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This is a guest post from Melvin Dichoso . It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

Most people who have just got started in their online ventures usually focus too much on SEO. It’s no secret that its really one of the biggest misconceptions most beginners and even experienced guys run into as far as their online businesses are concern. Today in this blog post, I’m very much hoping I can address this by writing about SEO as well as its connection to SEM and Social Media.

First and foremost I’m not an SEO guru or whatsoever. Heck, my blog is even PR0 up to now, although I have managed to reap a lot as far as  the blog’s traffic is concern. Just consider me as you’re typical online entrepreneur and blogger.

Setting up some Initial things

So what does these three things I mentioned above have something in connection? When building a website or any online-based project, you want to build SEO in it from the get-go. You want to optimize it for those key terms that you’re looking into from the start. I know you’re saying, “how can you do that, you don’t even have content yet?” Yes, you’re right but what I mean is that with every websites you can already set up things from the start that would give you a dramatic effect later on. Let me explain.

For example, if I’m building a site based on a WordPress platform, I can start fine-tuning the site’s search goals by doing the necessary things like adding an All in One SEO pack, canonicalizing the domain, setting up the meta descriptions properly and creating a robots.txt (and many more of course). You see, these are the things that you can already do from the start yet it doesn’t take that much to do those. On the flip side, it may not yield that much results for the first few months but its future benefits would be enormous for sure.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t a short-term goal in the first place right? Organic rankings is something that can be achieved over time and if you’re getting lots of traffic from search engines then you know what I’m talking about.

Before the SEO our site picks up

Now we all know that ranking in search engines does not happen overnight, but does that mean we’re going to wait that long before doing anything? No! That means we have to work on something that would alleviate the lack of traffic from our new site.

There are two things that you can do that would offset the need for SEO for short term. One is utilizing social media and the other one is via search engine marketing. Let’s tackle both of those things here.

Social Media

Social Media is something that everyone these days wants to utilize but only few can do it well. With that my tip has always been to focus on one niche targeted network first and forget everybody else. If you’re into Stumbleupon then focus on it, work on it first.

The problem with people is that they try to get everything from each and every social media sites but the truth is its never gonna happen. These social sites have different audiences and you can only target the ones which is the most relevant to what your business is. Also social media has an effect to search rankings. Indirectly you can see that it can boosts links, search rankings and web traffic in particular.

Popular site Mashable has even written an article on how SEO and social media goes hand in hand together.

Search Marketing

Unlike social media, search marketing does not have an effect with your search rankings. Instead this can be a quick way to boost your site’s traffic immediately from the start.

Let’s go back to our WordPress Site example. After we’re able to set up all the basic SEO-related stuff to our sites, we can immediately focus on running search campaigns for our sites via Pay Per Click. The way I do it is I focus on the top three networks, Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Ad Center. These three have the biggest market share and there’s no reason to go to other 2% of small search engines that can give you almost no traffic.

Running pay per click campaigns can be really tricky and hard. You need to focus on a lot of things like Ad copy, keywords, targeting different demographics, quality scores and a whole lot more. I had learned all of this for quite some time and to be honest, I spent a lot of money testing things but  I could say it’s all worth it.

I know not all of us can run PPC campaigns so there’s always an option of hiring a search marketing person or a team to run your campaign for you. This can be an investment on your part but the way these guys could do the job for you could later on offset the cost.

The logic behind running search campaigns is to immediately drive traffic to your site, find the top markets and top demographics for what you’re business is about and penetrating that market. We could also experiment on our campaigns and as a return this could only give us the whole pie of what we’re trying to achieve. We could forever do these campaigns until our search traffic starts picking up. In short, SEM is for short term and SEO is for long term.

Conclusion

Driving traffic to our website, more generally our business is an unending cycle. We as business owners continue to tweak and test things and try to find more sources that could give us the maximum return for what we spend.

These three components that I mentioned namely SEM, SEO and social media play a key role for that. They have their own ideal time to get implemented and it’s all about connecting them and making  them work harmoniously.What do you think?

This is a guest post from Kristi Hines . It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

There are many SEO tips that are not only good for search engines but they are very helpful for people looking for and perusing through your website. Here are nine SEO tips you can do to help search engines and visitors love your site.

