SEO Werkt!

Byline article pitches usually stink. This is because, even if the pitch is targeted, the article is usually included in the pitch. The recipient assumes the article has been sent to several other blogs or media outlets. And since most everyone likes to publish minty fresh content, the pitches are ignored.

So when I finally received a good byline article pitch, I was twice as excited. It meant I had some content for my blog and a good pitch to write about here. It’s two, two mints in one!

The good pitch below is from Carlo Pandian as well as a link to the end result.

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SUBJECT: Strategic Public Relations – Social Bookmarking boosts visibility, Twitter and LinkedIn for PRs and the status of press releases
Hi Kevin,
Just a quick note to see if you would be interested in a guest blogger for Strategic Public Relations.

The sophistication with which companies analyze their natural search visibility and the metrics they use to do so can vary widely up and down the spectrum. There is often little correlation between how sophisticated a company is in other areas of their online business and their level of…



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Having to think of original posts to draw in readers can be maddening.  Having to actually write down that idea in a way that’s easy to read, while being relevant and informative, is draining. We also have to think of different ways to give the article more visibility, be it for the purposes of increasing your page rank, affiliate marketing, and many more.

So the moment we finish an article, we might end up leaving it as is, letting it accumulate views and comments on its own while we start on another.

As for other people’s posts, we just read what we want and move on. Some of us just don’t have the time to leave coherent and reasonable comments, even if we found the article useful.

By doing so, we are missing out on some things that will not just benefit our readers and other writers but our own sites as well. Here are a few reasons why you should comment on blog posts:

• To give feedback – Communication is crucial to blogging, and it can only get clearer when it’s a dialogue. Giving feedback allows the webmasters to know just what their audience is thinking. Conversely, if our readers give us feedback on the articles we uploaded, we can give them exactly what they want. We can adjust to the varied and ever-changing tastes of our audience.

Discussion can even lead to new ideas, making the process of writing even easier.

• To have complementary content – When the content of a post is being discussed, it’s hard not to have people giving their own takes. Additional tips get thrown around, complex concepts are clarified, and problems are solved.

If we forget something important in our article, we can just mention it in our own comments section, too!

• To build your brand – Being able to answer questions from readers (whether from our own blog or another’s) makes us look like experts in the field. People will go to us for our insights. Chances are, they will even visit our own blogs if they see us commenting on someone else’s.

We also establish bonds between readers and other writers when they see that we care enough to impart our knowledge to them.

• To increase social proof – People can’t help but check out things that other people go crazy for. They’ll think, “There must be something worthwhile in that post when there are a lot of comments in it!”

So if people do leave comments on our posts, we can reply to each one, thereby increasing the number of total comments. When other people search for articles like ours and see the number of comments, they won’t be able to resist clicking on our site.

• To enhance your site’s visibility – It might not be apparent at once, but comments can directly contribute to upping our blogs’ rank on search engines. More often than not, everyone discussing in the comments section will end up using the keywords for that particular post.

Since we’ll be engaging in actual conversation, it won’t be seen as spam. Commenters will be unintentionally helping in increasing our ranks, and they’ll be happy to do so!

So when we write or read articles, we should take the time to say something sensible in the comments section. Posts get better, pages get more views, and readers get happier. Everybody wins.

Why Should I Comment on Blog Posts? is a post from: We Blog Better. © 2012. Share it freely, but please link back to this source.

Would you like to subscribe to my feed or subscribe to my newsletter? Or perhaps follow me on Twitter.

I’m also available for blog startup, content writing and consultation services.

Visit my other blog, Highly Favored for Christian inspiration and church newsletter tips.

Become a Better Blogger

It’s no secret that guest posting is becoming one of the most popular ways to earn quality backlinks. Contributing a guest article in exchange for a link back to your site not only improves your SEO, but it helps your company gain visibility and credibility in the industry. However, there are a few known rules [...]

