Search engines can be a great traffic source for your website. Do you have an idea where your site ranks when someone plugs in your keywords into search engine? Whether you own one website, or many, if you have one client or many tracking positions in the search engines is key. Doing it manually works, but is boring and, as I found, does not scale. I’ll share what I was using before Advanced Web Ranking, what the tool is, how it is sold, services it integrates with, reporting customization and brand-ability, and the reports I found most useful. You’ll also learn how to be proactively alerted should your site be impacted by any number of search engine (Google) algorithm changes. 

Advanced Web Ranking Review

The Importance of Keyword Tracking

A website can serve many purposes. For those using a website for business, at some point it will make sense to see how well the site fares against competitors in the same marketplace.

• How visible is it when searchers search keywords your site should be ranking for? What is a SERP anyway?
• What are the competitors doing that you aren’t?
• How do your sites rankings change over time? 
• What is the impact of rankings based on changes Google and others make to their algorithm?

As you invest in link building, the answers to these questions are important to track  your success. A keyword tracking system should be able to answer these questions and more.

The Labor of Keyword Tracking

In the beginning, the only way I knew to track keyword placement in the search engines was to use an Excel spreadsheet, document the keywords, and the search engines, and periodically update it by doing the searches and documenting the results. This was time consuming and impractical.

I found myself continually tweaking and modifying the spreadsheet to make it suitable for my needs. What are my competitors rankings? On Google, Bing, Yahoo? How has that changed? How can I make a graph illustrating the keyword ranking over time? My competitors?

It became quickly apparent the time spent justified finding seo software to help with this tracking.

Beyond Keyword Tracking

While efficient keyword tracking was my top priority. It was clear that other elements may be useful to consider at some point. Take for example social. What about social media mentions, followers, and etc? With Google entering the social game with Google+, this is probably important (it is).

How does all this information fit in with my Google Analytics account? What about link data? This can all be overwhelming, but who offers these types of features, which I could learn to use after all the keyword tracking is dialed in?

What is Advanced Web Ranking

In short Advanced Web Ranking is an affordable PC based software (Windows, Mac, and Linux) that submits Internet queries to track your websites effectiveness with the search engines and visitors.

Since all data is hosted locally, it can display charts and graphs containing a lot of data much faster than web-based solutions. It comes in four different versions each with increasing functionality.

• Standard
• Professional
• Enterprise
• Server

They do offer a 30 day trial, so you can get familiar with the software first, and experience the different features each version provides. You can see the complete breakdown of Advanced Web Ranking versions and features here.

Annual Maintenance: At regular intervals (weekly or more) there are search engine and, less often, application updates applied to the software. Therefore they do charge a nominal fee annual fee for maintenance. I like this model, it keeps them on the hook to deliver a solid product, and I like the idea of paying a small annual fee to keep things moving forward for them and for customers. For details on Advanced Web Ranking version history, go here.

Advanced Web Ranking User Interface Review

I have been using Advanced Web Ranking for about 3 years. They made a significant change in the user interface about a year ago, and I find it to be a marked improvement. Everything is laid out in an intuitive fashion. Major areas of the application are on the left hand side. When in a given section you can go to a sub-section quickly by hitting the dropdown in the upper left.

There are three main areas in the Advanced Web Ranking user interface.

There is a comprehensive contextual help (F1) which guides users to perform common tasks for a given section of the application the help was initiated from.

Setting Up a Project in Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking collects and presents search engine data based on project. Projects can be for whatever you like. Project categories I’ve used cater to a specific website, market, or clients (if you operate a consulting practice). The project setup wizard is intuitive and simple, new projects can be setup in minutes. It will take a bit longer if you aren’t certain what keywords you want to track. You can always add keywords to your project later.

Keyword Tracking Options in Advanced Web Ranking

If you have a list of keywords already, you can simply paste them into the keyword dialogue box. However, Advanced Web Ranking can also assist in finding keywords. If you want to do some keyword research to determine what the competitive landscape looks like, you can use one of the many keyword tools that are build into the product.

Some require a Google AdWords account, others require additional services.

• Google Suggest
• Google AdWords tool
• Wordtracker
• Yahoo Related Keyword Search
• SEMRush Keywords
• Google Webmaster Keywords (Enterprise version only)

Perform keyword research from right within Advanced Web Ranking.

Once you have the keywords in a given project and start collecting data, over time you may want to organize keywords into groups. This allows you to select a group of keywords easily, having your chart reflect only those keywords.

