Developing Lots of Followers on Twitter

by John Eberhard

So now you have an account on Twitter and you think it would be cool to use social media to help your business. But you have only 34 followers, so when you post a “tweet” it’s not going to have much impact.

The goal is to build up lots of followers, so when you post something, lots of people will see it.

I realize that some people just want to use Twitter as a way to communicate with personal friends, and that’s fine. This is about using Twitter as a business generation tool.

The trick with Twitter is to build up your followers to the thousands, so that when you tweet something about your business, a lot of people see it.

I used to use a service called Tweet Spinner, which was free, but now their free service has been reduced down to three actions per day and you can’t do much with it. Their paid service is $35 a month. I now use software called Tweet Adder, and I bought the 5 profile package for $74 (one time fee). So I can use it on 5 different Twitter accounts. For one account it is $55.

With Tweet Adder you can automatically follow a bunch of people that fit a certain criteria, such as:

• They posted something with certain words in it

• They have certain words in their bio

• They live in a certain area

The idea is that you follow them, and a certain percentage, not all, will follow you back.

Let me explain how each of the three points above are useful. Let’s say you want to target business owners, nationally. You find people who include the words “business owner” or “entrepreneur” in their profile bio. Then you follow a bunch each day and a certain percentage will follow you back.

Or let’s say you are a local dance school. So you target people who posted something with your keywords in it “dance,” “dance class,” etc., AND that live in a certain geographical area.

Or let’s say you have a home improvement company. You might target all people that live in a certain geographical area, with the idea that many of them are home owners.

Twitter has rules about adding too many people in a day. You should keep it down to 10% of your total of people you are following, per day. In the beginning when you don’t have many, you can probably get away with 20%.

So you start doing this for a week or so and now you have way more people you are following than are following you back. Tweet Adder will locate those curmudgeons who didn’t follow you back, and remove them. It waits three days after they were added (to give them time to see who is going to follow you back) and then displays how many there are to be removed. So you can then enter that amount in the “Unfollow” window, and press “Start” and away it goes.

So the trick is to develop a strategy for your business of locating who to follow, then following new people, up to 10% of the total people you are following, per day. Let’s say you have 500 people you are following. Follow 50 new ones per day. Then after a few days when Tweet Adder starts displaying a number of people who have not followed you back, have the software delete them. So you just jockey those two factors back and forth, following new people, then removing the ones that didn’t follow you.

Engagement

The next trick in using Twitter as a business generation tool is to start posting things about your business on Twitter. I follow a strategy of posting things several times a day, saying what I am doing at the time, such as “I am working on a new web design project,” or “I am reviewing my client pay per click advertising accounts.” I have found this strategy works for me, and I use Ping.fm and have it hooked up to my Twitter account, as well as my Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts, so when I post something on Ping.fm, it goes out to all.

You have to observe what other people post and get a feel for what would be good for your business. My advice is not to post “Buy my stuff!” messages all day long because it will just annoy people and they will “un-follow” you.

So as you post things about your business, now you will get people starting to follow you. They will find you using the Twitter search feature, or they will be using Tweet Adder or some other software. They will be searching for people posting certain keywords, just like I talked about you doing, above.

So when I post things I will think about keywords and what keywords other people might be searching for, and I will try to include those. I also notice that when I link to something in my tweets, like a new video I have put up on YouTube or a new offer I have like a new white paper I have written, it tends to increase the number of people following me from that.

Follow-Backs

So now that you have people following you, you probably want to follow them back. Otherwise they will probably un-follow you in a few days (if they are following this type of strategy which many are). So Tweet Adder will show you the number to follow back, and you just press a button and will automatically follow them back.

The Email Traffic

So now as people start to follow you back because you followed them originally, or as people start to follow you because you tweeted something of interest to them, you will now get emails telling you that so and so followed you. I believe you can turn off this function but I like to get those emails as it allows me to track what’s going on. But you don’t want all that cluttering up your email inbox. So start an email rule so that everything coming from “postmaster.twitter.com” gets dumped into a folder in your email. That allows you monitor the flow but keeps your inbox free.

Good luck with Twitter.

 

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34 Tips on Creating a Social Media Presence

by John Eberhard

1. Start an account on Facebook if you don’t already have one

1. Start an account on Twitter if you don’t already have one

1. Start an account on MySpace

1. Start an account on LinkedIn

1. Start an account on Ping.fm. Hook up all the accounts above to your Ping.fm account, so that whenever you post a status update to Ping.fm, it automatically goes out to all your accounts.

