October 1st, 2009
It is all over the news, the economy is bad. Yes we know thank you for telling us over and over again because we quite didn’t hear it the first, second or thirteenth time. By the way, did you know the economy is bad? 
But what does this mean in terms of a businesses marketing budget? As we all know the first budgets to be cut are always the marketing budget. Why? It seems since the new business is far and few between, the all mighty powers that be feel that marketing isn’t too important as the existing customers will stay customers and why bother to try and pick up new customers during a down economy?
The reason to not stop your marketing is when the economy begins to pick up, the first companies or products which are going to be remembered are the ones who didn’t stop their marketing efforts. And (yes I used an And to begin a sentence) there are people and companies who are still making money and not feeling the downside to this economy. They are still spending money and going about their lives as if nothing has changed. Think about this population and target them!
This is why I ask the question, "Why stop your marketing?"
With all the new ways to market your business, why not open your mind up to the endless possibilities. It’s just not about print or radio anymore! Video optimization, content creation, podcasts, webinars, online article marketing, social media marketing and online press release distribution, oh and blogging; don’t forget blogging, are all great tools to use when you want to continue marketing to reach a different or new audience.
So ask yourself should you stop all your marketing efforts? When this economy begins to turn around, think about who will be ahead (competition) of and who will be left behind (you).
Tags: content creation, Online Marketing
Posted in Organic SEO | No Comments »
September 21st, 2009
The ongoing debate of new copy vs rewrites and what to charge for rewrites seems to come up more often when the economy is at its worst or around tax seaon.
My definition of rewrites has always been to take the already existing copy and reword it with the same tone and style as most clients who want a rewrite, I have found in my experience, just want the same overall feel to say the same thing but just wants the words jumbled around a bit.
My definition of new copy is just that; new copy! Copy which engages the reader, copy which stimulates the reader to click or keep reading more; copy which is strong and interesting.
Due to this ongoing debate which I seem to encounter every few months, we do charge a lower rate for rewrites as when clients explain to us, "Well I just want the copy rewritten and it shouldn’t take you very long." Is another word for "I am cheap and won’t pay your pricing so let’s call it a rewrite BUT I expect newly written copy."
Um, yea that doesn’t fly with me. Maybe some writers would just grin and take it but after 10 years of being in this business, I don’t stand for the people who think they are "pulling" one over on the "desperate writer."
New copy is just that; new, freshly written copy.
Rewrites are taking already existing copy (no matter boring, crappy or whatever) and just reworking it to say the same thing. That is why it is called a rewrite.
When you want new, sparkingly fresh, vibrant copy, then you already know what my answer is…You got to pay for it!
So next time someone asks for a rewrite due to the price, don’t expect amazingly new copy. It’s the policy I have followed for years and no, it won’t change.
Tags: new copy, rewrites
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments »
August 16th, 2009
Since my last post was from June 30, I am not doing a great job keeping the PearlyWrites blog updated. I have been working and focusing on our AdultOrganicSEO.com blog where we update weekly if not a few times per week. Still it isn’t an excuse, especialy when we don’t have to write some huge blog posting, but just a small, nice thought weekly.
I wonder how other small businesses keep their blog updated? I mean I know that a few of them actually hire PearlyWrites to keep their blogs updated daily so does that mean I need to hire a blogger to keep my own blog updated? Really? I mean if I do this for a living shouldn’t I be able to update my own blog if not daily, but weekly? So I am posing my challenge to myself that I must update the PW blog weekly. Even if it’s about small, subtle items, at least their will be content on the blog as we all know the search engines REALLY like new content and blogging is my number one choice to draw the search engines back to a site organically.
Would love to hear how other self-employed people make sure to update their own blog while maintaining multiple client’s blogs. Feel free to share your words of wisdom as we all get side-tracked and any great ideas would be most helpful. Til next time…
Happy Blogging! 
Tags: blogging update
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments »
June 17th, 2009
Although we began as a freelance writing company turned SEO copywriting which now focuses on developing full online marketing campaigns, it is very important to brainstorm ideas before putting them into action. Whether you have a team you work with or if you are an individual working alone to create a full campaign, we have learned a few tricks which can help you on your way to creating a strong campaign as well as get exposure for your product or service.