Useful Features

Monitoring impact of Google and other Search Engines changes with triggers: Been a lot of talk of the impact of search engine algorithm changes over the years and more recently. Advanced Web Ranking has a triggers feature. Allowing users to effectively say, create a report whenever keyword(s) move any number of positions up or down with a given search engines (you specify).

Scroll down to the reports section for more info. See more about triggers on their website here.

Notes: As you monitor your keywords, you will likely make changes to your webpages, site, or offsite pages (linking, etc.) and will want to have an idea if these things correlate. This is where the notes feature is handy.

You can specify a note so it appears right on the chart. Mouse over the line and a balloon containing the text of the note appears. Notes can be general, or very specific down to the site, search engine, and keyword. If you prefer not to have notes appear on the charts, it’s simple to disable.

Advanced Web Ranking Review of Google Analytics Integration

The folks at Advanced Web Ranking (Caphyon) understand that many website owners have also integrated Google Analytics for their blogs and websites. They have given website operators the ability to bring that data right inside Advanced Web Ranking.

Advanced Web Ranking with Google Analytics Integration

This is a relatively new feature, and something I’m really liking. Here are a few standout features:

• Use with Multiple Google Analytics Accounts- Easy to get traffic info for all your websites.
• Historical Google Analytics Data- For specified time period (assuming you have GA on the site for that period of time).
• Goals tracking- Using Goals in Google Analytics is not only smart, it is essential in measuring ROI. This is available right within Advanced Web Ranking.
• Revenue by referral source- With this info, you can make smart decisions in your business.
• Date Comparisons- Overlay graphs to see traffic comparisons of two different periods of time.
• Import Google Analytics Keywords- This is big, now you can track the keyword rankings of your targeted keywords, but also import the ones that you may have missed in Google Analytics. If those are converting keywords, now you can optimize and rank better for those keywords.

If you want the complete list of integration features from their website find them here.

Advanced Web Ranking Integration with SEOMoz

Another newer feature offered in Advanced Web Ranking, is the ability to get link data from SEOMoz. This isn’t something I’ve used just yet, but I plan to. I often use the free SEOMoz tools to determine domain authority, but there are so many other valuable things that SEOMoz offers. Many of these things are now available from right within Advanced Web Ranking. The product includes 2000 credits, and the option to purchase more credits if needed.

This functionality helps you understand competitive analysis based on backlinks. You can configure the system to fire an update whenever SEOMoz updates their Linkscape database (roughly monthly).

Advanced Web Ranking Reports Review

There are several things I use regularly and find useful when it comes to reports.
Automatic: Using the scheduler component to run rank checks, you can configure the system to generate a report immediately after the software has completed a rank check. The reports can be delivered via:

• FTP. Have a server to host reports on? Load up the FTP credentials and it can upload the reports you’ve configured directly to the server.
• Email. Prefer to email reports on a regular basis? Configure an SMTP server, and viola, they are set to be emailed.
• Folder/File output: You can also have the reports write to a directory of your choosing. I find this helpful as I use Dropbox [LINK] for that directory, and the files then sync over to my other systems where I have Dropbox configured.

Brandable: This is big for agencies and online marketing/SEO consultants. Within the reports editor of Advanced Web Ranking, it’s easy to drop your logo, custom footer, and contact information within the template itself.

Report File Type: One thing I wanted specifically, was the ability to output reports in PDF format. Advanced Web Ranking allows for that. It also supports other output formats such as HTML, XML, and RTF.

The system also allows you to configure the naming format per project. This allows you to specify a path structure for specific clients, etc.

There are over 20 reports available, and several nice ‘hybrid’ report options for you to cross reference data from Google Analytics with keyword ranking data.

For those interested in the granularity the reports offer, it can run reports manually as often as you want, you can also run it on a scheduled basis multiple times a day along with the rank checking.

Tip: If you take that course of action, be sure to enable “Be nice to search engines” feature in options, or setup proxy servers so the search engines don’t block you for too many queries in a short period of time. The proxy service I use is here.

Useful Advanced Web Ranking reports I use regularly include:

Visibility Report: which is a combined calculation of overall rankings for a site or group of sites across the entire keyword set.
Overview Report: Simple report, lists the keywords for the project, their current rankings on your selected search engines (I use Google and Bing), compared to a previous time period, I choose 7 days prior.
Top Sites Report: This report lists the top sites for a given keyword you specify for the search engine you specify. Similar to the overview report, it compares for a previous time period, so you can see how the rankings are changing among competitors.

