In this article I’ll explain my strategy for commenting on blogs and how I use google reader to be more effective with my blog commenting.

Why bother commenting on blogs?

Early on in my blogging life I read about blog commenting. The original stuff I read talked about visiting other people’s blogs and leaving comments. There were two benefits:

1. You become a contributor to the conversation going on on another blog. It’s part of building a community and being social.
2. You get a link back to your site. This link may or may not carry some link juice (depending on whether the blog is a follow or no-follow blog), and some people will click on your link and actually visit your site. When you’re just starting out, any traffic is good traffic!

As I read more about internet marketing and blogging I came to the realisation that some people were commenting on blogs in a manner a bit different to how I was doing it. They were using automated tools to find blogs that allowed comments, and then they flooded them with spammy comments or comments that didn’t add any value – ‘nice post, well done!’

Now, there’s nothing illegal about doing this – I don’t think you’re breaking any laws, but it’s not something that I’m comfortable with.

I’ve been slack in blog commenting over the past few months but I’m starting to do more of it. I’m getting back in the habit of making an effort to comment on articles that I’m reading.

One of the things I’ve always found difficult to do is to keep track of when blogs put up a new article. I used to bookmark a bunch of sites in Firefox and visit them, but I’d frequently miss new articles or visit days late.

I tried following people on Twitter, and whilst this is a good way to keep track of things, sometimes they’d get lost in the Twitter stream. Also, a lot of bloggers (myself included) will Tweet about older blog articles so it can be difficult to determine if a tweet is about a new article or an old one.

The best way I’ve found to make my blog commenting focussed, is to use RSS feeds into Google reader.

Blog Commenting – google Reader

Google reader is one of many Google applications that I use. It’s a web based tool that I use to display all the RSS feeds that I subscribe to.

Whenever I find a blog that I like, I click on the ‘Subscribe To This Page’ link in Firefox. It them asks if I want to use Google for the feed – this is the option I select. It’ll then open up that feed within Google Reader.

The best way to use Google Reader is to set up multiple folders and place your feeds within those folders. This makes it easier to find the feeds you want.

I‘ve got one folder set up with all my favourite guitar site RSS feeds going into it. I can easily find this folder in Reader, and click from feed to feed reading my guitar news.

When it comes to blog commenting, I’ve done something similar. If I find a site that I want to comment on on a regular basis, I place it into a folder within Reader called ‘Blogs To Comment On’.

This is easy to do. When you’ve got the feed displayed within reader, click on the ‘Feed Settings’ button on the top of the feed box. This will open up a list of options, one of which will be to add the feed to a pre-existing folder, or to a new folder. Call you folder whatever you want to call it, as long as it makes sense to you.

The good thing about Reader, is that you can easily see if there’s new content to look at. On the screenshot above, you can see that there’s 6 new articles in the ‘Blogs to Comment On’ folder.

If I click on this and open it, it’ll list all the blogs, line by line and I’ll be able to see at a glance which ones have new content. From there, it’s simple. Click on the articles I want to leave comments on, open them up on the actual blog’s website, read the article and comment.

Using Google Alerts in Google Reader

Here’s another quick bonus tip!

I have a number of Google alerts set up. Want to know if people mention me, my business, or a couple of specific keywords I’m targeting. So I’ve set up Google alerts for these terms.

Instead of getting emails from Google alerts, I’ve set it up so the RSS feeds go into Google Reader, into a folder called ‘Google Alerts’. I can quickly see if there’s anything new to look at, and it easy to mark it all as read.

Blog Commenting with Google Reader – Your Thoughts

So this is how I do my commenting on blogs using Google reader and RSS feeds to make the process simpler.

What do you think. Is there a specific method you use to help with commenting on blogs? Could the method I’ve outlined work for you?

Leave a comment below (ironic, considering it’s an article about commenting!) and let me know what you think.

Years ago I remember hearing someone speak about marketing and the Wall of Black.

Chances are you’ve probably never heard of this concept, but once you learn about it you’ll notice it a whole lot more.

The Wall of What?

The person was speaking about Coke and how they market to their customers. He was saying that its Coke’s goal to have a Coke fridge full of Coke products on the wall directly opposite a shop’s doorway so the first thing you notice as you walk into the shop is the wall of black – a fridge full of Coke.

Once I heard about this I began to notice it in stores that I went into. If I went into a deli or takeaway shop the wall of black was usually there. Sometimes it wasn’t quite in line with the doorway, but it was usually pretty prominent in the store.

I never appreciated how competitive the soft drink market was until I learnt about the wall of black.

What Does Your Wall Look Like?

What does your wall look like?

In the blogging world, you have your own ‘wall of black’.

It’s your blog’s homepage.

In particular its the portion of your home page that’s visible when someone first lands on your page. It’s like when you walk into a shop – you don’t notice everything in the shop straight away, but you’ll notice the wall of black if it’s there.

