Online Adventure Part 4
Promowear Magazine, November/December 2008.Our Online Adventure comes to a close. I hope readers have seen some success with their online storefronts and at a minimum have learned some methods of Internet Marketing. The following links were included for using while following along with this column, and I have added some additional links as well:
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The Power Of The Press Release
As any marketing consultant will tell you, press releases have a powerful impact on getting your business in front of an audience. I remember back in 1996 when I had just started a single head embroidery business in North Dallas. I was featured in IMPRESSIONS Magazine as a single head operation finding niche markets in my area, and I promptly sent a press release out to every newspaper in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.The response was to say the least, IMPRESSIVE. In fact, as I recall I had to hire help within a few weeks to keep up with the workload I had suddenly generated.
I have recommended, written and submitted many press releases for customers throughout my career however I have to admit I am limited to a smaller database of publications, which generates a smaller amount of responses.
Writing your own press release can be challenging, but the real challenge - and time sonsuming task - is finding the proper contacts and news outlets to send your press release to, as well as having a good chance of having it published.
By using a service such as Advanced PR, for one low price you can reach millions through magazines, newspapers, radio and TV broadcasting companies, contacts you and I simply do not have. Announce your new web site, let everyone know about an award or new product you have, promote a seasonal sale or even celebrate the anniversary of your company each year and get your business out there in the public. While you comfortably run your business as usual, Advanced PR:
- Distributes Your Press Release to Thousands of High Profile News Agencies
- Makes Sure You Get & Receive Press Coverage in All Applicable Trade Publications
- Generates Press Releases Are Personalized & Highly Targeted to Editors, Reporters, Journalists and Program Directors
- Offers Various Distribution Options Including Email, News Wires, Fax, Audio & Search Engine Distribution
- Provides Professional Writers on Staff to Create & Write Your Press Release
- Uses An Extensive 690k Press Database Covering Thousands of Subjects
- Has Guaranteed Press Release Coverage of Your PR
The value of the exposure and recognition that a tv blurb, newspaper or magazine write-up, editorial or product feature can have is often times enough publicity to launch small companies into multi-million dollar businesses and transform mid-to-large size companies into the billions. You can't underestimate the value of press and publicity. The golden rule is… "If you get press attention, you WILL GET ORDERS!"
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Online Adventure Part 3
Promowear Magazine, September 2008.Time to turn our creative caps backwards, roll up our sleeves and rally into marketing and promoting your new online store. The following links were included for using while following along with this column:
And for brief look at how I use my Squidoo lenses for generating traffic and sales to my dart shirts web site:
- My Dart Shirts
- Dart Shirts History
- Smart Darts - 501 Finishes
- Dart Tournament Brackets
- Regulation Dartboard Setup
- Dart Teams
- Online Darts Via Webcam
- Gift Ideas for Dart Players
- Software For Darts
- Play Darts: 01
- Play Darts: Cricket
- Play Darts: Mickey Mouse
- Play Darts: Shanghai
- Historical Darts Pictures
- CafePress Newsletters
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Online Adventure Part 2
Promowear Magazine, July/August 2008.Time to get the ball rolling and have some tools ready for marketing your new online store. The following links were included for using while following along with this column:
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Online Adventure Part 1
Promowear Magazine, May/June 2008.Join me for a summer full of hands on experience with Internet Marketing! This is the first in a series of columns that will take us on an adventure into Cyberspace, selling garments and imprinted items, and promoting the online store where you will be selling them. If you have not done so, head on over to Cafe Press and get your account started right away!
See y'all in the next issue!
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RSS-ing To The Occasion
Promowear Magazine, March/April 2008.This column explains a little about RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and how you may use it to automate your online activities as well as market your business. Examples of RSS you see here include the RSS feed to this blog in the top navigation area and my Twitter feed in the far right column.
As mentioned in this months article, Google Reader is a great tool to get started with to get familiar with RSS feeds and how they work.
Update March 15th, 2009: I have posted a list of RSS feed directories for submitting your feeds.
