My colleague and guest blogger David Carmichael is contributing a total of ten posts over the next few months aimed at providing techniques for marketing your online business. In this third post, David looks at The Yahoo! Answers Strategy.

The third technique in effective website promotion is through the use of a simple “who would ever thought of” tool – the Yahoo! Answers feature of Yahoo. Launched in 2005, this question and answer community site allows people to ask questions and have them answered by other users in the environment. Its feature makes it an ideal ground for selling promotion to your brand and website.

It is surely one of those fantastic places to visit where we could get that instant exposure to potential visitors and yes, customers. And of course why not utilize this feature? Yahoo! Answers breeds countless numbers of internet users from all around the world. If you are looking for an ideal marketplace to promote or sell your website, Yahoo! Answers is the place.

Located via the URL www.answers.yahoo.com, the site contains all the possible questions ever conceived by the human mind. Well some might not seem human at all, or dumb for short, but you may still consider using this tool wisely. How does it work? Here is a simple step to utilize this feature.

1. First type in www.answers.yahoo.com and once inside the site, click on the new user sign up link.

2. Upon clicking the button, you will be asked to enter in your personal information, given that you have no yahoo mail account yet. Then after putting in all the details, click the Create My Account button. By then you are ready to go!

3. Once registered, you may now post your strategic questions. Or if you want, try to look for questions posted in the environment that are somewhat related to your website or brand. Meaning to say, considering your goal to attract more visitors and potential customers to your website, you may want to spot for the needs around. Once you find that question, you may post your humble answer there.

4. Oops! don’t forget to attach your website link to your post. Without this move, you will not be able to promote your product or brand and you will waste that opportunity to advance your way up in the marketplace. One of the most surprising truths about this is that most of the users in Yahoo! Answers don’t have marketing and promotions in their mind. You may only find few users who did attached some links to their own sites, which means to say that you are among the first to wisely realize the tremendous benefits of using the Yahoo! Answers tool.

So here is fast run-through example. Let’s say you own a website about guitars and you want to have it promoted fast, then you may sign in to Yahoo! Answers and post a question like, “Where can I buy good guitars?” then since it will be posted in the forum, others may give their own advices and tips. But then as a business-minded person, you may post an answer like, “Hey I have found a good place to buy good guitar. It’s in www.yourguitarsite.com.” Now what you just did there was you’ve nailed a link in your website link for others to see, thus, generating more visitors to your website. You can also search for questions related to your topic. For example, a question posted by an unknown user says, “Where can I get online tutorials for the guitar?” Here you may put in your humble answer in the post and also add the link of your website there. Don’t forget – post and link. These and many other ways you can do in the Yahoo! Answers tool to generate more traffic and visitors to your page. Cheers to your success.

My colleague and guest blogger David Carmichael is contributing a total of ten posts over the next few months aimed at providing techniques for marketing your online business. In this second post, David looks at Social Bookmarking.

In the field of website promotions, links are not enough. And most of the time, web masters go through the season of waiting, where they just watch and wait for that visitor to come. Sadly this happens most of the time.

The sigmoid curve applies to website marketing and promotions as well. At first, your site goes through the process of building, often the hard and difficult process we go through in marketing: planning, goals-setting, etc. Then it grows, where many visitors flood and traffic your page. But then soon enough, it declines. This is the reality of most businesses. The S-curve applies to all. So in the area of website marketing and traffic generation explosion, we might want to consider some effective solutions if we want to thrive and dominate the internet marketplace.

Social Bookmarking has been there for long but only a few people really know what it is really about. Similar to bookmarking the favorite pages of your business book or magazine, or bookmarking the last page you’ve just read in your favorite novels, social bookmarking works in the same way too. Contrary to using the bookmark feature of your web browser, social bookmarking involves not only you, but the many users also in the internet. This is why social bookmarking is considered as one of the best effective ways to promote websites and your brand.

Social Bookmarking has some amazing benefits. One of its benefits is heavy promotion. By joining social bookmarking sites, you get to tag or mark your website for others to see. And once it is viewed by many, alas, you give the notion that your website is something to be taken seriously, and that your brand is really good. Since you are using the internet and the art of socialization as your primary tools, you are 100% sure that your site will get promoted in the internet. Although it may take time to grow your marketability through social bookmarking, once it is marked, it is there. This means that once you have made it to the top list of the most bookmarked sites; you are going to be there for a long time. Your marketability will stay long too. Hard efforts equals to long-term results.

So how does social bookmaking work? Here is a simple way to do it:

1. First, join a social bookmarking site, and sign up for a new account. The most popular website on social bookmarking is www.delicious.com. You may also check other popular sites in the internet.



2. Then once registered, try installing a button on your toolbar. By then you are ready to go. In just a simple click on that website (you may want to click your own here), you already bookmark it for others to see. The good thing about this technique is that if a friend of yours has a similar interest on your brand or website, he/she may bookmark it also. Then just like the universe, which is constantly extending, your business will continue to expand and grow in marketability and profit. Social bookmarking is really something.

My colleague and guest blogger David Carmichael will be contributing a total of ten posts over the next few months aimed at providing techniques for marketing your online business. In this first post, David looks at Article Marketing.

Most business experts agree that marketing is everything. This art comes first in every business venture. Marketing blends and integrates all the functions of the business together and presents them to customers in the form of advertising, promotion and other marketing activities.

