The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Google has been working on some new features of the Blogger blogging platform which are really cool. To try them out, you just need a Blogger account. Then, rather than logging into blogger.com like you normally do, you log into draft.blogger.com. The new features include blog post scheduling, which lets you specify a particular date when a post should go live, and a blog list feature to display information about other blogs you recommend.

The coolest new feature we see is the ability to add Google Gadgets to your blog. This now GREATLY expands how dynamic your blog can be. For instance, I am considering starting a new financial blog. Lucky for me, there are already hundreds of Google Gadgets in the Finance category that can do things like display financial market information or stock tickers. So just like that...bam!...my new blog will be able to display information related to stocks that I talk about in the blog.

There are lots of different categories of gadgets that can be added to a blog. Some more examples include sports gadgets that can do things like feed sports news or photos to your blog, and games that you can add to your blog. Another category of gadgets with a ton of useful potential is Communication. This includes gadgets like Google Talk and Skype, which facilitate communication with your readers and friends. There are currently over 1,300 available gadgets in the Communications category, so you have lots of options to choose from.

Google seems to be working hard to make its blogging platform competitive with other platforms, especially by leveraging Google Gadgets, of which there are many, to add excitement and interactivity to Blogger-hosted blogs. We have recommended Blogger on many occasions and continue to do so. We certainly like the fact that it is owned by Google, so maybe, just maybe, you gain a slight advantage in getting your content indexed for inclusion in Google search results.

If you need some help using your blog for marketing purposes, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, Blogger, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, google, internet marketing

Google has a new feature in beta testing that is very cool. It places a button on your web site that lets visitors instantly connect to you on the phone, without showing your phone number. Calls are routed through an online interface and you have the option of answering it or letting your voice mail catch the call. You can even prevent specific numbers from calling you. The feature is called WebCall, and it's actually made available through a service called GrandCentral.

GrandCentral is a service that was recently acquired by Google. It promotes itself as "the new way to use your phones." It provides you with one phone number that rings all your phones and one voicemail box that can store all your messages. It also lets you record calls on the fly. This could be a very useful feature for recording audio testimonials for a web site.

Currently, only select people are being allowed to use the service. Select people, that is, and users of Blogger. We've stated before that we think there may be an advantage to using Google's own blogging platform, and this is another one: preferential treatment from Google with regard to new tools and gadgets.

We will be trying out the new call button. Why not? It may turn out that users who would not otherwise have contacted us will do so just because of the convenience. It is definitely worth trying. You never know what little extra convenience will cause the phones to start ringing.
If you don't blog, start. If you do blog, use Blogger.

If you could use some help with your company's content or blogging strategy, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, content, content creation, google, internet marketing

Matt Cutts is an engineer with Google who has become quite famous within the Internet marketing community for his blog posts that help online marketers better understand how Google works. A recent MediaPost article focusing on tips culled from various Cutts blog posts revealed the following strategy for optimizing a web page for a particular keyword:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the URL, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page.

Brilliant. The above sentence masterfully and simply summarizes how to optimize a web page, at least from a content perspective. Now, certainly there is more to on-page optimization. For example, the way a page is coded can have a significant impact on its ranking. But if you combine clean coding with the above copy writing strategy, your web pages should be very well optimized.

Possibly the hardest part of this strategy is getting the keyword in the URL. The ideal solution is to have a domain name that contains one or two critical keywords. This is often in conflict with a company's branding strategy, however. I mean, we (Work Media) might possibly generate more search engine rankings if we had the domain name "internet-marketing-search-engine-optimization.com", but it just doesn't flow as well as "workmedia.net". It would definitely be harder for people to remember.

Fortunately, blogging provides a way to generate web pages with keywords in the URL. We use Blogger, but most blogging platforms probably work in very similar ways, in that pages are automatically created based on the content of the blog posts. If you use important keywords early in your blog posts, and use keyword-rich tags to describe your posts, then your blogging platform should create archive pages that contain those keywords in the URL.

As for the other parts of the strategy, it's easy. Just figure out the best keywords for which to optimize your site (we've discussed keyword research in previous blog posts) and use those keywords often in your pages, spread out exactly as recommended above.

If you need some help implementing a search engine marketing strategy for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We're here to help!

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, content, content creation, google, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Here are five pieces of advice for your blog (you do blog don't you?).

1. Go deep. Here's what we mean - unless you're the kind of writer who is so fascinating that people will hang on your every word no matter what you say - and it's probably a safe bet that you're not - the best way for you to attract readers is to focus on a narrow subject. Pick a niche and stick to it. Become known as a top expert in a very narrow field.

