At the heart of all good internet marketing strategies you’ll find effective keyword selection. Success hinges on choosing the right keywords for your online marketing campaign. If your focus is too general you’ll get a lot of traffic… but very low conversion rates, if your focus is too narrow you’ll get great conversion, but not enough volume to make it really pay. The trick is to find the optimum balance between the two. That’s where effective keyword research comes in.

Whether it’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), PPC (Pay Per Click / Google Adwords), social media, ad networks, affiliate marketing or whatever else you care to invest your time, energy and resources in, good keyword research is the foundation successful online marketing campaigns are built on.

So how do you find the right keywords for your niche? Here’s SEO specialist Aaron Wall of the widely acclaimed and respected SEO Book website explains keyword research basics:

Check out SEOBook.com for more great keyword research resources.

What are your top keyword research tips? Let us know in the comments.

Targeted Traffic Generation is the key to Affiliate success

Auto Mass Traffic -- top ranking affiliate traffic generator

The real trick to making money as an affiliate marketer is to direct large volumes of targeted web traffic to high converting affiliate offers in your niche. It’s no coincidence that some of the highest profile, best converting products on Clickbank are designed to help new and experienced affiliates to do just that.

Top of the heap, according to it’s gravity score (a Clickbank measure of product effectiveness) is Auto Mass Traffic.

Traffic System + Software = A Smarter Way to Work

If you’re struggling to see your affiliate commissions rise above a few dollars, the techniques outlined in the Auto Mass Traffic members area are designed to help. And here’s the best bit:

• You don’t need Google
• You don’t need a blog
• You don’t need an e-mail list
• You don’t even need a website

All you need is a tiny bit of capital and the willingness to invest a little time implementing the techniques revealed in the programme.

Auto Mass Traffic top of the clickbank charts

Whether you’re sending traffic to affiliate offers or to your own landing pages, the system is based on identifying “buyer keywords” and showing you how to leverage the power of online ad networks outside the realm of the search-engine gatekeepers at Google, Bing and Yahoo, and without needing to invest lots of time in content creation, blogging, social media and SEO.

Imagine being able to put your traffic generation on autopilot. What would you do with all that extra time?

• Create new products to promote and grow your online business
• Spend more time with your family and friends
• Climb out of the trenches and start planning your business strategically for better results

Like many of these products the sales pages for Auto Mass Traffic are garnished with the usual assortment of hype and over-the-top marketing rhetoric, but the underlying system is based on sound principles and certainly has potential. The vendor also offers an iron-clad 60 day no-questions-asked money-back warranty, so you really can’t loose. Check it out for yourself, and watch your affiliate income soar.

While people have always talked about the companies they do business with, today instead of telling five friends in a bar about that bad customer service experience, or crappy product, they’re online telling 50, 500, 5000….

You can’t afford to ignore that. Social media is here to stay. Some of your customers are undoubtedly out there looking to engage with you through social media today.

The next generation of consumers won’t just expect to engage with you through online social channels, they’ll demand it. Will you be ready?

Image via Wikipedia

As an independent professional service provider looking to succeed online you’re going to encounter one fundamental problem. You – your time, your skills, your personality, your charisma – are not scaleable.

No matter how well you market yourself, and how much business you bring in, you can only do so much of that work yourself. Once you’re fully booked, you’re fully booked – you can’t take on more work until you stop doing something else.

How to scale your online business

There is one absolutely vital thing that you do own, however, which is valuable and truly scaleable: that’s your knowledge. By packaging your expertise effectively, and turning it into a product rather than a professional service, you do two things:

1. You make access to your expertise more affordable to a much wider audience
2. After the initial investment of creating your knowledge product you’re free to sell it to as many people as you can without much additional demand on your time and resources.

But how do you go about developing a product based on your knowledge and expertise?

Dave Navarro, AKA “The Launch Coach”, has built a successful online business showing people just like you how to do exactly that!

I’ve been working through Dave’s excellent free online marketing workbooks in the LaunchCoach Library. The workbooks take you step-by-step through:

• 7 steps you can take to playing a much bigger online game
• 7 steps to networking yourself to A-Listers
• 7 simple income streams that you can actually create
• How to start making real money with your product in just 3 days

The thing I like most about Dave’s style is that he avoids the usual marketing hype of your typical online “gurus”, and gets straight to the meaty stuff that’s really valuable to people like you and me who are looking to turn our expertise into a scaleable online business.

I’m not a “guru.”  I’m just a guy who’s pretty darned
good at teaching people how to do things in a simple
step-by-step, you-can-do-this manner.

Dave Navarro – The Launch Coach

The free stuff that Dave offers is amazing – but if you’re looking to fast-track your online product creation and promotion skills, you should check out his latest offering

Two downloadable Workshops — 10 great training modules — that show you how he built his own online business, and that could be just the catalyst you need to kick start your online business.

I’m certainly going to check it out. You’ll find all the details on Creating Products that Sell & Building a Responsive List on Dave’s site.

Toyota teamed with comedy director Jody Hill to create this creative series of online videos featuring a couple of self-absorbed parents and their young family with the only vehicle that can match their awesomeness, the Toyota Sienna.

The ads seems to be resonating with parents and are generating a lot of buzz through this clever hip hop parody. Check out the full series of Swagger Wagon videos here… and watch for this one cropping up in 2010 online marketing awards later this year.

Check out this video of Damian in action, and be sure to roll by the Simply Zesty blog for lots of social media insight from Ireland’s leading social media agency.

