The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Internet marketing is for authors too. In fact, many successful authors use the Internet every day to promote their books and other merchandise. You can too.

One successful author recently increased his readership by several thousand fans just by following a very simple strategy for online promotion. Here it is in a nutshell:

1. The first thing Kevin W. McCarthy did was turn an existing book into a Kindle e-book.
2. Then he set the price of the e-book at free
3. Next, he sent out e-mail blasts promoting the book.
4. And he set up radio interviews and online webcasts to help promote the book
5. Finally, he promoted the book through social media

As a result of his efforts, Kevin W. McCarthy’s Kindle book became the No. 1 non-fiction book at Amazon. And all he did was promote his book in ways that successful authors everywhere do.

You can do it. And you don’t even need a previously published book. You can write your book right now and publish it yourself through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.

By authoring your own book and promoting it through your e-mail list, website properties, and all over the web using the tools at your disposal – most of them free – you can maneuver yourself onto the best selling list at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBook store, and other online book merchants.

The key to success as an author is to have an idea, follow through with that idea, and then promote your book once it is published. It’s never been easier to be a successful author.

Wordstream has a colorful, and very helpful, infographic that shows the best of the best Internet marketing tools in 10 different categories. Specifically, the categories addressed are:

• Web analytics
• Social media management
• Content marketing and blogging
• Search engine optimization
• Pay-per-click marketing
• Marketing automation
• Video hosting management
• Conversion rate optimization
• Crowdsourcing
• E-mail marketing

You’d think a company putting together that kind of list would include only paid services in hopes they might earn some affiliate money, but that’s not the case. Some of the marketing tools are actually free. Many of them, in fact.

Among the free Internet marketing tools that made the list are Google Analytics, HootSuite, WordPress, Joomla, Google Webmaster Tools, Vimeo, WordWatch, Google Website Optimizer, evly, NetProspex, and several others. There is at least one free service under each of the above 10 product categories.

So, what’s it mean?

If you’re savvy with your investment dollars you can run your online business using all free tools.

While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with every service on the list as I’d probably add some tools that aren’t on the list, but I will say that the infographic gives a good visual representation of some tools that are available for startups. But if you really want to shine and get your service the recognition it deserves, you’ll still have to spend some money on content creation.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to run your business online. You can find awesome Internet marketing tools for free, and most of these have value added services that you can pay for as your business grows.

What will Internet marketing look like in 2032, twenty years from now? Care to take a guess?

If you look at the history of Internet marketing from the beginning of the World Wide Web until now, it’s very interesting how we have progressed to the point that we have.

• 1990 – Birth of the World Wide Web including browsers and hypertext, online bulletin boards are very popular communication channels
• 1993 – Excite, the world’s first search engine, was created
• 1994 – AltaVista was created and later would become the world’s first major search engine; Yahoo! became the first powerhouse Web directory
• 1995 – GeoCities launched, becomes the first successful online community; webrings begin to rise in popularity
• 1997 – SixDegrees is the first official social network
• 1998 – Google was born, the first search engine to analyze back links
• 1999 – Overture became the first company to offer pay per click advertising; Blogger.com launches
• 2000 – Google enters PPC market with Google AdWords
• 2003 – Google AdSense program starts, increasing Google’s hold on the PPC market; LinkedIn and MySpace both launch
• 2004 – Facebook is created
• 2005 – YouTube launches; Google introduces personalized search
• 2006 – MicroSoft LiveSearc started; Twitter launches
• 2007 – Mobile marketing starts to pick up
• 2008 – Facebook becomes most popular social network
• 2009 – LiveSearch rebrands, becomes Bing; Google rolls out personalized search for logged out users
• 2010 – Local search becomes more important
• 2011 – Google+ launches, Google proclaims it is the future of the search engine’s search and social product

This is a very sketchy history of Internet marketing, but it can shed some light on the direction that online marketing is going. More personal, more local, more social, more mobile, and incorporating more video and visual results. So what will all of that look like in 2032?

Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that all of these components of search will be more integrated and more sophisticated. Are you preparing your company to make the most of your opportunities in each of these online marketing channels?

One question that any small business owner must ask him or herself when embarking upon an Internet marketing strategy is this, Should I stick only with Internet marketing or use it as an adjunct to my other marketing efforts?

I think the answer depends on your own circumstances and goals.

If your business is an Internet-only business, then Internet marketing as a standalone strategy might be the way to go. However, if your business is a local retail shop, then you definitely want to do some off line marketing within your community.

Marketing is not a zero-sum game. It’s also not an exact science. You have to do some experimenting and see what works for you.

But when you start experimenting with online marketing techniques, it helps if you spend some time studying what others have done before you. Not that you have to copy everything that’s been done before, but if you are going to try something different, then you need to know why you are veering from the acceptable norms. That’s true in any profession.

