Using press releases (PR) is one of the greatest ways of marketing your website and Internet business. It gives you backlinks, it gets the word out about you in an exciting and informative way, and if you write the PR piece correctly you will never come off as just marketing a product or service; rather, you’ll simply make headlines, and people are very attracted to newsworthy stories.

PR pieces that are well-written really capture people’s attention. Some PR websites require a fee for you to publish there, while others are free. Generally speaking, the paid-for sites give better exposure. They are sites that journalists, bloggers, researching writers, and website owners looking to add or link to interesting content for a new post all frequent.

PR pieces are also a great way of making yourself quotable. You should include quotes from yourself or from someone authoritative about the topic in a PR piece whenever possible. This lends your piece an air of authority and authenticity. A great quote can spread like wildfire on the Internet and really generate a lot of interest in you as a person, which is the best way of generating interest in your business.

A PR piece should follow a specific format and formula to be successful. First, begin with a catchy headline (title). Remember, this should sound like a newspaper headline and be quite informative but punchy at the same time. Read some front page headlines to get a feel for how yours should sound.

Next you may want to consider writing a catchy summary of your article to appear just below the headline. But this is optional.

Your next step is to give a “dateline”. This is where you write the location where the story is generated–it may be the World Wide Web–and the date, written out in full (So, for instance, July 14, 2008). This is followed by a long dash, and then you want to write a sentence that really grabs the reader’s attention but, again, sounds like news and not like one of those midway-hawker online marketing splash pages. This opening sentence should contain very relevant and important information and compel the reader to feel like she’s about to learn something very important if she continues reading. If you need it to be so, feel free to make this sentence quite long (but be sure it’s not a fragment or a run-on).

Most important about that opening sentence is that it’s powerful WITHOUT sounding even remotely like a sales pitch and that it’s chock-full of vital information that makes the reader desire to read more. One of the best ways to achieve this is to open with “[Yourself, your business, or the producer of a product you are promoting] today announced that [latest and greatest event, such as the launching of a hot new product].”

Next, proceed to outline everything someone should know about the newest event. Use straightforward language always, not overly-emotional or hyped. Try to remember your essay-writing classes from high school or college. Save anything emotional for a direct quote from you or someone authoritative like a product producer.

Finally, at the bottom of the PR piece include a brief, informative summary about you or your product, and then follow it up with Contact Information with a link to your website. Go to a site such as “PR Newswire” or “Marketwire” to see models.

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If you have a website and market a product or service, or just want to get more traffic to your content site, then you have one thing in mind- traffic. One of the best ways to get traffic to your site is by using blogs to post articles related to your topic. This method is so effective because the big search engines out there love blogs because of their fresh and new content. The most important part about blogging to generate traffic is in optimizing the content of the blogs, a process that is easy to master and can prove very beneficial to your website.

The big search engines absolutely love blogs, especially WordPress. This particular service allows you to setup as many free blog sites as you want, and Google loves it. The search engines index blogs quickly and often and, if you choose to take the extra step in keyword optimizing the content on your blog, then you are going to attract a lot of attention. Make sure you always include a carefully crafted backlink to drive people to your actual sales or content page and you will begin receiving traffic in no time.

Blogging has many aspects that make it an effective marketing tool. Because the popular blog suppliers are so highly ranked themselves in the search engine page rankings, everything they are associated with (linked to) gets spidered and indexed as well. Also, the search engines love all of the new and fresh content that is circulated on such sites, causing them to hang around and spider and index their (your) blogs more often. In addition to sustained traffic generation, if you select your tags and popular keywords carefully, you may also see sudden urges of traffic. All of this traffic can then be directed to your sales or content sites, delivering you the success you want.

Blogs are very popular and easy to maintain, as the website portion is already taken care of and all you have to do is add useful content. Products such as Microsoft Office 2007 also make it easy to update blogs, as you can choose new blog post, type it up and, by adding your login info, it can seamlessly integrate your new content into the blog. This is pretty powerful stuff, considering the value of such sites. With blogs you can add posts as often as you like. Obviously, the more you post, the better for the site, but you can find your own friendly medium and watch the site grow.

Another great way to get attention to your blog is to post comments on other, related blogs. By posting on other niche blogs, you can include a signature file that links to your blog or main site. Once you have that down, the best way to create traffic through blogs is to have multiple blogs on different niches. Each site can be optimized for a different keyword, all pertaining to your main site or product. You can use each blog to promote for that keyword only and then find a way to funnel all traffic to your main site and product pages. This is the power behind blog marketing and can be very effective in creating the success you desire.

