My smart adv

How To Magnetize Your Brand And Attract More Customers

What makes a company brand magnetic one that effortlessly
attracts customers revenue media attention and employees alike? A quick examination of the laws of nature will reveal the answers. Forces such as magnetism and gravity while seemingly subtle have a powerful and constant influence on our lives. They govern us without our awareness of their presence. Their “pull” is not overt and goes largely unnoticed yet they govern so much of what we do. They are natural vs. mechanical powerful vs. forceful and attractive vs. coercive.

Magnetism occurs when charged electrons align themselves in the same direction. As in nature magnetic companies and brands are ones that are aligned and “pulling” together toward a common goal. Once that alignment takes place the rest is easy. Target customers are no longer “targets” since they will gravitate towards your message. The emphasis slowly shifts from artificially capturing customers to naturally attracting them.

Magnetism then comes from a distilled and powerful sense of purpose. This purpose reverberates throughout the organization and intuitively guides the organization’s members to act and behave in ways that promote this vision. The cost of topdown internal messaging is greatly reduced. The process becomes more natural more fluid and instinctive.

So is this purpose the same as a mission statement or brand strategy?

Yes and no.

Most mission statements are written in boardrooms and sit nicely on the lobby wall. Purpose is something that comes from the heart and it needs to come from the heart of top management not the ad agency. Again this is about alignment and if top management is all about maximizing the bottom line it cannot create a magnetic company whose mission statement expounds the virtues of altruistic self sacrificing service.

It just won’t vibrate resonate and ultimately attract the desired customer. So it can also be said that magnetic companies are genuine in nature. Their values are consistent at all levels of the organization. Profit then becomes a natural byproduct of doing what the company believes in whether it’s delivering on price quality or service.

How does a company find its purpose? It’s already there waiting to be acknowledged and promoted. For example many business owners I deal with feel passionate about the quality of their products and services but also feel compelled and pressured to compete based on price. They are brainwashed by their sales force and outside influences to believe they can only compete by selling for less. Once they gain a true sense and understanding of their core purpose they become emboldened and that energy translates throughout the company energizing everyone. Soon “the talk” is about product quality and innovations new customers appear and old time consuming complaining incongruent ones begin to leave. The company the brand the image begin to align and “pull” in a quiet but powerful way.

An Optometrist came to me years ago desperate to create an image of quick service in order to combat the onehour vision centers that were devouring the market. When I asked him how long it took him to provide the same service his reply was “one week but I think I can get it down to three days.” A customer needing glasses in one hour won’t wait three days. So I designed a campaign with a headline that read “We Take Time.” It went on to extol the vital role of vision in our lives and why it’s important to wait to make sure an eyeglass prescription is done right by a professional.

The doctor felt I had completely missed his point but he trusted my judgment and ran the campaign. The phone began to ring and one lady said “I haven’t had my prescription filled because I was waiting to find someone who took more than one hour to ‘grind’ my glasses”. He has run the ad for over fifteen years and “taking the time” has now become his position in the market. His revenue share and bottom line all increased when he became comfortable and congruent with who he was and what he did best regardless of the market.

Transforming a company or brand from mediocre to magnetic requires refocusing on the passion that created it or now drives it and aligning everything around it. Rather than finding the right market the right market will find you.

A good example of a company that reinvented/repositioned itself is British Petroleum. BP recently launched a new look but more importantly a new focus one that reengineered the BP acronym to now stand for “Beyond Petroleum”. In fact I could not find one reference to the original name on its web site. In much the same way that KFC moved away from proclaiming itself “Kentucky Fried Chicken” BP moved away from the image of a profit driven European oil conglomerate to a globally involved environmentally friendly organization working to explore new energy sources vs. exploiting old ones.

How congruent is your company? Are your goals marketing name image and mission all aligned? Do they all communicate the same message? Are you easy to summarize and describe. To see just how “magnetic” your company is ask yourself the following questions…

*What are your core competencies? What does your company do well/best?

*Is that reflected in the name tag line logo and marketing materials?

*Which of these attributes best describes your company and it’s products quality price or service?

*Does your marketing match your attributes i.e. do you preach quality but sell based on best price?

*What do your customers most value about you?

*What do your employees value most about you?

*What does management hold as their top priority?

*Do all these match up? If not why?

Taking the time to align your company with its core competencies can greatly increase the momentum and effectiveness of any organization. The intuitive selfguiding nature of a highly congruent company makes it powerful and memorable. Apply some of these principles yourself. Rather than chasing indifferent people you will begin attracting perfect customers. After all it’s only natrual.

About the writer:  Phillip Davis is president and founder of Tungsten Branding company naming consultants located near Asheville NC. Phil and his team have assisted over 200 regional national and international corporations with business and product branding strategies. To view his company naming portfolio visit http://www.PureTungsten.com

8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSSXML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure

RSSReal Simple Syndication is the new technology on the block and is taking the Internet by storm as Internet marketers are hurrying to incorporate this new form of communication and technology into there existing online businesses to Maximize there exposure online with NEW and/or Existing customers.

