WordPress Training Expert

Author: WP Training Expert

  • What is Web Word of Mouth Marketing?

    Online marketing presents you with an opportunity to get more bang for your buck compared to traditional marketing. This is particularly true for word of mouth marketing.

    Word of Mouth Marketing on The Web

    Word of mouth marketing refers to a type of marketing that promotes something by enticing independent parties to promote the service, idea or product to friends.

    The idea is to create a buzz for the subject matter. In creating the buzz, the goal is to create enough word of mouth momentum to get the idea to spread quickly. People are the sole conduit for the momentum.

    If you get it right, an entire product can become an established success with little or no paid marketing.

    A classic example of word of mouth marketing, often called viral, is the situation involving Red Bull. Red Bull is an energy drink. When it was first introduced in Europe, rumors spread that the drink was an aphrodisiac. Nobody knows who started the rumors, but Red Bull became very popular. It then evolved into a mixer for alcoholic drinks in nightclubs and the rest is history. It is a hugely popular product and much of the popularity arose through this word of mouth process.

    Word of mouth marketing online works in much the same way. The primary difference is it tends to happen much quicker than in the real word. The Internet is full of forums where like minded people congregate. A new, cool product, idea or service can blow up a site over night. If you don’t believe me, consider the wild success of the My Space platform, Napster, EBay and so on.

    Most of these sites grew into behemoths because of word of mouth endorsements, not paid advertising.

    Obviously, this type of marketing can lead to tremendous riches. Unfortunately, it isn’t particularly easy to accomplish. Everyone is trying to do it, so you really need to be pushing something unique.

    If you can come up with something, it is time to hit forums and other sites to create a buzz.

    A traditional way to pursue viral marketing online is to offer a free e-book. The book will detail your thoughts on some subject matter, such as marketing.

    One makes the book available for downloading and also allows people to send it to others. If you are offering something of quality, the book should spread quickly to thousands and thousands of people.

    The ultimate goal is to promote it over and over until hundreds of thousands of people have read it. At that point, you write another e-book which you sell for $3 to $7.

    If people liked the first book, they will buy the second.

    If 100,000 read the first one and only 10 percent buy the second, you will have 10,000 sales.

    This strategy has been pursued over and over by many authors.

    The word of mouth approach is definitely a hit and miss strategy. The large online communities make it a viable strategy, but there are a lot of people trying to do it.

    If you fail 50 times, but succeed once, life will be very good.

  • Add a new Author to Your WordPress Blog easily

    Video: How to add new author accounts to your WordPress site.

  • Resurrecting Online Ads

    Have you ever thought of placing a classified ad online to get some online ad traffic? There are so many free ad sites out there you should never have to pay a dime to put ads online. There are people who will tell you that those free sites are so congested that your ads may not ever be seen but if you choose to not place that ad then that will surely be the case, won’t it? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

    Place the ad on the free sites. You never know, the one person who really needs what you are selling may just be looking there right now. Why anyone would ignore such a good resource is beyond me but even I know someone who has listened to the naysayers and she has not been very successful in her internet business endeavors because she has no online ad traffic. Just think of the millions of people she could have reached if she had just placed that ad on the free sites.

    Learning how to write a n effective ad will put you one above the rest. If you can’t write or are intimidated by the process then hire someone to write it for you. You will need to make sure you have the budget for this.

    The cheapest way is to learn to write for yourself. My advice to you is to take a look at what is out there for writing samples on the internet. If you can speak English and can hold a pen in your hand you are qualified to write your own ads. Some of the stuff you find out there is so bad it will leave you shaking your head in wonder as to how they ever got published in the first place. Some of it doesn’t even make sense!

    Anyway, you can do this, I have faith in you. First, make a list of, say, ten free classified ad sites you think you can trust. Then, research them to be sure you can trust them. Make sure they are on the up and up with no funny stuff going on. When you get ready to submit your ad, be sure to follow their rules for submitting ads closely. Remember you are trying to get more traffic to you website not the other way around.

