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Read this before you sign up for that next conference

Are you the conference-going type? Are you thinking of attending another marketing or search-related conference? Rebecca Kelley, a seasoned SEO person, and ex conference goer tells why she now prefers to stay home.

As she says,

I’ve been to tons of SEO and search conferences since I started doing Internet marketing in 2006, and at first they were really awesome and exciting. You can’t beat traveling on the company dime and staying up until 6 am making friends and knocking back drinks. It took a while for the luster to wear off, but when it does, you’ll discover that there are any number of things you’d rather do than climb aboard a plane, pull a lanyard over your head, and pretend that the same crap you’ve heard at the last 15 conferences is new and exciting.

Her reasons basically boil down to the fact that conferences are repetitive, appeal to newbies or groupies, have mediocre speakers, and have no significant business value. For all the time, energy and money spent attending a conference you get very little (if anything) in return.

Of course she admits that attending a conference can be “really awesome and exciting” the first couple of times. But after that it’s the same old thing over and over again.

I must admit I haven’t been thinking much about attending a bunch of conferences this year (I’m not the conference type – more the hermit type.) Now I have a few good reasons why I think they are a waste of time.

Read the very good article by Rebecca here: Why I’m Kind of Over Search Conferences

Applying old marketing principles to new social media

It won’t come as a surprise to online marketers who’ve been around for a while, but many of the same principles that worked in “old-fashioned” email marketing (Web 1.0?) apply pretty much directly to successful marketing using newer social media.

As the Web Marketing Ninja says in an article on ProBlogger.net,

You can take exactly the same approach you’ve been refining for your email list-building activity, and apply it to these new channels—the basic principles are exactly the same.

The four core attributes of successful email marketing are:

• Make your email capture findable.
• Provide incentives for people to sign up.
• Craft well-written, engaging messages.
• Give more than you ask from your list.

Translated into techniques for, say, promotion on Facebook these become

• Make your Facebook URL and Facebook pages findable.
• Provide incentives for people to sign up.
• Create content specifically targeted to your Facebook subscribers.
• Offer real value and quality content.

This means you should treat your Facebook channel as a way to connect in a meaningful way with a whole new group of people. These people are not necessarily going to subscribe to your list. You must engage them right within Facebook (and other social media.)

To read more see The Money’s Not In the List, it’s In the Connection

Guest Blogging Compared to Article Marketing

I’ve mentioned guest blogging in a few previous posts, but I admit I haven’t done much of it myself. For years I have focused on article marketing and it is only in the last year or so that the idea of guest blogging has really dawned on me as a really powerful marketing tool.

It is the interactivity of blogs that gives guest blogging so much potential to build followers and subscribers. This is completely different from article marketing (AM). AM is primarily for link building. And as social networking gradually replaces search engine marketing as the most important way to drive traffic to websites and blogs, many of the old techniques such as link building using article marketing are beginning to look flat and uni-dimensional. Getting links is great, but wouldn’t it be so much better if you also got readers, commenters, followers and subscribers?

This comparison between article marketing and guest blogging is what Ann Smarty looks at in the article “Guest Blogging Versus Article Marketing: What Really Works?” (see link below). As she says,

Do blogs have more people who are likely to follow and promote your brand in the future?

Yes, absolutely. Let’s face it: blogs and article directories do have different types of audience. People follow blogs while they only randomly check article directories (if they do that at all). Blog readers are much more likely to “stick” to you and help to grow your brand by spreading the word, linking, coming back regularly, etc.

This disctinction (between AM and guest blogging) is actually true of blogging itself, not just guest blogging. But the fact is, if you have a poorly trafficked blog you can reach so many more people by publishing in a major blog within your niche than by simply posting on your own blog. In other words, guest blogging is a way of reaching out and promoting your own blogs by building and enhancing your own online profile.

To read more about the comparison between guest blogging and article marketing see Ann Smarty’s article here:Guest Blogging Versus Article Marketing: What Really Works?

Rejected blog post turns into subscriber magnet

In a guest post on ProBlogger.net online blogger and marketer the Blog Tyrant tells how he turned an article rejected as a guest post into a successful list-building ebook. The rejected article became the basis for a free ebook that he gives away on his own site to build his subscriber list.

It turns out that this ebook was considerably more successful than any of the others he had tried – for a while getting between 100 and 200 subscribers a day.

Why did this happen? That’s the important part for bloggers, and the Blog Tyrant tells us why he thinks it worked so well. It was because of an unintended strategy that he had previously put into place without knowing it. The ebook that drew so many subscribers is called Capture 120% More Email Subscribers Overnight, and he realized that he had inadvertently pre-sold many readers through a series of guest blog posts he had done over the previous month or so. As he says,

I went back and looked at all the guest posts I’d written in the past few weeks which were still bringing in traffic. In every single one, I had talked about growing a mailing list, the importance of community, or something to do with that rejected-post-turned-ebook.

