Customers Search to Buy

Do you even know what your Web URL is? Do your customers? Probably not, but that’s okay–assuming Google knows where it is.

Here is a quick test to see if we should be talking.

1. Go to Google
2. Be a customer looking for your products or services
3. Type in a search to find what you are looking for
4. No luck? Try again
5. …and again

Did any of those searches show your website? If you are like 95% of business I talk to, “No” is the answer.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engines are the number one way people find what they buy on the Internet. If you do not have a consistent strategy to market you products and services through these popular search engines you website is anonymous.

Without a search engine strategy your website is just another zombie, adding little value and invisible to consumers that want to buy.

A good Internet marketing campaign is one that consistently produces and distributes relevant, valuable, customer targeted content to the major search engines.

Improving Search Engine Rankings

Getting your business to show up in the search engines more frequently and higher in the search results is a steady process. Here are a few important elements to get you started:

• Make sure your website has customer relevant content
• Register with the search engines and local directories
• Regularly update or generate news feeds on your website
• Encourage other websites to link to yours for relevant topics

These kinds of activities tell Google, Bing, and Yahoo that your business website is a good, relevant, and current source of information about your products and services.

RICEinteractive SEO Services

Our SEO experts can help you move your business website into a leadership position. We can help you get the search results you want and attract the customers you need.

Call us at 734.775.4487 and help more customers find you.

Probably nothing!

95% of business websites do absolutely nothing for their businesses–no phone calls and no revenue. Fortunately, the solution is relatively simple, but few web design firms know the secret.

It’s about words…

Search Engine Marketing

Here is a simple test to prove my point. Think about your own behavior on the Internet. What do you do when you need something or want to buy something on the Web? You go to Google, right?

So does everyone else. They go to Google and they type in…that’s right words. In Internet marketing we call these keywords.

Your website needs to be more than pictures of your office and employees. Your website needs to be filed with relevant words, keywords that help customers find you.

RICEinteractive can help you build the right keywords and content to attract more customers to your website. Our search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) services will have your website booming with new consumer visits quickly.

Copywriting

Of course, getting customers to the site is only half the battle. You need those visitor to call or email you. You want buyers not shoppers.

This is the job of good copywriting. The art of selling with words.

Simply having a website that lists you address and phone number is not going to generate revenue. You need to give your Web visitors a reason to call.

Good copywriting can help generate the need and desire to solve their problem, and solve it right now. We call this the “threshold of resistance.” It is a retail term coined by Taubman, a famous retail architect. Like more traditional retail stores your Web storefront can create resistance–allowing consumers to wait on their purchase.

RICEinteractive specializes in writing content and copy for your website that sells. We will break down that resistance and communicate your value proposition in a way that makes waiting to buy impossible.

What are you waiting for?

Why are you waiting to give us a call?

You know…

• You already invested in your website
• It isn’t attracting consumers
• It isn’t generating any sales inquiries
• It might even be creating resistance to sales

Let’s fix that today! You call and initial consultation is free. We will review your website and tell you the exact steps we will take to increase your sales.

Call me 734-775-4487.

This is one call that will make YOU money.

Creating To Write List(s)

I like to form lists of titles and topics that I think will be interesting to tackle. This list is often scribbled on a legal pad, extracted and tucked in my notebook.

My notebook is my writing desk. Even though I am typically toting my MacBook and do most of my writing there, the notebook is my repository of ideas and home to quick impromptu writing sessions.

However, there is another fountain of inspiration that I use almost as often and it is of a more technical design. And that makes it a more dynamic inspiration tool.

Using Delicious to Track Writing Ideas

My first step involves delicious.com. I still use good old delicious as my preferred bookmarking tool. It is simple and fits tightly with my Firefox browser, where I do my online reading.

I do the majority of my Internet reading over my morning coffee and breakfast. I catch up on my favorite news and blogger via my Google Reader.

Items that trigger thoughts or ideas for future writing get bookmarked with delicious.com and tagged with “towrite.” In addition, I like to use the notes feature to add any comments that may guide my writing later.

This little habit of bookmarking your daily reading will build a rich river of writing ideas and a huge repository of research material.

I will often print off this evolving river of inspiration. Tucking it in my writing notebook along with my handwritten list–many times they are complimentary.

