Social media still hot topic with UK marketers

Recent research has found that social media remains a hot topic with marketers in the UK, with 74 per cent saying that it will have the most influence on their digital marketing campaigns in 2010.

A total of 155 marketing professionals were questioned about their digital marketing budgets in the survey and 69 per cent answered that their budgets will be increasing this year, which is positive news for the industry.

The research found that consumers are still in bargain hunting mode, however, with 66 of marketing executives believing that will this will remain the case for the present. Reflecting this, 17 per cent of respondents said that online vouchers and offers will form a part of their digital marketing campaign this year. Online video, interactive games and augmented reality were not deemed so important to the marketers, with only 3 per cent mentioning these areas as a focus for spend.

Some 59 per cent of the marketers said that are looking to place more emphasis on performance based marketing this year.

One of the analysts commented: “The research is a positive sign for the industry as we move out of the recession. Marketers are looking to spend more in 2010 and are continuing to develop their digital marketing strategies in line with consumer buying habits”.

Listbuilding with Membership Sites

If you’d like to build your list and make money at the same time, consider starting a membership site. You can start small and build your membership site as the interest in it grows. If you’re interested in listbuilding with membership sites, here are the strategies you’ll need to follow to be successful.

Your membership site should be easy to navigate. As you design your site, keep it simple for members to use. Don’t add a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles. People don’t like them. They just want to get the information they need when they want it.

WordPress Wishlist Member is an easy place to start. This is great for beginners because it uses WordPress to manage your content. It also easily integrates with PayPal and 1ShoppingCart.

Create a professional-looking site. People join membership sites because they are looking to an “expert” to answer their most pressing questions or solve a problem. No one will listen to you if your website is sloppy and in disarray. Always present a professional appearance.

Most of us don’t have to spend money to hire a Web design expert. WordPress has made it easy for inexperienced Web masters to get a site up and rolling in no time. You can also use GoDaddy or Yahoo! or another hosting service that features web templates or “wizards.” The website wizards walk you through the process and allow you to type and publish a site in just a few minutes.

Make it easy for members to view videos and read online text. Again, keeping it easy to navigate and simple to use is key here. You want to reach everyone who is interested in your membership, so don’t make anything more difficult than it needs to be for your members or yourself.

Set a price that keeps them coming back each month. The jury is still out on the best price for a membership site. Some people price their sites at $9 a month and get a healthy number of members. Others swear by $27 a month and have similar success.

Don’t get greedy in the pricing process, especially when you’re new to membership sites. Once you’ve created an arsenal of great information, you may want to increase the membership cost to new members. Test different pricing plateaus to see what drives more traffic to your site and keeps more members month after month.

Stay the course. As you are building your lists, keep in mind that you probably won’t get wealthy overnight. After all, there is a degree of trial and error with your first membership site. Ask for feedback from your current members. When people cancel their membership, ask them why so you can improve the quality of your site.

Listbuilding with membership sites is a fun and effective way to build your business. You may want to join one or two successful membership sites before you begin to see what makes them so popular. That way, you’ll have a solid foundation from which to build your own site.

Charge for specialised web news says Google

Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google, has advised publishers that it may only be possible to charge readers for specialized online news content, due to the proliferation of general news.

He commented: "News sources that have highly differentiated content may be able to make pay-for-access work. This will likely be difficult for more generic news sources.”

Publishers are increasingly looking at charging for online news content as they lose out on circulation and print advertising revenue.

However, Varian believes that publishers will need to encourage readers to spend even more time reading online news. At the moment, people spend an average of 70 seconds per day viewing online news content, as compared with 25 minutes per day reading a newspaper, he stated.

Varian pointed out that there are huge cost savings to be made with online news, including savings on printing and distribution costs. He added: “Newspapers could save a lot of money if the primary access to news was via the internet.”

There is also a trend for people to get news on mobile devices like electronic readers and phones. Varian predicted that reader involvement and multimedia content will grow as a result of this.

This article was brought to you by Newsvend – delivering online news and other unique content for your website.