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Did you know that you can browse blogs and forums your target market reads for about an hour a week and be marketing your business? You can!

First, find blogs and forums that attract your target market. The topic should generally be related to your business in some way, but probably not published by a direct competitor. The objective in selecting these sites is that your actual or prospective customers are reading them on a regular basis.

Next, read through recent entries to find posts where you have something useful to add to the conversation – preferably on a topic that’s directly relevant to your business.

Your goal in your comments is to be as helpful as possible. You want to do more than add a comment just agreeing with someone else or making a generic comment. You want to use your business expertise to assist the readers. The benefit of doing this is that people reading these sites will begin to see you as knowledgeable in your area and may choose to check you out further.

When you add a comment to a blog post, you’ll have a hotlink on your name that points back to your site. Forums often allow you to create a signature containing your site address that’s automatically included at the end of each post you make. Not only do these links help readers find your site, they may also help you build additional links back to your site that search engines see and value.

The more links to your site that exist – especially from ‘popular’ sites – the better your organic (non-paid) search engine rankings will be.

Note that some blogs will have the ‘nofollow’ tag set on their comments. This tag tells search engine spiders not to give the commenter credit for the link to his site. Blog publishers do this to discourage spam comments that have only the goal of getting links back to a site and not providing anything of value to the websites they were posted to.

While adding quality comments to blogs not using the ‘nofollow’ tag will help you with both readers clicking through to your site as well as search engine rankings, you don’t need to avoid the blogs that do use this tag. As long as you’re adding valuable comments, readers will click through to your site, and that’s who you’re trying to attract, right?

Also, the ‘nofollow’ tag does not stop search engines from following the link, it just prevents any of the weight being carried from that page to the page it is linked to; the search engine spiders still do follow the links.

I use a tool called Comment Kahuna (http://www.commentkahuna.com/) to find relevant blog pages by using keywords I specify. It will show me which blogs use the ‘nofollow’ tag so I can decide whether or not to post comments to them or only to ones without it. I can specify the minimum page rank of each blog page and how many results I want.

Once the program returns the results, I can go to each page to decide if I want to add a comment. If so, the system will auto-fill my name, email address, and web site URL and I’m ready to add a comment. If not, I can tell the program to skip this blog and move on to the next one. I can stop at any time and the system can pick up where I left off next time.

The best part about this tool is that it’s free, so give it a try!

There’s another tool available for finding relevant blog pages, Fast Blog Finder (http://www.fastblogfinder.com). It’s features are similar to Comment Kahuna, but it adds a few, such as displaying the page rank of each domain and page found. You can download a free trial and upgrade to the Gold version if you like it.

For finding appropriate forum threads, I use another free tool called BotSurfer. With this tool, you must find a list of relevant forums and input their URLs into the tool. It will then find threads within these forums that contain the keywords you specify.

To find relevant forums, just go to Google or Yahoo and type in your keyword topic: Online forum + Keyword

You can find this tool at BotSurfer (http://www.articlemarketer.com/affiliate_forum3b.php). Check out the forum posting tutorial links at the left, too. While they’re oriented toward affiliates of Article Marketer, the principles are applicable to anyone wanting to use forums to attract visitors to her business.

It goes without saying (I hope!) that you shouldn’t post comments to blogs or forums that are just links to your site. They will be considered spam, almost certainly be removed, and may cause you to be banned from the site.

I put aside about an hour each week to comment on blogs and forums. You obviously could spend much, much more time doing this, but remember this is just one of your marketing strategies and don’t get too carried away!

Give this technique a whirl and over time you’ll see the results yourself.

Peggy Champlin’s web design business has been providing a full suite of services and products to help small companies build their businesses online since 2002. Visit Success With Ease to subscribe to our list and receive an article like this every week.

Social Media sites are basically communities where like minded people gather to share information and experiences. They are viewed everyday by massive numbers of people and these same people actually generate the content for these sites. These sites are growing in importance because they contain information users find interesting, timely and informative and they are becoming a target for Internet Marketers who see them as an untapped reservoir of potential clients.

The top five Social Media websites in terms of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast are lead by MySpace. MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for people internationally.