I recently received a post on my Blog from a fellow that inspired me to write this article since I found the nature of the topic important to ALL who are serious about getting the most out of there RSS feed and this new technology.

I’m pretty sure you can guess what he ask from reading the headline of this article.

Well… I did some research on what he had asked of me and came up with…

“8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure

So with that said let’s dive into the first and MOST important step to Maximizing your RSS feed for the exposure it deserves.

Step 1. Build a dedicated webpage for your RSS feed.

This is probably the most important part of getting the most out of your RSS feed is by building your own dedicated webpage for your RSS feed subscription.

The KEY here is to give your potential readers many options to adding Your RSS feed.

The best way for me to illustrate this to you is by clicking on the link below that leads to my dedicated RSS feed subscription page so you can see first hand what you need to do to get yours started.

Click here:http://www.internetwondersezine.com/rss_feed.html

Did you notice all the different options I give?

That’s what you need to do.

Now for those of you who aren’t so web savvy don’t worry I have something for you that will autogenerate a RSS feed webpage for you within minutes if you already have a Blog or RSS feed.

The service I’m talking about is called FeedBurner.com http://www.feedburner.com and is a free service for you to sign up for.

Here’s what my webpage through FeedBurner.com looks like so you’ll have an idea of what yours will look like.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheInternetWondersBlog

Do you see all the options they give your potential readers to add your RSS feed to there RSS readers?

Once you’ve accomplished one of the two options above your all set to start promoting your RSS feed for MAXIMUM exposure.

Step 2. Add links to your RSS feed webpage on your website.

This is yet just another way to pull your visitors towards your RSS feed webpage by simply adding Text or Graphic links to your existing webpages.

Make sure you put them in Highly visible area’s where your visitors will see your links.

I would would put one at the top middle and bottom of your website.

This really depends on what kind of website you have so you’ll have to use your own dicression.

Here’s what I have done on my website to give you an example.

Click here: http://www.internetwondersezine.com

Step 3. Add this HTML tag to your RSS feed webpage.

Here’s something you can add to all your websites webpages that will get the attention of Search Engines spiders to come on over and check out your RSS feed further.

Simple add the following HTML tag to the of your document:

link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rssxml” title=”YOUR SITE TITLE RSS Feed” href=”URL TO RSS FILE”/

note: add this to the end after the forward slash /

Step 4. Some idea’s if you have your own newsletter.

If you have your own newsletter like I do here’s a couple ways to get your visitors to visit your RSS feed webpage.

Add a link on your “Thank You” page that leads to your RSS feed webpage. Whether its a Text or Graphic link.

The key here is to get your RSS feed link in front of your readers as much as possible to get them to add your RSS feed to there readers.

The next one is add a link inside your “Welcome” email that’s sent out to your New newsletter subscriber after they’ve subscribed.

This again will give you another chance of getting them to add your RSS feed to there readers.

Step 5. Put together a “Signature File”.

Here’s another couple great ways to get your RSS feed webpage more exposure every time you send out an email or post to any online forums is by simply putting together a “Signature File”.

Now every time you sent out an email to your list and/or business contact you can attached your “Signature File” at the end of every email you send.

The same goes for online forums every time you make a post or answer someone else’s your “Signature File” will be automatically attached.

Your “Signature File” doesn’t have to be a huge a few enticing lines will do fine with your RSS feed URL.

Step 6. Submit your RSS feed to RSS Directories and SE’s.

Another great way to give your RSS feed more exposure is by submitting it or them to RSS Directories and Search Engines.

I’ve listed a few resources for you below to get you started with.

• Feed Sharkhttp://feedshark.brainbliss.com

• PingOMatichttp://pingomatic.com

• RSS Top 55http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Step 7. Write an article if you write articles.

This is a great way to get your RSS feed webpage in front of thousands of targeted readers absolutely FREE!

Simply write an article on a HOT topic within your niche and at the end of your article add an enticing attention grabbing “Resource Box” that points to your RSS feed webpage URL.

Step 8. SetUp a PPCPayPerClick campaign.

For the last step to getting your RSS feed webpage Maximum exposure is to setup a PPC campaign.

By doing this you will be able to send HIGHLY targeted traffic to your RSS feed webpage that are hungry for the information you have to offer.

The only downside to doing the PPC tactic is that it will cost you.

And this tactic solely depends on whether or not you chose to setup an RSS feed webpage of your own.

Now I’m sure there are many others ways out there that could draw in more visitors to your RSS feed but these ones I just outlined in this article are the Best ones in my mind and are the ones I use.

Well this concludes the “8 TOP Ways To Promote Your RSS/XML Feed For MAXIMUM Exposure” so the only thing I have left to say to you is… Get Started!

