Online Video marketing is an amazing and lightning fast way to get your business seen and known, and there are several very good reasons for this.
1. Video proves your product is real. Words may be able to explain what your products or services are and what they do, but they don’t convince the viewer that your product really exists. When you can actually SEE it, then you know it’s real. So video creates reality and adds legitimacy to your business.
2. Video works fast. Would you rather read 5 pages of web text to find out about a company, when you can watch a short video? Probably not. Online viewers do expect a company to have a website, but we’re so used to watching commercials to find out about businesses, it’s just what we’re used to and is proven more effective for marketing and advertising than static images or text alone.
3. Online video is free. In the past, before the internet, businesses would spend tons of money creating television commercials because they knew this was the most effective form of advertising. And while that’s still effective, Youtube and other video sharing websites have made it possible to post your videos for free all over the internet.
4. You can correctly categorize your video to make your video easy to find. With tagging, you can add relevant keywords to your video, making it easier for people who are already interested in your product/service to find you and your business. This makes online video even better than television commercials because they’re targeted to the correct public.
5. You can create groups. Many online video sharing websites allow you, the business owner or individual, to create a group or multiple groups for your videos. You put your group into a category on the website. This feature PLUS the tagging feature makes it even easier for viewers with common interests to you to find your video(s).
The activity of creating videos for your business is a whole different technology, however. At the low quality end are free, quick videos from your cell phone or digital camera. At the high end of quality are professional videos with a hired crew and expensive equipment. And there is an infinity of options in between. The Dream Team will actually take care of all of this for you. Creating all the profiles for you on the video sharing sites, posting your video, adding all the correct tags and categories, etc. But that’s not all, if you don’t have a video for your business, the Dream Team will take care of THAT TOO! This is just one of many of the features of the Dream Team’s service to drive endless traffic to your website.
Find out more. Go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
When you save a web page url for later viewing that is called “bookmarking”. When you save a web page url to a public website and add relevant tags, that is called “social bookmarking”.
Why Social Bookmarking?
Before social bookmarking, internet users saved urls they wanted to remember in whatever bookmarking tool their browser offered. That’s fine if you don’t have too many. But as you probably have already experienced, as you save more and more bookmarks, they become harder and harder to find, and you can’t remember what category you saved them under. And then if you want to share them with someone, you have to email the link or write it down. And sometimes you’re on a different computer so you don’t even have access to those bookmarks when you need them.
Social bookmarking addresses and solves EVERY ONE of these problems we’ve all had. How?
1. You can add as many tags as you want. Unlike categories in your browser, tagging allows you to categorize your bookmark under as many different categories as you want. If you bookmark a tshirt design company’s website, you can tag it “design” “tshirts” “merch” “wearable art” etc. And these services usually suggest common tags you could use. What this means is that basically your searching nightmares are over. “What was that tshirt design site?”, you might ask yourself a year later. You check “tshirt” and there it is. And if you searched “design” it would also be there. The key is to make sure and tag with relevant keywords that you (and others) would search for in looking for that url.
2. You can share your bookmarks with specific people. Some social bookmarking sites like delicious.com allow you to create special feeds just for your friends or colleagues or whoever you’d like to send specific links to. And as the recipient you can add that feed to your RSS reader, so you get alerted the instant someone sends you a personal url just for you to see.
3. You’re making information retrieval saner and easier for the whole world. By using social bookmarking, you are contributing to a properly categorized and organized true library of information that others can use as well as yourself.
4. You can be free. You don’t need to be stuck to one particular computer to view, create and share your bookmarks, because these are stored on the social networks’ servers. So you just log in from whatever computer and you have access to all your bookmarks and everyone else’s too. It’s a beautiful thing.
5. It’s a really good online business marketing strategy. Sharing your business’ web pages with the world allows the world to find you, and allows you to search for members who might be interested in your products/services. You can find people interested in YOUR keywords, as well as finding out what websites THEY find interesting. You can see what bookmarks are currently popular, and use this information in your own website optimization, promotion, marketing, and advertising.
There are many reasons that social bookmarking is a great tool, both for personal use and for business. The above are just a few. I hope this helps. And I hope it convinces you to get going with social bookmarking.
