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Marketing

What You Need to Know About SEO

What You Need to Know About SEO

How many different websites do you visit each day? How many of those sites did you reach through a search engine? Chances are at least one of them if not more. Search engines are the gateway to much of the internet. People just like you go online in search of something, but not sure where to find it. Their search engine then directs them to a list of ranked websites. If you’re like most people, you will only check out the top ranked results, even though there may be multiple pages of results that match your search query. This means that it is extremely beneficial for your website to appear on that first page of results.

But how do these websites make it into the list? Search engine optimization. Simply put, search engine optimization is a process used by websites to give them a higher ranking and more visibility in search results.

It used to be that search engine optimization, or SEO, was as simple as having the right keywords placed all over your website and in the code that makes up your website. But that’s no longer true. While the big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have many number of factors that affect SEO with their service, they aren’t sharing what all these factors are. Think of what affects these SEO rankings as a recipe. We don’t know all the ingredients that make up this recipe, but thankfully top SEO experts have identified some.

Read on to learn how to include some of these ingredients in your website.

Your Domain

Before ICANN opened the gTLD world to more personalized domains, your domain didn’t matter much to your SEO. When most websites had similar domains like .com, .org, or .net, these didn’t add much to SEO other than credibility for the domain. Keywords have long been important in web addresses, but now they are important in domains as well. Websites that battled for top SEO ranking  with just their web address can now battle for it with their domain. Coffee.com now has to battle www.fresh.coffee. Think about the keywords that are important to your website and business and choose that domain.

Your Website

Keywords still play an important role in your website. Though they have been supplemented by some other important ingredients–which we will explain below–they still need to be a focus of your website. What are you selling? Why should people come to your website? If you’re selling, local, fair-trade coffee, find ways to include those keywords and that keyword phrase in many places on your website. Search engines give preferences to website who use a search term many times in their website. This shows these search engines that the website must be a good fit for the search term since it is used many times on the website. However, that doesn’t mean you should just type “local fair-trade coffee” on your website over and over. In fact, this is a bad idea. As search engines have gotten more complex they have been able to identify and even weed out websites that are trying to game the system and get all the clicks without providing good content

Your Content

Search engines like Google will often change what the engine looks for from websites to keep sites from manipulating it. One of the big changes Google has made recently has been a focus on quality content. Google is essentially a robot that crawls websites, so how does it know good content from bad? It doesn’t but it has some rules for what it think makes good content. A big rule is content that is enjoyed, shared and supported by others is considered more legitimate. That means you can create quality content all day, but if no one is reading it, Google won’t give it as much weight. So it is important to create quality content and get others to read it. How do you do this? Following the coffee example this may mean writing a blog on your website that talks not just about your coffee but about coffee in  general. What’s the best roast? How do you tell good coffee from bad? Write these blog posts and share them with friends, on social media and other blogs if possible. You are creating quality content that is keyword rich that you are now hopefully building an audience for.

These are just three ways to build your SEO and SEO is always changing. Services like Google give a little insight into what their search engine is looking for every few months. Keep an eye out for these updates, keep checking back here, and continue creating great content.

 

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Affiliate Marketing Marketing

The Best B2B Sales Technique You’re Not Using

B2B Networking

 

One thing many B2B sales people seem to forget when pursuing a lead is to stop being a sales person and start being a human. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Would you want to be continually hounded and repeatedly told the benefits of a product that have nothing to do with why you may be interested in using it? You are not a nameless online shopper filling your e-cart with goods. You are a potential client or customer of the business, using the product or service for your business. So, here it is: the best B2B (or business to business) sales technique you’re not using is the delicate process of getting to know your prospect on a genuine level, listening, engaging, and crafting your sales pitch around that specific person’s motivations to buy.

Invite them to participate.

Whether you’re the owner of a marketing agency looking to close a client, or an affiliate marketer looking to close a new member of the team, one of the advantages of trying to close a B2B deal is that it is much more personal and on more of a peer-level than B2C customers. Invite your prospect to grab coffee or even play some golf. Get tickets to a sports game or a concert and invite your potential lead along to enjoy. The type of activity will depend on the value of the lead being closed, but the idea is to get some face-to-face time alone with this prospect.

