Online Marketing: Have You Tried Reverse Psychology?

An old saying goes "A knock is as good as a boost." and another says, "There's no such thing as bad publicity." Here's a couple of examples:

Alfred Hitchcock - do we really have to explain who he was? - would announce the commercial break on his TV show during his monologues. Most of the time, this was some dryly sarcastic remark about their sponsor, and sometimes it was even insulting. Advertisers bristled at first, but eventually fought for the privilege to be in the first spot after the introduction, because the viewers tended to pay more attention to the commercial.

A better example: Marmite! The TV commercials for Marmite yeast extract have made the tagline "You either love it or hate it!" into a household phrase, and their marketing has been a smashing success! Check out this commercial clip for a good example. Now, how refreshing is that? Market your product by suggesting that there will be people out there who hate it! How bold! How original! How funny!

So, back to web marketing: what's your online marketing campaign like? Is it earnest? Does it go for the hard sell? Does it take its product seriously? Is it by-the-book marketing-speak? Well, then... is it boring and unoriginal?

Sometimes the best web marketing is at least the kind which shows the world that the company doesn't take itself too seriously. Yahoo named itself after a word that means "uncouth rube". Google has used primary nursery colors and plain page design to suggest that there isn't much to them. Craigslist has one of the ugliest sites on the web, and then mocks itself with an ASCII banner. When the Twitter network goes down, it mocks itself for doing so by showing visitors the "Fail Whale" page. So what do Twitter fans do? They start a fan club for it!

That's the power of not taking yourself too seriously. Wear some pie on your face every now and then.

Peter Brittain


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How To Conduct A Link Campaign

Link campaigns are a very important part of your online marketing strategy.

In your efforts to increase the number of visitors to your website, you would find that having strategic partners is very useful. It is very helpful to have mutual links with related sites, but not compulsory to have reciprocal links always. Having a link campaign is vital in online marketing, as search engines determine your site ranking on the basis of links with its results. The higher the ranking, higher are the chances to get more prospective customers to your website.

To manage your link building campaign, you have to make continuous efforts. It cannot be ‘a build it and forget it’ situation. To manage a campaign successfully involves adding new links frequently, as well as monitoring the existing links. If you do not check links regularly, it may result into some dead links, which is considered a negative by the search engines. Sometimes, it may even be the result of accidental removal of your link from the website, which may be disastrous to you rankings.

As you conduct your link campaign, you can undertake various activities. One of them is using link replacement. If you are in touch with your link partners regularly, there may be some, who may inform you of removing it. In such a case, you can make efforts to find a replacement to that link. You can immediately start with extra efforts to ensure that you do not lose out on ranking with reduced links.

You should regularly screen the email that you receive, which may concern link exchange requests. With maintenance and monitoring of partner website on a regular basis, you can ensure that your links are up and running on a consistent basis.

Peter Brittain

How To Conduct A Link Campaign 2

Typically, there are two ways of creating links, reciprocal and one-way links. Out of the two, reciprocal is a very time consuming one. As a Webmaster, you would have to contact other Web masters with a proposal to exchange links. You would mostly contact such Webmaster, who deals in similar topics or products.

You should first get a mailing list of such websites and then send them personalized emails with the proposal. You will have to wait for some time for the response and if it is favorable, then you can share each other’s links.

The other type is one-way linking. The search engines mostly prefer these. It may need you to spend some money. There are some free directories, to which you can submit your website link. There are, however some sites, which may do it for a one time fee. This is faster than other types of links and is very useful. You should preferably set aside some budget for it.

You have to ensure that you get listed into such sections of the directories that are related to your website. Another option is to write press releases and submit them to a service provider that promotes your site, from which you may get number of one-way links. A similar option is to write good quality content and submit it to article directories. If you provide very good content, you can get links with webmasters, who can post your content.

Link campaign is very important to your online marketing strategy and should be undertaken properly and in a planned manner. It is important to manage and monitor link regularly, so that your efforts are not wasted for any reason.

Peter Brittain
Slinky Internet Marketing

Steps To Internet Marketing Success

If you have your own online business, you need to have a good Internet marketing plan in place. If you have designed a plan well it can be one of the most rewarding experiences. Make use of various opportunities out there to succeed in your Internet marketing efforts. Getting traffic to your website is important, and converting it into sales is a challenge. With a few things in mind, and you activities planned properly to achieve your goals, there is no reason why you cannot succeed in your business.

