Online Marketing

Four Components of a Well-Written Article

2009-08-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

I hope I’m not the first to tell you that if you have a business, you need a blog, or at least a place to submit original articles try ezine articles . If I am the first, please take it to heart. People search the Web to read about issues that interest or concern them even if they are completely unfamiliar with whoever the author may be. You are reading my blog. Case in point.

But before you begin typing frantically about what you ate for lunch that gave you indigestion or how outraged you were when your spouse didn’t use a coaster on the authentic-wood side table, please heed my suggestions. It is imperative that you not only write these blogs or articles, but that you write to win over your audience. If there weren’t rules, work would simply be too much fun.

First, you must do your research. Whether you are writing about how perfect your service or product is for your audience or blogging a review about the movie you watched last night, you must know what you are talking about. If you’re bluffing, your readers will catch on and, most likely, will not return to read any more of your posts.

But take this lightly. Your research-paper writing days are probably long gone with the memories of college. Take five minutes. Maybe ten. Check out what other experts are writing about the subject, and gather multiple points of view. To establish yourself as an expert, you must be able to not only defend your theories and thoughts, but make a case for why your theories and thoughts are the best.

Remember: it’s okay to use other experts’ words, but you MUST directly attribute them in your writing.

Second, include hard facts. Your article or blog does not have to read as if it could make the front page of the Wall Street Journal. In fact, I advise against that (I’ll mention that in a second). But you do need to include a foundation for whatever you are presenting to your reader. If you’re writing about bubblegum flavors, mention bubblegum was invented in 1928 – and it was pink! Quirky, fun and something I’m sure everyone has wondered at least once in their life.

In short, no one really wants to read your babbles and coos. Maybe your mother, maybe not. Give your readers something they can take with them.

Third, write with your own voice. Let your audience hear you when they read your words. Throw in a “gnarly” or a bit of sarcasm – however your thoughts flow through your mind. (Advice: keep it clean). Again, if people want to read flat, no-attitude compositions, they’ll grab a newspaper. This is your chance to show your audience that not only do you know what you’re talking about, but you can keep their attention while you’re talking about it too. If you can master this, they’ll keep coming back.

Finally, in all things you do – especially writing articles and blogs – give your audience a call to action. They’ve read what you had to say, loved it and want more. But if they don’t know where to go from here, they’ll find someone else who guides them. Always include your Web site and e-mail addresses, Facebook and Twitter links and any other destinations that will keep them connecting with you over and over. This is the key: keep your audience depending on you. You depend on them.

Taz Solution Full service search engine ranking company that offers everything from a web site optimization service to developing and executing an online strategy.

Blogging and Micro-blogging

2009-08-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, we’ve all heard of blogs, but do you truly understand how to utilize a blog, the frequency of posting or what plug-ins you should be using for maximum marketing impact?

You don’t need to have one blog, we encourage you to have three! A company blog, a personal blog for the key executives and a general market commentary blog.

The key to blogging is consistent posting with relevant information. 97% of blogs have 1 or less postings each week. That leaves a great opportunity for you to shine in the other 3%!

Once you’ve mastered blogging, we encourage you to jump on the micro-blogging bandwagon. Micro-blogging is posting shorter posts, typically under 200 characters. Twitter has mastered this concept and is among our favorite sites to be leveraging in 2009. Twitter allows you to post short “tweets” of 140 characters or less. You can update your audience on your personal life — for example Michael is currently enjoying some time his twins or on the business side of things — Michael is currently working on his new book, check out the link here. The great thing about twitter is that you can link twitter with various other social networking web sites. So one post or “tweet” to twitter, and you’ve just updated ten other social accounts instantly.

Not logged into your computer to make the post? Send a text message and your status will be updated automatically!

Twitter is one trend that you cannot ignore. It’s still relatively new enough to start gathering a following and taking that market share away from your competition! Get on twitter and become the expert in your field, you’ll have thousands of followers in no time!

Key Resources:

· Twitter.com

· Wordpress.org

· Blogpress.com

· Typepad.com

Four Components of a Well-Written Article In Link Building

2009-08-03T07:56:00.000-07:00

I hope I’m not the first to tell you that if you have a business, you need a blog, or at least a place to submit original articles in Enzine Article site. If I am the first, please take it to heart. People search the Web to read about issues that interest or concern them even if they are completely unfamiliar with whoever the author may be. You are reading my blog. Case in point.

But before you begin typing frantically about what you ate for lunch that gave you indigestion or how outraged you were when your spouse didn’t use a coaster on the authentic-wood side table, please heed my suggestions. It is imperative that you not only write these blogs or articles, but that you write to win over your audience. If there weren’t rules, work would simply be too much fun.

