I thought for this weeks entry I would share an amazing website I recently discovered. The page is Web Design Blog, this blog finds some of the best free wordpress templates, logos, vector images, and general free stuff on the web and shares them with their readers. With this blog I no longer have to go looking around the web for some great free templates or graphics.

As you may be able to see in the screen shot taken from the webpage, they have many sections you can look through. The blog is updated regulary and can help you when you are struggling for ideas. Essentially this is a great place to start if you are building a webpage or designing a logo. You will not be dissapointed.

Link: Web Design Blog

The Irish Proverbs has a great quote that relates to marketing, “If you want an audience start a fight”. Everyone one of use is seeking an audience we can market to. If you write a blog or need a new idea for emarketing, a controversial way is to start a fight. This could include writing about a controversial topic or making an ad campaign that doesn’t conform to traditional advertising. Today I wanted to share with you an ad I found on the internet that meets the clever and new advertising style. This ad is a newer form of advertising called viral marketing. This simply means that viral marketing is a marketing strategy that encourages others to pass along the video or email to someone they know. This marketing is done in hopes of increasing brand awareness or to achieve another marketing purpose.

Here is the ad

Now that you have seen the video that is taking the internet by storm, did you ever notice what the advertisement was for? It seems that the video leads you to believe that cell phones transmit ultra violent rays strong enough to make popcorn, but what does that have to do with anything. It turns out that the ads are for a bluetooth company, although bluetooth headsets are never seen in the viral videos. This viral video raised awareness of the bluetooth brand by people simply wanted to know what it was all about. With the release of these viral videos, this relatively new bluetooth company has had their products featured on National television including Good Morning America, CNN, and MSN to name a few.

So the question is was this youtube video effective marketing, and I respond with an empathetic YES! This relatively unknown (at least to me) bluetooth company was able to make a few inexpensive youtube videos that would gained them international exposure. For the cost of a clever idea and those cheesy actors, they received free publicity from all sorts of news related outlets.

The point of this blog post was to show you an example of an effective and relatively easy viral video idea. If you are a small business on a tight shoestring budget using viral marketing could be a great way to inform others about your products or services. To create a great viral video all you have to do is think of an idea that makes people laugh or experience some sort of emotion. Make sure to look for my next topic on how to create an effective viral campaign. Otherwise, please share with me if you thought this campaign was effective or not.

Many people, including me, work hours upon hours to secure backlinks for their website. Most of us only build hundreds of page rank 0 backlinks and very few page rank 2+ backlinks. With this method you will receive a lot of PR 1+ backlinks with very little effort. Not only will you receive backlinks, but you will also show that you are an authority within a specific industry. The secret method that I will talk about today is Article Marketing. This method will yield a massive amount of page rank 1+ backlinks that are long term backlinks that carry an authority weight to them. So go on and read.

Articles are an amazing way to get backlinks, in my own experience I have had great success with this method. Case in point, I have recently begun working for a client based in the construction field, I wrote 4 articles related to this field and then put them up on Ezine Articles. About a month or so later those articles are now page rank 4,3,3,2. Ezine articles allows 3 self serving links to your webpage in your articles. That is 3 page rank 4 backlinks, 6 page rank 3 backlinks, and 3 page rank 2 backlinks! Not to mention Google will see these as authority links because of the content found in the article. It would cost a lot of money to buy those kind off links that will last for a long time.

So Where do you begin?

You can start with thinking of articles that apply to your niche. For example if you own a construction supply company that specializes in concrete sales, you could write an article on concrete counter tops. Or you could write an article on how to use certain tools correctly (ok so that idea sucked). However if you think about it there are a lot of different topics you can cover. When you begin brainstorming make sure you pull out a pen and paper, and start writing them down. It doesn’t matter how bad your ideas are, just keep thinking of ideas. My article that I mentioned before that is a PR 4, is actually only 250 words long on how to remove paint. That idea is terrible, but it paid off huge for me. So don’t worry just write those ideas down.

Writing your Article

Now that you have a few ideas it is time to write your article. You need to begin by researching your topic and getting a general idea of what you will write about. If you begin writing your article and cant think of a opening or another part dont worry about it. Just write what you can think of now and worry about the rest later. Remember to write an article for every idea you came up with, your boring idea may be a PR 4 backlink in the ruff. If you are a terrible article writer or you want a nice automated blog with unique content you can contact me for a great deal! I am more then happy to be a ghost writer for your webpage/blog and give you all the credit.