Snippet of an old Top Sites Report from Advanced Web Ranking

Bottom-line on Advanced Web Ranking

Keeping track of your rankings is something online marketers should have familiarity with. Tracking it manually works, but as you grow, it just doesn’t scale. Either hire a firm to track them, or use a proven tool like Advanced Web Ranking to do it for you, sending you only the reports you need when you want them. Other than applying updates to the software from time to time, once you have a project setup, scheduler and reports configured, it’s pretty hands off.

I’ve tested quite a few rank checking tools over the years, and always came back to Advanced Web Ranking as a tool of choice. It allows you to store things over the long-haul, the user interface is faster than web UI competitors, and I’ve never had a service outage (as with web-based tools I’ve used). It also combines social mentions, Google Analytics, and link data (extra fee after 2000 link checks) in an easy to use intuitive way.

If you are looking for a decent rank checking tool, after 3 years of use, I encourage you to test drive Advanced Web Ranking. They also offer a 30 day trial here.

In a bold move Google ‘moves some cheese’ by overhauling the Google plus user interface. Reporting 170 million users who have “upgraded” to Google Plus, Google states these changes “accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.” Some early adopters may bristle at the changes, and it may be “just what the doctor ordered” for Google to get even more traction in the competitive marketplace of social networks.

Google+ Get’s an Elegant Upgrade

As a long-time user, I like the changes and believe it will help my customers and users better integrate Google+ into their social activities. You can review the details of the upgrade here, but the enhancesments touch the following areas:

• Navigation: There is now a ribbon down the left side, which you can sort icons via drag and drop.
• Stream: They have cleaned this up displaying photos better, creating conversation “cards” and an activity drawer.
• Hangouts: There is now a dedicated page for hangouts, so you can see friends that are hanging out, popular hangouts, and public hangouts… and join in.

Another thing I noticed is cleaner notifications drop down, and options on the notification page to filter notifications as you wish. They have also put the management of business pages right off the user profile icon in the top right. If new to Google Plus, checkout these Google Plus Tips.

Overall a very welcome improvement, and certainly paving the way for more enhancements going forward. Nice job Google!
Here’s the navigation ribbon in action:

Here’s an overview of what’s new:

2011 Ultimate Marketer winner Jermaine Griggs and 2012 winner Iron Tribe Fitness

Marketing conferences.

When attending good ones, the challenge has always been, how to deal with the tidal wave of great information? How to apply what you are hearing in your business.

My conclusion? Prioritize what makes sense, put a timeline to it, appreciate the rest of what you learned, but understand your limitations (yes, even you have limits).  Then implement.

Having attended one of the premier conferences for small businesses, Infusioncon 2012, this post contains a summary of tweets from the event. If you are curious what Infusionsoft announced. Find it here.

Infusioncon 2012 Wrap Up – Chris Brogan, Ali Brown, Gary V, and Moore

Infusioncon on Twitter

Joanna Garzilli @joannagarzilli
@saleswhisperer @Infusionsoft @alibrown awesome! Most heartfelt business conference I’ve ever been to! Excited for next year! #icon12

Sara Arnold @seasarawrite
Back in the office after 3 amazing days at InfusionCon #icon12. Met so many passionate @Infusionsoft customers with great success stories.

Kathy Sacks @kathysacks
See video sneak peeks from #icon12 at http://2012.infusioncon.com/videos . See the full CEO and product keynotes Ultimate Marketer winner AND the rap!

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee
Hey #icon12 I am about to rip your faces off – get ready – who’s In ?

Carla McNeil @RetireWithCarla
RT @travisnow: Your customers will love you if you love them first. Gary V. #icon12

francine hardaway @hardaway
I am the dork taking a picture of @garyvee with my new iPad at #icon12. Trying out the better camera on Gary

Chris Brogan

jenniferbourn @jenniferbourn
Write this down – “Make your buyer the hero” via Chris Brogan #ICON12

mjaStudios @mjaStudios
#icon12 “All this stuff is Greato.” But consider what to automate and what to do personally.” – Chris Brogan

Chris Widener  @ChrisWidener
Chris Brogan talking about Google +. Maybe he can convince me it isn’t a major bomb like I predicted months ago. #Icon12

More of what Chris Brogan shared here 

1. Stop using QR Codes on Social Media or a website…they are already online!
2. Over 70% of people that do use QR codes send the person to a non-mobile friendly website…that makes no sense.
3. Be sure to check your website for how mobile friendly it is as over 60% of traffic is now coming from mobile devices.
4. Be aware of what you are showing to your visitors when they come to your site. What do you want them to do? He suggested removing the social media icons in the sidebar as that is not really what you want them to do, why offer them such an easy way to leave your site? (have never heard that, pretty cool)
5. If you are not sure what type of videos to make, do Frequently asked questions videos about your product or affiliate products.

