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The Power of Social Bookmarking for your online store
Marketing social bookmarking comes in two main options - one, your prospects and customers bookmarking your online store’s pages, and two, you proactively bookmarking your own pages. Don’t be afraid to toot your own horn…that is what marketing is all about.
Here is how to do it:
1. GETTING YOUR CUSTOMERS TO PROMOTE YOU:
Asking your site visitors and customers help spread your content onto social bookmarking sites is a powerful tactic to gaining more visibility for your online store. Plus, you can see which products or services you sell are most interesting to customers and buzz-worthy.
There are many ways to implement this technically on your site. The more technical ways are outside this scope of this article, but I want to share an easy way to give your site visitors the ability to bookmark your pages on the most popular Web 2.0 properties or email the page to a friend.
It is called sharing buttons (a.k.a social bookmarking widgets). There are two popular companies offering FREE, easy-to-use (just copy-and-paste the code onto your site) sharing widgets to share your content on other websites or with friends. One company is ShareThis and the other is AddThis. Here is a current view of each when someone clicks on the widget on your site.
QUICK TIP:
These two companies allow your visitors to share content from anywhere to anyone or another site without leaving the current page. You will want to encourage the usage of a feature like this within your online store. Try placing it on your product pages, editorial pages, homepage and other pages with interesting content or features.
2. TOOT YOUR OWN HORN - PROMOTING YOURSELF:
Luckily, actively promoting yourself on social bookmarking and social networking sites is an accepted marketing practice. In fact, these sites encourage people sharing valuable content and links on their service.
There are many sites for social bookmarking. Here is a short list of the most popular bookmarking sites:
- Delicious
- Digg
- Technorati
- StumbleUpon
- 43places
- Propeller
- Sphinn
- Diigo
- Clipmarks
- There are MANY more…
SUPER TIP:
Related to the concept of actively promoting yourself to other sites is the concept of “pinging” a site. This simply means that you tell other sites about updates to your site, so instead of waiting to let other sites and search engines find out about your newest updates, you can just let them know.
Use Ping-o-Matic to tell other sites about your changes. It is a FREE service that according to their site, “…is a service to update different search engines that your blog has updated.”
NOTE: you don’t have to have a blog to use this service, simply an updated webpage and an RSS (optional, but preferred).
Many online retailers have RSS through their E-commerce platform. If you use a hosted E-commerce platform and you are not sure if you have this or not, contact them to ask or look in their user forums online to find out. Hate to get too technical here, but it is likely you can easily produce an RSS feed either directly through your online store (perhaps through an XML feed) or through other online services that produce RSS as an output from their system (e.g. Feedburner).
If you have a Wordpress blog or use other popular blog technology, you already have an RSS feed - likely by category, tag and more. Plus, you ping other services AUTOMATICALLY whenever your post a new page or post behind-the-scenes. This is good, but you can add more sites to your “ping list” to have your blog software work harder for you. You can either tweak how your blog pings other services or you can add Ping-o-Matic to your arsenal.
It is easy to tell more sites about your updates and have more potential for additional traffic to your online store or blog. You will want to make sure the right sites know about your site’s updates.
Here’s to your online (social bookmarking) success,
David
How to create a social networking presence for your online store
One of the major opportunities social networking sites give you is to be omnipresent. Wherever your customers or prospects turn online, let them find you.
In this article, I identify some of the most effective social networking opportunities to reach new customers and retain current customers.
- Facebook Fan Page - create company presence on Facebook and tap into the 500 Million active users throughout the world.
- Twitter - make sure to include appropriate hashtags in tweets, research popular hashtags, direct message as appropriate, follow your friends and industry influencers.
- LinkedIn - keep those business relationships up-to-date and be helpful to those who need it.
- MyBlogLog - blog aggregator site owned by Yahoo, indexes well in search engines.
Other honorable mentions include MySpace, FriendFeed and Google Buzz. These can all be good, but if you only have limited time, choose Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in 2010.
One more site that has become an interesting social networking site is Amazon.com. No, that is not a typo. Amazon.com is more than just an online store. Customers don’t go to Amazon.com for their great customer service, they flock to Amazon.com to make an intelligent buying decision.
Here are some of the features that have made Amazon.com a social networking site. Plus, here is an example of the Kindle page on Amazon.com that has most of these features.