1. Keywords and Research

If you choose the right keywords for your homepage and your internal pages, blog posts, etc., you will be helping visitors find what they are searching for easier. The best way to do this is to think of a keyword that fits your page, then a 2 – 3 word phrase that fits including that keyword. It’s really as simple as that.

Keyword Resources

• Google Adwords Keywords Tool
• Google Insights (plus ideas on how to use Insights)
• Microsoft Advertising Intelligence plugin for Excel (plus how to use it)
• Popular Searches
• Anchor text

2. Titles

The title tag is important because it is the heading for search engine listings and it is usually the anchor text when people bookmark your homepage, blog post, or single page on your website. The easiest way to create a title for your page is to include the keyword phrase you thought of during keyword research and include it in the up to 70 character description of your page.

Title Resources

• Title tag best practices
• Creating Killer headlines
• All in One or Platinum SEO for WordPress

3. Meta Descriptions

The meta description is essentially your sales pitch for your page when it comes up in search engines. It is also usually the description that is picked up when people bookmark your site socially. To create a good meta description, create a short sentence or two under 155 characters that includes the main keyword phrase for your page.

Meta Descriptions Resources

• Ultimate guide to meta descriptions
• Meta description best practices

4. Header Tags

Header tags break up your page into easily digestible sections to help readability. Think of your page’s content in outline form – the header tags break up each main section of your text. Header tags should include keyword phrases you would like your page to rank for.

Also, note that the text right after your header tag can play a significant role. For example, I had an H3 header in one of my recent posts that said Most Valuable Guides (not the best keywords, but bear with me). In search results, without any other optimization, link building, etc., search engines pick up that phrase as follows:

So needless to say, header tags are valuable and need to be optimized as well as careful consideration given to the first sentence after the header tag as well.

5. Images

<img src="seo-optimized-image.jpg" alt="A SEO Optimized Image" title="A SEO Optimized Image" />

To get the most out of your keywords and help break up text for visitors with something eye catching, be sure to include an image in your post with keywords in the filename, alt text, and title.

Where does the alt tag come into play outside of SEO? If you were visually impaired and using a screen reader, the alt text would be read to you by your program.

Image Resources

• SEO optimizing images.
• Creative Commons and Flickr image search
• Image copyright laws
• SEO friendly images WordPress plugin

6. Internal Linking

Once people get on your site, you want them to stick around and find more relevant content. Using internal linking will help them learn more about what your site has to offer, especially if you are using the right anchor text as a guide.

Internal Linking Resources

• Never use nofollow on internal links
• SEO Smart Links WordPress plugin

7. Link Building

So what benefit does link building have to offer potential visitors without mentioning any SEO benefits? When I am seeking out link building opportunities, I find that pages already offering their visitors resources for a particular topic. Link building is simply offering another site’s visitors more resources to choose from for more options.

Link Building Resources

• Top 100+ link building resources.
• Link building for beginners.

8. Social Media

Social networking allows you to really connect with your website’s audience, which helps you learn more about their needs and create content, product, and services that will really appeal to them.

In link building, even though Twitter, for example, only gives you nofollow links, someone who sees your link through Twitter may like it so much that they link to it in their blog or elsewhere on their website, which essentially means that nofollow social media link turned into a dofollow one.

Also, it’s not just the social networking you do – it’s the social sharing you make possible. Installing buttons or widgets to make your site more socially sharable makes it easier for your visitors to tell the world about you!

Social Media Resources

• Top social media blogs
• Social media snapshot series: your hub, content, network, and impact, plus creating a dashboard on a spreadsheet.
• Add This, Add to Any, and WordPress plugins

9. Guest Blogging

Last but not least is the ever popular guest blogging. If you have expertise that others would benefit from, then guest blogging will help you share that knowledge with an even wider audience. If your visitors are also bloggers, you can even help them by guest blogging on their site, sending some of your visitors in their direction. The benefits to doing both of these (the right way) are really exponential in helping establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

Guest Blogging Resources

• My Blog Guest
• How guest blogging gets subscribers, links, and even a better Google ranking
• A comprehensive guest blogging guide

Your Thoughts on Search Optimization for Visitors

What ways do you optimize for SEO with your visitors in mind, and what tools and resources would you suggest to help other website and blog owners to do the same?