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Dartoids World
I only wish mixing business with pleasure could come around more often. Recently I finished up an exciting project in the rebuild of Dartoids World. As a regular reader of Dartoid's column for many years, I had always been a bit torn when visiting his web site. As a fan and loyal subscriber to his articles, the content was always there. However from a webmaster's chair, I often found myself cringing at the lack of consistency, broken features and cookie cutter template and widgets that the web site consisted of.
I can't begin to explain how excited I was when I got a call from Dartoid himself to discuss an overhaul. Mixing humor and vignettes of local life with useful tips for darters who find themselves at the ends of the earth with nowhere to throw, Dartoid’s World is a must-read, the most widely read column about darts in the world.
I engineered Dartoids World to give him the freedom of posting his column with ease, using a custom created admin area that is as simple to use as any text editor or word program. In addition to that, I built in easy to use tools for Dartoid control other features on his web site such as polls, a travel gallery and recommended columns. Each time Dartoid posts a new column the web site automatically updates his RSS feed, Google Site Map and the menu's and links within navigation. I told him I could make it so easy a six year old could do it, and he no doubt responded with his great sense of humor, "good, because when it comes to this kind of stuff I'm about as smart as one".
Additional features give Dartoid's readers the ability to comment on articles and rate them, a rating system for the "double out shots" which are updated automatically each month, and a "wheres Dartoid" module that allows him to keep his audience updated on where his travels and journeys around the globe are currently taking him.
On six of seven continents, Dartoid has gone toe-to-toe and mug-to-mug with some of the best dart shooters, and best drinkers, on the planet. From Beijing to Toronto, Tokyo to Johannesburg, Bangkok to Rome, Dartoid’s stood at the line, often in the most unbelievable of circumstances.
Dartoid's column has been featured by Bull’s Eye News, the American Darts Organization’s (ADO) Double Eagle and numerous other darts publications and websites around the globe since 1995.
I can't begin to explain how excited I was when I got a call from Dartoid himself to discuss an overhaul. Mixing humor and vignettes of local life with useful tips for darters who find themselves at the ends of the earth with nowhere to throw, Dartoid’s World is a must-read, the most widely read column about darts in the world.
I engineered Dartoids World to give him the freedom of posting his column with ease, using a custom created admin area that is as simple to use as any text editor or word program. In addition to that, I built in easy to use tools for Dartoid control other features on his web site such as polls, a travel gallery and recommended columns. Each time Dartoid posts a new column the web site automatically updates his RSS feed, Google Site Map and the menu's and links within navigation. I told him I could make it so easy a six year old could do it, and he no doubt responded with his great sense of humor, "good, because when it comes to this kind of stuff I'm about as smart as one".
Additional features give Dartoid's readers the ability to comment on articles and rate them, a rating system for the "double out shots" which are updated automatically each month, and a "wheres Dartoid" module that allows him to keep his audience updated on where his travels and journeys around the globe are currently taking him.
On six of seven continents, Dartoid has gone toe-to-toe and mug-to-mug with some of the best dart shooters, and best drinkers, on the planet. From Beijing to Toronto, Tokyo to Johannesburg, Bangkok to Rome, Dartoid’s stood at the line, often in the most unbelievable of circumstances.
Dartoid's column has been featured by Bull’s Eye News, the American Darts Organization’s (ADO) Double Eagle and numerous other darts publications and websites around the globe since 1995.
Order On The Court
A good friend of mine in the dart league runs a business called Pioneer Sports Flooring, specializing in maple and synthetic sports surfaces for basketball, volleyball, athletic and recreational facilities. Realizing the need for a solid web presence to educate their existing customers as well as reach new clients and expand their market I was asked to build them a simple, straight forward informational web site.
During the process I was reminded of how important it is to have a web presence in todays business world. The Internet has become as common as a refrigerator and television set in homes around the world. Consumers are using the web to research products and services before picking up the phone or looking through the Yellow Pages, if they even keep a phone book handy anymore.
