Online Marketing

Make Money Online – Pay Per Click Advertisements

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:12:54 +0000

A lot of people strive everyday to make ends meet. Working the 9-5 can be stressful and one can wish to break free from it, and be able to pursue their true goals. A way people started to do this and make money online, was by pay per click advertisements.

People jumped at the opportunity to make money online using PPC ads. If you built a website or blog, you could display pay per click advertisements on it, and if someone were to click on an ad you would be paid. Unlike affiliate marketing where the person has to make a purchase in order for you to make money online, with pay per click advertisements one simply needs to wait for someone to click on an ad and they have made money online.

Another difference between the 2 is that in affiliate marketing since it’s pay is based on purchases made the commission is much larger, say a $100 product and the % of commission is 30% you just made $33 and change. When it comes to pay per click, one click can pay out anywhere from $.15(cents) – $100 depending on the niche your covering. Usually you get paid cents per click.

In affiliate marketing pay is determined by purchase so the number of clicks your link gets is irrelevant if no purchase is made. With pay per click what determines pay is simply a click on the link, and about 30 seconds of navigation in the page.

You can sign up to pay per click networks and make an account with them. Once you make an account you can start making your ads. You can choose a size for the ad unit, color and some networks allow you to choose which advertiser you want to display and which ones you don’t. If you have a website or blog, then pay per click advertisements can be a great way for you to make money online from. Join a pay per click network and start making money online today.

About Author

Make Money Online

How to Promote Your Website Using Pay-Per-Click Advertising

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:12:41 +0000

Business owners have a common goal when it comes to Internet marketing. They want to get the most website hits for the least amount of money. Increasing income without spending a fortune on advertising can be accomplished with the right marketing strategy. Pay-per-click advertising is one way to achieve that goal.

Cost-Effective Advertising

Pay-per-click ads can serve as part of a profitable advertising campaign. Pay-per-click ads work well because, rather than paying a flat fee, you only pay to reach people who are actually interested in your product or service. This type of advertising is an effective way to promote your website. It helps keep costs down while directing only targeted traffic to your site.

It takes a little knowledge and skill to build an effective ad campaign. A poorly devised pay-per-click ad can cost a lot of money and still be ineffective at increasing sales. It is imperative to have a solid marketing plan. Start with these simple steps:

1. Carefully choose your keywords. Keywords are the backbone of a successful pay-per-click ad campaign. Use the right set of keywords to reach targeted traffic and build your revenue. Many keyword tools are available to help you sort through popular choices. Remember that search engine optimization is the way to get website hits from search engines. The higher your site ranks, the better the click-through rate you can expect.

2. Use captivating writing. An effectively written and carefully worded ad is your best bet for success. Each pay-per-click ad must captivate and intrigue the reader enough to make him click on it. A poorly written ad has the opposite effect and will not only lead to disappointment and lost revenue, but possibly to the removal of your ad.

3. Include a call to action. Asking potential customers to opt in to your mailing list or to make a purchase is essential for building your business. Use simple lines that clearly tell the reader what to do. Tell them to act right away, offer them a free bonus for signing up, or lure them in with information that’s not generally available.

4. Develop a solid landing page. No pay-per-click ad campaign is effective if it fails to direct potential customers to a quality landing page. Make sure your landing page is informative, neat and creative. Be sure it is search engine optimized to bring in more traffic. Remember that the homepage on your website is not necessarily the best landing page for new customers. Create a distinct page that gives customers what they want upfront.

5. Devise a new ad campaign. An effective Internet marketing campaign includes a variety of advertising methods. To attract more attention, switch up your advertising methods and create new pay-per-click ads for different sets of keywords.

Pay-Per-Click Programs

Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter are three major pay-per-click programs. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks. The only way to tell if these programs can drive traffic to your website is to test them and use their tracking features to see what is working. Regardless of which pay-per-click program you decide to go with, keyword research and market analysis are essential to your overall success. Do your homework, be prepared and create a pay-per-click ad campaign that will boost your revenue without breaking the bank.