For most businesses, Internet marketing strategies make for good adjuncts to whatever else you are already doing. I’d say it’s a rare situation where you would completely replace your traditional marketing with Internet marketing.

The challenge for most businesses to decide is what mix of Internet marketing you want to accomplish and what mix of the traditional you will incorporate.

Once you decide on your total marketing plan, then you implement it. Get aggressive with whatever strategies you decide to employ.

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.

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.

Internet marketing is an ever changing discipline. How to effectively market your business and manage your content today is nothing like it was ten years ago, or even five years ago. If you plan to do business online, then you’ve got to adapt to the changing landscape of online marketing. That means adjusting your aim and trying new things from time to time.

Social media has only been around a short while, but it’s undoubtedly the way to market your business online today. And I don’t mean in the usual way that most Internet marketers today think of as social media.

The big secret in this industry is that most Internet marketers are about five years behind the times. Yes, five years.

They’re still trying the hard sell. They’re still pretending like SEO is the holy grail of online marketing. And they’re still banking all their social media coin on social bookmarking. But that’s not what social media is all about.

What it is about is building relationships. It’s about attracting the type of person you want to do business with. Nothing more, nothing less.

When you employ a successful social media campaign, you’ll know in the gut that you’ve made the right connections. And many times that translates into positive SEO. But if that’s your end goal, then you’re doing it wrong.

Phone call tracking is one of the useful metrics for companies who want, and need, a phone number on their website. You’ve spent a lot of money on that website. Wouldn’t you like to know if it’s working for you?

With phone call tracking, you can track your incoming phone calls no matter where they come from. You’ll never miss another phone call. You can block the calls you don’t want to get. And you can calculate your ROI, record your phone calls, and track local as well as international calls. All at no additional cost to you.

Never wonder how effective your Internet marketing campaign was ever again. Whether you want to implement a PPC campaign, a social media campaign, or a video marketing campaign, you can track your incoming phone calls.

Inbound call tracking allows you to measure the results of your Internet marketing campaigns and determine if they are successful or not. If your marketing efforts succeed, then you can re-run them another time. Or learn from your mistakes.

Try inbound phone call tracking today. Use an 800 number and measure your total ROI so that your online marketing efforts can be more effective.

Here’s a story for you. Famous stand up comedian Louis CK ditches traditional media and decides to deliver his own comedy routines through his website for $5 per download. Either that is genius of the highest order or sheer folly. What do you think?

Here’s what I think: He’s paving a new path for others to follow. And they will.

In every field there are innovators. The innovators come first. They meet with mild success, or sometimes wild success, while others watch and learn. Then, the second wave hits. Others pick up where the innovators left off and take that success to a new level.

I think we’re entering a new era. Creators have realized they no longer need a publisher or a large benefactor to increase their market share and visibility. Louis CK built his reputation on the backs of large companies who gave him a platform. Now that he has his platform he can take it out on his own. And he’ll likely succeed because he’s creative, good with business and has attainable goals.

What about you? Can you take your business on its own? Can you innovate? Should you?

Entrepreneurs can learn from the creative geniuses among us. Internet marketing is changing the playing field. Have you noticed?

Online marketing is becoming less and less about SEO all the time. That doesn’t mean you should give up on SEO. What I’m really saying is that SEO is not the be all-end all of Internet marketing.

In the early days of online marketing, you had directories and search engines. There were these things called web rings, which on one uses any more. And there were display ads and articles, which was mostly about SEO. But that’s about it.

Around 1998, things began to change. Google was born. SEO took on greater prominence – for about five years.

In 2003, things began to change again. Blogs were becoming popular, social media was gaining ground, and PPC was big and strong. PPC was not about SEO It was about reaching your target market quickly and effectively. It still is.

But in the last couple of years we’ve seen the growth of mobile apps, QR codes, e-book readers, and a number of other emerging technologies that threaten to expand the Internet marketer’s reach outside of traditional online strategies like SEO, link building and social media. And I believe these opportunities are going to grow more prominent.

When it comes to online marketing, focus on what’s important for reaching your target market. SEO is important, but it’s one channel. Don’t get wrapped around a tree looking for the forest.

Online marketers have recently begun using a different kind of language. It used to be that you’d hear a lot about link building, social media marketing, and the use of other terms to give a fragmented impression of Internet marketing strategies. But there is one term that draws all of these concepts together under one impressive term.

That one term is “content marketing.” So what is it?

Content marketing includes the full span of content that you produce to promote your brand. It begins with your own website content, but it doesn’t end there.

Beyond your own website you have your blog, your social media profiles, directory submissions, video content, links, articles, Knol pages, Squidoo lenses, guest blog posts and anything that involves promoting your content in hopes of drawing attention to it.

