January 10, 2010 By

Email Marketing Is Still My Number One Marketing Tool in 2010

Since my Twitter account got suspended, I came to realize that social media marketing is just not my cup of tea. I’m just not genetically designed to chat and talk about everything under the sun.

I’m not alone – even Seth Godin says it’s not for him.

But that does not mean that I don’t communicate with my subscribers and customers. If you’re on my list, then you’ll know that the easiest way to reach me (or my support team) is by clicking on “Reply”.

Let me share something interesting with you:

email marketing

The stats above are taken from my link tracking campaign for Host Commando. As you can see, the conversion rates I get from email marketing are way higher than from my blogs, affiliates.

You cannot get that type of conversion from Twitter or most other social media sites. Sure, you can get a lot of traffic, but the conversions usually suck.

Even by putting the link in email signatures, I got a conversion of 6.67%. And that took me like 1 minute.

Of course, the data may be a little premature, but it’s still a big difference from the affiliate results.

I’ve been telling people for years that they need to create their own email list, and build a relationship with their subscribers first. Twitter, FaceBook or whatever else you use, should only be driving traffic to a page where you can build your subscriber list.

I use Aweber, and I highly recommend that you do too. Or, you can check out the top autoresponders comparison and choose the one that fits your purpose. I also wrote an article that directly compares Aweber Vs GetResponse.

Either way, build a list now. Twitter may be gone tomorrow, but a list is forever :)

Filed Under: Email Marketing Tagged With: , ,
June 24, 2009 By

Importance of Social Media in Affiliate Marketing

Web 2.0 has seen an emergence of a plethora of affiliates and social media websites. With the people understanding the nuances of affiliate marketing programs, the importance of social media is quite a big consideration.

social-media-marketing

Promoting your affiliate system

The obvious question for affiliates marketers is – how do we promote our affiliate programs to generate more revenue? The answer lays in Social Media circles. Social Media has outgrown almost every possible source of digital advertising and promotion in today’s world. The fact that has helped social media experts is that consumers have turned a blind eye towards traditional forms of advertising.

Social media helps in creating the much required monetizing buzz for the affiliates to be successful. Successful affiliates have been implementing social media strategies from the initial days when the term was not even coined. It is the ability to create a buzz about a new product or a service in the market by a commission generating option that competes for one’s time, money and attention. Affiliates have used social media in its traditional forms such as the news groups, bulletin boards and emails. With the new trends such as PPC, SMO, etc. the chances of generating significant revenues have grown leaps and bounds.

Selecting the correct strategy

The key consideration lies in selecting the right social media strategy to boost your affiliate websites. It is thus advisable to select and implement the right strategy which sounds more significant to your work instead of playing trial and error with everything that can be implemented. Affiliates should thus focus more on the trusted channels of social media such as blogging, social bookmarking and social networks. The outreach can be extended to locating the niche audience in forums, communities, facebook pages and groups, etc.

Few reasons why affiliates should use social media for promotion include;

  • The monopoly of merchants and their restrictions to discontinue using certain sites and advertising channels compels one to look for social media to do the job in a better and cheaper way.
  • With a plethora of affiliates in the same competitive arena which focus more on the traditional means, it is always a smart option to choose social media as it brings in an added freshness in the approach.
  • Google is playing the spoil-sport by introducing PPC and SEO squeezes which has various restrictions and are not in the interest of affiliate marketing community. Social media herein comes handy and acts as an answer to the strict laws and regulations being laid down by Google.
  • The traditional methods have started sounding suspecting because of its monotonous nature. Consumers always look out for something new and Social Media has the potential to deliver and come up to the customer’s expectations. Today people spend a lo of time on Facebook, Twitter and other similar networks. Tapping them at places where they love to be would fetch better results.
  • Social media is dirt cheap to dirty your hands with. With time, one can learn the basics of the game. The simplicity of social media measures such as blogging, tweeting and creating fan pages allows you to get get going within minutes.
  • Social media doesn’t need you to be a journalist or a big shot in the internet space. Efficient practices can help you do wonders with your affiliate programmes.

Innovation is the key in social media strategies. If the innovation is right and it strikes the right chord, the affiliate rewards are more than one’s expectations.

Image credits: Gary Hayes and sean dreilinger

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , , ,
February 2, 2009 By

Twitter for Profit Blogging

Twitter says, “Twitter is a service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing”?

twitter

But there also resides a business perspective to it which has to be strategized and to make twitter from just a social networking media to a profit blogging tool. Among a plethora of social networking sites which are used profitably for business, Twitter is one of the most used and successful social media practices today. There has been a remarkable transformation in the marketing environment from owning a website to direct marketing through personalized emails and messages to the current trend of using social media for free publicity and marketing of one’s own blog.

The key analysis lies here in understanding how Twitter can help an individual to promote his services/website/blog and the particular ways of implementing it. Twitter is about sharing your experiences online and helping people gain something from reading it. Sounds simple. Isn’t it? The key lies in a sound understanding of how to twitter.

As BlogForProfit writes, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (or tweets; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or twhirl”.

The most obvious question to ask here would be the reasons for someone opening a twitter account. The reasons are aplenty.

