Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Business Success
Copywriting For Internet Business Promotion
Aug 26th
Good Copywriting Skills are Essential to Your Internet Marketing Efforts
Internet business marketing is one of the most popular promotional tool for businesses online. Almost every business, be it a small company or a large organisation, has a website through which it attempts to send across its message to millions of online prospective customers.
The message content is your business’ way of spread good PR, authority in your Niche and value to customers, it is therefore very crucial to write good promotional content for your Internet business website to be successful. The art of writing content to promote a business is known as ‘Copywriting’. This post looks at some techniques to help you to write good copy to incorporated in your website.
The art of copywriting
Writing good Internet marketing copy for your website requires a lot of effort. It is a learning process which develops over time, unless you were born gifted (you lucky few). Writing if done frequently can be greatly increase your fluency and style especially if you write on lots of diversified topics.
Before you write any piece of promotional content, always think from the perspective of your intended audience. The content must be simple enough for your audience to understand and also must be a value addition to their knowledge.
When you think about your written content from a technical perspective, the content should follow keyword enrichment techniques of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You should not pitch to your customers; instead you should try to make the tone informational. Your customers must feel empowered by the information you provide to them.
Presenting the content
To ensure that your content’s message is conveyed to your audience in the manner you intended, you have to present the content in an effective manner. You can use word formatting to generate different effects. When you want to emphasize certain text in your copy, you can use the formatting codes for italics, bolding and underlining to give the text a lift effect.
You can also use colour formatting for differentiating some portion of the content from the rest. The most important part is this process is the tone of the content do not try to push your product or services on your customers but to ensure the message gets across you can have a simple link from a keyword to that product or service. This way the text is natural, non promotional and informative whilst still linking to your product or service through a keyword naturally embedded in your copy, which is great for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as well.
Linguistic rules
Good Copywriting Communicates A Message Clearly
Basic grammar rules should be followed however do not be afraid to break a few rules as long as your copy still makes sense. Things to get right – well you should always spell properly. Make sure you always get the facts for your article/ post correct, it will not hurt you to educate yourself a little bit on any subject whether you think you know it or not. This addition education will shine through when you write your articles/posts it will also help reinforce personal knowledge as well as help you convey more authority throughout the article.
Please do not try ‘wing it’ you may end up looking like a complete amateur and prospective customers will not come back to your Internet business website once they see this, so do not make this mistake – people do notice.
Finding a good copywriter
Following the tips give above can dramatically improve your writing style however, it is a gradual process and it takes time, which many busy business owners can simply not afford. So, outsourcing your copywriting tasks is sometimes a good option.
Copywriters can be found through various Internet marketing service providers or from freelancers. A good copywriter is an expert in writing content for many different business areas. You should choose the serviceprovider or individual who is the most suitable to your business needs.
It is important to interact with your copywriter so that they can write as per your objectives. Most importantly when hiring one ensure you give them a test first, ask them to do a sample piece of writing for you on one of your topics with a given keyword.
When the sample comes back if it does not speak to you i.e. reach you by getting a reaction, then this copywriter will not reach your clients either so move on a test another. Other good things about an unpaid sample but written specifically for you are:
a, Eliminates the charltons who have a piece there to give you which they did not write.
b, Allows you to check the written content, process, thinking, mindset, spelling and grammar.
c, Gives you the opportunity to see if they are prompt and enthusiastic about your work – this is very valuable as if they do not want to do your work it will be lacklustre, you will have to keeping chasing them for copy and worst of all it will always be late.
All of your Internet business marketing efforts rest on the strength of your sales copy. Your words can help bring you success or dismal failure so it is imperative to use the correct words in the right manner in your content.
It is your decision entirely whether to write your own Internet business copy or outsource your copywriting to an Internet marketing service or to a freelancer. In either case the tips in this post hold true which ever you decide.
4 Tips To Help You Outsource Successfully
Aug 21st
As your business grows, the complexity of the tasks involved increases quickly. There are some core business activities, which require greater focus compared to some other non-core business activities that although important are better dealt with by a professional in that area so you can free up time to concentrate on customers.
Reasons to Outsource, Image Courtesy Of EJM.com
As a business, if you are running your own website, there are a few of these activities which can be outsourced. Outsourcing gives you to the freedom to concentrate on being in business not working on all aspects of your business however there are issues that you need to consider before outsourcing your work. This post looks at some of the key points you need to ensure you take care of if your outsourcing exercise is to be successful.
Specify your keywords before outsourcing content
The content of your internet business website must be aligned with your business ethos and at the same time should incorporate Search Engine Optimisation. If you are outsourcing your content development, then you should be very explicit in explaining your business objective and be very exact in specifying the keywords related to your business.
You can make use of various online tools like ‘Google keyword tools’ to find the popular keywords related to your business category. A third party may not be as knowledgeable about your business as you are, so it is better that you give them the keywords which needs to be use in the content. It might take you some time to research this thoroughly but the end results achieved are very effective if the content then becomes more honed to your business.
