9 Lessons On How To Attract High End Clients

It is every business goal to have high end clients — these are clients that can really create a big difference in the profitability of any business. They do not care at all about the cost as long as they can be certain to get superior quality.

However, not all businesses know the essentials of how to attract high end clients; most only go with the simplistic idea that as long as they work on their products and services and are at par with others, these important clients will come.

High-end clients don’t grow on trees—attracting clients with luxury tastes and budgets to match takes excellent service and great PR. The home improvement space is already full of competitors ready to try their hand at these customers. The Associated General Contractors of America estimates that there are about 6 million workers in the construction industry, which is a lot in the running, to say the least.

And from a global perspective, the American economy performed quite well in 2016, at least compared to other developed nations like Japan and many countries in Europe. That’s left Americans with much more capital, meaning an expected 5% growth in construction starts in 2017. And residential units will get a large share of that growth—there’s a projected 12% dollar rise in single family housing. And where there is money and growth, there’s the opportunity for luxury products and goods, and less need to advertise the savings of a particular service.

Here Are The 4 Lessons On How To Attract High End Clients

Lesson 1: Don’t Sell Yourself Short

Imagine you’re about to buy a car, and you’re presented with two options from your dealer. One model costs $5,000 and one model costs $500,000. Which one would you say is the better car?

Unless your clients come to you on a referral, they’re a lot like the customer in this example. That is, since they haven’t seen the product you intend to provide them—because it’s not built yet—much of what they know about you gets communicated through your prices.

Keep in mind that high-end clients aren’t necessarily looking for a bargain or the best value. To these consumers, a lower price translates as a lack of quality. And if you haven’t been in the business for a long time, chances are, you’re probably charging too little anyway.

Analysts who study this sort of thing note that most of the time, when the price on a product or service is wrong, it’s because it’s too low, not too high. In fact, that’s the case with about 85% to 95% of bad prices. As a small business owner, the first step to evolving your customer base is to step up your prices.

Lesson 2: Let Price Reflect the Quality

Providing economical or budget-friendly solutions is great, but if a business wants to appear thoroughly competitive and professional, the price it charges should always reflect quality like no other.

Every marketing expert says this: “High end clients do not care much for cheap provisions — they do not trust them.”

If the business is using prime equipment or technology and has the best professionals or experts in the business, in the mind of the wealthy and powerful, there’s no reason for the products or services to be cheap.

Lesson 3: Add Polish to Your PR and Customer Service

No brand wants customers to see how the sausage gets made—but particularly when you’re dealing with high-end clientele, customers will expect an experience that’s polished and thorough, from beginning to end. That means you may have to trade your work clothes for a clean collared shirt when you first greet your clients.

It also means branding your business using a well-designed logo and professional-quality photos of your past work (no more fisheye lens captures of that intricate cabinet work you did last summer). A trained graphic artist or photographer can provide these materials, and you can find many eager artists that will perform this work on contracting sites like Upwork.

Similarly, sensory touches—the ability to touch and feel wood samples, for instance, or walk through a showy display room—mean a lot to high-end consumers. Even very small touches, like your company cards, should be on textured cardstock meant to evoke a feeling of luxury and richness.

You may need to up your game when it comes to customer service, as well. That could mean hiring and training an employee to answer the phones when you’re out on the jobsite. It may mean investing in your website, or spending time responding directly to social media.

While every customer values their time, high-end clients are accustomed to fast, knowledgeable customer service exchanges. They prefer to be guided through the process by an expert, rather than doing a lot of it on their own.

Lesson 4: Establish a Top Quality Brand

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity."

It is the quality that will attract high end clients too.

Its the small attention to details that they notice. Things like a well designed site, quality photos, even the quality of the paper on your printed materials are all very important details.

You can also take a cue from one of the episodes of the '90s TV series "The Nanny."

Broadway mogul, Mr. Sheffield, only wanted an engagement ring for Miss Fine from the most famous jewelry stores like Tiffany and Co., Cartier, or Harry Winston because they are trustworthy and are known to produce the best money can buy.

A business should always strive and prove to be the best that money can afford because that solid reputation will establish a top brand that's reliable and worthy of respect.

Lesson 5: Get to Know Your Ideal Consumer

It’s easy to get excited about consumers with good financials. A customer base with a ton of expendable income? What business owner wouldn’t want that? However, your customers aren’t just a tax bracket, so if you treat them like a walking wallet, they’re going to feel it in your interactions.

To understand your ideal demographic, it helps to design a profile (or multiple profiles) of your ideal customer. Imagine the specifics: where they live in your area, what their home looks like, what they’re coming to you for. For instance, a highly-paid professional with two young children may have different needs than an elderly, retired couple living in a luxury community.

Additionally, you may need to keep an eye on the trends dominating the market. With a lot more income at their disposal, these homeowners are more likely to want to incorporate the latest designs into their remodel or new construction. Staying on top of new features like solar panel installations or floor-to-ceiling windows will help you capture these clients’ interest.

Lesson 6: Provide Special Perks for Premium Clients

Put a lot of thought into the bonuses and special privileges to that you can throw in for big accounts.

These perks are great manifestations of the business's fine taste and effort to take care of big money clients.

The key is to add things of high perceived value, that act as a "sandwich" to your main offer.

Think of your main product as the "meat" of the sandwich. To complete your sandwich, you want to include bonuses that become the "bread" of your sandwich -- one for below your meat, and another that goes above it.

The "bread on the bottom" is a bonus that addresses something that may be preventing your ideal client from using your service.

The "bread on the top" is a bonus that you create related to your main offer that your clients use after you deliver it, to enhance the results.

Lesson 7: Network, Network, Network

It’s all about who you know, and that’s never more true than when you’re trying to rewrite your brand. Wealthy clients have the ability to consider reputation above price, so they’re looking for a standout business with a well-known pedigree. That can be difficult to accomplish with a small business: You’re likely not able to afford the kind of expensive ad space that you’d need to communicate your message.

One tactic that several remodelers have found successful, however, was asking former clients to post anniversary signs for their business in their yard. If you can, approach homeowners who live close to the neighborhoods you want to target. The signs communicate both your longevity—it’s your business’s anniversary, after all—and your good reputation in the community.

Another idea is to sponsor an event or charity function in those areas. Your business’ name will be plastered everywhere, and there’s no better way to meet the clientele you hope to draw.

Besides that, it’s an opportunity to gather intel about what your future clients need and want, so be sure to engage and ask plenty of questions as you talk to attendees—you might just walk away with a whole new customer base!

Lesson 8: Offer Consistent and Superior Customer Service

Customer support or service is a clear reflection of quality operations; be classy, eloquent and consistently ready to help because high end clients are used to being put first -- they do not like to wait.

A famous quote by Sam Walton reads, "There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

And since they have the resources to pay for any service provider, no matter how high the charges are, it's a big advantage to provide them the support or services when they need and want them to get them to stay.

Lesson 9: Develop Strong Lead Generation

Big ticket sales guru, Kevin Nations stated, "Nothing fuels high ticket sales like powerful, authority based lead flows."

Authority based lead flows are from sources where you demonstrate your expertise in a certain area. This could be things like a weekly podcast, blog or even a book.

By giving them this content, you position yourself as an expert that understands their problems and can help them.