When someone lands on your blog homepage, what do they notice?

How does it look? If I looked at the top part of your homepage (the bit above the fold), is it obvious what your blog is all about?

Does it look inviting and interesting? Is it easy for me to work out what to click on and to find things that interest me?

Think about when you go into a shop for the first time. You probably don’t know where things are or where to look, so having the store laid out in a logical manner is a good start, as are signs and posters advertising the products.

Building Your Wall of Black

Find some websites that you like reading and look at how they are laid out. What is above the fold on those sites? How is their navigation designed? Is it easy to work out where to go?

Now compare these sites to your site and decide on improvements you can make.

I think there are a couple of ‘essentials’ for a blogger’s wall of black.

• A very clear blog title and tag line. When I land on your blog for the first time, I want to know what it’s all about. I hope you’ve taken the time to think about your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – an elevator speech that sums up what you’re about. If you look at my blog, under the title it says ‘Helping you turn your blog into a business’. If you landed here for the first time, I think that line sums up what I’m about.
• Where do I go? Make sure your navigation menu is easy to understand. Don’t clutter it up too much, but make sure you use titles that are enticing and make me want to click on them. Writing this article has made me review my navigation menu and I’m planning on making some changes to it to simplify things.
• Sign me up. One of the first things a new visitor should see is the sign up box for your newsletter. Mail services like Aweber make it easy to design and install good looking sign up boxes.

You only get one chance to make a good first impression. What can you do today to improve the look of your blog?

Do you have a ‘wall of black’? What does yours look like?

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

Photo Credits : ReneS, Ali Burçin Titizel / Gti861

When it comes to marketing, you need to realise that you can’t please everyone. And if you’ve got a good idea of who your target market is, you may actually start to turn some people off. This isn’t a bad thing.

One of the things I like about blogging is that you get to share your opinion about things. You’re free to express yourself and talk about topics the way you see them. You don’t have an editor or boss telling you what you can or can’t say – you can say what you want.

But the flip side of this is that you’ll soon discover some people have different opinions to you. And sometimes these people read your blog. And sometimes they’ll leave comments that disagree with your point of view. Or they’ll send you an email telling you they don’t agree with something you’ve written. Or they’ll unsubscribe from your newsletter list.

I’ve learnt in business that you can’t please all the people all the time. And trying to please everyone generally results in you pleasing no-one and completely missing the mark.

Who have you annoyed lately?

So my theory is this – if you’re not annoying some people, your message isn’t clear enough.

Let me explain further.

Years ago I read a book called ‘The Brand Called You’ by a marketing consultant called Peter Montoya. His business did a lot of work with financial planners and I came across his material on the internet and got hold of a copy of his book.

I remember one quote from the book – good marketing attracts as well as repels.

Think about this for a minute. Good marketing will not only attract potential clients, but it will also stop some from buying from you.

Good marketing attracts as well as repels

Here are a few examples I’ve come across in recent years.

My idea of good music probably isn’t the same as yours

It's not my cup of tea!

I’m a guitarist and I have a pretty broad range of musical styles that I like. But there are some that I don’t like. It doesn’t mean that I hate them – it just means that I choose not to listen to them. I’m not a big fan of hard rock or heavy metal – one look at the CD covers or videos sometimes puts me off. But that’s ok, because I’m not their target market. And their target market probably loves the CD images and videos.

Its good marketing – it’s attracting and repelling.

I don’t like Big Brother

Here in Australia we used to have a reality TV show called Big Brother. There have also been numerous versions produced in different countries around the world.

I don’t like it. I’ve never understood the attraction of watching a bunch of 20 something’s sit around isolated in a house for weeks on end.

But I’m not the target market.

The show isn’t aimed at people like me. It’s aimed squarely at Generation Y. And they loved it (at least until the last few seasons when ratings dropped!).

Again, it’s good marketing. It attracts those who it wants to attract, and repels those, like me, who it’s not aimed at.

And whilst I think the producers would have loved to have more people like me watching it, it would have meant changing the format and in doing so they possibly would have lost some of their existing audience.

Marketing in the Blog World

I beg to differ

I’ve seen a number of bloggers who’ve written posts that attract some negative comments. They’ve lost readers over things that they’ve said or done.

The experienced ones realise that it’s just par for the course and accept it. The inexperienced ones take it personally.

Now, I’m not talking about people who leave rude or abusive comments. I’ve got no time for people like that. I’m talking about people who have a different opinion to you, and aren’t afraid to voice it.

I’ve written a number of articles about how I use Twitter. Part of my Twitter strategy involves automating some aspects of my account. Some people accept this, others are dead against it. That’s fine. We don’t all have to agree on everything. You’re free to choose which bits of my advice you want to follow. But those who want to automate aspects of their Twitter usage find my advice very helpful.

