Creating an Effective Online Presence Part three

Published on this site: November 23th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

This article will be the last in my series on Creating an Effective Online Presence. This article addresses blogs, newsletters, your sales funnel, and joint ventures. This is certainly not meant to be an exhaustive review of each category but rather a quick synopsis of each one.

Blogs

A blog is short for weblog and it's in actuality, an online journal. Blogs can be stand alone websites or can be incorporated into your website with its own page.

Creating a blog can be advantageous for a variety of reasons:

• They will improve your standing with search engines as long as you post to them regularly.
  
  
• They help your readers get to know you in a more personal way.
  
  
• You can use your blog to market your existing products.
  
  
• You can use your blog to announce new product offerings.
  
  
• Blogs can help you create new information products. As you blog each day, you can actually organize your posts in such a way that you could blog a tip sheet, e-course, article or evena book.
  

If you want to start a blog, it's easy. You don't have to be a web designer or have any particular web expertise. All you need to do is go to www.typepad.com and start using their system. They will take you through the process step by step.

Newsletters or eZines

Having a newsletter or eZine (electronic magazine) is a great way to stay in contact with your clients and potential clients. A newsletter is one of those products you can offer for free to entice casual browsers to give you their name and email address. Some people argue that newsletters are no longer useful but I disagree. While some people are overrun with newsletters that hardly ever get read, for the amount of work it takes to put one together, it is worth the potential audiences you will reach.

One of the things about online marketing that will help you stand out from your competition is over delivering. A newsletter is one way to do that. Use your newsletter to deliver outstanding information to your targeted market that directly addresses their pain or their desires. Giving away great information is another way to build trust on the web.

Sales Funnel

The sales funnel is a metaphor for the way your bring clients to increasingly higher levels of commitment in their buying cycle. The idea is that all your potential clients will enter the mouth of the funnel by agreeing to give you their name and email address. Then, the concept is that you create increasingly more expensive products and attempt to move your customers through your sales funnel progressively by offering them the next product.

The funnel analogy is used because at each level, less of your customer base will pursue your offer until you get down to the skinniest end of the funnel where only a few choice clientele will go.

You must create a progressive line of product offerings that are targeted to your audience both in content and modality. Don't offer teleclasses to a group who historically doesn't purchase teleclasses. Perhaps you will need a CD product instead.

And you will need to draft compelling sales letters for each of the products you offer, which was discussed in part one of this series.

Joint Ventures

The last area I want to talk about may be the most lucrative on the Net, actually. Anytime you can partner with another professional you are increasing your exposure and broadening your client base.

There are many advantages to joint venture partnering:

• You gain access to another person's email list.
  
  
• You gain access to another person's expertise.
  
  
• You increase the odds of others wanting to partner with you.
  
  
• You get to put yourself in front of audiences you wouldn't otherwise have access to.

There are many opportunities for joint venture partnering but the typical one you see is one person promoting another person's book in an attempt to make it a bestseller on a particular day. In addition to the ones who send this notice out to their list, there are other joint venture partners who offer free bonus gifts in exchange for increased, targeted traffic to their sites.

I know I have covered many topics briefly and you may have multitudes of questions. I recommend Michael Port's book, Book Yourself Solid, as an excellent resource to fill in the blanks for you.

If you would like to view Part One and Part Two of this article, click here or go to http://www.coachingforexcellence.biz/eZines.shtml.

Kim Olver - is a professional coach, specializing in the field of interpersonal skills, empowerment and leadership development. She has functioned in the role of supervisor and administrator for over 20 years. This column is for readers to submit their questions for Kim to answer. It could be a question about supervision skills, maximizing teamwork, customer service, interpersonal skills or client satisfaction and empowerment. No interpersonal question in the field of work is off limits. For more information visit
http://www.coachingforexcellence.biz/Coaching.shtml or contact Kim by email to [email protected].