One of the most effective marketing and SEO strategies currently available is your blog. With the ability to quickly add content for both visitors and search engines, it has become the way to share your information in a way that subtly increases your visitor’s interest. It also allows for their input which creates involvement.

Our article today “Four Pillars of a Successful Business Blog” is on our StomperNet blog, our own business blog. The blog format is one that cannot be beaten for building your influence on the marketplace. With the appropriate design, it is also a format that can add SEO for your website, with meta tags, descriptions, and more.

A common resolution among entrepreneurs and small business CEOs is how to model or remodel their blog to bring more traffic and conversions. Regardless if you have a product or service, you may have been struggling to build your thought leadership, authority, and SEO with blogging. The key is adding the appropriate elements, like Search Engine Optimization to each post that will encourage both visitors and search engines to find and refer to your site.

Of course, the goal of any good business owner is to increase profits. But you may be frustrated by your blogging efforts lacking in conversions, results, and profits. Fortunately, Sherman Hu has easy to remember acronyms for B.L.O.G and P.R.O.F.I.T.S that help you create better posts.

Talk soon,

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.”

~ Simon Dumenco ~
“Media Guy” of Advertising Age

The Four Pillars of a Successful Business Blog

By Sherman Hu

The Four Pillars Of A Successful Business Blog is written as a checklist. The acrostic or acronym – B.L.O.G. (Build, Launch, Orchestrate and Generate) will guide you through this checklist.   There are three reasons why you can benefit from these four pillars.

1. CONTROL

The lessons within the checklist below will give you insights to control your blog’s success. For some, knowing what to do gives them the power to control their blog’s success. For others, seeing the lessons in a clearly laid-out “checklist” will offer a format to easily work through the list of actions.

2. OPPORTUNITY TO PAY IT FORWARD

Your life lessons or experience shared on your blog can be priceless to your readers – if they can find it or be engaged by it. It makes sense to discover how you can gain more exposure to your blog, and engage your readers when they get there. This way you can help others with your product, service or knowledge offerings. Otherwise, your blog will not ‘exist’ – either on Google’s top ranks or in the minds of your visitor.

3. TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE RESULTS

Not only will you feel proud of building a successful business blog, you’ll also receive many profitable results. When you achieve a position of authority or thought leadership via your business blog, you can expect a boost in speaking engagement invites, coaching clients, product sales, strong affiliate commissions, joint venture requests, a strong database of subscribers who value your opinions, or other results based on your business model and offerings.

Let’s begin, shall we?

1. BUILD: Get in the right M.O.D.E. for success

I’ve created another acrostic in this ‘Build’ phase titled “M.O.D.E.” (Markets, Objectives, Design and Engineer). You need to get in the right M.O.D.E. for success.

MARKETS

Have you researched and selected your market yet?

A market gives you an opportunity to offer multiple, related offers over a period of time to the same audience (eg. ‘People who are interested in time management’ vs. ‘Getting Things Done (GTD)’).  Choose a market accustomed to spending money, one that can be presented with related offers and a market you’re personally attracted or interested in.

Have you researched the trends of your market?

Gathering trends will give you “intel” on your competition, what Google indexes in its top 10, universal search patterns, related search keywords, keyword suggestions, search volumes, questions commonly asked by your market, influential bloggers in your space and hot news.

Resource: “20 Ways To Research Trends, Competition & Keywords”

Have you profiled your perfect customer?

Flesh out a ‘perfect customer’ from your target audience to make your audience “real” and believable. Give this person a name, a stock photo and write their short story, including their pains. Print and keep this profile sheet visible. Focus on this ‘John or Jane Doe’ whenever you write copy or create your marketing.

OBJECTIVES

There is power in knowing your destination before you begin. Without keeping your objectives in sight, you may fall victim to distractions that may take you astray. Set a S.M.A.R.T. objective that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

DESIGN

You want to look professional and be taken seriously, right? So get your own domain name.

Keep it short, memorable and ‘radio-friendly’. If you were on radio and had to share it on the air, would it be easy to say and spell (without you spelling it out)? If you have an existing site, setup your blog in a sub-folder titled “blog”, so your blog URL will be www.YourDomain.com/blog.

Select a Blog Theme.   Showcase your business individuality and personality. Google for “free WordPress themes” if you’re using the WordPress blog software. For professional blog themes, I’ve used StudioPress.com and WooThemes.com with satisfaction.

Do you have creative (logo, icons, masthead graphic) ready for your blog? Showcase your business brand and personality! Either design it yourself or contract/outsource. Consider 99Designs.com or DesignOutpost.com.

Have you set up communication channels (i.e. ezine autoresponder service, contact email, telephone number, RSS feed etc) for your blog?

How are interested visitors going to contact you? For ezine autoresponder services, I recommend Aweber, Mailchimp or iContact. For blog rss feed management, I recommend Feedburner.

ENGINEER

Have you chosen which blog software you’re going to use? Choose a platform or software that’s easy to publish, search engine friendly, includes commenting features, pre- scheduling content, updates blog directories automatically when you publish new content. For free, scalable and self- hosted blog software, I recommend WordPress.org hosted on your own hosting account.

