1) Converting those who visit your website or interact with you somewhere else on the web to taking action with you

2) Enabling yourself to be not just “found” or “stumbled upon” but ever present

3) Maximizing your sales potential by either making or creating something to sell on your own or promoting someone else’s product.

Stay tuned for Thursday’s launch, which will be ONLY between the hours of 10am and 3pm. Sign-up for the Tuesday Triplet where we’re describing the product launch process one step at a time while we’re actually doing it.

In one week worth of promotion, we packed a room of more than 100 people and we had 40 more on a waiting list. We just couldn’t fit any more into the room.

So, we’re doing it again! And, it won’t cost you a cent to attend.

This one-day-only event will be from 9am to noon on Thursday, June 24 at the Red Lion Hotel in Aurora Colorado, just off I-225 at the Parker Road exit.

Our room will only hold 125 and, as last time, it’s sure to fill up fast, so register now or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://tinyurl.com/29qr8tf

As last time, I (Marty Dickinson) will start the morning off where I’ll cover:

• The new evolution of websites and why it doesn’t make sense to use anything else for your business
• Hot strategies that are working this month for converting more of your website visitors to leads and paying customers, including less text and more video
• Updates on Google’s organic search mix and how real-time search and video is impacting your traffic today
• How the Internet marketing “heavy hitters” get more traffic to their websites using my “Traffic Triangle” process (You won’t hear about this at a Meet-up group!)
• How to get 300 minutes of benefit from every 30 minutes you spend on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin

Then, we’ll switch gears and Zak will cover the enormous power and process of more effective email marketing, including how to:

• Use best practices and winning strategies in your email marketing
• Get and keep quality subscribers
• ncrease your deliverability and open rates
• Create more compelling content
• Integrate video into your email campaigns

This is your opportunity to learn the true cutting edge online strategies for today in simple step-by-step sequences you will be able to apply immediately to your own business promotion efforts.

Learn from valuable case studies of how other businesses have effectively used these important Internet marketing and email marketing techniques to boost their business.

Join us on June 24th at the Red Lion in Aurora. You must RSVP to this free event and we are sure to fill the room before the date arrives. So, do not hesitate.

Don’t wait. Click Here NOW to Sign-up today and get ready to Profit Again in 2010!

Your primary goal with content pages is to supply informational content to the Internet that people are already searching for by keyword phrase. When people search for that phrase, your content page comes up and you get the traffic.

For example, one day I wrote a content page titled “Why Internet Marketing Coaching Doesn’t Work.” Now, most people wouldn’t search for that exact phrase. They would search more probably for “internet marketing coaching.” When they do, that content page is #1 on Google (as of the time of this writing). Over the past 30 days, I’ve had 83 visitors to that page, 31 of them came as a direct search on Google related to “Internet marketing coaching.”

Not bad for content that took about 30 minutes to write and another 10 minutes to optimize for Google and post.

What if you were to build just 50 content pages around topics of interest to your potential audience, with each page bringing just 30 new visitors a month searching specifically for that phrase? That would be 1500 new visitors a month. What about 100 pages?

And, the best part is that once a page is created, it continues to generate that traffic for you month after month.

What should you do once you have a content page ready to go? Here are three steps:

1. Link from one of your existing Web site pages to your new content page

There are really two types of content pages. Those you want people to see AFTER they’ve arrived at your website and those you want search engines to be attracted to so that people get introduced to your website through the content pages.

When focusing on the latter, add links to your content pages from within the content of sub-pages. Search engine spiders will find those links and index the content pages while visitors to your main website will probably glance over them.

If you go to the Internet marketing coaching page, you will see a link called, “Finding an Internet marketing strategy mentor.” See how the link is not part of my left or top navigation. It’s just embedded within the content.

2. Wait for a week or two

This is really all the time it should take to get a new page indexed in Google. If you have a well-done blog setup, you could see your new post on Google within a day or two…even within a few hours! Search periodically for exactly what you’ve added as a page title and within two weeks, often less, your new page will appear–somewhere.

