Copywriting

• Web site copy
• Blog
• Press Releases
• Whitepaper
• Newsletter

Link Building

• Related Industry Directory
• Geographical Directory (your Local, or your  target market’s Local)
• Link exchange with related sites
• Blog commenting
• Forum participation

Branding

• Social Networking activity
• Company blog comments maintenance

Paid Advertising

• PPC
• Banners
• Link Purchases
• Blog or blog post sponsoring

As a general rule the best results are achieved if the budget is evenly spread between the marketing activity groups above. The tasks should be performed more or less in the sequence as listed above.

Each online marketing plan is specific to the companies activity on the web. It will contain clear goals and targets to be achieved. Make sure your online marketing budget is adequate to achieve your online marketing goals.

Or are you a SEO Expert yourself?

Not? Well everyone else seems to be? So what’s wrong with you?

In reality, everyone calls themselves a SEO Expert nowadays. There are no credentials required really. Most of us think that there is no experience really required. Kind of – you get up one day and decide – today, I will call myself a SEO Expert.

And the world all of the sudden seems so different to you. You are important professional now. People are very interested to hear what you have to say.

It feels great actually to become a SEO Expert all of the sudden. It is a life changing experience. You are invited as a speaker to pretty much any conference that you can think of. If you add a bit of the social networking in the mix of your expertise – you will have to run a busy schedule! You get invited to speak and are asked for quotes from the editors of the magazines you didn’t even know existed!

You can pick the projects you want to work on. Greed clouds your judgement and you tend to choose the SEO projects with the largest budgets. Months are passing, and your clients see no benefits from their investment in you – the SEO Expert of their choice!

Problems. Project cancelations. Clients asking their money back. You of course, the SEO Expert keep on explain them that it is either their fault or that SEO takes time.

In the meantime you are also realising what works in the sales process of the search engine optimization. It really is very cool how the phrases like

• First page in Google Guaranteed
• Page 1 ranking in 30 days

Open up the check books instantly. The Guarantee works somehow as the insurance to the buyer. It can only be a REAL SEO Expert offering 100% Money Back Guarantee, right?

Clients are piling up. There is a waiting list now. You think of the expansion. I should hire SEO staff to manage the demand! If the demand slows down a bit, you can always pour a few thousands in Google AdWords, and the hungry clients will come for your SEO Services.

Soon enough, this country is too small for you…. Expansion to Europe is on the cards. Or perhaps the Far East? Or should we do the IPO first?

Such is the life of the self proclaimed SEO Expert. Not easy really. Tough choices.

To market yourself you can use a number of online tools. Here are just the main ones:

1. Your web site
2. Your blog
3. Twitter
4. LinkedIN
5. Facebook

The list is endless. What will work for you might not be the best for everyone else. You need to understand where your target market ‘hangs out’, and use those sites.

Your Web site

Using one of those tools by itself is good. The true success in social media marketing is when you start combining them. Years ago, having a web site was enough. Then the search engines came and it was important that your web site is search engine optimised. Otherwise no one has seen it! Today, the number of optimised sites is so huge, and the size of the data published online that SEO itself is not enough anymore.

What become the powerful tool is the subscriptions to ezines and newsletters. You captured the web site visitor and he agreed to get an email whenever you decided to send one. It’s all great but we all started getting far too much mail we really wanted. As a publisher of a web site you always wanted to ‘talk’ to your visitors. Here comes ‘The Blog’…

Your Blog

Blogs are a bit magical from a number of aspects:
1. Interaction with the visitors via the blog comments is unique. The web site visitors can have their say on your web site! Unique.
2. RSS feed subscription enables everyone to subscribe to your updates and read them where and when they like, in a very manageable format.
3. From the search engine optimization perspective blogs are almost always performing better than your own web site. In majority of the cases a blog will attract a multiplication of the total number your own web site can attract.

Twitter

So what do you do with all your blog visitors now? You get them subscribed to your feed or at least on Twitter. The best exit path from your blog after the ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Subscribe’ (or whatever is a conversion on your site) is ‘Follow me on Twitter’.

LinkedIN

Let your visitors connect to you via LinkedIN. There you capture their name, phone, email and actually their whole professional life is logged there. It is quite easy to export your LinkedIN Contacts, and here is your perfect marketing list.

Facebook

Similar to Twitter as it is another permission based (marketing) message broadcasting channel. Facebook is more ‘feature rich’ compared to Twitter. Get your web and blog visitors to Connect to your on Facebook.

So why getting your web site visitors to the social networking sites to connect to you? Simply to capture their details, and enable them to start and engage in the conversation with you. You then use the social networks to advertise your new products, special offers, services… and back they come to your web site and your blog. The big red ‘Buy now’ button is jet again in front of them. And again, and again…

Any of the online marketing tools alone cannot achieve anything similar by itself. Your offering will determine what will you use, but you have to use either a web site or a blog, and you have to use at least one social network. The choice what to use will not be based on what you like, but based on what your target market is using .

How to structure and organise your company blogging?

Create a new position. Call it a ‘Chief Blogger’ or however your companies position titles are structured. Do not make it report to the Marketing manager, but to the same head where the Marketing Manager is reporting. Allocate a percentage of your marketing budget to the Blogging Department.

What should a Chief Blogger do?

Company Business Blog
The first step into the blogging world is to create a company blog under the company domain. Structure your blog based on the type and amount of the content you intend to publish, and the participation (content contribution in the form of comments, etc) you are looking for. Publish your initial ‘static’ articles about your company, services or products. Start blogging!

Social Networking
Search for the blogs related to yours. Leave comments, contribute in discussions. Develop the ‘Trust’ and the feeling of the ‘Authority’, associated with you and your company name. Trust and respect will help you bring visitors to your blog. Some of those visitors are partners and some your future clients! The sales process is far shorter if they see you as an authority in your industry!

Matt Cuts is a good example of a Business Blogging for Google: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/