You can also use video as part of your internet marketing efforts to connect more with the audience.  The question quickly arises though of how much time, effort and cost producing reasonabl (or high, depending on your market’s preferences) video.

So, here’s a little experiment. The (words and audio) video below was made from scratch in under 15 minutes using free tools.

For more information, check out the Video Marketing pages on this blog. The tools used were both free. Audacity and Animoto.

This is a great medium to be using to get further reach into your target market. If you haven’t tried yet – get out there and give it a go!

There are still (some – the internet hoards information!) ‘guides’ out there recommending that keywords be selected and packed into pages and web sites to increase the breadth of appeal of your site.  Keyword density is the game in these guides.

If you don’t know this already – don’t do this!!!

The ‘second wave’ of thinking on keywords now recommends that keywords are selected for relevancy around a theme and it is this you want to use in your website.  Some will go so far as to say, just choose one keyword per site or per page.

There are of course also tomes on the subject of on-page SEO and where to place keywords.  Thankfully these seem to be drawing some kind of consensus around Title tags, and Page tags – but there is still a split on whether meta tags and meta descriptions are good, bad, or otherwise.

So, what’s all the fuss anyway?

The heart of this confusing mix of views is that keywords are what people use to find your site – ie the search terms they are putting into Google, Yahoo! etc – and the search engines scan your site to find the most relevant match, putting those they deem most relevant at the top.  Ok, yep, go that.

So, what’s the answer then?

Actually, I think it gets back to the very beginning of your site – your market.  Do you really know your market?  What are they after and what do they want to see when they search for products / services like yours?  When you can answer those questions, target your keyword selection around them.

This is where keyword tools come in handy.  They can provide an ocean of information about search terms – who uses them, for what, where, how often etc.

But, there is trick here – you still need a way to decide how to choose the keywords that make sense for you and to do that – you need to know what your customer (or potential customer) is looking for.  Target each page to meet that specific need and don’t cram 15 possible ‘guesses’ onto a page.  Choose the most relevant and you’ll be on your way.

As with many things, this is not as easy as it seems, but that’s why keyword research gets its own tab here – and is deserving of your time and attention.

I am really excited to be chatting today about an offer that will give you access to some **TOP** entrepreneurs and business minds at the tiny sum of… nothing.  Yep, free.  And, this is high quality, free.

There is a program of panel interviews with 53 – yep, 53 – of the top business, marketing and entrepreneurial minds in the world revealing their secrets of success and solving real world problem – and not selling you anything.

One panel consists of seven world famous marketers:  Another has six celebrated mega-bestselling business authors.  Another has internationally renowned legendary mastery in dealing with business competitors.  Still, another is a legendary master icon in the field of persuasion and infamous prominent consulting-giants who charge $250,000 a day to share their prized perspectives.

They’ve also promised to focus specific interview panels in this six week experiment on these problems:
*  Too common type product/service

* No strong benefits to buyers

* Massive competition

* Mature business

* Weakly performing start-up

* Economy-caused drop in business

* Lower response rates from “on and offline” advertising

* Promotions not pulling well

* Prospects not converting like you want them to

* Margins eroding

* Old way of doing business no longer works.

I am signed up and can’t wait to get into these interviews : there is 36 hours of content to be made available for free during the 6 weeks of the experiment they are calling “The League of Extraordinary Minds”.

As far as I can tell, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  So, if you’re keen, click here to sign up and get your access to these extraordinary minds.

In fact, it’s so easy you just need to write an e-mail that may be in a form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and then send that to as many targeted recipients as possible.

However, there’s an ideal way of going about it. Email marketing is not just about writing any email that you will be sending to anybody.

Here are some simple tips in doing email marketing the best way possible.

1. Join the “Can Spam” campaign.

Email marketing is not at any rate tantamount to spamming. You are not supposed to send information that your email list will not have any valuable use for. And, you need to ask their permission first.  Always do this!

2. Give your recipient a reason to open your email .

Your email might get lost together with the hundreds of emails that inbox owners are confronted with everyday. Improve your subject line by using extra white space creatively, adding text symbols, starting each word with a capital letter (this is call ‘Camel Case’).  its also good to ask compelling questions, but – do not making any unbelievable claims, and do not use the word FREE.

3. Keep it real.

We are all pretty email savvy these days and so are your customers and prospects.  Treat them with the respect you would like.  Don’t include any ‘too good to be true statements ‘ and make sure the content in your email relates to the eyecatching headline.  Your email content should never make promises you can’t keep.  You are ‘speaking’ to a real person -  make your offer genuinely of value to your recipients.  Build up your copywriting skills too – these can be invaluable in crafting compelling email marketing messages.

4. Don’t go too low.

Discounting is a tempting way to grab some attention – but be careul.  If you go too low, you may wipe out your profitabliity, which kinda defeats the purpose of sending out an email campaign.  Be Creative and think about what other items of value you can offer your list.

