SeoMktSearch Engine Optimization Marketing

I know it’s Tuesday!

Sometimes when your career consists of repetitive tasks or responsibilities it’s hard to stay focused on the importance of your job and most importantly it’s hard to stay motivated! With the American economy falling to pieces we all find ourselves wondering when we will see the lay off papers. In today’s market self motivation doesn’t come easy and as the days go by your job may continue to seem more and more depressing. Especially if your in sales and marketing.

Sales and Marketing is normally a decent job but as mentioned the American economy is in the tubes and from this we see less sales and less marketing strategies working as they should. Getting the sale isn’t as easy as before and new leads are far in few in between. Today I thought I would put together a nice list of some thing’s I do to help myself stay motivated during these hard economic times.

1. Don’t think it’s your product or service it’s the whole sector things are simply down so take advantage of all possible sales leads even if the sale decreases your overall profit!

2. When doing your sales calls try to remain positive! I’m sure many companies have a need for your service but again with the market in its current state most companies can’t buy into your idea right now. Try to get dates on when you should call back and also try to send literature or information about your products to the prospect.

3. Remember you’re not the only one experiencing these issues so be understanding to companies that can’t necessarily afford your product right now! Build relationships with these people because someday they will need your product or service.

4. Everyday when I wake up I set goals for my self and I ensure they are realistic. I’m not setting goals for sales but rather sales calls! I want to try and reach the most people I possibly can in the period of slowdown. The reasoning I do this is because I know somewhere someone is looking for our product and service. Ensuring I reach a specific amount of calls a day will help my chances of calling on that company whom is in the market.

Sales and marketing isn’t as fun as most people think. The job can get extremely depressing and from this your whole life can become affected! Try to pace yourself, set personal goals and when you accomplish these goals you will find you are becoming closer to being self motivated!

Sometimes things simply don’t work out the way we expected in life. We lose a job, or we didn’t get that awesome raise but we should remember! There’s a reason these things didn’t work out the way we expected and only we can change this. Work hard, set goals and don’t give up! If you don’t have the motivation to continue these practices maybe it’s time to look for a new career, a career in which you can practice these Self Motivational Tips. If you don’t want to practice these tips it’s a good chance you really don’t like your current job!
Best if luck to all my Sales and Marketing friends and remember try to stay motivated!

Thanks,

Brian

Understand this concept and you may have the chance of dramatically increasing your website traffic! When submitting to Social Networking sites create unique content by changing the keywords in your topic title and the body of the explanation! This isn’t mandatory for any site but the concept could potentially increase your organic traffic flow by over 100%

Let me explain the concept behind Unique Content or the ideal of what it represents. When you initially write your blog article and submit it to your blog site the content at this point is unique to the World Wide Web and all its Search Engines. When the Search Engine caches your content it will check to ensure your content is unique and not already mentioned elsewhere. Once this is confirmed your information will be indexed into Google’s search results along with other Search Engines. The keywords that were used for the article along with other factors will determine your SERP for a specific page. (Search Engine Rank Position)

When submitting to Social Networking websites you have the opportunity to develop many search results linking to one specific article. Creating Unique content on a social networking website is easy as mentioned. You simply use a unique topic title with similar keywords and a unique description of the content.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t want 2 Google search results indexed and linking back to their site especially from blogengage seeing we’re all about the do follow! Pass the Juice!

Here are some examples of what I have personally done with my latest submissions at blog engage,

Submitted on original Blog titles,

1. Blog Marketing - Tips and Techniques for Success - Webinar
2. Increase Website Traffic by using Top Webmaster Forums

Submitted at Blog Engage titles,

1. Tips and Tricks for starting a new blog – Webinar
2. Top Webmaster Forums can Increase Website Traffic

The Keywords are targeted and focused “Starting a new blog” and “Top Webmaster Forums” These are the terms I want the search engine to pick up! In general I want the Search Engine to pick it all up Webmaster, Traffic, Website Traffic, Blog Marketing, Tips and Techniques and whatever else you see in there! My topics are %100 relevant so Google will cache these articles in top spots over no time!

I know it’s a lot of work but in the end it might be worth the effort! We all know it’s the organic traffic that makes the money!

Best of luck and enjoy!

Brian

Today I had the opportunity to sit in on a Webinar regarding Blog Marketing - Tips and Techniques for Success. At first I was wondering what type of information we would be talking about seeing I have never seen anything like this but the topics were all relevant and informative to Business owners and bloggers.

