e-InfoActive

Internet Marketing Blog: How to Leverage a Description Tag

The description tag is critical to transforming search results into clicks. When your website comes up on most search engines, users will see the contents of the meta description tag directly below the title (title tag) of the resulting web page.

When it comes to ranking your content relevance, search engines generally ignore the content in the description tag because it’s easy to just type anything into the tag. Also, when users visit your site, they don’t read the tag, so this content wouldn’t even need to match the search results anyway. However, what the description tag can do is focus attention and encourage the user who found you amongst the search engine results to actually click thro

Internet Marketing Blog: Tips to Improve Your Email Offer Click-Through Rate

Sending out an email blast to your opt-in list with special offers or calls to action can be a great way to attract some immediate results. However, crafting a compelling email offer can be difficult, and can be the difference between a click through and an inbox delete.

Every opportunity to correspond with your email audience is also an opportunity to make improvements to your overall communication efforts, especially if you create small test cases and measure your results. Repeat this process every time and, before too long, you will know how to craft a very effective call to action that will attract your audience.

Here’s a simple example: If you have a large email list,

Internet Marketing Blog: Get Results By Putting Yourself in Your Visitor's Shoes

Every business has their significant goals regarding Internet visitors. For some, it’s prompting you to call their 1-800 number. Some want you to sign-up for their email list. Others want you to purchase a product online. And some just want you to fill out an information form. On the flipside, when you’re the one managing a website, you need to narrow down the many possible actions a user will experience when he/she visits. While options are important, you need to understand what your visitors want. Otherwise, you’re no different than a pushy car salesman.

Visitors to your website may be in a totally random state of browsing or shopping. For example, they may be doing an initial research

How Do You Use the Internet for Ass Kicking?

Cartoonist Hugh MacLeod: “The web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain.” Similarly, Seth Godin writes in his latest book, “The internet has raised the bar because it’s so easy for word to spread about great stuff…[the] abundance of [mediocrity] is overwhelmed by the market’s ability to distribute news about great stuff.” Assuming these statements are true, how long will it take to rid the Internet of mediocrity? The answer: probably forever. Mediocrity may just be a human necessity. Without mediocrity, whose asses would the ass kickers kick?

Perhaps a more interesting question is: How have you used the web to do your ass kicking? We w

More Internet Marketing Tips: How to Remedy Blogger's Block

So you’ve committed to being a blogger; you are writing remarkable content, publishing it on your blog or newsletter, and you are seeing some valuable interaction and feedback. You’ve written about your favorite subjects and the things you are most experienced with. Perhaps you’ve even re-worded some of the same ideas and presented them as new ones. But, one day, your self-imposed deadline has come and gone and you’re staring at your screen. The cursor is blinking at you, but you have no idea what to write for your next post. What to do?

The solution to the problem lies somewhere between creativity and inspiration. You need to find your new source of inspiration so that you can get the ideas

Search Engines Tap Social Media Feeds, But Who Benefits?

It may seem, at first, that search engine indexing of social media sites like Facebook is a ridiculous notion—who wants to search for what your friend Bob had for dinner last night? However, for some savvy internet marketers, it’s an opportunity. For all those looking to promote their content and message (hopefully meaningful—not what time they picked up the kids from daycare), social media offers the potential to be found and read by more people. Search engines claim they index these sites to advance their “search innovations” and provide that much more searchable content for their users.

The risk here is that, at some point, the vast amount of content indexed will start to ma

Take Advantage of Video as an Internet Marketing Tool

Creating a video-based marketing campaign used to be time consuming and expensive. It involved hiring a professional to shoot and edit your video, recording it to a CD or DVD, and figuring out a way to stream it online. These days, advances in internet technology has made it easier and less expensive to take advantage of audio, video, and written publishing efforts. Video streaming sites like YouTube.com allow you to upload short videos at no charge. From there, you can establish linkable online content that feature your videos. Today, making your own marketing video is as simple as grabbing your camcorder, using some editing software on your PC or Mac, and clicking the ‘upload’ button.

