Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Marketing The Social Media Bible will show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services, and your way of doing business. Using the systematic approach presented in this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn how to: Increase your company and brand value by engaging people i (more…)

So you understand your user documentation project and you’ve specced it out. Now you’re ready to write. Here’s some tips to help you on your way. This article isn’t about the actual writing itself; it’s about the things which go along with the writing. (For information on writing online help, see www.divinewrite.com/helpfulhelp.htm.)

NOTE: This is the final article in a series of three outlining the key elements of a good user documentation process.

Indexing

Index keywords should be defined while the topic is being written. At this time, the subject matter is clear in the author’s mind, and they are very conversant with all of the intricate details. Indexing during the writing stage also means that your keywords are reviewed as part of the draft process.
Some authoring tools don’t really facilitate this kind of approach particularly well (e.g., some don’t allow multiple author access to the files needed for indexing), but at least the keywords should be listed at the end of each draft. (Depending on the authoring tool, this may actually be easier for the reviewers, anyway.) TIP: For further information on indexing, see The Art of Indexing (1994) by Bonura.

User documentation reviews

To ensure that your user documentation is technically correct and readable, you need to get it reviewed by an intelligent selection of people. For a software project, your review list should include a subject matter expert (generally the programmer), the software architect, perhaps the project manager, and another writer. The review requirements will vary with each draft, so your reviewers and review procedures should be documented in your work pracs.

Testing your user documentation

Testing can be performed at a number of levels:

• Each writer should test their own user documentation by following it to use the product. But remember, this kind of testing isn’t very powerful, because there’s a tendency for writers to follow instructions as they think they’ve written them, not as they’ve actually written them.
• The second level is for the testing to be performed by other writers… as part of the peer review.
• The third level is for the testing department to do formal testing on the user documentation. This type of testing doesn’t often happen, but it’s good to try to get it happening.
• The fourth level is/should be conducted as part of Beta testing (see Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.452-453).

No matter what level of testing you use, it should be designed to ensure that the tasks documented are true to the product, and that any online help functions correctly. For the user documentation to pass testing, it needs to satisfy the goals you specified in the earlier stages of the project.

Localising your user documentation

Although localisation is often considered a post-writing activity, it’s best to do it as part of the writing stage. The exact timing may vary project to project, but a good rule of thumb is to get the translators working on the second drafts (but only if you’re not expecting many changes to the draft). TIP: Most translators will probably prefer to work on a sizable piece of user documentation, rather than individual topics sent to them piece-meal, so you should wait ’til you have something of a respectable size to send them – perhaps a whole subject area, as opposed to a single topic.

With localisation, you’re performing a balancing act. If you send the user documentation to the translators too soon, you’ll spend a lot of money on changes to the translations. If you send it too late, it won’t be ready in time for the release of the product.

Managing change

It’s important that you minimise the impact of changes to the product and/or development schedule. To do this, you need to develop a technique which:

1. Identifies the change
2. Estimates the impact in time and/or resources *
3. Informs the project manager

* You can use the same estimating techniques as you used earlier in the project.

Tracking writing progress

It is important to note that the writing stage is not simply about writing. If you track your progress at every step along the way, you’ll be able to see whether you will meet your milestones and deadlines, and you’ll also be able to use this project as a learning experience… to better plan the next one. (You should ensure that all project records are easily accessible for ongoing maintenance and future project reference.)

You should track the time taken to perform every step outlined in this procedure as well as each draft stage, review times, total turnaround times, etc.

Conducting regular team meetings

In order to keep all team members informed of writing progress, you should conduct regular team meetings. These meetings should be a forum for taking a look at your tracking metrics and discussing the estimated percentage complete for the various topics currently under way. If the estimated percentage complete is lower than it should be given the time already spent, then you can act on it. These meetings allow you to identify hitches in the writing progress.

Writing progress reports

Your management also need to be kept informed of the status of the project. You should write periodic progress reports outlining:

• Where the project is at
• What you’ve done over the last month
• What you plan to do over the next month
• Any issues you’ve encountered

Manage Production

The meaning of “production” varies depending on what kind of documentation you’re working on and who the audience is. It can encompass such things as:

• Printing
• Binding
• Product build (when the help is compiled into the product)

Although the production stage generally only requires management, you still need to spend a fair bit of time on proofing and liaising with production people.

