Internet Marketing Course BLOG

By Dave Ingalls
B2B Internet Marketing Consultant
March 30, 2010

I recently “discovered” the site SocialMediaB2B.com and now I’m more or less addicted to it!

What is “SocialMediaB2B.com”? Here’s how they describe themselves:

“SocialMediaB2B.com’s goal is to become the foremost news and discussion site on the topic social media’s impact on B2B companies, help drive social media adoption within B2B companies, and become a repository for advice and commentary from experts in the social media and B2B industries. The site is a group blog with editors and regular and guest contributors publishing articles on a variety of subjects related to social media’s impact on B2B companies.”

What I love about this site is the way the articles are so well crafted to the specific needs of B2B Internet Marketers.

Here’s an example of a recent article on pitching B2B stories to B2B bloggers:

“4 Things to Know When Pitching B2B Bloggers” by Karlie Justus

First, Karlie gave a nice overview of pitching stories to bloggers versus traditional newspaper, technical journal editors:

“Some points to consider:

• Actually read the blog. Whether you subscribe to it in a news reader or do a quick scan once a month, get a handle for the blogger’s tone, writing and opinions.
• Search for the term “pitch” and “pitching” among the blog posts. This may yield a post that details exactly how that blogger would like to be approached with ideas for content. Check the about page or other pages on the blog.
• Establish a baseline relationship by following the blogger on Twitter and commenting on his or her blog.
• Make sure the blogger has access to images, screenshots, link, etc. that will help him or her directly drop those into a post.
• Personalize, personalize, personalize. Put yourself in the blogger’s shoes – if you received this e-mail, would you immediately drag, drop and delete?
• Don’t attach a news release. If you can’t relate how your information is important to a blog’s readers in a paragraph or two, reconsider your angle.”

And then the article gets REALLY interesting for B2B Internet Marketers:

“What are some things that are different when you pitch a B2B blogger? When you have a story, product, person or example you think could provide great content for a B2B blog, here are some things to think about:”

Read the entire article by clicking on the following link:

4 Things to Know When Pitching B2B Bloggers

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

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By Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Consultant
February 21, 2010

Every now and then I get the opportunity to solve a Web site-related technical problem.  When that happens, I proudly don my “geek hat”, go under the hood and outline how I was able to solve that problem.  This time it has to do with WordPress and its use as a Web site and blog Content Management System (CMS).  I am doing this because I’ve seen several posts in forums wondering how to solve this particular problem.

WordPress is the first or second most popular open source blogging software on the Web.  Recent WordPress versions have added the ability to use the software as either a stand-alone blogging platform or as the back-end content management system for a Web site and a blog.

As part of the Web site/blog setup, WordPress provides a built-in mechanism to create a “static” Home page for the Web site and a separate “static” page that is used as the blog home page.  (I put the word static in quotes because there are really no static Web pages in WordPress – all pages and posts are created dynamically from content and graphics stored in an online database.)

Using this built-in mechanism is very straightforward – you end up with a Web site “home” page that mimics the standard “index” Web site home page and a blog “home” page that most folks name “blog”.  So far, so good.

Now, if you also structured this WordPress-based Web site so that all of the WordPress files are installed in their own sub-directory, you end up with the problem described below.

The problem: The BLOG RSS feed has an incorrect name (title) and the link to the blog “home” page is also incorrect.  (If you don’t know what a RSS feed is, please visit Wikipedia to learn about it.)

An example of what I’m talking about will be helpful.

Let’s say we named our WordPress-based Web site the “Internet Marketing Course”, and we named the  related blog the “Internet Marketing Course Blog”.  (Sound familiar?!)  When we look at the standard RSS feed created by WordPress based on the configuration described above, the BLOG RSS feed is named “Internet Marketing Course” and the Web page address it links back to is the home page of the Web site, not the blog. Oh oh!

The fix: Long story short, open the WordPress files “feed-rss.php” and “feed-rss2.php” in a text editor like Notepad.  (Both files are located in “wp-includes” directory in the WordPress installation directory.)  Then make the following changes to both files:

1. Add “echo ‘ Blog’;” in the location shown below to add the word “Blog” to the feed title:

<title><?php bloginfo_rss(‘name’); echo ‘ Blog’; wp_title_rss(); ?></title>

Note the SPACE inside the single quotation marks.

2. Remove all text between the <link> tags and then place the specific blog home page address (URL)

<link>http://www.yourdomain.com/blog</link>

If you’ve also had this problem, I hope this blog post helps!

