These Internet Marketing Secret Weapons Will Help You Get More Sales Online

 Great Tips to help  grow the E-business by  Jimmy Rodela.

Even for seasoned marketers, converting their website traffic into paying customers can be quite a challenge.

Sure. The process may be simple. But it sure isn’t easy.

While there are a plethora of things that can cause your website visitors to simply exit your website without buying anything from you (even after consuming your content), there are also ways to make them buy from you even if it isn’t originally their intention to do so.

Of course, we’re going to talk about the latter.

Excited? You should be.

While these methods have already been used by other marketers, they are by no means overused. Simply because the effort and the risk that goes with using these methods aren’t quite of the ordinary.

However, if there’s one thing that I can promise you, it would be that these strategies are proven and tested to work. If you’ll just take the time to re-engineer them to fit your business’ dynamics, you’ll surely get good (to great) results one way or the other.

Let’s jump right in.

1) Add a “University” section on your site.

The first time I saw this strategy was from Neil Patel’s website. Here’s how their University page looks.

image: http://pixel.watch/y3e2

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Amazing isn’t it?

If you’re looking to learn about internet marketing, you’ll without a doubt find this place to be your internet marketing haven. There’s just loads of things that you can learn from on this page alone.

Of course, when your website has something very similar to Neil’s university page, your website will also become the go to place of your target audience.

At this point, you’ll be able to establish your brand as an authority in the industry, be able to pitch them your services strategically, and build a strong relationship with them; all of which are key elements to converting your website visitors into buying customers.

Here are a couple of things you can add on your University page:

1. Case studies
2. In depth how-to-guides
3. In depth video tutorials
4. White papers
5. Interviews

2) Answer questions

There are several ways to go about using this strategy. You can either go to websites like Quora.com, go to forums, or setup a google alert so you can go to the specific platform that your target audience are asking their questions about your industry.

Using this strategy is so effective because answering other people’s questions will help establish your image as an expert in your industry – all while raking in more customers for your business.

Here are some of the most critical points that you need to remember when answering other people’s questions.

1. Leave a clear call-to-action at the end of your answer. Ask the users to contact you should they need your help.
2. Link to your website as much as possible.
3. Leave your signature whenever you can.
4. Write a comprehensive answer to their questions. The point is to add as much value as you can.

3) Get influencers to talk about you.

What do you think will happen if personalities like Neil Patel or Pat Flynn will give a positive feedback about your brand to their audience?

There’s just one word that came to my mind – sales – and lots of it!

Such is the power of influencer marketing. If used correctly, not only will you get massive exposure from the influencer’s audience, but you’ll get tons of sales from the get-go (among many others).

It’s no surprise that businesses are now using influencer marketing campaigns as one of their main marketing methods. It flat out works. And its results are quite epic!

If you’re looking to learn more about proven and tested strategies on how to make your influencer marketing campaigns a success, you can check out my post about, “3 Influencer Marketing Tips That You Need to Start Using RIGHT NOW!”

4) Make your contact info visible.

If your web visitors are keen on contacting you to inquire about your services, make sure that your contact info is readily available.

Make it easy for them to contact you.

You’ll be shocked at how other businesses don’t have a “contact us” page; or if they do, the page is hidden. It just doesn’t make any sense.

More than just making your contact page visible, I suggest that you take it a step further by making sure that your contact details are visible on all of your website’s pages.

This website is a classic example of what it means to make your contact details visible. Regardless of which page you go to, you’ll find their address, phone number, and even fax number on their side bar. Doing so makes it very convenient for your readers to contact you should they want. Trust me, you’ll be surprised at how your web visitors appreciate you doing this for them. Nothing can be more annoying to them than not being able to contact you when they’re 100% eager to buy your product.

5) Use a company mascot.

You’ll be amazed at what a mascot can do. :)

A lot of influencers talk about how you need to differentiate your business from your competitors. They’ve also been sharing tip and tricks to make your brand as “sticky” as it can be to your audience.

What better way to do that than to use a mascot, right?