All content marketing is really about one thing – drawing attention to yourself. Anything you use that does that falls into the category of content marketing. That even includes press releases, forum content and comments on other people’s blogs.

So here’s the question you have to answer about your own content marketing efforts: Are all of your efforts consistent in terms of your message and brand? If not, what do you need to do to get it there?

Content marketing is as much as creating perceptions as it is anything else. What are you doing to make your content sell your business?

Here’s a question for you: What’s killing e-mail marketing?

Is it PPC? Search engine optimization? Video marketing? Social media?

Answer: None of the above! E-mail isn’t dying.

It’s fashionable to proclaim the death of old media when new media arrives. Those who remember the early advent of DVDs will remember how they were supposed to kill the movie theater. But the box office is still going strong and some of the biggest box office openings in history have occurred after DVDs.

The Internet hasn’t killed radio or TV. Search didn’t kill directories. Social media didn’t kill search. Nor will it, or anything else, kill e-mail marketing.

E-mail is a private space that people will allow you to enter if you’ve built their trust. You can use other media – search, social media, and videos – to build that trust. Then you use your website to get people to give your their private e-mail address, which you can then use to send them invitations and marketing messages that close the sale or seal the deal. E-mail is where the transaction is solidified.

E-mail marketing is far from dead. The best Internet marketers are using it to make their dough. You should too.

Do you have free giveaways on your website? If not, why not?

Free giveaways, if you give it some thought, actually aren’t free. They do cost you money and you should get something of value in return. So what does that mean exactly?

Let’s say you own an auto body shop. You provide dent and pain repair and also perform basic automotive services like tire rotations, tune ups, oil changes, and fixing flats. What if you wanted to increase your business over the long term? What could you provide for free in exchange for something of value that you receive in return?

You could give away a free tune up in exchange for an e-mail address so that you could send out your weekly auto maintenance newsletter. Or you could give away a coupon for a fixing a flat tire free of charge when a new customer purchases a more expensive service like getting their vehicle painted. The coupon could be delivered by e-mail upon payment through your website when the new customer schedules their appointment.

There are all kinds of ways to make giving away free products and services work for you. You just have to think creatively. But the truth is, it works. And you should be doing what works.

Professional Internet marketers are always on the lookout for new opportunities. But what constitutes an opportunity?

At one time, Facebook was seen as a college hangout. Then, almost all of a sudden it seems, it became a marketing powerhouse. Everyone had to do it. A similar story can be told about Twitter. It was an obscure location where only the elite geek patrol hung out and shared what they ate for lunch. Then someone figured out how to use it for marketing. Everyone had to try it.

Similar stories can be told of hundreds of other locations on the Web: Blogger, LinkedIn, MySpace (which is now a bit of a has-been), YouTube, Ning, and the list goes on. Well, now can add one more site to that list.

Tumblr.

Tumblr has languished in relative obscurity for the past four years. But, according to comScore, in the last year it grew by 218%. But the majority of that is the 12-34 year old crowd. And the majority of that is in the 18-34 year old range.

In fact, comScore mentions that Tumblr outpaces the rest of the Internet in those age brackets. That tells me that if you have a product that you can market to those ages, then Tumblr could very well be the social marketplace to be.

The rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers had a popular song a while back titled “Give It Away.” The popular lyrical refrain went like this:

Give it away
Give it away
Give it away, now

If you’ve heard the song, then you know the melody.

The philosophy behind the lyrics was one of altruism. If you have something of value, give it away. Your efforts will come back to reward you. It’s a timeless principle that is at the heart of more than one religion. And it’s also an important principle for Internet marketers.

“Free” has become a sort of currency online. Many Internet marketers have gone on to great success giving away their precious gems for free. And you can do it too.

When you decide to use the power of “free” to your advantage, take something you’ve produced – something of value – and give it away for free. Ask for nothing in return. Except one thing. An e-mail address.

This works wonders and leads to great things. The thing you give away for free has to be truly valuable – at least in the eyes of the recipient. When your freebie has value, the recipient will be more than happy to share their contact information. You can then use that for marketing purposes well into the future. Try it, you’ll see the reward I’m sure.

If you share your links on Facebook in hopes that you’ll drive more traffic to your website or blog, you might think more about StumbleUpon for that purpose. On the other hand, maybe not.

This is a rather lame analysis on the differences between Facebook and StumbleUpon, but Cynthia Boris is right on one point, at least. Facebook was not designed to be a link sharing site – StumbleUpon was. So what’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?

Look at this like this. These numbers represent an aggregate of users. StumbleUpon now drives 50% of social media traffic referral in the U.S. while Facebook dipped down below 42%. Guess what? Search engine traffic is still up around 60% of website referrals. When seen in that light, both StumbleUpon and Facebook pale in comparison.

