Marketing Obama

After the victory is over and the real work begins, as internet marketers what can we take from the Obama marketing campaign?

I signed up to the Obama campaign a few weeks back now, now being from London I cant even vote, so I left that part to my wife;), but that didn’t stop me from signing up to see how marketers at the top of their game would market such a campaign, and im glad I did.

Hundreds of emails later you really get to see similarities with the way they approached their internet marketing campaign, and the way we see many other internet marketers work on a day-to-day basis, the first thing I recognized was the namesqueeze page….

I forgot what I typed into google, but this sign up box was pretty much the only thing on that page, so naturally I signed up for it, then not long after got the regular “thanks for signing up” email sent back to me, then came a rally email asking for support and basically making you feel part of what was going on, the copy they used was amazing, you can watch him give a speech on TV and feel empowered, but they even did an amazing job of this in the emails, their emails were crafted to perfection.

Stories were told about people just like yourselfs that wanted a change, and Obama was the man to make these changes happen, all you had to do was donate if you could, and then vote, every email was the perfect sales letter!.

Its no wonder they were able to raise over $400 million, Obama was everywhere, on magazines, newspapers, TV, DVD, Cds, and I even saw a kids book aimed at children 3-5 with guess who on the front!?, yep, the man himself, if you do take a look at the site, you will also notice the “Obama Everywhere” box……

His marketing team really did cover everything here!, profiles galore!, it really does go to show you the power of the internet and also how great web2.0 can be, didn’t they say it was dead?, I think they may need to rethink that;).

Its great that the power of such a thing as web2.0 shone through for the new president, but how can this help us as internet marketers?, how can we take what the Obama team did to win the election, and put this into action with the things we do with our own internet marketing?.

If you step back from the $400 million and the millions of supporters all over, the basic bones of the marketing campaign were the same as many other successful campaigns it seems, you have your market thats calling out for something “change”, you have your product that can answer these calls and solve the problem “Barack Obama”, and you have the marketing team behind both that can marry the two together “His marketing team”.

So to put this into action in your own internet marketing follow what the best of the best did, find that market that needs something whether its a product or information, then find the product they need that could solve the problem, ebook or product itself, then use what you know from the Obama campaign, get the site, grab the emails, write great copy curtailed to your product and promote it everywhere!, and I mean everywhere you can;), remember you dont need to make $400 million, so it should be allot easier than trying to win somebody an election;).

I’m going to end with a thought, allot of internet marketers worry about sending too many emails to people, most of the time they consider it maybe as spamming, but in the height of the election campaign I would probably get about 3-4 emails a day form the Obama campaign, these emails were themed on the actual news event that were taking place as it happened, and by no means did I once consider it too many emails, in my view its just a way to keep interested people interested, and the ones that don’t want to read it can pass it right by;)).

Twitscoop

Two posts in one day!!, so this has to be important right!!??…..:)

I found a really cool site just now and wanted to share it with you all, its based around Twitter, and what it does is give you a live view of what subject people are talking about right now!!, this is huge information if you are interested in finding what the latest buzz words are on twitter!, its so easy to use too!.

Not only does it give you the latest trends, but it gives you a time framed chart of popularity over the last few hours!!, also it shows you the actual tweets from where it pulled the subject from!..

   

You can also add widgets to your site if you want to give up-to-date twitter trends to your viewers as well, its really is a cool site, you just got to see it to believe it;)).

Let me know how it goes;)).

Heres the link your looking for TwitScoop

The All Important Backlink

Searching for backlinks to your sites can be a long process, especially the .edu and .gov sites, now if you have not got a program that can do this for you, how can you shorten this search to get the results you need right away?.

