The eSilverBullet Blog: A "do follow" blog about traditional and online advertising, CRM, affiliate marketing and best business practices.

New Business Card

July 30th, 2010

By Adam Ward

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about designing effective business cards. Even though creativity is important (and usually what people talk about when they give tips on making business cards), I argued that a card needs to be functional.

Our company recently rolled out a new business card, and just to show that I follow my own advice, I’m posting images of the card here.

Although the front is glossy and uses dark colors, the back is not. We made the back easy for people to find our contact information, write notes on it, and run it through a card scanner. We tested it in our scanner and it picked everything up just fine. We opted out of putting our address on it, because as an Internet company we don’t get much foot traffic (and our website clearly shows people how to find us if they want to).

We had fun with the front. We think it is catchy, will be easy to remember, is consistent with our website design, and shows people (we hope) that our product helps them with their contact management.

The only tip we didn’t follow was putting our mugs on the front. We debated it, but ultimately decided the “hello my name is” sticker effect would give us more traction than our faces.

I’m curious to hear what you think of our new card.

Tags: Business Cards
Posted in Selling | No Comments »

Look Before Diving into Affiliate Marketing

July 26th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Mar. 20, 2010 - Medell N, Antioquia, Colombia - MEDELLIN (COLOMBIA), 20/03/2010.- Colombian divers Victor Ortega (top) and Juan Guillermo Uran, in action during the men's men's ten-meter synchronized platform diving event at the 9th South American Games in Medellin, Colombia, 20 March 2010. The Colombian couple obtained the gold.

The term “affiliate marketing” conjures up a lot of images for different people. To some, it conjures up a work-from-home-in-your-undies picture. To others, it is synonymous with online fraud. Even to those who know it is used by legitimate businesses to make legitimate sales, they often think it somehow doesn’t have to follow the same discipline as traditional marketing.

Affiliate marketing is, after all, marketing. It is just a different flavor, just like TV ads and print ads are different flavors of advertising. Sure, one may use a different medium, and have different terminology, but both try to build brands and drive sales.

Sales don’t just happen. Businesses spend a lot of time and money figuring out who their customers are, how to most efficiently convince those customers they should be buying their products, and what the proper triggers are that will get them to actually buy. They then develop well-trained sales teams to implement their proven sales strategies.

So it strikes me as more than a little reckless when these same companies, thinking that an affiliate program can increase their online sales, decide to dabble in affiliate marketing without giving it the same consideration as their other marketing efforts. They might think that because they only pay when they see results, there is little harm if nothing comes of their testing the waters.

However, there is always a cost. Advertisers have to hire an affiliate manager to run their programs, re-task an existing employee to do it, or hire an outsourced program manager to run it for them. They need to buy tracking software, develop it in-house, or join an affiliate network. None of those options is cheap.

Based on the number of new advertisers joining networks (AffiliateTip reported that LinkShare has added nearly 200 advertisers so far this year), we’re going to see more and more advertisers jumping into affiliate marketing. So for those advertisers, here’s some advice: treat your affiliate marketing efforts the same as your other marketing efforts.

Do your research. If you already know who your customers are, figure out where they are online. Just like you would be more likely to place print ads in magazines that cover your desired demographic, there will be some websites that are frequented by more of your customers than other sites. Do those sites run affiliate ads on their sites? If so, what networks do they belong to?
If you don’t already know, figure out your margins. Online publishers (your affiliates), will not only want to run your ads if they think they’ll see a high conversion rate, but also if they think you’re generous in your commissions. Since you can’t be profitable paying more commissions than you can afford, figure out how much you can pay before you start your affiliate program.
If your competitors are running affiliate programs, figure out what they are paying in commissions. Can you beat that? Are there websites running your competitors’ ads? If so, those websites might be more eager to run your ads than if you’re pushing an untested program.
Be prepared to treat your affiliates well. You can think of them as special customers, crucial business partners, indispensible distributors, or whatever. But the fact is they will be pushing sales your way. They may even pay money out of their own pockets to drive traffic on behalf of your program. If you communicate well with them, are open and honest in your dealings, and take care of them, they will want to work with you, even if you may not pay as much as others. Remember that they have limited ad space on their sites, and possibly hundreds of advertisers wanting their ads in that space.
Transfer the best practices you’ve established in your offline marketing to your online marketing efforts. Give your affiliate marketing team the tools they need to be successful in their jobs.

