Mike from Flantoons exceeeded our expectations again with this fab cartoon – we hope you like it as much as we did!

But when I speak to people online, it amazes me how many of them think article marketing is a waste of time, isn’t for them, won’t do them any good, or simply haven’t heard of it!

I haven’t yet found a small business website that couldn’t be helped in some way with a targeted article marketing plan, so here’s my list of 5 ways that article marketing can work for you:

1) Article Marketing establishes you as An Expert. Writing knowledgeably about your services or industry shows that you know what you’re talking about, and encourages people to trust you.

2) Article Marketing spreads the word. By submitting your article to the best article websites, you can reach more readers and find people who wouldn’t normally have visited your website.

3) Article Marketing helps SEO – by including relevant and targeted links from your articles, you’re helping Google to not only find your site, but learn a little more how to categorise it. Anchor texted links from well thought of websites can help your SEO tenfold.

4) Article Marketing adds content to your website. Google loves content rich websites, and adding new pages gives you things to blog about, Tweet about and generally tell your contacts about.

5) Article Marketing gets you exposure. Journalists often refer to articles they have found online in order to find an expert for a comment or quote in articles they write.

There are many other reasons to carry out article marketing – see the following articles for more details:

• Become an Expert
• Top Ten Tips To Make Article Marketing Work for You

So if you’ve been thinking about Article Marketing, but not yet gotten around ot it, or you’re not sure it will work for you – give it a go!

If it’s submitting the articles in various places that’s wrrying you, check out our Article Marketing special offer - submission to the top 20 article websites, plus a whole lot more, for just £30!

Part of what I love about my job is that no single day is the same as any other – because we have a good range of related services, I can be working on quite a few things throughout the day, and chatting with many different customers and associates, as well as trying to keep order in the offices both here in France and in the UK!

Today, among other things, I’ve been working on:

• Article Marketing for a company providing a solution to cellulite – we’re all going to get it girls, so it’s nice to know how to get rid of it. And I know where I’ll be going for cellulite reduction!
• Article and Blog Marketing for an eco friendly toy company – can’t say much more about this one at the moment but it’s certainly been eye opening!
• Constructing a Wordpress blog site for a client who specialises in software used in Accounting – I really love how Wordpress gives control to the client, in that they can update as and when they want, and there’sa plug in for every eventuality! (I really should get around to putting the blog design packages on the website!)

We’re also restructuring social media marketng services at the mo, and that’s coming along nicely, so I’m quite excited about it.

It’s nice to see the Twitter interview requests coming in – 3 so far this week, which I’m looking forward to doing and will definitely talk about more in the near future!

It’s easy to forget, with everyone jumping on the bandwagon, that Social Media has been around a while, and it’s not as complicated as it may seem. Not only that, but you don’t necessarily need someone else to do it for you – the tools and help are there for you to do it yourself; and the great thing about Social Media Marketing is that it’s trackable and measurable pretty much immediately, allowing you to see what is and isn’t working, and adjust accordingly.

So, without further ado, here is a quick guide to three of the aspects of Social Media you might be hearing about, with links to places that will help you to ‘do it yourself’ , and details of how we can help you if you need it.

Twitter

Let’s get this one out of the way first – it’s everywhere

What is it?
A ‘Microblogging’ site that alows you to tell the world (or your followers) ‘what you are doing’ in 140 characters or less. Allows you to interact with clients and potential clients, and push your message out to people who choose to folow you, thus reaching a new audience.

Can I do it on my own?
Without a doubt, yes – it costs nothing to sign up to Twitter, and you can be up and running in less than 5 minutes.

Pros?
It’s quick and easy, followers tend to be loyal and pass on (or ‘retweet’) things they like, great for getting traffic to a site or bog

Cons?
Easy to get wrong, time consuming if you let it be, building up ‘followers’ isn’t always easy

Links to look at:

• 10 Irritating Mistakes That People Make With Twitter
• Twitter Checklist for Businesses
• Twitter is easier with Tweetdeck
• What is Twitter? In Plain English

Can you help me?
Yes, if you want to run your Twitter account yourself, then consider our Tweetmentor program, a daily email to help you make the most of Twitter – our current promotion means you can pay as much or as little as you want to sign up.

