Just viewing one of Charles Heflin's post on getting ROI from social media.
His video tells the same scene - get people to opt-in to your mailing list and then give them good content through your autoresponder series (A/R S).
Nothing new, really.
Good content on the social networks (social media) - which then sends them to your site with an opt-in link. If you are using a blog, you have that opt-in link on every page. Opt-in form has an ethical bribe relating to what your content (and ARS) is all about.
The trick is that nothing about what he's saying on this video hasn't been known by article marketers or "older" online marketing lines for a long time.
It used to be that Search Engines would get you traffic, and they still do - but their day is basically gone. Because social media networks have become the go-to referral sites. SE's are simply playing catch up and working out how to index the social sites as fast as they can.
Now, let's review (for my sake and yours):
8 key promotion outlets for you:
- article directories
- blogs and social media (videos, slidecasts, podcasts, even twitter)
- Squidoo (a hybrid social media)
- offline media, such as tradeshows and postcards and radio interviews.
- eBay - great qualified lead generator and income source
- press release sites
- forum postings
- affiliates
0. You've already done your homework on what your niche is, what your solution is, and what format you are offering your valuable service/product in - as well as figuring out how to acquire and deliver the goods, at a profit.
00. You keep track of the news and conversations that are occuring in the forums. Use Google Alerts to tell you what's happening and you can also keyword analyze these posts to get the theme words they are using as well.
1. When you've got a hot area, build a product around it (information product) and also then create an autoresponder series for that product. And get your product up for delivery through your ecommerce site - especially if you can do digital delivery.
2. Write an article (like a product review) on that and post this to the top two or three article directories.
3. Record this and post to archive.org as a podcast.
4. Create a powerpoint presentation and upload this to slideshare.
5. Combine it with your podcast to make a slidecast.
6. Create a video from the slides and podcast and submit to multiple video sites - particularly the biggest ones.
7. Write a news release about what you just did - and post these.
- - Now, note to this point we haven't referenced anything, other than putting our website address into the articles and tacked to the end of the podcast and slideshare/slidecast. So we aren't gaming the search engines at all.
8. Create a full blog post on your site with links (and embedded media).
9. Now - create a Squidoo Lens about all of the above with their links.
10. Now post a mini blog entry on Blogspot (because Google runs it) about all the links and what's important there.
Note: 8, 9, and 10 all have your opt-in form on the template, so that people can opt-in to your ARS.
11. If you want to at this point, you can twitter it, or post it to your Facebook group, or anything else.
The point here is that we haven't done anything until 8 which says all these things point back to you. What you did do is to create a bunch of new (and hopefully high-quality) content that answers someone's questions. And all of this is on individual sites which themselves are independently getting indexed by Google.
What you should start having is lots of people opting-in to your ARS and then you are able to convert them.
Next week (yes this means an article, podcast, slidecast, video weekly - 50 per year) repeat with a new set of compelling data about your area. Templates still say where people can opt-in.
What I used to tell people at this point was to Digg your own stuff, as well as submit these to as many social sites as possible. THAT is where the search engines would begin penalizing you.
Now, get creative though - Twitter is fine. Use mini-url's to forward the mystery. On Stumbleupon, you can make your own blog post - and that's different from stumbling your own stuff. You can also blog on eBay, and several other sites (like Lulu.com). All these links add up.
And there is forum posting, where you can help other people with solutions (that you also sell on your site).
Affiliate marketing is a different loop - but builds after you have already started moving this product - because these Affiliates can make use of your video, podcast, slidecast, etc. as embedded media in their own sales pages. And there is promotion for these Affiliate sites - like Warrior forum - but that's another loop, like I said. This loop is started after you've gotten the first set going. But you do it the same week.
Because you're going to be busy every week with this stuff. (The Affiliate stuff probably only has to be done once for each product, so that's a break. But when you add extensions to that product, you'll have to update these.)
- - - -
How to set up your week:
1. Take a day or two and do carefully structured research.
a. See what is selling and what you are doing well and could improve.
b. See what people have their attention on in your niche - what's news, or how news is affecting them.
c. Look up your website/ecommerce metrics to see what has become/continues to be really popular.
2. Take a day and do your site maintenance.
3. Now, the rest of the week (between 3 and five days) are for your creative self to shine.
If you're selling on ebay, schedule your auctions at #2.
When do you create new produts? That is also in the time you save from 3 - when you get really good. Remember, I've said several times that the articles you write can become ebooks or full books on their own. The podcasts can become audio books. The videos can become video CD's or Webinars or DVD's.
OK - good.
Now, I've got to get to work...
Happy to help.
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