Content Magician, Freelance web content writers

Archive for the ‘Malaysia internet marketing’ Category

It’s been a long but enjoyable day. But before I pull the plug on this tremendously relaxing Saturday, I would to share something with you and it’s got to do with how people are going about this whole online marketing thing wrong.

It’s my personal opinion that there’s one way to turn people off online. The only surefire way to lose the fight in this very tiny battlefield is to stick to a formula that you know works. The old method used to work well, I know, but with the economy down in the gutter, everyone’s using the same formula. PLUS, the same formula is costing us too much money.

So, the traditional way of marketing is to knock down every single door you see and shove your products and services into their faces and refuse to leave until they succumb to your harassment. You could advertise in the newspaper but it’s getting expensive. You could hire a new marketing guy but it takes time to train someone new and you can’t exactly afford to hire anyone new at this point in time. You could revamp your brand but every single idea you’re going to have involves spending money.

The logical thing to do is to jump into the internet marketing bandwagon, right?

That’s the right thing to do, I am not saying you’re wrong, but don’t do it blindly and don’t just hand THE FIRST PERSON you know to do the job. You can’t because whatever they do online (and they can do this without waiting for a memo to be passed during a Board of Directors’ meeting) will affect your image! Hire the wrong person and you’re screwed.

In online social media, or the Web 2.0 as some people prefer to call it, it’s imperative that you sell yourself correctly. But you’re not selling your products and services, you’re selling a brand. You’re promoting loyalty. You’re encouraging people to get to know you better. You want to create a personality….a sort of stickiness on the internet that helps people remember you and come back for more.

With more and more people with the same social media marketing modus operandi, you can only create awareness by selling YOURSELF as a brand. You connect with people. You make yourself heard. You make friends and help people understand what kind of person YOU ARE before you get them to understand what you do for a living.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a business or a freelancer! You’ve got to make that CONNECTION with others in order to get online social media marketing to work for you. Shall I say it again for good measure? OK. CONNECTION!

For a business, you can hire someone (or use someone who is currently on your payroll) to create an online persona for your business. And this personality is to connect with people, share his or her experience (on a personal or professional level) with people he or she knows.

It’s plain and simple.

The old method of PUSHING no longer works. Writing notes or blog posts about how WONDERFUL YOU ARE and how amazing your products and services are, shoving your potential clients’ faces into the brochures, flyers, profiles….they don’t work anymore. Blow your own trumpet and watch flocks of potential customers run off in the opposite direction!

It’s now time for some PULLING instead. And friends….the only way to pull is to attract. The only way to attract is to get personal.

I am ashamed to see that I’ve not blogged in this dearly beloved blog of mine for so long. Please forgive me, my readers. Anyway, I am back. One thing I am not very keen on admitting and submitting to is the somber outlook that most people have about the economy and how people are actually shrinking their marketing budgets till they’re next to nothing. Impossible! If we’re to remain in the game, we have to be aware of one fact….and that is if you don’t take full advantage of the fact that many giant companies are shrinking down THEIR budgets, we’re going down with them.

They can bolster it with many things….but we, smaller and much less significant entities, cannot.

What we can do while they’re down is to take it upon ourselves to aggressively grab their customers from them while they shrink their budgets. Trust me, when I say aggressively, I don’t mean it in the financial sense. What I mean is to explore other options open to us and methods that we’ve ignored in the past.

Anyway, this is just one of my thoughts about the sinking economy. Nobody can do anything about it and yet, we have to continue to feed the kids and send them to school. We’ve got to do something and that does not include sitting there on our laurels sinking into depression or stressing over things that are inevitable.

Things that we can do:-

• Online marketing
• Web content development
• Start a mailing list
• If you don’t have a website yet, get one up
• If you don’t have a blog, start one NOW
• Email all your friends (don’t be shy about this) about your endeavor and unabashedly ask for their support
• Pay special attention to your social networking skills - hone it and use it well
• Read and learn about ways to bring attention to your own business
• Draw up a solid marketing, online or otherwise, plan.

If you’re really good at what you do, usually, it results in being paid more for the same kind of stuff that other newbies have to offer simply because when you’re an experienced freelance web content writer or search engine marketer or online promoter, people have the assurance of knowing that you know what you’re doing. It’s as simple as that. But because many of my clients are new to internet marketing, they tend to compare.

