Internet Marketing Blog to help you succeed online

This amazing powerful tool called Twitter has proven that its not only effective to market products online and generate traffic but also a very important tool to cover events and updates. Live blogging on Twitter took an all time high yesterday when terror struck Mumbai.

Bloggers across Mumbai updated live feeds via Twitter after gunmen launch attacks on Mumbai city, highlighting the emergency of citizen journalism in news coverage.

Bloggers were uploading pictures and images of attacks from the damge sites. Some bloggers provided running description and commentaries from near the action, while others vented emotions.

I got to know about the attacks on Twitter, much before any media covered it online. In a matter of seconds number of messages ( tweets and re tweets ) from Twitter fans created a live blogging viral effect of the incident.

Close to 80 Twitter feeds were being posted every 30 seconds and this still continues as bloggers send live coverage updates via Twitter. Several news channel were reported to carry out live feeds of Twitter updates on Mumbai attacks.

The Live blogging from the attacks in Mumbai still contine on Twitter as I write this post, you can view Live Twitter Feeds here

Is Twitter changing the way mainstream media covers an event? This is one of the first instances I ve seen on citizens covering an event thro live feeds, the Twitter revolution seem to have begun worldwide. Can this application change the dynamics of the digital media industry ?

You may experience a minor issue while commenting on this post, I am working on fixing this. It should not deter you from commenting.

Keep Twittering

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The Google Webmasters Blog has recently released a very simple and straight forward guide to SEO - Search Engine Optimisation for your website. This guide covers all the broad basics that will be helpful to a newbie or website owner. It’s a guide that will help you achieve a higher SERP ( Search Engine Rank Page ) and help your site’s visibility on search engines.

Some of the topics in the guide have been covered before on this blog.

- Introduction to organic search
- How to create unique page titles ( also featured here by WebTrafficROI.com )
- Good practise for page title tags
- How to make use of the description meta tag
- How to improve the structure of your URL’s ( also featured here by WebTrafficROI.com)
- Good practises of the URL structure
- How to make your site easier to navigate
- Good practises of site navigation
- Offering quality services and content
- How to write better anchor texts
- Using heading tags appropriately
- Image Optimisation ( also featured here by WebTrafficROI.com )
- Making the right use of Robots.txt
- Making use of “nofollow” tags
- Promoting your website in the right ways.
- Making use of webmasters tools ( also featured here by WebTrafficROI.com )

Download the Google Search Engine Guide here

“This is to all the Guns N’ Roses Fans who stuck with us thro all the s*** ” - Axl Rose

I’ve been a hardcore Guns N’ Roses fan and I am joined by millions around the globe who await their new album in 17 years..Yeah, you read it right 17 years.

By the time the new GNR album, “Chinese Democracy” hits stores on Sunday, it will have been 17 years, two months and seven days since the last time GNR fans had a chance to buy a CD of new material.

When Axl finally emerged from the Rip Van Wrinkle studio he would have found that the world had changed.

Here’s what I mean :

- When the bands album “Use your illusion” 1 and 2 were realeased on September 17 th 1991, an unknown band called Nirvana was getting ready to launch an album called ‘Nevermind’ the following week. In other words Nirvana became a cult band , lead singer Kurt Cobain peaked, died and became nostalgia between the two GNR album releases.

- The Google guys were still 8 years before they met.

- Micheal Jackson was considered a good investment. Sony had just signed him to a contract for worth 1 billion.

- The biggest game system was SEGA, Sony’s playstation was still three years in the future. 

- Apple was 12 years aways from making the iPod.

- There were no digital downloads, no Facebook , no Myspace, no American Idol.

- The world’s population was 5.7 billion. Its now 6.3 billion.

- The band itself split with Axl Rose controling the rights to the Gun N Roses brand.

- It was still 10 years before 9/11 change the world.

- There was a brutal recession in US and across the globe as stock markets tanked, partly because fighting a War in Iraq.

 Ok, so not everything has changed.

What’s this got to do with an Internet Marketing Blog ?
- Chinese Democracy is an album that Axl Rose has been working on for over 10 years, it has become the most expensive albums of all times. After so many delays , leaks , band link up changes it’s hard to believe that this album will ever be released.

But we can certainly learn some marketing lessons from this one.

- Building anticipation works :

The anticipate build up used for this is worth mentioning, instead of waiting until the entire album was finished, the band strategicaly made announcements when the album was in its early stages, when new band members were found, and made good use of live shows to preview select few songs. If this was not done stratigically the band would not not impacted the anticipation build up for 17 years.