If you want someone to run your whole Twitter promotion and account for you, then we offer this service too, from £150 per month – contact nikki@nikkipilkington.com for more info.

–oOo–

Article Marketing / Blogging

You can’t fail to have noticed the amount of people talking about blogging and article marketing recently, and that’s because it’s a great way to promote yourself.

What is it?
By writing and distributing articles and bog posts on your area of expertise, you become synonymous with your area of expertise, and gain credibility and referrals.

Can I do it myself?
Absolutely! If you are able to write convincingly on your area of expertise, then setting up a blog and writing regularly costs nothing but your time. Similarly, most article websites charge nothing to list your article, which links back to your website.

Pros:
Costs nothing but time, develops brand and credibility, sets you out as ‘the expert’

Cons:
Can take time, you may not like / be good at writing, ideas hard to come by at times and needs regular upkeep

Links to check out:

• Wordpress.org – set up a blog for no cost
• Become an Expert
• Top 10 Tips To Make Article Marketing Work For You
• Ezine Articles – a great place to submit articles
• What is Article Marketing?

Can you help me?
Yes, we can help in many ways, whether you need a bespoke blog site setting up and / or managing, or just article writing and submissions. See our Article Marketing Packages for more info, and ask about our Blogger Specials.

–oOo–

Facebook

Once seen as a place only for teenagers, this site has come into it’s own in the last 2 years as a great place to promote your products and services.

What is it?
Facebook is a social networking site that allows businesses to connect with customers and potential clients through the use of fan pages, business pages, groups and more.

Can I do it myself?
Yes! It’s free to open up an account, either as a person or as a business, and you can set up fan pages, groups and blog pages without paying too.

Pros:
Huge potential client base, easy to manage / update, for some people easier than updating their own website!

Cons:
Can be time consuming, easy to miss out on opportunities, needs to be ‘kept alive’

Links to check out:

• Facebook
• Creating a Facebook fan page for your business
• Promoting your business on Facebook
• How to promote your business on Facebook
• Nikki Pilkington on Facebook (let’s connect!)

Can you help me?
Yes, we have set up many Facebook pages, groups, fan pages and ad campaigns for clients, and can help you to get the most out of Facebook for your business. Whwther you just need setup and then left to run it yourself, or you need complete management, we can help – drop us an email if you want to know more.

–oOo–

So there you have it, just 3 aspects of Social Media Marketing that you can try yourself, and have up and running in less time than it took you to read this newsletter!

Hopefully this has taken a little of the mystery out of SMM, and given you a few ideas. As always, if we can help, please let us know.

Next time we’ll cover Online Business Networking, talk about Blogging in more detail, and touch on the use of multimedia in promoting your business.

Until then, thanks for reading

All the best

Nikki Pilkington
NikkiPilkington.com

http://www.nikkipilkington.com
nikki@nikkipilkington.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NikkiPilkington
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkipilkington
Skype: nikkipilkington
MSN: nikkipilkington@hotmail.com
ICQ: 9330127

At this time of the year, as you’re looking back, consoling yourself about the poor state of the economy and the effects its had on your business, the future may be the last thing on your mind.

But this is no time to be burying your head in the sand, it’s essential that you take action and start making effective plans to improve your online presence to start 2009 strongly and capture the best web traffic that your business deserves throughout 2009 to next Christmas.

Now’s the time to start planning your article marketing campaign for 2009, there’s very little time to waste, it’s essential that you start directing traffic towards your website using relevant and informative articles right away.  Your competitors are certainly already making plans and you don’t want to be left behind.

But what is Article Marketing?  Article Marketing is a relatively simple technique that builds upon the text-driven nature of the Internet.  It involves creating short (300-1000 word) articles that are used to improve your presence, credibility and selling power on the Internet.

Reputation and Credibility
Article Marketing can be used to improve your online reputation and credibility.  When someone uses a search engine to look for a particular term such as ‘Clear Widgets’, they find a link to one of your articles.  In this article, you expound your expertise and knowledge on the subject area and provide a link to your website for interested readers.

