Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

We’ve come a long way since the first printing press was born.  Back in 2008, online news readership surpassed news readership via print media.  Along with this shift, the power to influence shifted.

For years, in fact centuries, newspapers and other print news media journalists held the power to persuade others and controlled the flow of information. Our forefathers who helped build America used print media to create an uprising which lead to our independence.  Newspapers were the primary source where people received information delivered by writers, information which was used to formulate opinions.

The power of this is huge when you consider the information you chose to deliver to a reader will influence what the reader perceives to be true.  Once you understand the fact news via any media is almost impossible to deliver without bias and objectively because every word chosen when writing an article and delivering the information is going to have the personality of the author somehow connected. When you understand this principle you understand that the news we read will always carry undertones which will often lead to a perception the writer intends for you to encompass.

What’s interesting is that with the shift from print media to online media, the primary source where people get there information has changed.  This means the power to influence has shifted to the authors, journalists, bloggers, and others who deliver their opinions online.  This doesn’t mean the only people who control the information you see are online authors, but the majority of people who read the news, do get their news online and that is a powerful thing to consider.

As an example of what online can do, there are many websites that are now being used to promote candidates for government office.  Consider the fact for a moment that if company “A” develops a website for a particular candidate who becomes the next president, company “A” in a small part helped change the future of this country by helping the candidate reach the people necessary to gain the office.

One story which comes to mind recently is a story recently regarding the use of Twitter to relay information about what was going on in Iran during a recent election protest.  Time.com has mentioned this by saying:

“The U.S. State Department doesn’t usually take an interest in the maintenance schedules of dotcom start-ups. But over the weekend, officials there reached out to Twitter and asked them to delay a network upgrade that was scheduled for Monday night. The reason? To protect the interests of Iranians using the service to protest the presidential election…” See the full news story here.

If the forefathers of this country used the power of the presses to form a new government is it too far-fetched to believe that the domainers, online journalists, and bloggers of the world may have a powerful affect on our future.  In my opinion, if you don’t have a blog, or a website where you can voice your opinions, you really should and if you are someone seeking to run for office, or make a change learn how to deliver the “right” information to the “right” people using the “right” online tools available.

One of the main goals for online marketing is to drive traffic to your website. This post covers a short description of several different ways to do this. Most of these are well known, but I almost look at this post like a checklist.

There are a lot of companies which offer Link Building Services, and it’s true, more links to your site are better than none, but one thing to keep in mind is that just because you have links to your site, doesn’t mean you will see immediate traffic, or raise your search engine ranking. Be careful who you hire to do your “link building”, you don’t want to pay for a bunch of links just to have links. It’s far better to place links to your website strategically in order to drive targeted traffic to you rather than generic people browsing.

1. Google Adwords and other pay per click advertising
2. Social Media including but not limited to:
  -a. Twitter
  -b. Facebook
  -c. MySpace
  -d. Flickr
  -e. Etc.
3. Digg, a place to post links to pictures, videos, and news articles.
4. Delicious, a free bookmarking website.
5. Stumble Upon, a place to post links with a brief description for other to find.
6. DMOZ, and open directory project. This site is not used to post multiple links to your site, just one to get your site in the directory.
7. Leaving a link to your site in a comment signature. Bad etiquette to leave a link to your site directly in the comment itself.
8. Leaving a link in the “Authors Signature” when you write an article for websites like ezine.
9. Find other website owners willing to trade links. (I.e. Your link on their site for a link to their site on yours)

These are just a few ideas that may help. This is pretty basic stuff, but every little bit helps.