Keep in mind that there are hundreds of social bookmarking sites, each of which requires you to create a profile, and each of which you would have to bookmark your web pages to, in order to make best use of this tool. As a business owner, you may want to opt to have the Dream Team do all of this work FOR you. It’s a very effective web marketing strategy, but it’s also quite time-consuming to do it right. The Dream Team professionals take care of this, and many, many other services for you, to get your business seen, known, and to drive tons of traffic to your website. Want to find out more about what the Dream Team can do for you? Go to http://www.websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
Writing press releases is relatively easy, and it’s an important step to get your company seen and known, and talked about in online media websites. You can find templates for this online, as well as actual press releases to use as a guide, if you like. Also, you should take a look at the media sites you plan to submit your media release to and format in the style that THEY use to make it easier and more likely for your release to be accepted.
These are the basic steps in writing a press release:
0. Make sure your press release is actually newsworthy. Do NOT use your press release as just another way of creating an online ad. Ads are ads, press releases are press releases. Your release has to be actual news or it’s not going to be accepted by the media sites. So come up with some news that is news, and then move on to step 1.
1. First Line. “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” is always the very top line of a press release. This usually goes in the top left margin. Make sure to capitalize every letter exactly as I did above.
2. Contact Info. Skip a line, then put contact information. Include minimally contact name, phone number, website address, email address, date and/or time of release.
3. Headline. This is the make/break of your press release. You have a split second to grab the reader’s/media site’s attention with your press release. So your headline MUST MUST MUST grab their attention. It should be as short as possible. What is your most exciting news? And how short can you make a headline that makes sense? Those are the two questions you should be thinking about in your headline. Use words which are attention-getting. Think newspaper headlines. If you write “A New Media Company is Opening its Doors” for example, that will attract as much attention as an obituary. “New Media Company Prepares for Instantaneous Global Takeover” sounds more dramatic and, therefore, more interesting. Positive or negative extremes are always more attention-getting when it comes to news. As a rule, your first 10 words are the most important words of your entire press release. So use them wisely.
4. Intro/Lead Paragraph. Start with City and State of release then date. Next comes the most important facts of your press release. This paragraph must contain who, what, where, when and how. Just the facts. Do not use flowery, fancy language or lots of adjectives. Do not include hype. And definitely do not use bold letters, extra capitals or excessive punctuations for emphasis.
5. Next Paragraph. The next paragraph should serve to reinforce whatever claims you made in your lead paragraph and headline. If you have an actual quote from an expert, or a testimonial, that’s always good.
6. The Boilerplate. This is the journalism name of a sentence or two that you use repeatedly in your advertising to describe your company and what it does.
“The Nuthouse has been providing exotic and hard-to-find fruits and nuts to restaurant owners since 1908.” is an example of a boilerplate.
7. Hashmarks. Right below the boilerplate type “# # #” to signify the end of the release.
8. General key points to remember: Write your press release in the 3rd person, from the viepoint of an actual journalist. Stick to facts and try to avoid hype indicators like “One-of-a-kind” or “Breakthrough”. Keep it short. Make it newsworthy. If you don’t find it interesting, the media sites sure aren’t going to.
If you’d like this done for you by professionals, just contact the Dream Team. They will write your press release FOR you. They know ALL the rules, and they also will submit your release to dozens of media sites, which is an entirely different technology that I didn’t even get into in this blog post. It requires knowing exactly what are the best media sites to submit to, knowing how and when to submit them, the rules of each media site, etc. Give yourself a break and spend your time on your business. Let the Dream Team take care of this for you. Go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/ to find out more or to have the Dream Team drive tons of traffic to your website.
Pay Per Click advertising can seem very mysterious and confusing. In truth, there are many aspects to creating a successful PPC campaign, and many factors to consider in getting started with this type of marketing/advertising. Here are a few tips to help you get started.
