The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

If you don’t have a ghostwriter on your team, then you should probably consider one. A ghostwriter – especially if you don’t have the writing skills yourself – can take your business to all new heights. The tasks that one good ghostwriter can handle are legion. Here’s a short list just off the top of my head:

• Write your daily blog posts. This is important. Having a daily blog is a vital part of any online business.
• Manage your social media campaigns. You’ve got to promote those blog posts somehow. Your ghostwriter will be instrumental in pushing them out to the popular social media sites.
• Write your SEO content. Make sure your ghostwriter is well-versed in SEO tactics. A good copywriter with a working knowledge of SEO is worth his weight in gold.
• Produce your weekly newsletter. You should have an electronic newsletter to help you build relationships with your clientele. A good ghostwriter can help you with that too.
• Write your PPC ads. A writer should be able to write ads with a strong call to action. If you run PPC campaigns, you need a good ghostwriter.
• Article marketing. This includes writing and submitting articles to directories as well as writing guest blog posts on occasion.
• Link building. Since your ghostwriter knows SEO and can write articles, have him manage your link building campaigns.

There really is no limit to what a good ghostwriter can do for your business. If you are serious about marketing your company online, a ghostwriter can be a lot of help.

Do you know the definition of content? I can tell you this much – it isn’t fluff.

Fluff is that soft white stuff that some kids like to spread on their bread like butter. It’s creamy, has no substance, and isn’t particularly nutritional. It has little, if any, health benefits. The upside is it isn’t harmful to your health either.

Content, however, is just the opposite.

• It’s meaty
• It’s substantive
• It’s vitally important to the intellectual or mental health of the person reading it
• It improves the reader’s life in some way

Many online content writers have a tendency to write to the keyword. They’ll find a word they want to rank highly for in the search engines and focus their content on that keyword ending up with nothing but a big bucket of fluff.

Now, I’d like to say that there is nothing wrong with keywords. We use them all the time. But if your content is so full of your keyword that it ceases to provide intellectual stimulation or anything substantive to the reader, then you might want to scale back on the keywords and add a little meat. Make your content communicate something extraordinary.

Content can take many forms. It can be online website content, dynamic blog or widgetized content, social media content. It can be viral, video, make use of vivid imagery, contextual, or a combination of these. The important thing is that your content be valuable to someone.

If your content doesn’t provide value, then it’s fluff. Take out the fluff and add some value. That’s how you build online content.

We’ve said all along that small businesses – in particular, local small businesses – should make their best use of search and social. If you can incorporate a strong search engine optimization campaign and a social media campaign, then you should do it.

As you manage your two campaigns, there are three pieces of information that you should ensure you incorporate into both campaigns:

• Your business phone number
• Your business address
• Hours of operation

Why Your Phone Number Is Important To Search

According to the latest social search study, the information most often sought by local searchers is a business phone number. The second most sought after information is a business address. And the third most searched for information are hours of operation.

In fact, these three little bits of information far outweigh everything else people search for online. So you should be sure to include them on your website in a prominent location. If possible, get them into the search engines.

But don’t just stop there. More and more, people are using social networks to search for local businesses. And 91% of the people who do are using Facebook to do it. What’s that tell you?

It tells me that you should have a Facebook page and your phone number, business address, and hours of operation should be displayed prominently on it.

Why People Do Business With You

Here’s the kicker. 72% of survey respondents said they are more likely to do business with someone if a friend or colleague recommends them. If you are a business-to-consumer operation, then Facebook is your friend. Build a brand page, share it with your friends and fans (and customers) and watch them share it with theirs. A recommendation online goes a long way.

Make it easy for people to find you and they will find you. Whether in the search engines or the social networks, being found is the first step to getting business.

One topic that doesn’t get discussed a lot among Internet marketers is time management. Whether the marketer is a search engine optimizer, a social media marketing professional, a PPC expert, a video marketer, a hybrid of these, or something else entirely, Internet marketing professionals tend to talk about the concepts of their specialty, but not time management.

Today I’m going to discuss some time management principles that you can implement as you go about managing your marketing activities online.

The first principle I’d like to discuss is the principle of like activities. These are activities that you perform daily that can be fit into a tidy little group.

