How to turn your Blog into a Blog Strategy

What differentiates a tactic from a strategy?

A strategy is the plan for achieving a defined goal. A tactic is the “doing” part of the strategy. Tactics can be put together in a plan to form a strategy.

Time line is also an important differentiator between a tactic and a strategy. A blog can be up and running in a very short time frame (hours or days). A Strategy usually takes much longer to achieve (months or years depending on how lofty your goals are).

This is the second in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at how to develop a Blog Strategy for your Client. What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just building your client a Blog?

Starting a new Blog is a tactical move. You select the platform, customize a template, add a few plug ins and you’re done. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t.

What transforms a Blog from a tactical move to a Strategy are:

1. Setting Goals and Objective(s)
2. Developing an outlined plan of all the steps necessary to get there from here
3. Having some idea of how you will know whether you’ve achieved your goals (metrics).

These principles apply to any Strategy, in this post I am going to take the above steps and apply it to a Blog.

1. Goals and Objectives
There are many good reasons for starting a Blog.
Having a good understanding of what you want to achieve will assist in setting the tone for your writing; determining what topics you’re going to write about; and making decisions about how often to Blog and whether you wish to have multiple authors.
It will also influence social networking decisions such as if you’re going to show and allow comments, if you’re going to employ social media tactics.

2. Outlined Plan
Getting the right level of detail in a plan is very important. I’m a visual person, so I like to start planning with a diagram
Here is where I currently am -> -> -> -> and this is where I want to get to.
Then I break this plan down into the high level steps that must happen to get me from A to B. Personally, I like to plan three levels deep. Steps A, B, C, then A1, A2, A3. then A1i, A1ii, etc.
By planning three levels deep, you can take big steps and break them down into bite sized, doable pieces. Unless you’re working on a 18 month IT project with 60 project members, I don’t recommend planning in much more detail than this.
Although detail is awesome, sometimes you can get caught spending too much time planning and not enough time doing (also known as Paralysis by Analysis).

3. Metrics
It’s important to make sure that your metrics are tied to your objectives. If your goal is to increase traffic then one of your metrics should be to measure increase in traffic.
Make sure that you set an actual number. Setting SMART objectives is very important. Jeff defined these principles really well in his post about setting goals for social media Profile Development.
It could be a percentage increase in overall site traffic or could be a 12 month goal. If you blow away your 12 month target by month 3, you can always adjust this goal later.
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Here is a Blog Strategy for a Typical Client which employs all of the above:

Objective
Client Objective: My ultimate goal is to increase sales and I’d like to attract new customers to my website.
Agency Objective: We can use your blog to help bring new visitors to your website. If the ultimate goal is sales, then we will go after targeted traffic. Quality first, quantity if possible. (this is different than if your client is on a CPM model who strictly is going after eyeballs).

Outlined Plan (3 levels deep)
In this case I would optimize the site to help rank for many more broader keyword phrases than we’ve targeted in the past. Further social strategies will encourage referral traffic from like minded sites. Finally, niche tier II social media will expose your site to potential customers.
Here is the plan one level deep:
SEO –> Content –> Social Strategies –> Blog Promotion using niche social media
Taking it two more level deep it might look something like this:

1) SEO
Select an SEO friendly blog platform (like wordpress) and customize it so that it has the look and feel of the clients site. Add plug ins that will make it easier to do your job.

2) Content - Develop editorial schedule for next 3 months.

• This will involve coming up with at least 15 to 60 Blog Post ideas that will appeal to your clients target market. I’ll be discussing how to come up with post ideas for Challenging Industries in Part III of this series, next week.
• Decide who is going to be responsible for the writing. I really like it when the client does the writing. Not only does this keep the budget down but it starts the conversation between your client and their clients. Plus, they are the expert in their field. They know what matters to their clients.
• Ideally you will be able to assign topics to various experts on the client side. Not only does this split up the work effort but it gives your client’s blog more variation in voices and content.
• If the client is going to be doing the writing then some Blog Writing coaching is probably required. Writing a blog post is different than writing an article which is different than writing a business email.

3) Determine what Social Strategies you are going to employ.