The other route is to develop a "trip wire", a low cost product that can introduce a new customer to you and your business. The key is to keep the price low, so there is not a possibility of price objection.

This will build a strong relationship, and result in attaining premium clients. Remember that high-end buyers are not looking for quick fixes, hacks or tricks; They want quality. They want you to move them, serve them, and show them they are unique and special.

Make sure that you are being yourself with your clients and allowing your authentic personality to shine.

Top 5 Tips For Marketing On A Shoestring Budget

Local Business Owners Survive and Thrive by maximizing every dollar of a budget, every ounce of effort and every minute of time. An effective marketing strategy for your small business is crucial to efficiently grow revenue and minimizing wasted resources.

If you can maintain focus, understand your customers and your strengths, simplify your approach and maximize efficiency, you can find success with less. If funds are tight at the moment, try our 5 tricks for marketing on a shoestring budget for strong results without the massive price tag.

5 Ways to Market Your Small Business on a Shoestring Budget

1. Hone in and Focus

Big Companies with huge marketing and advertising budgets can afford to cast a wide net. For small business owners, a scattershot approach will deliver a very poor return on investment. Whatever channel you are focusing on, each marketing message must be targeted with laser-like precision.

A Well-targeted online advertising is the most cost-effective option for most small businesses. But if you don’t understand your targeting options or if your net is cast too wide, you can blow through your budget without creating value. The biggest value comes when you can find opportunities your competitors are undervaluing, where demand is lower than it should be, and the clicks, or impressions, are relatively cheap. You don’t want to follow the crowd and subsist on your competitors’ scraps. Rather than copying the strategy of your larger competitors, find the opportunities that are more precise with smart use of keywords and by targeting less obvious demographics.

Stay on-message, with your best message - make it clear what you are offering that the competition is not. Be results oriented, set your KPIs (key performance indicators) before you spend any money and keep a close watch on your results.

Think in terms of high-impact messages that are clear and succinct. Your intent should be apparent and simple to understand. In assessing your target audience it helps to consider demographics. How old is the audience you are trying to reach? Are they male or female? You can also use psychographics and other segmenting tools to drill down and create narrow marketing channels. There is virtually no benefit in marketing to those you are unlikely to reach.

2. Keep in Touch

Engagement is crucial to maintaining your customer base. The dollars you spend attempting to gain new customers will far exceed the ones you spend to keep them, so you need to make sure you look after your existing customers. Use e-mail and social media to enable a regular flow of communication and preserve the existing link with your patrons.

What you must remember is that maintaining a relationship with your customers requires finesse. You know the old saying, familiarity breeds contempt. Find that balance between being overwhelming and being effective. Here's a tip. The more helpful, professional and informative your communications are, the better they will be received. Every communication shouldn’t be an outright sales pitch.

3. Publish Great Content

Content is King. Content marketing is still one of the most reliable and cost-effective methods of marketing for small businesses, and it’s a solid choice for those who are trying to eke maximum value out of a shoestring budget.

Stand-out content is a surefire route to higher sales conversions - but this requires a solid content strategy, something which can be intimidating at first. Simply creating content with no real thought or goal behind it is akin to casting too wide a net with your advertising dollars. Again, you need to be focused on getting the most out of a smaller marketing pot.

Prior to any content creation efforts, research how to reach your target audience. Don’t assume you’re already aware of exactly who your target demographics are. Consider conducting market research to find what specific keywords they use to describe your product, what they find compelling about your product and what related topics interest them that are adjacent to the product you offer. Are you reaching a local, national, or international audience? This information will help you determine how to best reach customers in your choice of both content topics and mediums.

Creating valuable content that engages readers and provides useful information is one way to get a top spot in the search engine rankings. We've all seen how easily something can go viral. Remember Chewbacca Mom? In the age of social media, content can be viewed literally millions of times in less than 24 hours. The key is to be first in line. Your content will have less value if someone else beats you to the punch.

If you have the ability to create superior content yourself, go for it. And don’t be afraid to outsource for inexpensive help - websites like UpWork offer a pool of talent for less. Making smart use of freelancers once you have a content strategy in place is a cost-effective way to get your content needs covered without having to invest in a long-term hire.

4. Giveaway Discount Coupons

Coupons leverage the eternal fondness most people have for saving money and getting a deal. As such, offering coupons has been a powerful way for brands to attract new customers for many years. Make this work for you by investigating platforms that can distribute your coupon to a large number of people for a small cost.

Once you’re committed to offering business coupons, you need to have a plan in place to convert those trying your business into long-term customers. Talk to your new customers as appropriate, and find out what you can about what they want as a customer. Which aspects of your business do they love? Are there any impediments to them becoming a long term customer?

The free trial is another useful tool in the penny marketer's chest. Some people appreciate the opportunity to try something before they commit. It doesn't even have to be a long period of time. Sometimes seven days of service can do the trick.

5. Grow Your Community

Your best marketing assets are the satisfied folks you've served before. They will work cheaply on your behalf if you treat them right. Try offering a free month of service or product discounts in exchange for referrals. In many cases, the act of giving the reward itself is more meaningful to your existing customers than its value. In other words, customers value being appreciated.

Networking is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business. It can also be one of the most time-consuming. When you can persuade your existing customers to take up the cause of promoting your business, the growth can be exponential.

Small Business Owners with a Strategic Marketing plan in place have a far greater chance of succeeding on a shoestring budget. Match your passion, skill, and self-awareness to use what you know about your own business and your target audience to deliver bright ideas that will win new customers over and over again.

15 Important Factors To Consider Before Choosing A Web Hosting Service

Choosing a reliable hosting service is one of the very first and most important steps in your website development and marketing process. No matter how “maxim” it may sound, your website hosting is literally the foundation of your website online success.

Whether you’re looking to host your very first site or want to move an existing site to a new hosting provider, taking the time to think through each of the following items can help you feel confident that you have made the best decision that will meet your needs long into the future.

Physical Hardware

Physical hardware running your site being one of the most important considerations, take the time to research the server types of a hosting company is using. Is high-speed SSD storage included? Does it use redundant devices, such as RAID-configured hard drives? What is its response time when replacing failed hardware and are backups onsite?

Technical Support Team

No matter how good a host may be, it’s likely you’ll need to work with its support team at some point. Discover your comfort level when communicating with them upfront, as this may very well impact how quickly you arrive at issue resolution.

Response Times & Contact Options

Some web hosts require that you work through their ticketing system. Others have a phone-in option, use live web chat, or want you to reach them via email. So what is the best way to get in touch with them? Is the team available 24/7 or only during certain hours?

Reputation

In evaluating host contenders, reading reviews can help you make a more informed decision. HostReview is one of the resources you can use here—it’s a community of webmasters who share their experiences with different hosting providers to help find the most suitable option.

