Keep regular

We don’t mean a high fibre diet… hmmm.

Here’s the first bit of ‘non rocket science’ – good blogs build followers. It might be a few, it might be a few thousand, but if they have gone to the effort of visiting your blog to read your opinions, it is only polite to offer readers regular, fresh content.

Poorly constructed, irregular blogs, or those which begin by publishing a lot of articles but then tail off, are a kick in the teeth to your followers. They can also make a website look uncared for; if you visit a blog and find it has not been updated in two months, you are hardly going to think the firm is at the cutting edge of its sector.

It is better not to have a blog at all than to have an old, dated one. This is really key.

Keep calm

No matter how popular your blog and how long you spend crafting eloquent and insightful posts, some people won’t like it. Or all of its posts. That’s just life. Get over it.

This may be because they disagree with you – and you should develop a thick skin when it comes to criticisms. Healthy debate is part one of the biggest benefits of the Internet and if your blog is filled with intelligent arguments then it is even more valuable a resource. Go on – do it justice.

Some individuals may leave sarcastic or just plain nasty comments. Well, that’s their problem and waste of time. Not yours.

It is vital not to be unpleasant back at these agitators. Remember, a blog represents you or your business and, however you might respond, it is vital to stay calm and measured when representing your firm. You owe it to yourself.

Keep polite

Now, you may think your parents taught you this when you were five, but the world of blogging can be an exasperating place and it is vital for a corporate blogger to keep his or her head. Remain level.

Importantly, it is not just on your own blog that you have to stay polite. You may disagree with a post elsewhere and leave a comment. Remember, it is essential to do so in a polite way, even if that blogger responds aggressively.

Your readers (perhaps clients and prospective customers) could see any of these posts, even many years later. You would not get angry in your office or at a conference (we hope!), because this would look unprofessional, or worse. The internet is like a big conference and go talk to someone else if another blogger loses his/her cool.

Keep open-minded

Your purpose may be to speak to the anonymous world, to share helpful thoughts, to build relationships with potential customers. Particularly for the latter it can also be a great place to discuss industry developments and learn from your peers’ opinions.

However, by engaging with us and sharing their thoughts, we can all add to our “bucket” of understanding.

The purpose of the web is not simply to inform, it is also to debate and learn. Be open-minded to the possibility that those commenting on your pages may have valuable insights.

Keep your integrity

Followers of your blog are unlikely to want a sales pitch repeated over and over again. That is not the point of blogging, you have to offer visitors something of value if you hope to keep them.

Of course, you can post about developments within your areas of interest/business, challenges you/it have/has recently faced and developments, but you should not blog with an overtly intra-focused or commercial message.

Aggressive marketing is hugely unpopular with the average consumer. It is likely to cause actual harm to your brand by making you look cynical and sales-obsessed

Keep comments

Comments are an important addition to any blog post. Debate and discussion is what such pages are for, so enable comments and welcome discourse. Why not leave your comments below?

We recommend you dig deep into this topic, but now have a partnership with a world expert on the topic who is providing a free 5-day course, here. Feel free to head to that and then read the rest of this post, or just continue reading: it’s entirely up to you. Either way will benefit you.

A commonly-asked question for those who use Adwords: “Why do you put quotation marks and square brackets around some keywords?”

To dig-down on this one, let’s look at what the matching options mean, and how they affect results:

Broad Match. This is where a keyword phrase is written as is, for example: google adwords

This method means that your Ad will potentially be shown to anyone searching for ‘google’ and ‘adwords’, in any order and possibly with other terms. So, anyone searching for ‘adwords google help’ could see your Ad.

Phrase Match. This is where a keyword phrase is enclosed by quotation marks, for example: “google adwords”

Basically, this is the next step up from Broad Match – your Ad could be shown to anyone searching for ‘google’ and ‘adwords’, but only in that order, and possibly with other terms included in the search. So, ‘how to start a google adwords campaign’ could trigger your Ad to be shown.

Exact Match. This is the last in the ‘positive’ matching options and is where your keyword phrase is enclosed by square brackets, for example: [google adwords]

This is the most specific of the three types. In this case, your advert will only be shown if somebody searches for ‘google adwords’ in that order and with no other terms.

