I Do Web Marketing

This is a guest post from Sachin of Web Profits. If you are interested in providing a guest post, please contact me.

Many people do not realise how big of an industry social media marketing, online marketing and other related professions, such as SEO (search engine optimisation) have become. Getting educated for these industries is tricky enough in itself. The best in any industry are those who study, learn and create well before there is somewhere to study. That being said, private institutions seem to be the best place to learn for these careers. It is difficult to find a degree in Facebook, for example. So what does it take to be a part of these exciting new industries?

• User Experience. Knowing social media, knowing all those sites, and having your own experience is the best way to know anything to do with online marketing. Unlike many other media industries, the options, strategies and methods are varied, many and complex. The best way to understand what is going on is to be a part of it. Your own research and reading will take you further than most studies.

• Studies. Online marketing could be described as the latest version of public relations – just it is on a very big scale. If you are looking for some background or foundation studies to support your career move, a degree in communications is worth a look at. There are those private institutions that are already developing more specialised study programs. As per usual, the USA is leading the way.

• Working Style. Anyone who works in media, or any other creative type industry knows there are long hours. At the same time, there are long hours in anything we want to do well in. We thought computers were going to give us more free time. That is obviously not the case. In other words, it is not the hours that are the issue. Working in a creative environment takes a fresh and open attitude towards working. Those who work best in these industries know a flower only grows when it is given water and sunshine. Encouragement and positivity will allow you and everyone else to get the most out of what they do. It is not always pressure that delivers, especially when we are talking about creativity.

• Getting Experience. There are so many fields we can apply to online marketing, and particularly social media marketing. Making the switch to these new industries might not be as difficult as you think. Spending 3 years to get a new degree might not be a sensible option in a field that is so new and fresh. Facebook marketing did not exist only a few years ago. It might just be your communication skills and your current following that make all the difference. Again, user experience and self-education are still the best ways to go.

Those who specialise in SEO (search engine optimisation) are the true online marketers. This is actually the basis of many of the other fields of online marketing. Social media marketing, Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing and now, Google+ marketing are areas those professionals have included in their portfolios. You might have more knowledge than you think. Careers come and go, but you can be assured, online marketing is here to stay.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This is a guest post from Sachin of Web Profits.

Online marketing is an art form, a science, and is closely related to the basic principles of SEO. The marketing industry has been having a hard time getting a grip on this very tricky market, and the reasons are all too obvious. The basic process of getting sales isn’t well understood. Part of the trouble is that marketing online is marketing to an entirely different buying pattern based on external information sources.

The fact is that most online marketing is still being done using Old Media techniques, trying to transfer TV advertising and marketing methods to the internet. It’s a bit like trying to sell sand to people living in the Sahara. The net is full of advertising and marketing materials which are strenuously avoided. Most people are quite happy to ditch a web page rather than put up with irritating materials.

There’s a good reason for the resistance. Wading through marketing materials can be a colossal waste of time. When people are actually trying to buy something, they don’t go running to the nearest ad. They go looking for information about the products and services they want. They can evaluate any number of choices very easily.

This is the only market in the world where the consumer is more likely to be better informed than the market itself. People learn very quickly how to find the information they need about things they really want to buy. There is such a thing as impulse buying online, but that’s equally selective, and when it’s so easy to do a bit of research while shopping, that’s what happens.

What sells, an overview

Ironically enough in the Information Age, what sells is information. People are quite happy to read through any useful information and get facts. They’re a lot more receptive to meaningful information about products and services than they are to hype of any kind.

For example:

• Tell someone you’ve got a great new app that will cure their acne, improve their love life and make them 20 years younger, and nobody will pay the slightest attention.
• Tell someone you’ve got a new app that can do their business for them, and you’ll be snowed under with orders, the minute people can check it out, see how it works, and evaluate it. That’s information. Anything else is nothing.

What marketers need to install into their craniums is that their materials are a click away from oblivion in this environment. Nobody cares what the advertiser thinks of their own product. The mere fact that someone who may or may not exist and is living in a tree in Wisconsin likes it isn’t overly persuasive, either.

The “Why” factor

Internet marketing has its own rationales. The question marketers should be asking themselves is “Why would anyone want to buy this product?”, because that’s exactly what the consumers will be asking themselves. Online marketing must relate to information values, not hype, to sell.

The “Why” factor is the real issue for marketers. If you expect people to spend money, that endangered species in anyone’s life, they must have a reason. Concentrate on that, and you’ll sell, and sell well.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Today’s guest post was written by Jonathan Bentz, a member of the internet marketing team at ProspectMX, a Pennsylvania-based web marketing company.

If you blog, and no one reads it, does your blog matter? Or are you simply clogging up the internets?

Many bloggers don’t feel the need to worry about marketing themselves. “I’m not blogging to make money – this is just my hobby,” I’ve heard some say.

If that’s the case… then great. But if you’re not blogging to be read, why not just keep a notebook and write notes to yourself?

The point of blogging IS to be read. You believe you have something to say that people want to read. In order to be heard by the right people, bloggers need to get their content in front of their audience.

How can bloggers do that? Through syndication. Really Simple Syndication.

Below is a list of ten websites that syndicate blog content at no charge. Due to the traffic these sites receive, the authority they carry with the search engines, and connections they have with top publishers, all ten sites can provide a major benefit to marketing your blog. In all cases, they also allow you to syndicate the content you produce on your blog for free.

In some cases, these syndicators might even pay you for your hard work! Even if you don’t blog for the money – who doesn’t like being paid?!

Make sure you have your blog syndicated by as many of these websites as possible. Your traffic numbers, better search engine rankings, and potential to earn more revenue from your blog provide all the benefit you need to syndicate.

The Essentials:
1. Technorati – the search engine for blogs. This should be the first place anyone goes to syndicate their blog.
2. Blog Catalog – need to add a small line of code to your site to get syndication with Blog Catalog.
3. BlogBurst – another essential. If accepted, your content can be syndicated on authority sites like Reuters and USA Today.
4. My Blog Log – add a small piece of code or one of their widgets to your site for visitor tracking and visitor ID.
5. Twitter – if you’re a blogger who uses Twitter and aren’t using one of the many WordPress plugins for Twitter syndication or Twitterfeed – I ask, why? What’s the problem – your blog allergic to traffic?
6. Feedburner – setting up your RSS feed through Feedburner is very SEO-friendly. Anytime you can align yourself with something Google-approved, do it.

The Unexpected Surprise:

7. Amazon – I bet most bloggers don’t know that they can syndicate their content to Amazon and get paid for it. At the beginning, Amazon only syndicated the highest profile blogs to its Kindle buyers. In May, however, they opened the doors to all bloggers. There are over 600,000 Kindle users – do you think a few of them might be interested in your content? Amazon controls pricing, but Kindle users pay between $0.99 and $1.99 for access to your content. Amazon pays bloggers a 30% commission.Three Others Syndicators That Can Benefit Your Blogging
8. Blogged – another quality blog search engine.
9. Networked Blogs – Networked Blogs also has a great Facebook app for bloggers and the fans of blogs.
10. Blogoria – SEO-friendly syndication.