Editor’s Note: Sales Marketing Manager Leslie Hitchcock is a non-editorial TechCrunch employee. In addition to working at TechCrunch and being super fashionable, she reviews startups and tech products occasionally on her personal blog, Leslie Just Joined.

“Marketing is the name we use to describe the promise a company makes, the story it tells, the authentic way it delivers on that promise.” –Seth Godin

In an effort to appear in touch with Silicon Valley, the traditional media has recently turned its eye on venture capital’s marketing efforts.

Venture capital is certainly a changing landscape, especially as of late. With the chattering classes abuzz about the current state of VC, the tech industry seems to be taking the recent visibility of local investors personally. Traditionally a quiet industry, firms are now actively touting themselves and it is making some people uncomfortable.

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures’ Charlie O’Donnell explains,”A lot of the VCs are feeling the need to explain to the market what you get by going with us versus the other guy.”

We marketers hate to break it to you (traditional media) but this effort is old news i.e. something that our niche industry has been following for some time.

Not all VCs appreciate marketing but a few are currently to breaking into the forefront by establishing their differentiating factors aggressively. So which firms are in the lead? Well lets take a look at the big player’s efforts, and what they means from a marketing perspective.

Andreessen Horowitz: The Partners

Brash. Larger than life. Successful. Philanthropic. When news comes out about Andreessen Horowitz, it is about Andreessen and Horowitz themselves. Interchangeable, they are the fund, the fund is them and it captivates the Valley. Prolific bloggers, both Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are open about what they look for in startups and founders, how they invest and the influence they command. And let’s not forget standing on their pedigree (or as some see it, star power) as founders with substantial exits themselves.

In my experience, the only problem with linking the brand with people is that people are fallible. If they fall, the fund can fall. But clearly that is a risk they’re willing to take, and at this point it is working well for them. As Andreessen himself has said about being so open: “We wanted to tell our story. Venture capital has traditionally been behind the scenes. How does Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins build a company? I don’t know.”

Greylock Partners: The Portfolio

Attempting to take a page out of the Andreessen’s playbook, Greylock brought on Reid Hoffman and immediately increased its visibility in doing so. But the firm appears to have no interest in putting all of its eggs in one basket, if you take a look at its marketing exposure. Above all, the firm appears to stand on the shoulders of their investments, letting them speak for themselves, enterprise and consumer alike. Cloudera, Pandora, Instagram, OpenDNS, Tumblr — Greylock wants you to know that they are reputable, disruptive, entrepreneur-friendly and ultimately stable.

This is a more subtle marketing tactic, but has less potential to trigger the collapse of a firm unless we see a gigantic shift in the financial market. A fall-off is always possible, as those of us who lived through the dotcom bust of the early 2000s are all too aware of, but a steadiness through volatile times stands for something as the industry rebuilds.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers: The Services

A panel held during the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC conference in May featured some of the best known VC’s in the industry, including Kleiner Perkins partner Mike Abbott. What was particularly interesting to me when I attended the session was the topic of what value a VC adds to the startup they’re backing. KPCB specifically led the charge on this a decade ago. They take this mandate seriously, going well beyond writing a check to offer services like recruiting, perspective, market analysis and advice, as Abbott pointed out.

VCs adding marketing/communications advice to their already established service offerings is a logical step. KPCB specifically states that their marketing efforts are not for the firm but are in the best interests of the startups they fund, a brilliant distinction. “Who cares about us? We care about you!”

As an aside, with the recent legal debacle the firm has found itself ensnared, in it will be fascinating to watch the effort to help it regain its reputation — And if that effort will succeed.

Sequoia Captial: The Success

Shepherding a startup from seed to exit is a hard job, but Sequoia makes it clear that they’re up to the task if their dizzying homepage is any indication. Palo Alto Networks, Kayak and ServiceNow were all funded by Sequoia in early stages, and are all successfully listed companies today.

