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Donna Gunter/
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Articles by Donna Gunter

Browse published articles attributed to Donna Gunter, with full-archive search.

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Showing 51–82

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Mobile Marketing: 5 Ways to Use Text Messaging to Get More Clients Online

Today, there are three items that people bring with them when they leave home: their keys, their wallet (purse) and their cell phones. However, because businesses (like Starbucks) are permitting patrons to pay using their cell phone and car companies are creating applications that let car owners start their cars from cell phones, all but the cell phone may be obsolete in a few years. The best way to reach these mobile phone users is via text messaging on their phones, which reaches your prospects no matter where they are.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,432 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Your 10-Step Year-End Blog Review

How has your blog been working for you this year? Is it bringing you new clients, more recognition for your expertise, or increasing your bottom line? If not, now may be a great time to review your blog and see how you can tune it up. Blogging should be an integral part of your marketing plan so that you have a showcase to demonstrate your expertise to your target market. Creating actionable content useful to your target market is a great way for you to initiate the like, know, and trust factor with potential clients. Here's my 10-step method for doing a year-end blog review:

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,431 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

5 Ways to Use QR Codes to Increase Your Online Visibility

You may have seen some funky looking symbols recently in newspapers, flyers, magazines, or on products. Most of us here in the U.S. have no idea what they are or what to do with them, but I see that the tide is slowly turning. They're called QR codes, or Quick Response codes. They are a 2-D bar code that can be scanned with smart phones to retrieve information like a menu, phone numbers, videos, URLs, and more. Its grid consists of tiny squares that contain much more data than a conventional bar code.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,421 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

10 Proven Methods to Promote Your Free Client Attraction Device

Your client attraction device, also known as an ethical bribe or free taste, is the information that you give away on your site in exchange for a visitor's name and email address. I call it a client attraction device because it helps to build your list. Unfortunately, just like a product that you sell on your site, your client attraction device also has to be promoted. What do you need to do to get prospects to discover and sign up for your client attraction device? Here are the 10 most effective ways to promote your client attraction device:

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,419 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

8 Secrets to Fill Your Business in 60 Days

Recently I was asked in an interview to imagine that I was starting all over again, and as a newbie, how I would fill my business in 60 days. Things have changed tremendously since I began my online business in 1999, mostly for the better. Most of the steps, however remain the same. Best of all, the strategies I recommend to fill your business are the same ones that can be applied to any business, and then applied again and again to other online ventures. Here are 8 secrets to filling the prospect funnel in your business in 60 days: 1. Success mind set.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,405 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Ezine Marketing: How to Triple Your Ezine Opt-ins With a Squeeze Page

For years I've resisted the urge to create a squeeze page for my email newsletter. A squeeze page is a one-page site, or a landing page on a site, that has one call to action: convince the visitor to enter her name and email address to join your list and/or receive your giveaway. On a traditional squeeze page, the visitor has only one option -- to part with her name and email address to opt into your list.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,400 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Your 15-Step Wordpress Installation Checklist

As I work more and more with Wordpress, I began to see the need for an installation checklist, or all of those tasks that need to be completed for a new Wordpress installation. Part of my rationale in creating this checklist is to make it easy for my assistant to set up a new Wordpress install. I actually have several installation checklists set up, depending on the nature of the site. I divide my sites into the following categories: Product (to promote and deliver an information product) Affiliate marketing (to promote an affiliate product) Membership Blogr Web site/ Blog site

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,399 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Internet Security: 8 Proven Tactics to Eliminate Threats from Spam, Viruses, and Hackers

As an online business owner, you face treacherous Internet security risks every single time you're online. Viruses, hackers, and spam await you at every turn. The reality is that these threats are always going to be a component of being online and doing business online. Unfortunately, they seem to be here to stay. Given that, there are a number of precautions you can take to make yourself, your business and the visitors to your site as safe as possible. Here are 8 tactics proven to enhance your Internet security: 1. Virus Protection.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,376 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Your 7-Step Year-End Social Media Audit

