Bill McRea

If you are an affiliate marketer who has felt the pinch from Google’s recent Panda and Penguin updates, you know that the landscape of content Marketing has shifted. You are clear on the fact that you’ve got to find a way to create relevant, quality content that your visitors engage with and share. No more black hat linking schemes for you. You are sold on the fact that investing your time and energy into creating and syndicating remarkable content is what is going to get you the traffic and rankings you require. But now you are faced with the challenge of creating that content. Well, read on for some actionable tips for creating an endless flow of content for your affiliate blog.

We are going to be working from the basic principle of using and re-using or re-purposing every piece of content you create. For an affiliate blog, you need a good variety of content in different formats such as:

• Blog posts
• Product reviews
• Videos
• Slideshows
• Audios

What you’re going to do is create a content creation assembly line. Start with a blog post. Do your keyword research, write it, edit it and post it on the blog.

The next step will be to decide how you can use that content again in another form. You could read the article into a mic, record it, and have a little audio program.

Find someone who is an expert in the topic of the article and interview them. Record the interview and offer that as audio content. You could then have that audio program transcribed and formatted into a series of articles that you can post on your blog, or publish in article directories with links back to your blog.

Another strategy is to create a slideshow with the article content. Publish the slideshow on your blog, and then share it on a site such as slideshare.com. Save the slideshow as a video and upload it to the top video sharing sites with a link back to your site.

You are creating a process for creating a flow of fresh content, but also for generating natural, relevant back links to your site. Keep in mind that you can always outsource pieces of this process because it is labor intensive and many of the steps are repetitive.

Here are some tips for making this process work:

• Set up Google alerts for your keywords. Have the alerts come to your email inbox daily or whatever interval you prefer. When you are ready to start creating content, you can comb through those emails to get some ideas.
• Conduct a monthly survey or poll of your readership. Use the information from your readers responses to create content for your blog. The fabulous part about this is that you will be able to create content that gives your readers exactly what they have been asking for in those surveys.

• Create a weekly system for repurposing your content.
• Join blogging/ content syndication tribes and line up guest post gigs
• Create and use a content calendar: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/editorial-calendar
• Use your smart phone to help you capture blogging ideas while you are out living your life.

-Take photos

-Write blog posts wherever ideas strike you

-Shoot video snippets or complete videos

-Use productivity apps like Evernote

Try these tips and see if your content creation chores have not become a bit more streamlined.

If you found these affiliate marketing tips to be useful visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today where you’ll discover lots more information about how to build your online business.

Being active on facebook, which is a daily destination for 500 million people around the world, is an effective way to gain lots of exposure and traffic for your blog. On your Facebook page you can create a sense of community with your blog readers, and you can attract new readers as well.

Let’s look at these five tips for leveraging Facebook’s timeline for pages to get you some valuable exposure for your blog and your brand.

1. Make the most of your cover image

The new look of Facebook timeline for pages features that fabulously, huge cover image that you can use to visually depict your brand image. You can choose one image for your cover, or change it up every week or when the mood strikes you. Use that space to publicize events, contests, challenges or upcoming book or product launches. Be sure to follow Facebook’s cover image guidelines: https://www.facebook.com/help/search/?q=cover+guidelines

2. Maximize the Apps on your timeline

Whatever you had as a ‘tab’ in the old layout now appears as an ‘app’ in the timeline layout. You get as many as 12 apps per page, but only four are displayed at a time, and the first one is always photos.

• Create a custom image for each app
• Use a unique URL to drive traffic to a specific app
• Create branded landing pages linked to each app

3. Set Milestones for significant dates in the past for your blog

Milestones are part of the chronological flow of the new timeline. If you’ve got an existing page with old content, you can go back and add backdated posts at significant points in the history of your blog.

Marking your milestones allows your visitors to learn more about you blog and it could encourage them to engage more with you and your community.

4. Use or do not use the new message feature

Part of the new design is the message feature, which allows visitors to send you a direct message without posting it publicly on your wall. You can also send messages to your fans. If you don’t plan to use this feature, then you might want to disable it. It really wouldn’t look good for a visitor to send you a message and you didn’t see or respond to it for a few days.