Use Twitter to Get Audience Reaction

The next step is where your writing ideas list can become very dynamic and exciting. I use delicious.com’s relatively new integration with Twitter. Every time I bookmark something I have it broadcast as a Tweet to my thousands of followers.

This simple automated step brings me enormous value. Not only does every Tweet typically help add targeted followers, but more importantly it brings me reaction to the topic or article I just bookmarked.

These reactions can bring me additional ideas, insights, sources, or even clients. This little passive trick can bring even more inspiration and opportunity to your writing.

Engage to Build Expertise or Sources

Don’t neglect the opportunity to engage those who respond on Twitter. Many times these can be experts and sources of information that will add depth and credibility to your writing.

Writing can be a frustrating if every blank sheet of paper or screen involves generating a topic or inspiration. Having that first step dynamically flowing all the time makes each new project a little more fun.

Here are my 5 secrets to increase back links from your next article marketing campaign:

1. Keyword Rich Headlines: Back links to your website, blog, micro-sites, or landing pages are entirely contingent on the effective distribution and syndication of your article. That means your article has to attract attention and communicate value.

Publishers must believe in a fraction of a second, while scanning an article directory or article search, that your article will deliver value to their readers, traffic to their site, and revenue through their advertisers. This belief has to be communicated in your article’s headline.

Write your headline with a specific keyword in mind, a call to action, and long tail value. Every article headline should not only be emotionally compelling, but engineered for search optimization.

2. Keyword Rich Copy: Now that you have made it past the initial cut and a publisher is reading your article you need to pop with inherent value.

To a serious publisher that means high-value, high-returning keywords. Most publishers are syndicating your articles for search engine optimization, text link revenue, or affiliate ad revenue. That means your article need to be packed with keywords that sell.

The easiest way to fill your head and writing with valuable keywords is to spend a little time in a keyword analysis tool like WordTracker or Google’s Keyword Analysis Tool. Search your niche and find suggested terms that are paying the highest eCPM. These are the glasses that your publisher (article client) is looking through when reviewing your articles.

3. Call to Action Resource Box: Most resource boxes look like journalistic bylines. These “golden” little boxes are not designed to when you Pulitzer Prizes or even attribution. They are to pitch and sell your product or service.

No publisher or even reader cares who wrote the article. They want to know where to get more advice or (hopefully) buy the secret potion.

4. High Quality Anchor Text: Getting the most out of your anchor text is your prime objective in article marketing. Think about what you are trying to achieve, your perfect customer, and what they are looking for–then capture it.

Your anchor text is like a flashing, neon arrow pointing you site. Make it compelling and accurate.

Do not squander your precious link text on: your name, your website URL, company name or other non-descriptive text. Every anchor text should be a keyword or action you are going to deliver with every customer’s click. This approach will guide search results and consumers into your product or service for the buy.

5. Deep Links Too: Neglecting the development of deep link backs is the number one mistake I see in site development and article marketing. Don’t forget to develop the whole site–not just the home page.

In your resource box, on every article be sure to include not only the home URL, but also a relevant deep link to your site. This can be a landing page, resources page, or the original article.

Most article directories have a quality reputation and credibility with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN leverage this to expand the indexing of your entire site. The more you index the more likely you are to return in organic search and the more credible your site becomes.

—

Bill Rice is an expert at Internet marketing and copywriting. His interactive marketing agency, RICEinteractive helps businesses increase their online sales lead generation.

Masterful Execution

I witnessed a masterful execution of social media strategy at BlogWorld 08. Coordinated by at least two of panelist on the Making Money Online with a Blog session, Shoemoney instantly increased his Twitter followers by 200+ and piled in the links to his site.

Social Media Setup

This aptly named panel on making money online, was packed with the heavy-hitters in the affiliate marketing space: John Chow, Brian Clark, Zac Johnson, Jim Kukral, Darren Rowse, Jeremy Schoemaker.

As the panel begins the social media campaign creative kicks in. Jim Kukral, the moderator, draws attention to his frustrated wait for the late panelist–Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney). Despite his frustration he launches the session.

Call to Action

Now, as the session proceeds, Jim seems to again become agitated at the empty panelist seat. He turns to the audience of 200+ and tells them to use Twitter and tweet, “@shoemoney you suck #bwe08.” Of course everyone obliges. Instantly 100s of “@shoemoney you suck #bwe08″ tweets light up Twitter clients and Twitter search feeds for #bwe08.