Ali Brown

Eric T. Wagner  @MightyWiseMedia
#Entrepreneur Ali Brown talking about how to switch from success to significance – Ali Brown @Infusioncon #ICON12

Pat E Perkins ? @PatEPerkins
“You have to remember your why.” ~ @Ali Brown #ICON12

Geoffrey Moore

Josh Ochs @JoshOchs
Learning so much! RT @sarakyler: “When people aren’t having any fun, that’s called churn.” Geoffrey Moore is absolutely right! #ICON12

Brent Leary @BrentLeary
Moore: our entire lives are being reconstructed on the web. #icon12

Jacob Morgan @jacobm
RT @BrentLeary: Moore: fear causes you to overclinch on performance gears and not spend enough time on the power gears. #icon12

Mosaic Business @seemosaic
RT @brentleary: Moore: 2 gears most people concentrate on – getting leads and monetization. That will wear out your welcome. #icon12

Jermaine Griggs

Travis Campbell and Jermaine Griggs

Lauren Tassiello @eltassi
“Those that make it happen…Those that watch it happen…Those that are wondering what happened.” -Jermaine Griggs Who are you? #ICON12

Jim Cavale @JimCavale
Cool pic of amazing Ultimate Marketer Jermaine Griggs with @forrestwalden and I after the big announcement!

Sara Kyler @sarakyler
Jermaine Griggs is feeling how Miss America must feel when the next year’s model is crowned. #ICON12

Loral Langemeier

Adrianne Machina @AdrianneMachina
So obvious, but so seldom done. RT @SallyLiddicoat: Strengthen your strengths, hire your weaknesses. #ICON12 @loral

richersonc @richersonc
I can’t do this it is hard…fine stay poor! Loral Langemeier #ICON12

It’s your turn. If you didn’t make it to this year’s event, visit the Infusioncon website for updates and presales of Infusioncon 2013. If you did attend, what was your most compelling experience, meeting, or takeaway?

Insert challenge: Once you have a strategy down, now the quest becomes figuring out how to make the technology cooperate with what it is you want to do.

In this post I’ll share an effective strategic model Infusionsoft has used to help small businesses, and also show (video) how their latest update is making it easier than ever to implement this model.

Let’s talk strategy for a moment.

Infusionsoft Rewrites Marketing Automation for Small Business

The best way to articulate and clarify your strategy is to write it down. Not with words per-se, rather drawings. Some of the best business ideas were first conceptualized on a napkin.

Infusionsoft Helps Small Business Build a Strategy

Certainly there are tools for drawing your strategy out, but I’m not recommending anything like that just yet. What’s important is that there are no barriers to developing a solid idea, learning a new tool is not what you want, you want to crystallize your strategy. Therefore put pen to paper.

That is one thing Infusionsoft has done to help small businesses, help them map out their marketing strategy. They call it the Perfect Customer Lifecycle (PCL).

Once the PCL is written down the next item is to create a marketing plan to support your PCL. I’ve included a brief overview of the PCL in the video below (scroll down).

Infusionsoft Approach and their Spring 2012 Release

Now that you have a solid understanding of what it is you want to do, time to figure out the technology. The challenge for many marketers is dealing with multiple systems. Systems that don’t talk to eachother. Infusionsoft allows customers to have contact data related to lead tracking, email marketing, customer status, purchase history and more in a single record.

Today, at it’s annual user conference, Infusionsoft revealed its Spring 2012 Release which will likely be game changer for the Small Business Sales and Marketing all-in-one CRM market. New features of the release include.

• All-new user interface- soft, more intuitive, less overwhelm, easy to use and customize.
• Web Analytics- know who is coming from what traffic source, and what value they offer your business.
• Lead Scoring- Contacts now have flames next to them. 1 flame, not so hot, 5 flames, super hot!
• eCommerce improvements- Easy to style and seamlessly integrate with your website and brand.
• The Campaign Builder- Intuitive, centralized, drag-and-drop building of campaigns. Complete with drag and drop landing pages, email editor, and webform creation tools.

Rebecca Sprynczynatyk Product Marketing Manager at Infusionsoft puts final touches on presentation with colleagues just ahead of opening keynote.

