Web Bazaar: Blog

It’s a complete waste of time placing ads unless you have a decent, memorable ad image. Your ad should give people a compelling reason to click on it. Here are some images you probably shouldn’t use:
• A tiny screenshot of your blog
• someone else’s image
• a photo of yourself (unless it’s a personal blog and you’re well-known)
• an image that is completely crammed full of text
• an irrelevant image (e.g. a “hot girl” photo for a tech blog)
• Do try and include a small amount of text – your pitch – to get more people clicking your ad.

Frankly, a crappy ad image will produce crappy results. Look at what you can do to improve your ads before blaming other people (such as the sites you advertise on, or the networks you advertise with) for things that only you can sort out.

By Vinaytosh Mishra

With increased use of Social Media it became a platform of knowledge sharing and interaction. People started relying on peer group for product and service review or even basic information search. Information through web 2.0 was more timely and customized. Google realized that its search engine would lose its importance without inclusion of real time search and few month back Google included real time search in their search result. Since then users were demanding a separate interface for their real time search.

Google has now moved its Real-time search to a dedicated location, separate from the “Updates” section of the regular search. The new emphasis comes with several new features like the ability to filter results by location as well as see the entire messages ion a conversation. You can check Real-time search at www.google.com/reatime

“Today we’re making our most significant enhancements to date, giving real-time information its own home and more powerful tools to help you find what you need,” Dylan Casey, Product Manager at Google, wrote. “Now you can access Google Realtime Search at its own address, www.google.com/realtime,” he announced.

“On the new homepage you’ll find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify,” he explained.”In addition, we’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web,” he added.

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In case of B2C website customers buy the product without having a touch feel. If customers can trust an online business even without a physical presence, then the likelihood of success is greater. These are some of the actions which can help us in winning customer’s confidence.
1. Clearly display privacy policy and possible use of data you are gathering through website.
2. Seek permission before using the information for a purpose other than the purpose for which the information was shared.
3. High light the benefits clearly and support them with numbers and case studies
4. Maintain proper catalogue and price/benefit comparisons
5. Take membership and certifications to build trust
6. Communicate at relevant pages/mediums only

Reference:http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-essential-seo-infographics

Facebook is a rage after Google and it provides a platform on which you get an access to a large audience of over 200 Million people worldwide at a low cost. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a strategy in place for what you are trying to achieve.

Whether you are a small local business, or even a well known product or service you will need to give some thought to your audience like, who they are, how do they want to be spoken to, what messages would you want them to receive, and what are the tactics for having them interact with your message. So let’s go through some of your options when it comes to the tactics of social networking marketing.

Have a Strong Presence

A Facebook presence, like a website, is a fundamental tactic and should be on everyone’s list of must haves for social network marketing. Similar to the .com land grab that happened in the late 90’s, you should secure your company name on as many social sites as you can.

Once you have your presence you will need a strategy for posting updates as frequently as you can with interesting content. Be sure to get your employees involved. Encourage them to become fans and drive the conversations to create a thriving community. The reason being, you will want Facebook users to be able to discover your Facebook Page through their friends’ profiles and with Facebook searches. This is the key to growing your fan base “virally”. Also keep in mind Facebook Pages are indexable so be sure to write your content with good SEO in mind.

Do some Advertising

You will find that advertising on Facebook is unlike any other advertising experience you have ever had. Mainly do to the unique ways in which you can precisely target a specific ad down to the person’s profile. For example if you want to target MBA graduates that are 3-5 years out of school and working in Southern Connecticut that like Classic Rock music whose favorite food is Sushi …. you can do that!

There are 2 basic types of ads: Display ads and Social ads. And they can be purchased like banner ads with Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per Thousand (CPM). And they work similar to online banner ads but try not to use them in the same way. Most Facebook users feel more comfortable staying within the Facebook environment. So try to direct them to someplace on your Facebook Fan page. With the new Facebook Fan page design, you can send them directly to a tab of your Fan page since each tab has a unique URL.

