Bill McRea

Content marketing is an effective way to gain valuable exposure online and earn credibility as a trusted authority in your niche. Junta42.com defines content marketing this way: “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

So, if we break that definition down you’ve got to create relevant content and distribute or syndicate it in a way that attracts the attention of your target audience. Using content to drive profitable customer action is our goal with content marketing, but guess what? Chances are this is something you’re already doing if you’ve been marketing online for any length of time. We’re just going to get intentional about it and focus on implementing a strategy that will generate the results we are looking for.

When you are considering your content syndication strategy there are five hot spots  that you do not want to miss. Let’s take a look at each one briefly and see how they stack up when it comes to driving profitable customer action.

1. Your blog

Your website or blog serves as the hub of your online operations. Post SEO optimized, relevant content that your audience is searching for here first. Put energy into making sure that your website ranks for your primary keywords and that you are taking the necessary steps to become a trusted authority in your industry or niche.

2. Facebook

Facebook is exploding with exponential growth. Your customers are here, so you must engage them, share, inspire, question and get them to take action. Use the Networked Blogs app, keep your fan page current with valuable content and grow your list with this powerful social media platform.

3. Twitter

Twitter is the spot for networking, seeing and being seen. Share excellent content. Be a resource, but also be a living breathing person who sometimes eats pistashio ice cream and then Tweets about it, but nothing beats the engagement you’ll enjoy from a successful Twitter party. You’ll generate targeted traffic and gain invaluable exposure when you work Twitter consistently.

4. LinkedIn

This may be old school power networking at its best, but don’t overlook LinkedIn’s power to help you build your professional network and drive targeted traffic to your site. Creating and participating in groups, sharing your content, answering questions and becoming a resource are ways to grow your reach using LinkedIn.com.

5. Youtube.com

Video marketing is one of the most powerful ways to generate lots of targeted traffic to your website. Convert some of your text content into video and share them on youtube.com and some of the other video sharing sites and watch your traffic stats go through the roof.

Then, of course in addition to the place I’ve mentioned there is the tried and true article marketing and forum marketing for driving targeted traffic and building high page rank backlinks to your website to improve SEO and traffic using content marketing strategies.

Content marketing is just one of the ways you can drive traffic and gain exposure online. Visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today to discover more about growing your online business.

LinkedIn.com with its 119 million users can be likened to a sleeping giant in the social media marketing space. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which cover a combination of business and personal networking, LinkedIn is a strictly business social media platform where 58% of its users are male, and North America and Europe represent 68% of its users. Over 40% of LinkedIn users work in companies with 10,000 employees or more, and over 40% of its members are managers, directors, owners chief officers or a VP. Clearly LinkedIn has some power players as members that you might want to get to know. Source: Digital Buzz Blog

With a million new users added each week, LinkedIn offers a tremendous opportunity for you to gain some targeted exposure, establish your credibility as a market leader, and grow your network. Let’s dig in and look at some practical ways that you can use LinkedIn to get some results.

Complete your profile

Take the time to complete your profile. Import your resume, fill out all of the fields that apply to you. Include all of your skills and certifications. Upload a clear headshot of yourself. If you do not have a suitable photo, spend the money to get some professional photos taken. There’s a button at the top of your profile that says, “Improve Your Profile.” If you click that button you’ll get recommendations on ways to make your profile better. Give recommendations and then ask for recommendations from your key connections.

Create a company profile

You can add details about your company, it can import blog posts from your blog, and display your company’s activity on LinkedIn.

Participate in groups

You should search for groups in your topic area, and in areas where you have interest and knowledge and join a few groups that look active. Read the group’s guidelines to find out when it’s appropriate to share your links.

Establish yourself as a leader and trusted authority in your topic

Starting a group on LinkedIn is a great way to establish yourself as a leader, however, only do so if you have the time and interest level to be active in the group several days a week. You will have to foster the growth of the group and encourage interaction at first, but eventually there will be regular contributors and the group should begin to grow on its own.

Interact with others

Use the site for its intended purpose and network with colleagues in your industry, scope out possible joint venture partners, establish relationships with other authorities in your industry.

Import your company blog

You can import your blog to your profile so that it displays your recent posts. You can also import videos and other presentations on your profile so that when visitors check out your profile they can learn all there is to know about you and your business.

LinkedIn provides a perfect platform for you to expand your visibility online. Take the time to get comfortable with the site so that you are not neglecting the powerful connections that you could be making on LinkedIn to grow your business and your network.

If you want to learn more about leveraging the power of social media marketing to grow your business, visit, http://mcreasite.com/blog, where you will discover lots of strategies for marketing your business online.

How the FTC is Impacting internet Marketing in a Very Good Way

From the beginnings of ecommerce on the Internet when it could have been compared to the wild, wild west because it was a brand-new medium that people were experimenting with, there was lots of money to be made, but there were also a lot of people who got scammed because of unscrupulous marketers.

In 2009, the FTC released new guidelines that will impact the Internet marketing industry in a positive way because they force marketers to disclose the nature of their relationship with product vendors, and they force marketers to substantiate the claims that they make about product and services that they offer for sale to the public.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued newly revised guidelines designed to protect businesses and consumers while maintaining the credibility of the Internet as a medium of commerce. The basic premise of these guidelines is: “Advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers. In addition, claims must be substantiated.”

Also, if you talk about the merits of a product or service, and you stand to gain something you are required to disclose the nature of the relationship. So, if you are an affiliate marketer sharing reviews of a product that you stand to earn a commission on if visitors purchase is, you must issue a disclaimer informing them of this material relationship.