    Read all of the directions before you do anything. Find out if you can upload a picture of what you are selling. This will help increase sales. The free sites may not allow pictures but check it out and if they do then put one up. It can’t hurt.

    These free sites may not have categories of ads listed so your ad may get lost in the jumble but like I said if it is not out there then it surely will not be seen. Use every advantage you can find when it comes to trying to drive online ad traffic to your site. Use the free sites to start and then graduate to paid sites when the money starts rolling in.

  • Advantages Of Using Premium WordPress Themes

    WordPress is a one of the internet’s most popular web publishing platforms. One of the biggest reasons for this are the themes. With WordPress themes you can instantly change the style and look of your website, with literally a click of a button. Another great feature is that many of these themes can be found for free. If you have been using WordPress you have probably done many Google searches for free themes. They are out there and in some cases they are fabulous. What about paid themes though? Have you ever thought of paying for a theme? Would you? I think in the right case, a paid theme makes a lot of sense. What are the benefits? Well here are just a couple…

    1. Support: When you are paying for a good WordPress theme you are also paying for support. Any reputable dealer of WP themes will offer support, and most likely in the form of a forum. If you have any issues with your paid theme you can check out the forum and by either searching or asking you will get an answer. The support team will be able to troubleshoot any problems you have with the theme. They will be able to diagnose any plugin conflicts. They may even help you with some custom coding. On a premium theme forum I belonged to, the mods would even give me the exact code I needed to customize my site. You will not get any or much support with a free theme. Certainly not at the level described earlier. For the most part you are on your own. The time saved on troubleshooting alone will be worth the added price in no time.

    2. Under The Hood Features: A lot of free themes look great, but they lack the under the hood features of paid themes. Most paid themes will add a settings panel in your WordPress back office that is unique to that theme. These control panels can make tasks like logo upload, favicon upload and other design features a snap. These admin areas will also help you control what is shown on your home page and in any featured posts areas. Sometimes you will even be able to change the color scheme of your premium theme from this area.

    3. Removing Attribution: This might not be a huge deal for you, but if you are working for a client it might be to them. Almost all free WordPress themes require you to keep a credit or attribution to them in your footer. It isn’t a huge deal but it might mean your footer says something like; “Powered By Apple Green Designs” which is a link to the free theme home page. If you are designing a site for a client, they might not want that. In fact, even if it is your own site you might not want that. Paid themes will usually offer you the chance to get rid of the attribution. In fact some will have an option in their control panel so you can just click it off or replace it simply.

    4. Subscription Opportunities: One last bonus I will mention is that many times theme developers will let you pay a cost to access all their premium themes. This way you have access to a lot of really well designed themes. These themes are often geared towards a different use too. There are themes for photographers, tube themes, eShops, real estate etc… Their will be a theme for just about any use you can think of, as well as a wide variety of style choices. These kind of packages are great for the home based web designer.

    These four reasons alone might be enough for you to make the change to a paid theme. Free themes have come a long way and they offer some great features and design, but to really kick your site up a notch you might need to make the switch to a premium theme. When you want to take your WordPress site to the next level – think premium.

  • 5 Deadly Blogging Mistakes Every Writer Should Avoid

    If you are a blogger and you want to do the best you can then this article will help you avoid five costly mistakes. No one is perfect but everyone should be able to cut down on the mistakes below. These are not accidents, they are willful transgressions that will hurt your bottom line. Clean up these mistakes and you will already be far ahead of the pack.

    1. Not proof reading: A simple mistake but it can definitely make you look bad. Spellchecking is great, but you can’t rely on just that. You have to read your blog post 2 or 3 times to make sure you catch all your grammar mistakes. It might not seem like a big deal but here is one example of a mistake I have made. I wanted to write “now four styles to choose from” and I wrote “no four styles to choose from.” Spell check didn’t catch anything, but that one sentence means a big difference to the reader. If you want to take it to the next level, get someone else to proof read your blog post. They will catch things you miss every time.