Social media has been all the rage this year, so it's probably time for you to do a social media audit. This audit will help you determine if you're using the correct social media platforms to reach out to the right people in the right way. Here's my 7-step method for doing a year-end social media audit:

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,369 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

3 Ways to Improve Customer Service with Help Desk Software

When you start your online business, you have very few customer service issues. Those that do emerge can usually be handled fairly easily via email or a phone call, and you'll probably resolve most of these yourself. However, as your business grows and you begin to develop products and programs, the number of customer service issues increases, as well. You then begin to look for a way to delegate this task, but if you don't have procedures outlined for how you have handled these issues in the past, it becomes difficult to train your team on carrying out these procedures.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,368 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

5 Best Strategies to Develop a Responsive Email List

I see the well-know Internet marketing gurus do this all the time -- they begin to try and sell to me when I first opt into their list. This has worked quite well for them over the years, but I think the tide is turning and people are generally becoming more marketing-savvy.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,363 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Social Media Marketing: 5 Best Strategies to Enhance Your Twitter Profile and Get New Followers

Twitter took the world by storm last year. I predict this year many business owners will drop out of the Twitter stream because they're not seeing a valuable ROI for their business in return for the time invested in marketing on Twitter. This comes, partly, from the fact that Twitter can be a great time-waster. However, I think that it's due, in large part, to not maximizing your Twitter profile when setting up your Twitter account. Because Twitter doesn't offer many options when a user creates a profile, most people put little thought into that process.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,363 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Image SEO: 7 Strategies to Optimize Your Images for the Search Engines

There are all kinds of ways to optimize your web site for the search engines, but one of the most overlooked methods is image SEO. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but who knew that image seo, or optimizing your images for search engines, might shoot your site to the top of Google, when all else has failed? Images can generate a TON of traffic from the search engines, so if you want more of this traffic, you need to use image SEO to land this extra traffic. Fortunately, it’s easier than you think… once you know what to do.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,342 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Boost Sales: 7 Most Effective Strategies to Increase Conversion Rates

If you want to boost sales on your web site, the first issue you need to explore is how to increase conversion rates. Conversion rate is the portion of unique visitors to your web site that take the action you want them to take. This action might be a product purchase or a mailing list sign-up. What's nice when you look at how to increase conversion rates is that you don't worry about increasing your number of visitors. Why? Because what you're doing is seeking to increase the conversion rate of the visitors you already have.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,315 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

How Frequently Should You Email Your List, Blog, Tweet, or Update Your Facebook Page?

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,314 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

7 Steps to Guest Blogging Your Way to More Traffic and Greater Online Visibility

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,286 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

How to Stand Out: Differentiate Your Business with Authenticity

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".

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,273 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Top 5 Reasons Why Mobile Marketing Will Increase Your Profits in 2011

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,259 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Twitter Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign with Twitter Hashtags

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,258 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Business Focus: The Secret to Doubling (or Even Tripling) Your Business in One Year

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,252 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Online Reputation Management: How to Protect Your Online Reputation in 7 Easy Steps

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,234 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Internet Marketing: The #1 Marketing Mistake Made By 75% of Online Business Owners

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,212 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

7 Essential Sales Pages Needed on Every Web Site

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

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,194 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

More Sales: 3 Secrets for Generating More Income in a Down Economy

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,179 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Your 10-Step Year-End Web Site Review

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

1,146 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Article Marketing: 7 Essential Elements of an Article Resource Box That Gets Clicked

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?

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

920 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

3 Expert Strategies to Prevent A Great Referral From Going Bad

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

916 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

Marketing Results: 7 Crucial Stats You Need to Track Your Marketing Success

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.

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

838 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

10 Best Strategies to Massively Increase Your Visibility Online

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 ...

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

730 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

10 Steps to Testing the Viability of Your Online Business Idea That Won't Break the Bank

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, ...

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

718 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

How to Set Up an Online Affiliate Program to Sell Your Products and Services

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 ...

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

701 views

By Donna GunterRecently published1 topic

5 Secrets to Moving the Free Line With Your Client-Capturing Device

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 ...

Primary topic: Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

585 views

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