What You Should Know About Industry Conferences
Guest Post by James Martell
Do you ever hear about conferences for your particular industry and wonder if you should go?
Do you worry about whether a trade show is worth the time and expense involved?
I was struggling with those issues when I went to my first affiliate marketing conference in 2002. I had been an affiliate marketer for about three years, and I wanted more information on growing my business. Yes, I enjoyed the travel opportunity. Yes, the weather in Santa Barbara was gorgeous and the hotel was nice as well.
Seriously, though, if I were only looking for a short vacation, Seattle is closer and Portland is much more affordable.
Specific to my situation, I would have had a hard time convincing my wife Arlene to cut me loose for three days if all I could promise her on my return was a suitcase full of dirty laundry.
Fortunately, I was able to attend the conference because both Arlene and I knew why I was going. Better yet, our expectations for the trip were met and then exceeded.
Reasons to Attend Online Marketing Conferences
When I returned from my first Commission Junction University, Arlene and I were more than satisfied with the benefits I brought home. That’s why, when I returned to CJU the next year, I was accompanied by Arlene and 40 other people.
These days I attend several marketing events every year, and I advise all of my affiliates and colleagues to attend at least two per year. The primary reasons include;
- The time spent at these conferences is actually an investment. When you get back to the office, you’ll be working better, working smarter, and you’ll be far more motivated.
- The money you spend attending these conferences, to include travel and meals, is normally tax deductible. If you happen to own the business, I don’t have to tell you how important that is!
- You’ll have the opportunity to speak with and listen to leaders in your industry, and will probably come away with a few new ideas.
- You’ll be able to tap into a knowledge and experience base far larger than anything you would be able to accumulate on your own.
- The most important reason to attend an industry event, however, is the same reason I kept going back to the Commission Junction Universities; We need to grow.
Over the last decade, I have attended many trade shows and industry conferences, and I have listed a few of my favorites below. I have personally attended each of these events, and I have been invited to speak at several of them as well.
Whether you are an affiliate marketer, or are just interested in what the Internet can do for your business, one of these events offers something you can use.
The Best Online Marketing Conferences 2011
Affiliate Summit
This event is described as the premier affiliate marketing conference, and with good reason. The Summit is held in New York and Las Vegas, and offers a variety of educational events in addition to top industry speakers and acres of merchants and vendors.
Blog World Expo
The Expo gathers bloggers from the four corners of the earth to Las Vegas for three days so they can take advantage of networking events, presentations, and of course, vendors and merchants galore. You don’t need to be a blogger to enjoy this conference, though. If you are just looking for a way to use social media to promote your business, you should plan to attend.
Webmaster World’s PubCon
Most people expect this to be a publishing convention, but the first one was actually held in a pub, so the name actually describes a group of colleagues around a pub table. Well, Webmaster’s World has outgrown the pub, but it still provides an informal, relaxed venue to share marketing strategies and advanced SEO methods.
Commission Junction University
I cut my teeth, so to speak, on this event, and if you actually need a reason to spend three days in Santa Barbara, this conference is a really good one. You’ll get a chance to meet with over 800 industry leaders and top Commission Junction affiliates, like me. You should attend just to find out what affiliate marketing can do for your business.
AffCon
The cool part about newer industry shows is that they’re usually inexpensive, and this one is free, for the moment. This may not last long, though, because AffCon is still packed with leading panelists, all the usual vendors and merchants, and lots of great information for beginners as well as experienced affiliate marketers.
ShareASale Think Tank
What is the difference between a Think Tank and a regular conference? Imagine the level of creativity inspired by great parties, a sports event or two, and one of the best assembled brain-trusts in the industry. Affiliates, managers and merchants would all benefit from this event.
Every business relies on marketing, so it’s likely that your business would benefit from any of these events. If you’ve never attended these or any other online marketing conferences, 2011 might be the year your business really takes off.
Of course, if you aren’t a full-time marketer, there are probably other gatherings which are more focused on your specific industry. You should also least check out the ones that sound interesting.