    2. Plagiarism/Spun Content/PLR: Alright if you have an adsense bait autoblog, ignore this mistake. Put up whatever crap you want. However, if you care about your personal brand and your blog, then at all costs avoid this type of content. Creating content can be a pain in the butt, but stealing someone else’s’ can hurt you dearly in the end. If you get caught (and you will) you lose all credibility instantly. The same thing goes for PLR content or articles you have spun. If you want to use these elsewhere to build backlinks OK, but keep them off your personal blog. It just looks tacky and people will notice.

    3. Not being consistent: This might be the biggest mistake. If you are committing to running a blog then it is a commitment. Treat it as such. Don’t fire out 5 articles your first week then sit back and relax. You have to constantly create content in order to engage your visitors. Fresh content is also good in the eyes of Google. We don’t want to make the Google Gods angry do we?

    4. Not marketing: I was guilty of this mistake. When I first started blogging I hid it from people! What the heck is the point of that? I posted away and hoped people came, but never worked at marketing it. I didn’t start to see success until I sent it out to my Facebook and Twitter lists. I began using Digg and Stumbleupon. I talked about it at social gatherings. I even got some business cards made up that had nothing but the URL of my blog. It began to work and I finally got to see some significant traffic. You can post all you want, but what use is it if no one sees it?

    5. Not responding to comments: If you are lucky enough to get comments on your blog posts, then you should reply. For one it is the polite thing to do. Secondly it will engage web visitors and make them more likely to come back. Also people who haven’t commented will be more likely to comment if they see people getting responses. A blog full of active commenters is the start of a potential money making machine!

    Cut out these five mistakes and you will definitely notice a traffic increase to your blog. You will also notice you have more interaction with your visitors and in the long run it will offer you more chances to monetize your site. If you have to only choose a couple from the list above, please post consistently and market yourself. Curing these two mistakes alone, will mean great things for your site.

  • Easily Add Domains and Sub Domains

    Video: How to add subdomains or addon domains to your host.

  • Simple Steps for Adding a PDF download to Your WordPress Blog

    Video: How to add a PDF download (like a coupon) to your WordPress site.

  • The True Value OF SMS Marketing

    While this is not the most popular form of mobile marketing in the United States by a long shot, the popularity of marketing via text message or SMS is so strong that it’s definitely worth a mention. There are companies in the United States that do engage in mobile marketing through texting as well, but the restrictions on place in the United States have made this a harder avenue of media marketing to break into unless you are a startup that has a lot of money to spend on advertising.

    Mobile marketing through text messages is exactly what it sounds like – a company sends out advertisements and other form of communication to customers through a texting service. This has been a very effective and popular form of advertising throughout Asia and Europe in particular, despite being unpopular at the onset due to people being concerned about spam.

    If you’re an American company, you might shy away from mobile marketing through texting, as it might give the impression that you’re “bothering” the customer with your texts. While this might be true if mobile marketing through text is handled the same way as “spamming” somebody’s inbox is through email, the reality of it is that mobile marketing has found a great deal of purchase as an effective communication medium.

    The trick is making it an opt-in system. In fact, in the United States it’s a legal obligation to make mobile marketing an opt-in, opt-out system, but this is the linchpin that keeps using texting as a marketing medium from becoming spam. Using texts to get a hold of potential customers is actually a great way to engage with customers in a similar way that the customers engage with their friends on a regular basis – through text. If you watch commercials, you’re likely to come across a company or two advertising their mobile marketing through text methods. Most companies who use this sort of method in the States put out print, television, or radio ads advertising the fact that interested consumers can contact the company through texting and get discounts and other such promotional offers through texting.