About Author

Katy Mutlow is the author of “How to Promote Your Website Using Pay-Per-Click Advertising” and recommends that you visit: http://www.free-google-pay-per-click.com for more information

Content Management Systems Boost Website Productivity

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:58:55 +0000

If you own a website, then a content management system (CMS) can make your job a whole lot easier, as it can add or update information, whether it has 10 pages or 10.000 pages. A content management system is a tool that enables you to manage the pages that make up your website. With a CMS program, you will be able to create, edit, publish, update and archive your website’s content and what’s most importantly, you can do all these without any help from your web designer. Maybe the most popular and easy to use CMS is Wordpress.

Here are the most common publishing uses for a CMS:

News, announcements and press releases

Articles and newsletters

Product details

Special offers

Testimonials and case studies

Vacancies and personnel profiles

Useful links

Online resources and downloads

In case you’re wondering whether a CMS will benefit you, well, here are some questions that will give you an idea of whether a content management system would be good your business:

· Do you need your web designer to update text and images on your website on a regular basis?

· Do you fully depend on your web designer to keep your website up to date with all the activities in your business, like new product releases, price changes or marketing campaigns?

· Do you feel that the maintenance price you are paying your website designer is getting higher and higher?

· Are you becoming frustrated that some of the content on your website is obsolete or inaccurate?

· Do you ever miss business opportunities by not being able to add timely or topical content in response to changes in your market?

If you answer “Yes” to one or more of these questions, you should use a CMS to update your website. And if you are still not convinced, here are your direct benefits of a CMS:

1. Lower costs for website maintenance

The immediate benefit of using a content management system is cost reduction. Updating your own website yourself, rather than paying a website designer to do all the changes on your behalf, will save you lots of money. When you start using a CMS you will usually pay a fixed charge that does not vary with the number of changes you make to your web page. So, the more you use your content management system, the lower the cost per change becomes. On the other hand, every time your web designer makes changes on your behalf, he will charge you for each change, meanings that the cost per change is never reduced.

Businesses that choose to use a content management system for their website always expect to increase their productivity and improve the web ROI (Return on Investment) by improving the quality of the web and intranet content. In order to calculate the ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment and the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. In simple terms, the formula for ROI is

(Profit – Investment)
Investment

Return on investment is a very popular way to measure your benefit, because of being so easy to use and implement. In other words, if your investment doesn’t have a positive return on investment percentage, or if you can find other businesses with a higher ROI, then your investment should be not be undertaken.

2. Timely and updated content

As previously stated, a CMS enables you to make immediate changes to your website. Perhaps you’ll want to upload certain infos at a particular time of year, Christmas or Valentine’s for instance, or maybe you want to show something at a time that’s in sync with a particular event like the World Cup or the elections. Many content management systems allow you to set a particular start and an end date for your content, plus your CMS could automatically remove the details of each event from your website as soon as it is no longer of interest.

3. Higher ranking in the search engines

Search engines simply love fresh content added on a regular basis. Think about it: updated web content, including keywords phrases relevant to your niche market – you will definitely boost your chances of search engine exposure and this will increase traffic on your website.

All these being said, you probably convinced yourself of how much help a CMS could bring to your business and how it could boost your website’s effectiveness by offering your visitors timely, fresh and appealing content. Undoubtedly, a content management system will help you improve your website content, making your customers keep coming back for more valuable information and you can rely on it as a regular source of business opportunities.

About Author

Arnima is a Tampa Florida company with expertise in custom web and website design, web development & web page design & development, e-commerce website development, web & internet marketing, search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaign setup & management. We unleash your web presence!

Build your Website Using Content Management Systems

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:58:48 +0000

When you decide you want to make a site there are more options then you may think. You can code each page individually by using applications such as front page and dreamweaver or you can use a content management system (cms). These will make your life a lot easier, especially if your site has thousands of pages. A cms is basically a template which allows the creation of pages much easier then making it and uploading it to your server. A website is made through software such as dreamweaver and a cms is run through the browser making it accessible from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

These are becoming very popular because you have full control of your website, when it comes to designing your website there are thousands of templates which can be freely downloaded, if your feeling confident you can even make your own which will add a sense of uniqueness as no one will have the same design. If you are not able to create a fresh template from scratch you can always download a free template and edit it to make it how you like it.