7 Effective Strategies for Getting Traffic to Your Website

Getting traffic to your website is crucial for marketing success. However, there are many ways to go about increasing your visibility to website visitors. Here are 7 methods you can use to increase your website traffic.

1.    Increase traffic by offering more backlinks. A backlink is basically an incoming link from another Web page. It acts as a connector between two different sites. The more backlinks you have, the more traffic you will attract.

Be sure that your website looks professional and is free of errors. Many Internet marketers like to exchange links with each other to create a win-win situation for all. In order to increase the number of backlinks, you’ll want to maintain a professional appearance.

2.    Increase traffic by providing free, original content. Google doesn’t like it when you copy and paste material from another site onto your page. In fact, that’s one way to find your site listing at the bottom of the search engines. Providing free, original content on a frequent basis will help your site rise in the search engines.

3.    Check out free resources to drive traffic to your website. Participate in forums, get a Twitter account, and use YouTube to drive more traffic to your website. You may even want to check out Google Groups. Be scrappy. Find as many free opportunities to showcase your site as you possibly can.

4.    Write articles to increase traffic to your site. In order to get attention, you’ll need to brand yourself as an expert in your field. Submit articles to ezines, Digg, and team up with other marketers or bloggers and publish articles on each others’ site. Always include a link at the bottom of the article to direct people to your website.

5.    Advertise to get more traffic. You may want to invest in Pay-per-Click or other methods to get noticed. Buying ads on niche-related forums is a good way to get targeted traffic to your website. Another good way to advertise your business is to buy magnets. You can have an oversized magnet printed from your local office supply store and put it on the side panel of your vehicle. Be creative in your advertising efforts.

6.    Speak at seminars to attract website visitors. One very effective way to drive more traffic to your website is to become a presenter at a conference or niche-targeted seminar. When you develop your presentation, offer valuable, free content to the audience and be generous in your responses to questions. Be sure to have plenty of materials, books, or products in the back of the room that people can buy or get free.

7.    Take it one step at a time. Be patient when it comes to your advertising efforts. You’ve got to give each strategy time to be successful. Sometimes, a minor change is all you need to make a huge difference in your advertising campaign.

Getting traffic to your website is a matter of getting in the trenches to see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t get tunnel vision and stay stuck in one place. Use multiple channels to advertise your business. Take chances. Stay the course. With a little ingenuity, you’ll discover the best strategy for attracting Web traffic to your site.

Growing businesses should implement email marketing

Experts have advised that growing businesses should not be reluctant to use email marketing as it offers one of the best advertising returns for small companies.

Managing editor of Webomedia, Vangie Beal, explained that some growing companies may be slow to implement email marketing due to a lack of time or because they believe that they need to be marketing experts in order to run such a campaign.

She said that there are a number of options available to growing businesses when it comes to online marketing such as contracting an external email marketing agency or getting advice from marketing consultants.

In fact, growing or small businesses often have a natural advantage when implementing email marketing campaigns. Stephanie Miller, writing for ClickZ, recently noted that small firms can be more "nimble" than their larger rivals and thus more able to engage with their consumers on a more personal level.

She added that "email is a dialogue channel, and while many still use it like a broadcast medium, the real opportunity is to engage in conversations that nurture sales and loyalty. Owners can win big with email marketing, and today's technology makes it easier than ever."

Some of the Best Ways to Use Squidoo for Affiliate Marketing

If you’re not using Squidoo to showcase your affiliate marketing business, you may be leaving money on the table.

Squidoo is a community of users and a great platform for the affiliate marketer. Basically, what you do is create “lenses” or pages online, sharing your interests with others who share the same interests. It’s a great way to generate a buzz around your product, blog, or website.

Don’t underestimate the power of Squidoo. It’s one of the top 500 visited sites in the country and one of the top 300 in the United States alone. One year ago this month, there were 900,000 hand built lenses on Squidoo.

10 Ideas for a Squidoo Lens

You can create multiple lenses to promote your affiliate marketing business, but here are a few ideas you may want to consider:

1.    Products You Sell. Squidoo is a great place to create a lens about your products. If you want to be even more effective, write a review about each product. Don’t sell them. Talk about them.

