We left off on list-building, right? How do you develop a trust factor once you have someone enticed to sign up on your lead capture page? Do you deluge them with freebies? (Incentive Marketing). How many e-books and videos can anyone REALLY read, watch or whatever? Online Success seekers fill their hard drives with downloads..how many just become clutter? So when they say “The Money is in the list” whose list are they talking about?? They say people don’t want to be sold to, but in reality that is the purpose of your list. Ever wonder how many emails it might take to EASE into introducing your opportunity?? Building a list is a laborious task, one that really takes time so be prepared for it. Everyone should be working on it, but don’t expect overnight results. Practice writing great email series for your autoresponders to keep people interested so they don’t just opt out after collecting your freebies. What would keep you interested and keep you from opting out?
Blogs and content pages are another part of Online Marketing. Good Content will bring you good, targeted traffic. If you use them to show AdSense or other pay per view advertising they can also bring another revenue stream. Subscribers to your Blog are a list..of your own. Maybe not in the way you ordinarily think of lists, but Blogs can be a great sales tool for developing TRUST and yes, making SALES. They can be on any topic but do the best job for niche markets and getting good organic listing positions on search engines..which is the GOAL of using content for marketing purposes. Good content breeds trust…makes the author appear knowledgeable and perhaps even an “expert” on their topic. Combine good content (Blogs, Articles, even well written sales pages) with some specialty forum postings, some social bookmarking and you are on your way! I find this to be the most HONEST and helpful to the buyer as a marketing method.
Social Marketing…is social bookmarking. What is it? It is an excellent way to get more traffic..that is what it is really all about. Sites like Delicious, Digg, Spurl, and many many more can help you get targeted traffic to your site. I offer a free email series on Guruette On The Net to help you get started. I hope you will check it out. It is meant strictly to be helpful to you in your quest for success online.
Have an awesome day, God bless you!
Marianne
Guruette On The Net
Many of us have signed up to lists from lead capture pages not only for the “freebies” but because we also wanted to find out more abotu the list owner and what they may have to offer. For the most part, I believe, we know will be “sold to” and yes, I agree, that is one purpose of the list, to build a responsive downline, as well as, build your reputation on the internet as someone who offers quality advice, services, and / or recommended products.
The top marketers today have spent the time to build their lists and reputations to become very successful. I’m sure that when these marketers offer, lets say, a product to their list(s) that many of the readers without even checking out the products would just purchase it, sight unseen (so to speak). Would you say that was “TRUST” ? I would !
I agree that blogging and content driven pages bring targeted traffic, providing that the blog(s) and content page(s) are not all pre-written articles / content by someone else. That is just my opinion. To your readers, how would that build TRUST and your reputation ? I don’t believe it would because it would appear that the author didn’t take time to do some research and write the content in his / her own style and own words / thoughts. I’ve seen many blogs / content pages that appear to have been, lets say, “cloned”, even though they were different blogs belonging to differnt people, the point being is “How would one begin to TRUST the blog owner when their name is barely displayed on the blog, for instance, because another is doing all the “cloning” posting” ?
Many probably do not know, have not realized, or just don’t think it may be so, but, Social Marketing, in my opinion and yes I was in that group myself, is a great tool. Have you heard the expression, “Its not what you do, but who you are” ? Stop and think about that statement.
Thank you for a well written article, Marianne! There isn’t anything I disagree with; however, I do things a bit differently with my blog…not right or wrong, just different! I use it to train my team on how to use different online marketing techniques. Actually, I have two blogs like that since one of them is more for beginning marketers. I hadn’t intended to have a second blog for beginners, but some people seemed to think I was talking a foreign language. Maybe I should have just sent them here!!!
Thank you Don and Stan! I hope you will visit again. Training is an excellent use of Blogs, and great even if program specific. Thanks for commenting here!
Have an awesome day and God bless you!!
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