How to Launch an Article Series

"... how to get more marketing mileage out of my blog posts"

We frequently comment in our Internet Marketing Clinic that "Content is King!" What that means is that having good content on your web site is the best thing you can do to achieve good rankings in search engine results.

Almost everyone with a web site feels the pressure of generating good content for their site and is looking for ideas to get more material. This blog posting offers a nice technique for creating more of that content as a spin-off from the work you have already done. The basic idea is that you elaborate on things you have already done. Every good article that you create has points made within it that can suggest further detail that might be of value. Not only can you review your previous articles to look for these points, but you can anticipate this whenever you draft a new article by thinking in terms of lists of relevant points that are easily expandable in the future.

Every time I browse my web site, I find ideas that I could say more about or points that leave me feeling that I have not completely described what I was trying to say. Try this on you own site. Re-read your material and ask yourself, "if I were not familiar with this issue and reading this for the first time, what questions might I still have?" I am sure you will find triggers for more articles with this process!

Social Media for the Executive

"How many times have you heard, 'Not on Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn? You're way behind.'"

Pierpont Communications, a leading marketing firm here in Houston, recently took a look at social media from the perspective of a business executive and posted some interesting reactions to their blog.

The author made four points:

1. You expand your reach with these tools and can learn more about the people that you are dealing with in your business. That is always helpful.
2. Social media provide an inexpensive and efficient means of gathering information and maintaining contact.
3. Social networks are growing every day and more and more of the people you would like to reach are becoming available through this medium.
4. These media can provide you with early warnings about negative comments about your business that can give you an opportunity to take some action to counter the effect of the comments on your business.

In another blog entry on the same date, other authors from the same company provided more suggestions about how to think about and integrate these new media resources into your marketing strategy.

Keep in mind that the world is always changing and it is important to keep up with the changes if you want to be in the action. The growth of what we call "social media" is only one of the recent developments that is having an impact on business. Look into it and think about how it can be useful to you and your business or you may be falling behind your competitors without realizing it!

Why People Go Online - eMarketer

"According to Ruder Finn, 100% of US Internet users surveyed in Q2 2009 went online to pass the time. Other popular reasons were education, connecting with others, researching and sharing. The least common intentions when logging on were to make purchases, manage finances, comparison shop and join causes. "

As Internet Marketers, we have to go where the people we are trying to reach are going. This survey tells us more about what people are doing when they are on the internet, and most of the time they are not there to buy things or do business! If we focus our efforts too narrowly on those kinds of activities, the people we are trying to reach are not going to be interested most of the time that they are on-line. That does not sound like a productive approach.

The message that this survey emphasizes once again is the importance of content to effective on-line marketing. Note that "Keep informed" was given as a reason for going online 79% of the time. Other similar reasons like "Research" and "Educate self" were cited more often. Entertainment reasons like "Pass time" and "Be entertained" also ranked very high. What this says is that if you provide interesting and informative content on your website, you will be in the zone that most of your prospects are seeking when they go online!

For effective outreach on the web, always keep in mind what the people you are trying to reach might find useful or entertaining. If you can communicate with them in that mode, you can be there when they are ready to make a purchase or another commitment that supports your business objectives.

Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn

"All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees."

I found the statement above intriguing because I had always thought of LinkedIn as a way that small businesses and individuals were interacting on the web rather than large corporations. While that may be true, what this statistic reveals is that the individuals who are on LinkedIn are connected to all these large organizations, and, importantly, in significant roles! That has a lot of implications when thinking about how this tool might be useful to someone using it for networking.

This blog entry outlines a short list of ways to make use of LinkedIn:

1. Increase your visibility.
2. Improve your connectability.
3. Improve your Google PageRank.
4. Enhance your search engine results.
5. Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks.
6. Increase the relevancy of your job search.
7. Make your interview go smoother.
8. Gauge the health of a company.
9. Gauge the health of an industry.
10. Track startups.
11. Ask for advice.
12. Integrate into a new job.
13. Scope out the competition, customers, partners, etc.

For a more detailed discussion on each of these ideas, click on the title of this posting to go directly to the original blog that I have quoted.

These are just ideas that others have collected, and they will be more effective for some people than for others. For example, it appears to me that there is a definite "age bias" inherent in this kind of tool. My connections who are over 55 do not seem to have as many connections as my connections who are under 55. With a networking tool like this, it becomes more powerful and useful as more people use it more fully.

The message for us all in this article is that there is a new tool available to anyone who can make something of it, and using it is free and relatively easy. Keep in mind that LinkedIn also has a paid option that offers more features and power, so if you are in the group (or want to get into the group) for which this tool works better, you have the opportunity to "gear it up" a notch.

The Future of the Internet?

"Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now."

Here is some food for thought! This article describes how Facebook is building a huge database of information about people and their activities and relationships. As described in this article, this platform could become the new way that people find information on the web, that is, by referrals from friends and connections rather than by search!

There is a lot of speculation in this article, and many things that might happen never do, but it appears that Google is taking this kind of threat seriously, indicating that there is something to the idea.

We are all aware that social media, of which Facebook is only one outstanding example, is playing a more and more significant role in marketing on the web. As active marketers, we all need to be aware of this new phenomenon, but the idea that Facebook could actually replace Google as the primary source of new traffic is a real paradigm shift.