These options each have their own merits, but generally, the more specific the search term, the higher your CTR (Click Through Rate).

If you have a small niche to start with, then Broad Match will give you the most exposure. The downside is that the large number of triggering phrases could push your CPC (cost per click) up, as a result of competition.

Larger markets require highly-targeted Ads, and this is where Exact Match (and Phrase Match, to an extent) comes into play. Imagine trying to get clicks from keywords such as ‘car parts’ compared to ‘ford fiesta rear wheel bearing’. Obviously, the more specific your keyword terms, the more likely you are to get an interested visitor to your site.

The last of the keyword matching options is Negative Keyword. This is where a keyword is precluded by a minus sign, for example: -tricks

This stops your Ad from being shown if somebody searches using that term. For example, ‘google adwords tricks’ would stop your Ad from being shown.

This is useful for prequalifying prospect clients – if you are trying to sell something, then ‘-free’ would be a good term to include in your Keyword list.

Of course, as with any marketing campaign, which of these methods will work best for you is unpredictable, so always remember to test, test test!

Best of luck. When used in the right way, Adwords is stunningly powerful. We’re going to run more features on this in the future.

Free 5-day course, here.

Effective, legal, effective email marketing is always permission-based. If not, it is called spam.

If you didn’t sign up for it, you think of it as spam – we’ve all experienced this. So why would anyone feel differently about messages you send them if they didn’t sign up for them?

Communicating, and marketing, via email requires a positive relationship. All messages swapped are opportunities to either strengthen or weaken that relationship.  To enhance the relationship, always make sure the content is relevant, useful, and interesting to the readers. You can hardly achieve this if they didn’t want to receive the messages in the first place!

Having and growing a big list of people who don’t want or read your emails gives you no advantage and is a waste of your time. Even if email is ‘free’, your time is certainly not.

You should appreciate and expect that a proportion of manually added email addresses will subsequently unsubscribe. Interestingly, if they do not, expect few of them to ever open your messages!  Remember this: even when someone deletes a message without opening it, they still see who it’s “From”. They are still exposed to your brand. The only take-home message they get is that you keep emailing them even though they don’t want you to! This is 100% actively detrimental to the reputation you have and to the relationship you’re trying to build.

If you’re not sure your approach is the right one, it’s probably not. Remember this, too!

Relationships built on trust will last, whereas those built on spam are bound to fail. If you think someone might like to be on your email list, always invite them to sign up and let them decide.

For a free CD about nailed-on effective marketing, click here.

Success. What is it?  Freedom?  Financial independence?

Whatever, we know it’s possible in different ways. Sure.

But there’s nothing quite so motivational as hearing about it for real. In a world where making it on the internet can feel like pushing water up hill (;o)) it’s great to hear some real-life stories.

These are some of our favorites:

“My goal was to build an online business that would generate an income equal (or greater, of course) to the salary I was earning. And also wouldn’t be dependant on any country’s economy (as my country’s economy is in shambles…).”

~ Elad Shippony

coolest-parties.com

“My online success means so much more to me than money. The fulfillment I feel in my own life and the example I’m setting for my kids far outweighs the dollars (although dollars will always be welcome!). My boys are growing up with the knowledge that they really can achieve their dreams if they’re willing to have faith in themselves and take action in their lives. Then all it takes is some dedication and hard work, which is easy to muster when you’re doing something you love! … Oh yeah, and SBI! of course.”

~ Michelle Schill

style-hair-magazine.com

“Having the opportunity to share Vieques and Puerto Rico with so many people around the world is a great satisfaction. As a bonus, I get to go on a tax-deductible vacation every year. I can visit my beautiful island, ride my jeep, take lots of photos, meet great new people, and write travel guides about places I love. I felt that money would just be the icing on the top. Of course, I did not realize how much icing my cake would have.”

~ Luisa Cupeles

viequestravelguide.com

“From the beginning of this year, my site traffic has rapidly increased and my Adsense income has more than tripled. At the time of writing this, my traffic is hovering around 800 visitors a day.”

~ Sara Ding

Juicing-for-health.com

Twitter has exploded onto the scene. With the growth of Twitter has come a big shift in the way people are interacting with blogs.

Previously, if you did something interesting, people might reference it on their blogs. But now in the age of Twitter, many people mention your stuff on Twitter.

