USE THESE 10 TIPS FOR MARKETING YOUR STARTUP GLOBALLY

Are you ready to take your startup worldwide?

It’s easier to do than ever thanks to online Kickstarter campaigns, crowdfunding, social media platforms, and the overall move to digital over old school brick and mortar. However, that doesn’t mean it’s actually easy—globalizing your startup comes with an entirely new set of challenges. Plus, it’s even tougher for entrepreneurs because you don’t have the same deep pockets as corporations who can hire entire translation teams to take care of communication. How can you compete in taking your startup global?

There are 10 easy, budget-friendly ways to stay competitive even on a startup’s budget. Here’s how to go global even when your bottom line is playing boss:

Learn a New Language

Learning a new language yourself helps you show respect for the culture you’re marketing to. Even if you make a faux pas or can’t communicate like a native speaker, making an effort is what really counts. It might be what makes an investor in Japan choose you over a bigger company that didn’t bother to learn basic greetings.

Get on the Right Social Media Platforms

Facebook and Twitter aren’t the be-all, end-all of social media. In fact, the platforms used by other countries for connecting, marketing, and producing might vary widely. Accessing Western social media from China is banned, though not impossible; instead, the local market has developed its own competitors like WeChat and Sina Weibo. Find out what the most popular SM platforms are in the countries you’re targeting and get on board.

Hire Smart, Hire Local

As a growing company, you’ll probably soon have an opportunity to bring on a new worker or contractor. Hiring someone who’s from the region you’re targeting, or at least is highly experienced in the culture, can give you an edge. Plus, it helps diversify your startup, which is a plus no matter how you look at it.

Tell Your Story in Pictures

If you can’t afford a certified translator right now, remember that pictures are worth 1,000 words and need no translation. Use an infographic, image, or short (wordless video) to convey your message. It’s creative and more appealing than a dry document anyway.

Go Fully Digital

There are some founders who are experienced in old school marketing strategies and stay in that realm because that’s where they’re comfortable. Stop. It’s a digital world and marketing is changing, which allows you to reach all corners of the world—plus it’s more affordable, so it’s a win-win.

Research the Culture

It’s not just about the language, but also the culture when marketing. You can easily creative an offensive marketing campaign in another country and never know it. Know the culture and the language if you’re delving into that territory.

Take Holidays into Account

If you really want to tap into a culture or region, make sure to plan your marketing around their biggest holidays. For example, who wouldn’t jump on the holiday marketing bandwagon in the US? However, in India it’s Diwali in October/November that’s the big ticket item. It makes your marketing relevant and gives you a free competitive edge. 

Give Them Their Own Domain

In some cases, you might want to pick up multiple domains and create content for each region. If it requires another language, it needs expert translation. If not, just make sure the content is different and appropriate to the country. For example, you might want to get both the .com and the .ca for your American and Canadian audiences. 

Drop the Slang

Many startups want to be seen as young and trending, which means using a lot of slang. It’s lost on some Americans, so just imagine how confusing it can be to other markets outside the country. Even some “staple” slang like “jones” (i.e. “jonesing” for some chocolate) makes zero sense in other English-speaking countries.

Don’t take Short Cuts

There are no short cuts around certifiable translations. If you can’t afford to go global now in some regards, don’t. There are many other ways to reach audiences besides butchering a language.

While it’s simpler to go global now more than ever, don’t dive in without doing your research. Just like starting your venture, preparation is key. Know who your audience is, why you selected that market, and how they want to be approached before you ever create a first impression. 

 Source : http://bit.ly/2c3Jpex

15 things that happen to every social media campaign

You might think to be a "social media manager" is a dream job, like a travel blogger minus the packing and jet lag.

It seems easy: You do nothing but publish blogs, humor followers with memes, post a quote, share a link and watch YouTube. Well, if you plan on joining a social media company, you've got it all wrong.

Nearly nine out of 10 companies {88 percent) use social media marketing. It’s a virtual slug-fest. Enjoy it but don’t take it lightly. Social media requires hard work. You don’t just fire ideas into thin air. Identify your brand, understand your audience, choose a platform and deliver relevantly, interesting content. There are many pain points to overcome, many things that you must understand before you get giddy over every like or share your post gets.