- Customer reviews
- Customer reviewer profiles
- Editorial lists
- Video reviews
- Customer Forums
- Author pages and information
- Gift lists and wish lists for social shopping
- See the product locally
- Community
- Share this product with friends
GENERAL Web 2.0 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:
Of course, no matter which social networking sites you use, you will want to follow some recommended rules:
- Always provide value
- Link to your online store from social networking profiles
- Link to your social networking profiles from your site
- Promote your social networking pages on your online store and through external marketing efforts such as email or direct mail as appropriate
- Answer questions in a timely manner
- Don’t ignore the negative comments - answer these and learn from these comments and criticism
- Don’t delete negative comments - leaving them (and answering them) can build customer trust and loyalty
QUICK TIP:
To see if your preferred name is available at the top Web 2.0 properties, here is a great time-saving, free site - namechk.com.
ADVANCED BONUS TIP:
If you ever wanted to create your own social networking site, there are now many easy-to-use online solutions. One of my favorites is Ning - it is currently FREE, integrates with many of the other social networking sites and is highly customizable. Easy and it works - love it!
Here’s to your online (social networking) success,
David
Repurpose your online store content and drive more traffic
One of my favorite marketing techniques and time-saving efforts is to leverage current assets for multiple uses.
Do you need ideas for reusing content:
- Articles
- Blog posts
- “How to” information
- Videos
- Audio
- Press mentions
- Product information
- Testimonials
- Product reviews
- Presentations
- And much more…
You will want to learn how to reuse your content on different sites to create a larger reach online. Here are great sites that can be wonderful sources of traffic for your online store.
- Scribd - this site, established in 1997, gives self-publishing a whole new name. Scribd allows you to upload your files for online public consumption, so Scribd visitors can view and download your documents for free.You should have confidence in the power of Scribd, as companies such as Chicago Tribune, Ford Motor Company, Pearson Schools and many more are using their service.
You can upload all different file formats to Scribd including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and many more, so it is easy to get started.
Scribd documents are indexed in search engines giving you more valuable online real estate for free.
Plus, Scribd documents are able to be syndicated to any website - that is cool. As easy as embedding YouTube videos on any website, Scribd documents are super simple for other webmasters or bloggers to add your content to their site!
NOTE:
Now you can even sell your content through the Scribd Store. Perhaps you can create a new revenue channel for your business. - Slideshare - SlideShare is built for businesses who want to share presentations, documents and pdfs.Here is your chance to reach a wide online audience by uploading files promoting your products. If you have older PowerPoint® presentations that could be for public consumption sitting idle in your company’s computer, then run - don’t walk - to this site.
Slideshare allows to you create online presentations (even with audio if you wish) from your documents. Easily use PowerPoint® to get started.
Success with Slideshare is based on how viral your Slideshare files get - visitors can view or embed your presentation on their site and bookmark or share your presentation (on Web 2.0 properties such as Facebook, Twitter and many more popular sites).
However, by using Scribd, you can also find industry and media contacts to grow your professional network.
Also, files on Slideshare are indexed by search engines that give you additional virtual real estate on their search results pages. As search engines mature over time, video and other types of media, like Slideshare, will become even more important within search engine results.
- Article distribution sites - this is a great way to reuse or repurpose your content to find new customers for your online store. Make sure to work on a compelling call-to-action in your “about the author” signature box to maximize traffic to your online store. Ideally, you can add a coupon code within that section too.Some of the best article submission sites are the following:
- EzineArticles.com - my preferred site, but you can use more than one!
- GoArticles.com
- ArticleBase.com
- Buzzle.com
- ArticleCity.com
DUPLICATE CONTENT PENALTY?
One popular question I receive from clients and other online retailers when it comes to reusing content online is, “Is there a duplicate content penalty?” Let me address that here.
If you reuse the exact same content on multiple sites, then there can be a filter placed on the content from the search engines versus a true penalty - something that could harm your online reputation. From my industry research and own experience, there is no evidence to say duplicate content could actually harm your online store’s reputation.
Also, it is important to note that search engines are smart enough these days to understand the first site to post the content. So, that site can get “original content” credit.
Therefore, it is recommended to post content on your online store or blog first, then on other third-party sites.
Here’s to your online success repurposing that store content,
David
Submit your articles to drive traffic to your online store
Creating and syndicating articles online can significantly drive new customers to your online store. The benefits to getting your articles out there are numerous:
- Attract new customers for free
- Create media opportunities - providing valuable, interesting article content can attract media outlets who are looking for your expertise
- Form partnerships - you may find related companies or industry partners to form ongoing profitable relationships
- Build new inbound links - usually, articles have an area for information about the author. Promote your online store’s domain name and link to it within this area.
