101 Best Blogs for WAHMS
Today I am honored to share with you a great list that was just released of the 101 Best Blogs for work at home moms–and excited to say that The Marketing Momma was included in this list. This list includes an awesome list of helpful blogs for any mom in business looking for some great resources. The list includes everything from blogs offering business tips, resources for work at home entrepreneurs, easy recipes for moms on the go, blogs for moms looking to work from home, and more. Stop by and check it out — I’m sure you will find something in this extensive list that will be helpful to you in some kind of way–I know I did.
Since we are on the subject of blogs and I just gave you a link to an extensive list of awesome mom blogs to check out I thought I would tie today’s lesson into the subject of marketing by “guest blogging”. We have discussed this marketing tactic a few months ago but since this is such an effective way of getting your name and message out to your target market I wanted to follow up on this marketing tool again. Guest Blogging is a great marketing tool for several reasons. One reason is that when you do a blog post on someone else’s blog you are expanding your reach to other’s that you might not normally be in contact with — and the second reason is you are also building effective and relevant back links to your website by providing a link back to your website within the guest post.
There are a few strategies to follow when implementing guest blogging as a marketing tool for your business that you will want to follow. The first thing is to find other blogs that are relevant to your market, there is no use guest blogging on a motorcycle blog if you sell children’s clothes. Make sure the blogs that you seek out are relevant to your niche market. The next thing is to start to build a relationship with the blog’s owner in some form before you request to post on their blog. It’s just like any other relationship you build–you need to form a relationship of some kind–whether through twitter -retweeting their tweets, through posting helpful comments on their blog, or by emailing them and telling them how much of a fan you are of their work. Don’t just expect every blog you are interested in to offer you a chance to post something on their site–remember their website is sacred to them, an important part of their business and livelyhood and you will most likely have to earn their trust before they allow you to be a part of their sacred space. So start to build a relationship with them first and then work on the guest blogging opportunity. One helpful tip is to find other related bloggers in some of the communities/forums you are already involved with–if you are involved in these communities you most likely already have relationships built that will be beneficial for this strategy. (if you are looking for a great forum to join I suggest this one)
Add guest blogging to your marketing strategy as soon as possible and believe me you will start to see results. For more helpful information on guest blogging check out the Blog Tour Guide offered by Nicole Dean. She has some awesome tips and ideas in this guide and this is how I got started with my guest blogging.
If you have a blog that is related to the internet marketing niche or a mom blog that may compliment The Marketing Momma Blog or my Barefoot Bella blog and you are interested in exchanging guest blogging with me please contact me to discuss it further. I am always interested in having guest bloggers to contribute to my site and vice versa.
To Your Success!
Kate Wilber
PS Disclaimer: The link in this blog post is an affiliate link and if you decide to purchase from it I will make a small commission. Thanks! Just remember I only recommend products that I use myself and feel would be beneficial to you and your business!
Your “Focus 5″ Marketing Strategy
Marketing your business can be easy is you have focus and today I am going to give you your Focus 5 Marketing Strategy.
This strategy will give you the focus you need to pinpoint your daily marketing to save you time, money, and frustration.
Focus is the key! Once you know your focus the rest will come easy.
Your Focus 5 Marketing Strategy
- Who is your target market? The worst thing you can do in business is to try to be everything to everybody. In order to be successful you need to determine who you are selling to and why. Once you know that, you can focus all of your marketing to the exact people that are interested in what you have to offer. Focus on the people who want want you have — and yes I’m sorry not everybody wants it — so you need to find out who does.
- What is your USP? Determine your unique selling point — why would your target customer want to buy from you and not one of the other businesses that offer a similar service or product. Why are you different from your competitors — or why are you the same as your customer? How can you relate to your target customer to make them like, know, and trust you enough to buy from you?
- How are you going to get in front of your target market? Where does your target market spend their time? Forums, social media groups, blogs, local events? Find out where they are hanging out and become active, helpful, and visible in those places.
- What problem are you going to solve for them? You need to find out what your target client needs and wants and then provide it for them. How are you going to help them? How do you find this out? Well—just ask them!
- What type of product or service are you going to provide to solve their problem? Now that you know what your target market needs and wants, where to find them , and why you are the right person to provide it to them — provide it to them.
Now that you have the step by step Focus 5 strategy make a plan on how you are going to execute this strategy within your own business. Go through each step and develop your marketing strategy based on the answer to those 5 questions.
To Your Success!
Kate Wiber
The Marketing Momma
10 simple steps to market online today
Marketing your business online doesn’t have to be complicated you just need a marketig blueprint to go by and to be consistent with. Here are 10 simple steps you can take today to start your marketing.
- Do a blog post giving 10 tips about a topic related to your target market.
