IS YOUR POCKET BEING PICKED? CLICK FRAUD & HOW TO DETECT IT

                                                     

Click Fraud:

Is Your Pocket Being Picked?

Click fraud involves a complex chain of fraud scams that can drain your marketing budget before you even know it. It’s been going on since paid links programs became popular and, even though Google and Yahoo – the two biggest search engines – depend on this steady stream of promotional revenue, these two giants actually have little incentive to investigate click fraud. They get paid whether the click is legit or a fraud.

Do You Know Where Your Ad Is?

When you sign on with a PPC program you expect your linked ad to appear on sites that have some relationship to your site’s topicality. If you’re selling bedding for infants you’d expect your link to appear on family sites, pregnancy and wellness sites and, of course, parenting sites. But how do you know?

A report in BussinessWeek states that PPC participants have no complaints when their ads appear on actual Google or Yahoo pages within the context of site topicality. That’s the way PPC is supposed to work. However, according to this report Google and Yahoo “boost their profits by recycling ads to millions of other sites, ranging from the familiar, such as cnn.com, to dummy web addresses like insurance1472.com, which displays lists of ads and little, if anything else.”

The article went on to explain that, “When somebody clicks on these recycled ads, marketers such as MostChoice get billed, sometimes even if the clicks come from Mongolia. Google or Yahoo then share the revenue with a daisy chain of Web site hosts and operators. A penny or so even trickles down to the clicker.” Hey, it’s a living.

But what about your living. If you can’t trust Google and Yahoo – your marketing partners – to protect you from click fraud, who can you trust?

The Search Engines Respond

“We think click fraud is a serious but manageable issue,” stated John Slade, Senior Director for Global Product Management over at Yahoo. According to the spokespeople at Google and Yahoo, when click fraud is detected the client (you) aren’t charged for the click or you’ll receive a credit on your next billing statement. However, despite the search engines’ vigorous defense of its click fraud detection programs, the practice continues because, in plain English, there’s no reason for Google or Yahoo to pursue these fraudulent activities. They’re still making money.

The Loss of Trust

With print journalism, an advertiser receives audited reports on circulation. You see these reports printed annually in your favorite magazine. But it’s also true that not all figures in these circulation reports are accurate. For example, many newspapers give away daily copies of their publication just to keep circulation figures inflated.

So, an advertiser sees that s/he is paying for 160,000 readers in the region but, in fact, only 120,000 of those daily newspapers are being delivered to homes where people will actually read the paper and see the ad. The other 40K copies are delivered free to every halfway house, nursing home, professional office – you name it. If they’ll take a paper, they can have it free – just to keep circulation numbers up. And, the advertiser is cheated.

Same thing with click fraud. The big selling point of PPC advertising is that you only get charged when the link is clicked. Sounds economical, right? But, if you’re a small site owner working with a limited PPC ad budget, you want every click to count.

The BusinessWeek article referenced earlier states that “there is a thriving, click-fraud underground populated by swarms of small-time players, making detection difficult. ‘Paid to read’ rings are everywhere with hundreds of thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in their living rooms…in some cases, ‘clickbot’ software generates hits automatically and anonymously. Participants…speak of making from $25 to several thousand dollars a month apiece, cash they wouldn’t receive if Google and Yahoo were as successful at blocking fraud as they claim.”

The Most Common Scams

There are endless varieties of PPC fraud scams but most fall into one of three categories.

Network click fraud occurs when the owner of the site where your ad appears clicks your ad to increase revenues. S/he also has his or her friends click on it, too. And each time they do, you lose money.

Competitive click fraud takes place when one of your competitors clicks on one of your links endlessly until you end up with a bill for $10k from Google. Now what?

Impression fraud is also common. In this case, the ad appears on site but the link is disconnected. The competition’s click through rate is lowered (keeping more business on the unscrupulous owner’s site) while raising your ad ranking.

How to stop it

If you’re the site owner and marketing director, PPC fraud may be all but impossible to stop, but fairly easy to detect. Services such as Who’sClickingWho will track your PPC accounts using fraud detection software. They charge by the click (another expense) but if you use PPC as a main promotional tool, it may well be worth the price. A one month subscription with 5,000 clicks will cost you $29.95. As click volume increases, the per click monitoring price decreases.

Because many click frauds involve networks of individuals stealing a penny at time from the till, or bots that click but don’t leave a trail, you may also want to consider hiring an agency to place and monitor your PPC dollars. These monitoring services do have a vested interest in detecting fraudulent PPC. That’s how they build customers and keep them, unlike Google and Yahoo where the incentive to stop click fraud is…um, slightly less fervent.

You can also look for obvious signs of click fraud. For example, if you’re getting 5,000 clicks a month and that suddenly spikes to 500,000 in a single month, chances are you’ve been victimized. In fact, it’s almost a certainty.

Another tip-off is the source of the clicks. Click fraud is actually a business in places like China so, if you’re getting a lot of click-throughs from Ulan Bator, report it to your PPC placement service and demand a credit.

Finally, check out click fraud software. It doesn’t cost as much as monitoring services (that’s good for start-ups where every dollar counts) and these software packs are pretty good at detecting repetitious clicks from the same computer – an obvious sign of fraud.

Helpful Resources

ClickReport

AuthenticClick

ClickFraud Detective

Finally, if you suspect that you’ve been the victim of click fraud, call the placement service but be sure to have some evidence to back up your claim. Reports showing an unusual number of clicks from a single region, 1,000 clicks from your lead competitor’s computer or a major spike in PPC costs are all pretty good indicators that you’ve had your pocket picked.

Track your PPC like you would your sales – very closely. And, at the first sign of suspicious activity, close your account or call Google and/or Yahoo.

Trying to fight click fraud all by yourself is like punching air. It doesn’t do much good. And, you get tired. So get some help and save some $$$.

You getting what you pay for?

Call me.

Webwordslinger.com

IS YOUR BLOG BOOKMARK-WORTHY?

Is Your Blog Bookmark-Worthy?

Getting the Most from Your Post

image courtesy of Igor Clark

If you don’t have a blog, build one. It’s easy using blog modules that plug in to your existing site. Then start posting content. Then get listed in blog directories. Then keep it fresh. Oh man, that’s a lot of work – especially when this is your second job!

Blogs build traffic and keep it coming back. However, too many site owners either don’t maintain a blog or don’t promote it for maximum benefit. So, here are some tips from your web host provider on maximizing the usefulness of a blog.

Post Your Thoughts on Topic-Related Sites
One way to get noticed, especially by those in the know, is to make posts on other topic-related blogs. You can provide your URL so that readers who find your astute insight are able to follow the trail back to your blog archives.

Blog Archives
And speaking of blog archives, keep a good one. Sort each blog post by date and general subject, i.e. conversion optimization. Unless you’re a great writer with plenty of time on your hands, good content is expensive to develop. Think of blog content as a commodity. An asset for you and others interested in what you have to say.