But as Chris Pirillo points out at LeWeb 2009, the tools are NOT the community – the community is the people using the tools, the connections between them.

My favourite quote from Chris’s presentation:

If you believe a community is a tool, then you yourself are a tool.

Communities aren’t about tools and they’re not about technology – communities are about people, and understanding people is far more valuable than understanding the underlying platforms and technology when it comes to being a part of and harnessing the potential of online communities.

We’re sourcing case studies from various places, and will feature a mixture of different online campaigns in the book, from award-winners to more obscure but successful campaigns from all sorts of businesses spanning a variety of industries.

We’re a bit short of time to truly crowdsource all the case studies for this edition – but we are looking for your nominations to help us identify truly exceptional examples of online marketing that we may miss through other channels.

You can use this form to submit your favourite campaign for consideration. We’ll let you know if it goes on to be featured in the book.

Thanks a million for your input.

Understanding Digital: CREATIVE will take place at the National College of Ireland in the city centre from 4-7 pm, followed by a drinks reception and  an opportunity for informal networking.  We’re hosting the event in conjunction with the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design (ICAD) as part of Design Week 2009.

For just €50 (€10 for current ICAD members) you get to share the expertise and insight of four leading digital creative minds.

Places are limited, and at that price they’re going fast so register now to secure yours.

The speakers

As well as Damian and myself… who’ll be hosting he event… our panel of speakers will explore how digital media can expand the scope of creative marketing online, facilitate interaction and ultimately improve the bottom line.

We’ll hear from Dave Birss, Creative Digital Director at Ogilvy London; Matt Butterworth, Managing Director of Folk Creative; Nick Suckley, Managing Partner of Agenda 21 Digital and Robin Grant, founder of We are Social.

It’s a line-up that Damian and I are very excited about. It promises to be a great event, and the drinks reception afterwards, in association with Design Week sponsor Bombay Sapphire will be a great opportunity to meet and chat with us, with the speakers and a great mix of people from inside and outside the digital media sector.

We hope you can make it, and look forward to welcoming you on the 05 November.

Image by HubSpot via Flickr

Social media is the buzzword in online marketing today.

It’s still in its embryonic stages, and not nearly as critical to online success, or indeed as measurable, as some more established online marketing channels (search springs to mind as the online marketing granddaddy that dwarfs all others in terms of potential ROI and measurability), but it is gaining momentum fast.

People are flocking to social media sites around the globe, using them to connect more effectively with more of their peers, to share, entertain and communicate. And of course where the masses lead, the marketers are never far behind.

While Social Media may not be as fundamental as an effective search marketing strategy to your company’s online success (yet), there’s are some crucial differences. You can’t really compare the two directly, because they’re trying to achieve two very different objectives.

Search marketing is focussed on driving targeted traffic to your site, and ultimately converting that traffic into paying customers,  social media is more about nurturing and building ongoing relationships surrounding your brand. It’s about taking that first contact — whether it comes through a search engine, word of mouth, social media referral, or perhaps even a newspaper ad (yes, it still happens ) — and building it into a lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.

Of course there’s crossover here: some brands use search for more subliminal marketing like brand awareness and social media is used for direct marketing… but by and large, for most businesses, the distinction outlined above holds true.

Finding the Social Media Win-Win

Social media marketing is all about finding a “win-win”. Get it right and the viral potential of online networks can do wonders for your business. Get it wrong, and that same viral effect can be devastating.

That’s one of the things that makes social media a scary place for traditional marketers, who tend to be more used to shouting than listening. The conversational aspect of social media marketing… the fact that you have to listen, adapt and respond to what people are saying about your brand in practically real time… can be daunting.

There’s a steep learning curve, and because it’s all so new there’s no “manual” to speak of… everyone, even the apparent pandemic of “Social Media Experts” you’ll find on Twitter, are just feeling their way here, whatever they may claim.

In Understanding Digital Marketing we explored a few of the Social Media Rules of Engagement – some common-sense guidelines to help you navigate a course through the social media jungle. But talking to my own children recently, I realised that good social media etiquette isn’t a million miles away from the way any sensible parent teaches their child to play nicely with their peers.

Back to Social Media Basics

Think about it… as parents we teach our children to share, to listen, to respect other people’s opinions while understanding the value of their own.

Sounds a lot like a roadmap for a successful foray into Social Media if you ask me. So why, as adults, do we struggle to apply the “social rules” we mastered in the school playground when we venture online?

• Sharing is caring: Barney, may be as irritating as hell, but he also has a point. Sharing is at the heart of social media interaction… so provide useful content, links and comments that add real value and are relevant to the conversation.
• Show a little respect: we’re always telling children to respect other people’s views, and that even if they don’t match our own, they are no less valid. That’s just as relevant online.
• Play nicely: wherever people congregate, be it the school playground, the pub or a Facebook Fan Page, there are going to be disparate personalities, some of which will clash. We try to teach our children to work through their differences and to be polite and courteous. It’s no different online.
•  Rules are rules: another important lesson children learn when they’re young is to play by the rules… be they the household rules we set as parents, the school’s rules, rules at the local swimming pool or the rules of a family board game. It’s no different when the places we visit are virtual.

Interacting with other people is tricky, but we’ve been doing it for a long time. Yes, some are better at it than others… in the pub, at work or online, but this isn’t rocket science. We all know the basics… we;ve been doing it since pre-school!