Tips & Tricks for
Online
Marketing by
Tips & Tricks for
Online
Marketing
Table of Contents
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Online Marketing
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Online Advertising
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How-to Guides
About Wisdom N’ Treachery Best of the Web Email Marketing Works When Tips for Twitter Be Found on Facebook
Cost-Per-Click Advertising Tricks For Clicks
Manage Your Online Reputation Simplifying Your Social Media Daily Routine Creating a Product Video in 5 Minutes
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About Wisdom N’ Treachery
Wisdom N’ Treachery is a Social Media, Public Relations and Online Marketing consulting firm; we build brands around Websites, Products, Services, Blogs, and Events. We help our clients acquire customers using digital and social media. Wisdom N’ Treachery is a consulting company that delivers real world results for our clients, both online and offline. Wisdom N’ Treachery takes clients through a systematic and thoughtful process in order to help identify the resources and barriers to their success. We help our clients use contemporary communication strategies to accomplish their objectives. Our results help build reputations by giving our clients a voice! We provide: Strategic Development Implementation and Execution Consulting Project Support
Event Support Coaching Classes Seminars
Wisdom N’ Treachery is committed to helping you understand and leverage the internet to maximize your business online. www.wisdomntreachery.com
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Tips & Tricks for
Online
Marketing
How Online Marketing Works:
V R
VT
C
P
VT V R P C
Venture Visibility Relationships Profits Credibility
Shifts in technology may occur but what makes marketing work is always the same!
The Shift in Media Understanding Media Marketing: Type
Traditional Media
Digital Media
Magazines, Newspapers, Bill Boards, Posters, Direct Mail
Websites, Email Blasting Blogs, Forums, Facebook, Twitter, Ads
Photos
Print Based
Flickr, Facebook, Twitter Blogs and other photo sharing sites
Audio
Radio, Tapes
Podcasts, Videos and Radio Blogs
Video
TV, Video Tapes, DVD’s
Youtube, Blogs, Facebook
Mobile
Books, Pamphlets, Letters,
PDF, Blogs, Websites, Devices, Emails
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Online Marketing Mindset Analysis: As you start your online marketing there are some important questions to keep in mind. Audience: Who are your customers? Where do you find these customers? Who is your best customer? What does your audience want? Competition: Spend time on search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) to see what other businesses in your field are doing. Simply type the category of your field and you will find a plethora of potential keywords. It is also good to gauge how many other potential competitors are fighting for the same keywords.
Best of the Web With Millions of registered websites and hundreds of new arrivals each day, it can be a monotonous process trying to find the sites which can benefit you. Which sites have something to offer you? Which can help you grow your business?
DropSend can be used to send large files online without being restricted by email attachment sizes. That’s right, no file is too large or too small to send using DropSend. You simply upload a file online and the receiver will get an email with a download link. This site offers an efficient and secure way to share information. There is no charge for up to five 2 GB files per month.
Issuu is an online publisher that allows you to publish your presentations, documents, sales kits, brochures, magazines and more online. Just send a link to potential clients and they can flip through the contents like reading a book. Issuu gives you a chance to showcase your portfolio via your personal account. Simply add a link to your work in your email footers.
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. Haro is an online community where reporters, bloggers and other content creators can solicit interviews from experts, business owners or everyday citizens (signed up to respond to specific categories.) Haro offers reporters real-time access to subject experts and the opportunity to use their own expertise.
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Tips & Tricks for
Online
Marketing
Email Marketing Works When: Email Marketing is often overlooked today given the rise of social media. However, the fact remains it is still one of the most effective marketing strategies available. To maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing activities, here are some of the best practices: Subject Lines The subject line is the first point of access; it can make or break your campaign. Here are some basic practices:
Never use all capital letters
Keep it under 60 characters; the shorter the better
Use special characters sparingly (never use multiple exclamations if at all)
Be careful with words like “Free” or other words occurring often in spam
Email Body Text Your email should be short, sweet and straight to the point. The longer the message, the lower your click-through rates will be.
Your title should grab attention, using only 3-5 words.
Use no more than 2 fonts in your text body.
Do not use style classes or style sheets, only in-line styling
Refrain from centering all your text or using a bright color on a dark background.
Images An email with all text can be very boring, especially as a first impression. Images are great ways to enhance the quality of your message, but keep these tips in mind:
Try to avoid using one, large image as the entire email
Learn to wrap text around an image.
Use relevant images; consider the subconscious link of your image.
Refrain from using too many images as it will slow down the load time of your email.
Test Lastly, test different subject lines; try various text bodies; try new images. The bottom line, keep testing to improve your conversion rates.
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Tips For Twitter Twitter is emerging as one of the top social media sites, now with over 28 million users, an increasing number of businesses are beginning to utilize the forum to reach their base. Twitter is an effective platform to communicate relevant information, but more importantly it is one of the fastest ways to establish relationships with clients, both existing and potential.
