Blogging The Web Savvy Dirt Cheap Method To Get the Word Out and Generate Traffic

Google loves blogs.  

Don’t ask me about all of the technical SEO babble that goes along with Internet Marketing, but I've read countless articles about this and the results are in:

Google Loves Blogs.

It’s just that simple.  Or is it?

If you've glanced at my articles for more than five seconds, you’ll see that I’m cheap.  I've mentioned this before, but I don’t like getting a second mortgage to start a business. That’s just the way I am. (Actually, I don't even have a first mortgage ;I paid my little house in the country off years ago, but that’s another story.)

The Upside to Blogging

So, blogging is one of those dirt cheap tools you can use to generate interest in your business and get people to actually go to your site.  There are several reasons for this that you should know about:

1.  As I said before, search engines like Google love blogs.  The reason that they do is because if you write brand new hunks of content every day, they’ll consider you to be an active web page rather than a stale, inactive one. 

2.   It can give you a good reason to stay in contact with your client and customer base.  Every time I finish a post, (which is usually once a day) I post it online and immediately tell everyone I can online about it.  I send out email, tweet, Google +, Facebook, and let everyone I do business with know about it. 

 I also have a physical newsletter that I send out as well and I mention that I just made a post somewhere in the body of the article.  It is very effective that way.

3.  People can feel like they are a part of your business and that they actually know you.  They can leave comments and feel like they are contributing to your cause.  If they follow you on a regular basis, they’ll feel like they really know you.  The evidence is in that people will spend their hard earned cash if they know you and trust you.  So, look at blogging as a trust building experience.

The Downside to Blogging

The problem with this blogging strategy is that it is labor intensive and requires massive amounts of discipline.  There are quite a few reasons for this.

1.  You have to research your posts before you write them.  You can’t just sit down and blather on about nothing.  Even if you're going to write highly personalized accounts about yourself or a particular subject, you need to sit down and think the post through.   

If you just sit down and dash out crap, people can smell it from a mile away.

2.  Keyword research is important too.  You need to find low competition keywords that are somehow related to your niche.  If you have a Google AdSense or AdWords account, you can use their free keyword research tool.  

They’ve changed quite a bit about it over the years, to include the name of it, (they now call it Keyword Planner) but it’s still pretty effective. 

If you don’t want to use that tool you can always pay to use WordTracker or MarketSamurai.  These have been rated pretty well by SEO specialists, but I can’t vouch for them because I’m too cheap.  

I just use the free Google tool.  That’s good enough for me.

3.  Formatting Text and Pictures on a Screen - You’ll need to go back into your blog and make sure that you format the paragraphs so that they are readable to your audience.  This is one of those times you need to put your grammar book away and think about the way people’s eyes work when reading a computer screen.

People see things as blocks of text on a screen much differently than they do when they read a book.  You can use all sorts of word processor conventions to do so.   Bullet statements, headings, underlined areas, highlighted text and paragraphs that are shorter and different length can be used.

Word count is important. Remember the reason why Google likes blogs is because it loves to see well written content as frequent as possible.  I personally like to write every single day.  However, posting every single day is sometimes impossible due to scheduling problems.  

So, post as frequent as you can.

You’ll need to post 500 words every other day to gain favor with the search engine gods.  Be patient with them though, because they might not to notice you for a while and you’ll need keep working at it without a lot of visible success right off the bat.

4. Spreading the Word – Once you get your post written, I would spread the word throughout the social media net as fast as I could, merely highlighting the posts and giving teaser information about it.

Here's a video on how a lovely young lady built her blog.  The rules are pretty much the same no matter what the niche or market is.

5.  Add on Videos and Charts – Not only do the search engine gods like new content frequently, but they also like other relevant information as well.  If you can produce relevant charts and graphs backing up your information, then you’ll find favor in their eyes. 

Relevant video is another area that search engines like if they are relevant to the posts.  If you can find video you can use that helps illustrate a point, then use it. 

