1. Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary… an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, for more details visit to www.outsource-beginners.com and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise. 2. Blogging is realistic. In this day and age where advertising inundate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You absolutely want to buy a tried and tested product. 3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any chance for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Useless to say, paid blog pages can earn more income for your growing business. 4. Blogging builds reliability. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, for more details visit to www.tube-pros-espects.com or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site. 5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:

-By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail’s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.

-By using subscription. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blogsite. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.

-By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

-By joining a blog network –A network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and handiness in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.

-By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.

Ultra Selects International

Thanks to Mike Volpe at Hubspot.com for putting together this great video of piecing together the puzzle of today’s online Internet Marketing tactics that are producing higher conversion rates.

 There is an evolution of authority sites that are standing out in the crowd because the Internet Marketing gap is closing as laser targeted prospects or leads are becoming far more sophisticated in their evaluation stages about your product or service. This self discovery movement is genuinely orchestrated as they look for solutions to their needs within the social communities of the Web 2.0 platforms.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, let us look at the old school marketing tactics vs. the Web 2.0 Internet Marketing tactics of today.

Old school advertising or marketing deals with the ‘needle in a hay stack’ approach where massive exposure drummed up leads for a sale. This exposure consisted of:

• Print Advertising
• Telemarketing
• Direct mail/email campaigns
• Tradeshows
• Inside Sales
• Seminars

The average for this type of approach usually ran about 2-3% of your overall volume of people reached, IF done properly, are considered a ‘quality’ lead.

The New Internet Marketing experience – Organic Traffic Building, is built around laser targeted traffic that have picked you out of the crowd as an authority in your niche.

What was it that drove this traffic to you?

It is the power of social communities and word of mouth advertising (kinda sounds like Network Marketing, hmmmm). The contributing factors that brought these qualified leads to you are:

• SEO
• PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising (consists of about 25% of organic searches)
• Buzz Marketing
• Blogging
• Smart Content Management
• Landing or Squeeze Pages
• Conversion Tools
• Sophisticated Analytics

Take it from me, that attracting your leads to you is far more rewarding and brings a higher conversion rate than if you just spent countless dollars on advertising for a mere pittance of a qualified lead. According to Marketing Sherpa’s “Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008″ about 98% of B2B buyers start in Google when performing their self discovery quest.

Organic traffic has longer lasting residual results as compared to PPC because the exposure you get from PPC is directly dependent upon the size of your wallet.

Note the 5 tips to Internet Marketing Success in Mike’s video above.

1. On Page SEOVisible SEO   -Page title   -URL has title keywords in it.   -Heading tags have same keywords   -Page text has bolding of keywords  Invisible SEO   -Description (not used in ranking, but more so for listing summary relevance that shows your customers what they want)   -keywords (5 to 7 max)
2. Off Page SEO   -Page rank = Links (the more links from high quality sites the better your page rank)   -Quality linking   -Leverage partners   -Be wary of linking directories as you may get penalized.
3. Start a Blog   -Fresh content   -Link likelihood is better than to a static page   -Conversational (engages customer interaction)   -Social Bookmarks (Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, etc.)   -Blogger.com or other exterior site platforms vs. localized site blog (www.xyz.com/blog)
4. Optimize Forms   -Raise your conversion rates (shorten forms, add cookies to get more info, experiment with this)   -Have a very clear call to action (and only one!)   -Remove navigation for lead capture/squeeze page   -Add short testimonial quotes and photos   -Have a strong offer   -Link to your privacy policy to give your customer assurance that their info is safe with you.
5. Measure Everything   -Web visitors   -Website conversion rate (# leads / # visitors)   -Lead conversion rate (# sales from leads / # leads)   -Cost per lead   -All of the above sorted by source/program

Thanks again to Hubspot.com for their indepth marketing analysis and for more Internet Marketing Tips use their FREE Internet Marketing Resource – WebsiteGrader.com, for more comprehensive analysis and subscribe to their blog by email or RSS by going to SmallBusinessHub.com.

A new social network dedicated to learning about Web 2.0 and elevating your Social Networking IQ has just started. You will get to know others in the industry from beginners to advanced Web 2.0 marketers, so be prepared to see some familiar faces because this is already becoming the place to hang out.

The Social Site, Social Marketing Central, and is from none other than Web 2.0 Guru, Jack Humphrey. There is no doubt, if you’re looking to learn and network with other marketers who love social networking and than you will love this site! They are discussing everything from how to be successful in Digg, Squidoo and Linking. This was just started so NOW is a good time to join and get to know others in there and see what you can start learning from each other.

There are so many social sites out there and I think the key is to find a handful you really enjoy hanging out in, learning from and possibly meet some new business partners! Check it out right now: Social Marketing Central

Photo by Asif Akbar 

For more Web 2.0 Marketing, check out: http://www.marketingwarriorteam.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

The days of internet marketing with a static billboard site have come and gone off into the sunset. Today’s cutting edge technology allows home business owners the ability to reach out through the computer monitor to touch and create a relationship with their visitor allowing a unique personal one-on-one introduction. No different than writing your name on the back of a business card, this electronic age has allowed you to pass your personal energy via the medium of audio and video or in an even simplier form of posted comments and replies in the blogosphere.

Now the biggest fear most marketers have is actually stepping out of the box and doing what it takes to be successful in the old school way of belly-to-belly marketing - the fear of REJECTION. With the ability to actually reach your target audience via a video or audio presentation which you record once, pack it up and walk away with absolutely no fear of rejection, the playing field of successful marketers has just been levelled and expanded exponentially.

REMEMBER!

Marketing is the art and science of creating a relationship with another human being based on their needs and not yours or mine.

So ask yourself this………… do YOU have what it takes to be successful?

Find out here if you are ready to confront your fears.

Okay, here is the latest ping list I have found over at Brandon’s site.  I also use pingomatic and onlywire as well after I post which both comprise a number of different sites in one shot.

If you’re part of the Authority Site Center or read the Web2.0 book than you may already have a list of [tag]pings[/tag]. I have happened upon so many but find they change some pretty quickly and can get broken [tag]links[/tag]. If you have any to add or find any broken links on this one, please let me know. It’s supposed to up to date, but what is these days especially on the [tag]Internet[/tag].

Ping List

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

happy blogging! Remember, a Warrior Marketer not only uses his/her marketing skills but his/her mindset which should be strong in belief in yourself and you’re going.

Cheers! Kelly

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“Uh oh,” I thought as Jack explained what not to do on these social sites. And how it’s not the same as the old way of marketing through direct marketing letters and such. I was panicked because I know I did some things wrong already on certain social sites and I was hoping I didn’t do too much damage yet.

“Just move forward with the information I now know,” I thought.

Why? Because this is the wave of how everything is going. This is what we are passionate about and what we plan to use to build our business.

We already have the mindset, that is a part of building any business and will never change. But I am obviously going to make mistakes along the way. What’s exciting is putting the research, internet surfing and writer’s hat on which is where I started long before I started this endeavor and was in the journalism field. This is the fun part and the possibilities are endless.

So get ready for the rollercoaster ride and grab on until you see the whites of your knuckles. If you have any suggestions, thoughts or stories about your journey you want to share about your web 2.0 experiences you’re welcome here because we are in this together. I will share whatever tools and tricks we discover along the way. . .

Cheers!
Kelly

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