It is one of the most successful sites in recent years, amassing 124 million profiles and has transformed life online since its launch. MySpace is one of the most visited sites in the world and it’s introducing a huge number of people to content syndication and they allow millions of people around the world to publish to the web for the first time.

It is by far the dominant social network in the US and is at an all time high in terms of audience reach and engagement according to both comScore and Neilsen. Coming in second is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is booming in terms of visitors and contributors. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, for the most part written by the masses and therefore should be viewed accordingly.

It is meant to be a starting point, a place to go for basic information and therefore it’s like any encyclopedia, a place to begin your research but not a place to end it. Wikipedia is full of information, but this doesn’t mean that it’s all reliable information. Wikipedia is a good example of the new Web 2.0 and is a fine first step to get the basics quickly, especially for technology and pop culture related questions.

It’s a wonderful resource if you use your own judgment and don’t always believe what you read. It is supported by a non-profit organization and exists to serve information in an open platform. Anyone can edit it and, of course, this opens it up for all the issues and inaccuracies that come with an open platform. However, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and often provides excellent summaries and detailed articles.

In third place we have YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Founded in February 2005, and based in San Mateo, California, they specialize in showing short videos created by everyday people. YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience.

It is the most popular site to visit for viewing online videos, sharing your favorite videos and for commenting on what you’ve seen. A slightly newer feature of YouTube is the ability to send invitations to people through email by using the “Invite Your Friends” feature.

In fourth place we have Facebook. According to Wikipedia: “Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves.”

Finally, at number five we have Photobucket. Photobucket is a photo-sharing and hosting site owned by News Corp. Photobucket is a photo and video tool that could become an online warehouse for the storage of digital media.

It is the Web’s most popular creative focal point, with nearly 40 million unique users around the world linking billions of personal photos, graphics and videos daily to hundreds of thousands of websites. It’s a tool that allows users to host images for use on social networking, e-commerce, gaming and blogging sites.

These sites are all about shared experiences and are based on the technology of Web 2.0. Social media sites are where people come together online to interact, share experiences and make friends. When formulating your Social Media Marketing strategy these five sites are the ones to target in order to make your presence known in the social media network and to drive this traffic to your website. They are the new wave online and it’s a wave which doesn’t appear to be going out anytime soon.

Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has turned his sights on internet marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob please visit:
Free Internet Marketing Advice

You may not believe this, but even though traffic from searches is still very good, there are other excellent options open to you. Having spent a great amount of time targeting search engine traffic, I became quite familiar with the subject of search engine optimization and although many marketing experts would suggest it is difficult, it really is not the case. Nonetheless I am pleased to say there is a way of finding a mix of traffic without having to completely rely on the work of the search engines to get results.

Blogging is a super way of getting traffic, but this has to be done in the right way and needs to be updated at regular intervals. When you blog, you must, of course, social bookmark your post to the top directories, and for your guidance, some of these are listed below.

1. Digg
2. Onlywire (with this method you will get into twenty two directories with one simple click)
3. Propeller
4. Stumbleupon

Carry out a Google search for The Authority Black Book. When you download this information, which is free of charge, make sure you read and understand it. This will tell you all you need to know about using blogging to drive excellent quality traffic in high numbers on a daily basis to your blog.

Another way of getting great traffic is to use Article Marketing. These days if you write for traffic and get your articles into a few of the best article directories, there is no worry about duplicate content penalties.

The top 5 article directories for your articles to appear in are as follows:-

1. Ezinearticles
2. AssociatedContent
3. Goarticles
4. IdeaMarketers
5. SearchWarp IdeaMarketers

No doubt by now you will have noticed the theme taking place here. It’s the theme of getting traffic from your social booking marking directories and from article directories too.

The job of search engines is to give their searchers new and relevant material. You can easily do this for your visitors without having to be concerned with the search engines now or at any time in the future.

It’s a great feeling when you know you are getting traffic every day and will continue to do so even if Google were to totally rearrange the top ranked sites in the blink of an eye, as this will not affect you and your traffic at all.

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If you look all over the Internet you will find that video sites are starting to popup left and right, and there is a reason for this. Video sites are becoming huge and very popular all across the world. Probably the most popular of them all is YouTube.com.

Now you can cash in on these sites popularity and start generating your own income by creating web videos that sell. When it comes to making videos for the web that sell there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Most people unknownly do it the wrong way.

Lets take a look at the basic setup you will first need in order to crate a web video.