If you want to read an excellent article on search engine optimization then I would highly recommend SEO Book’s Guide to Blogging.  It is one of the most extensive and well written posts on the subject.

The Most Important Facet of Your Blog that’s Dirt Cheap

I know I've spent a considerable amount of time talking about the things you should do for the search engine gods.  However, the main focus of your blog is to provide your readers the best information possible on your business niche.  You want to be seen as an authority, a valuable resource site and a place to go to share opinions and ideas. 

To Your Success

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy Content Generating Ideas That’ll Drive Free Traffic to Your Site

It appears that we are moving toward a more sophisticated economy.  About a year ago I watched a fascinating expose on how our education system MUST change.  It appears that we have been graduating from schools that are based on the Industrial Revolution production mindset.   The speech was given by Sir Ken Robinson, a man that was described as a “world-renowned education and creativity expert”. 

The premise of his speech was that basically, our education system was built to fuel factories with more warm bodies.  We had a factory driven, industry based economy and it was the civic duty of our leaders, government, and citizens to perpetuate it.

(If you are wondering why I am starting down this road instead of jumping right into the subject matter outlined in the title of this post, please stay with me.  I always want to tell you why you should do a thing before you go out and do it.)

Our Industrial Based Thinking Sucks

Anyway, we went to school, went from one class to another in lines, and with kids that were the same age as we were, and we were programmed.  Follow the rules, do what you’re told, sit at your desk, keep up or be left out, and DON”T BE DIFFERENT!!!

In the ‘60’s rebellion kicked in.  The “in” thing was dropping out and letting your hair hang down.  However, most of it was rather pointless.  As a matter of fact, some people could objectively look at the 60’s rebellion and call it another form of conformity, but that’s getting too deep.

Hence, the Industrial Revolution conditioning stuck and the education and labor system that we have become used to is still in place today. 

To see the video by Sir Ken Robinson on our industrial revolution school system click here:

The reason why I’m bringing this up is because our brains seem to think along the same business model/economic lines.  We still look at doing business the same way we were always trained:

Draw people to our site, try to sell them something, move on to another victim…er…customer or client, contact your previous prospects, try to upsell them something more expensive, and leave never to return. (Except when you want to sell them something else.)

People are catching on.  They know when you are merely looking at them like a piece of raw meat that you can suck the life from. 

Undercover Boss - The Bad Side of Things

The trouble with this business model is that there is a very high burn out rate, mainly because you’re just churning out CRAP. Even if you finally make a lot of money getting people to buy into your scheme, you’ll still have to fight like the dickens to keep replenishing your clients and prospects. 

And what kind of entrepreneur will you become as a result of this?

A perfect example of this was on a 2015 episode of the TV show, Undercover Boss.  Without going into too much detail, the show highlighted a seminar/real estate tycoon that was obviously a charlatan.  

He bragged about himself so much, you wouldn't believe it. He announced that if he died he’d want to be reincarnated as himself, because he was the “&%$#*” luckiest man on earth.  His claims were that he made about 40 million or so and was getting richer every day.  He charged attendees of his real estate seminar $43,000 per seat, for a 2 day session.

You should have seen the poor, deceived people he was fleecing.  Some of them looked like they were living out of their cars.  Some admitted that they were running up their credit cards to feed the beast.

(Not only that, but as the show was running, I was following the comments of people on Twitter about this show, and you wouldn't believe how hated this man was, especially by women.  The comments ran on and on and NOBODY had anything nice to say about him or his business.)

It was sad.

One of the reasons it was so sad, is because ANYONE COULD HAVE GIVEN THOSE POOR PEOPLE THE EXACT SAME REAL ESTATE INVESTING INFORMATION FROM AMAZON USED BOOKS FOR LESS THAN $20.00!!!! Actually, the information from the books would have been better than the info they would have gotten from HIS seminar. I guarantee it.

