Content Magician, Freelance web content writers

Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

by Marsha Maung

I have been receiving SMS messages from this beauty center that I go to this month and it’s amazing that they keep doing that. You know why? It must be costing them a bomb to just send out these messages through the conventional text messaging system. They could be saving themselves tons of money every month if only they knew more about things like Twitter and Facebook.

Sigh….

Online social networking is the new word of mouth marketing, albeit, in the electronic format. It is like you giving your friends a call and telling them about the amazing beauty treatment that you just got or you could be telling them about this amazing promotion going on…all free of charge, except for the amount that you are paying for your internet services.

But we all have internet services nowadays anyway, so the extra cost is basically ZERO.

The cost comes in the form of the number of seconds it will take you to type out your message on the online social networking website and then clicking the submit button. That is it.

In fact, online social networking is so incredibly powerful and cheap that more and more companies are beginning to hop onto it for the sake of their businesses. The downside to that is that not many of the businesses know how to optimize the full potential of such online social networking sites. What they are doing is keep telling their friends to visit them, telling them about a promotion…using the old method of pushing products and services instead of pulling.

A balanced method of using the push and the pull marketing on online social networking sites is the only way to do it. People are smart and they don’t like it when others talk about nothing but just ‘buy me, buy me, buy me, I am good, I am good, I am cheap, I am cheap’.

Boring.

Online SOCIAL networking is a social site. You need to socialize and make friends. That way, you win fans, you win friends, you win business. There’s nothing, like they always say, like doing business with someone you like and know.

written by Chris Malta

If you’re starting or running your own home-based online business and you’re confused and frustrated, and don’t know which way to turn for real answers, you’re not alone. There’s so much information coming at you from so many directions! Product choices, store platforms, social marketing, merchant accounts, search engine optimization… where does it all end? How do you make sense of it all?

Well, the first thing you need to know is that it’s normal. If you’re not confused, you’re not an Entrepreneur. Confusion is the natural state of a small business owner. The second thing you need to know is how to get through it.

I’ve started and run many businesses in my 35 year Entrepreneurial career. Yes, it gets much easier along the way, but there is always an element of confusion when you venture into a new field. You can’t help it; that’s just the way it is. Nobody’s born knowing this stuff.

The most important thing you can do for yourself and your business is to take things one step at a time. An online business is made up of four basic things:

• Get Legal
• Find a Product to Sell
• Pick a Storefront
• Market the Business

Of course, within and in between those simple sounding steps are hundreds of little things that need to be done and learned. Meeting and working with people who are already running online businesses is critical to your success. I know a lot of people who have done really well online and made lots of money. None of them did it in a hurry, and all of them sought help from trusted, experienced people in the business community.

Working by yourself in a vacuum is the hardest way to do this, and the quickest way to get confused, frustrated, and end up wasting your time and effort. In most cases, your friends won’t understand what you’re trying to do, and your family will worry about what you’re trying to do.

The first time I left a high-paying job behind to strike out on my own in a business that I started, I didn’t hear the end of it until my business started making more money than my job had! Trying to do this alone is also the best way to get caught up in the thousands of online scams out there. Professional scammers are predators, and they just love to find their prey separated from the safety of the flock!

So slow down, take things one step at a time, concentrate on one part of your business at a time, and seek out someone who can help you.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

About the Author - Chris Malta has been an Entrepreneur for 35 years. He’s the Founder and CEO of WorldwideBrands.com, an EBiz Radio Talk Show Host, a published EBiz Author, Contributing Editor to eBay Radio, and the creator of dozens of instructional EBiz videos and free EBooks. His company is recognized as the best in it’s field by businesses including eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Intuit, UPS and many others. Chris Malta personally Trains and Mentors new EBiz owners through his Personal EBiz Workshops at http://www.ChrisMalta.com/Workshops. Chris is a well-known crusader against internet business scams. Save yourself a tremendous amount of money in your online business - get Chris Malta’s FREE EBiz Scam Report now at http://www.ChrisMalta.com.

