Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite!

Two Common Blog Mistakes Which Will Hurt Your Subscriber Rates

There are two common blogging mistakes I’ve seen recently which will really hurt your subscriber stats. Avoid these and I am convinced you’ll see an increase in subscribers.

The two mistakes to avoid:

1. Not having a site search, or burying it towards the bottom of your home page
2. Not placing your RSS Feed Icon at the top of every page

Site Search

Why is this important? New visitors to your site may have been drawn to your blog by a recent post, but they may be interested in knowing if you’ve discussed other topics. Without a site search, there is virtually no way they can find out. Sure, they can put your feed into Google Reader and search that - but it’s not all of your blog! Make your site search obvious and towards the top of the page!

RSS Feed Icons

Congratulations! You’ve got new visitors to your blog. The hard work has paid off! But hey, where did they go? Why did they not stay and subscribe to your feed? Because you’ve buried your RSS Feed Icons somewhere deep within the middle of your side bar - or obscured them with a million similar icons. Use a simple orange RSS Icon, and place it in the header of your blog, and put text links in your footer. No one will miss it then and they won’t have to go hunting for it!

As I said, I am convinced that if you do these two things you’ll see an increase in subscribers if your doing a good job of getting new visitors to your blog already!

Note: You can feed icons at http://www.feedicons.com

Exclusive Video Footage of Tony Clifton Before the PubCon Charity Poker Tournament

We have just released exclusive footage of Tony Clifton as he prepared for the PubCon Charity Poker Tournament in Las Vegas!

Earlier this month Tony Clifton appeared at the Charity Poker Tournament held during the Las Vegas PubCon conference. The tournament was held by Purpose Inc and was a tremendous hit!

While Tony was getting ready for the tournament we were able to sneak a camera in and follow him along his journey! If you’re interested in Tony Clifton, we recommend you give this video a watch!

Search Engine Optimization Link Building Has A “Snow Ball” Effect

Search Engine Optimization Link Building is much like rolling a snow ball down a hill. After a while you start getting links that you never requested yourself.

A large part of search engine optimization includes the creation of back-links to the site being optimized. As a result we spend quite a lot of time developing links. The wonderful thing about the process is that you don’t always have to fight hard for every single link you want. If you do a good job, in the beginning you will find that every link you get is one you clearly created - but after a while you will have accomplished the following:

1. Produce some good quality content worth linking to
2. Connected with  influential people online in your industry
3. Linked out to enough people to get noticed
4. Promoted the content of enough people to get noticed

Once you’ve done the above - you’ll beging to notice the number of links to your site growing at a rate faster than you are requesting / creating them. Why? Because the relationships you’ve made on-line (whether you really know them or not) are producing links for you. As it turns out - there are many people on-line working to promote their sites too. All you need to do is get your site plugged into that network and y0u’ll see your back-links grow at a faster rate than your requesting them. Just like a snow ball being pushed down a hill!

So get out there (on-line) and start promoting your content and participating in conversations on-line. People will take notice and they may just thank you by linking to your site - or promoting your content on someone else’s site!

A Better Way To Manage Tasks And Be More Productive!

  Cornelius Fichtner of the PM Podcast in episode 82 interviews Mike Graupner in which they discuss a fantastic strategy for managing your tasks by prioritizing them - and defering, or avoiding altogether any low value tasks!

I’m an avid listener of the Project Management Podcast - because I happen to be a project manager among other things. Unfortunately not everyone is going to have the time to listen to every episode. So when I listen to one which I feel you’ll benefit from - I like to promote it. In episode 82 Cornelius interviews Mike Graupner - PMP and Presenter on PM Topics. Mike happens to be an expert on managing tasks (he calls them Monkeys) which happen to crawl onto your back when you least expect them! He’s developed a really simple methodology for recognizing a “Monkey” and grading them so that you know which ones to tackle first - because they are of high value.

Mike Graupner’s methodology will apply to anyone. You just have to listen to it to find out how it will help you save your precious time every day - making you much more productive!

A Tip For Getting Your Voice Mail Read On Buzz Out Loud

If you’re an avid listener of Buzz Out Loud like I am you’ll appreciate this little tip for improving your chances of having your voice mail read on the show.

In episode 627 Tom and Molly are speaking with co-host Alex from Miami Beach. Alex asked about their process for reviewing listener voice-mail and Tom and Molly revealed that they only listen to voicemails that are 60 seconds or less and they ignore the rest!! So, if you want to improve your changes of getting your voice mail read on the show make sure it’s less than 60 seconds. Then make sure it’s funny, or thought inspiring! Alternatively, call out Tom or Molly as they love to a) defend their opinions, or b) tell us how we are flat out wrong!

