The top search term for the first week of the new year: “lyrics.” This is not likely to be very helpful to your online marketing efforts unless yours is a music site and you have authorization to post what in most cases is copyrighted material.
Farther down Google’s “Top Ten” list however are four more significant terms; in descending order, these are myspace, youtube, facebook, and craigslist.
These sites all represent a relatively new and growing phenomenon; the virtual online community. These are forums where one can reach a large number of people with Internet advertising at virtually no cost – and in some cases, generate revenue. For example, YouTube, a site where anyone can post video material, attracts hundreds of millions of visitors each year – and videos that receive a large number of viewers can become valuable “virtual real estate” for promoting one’s Internet business.
Here’s a fact: advertising has so saturated the media, both in the brick-and-mortar world and in terms of Web marketing that it has become intrusive. Increasingly jaded, people are understandably tuning out; “adverts” no longer have the effect they once had. This poses a real challenge for those in Internet marketing online. It is also one of the challenges of SEO consultants, and highlights the need for such services.
In order to get potential customers to pay attention to any commercial message, such Internet advertising messages must offer something of real value in return. This might be useful information, which is the underlying basis of the article strategy; it can also be entertainment, which is why YouTube has such great potential for the Internet marketer.
To summarize: one of the keys to successful modern online marketing is to make it worth someone’s time to listen to your message. When you begin a web marketing campaign, think about what you can give away that will make your potential customer want more.
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