First, you must do your research. Whether you are writing about how perfect your service or product is for your audience or blogging review about the movie you watched last night, you must know what you are talking about. If you’re bluffing, your readers will catch on and, most likely, will not return to read any more of your posts.

But take this lightly. Your research-paper writing days are probably long gone with the memories of college. Take five or maybe ten minutes. Check out what other experts are writing about the subject, and gather multiple points of view. To establish yourself as an expert, you must be able to not only defend your theories and thoughts, but make a case for why your theories and thoughts are the best.

Remember: it’s okay to use other experts’ words, but you MUST directly attribute them in your writing.

Second, include hard facts. Your article or blog does not have to read as if it could make the front page of the Wall Street Journal. In fact, I advise against that (I’ll mention that in a second). But you do need to include a foundation for whatever you are presenting to your reader. If you’re writing about bubblegum flavors, mention bubblegum was invented in 1928 – and it was pink! Quirky, fun and something I’m sure everyone has wondered at least once in their life.

In short, no one really wants to read your babbles and coos. Maybe your mother, maybe not. Give your readers something they can take with them.

Third, write with your own voice. Let your audience hear you when they read your words. Throw in a “gnarly” or a bit of sarcasm – however your thoughts flow through your mind. (Advice: keep it clean). Again, if people want to read flat, no-attitude compositions, they’ll grab a newspaper. This is your chance to show your audience that not only do you know what you’re talking about, but you can keep their attention while you’re talking about it too. If you can master this, they’ll keep coming back.

Finally, in all things you do – especially writing articles and blogs – give your audience a call to action. They’ve read what you had to say, loved it and want more. But if they don’t know where to go from here, they’ll find someone else who guides them. Always include your Web site and e-mail addresses, Facebook and Twitter links and any other destinations that will keep them connecting with you over and over. This is the key: keep your audience depending on you. You depend on them.

What Marketing Campaigns are Making you the Most Money?

2009-07-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Can you tell me exactly how much money you’re making from your various marketing campaigns?

How many leads did you get from the tradeshow you just attended, even further how many became sales?
How much money do you make from spending $5000/month on pay per click marketing?
How many people visited your web site from the ad you placed in Time magazine? Was it worth the $100,000 you spent?

You need to be able to track every penny you spend regardless of the size of your company. We’ve got to identify what’s working and what’s not working. Save some money and cut out whats not working and beef up the campaigns that are bringing in the most dollars for your company. That follows the golden rules of why companies are in business: to make a profit. To do so, you need to reduce expenses and or increase sales.

You should be thinking this sounds great, but how do I actually track my campaigns?

First, you need to identify all the various campaigns you have taking place: online marketing, magazine ads, TV ads etc. Each and every campaign needs to be tracked in a different way.

The next step is to get google analytics installed on your web site - contact us if you need help in doing so - Tazsol Marketing . Once installed, you will gain a HUGE amount of data. The basics of google analytics - it will tell you how many people are coming to your web site, where they came from and what they are doing on your web site. In another post we will go into more advanced Google Analytics options, for now, simply get it on your web site!

The last step to tracking your campaigns to dollars is to customize and configure a customer relationship management tool. We prefer and only use Sale Force . It’s the most robust tool we have ever used. If you are dealing with any phone orders or customer service issues you need to use a system like salesforce.com. This tool will allow you to setup campaigns and then track them thru the entire sales process. It also allows you to manage quality issues, technical issues and so on. It will do just about anything you need: you need an English Muffin it will literally hand you an English Muffin (that’s an extreme dramatization, but you get the point) If this sounds familiar we borrowed it from Geico

Let’s show you an example of how you can use a CRM tool to track your campaigns. You sell sprinkler systems to schools and just got back from a tradeshow. You’ve got 25 leads. Your task is to follow up with those leads. Our task - to determine how many of these leads became sales.

Using a tool like Salesforce.com, you would enter in the leads in the system noting the lead source - the specific trade show. Once the lead became qualified (some will already be qualified) , you would change it into an opportunity. An opportunity is qualified lead that has some sales potential.

If you end of quoting that person/company that information would get entered in Salesforce.com along with any other activity along the way: any phone calls that were made, emails exchanged etc. The last step is closing out the opportunity - did you win it or did you lose it? If you lost it we want to know why, if you won it great!

Re-read this section to see how we closed the loop. You went from attending the trade show to coming back with 25 leads to quoting some of those and to winning some orders and not winning some.

If your orders/profits are greater than the cost of the show, you made a good decision. If your orders does not cover the cost maybe you think about another show!

Keep reading our posts for further information on how to track leads to dollars - allowing you to make more informed and practical decisions!

Have a profitable Day!

Taz Solutions, Inc.