Mascots are unique, they’re catchy, they’re good brand ambassadors, and of course, they do such an amazing job at making your brand as “sticky” as it can be to your audience.

In just a weeks time, there’s a chance that your audience may have forgotten your company name; but your mascot? I doubt it.

It doesn’t stop there.

There are TONS of other benefits that mascot’s can bring to your business. They can also help amplify emotional connections between your brand and your audience, and help you with improving your brand awareness (among many others).

Conclusion

If you aren’t quite sure about which internet marketing methods you’ll use to help you get more sales online, then this guide will give you a good head-start.

Just remember that while most of the tips I shared are quite challenging to implement, they are totally worth it. I’ve experienced it’s results first hand after using them on my client’s websites.

http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/these-internet-marketing-secret-weapons-will-help-you-get-more-sales-online-01249576

12 Tips for Hosting a Successful B2B Webinar

Many B2B companies are already leveraging webinars as part of their content marketing and thought leadership efforts. As with any marketing tactic, a successful and effective B2B webinar is ultimately a byproduct of proper planning and execution.

Whether you are already hosting webinars or considering adding them into your content marketing mix, it’s important to “plan your work” and “work your plan.” So it’s with that in mind that we’ve developed a list of 12 tips to consider when planning and hosting a B2B webinar.

1. Plan, plan, plan

Any webinar that is considered a success by both the host AND the attendees is the result of careful and meticulous planning. Naturally there are a lot of logistics associated with webinars, so it’s important to carefully consider the date, time of day, presenter(s), moderator and topic, among other things. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is especially true of webinars.

2. Develop great content

Content is the reason people register and attend your webinar, so without great content you either won’t get people to show up or you won’t get them to come back. Carefully select your topic/title/speaker based on your target audience’s interests and needs, as it relates to what your firm does. Generally speaking, webinars are intended to be educational—not “salesy”—so be sure that you create content that your audience will find helpful and valuable.

3. Put effort into your slide deck

Along those lines, be sure that your slide deck is creative and compelling as well. Remember that it’s meant to support what your presenters are saying, not be what your presenters are saying. Similar to preparing a presentation for other situations, your slide deck should be visual, use large text and avoid trying to cover too much ground on each slide.

4. Use the right tools and equipment

In many ways, a webinar is only as good as the tools you use to produce them. And it starts with choosing the right webinar software. There are a ton of webinar tools out there to choose from (GoToWebinar, WebEx, Adobe Connect, etc.) and selecting the one that’s right for you comes down to capabilities, preferences and cost. Once you know what you need most from the software, choose the one that best aligns with your needs.

And it’s not just the webinar software that matters—having the right equipment is important as well. This includes everything from having the right kind of room to conduct the webinar in, headset microphones that offer crystal clear and static-free sound and a dependable Internet connection.

5. Get the word out

A well-planned webinar with great content, a compelling slide deck and the right tools will be of no use if you don’t have attendees! Once you’ve identified the webinar logistics (date, time, title, etc.) and have set up the webinar in your preferred webinar tool, you need to spread the word! Set up a landing page to promote the webinar and create images and graphics that can be used on the website and social media. We recommend to start promoting at least 3-4 weeks in advance of the webinar, using a variety of methods including email, social media, website calls-to-action and even paid amplification.

6. Be prepared—for everything

I can’t overstate the importance of preparation. While some might think that webinars are easier to present for than an in-person seminar, in some ways they are more difficult. The audience is virtual, so you can’t make eye contact, pick up on social cues or feed off the energy (or notice the lack of) like you can in person. And the audience only has your voice and the slide deck to hold their attention. So naturally, the more prepared you are, the better you’re going to connect with the audience. Know your material, practice and time the presentation and set up early for sound and equipment checks.

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Another component of preparation includes being ready for the unexpected. What if you lose your Internet connection? What if the phones go down? What if attendees are having trouble logging in? Identifying what could come up and having a contingency plan in place ahead of time will make it much easier to deal with should any problems arise.