2. Establish relationships with other bloggers in your field. Now, I will admit, we are terrible about doing this. We publish this blog but do little posting of comments to other blogs, which is what we should be doing. My only excuse is that we're so dang busy we do good just to get this blog posted. But YOU should do better. Spend some time reading and commenting on others' blogs and you will help drive traffic to your blog.

3. Use traffic-generating keywords in your blog. Set up an account at Nichebot.com, then use it to find keywords that generate a lot of traffic. You might also want to go to some of the social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and look in the tag clouds to see what tags people are using for blogs in your industry. Using these keywords in your blog will increase your blog's exposure and drive traffic to it.

4. Monetize your blog...subtly. Use in-text links to link to products or services for which you are an affiliate. You will probably have much more success with this style of link than a more obvious banner or AdSense-style link. Not only will you generate more clicks, but it will seem less like you are advertising than simply making recommendations. If your readers trust you, then they might just take your recommendations...and make you some money.

5. Blog a minimum of three times per week, and ping your blog out to various directories every time. If you don't have time to effectively author and promote your blog, then you need to find someone who can do it for you.

Work Media offers a blog authoring and management service. If you need some help with your blog, feel free to give us a call at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, internet marketing, keyword research, keywords

Jerry Work here. I have no idea what to write about today. I'm not feeling very inspired. I have not had very much time the last few days to work on the AdWords management application, so there's not much to talk about with that. I was up ALL night Monday night working on a proposal that could mean a very large piece of business for us. I got it sent out yesterday about 10:00 in the morning. So I was useless yesterday and got next to nothing done. But that's what is beautiful about running your own company. If you need to work 24 hours straight one day and take the next day off, well, there's nobody to tell you you can't do it (although clients can definitely dictate such things).

Soon Chris and I will be bringing our other brother, Corey, into the business. He is currently working on his Google certification and working hard to get up to speed. Then we'll be out of brothers, so whoever the fourth person is who comes into the company may have to come from outside the family.

Very soon, we are going to be slammed with more work than we can get done. Then we'll really need to start ramping up our personnel. That will be interesting. I've been on the interviewee side of the table many times. And I hate it. But the time is coming when I'll be on the interviewer side, which will definitely be a nice change. But will I be a hardass like some interviewers I have dealt with, or will I be cool and try to make the job applicant comfortable? I don't know. I'll have to find my style, although I will probably lean toward the laid back side.

I'm a huge fan of the eMyth books. One of the primary themes of those books is that a business needs to run like a franchise. Your business needs to run on systems, not people. You should run your business in such a way that anyone could be plugged into it and immediately take care of business. We're not there yet, but we're working on it. We have written several Internet marketing guides and are working on tools to automate much of what we do. It takes a ton of time doing that stuff - time that could be spent on generating business - but I think it's critical that BEFORE we get overrun with work, we are prepared for it and have a plan for managing the workload.

Well, there you go. I've managed to crank out a blog by talking about every day stuff. This actually relates to a blog I posted a long time ago where I said that not every blog you post has to be substantial in length or quality. We always try to teach some kind of lesson in our blog, but sometimes you just gotta mail it in. The main thing is just to get it out. Somehow.

If you need help with your Internet marketing, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blogging, blogging advice, business planning, internet marketing

Jerry Work here. Man, I really "mailed it in" in my last blog post. In other words, I basically just slapped some words down to get something out, but did not put much real effort into it. But sometimes you have to do that just to keep the thing going. The key to success (well, maybe not THE key, but a big key nonetheless) is consistency. It's actually a lot like working out. Once you get on a roll and get in the habit of doing it 3 or 4 times a week, it gets a lot easier. But if you stop for an extended period (as we recently did, going a month without posting a new blog) and then try to start back, it becomes much more difficult until you get back into a good groove.

Last year, when I first launched Work Media as a full-time business (rather than a sideline) it was much easier to blog regularly because I didn't have much else to do. I didn't really have any clients to speak of so I had plenty of time for marketing, such as publishing my blog. Funny how things change once you actually start getting some business.

Now there are two of us working full-time, with a major expansion about to happen that will greatly increase the number of people associated with Work Media, and it's all we can do to get our work done. So blogging has fallen way down the list of priorities. But it must be done!

Why? For one thing, it generates search engine rankings for our web site. Another reason is that it is a way for us to clarify our thoughts on subjects related to Internet marketing - a way for us to think out loud. It also helps establish our credibility by creating original writings about our industry. We have used a lot of content originally published in our blogs as material for articles and books.

So...you should do the same. Force yourself to post three blog posts every week. And on those days when you just can't come up with anything, phone it in. Just getting it done somehow is better than not doing it at all.

