When it comes to marketing blogs, we all know what the “authority” blogs are, right? After all, they’re hugely popular and many of us follow those blogs faithfully. Blogs like ProBlogger, DailyBlogTips, SearchEngineJournal, ShoeMoney, CopyBlogger, just to name a few. You know, the usual suspects.

But there are many other outstanding marketing blogs flying under the radar, whose marketing content is just as impressive, but perhaps not quite as well known to the average online marketer. I call these “the unusual suspects.” And since they may not be quite as well known, chances are, you probably aren’t familiar with them.

1. Content Marketing Today

When it comes to content marketing and content marketing strategies, I can say without the slightest bit of exaggeration, Newt Barrett’s Content Marketing Today blog is as good as it gets.

2. Brian Carroll’s B2B Lead Generation Blog

Brian Carroll’s blog focuses on B2B lead generation, sales leads, and marketing.

3. Peter Stone’s Copywriting Blog

Peter Stone is simply one of the finest copywriters on the planet…period. But be warned, this isn’t basic copywriting. These are sophisticated, highly advanced copywriting concepts, and as such may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

4. Chris Mole’s Media Blog

From copywriting to website design, and everything in between, this blog covers it all.

5. Jeff Korhan Blog

Jeff Korhan’s New Media and Small Business Marketing Blog helps mainstream small businesses get practical results from their onlíne marketing.

6. Search Engine Guide

When it comes to knowledgeable, “on-the-money information” about search engine marketing, it’s hard to top these guys.

7. Unstuck Digital

Mike Tekula’s blog is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Lots of good SEO resources.

8. The Content Revolution Blog

Content Marketing strategist, Joe Pulizzi’s Junta42 brings clients and vendors together through its Content Vendor Matching Service.

9. Heidi Cohen

Actionable Marketing expert Heidi Cohen’s blog provides marketing related insights grounded in digital and direct marketing.

10. Web Ink Now

Author and Marketing Strategist David Meerman Scott’s blog specializes in marketing and leadership strategies.

11. Get More Clients Online

Donna Gunter, author of “Get More Clients Online: How to Get 95% of Your Clients from Internet Marketing,” helps introverted independent service professionals stop the client chase and create online businesses that drives clients to them.

12. Author Marketing Experts

If you’ve written a book or are in the process of writing one, Penny Sansevieri’s Author Marketing Experts blog is for you. This blog teaches authors how to get published, as well as other helpful book marketing tips.

13. Mark Widawer’s Traffic and Conversion Blog

This blog specializes in website traffic and conversions, as well as Internet marketing training and education.

14. Small Business Search Marketing Blog

Matt McGee’s Small Business Search Marketing Blog helps small businesses compéte and succeed online on their own terms (and budgets).

15. Church of the Customer Blog

Talk about a hidden gem. This outstanding blog specializes in word-of-mouth marketing and teaches you the art of getting your customers to be “evangelists” for your business.

16. PR Secrets Blog

Media Coach and Marketing Strategist, Susan Harrow teaches you how to get publicity for yourself in a dignified fashion, without selling your soul.

17. Pro Copy Tips Blog

Copywriter Dean Rieck’s Pro Copy Tips Blog gives you the tips, tools, resources, and inspiration to turn ordinary words into extraordinary success.

18. CK’s Blog

The initials “CK” stand for Christina Kerley, and her B2B blog helps guide marketers through strategy… social media marketing, mobile marketing… and whatever’s coming next.

If you have a website, or are studying a website which has a large amount of links, it can be difficult to sift through all of them. Using this Link Extractor, you can simply input a URL and all of the outbound links are generated into a list for easy access.

Just a few short years ago, it was a good bet that you would read articles like this one on your PC or laptop. Today, it’s just as likely that you are reading this article on a smartphone or tablet computer. So what’s changed, what happened? The mobile web happened, that’s what – and the Internet will not ever be the same. So, what’s the mobile web?

Loosely defined, the mobile web is a way of accessing the Internet via a wireless network, using a handheld mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer.

The Explosion Of The Mobile Web

The mobile web is growing at a phenomenal pace, and is forecast to overtake the desktop web in 2014. In other words, more users will access the Internet using a mobile phone rather than a PC for the first time.

Approximately 900 million people currently access the web with mobile phones, compared to 1.4 billion desktop Internet users. In 2014, mobile web users will outpace desktop users (approximately 1.7 billion mobile users to approximately 1.65 billion desktop users). By 2015, the number of mobile web users is expected to grow to 2 billion.

Assuming an annual growth rate of about 2 percent annually between 2010 and 2015 in cell phone subscriptions (77 percent of the world’s population will have cell phone subscriptions in 2010 and 87 percent will have subscriptions in 2015), about 6.35 billion people worldwide will have a mobile phone subscription and approximately 1 out of 3 subscribers(or 2 billion out of 6.35 billion) will be accessing the Internet on mobile phones. (Source: Wikimedia)

And according to the August, 2011 edition of eMarketer, 33 percent of mobile users are looking to access local content relevant to their GPS positioned location.