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

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By Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Consultant
October 24, 2009

You’re a small business owner who has taken the time to create some original content for your Web site to help that site be more visible to potential Customers via the major search engines, just like all the Internet Marketing experts tell you to do. But after you add it to your Web site and let your existing prospects and customers know about it, what else can you do? How about helping that online content “go viral” easily and at no cost to you? Here’s how.

Look at the bottom of this post. See the “SHARE” button? Click on it. What you and over 95% of your Web site visitors will see is a listing of over 200 ways for them to share this post with friends and/or business associates! (Why 95%? Because that’s how many Web surfers have JavaScript turned on in their Web browsers-you have to have JScript turned on in order to make the “SHARE” button fully functional.).

Those visitors can send someone they know an email about the content, or they can add it to one of several popular “social bookmark” Web sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon, or they can add it to the RSS Reader they use to receive feeds of this nature (they’re all here), or they can “tweet” about it on Twitter, or they can add it to their Facebook wall, or – you get the picture!

Interested? If yes, head on over to AddThis and pick up the code for your very own “SHARE” button. It’s free, it’s simple to install on your Web pages/Blog posts and if you go thru a simple registration process, you can get statistics on what visitors are doing with these “SHARE” options.

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

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Internet Marketing Course Blog
Dave Ingalls
September 27, 2009

We’ve all heard the hype about online Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. And much of the hype is true. But if you’re a small/medium sized company selling your products and/or services online, take my advice about online social media, social marketing, social networking – whatever you want to call it – and start with the basics – let your Customers review your products/services on your Web site.

I don’t know who started online Customer Reviews on their Web site – I’m guessing it was Amazon – at least that’s where I first encountered it when buying books many years ago. Those reviews saved me money and time by helping me find the RIGHT book to buy, and when I purchased the right book, EVERYBODY won! I ended up buying the best, most on-target book for my needs, the author of that book got the sale, and Amazon not only got a sale, they also got a happy Customer (me) who came back again and again for more purchases because I could get many honest opinions of a potential purchase BEFORE I bought it.

And here’s my latest example of why I think online Customer Reviews are the KEY online social media application:

Over the past Summer I was trying to decide what Smart Phone product and wireless plan I would purchase. It was definitely time for me to move on from the “flip phone” era!

Several acquaintances had just purchased the new Apple iPhone 3G and loved it! To get additional Customer opinions, I went to the BestBuy Web site and looked up iPhone 3G phones and plans, then read the Customer reviews (at that time there were well over 100 reviews). The vast majority were very positive about both the iPhone 3G and the 2 year AT&T plan typically purchased with the phone. Because there were so few negative comments, I decided to read them and see what problems iPhone owners had with their purchase. And here’s the first instance where online Customer Reviews helped me with this purchase!

» Continue reading “Customer Reviews Help iPhone Purchase – The REAL Social Media Phenomenon!”

Internet Marketing Course Blog
Dave Ingalls
July 28, 2009

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): This IMC Blog entry is a bit different. I’m going to help readers who use Joomla and/or WordPress find out if they’ve got any Internet Explorer 6.0 (“IE6″) display issues with either their Joomla Web site templates and/or WordPress blogging themes. If they do, I also outline how they can get a head start on fixing those problems by looking “under the hood” of these 2 very popular Web applications. Why am I doing this? Because I just went thru this situation myself and I thought I’d spare my readers some of the pain I went thru finding a solution!

According to Market Solutions, 2009 YTD IE6 usage still stands at 18% of all Internet browsers. IE7 (42%) and IE8 (6% and climbing rapidly) are both taking share from IE6, but at this writing, IE6 is still the THIRD most popular Web browser in terms of usage.

So why worry about high IE6 usage by Web surfers? Because IE6 is NOT the same as IE7 or IE8. Without getting into the details, let’s just say that IE7 and IE8, along with all popular versions of the Firefox Web browser, know how to correctly interpret and display the latest underlying HTML, CSS and XHTML code that most popular Joomla! (content management system) Web site templates and WordPress (blogging software) blog themes use. IE6, however, was developed before these new browser software standards were adopted by all browser manufacturers. And with almost 20% of Web browser usage, IE6 can make your Web sites and blogs look more like a Picasso painting (no offense to the master) than the beautiful sites/blogs you see in standards compliant browsers to 1 in 5 Web surfers! Not a good situation!

What did I do about this potential problem and why did I care? Because this Internet Marketing Course Blog uses WordPress and my Internet Marketing Course Web site uses Joomla!

Here’s what I ended up doing after much surfing and trial/error.

» Continue reading “IE6 Problems-How to See Them-How to Fix Them”