Online retail giant Amazon has been forced to lock out over 10,000 members of its Amazon Associates program due to a new tax signed in by California Governor Jerry Brown.  Governor Brown, who took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger in January this year, has served as Governor twice before. The new, controversial tax is aimed at non-resident retail corporations, like Amazon, and is levied on online purchases made by California residents.

Shutting down the Associates program in California is bound to have serious repercussions that will extend far beyond The Golden State. The first to be hit will be third party retailers who leverage Amazon’s immense ecommerce infrastructure to sell products of their own. Also affected will be affiliate marketers, those who promote products on Amazon’s behalf, making commissions off sales. For some this is an excellent way to make additional income, especially during these tough times. For others it’s a full-time job and many influential internet marketers are, understandably, up in arms.

Unless they manage to help repeal it, Amazon stands to loose huge amounts of affiliate-generated income. It would also be forced to pay additional sales taxes on all transactions originating from within the state of California.

This is not the first time the so-called “Amazon tax” has reared its head. The states of New Yoke, Illinois, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Arkansas have all passed similar laws. As a result Amazon shut down its Associate programs in all states but New York, where it has mounted a legal challenge.

Levying a tax specifically against internet-based income and internet companies in general, truly the one industry where America is still dominant, is a bad move both economically and politically. Doing so in California, however, seems just downright irresponsible – stupid even.  Yes, California is in financial trouble, more so than many other states, but that trouble can hardly be alleviated by crippling online business. From a political standpoint Governor Brown is doing himself no favours by alienating Silicon Valley, especially after only a few months in office.

The tax isn’t just an “Amazon tax”, it theoretically affects many other internet giants also. Many of the big-name companies are already based in the state, most notably Google and Facebook, and whilst some might argue Amazon’s loss could well be theirs gain they forget that internet marketing is all about interconnectedness with advertising on one platform often driving sales on another. The removal of one player from the equation, even one they may be directly competing with in other areas, will no doubt have a significant impact on their bottom line. As a result many in Silicon Valley are no doubt watching this latest development very closely.

The Amazon Tax Debate – Have Your Say!

Should the government get off Amazon’s back or are they right to demand that large corporations like Amazon pay more taxes? Is this a good thing or a bad thing for California? Does Governor Brown “get” the internet? Can he succeed in balancing the books where so many before him have failed? We want to know what you think!

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

When it comes to supporting your on-page and link-building efforts, there’s nothing more appropriate or better than a soundly developed content marketing strategy.  Some may argue that content marketing is link building since you’re going for links but in my opinion content marketing is about more than just getting some links.

It’s about thought leadership, and leading the crowd to a specific point.  Why just build links when you can build an army?

So the question here, in terms of content marketing, is which is better: article marketing or guest posting?

If you’re running a blog, especially a popular one that gets a fair amount of traffic, you know the kind of buzz that can be generated from a winning topic.  You also know the kind of buzz that can be generated from someone who speaks as if their mouth were actually a gaping a…  you get the point.  Whether the traffic comes from controversy or intelligent thought (or both combined) there’s a lot of benefits to be had in guest posting.

I have to immediately knock article marketing out of the running between these two.  In a title bout, it’s a 3 second knockout with Guest posts winning hands down.  Here’s why:

The response is immediate

Not only do your readers appreciate a breath of fresh air (or a breath of fresh ass, depending on the type of guest you invite in) they crave it.  If readers know they can expect something new on a regular basis from you, especially in the form of a guest post, they’re more likely to share the content and invite other people to read.  Likewise, if the guest-poster maker type individual has their own little following then they’re more than likely to land on your blog as well in order to read the newest piece from their “effervescent” deity.

That’s meant to say..they’re “bubbly”.  Get it?

The readership is bigger

I know I touched on that already, but the benefit of that bigger reader-base is that some of them are bound to stick around or pop in for another visit.  Perhaps just subscribe to the RSS to get more – if you’re lucky you might even get a few Opt-ins on your site if your CTA’s are bold enough.

Your Site Stays Fresh

When you drone on through endless posts (lets face it we all do it) you’re bound to get locked into a certain style of posting; the tone, the format, the topic.  In the end, unless you have some measure of writing genius or you’re  comedic god the likes of which would make Mel Brooks bow down, you need something fresh.  As mentioned previously, guest posting is one of the best ways to stave off the boredom that you will inevitably generate among your fans.

