The key to successful marketing is learning how to create your own internet community.
“Community” is defined by dictionary.com as “a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.”
A group of any size! How about describing the locality as Planet Earth—anyone who has access to the internet?! The social group would consist of all individuals who share an interest in your products and services.
"Fly-outs"- content-rich web pages, newsletters, web-based blogs, sales letters and other promotional emails, personal emails
Internet browsers will learn about you by discovering your internet location, or your domain. We’ve already learned that this can easily happen if you’re constantly building more content-rich web pages for the search engines to pick up. You’re also “flying out” information regularly to opt-in email subscribers (names you’ve collected and confirmed through a spam protecting system that is included in your SBI web building package or that will be provided by any reputable web building company.)
You’re sending out newsletters or ezines, blog updates, sales announcements for new products and services, and other group emails for staying in touch with your membership.
You place an optin email subscription requirement in every sales announcement you send out. This is one of the best ways to build your optin email data base.
"Fly ins" – newsletters, articles, blogs, social networking sites
You’re also working on the “fly in” opportunities for bringing people to your website. When they arrive, you will invite them to subscribe to your newsletter, ezine, etc.
You're writing articles that contain a link-back to your website.
An excellent newsletter that delivers inside information about how to create your own internet community through article submissions is Article Marketing Experts
Become an Expert at SelfGrowth.com. I highly recommend that you start to post your articles on this amazing internet website. The areas of expertise, each of which has several subtitles are: Success Skills, Love & Relationships, Health & Fitness, Money & Careers, Mental Health, Spirituality, and LifestyleHome.
Because of SelfGrowth.com’s expert SEO capabilities (also based on developing content-rich web pages as per their own articles pages), you will get extraordinary visibility by having an active presence on this website.
You’ve opened up blogs at blogspot.com, blogger.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com or one of the other online blogging companies. Many of these blog services are free, or for added benefits you may wish to pay their low monthly rates.
You’ve linked these blogs to your website and you’ve also mentioned hyperlinks for pages that appear on your website. People interested in the content you’ve placed on that page will eagerly click on that “fly in” hyperlink and land at your websites.
In a recent internet article, Bean Jones reviewed David Perlmutter's book, Blogwars: The New Political Battleground, a study on the power of blogging.
Jones writes: “…many Internet users these days prefer the dynamic nature of blogs as opposed to traditional newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs.
“Perlmutter--a professor at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas--also highlights the reasons why blogging has become so popular:
“While the information contained in blogs (as well as in other forms of media) should not be taken as gospel truth at first glance, it's clear that they encourage people to think for themselves and examine other perspectives. That, of course, is how change begins.”
That is not only how change begins; it is also how sales leads can be generated. Blogs are an excellent virtual word of mouth referral system.
In your spare time (!) you are social networking at one or more of the following spots:
The list of social network website is extensive. Here’s Wikipedia’s list of social networks.
Enjoy browsing through the list and choosing even more that you may wish to join, based on your special interests, background, location, etc.
If you have books posted for sale on Amazon.com, you’ve probably joined Amazon Connect, another social networking opportunity. Through Amazon Connect you can write reviews of other people’s books and invite them to reciprocate.
In my next article in this series of how to publish your books and articles, I’ll discuss specifically targeted sales campaigns and membership websites.
Carol Adler, MFA’s first ghost-written book listing her name as co-editor, Why Am I Still Addicted? A Holistic Approach to Recovery, was endorsed by Deepak Chopra, M.D., and published by McGraw-Hill. Other publications include three novels, four books of poetry, and well over 200 poems in literary journals. She has ghostwritten over 40 non-fiction and fiction works for a number of professionals in the education, health care and human potential industries.
Carol is President of Dandelion Books, LLC of Tempe, Arizona; a full service publishing company. She is also President and CEO of Dandelion Enterprises, Inc., Write to Publish for Profit and President of the International Arts & Media Foundation, a non-profit subsidiary of Dandelion Enterprises, Inc.
Her business experience includes co-ownership of a Palm Beach, FL public relations company and executive management positions in two U.S. rejuvenation and mind/body wellness corporations, for which she founded publishing divisions.
Carol has served as editor of several poetry and literary magazines. Her career experience includes extensive teaching of college-level creative and business writing, and conducting of writing workshops in prisons, libraries, elementary, junior and high schools, and senior citizen centers.
Additional Resources on Publishing can be found at:
Website Directory for Publishing
Articles on Publishing
Products for Publishing
Discussion Board
Carol Adler, The Official Guide to Publishing