1. Thou shall not send e-mail spam; Build a following instead.
E-mail spamming is illegal, unethical, and potentially disastrous for your business. Instead, build a double opt-in e-mail list that is relevant to your industry. It can be a newsletter, weekly tips, industry news, etc. It will vary depending on your industry, but the overall goal is to provide something of value to your target audience.
A high quality e-mail list, one that provides much value to the reader, re-enforces industry leadership. If you're not a good writer, find a good editor to turn your material into quality content. Content is king, and the recent flood of social networks is making sharing content easier than ever.
A high quality e-mail list, one that provides much value to the reader, re-enforces industry leadership. If you're not a good writer, find a good editor to turn your material into quality content. Content is king, and the recent flood of social networks is making sharing content easier than ever.
2. Thou shall not post the same thing across dozens of community sites; Become a valuable part of the communities instead.
Take the time to post meaningful content to communities relevant to your industry, somewhere your customers also visit. This will further position your business as an industry leader, generate leads, and connect you with your customers in a meaningful way.
Don't forget to monitor social networks for people talking about your brand, they count as communities too. From a customer service perspective, customers usually appreciate the added effort. This is your chance to turn a customer into someone that preaches your brand to everyone they know.
Don't forget to monitor social networks for people talking about your brand, they count as communities too. From a customer service perspective, customers usually appreciate the added effort. This is your chance to turn a customer into someone that preaches your brand to everyone they know.
3. Thou shall not buy links for pennies on the dollar; They could get you banned, and ethical link building is much more effective.
Get quality marketing or link building from a reputable company, or learn how to do it yourself. Cheap marketing can hurt your search engine rankings and your brand. Everyone seems to claim to be an internet marketing expert these days, tread carefully.
4. Thou shall not use automated spam software.
Link building while you sleep, it's a dream come true, what could be better?
I know it's tempting but you have to resist, it's just not worth it. Google will delist you, everyone will hate you, your website will get blacklisted, e-mail providers will stop accepting your mail, etc. There's no need to force your product onto anyone with spam; Fantastic new marketing opportunities are all over the place lately.
I know it's tempting but you have to resist, it's just not worth it. Google will delist you, everyone will hate you, your website will get blacklisted, e-mail providers will stop accepting your mail, etc. There's no need to force your product onto anyone with spam; Fantastic new marketing opportunities are all over the place lately.
5. Thou shall not ask questions about thy own product, then answer it with a different account.
You're not the first person to think of it. It doesn't work well and it doesn't look good for you when you get caught. They can see the same IP address was used. Even if you can do it from multiple IP addresses, the quality of traffic from sites like Yahoo Answers is pretty bad. Instead, try to build mutually beneficial relationships with people in your line of business.
6. Thou shall not market without analytics software.
Measure and analyze your marketing efforts! Know exactly what kind of value you are getting. Optimize your efforts as much as you can, and if you're still not getting a good return on your investment, dump it. There's a lot of options out there and not all of them are going to work for you, but you won't even know if they're working or not if you don't have analytics software.
Numbers, graphs, and data analytics for any type of marketing is infinitely more useful than shooting in the dark and hoping for the best. If every step of your marketing strategy isn't driven by data analytics, then you're doing it wrong.
Numbers, graphs, and data analytics for any type of marketing is infinitely more useful than shooting in the dark and hoping for the best. If every step of your marketing strategy isn't driven by data analytics, then you're doing it wrong.
7. Thou shall not have cheesy fake testimonials.
They're easy to spot and you want to make a good first impression, don't you? If you're not providing detailed information with testimonials, enough for someone to believe or verify your claims, then don't bother. A mediocre review from John in Texas looks suspicious and you're better off leaving it out. One day you might have thousands of raving customers, no need to fake it in the mean time.
8. Thou shall not spam blog comments.
Blog spammers are bad apples in the internet marketing world. Instead, write insightful comments on blogs relevant to your industry. They won't mind if you link to your site once in a while, when appropriate. If you're not going to contribute high quality comments, skip blog commenting all together.
9. Thou shall not use link exchange programs or web rings.
Back in the day, some people took advantage of the fact that Google wasn't very good at detecting these link schemes. Times have changed, Google knows about them and they should be avoided. Repairing the damage of a link scheme can be expensive and stressful.