Have you registered for your hosting account? A hosting account will host your blog and media (i.e. video, audio, PDFs, images etc). For stable and good customer service, I recommend NameCheap.com and Hostmonster. com. Others claim great satisfaction with Hostgator.com, Dreamhost.com and Bluehost.com.

After registering for your host account, point your domain’s DNS to this new host so visitors to your domain will see your blog/site at this host. Your hosting service will provide you with tutorials or support on how to accomplish this.

Have you installed your WordPress blog on your hosting account? The first step to getting your blog-site up and running. The hosting services recommended above should offer simple, 1-click installation features to quickly install WordPress to your hosting account.

Have you customized your WordPress blog settings? Customize your blog to suit your business purpose. If you need instruction, consider WordPress.org support, WordPress. tv or WordPressTutorials.com for tutorials.

Now that you’ve built your “M.O.D.E.” for success, let’s “Launch”. Time to set up your launching P.A.D. to establish authority and visitor engagement.

2. LAUNCH: Your launch  P.A.D. to authority & engagement

The general public seeks the opinions of thought leaders and influencers for their perspective on trends, strategies, best practices and habits. In the same way, you can build your blog over time to gain credibility, authority and influence.

Here’s the acrostic P.A.D. and a checklist to help you build your authority and engagement with your visitors:

PUBLISH

Are you catering your writing to your target market (or perfect customer)?  What are your perfect customer’s biggest pains/ problems and are you blogging about it?

What are your perfect customer’s visions/goals/dreams and are you blogging ways they can accomplish it? Are you case-study-ing your customers’ success? Are you telling stories?

ASK

Are you seeking feedback and comments from your readers?  Are you asking specific questions in your posts? Are you leaving your posts open-ended to encourage your readers to comment? Are you making it easy for your readers to comment instead of adding registration “hoops” they have to jump?

DEPLOY

Are you deploying content that’s actionable, insightful and meaty?  Are you embedding images, audio, video and other cool media to engage your viewers?  Are you responding to industry information and topical news?

Are you drawing in your readers with sexy, irresistible headlines? (For instance, think of those magazines in supermarket lines) Check out Brian Clark’s “10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work”

Have you added elements to your blog to show credibility? - bio photo, bio, contact info, social media profile links, media room, magazine tear sheets, radio interview recordings, TV segment clips, certification logos, association badges etc.

Now that you’ve set up your Launching “P.A.D.” for success, let’s “Orchestrate” your S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. of traffic.

3. ORCHESTRATE: Coordinate your  S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. of traffic

Sharing all the strategies to get traffic to your business blog could occupy a full report. However, we’ll squeeze as much into the acrostic S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. to coordinate your traffic efforts:

SYSTEMIZE

Have you systemized your blogging with pre-scheduled content?  You can modify the timestamp of each WordPress blog post to publish in the future. So take advantage of this feature.

Have you added additional search engine directories to be updated automatically when you publish your posts?  In your Dashboard, go to Settings > Writing. Scroll down to “Update Services” box. Click the link above the box to grab more search engine directories to add to your box. Now you’ve extended your reach whenever you publish blog posts.

Have you systemized your search engine optimization?  You can do this with plugins for basic SEO, or use StomperNet SEO Services if you want a team handling all your search engine optimization.

YANK

Are you ‘yanking’ as much exposure to your blog through the use of videos? Video styles include screencasts (see Camtasia Studio or Screenflow), newscaster (“talking head”) style, live video broadcasts (see Ustream.tv) or dynamic video slideshows (see Animoto.com)

Are you leveraging video syndication services?

MOBILIZE

Do you mobilize your readers to easily Word Of Mouth or share your posts with their tribes on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc? There are many plugins to help you with this task. On ShermanLive.com, I use “ShareThis”, “Damn Sexy Bookmarks” and the “TweetMeme” plug-in.

PROMOTE

Are you promoting your blog posts via Social Networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Squidoo etc? Are you promoting your blog posts via article directory sites like EzineArticles.com?

HEIGHTEN

Have you heightened your chances that your blog posts will receive more inbound links via Social Bookmarking sites like SocialMarker, OnlyWire, StumbleUpon etc?

OBTAIN

Have you obtained additional inbound links and exposure from Press Releases? See Marc Harty’s http://OnlinePRMadeEasy.com for an instructional course on this topic.

NAVIGATE

Have you navigated your opt-in list system for a web-form to add to your blog?  Have you navigated the system to add a series of drip marketing pieces?

YIELD

Are you yielding the power of viral reports, viral blog posts and viral videos?

4. GENERATE: Produce P.R.O.F.I.T.S. today

Now that you’ve Orchestrated your “S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y.” for success, let’s move on to “Generate” “P.R.O.F.I.T.S.” today.

And finally, the “G” in “B.L.O.G.” stands for “Generate”. How can you “Generate P.R.O.F.I.T.S. with this acrostic? Let’s unpack it now…

PUBLICIZE: Have you publicized your product or service offerings in a prominent location on your blog?

RECOMMEND: Have you offered recommendations to 3rd party merchants with an affiliate link (in full disclosure, obviously) within your posts or in the sidebar?

OBTAIN: Have you obtained likability and trust from your audience through value-add email broadcasts?

Have you obtained trust with (and knowledge of) your customers to make solid recommendations to them to solve their problems?

