So, if you're like everyone else (including me), you're probably sick of hearing about the sluggish economy (cue the groans). Lots of business owners and executives are frustrated by shrinking market share and bottom lines that are bottoming out. Unfortunately, too often, companies axe their marketing budgets to compensate for the short fall, which is a huge mistake.
Lack of cash flow is a real challenge that many companies today face. What do you do with the vicious cycle in which you 1) no longer have enough traffic coming through the door to 2) make enough money to advertise and 3) keep traffic coming through the door? It's all about the little things. I advise my clients to concentrate on the little efforts, the cheap and free activities, the referral campaigns and relationship building activities.
It's great to run TV spots and huge orchestrated pay per click campaigns- when you can afford to. They are proven, effective marketing methods. But these costly platforms are a diminishing opportunity for many small business owners today. My advice is to get your business in front as many people as possible using other avenues:
Referrals - begin by working your past and current clients. You may find this to be your best quality-lead generating activity because you gain instant credibility when you are referred by someone who has done business with you. Clean up your database (don't have one? tsk tsk, start one now!) and start contacting people. Send handwritten "thank yous" or "thinking of yous", and include a scratch off lotto ticket. Hold an open house, start a newsletter, offer a gift or discount in exchange for referrals, leave a little gift on their doorsteps with your business cards.... There are so many fun ways to do this! Use your creativity.
Newsletters / eNewsletters - this is a great way to keep in touch with your target audience and keep your business "top of mind". Better yet? This is a great vehicle to position yourself as an expert in your industry by sharing insider opinions and observations on your industry's trends and changes. If you're nervous about writing articles, get some help from a decent writer or hire a copywriter to create a final draft from your notes. Some great ways to compel clients and prospects to sign up for your newsletter or eNewsletter is to respect privacy, don't bombard them with messages, provide both industry information and lighter, more enjoyable reading and anecdotes, and don't forget to offer newsletter / eNewsletter coupons, offers and specials only available to subscribers.
Get Published - there are quite a few sites out there for publishing your own content like Associated Content and EzineArticles. This could include your own original articles, and reprints of articles written for your newsletter, and blog posts. Each site has their own policies and requirements for your pieces, so be sure to review prior to writing and submitting. This activity benefits you in a couple ways: 1) you gain the credibility of being a published author, again positioning you as an expert in your industry, 2) you will turn up in search engines which means opportunities for new prospects to find out about you and your business, 3) these sites give you the ability to set up a bio about yourself, so be sure to include a link to your website. All the links out there leading back to your website improve your search engine ranking.
Join an Organization- I recently joined ASBA, the Arizona Small Business Association and they are great! The membership is very inexpensive and they offer a wide array of educational workshops, informational seminars, Toastmasters and writing classes, and even health insurance! Take advantage of the many opportunities to network with other business owners for purposes of growing your business and get and give leadership and support. Check them out at ASBA.com. Along these lines, you may also want to check out SCORE, and non-profit volunteer opportunities as well.
There are lots more, these are just a few. Want more? Email me at Jennifer@mcmaz.com and I will send you a list, no charge.
Do you have inexpensive, easy and effective business development and marketing tips to share? Post away, I'd love to read them!
Jennifer Maggiore holds degrees in Business-Marketing and Journalism and has worked for major companies including M & I Bank, the YMCA and Nordstrom. Jennifer is a marketing and business development consultant, as well as owner of Maggiore Consulting & Marketing (http://www.mcmaz.com). Please visit http://www.mcmaz.com for more information. (Jenn Maggiore, Jenn Loyd, Jennifer Loyd)
Blog Promotion, Featured Posts 80 comments
You’re slaved over your post - crafting titles, opening lines, adding depth, designing the post to be eye catching and more - you select the perfect time for your post to go live and hit ‘publish’!
It’s over - another post ‘released’ into the wild - there’s nothing more you can do except sit back, see how people like it and start on your next post…. or is there?