This is a guest post from Onibalusi. It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

One problem many people just starting out in the social media world face is that they find it difficult to get traffic and attention from all their efforts and they believe they have already done all they can to no avail. Social media is great and really effective and it is not meant for some specific type of people only. Everybody can get the best from social media.

Before I continue, I will like to tell you that getting the best from social media is not about having a gazillion followers but it is all about the impact you are making in the social media world, this post will be talking about some great ways to get the best from social media.

Have The Right Friends

This is the first and most important step you must consider when trying to get results from your social media efforts, it is of no effort to have fishermen as friends when you are a barber. The saying birds of the same feathers flock together is also very applicable in the social media world and you must make sure you get many valuable friends in your niche.

Your friends are the one who will promote and share your posts and it must make sense to them before they will share it, if you are writing what they can’t resonate with then they would not share your posts. It is also very important to have the right friends because they are the ones that will help spread the word about you and they will also be your customers.

One of the best ways to get the right friends is to make sure your friends are from your niche, for example, if you are trying to add more twitter followers to your account you can search using keywords related to your niche because this will make sure your friends are targeted.

Another great way to get the right type of friends is to make sure you build your follower base naturally, i.e. you allow people to follow you of their own interest without automating anything as this will make everything easy for you and you will be able to get the right results.

Don’t Introduce Your Business First

Another great mistake many people make when trying to get the best from their social media efforts is that they keep on pumping their business on other people without even thinking about what others will say about them. Take this as an example, if you meet a stranger on the streets who just told you to buy something or your trusted friend introduced the same thing to you, from whom would you buy first? It is very important to try your best to build strong relationship with people before trying to introduce your business to them, doing otherwise can be disastrous.

Help People Out

One of the best ways to get what you want is by helping others get what they want. Another great way to get the best from your social media efforts is by helping as many people who need your help. If you see people contacting you for one help or the other, feel free to help them and they will be willing to return the favor one day.

Another great reason you should help people is that they will also introduce their friends to you and they will also go about spreading the good news about you thereby leading to more social media influence and results on your path.

Share Great Content You Like

Another great way to make sure you are getting the best from your social media efforts is by helping people get what they want. Knowledge they say is power and the more people you help increase their knowledge the more they will be grateful to you.

It is always very important to always share great content on your favorite social media networks because this will make your readers value you the more and it will also give them an impression that you are not there for your interest. It is always very important not to just share just any content but to share what you know people will like and what you know can impact their lives.

Be Reciprocal

Another great way to get the best from your social media efforts is by being reciprocal, if someone tweets your posts, move over to the persons post and tweet any of his post you find interesting. Try as much to help your friends and those who help you because this will make the come to respect and trust you the more and it will also help you get more results.

Another great reason for you to be reciprocal is that you might need your social media friends to help you once in a while and if you have been reciprocal then you will have no problem with them but if not it might be difficult to confront them.

Social media is great and if you do the right things at the right time your efforts would not be wasted, the above are 5 great things to get more from your social media efforts.

This is a guest post from John Landells. It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

As Internet Marketers, one of the things that we’re constantly looking for is how we can get targeted traffic for the lowest cost.  By now, I’m sure you realise that the single most effective way of doing this is by investing the time and effort in generating good organic search engine rankings.  In other words, you can get on page one of Google by paying a fortune through AdWords, or you can instead choose to invest the time and do it properly!

In this article, I’d like to share with you 3 tips that I’ve found to be extremely effective in getting ‘link luv’ (backlinks) to my site with only a small time investment.

Articles

You’re probably familiar with this already.  Articles are still an extremely effective method for getting link luv to your site and building your authority within the search engines.  However, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.  The wrong way is to over-use your keywords throughout your whole article, making it difficult to read, then uploading that one piece to as many article sites as you can find.

In my opinion, a far better technique is to aim to use your primary keyword phrase just 5 times – once in the title, once in the opening sentence, once in the middle, once in the opening sentence of the last paragraph, and a final time in the resource box.  Additionally, I try to make the keywords in the resource box into a clickable link, if possible as well as providing a straight URL for my site as this really helps in SEO terms.

