Steve Mills – Online Marketing

Hi everyone, good to see a whole lot of new readers on the site. I am hitting my weekly targets easily, and showing that fantastic mathematical trend, EXPONENTIAL GROWTH.

Darren over at problogger explains it pretty clearly in this weeks video post, and I can recommend you check it out.

Over the weekend while planting my new veggie patch I had chance to ponder what the online blogosphere needs. Please feel free to correct me or add your own twist to what I have written below. These are the things that I want to see happen

* More blogs that make money, but are not about blogs making money

* Quality content that shares the owners personal views on subject, not just what everyone else is saying. That’s the whole point of social media, wouldn’t you think?

* More people commenting on each others blogs, not just the big blogs but the smaller sites in the blog community. I know it’s tough but everyone needs encouragement.

* Injection of more advertising dollars, from areas other then just adsense and affiliates. People won’t click the same ads over and over again. Fresh advertising = more clicks.

* More blogers as content producers, not just content commentators. We need more experts, and less reporters.

What we need is to make the blogosphere sustainable for future generations, not just a flash in the pan that burns up all of the dollars available. The last thing we need is for advertisers to get sick of it and start withdrawing funds and allocating them somewhere else.

Oh yeah, and before anyone gets too smart, I know that one thing we don’t need is more top 5 lists

Keep it real and positive, till next time.

I had a thought the other day while driving around listening to MP3′s. I envisioned a future where Supergroups are formed, groups that comprise some of the best or influential musical artists. You might get Chris Cornell singing, and Thurston Moore playing guitar, and Danny Carey from Tool playing drums, and Sting playing bass. And then they organise a tour where they play all of the best songs from any of the really classic rock bands, for instance Led Zeppelin … So they promoter gets all of these guys together, dumps the truckload of money on their doorstep and then they hit the road. 50 dates across the planet, playing stadiums. They come out and crank out Stairway to Heaven, Immigrant Song, Battle for Evermore etc and the goes on from there. Imagine the excitement and the novelty, imagine the interest.

As the iPod revolution continues, and moves into easily download-able video the music industry is going to have to come up with more ideas like this. Also, as the ideas of new accessible forms of musical expression are used up, and people get sick of the same old, novelty like this will be the way to breath life into the old standards that people love. This is the “mash up” taken to the next level.

So there you are music promoters / managers that read this site. Just get the best there is together, and get them to go out and play the Beatles back catalog, or the best of Hendrix etc.. You have to admit that it is something different.If you hear of anyone who has done this in the past please let me know.

Sometimes it’s good to get a fresh perspective on your website or blog. To take a step to one side and look at it in a different light. It allows you to see all of the elements that make up your online presence, break them down, see what they do. Most people when they first start a site or blog think of it just as a mixture of code, information and design sitting in cyberspace.

But just for today I want you to think of it like a shop in a busy main street in your local town, or in the busiest shopping mall in the city. This is really just a preliminary exercise, and I will brush over a number of topics below, each of wish could fill an entire blog if you wanted to. This is just to allow you to start making notes and noticing the subtle way that everything in the site determines the final outcome (clicks, sales, downloads etc)

Just imagine this shop for a moment in your mind, what it looks like, what you are selling. If you are trying to blogg for a living or make any type of income online then you must have merchandise. You must have something that either people are willing to pay for, or that people are going to pay to get them to look at it. Factors that determine the price of things valuable in real life business are scarcity of what you are selling, percieved value (determined by such factors as how usefull it is to them, can they use it to make more money / goods), social value of the item and entertainment/novelty factor. If you are not giving a reason to buy (or click) then it’s time to assess why.

The other factor in the success of the physical store is the amount of people that activly shop there. In retail shops, as well as online site there are two types of shopper, the casual and the directed.

The casual shopper are people that wander by, finds the store by chance and as passing by sees something that catches their eye. The second is the type of shopper that has seen something pointing them to your store (site) from somewhere else and has made the journey there specifically on the notion of what you can give to them.

The casual site visitor is the type of user that finds you from social bookmark sites or random google searches. they land at your page not really knowing why they are there, and quickly want to establish context and content of the site.

In your vitual shop uou must be able to attract the passing shopper as they stroll past your storefront. How are you going to do this. Quality merchandise? Attractive Offers? Great service and attentive sales people? Next time you go to the local shopping center, or even to the commercial district have a look around at each shop. See what type of customers are theere, how many are there. What are they looking at, what are they taking up to the counter and actually paying for? How is the store attracting casual passing traffic?

In the physical world, the directed shopper finds a store via catalogs, advertising, directories, brochures. For your site this can mean traffic via adwords, targeted search, links via other sites and comments that you have made on other blogs. This type of shopper / user is after something specific as they enter the store, and are looking for the quickest way to it.
How are you helping them to do this on current site? You need to give this type of user clear directions to find the information and product they are after, and once that has been done how to then buy it.

The off line and online worlds are really not that far apart, its just being able to draw the analogy and get something out of it.

Happy Shopping