Week 4 of "Promotion for Writers: Establishing a Web
Presence and More"

Beyond the Promotions Basics

Once more, welcome back!

Today we're going to dive into some information that admittedly may be somewhat confusing and overwhelming. Hang with me though, go through the whole lesson, mark the subjects you're interested in pursuing, and then go through them one-by-one.

If you don't have time to go through the full lesson right now, please skip down to the section on Autoresponders. That's the most important section and the one that can help you begin promotions whether you currently have a web site or not.

Onward and upward!

Staci Stallings
Visit www.stacistallings.com
You'll feel better for the experience!

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Webrings
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If you've surfed for any length of time, you've probably come across a few webrings. These are simply a series of similar sites linked together via a set of coding that puts a box on each site's page. A visitor can then click around the "ring" and theoretically will find your site if you are a part of a webring. Many of these visitors will be qualified visitors as they are interested in the topic of the webring. There are a few things to remember about webrings before and after you join.

First, be sure to place a link to your homepage from the page where the visitor will come in (where the webring is located). If you don't, bye-bye visitor. You also have to place a link to the page where the webring is located on every page of your site. If you don't, you will not be allowed to join the webring. Also, webrings are a very passive form of advertising. You put the link on your page, and visitors come-not in droves, but for the amount of time this promotion takes, it might be worth it.
To find webrings to link to, you can go to:

www.webring.com
www.ringsurf.com

An Important Note: Webrings can be a great resource for finding places to link to as well as places to send articles, press releases, banner ads, etc. It's not always the most efficient method, but if you're at a loss for another search engine tool, webrings are definitely worth looking into.

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Banner Ads
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Banner ads are probably the type of advertising you are most familiar with on the web. Banner ads are generally divided into pay-per-click or pay-per-visitor ads based on how you pay for the ad. Pay-per-visitor ads are not as popular as they used to be simply because they can be very expensive for the amount of traffic they generate back to your website. With this type of ad, you pay for every visitor who viewed that page where the ad is, whether they clicked-through your ad or not. Let's say that you have an ad for a floor cleaner, and you pay to put it on a site about home décor and on a site about linoleum. Say that the home décor page received 1,000 page views while your ad was up, but the linoleum page received only 300 page views in the time your ad was up. Which was the most successful ad?

Ah-ha, here's where it gets tricky. You might automatically conclude that the home décor ad was the most successful. But what if I told you that the home décor ad only received twenty click-throughs, and none of those people bought the product. How successful was that ad? Now, consider the possibility that the linoleum ad got 30 click-throughs and sold 10 products. Which was the more successful ad? This is why pay-per-visitor advertising can be dangerously misleading.

Pay-per-click ads are purchased based on how many visitors actually clicked-through your ad to go to your website. They still don't tally how many people actually bought your product, but they can be more cost-effective than pay-per-visitor ads. However, pay-per-visitor ads can be used for product-branding and name recognition-getting potential customers to connect your name with a slogan for instance. This can be expensive, but many larger companies are willing pay for this type just to get their name in front of customers.

Banner links can be a good way to attract visitors. If you make them a part of your linking campaign, they are not purchased, but exchanged for a reciprocal link with another site. Often these banner links look similar to banner ads-although most banner links don't technically try to sell anything in the ad itself. Their purpose is to intrigue someone enough so that they want to visit your site, where you can then sell your product. The strategies for banner links are similar to those for a straight linking strategy; however, many sites don't have a place for banner links. Therefore, I recommend if you want to use banners in your linking campaign, have several different sized banners to choose from and also have a text link that the partner can use as well.

There are places on the web called Banner Exchanges where you exchange banners with another site, agreeing to post their ad if they will post yours. Some of these sites are:

http://www.linkexchange.com
http://www.hyperbanner.com
http://www.123banners.com
http;//www.linktrader.com

One other option you have in this realm is to do an ad swap with another newsletter or ezine. Generally you should have more than 100 newsletter subscribers before you approach another site about ad swapping. In an ad swap, say you have 100 subscribers and someone else has 500. You agree to post their message, ad, or banner five times in your newsletter if they will post yours once. You always want to do these types of swaps with people with more subscribers. However, don't go after a big fish like say 10,000 subscribers if you only have 100. Start small and attract those just bigger than you. Eventually you will be swimming with the big guys.

A smart tip about banner ads: Always offer a benefit in your banner ad. Tell the customer right in the banner what they will get by clicking there. You will increase the pull of that ad.