Work Media provides a blog publishing service. If you just don't have the time or energy to do it, we'll do it for you! Contact us today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, content creation, internet marketing, web site marketing

Work Media is finishing up our first month of providing blogging services for one of our clients. The experiment has gone well. We blog all the time for our own purposes (we're up to post number 115 - whoohoo!). But to blog for someone else in a completely different industry...well, it's a challenge. But we've pulled it off, and all honesty, it has gone very well.

The point is this - if we can author a regularly updated blog (three times per week) for someone else...in an industry we really don't know a whole lot about...YOU CAN DO IT FOR YOURSELF.

By the way, the posts we're doing are not random pieces of meaningless crap. We have spent a good bit of time doing online research for material to write about it. But there is a lot of material out there for us to learn from and borrow ideas from. The blog posts don't have to be brilliant. They just need to focus on some specific concept or piece of information related to your industry. And THEY NEED TO USE KEYWORDS RELATED TO YOUR INDUSTRY.

Now, if you are able to develop a loyal audience around your blog, then that is spectacular. It's also difficult to do. But if you just do the blog regularly (and the blog is indexed in the major search engines) you will generate search engine rankings for various odd phrases that happen to be in your blog. It makes sense then to use keywords for your industry so you generate rankings for searches related to your business.

This approach is particularly useful for generating geographically-related search rankings. For instance, if you are a law firm, it will be very difficult to generate high search engine rankings for terms like "personal injury attorney". But you just might be able to generate related searches that contain geographic modifiers - i.e., "Buffalo personal injury attorney".

If you just don't have time to publish your own blog, give us a call at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We'll do all the work for you.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

This is our 100th blog post! That is quite a milestone. When we first started publishing a blog (originally under the domain name "icanbefound.com"), we posted maybe an average of once every two weeks. We just couldn't get it going. It was only a few months ago that we decided to get serious about it and started posting an average of 4 times per week. And now we've reached blog number 100. Here are some things we have learned, both positive and negative:

1. Blogs generate search engine rankings. Once the search engine spiders (especially Google) became trained to the fact that our blog was a source of frequent new content, they started returning every day looking for content. As a result, we have generated all kinds of search engine rankings for keywords that just happen to be in our blog.

2. Communities don't just form around a blog. This is an area we have been weak. To build a community around your blog, you need to be an active member of the blogosphere. You need to read blog posts of others in your industry and post informative, thoughtful comments to their posts, along with a link back to your blog.

3. There are lots of ways to come up with content for a blog. One technique we have used a lot is to write large blocks of text, such as a chapter or section for a book, and then cut that text up into smaller blocks that you can use for blog posts. Another common technique is to comment on articles or other blog posts related to your industry. We have stayed away from personal-style blog posts where you talk about your feelings, interests, or things going on in your life - but if that serves your purposes, go for it.

4. Blogs are repurposable. Blog posts can become content for articles. Articles can become content for books, etc.

All in all, our blogging experience has been very positive, and we definitely encourage you to try it.

If you would like help creating a blog for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

I have a friend who has a vegetarian recipe web site. It's a blog in which he posts every now and then with a new recipe. He asked for some advice on generating traffic to it. My first piece of advice to him was to make more posts. For a blog to be an effective marketing vehicle, you must post often. I recommend a minimum of 3x per week. But at the very least, regardless of what business you are in, at least post once a week. That is the rock bottom minimum for your blog to be legitimate.

But while I was checking out his site, making suggestions for his title and whatnot, I decided to do a little keyword research just to see what kind of traffic there was related to vegetarian and vegan recipes. As was expected, there was a fair amount of traffic for broad terms like "vegetarian recipes". Competition for those broad phrases was also fairly stiff. But what I found interesting is that there were a lot of less trafficked terms that had much less competition.

Our primary keyword tool is Nichebot's Keyword Tracker. The main way it counts competition is the number of web pages with the keyword in the title. Search engines place much stock in web page titles. If you have a web page indexed with a specific keyword in the title that few other web pages have, that page will likely rank highly for that keyword, regardless of external factors such as the number of backlinks the site has.

So I found lots of keywords with just a few searches, but also just a few competitors. My suggestion to my friend was to use those "long-tail" keywords as the basis for future blog posts. As a hypothetical example, if our data showed that there were ten searches for the phrase "low fat vegetarian lasagna", with eight competitors listed, then a blog posted with the title "Low fat vegetarian lasagna" would have an excellent chance of generating a first page ranking.

