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My Experience

By no means am I a power user. Actually, Ann might not even give me the title of Regular User. However, I have utilized the service both ways with great results. I needed a few posts to help me keep my blog going over a vacation and I easily got a couple quality posts. I also found a couple blog owners looking for content and was able to get some articles of my own out there.

The site is dead simple and it’s easy to make arrangements through private messages. You can even ask for some social media promotional love in the Help Needed thread (a big help if you don’t have thousands of friends and followers on every social media site). Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Be The Lead Goose

Growing up as a kid in Idaho, I would often see Canadian geese fly overhead during their seasonal migrations. Similar to the picture above, the geese fly in a V formation. As many of us know the lead goose puts in the most effort and makes flying easier for all the other geese in the V.

Julien compared the V to your network and you should be the lead goose. That means you’ve got to make things easier for your network. But how?

• Invite, Invite, Invite – You may have overcome the temptation to sit on the couch, but others in your network may need a little help. Invitations can help get people off the couch, because you have 0% chance of making connections at home, but at least some chance if you go out. This works for your business life and your social life.
• Carpool – If an invite isn’t enough, carpool. Every little bit of motivation helps.
• Make Introductions – If you’re talking with one acquaintance and another comes to say hi, introduce your other friend. Better still, include a compliment in the intro.
• Follow-up – This includes not only connecting on LinkedIn or following someone on Twitter, but making sure you follow up on any promises you made. Did you say you’d introduce them to a friend? Do it. Did you say you wanted to have lunch sometime? Schedule it.

What are you doing to be the lead goose?

Effective Ways To Build Targeted Traffic

• Engage well in healthy discussions. It can be as simple an e-mail sent to someone to something more complex like chatting with friends online. Any action that requires interaction is a good way to create loyal readers.
• Participate and join in forums that are relevant to the content you are promoting. Learn from  them and also share a thing or two to others. Show what you really have and people will soon follow you through your website.
• Post comments on blogs which are relevant to your site.
• Track back articles and content from other blogs.
• Find an affordable contextual advertising service for long tail keywords which you can use to screen out unwanted clients.
• Sign up for social networking groups relevant to your field of business. Interact with people within those communities accordingly.
• Exchange or share guest posts with other blog owners.
• Article marketing can also be a good suggestion. E-zine articles should one of the websites on your list for this strategy.
• Add new SEO-optimized content frequently on your website using high end or high potential keywords that have very little or if possible, no competition.
• Outsource certain projects that are targeted on a specific group. For example, link directories usually attract web owners.

The “Building” Part

• Go with your readers, as this defines building your targeted traffic.
• Suggest any syndication service that interested readers can subscribe to, regardless of whether it is in the form of e-mail or direct feed, just anything that can keep your readers updated. Twitter can be a great tool for this.
• Naturally, quality content will play a major role that makes it an important center of effort for web owners.
• Always give an aura that you are always available on the internet. Offer services that would convince them that you are always active. You can do this even better and easier with the help of a Twitter or Digg account.
• Think about what actually keeps the readers hooked and what could interest them the most. Giving incentives or events can be a great idea to liven up your community.
• Give information, and communicate just as you normally would in any group. One of the biggest priorities that you have to take is to engage and sustain readers, to give them a good reason to explore your site better and to continue coming back for more.

Proper maintenance and treatment of your readers would be the best way to obtain targeted traffic and to ensure long lasting effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Try to use all tips moderately and do not focus only on one or 2 tips extensively. I often compare this with constructing a house, if you would build your house on one column and this column would break then your house will collapse and you will have to start over, however if you construct your house on many columns, it would be strong and withstanding a failure of one or even more columns, while giving you the time to fix them again.

About the author: Andreas Horch is a professional search engine marketing consultant with over 10 years experience in the internet marketing industry and CEO of Linknami.com, which offers online marketing and advertising tools for webmasters, seo’s and small businesses.

Are Business Cards Dying?

My first reaction was “Of course I need business cards.” That’s how you do business. But then I started to think of how I use the business cards I receive.

• I put them in my pocket or notebook.
• I add them on LinkedIn/Twitter when I get back and then the card goes in a drawers somewhere.
• I pull one out once in a while to get contact info.
• I forget who the person was 2 months later and throw their card away.

This guy would argue that your business card is crap:

So Should I Still Have Business Cards?