Although there is certainly a learning curve with affiliate marketing, if you view it as a legitimate source for new revenue, you’re much more likely to be satisfied with your results than if you just jump in to test the water.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Best Practices
Posted in For Advertisers | 1 Comment »

What Does an Affiliate Manager Do?

July 8th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Manager showing extreme emotion on the playing field at a sport event

If you are a business toying with advertising your products online through an affiliate program, you should know what an affiliate manager does, since you (or whoever manages that program in your company) will soon assume that title.

Getting Started

First, you’ll need to decide what your “program” is. This is basically taking a product you sell online, deciding how much commission (and for how long) you can afford to pay to affiliates that refer people who buy that product, and making sure you’ve got banner or text ads that those affiliates will place on their sites.

Second, you’ll need to get your program listed on an affiliate network (see An Advertiser’s Guide to Placing Ads in Traditional and Online Media). If you plan on running your program “in-house” (i.e. you won’t list it on a network), you’ll first need to have your own tracking system in place (see Newspaper Ad-Tracking Systems vs. Online Ad-Tracking Systems ).

Once you have your program up and running, you’ll now need to attract affiliates to your program, make sure they actually run your ads on their sites, and then monitor the traffic they send you. This is broken down into three “ings,” which are Recruiting, Implementing, and Optimizing.

Recruiting (i.e. getting affiliates to join your program)

If your program is listed on an affiliate network, you can log into the network and browse the list of publishers in that network. Publishers will list the market verticals most compatible with their content, and include a description of their sites. If you see any publishers that you think would be a good fit for running your ads, you can contact them to introduce your program. Some networks want all such communications to take place within their software. Others provide contact information that you can use to communicate with prospective affiliates outside of their software.

You will also recruit by trolling websites you think would be good fits, and scrubbing them for contact information. Most contact information you’ll find consists of an email address, rather than phone number, so sending emails to prospects will be the primary means for recruiting. Once an affiliate joins your program, that publisher is no longer a prospect, but an affiliate.

Implementing (i.e. getting affiliates to actually run your ads)

Just because affiliates join your program doesn’t mean they will run your ads on their sites. In fact, roughly 90 percent of affiliates who join programs don’t end up running ads for those programs. Publishers have limited real estate for ad placement on their sites, and they want to make sure they fill those spots with the ads that will make them the most money. It is now up to you to convince them that your ad will convert better and be more lucrative to them than ads from the other programs they have joined. So you will need to continue following up with your affiliates. If they haven’t implemented your program, ask them why, and see if you can solve their concerns.

Optimizing (i.e. getting results from your ads)

Once affiliates start running your ads, you’ll want to make sure they are converting well. If publishers see ads that don’t make them money, you can’t blame them for replacing them with ads they think will convert better. Also, you may have two affiliates with similar websites and traffic, and yet one sends you much more traffic than the other. You’ll want to figure out why that is. Does your creative need tweaking? Is placement on the site an issue? Could someone else be stealing your traffic? Regardless, you need to continue to communicate with your affiliates to make sure both you and they are happy with your relationship.

If you make any changes to your program, such as payouts, specials that are time-sensitive, etc., make sure you let your affiliates know. They will appreciate your efforts to not only make their websites look good, but also make them the most money possible.

Additional Exposure

In affiliate marketing, where even large companies can have just a few people managing their affiliate programs, marketing yourself is almost as important as marketing your brand or program. As such, you will probably be blogging, be an active participant on online forums, and attend trade shows.