Create an Application

If you are going to send your ads to a specific tab why not send them to an application you built to engage them with your brand. Facebook Applications are similar to widgets or snippets of code that can be embedded in any Facebook Fan page to make it more distinguished. You can think of them like interactive spaces that can allow the user to take a poll, play a short game, or anything you can dream up.

Creating a Facebook Application has become widely popular because custom applications are not that hard or expensive to build. Some Facebook Applications have seen tremendous growth because they were built to take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook.

Syndicate your Content

Another tactic to consider if you already have a steady stream of rich content is using Facebook as an outpost for your content. If you already have a blog, podcast series or video series you can effectively use Facebook to attract another audience to interact with those assets.

There are a variety of ways to syndicate content on your Fan page. You can use the Notes page to import blog posts to your Fan page, you can use the My Del.icio.us application to import any bookmarks you may have made in your Del.icio.us account, you can use the Simply RSS application to bring in all the RSS feed you may have on your company website, you can edit your links section of have a variety of blogs or websites you may want to highlight perhaps by employees or partners of your company, and don’t forget to edit your Feed settings to include the complete versions of all your blog posts so they appear not only on your Fan page but on the Feeds of all your fans.

Throw an Event

Facebook Events are a great way of getting people together virtually or in person in support of your local business, brand or product. They are also a very economical way of getting the word out beyond your normal in-house marketing list by inviting the Fans of your Page. Fans can also help you promote your Facebook Event to their friends by sharing the event if it seems of value to a group of their friends.

Also don’t forget to follow-up after your event, it’s just good protocol to do so. If you had a very healthy debate with lots of questions …. Why not send a transcript out to everyone who attended or even those that didn’t attend. If some questions didn’t get answered because of time constraints …. Why not write up the answers and send them to the all attendees too.

The key point is try not to take a “set it and forget it” mentality to any social presence you have. While the costs of social marketing are low don’t let that fool you. The true cost is found in the creation of content. And your key to success will be the consistent participation and willingness to engage your customers you can create by using great content.

This article contains excerpts from Facebook Marketing For Dummies (September 2009, Wiley) and was published on www.marketingprofs.com .

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 Courtesy: Hubspot Internet Marketing Blog

Reference:http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-essential-seo-infographics

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The headlines below have sold hundreds of millions of dollars of products over the last 50 years, and best of all you can adapt each of these headlines to suit your own business.

1. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano – but when I started to play!”
This is *the* most popular headline of all time. It has been used in direct marketing to sell millions of dollars worth of products, but what is it about this headline that makes people keep reading?
As a reader you ask yourself “well, what happened when he sat down at the piano? Did they like what he played? What song did he play?”. This makes you want to keep reading to see exactly what “they” did when “he” started to play the piano.
Can you use anticipation to build curiosity in your headline?
2. They grinned when the waiter spoke to me in French – but their laughter changed to amazement at my reply.
Again, the use of anticipation. “What was her reply?” you ask yourself. “If they didn’t think she could speak French, then what country was she from?”. How can you use visual imagery to create a killer headline for your web site?
3. Do you make these mistakes in English?
“Do You Make These Mistakes When Attracting New Clients?” is the headline I chose. The headline is followed by a paragraph about our web master secrets email course.When you see this headline you immediately ask yourself “What mistakes is he talking about? What if they are costing me and my business money?”
This headline is easy to flip and use for business. Can you flip it?
4. Can You Spot These 10 Decorating Sins?
Similar to headline #3, this headline provokes thoughts of embarrassment. Obviously this headline would’ve been used in craft magazines targeted to female homemakers, but what you do you think the inner monologue of a reader would have been when she saw this headline?
What “sins” might your potential customers be committing? Can you use this headline on your web site or in an article?
5. How a “fool stunt” made me a star salesman
The “How” headline pulls really well because it sounds more like the introduction to a story rather than a headline. People love reading stories and when I see a headline like this I say to myself “Hmmm, a story.
How can you use the “How” headline to make your ad or web page sound like a story?
6. How a strange accident saved me from baldness
The same as headline #5.  “How can an accident save this guy from going bald? Is he crazy? This sounds like an interesting read, let me skim over the article”.
7. Who else wants a screen star figure?
The “who else wants” headline implies the theory of social proof. “Who else” means that other people already have what’s in question (in this case it’s a “star figure”). This headline also implies that just by reading the content of the article, you too can have a star figure. This gives the copywriter plenty of time to “warm you up” in the body of the article so that you’re ready for the sales pitch a few paragraphs after the headline.
Make this your next headline: Who else wants [insert the benefit of your product here?
8. Who else wants a lighter cake – in half the mixing time?
The same as #7 with a clear benefit – half the mixing time. Implies social proof and if that doesn’t work the benefit acts as backup.
9. Free to brides – $2 to others
Headlines with “free” in the title don’t really work anymore, but you could flip this headline in another way. This headline is strictly targeted to brides, making them sound in a class of their own, as opposed to “others” who have to pay $2 for whatever the article is promising the bride for free.
10. Free to high school teachers – $6 to others
The exact same format as headline #9. Use this headline and just plug in words relating to your industry:
[Low price] to [your target audience] – [High price] to others