FACILITATE: Are you facilitating irresistible offers packed with so much value your customers can’t say no?

INTRODUCE: Are you introducing upsells, cross-sells, down-sells, one- time offers, and the like, when your customer shops in your store?

Are you introducing your offerings in different formats so interested customers will buy from you again?

TEST & TRACK: Are you testing and tracking your offers to increase your ROI?

SERVING: Are you serving your customers with seasonal offers and packages?

Remember, there’s practically a holiday each and every month of the year.

Now we’ve completed the how to Generate “P.R.O.F.I.T.S.” checklist in the acrostic “B.L.O.G.” If you work on this checklist, you will experience dramatic results.

STOMPER Speed Boost

Last month we hinted this was coming.

And you’ve been asking for it since we opened our doors 5 years ago.

What is it?

Click here to find out!

Secret Sauce Checklist

B.L.O.G.  for Success

• BUILD: Get in the right M.O.D.E. for success
• MARKET: Research
• OBJECTIVES: Set a S.M.A.R.T. objective that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely
• DESIGN:  Look professional
• ENGINEER: WordPress.org self-hosted

• LAUNCH: Your launch  P.A.D. to authority & engagement
• PUBLISH your writing to your target market (or perfect customer)
• ASK your readers
• DEPLOY  Content that’s actionable

• ORCHESTRATE: Coordinate your  S.Y.M.P.H.O.N.Y. of traffic
• SYSTEMIZE with pre-scheduled content
• YANK as much exposure as possible to your blog
• MOBILIZE your readers with social media plugins
• PROMOTE your blog with social sites
• HEIGHTEN your chances with Social Bookmarking
• OBTAIN inbound links and exposure from Press Releases
• NAVIGATE  your opt-in list system
• YIELD the power of viral

• GENERATE: Produce P.R.O.F.I.T.S. today
• PUBLICIZE: your product or service
• RECOMMEND: 3rd party merchants with an affiliate link
• OBTAIN:  likability and trust
• FACILITATE:  irresistible offers
• INTRODUCE: different offers
• TEST & TRACK: to increase your ROI
• SERVING: seasonal offers and packages

Stomper Buzz

Next Week’s Focus: Focus on SEO

Stompernet Blog

If you think blogging is only for bloggers or personal journals, then it’s time to adjust that thinking. When it started, blogging may have been simply that, but blogging has changed significantly over the years. Today, having a blog is really a required part of a successful website, and provides a solid foundation for good SEO practices.

The change has been subtle but noticeable. SEO; Search Engines Optimization, means providing search engines with new content.  And providing a constant stream of new content is a MUST if you want to be ranked in the SERPS.

But building new pages is not fun with HTML, yet blog programs like WordPress.org have made creating pages as simple as writing in your favorite document program. You can add pictures, add SEO make changes, or easily add different elements to create a webpage that is appealing.  The days of waiting for your web designer to add your updates have gone by the wayside with the addition of a self-hosted blog.

Thus WordPress has become the ideal CMS; content management system, for updates, including many social media interaction aspects. The powerful combination joined with your expertise, knowledge, and plugins is why you want a blog as part of your SEO routines.

However, if you are a wise business owner, or if you simply don’t have the time (or know how to) do all the SEO by yourself, then leave the SEO to the professionals. If that is you, then you don’t want to miss our upcoming webinar on Wednesday. Imagine having a WHOLE team of experts taking care of your all of your Search Engine Optimization needs. Thus, leaving you the sorely needed time to focus on blogging or other business needs.

Ryan Taylor
Director of Operations
StomperNet, LLC

IMPORTANT:  Some of the resources shown are only available to members. With our all-new tiered benefit levels you can join us today for as little as $49.00and get instant access to the world’s largest SEO and Online Business community plus all the tools and resources you need (including upcoming free webinar replays) to enhance your existing business or start, build and grow a thriving Internet-based business!

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• Why WordPress

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WEDNESDAY Jan 25th, 2011 at 7:00pm Eastern

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“StomperNet Open Forum” Fridays at 11EDT

We know everyone has questions about their business or different stumbling blocks. Well we invite you to bring them to the table during our Open Forum. With the combined training and experience of our Coaches you will get the direction you need to get you back on your road to success!

The next StomperNet Open Forum Call with our Professional Coaches happens next Friday at 11am EDT and we hope to see you there! These calls are intended to be live Q&A sessions and playback will not be available.

Stompernet Blog

It may not be fun.  It may not be easy.  It may not be quick.  But a good article linking system can work out much better for building quality backlinks.

On Wednesday, we had the first part of an article from Freddie Brister, one of our StomperNet coaches, in our StomperTip.  Freddie also runs a very successful online eCommerce company.  It’s great having a coach who’s also a practitioner!  One of Freddie’s strengths is building quality backlinks in his business.

Freddie has been generous enough to share with us his Article Linking System. We often hear, “Okay, I know I need to do article linking, but TELL ME HOW”.  Well, here you have it!  Freddie knows his stuff, and it works for his business – I hope you find it helpful for YOUR business!

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“If creating large amounts of original, well written content is considered King for search-engine-optimization purposes, building quality links back to your Web site might be considered the Holy Grail.”