5. Utilize Interest lists

On the left navigation panel, scroll down a bit until you see, ‘Interests,’ Click on that link and you will be able to subscribe to different interest list feeds, or you can create your own.  Creating an interest list is an effective way to gain exposure for yourself and your blog within a specific topic. Once you’ve created your list, post an update letting your followers know about it occasionally.

Now, here’s a cool little tweak that you can do as a page admin. This tip comes from Dorien on the More in Media blog. You can add Pages to Your Facebook interest lists by clicking on the down arrow to the right of the ‘Message,’ button below your cover image. Be sure to occasionally remind your fans to add your page to their interest list.

There are some lists that have 10,000 or more members who have all expressed an interest in that topic. What a great way to build credibility, gain exposure and meet lots of people?

The new timeline for pages has lots of features that allow you to really brand your blog and tell your story in a visual and chronological way.

For more social media Marketing tips and blogging tips and strategies for building your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

Since the world of online business is a relatively new one, and it often attracts people who are bootstrapping it, (starting out on a small budget) there are several ways in which to track progress and measure success that do not exist for traditional businesses. We’re going to look at some of the metrics that you might consider when gauging the progress you are making in you business. Success is a relative term and it looks different to different people. If you have set specific goals for your business and you have met or exceeded those goals, then you are a success even if you’ve not made a million, or driving an Italian sports car.

For an online business there are three basic measures of how well you are doing, which will vary depending upon the purpose of your site, and the goals you have set. They include:

1. Conversions/sales
2. Traffic
3. Opt-ins

But there are additional metrics that can apply to your online business that will be important in determining whether you are getting a return on the effort, energy and finances that you have invested in your enterprise:

• Search engine rank

You have worked hard to build a website and a following, right? Your search engine rankings give you a good idea about how well you are doing on that front. You can feel proud of yourself if you’ve managed to develop a blog with an enviable page rank, so don’t discount that as a measure of your online business success.

• Engagement

Do you get a decent number of comments on your blog? Do your visitors share your content on social media sites? Do you have a growing Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn presence? Do your tweets get retweeted? Do you get likes and shares on Facebook? Are you in the circles of the influential players in your industry on Google+? All of these are measures of how engaged your audience is with you and you with them. If you are creating a sense of community around your brand, having real conversations with your audience, then engagement is high and that is good.

• Partnerships

Do you have a rolodex of joint venture partners that you can call and do projects with? Are you part of an active, committed Mastermind group? Creating mutually beneficial partnerships is a vital skill in business. When you are growing your business having the right partners is almost if not more important than having a lot of customers.

• Personal satisfaction

Of course you are the only one who can say how successfully you have achieved this metric, but if you enjoy the work you are doing, if you are proud of your business and the products or services that you offer then you should get a great deal of personal satisfaction from your business. If you left a corporate job to pursue your own online business you want to make sure that you’re not just creating another job that you will grow bored with and hate. Your level of passion for your work will go a long way towards motivating you to be successful.

Make sure you are setting goals and doing a weekly assessment of your progress toward achieving those goals. No matter how you measure your success make sure that you congratulate yourself when you achieve the goals you have set. That alone makes you a success.

For more tips and strategies for building and growing an online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today where you will discover how to use Internet Marketing principles to find online business success.

If the ultimate goal of your website is to sell more of your products and services, you know that the copy on your website is what makes all the difference when it comes to conversions and sales. Copywriting has been called salesmanship in print, and this is true because on the web it’s the copy that you use to draw your visitors in that will dictate your ability to make sales and retain customers.

Everyone knows the power that the words you use can hold. You know that the right word can elicit a happy reaction, but just as important, the wrong word can leave a bad impression for a long time in the mind of the person hearing it. In that vein, we are going to take a look at some, ‘emotional power words,’ and how you can make use of them along with additional emotional selling tools to forge connections with your audience, boost conversions and increase sales on your website.

A successful conversion means that you have achieved the goal of getting a website visitor to complete a specific task, which can be anything from opting in to an email list, to purchasing a product. You must skillfully craft your copy using these emotional power words so that it bridges the gap between where your prospect is right now, and their completing a task that you want them to complete which results in a conversion.