Micro-blogging tool is the most effective use of twitter where in you can post anything within 140 characters and increase the interest levels about the topic giving in a link to the original article. It is being used effectively to promote one’s own blog posts by broadcasting it in a ‘micro blogging platform’. There are WordPress plugins which do this for you as soon as you hit the publish button on your WP blog! This short medium can be used by the followers and get broadcasted, subscribed and shared by people by getting involved in a conversation. It also enables people to vividly discuss and opine with the topics that you post on our blog giving them a platform to communicate and converse with each other in their own network. Though twitter is a self-policing site; some would prefer calling it a ‘decentralized social network’ with no formal rules, but there are a few rules of engagement which everyone should know and implement accordingly.

The marketing benefits a blogger can achieve by using twitter are –

  1. Linking your blog to your twitter profile. All great and successful bloggers have it.
  2. Use Twitter Tools to post your tweets from your blog. It increases visibility and traffic onto your blog.
  3. Promote twitter on your blogs and vice versa.
  4. dding plug-ins which enable automatic tweet every time you post on your blog.
  5. Tweets can also be done if you do not post on your blog. The motive is to let your followers know anything interesting that you are doing.
  6. Reply to tweets you receive and build a network of your own.
  7. Basic Mantra for all marketers – Try and maintain long lasting relationships.

There are also a few basic strategies that companies/organizations/individuals can adopt to make their businesses successful by having an in-depth knowledge about the do’s and don’ts of Twitter. The specific strategies that need to be worked upon are;

  • Establishing professional repute
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Implementing promotional tools and generating sales
  • Achieving Advocacy
  • Efficient Event management and coverage

With the exponential increase in social networking sites and their immensely successful contribution to the business blogosphere, Twitter has already made its mark among them. And the question about its sustainability to business blogging and profit generation, I am sure that Twitter will keep tweeting. You may follow me @praval :)

If you’re looking for a better Twitter marketing solution do check out Viral Twitter Profits.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , , ,
November 14, 2007 By

The Right Way to Use Social Media

Social media has made its mark in the blogosphere. We can merely try to pick the right social media tools because there are so many. And to add to the whole confusion, more and more appear every month.

I don’t think this will stop sometime soon and the sooner we get used to using social media, the better.

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But unlike many other bloggers my approach to this phenomena has recently changed 180 degrees. Where before I used to shamelessly promote myself and use the force of social media to do this I have learned my lesson and am now an abiding social media citizen.

And you know what: it is so much more fun this way. I am making not only trust worthy friends at an alarming rate, but taking the total puritanism approach to social media has also gained me more recognition in the blogosphere.

My intent is no longer on gaining an unfair advantage over others, but on making new friends and helping others get noticed. It makes me feel great!

But before you think I totally lost the plot, I can assure you that I haven’t. It doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy being recognized by my fellow peers, I mean who doesn’t anyway. I would be lying if I stated this and one thing I never do is “lie”.

Using social media to help promote fellow bloggers who I care about and respect gives me the kick out of my day now. Besides writing and blogging of course and I urge you to try it sometime.

As bloggers we all want to be noticed and often it is very frustrating to spend a lot of time crafting our posts, only to find that no one is visiting or commenting. By giving your fellow blogger a helping hand you can send some traffic his/her way.

If your own blog is a bit starved for attention, then you can turn this misfortune around by helping your visitors gain recognition.

Help promote their posts on Stumble Upon, Digg, Sphinn, Blogging Zoom or whichever your favorite social bookmarking site is.

Be honest, don’t overdo it and stay true to your likes and dislikes.

I can almost guarantee that you will love social media as much as I do.

Monika

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Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: ,
March 28, 2007 By

Add This – Free Social Bookmarking Tool

AddThis is a widget that enables your visitors to share your website content with social bookmarking and feeder providers. The AddThis buttons can be used is a couple of ways on either website/blogs or in the browser.

addthis-logo.gif

Web Publishers can make use of the AddThis Web Buttons by allowing their visitors to collect content for their websites and send it to their preferred locations. The AddThis buttons come in four different types: Bookmark buttons, feed buttons, podcast buttons and product buttons. Website publishers can add a product button to enable visitors spread word about a particular product that they are selling.

The AddThis Browser button also enables users to collect useful content and save it at their favorite bookmarking service, feed reader, shopping service, or podcast reader.

The Benefits of the AddThis widget are as follows:-

  1. Bookmarking with Ease – Visitors to your site can bookmark your website or blog with relative ease and subscribe to your feeds.
  2. Social Traffic Generation – Helps visitors promote your site to social bookmarking service in blogosphere.
  3. No Clutter – All you need to do as a Web publisher is put up a simple button on your site.
  4. Provision of valuable statistics – The AddThis widget collates valuable statistics of what content your visitors are bookmarking over time.
  5. Free – The AddThis bookmarking tool is free to download.

AddThis widget is available as a WordPress plugin which will automatically add the widget to each of your posts. A demo of the widget can been seen right here.

Another way to automate social bookmarking on your blog is to use Auto Social Poster, which is also a WordPress plugin. This one, however, submits your sites automatically to social bookmarking sites.

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