Internet Marketing Essex

Whatever forms of content marketing you’re engaged in – blogging, article marketing, social media, etc – little and often is usually better than sporadic bursts of prolific output. There are several reasons for this:

First of all, the more often you add content to your website or blog, the more often the search engines will tend to come back to check for more. So adding some content on a regular basis ‘trains’ the search engines to spider your site regularly.

Secondly, it keeps your content fresh for visitors. Particularly with blogs, people expect to see new posts being added on a regular basis, and if they do they will keep coming back to make sure they don’t miss out. On the other hand, if they come back and find you haven’t added anything new they will stop bothering and lose interest.

Similarly with Facebook and other social media, if you add loads of posts one day and then disappear for weeks or months on end, people won’t bother to check back regularly and will probably get annoyed at those times when you do add huge amounts of info all at once.

However this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to write articles or blog posts every single day or week. Most blogs, websites and article directories have the facility for you to schedule when your content is published. So if you do sit down and write a lot of articles or blog posts one day, you can submit them all at once but arrange for them to publish at weekly or monthly intervals. This helps you to be efficient while still keeping both the search engines and your visitors happy.

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas of what to write about on your blog, Facebook page or newsletters, try using these seasonal ideas to get you started. You can use each one more than once, e.g. refer to Valentine’s Day before, during and after the day itself.

Here are some seasonal suggestions: New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, Spring, Father’s Day, Summer holidays, New school year, Halloween, Guy Fawkes, Christmas.

Some industries have their own seasonal topics, e.g. Financial institutions have the end of the tax year, the government budget, etc.

You can also use national days such as St Patricks or St George’s day, or awareness days like Earth Day, Fair Trade Fortnight or International Women’s Day. There are hundreds if you do a search for them, so chances are you’ll find at least a couple that you can use for your business.

Fashion, retail and the beauty industry will find it easy to associate various celebrations with their products, but even if the seasons don’t relate directly to your services, you can usually still find a way to build a discussion around them. For example recruitment agencies can use the New Year to talk about career goals, Valentine’s Day to discuss finding a job you love and Halloween to talk about facing your fears when job hunting.

You don’t need to be rigid about sticking to the themes, just take the ones that work for you, or use them when you’re stuck for other ideas.

If you take the time to write a good article, there are plenty of things you can do with it to get the most out of your effort. Here are just some suggestions:

Add it to your website – if you have a section for articles you can add it there, otherwise you can add it as a content page anywhere on the website that makes sense.

Post it on your blog – you can either add it as a blog post or, if you have already added it elsewhere on your website, you can add a short introduction and link to it from your blog.

Get it published – your articles can be submitted to article directories and ezines where others can access them for publishing elsewhere (with a link back to your website of course). Bear in mind that you probably don’t want to publish exactly the same article on your website as you submit to article directories – if you’ve already added it to your website, rewrite it to make it a little different before allowing others to publish it.

Add it to your newsletter – whether you send out a printed or email newsletter, it’s a great idea to include an informative article in it, to encourage recipients to open and read it.

Use social media to promote it – post a link back to the article on your website or blog from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and whatever other social media you engage in. Add it to your RSS feed too.

Finally, once you’ve written a good number of articles you can put them together and publish them as an ebook, which you can offer as a free gift to newsletter subscribers, etc.

By making your article accessible from a number of different places, you can ensure that it gets read by as many people as possible, which after all is exactly what you wrote it for.

When it comes to marketing our business or products we want everyone to hear our message, and usually we do everything we can to get it out there. Sometimes, though, it’s more important to listen first.

If there’s one thing that the social media explosion has taught us, it’s that people like to interact and to be heard. Everyone is sharing everything, from what they had for breakfast, to their plans for the weekend and of course any good or bad experiences they’ve had. Suddenly there’s a place for them to vent their frustration with awful customer service, or let their friends know about the great new product they’ve just bought.

This is why businesses need to get into the habit of listening. Social media offers us a great opportunity to get the sort of customer feedback and opinions that would usually cost a lot of money to gather up. Make sure you’re monitoring what people are saying about your business, or figure out why they’re not saying anything at all.

Even if what you hear isn’t positive, you still have the perfect opportunity to respond in a sympathetic and personal way. Sometimes it’s enough just for a customer to get an apology, but if not, at least you’ll have the chance to put things right, and others will see how you respond too. Every business makes mistakes, but it’s how you deal with them that makes the difference, and keeping abreast of what people are saying about you helps you do that in the right way.

So next time you’re on Facebook, Twitter, your blog or even a forum, make sure you’re taking the time to listen to what current and potential customers are saying and then use that information to build a better business. Social media marketing is as much about listening as it is about promotion.

You know you need to get an article written this week as well as a blog post, not to mention remembering to update your Facebook page and do some tweeting, but just thinking about getting it all done (again) makes you want to run away screaming. Before you do that, try some of these tips for being more efficient in your content and social media marketing.