Once the article’s ready for submission, I like to use a quality service such as SubmitYourArticle as my distribution method, as it offers powerful technology that guides you through producing many variations of your original article, without the readability challenges that is normally inherent in traditional ‘spinning’ technology.  As a bonus, it’s also the only service that I’ve found that includes EzineArticles in its submission list!

Social Media

Social Media sites are becoming more and more powerful in terms of generating good quality backlinks to your sites.  I’m not just talking about Twitter and Facebook – I’m referring more to sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Scribd and SlideShare.  I link to build pages using all of these services which link back to my primary sites, then I use the micro-blogging platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc) as well as the free blogging platforms (such as Blogger.com) to build links to social pages.  This creates significantly more depth which again, adds to the authority of your primary site.

On top of this, I use bookmarking services such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon to drive more traffic (and potentially backlinks) to both my main site and my social media pages.  However, when using this strategy it’s vitally important that you only add one or two of your own URL’s at a time and then add five to seven links to other good sites that you find in-between.  If you don’t do this, then people who look at your accounts will see that you’re only using them for self-promotion and may tend to discount the credibility of any links you post.

Video Marketing

Video is now becoming my preferred method of marketing online.  Not only is it more engaging to the people who watch them, videos are also loved by the search engines.  In fact, it’s common today to see clips of videos included in Googles search results on page one!

Many people are sadly put off from producing videos as they believe it’s a complicated process requiring expensive equipment.  This could not be further from the truth!  If you’re just starting out, you can use services such as Animoto to produce a great 30-second promotional video which looks awesome and has a great backing track for free.  Pay them just a few dollars and you can produce something much longer and really drive home your call to action.

Once you have your video, you need to distribute it.  I use a paid for service called Traffic Geyser, which can generate hundreds of backlinks for me for each video that I submit.  It’s not cheap, but I believe it to be a solid investment in my business.  However, if you’re on a budget, TubeMogul offers a video distribution service for free which is well worth checking out.

Whichever service you use, it’s important to use the service well.  The most important aspect from a search engine marketing perspective is to include your full site URL (including the http://) as the first thing in the video description.  On most video sharing sites, this will be automatically translated into a clickable link giving you valuable link luv back to your site.  Also make sure you include your keywords in both the video title and the video tags.

Of all the things that I do to develop my Internet Marketing business, these 3 strategies are the ones that I find most effective in building link luv.  Give them a try, see how they work for you and please share your experiences in the comments.

For more Internet Marketing tips, please check out my blog, Internet Marketing with John.

Yes, you read correctly, it’s time for The Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest. For the next month, I’ll be accepting guest posts right here on my blog. As you can see below, the top guest bloggers are eligible to receive cash prizes (current pot is $2100.) cash and there are a couple non-cash prizes.

To clarify, you don’t have to actually be a bad ass SEO (although it wouldn’t hurt) to enter the contest. The general theme is SEO and the contest itself is bad ass since we have several generous sponsors that put up cash and a few other prizes.

What is the Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest? Blogging is always fun, but it’s even more fun when there is cold hard cash involved. Starting today (August 2nd) until September 2nd, you can submit guest posts to my blog. I’m pretty flexible as far as acceptable topics as long as they fit within the general theme of this blog. So, anything from SEO to blogging to social media will do.

How long does the contest last? The contest starts today August 2nd and ends September 2nd You must submit your post between these dates in order to be eligible to win. The winners will be announced 15 days after the contest ends. This will allow us ample time to publish any remaining posts and to judge all contest entries.

What can you win? Take a look at all the sponsors, cash and other prizes!

$200. Prize Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

BestTravelWebsites.com Best Travel Sites

ArrangeYourVacation.com Vacation Rentals

$150 Prize Sponsors

Candy Store

$100 Prize Sponsors

Alisa Bowman Marriage Advice

Internet Marketing Services

SEO Software

SEO Ottawa

Virtual Assistants

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

Gerald Weber Houston SEO

Toni J Young Network Marketing Training

Quillcards Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards

Ghostwriter Dad Ghostwriting services

$50 Prize Sponsors

Whitney Segura Whitney Segura’s Internet Marketing Blog

James Brown James Brown

Raxa Design Houston web design

Eric Brantner Freelance Copywriter

The Servant Media Houston Business Development

Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe Increasing Targeted Website Traffic

The Lane Real Estate Team Kennewick Homes

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value Business Web Hosting

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. SEO tools

Special thanks to the contest media partner: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

What are the rules?

