1. Think Audiences Not Markets
What's your market? Hire a consultant to help you with your Web-business problems and one of the first questions he or she will ask is, what's your market? How about eighteen to thirty-four year old, single male college graduates with a dog named Spot; or maybe forty-five to fifty-nine year old married women, who hate their husbands and can't get their adult children to move out of the house. Maybe, just maybe, they're asking the wrong question.
The Web isn't about markets, it's about audiences. Audiences need to be entertained, enlightened, and engaged, and if your website doesn't, you're never going to achieve what you want.
Time to rethink how you're delivering your marketing message. Start treating Web-visitors like an audience not a market, and you might just find what it takes to be successful on the Web.
2. Think People Not Customers
You know all those visitors you attract to your website with your brilliant search engine optimization schemes, how many actually purchase anything? Stop treating visitors as if they are already customers and start treating them like what they are - people. That's right, people. You know the two-legged funny creatures with wants, needs, desires, and maybe even a few bucks to spend.
Customers are always looking for a deal and they're leery of websites that only want to take their hard earned cash. Treat your Web-visitors like people who can satisfy their wants, needs, and desires with your assistance and guess what? Maybe it will make a difference: one small step for Web-credibility, one giant leap for Web-success.
3. Think Experiences Not Features
Bought any good features lately? Didn't think so. You would think the way business pushes the whole feature-frenzy thing that features are exactly what people are looking for, but nobody buys features, they don't even buy solutions - boy doesn't that whole solution provider nonsense really get to you after a while.
What people really buy are experiences, hopefully positive ones. Whether it's soft ice cream or a new accounting program, what people are paying for is the experience your product or service provides.
Does your website offer an experience? Does it explain the experience your product or service delivers? If it doesn't, then you really haven't got anything anybody wants.
4. Think Emotion Not Logic
Think you're a logical person, always making rational decisions based on practical criteria, and bottom line results. So tell me what was the functional thinking that went into the purchase of those leather pants you bought last year, or that sixty inch plasma television you bought just to watch the big game?
Let's get real. You make purchasing decisions based on what you want, and then justify them with seemingly sensible rationalizations, just like everybody else. So stop trying to appeal only to the practical, logical, aspects of bean-counter sales, and start pushing the feel good aspects of emotional marketing.
If you're trying to appeal to an audience that gets its only satisfaction out of acquiring the most features for the least cost, then your marketing to the wrong audience.
5. Think Memories Not Promotions
Most animals live in the moment, whereas human beings live in the past. Our here and now and our plans for the future are based on our experiences, our histories, and our memories.
We take pictures of our kids, holidays, and special events; we commemorate birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, and milestones of all kinds. Even the significance of our prized possessions is centered on the fact that those mere objects represent memories of the people, places, and events that shaped our lives.
Real marketing, the kind that creates long-term clients and customer relationships, is not about coupons, sale promotions, or deep discounts; it's about delivering memories.
6. Think Marketing Not S.E.O.
Okay, here's one you've heard from us before: think marketing not search engine optimization. Sure you've got to drive as many people to your website as possible, but if your marketing message is so confused, unfocused, and hard to comprehend because of all the keyword density and S.E.O. tricks, then what have you really accomplished other than wasting people's time? And people really get upset when you waste their time.
7. Think Stickiness Not Hits
It's not about how many hits you get on your website, it's about how long people stay. If visitors remain on your site long enough to get your marketing message then you must have said something worth listening to, and if visitors get the message, your site has done its job.
If your website delivers the message, then you can expect the email inquiries and phone calls to start flowing, but it's still up to you and your sales staff to close the sale: people close sales not websites.
8. Think Stories Not Pitches
Did you hear the one about the farmer's daughter and the search engine optimizer ... Stories, everyone loves stories. In fact before the invention of the Gutenberg press, oral story telling was the way knowledge got passed down from one generation to the next, and how news was sent from one region to another.
Now that we have this multimedia Web-environment, we can continue the tradition of real people delivering creative audio and video presentations that capture the imagination and drive home the marketing message so your audience won't forget who you are. Nothing informs, engages, and entertains, like a good story: sounds to me like one heck of a way to sell to an audience desperate for meaningful communication.
9. Think Focus Not Confusion
There you go again, telling everyone who will listen all the wonderful things you and your company can do. Trouble is, telling them all those things just confuses them.
What is the product or service that is most important to your company, the one you are determined to sell to your audience? That's the one you want to talk about. That's the one you want to devote your marketing effort to promoting. That's the one you want people to think about when they hear your name or see your logo. Focus your communication or your message will just be a forgettable, incomprehensible blur.
10. Think Campaigns Not Ads
Isolated one-time advertisements are like one-night-stands: exciting for a while but ultimately unfulfilling and devoid of meaning. Your audience is looking to get married, not a short-term fling. Your marketing has to woo your visitors with long-term campaigns that tell your story and deliver your focused message; audiences expect to be courted and counseled with meaningful communication. And that takes time and commitment.
If you're spending money on just ads, you might as well be throwing that money down the drain. There is a better way. So if you're looking for a long-term relationship with your audience, think campaigns not ads.
11. Think Message Not Hype
What message are you delivering to your online visitors? Are you telling them you've got the best product, at the best price, with the best staff, and world-class customer service? Is that what you saying? Guess what? Nobody cares, because nobody believes you.
There is only one way to show people you're the best and that is to prove it, but here's the catch, you can't prove it until they become customers. Whoops. Okay, so what's the solution? How about a real marketing message that speaks to what your audience really wants. It's not about you it's about them.
12. Think Personality Not Banality
Does your website just lie there like a lox; you know that cold, dead fish that often comes with a bagel? No personality, just more of the same tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, tiresome, lackluster, monotonous, stuff everybody else has. Boring! This is the new Web, so if you can't get with it, you'd better get out because you're wasting your time and everybody else's.
You're so worried about downloading times that you forgot to put anything on your site worth seeing or hearing. Check your logs. If people are jumping ship faster than rats on a burning ship, it's time to try something new; like, maybe some compelling content.
13. Think Branding Not Copyrights
Hay, I love the Beatles. I grew up with them, and I have all their records - ya records, like vinyl dude, not CDs. And guess what, I've also got a Mac, in fact I've got a bunch of them, not to mention iPods and other assorted Apple gizmos and gadgets. And you know something, I've never once got John, Paul, George, or Ringo confused with Steve Jobs. Amazing!
Worry just a little less about all that small print stuff and more on building a memorable brand that people will remember, and that nobody will mistake for some johnny-come-lately imposter.
14. Think Positioning Not Slogan
It's funny how people have a position on almost everything: you name the issue and people will have a definite opinion on what they think, except when it comes to their businesses. Just because you have a cute slogan that you print under your logo, doesn't mean you own a position in your audience's minds.
It seems businesses can't stand to make a definitive statement about who they are and what they do. Why is that? Afraid they'll lose a customer I guess, but if people don't understand exactly what you do, and why they should be doing business with you, then they're never going to be customers anyway.
No company can be all things to all people and companies that try, never go anywhere. Tell people who you are and what you do and forget about all the other stuff, it just gets in the way.
15. Think Sensory Appeal Not Cents Appeal
Do you want people to sit-up and take notice of what you have to say? Do you want people to actually remember what you're telling them? While if that's the case, you better appeal to their senses, and we're talking about sights and sounds.
Deliver all your juicy, got-to-have content in an audio and video presentation that will stick in people's heads.
If all you're doing is appealing to their desire to spend less, then maybe they aren't the customers you're looking for anyway. Nobody can afford to sell for less all the time, every time.
16. Think Identity Not Logos
Is your company the equivalent of the invisible man? You're on the Web, but nobody cares because you're not saying anything worth listening to, and if they do see you, you are instantly forgettable.
You've got to have an identity, a personality, an image, and there is no better way to create that identity than with a video of a real person delivering your marketing message in an entertaining, memorable manner.