Except that guy who follows you religiously and wants to wear your skin like a rainbow jacket.  He probably won’t ever get tired of you.

You will build links

With the mass of traffic from guest bloggers, the link sharing that will take place among those you guest post with and the sharing going on among everyone you can rest assured that you’re going to gain some quality links on sites that carry a similar message.

Reciprocal linking doesn’t carry as much weight, but it’s still a good strong editorial link.  It may not command a lot of “link juice” but it can bring you a fair amount of consistent, relevant traffic.

Article marketing has some beef behind it, don’t get me wrong.  There’s plenty there that it should be utilized as part of your content marketing strategy.  If you can do both, you should.  There’s no reason not, too.  If you’re forced to choose between the two, then consider the benefits that go along with bringing the party to your blog.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

We’ve all heard it before: SEO is dead.  X social media is going to be the end of Y media site and Z is the next best thing since sliced bread.  Here we are however, several years into the social media and SEO race and…oh look all of those sites are still here and the same absolutes are being peddled over and over again.

True that some things have meant the down fall of other things but if we look throughout history it’s pretty obvious that predictions of this nature are always exaggerated to some massive degree and far from accurate.  So why do bloggers keep using absolutes like this?

Because it’s traffic-bait of the worst kind.  They’re playing on the morbid curiosity of people who can’t live without a little bit o’ gossip.  It’s the attention grabbing hyperbole that makes people stop and change direction.

If you’re a blogger, you need to seriously consider whether or not this is the route you want to go with the content you’re producing.  Are you going to maintain the integrity of your site or will you sink to the level of the gossip rags that litter checkout lanes in supermarkets across the U.S.?

Because when absolutes are used in your blog content, that’s exactly where you put yourself – you sink to the level of the tabloid.

It’s true that a very small fraction of the time the information winds up being accurate, but since there are no true prophets among bloggers and marketers online it’s safe to assume that those incidents are just a coincidence where the blogger gets to rant a quick “I told you so.”  As a blogger or marketer, it’s something that you need to stop, because overall it makes bloggers look bad and can put a negative spin on your marketing campaigns.  It’s not the kind of traffic that generally converts well (all they want is their gossip and they’re gone).  You want traffic from people that will admire what you have to say, that admire your work.

You never want traffic “just because”.

A great blog, whether you’re marketing or sharing a personal stance on a subject, will persist and do content the way it’s meant to be done.  They’ll create content in a way that is redeeming to the social consciousness.  Honestly, I’ve yet to read a “dead” or “killer” post on a blog that kept me interested to the point that I felt the need to return.

Even when I post about the ups and downs and Twitter or Facebook I stay away from calling on a particular site to go the way of the DoDo.

When you’re preparing a piece geared toward branding, drawing traffic or selling a specific product or service then ask yourself next time – is dropping an absolute going to move you closer to your goals?  More importantly, will it continue to make you proud in your abilities as a marketer and writer?

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Twitter is Massive!  …or is it?

If you took a stab to guess the total number of people in the U.S. that use Twitter, what would be your guess?  You’d probably shoot for somewhere around 20-30%, as that seems to be the general consensus among a lot of people discussing the topic.  Some even consider it to be more.  That’s why it’s such a surprise to know that the number is actually a lot lower.

According to the latest report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, the answer is 8%.

That is more shocking than it is surprising, since many perceive that Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites and social media services on the web.  Famous folks tweet regularly, celebrities drop bombs, and everyone talks about where they went for coffee.  It’s used to raise money, respond to disasters and even the cops are using it to track down criminals.

So how is it that only 8% of internet users are hanging with the fail whale?

In September, the Pew Report noted that 24% of users went with Twitter “or another service to share updates”.  This time, the researchers asked a more specific questions – “Do you use Twitter?”.

Since 74% of Americans rely on the net, which means that only about 6% of the entire adult population in the U.S. is tweeting.  Even still, it’s the people between 18 and 29 that are most likely to be the ones Tweeting.  Urbanites are twice as likely to use twitter compared to their country cousins.  Of those that do use the system, Pew Research asked the Twitter users how often they check their Tweets.  24% said several times a day, another 21% said they rarely check (some stated “never”).

