When it came to the World Internet Summit UK 2007, there seemed to be certain themes that the experts focused on.

Without exception, every speaker would re-iterate certain themes, and I’d just like to expand upon those in both this post and in future posts to this blog. These seem to be the themes that every wannabe newbie Internet Marketer should take on board.

1. Write a blog

I’d say that one of the themes that came out of the event was “get a blog.”

Why?

Because it’s the one simple way to generate lots of content for your website, and as we all know content is like search engine spider food (yum, yum). And if you have lots of regularly changing content, then you start to get higher kudos from the likes of Google.

Now, I don’t know if this is true, but it’s said that a blog has a much better natural rank than a static web-site. I haven’t seen any evidence of this, not clear evidence, but I can confirm that when I’ve used blogs my web-site gets indexed faster (ok, I have a few tips and tricks here, maybe I’ll disclose them another time) and ranked higher for my keywords.

But here’s another really cool strategy which came out in Shaune Clarke’s presentation …

… write content to your blog to get Google to fall in love with you. When the romance is underway, you can then use Google Adwords to point directly to a squeeze page without being penalised for having a poor landing page experience. Hmmmm, very cool idea. And I can see how that one works. The regular changing blog content makes you in favour with Google so that when your landing page only has an opt-in form (something that would usually penalise you with a higher bid price) they look at your site and say “well, he’s kind-a ok ‘cos he’s got all this wonderful changing content … we’ll let him off for now …”

But which blog software should you use?

You can obviously blog for free with either blogger.com or wordpress.com and you can have your blog set up within minutes.

Now most people advocate using Wordpress, but having it installed on your own domain. I’ll go with this advice too. Wordpress.org is the place you want to visit to grab the software. It’s free, and really simple to install. But if you have a hosting account that provides CPanel and Fantastico then installing a blog is something like 3 clicks at most! There’s a hosting service that I recommend just because of this (never mind the free vouchers for pay per click marketing worth something like $50+ by itself) and because of the free domain for life they provide.

2. Build your list

If you have a list of subscribers, then you can use follow-up marketing.

It’s as simple as that.

You see, it’s very rare for people to buy from your web-site on the very first visit, and it’s so difficult to even get that visitor back to your web-site without a little persuasion.

So, the sooner you can grab their email address, the sooner you can invite the person back to your web-site.

Even if you only build a list of customers. There’s lots of evidence to show that it’s far easier to sell something more to an existing customer than it is to get a new customer.

So build the list, from the start. (Yes, I know I haven’t got my opt-in form on this blog … it’s going to be the next thing I put up, honest!)

Now there’s lots of systems out there to use. You could just get the person’s name and email address sent to you via email and then you put them into your Outlook contacts. However, trust me, this is not the way to go. And the sooner you start properly, the quicker you’ll get results.

I used to run my own “autoresponder” (as they’re called) from my own server. I was horrified though that none of my AOL subscribers were getting my emails. It was because one AOL user had marked my message as SPAM, even though he had previously opted-in to receive my emails! (Hey, it happens, you’d better get used to it!)

Not only that, but soon after I couldn’t send to any Hotmail users either. Overall, I think I was getting a delivery rate (that’s delivery, not open rate) of about 20%.

I swiftly moved over to AWeber as my autoresponder service, and I’ve never looked back.

You can also take a look at GetResponse, or even the autoresponders that come with the likes of Valued Client System (an excellent suite of products if you’re thinking of getting into the Internet Marketing business)

Just to give you an idea of the power of having a list. Two days ago I sent out an email to a small list of subscibers (it’s less than 1000, but targeted to a particular niche). Today I have $200 in commissions from purchases made from recommendations in the email.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

3. Learn copywriting

Perhaps the biggest and greatest skill you can develop is to learn how to write good copy. You’ll need it for everything, after all. You’ll need it for your blog posts (Is this good copy? Let me know!); you’ll need it for your Adwords adverts; you’ll need it for your follow-up emails; you’ll need it for your sales and landing pages.

Good copy converts. Great copy converts even more so

Oh, and here’s a fact for you. Long copy converts better than short copy. Now most probably you’re just like me in that you don’t enjoy reading long pages of sales pitch. Well, here’s something. Brett McFall asked the people in the audience who enjoyed reading long copy. And the majority of people agreed that short sales letters were better.

WRONG.

You see, when we all agree that the short copy is good, we’re actually not buyers, we’re readers. However, long copy converts more buyers. Now, if you were a buyer, you’d be more inclined to find out absolutely everything you can about a product before making up your mind. And when I’ve bought in the past, yes, I’ve read the whole blooming sales page from top to bottom, just to make sure I’m making the right decision!

Also, when you write copy, you want to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. I’ve briefly talked about this before, that if you had the exact problem that the sales copy solved, then you’ll be able to write better copy because of it.

And here’s another simple tip about copywriting. Only write for buyers.

I’ll re-iterate that one …

… ONLY WRITE FOR BUYERS.

Don’t bother trying to convert every single person who lands on your sales page. It won’t happen. Just write for those people who are going to buy, and you’ll find that your conversions go up.

Don’t believe me?

Well, why don’t you give it a try and let me know your results, eh?

4. Article marketing

Very similar to blogging, but with a different focus, article marketing is all about writing articles that have your link on the bottom of the article, and then posting these articles to article directory sites.

What happens is that the article sites automatically have a link back to your web-site (giving you a higher kudos value in the search engines because you’re being linked to by an authority site). And when a web-site owner takes your article to publish on their own web-site, they automatically link back to your site too (giving you even more kudos).

(Notice I use the word kudos rather than the Google term PageRank which you’ll hear most people talk about. PageRank is cool. However, it’s not the be-all and end-all of search engine marketing, but it is important, don’t get me wrong. However I like to include all the search engines, not just Google :-))

Now here’s a nice little tip that I learned recently. When you write your article, you can use it to also build your list.

How?

Well, let’s say you write a post on your blog (or just update your website with a page about “Top 10 Tips For …”, you can write an article with the same title, but in the content, only give tips 10 down to 6. And in the resource box you can put something like “To find out the top 5 tips, visit my web-site at …”

Of course, the link to your web-site can be a squeeze page so that you capture the users email and name before you show them the full article on your web-site. This way you can build your list as well as build your back-links to your site. Winner all round, eh?

So, there you have it. 4 of the top recommendations by the experts. Now these aren’t the only tips to learn from attending an event such as World Internet Summit, but it’s certainly the most important tips to take on board right at the start of your Internet Marketing career.

Let me know how you get on, ok?

Tags: article marketing, article publishing, article writing, articles, blogging, blogs, copywriting, internet+marketing, landingpage, landingpages, list+building, aweber