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Monthly archives for May, 2011

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Make Your E-newsletter Efficient!

May30
2011 Leave a Comment Aby Written by Aby

It is a fact that e-newsletters are the electronic or online versions of printed newsletters, but they have a huge difference in terms of structure and format. You cannot just send a print newsletter as an e-newsletter as it is. People read print documents and online documents in different ways.

People checking online do not really go for long contents. They usually want to read brief but substantial information online. It is important to keep your e-newsletters short and concise. If you really need to include long documents, it is best to have a summary that would just be a few lines and then a link to the full document on your site.

The purpose of e-newsletters is to give updates so it must not bluntly appear as a promotional material. It must contain invaluable information, catering to the news that basically affects your target market or email recipients. Press releases must also be disregarded, you must have a separate document for the media people.

Do not forget to have a link to your website. It is also the goal of the e-newsletter to lead your recipients to your web site. Since they will just have brief information, they must get more from your web site. This is one of the best ways to build trust and relationship with your target market.

Since e-newsletters are being sent through emails, they must have attention-grabbing subject lines. This will keep your recipients reading and even going to your web site for more information. Couple this with a timely and relevant content and you are surely in the right track.

It is good to have a schedule for your newsletters and it does not need to be so frequent so it will be treated as special. In doing this, people will perceive it as something important to read. It is also best that to have a ‘call to action.’ This will make it more personal.

You must have an archive of your newsletters that can be accessed on your web site. This will help your recipients check on previous newsletters that they could have deleted. It is also important to make it easy for your target market to subscribe and unsubscribe, and to stick to your privacy statement. This will help a lot in your credibility.

Posted in Internet Marketing Basics, Lead Generation - Tagged , ,

Social Media Optimization: A Threat to Search Engines?

May23
2011 Leave a Comment Aby Written by Aby

There have been talks about Social Media Optimization (SMO), that it has been threatening to Search Engines. SMO is all about using social media in promoting your site, products, and services. Question is, how could it be a threat to the search engines? It would be best to make this a part of our Internet Marketing Basics.

Up to this point, search engines still has a huge role in sending traffic to different sites. Their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is still being trusted by people when searching for web sites, products, and services online. The Social Media does not function like a search engine. It is an avenue to connect with people and share information about you, your business, or whatever you want to share. Thinking about it, it does not seem threatening to search engines.

On the other hand, you will notice something if you are a social media user. Let’s say you are in Facebook. Can you see that it has now been widely used on marketing? Since there is a huge amount of traffic in it and a huge number of users around the world that checks it everyday, advertisers have started promoting in social media sites. Do you notice the ads that are being shown in the site?

As an advertiser, you would of course want your ads to be shown to as much people as possible. Since social media like Facebook has been known to have a big number of viewers, it would be a nice target for ads. This is where the threat to Search Engines start.

We have discussed Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising. This is the way search engines earn through ads. If advertisers will be compelled to post their ads in social media instead of doing PPC, then it will be threatening to the search engines in this area of their business. However, this just posed as a threat and there is still no concrete basis that the search engines will be overthrown by the social media in this matter. It may affect a bit though.

At this time, search engines are still above social media in terms of traffic and advertising. I personally think that the search engines would not let themselves be overthrown by social media in this subject. Let us watch out for further developments.

Posted in Internet Marketing Basics, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing - Tagged , , , ,

11 Best Ways to Generate Traffic

May18
2011 Leave a Comment Aby Written by Aby

You might have already heard or or read of the statement “Traffic is the lifeblood of your online business,” and I certainly agree with it. Have an alluring and goal specific web site is not enough. You must send people to it. You must let the virtual world know about you. You must establish an online presence, especially to your target market. As per my experience, I enumerated the Top 11 Best Ways to bring traffic to your site and here they are.

1. Search Engine Results. When people search for information, products, and services, they go to search engines and enter a keywords. As we have discussed, it could be a word, a phrase, or a long tail keyword. The bottom line is that they will do it and then check on the first few sites on the list. If you are one of these sites, then the people will be directed to you. We have also discussed how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works for this.

2. Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising. The major reason for you to go for PPC is to send traffic to your site as soon as possible. SEO results may take some time to put you on top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and it is useful to have your site on top through PPC. It would also be best to do it with SEO so that you will have organic or natural results in the future.

3. Banner Advertising. This is placing banners on other relevant sites. People who look into those sites may be interested to go to your site. You just need to contact the site webmaster and ask about the ad placement rates for their site.

4. Social Networking. Think about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other similar networks. These are social media sites. You can share your expertise on these sites in order to gain credibility and be trusted by your network of friends and others. Share your ideas and links to your site and people will be directed to it.

5. Social Bookmarking. This is almost the same with social networking. It is another social media site but focusing on sharing your favorite links. It helps your site be crawled by search engine spiders and it also allows people to go to your posted link.

6. Classified Ads. You may post on classified ads sites and have a link towards your site. These sites are recognized by the search engines and having your products or services posted there will also lead people to have a look at your site.

7. Article Directories. There are a lot of people looking for valuable content in directories. After reading your article, there will be some who would also spend some time going to your site to know more about you and your business, especially if you have written something interesting.

8. Blog Comments. If you give invaluable comments on relevant blog posts, people will find time to also visit your site and know more about you and your business.

9. Forum Posting. Forums are great avenues to share your expertise. People ask about their concerns and if you will be able to provide what they are looking for, they will surely follow you on your site as well.

10. Directories. It is easier for some people to look at directories when they are searching for sites that they need. If you are included in the directory under the category relevant to your site, then your target market could be directed to your site.

11. Link Exchanges. This may not be useful for SEO but it could be for traffic. If you exchange links with other sites that have relevant information to your sites, then you get greater chances of building target traffic to your site.

These could just be a few of the strategies on bringing traffic to your web site but they ate those at the top of my list and I really find it worth sharing. Hope this Internet Marketing Basics list will help you in your online success.

 

 

Posted in Internet Marketing Basics, Pay per Click Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Traffic Generation - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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