Tags: Affiliate Manager, Affiliate Program
Posted in For Advertisers | 5 Comments »

How to Make Money from Your Passion

July 7th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Most people are passionate about something. Call it a hobby, or an addiction, or whatever. But it is something they spend a lot of time, energy and money on. Think about your passion for a minute. Now wouldn’t it be nice for you to actually make a little money from your passion, to offset what you spend on it? Maybe you could even develop it into a full-time career. Although it will take a lot of work, there has never been a better time to make money from your passion, thanks to the abundance of free, easy-to-use tools on the Internet. Here are three steps to get you started.

First, start blogging about your passion. Think about it—where do you currently get information about your hobby? Probably the Internet. How many blogs do you read where you think, “I know more about this than the blogger does.”? Starting a blog is as easy as creating an account on Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. You’ll want to make sure you have the flexibility of putting ads on your blog, though, so I suggest buying a domain (e.g. unicycleexpertadvice.com) and a hosting account from GoDaddy (less than $10 a month), and then installing Wordpress from within GoDaddy (it is free and easy to do).

Second, once you’ve got some posts on your blog, put up some ads. This is easier than it sounds. Think about the companies that sell products you use, would recommend, or might be blogging about. Go to their websites and search for “affiliate.” A lot of times you’ll see a link at the bottom of the page called Affiliate Program. That refers to you joining their affiliate marketing program (i.e. you become their affiliate), which is just a funny way of saying you’ll run their ads on your blog. If they run an “in-house” program, you’ll need to submit your blog information with them so they can accept you into the program. If they run their program through an affiliate network, such as Commission Junction or Share a Sale, they’ll require you to submit your blog information to those networks. Either way, there will be no cost to you. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be given some html code that you have to copy to your blog. That places the ad on your blog, and includes a script that tracks people clicking through your ad. Whether in-house or via a network, the program will track click-throughs and sales, so you get credit for (and paid a commission on) those sales.

Third, use CRM software to manage your efforts. CRM stands for customer relationship management, and is useful for recording contact information of people you are (or would like to be) doing business with, logging communications you have with them, and scheduling your tasks and follow-ups. There are a lot of CRM companies out there, but a few have a free tier, including freecrm.com, sugarcrm.com and esilverbullet.com, which is designed specifically for online publishers.

Before my dad retired, he sold pet food for his living. He once told me he knew more about dog food than anyone in our state. Had he been a blogger, you can imagine how useful his blog would have been for all the dog owners out there. And you can imagine how eager the dog-food companies would have been to place their ads on his blog. If you know more about something than most people do, you could create the same situation for yourself by blogging about it and placing relevant ads on your site.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Making Money Online
Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »

Affiliate Networks Directory

June 25th, 2010

By Adam Ward

I’ve written previously about using affiliate networks to advertise online. Although running ads through multiple networks can compound problems for advertisers, online publishers have more of an incentive to join multiple networks.

So the question of which networks to join comes up frequently. And that question is often followed by, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a list somewhere of all the affiliate networks out there?” Well, yes it would be great. And I’m working on building that list. Since putting a list like that on this blog would be too static, I’ve built the list on Squidoo. The Affiliate Networks Directory there allows anyone to add a network that isn’t already on the list. My hope is that Squidoo visitors (which are a lot more than this site gets) will help keep the list current.

We first put together an internal list of networks last year. When I was recently adding it to Squidoo, I checked each website to see whether the network was still in existence. I found 34 that weren’t in business anymore. There are probably at least that many new ones that have started up since then, which are not on the Squidoo list.

With such high turnover, it is wise for any advertiser or publisher to do their due diligence before joining a network. Ask around to find out how long they have been in business, whether people on the network have complained about fraud or lack of payments, etc. At the very least, do a Web search for that company name, to see if anything comes up. The last thing you want to deal with is a network owing you money, but shutting down before you have a chance to get any of it.

Tags: Affiliate Networks, Directories
Posted in For Advertisers, For Publishers | 2 Comments »

Stemming Lost Sales: Rethinking Affiliate Marketing’s Role

June 21st, 2010

By Adam Ward

Businesses that sell products online live and die by the number of consumers they get to their sites. They spend lots of money on SEO, paid keyword searches and affiliate marketing to attract eyeballs. They speak of “driving traffic” to their sites, as though it flows in a single direction.

