Keeping the subject of your e-mail letters engaging means there needs to be an element of freshness about them. You can do this by including current newsworthy events that are related to your niche. This demonstrates two things: first, that you can be relied upon to keep your audience informed of niche-related news; and second, you are updating your e-mail series. Nobody wants to stay on an e-mail list that appears to be written 10 years ago. The fresher the information the better, and for ideas on how to keep your e-mails fresh read on:

Forums Are The Place To Go

For those of you who are stuck for content ideas, and more specifically can’t come up with niche-related problems that need solving, then visit forums that are related to your niche. There are forums on virtually any topic out there. What’s great about forums in particular is that the information will be fresh. Users will post on topics that are relevant today, not a year ago, or even 6 months ago.
This means you can find out what problems your e-mail list should be tackling and address them. One of the best ways of keeping people subscribed to your e-mail list is by proving to them that you can solve their problems, or at the very least provides partial solutions at an on-going basis. An expert from Ivana Bosnjak suggests that the forums are a great place to research niche-related topics:

If you don’t know where to search for problems, just browse your niche relevant forums. You will see many problems, many! Shoot, you might find so many that you will not be able to solve them all.

Just make sure to find a forum that has many participating users. Some forums become dead after a while because there is a lack of activity. You need to avoid these because the information at these forums will be dated and not worth using in your e-mail series.

Top Blogs

Every niche or industry has top blogs that in effect act like a news channel for any important information that comes out. That means you don’t have to spend hours researching what’s newsworthy on the internet. You simply need to follow a few very carefully selected blogs and you’ll have as much newsworthy content for the e-mail list as you’ll ever need.

To find a top blog in your niche, simply enter a few search strings into Google such as “top blogs” followed by the name of your niche. You don’t need to follow as many as 10 blogs, but you shouldn’t follow just one either. Around 3-4 well selected blogs can be enough for a typical e-mail list. Of course, the amount of information you need depends on the frequency at which you send off your e-mails. However, as Lucy Langdon suggests, some niches might be so obscure that finding niche blogs could be difficult:

They’re not necessarily going to make it any ‘top x’ lists. As mentioned above, there are also a lot of blogs and although the best will usually make themselves known in one way or another, finding and assessing their value to you can still be a frustrating and time-consuming business.

Offline Research

You should keep in mind that you can research information for your e-mail series offline. This has the added advantage of providing you information that competitors in your niche might not uncover. That’s because most people will only stick to online research. By going the extra mile you are giving your subscribers something extra. They will reward that extra effort by staying on your e-mail list instead as opposed to switching to a competitor. The sources at which you can do offline research are news channels, libraries and experts. You can form partnerships with experts that can provide insights into your niche. For example, if you have an e-mail list about fishing then you could join a local fishing club and it might become an invaluable source of information.

Even if you are just an affiliate and have had no interest in fishing before you could try it out for yourself. Then you can provide content from experience as opposed to re-writing something which you might have read elsewhere.

Frequency of Sending E-Mails

You might think that the more e-mails you send the better, but in actual fact that might be counter-productive. From the content freshness standpoint the more often you send e-mails the harder it will be too keep content fresh. For example, if you send e-mails on a daily basis, but can only find 3 newsworthy events per week then you have a problem. A well written content rich e-mail sent weekly can be much more effective than sending daily e-mails that are filled with content you can easily find elsewhere on the internet. The best way to find out what frequency is optimal is to conduct split testing. An expert from the Mail chimp blog suggests that less is more:

Ok, the first thing we need to establish is that frequency and engagement are negatively correlated—meaning as you send more frequently, people tend to engage with each campaign less. For this study, I used click rate instead of open rate.

Why Fresh Content Is Important

In most niches, people with problems tend to gravitate towards those who establish themselves as authorities in the field. After all, that’s the best kind of source to get advice and solutions from, right? So by demonstrating that you have insight into not only the generic solution, but also up to date events then you will be showing your potential customers why they should listen to you.

Remember that you must always keep your content fresh. It’s not something you can try to do for a while and then once you have acquired a bit of popularity give up on it. Because as soon as you give up trying to produce high quality and up to date content your subscriber rate will begin to decline to levels that are lower than they could be.

Every marketing method out there has its own set of problems, and pay-per-click (PPC) is not any different. A lot of marketers getting started with PPC will have heard of the instant profits that can be made and then scaled up beyond one’s wildest dreams. But in reality, you are likely to hit a series of setbacks before you even get one profitable campaign. If you want to get through the PPC learning curve quicker than most then you would do well to familiarize yourself with the top problems that you may come across.