17. Think Entertainment Not Biz-speak
Speaking of entertaining, you cannot engage, enlighten, or entertain if everything you present sounds and looks like it came from some b-school text book, or from one of those self-help courses on direct marketing guaranteed to make you a millionaire in only three weeks.
Every business has a story to tell and they can all be presented in a compelling way with a little imagination and creativity. And yes, even b-to-b businesses can rise above the mundane and deadly boring, if only they take the time and make the effort.
18. Think Communication Not Copy
Last but not least, let's all remember, that websites are about communication. If you've got nothing to say, nothing to offer, or are afraid to say what you can do for your audience, then how do you expect to be successful.
Filling your Web pages with keyword density prose and instantly forgettable sale's copy is not going to win the day.
Whether you are presenting your case in text, audio, or video, it better be interesting and enlightening - even text can be entertaining if written with style and attitude.
When websites fail, they fail because they do not communicate a realistic, believable, convincing marketing message.
About the Author: Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
Friday, September 14, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Effective Email Marketing Subjects
Email marketing has exploded in growth over the past few years, as marketers have continued to see the benefits and outstanding ROI this marketing medium can bring. However, despite the great results being attained, many marketers still overlook a very important component of their email marketing campaigns: The Subject.
Just about everyone who uses email knows about the subject line. It's the little bit of information that is displayed along with the 'sender name' when an email lands in someone's inbox. Some email programs show the sender name, subject and a preview of the message, while other email programs only display the sender name and subject. In these latter scenarios, the subject is an even more vital part of your email marketing campaigns because that may be the single biggest factor in determining whether or not someone will open your email marketing campaign.
Far too many email marketers spend a long time perfecting their message content (which is a good thing!) and then they simply gloss over the subject. An there's the mistake. You may have the world's greatest content, but if your subject line isn't compelling enough to make your readers open the message, all that great content will just go to waste. With that in mind, here are a few tips for crafting your subject line:
1. Short & Simple: A Few Words Can Go A Long Way
A good subject line is short and to the point. Many email programs restrict the amount of characters that are displayed in the subject. What this means is that your subject may get cut short. Worse yet, you don't really know where it will get cut off, which would lead to some highly unexpected results. Imagine sending out an email campaign to business professionals with the subject line: "Learn to Diversify Your Sales Strategy." Now imagine if that subject gets cuts short by your readers' email programs, and all they see is "Learn to Dive". Chances are, your business-focused readers won't care to open that message. On the other hand, if your subject is just a few words, and is direct and to the point, then it will be displayed fully and you will know with the utmost confidence what each recipient is getting the context of your email marketing campaign, regardless of their email software.
2. Pique Your Readers Interest Everyday
People receive a lot of email messages, so you want to make sure your email marketing campaign cuts through the clutter. For your email marketing campaign to succeed, you need to pique people's interest. After all, it is their choice as to whether or not they open your email. And if the subject doesn't elicit some interest or curiosity, then it can easily be skimmed over. The best way to come up with a captivating and interesting subject line is to put yourself in your readers' shoes. Don't tell them what you think they want to hear; tell them what they actually want to hear! This can be tough because you need to keep it short (as per point 1), but a few words is more than enough to get a reader's mouth wet and make him or her want to know more. Remember, if your subject is dull, boring, or completely uninteresting, your reader will go looking for the delete button, and no email marketer wants that.
3. Cheesy or Overly Exaggerated Subjects Doesn't Fool Anyone
If you send out an email and in the subject you promise that "all of your dreams will come true", today's consumer will likely delete your email marketing campaign prior to even reading another word. If your subject guarantees your readers will be rich beyond their wildest dreams, then it will almost always get trashed (not to mention classified as spam). Today's consumer is very savvy and these cheesy, out-dated gimmicks simply don't work. Before writing your subject, assume that each one of your recipients is very well aware that your product or service is not the miracle of all miracles. The moment you send out an email with an overly gimmicky subject, you are really shooting yourself in the foot. This is not to say the content of your message is not special, but with limited reading time for emails, people quickly dismiss anything that sounds "too good to be true". Make sure your email marketing campaigns don't get filed into this notorious group!
4. Be Honest: Describe Your Content
Your email marketing subject should not be conjured up in isolation of your actual email content. They should go hand-in-hand, where the subject nicely describes what the reader can expect in the body of your email marketing campaign. Far too many times in the quest for the perfect subject (and while following the points above) an email marketer will stray so far away from their content that the subject ends up having nothing to do with the message. This is a catastrophic mistake because in addition to the subject acting as a determining factor for opening your email, it also sets up the reader's mentality for what they can expect to see in your email marketing campaign. If they open your message expecting to see tips for effective email marketing, but instead you give them tips for dieting, they will swiftly close your message. While a goal of the subject is to get the reader to open he message, you also want to set it up so that the reader keeps reading. And you can only do that when your subject is honest. After all, if you're trying to fool your readers into opening your message, then you can't expect them to be that attached to what you eventually want to say.
A good email marketing subject can go a long way towards boosting your results and helping you achieve your goals. This important part of every email marketing campaign should be given some serious thought and, when combined with the points above, will help more people open your email and read your content.
About the Author: Robert Burko is the President of EliteEmail.com, the leading email marketing program, serving thousands of businesses across the globe. The EliteEmail.com email marketing service is part of the EliteAnswers.com family.
Just about everyone who uses email knows about the subject line. It's the little bit of information that is displayed along with the 'sender name' when an email lands in someone's inbox. Some email programs show the sender name, subject and a preview of the message, while other email programs only display the sender name and subject. In these latter scenarios, the subject is an even more vital part of your email marketing campaigns because that may be the single biggest factor in determining whether or not someone will open your email marketing campaign.
Far too many email marketers spend a long time perfecting their message content (which is a good thing!) and then they simply gloss over the subject. An there's the mistake. You may have the world's greatest content, but if your subject line isn't compelling enough to make your readers open the message, all that great content will just go to waste. With that in mind, here are a few tips for crafting your subject line:
1. Short & Simple: A Few Words Can Go A Long Way
A good subject line is short and to the point. Many email programs restrict the amount of characters that are displayed in the subject. What this means is that your subject may get cut short. Worse yet, you don't really know where it will get cut off, which would lead to some highly unexpected results. Imagine sending out an email campaign to business professionals with the subject line: "Learn to Diversify Your Sales Strategy." Now imagine if that subject gets cuts short by your readers' email programs, and all they see is "Learn to Dive". Chances are, your business-focused readers won't care to open that message. On the other hand, if your subject is just a few words, and is direct and to the point, then it will be displayed fully and you will know with the utmost confidence what each recipient is getting the context of your email marketing campaign, regardless of their email software.
2. Pique Your Readers Interest Everyday
People receive a lot of email messages, so you want to make sure your email marketing campaign cuts through the clutter. For your email marketing campaign to succeed, you need to pique people's interest. After all, it is their choice as to whether or not they open your email. And if the subject doesn't elicit some interest or curiosity, then it can easily be skimmed over. The best way to come up with a captivating and interesting subject line is to put yourself in your readers' shoes. Don't tell them what you think they want to hear; tell them what they actually want to hear! This can be tough because you need to keep it short (as per point 1), but a few words is more than enough to get a reader's mouth wet and make him or her want to know more. Remember, if your subject is dull, boring, or completely uninteresting, your reader will go looking for the delete button, and no email marketer wants that.
3. Cheesy or Overly Exaggerated Subjects Doesn't Fool Anyone
If you send out an email and in the subject you promise that "all of your dreams will come true", today's consumer will likely delete your email marketing campaign prior to even reading another word. If your subject guarantees your readers will be rich beyond their wildest dreams, then it will almost always get trashed (not to mention classified as spam). Today's consumer is very savvy and these cheesy, out-dated gimmicks simply don't work. Before writing your subject, assume that each one of your recipients is very well aware that your product or service is not the miracle of all miracles. The moment you send out an email with an overly gimmicky subject, you are really shooting yourself in the foot. This is not to say the content of your message is not special, but with limited reading time for emails, people quickly dismiss anything that sounds "too good to be true". Make sure your email marketing campaigns don't get filed into this notorious group!