Traffic flows both ways, though, and by failing to think of the traffic leaving their sites, they may not be using their online marketing dollars as effectively as they could be.

A couple of months ago I attended a panel discussion where Tony Zito, CEO of MediaForge, said merchant webpage abandonment is 98 percent (i.e. only 2 percent of visitors buy anything) and shopping cart abandonment is 80 percent (which means only 20 percent of visitors who started pulling out their wallets finished the transaction). He said most of the people who get to a merchant’s website (the traffic that their SEO and keyword purchases bought) leave product pages to go out to blogs and social media sites to find reviews on those products. Can you imagine 80 percent of customers in a Target shopping center wheeling their carts to the checkout line, only to leave them there and walk out of the store to ask whoever is standing outside whether they should buy such-and-such a product? Crazy. And yet that is exactly what happens online.

Savvy merchants allow reviews of their products on their own sites, but people are naturally distrusting of those comments, even when written by consumers who probably have no financial tie to the company. The irony is that the “independent” bloggers who review that company’s products on an external site (the very blogs where potential customers land after leaving a product site looking for “unbiased” reviews) are probably getting compensated for writing those reviews. Although federal regulations now require bloggers to disclose financial compensation for products they review (see Jeremy Shoemaker’s disclaimer where he says he benefits “financially or otherwise from everything [readers] click on, read, or look at” on his site), many readers ignore those disclaimers.

I’m not saying it is wrong for bloggers to benefit financially from pushing merchants and products. Quite the contrary: right or wrong, consumers trust the bloggers, so the bloggers should be compensated for the value they bring. In fact, I am saying that online businesses should allocate even more money and resources to these bloggers and review sites. Since that usually comes in the form of affiliate marketing (i.e. the merchant creates an affiliate program for a product, a blogger joins the program by running trackable ads for that merchant on his or her blog, and gets compensated for each sale made thanks to the consumer clicking through the ad prior to the sale), these businesses should increase their affiliate-marketing efforts.

Merchants engaged in affiliate marketing often lump those dollars with expenses used for SEO and paid searches. Although affiliate marketing is great for driving new eyeballs to the merchant’s site (like SEO and searches), it is also a great tool for capitalizing on lost traffic. Regardless of how potential customers got to a merchant’s site, once they leave, it isn’t the SEO that is going to get them back. They’ll come back 1) if they find what they are looking for (i.e. a favorable review on the blog) and 2) if the blog they’re on makes it easy for them to get back. By merchants making sure they have an ad on that blog, they are increasing the chances that the consumer will get back to their site and finish their purchases.

To do this, merchants should put themselves in the shoes of their consumers. For each product they sell, they should do a search for that product and see what the top blogs or reviews for that product are. If there are negative reviews, that’s a separate product issue that they’ll need to deal with. But if there are favorable reviews, the merchant needs to make sure they have an ad on that site, ready to redirect the consumer back to their own site. By doing this, merchants are essentially using affiliate marketing programs to cast a wide safety net to catch potential consumers who stray from their site. Getting back to the Target example, that’s like anyone in the store’s parking lot telling the wayward shopper that not only are the items in the abandoned cart good, but also walking the shopper back to the front of the checkout line to finish buying the goods.

If just a small portion of the 80 percent of abandoned shopping carts come back to buy, that’s money well spent on bloggers.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Bloggers, Jeremy Shoemaker, Lost Traffic, MediaForge, Shopping Cart Abondonment
Posted in Blogging, For Advertisers, Selling | 3 Comments »

Channeling Creativity into Productivity: Five Ideas

June 9th, 2010

By Adam Ward

a young bald caucasian man in a yellow shirt and red tie sits at his desk as he looks off into space and daydreams

The other day I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that explained why so many creative people have trouble executing their ideas. It mentioned the oft-quoted “genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” The trouble with really creative people, it said, is they often lack the discipline to see ideas through to the finish. They have so many ideas that they only develop an idea so far before getting distracted and abandoning it for another idea.