The good this about this is its simple to do and often overlooked, most of the time using Google you just enter what you think you want, then work with the results you get back, now in regard to the .edu and .gov links, i’m going to show you what to type in to get only sites listed for your keyword, or related to your keyword that have the important domain extension you need…

STEP 1

Into the search bar rather than before where you would just enter your keyword then maybe forums or blogs after it, i.e. Trout Fishing Forums…

What you can now do is still type in your keyword, but after it enter this term… site:edu or site:gov , what this does is search for your keyword terms, and only return .edu and .gov sites that contain that term, like this….

 

STEP 2

Now you should see a list of .edu sites that contain a forum….

Once you get this information back you can join the forums and add some great contributions to them, and at the same time you may even get back a highly regarded .edu or .gov link back to your site, remember you can also look for blogs this way too, in fact anything, Ive even tried this using trout fishing comments site:edu, and got some pages back I could comment on that were also on a .edu or .gov site!.

This seems to save me allot of time in finding important backlinks, and I hope it does the same for you too.. good luck, and let me know your results;).

 

Sale Number Two

Hi everyone, I woke up this morning to see this at my Amazon Affiliate account….

 

Thats right 96c!!, but better than nothing right;)), I have optimized sites and keywords, I use PPC when I can afford it, and regularly promote my sites, and someone comes to one of my sites clicks through one of my hypnotically worded ads and buys a second hand book on Algebra……………………………., and no, that was not one of my products;)), Algebra, I prefer Camels myself;)

But some people would look at that 96c commission from an algebra book as a waste of time, but not me, I’ve been looking at these affiliate programs watching the zero sales stay on zero for too long!;), what it does show you first is, that even though you have a affiliate product that you are trying to get people to buy, those very same people are also looking for other items at the same time, which makes a hub like amazon a pretty good affiliate program, where as another program may just offer that one product and nothing else, sending someone to Amazon is like going into to a store and buying what you need, then at the register where they place all the smaller but needed items you have one of those “Oh I need that too while I’m here” moments.

Its always good to see a sale made when you check, no matter how much it is, or what its for, you still helped someone get what they wanted, so you should feel good about that, and maybe you discover a new niche idea in the process;)). Not sure I’ll take on Algebra though;))….

 

Top 10 Mistakes Ive Made So Far

Here is a list of my personal top 10 internet marketing mistakes so far, I could have done a top 20 pretty easy, but I thought id bring you just the top 10 to get you started;).

1) Believing The Hype And Taking On Too Much

This is one that probably gets many a newbie in the same position that I’m in, by believing the “$10k in two weeks” internet marketing stories!, so rather than just keep it simple stupid(KISS), I jump into this with eight projects all at the same time!, my thinking was… “Well if one site can make you $10k, imagine what lots will bring!!”, let me tell you lots will bring you a TON of work for yourself, and about $15!!, thats what allot of projects will bring you!.

Looking Back: You do not have to take on just one, but I would say 2-3 is the limit, anymore than that and you really struggle to keep up with new content, link building, and stat tracking, (KISS);)

 

2) Not Properly Researching A Niche Market

I’ve also fell pray to this one too, I’d research a niche market to find something I may be interested in doing, but Id only check it using one keyword tool, then Id just do it because I found that topic interesting, only to find out that when you’re in it, you have too much competition to work against, or there is just too little a market of customers for you to sell anything.

Looking Back: Now I check target niche markets out in no less than 3 keyword tools, I look very closely at all the competition, and I use my Adwords method I posted about already, this way I know what im in for once I take that leap!.

 

3) Find Something You Are Passinate About

This is very important too, while finding a niche it is very important to as much as you can try to find something you have at least some passion for, it gets very tough to think up new blog posts, or continue to promote a site that is not selling anything, and that you really don’t have a particular interest in.

Looking Back: Find something you love or care about for a niche, something that you can see yourself writing blog posts about this time next year without any worry.

Picture a conversation you enter with a couple of people about your niche, if you feel like you could enter that conversation and have allot of things to say about it off the top of your head, do it!, if not, leave it to them;).