Get involved in your business website design
The creative part of the website is its overall design. Although a third party web designer may be an expert in this work, he does not know your business so you must specify your requirements fully and in detail on paper for them to follow, this gets ride of the ‘he said, she said’ syndrome.
You should always decide on how you website looks and if it is in keeping with your customers’ viewpoint, if the web designer whats to give you something that your clients will not like i..e a design or flashy swirly etc. Regardless of what the web designer thinks go with your gut you know your customers he does not if they will not like it do not let them put it in.
Any images, videos or links you put on the website must be put in such a way that they represent your true business value. If you have sales and marketing people get them involved in this task as well.
Communication is the key
All the points above are important but will not work unless you ensure you use ‘effective communication’ between the outsourcer and yourself. There must be two-way communication on a regular basis so that both parties understand fully each other’s requirements and expectations.
Communication is also necessary for continuous improvement as per the changing market scenario. All reports must be sought from the outsourcer and should be comprehensive so that you have a paper trail (e-mail trail) to establish quantity and quality of work and also if you decide to go to another outsourcer you can ensure they are not repeating previously covered work.
Any improvements sought for on the outsourced job must be communicated to themin writing as well as verbally for clarity purposes and again for accountability. This should be given in a timely manner so the outsourcer can have plenty of time to incorporate them.
Gauge the Return On Investment beforehand
The objective of outsourcing is to save your time and keep cost whilst doing so to a minimum while extracting the maximum benefit for your company. If you recruit full time staff for tasks then it would not be an economical option for a small business. So, it is imperative for you to decide how much cost you are saving by outsourcing and what are your returns.
You should bear in mind that the profits expected from outsourcing must be higher than the expenses associated with it. At the same time, the quality of your content must not be sacrificed on cost. The return on investment should be measured in terms of the number of visitors to your site, sales and lead generation which should be monitored closely. If you are not able to do this then a good internet business coach or internet consultant will be able to help you to judge the performance of your outsourced work.
Outsourcing SEO tasks helps you to achieve economic efficiency, brings in expertise of the experienced third party players and above all saves your precious time. All you need to do is a bit of homework and some amount of timely monitoring.
Backlinks: Some mistakes to avoid!
Aug 1st
Backlinks are very useful for a website as they increase its page rankings on search engines. A whole lot of host websites, known as affiliate websites, post such links for another website and hence increasing its visibility.
If you want to get backlinks for your website, then you have to catch attention of these affiliate websites. However, it is easier said than done. This article presents the difficulties faced while getting the backlinks. These difficulties are classified for two way backlinks, where two websites mutually post each other’s links; and one way backlinks, where one website makes efforts on its own.
‘Some bad practices’
Assuming that your website has got good content and it can add value to its visitors. Still you face issues when you request affiliates for backlinks. One of the most prevalent issue is of ‘link trading’ where, one website refuses to post links of the other website until that latter does not post its link. This practice is always bad as it brings your site and the quality of your content into question; bribery is never a way to get a link, it sends out a bad name for your site as it is considered unfair, if your content is useful then it will automatically get back-links.
Another bad practise when trying to get links is forming a ‘link farm’. A link farm is a group of websites hyperlinked to each other in a group. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine by repeatedly posting useless links, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine. The repercussions of being a part of link-farm may be serious iand could ultimately get your site banned from search engines altogether.
‘Insufficient efforts’
Getting backlinks is a time consuming process which requires patience and lots of efforts. Posting quality content and regularly updating it calls for a lot of research. A lot of effort is needed to find a website and convincing it to post your backlink. You can outsource these jobs to third parties like freelancers but that will cost you and also, you need to monitor the work regularly.. If you are going to outsource it is best to use a reputable internet marketing service company and preferably with knowledge of your geographical locale as this will make all the difference to the types of backlinks that are made and there true relevence to your business.
‘Quality issues’
The content of the website which requires backlinks should have high quality standards which we refer to as ‘Link Quality’. These standards are similar to the standards set by the search engines for listing their websites. Directories like Yahoo, DMOZ and Google mention these standards as guidelines on their pages. High Quality Links are not easy to get.
Affiliate websites don’t rank them on basis of PR. Instead, they look for content which adds value to their content and hence increasing their visibility as well. If your copy is questionable then you need to sit down and redo it or hire someone with more expereince to do it for you like a copywriter.
‘Spamming issues’
Like you, there are many other websites which are trying to get their links posted. Not everyone is genuine and and many of the site are just not up to the quality standards. As a result, affiliate sites get excessive requests for a link and so most are turned as they are seen as spam.
To ensure that your website is not lost among the spammers you must prepare a nice request proposal in a concise manner, so that the affiliate understands the value of your proposal without spending much time wading through a long drawn out letter. Try to discuss specifically which part of their site is useful to your visitors and which part of your site might be of interest to their customers, give a link to that specific area. If you offer to put a link to them do not later threaten to remove it as they have not linked to you, if you continue to request them to put a link and show that your site is relevent eventuallly they will link to you.