2.    Books of Interest to Your Target Market. Every time you read a book that may be of interest to your target market, create a lens about it. What was good about it? Was there something you didn’t like? Do you recommend it?

3.    Post a Rant. It’s not just about selling. It’s about building connections. If there’s something you’d like to get off your chest, create a lens that rants. Have fun with it. People love controversy, and this is a good way to get more views on your lens.

4.    Post a Roast. Let people post stories about you. This is a fun way to poke fun at yourself and entertain your followers. Encourage participation from others.

5.    Entrepreneur’s Lens. Post ideas and new products or services and let others do the same. Create an inventors’ brainstorming lens and let the creative juices flow.

6.    Showcase your eBay Store. If you have an eBay store, create a lens to show people what you’re selling. Be open to questions that others may have about your products.

7.    Showcase Your Website. Don’t use Squidoo to do heavy-handed selling. Instead, write about your website and feature some interesting facts about your business. Let your sales page do the selling. Use Squidoo to direct traffic to your website.

8.    Reveal Your Passions. Use Squidoo to give people insight about the non-business side of your life. Because Internet marketing does not happen face-to-face, people tend to respond to interesting personalities that catch their interest.

9.    Spread the Word about a Special Cause. Give back to your community by creating a lens around a charity or other special interest you support. Don’t just showcase it; invite others to talk about it.

10.    Write a Blog Post. This is the perfect platform to create a blog about your product or service. Because Squidoo is an online community, people will find your blog based on their interests.

Using Squidoo to promote your affiliate marketing business is a fun way to showcase your products, share your talents, and generate conversation in the community. Use Squidoo to build a connection with your target market, generate a buzz, and grow your business to new heights.

Videos made searchable with YouTube web captioning

Including online news videos and other video content on a website and on YouTube can now boost SEO more than ever due to automated captioning that has been introduced by the google-owned video sharing giant.

The captioning makes it easier for deaf people to enjoy online video content but also means that the keywords in the script will be searchable and can help to boost a website’s placing in the search engine results.

The captioning has been made possible using Google Voice technology, which automatically generates captions based on text-to-speech algorithms.

The captioning technology is expected to be able to support 50 languages eventually. Experts claim that optimising videos for search is a good idea. They claim that including original, keyword-rich video content will now help to boost a website’s SEO capabilities.

Videos with clear speech are thought to be the easiest to caption, according to search experts so marketers would also be wise to bear this in mind when creating or commissioning videos. Video news is now an even greater way to boost the presence of a website on the search engine results.

This article was brought to you by Newsvend – delivering online news, videos and other unique content.

10 Listbuilding Ideas That Everyone Can Use

If you Google “listbuilding,” you’ll see that there are 6,910,000 hits for that word alone. It seems that anybody and everybody with an online presence have a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to listbuilding.

If you’re looking for ways to build your list and want to try a few new ideas, here are 10 ideas you can use to build your list for your affiliate marketing business.

1.    Hold a Contest. People love contests, and there’s no better way to build a list than to create a fun event that people can enter just by joining your list. You can ask them to name a new product, design a logo, or just enter a drawing to win a cash prize or free product. Contests are a great way to build a targeted list of subscribers.

2.    Offer a Discount. Everyone loves a bargain, so offer a deep discount on your product or service for opting in to your list. Make the offer substantial enough to get attention. It’s got to be a win-win exchange.

3.    Barter Friends for Free Products. In exchange for free products, ask the people on your list to refer a friend. Create high-quality products for those who refer other people to your list.

4.    Create a Conspicuous Display. Who says that advertising has to stay online? Make a deal with a local business to display some of your business cards or post cards to the public. Be sure that the business is compatible with what you are selling. Include your website address and a free gift for those who sign up. You may even want to ask them to type in a special code so you can track your success.

5.    Start Tweeting! If you haven’t jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, it’s time to get on board. Twitter is a great way to build your list because you can include links to your landing pages, blog posts, or any other special offer in your tweets.