1. Work out some kind of strategy for adding lots of friends/followers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, because if you don’t have a lot, your communications will not go out to anyone. My strategy has been to search for my personal friends first and add them, then start adding people who have at least 20 friends in common. Using this strategy I now have 3,400 Facebook friends and 3,600 Twitter followers. In order to use your social media accounts to promote a business, you should target to get thousands of friends/followers.

1. Put up a Facebook fan page if you don’t already have one. Promote this to your Facebook friends (but don’t keep asking people to become a fan of your page over and over).

1. Once you have some friends and followers, observe what other people do and what types of communication they put on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Get a feel for each site and what is acceptable.

1. Start posting some “status updates” yourself, via Ping.fm. You will need to develop a strategy of how to communicate about your business without being obnoxious. One thing I do which has worked well for me is to post status updates saying what I am working on at the time, such as “I am working on a new website for an aviation company,” or “I am setting up a new pay per click advertising account for a new client.” This establishes the fact and reminds people that I am a web designer and Internet marketing consultant. This has gotten me business.

1. You can occasionally do a status update telling people to come to your webinar or download your eBook or even buy your product. But don’t do it all the time. It gets really annoying. And I see some people do it, even some so-called “gurus” who should know better.

1. Also include status updates occasionally about personal stuff, such as your kids, your vacation, your dog. Post pictures or videos. Don’t make it all about your business.

1. Avoid one word, cryptic status updates that are basically a private joke between you and only a few other people. My theory is it’s basically trolling for people to respond “What do you mean…?” Some people specialize in this. You know who you are.

1. Start an account on Plaxo. And you can import all your Facebook friends that also have an account on Plaxo. Hook it up to Ping.fm.

1. Start an account on Plurk. Hook it up to Ping.fm.

1. Start an account on FriendFeed. Hook it up to Ping.fm.

1. Put up a Wordpress or Typepad blog. Start posting something to it once a week or more. Your posts can be articles at 300-1,000 words, or can be short messages related to the topic of your blog. You can comment on something someone else put on another website or blog. You can link to a video, or embed the HTML code so the video appears right in your blog.

1. After each blog post go to www.pingomatic.com and send out a notification called a “ping” to all the blog search engines. Takes 1-2 minutes, and really drives traffic to the blog.

1. Put up multiple links to your main website in the sidebar of your blog.

1. Put up a free blog on free blogging sites like Wordpress.com and Blogger.com.

1. Put up a free blog on Posterous.com. Then hook up all your other blogs to it so when you post something on Posterous, it goes out to all of them automatically. Saves time and increases your reach.

1. Use keywords in your blog posts, keywords that you want to rank for. Then link them in the blog posts back to your main website. A word or phrase linking to your website is what is called “anchor text,” and is considered the most valuable type of link.

1. When posting a status update on Twitter (a “tweet”), remember that people will use the search feature on Twitter to search for people who use certain words or phrases in their tweets. They will then follow those people. I notice I get a burst of people following me on Twitter whenever I include certain key phrases in tweets.

1. Take any articles you post to your blog, and also put up a page for them on Squidoo.com and HubPages.com. Squidoo lets you put multiple links to your site into the article whereas HubPages only allows one link.

1. Spend a small amount of time every day or every couple days adding new friends on Facebook and Twitter.

1. On Twitter, the strategy I use is to follow people who tweet with certain words or phrases that are related to the topic I’m working on. Then a certain number of them will follow me back. The idea behind this is that you will hopefully be following people who are possible prospects for your business.

1. Use software to follow people on Twitter who include your keywords in their tweets. TweetAdder and TweetSpinner are two possible options. Doing it manually takes too long. Also use one of these packages to remove people you’ve followed who don’t follow you back.

1. Spend a few minutes a day on Facebook reviewing the status updates of people on your friends list, and comment on things other people are saying. Not just business but personal stuff too.

1. Once you make a comment or click the “Like” button on someone else’s post on Facebook, you will now get emailed every time someone else comments on it or whatever. I set up a mail rule in my email software and dump all those emails into a folder, so they don’t clutter up my inbox, and I can review them when I have time (or not).

1. I also set up an email rule so that all emails from Twitter get dumped into a folder and don’t clutter up my inbox.

1. When you set up an account on MySpace, don’t put some bizarre, busy background behind your page so it is impossible to read what’s on the page. I think this is what killed MySpace, because it became too difficult to read people’s pages. Originality is great but don’t sacrifice readability.