For instance, your social media management activities. If you have a Twitter account, a Facebook account, and a LinkedIn account and you have a tendency to check in with each service every day, make a point to check in on each service at the same time every day. Also, limit yourself to no more than 15 or 20 minutes for each service. This way, you can easily manage your activities and you don’t get caught in the “I’m here all day” syndrome.

Use the same principle for each of your other marketing activities. Pick a time of the day that you write your articles and do it the same time each day. The same goes for blogging.

Of course, we all know that things pop up during the day that take us away from our scheduled activities. You can easily get overrun with events. What should you do if a phone call takes you away from your planned activities and gets you sidetracked? How do you get back on track?

The important thing is to remain diligent. That two hour “must take” phone call took you away from several important activities. You still need to get those things done. Take time out to perform those activities you missed on account of the “wrench” in your schedule, but truncate the time you spend on them. Instead of 20 minutes, only spend 10 minutes in each social media site. Instead of spending one hour blogging as you normally would, take thirty minutes to kick out a quick blog post and get on with other business.

With these time management tips you should be able to manage your Internet marketing activities much more effectively.

One of the biggest hurdles to get over for new content creators is the development of ideas. Sure, you can keep it going for a while, but what happens when you’ve run through your list of keywords a dozen times and you begin to repeat yourself? What do you do?

Why not ask your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn followers?

Your social media followers are likely some of your most avid blog readers and most frequent website visitors. Why not ask for their feedback on what to write about next?

It doesn’t have to be a big to-do. You just want some ideas for content. So ask your followers to visit your blog and tell you what they want you to write about. There are several ways you can approach this.

• Make it fun – Write a blog post saying the best suggestion for a blog post will get a free copy of your e-book. Give a deadline and then share your blog post on your social networks.
• Up the stakes – Ask your followers to give you their ideas and if you use the idea, then you’ll give away your e-book or multimedia presentation to each person whose idea you use.
• Ask for guest bloggers – Open up the floor for others to post their content on your blog or website.
• Interview a reader – Pick one of your most avid readers and interview them. Post the interview on your blog and make one of your questions about you. Ask “why do you like reading my blog?” or “what kind of content should we write about here?”

Readers love to give you their feedback, so give them plenty of opportunities for doing so.

Aaron Wall has posted a nice infographic that shows life before the Panda update and what life has been like afterward. I think it’s a fitting infographic for a number of reasons.

First, today marks the 1 year anniversary of the Panda update. That’s reason enough for celebration (or woe, in some cases).

Secondly, the infographic illustrates some hard truths about the Panda update. Here’s a little summary:

• The Panda update wasn’t just one update. The update was really a series of updates that occurred on average about once a month through the year. That’s very important to understand.
• Before Panda, relevance was driven largely by links, which angered many journalists who saw themselves producing better content than website that were ranking better. After Panda, the journalists are winning.
• Most of the sites impacted by Panda were large sites with marketing issues. Smaller sites and brands were unaffected.
• Important! – The big winners were YouTube, big retail brands, and mainstream media. I think it’s interesting that the mainstream media sites started using bots to write their stories, and those stories are ranking.
• Another interesting tidbit is that some sites that were hit by Panda recovered by complaining publicly while others went back to the drawing board.

This is an interesting and very telling infographic. You could say that the takeaway here is to complain about Google if you don’t like their search and ranking algorithms. It might not help, but it can’t hurt.

Without further ado, I’ll give you SEO Book’s Panda infographic.

SEM Infographic by SEO Book

Let’s say you’ve decided that a huge website covering every aspect of peeling a banana needs to be published and that you are the right person for the job. You’ve done the research, you’ve picked your keywords, and you’ve put together an awesome plan for the website. How many pages per day should you publish?

I’m not talking about blog posts. I’m talking about web pages. Actual content pages of your website.

There are two types of mistakes new webmasters can make with the rate of publishing their web pages.

• Too often
• and not often enough

Both of these mistakes are easy to make.