Attracting and Repelling

I’m not saying you need to make annoying people a big part of your marketing plan, but I am saying that if you’re not annoying some people you’re perhaps not delivering your message as effectively as possible.

You can't please everyone

Step one is to determine who your target market is. I’ll write more about this in coming weeks, but take some time to think about who your blog is aimed at, and the issues they face. Spend time working out exactly what problems of theirs you are able to solve, and craft your message around that.

Take more time to put together a profile of your ‘ideal reader’. How old are they? Are they male or female? What language do they speak? What keeps them awake at night?

Make this real to the point of giving them a name. Get a very clear picture of the type of person who will get the most value out of your services and advice.

In the financial planning world, we used to joke that our target market was ‘anyone who could fog a mirror’. That’s not very specific! Now our industry has progressed to the point where there are planners who only deal with business owners, or female managers. One planner I know deals solely with people who own large car dealerships. He won’t take on any of their staff as clients – he only wants to work with the owner.

By getting so specific, you can focus your message so powerfully that when someone in your target market hears it, they’re instantly attracted to it.

And in creating a compelling message, you’re also causing some people to self-select away from you. They might come to your blog, read a few articles and decide that it’s not for them. Good! Don’t ever get confused that more traffic to your blog is the key to success. It’s not. More targeted traffic is a step in the right direction, but traffic alone won’t guarantee success.

The more specific you can be, the more value your target market will see in your services.

Lessons from e-books

Let’s think about books for a minute. I’ve read a lot of discussions about whether e-books should be priced higher or lower than traditional ‘real’ books.

One side says that a self-published book can never be as good quality as a physical published book, therefore it shouldn’t sell for the same price.

There’s another way to look at this argument.

E-books are not the same as traditional books

Book publishers will only publish books they know they can sell. So rarely will they publish a book in a specific niche, because there may not be a huge demand for it.

I’ve read books on how to use Twitter that are 150 pages long and are so general in nature that they don’t teach much that’s helpful. By aiming at every type of Twitter user they’re giving out a lot of general information, but not a lot of specifics.

By way of contrast, I’ve read e-books about using Twitter that are only 30 pages long, but provide a lot more value because they’re written specifically for bloggers like me.

So why should they cost more?

Value.

It’s all about value.

• You’ll attract people to your message if it’s delivering something of value to them.
• Some people won’t see value in it. They’re not your target market.
• But for those who are your target market, your message can deliver huge value.

One of my consulting services is helping financial planners use the internet to attract and retain new clients. Can you see how specific it is?

If a financial planner comes to my site, they’re attracted to my message because it’s aimed at them.

If I wrote an e-book on how financial planners can use Twitter effectively, do you think they’d find it valuable? And how much could I sell that e-book for? Forget what it looks like or how many pages it is and focus instead on the value it provides.

The cool thing about my target market is that if a real estate agent comes to my website, whilst they’ll still get some value from my message, they’ll realise it’s not aimed at them. If I started changing my articles to also appeal to real estate agents, I’d reduce the value to my financial planning audience.

Over to you

What do you think about this idea of good marketing attracting and repelling people? Do you think it makes sense to appeal to a niche audience, or to try and appeal to everyone? Leave a comment below and let me know how you feel.

photo credit: sergis blog, notsogoodphotography, Adam J. Merton the half-blood prince Dawn Endico Ed Yourdon

If you’ve been blogging for a while you’ll understand the importance of backlinks to your site. There’s two reasons why you need backlinks:

1. They act as kind of a ‘vote’ for your site. The more people who link to your site, the more important it can be seen by Google.
2. They’re an excellent way to get visitors to your site.

When I’m building backlinks, I’m more interested in doing it for the second reason. My priority is to get targeted traffic to my blog, and finding other blogs and forums to comment on is one excellent way to do this.

I have a list of blogs that I comment on, and I’m starting to do the same with forums. Up to now, I’ve found it hard to find some forums, but I recently came across Big-Boards.com.

Big Boards is a web site that allows you to search for forums on certain topics. Type in ‘Guitar’ and it will show you forums about guitars. Type in ‘Dog Training’ and you’ll get a list of forums on that topic. Importantly, it also allows you to see other information about the number of members, posts per day etc so you can focus on the most active forums in your niche.

This week’s Weekly Wrap video shows how I use Big-Boards.com to find forums to comment on.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on various internet marketing products and services that have recently been released. Unfortunately, in the internet marketing world you need to approach a lot of these products and reviews with a healthy dose of cynicism, as there’s so much hype out there that every second product is promoted as the next best thing.

It’s made me think a lot about how I approach my product reviews and recommendations, and I wanted to share my ideas here so you understand my philosophies, and why I recommend some products and not others.

Firstly, I see it as my job to let you know about products and tools that could make your blogging life better. I’m a bit like a friend who has discovered a new band and he wants to tell everyone about it.  You don’t have to buy the album, but it’s ok for me to let you know about them.