1. When you get leads for your business, track where they come from so you know if your social media efforts are bearing fruit.

1. Once you have a Facebook fan page, hook your main blog up to it so every time you post something to the blog, it shows up on the fan page. That will make your Facebook page more active and appealing for fans.

1. There are two purposes of starting an account on social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon. One is to create an account and put in bookmarks to all your favorite sites, making it easy to find your favorite stuff. Another is to bookmark your own site and various pages on your site, your blog, your social media pages and so on, and each of those bookmarks will count as a link to those pages. This helps with search engine ranking and it can help people to find those pages as well.

1. Stay engaged. Once you start these accounts, you have to spend a little time regularly, communicating what you’re doing and responding to the communications of others. And adding more friends or followers. And reaping the rewards. I get regular business from my social media presence. You can too.

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34 Tips on Building Links to Your Website

by John Eberhard

1. Submit articles to article directories, including a “bio box” at the end with your website address. I see article directories getting zero comment from other so-called SEO experts and yet I have been doing them for 5 years and have seen them consistently get results in terms of building high quantity links in a short time.

1. Write optimized press releases with your targeted keywords in them and submit them to online PR sites.

1. When you submit a press release to online PR sites, submit it to several because they each have arbitrary rules about what press releases they will accept.

1. Put up a Facebook fan page, with links to all your websites and blogs. These rank highly on search engines.

1. Put up a blog and write regular articles and posts that include links back to your main website.

1. Include sidebars on your blog with links back to your main site, including links to any offers you have, books you sell, eBooks you’re giving away, etc.

1. Put up a free blog on free blogging site Wordpress.com. Write regular articles that include links back to your main website.

1. Put up a free blog on free blogging site Blogger.com. Write regular articles that include links back to your main website.

1. Put up a free blog on free blogging site Posterous.com. Write regular articles that include links back to your main website.

1. Put up a free blog on free blogging site Tumblr.com. Write regular articles that include links back to your main website.

1. Put up a free blog on free blogging site LiveJournal.com. Write regular articles that include links back to your main website.

1. Use Posterous.com and hook up all your blogs to it, then post your content to Posterous.com and it will go out to all your blogs.

1. Don’t worry about “duplicate content” penalties. This is a myth. Check what Google says if you don’t believe me.

1. Every time you post something on your blog or blogs, go to www.pingomatic.com and send a notification, called a “ping,” to all the blog search engines. If you use multiple blogs, ping for each one except Wordpress.com.

1. When you put out a press release on the online PR sites, also post it on your blog.

1. Post status updates on Facebook and Twitter that include links to interesting stuff on your website.

1. Set up accounts on social media business directories like Hotfrog.com and About.org, including a blurb on your company and links back to your website. I’ve identified 21 sites like this that are effective.

1. Start an account on LinkedIn. List your website address.

1. Start an account on MySpace. List your website address.

1. Produce a video about your company and post it on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Be sure to include your website address.

1. Ignore Google’s advice to simply put up great content on your site and wait for others to link to you. You will become old and gray before you get rich this way. You need to be more proactive than that.

1. If you have multiple websites for different businesses, figure out a logical way to have them all link to each other.

1. Take your articles and put each one up as a “lens” (basically just a page) on Squidoo.com. Include links to your website and blogs.

1. Take your articles and put each one up as a page on HubPages.com. Include one link to your website (HubPages is not as friendly to marketing as Squidoo).

1. Forget about “reciprocal linking,” where you email someone and ask them to link to you and you link to them. This used to be the primary method of link building but Google devalued this about two years ago and you get little benefit from it anymore. (Some “experts” still recommend it though).

1. Despite the fact that Google’s advice to “just put up great content and people will link to you” is pretty anti-marketing, you should still come up with great content and put it up on your site as well as plastering it far and wide.

1. Find bloggers that write about your topic and pitch them on writing something about you. Or offer to guest-write something for their blog.

1. Submit your site to directories that allow free submissions.

1. Set up accounts on bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, and bookmark various pages from your site.

1. Put up a free listing on Yelp.com.

1. Avoid link farms, defined as a group of websites that all link to every other site in the group. Most of these are created with some automated setup. Link farms are considered a form of spamming by search engines. You might notice that the word “spam” has evolved to not just mean unsolicited email but anything any techie now considers bad.