Firstly, keep a list of potential article and blog ideas handy. Whenever a topic occurs to you, or you receive an interesting email or link worth discussing, make a note of it. That way, when you sit down to write you can just pick up one of the ideas and get going right away, rather than wasting half of your time trying to think of something to write about.

I’d also recommend writing several blog posts or articles in a row. Getting started writing is often the hardest part, but once you’re on a roll it’s easier to keep going. Don’t just publish them all at once though. If your software permits you can add the articles or blogs all at once, but schedule them to go out at regular intervals; otherwise just keep them typed up ready to add when they’re due.

You can apply the same principles to your social media updates. Provided the subjects aren’t time sensitive you can keep a list of ideas and links to share when you have time. Also make use of services like ping.fm that allow you to send the same update to several different places, so for example you can post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn simultaneously.

Doing things in ‘chunks’ does make you a lot more efficient. If you schedule separate time for research, time for writing and time for actually adding the content, you’ll find you spend a lot less time on it than if you start from scratch for each post.

Every business with an online presence wants more traffic and sales, and it’s worth investing in professional internet marketing as it will usually provide a good ROI. However whether your budget is a little tight or you just want to do everything you possibly can to increase your rankings, here are three  inexpensive ways to promote your website.

1.    Social media marketing

Social media marketing is all about building relationships with your potential and existing customers. Find out more about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc and get stuck in. The more you interact with people on these sites the more likely they are to trust you and take a look at what you have to offer. Just make sure you understand the difference between engaging with people and shameless promotion, or you may make more enemies than friends.

2.    Article marketing

This involves writing articles relevant to your industry and website and submitting them to online publishers and directories. Although you shouldn’t be promoting your business or products in the article, most allow you to add a link to your website in the author resource box that appears at the end of your article when it is published. By writing articles you are establishing yourself as an expert in the field and thereby encouraging readers to visit your website to see what else you have to say. Your website may also benefit from the links that point back to it.

3.    Blogging

Blogging is similar to social media marketing, except that it is more about building relationships with your existing visitors and customers, and is usually done on your website, rather than on external social media sites. The same rules apply though, in that you shouldn’t use your blog to constantly push your products; rather offer the readers valuable or interesting information and they will naturally want to find out more about you and your business. The benefits are also similar to social media marketing, in that you build trust with readers and encourage them to return to your blog on a regular basis. Blogs can also be very beneficial in helping your website’s search engine popularity.

Whether you're blogging, getting involved in social media marketing or doing article marketing, it's absolutely vital that you do it consistently. If you don't, you'll be wasting what time you do invest, and possibly even alienating those you’re trying to win over.

There’s nothing worse than seeing that a site you’re interested in has a blog, clicking over to it and finding that the last post was several months ago. You feel cheated, and wonder why they bothered in the first place. It may even make you wonder whether the business is struggling or has given up. 

So don’t do this to your visitors. You really need to be posting regularly. If you’re hosting a forum on your own site, then the same applies – in order for it to gain momentum you’re going to have to keep posting so as not to let it seem abandoned.

With social media, there’s another reason to keep engaging: if you don’t you will be forgotten. Whether you’re involved in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media site, there’s so much going on all the time that you need to constantly remind your followers or friends that you’re there. Social media is about building relationships, and you can’t do that if you’re not around much.

Article marketing requires consistency too, not so much because it reflects badly on your business, but because it really won’t have much of an effect unless you do a lot of it. The more articles you write and get out there, the more likely that you’ll get enough quality backlinks to your website to impress the search engines.

With most internet marketing results take time, and you might be tempted to give up just before it starts working. But whatever you decide to do to promote your website, it’s important to commit yourself to following through with it. You might not see any results for a while, but if you persevere and are consistent then you will reap the rewards in the end.

Thanks to everyone who turned out for our Facebook webinar, the response was overwhelming.  If you wish to download the free whitepaper on how to leverage Facebook for your business then click on Facebook Whitepaper. Due to the high level of attendee's i know that some of you were unable to have all of your questions answered.  Please ask away if you still have any burning questions.

From feedback received we have developed a programme of webinars for the remainder of 2010.  They are listed below.  I will post more information about each webinar closer to the time.

• April - Video Marketing & YouTube
• May - Web Analytics
• June - SEM (Display and Directories)
• July - Twitter
• August - SEO
• September - Lead Nurturing
• October - Email Marketing
• November - Conversion Website Copy
• December - Marketing Optimisation

If anyone requires any further information about any of these subjects, then please get in touch and we will answer your queries asap.

Facebook is a social networking site that is continuing to increase in popularity, with over 350 million users worldwide it is an ideal way to reach a large audience.  More and more businesses are using Facebook in the following ways:

• branding and brand awareness
• engage with customers
• drive traffic to websites
• manage online reputation
• acquire new customers
• generate new leads
• client retention

WSI are holding a free webinar on Wednesday 24th March, from 2pm - 3pm to explain more about how your business can leverage Facebook. Our Social Media Strategist Baltej Gil will be hosting the webinar.

To register click on the link below and fill in your IC as C Taylor.  I would love to have any feedback from you or indeed any other subjects that you want to learn more about.


Facebook Webinar