Devour The Web

When we speak about viral marketing, we are not talking about the newest disease. We are not talking about a Mad Cow Disease variant or something that you need to be vaccinated for. In fact, we are not referring to a disease at all.

What we are talking about is literally the most powerful traffic generation technique available on the internet. Viral marketing is so powerful that it makes the search engines look small and insignificant in comparison. Even link exchanges, as powerful as they can be, wilt into oblivion in comparison.

What you do with viral marketing is create something, anything, that visitors will want to give to other people. This thing, whatever it is, contains a link and perhaps a short advertisement for your website, ezine or ebook. So far so good, this is just good marketing. The viral part comes in because the people who receive these items want to give them to other people, who in turn want to give them away also.

So you see? What you get is an explosion of marketing for a very small price. It’s actually kind of like an avalanche, in that you throw a snowball down a slope and it just grows and grows until the whole mountain of ice and snow is tumbling down.

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There are thousands of marketing tool kits available online for a whole range of prices, but what if you are not interested in buying someone else’s tool kit and are more interested in creating your own internet marketing product and toolkit to sell. Well, there are plenty of ways to going about doing this.

First, you should have considerable information that you can easily compile into a toolkit or e-book to sell. Whatever information you are including in your marketing product, make sure it is viable and relative information your customers can use and will find practical. Providing this information will carry you a long way when it comes to customer reviews and recommendations of your product. Make sure any information that is not yours is documented properly and that you have permission to use it. When you start compiling the information, make sure it looks professional.

Also, be sure the information is easy to read and understand. Bullet points, lists and step by step guides are very helpful for individuals interested in learning how to market a product. Edit your e-book or toolkit several times as well as have another set of eyes read over it to make sure it is clear, concise, and understandable. The last thing you want is to provide confusing information and receive hundreds of emails that you don’t have time to response to. Do it right the first time and you will receive more customers, positive reviews and constant cash flow.

Contrary to what most people think, it is not necessary to submit your site to the search engines. In the early days of the web, when search engine technology was still primitive and search engines’ ability to crawl the web was somehow limited, it made sense to submit your site.

Today, search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo! Search have no problem crawling billions of pages and adding them to their index every month (and sometimes even more often). Most likely, they will find your site once they find a link to your page in another website.

That website can be a directory (a site that uses human editors to select, categorize and list websites), a site you exchange links with, or an article-posting site where you submit articles you write, complete with your resource box (a small bio about yourself with a link to your site).

The two best general directories are Yahoo! ($299/year fee) and DMOZ (free, but they may take a while to list your site). Listing your site with them will give you two of the best links you can get.

Today there are so many web sites on the web, but so few of them have good content and there are even fewer web sites that have large amounts of content. Why is the web like this? For one most webmasters are trying to make a quick buck and others don’t know where to begin or are too lazy to do the work.

Content really is king! Why? because visitors will stay longer or will come back more often and they are more likely to buy from your business. Visitors know you are an expert in your site’s topic because you write informative articles, which leads the visitor to trust your business more. And to your visitors it’s all about trust because if they can’t trust your business, how can they trust the product/service you sale or how can they even know that they will receive the product/service.

Most of the time before an Internet surfer buys a product they will search the web to get more information about it. Sometimes they are just looking to see how it really works or maybe they want to know more about a certain feature. If you write articles about your products, surfers are more likely to find your web site in the search engine and you may even steal a few sales from your competitor, which will result in more sales for you!

Major offline advertising firm Valassis is “going where the consumers are” and repositioning itself to rely heavily on an online portal site called RedPlum.com. Valassis has been known primarily for coupons, direct mail messages and for putting ads directly on the polybags protecting newspapers, but starting this January it will retire its ShopWise brand name and shift gears, according to Suzie Brown, chief marketing officer for Valassis.

“Consumer media habits have changed dramatically over the past five years, and we’ve primarily been on online medium,” she said of her company’s move to an online portal. “Our whole goal is to deliver value to consumers how, where and when they want.”

To drive consumers to the site, however, the company is still relying on its offline advertising expertise, as all of its products will now include references to the RedPlum Web site. The site will contain product information, coupons and ads for local and nationwide businesses, many of which will be updated by widgets built into the site. Unlike other widgets, the RedPlum versions will have a limited ability to be grabbed and replicated on a consumers Web page or social network page.