1. Keyword Research. This is the most important first step in anything having to do with website marketing, SEO, traffic generation, any of it. You HAVE to know what the correct keywords are for your industry, as well as what the exact search terms people who purchase your particular products and/or services are searching. There are many places to find this kind of information. There are free online services, as well as paid software. For a decent free search, Google offers a keyword tool to help you with your eventual adwords campaign. It would also help you if you did ad campaigns with Yahoo or MSN. I’m just mentioning it because it’s decent and it’s free.
2. Do the math. You need to find out how your keywords will pan out, cost-wise. Figure out your current visitors to sales ratio. How much is the #1 advertiser for your keyword (your competitor) paying per click for that keyword? What percentage of your visitors turn into sales, and how much do you make on each sale? If one out every 100 visitors makes a purchase on your website, and you bid 5 cents per click, your cost will average $5.00 per sale. If your profits are $10+ per sale then this is viable. If, however, your profits are $2 per sale, then this is unworkable and you’ll be losing money. This math is based on you taking the #1 spot. For Yahoo ads, as an example, the Yahoo Keyword Selector tool gives you that information so you can work out this math. You may decide to go for the third highest spot. Or you may decide to go for a different keyword, a bit less general keyword that isn’t as costly to you per click.
3. Figure out which is the best PPC company for your needs. Eventually maybe you’ll have multiple PPC accounts. But just to get started you can check out the various PPC companies to see what they offer. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, ABCSearch, Bidvertiser, Search123 are just a few pay per click companies you can look into. And in your investigation, check things like: Do they offer free keyword search and suggestion tools? Do they offer you assistance with click fraud? What are all the costs? Are there minimum balances? Do they have good customer support? Try it. Email them and see how quickly they respond, or if they, in fact, respond at all.
4. Alternately, leave it to the pros. You also have another option. Between you and me, I strongly recommend this option, only because it’s not necessary for you to reinvent the wheel. And because, trust me, there are a TON of ways to mess this up. You could let the experts at the Dream Team take care of all of this for you. They will do all the keyword research, create your ads, manage your accounts, all of it. And they already KNOW what they’re doing. So you won’t have to worry about messing up with the trial and error learning method. Have the Dream Team drive tons of traffic to your website. Go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
Getting generic traffic to your website is, of course, vital. But what about local traffic? If you have a business which requires your local area knowing about you, then you absolutely NEED to drive the local traffic to your website.
But how?
There are several different important steps to driving tons of local traffic to your website.
1. Paid advertising. Google Adwords allows you to choose what areas you want your ads to target. You can choose everything from every country of earth to your city/metropolitan area. So that is definitely something you can do. It will cost you, but it’s definitely a route.
2. Make your website local traffic friendly. This means ensuring that your address is correctly located on the correct pages. Ideally you should actually have your address on every page of your website.
3. Submit your website to local directories. Websites such as Google Local, Yahoo Local, MSN Local and Ask Local are places people go to find local businesses. Plus they are already huge, well-established, respectable websites as far as the search engines go, so being linked to them can improve your own search engine rankings as well as your general reputation.
4. Create profiles on social networks with a local search feature. Yelp.com, for example, is where people go to find local businesses by inputting their zipcode or town and type of business. Having a profile on there makes it easier for people to find your business and review it. Delivering stellar service will get you better reviews on there, and definitely drive traffic to your site and also to your physical business location.
5. And, of course, don’t neglect your offline marketing strategies. Make sure your URL, address and phone number are on your business cards and all off-line promotional materials. And get those promotional materials out EVERYWHERE. Put two business cards along with your tip at restaurants, put them in with your check when you mail in a credit card or other type of bill. Keep your business cards on you at ALL times and find every excuse to discuss your business with people and give them your card.
The Dream Team knows everything about generating tons of local, as well as non-local, traffic to your website. Some of this data is very technical and I haven’t even mentioned it here. And some of it is just time-consuming. Your time is valuable. As a business owner, the last thing you need to be worrying about is locating and submitting your website to every local directory that exists, creating tons of social networking profiles, making the correct changes to your website, etc. So why not let the Dream Team handle that for you? Find out for yourself. Go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
As a business owner, you absolutely need a reliable way to stay in touch with your customers, to thank them for things, to invite them to things, to send them special offers and give them updates. Email marketing is THE way to accomplish all these things. Here are my top 6 reasons you need to use email marketing for your business.