Though being a social media manager isn't a bed of roses, it's not a bed of nails, either. Manage your expectations by noting 15 things that can happen while you run a social media campaign:

1. Expect to build a name .

Online presence, visibility, and awareness are part of the strategy. Putting your brand on social media is a cheap way to get exposure. And you’ll get the buzz if you do it right. Social media reaches out to a broader audience to pave the way to solid branding.

2. Enjoy brand loyalty.

A Texas Tech University report found brands that engage in social media enjoy higher customer loyalty. A study by Convince and Convert reported that 53 percent of Americans who follow brands on social media are more loyal to those brands.

Social media offers more chances to convert and improve brand loyalty. Every marketer must take advantage of this.

3. You can lose focus.

A report by Hubspot showed that consumers expect brands to be active on three or four social media channels. Logic tells you to immediately create four accounts at once but doesn't do it.

You must assess your resources before you do this or you risk failing in all. Do you have the people, the time, the energy, and the content to keep all of them going? Be realistic—take it easy. Focus on the platforms you can manage and the ones that cater to your audience.

4. You will stare at the wall.

One study showed that creating content is one of the biggest difficulties for digital marketers. You will experience this too. You will stare at a blank wall. There will come a time when you feel like you have done everything. You haven’t. Continue exploring and inspire yourself by reading and observing trends. Open your mind.

5. Formats can change.

Content comes in many forms: blog, video, photo, infographics, SlideShare, DIY, tutorial, list, memes, etc. At some point, you will know which ones work.

This requires understanding your audience. If you have a young audience, you might want to go easy on data and graphics. If your market is old, go easy on memes. Draw up a strategic formats plan.

6. Followers will get angry.

Stop telling yourself that you can please everyone. No, you won’t; no, you can’t; no, you don’t have to. The things you put out will get good and bad feedback. Learn how to deal with feedback. Do not ignore it.

7. Outsourcing to find the right people.

One tip for winning social media marketing: Find the right people to do it.

For start-ups, this is a real difficulty. It’s best to outsource. Don’t force yourself and your small team to do things you have difficulty doing. If you lack a good writer, hire freelancers. If you have difficulty scheduling, hire a virtual assistant. Assemble a team with potential, talent and the right motivation.

8. The fight for time and consistency.

In drawing up a plan, decide at what hour you should publish a piece of content. You must make sure that deadlines are met and schedules followed. Most social media channels enable you to schedule posts—but consistency isn’t just timing. It’s publishing the right content at the right time.

9. Analytics that are lost in (data) translation.

Analyzing metrics and data will be pain points. But don’t be scared of numbers. According to Propeller, a digital marketing agency, data is important in any social media campaign. It converts buzz into revenue. Measure ROI against goals, know the competition and go deeper into every like, comment or share.

10. Dropping everything if your post just went viral.

You‘ll occasionally experience the bliss of going viral. Viral content spreads like a disease. You’ll be surprised at how fast everything happens.

Enjoy virality, because it’s pretty hard to come by. Never rest on your laurels. Keep the ideas coming and get ready for your next viral content.

11. Winning the game of hashtags.

The #GetCovered campaign of the Obama administration is a social media campaign success story. Obama’s healthcare plan was off to a bumpy start, but things changed as soon as they launched the hashtag, reaching out to 26-35 year-olds and older adults. Millennials helped boost the government’s healthcare website traffic by 40 percent.

Get creative with hashtags without losing focus on the people you target. Soon you’ll know the difference between a poorly-constructed and a spot-on hashtag.

12. Find time to repurpose content.

The blog you published several months ago has become relevant again but fight the urge to publish the same blog.

Repurpose it by turning it into a list article. Turn (for example) a step-by-step guide to putting up wall decals into a video. Learn how to recycle content. It saves time and energy.

13. Prove you are not robots.

Social media is tricky in the way it connects people but risks losing people at the same time. It seems very impersonal. Don’t fall into that trap. Let your followers know to whom they are talking.

HBO’s “Girls” promoted their show on Snapchat in a personal way, filming behind-the-scenes videos. Imitate the social media campaign to improve your audience engagement. When you feel your campaign has gotten too mechanical, get personal—it might help things flow again.

14. Revenues are climbing.

Companies launch social media campaigns to boost website traffic, followers, and revenue.

A Social Media Examiner study found that 50 percent of brands that used social media for at least three years reported a spike in sales and revenue, which is good news for companies who take social media seriously. If you do things right, expect increased sales.

15. Select trends to ride.

In the blink of an eye, Facebook introduces an update, Instagram announces a new policy and a new social networking site is born. Learn about these trends, but don’t ride all of them. See which serve your goals and your audiences’ interests.