When Click-Through Rates Are Too Low

When the click-through rates drop to painfully low levels then you need to take action. You could have a great product, but without high click-through rates to match that your sales will not be as high as they could be. Remember that you are competing against other ads for those clicks, so don’t expect 50%, 20% or even 10% click-through rates. In fact the average is at around 3-4%, so if you can get within that range then you are doing as well as you can expect. A writer for Kayak Online Marketing Blog suggests ways in which you can improve your PPC campaign to get higher click-through rates:

Your best bet is to write more targeted ads (those that appeal only to specific searches and terms), raise your bid prices slightly to earn a better position, and experiment with different forms of ad copy until you find the right message.

Overcoming The Quality Score

The most popular PPC program out there is the “Adwords” program and it has a quality score that it uses to assess advertisements. The higher your quality score the better placed your advertisement will be and you’ll be able to pay lower per click rates. To begin with, getting a good quality rating can be difficult. At times it might seem as if you are producing two identical advertisements, yet one of them has a quality score which is much lower than the other. With experience you’ll be able to figure out how to create ads so that your quality score will be good enough to have a profitable PPC campaign. The key is to create ads that are targeted to what it is you are selling. Also try to tweak your landing page so that it matches your product in a more clearly defined way.

Many Clicks, But Not Enough Sales

Getting a lot of clicks without many sales in return can become very expensive really fast. The good news is that in virtually every case you can tackle this problem. To start with, you need to assess the overall message that the advertisement is conveying to see if it matches your landing page, and your product or service. There needs to be a very tight narrative between your ad, the landing page and product. A writer for Speed PPC explains that healthy conversions can lead to momentum:

Being able to increase your conversions not only means your campaign is more successful in itself, but it also gives you the power to turn up the heat a notch: Raise your bids, get a higher ad position, get more traffic, and turn that into profits as well.

Getting the conversion part of the equation right is a difficult process that can take a lot of testing. Therefore, don’t give up on it even if after a few campaigns you still don’t see the results you want. Through a process of trial and error you will begin to see what changes you need to make in order to see positive results to your conversion ratios.

Webinars can help you to accelerate your business growth, build closer relationships with your current clientele and elevate your professional profile. Webinars are an evolution of blogging, where you have an opportunity to provide information and educate your clients, but live interaction allows you to take your client relations to a whole new level. Let’s have a look at how you can improve the quality of your webinars and provide a more progressive service.

Are Webinars Right For Your Audience?

It is important that you evaluate whether webinars really are the right kind of medium for your business and your clients. In the same way that you might want to assess the difference in effectiveness between print and online marketing, a webinar will only be effective if it is the right tool for your audience. Webinars afford interactivity and engagement, but they are best suited for businesses that want to show and explain information in more detail. If you aren’t sure or can’t make your mind up, think about running a survey or evaluation to ask people directly if they would find a webinar beneficial or not.

Do All The Training

Before you get started be sure to go through each step, either using video tutorials or by reading the instruction manual. Write your own script or speech so there is consistency and flow in your session, but also make some allowance for ad hoc things that might come up. Consider what kind of questions might come up from your audience so you are prepared.

Recruit A Team To Work With

Working with a co-presenter or team helps you to create a more professional webinar. Collaboration adds depth and gives you a point of interest in your webinars. Doubling up also gives you a way to handle any problems should they arise. If you encounter a technical problem it is important that the show goes on and you have a chance to address the problem as quickly as possible. Tech Soup explains how you might consider integrating other people and roles into your webinars:

Once you’ve decided that a webinar is the right tool for you, you’ll need to assemble a team of staff members or volunteers to help you run it. In general, there are three main players in a webinar: the organizer/facilitator, the presenter or presenters, and assistants. You might fill all three of these roles yourself, you might assign them to three different people, or you might need more than three.

Make Sure You Do Your Testing Properly

Preparation is key for things to run smoothly. As the host of the webinar you should ensure that everything is correctly prepared and that the chances of something going wrong are minimized. Copyblogger runs through some of the checks and balances that should be put in place prior to going live on air:

Check everyone’s audio, and ask your panelists to use headsets to eliminate echoes and tinny-sounding presentations. Make sure your slides work smoothly. If you’ll be switching presenters, make sure your panelists can advance the slides or show their demonstrations.