Hosting Features

Beyond providing you a server(s) where you can load your site contents, some hosts include many features, others make them available as add-ons, and still, others don’t offer any of them. These include:

• Bandwidth: the amount of data transfer (in GigaBytes) that you can use per month. Your site visitors utilize bandwidth as-as the traffic moves from your server to the Internet and vice versa; each time an image located on your server is loaded in a browser, data is transferred, hence bandwidth – which basically means, the more users you expect, the higher the bandwidth you will need. As a very rough estimate, 5GB bandwidth should be enough for a medium-sized site with moderate traffic.
• Disk Space: the amount of data you can store on your server. Today most (even quite cheap) hosting packages allow huge disk space. Most of my websites never occupy more than 1% of the available disk space. But you should know (to be able to estimate when needed) that if you are planning to build a simple website or blog, 3GB of available disk space would be obviously a lot more than enough (mind that a dynamic site (forum or blog) will need a lot of space for the database expansion).
• Operating system: two standard web hosting operating systems are Linux and Windows. Linux is the traditional choice with most providers as it is significantly cheaper and is compatible with plenty of Open Source applications and most scripts you may need (unless you plan to use any Windows applications).
• Control Panel: All hosting services provide some sort of a control panel where you will be able to add your domains and configure settings. Cpanel is the most common control panel found on any hosting service.
• IP Address: IP address is basically the unique number which identifies the location of your server on the Internet. Like we have mentioned above, if you are on a shared or virtual private server, your site should be sharing an IP address with a number of other websites. If you are on the dedicated server, you have a unique IP address.
• Server Location: tightly related to the above one, this one is important to mention for a number of reasons. For us, the most important reason is that Google considers the server “physical” location when ranking a website in both local and general search (for location-specific searches). So if you are creating a website for your local business and expect people to search it by location, find the hosting provider nearby.
• Server Uptime: Uptime refers to the percentage of time your server (and website) should be “up” and running. Uptime is an important SEO-relevant metric. Apart from obvious damage to your website performance, frequent crashes often negatively affect SEO. Google won’t rank your website high if it is often unavailable or down (see tip #2 in the list of the ways of increasing Google crawl rate). Most web hosting providers “guarantee” min 99.9% uptime (but it is recommended to do your research and check for real people’s reviews before jumping to any conclusions).
• (Free) Site Builder: Just don’t use them. period (hence the absence / presence of one should NOT be a criterion). You don’t need any (especially with various easy-to-install and easy-to-use website platforms like WordPress. Many built-in Site Builders are not SEO-friendly and limit flexibility; besides many of them are proprietary which means you won’t be able to painlessly move your site to another provider.
• Customer Support and Feedback: Every hosting provider (like any person or service) may fail at times but the availability of the customer service and the rate at which they solve issues and – that’s what defines a good service provider.
• The number of accounts per server: If shared server, it is advisable to know the number of sites with which you share the server. As if there are many sites on a server, the greater the chances of your site to load more slowly. Compare the number of accounts on a server with the number of accounts used by other hosting companies to have a starting point to negotiate. For full access to server, resources would better be up to 100 accounts per server.

Acquaint yourself with each host’s feature list in determining those that best match your specific needs.

Price of Hosting

Web host pricing is nowhere near uniform. Only by taking the time to comparatively shop will you finding a company that offers high quality hosting at a reasonable price. Determine accepted payment methods and look for discounts if you’re able to pay for service a year in advance.

Control Panel

A control panel or portal is the interface you’ll use to manage your website once it’s live. Here you can do such tasks as performing a manual backup, reset your server (if allowed), or configure additional domains. Two of most popular control panel options are cPanel and Plesk. Choosing a host that offers one of these helps make site maintenance easier.

Usability

As well as features like bandwidth and storage, you should look at the usability of the service. This will affect you if you are new to hosting and don’t have much coding or technical knowledge, or if you’d like more freedom to customize your website and hosting options.

The first usability feature to look for is whether the hosting provider has cPanel, Plesk, ispCP or ISPConfig. These programs allow you to set up and customize your website and hosting if you’re unfamiliar with the FTP (file transfer protocol) and is a must if you’re new to website hosting. Equally, if you plan to upload files from your computer to the website, such as header images and logos, you will need to ensure the hosting site provides FTP access.

Datacenter Geolocation

Having your site hosted at a datacenter that is geographically close to your target audience helps maximize site load speed experienced by your visitors.Having said that, organizations catering to a global audience should disregard this and consider using a content delivery network instead (see below), as it will replicate their website in multiple geolocations to improve performance.

Content Delivery Network

If your site is likely to have high bandwidth requirements, serve large files, or have other significant demands, you’ll want a content delivery network (CDN) to serve up at least a portion of your content. A CDN enables your site to quickly and efficiently serve a very high number of customers—performance that isn’t always possible using traditional hosting options. The host should also make CDN integration easy for you.

Email Features

This is one of those areas where you might not have considered asking your host for help. If you have a spam problem, then it may be because your hosting company doesn’t provide an adequate solution to stop it. Look into or ask about your provider’s spam solutions and general email practices. No matter what they say, email isn’t dead quite yet.

Upgrade Options

When you start a new website/blog, it is highly recommended to purchase a shared web hosting plan. This way you can save a lot of money on hosting bill during the time you grow you website/blog. Shared hosting is Web hosting in which the service provider serves multiple Web sites, each having its own Internet domain name, from a single WebServer. Most Web hosting companies provide the shared hosting plan nowadays.

As a rough estimate, the shared web hosting account is sufficient to support a properly optimized WordPress website with 5,000 to 100,000 unique visitors. However, if you are expecting your website to grow into a real big in next two or three years then it’s worth considering – what are the upgrade options web host provide you at the time of purchase. You may like to migrate from shared web hosting account to VPS or dedicated server for more disk storage, memory capacity and processing power with added security features. So, it’s very important to inquire about these upgrades options at the time of setting up web host account.

Security

In addition to other threats, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is a frequent cyber attack form, with millions of sites being hit every day at a rate of tens, or even hundreds of gigs per second. Protection is a critical component for any website. Most web hosts offer basic security/firewall and DDoS protection, but the most effective threat mitigation available today involves routing all of your site traffic through a service that scrubs out nefarious traffic before it has an opportunity to wreak havoc with your content.

Scalability

In starting a new website, perhaps you only need a simple, shared hosting account. But once it becomes a success, your hosting needs will likely grow commensurately. In looking ahead, then, you may want to use a hosting company that provides such expansion options as virtual private servers (VPSs), dedicated servers, cloud hosting, and more.

Refund Policy

These days all web host companies have a refund policy or trial period and during which you can try the hosting services and decide whether you would like to continue or not. Remember that, if you forget to cancel your account before the last day of your trial period then you will be charged for the whole trial period. If you have this question in mind then it’s worth asking beforehand. Some companies do not require credit card information during the trial period and later when you decide to continue with then you will need to upgrade to your chosen plan after the end of trial period.

How to Generate Leads with White Papers

What’s the difference between selling $900,000 business software and a $0.99 iPhone App? One requires getting the attention of an executive in a company…

While the other requires a few taps of your fingers. If you’re in the business of selling complex, high price products and services – aircraft, enterprise technology, consulting to name a few – traditional, consumer oriented sales strategies will not work.

Ever wondered why? Let’s take you inside the buying process at a multi-billion dollar company. This example is based on a real bank that spends over $9 billion per year on suppliers and vendors of all kinds including multi-million dollar purchases with professional services firms and technology companies. This is how you generate leads with white papers.

Inside The Corporate Buying Process.
As a sales representation visiting Big Bank Inc, what’s the first thing you try? You might try looking up a prospect on LinkedIn and sending them a cold email (or call).