An entrepreneur’s dream is leading a startup from idea to IPO and the backing of a proven VC quantity is one way to get there. Sequoia’s branding all but says “If we anoint you, you will exit.” Heady stuff for a young startup looking for backing and guidance.

As far as guidance is concerned, Sequoia gets an honorable mention for including a “How to write a business plan” link on their site.

All of this already established discussion around positioning begs the question, “Why damn investors for differentiating and branding themselves, if everyone else is already doing it?”

Well, the entrepreneurial “Change or Die” becomes “Innovate or Die” which becomes “Differentiate or Die” as competitors crop up. Investors know this and the fact that they’re branching out and hiring marketing/PR staff means that they see the need to stand apart in the saturated market.

Incubators, angels and smaller venture firms are poised to position themselves in a different way, and succeeding. It make sense that the big guns would take a page from their playbook.

Increasing media visibility is a great way for organizations to get in front of customers.  What many business leaders don’t know is that they don’t have to hire an expensive public relations firm or wait for the media to notice them to earn media visibility – they can create their own buzz! Today’s web-driven world has made it possible for companies large and small to make news – simply by writing and publishing their own newsworthy content.  The way to get started is by writing and sharing powerful press releases on the web.  Thanks to the power of today’s social web, the elitism of PR is gone.  Now a days, lots of organizations do their own PR – some in their PJ’s…
…Quick confession session, Team WMT has done some serious PJ PR!

I wrote an educational article for Web Marketing Today on Online PR where I bullet out (step by step with an example release) the ways to write online press releases with best practices.

Marketing, in it’s purest definition, means maximizing relationships.  We make meaningful relationships when we respectfully communicate.  Press releases have a format that helps keep news pithy and powerful.  Thanks to web’s searchability, press releases are not just read by the media, they are also read by current and prospective customers.  Readers don’t want to be pushed a bunch of propaganda, they want to be educated and empowered.  Think of a press release as a way to spoon-feed news in a “spoonful of sugar” way that is easily consumed by the reader.

That being said, check out the How to Write Online Press Releases article and look at the necessary components to writing an effective (and delicious) online press release.

Happy Web Marketing!!!! 

Web Marketing Related Posts:

1. The Pros and Cons of the Social Media News Release: Has PR 2.0 Killed the Traditional Press Release?
2. PR 2.0: Build Your Own Social Media News Release with PitchEngine
3. Should Press Releases Be Shared on Social Media Platforms?

Just last month, we reported on data from 3 of Facebook’s biggest ads API partners that mobile Sponsored Stories were generating more than 13 times the click-through rates of all Facebook desktop ads. Compelling as that data may have been, it was also some pretty early data, considering Facebook had launched the ability to purchase mobile-only ads just 2 weeks before.

So today, when we stumbled across a study conducted by EyeTrackShop, the results raised our eyebrows a bit. EyeTrackShop had tested and analyzed ads with various placements surrounded by identical content on a desktop, an iPhone, and an iPad. The study revealed that iPhone users (and, by extension, other smartphone users) were the least likely to see ads on Facebook, with only a 3% to 13% chance of being seen if they were located ‘below the fold.‘

So why do desktop ads get more visibility than their mobile counterparts? According to EyeTrackShop, it’s because desktop ads are located in fixed positions, which gives them a better chance of getting seen. The study even found that Facebook ads were actually the second thing desktop users looked at on Facebook, and that the performance of these ads had improved since Facebook introduced timeline. Mobile ads, on the other hand, were seen by fewer people, for less time, and had significantly lower recall.

Okay — so we know that Facebook ads on smartphones are getting less visibility than desktop ads. But wasn’t there a third test subject involved in this study? So how did the iPad ads fare?

Even better than desktop ads, in fact! EyeTrackShop reports that ads served on the iPad were seen by 18% more people. Those people even spent 29% longer looking at them and recalled the ads at a level similar to desktop/web ads.

