We all want more traffic to our website right? Everyone spends hours a day trying to find loopholes tricks and secrets to driving huge numbers of visitors without ever truly discovering the holy grail.

Stop wasting time searching and start with the simplest solution. Often times the simplest solution is the one that works, as long as you are strategic about its use.

Today we are going to look at Commenting as a source of traffic. Many of my clients think that commenting is not effective because they have been sold on the spammy auto-commenting tools of the past that do nothing, but get you banned from sites and kill your google Seo rank.

How to use Commenting to Drive Hundreds of Visitors a Day

Below I will outline, the key elements to a successful comment and then the strategy you should use to find blogs and make it a repeatable process to drive more traffic. Any comment on any blog is not effective. A top comment on a prominent blog drives huge traffic and backlinks.

The Elements of a Successful Blog Comment for Maximum Traffic

There are a few key rules when commenting on blogs

• Acknowledge the Writer of the Post when Commenting

This is one of the biggest misses of people using commenting as a traffic source. You need to stroke the ego of the writer a bit (admittedly I love this when I am the writer) and let them know you are a real person who actually read their post.

This will differentiate you from all other commenters.

• Add Value to the blog post content

When posting comments you need to be specific and reference a section of the article. You want to either comment on a specific part of the article or add a valuable insight that you have had on the topic. Focus on adding value for the people reading the post. They are your potential visitors.

• Don’t overtly promote yourself in the post

Do not overtly promote yourself or your site in the posts. You want to make sure that you have a link at the end under your name or at least use a tool like Disqus for comments that links your name to your site.

Let people seek you out from your value and not because you tricked them into clicking your link. This provides a higher conversion as well as adds credibility to your content.

Feel free to use a signature in your comment like you would in an email. People are accustomed to seeing it and are less likely to see it as promotion than a blatant link in the body of your comment.

The Strategy behind Successful Blog Commenting for Traffic Generation

As I said before, not all comments are created equal. You need to have a well thought out comment on a high traffic blog that is prominently located. Below are the strategies requires to generate significant volume from commenting.

1. Identify 5 High Traffic Blogs that Post Daily on Your topic
2. Find out when they post and be the first to comment

Some blogs list the time a post is posted and the date. Take a look at the time and be the first person there with a well thought out comment.

If you are not the first, try to reply to the first comment with some additional value or suggestions.

It helps to use a notification program like for Boxcar for the iPhone or another program that follows a site for changes an then notifies you in realtime.

Other things to be sure of is that the blog gets regular commenters (ie. 30+ Daily is a good #). You can also look at the number of tweets and shares a post gets to indicate the popularity. These all add to the eyeballs that will see your site.

3. Be thoughtful and use the Good Commenting Rules

Be sure to follow the good commenting rules shown in the beginning of this post. Nothing does more for your conversions than adding value and offering solutions to your potential customers.

For more information, grab my free ebook at 21 Tips to simpler and more effective Web Marketing.

Content Marketing: 5 Apps to Create Killer Blog Content

Blogs are a great way to pull in free traffic, but without great content they will struggle at best.

One way to spruce up your posts is by adding video and photos. There are plenty of places purchase photos, but not video. I am going to show you four very fast and fun ways to use your iPhone to create amazing (no exaggeration) videos and photos for use in your blog.

Photo Creation App for iPhone: Instagram

The first and easiest app to use is InstaGram. It is a simple photo sharing app that gives you some free filter effects to make a dramatic impact on your photos. I use this app for personal as well as business use. The best part is that the app actually creates square photos that are ideal for WordPress blogs, or social media sites. This saves loads of time editing photos to be just right for display on your blog or even your profile photo. In fact, my social media profiles all use an image captured from my iPhone and processed in InstaGram.

When I am traveling or just going about my day I like to capture photos that I think are interesting and tied to my subject matter. It is an easy way to inspire posts that are completely yours.

Photo Editing App for iPhone: Photoshop Express (PS Express)

It is important to have images for your blog posts, Pinterest postings, or Facebook timeline updates. When I am traveling, I commonly need to crop images, add blurs, or modify a photo. The PS Express app let’s me do so easily and for free.

Simple Tip – Holding the home and lock button (the one on the top near the headphone jack) at the same time will capture a photo to your phone of whatever is on the screen. Use this to grab screen captures of an app or webpage to use in your blog post.

Slideshow Creation for iPhone or Android: Animoto

Still images can get boring fast. What If you want to create a great slideshow on an event? Or perhaps a video slideshow for YouTube? The Animoto app is your secret weapon. You will look like a mobile ninja with this free app. Simply select your theme, images (or now video clips), music, and Animoto does the rest. It will create a video slideshow full of engaging transitions, powerful graphics, with great background tracks (royalty free and provided by Animoto).