1. Register for a user account with SEM Group so you can submit your post for review. Please fill out all of your profile information and if you don’t have a Gravatar please get one. You may have up to 3 links in your bio.

If you have already published a guest post here in the past there is no need to register. If this is the case and you aren’t sure about your login just send me an email and I’ll let you know your login credentials.

2. You must submit your post by September 2nd 2010
3. Your article must be original content, and it must be written by you.
4. On the day your post is published, you must write a post on your blog about the contest that contains a link to the official contest post and links to all of the sponsors using the correct anchor text. Also these links must remain do-follow. You can get the code to link to all of the sponsors here
   ^?View Code HTML

   <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$200. Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Daniel McGonagle <a href="http://linkvanareviews.com/">Link Building</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/besttravelwebsites.png" alt="" title="besttravelwebsites" width="391" height="90" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1575" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">BestTravelWebsites.com <a href="http://besttravelwebsites.com">Best Travel Sites</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/arrangelogo.png" alt="" title="arrangelogo" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1576" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">ArrangeYourVacation.com <a href="http://arrangeyourvacation.com">Vacation Rentals</a></p> <strong>$150 Prize Sponsors</strong> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bestcandystore1.gif" alt="" title="bestcandystore" width="200" height="39" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1509" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bestcandystore.com">Candy Store</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$100 Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Alisa Bowman <a href="http://www.projecthappilyeverafter.com/">Marriage Advice</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/New-Logo-with-White-Space-350.jpg" alt="Vertical measures" width="350" height="50" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/">Internet Marketing Services</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1438" title="sheerSEO_banner" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sheerSEO_banner1.gif" alt="" width="120" height="60" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sheerseo.com/">SEO Software</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo_with_border1-150x150.jpg" alt="" title="logo_with_border" width="150" height="150" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1499" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.seo-writer.ca/">SEO Ottawa</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo.jpg" alt="" title="logo" width="334" height="43" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1591" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://offshoreally.com/">Virtual Assistants</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Hesham Zebida <a href="http://www.thesisawesome.com">Thesis Skins</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Gerald Weber <a href="http://sem-group.net">Houston SEO</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Toni J Young <a href="http://www.tonijyoung.com/">Network Marketing Training</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Quillcards <a href="http://quillcards.com/">Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Ghostwriter Dad <a href="http://ghostwriterdad.com/">Ghostwriting services</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$50 Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Whitney Segura <a href="http://www.whitneysegura.com/">Whitney Segura's Internet Marketing Blog</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">James Brown <a href="http://www.jamesbrownmarketing.com/">James Brown</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Raxa Design <a href="http://www.raxadesign.com/">Houston web design</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Eric Brantner <a href="http://ericbrantner.com/">Freelance Copywriter</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">The Servant Media <a href="http://www.houstonbusinessdevelopers.com/">Houston Business Development</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe <a href="http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/">Increasing Targeted Website Traffic </a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">The Lane Real Estate Team <a href="http://www.joelane.com/">Kennewick Homes</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value <a href="http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml">Business Web Hosting</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.<a href="http://www.huomah.com/dojo/">SEO Training Dojo</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. <a href="http://www.link-assistant.com/">SEO tools</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Special thanks to the contest media partner: <a href="http://myblogguest.com/">My Blog Guest</a>. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://myblogguest.com/"><img title="myblogguest" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/myblogguest-125-30.gif" border="0" alt="" width="125" height="30" /></a></p>

5. You can be either a sponsor for the contest or you can compete in the contest. Unfortunately you can’t do both.

Post Guidelines

1. Guest posts must be at least 450 words, not to exceed 1000 words.
2. You may have as many links as you wish in the body of the content. However, please limit links to your projects or websites to your bio. Absolutely no affiliate links allowed.
3. Your bio must have a Gravatar. Please use a picture of yourself and not a logo.
4. Keep your post relevant to the overall theme of this blog. SEO, link building, internet marketing, pay per click, social media, blogging tips are all acceptable topics.