• The most common Social Strategy is to allow commenting on your site. I personally really like comments because take a one sided conversation and turn it into a dialog. Plus it can give your blog more of a community feel.
• RSS Feeds are another social strategy. Your client’s readers may not be very technically savvy so it’s very important to make it easy to subscribe and to give the reader the choice of subscribing by email.
• Linking out to other bloggers through your blog roll and in individual blog posts is also a good social strategy. When you link to another blogger you will get their attention. Chances are they will check out who is linking to them and if they like your blog they may subscribe to it. Or even link back to you in the future.
• Further, by linking to authoritative bloggers in your industry, your readers will perceive you to be at their level, defined by the company we keep. It’s very important that these links make sense and that they add something to your ideas. Name dropping industry experts into your posts does not add to the quality of your post and will probably take away from your readers experience.

4) Promote the Blog using Niche Social Media

• Research your clients industry to find social media sites that their potential clients may use. I.e. if your client’s product is helpful to the environment then environmentally conscious posts may appeal to the HUGG crowd.
• Decide which posts would appeal to which social media. There is no point in spamming social media with every blog post your client writes. Only the really good posts that are on topic for that social property should be submitted. If your post is interesting to the social media’s target market then social media can drive quality traffic to your client’s site.

Make sure all the steps i the plan are mapped out into a process and that the process is communicated to everyone involved.

Metrics
Forget about what all the experts say. Just ask your client “what would make you consider this a success?” You may have to coach your client to keep it reasonable but this is going to open up a very important dialog.
i.e. You want get more traffic to your site and you want some of it to convert. So we have two objectives here.

• Quantity of traffic (this is going to build over time so I would set goals for this for 3months, 6 months, 12 months).
• Quality traffic. Some of my favorite quality indicators include bounce rate, time spent on site, and number of pages visited.
• Down the line you will want to start looking at how social measures like the comments your posts are generating and the number of RSS subscribers.

I’ll discuss what realistic measures are for your Clients Blog, in part four of this series.

A Blog without Objectives and a Plan is just a Tactic.
By breaking out the steps and assigning accountabilities & time lines to those steps you can take a tactic and turn it into a successful strategy for your client.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Why Free Viral Promotion Makes Practical Sense - by Clive Anderson

First let us clarify. What is Viral Promotion.

Viral Promotion starts out in more or less the same way as most other forms of promoting online, except the deference soon becomes apparent from the moment you join. Most other traffic producing websites are one’s that you join or use for the production of your ads or websites, some free and some you have to pay for, but predominantly you use that program’s services to promote for you.

However, when you join a Viral Traffic generating program you are immediately faced with an altogether different set-up. First and foremost you will be expected to view six or seven websites that will give you a code to enter into the program once you have viewed the site for long enough. Secondly you will be expected to place your ad in section one (There can six or seven sections depending). This can be in the form of a simple single line ad or in most cases you can place a title and up to 500 characters in the main ad and of course your link or URL.

This now becomes your advertising board. By starting to promote the actual program itself, which can be done in numerous ways you will be gaining not only views of the program, but also your ad on the front page (Ads in Viral Traffic programs tend to be displayed on the front page that is seen when advertised).

When someone joins that program they will be expected to follow the same process as you did, except this time when they view the first website it will be your website from your ad. (So the more you promote the program the more times your ad and website will be seen).

It doesn’t end there. By you promoting the program and gaining sign-ups yourself these people’s ads will be placed in section one and yours will be moved down to section two. Lets say it is a rainy season and you only managed to get ten sign-ups personally. That would equate to your website being seen by just ten people. And say those ten people only managed to duplicate the same as you did. Well that is a hundred more people that have seen your website. Now if those hundred duplicated with just ten sign-ups then that means your website has just been seen by at least a thousand people and we are only up to section three.

Bearing in mind all you have done is gained ten sign-ups. Here’s where it really starts to get going because those thousand are only going to get ten sign-ups also, but that does mean your website has now been seen by a staggering ten thousand people.