5. Make it eventful.

Mix up your email marketing messages and include events (ie seminars, webinars, conferences etc).  Always give plenty of notice and do provide follow ups and reminders (but in a gentle way – no one like a pushy SHOUTY reminder).
6. Post news.

Sending newsletters and postcards provides useful information for your subscribers. These are the best forms of reaching out to your customers or prospects. You should keep the information short, simple and direct to the point for this  to be effective.

If you’ve got some other tips, please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Content is king. You can say that again. That is why writing articles is one of the most utilized Internet marketing media today. Internet surfers just can’t get enough of information on various fields. Providing information through these articles is a surefire way to drive hot traffic to your web site.

Why is this so?

Here are the benefits that writing articles can give your Internet business.

1. It’s absolutely free.

Too good to be true? Not. Okay, you have to pay for your Internet Service Provider. That’s it. All you need is your thoughts, your computer, and your hands. If you have those, nothing will stop you from typing words that will make you complete that article for your website. On which aspect of that process did you really shell out any cent? Maybe later when your electric bills come.

2. Your website will be noticed in a short period of time.

Submit that article of yours to article directories that get the most web traffic and in no time your web site will be crawled. That is if you don’t forget including your resource box or byline.

3. Obtain back links automatically.

When you submit your articles to directories, surely, other websites will make use of your article too. With the copyright terms of your articles, the URL of your website will still be in tact and will subsequently direct more traffic to your website.

4. Improve your reputation.

As an Internet marketer, if you plainly display your products on your website, you will not gain much conversion rate. Conversion is when your traffic converts to sales. You have to show that you are knowledgeable on your field. And what better way to show that than by writing articles that will allow you some bragging rights, right?

Just make your creative juices flow and jot down or key in those ideas quickly to jumpstart your article writing momentum. With those benefits listed above, a writer’s block is the last problem you will ever be able to surmount.

1. Take the time (and it can be time consuming) to do detailed keyword research

There is absolutely no point whatsoever trying to get ranked for 25 different terms that people could use to reach your site.

Google has a number of free (and very powerful tools) – check out the ‘Keyword’ page in the Toolbox if you’re after more info

2. Think about the relevancy of the content on your page – its not about quantity – it is definitely about quality.  Google is going to put your site higher if you have more relvant information for a specific keyword, so make the content relevant to the specific keyword on that page.

3. Get links to your page/s from other sites who have related content.  There are a few different ways to do this – you can post in blogs or forums, you can write and publish articles in directories, or you can pay some one to do it for you.  Check out the Traffic – Link Building Page in the Toolbox for more info

So, there you have it – If you are implementing these top tips – your ranking will improve – and don’t forget to check out more detailed info abotu tools that can help you do this more effectively in the Toolbox pages!

There are three options that you can use:

1. You can risk it and hope that you find a good copywriter

2. You can find out what a good copywriter does and then get some recommendations etc

3. You can do the copywriting yourself

Now, given that writing good copy can be quite time consuming, option 3 might not seem like the way to go, but (and I might be a little controversial here) I think its the only way to go.

All the top internet marketers write their own copy for themselves and/or their clients – certainly on their biggest campaigns.  And, before you even think about “outsourcing” this task – you need to know what it should look like when it comes back so that you can provide critique and get value for money.

Well – I hear you say – that’s not an option for me – I am not a writer and certainly not a copywriter.  Hey, you know, that’s what I thought too, until I started doing some digging.

There is some great (free) tips and techniques for effective copywriring (or “writing killer copy”) here if you’re interested.

This is the blog of John Carlton who is not only one of the best copywriters in the biz, he is also one of the veteran teachers and can certainly teach you some valuable tactics.  Enjoy! Here’s the link to John’s Blog.

The biggest challenge with deciding to follow or work with a guru is finding one who has a clue about internet marketing.

Ideally you want to find someone who:

• has personal success in internet marketing endeavours (and can prove it)
• knows how to convey their knowledge to you effectively – ie they can teach (its one thing to know alot, it entirely another to be able to teach)
• has a strong support forum of other like minded (and experienced experts) that you can also can get access to
• has a regular series of ongoing training so that you can learn at your own pace and then come back – you don’t want a ‘buy it once’ experience

So, how do you find these people?  Recommendations are not a bad place to start.  Here’s my list of faves….

James Schramko ( my Guru of Choice), Russell Brunson, Kevin Wilke, Howie Schwartz, Frank Kern

That’s not to say that there aren’t a number of other very talented people out there.

Once Your Guru has met the initial criteria above – there is one more critical component they must have – YOU MUST LIKE THEM.  yep – you need to ‘fit’ with this Guru, their style, their methods, their ethics or they are just not going to be the right fit for you.

Have a look around if you want to – check them out, cross check them out, but do CHOOSE ONE – having an Internet Marketing Guru guide you through the tangled web of internet marketing practices and systems to help you find the success formula that works for YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS will certinaly shorten the time it take to be successfull and may even be the only thing that gets you there.