Social media is a big marketing help, but it poses big risks if you use it without know-how or a good plan. When done right, social media marketing is dynamic and fun.

Source: http://bit.ly/28K7jiJ

Five Essential Steps To Creating Content That Works For Your Business

Most businesses are now aware of the need to create fresh, new content for their websites, perhaps in a bid to improve sales or customer service, or to raise brand awareness. However, not all of these businesses are aware of just how crucial it is to have a carefully considered and organized strategy in place for content creation. Before going ahead and spending good money and valuable time on content creation, there is a lot to consider: audience, reach, aims, timing, delivery, to name but a few. These five essential steps along with an all-important planning document available below will ensure that each and every new piece of content has been carefully organized to ensure it reaches exactly the right people at the right time in order for you to maximize its efficiency and meet your goals.

1. Define Your Goal

Content marketing can have huge payoffs, but to make it work for your business you must invest time, and lots of it. If you want that time to be well invested, it's important that you start with the end goal in mind. Before you begin, get very clear on the goal for your content marketing efforts. With content marketing there are a number of possible business goals you can have:

1. Brand awareness
2. Lead generation and nurturing
3. Customer conversion
4. Customer service
5. Upsells
6. Subscribers

Depending on your scenario, each one of these goals could be a good fit for you. Perhaps you're trying to create a program that increases awareness? Maybe you are looking to improve your position in the search engine results, or simply drive more leads into the sales funnel? Get focused on the end result before you start and you'll stand a far better chance of building an asset that works for your business in the way that you want it to.

Get Subscribers, Get Customers

When someone opts in to receive an email from you, they give you permission to market to them. Well-crafted permission based email marketing can allow you to develop one-to-one relationships en masse like no other marketing channel can. Step one is to acquire subscribers, then over time through anticipated, personal and relevant emails, you can turn those subscribers into passionate buyers. Soon after launching in 2008, the Content Marketing Institute found that their email subscribers closed to customers three times faster than non-subscribers. Since then they have focused on the one goal of growing their email subscriber base. It now stands at over 90,000.

How to Get Subscribers

In order to build an email subscriber base, you will need to offer something of value on your website as a fair exchange for a new subscriber's email address. Few, if anyone, will give up their email to be added to a newsletter, but many will happily exchange their email to download a premium piece of content such as an e-book, a cheat sheet or an educational course on a topic that's relevant and interesting to them. To get more subscribers, offer more content like this. A simple cheat sheet or resource guide promoted in your website's sidebar and on pop-up forms will do well, but by far the best strategy I've found for growing an email list is the content upgrade.

Content Upgrade

Recently I've noticed a few of my savvy marketing friends adding bonus content to their blog posts. Brian Dean who wrote a great blog post called Google's 200 Ranking Factors had added a free Ranking Factors Checklist as a bonus to his post. I also saw that LeadPages.net were giving away free bonuses with all of their blog posts. Not a generic bonus but a specific bonus with each piece of content- something that would help the reader get even more out of the post and take their learning to the next level.

I followed suit and implemented the same strategy on my own website starting with my podcast episodes. Instantly I went from adding just a few email subscribers to more than 80 per episode. I now create content upgrades for every piece of content I post to my blog, and if you are serious about building an email list then you should too.

2. Define Your Audience Persona

If, your content marketing is to be a success then you must plan your content to fill the wants and needs of your audience, not your own. This is an important point. Business owners and marketers all too often bend their content to their own thinking. If you do the same, your content marketing will fail. Before you begin your content marketing program, get very clear on who you are talking to with your content by developing audience personas. Most businesses will have at least one audience persona, but others will have several.

For example, a nursery school will have all these audience personas: children, parents, teachers and local authorities. Content for each of these personas would be very different. You can develop your audience personas by asking a few key questions of your audience:

1. Who is he or she?

2. What information does this person need?

3. What does this person care about? 

Don't assume the answers, instead, interview your audience. 

Take time with this process but don't shoot for perfection, you just need to be detailed enough to guide your content creators.

3. Create A Content Segmentation Grid

In the past we would advertise our businesses by blasting our message in the general direction of our audience persona. The theory went that if you blasted loud enough and long enough, eventually you would reach some of your audience. While advertising does still work, there is much waste, because naturally for most it will not be the right time, the right place and the right message. To ensure you deliver the right content at the right time you need to study your customer's buying process and your own sales process. Consider what content your customer needs when they first come to know of you versus the final stages of a negotiation. At each stage of their buying process (and your sales process), different types of content will be required to help move them to the next stage.