Shopping for Your Own Trade Show
Matt Papas is an associate of mine who has a weight loss website. Matt could benefit from nearly any Internet marketing conference, but he could also get some great information at fitness or medical conferences. For instance, he could learn more about how to market to clients who are looking for a Medifast coupon code, or looking for the right answer, complete with details, to the question, “Does the Nutrisystem diet work?”
Arlene, of course, attends some events with me, but occasionally she should take in other events as well. Arlene’s website, epliepsymoms.com, offers support and information for parents of epileptic children, so she could also benefit from medical conferences. She could also add conferences specific to epilepsy support organizations and other childhood diseases.
Regardless of your industry or interest, finding the right trade show could only take a minute or two on your favorite search engine. Search for a phrase like “Restaurant Trade Shows” and you’ll find a list of events and probably a Facebook page or Twitter account you can connect to as well. Someone out there is dying to show you how to attract more customers using Google Plus or how the right color of interior paint will keep customers in your store longer.
Will You Be Attending an Industry Conference This Year?
Well, why in the world not? If you have yet to attend one of this year’s online marketing conferences 2011 is not quite over yet . The amount of time and money you’d put into a conference will be more than justified by the ideas and motivation you’ll bring home. The only real question, then, is;
Which of these conferences will you attend?
—
Author and website developer James Martell is the President of Net Guides Publishing Inc. and is a popular speaker at many national events all over the country, including Commission Junction University and the Affiliate Convention. When James isn’t working or traveling, he enjoys the coastal life just south of Vancouver, BC with his wife, Arlene, and their four children.
Read MoreFour Good Reasons to Try Photo Sharing on Google Plus
Guest Post by James Martell
We’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?
Google has had several false starts with Google Wave and Google Buzz, but it appears that Google Plus just might be some serious competition for Facebook.
At the moment, Google Plus is accessible by invitation only, so it’s hard to predict just how many Facebook fans will be willing to make the conversion. Based entirely on the response from habitual pic posters, however, I think Facebook ought to be sitting up and taking notice.
Charlie Sorrell offered some insight from his listening post in the Gadget Lab at Wired.com; “It has been said that the biggest feature of Google Plus is that it’s not Facebook. However, there’s another feature that may be of interest to all you Gadget Lab photo nerds out there: the photo integration. It turns out that G+ is a pretty sweet way to manage and view your shared photos.”
Since photo sharing is the most commonly used application on Facebook, it makes sense that Google Plus should launch with its photo sharing applications up and running. The question I wanted to answer, though, is how Google can improve on Facebook’s well-established and familiar photo gallery function.
Conveniently enough, I found four answers.
Google Photo Images Will Upload Faster.
The difference in loading time per picture between Facebook and Google plus isn’t impressive. Google won’t require you to toggle or configure pictures before loading them on Google Plus, while Facebook will. For the causal user, this will amount to no difference at all. However, if you come back from your Alaskan cruise with 200 pictures to post, an extra second or two per picture will make a difference.
Google Photo Images Will Look Better.
The difference between the visual display on Facebook and Google is very impressive. Google will accommodate high resolution shots of up to 2,048 pixels, so kittens on a laundry basket will look more adorable and your latest experiments in digital infrared photography will look like they came from NASA.
I have a friend and colleague in Brooklyn named Vinny, who recently attended the 4th of July fireworks show over the Hudson River. He took plenty of pictures with his Android and was able to upload them to Google Plus directly from his phone quickly and easily, and with stunning results.
Google Photo Images are Android-Friendly
As my friend Vinny discovered, you can easily access and upload to Google Plus directly from an Android. As several thousand annoyed consumers have discovered, iPhone and Blackberry users aren’t so lucky yet. Google has assured us that the iPhone and Blackberry apps are on their way, but Google’s favoritism may have been a good thing for the Martell household.