Steps to marketing success

• Strive to be the best: whatever web activity you undertake, ensure that you excel, and to excel, you need to learn. Learning is the way of life in any business online or otherwise; therefore, understand technologies that are currently in use. Keep yourself updated with the latest market trends. Be sure about the market you are looking at, before you decide that it is your target market. Depending upon these factors, make your Internet marketing plans accordingly. If you offer the best quality product you should ensure that your website comes across as professional, to help in holding up your product’s authenticity and reliability. Prepare a website with all these things in mind.

• Study and understand the market: When you are taking a leap into the big tough market, it is necessary that you first study market conditions. Depending upon your target market, look at your competitors, and the tools and techniques they use; understand what products are popular, whether your tools and techniques match and exceed them. See how products similar to your products are being advertisement, and what sort of a response and popularity they have achieved. This helps you to get an idea of how your product may workout.

Peter Brittain

A Completely Unfair Court Ruling

The web hosting world just might have received the most shocking news it will have all year. TechDirt reports that a US court has decided that a web host can be held liable for a hosted website that sells counterfeit goods. Even though eBay, it is noted, cannot be held liable when somebody uses eBay to do the exact same thing.

What?

This is wrong on so many levels, that it would have to get overturned. There is a very handy analogy we could draw here: Should a landlord be held responsible if their tenant was found to be breaking the law? Should a commercial landlord be held responsible if a business that rented office space is found to have been engaging in criminal or even civilly violating activities?

Now, don't get us wrong. Web hosts do frequently take action against clients who are violating laws that are more on their jurisdiction. Spamming, for instance. Hate sites and fraud, for another. There's nothing wrong with expecting a web host to intervene in those cases.

But when you come down to violating copyright and trademark, who could possibly expect a web host to even know? Say you host party A, and party B claims that party A is violating their patent or whatever and demands a take-down. Before the case is settled in court! Now, if the host doesn't take down party A, they're liable. But if the host does take down party A and party A later successfully defends the claim, then party A now has a claim against their host for taking down their site without cause. There's a reason why computer geeks choose to be computer geeks instead of going into police work.

Peter Brittain
Perth Web Hosting

Why SEO Matters For Your Internet Marketing

It is true that a website needs to be appealing and attractive enough to increase the traffic. However at the same time, you cannot deny the fact that SEO matters the most. If your website is not a search engine optimized, you will have failure or very little success, when it comes to online business. As a newcomer we all are under the impression that a well-developed site is all what it takes to be successful in Internet marketing.

There are several well-developed websites that fail to get recognition on the World Wide Web. You need to make your website search engine friendly, so that it finds a place on the first page of Google or MSN or any other search engine. The mechanical settings do not understand the worth of good images, pictures and graphics. They only understand the mechanical codes and thus SEO matters more than the grooming of your website. You receive the rank on the web page, depending on the keywords that you use. Thus you need to make sure to use phrases and words that will be easily accepted by the search engine to pull it on the top page.

A better friendly SEO website has higher chances of being visible on the first page of the search engine. To make sure you have to use the right keywords. You can always refer to the sites that give you details about the words and phrases to be used. There is a particular pattern, in the way the browsers search for particular information. For example, if they are looking out for information on growing cherry tomatoes in a patio, you must make sure that you use the words, ‘cherry’, ‘tomatoes’ and ‘patio’ as your keywords. These keywords should be used at least four to five times, so that the search engine can easily pull it out, when somebody is looking out for it. You should also use synonyms of the key- words, as you never know what the browser will type in the search bar.


Peter Brittain

Why SEO Matters 2

The secret is using the key words more often in the first paragraph and then utilizing them in the entire content. However, the first part pays an important role and it helps to make your website SEO friendly. Always create content keeping your readers in mind. They will have their own way of typing words to get information. It is good to be aware of such keywords, so that you know how you can use them.

To achieve a better ranking always make sure that your keyword is a part of the title you use. For example, if your website speaks about garden equipments, make sure that Garden equipments become a part of your title. Your main keywords need to be used first and then you could use less important words in your content. By taking care of these keywords, you will definitely acquire a good ranking.

A search engine optimized website is surely to be very successful and could generate a lot of traffic. Every good website is incomplete without the right keywords. Hence make them a part of your web layout plan.


Peter Brittain