- Kristopher B.  Jones, Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint for effective Internet marketing (2010)

Backlinks:  An Article Linking System

Say you have an article written that’s either 8 or 9 paragraphs long. Don’t worry about the number of words, but it should be at least 400 to 600 words. Longer is better, but also more expensive, and as far as our testing goes, the results of longer does not make them worth the extra cost in Article Linking.

Let’s say that this article was rewritten twice so that the paragraphs match. Paragraph 1 in all three articles must be about the same subject, as does paragraph 3, 5 and 7. All the paragraphs must be about the same subjects – only written using different words. We then spin these articles by paragraph and submit them using the Unique Article Wizard. Submit 50 per day for 30 days. This gives us 1500 unique versions of this article.

After the UAW, we take each of these articles and submit one of them to EzineArticles, one to I-snare and one to Squidoo. All of these places have proved to be productive – especially with our edge network pointing to them. Ezine and I-snare, although they are slow, will eventually syndicate the articles out to many other sites. Squidoo is less productive in syndication, but you’ll get some really good links nevertheless.

After submitting the articles to these three places, take each of the articles and run them through the best spinner at the best settings. Then submit one each to ArticleQast, SEOLinkVine, and the 3rd article to SubmitYourArticle.com. We have seen some really strong results with them in our own testing.

Edge Network

The final part of our Article Linking process is the edge network. Build RSS feeds through Google alerts and Delicious.com and submit these to index drivers. Once you finish the test, you should be able to build lists of the article urls and run them through several other edge network services.

Some of the things we are testing for in this process include SYNND, BacklinkEnergizer, BacklinkBooster and ScrapeBox. We’ll then add links in our next set of articles connecting to some of the articles we want to see indexed.

At present we are running 20 to 30 articles per month through this program. Brandon handles all of this for through his Ultimate program at MyArticleMarketingGuy.com. We also do about 40 HubPages a month, but only unique articles as duplicated articles will get kicked out pretty fast.

After we get the pages built by Brandon, we usually go into our HubPage account and try to build our hub karma by linking to relevant hubs that don’t belong to our competition. We also try to post fan mail to other people’s HubPage accounts in hopes that they will become a follower of ours! The formula for having a good HubScore is as follows: having good quality content, high hub karma, building up your followers, and rating or commenting on others. HubPages love accounts that are community minded!

Blogging

A very smart Internet marketer once told us that we need 10,000 links from 100 different pages to our home page. The best way to do this, in addition to the systems we have already brought up, is blogging. Go to Google, and click on more than just blogs. This is Google blogs and it should show you the most talked about subject of the day.

We usually like to get into conversations that have lots of blogs involved. Read what a blogger is talking about, and then go from blog to blog making a comment that’s relevant to the conversation. You can usually get lots of links here in a short period of time. Don’t worry about the nofollows here!

By Freddie Brister

STOMPER Speed Boost

Stompernet has trained thousands of webmasters to generate free, organic traffic on-demand with solid SEO principles. Find out how you can get your fair share of free traffic right away by clicking below…

Get free, targeted traffic every day!

Get the full story (and learn how-to join) by clicking here.

SEO Secret Sauce

1.    Write and spin articles – submit to Unique Article Wizard.
2.    Submit to EzineArticles, I-snare and Squidoo
3.    Spin and submit to ArticleQast, SEOLinkVine and SubmitYourArticle.com
4.    Use the Edge Network
5.    Get Blogging!

The STOMPER Buzz

“There’s absolutely tools in there for everything.  Anybody who’s in business needs to know these things.” ~ Steven Moran

Free Live Webinars Next Week:

TUESDAY June 21st, 2011 at 8:00pm Eastern

Public Webinar: Spanking Google with WordPress Best Practices with Marty Rozmanith.

Discover the best practices for maintaining traffic while Google keeps cracking down on low quality sites.  These tips are what people with over 10,000 keywords with Page 1 results are doing.  Find out how they do it!   Register Now!

Let us know your thoughts on today’s issue.

Post Your Comments Here

Stompernet Blog

In the previous parts of this series, we focused on the idea that as internet marketers, we need to:

Stop building links, and start building connections.

We talked about how through creating connections between ideas, and developing relationships with site owners and bloggers, we can essentially take on a shepherd role in our niche markets. We can steer the tribes we target by helping them develop their niche interest.

If we use this strategy wisely and ethically, we can practically use OTHER people’s web properties as part of our own lead generating funnel.

We are no longer perceived as an outside force – like a door-to-door salesman imposing on their community.

We instead become a valued member of that community, associated not with marketing messages, but rather with being a valuable resource of information – as well as a provider of products and services.

See, by making our own connections in our marketplaces, we can capitalize on other people’s resources to do all kinds of things:

We can better educate consumers on our chosen topic, slowly turning them from someone with a mild interest into a hot prospect.

We can create an impression of expertise by portraying a consistent personality across multiple “tribal” sites in our niche markets.

And of course, let’s not forget that even though we’ve changed our thinking – we are actually STILL building links.

Now, if you’ve been following along, we recommended a f’ree tool called “Comment Kahuna” that when used correctly, can help you efficiently engage your chosen audience and save you a LOT of research time.

Well, the same folks that made “Comment Kahuna” are releasing a service today at noon called “Traffic Kahuna” and I think that it will prove to be an incredibly valuable resource for helping us create quality CONNECTIONS with our consumers AS WELL AS building quality links for the Search Engine spiders.