Infusionsoft – The All-New Campaign Builder

As great as the other features are, I’d like to focus on the Campaign Builder. It is without a doubt the most important new feature of this update.

Some time ago, I shared a video talking about a huge time-saving feature that Infusionsoft introduced called Campaigns. No longer did you have to create a bunch of links with actions, along with the templates, tags and other components necessary to properly setup a campaign in the application. What took 3-4 hours to do manually (if you were fast) now took only seconds.

As of today, small businesses can simply build their campaign with the build-in visual editor Infusionsoft has in its product.

Below is a video that illustrates this further, and shows the new feature in action (click image to play video). If you can’t see it, find it here.

Video Summary:

• Marketing automation is important, but introduces a challenge.
• Understanding your business relationship with customers is key, the Perfect Customer Lifecycle is Infusionsoft’s key to communicating that with small businesses.
• Infusionsoft is making life easier for businesses who want to build campaigns quickly and easily.
• Coupled with the other new features of Web Analytics, Lead Scoring, eCommerce improvements, all in an intuitive user interface, Infusionsoft has just made life easier for many small businesses.

Infusionsoft is sure to be a delight to existing customers, may get a hoard of new prospects, and likely ruffle feathers of their competitors. Here’s what people are saying on Twitter.

What are your impressions of this revamped software? Chime in with your thoughts below.

Like being voted Homecoming Queen, being at the top of the list of influence metric companies such as Klout, Empire Avenue, Peer Index and ProSkore may be turning into a hollow victory as the shortcomings and pitfalls of these services become more pronounced.

The major issue seems to be the ease with which some of these metrics can be rigged through a well-organized canned third party campaign. Because the measurable data is very much anecdotal – and also requires a lot of context to determine whether a reference to your company is glowing or scathing, reliance on such measurements becomes very much a ‘use at your own risk’ exercise.

How these companies work is by aggregating the numbers of times and also what is being said about a brand or company within major players such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google+ .

Should You Be Concerned with Klout and Other Social Grading Services?

This is a guest post by fellow marketer Doug Crosse of 4 C Communications

The real grey area appears to be in the influence special formula each company uses. Like the Colonel’s Herbs and Spices recipe – most people can figure out the basics of how a company gets its metrics – but it is what they don’t specify that has industry watchers worried. The argument presented by the Social Influence companies is that the score a company receives is based on quality analysis of retrieved social references about your company. But any industry will tell you that these can be dangerous tracking metrics if the person looking at the information doesn’t understand the nature of the business being discussed.

A report from Digital Agency White Horse had this to say about Klout’s recently updated scoring system. “Although highly touted and, in many cases, given significant weight, social scoring systems are a cloudy measurement of true influence. This is due, in part, to secretive scoring practices (i.e. – “mystification”) of measurement in order to prevent users from “gaming,” or artificially manipulating, scoring systems.”

So – going back to the Homecoming Queen analogy – if your best friend is counting the ballots – chances are good the vote is going to go your way. It is the human element involved in creating these scores that makes the data such a dangerous measurement of a company’s social reputation.

A more useful measurement tends to be how much a brand is coming up in the overall conversation. Heard of Pinterest lately? Until recently, most of us hadn’t but now the ubiquitous image sharing social site is the next ‘big thing’ . Certainly a quick random check of those conversations about Pinterest reveal a very high approval rating among users – so it is quick exercise to connect the dots that a large volume of references X high percentage of glowing recommendations = Pinterest’s meteoric rise in the social conversation.

Where a service like Klout may become more relevant is for companies going through a bad PR stretch.

Case in point: Tassimo – the maker of the popular single serve coffee machine has had to issue a recall of nearly 1.5 million units plus some of its line of Kraft made tea discs in Canada. How they are handling this PR disaster would be a good thing for Klout to be measuring hour by hour and day by day – so Tassimo can better direct its resources.

• If they hear, for example, the 800 number is frustrating and people are unhappy – they can scale up or outsource the phone system to handle the extra call volume.
• If the website is missing key information – Klout might be able to reveal that through measurable conversations in the key social media streams.

The question then becomes – is that not a task for the in-house PR team to be conducting – or is this a value add that a Klout or ProSkore bring to the table.

While useful information can be gleaned from the reports of these companies, it should all be weighed against other measurables both scientific and anecdotal, to achieve a fair and balanced view overall. What am I missing here? Is there a better way? Chime in with your thoughts below.