7. Designate a producer/moderator

We highly recommend that you designate a “producer” whose primary role during the webinar is simply to run the webinar software console. The presenter(s) should be focused solely on presenting, but you need someone to run the software, collect Q&A submissions, launch poll questions/answers and field comments from participants. The producer can also serve as a moderator, introducing the speaker(s), making announcements and handling audience questions during Q&A. We’ve found this role to be critical to the success of our webinars.

8. Create a webinar production checklist

As we just discussed, running a webinar involves a lot of logistics and details. And forgetting to do something as simple as pressing “record” at the start of the webinar can have a negative impact on the success of your webinar. So to avoid missing any detail and to keep your webinar on track, it’s a good idea to create a webinar production checklist. This should be a list of all activities and items—both big and small—that need to be completed in order to successfully host a webinar.

9. Start on time, end on time

Your audience’s time is valuable, so be sensitive to it and honor the time constraints that you’ve advertised for the webinar. While it’s not uncommon for many webinar attendees to arrive late, it’s still best to still start on time. And it’s equally important that you end on time as well. This points back to the necessity of being prepared and making sure that the presenter has timed their presentation and can stick to the time allotted.

10. Deliver content as promised

The title and description that “sold” the attendees when they registered should be accurate to the actual content that is presented during the webinar. In other words, if they are expecting something educational, don’t make your webinar a thinly veiled sales pitch. Your promotional emails and landing page are essentially a promise, so make sure that by all means you deliver on that promise.

11. Allow time for Q&A

Be sure to allow time at the end of the webinar for taking questions that the audience can submit throughout the webinar. The Q&A provides a great opportunity to engage with the audience and give additional insight to what you have previously discussed, as well as related topics that are of interest to the audience.

12. Follow-up

Last but certainly not least is follow-up and this goes for both attendees and non-attendees. We recommend creating a post-webinar survey that ideally gets served up when the webinar has ended. Keep the survey short and to the point and seek to gauge how well the webinar met the expectations of the attendee, the quality of the speaker/content, suggestions for improvement and ideas for future webinar topics.

You’ll also want to send an email to attendees (ideally within a few hours of the webinar) thanking them for their attendance and offering links to download the slide deck and/or view a recording of the webinar. Similarly to non-attendees, you’ll want to send an email expressing your disappointment that they were unable to attend and offering them the opportunity to download the slide deck and/or view a recording of the webinar as well. You might want to consider a drip campaign as well to keep registrants engaged with additional content that is relevant to the topic of the webinar.

While webinars are an ideal tactic for content marketing, success ultimately depends on how well you plan and execute. Hopefully these 12 tips will provide some insight to help make your B2B webinars more successful.

http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/12-tips-for-hosting-a-successful-b2b-webinar-01242330

5 Big Internet Marketing Mistakes (That Are Incredibly Easy to Make)

The Internet is full of “must-do” lists when it comes to web design and Internet marketing. Click through popular blogs, our own included, and you’ll find many different tips on what you have to try, use, or manage if you want to find customers over the Internet.

Knowing which mistakes to avoid is just as important as realizing which best practices you have to follow, however. For that reason, we’d like to point out five big Internet marketing mistakes that are incredibly easy to make:

1. Pestering your customers. Email marketing is incredibly valuable, but lots of companies use it to simply badger their customers week after week (or even several times per week) with one offer after another. Be sure to mix up your sales pitches with some informative articles and ideas, so your customers don’t feel like you’re just contacting them when you want something.

2. Sounding just like your competitors. A lot of business owners and managers are at a loss when it comes to describing or differentiating their companies, so they adopt the approach to either copy their competitors or come up with web content that is similar to what they’ve seen. The end result, though, is a set of pages that doesn’t set a business apart from the competition.

3. Promoting too many sales or discounts. When you’re constantly having sales and offering discounts, you don’t just give your business a short-term revenue boost – you also teach your customers that they can get your products or services for less if they are willing to wait long enough. In other words, discounting too much or too often can make it virtually impossible for you to find customers for your normal prices.