Ask them questions about themselves.

The number one priority of this “get together” is to genuinely learn about this prospect and what makes them tick. What inspires this person or drives them to work hard? What is their personality type and what do they enjoy doing? By asking people about themselves, even family and general questions that are unrelated to your business will get them to loosen up, trust you a little bit more, and think of you on a more friendly, less “salesy” level.

Practice engaged listening.

Don’t just ask questions and forget to listen to the answers or respond with follow up questions that show you are interested. By sharing openly with you, your prospect will be giving you valuable insight into the kind of person they are, why they may or may not be looking for your services, and what kind of tactics you should be using to close them. Once you listen and learn from them, you will know what may motivate them to sign on the dotted line. For example, let’s say you are a member of the Domain Cost Club, and part of their affiliate marketing program. After speaking with a prospect in depth, you come to realize that the wholesale domain prices are much more important to this person who is constantly purchasing top-level domains than the affiliate program itself. In this case, you will know to change your sales approach.

Perfect the “soft sell.”

The word “sell” should be used extremely lightly in this post, as the whole idea is to listen and engage, instead of sell. Once you have gotten to know your prospect and learned valuable insights as to why they are interested in your product or service, you can begin to describe the benefits as they relate specifically to this person. Give concrete examples based on information they have told you as to why this product or service will work for them, or how much they stand to gain based on what they told you they were looking for, specifically. Relate all information back to the prospect personally and back to how you, yourself found value from this product or service. Whatever you do, do not push yourself or what you are selling on this person in the first meeting. Simply explain the benefits and allow them to reach back out with specific questions.

Check back in.

You will want to re-engage your lead multiple times throughout this process. First, make sure to thank them for their time and follow up with some anecdotal stories you enjoyed speaking about. Or, perhaps you discussed something else you could help them with or that you could do together. Make sure to keep your word and follow-up with any necessary details. After a week or so, you will want to check back in regarding your product or service. Ask your prospect if they need any further information and/or reading material to help them in their decision. Offer to set them up with a current or previous customer that could give them an unbiased opinion.

Create urgency.

At the end of the day, people respond better to making decisions if they feel there is a time constraint attached. If your prospect still hasn’t signed, offer some kind of special deal or discounted membership for one week only. Of course, do not be pushy with this approach, simply let them know you are reaching out in regards to this special, because you know they were interested and this would give them a significant discount (or whatever deal you have offered them.) These kinds of activities will passively encourage the prospect to make the choice and close the deal.

Remember, this approach should continue even after the sale is closed. It is just as important to keep the client or customer once you have closed them. Provide continued support and a consistent communication stream. Your client lists should have a “check-in” calendar in which you take into account the satisfaction level they have in regards to the product or service. This will aid in a high retention rate for your business.

You may think this is an extremely time-consuming process to complete, and you’re right – it is. However, you will close more leads with this approach than you ever will with a “one size fits all,” “throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks” approach. Time and effort are the marks of a truly successful sales person.

 

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Landing Pages Marketing

These Thank You Page Best Practices Will Help You Move Leads Down the Funnel

lead funnel

In our last post, we discussed best practices for a landing page that will successfully convert leads. Once your leads click on your ad and submit your form to receive whatever offer you’ve advertised, they should be directed to a well-designed thank you page.  A thank you page let’s the lead know their request has been received and allows your brand to have another opportunity for conversion.

The following are best practices for content to be included on your thank you page:

1. Clean Design

Just as you should have done in your original landing page, make sure your thank you page is clean and easy to navigate. Your visitor should not be confused on what their follow-up options are. Also make sure the branding and design matches that of the original landing page. The ad to the landing page to the thank you page should all read like a story.

2. Remove Distractions

Once your lead has converted and been directed to the thank you page, you want them to take some other action that will force them to continue to interact with your brand. Take out links to the homepage, or the like, which will not do anything to assist you in converting the lead in any other way.

