Credit: Cool knitting photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-a-team/sets/72157594573683373/

Links are important since they help us get more traffic to our sites and better search engine rankings.  Targeted links are the ones that really count though!

What is a targeted link?  A link from a site that reaches your target market.  8-)   For example, if you sell bowling balls, a link from a site about cats isn’t targeted.  But a link from a site that discusses bowling technique, lists bowling ball reviews, or sells bowling shoes would be a good targeted link for you.

If you’re a crafter or artist, stop by these 9 crafting or arts sites and request your free link!  Some may require a link back while others don’t.  Just check the terms as you submit your info to see what’s required for each.

(more…)

Reprinted with permission from Christine Gallagher’s Communicate Value Newsletter

These six steps were born out of common frustrations I hear from people about understanding how to market online.

Does this sound familiar? “I know I need to figure out all of this social media stuff, but it’s all piecemeal now and I just don’t know where to start!”

You may have noticed how some small business owners seem to attract clients and customers almost effortlessly–while others struggle to keep their business afloat. The reason is that they are following a proven business model to market their business.

The six steps outlined here not only incorporate that proven model, but show you how you can supercharge it by adding social media tools and techniques–leading to more clients, customers and sales.

Without further ado…
(more…)

Note: This is part 1 in a 7 part series on how to transform your website to attract your ideal clients.

Who is your ideal client? Does your website make clear exactly who you serve or support?

(more…)

Don’t let your email newsletter get tossed into the virtual trash can before it’s opened, or lead your customers to the wrong place when they’re ready to purchase.

Be sure you aren’t making these three common mistakes.

(more…)

If you’ve been following me or subscribed to my newsletter for a while, you already know I love article marketing as a promotional strategy.  One place I regularly submit my articles to is WAHM Articles, and you can find more info below about the site.

This week we’ve been authorized to giveaway ONE Platinum membership to the article marketing forum!  In addition, I’ll include a free copy of my guide to article marketing for the winner.  Would you like to enter?  Just post a comment below and we’ll draw a random winner on May 6th then announce it in the newsletter next week.

Many women with home businesses discover that being a work at home mom requires a lot more time, money and energy than they had expected.

If your time and energy is in short supply, and your business needs a boost, WAHM-Articles.com has launched a new social networking community that might help.

The WAHM-Articles Forum helps work-at-home-moms learn how to market their businesses in less time and more effectively by using article marketing. Article marketing is a marketing strategy where you write articles to promote your products and services and let others publish them for free in exchange for a link back to your site.

Many of the members at the WAHM-Articles Forum are experienced article marketers and publishers, so it’s a great place to hook up with website owners who are looking for articles like yours and ask all your article marketing questions.

In the forum, they talk about everything to do with article marketing, including:

-   How to write articles that get more traffic to your website or blog
-   How to use your articles to get more subscribers to your mailing list
-   How to get your article readers to visit your website
-   How to convince those website visitors to buy from you.

Joining the forum is free. There is also a Platinum membership that gives you access to article reviews, article marketing training, and valuable resources and discounts. Platinum memberships are available for an introductory price of $50 a year.

If you want to learn how to get more traffic and sales in less time, I recommend you go to http://www.WAHM-Articles.com/forum and register for a free account.

I’m a member and I’ve already learned a lot from the community there. If you join us, you can discover how to spend less time on marketing your website so you have more time spend with the kids, or on taking your business to the next level.

I’d love to see you there! You can register at http://www.WAHM-Articles.com/forum

Put your blog promotion on auto-pilot with these “set it once then forget it” promotional strategies.

Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories

Once you’ve requested a listing, you’re done!

http://www.blogcatalog.com

http://www.bloghub.com

http://www.blogarama.com

http://www.blogexplosion.com

http://www.blogflux.com

http://www.blog-search.com

http://www.blogbunch.com

http://www.iblogbusiness.com

http://www.quickblogdirectory.com

http://www.bloglisting.net

http://www.blogrankings.com

http://www.weblogalot.com

Ping When You Post

If you’re using Wordpress, it’s probably already set to ping rpc.pingomatic.com Add that to your ping list if it’s not there already. Ping-O-Matic will receive your ping then let lots of other sites know you’ve updated your blog.

If you can’t ping directly from your blog, try Feedburner’s Pingshot service at

http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/publishers/pingshot

Offer Your Readers an RSS Subscribe

Techno-savvy readers love RSS feeds they can subscribe to.

