“Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”- PT Barnum
For the past couple of weeks I have spent a lot of time on an important subject: productivity.
Productivity is all about getting things done. In the past few weeks I have discussed:
Hopefully these articles have given you some inspirational ideas AND actionable tips on increasing productivity. So now you have free time. (Yeah, right!) It is time to take all those free hours and turn an eye toward online promotion.
What is online promotion?
Online Promotion is everything you do to publicize a project, venture, blog, article or online business. It is all about getting the word out there. It can be as simple as a Digg or a Stumble or as complex as writing an EBook.
In fact let’s just look at just a few of the sites that are great for blog promotion:
This list is by no means, “complete” either. Off the top of my head I can of about 20 more. With research I am sure I could come up with another 100-200 of variable efficiency. As you can see, finding places to do your online promotion should never be the issue. The important part will be finding the time to do as much as you may want to do.
But we cleared that up, right?
You now have time because you have increased your efficiency. All that time you have saved on increasing productivity can now be spent on promotion.
Well still there are so many means out there for promotion; you can never do them all.
Pick a few of the “quick” ones from the list above. Try to do those every day.
After that, it is important to schedule time blocks for some of the following promotion ideas.
Well it is a Saturday, my “link-love” day, so enough of my blathering. Let’s look what some other great people have said on the general subject of “Online Promotion”
Social Media
I will be the first to admit that I am not a social media, “expert.” I am constantly in a position where I feel I am “not doing enough” in this venue. That being said, I am still doing, “enough” that I gain a considerable amount of traffic on a regular basis from social media.
Chances are you have a Twitter and Facebook account and understand the importance and reach of social media.
If not is reply to you with a resounding, “huh?”
How could it be possible in this day and age for anyone to still not have heard (a billion times) about the power and scope of these social media tools. Did you awaken from a 10 year sleep like a modern day Rip Van Winkle?
Anyway I am not going to bore you with “5 reasons to be on twitter” or “8 reasons why Facebook is cool” articles.
Suffice to say, if you have not yet started trying to connect on a couple of Social Media platforms; you should.
There is one article that could be particularly useful for Social Media and online promotion. For anyone who owns a local business this tip by Charlene is essential. Even if you do not own a local business there are many reasons why learning to use Twitter to connect to local businesses can be very effective.
Email Marketing:
You may goggle at the fact that I start the section of “Email Marketing” for online Promotion with a link to the Blog Tyrant’s post on how to Make an EBook. This is because I think it is essential to have free offers for your email list.
A free ebook, special offers, programs… Basically whatever it takes and as much of it as you can get. You need to give away what is hopefully a lot of valuable free stuff to engage people and get them onto your “list”.
James starts us off this week with a basic description of an Email Marketing Plan. Over-time you will surely want to refine things, but the concept is simple.
- Make a plan
- Make an offer (EBook etc.) for Opt-in
- Make a Squeeze Page
- Give good Free information and build a “relationship”
- Keep it regular
If you are new to the concept of email marketing, make sure to read James article. It goes in depth on these (and other) topics.
This week Robert had a podcast interview with Ben, an email marketer. Ben said a lot of things that go against the grain of the “conventional wisdom” of email marketing. He even said a lot of things my own personal experience have shown the opposite of.
However, he did make some very interesting points, and I may be doing some direct tests on some of the things he said. For the experienced email marketer this podcast on creating an undeletable email may be very intriguing, even if (like me) you are unsure if it works it gives what is, at very least, a really fresh perspective.
For those of you wondering some of the things he says that I disagree with:
- Send emails daily
- Do not provide too much free content in emails
- Don’t soft sell
I still have to disagree on all these points, but it is interesting that he makes cogent arguments for all of these points.
Now on the other hand there is an email marketing article by Ana (2nd link for her this week) that I do agree with almost point by point top-to-bottom. (I think a little differently, but only in a nit-picky fashion)
Ana discusses topics like how often to email your list, what the content should be, how hard should you promote.
