With Christmas just around the corner, the holiday spending spike is happening now. Is your business prepared to capitalize on the season? Will you end the year on a high note? Or will you be limping into 2010?

From email marketing to your PPC campaign and everything in between, a holiday makeover to your marketing campaigns could be your ticket to reeling in those Christmas sales. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your holiday marketing efforts.

• Play up the holiday theme in your emails—Your holiday email marketing should be holiday-centric from head to toe. Your subject lines should focus on special Christmas offers, and the design of your emails should have a Christmas theme so they stand out from the emails you send the rest of the year.

• Be careful not to overdo it—Your company isn’t the only one putting its email marketing campaign into overdrive for the holidays. Your readers’ inboxes are overflowing with offers. Just make sure you don’t overdo it. Emailing your subscribers too often puts you at risk for annoying them and causing them to view you as a spammer. By all means, increase the frequency of your emails as Christmas approaches, but don’t cross that overkill line.

• Be a friend to last minute shoppers—Let’s face it: A lot of us wait until the last possible minute to do our shopping. If you can offer shipping solutions and special deals to accommodate last-minute shoppers, you could put your company in a profitable position. You may even consider offering printable gift certificates that can instantly be delivered to the customer via email. Don’t forget, gift cards account for about 10% of all holiday spending.

• Be creative—A creative holiday promotion can help separate your business from all the others. I’ve seen a few businesses run “12 days of _____” promotions very successfully. Finding an interesting way to incorporate the holidays into your sales promotions can get your customers into the Christmas (and spending) spirit.

• Customize your website—Show your website visitors that your company is offering hot holiday deals by customizing your website with a Christmas theme. It makes your website feel more personal and warm during this wonderful time of the year. Customizing your website for Christmas doesn’t have to be a hassle. It can be as simple as altering your logo with a Santa hat or something else Christmas related.

• Don’t overlook PPC—Don’t forget to incorporate the holidays into your PPC campaign as well. This includes everything from targeting seasonal keywords to altering your call to action to include references to special Christmas deals. It’s all about being relevant. Customers shopping for Christmas gifts are going to be attracted to special Christmas deals highlighted in your AdWords copy.

Above all else, make sure you have the infrastructure in place to meet your customers’ needs quickly and easily. Review your checkout process to be sure it’s working correctly for a smooth transaction. Make sure your customer service representatives are providing fast, reliable service for Christmas shoppers who are in a hurry.

How have you changed your marketing efforts for the holidays? Share your tips in the replies.

Email marketing has grown to become one of the most powerful direct marketing methods available today. In 2009, email marketing earned about $45 for every dollar spent on it. With such a high ROI (return on investment), it’s clear that when leveraged properly, email marketing can get huge results for little investment.

Of course, to get those results, you have to build your email marketing campaign correctly. And achieving this starts with avoiding these common email marketing mistakes.

• Emailing far too often—It’s like the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you send an email every other day about “Huge One-Time Only Deals”, your subscribers will soon stop paying attention to your messages. Why would they feel compelled to act when they know you’ll be having another big sale in just a few days? Additionally, sending too many emails can start to get annoying to your subscribers, leading to a high unsubscribe rate.
• Not emailing enough—Of course, just as bad as emailing too often is not emailing often enough. I’ve received emails from companies that I’d completely forgotten I’d signed up for because they hadn’t contacted me in months. You never want your customers to forget about you. At minimum, you should be sending them a newsletter once a month, but it’s better to touch base a little more often if possible.
• Buying an email list—Buying your email list is a bad idea for 2 main reasons:
  •  
    1. It makes you look like a spammer. In order to put someone on your email list, you need to have their permission. This requires them opting in to join your email list. Buying a list can cause you to be seen as a spammer, and that can lead to serious trouble.
    2. It’s not targeted. No mailing list will ever be as targeted as one you build yourself. When you build your own email list, you know that everyone who subscribes to it is truly interested in receiving your offers and newsletters.

