WebSite Marketing Strategy

A blog is a great communication medium, so long as people visit and read your blog. Some people measure their popularity by the number of comments they receive, or by the number of subscribers they have. These figures can often be misleading. Any good blog metrics package will give you a much more refined look at your blog.

Comments and subscribers are not reliable indicators of popularity. When it comes to comments,  you may have some fairly good content, however some content is just for reading, not all content draws comments. Bloggers are also notorious for not stopping and leaving comments.

Subscriptions are just as unreliable. These days up to 50% of your subscibers may just be scrapers looking to make use of your content. Of the other 50%, how many actually read your feed?

A good blog metrics package will tell a real story about your visitors. You can see how long they are staying, which pages (posts) are more popular and whcih pages they are landing and leaving by.

By reading this information, you can determine which pages or stories are more popular and so concentrate on producing more along those lines. You are also able to see what search terms they are using to find you. A little more refinement and you can use those terms to increase your reader numbers.

Blog metrics packages provide a lot of valuable information if you know how to read them. That information is useless if you don’t know what to do with the information. Find what others think you do well and concentrate on that.

Many bloggers look to sell advertising on their to generate blogging income. The big problem is they have no idea what their blog is actually worth.

There are many sites that claim to put a value on your blog but the reality is that single formula is going to come up with an answer. As a blogger you want to receive as much blogging income as possible. An advertiser is going to want to pay the lowest rate possible while expecting a maximum return and there is no half way point.

As an advertiser, I want a return on my investment. Generally speaking, it can be difficult to determine how much traffic I receive from an ad placed on your blog. From there I also need to be able to determine what the conversion rate is. I can choose a static banner type ad, a per impression ad or and per click ad. As blogger, the ideal blogging income is a static banner pay per month type ad.

With pay per month ads you know in advance what your blogging income is going to be. With any of the ‘pay per …’ type ads, your income is going to fluctuate wildly. Eventually, if  your traffic is high enough, you may find that per impression or per click type ads generate significant returns.

What is your blog worth when it comes to blogging income? The value you place on it. If an advertiser is willing to pay $5 per month for an ad and you accept, then that is the value you place on your blog. If you hold for more, you may find that ad space remains empty.

Supply and demand rule even in an online world. As the number of blogs grow, the amount of ad space grows so the price per ad falls. Until you reach the point of generating thousands of visitors per day, the advertiser is going to be the one who dictates price. You either accept it or refuse it. Blogging income is getting harder to acquire so it often better to accept what is on offer if is suits the general direction of your blog.  It’s now a case of ‘beggars bloggers can’t be choosy’.

Many bloggers leave the structure of their URL’s as the default. When it comes to blog SEO this can be not only a mistake but a wasted opportunity.

Whenever possible, you want each page on your blog to stand out. Blog SEO requires a URL structure that is easily read by your users whilst adding value when crawled by a search engine spider. Default URL’s often include fancy symbols, generally the ? symbol and simply number each page (post). This leaves an untidy URL such as:

yourdomain/wp/index.php?p=77

Not easy to remember and not easy to reference. Of course it would be nice to have a URL that provided a little more information such as:

yourdomain/wp/blog-seo-and-url-structure/

That is nice, neat and easy to remember and easy to access. More importantly,  URL’s like this can have keywords included - an important part of blog SEO.

There are several ways to change the URL structure of a blog. With WordPress there are several plugins that provide you with the option of changing the URL structure.  Consider you URL as part of your blog SEO - there are many advantageous to be had.

Blogs are great tools when it comes to connecting with people. They provide a unique opportunity for not just producing product related content, they open up a one-to-many dialog where customers, or potential customers, can ask questions or leave comments.

Once a dialog  has started, other visitors are also likely to join in either offering their suggestions, sharing their experiences or asking a question of their own. This is very different to a bricks and mortar store. Here, although you are in public and asking questions of the salesperson, every one considers it a private conversation and stays away - they find their own salesperson to pester.

The one-to-many dialog can be useful for generating sales if your approach is customer focused. Answer their questions thoughtfully, no matter how dumb, and provide some recognition to everyone who has commented. This recognition makes them feel valued and they may likely to return - even if it is just to see what else has been written. One thing that is often very true in this world, when people leave a mark, they will often return to view it.

Provide content that is helpful and relevant to your products and people will read it. We are spending more time online now researching  before we spend. If you have the information that I need then I am going to keep coming back. If you can solve my problems or answer my questions - I will be back.

