Internet Marketing Smarts.com

Any marketer or business owner worth their salt will tell you the money is in the list. If all your advertising partnerships disappeared tomorrow, would you still be able to keep your head above water? A lot of businesses would cringe at the thought of this. But then there are smart business owners like our subscribers that wouldn’t even flinch because they know they have a massive list of existing customers that they can tap into.  Hopefully you’re one of these smart business owners, because you’re going to find the following article very useful.

For the others, We’re not going to get into the mechanics of building a list and capturing the information. There are great services that handle this such as GetResponse.com which is found in our tools section. But nonetheless when you become up to speed with the technical aspect of list building,  this article will still prove useful.

So let’s get in to it. Most of us have been to a dance club at least once in our lives. I’m in my early 30’s so it’s not as appealing to me anymore. Actually by my late 20’s it had lost a lot of its appeal to me. I just didn’t want to be that 30+ year old dude in the club trying to seem cool and hitting on women that looked at me like I was in a walker and wearing adult diapers. If you’re that dude, my condolescences go out to you and your self respect.

In any event, one thing I always hated about the club was that whole waiting on line business. There were a few times where I didn’t have to do this because I was on that magical "List". We all know that list all to well, for better or worst. Have you ever been outside for over an hour in the rain and then some random people just head to the bouncer and tell them they’re on the list and presto, they’re in? I won’t lie, I was so mad at these people that you would’ve thought I had just taken a "Hate"orade bubble bath that night. It was really frustrating for the person on the other side of that cool line.

Everyone wants to be part of the cool list. We all have this high school mentality of wanting to be part of a popular crowd even when you lied to yourself and said that you didn’t. Deep inside you did. Well the visitors to your website have the same mentality. It’s not something we shake off as adults. We still want to be accepted and part of a crowd. So you as a blogger or content producer must play on this primal emotion.

How To Get People To Flock To Your List!

1. This goes without saying but you should always have a call to action on everything you write. Don’t just have a subscription box on your homepage and call it a day. You want that call to action at the end of every piece of content you write.

2. Make the call to action sexy though! When you go to a club you’re trying to look as "fly" as possible. Well most of us do. Your call to action should make your users feel like they’re missing out by not being part of your list. There has to be some unique selling proposition. After all you put a lot of effort in your ad copy, right? Well subscriptions are just as important as sales because they can lead to more of them if you manage your list properly.

3. Make reference to your cool subscribers in your actual content. Remember people are like sheep they want to be lead. So when writing content always make reference to your subscribers in a positive way and link to back to the subscription page. So for instance here’s a sentence you might use. "It amazes me how many people fall for that scam. But fortunately my subscribers already know how to spot these type of scams a mile away." I basically implied that my subscribers were smarter and thus cooler merely for the fact they’re on my list. It’s very easy to do this every time you write. In fact,  there shouldn’t be a time this isn’t employed in your articles or content.

By the way, I’m not only a client, I use these techniques in this and other blogs. If you re-read this article again, you’ll see exactly where I used tip #3. So if you treat your content like a dance club you’ll have people dying to get in but the difference is that you welcome them all.  Unlike the hottest dance club your users won’t have to grease the bouncer, get frisked or deal with a meat head’s delusional visions of grandeur.

Party is over, lights are on, now go back home and employ these techniques. And for God’s sake stay out the club. Aren’t you a bit too old for that?

Everyone says that content is king. But I feel like no one really gets into what that means. If I write about how my wife takes up all the bed covers now that she’s pregnant. Is that an example of content being king? I went to a search engine conference in 2007 and some folks from Google were present. A question about search engine optimization and content was asked and the Google rep said the following. "Don’t worry about search engine optimization (seo). Just write good content!"  What the f! What kind of answer is that? We all had to chuckle because Google was being as elusive as secret government agent.

Well screw that. I’m going to let the cat out the bag. I have 3 steps that have helped me secure top rankings in Google for various long tailed and regular keywords. Chances are you’ve heard some of these but I’m going to put some twists to them. So be patient.

Step 1:  Write good content first!
Huh? Didn’t I just make fun of the Google guy for saying that? Yes I did. But he is right, you should write really good content first. You should actually know about whatever you’re writing about. Otherwise people will know that you’re just babbling on and will leave your site. (more…)