Successful internet marketing

I have another interesting topic to discuss with you from our Internet marketing toolbox. Today's topic is "Online Directories."
I admit that I am not as excited about online directories as I am about other online marketing tools. Seems there must be about 2,000 directories out there on the Internet right now, and it grows every day. I recently heard one of my teachers state that 30 percent of the Internet is new all the time.
Now that is a simple statement to glance over without thinking about its importance. If 30 percent of the Internet is new all the time, that means any month you work online, another third has been added to the Internet.
Right now, it is estimated that there are about 15-20 billion websites on the World Wide Web. That's impressive, but it is nothing compared to the 30-35 billion that will exist next year.
Just the sheer numbers are staggering. With this kind of volume, how is a business owner going to compete? Fortunately, we have all the tools we need to do that.
One of these tools is Online Directories. While most people consider a directory just a good place to look for things, it is far more than that to the savvy online marketer.
An online directory is much like an offline directory, in as much as you use it to find things you might need. Our local phone book is a great example of an offline directory. It has been a staple of the searching public since the telephone was invented. Very smart marketing idea, really. It was the major source for business leads in its day.
Google is really just an online directory. People open Google just like the old phone book and get answers to their questions. But the last thing I want to do as a consumer, is to go to a directory like Google, open another directory like yellow pages online, then scroll through the listings there to find my answer. That's too much trouble.
Shoppers on the Internet are very likely to stop their search within three clicks. Here is a daunting statistic: Google accounts for 70 percent of all Internet searches. Better yet, 93 percent of all searches stop on the first page.
What does this mean to you? If you want the Internet to pay off for your business, keep in mind that every click your prospect makes is closer to just clicking away from your site. Every click they make MUST return better and more relevant information. Otherwise they are off to the next website, and you just lost a sale.
We know that online directories can help us create easy sales online. We can use them to drive business to our offline physical store. They are a powerful tool that can help our websites rank for backlinks, too.
There are many directories that are free to register with, and there are some that cost money to register with. What are the differences?
Two of the top directories that come to mind are Yahoo! and DMOZ. DMOZ has strict editorial guidelines that can give you a headache. Yahoo! Directory has an annual fee associated with it. Both of these are considered "authority" sites by Google and are often shown in the first results for search terms.
By using many of the directories available online, your site can get ranked higher in search engine returns, and you can get many more hits on your website because more people are seeing your site every day. It's very important that sites are submitted to directories in small batches, so that the search engines are less likely to distinguish sites as spammers.
The combination of higher rankings, more visits to your site, and greater saturation within the Internet, make directories another must-have tool in your Internet toolbox.
Chuck Hall, MCSE, is an Internet marketing consultant, specializing in local Internet traffic-building. E-mail your questions to info@WebMarketingofNorthFlorida.com.
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Facebook Places Comes to BlackBerry Devices

Only one week after Facebook Places became available on Android phones, BlackBerry has begun offering the location-based service as part of its Facebook app. Before Nov. 3, the 12-week-old Places platform had only been available to iPhone users.
And now for Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Booyah, etc., the game for audience share truly begins. With an increasing device-driven availability, it's likely only a matter of time before many of Facebook's 500 million users begin tinkering with Places - perhaps even if they have been checking in on one of the other platforms up to that point.
Tom Goguen, VP of collaboration and social networking for BlackBerry parent Research In Motion, said that expressed interest from BlackBerry users has been recently increasing. "We started seeing requests for this feature in user feedback on our [last] version and started looking at the best way to bring Places into our app," he told ClickZ via e-mail. "We then started to work with Facebook to develop the integration for this new feature, using the publicly available Facebook APIs."
Research In Motion said BlackBerry owners are invited to download an upgraded Facebook app starting today. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said the new version of the app will allow users to check in, add places like restaurants and bars, view places where friends have checked in, and tag friends in photos.
Palo Alto, CA-based Facebook last week said it has 200 million mobile users per month - up from the 150 million it had most recently claimed. The company has not disclosed how many of those people are using its Places platform.
Facebook did not respond to an information request for this story.
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Consumer Online Brand Interaction: Satisfied or Indifferent

Marketers are constantly looking for the silver bullet, the holy grail or the big kahuna, if you will, that can truly define just how much interaction people are actually having with their brands online.
What are people looking for? Are they are truly interacting or are they just serial “Likers”? This is a question that will nag everyone in the marketing game for as long as this game is being played because in the end the only way to gauge a person’s engagement is to measure their sentiment and that’s going to always be elusive.