Evaluate the Project

The purpose of the evaluation stage is to consider:

• Did the project go according to plan?
• Why? / Why not?
• How individual team members contributed to the overall project.
• How the project manager performed.
• Whether the documentation achieved its goals.

Your tracking metrics will come in handy during this stage; if there were any flaws in the project progress, they should go some way towards identifying them. You might also use the sample evaluation report provided by Hackos in Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.514-518.

Is your documentation successful?

Now that you’ve written and released the documentation, you need to determine whether it has achieved your goals. The only way to accurately do this is to conduct further user research.

TIP: For details on research methods, take a look at Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by Hackos & Redish (1998), Social Marketing: New Imperative for Public Health by Manoff (1985), Designing Qualitative Research 2nd Edition by Marshall & Rossman (1995), and “Conducting Focus Groups – A Guide for First-Time Users”, in Marketing Intelligence and Planning by Tynan & Drayton (1988).

And that’s it! Remember, this process is an ‘ideal’ process. Take the bits that suit you and your project, and leave the bits that don’t.

Good luck!

Let’s jump right in and talk about how you can use Twitter to conduct your market research. Every business has a target market, but the simple fact is that many business owners often miss the mark because they don’t know the true needs of their market.

By using Twitter, you can easily listen to the needs of your prospects, the issues they are currently facing and the kind of help that they want.

Whenever you meet someone new on Twitter it’s a good idea to try to establish a good relationship from the start. Think like your customer. You buy from people who you trust and like. Your target market also behaves the same way. It is important, especially in social marketing that you get to know your clients and do your best to win their trust and confidence.

A good rule of thumb is to try and keep 90% of your tweets full of helpful content and try to limit your promotional ones. By doing so, you can attract more followers and hopefully customers.

Share Your Expertise

In order to show off your expertise on Twitter you will want to post quality content on your blogs, website and other sites, like article directory EzineArticles.com. Then share them with your followers.

As we talked about in the last chapter, there are a wide variety of tools that work with Twitter that will automatically check the blogs you’ve posted and share them instantly on your page. Offering educational materials, seminars, video training and networking events will also go a long way when you are trying to convert your followers into paying customers.

If you’re not camera shy, plug in your webcam and use this great service that allows you to stream live video on your Twitter page and chat real time with your followers! This will be a fantastic way to make an instant connection for you and your peeps.

You can find out more here: http://twitcam.com

There are so many different techniques that you can use to help the transition from follower to customer by using Twitter. Just remember to keep the value of your content high and the volume of your promotions low and you will begin to see more of your followers clicking on your promo links and turning into customers.

In this article we are not going to mess around. The fastest way to make money online is available to anyone willing to work and has a small amount of money to spend on website hosting and an Autoresponder for future follow up.

Here is exactly what you need to get started making money online the fastest way. We are going to base this on having a blog, quality products, and a way to capture names and email addresses for future sales as well.

1. Quality hosting that you can grow with is the first thing you will need. We are not talking about some cheap hosting that will allow you to build a 10 page website. Your website is going to be a WordPress blog and you are easily going to build pages because all you have to do is type. You can expect to pay $10-$25 a month for quality hosting.

2. Your website is a WordPress blog so expect to pay someone around $60 to get you set up.

3. Join a quality Autoresponder company like Aweber. They will run you around $20 a month, but you are going to have your installer set up a capture form on every page that you can give away a free report in exchange for someone giving you their name and email address. Put a free report from one of your affiliate programs in it or write one of your own. Make sure it offers value to the reader.

4. Learn to love to write because blogging is all about writing about your products. This means you will need something to sell. If you do not have anything you can go and join for free affiliate programs on websites like CJ.com and AssociatePrograms.com

5. Join a couple of Internet marketing and affiliate marketing forums for free training. AssociatePrograms has the best forum for affiliate marketing and the WarriorForum offers the best Internet marketing advice.