4. Be Honest: Describe Your Content
Your email marketing subject should not be conjured up in isolation of your actual email content. They should go hand-in-hand, where the subject nicely describes what the reader can expect in the body of your email marketing campaign. Far too many times in the quest for the perfect subject (and while following the points above) an email marketer will stray so far away from their content that the subject ends up having nothing to do with the message. This is a catastrophic mistake because in addition to the subject acting as a determining factor for opening your email, it also sets up the reader's mentality for what they can expect to see in your email marketing campaign. If they open your message expecting to see tips for effective email marketing, but instead you give them tips for dieting, they will swiftly close your message. While a goal of the subject is to get the reader to open he message, you also want to set it up so that the reader keeps reading. And you can only do that when your subject is honest. After all, if you're trying to fool your readers into opening your message, then you can't expect them to be that attached to what you eventually want to say.
A good email marketing subject can go a long way towards boosting your results and helping you achieve your goals. This important part of every email marketing campaign should be given some serious thought and, when combined with the points above, will help more people open your email and read your content.
About the Author: Robert Burko is the President of EliteEmail.com, the leading email marketing program, serving thousands of businesses across the globe. The EliteEmail.com email marketing service is part of the EliteAnswers.com family.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Understanding Search Engines So You Can Get a High Ranking
just 5 years ago getting a high ranking in the search engines was easy. As search engines have gotten smarter it has become impossible to get a high ranking in the search engines with gimmicks. Now the only way is to have one of the best pages about your topic and lots of people agreeing that it is one of the best by linking to it. Before explaining how to get high rankings in the search engines it is important to understand some basics about search engines.
If you were to run a search engine what would be your number one goal. This one is simple; you would want to be the most used search engine on the Internet. The only way to become the most used search engine is accuracy. People use a search engine for one reason and that is to find what they are looking for. When I first started using the Internet 12 years ago, it was difficult to find anything in a search engine. You would type in baby toys and get hundreds of sex toy sites with a few baby toys sites mixed in. Now you type in baby toys and you get baby toys. The reason Google became number one was that for several years they had the most accurate results. So if you want to get a high ranking in a search engine for the terms your pages are about, then you must give the search engine what it is looking for.
The search engines became more accurate because now they look primarily at one thing. That one thing is content. The only way for a search engine to find out what a page is about is to scan the page and see what it is about. Yes, there are a few other things the search engine looks at but none of those things matter if the content does not match what people are typing in a search engine. If you want to rank high in the search engines, you must make a great page specifically about the topic that page is about.
Natural Language
It also matters how you put your content on the page. One of the things search engines look at now is natural language. You cannot just put a search term a bunch of times on the page. It is true than once upon a time that worked. But stacking search terms no longer works. Search engines look at how many times a term shows up in a sentence and how many times it shows up in a paragraph. In a normal paragraph you will not have a search term that shows up 6 to ten times. That is not the way a paragraph is normally constructed. When a search engine sees this it counts against you and not for you. The same is true about sentences. So be careful how you word your content. Try not to put the same term multiple times in a sentence or several times in a paragraph.
It is also a good idea to make sure you write in complete sentences and make your content read well. This is not just a good idea for search engine consideration but also for the reader of your page. You want them to find the page informative and easy to read. Having them come back and telling their friends about the page is important. If they find it interesting enough, they may just give you that all-important link to your page.
Here are some other things to consider about content.
The content of your page is not just limited to the words written on the page. Search engines also look at how you present your content and what you say about it. For example, every page in your site should have a title. This is the first thing written on the page such as the title to an article. When you present a title you place it as a heading. Heading tags are a way to tell the search engines this is what my page is about. To be effective your heading needs to be about the same thing as the rest of the content of your page. You can also put sub headings on the page. You can title different sections of the page with heading 2 or heading 3 tags.
Search engines also give you two places to tell them what you think your content is about. This is done through your meta title and description tags. These are the only two meta tags that most search engines look at so far as determining how they are going to rank your page. I do not even add a key word tag to any of my pages. The meta title is the place where you tell the search engine what your page is about. It can be exactly the same as the title on the page itself (your H 1 tag or page heading). Your description tag gives you the opportuníty to describe the content of the page to the search engine. The description needs to be short and to the point. It should be no more than two sentences but preferably only one sentence. There is no reason a good description of a page cannot be made in one simple but complete sentence.
Last but not least is the overall content of the page. Make each page about one thing. The more topics your page talks about the less credít you get for each topic. For example you want to make a page about the three most influential people in medicine today. You can make your first page generic and mention the names of the three people and their general contributions to medicine while concentrating on making sure every paragraph is about the main topic of "most influential people in medicine". Then, if you want to go into detail about the three individual people, make a separate page about each and have them linked to from the "most influential" page.
About The Author
Article by Rusty Ford, Editor Arthritis-Symptom.com .
If you were to run a search engine what would be your number one goal. This one is simple; you would want to be the most used search engine on the Internet. The only way to become the most used search engine is accuracy. People use a search engine for one reason and that is to find what they are looking for. When I first started using the Internet 12 years ago, it was difficult to find anything in a search engine. You would type in baby toys and get hundreds of sex toy sites with a few baby toys sites mixed in. Now you type in baby toys and you get baby toys. The reason Google became number one was that for several years they had the most accurate results. So if you want to get a high ranking in a search engine for the terms your pages are about, then you must give the search engine what it is looking for.
The search engines became more accurate because now they look primarily at one thing. That one thing is content. The only way for a search engine to find out what a page is about is to scan the page and see what it is about. Yes, there are a few other things the search engine looks at but none of those things matter if the content does not match what people are typing in a search engine. If you want to rank high in the search engines, you must make a great page specifically about the topic that page is about.
Natural Language
It also matters how you put your content on the page. One of the things search engines look at now is natural language. You cannot just put a search term a bunch of times on the page. It is true than once upon a time that worked. But stacking search terms no longer works. Search engines look at how many times a term shows up in a sentence and how many times it shows up in a paragraph. In a normal paragraph you will not have a search term that shows up 6 to ten times. That is not the way a paragraph is normally constructed. When a search engine sees this it counts against you and not for you. The same is true about sentences. So be careful how you word your content. Try not to put the same term multiple times in a sentence or several times in a paragraph.
It is also a good idea to make sure you write in complete sentences and make your content read well. This is not just a good idea for search engine consideration but also for the reader of your page. You want them to find the page informative and easy to read. Having them come back and telling their friends about the page is important. If they find it interesting enough, they may just give you that all-important link to your page.
Here are some other things to consider about content.
The content of your page is not just limited to the words written on the page. Search engines also look at how you present your content and what you say about it. For example, every page in your site should have a title. This is the first thing written on the page such as the title to an article. When you present a title you place it as a heading. Heading tags are a way to tell the search engines this is what my page is about. To be effective your heading needs to be about the same thing as the rest of the content of your page. You can also put sub headings on the page. You can title different sections of the page with heading 2 or heading 3 tags.
Search engines also give you two places to tell them what you think your content is about. This is done through your meta title and description tags. These are the only two meta tags that most search engines look at so far as determining how they are going to rank your page. I do not even add a key word tag to any of my pages. The meta title is the place where you tell the search engine what your page is about. It can be exactly the same as the title on the page itself (your H 1 tag or page heading). Your description tag gives you the opportuníty to describe the content of the page to the search engine. The description needs to be short and to the point. It should be no more than two sentences but preferably only one sentence. There is no reason a good description of a page cannot be made in one simple but complete sentence.
Last but not least is the overall content of the page. Make each page about one thing. The more topics your page talks about the less credít you get for each topic. For example you want to make a page about the three most influential people in medicine today. You can make your first page generic and mention the names of the three people and their general contributions to medicine while concentrating on making sure every paragraph is about the main topic of "most influential people in medicine". Then, if you want to go into detail about the three individual people, make a separate page about each and have them linked to from the "most influential" page.