4. Not building trust. Today’s consumers have a lot of skepticism when it comes to what they read and see on the Internet. That’s why it’s up to you to do everything you can to build trust and credibility on your website. Show them that their transactions are safe, that you’ve been in business for a long time, and that other customers are willing to vouch for you. That brings us to…

5. Ignoring online reviews. The online reviews your company has are your most important marketing tool, because they essentially amount to word-of-mouth advertising. Do everything you can to encourage buyers to leave good reviews for your business, and take immediate action to clean things up if the feedback you get is less than stellar.

Are you working against your own Internet marketing success by making these common mistakes? If so, the first step is realizing that they’re holding you back and deciding to be smarter in the future. The second step is to call us today and let us show you how we can make your website more effective and profitable at the same time.

http://www.washingtontimesreporter.com/article/20150522/BLOGS/305229999/1662

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How A Blogger makes Millions

She's the food blogging phenomenon who made history as having the fastest selling debut cookbook since records began.

So, when author and health guru Ella Woodward, known by her blogging pseudonym, Deliciously Ella, imparts her wisdom on what it takes to build a successful digital brand, we're all ears. 

Speaking at a new series of debates hosted by ad agency, Havas London, the blogging sensation, who has over 6m unique users to her site a month, spoke about how she's made a business from what started out as a life-altering dietary change.

+5

Ella Woodward, 23, embraced a fully vegan lifestyle to beat her POTS syndrome. She started blogging about her healthy living journey at Deliciouslyella.com, which has lead to the release of her debut recipe book documenting her story and sharing her healthy living tips

After being diagnosed with a chronic illness, Ella chose to reassess the way she ate; she now teaches cooking lessons, released an app, which has nearing 100,000 downloads, and wrote the fastest-selling debut cookbook since records began.

A self-confessed 'sugar monster', who was struck down with a rare illness that attacked her nervous system and left her bed-bound, Ella cured herself through healthy eating - and now she's cashing in. 

In an effort to turn her life around, Ella embraced a fully vegan lifestyle and managed to beat her illness and launch her own successful business along the way.

So, what are her secrets to success? Speaking to FEMAIL about her blog, which started 'by accident', Ella said: 'Stay true to yourself, engage with your followers and ignore the critics.

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Ella, who is the eldest daughter of Camilla Sainsbury, the supermarket heiress, and Labour MP and former Cabinet minister Shaun Woodward, blames her diet for a multitude of problems but her has fully recovered ever since overhauling her sugar-filled lifestyle 

Behind the scenes at a Deliciously Ella cooking class

'When I first started blogging, I kept it a secret from my friends and then started to show a few people and it snowballed from there. I'd say my golden rule is stay true to your own self and voice. People criticised me for using too many explanation marks and the word "awesome" too much, but that's just me. Authenticity is huge, it's important to make people feel apart of the journey.' 

Unlike some bloggers, Ella is extremely strict with who she works with and won't represent a product that she wouldn’t have in her own kitchen and use regularly.

I want people to be excited about good food and want my blog to be the go-to for healthy food 

This sincerity runs through her whole ethos. When Ella started out she contacted heath bloggers but received no response, so she now makes it a priority to reply to every email she receives from her website and has a personal connection with her readership.

'I think it's essential to engage with your followers,' she said. 'I always used to email bloggers and no one ever replied so I try to reply to every comment and question and although sometimes I regret it when I'm sat on Instagram til 3am, it's worth it.'

Ella, who has followers all over the world (including in Pacific Islands she's never heard of so has to Google), believes it's important not to localise too much.

'I don't alienate anyone by making it too London-centric,' she said.

She's already accomplished so much for someone so young, but she's already starting to look to the future.

'I am going to concentrate on my website – I want my blog to be the go-to for healthy food,' she said. 

'I would like to go down the [Jamie Oliver] route and help educate people. Educating people is so important and that’s why I am not worried about other health food bloggers. 