In essence, I had built a whole lot of hype around the ebook without even realizing that I was doing it. If I was a marketing firm I would have charged a lot of money for that strategy!

As a result he developed a strategy for replicating this success:

1. Research your ebook topic very thoroughly
2. Create guest posts that target and promote the topic of the ebook
3. Interact with people who comment on guest posts
4. Have a strong call to action in your blog where you give away the ebook

To read the complete post go to How a 30 Minute Reject Post Brings Me Hundreds of Subscribers a Week

Mashable poll says MS Winphone 7 will succeed

Given Microsoft’s fairly poor track record in the smartphone arena many tech experts and bloggers think the new Windows 7 phone has a fairly good chance of failing. Just too much quality cutting edge competition with the likes of iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

But a recent poll at Mashable.com suggests not everyone agrees. In fact of more than 7700 votes, more than 37% say Windows Phone 7 will succeed because it “is a really great product.” Another 1230 voters (16%) say it is “too soon to tell”, and 300 (4%) say the marketing campaign will “convince consumers this time around.”

Only about 37% say it will fail either because there is too much competition or the market “has moved on”.

This is somewhat surprising considering that Mashable’s readership is undoubtedly more tech-savvy than the market as a whole. After all, Microsoft appears to be targeting people who do not currently use smartphones.

These are people who are less tech-oriented, and do not have the same bias towards Apple and Google that many in the tech community have. That should mean that the perception of Windows Phone 7 will be even more favorable in the general marketplace than this poll suggests.

Web design trends for business in 2011

There’s no doubt that web design is evolving. One of the major influences on web design is mobile computing – smartphones and tablets (like the iPad and the soon-to-be-released Playbook from RIM). These have a direct influence because the focus has to be usability, readability, and functionality.

One important technology that does not work on most phones and tablets is Flash. So the advice of many web designers in tune with mobile is to move away from flash. This is quite a turnaround from a few years ago when flash was seen as the answer to web functionality and interactivity.

Another trend to watch is the use and influence of  Tumblr.  As Christina Warren of Mashable says,

The popular microblogging platform Tumblr is a great way to quickly and easily post updates, share content and garner direct visitor feedback. Tumblr has become a really popular platform and more and more small businesses are using it for their own company blogs or sites.

For other trends in web design see these resources:
5 Design Trends That Small Businesses Can Use in 2011
4 Winning Web Design Tips From Ryan Carson of Carsonified
Essential Web Design Advice From a Wireframing Master [INTERVIEW]

Succeeding in a competitive SEO marketplace

SEO (search engine optimization) is often confusing for newbies and people inexperienced in the techniques and jargon. It can be confusing even for pros who have years of experience doing professional SEO work for clients. That’s because the ground is constantly shifting. As Gabriella Sannino says in a recent article at SearchEngineJournal.com,

In yesteryears, SEO might have been nothing more than a few reciprocal links and some on page optimization. Today, it could be a long list: article marketing, blogs and other content development, URL structures, back links, you name it. While methods may change, grow or depreciate, the same two truths hold firm. They are:

1. An SEO campaign cannot be thrown together. It has to be carefully planned – as any campaign should be.
2. An SEO campaign has to be revisited intermittently and adjusted as necessary – as any campaign should be.

Read more: Increasing SEO Competition and Change: Survival Not Mandatory

Mashable’s top 3 tech stories – Mon Nov 22

Here are the top three tech and mobile stories on Mashable this morning:

Apple releases iOS 4.2 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch
- new features include multitasking, wireless printing, app folders, unified inbox plus other things

WikiLeaks says next release will be 7x the size of Iraq War Logs
- if you thought the Iraq war logs were a big leak, the next one will be seven times the size

eBay iPhone app has new features
- buy and sell on eBay, scan product barcodes

Resource: 
This Morning’s Top 3 Stories in Tech and Mobile

What can Hootsuite do for you?

Do you use Hootsuite? It is a social media dashboard that lets you manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts in one place. There are other services and programs out there that will do this – such as Tweetdeck – so why use Hootsuite?

In a recent post blogger Joe Hackman offers reasons why he has opted for the paid “Pro” version of Hootsuite:

…so why do I love Hootsuite?:

1. The platforms it supports (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm etc)
2. The custom dashboards (must have, seriously!)
3. Ability to access customers accounts and collaborate.
4. Scheduling.
5. RSS/Atom feed support. (This is a absolute must for some of my clients accounts)

These features are available with the free version. The Pro version gives you expanded capabilities such as inclusion of unlimited social network accounts, unlimited stats history (rather than just 30 days, and integration of Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

More information about Hootsuite:

Determining the business value of HootSuite Pro
Hootsuite Gets a Facelift