Your goal is to create an emotional connection with the prospect because people will not only buy from other people that they know, like and trust, they are more likely to refer you to their friends and network. There are so-called, “power words” that evoke emotion in your readers. You can use them to create an emotional connection with your audience and to provoke a gut-level emotional reaction that will catch their attention and hopefully spur them on to action.

Here are ten power words from a list of 186 from copywriter Karl Stepp:

• free
• professional
• tested
• limited
• big
• valuable
• unlimited
• under priced
• launching
• better

Source: freereports.net/powerwords.html

In David Husnian’s  article, ‘Some Words Are Mightier Than the Sword: Powerful Words to Trigger Emotions,’ he writes that, “Power Words are a great way to improve your conversions and to grab the prospects emotions and should be used, judiciously, in all your sales copy.: Source: streetguidetocopywriting.com/blog/writing-copy/words-mightier-than-the-sword

Emotional selling is about appealing to the wants, needs and fears of the buyer. Judiciously using these and other power words in your copy might be just what you need to get better results from your website. Using techniques such as emotional selling and using the power words in your copy are powerful when used properly and skillfully. Remember to always operate in integrity and use your powers for good and not to use emotion to manipulate your audience into buying something that is worthless or that you do not stand behind 100%.

In addition to using power words in your copy, try these other tactics to draw your readers in and get them more engaged in what you have to offer:

• Tell an engaging story that draws the reader in, grabs their interest and makes them feel something real.
• Paint a compelling mental picture so that the buyer can see themselves using your product or service.
• Be vulnerable and admit to a mistake and then share how you were able to overcome it.

Take a look at these tips and find ways to incorporate some of these power words and emotional selling tools into your copy and see what kinds of results you get.

For more copywriting tips, and other ideas for how you can build and grow your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

If you are just getting started establishing an online business, one of the most effective things you can do is to become known as a subject matter expert in your field. Once you have done the work to gain enough knowledge, skill and ability to call yourself an expert you’ve got to demonstrate to the world that you’ve earned your chops, so to speak. The goal is to have others refer to you as an expert and in order for that to happen you’ve got to demonstrate your expertise to the world.

In this article we’re going to take a look at 10 tips for demonstrating your expertise and establishing yourself as an expert.

1. Publish a blog on your topic

Buy your name as a domain name, i.e., www.yourname.com, and establish a blog where you take a narrow focus but drill deeply into your topic.

2. Write guest blog posts for high profile blogs that focus on your subject.

3. Become a news maker

Discover something new about your topic and publish it first. Create content that other people will want to quote, and use in their work. Be a trend setter in your industry rather than a follower and disseminator of other people’s original work.

4. Publish a book.

This could mean writing and publishing a traditional hard copy book, self-publishing or writing an ebook. Writing a definitive book on your topic is an effective way to establish your expertise and you will automatically be labeled an expert.

5. Write articles for print and online magazines. Publish them or publicize them on your blog.  Post articles in article directories with a link back to your website.

6. Create a video series on your topic with links back to your blog. Keep the videos short, tightly focused, and full of valuable content that does not sound like a commercial.

7. Create a slide show and post it on slideshare.com, and other presentation sharing websites.

8. Conduct live workshops in your city and neighboring towns where you teach others about your area of expertise.

9. Host a webinar or tele-seminar that shares news, industry insights and how-to tips.

10. Answer questions on Q & A websites

Create a profile on question and answer websites such as yahoo answers, quora.com, and Linkedin answers.

Keep studying in your field. Continuously build on and increase your skills, but remain teachable and curious. Take classes, get an advanced degree, and keep your skills sharp. Probably the most important aspect of demonstrating your expertise is to be confident in your own abilities. Own your accomplishments and never compare yourself with someone else. We each have unique abilities and strengths.

The ability to demonstrate your expertise will have a great impact on your ability to attract your ideal clients and customers and grow your business.

If you’d like more tips and ideas for how you can demonstrate your expertise and develop a successful online business visit, http://mcreasite.com/blog today.