Why Am I Telling You This?

The reason I’m telling you all of this is because, your mindset has got to change!  

Gone are the days of merely taking people’s money and forgetting about them.  If you are just in this for the fast in and out, just be aware that people are becoming attuned to the fact that they are getting fleeced.  It’s little wonder why the term “Internet Marketing Guru” is now considered to be a negative term and the gurus are doing their best to distance themselves from that moniker.

People want to feel like they know you and they want to feel that they are a part of something.  They‘re sick and tired of being thought of as nothing more than a consumer that’s there to line somebody’s pocket with money. 

Consider a Facebook ad that looks like this:

Actual ad from Facebook- (URL removed). Apparently they were using Shutterstock’s pics without even paying.

Do you really think that anyone is going to feel connected to this, much less believe it?

The reason why I’m telling you this is because you are going to have to give, connect, respond, enrich, enliven, educate and HELP people if you really want true success.  And when you do sell them something, your product should be the best it can possibly be.  

You don’t want to cut any corners, and when you do sell somebody your wares or services, you’ll want to be extremely concerned that it is doing every single thing you said it would.

Hey, here’s a new concept:  After the sale, follow up and ask your customers how it’s working.

Generating Content – It’s Not Expensive to Give This Away

This brings me around to the subject matter at hand, generating content ideas.  The cheapest way for you to help people out and educate them about what you do, is to give them excellent, mind-blowing content.

 Here are a few ideas to help you get started:

• Cruise forums that are specific to your niche and read the questions that people are asking.  If you keep seeing the same question asked over and over again an excellent, FREE, well-written article will be something they’ll benefit from.

• If you have a list of people that have already purchased your products or services, ask them questions about what they thought the product lacked or helped them with the most.  This will give you fertile ground for subjects you can write about.  Make sure that you send this information out to people on your lists.

• Sit down and brainstorm a list of benefits that your product or service gives, as well as a list of problems that it solves.  Remember the color or size of your product isn't usually a benefit it’s a feature. Benefits are things that your product will do for you.

• Go on Amazon or eBay and look at products and services similar to yours. What benefits do you see vendors talking about the most? (NOTE: If you are rendering services, look at the books related to your services that are being sold.  Use the “Look Inside” feature of Amazon and look at the table of contents. There’s loads of ideas you can write about there.)   

Also, look at the comments sections of the products and see what people are complaining about the most.  That‘s pure gold for content creation.

Make a List and Create Your Programming

Once you have gone through these content generating ideas, use a calendar and make a schedule of the subjects you’ll be talking about on your blog, podcast or website.  Since I’ve already written a post about this, I won’t bore you by repeating myself, you can read it here:

Using a Calendar to Create a Content Schedule  

I hope you find this message enlightening and it has helped you in some way.  If you’d like to fire some ideas or comments at me please feel free to do so.  

Send them to:

Elmo033057@gmail.com

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

Web Savvy Content Creation to Generate FREE Traffic to Your Website

If you are going to use free content to drive traffic to your website, then you need to pay close attention to this one important tip I’m going to throw at you in a second.  Free content online is huge, and there is a lot of competition. 

However, for those of you out there in the vast Internet heartland, reading this message might be just what you need to push you to greater heights of Internet marketing glory.

The Giant Failure-Filter…Don’t Quit Your Day Job

If the statistics are close to accurate, Internet based businesses have a 90%+ rate of failure within the first 120 days.  There are many reasons for this that have been cited:  Lack of business experience, very limited technical skills, poor understanding of starting and running a business, no capital at all, unrealistic expectations. 

Should I go on?

This is why my blog is dedicated to teaching you how to work the Internet as cheaply as possible.  If you've never had a business before, start and learn as cheap as you can.  The most beautiful thing about the Internet is you don’t need to spend a wad of money to get started, and therefore, if you don’t succeed, you’ll financially live to fight another day. 