There are many plugins and additional components which you can use with ease, with most of them you simply download the zip file, upload it to your server in the relevant folder and then activate the plugins through the cms admin.

If you want to create a blog type site with a cms then wordpress is the most popular. You can add categories so that when you make east post you simply tick the relevant category you want it to appear in. If you want to avoid the blog style website then there a number of options which have been tried and tested. One of the bigger ones is called joomla, this will allow you to make a really complex site with ease. You can add functions such as a sitemap, contact us page and links page with the click of a button. Joomla allows you to create either static pages or sort them into categories and sections.

Be sure to read up on all of the cms’ to ensure it can cater for all your needs before you download and start making your website. See what optional features you can include to make sure your site stands out from the crowd and really impress the users.

About Author

Andy Tao
More info about Cirtex web hosting from cirtexhosting and cirtexhosting coupon from http://www.cirtexhostingreview.org/cirtexhosting/cirtexhosting-coupons website.

Dominate the Competition by Pay Per Click, Small Business

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:13:35 +0000

So, someone told you to use pay per click. You have an idea of what you want to say on your banner ad and you are raring to go. Wait just a minute. Pay per click advertising is not difficult to do but dont let that statement fool you. It is increasingly difficult to succeed at it. Monthly rate advertising sites provide more advertising for less money. Read On.

Ask would-be marketers of different levels, from many different backgrounds, and they will tell you the same thing. Implementation of a successful pay per click advertising campaign is quite difficult and requires a certain level of internet savvy.

Dont believe me? Do a search on any popular search engine and look for pay per click tutorials. If you read them, they will basically all tell you the same thing. They will basically tell you how to make your banner, and to put it on the website or keyword that gets the most traffic. To the rookie advertiser, this actually sounds like sound advice from a pro, but they negate telling you one simple fact. Websites with the best traffic tend to know it and set their advertising rates accordingly.

Premium advertising spot prices and the shear number of well funded advertisers seeking to get their products noticed, creates a pay per click banner ad competition that leaves small budget guys and gals grasping at the wind. Add to this, the number of lookiloos that will click a banner and only stay on a website two to five seconds and advertisers are basically giving money away or out of the game all together.

It has been said by some that getting noticed online is hard. That is an understatement in the strongest sense of the word. Todays internet is not the internet of ten years ago or even the internet of one year ago. Things have changed and smart marketers recognize and accept this fact.

Long gone are the days when a small business could depend on the kindness of strangers to post their banner for free, simply because they believe in the product. I am not saying that it cant happen today but the likelihood of it happening on a large enough scale to make a difference in the bottom line is dismal at best.

Your product may be unique, but please understand this. You have competition. Maybe not competition someone selling the exact same product, but you have competition for the advertising spot that you need to get your product noticed. This is cross product competition. You may be selling shoes and they may be selling belts but in the end, you are both battling for the attention of the buyer. Thats why 90 percent of pay per click advertising sites wont allow advertisers to just pay a monthly rate for the advertising they will do. Did you ever wonder why?

Pay per click sounds great when you first hear it. Its cheap, its quick and its easy to do. To that I say wrong, wrong and wrong. Successful campaigns are rarely any of these.

Your ad can get clicks but think about it. There are software programs that can and probably will provide false hits that will cost you money. Software scripts that follow links looking for email addresses to harvest, automated data gatherers such as search engine spiders and a whole host of other malicious coding exist to drive up the price one pays for their pay per click campaigns. You will see it as a click and a charge but you wont get the benefit of a customer visiting. It is exponentially cheaper if you can find an advertising website that allows for the advertiser to pay a flat monthly fee for advertising. Added benefit from monthly fee advertising websites is that they often allow you to lock in low rates as long as your ad remains active.

Many of the monthly fee advertising websites employ innovative strategies for getting real people to come to your website and stay there for long lengths of time, reading all of your websites content and giving you an increased chance to sell your product an service.

An important strategy is to begin advertising on websites as soon as they hit the internet. While they are new and before their own marketing campaigns kick in, their prices are extremely low and your ad price can be locked in. as the site grows you gain the benefit of all of their marketing efforts.