Be Yourself You can do this by customizing your profile background, adding a link to your website and listing the email addresses of those running the account. This will help establish the personality behind your account. Tip: Visit the “Settings” section of your account to add and update this information
Listen and Respond It’s important to monitor when your business name is mentioned via @replies or Direct Messages (DM). Think of Twitter as real-time market research in which you can receive quick, firsthand public opinion on your products and services. In addition, you are granted a voice with which to respond– thanking or addressing concerns. Tip: Use third party sites, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck, to quickly and easily monitor mentions of your business
Refrain from constantly talking about yourself In addition to posting about your business, share sites and articles you deem useful. Retweet interesting things you see or promote other professionals you know. This will demonstrate a level of engagement that will be greatly appreciated .
Engage in casual conversation It can be challenging to deliver a formal message in 140 characters or less. Think conversationally. Twitter is a great way to showcase the inner workings of your business, so think of it as a conversation between you and your followers.
Offer Value Add value to your tweets by providing an inside look at your business. Post pictures of your office, include product coupons, offer service discounts and more. This will help direct your audience towards your tweets and eventually result in more business. Tip: TweetPic, Yfrog, and TweetPhone are a few sites that can be used to post photos to your account.
Evaluate Your Relationship
As a business, you understand the importance of measuring the value of your company. With Twitter, the same rules apply. Below are some tips for measuring your Twitter experience. Even though each and every business on Twitter has its own experience, these are strategies that can aid any business, regardless of size, to maximize its Twitter experience. For more questions, visit www.twitter.com
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Tips & Tricks for
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Be Found on Facebook Facebook is more than just keeping tabs on friends, family and playing with applications — it’s also a highly effective business tool; It is great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers. Here are some ways to use Facebook in your business: Manage Your Profile
Fill out your profile completely to earn trust
Stay out of trouble by reading Facebook rules regarding business accounts
Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your profile (note: you should be careful before integrating your Twitter feed into your Facebook profile, as a stream of Tweets can seem overwhelming to your contacts
Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings
Post a professional or business casual photo of yourself to reinforce your brand.
Manage and Share Contacts With Others
Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily
Add your Facebook URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you
Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, like “Working with ABC Company on website design”
Share useful articles and links to presentations and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall to establish credibility.
Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks you a question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.
Research prospects before meeting or contacting them
Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
Share survey or research data to gain credibility.
Use Networks, Groups and Fan Pages
Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company sites, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives
Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.
Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.
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2 Online Advertising Cost-Per-Click Advertising
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Advertising, sometimes referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC), has grown dramatically in recent years as more and more consumers turn to search engines. Businesses of all sizes use Google, Yahoo and to Bing to help drive online traffic to their site. A CPC ad means that your ad will appear on the search result pages, but you will only be charged when someone actually clicks on your ad. Here are some of the benefits of CPC advertising.
You can do it Yourself
It takes a couple minutes to create an ad for your business. The basic
components include a headline, a two line description, and a link to your site.
Get Immediate Delivery
With traditional media you set up your ad, but it may not be shown for
months. CPC advertising allows you to create an ad and have it displayed within minutes.
Find your Keywords give you
The search engines make it easy to build keyword lists. Type in a word and they’ll
hundreds of suggestions. You can also see how competitive each word is.
Easily Manage your Budget
You can easily assign a daily budget so that you don't break the bank.
Budget adjustments can be made on the fly and you can set bids for each keyword.
Deliver Ads When and Where you Want
You select a start date and end date for your ads and
even deliver to a specific state, region, country, town or area (based on zip code or distance from you). You can even choose to show ads on certain days or at certain times during the day.
Test Different Messages
Different messages are received differently depending on consumers. Take the
time to try out different ideas and track what is most effective.
Keep Track of Performance
It is easy to track how many times your ad was shown, how many times it
was clicked, the cost of each click, and where your ad is being shown.
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Tips & Tricks for
Online
Marketing
Tricks For Clicks In the midst of an economic downturn, business owners have to spend more efficiently than ever. As mentioned in the previous article, there are benefits to utilizing Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Advertising to get more business. The Key to this form of advertising is to make sure you are getting the most out of your advertising spending during this down economy. Here are a few things to think about:
Be Clear Have exact traffic targets and budgets. Know exactly what you can spend and how much traffic you realistically need to create leads and conversions you deem necessary. Now is not the time to be vague.
Be Consistent Keep a watchful eye on your keywords, conversions, and bid amounts. If you outsource your CPC advertising, stay in regular touch with your account manager to ensure your ad dollars are being maximized.
Be Efficient If you find that certain keywords on a specific site perform better than others, do not be afraid to shift some ad Go with what works.
dollars. Wasting clicks on keywords that are not converting leads will not help you.
Be Adaptive Test new keywords and new ad content. You can run multiple ads against certain keywords, so try different phrases to see what works best and then shift your campaigns to focus on the successful ads.
Be Calm
Try not to overreact right now if something is not producing the results you anticipated. Try
new phrases, search for new keywords or try adding new sites to the content network your ads will appear on.