3. Confirm the Submission

Make sure the user knows that your business has received their form and you are taking the next action, whatever that might be. Let them know the form has been submitted and either they will be contacted, their order will be shipped, or some follow-up will occur after this.

4. Include a Relevant Offer

Think of your thank you page as another landing page, and another opportunity to make a conversion, as mentioned above. If you are an affiliate marketing company and your original offer was a discount on signing up, you should include a link or on-page ad to a “refer a friend” commission, or something else that would be relevant to the offer they just acted on. Other ideas for additional offers include webinars or coupon codes for other products.

5. Tell Them Why to Follow Your Social Accounts

It’s all well and good to include links to your social accounts and hope that people click, but why not give a little push to increase your chances of gaining likes and followers? By including larger social icons with blurbs that mention why they should follow you on social and what kind of content they will see from you, they may be more inclined to click. For example, if you are a domain registrar and this lead just converted on an offer for a discounted domain name, they may be interested in how to design their website or want to learn about simple social media tips to increase traffic to their new site. Letting them know that this is the kind of content you post about on social will be much more likely to get them to follow than simply placing a link to your twitter account.

6. Include Value Added Blog Content

The same concept from above applies to this best practice. Offering free content on subject matter that would interest your lead will allow them to get to know and trust your brand more. If your social accounts post about various categories this lead cares about, they will most likely also care about the original content being created and posted on your blog. Choose to include a blog post that is, again, relevant to your initial offer – make your story continue.

7. Ask them to Subscribe

Let the lead know what kind of content they can expect to receive if they sign up for your email newsletter and provide a simple email submission form to close the deal. From your end, you make sure your drip marketing campaigns provide interesting, trustworthy content that would apply to your leads, no matter where they are in the funnel. Remember, you should use your email marketing to push leads like this down the funnel to make them a customer.

8. Try Including a Video

Videos generally get very high click rates on thank you pages. At this point we can assume the lead is interested in your brand or type of product based on the fact that they submitted your form to receive your offer. This lead is most likely interested in learning more about your brand, how your products work, more details on the offer, or something in that realm. Remember, the idea is to keep this lead engaged with your brand for as long after conversion as possible.

9. Show Off Your Social Proof

Including reviews from current and previous customers, bloggers, reliable news or online sources is an awesome way to seal the deal with your lead and increase their trust with your brand. People like to know how others like using a product or service and will often be more likely to complete a purchase if they see the product got great reviews from others that used the product or service. “As seen on” images, such as “As Seen on The Today Show,” or “Dr. OZ,” also work as wonderful social proof on a landing page.

10. Let Them Share

Ask visitors to share the offer on their personal social channels or via email. Using the same concept from above, but to an even higher degree, someone will be more likely to make a purchase if someone they know personally has actually emailed them an offer with the assumption that the person they are sending to would be interested in it.

BONUS: Send an Auto Confirmation Email

Make sure you set up an auto-responder email to confirm submission of a form and thank the lead for their interest. This email is an entirely new blank canvas with even more chances to convert a lead in different ways. Include any of the best practices above that you didn’t have room for on the original thank you page, or include the same best practices with different content! The point is not to waste an opportunity to touch a lead an additional time and get them to engage with your brand further.

Remember to keep your design clean and your paths to conversion easy for your user to understand. In other words, you probably won’t be able to use every single best practice on every thank you page. Choose the ones that are most relevant to the original ad and landing page, and whichever ones align with your most important conversion goals at the time. It’s also a good idea to test different thank you pages to see which content resonates better with your leads.

What did we miss? What is you “must have” piece of content on your thank you page? Let us know in the comment section…

 

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Landing Pages Marketing

2015 Best Practices for Landing Pages that Convert

landing page best practices 2015

 

So, you got your target customer (we hope,) to click your offer or ad – now it’s time to make sure you close the deal and get their info. Whether you’re goal is to collect an email address, garner a subscription to your blog, or have your customer complete a download, etc. the second most important part of that process, after creating an effective ad or offer, is the effectiveness of your landing page.