Is Your Website Ready?

So, what does all of this mean to you? It means more people than ever will be viewing your website through a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer, via a wireless network. It also means that if you want to survive and thrive, you have to adjust and adapt, and make your website mobile web friendly. The good news is, it’s easier than you think.

“Within the Alexa top 1,000 sites, 40.1 percent of all sites are mobile-friendly. These sites represent the world’s most popular web properties, like Google, Facebook and Yahoo!

Beyond the top 1,000, mobile friendliness still holds strong but is not yet as widespread. Of the top 10,000 Alexa sites, 29.7 percent perform well on mobiles. Once the input data is broadened to include the top 500,000 sites, the total number of mobile-friendly sites drops to 19.3 percent.” (Source: mobiThinking.com)

If you haven’t already done so, the very first thing you need to do is bring your website up to speed visually. In other words, you want to make sure that users of mobile devices can view your site optimally.

The quickest and easiest way to do this is to run your site through the MobiReady online testing site. This is a free service that evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards.

The free report provides both a score (from 1 to 5) and in-depth analysis of pages to determine how well your site performs on a mobile device. There are also other tools that will allow you to test your site for mobile readiness. In fact, here are 10 Excellent Tools for Testing Your Site on Mobile Devices.

Personally, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of these types of testing tools. For example, I ran my site through MobiReady, and it gave my site a 2 out of 5 score which, according to their analysis is bad. I got the exact same score before and after I mobil-optimized my site.

Here’s the problem: I’ve had many friends and colleagues of mine, all with different makes and models of smartphones, on a variety of platforms, tell me that my site looks just fine on their phones. So while testing tools may be a useful resource, the true litmus test is what users of mobile devices are seeing – so be sure to ask them.

That being said, there ARE things you can do to mobile-optimize your website.

How To Make Your Website Mobile Compatible

1. Have a fast-loading site. Chances are, most mobile-web users who are using their phones to access the Internet are using a slower 3G connection. You can help these users out by making sure your website code is clean, which will not only make for a faster-loading site, but faster downloads as well.

2. Don’t use flash. Not all mobile devices can see flash? Personally, I’m not a huge fan of flash sites anyway. But if you absolutely, positively have to have a flash site, be both smart and considerate. Make sure you have an alternate HTML version of your site as well.

3. Have a clean, easy to navigate website. Remember, mobile users are viewing your site on a tiny little screen. In addition, there is no mouse and not all mobile devices are equipped with a touch screen. So don’t make it harder for mobile users to view or utilize your site than it needs to be. Clean up the clutter and streamline your content. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If you keep it simple, your site will be user-friendly for everybody.

4. Use HTML phone numbers. Don’t make mobile users have to type in your phone number. Use HTML so that they can simply click to dial the number.

5. Avoid horizontal scrolling. Mobile users prefer to scroll vertically as opposed to horizontally. It’s easier and less of a hassle for them. Always create your content as a single column of text that wraps for mobile users.

6. Use images sparingly. As I mentioned earlier, most mobile users are using a slower 3G connection. As a result, heavier images can take forever to load. To avoid this problem, you should use images sparingly on your website. But if you do choose to use images, they should be lighter-weight jpeg, gif or png format. Also, make sure to compress your images to avoid zooming.

7. Voice Search. Google’s Voice Search on smartphones, has increased voice search usage by approximately 600% in the past year. Since mobile devices don’t have a traditional keyboard like a PC or laptop, voice search makes searching quicker and easier for smartphone users. So you should definitely keep an eye on this trend for SEO purposes. Bear in mind, people tend to search differently when speaking as opposed to typing. For example, while you might type-search “best virtual assistants,” you might voice-search “what are the best virtual assistant services?” Again, it’s a trend you should keep an eye on.

Website Engagement Techniques: The Caricature Effect

Marketing is all about getting noticed, getting remembered, and motivating people to action. Whether it’s a website, display ad, or video, it must first grab people’s attention, it must stop the viewer from going onto the next website, turning the magazine page, or clicking the stop button. In order to accomplish that increasingly difficult task, you must understand the Caricature Effect.

The Caricature Effect

The Caricature Effect simply stated says that what we notice is variation from the norm. Caricature artists exaggerate reality because that is how we visually distinguish one person from another. Human beings are preprogrammed to look for patterns and variations in those patterns, it’s how we recognize who people are, and it is a basic survival mechanism that helps us recognize danger and distinguish friend from foe.