Remember how I spoke to you about how we can consider internet communities as “tribes” – small groups that cluster around common interests.

Well, what Jason and company have done is shepherded their own “tribe” around a common interest, just as I’ve been trying to teach you to do.

Their tribe consists of webmasters that collectively operate over 1000 websites and actively post to over 500 blogs.

And here’s where this tribe becomes valuable to you:

The common interest of all these site owners is a hunger for QUALITY CONTENT.

In exchange for this quality content, they’re willing to trade QUALITY real estate on their sites (pages that have a high PR) and they’re willing to give QUALITY one way links (with no “nofollow” tags).

Now, I’m sure you’ve seen this kind of “link building” network before, but the flaws in those systems were numerous.

The primary problem is that most of the blogs and sites in those networks were primarily owned by the network operators, and they existed ONLY as content billboards for their members.

The sites in those networks really had no traffic of their own, no communities of value that visited regularly.

Add to that the fact that the network operators were typically unwilling or unable to police the submissions from their customers.

So, what you ended up with were spammy sites, filled with unrelated, untargeted, duplicated posts, and worse – just crummy content.

Sure, you may have been able to get some limited benefit from those links as you’re essentially “tricking” the search spiders into thinking you’re popular with all those links.

Heck, it’s probably still working pretty well. But that’s a short term strategy. Over time, any PR value those network sites may have had is quickly leached away, and any REAL value you may have tried to provide is leached away and wasted as lazy, unethical marketers bury your stuff in worthless crap.

See, that old way was focused on getting LINKS, but had no thought at all towards building the kinds of valuable CONNECTIONS that web users actually want to see.

And that’s why Traffic Kahuna is different. Jason and crew KNOW the problems of using that old Web 1.0 “link-getting” model. After all, they’ve been using content syndication for the SEO benefit for years. They are recognized experts in that area.

Traffic Kahuna OVERCOMES all of those problems and it does it by providing a HUMAN-GUIDED focus on QUALITY.

See, the sites in the Traffic Kahuna network are all REAL sites with REAL audiences. They aren’t just billboards for plastering up whatever anyone feels like. All these sites have a real interest in maintaining their audiences by providing fresh, and VALUABLE content.

Because of that, an article, review, and link from THESE sites are for the long term. They won’t be buried by spam, because they will be part of a targeted resource aimed at SPECIFIC niche communities. These are sites built not just for spiders, but for TRIBES.

Webmasters have joined this network because they want to better serve their VISITORS. They are NOT just added by the network owners to provide a place for their customers to put more links.

Now, the Kahuna folks know that these webmasters are already busy, or else they wouldn’t have a need for an automated, QUALITY content solution.

And that’s why on the Kahuna side of this community there are actual GUIDELINES for quality content, ENFORCED by human editors.

Jason and the gang are FULLY COMMITTED to shepherding this tribe, and their aim is to BUILD QUALITY CONNECTIONS between marketers like you and me, and webmasters who already cater to the tribes we want to target.

In the same way that the f’ree Comment Kahuna tool allows you to find related blogs and post to them, Traffic Kahuna is going to allow you to bypass a lot of what I talked about in Part 2, and give you a DIRECT outlet to these valuable community sites.

You’ll have a centralized place to manage your content, and YOU decide where to place it and what links you want. Of course, you need to meet their guidelines for quality, but I’m assuming if you’ve kept up with this series, you know that quality is of the utmost importance anyway. I don’t think any of our readers are out to junk up the internet.

But here is the BIGGEST reason I think Traffic Kahuna will succeed – both in the short AND long term:

It’s because they NEED you.

And I don’t just mean that Jason and crew need your money to line their pockets.

You are HALF the equation - without marketers and vendors that have messages they want to spread, the network has NO VALUE for the “tribe” of content-hungry webmasters.

They are creating a real, mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship – one built on an expectation of quality and trust. The very foundation of what they aim to do is JUST what I’ve been telling you.

They don’t sell links – they foster CONNECTIONS.

And if it was from anyone else but Jason Potash, I wouldn’t be so trusting that it could be pulled off.

Jason has the same attitude as I do – as ALL of StomperNet does – when it comes to content. Good marketing is about finding a group of people that want the same thing, and then giving it to them. And though SEO is one method of doing that by manipulating search results – the REAL focus should always include going to where the people ARE and interacting with them directly.

Traffic Kahuna aims to do that and MORE, and they open to the public today.

Now, don’t think that the f’ree Comment Kahuna tool was some sort of take-back. You can keep right on using that tool as long as you want. But if you are finding it valuable – do your business a favor and give Traffic Kahuna a shot.

This network has the same kinds of values that we used when building our exclusive StomperSCORE system, so if you’re not a StomperNet member, this is probably as close as you can get to having the same kind of benefit.

If you ARE a member of StomperNet – this service is going to augment whatever link and connection building you’re ALREADY doing, and hopefully it will save you valuable time and resources along the way!

Thanks for reading along with this series. If you missed Parts 1 and 2, please check them out here on the StomperBlog – and while you’re at it, leave us a comment. We’d love to hear what you think!

