This blog at Huffington Post about the perils of free labor poses interesting questions in a humorous way about how the workforce uses interns and the purposed lawsuits and regulations that are currently being discussed. It turns out that interns are an economically friendly way to get work done for free with little or no risk. Uhm, yeah, we who have been through [Read more…]
When you market yourself as an expert in any field, chances are that people will want to buy from you. An excellent way to do this is to write articles and about your industry then distribute them both online and in print publications. Both Ezines and print publications are hungry for fresh content, so submitting a good article to them is a win-win situation; they get fresh content and you get exposure. Keep in mind that it’s very important that your content is engaging and informative so that readers will seek your articles out and publishers (ezines and print publications) will come back to you again and again for that golden content. Article marketing can really establish a lasting footprint online for your brand because useful information tends to have a longer shelf life. Articles should be in-depth and informative and rely less on opinion and more on facts. Here are some simple guidelines to help you get your articles the attention you seek.
“¢Â How-to’s are great subject matter when creating an article. A succinct list that explains how something is done in a step-by-step manner can be an enticing read. For example, say someone bought a low-quality “widget” from a competitor and you write an article on how to make a high quality “widget” in a step-by-step format. First, the reader will feel empowered with the knowledge of what makes a great widget and may use that knowledge to question the competitor. Secondly, you become the quality “widget” master in that person’s mind and the next time they’re in the market to buy a quality widget, they just may think of buying from you.
“¢Â Make good use of the resource or bio section under the articles you write. The submission box appears after your article and is where you can promote your brand as well as offer contact information for the author of the article. You should include a short bio and a link back to your main site and blog. If your content is good enough, you can be sure people will click on your links thus increasing your website and blog visibility.
“¢Â Use keywords in your articles that are similar to the ones you’re using on your main site. Remember that SEO expert you hired when you built your website? You can use that same keyword strategy with your articles too. This will help your search engine rankings when your articles are linked back to your main site. Good thing you hired that SEO expert, right?
“¢Â Publish your articles to submission sites and have them distribute your content. Submission sites collect articles and also allow for you to add a bio-section at the end of your articles that can link back to your brand site or your blog. A few of the more popular ones are ezinearticles ,   goarticles , thephantomwriters and buzzle. To find the best fit for you, do a search for online article marketing distribution and you’ll find lots of options to choose from.
Want to read more on article marketing, visit my article on the subject by visiting this link
This week, I’m going to try something different by offering up a seven part series on Brandcasting : what it is and how it can help your brand. Today’s post will cover the definition of Brandcasting and ensuing posts will cover Brandcasting strategies that you can implement to help build your business online. Keep in mind that the information that I will cover is just scratching the surface and is meant to be a starter-kit for anyone who may consider Brandcasting for their business.
So what is Brandcasting? Brandcasting is the act of spreading informative and relevant content throughout the digital stratosphere in order to create a wide footprint for your brand in a cost effective and powerful way. Content may include articles, blogging, social media, video and any kind of content that can be indexed by a web crawler like Googlebot . The best way to get the word out on your company’s goods and services online is by creating and distributing content about the industry your business is in. For example, if you make widgets, you want to create content based on subject matter directly related to widgets (i.e., hot to make them, how to sell them, what makes a good widget, wooden widgets vs. plastic, etc.) Brandcasting will not only make your brand more findable on the Internet, but it can organically increase your ranking on search engines and make you appear to be the expert in your field. Any size business, small, medium or large, can put Brandcasting to work with a minimal investment of time and money. One benefit of Brandcasting allows smaller businesses to compete with bigger businesses that may not have the wherewithal to have an online branding strategy. Brandcasting can be a powerful and affordable way to market a business and attract customers via relevant content. Here is how Brandcasting can be most effective; when potential customers are ready to buy, they usually do some research on what they are buying. With Brandcasting, potential customers have a greater probability of interacting with your brand if you have multiple points of content on the Internet. Brandcasting is not a gimmick, nor does it offer immediate results. Brandcasting takes patience, foresight and good old-fashioned hard work. If you’re looking for a quick fix marketing strategy, this is not it. Plan on dedicating a good amount of time and effort to build your Brandcasting empire and be prepared to map out multiple strategies as you go. In the next post, we’ll discuss the first and one of the most important strategies for a brand; building an SEO friendly website.