I love creative people. I think they add spice to the world. Unfortunately, the world usually benefits from their creativity only if their ideas make it to fruition. So in an attempt to support the creative people of this world, here are some ideas to help even the most undisciplined person be more productive.

Set goals. Mentioning “goals” to creative people probably generates groans and eye rolling. Goals are limiting, whereas ideas need to be free-flowing and open, right? But the fact remains that people who set goals are much more likely to reach them than those who don’t. Goals can be specific or general, but at least they create a self-imposed timeline and benchmark that you can work toward. So even if you start to get distracted, every time you look at your goals, it helps to bring your focus back to your idea. Eye on the prize, right? Of course, that assumes that A) you write your goals down and B) you review those goals often. Failure to do either of those things reduces the likelihood of you ever reaching your goal.
Use a calendar. Calendars are cheap. Every PC, Mac or smart phone has one on it. Electronic calendars are the best because they can alert you when you’ve got a deadline. If you break the goal into small steps, then set targets for those steps on your calendar, you can establish those at the very beginning, when you’re excited about the idea. You can then let the calendar’s reminders do their jobs at keeping you on track.
Use a task manager. Task managers are even better than calendars in that they require you to mark one action as finished while scheduling the next action, all at the same time. This forces you to constantly be working toward the next step. A good task manager will allow you to do this in just seconds, so you don’t feel like you’re “working” too hard.
Use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Although a CRM tool is overkill for individuals that are working alone, such as painters or software programmers working on their own projects, if your work affects other people, either people you collaborate with or potential customers, CRM systems provide not only calendars and task managers, but also ways to keep track of communications with the people who will benefit from your creativity. They let you keep notes on your ideas, so when you do come up with ideas outside the scope of your current project, you can jot those down, knowing you can come back to them once you’ve finished riding your current wave of creativity.
Share with a small group. If you let a select group of people—such as friends, co-workers or family members—know what you are working on, they can help keep you on task. They can review your work as you step through the process, give feedback, provide support and encouragement, etc. You’re more likely to stay focused and productive if you know you’re not the only one looking forward to the finished product.

Tags: Creativity, Productivity
Posted in Random | 6 Comments »

Ten Pet Peeves of Cold Calling

June 4th, 2010

By Adam Ward

I’ve been thinking about cold calling lately. Because we are a small startup, we have no gatekeepers to manage the phones, so I’m the recipient of many sales calls, most of which are cold. We also make outbound calls to promote our own product, so I’m hoping to avoid using the same annoying practices that seem so common in the calls I receive.

First, let me say I’m not opposed to receiving cold calls. As entrepreneurs, we’re always on the lookout for any tools that will allow us to grow our business effectively. And sometimes the only way I become aware of those tools is by somebody I’ve never heard of calling me out of the blue. But because of that mentality, I think I have more patience with cold callers than most. Still, I do give more attention to cold callers that don’t annoy me.

I searched for some cold-calling blogs to see if I’m out in left field on this one. I found a few that I thought had some good tips, such as Tips for Making a Great Cold Call , Cold Calling – How To Make It Work and I Get Cold Called.

With those as a starting point, I’d like to add my own pet peeves here, in hopes that people who engage in cold calling will steer clear of these pitfalls.