Until next time, Keep Stomping
~Andy Jenkins

P.S. Traffic Kahuna opened for a limited release already last January, and they sold out in 14 minutes. I’m not trying to make a scarcity play here, but with such a high focus on quality, Jason and co. may limit the amount of people they let in, so don’t wait too long. They open at NOON today.

Stompernet Blog

So, last time we talked about how you need to rethink your linking strategy to focus on building real connections rather than just plastering links all over creation.

Here’s a summary of how I think we can ethically and profitably build connections in our niches:

1. Identify “tribes” of people with common interests
that we want to target with our messaging.

2. Find the bloggers in those tribes who have
readership and influence, and who regularly write about
your niche topics.

3. Of those tribal blogs, identify the ones that will
also give you SEO benefit through linking (primarily,
blogs that don’t add rel=nofollow to links in their
comments).

4. Comment on these bloggers’ posts and REALLY
contribute and add value. Link not only to your own
resources on the subject, but help strengthen the tribe
itself by cross-linking these bloggers to each other.

That’s it. By practicing this kind of linking, you not only get the SEO benefit of keyword-rich links in your comments, but you visibly serve a community of active web users.

You strengthen tribal communities in your niche by connecting people to information they really want, whether you’re the source of that information or not.

On top of that, you will trigger really strong reciprocity and goodwill in the bloggers whose sites you contribute to regularly. You add value to THEIR sites with your comments, and you send THEM traffic by recommending their sites to other readers.

Pretty soon, the most visible and influential members of your target tribes are going to jump at the chance to work with you.

Here’s where we’ll take your new CONNECTION-building strategy to the next level.

We’re going to talk about Article Marketing. Now, I know most of you are already familiar with article marketing to some degree. But this (just like last time) will put a new and different spin on what you may have tried.

The most common article marketing practice involves placing articles up on major article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, and ArticleCity. And that’s great. If you’re already placing your niche articles there, keep doing it. If you’re not, you should start.

The main reason you want articles in those directories is because the search engines love them, and it’s quite likely your articles will rank for your keywords if you wrote them well. If those pages rank high, and they link back to you, it’s an instant SEO boost. It’s because of that SEO benefit that posting articles to directories is still a worthwhile and vital part of an SEO link-building strategy.

Now, some folks proclaim that by putting your stuff in these article directories, webmasters who need content will pick your stuff and publish it on their site or in an email newsletter, with your link intact. You get instant traffic! Hooray!

Well, the sad fact is that most of the time, your content WILL get picked up from article directories, but it’ll be unscrupulous webmasters who scrape out all your links and use their own. You may get an occasional ethical webmaster who really does use those directories according to the terms and conditions, but in my experience – it’s becoming rarer and rarer.

So, that being the case – YES – put articles on the directories – all the articles you have EXCEPT your very best ones.

Put the lower-end keyword-targeting stuff up on the directories, but reserve the long, feature-style human interest ones for your new allies.

That’s right – we’re going to take your best articles and approach your tribal bloggers (especially the ones with blogs that have some authority). If they’re active members of their tribes, and they’re active posters, they know it can get tough to come up with
good content to keep their readers happy.

If you’re already a solid contributor to their sites, now is the time to offer them a UNIQUE and UNPUBLISHED article for their site. They get free, high-quality material that their readers will value, and you get a byline with links back to your own site.

This is one of the most powerful traffic generation methods I know. Of course you get the machine-benefits of SEO in this case, because you’re getting your links on niche authority sites.

But the real benefit is that you are putting your best content in front of your most qualified audience, and while you’re at it, you’re building powerful alliances with influential members of your niche.

Do you think this sounds hard?

“How will I get all these guys to want to post my articles?”

You know what? You only need ONE to post for you. Then, you contact the other possible targets and either send an email to say,

“Hey – I wrote an article about blue widgets that your readers might like and John Doe over at the Widgets Blog was kind enough to publish it for me. I just thought I’d let you know so you can hook your readers up. If you’re interested in publishing any of my future articles about blue widgets, I’d love to speak to you about a unique, unpublished article I’m working on right now. Thanks!”

After you get the first one, the rest should be happy to line up to share in the f’ree quality content you want to provide to their readers.

So where can you go from here?

If you’re already regularly having your content published on different niche blogs, why not try to leverage for more prominent placement? Maybe work out a deal for a permanent homepage link? Why not seal a deal for a regular recurring spot so you can start to REALLY engage that blog’s audience?

Are you more worried about your bottom line rather than exposure?

If you have an affiliate program, do you think it would be hard to sign these publishers up? You’re already giving them great content – do you think they’d be opposed to getting paid to publish it? Some might, sure. But most of the time, you’ll have a much more friendship-based relationship with these guys rather than a business one.

And if they see they get paid for something they were already doing, I can almost guarantee that they’ll be more willing to mail for you or post for you every single time you ask.

Remember, you’ve been a long-time contributor by this point. You started with commenting, continued with unique content, and proceeded to full on linking and affiliate relationships.

If our last newsletter was about building connections instead of links, this newsletter is about cultivating and strengthening those connections.

You want to find all the sites that cater to your niche and weave your own stuff through them. And if you use a little brainpower, it’s not even that hard. You’re simply creating mutually beneficial situations, and everyone really does win!