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Reviews
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As writers we have an "in" when it comes to reviews. Most sites have to get visitors to review the site. For us, it's a matter of repurposing the reviews of our books. Say for instance that you've gotten a great review for your newest release. Why not put a portion of that review on your homepage and link to it for visitors to be able to read the full review? You can also (and should) use these types of reviews in your online publicity campaign-in your article tag lines, in your sig files, in your banner ads, in your press releases, etc. Let everyone know how wonderful the reviewer thought you were.

I also have a page of reviews for each of my books accessible on my site. Not only did I post "real reviewers" but reviews of "actual readers just like you." Use these types of reviews creatively in on and off-line publicity. They are a great resource!

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Surveys
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Surveys are akin to Reviews, but most of the time they are much less formal. Use surveys to find out what your visitors like about your site-and what they don't. What other things would they like to see? What things would they like to throw their computer out the window about? The benefits of this strategy are that you can get people's honest reaction (and thus tease out problems with the site) also if you ask for permission, you can then use their comments in your other promotions.

Also, if you are creating new content, you can use surveys to find out what most of your visitors want to read. Are they more interested in relationships? Money? Spirituality? It would be nice to know. Further, this is a way to capture email addresses so that you can contact these people later with promotions.

You can sign up for a free survey service at: www.surveymonkey.com This service allows you to ask 10 questions of 100 people. The paid version is unlimited questions of 1,000 people. You decide.

Another service you might check out is a feedback service at www.freedback.com

For more on this subject, please visit my online course at: www.stacistallings.com/OnlineCourse3-1.htm

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Copywriting
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This topic is the bane of many webmaster's existence! Why? Because it's devilishly difficult to put words together that will grab, hold, and never let loose of a visitor's attention! It's also the most important part of your promotional campaign. So, why didn't I start with this? Because first of all, you all are writers, and as such you probably don't want more tips on writing (that wasn't the point of this course-right?) Well, unfortunately I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't touch on this subject, so here we go…

Let's face it: on the web, writing is king. Sure there are cool graphics and nice pictures, but if your writing isn't there-neither are your visitors (and potential customers). That's why I think copywriting is so important. The bad thing is that it's a skill that really can't be explained or taught over a lesson or two. Good copywriting takes practice and lots of it. It also helps to have a good teacher along the way, plus two or three good critique partners because what you think you said isn't always what you really said!

(If your writing is shaky, you may want to check out my advice on the basics of copywriting at: www.stacistallings.com/OnlineCourse3-1.htm )

The first rule of good copywriting is that you must believe in what you are selling. Be it a product, a service, or an organization. If you don't believe in it (and you're only selling it to make money), you've already failed. Go back and find something you believe in that you can get excited about.

Now, I firmly believe that most of you have no problem with that part, so let's go on to promoting this fabulous creation of yours!

In any sales letter (and let's face it everything you send out, even if it isn't specifically a sales letter is designed to bring visitor/customers in to your site), always think "rapport." When you write your copy, talk to the person not at them. Technical language and jargon will only work if you are targeting a highly selective audience who will understand every term you use without running for a dictionary (or clicking off your site). Remember to keep your message simple.

There is a rule of thumb when it comes to sales copy: "Benefits are better than features, and solutions are better than benefits." Present someone with the solution to a problem they are having, and they have just bought your product. Instead of saying, "Roses on Sale," you can say, "In trouble with her? A rose will send the message you really wanted to send." Always think of what problem your product can solve for a potential customer, and then point that out.

As for benefits, it might help to make a list of the features that your book or product has. Then to the side, list all the benefits of each feature. If a feature doesn't have a clear benefit, mark it off your list. When you have finished this list, look at the benefits you have listed and much like you did with your keyword list, work them into your sales copy. Keep asking yourself: "What can my customer gain from this?" Then point those things out.

Transfer of ownership is extremely important. The you vs. I ratio is critical. If it isn't two to one in favor of the you's, then go back and rework your sales letter. Never start your website talking about you! I can just hear the visitors clicking to another site right now! What's in your website for THEM? There is a time and a place to mention yourself-the top fold of the first page is not it!

Technically, you should never use capital letters to emphasize a point in a sales letter. In the world of cybertalk, capital letters equal shouting. Think about it. If you walked into a store, and a salesperson walked over to you and started yelling about "THE FABULOUS SALES WE HAVE TODAY…" How long would you stick around?