Fake pleasantries. I once had a friend from Croatia who asked, “Why do you Americans always ask me how I am when you don’t mean it?” Nowhere is that more prevalent than in cold calling. Nine out of the ten times I pick up the phone from a number I don’t recognize, I hear somebody I don’t know blurt out, “How are you?” That immediately makes me groan and think, “Oh boy, here we go again.” I don’t feel like they really care, and I don’t like that I have to come back with a response that is just as fake. So right off the bat, I’m on the defensive.
Not telling me where they got my information. I’m a bit of a privacy freak, and yet my business contact information is right on our website, so I expect that I’m going to get calls from people I don’t know. However, unless someone tells me how they got my information, it still feels a little creepy. I feel much more at ease if they say they got my information from our website, my business card, a trade show I attended, etc.
Not listening to me. I like people to ask me questions, as long as they are genuine ones. That gives me a chance to help them understand whether I’m as good of a fit for whatever they are selling as they thought. But asking questions and genuinely listening to my answers are two totally separate things. If they interrupt me when I’m speaking, or only ask questions by rote where it is obvious they don’t care what my answer might be, then I can tell they care more about their product than they do me and my business.
Not knowing my business. I assume that if someone goes to the trouble of calling me to tell me why a certain product or service will help my business that they know what my business is. After all, it isn’t hard to go to our website and read the information that I’ve so carefully chosen to put up there. So if someone calls and has to ask about my business, and it is clear they haven’t done any preparation, I’m not as forgiving with my time.
Assuming I’m the person they should be talking to. Because our company is small, chances are I am the right person, regardless of what they are selling. But it is nice if they let me know who they are hoping to talk to, and ask whether I’m that person first. It is frustrating to have to listen through four scripted paragraphs before I finally have a chance to insert that I’m probably not the right person to talk to in our company.
The stereotypically slick sales personalities. I realize cold calling is something most people don’t enjoy doing, so it takes a certain type of personality to do it. Unfortunately, a lot of those personalities seem to be men in their mid-20s with stylish black pants and shoes, sporting lots of gel in their hair (e.g. the guy in the picture above). I can almost smell their cologne over the phone. They talk too fast, care too little about me, and the excitement they have for their product seems too fake, as though their stimulation comes from the caffeine they are drinking rather than a real respect for their product. Stereotypes are dangerous, so I doubt this is a very accurate description. All I know is that’s how the person on the other end of the phone sounds to me. So when I hear someone that doesn’t sound at all like that, I sit up and pay attention.
Talking a mile a minute. I guess all cold callers realize their rate of rejection is high, so they start to expect it and go into each new call armed accordingly. Somehow they think the faster they talk, the more information they’ll get through before getting shot down, and the more info given will somehow translate into the recipient ultimately realizing their folly, remembering what was said, and giving the product a second look. If I’m going to give a caller some of my time, that means I’m willing to hear what they have to say for a few minutes. But they need to be aware of not overdoing it, though, which takes me to my next point.
Don’t respect me. At some point in the conversation, I need to make a decision to continue learning about the product or service. I can do that either by answering questions I get asked, or by asserting myself. However I do that, I don’t mind getting a little resistance if I decide to stop the conversation, but I quickly change my tone (and attitude) if it seems like I can’t get off the phone. I appreciate it when people allow me to make my own decisions.
Don’t help me understand the benefit. Do I need the product or service? Maybe, but if I can’t easily see the benefits, I’m not going to stick around long enough to find out. And if I do decide I need it, that doesn’t do anyone any good unless they realize I need it. So they should follow up with questions to discern my level of interest.
Either no script, or nothing but script. If people act like they don’t know what they are doing, like this is the first call they’ve ever made, I wonder why they are wasting my time. A lack of confidence on their end is palpable on my end. But on the other end of the spectrum, people that are clearly reading straight from a script don’t give off the impression that they are capable of listening to and understanding any responses I may come up with. So the people that resonate best with me are the ones in the middle. They confidently cover all the points they need to, while demonstrating a genuineness that I can respect. That tells me they respect my time and input.

Tags: Cold Calling, Pet Peeves
Posted in Selling | 1 Comment »

Promoting Your Blog

May 27th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Today I saw a forum thread where a blogger said he learned how to put posts on his blog the first year, monetize his blog the second year, and market it in the third year. At first it seemed flippant, but I realized he was being truthful. The more I thought about it, the more it struck a chord with me. I imagine this is a common path for most bloggers, at least those that are blogging for business reasons.

Starting a blog couldn’t be easier. There are many tools out there people can use to start blogging in minutes. When I started, I recall seeing a “What should I blog about?” question with the advice to just start writing about something. Once you start, you can then catch your stride, as well as take some time to add plugins and other design elements to your blog. I think that’s good advice.