But don’t quit your day job, no matter what the gurus tell you.  Every stinking’ one of them had failures along the way.  Rarely, (emphasis on rarely) are the ideas, economic conditions, and your personal life so perfectly in sync that you’ll hit a homer on the first swing.

If you are persistent in business, you’ll bounce back from your failures.  You will find, especially on the Internet, that you’ll fail more times than you succeed. 

Writing Content for Free Online Traffic

Writing content in order to get free, organic traffic to your site or blog is

probably the cheapest way to get Internet traffic.

Just think of these benefits:

• If you wrote a post or added a webpage every single day of the year to your site, at the end of the year you’d have 365 pages of content out there on the Internet working hard for you, every day of the week.  Over two years you’d have 730 pages of content over three years that would give you over 1000 pages.  Those pages work 24/7/365 for you and the charge will be almost nothing. 

• If you did keyword research correctly for those pages, they would definitely bring in some traffic.  

• You could also post short notices to social media sites about those posts, generating a flood of traffic, and you can use the same post on social networking sites months later to generate interest in it again.

• If you organized those posts, and put them into a .pdf file, you could also brand it as an eBook and either sell it online or give it away free as an incentive for giving you their email address.

• Not only will you get comments from people visiting your site, but your website or blog will definitely draw attention from Google and other search engines.  People contributing to your blog by commenting on it will help it generate more attention from Google, and therefore, move you further up the search engine results pages.

The Downside to Using Free Content

I present to you now, the downside to this strategy:

• Most of us are lazy, let’s just face it.  In order to pull this off, you are going to have to write and actually enjoy it.   The only way out of this is to hire a ghost writer, but that costs money and the good ones don’t come cheap.

• You’re going to have to set a part of your busy day away to write and post.  This requires discipline as well as commitment.

• Quality is the order of the day.  In order to pull this strategy off, you’re going to have to give people the highest quality content you can muster.  It doesn’t matter what your services or products are, if you aren't producing excellent information and content about them people will ignore you.

• You need to know how to write.  If you write posts or pages that people can’t easily understand, then chances are they will click and go elsewhere.  Yes, this blog is about using the Internet as cheap as you can to make money, but don’t think for a second you can give out used Volkswagen efforts and get Rolls Royce results.  

• This is time consuming.  You’ll need to spend at least an hour or more writing every day.  Anything less is ludicrous.

• You need to know what you are talking about.  If you have no clue about your area of, ahem…”expertise”, then it will definitely stick out like a sore thumb. 

• You’ll need to know how to post to the Internet and do Keyword research.  You can use WordPress, Blogger or a website editor like Dreamweaver.  If you are going to build an actual website, you should learn how to hard code HTML so you can create the pages that you’ll post your writing to. 

  Blogging the “Easier” Solution

If you want my two cents about the easiest way to get content onto the Internet, I’d say Blogging is the way to go.  Both WordPress and Google’s Blogger are very easy to use and you can get free versions of both to cut your teeth on.  I personally use Blogger, both the free version and I also have a .com I pay for on another Blogger blog as well. (www.markelliscopy.com) 

Blogger is the cheapest way to go because even if you get a .com (URL) for that blog, all you have to pay for is the .com.  To have a URL with WordPress, you’ll have to have a hosting package from a company like HostGator and know how to set up the blog through the control panel. 

Here are some resources for you to consider:

Dreamweaver : Web Design Software

Learn HTML and how to build websites online...FREE!

Blogger

WordPress

In my next post, we’re going to explore how to organize your subject matter and research it in order to be able to write blog posts that people are actually going to WANT to read about.

Until then…

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Getting Your Web Savvy Video Published Online To Generate a Flood of Traffic!

OK, now you are on your last step of creating and posting your first video on the Internet.  I am assuming that for now you are going to be posting to YouTube because it is probably the easiest way to get your video out there so you can get some traffic to your site or blog. 

(If you want to read the previous articles on this subject the links will be provided at the end of this post.)

