By Melanie Rembrandt

After optimizing your site for search engines and pursuing other marketing efforts, it’s time to use the power of the press to boost sales, awareness and credibility cost-effectively. But how do you pitch your story to a reporter?

Here are some quick tips to help you through the media process:

1. Know Your Targeted Media Members.

Before you even reach out to a reporter, you should know what that person writes about and what he or she will be interested in discussing. Do your homework before contacting a specific reporter, and you’ll have a much better understanding of what you should say (and the topics to avoid).

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By Jerry Bader

Tip O’Neill, the late Speaker of The House of Representatives is often quoted as saying “All politics is local,” meaning a politician that helps a constituent with a problem is likely to win that vote based on the personal assistance provided, irrespective of that politician’s stance on the larger, more weighty, geo-political issues. What then of business, is all business local or international?

Shopping Is An Experience

The world has changed dramatically since the days when neighborhood shopping was the main option, and people relied on their local merchants for products and services. The world of commerce today seems to be divided between two competing scenarios: on the one hand, people are more mobile than ever before, and more willing to travel to buy what they want, even with wildly fluctuating energy costs; and on the other hand, people are busier than ever and use the Internet to seek out the companies, products, and services they want and need.

What seems to be consistent is the underlying need to feel something, to experience the process. The higher the value, the greater the psychological component to the buying experience. The same is true for products and services that are considered non-essential.

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By Mark McCullagh

Internet marketing strategies involve driving targeted (people who are interested in what you have to offer) traffic to your website, blog, or sales page.

That traffic then has to be converted into sales. This simple formula illustrates this process:

Traffic + Conversions = Sales

Keeping this formula in your mind will help you in your internet marketing efforts because you will realize that you not only have to generate traffic, but also turn those visitors into buyers.

Furthermore, here are 7 basic rules to follow when applying this formula. These rules are relevant to all forms of marketing but are especially important for online marketing where inexperienced people can “burn” a lot of money quickly and become very discouraged.

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By Linda Van Fleet

To make your web site really pay off, it has to get good web traffic, which means simply that a lot of people are coming to your web site. By checking your web stats you can quickly observe how many visitors your web site is getting and even how many people stay long enough to browse the website.

Programs such as Awstats, a web analyzing program found on most Linux based servers will reveal how those web visitors came to you. Did they click through from a search engine? If so, what keyword brought them to you? Or, did they come from a particular website that links to yours? Your stats will reveal all.

Of great interest to most webmasters is the keywords used by visitors who find your site through the search engines. In the past few years a new science called “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) has evolved into a business model that specializes in making sure your web site gets a strong flow of business from people who look for your niche of goods and services using Google, Yahoo or one of the other big search engines.

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By Mark Hochhaus

Getting to the top of the search engines, and staying there, is an ongoing process. This does not mean it is expensive to stay at the top. In fact, in most cases, it’s rather affordable. But beware, there are pitfalls along the way to search engine Zen.

The old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true”, applies to SEO (search engine optimization). There are many companies that will promise top results using less than ethical methods. Including slick salesmen that will convince you that all the top sites cheat the search engines in order to stay on top. You will run into web site owners that mask keywords to get top positions making it sound very tempting to follow in their foot steps.

Don’t be fooled by such hype. These are short term solutions that can lead to a permanent ban in the top engines. Once you are banned in Google, Yahoo, MSN or ASK, you may as well dump your site and start over. If you’re looking for long term success on the internet, don’t cheat the search engines.

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By Karla Whitmore

Search engine marketing involves keeping your content fresh, using keywords that put you at the top of the first page and obtaining as many links to your site from other websites as possible.

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