Going to section five is going to give you (On top of all the website views you have already received) one hundred thousand website visitors and as if that wasn’t going enough to blow your website out of the water, by the time your all done at the end of section six over one million people will have seen your website and many more than that who didn’t join will have seen your ad.

One million website visitors just by getting the ball rolling with ten people joining below you. I think anyone would have to agree that by any standard the Viral marketing process is a marvel to behold. Just imagine if that first ten was in fact thirty five or even one hundred people and it doesn’t even have to stop there.

Now obviously with numbers like that involved it is not going to happen overnight. No, in fact it will probably take a good few months if not several to start seeing the really big numbers of visitors, but once that avalanche starts to roll there’ll be no stopping it from there on in.

On top of that there is the added bonus of knowing that no-matter what kind of website you plug into a system such as this it is going to be successful. Even if it is only a $7 product that you are selling.

Further more, imagine getting involved with four or five such systems, the end results are un-imaginable.

A real scenario where the results far outweigh any amount of effort that it would take.

Still think free viral promotion isn’t worth the effort – Think Again…

JOIN FREE VIRAL RIGHT NOW!

Imagine if there was one single place where you could activate not one of these type of program’s, not two but five. And imagine if that place had every conceivable free promotion system all set-up and ready to go with materials and everything you would need to make them all work. That place really does exist. It has just had the finishing touches added and is now available to everyone absolutely free of charge.

If you wish to check it out for yourself, please feel free by using the link Below:

JOIN FREE VIRAL RIGHT NOW!


So, How The System Works?


Here's a Graphical Example :

First Phase: Webmasters signup on your level 1

Next Phase: Your "Level 1 Webmasters" promote their FreeViral pages

Next Phase: Your "Level 1 Webmasters" build their downline (and yours!)

Matured Phase: You have a HUGE dowline (which never stops growing!)

Not only does it really work, but it really works Very Well.

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Kind REgards

Clive Anderson
The Smart Markters Solution

Make More Money, Sell PPC Ads on Facebook!

Pay per click ads have been widely used in the internet marketing world and they are probably the most used types of Internet advertising among online marketers. It is one of the effective methods for driving a lot of targeted traffic to websites and producing good return on investment (ROI) for many Internet businesses.

Today, the very popular social networking site, Facebook.com also offers Facebook Ads. It is a pay per click advertisement that any Facebook users can try. If you want to use the Facebook Ads to increase your website traffic and revenue, the first thing you must know is how to create an appealing Facebook Ads that will attract people to click on it.

A good Facebook PPC advertisement is the one that will be able to grab people's attention and to achieve that you will have to create something catchy and flashy in your ad. You must remember that people will only click on Internet ads that truly catch their attention.

Also, you have to remember that when people login to their Facebook account, most of them will be interested just in checking out what's new in their account or what's happening with their network of friends. They will always want to socialize with other Facebook users who have the similar interest.

Now, let’s talk about creating a PPC advertisement in Facebook Ads, your main task is to take away people's fixed intention (as mentioned above) when they visit Facebook or login to their profile and make them take some time to take a look at your Facebook PPC ad and click on it.

Creating a good pay per click advertisement on Facebook Ads isn’t difficult. You just need some creativity. For instance: If you are trying to market your Nokia cell phones or any kind of electronic items that people would definitely love to have, you might want to try advertising "Want an Nokia Cell Phone at a Cheap Price?".

For this type of example, you may need to spend some time to identify your target customers. For electronic products, the target customers will be those people in college or people between the ages of 18 to 25. You must remember that youngsters today love to buy cheap and cool electronic products.

You can also add a picture of the cell phone to attract more potential customers to view your ad. Visual advertising (ads with photo and graphic) will definitely more effective in catching people's attention compared with the traditional Internet text advertising.

Besides, you should have a strong selling point. Don't just tell people to find out your offer, you should give them a good reason why they should check out what you have to offer. You need to study your target customers and do some researches find out what they need and what they really want.

These are just some of the things that you need to know about advertising in Facebook. By keeping these tips in mind and applying them when your are starting a Facebook Ads campaign, you will find that they will help you a lot in creating a successful Facebook marketing campaign that will increase your online business exposure and generate more sales for you.