BizExcellerated Internet Marketing: Achieve mastery in blogging, affiliate marketing, social traffic generation at Andrew Wee
When it comes to your marketing arsenal, words can be your most powerful weapon when it comes to getting killer results when you’ve launched a marketing campaign. Unfortunately, too many marketers take a step in the wrong direction and instead kill their leads with poorly developed content.
I was reading through some of the newer business/marketing blogs and articles/content posted on the social networks, and the content out there is (more…)
Unless you’ve got a desire to be a loner hanging out on the internet, most bloggers, marketers and casual users want to build some sort of following.
A large part of your success will lie in building a loyal and large readership. And it’s not as hard as it might seem if you follow a couple of principles.
Principle 1: Pay It Forward
At the risk of sounding like a new age “Law of Attraction”/destiny manifestation proponent, I’m going to say that Law of Reciprocity determines the success of your written content.
If your content sites or affiliates sites are going beyond merely the hot/long-tail keywords, and strive to help people solve a burning issue or problem, you’re starting on the right track.
You’ve probably heard my constant refrain on the Friday Podcast about surfing for information before making a buying decision and landing on page after page of scraped manufacturer specs. If you can build the expert authority of a Tom’s Hardware or a Cnet, you’re moving in the right direction.
Principle 2: Positioning And Incremental Marketing
Here is the part that kills me…Why would you spend time writing great content and then fire an update on twitter or facebook or one of the other social networks and publish an update “New Blog Post: <URL>”
It’s like buying a set of new clothes and then have spinach sticking between your teeth – completely blows everything else.
An incremental marketing means (more…)
It’s a good thing that blogs and websites have the freedom to publish any information they like because readers has a smorgashboard of content to choose.
At the same time, if your content isn’t tightly planned out or executed (or just plain funny enough), you could find yourself creating a bunch of content that no one wants to read. I experienced this in my early days and it’s certainly not a fun experience.
If you’re planning to interview experts for a podcast, a product like a book or course, or to provide entertainment, here are a couple of tips to help you up your game:
Research your subject – their company AND their personal background. Having an insight into what the interviewee used to do and what they’re doing now can give you idea of how to structure the interview.
A good way to start is to google your interviewee’s name and company, or check Google News or Technorati or Techmeme.
Compiling the facts into a spreadsheet or text document and organizing it will help you with the next step:
While I enjoy the stream-of-consciousness element of some interviews, it can get old especially after a month or two of “more of the same”.
Like any written piece, an interview or discussion should have an introduction, a body where content is developed, and a conclusion.
If you incorporate “takeaways” into your session, or have tips or resources that listeners can immediately check out after the session, you’ll provide value, build content stickiness and form a core of loyal listeners/viewers.
Structuring the discussion by various interview topics will help create a more organized discussion, especially if you can spend time to address questions related to a specific topic before moving on.
Although you have a gameplan in hand, use it as a rough guide. As interesting points develop, go deep on those topics – talking about case studies, specific examples, clarify definitions – to generate content depth.
As you talk about certain issues, parallel issues might also pop up, giving you an opportunity to “lateralize” your content. Heading in those directions, expands the scope of the discussion and provides an opportunity to create value.
Continually asking ‘what is the consequence of what the person just said, and how can I apply or use this information?” is a good metric to ensure that you remain on-topic.
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For past sessions of the Friday Podcast, check out the podcast archive.
An interesting discussion arose over at PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta’s blog: Is it easy to create content, which ultimately drives traffic and generates profits, at an attractive price?
Amit and I are in obvious agreement that niche sites can be very profitable. As Amit notes:
Yes, $1k-$2k/month is fairly typical for the amount of revenue that I generate from my content sites just free traffic. Small compared to what I make from PPC from these site, but it’s a great source of long term revenues & profits, especially if you continue to add content and get backlinks to your site.
That $1k-$2k/month can grow to $1k/day, I know one affiliate who have done this in 6 months by ranking high in Yahoo and MSN.
Certainly, niche sites can provide nice long tail income, especially if you’ve built a critical mass of niche sites.
Amit’s experience of talking to one super affiliate: I had a chance to speak with some other very successful super affiliates. I talked to one guy who was running 500 affiliate offers at one time, making $20-$50/day from each one. WOW!
Is fairly typical of a number of Super Affiliates I’ve worked together with.
But the one limiting factor, especially if you’re not already doing this regularly is:
How do you generate original and more importantly “sticky” content.
Tim notes in the comments to Amit’s post:
Thanks for addressing the issue of content creation. I’m curious to know where you are finding writers who work for $5 a page. Most of the eLance article writers I have seen who actually have a good command of English and write well charge a lot more than $5 a page. Maybe I’m not negotiating enough.
It would be great if you could share your “insider strategies†on quality content control and selecting the right people to outsource to. I’ve found some great people on eLance, but they’re not insanely cheap not do I want to insult them by nickel-and-diming them down to nothing. I think what Amit has said is that if you find someone good, expect to pay them well because they’re in pretty high demand.
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The reality is that you will get what you pay for. Proven quality costs.
A workaround is to (more…)