• What does your site look like? Does it have a dark background and light letters?  Not a good move. It seems that it is much harder to read white letters on a dark background than vice versa.  It can cause eyestrain and your visitors will leave your site by the droves.  Keep it simple by using black letters on a white or light background.

• Are you making use of the whole width of your screen for your copywriting?  Another not so good move.  The experts are saying that a writing area of no bigger than 600 pixels is preferred by readers.  People would rather scroll down than move the cursor from side to side.

• Do your site navigation tabs number over 8?  The magic number is 8.  Anymore than that and people feel that your site is too complex and too convoluted to try to decipher even if the information is really good.  They will leave for better pastures.

• Are you trying to sell vitamins along with lawnmowers?  Then you are being too wide in your niche and not targeting the people you need to.  Stay within your niche boundaries.

• Your headlines need to evoke an emotional response from your reader.  Whether you save them some money or make them feel less alone or provide them some help that will make their job easier, no matter, use the words and benefits that will get them to want to find out more.  Copywriting well done evokes emotions.

• Also, good  copywriting is not just for the headlines but also needed for taking your visitors through a series of hoops that will pre-qualify them and lead them to a product you want to sell to make their lives easier.

Improving your site does not have to be hard to do.  Just think logically, use your common good sense and if you need to,  get some good training.

I f you’ve been marketing online for a while now, you are familiar with e-books and how powerful they can be at increasing your list of contacts.  You may even have created one or used one to entice people to sign up for your newsletter.

Here is a great little training showing you how you can make an ebook work for you to increase sales over and above just giving it away to increase optin leads.

1:  A smart idea is to give away your ebook, in its entirety, in exchange for people leaving testimonials. These will come in handy for improving your ad copy with live people comments.

2:  Do you have a website or blog? Well, why not publish it in ebook format which you can write to CD disks and include in any of your direct mail packages. It’s a great advertising tool which can lead to sales of your specific products.

3:  When giving your ebook in exchange for contact information, add a little twist.  The contact can only download it if they provide email addresses of 3 to 5 friends that could be interested in your book. This is a great way to build your list.

4:  Getting free advertising can sometimes be tricky. But not if you submit your ebook to freebie and freeware/shareware web sites where people can load your ebook and see your ad.

5:  In a similar fashion, you can hold a contest, submit it to free contest or sweepstakes directories, with your ebook as the  prize. A Google search will list all you need.

6:  A clever way to offer you ebook is to make available only a few chapters. Give people a taste for what they could be getting, then if they like it, they can order the full version.

7:  Sell advertising space in your ebook by charging for a full page color ad, or classified ad or even a banner.  You can even trade advertising space in your book for space in theirs.

Now you have seven great tips that can help you increase sales with your ebook that are easy to implement but very effective.

Making your website visible is often a challenge to new online marketing beginners.  Here are 5 new ways you may not have come across before that should expose your site to more click through’s.

• Let’s say you are interested in optical lenses. A really creative idea is to have  a directory of web sites available on this specific topic.  First off, it will give people the opportunity to add the directory as a link to their website or bookmark tool.  By putting your advertisement at the top of the home page, you are in the visitors line sight and can possibly increase visits to your site by people interested in your topic, whatever it is.
  

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• You created this e-book which just isn’t taking off.  Sales are just about dead.  What to do?  Bonus to the rescue.  Offer it as a free bonus to someone else’s product or even as an incentive to optin your newsletter.  Don’t forget to place your ad somewhere on the product to get more exposure.

• Know anyone else who has a list?  Well, offer to trade adverts with them and have your ad placed at the bottom or top of each autoresponder email.  Your agreement could cover the number of emails you would send and for how long.  It’s a win-win situation giving you both new exposure to new faces.

• People love tips, especially when it saves them money.  So start a free tip line.  Decide if you want to have it daily, weekly or monthly.  Allowing the viewer to add to the tip series is also a smart tactic that will attract others and give you really good content to share.  It’s all about value!

• You’ve heard of paying to have your content on ezines with a large list of followers.  Well, save yourself some money and exchange some content with other sites such as trading articles etc.  The resource box would include a link back to you.  How great is that for backlinks?

