Always Learning Something

If you want to rank in search engines, drive traffic to a website, and/or find new customers, a blog can be a great asset.

I’ve been writing this blog for just over 1 year and it’s finally starting to take off.  Most of my new clients in the past 3 months have come from this blog.

But that’s not the best part. It’s what I’ve learned along the way.

Let me share 3 key ingredients to successful blogging:

• Work smart
• Work hard
• Don’t quit

Work Smart

You can’t just work hard when it comes to ranking high in Google.  If you don’t know what you are doing, you’ll get nowhere.

In my experience you can learn about blogging from one of three sources:

1. Reading…you can learn TONS by reading. Just type in “learn to blog” and you’re on your way. The downside to this approach for me has always been time. Who has that much time?
2. Job experience…jobs train you for all sorts of things. You may be in print advertising, but your company needs you to learn about blogging. So you get a great opportunity to learn something new.
3. Mentors…unfortunately most of us don’t have the time to read or are in the place for a “blogging” job experience. So I suggest you find a mentor.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount for two very different services: BlogSuccess and HubSpot.

Work Hard

Then again, it’s still really hard work. If you are going to create a blog, you’ll be working hard.

My advice is, if you can’t blog at a minimum weekly, don’t do it at all.

In addition to writing, you’ll need time to:

• Set up & maintain your blog
• Promote your blogs posts 
• Guest blogging to build links

Don’t Quit

There are no guarantees that your blog will be successful. Mine was definitely not at first.

Here is some inspiration. My traffic over the last 12 months:

 As long as you’re working hard and working smart, DON’T QUIT!

You’ve got to be patient so that you don’t give up before you succeed. I’d suggest you blog weekly for a minimum of six months before you think of giving up.

In Conclusion

IF you work smart, work hard, and don’t quit, you can create a blog that greatly benefits your business. Hope that helps!

Photo credit:  robertpogorzelski

{ 6 comments }

One of the biggest problems facing iPhone app developers is getting noticed. 

Seems like several companies are now offering ways to launch your app into the top 100 or at least into a top category ranking. 

Greystripe is one of those companies. 

They just announced a program where if you’re willing to spend $.99 per download, they’ll drive a large volume of downloads your way. 

 

The Details

• You pay $.99 download
• Minimum commitment of $10k (that’s a deal killer for many)
• Claim their ad formats convert the best (doesn’t really matter though if you pay on a cost/download)
• They’ll promote you amongst their network of apps/publishers

What I Like

Yet another possible way to get into top ranking. 

What I Don’t (Like)

The price. I’ve actually done better than $.99/download using Admob, Quattro, and other ad networks. 

More to Come

Several days ago I sent an email to Greystripe requesting more information. I have not heard back from them so far. Hopefully they are just overwhelmed with new business. 

I will update this post if/when I learn more about this opportunity. They responded..see update below! 

How About You?

Is this something you’d consider for your launch? 

Feel free to ask questions and/or discuss in the comments! 

Update

Talked to the folks at Greystripe and they were very responsive.  They sent me a bunch of great information. Appears to me that they’d be easy to work with. 

Here is an example of a 300×250 ad: 

 

More Details 

• 4.9 million unique users
• CTRs – average US click through rate: 4% (impressive)
• Opt-in and take rates – 10% opt-in
• Can use your existing 300×250 flash creative

  

  

  

 

Photo Credit: Erik Charlton 

{ 1 comment }

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaigns left to themselves can just bump along.

You should continually try to expand or optimize them. I’ve talked a lot about expanding keyword lists in my keyword research series, so let’s talk about optimization in this post.

For the sake of this post, let’s say we are selling women’s red leather shoes. Our initial list of keywords was ~ 500 words. The campaign has been running for a while and has done well, but needs some cleaning up.

Here are some keywords that drove a lot of clicks:

• red shoe
• red leather shoes
• leather shoes
• women’s shoes
• women’s red leather shoes

The title and description looks like this:

 

 

 Six Ways to Optimize an SEM Campaign

 #1 Calculate ROI for categories or keywords

ROI = return on investment.