About The Author
Article by Rusty Ford, Editor Arthritis-Symptom.com .
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Adding A Regional Component To You Web Site
Adding A Regional Component To You Web Site
What is a regional web site?
A regional web page is one that focuses in on a specific area such as a city, county, state, country or area of the world. You do not have to have a regional web site to add a regional component to your site. There are two types of sites I am going to talk about. First is the regional site itself and then a web site with a regional section in it. If you already have a web site and want to expand the content and the audience then adding the regional section is a great option for you.
Building a regional web site.
Regional web sites are becoming more popular. Five years ago if you built a site about the community you live in there was a good chance you were one of only one or two sites to do so. Obviously if you were only one of two web sites for a community then you were at the top of any search for information about that community. It is not as easy now. This is still the case for many smaller towns and counties. But there is much more competition for larger more populated areas. Don't just rule out larger areas because if done right then you can still do great in these areas as well.
The first thing to do is decide on the area you want to build a page about. A good place to start is where you live or your favorite vacation spots. This is a good choice because you are already familiar with the area. I will share two things the site will need. The first is more important and the second will bring in more traffic.
Next you need to list the things that make the community you chose unique. It is especially good to find the lesser-known unique things about your community. This can include historical places, unique places and fun places. It can even include the best places to kiss. It can have reviews of local restaurants and business, a history of the community, little know facts about the community and any other things that make your community unique and special.
This is important because most community sites are just a group of links pages about the area. This is part of doing it right. When your page is unique and full of quality content it is easier to get good quality links to your site. Many people forget about this and concentrate on make pages about the key words that people search for. When this happens you end up with a site that nobody wants to link to and nobody wants to spend time looking at the different pages of your web site. Quality is always at the top of the agenda. The goal of any web site should be to be the best web site on the internet about your particular topic. You decide which is better: To have 1000 visitors who visit your site a day, who average looking at 2 pages, or 300 visitors a day who average 10. In the long run when you have hundred of well-ranked sites linked to you then you will get the thousands of visitors who visit many pages on your site.
After you have the above and have a quality site for your community then it is time to start looking at keywords. This is what brings people to your site. A good tool for finding out what people are searching for is Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Type in the name of the community in the search box and click the arrow. It will give you a list of how many times that a term has been searched for in Overture the previous month. I will also list all the phrases that were searched for using that term. This way you know what people are looking for when they search for something in your community. Now you can take the information in this book and apply it to making pages based on these keywords. Remember that with every page you build quality is the key. You want your site to be better than any other site about your community. For an example of how to use this tool try this link.
http://arthritis-symptom.com/adsense/keyword-selector-tool.htm
As an example if people are searching for museums in your community do not just make a link page to the museums web sites. Rather list every museum in the area and add a paragraph or two for each. You can also make a page about every museum and have an index page called museums in your community that link to all the museum pages you have built. If you have 10 museums in your community people will visit most or all of the museum pages. Be sure to add a short description on the museums in your community page.
Adding a regional section to your web site.
This is an idea that has become very popular in the last few years. As the internet continues to grow it is becoming harder to be at the top of the search engines for the most popular terms. So one of the things you can do is to make regional pages for your products or information. I stumbled on this by accident years ago. As I have mentioned I have a very large arthritis web site. As a service to my visitors I decided to add a section to the web site that listed had a page in for every state that listed arthritis resources in that state. It quickly became one of the most popular sections of my site especially in the search engines.
This can be done for any product or service that is not specific to a community. For example I knew a guy who was representative for a Satellite TV system company. He could sell a system anywhere in the country. Once he made the sale the company arranged for the system to be installed. So he built a page for Satellite TV for every city in America. He did this because he found out that many people were searching for Satellite TVs in their communities. He had about pages for over 500 different cities.
This worked well for a while, but he had a problem. Basically every page in his site was the same. The only difference was the name of the city and state. The search engines now frown on this. He tried to fix this by adding unique information about each city. He finally gave up on this and redid the site under a new domain name. Once a search engine punishes you it is hard to get back in their good graces.
So if you are going to do this for a product or service you need to make every page unique. As mentioned above, quality always is important and you can no longer cheat the search engines. So do not take the easy way. Take the time to make every page one that the search engines and your visitors will be proud of.
This can also be done as a service. One of the most popular sites on the internet is topix.net. They have the largest news network that includes news for almost every city and town in America. This can be done for almost any service from adoption to zoos. Some subjects have way too much competition and companies that are spending too much money for you to compete with. Regional travel and legal sites are examples of these. Even though there is a ton of competition for some types of regional sites there are still literally thousands of different topics and services that do not have too much competition.
About the Author: Rusty Ford is editor at http://arthritis-symptom.com/.
What is a regional web site?
A regional web page is one that focuses in on a specific area such as a city, county, state, country or area of the world. You do not have to have a regional web site to add a regional component to your site. There are two types of sites I am going to talk about. First is the regional site itself and then a web site with a regional section in it. If you already have a web site and want to expand the content and the audience then adding the regional section is a great option for you.
Building a regional web site.
Regional web sites are becoming more popular. Five years ago if you built a site about the community you live in there was a good chance you were one of only one or two sites to do so. Obviously if you were only one of two web sites for a community then you were at the top of any search for information about that community. It is not as easy now. This is still the case for many smaller towns and counties. But there is much more competition for larger more populated areas. Don't just rule out larger areas because if done right then you can still do great in these areas as well.
The first thing to do is decide on the area you want to build a page about. A good place to start is where you live or your favorite vacation spots. This is a good choice because you are already familiar with the area. I will share two things the site will need. The first is more important and the second will bring in more traffic.
Next you need to list the things that make the community you chose unique. It is especially good to find the lesser-known unique things about your community. This can include historical places, unique places and fun places. It can even include the best places to kiss. It can have reviews of local restaurants and business, a history of the community, little know facts about the community and any other things that make your community unique and special.
This is important because most community sites are just a group of links pages about the area. This is part of doing it right. When your page is unique and full of quality content it is easier to get good quality links to your site. Many people forget about this and concentrate on make pages about the key words that people search for. When this happens you end up with a site that nobody wants to link to and nobody wants to spend time looking at the different pages of your web site. Quality is always at the top of the agenda. The goal of any web site should be to be the best web site on the internet about your particular topic. You decide which is better: To have 1000 visitors who visit your site a day, who average looking at 2 pages, or 300 visitors a day who average 10. In the long run when you have hundred of well-ranked sites linked to you then you will get the thousands of visitors who visit many pages on your site.
After you have the above and have a quality site for your community then it is time to start looking at keywords. This is what brings people to your site. A good tool for finding out what people are searching for is Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Type in the name of the community in the search box and click the arrow. It will give you a list of how many times that a term has been searched for in Overture the previous month. I will also list all the phrases that were searched for using that term. This way you know what people are looking for when they search for something in your community. Now you can take the information in this book and apply it to making pages based on these keywords. Remember that with every page you build quality is the key. You want your site to be better than any other site about your community. For an example of how to use this tool try this link.
http://arthritis-symptom.com/adsense/keyword-selector-tool.htm
As an example if people are searching for museums in your community do not just make a link page to the museums web sites. Rather list every museum in the area and add a paragraph or two for each. You can also make a page about every museum and have an index page called museums in your community that link to all the museum pages you have built. If you have 10 museums in your community people will visit most or all of the museum pages. Be sure to add a short description on the museums in your community page.
Adding a regional section to your web site.
This is an idea that has become very popular in the last few years. As the internet continues to grow it is becoming harder to be at the top of the search engines for the most popular terms. So one of the things you can do is to make regional pages for your products or information. I stumbled on this by accident years ago. As I have mentioned I have a very large arthritis web site. As a service to my visitors I decided to add a section to the web site that listed had a page in for every state that listed arthritis resources in that state. It quickly became one of the most popular sections of my site especially in the search engines.
