“My First AdWords: How to Trial AdWords Promotion for Your Blog” plus 1 more

My First AdWords: How to Trial AdWords Promotion for Your Blog

Posted: 22 Sep 2012 01:00 PM PDT

This guest post is by Kole McRae of Chilled Soda.

Many of you probably have AdSense on your blog. It's a great system for monetization, especially for those with smaller blogs but how many of you have been on the other side?

AdWords is the system Google uses for advertising. It's how you place ads on it's search engine and on the huge network of sites that use AdSense.

Right now Google is offering $75 free to anyone that wants to try out AdWords. That's a good chunk of change but it can easily disappear in a day on AdWords and give you nothing to show for it.

So I've written this little guide to help you out a bit. I wrote this with a few assumptions in mind: that you know how AdWords works in terms of buying clicks and that you have full control over your site. If you have never heard of AdWords you should probably start here.

I have also assumed you have made an AdWords account. If not, use the link above and make one.

Step 1: Keyword research

The first step to a successful AdWords campaign is research. I know what I'm about to recommend sounds really boring, but not only will it help your AdWords campaign but will also help you understand your niche better.

I want you to take ten minutes and write down every combination of keywords you can think of for your blog. What words do you want people to type in to find your blog. For example:

cool tech blog
tech news
technology news
Canadian technology news.

Write them all down and keep going until you just can't go anymore. You should be able to put together a pretty sizeable list. Next sign into your AdWords account and click on Keyword tool, which is under the Tools and analysis tab. Paste your list into that tool and hit Search. Next, click the Keyword ideas tab.

This will give you a much larger list of keywords (usually in the hundreds or thousands). It also tells you about how many people a month search for those terms and how much competition there is. This can be invaluable data.

Take this new list and download an Excel copy of it. Then take the time to divide the keywords into different groups, or “themes,” and choose which ones to focus on. I'd go over just how to do that but it would take far too long. So I'll simply suggest using common sense and your own judgement.

Try to find keywords that have low competition, low CPC cost, but high monthly searches. These are called low-hanging fruit. They tend to be the juiciest! Remove any words that are too generic. Single-word keywords that have millions of searches will not be helpful to you.

Another quick tip is to look up your competitors and go to their pages. Then right-click and select View source. Though Google has said they no longer use the Keywords meta tag, some people still fill it up, which might give you even more keyword ideas.

There are many other ways to get even more keyword ideas, so get creative and see what you can find.

You should also look for keywords in your lists that are not relevant at all. These you will want to add to your negative terms list so that people who search those terms don’t see your ad or cost you any money.

The most important thing I can teach you about AdWords is that it is not about getting as many people as possible to your site. It is about getting the right kind of people to your site. So make sure you remove any and all keywords that are not relevant. People searching for Python programming tutorials do not want to learn more about snakes and will only cost you money with no added benefit.

Step 2: Ad copy

Once you have put together your keyword lists and organized them into categories (or “adgroups,” as Google calls them) you need to write ads for each one. I say ads, not ad, because the most important thing you can do with AdWords is rotate and test ads.

I suggest writing two ads for each category or adgroup. Google will automatically rotate these ads and give you stats for both so that you can choose the one that works best for you and test it against an even better one. This means your ads will get steadily better as you test them against each other.

Your ad copy needs to be simple and to the point. Tell people exactly what to expect when they land on your site. Some best practices: Start Each Word With a Capital Letter. It looks weird in an article but in an AdWords ad, it stands out and looks professional. End each line with a period. Don't cut sentences off halfway through because of character limits.

I'm going to reiterate a point from above. AdWords is about getting quality traffic to your blog, not just getting as many people there as possible. You want people that will become part of your community. This means your ad should be written in a way that will build a community and invite people to join it.

Step 3: Landing page

The final thing I want to talk about is your landing page—the page people land on after they click your ad. The first instinct for a lot of people is to land folks on your home page. This can be a bad idea for two main reasons.

