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101 Web Marketing Ideas, Tips and Best Practices
October 27, 2006
SEOPedia has a list of 101 Web Marketing Ideas and Tips, and there is something there for everyone.
My favorites (and they go to show you where my mind's at these days)
Advertising and Affiliate Marketing
No. 17: Effectively lead your readers to your MDA (Most Desired Action). That may be a newsletter box, a banner, an Adsense etc. Place your MDA right below comments, or in the left/right sidebars, or in the header. Experiment. Analyze. React.
Putting a call to action right at the end of a post is something that I've been thinking about lately. I'm not so sure about putting it BELOW the comments - I was thinking that putting it right after your post might be a good idea, though.
RSS and Newsletter Marketing
19. Don’t trust yourself only in RSS feeds. A lot of users are “old-school” and prefer e-mail newsletters. Always offer this option.
This is something I've been toying with for a while, too. I've been looking around, and there are several options for bloggers to do this, like Feedburner and Feedblitz.
Brand and Visibility Marketing
29. When commenting a post or story in another website don’t spam: “OMG that’s uber cool”, “Nice post” or something like that. Instead, try to make your comments in a professional way, show what you liked/disliked/agreed/etc, cite other sources, give examples, bring pertinent arguments etc. Remember, comments are an important part of a post/article. Over 60% of the readers will also read the comments.
I'm thinking that if I keep this in mind: "show what you liked/disliked/agreed/etc, cite other sources, give examples, bring pertinent arguments", it will really help me to pinpoint which posts I SHOULD be commenting on. And if over 60% of readers also read the comments, you'll probably get quite a few visitors just from making good comments. (I don't know about you, but I've never clicked on the link of someone who comments, "Great post", but I've definitely checked out the site of someone who made a good comment)
30. Try to associate your name or your website’s name/brand with the big boys on your niche. Regularly comment their articles (don’t spam) and from time to time make reviews of their post on your blog/website
I love this suggestion - it really helps to remove the fear of "little me" making comments on the big boys' sites. It's a good reminder to me that one of the best professional relationships I have was developed simply because I decided to one day make a comment on a top blogger's site.
Social Media Marketing
36. Pay close attention to Stumbleupon. It’s a great alternative social network. Install their toolbar, and if you write a good post, submit it in their system. Be faithful and fairplay with the other members, help each other, and add friends to your account. Ask other members to review you if they liked what you stumbled upon. StumbleUpon traffic had the highest converting ratio (at least for me), in comparison to Delicious, Digg or Reddit users, which seem to be RSS and AD blind.
I've had Stumbleupon on my toolbar for ages, and NEVER thought about using it like this. That phrase, "highest converting ratio", is riveting to me.
Link Baiting, Link Building and Research
45. A good link building strategy is to comment or participate in discussions or content on other websites in your industry. It’s not enough to have good articles/content. The world has to know about them. Make connections/relations with other jounalists/bloggers/entreprenours in your niche, comment their articles, and links will come by themselves, with time.
For me, blogging has become all about making connections and relationships, but I have a tendency to put participation and discussion on hold when I get busy. Again, a good reminder for me of the route to follow to develop a great site.
Corporate & E-Commerce Marketing
57. Issue press releases for your website. No matter the field, a well written press release can not only improve your marketing strategy and gain a few inbound links and link bait from other websites, but can lead to journalists that will cite your company in their offline/online magazine as well as in online news websites like Google News and Yahoo! News.
(And there are a few tips linking to resources that will help you write good press releases. I've got to read up on those.)
Blog Marketing
73. Always link from your blog. Link to as many quality websites as possible. Don’t be afraid to “spread your PR thin” or some other BS like that. Link to good posts of people, link to good newspaper articles, and most importantly, link to relatively unknown blogs/websites that feature a good original story. In most cases that will yield you some free PR. Most other websites (like PrWeb or blogs etc) have trackback plugins so they’ll feature your story in their comments.
I've noticed that there's a sort of "old school" way of thinking about linking out - you know what I mean. Where there's lots of talk about "draining your PR", and people religiously using rel="nofollow" tags on any links they have in their content because they don't want to leak their PR. It's good to see an SEO authority saying this is BS. For me, linking out has always been one of the most powerful things about blogs. It's why Google loves blogs so much.
Design, Content, Accessibility and Usability Marketing
83. If you have a content website, try to keep your posting frequency regular. If you decide to post 1 post per day, then post 1 post per day, every day, every week, 365 days/year. So what if it’s Christmas ? Just don’t make your posting habit irregular. Today 1 post, tomorrow 5 posts, 1 week no posts etc. That disturbs visitors and that will hurt your RSS subscribers and newsletter subscribers numbers.
Well, I've obviously been in violation of this one. But I'd like to keep up a more frequent level of posting to this blog, very definitely. I seem to have come to a crossroad earlier this month, and this is the new direction I'm taking.
There are so many more tips there than these ones that really spoke to me. I'm going to print it out and get out my highlighter!
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Posted by BJ at 10:34 PM in Affiliate Marketing , Internet Marketing , SEO, Web Publisher's Life | Permalink
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Comments
My hilighter smears my inkjet ink. :(
There're lots of good ideas here--thanks for rounding them up!
Posted by: Steve Johnson | Oct 29, 2006 1:05:48 AM
Glad you liked the ideas - I'm really hoping to put them to good use.
I use a laser printer, no smudging - Samsung, cost me under $200. I bought it because I was going through so many inkjet cartridges printing everything out :) The laser cartridges cost three times as much but last about a bazillion times longer. Highly recommended :)
Posted by: BJ | Oct 29, 2006 10:20:56 AM