Instead of capitals, if you want to emphasize a point, use either bold or italics. These are much more effective and much less jarring to the reader. However, a word of caution, use even these with common sense. Bolding every third word is as annoying as yelling at your customer. Intelligent use of bolding and italics, however, creates the beneficial result of a visitor being able to skim your page. This gives you several opportunities to catch their attention rather than just in the headline.

In all copy (headlines, content, taglines, and ads), think in terms of this formula:

Attention | Interest | Desire | Action

Attract the visitor's Attention (headlines and hooks), Interest them (good copy, good content), make them Desire more, and then present them with a call to Action (a specific response you want them to make-come back, bookmark the site, tag your autoresponder, visit your site from an article, etc.)

There are words that enhance sales copy such as love, safe, sale, now, value, save and gain. The best known of these words is "free." This is a great word when used properly. "Free" cannot have any stipulations such as additional shipping and handling charges, hidden fees, or having to buy one component to use the "free" merchandise. Free must mean just that-free. Nonetheless, if you do offer something free, it can bring people to your product. For example offering a "free" article if a visitor subscribes to a newsletter is smart marketing. Offering free samples, provided you can get those samples to the customer without shipping charges, is also a good idea. Bottom line is remember, free is free.

As there are words to use, there are also words to avoid. These include: Buy, Difficult, Failure, Cost, Loss, Deal, and Bad. An even more important tip to remember is to never bad-mouth your competition. Pointing out how your product has better features or more benefits is fine. Slamming the other product is not. I remember this lesson from a basketball game I attended when I was teaching. One of the students was behind me yelling things like, "Give it up. You can't play. Boo! You're horrible" at the other team. After a few minutes of this, I turned to her and explained that there is a difference between yelling for your team and yelling against the other team. That difference is called class.

Make sure your sales copy and everything you send out exudes class, and people will want to join you. Making your copy full of negatives and slamming others will not encourage people to buy your product--it will chase them away. Show them how your product can solve their problems, point out benefits to them, and keep the message positive and simple. You will go a long way to accomplishing what you've set out to do.

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Autoresponders
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The best of the best "new, fun" promotions I've found in the last year is autoresponders. Actually, I knew about these 2 years ago, but I was working so hard to put all of my other promotions into gear that I didn't have time to look into these. Also, when I looked into them 2 years ago, there were no "free" services that did anything close to what I wanted to do with them. So it was only recently that I really put them into play, and what a difference they've made already.

The basic idea behind an autoresponder is that you put in pre-made messages to visitors. When the visitor sends an email to your autoresponder address, these messages are sent back at intervals of your choosing depending on when a certain visitor triggered it. For example, say that Visitor #1 responded on Monday and your responder is set for 3 messages at 2-day intervals starting immediately. Your visitor would get your first message on Monday, the second on Wednesday, and the last on Friday. However, say that you had a Visitor #2 who came on Thursday. This visitor would receive the initial response on Thursday, the second message on Saturday and the third on the following Monday.

This may not sound very amazing, but what if you had 10 visitors clicking on a day? Or 50? Or 100? Trying to keep up with where that many visitors are in the cycle would be a nightmare! With an autoresponder, however, it makes this type of promotion possible.

I do want to caution you that setting up a vast autoresponder sequence can be time consuming. Simple ones to just say, "Thanks for visiting, here's a free article for your trouble." That's no problem. But I seldom do anything the easy way. Right now, I have at least 3 cycles going-one for inspirational articles, one for writing tips, and one for emarketing (which some of you may have signed up for). These are all great tools, and they allow me to do so much that I couldn't ordinarily do, but they did take some effort to set up-so be forewarned!

When I was researching new promotions for this ACRW Course, I hit again upon autoresponders only this time I was in luck. I found a free service at:

www.sendfree.com

The free version of this autoresponder will send out a maximum of 12 messages and has ads for other things at the top of the emails. You can't do HTML in the free version. But for every 2 times your responder is contacted, you get an ad placed on someone else's responder that will lead back to your sendfree autoresponder. This is a good way to test out if autoresponders may be right for you.

BEFORE YOU BUY a sendfree autoresponder however, I recommend checking out the service at:

www.myemailmanager.com

There is no free version of this, but it has features in the paid version that sendfree doesn't have.

For a free article about setting up autoresponders to sell books, send a blank email to:
auto@stacistallings.com -- written by me, this article gives step-by-step instructions on how to use autoresponders to flow your traffic right into your sales letter, how to use joint ventures to promote yourself and others, and how to mask your autoresponder address so you can look more professional. (Invaluable information for anyone wanting to implement an autoresponder campaign, and it's FREE!)