The other reason why I suggest that you post to YouTube is because you’ll get success much quicker. You’ll be ecstatic getting your first video published online, so you’ll want to get more of them done.  Nothing will get a student more motivated to learn and do more than a successful experience. 

Getting Your New Web Savvy Video In Front Of the Right Audience

Once you have your video complete, you will want to get it in front of the right audience.  You can have the greatest video ever made and even win some sort of award for it, but if you don’t get in front of people that are hungry for the information that’s on it, your goal will be missed.

Utilize Social Media Channels

You can go to different social media sites and post a quick snippet of information about your video that you posted to your YouTube channel.  All you have to do is go to your social media page, write a brief introduction to your video and then copy and paste the web address of the video into the posting area of the social media site and hit “Enter”.    Magically you’ll see the actual video clip appear!

Screen Shot of social media channel:

You can use this technique on a whole boatload of social media sites like Facebook (in picture) Google Plus, Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  You don’t even have to rewrite the posts and the links, you can just write the first one, copy it and paste it to the other sites.

Now, this is assuming that you've been cultivating and socializing with people that are interested in your niche and that may be interested in what you have to offer on these social networking sites.  If you aren't cultivating people that are interested in your business, then you’ll be wasting your time because if they aren't interested in your message it won’t even watch it.

Make Your Title Keyword Rich and Interesting

You need to do some keyword research to see what keywords people are interested in before you name your video and post it to the Internet.  The best way to do that is by consulting Google’s Keyword Planner.  

If you already have a Gmail account you can easily get an AdSense account and access the Keyword Planner.  This tool will allow you to check and see what keywords people are looking at and how much.  Ideally, you’ll want to get words or phrases that people are looking up but are underused. Once you have done your keyword homework you’ll want to include the words or phrase in the title of your video.

 Build Your YouTube Channel

I often forget this because it’s so obvious, but YouTube is a social media channel itself.  You can easily create your own channel on YouTube, trick it out with banners and backgrounds to make it look cool and start inviting people to it that may be interested in your videos.  

You’ll eventually find out that people that pop-over from Facebook and other sites also are into YouTube, and have been at least posting family or hobby videos on there as well.

Use Other Video Sites Too!

Once you get some experience using and posting to YouTube, you can now start to post to other video sites as well.  Almost all of them are very, very similar.  All you have to do is create accounts to them and post. 

Don’t Forget Your Blog!

Web savvy marketers should always post their videos to their blogs.  When I post a video to my blog, I always try to make it relevant to what I’m writing about.  Some people don’t even blog, they “Vlog” or create a video blog. Instead of writing, they will record a video and then post it on the Internet on a regular basis.  

The big problem with this is Google will usually rank your webpage based on the content that’s written on your site.  So a blog (or Vlog) that only has video on it will be much harder to rank than a blog that is well written.   The other problem I've seen with Vlogs are that they are usually poorly made and boring.  

When you consider the procedures we've posted in previous posts and the care you must take to make an excellent video, it would take a lot of time and effort to accomplish.

If you are interested in seeing how to post or embed a video into a blog, watch this video.  The procedure involves getting the embed code from YouTube for your video and placing it into the HTML code into Blogger.  Pretty much the same procedure with WordPress and other types of blog platforms.

I hope the series this week has helped you decide on whether or not you’ll want to use video to market your services or products with.  It’s really not that hard to learn and once you’ve made your first one the rest are pretty easy.

Here are the links to this week’s series on marketing with video. (In order of their appearance.)

1.       Web Savvy YouTube Traffic Generator

2.       How NOT to Create YouTube Videos

3.       What Type of Software Do I Need

4.       How to Make Web Savvy YouTube Videos

5.       You've Made Your Video, Now What?

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

You Can Laugh At Your Money Worries If You Follow This New Simple Marketing Trend.