Within your company, you have product experts. Whether it is you or someone on your team, someone should be able write an article. If you are embarrassed by your writing skills and don’t know anyone to help you pull together an article, try speaking into a digital voice recorder and getting it transcribed or hire a ghost writer.
Stuck for content ideas? Try these ideas for sources of content:
- Your comments on upcoming holidays
- Featured products
- Bestselling product lines
- New product arrivals
- Your take on the latest industry news
- And plenty more…
Where to place your articles?
There are two main places to use your articles. The first is on properties you own or fully control:
- Your online store - perhaps an article section or within the shopping experience
- Your blog
- Your Squidoo lenses
- Your secondary sites
The second way to use your original articles is through syndication efforts:
- Guest posts on blogs
- Retailer trade publications
- Industry publications
- Expert sites
SUPER TIP:
One site I wanted to feature here is Hubpages. This site is similar to Squidoo in which you can create your very own one-page site about your favorite subject. Instead of “lens”, Hubpages calls their pages “Hubs”.
Also, it is similar to Squidoo in that Hubpages Hubs get indexed often in search engine results. I have seen this MANY times. Plus, Hubs can help you create valuable inbound links to your online store. I have seen this improve certain store page’s search engine ranking overnight!
Hubpages is a great site for getting your original articles online, giving you another piece of virtual real estate in the search engines.
Here’s to your online (article marketing) success,
David
How to create a lens on Squidoo to drive more traffic
Here is an opportunity to get another online presence absolutely FREE. Plus, it is one of the easiest ways to set up a site within minutes without any tech knowledge.
Squidoo, created by Seth Godin, the wildly-successful author of highly influential marketing books such as Tribes, Small is the New Big, The Dip, Purple Cow, is a site where anyone can create a “lens”, which is Squidoo speak for a one-page site.
Through their easy-to-use interface, you can create a page about any subject you wish. You can easily integrate content from any RSS, YouTube video, Twitter, your blog and more.
For online retailers, it is easy to come up with products/product lines to feature. If you don’t know what to choose, try a product line that is interesting, unique or exclusive to you. Need to get inspired, try these lens ideas. As of February 2010, there have been over 1.4 Million lens hand-created.
Why Squidoo? In addition to the active community within Squidoo, their lenses have always been indexed well in search engines. This is the real reason to create a lens on Squidoo.com - you can get another page (indirect link) to your online store!
OPTIMIZING YOUR SQUIDOO LENS:
Here is how to optimize your Squidoo lens for an even greater opportunity to rank higher in search engines:
- Keyword rich URL - create a keyword-rich name for your lens. The naming convention is http://www.squidoo.com/YourLensName.SUPER TIP:
If your preferred lens name is taken, try adding a hyphen, underscore or multiple hyphens in between the words in your keyword phrase. If that doesn’t work, try adding “action” words to your keyword phrases such as http://www.squidoo.com/buy-plasma-tv-today or http://www.squidoo.com/find-mothers-day-gifts-online. - Add keywords to your lens - don’t abuse this, but make sure to have your keywords within your lens content
- Comment on other lens - this helps your lens get inbound links and gives you an opportunity to find influencers in the Squidoo network. Ask people to rate your lens whenever possible. Other tips to maximize the Squidoo community are to visit other people’s lenses and sign their guestbook and participate in the forums to meet other Squidoo members.
- Write a keyword rich description in the author bio box
- Add “tags” to your lens - this helps Squidoo return your lens when someone searches their networks for an appropriate lens.
SUPER TIP:
To find popular Squidoo tags, ones indexed in Google already, go to Google.com and type in the following phrase:
“site:www.squidoo.com/tags”Also, you can also add a keyword after the above phrase to find lenses in your niche that are already in search results on Google.com.
e.g. “site:www.squidoo.com/tags gift basket” - Use bookmarking features - each lens can be bookmarked on popular Web 2.0 bookmarking sites. Don’t forget to bookmark your lens or encourage you customers, Facebook fans or Twitter followers!
- Link to your Squidoo lenses - in your online marketing efforts and on your online store or blog, make sure to link to your lenses. If you need banners, then Squidoo offers creative to help you do this - all found here.
Sample Squidoo Lenses from retailers:
NOTE: Squidoo is an extremely active place for affiliates. If you have an affiliate program, it is likely some of your affiliates are using Squidoo to drive traffic to your online store. Plus, Squidoo makes it super-easy for anyone to optimize their lens to make money with Google AdSense, eBay, Amazon and many other monetization opportunities.