The Rest of the Article Process

Now that you have an article you can submit it to Ezine Articles. They are my favorite article website, so I would recommend them to anyone. Make sure you do not submit your article to a bunch of article websites, the great Google will see this as duplicate content and punish you. If you feel the need to submit it to multiple pages, at least change the content a little. Once you have submitted start writing a new one and keep this process up. In a few months you will have a few amazing backlinks.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions, or you can email me. Once again if you are in need of content or ideas please contact me for a quote.

Stuck trying to figure out what your design should look like? Well look no further, I present to you the Top 10 Best Design and Web Inspirations.

1. http://www.bestcssgallery.com

Best CSS Gallery offers a huge variety of inspiration. They have a great top rated list if you do not want to look through all the pages. You can not submit your webpages/blogs at this point in time.

2. http://www.boxedcss.com

This site is amazing for design inspiration. You can submit your webpage/blog for reviews, if chosen your webpage may be featured and receive a PR 5 backlink! Not only do they have great designs but they will provide you with FREE CSS Grids, and who doesn’t like free stuff? They have a very clean design free of a lot of advertisements and hundreds of pages of inspiration.

3. http://www.cssartillery.com

CSS Artillery has a huge variety of design inspiration. One nice thing about CSS Artillery is that they break up their web pages by category. So if you needed a business web idea you could go to that category. They also have a submit web design that could potentially give you a PR 5 backlink.

4. http://www.cssbased.com

CSS Based Web Design Gallery has a great mix of web inspiration anyone can enjoy. They also provide a chance to submit your site. They stay up to date on the best designs, and if your site is featured you will be provided with a PR 6 backlink.

5. http://www.cssclip.com

CSS Clip has a great layout that is easy to follow and free of advertising. One great thing about CSS Clip is the fact that you can look for design inspiration based on your color scheme. You can also look at their top designs for the year. You can also submit your website for review, if chosen you will receive a PR 5 backlink. This is one of my favorite sites for design inspiration, and I’m sure it will be yours too.

6. http://www.csscreme.com

CSS Creme has a huge selection of design inspiration. You can view webpages based on category, top rated or shuffle. Their are a few advertisements on the page, but nothing that distracts to the overall design. You can also submit your webpage for review, if chosen you will receive a PR 5 backlink.

7. http://www.cssdaddy.com

CSS Daddy has a great clean design that is easy to navigate through. Although their selection is smaller, they make up for it by the number of categories you can look at. This makes it easier if you are looking for a specific niche. They also offer the ability to submit your website, if accepted you will receive a PR 3 backlink.

8. http://www.portfoliobase.com

Portfolio Base has a smaller selection of inspiration, however they offer many different color schemes, top rated and awarded designs to choose from. You can submit your design and if chosen you would receive a PR 3 backlink.

9. http://www.prowebart.net

Pro Web Art has a great design that is free of annoying advertisements. They also offer a variety of categories to search from. Pro Web Art has also offers a streaming tv show you can watch for the latest industry news. They also offer tutorials for design and the ability to submit your website. If you site is accepted you will receive a PR 5 backlink.

10. http://www.stylecrunch.com

Style Crunch has a great black design that is both appealing to the eye and makes it easy to see the web designs that are featured. They have a large selection of web inspiration, and feature many categories that make it easy to find what you need. They also allow you to submit your web designs for consideration for placement on their website. If you are accepted you will get a PR 5 backlink.
Honorable Mention

http://www.asiteaday.com

A Site a Day reviews a webpage/blog every day. They then post their images of the great sites they find. You can also submit your blog for review. If it is reviewed you will be given a free backlink. For all you who need backlinks they are a PR 4, so if you have a great design send it in.

Public speaking can be a great source of inspiration for marketing. I have put together a few tips that will help you improve your marketing ability and better understand public speaking.

You Need to Know your Audience

It seems obvious that you would never want to give a speech on preventing hot flashes during menopause to an audience of men in their mid-20s. However it’s not always so obvious that you wouldn’t want to market your product to the wrong demographic. But if you want the most return for your marketing dollars, be sure to do research and find out to whom your product will appeal. Google is a great example of how this can be accomplished. They use information found by your emails, what you search for and other ideas to sell different products or services specifically to your needs,

Make yourself Heard

If you give a speech and no one can hear you, no one will care about what you have to say. The same goes with marketing. Once you know your target audience, if they don’t realize you exist, you don’t matter. You need to come up with new innovative ideas to help your audience hear what you have to say. However remember to know be so loud that you leave bad impressions on your target audience. In marketing you may create a bad logo that screams amateur to your readers, or you may have terrible customer service. Make yourself heard with new ideas, but be careful not to use something that might hurt your business.

