The powerful Internet marketing strategy to quickly establish your Internet presence

With all the marketing and advertising options available today-email marketing, pay per click, banner advertising, display advertising, free samples, etc., the many traditional print advertising and marketing methods including brochures, direct mail, newspaper and magazine advertisements, radio and television broadcast media, and others-the one true, best way to position your particular brand of service or product (herein referred to as product) is the good, old fashioned word-of-mouth.

If your small-to-medium-sized business is like most, you have a blog or a Web site and you are hoping it will generate business, or leads, or at least some activity. If it isn't performing like you had anticipated, perhaps you left something out of the business marketing equation. Don't feel bad, because many businesses experience the same situation.

Often the business owner or executive will try to save money and get a Web site up and operational via the many software programs and designers available for a low or moderate price, and believe they are now on the Internet like other companies, and can expect that the Web site will do for them what it is perceived to be doing for their competitors. Well, it doesn't work that way, and why should it?

Think of it this way; when you want to try a new restaurant, do you trust the restaurant you know something about over the one you do not? Do you visit the restaurant that has many vehicles in the parking lot or the one that has very few? Why?

It is not the business who advertises the most or the most often, it is the business that is perceived to be the expert, or the best in their market niche, or at the very least the capable business that will receive profitable sales from that niche market.

Let's assume you have an active Web site, and you want to position your business as the expert in its niche and be in the top ten (first page) of Google, Bing, and yahoo, among other search engines.

If you do not yet have a Web site, determine a strategy and pricing structure to plan the quarterly expenditures and monitor results, before your new site goes live. 

Website marketing tips

First step: optimize your website for search engines. Either spend the time reading and learning how, or find a reliable source for search engine optimization (SEO).

At this stage, I recommend to my new clients placing as much relevant content about your market niche on your site as often as you can. Your business is trying to catch up with others who are steadily placing content on their site and on the Web, and you are also trying to stay ahead of others who are attempting to do the same thing.

Here is where I have proven to be very valuable to my clients, and if you use my services you will never run out of information to place on your site or in your marketing mix.

I like the idea of placing at a minimum an article a week to keep the search engines active and alert to your business name. A cost-effective marketing strategy includes a blog or RSS feeds at your Web site, with a Share This control that will allow you or others to easily submit the article or blog to social networking sites such as Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, and many others.

For a mere $40, I create multiple versions of an article that I write for $100 (which is always 600 words or more for this particular use), distribute them to several hundred sites, 4-5 articles or more per day, for as many days in a row until the sites have received the articles. That's hundreds of articles and potential links to your site (also known as inbound links or back links).

If clients want to save money and provide me with content for an article, I will edit the article for search engine optimization for $40, and then create multiple versions and submit them (for $40) to the many submission sites. That will require that clients use some of their time but it is one option to consider, especially when there are slower times when clients can write more if they want to.

Incidentally, I am willing to bet you have some stories of times when things went wrong for whatever reasons, and you could share those stories to show how you handled the situation-that makes for great reading.

Social Networking sites (like those in the Share This device) are very important and it doesn't take a lot of content. A brief mention of something important or something others can use; something of value to the reader is appreciated and can generate more interest in the rest of your Web site and may evoke a response-a customer contacting you; that's what you want!

Use social networking to your marketing advantage

Don't forget to find blogs from other sites to periodically post useful comments on. I know of successful business people that make a habit of bookmarking certain sites and every week (and often multiple times per week) these sites are visited and comments are posted at their blogs.

I suggest to my clients to post a couple of comment sentences on these blog sites, or if there are many and it consumes too much of the client's time, I will for $1.00 per blog comment. Clients find the blog sites and let me know.

But be careful not to make articles on social media sites sales pitches or they will get removed and you may be penalized. You want to inform and educate first. A greater way to get response is to ask engaging questions! People usually want to add their two cents worth and it can be fun and entertaining to others such as titling a post, "What do you do when things go wrong?"

Your new site should have a blog where people are going to be able to read your blogs, and you WANT them to visit and comment on your blogs. Why? Because it builds relevant content, and search engines love that. It is also more content that you do not have to create or pay someone like me to create. It also builds connections to others and extends the rapport to others that builds on your business's credibility and expertise.

Here is what to do now and continue to do: If you can't write a book or a manual, write an article for magazine publication (as a ghost writer I can really help you here). This is one of the best ways to get credibility, and it can be altered to fit various publications. This allows you to refer to your published material and adds more credibility to your business.