Examples of lens built by affiliates:
For more examples of a good lens, try the Top 100 list at Squidoo. Although these are not necessarily retailers, you can see plenty of examples of quality lenses.
Here’s to your online (Squidoo) success,
David
How to find influential sites to promote your online store
Beside blog sites, there are many more traditional influential sites within your niche. Hopefully you know many of them off the top of your head.
But, if you don’t, you can use your favorite search engine to find some. Try some of the following phrases:
- Niche name + association
- Niche name + wholesale
- Niche name + manufacturer
- Niche name + magazine
- Niche name + publisher
- Niche name + editor
- Google Groups, Yahoo Groups
- Linked In Groups
- Groups on Ning.com
- And many more…
What to do once you find these influential sites
You don’t need to over think this. Here are some ideas to approach these sites:
- Ask for links from these sites to your online store. If the site you are working with is a manufacturer, then this is a GREAT opportunity to drive well-qualified customers to your online store! Don’t miss this one.
- Agree to be a case study and get links back to your site. Often, these sites have great “authority” to the search engines and any link from their site to your online store will help your SEO efforts.
- Sponsor an event or promotion on their site or for their members
- Give a testimonial regarding other sites and get a link back to your site
- Offer to consult or make suggestions regarding their site
- Volunteer to moderate their online forums
- Donate to a blogger’s site and ask for a link back to your site
- Call an industry friend to tell him/her about your new offering
- Send product samples with a hand-written note to an influencer in the industry
- Find out their social network accounts - interact with them on social networking and social media sites if they have a presence.For instance, Twitter with the key players in your industry - be helpful to them. Join their Facebook fan pages. Be omnipresent so they can’t miss you. There are plenty of opportunities to get on their radar.
- Pitch a writer/editor a relevant, timely story that incorporates your key product/service
You don’t want to be shy when approaching these influencers. Most are happy to help.
Here’s to your online (outreach) success,
David
Marketing through other bloggers
Over the last several years, bloggers have become the new reporters, living day-to-day on the front-lines of their niche. Many of these passionate bloggers have built large loyalty followers who anxiously wait to read and comment on the blogger’s next post. And many of these influential bloggers in your niche want to know about your products.
Learn how to find these bloggers
Here are my favorite tips to find influential bloggers.
- Type in “blog” and another relevant keyword from your niche into your favorite search engine. For example if you sold organic food online, you could type in something like “organic food blog” into Google. Don’t forget to try the same search in the other top search engines like Yahoo.com, MSN.com, AOL.com and Ask.com. Each of these search engines will present different results.
- Search Google Blogs - this is a specialty search feature on Google.com found here. You can do a keyword search just for blog content.
- Search for niche blogs at some of the top social media sites like Digg.com, Technorati.com, delicious.com, Gather.com
- Search the sites that allow anyone to maintain a one-page about a certain topic - sites such as Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com
Getting bloggers to comment on your products
Remember the expression…”You never know unless you ask”?
Well it is okay to ask bloggers to review your products. Sometimes, you will be required to send them a sample for the review and sometimes not. Hopefully, the review will be positive (or somewhat positive) and maybe you will even learn something from some independent constructive criticism.
Here are some reasons to get bloggers to review your products:
- This is cheap publicity - permanent one-way links
- There is a trust factor - those who have an affinity to the blogger
- The blogger has a built-in audience - you will reach prospects quickly, remember the sales funnel no longer starts at the search engines
- Get people talking about your product/service - bloggers, by nature, are writers and they are always looking for good products/services to share with their audience
- Extremely, profitable sales - a positive product review from an influential blogger could lead to sales without any additional marketing costs
SEO benefits of links from blogs
By getting several one-way links from blogs, you will increase the amount of in-bound links to your online store. The more in-bound links from other quality sites (not sites that are link farms or built for SEO purposes only), the better your site will do in organic search results.
At the end of the day, you are looking for that all important one-way direct link from their blog to your store. The search engines love blogs. They think of them as authorities in their niche. So, make sure to ask for these product links. Ideally, you would ask for the blogger to link to the particular product (or category, etc.) versus the homepage to help build deep links to your online store.
Remember, these links help your search engine results. The more of these links, the more FREE traffic you can expect to get to your store.
Another benefit is that this free traffic can often offset increasing pay-per-click costs in your Paid Search program leaving your more money to bid more aggressively and potentially outbidding your competitors.
