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This is How Web 2.0 Works…

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According to the Chinese, today is the luckiest day of the year. (08-08-08)

In China, the number 8 is considered extremely lucky, as a matter of fact, it’s the luckiest of all numbers and the competition for identification with the number 8 (the more the better) is fierce. From license plates to phone numbers, the more 8’s the better and some Chinese citizens are willing to pay a small fortune to possess a lucky phone number or a lucky license plate.

No wonder the Chinese are ecstatic about landing the 2008 Olympics and why the Olympic Games started at 8:00 AM on 08-08-08.

Samuel Goldwyn is credited with the quote, “The harder I work, the luckier I get. ” No where is that more true than on Web 2.0.

I recently received an email from a client who has launched one of those “easy” website builder type sites. About six weeks ago, she canceled her blog and now she now has four pages of unreadable (one big blog of text – obviously the p tag wasn’t an option) and forgettable content, but it’s a website she is able to set and forget.

set it and forget it websiteI’m not surprised by this series of events. Six weeks after the launch of her blog, she emailed me wondering why her brand new blog wasn’t appearing on the front page of Google for her desired keywords.

Since the keywords weren’t appearing in the domain name, the only other chance she had to score was via her content. I went to check on her blog – expecting to run a Wordle and show her how to focus her content around desirable keywords. However, when I went to the blog I found the “Hello World” post was the only content on her WordPress blog.

When she canceled her hosting for the blog, she said she was “much” too “busy” to create content for her blog.

I know that business success isn’t determined by your Alexa ranking… but having a website that can be found when people are looking for the solutions you offer is a bonus to any business no matter how you look at it!

WordPress doesn’t have to act like a blog! WordPress can act like a GREAT CMS (content management system). It provides a search engine friendly foundation for your website and you can create static pages just like a “static” website. When you use WordPress as your CMS it means you can use it to EASILY and QUICKLY publish articles to highlight product features and benefits on a regular basis.

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

On the other hand, I have several clients who are fighting the good fight and doing everything they can in pursuit of success. I recently received an email from a client who is going to be featured on NPR in November. Another client’s story is going to appear on nationally televised show thanks to her blog. Yet another client is pursuing a $10,000 project lead thanks to her blog. These are people who have put forth the effort and as a result, they’re getting “lucky”. They have prepared for success and now that success is knocking, they’re ready to answer.

It’s not just my blogging clients who are reaping the rewards of blogging. Yvonne over at Lip-sticking gives her story of how she scored a coveted invitation to Ford’s 2009 Model Year Product Program. Seems Yvonne joined a new site called SavvyAuntie. Turns out that was a KEY factor in Yvonne getting “discovered”.

Ford went searching for women bloggers on the woman focused site and found Yvonne. Now Yvonne is getting VIP treatment by Ford.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Vyonne is another example of someone doing the leg work and then reaping the rewards. Is there an element of luck involved? Of course there is!

Web 2.0 is all about making connections and the more connections you make, the luckier you’ll get! What’s your tale of “getting lucky” thanks to hard work?

Guest Post Guide

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Because this blog is written for my clients, I’m going to start at the beginning.

What is a Guest Post?

gues post opportunityA guest post is simply a blog post written by someone who is NOT a regular contributor to a blog. The person writing the guest post doesn’t even have to have his or her own blog to write a guest post.

Usually, guest posts are written by people who want to introduce themselves to another blog’s audience. These guest posts are done with the hope of attracting new readers to the guest post author’s blog or website.

The blog that features the guest post also hopes to benefit as well. Usually, when a blogger lands a guest posting gig, they promote it on their own blog, including a link to the guest post. The guest post blog’s readers are then introduced to the blog where the guest post is published.

This is known as a win/win situation. Both blogs are introduced to new audiences and as a result, both win.

The blog featuring the guest post wins in another way. The blog which features the guest post also gains some valuable content which is the currency in which blogs trade.