We’re really going for the long-term strategies here – by really spending time in your niches, you get to know the players, and more importantly, they get to know YOU. You become the preferred provider of your product or service because you’re one of THEM. You’re a trusted and active member of their tribe – not some out-of-towner with a snake-oil pitch.

Never forget – markets are people.

What “Web 2.0″ is doing now more than ever is allowing those people to talk to each other, so find where they gather, and join the conversation.

Contribute regularly and wisely, and you’ll even begin to STEER some of those conversations your way.

If you cultivate the relationships you build through contributing, then your business will be the first and last name on the lips of your tribe when they decide to buy…

… or better yet, when they make a recommendation.

Until next time,
Keep Stomping,
~Andy Jenkins

P.S. Don’t forget to try out Comment Kahuna while you can. They’ve already released an updated version, and we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on the StomperBlog from your fellow readers who have put this free tool to good use.

P.P.S. And of course, don’t forget to leave a comment – we’d love to hear what you think.

Stompernet Blog

Stop. Getting. Links.

Until you evolve your thinking about what “links” REALLY are, you risk wasting your precious time and resources on work that will lose its value in the long run.

Ever since Google invented Page Rank, human behavior has determined what websites were really “about” and which ones were more relevant than others.

Page Rank did this by giving webmasters and site owners the ability to “vote” for the sites they liked with their links.

But now, with things like social bookmarking and content tagging, EVERY web user gets to vote on the relevancy of content – not just webmasters and site owners. Anyone can Digg, anyone can StumbleUpon, anyone can blog.

And that’s a great thing for marketers.

After all, it’s the PEOPLE on the web that we really want to reach anyway. A spider program will crawl any and all links it finds, but it won’t ever take out a credit card and BUY anything.

PEOPLE won’t just click on any and every link. But they WILL click on the ones that are meaningful – the ones that promise value on the other side – the ones that are recommended by respected members of their online communities.

So with that in mind, the REAL “home run” link building campaigns from now on will continue to focus on the usual stuff: anchor text, deep linking, page rank, all that.

But successful campaigns are ALSO going to focus on finding and engaging these “tribes” wherever they are, and using your links to connect them with content that is VALUABLE to them.

So STOP GETTING LINKS…

…and START BUILDING CONNECTIONS!

When “tribes” form on the web, they do so more or less to gather around a theme, or topic, or idea. They gather to talk about it and collect links to resources that are of common interest.

Your goal is to find and participate in those conversations.

Contribute and provide REAL value, and in the process, you’ll garner attention to yourself. Of course, you can then use that attention to get traffic to your sites, get subscribers to your lists, get readers for your blog, etc.
What will happen is that you don’t just become a participant in these conversations. If you provide real value, and solid resources to these tribes, you will become a TOPIC of conversation. Members of your chosen tribe will talk about YOU, and talk about YOUR resources.

Now, enough theory – let’s get into some real-world examples of how you can start putting this to work in your business starting today.

We talked about blogs earlier. Now it’s important to understand what kind of role bloggers can play in their respective tribes. The bloggers are the noisemakers – they initiate discussions, distribute news, and act as a kind of general mouthpiece for their tribes.

As such, they can be a valuable asset to leverage in getting attention for your own offers, right?

So if you want to make some inroads into a particular tribe you’ve identified, find the people who are blogging on topics relevant to that tribe’s interests.

Read their stuff. REALLY READ IT. Then comment.

Make it a BIG comment. Add value. Did you agree? Did you disagree? Can you elaborate on anything they said? Can you refute anything they said? Remember, we want to focus on ADDING VALUE to THEIR website.

Only THEN is it going to be “okay” in the eyes of the tribe. Posting a worthless comment will get your work either quickly deleted, or if it’s a moderated blog, it won’t show up at all. If you can comment and come up with a REALLY GOOD reason to link back to one of your own resources, THEN do it. Otherwise, prepare to get nowhere fast.

How do you avoid wasting time? There’s a “sniff test” I like to recommend to people when considering whether you SHOULD link back to yourself from a blog comment.

If you left out ALL link text and your link ONLY said “read more” – would it actually provide value? Would it be a continuation of the conversation the blogger started? If so, cool! Post that link.

If not, don’t quit!

Go to your site/blog/store and MAKE a resource or post that WILL continue and expand that conversation. Let their post be part one, and your write part two on your own blog.

Does that make sense? This is what I mean by PARTICIPATING in the conversation.

Let me give you a real-world parallel. Say you’re a blue widget vendor, and you’re at a widget convention and you have a booth at the trade show. It’s the end of a long day of exhibiting, and the show is winding down. People are collecting into their little cliques and maybe deciding where to go to dinner or whatever, but you overhear some chatter about your own product, blue widgets.

These people are your target audience, they couldn’t possibly be a more appropriate tribe for you to try to speak to about your offer.

So how do you approach them?

Do you just elbow into their conversation circle, business card in hand, shouting “Hey! I sell blue widgets! Buy blue widgets from me!”

No, of course not. It’s rude. You’ll get ignored at best, and told EXACTLY where to put your blue widget at worst.

So what’s the right way?