The first is that it can be confusing, especially if your home page is just a bunch of blog posts. People may not know where to begin or what to do.

Secondly, it's very possible that Google's AdWords quality algorithm may not understand that your site is relevant based on the page it lands on. It may be searching for instances of “Canadian Tech News” but only find it once on the main blog page, so it will lower your quality score and may not show your ad as many times.

The best practice is to send people to relevant posts and guiding pages for each adgroup. If you have an adgroup for Microsoft technology news, send people to a page specifically about Microsoft that has a bunch of news for it. Or maybe to an About page or a category page. The more specific, the better.

This is only the beginning

I've written over 1000 words here and it hardly scratches the surface of AdWords advertising. It fails to mention local searches, conversion tracking, match types and a million other things that go into a proper campaign. The best part? This is all for Google search, I didn't even bring up the content network.

Which reminds me: I suggest going to your Campaign settings and setting it to Google search only, as this will give you a bit more control over where your site shows up. The content network requires an article all on its own and has a habit of eating up all your advertising money without giving you nearly the quality of traffic the search network gives you. That is, of course, unless you do a lot of research and use it correctly.

Hopefully, I've helped you get more out of that $75—and maybe even inspired you to start learning more about advertising on Google in general so you can fully leverage any money you spend on it.

Kole McRae is an Internet Marketer for 9th Sphere. He also runs a blog called Chilled Soda, which is about tea, music and all the chill things in life.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

My First AdWords: How to Trial AdWords Promotion for Your Blog

Score Face Time with New People in Your Niche

Posted: 22 Sep 2012 07:03 AM PDT

This guest post is by Stanley Lee.

We all know the benefits of networking are obvious, so why are we neglecting it?

Are you scared about meeting new people in your industry? Do you spend a fortune to attend conferences and trade shows? Or do you waste a lot of time with travel and setting up your computer to work properly?

If you’re sick of making compromises, read on.

Get in touch using Airtime

Airtime allows you to talk to strangers and friends on Facebook via video chat without leaving your home office.

You can meet new people on the platform based on:

where you live
your interests
their relationships with your friends.

The information is extracted from your Facebook profile.

The best part of all this is you don’t have to acquire strangers’ permission in advance to talk to them, which is typically common when you try accomplishing this feat with Skype or even on Google+ Hangouts. Also, you won’t find any random dudes doing weird stuff (remember Chatroulette?). I mean, who really wants to expose their Facebook identities while doing that?

If you’re concerned about Airtime’s credibility, let’s start with its leaders. Sean Parker was founding president of Facebook and co-founder of Napster, and Shawn Fanning, was co-founder of Napster. Celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys, Jim Carey, and Martha Stewart checked Airtime out on its launch day.

If you aren’t familiar with any of those guys and girls, how about Gary Vaynerchuk? He loved using Airtime to connect with other social media fanatics.

Now that you’re excited, let’s learn how you can use Airtime to connect with readers and others in your blog’s niche.

The How-tos

Basic requirements

Before logging onto Airtime.com, you will need the following:

A compatible web browser: For simplicity, I suggest using Google Chrome.
A Facebook account: For obvious reasons.
A webcam that works with Airtime: Most laptop cameras should work without problems. Plug-in webcams may have problems. See the steps below to find out if yours does.

Step 1: Log into Airtime.com

A simple process—just visit Airtime.com and follow the launch process. You will need to press some buttons to authorize certain permission settings in Airtime’s login process. These are required in order for your camera to work properly.

Step 2: Choose your target

You will see this splash screen after successfully configuring your webcam.

I blacked out my Facebook contacts to protect their privacy here. If you want to talk to your existing Facebook or Airtime contacts, you can click on a name on the right-hand panel and explore for yourself.

But since you’re most likely interested in discovering industry colleagues, let’s look at that. You have two ways to accomplish this goal.