This can be done for any product or service that is not specific to a community. For example I knew a guy who was representative for a Satellite TV system company. He could sell a system anywhere in the country. Once he made the sale the company arranged for the system to be installed. So he built a page for Satellite TV for every city in America. He did this because he found out that many people were searching for Satellite TVs in their communities. He had about pages for over 500 different cities.
This worked well for a while, but he had a problem. Basically every page in his site was the same. The only difference was the name of the city and state. The search engines now frown on this. He tried to fix this by adding unique information about each city. He finally gave up on this and redid the site under a new domain name. Once a search engine punishes you it is hard to get back in their good graces.
So if you are going to do this for a product or service you need to make every page unique. As mentioned above, quality always is important and you can no longer cheat the search engines. So do not take the easy way. Take the time to make every page one that the search engines and your visitors will be proud of.
This can also be done as a service. One of the most popular sites on the internet is topix.net. They have the largest news network that includes news for almost every city and town in America. This can be done for almost any service from adoption to zoos. Some subjects have way too much competition and companies that are spending too much money for you to compete with. Regional travel and legal sites are examples of these. Even though there is a ton of competition for some types of regional sites there are still literally thousands of different topics and services that do not have too much competition.
About the Author: Rusty Ford is editor at http://arthritis-symptom.com/.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Backlinks - How To Get High Quality One Way Links To Your Websites
Backlinks - How To Get High Quality One Way Links To Your Websites
By Matt Garrett (c) 2007
There are basically two aspects to SEO, "on page" & "off page" optimization.
"On Page" SEO is easy because it's totally under your control. It's simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly.
OK, so there is a bit more to it than that, like keyword research, keyword density & frequency, which html tags to use, making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant, using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it's most effective, using titles and descriptions that encourage people to clíck through from the SERP's etc.
But essentially, once you know how to do all that, it's not difficult to get it right for all your pages/sites.
It's also less important in the long run than getting sufficient links to your site/pages from other sites.
Getting links to your site is fundamental to getting visitors, and without visitors all the time, effort and money invested in getting your site up and running, and looking "nice", is irrelevant.
No Visitors = No Point!
So links are essential to the health of your site, and indeed your business, but all links are not equal in value to your site.
Reciprocal links will help, but they are far less effective than one way backlinks, i.e. links from another site where you don't have to link back to them. These "One Way" backlinks will give your site a far greater boost in the search engine results and bring you more traffíc, providing of course that you have chosen good (relevant) keywords for your links.
There are many ways of getting these powerful one way backlinks, but most you will have no control over the anchor text used (i.e. keywords) in the link, which means their "power" is unfocused and therefore of less use to you in achieving the targeted keyword results you are looking for.
For example, submitting your site to website directories can be a very effective way of picking up some high quality one way links from high PR sites, but you will seldom be able to choose the keywords/anchor text used for the link, often ending up with the site name as the link.
This is not a waste of time, as the Pagerank passed to your site will, with the correct internal linking structure, be passed on to your sites internal pages, helping them to rank better for their targeted keywords.
So how can you get highly targeted one way links?
It's fairly common for webmasters to now buy or "rent" links to their sites through services like Text-Link-Ads.com, and these services will allow you to choose the anchor text, but they are far from cheap. A link from a PR 8 site can easily cost $150+ per month. In fact there is now a business model emerging based on building sites simply to sell these kind of links (see LazyGitMarketing.com).
Google has also publicly stated that they disapprove of this practice and are actively seeking to downgrade the value of such "paid links", although personally it seems like a valid form of advertising to me, but maybe I just don't have Google's wisdom in these matters. ;)
As always in business, there are entrepreneurs who have identified this need in the market and a whole new branch of linking services are popping up offering new solutions for one way backlinks.
I've been testing some of them out over the last few months and have found a couple that have had a significant positive effect on the sites I used them for.
The Backlink Solution
This first solution is a monthly subscription that provides a network of high quality blog sites for you to post comments on, including a link to your site(s) using your chosen anchor text.
Note: As you make the link yourself, you can also link to internal pages on your site to improve their rankings as well, which you can't do with directory submissions.
It is a manual process, but is easy enough that it can be outsourced fairly cheaply.
The Pagerank of these blogs varies, but the links provided are very "natural" in appearance to the search engines, and as you can post unique relevant content on market related blogs, the links are highly relevant. You are also limited as to how many blogs you can post to each month, to ensure that the links grow naturally over time, rather than all in one go.
Three Way Links
The internet marketing market is highly competitive, so it's hardly surprising that another service with a different twist has popped up from this market.
This is an automated "three way links" system, where you link to site A, which then links to site B, which then links back to you. Whilst this is arguably not as powerful as true "one way backlinks", it's still a significant step above one way "reciprocal" linking that is the more traditional method used by the majority of webmasters.
The process is also automated for you, making it very hands off. You can submit up to 20 sites with just one account and you can specify three different anchor texts to be used as the links for each site's, making sure you don't incur any penalties for over use of just one text link keyword or phrase.
It is also set up to gradually build up the links over time to make it all appear very natural to the search engines.
Your Own Authority Blog
There is one final service that I've found to be very useful, although it is more ideal for people with multiple sites to promote.
The service gives you your own blog on an existing high PR authority site. The site has 833,039 backlinks listed in Yahoo and gets spidered several times a day by all of the major search engines. For example in June 2007 Googlebot visited it 14,470 times and Yahoo Slurp 52,436 times, so you can see why it's regarded as an "authority" site.
I have used this to link to brand new sites and had them indexed by Google within 24 hours, so it's a great way of getting a new site in to the SE's quickly, and the link weíght will obviously also help any site linked to.
As a side note, I've also found that my blog on this site can get fairly significant traffíc itself when I take the time to keyword optimize the posts, which is always a nice added benefit. I haven't traded reciprocal links for any of my sites in almost two years, and you can probably see why I don't need to. Using powerful new linking tools and services like these means I am able to take total control over the "off page" SEO linking strategies for my sites in the same way as I do for the "on page" SEO factors.
About The Author
Article by Matt Garrett © 2007 Mat4.com | 4 Minute Internet Marketing Videos Grab Your Free Article Site Building tool, Blog Commenting Software & 90 Page SEO Book Now! http://www.mat4.com/newsletter.html
By Matt Garrett (c) 2007
There are basically two aspects to SEO, "on page" & "off page" optimization.
"On Page" SEO is easy because it's totally under your control. It's simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly.
OK, so there is a bit more to it than that, like keyword research, keyword density & frequency, which html tags to use, making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant, using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it's most effective, using titles and descriptions that encourage people to clíck through from the SERP's etc.
But essentially, once you know how to do all that, it's not difficult to get it right for all your pages/sites.
It's also less important in the long run than getting sufficient links to your site/pages from other sites.
Getting links to your site is fundamental to getting visitors, and without visitors all the time, effort and money invested in getting your site up and running, and looking "nice", is irrelevant.
No Visitors = No Point!
So links are essential to the health of your site, and indeed your business, but all links are not equal in value to your site.
Reciprocal links will help, but they are far less effective than one way backlinks, i.e. links from another site where you don't have to link back to them. These "One Way" backlinks will give your site a far greater boost in the search engine results and bring you more traffíc, providing of course that you have chosen good (relevant) keywords for your links.
There are many ways of getting these powerful one way backlinks, but most you will have no control over the anchor text used (i.e. keywords) in the link, which means their "power" is unfocused and therefore of less use to you in achieving the targeted keyword results you are looking for.
For example, submitting your site to website directories can be a very effective way of picking up some high quality one way links from high PR sites, but you will seldom be able to choose the keywords/anchor text used for the link, often ending up with the site name as the link.
This is not a waste of time, as the Pagerank passed to your site will, with the correct internal linking structure, be passed on to your sites internal pages, helping them to rank better for their targeted keywords.