How to win

1. Write a post about the contest to help spread the word in the blogosphere. Your post (contest submission) will be judged First on quality of the content and style of the post.
2. Add Sponsors links to your post using the correct anchor text and make sure the links are do-follow. This is extremely important and your post won’t be eligible to win if you haven’t fulfilled this requirement. The sponsors are the ones making the cash prizes possible, so show them some link love.
3. A high value is placed on the number of and quality of comments received on your guest post. Also, be sure to interact with and respond to your commentators. This will help you win! Ambiguous and/or spammy comments will not help you.
4. Spread the word about your post through all your social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn, etc. A high value will be placed on number of Tweets and overall social media promotion.

Keep in mind, the sooner you submit your post the more time you’ll have to promote it. So the early bird gets the worm!

Also feel free to use the donkey image in your post. You can get the code here

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1397" title="badd_ass2" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/badd_ass2.gif" alt="" width="450" height="300" />

Also feel free to upload the image to your server if you like.

IF you have any questions feel free to contact me. Also you can contact me on Skype, I’m searchengineguy.

Let the blogging begin! Woot!

Sending gifts and promotional products has always been a powerful marketing tool. It can be used to improve client retention and to reach out to prospects. The Guinness Book of World Records Most Successful Salesman in the World used to send out greeting cards to every customer and prospect on a monthly basis. He was sending out more than 16,000 cards each month, and it worked. Customers knew him by name, and they came to him for all their car-buying needs.

photo credit: Adam Swank

But now, with the power of social media, gift giving as a marketing tool can make an even bigger splash than before.

I want to share a couple of stories with you of my experiences with receiving promotional products from some of my friends on Twitter.

• 2 Bottles of Wine from St. Supery Winery—I’ve been following @RickBakas, Director of Social Media for St. Supery Winery, for quite a while now. We had a little interaction with each other, but it wasn’t on a regular basis. Then, one day Rick reached out to me for help pushing some content on Twitter. I obliged, and next thing I know, I’m receiving 2 bottles of wine in the mail. By the way, the wine truly was amazing. Thanks again Rick!

So, why did Rick send me the wine? Well, I think there are a couple of savvy marketing reasons he did so.

1. To cement our relationship. See, you can only build a relationship through Twitter so much by @replying and DMing. Rick decided to think outside the box by sending me 2 bottles of his companies wine, knowing I’d be forever grateful and pay much closer attention to him.
2. To spread the word. After getting the wine from Rick, I of course thanked him through Twitter, and now even felt compelled to write an entire blog post about his company’s effective social media marketing tactics.

• Books from my followers—Rick isn’t my only Twitter follower who has reached out by sending me a promotional product. On a few occasions, my social media pals have sent me books they’ve authored or co-authored. The 2 most recent examples that come to mind are @ConvertBond and @AlisaBowman.

  The book I received from @convertbond (Lawrence McDonald) was called A Colossal FAILURE of common sense(a New York Times best seller), and it took a look at the fall of Lehman brothers. Lawrence was a former VP at Lehman Brothers, so he had an interesting story to tell.

  Alisa Bowman, who gives marriage advice at her blog, and has also collaborated on five New York Times best sellers, sent me a book she co-authored called The Skinny: On Losing Weight Without Being Hungry.

What’s my point? The point is that you need to do something different to stand out from the crowd. Sending a promotional product or a simple greeting card can put you on a first-name basis with influential social media users and your customers. It can also create a buzz, getting your name out there and driving sales.

Do you have a “outside of the box” marketing story? We would love to hear about it in the comments.

This is a guest post: by Alisa Bowman. In addition to being a friend of mine, Alisa is also a freelance writer and blogger. She gives free marriage advice and help. at her blog ProjectHappilyEverAfter.com. You can find her on Twitter @AlisaBowman.

About six months ago, I had 1500 blog subscribers—all of whom left few if any comments. On a good day, I would get maybe 8 comments.

On a bad day, I might get zero

It hurt my feelings more than a little.

And it made me wonder: Is anyone actually reading my blog? Or are all of these people pressing the delete button whenever my blog feeds into their inbox? Am I the most unloved blogger on the planet?

I thought about throwing a De-Lurking Party, as I’d read about other bloggers doing that sort of thing. But that seemed, well. In a word? Terrifying. What if I held a party and no one showed?

No, I couldn’t do that. No. No. No. A De-Lurking Party? That was waaaaay too risky.