This simple call to action instantly reached thousands both at and monitoring the BlogWorld conference. Bingo! Hundreds of follows and links.

The Social Media Play

Come to find out…it was all a staged social media campaign:

Brilliance! John Chow is infamous for clever social media and audacious social media campaigns. Anyone remember the “John Chow is Full of Shit” viral video test? That broad search returns 45,500 results–not a bad link building strategy.

Social Media Takeaway

So, what is my point to clients? Obviously, I am not advocating that you upstage your next conference panel opportunity or produce viral videos about your bowel movements. However, I am strongly suggesting you follow the key elements of these social media scoundrels:

• be creative
• think 3D (online and offline)
• be interesting
• take a few carefree risks

Have you witnessed any clever social media campaigns?
—
Bill Rice is the founder of RICEinteractive. We help clients design, execute, and make money with content and social media. Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/billrice. I would love to help you succeed.

• Gmail
• LinkedIN
• Twitter
• MyBlogLog
• StumbleUpon
• eZineArticles

I will tell you how to use each in a moment. All you need to do now is sign-up and have your Web URL in each pointed at your home base.

Day 3: Brainstorm Your Brand

This is a critical step and where most stumble. I am going to break it into small concepts.

You are building a personal brand for a reason. Let’s write them down:

• Defining who you are and what you are good at
• Defining who you want to meet
• Defining who you want to meet you
• Make connecting as frictionless as possible

Turn each of these headings into 4-5 core brand concepts. Here are some examples:

• Writer: copywriting, ghostwriting, speech writing, web content
• Affiliate Marketer: ppc, seo, article marketing, affiliate programs
• Mortgage Broker: mortgage rates, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, loan modification

From each of these personal brand concepts craft 10 long tail topics. More examples:

• Writer: Copywriting-10 Secrets to Make Your Copy Sell
• Affiliate Marketer: Article Marketing-Driving Niche Traffic to Your eBay Affiliate Store
• Mortgage Broker: Reverse Mortgages-Helping Your Retired Parents Get the Right Mortgage

Day 4: Write–A Lot

A good personal brand only works if it has depth.

This 5 day process is going to immediately drive people to you. Make sure you look like you are open for business and it is clear who you are and why you are valuable.

So now it is time to open up the word processor. Write each of your list of articles. The list should have between 40-50 article topics. Yes, this is going to be a long day. Here are a few tips:

• Each article should only be 300-450 words
• Each should be informative or how-to oriented
• Create a standard format that is easy to read: italicized introduction, sub-headings, and lists
• Use keyword(s) in sub-headings and body of article, but no more than 2-3 times
• Include a consistent “resource box” at the end of each–brief who you are, what you do, and website link

Look at this post as an example.

Day 5: Start Promoting

Okay. I know you are tired, but we are to the fun part–self-promotion!

Expect another long day. Do the following steps. Since we are compressing this into 5 days it is important to do this in order:

1. Post 10 articles to your blog (website): This should simply be a cut and paste exercise. One important trick to add a little apparent depth. Post date each but the final article when posting. I recommend spacing the post dating to reflect 3 posts per week, or whatever frequency you intend to post in the future. This isn’t intended to be a deceptive trick, but rather helps set expectations for your readers for the frequency of future posts.
2. Post 10 more articles to your blog (website): These are going to be posted with future dates. This will help make you ongoing personal brand maintenance less intimidating. You now have a good queue–keep it full.
3. Post 10 articles to eZineArticles: There are others, but this is the best. They have good rules, reputation, and traffic.
4. Hold on to remaining 10-20 articles: Chances are you didn’t write 40-50 anyway–I know you got lazy, didn’t you? I am your coach– I am going to push you harder than you think you can go. If you met my goal you have some extra juice in the tank to deploy or reserve your call. If you didn’t make it you need to work harder–this is important. It is your personal brand. It will make you more money!
5. Gmail: Add a signature block. Make it much like your article resource box, but add telephone number, LinkedIN profile and Twitter URLs. Announce your new website and expertise to 10 friends. Ask them to promote and link to you.
6. Twitter: Go to http://search.twitter.com. Search for your keywords. Reply–intelligently–to 10 tweets on things of interest and relevant to you brand. Follow 10 other people in your brand area that you did not reply to tweets from.
7. LinkedIN: Connect with 10 people you already know (load in address book). Ask them to endorse you.
8. MyBlogLog: Add widget to blog (website). Search for your keywords. Join 10 communities of people in your brand area.
9. Stumbleupon: Search for your keywords. Connect with 10 people in your brand area. Stumble each of the websites of the people you connected with on Twitter, LinkedIN, MyBlogLog. Stumble your most recent blog (website) post.
10. eZineArticles: Add widget to blog (website).