Unless you’re unusually well informed, you’ll probably get nowhere. Even worse, you might be told something like “Visit the procurement website: that’s where all our major purchases are done.”

You take the feedback in stride and check out the procurement website. Before you know it, you’re knee deep in “RFPs” (requests for proposals) that have endless requirements.

Big Bank Inc has eight people work on each procurement decision – a purchasing specialist, a technical subject matter expert, the end business user and more. With this kind of committee style buying process, you can expect to wait weeks or months to close a deal.

Why do companies –your potential buyers – have these complicated procedures? Why wouldn’t they just let you in to present your product?

It all comes down to one word: risk. In the corporate world, everyone is SCARED of killing their career by buying a million dollar software system only to have it fail. A procurement failure like that could set back your buyer`s career by years. Fortunately, you can soothe their fears by using white papers in your sales process.

The White Paper Solution.
How do white papers open new doors for complex sales? Let’s quickly define our terms. “A white paper is a persuasive document that usually describes problems and how to solve them.

The white paper is a crossbreed of a magazine article and a brochure. It takes the objective and educational approach of an article and weaves in persuasive corporate messages.” (from “Writing White Papers” by Michael A. Stelzner)

According to Stelzner’s research, over 80% of executives report that white papers are extremely helpful or helpful. Even more important – over half of executives state that white papers influence their buying decisions. White papers are highly popular and most heavily used in the technology sector.

However, they can be used in other areas where buyers are making complex or large budget decisions. In contrast to a presentation or visit from a sales representative, most prospects view white papers as non-threatening. If you’re tired of getting told no when you ask for an appointment, consider offering a white paper to your prospects instead.

2 Reasons To Market Your Business with White Papers.
Before you commission a white paper for your business, consider the following.

1) White Papers put Technical Stakeholders At Ease: Without a robust white paper, your sales effort may be defeated by the fear, uncertainty and doubt of a technical stakeholder.

2) White papers go where your sales team can’t: Getting your foot in the door at a large company is difficult. Assistants are told to keep away sales people like you. How do you get through the gate keepers? You need an insider to help you. When your white paper is read by one person inside a company, it may be shared to others. That peer recommendation opens new doors that would be difficult to open any other way. For this process to work, your white paper has to deliver highly valuable industry information and a subtle sales message.

5 ways to Build and Establish your Brand.

So you’ve taken a leap of faith and started your own business, Congratulations! For some, it’s an exciting time to venture out and put their entrepreneurial skills to the ultimate challenge, a challenge they’re so eager to embark on. For others, it can be quite terrifying to try something new, wondering if the world will appreciate what they have to offer as they determine the best path to take to success.

Your brand is how you want to appear to the world. How well do you want to be recognized? How will you build your authority and your following? We learned a thing or two about establishing your personal brand from thought leader, Thomas Smale, a contributor for Entrepreneur.com and Founder of FE International shared an insightful article on this topic. Here are 5 Brand Building Tips:

1. Be true to yourself
For a brand to be “authentic”, so should the creator. Your brand should tell your story, who you are, what you believe in, where you came from, and how you came to creating your own brand. People connect with people better than they connect with “things”. When speaking to others about your brand, wouldn’t it would be harder to fake it then to just simply be yourself? Just some food for thought.

2. Speaking Engagements
Are you a people person? Do you speak with knowledge or from a level of authority? Do you have the ability to intrigue and captivate others? Being an entrepreneur is all about developing good communication skills because part of building your brand is being able to speak about it on a regular basis.

3. Write thought leadership articles
This will build your credibility as a leader in the industry. Write about topics that talk around your brand and share your knowledge with people who are seeking this kind of information.

4. Build and protect your internet presence
Claim your business online and be aware of how you appear or what people are saying about your brand online. Embrace online reviews, even the not so pleasant ones. Start a Facebook business page and ensure that it presents you in the best light possible. Meet your customers expectations by appearing in their search results, it further legitimizes your brand and your existence.

5. Never stop learning
You may be an expert in what you do but the development and advancement of your brand has no limits. In order to stay relevant in this ever-changing, ever-growing world of technology, continue to learn from other thought leaders and competitors in your industry. You can never have too much knowledge and perspective.

The most important thing to remember is to stay humble by being open to the opinions of your followings. Be honest about your weaknesses and strengths. There’s nothing more believable when it comes to branding than one that is “human” and one that people can relate to.

Content Marketing: 6 Steps to Building Your Editorial Calendar

I've seen content marketers in a state of paralysis, overwhelmed with the responsibility to create a constant stream of quality content. I get it. It's daunting to even get started because it’s not just about churning out blog posts, either; part of content creation is fitting each piece into an overall strategy. 

In the last B2B Content Marketing benchmarks, nearly half of those with stagnant programs said content creation was a major factor. Which makes sense. I get questions from marketers who ask me, "where do I even start?" Or claim, "we just don't have enough content." 

Let's conquer this together. 

It all starts with an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is a tool you and your team can use to map out content for the entire year. Building out your calendar naturally focuses your strategy, ensuring that you have the right mix of content types, the right topics covered, and enough content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Now that you know where to start, here’s just 6 steps to building out your editorial calendar that I guarantee we relieve any paralyzed marketers. 

1. Find Your Topics

First things first -- it's your job to identify the most relevant topics for your audience. You’re looking for the sweet spot where your audience’s needs and your brand’s expertise overlap. But don't lock yourself in a room and stare at a blank whiteboard. Act like an investigative reporter and hit the streets, if you will, to understand what resonates most with your audience. 

• The Field: What are the conversations they're having with prospects -- what are their pain points, what keeps them up at night?
• Buyer Personas: Assuming you have these already, use these as a catalyst to understanding what's important to them. 
• Social Media: What content topics and thought leaders are your audience engaging with the most?
• Keyword Research: Leverage Google Adwords to understand the key phrases around your brand's expertise, their search volume and competitiveness. 
• Forums: Find where your audience goes to get answers and consume content. 

Basically, anywhere your customers are talking is a place your brand can listen. All of these sources will help identify the broad topics that will shape your calendar.

2. Audit Existing Content

When marketers tell me, "we just don't have enough content" for a content strategy, I quickly dismiss their argument. Sure, if you're literally launching your business today, chances are you don't have much content. But in most cases, your marketing team has been sending emails, promoting eBooks and whitepapers and publishing blogs for some time now -- perhaps just not at the always-on pace and volume of an effective content strategy.

So start your quest for sourcing more content by auditing the work you have already spent resources creating. Once you have your topics in place based on your research conducted in step 1, check your back catalog for content that fits. 

I always say if you have a 20 page eBook, you can squeeze 20 blogs from it. Or if you have just 5 blogs on a similar topic, you have an eBook. If you want to test me, find me on LinkedIn -- happy to prove my theory. 

Dig into your Big Rock assets and slice and dice. Look for older blog posts that still have value but are due for a makeover and re-launch. Find successful email content and convert into a blog. Turn webinars into Q&A blogs and presentations into SlideShare decks.

Odds are even your most popular content last year still didn’t reach your entire potential audience. So don’t be shy about adding new value and republishing.

3. Plan Content throughout the Buyer’s Journey

Once you have identified some re-purposed content that can act as tent poles to your calendar, it's now time to work on the gaps. Make sure each piece is targeted at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, and aim for a healthy mix of early and late stage content.