About the writer:  Looking for MORE Information or Webmaster Resources on RSS promotion? Look NO Further! Go shop Cory Threlfall’s TOP Rated CBmall that carries over 10000 of the Internets BEST ‘Information Products’ available Online. webmaster resource site

The Problem With Automated Content

Shortly after the dawning of the Google Adsense Age webmasters learned that their sites were effectively little gold mines or “virtual real estate” as one expert put it. The more cyberproperty you had the more virtual billboards you were able to put up also called Adsense blocks. And so if you made n dollars by owning one web page with an Adsense ad or any ad on it then it was reasonable to assume that you would make n x 10000 if you had 10000 pages with similar ads on it.

Similarly reason suggested that 1 million such pages would make you n x 1000000.

Webmasters were eager to rise to this Gold Rush challenge and so were those presentday providers of picks and shovels the software developers. Applications were developed which could produce thousands of web pages in less than an hour from a keyword list. All you had to do was a little research using Overture’s keyword tool or its many free derivatives 8211; the more sophisticated practitioner of this art would have added Wordtracker into the mix 8211; and you had your keyword list.

Add some adjectival superlatives such as “better” or “best” or “latest” before each keyword and you had an even bigger list. Then after each keyword add “in New York” or “in London” or even all the place names in the English speaking world there are over 30000 of them and you had a massive list. The software which was available at the time could and still can produce whole websites consisting of tens of thousands of pages from your own such bloated keyword handiwork. Each page of that site would be highly optimized for one keyword phrase so that you could more or less guarantee that your page would be in number one position on all the search engines simply because it was so specific. Such websites could be cranked out and uploaded to your server all in the same day. You could produce 50 such websites each with thousands of pages in a single month; all of them with Adsense blocks on each page.

The problem was they were all unreadable.

Pages that were manufactured at that speed could hardly rely on human dexterity in creating their content. So the software which produced them 8211; and it was ingenious software 8211; had to resort to other means. These largely fell into two groups: RSS feeds and what came to be called “scraped” content. The problem with RSS feeds was that lots of other people were using the same feed. The problem with scraped content was that it belonged to someone else. In both cases the hyperlink which was obligatory but which could be turned off in the case of the scraped content bled Pagerank away and in other ways compromised the integrity of your site. Both practices also had the habit of leaving footprints for the search engines to spot. Lawyers’ purses bulged a bit as well.

At about the same time people searching the Internet complained of seeing bland web pages with content that was either nonexistent meaningless or repetitive even heaven forbid duplicate. The search engines addressed this by punishing web sites that displayed those tendencies and so raised the informational quality of their listings for a while. This punishment consisted of altering their algorithms so that sites or pages which demonstrated such blandness were either pushed so far down the listings that they effectively could not be seen or delisted altogether banned.

Along came a flurry of remedies. You could pay ghostwriters at Elance or Rentacoder to produce the content for you according to a specified keyword density but even at 3 an hour it was expensive if you wanted to replace all those thousands of pages which had just been banned by Google. Then a huge mini industry of private label membership sites came along charging you a monthly fee to use its thousands of stock articles without any copyright questions being asked. But there were seldom the specific keyword phrases you wanted in those articles and you could never control the keyword density; also you just knew that lots of other people were using the same articles from the same membership sites.

Other software came along and inserted random text at the top and bottom of each article so that each page became unique in its own way. Still more software was produced which substituted common words in existing PLR articles from stock synonyms there was word going round that if a page was 28 percent more different than another page then you were okay. The problem was that if the page was read as a whole it made no sense at all. But this could still fool the search engines. Just.

The search engines were reported to have recruited thousands of student “editors” to manually weed out such aberrations from their indices. More emphasis was placed on nonreciprocal inbound links with the appropriate keywords in the anchor text or within ten words left or right of the anchor text and other “offpage” considerations. And so it went on. And on.

There were all sorts of “solutions” offered to those webmasters who had known the heady days of the bigfigure Google checks for doing very little and were willing to pay almost any price to return to them. Accordingly the software became more ambitious. In turn the search engines became more demanding and there were increasing signs that perfectly legitimate sites were being punished as well as the spam pages.

We seem to have reached a point where something has to give. The browsing public does deserve better than scraped content RSS feeds and the abundance of protoplagiarism that it still gets. The need is for content that makes sense and is readable by real people and also of value as well as ticking all the boxes of the search engine bots’ latest algorithm. Equally webmasters have a need for such content as well yet they also have an understandable need to be able to produce that content on demand to their increasingly informationhungry readers. To satisfy such demands it is unlikely that one piece of software alone will suffice. Instead it seems clear that a system of content delivery needs to exist which is actually sophisticated enough to produce content which is of value to all concerned.

About the writer:  Dorothy Thompson is the editor of The Writer’s Life www.thewriterslife.net one of Writer’s Digest Top 101 Websites for Writers and the author of the selfpromoting eBook “A Complete Guide to Promoting Selling Your SelfPublished eBook” available at http://www.thewriterslife.net/promoteebook.html.