If there's one thing all of my new clients have in common, it is coming to terms with the fact that a web presence has become so critical. All of them admit that the majority of new customers that contact them ask the same question, "do you have a web site I can go look at to learn more about your business and see examples of what you have to offer?".
Despite the current economic situation, the Internet still thrives and maintains itself as a huge cog in the gears of commerce. Don't leave potential customers out there for your competitors, if you don't have a web site yet consider getting started right away!
During the process I was reminded of how important it is to have a web presence in todays business world. The Internet has become as common as a refrigerator and television set in homes around the world. Consumers are using the web to research products and services before picking up the phone or looking through the Yellow Pages, if they even keep a phone book handy anymore.
If there's one thing all of my new clients have in common, it is coming to terms with the fact that a web presence has become so critical. All of them admit that the majority of new customers that contact them ask the same question, "do you have a web site I can go look at to learn more about your business and see examples of what you have to offer?".
Despite the current economic situation, the Internet still thrives and maintains itself as a huge cog in the gears of commerce. Don't leave potential customers out there for your competitors, if you don't have a web site yet consider getting started right away!
iGoogle Darts Theme
Just like most things I seem to stumble across, iGoogle had no home page themes for darts. So, just like the screen savers I made for my phone, PDA, Blackberry and laptop I decided that needed to be addressed and submitted a darts theme. Also, being the Internet Marketing tool that I am, I branded it with my dart shirts web site URL. My vision of course was to draw dart players to the web site to shop.
Can I say it was successful as an Internet Marketing venture? Unfortunately, the nature of the theme limits you to providing a static image. So without a functional link to track statistics from users there is no way to tell.
The theme page does have a counter that shows how many users currently have the theme installed on their iGoogle home page, and I have seen it as high as 4000 users since submitting the theme. From a branding perspective, considering a few thousand Internet users have my web site URL on their screen I would venture to say many will visit the web site. I would also guess that the majority of users who are enjoying the theme are dart players, which is a slam dunk in terms of reaching a targeted, qualified audience.
This is just another example of finding creative ways to get exposure and traffic - especially qualified traffic - to your web site. The Internet is full of widgets, bells, whistles and inter active features that people use quite often, and if you keep your eyes peeled for ways to market yourself through them you can discover stones left unturned.
So, if you're a dart player please enjoy this iGoogle Darts Theme and drop some comments - good or bad - on the iGoogle theme page!
During the day it looks like this:
And at night it changes to this:
Can I say it was successful as an Internet Marketing venture? Unfortunately, the nature of the theme limits you to providing a static image. So without a functional link to track statistics from users there is no way to tell.
The theme page does have a counter that shows how many users currently have the theme installed on their iGoogle home page, and I have seen it as high as 4000 users since submitting the theme. From a branding perspective, considering a few thousand Internet users have my web site URL on their screen I would venture to say many will visit the web site. I would also guess that the majority of users who are enjoying the theme are dart players, which is a slam dunk in terms of reaching a targeted, qualified audience.
This is just another example of finding creative ways to get exposure and traffic - especially qualified traffic - to your web site. The Internet is full of widgets, bells, whistles and inter active features that people use quite often, and if you keep your eyes peeled for ways to market yourself through them you can discover stones left unturned.
So, if you're a dart player please enjoy this iGoogle Darts Theme and drop some comments - good or bad - on the iGoogle theme page!
During the day it looks like this:
And at night it changes to this:
Adwords Meets YouTube
Promowear Magazine, January/February 2008.Hopefully Promowear readers will have by this time explored pay per click advertising [See: July/August 2005 Issue]. And for those who did - and chose Google AdWords as their pay per click service – prepare for some exciting news.
Google recently added YouTube Video Units as an option to their AdSense users. Just like AdSense displays a relevant AdWords block on their web site, this simply plays content related video with AdWords running in a small banner and occasionally rotating through a semi transparent window below the video.
Update April 20, 2009: I just received an email from Google announcing that they will no longer be running this program.
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