Of those that are posting, 72% said they post personal updates, 62% post work updates and more than 50% share news and retweet.

If these numbers are truly accurate, then it’s a pretty clear indicator that – depending on the niche you’re in – Twitter may be a lot less effective for marketing than people originally anticipated.  I’d love to know what kind of success stories people have had using Twitter for their own networking and marketing campaigns.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

The internet is never really happy with what it has.  “It” is always on the lookout for something better and far more complex.  For anyone in the business of marketing, it’s a hair-pulling trial trying to keep up with the continuous growing trends that shape the way we have to do business.

There is one universal point that helps us understand that change however – technology will never stop trying to outdo itself.  If it’s not a change in SEO, then it’s a new way to tackle social media.  One of the most recent trends that people can’t get enough of is video.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I have to admit that despite being a programmer and handling SEO, I love to read and write.  When I come across any kind of a blog that has a lot of text I’m in heaven.  As long as it’s not too long then I’m comfortable.  I also appreciate a good image however when I hit a blog and a video starts playing automatically, with a strange voice blurting out trying to get my attention I get a little frustrated.

For this reason I sometimes wonder how video managed to make it at all as people violate video etiquette.

Video is popular though because people don’t have to sift through and take in a lot of written content.  They don’t want to have to scroll to find their opinion or idea.  When it comes to anything relating to marketing, people are getting a little lazy and it’s paying off with video.

The Benefits of Video

I know I sound bitter, but I know and recognize the power of video as it currently stands.  They provide people with the instant gratification that is needed.  It began with people trying to find humorous videos of others making complete fools of themselves.  Now, marketers are leveraging the same style content in order to mass traffic and boost their SEO campaigns.

I think one of the main reasons video has taken off is because more and more people have the broadband connections to support it.  It’s not something that could have ever gained ground in the days of dial-up.  Only in the last 5 or 6 years have many people become intimate with the benefits of a broadband connection.  Now, video is everywhere whether you need a tutorial or just something to laugh at.

Affordable technology is increasing the quality of video as well.  Gone are the days of grainy webcams and echoing audio.  More people use quality flip cams to created classy videos that look great and sound even better thanks to scripting.

Videos have become an effective way to reach out to, connect with and engage a target audience.  They are a wonderful mix of the copywriting that has made the world of online marketing popular and the one-way media of television that people have been comfortable with for years.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Today, the world would grind to a screeching halt without the text message. Mobile phones have changed the way we communicate and access our information, and that applies to our marketing efforts as well. If you are a business owner who is only a causal texter, you may be missing out on the potential to cash in on one of the fastest growing segments of marketing: Mobile Marketing.

Mobile marketing has been around for a few years now, but the technology of the mobile phone advances so quickly that advertisers are constantly in need of updating their tactics, graphics, and ads in general. Today’s smart phones allow us to create downloadable content-in the form of an app or a game- that while useful to us, it is also a thinly disguised advertisement.

How Smartphones Make Mobile Marketing Easier

It may be practically ubiquitous for all of these phones to be able to access the internet, but it hasn’t slowed the use of text messaging that much. For a quick way to get in touch with a friend or family, there are few more convenient methods. This is also what makes text message advertisements effective: they are quick and easy.

Gathering the market research for a mobile marketing campaign can be labor intensive, but it can also be very rewarding in the long run. Mobile marketing campaigns have to be tailored very closely toy our buyer personas to be really effective, which means you have to do a lot of research about catering to that particular segment of your market.

Spamming your target audience with poorly targeted ads will only alienate them.  You should make sure your opt in information is as complete as possible. The last thing you need is a perfectly good technique backfiring because of poor execution.

Better Overall Marketing Performance

If you are trying to direct traffic to your website, you can use mobile marketing to achieve that end. All you need to do is enclose a hyperlink to your optimized landing pages for each advertisement. This can be a great way to get the most out of your strategy, by combining elements in a connected chain that pulls them into the sales funnel.

For that matter, with a little ingenuity, you might be able to create the next big movement in mobile technology. Apps for mobile phone are developed every day to help customers and connect them to businesses, and the movement is growing. For a small business, you may have to implement these techniques in stages, starting with text messages for example, and if you gain quite a bit of success, you can move up to contracting for app development.