• Not focusing on the subject line—The subject line is the most important part of your message. If it isn’t a strong, benefit-driven subject line, your subscribers won’t be motivated enough to open the email. But that’s not the only reason your subject line is important. Remember, your email needs to clear spam filters. If your subject line sends up any spammy red flags, it won’t get delivered to subscribers.
• Not integrating email with social media—Here’s a stat to consider: 20% of Facebook, MySpace and/or Twitter users have posted or shared something from permission email to their social account(s) via a “share” option. – Merkle , “View from the Social Inbox” (2010). Social media is a fast-growing marketing tool you can use to spread your message far and wide. When combined with email marketing, social media can create a viral effect, increasing your brand awareness and getting you more conversions.
• Making it difficult to sign up for your list—Someone should be able to sign up for your email list in just a few seconds. Don’t make them jump through hoops or offer up a bunch of unnecessary information just to become an email subscriber. Make subscribing to your email list as simple as you possibly can.

 Consider enlisting the assistance of a marketing and advertising professional.

Does your business use email marketing? Why or why not?

Make no mistake. There are plenty of good, even great, SEO companies out there that use proven techniques to get results for their clients. But far too often our industry is given a black eye by shady SEO companies ripping clients off for thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it.

Whether you’re just now looking for an SEO company or you’ve been with one for a while, you need to be on the lookout for these 7 signs of a sketchy SEO provider.

1. They promise specific rankings—Your SEO company doesn’t run Google. So, no matter what they say, there’s no way they can guarantee your website will reach a certain position in the search results. If your SEO company is making this promise, run away as fast as you can. They’re liars.

2. They can’t show you proof of their past work—You want to make sure the SEO company you hire has actually gotten results for their clients in the past. The best SEO companies have detailed case studies showing where the client’s website was before they started working on it and where it is now. If your SEO company can’t show you proof of their work, I recommend taking your business elsewhere.

3. The price doesn’t seem right—There are shady SEO companies on both ends of the price range. On one hand, you have the guys who promise to optimize your website for just a few bucks. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Then, on the flip side of things, you have the companies who charge tens of thousands of dollars for their SEO services.

4. They promise hundreds of back links—Sure, it’s nice to have an SEO company who can handle all your link building needs, but whenever you come across one that promises hundreds or even thousands of links, you can bet these are low quality and even spammy links. In the end, this can hurt your website more than it helps.

5. They don’t provide any insight into the process—Always choose an SEO company who speaks to you in plain language and lets you be involved in the process. Too many shady SEO companies leave clients in the dark, don’t answer their questions, and when they do decide to talk, use industry jargon to speak over your head.

6. They sent you an unsolicited email offer—Not a day goes by that I don’t get a message in my Spam folder from an SEO company who claims they can help my website rank #1 in Google. These unsolicited emails violate the CAN-SPAM Act, and they’re sent by bots to thousands of other webmasters. Believe me, if the SEO company was really that good, they wouldn’t have to resort to this spammy tactic to get customers.

7. Their website sucks—I can’t help but shake my head when I come across an SEO company’s website that is poorly designed and incorrectly optimized. If they can’t even build a great website for their own company, they won’t be able to make one for you.

Have you ever dealt with a shady SEO company? What were some of the warning signs you noticed? Share your experiences by leaving a comm

You don’t read much about article marketing anymore. A lot of people look down on article marketing. They think it’s an outdated technique that just doesn’t get results. They think it’s a marketing technique only used by spammers.

And they’re wrong.

The truth is article marketing still works. Sure, there are a lot of people out there who do it all wrong, but you don’t have to be one of them. If you do it right, article marketing can still help you build your online presence and drive traffic to your website.

Here are the keys to effective article marketing.