Two main ways to ask for bloggers to review your products.
1. The first technique is FREE. You can simply identify bloggers in your niche and contact them usually via email and let them know about your products and store. You would be amazed at what you can get by simply asking!!!
2. Pay Bloggers to Review Your Products
There are entire ad networks dedicated to helping online businesses find bloggers who are willing to write product reviews for a fee. Why do bloggers do this? Well, they might be running a for-profit business or they might want to cover their expenses of running the blog or others might want a little spending money. If paying for product reviews seems sneaky, it is not. It happens all the time.
Now, there is a cost involved, which is generally low ($15 and up per review, depends on what the bloggers are now charging really). From my experience, this is an effective use of your marketing dollars.
Remember, you are getting a quality product review to a built-in audience that has a passion in your niche market. This will generate discussion and other online chatter both on the blogger’s site and potentially other sites, where the blogger’s audience frequents. It can lead to direct sales and exposure for your online store.
Some ad networks that specialize in this market include PayPerPost.com and ReviewMe.com.
SUPER TIP:
One more super-easy tip to get the attention of influencers in your niche is to link to them on your site or within your social networking posts (or Twitter tweets).
NOTE: As of December 1, 2009, the FTC requires bloggers to make it clear if the blog post is a paid review or if compensation was given for the product review. So now it is required for the blogger to note that what their audience is reading is a paid review.
Here’s to your online (blogger outreach) success,
David
Maximize Sales With Your Affiliate Program
Now if you already have an affiliate program, you’ll want to learn to drive additional traffic to your online store by following these steps:
- Contact your top affiliates - ask them “what do you need to generate more sales for my business?” You might need to provide them banners, offers, exclusive content or more.
- Contact your non-performing affiliates - if you have a typical affiliate program, a majority of your affiliates are inactive. Try to make them active. Send them an email with a special bonus if they generate $50 of sales this month.
- Contact potential affiliates - either within your industry or the other key affiliates that join most companies’ programs. They are out there!
- Get help - work with your affiliate network’s professional services to use their experience to find new affiliates for you.
- Call your best affiliates and ask how you can earn more money together
- Pay an affiliate an extra bonus for a special one-time deal for more aggressive promotion
- Find new affiliates, especially popular sites, coupon sites and bloggers with a following. Tap into their traffic to find new customers for your online store.
Your affiliate program should be a top three online marketing channel for driving new customers to your online store - search engine optimization and paid search being the other two. If it is not driving the traffic and sales you think it should, you need to dedicate more time and resources to your program.
I love sales generated through my affiliate program! These sales are guaranteed to be profitable, require less direct effort from you as your affiliates are doing most of the work and create a huge strategic advantage for your company.
Another important note about this strategic advantage is that it is often under-the-radar from your competition. As opposed to most search engine marketing efforts, sales from you affiliate program are virtually unknown by your competition.
Here’s to your online (affiliate program) success,
David
Create a radio show to get more free traffic
For a super-simple solution to get your own online radio show, there is no easier service than BlogTalkRadio.com. And it is FREE (there are upgrades to paid services, if you wish)!
Imagine a radio show where you can take calls, record the show, replay the show, and syndicate it out throughout the Internet.
Plus, when you make your radio shows, you can easily syndicate them through iTunes, so you can get some BIG exposure for your radio show.
Here are some examples of popular shows on BlogTalkRadio.com:
To get started on BlogTalkRadio, click here.
Here’s to your online (radio) success,
David
Broadcast your own live show on Ustream.TV
Ready for your very own live broadcast channel? Forget big budgets, long lead time and editing! It is time to go live, it is time for Ustream.TV!
Different than podcasting, where the format is usually a produced .mp3 file or edited video, broadcasting on Ustream.TV offers live video to a worldwide audience. You just need a web camera and an Internet connection and you are ¾ of the way there! Just add content.
Here are some ideas for retailers to use Ustream.TV:
- Editorial talk show about your industry
- Answer common product questions
- Get to know the employees and engage with your audience
- Broadcast with a well-known expert
- Discuss current events and tie the discussion to your product offering
It is simple to get started - if you wanted, you could be broadcasting later today! Plus, it is FREE.
NOTE: If you don’t think this service is brand appropriate for your company or you don’t want to get in front of the camera, then focus on the other traffic tips featured throughout this site. Not every traffic tip may be appropriate for every online store.
Here’s to your online (Ustream) success,
David