There will come a time where mobile marketing will become a necessary part of every business’ overall advertising plan, and for companies that are large enough one could argue that it already is, but getting the most out of your marketing scheme takes time, patience, and the drive to win.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

In the past small business promotion was extremely limited. Outside of efforts made on a personal level to market to the local community, if larger exposure was desired, you usually had to submit your press releases to a wire service or some other outlet where the media could choose to pick up the story, or not, without any other input from the business itself.

What if your business had the power to tell its own stories? What if a small business didn’t have to rely on the press to make sure that their ideas were read? What if the power of SEO made these messages highly ranked and relevant to your keywords? All of this and more is possible with SEO Press Release Marketing.

It seems like a very long time ago now, but before the internet, the only way to get news was from the TV or the radio. With the internet we have access directly to all of the most important news as fast as it happens in some cases. This includes press releases, which for the most part, are fairly short news briefs about anything that has very recently occurred, or will be occurring soon.

Why Press Releases Matter

Now that press releases are published online, each one of them counts as content.  When you distribute the press releases online, it works in a similar fashion to article marketing. The information is fresh, entertaining, and just informative enough to give anyone who is really interested in the idea to inspiration to visit the website.

When the press release content is search engine optimized, you can create the winning combination of information that creates targeted traffic and links that add page rank to your website. The best part is that as long as the press release distribution holds on to the content, the link is permanent. This is a great way to leverage the search engines in an effort to market your site and get more traffic.

Taking the practice a step further, you can use social bookmarking sites to link your press releases, and maybe even create a viral sensation, all through strong search engine optimization techniques. As each one of the individual sites count as their own link the more sites you can get to host the press releases the better, as long as the sites themselves have a respectable page rank.

Put the Bells and Whistles Away

You don’t need to use fancy video and audio productions to attract the attention spans of internet users, although for some market sectors, it certainly helps. The fact is that simplicity is the most reliable first attempt at making a new idea work, and if you are not used to using search engine optimized press releases, getting the hang of it can be a little tricky. You never know what makes one press release fall flat while the next takes off and creates a viral sensation, except the ingredient of your own sweat and tears.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

The online relationships and friendships have a lot of influence in many people’s lives. If you could use this influence to spread your marketing message, wouldn’t that be the ideal way to get word of mouth business? Small internet businesses can use the power of the people in the company (and their friends lists) as the basis for their internet promotion.

It is important for your employees to be excited about the business, especially if you are a small business. It could be good for promotional value to designate time in a few of your employee’s days to tell their story in a personal blog or through their social media accounts. This has the advantage of showing your employees that you care about their voice, and it allows their friends a window into your company and what you do.

Social media shouldn’t be sued for some of the more tired and out–of-date promotional techniques, such as:

• Half Off Coupons-Your offers should be available on your site at all times, not some kind of special unique deal. The days of a coupon being something new and cool are long gone.
• Loud, Over the Top Production Videos- Interrupting people to advertise on the internet are likely to make them click away before kicking through. If you are going to have an audio/visual experience, make sure that it is something that a visitor is going to have to voluntarily ask for.
• Your Brand Name, Everywhere- It is a wise idea to have a promotional theme that matches your logo. It is unwise to make your logo the focal point of every picture and paragraph of text. You can be a little more subtle on the internet than you can be on television advertisement.

These are just a few of the worst offenders, but there are plenty of other methods that are simply too numerous to mention in a simple blog post.

The problem seems to be that a lot of marketing people still make the mistake of treating the internet like television of magazine advertisement. The fact is that it is entirely new creature, and without new ways to adapt to the changes, the stagnant techniques of yesterday will drag down those companies that fail to make the change like the dinosaurs that they are.

That is why it is crucial, especially for small businesses, to at least talk to a website advertising specialist about the options available to better promote your website. With the right changes, your small business might start growing faster than you ever anticipated that it would. Success in today’s marketing climate is partially luck, and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to sell you, but there are proven methods that will drastically improve your chances of getting noticed online and becoming tomorrow’s household name.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

So you’ve hit a plateau in your online business, have you? This is a fairly common problem, but fortunately the answers aren’t that hard to find either, the trick is making it work for you. There is a lot of good general advice out there about search engine optimization and good social networking practices that will help promote your brand, but it is pretty likely that there won’t be any advice that pertains to your specific company, and do you know why?