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3 How-To Guides
Manage Your Online Reputation Word of mouth and referrals have traditionally been the largest sources for business. People are having conversations about your business all the time, both good and (unfortunately) bad. But what happens when these conversations happen online? All of a sudden people are tweeting, facebooking, blogging, commenting, reviewing, and discussing your business online for all to see. How do you keep track of what’s being said about your business and, more importantly, how do you manage it? Monitor There are large amounts of online monitoring tools out there. Here are a recommended few: Google Alerts: visit google.com/alerts to set up a notification for any time your business name is mentioned in the news, blogs, web, video, and groups online. You can set it up so that you receive an alert via email or through you RSS reader as-it-happens daily, or weekly. Twitter Search: on Twitter, you are able to set up searches for your business name to monitor conversations in real time. Refer to our article (Strategies for Twitter Success) for more information. Technorati: You can set up a Technorati Watchlist that will alert you about any online activity for keywords you choose or specific websites you select, particularly in the blogsphere.
Manage Now that you have successfully set up online monitoring for your business, how do you manage that information? Be consistent and Transparent: When you inevitably find something negative said about you online, conventional wisdom would have you do everything in your power to remove it. Stifling negative feedback will only make the person go elsewhere to say something, perhaps even more aggravatingly. The best course of action is to stay consistent and be transparent. Have a conversation and understand why he/she had a negative experience with you. Do everything in your power to make it right. Promote Positive Feedback: It is important that you also applaud and promote positive feedback. If someone comments on your blog, thank him/her. If someone Tweets, reTweet. If someone leaves a review, respond. Other potential clients will appreciate your candor and sincerity, which may make the difference in a service-oriented industry.
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Tips & Tricks for
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Simplifying Your Social Media Daily Routine Social Media is all the rage today. Blogs and newspapers are talking about Twitter and Facebook daily. However, like any new technology or service it can seem overwhelming to find time to effectively manage your presence. Here are some ways to keep it socially simple: Look for Programs There are a few programs or websites now that can help aggregate your social media profile TweetDeck will help you manage your Twitter profile while also viewing Facebook Newsfeeds. TweetDeck also lets you update your status on each platform.
Ping.fm makes it easy for you to update your status on over 40 social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, and more.
Digsby aggregate several services in a downloadable app. This will bring together your IM lists, provide email notification from the popular webmail providers (i.e. Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) as well as integrate your newsfeeds from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn. While not as feature rich as TweetDeck, Digsby will allow for updating your status on multiple platforms.
Create Useful Messages The Social Media sphere is great for sharing content, but it also creates a lot of noise. Keeping your messages relevant and useful is always a great way to increase the quality of your engagement.
Read the Important Stuff Learn to sift though the noise and read the important items. Figure out which content providers are creating the most relevant content for you. Additionally, consider engaging these content providers to establish working relationships.
Optimize Your Presence If a certain social media property is not creating new leads or engaging conversation, do not be afraid to shift your efforts. Your time is valuable, so determine which social media sites are most effective and focus your efforts accordingly.
Manage Your Time Trying to read or respond to everything is not going to be an efficient use of your time. Try setting aside a set amount of time (10 to 15 minutes) twice a day. Furthermore, reading every piece of content in its entirety is also not recommended. Learn to skim and only spend time on the most relevant.
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Creating a Product Video in 5 Minutes Looking for a way to showcase your portfolio beyond a standard slideshow? Welcome to Animoto for Business. Animoto is a great site for businesses as it produces a professional film-quality music video using your photo in a matter of minutes. The process is easy. Simply upload your images and choose a song. Animoto then does all the work for you by analyzing every subtle variation of the song and produces a totally unique video– No two videos will ever be the same! Animoto for Business is complete with numerous features that allow you to showcase your business in a unique, captivating way. Here are some of the features available. Videos Unlimited You can create as many DVD-quality videos as you like. You can download them, email them, post them to your blog, and even burn them to a disk. Marketing Tools When you sign up for Animoto for Business, all Animoto branding is removed from your video. You also have the option to add a customer call-to-action button at the end of your video, which turns your video into a marketing tool for lead generation. You can create a link to your website or link viewers to your contact form. This option will only work with the Animoto embedded code. Sweet, Sweet Music Animoto provides you with over 300 commercially licensed songs for you to use- At no cost! Simply preview the songs and pick which fits your style best. It’s All About Speed Animoto recommends a speed based on the tempo of your song, but ultimately you control the speed. You can choose between half or double speed. Half speed is perfect if you are displaying your portfolio, as it allows more time between each image, while double speed can heighten the overall effect of the video. There are many ways Animoto for Business can help you grow your business, but here are a few to you get you started: Showcase your work in a complete way on your website Post your video on Youtube to help increase your online exposure Create a promotional DVD to hand out to prospective clients or sell for profit Differentiate your booth at Tradeshows or conferences by playing a video Engage users on your blog by creating a captivating video
. . . . .
Animoto for Business sounds too good to be true, but in fact t’s not. Animoto was intuitively designed to support the unique needs of businesses. It is the fastest, easiest way to produce professional quality video for only $249 a year, or $99 for a 3 month trial. Visit Animoto for Business today to get started. Animoto makes it easy for you to see how great their product is before you commit. Simply see for yourself by registering at www.animoto.com and create a free 30 second video.
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