My son Justin loves his Android, and has been using it to educate me about the shortcomings of my iPhone. I may not be a fast learner, but I have finally decided that my next phone will be an Android, so I won’t lose much sleep if Google takes it’s time developing an iPhone app.
Google Photo Images are Easier to Share (or Not)
You and I are both aware that photo sharing is wildly popular, and we also know that it should be done responsibly. Google knows better than to promise a perfectly safe method of photo sharing, but they have come up with a few improvements over the Facebook model, and one in particular that has my attention.
Facebook allows you to categorize your visitors as “friends” or not, but Google allows you to place people in circles. The circles let you to share certain images with certain people and other images with others.
Of course, Google offers the same opportunity for tagging and re-sharing pictures, so you still shouldn’t post anything you don’t want your boss to see. However, using selective “circles” could keep your co-workers from getting too much information about your escapades at the Comic-Con last summer.
This Should be Interesting..
Google Plus is much more than a new Google photo gallery, and it will take more than photo sharing options to get folks to switch from Facebook. However, if the photo sharing options are any indication, Facebook could have a fight on its hands.
Google plus’ photo gallery will appeal to nearly everyone who posts snapshots. Grandparents will be able to safely post and share birthday party pictures, and whether the shots come from camera phones or infrared digital cameras, they’ll all look like they could be posted on the National Geographic site. Sort of.
So, is Google Plus the new Facebook killer? David Seaman from BusinessInsider.com weighs in with a measured response; Google Plus “.. will be a huge success, and Facebook is in trouble – although by no means obsolete.” It appears that only Facebook
can decide whether Google Plus will kill it or just make it stronger.
Hopefully, Facebook will respond with equal amounts of innovation and marketing savvy. If they do, then both the Facebook faithful and the Google groupies will be able to enjoy the same outcome; more toys for everybody!
—-
James Martell is well known as an affiliate marketing specialist in outsourcing and SEO. He is a sought after speaker, affiliate marketing trainer and podcaster. James is host of the longest running affiliate marketing podcast on WebmasterRadio.FM (since 2003), and creator of the Affiliate Marketers “SUPER BootCamp”, where he teaches others how to make money with affiliate programs. James lives in White Rock BC, a seaside suburb of Vancouver on west coast of Canada with his wife, Arlene and their 4 kids.
Read MoreFive Strategies for Return Traffic
Guest Post by James Martell.
With over a decade’s experience in the online marketing business, I can tell you that things have changed. Just a few years ago, the best way to have success online was to get a high volume of unique visitors on a regular basis. To an extent, this is still important, but the key to success today is to have your visitors come back to your site on a regular basis.
Websites with a devoted following of users are among the most successful today, with a prominent example being daily deal sites such Woot or Groupon.
The significance of return traffic
In a recent interview I did for my Coffee Talk series with Ryan Allis, co-founder and CEO of iContact, a leading provider of email marketing software boasting more than 700,000 users, he told me that you will never see a whopping 70% of your traffic ever again if you don’t get them on your list. In other words, your time and effort would be best spent on getting your visitors to return to your website on a regular basis.
In general, if a product or service is expensive or complicated, a consumer must be exposed time and time again to the product or service before they will truly consider purchasing it. If a visitor to your website never comes back, they will not likely result in a sale or increased advertising revenue for you.
Search engines also play a very large part in this equation. Google and other search engines continue to monitor information about your website’s visitors, including how many times they return. Ranking highly in search engines for topics such as car insurance quotes, lift chairs, inflatable boats, wood routers, or doll houses requires you to get your users to come back.
In this article, I will discuss the five best strategies for creating effective return traffic.
1) Make use of RSS to Email
This is a fantastic piece of email automation software that can inform members on your list about the new content that you post. Best of all, you never have to lift a finger, with many options for automation.
Creating a weekly or monthly newsletter or sending email auto-responders can be incredibly difficult and time-consuming.