The answer is astoundingly simple.

Any expert in the field of SEO will tell you that in order to make your presence on the internet known, you have create the idea that you know what you are talking about. In other words, part of creating a higher page rank can be the use of articles and blog posts where you talk about what you know and how it helps your customers. This technique kills two birds with one stone, promoting the author as an expert, and linking back to the main website.

The fact is that the techniques may not be that different from business to business, but the implementation of the techniques is. The blog your company would create probably wouldn’t talk about the same concepts or even use the same writing tone as this one, or even your closest competitors’.

Complicated Success Strategies

Any SEO company worth its salt can get you a higher page rank; maintaining that position is a little bit harder. It takes a good feel for what your customers are going to want out of your business tomorrow, and knowing how to talk to them. There are more and more stories about companies that got all the way to the top only to fail because they didn’t have a post traffic success strategy. They simply couldn’t handle getting more business once it came.

Promoting your own work can be a little trying, even for an expert. There is a good chance that no matter what you do, if you are a small business owner, it is more likely you can get what you want out of your web pages and internet promotional efforts fi you hired an SEO company to handle these services for you. You might be amazed at how much more effective a second pair of eyes can be in creating the right image for your company.

A Personal Hand

The simple reason why I can’t describe exactly how this is true is because every business is different, and that the strategies that work for one may not be as effective for another company in exactly the same ways. Article marketing works better for some companies while blogs, affiliates, and pay per click advertising might be better for others. There are so many different kinds of websites and subjects that it takes a personal approach to every optimization opportunity.

Anyone who tries to sell you a cookie cutter approach to success is a scam artist and a huckster. The internet allows all of us to express ourselves in completely different ways, and if you want your business to stand out, you have to make it an extension of yourself.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

There is no doubt that the companies that have learned how to use the social networks effectively are enjoying better success than they have before. If you are looking for ways to boost your marketing online and achieve overall greater success, you should look into the social networks. When you introduce yourself to the social networks there is a good chance that a loyal base of followers will begin to watch your sites and promotional materials. When the people communicate with each other they are talking about the things they like, which could be you. There are a lot of ways of doing this including blogs, forums, instant messages, and email and other kinds of online communication. The network marketing opportunities are literally endless for those who know how to market to the next generation.

Be a Part of the Crowd, But Stand Above It

Part of getting the most out of your social network is putting in the effort to be a part of the community. You have to make yourself one of the people and not some far off person that is too good to interact with the rabble. A person who thinks you are just trying to use them to your own gain isn’t likely to become your customer, so you have to listen to what they say and respond in kind. When you show them that you are capable and willing to be a helpful source of information and credibility, then they are very likely to patronize your goods or services. Your opinion can carry a lot of weight if you mix in the right circles.

There are literally endless possibilities with social network marketing, and one of the most pertinent to a growing business is exposure to a larger base of interested web traffic to your website. There is so much more beyond that though many companies seem content to let that be their goal for now.

Better Ways to Use Information

Research is one area that social marketing can greatly help with. People are willing to give you their information as a part of the signup process. Some companies try to make money on this information by selling it to advertisers, but that is a betrayal of the customer’s trust and ultimately the information is much more valuable as a tool to describe what kind of customers are interested in your products. The social network is a great way to get a quick poll form your most loyal fans by posting a short question and seeing what kind of reply comments you get.

There are few better ways to increase brand awareness than with social network marketing. The trick is to promote your company without sounding like a sales pitch. The best way around this is by joining a discussion already in progress by offering our products as the solution to the problem, tell them about your experience with it and ask them if they have heard of it or tried it out. You can increase your product awareness by subtly adding a link in your comment that can help them get more information.

Better than any other advantage, and definitely one of the major selling points of the social network is that it is one of the most cost effective ways of contacting your market directly to ask their opinion and other kinds of interaction. For the most part, joining the networks is free, and your only real cost is the time it takes to interact with the community. You will find that once you are established, growth is likely to become as natural as the sunrise. When your community grows, so will your exposure in an ever expanding cycle, all because you invested the time in social network marketing.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.