A first page search engine ranking for a search phrase being used by a few people is way better than a page 23 ranking for a search phrase that lots of people are using. You have to think specifics. Think niches.

Think in terms of finding keywords you can dominate and serving content directed toward small pockets of people, rather than trying to compete for broad, general phrases against thousands of other web sites. Keyword research can help you find those small pockets of people.

Getting back to the vegetarian recipe example, if my friend were to use the long-tail keywords as a guide to what kinds of recipes to post, eventually he would have a large collection of blog posts (and corresponding web pages) that focused on keywords with little competition. And he would have some real nice search engine rankings to go along with it.

If you would like some help performing keyword research for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, search engine marketing, search marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

It took us a while to really get into blogging. Considering that our blog is not just personal musings on random topics but is instead meant to be an educational resource on the subject of Internet marketing, it took some discipline to get into the habit of thinking of a topic every day (or almost every day) and composing a halfway readable blog post. This whole thing has sort-of been our own personal experiment. You see, we're from an SEO/PPC background - doing things like tweaking code and copy to emphasize certain keywords, and doing what we could to get links pointing to our clients' sites. Or just outright paying for traffic. But a few months back we decided to shift to a more content-oriented strategy. So we set up out blog and re-worked our site to feed our own blog material into our main web pages. Now every time we update our blog our whole site gets updated. And then we started blogging, without doing anything else other than pinging some blog directories and Technorati.com. That's it.

Interesting things have begun to happen. We're getting top search engine rankings for, and traffic from, search phrases we never even thought of just because they happen to be in the title or in the copy of our blog posts. Most of these are Internet marketing-related, such as "target keyword density". We never would have thought to try and specifically optimize a page for that keyword, and it probably would not have been worth it. But we picked up a little traffic from the phrase because we discussed it in a blog post.

Here's one that is out of this world: www.gibsonguitars.com. We used this web address as an example in one of our blog posts, yet now we have TWO listings on page one of a Google search for this phrase. We wouldn't even know about it except that someone actually clicked through to our site, so we saw it in our analytics.

So start blogging. Seriously. Become an information hub for your industry by creating original new content almost every day. It will take some time and it may be months before you really see the effect, but eventually you will start getting free traffic from completely unlikely sources.

If you would like help implementing your own blogging strategy, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing

Man, it is hard coming up with something original to write about almost every single day. With that in mind, we thought today we would just point out a few blogs we have been checking out that we really like:

http://www.copyblogger.com/
I think "copyblogger" is a take on the word "copywriter", which is an interesting thought. Blogging is sort-of like the 21st century version of copywriting. The major difference is copywriting is done specifically for the purpose of influencing the reader to take an action, whereas blog writing can be done for any purpose, although in a business setting it is meant to influence the reader in a more roundabout way. It's a very soft sell. Anyway, the point of the site is to give copywriting tips for bloggers to more successfully use their blogs as marketing vehicles. It's a very good read.

http://blogmoneymakingmachine.blogspot.com/
The purpose of this site is to give advice on how to make money with your blog. While that is not really what we're trying to do (and may not be what you are trying to do), you can't make money without driving a fair amount of traffic to your blog. So that's what this blog really comes down to - how to get people to your blog. There is a lot of good advice here.

http://www.netpreneurnow.com/wordpress/
This blog has lots of short posts that discuss various resources you can get for free or for cheap that will give you an edge in your Internet marketing. It's definitely worth a look, and you may even discover some products you'd like to resell yourself.

If there is anything we can do to help you be more successful in your Internet marketing, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing

Link Bait is content on your web site so interesting and compelling that others want to link to it and discuss it. Examples of different kinds of link bait include free books, free tools or downloads, and contests. To give you a better idea of what link bait looks like, I thought I would highlight a couple of examples that I like:

http://tools.seobook.com This site is intended to market a book about search engine optimization. But what's great about the site is that it provides a ton of free information about SEO as well as providing free access to a very useful set of SEO tools. The design is very clean and easy to navigate, so this is a good site to study all around.

http://www.deanguitars.com This is a very dynamic, exciting site that caters to a very specific market - primarily young men who like to rock out. The site has lots of original content about music artists, new models of guitars, contests, sexy women - everything boys like.

http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop Another site with free SEO tools. This particular one, the Link Popularity Checker, lets you check the number of links for the major search engines pointing back to your site all at once.

Now think about your business. What tool or content could you give away for free that would be of great value to your prospective customers? If you can think of the idea, you can probably get the item created for cheap by posting the project on elance.com. Or if it's a book and you have some writing skill, you can easily do it yourself.