Still, let’s get back to StumbleUpon and Facebook. SU has been a heavy driver of traffic for years. But most Internet marketers know that traffic doesn’t convert well. Facebook is better for branding. Plus, because of its social networking features, the ability to build brandable pages, and Facebook’s app development features, the largest social media website on the planet is much, much better for small business branding.

Besides that, you’ll have to do your own comparisons for your own website. Many website owners can use StumbleUpon very effectively. Others find great success with Facebook. Aggregate totals say nothing about your ability to leverage any particular social media website.

There’s nothing wrong with StumbleUpon touting its success. And there’s nothing wrong with being a little critical of it too. StumbleUpon is a good source of traffic if you keep in mind what it’s good for.

While we are proponents of Internet marketing – pay per click advertising, social media, search engine marketing, video marketing, etc. – we still believe that there are traditional marketing tactics that still work. The question isn’t whether or not you should be using traditional marketing, but which traditional marketing tactics you should be using.

When it comes to looking up phone numbers and addresses, many people today will go online before consulting the traditional Yellow Pages. And a website, of course, is a wonderful thing to have for lots of reasons.

Traditional marketing collateral like business cards, brochures, billboards, and radio and television advertising are still very effective in reaching the right market. But often, the most effective off line marketers are marrying these tactics up with successful online marketing campaigns that include but not limited to

• PPC advertising
• Website development
• Video marketing
• E-mail marketing
• Search engine optimization
• and social media marketing

When you combine effective traditional marketing efforts with effective Internet marketing, you increase your own branding and marketing power exponentially.

Many TV advertisers, for instance, plug their websites and social media profiles in the ad. You can do the same in your radio spots and other offline marketing materials.

Don’t give up on traditional marketing just yet. Just add it to your online marketing efforts for greater effectiveness.

If you plan to do any Internet marketing at all, then the most important thing to keep in mind about your business is that you are first and foremost a publisher. A self-publisher, but a publisher nonetheless.

Why is it so important to consider yourself a self-publisher? Because when you think about it, publishers own and control the flow of information and information is the key to your business.

It doesn’t matter if you run a brick and mortar busines or an online-only business, if you are marketing online, then you are publishing information. Articles, blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook status updates, Facebook pages, social bookmarks with content summaries, answers to questions on the Q&A sites, the list goes on and on. It’s all content that you publish – whether on your own site or someone else’s.

While this is marketing and the intent is to drive traffic back to your website so that you can close sales, it’s also publishing. You’re in the information publishing business no matter what other business you consider yourself in.

When you think of yourself as a publisher, then you gain a lot more clout. You gain instant credibility. You can suddenly own and control the flow of content and information. If you aren’t doing that, then it’s controlling you.

E-mail marketing has been around since the early days of the Internet. It was one of the first firmly established Internet marketing tactics and is still today one of the most effective ways to reach an audience and earn an income online. Here are 5 ways to make e-mail marketing work for you.

1. Use your website to collect e-mail addresses. Give something away in exchange for your website visitors’ e-mail addresses, then mail them periodic offers for your products and services and affiliate products.
2. Get your website visitors to subscribe to an ongoing newsletter or e-zine, which you mail weekly or monthly with unique content they cannot get anywhere else.
3. Use your mailing list to promote your online website and blog content. When you post something new, send a note to your list and guide them to your new content.
4. Provide an e-course for your site visitors. Use your website to sign up new members for a free or paid e-course.
5. Send out coupons for your products and services to members of your e-mail list to encourage the purchase of more products and services.

These are not the only ways to use e-mail marketing effectively, but these 5 techniques are ways that successful online marketers have used e-mail marketing in the past. I’m sure you can come up with your own creative way to market to your list using e-mail.

Direct mail marketers have enjoyed a long hey-day of success and profits thanks to the U.S. Postal Service. But Postmaster General Patrick Donahue is predicting that mail delivery will move to three days a week – within 15 years. That makes me wonder, how much will postage cost then? Probably over $1 per delivery.

With postage expected to go up to 45 cents at the end of this year, direct mail marketers can’t afford to cling to the paradigms of the past. It’s high time to move into the future.

And what is the future? Well, I think we can safely say it is now.

Internet marketing is here to stay, and it’s replacing the old paradigms. If you wait 15 years before you start on your plan for marketing online, then your business will be as dead as the U.S. postal service. You should be online right now, and you should be marketing your business online right now – even if you still use direct mail marketing.

Smart marketers measure the times as much as they measure their own efforts. It is clear that the U.S. postal service, and direct mail, are moving into the past. The question is, what are you going to do about it – for your business?