{One monthly fee advertising website TypoBounty dot com charges less than ten bucks per month but provides an almost unimaginable venue to be seen and heard, plus they provide over two thousand dollars worth of additional services, all for that same ten dollars. Compare that to pay per click campaigns of 300 to 1500 bucks, the savings is clear.

Remember, If you just want to count clicks, pay per click advertising will certainly supply that for you. But if you want to make sales, flat rate, monthly advertising rates are best.

About Author

The author, John Reed, has 15 years business marketing experience and has had the opportunity to use and review multiple online businesses. You can read more about avoiding the money trap of marketing at www.cheap-online-advertising.com

The Secrets of Internet and Online Marketing

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:44:29 +0000

That’s right, with the power of the Online World to reach millions of people, Online Marketing is definitely an awesome tool that no business should be without. Just because of the simple fact alone that advertising is practically FREE. The ability to get the results of thousands of dollars in free publicity is practically unheard of in business today. Only recently have more and more people figured out how to utilize the ever exploding Online World to market their business efforts.

Think about it, there is probably no business in existence that could not benefit from free publicity! And the fact that properly utilizing free advertising raises net profits to unbelievable levels! Using any or all of the major online services, or the INTERNET, can help you market your business efforts.

Let’s start with plain-old advertising. On America Online, for example, they will let you place classified advertisements for FREE! They have a variety of classifications to choose from. By placing these small free ads you can generate some very quality leads that can turn into sales. Or if you are a really good marketer you could sell something straight from your free ad. Wouldn’t that be something, using the actual free ad to do all of the selling.

The other services offer free advertising from time to time. When they do charge for classified ads it is usually very inexpensive, and still a great deal considering how many people those ads can reach. When you place any advertisements you should always “code” your ads. This means put something in each individual ad that will tell you, if you get any business from it, which ad it came from. This way, you will probably find that some sections are better producers than others, and you will want to concentrate on these sections and not the ones that weren’t making any money.

To code an ad you could make them request a certain “report” on more information. You should give each report a different code for each ad. Such as: “ask for report #1tv” , this way you would know that this request came from the ad in the televisions for sale category, and so forth. If they send you an order straight from the ad, make them give you an order #, which would be different for each ad. THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ADVERTISING ONLINE ARE NOT USING THESE AD CODES!!! THIS IS A MAJOR MARKETING MISTAKE!!!

By not tracking exactly which ads are making money, they are wasting their time by continually placing ads in “loser” categories. The actual code can be anything you want to assign to it. ALWAYS keep track of every ad you place. Make a note of what it said, where and when it was placed. You will be pleasantly surprised when you analyze your “ad data” and see some positive trends developing. Just repeat these trends and it will help you to make more money!

How would you like to find a name list of several hundred (or even thousand) people who might be interested in the particular product or service you are selling based on their jobs or interests? Wouldn’t that be great!? Well, you can! And the Online Services supply this service as a part of your regular membership.

This little unknown tool is called the “Member Directory!” You can do searches in the directory for other users with certain characteristics. For example, if you were selling fishing equipment, you could do a search by “fishing.” All of the people that were registered in the directory and had listed fishing as one of their hobbies would show up on that search list. You could now send each one of those people an e-mail message telling them about your product or service, it’s just like using a mailing list, but you have no postage! (*Make sure you check with your Online service to see if they allow unsolicited E-mail.)

You can also get the names of several prospects by doing some “browsing” in the different topic forums. Using the earlier example of looking for people who fish, you could look under sports until you found a discussion on fishing. You could then take note of the users’ names that were participating in the discussions. You could do the same thing on the INTERNET with one of the many newsgroup topics that they have.

The bottom line is that you “test” and record the results of your Online Marketing efforts. Then just repeat the steps that are making you money and expand on them to reach more people.

Doing simple research on the Internet. The Internet has several mailing lists that are dedicated to marketing on the Internet. You will also find hundreds of articles on the World Wide Web. By searching one of the WWW search engines like Webcrawler you can find all the information you can read. Use search strings such as: “online marketing”,”internet advertising”, “selling online”, and so on.

You can also find many books on the subject at your local bookstore or being advertised online.