However, just creating the item or content is not enough. You have to tell the world about it. Make sure you ping the blog directories with your blog update about it. Contact web site owners or bloggers who might be interested in it. Do an online press release. These things will get the word out and hopefully cause an avalanche of exposure and new links pointing to your site.

For help creating link bait for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, link bait, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

Scarborough Research has released a new research report about the buying habits of online newspaper readers based on data from newspapers in five markets: Sacramento, Houston, Providence, Orlando, and Kansas City. The data proved that online newspaper readers tend to be avid online purchasers. This supports our belief that people who are going to do business online tend to do other activities online, such as reading their newspaper.

If they are already reading a newspaper online and buying online, chances are very good that they are also reading blogs and other content-oriented web sites. So if you engage in a targeted blogging campaign, combined with periodic targeted online press releases, you will have a very good chance of getting your message directly in front of the people who are seeking information about you.

The interesting thing is that online blogging + PR works irrespective of how well optimized your web site is, and the traffic is free (except for the cost of distributing your press releases).

However, even if your web site is not optimized, your blog should be, and your press releases can be (sorry). You still need to do your keyword research. You need to target a very specific set of keywords, and you won't really know what those keywords are if you don't look at the traffic numbers behind them. You also need to keep in mind SEO principles such as keyword density.

And while you're at it, you might as well optimize your web page because you are going to be sending traffic to your web site. Remember from an earlier blog that you want all of your links pointing to your home page to maximize your buildup of Google Page Rank. As you distribute press releases, you are going to have the opportunity to create lots of new keyword-rich links pointing back to your site.

The single most important thing, however, is to be consistent. Blog 3 - 4 times per week, if not more, and ping various blog directories every time. And do an online press release every 2 - 3 weeks.

You will absolutely drive a lot of targeted traffic to your site. And as the Scarborough report proves, this traffic will spend money.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, online pr, online press releases, online publicity, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Dan Kennedy has a piece of marketing advice that I really like, and that I try to adhere to every day (actually, Kennedy has many pearls of wisdom), that goes something like this:

Do something every day to put prospects in the pipeline.

In other words, do some kind of promotion every day to bring business. It could be:

• Make a blog post
• Send an email
• Write an article
• Send a newsletter

These are just a few examples. Unless it's a day where you are determined not to do any kind of work, don't rest your head at night until you have done SOMETHING to bring in business. Work Media really likes the approach of blogging every day. It creates lots of original content, helps our search engine rankings, and helps get our name out to the world. If we at least make a blog post, then we have made some kind of little effort in the name of marketing.

Which is why, as on many nights, this post is being made at just a little before 11:00 PM. It might be bed time...but we're still promoting.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, business, content, content creation, internet marketing

The whole point of your Internet marketing campaign is to drive people to your web site and then get them to do something: buy your product, fill out a form, call you, whatever. The more traffic you can drive to your site, the better your chances of achieving your web site goal. So everything you do should be for the purpose of driving traffic to your site.

If you have a blog that is separate from your web site, you are splitting your efforts. Your blog should be part of your web site. Your blog can be used to feed content throughout your site. This can be accomplished by specifically tagging your posts and then using your own RSS feed to feed content to different sections of your web site. Using the Work Media web site as an example, our page about Pay-Per-Click Marketing features snippets of blog posts that have been tagged "pay-per-click". As a result, every time we update our blog, we create new content that gets spread throughout our web site. And you know search engines love content that changes often.

The same effect could be achieved with a blog that was hosted with your blogging service (such as blogger.com) or at a separate domain, but you weaken your branding effort. Readers of your blog won't see your domain name in the browser window. They may not even see the connection between your blog and your web site. You should set your blog template to look as much like the rest of your web site as possible. Think "branding".

Contact Work Media for help implementing your blog marketing campaign at info@workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, branding, content, content creation, internet marketing

If you only approach blogging from the perspective that you are going to post blogs and hope people read them, you are missing half of the equation. There is a community of bloggers engaged in discussion about your industry. Be a part of their discussion. Search out blogs that deal with your industry and post intelligent, informative comments (but make sure you have something legitimate to say). You will receive two benefits from doing this:

1. You will expose yourself to others who may be interested in what you have to say and may even be potential customers. You will get your name "out there".
2. You can get some links from very popular blogs pointing to your web site, which will drive traffic to your web site or blog and possibly raise your search engine rankings.
   

Really, you just have to remember that you're not blogging just to sell stuff - you are trying to build a community of people who are interested in what you have to say, and you are participating in a larger community-wide discussion that involves your blog as well as the blogs of others.

For help implementing your own blog marketing campaign, contact Work Media at workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, search engine marketing, web marketing