If you are relatively new to online marketing, it represents a broad frontier with lots of opportunity. If you are anything like I was early on, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed, and are unsure where your gifts and talents fit in the big picture. Don’t make the mistake I did and go in every direction (which is the inspiration of the MarketersFAQ special reports). To be successful in online marketing, entrepreneurs need to have focus. Regardless if you are focusing on becoming a local marketing consultant, an email marketing consultant, paid or search traffic expert, or an affiliate marketer, blogging is a great branding medium. Enjoy these reasons and examples, and chime in with your thoughts.

3 Approaches to Blogging for Profit – Marketers Edition

Before diving in here, let me just say, it is very easy to have a short-term view on blogging, at least for classic Internet marketer types. The emphasis on making millions by purchasing a $37 product (more on that here), or turning a profit lickety-split, while possible in some cases, contributes to this short-term mindset. So, if you are looking for something new that will have you making millions in an instant, this isn’t your post. If you recognize that it takes some work to build something that will last, read on.

1 – Blog For Free (Now) with a Long-Term Options

Many scoff at this idea. I think it is legit, for good reason (see example shortly). Blog for free, but with a long-term view. Publish content for a while to get your feet wet as to what is involved and required to be successful. While it is possible to do it with one of the free services, I strongly encourage you to do it on a domain you own. This will require a small investment to buy a good domain name, learn the ropes with WordPress or similar platforms, and hone your writing skills.

Make sure you do it on a subject that is your passion and tied to your personality and talents. You’ll need this passion to carry you through as you learn the ropes of blogging.

Example of Blogging for Free: My wife has been doing blogging for the past year. She is a Brazilian native living in the USA with a joy of cooking. Taking her passion of cooking, and a willingness to develop both photography and writing skills, she started just over a year ago.

Last month (February 2012) she had 3457 unique visitors to her site and is on pace for 4600 in March, all from organic SEO traffic.

As a result of a long-term view with her blogging, she is now experiencing multiple opportunities she wouldn’t have had otherwise. Which brings me to the second point.

2 – Blogging for Exposure

Exposure = opportunities. There’s something about the written word. It carries weight. It does the job of marketing. If it’s good, you get noticed. It’s about exposure. As your consistent content becomes seasoned you are really building a portfolio. As you outlast the points in time when others often quit, opportunities come.

These opportunities happen as readers and search engines realize you are serious about this.

Outcomes of Blogging for Exposure: Exposure has benefited the sites I mange (including this one), and it happened to my wife as well. Requests to receive guest posts on your site, as well as opportunities to post on other sites are indicators that the exposure is working, even if they are not paid opportunities. For my wife, she has declined nearly every opportunity, but may accept a few as she has more time to act on them down the road.

3 – Blogging for Profit – The Kind That Goes In The Bank

This is where many are in a rush to get to, and rightfully so. If there isn’t some compensation involved perhaps it isn’t worth it. While one can accelerate the process a bit, if you are starting from scratch on a shoestring budget, paying for traffic isn’t a viable option. This is especially true if you haven’t nailed down your business model.

As I see it, there are three main ways to profit from blogging.

Advertising. This requires a decent amount of traffic but can be effective on small niche sites. The common option has always been to use Google AdSense, but if using WordPress you might consider this free Ad Management Plugin or something more robust for a fee like OIO Publisher in lieu of placing ads manually on your site.

Product reviews or mentions. This approach means you provide value to your readership by reviewing products they might be interested in. If they click through your review, and you are an affiliate for the product, you are compensated by the product creator for bringing them the sale. This is the primary way this site is monetized.

Become a Full-time publisher. There are several ways to do this, but the most common is to goto work for a company that values social media and blogging, and publish for them. This is a great way to hone your skill, while getting paid for it. Some reputable sites also have job boards for these type of positions, like here and here (marketingpilgrim, and problogger).

You might also consider publishing a vendor profile on a 3rd party outsourcing site where people go to find writers. Something like WriterAccess, TextBroker, or even classic outsourcing sites like oDesk or Elance.

The downfall here, is that your compensation is a one-time event. You write you get paid.

Writing on a site you own and manage means it is tied to you, and you benefit directly from the traffic the content on your site receives for years to come.