This is sure to make your customers think you have a full time marketing team. 30 second clips are free and can be done online or via the app. Try it out, I am sure you will love it.

Pro Video Creation App for iPhone: Videolicious

Now this may be one of the most amazing free apps I have ever come across. This app let’s you make TV worthy videos about products, services, events, projects, or even birthday wishes. You have to try this app. Videolicious guides you through selecting your theme, uploading images or videos from your phone, choosing your background music, and then it asks you to record a clip of yourself talking about the event, product, or subject. It then splices it all together with you talking and transitions through our images or videos like a professional video editor would.

These are phenomenal videos that you could use to promote anything in your business. I recommend these for events, product launches, how to videos, website walkthroughs, or anything else you want to promote using video.

Simple Tip – I recommend recording your voice using a lapel mic of possible. I use the Audio Techica AT335 with an iPhone adapter cable.

Blog Writing for iPhone: WordPress App

I can’t stress enough that you should be using a self-hosted WordPress blog on your own domain. This might mean going to Fiverr.com and finding someone to create you one.

Once you have a WordPress blog, you can use the WordPress App to write all your blog posts. I am (as always) writing this post from my iPhone. It makes creating content easy and I can save it as a draft and edit it on my iPad or Computer later.

I can also upload photos in a post, respond to comments from my readers, and schedule my posts in advance. This app is a must for a mobile blogger or creator on the go.

For more tips like this, sign up for my email list and get a free video on how to build a Killer content strategy to drive traffic and build a business using 100% free online marketing strategies.

Google has recently launched the beta version of their Google Offers service. This service comes on the coat tales of Groupon, LivingSocial.com, BuyWithMe.com and many other successful daily deal sites vying for attention in a price-sensitive economy.

These site all work off the same principle, sign up for their service and you can receive daily deals at 50-90% off retail. The deals are usually contingent upon a minimum number of people making a purchase.

The concept certainly drives large volumes of potential customers to purchase, but as a business you need to use caution. I have seen many businesses that put their product or service on sites like groupon and ended up losing money with little repeat business. These companies are usually food service businesses or those with slim profit margins to begin with.

How do you ensure daily deals are right for you?

Be sure that your offer is either high margin or that you can sell add on services when the customer comes in.

Good Daily Deal: High Margin with Upsell

Some perfect Examples of successful company strategies with selling add-on services are the smart lipo and hair removal services. These are services that usually sell an initial 3 appointments on the daily deal site for a low price and then recommend a total of 6 or more sessions to see optimal results.

This works because they are selling a high margin service at a low proce to entice new customers and then up-selling the customer to another 3 sessions at retail prices.

Bad Daily Deal: Low Margin, no Brand Loyalty

Examples of bad daily deals are pizza shops and small takeout restaurants. This is because the margins on food are so low that they are losing money and there is little opportunity to up sell or create repeat business.

These types of deals generally get purchased by deal seekers who have little brand loyalty. It may succeed I’m getting people in the door, but if you are struggling to pay the bills, you may find yourself deeper in debt if you get hit with a lot of low margin orders all at once.

The Risk: Market Price Erosion

Daily deal sites have provided great opportunity for some industries, but it has also caused market price expectations to drop dramatically. The more frequently a daily deal site features deals with the same offer, the higher the risk of market price erosion. An example of this is the massage industry. Site like Groupon and LivingSocial exploited the success of massage services by offering them monthly and then almost weekly. Users of their services would purchase the deals in large numbers. The deals were generally offered at 60% to 80% off retail.

This began to set a precedent for buyers of massage services. They could try to find a massage parlor and pay retail price or just wait a few days and purchase a massage deal for at least half the retail price.

Massage services then started seeing a drop in the price customers are willing to pay. These deals are then available on secondhand resale websites, so customers could even purchase them without being a part of the original daily deal.

So are Daily Deals a bad idea for small business?

No. I am not saying you should avoid these deals all together, but I am saying that you should be cautious about how you structure your deal. Be sure you know how much they will charge you and how you plan to up sell the customer or gain their loyalty. If you structure your daily deal properly you can avoid there pitfalls and drive new customers to your doorstep.

So is Google Offers worth checking out?

When compared to other services, Google has a lot more to lose in doing deals wrong. I would expect that they will leverage their strengths to maximize your exposure while maintaining your profitability.

The jury is still out as to whether the Google Offers platform will trump the likes of LivingSocial or Groupon, but it is certainly a contender.