Take the weekend off. Rest. Then…

Repeat Weekly.

Good luck! Happy personal brand building.

—

If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice

• Increase the efficiency and frequency of your communication
• Facilitate you consistently adding value to your network
  
• Generate and/or spot business opportunity

Unfortunately, social networks often degenerate into ego arms races. Creating or growing your network in this fashion creates an overwhelming and useless mess. This approach simply creates a high noise to signal ratio, which destroys any hope of value.

What Services Do I Use?

New social networks and supporting applications pop up daily. Getting distracted by every venue for your network can be paralyzing. Organizing these solutions into categories, based on your objectives, quickly sorts them.

• Contact database: Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Mac Address Book
  
• Reputation and identity: LinkedIN, Plaxo, Personal Blog
  
• News and opportunity: FriendFeed, Twitter
  
• Communication and nurturing: Twitter, FriendFeed, Personal Blog
• Metrics: TweetBurner, Bit.ly

Each of these services allows for the simple importing and connecting to contacts in any of the major address book applications. I highly recommend you begin organizing your network there, import, and then continue to sync back to that as a master contact database.

How to Nurture a Social Network

Getting your network to generate leads and business opportunities is perfectly correlated to your lead nurturing strategy. Or, as Tim Sanderssays refresh your network for better performance.

Nurturing a social network is significantly different than nurturing a sales prospect database. You are not creating a drip email campaign. This type of activity will quickly erode your network. Lead nurturing and network building in social media should be focused on listening, discussing, and adding value–in that order.

Listening teaches you what people are interested in learning about, what they find valuable, and messages that call them to action.

Discussion allows you to build relationships and grow your audience. Again, you should be learning here too.

Adding value, this is what produces business opportunity leads. Directing people to and providing valuable, problem solving information drives them to you. This approach drives them to you in solving these problems and attracts others with similar problems.

How do you maximize the value you get back from your time spent on social media and social networking? What are the tools you use?

—

If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice

Target Venture Capital

Finely written Web copy and experienced keyword research famously attracts search engines, motivates customers, and compels action. If you are an entrepreneur with a hot idea, but not quite enough capital to take it to its full potential angels and venture capitalist should be part of your target market in your marketing plan.

Keyword Research

Start with good keyword research and analysis an zero in on what venture capitalist are looking for–markets, benefits, ideas, and trends. Then create an SEO plan to bring vector in interest to your project or company.

Highlight Synergies

No one will know companies and technologies that are natural components of your value chain. These become powerful synergies when two or more of these opportunities are in one investor’s portfolio. Make sure your Web copy and marketing materials clearly demonstrate these connections and potentials.

Focus on Benefits

Like customers they are looking for benefits and need to be emotionally inspired to action. A professional copywriter can help you achieve this result on your website, in your emails, on your business card, and even in your pitch.

Get Emotional

Remember what drives venture capitalist to action: large markets, smart teams, and a passionate inferno. These are all qualities that a good copywriter can bring to vivid life your marketing.

Target Bright Entrepreneurs

This difficulty in connecting is not limited to entrepreneurs trying to raise capital. In fact, the problem of investors trying to locate the right ideas, quality teams, and attractive deals to meet their goals may be more acute.

Venture capital websites typically highlight past successes, current portfolios, and partner profiles, yet do little to attract targeted new opportunity.

A top copywriter can design a search engine strategy and experience that will efficiently attract, segment, and engage the types of entrepreneurs and ideas you want to fund.

Write for the Sale

Like any marketing or copywriting project, don’t forget to write for the sale. Hope and opportunity will still pass in the wind if you don’t ask for a conversation.

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If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice