Archive for online traffic

3 Great Twitter Apps for Content Marketers

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Today’s post was written by Louise Baker, freelance blogger and journalist.

When it comes to Twitter apps for today’s busy professionals, there are some top notch applications available that will let you maximize your productivity on the service without falling prey to the infamous social media “time suck.” Here is an inside look at what you need to know about three of the top Twitter Apps for business: CoTweet, HootSuite and Twaitter.

CoTweet

CoTweet holds the distinction of being the Twitter app of choice for some of the largest corporations that have finally begun to take their Twitter campaigns seriously, including Ford, Dell, Whole Foods, Salesforce.com and and several others. CoTweet is designed to allow teams to collaborate to provide real-time responses and relevant content to Twitter and other social media services. There are two versions of the application available, including Standard and Enterprise.

CoTweet Standard is fairly basic and is designed for individuals or small businesses who only manage a couple of Twitter accounts with a relatively small team. CoTweet Enterprise requires offers a full range of dynamic features for companies that are dedicated to creating a substantial presence across multiple Twitter accounts, such as solid workflow reports and advanced analytics. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff
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No More Geek-Speak: SEO for Smart Bloggers

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 6th, 2010

How can you learn basic search marketing for blogging in 5 minutes or less?

Scribe SEO Copywriting is a practical tool you install and use for each blog or web pages you want to publish. Once installed, you can get a report BEFORE you publish, which tells you how optimized your content is for search engines.

Before I started using Scribe, I assumed (because I’m pretty smart and I’ve been getting good search results) that if I wrote quality headlines and posts, using the keyword phrases I wanted to focus on, those little search robots would be pleased…

Wrong! By using Scribe, I learned which pages and posts were getting 100% scores… and which were only ranking 52%, 78%, and 90% with the little darling spiders. In seconds, after writing a draft, a report is generated, telling me what’s wrong with my headline, use of keywords, description, etc.

All I have to do is make a few corrections and usually I can get a 100% score on the 2nd try.

Trust me, I’m no geek. This is so easy a 3rd grader can use it. Do yourself a favor and try it out, you can always unsubscribe from the monthly fee ($27 for 300 analyzes a month). I am an affiliate, I recommend it, and I love it.

Here is a sample analysis… Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing
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Get Search Engine Optimized- Fast

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, August 13th, 2010

How do you know if your blog posts are optimized for search engines?

Good question… and no  easy answer… well, except for one which I’m going to share with you here!  Here are a few options for optimizing your content for search marketing:

  1. Study Google and search engine optimization (time-consuming)
  2. Hire an SEO person to do some optimization for your web content (expensive)
  3. Become a subscriber to a service called Scribe Content Optimizer (easy, instant & affordable)

Here’s how it works. You go here, you sign up, you install it to your WordPress blog. You start using a free plug in called All-in-One SEO Pack.

You write a blog post, you fill in the information on the SEO plug in, you click the Scribe analyze button, wait a few seconds and get a review of how well your content will do with search engines. You then get a list of things you can do to raise your search engine optimization score.

Okay, seeing is better than me telling you. Here’s a snapshot of a blog post that didn’t score well, and here’s one that got a perfect score. You can see for yourself that the Scribe report tells me what I can do to raise my score, to improve my search engine optimization.

And here is a screen capture of a post that got a perfect score: Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web
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Online Content Marketing Results: Poll Says 50% Dissatisfied

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, July 8th, 2010

In a recent poll, I asked readers if their marketing tasks were easier, faster, more effective since publishing a website or blog…

  • Half of respondents said yes, significantly better results since doing web marketing
  • One-third said yes, but still needs improvement
  • 16.7% say, not much difference

My conclusion: half of you are getting results with your Web content marketing, the other half still struggles to see the kinds of results you want. This is a liberal interpretation to a poll that doesn’t lend itself to participants explaining their answers.

This brief poll was hosted on here on this blog, so only my readers would have responded. I don’t reach significantly large numbers to be able to say half of all people using the Web to publish content are dissatisfied.

Based on what I hear from clients and colleagues, I’m going to speculate some of the reasons this may be so:

  1. Web marketing is complicated: Although tools (blogs, sales pages, shopping carts, audio and video, email marketing) have become more user-friendly in the last few years, there’s a lot more to do (social sites)
  2. Web marketing is crowded: Ten years ago there weren’t as many businesses in your field competing for readers’ attention online. Competition is fierce.
  3. Web marketing is confusing: There are so many ways to publish content online, it’s hard to know what to do first and most.

I’m thinking about this a lot. And, I’d love to hear from you in the comments about what you think the challenges are, for using the Internet to grow business.

One possibility that comes to mind is that some professionals are unclear about their goals for their Web presence. They may be measuring the wrong things. Sales isn’t the only measurement, nor is traffic.

And when it comes to things like thought leadership, reputation, credibility and trust, it’s hard to measure in terms of numbers. Branding is another key element that gets reinforced through web marketing, but it’s also hard to measure.

What do you think about the reasons why many entrepreneurs, small businesses and professionals may be dissatisfied with their online content marketing? What have been your own experiences?

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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4 Time-Saving Tips for Social Media Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

What’s the least you should be doing to extend the reach of your online content marketing through social media sites?

This is a good question because many of my readers are busy professionals running a business who don’t have a lot of time. The big danger of sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is that they can suck you in and spit you out hours later. … and time is money.

Even when you’re connecting and having a good time, you can spend time that isn’t productive. …Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s time well spent or just a good time.

So for those of you who want the bare minimum effort and time, and still get results, here are a few tips I suggest. I’ll remind you I’m not a social media marketing expert, so please feel free to join in and add other tips in the comments section.

I will tell you I’ve gotten clients directly from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so I must be doing something right. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff
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The Psychology of Content Marketing with Blogs

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, May 17th, 2010

Why do business blogs work so well to attract new clients? For that matter, why is it I’ve declared them to be “The Best Darn Marketing Tool on the Planet!”

When it comes to writing on the Web, a blog is a great way to get found, get leads and get clients.

There are a couple of reasons blogs work. For one thing, there are over a billion people connected to the Internet looking for information.

According to Technorati, there are over 170 million blogs… maybe more, but then a lot of those may be abandoned.

When search engines do a good job of indexing content on the Web, they match up search requests with published content. Since blogs are content-rich and frequently updated, they provide fresh keywords for search engines to index.

Someone looking for a solution to their problem, or answers to their questions, clicks on links that are offered up on a page of search results. Those links could be to web pages, blog posts, videos, or podcasts, it doesn’t matter. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars
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Dart Board Marketing: How to Avoid Holes in the Wall

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, May 7th, 2010

I was at the beach a few weeks ago at my friend Amelia’s beach house. She put a dart board up on her kitchen wall. There are a lot of holes on the wall around where the board hangs.

Which reminds me a little of marketing. Sometimes it’s tempting to think that the more you do, the better results you’ll get as far as getting found and getting leads on the Internet.

Social media marketing is a little like that. You post here, comment there, retweet this, update that… and hope you’ll connect with someone at just the right time and right place… and that something good will come of it.

It does happen, I know. I’ve gotten a few clients signed up for my teleseminars because I tweeted something and it led them back to my blog or sales page. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars
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