Fortunately, RSS to Email allows you to send out newsletters and auto-responders, but in a much simpler and easier way. Their automated service can allow you to notify your list members every single time you add new content to your website. This is a fantastic way to get your readers to return to your website and check out the new content you have posted.
My favorite feature on this program, however, is the scheduling tool. This allows you to send out a regular newsletter automatically with little to no work on your part. The scheduling tool can run as little or as often as you want, and it can crawl a number of websites, effectively combining different pages of content into one handy newsletter. It can even send out a newsletter to your list automatically, but you can also have it send you a preview newsletter so that you can approve its content yourself.
2) Release podcast updates
Considering the amount of people with online businesses today, very few marketers are making use of podcasts. However, they are easily one of the best ways to engage your visitors and have them return to your website.
Currently, I am the host of one of the longest running podcasts about affiliate marketing (The Affiliate Buzz) as well as my own series (Coffee Talk with James Martell). I use these podcasts to pique my visitor’s interest and convert them into devoted followers.
You could put together a 30-minute podcast in under an hour fairly easily. However, shorter podcasts (5 to 10 minutes) are becoming more and more popular. It is also very easy to automate your podcast publishing, allowing you to update your list members with very little work on your part.
3) Comment on your own blog
Users that are involved in your website will return regularly. One of the best ways to get your users involved on your website is to reply to comments on your own blog.
Thousands of visitors might read a post on your blog, but it’s typically quite rare for a reader to get involved and post a comment. For this reason, it’s important to write out thoughtful replies when someone takes the time to write a comment on your blog.
If you’re having trouble keeping track of comments on your blog, I would recommend WordPress plug-in called “Subscribe To Comments“. This plug-in can notify your website’s visitors when someone responds to their comment. It doesn’t cost anything, and it can be a fantastic way to deepen your website’s sense of community and get your visitors involved.
4) Utilize chat forums
Bulletin boards and chat forums have played a large role online since the birth of the internet. However, many online marketers tend to neglect internet forums. However, they remain one of the most effective tools for building a community on your website and getting your visitors invested. They also allow you to communicate with your visitors and have your visitors interact with each other, giving them valid reasons for returning on a regular basis.
My wife Arlene and I have had great success in building online communities with chat forums. Arlene’s website, EpilepsyMoms.com, has thousands of chat forum members that regularly participate in discussions about parenting children with epilepsy. These are the type of invested returning visitors that I consider to be the most valuable type of traffic.
5) Provide useful information
In today’s world, content is king. However, it is important to provide your users with well-written, informative content.
Try to remain open and interested to your community members, and provide useful information to all of your visitors. Through various forms of media, such as video, audio, or simple written articles, you can provide helpful advice, useful information, and fun, interesting content to your users, prompting them to come back on a regular basis.
Keep the visitors you have
If you wish to increase the traffic of your website and rank high in search engines for topics like car insurance quotes, Pride lift chairs, inflatable boats, wood routers, doll houses, and arc welders, it is likely a good idea to shift your focus from new visitors to return traffic.
—
James Martell is a successful author, podcaster, and speaker. He’s a leading expert in affiliate marketing and outsourcing as well as a specialist in SEO. James is host of the Affiliate Buzz podcast on WebmasterRadio.FM (the first ever and longest running podcast about the affiliate industry), and creator of the Affiliate Marketers SUPER BootCamp where he teaches others how to make money with affiliate marketing. He lives in White Rock BC, a seaside suburb of Vancouver on west coast of Canada with his wife, Arlene.
Read MoreHow to Add Twitter Followers Every Day…And for Free!
Guest post by James Martell.
If you have a Twitter account but are clueless about how to get more Twitter followers, then you’ve come to the right place! I’m going to share with you three very useful strategies that will enable you to get free Twitter followers, guaranteed.
Be Careful:
Even if, for some reason, you decide not to use my strategies, I do want to caution you about using software programs supposedly designed to increase your Twitter following. Most of these programs don’t work, and they certainly don’t teach you how to get more Twitter followers.