For more information about how to structure daily deals, tweet me @MrSimpleMedia

What do you think? Is Google offers worth it? Will they do it right? Are daily deals worth the time? Leave a comment below and let’s discuss.

Tonight I arrived at my hotel after a short flight and was pleasantly surprised. When I arrived in my cab, the doorman had opened the cab door and carried already had my things from the trunk before I even finished paying. He then proceeded to welcome as if we had been long lost friends and I was returning home.

As I walked to the check-in counter I was greater by yet another endearing voice that said “we have been waiting for you Mr Griffis”. Now the simple phrasing suggests that I am not just another random stranger checking in to the room, although that is precisely what I am.

I then started to notice the subtly of the hotels charm, from the artistic chairs in the lounge to the simple conveniences of the room (e.g. The easily accessible outlets near the bed for charging my phone). The details are what set this experience apart from so many other hotel experiences. This is the reason that a hotel can charge higher prices for the same or similar lodging that many others offer in the same area.

This got me thinking about marketing online. It is in the details that we differential our websites, promotions, an products in the mind of our consumers. It is the coherent and memorable design of our sites. The simple and straightforward calls to action. It is the honest and personable messages we send that resonate with out customers.

You don’t have to have something 100% new and innovative as we all think. You simply need to provide something genuine and pay attention to the details of the customer experience. Make the process of buying from you easy and familiar. Let the customer know you care immediately and keep that promise. Strive to surprise them with the little things that other companies don’t do like sending personalized thank you notes or sending an unexpected special gift for your buyers.

Remember to always add value to every experience and interaction with your customer. If they matter to you, than you will matter to them.

Have a good day!
Keith

If you are like most people you dread Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I bet you avoid it at all costs. What if I said you can get 80% of the work done in less than 5 minutes and greatly increase your search engine ranking?

You probably think I am lying. Well let me give you an example. I was doing some digging for a recent class on SEO basics and discovered a great keyword with over 165,000 monthly searches and little competition. I put up a post and was ranking in page 1 in under 1hr and then top of page 1 in a few weeks. Don’t steal it, but the keyword was “What is Places on Facebook”. Type it in to google and check it out. Using quotes I come in first. If I spent more time I could even come in first for broad search (more on that in another post).

So what did I do for these rankings?

1. Search Google Keyword tool for odd spellings or phrasing variation for the keywords you wish to rank for..

In my example, the correct way to type in a search for the feature is “Facebook places”. People undoubtably search for the feature based on their limited knowledge and put in “Places on Facebook” because they are unfamiliar with the feature. These are the people I want to reach and the phrasing that is commonly overlooked.

Go to the Google Keyword Tool, type in your main keywords with longer phrasing.

Look for odd spellings or conjunctions (e.g. With, for, on, in, etc). These tend to have lower competition and higher search volume.

Go to google and search for your keyword or phrase in quotes (e.g. “Your Keyword or Phrase”) and see how many sites show up (shoot for 30,000 or less).

Now type your keyword or phrase with the quotes and add the text INTITLE: in front of your key phrase (e.g INTITLE:”Your keyword phrase”). Now see how many results appear.

These are the results that have your exact phrase in the title. Shoot for less than 1000 and hopefully only several hundred.

Make a list of 5 key phrases you find with the above criteria.

2. Write a Post Using Your Keyword

Now that you identified a keyword you can create a post that is optimized for it.

Keyword In Start of Title
To do so, first write the title with the Keyword exactly in the start of the Title (e.g Your Keyword or phrase: some description). You can add a new descriptive phrase after the title to make it more readable.

Keyword In Header 2
Create a H2 tag that contains the keyword and the a list of bullets below your H2 tag.

Example post:


Your Keyword or Phrase

• Example Bullet 1

Blah blah blah Your keyword.

• Example Bullet 2

Blah blah blah a variation of your keyword.

3. Post your Blog post link to Digg

In order to rank you will need to get indexed by google. One of the fastest ways to do this is to get your post into the digg.com website. Google crawls this hourly and follows the links.

If you follow these steps, you will appear in google fairly quickly with very little effort. The hardest part is the keyword research, but once you do it you are 90% farther than most bloggers or marketers online.

I can’t guarantee results as it will depend on your keywords and competition, but you will be well in your way without spending a lot of time and money on SEO.

For more tips check out 21 Tips to Simpler and More Effective Social Media & Internet Marketing

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are simple to start, but without a plan can easily become a time-sink and money pit for most businesses.

How do you avoid this costly mistake? Easy!

Create a Social Strategy Plan!

Keep the plan simple by answering these few questions?