Oh, and yet another “win” for the blog owner is a sweet, brief respite from posting duties on the blog.

Men with Pens has a GREAT informative series on Guest Posting. James openly shares that guest posting is one of the keys to the success of the Men with Pens blog. In Guest Posting: Finding the Motivation to Write, James Chartrand shares how the guest posts that you write should be the absolute BEST posts you can write. Instead of posting these “gems” on your blog, you post them on someone else’s blog. By posting these gems on someone else’s blog is how you build an audience.

In Dispelling the Myth that Guest Blogging HAS to Be Time-Consuming Charles writes:

Sure, there are other downsides of guest blogging. There are risks associated with it if you don’t fully understand your audience (although some would argue that controversy is far from a bad thing), but the benefits – visibility, enhanced reputation, high quality links, relationships – far outweigh the disadvantages.

In Landing a Guest Post Isn’t That Hard, James outlines the pros and the cons of guest posting. If you’re interested in guest posting – either for your blog or being a guest post contributor, read every installment of the Guest Posting Series.

Guest Post Case Study

James Duthie from Online Marketing Banter wrote two guest posts for the Tad’s SEO 2.0 blog. It’s a follow up to a naughtier previous guest post which I won’t name here because I just wrote a post “Sex Sells- but you already knew that” and I don’t want to even try to compete with Naomi over at Itty Biz for the title of sex marketing queen. (She has the title wrapped up and I hear she’s wearing the accompanying glittering crown and sash to all her public appearances.)

Anyhow, James promoted both of the guest posts on his own blog. The first guest post written by James resulted in Tad’s blog gaining over 100 subscribers overnight! (James also confesses that he saw a much smaller increase in his subscriber base.) The second guest post, The 7 ingredients of a wildly successful blog post, dissects the reasons why James thinks the first guest post was so successful.

Barriers to Guest Posting

Despite success stories like the one above, bloggers don’t seem to be hungry for guest posting opportunities. I think fear has a lot to do with that.

Monika Mundell put out a call for people to guest post on her blog The Writers Manifesto a while back and only got a few responses. I suspect the reason is that many of her readers are afraid their content can’t stand toe to toe with Monika’s incredible content. Fear of rejection is a powerful inhibitor on both sides of the equation.

One the blog owner’s side, there is the fear of how the content will “fit” into the blog’s overall content. When you get contacted by someone who wants to do a guest post, some fears that come to mind are:

  • Will this content fit into my blog?
  • Will this content cause me to lose readers for my blog?
  • What if this content offends my blog readers?

Of course, fear of rejection on the side of the potential guest post writer is also high, and the fears above are echoed on the potential guest writer’s side as well.

Strategies for Guest Posting Success

Guest posting is a form of marketing your blog. You should view guest posts in the same manner as you would submitting an article for publication in a magazine.

First, be sure your blog and the blog for which you’d like to guest post are a good “fit”. For example, if yours is a blog on diet and exercise, then a guest post from an RD or an MD would be a good fit. A guest post from a marketing expert on a diet and exercise blog would not be a good fit.

Next, subscribe to the blog’s feed and watch the posts. For example, this would be an exceptionally bad time to contact the Men with Pens blog with your guest post on guest posting because that series is wrapping up over there.

If you have an idea for your own series, pitch it to the blog’s owner. That’s what Joshua Clanton did over at Daily Blog Tips. His series of Star Trek Blogging concluded with Star Trek Blogging: The Borg Way

and landed
As a blog owner, here’s what I’d like to see from prospective guest bloggers.

  • A synopsis of who your current blog readers are.
  • An idea of what this blog post could offer my readers.
  • The actual blog post you’d like to feature on my site.

If you’re looking to test the waters of guest posting, check out Blogging Web 2.0 where you can get your feet wet in the guest posting waters under the watchful eye of Monika Mundell and Terry Didcott.

