Honest Marketing Secrets

Photo by zappowbang

A couple weeks ago I seriously riled some folks up. It was fun, but now I want to show you why I did it and how perfectly my fiendish blog-traffic-linking plan has unfolded so far. If you haven’t yet, definitely read my recent post about misusing five words. If you’ve already been there, you know there was a little controversy stirred up, but otherwise, a lot of fun talking about the idea. If you hadn’t guessed yet, that post was not really about screwing up the English language at all. In fact, it was an experiment in linkbait. What is linkbait? Oh my, where have you been? Please allow me to refer you to the number one Google result for the term linkbait by Matt Cutts (at least it’s number one as I write this).  

It Sounds a Little Dirty

The word linkbait sounds like it could be a bad thing, or at least, it could have a few negative connotations. In fact, it’s not bad at all if you do it right. Linkbait is essentially nothing more than writing a great headline that attracts a reader to click your link and commit to reading your article. And if the article is good enough, they cannot resist bookmarking it, or linking to it on either social media sites, their own blog, or their website.

When newspaper, or magazine editors select a headline, they’re creating the equivalent of linkbait. They make the headline as compelling as possible and attach it to a phenomenal article. And the best articles are passed around by friends who may eventually subscribe to the publication, if they like the article enough. This is offline linkbait. More like, readbait, or make-you-not-able-to-put-the-magazine-down-and-also-insist-your-friends-read-it bait. You get the picture. If you want your blog, or web site (or printed ad, for that matter) to attract and keep readers, you must learn how to write headlines and posts (articles) that are so compelling that a majority of casual observers click through and commit to spending a little time with you and then even bookmark you for reference and sharing. A curious thing about this:

The headline is useless if you write a terrible article and the article is useless if you write a terrible headline.  

Doing it Wrong Can Hurt You

If you’re just writing a snappy headline and it has a crappy article behind it, you probably just lost yourself a whole mess of readers. You made a great promise with the headline, but failed to deliver with the article. There’s good linkbait and bad linkbait and if your article is weak, or an obvious attempt to linkbait-and-switch, you will get what you deserve: a bad reputation and no catch-of-the-day, AKA link love. I’ve already written a post about how to write great headlines and there are some good references there to get you started. That post, by the way, had a terrible headline and is a perfect example of how to fail epically at writing a linkbait headline. I got almost zero readers for that post, although it did have some good info in it. Word to the wise—seriously consider your headlines.  

So, Does Linkbait Work?

I’ve been practicing and diligently doing the training in the Social Power Linking program and my last, best attempt at a linkbait piece succeeded better than I could have expected in my wildest dreams. I spent probably five hours on that post, whittling away every non-esssential word and making sure it flowed smoothly, etc. I also spent a good 30 minutes on the title alone, to which I grant the most credit for having made that post so popular. My post on five misused words got more traffic than any other post I’ve ever made.  

In fact, during the two days following my linkbait post, this blog received over 1800 pageviews and is now up to approximately 4870 pageviews at the time of this post. Unique visitors climbed to over 900 during those two days and have continued to flow in ever since. I got more unique visitors and overall traffic from that one post than all my other posts combined to date. 

A Few Resources

If you want to learn more about the fine art of linkbaiting, the following resources will really cover almost everything. I owe a lot to SPL, but I also spent a lot of time reading the posts linked below and I want to thank the authors for taking the time to put that information together. I’d also love to hear about your own experiments in linkbaiting as well as any advice that the resources below may have left out.  Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited

And if you don’t feel like reading right now, check out Aaron Wall’s video on linkbaiting, How to: Create Linkbait Every Day:

And finally, here are just a few more linkbait resources you might find useful:

• 5 Linkbait Ideas Any Blog Can Use
• Linkbait in difficult industries
• Beyond Linkbait with Media and Blogger Relations – SES NY
• Productivity, How-to and Advice Sites: Making Linkbait Useful Again
• Five Simple Linkbait Metrics (& How To Measure Them Cheaply)

Photo by Redvers

This is only the beginning. It’s going to get much, much bigger.
Social marketing is all the rage right now and if the signs are to be believed, this is a mere taste of the future. Part of social marketing involves joining various online communities in your niche and adding value to those communities.

Social marketing is most definitely not about joining as many groups as you can, regardless of their relevance to your niche, and spamming the living daylights out of everyone with “ME! ME! ME!” kinds of advertising and requests. This will get you banned, and rightfully so.

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you making these mistakes? Proper word usage will make your writing efforts powerful and effective and build credibility with your audience.

Day-before-yesterday I read a great post over at skelliewag.org that stirred up an excellent discussion about whether or not it’s important to write well online. I’m not a great writer myself and, in fact, I started this blog in part to get a little more practice.

But this got me thinking about writing in general, word usage and credibility. So I put on my tall, pointy hat and decided to post my opinion about five words that really annoy me when misused. Here they are in no particular order.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, grasshopper, you seek the holy grail of site popularity? Indeed, you are not alone. And you must prove your worth. You must wait, on your knees, in the rain, for many years. Maybe then we will teach you what you wish to know. If you beg. And fetch us some green tea from time to time . . .

Or you can grab the free, 2008 version of the Authority Black Book that was just released a few days ago. I’m sure there are a few folks who will insist on the former option, but hey, whatever flings your shuriken. (*I know, I’m mixing styles and cultures all over the place, but you know you love it!)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been talking to some friends who own small businesses recently and they all wonder what this whole blogging thing is all about. And when I start to explain, I inevitably start describing all the benefits of blogging and end up likening it to an electronic, dynamic, interactive business card. Of course, it’s much more than that, but it’s a great starting point for a fun conversation about blogging and marketing.