- Leveraging Technology and Internet to build anticipation :

No better marketing tool can be used than the internet to leak song footage online. While this was strategically done it would have been a disaster for the band if this was not supervised and authorized intentionally.

- Keeping the trust factor intact :

Most marketing companies go too far in anticipating the trust of their customers in the initial phase of the campaign. You need to know when to  stop and when to go. I am sure that most GNR fans had given up hope waiting in anticipation about the release of this new album. 

- Getting attention of the media and the marketplace :

The hype and aniticipate of the release of the album ensured that they were always in the news. Back in March, the Dr Pepper people said they would offer free fizzy stuff to everyone in US if Axl managed to launch the album in 2008. Back then the likelihood of see the release of Chinese Democracy on the shelves seemed remote.

But now the day has arrived and the company is not welching. Tony Jacobs, VP Marketing of Dr Pepper, said in a statement :”Dr Pepper’s on us ”

Begining this Sunday ( 23 rd November ) at 12.01 am, coupons for a free 20 ounce soda will be available for 24 hours on Dr Pepper’s website. Coupons will be honoured until 28 th February 2008.

The long awaited Chinese Democracy drops at Best Buy stores November 23 rd 2008 , but you can listen to the preview songs right here  at Myspace.com/gunsnroses

Its received a record smashing 25 listens per second, Guns N’ Roses have not only completed their comeback, but they have had the largest ‘listening party’ in the world.

The release makes me feel nostalgic.

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Contesting is an amazing viral tool that gets more exposure for your blog provided you use the contest strategically to leverage growth for your blog.

The objective of any contest should be to create a viral effect and increase usership for your blog.

Tips to make a blog contest successful :

1 ) Don’t rush:
- Don’t start a contest as soon as you launch a blog, get at least about 30 - 40 good articles on your site before lanching a contest, ensure you have decent amount of traffic to your blog atleast 25 - 35 visits a day to your blog, ensure your content encourages interactivitity from your readers in terms of comments at least about 4 - 5 good commments per post.

Once you have the above you can start to work on a contest as you have now created a solid foundation for the contest to be successful.

2 ) Keep the contest simple:
- Keep focused on the objective of being viral, keep the contest very simple. Let the user do a maximum of 5 action oriented things to gain an entry in to your contest. Anything more than 5 will not go well with the user.Respect your users time for contesting.

3 ) Create a viral buzz:
- Ensure that you give entries or points to users to create a viral buzz for your blog. You should leverage social media sites like Stumble Upon and Technorati to favourite your blog, gain visibility and increase ranking.

4 ) Ensure a link strategy for your contest blog:
- Incentivise users with entries to link your contest post to their blog. This is the best natural form of getting noticed by Google. This will result in high Google ranking and high PR in the next update depending on how many sites link to you.

5 ) Use forums effectively:
- Use webmasters forums effectively to ensure that your contest post is visible. Create a contest thread for your blog on these forum to leverage traffic and entries to your blog. Use at least 10 - 12 webmasters forum for this activity. Ensure that each thread on each forum is different, the will help you in not posting duplicate content for your blog online.

Every webmaster forum has a Contest sub section, make use of this to promote your blog.

6 ) Ensure reputable sponsors:
- Good sponsors and prizes are always an attraction for any contest. Ensure you tie up with reputed blog and sites to build attraction for your contest. High the value of the prizes better the response to your blog contest.

7 ) Get high commenting:
- Ensure that you comment intelligently on top traffic blogs in your niche and drive traffic to the contest post instead of your home page.

Let’s see how WebTrafficROI performed on the above points in terms of traffic and readership.The figure below indicate the before contest and after contest scenerio.

RSS users : 38 122 ( till last night, not sure what happened to the feedburner this morning, its only showing me 40 RSS readers )

Alexa ranking: 3,85,000 2,18,000 ( the blog is moving rapidly below th 200 k mark )

Technorati : 62,300 35,630

Google PR : 1 2

The contest has shown that it can significantly improve your blogs ranking and traffic in less than a month. You need to ensure that all the above factors are well executed.

The blog did not spend any money on advertising the contest on any blogs nor did I comment on blogs leading to the contest page.

The traffic and readership for the blog was a natural and viral progression of effectively leveraging the contest post on the blog.  
 
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