Do you want more customers?

Feb 27, 2009 Comments

Seth Godin in his latest blog post has outlined the factors that can get you more customers and clients.  You need to find people:

• You can identify and reach
• Who have a problem and that problem can be solved by your service or product
• Who have the desire and ability to pay for your service product

These are very common sense factors but amazingly many businesses lack them in one way or another.

Let us see how I can apply the above information to increase the number of clients I have (I have been taking small steps towards generating more business).

Identify and reach people who require my writing services.

What sort of people require writing services?

• People who cannot write well in English
• People who are not very articulate and convincing when it comes to writing
• People who need a writer but don’t want to hire a full-time person
• People who need lots of content but don’t want to spend their own time writing and supervising and consequently are eager to pay someone else for the same
• People who want to increase their search engine rankings with the help of targeted content but don’t know how to do that
• People who want to maintain a regular blog but don’t have the time to remain regular
• People who are looking for a highly professional writing service for their business writing requirements without having to hire in-house writers

You can keep on adding to this list.  I have recognized the sort of people who require my writing services; the tricky part is reaching them.

I am trying to search engine optimize my website and my content as much as possible. I am expanding my network and trying to make more and more people aware of the writing service I provide. I also plan to write for other blogs and websites but somehow there is a mental block and I never seem to come up with catchy titles, although I have no problem if I have to write catchy titles for my clients.

Now and then I will be sharing with you on this blog how I’m trying to generate more business for myself as a freelance online writer.

Creating content strategy for Internet marketing and SEO

Feb 25, 2009 Comments

What do you have in your mind when you are creating content for your website or for your client? Today a client wrote me that he had created more than 100 articles on his website for SEO. To be frank even I have created lots of pages to draw targeted traffic from search engines.  It doesn’t mean I have created those pages to misguide the search engines and human visitors — I’m trying to kill two birds (actually I would hate to kill birds)  with one stone.  I am creating useful and informative content for my visitors and I am giving a valid reason to search engines to send traffic to my website.

This can sometimes be counter-productive.  Having lots of information can send all the wrong people to your website.  For instance my target market is America and Europe, despite the fact that I operate from India.  No, I am not biased against my countrymen and women, it’s just that there is hardly a demand for the service I provide because most people here in India think there is no need to pay a writer, and especially a writer who writes for websites and most of the stuff on the Internet is free.

On the other hand, in the western countries they fully recognize the importance of an experienced and well-trained writer and hence have no qualms about paying him or her.

Having lots of informative and educative content on the website can be counter-productive if your website is not as famous as, let us say, 37signals.com. Since I have many articles and pages dedicated to the art of writing content and doing copywriting jobs, more than 70% of my traffic constitutes of people from India who want to become online content writers either because they have got nothing better to do or they think it is a very easy way to make lots of money (poor, misguided souls). All the time I am telling them it is not as easy as it seems because lots of networking, promotion and maintenance is involved in the process of getting routine work from the Internet.

Fortunately, as many people comment, my pitching is so convincing that the remaining 30% traffic gives me ample business to earn a decent living.  Of course I’m trying to change this; I’m trying to bring more people who would like to do business with me rather than simply trying to piggy-back on my hard work of 5 years.

It shows that randomly creating content works sometimes but most of the time it doesn’t. You got to have a clearly defined content marketing and SEO strategy. Toprankblog has a comprehensive and informative compilation of content marketing and SEO interviews with top ranking professionals. The moot point present in all the opinions is strategizing your content marketing strategy always pays in both long and short term.

Personally, right now, more than strategy I’m focusing upon quality and consistency.  What is your content strategy?

How to make more people read what you write

Feb 19, 2009 Comments

You can significantly increase the number of people who read and understand your content by answering the following questions:

• Why you publish?
• For whom you publish?
• How can your content be accessed/found?

Recently I read somewhere that more than 90% people don’t read 80% of what you have written on your website. Why does this happen, and why in the first place you post your content — blog posts for instance — online?

You publish content to inform people — sometimes for the sake of being helpful in an altruistic manner (publishing informative content during natural or man made calamities), to showcase your talent and promote your skills (as a writer, for example), to earn revenue through advertising and affiliate programs, or to convince them to do business with you. You also publish content to improve search engine rankings but that content doesn’t matter much if it brings you redundant traffic.

Once you have figured out why you publish content on your blog or website, the next two important questions are, why people must read your content and how they can access/find your content. You can exceptionally increasing the number of people reading your content if you can sort out these three questions.

So why must people read your content?

They must need your content, whatever may that need be. They may need it to solve a problem (programming problem, technical problem, psychological problem…whatever). They may need it to make a buying decision; the sales pitch on your website or your blog post describing the benefits of your product or service. They may need it for entertainment. Unfortunately, they may also need it in the times of crisis and disaster.

For your content to be highly readable, it has to be needed, needed desperately if possible. If you can provide such content, it hardly matters how you present it (as long as it is readable).  When your content satisfies a need, people read it hungrily and they wait for it in great anticipation.  In fact they employ all the means available to them to make sure that they never miss what you publish.  This is a great state to accomplish as a publisher.

For whom should you publish?

As it is famously said somewhere every writer has an audience. You just need to find your audience or figure out who your audience is. It is very easy to be read if you have got an eager audience.  Being your audience means they already need your content and that is why they are part of the audience in the first place.

If you publish elementary computer tips on your website or blog then your audience constitutes of people who are not very well-versed with computers and they are looking for basic operational guidance. Similarly, if you are writing copy for a website that sells winter garments then your audience are people who are looking for winter clothes, have lots of choice at their hands, and need to be convinced that they must buy the clothes at this particular website. When you know your audience you can specifically write for them, and they are extremely receptive.

