I was pricing a website the other day and actually it was a pretty in depth website, so it wasn’t really something we could give a fixed rate out on due to the complexities well when I was searching for a few things to get a few ideas on and to get more insight on this site I ran across Marketing Proofs which I have heard of it several times before I just never really paid much attention to it.

Well as I started to browse through there I was like wow this has some valuable information which granted not every one on there knows what there talking about (hopefully no one takes that personal if there reading this). I did notice though they had some very helpful articles written that has to due a lot with internet marketing, branding, blogging, and etc.

For example take a look at the following below on what exactly this site covers and how it can be educational.

1. Marketing Resources: This part of the website has a lot of articles to offer which other people submitted them, so you can’t trust everything you read, so use your best judgment, but over all this site has some valuable information for a beginner or someone in there more advanced levels. If your a blog publisher I seen some great helpful tips in there for blog publishers I would suggest checking them out.
2. Find a Post Job: If your into marketing as much as I am and you love marketing jobs there is some great listings in there for numerous locations which granted I’m not looking for a job by any means I have my company and several people that work under me, but for any one that loves marketing and might be looking for a job there is some excellent leads in there.
3. Blog: You know there blog does not look to bad, but I think it could use some improvements by every means such as writing more unique in depth post. To be quite honest with you I’m surprised it don’t have more subscribers I’m not sure how long the blog has been out, but I do know marketing Profs gets some traffic to there site thats for sure.
4. Forum: The lovely forum, this is not a bad resource at all. Ask a question and you’ll get some great answers and most generally from what I’ve noticed its from more experienced people, and there more direct with there answers which there is a lot of resources that provide educational information to such as Digital Point, V7n, Webmaster World, and etc, but I would still suggest getting into this community as well as any other communities your involved in because I got some pretty good answers back, but what really caught my eyes was the articles that was written up.

Conclusion
That should be it, but mainly the whole reason I decided to review this website and write about it was to let my readers be aware that this can be a great site for more education. To be all honest with you I’d say the best blogs to read and the best articles to read is from people that have been successful in there marketing careers, or even people that are moving forward very fast. I think forums are great to read by all means, but some of the people that hang out in the forums are more of forum junkie then anything, but when they do catch some great information they’ll pass it on and its just a matter or not if you use that information and pursue it, its called social networking :).

Something that a lot of people have there mind on are big broad terms not every one, but some people do which granted broad term can drive traffic and are excellent for branding specially if you are a search marketer and really want to be known on branding purposes then a broad term would brand you pretty good if you ask me (juts shows your the best), but there is other markets you should tap into which is the the long tail a long tail market.

So What is the Long Tail?

The long tail search is a search that is built around a certain foundation or keyword most generally its built around a competitive market, but more niche related. For example you are targeting real estate which is a very brandable and strong market to approach, but why not try to target something like state by state, city by city, and so on.

For example lets do a long tail search market such as Indiana Real Estate Agents, Ohio Real Estate, Indiana Real Estate Services, and so on now I’m just using these for an example when you do tap into the long tails make sure that your doing your research on the keywords and most generally the idea is to just build around a competitive keywords and make it niche related that is related to what your offering of course.

Why are the Long Tail Markets Beneficial?

1. Conversion Ratio: Generally with the long tail your conversion ratio is higher then what a broad term would hold. The reason behind this is because your targeting a niche market that will convert better because the consumers are looking for that specific item lets say there looking to buy the movie ET well if you target certain keywords on search engines such as ET Movies instead of Movies most generally ET Movies For sell, Et Movies, Et Movie Download, or whatever will convert way higher then what a broad term would, and yes it will take a long more long tail keywords to drive the same traffic as what movies would of course, but over all you would get a higher conversion ratio.
2. Less Competitive: A long tail market is less competitive of course, and cheaper to drive sales through, and Google has even stated that 50 percent of the searches they do get to see that more then 25 percent of them are searches they have never seen before such as new searches this is why its important to build long tail trends around your more broad terms.

How to Identify the Long Tail Markets?

Identifying the long tail markets is pretty simple, but then again time consuming. You can use several tools to identify how many searches your certain long tail is getting such as Google Adwords, and of course numerous other tools, but to be quite honest with you the best thing to do is to just start testing and just build around your broad terms into all your products such as your inner pages and etc by using brand names, model numbers, and just straight specific product names.

