Catherine "Cat" Seda

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Want More Business? Answer a Question.

In your business, do prospects ask you questions?

I bet they do! And I bet that you often turn those prospects into clients. So, why not answer questions on the web to attract more business?

Do you know about Yahoo! Answers? It’s an online community that lets you answer visitors’ questions. What a helpful way to showcase your expertise! And if visitors vote for your answer, you earn points to boost your reputation even more.

I’ll confess…I don’t know Yahoo! Answers. But Manny Hernandez does! He’s an Internet marketer who uses it to raise awareness for www.TuDiabetes.com, his global community for people touched by diabetes. Manny shares these proven tips:

* Find Your Niche
Use the site’s search engine to find highly-targeted topics. It’s easier to show your expertise as a specialist rather than a generalist.

* Answer Questions Often
If you want points, log in every day to answer one question—you’ll get one point a day by doing this. If you can’t do this, try to answer at least one question once a week. Obviously, the more questions you answer, the more you shine. For more info on the point system, visit: http://answers.yahoo.com/info/scoring_system

* Avoid “YES/NO” Answers
Almost any answer at least one paragraph long is an excellent candidate for a “Best Answer” vote (worth 10 points). Because “Yes/No” answers aren’t usually helpful, you won’t likely get “big” points (or business) for giving this kind of answer.

* Vote on Others’ Answers
It’s always a good idea to recognize the good work of others. Yahoo! rewards you for it. By voting for someone else’s answer, you’ll get one point.

* Only Link When Appropriate
Yes, you can link to other resources on the web, including yours, from within your answer. But don’t lace every answer with a link to your site because that’s spam. Never blatantly advertise your products or services—EVER.

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Thanks Manny!

LinkedIn also has a similar service called “LinkedIn Answers.” Check out Manny Hernandez' Internet marketing blog about this topic.

Several of my family members have diabetes. Once while in a store with my dad a few months after his stroke, I mistook his low sugar attack for fatigue. Had an ambulance not been called, I would have driven him home to take a nap; he would have slipped into a diabetic coma and died. After that scary experience, I learned from other diabetics that while in a low or high sugar state diabetics might not remember if or when they last ate or took insulin. I hope communities like TuDiabetes.com can help get life-saving information like this out to the world. Congratulations on reaching almost 600 members!

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Monday, July 09, 2007

The 10% Lunch Video Contest

How's this for a contest: create the winning 30-60 second video inspired by BizzFlip's blog The 10% Lunch, and you'll own 10%, in private stock, of BizzFlip.

Whadda think?

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Internet Legend Dr Ralph Wilson

WOW. Today, my book was given a "thumbs up" by Internet legend Dr. Ralph Wilson. Thank you, thank you!

Monday, July 02, 2007

SEO Your Blog

Want to know a simple SEO technique for blogs? Learn about “permalinks” in my July 2007 “Net Sales” column for Entrepreneur magazine (below). Has this technique worked for you? Please share your results!

Site Unseen?

To attract customers near and far, optimize your blog for search engines.

Search engines send out spiders to crawl the web looking for web pages to add to their databases. Blogs are spider magnets, especially if they have freshly updated content and links pointing to them--two delicious ingredients, according to spiders. But with more than 100,000 blogs being born every day, content and links aren't all you need to catapult your blog to the top of search results. Your blog must also be optimized.

Start by putting relevant keywords in the titles of your blog posts. For example, let's say you publish a blog about interior design. An effective title for one of your posts could be "Designer Home Accessories." This way, these keywords will become associated with that blog entry.

The blog publishing tool you use should create a unique web page for each post you write. That means the post title you choose usually becomes that post's permanent URL, called a permalink. For example, the permalink for a post titled "Designer Home Accessories" could look something like blogname.com/designer-home-accessories. See why it's so important to use good keywords?

Wait, it gets better: When someone looks up a keyword in a search engine or blog engine, your post can appear as a top search result. The title of your post becomes the title of the listing shown. And your permalink appears as the URL of that web page. Not only will humans see what your post is about before they read it, but so will those all-important search engine spiders.

But be careful! Don't repeat your core keywords in every post you write. That's considered spam. When optimizing your blog (or website) for search engines, think humans before spiders. If what you write is illogical or annoying for people to read because of your repetitive use of keywords, it's definitely spam--and is not a good way to win customers.

© Entrepreneur

Sunday, July 01, 2007

3 Tips to Boost Traffic to Your Blog

Every month in my Internet marketing newsletter, I answer a reader's question. Whoops! I forgot to post my June Q&A. Here it is:

QUESTION:

I ended up going with a TypePad account for my new blog instead of a Blogger account. I have looked into several options for getting the word out about it, but there are so many different ways to do it. How can I establish a solid base to build upon?

~ Will Radcliffe, http://www.bizzflip.com/


CAT’S ANSWER:

I hear you loud and clear, Will. You don’t want 101 tips right now. Here are three quick (and powerful) tips to boost traffic to your blog:

1) E-mail your community of prospects, customers and fans. But don’t just tell them you have a blog. Post something delicious on your blog, then use e-mail to send them a “teaser” to check it out.

2) After browsing BizzFlip, and reading that it’s fairly new, send out a few press releases. Choose a newswire service that’ll let you link keywords from within the press release copy to your blog. That’s a quick way to get a little “link love” (good for search engine optimization)…from the original press release and all of the sites/blogs that’ll publish it for free.

3) MOST IMPORTANTLY, blog. Surf the blogosphere using a blog engine like http://www.icerocket.com or http://technorati.com to find blogs that are similar to BizzFlip. DO NOT ADVERTISE. Instead, share a tip, tool or comment. By posting a comment, you’ll get a link to your blog which invites bloggers to visit it.

Thanks, Will. A lot of people have asked me about this lately, so your question is timely for many of my readers. Good luck, bloggers. Go forth and blog!