1. What is our main goal for Social media this year?

Are you trying to drive traffic to promote a product? Are you trying to build buzz or brand loyalists? Each of these will have an impact on how you choose and use your social site.

2. Are you looking for new customers or to engage old customers

Social strategies often fail at this critical point. If you are looking for new customers then you are likely going to focus your content and promotions to entice first time action. Whereas for existing customers you might want to have them create and submit videos of their experience with your products to strengthen brand engagement.

3. Which Platform are you focusing on?

You need to be where your customers are. If you are targeting consumers Benin Facebook. If you are targeting businesses you would try LinkedIn. if you want to target the
Tech saavy youth, try Twitter. If you are looking for cutting edge businesses try Google+.

The basic idea is to stay in one platform until you have built momentum and exhausted that traffic source.

4. Where are you capturing that Traffic?

When you start with a social campaign you must always have a plan for how you are going to move people from casual social users to the next phase of your purchase process. You need to capture that lead into your email list. This allows you I reach them at the frequency you desire with the exact content you desire.

Don’t just go for likes and be upset when you realize no one is converting to a customer. The truth is that you made it too hard for them. Each step they need to take to become a customer, the more will drop off. Make it easy by sending them to an optin form on your Facebook page offering a free sample or download. Capture that lead early and as swiftly as possible before they just become a casual user.

Once you have thought about the above steps, you are ready to begin the initial steps for executing your social strategy.

Go here to learn 21 Simple Tips to managing this easier: 21 Simple Tips for Social Media Success

You may be sabotaging your own business quietly and without any intent. You work hard every day to develop great products or services, but free tools like WordPress, Facebook, and photoshop have been conspiring against you. How you ask?

It’s fairly simple, technology has become so inexpensive, even free, that it has diluted the role of a business owner. We now think we know how to build a website, market using Facebook, and create our own logos and graphics in photoshop Elements.

The truth is that we aren’t that good as any one of those things. If you are a business owner that is not in the business of website design, graphic design, and marketing, but you are spending any time on these efforts you are sabotaging your business.

If you were opening a retail store, you wouldn’t build the building Just because you know how to is a hammer and a saw? Why then would you spend hours building your virtual storefront or office using free tools? It still has as much of an impact on your sales as a physical storefront, yet you wouldn’t fire your contractor and build it all yourself.

Focus on Strengths to deliver the most Profit Potential
Ever hour you waste on a non-core activity in your business is lost profit. It is what we marketers an economists call opportunity cost. Every activity you participate in has a cost because it takes away from time that could be used to make money.

What to Hand over to the Experts
Not everything you do on your website should be outsourced. You still want to maintain your own blog content for instance. I don’t recommend handing your blog writing because your site needs to accurately reflect you. The actual layout, design, an development should be handled by an expert. The marketing plan should also be done collaboratively with a marketing expert. Graphics are always to be handled by a designer. There is nothing worse than an amazon website with great content, but a hideous logo, banner, or background.

What is the Process of Website Design
Always start with your marketing plan. You should have a clear process and goals for your site. You should know the exact process flow for a user from initial visit to prospect to sale. This will guide your visitor gracefully into a customer relationship.

Simple Tip: Each Page should have one purpose only. Don’t create a lot of crazy sidebar links to distract your users. Have a call to action for each page (e.g. sign up below to receive our newsletter)

If you want more social media marketing tips, visit my 21 Tips for Social Media and Internet Marketing Guide.

What is Places on Facebook?

Places on Facebook is a powerful and highly interactive feature on Facebook for mobile users. This feature can be used exclusively as a very effective mobile marketing tool for small businesses or anyone who has a physical business location that they would like to drive customers to.

How to use Places on Facebook for users

Using the Places on Facebook feature of the Facebook mobile app is easy. A user simply needs to open the Facebook app or Facebook mobile website when at a specific Physical location (e.g. A store or retail location) that exists on Facebook and “check in”.

Here are the steps to do so:

1. Open the Facebook mobile app and go to “Nearby”



2. Go to the “CheckIn” Button



3. Select a place from those available GPS must be On



4. Add Who you are with or Message or Photo in the Check in Screen



5. Choose who to Share it With and hit Post

Now you have shared your location and post with the world or whomever you desired.

The post will show up in their status stream and potentially drive business to that store or physical location that you “Checked In” at.

How to use Places on Facebook for Business

Facebook places is ideal for retail businesses who want to generate foot traffic in their stores. People who see status updates from their friends saying they are at your location can drive business and act as a form of social proof that your business is worth their time. This is also good because friends generally trust friends more than advertising and we generally surround ourselves with people of similar tastes.

How do you get people to Check In at your location for Places on Facebook?

