In the “How To Blog On WordPress” series, I will be posting on using your sidebar as an effective marketing tool.
We will be looking at each element of the sidebar and what works best for your readers and for you.
Social Media-Newbies Getting Started
Social Media on the Internet is one of the advantages of having an business online. With time to learn and do everything at a premium, you will need to get the most bang for your buck.
5 Places For A Newbie to Start
1. Twitter can be a very effective tool. The trick is to learn it well and use it to your advantage. You will find several twitter posts on this blog that will help you. Look under categories.
2. Your blog– When you are giving good valuable content your blog will be a resource for others. You can be the blog others want to come to.
3. Forums– Join a forum in your niche. Do a Google search for a forum that relates to you niche; dog forums, tropical fish forums, etc.
4. Comment on other blogs. You can create quite a community by giving good information on blogs that are related to your niche. This has worked really well for me. I just bookmark blogs I visit and comment on. Most of my traffic comes from other blogs. The key is to give good data that compliments what the blog is about.
5. Become an expert in you niche on Yahoo Answers. You can strut your stuff in any category that fits your niche and attract potential customers.
Remember what ever you do -learn it well. Pick one item, learn it and get it rolling before moving on to the next tool. Keep it simple.
To your social media success!
P.S. Making Money online is all about Social Networking. It is never two early to get started.
Optimizing for Conversion, Ignoring Consumption
We have worked with many demand or lead generation companies over the past 10 years. Most of the time when they come to us, they ask us to help them increase the number of people they convert into a free trial, a free download, or to create an account.
Conversion Isn’t an Event, it’s a Process
We always like to focus first on increasing the number of leads towards the top of the sales funnel. However, without the next step, consumption, the companies don’t necessarily achieve their better but usually unstated goal of increased revenue.
This is the same fuzzy focus that has companies intent on getting more clicks to their PPC ads just so they can show the increased traffic numbers without focusing on converting that visitor into a lead or sale. To tell you the truth it is not as hard to get visitors to take the uncommitted step, as it is getting them to actually use and consume the product.
When you optimize for customer experience you really need to take the whole scenario from awareness (clicking your ad) through conversion and ultimately to consumption (and ideally to evangelism) into account.
An Example of Trying to Create Consumption
Yesterday I received this email from TimeBridge. I set up an account when I received an invitation from a friend at another company to setup a meeting. You know how challenging it is to coordinate a meeting amongst several people using email, etc. Well I responded to his request and I really enjoyed the experience (partially because it was seamless using my Mac and Entourage) so I decided to setup an account. I even told several people about it. But I was never converted enough to incorporate it into my work flow.
I must have setup countless meetings since then all without the use of TimeBridge. What do you think went wrong? I converted, did a little worth of mouth for them but never consumed the product. Somehow the persuasive momentum was lost.
This is one way to try to initiate consumption. Use emails to try and prod engagement, add a bit of bribery (such as a contest for a $10 Starbucks card) and see how it works. We’ve seen several other really good examples over the years, what is the best method you have ever seen?
Attraction, Conversion, Consumption: Why You Need To Separate the Trio!
Go to a pond where you can visibly see a lot of fish. Take a stone and throw it in the water. Notice what the fish do? Yes, they race towards the stone in anticipation of a feeding frenzy?
Of course, you know what happens next.
The fish figure out you’re just teasing, and with disappointed guppy faces, they swim away. Um… if you continue to throw stones, they’ll keep coming back, till they work out it’s useless to humour you any more.
Sword Arms vs. (Semi) Scientific Advertising
While most copywriters have avidly studied Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising, very few have even heard of Theodore MacManus, let alone read his book, The Sword Arm of Business. And yet MacManus was, in some ways, a more successful ad man, having:
7 Signs Your PPC Campaigns Needs Optimization
Are you getting the most from your pay per click (PPC) campaigns? How would you know? Are you as efficient at getting clicks and converting visitors as you would be carrying water with a leaky bucket? Let me give you 7 signs to tell that you are not optimizing your PPC spend:
1. You use the set it and forget it strategy to PPC. If you setup your PPC campaigns months ago and haven’t adjusted a thing in it, I can practically guarantee you have room to improve it. The seasons change, traffic flow and traffic quality change, even Google’s Quality score changes.
Don’t Overlook These Common Cart Mistakes
I’ve seen a few big shopping cart no-nos lately, so I just want to alert Grok readers to them–they’re pretty easy to avoid:
The Homepage Dump: You add an item to your cart and are thrown into the checkout process. You’ve got another item on your shopping list, so you click the little link that says “Continue Shopping.” You’re dumped on the homepage. This is especially bad when you’ve done a lot of searching and results-filtering, and now it’s all gone. It really does feel like you’ve just been dumped! I can’t think of any good reason why the homepage is the proper place to land a visitor to continue shopping.
Bridging the Psychic Pain Gap
When people are confident of their next paycheck, they have a predisposition to buy most of their “because I want it” items that are within financial reach (and maybe even just out of reach as well – hence the credit card). That’s because their psychic pain threshold for buying is just above their actual expendable income level.
Here’s how to visualize it: there are usually, say, 5-7 “extra-budgetary” purchases a person might have in mind for the next two months or so: nicer sunglasses, or an expensive wireless mouse, or shoes or some type of clothing, etc. And most of those things will actually get purchased within a rolling 2-3 month time frame, without the buyer feeling that any of them represent a considered purchase – even if the sunglasses or shoes might be in or above the $150 range.
Why You’d Be Smart to Let a Stranger Select Your Baby Stroller
There I was at Babies”R”Us, way back in 2003, manhandling different strollers and finding myself more eager to read the amazon.com reviews than to kick the tires myself – and it had nothing to do with wanting to avoid the in-store shopping experience and everything to do with wanting to make the best purchase decision possible.
So why would I want to read reviews when I could examine the stroller first hand?
Emotionally Speaking
People often ask me what I mean when I say it’s important to appeal to the emotional needs of the folks who come to your Web site. Like, is it really about writing extravagantly, in a fashion that suggests the emotions of the copy’s author are stirred up and yours are about to be next? Should we be in search of flamboyant prose?
It’s then I realize people don’t really have a handle on what it means to appeal to emotion. I mean, if you’re looking to acquire an excavator, how meaningful or appropriate is effusive, flowery language? Think it will stir you up or send you running?