“Hey guys – did I hear you talking about blue widgets? Awesome! Did you know they are 99% more effective than red widgets of the same size? Yeah! I read that just last week in a report my company put out. You can find it on this website if you want to have a look. The URL is on my card there. My name’s Andy, by the way. Nice to meet you! I look forward to talking more about widgets with you next time I see you!”

See?

Not so hard, and you get this crowd to like you by PARTICIPATING and EXPANDING their conversation. By contributing a valuable resource that is relevant to what they were ALREADY talking about, you can actually BECOME a new topic of conversation.

So, now you should have a better idea about how to tactfully make headway into tribal conversations when you find them.

But I bet I know what you’re asking… how DO you find them?

Of course, you can do Google blog searches, or crawl social bookmarking sites looking for relevant tags. And that’s great, you’ll find a lot of potential conversations there.

But let’s not forget. This might be “Web 2.0″ but some things remain necessary in any link-building campaign. You MUST focus your efforts efficiently, so you should spend your time and resources on sites that will give you some good old fashioned SEO benefit AND get you involved in your niche’s tribes.

So that means you have to go in and scrub your list of potential comment targets for factors like high PR, cache date, Alexa rank, etc. – all the things you would normally look for if you were purchasing a link, right?

More importantly, when we’re talking about blogs, you need to make sure that comments aren’t automatically nofollowed.

And of course, that’s very tedious and time-consuming. You need to keep a spreadsheet, and collect all that info from various toolbars, you need to check out their source code to find out if their links are rel=nofollow. Now, even though it’s a pain to do that work manually, I guarantee you it’s worthwhile to identify the 20% of sites out there that will get you the 80% of the possible benefit.

Now, here’s the part where I work a whammy on you and tell you about some spanking new product that will save you all the backbreaking work and time spent on researching these blogs. SURPRISE!

(Not really).

Yeah, I DO want to tell you about a tool that will make this super simple, and super fast.

BUT before you go grumbling off in a huff – don’t sweat it. It’s f-ree – 100%. AND it’s from a trusted strategic ally and colleague, Jason Potash.

A lot of you have probably heard me speak about (or even with) Jason on the subject of articles and syndication for the purpose of link building. Jason’s been in that game for a long time, and has built some of the best and most-used software to help with those methods.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t using at least one of the tools he’s developed in every single one of my businesses.

And now, I’m going to start using THIS one – it’s called “Comment Kahuna” and it will prove to be a LIFESAVER when you get serious about using blog comments in your “Web 2.0″ linking strategies.

He’s got a sweet video on his site showing exactly how it works, but I’ll give you the quick version.

1. Type in some keywords.
2. Find some blogs that match those keywords.
3. You’ll know which ones will pass link juice, AND how much (the software sniffs for nofollow tags and PR rank).
4. Automatically post your comment on those blogs right from the software interface.

That’s it. No cross-referencing a bunch of statistics, no time wasted on blogs that won’t pass on value. Plus, there’s easy and quick posting, letting you move onto the other parts of your business that need attention.

Now, I have a warning for you. This tool COULD allow you to become a comment spammer, but I’m not giving you this resource so you can go out and tick off all the bloggers out there.

These bloggers are potential allies - if you help their websites be BETTER by contributing good stuff, they can become evangelists for your cause. There is no better form of word-of-mouth than when the tribal noisemakers start singing your praises.

So PLEASE – use this tool responsibly. In fact, you shouldn’t use it exclusively to link back to your own stuff. Identify ways to build connections between related tribes. Strengthen those contextual and semantic connections. Improve the sites you comment on by strengthening the network of links between them.

Why on earth would I want to waste time working on some other site’s links, Andy?

Good question. If you increase the value and authority of sites like these by linking them to each other, your OWN links to your OWN stuff become even more valuable.

If you’re commenting on all the blogs your tribes frequent, and you’re cross-linking your comments, you start to spread that traffic around. You get a chance for repeated messaging, and you increase your chances of saying something that will really resonate with individuals.

Now, you don’t even have to find an existing niche. You can actually start to link together a cohesive and highly populated niche simply by effectively connecting these related tribes together.

Does that make sense?

Now, if Comment Kahuna didn’t make this stuff so easy, I wouldn’t recommend you waste ANY time on this advanced cross-linking stuff. You simply wouldn’t have the time.

But that’s the beauty of this tool. It is so fast at doing the grunt work, it allows you to REALLY get creative in the way you distribute your messages and offers to your audience.

Think about how you discuss things with members of your own tribes. Are you a member of any niche communities – based around hobbies, or maybe even a professional network? How does your tribe discover resources? How do you share them?

Answer those questions, and then figure out how you can get your taget market’s tribes to discover YOUR stuff and make your stuff WORTH sharing.

Stop getting links, and start building connections.

What do you guys think? Have I given you some food for thought? Here’s your chance to take a crack at this. Why don’t you comment on this post and CONTRIBUTE! (I mean, you ARE part of our tribe, aren’t you?)

And if our “tribe” isn’t in your niche, that’s cool. Go get Comment Kahuna from Jason’s site and find your own conversations to politely “butt-in” on.

Until next time,
Keep Stomping
~Andy Jenkins

P.S. Don’t forget to go grab Comment Kahuna - if you’re into
building links through blog comments, I know it’s going to save you a lot of time and headaches. Let us know what you think of it.

Stompernet Blog