6. To get traffic to your blog you are going to want to use three main forms of free, or nearly free, advertising. Social marketing, article marketing, and forum marketing. You can easily find advice on all three of these in the discussion forums we just listed.

Your strategy is very simple. Get your blog monetized with affiliate products. Start writing about these products. When you blog you can ping your posts. WordPress makes this very easy to do. You will also post your articles you just wrote on several relevant social networking websites and in article directories.

2 very good books on doing this are the Authority Black Book and Article Domination which you can Google search to find.

All totaled you will spend around $100 to get started and another $40-$50 a month for hosting and Autoresponder fees. If you master getting traffic to your blog and then have good products to sell you can quickly start to make money online without spending hardly anything out of your pocket to do it.

Summary: In this article we are not going to mess around. The fastest way to make money online is available to anyone willing to work and has a small amount of money to spend on website hosting and an Autoresponder for future follow up.

Most reports peg search traffic at about 10% of total internet traffic. However, most businesses spend 90% of their website efforts on search engine optimization and marketing. Below I outline why this disproportionate emphasis on search traffic can be spell disaster for an online business.

If only 10% of people are searching, what are the other 90% doing? The majority are returning visitors. They may have found a site initially by search but now they return. If someone is comparison shopping, they’ll usually bookmark five or six sites, comparing each one with the others. There’s another small percentage that are simply typing in domains. Looking for lawn furniture? I’ll just type in lawnfurniture dot com. Another even smaller proportion actually type the domain name into a search box, then click on the domain in the search results.

I think as webmasters we get search engine tunnel vision when we’re marketing our businesses. When someone tells me they’re having trouble getting top 10 search positions, I usually ask about the other types of online marketing strategies they’re engaged with. The common response is, what else can I do?

There’s a lot you can do! The great thing about online marketing is that we’re only limited by our creativity. Social marketing is wide open for the creative and savvy marketer. What better way to get traffic than to create word of mouth referrals. How do most offline businesses get clients? Through word of mouth. It’s no different online.

How people get to your site is important. But, what you do with a visitor after they come to your site is even more important.

I would argue that our existing clients are our top marketing vehicles. Do you offer great service and support? You’ll get referrals. Are you hard to work with, arrogant, or stingy? You won’t get referrals. A happy client will tell one other person. An unhappy client will tell at least four other people.

One of the few points I think professional internet marketers get right is traffic diversification. Yes, they focus on getting free, organic search traffic but they also spend a great deal of time on list building, customer service, and word of mouth.

If your only focus is search traffic, sooner or later you’ll be disappointed. My business goal is to have as many traffic streams as I can develop. I’m slowly getting to a point where even if my search traffic went to zero, I’d still keep plugging along.

Search engine algorithms change all the time. Time spent surfing forums to find the best ways to beat search engines is time better spent on other marketing methods. Time spent tweaking a page for keyword density is time better spent handing out business cards with your website address.

For those of you stuck in a search engine rut, step back and look at your options. What else are you doing to drive traffic to your site? There are so many more options than we think if we would just look around.

The use of social media encompasses a broad range of online media types. While some might only think of a social network like MySpace there are actually several social media formats that contain significant marketing potential for online business.

While others may think you are simply enjoying the multiple aspects of social networking, the truth of your interest may likely be tinged with a business focus.

What that doesn’t mean is that you post simply to leave a traceable link back to your business website. Those who visit any social media site see through posts that are overtly geared toward marketing. In many cases social media consumers view this as spam even if the social network owners do not. In the end, you can lose credibility of you don’t work as a meaningful contributor in a social media environment.

Social media can be presented in many different forms. Let’s take a peak at a few of them.

YouTube and other similar video sites – These videos can be funny, serious, off the cuff and sometimes political in nature. You can show your business in a humorous light and allow individuals to be curious about you and your business.

MySpace and other social networks – This form of social media is popular because it draws together multiple elements of social marketing and makes them accessible to the masses of individuals that may view social networking as an online version of reality television.

Blogs – This is a form of social media if only because it does allow interactive exchanges between the blogger and the reader.