These articles drive traffic through to your website whilst increasing your online reputation.  The more relevant, informative expertise you can demonstrate, the greater your online credibility.

Backlinks
Understandably, not all your potential customers want to read articles but this method of marketing is also a great way to create high quality backlinks to your website.  By submitting your articles to article submission sites such as Ezine, GoArticles and Qassia, you can increase traffic to your website and in the world of Search Engine Optimisation, backlinks are one of the factors that Google and other Search Engines use when assessing your website and giving it a ranking.

The more articles you have, the more backlinks you will create and the better potential traffic and greater position your search engine ranking is likely to be.

Key Words and Phrases
If you’re looking to compete with others over popular key words and phrases, it’s going to take persistent and sustained publication of articles as part of your bid to capture the top spot, but it is possible.  Over-stuffing your articles with keywords is a bad idea and may be punished by the Search Engines.  Great articles place the quality of the article content above all else.

Return Visitors
Well written articles and blogs encourage your visitors to return to your website to read your latest postings, so create quality and receive great traffic in response.

None of this work can be done quickly, it all takes sustained development over time and if you want to start seeing results, you need to be producing regular articles and you need to start straight away.

If you don’t feel confident or comfortable writing your own articles, or you simply don’t have the time, an experienced and skilled writer can produce your articles on your behalf at very cost effective prices.

If you want to gain great web presence, increased traffic, enhanced profile and credibility – all leading to improved business online, you can get a head start by speaking to Internet Marketing expert Nikki Pilkington at Nikki@NikkiPilkington.com

So it was lovely to wake up on Sunday morning to a stream of emails about the web marketing feature in the Sunday Times. It’s already resulted in business, and we think we’re going to be in the second part next Sunday too!

An extract from the article, which you can read in full here:

A common mistake many firms make is creating a website and expecting visitors to come to it, said web-marketing expert Nikki Pilkington. “A lot of people still expect visitors just to find their website. Making your site visible to search engines is vital if you want to attract traffic.”

Before you spend money paying search-engine-optimisation (SEO) experts to get your site high on search-engine listings, there are simple things you can do yourself, free of charge, said Pilkington.

One of the best (if not THE best) article sites on the web is Ezine Articles. Ezine Articles is run by Chris Knight and his team, who also run the fab “Top 7 Business” site. (Which reminds me, I must reformat some of my articles for that site; it’s been a while).

One of the things that I love about Ezine Articles is that Chris et al never stand still – they’re always innovating, changing and updating. They react to customer/member suggestions, and they’re very approachable. In fact, if you’re not following Ezine Articles on Twitter, you should be – Chris is one of the few ‘internet celebrities’ to interact with his followers, and realise that Twitter is in fact a two way street. But I digress…

Ezine Articles have announced today that they have added 17 new categories to their database – have a look and see if you fit into any of them. Do you have articles written that you could submit? If not, could you write an article and submit it? You can’t think of anything to write about? PM me and I’ll send you 5 article titles off the top of my head – call it a Christmas present if you will

The categories are:

# Animation
Articles about/concerning Animation, Computer Animation, Animation Studios, Animation Videos, 3D Animations Styles, Photoshop Animation, Pixel Animation, Digital Design.

# Career Advice
Articles about/concerning Career Coaching, Career Planning, Career Counseling, Job Decisions, Leadership Development, Job Education/Career Education, Choosing Career Path, Career Advice.

# Consulting
Articles about/concerning Business Consulting, Startup Business Consulting, Small Business Consulting, Management Consulting.

# Job Search Techniques
Articles about/concerning Job Search Techniques, Job Hunting, Temporary Agencies, Job Centers, Strategic Planning in Searches, Online Search Strategies, Employment Guides.

# Workplace Safety
Articles about concerning OSHA, Workplace Job Safety, Occupational Safety, Workplace Training, Regulatory Compliance, where to locate your safety information at work, Human Resource’s Role in Workplace Safety.

# Radio
Articles about/concerning Radios, Car Radios, Radio Stations, HD Radio, AM/FM Radio, HAM Radios, Digital Radios, Two-Way Radios… but not including XM/Sirius Satellite radio as we already have a category for that.