By distorting an individual’s prominent facial features the caricature artist mimics the human brain’s way of remembering who’s who. Our brains are not cameras that take pictures and file them away for future reference. Our memories are malleable, they change and alter over time and experience, and as a result the things we remember best are the things that stand out, things like Bob Hope’s ski-jump nose or Albert Einstein’s wild white hair. The reason caricatures are so effective is because they emphasize the distinguishing differences that we recognize and remember. So how do we use this fundamental, hard-wired human characteristic to further marketing agendas?

What We Notice Is Variation From The Norm

Getting noticed is job-one of any marketing vehicle, so in order to get people to stop, look, and listen we need to use all the available communication elements at our disposal.

When developing a video campaign we use concepts that demand the mental processing of information by shocking, stimulating, puzzling, or tickling the funny bone of the viewer. These techniques force the audience to think, process, and decode the message, and by generating this mental activity we embed our client’s message in the audience’s consciousness. Depending on the brand and/or product, implementation can range from subtle to obvious with the trick being to make people sit-up and take notice by forcing them to think.

Pattern Recognition – The Same But Different

Human beings have evolved to watch for patterns and when an audience recognizes a familiar scenario they leap to a conclusion. It’s a way of making quick decisive decisions that can either help or hurt communication. Properly used pattern recognition can lead your audience where you want to take them, but if the pattern is too obvious or hackneyed, it can lead to viewers dismissing your message.

Let’s face-it, consumers have become increasingly jaded by too many ads that yell at them like a Billy Mays commercial, or promise improbable results like so many diet schemes, or scare the hell out of people with legal disclaimers warning of everything from headaches to heart attacks like most prescription drug ads. These feeble attempts to standout like a pair of John Daley golf slacks only succeed in reminding the audience how completely desperate, or disengaged the advertiser really is.

If you want people to remember your message you have to alter the pattern by varying from the norm so that it forces people to mentally process your information. It’s as simple as a story with a twist like how a comedian sets-up a punch line, or how a magician sets-up an illusion.

In other articles I’ve written extensively about techniques for using video but here let’s discuss something even more universal – photography. It is one of the most economical ways to create the kind of mental stimulation that makes people remember your site and your message.

Photo-Visual Engagement Techniques

Most every website has photography of some sort on it, but like most video implementations, it is rarely used to its full potential. Obviously, do-it-yourself snapshots reek of amateurism but even professional royalty-free images can be as innocuous as DIY snaps are unprofessional, and as we have stated, bland, featureless images are just not going to stimulate anyone’s memory.

Cinegraphs

Cinegraphs are photographs that move. They are created by combining a series of still images into a gif animation. The best cinegraphs use subtle movement like hair or clothing blowing in the wind to cause the audience to take a second look. What appears at first to be a regular photograph creates a “Did I just see it move?” reaction, and that’s the kind of subtle yet powerful feature that can get people to remember your site, your product, and your brand. Like any technique you have to know how and when to use it in order to enhance your presentation and reinforce your message. Just parachuting in a technique for technique’s sake is no better than a meaningless royalty free image used as filler.

Sequence Images

A sequence image is a still image that combines a series of images into one photo. Unlike cinegraphs, the image doesn’t move but it does provide a kinetic quality by showing a series of varying poses all combined into one photograph. This kind of image can be very striking and powerful and can cause your viewer to take a moment to decode the story it tells.

Selective Color

Color is another area that often gets forgotten. Different colors have different psychological effects depending on the context in which they are used. In addition to the color choice, using color as a consistent marketing communication element helps enhance and embed your identity and brand image. Many Internet entrepreneurs pay little or no attention to color imaging and it is really unfortunate as it is often an inexpensive but effective way of making a profound impression.

Photographs today are generally full color images but if you’re not controlling the color in your images then you’re missing a great chance to make a memorable impression. Of course lack of color (black and white photography) can be just as powerful if used properly. Jack Daniel’s is a brand that uses black and white and selective color extensively in its marketing.

There are several ways to use selective color in your photographic imaging. Jack Daniel’s uses a lot of black backgrounds or B&W photos and copy combined with color product shots of the bottle that has a B&W label but is filled with the golden elixir.

The companies that make a real impact in the marketplace are not the ones that produce what people think they want, but rather the ones that produce what people will want but don’t know it.

The ability to know what people will want before they know it exists is not a result of intensive market research, focus groups, or telemarketing surveys. Knowing what people want is based on understanding the human condition: the motivating factors that move people from disinterest to action. Steve Jobs was unrelenting in this philosophy and it resulted in changing the computer, music, movie, and telecommunication industries and more significantly how people live, work, communicate, relax, and in some ways, think.

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‘Make A Dent In The Universe’ – Steve Jobs

This is not an approach taught in business schools or self-help marketing courses designed for business neophytes. An entire industry of self-help consultants has exploded on the Internet, all designed to produce mediocrity, all based on rational analysis of what was, rather than what will be. Not many will búy into this alternate approach but that is what makes those who do, so special.