Testimonials

If you include testimonials on your website where consumers talk about their experience with a particular product or service you must clearly disclose the actual results, the typical results that someone could expect to gain from using the product or service. The new guidelines state that, “advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.”

Review copies

If you have received free or discounted products or services from a vendor and you publish a review of it, you are required to disclose how that the product was provided to you.

The new FTC guidelines impact Internet marketing in a good way because it levels the playing field for those marketers who operate their businesses with integrity, but who were fighting a losing battle against those companies that were getting away with publishing inflated, non-typical results which were misleading the public and causing them to make a lot of money by using false claims.

If you are not using deceptive practices in your marketing then there is really nothing for you to be concerned about. These new guidelines will help to keep everyone honest and keep consumers informed.

These new guidelines also seek to protect consumer’s privacy online, require more robust disclosure about business opportunities along with several other issues related to consumer protection. If you are a blogger or an online business person you might want to familiarize yourself with the new guidelines so that you can be sure that your blogs and websites are in compliance.

The new FTC guidelines is just one of the many issues that affect online business owners. For all of the best information about growing your business online, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog.

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Submitting press releases is a practice that is overlooked by most online entrepreneurs because they feel like they are not necessarily making “news” in their business. But you can write and submit online press releases on just about any topic concerning your business.

Press releases are an effective way to raise your profile online, increase your online exposure and credibility in your marketplace, but they are also a great way to increase targeted traffic to your website, and build lots of high quality in-bound links to your website, which is good for your SEO.

What makes an effective press release?

When you are writing a press release, you need to write from the standpoint of being informative rather than self-promoting.  They should be keyword optimized and carefully crafted to present an unbiased view of the topic. Again you are informing not trying to persuade the reader. If the content of your press release is compelling enough, the reader will follow the link to your website where you can do all of the persuading you want to.

Keep the goal of the Press Release in mind

If the goal of your press release is to get actual media coverage and exposure for the launch of a new book, product or service, or for a major event, you should consider submitting your press release to a reputable submission service. These services carry more clout with reporters who rely on them to filter out some of the lower quality content online.

When your goal is to boost your site’s SEO and attract a nice flow of targeted traffic to your website, you can get away with using automated submission services and software tools to save time and effort.

How to streamline press release submission

Once you’ve got your press release written, your next step is to submit it to all of the press release websites online. Just as with writing articles and submitting them to article directories, it’s the submission part that takes a lot of time and effort.

If you use press release submission software you can significantly speed up submission of your press releases, so you can do it on a more regular basis. Here are some of the features of press release submission software:

• Some of these software packages include templates that you can follow
• Separate profiles for different websites
• Reporting tools
• Title and description rotation
• Supports Keywords

How do press releases help boost your site’s SEO?

Since most of the factors that influence your website’s SEO are off-page factors such as the number and quality of the in-bound, or back links to your website, you should put a lot of effort into creating a constant flow of high-quality, relevant links to your site. When you write a press release using the keywords that you want your site to rank for, and then you submit it to hundreds of press release sites, you are creating hundreds of links back to your site from relevant, authority sites. This is good for your site’s search engine optimization.

For more tips and strategies for using press releases for building backlinks for your website and improving your SEO, visit, http://www.mcreasite.com/blog.

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Before you start rolling Your eyes at the mention of article marketing because you think it’s ‘old school’ or passé, think again. Article marketing is still an effective, viable, online marketing strategy that can benefit your website in three powerful ways:

1. Article marketing creates high-quality, relevant backlinks to your site for improved SEO
2. Your articles will establish you as a trusted authority and subject matter expert in your niche
3. You create a flood of the best kind of targeted traffic to your site—visitors who have already consumed some of your content, so they are looking for more of what you have to offer

Article marketing was very popular back in the day for good reason—it totally works. Article marketing does take some time and effort, but once you invest that energy, your articles will continue to send you targeted traffic and sales for years to come.

How does article marketing work?

For those who are not completely clear on the concept of article marketing it’s very simple. You write a 400-600 word article based on the primary keywords for your website, include a link back to your site in the resource box at the end, and then your submit the article to an article directory. Visitors find your articles when they are searching for your keywords.  Email newsletter editors may grab your article from a directory and publish it to their audience spreading your link even wider.

What is the goal of article marketing?

The basic goal of article marketing is to generate targeted traffic to your website. Don’t overlook the opportunity that articles present for you to expand your brand, and establish your credibility in your niche.

You want to craft articles that will inform, entertain, engage and entice readers, but leave them wanting more of what you have to offer, which they will find when they follow the link back to your site. Think of your articles as an hors d’oeuvre—a tasty appetizer where the content on your website is the main course.  The content of your articles should showcase your unique strengths and what sets you apart in the marketplace without giving away the store in free content.

Tips for your article marketing strategy

• Write quality, original articles.
• If you re-write your articles, do it with an eye towards quality and making re-write able to stand on its own and convey the same sense of quality and originality.
• Spinning article content is a personal choice. Spinning produces a lower quality product, but it gives you exponentially more exposure. One alternative is that you can point the links from your spun articles back to the other articles that you have published online, blogs where you have guest posted and content sharing sites.
• Post your (original) articles to content sharing sites such as Hub Pages, Squidoo, Scribd, and a whole host of other sites of that nature.
• Post your articles on free blogs such as blogger, zimbio, wordpress.com, tumbler.com, etc. All of these properties will give you relevant, high quality backlinks.

Article marketing is made super-easy when you use ArticleBot software because the more articles you write, and the more places you submit them the more money you will make. Submit your articles to 400 directories and watch the traffic start rolling in. Visit, http://www.mcreasite.com/blog for tips and strategies for Internet marketing.

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