Is it even worthwhile to publish a newsletter anymore?
I must ask myself that at least four times every month – each time I put together and send out UltimateFatBurner.com’s newsletter, and each time I login to my account over at Aweber.com to check out the results of each mailing.
C-T-P-M. Content, Traffic, PREsell, Monetize.
The C-T-P-M acronym was, to my knowledge anyway, first coined by my old boss, Ken Evoy of SiteSell.com. It very concisely “verbalizes” one of the most effective means of building a successful, long term online business.
It happened again.
Someone sent me a reciprocal link exchange request for a site in an obvious “under construction” state. It was a web site definitely NOT ready for links.
I’m at a bit of a loss as to why this happens so much.
The task of creating high quality content for a web site can be intimidating. Many folks completely panic when they realize that “killer” content is the key to establishing themselves online, both with prospective visitors and the Search Engines. That’s understandable. Very few of us do much writing in our day to day lives, and most of us haven’t written anything creative since high school.
That’s OK. You CAN write great content. More importantly, you HAVE to. Sure, there are options for outsourcing content creation. For example, you can hire a writer from Elance or Guru.com, publish syndicated material on your web site, or buy PLR (Private Label Rights) articles. You can even use public domain material.
I’m on the mailing lists of a number of Internet Marketers. Every couple of days or so I’ll hear from one or more of them, and there’s even a select few that e-mail almost daily! 99 times out of 100, these are promotional e-mails, as the guru in question – breathless with excitement – eagerly shares with me some closely guarded, “just released to the public”, secret that will turn my hard drive into a cash-siphoning machine.
Sadly, very few of these folks are using their lists to build rapport, or to “give something back” to their customers. So many of the newsletters I read contain absolutely no material of merit. There are a few exceptions, of course, but so many contain nothing but blatant “pitches” for one product or another.
Unless you’ve spent the last 6 months in a vacuum, you’ve probably heard something about Twitter and micro-blogging – the “apparent” newest trend in social media / networking.
Being inherently curious of any online tool that has certain authoritative figures in the Internet Marketing field buzzing with excitement, I decided to spend a little time looking into Twitter lately.
I’ve read authoritative articles on the subject, J.B. Allen’s “The Tweet Virus”, the gushing of numerous gurus, and I am currently in the middle of Joel Comm’s new book on the subject, “Twitter Power: How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet At A Time.”
And I don’t get it.
Twitter might be fun, but it is one heck of an inefficient business building tool. That’s how it looks to me – at least for my business. So far.
You want traffic? You gotta have in-pointing links. Rankings in the dumps? You need more links. Sales on a downward spiral? Beg, buy, borrow, or steal some links.
It’s pretty much the online marketing mantra.
Links, links, links. It’s enough to drive you crazy. And of course, every online marketing expert on the planet has an opinion; here’s what YOU need to do to get the links you require. Others have software tools to help you accomplish your link building goals. You’ll need to pay for those, of course.
With all the commotion, I figured it was a good time to get back to the fundamentals and examine exactly why it is that you need links, and what you should be doing to get them.
