The Difference Between Building Authority And Talking About Yourself

I recently read a great report called Authority Rules by Brian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger. It’s a well written easy to read piece that outlines 10 rules to building authority for your business and persona.

Building authority in the new distributed web is critical to the success of your Internet marketing efforts. Let’s look at the definition of authority for a minute to better understand why:

au-thor-i-ty noun: [1] A citation (e.g. from a book) used in defense or support; [2] the source from which the citation is drawn; [3] and individual cited or appealed to as an expert.

On the web, the way Google and other search engines see authority is through links from other sites to your site. How influential are those other sites and how many of them link to your site also play a big part in your perceived authority by search engines. So this concept of building authority is very important because while you build authority on the web, other sites will be linking to your site and your business will win search engine rankings (SEO). It becomes self perpetuating…very cool if you can do it.

Here’s the way Brian puts it in his report;

“In order to get the power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior online, you need to become an authority that others cite (link to) in their online content. Which means, of course, you need a content-rich website that demonstrates your authority in the first place.

Your content actually demonstrates your expertise, compared with a website or bio page that claims expertise. This is a crucial distinction, because it truly levels the playing field and allows anyone to come along and build authority that outpaces even recognized and credentialed experts in a particular niche or field.”

The truth about authority perception by humans or machines is what people say about you is much more important than what you way about yourself!

How do you get people talking? Have a point of view and let people know through content you publish on and off of your webiste. Use a blog, articles, guest blogging, commenting, videos, podcasts…the list is endless.

The key is creating content now. Imagine, you have been working your entire adult life building your business and developing a great reputation. Then, some upstart comes into your market and starts publishing content, doing webinars, and suddenly, they are the perceived expert in your niche. Not fun…

We will have a webinar on this shortly….stay tuned.

Is Your Content Organized For Social Media Marketing?

Over the next year you are determined to get your business focused on social media marketing. That’s great. Now let’s spend a few weeks getting our content organized so we make it easy to become a content publishing machine.

At this point you should have done your research so you know the keywords and phrases that your businesses is looking to compete and win with. You should also have a Unique Selling Proposition that positions your product or service differently than the competing brands in the space. Now we need to translate that into attention getting, educational content that motivates your target customer to interact with you business and convert to a sale or a lead.

Don’t get stumped on content ideas you can use for “link bait”. So everyone is on the same page, “link bait” is content that is specially created to attract your best prospects and convert them to leads. It should have a high perceived value by the target customer because it gives them just the information they are looking for at the right time. It can be in the form of a whitepaper, video, ebook, webinar, special consultation…you get the idea.

Here are a few ways to think about developing solid content that will get your target customers attention and make them want to learn more about your business:

1. Answer your target prospects most burning questions. Whatever medium you use (Video, whitepaper, article, ebook), you want your content to be found when your prospects are looking for solutions to their problems. Answering questions you know they have is a great way to find yourself at the top of the search engine results page.
2. Create an innovative approach (a “system” or “formula”) and use various content to educate your target audience about this specially designed approach. Key in on why it  saves them money, time or get’s them more customers.
3. Tips and mini courses are another way to make interesting content and be able to educate your target customers.

Now you are going to have two types of content.

First, content on your “home base”, that’s your website and blog. For the most part, you want to have your “link bait” on your “home base”. Second, you will have content that gets published in your distributed network. That’s web 2.0 sites, social networks, article directories and other places in the distributed web that your target audience hangs out in. You will then use your distributed content and social media to engage with prospects and drive them to your “home base”.

Key in this example is you are not hard selling at any time. If you have “link bait” that answers questions or is helpful and additive to the discussion taking place in the various web communities you are involved with, this is a natural process and you are a helpful person.