When it comes to products on the internet, there are three types of recommendations that I’ll provide:

New Product Promotion

Sometimes a new product will be released and I think it’s worthwhile promoting it. If the product isn’t on the market yet, it puts me in a dilemma. If I can’t use it and review it, I’m careful what I’ll write about it.

Sometimes in these cases, if you sign up to a pre-launch list, you can receive discounts when the product launches. So on one hand, I want you to get the discount if the product interests you, but on the other hand I need to stop short of fully endorsing the product until I can see it myself.

In these instances, I’ll usually stick to Twitter and send out a few tweets about the product. I’ll generally only do this for products that are produced by reputable people who have a good track record.

Product Reviews

If I can buy a product and it’s relevant to my audience, I’ll usually review it.  I’ll always be honest in my reviews and try and point out the good and bad points.

If someone gives me a free copy of a product to review, I’ll let you know that I’m using a review copy. However, I won’t put myself in the situation where I give a favourable review in exchange for a free copy. If the product sucks, I’ll tell you.

In some cases I’ll review a product, but not use it myself after the review. This doesn’t mean it’s not a good product, it just means it’s one that I’ve decided isn’t suitable for me. I’ll still review it and promote it, because it’s a good product and may be useful to my readers.

Products I Use

There are a bunch of products that I use regularly to help with my blogging life.  You’ll find a lot of these on my Resources page.  These are products that I’ve got experience with and that I’m happy with. Things like the Headway Theme and Aweber. I’m very happy to promote these products as I’m using them every day.

Affiliate Links

A lot of the products I discuss here have affiliate programs, where the person who introduces the customer to the vendor can receive a percentage of the sale.

Here’s my opinion on affiliate links and receiving commissions.

Firstly, I believe it’s ok to make money on the internet. A lot of bloggers have a poverty mentality and believe they should give everything away for free. I don’t subscribe to that way of thinking.

Secondly, you don’t pay more to buy a product through my links. If there was a higher price to pay by buying through an affiliate link instead of going direct to the product manufacturer, then that would give me a dilemma. But that’s not the case. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy the product by using my link.

Thirdly, I don’t mind getting a commission from a product I don’t use myself. I mentioned this earlier. There will be some products that I look at and review, but then choose not to use. I may even give some poor reviews. But if someone wants to click on my link, go look at that product and then decide to buy it, that’s fine by me. I don’t have a problem receiving a commission from those sales.

Finally – do no harm! I’m building up my online reputation and I have no desire to do things that will affect it. I’ll pass on a lot of high profile product launches if I don’t believe the people involved have a similar set of values to me. I also don’t want to recommend products where the vendor has trouble delivering what has been promised.

And I promise not to spam you with product offers! If you sign up to my newsletter, I’ll make sure you get great content delivered to your inbox, with the occasional product promotion thrown in. But my hope is that these promotions will be relevant and valuable to you, not junk.

Conflicts of Interest

I believe the biggest issue when it comes to affiliate products is the potential for conflicts of interest to exist. I’ve seen a lot of this in the financial planning world and I see it in the internet marketing world.

When the majority of your income comes from recommending products to people on your email list, there will come a time where you may be tempted to recommend lesser quality products simply because you need to make money.

In this instance your business model could be wrong.

If your business model relies on you selling a range of products, and you can’t source enough quality products, then there’s only two outcomes – you either earn less, or you start to recommend lower quality products. This is the same whether you’re in the internet marketing world, or run an offline business.

And what if two similar products exist, and one has an affiliate program but the other one doesn’t? Which do you recommend.

I try to avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible. I’m fortunate in that my blog only provides a portion of my annual income. This means I’m able to only sell things I believe in and feel are valuable to you.

My plan for the future is to have a large percentage of my online income coming from my own products. I’m happy to allow affiliates to distribute those products for me, but I want to control the product creation. This way, I know that what I’m selling is a quality product.

Where a product exists that’s useful to my readers, I’ll suggest it regardless of whether there’s an affiliate program or not. This is a way to build up trust and show my readers that I’m truly interested in their needs.

Wrap Up

This has become a rather lengthy, but necessary post. Whilst it’s possible to make a lot of money online, I question some of the methods that people are using. I don’t have a problem with receiving a commission from a product recommendation, as long as the recommendation is truthful and the product is useful to my readers.

What do you think?

Is it ok to promote affiliate products or not?

What conflicts of interest have you seen? Do they bother you?

What can we do to make a living online, but in an ethical manner?

Image from TheeErin

I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters about internet marketing, and I’m surprised at how some of them are always trying to sell me something.  And some of the products look dodgy – so they’re really just selling for the sake of selling.  I find it hard to trust some of these people because of the way they market.  In this article I’ll look at how people erode trust, and also how people can build trust.

