How I Made My First Million

Brand Your Business via PINTEREST

Posted by peterzmijewski | Filed under Internet Marketing, Peter Zmijewski

What do Chobani Yogurt, Drake University, and Oreck Vacuums all have in common?  They are all rock stars at leveraging Pinterest to brand their business. Each plays to their unique demographic Chobani dedicates their pins to delectable treats, Drake boasts boards of beer pong best practices and study guides, and Oreck features re-pins of furry friends that their vacuums will be cleaning up after  just to name a few.

As you have read from Lauren’s and Suzanne’s past Pinterest posts, this social network is quickly becoming a major contender within its realm, as evidenced by a 429% increase of unique visitors to the site from September to December 2011 via 11 million monthly visitors, making it the fastest growing website to surpass the 10 million mark.

1)Start It

The largest and simplest way to brand your business with Pinterest is by simply starting. I mean it kindly, but the more you put in to the network, the more your business will get out of it. Create your profile, build your boards, and let the fun begin. Leverage the site to introduce new products, show off best sellers, and present your business directly to your customer. Remember, like all social media sites, content is king. Curate your brand by featuring content that is applicable, pleasant, shareable and adds value to your brand.

2)Personalize It

Let me illustrate my next point with the archetype example of how NOT to pin. I am sure you are well familiar with the sleazy sales guy who is constantly pushing their product through your window after you slammed the door. Pinterest is not the place to be “that guy”. Nothing destroys value like the constant, straight-up sales pitch.

Pinterest goes beyond simply featuring your products; it is an opportunity to interpret the lifestyle of your clientele.  Feature your items together not only does it make it easier to up-sell, it makes your posts look more organized. By doing this, you resonate with your customer’s needs.By personalizing your brand, you humanize your business. Leverage a board to showcase employees with photos and bios, give a glimpse of behind the scenes of the office, commemorate special events, or provide tutorials.

3: Engage It

Next step: engage your customers. Respond to comments, feature their boards, run contests – the possibilities are endless. Pinterest is another venue for customer interface, so interact, socialize, and connect. One of the best ways to engage is to promote others’ pins through likes, comments, and re-pins. Pin images that flatter your brand and provide a diverse mix of images from your industry. ModCloth shares pins from bloggers and websites that share their mutual admiration for all things eclectic, and vintage.

One final way to engage your customer base: add the “Pin It” button to your product pages to help your customers build the brand. For example, Etsy includes the “Pin It” button on all listing pages, alongside the usual “Tweet” and “Like” buttons, allowing their 55 thousand followers to actively participate in the content distributed on Pinterest.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.

Do you know who you’re writing for?

Posted by peterzmijewski | Filed under Internet Marketing, Peter Zmijewski

Today’s Web-writing video addresses a fundamental copy writing step that a lot of people choose to blow off: researching the target audience you’re writing for before you start writing.

That most folks ignore this critical step is actually a huge advantage for those that do invest some time into getting to know their customer: those copywriters who know their audience are going to write content that will blow their neglectful competitors’ copy right out of the water.

Make your content stand out

• It’s one thing to “write a blog post,” or “write a sales page.”
• successful writing is highly customized for your reader.

What a lot of folks do when tasked to write something is they just start writing. And while that’s OK, there is a way to take that writing from merely “okay” into really, really good copy that is highly customized for your reader.

What you are doing is matching your content to the folks who are visiting your site. And when you do this, you’re going to see:

• Higher conversion rates
• Visitors staying on your site longer
• People sharing more of your content

Because the content is written just for them.

I’ve referred to this before when discussing customer persona. Ideally, when you’re writing copy you should have a picture of the person who is going to be reading your content in your head.My joke is that you should be able to walk into any Starbuck’s anywhere and look around and say: “You! You are my target audience!” because you’re so familiar with that person, and writing for that person, that you would be able to pick them out of the crowd.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.

Google Discovery House

Posted by peterzmijewski | Filed under Internet Marketing, Peter Zmijewski

We’re just as excited as you are to roll into Austin this year for South by Southwest Interactive 2012 for another Texas-sized festival packed with BBQ, margaritas, and the most exciting digital chatter of the year. This year, we’ll be packing up some of our favorite things about Google and bringing them with us to the “Google Village” on Rainey St. – just a few steps from the Austin Convention Center.

We hope you’ll join some of the 40-plus Googlers participating in panels and discussions around the SXSW festival! Our participation kicks off on Friday, March 9  in a fireside chat where senior vice president Vic Gundotra will discuss the future of the Google+ project with Guy Kawasaki.

Then, on March 10-11 at the Google Village you’ll find:

• Android House with the latest and greatest from Android, complete with live music and a look at cool entertainment for your device
• Google Maps House packed with cool ways to make the most of Google Maps and the places you know and love
• Developer House with an exciting day of building LEGO race bots and gearing up for the ultimate rumble Sunday evening. Learn more on the Developers Blog
• Discovery House where you can learn about our latest creative and advertising products, and see how Google can help you and your clients make the most of the web

As members of the advertising community, we’d love for you to come join us at the Discovery House in particular, where we’ve got a diverse lineup of discussions, teaching sessions, and social events. There’s something for everyone:

• Come learn how we’re working with our partners to bring together creativity and technology in new ways, and re-imagining what online advertising can be. Be sure to stick around for our re-imagined happy hour, with a new take on classic cocktails.
• Participate in engaging seminars about the latest in mobile marketing, the coolest things that Google+ users are creating with Hangouts, and how to make the most of consumer insights.
• Want the full schedule.

Come swing by and have a drink on us in Austin – we’d love to hear all about everything exciting and innovative that you’re seeing and hearing around town, too.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.

Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization

Posted by peterzmijewski | Filed under Internet Marketing, Peter Zmijewski

Today we’re going back to basics. And nothing is more basically important to a site than properly written title tags. You know the ones that used to appear in the little blue bars in your browsers. Most modern browsers try to hide these, though that doesn’t stop them being helpful.

Meta Tags

First let’s talk about meta tags. Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide information about a web page for the search engines and website users.Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of a HTML document. These elements are the:

• Title Tag
• Description
• Keywords

What is a Title Tag?

Title tags are part of the meta tags that appear at the top of your HTML inside the < head> area. Think of title tags like the title of the chapter of a book. It tells people and search engines what your page is about.Title tags are also part of what makes people decide whether to visit your site when it shows up in the search results. The title tag should contain important keywords to help the search engine determine what the page is about.

Quick Checklist

When you’re writing your title tag what do you need to know? Here’s a quick checklist with some tips on how to write optimized title tags:

• Length: Title tags should be a maximum of 70 characters long, including spaces.
• Keyword Placement: Your most important words  need to be first in your title tag, with your least important words being last in the title tag . However, if you’re working in a language that reads right-to-left, then it is reversed, and it would be least important to most important.
• Keyword Separation: Use pipes | to separate important phrases.
• Wording: Keep your important phrases short and simple. Leave out words that would make it read like a sentence.
• Company Name: If your company name is not part of the important phrases, put it at the end of the title tag; if it is part of your important words, put it as the first words in the title tag. Some SEOs will tell you to leave it out. You can leave it in for branding purposes – so people will see the brand and click. This isn’t valid for all sites.
• DON’T DUPLICATE Title Tags: They must be written differently for every page. Don’t mass replicate your title tags.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.