Now, let’s get organized. When you go to publish your content and register for accounts around the web…you will need to register for just about everything (article directories, web 2.0 sites you build pages on). If you are just getting started, here is a list of content and other resources you should put into an easy to access folder so it makes publishing a breeze:

• 10-12 articles
• 250-350 word doc with your website/company mission
• Agree on passwords and usernames for all the accounts you will open up
• Have a short and long form bio for the “author” or your articles
• Have nice graphics of your “link bait” with a description of what it is and why it’s important
• Don’t be shy, create video either in screencast or headshot form. Do 5-10, 30 sec to 2:30 minute videos that you can use on social sites, your own website and on video channels like You Tube
• If you have a company/product PowerPoint, you can use that as well
• Put company contact info in the folder so it is handy
• Keyword worksheet so you know what your titles and anchor text should be

Now you, or someone you delegate this task to, can quickly build up your presence in social media presence. Add content to this folder on a regular basis and you will have a content publishing machine. Make sure you are monitoring what articles and “link bait” is getting picked up most and learn why so you can further hone your content to attract your best customers.

We have a complete step-by-step social media marketing program that walks through this process in much more detail at Surefire Social.

Now go do it!

Creating Content That Breaks-Through: Three Questions For Killer Content

Content is king in the distributed web. We use it to attract our ideal customer and get them to “convert” to a lead or sale. We call this new paradigm “content marketing”. The content we create becomes “link bait” to attract target customers. We promote that link bait across the distributed web in forums, blogs, Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Squidoo, Hub Pages, You Tube…it’s endless and free. Done right, content marketing becomes a huge economic advantage for your business.

Just to be clear, content can take many forms; whitepapers, ebooks, video’s, mini courses, blog posts, articles, podcasts, Internet radio shows. The key is using a media vehicle that your target customers want, and providing great content that builds your reputation, authority and brand.

Creating great content is not easy. But anyone can do it if you ask yourself some simple questions before you begin:

1. What are the most burning questions your target customers have relative to buying products and services in your market and what is the unique information and/or personality (voice) that will compel target customers to read it?

• Use surveys, listen in forums and blogs, ask questions in Yahoo and LinkedIn Answers…the key is spend time upfront to understand your customer and the questions they have.
• Identify what your competitors are using for content (Link Bait) and find a way to make your approach unique, have a voice. Sometimes you can find ideas or a positioning that will give your businesses a strategic advantage.
• Do your keyword research and make sure you thread targeted keywords throughout your content, landing pages and all your headlines and copy.

2.  What medium will be best for your content?

• First, who is your target customer and what medium do they use the most right now? For example, video is a great tool. Particularly for mini courses and such, but many executives feel uncomfortable using video in an office situation because of the noise…especially in cubicles. Look at what competitors are using and try to identify how long their campaign has been running. Are they successful.  Sometimes using a new medium can set you apart, but make sure it is something your customers will want to consume.
• Second, what do you or your business colleagues feel most comfortable producing right now? Good intentions alone will not get you great content. This needs to become a regular part of your workflow.  Eventually you can try everything, but to get started, just find something right now that you are comfortable producing and go for it. Get help by outsourcing writing and design.

3.  How will you go about marketing your content?

• Join discussions in forums and blogs and when appropriate, let people know about your content by putting in a link. Use trackbacks (if you don’t know what this is Google it) to promote related blogs that have an established audience and people will find your blog and content easier. Warning, you need to be an established member of a community before you start to do this or you are simply a spammer.
• Include links in your email signature and other online and offline promotional materials. Chances are you and your team send out hundreds of emails and other promotions per week. Make sure you take advantage of this free exposure.
• Promote your content on your Web 2.0 pages like Facebook, Twitter and others.
• Sometimes you will use content to bring your customers down the purchase funnel. Once you have a name and email, implement a series of Autoresponders and integrate your content into them to keep prospects interested and convert them to buyers
• Use PPC and other forms of paid promotion. If you start to understand the value of each new customer, you know how much you can pay to get someone to sign up for your “link bait”.

Having great content is the key to marketing success in the distributed, social web. Sonia Simone has a great post on content development over at Copyblogger. She has some great advise including the key point made here, you need a plan before you begin.

Get going by answering these questions and you can be confident that you will be aiming in the right direction.

What works for your business or clients?

Hot Topic: Find Content Ideas That Attract Your Best Customers

Creating new content on a consistent basis is one of the biggest challenges for businesses starting to implement social media marketing. Integrating responsibility for researching topics, writing new content, producing videos and publishing the content has to be integrated into your businesses work flow and organization structure.