So how can you get highly targeted one way links?
It's fairly common for webmasters to now buy or "rent" links to their sites through services like Text-Link-Ads.com, and these services will allow you to choose the anchor text, but they are far from cheap. A link from a PR 8 site can easily cost $150+ per month. In fact there is now a business model emerging based on building sites simply to sell these kind of links (see LazyGitMarketing.com).
Google has also publicly stated that they disapprove of this practice and are actively seeking to downgrade the value of such "paid links", although personally it seems like a valid form of advertising to me, but maybe I just don't have Google's wisdom in these matters. ;)
As always in business, there are entrepreneurs who have identified this need in the market and a whole new branch of linking services are popping up offering new solutions for one way backlinks.
I've been testing some of them out over the last few months and have found a couple that have had a significant positive effect on the sites I used them for.
The Backlink Solution
This first solution is a monthly subscription that provides a network of high quality blog sites for you to post comments on, including a link to your site(s) using your chosen anchor text.
Note: As you make the link yourself, you can also link to internal pages on your site to improve their rankings as well, which you can't do with directory submissions.
It is a manual process, but is easy enough that it can be outsourced fairly cheaply.
The Pagerank of these blogs varies, but the links provided are very "natural" in appearance to the search engines, and as you can post unique relevant content on market related blogs, the links are highly relevant. You are also limited as to how many blogs you can post to each month, to ensure that the links grow naturally over time, rather than all in one go.
Three Way Links
The internet marketing market is highly competitive, so it's hardly surprising that another service with a different twist has popped up from this market.
This is an automated "three way links" system, where you link to site A, which then links to site B, which then links back to you. Whilst this is arguably not as powerful as true "one way backlinks", it's still a significant step above one way "reciprocal" linking that is the more traditional method used by the majority of webmasters.
The process is also automated for you, making it very hands off. You can submit up to 20 sites with just one account and you can specify three different anchor texts to be used as the links for each site's, making sure you don't incur any penalties for over use of just one text link keyword or phrase.
It is also set up to gradually build up the links over time to make it all appear very natural to the search engines.
Your Own Authority Blog
There is one final service that I've found to be very useful, although it is more ideal for people with multiple sites to promote.
The service gives you your own blog on an existing high PR authority site. The site has 833,039 backlinks listed in Yahoo and gets spidered several times a day by all of the major search engines. For example in June 2007 Googlebot visited it 14,470 times and Yahoo Slurp 52,436 times, so you can see why it's regarded as an "authority" site.
I have used this to link to brand new sites and had them indexed by Google within 24 hours, so it's a great way of getting a new site in to the SE's quickly, and the link weíght will obviously also help any site linked to.
As a side note, I've also found that my blog on this site can get fairly significant traffíc itself when I take the time to keyword optimize the posts, which is always a nice added benefit. I haven't traded reciprocal links for any of my sites in almost two years, and you can probably see why I don't need to. Using powerful new linking tools and services like these means I am able to take total control over the "off page" SEO linking strategies for my sites in the same way as I do for the "on page" SEO factors.
About The Author
Article by Matt Garrett © 2007 Mat4.com | 4 Minute Internet Marketing Videos Grab Your Free Article Site Building tool, Blog Commenting Software & 90 Page SEO Book Now! http://www.mat4.com/newsletter.html
Sunday, September 2, 2007
How To Make Web-Advertising Worth Watching
How To Make Web-Advertising Worth Watching
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007
It has become an article of faith that the Web is all about content; content is King on the Web as opposed to television where commercials are king. It seems that television networks just can't wrap their heads around the Internet and fit it into their standard commercial box. The traditional media's tactic of last resort, buying-up the competition and imposing its commercial will, just won't work with the Internet.
Businesses that want to succeed on the Web must learn how to turn their commercial message into content as a seamless entertaining presentation.
After years of website visitors first ignoring, then getting increasingly irritated with banner ads that blink, burp, and blast across their screens, there finally is a better way; advertising in the form of Web-videos that not only deliver a marketing message but are worth the time invested in watching.
There is a lot of hype surrounding so-called viral videos. Many companies have tried to create this kind of marketing vehicle but the sheer lack of commercial purpose fails to attract viable prospects and instead generates a lot of attention from the maturity-challenged segments of society. As a business you want your video to be passed on to as many additional viewers as possible, but if it doesn't attract new leads or at least deliver your message, what good is it?
There is an absolute qualitative difference between a video that is engaging, entertaining, humorous and clever that delivers a strong marketing message and a video that is just plain stupid or at best pointless.
Bold is Beautiful and Effective
We know from experience that clients are attracted when we create entertaining offbeat video campaigns that send a clear message. But as soon as we start to create the equivalent type of campaign for them, they start to get nervous.
The Web demands a bold, frontal attack that delivers an uncompromising creative presentation of what you offer; not a defensive, compromised, don't-make-a-mistake approach that tries to cover everything and anything you might do.
The average business is incredibly timid when it comes to advertising. Boring, monotonous presentations that drone on are as helpful in attracting new business as viral video food-fights or female mud-wrestling clips. There is as much difference between bizarre and bold, as there is between salacious curiosity and entertainingly effective.
The challenge for business is to take this new form of advertising and use it so that it rises above the lowly realm of boring corporate PowerPoint presentations and silly homemade video antics to the lofty, and ultimately profitable dominion of content.
Why Web-Videos Aren't Like Television Commercials
Web-commercials are not television commercials. I know big advertisers are double-dipping their ad placements by flooding the Web with their TV spots, but who really cares? If you can see it on NBC or CBS twelve times every night why would you go out of your way to watch it on the Web?
The most significant difference between television and Web-commercials is cost. According to MediaPost's Gregory Wilson in his VideoInsider newsletter, the average 30-second TV commercial costs $12,000 per second to produce. That's per second, far beyond the budgets of most businesses. You can get an entire Web-video campaign for the cost of one second of TV-level production. Of course, you're not going to have a cast and crew of hundreds working on your spot, but then the quality of scrípt, simplicity of concept, and creativity of presentation count for more than wasted exotic sets and setups.
There are lots of things people just hate about television commercials and the best of the Web-commercials avoid these irritants.
Television commercials distract viewers from the content. Nobody likes interruptions. There is not much difference on the irritation scale between a telemarketing telephone call selling aluminum siding at dinner time and a commercial that interrupts the latest adventures of 24's Jack Bauer.
About the only good thing you can say about these program-interruptions is that they provide you a bathroom and beverage break, which of course doesn't help the advertiser who just spent $12,000 per second to get to you.
Web-commercials are different. They are sought-out by people as long as they provide something more than a mundane sales pitch. If you are clever, bold, and interesting, people will not only watch, they'll remember.
Think back to when you were in school and the teacher told you to look up the answer yourself and not just rely on her to give it to you? That's because the effort of searching out the answer created a more memorable experience. Commercials are no different. Sure fewer people are going to come in contact with your Web-commercial than they would a television commercial, but then the Web-commercial is more targeted, more memorable, and far more cost effective.
Even worse than the continuous interruptions is the repetitiveness of television commercials. Sometimes you have to sit through the same obnoxious commercial multiple times in the same commercial break. Give Apple computer and Geico Insurance credít for their commitment to developing creative, entertaining campaigns that are continually evolving with new segments that build a following for the characters, product and message. These commercials actually do rise above the level of sale's pitch and achieve the status of content. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for ninety-nine percent of all the other television ads.
Because people choose to watch a Web-commercial, they don't become upset with the advertiser for inflicting repetitive psychological torture. In fact Web-commercials that are entertaining and informative will be watched over and over, and passed on to friends and colleagues.
The Bottom Line
1 Web-users choose to watch Web-videos and therefore are more receptive to the message.
2 Web-videos need to be entertaining so they are more likely to be watched repeatedly and passed on to friends.
3 Web-videos are less costly to produce so advertisers can create campaigns consisting of multiple videos on the same theme so that viewers don't get bored or irritated.