As it turns out, even though those of us who blog take it mostly for granted, the vast majority of people have still never heard of blogging (don’t gasp so loudly, you’ll hurt yourself!) or still consider it as novel as email once was just a few short years ago. Because of this, it’s not unusual for me to start at the very beginning when explaining.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many of my clients have been clamoring for web sites. Right now. Practically while they wait, even. Now that’s just crazy talk.

Or is it?

Setting this blog up has given me ample opportunity to spend lots of time working with WordPress and learning many of its ins and outs.

As it turns out, building a site “while-you-wait” IS crazy talk if you don’t know anything about web design, installing scripts, or any of that. However, if you are technically savvy, the 10-hour web site is fast becoming a possiblilty. Now, of course, when i say ten hours, that’s a bit of stretch for a fully customized theme with logos and graphics etc., but the part that used to take 20, or more hours of painstaking coding can be all but eliminated now by using WordPress as the foundation of your site design.

Now all you have to do is concentrate on customizing the features, graphics and loading the content. Frankly, it’s enough to make a grown developer wriggle about a bit and even, just possibly, run naked through the streets drinking Ovaltine™ on a Saturday morning. Er sumpthin’ like that.

Anyway, the point here is that there are some really great reasons to use WordPress as a starting place for your brand new web site and here are the ones I can think of right now:

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just recently discovered that WordPress has changed its terms of service (TOS) for blogs hosted on their sites. This is good news.

Here’s a quote from the page where WordPress gives examples of types of blogs they are deleting:

And here are some examples of blogs that are banned from WordPress.com (all of these fall under the general heading of “spam blogs”, or splogs, and we will be deleted as soon as we find them or they get reported to us):
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by jaqian

You know how you read a great blog post and get to the bottom of it and someone’s made a truly stellar comment? You know how you think to yourself, “holy mackerel, that was a good comment, who the heck is this person?” (Don’t tell me you don’t say holy mackerel! ok, ok, you probably say “shazam!” or “zoinks!”, but you get my point, ya?)

Anyway, let’s say you then attempt to click on the person’s name in the comments and check out their site. And it doesn’t work. The commenter mistyped the URL. Horrors! You’re sad. You can’t find out who this amazing person is. You’ll never know what else they might have to say. And the name they typed in was something like “Dan”. Argh, how will I ever search for that?

BUT you’re not half as upset as the person who mistyped their URL in the comments box would be if only they knew.

The commenter has completely lost the greater opportunity to join the conversation web-wide; they’re only conversing on that little blog post floating in the info-ether with no link back to their site. Such a great comment and they get no search engine, or pagerank credit whatsoever for having made the effort. And all because of a little typo. Now that hurts.

Here’s how I avoid this problem altogether: Read the rest of this entry »

I am officially overwhelmed. But that’s nothing new. In fact, I’m sure you’re pretty blasé about being overwhelmed now too. Everyone’s been overwhelmed for the last few years and it’s only getting worse by the second as a new cornucopia of interesting and not-so-interesting blogs hits the net daily. But what to do about it. I need to keep track of everything happening in my area as best I can and I’ve been searching for a good way to do that for a while now. I found a few very cool answers.

Track Your Posts, Track Your Blogs
Need to track your own blog and other blogs you read every day? Wish you could track more easily? Want to find out how well a specific post is doing compared to your other posts? Want to quickly find the best posts ever made to your blog, or to any or all of your favorite blogs? Definitely grab an account over at aiderss.com. I just stumbled across these guys a few days ago and I’m thrilled with it so far. You can track trends, see the historical performance of your blog, or any blog you’re interested in. I could go on . . . but the best way to see why I’m so pleased with it is to just check it out. (You can also do RSS mash-ups here too.)
Check out AideRSS

Follow the Conversation
I mentioned before that marketing and blogging are all about conversations. Now I’ve found a great tool that helps you track blog conversations and will really surprise you with the alternate view it provides. It puts even older stuff you might have seen before into a different context that might trigger new ideas, or interpretations. Never mind the fact that you can watch what people are talking about in an up-to-the-minute sort of way about whatever key phrase is burning a hole in your brainpan today. This tool may be my tool-of-the-month, if I had such a thing.
Check out TalkDigger

Mash Things Up a Bit More: 2 Great Video Tutorials on Using RSS Feeds
If you were to take all the information you’re interested in and mash it up together and then sort it so the most important and relevant stuff popped to the top, wouldn’t that save you a ton of time? Wouldn’t that be cool? That’s what a feed mash-up can do for you and all you need is a good feed masher. There are a number of feed mashers out there, but I recently ran across an RSS tutorial over at John Jantsch’s blog that covers the how, but also suggests a site I hadn’t seen called mySyndicaat. I’m still having a go at mashing my favorite feeds and comparing all these tools, but so far mySyndicaat definitely seems worth checking out.

Alternatively, Jack Humphrey posted a great tutorial on another great feed manager called BlogRovr which you may find very useful. So far, this one is duking it out with AideRSS above for my favorite, but they do slightly different things and I can see using both of them.

Check out the tutorial at John Jantsch’s blog.
Check out the tutorial at Jack’s Friday Traffic Report
Check out mySyndicaat
Check out BlogRovr

Have fun finding yourself and others and have a great weekend! (Holy mackerel, I used an exclamation mark. What on earth was I thinking? . . . was that wise? Hmmm, we shall see.) [dang, WordPress won't accept my interrobang . . . argh.]

-Zack