But also remember that being prepared can only get you so far. Even if you are prepared there is a chance that something (or two) will go wrong. Entrepreneur.com recommends that you do actually work around the premise that something will go wrong when you are on air, and provides the following advice:

Run on the assumption that some issue will arise — someone’s screen will freeze, they won’t be able to hear, the slideshow won’t work, the entry or exit chimes won’t turn off, or your co-presenter’s computer will fry mid-presentation (these have all happened to me). Take a minute to try to resolve it, but if you can’t, apologize and move on.

Don’t Use A Phone To Handle Your Audio

To do a quality webinar you should use the right equipment, which means that phones (smart or not) are out of bounds.

The number one rule to live by is to never use a speakerphone or cell phone to deliver your presentation. Speakerphones pick up noises such as rustling papers and squeaking chairs. Cell phones are prone to audio dropouts, fuzzy and have inconsistent volume levels. Investing in a high quality headset is ideal for presenters who will be doing many presentations.

If you would like more mobility, a headset will ensure you can get up and move around without losing any quality or clarity. Sitting in one place could make your voice become monotonous but moving around can energize it and make your presentation much more interesting.

Keep Things Concise

The fewer points you cover, the more detail you can go into about each one. If you try and address too many elements you could lose your audience or run the risk of being too superficial. Ideally, you should be selective with the number of topics you want to discuss so that you can provide more depth on each topic or subject.

Also if you can keep things open-ended you give viewers a reason to tune into the next live session. You also want to keep some secrecy and continuity going, and revealing everything takes away a reason for your viewers to tune in next time.

Remember To Leave Time For Questions

In the same way that people surf the net and read blogs in search of information, users participate in webinars to have their questions answered. If the webinar runs over time it will run into your question and answer session (another good reason to run through a test session before you go live on air). Most experts recommend at least 10 to 20 minutes for providing feedback.

The differentiating factor between a good webinar and a great webinar is making it interactive and personal. If you do not allow enough time for questions and feedback then you might as well write blog articles, or find another medium through which to convey information so rather use the medium for what it is intended.

Search engine optimization gives you the chance to optimize your content for search and show up when users are searching for content that relates to your products and services. Business Insider provides the following definition of SEO:

At its most basic, “SEO” means finding ways to increase your site’s appearance in web visitors’ search results. This generally means more traffic to your site

While intense SEO can involve complex site restructuring with a firm (or consultant) that specializes in this area, there are a few simple steps you can take yourself to increase your search engine ranking.

Ultimately you can decide which practices you want to apply to your website, and how important you think each is. Because search algorithms are so secretive, no one actually knows how they work and which are the most important ranking factors. Have a look at these tips and incorporate them into your strategy for a better online performance.

Do Your Keyword Research

Keywords are what notify search engines that you have content relevant to a user’s query. If you are not using the right keywords in your content there is a very big chance that your content will not be found or indexed when someone is search for a specific phrase or set of keywords.

Once you have identified the right keywords they need to be used in all the right places without any keyword stuffing taking place. Your keyword should be incorporated into your article heading and used sporadically throughout your content. Your keywords should also be incorporated into your image tags so they can be indexed just as easily as content, especially with the new changes to Google’s Images platform.

Remember not to be tempted to do keyword stuffing and that you should only be focusing on one keyword per page. Too many keywords will not give spiders enough clear direction about what content your site includes and how it is relevant to user searches.

Use Your Keywords In Your URLs

Searchengineland.com states the following:

Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.

Make Your Website Easy To Navigate

Not only will users be searching on your website for information but spiders too. Spiders need a site that is easy to navigate, which includes lots of internal linking and an intuitive site map that makes it easy for content to be found and indexed. Be sure to give spiders (and users) a site map so they can get through your content more easily.

Have Links That Point To Your Website

The more links that are coming to your website, the more important the search engines think your content is.

Moz.com explains it like this:

Since the late 1990’s search engines have used links as votes – representing the democracy of the web’s opinion about what pages are important and popular. The engines themselves have refined the use of link data to a fine art, and complex algorithms create nuance evaluations of sites and pages based on this information.

As time has gone on, SEO experts have started questioning the validity of back linking. Some suggest it is more important than ever while others say that it is no longer one of the defining factors in a website’s search engine performance. Regardless of how much weight it does actually carry, having high quality websites that link back to yours should be part of your search engine optimization strategy.