Normally, most entrepreneurs are looking at shortcuts to success through marketing.  Everyone is looking for a shiny new object to bring in more business, and there seems to be no end to the number of “gurus” out there that will hawk a free report, or recent book telling you about a “new secret”.

In reality, there is nothing new under the sun, and the same exact principles that were used 40 years ago, will still bring home the bacon today. 

(If you missed my last post you missed the fact that you should get yourself a herd, tribe or a HIVE MIND COLLECTIVE as a proven way to get more sales, conversions or loyalty.)

The technology of communicating the message has changed but the formula for communicating the message is the same old, tried and true, which is why any really good advertising copy writers will study works by guys that earned their stripes years ago.

This is not to say that you should only learn how to write or use static sales letter pages.  I said the technology has changed not the actual messages.  For example, if you learned how to use it properly, you could easily use Youtube videos to market your business, and many people have done just that, to include myself.

As a matter of fact, just one of the many videos that I have produced, Facebook for Beginners has pulled in a whopping 19,000 views.  Having said that, I would like to point out that if you try to just slap together a thoughtless, unplanned and unclear message you will not get very many views or conversions on any level.

One of my pet peeves is a video wherein a person just gets on there and rambles on incessantly about their business.  These folks make these “marketing messages” while driving their cars, sitting at tables, etc.

You can usually tell that they put very little thought into these messages or that they did the entire production with their left hand. I could never really figure out why anyone would even watch a video like this, because it usually doesn't help you or tell you anything that you don't already know.

If the marketing message doesn't connect with the viewer, àclickß the viewer goes elsewhere. That’s the problem with all of this new-fangled technology is one click and you’re gone. 

It’s a little different with a highly crafted direct mail piece that you've got in your hands, but if that medium isn't crafted and formatted properly, it’ll wind up in the trash too.

So, what is this new-fangled marketing trend mentioned in the title? Well, recently Forbes Magazine unleashed its Top 10 Brand andMarketing Trends for 2014, and low and behold, mobile marketing should be optimized is number 9 on that list.

Trend spotters got this right several years ago when they accurately predicted mobile methods of accessing and using the Internet would go mainstream.  This means that when you design a webpage it has got to be optimized in a fashion that is acceptable to smaller devices than a laptop. 

Years ago, I used to build my own websites so I know how the process works.  However, as a down and dirty marketer, I learned that more complicated, sexy web design is expensive, harder to maintain and more difficult to make changes to. 

Don’t get me wrong, if you are Amazon, Zappos, eBay or any of the other online giants, you have a complex e-commerce site. I get it. However, if you are a mid to small time business, you may want to do the smart thing and have a Flash free, easy website that is easy to post regularly to. 

(Notice I am using WordPress and Blogger for my sites because they are easy to use, post new material to and if optimized properly, do fairly well in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting.  You can still have a single, stable sales page and if post articles regularly, you will get noticed by the search engines a little easier.)

My disclaimer on this advice is: I am not a professional web designer, although, I have a degree in Education Technology and have built professional websites for business and educational purposes.  I know that there are probably a bunch of web designers that are going to descend on me with all of their technical terms and wizardry, telling me how I should be hoisted up by my ankles and flogged until sunset for this bad Web design advice. 

However:  I am right, and never wrong, so there!

My point is, that if you are designing simple sites, or using WordPress or Blogger (which are already optimized for mobile formats automatically) you shouldn’t have to worry.  If you are hard-coding your own complex, Flash induced website, you will probably need to brush up on what the mobile marketing formats are and keep abreast of the trends in this area.

TIP: One of the ways you can always get people to come to your site in the mobile format is to create an app that connects to your website.  If you can put a regularly updated piece of information on your site then the app will connect to your page to access that particular information.  

You can always hire someone from an outsourcing site like oDesk or eLance to create your app for a very reasonable price. The trick of creating an app like that is that it needs to be conducive to your niche or business.  You don’t want a weather update on a site that has a comic book or cooking niche.