In spite of all the above difficulties, back-links are still very popular. The whole exercise of getting backlinks can highlight the shortcomings of your content and hence helps you to improve its quality. In a nutshell, getting backlinks requires creativity, hard work, expertise and patience. When executed properly, the results are encouraging.
Content Marketing – Essential to Growth
Jul 26th
Content Marketing is Essential for Growth
The Internet has changed the way internet business’ market themselves all over the world and a lot more innovative techniques have been invented to market products to gain an advantage over competitors. Regardless of the new techniques coming out the reason for them is the same as the old one to attract customers. The easiest way to do this is to provide them valuable content, hence the term ‘Content marketing’.
‘What is Content Marketing?’
Basically Content marketing is a number of techniques used to create and share the content on your business website in such a way as it will engage with the maximum amount of potential customers.
It works on the principle, ‘the more useful information you provide to a customer, the more they are attracted to you’. So, The idea is to aim at delivering high-quality content that will add value to the potential customers knowledge so they can gain a better understanding and insight to that particular field.
When you look at content marketing it has three main elements to it these are textual content which is important as it is the basis of on-page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), creative images which should natural support the textual information on the page and if used a highly convincing video relevant to the message being conveyed.
Apart from adding these essential components, you must make sure that content is regularly updated at least 2-3 times a week. There are lot of tools which can keep your site up-to-date like Blogs or or webinars and RSS feeds.
‘Content Marketing Techniques’
Once your essential elements are in place there are a number of ways you you can look at to do your internet business content marketing. The basis of any format you use is to empower your customer through knowledge rather than pitching them a product or service.
Publishing ‘Case studies’ is a great way for service industry businesses to present how they have solved problem for clients through their product offering which can generate curiosity among readers grabbing their attention.
‘Online newsletters’ which is highly used by many internet marketers, are a great way to spread awareness and educating your customers as you can spread up-to-date information related to your business. You can also offer ‘free online tutorials’ on the topics related to your business.
You can even develop ‘Quizzes’ and ‘Polls’ using tools like survey monkey to trigger discussions and attract more traffic. You can also make content more useful by posting ‘reviews’ on your products or services. You can also do ads or use testimonials from customers to create impact.
‘What Can Content Marketing do for Me?’
Content marketing is a great tool, however if you are looking for an overnight miracle do not look here, you need to be patient enough to allow the content to be dissimenated and to get out there. You will also need to keep going, keep writing new content and get it out to the right sources to help drive traffic.
The better the content is the more traffic it will bring you, the more driffic coming to your site isthe more potential customers coming with it. This increases your chances of converting some of those prospects into customers.
Another great thing about good content is that if it is relevant and unique is the greater the chances are of increasing your search engine rankings through ‘back-links’, basically if your content is good enough it will create a buzz about your business which can help generate new sales.
If you put great content together your business will flourish with time, getting this step right is crucial to the online survival of your business and its continued growth.
Planning for Local Marketing
Jul 23rd
Local Marketing
Local marketing is the current internet marketing buzz word that seems to be on the tip of everyones tongue at the moment. But for many newbies this is just another phrase in the long line of online phrases being banded about. So we thought we would do a short piece using the five stage planning methodology for our newbie readers to help them plan their local marketing.
When people discuss “local marketing” they are talking about a marketing message which will help a business in a specific location market their products or service to their local community. The term local can mean in your town, city, county or just your main high street.
The idea is you engage in activities that specifically promote your business within your area to meet a specific goal such as new sales. To do this to your advantage you should follow a few simple rules in planing your marketing campaign.
You need to firstly set out the goals or objective you wish your marketing message to convey. This is really important and is the most poorly done task of many small business owners wanted to market to their locale as there is an automatic assumption that marketing will work because you are the nearest to that prospective customer.
But how do you target that customer if you have no goal for your message or plan for what you want that marketing campaign to achieve – yes lots of people may see your ad but that does not mean it is useful to them or to you in terms of getting customers.
Second you must establish the market you want to reach, lets face it anyone can market to the masses – the question is, ‘Is your product or services suitable to them’, if not then you need to think who it is beneficial for and target only that segment of your local area.
Third is your message – what is it you really want them to know? is it how wonderful you are (do not use this strategy it will not work) or is it if you have X problem then we can solve it. Be creative with your message but also to the point.
Forth how much money do you have to spend and of that how much are you willing to spend? Delivering your message costs money – fact, the question should be how much can spending X potentially bring me in return on investment (ROI).
Finally what media will you use to deliver your message, there are so much to choose from many people say that offline mediums are dead, I personally disagree – done correctly they can work extremely well especially given the fact that there are soo many people vi-ing for business online. Online can be really great however as well if you target your campaign correctly.
In order to market well locally all that is needed is a generous helping of thought. If you want to get the best results for your money and time invest in the free process of planning first then implement after.