3. Tweak and be patient

This search engine optimization stuff takes time. But once you get the hang of it, you will consistently get any new content page you post at least on the first page. And, if not, keep working at it. Eventually your pages will appear higher on search results.

In summary. . .

Using content pages as a form of gaining targeted visitation is something that has a cumulative effect over time. Don’t expect to write one or two content pages and all of a sudden have 50,000 more visitors than last month. It doesn’t work that way.

Think of it like this. At every speaking opportunity, I’m sure to say somewhere along the line that the Internet is an opportunity for you to become a recognized authority in your industry. Developing tons of content pages will give you that opportunity. But, that stature and reward does not happen by slapping up a page or two. Aim high in quality and quality and this strategy will pay off for you over time.

Don’t pay attention to how many pages you create, but that you’ve covered every topic possible and every question someone might ask about your industry. The results will happen.

It’s just that blogs have a few more cylinders under the hood if I can use a metaphor.

In fact, I wrote a blog post a few months ago that suggested a blog is the very heart of ALL of your Internet marketing efforts by the blog working together with social networking and Web sites.

I don’t know why the power of WordPress is being so under rated, because I believe this beloved software has paved the way for a new evolution of Web site. Here are 35 reasons why a blog, specifically a WordPress blog, is better than a traditional Web site for your business and business owners today in a very trying economy.