What’s worst of all is that they are almost always against Twitter’s term of service. This means that they can actually cause you to lose your Twitter account, leaving you even worse off than when you started. So stay away from these programs, and instead follow my steps for how to increase Twitter followers.
What’s Twitter?
I have to tell you that I was once in your shoes – maybe even worse. Just a few years ago, I didn’t get the “Twitter” thing at all. But I decided it would be a good idea to at least try it out.
Now, it’s a huge part of my business. I might not have millions of followers like all the major celebrities, but I do have 5,403 loyal followers to date. Also, since I’ve started using the three strategies we’re going to discuss, I’ve watched my following grow a little each and every day!
I can promise you that no matter what you’re promoting with twitter- whether it be kids rocking chairs, dental services, or joovy caboose reviews – my strategies can and will work for you.
Strategy 1: Syndicate an Online Newspaper
So, let’s get going with Strategy 1! For this strategy, all you have to do is syndicate your own online newspaper based on a Twitter list, user, or a keyword. Then, you publish the newspaper to your Twitter followers each day.
My newspaper, The Guest Blogging Daily, was created using paper.li, my Twitter account, and a Twitter list. You can check it out here: http://paper.li/JamesMartell/1308523225.
I absolutely love paper.li, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!
Not only does the site create a lovely paper, but it’s so very easy! Everything, and I mean everything, is 100% automated, so you barely do any work at all. The site posts to your Twitter when each daily paper is released, and it even tweets to your followers.
Plus, contributing authors are tweeted as well. These writers will often follow you and –best of all- retweet the newspaper. This means that not only will you gain the writers as followers, but some of their followers as well!
It doesn’t get any better than this. So, start out with strategy 1 today! Simply pick an interesting and informative topic for your paper and then use paper.li to get your idea up and running!
Strategy 2: Become a Guest Writer
There are a lot of sites out there – this one included – that are always on the lookout for guest writers. Also known as guest blogging, writing for such a site is an excellent way to gain positive publicity and, best of all, more Twitter followers.
When acting as a guest writer, make sure that you are a good communicator and that you provide worthwhile information to your readers. Take the time to respond to their comments and/or emails. The more they feel they know and can trust you, the more likely they will be to follow you on Twitter.
Of course, it’s up to you to ask them to do just that! A great place to include the invitation is in your author bio. I guarantee if you follow these steps, this will gain you more followers, so get started today!
Strategy 3: Using Your “Thank You” Page
The easiest and most effective strategy is the last one. Once you hear it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself- it’s really that simple. I can’t take the credit either, though. It was my friend, Joshua Sloan, the former Director of Online Marketing for the world’s largest and fastest growing hosting company, 1&1 hosting, who shared the idea with me.
To carry it out, you simply set it up so that visitors who fill out your option form, either to request more information or sign up for a newsletter, are redirected to a “thank you” page.
On this page, you then invite them to follow you on Twitter. Remember that these visitors went the extra step to find out more or request more information, and they gave up their contact information in order to do so. This makes it very likely that they will follow you on Twitter if you only ask.
The Choice is Yours:
I’ve laid out my three proven strategies, and they couldn’t be any more simple! Now it’s up to you to put them to work and to make them work for you. I personally guarantee that no matter what you’re promoting – and I mean anything from a Bumbleride indie twin stroller to dental services to bar stools – these strategies will work!
—
James Martell is well know for his podcasts and affiliate marketing trainings, as well as outsourcing and a specialist in SEO. James is host of the Affiliate Buzz podcast on WebmasterRadio.FM (the first ever and longest running podcast about the affiliate industry), and creator of the Affiliate Marketers SUPER BootCamp. He lives in White Rock BC, a seaside suburb of Vancouver on west coast of Canada with his wife, Arlene.
Read MoreAffiliate Thing Post-Show
On Tuesday I had the pleasure of co-hosting the Affiliate Thing podcast with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit. Let me start by saying that I was unaware that it’s a live show since I always listen to it on iTunes or GeekCast.fm. I listened to the recording last night that’s up over at GeekCast.fm and I have some criticism for myself.