What is Alexa? It’s a Website Traffic Spy Tool

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One of the GREAT things about being involved in a “social networking site” such as Biznik is that people can communicate PRIVATELY with you.

I recently got a question privately there from someone who visited my blog and read my post Business Success Isn’t Determined by Your Alexa Rank. A well respected marketing expert, he wasn’t familiar with the Alexa tool and asked me to blog about it. Since I’m all about educating my clients and other readers, here we go.

What is Alexa?

Alexa is a product developed by Amazon (yes, the internet book selling giant and internet retailing pioneer). It’s a way to “spy” on the traffic of other competing websites.

increasing site trafficAlexa “ranks” websites in order based upon traffic from 1 to 24+Million. (I’ve seen TWO sites in the past 2 weeks that were in the 24 Million range.)

The last time I looked, Yahoo was #1, Google was #2 and YouTube was #4 according to Alexa.

If your Alexa ranking is above 1Million, you can congratulate yourself. You’re in the top 5% when it comes to rating traffic of the 24+ Million sites indexed by Alexa.

With that said, Alexa doesn’t get real interested in your website until your site breaks into the top 100,000. Once you break into the top 100,000, you can see your daily reach, rank and page views.

A Brief History on Alexa

The way Alexa used to collect the information it needed was via a plug in for MSIE (Microsoft Internet Explorer), Window’s internet browsing software. The plug in installed a toolbar in the user’s browser. While it offered a way for users to “spy” on the traffic of other websites, it also provided a way for Alexa to TRACK toolbar users movements on the web.

If you think about it, it makes sense that the only people who really CARE about what kind of traffic other websites are getting tend to be part of the techno-geek crowd. Very few sales training professionals CARE about the web traffic of any particular website. On the other hand, people who create websites are PASSIONATELY interested in the traffic ranking for a site. As a natural progression of events, in the early days the Alexa tool bar was used almost exclusively by web professionals or devoted web amateurs.

increasing site trafficAs the web has grown, so have the number of “non-tech” users. Many of these “non-tech” users didn’t have the Alexa toolbar installed in either MSIE or any other browser. As a result, the results of Alexa’s ranking became rather “skewed” statistically. Sites targeted towards technical users tended to do much better than websites that dealt with non-techy matters such as organic foods.

Meanwhile, new Web 2.0 businesses are popping up left and right. With the explosive growth of blogs has come advertising management services which will allow you to sign up and place ads on your blog via their network. Since ads are sold based on the number of impressions, many of these networks rely heavily upon the Alexa ranking of a website to determine traffic. (Log files can be altered, but Alexa is an unbiased third party.) Also, bloggers are popping up who aren’t blogging about the latest Tech Toy who are developing quite a following. These popular “non-tech” blogs were crying “foul” when it came to Alexa’s method of collecting data.

Recent Changes in Alexa

Back in April, Alexa responded, either to these cries or to the increased competition they were facing. (Compete.com comes quickly to mind.) Alexa changed the way it gathers data for its rankings to try to reflect what was happening in Web 2.0, where it’s not only geeks who roam the web for hours on end. ( Read more here Alexa’s New Ranking System Hurts Some and Helps Some.)

If you go to Alexa, you too can install this tool bar in your web browser. When you do, you’ll be contributing to Alexa’s data collection efforts. In other words, you can spy but you’ll also be spied upon.

blogs as money making marketing toolsThere’s actually a plugin for WordPress which will display your current Alexa ranking in your blog if you want the world to see. (Personally, I’m waiting to break into the top 100,000 to activate that one.)

If you don’t want to install the toolbar, you can always go to the Alexa.com site and type in the URL you want to check.

The most important thing to remember with Alexa is:

a) It’s an estimated traffic count

b) It’s a NUMBER and nothing more.

There are people whose blogs were ranked in the Alexa top 100K who have shut down their blogs and gone on to get real jobs because they weren’t making money from the traffic they had. On the other hand, I recently wrote about a business who is RAKING in the dough whose website is ranked in the 24 Million range.