'Whilst everyone is still learning about good food, I think there’s plenty of space online for everyone, I want people to be excited about good food.' 

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Brimming with tantalising photography of Ella's fresh, simple recipes, this book is sure to inspire readers to embrace a new mind-set that celebrates food and lets natural ingredients shine

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Ella gave up refined sugar, gluten, dairy, anything processed or refined and meat - and noticed the difference within two weeks

ELLA WOODWARD'S STORY  

Ella was a self-confessed 'sugar monster', who was struck down with a rare illness that attacked her nervous system and left her bed-bound, and cured herself through healthy eating.

In an effort to turn her life around, Ella Woodward, 23, embraced a fully vegan lifestyle and managed to beat her illness and launch her own successful business, which has lead to the release of her debut recipe book documenting her story and sharing her healthy living tips.

Ella, who is the eldest daughter of Camilla Sainsbury, the supermarket heiress, and Labour MP and former Cabinet minister Shaun Woodward, blames her former diet for a multitude of problems.

Her childhood was extraordinarily privileged but her diet, by her own account, was appalling and she blames it for her poor health.

In 2011 Ella was diagnosed with a relatively rare illness called Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS.

The syndrome effectively breaks down your autonomic nervous system: the system that controls everything that is meant to happen automatically in the body - so your heart beat, digestion, circulation and immune system.

Speaking to MailOnline, Ella said: 'As you can imagine this had a pretty devastating effect on my life. I literally couldn’t walk down the street, I slept for 16 hours a day, was in chronic pain, had blackouts, never-ending heart palpitations, unbearable stomach issues, constant headaches - the list goes on.'

Ella, who lives in London, was bed-ridden 95 per cent of the time and prescribed conventional medication and steroids for about six months but they didn’t make much difference so she decided to make a change herself.

'I began researching natural healing which is how I came to change my diet. Overnight I gave up refined sugar, gluten, dairy, anything processed or refined and meat,' she said. 

'It was a huge change from someone that lived off a delicious mixture of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream; mountains of Cadbury’s caramel chocolate, lots of fizzy pick-n-mix and millions of jars of peanut butter and strawberry jam eaten with a spoon.

'I noticed a difference after just a few weeks of eating well though and 18 months later I was able to come off all the medication - which I should have been on for life - and now feel absolutely amazing.'

Ella tracked her progress and shared all her favourite recipes via an online blog, Deliciously Ella. 

Ella, who studied History of Art at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's University, St. Andrews, was so inundated with recipe requests that she decided to launch an app and runs regular cookery classes and supper clubs.

While Ella starts the day with a green smoothie and follows with salad bowls, hearty soups, kale chips and homemade houmous, we don't all have the time or taste for that.

The lifestyle guru advises: 'I think just making one small change a day is amazing, just adding in one new serving of fruit or vegetables a day is fantastic, some sweet potato wedges or guacamole make an insanely delicious addition to any meal and they’re such an easy place to start.'  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-3064116/Deliciously-Ella-build-global-blogging-brand-bedroom.html

How to Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile to Find Potential Customers

n his book Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, Mitch Myerson introduces you to 22 innovators who have redefined the developing landscape of online marketing. Learn how to master proven strategies, avoid costly mistakes and grow your business. In this edited excerpt, contributing author and LinkedIn expert Viveka Von Rosenoffers tips on creating a LinkedIn profile, then targeting your searches, to find your target market.

Are you, like many professionals, still not convinced of the power of LinkedIn? Here are some stats that might change your mind:

• LinkedIn is the number-one social network for driving traffic to corporate websites.
• LinkedIn members are 50 percent more likely to engage with a company they engage with on LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn drives more traffic to B2B blogs and sites than Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ combined.
• Ninety-three percent of marketers rate LinkedIn as effective for generating leads.
• Sixty-five percent of companies acquired B2B leads through LinkedIn.

Your first step to attracting prospects on LinkedIn is to create a powerful profile. Start with your Professional Headline -- it's the area right underneath your name, the 120 characters that describe who you are and what you do. Most people just have their “Title” at “Company” (because that's LinkedIn’s default), but this is a great place for a tagline and a few keywords.