Conclusion

I kind of wrapped this topic up quicker then what I thought I was going to, but I don’t think there really needs to be much more said about it. If you just take the time out and learn your long tail patterns it will start to come together. Also I’m sure I’ll have a post on here about finding the long tail markets sooner or later, so make sure your subscribed to our RSS feed below if your not subscribe.

Building Communities, Maintaining Communities, and Leveraging communities is something that takes time and its a task. The first stage is to build the community and then maintain the community of course and there on out you can leverage the communities which of course its a pretty big process and a lot of work involved, but the outcome of it is just fabulous and nothing else can out beat it. If you read on I’ll list some tips on how to build communities, maintain communities, and how to leverage them such as for more traffic, sales, links which results in higher search engine rankings organically, and etc.

Building Communities

1. When promoting content through social networks such as Digg, Reddit and Stumble Upon make sure your content is made for users. Promote content that people will love and link to or at least bookmark it another thing is to make sure the content your creating will catch there mind set right away and draw there attention and ways of doing this would to test certain things such as your title, colors of website, and content ;).
2. Become part of communities and make friends, when you establish more friends such as associates and etc your creating a community your self basically. Let every one know where its happening at for example when you was growing up or maybe still today, or maybe in college is there certain places that you hung out at because its fun and every ones having a blast well the same thing for your blog if you offer something they like such as your friends and etc that you’ve met there going to tell there friends and there going to tell there friends take for an example look at My Space a very popular social networking site and one of the most popular that has grown very large due to the social networking through out friends, colleagues, and you name it (Its been promoted everywhere, your content should do the same).
3. Building links into your website can help gain more traffic and give you a kick start, but if your going to build links or buy links personally I would recommend promoting viral content at the same time. If your someone that hates to write just hire a great content writer and have them do research for you to promote viral content if they are a good writer and you can implement the ideas then it will work out great. The person does not necessarily have to be a viral marketer there self as long as there a great content writer they should be able to establish links for you speaking you do your part and create the ideas and what to promote.
4. Landing pages can be great, the idea behind a landing page is to create a page thats going to prove to users that your blog will help them whether its financially or just educated them in general. This can fall back under the category of building links into a landing page and then generate traffic to it from search engines whether its through PPC or Organic search or better yet both. Once the user hits the landing page make sure your e-mail subscribing list or RSS feed is very visible and from there on out take there mind over tell them who you are and etc, just test it and see what works.

Maintaining Communities

Maintaining communities is something that takes persistencey such as staying involved with then the community. After so long you should be able to set back speaking you have the community built really strong and other people are keeping the community alive such as content writers and etc, but generally if you built a strong community all on your own its probably a good idea you stay writing and participating because if not you can lose it pretty quick or at least keep it at a level pace and if you want to leverage it into something larger put that extra hard work in to make it expand.

Take a look below on just some of the things that keep the community leveled.

1. Keep creativity in mind, never forgot what your doing. This would fall back under the category of staying persistent and motivated. When you have a community try to keep it creative and every ones mind hooked such as using images, videos, free give aways, and viral content.
2. Stay communicating with people such as replying to comments, and stay active with then your communities in your niche, or at least to where you can keep your community leveraged like I mentioned above.
3. If at all possible answer your e-mails speaking its a reputable questions now you don’t have to go through there consulting people no one would do that unless you feel the need to, but consultants get paid for a living the best thing to do is reply and answer questions the best you can if it has to do with someone asking trade secrets or just plain out simple educational information tell them to stick around the blog and keep reading (its all at the blog).

The idea of maintaining communities basically is to stay persistent and on top of it like I mentioned above and keep in mind no one can build that community better then you because you’ve done did it and know the ins and outs of how it was built and how you can expand it if you needed to. Maintaining a community is not that hard now if your someone that is lazy most certainly its going to be hard, but remember three things and always keep in mind persistency, motivation, and effort is the key to success.

Leverage Communities and how they are Beneficial

I have some prospects such as clients tell me that online communities are a waste of space actually I had one guy tell me that he does not want people hanging out on his website, and I set there for a minute smiling in my head, but at the same time thinking does this guys even know anything about marketing online or just general marketing on the outside world any one thats been in the marketing game knows that building clientele and word of mouth is very important for marketing and with online communities you can do this (you can do several thing with them)

Most generally in the beginning stages of building an online community you won’t get much from it, but as time comes and you stay persistent you’ll start to establish more of an image and things will grow more gradually. As your community grows this gives you more leverage to build out through other social networks such as word of mouth marketing and the path will continue through other networks just depends on how strong the viral is.