1. Put up free ads on Craigslist.com.

1. In your own blog posts mention other people in your field occasionally who have stuff of interest and link to them. What goes around comes around.

1. Hire a brilliant website marketing consultant to do all or most of this website marketing stuff for you, allowing you time to get out more of your own product or service.

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What You Can Tell With Google Analytics

by John Eberhard 

Google Analytics is a free web statistics service offered by Google. Just sign up with an account or you can do it easily from your existing Google AdWords or Gmail account. Then you get some HTML code that needs to be put on every single page of your website. If you have multiple websites, create a profile for each site.

OK, now you’ve got Google Analytics set up. What kind of information does it tell you?    

The first thing it tells you is how many visitors you are getting to the site each week. I graph this for my own site. For many of our clients we do a monthly report that shows how many visitors they got to their site for the last month.

If you are doing any kind of website marketing program, this number of website visitors should be going up month to month. That tells you that your program is working.

Some people insist that the real statistic you want to look at is not web visitors, but unique visitors, which counts a person only once even if he came to your site multiple times. I disagree with this, because ideally you want people to come to your site multiple times, don’t you?

The next thing to look at is Page Views. This is the total number of pages that were viewed in the given time frame that you’re looking at. This will always be at least as many as the web visitors, but will almost always be more. You want this to be as much higher than the web visits as possible, because it shows that people are moving through your site to multiple pages. You want your ratio of page views to visits to be as high as possible, because the more pages they look at, the better your chances are to sell them your product or service. It also means they are not bailing after just one page.

The next thing to look at is the top pages and how many visits they are getting in your given time frame. This shows you what your most popular pages are, it shows you how effective your navigation system is in getting people to the pages that are most important for you, and you can see how much traffic any new or special pages are getting. You can also create special landing pages for an email or pay per click campaign and this shows how many people actually arrived there. You can also look at specific form pages or buy pages on your site and see how many people went there versus how many people filled out the form or bought the item. If the ratio of visitors to conversions for those pages is poor, that tells you that you need to work on improving those pages.

The next thing to look at is the referring websites. These are sites that have a link to your site, and it shows what the site is and how many people came to your site from there. The biggest numbers here are usually from search engines, but you will also see some other sites that have links to yours. This tells you which of your link building or social media marketing actions are bringing people to your site.

For instance, you might see referrals from Facebook or Twitter. Or you might find out Wikipedia or some similar site has a link to you. For instance, on my political site I have written several articles about a historian named Alexander Tytler and his cycle of democracy, and Wikipedia has linked to my articles and I get a lot of traffic from that.

The next thing to look at are the keywords that people entered in search engines on their way to arriving at your site. This gives you an indication of what keywords are important for you, and can be an indication of which keywords your site is ranking well for. It also shows which keywords people are entering to arrive at your site via the pay per click systems like Google AdWords.

Having Google Analytics on your site, you can really tell what is going on with your visitors, and you can see how well each new thing you do is working. Anyone who has a website who is serious about getting good results from that website should put Google Analytics or some other type of web statistics system up on that site. I like Analytics because it is free and has some great features. Without it, you are flying blind. With it, you can make more intelligent decisions and improve your results.

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Use of Color in Design, Part 2

by John Eberhard

Last week in part 1, I covered the importance of a color scheme and how you can use the color wheel in selecting colors that will go well together.

After I sent out that article I got an email from friend and associate Jane Millan, owner of Precision Design in San Francisco. She said:

“I might suggest in your next email mentioning the Split-complementary Color Scheme rather than the complementary color scheme (opposites on the wheel) which you mentioned in this email. The Complementary color scheme does have a strong visual contrast, but because they are opposites (thus reflecting the opposite light-wave band) there is a lot of tension in a color scheme like that (hard on the eye if used predominantly).

“The split-complementary color scheme is a variation of the complementary color scheme. In addition to the base color, it uses the two colors adjacent to its complement, rather than its complement.

“This color scheme has the same strong visual contrast as the complementary color scheme, but has less tension. It’s also hard for beginners to mess up.

“Also, I might mention warm vs. cool colors. A great rule of thumb (and one that isn’t generally known or used, but I use it) is that if you use a predominantly warm palette (lots of oranges, yellows, reds) that you use 20% cool (blues, blue-greens). And vice versa. This gives a very dynamic feel to a palette. There are of course bluey-oranges and reddish-blues, etc. so this can be played with a lot, but the 80-20 rule is a great rule of thumb.”