Instead of seeing the moment of publishing a post as the end point in the posting cycle of a post - I see it as the birthing moment of a post. The work has only just begun and what you do in the minutes and hours after it goes live can exponentially increase the effectiveness of the post!
Original Image by Elephi Pelephi
A lot is written about promoting and marketing blogs (as a whole) but I’ve found looking at ‘promotion’ on a more micro level (at a post by post level) can be a highly effective strategy.
Having hit publish on your post - don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
Let me describe a few post promotion activities that I engage in.
note: I don’t use all of these techniques on every post but instead see them as a variety of tools that sit in my blog promotion toolbox and pull out different ones on different posts depending how suitable they are.
One of the most effective ways of getting the word out about a new post is to let other bloggers know about it. There isn’t much more powerful a way to find new readers than another blogger recommending something you’ve written to people who trust them.
Getting other bloggers to link to your posts is not always easy though - particularly in the early days of a blog or if you don’t have some sort of profile or pre-existing relationship with the bloggers that you’re pitching. However it isn’t impossible. Here are a few tips on how to pitch your posts to other blogs:
Read more tips like these on pitching other bloggers at 13 Tips on Asking other Bloggers for Links.
An increasingly large source of traffic for my own blogs over the last year has been Twitter and other social messaging sites (like Friendfeed and Plurk). I use a mixture of automated tools and personalized tools to drive this traffic. On twitter I use TwitterFeed to tweet items from my blog’s RSS feed.
I find that this works best if your blogs feed is not the only thing that you’re putting up on Twitter. Add your own personal tweets, link to other people’s content, ask readers questions etc - the more you mix it up the more effective your own automated tweets will be accepted and clicked upon by your followers.
Don’t be afraid to use social messaging to promote posts that have good discussion on them also. I find that 12-24 hours after my post goes live can be a good time to shoot out another tweet if there’s a particularly hot conversation going on (in fact this can drive even more traffic than the first TwitterFeed automated tweet as it alerts your followers to a conversation rather than just content).
This is something that I only do on selected posts - those that I think could do well on bookmarking sites like Digg or StumbleUpon.
I won’t go into great depth on this topic in this post as I recently wrote on how to get to the front page of Digg and have posted other tips at Using Social Media Sites to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic.
A great deal of blog promotion tips focus upon how to promote your blog on other people’s blogs and sites - but a great way to promote your blog post is to do it on your own blog.
One thing that I try to do with my best posts after I publish them is to think about where I could promote it on my own blog.
While it is at the top of my blog’s front page (the primary place to promote it) if you think hard you’re bound to find a few other posts in your archives that you could link to this new post. Find places where you’ve covered similar topics before and add your link as a ‘related reading’ link or even add a link to your new post within the content of an old post.
You might also want to add your new post to previously written ‘sneeze pages‘ or your sidebar if it’s a key post. Every link you add on your own blog to your new post potentially sends your current readers to your new post but also helps your blog with Search Engine Optimization (internal links count too).
If you have a newsletter list on your blog and you’ve written what you consider to be a key blog post - include a link to it in your next newsletter. Doing this will drive traffic but also signal to your readers that it’s a pillar post that you feel deserves their attention.
As with each of the points above - only do this with your best and most relevant posts. If you do it with every post reader will become desensitized to your recommended reading.
NOTE: tread carefully with this one and only do it occasionally and in a way that adds value.
If you’ve got a post that you think relates strongly to something that another blogger has written about or that is the topic of discussion on a forum - leave a link to your own post.
The key to pulling this off without being labled a spammer is to leave a genuinely useful comment on the blog or forum. The comment itself should add value, be right on topic and contribute to the conversation. Then if you include a link introduce it with a ‘I’ve written more about this at….’ type comment rather than just a spammy call to action.
The other option is to email the other blogger first and ask if they’d mind if you leave the link. You might even find that the blogger will add the link to the post itself (don’t assume this).
