There are differences between best practices and using SEO as a means to achieve the goals of your search marketing strategy. Do you know which method your agency is using? …
On January 28, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
There are differences between best practices and using SEO as a means to achieve the goals of your search marketing strategy. Do you know which method your agency is using? …
On January 7, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
People blog for different reasons. Some people have an idea for a blog and they want to turn that idea into a real moneymaker. There have been real successful bloggers who have done this, but most attempts that I have encountered have failed. They had an idea and turned their blog into a business model. [...]
People blog for different reasons. Some people have an idea for a blog and they want to turn that idea into a real moneymaker. There have been real successful bloggers who have done this, but most attempts that I have encountered have failed. They had an idea and turned their blog into a business model. Nothing at all wrong with that. How you can tell if a blog has failed is if you see it ranking well in the search engines and have not seen any new posts for months. I can’t tell you how many blogs I have seen, really great ones that get abandoned due to lack of advertisers or poor monetization strategy…that is another blog post topic all together. Others have taken a blog and used it as a marketing tool for a business. Is there a different strategy involved?
Yes. A blog as a business model is different than a blog as a marketing-tool model. But, in reality, both types of blogs require a marketing strategy all to themselves. The key is to drive targeted visitors to your blog from many different sources and which ever type of blog you have – business or marketing tool – you’ll need to market the blog. People often forget that a blog (especially a stand alone one) is a website that needs to be marketed.
There are a variety of ways to market a blog, but it all starts with the blog itself. The most basic form on online marketing is search engine optimization. This is the beginning. By optimizing your blog for search engine traffic you are giving your blog the basic building blocks to act as a business on its own or be used as a marketing tool for your existing business. In some cases, you can even do both. Without a solid SEO strategy for your blog, however, success as either will inevitably allude you. Don’t forget to SEO your blog.
Search engine optimziation is one really good source for targeted visitors however there are many other great ways to drive targeted visitors to your blog, they include:
1. Search Engine Optimization – Make sure your blog has excellent content and is naturally optimized.
2. Online Publicity – Publish newsworthy press releases online to drive relevant visitors and good inbound links.
3. Social Networking – Become active in the top social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and talk about your blog.
4. Social Bookmarking – Submit your blog posts to good social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.
5. Guest Blog Writing (on other blogs) - Over time develop your credibility in your niche and write for other related blogs.
6. Opt-In Email Marketing – Build a list through your blog and send out newsletters that drive people back to your blog.
The bottom line is blogging is a useful and long term approach that really works. If you are launching a business as a blog or using your blog to market your business, either way take the time to develop a long term marketing strategy. Believe me, it will be worth your time!
On December 21, 2009, In SEO, Web Design Tips, by Rob Smith
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There’s very little to stop anyone becoming a freelancer. In a highly competitive and, in most places, saturated market, you need to make sure your reputation as a freelancer is well-managed and continues to grow. It’s very possible to get a good reputation without being the best in the world, and it’s even easier to lose that reputation.
In this article, we’ll explore 15 habits that are essential in helping freelancers effectively safeguard and grow their reputation, and we’ll also discuss how to make freelancing work for you. The habits are split into 3 sections:
- Marketing
- Business and time
- Specific business areas
There’s very little to stop anyone becoming a freelancer. In a highly competitive and, in most places, saturated market, you need to make sure your reputation as a freelancer is well-managed and continues to grow. It’s very possible to get a good reputation without being the best in the world, and it’s even easier to lose that reputation. In this article, we’ll explore 15 habits that are essential in helping freelancers effectively safeguard and grow their reputation, and we’ll also discuss how to make freelancing work for you. The habits are split into 3 sections:
- Marketing
- Business and time
- Specific business areas
Marketing and Relationships
1. The Presentation Habit
Your website should be at the centre of your marketing strategy. It’s where people go to see who you are, what you’re about, whether you know what you’re talking about and what work you have done. It’s your silent 24/7 salesman, and it needs to be right. Fortunately, what your website needs is straightforward:
- Well-presented work with a good description of the roles you played
- A brief history of who you are and why you’re where you are
- Contact details that are easily accessible
- Content that is continually tweaked, added to, and updated
Other than that, you can go wherever you want with your own website — and so you should. Personality is key. Some great examples:
2. The Networking Habit
They say that within 6 degrees of separation, everyone knows everyone. So you need to make sure that everyone within your 1st degree (i.e. people you know), know exactly what you do. It needs to be exact as well. If you’re a developer you don’t want people saying you’re a website designer, and so on. Your current network of friends, family, and associates are your free word-of-mouth marketing – so get them talking about you right now.