Monetizing a blog is also pretty easy to do once you’ve made a few posts. It costs nothing for a blogger to sign up for an account on one of the many affiliate networks, such as Share a Sale, grab the code for an advertiser’s offer, and put it on the blog. Now, monetizing a site and making money are two completely different things. If nobody reads your blog, nobody will click through your ads, and you won’t make a dime.

That’s where marketing the blog comes in. I realize not every blogger is trying to make money, but those who do it as affiliate marketers do (I saw a forum post once that said, “Why bother blogging if you don’t expect to make any money?”), and business bloggers (myself included) have kind of a dual purpose in wanting to disseminate useful information that others can use, but also do it in the hopes that readers will become familiar with their business or product, have a greater amount of trust in them because of the comfort level built through reading the blog, and possibly become a customer. But even people who blog for fun and don’t ever expect to make a dime want to know that at least someone out there is reading their blogs.

I started this blog about seven months ago. I got busy with our eSilverBullet development for a few months, so didn’t have a chance to blog. But now that I’m back at it I realize I’m at the stage of needing to promote it. I’m not looking to monetize it by putting ads on it, so I can skip that step, but up until now the blog has been mostly hidden, with no readers whatsoever. Since I’ve been cobbling together advice from the far corners of the Internet on how, exactly, I should market this blog, I thought I’d share what I’ve encountered here. If you’re reading this post someday, that means I was at least nominally successful.

Linking to Other Blogs

One way to possibly get noticed, starting from day one of your blog, is to link to someone else’s blog. This doesn’t automatically create a quid pro quo (i.e. they feel obligated to link to your blog), or improve your page rank in the search engines, but it might get that blogger to look at your blog, and possibly leave a comment. If you use WordPress, linking to another WordPress blog in the body of your post will automatically ping the blog you linked out to. That means 1) they’ll be aware you linked to them and 2) a snippet of your blog post right around the link may show up in the comments area of their blog, without you even having to visit their site.

If a blogger allows trackbacks, you can copy the URL of their post (clicking the trackbacks link will show you the correct URL you should copy in your browser’s address field) and paste it in the Trackbacks field just under your content when you are creating a new post. That is similar to linking to another WordPress blog in your post. It essentially alerts the blogger that you’ve written a post and have referenced their post. If the blogger approves it, that snippet will show up along with all the other comments for their post.

Commenting on Other Blogs

Anytime you leave a comment on someone else’s blog post, you have the option of entering the URL to your blog. If your comment gets approved, people reading your comment can choose to see where you’re coming from. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll come to your site, but it is always a possibility. Although you’ll want to put some thought into the comment you leave, you’ll still be able to leave comments faster than writing new blog posts and referencing that blog using a trackback.

Those Pesky No Follow Backlinks

I’m sure you’re aware that the more links pointing to your site (referred to as backlinks), the higher esteem search engines place on you, right? But before you start spreading comments on every blog you see, be aware that just because a reader may see the backlink, a search engine may not. By default, WordPress sticks a piece of code called No Follow on the URL of each comment left. If you look at the page source (Ctrl+U for Firefox on a PC), if you see a rel=”nofollow” code listed, that means search engines won’t count that as a link, ergo they won’t effect a site’s page ranking.

If you think you’ll be checking source codes often to see whether a site does No Follow or not, you may want to download the NoDoFollow add-on for Firefox, which will color code No Follow links and links that aren’t No Follow (called Do Follow).

To test this out, go to Yahoo’s Site Explorer and type in the URL for your blog. You’ll see which backlinks Yahoo attributes to your site. If you’ve made a comment to a blog and its backlink URL was assigned No Follow, that blog’s site will not show up in the Yahoo search. However, if the blog doesn’t use No Follow, you will see the site show up.