Even better is to write a series of articles for publication in magazines. This is very powerful and exponentially increases your business's credibility, but also takes more time and planning so it is never too soon to begin this endeavor.

Everything counts as you ramp-up your presence. It may seem expensive now, but it really is an investment for the long term and will establish your business's credibility with your market niche that do not yet know your company's value to them.

Review your how your site's pages are performing with free analytics

It's important to have a strategy in place to both measure the results, and to plan for expenditures, or reductions in expenditures (such as seasonal downturns). The marketing plans are structured for maximum effectiveness so you can determine more precisely what types of businesses will need your services and when, who to approach and how, what their hot buttons are, etc.

I have one account that I have been writing for, and editing and optimizing older articles and press releases for, and discovered that he did not know whether or not his site was registered with directories and did not know about all the different submission sites he could be sending marketing content to, until I showed him. In just three weeks he saw immediate improvement in his site's activity, and subsequent weeks' customer activity, without expensive pay per click campaigns that he had tried and were getting him nowhere.

He also had a Web site designer who made a small error that he discovered; he couldn't understand why he wasn't getting emails, until it was revealed that the Web site had somehow inadvertently disconnected his emails from him and that he had about 100 emails (some of which were over 30 days old) from interested customers. He informed his designer and that was corrected, but it demonstrated the positive effect that my writing and strategies are working for him, and can be for you, too.

Using the free Google analytics to review the activity of the site and specific Web pages can tell a business volumes about what is most important to the customers in that market niche.

The website marketing strategy that works

Web site marketing does take effort. I have been contracted to serve as an offsite communications director to provide services for others that do not have the time or inclination to handle these various tasks and it is working for them.

12-month Internet marketing plan

• 1. Optimize the Web site. Time: one week.

Ensure that links within the site allow easy navigation for search engines to key words and key phrases. Add meta tags and description tags to each page.

Add one new (articles, blogs, RSS feeds) page of content to Web site plus appropriate meta tags and description tags.

• 2. Submit Web site to directories for search engine placement and registration/inclusion. Time: one day.

• 3. Write a 300- (or fewer) word blog three times per week and place onto client's Web site. Spans 12 months, begins when Web site is optimized.

• 4. Register with social networking sites and batch- or select-submit a snippet of information of 140 characters along with blog (or RSS feed) URLs to desired sites (up to 200). Time: three days.

• 5. Batch-submit each blog from the Web site to 50-plus submission sites. For the first month, each blog posting will be batch-submitted immediately; weekly batch-submissions thereafter for 11 months.

• 6. Write 10 or more (500 to 600-word) news releases /press releases per month and distribute each on J Howard Company's database hub spanning three to six months; biweekly articles for six to nine months thereafter. Begin within first week after the site is optimized.

• 7. Batch-submit multiple random versions of articles to 500-plus article submission sites. Note that this can build links to the Web site quickly and efficiently. Simultaneous with step 6 above.

• 8. Submit press releases/articles to specific, individual submission sites (up to 50) beginning first week.

Note: All written material must be optimized for search engines without sacrificing reader comprehension.

• 9. Approach magazine publishers with press releases/articles for their readers' benefit. Time: two to three weeks.

Each magazine has their word count requirements, but the first step is to determine which publications would be appropriate to suggest informative articles to. Then, a query letter must be written and sent to each individual publication's editor explaining why this article would be in their readers' interest.

Create a list of print publications with the intention of submitting a query letter to, whose readers you feel will benefit from your company's products or services, and if the magazine editor responds to the query, submit an informative article or press release.

Within the article or press release offer something of value for free (such as a brochure, a useful item of information, or something the reader can benefit by) to every reader who responds by providing you with their email address, whereby the information can then be downloaded immediately (assuming you have the information prepared, which you should, and the capability established for the reader to download immediately, prior to the offering).

This technique gathers email addresses to qualified prospects. Cherish this important information.

• 10. Email prospects and customers periodic offers. Time: ongoing.

Beginning after two weeks of your new site and continuing weekly for at least two months, introduce services or products that your customers can use by directing them to a Web page that tells more about the email notice. Consider a frequent (biweekly or monthly) newsletter from then on to stay well positioned in the customer's mind.

If you or someone you know could use my services please have them contact me and I will put together a proposal on what is best for their particular needs.