Many marketers focus their content on the late stages, because perception is that this content is contributing more directly to revenue. But without a healthy proportion of early-stage content, you won’t be building an audience for the late-stage stuff -- a cart before the horse issue, if you will. 

For help turning your topics into blog posts, try HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator, or Portent’s Content Idea Generator.

4. Set Your Cadence

Is it better to publish daily, three times a week, once a fortnight? Plenty of research has been conducted to find the perfect publishing cadence. But I'm sorry to say, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The one thing we do know is that consistency is far more important than frequency.

So as you plan your calendar, plan to publish as frequently as you can reliably create high-quality content. Your audience may prefer short-form content every day or more substantial pieces weekly. Use your best-performing pieces from the past year, as well as your current capacity, to set a sustainable cadence.

5. Fill in Your Blanks

Now it’s time to actually fill out your calendar. This is the fun part because you start to really see your content strategy come alive. Start with your broad topics, then fill each of your content slots with related posts from your existing content and your idea generation sessions. Aim for a mix of content types for variety, and make sure to vary the stage of the buyer’s journey.

A few recurring series can help fill out the calendar, and can give your audience something to look forward to every month. For example, on the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions blog we do a Marketing Book Worth a Look and Millennial Minute each month, and a Trending Content roundup weekly.

It’s also a good idea to leave an open slot or two each month for timely posts, new turkey slices, guest posts, or news jacking—anything that would add value but is hard to plan in advance.

6. Adjust As Needed

Once your calendar is complete, it can guide you throughout the year. But don’t carve it in stone—it should be a living document, evolving and iterating. Evaluate how each piece of content performs, and use that data to make strategic tweaks to the calendar. The focus should always be on what is resonating with your audience, not what you planned six months ago.

Creating a year’s worth of content is a hefty challenge for marketers. Start with a quarter or just the next two months. Leverage your research to generate broad themes and then build out secondary and tertiary topics based on those broad themes. Add existing content, recurring series, and a few wild cards, and you will find your calendar starting to fill up in no time.

10 Powerful Habits for Building a Personal Brand

CREDIT: Getty Images

Building and promoting your own personal brand is as important for you as it is for any company. Maybe more.

We all know the power of brands. Who anywhere in the world isn't familiar with McDonald's fabled golden arches, Coca-Cola's distinctive red-and-white logo, or the green Starbucks mermaid?

But here's a secret--building and promoting your own personal brand is just as important for your success and happiness as it is for any business. In fact, since it's you we're talking about, it might be even more important.

In her book Personal Branding and Marketing Yourself, executive coach, trainer, and consultant Rita B. Allen explains that there are 10 habits you should adopt to market yourself while building a more powerful personal brand.

1. Identify specific target markets
When you're building your brand, it's better to first focus on a few, most-promising targets, than to try to reach out to the entire world all at once. You'll get the greatest payoff for your time and money by identifying the segments of your market where you are likely to achieve the greatest rewards, and then pursuing them relentlessly.

2. Know your marketplace
Your brand is only as good as you are. Stay up to date with your industry--the latest news, practices, companies, and other information. The moment you begin to fall behind is the moment your brand will begin to tarnish.

3. Be visible and "in play"
Building a brand means getting out of your office and becoming very visible to your target audience and potential customers and clients. Attend networking events and become active in your profession and community. The more visible you are, the stronger your brand.

4. Become a source of relevant information
You should be someone people contact when they want expert advice or information on a particular topic. When you build a following as a content expert, you put yourself in position to be viewed as a trusted authority, which will attract people to you.

5. Always give something back to your profession and community
When you give back to others, not only will you gain the personal satisfaction that comes from doing it, but you'll build your brand in ways that money can't buy. People will remember the good deeds you have done, and your personal brand will benefit as a result.

6. Practice networking etiquette
Networking is all about marketing yourself, but it's also about giving others the opportunity to market themselves to you. Make sure that your networking efforts are beneficial to both you and to the people with whom you are networking. It's a two-way street.

7. Maintain your shelf life and develop an effective social media presence
In the publishing world of which I am a part, you're only as good as your latest book. Don't rest of your laurels, as impressive as they may be. Continue to do great work and achieve great things. And in these days of social media, don't ignore your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other accounts.

8. Create a networking database
Keep an up-to-date computer listing or database of all your networking contacts and social media connections.

9. Have a clear, brief message to deliver
The founder of every startup has a well-honed elevator pitch--ready to break out at a moment's notice when the opportunity presents itself. You should have a similar pitch ready for your own personal brand. What is your value proposition? Why should someone work with you?

10. Don't ever stop!
Building and marketing a personal brand is all about generating momentum--and then sustaining it over a long period of time. Once you get the ball rolling, then keep it rolling. It's a lot easier to keep the momentum going than it is to start all over again from scratch.

Source: Inc.com

How to Use Reddit to Drive Huge Traffic to Your Website

Reddit to Drive Traffic to Your Website

We already no that, Reddit is one of the best & popular social bookmarking site. By using it effectively you can  Drive Huge Traffic to Your Website too.

Related: Want to Increase Website Traffic

In order to be successfully drive traffic to your website with Reddit, you can’t be a Reddit marketer. You have to be a Redditor & have to share their passions too, yes i MEAN it. But more importantly, you have to share their hatred for self-promotion. Only share something with the community if you think it’s worthy & awesome; someone might be interest to the topic.

There are few steps you need to follow to be successfully drive traffic to your website via Reddit & Reddit Reputation. Skipping even one of them can ruin your reputation on Reddit, or risk get you banned.

It is easy to get banned from Reddit. Posting too many links or breaking the rules in a subreddit will almost guarantee you get banned from that subreddit or from the site entirely. This is how Reddit fights the constant onslaught of spammers and over-zealous marketers.

Read the rules of sub-reddits and avoid spamming

Many users submit their links without knowing about the rules of sub-reddit. Reddit is highly concern about spamming. It has a spam filter which automatically filters out spam. But, don’t worry. You can prevent it. Before submitting, read the rules of sub-reddits where you want to submit your link because different sub-reddits have different rules.

Also be sure that your link was submitted before by you or someone else or not. After submitting, to check whether your link is alive or not, click the “New” tab of that sub-reddit where you have submitted your link. If it is not there, it means, your link is caught by spam filters.

Keep It Relevant

If you want to get large amounts of traffic from Reddit, you have to keep your posts highly relevant to the users. This means that the more that you can tailor your posts to the subreddit that you’re posting in, the better. Avoid posting content that addresses too broad of an audience.

This requires you to do a little bit of research into your subreddit and see what kinds of posts are already popular. Get a feel for your audience there. Then you will be more equipped to create a popular post of your own. If the end goal of your site is to sell a product or get subscribers, you will need to do some customer development first.

This will ensure that you’re in touch with what your audience wants, while saving you a ton of time in the long run.

Only Post Great Content

Only post your best content on Reddit! Short and generic content will not perform well. It will also get down-voted and you’ll lose any valuable reputation points (karma) that you have.

Only post content that is in-depth, unique, well-written, helpful and actionable. Wherever you post your article, Reddit users are going to click on it to check it out. What they think of it (either upvote or down vote) will dictate your results.