1. Computer
2. Webcam or camcorder, either one will work
3. Access to the Internet
4. Basic video editing software
5. YouTube.com account

Ok so once you have those five things setup you are ready to get started. Now the fun really begins. You first want to record your video. This can take some time if you do not plan it out. I suggest writing what you want to say on paper first then go from there.

The next step after you record your video is to upload it to your computer. I recommend you save it as either a movie file or an AVI file as these have good quality. Once you have it on your computer the next step is to open it up in some type of basic video editing software program.

After you open it up in the video editing program now you will want to add text over top of your video so you can right messages, or type the link to your website. This will allow people to see either your message or link to your website while they watch your video.

Now comes the easiest part, and that is to upload your video to your brand new You Tube account you created. One thing I recommend you do after you upload it to You Tube is in your video description put your link to your website. This will turn it into a link people can click on while watching your video. This is a great way to get traffic to your site.

With that said video sites are growing, and they are a great way to get free web traffic to your website it a matter just a few hours or days. It is easy to do once you get the hang of it, and it is completely free. The only expense involved is buying the webcam if you do not already have one.

Quick tip, the best videos are ones that are short, and funny. If you do not like being in front of the camera you can easily just make a video with music and images as they work well also.

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According to The Free Dictionary online the definition of success is as follows:1. the achievement of something attempted. 2. the attainment of wealth, fame, or position. 3. a person or thing that is successful.In order to achieve any of the above criteria marketing to the new Web 2.0 or in the social media arena as we know it today you, first of all, have to know your target audience and what makes them tick.

What drives them to spend so much time in the social media environment? What are they hoping to gain from these activities? What are their needs and wants? And most importantly; how do they feel about being targeted as a potential consumer in this situation? To achieve any level of success with the social media market each of these areas must be addressed in detail.

First of all, why do people spend so much of their free time on MySpace or Facebook? What is the lure or attraction of these social media sites? On some of the forums, such as MySun, people go so far as to say it’s an addiction. One female contributor is quoted as saying, “I was addicted to MySpace. I wanted to sit there 24/7. I’ve deleted it now, can’t be doing with it anymore, as for face book well I’m on there now but I think I’m gonna delete that too. It’s nuts.”

Another 26 year old female said, “I love Facebook, my sister got me hooked on it. Before then I didn’t see the fuss, but now I do. The more you do on it, the more you love it.” And yet another participant, a 34 year old male stated, “I use MySpace to keep in touch with everyone, not addicted though. Pop in once and awhile, and it’s helpful. Found friends from years ago.”

From each of those comments you see a common thread emerging. Two of the respondents mentioned “addiction” and one used the phrase “hooked on it”. All of these people constitute a potential target market, for Internet Marketers, no matter what their reasons for spending so much time socializing online. So it follows that in order to be successful marketing to this audience, the marketer too, must spend time online socializing with and gaining the trust of these potential clients.

In order to accomplish this you have to be transparent with these individuals. Whatever you do don’t try to deceive them by pretending to be someone you’re not just to gain favor with them. These people are there to make friends and establish relationships and that has to be the goal of the Internet Marketer as well. You have to respect their environment and their reasons for being there. If not you’re doomed to failure even before you begin.

Secondly what are their needs and wants? In order to determine this, the Internet Marketer must again establish relationships with these people in order to find out what their situation is and what they are looking for at the present time and in the future. If they aren’t looking for what you’re selling then at least you’ve made a friend online and maybe the next person will be in the market for your product or service.

Finally how do they feel about being targeted by Internet Marketers in their environment? Again in this situation the Internet Marketer must always keep in mind that these people are in what they consider to be their space, pardon the pun. You must respect their feelings and approach them as if you’re in their home. The Internet Marketer can be viewed as an outsider or an intruder if they’re too aggressive and lose sight of the fact that they are on their turf, so to speak.

Finally, along with being genuine in your approach, have fun with it. That’s what these sites are meant to be for the most part and if you’re having fun and being honest about your intentions then you can be very successful marketing to the social media audience online.

Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on internet marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob please visit:
Free Sales and Marketing Advice

With social media being the new phenomenon online today it would be ludicrous for any internet marketer to ignore it when it comes to formulating a strategy for an internet marketing campaign. As with most marketing promotions your success or failure is usually determined by your approach. The most important part of a successful socialization plan when it comes to MySpace and Facebook, for example, is the content on your profile page.