Why You Shouldn’t Publish Web Pages Too Often

If you publish hundreds or thousands of web pages at a time you are likely to make some huge mistakes. First, you’ll have no way of knowing what you are doing that is working if you manage to get some of your pages to rank #1. What is your control group? It’s best to go slow so that you can measure each activity you perform as you perform them. Then, you have a much better chance of figuring out what is working and what isn’t.

Secondly, if you publish too many pages at once, you may very well get flagged by Google as a spammer and your web pages could end up at the bottom of the SERP heap. That would be disastrous.

Why You Should Publish Web Pages Every Day

A much lesser problem is not publishing often enough. You won’t be penalized for publishing one page a year, but you’ll spend a lifetime trying to figure out what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. As often as search algorithms change, you’ll probably never figure it out.

The best content plan is to publish in moderation. You want to publish often enough that you can test new techniques and strategies without destroying the old ones you know are working. But you also don’t want to publish too much too fast. So my recommendation is to publish no more than 5-10 pages a day, at most. 10 pages a day might be too much to tackle if you are on your first website. At the least, you want to publish one new page per day, or one every other day.

Every time you update your website the search bots come and recrawl it. The search engines then index new pages and re-index any that might have changed since the last time you updated your website. By publishing often, you ensure that you have a steady content publishing stream that keeps your website in the search engines’ eyes. And if you are on the search radar, you are in front of visitors’ eyes too.

Everyone knows about article directories. You write an article, then upload it to a handful of article directories that are used by countless other marketers and hope that you get page views, click-throughs, and traffic.

While article directories aren’t exactly a thing of the past, there may be better places to go for your article marketing efforts. Here are 3 places you can get your articles published fast and that will build great links and send awesome traffic to your website.

1. Squidoo – Squidoo is a place where you can build Lenses. These lenses are a snapshot into one topic. You can use photos, videos, multimedia, and textual content to communicate your passion for a particular topic – and use that to link to your website a few times. Squidoo does have its guidelines, however, and you must strictly follow them. Otherwise, your lenses won’t be nearly as effective.
2. HubPages – HubPages are not as extensive as Squidoo. In fact, its best used for publishing one article at a time. And you can’t be as blatant about self-promotion on HubPages as you can on Squidoo. In fact, it’s highly discouraged. But you can publish highly informative articles that get lots of traffic and add links to your website.
3. Blogger – Blogger is Google’s blog platform. But you can use it for articles. Set up your blog in your company name, or use a keyword-based subdomain, and post your articles as blog posts. Don’t forget to link back to your website in your articles.

Remember, article marketing isn’t dead. We’re just doing it a little different now.

I saw this image online this morning.

Just in case you can’t read the questions, here is a sampling of the questions with the answers:

1. In which battle did Napoleon die?
   Student’s answer: the last one
2. Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?
   Student’s answer: at the bottom of the page
3. River Ravi flows in which state?
   Student’s answer: liquid
4. What can you never eat for breakfast?
   Student’s answer: lunch and dinner
5. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
   Student’s answer: Very large hands

This student failed his exam, but I think he should have passed on creativity alone.

When it comes to online marketing, many times the answer to your most pressing questions are not direct response. They require some lateral thinking, what is commonly referred to as “out of the box.” Are you engaging in that kind of thinking for your business’s marketing needs?

Here’s the real question: How do you get to that level of thinking about your online marketing?

Answer: You study and learn all the right ways, then go your own way.

You might think doing what everyone else is doing is the best way to go about marketing your business online, but it’s really not. You have to find your way. Sometimes that requires a lot of study time to come up with the answers that everyone expects you to come up with. Then, once you know those answers, defy the test. It’s not all black and white.

Like your automobile, your WordPress blog requires periodic and ongoing maintenance. It is a tool for your business and if you don’t perform routine maintenance, then it won’t perform optimally. Here are five specific routine maintenance items you should perform on your blog to keep it safe from hackers, to ensure it performs optimally, and to keep your content working hard for you and through the search engines.