Conventional Wisdom Breeds Mediocrity

Inventing the next big thing in and of itself is not good enough for you to make that dent in the universe. Those who ultimately profit from innovation are not necessarily those who invent it. History is littered with sad stories of entrepreneurs who lacked the ability to implement and communicate their vision to the masses. You have to know how to execute, communicate, convince, and brand your vision in the minds of your audience.

Xerox may have developed the original concept of a graphical user interface and mouse, and they may have had the resources to dominate the future computer market; but they myopically saw themselves as a copier company, and instead chose to turn over the keys to the kingdom to Apple for a relatively small investment stake; much to the chagrin of the Xerox researchers who created the original technology.

The Xerox strategy was textbook business school think – stick to what you do. It’s not so much that the concept is wrong, it’s that the concept must be reinterpreted for a business environment where traditional corporate culture and methodology doesn’t understand, and can’t keep up with the pace of new technologies, and the new forms of competition they breed.

History Repeats But Some Nevér Learn

When Xerox realized their miscalculation they tried to capitalize on their original research by creating their own computer, but they failed because they lacked the vision needed to implement something that would spark the public’s imagination. Kodak, Polaroid, and the movie and music industries have all succumbed to the same lack of vision.

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Where Xerox was run by professional managers who relied on conventional wisdom and traditional methods of operation and decision-making, the Macintosh division of Apple was run by a virtual cult leader who did whatever it took to bring his vision to market.

It’s not that Apple didn’t have the same corporate managers and engineers within the organization, they did, but their efforts resulted in the failed Lisa computer, leaving Jobs to lead his band of Silicon Valley pirates to something truly innovative. But the genius of Macintosh wouldn’t ever have made an impact without Jobs’ steadfast focus on excellence, and his Rasputin-like communicative powers.

The Board of Directors, all experienced corporate executives, even tried to kill the famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial that introduced the Macintosh. The commercial is not only regarded as one of the most influential commercials ever made, but just as importantly, it established the metaphorical language and positioning grammar of a revolutionary brand.

The Grammar of Communication

In order to make an impact and create an identity for your NBT (next big thing) you need to develop a written, oral, and visual language that expresses, explains, and describes the fundamental emotional value proposition your brand delivers.

Every aspect of your business from product, packaging, and logo design, to website layout, iconography, and copy, to photographic and video presentation must all speak with the same voice, the same style, and with the same enthusiastic visionary assurance. You need to develop a brand patois that says: this is who we are, this is what we can do to fulfill your desires, and this is why you need us.

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Tom Derresteijn, partner in Studio Dunbar writes on his website visual-communication dot com about a variety of concepts that help focus marketing attention: inside-out thinking, paradox, and fragmentation.

Inside-out versus Outside-in Thinking

What we have been describing thus far is what Derresteijn refers to as inside-out thinking as opposed to conventional corporate outside-in thinking.

Most business professionals have been educated and trained in the pseudo-science of business management, always looking for rationality in how people behave, when in fact people most frequently respond to emotional triggers of psychological desires. As a result most corporate managers do not understand the impact of imaginative design and creative marketing communication.

Corporate executives worry more about next quarter’s stock market results than they do about the products or services they provide. As a result they play it safe and give people what they say they want by relying on market research.

Ad agencies are quick to adopt the approach because (a) rationalizing decisions on research was an easy sell compared to explaining clever creative, (b) agencies could charge quite a lot for the research, and (c) if things went wrong they had a built-in scapegoat, the research.

The underlying problem is simple, people don’t know what they really want until they see it, so you can play it safe and wait for the competition to bury you with something bigger, better, and cheaper, or you can follow your instincts and work to make a dent in the universe. It’s business, there are no guarantees no matter what approach you take, so you can aim for something special, or you can aim for mediocrity.

Paradox

The ‘Think Different’ slogan used by Apple in the 1990s for the Macintosh was brilliant in its duality. Not only did it position Apple against IBM’s “Think” slogan, it conveyed the complex, conceptual conflict found in human nature: the desire to be different and the same simultaneously. The Macintosh was convivial, an easy-to-use machine for the masses, while at the same time it was an alternative to the establishment Big Blue for those who thought of themselves as different or special.

How much time do you spend online?

According to a time use survey compiled by ComScore Media Metric, the average American spends 33.9 hours on the Internet every week. Depending on age and other demographics, this number can double! And for those lucky individuals whose occupations rely primarily on computers: the Internet commands their lives and they aren’t ever not connected.