Stay Focused
And speaking of what you have to say, stay on topic. If your readership (whether 10 or 10,000) turns to you for certain information, meet expectations. If you occasionally go off on a tangent expressing your political views, for example, you’ll lose readership.

Keep It Unique
A change in the Google algorithm will be the topic of the week, and virtually every webmaster blog and forum will be crammed full of erudite opinions on the affect this change will have. In other words, they’ll be so much written on a major topic, you can afford to cover something else. And get noticed.

Make it Attractive
It’s human nature to become bored easily on the dynamic web where things change faster than you can say “keyword stuffing.” So, paragraph after paragraph of text is going to bore even the most dedicated reader or subscriber.

Add some relevant images. Charts and graphs. Eye candy to maintain the reader’s interest. Skip the endless pages of “just” text.

Perform Regular Blog Analysis
Good tracking software will tell you which posts are popular with visitors and which get passed over for whatever reason. Use these metrics to more specifically target the wants and needs of your readers.

The things you want to measure regularly are: number of page views, time spent on site and the source (link) and destination of the reader after leaving your site (do they go to the site or bounce off to another site?). Regular metrics analysis will provide concrete data to demonstrate whether your site blog is performing to expectations.

Write Like You Talk
This is the best advice any blogger or writer will ever receive. Something happens to people when they sit down at the keyboard to write the next blog entry. They become walking thesauruses. They use big, impressive words and long, run-on sentences. Don’t. That kind of writing is great for a master’s dissertation but it does nothing for the readers (except bore them).

Blogs as Linkbait
Some posts are better than others. Market your best posts only. Posts can be tagged and show up on human-based search engines like digg.com and del.icio.us – sites where readers determine how good you are. Don’t oversell every blog entry you write. You’ll start to pickup negative user feedback when readers have seen your post everywhere, or it’s a so-so post.

Blogs make great linkbait (a reason for another site to link to your site) but your efforts to “sell” your content to expand your presence may blow up and backfire with readers and search engines alike.

Use High Traffic Days to Build Your Reputation
When one of your posts is front page news on digg.com or reddit.com, you’re going to see a lot more blog traffic that day sniffing out this high quality linkbait. Use these days, when your traffic jumps 100%, to build on a good thing. Immediately follow up with top-of-the-line posts – as good as the one tagged by enough readers to make it to the top of user-driven search engines. This will establish you as an authority, and your site one worth visiting for the latest.

Don’t Hide Your Blog
Your blog is designed to create stickiness and/or to provide something to subscribers. So, make it easy for users to access your blog. All tags, of course, link to the blog. But, do you have a big, well-labeled blog link on your home page? Is there a BLOG button on the navigation bar? If not, there should be. Make it easy to find your blog and more visitors will find (and read and return because of) it.

Don’t Host Your Blog on a Separate Domain
Some site owners do this to keep things simple. Business side. Blog side. But they’re missing a critical benefit of maintaining a blog (in a subfolder) as a sub-section of their primary domain. Blogs attract all kinds of good stuff. Links, improved PR, “buzz,” new readers and customers (showing up as more traffic in SERPs) offers to contribute to other blogs and so on. Maintain your blog as a section of your main domain to get all of the benefits that come with maintaining a blog.

Start the Conversation
Blogs should generate discussion among readers. They should provoke readers to add a comment – good, bad or indifferent. But what if your posts don’t elicit any response? What should you do?

Shill. Fake it. Salt your posts with a comment or two. Many readers are shy about leaving the first post but will happily jump in once they see what other posters have said. There’s nothing deceitful in starting a conversation – one that grows your site’s popularity.

An up-to-date blog – one that contains useful information for a particular market segment – is a great way to build site traffic and to maintain customer or subscriber interest. But, there are certainly things that every blogger can do to increase readership and squeeze out a few other benefits from blog building. After all, it’s time consuming. You might as well get all you can out of the time you invest.

Drop me a line or give me a call.

Webwordslinger.com

HOW TO IGNITE A SUCCESSFUL E-MAIL BLAST

E-Mail Campaigns:

Don’t End Up in the Trash Bin

E-mail marketing is a fundamental element of online promotion. E-mails can be personalized, targeted, automated and even gussied up with template-based backgrounds and animated images. All good.

So, why do so many e-mail campaigns fall short of expectations? And, what can you do to enhance the success of your next e-mail series?

Manage Your Subscribers

Not all subscribers are alike. Some are opt-ins who look forward to your updates on new product listings and sale items. Some are previous customers. And some of those e-mail addresses ended up in your database simply because a visitor clicked on an in-bound link but bounced off the landing page. “Ooops, I clicked the wrong button.”

Managing this list of potential e-mail newsletter recipients is critical to the success of your next e-mail campaign. Most recipients are going to relegate your e-mail to the trash bin if you don’t target everything from the subject line text to the call to action.

Create Different Subject Line Text for Different Groups of Recipients

Create subject lines for each category of recipient. Opt-ins want to read what’s new so the prominent positioning of your company name is often enough to entice these eager readers. Sample subject lines:

BugsnSuch.com: Here’s this month’s issue of Ant Farming for Profit

BugsnSuch.com: The Latest News for Beekeepers

BugsnSuch.com: Huge Tarantula Sale Just for You

These’ll work for opt-ins who are into bugs ‘n’ such dot com.

Previous customers know you and, if they’ve had a good online buying experience with you, they might take a look to see what’s new. They may not open every e-mail you send but it’s reasonable to expect them to open some – if they aren’t buried under an avalanche of promos from your e-business.

If these previous buyers didn’t have a good buying experience (it happens, though you should make sure it doesn’t happen often) there’s little you can do to turn around this dissatisfied buying segment. There are simply too many other options to your site.

Sample subject lines for previous buyers:

bugsnsuch.com The arachnids miss you!

bugsnsuch.com Special sale for our best customers

bugsnsuch.com FREE gift for our valued regulars

Notice that the company name still takes the most prominent position in the subject line box. However, the following text is a little more specific – targeted at individuals in your database who have made a previous purchase.

Finally, for those recipients for whom you have little or no information, use the subject line to introduce your company.

bugsnsuch.com We want you to go buggy with us

bugsnsuch.com Make easy money as a worm farmer

bugsnsuch.com 50% off your first bug purchase

The Main Body

Keep it short and friendly, regardless of which group the recipient falls into. Even your most ardent customers aren’t going to sift through pages of hype so go with a soft sell approach and, again, keep it short.

Avoid long paragraphs. Break up the text into little, bite-sized pieces of actual information – a new product description, the terms of the special sale or an explanation of how to use the special sale code to save 50% at the checkout. Short and sweet. Don’t assume the reader has a long attention span. Most of us don’t these days.