Forums – This can allow you to have an individual voice willing to discuss topics of interest to the majority. As with all social media you can provide a link to your site. If you are viewed as a trusted source you will likely find forum members following you to your site to learn more.

Podcasting – This is an audio stream that can allow a visitor to hear a personal message from you. This can have a pronounced impact in social marketing.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does provide something for you to consider as an addition to other marketing strategies you may have in place. Social media allows you to take your message to the people and have fun while you share your message.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be real. The entire Internet community has a low tolerance for supposed spam so make sure you don’t use social media as simply another form of online advertising.

Forum marketing or Social Marketing can truly be another great hidden source to add to you’re over all Internet marketing. It is a place were people with similar interest gather to discuss all types of topics for that subject.

How affective is it for your Internet Marketing and generating website traffic?

Forum Marketing can help in many different ways when it comes to marketing your website, here is how:

First you want to find a discussion board or forum that is targeted to your website theme. Think of it like this would you market your website about jewelry to a forum about cooking? The answer is no.

Participating in forums can help you and your website build an expert status online by posting answers to questions others have in a specific topic.

Never posted in forums before?

First thing you should do before just jumping in and posting wildly, take a look around and see what other are posting about, view the set up and feel the mood of the forum.

Once you have a good understanding of the forum then you can start participating in this targeted marketing platform.

Note: There is a sign up process for most good forums. Process is simple and only takes a few minutes. Forums normally use sign in to help better monitor the forum and protect it from spamming.

Keep in mind that most forums do not allow advertising in their post and the regular participants of these forums can smell an ad from a mile away. This way of using the forums will not make you any friends so keep your content exactly that content. Add value to the forum by providing your own unique quality copy.

Forums allow a signature line were you can place a small description about your business along with a link to your website. Here is where your link popularity can climb and climb steadily as new post creates new fresh content that the search engines love.

Search engines pick up and index forum posts high so be sure to include important keyword rich topics and content in every forum posts so they will attract targeted traffic for your website through your popular keywords.

Consider Forum Marketing as part of you Internet marketing strategies, it can have many benefits for your website and business that you may not have thought about.

Enjoy the benefits of Twitter business marketing

There are many benefits to using the Twitter social marketing program. Some of the most important benefits include the following:

News related to your niche, and technologies related to it are available online when and where needed. The latest enhancements to make your job and marketing endeavor easier can be found. Also many people are willing to share their experiences and ideas with others who need the information and assistance.

Using Twitter is an excellent method for traffic generation. More visitors to your website and online presence will help to increase sales, and perhaps more importantly potential sales.

The social database is a very good source for building a contact list, finding potential employees for your business and more sales will be generated from your marketing efforts. Many professional marketers have built their contact lists in this manner.

Prove to the community you are an expert in your niche. The more beneficial information you can provide, the better the impression that you leave.

Another benefit is that using the network marketing method is free. The only investment is your effort, time and determination.

Not only is this enterprise used for building your business, it can also be fun to keep in touch with your family friends and colleagues. Share an entry or two to let people know what you have been doing. Let your true self shine through when posting comments

Easy and valuable tips for successfully building your business with Twitter

1.Twitter is a place where people share information about themselves and other aspects of their lives and their specific niche. Because of this, it is important not to spam. If, in error, you are banned the possibility of building your business with Twitter will be exhausted.

2.You should follow people and not only have followers. The more people you follow and the more followers you have, and the higher your exposure will be.

3.Post information and share comments as often as possible. Posting may be time consuming but worth the time and efforts when you reap the benefits. Commenting or reply to other member posts is also recommended.

4.As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Post information followers can benefit from.

5.Build your collection of followers. You may be intimidated by knowing this but the task is not as difficult as you think. Links to your Twitter ID can be placed on your own website and also in the signature in forums and message boards used for promotion of your website.

6.Follow as many people as possible. Try to balance the number of people following you to the number of people you are following.

Most people who have succeeded in business can probably tell you something about the importance of having a mentor who will be able to teach you the ropes in starting your own business. This is because the experience that these successful businessmen can impart is a very important factor in shortening your learning curve and in helping you avoid the mistakes start-up entrepreneurs usually make.