How To Turn A Pitch Into Content
If you are going to bore people to death, then Web-advertising is not for you. If all you have to say is buy my stuff, nobody is going to listen. If you are afraid to be different, you are just going to blend into the woodwork. If you think search engine optimization is going to solve all your marketing problems, well think again.
If you want to turn your advertising into content then create your next campaign on the following principles:
* Be Clear.
* Be Bold.
* Be Uncompromising.
* Be Entertaining.
* Be Engaging.
* Be Clever.
* Be Humorous.
* Create Character(s).
* And Tell a Story.
About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007
It has become an article of faith that the Web is all about content; content is King on the Web as opposed to television where commercials are king. It seems that television networks just can't wrap their heads around the Internet and fit it into their standard commercial box. The traditional media's tactic of last resort, buying-up the competition and imposing its commercial will, just won't work with the Internet.
Businesses that want to succeed on the Web must learn how to turn their commercial message into content as a seamless entertaining presentation.
After years of website visitors first ignoring, then getting increasingly irritated with banner ads that blink, burp, and blast across their screens, there finally is a better way; advertising in the form of Web-videos that not only deliver a marketing message but are worth the time invested in watching.
There is a lot of hype surrounding so-called viral videos. Many companies have tried to create this kind of marketing vehicle but the sheer lack of commercial purpose fails to attract viable prospects and instead generates a lot of attention from the maturity-challenged segments of society. As a business you want your video to be passed on to as many additional viewers as possible, but if it doesn't attract new leads or at least deliver your message, what good is it?
There is an absolute qualitative difference between a video that is engaging, entertaining, humorous and clever that delivers a strong marketing message and a video that is just plain stupid or at best pointless.
Bold is Beautiful and Effective
We know from experience that clients are attracted when we create entertaining offbeat video campaigns that send a clear message. But as soon as we start to create the equivalent type of campaign for them, they start to get nervous.
The Web demands a bold, frontal attack that delivers an uncompromising creative presentation of what you offer; not a defensive, compromised, don't-make-a-mistake approach that tries to cover everything and anything you might do.
The average business is incredibly timid when it comes to advertising. Boring, monotonous presentations that drone on are as helpful in attracting new business as viral video food-fights or female mud-wrestling clips. There is as much difference between bizarre and bold, as there is between salacious curiosity and entertainingly effective.
The challenge for business is to take this new form of advertising and use it so that it rises above the lowly realm of boring corporate PowerPoint presentations and silly homemade video antics to the lofty, and ultimately profitable dominion of content.
Why Web-Videos Aren't Like Television Commercials
Web-commercials are not television commercials. I know big advertisers are double-dipping their ad placements by flooding the Web with their TV spots, but who really cares? If you can see it on NBC or CBS twelve times every night why would you go out of your way to watch it on the Web?
The most significant difference between television and Web-commercials is cost. According to MediaPost's Gregory Wilson in his VideoInsider newsletter, the average 30-second TV commercial costs $12,000 per second to produce. That's per second, far beyond the budgets of most businesses. You can get an entire Web-video campaign for the cost of one second of TV-level production. Of course, you're not going to have a cast and crew of hundreds working on your spot, but then the quality of scrípt, simplicity of concept, and creativity of presentation count for more than wasted exotic sets and setups.
There are lots of things people just hate about television commercials and the best of the Web-commercials avoid these irritants.
Television commercials distract viewers from the content. Nobody likes interruptions. There is not much difference on the irritation scale between a telemarketing telephone call selling aluminum siding at dinner time and a commercial that interrupts the latest adventures of 24's Jack Bauer.
About the only good thing you can say about these program-interruptions is that they provide you a bathroom and beverage break, which of course doesn't help the advertiser who just spent $12,000 per second to get to you.
Web-commercials are different. They are sought-out by people as long as they provide something more than a mundane sales pitch. If you are clever, bold, and interesting, people will not only watch, they'll remember.
Think back to when you were in school and the teacher told you to look up the answer yourself and not just rely on her to give it to you? That's because the effort of searching out the answer created a more memorable experience. Commercials are no different. Sure fewer people are going to come in contact with your Web-commercial than they would a television commercial, but then the Web-commercial is more targeted, more memorable, and far more cost effective.
Even worse than the continuous interruptions is the repetitiveness of television commercials. Sometimes you have to sit through the same obnoxious commercial multiple times in the same commercial break. Give Apple computer and Geico Insurance credít for their commitment to developing creative, entertaining campaigns that are continually evolving with new segments that build a following for the characters, product and message. These commercials actually do rise above the level of sale's pitch and achieve the status of content. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for ninety-nine percent of all the other television ads.
Because people choose to watch a Web-commercial, they don't become upset with the advertiser for inflicting repetitive psychological torture. In fact Web-commercials that are entertaining and informative will be watched over and over, and passed on to friends and colleagues.
The Bottom Line
1 Web-users choose to watch Web-videos and therefore are more receptive to the message.
2 Web-videos need to be entertaining so they are more likely to be watched repeatedly and passed on to friends.
3 Web-videos are less costly to produce so advertisers can create campaigns consisting of multiple videos on the same theme so that viewers don't get bored or irritated.
How To Turn A Pitch Into Content
If you are going to bore people to death, then Web-advertising is not for you. If all you have to say is buy my stuff, nobody is going to listen. If you are afraid to be different, you are just going to blend into the woodwork. If you think search engine optimization is going to solve all your marketing problems, well think again.
If you want to turn your advertising into content then create your next campaign on the following principles:
* Be Clear.
* Be Bold.
* Be Uncompromising.
* Be Entertaining.
* Be Engaging.
* Be Clever.
* Be Humorous.
* Create Character(s).
* And Tell a Story.
About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video
Saturday, September 1, 2007
How to Build a Better Website Without Building a Website
How to Build a Better Website Without Building a Website
By Richard D S Hill (c) 2007
The most important thing to consider, when first thinking about any website, is the user. Like so much marketing, websites are, unfortunately, too often developed 'inside out' (company focused) rather than 'outside in' (customer focused).
All website users have their own reasons and objectives for visiting a site. No matter how targeted, any website has to communicate with a wide range of individual users.
To be successful, therefore, every site has to give each and every user a thorough but simple presentation of the site's content so that the site achieves your objectives e.g. registrations, leads, sales.
To do this successfully, users want:
Simple Navigation
Navigation that is clear and consistent.
Probably the worst issue is 'lost visitors' – those who are in a maze and don't know where they are in the site.
The site should always allow users to easily return to the home page and preferably get to any page with one clíck.
Studies have shown that users want to find things fast, and this means that they prefer menus with intuitive ranking, organization and multiple choices to many layers of simplified menus. The menu links should be placed in a consistent position on every page.
Clarity
Users do not appreciate an over-designed site.
A website should be consistent and predictable. For maximum clarity, your site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units that all share the same basic layout, graphics etc.
Designing Websites That Meet Their Objectives
Everything above is pretty simple, but how do you ensure that you can achieve it?
The answer is website architecture – an approach to the design and content that brings together not just design and hostíng but all aspects of function, design, technical solutions and, most importantly, usability.
The distinction may seem academic but imagine trying to publish a magazine using just graphic design and printing whilst ignoring content and editing. It just would not work yet that's what too many people still try to do.
Website Architecture
Defining a website using web architecture requires:
* Site maps
* Flow charts
* Wireframes
* Storyboards
* Templates
* Style guide
* Prototypes
This planning saves you (the client) money. The better the site map, flow chart, wireframe, storyboard, templates, style guide and prototype the more time and money you save because it gives the designer who has to do the graphics and the developer who has to do the programming a blueprint.
We are constantly amazed that people who wouldn't think about building a house, car, ship or whatever will still build a website without an architectural plan.
The benefits include:
* Meeting business goals
* Improved usability
* Reducing unnecessary features
* Faster delivery
Site Maps
Many people are familiar with site maps on web sites which are generally a cluster of links.