Follow other Reddit users

It won’t give you up-votes or traffic, but it is very helpful. What you have to do is watch what other users are doing. Specially follow users whose links are on front page. Try to understand why they have got so many up-votes or what types of posts get more up-votes.

Find out what’s the difference between your title and their titles. See how they comments on a post. This will give you more knowledge and you can understand what to do next.

No Double Dipping

Don’t start getting greedy on me now! When you log in to your analytics account and see that spike in traffic and realize: “Oh yeah, I posted on Reddit – and it only took me 5 seconds!”

Making a link submission as your first action as a redditor is a huge red flag. Even if you are posting a genuine, relative link, it still looks suspicious to moderators and Reddit’s source code. If this link gets remove or marked as spam, your account might be done for. We recommend always posting comments and voting on other submissions before you start posting links.

Usually the next natural thought is “I should be doing this all the time!” But that’s where you can get yourself in trouble. Stay out of “hot” areas. This means that if you just posted a link in a subreddit, let it rest for a while! I usually wait 2 weeks to a month before I post another link of my own in the same subreddit.

Have fun

This is possibly the most important point on the list that impatient marketers overlook. This is why ‘the other guys’ are terrible at getting traffic from Reddit. You need to be a normal Reddit user. Remember, you can’t be a marketer, you have to be a redditor.

Reddit does not tolerate users that upvote their own posts. This is because spammers are constantly trying to implement upvote schemes that get their content to the top of a big subreddit.

Interact with the rest of the site. Build up a post history that shows that you’re a normal user. Build up your karma points by posting helpful or funny comments on other posts.

Address the Concerns of the Community Before They Have Them

If you post links to your site on Reddit, there will be a lot of users that will to try to find an excuse to down vote your posts, report you to moderators, bad mouth you etc.

What you have to do is beat them to the punch and address all of their concerns before they can get a word in.

Reddit has take a strong anti-harassment stance this past year (2015). If you are harassing a user or someone harassing you, you will likely be reported to the admins and they will take action.

Don’t Ever Let Your First or Second post be a promotion

This should go without saying, but if you’re new to a subreddit, be sure to post a few other things in that there first before you decide to promote anything of your own. I made this point short, since the last one was so long.

You can be banned from any subreddit by a moderator of that subreddit. A subreddit ban can be time-limited or indefinite. When you are banned from a subreddit, you will receive a private message that says how long the ban will be in effect and optionally the reason you were banned. After you are banned from a subreddit, you will not be able to submit any posts or comments to that subreddit.

Don’t Over-Promote Your Post or Website

You may think that if you don’t promote your website repeatedly in the same Subreddit that you’ll be fine. But this is yet another big Reddit no-no. Reddit moderators and users can see your site-wide activity. Not to mention that they have automatic spam filters. Don’t abuse the system, and you’ll be safe.

You can also be banned from submitting posts or comments to a subreddit by the “AutoModerator” bot. AutoModerator is a Reddit bot that moderators use to perform tasks on their behalf. One ability that AutoModerator has is to remove any posts or comments from a specific user. So if you have been banned by AutoModerator, you will still be able to submit posts and comments, but they will instantly be removed from the subreddit.

If you post links to the same domain name too often you run a huge risk. Reddit's automatic spam filters will blacklist your domain, so that if anyone posts it, it won’t show up. They can also “ghost” your account which is a special kind of punishment for spammers. Getting ghosted means that none of your posts ever show up to anyone but you. So you can post as much as you want, but they will never show up to anyone else.

Share Your New Posts With Your Friends

Even if you do not belong to a Reddit team, you should still have a group of people or a network that you can share your content with. This step entails you sending your new Reddit posts to your friends or Twitter followers that are also Reddit users. If they like what you posted, they’ll give you an up-vote, which will attract other Reddit users, and get the ball rolling for your post to get it popular.

Comment and Reply to Everyone

Activity on your Reddit post breeds more activity. This means that when someone comments on your post, reply to their comment to double the comment count. When posts have lots of comments, it gets more redditors to click on your post, and join the conversation. You can even be the first one to comment on a link that you post.

Be Humble

Most people take criticism on their post as a bad thing. But you can use it as one of your biggest advantages.

Not only will this help you with "Address the Concerns of the Community Before They Have Them", it will also help you to get better at using Reddit to drive traffic and customers to your website. When you reply to comments, be sure to learn as much from your commentators as you can.

Personal Thought: Spend At least 10 minutes a week, and get a feel for the community.

Best Ways to Promote Your Online Courses

Actually there is no specialize way to promote online courses, You’ve got to address the same challenges you do when promote a service or product online: build attention, interest, desire, and action in your prospective customers.

You do need to take into account the unique structure, timeline, and value proposition of your online course, and create online marketing campaigns that support it.

Here are ways that can help you market your online course effectively and grow your Audience (I believe so).

Make a blog 

Maintaining an active blog in order to support your online course activity as an educator is the best thing to do. Update your blog few times a week with engaging, useful and informative content about your online course.

Regular blogging also make your blog authority source in your niche. Becoming an authoritative source for information that meets users expectations more than search engine needs will become exceptionally important.

Social Media 

Οbviously using social media in order to communicate and connect with potential learner is important. What you should never forget is to always provide useful information and actual and useful knowledge. Also, keep this activity within reasonable limits. For example, post blog articles on Facebook not more often than 2, 3 times a week. Making “noise” in the social media will have a negative effect on your image.

Provide Authentic Information

Make testimonials and small stories for specific people who enjoyed your online courses recently. Publish these positive examples on your blog and social media pages.

Make Short, Free Courses and Share Them 

Giving things for free builds more engagement with existing and potential customers. It is an excellent way to grow your online community and to generate more new leads.

Newsletter 

Keep engaging your past, current and future potential learners with informative newsletters. Let them know about the latest on the industry, tell them about your content, interview industry opinion leaders etc.

Run a Forum 

As an educator you are an opinion leader yourself, most probably. Use this expertise and engage learners with a forum. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to properly administrate a forum but once you are up to it results will be fascinating. You can also use it in order to start discussions, get feedback and come up with new ideas just by listening to people.

eBook 

eBooks are used to provide information, engage online customers and provide the writer with an authoritarian role. You can make and share new eBook every couple of months. They should be anything between 10-20 pages and they must share clear and useful information related to your online course.

For example, if you are educating people on Website Design, you can make a 20 page eBook on how to design a basic website. You can then upload it on your website or blog and allow people to download it for free only by giving you their name and email. This way an eBook can also become a useful lead generator.

Of course, this list isn’t a road map to guaranteed success to Promote Your Online Courses. There are number of ways you can do in order to promote your online course and sell your courses. You can start by using these ways I just mentioned above and make them part of your core strategy, before using more advanced processes.

Crucial Things Social Media Marketers Need to Remember

Social media is everything. An obsessive habit, a communication portal for businesses and customers, a gateway to increasing links and online purchases, a consistent lead producer, and so much more. Social media marketers are well aware of this and the heavy burdens that come with managing company social profiles.

Not only is a brand exposed to the possibility of bashing, but several crises now exist due to social media and the demand for presence. Through all the chaos of managing a company’s brand online, there are many rewards: engagement with new fans, the first sale from Facebook, content shared virally on Twitter, etc.