For me, checking Alexa rankings could be called an addiction. I have a similar addiction to Diet Coke and coffee. (Caffeine FREE Diet Coke… I’m trying to be in “balance” because I drink a pot or two of coffee every morning. Screw moderation, I’m seeking “balance”.)

It’s only recently that I’ve come to recognize NEITHER my drinking habits or my Alexa checking behavior is productive. So before you install the Alexa tool bar in your browser, proceed with caution!

Sex Sells – But You Already Knew That

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Using sex to sell everything from beer to boats to men is nothing new.

The television show Family Guy parodies this phenomenon by telling the story of Peter’s stone age ancestor who invented the wheel. Unfortunately, the caveman Peter can’t seem to sell his wheel until he strips his wife down to her undies and places her next to the wheel. This inspires the cavemen in the audience to utter such things as “Pretty lady stand near wheel. If I buy wheel, maybe pretty lady will stand by me!”

Using sex to sell products to men is nothing new. However, angering the other half of the population, now that’s a bold and inspired move being made by BMW’s recent offensive campaign.

Progressive Gold says in the post For now you can still buy a Beemer with your dignity intact. The question is, should you?”

The air of innocence suggests virginal chastity, yet the pose of passive abandon says ‘here, take me’.

The makeup is deliberately designed to accentuate the dewy skin, pouting mouth and cherubic curls of extreme youth; yet the direct gaze gives an implicit promise of sexuality.

It’s all very carefully done and just to make sure you get the message, it’s made explicit in the slogan. “You know you’re not the first”.

Oh well, that’s all right then. Lech away at the child.

Pedophilia is not sexy- PERIOD!

Salon doesn’t question the model’s age in the post Used Women are like cars but does state:

Plenty of delightful messages are implied: Used BMWs are like soiled sexpots — dirty but fun to drive. Or: A used BMW won’t tell you to go faster or slower. It lets you drive. Maybe even: Driving a used car doesn’t require protection!

Tracy Clark-Flory ends the post with this simply MAHVELOUS dig: ” You stay classy, BMW.”

To quote another campaign: PRICELESS!!

Yes, it seems there’s quite an uproar brewing over the particularly distasteful ad by BMW. (Follow the link to see the visual and if you’re a man, have a Kleenex ready.) The print ad is an obvious attempt at generating free PR for BMW. It’s got to be. There’s no redeeming value to the ad otherwise.

The ad was brought to my attention initially by Yvonne over at Lipsticking-Marketing to Women Online in the post BMW – No Woman’s Answer to Transportation: Please Leave the Dealership. Yvonne got the heads up from Andrea over at Muse Communications, who doesn’t think much of the advertising executives who created the campaign. Her post inspired me to post a tongue in cheek post The Lazy Ad Executive’s Path to Success: Using Soft Core Porn to Sell Cars

But this party is just getting started. The Ask Patty blog is on board with the post BMW’s Shameful” Greek Used Car Ad as is Copyranter in my car is a woman, my right foot is my penis.

Sarah left a helpful comment coming to BMW’s defense, but alas Sarah doesn’t give a way to check on her identity. Probably a way for BMW to slip on a robe when they discovered they had wandered into a cocktail party dressed in the same attired as the woman in the Bluefly ads. (a.k.a. Naked at a Cocktail Party) Besides, if the ad is a FAKE then why, oh why doesn’t BMW sue the dirty bastards who are slandering their brand?

Mary Schmit calls the ad Very Tacky and Very Stupid. I couldn’t agree more.

This type of advertising has very limited endurance. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. How many affluent women will think twice about purchasing a BMW in the future as the result of this ad?

I really, really, really hope the approval of this campaign wasn’t the case of a man’s blood to the brain being reduced and his IQ being reduced to 1. When the brain BELOW the belt is allowed to make the decisions – things to badly no matter which gender you are.