The first way involves finding users with a common interest to talk to (as indicated by the blue rectangle). Then, click the Talk to Someone button.

This is the easiest way because:

By checking the Near option, you can find people located close to you. If I live in Vancouver, Canada, I’m more likely to be connected to someone in, let’s say, New York City than New Delhi, India.
By checking the Common Interests option, you can specify multiple interests to find like-minded people. For example, if you read ProBlogger, your search won’t just be limited to this publication. You likely read Copyblogger, Think Traffic, Social Triggers, SEOmoz, and Blog Tyrant regularly. You may have even liked them on Facebook.
By checking the Friends of Friends option, you increase your chances of talking to a second-degree connection rather than the third, fourth, fifth, etc.

Let’s face it, life is already complex enough as it is. Enabling these options simplifies your Airtime experience and helps you home in on the right readers and industry contacts.

The second option involves finding users with a specific common interest. This is a great feature, but I do not recommend this method at the moment. Airtime does not have enough simultaneous users for you to find strangers with a specific common interest in a reasonable timeframe. Still, let’s take a look at how to do this just in case you want to play around.

Click on your profile, indicated here by the red box.

Move your cursor down to the Interests section, indicated by the blue box. You can click the More button at the bottom-right corner of the section to expand it.

Click on an interest, then click the Find people who like this hyperlink, indicated by the blue box.

Step 3: Start talking

In case if you’re a networking novice, here are some quick conversational basics before you begin talking.

Your goal should be to make new friends and make a great impression. How? By asking these simple questions in the following order, you will be able to spark deep conversations with your contacts:

How did you find yourself trying out Airtime?
What are you interested in these days?
What challenges are you facing when you’re doing that?

Feel free to add one or two more questions specific to your industry or niche. The point is to break the ice, inquire about their hopes and challenges, and steer the conversation into the direction where you can provide—rather than extract—value. This is the key to keep the conversation going beyond this meeting.

After asking each of these questions, stop talking, and listen actively. After all, mutual exchange is a key ingredient to the art of networking.

If you really like talking to the person, you can add the contact into your Airtime list by pressing the blue button. You can also find other interests you may want to check off in your contact’s Interests panel on the right.

Step 4: Closing the loop

So you’ve met some new people and added the contacts you’ve bonded with particularly well. However, you’re just beginning the relationship. You’ll need to stay updated with what they’re up to, and close the loop by learning what you can help them with.

Here are some suggestions of what you can offer them:

Advice from your expertise: Act like a consultant giving them free advice on their problems related to your blog’s niche. Leave money off the table, as you want to keep the relationship social rather than transactional.
Be a connector: Doing so would not only help out your connections, but also build your reputation as a connector. Read this guide to get started if you don’t know how to be a connector.
Share relevant resources: This could be as simple as sending a quick email with actionable information you come across that’s helpful for them.

It takes several iterations of loop closing in order to build trust in those new relationships. If the first tries seem daunting, don’t worry. Networking is a learned skill, and you’ll improve with more practice. And Airtime is a great environment for you to practice quickly.

Let me know about your experience!

I hope you have enjoyed learning how Airtime can improve your life. Both in business and personal contexts, but particularly in terms of your blog.

Now you know how to use Airtime to build new relationships with other similar-minded people in a fail-safe manner. Or improve the quality of your relationships. Or even just conduct research for your blog that would otherwise be time-consuming and difficult to get without a large existing readership.

All within the comfort of your workspace, without the headaches of messing around with software packages.

Don’t you want to focus on big wins rather than being buried in the endless list of trivial tactics (e.g. spending all your resources tweaking SEO or honing a sales page when you don’t even know if it has its place in the marketplace)?

Have you used Airtime? How did it help you? What were the good points and bad points? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Stanley Lee blogs about systems building, marketing, and societal topics, providing in-depth commentary for the benefit of his readers.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Score Face Time with New People in Your Niche