There are many reasons a lead may click the ad and then fail to complete the landing page form, but listed below are some best practices you should follow in order to design landing pages that convert.

1. Consistent with the source

The “one size fits all” method that many people use for landing pages is simply not effective anymore. Your offer, writing style and design should be consistent with the channel it is being displayed on. For example, if your offer is a discounted price on an affiliate marketing membership being shown on Facebook, your landing page should reflect that. You would want to use more casual, peer style writing than you would if your offer were a whitepaper download coming at the end of a Forbes magazine article. Also, make sure to use some of the exact language you had in your ad from the original channel in your landing page. This reassures the lead that they have clicked into the right place and it’s the page they want to be on. 

2. Take audience into account

Each channel you use to advertise can potentially have different audiences viewing your content. The style of copy, design of the landing page, and content on the page should always be tailored to fit the type of person clicking your offer and the channel that they came from. Who did you target in your ad or offer? What kind of content resonates well with them? Your landing page should reflect the “mindset” of your lead based on your targeting and where they clicked over from.

3. Closes the deal

Use clear and concise sales language in your landing page. Your lead wants to know exactly what your offer is, why they should want it, and what they can expect after submitting the form. Bullet points and check marks come in handy here. Use strong, action language, like “download the guide,” or “get a call from one of our experts,” to ensure the lead understands what the exchange of information is for.

4. Shortest form possible

The process of landing page completion should be as painless as possible for your viewer. Extensively long forms are an enormous deterrent for leads, and increase the chances of abandonment. Only require the fields you absolutely need from this person in order to get in contact with them, nurture them, or get them what they need for the offer they clicked on. One other option if you absolutely have to have a long list of form requirements is to have multiple parts, or a form that builds. Once you receive one or two of the form fills, then they move on to the next part of the form. However, avoiding a long form is always the best option.

5. One clear CTA

There is nothing worse than a landing page that has so many calls to action that the lead doesn’t know which one to click first. Make this as easy a path as possible for your potential customer. They should know exactly where the CTA button is immediately upon opening the landing page; in addition to what they need to do (i.e. fill out the form) and what they are getting in return. The CTA should look clearly like a clickable button, should stand out against the rest of the page, and should use action language. Examples of good CTA’s include: “Download Now!” – “Get My FREE Quote!” – “Sign Me Up!” – etc.

6. Limit Distractions

Too many links, buttons, images, and the like, floating all over the landing page simply distract the lead from what you actually want them to accomplish while on the page, which is filling out your form. The more opportunities they have to click out of the landing page, the more you are increasing your chance of the form never being completed by a potential lead. Save the social links, blog posts, and homepage links for the Thank You page, once the lead has already submitted their info.

7. Urgency is a plus

If it makes sense to include verbiage such as “limited quantity,” or “limited time offer,” do it. It’s marketing 101 knowledge that urgency can increase the chance of your sale based on consumer psychology. It won’t make sense to include urgency on every offer or landing page, but is a great option if you are able to make it relevant.

8. Contrasting colors

Using contrasting and complimentary colors throughout your page is the best way to direct your visitor’s eyes on the particular path that you want them to follow. Contrast in colors makes the copy easier to read, makes the CTA really pop off the page, and is simply aesthetically pleasing to the eye. For example, an orange CTA button looks great when the entire page uses muted blues and whites. Your visitor’s eye is automatically drawn to the one color that stands out above the rest.

9. Limited Copy

Again, you want this process to be easy and painless for the lead – you don’t want them to feel overwhelmed by two large paragraphs they feel they have to read before filling out a form and giving you their information, and instead decide to abandon the page. A heading which reassures them they are one step away from redeeming the offer they clicked on, a sub heading, and a few bullets should be enough to explain again, after having already seen your ad and been interested in the offer, to the lead what will happen once they hit that submit button.