- Create a short video using a free service like animoto.com featuring some of your best products.
- Tweet a discount code that your Twitter followers can use at your business or website.
- Tell your friends at Facebook an interesting fact about your business or niche.
- Send an email to your existing customer list about an upcoming sale using a service like aweber.com.
- Submit your site to 5 online directories a day in the appropriate category for your business using a targeted keyword for your title (creates great backlinks and gets your name out there)
- Create a Squidoo lens focusing on fascinating facts about your company’s background, products, and or services.
- Use a free service like socialmarker.com to bookmark your favorite webpages about your company.
- Write and submit an interesting and informative article about a topic your target market is interested in to ezinearticles.com.
- Create and submit a press release to webwire.com about something new and exciting going on in your business.
10 simple marketing steps that you can do right now for free online to get your business noticed. Get started today!
To Your Success!
Kate Wilber
Easy Twitter Tips
If you have been doing any kind of marketing lately online for your business then you are probably familiar with Twitter. If you aren’t using Twitter to market your business then you should be — so go get started — TODAY! Twitter is an easy way to get your message out to your target market, find potential new customers, and follow up with your existing customers. All done with 140 characters it can be a quick and painless way to stay in touch with your market if used correctly.
Here are a few quick tips that will get you started in the right direction to using Twitter effectively and efficiently for your business.
- Create (or have one created for you) a custom background for your Twitter account. This will help brand yourself and your business to your Twitter followers and potential customers or clients.
- Use a personal picture for your profile pic — this is social media — so make sure you are being social by letting your followers get to know you in a personal and social way –what better way to do this then portraying a pretty smiling face for your profile picture.
- Update several times daily — Twitter likes activity — the more active you are the more successful you will be with your use of Twitter (just remember not to get sucked in for too long of periods at a time –schedule it, do it, and then get out of there and stay productive.
- Find relevant quotes that you can use that are relevant to your niche that your followers may enjoy (people love interesting quotes). This also helps you keep your account active without having to tell everyone every tiny little thing you do all day long –but you are keeping them interested and active.
- Use Twitterfeed.com to automate some of your posts by updating your Twitter account with relevant blog posts that you have created on your blog or even someone elses blog that is relevant to your niche and would be interesting to your followers.
- Make things easy and efficient for yourself when using Twitter by utilizing free and helpful tools that can keep you productive and organized — here are a few to check out Socialoomph.com and Hootesuite.com both are great and very helpful in your Social Media Marketing Strategy.
To Your Success!
Kate Wilber
PS Disclaimer: The link in this blog post is an affiliate link and if you decide to purchase from it I will make a small commission. Thanks! Just remember I only recommend products that I use myself and feel would be beneficial to you and your business!
The importance of backlinks
Today we are going to talk about backlinks and why they are important to your website’s success.
There are so many things that factor into the reasons why or why not your website will rank well in the search engines. Some of them only google knows and you could spend your life trying to figure it out — but don’t waste your time — because there are some things that we know for sure will affect how well your website will rank and that’s what you should focus your efforts on. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Find out what is already known to work and then go full force with that.
The correct use of backlinks is a website strategy that you want to learn, understand, and spend sometime everyday working on. It is a well known fact that the more links you have pointing to your website the more importance google and the other search engines give to your site.
A few tips to remember when building backlinks to your site are:
- The more relevant the link has to do with your niche the better
- Use targeted keywords for your backlink if possible
- The higher the page rank of the site that is linking to you the more relevance google will give it
- Try to get at least 8-10 backlinks a day
- Your backlink campaign can include directories, blog commenting, forum posts, sites like .gov and .edu, advertisements on other sites, reciprocal linking, articles, press releases, and social media
- Stay consistent and do a few each day and before you now it you will have 1000’s of links pointing to your website and ranking well in the search engines — Taking action each day is the key to success!
A tool that I have found to be helpful for my backlinking campaign is called 5000 Backlinks
Building links to your website can be a time consuming task – that’s why having a tool to make it easier is a necessity. This tool not only will save you time it will also make it more likely for you to stay consistent with your efforts because it makes it easy. Speaking from my own experience — once I found this tool my backlinking campaign increased by 10 x’s my normal efforts — because now it is fast and easy. And if you are anything like me anything that can make my life simpler is what I need and want!
To your success!
Kate Wilber
PS Disclaimer: The link in this blog post is an affiliate link and if you decide to purchase from it I will make a small commission. Thanks! Just remember I only recommend products that I use myself and feel would be beneficial to you and your business!
Blogging as a marketing tool
Today I have a great treat for you. I want to share with you a link to some awesome videos teaching you how to create a blog from scratch and then also a link to a roadmap teaching you how to use that blog to market your business.