Anyway, that’s not what I am gripping about today.

The thing with some website owners is that whenever they think of search engine marketing, they think that search engine optimization is the be-all and end-all. Sadly, I am here to tell you that THAT cannot be further from the truth.

Listen, if you expect loads of traffic and an incredible jump in sales just because you’ve had your website search engine optimized, you’re in for a big disappointed. There’s more to internet market than just SEO (search engine optimization).

SEO is merely when you get someone to make your website really search engine friendly….and also place some important keywords here and there. That, in itself, makes you an acquaintance with the spiders that crawl your pages. What you’re really, REALLY looking for if sales is your target, is for the search engines to fall in love with you.

As with a woman prettying herself up to impress a potential life partner, you need to promote your website or blog out there in cyberspace CONSISTENTLY. It’s a lot of work but if you do it right, I promise you that you will reap the rewards in a couple of months’ time.

So, in conclusion, I would like to help you understand that search engine optimization is not the end-all and be-all. It’s not a magic wand, and it’s only the start of a very intriguing, manipulative, challenging but profitable online presence.

Where I live, people…business people tend to be more than a little uncomfortable about trying out internet marketing ideas and search engine optimization tactics. They would rather sit it out and WAIT FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN to their websites. A relative, with whom I spoke extensively with about search engine optimization and internet marketing, said that it would be OK with him if he just waited it out and see if he could get lucky!

There is no such thing as getting lucky with internet marketing. It’s either you put effort into it or you DON’T. Look, the Internet is a wonderful stage for business website owners. It’s the single one available vehicle to us that allows us a stage as big as television….bigger. And everyone’s fighting for footspace in cyberspace.

My question would be this…how does LUCK come into the picture when there are tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of people fighting for the first three pages of a popular search engine results page? If it’s so easy, why don’t everyone just hold back on the search engine optimization and internet marketing startegies, save the money and just wait for Lady Luck to smile at them.

Who knows? Maybe she takes turns?

If one wants a piece of the pie in cyberspace, it’s imperative for one to out effort in promoting one’s website or blog online. It just does not appear on your lap for no resaon whatsoever.

And frankly speaking, it’s not even that hard to do on your own. All it takes is a willing heart and an open mind….or is it the other way around.

Till this very day, I am still surprised with the number of people and companies in my own country’s, Malaysia, ignorance and indifference to the importance of search engine promotion. Malaysia search engine promotion industry is still at an infancy stage whereby the SEO industry and online marketing sector in other countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan has grown tremendously over the years…well, after Facebook came about, I guess everyone started realizing just important it is to be ‘present’.

Not only should a Malaysia company focused on search engine promotion be ‘present’ ONE TIME but all the time, as many times as possible! I’ve said many times before and I guess I’ll waste those precious few taps to say it a few times again…it’s all about online activities and communication with the readers. Malaysian companies who are looking for search engine marketing and promotion methods should look beyond the ‘paid advertising’ method because there’s more to online marketing than placement of banners and text links.

I assure you, Malaysian companies, that the banner advertisement is the easier way to doing things but in terms of search engine marketing or a Malaysian company, that’s a short term solution and if you do your math, the ROI isn’t impressive at all.

Focus, instead of bringing in good content through good search engine marketing methods for your Malaysian website selling Malaysian products and services in the International arena. Rope the readers in and do everything you can, within your power, to keep the Malaysian or readers from other countries from clicking away and never coming back.

To me and to a lot of other search engine marketing experts, this is the essence of search engine optimization and building an online presence – regardless of whether you’re a Malaysian company serving only Malaysian companies or individuals or an International brand.

The world is your stage where internet is concerned and when you use the right internet marketing methods and search engine marketing strategy for your Malaysian-based website, you can reach beyond what you dream of.

Right now, the focus of your attention could be merely Malaysian consumers…but think in the long run. What happens when you are looking for foreign investors? What happens when you need help in terms of technology? How are people going to view your Malaysian company with very little internet marketing and search engine optimization done to your website if they see that you’re not innovative and quick enough to catch on the digital wave?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author is a Malaysian-based freelance writer, graphic designer and occasional singer who’s been in the internet marketing, content development and search engine optimization field for more than a decade. For more info, visit her website at http://www.marshamaung.com or her blog at http://www.marshamaung.blogspot.com.