1. Regular back ups - You should back up your WordPress at least monthly. You can manually do this, but there are plug-ins now that will do it for you automatically. Some of the best back up plug-ins will schedule a back up for you daily, weekly, or monthly and send it to you by e-mail or save it on your server.
2. Keep your WordPress software up to date – WordPress is continually in development. New versions arrive several times throughout the year. You don’t have to adopt every new update immediately, but you shouldn’t allow yourself to fall too far behind. If you are more than two versions behind the latest, you should update your WordPress software.
3. Update your themes – Like the WordPress software, themes need updating too. If you operate on an off-the-shelf free theme, then it isn’t as necessary. But if you have purchased a premium theme for your WordPress blog, then updating regularly is a necessity.
4. Update your plug-ins – Plug-ins are another WordPress tool that I’d recommend staying current on. Almost all plug-in developers update their plug-ins periodically to keep them working optimally with the latest versions of WordPress. You should update your plug-ins as soon as the developer makes them available.
5. Site diagnostics – Finally, run periodic diagnostic checks to ensure that your WordPress blog is free of malware or unnecessary hacker code, and spam. Google Webmaster Tools will do that for you for free.

If you keep your WordPress blog maintained properly, it will give you years of good and useful service.

One of the most important things that you can do with your content today is to repurpose it. But which content should you repurpose and what benefit does it serve?

The best content to repurpose is content that has done well. Do you have any web pages, articles or blog posts that have been popular in the past? If so, that’s great content to repurpose. It’s really good to repurpose content that did well for a time then fell off the radar. For instance, if you wrote a blog post that became your most popular blog post ever during a 30-day period of time then quit getting page views after about six months, it could be time to revisit that topic and repurpose the blog post.

But you don’t want to repurpose it on your blog. You want to take that content and massage it for another medium.

Think of new ways you can use the same content. Maybe it would make a good video. Or maybe it would make a good article or guest post on someone else’s blog. Perhaps you could turn it into a standalone website and turn the content into a microsite from which you could solicit orders.

Whatever ways you decide your old content can be repurposed, take it and make it brand new. You do that by reordering the content and rewriting it completely. Don’t take any chances on duplicating your content.

The benefit to repurposed content is that you can take popular content from last year or two years ago and make it popular again. You re-capitalize on that content to drive new traffic and increase conversions. If it did well once, it will likely do well again.

Facebook stole the show this week with news of its initial public offering. But the news that should have been the big news didn’t quite get the same press.

Google has acquired a handful of patents and pending patents having to do with fiber optic technology. What could they possibly do with those?

Seeing as how they’ve already announced plans to introduce a fiber optic network in Kansas City, this patent transfer should have been the biggest news of the day. It has the potential to make a huge difference in how the Internet works all over the world.

Kansas City will likely be the first municipality in the world to offer high speed Internet by fiber optic as a city service. And if Google is successful with its fiber optic service in Kansas City, then they will likely introduce the same service to other cities. Eventually, there could be high speed fiber optic Internet everywhere in the world, courtesy of Google.

But who will pay for that? There are any number of ways that fiber optic Internet could be paid for. Cities and municipalities could foot the bill for local citizens. Or they may turn around and charge a fee for services in the same way that local phone companies do today. In either of those cases, fiber optic Internet service could be considered a utility.

Another way it could work is as a free service from Google. Now why would Google offer free Internet access to the entire world?

If more people are online, shopping, building businesses, etc., that will lead to more click-throughs on Google’s paid ad networks. More advertisers means more revenues for Google over the long run.

I’m not saying any of these scenarios is the right one. They’re just possibilities. But I could see any of them playing out. The real news, however, is that high speed fiber optic Internet would benefit everyone – consumers, online marketers, and Google as Internet service provider.

When it comes to marketing online, you can’t go wrong with what works and what continues to work. It seems that there are only a few tried and tested tactics that continue to work over and over again. Don’t listen to the gurus who try to sell you on the “latest and the greatest.” Instead, focus on what has been proven to work.

Here are 5 timeless Internet marketing tactics. They worked ten years ago (or five) and still work today.

