Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Message Boards and adverts

In a previous posting I spoke about the importance of using bulletin boards as a means of driving traffic to a Web site - Bulletin boards, newsgroups - a good source for targeted leads.

Tessa Wegert in an article on Clickz, titled On the Cheap: Message Board Ads, writes about how to use bulletin boards effectively for advertising, using the case of a business her brother developed a few years back as an example:

To assess their target market and determine how best to reach it through online advertising (without investing a bundle), the three partners spent hours surfing the Web daily. They spent much of their time on message boards and in online forums. There, automotive enthusiasts discuss their passion and compare notes on parts they'd appraised. The sites helped the group identify the demand for their products.

The great thing about message boards is that they can help you identify the right language to reach your target market, due to the fact that people on a particular forum will be talking about like-minded things. This article also describes how companies with lower budgets or those looking for channels to drive the main advertising push can use forums extremely effectively. She says that of the 20-odd message boards that they advertised on, only 1 failed to generate any sales for them.

Related Article
Forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups - A good source for targteted leads.

Tracking a DMOZ editor

Here's a great forum thread that I came across on the Search Engine Roundtable Weblog, entitled 'Watching a DMOZ Editor in Action'. The author of the thread is a DMOZ editor and she explains, over many postings, the criteria she looks for in adding people to the DMOZ directory. It is well worth looking at and offers great tips.

DMOZ - New in DMOZ

Club Marketing de Barcelona

I just had to do a quick post about the Club Marketing de Barcelona. A couple of days back they added Marketing Tom to their links page - many thanks - and out of curiosity I took a look at their website. It appears that they are organising a big Marketing event  - Marketing is the Boss from the 17th to 19th March. The speakers, companies and the topics to be discussed are very impressive and it is worth taking a quick look.

Forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups - A good source for targteted leads.

Generally speaking, most of my referrals to this site, and my other site, Mad About Madrid, come from search engines and other blogs. However, it is surprising how many come from the various forums that I subscribe to and leave my pearls of wisdom on! Analysing the activity of visitors to the blog I have noticed that those coming in from forums tend to spend more time on the blog and view more pages - which are obviously key objectives of the site. I am pretty sure that the one of the reasons is that these visitors are probably more 'converted' or further down the decision path than other visitors.

So, how does it work? For my Mad About Madrid website I identified a couple of forums that I thought it would be worth leaving comments on - they include Madridman, Bootsnall and Fodors. Every time I leave a comment, my intention is always to add value to that post, and not to use it as a way of blatantly pushing my own products or services. Once I did do this and got my knuckles wrapped from the moderator. It won't happen again, promise!

When you have completed your posting you must ensure that you add your signature to the post, typically this will be a link back to your website. Most forums will allow you to create your own signature and preview your posting before publishing it. As long as you have answered the query, or 'added value' to that posting, you will have done enough to awaken that person's curiosity and send him/her to your website.

One other thing I have noticed abut forums is that they do tend to be time sensitive and unless your posting is relatively fresh, people won't click on it.

Identifying Useful Directories to Submit to

If you're finding it difficult to identify suitable directories where you can list your site, why not use Google to identify them for you. Simply type in "submit URL" AND "keyword" and Google will list all sites with your keyword that have a "Submit URL" button. You could substitute "Submit URL" for "Add URL", "List URL", etc.
For example, for business, type in "Submit URL" AND "business".

Developing Links - Part 3

The last article discussed ways of identifying websites that you could target for links. Here, we'll look at how to go about requesting links.
Step 1 – Try and identify either the ‘submit URL’ or ‘submit site’ button on these sites. If you have to submit to a category, take your time to find the most suitable category.
Step 2 – If there are no submission pages, locate the 'Contact Us' section or email button.
Step 3 – Craft an eMail to the site giving a brief overview of what your company does (to reinforce the fact that your site belongs in their directory); copy out the page description from your meta tags and make sure you include your URL (with http://).
Step 4 – Make a note of the URL on a spreadsheet and make sure that you go back to check if the link has been included.
Step 5 – Look at creating a links section on your site, possibly as a text link on the base of the web pages (hidden away), so that you can put all the reciprocal links directories may ask you to place on your site.

Developing Links - part 2

The first part of developing links identified a number of ways that you could generate links within your current circle, be they suppliers, business associations or chambers of commerce. The next phase is to look ‘outside the box’ and this will certainly include analysing links to competitor web sites. Identifying your known/unknown competitors. 1. Make a list of the competitors you know of. To help jog your memory, you could look at Yellow pages, local business directories and other similar sites.

DMOZ - the most important directory

DMOZ has to be your first port of call when looking to develop links to your site. It is commonly known that Gooogle will give you a better rank if you're listed on DMOZ. However, you must have patience with DMOZ and make sure that you submit to the right section.

Here are some good tips:
1. Take time selecting the most appropriate category within DMOZ.
2. When submitting the site, make sure that you keep marketing jargon to a minimum and hold back on the superlatives.
3. Read the submission tips page on DMOZ very carefully.
4. Keep checking to see if you're listed and, if not, submit again after 3 weeks.
5. Take a look at the DMOZ editors' forum to see if you can get any new tips.

Developing links part 1

Why is it important to develop links?
1. You can reach some of your target audience that doesn't come in through the search engines
2. Search engines tend to rank web sites higher if they have decent links coming in to the site.

Dean trouncing Bush in Google link popularity stakes!

Just took a look at Howard Dean's links on Google, as compared to those of George W. Bush, and saw that the inbound links to his site totalled 4090 (www.blogforameria.com), whereas GWB's (www.georgebush.com) came to 1520. However, when you include AllTheWeb, Altavista and Hotbot/Inktomi the Bush campain leads by 71,191 to 38,958. Keep up with it yourselves, using Market Leap's link popularity tool

Developing links - discover yourself!

Following on from my previous posting, I'm going to follow Jeremy Wright's advice, of Ensight, and learn how people can discover this site through my discovery of other sites!

SEO: To Get Discovered: Discover Others!

DMOZ Editors' Forum

Here's an opportunity to ask the ODP (DMOZ) editors why they haven't listed your site on the DMOZ directory.

ODP Forum

Developing high quality links

I came across this interesting article in Clickz today. It stresses the importance of developing links to your site from 'human-based directories', like DMOZ. The author, Frederick Marckini, stresses the importance of building 'relevant', quality links from sites associated with your business/product.

This explains why a link from your community counts more than a link from outside. Objectively, this means quality does count more than quantity when it comes to linking partners on the Web. So most Web sites need to submit to human-edited directories first, not pursue links from random Web sites.