Internet Marketing tips and sales copywriting advice from Chris Garrett to help you launch your products, generate more quality leads, and convert more visitors into long term, loyal customers.
Picture a riverbank, popular for fishing. One part is beautiful, sunny, nice grass verge. A great place to just sit and soak up the atmosphere, let alone fish. Another part of the river is muddy, dark, cold. People do not even like to walk their dogs through there. Sam turns up one morning. Some old…
In this business and indirect monetization blogging series I have been talking about how you can use blogs to gain attention and generate sales leads. Now we should really take a look at some examples. Here are five great blogs that sell. english cut: bespoke savile row tailors Just take a look at this quote….
Blogs and online marketing. To even separate the two phrases in my mind feels weird. Bloggers are online marketers. You can’t blog successfully without online marketing. Online marketers who ignore blogging are entering a marathon with their shoelaces tied together. A similar (and just as confused) debate is about Blogs versus Websites. The question makes…
Selling with blogs? It’s not so long ago that I might have gotten myself lynched for merely suggesting such a distasteful thing. Slowly though the blogosphere is coming around to the idea that commerce is not necessarily evil, that in fact businesses need to make money and that they do that by selling stuff. Blogs…
Professional networking with blogs is something people do largely unconsciously. How can we use blogs for networking more intentionally? In this series I have been revealing how blogs can boost your business. Most businesses at some point will do the drinks, nibbles, business cards and handshakes thing. You might note I am not super excited…
This is the third post in my series about blogging for business. In the first instalment I talked about how blogs can help your business profit and in the previous article I showed the ways blogs boost your website traffic. Now I am going to talk about using a blog to generate more fame, credibility…
In the first post of this series I showed you how blogs generate indirect profits, publicity and leads for businesses. Let’s take a look at how. A primary motivation for anyone to set up a business website is to gain visibility. They want people to visit. Blogs are well suited to achieving this. How Blogs…
You have heard them “Build a list”“The profit is in the list”“It’s all about the list”blah blah. Most people who have read up on internet marketing will have come across this idea. But then blogs, or rather RSS, came on the scene and confused the issue. Several people have asked me if they should close…
I have been asked a question by many business people over the last couple of months. While I am still working on what my answer ought to be I have developed some thoughts. One of the great things about blogging is if you don’t know the answer then your readers will usually fill you in,…
What is Squidoo? Squidoo was a website-building and blog platform from Seth Godin. Squidoo blogs were called “lenses” and there were over 1.5 million lenses before the platform was sold to HubPages on August 15, 2014. Squidoo Blog Advertising Although all the tools are there and costs aren’t always super high, it is rare to…
In part 1 we looked at how web prospects are a lot like tourists visiting a foreign country for the first time. In this post we will look at how we can make it easier for our visitors to find their way without wandering down any dark alleys or tourist-traps. Making a destination decision Even…
When you are thinking about visiting a new place, what do you do? And when you get there, what do you look for? Picture it. You are sat on the floor with brochures all around you. Each picture and blurb seems more appealing than the last. It’s hard to make up your mind. Who is…
It’s been said so many times it has lost all meaning. Focus on the content. Content is king. Write! Fine. Why then do some people create crummy but popular content? How is it that brilliant writing is often overlooked? So it can’t be just about the content. Something else is necessary. Do you buy bottled…
Recall my interview with Sean D’Souza? Since the interview I have been poking him with a pointy blogging stick and he has finally started his blog to stop me nagging at him. He has already posted some great stuff, like this one about getting your customers to actually consume what you deliver them … Why…
In my last post I said I loved Seth Godins blog but hated that he doesn’t have comments enabled. He responded to my complaint with an email saying he reads and responds to his own email. I’m honoured. That’s great. It’s good to hear, but who would know? The public perception is still, and please…
I know this blog is not a success just yet. Why? People do not hate it. Wuh? It’s true. People do not dislike it so bad that they just have to tell me about it. There is no “love” feedback either. I just don’t get those sorts of messages. Sure, I get plenty of “You…
Every day I get emails from people asking I go look at their blog, or swap links. Some work and some do not. This post is about why. Actually let’s take a step back. The first type of request says “please look at my blog” but actually means “please link to me”. I can tell…
Why do I answer every single comment made here? A couple of people have asked why I did my Reader Appreciation post. Some have even implied that I have a big enough audience to not need to do this. What is it about comments I am so obsessed about? There are three critical aspects that…
This week I was pulled up on my comment links having the default “no-follow” attribute. This led to me installing the Wordpress “do-follow” plugin and also to questions about if no-followed links have any value. First of all let me explain what “no-follow” means. The idea was hatched to prevent spammers profiting from carpet-bombing blogs…