Because your picture, name and Professional Headline are usually what people see in most communications on LinkedIn, whether you're responding to a group update, sending a message, inviting someone to connect or using the introduction feature, invest the time to make it engaging.

A lot of people skip the description field of their Experience section, but I'd strongly urge you not to. You have 1,000 characters in this area to plant your keywords. As you describe what you do and what your company does, these keywords are going to naturally settle right in. And with LinkedIn’s search algorithm, the description section of your Experience is more important than ever!

In the Background section of your profile, make sure to use the most of the 2,000-character Summary field to expound on who you are and what you do. Keep the Summary section customer-facing, by being clear on how what you do benefits your prospects.

The Interests section, found at the very bottom of your profile under Additional Information, is the only section on LinkedIn into which I recommend you blatantly dump your keywords. You have 1,000 characters to add both personal interests (hiking, biking, walking, judo) as well as the list of the keywords you use for SEO. Just paste in your list, and make sure you separate each keyword or keyword phrase with a comma so the words are searchable.

If you get the right keywords in these four sections, you have a much better chance of your profile showing up when someone does a search on them. Since LinkedIn actually drives more traffic than Google+ and Bing, you need to make sure that you, not your competition, are being found by your prospects.

Now let's talk about the best ways to search and find prospects on LinkedIn.

1. Advanced search.

LinkedIn’s Advanced Search is found just to the right of the Smart Search box. (The tiny, light gray link that says “Advanced.”) The Advanced Search is available to everyone no matter what membership you have. Once you click on the link, a new page opens and you’ll now have the ability to search by:

• Keyword  
• First name
• Last name
• Title or potential title
• Company
• School
• Location

When working with LinkedIn, it's so important to know who your target market and prospects are. You must be clear on your “buyer” or “purchaser persona.” Once you’re clear on who these individuals might be, it’s an easy cut and paste into these different search fields on LinkedIn.

• What keywords would your target buyer have in their profiles?
• What would their titles be?
• Where would they work?
• Where did they go to school?
• Where would they live?

2. Boolean search.

Even with the Advanced Search, we don’t always get as accurate a result as we'd like. To more fully refine a search, consider using Boolean logic or Boolean search strings.

Boolean search uses a series of “modifiers” to help you refine your search. These modifiers include:

• + and “ ” to hold search phrases together
• OR when you're not sure of a title or keyword
• AND to definitely include a search term or phrase
• NOT to exclude a search term or phrase

+ or “ ”

If you're doing a search for a Chief Executive Officer and don’t use the little plus sign (+) between chief and executive and officer (chief+executive+officer) or you didn’t put that phrase in quotation marks, then LinkedIn will search for a bunch of “chiefs” and a bunch of “executives” and bunch of “officers.” Your result is going to be much less targeted than if you'd used the + sign or the quotation marks around the phrase: “chief executive officer.”

OR

If you're just not quite sure about whom you're looking for, then OR becomes your best search friend. Maybe you want to work with the head of a company. What does the head of the company call him or herself? Did they choose CEO OR “chief executive officer” OR founder OR owner OR partner OR co-owner OR co-founder OR... . If you didn’t use OR and put the wrong title in the title search field, then you lose the opportunity of seeing everyone who might be a good fit. You can use the OR modifier in both the keyword and Title (and company) fields on LinkedIn.

AND

Use AND when you want to clarify an audience or a niche. If you were looking for a CEO OR owner OR founder OR partner AND you wanted to make sure to only search for people in the legal industry, you would simply add AND legal AND law AND lawyer AND law firm to your search. If you're not sure what keywords you want to add, you can always use parentheses to hold options together. Your search might look like this: CEO OR chief+executive OR founder AND (legal OR lawyer OR law).