1310 Moll Street

North Tonawanda, NY 14120

Phone: 1-800-659-3020

Email: info@tazsol.com

Online strategy site

Website optimization service

What The Heck Is Web 2.0 For Online Strategy

2009-07-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

Almost daily we get the question "What is all this Web 2.0 stuff about?" Normally the follow up question is: should we be concerned with it?
Everyone and their third cousins has a definition on what Web 2.0 means or at least what they think it means.

At Taz Solutions we like to keep things simple, so when we use the term "Web 2.0 we simply mean "an ever changing internet landscape." When the internet started out we refer to it as Web 1.0 things like: personal web sites, limited collaboration, Britannaca Online, content management companies and the like. Web 2.0 is quite different, it's the age of Wikipedia, mass online collaboration, blogs, flickr, youtube.com, social tagging, facebook, myspace and so on with stop in sight.

As times moves on we're only going to get more and more advanced and sharing and publishing information will continue to get easier.
What does this mean for YOU?

If your business is not using these Web 2.0 methods to collaborate, drive traffic, and publish information you are going to be left on the waste side in the coming years. Your competitors are already using these new marketing/data sharing methods. Your goal is to stay ahead of the curve and follow the latest trends so you can wave while passing them by!

The biggest Web 2.0 trend is the social marketing aspect. Consumers are looking to Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Scribed, Flickr, Bebo, Spoke and so on for information and products.

Remember the old phrase "People by from people they know and trust." When a client finds you on a social network site they already know some information about you and have made a connection with you. Essentially these people are pre-sold on what you have to offer!

Get up to speed on social marketing and all the other Web 2.0 aspects you should be using ASAP. We guarantee you this is not a fad nor a trend you should ignore.

We are pro's at Social Marketing feel free to call us or email us for some free advice: Social Marketing Guru's .

SEO is Quality Content is Key For SEO Success

2009-05-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

Many Web site components are needed in order to experience success from your search engine optimizatio n efforts. On-page optimization, linking strategies, and other techniques are used to help improve your search engine rankings. One thing you cannot avoid is adding quality content to your site on a regular basis. Content is what makes your site relevant to readers. Good content will prompt readers to link to your site and promote your business for you without you having to pay a cent. Knowing how to develop quality content will help you to succeed at search engine optimization.

Keywords

Keywords are an important part of your content, but they are not the most important part. You may have seen some pages that are filled with keywords and make absolutely no sense. While you may get ranked highly by using very keyword-dense content, readers will be turned off and will not spend very much time at your site. This goes against everything search engine optimization is for. You should balance the use of keywords with the development of content that is useful or informative for your readers. This will keep them on your site longer and improve your chances of making a sale or getting a new e-zine subscriber.

Originality

No one wants to visit your site or blog and see the same article they saw at three other sites. Original content is important for your readers, and it's also important for search engine optimization success. When you update your content, the spiders have more opportunities to crawl your site and index your pages. If your content is exactly the same as the content of other sites, your rankings will not improve. What you need to do is add original, or unique, content to your site so that readers are able to learn about a new subject and the search engine spiders are able to find new content to index.

If you're not sure how to develop content, or you just don't have the time to write new content on a regular basis (which is what you need to do for search engine success), let us know. We'll put one of our copywriters to work developing fresh and useful content for your site or blog.

Web Linking: Good Links vs. Bad Links

Many of the articles and blogs available on search engine optimization emphasize linking as a way to improve your search engine rankings and increase traffic. However, most of these sites fail to distinguish between good links and bad links. Not all links are created equal, and choosing bad linking strategies can hurt your business more than it can help you.

Good Links

Good links are the kind of links you want to have coming in to your site. Good links are posted on relevant sites and aren't surrounded by questionable content that can harm your reputation. When we say that you want relevant sites to link to your sites we mean that you shouldn't let just anyone link to your site. Your linking partners should be related to your business somehow. If your business is selling computers, your linking partners may be computer repair firms, printer and computer accessories dealers, and computer trainers. You don't want flower shops and clothing stores linking to your computer site if you want to reap all of the benefits of SEO. Questionable content can be any content that sheds your business in a negative light. You don't want your link to appear near any content that is adult-oriented (unless you run an adult-oriented business) or near content that is considered very controversial.

Bad Links

Bad links are those that appear on sites that are not relevant to your business or that are surrounded by adult-oriented or questionable content. Links appearing in link farms can also hurt your search engine rankings and your reputation. Because you have no control over what other links appear on link farm sites, your link could end up next to a link to a site you would not want your visitors to associate your business with. Additionally, the search engines consider link farms to be a form of spam.

Taz Solutions, Inc
1310 Moll Street
North Tonawanda, NY 14120
Phone: 1-800-659-3020
Email: info@tazsol.com
Online strategy site