This is why most online businesses or websites consider marketing seriously. The importance of marketing lies in its ability to bring the business to the market – where customers dwell and opportunities thrive. In the case of websites, if one wishes to have his site linked to thousands of other sites in the internet, also known as backlinking, then you may consider article marketing as your first option.

Apparently, the benefits of article marketing are endless, probably because countless possibilities could happen to you. But these things are certain and fundamental. What’s so great about article marketing is that it is the easiest and fastest way to promote your site. Not to mention, not only is it easy and fast, it’s free of charge. Contrary to the typical marketing strategy in the corporate world, where hundreds and even thousands of dollars are spent, article marketing is free. Later on, we will run through some of the basics in article marketing.

Another benefit is that it gives you instant exposure. Ever heard of stories where a song or a book gets that instant success overnight? This is also true with article marketing. It gives you a direct and instant exposure, period. Another proven benefit of article marketing is 100% efficiency. This technique is sure to win if used as a strategy. Then of course since it is marketing, once the effort is done and the seeds have been sowed to the field, all you have to do is watch and see your website get promoted passively! This means that everyday your site will be promoted, more and more customers will link you, and more visitors will attach your site, and this will go on and on.

So how will I do it? Let’s get our hands dirty now as we learn the basic type of article marketing. Here it is.

1. First, try to make an article or a review about your brand, in your case – your website, what you are selling or what you are about. For example, if your site is about guitars, you may want to make an article about guitars.
2. Then post it to popular article directories in the internet.


Probably the top directory we have today is www.ezinearticles.com. Post it there and have it published. Ezine Articles hosts thousands of articles and are categorized in many sections. You may check in their site for further reference.

3. Then here is the one last thing you shouldn’t miss out – attach your website at the end of your article post, i.e. www.mydomainname.com. You may want to attach “for more resources or for further reference, please visit my site at www.mydomainname.com” or “Click here to Learn guitar tabs” as anchor text text.

Here’s a good example I got from ezinearticles.com:

When you do this, visitors can follow you to your website, which is our main goal by the way. There are other article directories out there. But these site directories are at the top: EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and SearchWarp.com. You may consider these sites in your priority list. Since article marketing is limitless, other web masters can take your content to their own site. Talk about passive marketing.

My company, Innovate Web Media Limited, have just launched a new service to help entrepreneurs sell goods from their Facebook Fanpage.

We can now setup a shop right in the Fanpage which shows images of the products with a description and price and a link directly to the product on your website. You can find an example of this at Wooden Gifts By Laura. When you arrive on the fanpage, look for the link called “My Shop” underneath the fanpage image. Click on this and you’ll be taken to a shop within Facebook. You may have to “Like” the page first.

This is a really neat idea that we are trying out and we’ll keep you updated on our progress. In the meantime, if you’d like a shop building into your fanpage, just give us a call at 020 8144 0324. We’d love to hear from you.

I’ve got some domain names which are surplus to requirements so if anybody wants one just make me an offer. Here’s the list:

• ArticleLibrary.co.uk
• BigArticleLibrary.com
• CreateIncomeSystems.com
• Great-Free-Download.com
• HowToMakeMoneyReviews.com
• LeadGeneratingServices.com
• LeadGeneratingServices.co.uk
• LeadGeneratingServices.info
• MailingListClassroom.com
• MediaPublishingServices.com
• MyWebsiteClassroom.com
• MyWebsiteClassrooms.com
• NewInternetMillionaireSystem.com
• UltimateAffiliateMarketingSystem.com
• UltimateGoogleTrafficSystem.com
• WebsiteDesignLibrary.com

All the best!

Craig

What exactly is SEO? How does it work? These are questions a lot of clients ask me. It’s often difficult to explain it in layman’s terms without baffling your customer and sounding like a real geek!

Yesterday I was meeting with a new customer that we have just built a mobile website for and she asked me how to get her main website onto the first page of Google. She told me that not one web designer had been able to explain this to her. I answered the best I could without turning into Bill Gates. I think I explained it pretty clearly and she seemed cool with my answer so I guess I either totally baffled her or she did in fact understand. She’s pretty savvy so I’m confident she grasped the basics. Afterwards I found a video by my buddy Damon Greene which gives a pretty good overview of what search engine optimization is and I sent her a link to it. You can watch it below.

The problem is many web designers have shrouded SEO in mystery. When in truth … it’s pretty simple. No disrespect to web designers but they are web designers after all. They are not SEO specialists. Optimizing a website so it ranks high in the different search engines is a job for an SEO specialist. This person or company knows two fundamental things:

1. How to optimize each page on the site so that it is capable of high rankings
2. How to build backlinks to your pages and thus create the impression (at least to Google/Yahoo/Bing etc) that your website is popular. These backlinks are like “votes”.

Your websites popularity for various keyword phrases tells Google that it must be what the searcher is looking for and thus ranks it higher than another site that may not have so many “popularity votes”.

That is a very brief outline because I don’t want to go further than the basics at this stage and I think Damon’s short video might help you understand it a bit better.

Fast Tube by Casper

I hope that helps you understand SEO a bit better.

For those of you interested in pushing into the mobile marketing arena here’s a short video with some statistics that you should be interested in . . .

Fast Tube by Casper

Here’s some statistics on Mobile Technology. If you’re not using mobile marketing in your business yet … you soon will be.

Fast Tube by Casper

Will Smith is not only a great actor, he’s one of the most inspirational men alive today. If you haven’t already seen the “The Key To Life” video you need to watch this. If you have seen it, watch it again anyway . . .

Fast Tube by Casper