Bottom-line on Blogging for Profit

There are many ways to blog profitably, this post represents one perspective. If you want a platform that can profit quickly at some point down the road, you need to invest time now and continually by publishing content. In my wife’s case, she published about 40 posts to experience her current traffic levels, or roughly 3 posts a month. With a steady stream of traffic, you can then look to monetize the site with ads or product reviews. Alternatively you can get a job as a full-time content publisher as an outsourced talent, or with a company. Thoughts? Feedback on blogging for profit? Chime in below.
Image Credit: Nanny Snowflake, Vinoth Chandar, Fab O Lens (Flickr-CC)

It’s not about getting it perfect, but getting it going. It’s not about checking everything off, but keeping it flowing. [Tweet Me]

I encourage you to consider the same mindset, and dial in your own productivity techniques. In this post I’ll share the challenges of being productive as I see them, 5 tips, and some other ways to improve productivity.

5 Productivity Tips for Online Marketers

The Challenge of Maintaining a Productive Lifestyle

Tip 1: Blocking Out Strategy Time

Tip 2: Clarify Priorities and Objectives

Tip 3: Mapping Out Your Week

I like to sit down Sunday and map out what my intentions are for the week. Writing them down helps clarify my priorities, and somehow sleeping on it helps my mind ‘gear up’ for what I intend to do. Some additional thoughts on this:

Tip 4: Using a Timer

This is a must. There are easy ways to do this. Here are some benefits.

Tip 5: Evaluating Your Progress and Barriers

Other Ways to Improve Productivity

Is this useful? What productivity tips do you have? Chime in below.
Image credit: mkorchia [Flickr CC]

Pinterest seems to be the new cute girl at the dance that no one knows about – but everyone wants to get to know.

So how has this photo sharing site that is incorporating affiliate linking as its revenue model, capturing such interest and traffic share?

With a 400% increase in visitor count from September through December of 2011 – this little upstart site has marketers salivating at how to make new and interesting iterations turn into a Pinterest money tree.

Marketing with Pinterest – 7 Unique Business Models

This is a guest post by fellow marketer Doug Crosse of 4 C Communications

First – for the uninitiated – Pinterest allows account holders to create a virtual bulletin board – posting pictures of what interests them, cats, surfboards, musical artists – and like your old collection of baseball or hockey cards – other users drop by and evaluate your taste – and also peruse looking for rare and interesting items. If they see something they like – that image can be transferred to that persons Pinterest account. But what does it all mean from a marketing perspective?

The general thinking is that Pinterest is not a one size fits all solution when it comes to marketing. Banks, Oil companies and the insurance industry won’t likely get much traction as fans pin up photos of their favourite ATM – or teller at a local branch. But thinking smaller – there are a lot of great fits that would help businesses at a local level to attract traffic and also generate online and bricks and mortar sales.

Is there a Pinterest page for millionaires made rich off of successful marketing using Pinterest? No – that one may be some time off – but think back to 2006 when someone asked “are you on Facebook yet?” Uh huh – it could be like that.

7 ways to use Pinterest for Marketing

You may or may not have any of the business examples listed above, but hopefully this got you thinking how this could apply to your business. People enjoy and respond to photos, as you integrate photos into your marketing, Pinterest should be atop the list of sites to engage with.

How are you using Pinterest in your marketing? Chime in below.
Image credit: Awesomo D90 

Influence is a tricky thing. If in striving to be influential you succeed, at what cost. If failure is your outcome what can you learn? In either case it’s worth asking “was it worth it?”. No problem with influence here, but influence is best when it is a result of other business and marketing activities. The reality is, many strive for influence to get the sale, what can often be overlooked is that the most profitable influence happens after the sale, when customers have experienced results of your product or service. 

Influence without the Hype

It’s true, there are many over-promised and over-hyped Internet marketing products, viable prospects are looking for a reason to dismiss offers in many markets. Yet those new to Internet marketing can be subject to influence gone wrong.

For those striving for influence, it may be that they don’t have it at all. If successful, is it influence, or something else? Important as influence may be in business and life, in my experience it begins to break down when authenticity is compromised.

In marketing, a good principle to consider is giving them (visitors and prospects) what they want on the front end, and what they need, on the back end. Show them you understand the pain in their world, and that you have a working solution, and you have influence.

Recently I attended a seminar where some ideas shared about influence, specifically when working with clients:

Influence Tips

1.) Establish Trust- People are influenced only by someone they trust.
2.) Educate- The more your clients know, the better.
3.) Explain Why- “It worked on my last three projects.” (demonstrating experience), or “It would cost less.” (demonstrating partnership). etc.
4.) Do it in private - If there is something you need to share that is likely to be mis-understood in a group setting, do it in private, it’s less confronting.
5.) Show them, then sell them - This is the “free sample” strategy. Could be a case study of what other clients have experienced.
6.) Balance the give and take - Recognize that sometimes you have to give a little to get something in return.
7.) Sooner is better than later - Clarity is important, but no matter what you do there can be unknown expectations. These get firmed up the longer they are left alone. Deliver services as soon as possible, so any unknown expectations come to the surface and adjustments can be made early in the process.