Author: Rigel Powell

Congratulations! in just a few minutes you will become a college graduate. The four years of hard work and discipline finally paid off because today is your day. I know when you look back at the many late nights studying or the topics that you had to research for term papers that you absolutely abhorred was worth it. Don’t forget there were sacrifices as well, I don’t think you can count on both hands the many parties that you passed up or the summers you spent at an internship while your friends sat in the sun by the beach.

Today you make your parents proud because today you have proved to the world that you are entitled to success. You hear your name called out and you walk up on stage to receive your diploma it’s one of the proudest days in your life. Every second you can feel the S on your chest get bigger and the red cape get larger. You are officially a college graduate ready for the world and fully prepared to defy gravity. Like the R & B singer R Kelly once sang you believe you can fly.

Fast forward one year later. You walk through the revolving doors of the faceless building quickly being swept up by the lunch hour traffic. Once again disappointed at your job search. You can’t seem to get on your feet and every time you turn on the TV or open a magazine you see and hear about the job market getting smaller and smaller. What happened your life wasn’t supposed to be this way. What happened was the same thing that is happening to countless other new college graduates. They are leaving school to find out they have been learning old out dated principles that don’t apply to the current job market but even worse the job market doesn’t even exist. The only thing they do have is a mountain of debt created from consumer expense and college loans. Naturally you feel bitter frustrated and even a little depressed. You graduated from college your entitled to more right… WRONG

Sorry to say that the only thing your entitled to is a opportunity to try something different that will present a different outcome. For college students especially those who are seeking careers in business their is unlimited potential for success as a internet marketer. first and foremost their is no recession on the internet, the internet is a constantly growing and changing algorithm that corporations in the fortune 500 listing to mom & pop brick and mortar business need someone to successfully promote, brand, and attract high quality customers to their business. The only possible way a internet marketing professional will be considered non valuable is unless the internet disappears.

The major appeal to becoming a internet marketing professional is the ability to make a substantial residual income while your learning. Unlike major colleges and universities in America you don’t have to graduate before you have the chance to sell yourself. The college of internet marketing teaches you to define your self value so the business opportunity comes to you and you can state the terms. The curriculum is all online so you can work around whatever personal schedule that you currently have and the cost to begin this business education is far less then it would be to get your degree in any major college or university. Apply the same discipline and study habits to this education like you woud for your undergrad or graduate level courses and success is inevitable

More of the Author’s articles can be found here: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Rigel_Powell

AUTHOR: Marsha Maung

If not for the internet, many of us would never have made it as writers. Some of us would probably be stuck in a boring job in a kitchen or driving trucks from state to state or teaching in a kindergarten. Whilst there is nothing wrong with those professions, it’s wrong when deep inside, there’s a dire need to write and share what we know or a story with everyone else through the written word. Writing is like an itch. It needs to be scratched.

With the internet, writers get the chance to test-drive their skills, practice and get advice, promote ourselves, express our feelings and also start a business. Many writers can’t imagine what life would be like without the internet.

Of course, there are many other ways to promote oneself without the internet but let’s face it, it would be far less effective. And of course, photographers get quite a bit of help from the internet as with many other types of businesses.

But because the internet is a world where the written word is the leading reason why people can find you online, suffice to say that writers have the upper hand. If you could write a decent piece of work, you can use it to promote yourself via various methods. Almost everything is reliant on the written word.

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Why do I Twitter?

Well, there are a number of reasons, but let’s take a look at a hard core business marketing reason.

Paraphrasing an oft-used line from the political realm, “It’s all about the blog, stupid.”

Let me digress … I provide media replication and related multimedia services. I have been to several networking events of late and in discussions with others have asked, “So, have you been delving into Social Media any?” The answer has usually been something like, “Yeah, I have a Facebook and LinkedIn. I do keep up with Facebook,and less so with LinkedIn, etc.”

I then ask, “Are you Twittering?”  The answer has been pretty much along the lines of, “Whew, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with that!”