NOT

I think the most important modifier is NOT. When you get your search results, you might see a lot of competitors show up (or employees or job seekers or consultants). If you're not interested in any of those folks as prospects, you can erase them from your list by using NOT. You might want to add: NOT consultant NOT jobseeker NOT . The use of NOT will definitely target and clarify your results.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243709

5 Guest Blogging Tips That Build Your Brand Successfully

Over the years, it’s become clear that the quickest way to build a brand online is to invest in content marketing, and link up with bloggers and authoritative industry leaders. All you need to support this theory is to look at brands like HubSpot and KISSmetrics, which hit the ground running with massive guest blogging campaigns and impressive visuals.

If you’re looking to experience an equally fast start for your brand – or are looking to give an existing brand a much needed jolt – there are certain strategies you need to pursue.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

The entire blogosphere gasped when Matt Cutts told the world guest blogging was over. But what did he really mean? Was he saying that all guest blogging was bad and should be done away with?

Not quite.

What he said was that guest blogging as a primary source of link building was over. He warned companies to quit relying on guest blogging as a link-building strategy and to instead only use it for brand awareness.

While this statement should have provided more clarity for companies on how to approach guest blogging as a brand play, it instead scared many off from the practice altogether. However, the truth is that guest blogging is still very much alive and is a perfect opportunity for growing a brand. But you must understand the difference between linking up with spammy sites and using credible channels to disseminate your content.  Here are a few of the major benefits of partnering with credible bloggers:

Awareness

The primary benefit of guest blogging is that brands are able to reach entirely new segments of the market. Instead of relying on your own reach, you get to tap into someone else’s group of followers and readers.

Credibility

The more exposure your brand gets on a variety of different blogs and platforms, the more credibility you gain. Each place your name appears – assuming it’s not negative – is a virtual vouch for your brand.

Relationships

While you’re trying to reach a large audience of readers, the fact is that linking up with a guest blogger serves as an effective networking tool that could pay dividends in the future.

Link building

And while guest blogging shouldn’t be your primary form of link building, it’s certainly a form of link building. When used in conjunction with other strategies, it does add value. 

The Key to Successful Guest Blogging

What Matt Cutts warned people against was linking up with low quality blogs and using those connections to create spammy content. So, if you’re going to continue guest blogging, that means you need to find influential bloggers. Furthermore, you need a specific strategy for researching and monitoring which guest blogging opportunities provide the highest return.

Unfortunately, only six percent of B2C marketers claim their organizations are “very successful” at tracking ROI, while an incredible 30 percent either don’t track at all or aren’t successful.

Top Tips for Brand Building with Guest Blogging

If you believe guest blogging could give your brand a boost, here are some of the top tips to propel you in the right direction.

Keep Track of Your Efforts

According to Brand24, a leader in social monitoring and tracking, it’s critical that you keep track of all your guest blogging efforts so you can accurately understand whether you’re getting a valuable return. Using a proven software or online tool can make this process exponentially easier.

Implement a Closing

While many bloggers have very specific rules, some may give you more flexibility. If possible, find a way to implement a strong closing with a call-to-action. This CTA allows you to engage with your audience and may even encourage readers to click on your link or share your post.

Invest in Shelf Life

A well-written blog can realistically hang around for years and still produce results. While there is certainly a time for writing time-sensitive content regarding current issues, it’s a much more valuable long-term strategy to write content that can remain effective for a long period of time.

Find Syndicators

One thing successful brands are good at is finding syndication partners to redistribute existing content to new audiences. The huge benefit here is that you don’t have to write anything fresh. You simply have to contact these sites and make a simple request. In addition to guest blogging, consider syndication for content you own.

Invest in Research

Prior to implementing a guest blogging strategy, you should make sure you’ve done your research. Whenever considering a new blog or channel, check to make sure it’s audience would resonate with you, that the bloggers are invested in quality content, and that Google and the other search engines don’t see the site as spammy.

Guest blogging is still a great brand building strategy and can be used to garner positive traction on the internet. Use these tips to make the most out of your efforts and always remember to track and monitor your influence to ensure you’re getting the maximum return on investment.

http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/03/guest-blogging-tips.html