The simplest way to get people to check in at your location is to Create an incentive. Place a message at the counter asking them to check in and offering a free treat or discount to do so.

Have them show you the CheckIn on their phone and you will take 15% off the purchase price for doing so. Th immediate incentive will be automatic and you will get a much higher ROI this way. Here is a Places on Facebook Guide from my friends at Mashable

For more tips on how to create and implement a places on Facebook campaign, signup for the blog below.

There are several common mistakes that people make when starting email campaigns.

Top 4 Common Email Marketing Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

1. Misleading Subject Lines

People will try anything to get others to open their emails. This starts out innocent with an email titled “Download your free program” and slowly slips into more deceptive tactics designed to confuse you into thinking it is an email you requested.

Sure this may increase open rates in the short term, but it kills credibility and sales in the long term. I have unsubscribed from more email lists due to this practice than any other reason.

2. No Value in the Email Body

When we sign up for an email list, we expect value IN THE EMAIL! More often than not lately it seems people are desperately trying to get people to their site before ever adding valuable content in the email body itself. They simply insert short enticing messages and links without even describing what you get by visiting their links.

Ads value in the email and people will trust you more and your sales conversion rate will increase even though your click-though rate from the email may not.

3. Asking Before Receiving

When someone signs up for your email list, you must prove yourself to them. You need to provide immense value immediately an consistently to build trust and credibility. Don’t ask them to buy too frequently without first adding value.

4. Acting as a Company, Not a person

One fatal mistake I see is that entrepreneurs try too hard to brand their lists with their company persona rather than their own. People learn from and by from other people. Be sure your email comes from you, not your company name. Be sure to sign your name at the bottom of all emails as well.

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Musicians are the ultimate entrepreneurs. They set out to build a brand and make a living with their passion. Often times, they will go through years living in poverty-like conditions in an effort to persue their dream. How do I know this? I used to be one. I set out with a dream to be a career musician before college. I learned along the way how to develop marketing plans, build websites, make sales calls, entertain business partners and fans, and more things than I probably ever learned in college. It is that desire that lead me to the web itself long before there were massive websites, or even many websites for that matter. As a musician I taught myself how to entertain a crowd, write lyrics, and to dig deep inside myself to fight the basic fear of rejection. You learn to put your all into building a dream inside your head of what life can be.

Business for entrepreneurs is the same thing. Today I went with family to the Currier Art Museum to see an exhibit with backstage photos and behind the scenes footage of great artists of the 60s through today. I watched as these musicians like the Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Chet Atkins, Frank Zappa, the Rolling Stones, and the Beastie Boys all were desperately trying to do something they only first saw in their dreams. The photos of these now legendary musicians reminded me that everyone starts somewhere. No one is born into greatness and we all have to work for it. Even those we regard as legends were at some point nobodies to the general public. What is it then that drives some to remain anonymous and others to be revered?

I have boiled it down to three basic elements: the ability to dream, the ability to act, and the ability to persevere.

These musicians were all willing to dream of what they could accomplish. When we are young this comes easy, but as we grow older it becomes harder to dream because many will push you to conform to their expectations of life. It takes courage to keep dreaming. Never be afraid to dream as this is the key element that without it, action and perseverance would not exist.

These musicians were then willing to take action in pursuit of that dream. They created a definite plan to create a career. This plan included writing music, recording, and performing. All of these elements could have been a stumbling block. Writing music can be a difficult task as it is deeply personal. Recording an album takes a great deal of money (or at least it used to before digital recording), which requires business connections. This then forces them to look at how to best accomplish their dream without giving up too much control (this is akin to a startup looking for funding). Then they need to perform the music in order to build a following and sell their music. The performance must connect with the audience and persuade them to take action. This is no different than an entrepreneur working to obtain their first customers and then build their business.

Finally comes perseverance. This is the ultimate determining factor of success. The musicians who gave up when others criticized at any step had no chance. Those who were willing to forge ahead and ignore the critics atleast had the chance of success. The ones who created the right mix of talent and branding were a step further. The ones who reach legend status were able to not only do the first two steps, but they successfully converted large masses of consumers into raving fans. This is no different than the lines of customers waiting for the newest Apple Devices.

So the next time you feel like you are struggling to reach the next step in your business or even where to start, remember that we are all just people struggling to do something we believe in with the hopes that others will listen and accept us. In order to be legendary, you have to show up each day and put your entire heart out there. If you can do this successfully while dreaming and taking action then you are almost sure to find success if not at least find satisfaction.

Have a great day!
Keith

www.SimpleMediaMarketing.com

Check out these articles here as well:

How to Create Content that Attract Leads and makes Sales