• Pay Per Click Advertising – PPC advertising is the paid advertising part of online marketing. Google was the first company to champion PPC and it’s still going strong. As long as PPC ads continue to work, savvy Internet marketers will continue to use them.
• Search Engine Optimization – Despite rumors that Google+ has killed SEO, search engine optimization is still going strong. It changes every day, of course. But it still works today.
• Social Media Marketing – Social media is still young. It’s good and it’s only going to get better. With the rise of Facebook and now the introduction of Google+, you can’t ignore it any longer.
• Video Marketing – Video marketing just keeps getting better. Don’t give up on this new tactic just yet. Now should be when you start adopting it.
• Mobile Marketing – I know, I know. A lot of people still haven’t started doing it yet, but are you going to wait until they start. Now is the time to hop onto the mobile marketing bandwagon – before your clientele jumps on and starts looking for you.

When it comes to Internet marketing, stick to what you know works.

Quora, the question & answer website that has developed quite a following, now has a new tool for serious web promoters. It’s called a Quora Board.

So what is a Quora Board?

The concept is really simple. You set up a board around a specific topic that is associated with your business. Then you post links to that board and promote it to your followers.

It’s important to note that you can go through your Quora account followers and add as many of them as you want as followers of your Quora board when you set it up. Your followers then have to opt out if they don’t want to follow your board. That’s makes it a really easy marketing tool.

But keep your board focused. Don’t post spurious links are off-topic posts. If you blog often, post your blog links. You can also post other relevant and interesting third-party content (and you should) relevant to your board. Make your board a place where people interested in your topic will want to hang out and get the latest information from.

Quora boards are yet another social media tool that you can use for your business benefit.

You know you need to write to your blog every day. But how do you make the time? You’re too busy.

You can fix that. Discipline and a little bit of time organization is all it takes. You can write a blog post every day in 20 minutes or less. Here are the steps to take to ensure that you can have a blog post every day and have it written in less than 20 minutes.

1. Keep a running idea list – Every time you get an idea for a blog post, write it down. Keep a running list. This is easier if you create a keyword list before you set up your blog. Come up with 10-20 blog post ideas for each keyword on your list, and your keyword list should have 50-100 good keywords.
2. Let good ideas sit – Instead of trying to write about something the day you come up with the idea, let it sit a few days. You’ll think of other ideas that can go with it. Write them down. Start with your running idea list and go from there.
3. Cut unsupporting ideas before you write – If you keep a running list of ideas and related ideas, you’ll start to see that some of the ideas you thought initially supported each other are actually not related enough. They could be their own blog posts. Cut them out and separate them. Remember, the goal is to write fast. A nonsupporting idea doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.
4. Use lists – You can say a lot with ordered and unordered lists.
5. Keep your posts short - Remember, you’re trying to write fast. So keep your blog posts to under 500 words.
6. Write in bursts – If you get stuck on a blog post and can’t think of how to finish it, save it as a draft and come back to it later, when you can think of something fresh.
7. Write about your best ideas now - Why save your best ideas for later? Save time now. Just knock it out.

This blog post took 15 minutes to write. It’s less than 500 words and more than 250, so it should pass Google’s search engine optimization guidelines. Yours will too!

Press releases are good for one thing – links. If you really, really want to build some inbound links to your website and hope that your public relations campaign takes off, then submit a few press releases to the press release distribution websites. But what if you really want to power up your PR campaign?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t submit press releases. Submit them. You’ll get your inbound links and if you optimize them well you’ll likely see some inbound traffic when searchers find your press release in the search engines. You may even get a call from a reporter or see your press release re-printed somewhere – maybe even off line. But don’t expect your press releases to do all the work. Public relations goes beyond a mere press release.

Good public relations involves some level of relationship building. You need to find out what publications cover your industry. Make a list. Then find out who the person is in those publications who reports on topics that are important to you. Again, make a list.

When you’re ready to start your public relations campaign, contact those people on your list and make a personal pitch. The personal pitch is a lot more effective than a press release. It shows that you have the ambition and the incentive to go an extra step. Most of your competitors are submitting impersonal press releases. But you will be more direct, more personal, and more effective.

When you make a pitch, tailor it to the specific needs of the person and the publication you are pitching to. Is it a lone blogger in your niche? Find out what he likes to write about (you should subscribe to his blog and read it every day) and pitch to that.

Are you pitching to a national news magazine in your niche? What kind of stories do they run? What are their biases. Play to those.