A recent post by content guru Christina Gleason uncovers the dark underbelly of what Google considers good practices for creating link bait. For any of you who don’t know, link bait is simply the act of spreading content on the web (in this case, just like fertilizer) in the hopes that you’ll get people to link to your site. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, is an advocate of creating fresh and interesting content as a way to increase rankings. In a recent video , he seems to contradict himself. In the video Mr. Cutts is suggesting using a service called Amazon Mechanical Turk, which many writers feel is akin to a sweatshop that employs writers. Mechanical Turk is dirt cheap, and in my opinion, exploitative. Getting something for nothing because a new technology allows one to do so is not a new idea. Remember when “desktop publishing” took the world by storm? With the proliferation of computers that could handle graphics-based software, anyone with a Mac or PC was suddenly calling themselves designers, even though they had no formal knowledge of color, typography, design, etc. These self-proclaimed designers also knew nothing about how to price the market and often undercut professional designers, thus turning the design world on it’s ass for a bit. In the short term, it was bad for everyone because these “designers” were churning out terrible logos, websites with animated flames and hard to read content by the bushel load. But as design became more and more of a commodity, clients quickly saw the need to stand out. They realized the adage that “just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s good” and came to their senses, going back to professionals who could tell the difference between a serif, slab and sans-serif typeface and who charged accordingly for their services. I believe we are in the same situation here for the written word. While it may take some time, at least we don’t have to put up with over-animated flames.
In a recent TechCrunch article I read about a new website sponsored by Sears and AOL that pushes “Good News” to readers. It’s called GoodNewsNow or GNN. Erick Schonfeld, writer for TechCrunch says, “GNN is like a cross between a bad advertorial and a splog.” Whether or not you agree with it’s “badness” , one thing is certain; what the hell does good news have to do with Sears? Or AOL for that matter. Am I to believe that when I step into my local Sears and browse for the ballpeen hammers, I’m supposed to associate good, wholesome news with my shopping experience? I think Sears would be better off devoting a website to showcasing great products, or advice on how you can save money during a recession by a little do-it-yourself elbow grease and products purchased from Sears. At least that would make sense. But good news? I don’t buy it.
Over the years as an ad man I have had the good fortune to work with many B2B companies. I have gotten the opportunity to see the inner workings of some of the most successful companies in the U.S. More often than not I have found that these B2B juggernauts are home to brilliant engineers, product developers, software designers and genius number crunchers. What you don’t typically find, however, in a B2B environment is a stable of creative writers, video producers and savvy bloggers who are chomping at the bit to create digital content for their company. So how does a B2B company generate interesting content that will in turn attract a loyal following of online visitors? In a recent SEOLand post Brian Kaminski, managing director of SEO firm iProspect in San Francisco suggests leveraging a company’s PR department to take on the role. An informative read and a very smart idea. But what if your B2B company is small or midsized and doesn’t have the luxury of utilizing a PR department? You could hire on one or two individuals to create content for you. But that would mean taking on more employees to manage with the added cost of salary, health insurance, benefits and sick pay, etc. There’s a third cost-effective and efficient solution; hire a third-party company like Brandsplat dedicated to creating interesting branded content to take on that role. I don’t normally plug my companies’ services in blog entries, but I believe we offer B2B and B2C organizations an opportunity to reap the rewards of original branded content on the Internet without the cost associated with having a dedicated internal department. The thinking here is you wouldn’t take on the expense of an in-house advertising department when you can hire an outside agency to do the job for you in a more effective and cost-efficient way. Today it is common practice to hire third-party companies to do your advertising and media buying. So it’s a no brainer to do the same for content creation. At least that’s what I’m betting on.
With the proliferation of information-based blogs and blog marketing comes the need to report faster than the next fast typer. It’s perhaps why the blogger has gained the reputation of a caffeine-driven writer who spends every waking hour (and perhaps even some sleeping hours) perched above the warm glow of a keyboard, ready to report on breaking stories that are so hot, they’re steaming. Sometimes, however, the steam blinds the information-hungry reader into thinking that what is being reported on is true. A recent New York Times article explores the importance of being more relevant for blogs versus seeking credibility. The article describes the world yore when Newspapers were actually printed on actual paper, where writers fought to break stories first regardless of whether they checked sources or not. Eventually, newspapers that sought to be more credible survived because the readers demanded it. But now, methinks, the reader may be demanding more. So the question isn’t which is better. The question, in my opinion, is which is more interesting. Who says that all the news that’s fit to print has to be the cold hard facts? Perhaps there’s room for scuttlebutt and rumor just to keep things spiced up. By the way, did you hear that Apple is buying EA and Twitter?
Is the importance of page ranking ranking lower than it used to? Yes, according to Google’s Matt Cutts. The holy grail of search marketing used to be figuring out which phrases ranked highest so that you garnered the most clicks with the least effort. But times have changed. In a recent interview, Mr. Cutts reported, the challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.”
That’s not to say that page ranking isn’t an important factor. It still is. But just because someone clicks over to your site doesn’t mean diddlysquat. Is that visitor converting? Is a sale happening? In the non-pixilated world, putting a “sale” sign on a retail storefront is enough to get people to take a peak. But that doesn’t mean the gawkers are going to buy whatever it is you’re hawking. Other factors come into play; the quality of what you’re selling, the price, the way it’s displayed, etc. The list of factors goes on and on. And so it is in the wonderful world of online retailing too.
“Paying attention to the content on your site, building good stuff, those are the things that will help. Not “can I get my PageRank higher with one more sprinkle of green fairy dust?”, says Mr. Cutts. But then again, there’s no real data on the effectiveness of green fairy dust. Or maybe there is; Matt’s just keeping it to himself.