Using social bookmarking sites like Delicious and document sharing applications like Google Docs helps us organize, produce, edit and keep track of content…and share the responsibility over a group of people inside and outside or organization. We will get more specific about work flow and structure in future posts.

The biggest stumbleing blog we find with new social media marketers is “what am I going to write about?”. The great thing about the Internet is you can easily find what your target audience is interested in knowing more about if you know the right tools to use.  Here are a few to get your started:

Retweetist.com: This site follows all things Twitter and allows you to keep up with popular topics, trends and people by tracking retweets across the site. Follow them with your Twitter account for access, and you will be privy to the most important information and relevant discussions on the web that day.

Popurls.com: This is a one-stop shop where you can find the top entries from multiple sites that users are visiting. Find out what people are interested in and target those audiences based on the latest interests. Incorporate the top entries into your feeds to lead people to your site.

Alltop.com: This online magazine provides a plethora of popular topics on the web, with stories updated by the hour. This site is a relevant source of what is popular in the market place, and boasts easy search tools. It’s a great source for brushing up on new social media tools to keep your marketing strategies fresh and relevant.

Trendhunter.com: This online magazine is an “explosion of cool” and kept up to date by a global network of trendsetters. Get ahead of the game with the next big thing by tracking this site. The reason this site is so valuable is that it helps generate ideas, shape our social context, and stimulate creativity. This is a great way to figure out how to be more influential within your social media marketing and develop services to meet the demands you find on the site.

Trendistic.com: Look to this site in order to find daily trends in Twitter, complete with charts and graphs, and a list of popular topics. Tweak your feeds to be more relevant to the current daily trends and ensure more website traffic.

Twitturly.com: This site ranks and tracks what URL’s people are talking about on Twitter. It’s a quick reference to find out what information gets passed along and what doesn’t. You can also check to see how your information is ranking.

Makeuseof.com: This site has tools and resources that you can use and is a great source for finding anything from the top 5 things to do in an emergency to different ways kids can make money online. Find a significant URL to add value to your postings here.

Lifehacker.com: Another general site similar to makeuseof.com, this site has tips and downloads for everyday life.

Tweetgrid.com: An extension of Twitter, this search dashboard lets you search up to 9 different topics, events, people, groups, phrases, etc in real time. So, when new tweets are created, they will be automatically updated in your grid. This will help you stay relevant with your feeds and allow you to change them as the information deems necessary.

Tweetmeme.com: This site tracks what is cool and being talked about on Twitter. Everything is sorted by rank, so the things that are talked about most have the highest ranking. Tweetmeme.com tracks old and new content, and all media is categorized by blogs, photos, audio, and video. You can perform searches on this site for the highest ranking content and create similar posts that will guarantee traffic.

Twopular.com: This site pulls up trends on Twitter in real time. No need to refresh the page, and you can keep up by always having current information in your posts.

Twitturls.com: Works by grabbing the links that people post in their Twitter feeds and then counts them, scores them, and then lists them. Shows results by day and is refreshed every minute. Through this site you can check out the highest ranking links to see if you can make a posting relevant to your business.

Twitlinks.com: Features latest news that is for the more technologically inclined. Up to the minute tech links. Great for tech marketers who want to find small businesses online and offer solutions to their needs.

Twittersphere.com: A collection of the most hyped stories found on Twitter. Check regularly to see which stories get the most hits. Also a great portal for posting local specials relevant to your business.

Twitscoop.com: An easy way to stay on top of Twitter. Click on one of the words in the cloud map on the right and it shows you how many times the word has appeared in tweets. This is a great calculating tool for keyword research.

Sitevolume.com: Fantastic medium for pulling up keyword counts for 5 various sites. Simply pick a site you want to check, type in up to 5 keywords, and it pulls up how many times those words appear. You can check which words are the most relevant and incorporate them into your social media tools.

Twitgraph.com: Charts your actual usage of twitter complete with visuals. Use this to track what has been the most popular topics in your threads.