In efforts to define this interaction we turn to studies like the one just completed by the Cone Media and brought to our attention by the Center for Media Research. The chart below comes from the report called “2010 Cone Consumer New Media Study”. I have added to it in case you didn’t notice.

My question is the definition of people being “Somewhat Satisfied” about their online interaction with a brand. Why? Mainly because when anyone is somewhat satisfied with something it implies that they are also either somewhat dissatisfied or something else. The chart above would have us believe that only 5% are somewhat dissatisfied with this whole online brand interaction thing.
Confusing? I think so because what this is really saying to me that with only 14% being very satisfied that leaves everyone else falling into or dangerously near the category of being “Indifferent” which is a marketers worst nightmare. Maybe that’s why researchers don’t use the term because it’s actually telling the truth.
All I am doing, as I normally do, is looking at research and trying to call it like it is. Let’s face it. Many people follow or like brands because of a particular offer they can get at a particular time. Once that hook passes so does the interest in the brand online until something else happens to really catch their attention. What percentage of people are hanging on the social media moves of many brands at all? It’s a product. It’s a service. Sure we lead pretty hollow lives but are we that shallow that we depend on brands for genuine interaction?
I realize I am playing devil’s advocate here but with the amount of research I look at I can’t help but feel that we are dancing around the reality in many cases. That reality being that while we want people to truly engage with our brand online it’s not likely that the masses will truly be engaged to the level marketers desire. That all out dedication to the brand and their zealot like following is the goal but it’s rare. In fact, in the people that actually respond that way it might be unhealthy since they tie so much of their persona into a brand.
As a for instance, I am a Coca Cola bigot. I have said it here before. I won’t drink a Pepsi product if I can help it. I admit this is over the top and a little bizarre but it’s true. Now, here’s the rub. I don’t give a rip about Coca Cola online. Why? Because it doesn’t define me and unless I can save some money or get a customer service question answered I don’t have the time to care or pay attention. But guess what? I am a fan of the Coca Cola Facebook page (which has a very interesting history of its own that you may want to look into). I don’t even know if there are updates because I don’t look for them. I don’t go there and when I do the inane drivel that is being passed off as ‘interaction’ makes me happy that I stay away.
So is social media truly engaging people or is it just pleasing a present need or passing fancy that doesn’t translate into loyalty or engagement beyond the one instance? Is somewhat satisfied the same as being indifferent but being said in a way to give an online marketer hope?
I don’t know. I’m thinking out loud here. If you got this far and want to chime in that would be pretty cool. So what’s your take?
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Make Money Online With Resale Rights

If you could make a wish for the best resale rights product on the market, what would it be? I bet I not only know what it is, I bet I know how you can make that wish come true. Let’s see if I’m right.

I bet you wished for a resale rights product so spanking brand new, only you and a handful of others know about it. Am I right? If not, you should have. Brand new resale rights products decrease your competition and increase your chances of profit. The minute a resale rights product gets well-known, its sellers flood the market and leave little wiggle room (that is, opportunities) for newcomers to profit from it. As someone who wants to profit from a resale rights product right off the bat, you’ve got to keep abreast of what’s new so _you_ look like _you’re_ the only one that has it.

Of course, to make that wish true, you have to know where to find the best resale rights products, right? Well here’s a little gift for you: Google alerts. Use Google alerts to find newly released resale rights products. In case you haven’t heard, Google Alerts is the marketer’s best friend in online merchandising because it sends the freshest web foo on the internet. A lot of marketers use Google alerts to spy on what their competitors are up to, and although that’s a great idea, there’s so much more that can be done with it. Like finding the best resale rights product!

How do you use it? Easy. Head on over to alerts.google.com and sign in with your Google account. Create an alert using the keywords, “new” + “resale rights product“. You can have these alerts sent to your RSS reader or your email inbox. Whichever method you choose, Google will send you a link to each and every webpage that mentions these keywords. Using google alerts, there’s no more guessing about which programs are new and which are stale and overused. You can get first notice and capitalize on those products before they hit the mainstream affiliate storm!

Was your wish for products with master resale rights? If not, it should have been. With master resale rights, you get to play affiliate god and _sell_ the right to _sell_ to others who want to (you guessed it) _sell_ to others… often at any price you want. Now how cool is that? A product with master resale rights is golden and the best resale rights product offers it. Use Google alerts to find these opportunities as well, only this time, use “new” + “with master resale rights“ as your alert keywords.
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