Be sure to include a link. If it’s a general e-mail to unknown recipients, the link should be to your site’s home page. If the e-mail is introducing a new product, the link should take the reader to that product’s landing page within your site. In other words, don’t make the reader search for what you’re selling. You want them on the right page with a single click. That’s how you boost conversion ratios.

Provide contact information including a telephone number and a street address, as well. Potential buyers take comfort in knowing that you’re a real business and that they can call in case of problems.

Finally, close with a friendly call to action. Now, most site owners (and a lot of copywriters) think of a call to action as a strong sales pitch. It shouldn’t be. A good call to action should advise the reader what s/he should do next – to take action. Should they click, call, save the e-mail – what should they do right now? What is the expected action they should take? Answer those questions in your call to action and you’ll see a much better return on your e-mail efforts.

Track Results

Using basic site metrics analysis software and e-mail coding, you’ll be able to tell which e-mail pulls the best with the different categories of recipients. Obviously if one e-mail pulls 8% (that’s pretty good) keep using it rather than the text that only pulled 0.5% (not so good).

Build on a good thing. Once you’ve got an example of an e-mail that pulls well, analyze it from the customers point of view. What appealed to the reader to make that call or click that link? Low prices? Quality goods? What, in the e-mail, brands you as a worthwhile source of products and information?

Refine the strong points through revision. A single, product description may result in a major jump in sales. Okay, use that information to refine your e-mail and site text following that model of success.

Be Judicious

No one wants to see junk e-mail day after day, even from a preferred retailer. We see marketing in the newspaper, on TV and billboards, we hear the same jingle over and over on the radio – we’ve become numb to marketing. Thank goodness for the TV remote. Channel surfing has become an art thanks to promotion overload. How many times can you sit through the same commercial?

Undertake every e-mail campaign with care. Don’t be a pest. Send personalized, follow up e-mails to respondents, not the automated, “do not reply” type of e-mail. You want the reader to reply again and again.

However, also note that respondents are more approachable and therefore more open to frequent e-mails. Non-respondents may just become annoyed at the “all-too-frequent” appearance of your company name in their inboxes, so these prospective buyers should receive e-mails less frequently than those who do respond to previous e-mails.

It’s a matter of degree. Even too much of a good thing is still too much. E-mail campaigns can be extremely effective when targeted at different categories of buyers, and the e-mail itself actually has something to offer in the way of information or purchase savings.

If you keep sending them hard-sell hype, they’re going to keep sending your e-mails to the trash bin. Remember, it only takes a click to read your e-mail. It also only takes a click to send it to the trash bin.

Still clueless? Call me. We'll talk.

Webwordslinger.com

Site Promotion on the Cheap

Promo on the Cheap:

Got No Dough? No Problem!

The idea is sound. You built the website yourself on a razor thin budget and you’ve launched your on-line dream. Now all you have to do is wait for that traffic to start coming by and you can quit the 9-to-5 world forever, right? Oh, so wrong!

The only people who even know you’re on the world wide web are the people you told. You can wait for the next millennium before somebody stumbles onto your site – and that would be a total fluke!

In order to achieve success on the web (turn a profit or get your message out to more people) you must promote the site. Yeah, but doesn’t that cost a lot of money? It can, if you go to one of those high-priced boutique ad agencies, or even if you pay some on-line company $500 to distribute a grand opening e-mail announcement to six million people. But promoting your site doesn’t have to cost big bucks. And the bucks you do spend can be put to work delivering 100% productivity.

There are so many things you can do (must do) to promote your site and actually become a viable entity. Cheap. Real cheap.

Register With Search Engines

This one is a no-brainer, but how you register with the big three – Google, Yahoo and Inktomi – will make a significant difference in how quickly your site appears anywhere in search engine results. You can also ensure that your site is correctly and completely indexed. Not all sites are and their owners are trying to figure out what went wrong.

The best way to submit your site to a search engine is by sending the search engine a map of your site, aka, a site map. First, by sending the site map, you’re inviting the search engine to crawl the site. It may take a day or two but that’s better than the months and even years it takes for some sites to be crawled. One of the reasons for this is that spiders follow links. That’s how they find a site and index it.

When you provide the site map, you’ve given spiders complete directions to all of the site pages. This ensures that the site is completely indexed. Just because a spider crawled by doesn’t mean that it indexed all of the pages on your site – that is unless you provide a site map that shows all links to all pages.

A word of caution, here. Search engines (at least the big three) each want site map submissions in different formats. No surprise. But also, no worries. You can purchase site map generator software for less than $100 that will create maps of your site based on the quirks of each search engine. If you’re serious about promoting your e-biz, site map generators are worth the price – especially if your site changes often. Most sites do.

Submit Your Site to Directories

Directories are free and that’s always a good thing.

Directories like the Open Directory Project, the Yahoo Directory, Incrawler and others can drive a lot of traffic to your site. Directories review sites for quality issues, and if a site meets the directory’s criteria, it’s included and categorized by the topics of the site content.

Visit the Open Directory Project to see a great example of how these tools help connect buyers and sellers. You’ll find it at dmoz.org. Volunteer editors keep the site current and provide some quality assurance. The biggest problem, from the site owner’s POV, is that it can take weeks before an editor gets to your submission. However, you can get ready for that visit.

First, make sure the site is complete, all pages in place. An “Under Construction” page will exclude you. So will poor navigation, poor content architecture or little value to the typical directory user. Quality counts when you’re after a directory listing. And you should be.

Directories will point qualified prospects in your site’s direction. But it will also increase your link popularity – how many links connect to your site. This is one of the key factors in determining a site’s page rank. More quality inbound links from sites like the Open Directory Project or Yahoo is a real shot in the arm for an online start-up. Just be patient. It takes longer to get listed in a directory than it does to get indexed by a search engine. But it’s definitely worth the wait.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

OK, not free, but also not too expensive if you use PPC effectively. Google AdWords is probably the best known of these programs but links off of other sites are also PPC.

There are a couple of nice things about PPC programs. There’s no long contract so if one program isn’t working you can try another. There are plenty from which to choose. Another nice thing about PPC adverts is that you can set a spending limit and once that limit has been reached the link disappears. You know, going in, what this thing is going to cost you.

Finally, since you only pay for actual clicks, 100% of the cost of your PPC ad delivers potential buyers to your site – motivated, qualified buyers who took the time to click on your link.

Start slowly. Test, rework and test again. Welcome to the world of e-commerce.

Exchange Links

Remember search engines like sites that are well “connected,” i.e. lots of links to other sites. There are web sites with lists of site owners seeking links exchanges. Also, you can often find link-seeking contacts on the forums or bulletin boards of webmaster sites. Exchanging links may improve traffic and give you a bump up in page rank (PR) but there are a few cautions.

First, avoid linking to sites that have a lower PR than your site. Of course, if you’re just starting out, you’ve got no page rank so any link helps. Well, almost any.

