Coinciding Your Email Campaigns with Major News

Contributed by Heather Maloney .   Heather Maloney, Founder of Contact Point IT Services and eNudge.com.au, has a Master in Technology (Information Technology) majoring in the web, and has over 16 years experience in the IT industry, most of which has been focused on delivering business benefits via the use of internet related technologies.

Heather Maloney has written 8 article(s) for us.

Visit http://www.contactpoint.com.au

And Then There Were Lists …

The now well recognised Twitter Lists feature is a great way to organise the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people. In reality these lists are actually Twitter’s version of a ‘groups’ feature, offering an easy way to cluster other users on Twitter into groups allowing you to get an overarching view of what they are up to without having to filter through your vast followers list or visiting each and every profile.

Lists are not just static listings of users, rather compilations of feeds from a specified set of users that you choose. What this means is that you can create a live feeding snapshot of the tweets from your users by viewing a specific list’s page. Lists are a great way of organising the people you are following into topic based groups. Lists also have the great benefit of allowing you to include people who you are not following! Read the rest…

Database Management: Does Size Matter?

When I’m talking to people who are considering starting up a regular e-newsletter, I often ask “how many contacts do you have in your client database?” [I ask this question as it relates to the pricing of my services]. The response is very often almost an apology such as “oh, I only have a few hundred, but I intend to increase it”.

I would like to say here and now, there is no shame in a list of ‘only a few hundred’, and the size of your list should not delay you in starting your regular email newsletter.

An email campaign to the 200 person list, where every one of those 200 people personally know the business owner and the services they are providing, could deliver a much better response rate than the same campaign to a list of 2,000 people who subscribed to a list ‘accidentally’ or ‘by default’ and have never used the business’s services. Read the rest…

Business Know How: The Social Media Mix

If someone says spider and you reach for your thongs…  If you consider web presence to be something you send to a friend via email for their birthday…   If you still think tweeting is a sound that birds make…  Then you need to get online more! With so many new social media sites (Facebook), ecommerce platforms (eBay), media (Source Bottle) and article banks (Free Sticky) popping up, navigating the World Wide Web is becoming a mammoth task for business owners everywhere! Read the rest…

The Top 3 Mistakes Most People Make When Writing For The Web

Writing for the web is similar to writing for any other medium but it does have some unique protocols that must be followed. This article outlines the 3 big mistakes business owners make when writing website copy and how to avoid them. Read the rest…

Social Media Rules Of Engagement

Since social media has exploded onto the scene, a new set of cultural rules has emerged to accommodate each tool and it sometimes can feel like there is a secret handshake to gain access that no-one told you about!

Firstly, it is important to understand that all social mediums were not created equal! Socialising approaches are different for each channel, for example, I would not post on my Blog in the same tone that I Tweet, and I would utilise a different approach when updating my Facebook page in comparison to updating my LinkedIn account. Read the rest…

TweetMeme is Good Good for Business!

Since Twitter has reared its popular head around the web, there seem to be more chicklets (A chicklet is a feed button that normally contains a feed reader logo and has a specific blog or feed information attached to it. It is coded to easily allow users to subscribe to a feed), plug-ins , buttons and widgets than you can poke a stick at! One in particular that you may have noticed popping up on many a blog or website is the ReTweet button! Read the rest…

Marketing: How To Create Compelling Offers

Why have an offer? Offers (or incentives) are imperative because they make people sit up and take notice. Offers should stop the reader dead in their tracks and make them say “I want that!” If you don’t have an offer, it’s too easy for the reader to turn the page and move on. Even if they’re interested in your product, they won’t stop to do anything about it because they’re just too darn busy. They’ll probably say, “That looks interesting – I must get around to getting one of those.” And of course, that day never comes. So how does it actually work? Read the rest…

Quick & Easy Ways To Write Copy That Gets Results

I had the good fortune to have Apple Computers as one of my advertising clients. They asked us to come up with a series of headlines for a 24-page brochure to get rid of a bunch of old stock.  The headlines we presented were fantastic!  Amusing, outrageous, quirky. We were set to scoop the awards pool.  But when the research came back, the headline that out-pulled all others was - wait for it: Read the rest…

How Good Copywriting Can Help You Get On Page One Of Google:

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), or in simple terms, web marketing, can be very confusing for business owners so my intention with this article is to simplify it and give you an overview of what it’s all about. In essence, SEM is the art of driving traffic to your site, converting prospects into paying customers and measuring the results so you know what’s working and what’s not.

In order to do that for your business, you have to know where you currently stand in terms of your own web marketing.

Where do you rank on Google?

The best way to start is to find out how you rank on Google.  It’s worth taking a moment to find this out because if you can’t find yourself on Google, chances are your prospects can’t either.

If you don’t know how to go about finding yourself on Google, your best bet is to ask “Well, what words would the average person type into Google if they wanted to find my business?  (These words are called keywords.)

This is where it gets interesting because in order to do this, you need to crawl inside your prospect’s head and start thinking like they do.  This is easier said than done because people will search for your service using words that would never have occurred to you.

How do you know what your keywords are?

To work out what those keywords are you first need to put yourself in the shoes of your customer.  What words would they use?  What phrases would they use?

Let’s make some assumptions to demonstrate the principle. Let’s assume:

1)     you’re a lawyer specializing in workers compensation law

2)     that the person seeking your services lives in Melbourne and has never had to contact a lawyer before.

So here’s what that person might type in to Google to find you:

1. “Lawyer, Melbourne”
2. “Solicitor, Melbourne”
3. “Workers Compensation“
4. “Workers Comp Lawyer”
5. “Workers Compensation Lawyer, Melbourne”

Tip:  Keywords don’t just refer to ‘words’ but to ‘phrases’ as well eg “Lawyers in Melbourne” is a phrase that would be used, not just “Lawyers.”

Now, all those search terms (or keywords) will bring up different search results so it’s worth trying out a few different combinations to see if it makes any difference to where you rank.

Depending on your ranking, you’ll either be pleasantly surprised, mildly pleased or drastically worried.  Whatever the result, take comfort in the fact that at least you now know where you rank on Google.

Where do your competitors rank?

This exercise begs the question:  if you’re not on page one of Google, who is?  This is the perfect opportunity to work out where your competitors rank.

Take note of who the high rankers are and take a virtual stroll through their website and see what they’re up to.  Here’s a few things they are probably doing well:

They probably:

• Use the right keywords on their website
• Get lots of relevant sites to link to theirs
• Use the right keywords in those links
• Have lots of content on their site and add more regularly

Keep things simple to start with and just jot down the words and phrases that you think people would use to find you on Google. Then, weave those words into your copy.  There’s more you can do to get ranked higher but this is a great start if you’re just new to SEO and want to take constructive action to get a result.