Once this is done, your network needs to be extended and enhanced. Register with any social networking platforms that can work for you — LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Within those places, start getting into the right circles. On LinkedIn you may join some appropriate discussion groups that are either local or skill based. On Twitter you may start tweeting and including appropriate hashtags so more people can see your tweet on that subject.
There are many ways to network and connect with people, so it’s crucial that a freelancer not be afraid to talk to people and share information and contacts. Learn the networking habit and get yourself known.
3. The Niching Habit
The reasons having a niche is valuable are simple: It’s easier to become an expert in a niche. It’s easier to sell to other prospects within that niche as they can see what you have done before. As an expert in that niche you can charge a premium for your depth of knowledge.
The key to this habit is to proactively build your own niches. Seek out profitable areas in which you can work and concentrate on building niches.
4. The Pricing Habit
Second part of the pricing habit — protect yourself. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in winning a project that you forgot some simple rules. If you have never worked with a client before, ask for a small percentage of the fee before you do any work. At this early stage, you won’t know whether they will pay! Reduce your bad debt by either only working for clients you trust or having some remuneration first.
Third part of the pricing habit — be flexible. Make sure you find a way to make the commercial deal a win-win for both parties. This could be:
- Monthly payments (regular cash flow over the course of the project)
- Payment when you hit certain project milestones (e.g. project performance)
- Deposit and balance on completion (best avoided for cash flow reasons)
- Possible exchange of services
5. The Growth Habit
It’s been claimed that it costs seven times as much in resources to acquire a new client than it does to grow an existing one. So the growth habit is about proactively looking at your clients in detail so you can discover new ways to help them.
One practical way to do this is to cross reference. Write all your services across the top of an excel sheet, then put your clients down the left hand column. Now place an X in the box where a service you have done matches a client. The boxes without X’s are potential growth opportunities and should all be explored before spending too much energy trying to acquire new clients.
Business and Time
This section is less screenshot, more serious business.
6. The time management habit
Lacking good habits in time management could cause you to over-committing yourself at certain times, which could lead to:
- Missing a deadline and disappointing a client
- Producing sloppy or inaccurate work
- Causing yourself stress because of the pressure to get everything done
The solution to this is an effective planning mechanism. Estimate how long the work will take you, then add a buffer to your estimation. This will ensure that, if it does take longer, it won’t eat into other projects. A 50% buffer works well. That may sound like a lot, but if you go over by 25% and then there are additional client emendations, you’ll need it. Once you have the total time allocation, add it to your diary. Now, here’s the crucial part: Do not move it, shrink it, or change it in any way. If you have to do something urgent that will interfere with that scheduled work, make sure the time is reallocated elsewhere.
A simple calendar application like
7. The Flexibility Habit
What happens if nothing comes up to fill that pre-allocated time? Well you might finish that other project early and can add something special. What happens if the whole day is taken up by urgent project? No problem, you had already planned this might happen, so you won’t let anyone down.
Of course you’re not going to be able to foresee everything, but a certain level of flexibility will allow you to please your clients and be relatively free of stress because of time constraints.
8. The Honesty Habit
Agencies will not use you again if you let a client down, and your chance of repeat work is slim to none. In the same way, you should not over commit your time, but stay within your capabilities. We all need to stretch ourselves on new projects and learn new techniques and practices — that’s not what this is about. This is about promising to do a task in a specified time when, in actuality, you don’t have any idea whether it’s feasible or not. Above all else, people appreciate honesty. You’re better off being honest about whether you can handle a project rather than taking the risk of letting them down.