1. Improve the relationships with your customers. By staying in touch with them, your relationships with your customers become stronger, more real and more personal. When you show people you actually care about staying in touch with them, they like it. Your loyalty to them equals their loyalty to you. Routine personalized newsletters keep them informed.
2. Increase sales of your products and services. Your best customers will always be your existing and happy customers. Use your email list to send special offers to your already-existing, already-happy customers to generate a ton of sales.
3. Create a way for new people to sign up to your mailing list. With a subscription form on your website’s home page that connects to your email marketing account, people interested in your products or services can subscribe to your newsletter, and receive automated opt-in reply forms as well as Thank You letters once they’re subscribed. You only have to create these letters once and set when and with what frequency you want which newsletters/emails sent and to whom.
4. Keep your company in your customers’ memory. By sending out automated weekly or monthly newsletters, you remind your customers who you are, what services you can offer them, and you can generate a ton of business from this.
5. Keep track of statistics to improve your sales and marketing. With a good email marketing campaign, you can track your emails sent and received, which customers purchased what, numbers of emails vs sales, etc.
6. Save money on your promotions. Promotion and marketing can be very expensive, especially advertising in print. Email marketing services are relatively inexpensive and provide much, much more to you, the business owner, than just the printed advertisement could EVER provide.
There is a bit of research in determining what the best service is for you, and the technical ins and outs of how to create a great email marketing campaign that turns into sales. Fortunately, the Dream Team already KNOWS all of this. Setting up your email marketing account and even writing your first 5 emails is one small part of the giant amazingness that the Dream Team offers. Want to find out more? Go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
Directories are websites where internet users can go to find websites about whatever topic they’re looking for. As a business owner, it’s really important to have your website listed in directories.
The procedure for listing your website on the various directories is relatively simple, but can be quite tedious and time-consuming to do it thoroughly. The basic steps are:
1. Organize. Put together a list of all general directories, meaning not niche directories but general ones like Yahoo and DMOZ. Next, search for all directories which are niche-specific. If you have an online floral delivery business, for example, you would want to search for all floral website directories.
2. Read and know the rules. Now with your complete list, start with the largest, most well-known directories like Yahoo and DMOZ. It’s important to know each directory’s rules for submissions. They are NOT all the same, and violating the rules can get your website banned from the directory.
3. Make sure you’ve got the correct category. In these large directories, websites are listed by categories and sub-categories. So find the most specific and precise category/sub-category that pertains to your website. That’s where you’re going to submit your website. You can usually do a search for your main keyword and find what category/sub-category your business goes under that way. This is an important step, as adding your website to the wrong category can definitely affect your traffic adversely.
4. Write a great title. Your title should be a short. concise title with no hype and no filler. Just the exact title. Do not put the whole title in capital letters! Your title should include your #1 main keyword, and ideally would begin with the letter “A” or “B”. Many directories list websites in alphabetical order, so it’s always a good idea to set yourself so people can find your website quickly in the directory listing for your category. Be careful, though. If the directory thinks that you just added an A to the title to get listed higher up they could remove it. You may even consider changing the actual title of your website so that the first word begins with the letter “A”. It’s not the most important thing in the world, but it’s something you may want to consider, as your directory title must be the actual title of your website, and not one you just come up with for directory listing purposes. That’s a long-winded way of saying that your directory title must match your website title.
5. Write your description with care. Most directories require you to give a title for your website as well as a description. These steps are VERY important. Doing them incorrectly can violate the terms of service of the directory, and minimally can cost you in lost traffic. Don’t put useless words in your title or description. Do NOT use all capital letters. Your description should be short, concise and unbiased. You should use your main keywords in your title and description. It is very difficult to change your title and description later, so make sure it’s exactly right before submitting it. Write it down on paper first if you need to.
6. Double check. Make sure you do not have typos. Make sure you have followed all the rules of the directory. And make sure that you are in the correct category/sub-category for your business. Now submit your website!
7. Follow up. After a few days you should receive an email from the directory if your site has been accepted. This could take several weeks. You may try to resubmit after a few weeks if you haven’t heard from them.
8. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now go through that entire procedure for each directory on your list you made above.
As I mentioned earlier, this process isn’t difficult. It’s just tedious and can be VERY time-consuming if you intend to submit to many directories. Most people can’t really be bothered going through all of this for more than a few directories. That’s one of the great things about the Dream Team. One of MANY of the services they offer is Directory Submission. And that means directory submission to 3000 directories. They know all the rules of all the directories and have this down to a science. As a business owner you most likely have a lot on your plate, and your time is valuable. Why not let the Dream Team experts handle this for you? For more information or to have the Dream Team get started driving tons of traffic to your website, go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
Let’s start with what is a “blog”? The word “blog” is a shortened form of web log, which is a dynamic website to which you can publish content. It’s different than a static website, in that the content is always changing and can be updated by the user from a simple interface. It’s instant publishing, you don’t need to know HTML or have server login data, etc. So it’s like keeping a journal or log. Hence the name “web log” or “blog”. There are several websites which host your content for you like Blogger and WordPress.com, as well as websites which allow you to create your own self-hosted blog such WordPress.org.
Why is blogging important to you, as a business owner? Many reasons.
1. Google recognizes continuing and changing content. When you create a page on a static website, Google (and the other search engines) find your page and recognize it as new content. Each new static page gets recognized by Google’s bots. With a blog, every single article you write gets cached by Google’s bots. If you write a new blog post every day, that’s the equivalent in Google notifications to creating an entire new page on a static website every single day. Since static website content tends to not change very frequently, you can easily see how this is a practical way to get your business and your website known in the search engines quickly.
2. Your business will get known and discovered in the blogosphere. What is the blogosphere, you ask? In the same way that there exists a universe of static websites, with search engines etc., there also exists a universe on the internet of blogs with their own search engines. Such websites as Technorati and dozens of other blog search engines get automatically alerted or “pinged” every time you post a new article on your blog. Or you can use one of many services to manually ping your blog post after writing it. WordPress does this automatically for you. This means you get noticed by two different universes of search engines.
3. Proper communication is 2 way, not 1 way. So to really communicate with your public properly, you would want to hear their feedback and generally make yourself as a business owner able to be communicated with. Blogging allows two-way communication. You can control these settings, but by default, a blog allows public comments on each of your blog posts. This interaction makes you appear more real to the public, and also allows you to find out what your public like, don’t like, want, etc. to help you deliver a product or service that’s in alignment with what the public need and want.
4. People will be able to find your business by keyword search. When you blog, you can create tags, which are lists of keywords which are related to your blog post. This feature is actually built in to the best blogging software, so you can just add the keywords and they automatically get sent to Technorati, and your blog post gets linked to those keywords. This enables internet users searching those keywords to find your business when they search that keyword.
I’m trying to keep this down to the basics, but there’s really a LOT to know here, and a considerable learning curve. Things like the length of the posts, the content, the keywords, the titles, the time period between posts and many other factors are relevant and important in the art of blogging. I will be posting more articles on this subject, but this should get you started at least understanding why blogging is important and how it is important.
The Dream Team are expert at all aspects of blog marketing. If you’d like to have the Dream Team take care of all your blog marketing, even creating a blog for you and teaching you how to maintain it, or just find out more on how the Dream Team can get tons of traffic to your website, go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
Article marketing has been used successfully for many, many years to increase business traffic in print before the advent of the internet. The internet has made this activity quicker and easier and the possibilities for reaching millions of readers even greater. There are many reasons why article marketing is an important, even vital, part of business marketing in general. Here are the top 6 reasons.
1. Article marketing provides publishers with free content. Websites which publish articles, also called “Article Directories” accept these articles on various topics and thus receive information on thousands and thousands of topics for free. Internet users can then have free access to all these articles for their own information, research, etc.
2. Advertisers/businesses can promote their own businesses for free. Businesses can submit articles about their products and services to article directories for free, and gain a lot of exposure for themselves in this way.