Your blog may have this built it just waiting for you to link to. You can also sign up with Feedburner or Feedblitz.

http://www.feedburner.com

http://www.feedblitz.com

Be sure to add the code to your blog once you’re setup so readers can subscribe.

Add Social Bookmarking and “Tell a Friend” to Your Posts

Sociable and Share This are two great plugins you can use to easily add social bookmarking and “tell a friend” capability to your blog.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/

Just download, install, setup, and then the plugin of your choice will add the social networking icons to every post on your blog.

Connect to Social Networking

Using social media you can syndicate your blog content to reach your social networks.

If you Twitter, you can tweet your blog posts with TwitterFeed.

http://www.twitterfeed.com

If you’re on Facebook, try the Wordpress Facebook App.

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/facebook/

These five strategies take a few minutes to setup but once you’ve got them up and running they’ll promote your blog for you. Strategies 2 – 5 will promote your blog every time you post!

Would you like to reprint this article in your newsletter, or on your website or blog? You may! Just include this blurb at the end:

Work at home mom extraordinaire Michelle Shaeffer publishes The Muses Brainstorm, a weekly ezine with tips to help you balance, manage, and market your home based business. If you’re ready for inspirational guidance and bright ideas sign up free at www.thesmallbusinessmuse.com

A marketing plan gives you a basic guide for your marketing for the year. By looking at your marketing 12 months at a time you can plan for seasonal promotions, work to combat any traditionally slower times for your company, and keep your business supported by always having at least one or two forms of marketing working for you.

With your marketing plan in place you won’t have a holiday or event sneak up on you and think, “Oh! I could have done a really cool promotion!”  Instead you’ll have your promotion planned and you can be ready to take advantage of holidays and other seasonal opportunities.

As you plan your year, choose a few marketing tactics per month and remember that some will require continued time commitments (blogging, social networking, your newsletter) while others are more of a one-time project (donating a book or working a charity event, issuing a press release).

Once you’ve put your plan together, be sure to review it monthly and look ahead so you’re ready for what you’ve planned.

Download the free “Quick & Easy Marketing Plan” template below and you can have a basic marketing plan done in less than an hour!

Click Here to Download the Free
Quick & Easy Marketing Plan Template

Want to keep up with my articles?  Looking for free content you can reprint on your blog or website, or in your newsletter?  Check out my new articles website at http://articlesbymichelleshaeffer.com

Subscribe to the RSS feed and you’ll be the first to know when I post new articles.

Do you write articles for marketing your business?  It’s a great way to share what you know and promote your business at the same time.

Want your own ArticlesByYou.com website?  Here are the steps I took to create mine:

1) Register a domain.

2) Set up hosting (if you’ve got a website hosting package already you can probably setup an add on domain at no additional monthly cost).

3) Install Wordpress.  I did this through Fantastico in my cPanel, takes just a couple of minutes.

4) Add and activate your theme.  I used Revolution 2’s Office theme and hacked it just a bit to make it work nicely for my articles.

5) Set up categories and post your articles.

And that’s it.  :)

This is part three in the “15 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website” series. Here are strategies 11 through 15.

11. Craigslist

Craigslist.org is the hugely popular and successful local bulletin board website. Have you tried it for business yet? If not, or if your results have been less than you hoped for, here’s a link to an article full of great tips and a step by step on how to effectively use Craigslist: http://snipurl.com/3duox

12. Google Local

Want to come up at the top of Google listings? Target your geographical area and it might be easier than you think! Try a quick search for something like “alternative health anchorage” and you’ll see above the regular listing there are 10 geographically based listings with a small Google Map on the left. Now search for “your business type your city” (example: “dentist new york city” or “boutique baby shop seattle”) — if you aren’t listed on the top by the map, it’s easy to get added! If you’re already listed, claim ownership of your listing and make sure your contact info is up to date.

Description from Google: “Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.”

Sign up at http://www.google.com/local/add (you’ll need a Google account)

You can also encourage your customers to leave reviews for you through Google Local.

13. Joint Ventures

Two minds may be better than one. Two business promoting together can definitely be better than one! There are many easy ways to build your traffic and sales with joint ventures. Here are a couple quick strategy ideas to kick start your brainstorming:
- Create a collaboration of products
- Swap ads in ezines
- Link exchanges or banner exchanges
- Do a contest swap and offer a contest others can promote, the promote their contests for them
- Swap business cards – send theirs out with your orders, they send yours out with theirs

(I share more ideas in “Building Synergy”, available at www.themusesguide.com)

14. Giveaways

Who can resist a great deal? Or better yet, something for free? The most effective free items or giveaways will be closely targeted to your market.