6.    Create a Facebook Fan Page. Facebook is flooded with businesses that are using social marketing to build their lists…and for good reason. Business marketing and social marketing go hand in hand in today’s competitive marketplace. Create a buzz by telling people you’re trying to get a specific number of fans by a specific date. Promise a free gift to all fans who participate.

7.    Promote Other Blogs. Team up with other bloggers in your market and promote each others’ blogs on your blog sites.

8.    Never Waste a Signature Line. Add a link to your landing page in your signature line in e-mail and marketing forum posts.

9.    Blog Your Way to Profits. Blog often, and be sure to join Technorati to keep readers updated on your blog posts. Technorati is a search engine for blogs and will lead individuals directly to your blog site.

10.     Be inventive. Try new things. Don’t be afraid to take risks when building a list. Sometimes the simplest ideas yield the greatest results.

There is no magic formula for listbuilding that works 100 percent of the time. The best advice I can give is to brainstorm for ideas and see if they work. You never know what idea will take the Internet by storm and attract tons of traffic.

Survey reveals Americans’ preference for online news

The Pew Research Center in the US has released a survey showing that in America people now prefer to get their news online than from newspapers.

Conducted between 28th December and 19th January, the survey showed that only local and national TV news sources surpass online news as the favoured choice for Americans.

Of those questioned, 61 per cent said that they usually get their news online, 78 per cent refer to local news channels and 71 per cent get their news from a national TV network, such as ABC or CBS or from a cable channel such as CNN.

Some 54 per cent of people said that they get their news from the radio, 50 per cent from a local newspaper and a mere 17 people of people questioned said they regularly read a national newspaper.

The survey showed that 90 per cent of Americans refer to more than one source for their news, and 57 per cent access news from two to five websites per day.

Also interesting to note is the advance of mobile online news, with 33 per cent of respondents saying that they get news on their handsets.

This article was brought to you by Newsvend – delivering online news, blogs and other unique content.

Why You May Not Be Getting Traffic to Your Website with AdWords

There’s nothing more exciting than building a website and waiting for the pitter-pat of footsteps from Web visitors. One of the harsh realities of website analytics is that you may think you’ve set all the controls in place for getting traffic to your website and still not get more than a few views.

One way that affiliate marketers use to attract visitors is to use Google AdWords. It’s an easy way to get impressions in Google, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get a load of traffic from AdWords.

What you DON’T want to do is quickly set up your AdWords account and hope for the best, nor do you want to attract tire kickers. You need to attract targeted visitors who will become buyers.

Here are three mistakes that people make when setting up their Google AdWords account:

Mistake #1: Unfamiliarity with Setting up a Campaign

Don’t rely on the default settings to set up your ad campaign. Your goal is to attract targeted traffic to your website, and you cannot do so if you’ve got the wrong types of traffic checking out what you have to sell. Be sure to adjust the settings so the right people will see what you have to offer.

Also, don’t run your AdWords campaign on a tight budget. You may not get the number of impressions you need to make a good impression in Google.

Mistake #2: Failing to Use Targeted Keywords

Do a little research to see what keywords are most effective in your target market. Use keywords that generate a lot of traffic but may not be readily used by the masses. In order to compete strategically, you’ve got to discover the gold in low competition, high-traffic keywords.

Don’t make the mistake of using the wrong keywords. Strive to get the desired result by avoiding keywords that may attract a lot of traffic but will not result in a single sale.  Doing so is like tossing money to the wind; it’s cold, hard cash that you’ll never see again.

Mistake #3: Being a Big Spender with Nothing to Show for It

One of the biggest mistakes new marketers make is to spend more on advertising than they earn from profits. Your goal is to generate a high CTR and earn more than you spend. This may take a little trial and error to perfect but be sure to spend a daily amount that you can live with.

Keep in mind that this is a learning process. Too many new Internet marketers get overly zealous and start spending tons of cash before they understand how their advertising dollars are working—or not working—in their favor.

Once you get the hang of it, using Google AdWords for getting traffic to your website is an easy and automated method for creating your online presence. While most people learn through trial and error, you may want to do some networking with other affiliate marketers to see how they use Google AdWords to increase their CTR.

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