3. Web users can find articles by topic with ease. Articles are often written to target particular keyword niches, and then these articles get distributed to content publishers that cater to those markets. What this means is that a website, using RSS, can pull articles on a particular topic from these directories and have ever-changing subject matter on a particular topic that already-interested readers can read. This keeps interest up on the websites which publish this content. And it gets exposure all over the internet on the sites which use this content.
4. Article writers get backlinks. Backlinks are links pointing back to a business’ website. When the articles are distributed via RSS, the exposure to the authoring business and number of backlinks is increased greatly, making this avenue a great source for Search Engine Optimization.
Is there any down side of article marketing? Well, yes and no. There is never a down side to writing or publishing helpful information for people. There’s no down side for the web user, the writer or the publisher. However, this avenue for article writing and the resultant benefits to online businesses has led to a reduction in article quality in many markets. Sometimes people hire people to write mediocre articles JUST to promote their businesses or JUST to get the backlinks, rather than to really provide excellent content to web users. So this is an important point to keep in mind when writing your own articles. The benefits can be fantastic, but keep your viewers in mind. Always write articles asking yourself “How will this information help people?” If you can give yourself an honest, definitive and positive answer to that question, then your articles will be just fine and contribute to the value of the internet and the user’s experience in general.
The Dream Team knows how to write proper articles that help business owners, increase backlinks, and which provide valuable content to internet users. It’s an art. It’s also one of many, many services the Dream Team provides to its clients. If you would like to find out more about the Dream Team, or have them help you dramatically increase traffic to your website, go to http://websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.
There are hundreds and hundreds of social networks, and they offer different services. Some I like better than others, and some just ARE better than others. So I’ve listed my top favorites out, along with my reasons for this, and any down sides that I know of, to help you understand the differences between them.
Facebook – My all-time favorite social network. You can have a profile using your actual first and last name so your friends and family can easily find you. But you can also create a business page that’s a separate profile just for your business. Alternately you can just create a business profile without a personal one. But if you have both, people can search for either and find you. There are thousands of groups, a ton of great functionality, ability to invite people to events, post photos and business-related links. Much less spam and fewer phony profiles than Myspace. Millions of members. Supports iPhone and Blackberry.
Downside – They have changed their interface a few times now over the years, each time with the intention of making the user experience better and more intuitive. And that’s true, but it’s also difficult and confusing getting used to each new change. Newest version is a little buggy still.
Myspace – Myspace has been around for many years and is a very well-established, well-known social network. It has many millions of members, more than any other social network, and the capability for you and your business to reach those millions. There are groups you can join, the ability to invite members to events in bulk, and the ability to search members by keyword. Supports iPhone and Blackberry.
Downside – There are a TON of phony profiles that spam you, rock bands, etc. that try to befriend you. Harmless, just annoying. Very annoying.
Twitter – The talk of the town, and the internet, and tv and celebrities and politicians and Shaq. EVERYONE uses Twitter. You can get a little 140 character message out to thousands and even millions of people all at once. You can also do this from your iPhone. There are a lot of tools people have created to make the Twitter experience more organized, more intuitive, to add more features etc. And this continues to expand daily.
Downside – 140 character limit. But there’s even an application which bypasses that. Also a lot of talk and not so much listen by users, but it’s a really great way to get a quick communication out to a lot of people, and to get your business known throughout the internets rapidly.
LinkedIn – A social network specifically for business contacts and networking. Has groups you can join, a place for testimonials, and other specifically business-type functionality. Good site to find business contacts, jobs or even staff for your company.
Downside – It’s membership is not quite as large as the other 3 above, but it is continuing to grow and everyone who IS on LinkedIn is on there for business reasons, so you don’t have to wade through rockbands to find business contacts. It’s less fun than some of the others for personal social networking, but it’s a business contact social network so it’s not where you go to find out where all your friends are going tonight. It just has a different purpose, and it does succeed at that purpose and can get you staff when you need it, or jobs when you need them, etc.
The Dream Team knows which social networks are the best for you and your business. We know how to create profiles correctly on which social networks so that you get a ton of traffic to your website and better search listings. We will actually create 48 social networking profiles FOR you as part of the service that we provide. To find out more, go to http://www.websitemarketingdreamteam.com/traffic/.