Image Source: Dazeinfo.com

Business 2 Community organized an impressive list of online marketing statistics last December. Of the many, these social stats sum up the struggle, benefits, and why social media is such a vital part of online marketing.

• “Interesting content” is one of the top three reasons people follow brands on social media. (NewsCred)
• 47% of Americans say Facebook is their #1 influencer of purchases. (Jeff Bullas)
• 63% of millennials say they stay updated on brands using social networks and 51% say social opinions influence their purchase decisions; and 46% rely on social when making online purchases. (leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal)
• 34% of marketers use Twitter to successfully generate leads. (Jeff Bullas)

You can keep afloat through the social media updates, crises, and changes with these tips:

Optimize Social Profiles

As much as this should be a given, it’s so easily forgotten. Each social network offers different opportunities to optimize a company profile. Twitter allows hashtags in the description and tracks keywords to filter specific search results for accounts, photos, videos, and more. Facebook gives you plenty of opportunity to properly insert business information with specific hours, categories, address, short/long descriptions, etc. Don’t miss out on opportunities to connect locally and with potential new clients by forgetting to optimize your company’s social pages.

Optimizing Tips

• Verify your Pinterest profile by verifying your website. There are two different ways to verify, with an HTML tag or a meta on the website. Once verified, a bright red check mark appears next to the website, giving users a more comforting feel that this is indeed the real Kim Kardashian Pinterest page.
• Optimize Twitter images. Twitter automatically reduces images to 440 x 220 pixels. If the large image you were planning to attach with a tweet won’t be attractive that small, choose a different image that will appeal to Tweeters and the pixel requirements.

Pay Attention to Analytics

Almost every social network is now providing it’s own analytics for businesses. This leaves very little reasoning to why you’re still posting at 12:15pm everyday when Facebook has data to prove your fans are engaging best at 6:30pm. Scheduling tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Followerwonk also provide great analytics that further help analyze what fans are engaging best with.

Analytics Tips

• Perform weekly social media reports that analyze each social network’s progress. The report should track how many fans/followers, increase/decrease of engagement, published posts, link clicks, etc.
• Analyze goals with results. If the goal of a company Facebook page was initially to address concerns with products and act as a customer service funnel, then analyze how often the page is receiving such engagement. Is it the type of engagement you expected? Are you responding accordingly and in a timely manner?

Time is Always of the Essence

On Monday I spent about 10 minutes writing a complaint on a company’s Facebook page regarding an experience I just had. As someone who manages several company social pages, I know the quickest way to get a response from a company is when a complaint is right smack on a client’s Facebook page, just waiting for comments from others to add on.

It’s been four days now and still no response. This is a very big, corporate company with locations internationally and a large social team who’s been posting new posts since my complaint was posted. As a user, and former customer, I’m now even more upset. Imagine how your clients and customers feel when you don’t message them back on Twitter in a timely matter.

Urgency Tips:

• Respond to engagement within 24 hours. If the engagement is negative, respond as soon as possible to help resolve the situation.
• Create notifications to notify you each time engagement is received. Connect the notifications to the email address you check most, and push notifications through your cell, as well.

Reach Your Demographic

There’s nothing worse for a user than wanting to like and engage with your brand, but being turned off by your irrelevant posts. If your audience is primarily made up of millennials, use fun, high contrast imagery that they’re attracted to. Whereas if you’re trying to sell life insurance policies to 50+ year old couples you’ll want to use stock images of people in their 40s.

Conduct research, and then do more research, about what your demographic likes and what your competition is doing. Checking with your competitors who have similar demographics will inspire you with new ideas and avoid the trial and error of what works and what doesn’t.

Demographic Tips:

• Understand what your demographic likes. Clearly you’ve done enough research to define your demographic that you should know what kind of things your demographic enjoys. Incorporate your company with those types of interests to appeal to them with similar types of posts, images, and content.
• Pinterest isn’t the perfect social network for every company. Just as LinkedIn is great for scouting potential employees and leads, Pinterest is perfect for eCommerce, fashion, and restaurants. Have a brand presence on all social networks, but concentrate your main efforts on the networks your audience will engage with most.

Humanize the Tone and Message

This isn’t 2025; we’re not all robots. Let’s communicate to our customers on social like we do in person, using real dialogue. Phrases like, “Call Today!” and “Get Yours Now!” are typical calls to action that bombard customers with an unrelatable sales feel. Sales-speak can be great when spoken correctly, but isn’t always appropriate for social media. Converse with fans and produce thought-provoking engagement they want to interact with.

Image Source: Social Media Explorer

Humanizing Tips:

• Define the tone. Does your brand want to be playful, sarcastic, arrogant or persuasive? Choose a tone and stick with it when posting on social. Followers will respect the consistency of your tone, even if it doesn’t 100% match their own.
• Define the voice. A company’s voice is different than it’s tone. The voice is the more definitive style of the brand, whereas the tone is that extra spice you add to your already spicy burrito.

Handle Social Media Crises With a Stiff Drink

No one ever said managing social media pages would be easy. When a crisis hits, and they will, break open that bottle of whiskey that’s been collecting dust and get your typing fingers ready. You’ll have a lot of communicating to do.

Image Source: Pinterest

Crises Tips

• Know the difference between a standard consumer complaint and a social media crisis. When a group of fans who dislike your company create multiple social pages to badmouth and spread lies on Facebook,using your logo, that’s a crisis.
• Attack where the attack began. If the issue began on Twitter and quickly spread to Facebook and Tumblr, respond appropriately to the Tweeters, then the Facebookers, and Tumblrs. Your sincere apology needs to be seen where the comment was first made.
• Avoid an automated response. Copy and paste is not the answer to social media crisis. A real person needs to respond from the company and address concerns, either leaving their actual name as a signature or “Management”. Come up with a solution to the problem and respond uniquely to each comment.

Have a tip you can’t live without for social media management? Comment below and share your best strategies and ideas for surviving social media!

Strategy, Process & Life Cycle - Grassroots SEO!

Below you'll find the basic layout of your 6-12 month campaign, starting with what's in your SEO strategy. Let's start with milestones. You can put your milestones into a Google Spreadsheet in bold, font 24. Paste items in between milestones respectively, as you grow in your understanding of SEO best practices and techniques.

You can also use project management tools, such as TeamWorkLive.com or Basecamp, both of which allow you to calendar your milestones and create assignable task lists beneath them.

Milestone 1 - Your SEO Strategic Plan (1 Month)

You are going to get to hundreds of ideas and tools thrown at you for keyword research, spying on competitors, finding link opportunities and elements to consider when planning your SEO campaign. Problem is, most presenters don't actually say "okay, add these line items to your research to-do list, phase 1 of 5 in your holistic SEO strategy", they just say "here's some stuff you can do".

What's in Your SEO Plan?

Below is a list of reports and actionable lists to carry over to your project management system (or spreadsheet). The planning phase can take up to a month, but will save you a lot of time and frustration later in the campaign. Remember, this is boilerplate, so you can squeeze in new research and data-mining tasks you pick up from events. Isn't it nice to have a place to start putting the "stuff"?