About Author

Sortins Technologies as the name suggests is an Indian web designing & development company located in Hyderabad that provides professional services in web design, website development, web hosting, website maintenance, website redesigning, web promotion, search engine optimization, multimedia presentations, e-catalogs, e-commerce web development, intranet application development, software development, extranet applications, portals and vortals development from Hyderabad, India.

Career Blogging: Blogging for Cash

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:44:43 +0000

Want to Work at Home? There are many ways to make money online working from home. Career blogging is one of those ways. Career bloggers are in high demand. Businesses realize the many benefits of a company blog. These companies are willing to pay you to blog, usually on a contract basis. In addition, there are numerous sites that pay you to host links and ads on your own blog or to provide a review of the site on your blog.

Getting Started as a Career Blogger

First you will need to create your own blog. This will serve as your portfolio or blogging resume. Two popular blog sites are blogger.com and wordpress.com. First you need to decide what to blog about. Since you will be blogging for businesses, you could show off your business-sense in your blog. If you are a marketer, you could blog about sales and marketing. Blog about a topic you are very familiar with or an expert in. If there’s a particular niche that you want to blog about for hire, show your expertise on the subject in your own blog.

Getting Your First Blogging Jobs

Now that you have your blog, you need to get hired. Use your About or Profile on your blog to advertise your availability as a career blogger. You can also Google blogger job or blogging jobs and browse the search results. You’ll likely find dozens of search results for blogging jobs. Other resources for finding blogging jobs are Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and HotJobs.com. Just submit your resume and contact info to be contacted by companies looking for professional bloggers.

Get Paid To Blog

The following sites pay you to put links/ads in your blog or to place a site/product review for the company in your blog.

Bloggerwave.com
An opportunity awaiting all bloggers! Give your valuable feedback to advertisers with respect to their web sites, products, services, and companies and get paid for it.

blogitive.com
* Earn money with every posting
* Get paid weekly via Paypal
* No advertising required, just your opinions
* Only post the stories that interest you
* Create multiple blogs to earn more
* Does not conflict with ad campaigns on your site

PayPerPost.com
Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers.

BuzzByBlog.com
BuzzByBlog pays you to place ads on your website or blog. Just register as a blogger, receive offers, write, and get paid. They allow you to decide the minimum amount you will accept per entry, make counter-offers, and easy blog acceptance.

BloggingAds.com
Pays you to post an ad on your blog. Blogging Ads provides the ads and the money … you just place the ad on your blog. You must have a paypal account.

Blogsvertise.com
Get paid to write a review for advertisers in your blogs. Reviews in blogs create a buzz about a site or product and you’ll be getting paid to create this buzz in your blog.

CREAMaid.com
Place a widget on your blog and an ad and get paid via Paypal within 24 hours.

InBlogAds.com
With InBlogAds you can buy simple, direct HTML links on blogs. Increase both your traffic and natural search engine rankings. Get Bloggers to review your products or website. Generate buzz and get some links all in the same time.

ReviewMe.com
This new company was launched on Nov.9! They pay between $20.00-$200.00 for a review! Submit your blog. Once you are accpeted and receive an offer, you must write a post with a minimum of 200 words. You can receive payment by check or paypal. They pay on the first of every month. This is the highest paying company!

LoudLaunch.com
Earn more with your blog. Get paid to independently review LoudLaunch Campaign Releases. You’ve earned your audience, now be compensated for your opinion.

Smorty.com
Get paid for blogging. Write your opinion about peoples products, services and websites on your blog. Get paid weekly. No advertising, just write your opinions

* Earn top $ with every opinion post
* Select the subjects that interest you
* Post in multiple blogs to earn more
* Build interesting, unique content in your Blog
* Get paid weekly by PayPal

PayU2Blog.com
Make money blogging. Earn quick money by completing easy assignments in your blog. They pay you to mention products, services and companies, on your blog.

WeblogsInc.com
Apply to blog for one of their 90 blogs or suggest a blog topic and maybe they’ll start a new blog! WIN bloggers are paid to blog as little or as much as they like, are unfiltered, and can shift from blog to blog within the network. Their only requirements are that you be totally honest with your audience and passionate about the subjects you cover. Talk to their editorial team if you’re interested!