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Some people are just really sticky about posting links to other sites just because it’s a requirement when you use their articles, videos or images on their blogs or websites. They’re thinking, ‘Why should I? Who’s to know? Why should I share the traffic with this guy….he can do his own marketing, can’t he? I’ve worked hard for my readers!’

Be nice.

That’s one of the unwritten rules about internet marketing and one of the nicest thing a publisher can do is to provide a link back – you earn extra brownie points for pointing to a link without it being a requirement but a favor. There are many benefits!

One, readers love you for it if they find it useful or entertaining. In the online world, it’s about developing a love for someone who leads you to stuff….maybe bigger things and more entertaining materials. They’ll love you for it, so play nice and you’ll win the hearts over.

Two, Google loves it, most major search engines loves it. Enough said?

Three, it works both ways. If the owner of the said blog/website finds out that you’ve linked to him/her without even asking for credit or a linkback, you get a new friend!

The trouble with some website/blog owners is that they’re so insecure about their own standing in cyberworld that they’re afraid of helping others with a simple link (in a new window if you so wish).

That’s sooooo not it.

The friendlier, nicer, and kinder you are, the more you stand out. Being nasty helps some bloggers but if you’re a business owner, I’m not sure if you want to head down in that direction.

There’s something really fantastic about what Dunkin Donuts is doing with their online social media marketing effort through Facebook; it totally threw me off. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the first time I’ve heard of such campaigns and I sometimes try to get my clients to go along with it but….well, skeptics abound. Somehow, there’s something really endearing about the way they’re going about it.

How are they going about it?

First, let me get this out of the way before I explode. For the life of me, I cannot understand why Starbucks is not catching on?! Don’t they know enough about online social networking to be in it already – or at least, do it the right way?! Starbucks, surprisingly, is still stuck in the middle of nowhere….literally….trying to combine their offline and online social media marketing thing together and achieving….not much. They SHOULD be frustrated.

They should fire the advertising company doing it for them. Sending cups of Starbucks coffee from friend to friend can only do so much knowing that most of us Facebook users are already quite tired of adding applications to our already mashed-up Facebook profile page.

Have you seen the Coolatta sweepstakes ran by the Big Donut recently on Facebook? They don’t have as many fans as the Twilight series (yet) but they’re quickly catching up with eight-hundred-thousand fans of their Facebook page and counting. Accordingly (I’ve not tried this for myself), you can upload a photo of yourself on the Donut’s Facebook wall with a Coolatta and then add a caption to it. After that, it will be a BINGO moment for you – wait for them to go around on a random-selection process and BINGO, it’s either you get it or you don’t.

The kind of prizes that they’re offering are stuff like TVs, iPhones, wardrobe, flights….etc. Really cool stuff, I have to admit…for a chance to win that all you have to do is to get one of those Coolattas and snap a picture of yourself with it? Man, you can even borrow it from the guy behind the counter and have your instant Coolatta picture taken, does it matter? Not really. Sale is the last on their minds at the moment although this side benefit would have been good. There’s bound to be a spike in sales.

Anyway, the main purpose is to get people to spread the message and encourage action….and it’s the perfect way to enhance branding compared to Starbucks’ meek effort in getting people to pass Starbucks coffee around. Most of the time, for your information, I ignore these cups of coffees (sorry friends, but I prefer REAL coffee) and sadly, it does nothing to people like me.

It’s not targeting the target market properly and not encouraging any form of active participation at all….and the keyword would be ACTIVE PARTICIPATION….and AHEM, it does not include spamming or asking fans of the Facebook page to circulate a message to as many of their friends as possible. That’s viral and in case you don’t already know, viral marketing is a big turn off, does NOT work on Facebook…or any other online media marketing sites available to us at the moment.

Good on Dunkin’ Donuts. Now I am off to see if I can photoshop a picture of me with that Coolatta thing and win myself an awesome holiday.

At this point in time, when you’ve just started your website, you’re probably thinking about a SEO content development strategy that could help you secure a good position in your favorite search engine (it’s probably Google but I am not going to say just ONE single search engine because of locality). In order to bring in the traffic from search engines, you’ll need to have a strong SEO content development strategy that will work in multiple search engines, not just one and the person or company that hire to do this for you would have to be well-versed with multiple engines.