If you are a small business-to-business (B2B) company you may have a simple sales cycle something like this:

Contacts People who have contacted you or with whom you've been in contact.

Leads People you have identified as being in the market for your solution.

Qualified opportunities Qualified as having a need and the budget for your solution.

Finalists Considering your solution as one of the finalists.

Verbal agreement You are chosen.

Define your own sales cycle, and then using a content segmentation grid, map your content to the ap- appropriate stage. Why is a content segmentation grid important? It stops you falling into the "spray-and-pray" trap. Instead of creating content and throwing it out anywhere at any time, the content segmentation grid helps you plan and deliver relevant messaging (that moves people towards your desired action) by ensuring the right content is received by your audience at the right time.

I should note that whilst the grid is drawn in a linear fashion, don't force your audience through every step if they are ready and willing to move faster. If someone contacts you qualified and ready to do business with you, give them your case studies and product information, don't send them your white papers designed for awareness and education. Some will drive slowly through your content cycle, some will drive at break-neck speed. Ensure you have a slow lane and a fast lane set up for both.

4. Ensure All Your Content Has A Call-To-Action

Effective content that works for your business will always give an opportunity for your audience to respond. Whether that be sharing your content via social media, downloading your content upgrade, buying your product or service or any other action you want someone to take. If the body of your content has served its purpose it will have engaged, educated, inspired and built trust with your audience. That trust can be repaid to you in kinds, such as a share or comment on your blog, or in business with the purchase of your product or service. Always tell your audience what they should do next. Keep them moving through your content segmentation grid.

Call-To-Action Tips

Here are a few tips to consider that will help you craft calls-to-action that elicit a better response:

Micro-commitments Early in the buying cycle uses small micro calls- to-action such as "share this post on social media."

 New engagers are more likely to make a micro-commitment and it makes them more inclined to make a larger commitment later.

Ask questions End your content with a question. It will encourage your readers to post a comment (a micro-commitment).

Clarity Make your calls-to-action very clear. Use simple language and display your main call-to-action in a stand out color.

Reduce friction Use the minimum number of form fields possible for sign up forms. Make it frictionless for your audience to take the next step.

You can see how I apply these rules myself within the call-to-action I've included further on.

5. Build an Editorial Calendar

If I have to name just one thing that will be responsible for making or breaking your content marketing, it is the editorial calendar. For your efforts to be successful, you need to approach content marketing less like a marketer and more like a publisher. Instead of short-term tactical content campaigns, you need a long-term strategy consistently delivered over time. I have been using content marketing in my business since the beginning, and whilst I have had many successes during that time, by far my best results have come recently. When I compare my Google Analytics statistics from October 2013to October 2014, every measurable metric is up: traffic, time-on-site, bounce rate and conversions, they are all improved. While I made many small improvements to my content marketing approach over the course of 12 months, the one big change I made was consistency.

Consistency Doesn't Mean More

In the past, I published no less than I do now, in fact, give or take I probably posted more then, however, the frequency at which I published was inconsistent. I now stick to a strict calendar; my podcast is released every Tuesday, my marketing cartoons every Friday, and it's a schedule my audience have come to expect and look forward to. Consider this, could Entrepreneur magazine have built such a large audience and subscriber base if it published every once in a while as opposed to every month? Highly unlikely. You need to apply the same consistency to your publishing schedule, and the editorial calendar is the tool to help you do that.

What Exactly Is an Editorial Calendar?

The editorial calendar is much more than just a calendar with content assigned to dates. A good calendar maps content production to audience personas (see point 2), the content segmentation grid (see point 3) and the various media channels you are using. Beyond dates and titles for your content, your editorial calendar should also include the following:

Prioritized list An inventory of content. Could include content ideas, content from third parties or old content you will repackage.

Content producers/editors Who is responsible for creating and publishing the content?

Channels A list of channels where the content will be published, such as your blog, Slide Share, e-book etc.

Dates When the content will be created, edited and published-setting deadlines.