Consider the fact that 90 percent of all start-up businesses fail within five years as opposed to 90 percent of franchised businesses succeeding within the same time span and you’ll begin to appreciate the benefits of not having to reinvent the wheel to make your business work.

Social Marketing Networks
Online social marketing networks have served the purpose of educating new entrepreneurs as well as honing the skills of experienced entrepreneurs. This is because in an online social marketing network, you can ask for a business advice by posting your questions in a new forum and reading the answers given by some successful members. An article about the most common mistakes a newbie makes in any line of business alone can save you from making the same costly mistake. Furthermore, your learning curve will be much shorter as the other members in the network can help you find information, contacts and procedures that you need to start or manage your business.

Conversely, these successful businessmen can also generate leads and business opportunities through these online social marketing networks by providing the new entrepreneurs the tools they need to successfully jump start their business. All in all, social marketing networks benefit every member by making available information, means of sharing ideas, and ways of gathering information otherwise unavailable through other means.

Criteria in Choosing your Online Social Marketing Network
Of course, not all social marketing networks are the same so you must choose wisely. The best online social marketing network for you will obviously be the ones you will benefit from the most. For this reason, if you are a new entrepreneur, choosing the social marketing network with the most active and most numerous successful members will be the best choice. This is because the advice that they will be able to impart regarding your concerns will be ones based on something they have encountered before that has worked and not something they have only theorized about.

Of course, surrounding yourself with successful people in your field of business will also give you the right frame of mind and outlook in overcoming the challenges that will come your way. These people will tend to be supportive and not pessimistic because they themselves have learned to overcome these problems when they were starting out on their own.

Make sure to also choose a group that is well lead and structured as this will prove to be very important in making the transactions and conversations easier to participate in and more beneficial for the members. Beware of some social networks having very lax leadership; this defeats the purpose of creating the group in the first place with some members filling the forums with spams, advertisements, viruses etc. With social marketing networks, learn more, share more and profit more.

With more and more people coming to the internet marketing, practices have changed over the last couple of years. Many businesses are now taking advantage of the new trends and are using social marketing to promote their businesses. There are many different ways that you can do this.

Web2 has a whole set of tools that you can use for social marketing. MySpace is just one of them.

Using sites like MySpace: This site will allow you to have a page and make contacts, you should not blatantly advertise here. You will be able to build up business relationships here, with your contacts. It also allows you to put in a classified ad for your business in a special section. You can attract a general audience from this form of promotion. It does not work well for niche markets and you will have to be very careful for network marketing opportunities.

Using video sites like Flicker and UTube: using videos to advertise your products is a relatively new concept. Even Google has made video an option for searches. This will work well for products. You will attract a fairly general audience with this form of marketing. You can make it more targeted by linking it to your blog “Seeing is believing” and if you use a good quality video, you can indeed sell products in this way.

Forums and business networks:

Forums and business networks are very useful and fun places to use for promotions. You cannot advertise at these places, but you can use your little signature file at the bottom of every post. Do not involve yourself in lengthy, time consuming discussions. Remember to post valid questions and useful answers. You will become known as an expert in your field and people from the forum will come to your website to check out what you have. They will also join your newsletter.

You can sometimes submit small articles to some business networks and start discussions or threads like this. It is a good away to sell yourself if you have a service. Always choose forums and business networks that target your particular niche.

Blogging: Blogging is an enjoyable way to promote your business. This is a web log or small daily diary. You will need to blog everyday for this to be affective. Remember to always target your particular niche. Make a special link for each blog that will lead back to your site. This can link back to an article or a special product- preferably a new one. Remember not to ramble and keep it concise. Submit your blog to all the blogging search engines. Over time, you will build a good clientele and bring good quality traffic to your site. You can also gain subscribers to your newsletter this way. Blogging can gain you valuable back links which will help you to get a better search engine position.

Social marketing is a fun way to promote your business and very cost effective. In fact, many of these methods are free. Many marketers have built their empires using social marketing. It’s worth spending a little time everyday to practice this fun form of marketing.