# Budgeting
Articles about/concerning Budgeting, Finance Budgeting, Personal Budgeting, Budgeting Software, Building Budgets, Strategic Budgeting, Business Budgeting.

# CMS
Articles about/concerning Content Management Systems, Enterprise CMS, Web CMS, Open Source PHP, Content Organization, Content Storage, Website Management.

# Futures-and-Commodities
Articles about/concerning Futures and Commodities, Commodity Trading, Commodity Investing, Commodities Market, Futures Exchange, Futures Trading, Futures Contracts.

# Elder-Law
Articles about/concerning elder care as it relates to law, Elder Will, Elder, Trusts, Power of Attorney, Estate Planning including Taxes, Medicaid, Disability, and long-term care issues as it deals with law,

# Collectible Jewelry
Articles about/concerning Fashion Jewelry, Designer Jewelry, Fine Jewelry, Jewelry Care, Vintage Jewelry.

# Adventure Travel
Articles about/concerning Adventure Travel, Whitewater Rafting, Blackwater Rafting, Rock-River Tubing, Mountain Hiking, African Safari’s, Wildlife Touring, Polar Expeditions, Travel Accommodations.

# City Guides and Information
Articles about/concerning City Guides and Information Centers, Online Guides, City Information, Travel Guides, Expert Recommendation.

# Golf Travel and Resorts
Articles about/concerning Golf Travel, Golf Resorts, Golf Vacation Reviews, Golf Travel Tips, Golf Bags and Travel Cases.

# Menopause HR
Articles about/concerning Menopause Symptoms, Hormone Replacement Therapy, Pre-Menopausal Systems, Post-Menopause, OTC Treatments, Treatment and Care, Symptoms and Treatment.

# Publishing
Articles about/concerning Publishing, Self-Publishing, Book Publishing, Getting Published.

# Technical Writing
Articles about/concerning Technical Writing, Formal Writing, How To, Online Technical Writing, Strategies in Technical Writing.

They are also in the process of launching more categories, as mentioned here.

If you don’t identify with one of those categories, why not pop along to Ezine Articles and see if you can find another category suitable for you?

If you need any help writing articles, you know where I am

Nikki Pilkington

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299 Steps to Website Heaven is now FREE!

The trouble is that people who use it casually very rarely get the results they desire and end up paying for nothing.  If you want to get the best results from your Google AdWords campaign, steer clear of the following ten mistakes.

#1:  Keyphrases/Keywords

Many people who start using Google Adwords forget to include the Keyphrases in their Ad headline and description.  Yes, it’s important to create amazing copy that sells the product or service, but you won’t get any prospects if you don’t connect the customer’s search to your Google Ad through use of keyphrases.

Another keyphrase mistake is to go crazy with your ads and create a huge list of non-specific, poorly targeted keyphrases.  You must be aware of the best keyphrases to choose and what that means in terms of cost.   Choose the wrong keyphrases and you’ll end up paying the highest PPC (Pay per Click) rates and get virtually nothing for it.

Take care with very popular generic search terms that are likely to be used by lots of other AdWords users, as they will be relatively expensive compared to more specific search terms.

Don’t forget to check out tip #2 tomorrow!

One of the most essential keys to successfully attracting visitors to your website is the words that you choose when promoting it.  Whether it involves your website content, the copy you write, online advertising or Google Adwords, it is the words that connect you and your website to its visitors.

In terms of Search Engine Optimisation, the correct choice of words is known as Key Word selection.  The right Keywords can make all the difference as to whether you gain a good position on Google and whether anyone visits your website.

Search Engine Optimisers disagree over how to choose the right density of keywords and which precise words to use.  However, it is advised that the keyword density does not exceed 18% or drop below 2%.  When a phrase is used too much, the Search Engines register this as spamming and drop their connection to your website.

If you are company offering budget flights to Glasgow optimising using single words such as ‘flights’, ‘cheap’ and ‘Glasgow’ is not effective as the words are used by everyone and so do not distinguish you from the million other flight/cheap/Glasgow-based websites.

Adding FLIGHTS as a Keyword will put you in competition with 150 Million other results on Google.
Even Adding ‘Cheap Flights’ only reduces the competition to 30 Million.