How can your content be accessed/found

It’s just not enough to publish great content for the right audience — your audience must be made aware of the existence of your content. Here are a few methods you can employ to make the right people find your content:

• Search engines: Search engines are the best source of quality audience for your content because when people come from search engines they are already looking for something like what you can offer.  To achieve this you should create your content according to the language used by your audience.  Optimize your content for the right keywords and expressions that fundamentally define your content.
• Blogs and websites: Quality content in itself attracts incoming links from other web sites and blogs and this in turn gets you the right audience.  You can make other blogs and websites aware of your content by either directly writing to the owners or by interacting in the comment sections.
• Social bookmarking and networking websites: Websites like Digg, Delicious, Twitter and Facebook can get thousands of interested readers to your website provided you have built a following on these websites.

Success content implementation involves continuously creating quality content and promoting it using all the avenues available to you. It may seem daunting to a person who is interested in performing just one task, writing content or promoting it. Nothing wrong in that.  You can hire somebody for the job you don’t like doing.  The basic point is, creation and promotion must happen at the same time for the most effective implementation of your content and copywriting strategy.

Be careful about changing the .htaccess if you manage your website with WordPress

Feb 18, 2009 Comments

I had a customized .htaccess for my website so that all the old links could be 301-redirected to the new links once the website was fully ported to WordPress, and things worked great. I uploaded all the content, the .htaccess file, activated my theme, and changed the permalink structure to make the URLs SEO-friendly.

After a few days I was checking Google analytics, and noticed that some links that didn’t exist in the main navigation, but existed on the inner pages, were not being found, and needed to be redirected. I quickly added them to my .htaccess file and re-uploaded the file. After a few hours I noticed none of my pages worked. I remember this happening once, so I went to the permalinks section in the WordPress admin and again saved the permalinks setting. The links started working again.

Then today again I uploaded the .htaccess file and noticed that the website stopped working. Again I went to the permalinks section, saved the permalinks setting and the pages came back. Then it came to my mind that whenever you make changes to the permalinks structure, WordPress changes your .htaccess file. So whenever I was uploading my version of .htaccess, the changes were being overwritten, and the pages refused to work. Dumb of me actually.

So now after saving the permalinks settings I have downloaded .htaccess. Whatever changes I have to make, I’ll make in this file, without overwriting the WordPress settings for handling permalinks. Small oversights can cost you big time sometimes!

Do Internet marketing programs actually make you rich?

Feb 16, 2009 Comments

Do you often come across Internet marketing and business promotion programs that claim they can help you sell your product like hot cakes, that people will be crazy to do business with you? The promoters of these program often claim to have earned millions of dollars in a few hours or a few weeks or a few months. There is one thing I can never understand: after having earned around $20,000,000, why are you selling an Internet marketing program from a lousy-looking website. Anyway.

Some programs are cheap (costing you $20-100 for some ebooks and presentations) and some are quite expensive (around $2000-5000 for DVDs, ebooks and even one-to-one consultations with the “expert” who made a few million bucks in a few days). Are these programs for real, and do they really work?

I’ve never participated in one of these programs, and I’ve been doing business on the Internet for the past 8 years. Of course I’m not rich like crazy and my finances are not ideal, but I live a comfortable life and I manage to save every month, and I must confess, I haven’t been doing much in terms of marketing and promotion; heck, I don’t even blog regularly. I fully understand that in order to grow my business I must promote it.

So what does a marketing program normally teach you (logically, again, I’ve never participated in one)?

• How to recognize what you can actually do and get paid for
• Recognizing your marketing and creating a niche
• Setting up a website
• Defining a marketing plan and sticking to it
• Website/blog SEO
• Resources that can help you promote your business
• Building a mailing list and growing a blog
• Developing your brand presence
• Growing your network
• Establishing a social media and networking presence

Every course revolves around these broad topics. Now, if you have spent a few years doing business on the Internet then you can pretty well figure out by yourself what all it takes to be successful (actually, it can be applied to any kind of occupation). Does this mean all these programs and courses are a rip off?

Not exactly, some of them must really be good. But they mostly talk about common sense, and even the information you are paying for can be obtained free of cost if you try hard enough. Of course spending money on a program and getting this information saves you lots of time, and sometimes money too (by avoiding wrong tools). So I’m not saying you shouldn’t invest in such programs and courses. These programs can be excellent for those who work hard but only when they follow well-defined guidelines; it’s always better than randomly aiming at your targets and working in an environment of hits and misses.

My only suggestion is, just think before you take the leap, especially when you are going to spend lots of money. Be prepared to realize that most of the information that exists in these programs is common sense, and you may already have this information. Do you have some business promotion ideas and plans that you’ve been thinking of implementing but have been postponing or procrastinating? Implement those ideas and plans first. Do it with conviction and perseverance. For a couple of years, for instance, I have been thinking of writing articles and blog posts for other websites and blogs but so far haven’t been able to do so. I could have also developed a mailing list in all these years. My networking efforts are non-existent. I am half-heartedly in the process of optimizing my website for search engines. Although my website contains lots of content I can add a lot more. Similarly I haven’t been doing much in the field of social media and social networking. Considering all this I don’t think it is prudent of me to invest in a costly Internet marketing program. I should only opt for it if I have already, sincerely, exhausted all the options that are currently available to me. So if I haven’t done things that I already know what is the guarantee that I will follow the directions in the program? Of course you can say that the expense of a couple of thousand will keep me motivated. But then if I can do the same thing without spending the money then why go to all that trouble?

The best option would be first to exhaust all your ideas and plans and after that to give momentum to those ideas and plans you should invest in a marketing program. Otherwise you will be uselessly spending your money.