So how can you grow your skills and help your clients? By being honest and asking some good questions:
- “I don’t think this project is right for me. I don’t have much experience in [insert technology here]“
- “I can really help you with the [insert service here] part of this project, but I know another freelancer who can help with it. Would you be happy if I managed the project for you but outsourced this other work?”
- “I’ll need more information before I know how long this project will take. Would you mind if I spent a couple of hours doing some research so I can give you an accurate timescale?”
9. The Over-Delivery Habit
Do not deliver your projects early. Sound strange? It’s not. If you deliver early, there’s a possibility the client will think you overcharged, and may expect part of his payment to be returned. They might also expect future work to be completed ahead of schedule, which may set a bad precedent.
Instead, use the extra time to focus on whizz-bang elements — those extra bits of polish and creativity that will gain you the reputation you deserve and let you grow. For a designer this might mean spending time adding nice touches to your graphics; for a developer, it could mean more time to implement a cool piece of JavaScript to replace the plain functionality you originally settled for. The “over-deliver” will earn you a solid reputation, whereas finishing early could get you into trouble.
10. The Business Advice Habit
Although as a freelancer you’re skilled at what you do, don’t assume you’ll be able to do your accounts and bookkeeping, fill in tax returns, produce an invoice or write a proposal all by yourself.
Seek regular advice from respected professionals to help you with these aspects of running your business. This might include speaking with people who run their own operations and understand the ins and outs better than you do. Learn as much as possible from their experiences and mistakes.
Specific Business Areas
What’s out there to help you run your business and what areas do you need to focus on? In this section, we’ll discuss some applications that have earned reputations for helping freelancers do their jobs and be more professional.
11. The Email Habit
Email is toxic. As a freelancer you can easily become what’s commonly known as a busy fool. You might spend a significant part of your day just sending and receiving email without ever getting any work done. Instead, be in the habit of controlling email, and not letting it control you.
To do this you need to:
- Turn off all the little reminders, message counts, and other indicators that may catch your eye
- Configure your email client to run a “send and receive” at longer intervals, maybe as little as once per hour
- Set aside blocks of time in the day to deal with all email, then switch it off; if something is urgent, people will use the phone
- Use the ‘touch it once’ philosophy; fully read and deal with every email you open, instead of half-reading some and coming back to them later
12. The Project Management Habit
Some clients will want you to fit in with their processes, while others will not enforce this. You need to have very clear processes for how you start working with a client and start a new project. What questions do you ask a new client? Where do you store the information they tell you? How do you keep track of how close the deadline is? Where do you store all the files they send you?
Email is not sufficient for this! Things will get lost, forgotten or overlooked. You might prefer cardboard folders or ring binders or whatever works for you — but use something and stick to your own system. There are applications like
13. The Research & Development Habit
Sounds like a big company thing to do but R&D is essential to a good freelance operation. You need to be ahead of the curve or at the very least on it to be servicing your clients most effectively. Be in the habit of investing time for research and development. Expand your current skills and learn new ones.
Never designed a billboard before? That’s development.
Don’t know which email marketing system might help your clients? That’s research.
Set aside time every week to do R&D. Build up a list of blogs that feed you new thinking and new ideas. Listen to informative podcasts (
14. The Sales and CRM Habit
How can you allocate your time and resources and figure out whether or not you need to be hunting for new work or concentrating on servicing current clients? You should know at any given time what your work pipeline looks like, how likely is it all to materialize, and at roughly what value.
There are various applications out there to help, such as
15. The Accounts Habit
Making sure you have any easy way to produce, send, and track invoices is essential, as is getting into the habit of running your accounts professionally, because such habits will ensure regular cash flow. Applications like
Further Resources
About the author
Rob Smith is the digital director of
(ll)
© Rob Smith for
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On December 17, 2009, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
When you finally reach that point where you want to introduce search engine marketing and optimization in your overall marketing strategy it is important to understand how SEO fits into your overall marketing equation. Even though there are many different approaches and SEO service providers out there, it is important to understand that SEO is [...]