Good marketing is built on trust. In the businesses I’m involved in, I’m interested in building long term relationships with my clients where I can establish my credibility with them, and build up trust. As people trust me more, they’re more likely to use my ideas and services.

I’m not interested in short term sales, where I sell a product that may or may not be suitable for the client, and then move on to the next person.

One of the things that attracted me to blogging was the concept of building up a community of like-minded people, where I’m able to shares my ideas and thoughts and help them achieve their goals and learn new things. Blogging is a great model, because by enabling comments you’re letting people have their say and give you feedback. My favourite blogs are ones where there are regular commentators who also share their thoughts and ideas.

Over the past few weeks I’ve experienced some not-so-good examples of marketing, that have reduced my trust and confidence in the people concerned. Here are some examples.

Help, I’m in email marketing hell!

I subscribe to a few email newsletters. Some deliver tremendous value, others are questionable.

I subscribed to one newsletter late in 2009 after buying a product from this person. I kept his original emails for my swipe files, so I could refer back to them when I was going to sell a product online.

I must admit, I wasn’t ready for the quantity of emails he sends me. I receive one email every second day (on average) from this person. And he doesn’t even have a blog to promote. Every email is about some great product he’s come across that I need to check out.

This experience is repeated by quite a few marketers. You purchase a product from them, get on their mailing list, and all they want to do is sell to you. At least once a week they’re emailing and selling me stuff.

Here’s an idea – try and build a relationship with me. Get a blog, write some good content and build up some credibility before you try and flog me a product.

Which brings me to my next point…

Be open about what you’re promoting

I’m sick of people telling me about this great product that’s going to change my life and change the way I look at internet marketing forever without actually naming the product.

Instead they have a cloaked link that I need to click on to go to the product page. Of course, this is an affiliate link.

I don’t have a problem with affiliate links – I’ll use them myself – but I am annoyed about this trend of not naming any products. Be open about what you’re promoting.

If your reader chooses to Google the product and go directly to the product page without using your link, put up with it! One of the reasons they may choose to do that is if they don’t trust you or don’t want you to get the sale.

And this leads me onto another point…

Make sure the product delivers what it promises

Earlier this year one person from the Warrior Forum was promoting a backlinking program that another Warrior owned. He raved about it and promoted it in a number of his emails. Sadly, the service didn’t turn out to be what it had promised, and most of the sites were de-indexed by Google.  The credibility of this person was affected by the problems with this service.

You probably read my post on the Kajabi myth last month. It appears that post-launch there were some problems with the site and the support. A few posters on Warrior Forum suggested maybe it had opened too soon and should have waited a while for the bugs to be ironed out.

I haven’t used it, so I can’t comment on the situation. We can learn two things from the Kajabi launch:

1. Only promote a product if you’ve used it or tested it yourself.
2. Make sure the product delivers on its promise. If it doesn’t, you’ll get some of the blame.

Don’t be sneaky

Here’s an experience I had this week that inspired this post.

My son and I downloaded some new games for my iPhone on Friday. My son is 9 years old and pretty responsible. He knows he can only download free apps and games and we’re pretty strict in the types of games he can play.

He downloaded a City Sim game from a group called TeamLava. The game is free and promoted to kids. What isn’t clear is that in-game, you’re able to buy credits via the iTunes store to help you build things. The game doesn’t make it very clear that it’s costing you real money, and if you’re already logged into the iTunes store, it doesn’t make you re-enter your password.

So on Saturday we notice two emails from iTunes showing receipts for two in-game purchases of $189 each!

My son had no idea about these and he showed us in the game how he’d purchased these credits thinking it was done inside the game and not using real money.

A quick Google search shows that TeamLava have a website and forum and there are lots of nasty comments from people who found themselves in the same position we were in.

Luckily, I emailed Apple support and complained about the debits and within 24 hours they were refunded (thanks Apple).

What annoyed me most about this experience is that what the company are doing is unethical and sneaky. They’re producing a free app, but to be able to get much enjoyment from it you need to purchase credits. And the purchasing process isn’t very transparent or clear. So it’s being marketed as one thing, but actually delivers something different.

What annoys you?

Well, that’s a summary of things that bug me with marketing. If the goal is to build trust with your client, these are some examples of how not to build trust.

What have you experienced? Do you have examples of good or bad marketing?

Do you like the product flogging emails, or do you prefer people who try and build a relationship with you?

Let me know in the comments below.

Photo Credit – NotSoGoodPhotography

I don’t care what you think!

I had a lecturer a few years ago for a marketing subject who used to say that a lot. ‘I don’t care what you think’ he’d say.’ I care what your target market thinks.’

If anyone answered a question by saying ‘I think…’ he’d cut them off quickly by saying ‘I don’t care what you think.’

The point he was trying to make was that so often we talk about things that we really have no idea about.  We think we know what our market wants, but we’re too biased to realise we’ve got it wrong.