CreativeWeblogging.com
Get paid to blog with Creative Weblogging! They are one of the largest blog networks, with over 90 blogs in five languages.They will help grow your online reputation, establish you as a thought leader — and pay you, too.

CreativeWeblogging.com Compensation Package:
* Monthly compensation: $225 (US) — paid via PayPal or Moneybookers
* 7 to 10 posts per week are required.
* Traffic bonuses for aggressively growing traffic are available, up to $50 per month additional.
* Access to their vibrant community discussion group with 80+ bloggers, where you can share tips and network.
* They take care of all the technology, with an advanced blogging platform.
* They also provide marketing support.
* Virtual shares program: blog with them for a year and you can earn virtual shares in the company.

BloggerParty.com
Welcome. Join the party, where people from around the world join together to share their thoughts, ideas, rants, daily journals, reviews, and lives with each other each and every day. Write about what you want, when you want, meet people, and have fun. Plus, make some money doing it, too.

b5media.com/b5media-music-channel/
b5media is looking for writers to cover a wide range of genres, geographic locations, bands and interests. They’re also looking to cover specific bands who are newsworthy and blogworthy such as U2, the Beatles and Justin Timberlake. How to apply: Fill out a blogger application at: b5media.com/jobs. Please be sure to include any URLs of your writing samples.

About Author

Suzanne Bucciarelli is the owner of Million Dollar Dame, a website which provides free articles and advice for people who want to start an online business. For more online business opportunities, articles and advice and tips, please visit: Million Dollar Dame

Best Way to Success in Online Marketing

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:44:53 +0000

Online Marketing is defined as strategies for Internet related activities which ensure to reach the target buyers directly or indirectly. It include marketing activities such as opt-in email campaigns, webcasts, portal site media, newsletter sponsorships, great copywriting, web site design, online promotions, linking, search engine optimization and search engine submissions. Online marketing is not only limited to the web but it is integrated with your offline marketing if that’s an equally effective way to reach your target buyers.

The basic objective of every marketing strategy is to prompt more people into buying your products or services. To maximize the return on investment (ROI) it is very crucial to take care of some very important aspects of online marketing. The following marketing techniques can help in boosting your online sales and thus maximize your profits:

1. Articles Submission –This process involves posting of articles on article directories and affiliate websites, a part of off-page search engine optimization. A relevant and good quality article can do wonders in driving more potential buyers to your site. On-Page SEO – The content and Meta tags of a page are of great help in the process of optimization.

2. Blogs and Newsletters – These are popular ways to enhance the popularity and visibility of your site.

3. Online Forums – Being a part of online forums will help you to spread awareness about your website, products and services. Such techniques help you to stay in the loop of this marketplace and thus establish the right kind of contacts.

4. Paid SEO Marketing – Known as the Pay Per Click (PPC) strategy, this technique is very effective and can really enhance your website’s volume of traffic as well as search engine rankings. Using high-performance keywords, you can work towards converting general users to prospective buyers on a website.

At sem.mosaic-service.com, an online marketing company based in India, we offer excellent solution for all your web-related queries. We have been very successful in getting Top rankings for client’s websites based on our proprietary optimization and ranking methodology called Dartboard Optimization Matrix (DOM). Mosaic Services is an exclusive Offshore preferred Technical partner to many leading international clients in US, UK and other English speaking nations. Our clients are diverse and include large international companies, major universities, targeted business-to-business marketers, consumer goods manufacturers and distributors, software developers and marketers, and a broad array of small businesses. Every client gets our focused attention, and we’re proud of every achievement. Visit us now to Rank your Business Smart!

About Author

Vikas Malhotra is a successful Internet marketing consultant, having helped over 900 businesses to increase their visibility and sales online. He is a web branding expert with experience in online media planning, buying, and search engine marketing. To know more about him, visit http://sem.mosaic-service.com.

Dpci Digital Asset Management Systems Simplify Content Management

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:59:17 +0000

The company I work for could no longer get away with tracking the location of key files using a spreadsheet and a shared drive. I was chosen to head up the team tasked with formalizing our digital asset management strategy. Key requirements included centralized storage, controlled access and powerful search capabilities.