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Calling All Interested Guinea Pigs!
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Last year when I first started this course on my site, I had one purpose and that was to help all of my ACRW friends (and the whole ACRW Association) learn what I had about on-line promotion. I had noticed that many if not most of the members had ranks of 1 million, 3 million, etc. The ACRW site itself was in that range. (It's now at * gulp * 1.8 million-meaning that no one is seeing us!) To me, it's all-but pointless to have a site that no one is seeing. So, I considered my options for getting this information to the members so that everyone could get their site ranks up. That's when I decided to do the original course.

That helped me, of course, because I got to help a lot of people I wouldn't necessarily have been able to help. However, I didn't exactly boost the ACRW like I had wanted to. This year when I considered doing this course, I really started thinking about how I could help us "get connected" without all of these hit or miss type efforts. Sure, some would link, but it would be better if we were all linked. Sure it would be nice to exchange articles, but it would be better if we had an efficient way to do that.
The more I thought about it, the more it bugged me until finally a light bulb came on! After much thought and planning, I have devised a way to get not just our group but any interested group linked up in a way that will promote all of the members to all of the members-literally!

It's called News-Zine, and I firmly believe this could be the answer to a lot of prayers. Now I know this lesson has run on WAY OVER my allotted pages, so I don't want to bore you with a promotion idea that's not even available yet if you're not interested. However, if you want to see a way to take everything you've read in this course, put it all together, get super-great content for your website that changes daily (pulling those visitors back in)… a way to find links, article placement sites, and an exponentially powerful way to "webring" all in one place, I invite you over to the page I have set up to outline this new plan!

I sincerely hope that you all will get on board and take this idea to the ACRW-higher-ups because once you've seen the power of this based on the knowledge you have gained through this course, I think you will be as excited as I am about this golden opportunity.

Okay, enough rambling… here's the link to learn more:

www.stacistallings.com/news-zinemaininfo.htm

HOMEWORK

--Compose your ads. The program Fireworks from Macromedia makes creating animated gif's (the ads that change) a snap.

--You need to be rather proficient in HTML coding so that once the banner ad is composed, you can put it into a format that another site can use without immense trouble. In fact, I had some ads that were composed for me a year ago that I couldn't use because I didn't know how to couple them with HTML so I could actually place them on the web. So if you haven't started yet, learn HTML.

--Consider ad swapping with another newsletter. Most of these will be done with text type links rather than strictly banners, but it could be a good way to jump-start your campaign. You can also consider swapping articles, which is a great way to promote both sites.

--Devise a survey and ask one portion of your email capture lists to respond. (You will be able to see holes and problems with the survey when you start getting some of them back.)

--Revise the survey as necessary and then send it out to the whole email capture list.

--Consider the suggestions and comments of the people who respond. (And be sure to get their permission if you plan to use their comment in later promotions!)

--Not at the same time, but you might consider asking a select group of site owners to review your site. Responses on this can vary, but you may very well get some valuable insights.

--Finally never quit thinking out of the box. In any and all business correspondence have at least a signature file that points back to your site even if you do not directly mention the site in the correspondence. If nothing else, it will get the site name ingrained in the brains of those you contact most often.

--Look through your sales copy. Is your message positive? Does it make use of "good" sales words and avoid bad ones? Does it give solutions or at least benefits rather than simply listing features? Does it exude class from every pore? If not, now's the time to make some changes.

--Continue working on the strategies we have already covered. Keep implementing! And let me know how things are going. What are you having trouble with? What things have you had success with? I'd like to know.

--Remember to sign up for the free extra information kit at emarketing@stacistallings.com . This week's information includes:

· How to do Popups
· How to Set Up, Promote, and Profit from an Autoresponder campaign (auto@stacistallings.com -- you can sign up for this one only by clicking on the previous link or it will come with your original subscription to the extra info packet)
· Vivisimo the coolest search engine out there
· Joint Ventures

Also, if you would be interested in being a part of a group that would work together to promote and network, please email me at: staci_stallings@hotmail.com

Thanks for hanging with me! I hope you've learned something and that your online promotions will be soaring in no time!

If you're totally overwhelmed and you need a breather from all this promotion talk, I don't blame you. Take a little time to regain perspective and remember that God has led you to this point and will lead you each step as you go forward. To receive five days of solid success, inspiration and motivation (that has NOTHING to do with promotions or Internet marketing), send a blank email to: inspiration@stacistallings.com You'll feel better for the experience!

Peace,

Staci Stallings
Visit www.stacistallings.com
You'll feel better for the experience!