1. Obstacle Analysis Report (OAR) - This report will help you discover potential crawl and indexing issues. It has little to do with content, and is mostly focused on how search engine-friendly a website is. Criteria might include: checking for broken links and duplicate content, analyzing HTML and XML sitemaps, optimizing robots.txt and .htaccess files, to help crawlers get to the content you want indexed and away from the content you don't. The OAR might also include a review of Webmaster Tools, an audit from your seomoz.org campaign, and possibly data from similar online tools. Basically, your on-page "stuff" goes here.
2. Competitor Analysis Report (CAR) - This is your baseline report, your Day 1, your "aha" moment, where you get to discover some exciting things about your competition, and some occasionally depressing things about your current SEO performance. Having access to Hitwise is the most ideal starting point (if you can afford it). If not, tools such as Compete.com, SEMRush, KeywordCompetitor, and OpenSiteExplorer.org can give you really nice insight into where your competitors are earning links, what keywords they are getting traffic from (AdWords and natural search), and even tell you how much more money they spent on specific keywords last month versus the month prior (a keyword performance indicator). For local businesses, WhiteSpark's Local Citation Finder does a darn good job of finding competitor business citations and sorting them by seomoz.org's own Domain Authority for easy prioritizing.
3. Link Analysis Report (LAR) - This report is fun. Using tools like those in the seomoz.org arsenal, or possibly giving Ontolo a spin, you'll be seeking out and creating an organized inventory of link opportunities. Categorize your opportunities by classifications such as: Web Directory, Business Directory, Industry Blog, Regional Blog, Industry Portal, Industry Forum, Industry Experts, Niche Social Networks, and so forth. From here you have a few choices of how to store the information. I prefer Buzzstream, an Eric Ward-approved link tracking software, but Google Docs will do the job as well. If you do use a Google spreadsheet, break your classifications into their own tabs or link building becomes unmanageable.
4. Keyword Discovery Report (KDR) - You'll already have a boatload of data from the first three reports to help with this, possibly the most important, report. You can also explore a number of other tools to help tally up all the keyword opportunities. WordTracker and Google AdWords will provide some excellent ideas, but nothing will beat what you'll find in your own web analytics and Webmaster Tools (provided you are actually tracking conversions and/or sales). With competitor data, you can run pivot tables in Excel to learn about the frequency of keywords the major competitors appear to be receiving traffic from. Purge out the terms that are too broad or not searched enough to be bothered with, sort by relevancy and search volume and you've got yourself a list of keywords to optimize for.

Now that you have all this terrific data, what the heck do you do with it? Here's where actionable items or deliverables come into play.

1. Put your OAR items into a To-Do List within your project management system (under the milestone of On-Page SEO)
2. Put your CAR items into a Google spreadsheet so you can track and monitor changes over time
3. Put your LAR classifications into one or more To-Do List within your project management system (under the Off-Page SEO milestone), put the opportunities into a spreadsheet or Buzzstream
4. Put your KDR into a Google Docs spreadsheet, create a new tab called Content Tracking Spreadsheet with a column for just the top 100 or so keywords, and create columns to track Page Name, Title, Meta Description, Has Video?, Image Name, Image Attributes, Has 450+ words of Content? Matt Cutts Didn't Throw Up, Is Engaging? etc. In your PM system, your content writing tasks can be assigned (put the list under the On-Page SEO milestone)

Now that the technical stuff is done, you get to start the creative and social media campaign planning. Pull a group of super smart people into a room for a full day and come out with awesome link bait, widget, tools/giveaways, and other creative link building strategies to add under your respective milestones.

Milestone 2 - On-Page SEO (2 Months)

There are thousands of smart (and sometimes silly) things you can do to optimize your website. You already have a To-Do List assigned in your project management system to square away OAR findings, and a To-Do List for your content team based on the keyword themes you want to optimize for. This initial phase of your SEO shouldn't take more than 60-90 days and typically isn't rocket science.

You're going to get all sorts of new ideas from the seomoz.org blog, Search Engine Land, SEO Roundtable, and thousands of Tweets if you follow #seo in Twitter. Therefore, if you're using a project management system, your template will be growing and growing over time.

Local and Ecommerce websites will have a few special To-Do Lists for data feed optimization, location-based landing pages, and a few other things you might extract from David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors or elsewhere.

Milestone 3 - Off-Page SEO (3 Months for the Basic Tasks, 6 for Moderate)

Mike Essex wrote an excellent post awhile back on 99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away. I also like to use my Meetup.com group to have everyone provide 1-3 creative link building ideas to everyone who requests ideas, along with some crowd-sourcing tools, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and similar services. Choose the top ideas based on the business and industry and add them to an Advanced SEO To-Do List in your project management system. You will definitely need to create several project briefs for each idea so it makes sense to the tech and marketing teams.

I keep a Google spreadsheet going that has nearly 400 link building opportunities now (thank you Eric Ward).

You'll also have a list for Basic Link Building (industry destinations and directories), Moderate Link Building (outreach, and slightly more technical than submission-based linking). Advanced link building tasks are really more of an initiative and can be tracked outside of the the project management system as ongoing marketing innovation.

Milestone 4 - Social Media Optimization (1 Month for Setup)

This milestone gets a bit tricky and requires getting in bed with those crazy socialmedia people we all love. Perform an audit of all the current destinations our SMM teams are working with and insure they all contain relevant keywords, profile links, and (if location-based) business name, address, and phone number.

Next, seek out new social media opportunities, such as niche social destinations, popular social networks that have not been claimed yet (Google+ might be a good start). You might even buy lunch for the social team, and then try to give them training on how to blog with keyword-rich links every so often. If their eyes start going crazy as if you fed them after midnight, run away and try again another day. If not, train your social team, in distributing content, video, and micro-blogging to give you a serious lift in ranking. The trick is to make them think it was all their idea.

Milestone 5 - Video & Mobile (2 Months for Setup)

Technically, you can break video and mobile into two different milestones. But for the sake of the novel this post has become, let's bundle them together. For video, I recommend having a quick chat or consult with a pro, such as Mark Robertson of ReelSEO on campaign, channel and distribution ideas. Get ready to setup some video XML sitemaps and to start distributing video to relevant sharing networks. Also be prepared to start using video ads (PPC), which may help long term placement on key YouTube videos.

For mobile, you'll want to slip ONE task in for Milestone 2, insuring your mobile users have a custom experience that's mind-blowing and award winning. The rest will revolve around the creation of mobile apps for your products, mobile search optimization, and possibly even a few short code campaigns. We love Vegas, so I'm always excited to get my MB SMS offers from Mandalay Bay).

I've Completed My Milestones, Now What?

If you get through all the milestones (6-12 months on average - some might overlap, but they don't have to), your project management system should be empty of tasks. If so, you're no longer in Production Mode, you're now in Operations Mode and need only use your link and campaign tracking tools (here's a sample) for your day-to-day SEO initiative. However, you may elect to start over and repeat the entire process annually, depending on the results from the first round.

Now you have 5-6 vehicles of SEO in an organized form. You may decide to create a page for each milestone on your yellow notepad when you attend SEO conferences and events. If a presenter gives you some cool "stuff" to do, you should be able to easily classify the task into one of these buckets, so later you can update your project management template, as though you were putting another piece into a seemingly endless puzzle; which beats the heck out of creating scribble for your crumble ball with beautiful coffee rings on it.

Article First Posted on  - seomoz