Digital assets are tens or even hundreds of thousands of files, typically scattered across your company’s network. This material tends to be expensive to produce or acquire, but it’s reusable; think photos, logos and corporate branding material, videos and audio clips. If your company is anything like mine was, half the files it owns aren’t even on the network. They’re sitting on some marketing guy’s laptop, flash drive, or CD’s, and if he forgets any of these in a coffee shop, guess what? Those files are gone for good. Of course, it may take months before anyone even realizes that the files are missing, and then it’s a huge rush and a big expense to replace them.

I quickly realized that there are a lot of digital asset management systems out there and each has its strengths. After a few meetings, I also realized that, while it’s probably a good idea to have the IT department involved in the process of picking a vendor (you do need their support, after all), it’s probably not the best idea to let them attempt a solution on their own. Most companies simply don’t have the expertise in-house and you want to do this right. I insisted on working with a firm specializing in implementation of these systems and I’d highly recommend going that route. DPCI is one name that comes up frequently and it’s known for experience with the bigger vendors including Open Text, North Plans, Nstein and Documentum.

I’ve been beating up on the IT department a bit, but here’s an area where you can make their lives considerably easier: Implement a Web content management system. Most companies have an online presence and it’s not uncommon for various departments to be producing content that’s posted on a variety of web sites and blogs. Success online requires that content be updated quickly and material be consistent and professional in appearance. The problem is organizations still rely on the techies to update pages on the corporate Website, which is inefficient, slow, and anxiety-producing for both sides.

Multiple access points means multiple input methods to be learned, and that puts stress on IT. Not only do they have to keep a collection of access systems running, they usually end up providing user support. Have you ever had to talk someone in Sales or Marketing through posting an event photo or video on the corporate blog? Or updating an event or some other kind of campaign in another section of the corporate Website? I feel for those IT guys!

A Web-based content management system greatly simplifies the publication process and relieves the pressure on your IT department. A straightforward Web browser interface means anyone can quickly post content and upload multimedia files, and it keeps everything in the correct format via templates.

Once again, I’d strongly suggest that you don’t go it alone; enlist the help of a company that specializes in the implementation of content management systems to ensure you end up with the correct solution for your company. It is interesting to note that DPCI also implements Web content management systems, so in essence, they’re a one-stop shop for organizations’ content technology needs. They’ve got a good reputation in the marketplace, and to my way of thinking, if they do a good job its easier to work with a single consulting firm than multiple ones.

About Author

My name is Dan Manson: I run a multitude of websites and blogs. After using fragmented content systems for so long, I chose to get help with a professional content management system. When reviewing the digital asset management strategy, I found the best solution is truly in the form of an integrated system that functions as the single source of truth.

Web Content Management: The Secret Weapon in Your Marketing Arsenal

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:58:57 +0000

The term ‘Web 2.0’ has perhaps received an undue amount of attention, but it is a reality that every organization with an online presence must work within. Web marketers must face up to highly choosy consumers demanding up-to-the-minute, accurate, conveniently packaged, dynamic and interactive content. With increasing amounts of marketing spend being diverted online (U.S. Internet advertising spending reached close to $ 20 billion in 2007 according to one survey) companies are beginning to feel the pressure to make the most of their online marketing activities.

At the very core of any effort towards optimizing online marketing is quality content. But good content is not enough unless you can deliver this content quickly, easily and in the right amounts at the right time. Enter the Web Content Management System (CMS); online marketing’s most potent but most underplayed weapon. Any organization serious about getting the most out of its Web site will value a Web CMS solution because:

• Creating and managing online content is a marketing-related function, not an IT-related one. The focus is therefore on an easy-to-use interface that allows marketing professionals with only a rudimentary knowledge of the system to manage Web content.
• Every Web site needs constant monitoring and updating of content to attract consumers and have them return. A manual process is clearly not the best way to do this.
• The increased ease and speed of publishing content through a CMS allows for companies to be properly tuned to new challenges and expectations for their site, and respond in a timely manner.
• Standardized processes that can easily be tracked give companies greater control over the content generated, with quality checks at all appropriate points.

