Browse published articles attributed to Donna Gunter, with full-archive search.
What are the best days to send my email newsletter? How many times a week should I blog? How many Twitter updates are too many Twitter updates? Should I repost a status update? These are questions I hear all the time from clients. Until recently, I didn't have any documentation about what worked best, only anecdotal evidence from my own experience.
One traffic generation strategy that I'm started to explore is that of guest blogging. Guest blogging is the process of looking for other blogs read by your target market where you can submit your content for publication. This strategy is a natural fit for anyone who is using content marketing as a traffic generation strategy, as it provides yet another opportunity to syndicate your content to a hungry market looking for the information that you provide.
I had lunch several years ago with a colleague in a networking group. We talked about many things and were trying to get to know each other so that we could better understand what might make a great referral for the other. One of the things he told me caused me to chuckle because it was so true, but it seemed to surprise him somewhat. He told me that he liked my website because I was straight-forward, to the point and I just "put it all out there".
Now that I've finally gotten a Smartphone, I feel as though I've joined the 21st century, techologically speaking, at least, and can begin to engage in the mobile marketing sent to me by businesses I patronize. I've seen people all around me become VERY attached to their smartphones like a new toy, seldom putting it down for anything. In fact, having someone text on their while I'm speaking to them has become the newest item in my top 5 list of annoyances, but that's another story.
Twitter, as a popular social networking platform, is a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, I've recently noticed another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags. What's a hashtag, anyway? Also called the pound sign, the hashtag (#) is added to a tweet as a way of creating trackable categories, groups, or topics that others can use to search for info using the Twitter Search feature.
I watched a really great movie this week, The Help, starring an amazing actress, Viola Davis. I've been watching Viola for years, most recently in The United States of Tara, a Showtime series. Now, with this new role, it seems that Viola is everywhere. Or, maybe I'm just noticing her more because of the great performance she gave in The Help. How did she get to this point in her career? If I had to guess, I'd say it was due to the fact that she became hyperfocused on one thing -- getting quality leading roles in movies that showcase her full range of acting skills.
Online reputation management is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today. Have you ever been upset with the way you were treated at a business and immediately vented about it on a social website? Or have you sent an email or posted to a forum about a company regarding your treatment? If so, then you are certainly not alone.
I'm the world's worst at New Year's resolutions. My effort at making resolutions is best summed up by Mark Twain, "New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." As a business owner, however, I see the new year as ripe with opportunities, and it feels like a great time to begin anew. Consequently, I feel the ever-present tug to set resolutions for my business, at least.
Every day, my inbox is filled with emails promoting yet another new marketing strategy or promising results that will cure all of my marketing ills. Most of the strategies are flash-in-the-pan -- here today and gone tomorrow because the next new strategy has been discovered. A few newer strategies have proven to have staying power over time, like social networking, which took a long time to grow on me.
Web site creation has been at the forefront of much of what I've done as an online business owner. While I haven't designed the look and feel of all of my sites, I've created the content for all of them. Determining what to include on a web site can be overwhelming to the most seasoned business owner. There's nothing worse than staring at a blank screen and experiencing a severe case of writer's block. However, throughout the years, I've looked at many, many sites and have determined that there are a number of pages that generally appear on every site. These include: Home Pager
Tired of the day-to-day struggle of chasing one client to the next? Want a better way to run your business that enables you to better predict your monthly income?
So many business owners are struggling to make more sales in the midst of this recession. Some are succeeding better than others, and even the big discount stores (like Wal-Mart) are reversing managerial decisions to boost their bottom line. I'm not a big fan of Wally World (aka Wal-Mart) because of how their presence in small towns tends to run mom and pop stores out of business.
A new year always brings New Year's resolutions, as well as the urge to purge things from your life and business and begin anew. I caught the decluttering bug betwee Christmas and New Year's Day this year and removed from my office many boxes of physical materials that had served me well once upon a time but I had now "outgrown."
One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your web site is by commenting on other people's blogs. However, a vast majority of people don't do this the right way. Their primary traffic strategy is to leave meaningless comments on the posts of blogs in their niche just to get a few clicks from the passing traffic. I get these comments all the time on my blog, and wonder why the commenter bothered.
The close of another year is upon us, and with that comes your year-end web site review. Wait, you are doing an annual review, right? Failing to take a few minutes to review your web site at the end of the year can result in your visitors seeing something like "Copyright 2008" on your site. I know that if I see something like that, it's a signal to me that the site owner isn't paying attention to her business, or makes me wonder if she's still in business. That's not the first impression you want new visitors to have of your business.
Many times, when you sign up for a free giveaway or purchase an item, you are taken to an OTO (One Time Offer) page, where you'll be given the opportunity to purchase a "never to be seen again, one time offer," which is a product that has been discounted for one time only during this one particular transaction. In this transaction scenario, you have two choices: either buy the product now at the special discounted price, or continue on without buying the product and lose access to the special pricing opportunity.