Computers have drastically changed the technological landscape. The Internet has facilitated efficiency in a number of offline processes. We use the web to communicate with our family, friends and business acquaintances in real-time chats. Books and other multimedia are available for online viewing and instant download. We can even shop for gifts online – often offered at a deeper discount than in brick-and-mortar stores! The Internet has revolutionized the way that we live, as we now spend one-sixth of our lives in the digital world.

Where are We Actually Spending Our Time Online?

Google has compiled a list of the 100 most-visited websites in the United States. (Being the modest company that they are, Google has chosen to omit their website and statistics from the study.) These 100 websites are sorted into six categories: social networking, search engines, shopping, entertainment, business and software.

The Internet can deliver information instantaneously, so naturally search engines and other information-related websites comprise the most popular category – sites ranging from web portals, such as Yahoo! and Bing, to encyclopedias and other how-to pages, such as Wikipedia and eHow. Closely tailing search engines are online shopping and other e-commerce websites – pages such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart – followed, in descending order, by the categories Entertainment, Social Networking, Business and Software.

Social networks are defined as any and all websites that are personal communities, professional networks, blogs, dating communities, deal of the day websites and other content sharing sites. It is significant that social media occupy the fourth largest category, as these websites have only gained popularity within the past few years. In fact, two of the top three websites in America are “social” sites. The number one site, Facebook, is the largest social network in the world with over 800 million loyal users. YouTube trails behind this social giant as the second most popular social network, and the third most popular website in the US

Which Social Sites are Americans Frequenting the Most?

Americans have become fully absorbed in the social networking infrastructure. According to Nielsen, social media has engrossed 22% of our total time online. The chart, “Total Reach of Social Networks,” reveals the percentage of Americans that are logged-into the 15 most-popular networks in the country. The most popular social network is Facebook, with a total national reach of over 67%. Close in proximity is YouTube, with 54.7% of the population viewing, sharing and commenting on videos posted by others around the globe. Other social networks are used by less than half of the population – networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn, and blogging websites such as Blogspot and WordPress.

Another sub-category of social networks has made it to the top 100. Within the past year, the deal-of-the-day industry has flourished. There are dozens of competing websites, but the two that have thus far generated the bulk of the traffic and seized the largest marketing share are Living Social and Groupon. Consumers flock to these websites for the great discounts on a variety of products, services and activities. Only 5% of the United States population is connected to these sites. However, in another year it is predicted that the reach of these sites will more than double as the popularity of these sites is accelerating at an enthusiastic rate.

Which Americans are on Social Networks?

Of the 310 million individuals in the United States, at least 210 million are actively participating in social networks. Who are these individuals? According to Google, the majority of users are women. Females are more active participants in social media than their counterparts. Women are especially more active on deal of the day social networks – where users typically register in order to receive coupons. In fact, the only social network where men have the greater presence is LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network. This may be correlated to the fact that men hold higher-level positions in the US workforce than women. Currently out of the running Fortune 500 companies, there are only 16 female CEOs (as told by USA Today). Even more shocking is that this is the greatest number of women that have ever held this position at the same time.

Exhibit 3: Social Media Usage by Gender in the US, according to Google Ad Planner

In regards to age, the correlation shows that younger individuals prefer more active social networks, whereas older individuals prefer networks where there is an emphasis on content retrieval. Senior citizens are most active on deal of the day sites, which provide coupons and other group discounts for those that choose to lead active lifestyles. On the other hand, the media of choice for younger generations appear to be networks where regular, active participation is encouraged. Teenagers and kids flock to social sharing sites such as YouTube and Photobucket, an image hosting website. For yóung adults, blogs and other weblog sites that facilitate comments and sharing are most popular. Overall, the group that has the largest presence on social media is adults. The majority of the users of the 15 most-visited social sites are between the ages of 35 and 54 years of age.

Exhibit 4: Social Media Usage by Age in the US, according to Google Ad Planner

How Important are Demographics?

The Internet and technologies that make the Internet more accessible for us have been strongly embedded into modern culture. Laptops, smart phones, tablets and mp3 players with Internet access are consumed by all age groups. Internet users flee to the web not just for information, but also to shop, communicate and consume multimedia. The rapid growth in Internet consumption has led us to spend more time in the digital world and less time in the real world – one-sixth less time to be exact.

The media patterns of target audiences are changing. Marketers need to redevelop their marketing strategies in order to better influence target audiences and stimulate them to consume. The most successful advertisers are those that are able to reach their audiences through multiple channels. In modern America, this requires integrating an onlíne marketing strategy.

Using the demographics of our ideal buyer persona, we can learn which websites our target audiences are frequenting. These trending websites will prove to be the best online locations to advertise to these individuals. If the ideal buyer is a 35 year old soccer mom, then research shows that it would be useful to advertise on deal of the day websites that women in this age group tend to frequent. Alternatively, if our ideal candidate is a business executive that works long hours for a prestigious law firm, LinkedIn advertisements would be the indisputable way to go.