For example, in your plans, you’ll need to get someone to develop content thaT ATTRACTS not only search engines but is appealing to the readers as well. There is really no point in developing web content that brings in the search engines but not readers because REMEMBER, you’re trying to make money. The SEO content development strategy would be completely different if you were trying to make some money off of advertisements placed on a shell web template. If that is the case, it’s perfectly fine for you to stick to a singular strategy built for a single search engine. If you’re not, then here’s what you’ve got to do.

Your web content has got to be news-worthy. This is a no-brainer but even the best people in the SEO content development strategy industry tend to forget this in their quest to attract the search engines. Very few ever commits to or purchase from a website or business the first time they chances upon it. The trust comes in a couple of visits later. So, keep this in mind when working on your SEO content development strategy….you want it to stick a little the first time round.

Either hire multiple content writers or writers who can diversify. The purpose? It’s simple! Different types of content appeals to different people and considering the fact that you’re aiming at different sectors worked on by different personalities, it’s best if you diversify your SEO content development strategy a little to give yourself a little buffer. You don’t keep selling beef to a vegetarian, do you? So, this works the same way.

Reveal your own personality and get close to your readers. In your SEO content development strategy, make sure you get someone to get close to your readers. A decade back, a website is a faceless entity whereby information is freely dispensed. In today’s cyberspce, if you don’t have a personality or a face, it’s hard to win the war. Your competitors have blogs, facebook accounts, twitter, delicious and what-have-you-nots and you’ve got to be the same way if you want to connect with your readers. There’s really no way to get your customers to buy from you unless you’re amazon.com or a popular name in your industry. So, work your SEO content development strategy around that thought.

SEO content development strategy for regular publication of articles. You don’t do it one time and then hope for a huge amount of traffic. You do it consistently and persistently over time, regularly updating and pulling in the people and buying their trust. This is how an SEO content development strategy works now. Gone are the days whereby you write a basic web page content and let it do its work because they don’t work beyond being piled on by the multitude of page content in cyberspace. If you know how to hire an SEO content development strategy team, so do they and in order to get ahead of them, you’ve got to be persistent and patient.

There are no two ways about this, sadly.

The economy is in a slump and people are turning to the internet to make some money. As a professional freelance writer, I sincerely feel that while it’s great that the internet is providing many people a rope to cling on during this troubling time, businesses trying to find professional freelance writers for their web content or online marketing methods should be cautious about it.

The internet has become a breeding ground for all sorts of aspiring professional freelance writer. I am not being jealous because I am, frankly, thankful that there is a whole pool of new talents out there for me to tap into. I love that part of the bargain. But based on my experience as a professional freelance writer, there are problems that we need to face. There are so many of them out there right now, how do we know who is a good professional freelance writer and who isn’t?

The line has been blurred once again. The only time I remember this happening was when blogs become popular. Everyone became a journalist! As fun as it was to read into the lives of all those people who write blogs, it’s hard to find one that really rocks.

I hire one or two professional freelance writers to help me out with my work sometimes when I am bogged down with work or when there’s an emergency. I value the availability of my professional freelance writer…but I’ve had my fair share of bad experiences in the past. Hiring a professional freelance writer who does not write well and writes for SEO purposes ONLY gives me a blinding headache! Thankfully, over the years, I’ve found some professional freelance writer who are, indeed, very professional about their work, puts their heart into every single word that they write.

SEO writing is fabulous, I know, but it’s hard to find someone who can write SEO stuff without compromising on the quality of the articles. The professional freelance writer has to be experienced in balancing out the SEO part of the writing process and also the connectivity of the article. There’s really no point in writing SEO articles without trying to make SOME sense.

So, before you hire a professional freelance writer, check into the writer’s background and ask for some samples. Don’t make the mistake of hiring the first SEO writer that promises you a low price because you may regret it, at the end of the day.

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.