Over the past few years I’ve remembered this saying and applied it. When I’ve been designing websites or brochures, I have to consciously take a step back and think about what the end user will think about the design – not what I think.

When I’ve been writing articles, I take the time to stop writing what I want to write, and put myself in the shoes of my target market and write things that they want to read and learn about.

Do you have a target market?

Obvious question. Do you have a target market? Can you describe to me in a couple of sentences who your target market is and what their problems and concerns are?

If you can’t, it’s time to go away and brainstorm this until you can answer it.

And don’t guess about their problems – ask them. I’ve spent so long in the financial planning world that I have a very good idea of the issues clients face through the various stages in their lives. I can sit in appointments and suggest things to them that they have never even considered, but which are totally relevant to their situation. I can only do this because I’ve spent a long time getting to know my target market.

What do they care about?

What does your target market care about? Don’t guess – find out.

If you have a email list it’s so easy to set up an online survey with a series of questions and send out an email asking them to complete the survey. In a couple of days (or hours) you’ll have a pretty fair idea of the issues your target market are facing.

Another option is to visit forums that they frequent and look at the questions they ask. Develop solutions that solve their problems.

Find blogs that they read, and look at the content that’s popular. This will give you more hints about the things that are important to them.

Importantly, don’t guess. Remember…

I don’t care what you think – I care what your target market thinks.

Everything else is irrelevant.

So what do you think? If you’re reading this article, you’re probably in my target market, so I really do care what you think, despite the title of this post!

Photo Credit striatic

I used to work with a manager who told me “What gets measured gets done“. I think he was right.

Good salespeople measure the right things. In a lot of direct sales environments, they know how many phone calls they need to make to get a certain amount of appointments. This provides them with a certain amount of prospects and, eventually, sales.

So the equation may be: 30 phone calls gives me 10 appointments which gives me 6 interested people which result in 3 sales at $1,000 each. So, if your revenue target is $3,000 per week, you need to be making around 30 phone calls. If you want to double your revenue, you need to double your activity (or do it more effectively, which is another blog post in itself).

The point of this example is that you need to identify the crucial things that are in your control, that lead to the results you’re after.

As a blogger or internet marketer, there are certain things that you can do that need to be measured and tracked. And there are some things that, whilst they’re good to track, are things that you have less influence over.

It’s not just about Google Analytics

I’ve had  conversations with other bloggers where I’ll ask them what they track. The first thing most of them say is that they track visitors to their websites via Google Analytics. Some will go on to talk about how they also track sign-up rates to newsletters, or look at how long people stay on their website.

All this is good to track, but it’s important to think about this next point.

Track activity that you can influence

You can’t directly influence the number of visitors to your site, unless you go into people’s houses and force them to type in your URL! So whilst it’s good to track the number of visitors to your site, it’s important to realise that this figure is just an outcome of other things that you can influence.

In many industries they talk about tracking activity instead of just tracking results. I think they’re both helpful to track (i.e. to make sure your activity leads to the expected results), but it’s important to track the things you can influence (your activity).

Thinks of an Olympic swimmer.  Whilst I’m sure they track their lap times, this is just an outcome of many other things they do.  I’m sure more important things they would track would be the number and length of training sessions, what they eat, what other exercise they do etc. These are all things they can influence, and by keeping records of their activity, they stay focused on their goal (to swim a good time). Certainly the goal gets measured and tracked, but the more important things to track are the activities that need to be done to achieve the goal.

So,what are some things you can track or measure? Here are some ideas:

• The number of blog posts you produce – do you have a weekly target?
• How many backlinks / bookmarks you create to your blog via social media like Twitter, Digg etc.
• The number of comments you leave on other blogs.
• Number of guest posts you write and submit.
• Number of guest posts that are published. This is different to the previous dot-point.
• Number of Ezine articles or YouTube videos you publish.
• The number of articles your publish that target a particular keyword.

My suggestion is to focus on a small amount of key activities that give you the best result.  Which ones you focus on may depend on what your goals are.

You need to track activity-based items (like blog posts, comments you leave etc) and also outcomes (visits to your website, newsletter signups etc).  Over time you’ll be able to identify the things you do that lead to the best outcomes.

If your goal is to attract more visitors, then the recommended activities to track may include the number of blog posts you write, guest posts and bookmarking. Of course it’s important to track the outcomes as well – you need to be able to pinpoint what activities lead to your desired outcomes.

So if you have a brand new blog with no visitors, maybe spending most of your time writing a new post every day isn’t the best thing.  What if you wrote a new article every second day, and spent each alternate day commenting on other blogs and forums, and bookmarking your site using Digg and other sites? Maybe this mix of activity will provide better results. As your site grows in popularity, perhaps you’ll do less bookmarking (because others will promote it for you) and spend more time writing articles and other great content.