Recognize and overcome fears.

It’s been said that fear of public speaking is the most common phobia in the world, above even the fear of death. When you think about it public speaking is nothing more than talking with a fancier name. The same thing goes for marketing. You need to show your prospective customers the craziness of their fear of buying your product or service. Even more importantly, you need to overcome any ridiculous fears that may be holding you back from success. As Swedish football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson said, “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.”

Never discount passion.

The best public speakers care about their cause. The best speeches ever given concern the greatest causes ever undertaken: think of Lincoln, Ghandi, Churchill. Marketing should convey why your product is important. You might not aspire to solve the wrongs of the world as these speakers did, but you can solve the problems of one person. If you don’t care enough about your product or service to get excited and show some passion about it, then why should your customers?

Press Releases can be one of the most secretive and confusing marketing tools that you can use in your arsenal. Most beginner and experienced marketers on the internet do not use press releases, nor have they ever tried it. So I thought it would be fitting to show you how to use Press Releases to build backlinks and get a leg up on your competitors. This will be a multiple part series that will teach you step by step how to accomplish the art of press releases. I have used press releases for a few projects but I thought it would be more fitting to go step by step through the press release process with this blog. That will include writing a press release, submitting the press release and tracking its progress. You can then apply what you learn to your own business or blog to gain those vital backlinks and traffic.


What is a Press Release?

A Press Release is a public relations announcement issued to the news media and other targeted publications for the purpose of letting the public know of a company. What that means is that you will create a story or event that has happened to inform the media of your presence. If you want a visual idea of what a press release is, go to Google News and type in “backlinks” or any keyword you would like. Most of the stories you will see will be press releases that are on the internet. Their are many companies on the internet that offer press release services that will submit your press release to multiple news outlets.


What can be a Press Release?

You can use anything that you would like to announce for a press release. Some good ideas for a press release include:

• Announcing a new product or software etc.
  
• Announcing new services provided by your company or blog. For example if you now offer a free SEO analysis for everyone who visits your webpage.
  
• Basically anything you come up with can be worked into a Press Release (that doesn’t mean it will be published)
  

To give you a better idea, I typed in “Backlinks” on Google News and this is what appeared for the top news results.

As you can see, you can use about anything for your press release, for example “Free Backlinks and Traffic Through Forum Posts” isn’t exactly a ground breaking news story. So don’t worry if you think your story is weak you still have a chance to make it on Google News and other news outlets. If you want a better idea of newsworthy stories go to Google News and type in the keyword you will be targeting, go through and read the top press releases so that you can better understand what your story will need.

How can a Press Release Benefit Me?

If you write a good press release you have a chance of getting on the first page of Google News for your specific keyword. Your press release will also be submitted to other news outlets that may pick up your story. If any of these outlets pick up your story you will have specific direct traffic. This will help grow your site and bring new customers. You also have the chance of other blogs picking up your story and posting it on their webpage, thus providing you with a backlink that will help your search engine position. In some cases your news story may be at the top of the normal Google results for a specific keyword. This will once again bring you direct traffic and will boost your authority in the eyes of Google. This will help your overall page strength and rankings in Google. If you look at the overall picture of a press release it can be very beneficial to your overall SEO strategy.


Coming up in Part 2 – Step by Step instructions on how to write an eye catching Press Release.

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If you are one of those advertisers or the many Webmasters who use Google Adwords in order to bring in traffic to your site or into your client’s site, then you should learn the tips on making greater profit on Google Adwords. After completing the generation of your keyword list, do the following for more traffic:

The most important thing you would need to do is to come up with an advertisement that will lure people to take a look at your site. Remember though that the advertisement you create should follow Google rules in terms of format:

*Use text only listings
*Title lines should be composed of 25 characters
*Product Descriptions should be at least two lines composed of up to thirty five characters each
*Limit your URL only to thirty five characters

Of course make sure that the message you give to your potential customers or visitors would be direct, effective and concise in order to drive more sales.

When it comes to thinking of the title line for your ad, make sure that your end result will be catchy and would push the visitors to read the full product or service description in your site. If your potential visitors do not read the full description, then more often than not, they will not click on the link to visit your site/your client’s site.

Think of it as a trial and error since it is a fact that with Adwords, you will be able to change the content easily. Do not hesitate to try different approaches and come up with a number of word combinations or phrases and then stick with the ones that will lead to more clicks from potential customers.