To get more information about Email Marketing Please visit : www.webbazaar.com

Brainstorm: Once you have the core content of your email, create a few

subject lines that will complement your copy. Having more than one is a great option in case you want to test your subject line.

Target: Use list segmentation to send specific subject lines to different

portions of your audience, which will also enable you to send relevant content,

getting you the best results from your email.

Short and Sweet: Less is more when writing subject lines. Keep your subject line under 40-50 characters and place your most important information in the beginning.

Proof: Having a typo or error in your subject line is like shutting the door in your

face before you ever get into the room. Ensure you proofread and have a fresh

set of eyes look at every email before it goes out.

Read: Each of us receives a lot of email every day. Read your own emails and make note of the ones that get your attention and which ones you delete or

report as spam.

Test: Subject lines are one of the easiest things to test in your email. You can

simply split your list and send the same content with two different subject lines

and see which one gets a better open rate. Do this on an ongoing basis and track your results.

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Email Content – Email content is very important. The wrong email content or content with no messaging can cause your subscribers to leave and unsubscribe to your newsletter.Run a test campaign before email blast.

Email Design – You have just a few seconds to hold that email recipients attention so you have to make sure that you have the design to hold their attention and cause them to really interact with your email.But don’t become so obsessed with creativity that “spam score” of email becomes higher than permissible level.There are various free tools to check spam score of a email.

Email Newsletters – Email newsletters are a great way to get your information out to people that are subscribed to your list. Through trial and error you will figure out strategy on frequency and topic.

Opt-In Techniques – Opt-In email marketing is one of the safest ways to build your list. This ensures that you are not spamming anyone with information they might not or be interested in.

Subject Lines – Your subject lines will be very import to the overall success of your emails. The right subject line could drastically increase your email open rate.Do brain storming to make it more eye catching and meaningful.

To refer best practices in email marketing please visit www.webbazaar.com

1. Article Distribution: Submitting articles to dedicated websites and directories. It promotes your website and builds one-way links of great quality.
2. Social Networking and Bookmarking: The most commonly used social bookmarking sites are: Delicious, Digg, and Stumble Upon, Reddit.
3. Submissions and Link Building: Submitting your site in important directories will help in getting ranks on search engines. These efforts would build great keyword rich back links to your website.
4. Blog Commenting: Participating in conversations on industry specific blogs and interesting online discussions not only helps in creating your presence on internet and managing your reputation online but it also brings quality links back to your site. The activity includes identifying the blogs having theme around your product or service and providing expert comments over there.
5. Create a themed blog: Launch your own blog; it’s easy and free if you use Wordpress.com or Blogger.com, but we would recommend having blog on your own domain. It’s a great way to keep content fresh and engage visitors. Use widgets on your blog to show your social presence, it will help in making your loyal site visitor to become your Fan on Face Book and they can follow you on Twitter and other networks. Blog can bring loads of keyword rich links back to your site.

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