While we are on the subject (not to be overly promotional myself) here are a few articles you might like on the topic of Email lists.
Link Building
Many of the other methods work to link build. Commenting builds links. Social media builds links and connecting with others socially encourages them to also link to you. Email marketing may not directly build links, but it can be used to drive traffic.
Link building is best thought of as something slow and steady. Trying to “brute force” a 1000 links to a site, article or post in a week may drive you insane and also may land you in the Google sand-box.
This is certainly a case of the Tortoise and the Hare. Slow and steady wins the race. Take a little time every-day to work on some form of link building promotion. For instance, as soon as I hit publish I try to do 5 links. Usually it is Blogengage, Blokube and Amplify. For the other two methods (usually quick), I try to mix it up a little for each post. This ensures at least a few links for each post.
Later on, I go back and may try to do more links. But a few quick links done every day pile up over time.
For something like a niche site or a landing page, it will obviously take a little bit more, “concentrated” effort.
If you are unsure of the best link building methods Zarko has fortunately written a great post this week that goes over 20 of these link building methods.
Jane gives a good idea of the mistakes to avoid while link building.
Of course the words you choose for your link-building is important. Anchor text matters. If you are able to choose the words for you links, choose them carefully. (this is part of the reason I like Ana’s tip that I put under “blog commenting”)
Blog Commenting:
Without a doubt, blog commenting is a great way to promote your blog. It is particularly effective when a blog is starting out, but as a blog grows the effectiveness does not scale. Even when your blog is relatively well trafficked, it is still worth investing some time and effort in this.
I do believe there is a right way to do blog commenting.
Joe starts us off by showing some ways to find blogs to comment on. Then Suresh continues by giving a great guide to the unwritten rules of blog commenting. Follow these tips and your comments will be valuable to both you and the blog you comment on. Good commenting is symbiosis, not parasitism. The goal should be to leave something valuable to the person who’s blog you are posting on as well as getting a link back to your site.
Next Paul has (as usual) an insightful and interesting view of the basic models of blog commenting from the view of the site owner. From trying to respond to every comment to turning comments off completely there are many different ways bloggers view comments. All blogs fall into one of the models of comment interaction.
I have been doing this whole blogging thing for a while. It is not often that I find a little trick that is 100% new to me. Ana found such a trick with this little way to get a little more out of your commentluv comments.
Final Thoughts:
As you probably noticed, there is a lot to this “online promotion” thing. It takes a lot of time and effort to do it right. One of the biggest examples I can think of a blog, “exploding” is Marcus over at the Sales Lion.
He wrote a wonderful article this week about what it takes to create massive blog growth. Even if you do not have a blog, it is an important read, because it shows (to me) an important fact. Truly incredible results are only received by connecting with people and busting your butt.
In the article Marcus discusses how even though a handful of months ago his blog was not heavily trafficked he had a recent article where the comments section was over 200 comments. Most of them long and engaged comments too. Literally, there were more words in the comments than most ebooks.
Amazing!
How can that happen? Only one way truly caring and doing what other people will not do. In one point of the article Marcus mentions he spent 1.5 hours writing the post and nearly 7 hours responding.
Wow!
Now comes the time when I tie Marcus’ efforts to online promotion. Marcus effort, and his obvious connection with others, is what it takes to guarantee success.
To be honest, I couldn’t do it. If I spent 7 hours promoting/commenting etc. all of the projects I have, I would spent about 32 hours a day on it. Even outsourcing some parts of it, the math doesn’t work.
But the concept is still there. When you post an article, create a niche web-site, make a squeeze page or any other sort of effort an online business that is just the start. It is not even half the effort. Perhaps 1/3 of the effort.
Get out there and promote. Make connections. I cannot over-emphasis the importance of online promotion.
Remember the quote I opened this piece with:
“Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”-
Good luck! Now go promote!