Killerstartups.com: Interesting site that reviews 15+ internet startups per day, then the readers vote on which one they think will be a killer. This site can be a great source for being the first to find upcoming needs for your products and services.

Any one of these web-marketing tools will provide you with many avenues to get the latest topics and information that your prospects are seeking. Because you want to meet a need or fulfill an interest of your prospective customer, it is vital to stay current with popular topics and informational trends.

Key here is when you appear to be a business in-the-know, you will build credibility for your brand, while cast a wider net for new customers. Keep in mind that it is important to measure your results. Also, make sure that you are having two-way conversations instead of only talking “at” your audience.

Furthermore, it is important to ensure your network is growing. Work on building relationships through credibility, dialogue and content relevancy. By following this structure to market your business, you will be maximizing the power of your social network, and expanding opportunities for your company.

Any tools you find useful for content ideas?

Social Media Marketing: The Game Where Everyone Gets To Play Publisher!

The game in social media marketing is to build authority in your market or niche.  Why? To differentiate your business and build a defensible mote that can get you more pricing power, special relationships and winner of the coolest business in your market award!

To play this social media marketing game, you will come to the realization that you are now in the content publishing business.  Blogs, articles, whitepapers, ebooks…Phew!  We know this is overwhelming for most businesses and marketing organizations. We can tell by looking at your eyes as we explain the social media strategy and programs that your business should launch…yes, we can see your eyes start to widen and a sudden panic set’s in.

Copyblogger has a terrific post The 7 Realities of Social Media Marketing that characterizes this issue well.

Ok, take a deep breath and follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have a strong Unique Selling Proposition in your market or niche.  A clearly defined positioning will help you think about content strategy and be much more engaging and passionate about your message.

2. Don’t sell, teach! The distributed web is a collection of conversations in social media settings where a hard sell will be out of place.  The way to get attention is to inform and educate.  Should be easy because you are an expert in your market right?

3. Use content that answers the questions and issues your target customers are searching for.  Do some research to find out what these questions are.  Look in the forums they hang out in, Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, conduct surveys, do keyword research. If you get this right, your will have a content strategy that your customers will flock to read.

4. SEO and site design matter! You will need to get your site structure right with landing pages, “link bait” and distributed content all lined up so you get the SEO benefit of this effort and convert target customers to your list.

5. Outsource content development and other tasks.  Don’t abdicate it, just outsource so you can maximize your internal resources on what they do best and benefit from expert writers, content publishers website designers and SEO specialists.

We are not saying this “new normal” of marketing is easy. But if you plan well, do the research upfront and outsource help you will succeed. Even better, you will get there faster, better cheaper than competitors.

What are tricks that you use to produce and publish great content?

Business Marketing: Optimizing For Humans And Machines

Marketing in the “new normal” means optimizing your messaging for both humans and machines.  That’s right, you heard me right.  Before you call out the Terminators let me explain.

Marketing in the distributed web provides a much larger footprint to find and engage  potential customers.  The other big benefit is that every piece of content has the opportunity to be indexed by the search engines. So you need to keep both of these objectives in mind as you write and distribute content.

Here are four tips to keep your distributed web social media campaign looking good to humans and search engine machines so you achieve your business objectives:

1. Your number one objective is to convert your customers, so when in doubt, go with the customer focused copy or headline.

2. Do your research upfront and identify (and answer) the most burning questions your target customers have.  This will keep  communication on target for both search engines and target customers.

3. Focus on a few keywords or phrases that your target customers are searching for, and thread those through your distributed campaign. Everything should line up including headlines, descriptions, Web 2.0 page headings and copy in the body of your articles or other text.

4. Use keywords as anchor text for links out, and also use the same anchor text to cross link your various distributed content.

So, we don’t need John Conner to save us from the machines.  We just need a good keyword strategy and consistency in how we use them.

Online Marketing and Advertising Is Too Expensive to Make a Profit – If you are only planning on one sale.

If you are looking to maximize revenue for your small business, these are two powerful tools that you must know.