You will not gain the Number 1 Google position with single or even two words.  But combinations of words strategically used together work effectively.

Recently SEO experts have discovered that it is not Key Words that make the difference, but actually Keyphrases.

A Key Phrase is a combination of words that helps to uniquely link your website to the visitor’s search engine entry. Rather than using the above single keywords or generic two-word phrases, you should connect them into killer keyphrases.  ‘Cheap Flights Glasgow’ is a phrase more likely to attract your kind of customer.

This reduces the competition on a single Key phrase to 230,000.  That’s quite a drastic reduction from 150 million!

In Part Two: Learn how to create those Killer Keyphrases

For a long time I used Google Analytics to provide webstats for me and for my clients – and it worked. Great stats, pretty graphs, nice figures – everything I needed.The problem I had was that I couldn’t get real time stats – I had to wait until the next day, by which time in some cases it was too late to react to surges in traffic.

I needed something that showed me what my visitors were doing and where they were coming from NOW, not yesterday!

And then I found GetClicky.

As they say about themselves:

Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.

It’s the high level of detail, combined with the fact that I can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW that makes GetClicky the perfect stats tool for me.

So what do you get?

The Dashboard:

The dashboard is an overview of the traffic to your site – telling you how mny visitors you’ve had (and showing you trends in a nifty little graph), how many actions those vistors have taken (eg where have they gone in your site), where your visitors have come from, what search phrases they have used and which pages they have visited.As an overview of your traffic, it’s very useful, but it’s in the nitty gritty that getClicky excels, and that’s what’s more exciting to me.

Visitors

The Visitors tab gives you a list of all your recent visitors, and tells you where they came to your site from.You’ll know what time they visited, what their IP address is, how many actions they took on your site, and if the referrer was a search engine, what search phrases they used.

This can be filtered in a number of ways and is very useful information.

Actions

I love the Actions tab as it shows me what each and every visitor has doen on my sites. I can see that one visitor has come to the site from an article that was Stumbled on Stumbleupon, and has not only read that article, but has clicked on the links in it to go to external sites, returned to my site and read some more articles, and even whether they have clicked on an email link to email me. By the time I receive the email I probably already know who they are and what they’ve been looking at and can tailor my reply accordingly – how cool is THAT?

Content

The content tab shows me which pages of my site are being visited, which are the entrance pages, exit pages, which of my files are being downloaded (in my main site, www.nikkipilkington.com, I have PDF versions of my internet marketing articles – this view tells me how many downloads they get every day) and more.

Links

Like most other traffic stats, this tells me where my visitors are coming from. But unlike most other traffic stats, it also shows me which links a visitor is clicking on to LEAVE my site.

This is great – I know whether links in my articles are being visited, recommendations are being followed, links to other sites I own are being clicked – even down to whether someoneclicks on an email link. I can also track visitors that leave to read something I have recommended and then come back! This to me is vital information and one of my favourite GetClicky features.

Searches

The searches tab shows me the latest search phrases I am being fond for on search engines – it’s always interesting to see the searches that bring people to my various sites – intended and unintentional

Spy

This is my favourite GetClicky tab of all.

I can see, in REAL TIME, visitors on my site. I can see which pages they are clicking on, which files they are downloading, external links they are following, and more.

It allows me to react to visitors almost instantly – if I can see that lots of people are on Using Twitter for Business part one on my Business on twitter site, I can quickly amend the page to add a link to other more recent articles I may have written, in order to drive traffic there. If I see that lots of people are clicking on an external link to someone else’s blog, I can make sure I let the blog writer know, and investigate any synergy we may have to exploit the large amounts of traffic.

The spy tab has a multitude of uses – but I warn you, it’s very addictive

All in all I think GetClicky is as close to perfect as a real time web stats tool can get.

Pricing?

There is a free service, which doesn’t include the Spy tab, and if you sign up now you’ll get a free 21 day trial of the Premium service, which is what I use. It’s only $60 for the year and you can pay monthly – it’s well worth the investment to have your traffic stats NOW instead of tomorrow.

So, why not given it a go? Sign up now at Get Clicky and let me know how you get on!