Contest at Ezine HAHD
Filed under: Article Marketing, The Big Debate - Article vs Video Marketing
I wasn’t aware that there was a contest at Ezine Articles for 100 articles in 100 days – but looks like I’ll be participating by default. My deadline for the 300 articles is much sooner actually, but the difference is I was not necessarily planning on 400 words for all my articles.
I’m confident somewhere in the mix, a good portion of the articles I am currently writing are going to make that 400 word minimum.
The past two weeks have been spent doing some major research and planning. I have reviewed several article marketing ebooks on speed, subject, selling within articles, and some time was spent creating my topics to cover in each article. With all the preliminary work done, I “should” be able to just jump in and write daily with the goals of each article all preplanned. The next three weeks will be spent in a massive writing frenzy.
Up until now, my record number of articles to write in a day was a measly 5. This of course was slowed because of lack of focus and direction. I have to add, those articles also were well over 500 words a piece, which will not be necessary for this challenge. The day would be spent surfing, looking for topics, and honestly not really having an ideal format in mind for each article.
Things have changed drastically since then, and I feel all for the better.
The past 3 days unfortunately have been a bit of a wash with the holidays here and interruptions of guests, but I am anxious for this coming week where I will not be facing obligations and interruptions.
Yesterday in fact was the first 24 hours in a long time where I did not even log on to the internet (gasp)! This is going to be perhaps the biggest time saver for me.
I am lucky to have my own Macspeech Dictate, which is also going to be a great time saver.
I have fallen in love with a new tool, which I will be giving a review to as one of my articles. It allows me to automatically upload to some article directories, keep track of where specific articles have been submitted, and even upload to my blogs – which is where you want to put your articles first before submitting to the directories. I can create several resource boxes and project folders.
Well, I’ve got a window of time right now to get some more done, so off I go.
Will you be joining the Ezine challenge?
Originally posted 2010-01-03 09:30:29. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
A Great Debate For Viral Marketing – Video Vs Article Marketing
Filed under: Article Marketing, The Big Debate - Article vs Video Marketing, Video Marketing
Marketing campaigns can come in all kinds of flavors. Perhaps one way to stir up some attention is with a Great Debate.
IMP has been inspired to take on a debate, but this battle will have a set time frame and is just one big battle. It is the argument of which is better for conversions – Article Marketing or Video Marketing.
Now in a perfect world you really want to be doing both, and you want to do them in multiple places.
In an attempt to track results, the articles and videos in this experiment will be submitted only to Ezine Articles and Youtube.
Ezine Articles requires unique content, which on a free account that is being used will take up to 2-3 weeks for the articles to be approved. The plan is to submit articles and videos at the same time, as the videos should not be seen by ezine as duplicate content considering they are in video format and technically not readable by the spiders.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using both platforms.
As you know, words are primarily what control the internet. But video and multimedia appear to get some special love from Google.
Some article marketers swear by Ezine, not just because of it’s high page rank (giving you a high ranking link) but because its ability to rank articles quickly within the search engines.
Ezine allows 2 links within the resource box.
Youtube offers the ability to use your video as a video response to someone elses video, while Ezine does not have an article response mechanism in place.
Articles can be crafted in a way for the reader to gently glide into the click, while with a video the user is given a direct URL to type in or is directed to click on a link within the “more info” box.
And videos let you add more info to give a better description of what is taking place in the video.
Products need to be selected for this experiment.
The thought is to use a product that is centered around article marketing as a topic, and a second product that is centered around video marketing.
IMP is still personally debating if a third control product should be added to the mix. A product impartial to article or video which is a simple internet marketing product in general or a side related topic such as public domain, site flipping, using adwords – you get the picture. Perhaps the only topics to be taboo are those not entertained by ezine articles such as electronic cigarettes, and promotion of PLR as a way to get content.
The debate is the topic of the campaign in general, and like any other internet marketing plan it needs to be properly planned out. Work needs to be done to create the materials, and to market them all accordingly.
Updates will be provided here on IMP.
Originally posted 2009-12-03 11:35:30. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Finally Chose a Domain
Filed under: Article Marketing, Market Research, The Big Debate - Article vs Video Marketing, Video Marketing, internet marketing plan
The big deadline for the work of 300 articles and 300 videos will be here March 17th. I’ve had roughly 9 days to do some organizing and planning whilst running another business that is in desperate need of some viral marketing of its own.
I had been debating how to get the best results from my 100 articles about article marketing, and where I was going to point those links to.