    If you as a startup are looking to take advantage of this version of mobile marketing, you’ll need to contact a mobile operator for what’s called a short code, or the number that your customers will have to text if they’d like to opt into your text marketing scheme. Short codes can be prohibitively expensive for smaller startups, though – often they cost at least 600-1000 dollars a month to maintain. To waylay costs, though, you can team up with another startup and split the cost of the short code. This is one great way you can introduce text marketing into your repertoire without it costing you a mint.

  • Doing Initial Keyword Investigation

    The first thing you need to do is preliminary keyword research. This involves using keyword tools to find a large number of keywords that you would potentially want to target for your niche.

    By now, you should have already chosen a niche. Now, you just need to gather a list of keywords you can use to get traffic from various sources such as search engines, or with pay-per-click marketing.

    Let’s say you have chosen the acne niche. You’re targeting individuals who have acne and are desperate to get rid of it. You would probably want to start with seed keyword phrases like “acne” and “pimples”.

    This would return keywords such as:

    Get rid of acne

    How to clear up acne

    Get rid of a pimple

    I use the Google Keyword Tool for this:

    http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

    This tool is free, and it returns results directly from Google’s own internal database of searches people have performed. Although no keyword tool is 100% accurate, Google’s own data is likely to be the most accurate you will find.

    Google will give you around 100 keywords. You can then dig deeper by taking some of the keywords it returns and using those as seed keywords to find more.

    If you are creating a small niche site, you may want to focus on just a handful of keywords. In this case, the 100 keywords you originally find may be enough. If you want to create a large authority site, you will potentially want thousands of keywords. This will require you to continue digging, using some of the keywords you find as additional seeds.

    Once you have a list of keywords, you need to analyze them. Not every keyword is going to be one you would want to focus on for SEO purposes. Some won’t have enough traffic to make them worth the time, and others will have too much competition to give you a reasonable chance to rank.

    In the next section, you’re going to learn how to analyze your keywords to find out which ones you should concentrate on.

  • SEO Pricing: Cost is Only Half the Issue

    Most people understand that their primary role as an online entrepreneur is to drive as much quality traffic to their website as they can get. There are many ways to do that and most people will use several methods to get the best result. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those methods. Before you dive in and hire a company to do your SEO for you, you will want to check out seo pricing.

    There are companies online that specialize in doing all the seo your website needs. The prices for such services will vary depending on several variables. For one thing, the number of keywords you will be targeting in your seo campaign. The more keywords you want to target, the higher the cost will be.

    The more competitive the keywords you use, the higher the cost will be too. SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” method. It will take ongoing attention. That’s why the more competitive keywords will cost more, they will take more time and attention.

    Most SEO companies will sell their services in packages. Usually they will be divided up something like: 1 – 10 keywords, or 11 – 50 keywords,etc. The package you will choose will be based mostly on your budget.

    Another important element to website SEO is back links. Many times companies will set their pricing structure on the number of back links they are creating.

    Back links will gain more importance, and cost more, if the link comes from a highly ranked site. A back link from a website that has a PR4 rank will be priced differently than a PR8 website.

    The truth is for most new, and smaller internet marketers, seo campaigns are out of bounds from a financial point of view. But that doesn’t have to mean that you can’t still benefit from seo optimization.

    There are many places online where you can learn to do simple seo techniques that will allow you to benefit from optimization techniques. You can use these methods for your website, your blog posts and your articles.

    If you do decide that you have enough of a budget to hire a company to do SEO for you than you need to carefully check them out. Find out what they will offer, how much it will cost and how much time and attention you can expect to get from them.

    It’s also a good idea to find out what other people have to say about the company and their services. This can be a fairly big investment and you want to make sure that you hire a company that knows what they are doing, and can really help you get the results you want.

    You also want to make sure that there are no surprises, that you know exactly what you will get and how much it will cost. Having a written contract in place is very important too. That way there can be no misunderstanding; both parties know what is expected of each other and how much it will cost.

    When it comes to seo pricing remember that cost is only half the issue. You want to make sure that you get the service and results that you are really looking for.