Do not forget how important your descriptions are because those would be the tools that will help convince your visitors that clicking on the link would give them what they are looking for or will give benefits and features that they cannot say “no” to. Make sure that the description you create will be able to give more value to your potential customers as compared to what your competitors can give. Higher “clickthroughs” are said to be generated when you mention points such as: special offers, wider choices, flexibility in terms of terms and payment options, limited edition products, etc.

Lastly, make sure that the landing page that your potential customers will be able to reach when clicking on the link would really contain the right products or services as what you advertised in your Adwords page. Make sure that the page they reach would indeed contain complete information on the products/services they are interested in.

By following the guidelines stated, you will eventually realize that you are becoming more successful with your Google Adwords “business” and that you are able to enjoy more and more clickthroughs that would definitely be a step towards earning more money through Adwords. What are you waiting for? Try the tips mentioned above and be among those people who have earned a lot of profit in the world of Google Adwords.

Like I said in my WordPress how to, I am not programmer literate nor do I understand php and how most things work on the web. However I found Joomla really easy to install and work with. If WordPress were not so easy to use for blogs, I would probably be using Joomla. Joomla has a really good community that creates extensions that anyone can use. They have actually come up with some really good ones, if you want to see them to get an idea of what to expect just head over to Joomla.com

Step 1 – Download Joomla and Unzip it
Go to Joomla.com and you should see a link in the middle of the webpage that says “download”. Click that link and save the file to your computer. Once the file is downloaded you need to unzip it. You can do this with a program like WinZip or winrar. You can extract the contents to anywhere on your computer.

Step 2 – Set up MySql Database
Login to your cpanel and go to “MySQL databases”. Look for the button “add db” and type in the form the name of the new database (ex: joomladatabase). Press “add db” button. The new database is created. Now, let’s add a user to that database. Look for “Add User” button. Type your username and a password and press “add User”. The next step is to add the user to our database. Below databases are 2 dropdown spots where you see a user and a database. Select your new user and database. Below select the desired privileges and press “Adduser to DB”. Make sure you save this information because it will be used again in a later step.

Step 3 – Upload Joomla to Your WebServer
You can either log in to your cpanel and access a file manager or connect to your webserver through an ftp client. I use Filezilla (it’s free) to connect to my server and upload files, but you can use whatever you want. Once connected you need to take that folder you extracted in step 2 and upload it to your server. In filezilla this is as simple as clicking and dragging the file to your server (if you are connected).

Step 4 – Joomla Setup
Open up your web browser and go to your webpage you just uploaded to. Once there you should see a screen that looks like this. The screen will have 3 sections: The first checks that your system is able to run Joomla, the second part is some PHP settings and the third part checks several file and directory permissions. All parts must be like our image. If the first 2 are not the same ask your web hosting provider about them and maybe they will make corrections. The 3rd part must be modified by you. This can be done with your ftp client. You must give the directory permissions (CHMOD) so the files to be writeable. If you need to CHMOD all you need to do is open your ftp client, log in to your server and right click your Joomla folder. You will see something like “file attributes” click that. Once open type “777” where the number is and select “recurse to sub directories and files”. This will make it possible for Joomla to work. Now go back to your domain and it should be working.

Step 5 – Configure Joomla
You have to fill in the database configuration info (this is the same info you received in Step 2 when you made the Sql database). Your hostname is usually “localhost”. We created before the database, username and password. Now, all you have to do is to fill the spaces with the name of the database, username and password. The MySQL Table prefix can be left “jos_” Click “Next”. A pop-up window will appear to ask you if all info is correct. Make sure it is all correct and then go ahead and click “ok”. On the next window all you need to do is type in your site name. And then click “next”.

Step 6 – Final Step
Just keep filling in the information. You will then get to a screen that provides you with a username: admin and a password. Write down that password because you will need it to login to Joomla. You can change your password and username at a later time, so don’t worry.

Now click next, if you try to login to your webpage immediately, Joomla will remind you to delete your installation directory. All you need to do is log into your Web server with the ftp client and delete the folder. Now you should be able to log, and use Joomla.

Since this is an eMarketing blog I thought it would be fitting to teach you how to install and use Wordpress. This may seem like a very basic post to most, but to those who are just starting to learn how to do SEO or make webpages etc this could be a big help. I am a very average web author, so for those of you who may be intimidated by installing Wordpress, dont be! It is so easy, even if you have no idea of what you are doing. I will show you step by step and I can answer any questions you might have.