Thinking of innovative ways to promote your site does not have to be complicated especially when the proper internet training is in place to point you in the right direction.  I like to follow the KISS procedure.  Keep It Simple Sally!

Get ready for 2010 with 12 tips for getting more people to read your content by using these quick and effective ideas.

If you are ever wondering how you can boost readership of your content then pay attention to these 12 tips that are certain to bring in the clicks you deserve. This is training you want to listen to.

• Writing articles that teach how to do a specific thing are hot. People want to know and will read them.  Publish them in article e-zines as they will provide backlinks to your site.

• In your emails, add a P.S. at the end of your letter with a tip about the size of a paragraph on how to, let’s say, improve your copy writing skills or where to get free video skins.

• Use words such “top 7″ or “top 5″ ways to do something. Using a list is easy for people to scan and get the tips fast.

• Especially easy is to leverage the news and linking that news topic to your subject at hand. This gets readers more inclined to read your content as they are already pumped by the media to start off with.

• People love to read about how others have succeeded.  They want to know what that person may be doing differently and then hopefully they can choose to do that too in order to succeed.  So go out there and interview someone that has something important to say.

• Publishing your own product and giving it away for free can increase your readership tremendously.

• Don’t forget to publish your business history or profile where appropriate. It will create trust and attract people to your content.

• Reviews about your product or someone else’s can be quite informative to those that it interests.  It shows that you can be unbiased and provide value with a fair assessment.

• Don’t  forget to use visual helpers in the content you create to make your point. People love examples, charts and  photos.

• Tell a story and use humor.  Telling a story activates the readers imagination.  Entertaining your readers can also be done using puzzles, games, contests, quizzes.

• If applicable, prove what you say by publishing resources that support your content. This gives you credibility and pushes you further up the expert ladder.  For example, you can reprint information with your opinion added, transcribe what happened at seminars or what someone said while you were there in person. Press releases are a great tool to get this information seen.

• Don’t be a stick in the mud and provide content only through the written word. Don’t forget audio recordings and video, MP3 files and podcasts.

Go ahead and start the New Year by implementing some or all of these ideas and make your content something everyone will want to read because it is vibrant and dynamic and delivers the value you want to serve your client with in the best possible way.

Many online business entrepreneurs sometimes get stuck as to how they can improve their profits.

That’s why I have 5 unusual ways you can do just that. Read On.

• So you want backlinks, right? At least that’s what your online training has shown you must do in order to get traffic toy our site. Well, why not offer to write articles exclusively for one site in exchange for a link back to your site? A win win situation.

• Work extra hard at keeping your customer service in good standing order by keeping in touch on a personal note or even send them a postcard. Snail mail is often overlooked but is an excellent tool and makes your customer feel appreciated with the personal touch.

• Run surveys often and ask your customers what they would like to see. A great free tool to do just that is SurveyBob. It’s versatile and has many bells and whistles you would pay for with other online survey tool suppliers.

• Review your site for navigation ease. Often, we build and build without thought of how hard or easy it is go get around. So act like a customer and go visit your site.  Jot down what needs to be tweaked. If all if great, then kudos to you.

• Just because your site is up doesn’t mean that nothing changes.  If you have freebies, then change them every once in a while or otherwise, if someone visits your page more than once and a long period of time has expired and the same things is still there, they will sense that not much new info has been added and that this site is neglected. And it may not be neglected but you have to show it by changing some things around.  Send out a notice to your list about the new freebie and keep your visitors happy so they will want to come back.

We will be going through a list of do’s and don’ts that is not often found among similar lists online. This list was compiled by those who have been there and know what to do and what not to do. 

1. Don’t post direct links to affiliate pages right at first

Why not? Because directing your prospect to a site that tries selling to them is not a good reflection of you. You only come across as someone who wants their money and are not giving

2. Pre-sell by creating your own pre-selling page before linking is done

When someone gets to you through your blog or your articles, it shows that you value them as opposed to shuffling them off to a page that wants to “sell” them something.

3. Maintain a regular presence at all times is crucial.

Your old content becomes just that, old. You need to constantly update and create.