Search engines want to deliver quality, relevant results to their users. That’s what they do. And part of the relevance of any site is determined by its links. The links on your site should be related to the subject or products you sell. If you sell life insurance online, links to financial investment sites would be helpful in furthering a user’s search. A link to a clothing outlet store wouldn’t be useful. Make sure your links are related to the subjects of your site and that your inbound links are on sites related to yours.

Buy Links

You can, you know. There are sites that auction links. This enables sites with low PRs to link to sites with higher PRs, which improves the PR of the lower-ranked site. It can also drive traffic if the connection between the two sites is in sync.

Run a Google search for “link auctions” and buy your way to success. Just proceed slowly and make sure the link to your site remains active. Also, make sure it’s cost effective. Banner links, on average, have a click through rate of about 1%, which means for every 100 pairs of eyeballs that see your banner, one will actually click through to your site. Think about your own computer use. When was the last time you clicked on a banner?

The key objective is to get noticed by search engines and buyers – not an easy thing to do in the world’s busiest marketplace. If you’re just starting out, organize a plan that uses some or all of the above suggestions. It’s a time consuming process but one that pays dividends big time.

Need some heap with off site marketing. Call me. We'll get traffic to your site in just days,

Lator, gator,

Webwordslinger.com

Oooo, LET'S GET STICKY!

Always keep your site door open for repeat traffic and let's get sticky, eh?

Add Some Glue to Your Site:

Let’s Get Sticky

The world wide web is a jungle – especially for the start-up struggling toward profitability. With all of that heavy hitting competition, webmasters (you) have to spend increasing amounts of time marketing their sites and less time developing site improvements and adding new content.

The key to long-term success is to create site stickiness – a reason for visitors to return to your on-line shop over and over. Sticky content, by definition, provides benefit to the reader. It might be information, humor, the latest (very latest) news within a market sector, tips and suggestions – any information that keeps visitors returning and even book marking your site.

Sticky content could be as simple as the horoscope of the day, a Sudoku puzzle or even just a crossword puzzle. The objective? Less time on content development and more time on marketing while, simultaneously increasing site traffic. Think it can’t be done? Well here’s how to do it on bottle return money.

Post Your Publishing Schedule

If your readership liked article #1, chances are they’ll stop back to read article #2 – especially if you provide the reader with a publication schedule. If visitors know that every Thursday you’re going to post your latest stock prognostications, then all of those self-directed investors just might stop by every Thursday and read this week’s stock picks over their morning lattes.

Don’t push yourself to the limits, promising green content every day. You’ll get tired of cranking out the words and, after a few weeks, the content won’t be as fresh as you and your one-time readers thought it was.

Syndicated Content

Want free, relevant content? Visit sites like goarticles.com and similar sites. Here you’ll find well written (and not so well written) articles on everything from keeping pet turtles to how to make money in currency exchange.

It’s content that might appear on a dozen sites at the same time, so it won’t do much as far as search engines and page rank (too much duplicate content), but it’ll be green to your visitors and that’s what keeps them coming back daily or weekly.

A Newsletter

Hey what’s happening in the heavy equipment industry? Well, if you’re an authority you can probably put together a one or two page newsletter once a week on the topic of your site. These newsletters would then be sent to visitors who have signed up for the information (they’re called opt ins because they opted to receive your newsletter). In your newsletter, you can cover your industry, hobby, avocation or whatever your site’s subject is.

The Site Blog

A few years ago, the blog was almost unheard of. Today, even small sites can have blogs. The better web hosts provide the blog software gratis, so all you have to do is upload posts. The programming is super-easy.

You can control blog content and allow visitors to leave comments. Controversy sells so if you can work in the latest controversy within your sphere, all the better.

The Forum

It looks like a blog but it’s open for posts from anyone – including the nut jobs who populate the W3 landscape. In forums, people can deliver their screeds, rant and rave about this or that and, ultimately, create dialogue between site visitors. Your site becomes a source of opinions, ideas, warnings and other useful information to keep your site sticky like super-glue.

Site Convenience

RSS feeds (really simple syndication) allows you to pick up content relevant to your visitors from many different sites and deliver all of it in one place for sheer convenience. So, the visitor who once had to stop by five or six sites for the latest goings-on in Washington, D.C. can now stop by your site for content from all of those sites and more, saving visitors time. Plus, the content is updated regularly.

To gather RSS feeds you need an aggregator (collector). It’s free. Then, all you do is visit sites offering RSS feeds, click on the ones you think readers will enjoy and present them on your site. And once a feed is in place, you’ll receive regular updates that will keep visitors coming back.

Fun and Games

You can find almost any kind of fun and games free for delivery to your site daily. For example, funtrivia.com will set up a 10-question trivia game on your site every day. It will also provide daily scores, weekly and monthly winners. And it’s free. Once you get a few competitors going head to head, they’ll be back for more.

One of our favorite sites is freesticky.com which offers dozens of features to keep them coming back. A partial list, in no particular order: cartoons and jokes of the day, competitions, games (change them every day), horoscopes and astrology for star gazers, lottery results, maps, tickers, On This Day In History, The Daily Phrazzle®, free articles, viral marketing content, guides and directories and more. Much more. All free and all very sticky.

All you have to do is Google “free site content” and you’ll find hundreds of sites offering games, industry analysis, the latest from the Hong Kong stock market – whatever your readers will find interesting.

The Point of Getting Sticky

First, it increases site traffic – something search engines like to see. Second, you’ll get a lot of repeat traffic – something else search engines like. Your site will receive more page views per visitor, which means they stick around longer.

However, the most important reason to add a little glue to your site is because repeat visitors eventually buy something. Oh, they may not buy on their first, second or third stop, but if they keep coming back each day, eventually they buy. There’s an old Madison Avenue adage that says ‘A buyer most hear or see a product six times before it even registers’ and that was back in the day when TV was the main form of access to information.

Get sticky. Save time in content creation. Devote more time to marketing your site. In time, if your site becomes really sticky, you may be lucky enough to start a site community – friends who use your forum or message board to talk to friends.

If you’re working on a shoestring content budget, there are still plenty of options to create and deliver sticky content to your regulars. And in short order, those regulars will become buyers.

You’ll also see a little boost in your search engine rankings as an extra kicker. So start adding some glue to your site and watch that site traffic grow like never before.

That’s what site stickiness is all about.

Want to keep visitors coming back time after time? Youneed to get sticky stuff for your site. Drop me a line and let's get sticky.

Later,

Webwordslinger

On-Line Guerrila Marketing: Use The Resources of Others For Your Benefit.

SAVE YOUR MONEY.

GUERRILLA MARKETING IS FREE.

IT EXPLOITS THE RESOURCES OF OTHERS.

SO RELAX, ALREADY.

Guerilla Marketing:

Forget Viral. Go Guerilla.