1. Save Money – No longer do you need to send the most basic text changes to your designer or even have your designer add new pages for you. Make the edits yourself whenever you want and save the money you would’ve paid your designer for more important things by adding new pages on your own. Times are tight and managing your own content for your Web site is a great way to contribute to saving costs.
2. Greater Accessibility – Make changes or add content from any computer in the world with Internet access and a browser without the need for additional software or fixing firewall settings.
3. Speed of Communication – Since you don’t have to wait a few days for your designer to make those basic changes, the content on your Web site and be altered immediately by you, thereby giving your Web site visitors the most timely and current details possible.
4. Consistency - No matter how many pages you add in page template format makes visitors less confused
5. Better Time Management – Add content and then schedule those posts to publish on your site on whatever day and time you want. You could write an entire 12-week e-course, for example, break it up into 12 pieces and have each automatically post to the site at the same day and time each week for 12 weeks.
6. Ease of Membership Site Rollout – With the addition of a few plugins, a WordPress blog can evolve into a full service membership site with as many levels as you would like.
7. Social Networking Friendly – Automatically integrate your blog posts with social media like twitter, facebook, Linkedin instead of having to go to each one, login, and make a post that you’ve just added something new to your Web site.
8. Engage with Current Media – Easily add audio and video to posts and pages.
9. Creative Welcoming – Integrate any design within an hour or two in comparison to other CMS (Content Management System) tools that all look alike because of their stringent design constraints.
10. Ultimate in SEO Friendliness – The construction of WordPress blog code is consistent and streamlined without excessive HTML code that Google finds very inviting for indexing. Plus, with the right setup, you’re able to customize every page or post you make to give you the highest possible probability of getting your pages in high search results positions.
11. Inspiring – Participating by adding posts and pages and managing your own content becomes “fun.” When you see the results from your OWN efforts instead of farming out everything, you become fueled even more to add more content.
12. Search Engine Magnetism – As a result of your inspiration to post content more often, your frequency of contribution will attract Google robots and other search engines like magnets. The robots will search your entire site every day looking for new content and new pages and changes they can index. New pages get indexed in hours or even MINUTES when you commit to adding new content over time. Many of our HereNextYear posts and WebsiteWaves.com pages have been published and displayed on Google’s organic search in under 30 minutes! Try that with a traditional Web site!
13. Growth potential - No need to update navigation when you add pages; links to new pages will be added automatically based on what “category” or categories you assign your posts and pages to. This all happens in the admin area instead of manually editing javascript menus and complex PHP include files.
14. Insanely Fast Learning Curve - Learning to edit content, post new pages, add photos and images is as easy (maybe even easier) than using MS Word. Figuring out these simple procedures on your own would only take a novice a few hours. With initial one-on-one training by phone from an expert WordPress trainer like we offer at HereNextYear, all of these functions can be performed by YOU in under an hour…even if you have no design or programming experience. There are two and three FULL-day classes just to learn the BASICS of Dreamweaver or FrontPage. I know…I used to teach them! WordPress blog software is by far, the easiest tool to learn how to maintain content on your Web site.
15. Improved Security – One of the subjects “against” WordPress or other blog software that use plugins (plugins are small add-on programs to enhance the capability of the blog software) is that hackers can break in to your Web site. But, the exact opposite is in fact true: If you have the right people involved in the setup of your WordPress installation, your blog site can be hacker-proofed even more securely than a traditional Web site. How can that be true? Because there is an actual process to “hardening” a WordPress installation. But, you just don’t hear designers or developers hacker-proofing traditional Web sites. See the difference?
16. Inspires Repeat Visitors – The fact that you are inspired to add new content frequently will also encourage and increase your repeat visitor numbers. When people like what you contribute to the Web, they want to know when you add more. That’s where RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) come into play along with automated notices by email that new posts have been made. These announcements trigger former visitors to come back to read the rest of the article, or in the case of RSS, visitors can subscribe to receive the entire post through their RSS reader or mobile device. This is not just the “future” of how communication will evolve in a few years, but this is NOW, TODAY. If you are not experienced with how RSS works, having a blog site will introduce you to its importance for sure.
17. Two-Way Communication with Visitors - Through the use of blog comments, you are no longer restricted to one-way “outbound” communication with visitors like you would be with a traditional Web site. Sure, you can always have a “contact us” page on your traditional Web site, but blog comments allow for anonymous two-way discussion between you and your readers. And, every time someone makes a comment to one of your posts, the inclusion of their content full of keyword phrases helps you to build better search positioning. It’s like getting free SEO help from the general public!
18. Increase Your Perceived Industry Authority – Making frequent posts and sharing your opinion on what’s happening in your industry offers so much more potential for establishing rapport with your audience than a traditional Web site could offer. Why such a difference? Because traditional Web sites just take too darn long to format. Even if you open Dreamweaver and copy an existing page to create a new one, you still have to format all that content, upload it to the right directory, assign page permissions, add the page manually to navigation….UGGG! A WordPress blog will allow you to add new pages in as little as five seconds! Period! And, that page can be set to appear in navigation on every other page on on your entire Web site in the click of a button. You just can’t afford to spend that much time to make that many additions of content pages in such a short amount of time with a traditional Web site. And, when you’re “reporting” on industry happenings, and giving your opinions, speed is of the essence. That’s the difference.