• Optimize your content—Keyword optimization plays an important role in writing your articles. Stick to the basics: Make sure to include your target keyword in the title, description, and throughout the body of the article. Just remember that keyword stuffing will cause your article to look spammy, and it could even make it get flagged and rejected by the article directory. Focus on using keywords naturally. Never force them in.
• Include keyword-rich back links—Article marketing is a powerful link building tool. The rules for including links in your article vary from directory to directory, but most directories let you include 2 or 3 back links. Take advantage of this opportunity by using keyword-rich back links pointed at targeted pages on your website. For example, if you’re linking back to a page on your website that’s about “red ABC widgets”, the anchor text in the link should read “red ABC widgets.” This helps the search engines classify your website more accurately, leading to increased search engine rankings.
• Focus on quality—Article marketing has a bad reputation because there are some people who publish high volumes of really poorly-written content. These articles are usually either written for pennies on the dollar by amateurs in another country or they’re auto-written with the help of bad article writing software. Remember, your name is going to be on these articles, so quality counts. Make sure you’re putting out great content that you can be proud of.
• Quantity matters too—To be successful with article marketing, you can’t just publish one article every few months. You need to be committed to it. Article marketing requires a combination of quality and quantity. In other words, you need to publish a high volume of well-written articles to truly see the full benefits of article marketing. So, when you don’t see results right away, don’t get discouraged. You have to stick with it if you want to see it work.
• Take advantage of the author’s resource box—At the end of your article, you get an author’s resource box. Here, you can let readers know who you are and what you do. This is a great way to get your name out there, increase your credibility, and build more back links to your website. You can usually include one or two links in this box, so take advantage of the opportunity by using keyword-rich anchor text on links pointing to your landing pages.

If you follow these helpful tips, your article marketing campaign will start getting results, and you’ll stop wasting your time. Just let me say one more time: Quality counts. Focus on creating quality content above all else and everything will be fine.

What are your thoughts on article marketing? Do you still use it?

One of the most common excuses bloggers give for a lack of updates is that they just don’t have time to blog. The truth is almost everyone can find the time to blog. The problem is most of us aren’t very productive writers, so cranking out a blog post takes way longer than it should.

To help you blog more in less time, I’ve come up with a list of simple tips and tricks that can make you a more productive writer.

• Keep a journal with your ideas—Trying to come up with ideas for a blog post can be time consuming. So, don’t wait until you have an open word processor to figure out what you want to write about. Instead, keep a list of your ideas in a journal or somewhere on your computer. Ideas strike you all the time; make sure you write them down so you don’t forget them. This way, writer’s block will never be an issue, and you can hit the ground running whenever you’re ready to write a new post.

• Outline your posts—I like to create a basic outline for my posts before I begin writing them. I find that this keeps my writing tighter and more focused. With an outline, I basically just have to fill in the pieces of each section to write my post.

• Write first. Edit later—Don’t try to edit yourself as you write. This takes up too much time, and it will cause you to lose the conversation tone and flow in your writing. Once you get in the writing zone, ride that wave all the way to its completion. Then, once your post is written, you can start to do some editing. Otherwise, you’ll end up starting and stopping over and over, never getting any momentum built up.

• Use the egg timer writing method—I believe it was Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club and other great novels) who first came up with the egg timer method of writing. Here’s how it works: Get one of those little kitchen timers, and set it for a certain period of time…let’s say 30 minutes. Then, for that 30 minutes, focus only on writing. Don’t surf the web. Don’t answer the phone. Just write. Once the timer rings, you’re free to take a break or to stop writing altogether. This keeps you focused, allowing you to get a lot done in a small amount of time.

• Know your best writing times—Some people like to write late at night. Others are better early in the morning. Find the time that you’re best suited to write, and schedule your blogging during that part of the day.

• Unplug your laptop—I remember reading this in an article for freelance writers a long time ago, and it has stuck with me ever since. Unplug your laptop, and start writing. Your laptop’s battery can only last for a certain amount of time (usually 2-3 hours), so you can’t screw around. You have to focus on writing before your computer crashes.

• Think about what you want to write—Even when I’m not writing, I’m always thinking about ideas for new posts and things I want to say in my blog. The more time you spend thinking about what you want to write, the easier it will be to get it out once you sit down in front of your computer.

What are some other productivity boosting tips you’d add to this list? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Ever since I started blogging a few years ago, the topic of linking out has been a common source of debate. On one hand, you have people who swear that linking out causes you to lose link juice and drop in the search engine rankings (more on this later). On the other hand, there are people (including me) who believe that linking out is a powerful tool for blog promotion and that it’s something all bloggers should be doing.

Below are the top 6 reasons you should be linking out.