Public relations is about more than building links and sending press releases. If you really want it to be effective, make it personal.

If you plan on doing any online marketing in 2012, what are the important methods of marketing that you should focus on? What should you stay away from?

First and foremost, SEO is definitely not dead. You shouldn’t give up on that yet. But it has changed in the last five years.

For instance, if you are out prowling for links and looking for high PR do-follow links, then you are probably wasting your time. But if you are focusing on placing your unique articles on high profile, high traffic websites where they will be seen, then that is a much better way to go about link building in 2012.

Social media is another online marketing tactic that isn’t going away. However, don’t just sign up for a bunch of social media websites and forgetting about them. Stick the large sites with current traction and high traffic. For most businesses, that means Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. If there are niche-specific sites that you can focus on, join them too.

Whichever social media websites you decide to join, stay active.

Video marketing and mobile marketing are two other online content strategies that are gaining ground and look to be effective in 2012.

Online marketing hasn’t changed much in the last five to ten years, but it has changed. Make note of the changes and keep promoting your content far and wide.

A gravatar can be a very useful tool for online content providers. It does several things for your online identity including:

• Notifying bloggers that you are not a spammer
• Making your name and website more brandable
• Easily identifies you as authentic everywhere you go
• Unifies your blogging, commenting, and social media presence across all channels

Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. It’s easy to set up. You just head over to Gravatar.com and upload your photograph or image – the one you want to be associated with a particular e-mail address. It’s important to note that if you own several websites and have different e-mail addresses for managing those websites and often comment on blogs, forums and social media sites under your various names, then you can have more than one gravatar. You can have one for each e-mail address you own because the gravatar is associated with a single e-mail address.

Every time you enter your e-mail address into a comment form, your gravatar will appear beside your name. This makes you recognizable to other commenters while branding you online and shows that you are a legitimate poster, not a spammer.

I highly recommend that you set up your own gravatar – especially if you blog regularly and comment on other blogs regularly.

Companies who have been spending money on marketing and advertising off line for years are often reticent to join the online marketing party, especially if their off line marketing is continuing to be effective. That’s understandable. But Reciprocal Consulting has been watching the Internet marketing space for several years now and we’re seeing some interesting trends.

First, more and more companies are moving some of their marketing budgets to online marketing tactics and strategies. Those companies that are already using online marketing channels are beginning to spend more on those channels. There is a reason for these trends. Online marketing works.

However, there are quite a few online marketing channels that may or may not work for your business. It’s important to focus on the tactics and strategies that have the greatest potential.

When you plan your Internet marketing strategy, focus first on the least expensive tactics that historically have the greatest return on investment. Obviously, if you don’t have a website, then you’ll need to focus on website design before anything else. But then what?

Your next step should be to improve your website’s search engine optimization. A well optimized website can give your business a boost that lasts for years.

Pay per click marketing is another online marketing channel that delivers results. It might cost more in the short term than other marketing tactics, but you’ll often see more immediate results, which can be very encouraging if you are new to Internet marketing.

The idea is not to make a big bold leap from off line marketing to online marketing, but to gradually shift your marketing dollars from staid old ineffective strategies off line to better, more effective strategies online. By integrating your online marketing efforts with your successful off line marketing efforts, your overall marketing strategy should be stronger and more effective.

Here’s a great article on local online marketing. I have three comments to make about the content in the article.

1. Paid search still packs a powerful punch – I don’t care where you live, paid search has the greatest potential to drive targeted traffic to your website fast. And then you can reap an ROI that is difficult to match anywhere else. I’d say paid search is better than TV and radio – especially for effective local marketing.
2. You can’t separate local from mobile – Mobile marketing has arrived in full force and if you think about it you’ve likely seen people use their cell phones to find businesses to shop in as well as to find products to purchase locally. While people may use the Internet to research purchases, they still would rather purchase locally. Mobile marketing makes that so much easier.
3. Localization and local awareness - The big trend is for big businesses to customize their marketing for local geographic markets. Modern online technology makes that possible. A huge part of that effort is with local smartphone apps. Location-based apps make local marketing easier and local shopping better.

Online marketing is getting a lot better for small businesses and making the world a better place for consumers.