19. More Brand Awareness – Since the common approach with a blog site is to build out the site into an industry-specific authority resource with hundreds or even thousands of pages of content, the number of opportunities for the general public to see your brand identity is multiplied exponentially over and above the traditional 10 to 30 page Web site.
20. Immediate Identification of Hot Topics Among Your Audience – If you make 10 posts and get one or two…or even no comments at all, and then all of a sudden you post a topic that brings 20 comments, you learn immediately of an interest. This is a highly valuable opportunity that you normally don’t see with a traditional Web site, unless you pay for a bunch of custom programming to create some forms and surveys. The utility to allow blog comments is included with every Blog installation automatically with no custom programming required.
21. Better Anchor for Original Articles – When you publish articles to directories and blog networks, you first want to post it to your blog site. Why is a blog site “better” for this than a traditional Web site? Because of the automatic archiving feature within every blog setup.
22. Automated Syndication – Blog posts can be automatically converted to RSS feeds and
    syndicated to blog directories and other peoples’ websites.
23. Backdoor FREE Entry to Yahoo! Search Addition – When you submit your RSS feed manually to Yahoo! you don’t have to pay their $299 listing fee as your site will be indexed for free.
24. 24-Hour Listing in Bing/MSN – Adding the RSS feed to Bing/MSN is the fastest way to have your site indexed and it is common for even new sites to appear in Bing/MSN within 24 hours using this method.
25. One-Step Posting – It might sound like I’m repeating myself with “ease of use” or “ease of learning” already listed as a benefit, but this one is different. How many ways are there to add content to a Web site where you truly only click a single button to make the content appear live online? Only one that I’ve found and it’s through blog software. There are no 10, 5 or even 3-step processes to publish content live. It’s one single step.
26. You Control the Discussions – With traditional Web sites, the “old school” way of communicating with visitors was to add a forum or chat room. The problem with those was the need for maintaining the posts from spammers and removing discussions and predatory accounts that could threaten the integrity of your business. Blog sites changed all of that. You begin the topic of discussion. Your visitors make comments to the discussion you started. But, the comments people make are approved by you before anyone ever sees them on your Web site. It’s the best of all worlds without the worry of defaming your business with unacceptable posts.
27. Re-Ignite Your Ideas – By having the ability to add content to your Web site in a way that is easy, fast, and requires no technical skill, you will be amazed how ideas for “what to add” will no longer be a problem. In fact, you’ll be more worried about what to write about….first! Create content about industry happenings, product reviews, or educational steps. The limits are truly endless. You’ll never run out of things to add to your blog.
28. Increased Functionality with Lower Cost – Thousands of pre-written programs called plugins can increase the functionality of your out-of-the-box blog software. Traditional websites require everything to be programmed. Even if you find an available PHP or ASP script to work with a traditional website, there is usually significant integration work and customizing required, whereas WordPress plugins are usually a 3-click install process.
29. Multi-User Capable – WordPress offers multi-user capability so that larger companies with marketing departments, for example, can offer editing power exclusivity or even read-only mode to others.
30. Free Upgrades – Unlike traditional Web site software like Dreamweaver, PhotoShop or Flash, upgrades to WordPress blog software is free.
31. Universal Platform – With the economy the way it is, designers and Internet marketing service providers are closing their doors and disappearing even more quickly than when I got started in this business in 1996. You’ve got to be careful these days. With traditional Web sites, very rarely will a new service provider agree to pick up where the old designer or developer left off. The result is that the new provider will want to charge you for starting from scratch. Conversely, almost anyone with basic PHP and MySQL experience can jump into your WordPress blog site project in a moments notice if something was to happen to the helper(s) that got your blog site setup for you in the first place.
32. Safety – Add images and media by uploading to server from within your secret admin area instead of through traditional ftp and risking deleting important files or uploading to the wrong directories
33. Freshness – Easily change your site layout and appearance by swapping themes. Great for temporary changes for holidays or seasons.
34. Reduced Loss of Work – Your work is automatically saved as you type even if you haven’t published your blog posts live to the web yet.
35. Mobile Readiness - No need to produce a second Web site just for mobile users. WordPress automatically recognizes if a person is viewing the site through a Web browser or mobile device and configures the content to be viewed appropriately on either.
36. Ease of Printing – Designers are notorious for creating Web sites that are too wide to print. With a simple plugin, all your WordPress blog site content can be easily printed in easy-to-read format…without creating duplicate “printable” versions of pages. No need for sacrificing screen view design just so that people can print the pages.

Did I miss any benefits of WordPress blog sites over traditional sites? Let me know and please contribute to this important post.

If you have been wondering how converting your traditional Web site would be of benefit, this post was made for you! If you would like to talk more with someone about how you go about converting a traditional Web site to a WordPress blog site, contact us at HereNextYear immediately at 303-743-0832.

Whenever I get a call from a prospective client about a new Web site, I’ll ask them two questions: 1) “Is your Web site getting all the leads and sales you were hoping?” and 2) “Are you able to maintain your own content?”

In both cases the answers are almost 90% “NO!”

A blog or an entire Web site that’s setup using blog software supplies the pieces necessary to help make that answer turn to a YES!

For our Ultimate Blog Setup Pakage we use WordPress blog software and customize the livin’ heck out of it to accomplish what we need it to do; automated promotion. At the same time, the software allows you the site owner to login through a username and password to maintain your own content.

That’s right, you could be adding your own new pages whenever you want and change content on your Web site whenever you want also. And, it’s as easy as using Microsoft Word.

Blogs are important because they’re quickly becoming the easiest and most natural way of producing and maintaining a Web site. But, the fact that they automate promotion is an added plus.