1. It puts you on their radar—Any time you drop a link to another blog, a trackback is sent to that blogger. This lets them know that you linked to them. Chances are that when they see this, they’ll come check out your post to see why you linked to them and what you had to say. Now, you’re on their radar. This means they’re likelier to return the favor by linking to you at some point in the future, and this could even open the door for future guest blogging and promotion opportunities.
2. It lets your readers know you’re giving them the full story—As a blogger, it should be your goal to turn your blog into the leading resource in your niche. You want people to instantly think of you when they’re looking for news and information related to the topic you cover. And while providing quality content is one way to achieve this, linking out to other useful posts shows your readers that you’re giving them access to all the top resources from around the web. Don’t worry about losing readers or traffic to other blogs. If your readers know you’ll gather all the best information in one place, they’ll continue to return to you.
3. You have to give links to receive links—It’s old but true “You have to give if you want to receive.” This is true for link building as well. Why would other bloggers link to you if you never link out to anyone else? The blogosphere is a community where everyone tries to help each other out. If they see you link out regularly, they’ll be likelier to give you a hand when you need it.
4. You bring others into the conversation—I mentioned earlier that whenever you link out to another post that blogger is alerted with a trackback. This means they’ll likely come visit your blog. Many times, they’ll comment on your post. It could be as simple as “Thanks for the link!” or it may be a thoughtful response that adds value to the conversation. This is a great way to get to know the other blogger, and it can keep your comments section active and buzzing.
5. You won’t lose rankings by linking out—It’s one of the SEO myths that just never seems to die. Some people swear that if you link out to other blogs your rankings in the search engines will drop. There just isn’t any truth to this. Linking out is natural. It’s expected. When you don’t link out, it looks strange to the search engines.  Just make sure you aren’t linking out to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods.
6. Link love posts are great for linkbait—Remember back in January when everyone was writing posts like “Top 100 posts of 2009”, “Top 50 Blogs to Watch Out for in 2010”, and “Best Blogs of 2009”? Bloggers who did this knew that link love posts are powerful linkbaiting tools. With so many trackbacks, everyone is alerted of the post, and they all help spread the message about it. A good link love post stands a great chance of going viral.

Do you link out to other bloggers? Why or why not?

In the past, we’ve talked at length about the reasons for and benefits of guest blogging. Now, if you’re considering getting into guest blogging, you’ll probably begin your search for opportunities in the usual places. You’ll turn to some of your blogger friends, and you’ll also target well-recognized blogs in your niche.

And that’s a great start.  

Today, however, I want to talk about looking outside your niche for guest blogging opportunities. No matter what you write about, there’s a good chance you can find guest blogging opportunities on blogs that, at first glance, have nothing to do with your niche.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let me share an example from a story I heard recently. There was a band that put out an album that had a lot of songs about love and relationships. While the band of course sought coverage on music blogs, they also had the brilliant idea to grab the attention of love and relationship bloggers. This put the band in front of a whole new audience, getting them far more buzz than they’d have been able to create by just targeting music blogs.

So, how can you find similar unique guest blogging opportunities? Here are a few tips to get you pointed in the right direction.

Ask your readers what their other favorite blogs are

What’s the best way to figure out other blogs your audience likes to read? By asking them…duh. You can create a survey or poll on your blog to find this out, or you can just straight up ask your readers what some of their other favorite blogs are. You can also ask your followers this question on Twitter, and I’m sure you’ll get a number of good responses.

Once you’ve compiled a list of blogs outside your niche, visit these blogs. Start thinking of how your expertise connects to the main topic of this blog. Come up with unique story ideas and pitches for each blog, and submit them to the blogger.

You should also spend time getting to know the readers of the blog. Interact with them in the comments. Figure out their likes and their dislikes, which topics tend to generate the most discussion, and how you can best connect with them should you submit a guest post.

Brainstorm connections between your niche and others

Most of us just don’t spend enough time brainstorming anymore. We’ve lost our creativity. Spend some time with nothing but you, a pen, and a piece of paper. Start jotting down every connection you can think of between your niche and others. No idea is too crazy or farfetched to put down. I think that no matter what niche you’re in, you’ll find that it has a connection to dozens of other topics.

