| Marketing your website can be especially tricky in this Web 2.0 world. Under this new web paradigm, people are able to express themselves better online, make new friends, chat, and spread the word much faster on a product, service, company, or website. Gossip can be a frightful commodity on a social network: the minute word gets out on the greatness of a product, thousands of people can hear it and create a buzz that translates into profit. But when someone reports on something that has displeased them greatly, a social network can do viral marketing against a product, service, company, or even person or political entity. This can do wonders for people who love mudslinging; it can be the death of a person?s reputation as well. So what can you do to let your website stand out from the crowd? In this Web 2.0 world, content is still king, so if you want to succeed, you need to have great content. The problem now is how you can create that content, and what you should put on your site. The first step to knowing what to put on your site is to first establish your goal: you want more people not only to read you, but to link to your article and visit your site. You want your articles to be link-worthy, because it can bring more people to your site and make you more popular. Now that you have this goal in mind, your next step is to create your link-worthy articles. First, you need to have articles that appeal to a certain market?s needs. You can give tips for housewives in keeping the house clean, tips for teenagers who are going through difficult emotional ups and downs, tips for taking care of kids, tips for dealing with stress ? there are thousands of tips that you can give, but you need to stick to your goal, and you need to appeal to your market while promoting your website. Link-worthy articles are not only useful, they are also engaging to read. In Web-speak, this can mean only a few hundred words, with all the sense packed into short, simple sentences. Your articles, therefore, need to use simple language, and they need to be written by people who know your market. If possible, recruit writers from your target market to help you out. Pay for their efforts by giving them free samples of your products or discounts on your services. You need to get inside the heads of your customers, and who else can help you but the customers themselves? When you finally post the articles on your site, make sure that they are broken up into short, readable paragraphs that are easy on the eyes. This can make your site more soothing to look at. Provide a permalink at the bottom of the article, containing the permanent link to that article on your website. If you have the proper scripts, you can allow your readers to give feedback on the article. This allows you to participate in the spirit of Web 2.0, but be careful to moderate responses so that the chance to critique does not get out of hand. Update your articles regularly, and make sure that they are always useful, timely, and well-researched. If you have link-worthy articles, you can get your links out there, and more and more people will see you. Establish a web presence, and you can count on profits soon enough. |