When optimizing a site for search engines, it’s all about how you’re ranking for individual keywords. Depending on how you’ve optimized your site, you’ll rank differently for various keywords. If you’d like to see which keywords you’re ranking for, try this Multiple Website Search Engine Position tool.

It’s something that you hear all the time – all of the SEO content in the world doesn’t do you any good, unless your readers are really engaged in it. After all, people don’t purchase products, sign up for email lists, or share links if they think that something is “just OK”. If you’re not publishing SEO content that really gets readers involved, you’re missing out on countless link opportunities, traffic, and sales.

So, how exactly do you create SEO content that’s going to engage readers?

1. Don’t Overlook the Importance of “You”

Your SEO articles, blog posts, and optimized sales pages are not formal research papers. The best way to get results out of them is to make each reader feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Luckily, you can do that by focusing on one little word – “you”. Writing in the third person (using “he”, “she”, or “they”) is impersonal; writing in the second person (using “you”) brings your SEO content to a personal level.

Take a look at this sentence:

“People have a hard time driving traffic to their websites because they haven’t defined a target audience.”

It’s not a bad sentence. It contains an important fact that is easy to understand, and it’s certainly better than some of the gibberish you see floating around out there. Your readers will look at this sentence and probably agree with it. Unfortunately, though, there’s no personal investment on their behalf. Instead, they’ll probably think, “Sure, ‘people’ probably do have that problem. So, what does that have to do with me?”

Now, change the same sentence ever so slightly, to:

“You have a hard time driving traffic to your website because you haven’t defined a target audience.”

You’re making the same point and using the same fact. The only difference is that you’re not talking about other people. Instead, you’re speaking directly to the reader and telling him exactly what his problem is. By phrasing the sentence this way, your reader is much more likely to think, “You know what? She’s right. That is my problem! Let me keep reading to see if she has any tips to help me fix it.”

Just like that, you’ve encouraged someone to read your SEO content all the way to the end. Assuming the rest of your SEO content is full of important information, readers will get to the end and think of you with more respect. You can’t ask for a reader to be more engaged than that!

2. Get Rid of the “$10 Words”

I don’t know about you, but I hate “$10 words” – you know, the words you learned for the vocabulary section of the SAT’s and haven’t used since. Most of the time, I see big words and the writer instantly strikes me as someone who wants everybody to think he’s smart. Unfortunately, it’s a terrible impression to give to readers – that you’re some kind of stuffy know-it-all. After all, would you do business with a stuffy know-it-all? I sure wouldn’t!

Making matters worse, you may have a reader who doesn’t know what your “$10 word” means – and now he feels stupid.

Guess what?

People don’t buy from businesses that make them feel stupid!

Bottom line – keep the “$10 words” out of your SEO content. You can provide answers, list solutions, and summarize benefits with the same language that you’d use talking to a fríend over lunch.

Remember, the goal is to make the reader feel like the two of you are having a conversation. You simply can’t do that with big, fancy words that no one actually uses in everyday conversation!

3. Use Lists Whenever You Can

Internet searchers are a bunch that love to scan and skim. They scan Google results, article titles, and even the body of the SEO content itself – until they see something that catches their eye. Once they think something’s worth their while, they’ll sit down and read the whole thing. So, the easier you make it for readers to scan your SEO content, the greater your chances of them slowing down to engage with what you have to say.

That’s why you see so many numbered lists and bullet points around the web. Successful writers know that they’re crucial to catching people’s attention. After all, scanning a list to see if it’s got some merit is a whole lot easier than trying to trudge through long paragraphs.

That doesn’t mean you should try to force lists into every piece of SEO content that you publish. In some cases, they just don’t work. In situations where a list isn’t appropriate, make sure that your SEO content has short paragraphs. That way, readers won’t feel “intimidated” by giant paragraphs that look far too time-consuming to read.

How short are we talking?

If your paragraphs have more than 5 or 6 sentences in them, they’re too long. Chances are you’re trying to make too many points in your paragraph. Stick to one point per paragraph, so that you don’t end up with SEO content that looks more like War and Peace.

Remember – internet searchers want answers and solutions, and they want them now. If your SEO content makes it easy for them to find what they’re looking for, you greatly improve the odds of them being fully engaged in what you have to say!

There are a zillion ways to use video for business, varying from stylish, high-priced ad crusade commercials to complex landing page pieces designed to pull someone into a purchase. What are the greatest types of video for Small Business owners that can be created cost-effectively and published quickly and produce leads? Here are the Elite Eight.

Introductory Clip

Well-known and regularly underused, the video Intro to the Business is a brief, 5 minute or less (2-3 works well) homepage introduction that tells who you are, what you do and why customers should care. This can be done using a narrative in a commercial replete with lots of motion shots of the shop floor, the office, and merchandise; a talking head of the CEO to a blank camera; or use the 3rd party perspective of an authentic Video interview (see below) Business FAQ.