This can be good IF:—– they have thousands of Twitter followers.

BUT IF most the people mentioning a topic are all in the same small tight knit space then you are only reaching a fraction of a fraction of the potential distribution you would have before the age of Twitter.

Blogs become popular by being mentioned lots of times on other popular blogs. It’s not complicated.

So it’s very hard to become popular using social networks alone. If blog readers are deciding to spread interesting links via Twitter instead of blogging about it on their own sites then new blogs will struggle to gain readership.

There is a decision to be made if integrating Twitter on your blog – more people Tweeting your posts or more people leaving blog comments. If you don’t leave comments on blogs you’re probably in the “Twitter is more important” camp. You know what – jury’s out for me.

Come on, hit me with it!

It’s a subject close to the heart of some of us. If not most of us!

Building Your Landing Pages

We could talk about this all day.  Let’s not do that  )   Let’s talk about what works.

If there’s one thing you must focus on, it’s copy. Copy, copy, copy.  You know it deep down.  So why do so many people not follow this golden rule? All the search engines in the (known!) universe understand text. Yes, top of the list, Google, does too.  They don’t care much for design, pictures, animation or other ‘clever’ stuff. Search engines exist to give people what they want and they do that using copy when they crawl your pages. That’s why they say copy is king.  Copy IS king.

You want to CONVERT.  Suggested tips:

A. Write good content

Supposing you’ve done your homework and all the people that come to your landing page are targeted visitors, driven by one of your AdWords™ ads. Here’s what the page must do:
* be genuinely helpful
* offer reliable information
* avoid the mambo-jumbo sales lingo
* put the benefits of your service ahead its features
* offer real solutions to real problems
* create the urge to buy
* make it easy to order

Getting your page copy right is a very important job. You need knowledge, patience and some skill to do it. But if you do it right, you’ll be truly amazed with the results.

B. Choose your keywords

Use your keywords with balance. Make them come naturally. Don’t overoptimize. Remember your goal.

C. Matching Ads with Your Content – Match, Match, Match!

This is fundamental to making your landing page convert: your ads (together with your keywords) are the ones that send you traffic. If they don’t work for the same purpose (i.e. selling the same product), all your trouble is in vain.

The biggest mistake you can do is send all the traffic to the home page. So don’t. Each ad in your campaign should work for its own landing page. By customizing them, you make them more effective.

D. Set one goal per page

Don’t over do it.

Having more than one goal per page will confuse your visitors and drive them away. Everything you write must converge towards the same purpose.

E. Add relevant links

Remember that you offer solutions to problems. If you know about something else that may help, don’t hesitate to link toward it. It could be something in it for you, too. But that’s another story and we prefer to save it for the affiliates section.

F. Obtain testimonials

This is a common way to gain your visitors’ trust before they actually get to know you. Whenever somebody praises your service or product, remember to ask for their accept to publish that on your web page.

If you want a great way to build great great landing pages (and, generally, pages!), try this.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

We’ve all experienced the problem.

I’ve got to be honest: I don’t like pop-ups. However, many thousands of website owners do use them. They have their place, but it MUST be a clearly-defined place.

Looking at the stats, the conversion rate of pop-ups is high. There’s no denying it. So from a purely marketing perspective, I fully, fully understand their use. Club Blogger is nothing if not aware of the real world!

So, if you’re going to use them or know someone who does;

1) make sure that the code is working properly and not breaking your website. A good idea is to check it on different browsers, for example;

2) don’t use multiple pop-ups. I.e., some sites have more than one pop-up. One on the middle of the screen, one that shows up at the bottom later and one that reminds you to have lunch! Don’t do it!;

3) REMEMBER that you may stop people from linking to you that can’t stand pop-ups themselves. Many bloggers hate pop-ups, so if you’re fine with turning away a whole bunch of link love – – then go for it. Just be aware of what you’re missing out on;

4) “subscription” pop-ups which appear when you first a page are obnoxious. If I haven’t read the content yet, I am not going to subscribe to it. I usually leave websites which throw promotional or subscription begging pop-ups without reading further;

5) 9 times out of 10, if a site “pops up”, surfers “pop out”. Those who click through generally KNOW the site and really want to read before they stay to read the content.

Looking forward to your thoughts.