The one-to-many interaction helps to develop a trust relationship that is often found in bricks and mortar business. Most people have their  ‘favorite’ stores they go to time after time. They often have their favorite shop assistants as well. The online community can be the same. Foster it and watch your sales, and reputation, start to grow.

So you have built a blog and you write in it every day and you are curious to know if you can now make some money from your blog. You look at your analytics and you can see that you have many eager visitors everyday yet your pocket is still empty. Pay Per Post can help you monetize your blog.

Imagine getting paid to write blog posts. Upon signing up with Pay Per Post you enter into their network of blogging opportunities and you simply start writing. Once blog content is approved that is when the real fun begins. Get paid to write reviews and product opinions. If you have a blog and enjoy writing this will be the easiest you have ever made money. You have the opportunity to become a blogger or an advertiser. If you have a product or site that you are looking to promote than Pay Per Post can help you spread the word about your organization. Pay Per Post also allows to have videos distributed through our network of bloggers as well. Have a great video that you want the world to see, let Pay per Post’s network help you gain your popularity. Pay per Post can help generate a cash flow where you once didn’t know existed.

For more information on how Pay Per Post can help you put some cash in your pocket please visit Pay Per Post’s website today and sign up.

There is nothing that turns potential visitors off faster than a slow blog. Many blogers have great designs and their page is full of every imaginable widget - the problem is, the blog takes minutes to load.

Your blog is no different to any other web page. It should load quickly and be ready to be navigated within seconds - certainly not minutes. There are many causes so if your blog is slow to load, check some of these key areas:

Plugins:
How many plugins are you using and do you really need all of them? More importantly, how many plugins do you have that have been de-activated. De-activating a plugin is not enough as WordPress still loads them. If you have de-activated a plugin, either delete it entirely, or move into a temporary directory away from the ‘plugins’ directory.

Widgets:
How many widgets do you have on your sidebars and do you really need them? It is nice to have pictures of all your visitors from places like BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog, do you need both? Other widgets like sitemeters can be very slow as well. Double check your widgets and make a decision as whether they really do enhance your blog.

Graphics:
Graphics can be very slow. Even more of a problem are video and audio files that auto run. Leave the auto run off if possible and let the user decide whether or not play them. Graphics should be optimized. If your server is slow as well, store your graphics off site.

Page Design:
What loads first, the sidebars or your content? Your content should be the first to load. Your visitors can be reading it while the sidebars load. If your sidebars load first and there is a delay, it can be minutes before the content appears.

Header Image:
How big is your header image and is it optimized or does it need resizing to load? Header images, whilst first to load, can be the slowest part of your page. Make sure it optimized for quick loading.

Code:
There are some areas of your pages code that never changes, yet it is written in PHP and makes calls to the database. For example, when loading the header the code will often get your blog name from the data base. Use the ‘view code’ option in your browser to see the HTML equivalent. You can rewrite some aspects in HTML to remove the slow PHP and database calls. This can change the load speed of your blog.

Slow blogs are a no-no these days. Optimize your blog to ensure it loads quickly and provides your visitor with a great experience.

It is apparent that the Internet has gone through many changes in the short time span that is has been alive in. We are constantly seeing new ways and technology to convey the message of business. Blogs are no exception.

Blogs have only begun their life cycle. As blog marketing becomes more and more important in many companies daily strategies the need for qualified bloggers will only grow. eMarketingSilo offers top notch candidates for the entire online marketing industry. At eMarketingSilo you can have the confidence that you are interviewing the right candidates for your company. Don’t worry about being flooded with resumes from tire kickers and individuals that clearly do not belong managing and marketing your company’s blog.

Your blog should not be approached lightly. In the next few years it will only become more important to the success of your organization to keep your blog top notch and producing the greatest qualified traffic. You will want to make sure your employee is marketing that blog correctly so the right visitors and eye balls are landing on your blog. Having successful blog starts at your employee and it is important to take your time and make sure the right candidate has received the privilege to occupy that seat in your company.

For more information on how eMarketingSilo can help you build an all-star marketing team come and visit eMarketingSilo and see for yourself.

There are thousands of blog directories around and probably billions of blogs. Many bloggers look upon blog directories with disdain, this can be a big mistake as these directories can produce traffic and will generally deliver inbound links. Just don’t make any of these mistakes.

Don’t Over Submit:
Don’t try to submit to every directory you come across. Be selective and target directories that have categories to suit your niche.

Don’t Copy and Paste:
One trap that many bloggers fall into is to try and list with a lost of directories at once. They open as many directories as possible and then just copy paste the same information into each directory. You are far better off listing with directories one at time writing your title and description for that directory.