One of the quickest ways to build your email marketing list is by creating an ethical bribe, or what I refer to as a client attraction device. This free giveaway serves to entice visitors to your site to sign up for your email list because they want to access your solution to their problem proffered in your email list opt-in box. What are the two most important characteristics of an effective client attraction device?
When you have an online component of your business, experiencing ecommerce fraud is becoming the rule rather than the exception. No longer is it a matter of "if" this will happen to you but "when" it will happen to you. I did some quick research and was astounded at the extent of fraudulent transactions, especially given the poor state of the current U.S. economy. My first major case of ecommerce fraud happened this past week. I was running a special promotion with my affiliates to see how this marketing strategy for additional sales might work out for me.
Distributing your articles to various article banks and directories online (what I refer to as article marketing) won't work for you unless you have a well-developed resource box. A resource box is the bio information about the author that appears at the end of the article. Why is a great resource box important to the success of your article marketing efforts?
In the course of my business, I routinely make referrals to other products and business service providers that I know or use regularly. In 99% of the cases, I've actually used the product or service myself or have a good relationship with the person who is providing it. In rare cases, I will recommend something on the strength of the recommendation from a trusted colleague.
One of the most difficult aspects of being an independent service professional is being seen as credible and as a viable expert in your industry. Until recently, that process often took years and required an investment of much blood, sweat and tears. Ultimately, it wasn't until you paid your dues that anyone of influence in your industry would pay any attention to you or be interested in speaking with you.
Unfortunately, this scenario is a reality for all of us who use social networking -- it's not a matter of IF your Twitter or Facebook account will be hacked, but simply WHEN. I've been on the receiving end of messages from my friends whose accounts have been hacked. The message typically compliments me on some body part or requests me to click on a link to view a video of myself. Also, there are usually a number of misspellings in the message.
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp for online business owners who are writing their own sales copy is to write about the benefits of your product/service, rather than the features. Even though this skill is critically important, I would guess that less than 10% of business owners truly understand it. Not surprisingly, it's also the primary reason that so many marketing campaigns fail. Think about the products and services that you buy. Why did you purchase them?
All of my clients are exceptional at the service they provide for their clients. However, many of them come to me for coaching because they're having a hard time filling their practices and finding clients. Almost without fail, they tell me that this is a marketing problem. It is a marketing problem, but not the type they think it is.
You may feel as though you're on a hamster wheel when it comes to measuring your marketing. You run, run, and run some more, but don't seem to be getting anywhere. That feeling is perfectly natural if you're not measuring your ROI (Return on Investment) with your marketing. For years, I've been on this hamster wheel myself, without a system that I liked to help me measure my marketing results. Numbers and statistics have never been my strong suit, and even though I got A's in most of my math classes, it took every brain cell I had to do so.
Many online solo service professionals wonder how they will ever become known in their industry, given the easy access to the abundance of information found online. Almost everyone claims to be an expert, so it stands to reason that some percentage of that group are charlatans. How do you create trust and authenticity with your target market and be seen as a real, true expert rather than as a sham? One of the easiest and quickest ways to do this is by interviewing experts in your industry.
Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to increase your online visibility, you discover so many options, yet have so little time for research and ...
The economic recession is pushing more and more people to consider self-employment. Starting an online business is a very low-risk way to put your toe in the entrepreneurial pond because the start up costs are minimal, the overhead is low, and the returns can be high. Despite these benefits, ...
I consider Amazon.com to be the Internet pioneer for establishing affiliate programs. Their strategy to permit others to sell their products for a commission on affiliate websites has single-handedly help them become an Internet powerhouse and has resulted in Amazon.com becoming a household ...
I'm in the process of completely rethinking my business model, and that will be my primary focus as I plan this year's business retreat for myself. Your business model doesn't have to be at all complex, but should provide the guiding force for all that you do, like guiding you to the opportunities to accept (and those to decline), the joint ventures and strategic alliances to pursue, and the new ideas you should retain and develop, as well as those to let go of. Here's are the 4 steps I'm following as I create the blueprint for my business model: 1.
I often get asked the question, "How do I get more followers on Twitter?" Many of my clients want to pay a sum of money for the latest scheme to get them 10,000 new followers in 24 hours or some such nonsense as that. As in all marketing strategies, it's not the number that counts. Rather, it's the quality in the numbers that really matters. So, 10,000 followers who are not members of your target market are fairly useless to you.
Once upon a time, in the dark ages of Internet marketing (only about 10 years ago in Internet years), all an online business owner had to do was stick an email opt-in form on her site and request visitors to join her list. Simple, wasn't it? Then, the legion of spammers began to grow and ...