To Use Mobile Ads, or Not to Use Mobile Ads …

That is probably your question. So here’s the thing. From this data, you’d infer that your ads would get the most visibility on tablets and the least visibility on smartphones, right? So maybe you’d decide to purchase Facebook ads just for tablets and desktops. The problem is, while you can purchase mobile-only ads, you currently can’t purchase only tablet/iPad ads. In other words, ads that get served on tablets are lumped in with smartphones in the mobile category of Facebook’s advertising platform. So while the data from EyeTrackShop’s study is interesting, Facebook doesn’t allow you to take much action as a result. Not yet, anyway.

Furthermore, remember that this study is only reporting on the visibility — not the click-through rates — of Facebook ads. So while it’s good to know the difference between your Facebook ads’ visibility from screen to screen, it’s important to recognize that visibility and eliciting action are two separate things. Remember the report we referenced earlier in this article? While smartphone ads may have the least impressive visibility, if they’re still generating 13x the clicks of desktop ads, who cares?

The only true way to ensure you’re getting the most out of your Facebook ad spend is to conduct your own tests and closely monitor your analytics. If your desktop ads are performing well, but your mobile ads are floundering, mobile might not be the best investment for you regardless. Oh yeah, and cross your fingers for some smarter, tablet-only ad targeting from Facebook

What do you make of this EyeTrackShop data? Will you make any changes to your Facebook advertising approach as a result?

Image Credit: kennymatic

You know when your boss asks you what your leads goal is, and you don’t know how to answer because it’s basically just a shot in the dark? Or how about when he asks how your new fangled inbound marketing is going to help you drive leads to the sales organization? It’s hard to make the case for inbound to a non-believer when your projections aren’t based on math, isn’t it?

It’s high time to start making your monthly inbound traffic and leads goals based on your business’ growth goals. And we’re here to tell you how! The good news is that it’s ridiculously easy, and with the help of our friend Greg Elwell over at B2B Inbound, we’ve created an Excel template that you can download and save to make this goal-setting easy as pie every month. With just a few quick inputs, this template will do all the math for you, and you’ll be able to know exactly how much traffic and leads your inbound marketing efforts need to drive each month for your sales organization to hit their numbers, and your company to meet its growth goals.

Download the excel template now so you can follow along with the instructions on how to use it below!

How to Calculate Your Monthly Inbound Traffic and Leads Goals

Step 1: Enter Your Monthly Revenue Goal

This number is how much new monthly revenue your sales team needs to book, which you are going to attribute back to leads generated from inbound marketing.

But wait, what if you’re only using inbound marketing to generate new customers? Let’s go to the next step!

Step 2: Enter the Percentage of New Revenue Driven From Inbound Marketing

Here, you’ll input how much of that new revenue will be driven by inbound marketing. So if you’re only generating leads via inbound marketing, well, go ahead and put 100% in there. For the sake of this example, we’ll just say you’ll drive 80% of your monthly revenue from inbound marketing.

Step 3: Enter Your Average Revenue Per Client

Now, it’s time to input your average revenue per new customer. If you don’t know this, a simple way to calculate it is by taking your total revenue collected over the past 12 months, and dividing it by the number of customers you have.

And in this step, you’ll get your very first calculation — right there in that orange box. Now you know exactly how many new customers you need your inbound marketing efforts to generate to meet your growth goals (based on the information you’ve input thus far). Pretty good information to know, eh?

Step 4: Enter Your Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate

Now, enter your current lead-to-customer conversion rate to determine how many leads you need to actually get those customers. You can also input a goal if you’re targeting a better conversion rate to see how that affects the number of leads you need to generate to hit your goals.

If you’re not sure how to find your conversion rate, simply take the number of new customers you acquire each month and divide it by the number of leads you generate.