If you don’t know it already, I’m actually not too keen on articles. I typically feel some restraint – but I am going full blast into becoming the best expert I can on the topic and sharing freely as much on the subject as I can. I am giving it my honest best go to soak up as much as I can.
At one point I was just going to do this with the topics of article marketing and video marketing, but now have some wild card topics for the last 100.
Someone in my hot poll thread at the WF asked,
So, you’d be making 75 videos and 75 articles for each product?
The problem I see with this is: How do you make 75 videos about video creation without already mentioning basically everything that matters for video creation?
I mention this because my reply to the concern was,
How do you make 75 articles about article creation without already mentioning basically everything that matters for article creation?
In actuality, there will be 100 articles about article creation/marketing, etc. – not sure what happened to the math that day.
Anyway, much of what is needed for video creation such as the answers is already on the web somewhere. And same with article marketing and article creation.
It boils down to a “time” factor.
People are willing to pay for information that is actually “free” if it has been assembled and collected nicely into a package that will save them time looking it all up. Time is that one thing we can never get back.
Back to the plan, I want to have a site to showcase all my articles and information about article marketing, and I want to have a site to showcase all my videos and information about video marketing. Makes sense right?
The real question then lies in the monetization plan. Initially I wanted to just promote a course on article marketing, and one on video marketing. I have access to BOTH – but I will be already exposing and sharing a lot of information on those topics. The sensible thing to do is to offer those things, but also offer things that are not just digital information. For instance, what would be a useful tool for an article marketer? What would speed up their process in creating articles? Just doing a Google search, there are all kinds of tools that can help you assemble and create articles quickly.
There is article creation software, article submission software, and other tools to assist.
The same is true with video. People need access to photos, video loops, music, and even video creation software for those who really want to get into it.
I would be silly to limit the number of products offered to just courses. At the same time, I need to investigate best I can anything I do recommend. And it would not be wise to sell something in every email sent by an autoresponder.
I will funnel traffic to two blogs. Each blog will have a sign up for something “free” that will help my new subscribers. I will be able to judge this contest partly with the number of sign-ups.
Here is where things get a little crazy, and some “creative” tracking needs to be done. Let me explain.
Lets take that 100 articles about article marketing. I need to track how many subscribers come in from my articles on Ezine, and how many are directed to the sites from Youtube. Keep in mind, there will be 100 articles about article marketing, and 100 videos about article marketing. I can either split this into two squeeze pages, or 2 blogs, or a squeeze page directed from youtube and perhaps just a link directly to the blog from ezine as they are very specific on landing pages offered int the links and really want to see valuable content on the sites.
To save myself some time and avoid duplicate content issues on the Articles blog (which will be located at http://articleparticles.com) I will be installing Steven Fullmans WP Unique, which makes the article appear as unique content in the eyes of google. I will also need there to be some unique content initially to get the blog approved by Ezine as a site worthy of linking to.
I would like to be able to display the articles and videos of each for each site. The videos will play at the top, with the option to scroll down to actually read the materials.
Here is what I will have. A blog about article marketing that shows videos, and has article about article marketing, and I need to know what traffic was generated from ezine, and which from youtube. Let’s say I have 10 people visit from Ezine, and 10 visitors from Youtube – how do I really know which ones are “buying?” Do I just run this as a traffic experiment or traffic to conversions? The best way I can think to break this down is into 2 landing pages that are DIFFERENT lists. Through Aweber I can track the clicks on links in my autoresponders, and will need to have 2 affiliate codes for each product.
What a pickle eh?
My original poll question was:
If you had to choose between getting 300 videos, and 300 articles, which do you think would convert better and lead to more sales?
While some of this is obviously a traffic game, should I disregard conversions? Are article readers and clickers buyers? Are my video watchers going to click and ultimately buy something?
It is of no point for me to toot the benefits of video marketing if it brings traffic, but the traffic does not buy.
While I could just buy some cheap dot info’s and skip the whole list building thing, would I not just be throwing away traffic? It would be the easy path, but I’m not so sure it is the best for long term benefits of the work going into this challenge and plan.
I don’t even want to go into the mess of tracking and analyzing my results.
Fortunately some affiliate programs (IE clickbank) do allow you to create a unique tracking code for campaigns you put in place.
As you can see, there is a lot of pre-planning needed for this experiment aside from the creation of 300 articles and 300 videos. I dare say the creation of those is the “easy” part at this point.
I hope to be back soon with a nice method in place. I have only 91 days to my deadline.
Originally posted 2009-12-16 10:59:11. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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