First though, the experience. Monday night I spent nearly an hour fussing with Skype. The test call was choppy and I couldn’t understand all of what it was saying. But all my settings seemed fine. I determined at last that it had to be my internet connection, which has a tendency to be not so good in the evenings sometimes. I must have called the test call in the neighborhood of 30 times. I also called my husband’s cell phone to see if it was any better – nope. He could hear me pretty well but I could barely hear him. I finally give up and hope that it works in the morning or that there’s another option for me to call in or something if all else fails.
I can’t sleep (of course) because I’m nervous about the show. I finally get to sleep and surprisingly have no trouble waking up early the next day for the show. I’m on the West Coast and I usually work 10 am to 7 pm at PsPrint, so I had to get up around 8:30 am to wake up enough to tape the show at 9 am. I fire up my home computer and get Skype up and running, calling the test call about 10 more times with only slightly better results than the night before.
I let Shawn know over the messenger portion of Skype that I’m having issues and he suggests we start anyway and if it’s too bad I can drop off. Luckily when WebmasterRadio.fm called, it was much clearer. Which begs the question – shouldn’t the test caller be the best quality possible? I digress…
The call itself went great in the moment… there weren’t any points where I was sitting there silently banging my head. I fumbled the intro to myself, which is ironic because that’s what was keeping me up the night before – how to whip in PsPrint AND this blog. I figured that was the only part I could rehearse, and coming from a theatrical background I’m a fan of rehearsal.
Now, for my “notes to self”.
- Be more conscious of how close my mic is to my keyboard and how loud I’m typing.
- Do more research about what’s going on so I can suggest more topics instead of being a ‘yes’ woman.
- Don’t laugh – it doesn’t come across well over the phone/skype.
- Attempt to fix the skype thing because in the recording I do hear myself cut out sometimes.
I think, all in all, this was a good exercise for me in giving up control of my image and gives me some things to work on. Please, go listen, and add on to my notes so I can work on my presence, public relations and such! In advance, I truly appreciate it.
Read MoreMaking It Big
This week has been full of win, and it’s only Tuesday!
All the Cool Kids (and me)
My humble little blog TrishaLyn.com has been featured on Alltop.com under the Marketing category. Alltop is a digital magazine rack, per se. At each Alltop site, they display the latest five stories from 30+ sites on a single page, aggregating the information as a starting point. Alltop is a great way to expose yourself to blogs and websites relating to your interests that you may not have stumbled upon before. The interests range from women’s interests to sports, religion to geekery. In the marketing category my humble blog is mentioned amongst the likes of Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Michael Martine’s Remarkablogger, and Seth Godin’s blog. I’d say that lives up to the “all the cool kids (and me)” slogan!
Guest Co-Host of AffiliateThing on WebmasterRadio.fm
Regular host Shawn Collins of AffiliateTip.com and co-founder of Affiliate Summit invited me on to co-host the weekly Affiliate Thing podcast in lieu of regular co-host Lisa Picarille of Revenue Magazine who can’t make it tomorrow. I’m excited as I know this is a well-produced, professional podcast broadcast on Cranberry Radio, so I can’t wait. I’ll be recording from the pleasure of my own home in the morning and can’t wait to chew the affiliate fat with Shawn. I will say that I’m glad I’m not the one who has to edit it! it’s all recorded over Skype, so it’ll be great quality I’m sure!
Featured Expert on EzineArticles.com
That’s right, yours truly is also now a featured expert author on article site EzineArticles.com. So far I’ve submitted my Top 10 Things That Improve Work Ethic article and plan on submitting many more. If you’d like to see any of my former blog posts as articles on Ezine, drop me a line and let me know!
So that’s it! I feel like all this work I’ve been doing is paying off, and let me tell you, it’s a terrific feeling! I’ll be sure to report back on how the recording of Affiliate Thing goes tomorrow!
Read More