How do you track your activity?

Many of us know that there’s certain activities that we need to do to be successful. Yet many of us struggle to do these things regularly.

I’ve started using a weekly activity tracking sheet, both in my financial planning business and also in my internet marketing business.  There are certain activities I must do each week that will help me get closer to my goals. These weekly sheets help me stay focused on the tasks that need to be done. When those tasks are completed, I’m free to do other things that aren’t so productive, instead of doing non-productive things that stop me from doing the tasks that are important.

The activities I track will change from time-to-time depending on what I’m wanting to achieve.  At the moment my priorities are to make sure I post on average once per week, promote that post via social media, and comment on a number of blogs.

On a monthly basis I also track things like visitors to my site, number of backlinks, newsletter signups etc. These are outcomes or results that I want to achieve, but the activities I do every day influence my success with these outcomes.

So what activities do you think are essential for your internet marketing success? What things do you track? What don’t you track that you think you may need to start tracking?

Please leave a comment below and let’s all share some ideas.

Updated 16/11/2010 – fixed typo

What do bloggers Pat Flynn and Tyrone Shum have in common with investment managers? The answer may not be immediately obvious, but once you’ve read this article you’ll know the answer.

Pat and Tyrone are two bloggers who I follow.  They both have different styles and approaches to their blogs and they come across as two very genuine people.

A few weeks ago Tyrone challenged Pat to a competition.  They’ll each build a niche site, document their progress, and try and make more money than the other person. You can read about their progress to date at SmartPassiveIncome and TyroneShum.com.

So far, they’ve both posted about the process they used to find a suitable niche. And whilst there are some similarities to their methods, they’ve really gone about the process in two very different ways.

How Pat Found His Niche

Pat started out by writing lists of 7 passions, 7 problems and 7 fears. From that list he made a shortlist of potential markets and then started his keyword research.

He used Market Samurai to analyse the different niches before he decided on a niche and keyword that was suitable.

Once he found his niche he then bought a suitable domain name that featured the keyword, and then he started work setting up his blog.  He’s at the stage now where he’s writing articles, finalising the blog design and getting ready to launch.

Pat is also looking for products to sell. He’s going down the path of trying to find suitable training courses to sell to people who come to his site. For the niche he’s picked, there’s not a lot of e-books etc.

Pat’s process was largely about finding a niche he was interested in and could rank well in, setting up a site and then finding products to sell.

How Tyrone Did It

Tyrone has a different process.  The first thing he did was have his VA look on Clickbank for suitable products. They selected a niche they were interested in and searched for products with a high gravity – this is a good indication that they’re selling and converting well.

Once the product was found, they did keyword research based on the product description. Eventually they found a keyword phrase that they felt they could be competitive in, and registered a domain.  Similar to Pat, they found a domain that featured the keyword.

Tyrone is also at the stage now where he’s finalising the web site and getting articles written.

So Tyrone’s process was about finding a product, doing his keyword research, buying a suitable domain and then setting up his site.

What’s This Got To Do With Investment Management?

I work in the financial planning industry and have spent a lot of time learning how the fund managers invest my client’s money.  There’s lots of different ways to pick stocks – value or growth, large cap or small cap etc, but there’s also another concept that applies to both internet marketing and investing – top down or bottom up.

In investment management, a top-down stock picker looks at the economic environment of a country. They then dig down another layer based on their analysis and look at what sectors they think will do well.  Then they look within those sectors to find specific stocks that fit their criteria.

A bottom-up stock picker does it differently. Their initial process is all about identifying suitable stocks to buy.  They’ll usually make their decision based on the price of the stock and expected earnings. They’ll take into account the external environment, but it’s not the key driver.

So when I look at the process that Pat and Tyrone have gone through in finding their niches, I can see a top-down and bottom-up approach.

Pat seems to have taken the top-down approach.  He looked at the big picture (his list of 7′s), looked at various sectors (his keyword analysis) before making his decision.  He’s now at the stock picking stage – finding suitable products. Interestingly, sometimes fund managers can go through the top-down approach only to find a lack of suitable companies to invest in within their chosen niche.  I hope Pat doesn’t have this problem and can find some products that meet the perceived demand.

Tyrone appears to have used the bottom-up approach.  He’s picked a stock (the ClickBank Product), done his analysis on the product to make sure it’s going to provide a return, and then worked upwards, making sure there’s enough demand for the product.

Interestingly, both Pat and Tyrone have made some mistakes in their niche selection – they’ll happily blog about it and we can learn from it.

So Which One Is Right?

Neither is right or wrong. It’s the same in the investment world.  A bottom-up manager will have times of success, but also some failures. So will a top-down manager.  They’ll be right at different times.

The exciting thing that I’ve taken out of the niche challenge is that there’s more than one way to approach the same task.

I’m looking forward to seeing how they both go in their chosen niches, and I hope to learn a lot from watching what they do.