To No Follow or Not to No Follow

If you use WordPress, comments to your blog posts will all include the No Follow attribute. That means nobody who adds a comment to your blog will get a backlink to their site, at least as far as search engines are concerned. If you would like to reward readers (and possibly given them an incentive even) for posting comments, you can choose to turn off the No Follow attribute. To do that, you have to install the WordPress plugin called Do Follow, since there is no WordPress setting that allows you to turn off the No Follow code. If you search plugins for “do follow” you’ll see this plugin at the top of the list. That plugin just removes all rel=”nofollow” code from your comments, rather than replacing those references with rel=”dofollow” code, (the plugin is called Do Follow, but there is actually no code called Do Follow).

If you turn off the No Follow attribute, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more spam, or that comments will automatically be approved. You still have the discretion of approving all pending comments. I have not noticed an increase in spam since activating the Do Follow plugin, so I’m guessing either my Akismet plugin is catching any increases in spam, or I’m just not getting more.

Digg, Social Sites and Directory Listings

Although the best backlinks are created by other people (who essentially give a third-party endorsement to your blog), there are plenty of sites where you can link to your blog. If you have an account on Digg or Delicious, for example, you can mark blog posts you like, including your own. Before you link to your own blog on these sites, however, check to see whether they are No Follow sites. Digg is a No Follow site, so just because you link to all your blog posts from there doesn’t mean you’ll get credit for that from the search engines. So if you’re just looking for real eyeballs from those links, think about the pros and cons of possibly being the only person “digging” your own posts, from a public-perception standpoint.

There are some directories that list only Do Follow blogs. So if you have installed and enabled the Do Follow plugin, you might want to go to a site like dofollow.info and submit a link to your blog. You’ll have to verify that it is a Do Follow site. If you get listed on these directories, other bloggers looking to leave comments on Do Follow sites can find your site on these directories, and come to your site looking to leave comments.

Will This Work?

I know bloggers often act like the experts on everything. I’m not. Promoting this blog is new territory for me. My hope is that I’ve been able to consolidate some pertinent information on this subject here, which you can then try to utilize. I’m going to start using what I’ve learned right now, and we can both find out whether this works.

Tags: Backlinks, Blogs, Directories, Do Follow, Marketing, No Follow
Posted in Blogging, Online Media | 10 Comments »

Is Privacy Dead?

May 25th, 2010

By Adam Ward

There is a blog post by Janet Meiners Thaeler called Google Suggest & Your Reputation that took me back to Journalism 101 in college. As budding reporters, we learned the difference between public figures (e.g. politicians) and private citizens. We learned that the press was almost always protected against writing something about public figures in the paper (even if it turned out to be false), but we had to be careful about what we said—and why—about private citizens (even if it was true). Writing a damaging story about a private person for no apparent reason was cause for a lawsuit. The underlying reason for all that was privacy, and the unspoken need to protect the reputation of the average person. If the mayor is having an affair, it is fair game to report it. But don’t you dare write about the Mr. Nobody down the street having an affair, unless he does something newsworthy and the affair is applicable to the story.

Thaeler writes that a colleague of hers was denied an interview after the interviewee did a Google search for her colleague. Right or wrong, accurate or correct, information picked up from the Internet is influencing our decisions. And we don’t always have control over it.

In the pre-Internet age, someone could choose to remain a private person. The reason why politicians weren’t protected as well against libel and slander is because they chose to put themselves into the limelight, where privacy doesn’t exist. Now it appears that privacy doesn’t exist for the average Joe, either. Thaeler quotes the inventor of the cell phone saying, “Sorry, privacy is a thing of the past.” I certainly hope not.

As far as reputation goes, I know I can’t control what others say about me online, just like I can’t control what people say about me offline. Unfortunately, online commentary stays there forever. All I can do is control what I do and say online, which is why I recently deactivated my Facebook account. I felt like I no longer had control.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responds to a question during a news conference at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto

That takes me back to college. With college students today caring less about the information they put online than previous generations, I wonder what professors in Journalism 101, or Media Ethics are teaching today, and whether it is falling on deaf ears.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Libel, Privacy
Posted in Online Media, Traditional Media | No Comments »

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