10. Responsive design

Always remember that your landing page needs to look just as clean and well designed on a mobile device as it does on a desktop computer. In fact, it would behoove most marketers to put more emphasis on mobile devices than desktop, as mobile is quickly becoming the primary viewing device for most people. Make sure your template and design stacks your content the best way possible, and that your form is always above the fold. Do not force your lead to scroll, or potentially click out because they don’t even know there is a form to fill out below the fold.

The best practices listed above will help you to ensure you are designing landing pages that convert leads into customers. However, the channels used, quality of your ad or offer, and a number of other factors go into the success of a campaign. Stay tuned for next week’s article regarding best practices for “Thank You” pages.

 

 

 

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Marketing

30 Ways to Increase Blog Traffic and Promote Your Blog Posts

Increase Blog Traffic and Promote Your Blog Posts

Many believe in the old adage, “build it and they will come.” Unfortunately for content, that simply isn’t true. You take the time to write a research a topic, write a relevant post that your audience will care about, include the perfect keywords, and for some reason the post just isn’t taking off! Whatever your reason for creating original content, namely blog posts, it’s important to actually promote and market that content so that it is read and shared by whoever you are targeting.

From free tactics like social media to paid avenues, like affiliate marketing, these 30 ways to increase blog traffic are sure to help your blog get off the ground:

1. Twitter

Post your article as soon as it’s been written with a “click-worthy” title (even if it’s different than the actual title) and an eye catching image set to 1024px x 512px to fit well in the stream.

2. Facebook

Post your link with an awesome, standout image (sized at 940px x 788px) and an interesting description that lets the reader know why they should click. It’s good to be conversation in your post.

3. LinkedIn

Post your articles as a regular stream update, as well as in the “publication” section of your profile. You can link your content with the title and description to your profile for visitors to be directed to.

4. Google+

It’s awesome to post to G+ not only for the SEO benefits with Google, but also for the engaged crowds. You should also join a number of “communities” that would be interested in your content and make sure to post your blogs there as well.

5. Pinterest

This may not work for every industry, but is extremely beneficial if it does. Create an easy to understand image that can be easily shared across the platform. In other words, create an image with the title of your post and link it back to your blog.

6. Instagram

Use the same strategy as above; create a social image that people will want to click, and have it link back to your blog post.

7. Use Hashtags

The use of hashtags are a MUST on almost every social platform when attempting to increase your traffic to that page. It helps to categorize what your content is about, allows it to appear in multiple places within Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., and makes your content searchable to those looking for specific content.

8. Stumble Upon

Add the URL to your post on the “add a page” section of Stumble Upon for your post to be included in someone’s “stumble path”, based on what your content is about. There is also a “paid discovery” option.

9. Triberr

This is an awesome resource for consistent bloggers and “influencers.” The purpose of the platform is to share great content with other bloggers and marketers and cross promote each other’s posts.

10. Use Videos

Every so often, try to integrate a useful video into your editorial calendar for your blog. Upload your video to Youtube, Vimeo, etc. and remember to include the link back to your original post on your blog. Syndication services like TubeMogul can save you time by distributing your video to all of the video platforms.

11. Reddit

The Reddit community is one of the most engaged, but also the most honest and sometimes harsh, on the Internet. If users like your content, they will most likely share it, but if your content is merely “fluff,” don’t bother posting.

12. Blogionaire and Cool Site of the Day

These sites feature and send all of their traffic to a new website or blog each day. Submit your link or blog to their website in order to be considered for this influx of traffic.

13. Facebook Social Sharing Groups

Join and consistently share content in Facebook groups that are relevant to your industry and specifically your blog post. Members of groups tend to be more engaged than users simply scrolling their newsfeed, and will be more likely to see your post

14. Slide Share

Slideshows are a fast growing, interesting way to display your content. Use bite-sized facts and promote your slide share as your blog post. You can also include the slide share in a section of your LinkedIn profile.

15. Guest Posting

Create a stellar article to submit to another highly trafficked blog that is in a similar industry as you. You can gain new “followers,” and therefore, new readers with this tactic, as well as links back to your blog.