Oh, and which one will win? I don’t know. Tyrone is the Aussie so maybe I should go for my fellow country-man, but Pat is such a nice guy and he even replied to one of my tweets! So, I hope they’re both hugely successful in their chosen niches.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.  Is there a right way to select a niche and sell and affiliate product?

photo credit: pasukaru76

When I started blogging a few years ago, I had this strange idea that all I had to do was write good content and people would magically discover my site and become loyal followers. The reality is that once you hit the publish button in WordPress your work has only just begun.

Over the years I’ve been learning how to promote my blogs to a wider audience. My theory has been to work on getting people to my sites in two ways:

• Finding me through Google search.
• Finding me via other websites or social media sites that link back to my site.

Ezine articles helps me in both these strategies.

I started using Ezine articles in 2009, but never really had a strategy to go with it.  Earlier this year I had another look at Ezine and decided to use it more effectively.  In this article I’ll provide an overview of how I’m using Ezine articles and article marketing to promote my web sites.

What is Ezine Articles?

Ezine articles is a website that accepts articles from people.  They have some editorial guidelines (you have to submit your own work etc) and a couple of levels of membership.  It’s a free service, but Ezine make money from it by displaying Adsense on their pages. Every time someone clicks on the Adsense ads, they make money.

The attraction for a writer or blogger is that placing your article on Ezine gives you access to a wider audience. When I read an article on Ezine, I’ll frequently look at other articles in the same topic or by the same author. The main Ezine articles page has a high page rank, and individual pages can also quickly obtain page rank.  I’ve had a couple of articles published that already have PR3.

Articles on Ezine get ranked by Google quickly, because it seems the Google bots are frequently crawling the site for new content.

If your articles prove to be popular, they can appear on the popular articles lists for the relevant category and obtain even more page views.

At the bottom of every article appears a resource box where you’re able to talk a little about yourself.  Within that resource box you’re able to add two links back to web sites of your choice, with anchor text. Depending on the article topic, I’ll either link to two different sites, or provide two links to two different pages on one site.

A further benefit of Ezine is that your articles can be re-published.  This means that other web sites take your Ezine article and republish it on their site.  They have to include the full article and resource box, and can’t edit it in any way.  I’ve had a few of my financial planning articles republished over the past few months.  Each time they’re republished I gain two extra backlinks to my web site.

Using Ezine Articles Effectively

I submit articles to Ezine that I’ve already published on my blogs. Some people get concerned about duplicate content penalties but I don’t believe this is an issue.  Duplicate content occurs when you have the same content on multiple pages of your web site.  In my opinion it doesn’t apply if the articles are published on other sites.

A great example of this is press releases, or news stories that get syndicated.  Google doesn’t penalise these stories – it’s smart enough to realise the original source and actually sees the syndication as an indication that this information is popular.

Once I’ve published an article on my website, I’ll copy it and paste it into the Ezine submission form. I’ll find the most suitable category for it and customise the resources box to flow on from the main article.  It usually takes up to a week for Ezine to approve an article so I’m not fussed about making sure my original article is indexed by Google before I submit it to Ezine – I’m confident it will be found by Google soon enough.

Once the article goes live you’ll receive an email about it.  I’ll promote it on Twitter by setting up a tweet telling people I’ve got an article on Ezine with the topic and a Bit.ly link to the article.  I’ll also set up a Google alert with the article title or some keywords from the text, so I can see if it’s re-published anywhere else.

You can bookmark your new article with other social media sites like Digg etc, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to help with getting it indexed any quicker.

Content From Ezine Articles

One of the reasons Ezine exists is to provide content for people to use (with attribution). Ezine provides a range of RSS feeds that can help you automate the use of their content (more about this in another post).

If you’re looking for content for a web site, Ezine articles are sure to have a range of articles that will be suitable.  You’re able to use these with the correct attribution.

I’ve also looked at popular articles on Ezine, and written articles that cover the same topic or issue, but from a different perspective.

Results

Ezine provides some comprehensive reporting on your articles.  You can see how many views your articles are receiving, and also see the click through rates – how many clicks your resource box is receiving.

My goal for my Ezine articles is to get people to click through to my web site, and become subscribers.  For whatever reason, I have some Ezine articles that rank higher than my original article in the Google searches.  This is ok, as it still enables people to read my article and take action if they want more information.

My secondary goal is to build up additional backlinks to my web sites via the links in the resource box.  Ezine will provide you with two do-follow links, which help to create some link juice, particularly if your article page gets a higher page rank.

I’ve begun to see some traffic coming to my website via Ezine articles over the past few months. This traffic tends to have a higher number of page views on my site, which is a good result.

There’s other tricks to using Ezine – I’ll post more in future articles.

Are you using Ezine articles? Have you had success? Leave a comment and let us know what has worked for you.