Development costs can range from free (CEO riffing into a webcam) through a few hundred dollars to thousands for a videographer shot commercial. Google doesn’t care; either will index well given the suitable keyword tags. The question you have to answer is, what is going to be quickly informative, entertaining, and referable (as in Re-tweeted).

Product Demonstration

Specific to demonstrable products, especially ones that move, like machines, toys, electronic devices, and, considering the medium, software. These again shouldn’t run on too long but may be longer than an introductory commercial. A software-based demo may take up to 8 minutes, but you should be able to say it in less time than that. When it comes to demos, sometimes less is more. Most often either a narrative led demo showing strictly merchandise or a spokesperson paced demo (think QVC or Home Shopping Channel) works the best. Just make sure to show the BEST features of your product and explain repeatedly (3x) how this addresses a problem for your prospects.

Professional Abilities

This is very similar to a product demo and works best for suppliers, specifically those in developed countries, trying to demonstrate their superior technology will in reality cost less money or provide better quality merchandise for a customer engaging them with a contract for ongoing services. Machine shops and laser houses love this stuff, showing programmed machinery cutting steel while a guy with a hardhat and safety specs controls the process. This can run 5-10 minutes tops. The key here is, make sure that your ability really is something unique (as in a True Competitive Advantage that others don’t have) and that your video captures its uniqueness.

Company Headlines

This is more of a tug on the heartstrings video that spotlights either what your company has achieved that is noteworthy or what your employees have done for your company. If it’s about the business, it MUST be legitimized by 3rd party reference, as in an accolade won from a prominent registrar (Best in Class, Malcolm Baldridge quality), a status obtained (ISO 9001 certification, etc.) or a cat saved from a tree on the news. When discussing employees, the old Employee of the Month style headline adds a nice human element and speaks to what your company values in its people, and that can make a big difference to prospects with the same value system. For these types of videos, keep them brief (2-4 minutes) and keep them current, particularly for the employee notoriety videos. An Employee of the Month surmises that next month, we’ll see a new one.

Video Landing Page Combination

I could write pages on this one and to be truthful, I’m not a professional at it, but I am sure you’ve experienced pages that have these videos. These are designed to be easy for the vendor of a product or service, meaning, don’t call me, take the action explained on the video. That means enter your email address to get something for FRÉE for agreement to market to you, or sign up for the thing (whatever it is) immediately! Just like text-only sales landing pages, these are long-form videos, with Squeeze Pages (get the email address) videos stretching from 3-7 minutes, and Sales Pages running all the way up to 30 minutes (that is too long in my view, with 10-12 being enough). The most important stuff here: limit options to only this with no other on-page interruptions and make multiple calls to action to the viewer.

Vlog Posts

All about providing info this one is. It comes in the form of a training video, which is conveniently done for things like software applications using screen capture software, or talking head telling something she knows, and often is the Expert Interview (I’ve done a bunch of these in my blog, see sample). The goal is expert positioning for your company while providing real value for the view. These videos can run from 5-30 minutes or longer (think of a book author interview), but I prefer to keep them between 7 and 15 minutes (YouTube has a 15 minute max until you are a recurring video poster). Tickets to success are to limit the subject matter to prevent rambling, don’t provide fluff with a sales pitch to get more, and add some written text fore and aft of the video to set it up and summarize.

Testimonials and Case Studies

Very self-explanatory here, this is 3rd party Reliability Building 101. Take the same things that marketers value about written examples and testimonials and put them on steroids. This definitely MUST be a person unrelated to the business telling about what the company did for him or her, and it can NOT be anonymous (just like those absurd fake reviews you see, “JL from Tampa says …”). Use foresight if the person doing the talking is not good on camera. It shouldn’t make a difference but it does. He doesn’t need to be Ben Affleck, but he can’t be a stiff either. These run no more than 3 minutes in length and follow my rules for great reviews. Quality can’t be weak, but a webcam with reasonable quality can be used effectively, as the subject matter of the person’s referral is the principal piece.

Video Interview

I saved this for last and, as you probably know by now, Smart Company Growth does these in packages for the right type of clients. Video interviews work well for any company that wants to put a human face on its brand, so consider if that is you. They work extremely well when your organization has these three aspects:

1. No physical product – Right for consultants, lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, IT people and anyone else offering professional services. You sell intellectual property and that is difficult to show by showing a video shot of your report (although you can show results charts, but the people who can use this method the most, financial advisors, usually have rules stopping it).

2. Trust is the key to business - Same group, right? If you’re an attorney, how can you start to break the trust hurdle down without ever meeting someone? Show some face time with the 3rd party legitimacy that comes from being interviewed.