1) Decide on how you want to be viewed online. Whether by the Website name, a product name or your individual name. Of course this depends on what you are selling. For example if you are an artist selling original art, most likely you want to create a brand centered around your name. From your Website domain name to your logo through all the social media networks, this name and brand will be how you stand out from the crowd as well as be recognized from the competition.
2) Decide what type of strategy you want to use in grabbing a visitor’s attention. Do you want your campaign to be focused on "scandal" type headlines or do you want visitors to view your site as a clean, wholesome, family friendly place to visit while online. An example is say you’re a well known pizza chain who wants to target the college scene.
What type of approach would you want to use to grab this particular crowd? We would suggest not only blogging daily but to incorporate social media into your online marketing campaign. Whether on Twitter you give away coupons or free soft drinks to hitting the college crowd on MySpace and Facebook and creating a Fan page where you can post multiple sales for all fans to receive, this is only one idea toward targeting the crowd of your choice.
3) Do you want to target specific locales or target the global population and if so how do you want to approach it? Do you want separate efforts made toward locales as state, cities, basically following the same plan for each but just using targeted keywords and/or sub-domains focused on, for example, West Palm Beach, Florida or generalized areas like Southeast Florida. And then take it one step further to where you not only target a specific locale but then a specific population of consumers ranging from mothers to fathers or singles.
4) Are you a hotel looking to give visitors an option to search points of interests within a certain radius from your hotel like beaches or theme parks? This is another idea when brainstorming for your online marketing campaign. If you are a one building hotel located on the beach in Southeast Florida or a big corporate chain of hotels, mapping out a plan of action for hotel SEO is a highly suggested idea.
5) Free local listing sites is another option. It doesn’t take that long to write up an ad and confirm it. If you have multiple locations and again, looking for local business, listing yourself in the local directory is another easy option.
6) Setting up an analytics program on your Website so you can see where the traffic is coming from as well as measure which online marketing techniques seem to work best for your site is a must! As I repeatly say during our radio show, if you don’t know where your traffic is coming from and don’t know which is converting, then how do you know what techniques are working!
Although you may know many of these techniques, and these are just the beginning, it is always good to remind ourselves that we need a plan of action when approaching an online marketing strategy.Testing and tracking is a must and doing your keyword research of course needs to be incorporated into your strategy decisions.
Tags: online marketing strategy
Posted in Organic SEO | No Comments »
May 26th, 2009
In the game of online marketing and naturally ranking Websites, I am always a little cautious when it comes to giving a client a guarantee about how quickly their site will rank or if they will rank over their competition in a specific amount of time. In the past few months, we’ve had some really nice suprrises!
SilkWeb Consulting & Development , an e-learning development company based in Arizona, which we coached last year toward getting their Websites and Blogs created SEO friendly has now invested PearlyWrites to complete their monthly Organic SEO campaigns. Traffic has increased and potential leads are coming in from creating custom e-learning course development to purchasing and/or becoming resellers of SilkWeb’s off-the-shelf courses. SilkWeb is moving up in the search engine rankings for their keywords using Social Media Marketing, blogging, article marketing, PR distribution and online ad postings.
Transformational Health, a hydrotherapy colonics service based in Santa Monica and Palos Verdes, California, informed me last week that after a month of using our online marketing services their Website ranked above their competition! Talk about a REALLY nice boost! This client is just an example of updating your Website with the focused keywords and adding in social media marketing to the campaign to create a change in search engine rankings.
Then we have a PearlyWrites experiment…
A month and a half ago I was asked if I would host an Organic SEO radio show on RadioDentata.com. I agreed and the show is called Sensual SEO, airing Wednesday’s at 9pm EST. So on the show we discuss the techniques we use to rank an Adult Website organically through copywriting and online marketing. We decided here at PearlyWrites to put up a blog that will recap our Sensual SEO shows as well focus on Adult online marketing. The new blog is AdultOrganicSEO.com and we are taking all the techniques which we discuss on Sensual SEO and putting it all into place to allow our listeners to follow a brand new domain and blog and observe with us how quickly it can rank in a fairly overloaded niche using straight organic techniques. It has been up for 2.5 weeks so I’ll post updates as we begin to see the results.
Happy Online Marketing!
Tags: Sensual SEO
Posted in Organic SEO | No Comments »
|
Next Entries »