An architectural site map is more of a visual model (blueprint) of the pages of a web site.
The representation helps everyone to understand what the site is about and the links required as well as the different page templates that will be needed.
Flow Charts
A flowchart is another pictorial or visual representation to help visualize the content and find flaws in the process from say merchandise selection to final payment.
It's a pictorial summary that shows with symbols and words the steps, sequence, and relationship of the various operations involved and how they are linked so that the flow of visitors and information through the site is optimized.
Wireframes
Wireframes take their name from the skeletal wire structures that underlie a sculpture. Without this foundation, there is no support for the fleshing-out that creates the finished piece.
Wireframes are a basic visual guide to suggest the layout and placement of fundamental design elements on any page. A wireframe shows every clíck through possibility on your site. It's a "text only" model to allow for the development of variations before any expensive graphic design and programming, but one that also helps to maintain design consistency throughout the site.
Creating wireframes allows everyone on the client and developer side to see the site and whether it's 'right' or needs changes without expensive programming. The goal of a wireframe is to ensure your visitors' needs will be met in the website. If you meet their needs, you will meet your objectives.
To create a wireframe requires dialogue. You and your developers talk, to translate your business successfully into a website. Nobody knows your business better than you and your developers should listen to ensure the resulting wireframe accurately represents your business. You, however, must answer the questíons; questíons such as:
* What does a visitor do at this point?
* Where can a visitor go from here?
and ignore questíons about what your visitor sees at this point. Sounds easy, but!
Storyboards
Storyboards were first used by Walt Disney to produce cartoons. A storyboard is a "comic" produced to help everyone visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. When creating a film, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera. In the case of a website, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information.
However, the wireframe provides the outline for your storyboard. Developers and designers don't need to work in a vacuum - the wireframe guides every design, information architecture, navigation, usability and content consideration. Wireframes define "what is there" while the storyboards define "how it looks".
Templates and Style Guide
Templates are standard layouts containing basic details of a page type that separates the business (follow the $) logic from the presentation (graphics etc) logic so that there can be maximum flexibility in presentation while disrupting the underlying business infrastructure as little as possible.
Style guides document the design requirements for a site. They define font classes and other design conventions (line spacing, font sizes, underlining, bullet types etc.) to be followed in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) used to provide a library of styles that are used in the various page types in a web site.
Prototypes
A prototype is working model that is not yet finished. It demonstrates the major technical, design, and content features of the site.
A prototype does not have the same testing and documentation as the final product, but allows client and developers to make sure, once again, that the final product works in the way that is wanted and meets the business objectives.
Once you have built your virtual site, it's a lot quicker, easier and cheaper to build the real one.
About The Author
Richard Hill is a director of E-CRM Solutions and has spent many years in senior direct and interactive marketing roles. E-CRM provides EBusiness, ECommerce and Emarketing and ECRM.
http://www.e-crm.co.uk/profile/message170807.html
By Richard D S Hill (c) 2007
The most important thing to consider, when first thinking about any website, is the user. Like so much marketing, websites are, unfortunately, too often developed 'inside out' (company focused) rather than 'outside in' (customer focused).
All website users have their own reasons and objectives for visiting a site. No matter how targeted, any website has to communicate with a wide range of individual users.
To be successful, therefore, every site has to give each and every user a thorough but simple presentation of the site's content so that the site achieves your objectives e.g. registrations, leads, sales.
To do this successfully, users want:
Simple Navigation
Navigation that is clear and consistent.
Probably the worst issue is 'lost visitors' – those who are in a maze and don't know where they are in the site.
The site should always allow users to easily return to the home page and preferably get to any page with one clíck.
Studies have shown that users want to find things fast, and this means that they prefer menus with intuitive ranking, organization and multiple choices to many layers of simplified menus. The menu links should be placed in a consistent position on every page.
Clarity
Users do not appreciate an over-designed site.
A website should be consistent and predictable. For maximum clarity, your site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units that all share the same basic layout, graphics etc.
Designing Websites That Meet Their Objectives
Everything above is pretty simple, but how do you ensure that you can achieve it?
The answer is website architecture – an approach to the design and content that brings together not just design and hostíng but all aspects of function, design, technical solutions and, most importantly, usability.
The distinction may seem academic but imagine trying to publish a magazine using just graphic design and printing whilst ignoring content and editing. It just would not work yet that's what too many people still try to do.
Website Architecture
Defining a website using web architecture requires:
* Site maps
* Flow charts
* Wireframes
* Storyboards
* Templates
* Style guide
* Prototypes
This planning saves you (the client) money. The better the site map, flow chart, wireframe, storyboard, templates, style guide and prototype the more time and money you save because it gives the designer who has to do the graphics and the developer who has to do the programming a blueprint.
We are constantly amazed that people who wouldn't think about building a house, car, ship or whatever will still build a website without an architectural plan.
The benefits include:
* Meeting business goals
* Improved usability
* Reducing unnecessary features
* Faster delivery
Site Maps
Many people are familiar with site maps on web sites which are generally a cluster of links.
An architectural site map is more of a visual model (blueprint) of the pages of a web site.
The representation helps everyone to understand what the site is about and the links required as well as the different page templates that will be needed.
Flow Charts
A flowchart is another pictorial or visual representation to help visualize the content and find flaws in the process from say merchandise selection to final payment.
It's a pictorial summary that shows with symbols and words the steps, sequence, and relationship of the various operations involved and how they are linked so that the flow of visitors and information through the site is optimized.
Wireframes
Wireframes take their name from the skeletal wire structures that underlie a sculpture. Without this foundation, there is no support for the fleshing-out that creates the finished piece.
Wireframes are a basic visual guide to suggest the layout and placement of fundamental design elements on any page. A wireframe shows every clíck through possibility on your site. It's a "text only" model to allow for the development of variations before any expensive graphic design and programming, but one that also helps to maintain design consistency throughout the site.
Creating wireframes allows everyone on the client and developer side to see the site and whether it's 'right' or needs changes without expensive programming. The goal of a wireframe is to ensure your visitors' needs will be met in the website. If you meet their needs, you will meet your objectives.
To create a wireframe requires dialogue. You and your developers talk, to translate your business successfully into a website. Nobody knows your business better than you and your developers should listen to ensure the resulting wireframe accurately represents your business. You, however, must answer the questíons; questíons such as:
* What does a visitor do at this point?
* Where can a visitor go from here?
and ignore questíons about what your visitor sees at this point. Sounds easy, but!
Storyboards
Storyboards were first used by Walt Disney to produce cartoons. A storyboard is a "comic" produced to help everyone visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. When creating a film, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera. In the case of a website, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information.
However, the wireframe provides the outline for your storyboard. Developers and designers don't need to work in a vacuum - the wireframe guides every design, information architecture, navigation, usability and content consideration. Wireframes define "what is there" while the storyboards define "how it looks".
Templates and Style Guide
Templates are standard layouts containing basic details of a page type that separates the business (follow the $) logic from the presentation (graphics etc) logic so that there can be maximum flexibility in presentation while disrupting the underlying business infrastructure as little as possible.
Style guides document the design requirements for a site. They define font classes and other design conventions (line spacing, font sizes, underlining, bullet types etc.) to be followed in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) used to provide a library of styles that are used in the various page types in a web site.
Prototypes
A prototype is working model that is not yet finished. It demonstrates the major technical, design, and content features of the site.
A prototype does not have the same testing and documentation as the final product, but allows client and developers to make sure, once again, that the final product works in the way that is wanted and meets the business objectives.
Once you have built your virtual site, it's a lot quicker, easier and cheaper to build the real one.
About The Author
Richard Hill is a director of E-CRM Solutions and has spent many years in senior direct and interactive marketing roles. E-CRM provides EBusiness, ECommerce and Emarketing and ECRM.
http://www.e-crm.co.uk/profile/message170807.html
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