So today I will discuss most of the techniques I learned and try my best to pass on the same information that was given to me from our Webinar host, Bernie Borges.

The Webinar started off with the basics of blogging including the understanding of Web 2.0 and using this information to find and convert leads on the web. The basics of Web 2.0 are something I never understood until today. The ideal of Web 2.0 is to develop interaction between individuals on the web. In this case it’s being developed from blogging and blogs. Overall Web 2.0 is a read and write web and no longer consists of simply reading. Individuals have the opportunity to voice their opinion and not simply read the content only.

What is a blog?

The general idea of a blog is to share, maintain and add content easily to the World Wide Web. This can be done using Audio, Music, Video, Pod casts and more which is then displayed on a blog.

Blog Components, what makes a blog?

RSS Feeds - (Really Simple Syndication)
Blogging Platform – The software in which your blog will run off. This normally consists of free software from word press, drupal and other free open source software platforms.
Blog Authors – These are normally the people that will share, maintain and add content to your blog.
Permalinks –
Categories – This would normally consist of targeted and specific site categories. These categories should normally consist of subjects that are related to the product or service in which your blog offers.
BlogRoll – This is used to share other related and interesting websites your readers might like that again are similar to your own.
Tags- Tags are used as “keywords” explaining what the topic article is pertaining to. The tags should be very specific to the article and not the blog site. Don’t get these tags mixed up with Meta tags there’s a difference!
Social Bookmarking- Social Bookmark sites allow yourself or others to submit your article to be shared with other people or individuals that might have an interest in the topic you’re writing about. Specifically the one I own for bloggers, Blog Engage.

Blog Strategies

Begin with research- don’t think you can simply install blogging software and start writing about anything. You must do the research and ensure your target audience is appropriate and your content remains consistent to your niche blog.
Build a list of relevant blogs- Create a list of similar blogs that Share, Add or write content that you will also be writing about. Research the topics, categories and content they write about. This will give you some ideals on what direction you should, or in some cases shouldn’t go with your own blog.
Study them- Have a look at these blogs and try to find what has created the most buzz from the readers. If you’re specific niche market is ERP Software look at the topics that have comments on them or topics that appear more popular. These are the topic you might consider adding to your very own ERP blog.
Select a theme or topic- understanding the topics and theme your blog will be about will help determine your categories and or subject you will eventually write about.
Stay focused- Remember when you pick your theme and or topics to stay focused on this niche and write article pertaining to them. As a quick example if you have a sports related blog don’t start blogging about Paris Hilton and her dog. Honestly your readers don’t care and surely didn’t come to your blog to see that information.
Don’t launch unless you’re committed- Ensure your company is willing to invest the proper time and money into launching your blog successfully. There’s nothing worse than a company that creates a blog and simply lets it sit there with no updated content! Make sure you appoint an individual to write the articles, I would even consider adding the blog activities to their job responsibility within the company.

What type of blog do I create?

Technical/Product – Will the blog be technical and regarding the products?
Thought/Leadership- Will the blog demonstrate thought and leadership?
Tips/Best practices- Will the blog consist of Tips for end users and or Best Practices?
Opinion- Will the blog be opinion specific?
Contrarian- Will the blog consist of article relating to the different point of view?
Controversy- Will the blog create and stir Controversy to its readers?
Marketing- Will the blog promote marketing ideals and or ways of advertising products or services?

Benefits of starting a blog

Low Cost – The software is free but you still need a writer!
Build Loyalty- Create loyalty from readers who can be potential clients or current customers
Marketing/PR- help market your products and create Public Relationships.
Viral Impact of Conversation- This is an example of word of mouth which spreads fast
Research- Allow someone to do research on your target product using your own information.
Competitive- Keep track of your competitors and their activities from user’s comments and more.
Value added information- Generate the ideal of added value to specific products and or services.
SEO- Create more back links to your main company website and develop leads from SEO friendly URL’s linking to website and company pages they would never have seen before you added that blog.

Blog Marketing Tips

Write Often- try and maintain a consistent flow of written articles! Your readers are loyal but when there’s no blog to read and one was expected look out! You might loose more readers then you can get without remaining consistent!
Use Keywords- Develop keywords related to your site. Use these keywords in the article, tags and topic title!
Link to other blogs- Link to other blogs your reader will be interested in. Trust me this work and they might even link back to you!
Share Content- Use social networking website to create more back links to your article! Try and keep the topic title similar but change it a bit so Google doesn’t think its duplicate content.
Ping Google and Technorati- use these services when you update your blog allowing the information to be cached faster.