Take a look below on a few tips on how to leverage your communities and benefit from it.

1. Remember to always think virally when building communities because when you think virally your expanding your network every day, and your content is probably getting linked to. And for any one that is famaliar with SEO we know that links produce higher search engine rankings.
2. Try to leverage your community around your products such as maybe promoting products directly through your blog post or forum what ever type of community you built process this information to them. Now don’t get to carried away with promoting your self make sure the content is still quality and there.
3. You can also leverage your community into giving you links for example have a free give away or something and tell them part of entering the contest it to link to your site with your desired anchor text if the contest is interesting enough you might have just earn 1000 unique links if not more.

There are several ways of leveraging communities once you have them established, but keep in mind like I stated earlier the idea behind building one, maintaining one, and leveraging a community is to stay persistent, motivated and use effort. Another great thing about a online community is that generally when you have it built strong enough you don’t have to do any advertising on other sites I mean you community is built so strong and so big you can control it any way you want and advertise any way you like.

Related Articles and Content

O’Reilly Network - Building Online Communities (Great Article!)

Bruce Clay Building an Online Community

Tips for Building Online Communities (ProBlogger)

The Secret To getting a popular blog and getting Tons of Readers (Dosh Dosh)

Stumble upon brought me around 236 unique visitors the other day with then one hour to a blog post I wrote called Blog Building 101 which is not considerably a bunch of traffic, but with little pops like this here and there you can leverage these pops into other directions or even try to get more of them which I’m going to discuss below on how you can get more stumbles and how you can leverage these stumbles into different direction such as getting more subscribers to your blog.

How to get more stumble upon traffic

1. Build a list of friends and get into the community by getting into the community and networking with other people you are leveraging your self such as building relationships with other people, but at the same time as your building your friends list they see what you vote on, so for example you write up a nice piece of link bait material such as 101 ways to have better sex and you vote your own article all your friends will see it and this increases your chance of building a network with that content and gaining links, and every one knows the more links you have the higher your search engines ranking will be.
2. You can also buy traffic from stumble upon as low as 0.05 cents per visitor and its at set rate and you can set the category this can be another effective way of gaining links if you have wrote an interesting article. The great thing about paying for traffic is that you know your article will get seen because your paying for the traffic.

The idea to getting traffic from Stumble Upon is to create viral content that people will vote. Get into the community build your friends up and then let your content viral out there and be sure to vote on other articles instead of your own. Theres nothing wrong with putting votes on your own content of course, but make sure you offer your friends and the community more then just your own content.

Related Links to Gaining More Stumble Upon Traffic

Beginners Guide to Stumble Upon Traffic
How to get Stumble Upon - Neil Patel
Get Stumbled Through Friends

So why is Stumble Upon So Special and How can it Be leveraged?

1. When generating stumble upon traffic you can create link baits and links = higher search engine rankings. If you take the time out to write up some viral content up that you think people will just love and submit it or even pay for traffic you can catch a lot of links from it which granted it will take some practice to see what works, and what don’t work of course.
2. Stumble Upon can also be used for branding if leverage right you can get people famaliar with your blog and website in general. Think about it you used Stumble Upon to draw in 10 of thousands of visitors and numerous visitors have linked to you and this has given you more traffic through search engines so all together your getting brand awareness because people are getting more familiar with your blog and etc.
3. And of course Stumble Upon is great for building networks, friends ships, and communities. With all this put together you can leverage a good brand and great blog if you stay working at it and any one that plays around with social networks or blogs knows the importance of building up friend ship and becoming part of the communities.
4. You can use Stumble Upon to increase your blog reader ship such as subscribers and etc. You can even use it to increase increase a normal e-mailing list such as a sales list or something if you leverage it right.

Conclusion
There is numerous things you can use Stumble Upon for such as traffic, link baits, and etc like I mentioned above. If your someone trying to create some link bait content go study stumble upon see what people are voting and buy some ads just test, test, and test and see what works best your not going to get any where if you don’t try.