3. Sameness in Brand - If you look at your rivals’ websites and they look like yours does – competent yet non-distinguishable – you’re a good prospect for a video interview to set yourself apart. Once more, this is why professional service companies fall so nicely into video interview candidates.

Like millions of other people, I’m a huge NFL football fan (go Giants), and the one thing I’ve learned over the years is that on any given Sunday, the worst team in the league can beat the best team in the league. It happens all the time. Why? Because in sports, just like in business, there’s a very thin line between success and failure – winníng and losing.

And the team that executes their game plan the best and makes the fewest mistakes will invariably win the game. That’s not a theory – statistics bear that out. In sports, mistakes are the wild card – the great equalizer. You can have the greatest team and game plan in the world, but if you make mistakes and don’t execute your game plan, it will be all for naught. You will lose. Mistakes prevent you from performing up to your potential and winníng the game.

The same logic applies to business as well. Regardless of the competition, the businesses that execute their game plan the best and make the fewest mistakes will invariably come out on top. That’s why you constantly see small businesses outperform larger, more powerful companies with greater resources. It’s all about having a solid game plan and executing it.

Following are 10 surefire marketing tips that will improve your website conversions:

1. Have a Plan

There’s an age old proverb by Thomas Edison that famously states:

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”

Truer words haven’t ever been spoken. You need to have a plan before you start a business. Why is a business plan so important? Because a properly constructed business plan is like a roadmap to your goals – a GPS if you will.

Having a business plan will give you a much clearer vision of your goals and objectives, and will keep you on track and enable you to achieve your goals that much faster.

One caveat about business plans: They aren’t written in stone, and more than likely, you will have to change or adjust your plan multiple times along the way to keep yourself on track. That’s just part of the process.

If you need help writing a business plan, you can obtain a free business plan template from BPlans.com.

2. Focus on Organic SEO

While paid marketing methods are fine for the short-term, for the long-term, organic SEO (non-paid traffic that originates from search engines) is what separates the wheat from the chaff. If you can establish a significant presence in the search engines, it will give you a competitive advantage over your competitors. Stock your website with plenty of quality, relevant content and refresh it regularly. Also, concentrate on acquiring as many quality, relevant backlinks as you can. It will pay huge dividends in the long-term.

3. Develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Here’s what master copywriter, Michel Fortin had to say about a USP in his article How to Hook (More) Copywriting Prospects. “A USP is what distinguishes you from the pack. It increases perceived value, expertise, and credibility – without needing to state it outright. Just by being 10% different, unique, original, or special is enough to make you stand out like a sore thumb in an overcrowded, hyper-competitive marketplace.”

You simply can’t say it any more succinctly than that. Be smart. Get an edge on your competition, and develop a USP.

4. Be Obvious

Have you ever landed on a website and didn’t know what it was about? How did you feel? You didn’t like it did you? And I’ll bet you probably clicked out of there pretty quickly. Well, your visitors don’t like it either. Don’t let your visitors have to try and figure out what your website is all about. Make it crystal clear, right from the beginning. Be obvious. Having a big, descriptive headline or logo on your home page is a very effective way to announce what your website is about. Also, choose relevant keywords for your pages, as opposed to trying to trick people just to get eyeballs. Always make your keywords relevant to your web pages.

5. Install Internal Site Search

Studies have shown, you have less than 10 seconds to engage visitors on your site, or they’re gone. That’s why it’s imperative to make sure visitors to your site can find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily. But how?

If your website has more than one page, or has lots of content, install internal site search. If you haven’t done this already, take care of it now. Studies have shown a significant number of people use the search function on sites to help them find the information they’re looking for.

Studies have also shown internal site search definitely helps improve conversions. Here’s why:

If your visitors are able to quickly and easily find the information they’re seeking, they’ll remain on your site longer. And the longer visitors stay on your site, the greater your chances of converting them into customers.

So how can you add internal search to your site?

Just do a search for “internal site search.” You’ll discover you have a lot of options – both free and paid. Personally, I use Google Custom Search on my site. I’m pleased with it. It works quite well for me, but like I said, you have a lot of options.

6. Nurture Your Subscriber List

On average, it takes seven contacts with a visitor to your website to convert them into a customer. That means visitors have to see your marketing message at least seven times before they’re comfortable enough to purchase from you.

That’s why your subscriber list is so important. Even if your subscribers haven’t purchased anything yet, they are interested in what you have to say. Think about it. These people have taken the time and made the effort to opt-ín to receive your newsletter, blog updates, whatever. This gives you the ability to have contact with these people over and over and over again. Eventually, they will develop enough trust in you to purchase your products and services. And if you treat them right, they’ll keep on purchasing from you for years to come. More importantly, they’ll tell others about you.