10 Easy To Follow Videos Showing You How To Create Your Blog From Scratch!
Blogging is a great way to get your business brand out there and when used correctly it can become a business all in itself. A great example of this is my blog that you are reading right now. I use the Marketing Momma Blog in several ways to market my business.
The first way I use it is to keep my readers informed of what is going on in my business by sharing marketing tools that I find helpful, business models that I follow, and marketing strategies that I teach and offer as services to my clients.
The second way I use my blog is by taking advantage of keyword useage to help drive new customers or clients to my products and services by focusing on my target market using proper keywords–so basically using SEO to market my business and services.
The third way I use my blog is by recommending products that I have found helpful in my own business that offer a commission for my recommendation if one of my readers decides to purchase that product from my affiliate link. I only recommend products that I have used myself and feel confident hold real value for your business – so receiving a commission is just a great perk for me on top of the value given to my clients.
All of these methods are easily accomplished from one simple wordpress blog and with the help of these videos and roadmap you too can start using blogging as an effective marketing strategy in your business. It is simplier than you think.
Take a look at the videos and read the roadmap–and then let me know if I can help you with your blogging strategies by coming back and commenting here once you have had a chance to take it all in.
Here is the link for the roadmap
Here is the link for the videos
10 Easy To Follow Videos Showing You How To Create Your Blog From Scratch!
Remember blogging is a great way to start marketing your business so get started today–it’s easy once you have the roadmap to point you in the right direction.
P.S. Disclaimer: The links in the blog post contain affiliate links and I will receive a commission if you decide to purchase from these links. Thanks!
Automate Your Marketing
Yay! I leave for a quick vacation tomorrow! Sorry —didn’t mean to seem so excited–but I just wanted to share that with you because I am really excited!
Lately I have been traveling alot more than normal (for work and fun)and that has brought up a good topic for us to discuss today.
Automate Your Marketing!
How do you continue your marketing efforts consistently for your business if your life and schedule aren’t always consistent? This is a challenge that I have had in the past few months and this is also one of great things about working online that some people don’t realize when they are first starting out. When you run a business online it is extremely important to stay consistent with your marketing efforts and that is why having a system for automation is so important. Here are a few tips for automating your marketing efforts that you may not have thought of.
- Schedule out your blog posts—a great way to stay consistent with your blogging is to take one day a week–or even one day a month and write a bunch of blog posts–then schedule them out every few days to be released at a certain time. This way you are keeping your content fresh on your blog, keeping in touch with your readers, and staying consistent with your SEO efforts–but you can accomplish this all at one time. (You can also do this with your email list and newsletter using aweber)
- Have your blog posts automatically sent to your Twitter account–this is an easy fix with a good wordpress plugin and whalah–you are updating your Twitter followers and your blog readers all at the same time and at a consistent rate.
- Hire a good outsource team — If keeping up with all of your marketing on your own consistently is not possible then you may want to think about outsourcing it. A lot of online businesses use outsourcing help as a small business marketing tool.
PS: Disclaimer–The links in this blog post are affiliate links and if you decide to purchase from one of them I will receive a small commission–Thanks!
Small Business Marketing Tool
In this shakey economy the one thing that is for sure is that most small businesses are struggling. They are trying to find every possible way to keep their business going and effective marketing should be at the top of that list. Consistent internet marketing is a great small business marketing tool.
I know first hand how the economy has affected small businesses because my husband and I are the owners of several small businesses. The first thing that happens is that you look at all possible ways to cut costs when things are tight–but your marketing should not be at the top of that list. You still need to market your business effectively in hard times because now more then ever you need to stay in front of your target customer to keep those sales coming in.
The solution is to find inexpensive small business marketing tools that you can use effectively but also stay on a small budget. That is why the internet is your best choice for inexpensive marketing tools for your small business. There are so many free options out there to market your small business online you just have to know where to find them and how to use them effectively.
Here is a quick list for Small Business Marketing Tools:
- Blog about your business
- Join several forums related to your niche and become active in them
- Create informative videos about your business or niche and mass distribute them
- Write helpful articles on topics related to your niche and distribute them to article directories
- Become a guest blogger on a blog related to your niche
- Write a Press Release about something newsworthy about your company
- Create a Squidoo lens about your company and what you have to offer
- Create a Twitter account and become friends with others interested in your niche
- Post ads on Craig list for offers of your products
- Join a Mastermind group or business association that you can network with others related to your niche
- Follow up with your existing customers with a weekly or monthly newsletter
This is just a quick list to get you started with some small business marketing tools.
PS Disclaimer: The links in this blog post are affiliate links–I will receive a small commission if you choose to buy from any of them. Thanks!