Don’t Ignore Paid Directories:
Paid directories such as Yahoo! provide decent backlinks. They are not cheap, but they are well respected and that is what you are paying for - reputation.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read:
Good or bad. Directories are not going to solve your SEO problems and get you listed number one. The good directories will generate backlinks, quality at that, but little more.

Submitting to directories can help to develop back links which are valuable to all SEO strategies. Submit to blog directories that are going to deliver that value and your site will reap the rewards. Ignore of over do it and your site will suffer.

I have asked this question before but in a different way. It was a post I wrote about two months ago, The Holy Grail of Social Media: Conversions or Conversations? My summarizing hypothesis was that social media as a communication channel might not be the best strategy for customer acquisition and/or direct marketing as would search or display advertising.

Just yesterday, Reem asked a similar question on her blog – What’s more important: a million impressions or 5 relationships? — which was originally asked by Joe Marchese, President of SocialVibe, during a panel at the OMMA Social conference in New York. According to Reem, he was specifically asking this question about those who actively participate in social media. It was a great question that many marketers struggle with today; and if we are talking about social media users only, I echo this sentiment loudly. That is, real relationships matter more in social media, much more than millions of impressions.

If the question was directed at all web users in general (not just social media); that brings up a whole new set of variables. One variable being, the complexity for organizations that use multiple communication channels; yet want to maintain one voice with one high level strategy and multiple measurements of success. This is an issue that many corporate marketers have to deal with and it’s not as easy as one would think.

From the outside looking in, the answer might seem clear.

• Organizations need to be aligned in their communication strategy.
• Companies need to integrate their go-to-market strategies.
• Internal communication, planning and collaboration is the key.

Unfortunately, organizational silos exist so it’s not always that easy. Nonetheless, I would argue that social media may not always have to align with every other marketing activity, namely direct response marketing where conversions are the number one metric. Still, it doesn’t hurt to over communicate internally.

At HP, I managed search and social media for North America. My marketing objectives were to drive awareness and consideration for HP products and services (printers, scanners, All-in-Ones, Digital Cameras, etc.). My colleague and friend, Paul O’Brien managed interactive marketing for HP Shopping. While we talked, communicated and partied quite often, he had no interest at all in the engagement metrics that I was measured by; and I had no interest at all for his VERY STRICT CPA (Cost per acquisition) goals either. Nonetheless, it was nice to understand his strategy and go-to-market plans; and of course we always looked for opportunities to collaborate.

So to address the original question of “What’s more important: a million impressions or 5 relationships? and considering that I am referring to all web users in general, I would say it depends who you ask. Paul would say impressions and then narrow it down to a click-through rate – conversion rate – revenue per keyword – cost per acquisition – blah blah blah. Yes, he is THAT ANALYICAL. For me it was about engagement, relationships, conversational sentiment and tone; and I could care less about the clicks and impressions.

I would also say that the users who were browsing HP Shopping were “ready to buy” and could care less about engagement and conversations at that precise moment; which is probably a common scenario for most e-commerce related businesses, where users do want to be sold something.

Maintaining a blog can be time consuming so for many business managers, the implementation of a blog is the last thing they want to consider. However, your blog posts can be outsourced in a variety of ways and through numerous blog and website service providers. The question then is should you outsource you blog content?

There are thousands of bloggers who have a passion for sharing their experiences, stories and ideas and these same bloggers are often looking for ways to earn from their passion. There are, potentially, thousands of businesses that would benefit from having a blog attached to their website but don’t have the time, resources or know-how to maintain a blog.

Enter a blog and website service provider that matches bloggers and website owners to successfully  maintain a blog on a daily basis. Believe it not there are many blogs that are maintained by ‘ghost’ writers - and very successfully maintained too. These writers generally provide content on a daily basis with the webmaster or business owner adding their own content when required.

The issue is not whether you should outsource your blog content, rather it a question of economics. Can you afford to run your business without a blog? Most businesses would say yes, however the many benefits a blog brings, whilst difficult to put a dollar value on, can be substantial.

It becomes a matter of balancing the cost of maintaining a blog with the benefits that can be obtained. I am often surprised at how many business managers will happily cough up $100,000 per annum on search engine optimization and PPC campaigns but will baulk at spending $5000 per annum to maintain a blog, particularly when a blog can deliver so much ‘free’ or organic traffic to their website.

Outsourced blog writing can be one of the least expensive components for a successful online business. Blog and website services work with webmasters to ensure the content is appropriate, targeted when required, and delivers in respect of SEO benefits, traffic and a positive online reputation. If you don’t have a blog then perhaps it is time to consider one.