When you finally reach that point where you want to introduce search engine marketing and optimization in your overall marketing strategy it is important to understand how SEO fits into your overall marketing equation. Even though there are many different approaches and SEO service providers out there, it is important to understand that SEO is a form of inbound marketing.
If your website visitors do not convert you have to realize that this is not a direct problem from SEO service provider. Remember you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. If your website is set up poorly than all the SEO in the world will not help you become successful. Unless you hired a firm or a person to do more than just search engine optimization this should not be looked at as the problem. The problem is most likely many other factors.
Take a look at the following factors that might be affecting your website conversion:
1. Design: When was the last time your website has been updated? Is the design on par with your audience? Put yourself in their shoes for a moment and try to anticipate what you would like a website to look at. Does yours look this way? You cannot not be in denial here, if you are targeting a young demographic and your website hasn’t been updated since 2001 than it might be time to freshen things up a bit. Good design elements keep people engaged and wanting to know more.
2. Conversion Aspects: Does your website traffic need to figure out how to use your website? If your website makes a visitor work on how to contact you than you are already loosing the race. If you are an e-commerce site you have to make multiple entry points into your store from every single page. If you are a service based business you should have a phone number and lead form located almost everywhere so that you pave the way for that visitor to create some sort of action. The goal of your business needs to reflect immediately in your design otherwise you might lose that visitor forever.
3. Products: Everyone wants to think their service or products are the best but at some point you have to ask yourself if people really want what you’re selling. It might just be that your product isn’t cutting it. If this is the case you are better off to realize this at an early stage than spending a lot of money marketing a product people might not really be interested in.
4. Content: Remember your content should be written for the visitors that come to your website and should not just be written for the search engines. If your website content is poorly written (with weak call to action) then this could be a major reason why people are leaving your website and are not converting.
To close out here, make sure you take a moment to properly analyze your website if you start to see organic visitors (from your SEO efforts) are not converting as much as they should.
On December 16, 2009, In SEO, Social Media Marketing, by Guest Authors
In the last article on Facebook we looked at the 7 Fatal Sins that will Kill your Facebook Marketing Strategy. In this article I am going to talk about things that You need to focus on to build out a super successful network of people who listen to and respect you. Following is my list [...]
In the last article on Facebook we looked at the 7 Fatal Sins that will Kill your Facebook Marketing Strategy. In this article I am going to talk about things that You need to focus on to build out a super successful network of people who listen to and respect you. Following is my list of 7 Must Do’s to Maximize your Facebook Marketing experience… use them and prosper!
1. Relationship first / Business Second – Get this one wrong and you will never build significant influence and your time will be better spent somewhere else. Your primary goal on Facebook MUST be to build relationships and to build rapport with your new friends. So how do you do this? Simple; comment on their stuff, interact with them, get to know them and read their profile etc. Just show genuine interest
2. Concentrate on Quality not Quantity – Many folks get on Facebook and try to add as many people as possible. Instead slow down and be sure to build rapport with your new friends. A smaller more connected group will outperform and more importantly out value a larger less connected following. Please do not underestimate or try to circumvent this part of the process. A good idea is to start with a very small Core group of people that are ‘Influencers’ in your niche. Build a relationship with them and then build out from there.
3. Protect your Reputation at all Costs – Your most valuable asset in Social Media is your Reputation. Make sure you rise up as the go to person in your industry or niche. 67% of people will consult with social media sites for recommendations BEFORE they buy anything, so you want to build the reputation of someone that people trust and go to for advice. Don’t give into the allure of spamming for a quick buck. Not only it doesn’t work, but you’ll kill your reputation and a bad reputation is very, very hard to turn around.
4. Be Authentic – Be a real person. It’s ok to be vulnerable and to show your shortcomings; this tells people that you are truthful and genuine. People will be able to connect with you at a deeper level and the trust will build exponentially. In other words you do not need to be nor should you be Perfect. Be yourself; like attracts like. Believe in YOU.