Overall I couldn’t remember all the information regarding what Bernie said and something I missed but really wanted to know about was these Centric URL’s he talked about!

Does anyone understand what they are and how to implement them properly into our websites?

Hope you can use this information and a big thanks goes out to Bernie who delivered an outstanding performance on Blog Marketing - Tips and Techniques for Success.

Thanks

Brian

Some people think creating solid traffic from webmaster communities is easy but in all reality this task can be very difficult. The first thing we need to do is ensure the webmaster forum is on target to our purpose and has the correct forum categories for us to take advantage of! What we want to look for on these webmaster forums are categories that will allow us to use the service available inside the forums while also advertising the website url without being  a spammer. The line that separates a spammer from an online marketer is extremely fine so let’s make sure you don’t create a bad name for yourself by following the example I share very closely.

The named forums below will offer many online marketing opportunities for your company or website! The best part about these options is the concept is allowed and not considered as spam. Let’s take a moment and break down these specific forums to explain and give an example of how we can market our website inside these forums.

Website Review Forums – Website reviews are perfect ways to jump start the traffic flow to your website. At this point you should be creating a basic template for a Website review request which can be used with little change at all the webmaster forums your sign up at. Don’t forget in this process you should include a website url to the website under review. If you want to be very specific you can ask for reviews on multiple pages which have minor differences in design and or reasoning.

Domain Name Appraisal Forums – Another great reason to post a website url. Simply ask the members to appraise the domain name and when adding a live link 99% of the time they will also visit your website! Trust me add the link these guys giving free review are deadly bored think about the service there offering for free! Use a similar script as mentioned in the above paragraph and make minor changes for each forum.

Buy, Sell or Trade Forums – The mother of all examples is this amazing forum. It’s like a free ticket to extremely exploit your website url with so many different way to do so. The best thing about the Buy, Sell or Trade Forums is they normally have about 10 other forums inside them. The sub forums you should be looking for include the following and sometimes you might have reasoning for the rest but normally these are great forums to start with,

Freebies - If you are offering any sort of free services or products (or seeking them), this is the only place those offers should be posted. Remember to always add your url when offering these services especially if it involves your website.
Content - Users buying and selling content (including databases) can conduct business here. This is another forum you should be adding your url too and again especially if it’s pertaining to your website!

Templates - Post your url when asking for custom or free template! Make sure the members know what website you are looking to replace the current template on.

Services – Offering free services on your website? This is the forum you should be posting inside. Always add the url where the free services are located allowing you to gain another back link and increased traffic.

Link Exchange – This is another great way to get a back link. Post your url and offer a link exchange with other webmaster forum members. This will generate a nice wave of website traffic as all people willing to link exchange will want to see the website there dealing with.

Link Sales -  Selling links from your website? Have an empty sidebar you don’t know what to do with? Again this is another forum for yet another back link. Post your website url and sell your link spots!

Contests – Everyone loves contests but we can’t join if we don’t know what website is offering the contest so yup, another back link opportunity! Post your website url and tell all webmaster about this awesome contest!

I know sometimes marketing your website and or blog can become overwhelming but don’t give up! Some webmasters will make it difficult by posting silly replies to your forum topics but work with it and over come these situations. If you need examples of some Top Webmaster Forums visit that link and you will have a great start and maybe even a successful website to boot!

Cheers,

Brian

There’s many ways to market and promote our selves in this ever growing social networking society. The methods for marketing and promoting our blogs has grown vastly and continues to grow daily at an even bigger rate. I think the main concern is telling the difference between good and the bad. As an example how good is 10,000 hits if you get zero comments on your blog? I would much rather prefer that one hit which turned out to be an awesome comment. Also that one hit wont waste my bandwidth and decrease my cost per click on ads.

I don’t really use digg, stumble upon or any of the major networking websites personally but I will digg or stumble upon a friend’s article when asked to. I try to focus on other marketing and promotion activities such as Search Engine Optimization and Link Exchanges. I’m also a very big fan of forum marketing as you probably know from reading al my posts. It wasn’t too long ago when I wrote an awesome article regarding the Top Webmaster forums on the net and if you have a sec and are a blogger please have a read.

Even if I wanted to keep up with all the available marketing and promotional websites these days I couldn’t and if I did I wouldn’t have time to even blog. Without blogging we have nothing to promote correct? So at the end of the day you must sit back and observe the result from your marketing efforts and determine what communities you’re going to continue using. Sure I use blogengage but I’m bias seeing I’m the owner of the site but blogengage might not be the right median for your marketing and promotional needs.

