Sue Worthington

Many business owners I speak with say they are disappointed that their social media efforts are not working as they expected.
They have set up their Linkedin, Twitter and maybe Facebook profiles, they may even have a blog.
The reason it does not work is simple – they have no plan!
Here is what you need to do to make your social media work for you:- Read the rest of this entry »

We are all touched in some way by the power of social media every day, but many business owners are still hesitant to harness that power for their company. There are a few things you can do to ensure success with social media in 2010, and here are my top 7 tips.

• Social media is a set of tools to get you closer to your customer to begin the process of relationship building. It is all about people, so do not forget to give value and listen. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that the Google search engine processes 1.4 million search requests per minute!

Have you ever wondered how a small business could appear in the list of Google’s local results.  The local results are the lists of businesses that appear at the top of Google search results with their location on a map.

In order to list your business here, all you have to do is register your business at Google Local Business Center. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Cutts gives his usual great advice -- this time about getting better visibility on Google:-

• Just think about what people will type in to find your site and use those keywords on your page.
• “Title tags matter”, when people search on Google the title tag is what people see, and is the first impression of your website.
• The description tag is a short summary of what your website is all about and is also often shown to users when they search on Google.  So Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week I attended the Alex Jeffreys ‘Marketing with Alex’ workshop in fabulous Las Vegas.

Wow! What a fantastic experience it was.  This was my first event and will not be my last!

Met loads of fantastic people, and listened to some great speakers, including Jit Uppal and Stephanie Mulac as well as Alex himself of course. Read the rest of this entry »

Press releases can be a very effective way to  generate traffic to your blog.

You can generate thousands of visitors, within a very short time.  You can also get quite a few incoming links  which will help to push your site and your press release up in the search engines rankings.

It is generally after a week or two, when the release begins to be get noticed by the search engines and starts gaining rankings, that you start seeing traffic. Read the rest of this entry »

It helps to generate traffic to your blog if you have links from other sites.  I have covered linking strategies and also blog linking strategies in other posts, in my ‘Traffic Generation Strategy’ series of posts.

Creating a squidoo lens is like an amalgamation of both techniques.  The lens will contain separate information form your blog, but is your ‘virtual real estate‘ in that you own it and create the content for it, and you can link from it to your blog and vice versa.

My multi blogging strategy (available when you subscribe to my list on the sidebar) describes exactly how to Read the rest of this entry »

I use social bookmarking as part of almost every post I make.

If you read my post entitled  ‘Writing The Perfect Blog Post’ you will see the specific technique I use in each post I make.

However, that technique involves social bookmarking other sites on which I have commented.

I also bookmark my own posts too – not every one though.

It is a horribly time consuming task though and really tedious.

You have to create accounts at every social bookmark site – now I know this is only a one off task but it still takes time.  Read the rest of this entry »

Article Marketing is not as difficult as most people think it is.

People always have the perception that you must write a very sophisticated article to be a good one. Actually, what people need from your article for you to share  your expertise so that they can learn and perhaps apply what you know. You do not have to write extremely sophisticated articles, or to have a degree in English, to entice your reader. In fact, the more sophisticated your article, the less people will stay reading because they find it hard to understand.

Keep it simple!!

In order to generate traffic to your website, this is what your article should contain:- Read the rest of this entry »

Another great strategy to boost your blog traffic is by participating in Forums.  But what is the best way to go about this, because like any other strategy, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

Forum users are usually net savvy and very open to making online purchases.  Many forum users are also experts and bloggers in the specific topics covered in the forum.

Forum marketing has a high ROI, because once you make a good impression in an influential forum, this can help enormously in spreading your message.

So what do you need to do:-

• Find the right forum.

Search for forums in your niche.  You can try http://www.big-boards.com which gives a list of different forums in different niches, and the number of members.

• Check the posting guidelines.

Make sure you are allowed to promote yourself, how and what you are allowed to say, and what you are allowed to put in your signature. Read the rest of this entry »