 

4) Do Not Go Looking For Other Courses When You Are Already In One

There are thousands of courses out their all about internet marketing, all about how you can earn this by signing up and paying this, don’t drown yourselves by signing up for 2 or 3 courses at the same time, pick just one that rings closer to home for you and stick to it, do not start others all at the same time which will completely confuse you anyway, it may have great information you need to take into your head, but then you start course 2 lesson number 2 and forget that great information you just learned in the other one.

Looking Back: Stick to one course, see it all the way through, pick up all the information you need from it and learn it. then once your happy your done with it, start another if you need to.

 

5) Spell Check And Proof Read Every Post You Make

Now I cant spell too well at the best of times, but its so important to double check your spelling and read over your posts before publishing!, I make these silly mistakes all the time, and it can hurt you, like the time I made a huge spelling error in the actual URL of the post, then bookmarked it like that!, what an idiot!, not only that, I went back in after that and changed the URL, so if anyone didn’t even notice what a buffoon I was in the first place, when they click on that bookmarked link, it gives them an error not found page!!, classic!!!, I just found one today too!!.

Looking Back: Spell check, spell check, spell check, and make sure you read through it like a visitor would, just take your time;)).

 

6) Be Patient

I talk to new internet marketers all the time, and the one thing I hear the most, and even from me is.. “Why is my site not on page one in Google”, now this could be for many reasons, but sometimes you just need to be patient, it may not happen overnight thats all you need to think about, allot of the time you get frustrated and leave the site alone for a few days, then come back and its in the top 10!!.

Looking Back: I still get frustrated now that I’m doing allot of work and promotion, and I just dont list anywhere in Google!, but thats for Google to decide, all you need to do is write good content, and be patient and it will happen (As long as you researched It well;))

 

7) Check Results Daily

Ive been pretty good with this, but sometimes for the projects that are not going too good, I’ll skim over the stats, only to find a couple of days later I was getting good hits on a certain keyword, but not be able to optimize content for that keyword in time enough to lose allot of people.

Looking Back: Check results and stats all the time, even for the smallest of things, sometimes its the small things that if noticed, can bring big results.

 

Take Breaks

Many a times ive been in front of this computer staring at the screen for hours, even to the point I give myself headaches!!.

Looking Back: Although the dedication is a good thing, you do need to get away from it for a bit, I would even eat lunch or dinner right by the computer too, just so I could carry on with what I was doing before. Now I take breaks, walk away, make tea/coffee, or go outside and do something else for a bit, i’m actually starting to find most of my good ideas come at these times, just taking a break can inspire some great ideas!.

 

9) Listen To What People Tell You

I don’t know about you, but I listen to allot of internet marketing podcasts, I like to listen to the interviews with the guru’s, and also the new marketers that are doing really well!, these are the people that have been their, and done it, or are currently doing it, so let them make the mistakes for you, they are basically telling you the path they took with what works, and what does not!.

Looking Back: Rather than make some of the mistakes above, I should have really listened more before jumping into what I do, a good bit of research can go so far!, and what better research than from someone thats already walking that path for you?.

 

10) Keep Reading Flop Idle.com

If their is a stupid mistake to make Ive probably done it, or will do it, but I also have no shame, so ill post it for everyone to read about too, its my way of dealing with it I think, you have to laugh at yourself and not take it too personal, we are all learning after all;))

Looking Back: Become a big huge fan and reader at flopidle.com, I hear that guy is great;)).

*****

I hope that helps out in some way?, I know allot of my mistakes are due to the fact I have so much going on, thats probably why its at number 1!, but most of the others I have heard from peers in internet marketing too, so its not only me;)). Just keep at it, work hard and it will turn around for you!.

Again if I missed spelling errors or write like I’m 6, please don’t feel bad by letting me know, it all helps me out a great deal!, if I’m terrible at this I need to know, that way I can go on and maybe learn dog grooming or something better suited to my time and talents??;)).