5. Transparency is Paramount – There is nowhere to hide online anymore so don’t try to. If you don’t like a product or service don’t Promote it just to make a quick buck as it will come back to haunt you. You’ll slowly lose your influence and your social power will disappear. You will find less and less response and interaction as people realize that you are not always sharing the full story. Shadiness will lead to mis-trust.
6. Follow Through – When you set out to do something follow through with it. If you make a statement make sure you see it through. People are watching you. The great thing is 9 out of 10 people will never see anything through so you jump above 90% by just seeing your task through to the end. It is very important in the eyes of your followers. Be a man or woman of your word.
7. Be Interested not Interesting – The most important person in the world to your follower is YOUR FOLLOWER! So what does that mean? Be interested in them! Listen more and preach less. People are most interested in themselves so indulge a little. Ask people Where are you from / What do you do / Who do you know. This will expose commonalities, connections and similar interests. Think of benefits for THEM in your communication.
The above 7 items will ensure you build significant influence. By taking the time to do things right you will be enriching the lives of others and in doing so enriching your own. This represents the mindset you need to have to build a mutually beneficial relationship with your expanding Facebook Network. In future articles I will get in to the details of exactly what you can do to market yourself on Facebook. Just keep in mind that the preceding points should govern everything else you do there.
About the Author : Roger Silen, to learn the next Facebook Marketing steps, now that you have the Mindset down, visit Facebook Marketing Strategy where I show all my Facebook Marketing Secrets.
On December 11, 2009, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
In today’s online market place it is important for all business and entrepreneurs to realize that the playing field has changed quite drastically over the last few years. There are many new platforms and websites that businesses can eagerly leverage to drive new exposure, traffic and eye balls than there ever has been before. Social [...]
In today’s online market place it is important for all business and entrepreneurs to realize that the playing field has changed quite drastically over the last few years. There are many new platforms and websites that businesses can eagerly leverage to drive new exposure, traffic and eye balls than there ever has been before. Social Media Marketing technology has made it much easier to become visible online and it is up to you as a business owner to take advantage of this technology.
Launching a blog and having an active Twitter and Facebook account go hand in hand. If you don’t understand why that is not important yet just realize that having both is the first step to building new qualified website visitors. At the very least make it a point to have both created as soon as possible and worry how to incorporate into your marketing strategy after, your audience is waiting. After you launch your blog there are many sure fire ways to build new networks of happy customers and potential clients. Twitter and Facebook will be a nice meeting place for them to join and meet but it will be the blog that gets them there. When you launch a blog and start writing new posts you will most likely have to get those blog posts out there a bit at first to start building up new loyal readers. Once you have your Facebook and Twitter accounts all built with nice little links and great profile images you can sync the Twitter account along with your Facebook fan page. What this will ultimately do is eliminate one step for yourself. As you drop your blog post link into your Facebook fan page it will automatically create a link in your Twitter account for you. This is one great and convenient way to not only drive targeted visitors to your website from a variety of Twitter users but also build up your Facebook fan page as well.
This takes time so it is important to start doing it now and be consistent with it. Online marketing takes time to grow like anything else. Over time you will slowly start to build up followers on your Twitter account and fans on your Facebook page. As the search engines evolve even more they will require an element of social interaction through all the various social platforms in order to really help your SEO efforts.
On December 8, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
Planning and succeeding with your holiday international search marketing strategy can seem daunting, but there are opportunities with this highly elusive global crowd. …
Planning and succeeding with your holiday international search marketing strategy can seem daunting, but there are opportunities with this highly elusive global crowd. …
On November 23, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
Fully research why you’re using a particular social media strategy tactic. Did your agency tell you that you “need” it? Or is your audience there and interacting already, or is there potential for branding and exposure? …
Fully research why you’re using a particular social media strategy tactic. Did your agency tell you that you “need” it? Or is your audience there and interacting already, or is there potential for branding and exposure? …