Google Can Be Very Dumb: A Lesson for Internet Marketers

Occasionally I experience an annoying waste of time when going through the Google research channels. I’ve written about it before (http://www.e-infoactive.com/Google-Frustration), and I’m sure the topic will come up again. It’s not that I enjoy picking on Google, but I tend to use it quite often so I guess I’m more prone to noticing their technological problems.

I recently did a search for ‘Hashmap explained,’ trying to find a helpful tutorial on this technical term. The seventh search result on Google was this site:

Build a Following for Your Blog through Partnerships

Many people are taking the plunge into blogging and are carving out their content niche by regularly posting articles. But for professionals who are busy managing their business, consistency can be a challenge. For some, the dutiful norm seems to be one post a week. While we applaud the effort, we have to ask: “Is that enough?”

I recently had a great conversation with someone that solidified my opinion: No. Unfortunately, one a week is not enough, and as time goes on it will become less and less effective. People should realize that every blog post is competing with hundreds, if not thousands, of others throughout the Internet. Social media sites like Digg, Stubleupon and Delicious are helpi

3 Quick Tips to Jumpstart Your Internet Marketing Through Social Media

In a world of limited time and unlimited tools, it’s important to prioritize the things you need to get done. An overload of Internet Marketing possibilities can make the task daunting. For those of you who are ready to jump on in, here are some things you should focus on:

1. Twitter. Setup an account for your business today. It’s free and takes about ten minutes. ‘Follow’ everyone in your industry, including customers, media, competition, partners and writers. Tweet about your latest blog post or a new product feature. Make sure you provide a link back to your content (website or blog). Plan to repeat the process every time you have a new blog post. If something of note happens in your industry that you h

How to Attract Traffic, The Manual Way

Crawling to the top of search engine lists or getting hundreds of Digg’s and Tweets a day are lofty goals, and worthy ones if you take internet marketing seriously. But the reality is that it’s not going to happen all the time and takes a great amount of patience. So here’s the down and dirty way to generate some traffic and “authority” with your online space.

1. Once you know what your keywords are, for instance, Industrial Cooling Systems, or, in our case, Internet Marketing, you need to own them. You need to be all over these keywords like eggs on toast. And when you chime in on content containing these keywords, you need to showcase your expertise. Two important points:
A. Don’t spa

Elected Officials Should Follow Ashton Kutcher's Lead

I don’t often read Fast Company Inbox, but an interesting post caught my attention. Angel Refsland, a reader from Nevada, responded to a previous Fast Company article regarding Ashton Kutcher and the ‘Future of Media,’ no doubt referring to the star’s ubiquitous Twitter account. In her post, Refsland raised the question of why our politicians are not following Kutcher’s example and interacting with their constituents through social media. I couldn’t agree more.

Local politicians would do well to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or the like, to inform and communicate with the people who voted them into office in the first place. Isn’t it their job, once elected, to keep us abreast of

Houlihan's Sees Results From Homegrown Social Networking Site

Upon creating their own social networking site, Houlihan’s Pub of Kansas City enjoyed a 12% gain in sales while other restaurants in the area saw a 1% decline. Choosing to launch their own social networking site rather than leverage existing ones, such as Facebook, seems to have paid off. This may come as a surprise to many Internet followers and users. How and why did this happen?

1. The reality is that managing your own social networking site provides more flexibility and control over the content, if you're willing to put in the time. However, there’s the burden of technology management, so, for some, it might not be as effective or even possible.

2. Having your own social site will

Internet Marketing Tips for Indie Music

Now that the Internet has opened the doors to what’s being considered ‘the new music business,’ there’s a bit of a learning curve involved for new independent musicians, bands, and producers who are looking to market themselves online. Countless websites are sprouting up to compete with giants like AOL Music (about 28 million visitors a month), MySpace Music (27 million), and Yahoo Music (20 million). In order to take advantage of this brave new music world, it’s important for independent artists to understand some of the basics of online music promotion.

As an independent musician or band in a vast, unfriendly industry, the first step you should take to promote yourself is

How to Rise to the Top of the List On Google

Last year it was reported that over 13 billion (yeah, that's with a B) searches occurred on Google. If you or your business has no presence on Google, you are missing out on a lot of potential leads.