These tips seem to fall in line with common sense in most areas of life, especially business. Sometimes in our quests, however, they can get lost…so they can get lost.

Caution: A problem arises when we focus on being influential. The 7 items above can serve as influence indicators if you like. They are a partial list of attributes of those who influence.

How do you react to this? What are attributes of those who have been influential in your professional experiences? Love to hear from you in the comment boxes below.

Image credit: Just_Bryan

There has been a lot of activity recently with our friends at Google. Last week they announced the rollout of Google Plus Your World. This is essentially a more elegant version of personal search, with a snazzy video (shown a bit later). Now that the dust has settled, the question marketers are asking is how to leverage this? What does it mean for SEO?  It means a lot. We’ll cover that and share 7 things you can do now to make the most of Google’s recent changes.

7 Ways Marketers Can Leverage Google’s Personal Search

The farm. Google is pretty much betting that on their social initiative, Google+. Before sharing more on that, if you haven’t seen the video of this new functionality it’s here:

From my vantage point there are several forces in play here:

• Delivering more relevant search results.
• Unifying many of the Google properties and services with the Google bar and Google+.
• In doing so, training users that the cloud is where they should put their data (and that it’s safe with Google).

1-Have a Long-Term View

Similar to SEO projects, your ability to penetrate personal search results will take time. So many get burned out when they don’t get “instant” results online. The fact is, “instant results” only become (more) instant once your site is viewed favorably, trustworthy by Google.

Having a long-term view is a step in that direction. I like to think of Google as a business partner. Built value and trust into the relationship and over time they will reward you for it. [Tweet Me]

2-Get on Google Plus

Many of you reading this likely already have a Google Plus account. If you don’t, go set one up. Be sure to fill out your profile data, and created an engaging introduction. If you want to get a head-start, here are some Google Plus Tips to get you going.

3-Hook in your other social profiles on your profile page

While personal search doesn’t currently support other social profiles like Twitter, this is certainly something Google has done in the past, and wants to do going forward. When creating your profile, be sure to add links to your other social profiles. This not only tells readers of your profile where else you may be active, but it informs Google to look there as well.

4-Get on YouTube

I’ve been a fan of YouTube for some time. It is one of the top referral sources of converting traffic (screenshot here) I’ve seen. If you don’t have channel on YouTube, it’s important you get one.

Why? We know that YouTube videos show up in Google search results, but more than that is the social component. YouTube is a social network. You comment, rate, favorite, subscribe. Those are social actions, and social indicators.

It may or may not happen this year, but look for Google to integrate YouTube more tightly into the Google + social framework. As evidence of their integration of Google apps, Android apps, Blogger, and AdWords ads (to name a few).

Last summer Google started cleaning house on YouTube, shutting accounts down what they deem invalid, and of no value to users (more on this here and here). I believe this is part of the process before Google integrates Google+ with YouTube.

5-Establish a Brand Page

Beyond having a personal profile, it’s important that you have a brand page for your website, or business. Learn more about how to build your Google+ business page here.

This additional profile page is important in telling Google that you are serious, and that you intend to deliver value to the web.

6-Build Your Networks

Targeted. This is key. Build connections with people who are influential in your market. Personal profiles, and business profiles. If what Jon Henshaw says is true and Google has a new page rank coined as the Google Profile Authority (GPA), it’s wise to think in terms of building authority into your profiles. Numbers take a back seat here. Value, relevance, and authority will factor in Google rankings.

The Premium version of Google Plus Secrets “How to Build a Power Network” is designed to help users do just that, build a targeted network on Google Plus.

7-Have a Steady Diet of Online Social

This ties into the points of thinking long term and thinking of Google as a business partner. Sharing valuable content with those who have added you to their network is nice, sharing content that is engaged with via +1, shares, and comments is better. Doing the former consistently will lead to more of the latter. This presents a challenge, and requires consistency, but in the end, it is worth it.

In the end, if you depend on SEO traffic as a significant portion of your traffic, you need to be involved and engaged in the social web. These 7 tips are designed to help set you in the right direction. What do you think? Do you think viewing Google as a business partner is smart, foolish, or somewhere in between? Do you think that the hype about Google+ is overblown, or is there merit to it? Chime in below.
Image Credit: xddorox