For example, if you offer items like nursing bras, you could create (or hire a designer to create) blinkies promoting breastfeeding and give them away to visitors to use on their websites or MySpace pages. If you’re an artist, you could setup a script to offer free ecards that feature your artwork. You could give away craft project ideas if you sell children’s items, or recipes if you sell home related items to women.

Just grab a piece of paper and take five minutes to write down everything you can think of that your target market is interested in, and then go back over your list and highlight the ones that also relate to your products or services. Those are good things to consider for freebies.

15. Newsletter

I’ve saved the best for last. Studies show that most shoppers don’t purchase the first time they hear of a business, service, or product. So you need a way to capture their information and keep your business on their minds.

One of the best promotional tools is a newsletter or ezine. If you haven’t started yours yet, it’s easier than you might think! Choose your service provider, add the form to your website, encourage your visitors to sign up (offer a freebie or coupon in exchange for their subscription), then send out regular newsletters. Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or even seasonally may be often enough depending on your business model. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to keep your business in the minds of people who are interested in your products or services.

I highly recommend Aweber for newsletters: http://www.aweber.com/?221066

Need a bit more direction to help you get started? Ideas on what to write about? Get your copy of The Muses Guide to Creating & Managing Your Own Sales Newsletter at http://themusesguide.com

!!Bonus Tip!!

I couldn’t let this issue go out without one bonus tip to help you get more traffic. You need a way to let visitors tell their friends about your website!

Here’s a free hosted tell a friend form:

http://www.bpath.com/recommend/rcm_info.dbm

Or, here’s a free script you can install on your website:
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/tell-a-friend-script.htm

If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, or have talked with me much, you already know I’m a big fan of article marketing.  It works.  So when Denise Willms followed up with me a few weeks ago I was happy to share with her some stats I had from tracking my article marketing efforts.  With her permission I’m posting a copy of the press release she mentioned me in.

Calgary, AB (October 10, 2008) WAHM Articles challenges small business owners to jumpstart their holiday marketing this year.

Uncertain economic times mean small business owners need to work even harder to earn holiday shopping dollars. WAHM Articles, a popular article directory for women and an active writing community, is helping small business owners expand their reach by giving prizes for writing articles targeted at mothers.

Owner Denise Willms, a Virtual Assistant who helps her clients reap the benefits of article marketing, launched the Holiday Article Marketing Challenge early this month. Home and small business owners can win one of nearly $300 in prizes by writing articles to promote their products for the holiday season. Prizes include advertising space, Tupperware products, ghostwriting services, and personalized article coaching sessions with Willms.

“I’ve been thrilled with the response,” says Willms. “It’s great to see online business owners discover how to write articles that increase their visibility and their sales.”

Article writers gain exposure for their businesses by creating articles that solve their readers’ problems, and including a link to their website at the end of the article. The author’s resource box invites the reader to visit the writer’s website for more information.

To date, WAHM Articles has published nearly 2000 articles by 500 authors, each written with mothers in mind. Article topics range from parenting to business issues and from crafting to personal relationships.

Willms took inspiration for this challenge from the 30 Day Article Challenge, created by Carrie Lauth of CarrieLauth.com. In the 30-day challenge, participants put their marketing endurance to the test by writing 30 articles in 30 days.

Lauth says, “Article marketing has proven to be a consistently effective traffic generation method for me. I launched this challenge to give myself  some public accountability but also to motivate others – it’s not as  hard as you think to write articles, especially since all of us internet marketers are already writing so much for our blogs and websites.” Others are invited to join the ongoing challenge at any time.

For those who don’t know how to promote their business by writing articles, WAHM Articles offers a free forum, where members can ask questions, and get answers from article marketing professionals, experienced article writers and article publishers.

Writing and submitting articles has proved to be an effective tool to gain targeted traffic and increase conversions. Michelle Shaeffer, The Small Business Muse™, recently conducted an experiment to track conversions from writing and submitting articles. She found the traffic she received from her articles came with more average page views per visit and a higher subscription rate to her newsletter. From general website traffic, Shaeffer noted a 20% subscription rate to her newsletter. However, 40% of visitors who read one of her articles then clicked through to her website signed up for her newsletter.

To learn more about writing articles to promote small business, submit articles for moms to read, or to participate in the holiday article marketing challenge, please visit http://www.WAHM-Articles.com