Increase Traffic With Free Samples

• Category: Blogging, Content
• No Comments

You’ve got a website and/or blog. You’ve got your product. You’ve got your business plan mapped out. What you don’t have is traffic to your site that will help you to increase your profit margin. So what now? Ever hear the saying ‘If it’s free, it’s for me’?

There is a reason it’s a popular saying simply because it is true. Even those companies that are advertising on other mediums besides the internet may have difficulty convincing the public at large to buy their products because people who can not see, smell, touch, or handle a product (especially a new one) may be reluctant to shell out the cash to buy it.

So what now?

Give away a free sample product to get attention. It may cost you a bit of an investment in the beginning to give away free product but it can certainly reap benefits down the line. As word of mouth is usually the biggest advertising tactic a business can use, getting your product into the hands of the target audience is essentially.

Here are some tips for giving free samples in the online world:

Blog About Your Giveaway

Write your own article about your giveaway by describing what consumers need to do to have access to a free sample. Host a contest or have fun with trivia. There are number of ways to promote your own free samples on your own blog.

Call on Other Bloggers

Find bloggers that are relevant to your industry or product. Approach them to inquire about their ability to help promote your contest or sample giveaway. Not everyone will oblige but many will take an interest in the idea, especially if they also get a sample. Not only can they promote your giveaway, you can ask bloggers to review the product for their own website if your product is ‘reviewable’.

Get Social

After you post a blog about your sample product giveaway, be sure to add a link to all your social media sites. Refer to the link often but do not overwhelm your audience with the same tired post. Add a condition to a contest that to be eligible to win, contestants must also add links to their social media pages.

Research Contest Sites

There are several popular websites online that deal solely in promoting other people’s contests. Register your site and contest/giveaway with these promotional sites to help spread the word.

Be Consistent

If you are going to set up a contest for your free giveaway, stay on top of it and follow through. People who are signing up and following instructions are counting on a fair deal. If you fail to live up to your promises, you will likely turn any press into negative word of mouth advertisement.

Deliver On Promises

Pick a winner on the day you stated and be sure to mail out the free sample(s) as promised. Delaying the mail out of the prizes can also hurt you. People are prone to complain online about such incidents and again you can be subjected to negative press and a lack of traffic to your site.

7 Tips for New Business Bloggers

• Category: Blogging, Marketing, SEO
• No Comments

Businesses who want to use a blog to aid in promotion and build credibility have a long road ahead of them. A blog is not a ‘set up and forget’ marketing solution but rather a platform to build on weekly or even several times daily. Newbie business bloggers often struggle in the beginning because there is just too much information floating around, it seems impossible to consolidate anything logically. But with patience and some practice, even the most inexperienced bloggers can manage success rather quickly.

Here are 7 tips for successful blogging:

Pick a Niche

Depending on your industry or specialty, there can be a ton of topics you’ll want to cover. It will be better for you and your readers if you narrow down to a niche topic that does not have a lot of competition. If you specialize in home building, research what other companies are talking about and then select a niche subject with which you are familiar but doesn’t have a lot of available information online. This allows you to become ‘the source’ for this specific information. You can certainly discuss other topics from time to time as well so you aren’t limiting yourself.

Outline Beforehand

To keep blogging from getting totally overwhelming, start by outlining your ideas on paper before hitting the Internet. An outline will help guide you into a logical method for writing posts. Remain flexible with your guide

Keep It Simple, Classy

You want your blog to look professional and be easy to read and navigate. Feel free to make it unique but not necessary an art project. You can use images or styles that may directly relate to your business but don’t overdo it. Readers come for information and will leave quickly if it’s too hard to find.

Speak to Everyone

Keep your writing clear and to the point. Use simple language and short paragraphs. Subheadings and bullet points are preferable to readers who generally scan the information to find what they are looking for. Writing for the Internet is different than writing for other mediums. If you are not a good writer, consider hiring someone to do your posts. If you are doing it yourself, proof posts for grammatical and spelling errors.

Link to Your Other Information

When you are writing about a particular product or service you are promoting, be sure to provide direct links in your post so readers can click and instantly be taken to your website. You can make faster sales with this method too because you are making it so easy to shop.

Open the Door for Feedback

Be sure to enable reader comments. A blog is a great way to communicate with your customers and potential customers. Allowing them to ask questions allows you to respond directly. You’ll learn quickly what people want to know and in turn, you can provide the solutions that lead to bigger profits.

Advertise Your Blog

While you don’t have to take out a full newspaper advertisement, you should put the direct blog URL on business cards, letterhead, email signatures, and your website. Never assume people will find it on their own. A good giveaway is also a fantastic free advertisement. Realistically a blog can be a waste of your time if no one knows it exists.

How To Promote a New Blog

• Category: Blogging, Content, Marketing, SEO
• No Comments

Blogging is a successful part of company marketing because it’s relatively easy and it works. Thousands of companies start a new blog every day that can be a perfect springboard for reaching their target audience. However, many of these blogs often languish because once the blog is set up and launched management fails to promote it correctly.

Businesses and individuals alike can use blogs successfully to prove their expertise and knowledge about a particular subject but without the proper promotional avenues, their experience is a moot point. Here are some important tips to help a new blog stand out and reach the right people:

Write Constant Content

New and relevant content is key to generating traffic. Provide fresh material at least weekly if not daily so your audience will become more dependant on what you have to say.

Link to the Blog

Companies with already established websites should immediately provide a direct link to the blog on the main navigation page and subsequent pages to help attract attention.

Blog Link in Every Email

If you have composed your signature on outgoing emails, edit it to add a link to the blog. For every email that goes out to colleague or customer, you are continually promoting the blog.