16. Blog Commenting

Include useful commentary on blog posts that could relate back to yours. Answer a question or provide real feedback to the original writer (to avoid being “spammy”) and include a link back to a relevant article of your own.

17. Quora

Also a great place to discover new blog post topics by seeing questions asked by other relating to your industry, Quora is a great place to include your link in a comment. Find questions that you have already answered in your blog posts and include it in your response to that person’s questions.

18. Content Aggregators and/or RSS Blog Directories

Submit each post to websites like Alltop for your posts to have the opportunity to be automatically listed for their readers to find. It tends to be difficult to be featured on them, so quality and “share-ability” of your posts will be key.

19. Email List

Make sure you have an easy to find “subscription” box for people to sign up for your email list on your blog. Subscribers will be automatically sent an email containing the link to your new post.

20. Email Top Bloggers

Find influential bloggers in your industry and interact with them via social media and comment on their posts. Then, email them asking to share your published articles for your continued support of theirs.

21. Email Signatures

Include a link back to your blog in your email signature to ensure everyone you email will see a link to your newest post.

22. Infographics

Turning a post, preferably one with a lot of data or information, into an infographic is a great way to increase the chances of your post becoming viral. People like to share visuals on their social networks, so include a link back to the original post.

23. Digg

Paste your URL into the “submit a link” feature on the Digg website to potentially have your published article featured.

24. Thank You Pages

It is best practice to include something of value for free on your thank you page, which is followed by your landing page. Include links to your most recent posts and encourage viewers to take a look.

25. Face to Face Networking

Bring up your blog, what kind of content you generally write about and how it can help the person you’re speaking with whenever possible. Make sure your blog name is easy to remember or included on your card so the person can easily find you.

26. Affiliate Marketing or Network Marketing

Depending on your product or service, it’s known that affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to increase sales. However, it’s also a great way to have your posts shared by a large group of people. Affiliates are all working towards the same goal and your content will help their end goal.

27. Facebook Advertising or Boosted Posts

Boost or create and ad out of your Facebook post that contains your article. This will ensure those who would potentially be interested in your content, but are not currently fans of your page, have the opportunity to come across your content.

28. Ebay or Craigslist

Listing your product, if applicable, on platforms like eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon can drastically increase traffic to your blog. Make sure whatever you list is relevant to your industry and post, and include a link back to your blog in your listing. It’s a free way to get a lot of eyes on your link.

29. Engaging with Your Blog Community

Interact and engage with readers who are already fans of your blog. Turn readers into evangelists who will help you promote your blog simply because they feel they helped “discover” it.

30. WRITE GREAT CONTENT

Making sure the content you are distributing is great, not good, is actually not a bonus; it’s the most important part of promoting your blog posts. If the actual content is not valuable, interesting, thought provoking, or evoking of some other emotion, it’s useless. Do not forget that the point of your blog posts is to generate leads, not just get someone to read your post.

The most important tactic in gaining traction with your blog that turns into a source for lead generation is effort. It will take time to build up a following, but continue to use these strategies above in order to increase traffic to your blog and promote your blog posts.

 

 

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affiliate marketing

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Affiliate Marketing Uncategorized

7 Tips to Boost Your Affiliate Marketing Sales

increase affiliate marketing sales

Online affiliate marketing can be an incredible way to make money while working from home, simply by building and utilizing your network. However, affiliate marketing requires research, focus and commitment in order to be truly successful.

The following tips will help you hone your affiliate networking craft and starting making sales and earning income more quickly!

1. Build Relationships

Relationships are key to affiliate marketing. Constantly networking, having conversations, and finding ways to help others will be extremely beneficial to you. The more contacts you have, the better. No matter where you are, there is always time to meet someone new, strike up a conversation and build a new contact. Even if the person is not interested in your product, perhaps they know someone that is.

2. Solve a Problem

Is the product you’re selling useful? Does it actually help the customer in some way? Does it save them money or help them in their daily life? Affiliate marketers for Domain Cost Club can use the discounted prices of domains and enormous variety of new TLDs (or Top Level Domains) as one of their top selling points for the product. Purchasing domains from Domain Cost Club will save the customer money. Period.