Maybe your blog is about money and you need tons of hits for a little bit id clicks. If this was the case I would suggest larger websites like the ones mentioned earlier. Sites like dig and stumble upon will most likely get your ads clicked and maybe even make you a few bucks.

Overall I use many methods of promotion and so should you! Don’t stop looking for that new idea or new way to get the word out about your blog! Continue marketing and promoting and create the brand name you deserve.

Recommend Social Networking Websites

http://www.blogengage.com
http://www.entrecard.com
http://www.digg.com
http://www.blogcatalog.com
http://www.mybloglog.com

Enjoy and don’t forget to join our groups!

As most of you know I’m a major Sales and Marketing buff! I know selling your products or services isn’t always easy but I have a few tips for you to be more successful. If you have your own sales team you might want to use or share these techniques with them as well. The Gatekeeper is also known as the Administrative Secretary. She or he gets this nickname because they will decide if you get to the person your calling or simply hit the invisible wall they have up.

I do approximately 35 – 50 sales calls a day to large North American Apparel companies and let me tell you I have had my fair share of mean and bitchy gatekeepers. Sometimes the most annoying part is the absolute ignorance they show to me. They will say the company isn’t interested even if they don’t know what I’m talking or calling about. In this case when you get upset or frustrated you should be taking a step back and asking yourself a few questions.

Should I be calling and asking to speak with a different contact?

Sometimes you’re simply asking for the wrong contact. In my personal experience I always ask to speak with the President or CEO but sometimes it’s really not the right person. Depending on what your selling you can probably ask for a specific department. Human Resources, IT, Accounting, Marketing, etc,, use your common sense!

Is your approach to aggressive and obtrusive?

Maybe you’re asking the secretary and a very aggressive way and this could put her/him into a foul mood. This is the last thing you want when making sales calls. You should be as nice as possible to the admin secretary seeing she/he is the key to you speaking or selling anything to this company.

Is the admin secretary slow and slightly uneducated?

The last thing you want to do is make the gatekeeper unhappy because she/he seems or appears to be dumb. Try and keep things very basic with the secretary in order to increase your chances of properly communicating your sales pitch. Don’t be a slow talker you don’t want to insult her/him by assuming they are infact dumb. People know when you down talk them so be very careful.

I failed and the secretary hates me, what do I do now?

Move on to your next call and leave that specific account alone for a week or two. By not calling back you will allow the admin secretary time to forget all about you and your company. The next time you call back try and make the secretary fell like she/he’s making the management decision. Ask the secretary who they think you should speak with. Allow them to feel like their in control of what you’re doing or who you will be taking with.

I know working in the sales industry and simply doing cold call sales and marketing can be a pain in the ass. But if you dedicate yourself to improving your style and end result you have the potential of becoming very successful.

I hope these tips help you keep or improve your job and if you have any other suggestions don’t hesitate to add them!

Simply leave a comment and I’ll approve it!

If you live pretty much anywhere in North America you will notice like the majority of companies your sales are down. The automotive industry, the retail industry and more, it doesn’t matter where you turn it’s literally a global affect sales are down.

It wasn’t even a year ago the housing industry was in a boom and money was good! People had food on their tables and gas in their cars. Today the market has taken a dive for the worse. The large caps in North America all a sudden don’t seem so large and many families are applying for bankruptcy as we speak.

Diversification is very important to remember if you’re a business owner. Some would say the meaning of diversification is not putting all your eggs in one basket and as simple as this definition is its 100% correct.

How do I ensure I have diversification in my company’s products and services?

To ensure your company will manage and survive during the storm you have to set aside your target market and see if you have additional resources you can use to generate extra income. So if you’re in the apparel industry maybe you can also look at selling more items in that specific market. So let’s say currently you only carry a line of t-shirts and pants. This leaves potential opportunity from selling other items such as socks, hats, briefs, underwear and more. You could even go as far as to start selling shoes and accessories.

If your manufacturing options are limited you can simply become a wholesaler and start reselling other companies products. You can do this b2c or b2b either way it opens up more potential market share in these desperate times.

Expanding your available product lines can help increase your overall profits and in the long run it might be just enough to keep the company a float!

Best of luck marketers!