It’s very important to get on the first page of Google search results--studies show that almost 90 percent of traffic is generated from the first page. People's attention spans are not what they used to be, and most people don't bother clicking to the second or subsequent pages.

Getting Google to 'crawl' and index a website is not difficult. The Google crawlers follow links, so as long as you have at least one link to your site it should register. But you can also use this free tool to ensure it gets indexed:&nbs

Tips For Promoting your Company Blog

So you finally bit the bullet and started your own blog. You’ve written some solid articles that are interesting to read but also showcase your expertise and may attract some attention from prospects. But is anyone reading it?

Writing great content and unleashing it upon the world on a consistent basis is certainly the first step. But like any other marketing action, you still need to actively promote it. However strong your content is, people still need to find it. Here are some tips on promoting your blog:

Make sure you use basic SEO (search engine optimization) techniques that draw major search engines to index your blog. You can check your log files for spiders and robots. Look for keywords that ident

How to Better Invest a Small Biz Online Marketing Budget

As someone who has been in the website development game for many years, it’s difficult to have to tell people what is becoming more and more evident to marketers looking to trim their online budget: don’t spend on development. Fortunately, for me, I also write and consult.

In the past, spending big on professional design and branding for a website seemed to be the norm. A company would identify the 5 or 6 content categories (you’ve seen them: About Us, Contact Us, Products, Services, Company) and then have a designer make it look good. In actuality, what they were doing was an online version of their traditional, paper-based brochure. If they did this well, and then did some basic SEO, they would enjoy a multitu

How To Promote Your Business With Twitter

I always like to ask people if they are using Twitter and what they think of the tool. There are many people who can’t be bothered trying it (they don’t have much free time as it is) and they don’t see a potential value. But if they believed Twitter could help their business without too much effort, I’m sure many more people would give it a try. Many businesses are seeing success with the tool, and I’m sure the trend will continue.

So how can Twitter help you? I would recommend starting out slow, and try to measure its effectiveness. Setting up a Twitter account is extremely easy and takes only a few minutes. Then, daily or weekly posts can start to attract a following over time.

Here are som

Keeping it Real: Writing Effective Website Content

The Importance of Quality Writing

By now, we've all spent an incalculable amount of time on the Internet. Whether we're shopping, dating, plagiarizing, or just plain wandering, our time online has enlightened us, made us laugh (or cringe), and made it possible to never leave the house. But have you ever considered who's responsible for the content? Who's in charge of authoring the text, much of which we take as cyber gospel? Who is it that's misspelling and "misnomering" some of the most basic words and phrases in the World (or, shall I say, world wide web)? Ok, grammatical accuracy aside, it's becoming more apparent that the art of writing just isn't what it used to be. Is the Internet so informal a medium that

www.prweb.com), Marketwire (www.marketwire.com), and Vocus (

7 Reasons You Should Have a Blog For Your Business

1. Blogs are a necessary source of relevant traffic

With more and more content being added to the internet every day, search engines are constantly looking for new and fresh content to index. Content that is static and sales oriented falls to the bottom of their list.

Sites that create sales oriented content only and rely on search engine optimization for natural search traffic, will increasingly find it more difficult to get traffic. More and more blog content each day is literally burying this content in the index.

People searching on keywords and terms that are contained in your blog will find you more often and be drawn to your site. In addition, by commenting on other peoples sim

Thinking About Publishing A Book?

Why don't you just print it first and then decide. If you haven't checked it out yet, Lulu.com allows you to print your own book and even sell it online if you choose. This horribly ugly page is pretty useful for estimating prices (http://www.lugaru.com/lulucalc.html). But I'm not sure how up to date it is. I was frustrated to not be able to find pricing on lulu.com. But anyway, Seth Godin recommended Lulu in his new book Tribes. Let me know what you think.

www.alexa.com – Alexa ranks and measures web traffic for the entire web. How they do it, I have no idea (although they do explain it on their site). The important thing is that they are a reputable company and frequently cited by various news sources.

They provide tools so you can find the sites that are getting the most traffic and you can sort by country or category. So for example, if you have a product for webmasters, you can use their search and filter tool to narrow down the top sites that offer content for webmasters.