If you are looking for strategic online marketing for your business, content development is key to gaining you website traffic. People won’t come to your site if it isn’t search engine optimized, and if they do get to your site, won’t buy if the information isn’t relevant. It takes time to invest in content development and then web distribution in order to net higher revenue. Another key component to work alongside content development is affiliate marketing, which can bring in substantial passive income when used correctly. These tactics used together earn a lot of profit for your business.

Content Development

Successful small businesses know that having relevant content is necessary in order to have an applicable site. Fresh content that is regularly developed can increase traffic to your site. This happens if your website content is written in order to be easily found by the search engines. When the spiders search for informative and keyword rich content, your website will pop up at the top of the list. If you always incorporate current trends in your related field into your content, this increases your business visibility.

Certain content development can also improve your online sales. If you offer free products or information on your site, people will learn to trust you and you will build credibility. Informative content means that people will stick around and buy something from you.

Once your content is developed to maximize your website traffic and sales, it needs to be distributed through various channels: websites, blogs, press releases, articles, etc. Your choice is dependent on which venue suits your needs the best. Just remember that the more ways you can get your content circulating the web, the better chances you have for high visibility and website traffic.

Product Development

Savvy product development can bring a fresh jolt to your business. It can generate passive income and identify you as a subject matter expert in the field. The key to successful product development is having a clear plan. You need to be able to describe in detail what your product is, and what it is not. This helps set parameters for your product and defines who your target audience is. As you clearly outline the benefits, you stay on track when it comes to targeting specific leads that have a need for your service.

Using Affiliates for Revenue

Affiliate programs are great ways to raise revenue, either by starting your own program or promoting products for someone else in return for a commission. The trick to really having a productive program is to find similar products or services that relate to what your business offers and promote them. This will allow you to not only continuously build your network of contacts, but your revenue will grow with every purchase.

Your web marketing strategy should be aimed at intertwining fresh content development and the partnership of affiliates. You are limitless when it comes to affiliate programs, and should spend some time each week marketing for other businesses. On the same note, if you continually add fresh content to your social media outlets, your website traffic will increase, as well as your revenue. 

Social Media Training and Analysis: The reason why social media marketing does not work for most businesses is because of one word – Tinkering.

Proper business marketing requires having a system for your content development and proper keyword use. Read below for some valuable tips.

Content Development

If you want a successful small business, you will need to have a set of certain marketing strategies in place. The first part of your marketing plan should focus on content development. Is it fresh and relevant to what people are looking for today? There are sources you can check, like Twitter and Twitturly.com in order to find out the latest trends charted for the day. Use these sources to incorporate imperative information into your content. It is important to follow the trends so that you are always on the forefront of what people are searching for. Are you offering something for free? Use your social media tools to give away such things like free information and reports, or coupons and special discounts. Items like these are great at grabbing the user’s attention, building your credibility, and leading to a sale.

When you are distributing your content on the web, the first thing to take note of is that your copy is search engine optimized. Your content needs to be written in a very specific manner so that Google can easily find your relevant article when keywords are typed into the search engines. When the keywords are strategically placed, your content will be among the top of the list and ensuring you more website traffic.

It should be noted that this web marketing strategy can be abused and therefore, work against you. Search engines are more advanced than they were several years ago, and merely stuffing the content with your keywords in inappropriate places will not get you more website traffic. The spiders that search for relevant content are able to find informative and well written articles while sifting out the ones that are simply packed with keywords but provide no substantial information.

Keywords

If you are looking for the right keywords to add into your content, you first need to do some research. Do a search to find out what other web surfers are using in order to find information on your page. This also works for phrases you want to include in your content. When you collect a list of relevant keywords, you can then implement them into your copy. Take note that they need to go in specific places: title, teaser, subheads, and sprinkled throughout the meat of the content. However, be careful not to go overboard on the density and get banned as a spammer. You need to make sure the keywords fit seamlessly into the copy without compromising the integrity of the information.

This system of online marketing is incredibly solid. If you follow these steps and develop a system that works for you, you will be able to manipulate the social media tools to work to your greatest advantage. It requires research and skillful writing, but when done correctly will increase your internet visibility and thus get your more traffic to your site.