I know I don’t blog too much here at SEO Marketing but I really am a pretty busy guy. I work full time in Sales and marketing which doesn’t leave me too much personal time. I’m currently in a long term relationship which I also have to dedicate time to. In my free time when I have the opportunity to blog I also have other online obligation to tend to such as Blog Engage

This is a big time consumer for me because I have to moderate not only the main Social Networking Website but I have to moderate the blog forums as well. I’m not too sure if anyone has put 2 and 2 together but yes I’m the owner of blog engage and I love it!

Social Networking is a brilliant marketing tool and if done right you can use these tools to promote not only your blog site but specific topics you post. The ideal is pretty basic behind Social networking websites. You take an article you wrote and submit it to a specific category and from there members of that specific site vote for you. This in return creates a new back link and has the potential to generate extra traffic and intellectual conversation to your blog. If you use Social Networking websites often you will know as well as I do it’s a great promotional and marketing tool. I would also suggest using the large Social Networking Websites such as Digg, Stumble Upon, and Reddit.

Seeing traffic generation is always the hardest thing to do when building your blog you should 100 percent use these services. The overall goal here is to increase your exposure, promotion and brand awareness, yes even your have a brand.

Taking the time to increase your exposure with Social Networking Websites means more then simply submitting your blog article. You must add friends, Engage or Digg their articles. Trust me they will notice this and the majority of the time they will also Engage or Digg your articles. In its own little way this is an example of how you build relationship, create brand awareness and generate more traffic.

The drawback of using Social Networking Websites is you may find yourself at the Networking website more than your very own blog. Unless you own the Social Networking website this should happen. Be sure to maximize your time spent on these websites and don’t waste your4 time sitting around waiting for something to happen!

Social Networking Websites are great if you intend to Engage with other bloggers. You simply select the category your blog is in and start commenting on other blogger’s article that you find interesting. This will help you build relationships with other bloggers and in return generate more potential traffic. You can read more regarding commenting as a form of traffic in this article here, Simple way to generate simple traffic.

Best of luck to you all and don’t forget to leave a comment if you found this topic or article interesting.

Today I will share with you some of the Top Webmaster Forums on the net! I’m not adding any crap in this post so if it’s not here, it’s nowhere! Also I could have simply never discovered it yet as well! I’m at many forums on the net and most of them I’m sitting anywhere from 500 - 1000 posts! This is massive activity promoting all my blogs and websites! This list isn’t made in any specific order so don’t think the first added is the best because it all depends on what you’re marketing and promoting!

Top Webmaster Forums List

#1. Digital Point Forums - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

#2. iguides - http://iguides.org/forums/

#3. Web Talk Forums - http://www.webtalkforums.com/

#4. Name Pros - http://www.namepros.com/

#5. The Admin Zone Forums - http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/

#6 UK Webmaster Forums - http://forums.ukwebmasterworld.com/

Thanks and enjoy

I have some good advice I would like to share on how to develop website traffic and new users! I have a few ways and I’ll try and share them all. First you will need to ensure your forums are in perfect working order as you don’t want this new traffic to see a non working forum. Make sure you have the forums set up correctly and also in a non confusing way. Here are some ways to generate and develop new members/users.

#1- Start using Stumble Upon. This site can develop very good traffic for your website but ensure it good content as they will ban you for stumbling your forum names and not topics.

#2- Start Submitting your Forums to Link Directories. Ensure you provide enough information when submitting that you gain the interest of the reader and also ensure you add it to the correct category. Very Important!

#3- Sign up at large forums and immediately (if you can) set your forums signature with a unique tag line linking to your forums.

#4- Try and add quality posts when at other forums. I know this is hard sometimes and doesn’t have to be done all the time. Usually the more specific your answer is the better chance you have of someone actually clicking your signature links.

$5- Purchase forum signature when allowed. Many forums allow their users to sell their forums signature this can also help you develop traffic especially if they are a heavy poster.

#6- Pay for Bloggers to Blog about your site and a “web site Review” These usually cost money but are worth the 10 dollars. (Average price)

#7- Purchase Blog Roll links from Blogger when you can. This is a great form of traffic and you can really focus on your specific target market! I mean if your forums are about Sports look for a Blog site that’s about sports.

I hope this helps your forums develop and build traffic to your site. If you have any more question please feel free to ask away I’m pretty good a marketing websites!

I wanted to add some great Google search terms if you going to look for forums and blogs links to buy. just Google these simple terms

-Links Exchange

-Blog Roll links

-Free link submission

-Buy Trade or Sell Forums

-Advertising Forums

-Link Dirrectories

As you can see searching terms like these will get you access to forums that in the end will result in increase traffic and new members!

Cheers, seomkt