Set up your calendar in a way that works best for you. I prefer to use a simple spreadsheet which you can create with one tab for each month or all on one sheet. Across the columns you might have:

– Headline

– Content type

– Audience persona

– Person creating the content

– Date due

– Editor

– Channels

– Publish date

– Status (I like to color code this red, amber, green)

– Notes

– Call-to-action

Whilst you can use software as a service offering like Kapost, HubSpot, Contently and others to manage your editorial calendar, the best tool when you are starting out is a spreadsheet. I have our editorial calendar loaded to a Google Drive spreadsheet where all my team can access it online. It's a simple set up and very effective.

Using these five essential steps will ensure that your content is efficient, that it will be well-timed, and honed to the audience that will make the greatest difference in meeting your goals. Once you put this simple process in place, you'll ensure the same results from every new piece of content. Your content really will work wonders for your business! Has your content creation thus far achieved the goals that it set out to? What difference do you hope to make by using these steps?

   Source: http://entm.ag/25DBAx9

5 Steps to Ensure That Your Business Idea Can Really Work

Running a successful startup isn’t rocket science, but it’s also a delicate skill. It’s crucial when running a successful startup is to ensure that your idea can work. After all, one of the biggest reasons why so many entrepreneurs fail is because they are working with ideas that just aren’t applicable to the real world.

Balancing the needs of your consumers and your desire to create will mean life or death for your business. And unless your products can fill a need for your audience, it doesn’t matter how passionate you are about the product – it won’t work.

This guide is going to help you ensure that your business idea is viable and has a chance of working in the grand scheme of things.

Can You Build It?

To start, it’s necessary to see whether you can even build the idea. It may be easy to think that you can solve a problem by implementing different ideas, but often, the real reason why this hasn’t happened to begin with is due to the fact it’s impractical.

Rather than going straight to market, you should first build your product as a concept. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the finished product, but putting something out to test before finalizing will ensure that many issues can be addressed. There’s nothing wrong with building an early-stage prototype and testing it out in action with a small group. The feedback collected from choosing this step could save you product trouble down the line.

Is it Cost-Effective?

Once you are sure that you can build your idea, you need to be sure that the idea is cost-effective. But how do you determine how cost-effective something is?

You can begin by looking at your own bank balance. How much will your idea cost to make at this current time, and do you have the resources to cover it? If not, would you be able to gather resources to pay for the costs? Being able to examine whether it’s in your best interests to move forward with a costly project could play a big role in the future of this idea.

You also have to consider the price point you would have to sell an item at in order to make money. Sometimes you can have a perfectly good product, but because the manufacturing costs, it’s impossible to make a profit.

You can work out the price point by looking into your target market and getting an idea of the current price ranges for similar products.

Do People Want It?

For some people, this may be the first step. But even if it’s not, this is an important step to understanding if an idea is worth moving forward on. In many cases, inventors can’t test the demand for their product without a working prototype first. Go bold and take your product out to the general public.

People often fear this step the most, opting instead to confine product testing to biased family members and friends. But examining the true market appeal of a product will better serve you when it comes to bringing quality products to life for consumers.

Can You Market It?

By now, you know that there’s some demand for your product and you can make a profit. But the determining your product’s potential for marketing isn’t easy. Just because there’s a demand for a product doesn’t mean that you can marketing will come smoothly.

This is where you have to do research. Look into what your competitors are doing and you need to formulate a strategy. If you have a strategy that works, you may decide that it’s worth trying out.

Correct Scaling

At this point in the process, you may discover that you’re ready to warrant a limited rollout. The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make at this stage is to go all in. Going all in and hoping for the best can quickly drain your budget. It also means that you’re setting yourself up for trouble down the line if your product doesn’t sell like you wanted it to you are going to find yourself in trouble.

Start small and monitor how quickly you can sell your products. As time goes on, you can start to scale your efforts with a reasonable guarantee of making that money back. Remember, scaling too fast is one of the surefire ways to fail your startup.

The Biggest Decisions

For entrepreneurs, these are the business decisions that will prove to be the most difficult. You shouldn’t risk everything on one product idea or service. Startups need to ensure that they have performed due diligence prior to investing a significant amount of money in a venture.

How will you make sure that you validate your big idea?

Source: http://bit.ly/1OpcgkF

You Won’t Be Successful Online Without Mastering These 7 Skills

I get that most people don’t want to spend all day every day learning how to be a web developer but these 7 skills are absolutely necessary if you want to earn good money on the internet.

1. SEO

I’m a huge advocate of SEO. SEO is amazing because if you can get to the top of Google, you can get free targeted traffic to your website all day.