If you read through webmaster blogs the big thing is still viral marketing. Yeah, it’s okay. It’s free. But viral, online marketing assumes a passive posture when it comes to long-term promotion. You put it out there (whatever it is that you hope goes viral) and you pray for good timing and a whole lot of luck.

Example: A few weeks back the national TV networks all picked up this YouTube upload of a baby in a high-chair laughing hysterically at daddy’s funny antics. It was a very funny clip, no doubt. But out of curiosity, I went to YouTube, searched “laughing babies” and got about 200 hits using site search. Clicking on just a few of these uploads (you can only take so much of laughing babies even if they are as cute as the dickens) I saw plenty of good stuff. Funny stuff. Every bit as funny as the clip that caught the attention of a news editor at a 24-hour cable news network.

So, why does one clip go viral while those other 200 laughing baby clips didn’t? Lots of luck and good timing. Slow news day, pop onto YouTube, find a clip of funny baby (plenty to choose from), show on evening news. Wait for congratulations. Easy, right?

Well, it is easy to upload a webcast to YouTube, and you might actually get some organic viewers. The operative word, here, is might. Viral marketing is effective. It’s also annoying, sometimes illegal, mis-placed, offensive, off-putting and a bunch of other negatives that won’t drive traffic the way you anticipate. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That’s the problem with viral marketing. It relies much too heavily on luck and timing. That means you launch campaign after campaign of viral promotion with iffy results. Sometimes it pays off. Other times, it actually hurts your search engine ranking and annoys potential site visitors.

So, instead of casting your site’s fate to the wind, employ guerilla marketing tactics. These are pro-active, extremely focused and much more controllable by you, the guerilla marketer.

Viral Versus Guerilla Marketing

Indeed, they are similar, sharing two important characteristics.

Viral marketing is based on to critical premises:

1. It’s free.

2. It employs the resources of others for your gain. Legally!

The characteristics of guerilla marketing:

1. It’s also free (to you).

2. It also employs the resources of others.

3. It puts you in control. It’s pro-active promotion, unlike viral.

Why is this important? Well, let’s say you launch a viral marketing campaign and you post a bunch of your well-written articles on sites that syndicate content to other site owners. Syndication sites include helium.com, ezine.com and a bunch of other free content sites.

Once you’ve uploaded your article, design, program, artwork or other bait, you give up control over where those elements end up. Your scholarly article criticizing the United Nations could end up on a skinhead site. Great, now your name and your ideas are tainted by your “association” with hate groups. Ugh.

Your rights free photos can end up on competitor sites, or a site in a different language that you can’t even read. The fact is, when you employ these viral tactics, you may get the results you anticipated – visitors that have identified your authority and want to learn more about your good or services. Or, you may have a mess on your hands that’ll take a bunch of work to clean up.

Online Guerilla Marketing

Control over your creation. That’s what you want, even if you’re giving it away.

Place Free Content Downloads on Your Site

So, let’s say you have 50 articles uploaded to helium.com. And your pieces are spread all over the web on lots of different sites, each providing a backlink to your site. Okay, but what if you put those 50 articles on your site in an archives format and allowed rights-free use of the content.

Add “free content” to your keyword phrase list. This accomplishes a few things. First, you decide who can use your content and who can’t. Second, it drives traffic to your site, not to helium’s site. And third, using a content management system, you can track where your creations appear.

The content has to be good to be picked up so if you can’t string words together to form cogent sentences, hire a “ghost” at elance.com, guru.com and other outsourcing sites. You can buy words by the pound – and, because it was ghosted, you own it. It’s yours just as though you wrote it.

When you do offer up a free whatever, make the terms clear. You can download this article and display it on your site. In return, you must provide a link back to my site. By the way, it’s a good idea to track whether links are, indeed, provided. Some less-than-scrupulous site owners may claim the text as their own, defeating the whole purpose of guerilla marketing.

Blog Like a Crazy Person

Okay, if your blog posts sound like they were written by someone who howls at the full moon, you’ll probably get yourself banned. However, if you blog other sites everyday, pretty soon you’ll have lots of non-reciprocal back links.

First, find the top blogs within your area of expertise. For example, if you’re a site owner, Google “webmaster blogs” to see what pops up. If you’re an aerospace consultant, Google “aerospace blogs.” You get the idea.

Write your blog post or response in Word so you can check for spelling and other typos. These things still count as testaments to the quality of the writing. Be provocative. Controversy sells. But be sincere, too. It’s pretty easy to spot a blogger who’s more interested in promoting his or her agenda than providing a forum for public discourse.

Blog posts should be longer than 600 words but no longer than 1200 words. Embed text links to your site in each piece. These embedded links rank higher with search engine bots than the link in the “About the Author” block at the end of a piece.

You should set a goal of three or five or 10 posts a week if you can keep up the pace. And spread around that wisdom and experience. Use different blogs but don’t use the same content on different blogs. Spiders don’t value re-used content anywhere near as much as green, original content.

Become a Yahoo Authority

Yahoo Answers enables you to establish creds and get your URL plastered all over Yahoo. Here’s how it works:

You create a Yahoo account. (Have to.) Sign up as an authority. You don’t have to name a specific field. Just create a screen name, start looking for questions to which you have helpful answers and be sure to end each answer with contact information – especially your site’s URL.

You receive two points for each question you answer, working your way up the ladder from a level 1 authority to a level 7 authority, all the time helping others, helping build credibility for yourself and driving traffic using the resources of Yahoo to spread the word.

Yahoo users vote for “best answers” to questions. If your answer is selected best, you receive 10 points and you’ll move up that authority ladder pretty fast.

Try to post at least two good answers to open questions a day. Questions identified as resolved may still be read but they won’t move you up the ladder regardless of how cogent your answer.

Provide HTML Code for Your Webcasts

YouTube does this. If you look at a YouTube upload, you’ll see the HTML string for the video clip. Just copy and paste the code to embed the video on a site. However, don’t follow YouTube’s example.

Remember, the important aspect of guerilla marketing is control. You want to maintain control over where your content appears so let webmasters know that your webcasts can be embedded on other sites. They just have to drop you a line.

Hit and Run. Don’t Stop Ever.

On battlegrounds, guerilla fighters make short, powerful attacks and then disappear into the jungles or mix in with the rest of the population. That’s what you’re after. Short bursts of promotion repeated over and over.

Guerillas don’t face their enemies on the battle field. Strategic placement. The right force for the task. Control, hit, retreat, reload, hit. Over and over.

So take control of your content to insure its best use for your promotional efforts. And remember, guerilla marketing is short and sweet. A 10-part auto-responder is NOT short and sweet and by the time that 10^th piece of hype lands in the inbox, most users are apoplexic. Enough already.

But a one page, surgical strike aimed at previous buyers who already know your solid reputation is good, guerilla marketing.

The final key to the success of a guerilla marketing campaign is persistence. It’s the repetition that wins the day. It’s the use of other people’s resources – their blogs and websites – that makes it work. And, the fact that going guerilla doesn’t cost anything but your time, you have to admit it’s cost effective.