Make an Announcement

A new blog is a great reason to prepare a national/international press release. Let the press know what the blog contains in order to attract a new audience.

Promote In Newsletters

If your company produces a newsletter whether online or in print, make a special announcement about the establishment of the blog and include the link in every newsletter.

Make It Social

If you are already working with social media tools to promote your company, product and services, be sure to let everyone know about the new blog.

Share Links

Get in with other bloggers and have them recognize you by linking their blogs to yours. You can make friends with other bloggers and add them to your blog roll. Request they do the same.

Write Content for Others

Whatever your niche and experience is, you can write content and provide relevant content to other bloggers free of charge. Contact other bloggers whose core audience is related to your target market and ask if you can guest post for free in exchange for a brief bio and link back to your site.

Promote a Giveaway

A quick way to bring attention to a new site is to host a giveaway. Donate a free product or service to the winner but make sure the gift is something worthwhile to others. Sometimes a big ticket item is worth the cost for the attention it will bring but only give away what you can afford. Send out press releases and announcements about your giveaway contests.

SEO and WordPress Plugins You Need on Your Blog- Part Two

• Category: Blogging, SEO, Social media
• No Comments

There is little doubt that WordPress blogs are some of the most favored blogs by the search engine spiders. Because of the platform’s popularity, developers are constantly coming up with new plugins to make your WordPress experience better. Last time we looked at some of the most popular plugins used by many bloggers. This post continues that list with a few more of the biggies you don’t want to miss.

If you want your readers to be able to contact you (and hire you!) you need to provide some sort of contact form on your blog. Contact Form 7 is one of the easiest, most flexible content form plugins around. You can manage several contact forms and customize your forms so you get the information you need without overwhelming your reader.

Your blog is all about developing relationships with your readers, so in addition to a contact form, you want to make it easy for them to interact with you. Social media is a great way to carry on the conversation. Add a WPFollowMe plugin so your readers can follow you on Twitter with a mouse click. You can add your tweets to your blog with TweetMyBlog or a number of other plugins and widgets.

If Facebook is your meeting place, there are plugins for that as well. Try WP-Facebook Connect to add Facebook functionality to your blog. Add To Facebook is another plugin that will add your posts to your Facebook account through a footer link. The Facebook Dashboard Widget lets you see all your friends Facebook updates from the Admin page of your blog, so YOU can keep in touch while you’re working without needing to head over to Facebook.

Because your readers love social media too, one of the best plugins you can put on your blog is ShareThis. ShareThis offers your readers a number of social networking and bookmarking sites they can share your posts to with a simple click. Why not boost your traffic through the power of your readers by making it easy for them to share your words of wisdom? Another great sharing plugin for your readers is SexyBookmarks. Don’t let the name scare you off- there’s nothing seedy going on here. This plugin just offers your readers the ability to share your posts in a cute friendly icon sort of way.

Running a blog is all about interacting with your readers in order to build a relationship with them. That relationship is what will lead to bigger sales and business growth for your blog. When you take advantage of some these plugins on your WordPress blog, you make relationship building easier for you and your readers. Combine relationship building techniques with great SEO techniques and you’ll find your blog traffic, readership and subscription lists growing out of sight in no time.

Social Media Is NASCAR- Content Management is the racetrack- Any questions?

• Category: Blogging, Content, Marketing, Social media
• No Comments

I know you were waiting for part II of WordPress Plugins and Tools but that can wait.  Take a few minutes to read this. We’ll tune you to part II of WordPress Plugins and Tools later on.

Social Media is effectively 3-5 years old (depends who you ask). I can count on my hand how many companies are really using Social Media effectively.    According to a survey conducted by Junta 42, content marketing spending comprises 33% of the total marketing budget (this is up 11% from 2008) Let’s get back to the title analogy here.  Social Media is your typical NASCAR car.  It’s a high performance, suped up, fuel sucking, thrill ride!    It’s ready to go as soon as you shift your business into gear and slam on the gas.  You better get this car on the right track or you’ll have no way of controlling it.  This is where Content Management comes into play.  You’ve got a ton of power behind your new found thrill ride, but you have to have the right content to control this influx of traffic coming your way.   Put your Social Media campaign on the wrong track and you can seriously hurt the passengers and your audience…even kill them.  Ok, maybe you won’t kill anybody with less than stellar content, but you sure as hell will kill any kind of quality traffic being generated from that powerful Social Media campaign.

Social Media Thrill Ride

You have to remember that the content you create needs to be written as if people really care about what you are writing about.  Sure you still have to write for the search engines, but writing for your readers specifically will make sure that you stand out among the usual businesses out there and create a personal connection with your audience.

The great thing about Social Media is that anyone can start a campaign for really very little budget.  It’s simple…create an account, find people to follow, contribute to conversations, give back to those conversations…end up with a ton of followers and create your own twitterverse where you control the message.  Seems simple right?  The crucial part about this simplistic formula is the “give back” part. This is your “track” and this is what you have to do to keep that beast “Social Media” on the right path.

If you don’t have a way to contribute and give authentic information to help your followers, then your hot rod (Social Media) will burn rubber taking to the streets.  You’ll waste your resources on burning up the place but you’ll really get no traction.  Your message won’t get out.  Making sure your resources are focused to the “right track” is the art of Content Marketing.  If you know your message, but aren’t sure how to translate your ideas or thoughts…hire someone to do it.  Here’s three lasting stats to leave with you:

• 6 out of 10 Marketers are going to spend more on their Social Campaigns in 2010
• Smaller companies spend more than 2x that of larger companies on content marketing

• Only 7% of marketers are spending less on content in 2010

Bottomline:  Don’t get behind the wheel of your Social Media campaign without having quality content to direct it to.