Once you’ve come up with a list of these connections, start searching for blogs in these other niches. When looking for guest blogging opportunities, you might be tempted to look only at the top blogs in each niche. While you certainly want to reach out to these, you shouldn’t ignore the smaller blogs that have loyal bases of readers. Those blogs are often easier to get guest posting gigs on, and their readers are often fiercely loyal, meaning they’ll pay attention to what you have to say.

Try MyBlogGuest

MyBlogGuest is a really cool website where bloggers and guest bloggers connect. Blog owners who are looking for guest posters can submit opportunities and connect with eager guest bloggers. This is a great way to find guest blogging opportunities both inside and outside of your niche.

Have you ever guest posted outside your niche? Share your experiences by leaving a comment.

The last time I wrote about email marketing on here, I discussed several tips for writing better email subject lines. We’ve also given you some tips on building opt-in email lists to improve your online marketing.  These are all fairly basic topics, but they’re important to executing your email marketing campaign correctly.

Today, however, I want to talk about an important aspect of email marketing that tends to get overlooked. Yet, if you ignore this thing, your subscribers likely won’t read your emails or take the action you desire.

Here are a few stats to consider:

• 64% of online merchants keep key points of content high up in the body of the message. – Internet Retailer (2007)
• 64% of people who are offered preview panes start using them as their default. – MarketingSherpa (2007)
• 69% of at-work email users usually view emails in their preview panes. – MarketingSherpa
• 80% of at-work users in the US rely on Outlook, which offers preview panes. – MarketingSherpa

Based on these statistics, the importance of creating preview-ready email is pretty clear. Now, this brings up the question: What can you do to make your email preview-pane ready? Here are a few tips to get you started.

Put the most important information up topThe first statistic I mentioned earlier was that 64% of online merchants are placing the most important content at the top of their email. They do this because they know a lot of their subscribers will decide whether or not to open the email based on what they see in the preview pane. So, if the top of your email doesn’t contain a strong offer, a great headline, or an interesting tease, a lot of your subscribers will never feel compelled to open your email.

Take a look at the content of your email message. Highlight the main points (offer/benefits) of the message, and bump them up to the very top. If these points are strong and interesting enough, your emails will be likelier to get open.

Here’s another thing you should do: Send yourself the email before you send it out. Look at the email in the preview pane and ask yourself honestly if you’d open it if you were the average subscriber. Figure out what you could add or remove to make the message preview stronger.

Eliminate headers or big images at the top of the email

A lot of companies waste precious space above the fold (and in the preview pane) with large headers, images, and company logos. This is problematic for a few reasons:

1. It takes up too much space in the preview pane, and it doesn’t give previewers a compelling reason to open your message.
2. Many email programs still block images or subscribers will have their options set to block images, so instead of an image, they’re greeted with a big red “X.”
3. Large images can slow down email preview load time, causing readers to move on quickly.

If you want to use images in your emails, that’s fine, but push them down so they don’t clog up the preview pane. Also, make sure the file size of the images is small so they’ll load quickly.

Place a call to action link above the fold

In general, I like to place a call to action in every screen view. This way, no matter where someone is in the copy, they have a way to take action immediately. The same concept applies when tailoring your email to the preview pane. Placing a call to action at the top gives previewers a way to visit your landing page without actually taking the time to open the email.

Are your emails preview-pane ready?

It seems like any time we talk about blogging, we only discuss the benefits and reasons for blogging. It’s rare that we look at potential drawbacks of blogging, and we almost never consider the reasons that a business should NOT start blogging.

With that in mind, I’ve come up with some reasons NOT to blog that all people who are thinking about starting a blog should consider.

1. You don’t have time to blog—Blogging takes time. No more how fast you can write and no matter how many post ideas you have in mind, it just takes time to blog. Even if you write quickly, you still have to format the post, upload it, promote it, and respond to comments.

This is especially true in the beginning stages of your blog. Remember, readers aren’t going to suddenly appear on your blog. It’s like a house. You have to build your blog brick by brick. After you’ve built your blog up, then the time you have to spend on it each day will probably decrease a little bit.