And because those people are searching for what you offer, that traffic will convert.

But how do you master the art of SEO? There are many resources out there that will teach you SEO. I’ve personally been doing SEO professionally for 14 years and the person I trust the most to give you the most up to date information that is working right now is Brian Dean at Backlinko.

He gives no-nonsense training and backs it up with data. In other words, he’s not guessing.

One strategy that I invented myself and have been seeing a lot of success with is what I call building link maps. This, in essence, is the art of doing link building and then building links to those links (link stacking) in a strategic way so they become more powerful.

2. Email Marketing

It has been proven over and over again that nurturing leads through email will dramatically increase your conversions. People like Ryan Deiss teach very specific methods on how to do this.

There are a few good email marketing platforms that will make your job a lot easier. Here are the tools I actually use:

Aweber – I use them to collect email addresses and send out follow up emails automatically.

Mailchimp – these guys have pretty much the same features as Aweber.

Lead Pages – these guys have pop-up windows to collect emails that have been tested and proven to increase subscribers.

SumoMe – similar features to Lead Pages but they do have other tools as well.

In my own businesses, I have seen email follow up increase conversions over and over again and in many different niches. This is something that will mean more to your bottom line than anything else.

3. Evaluating Potential

If you’ve ever spent any time over at my Prosperity blog, you know that I love buying undervalued websites. I am only able to do this if I can evaluate the potential of a website and understand that it is actually undervalued.

Even if I’m not buying a website, if I’m starting an online business from scratch it is the same principle. I always look at what the market looks like, and then I look at what the competition is doing online. Are they proficient in SEO? Do they understand basic internet marketing principles?

When those key indicators match up, I know the potential is there and I feel confident moving forward. If the competition is extremely knowledgeable and deeply embedded in the industry, I will typically move on.

On the other hand, when I find a website that is trying to sell donkey socks, I am able to filter that out quickly because

4. Backend Website Administration

I hesitated including this one in this article because let’s be honest, you started falling asleep as soon as you read the heading for this section.

The reality is, if you really want to be successful online you must get a sound base in html. You must learn how FTP works. At the very least you need to become a WordPress master.

You also need to become proficient in working with images. I use a program called Fireworks from Adobe, but many people use Photoshop as well.

If earning a living online is something you are really serious about then you need to learn how to be a webmaster. Youtube tutorials need to become your new best friend.

5. Increasing Conversions

The only thing better than getting more targeted traffic is taking the traffic you already have and getting more of those people to give you money.

The reason this is so great is because it is completely in your control. If your website converts at a typical 1%, all you would have to do to double your revenue is to increase conversions to 2%. Easy.

How do you do it?

Split test, split test, split test. Also known as A/B testing, this means you show one version of a page to half of your visitors and show another different version to the other half. Then you see which version generated more sales.

I bought a website with traffic one time and just made a few (but significant tweaks) to the site and in less than 30 days the monthly revenue jumped by 968%.

Google Analytics offers a free AB tool in their software. There are other paid options but I will typically just use Google’s AB tool.

6. Pricing

If you don’t price a product or service correctly, this can quickly put you out of business either because you’ve overpriced your product and don’t get any sales or because you’ve underpriced and can’t cover expenses.

You must learn how to arrive at the perfect price so that you maximize revenue and customers. After all, it is so much easier to sell to a previous customer than to a new one. Maximizing number of sales along with revenue is extremely important for the long-term growth of your business.

This goes back to the testing part of this article. You need to test different prices to see which one performs better. This is not something you should guess on. There is too much at stake.

Get the price right.

7. Monetization

When I am looking to buy an undervalued website, one of the first things I look at is whether or not I can monetize the website in a way that will either greatly increase revenue or at least give me a good return on my investment of time and money.

Any site can be monetized by putting Google ads on it, but to me that is short sighted thinking. It has been my experience that Google Ads have generated the lowest amount of income on websites that I have owned.

So you need to learn what people want and what they will pay for or how to find good affiliate programs that are worth promoting.

For example, I used to run a website that was a directory of lawn care companies in the US. I sold advertising on the site and didn’t make very much money ($30-$100 a month). I had awesome traffic from SEO and knew I should be making a lot more money than I was.

I created a “how to start your own lawn care business kit” packaged with everything a person would need to know to start their own lawn care business. I priced it $97 and people bought like crazy.

Once I started selling the kit, the website made me from $30k-$50k every year.