I’m really a bit torn here, so I’d appreciate your comments. If you support business cards, give me links to a good printer who can turn the job over in a week. If you don’t use business cards I’m interested in hearing what alternatives you might suggest (like Pokens).

PS If you decide business cards are obsolete, you could make them into modified ninja throwing stars like the kid in this video. (Warning: Awesomeness may overload your brain!)

How PPC Is Like Farming

Over the next couple weeks I will be writing a series of posts comparing PPC account creation, management and optimization to farming. You’ll learn how to prepare the soil (research), plant (account creation), grow (testing) and harvest (landing pages) your PPC crops. So go buy your Wranglers and straw hats now, because we’re gonna be getting our hands dirty!

Copy That Converts

1. Write in the 2nd person – This means using words like You and Your instead of I and We. By default this will help you write with you user in mind. How a feature helps them. What benefits your product/service confers upon them, etc.
2. Write for clarity and persuasion – No matter how witty or clever you think your copy is, it will convert better if it’s clear and persuasive. If you find yourself admiring your writing prowess, you need to rewrite it. And also, if you need even more simple guidelines remember that Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments trumpets the phrase “Clarity trumps persuasion” (and here’s the data to support his claim).
3. Don’t ask for what you don’t need – How many fields do your forms have? Do you need every single one (emphasis on need, not want)? Could you get that information during a followup call instead?

Online Tutorials

Today’s post from the Conversion Room talks about several online tutorials from the AdWords Online Classroom. A couple titles that might be of interest to you include “Maximise your advertising ROI with Conversion Optimiser” and “Get the most from your website with Website Optimiser”. Many of the courses are available on-demand for free and they also have a lineup of live sessions throughout the month. If you need a little extra push to get your conversion optimization efforts started, take one of these courses.

Mobile Is a Horse of a Different Color

Typical PPC ads reach users in two ways. They show up on search engine results pages (and I’m lumping in search partners here) or as AdSense ads on content pages of other sites. The user sees these ads in a standard browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari) while seated in front of a computer. They’re on the internet for a reason and you can decipher at least some intent with keywords and ad copy. This is the PPC world in a nutshell and it’s awesome for people who know what they’re doing. But mobile doesn’t fit the mold.

Mobile users see PPC ads (and landing pages) in a much different way. First, the screen is much smaller. For some phones this means that the #1 ad on Google's SERPs is 20-25% of the space above the fold. For other phones this means that many users will never even see your ad even though you got an "impression." Second, smartphones have browsers that do all kinds of weird things. Some can handle Flash, some can't. Some have Javascript enabled, some don't. Some are full HTML browsers, some aren't. So not only could your PPC ads being shown in vastly different ways, but imagine what is happening to your landing pages. That video or Flash content may be worthless. Your images might be taking too long to download. As you can see, mobile needs to be treated differently.

Is It Worth the Effort?

The AdWords blog has a case study from Razorfish that shows a 7.5% lower cost/conversion on mobile advertising and a conversion rate boost of 9.3% for their mobile-specific ad copy. So in this situation, yes, the effort definitely paid off. If you’re still not convinced, here are the most critical areas to consider:

• Intent – Mobile users are probably looking at your site for different reasons than a desktop user. They may be looking for a phone number, address or hours. They likely won’t be going through a lot of page views (3G is fast, but not that fast) so think of what tasks that eliminates and what is left.
• User Experience – I will reiterate, smartphones are slower than computers so consider a mobile-friendly subdomain (ie http://m.linkedin.com) to serve a better user experience.
• Situation – The definition is in the name: MOBILE. These users are seeing and clicking your ads in a much different physical situation. Speak to that in your messaging.

What have been your experiences with mobile?

The Goal

I said I would post 3 times/week (which I have been doing) but I also said I would get one guest post each month (which I haven’t been doing). So this is a call for guest posts and here are some guidelines:

• Topic: Anything PPC or CRO related
• Length: 250+ words, pictures always help
• Links: Link to anything legit, I’m not picky
• Byline: Yes. Gotta give yourself some love

Last year, my most read post was a guest post, so I’m taking that as a sign that you like to see some variety. So, first things first, I need a post for March and it’s first come first serve. After that we’ll work something out (I wouldn’t be opposed to doing a couple guest post each month either.) If you’re interested send an email to robert “at” righteousmarketing “dot” com or you can reach me on Twitter here: @robert_brady.