If you use a service like Feedburner they have a little widget that you can add to your email signature that highlights your latest blog posts. I’m not sure how effective that this is at driving traffic but the principle is a good one.
I know of a couple of bloggers who do the same thing by hand - they pick one or two of their latest key posts and add links to them as ‘featured posts’ in their email signatures. Many of us have links to our blog’s main URL in our email signatures but it strikes me that a link to a recent individual post could actually be more effective as it sends people to your very best content - food for thought.
If you’ve just written a post that you feel is important a great technique to give it a second round of attention is to write a second post extending the first in some way.
This technique is very powerful at adding a sense of momentum to your blog.
‘Treat every post as an introduction to your next’. Here’s an image that describes this process taken from How to Keep Momentum Going by Building on Previous Posts.
Also check out how I use Mind Mapping to extend posts and do followups like this.
This one won’t be for everyone and is definitely only for those special posts that you write that you particularly want to drive traffic to - but why not put a little budget aside to promote a post with some advertising.
Key posts that have a high ‘usefulness factor’ to potential readers are a great way to find new loyal readers to a blog. Rather than advertising the front page of your blog a high quality post can actually be the perfect landing page for an advertisement.
There are a variety of ways to advertise a blog but one of my favorites is on StumbleUpon where you can actually start an organic rush of traffic to a good blog post with a relatively small budget. Learn more on how to do it at Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign for your Blog.
The list could go on - here are a few more quick tips on how to promote individual blog posts:
I’ve covered 12 ways to promote an individual blog post above. What would you add?
How have you done it? What success have you had?
Keep in mind I’m not asking about how you promote your blog in a general sense - but how do you drive traffic to individual blog posts?
This post is part of a series on how to craft blog posts. It will be all the more powerful if taken in context of the full series which looks at 10 points in the posting process to pause and put extra effort. Start reading this series here.
Promote
Over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States will open their doors to students this September. With a long enjoyable summer coming to an end, students will want more then just the cafeteria food to welcome them back. Freshmen piling into dorms unsure of what will come and upperclassmen just getting back into the swing of things will both appreciate a well-thought-out promotional giveaway.
Back to school promotional products are the perfect way to welcome in students and encourage school sprit. When looking for that perfect promotional item there is no need to stress. There's a great product for everyone whether it's a basketball player or a computer wiz. When choosing that perfect giveaway it's important to stay focused on what you want to achieve. The best back to school promotional products will keep students organized, promote safe fun and support your school.
Promotional calendars are essential for every student. It's the perfect place to display scenic photos of campus and fun dorm life to remind students of why they chose their school. And it's the best way to keep school, work, and party time organized. When it comes to class time, back packs are necessary for lugging books back and forth. An eco-friendly drawstring back pack with your school's logo printed on it will come in handy for day to day college life.
Computers are also a staple in the lives of college students Course work is most accessible on the internet and assignments are most easily completed on a computer. A great tool for every computer user is the promotional USB flash drive. This tool makes file transfers quick and easy. They're great for running files to the library for last minute printing and for sharing tunes and last nights pictures with friends. Students and faculty alike will love USB flash drives in their traditional form or attached to a lanyard or a pen for a fun and handy edge.
There are also many promotional products that work well out of the classroom. Sports events call for school spirit so mascot imprinted apparel is a must. Giving out college logo tees is a great way to promote your school on and off the field.
No matter what item is chosen, promotional products are a great way to kick off the new school year. Students will feel welcomed with a hand giveaway and a great promotional item can help them out all throughout the school year.
Jenn Jimenez is a e-marketing specialist for Motivators, Inc., a Long Island based promotional products distributor. The company's website, Motivators.com boasts over 30,000 e-commerce enabled promotional products. Back to School Giveaways are a great way to promote school spirit and keep students organized.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jenn_Jimenez