Blog building is something that takes time like we all know of course. One thing I see that a lot of blogs fail at is personality such as a brand, an image, and something that sticks out that makes you different from every one else. You need some type of vibe you can promote through the air that people will like and remember you for, just something you can implement in there head. (more…)

Getting search engine traffic from Google takes for ever and even worse takes longer on other search engines - sad to say, but the value of having search traffic through organic search engines is great nothing can beat it. Once you establish organic rankings nothing else can out beat it.  Pay Per Click and etc is very costly and I quite honestly sometimes I see no need for it which don’t take me wrong you can create large profit streams through PPC, but when you have organic search that is free tell me which one you much whether use.

(more…)

Getting subscribers to a blog is something that can take some time, and its not something that is going to happen over night by any means. The only way your going to get a load of subscribers over night is if you do something very innovative, or your are somebody famous other then that you might as well plan on buckling up because its going to take some time which granted it is possible to pop off 100 subscribers with then a few hours of course which I’ve done it my self, but take a look at the tips I listed below on how to get more subscribers now make sure you read it throughly because it might just help.

1. Feed Visibility
   Make sure the visibility of your feed is stuck out where people can see it. I would also recommended putting a signature link into your post at the bottom stating subscribe to me or something similar to that, but just make sure your feed is visible to people.
2. PPC (Pay Per Click)
   I have even talked to people that used pay per click to increase there subscriber list by setting up landing pages and then directing traffic tot hem pages and proving to the people what you have to offer to them. If your someone that has some money to invest this would be a fast way of getting that RSS feed up quick if done properly.
3. Buy Links
   This can be another effective way is by buying a bunch of text links and ranking several keywords then directing all the traffic to your blog, and yes you should use a landing page for this too.
4. Landing Page Tips
   When creating your landing page always make sure you put down who you are, maybe a picture of your self, and how your blog is going to help people, so for an example you are a online marker that has been successful at what you do well list this and tell people how your going t help them, so you can get them to subscribe to your feed.
5. Blog Personality
   Make sure your blog has a personality its of own. Build something that stick out and thats different, something that is unique to your readers. Just something that is structure differently then what every one else has to offer.
6. Think Quality and Virally when Posting
   When your writing always keep in mind to keep that content as high quality as possible because remember your trying to stand out from the crowd, so keep in mind think virally and quality. There is nothing better then reading quality content and thats for sure.
7. Stay Focused
   Stay focused on your particular topic I see a lot of bloggers that get lost in what they was doing like they lost there direction or what there blog was actually made out to be, so if your posting on how to make money online keep it in that direction you don’t want to scare every one off and lose your subscribers.
8. Signature
   If you notice we do this in our signature create a link that will go to a landing page telling someone why they need to subscribe for and what you offer that is different from others like I mentioned earlier on the landing page tips which was number 4.
9. E-Books
   Yes use e-book, promote your blog as an e-book or write an e-book. This works very well and you can offer your e-book as a bribe to get more rss subscribers or you can possibly find a way of getting more subscribers by using your ebook as somewhat bait. One example would be the e-book I wrote up called the SEO Fundamentals Guide I wrote the book and promoted it through social networks and popped my feed off a bit more then what it was around 75 subscribers, but if your someone that has a bunch of subscribers you can dramatically increase more subscribers by promoting e-books just give it a try.
10. Participate
    Participating in related communities is highly important, try to participate in other blogs such as commenting and join other forums and get famaliar with who every one is and get them to know you and make friends with them. Making friends is great who knows you might have a friend that promotes your blog for you for free now imagine having 50 of them promoting your blog through social networks.
11. Submit To Blog Directories
    You know this can help with the linkage going into your site, but its not going to dramatically increase your subscribers or anything. Its just still good to submit to blog directories along with all other used techniques.
12. Pillar Articles
    Pillar articles are something that is educational, something that is like a tutorial guide for your readers. These can help raise your rss feed because people will find your blog helpfu and remember you have to prove to your readers why they should subscribe maybe not telling them why they should subscribe, but by offering the content that will rill them in.
13. Blog URLS
    Try to optimize your blog url which this won’t really get you a bunch of subscribers, but it can lead you into getting subscribers. The reason I say that for is because if your urls are optimized properly then you’ll have better search engine traffic which could result in more subscribers.
14. Easy To Read
    Make sure your blog is easy to read such as the clarity of the text. I have seen many blogs in the pass that have not had much clarity to them.