It’s a good way to find potential sites to either join or advertise on and you immediately know which sites have high traffic ran

Are you Focusing your Marketing Efforts on the right Media?

www.davidmeermanscott.com – I just watched part of his 45 minute key note address: The New Rules of Marketing & PR for B2B Businesses. I’m a big fan of his book and blogs, and this is the first video I’ve watched. He’s a great presenter and describes some great ideas in a very compelling way.

He starts off by asking the crowd where they first look for information when researching a purchase - Google, Search Engines and online peer-to-peer recommendations was a the clear winner over more traditional methods such as mainstream media and yellow pages.

Another quote I liked… “We all want attention and there are four ways to get it &h

What's the Best Business Model for your Software Product

Ok, so you have a new software product. Maybe you are in beta or ready to go live. You and your team has poured your blood and tears into development and now you are ready to make money. So what’s the best strategy for making money without scaring away customers?

In the following article, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine discusses some common options, including the freemium.

If you have a good product that people need and can’t get elsewhere for cheaper, they will pay for it. The key is to build your user base quickly. I believe that it’s easier and faster to build a loyal user base when there is a free component to your product. It’s a lot harder to talk someone into giving you t

"The Web Startup Success Guide" for Budding Entrepreneurs

New book by Bob Walsh, promises to help software developers build their ideas into businesses.

“Software developers are the book’s target audience. Walsh, assuming the reader already knows technology, focuses instead on the business and marketing aspects of creating a startup.”

“The Success Guide does a great job of showing readers why and how to become their own community manager and guides them through the latest tools – including Facebook and Twitter – without succumbing to Twitter-mania.”

Read it here:
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2009/10/23/book-revi

Hubspot Founders Publish Book - Inbound Marketing

www.hubspot.com – Hubspot, based in Cambridge MA, recently took in 16 million in venture capital investment. They also announced a new book by founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, titled “Inbound Marketing.”

The company announced that it has raised a $16 million Series C financing round, led by new investor Scale Ventures, with existing investors General Catalyst Partners and Matrix Partners. That brings the company’s total investment to at least $33 million.

“HubSpot® is an inbound marketing system to help your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers for m

Tip for Startups: be Ready To Fail

“In order to succeed, you have to be willing to fail. This is a tough lesson for entrepreneurs, since it runs contrary to their nature. But assuming you’re working to create something of value, failing early - even in the market-research phase - not only saves time, money and heartbreak, but it enables one to pivot quickly to an endeavor more likely to succeed.”

As someone who has started many projects and small ventures, I know this can be a very difficult thing to do. As artists and creators, it's hard to let go of a project that at some point is proven that it won't succeed. But the earlier you find the answer to this difficult question, the better off you will be in the end.

There

The story behind Cheezburger Network`s Success

www.cheezburger.com - This is an interesting story to follow. It seems that the charismatic and “jokester” founder, Ben Huh, of the very successfully Cheezburger Network is a huge part of their success formula.

Cheezburger Network owns and operates a bunch of humor related sites and blogs; “total of 26 humor sites, including FAIL Blog, GraphJam, Engrish Funny, and Emails From Crazy People”. They took in an impressive 1 billion page views last month.

This article is a glimpse into the funny man who is also a shrewd business man and entrepreneur.I liked this bit of advice:

"In April 2008, Pet Holdings bought FAIL Blog, and was up to fi

Advice for Startups - Threaten to Take the Prototype Away

Here are some obvious and a few not so obvious tips for startups wondering if they really have the next best thing.

My favorite: “In the end, the best way to test whether you have a ‘must have’ product is to threaten to take the prototype away from your early users,” says Brian Rakowski (Google). “If they don’t riot, start again.”

Heard here:

I recently read, for the second time, a great book by David Meerman Scott, titled "The New Rules of Marketing and PR." www.davidmeermanscott.com.

There are a ton of great tips and examples of the changing tides of marketing & PR. Many, I will try to touch upon throughout my posts to this blog. But there is one simple and seemingly obvious idea that he mentions throughout. It occurs to me that although quite obvious it is overlooked by many of us.

It can be difficult to put your shoes into that of your buyers. You know your product inside and out, both the good and the bad. You look for creative ways of making the bad seem better and highl