Thanks Jane for that insight.

Here are some excerpts from “Color Harmony” by Hieaki Chijiiwa on the effects achieved by the use of various colors:

“Red: Red is passionate, the color of hearts and flames: it attracts our attention, and actually speeds up the body’s metabolism. Red is popular among the young, and pink in particular is associated with romance. Deep red, on the other hand, looks aristocratic.

“Yellow: Yellow is lively and happy, the color of sunshine and daffodils. Because it is to relentlessly cheerful, we tend to tire of it quickly; an apartment painted in bright yellow would be oppressive, but pale yellow would make it breezy and springlike.

“Green: Green is tranquil and pastoral, the color of trees and grass. Bright green reminds us of spring and fertility, but it’s also the color of mildew, poison, and jealousy. Dark green is an eloquent color, and brings to mind the deep quiet of a pine forest.

“Blue: Blue is the color of the sky and the sea. Like green, it has a calming effect, but it’s also quite powerful – the strongest of the familiar colors after red. Light blue looks young and sporty, but royal or navy blue has a dignified, wealthy air.

“Purple: Purple is a sophisticated color, long associated with royalty. We don’t often see it in nature, so we think of it as an ‘artificial’ color, and find it a bit hard to take. The lighter shades of purple have dominated women’s fashions in recent years.

“Brown: Brown is rich and fertile, like soil, and it’s also sad and wistful, like the leaves in autumn or an October moon. Light brown, tan, and beige give fabrics and housewares a rustic, natural look, while dark brown suggests opulent hardwoods and leather.

“White: White is the color of purity, virginity, innocence and peace, but it’s also associated with hospitals, sterility, and winter. The dichotomy is also seen in white household objects: they either look expensive (like bone china) or disposable (like paper plates).

“Black: Black is the color of night and death, and is often linked with evil (‘black magic’). Its unorthodox appearance has made it popular with artists, but it’s also associated with wealth and elegance (black household items tend to look expensive).

“Warm Colors: The hues from red to yellow, including orange, pink, brown and burgundy, are called warm colors. In fact, the wavelength of red light is very close to that of infrared radiation, which transmits heat. Warm colors are bright, splashy, and aggressive, like the molten lava flowing from this crater. More than any other colors, they attract the eye and excite our emotions.

“Cool Colors: The hues from green to violet, including blue and all the shades of gray, are known as cool colors – perhaps because they remind us of snow and ice, as in this photograph of a summer cruise to Alaska. Cool colors have exactly the opposite effect as warm colors: they slow down the body’s metabolism, and are even used in hospitals to calm manic patients.

“Light Colors: Light shades of any color look soft and ethereal, like cotton candy or fleecy clouds floating in the summer sky. The hue is relatively unimportant: even shades of orange and purple have a gossamer, fairy-tale quality.

“Dark Colors: Black and other dark shades feel heavy, like rain clouds dense with moisture. Black, in particular, seems as strong and as solid as the cast-iron boiler of this old-fashioned locomotive. Dark red, dark purple, dark green and dark blue are the colors most often associated with royalty.

“Vivid Colors: All vivid colors have powerful personalities. Red stands out (looking at all the red in this photograph is like listening to headphones at full volume), but blue and yellow are also vivid, and paradoxically, so are black and white. However, when you combine two or more vivid colors, the result is cacophony – too many voices shouting at once.”

I strongly recommend the “Color Harmony” book.

Good luck with your color scheme selection.

 

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Use of Color in Design

by John Eberhard

 

Color and the selection of colors in the development of a color scheme is one of the most vital elements to use properly in graphic design, and is one area where non-professionals are usually not well trained.

 

Although the use of color is very much subject to opinion, you might be surprised to know that there is a considerable technology of the use of color. And if you follow the general rules, you will usually have a color scheme that is integrated and aesthetic, and if you violate the rules, you can end up with a color scheme that is disjointed and hideous.

 

The first thing to know about color and color schemes is the use of the color wheel. I have scanned and included here a copy of a simple color wheel from the book “Color Harmony” by Hieaki Chijiiwa, which I recommend.            

 

When you’re deciding on colors for a color scheme for a web site, a promo piece, a direct mail piece, an ad, or a page or spread in a magazine, you want to keep it simple. You should have no more than two dominant colors (not including black and white) in that web site, promo piece, ad, spread or whatever. When I say “dominant colors” I mean the colors that are represented in large areas. You can have other colors in small areas (called “spot color”). But for your big, broad areas of the piece, you want only two colors, or at the most three.