3. Use Quality Content

Make sure anything you post on website, blog, social media, etc. is quality and can stand the test of time. Don’t post or write about things that don’t matter or will be outdated within a few months. This tip is especially important if you are an affiliate marketer for multiple products. Make sure you are conveying the most important, useful information regarding your products or that you are providing information helpful to your audience.

4. Use the Product

As an affiliate marketer, it’s easy to get a bad rap in the online world – simply by the nature of the business. Make sure you have actually tried and like the product you are selling. People can easily see through a disingenuous sales pitch and will not buy from someone who they don’t trust.

5. Be Honest

Transparency is key in gaining the trust of potential customers. Make sure you mention that you are an affiliate marketer of the product, and give details about how that actually works. Make sure your audience knows that you have indeed used the product, and that you would never endorse something you wouldn’t use yourself.

6. Set Specific Goals

Beginning an affiliate marketing journey without actually sitting down and writing out tangible goals will get you no where. It’s too easy to avoid hitting vague goals or let yourself off the hook if you don’t have real numbers written down. Talk with peers to evaluate realistic, yet challenging goals. Then create a road map to hitting them. You will accomplish more by knowing what it is you have set out to do from the beginning.

7. Be Patient

As mentioned above, success with affiliate marketing doesn’t happen over night. Extensive research regarding the product you are selling is essential. You need to be an authority figure on the subject. Not to mention the long process of building up your network, gaining their trust, and actually closing a deal. However, if you commit to following through, you will no doubt reap the rewards!

Implementing these tips into your daily affiliate marketing routine is sure to help you close more sales and achieve your goals. Make sure you build upon these guidelines each day to get the most out of your experience.

What did we miss? Do you have any top affiliate marketing tips to live by? Let us know in the comment section!

 

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Marketing Social Media

7 Social Media Tools You Can’t Live Without

social media tools 795x390

Let’s face it: there isn’t a business today that wouldn’t benefit from the use of marketing and promotion via social media.  Whether the business you own or work for sells a product or provides a service, having branded social media pages, and employees of the business assist in promotion is bound to generate more web traffic and more leads, if done correctly.

Posting the right content, with the right image, at the right time, has become known as the science of social media success. Content (both unique and curated content) posted to your business pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and the like should be relevant and engaging. Images created should be eye catching, appealing, and professional. Businesses should research the best time to post based on who their target audience is, what platforms they are on, and at what time.

All of the tactics mentioned above are critical for social media success. The following social media tools are designed to help make that “social media science” a whole lot easier for the inexperienced marketer. Use the social media tools to your advantage, whether you are a social media guru, or just beginning to look for new ways to promote your business!

Curating Content

The most important part of your social media strategy is hands down choosing content that is relevant, interesting, and/or helpful in some way to YOUR target audience. The following two social media tools make it easy to find articles to post based on the subject matter you are looking for, OR give you ideas of popular subject matter you can repurpose into your own original blog post, infographic, white paper, e-book, etc.

Buzz Sumo

1. Buzz Sumo

Type in the subject matter you are looking for, use the filters along the sides to narrow by time frame, etc., then post the links of the most popular, and most shared articles from the list. It’s as simple as that!

2. Alltop

The main page shows you all of the hottest articles at the moment, in every category. Use the search function at the top to narrow down the articles to the subject matter you are looking for. Find the most popular links for you business to share.

Creating Social Media Posts

The next step in ensuring your success on social platforms is to be able to create unique and eye-catching images of your own, and to use the right language and hashtags that will increase clicks. These are especially important on your own original content, since this work has most likely already been done for you when you’re just reposting someone else’s article. These next social media tools will help you increase the amount of clicks you get on your social media posts.

Canva

3. Canva

This social design tool has tons of images, fonts, and pre-designed layouts to assist you in your mission. Many images are free, and the rest are simply $1.00 a piece on a pay as you go service. Follow the simple tutorials during sign up, and you’ll be creating professional grade social images before you know it!