Do you know how to calculate it?

If you don’t calculate your ROI, you are just throwing money away.

If you spent $3,000 on keyword clicks in the ”red shoes” ad group and tracked 300 orders from that ad group, your cost/sale for that category would be $10. Make sense? Your cost per individual keyword may look something like this below.

 

 

 

 #2 Deal with Poor Performers

In the example above, “leather shoes” and “women’s shoes” are costing me $100 per sale. That’s just too much for me. One of my options is to pause those two keywords. In that case, I’m not showing up for searches on those keywords anymore.

A second option would be to drill down even deeper and find all the actual searches people are making. Google allows you to run a “search query report” that will give you the actual keywords people searched on. You may find that the term ”kids leather shoes” is generating a lot of clicks and you don’t sell any kids shoes! See #3 below for how to add negative keywords to fix that.

A third option is to take those poor performing words and put them in a separate category and use a different title, description, and landing page to try to get a better ROI.

#3 Add Negative Keywords

Another way to deal with poor performing keywords is to use “negative keywords”. If you don’t want to show up for searches of “kids”, you can add “-kids” to your list of keywords in Google.

#4 Create New Ad Groups

Is $10/sale the best you can do? Maybe, maybe not.

An ad group allows you to display different ads to unique sets of keywords.  You could put “red shoe”, “red leather shoes”, and “women’s red leather shoes” in one category, “leather shoes” and similar words in a second ad group, and keywords like ”leather shoes” in a third category.

That way you can tailor the ad to the search term.

#5 Add Match Types

Google, Yahoo, and MSN all allow you to use match types with keywords. Match types allow you to match what type of searches you want your keywords to show up for.  If this is news to you, learn more about Google’s matching options.

So one strategy might look like this:

• Start by using broad match for your keywords
• Run a test with a limited budget
• Run a “search query report” and see what searches you are getting clicks for
• Use negative, phrase, and exact matches to cut out undesirable keywords

Maybe when you run the search query report you see words like:

• red shoe restaurant
• red shoe repair
• red shoes for kids

You don’t want to show up for these searches, so you can either add negative keywords like “-restaurant” or create exact matches for your top keywords like [red shoes]. You’ve got lots of options.

#6 Test Title/Description Combinations

Google gives me 95 characters in the title and two description lines to explain the greatness of my red shoes. One thing new advertisers don’t always realize is that you can use more than one ad with an ad group.

Here is another strategy I might use with my red shoes campaign:

• Create two ads for “red shoes”
• Perhaps one focuses on the attributes of the shoe (i.e. scuff & waterproof) and one on the value (i.e. free shipping & great service)
• Use Google conversion tracking to see which keyword/ad combinations are most effective
• Once you’ve established a winner, pause the “loser” ad
• Create more ads over time to run again your “winner” ad

Conclusion

Don’t leave those paid search campaigns to themselves. Keep working on em!

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

{ 0 comments }

It’s not a secret that the iTunes app store exploded with sales over the holidays. If you were in the top 100 free or paid apps, you may have seen your downloads soar by 5-10x over the Christmas weekend.

Those who got devices and iTunes gift cards for Christmas were spending like crazy.

How did iPhone apps fare versus iPod touch apps?

According to a report from Flurry, iPod touch app sales rose by 10x versus just 2x for iPhone app sales.

Three Important Notes

• App downloads on iPod Touch soared past iPhone for the first time, eclipsing iPhone downloads by 172%.
• iPod Touch 3G downloads increased by more than 900% on Christmas Day, compared to the average of all previous Fridays in December.
• Total iPod Touch downloads (all generations) jumped by over 1000% on Christmas Day, indicating that in addition to new iPod Touch 3Gs coming into the market, iTunes gift card giving may have driven downloads to older generation iPod Touch devices.

So why does this matter?

If your app strategy did not include the iPod touch, you were left “out in the cold” on Christmas day (pun intended).

So as you plan your app strategy, make sure to consider apps that include the iPod touch platform.

Could be great for your business!

{ 1 comment }