Conclusion

There is several ways to increase your readership, but the best approach is persistency stay persistent and confident about what your writing.  Be a real motivator and make your self stand out from the rest of the group that is the key to success build your so it has a unique personality and prove to people it will help them by posting quality content if you try hard enough sooner or later all of this will start to make sense.

Related Articles 

Four Simple Steps to More Blog Subscribers 
10 Effective ways to get more Blog Subscribers
11 Ways to find new RSS subscribers to your blog 
Two Tips for increasing RSS Subscribers 

Publishing content online is something that every one does sooner or later speaking they are marketing there website online, and there is tons of article directories to submit your content to, but if your an SEO you should really start looking into websites like Web Pro News.

The reason I say submit quality articles to places such as Web Pro News is because a lot of people that go to webpronews go to the conferences, and generally these people are into the community and this is way to establish your self as an expert or a way to promote your name or at least get your self known in you field, so you can get other people familiar with you. Plus there is a handful of helpful articles over at webpronews along with interviews that are done with Jeremy Shoemaker (AKA shoemoney), AaronWall, and many other well known people through out the social communities.

Anyways give it a try and start submitting its a excellent place to start submitting your content to and make sure the content is unique they have a very high editorial status on there articles which is a good thing. Any site that has high editorial status is a plus plus by every means, so once again visit WebProNews and start submitting.

Becoming part of communities is something that everyone should do specially if your wanting to get your blog out there, or trying to get people famaliar with who you are. When becoming part of communities its a lot easier to establish your self and your website such as a community driven website, and building a community can take some time thats for damn sure sometimes it can takes a months if not years to get it going somewhat ok just depends on how much time and effort you put into the website, but any one can do it, put it this way if someone else can do it why can’t you.

So what should you do when your becoming part of a community?

1. Participate in forums that are related to your niche believe it or not this can be very effective if you leverage the people right. I use to think forums were a waste of time, but if you actually learn how to leverage them they can do some positives things for you I know they sure have for us by far.
2. Participate in others blogs such as commenting and getting people famaliar with who you are. When people see your comments they check you out I know they sure do me :).
3. Write on other people blogs if you’d like personally this is not something I do, but a lot of people like to do it. I don’t know I just don’t have the desire to write on other peoples blog even though I have though about it because I could write on some very popular blogs out there.
4. Brand your self in forums and other places make sure you brand your self as an expert in your field or someone that people need to talk to, or so you at least can get them to subscribe to your feed. Make sure your noticeable on who you are I see people all the time hiding there identity like its a secret make sure people know your name, and who you are and what you do.

Building a community driven website can be a task and thats for sure. It takes a lot of dedication and time. I’ve watched people go from 0 subscribers to 15k in 3 years which I wish I would of started our blog a long time ago because if i did it would of been popping off by now, but things are moving in a positive direction thats for sure. Just make sure you join the communities and your not too stuck up and participate and even bring some search engine traffic that will really help.

A lot of people get so caught on page rank, I mean literally caught on it. I had one guy wanting to buy a presell page on my website that was only one link, and we don’t sell links for what he was wanting to do with it and matter fact we don’t sell links on our site period. I don’t do any advertising for other companies unless its natural advertising through our blog which granted we have a pretty good directory, but we don’t promote it for search engine purposes by any means which granted it will help with search engines most certainly, and matter fact we haven’t even bought one link for our directory all of the links into it are natural.

Anyways don’t go buying links for page rank maybe a few links will be ok, but some people seem to think every link they buy must have high page rank personally if it was me and I was trying to promote a site I would try to acquire links that are from pr1,2,3 pages the reason being is because you can get more drive to your anchor text because with high page rank links your only going to have so many of them and the chances of your anchor text being credited a lot is low you might have some page rank flow which will help with your content and etc, but a bunch of lower quality links with your desired keyword in the anchor text can sometimes be better.

I’m not saying go get a bunch of cheesy links, I’m just saying don’t get caught up on the page rank which yes its nice to have, but use contextual links and etc for ranking purposes. Then use high page rank links to gain page rank, but every link you buy does not have to be a high pr link at all, so don’t be one of them people that set around all the time wanting nothing, but the top notch links, but you never get any traffic and believe me I know people like this they think they have to get a high quality link every time, but yet there site gets no traffic, but then they don’t understand why and they keep thinking its because they got to have the top notch links and there wrong.

Use contextual links for ranking purposes and high page rank links just for page rank. Simple as that and always get links with then content of course.