4. Pic Monkey

Another awesome social deign tool that allows you to edit, re-size, and add text and logos to pictures. This social media tool is fantastic for editing the colors, features, etc. or already existing pictures. For $10/month, you can use the “Royale” features, which are highly recommended if you will be using this service often.

5. Hashtagify.me

Adding hashtags to your post can dramatically increase your reach and clicks, if used correctly. Once you have the content and image you are going to post, you want to make sure you are using the most relevant hashtags possible.  Type the most relevant subject matter into the search box, and switch your results into table mode. The results will be returned to you by popularity of the hashtag, and relevance of the original term you typed in. For example, let’s say you are an affiliate marketer for Domain Cost Club, posting the most current domain news. You may find that “#domain” is way more likely to be clicked than “#domains” – in which case you would want to choose the more popular tag!

Scheduling Your Posts

The most efficient way to make sure your posts go out at the right time, and give you easy to understand analytics is to use a social scheduling application. These last two social media tools will save you time and energy, while giving you accurate tips on how to optimize your social efforts!

Buffer

6. Buffer

Buffer allows you to quickly choose a schedule by day and time of when you want your posts to go out. Once your schedule is created, you can simply link each of your social pages to the app and quickly paste your links and/or posts in the box to go into the queue. The analytics function gives you an overall view of your top performing posts, ReTweets, shares, and more.

7. Hootsuite

The Hootsuite platform allows you to schedule each individual post as you go, throughout the week. You can set up different feeds based on mentions, shares, ReTweets, scheduled posts, and posts that have gone out – all on one easy to understand dashboard. The analytics function allows you to turn your results into charts and graphs to see your success.

No matter what kind of business you are in, these social media tools will make finding, creating, and posting social media content an absolute breeze. Even beginners will be able to do it. Although professional social marketers often use these social media tools, people that own a small business, or earn money from home with an online business will find these tools extremely beneficial and easy to use.

What about YOU? Do you have any social media tools that you just couldn’t live without? Share them in the comment section!

 

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Affiliate Marketing Marketing

How To Make Money Online: An Introduction To Affiliate Marketing

what is affiliate marketing

In the world of Internet Marketing, there are many avenues used to increase brand awareness, generate leads for a company, and drive sales. One of the most common, but underrated, strategies used is “affiliate marketing.” But what is affiliate marketing actually, and how does it benefit you?

Read on to find out.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based program in which a company rewards their affiliates for each customer brought to the business by that specific affiliate. Think of it as a large-scale referral program. Internet-based affiliate marketing is extremely popular for a number of reasons, including its effectiveness at bringing warm leads to a business, the monetary benefits it provides for the affiliates, and the flexibility it usually supports for both the business and the affiliates.

There are many different structures a business can use to reward affiliates, but all of them a directly related to performance. Those that are simply misinformed, and flat out wrong, sometimes incorrectly compare the concept of affiliate marketing to that of ponzi schemes. Affiliate marketing can employ various multilevel marketing tactics, but never anything illegal. If it’s illegal, it is NOT affiliate marketing.

Build A Second Income

earn a second incomeAffiliate marketing is so popular because, as mentioned above, it has incredible earning potential for the affiliates. By putting in the research needed to become an expert in whatever industry the company you are affiliate marketing for, spending time building out your in person and social networks, and honing your sales skills, you could be on your way to securing a hefty secondary, or even primary income.

The great news is that your affiliate income is entirely dependent on your effort. The more you promote the service through your network, content marketing, SEO, social media, etc. – the more money you will make.

The power is in your hands. Utilize affiliate marketing to your advantage and start prospering today.

Give Us An Example

Online membership organizations, like Domain Cost Club, allow you to take advantage of their membership benefits as well as earn secondary income as an affiliate of their services. First, you can become a member of the club to purchase hundreds of domains at wholesale costs. Then, by simply referring people to Domain Cost Club you can start earning commissions as an affiliate. Yes, it’s THAT easy. This video explains more clearly just how easy it is to sign up and start earning extra cash.

 

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