 

So how do you select those two colors? Well the color wheel can be your guide. One method I use frequently which works well is to select color opposites on the wheel. Use of color opposites tends to give you an integrated and aesthetic look. By this I mean, mainly: blue-orange, red-green, yellow-purple.

 

I have used blue-orange a lot in designs during my career, usually with great results. Red-green tends to give you a sort of Christmas look, but you can get around this by using subdued shades of either green or red, like dark green or burgundy. Yellow-purple can give you some very striking results and I have seen it used very well. Although technically according to the rules it should not work, I have built color schemes using blue and red and achieved very good results.

 

It’s good to have a near-balance between the two dominant colors, but usually with one color being more dominant.

 

Once you have your dominant colors in there, you can start adding some spot colors to make your design more alive. For example, if you are working with a blue-orange color scheme, you should figure out a way to bring in some small areas of yellow or red. This makes the design more alive. But don’t make these other colors dominant or you could end up with a mess. For example, you would not want to make a design with equal parts of blue, red and yellow. I’ve seen it done and it is not pretty.

 

I advise spending a little time looking at some web sites, promo pieces, advertisements, magazine spreads, etc., to see how they use color and how they put their color schemes together. You will see some that are hideous and garish in their use of color, and some that are works of art.

 

“Saturated colors” are the pure color without adding black or white. The colors shown in the color wheel above are saturated colors. “Shades” are when you add black to the saturated color to get a darker result. “Tints” are when you add white to get a lighter color. Saturated colors tend to make your design feel brighter and more alive, and more masculine. Tints, i.e. pastels, tend to give a more feminine feel. Darker tints make it feel heavy.

 

Next week I’ll cover a bit about what each of the colors and color types communicates.

 

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The Call To Action

by John Eberhard                                                                                                            

One of the most vital aspects of any ad, promo piece, promotional email or web site is called the “call to action.” And for many business people, it is probably one of the least understood.

The call to action is the thing that comes at the end of your ad, promo piece, web page, or promotional email, and should be included in all website marketing. It is where you tell the person what you want him to do. This is where you tell him to buy the product now, to fill out the form, or to pick up the phone and call.

You might think that it is obvious at the end of the ad or web page or promo piece that the person should do what you have in mind. Not so. You have to tell them convincingly what you want them to do. Or let’s put it this way: if you tell them convincingly what you want them to do, your percentage of people that do so will increase dramatically.

I remember working with a guy once who was relatively new to marketing. I looked at the first ad he designed and I realized it had no call to action on it. I tactfully explained what a call to action was, and the ad got modified to include one.

So your call to action tells people what to do. But there is another important element to a call to action, and I notice that some business owners instinctively get this and with others I have to explain it. And that is the offer.

The call to action is where you incorporate your offer. By that I mean that you have to offer them something to sweeten the pot a little bit, to heighten the reader’s interest and get him to take action now, rather than moving on.

With promotions where you are trying to get the person to buy right now, usually with lower ticket items, your offer could be some sort of discount or buy-now, or an add-on that the person gets for free when they buy. Often you can come up with an add-on that adds significant perceived value, but is not that expensive in relation to the price of the item. I think that in the current economy it is more important than ever to come up with an offer that will increase the percentage that buy now.

With higher ticket items, you usually are in the business of lead generation, meaning that you are trying to get the person to respond and give you his contact information so that one of your salespersons can contact and sell him.

So with lead generation, it is helpful to give him an added reason to respond. So you offer him something, usually for free. Like a newsletter subscription, or a free report or white paper, a product demo, or whatever. You want to make sure that your offer is related as directly as possible to the topic of the product or service you are offering. For instance, if you offer a free white paper, it should be on a topic that is directly related to your product or service. That way the people who respond will be much more likely to be qualified prospects, because otherwise they wouldn’t be interested in the white paper.

I have written another article on hard and soft offers, and it is important to understand those. Over the 21 years that I have been involved in marketing, I have found special offers to be very helpful in terms of increasing the percentage of response.

Over the next week, check out the ads or promotional material you see and notice the call to action. Notice if the marketer included any kind of special offer to heighten your interest and get you to respond now. Notice how effective each one was for you. This will help you in crafting your own effective call to action.

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