It was a powerful lesson on monetization. I learned that I should always be trying to come up with new and better ways to monetize websites that I owned.

So those are the 7 traits I think are most important to master if you want to be successful online. Am I missing something that has been critical to your success? Leave it in the comments below.

Source: http://bit.ly/1S3W90E

Amplifying Your Content

You could build (or have built) the best, most amazing piece of content – but if no one reads or views it, does it even really exist? Recognizing the right avenue for sharing your content and then finding the best way to amplify the message through social influencers and employee advocacy will ensure that you get your message out to your target audience and hopefully fulfill your purpose.

Best Social Media Avenues

• Twitter – Posts are limited to just 140 characters. This can be a good thing as it forces the message to be succinct, containing only the most important aspects. It also becomes the avenue from which to launch most campaigns. Your post, which is a form of writing in and of itself (thus content), is focused to your audience and the sharing begins with those in you and your employees’ networks – that is those following you on Twitter. Then they share, then others share and so forth, snowballing the message throughout the virtual community. Be careful not to lose your focus, though, which is easy with Twitter where all posts are viewed by anyone.

• LinkedIn – Designed for business relationships and thus is easy to maintain a highly professional tone. Businesses should have a page on LinkedIn, especially if they want to reach other businesses. The reach here is to business-focused individuals, so if not presenting a product aimed more at enhancing business, then it isn’t likely the best approach. This does allow a tighter niche for business focus purposes, with employees showing their personal business connection to a company.

• Slideshare – This network is becoming increasingly popular for SEO and image-based content. Recently, it was acquired by LinkedIn and is becoming one of the one of the most popular search engines for content. When your employees are on LinkedIn and connected to your company, they can easily share a Slideshare, making it a more viable option than Instagram for enterprise social media amplification.

• Instagram – An outlet for images and often links with either Facebook or Twitter for greater ease of sharing. If a visual is an important aspect of your content – this is a must for you to use. If the image isn’t a must, this may not be the approach to take. 

• Facebook – Without question, a business should have a Facebook page that they regularly update. If it just sits there, it isn’t helping you at all. From Facebook, you can share links to any style or form of content, but the image ends up being a driving force. Include a picture, then the link, and you will get more traffic from Facebook. That said, it may not be the best arena to share more technical jargon that is geared toward a specific and highly technological business audience. Another avenue may work better.

There are many other approaches than the above listed social media outlets. And new sites pop up every day. Again, weigh the needs of your purpose against the reach of your target audience to determine the best approach for your current campaign. Most important, don’t go stagnant with your contribution of content. Keep it constant, lest your audience will lose interest and move on to the next big thing.

Advanced Amplification Techniques

• Employee Advocacy – Employees are always the best starting point for sharing the content you have put so much time into creating. Not only do they know your company and products, but offering them the opportunity to share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions in the creation of the content inspire them to want to share it with their circle. Employee advocacy is an essential element for successful engagement with your customers. Your employees should be the one talking with customers and offering support for questions. But this shouldn’t be limited to just the marketing or customer service staff. Everyone in the company should play a role, from executives to sales to maintenance. They all have a stake in the company’s outcome, so encouragement to participate in advocacy efforts is a must. When employees feel like they are part of the process, they are excited to become engaged in the process.

• Customer Advocacy – Customers are the whole point of business, right? Businesses know this. Or they should. Without customers buying products, businesses would go out of business. And they are the best marketing voice you have when it comes to sharing the benefits your company has to offer. Word of mouth marketing will never go away – as people like recommendations from their friends, colleagues, and even admired strangers. The place where people share has been moved from the watercooler to the Internet, but the impact is still the same – people telling people they know what they should or should not buy. Customer advocacy cannot be overlooked. Rather, incorporate them into your amplification efforts, ask them to share your content. They already buy your product, so becoming an ambassador for it shouldn’t be a stretch.

Amplification comes down to how the message gets shared, no matter the content. If you have followed the steps above, created a purpose with clear goals, determined your target audience, selected style and form, chosen a writer, wrote quality content that includes a good title and SEO consideration, and decided who to share the message, then the next step is to find a way to reach the most people with the lowest amount of effort – you need to amplify your message.

Content marketing is getting more saturated by the day. Getting your content out there and in front of your target audience is arguably the hardest aspect of content marketing. Social media promotion and leveraging employees and customers are easy ways to ensure your content is reaching your target audience.

 Source:http://bit.ly/1NpyYIV