Step 5: Enter Your Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate

Finally, let’s figure out how much site traffic you’ll need to generate! Enter your current visitor-to-lead conversion rate, and this template will deliver the number of visitors you need to bring to your site. Again, you can also enter a target visitor-to-lead conversion rate if you’re looking to improve upon this metric (and by extension, get a bit of a traffic reprieve and still meet your goals).

Not too difficult, eh? Now it’s your turn. Download this Traffic and Leads Goal Calculator, and see how your inbound marketing efforts can help your company hit its growth goals next month!

How do you calculate your monthly traffic and leads goals right now?

Want more people to read your blog?

Are you fully leveraging LinkedIn?

Many business bloggers neglect one of the most powerful social networks for growing visibility and traffic. LinkedIn is THE professional web.

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur, or a working person who is blogging, you should consider LinkedIn as a valuable place for getting more exposure.

Keep reading to discover seven powerful tips to use LinkedIn to drive more traffic to your blog.

LinkedIn Profile Views Drive Blog Traffic

Your LinkedIn profile can serve as one of the most important referral sources for your blog.

If you consider that significant blog traffic from LinkedIn can come directly from LinkedIn profile views, it makes sense to work to increase your profile views.

Fortunately this is something you can measure.

LinkedIn will display the number of times your profile has been viewed. Keep track of this each week and as you implement the steps below, most likely you will see this number consistently rising.

If you are active and engaged on LinkedIn, members are going to click through to view your profile.

#1: Add Profile Links

Your LinkedIn profile is where members are going to land to learn more about who you are, what you do and whom you help.

From your profile, the most natural next step that members will take if they are intrigued or interested in what they see is to click through one of the links that you showcase on your profile under Websites.

Get creative with your LinkedIn profile website links.

Showcasing descriptive and interesting links on your LinkedIn profile will encourage visitors to click through!

You can link directly to your blog homepage, or you can link to specific landing pages on your blog where you provide a special offer to potential subscribers.

Regardless, make your link descriptions compelling and don’t be afraid to experiment!

Given that your LinkedIn profile serves as the “gateway” to your primary web presence, it is imperative that you have a powerful LinkedIn profile. Learn more about how to enhance and improve your LinkedIn profile.

#2: Build Connections to Boost Your LinkedIn Profile Views

I recently invited someone in my industry to connect. We had a few connections in common and we run similar, perhaps even complementary, businesses. When she received my invitation, she responded with “I limit my LinkedIn connections to people I know personally.”

This is certainly your decision, but I firmly believe that if you limit your connections, you limit opportunities to expand your visibility. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you should only keep a small number of first-degree connections on LinkedIn.

If you want to grow your visibility on LinkedIn, connect with anyone who presents a good reason for connecting!

As you grow your connections, your updates on LinkedIn will be visible to more people.

Remember that every time you update your status on LinkedIn or participate in any activity on the network, that update shows up on the homepage of each one of your connections. If your connections engage with the update, it will be visible to their connections.

This is how my status update appears on the homepage of one of my connections.

Furthermore, be consistently visible and valuable, and the members in your extended network will click through to view your profile in order to learn more about you.

By growing your LinkedIn connections, you have the ability to expand your visibility exponentially. You will also increase your LinkedIn profile views, which in turn can increase traffic to your blog.

Don’t limit your opportunities for visibility and traffic by limiting your connections. Instead, always be connecting. Consider these creative methods for growing your connections.

#3: Get Active and Engaged to Drive LinkedIn Profile Views and Blog Traffic

It doesn’t take much activity to stand out on LinkedIn. All you need to do is spend a little time on the network.

Every action you take on the network will show up as an update on the homepage of your connections. If you’re active, some of your updates may even show in the “Network Update” that LinkedIn sends to members via a weekly email.

Examples of LinkedIn activities that will get visibility:

• Update your profile
• Post a status update
• Participate in a group discussion
• Comment on someone else’s status update
• Post to your LinkedIn company page
• Answer questions in LinkedIn Answers

Answering LinkedIn questions can position you as an expert and grow your visibility.