So I did all of the usual things that people tell you to do in order to get more comments. I ended each post with this line, “Please leave a comment.” I installed the Comment Luv and the Subscribe To Comments plugins. I begged my Twitter followers to please comment on my blog.

Nothing.

Then, one day, I accidentally purchased the wrong size of bed sheets. I opened the package and washed them before realizing the issue. I didn’t know what to do with the dang things, so in the middle of a post Of Cobwebs, Bedsheets and Butter I wrote: Would you like a set of free Bakugan bed sheets? Leave a comment on today’s post that makes me laugh and forget all of my life’s problems and they are yours.

It was a joke. I didn’t think anyone would want them. I mean, seriously? They were kid’s bed sheets. They were already out of the package.

They had Bakugan designs on them.

That post? It generated 23 comments. As the comments flowed in, I danced around my room saying, “Who-hoo. People really do read my blog. Who-ho. People love me.”

Reward Your Readers

Let me tell you something. I. Did. Not. Want. To. Come. Down. From. That. 23 Comments. High.

Did not.

So I decided to give away more stuff.

I included a line from Where the Wild Things Are in one post’s headline and offered to send a chocolate bar to the first reader who figured out the book from which I’d stolen the line.

I won a bunch of dildos at a conference (don’t you just wish you were at THAT conference?), so I gave two away to my readers.

I re-gifted swag. I gave away crap that I didn’t want anymore. I gave, and I gave, and I gave.

Here are some other things that I did:

Created a Reader of the Month award. I give it to one frequent commenter each month.

Thanked my readers. I thanked them in my posts. I thanked them in the comments area. I told them just how much their comments helped inspire me. I told them just had crappy I felt whenever a post did not generate a lot of comments.

Started a Reader Participation post. I did the first one on a morning when I was busy and didn’t have enough time to write a real post. So I posed a question, asking, “What was the best marriage advice you ever got?” In the body, I told readers that they would write the post instead of me. I would, however, reward one commenter with a subscription to Wired magazine. That post? It got 46 comments. Now I regularly post questions—usually ones that were sent to me by readers—and I ask my readers to answer them.

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As a search marketer I have long been looking for an ideal link building model: where everyone’s happy, Google can ban you for selling or buying your link authority, quality wins over quantity and there’s no room for manipulation (note: as a marketer I am well aware of the fact that there’s nothing perfect under the sun. But I wanted something at least better than what we have now).

Currently, the most popular (and the easiest) link building method is still paying for a link (paid reviews, paid editorials, sponsorships, etc). Still, two main reasons why I try to avoid link buying includes:

• Paid links are almost impossible to camouflage: a website selling links has obviously sold quite a few of them, so it is very likely to be flagged for selling links. By buying several links here and there, you are much likely creating a pattern and Google most probably already knows you are doing that (so this is either non-effective or even dangerous);
• The affect from paid link campaigns is somewhat lopsided: you are only paying money for possible ranking increase. A paid link is unlikely to promote your brand or generate you some good, targeted traffic.

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When I first started using Mixx, none of the links on the site had the NoFollow attribute applied to them. However, several weeks ago, I had the “Highlight NoFollow Links” option enabled on my SearchStatus add-on for Firefox as I was using Mixx, and I noticed that all of the links on my profile page were NoFollowed (as seen in the screenshot below):

This observation piqued my curiosity, so I decided to check out the Mixx Popular Stories page. When I saw that the Popular Stories did not have the NoFollow attribute applied to them, I initially assumed that Mixx had taken a page out of Digg’s playbook. However, a little bit of additional research revealed that this wasn’t the case.
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photo credit: dimnikolov

They say ‘Owning a Blog is No Longer a Luxury but rather a Necessity’. How true!

And so is social media marketing.

As the real focus of this ebook is on social media and in the true spirit of it, let’s take a look at the meaning of blogging from the s-o-c-i-a-l m-e-d-i-a perspective.

Selling – Blogging opens a window of countless opportunities. One of those is the opportunity to sell your product and/or service. Most bloggers, if not all, are online entrepreneurs who blog passionately for money.

What it takes is trust, credibility and the right product. Just be sure that the kind of product/service you want to sell on your blog should be relevant, of value and could really make a difference in their life.
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