Using this hit and run strategy will provide the means to take on much bigger competitors and enable you to stay in the fray and even flourish thanks to the use of free, controllable resources.

Go guerilla.

I know, marketing dollars are tight, but if you don't market your site, how's anyone going to find you? Guerrilla marketing has been around for millenia. It worked 4,000 years ago and it works even better today. I'll show you how.

Webwordslinger.com

GUERRILLA MARKETING USES ASSETS OF OTHERS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

IF IT'S FREE, USE IT TO PROMOTE YOUR SITE. TWEET, TWEET.

Guerilla Marketing:

Forget Viral. Go Guerilla.

If you read through webmaster blogs the big thing is still viral marketing. Yeah, it’s okay. It’s free. But viral, online marketing assumes a passive posture when it comes to long-term promotion. You put it out there (whatever it is that you hope goes viral) and you pray for good timing and a whole lot of luck.

Example: A few weeks back the national TV networks all picked up this YouTube upload of a baby in a high-chair laughing hysterically at daddy’s funny antics. It was a very funny clip, no doubt. But out of curiosity, I went to YouTube, searched “laughing babies” and got about 200 hits using site search. Clicking on just a few of these uploads (you can only take so much of laughing babies even if they are as cute as the dickens) I saw plenty of good stuff. Funny stuff. Every bit as funny as the clip that caught the attention of a news editor at a 24-hour cable news network.

So, why does one clip go viral while those other 200 laughing baby clips didn’t? Lots of luck and good timing. Slow news day, pop onto YouTube, find a clip of funny baby (plenty to choose from), show on evening news. Wait for congratulations. Easy, right?

Well, it is easy to upload a webcast to YouTube, and you might actually get some organic viewers. The operative word, here, is might. Viral marketing is effective. It’s also annoying, sometimes illegal, mis-placed, offensive, off-putting and a bunch of other negatives that won’t drive traffic the way you anticipate. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That’s the problem with viral marketing. It relies much too heavily on luck and timing. That means you launch campaign after campaign of viral promotion with iffy results. Sometimes it pays off. Other times, it actually hurts your search engine ranking and annoys potential site visitors.

So, instead of casting your site’s fate to the wind, employ guerilla marketing tactics. These are pro-active, extremely focused and much more controllable by you, the guerilla marketer.

Viral Versus Guerilla Marketing

Indeed, they are similar, sharing two important characteristics.

Viral marketing is based on to critical premises:

1. It’s free.

2. It employs the resources of others for your gain. Legally!

The characteristics of guerilla marketing:

1. It’s also free (to you).

2. It also employs the resources of others.

3. It puts you in control. It’s pro-active promotion, unlike viral.

Why is this important? Well, let’s say you launch a viral marketing campaign and you post a bunch of your well-written articles on sites that syndicate content to other site owners. Syndication sites include helium.com, ezine.com and a bunch of other free content sites.

Once you’ve uploaded your article, design, program, artwork or other bait, you give up control over where those elements end up. Your scholarly article criticizing the United Nations could end up on a skinhead site. Great, now your name and your ideas are tainted by your “association” with hate groups. Ugh.

Your rights free photos can end up on competitor sites, or a site in a different language that you can’t even read. The fact is, when you employ these viral tactics, you may get the results you anticipated – visitors that have identified your authority and want to learn more about your good or services. Or, you may have a mess on your hands that’ll take a bunch of work to clean up.

Online Guerilla Marketing

Control over your creation. That’s what you want, even if you’re giving it away.

Place Free Content Downloads on Your Site

So, let’s say you have 50 articles uploaded to helium.com. And your pieces are spread all over the web on lots of different sites, each providing a backlink to your site. Okay, but what if you put those 50 articles on your site in an archives format and allowed rights-free use of the content.

Add “free content” to your keyword phrase list. This accomplishes a few things. First, you decide who can use your content and who can’t. Second, it drives traffic to your site, not to helium’s site. And third, using a content management system, you can track where your creations appear.

The content has to be good to be picked up so if you can’t string words together to form cogent sentences, hire a “ghost” at elance.com, guru.com and other outsourcing sites. You can buy words by the pound – and, because it was ghosted, you own it. It’s yours just as though you wrote it.

When you do offer up a free whatever, make the terms clear. You can download this article and display it on your site. In return, you must provide a link back to my site. By the way, it’s a good idea to track whether links are, indeed, provided. Some less-than-scrupulous site owners may claim the text as their own, defeating the whole purpose of guerilla marketing.

Blog Like a Crazy Person

Okay, if your blog posts sound like they were written by someone who howls at the full moon, you’ll probably get yourself banned. However, if you blog other sites everyday, pretty soon you’ll have lots of non-reciprocal back links.

First, find the top blogs within your area of expertise. For example, if you’re a site owner, Google “webmaster blogs” to see what pops up. If you’re an aerospace consultant, Google “aerospace blogs.” You get the idea.

Write your blog post or response in Word so you can check for spelling and other typos. These things still count as testaments to the quality of the writing. Be provocative. Controversy sells. But be sincere, too. It’s pretty easy to spot a blogger who’s more interested in promoting his or her agenda than providing a forum for public discourse.

Blog posts should be longer than 600 words but no longer than 1200 words. Embed text links to your site in each piece. These embedded links rank higher with search engine bots than the link in the “About the Author” block at the end of a piece.

You should set a goal of three or five or 10 posts a week if you can keep up the pace. And spread around that wisdom and experience. Use different blogs but don’t use the same content on different blogs. Spiders don’t value re-used content anywhere near as much as green, original content.

Become a Yahoo Authority

Yahoo Answers enables you to establish creds and get your URL plastered all over Yahoo. Here’s how it works:

You create a Yahoo account. (Have to.) Sign up as an authority. You don’t have to name a specific field. Just create a screen name, start looking for questions to which you have helpful answers and be sure to end each answer with contact information – especially your site’s URL.

You receive two points for each question you answer, working your way up the ladder from a level 1 authority to a level 7 authority, all the time helping others, helping build credibility for yourself and driving traffic using the resources of Yahoo to spread the word.

Yahoo users vote for “best answers” to questions. If your answer is selected best, you receive 10 points and you’ll move up that authority ladder pretty fast.

Try to post at least two good answers to open questions a day. Questions identified as resolved may still be read but they won’t move you up the ladder regardless of how cogent your answer.

Provide HTML Code for Your Webcasts

YouTube does this. If you look at a YouTube upload, you’ll see the HTML string for the video clip. Just copy and paste the code to embed the video on a site. However, don’t follow YouTube’s example.

Remember, the important aspect of guerilla marketing is control. You want to maintain control over where your content appears so let webmasters know that your webcasts can be embedded on other sites. They just have to drop you a line.

Hit and Run. Don’t Stop Ever.