Ideally, visiting LinkedIn a few times a week to post interesting and compelling status updates, join in a few group discussions and answer a question or two will keep your profile active. Do not forget to engage with connections as well.

Leaving comments or sharing what your connections have posted can also lead to profile views.

Commenting is a very effective way to start dialogue with first-degree connections and beyond. When you leave a comment on someone else’s update, the conversation will show up with your picture in the homepage of all of your connections. It will also show up on the homepage of that person for their connections to view.

Commenting is a great way to gain exposure to your second- and third-degree connections while engaging in conversation.

See the commenting example below.

Comment on the status updates of your network connections to increase profile views and visibility on LinkedIn.

I posted a comment on an update that one of my connections had shared. The screenshot above shows what another one of my connections was able to see with regard to the comment and conversation.

Notice that the person who originally posted this status update (Sarah) gets less visibility than I do as the commenter.

#4: Use LinkedIn on the Go

Mobile devices now account for 22% of LinkedIn traffic.

LinkedIn has developed robust mobile applications to make networking on the go easy and fun. When you participate on LinkedIn through your mobile devices you can stay engaged and visible with your connections anytime and anywhere.

LinkedIn's iPad application.

Spending time on the network and keeping your profile active is the best way to drive views to your profile and ultimately visits to your blog. A significant percentage of my LinkedIn referral traffic to my blog comes directly from my profile!

#5: Post Blog Articles as Status Updates and Link to Relevant Articles

It goes without saying that to drive traffic to your blog from any social network, your blog posts need to be shared with your network.

• Manually post a link to a particular blog post in order to pull an image and control the messaging.
• Don’t be afraid to repurpose your blog posts as status updates from time to time (see image below).
• Post during high-traffic periods (lunchtime and afternoons).
• Edit your comments to engage your connections.

An example of manually posting a link to your blog through a repurposed status update.

It’s also acceptable to post your articles in LinkedIn Groups, but make sure it’s information that will add value to the group, and always include a question or ask for feedback.

Additionally you can point to relevant articles on your blog when participating in group discussions, answering questions in LinkedIn Answers and posting comments on the updates of your connections.

#6: Leverage LinkedIn Tools and Applications

LinkedIn provides a few tools to help you showcase your blog and encourage the sharing of your blog posts to the network.

Install the LinkedIn blog application.

Choose the appropriate blog application to install to pull your blog posts into your LinkedIn profile. This will enhance your profile and showcase your latest insights from your blog.

Use one of these applications provided by LinkedIn to showcase your blog directly on your profile.

The blog application will pull in excerpts of your latest posts.

Excerpts of your latest blog posts are pulled into your LinkedIn profile using the WordPress blog application.

#7: Utilize the LinkedIn Share Button on Your Blog

I’m amazed at how many business-related blogs I see that do not incorporate the LinkedIn Share button as a part of their social sharing tools. Most of the social sharing plugins provide the LinkedIn Share button as an option.

Using the LinkedIn Share button will not only help you get your posts shared on LinkedIn by blog visitors, but that in turn will drive views to your profile and new traffic to your blog!

Use the LinkedIn Share button on your blog to drive shares of your blog posts into LinkedIn.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to integrate your blog more closely with LinkedIn and ultimately boost your traffic.

What do you think? Are you currently taking advantage of any of these ideas? If so, what has worked well for you? I’d love to hear additional creative ideas that I may have left off of the list! Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

With more and more social networks popping up over the years, marketers continue to ask, “why do we need another one?!” Truth is, each network (at least the ones that last) truly does serve its own purpose, because they each have a distinct audience! But instead of sitting down and trying to figure out which is right for your business … let’s just have a little fun?

Have you ever wondered which social network fits your personality? Follow the flowchart below to see where your persona aligns with five of the most popular social networks. And when answering, try to really get in touch with your inner social media self. You know, be real … just like you are on social media

So, spill it. Which social network are you?