A Web CMS system thus offers several opportunities for maximizing a company’s return on marketing investment. The good news is that leading CMS software solutions providers have realized the shift in focus from mere administration to marketing potential: they now prime their solutions to directly impact revenue generation. With the right Web CMS, companies can now create accurately coordinated, multi-pronged marketing campaigns that can easily be tracked, modified, and quantified for analysis.

Let’s look at some of the advantages of Web CMS in detail:

Content Consistency
For potential customers to be attracted to a Web site, navigate their way through it and finally commit to a transaction, a key requirement is that they consistently receive information that appeals to them without difficulty. It is therefore important for any organization to coordinate content production at every level: the primary site, marketing emails, newsletters, landing pages and microsites. Single-sourcing is a critical enabler of marketing efforts, as the resultant content consistency ensures good brand management and greater user relevancy.

Search Engine optimization (SEO)
Central to any e-marketing effort, search engine optimization (SEO) involves techniques and innovations to ensure that a company’s Web site is consistently top-ranked. In considering SEO, one must look at two different kinds of advertising that take place:

• Organic or natural search
• Paid search

Although most companies tend to focus on the latter, the benefits of organic search should not be neglected. It is here that a strong marketing-centric CMS can help; not only by providing consistent, updated content with efficient metadata but also by facilitating keyword analysis and development. With paid search too, a CMS can help reduce pay-per-click rates by optimizing the Web site’s quality score. The quality score is factored on many aspects such as click-through-rate and content relevancy, all of which decide how much an organization pays for search services.

Usability Experience
Web 2.0 consumers are not merely looking for information; they seek a user experience. Integral to this experience is accessibility. Consumers must be able to access content in dynamic ways, without being restricted by weak taxonomy support or hierarchical information organizations. Social bookmarking now allows consumers to classify, organize and share content based on hierarchies that best appeal to them. Then there is the question of community-generated content, both primary (articles or blog posts) and metadata (comments, voting, ratings, and more).

A good CMS infinitely simplifies this process by allowing public participation in the publishing workflow. It provides the necessary tools to share content, monitor, acknowledge, verify and incorporate feedback into the system, thus promoting greater interactivity. Web publishers should also remember that users can now access content from various Web-enabled devices: the CMS must therefore maintain a level of separation between content and presentation systems.

Web Analytics
Responding to dynamic online marketing challenges is nearly impossible without timely and easy access to tools that track, measure, analyze and report user behavior and campaign effectiveness. While analytics has traditionally remained a separate domain from content management, companies are increasingly realizing advantages in leveraging relationships between the two. When fully integrated with a Web CMS, analytics solutions offer the advantages of consistent KPIs (key performance indicators), higher level traffic data analysis, scenario analyses and campaign tracking; all within the interface of the CMS itself. Thus, an integrated analytics and CMS solution offers non-technical, subject matter experts easily understandable, comprehensive tracking tools that can then be leveraged for better marketing returns.

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Advantage
Many factors have prevented small and mid-size organizations from benefiting from either installed software or open source CMS; primary issues being cost and implementation effort. With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or hosted CMS solutions, companies now receive all the advantages of enterprise-class CMS solutions without any of the hassles of installed or open source solutions.

The primary advantage is that SaaS removes the need for purchasing expensive software. SaaS also spares resource-starved companies the need for more hardware or personnel investments required for implementation, maintenance and upgrade of the CMS. And finally, SaaS models ensure constant vendor support, as the responsibility for maintaining the solution remains with the service provider.

The Bottom Line
The old days of top-down information delivery are gone. The mantra of the Web 2.0 world is fluidity and responsiveness. Treating content management as just regular delivery of static pages of information is a sure way to get left behind. Content management must be an ongoing process vital to organizational functioning, and the best way to streamline it is through a good CMS.

For more information: http://www.crownpeak.com

About Author

This article is contributed by Rob Rose – Vice President of Crownpeak. Crownpeak offers a cost effective and user friendly Content Management System (CMS). The Article talks about how the Small and Medium Businesses can compete with larger counterparts. It discusses the various strategies that Small and Medium Businesses can adopt to compete with Large Businesses on the web space.