Content drives traffic which drives sales when it comes to your Blog as well as your social media profile page. The richer and more varied the content the more people it will attract and the faster word will spread about your page and what it has to offer. Try to make it entertaining in terms of what’s available for visitors to interact with and adding a touch of humor helps because everyone likes to laugh.

For interactivity you could have your favorite music highlighted for them to click on and sample. You could add a music video or two as well as some comedy clips or maybe implement a joke of the day feature. One important factor not to ignore is your own personal story. The objective of these sites, after all, is to meet and get to know people, and most everyone likes reading or hearing about someone else’s life experience.

This doesn’t mean you have to reveal all of the sordid details but try to convey your likes and dislikes in your own style. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. People want to get to know the real you. Also try to make your profile informative. Everyone has an expertise in some area, so share this knowledge with your guests and before you know it you’ll have more online friends than you know what to do with.

If you keep giving people what they want they’ll keep coming back for more and the best way to do this is to write about what you know and what you are comfortable with. Pictures are also a great way to attract visitors. You can demonstrate some of your interests through photographs of some of your favorite activities. Pictures also add a more personal element to the page giving the viewer a better chance to get to know you and appreciate what you do.

If you’re an avid reader, for example, you could possibly start a book of the month feature where you discuss or critique a particular book you may be reading. You could ask visitors, who are also readers, to leave comments and maybe start a book of the month club. With any relationship, be it online or in your day-to-day life, the important thing is to maintain contact. On any of these social media websites this means visiting on a regular basis to let people know what’s happening in your life. It also means updating your profile page on a regular basis.

Any Internet Marketer who can follow these simple steps should enjoy great success in the new Web 2.0 or Social Media Market not only professionally but also personally, and always remember the old adage “Content is King.”

Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on internet marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob please visit:
Free Sales and Marketing Advice

The most recent phenomenon to hit the Internet Marketing scene in recent years is another form of Internet Marketing in its own right called Social Media Marketing. While Social Media Marketing has the capability to drive hordes of targeted traffic to your website there are still some pitfalls involved which you should try to avoid, at all costs, if you want to be successful with your Social Media Marketing campaign.

First of all one of the major targets of Social Media Marketers are the social media websites themselves, for example, MySpace and Facebook. In order to target and market to these sites you have to join and attract friends to your profile page. The first thing to avoid after joining is becoming involved with any of the software available which allows you to send mass invitations to certain groups you may have targeted inviting them to be your friends.

Everyone in the group receives a generic message inviting them to be your friend. If the site owner or webmaster discovers you are using this software you could be banned for life or, at the very least, have your membership suspended for a period of time. This can result in giving you a bad reputation within this community and make it very difficult to build any type of trusting relationship you need to establish for your future marketing activities on this site.

Another pitfall to be avoided is related somewhat to the first demonstrating how any type of news, good or bad, travels fast within these social media networks. When you approach your Social Media Marketing campaign and any of these social media websites you have to do so with the right attitude. By saying this I mean you have to be open and honest about your intentions. You have to be Transparent.

If you try to deceive any of your social networks it will usually come back to haunt you which can, again, result in a tarnished if not trashed reputation within these internet communities. A wise Internet Marketer once told me, when it comes to Internet Marketing the more you give, the more you receive. This brings us to a third pitfall which, if not avoided, can stall your Social Media Marketing campaign as if it were mired in quicksand. And this is, always be available and eager to offer help and advice.

But don’t offer advice if it’s not requested. If you are available to answer a Blog or forum question for someone who is stuck in a particular situation and needs help then by all means try to help. This will pay big dividends later on when needed because your reputation will precede you which, in this case, will be a good thing.

A fourth and final pitfall has to do with knowing who you are approaching. In other words you wouldn’t take a trip to Singapore without doing a little preparation and study about the culture and practices of these particular people. You should take the same approach when planning your social media campaign. If you’re approaching communities such as Facebook or MySpace, learn the proper etiquette and above all try not to offend anyone.

Especially try not to offend anyone who wields any kind of influence or power over the other members of the community. This too can result in a quick death for your Social Media Marketing campaign. If you approach your promotion with these four pitfalls in mind and put in the necessary planning and preparation as you would with any marketing campaign then you will be much more likely to encounter success with your social media strategy.

Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on network marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob please visit:
Free Sales and Marketing Advice

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of Free Affiliate Programs

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