On battlegrounds, guerilla fighters make short, powerful attacks and then disappear into the jungles or mix in with the rest of the population. That’s what you’re after. Short bursts of promotion repeated over and over.

Guerillas don’t face their enemies on the battle field. Strategic placement. The right force for the task. Control, hit, retreat, reload, hit. Over and over.

So take control of your content to insure its best use for your promotional efforts. And remember, guerilla marketing is short and sweet. A 10-part auto-responder is NOT short and sweet and by the time that 10^th piece of hype lands in the inbox, most users are apoplexic. Enough already.

But a one page, surgical strike aimed at previous buyers who already know your solid reputation is good, guerilla marketing.

The final key to the success of a guerilla marketing campaign is persistence. It’s the repetition that wins the day. It’s the use of other people’s resources – their blogs and websites – that makes it work. And, the fact that going guerilla doesn’t cost anything but your time, you have to admit it’s cost effective.

Using this hit and run strategy will provide the means to take on much bigger competitors and enable you to stay in the fray and even flourish thanks to the use of free, controllable resources.

Go guerilla.

Working with a small marketing budget. Learn to do it yourself and save. Drop me a line and let me show you how to use your web-based assets for max impact and even revenue.

Talk soon,

Webwordslinger.com

Seven Tips For Selling To The Rich

Seven Tips to Reach the Rich:

Marketing to the Luxury Consumer

There was a time when the world wide web was NOT the place to sell $100,000 diamonds or fine works of art. It was a place to shop for books, a few music downloads and maybe buy some electronics gear. The luxury consumers, the ones with the resources to buy at Tiffany’s without so much as a second thought, weren’t going to buy their diamond tennis bracelets at higgenbottomsjewelrywarehouse.com where the motto is: “If we don’t say ‘howdy’ your purchase is free.” That type of hometown marketing doesn’t work with those for whom money is no object.

And isn’t that the perfect customer? For all of us?

The Nouveau Nouveau Riche

There’s a new species of luxury buyer. This isn’t old Harvard or Yale money. This is wealth created by the class nerd who developed a software company that he sold for $500 million when he was 25 years old! (Who’s laughing now?) This new demographic is usually a professional, well-educated, two incomes, money in the bank and discretionary income at his or her disposal.

Reaching this market segment requires an understanding of the motives that drive these individuals to purchase – especially to purchase on line. From you.

Prestige and Indulgence

These deep pockets buyers are usually driven by the fashionistas – the media segment that tells us what’s hot (just ask Paris) and what’s not. They’re shopping, not just for a winter coat, but a signature statement – a statement that’s made by wearing designer clothes, for example.

You can buy a warm winter coat at LL Beans for less than $100 but where’s the prestige in that? Instead, this market segment looks for the designer label. The coat won’t keep them any warmer but it does exude prestige and indulgence – because of that designer label.

To reach this market segment, brands must be created and presented in a luxurious manner. Brand names count, whether it’s clothes, appliances or automobiles (especially automobiles).

It’s Not About the Money – Most of the Time

Most of us look for sales, squirrel away money in our IRAs and worry whenever the stock market hiccups. Not so with those who enjoy true financial freedom. When you’ve got millions, a market blip isn’t worth fretting over. So, the natural appeal to site owners to emphasize low prices – a natural selling point for the run-of-the-mill consumer (me) – doesn’t carry any weight with the luxury buyer. In fact, it works against the sale.

There’s a promotion concept called ‘velvet rope marketing’ – marketing designed to appeal especially to the well-to-do. We all recognize the turquoise Tiffany’s box and there’s no such thing as an entry level Jaguar. They’re all pricey.

However, today’s luxury, online buyer is just as likely to visit the Target website as the Tiffany site. It makes sense. These buyers may still look for sales on name-brand cookware at Target because cookware doesn’t have as much power to make a strong, personal statement as a $1,000 Gucci hand bag.

So how do you create a site that appeals to this new breed of online buyer? Here are some suggestions.

How To Convert the Luxury Consumer

1. Perception is reality to this demographic. Consider the coat example above. The LL Bean coat is made well and will last forever. However, the perception is that LL Bean sells to the masses, which they do. And I love my Bean parka.

Create the perception of elegance with a well designed home page and stylish product pages. Create a site free of AdWords and affiliate links. That is NOT what velvet rope marketing is about. Instead, think elegance, distinction and pampering.

2. Speak the language of the buyer. In this case, your buyers know fashion, they know prestige and they recognize the importance of making an independent statement. So, despite the fact that many of these buyers will only purchase brand names, they’ll mix and match brands to create their own, unique signature look. So, no men’s suit buyer is going to go 100% Hugo Boss or Ralph Lauren. That would indicate that the buyer is a slave to fashion.

3. So, build a site that let’s the luxury consumer mix and match from different product pages to see how the whole ensemble works. It’s these kinds of useful, upscale features the new, luxury consumer appreciates. It shows you understand them, their needs and drives and your site is designed to accommodate those needs and drives.

4. Offer special services. Buying services, for example, indicate a velvet rope level of customer care. Buyers provide birthdays and other important dates, provide the gift recipient’s profile, likes and dislikes and you take care of the rest. You, or your professional buyer, picks out the item, elegantly gift wraps it and makes sure it’s delivered on time to the right person.

This ‘concierge’ service can extend in other directions. Using a customer’s previous buying history, you can make gift suggestions for certain people for whom the buyer has previously purchased. Subtle but very effective.

5. Provide a toll-free number and make sure your customer service staff is well rehearsed with complete scripts to manage any contingency. Your phone staff should be courteous, alert and – this may hurt a little – they should also be given the training and authority to make decisions.

The upscale customer doesn’t want to hassle while the client care rep gets approval from a supervisor (who may or may not be available at the moment). This affluent buyer wants answers and resolutions to his or her problems. A well-trained and trusted staff can deliver this level of service routinely. (BTW, client care reps should be U.S.-based and available 24/7.)

6. Hit the mark every time. Track orders, ensure prompt shipment, include an easy ‘return kit,’ including pre-printed return label so all the buyer has to do is affix the return label to the shipping box over the mailing label. Simple and that’s what affluent buyers are looking for.

7. Provide lots of site space for product images. Clothes should be photographed using a model so the buyer can see the outfit or piece of clothing on a human, not floating in front of negative space. Don’t skimp on product pictures. They should be properly lit and shot, which means if you don’t know one end of a fill light from another, hire a pro to snap product pictures for upload.

This is a newly-defined demographic – one driven by the media with TV shows about Hollywood glam and glitz and who’s showing in NYC this week.

Know your brands. Know the motivations of this status-conscious buyer, provide the personalized service these buyers expect in the brick-and-mortar shops they frequent (too bad you can’t offer them a latte while they try on the latest from Europe) and create a site that has the look and feel of fashion chic and online professionalism.