RSS Provides Multiple Opportunities to Share Your Information
 by: Michelle McClory

RSS content syndication is a relatively new member of the internet marketing family of campaign options. And, it seems as though new uses for RSS content are coming about very quickly. This is possibly due to recent changes in the way that major search engines like Yahoo! and Google want web site owners to advertise.

It seems like it shouldn’t matter to the search engines - the way you choose to market your website. But, it does when your link popularity begins to fall due to too many links on irrelevant web directories, etc. With RSS content syndication, you will not face that problem. And the better your content, the better the chances of increasing your standing with the search engines (not to mention your site visitors).

RSS feeds are no longer just appearing on the large news sites in order to show the latest headlines. They are appearing on internet-enabled cell phones, PDA and other mobile devices. The reason this is possible is the simple XML format used to produce the RSS feed. By using RSS syndication to spread the word about your site, you are now using one of the best advertising methods for reaching the “non-traditional” web browsers installed on these mobile devices.

Motricity, a company that builds and runs mobile storefronts for carriers, said today it completed the $135 million acquisition of InfoSpace’s mobile services business.

InfoSpace’s mobile services unit provides the portal and search functions for AT&T and Verizon in the United States; Motricity offers a storefront, catalog, and other applications that enables its customers to offer ringtones, games, and other content on mobile devices.

InfoSpace, moving forward, will focus on growing its online search business, according to a statement from Jim Voelker, InfoSpace chief executive. InfoSpace’s metasearch technology is used by other Web sites such as Dogpile and WebFetch.

Ryan Wuerch remains as Motricity’s chairman and chief executive, while Steve Elfman, former executive vice president of InfoSpace’s mobile services business unit, becomes Motricity’s president and chief operating officer.

Political rallies and marches are nothing new, and online campaigning is a well known trend, but when the two come together with a bunch of gnomes, it’s hard not to take notice.

Grassroots supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul have invited supporters that play online game “World of Warcraft” to join them in a rally and march on New Years Day. Organizers of the virtual event have scheduled the event to start in the snowbound city of Ironforge, so it’s sure to involve lots of gnomes and dwarves, before they march to Stormwind.

No word at this point if “Horde for Hillary” or “Orcs for Obama” counter events have also been scheduled.

A landing page is used to capture people’s details when they come to your website.

It helps to sort out the serious lookers from the curious!

If people come to your website and they aren’t really that interested in what you have to offer, then they probably won’t give you their details to have a look at the inside.

The first thing to look at then is your online advertising.

Are you using relative keywords to get people to your website?

Or are the keywords you’re using too broad and people are not really interested enough to give you details to enter your website?

I regularly use secondary keywords or phrases that are more targeted towards the market you’re trying to attract.

For example; If I was advertising on the Internet for holiday accommodation on the Gold Coast and I was situated in Broadbeach, then the keywords to use might be “Holiday Accommodation Broadbeach”.

If I had used “Gold Coast Holiday Accommodation” then I could attract people who might want to stay at Coolangatta, in which case they aren’t interested because it’s half an hour away.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long and complicated process that can be highly rewarding if done correctly. SEO is not a waste of time, but can be if your site doesn’t appeal to visitors or function properly. Your potential customer will be turned off if your site lacks trustworthiness, an eye pleasing color scheme and easy to use navigation. Why lose visitors and possible sales because of a small design flaw or unappealing color scheme? Those visitors could have resulted in sales if those small imperfections were fixed.

As I arrive from your high position in the search engines looking for your product, I want to be able to trust the company I am buying from. People are very leery with making purchases on the Internet, and even more so from sites they don’t know a great deal about. You want to gain trust from the visitor with guarantees, a professional design and color scheme, testimonials and by any other way. If your site doesn’t boast its trustworthiness and make me feel secure, do you think I will purchase your product? No. Visitors are especially leery when they are required to give credit card information. Make them feel protected, boast about your privacy policy, encrypted servers and whatever else you have set up. Be enthusiastic about your site’s security.