Alle Beiträge von Steve Blalock

What You Need to Start an eZine Publication

Starting your own eZine can be a lot easier than you think. This is because all you really need to get started publishing your own paperless newsletter are a wealth of content, an auto responder with broadcast feature, and a website (which is optional).

Content. You can produce weeks of content ahead in advance and slowly dispense them to your subscribers. You can compile 100 short tips in one day and dispense 10 tips once a week. In this example, you have made 10 weeks worth of content in just one day!

Auto responder. Your auto responder is your asset. You need an auto responder to send your mails and eZine issues to your subscribers and store your data base of people subscribed to your newsletter. Some recommended auto responders include GetResponse.com and aWeber.com.

Website. This is actually an optional component. In short, there are eZine publishers publishing their newsletters without a website! But of course, having your own website can offer you tremendous advantages, such as the ability to bring in more subscribers and having your newsletter indexed in the top Search Engines.

These are the things you need to get started on publishing your own eZine at its bare minimum. Do not underestimate what little you need, though, because several eZine publishers today succeed well with only an auto responder and contents, with or without a website. And you can, too!

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The Cons of Ezine Publishing

As with any other types of businesses, publishing your own online newsletter a.k.a. eZine has its share of drawbacks, in spite of the several benefits it offer.

The purpose of this article is not to scare you away with the disadvantages of publishing your own eZine, as the benefits are quite often more attractive. However, I will also show you how you can easily tackle the cons.

One challenge most beginning eZine publishers face is the creation of eZine content. Creating your own content can be tiresome, especially if you are not a gifted writer. You can also run out of ideas often while your publishing schedule is threatening you.

Create your content in advance. You can compile 30 days worth of content in one day, for example. If you are not blessed with writing skills, you can broker the writing task to capable freelance writers which you can find at places such as http://www.elance.com/ or http://www.rentacoder.com/. While you need to pay for such services, you are at liberty to take the credit for written articles.

Alternatively, you can republish articles from article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/. This is a free method you can use in making content, provided you include the resource box of the original author and that the article has republishing rights stated .

In conclusion, you can easily tackle the content creation challenge using the mentioned methods that do not require writing on your part, free or paid.

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Viral Marketing Goes Mobile

Mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs are one of the last great frontiers of viral advertisement opportunities. However, we have become experts at filtering everything, our air and water, our e-mail and pop-ups, and our mobile devices as well. We are good at filtering.

The very idea of unwanted advertising streaming through our Blackberries is abhorrent. Mobile devices are the ultimate opt-in medium and, therefore, a great way for marketers to connect with users…..if that’s what the users want. WANT is the key word here. How should marketers approach the medium?

There are three main ways to achieve this. They are:

1. Offer exclusive content. Anyone can offer a new ring tones. Its the unique content, such as exclusive mobile images of new brand concepts, that drives interest in other media like e-mail campaigns, newsletters, websites, etc. So a wireless campaign is most effective when it offers exclusive content for wireless devices.

2. Make it useful and timely. Think about what would be handy and helpful to have on a mobile device. Last year, for example, Food Network enabled Sprint customers to download shopping lists for their Thanksgiving dinners. There was a lot of Sprint-envy going around among non-sprint customers.

3. Clearly define objectives. Usually, one of two business objectives drives successful mobile experiences: incremental revenue of brand intimacy. On the intimacy factor, a text message usually takes priority over almost any other form of communication. Why? Because we haven’t yet been saturated with mobile spam, and this causes us to prioritize wireless messaging over voice.

Mobile marketing has been out there for a while but we marketers have new territory to explore. Video offers fantastic opportunities for engagement. Consumers already bypass their filters for highly useful or entertaining content and will do so for rich exclusive, compelling content.

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Viral Marketing – What Works

Stop with the enforced e-mail forwards already! Trying to force or bribe people to forward your info to a friends or family in order to be rewarded or win looks skanky in today’s ultra-permission-based world. Especially when you tell visitors nothing about their friend’s or familys privacy in the space directly next to the e-mail form.

A true viral campaign gets forwarded because consumers are compelled to do so by the glory of the content, not because you bribed them.

What absolutely will not work:

Suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to their family and friends will not work. Adding a line at the bottom of your e-mail that reads Please feel free to forward this message to a friend is more likely to get it deleted than forwarded.

What absolutely will work:

Offering something worthy of sharing like a valuable discount, vital information or offering an incentive for sharing such ase additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount or premium service will work.

Jokes and cartoons are usually forwarded to everybody the recipient knows. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment is meant to be shared.

A really cool multimedia experience is always going to achieve a lot of pass-along. Rich media is new and the novelty and tech factors alone are often enough to make the e-mail recipient eager to share it.

I almost forgot one really important thing.You can craft a brilliant e-mail following all the rules, but if a consumer visits your site and has a a negative experience, you are going to achieve viral marketing, alrightthe bad kind. So be certain that your product or service is ready and is as advertised.

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How to Viral Market by Telling Friends

Each day webmasters have the recurring dilemma on how to increase the flow of traffic to their websites. During the past few years many methods have been developed to solve this predicament. While most of them would work, there are others that would not make even a small impact.

One of the methods that spawned much success in driving traffic to websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of people to share something they find informative, entertaining or amazing.

Many companies bank on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company or their website. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behavior. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video or many other things that could catch a persons interest.

This incredible type of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilize. The benefit greatly overshadows the cost or efforts to initialize this marketing scheme. Any website would greatly benefit from viral marketing.

Tell A Friend Script

One of the methods in viral marketing is using a tell a friend script. This is a simple programming script that you can attach to your website. Generally, tell a friends script are installed in pages where a media is placed so that a person can easily send the media to any of their friends or family members.

The tell a friend script involves a script where a person may input his name, e-mail address, the recipients e-mail address and send the media to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldnt think of the mail as spam mail because he would see the senders name as someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell a friend script eliminates greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for wider spreading of this marketing method. It can be quite sneaky but it is very effective.

When the email is opened by the recipient, the media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. There is normally another tell a friend script with this product.

Then the process begins again. As more people use the tell a friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail and like what they see will click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting in a great number of potential customers.

Tell A Friend Script Availability

A tell a friend script is very simple and does not require a complicated method of programming. In fact, you can copy a script and paste it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a search engine and type in the search box tell a friend script then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see links that will direct you to a site where you can get a tell a friend script. It would just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script and copying it to your intended web page.

Using a tell a friend script viral marketing strategy, you can drive traffic into your site which could potentially spell profits. This is a simple harmless script that offers great benefits for low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.

It is imperative that you have patience in using a tell a friend script. If your chosen media doesnt get the mileage that is expected of it, it may take some time before it gets spread or shared. But surely many people will see your ads and there is great probability that they will visit your site increasing your traffic flow.

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