Something a bit different for this post. The other day I had an opportunity to talk to Sean D’Souza, a cartoonist, marketing guru and expert on sales psychology based in Auckland, New Zealand. We cover a fair amount of ground but some of the highlights include: Why he doesn’t believe in advertising How he is…
As a strange hybrid of Internet Marketer and Blogger (amongst other things) I noted with interest Darrens worry about Talking to Internet Marketers about Blogging The —Ëœdaunting’ feelings don’t come from being afraid of public speaking (I’ve been doing that for years) but more because to this point I’ve always found internet marketing —Ëœtypes’ to…
Digg reckons their algorithms can spot paid-to-Digg patterns. Looks like they can’t. Annalee Newitz has successfully paid a company to Digg her blog, read about it over at Wired I can tell you exactly how a pointless blog full of poorly written, incoherent commentary made it to the front page on Digg. I paid people…
Garrett French learned the hard way how to approach forums for content and traffic One key difference is that I opened a forum thread to DISTRIBUTE content rather than to ask a question and start to GENERATE content. I did ask a question at the end of the thread, but my intention was partly to…
Yes, powerful headlines are vital. No need to go over that. There is one factor though that is even more important. So important that if you don’t get it right … even the most compelling headline will flop. People pass by. The reader yawns. What is this vital factor you ask? While you are reading…
Since reading the FeedBurner report Aaron has been thinking about how to change his approach towards RSS metrics I wonder, really, how our strategies will change as assumptions fly in the face of reality. I also wonder how many people cater to their RSS audience and encourage engagement from those readers. I personally have taken…
Does Google have a “Duplicate Content penalty”? Concerned about cross-posting or syndicating articles or scrapers copying your pages?
Nick over on his new ClickInfluence blog has a post up about Sending Gifts to Influencers Sending gifts to bloggers, in the hope they’ll write about them may seem a potentially dangerous move. If it backfired it could certainly cause some nasty negative PR, but provided some caution, and a good helping of common sense…
While “domaining” (usually buying up domains, putting up CPC ads then selling them from what I understand) isn’t a business model I would want to get into, Ahmed at TechSoapBox thinks this is one way Digg traffic can be immediately monetized Domain registered on Feburary 14, 2007 to Kavi Siegel (cvxdes) Website and content put…
iheartthis by miss_rogue. We all want to be liked. When creating a product, service, blog it is always our goal to create something people accept. This is setting our sites too low. The goal needs to be more than that. Love. Some people have problems with this word in a personal context so I am…
A reader wrote to me in response to my Burning Blog Bridges post. He was concerned that in his industry there was a big, powerful but sleazy competitor. How can he compete without resorting to critical articles attacking their business practices and violations? While it would be tempting to just give them a good kicking…
It’s funny because it’s true … Via: BLOchman
John Battelle has hit YellowPages with the clue stick “You’re asking me to tell my advertisers to invite criticism? You’re asking me to actually create a platform that lets that criticism happen? Are you nuts?” General nodding and murmurs of assent followed. “Er…yes,” I answered. “Yahoo already does. And Google does too (though not as…
Steve Rubel is asking What Will Replace the Almighty Page View? but I am not quite convinced by his candidate, “Events”. These days most interactive web sites are built using Flash and/or Ajax (a cake mix of Javascript, XML and HTML). Page views are useless here. They only count complete refreshes of a page. Yahoo’s…
Reputations can be made or broken online. Presidential candidates you would hope would have only the very best advisors. B.L. Ochman reports one presidential hopeful has had a few problems with his online image lately … A few days ago, typing www.rudyguiliani.com — a common misspelling of his name — took you to a site…
Steve Rubel reports that someone has created an Apple Store in Second Life Go download the latest version of Second Life and then teleport to the Apple Store. No, not the real thing but close! Someone has created an unofficial virtual replica of Apple’s famed retail stores This is a perfect example to me why…
I can’t believe a company of the size and sophistication of Amazon could sell a book, by best-selling author Seth Godin, without his permission AND pass it off as new. Quality control? Check it out on Seth’s Blog I didn’t authorize this book to be published, I have no idea who the publisher is and…
It is well known that the top Digg/Netscape/Reddit/etc members can make a story. Their stories get front page status more than any others and they wield masses of influence. Want to see who the social media power-users are? WSJ.com has the details A look at some of the hidden influencers deciding what is popular on…
People are starting to provide me with some excellent feedback on my free Killer Flagship Content ebook. One of the requests is for me to provide more examples. Funnily enough I was just reading Aarons (excellent) blog and saw his short video entitled “What is a Self Reinforcing Authority“. As well as examples that illustrate…
Reading blogs and forums you would think that getting on Digg is all about short term pops of traffic. Yes the traffic boost is nice but if those visitors arrive and leave like a tide without anyone sticking around then all you have for your efforts is a slow web site for a while. Is…