Remember, it is absolutely NOT about the money so play down cost and play up style, distinctiveness and the message broadcast to the rest of the world by the products you sell.

I have arrived.

Having touble hitting your demongraphic sweet spot? Drop me a line and let's target your marketing with laser precision.

Webwordslinger.com

Press Releases: Stop The Presses!

Website Press Releases:

The Latest; The Fastest

Google “press release” and the search engine will cough up 1.3 million links. “Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to be used by you.” (Annie Lennox, the Eurhythmics). But it’s true. Some of these online press release syndicators want to use you. They want your money. Others want to be used by you. Again, they want your money.

Online press release distribution is spotty at best. The PR syndicator is only as good as the extent and taxonomy of its database. And you can certainly ask the company rep for examples of recent releases sent out by the company. You can also check to see if these press releases are having the desired viral effect by using Google Analytics to see how the site performed before and after the release to the media.

This isn’t an indictment of press releases as a means of getting the word out. Indeed, well-written, informational PRs do get picked up. But here’s the thing. Newsletters are usually narrowly focused. Just a quick search of the web before writing this revealed that Alcoholics Anonymous just released a press release. So did a custom motorcycle shop that just launched its web site.

The topics of the press releases have limited interest within a very narrow vertical market, in this case recovering alcoholics and Harley lovers (or both, maybe?). So, the company releasing the press release will tell you that it’ll reach 100,000,000 web sites. However, only 150 sites will actually pick up the release and publish it. Now, that’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. That’s 150 links back to your site. You’ll also see a spike in site traffic, though it’s unlikely that they’ll be beating down the digital doors.

In any case, yes press releases should be a part of any web site marketing campaign. However, to make the biggest impact on the reader, and to encourage the reader to perform a desired action, here are some tips to make your press release stand out from the digital deluge of garbage that criss-crosses the web each day. You want to get noticed. Here’s how:

1. Use a banner to catch attention. An all-text PR already looks boring so add some eye bling at the top of the page.

2. Make the press release interactive. Be sure to include embedded links back to key pages of your site. That’s one of the reasons you distribute the press release – to drive traffic, so make it easy as a click to find you.

In fact, provide a couple of links back to your site. Place one at the top of the page so it can be seen easily by readers. Then embed a link back to your site within the corpus of the press release.

3. Provide an RSS and podcast link so that other site owners can pick up the PR as they aggregate the morning news. One click and you’re picked up by RSS aggregators for broadcast over numerous RSS feeds. Cheap marketing. Viral all the way.

4. Use quotes. NOT testimonials. We’ve talked plenty in this blog about the cheesiness of fake testimonials. Testimonials have lost whatever little credibility they had long before the creation of the W3. Testimonials have been around since you received your last copy of Look. (It was a magazine, kids.)

Quotes, on the other hand, have attribution. “Scariest book I read all year” – Stephan King, Award Winning Author. Now that has clout. If the King of the horror book genre thinks it’s scary, it must be pretty scary.

So, note the difference. Get quotes from credible sources willing to lend their names to your projects, your services or products. “ProGrow is the best protein shake I ever tasted.” Chuck Norris, movie star. That’s going to move some of the protein powder you’ve got stored in the garage.

5. Allow readers to print out your press release by offering a printer friendly version. Make the file available in Word doc and Adobe pdf files. The doc will eliminate non-essential images (you decide) while the pdf version is a snapshot of your newsletter, suitable for framing, or at least posting on the office bulletin board.

6. Enable readers to leave comments. This converts (somewhat) your press release into a blog post. A simple cut and paste lets the blogmaster post your PR and allows others to comment on your opinions or other content.

The whole point is to have the release read by as many people in as many different formats as possible – from directly through a browser on the computer monitor to a print out on the refrigerator of a million homes. The more accessible the press release, the more it will be accessed and USED.

7. Let yourself get pinged. Social book marking sites like digg.com, reddit.com, stumbleupon.com and other user-reviewer sites can take a ho-hum press release and quickly turn it into a web phenomenon. Go to www.digg.com and take a look at the number of pings (viewer or reader approvals) the topmost articles receive. It’s not unusual for an article to get pinged hundreds, thousands of times.

Readers visit digg and other social book marking sites to find the best (or at least most read) content on a variety of topics. To be “pingable,” you need iconic links back to the book marking site. Then, with a click, a reader can digg your press release, encouraging others to take a peek.

8. Add a tag cloud to your press release. A tag cloud reveals how readers describe your article in terms of content. A press release from mainframe maker IBM might contain the following in its tag cloud: mainframe, IBM, American business, business solutions, mainframe, mainframe software….and so on.

A tag cloud performs a couple of important functions. First, it helps you refine your keyword list by getting direct marketing data from PR readers. Second, it provides links to other content, some of which may be contained in your site’s article archives, driving more traffic.

This also introduces you to the latest terms, buzz words, jargon and other ephemeral data that you can employ until the next buzz word starts making the rounds.

9. Provide complete contact information at both the beginning and end of the release including: contact name and title, telephone, email address, website address, physical address, Skype user name and any other useful information that enables web reporters quick access to quick answers.

Often, a press release won’t run as a press release. It may be rewritten by a web reporter (perfectly legal) and run as an article or blog post somewhere. If you provide complete contact information for these web reporters, you stand a much better chance of still getting a mention or even an embedded text link so keep in touch.

10. Indicate the release date of the press release. It’s not uncommon for press releases to reach a webmaster’s desk several weeks before the anticipated release date. This gives site owners a heads-up to save some space for this new content to be released two weeks hence.

There are other things you can do. Add pictures throughout, even though many people won’t be able to see them with their browsers set the way they are. Those pictures will show up as a pdf download, that’s for sure.

Edit the content so it doesn’t sound like a sell piece. Create an informational press release that just happens to mention your web site or company name six times.

Get the darn thing proofread. Ask your spouse, your kid, your coworker or hire a professional proofreader. Nothing says a lack of quality control than a press release loaded with typos and poor grammar.

As you might imagine, the list goes on but these are the key points to get maximum return for the cost of distributing the piece.

One final suggestion. Be sure to add a couple of “test” sites to the syndicator’s database to make sure you actually receive your own newsletter. Any company can say “Reach 1,000,000 readers in 24 hours” but can they prove it?

No. And that’s why you have to be very careful if you plan to shell out a few thousand to a press release syndicator that makes promises it can’t keep.

Life is hard enough for the start-up or small site owner without a bunch of grey-hats providing sub-par services for lots of money, so ask questions. If your own database is large enough, self-syndicate. This way you know who’s getting the release.

Then, build a press release with eye appeal, quality information, multiple formats and links back to your site.

That’s a press release that’s going to do what it’s supposed to. Draw attention to you, your products and your website.

Hey, if you don't know a good press release from pressed ham, drop me a line. Don't waste your money flaring content spam. Quality counts, especially in press releases, so get picked up. It ain't rocket science.

Webwordslinger.com