4. Duplicate content re-posted everywhere else just doesn’t cut it.

But it doesn’t mean that you can’t change the article and re-post it to the same place, an ezine, or your  blog. You can even  take the same topic and create a video about it or a podcast.

5. Write more sales posts than value posts

If you end up with a reputation of only putting out sales style content, you will be shunned. That goes for all social media websites as well as your own. Your audience wants to learn from you, laugh with you, enjoy reading your stuff. When you give them that most of the time, guess what..the occasional times that you do post a sales item, they’ll read it. Why? Because they have become used to receiving value from you and they assume that what you are offering has value also.

6. Don’t get lazy on twitter and pre-load sales tweets

Now don’t get me wrong. Pre-loading does work but do it smartly. Focus mainly on value while using sales pitches just here and there.

7. Forget to write posts and articles around a specific keyword or words

Keywords are king, no matter what you may have heard. Right along with valuable content.  So don’t forget this most important tip over all others.

8. Don’t let new projects and new information side track you from focusing on what you know.

Stay on track by scheduling your time between answering emails, creating content and studying a new skill.

9. Give Value and details. How?

A good example is Not spending enough time on new web page construction, and putting them online anyway Don’t forget that  what you put up is a reflection of you. It is how people come to know you and whether they grow to trust you. So pay attention.

10. Giving great advice to others but then not taking it to heart yourself.

Do as I say not as I do? Is that what you do? Don’t!Practice what you preach. Your business will love you better for it.

It may all hinge on the training you have received as to whether you take your own advice or not.

If you’re like me, you use your autoresponder to collect leads, send follow-up emails and do the occasional broadcast.

But the autoresponder is much more versatile and can be a great asset to your online marketing business.

autoresponder

Here are some new ways for you to use your autoresponder:

• as an email digest of everyone’s contact info

• to publish a price list of your products and services

• for free reports related to your business giving away something of value

• to collect your customers’ opinions through surveys

• to publish a FAQ compilation of questions

• to show testimonials of your products or service

• to use as a newsletter using old articles in back issues

• to show off your website piece by piece

All of the above should give you enough ideas for you to never run out of  ways tol increase your exposure while still giving extremely good content to your customers.

Some of you may wonder if writing a press release is really worth the effort.

Do you want exposure?  Dramatically increase your sales? Enhance your image? Yes?

Then write a press release!

In most cases you can do this for absolutely nothing or very little cost.  The best part about press release marketing is that it is very easy to do and you reap the benefits from doing work once for along period of time.

There are two ways to get traffic from press releases.

The first way that you can get traffic from one press release is from natural search engine listings and getting natural traffic.  You achieve that by using certain keywords and the search engines will list that release on the search rankings, often within the top ten on certain keywords.

The second way is by getting traffic from the actual submissions services themselves.

Now a press release is basically an announcement or explanation of a product or service and is usually 2 or more paragraphs and can be up to 1 page and should contain a link to your site at the bottom.

But to write a good press release, here are 5 steps to follow that will deliver the results you want.

Before you read on, here is an example of a press release that contains all of the criteria explained below.

First of all, your release must interest a specific market. So you better know who your target audience is and have a title/headline that will be attention grabbing and should contain the primary keyword that you want Google and other engines to index it for.

Secondly, you need to create your summary which is usually 2 to 4 sentences in length.  A quick tip here, could be to use the headline of a capture page or you could write in journalistic style rather than marketing style.

Third, it’s time to write the body of your release which can be anywhere from 2 paragraphs to a page. You should be giving people enough information about your product or service without getting into too much detail, and the only way for them to find out more is to go to your site.

There is  no need to fatten with fancy words. Be brief and to the point and using bullet points can get your message across faster and easier.

Fourth, you have to tell your reader what to do next.  So at the end of the body, have a call to action which will send them to your capture page.

Fifth, it’s always a good idea to use a tracking link for your website address.  How else will you know how much traffic this release is generating for you and how many leads it has produced?

A press release service such as Free-Press-Release costs you nothing but it can add as many as 80 free leads in less than 24 hours.