The alternative is to let someone else handle the writing and promoting of your blog. You can assign this to a trusted employee or hire a freelance blogger to do the job for you.

2. You don’t have anything new to say—The internet contains hundreds of millions of blogs. There are blogs on every topic you can think of. Chances are, your niche is crowded already. The good news is there is always room for another quality blog. The bad news is most new blogs aren’t “quality.” Instead, they’re simply a copy and paste of every other blog in their niche.

If you’re serious about starting a new blog, you have to be committed to tackling new subjects, breathing new life into old subjects, and showcasing your unique personality. These are the things that will make your blog stand out in a huge crowd.

3. You can’t handle criticism—Like it or not, you’re going to come across people who disagree with you on your blog, and some of them might not be so polite with their comments. That’s just part of being a blogger.

If you can’t handle criticism, you shouldn’t be a blogger. Otherwise, you’ll constantly get in arguments with commenters, and you’ll probably start deleting any comment from people who disagree with you.

4. You can’t commit long term—If you’re looking for fast results or some quick fix marketing scheme, blogging isn’t for you. Building a successful blog takes time and a long-term commitment. If you’re starting a blog, you should plan on using it for years to come. So, if you’re the type of person who jumps from one hobby to another, don’t waste your time. You have to be married to your blog.

What do you think: Should all businesses be blogging? Or are these good reasons not to blog?

When a new visitor lands on your website, what’s their reaction? Does your website instantly gain their trust? Or does it have the opposite effect: causing the visitor to think you’re a spammer who’s going to rip them off?

A lot of this will be determined by the copy on your website. If your website copy includes the mistakes in the list below, you’ll look like a spammer, and visitors won’t convert into customers.

1. Using spammy words—There are certain words that immediately set off the spam alarm. Limit your use of words like:

• Amazing
• Secret
• Free
• Millions
• Opportunity
• Winner
• Prizes
• All New
• Bonus
  

2. Having a lot of exclamation points!!!—Nothing screams “scam!” like excessive punctuation. If your copy is littered with dozens of exclamation points, you’ll instantly scare off a lot of new visitors. Contrary to what some people believe, exclamation points don’t make your copy more exciting or interesting. Truly interesting copy doesn’t need to rely on cheap punctuation tricks to make it more compelling.

While we’re on the subject of excessive punctuation, another thing that drives me nuts is the overuse of ellipses. I understand that…ellipses can create a…a more conversation pace…but when you overuse them…it gets annoying…and it looks kind of…spammy.

3. Telling a way-too-good-to-be-true story—We’ve all come across landing pages where the author tells some remarkable story about how the product being sold helped changed his life forever. You see this a lot with supplements, like weight loss pills. The stories always sound way too good to be true, and instead of convincing you to buy the product, they actually raise your B.S. detectors, causing you to get too wary to place an order.

Make no mistake. Stories can be very powerful sales tools. Some of the most famous sales letters of all time used stories to suck readers in and to convert them into customers. However, if your story just isn’t believable at all, it won’t convert readers…it’ll scare them away and ruin your image.

4. Colorized text—Another technique used on a lot of the spammier landing pages is to use different font colors throughout the copy. You’ll see red headlines, important phrases throughout the copy bolded in blue text, and everything else written in black. It looks absolutely terrible from a design perspective, and it instantly feels like spam. I can say with 100% confidence that I’ve never purchased a product from a website that uses the colorized text trick.

5. Stuffing it with keywords—You don’t see this as much as you did in the early days of SEO, but it still happens fairly often. Amateur SEO copywriters will stuff their copy so full of keywords that it’s virtually impossible for a human to read. If your copy reads like this…

Our Houston bike shop is the best Houston bike shop in Houston. Come stop by our Houston bike shop for all your cycling needs. Our Houston bike shop is cheaper than other Houston bike shops, and it features a wider selection than any other Houston bike shop

…then you’re guilty of keyword stuffing. The best SEO copy is copy that pleases both the search engines and your human visitors. It integrates the keywords seamlessly into the content, so that the human isn’t even aware that your page is optimized for the search engines.

Is your copy guilty of these mistakes?