Category Archives: Internet Marketing

1. Unless you have good, interesting and valuable starting content on your forum why would anyone spend time there or consider joining? They are not going to.
2. I would suggest you create a repository of intellectual property (IP) that is available to forum members only and is uniquely position with how-to information.
3. Market to all of your current and previous clients, prospects and anyone you know and share with them the exciting new place / community you have created (after you built the initial content) and invite them to check it out and join.
4. I would charge for membership yet select a smaller group of subscriber that would become the initial group (for free) to start the momentum of posting going.
5. Promote and market your new site and forum in every possible media: news release, networking events, verbally with anyone you talk with, speeches, newsletter, blog, your paperwork (invoices, correspondence), get people to interview you on their blogs (written, audio and video podcasts).
6. Feature the best of the posts in your monthly newsletter (assuming you have one) and create enticements to have new members join.
7. Strive to become “the place to go” for the greatest and latest of your industry wisdom.
8. When possible discuss “success stories” and share on your site and inside the forum.
9. Create a referral network both domestically and internationally that would send your target audience to the forum and to you.

So what is your blog good for? Here are some ideas: It …

1. Enables you to publish your knowledge and wisdom for others to benefit from.
2. Allows you to promote and refer to it on your web site and newsletter and reference interesting threads.
3. Makes it easy for your visitors to subscribe so they may automatically receive your posts via RSS feed.
4. Gives you the flexibility to react to other blogs, news, current events and interesting posts.
5. Lets you promote your products, services, speaking engagements, articles and white papers.
6. Entices others to engage in a conversations and debates with you and others.
7. Positions you as an object of interest, an expert in your field and have other bloggers and web sites refer to your blog and posts.
8. Makes it easy to summarize your presentations and email the notes to attendees prior and after your event.
9. Creates the tool to allow the discipline to produce content to strengthen your brand and marketing gravity.
10. Evolves into a repository of interesting information – a knowledge base.
11. Sharpens your knowledge as you focus on developing and delivering interesting, new and valuable content.
12. Becomes fun as it evolves and once successful creates a community around your work.
13. Permits you to capture your clients’ questions and respond by writing a new post or refer to an old one.
14. Expands your network to reach out to clients, prospects, colleagues and business partners while allowing them to reach out to their network featuring your wisdom.
15. Pushes the envelop by augmenting the written words and creating additional channels of delivery methods such as audios and videos.
16. Strengthens your Internet strategy by adding another domain that creates content for Google and other search engines to find and index.

What are your thoughts?

Early this week I submitted a proposal (among several others) to a prospect interested in our web site development. Shortly after I sent the proposal the prospect emailed me and asked me to further articulate what I mean in the proposal by suggesting to incorporate strong call-to-action techniques on all site pages. I thanked the prospect and suggested the answer is clearly articulated in a previous post on my blog: “what’s your call to action” and I then suggested they might find several other articles on my web site and blog to be of value:
How the 3 strikes rule applies to your web strategy
The importance of web site evolution
Blogging in the new year

So what are some simple and basic ideas of marketing your blog?
1. Include it in your email signature file.
2. Print it on your business card.
3. Verbally mention it in your discussions and presentations.
4. Mention it when writing your articles.
5. Leverage in your emails especially using my idea above of driving direct value to your current and future clients.

This prospect is not a dear new client.

A question was asked on one of the online forums we implemented and I help moderate: “How often does one need to add a new entry to a blog? How long or short should a typical entry be?” Here is my answer:

This is one of the topics I study, track, research, write about, consult others and help develop. So let me share my bias with you.

I am writing an article for my blog with the title of: “The slow death of blogs” and please don’t misunderstand me, blogs are a powerful business tools and are here to stay and evolve. I am referring to individuals that were convinced by someone or thought it is a good idea to start a blog. But they rarely post on it. Not only is it a poor reflection on them but it is also a sad underutilization and a waste of this powerful tool. Their blogs are doomed by google and more importantly by their possible readers and will eventually close down – It’s only a matter of time. Unfortunately, some are members of this forum and some I personally reached out to and recommended they start posting on their own blog. Well guess what, they did for a short while and then stopped. They may get their last minute of fame and get featured in my article.

So if you are thinking of starting a blog here are some pointers:

1. Minimum 3 posts per week but if you missed a week here and there, not a big deal.
2. Length of each post from one sentence to an article length (1.5 page) although I recommend you keep it short and with bullet points. Write effectively and don’t over think this point.
3. You can always break your posts into sections or to be continued which may create anticipation.
4. The key is INTERESTING and VALUABLE stuff. But you already knew that I am sure.
5. The other key is that there is much more to putting together a successful blog than just starting to blog.
6. A blog is a tool for rapid publishing giving 100% of the control to the author of the blog enabling you to basically fire your web master (well not quite but almost.)
7. Finally, the power in creating a rich experience for the user is by combining text, images, audio Podcasts and videos on your blog. See Alan Weiss for a great example of a fascinating blog. Mine is another of course.

There are other members on the forum that have interesting blogs. Ed Poll, Aviv Shahar, Dan Coughlin, Pam Harper and Michael Harrison among others.

Here are some articles I wrote that you may find of value before you make your final decision:

Blogging in the new year
How to make your blog posts more interesting
The importance of web site evolution
How to improve your marketing exposure