Did I mention I really like their show? No, seriously it’s a great show and everyone should listen to it.

Video Marketing Made Easy With Tube Mogul

We’ve recently begun using a service called Tube Mogul to submit our videos to several on-line video sharing sites.

TubeMogul.com is a service which automates the submission of you video to multiple video sharing sites. What makes the service great is that you only have to configure and upload your video once - to the TubeMogul site. TubeMogul then takes over and distributes your video for you to the other video sites. More importantly, TubeMogul gives you statistics about your video in one interface covering all of the sites you submitted your video to.

At the time we’re writing this TubeMogul works with the following sites. It’s our understanding that they are constantly working toward adding additional sites to the service.

• YouTube
• Yahoo!
• MySpace
• MetaCafe
• Google
• Revver
• DailyMotion
• Blip
• Brightcove
• Veoh
• Crackle
• Stupidvideos

If you’re doing some video marketing you should seriously consider trying this service out. It will save you  considerable time, and bring together in one report the statistics you need to measure your progress!

PubCon Las Vegas Day 3 - First Impressions

Day three of the conference was in my opinion the best group of sessions.

I attended the following sessions and felt the content was outstanding:

• Brand Management
• Video Search Engine Listings and Optimization
• Startup Costs - Getting in the Video Game
• PodCasting, and Podcast Optimization
• Organic Keyword Research and Selection

All of the sessions brought forward a set of excellent concepts and tactics which we fully expect to bring into our SEM services we’re offering our clients today!

At the end of the day, Spark participated in the charity poker tournament sponsored by Purposeinc.com. Both Adam Green (AKA Tony Clifton) and Glen Reeves participated in the game. While we did not win, we certainly provided the casino and poker players with a great musical and comedy act. It’s great to know that Tony Clifton is back in Vegas!

PubCon Las Vegas Day 2 - First Impressions

Day 2 turned out to be even better than Day 1!

My favorite sessions out of Day 2 were those on Local and Mobile Search. Some of the strategies and tools presented were very interesting and will certainly be an advantage for our clients. One of the most interesting services discussed was that of www.getmobile.com which allows you to produce a mobile version of your standard website using a WYSIWYG interface and you can do it free if you opt into their advertising network, or you can pay for the hosting. Either way it’s a fabulous solution to easily begin tapping into the growing mobile search market.

Later in the evening the Google Reception & SEOMOZ Werewolf Tournament were both a tremendous success. Some of the weeks best networking I feel happened there and at the ensuing after hours mixer at the Wynn and Ballagio.

Today’s line up of sessions is equally impressive. I’m looking forward to the sessions on Brand Management, Video Search and Optimization, E-Commerce & Shopping Cart Optimization, Podcasting and Podcast Optimization, and Organic Keyword Research and Selection.

PubCon Las Vegas Day 1 - Social Media 101 The Playing Field

Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel and others provide a great overview of the latest social media sites and how to leverage them both from a white hat and grey hat perspective.

The social meda landscape is changing rapidly every day as new and interesting sites emerge. Knowing how to leverage these sites for your particular situation is they key to a successful strategy.

The panel reminded us that the goal of most social media marketing is to get your website and content in front of social media users (linkerati) so that they will consume your content and link to it. The resulting links then boost the popularity of your website in the search engines (which will send you qualified traffic when searched for) and will send traffic to your site. Again - the goal is to get links to your site which will boost you presence on the search engines.

Here are some strategic points to consider when planning a social media campaign.

1. Identify your topic of interest
2. Brainstorm potential stories to write and promote
3. Research the social media sites to find out what types of stories have been popular
4. Choose your best ideas and write them up specifically for those social media sites you want to target
5. Publish your content, and begin seeding it in these sites.
6. When seeding your content be sure to use good titles, descriptions, properly categorize it and choose appropriate keywords!

For various reasons we’re not going to post the list of social media sites on the blog but we will be writing them up in our newsletter.

PubCon Las Vegas Day 1 - First Impressions

Opening day of the PubCon conference was off to a bit of a rocky start, but is quickly shaping up to be a good event.

This mornings registration took much longer than the organizers had anticipated however, during the keynote the lines were much shorter and we got through fairly quickly. After a chilly keynote, and some wireless struggles the conference is shaping up nicely. There are roughly 2000 people attending both from the industry itself and business seeking to leverage Internet marketing.

Stay tuned to read more posts about the conference sessions themselves.