OnLetterhead Brandnews

A Holiday Message From Tom Martin

To Our Valued Customers,

I can’t believe that 2009 has come to an end; It seems that the year has rushed by in a blink of an eye! Looking back, this year marked a major turning point for our company and for that, I would like to wish you, our customer, a heart filled thank you. Our valued customers are the backbone of our company and we work each day to improve our services, our solutions, our customer support and our offerings to provide you with everything you need to achieve success.

It seems that at the end of each passing year, I get nostalgic and if you would permit me, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what has changed and what we, as your marketing partner, have done in the past 12 months.

At the end of 2008, our company had established itself as the premier one-to-one branded email solutions provider in the marketplace. With close to 10,000 users worldwide, we solidified our position by providing an inexpensive results based solution. We also made major developments to our email marketing campaign solution “OnMarketer” and have implemented many of the features that our customers have requested.

Around March of 2009, after the many conversations we had with our customer base, it was clearly evident to us that a new solution was required. With the emergence and wide acceptance of FaceBook® & Twitter® as well as the rapid use of blogs, we knew the direction we had to take. Careful planning was put into this with the following objectives in place:

1. 1. Our customers need a way to communicate via FaceBook® & Twitter® as EASILY as possible.
2. 2. One of the biggest obstacles our customers were facing in regards to email marketing was the lack and availability of content. We had to find a way to make this easier for them.
3. 3. How can we ensure that every customer has a blog as well as items to post to their blog?
4. 4. How can we tie all of this together in an easy to use format while still making it “budget friendly”

As you may know, in late June, we officially launched our “Turnkey Digital Marketing Solution”. I just want to let you know how proud I am of my entire team for their tireless efforts as I know that with each customer success story, we have exceeded our expectations! We have helped customers across all industries in communicating on a regular basis with their base of business, increasing their sales and retaining their customers.

For the past few months, we have hosted webinars focused on informing our customers and prospects on all areas of digital marketing. I personally host each webinar and love the interaction as I see on a daily basis the challenges you face. This helps me guide the direction of our solutions as well as our company to provide you what you need.

As the industry is changing, so is our company. We see what customers are doing, how they are communicating, what they need and how they need to communicate. To ensure that you have access to the tools you need to compete, we stay at the forefront of innovation to provide you with the edge required in this competitive marketplace.

As we approach the final days of December, I want to leave you with a final message of gratitude and well wishes. I truly appreciate your business and am vested in your success. From the entire OnLetterhead family, have a happy and safe holiday and a prosperous new year!

Tom Martin, President of Monsoon Interactive

Why Use a Blog?

If you don’t see the reasons to use a blog for your business, then you need to read on. Not using a blog for your business is like throwing away free money.

Every business should have a blog. Blogs can help keep your customers updated about new products and services. Blogs are inexpensive (or free if you don’t purchase domain URL) to make and maintain. Most beginners and professional bloggers use Blogger or WordPress to host their blogs. Both services are very simple to use.

Customers can subscribe to your blog posts to keep updated about what is new. The title of your post can be indexed to search engines easily. Lets say for example that you are selling a brand new product called “ABC123″, you will want to write for your title “Brand New ABC123″. When someone types the phrase “Brand New ABC123″, people can find your site in the search engine even though your company is named “XYZ”.

Customers can write comments on your posts. Instead of writing e-mails to you, they can write comments to interact with you and other customers. That way, everyone can read about feedback of the product or concerns. Comments should be opened to all customers because you should not have anything to hide. If someone makes an honest but negative comment, you should be nice to answer it without criticizing anyone.

You can monetize your blog to earn some money on the side. Even if you make $10 a year on monetizing your blog, that alone already covers the domain cost per year. If your company website gets a lot of traffic, you can definitely earn a lot from your blog.

Making Money Online and SEO Traffic Building for Blogs - Learn all about tips and tricks to make money and increase traffic to your blog easily.

By Kai Lo
Source Here

9 Hidden Benefits of Blogging

I’ve been writing this blog for right at six years now and the benefits I’ve realized from doing so are very tangible. Without much hesitation I can say that it’s the single greatest business I asset I own. It’s led to countless interviews with national publications, my first book deal, and interaction with hundreds of thousands of small business owners. My blog is an incredible source of search engine traffic and exposure for my products and services, but even if none of that were true, knowing what I know now, I would still write a blog.

Some of the most profound benefits of the blog writing practice are available to anyone, with or without any substantial following. It’s not that we call it a blog or that the software used by bloggers possesses some magical power, it’s the act of writing something, something about my business and passion, something that I observe that touches me, something I learn and can’t wait to share, that activates the many benefits of blogging. I did not start blogging for these reasons, but they are some of the many reasons I continue to advocate blogging for everyone. So, these benefits aren’t really secrets I guess, but they are often overshadowed, powerfully under appreciated, and real.

• Blogging makes me a better thinker - (understand that better is relative!) In an effort to create content for a blog that is succinct, reveals new ways to look at common things, or apply simple solutions to seemingly complex problems, I believe I now think about business much differently.
• Blogging makes me a better listener - When I engage in conversation or listen to radio interviews, I listen with a writer’s ear and often find my head filling up with blog post ideas by simply listening to others discuss sometimes unrelated subjects.
• Blogging makes me a better writer - The fact that I practice writing daily has made me a better writer. It doesn’t mean I’m the world’s greatest writer, but doing something makes you better at it - hard to deny that. Of course writing publicly like this also allows for community reaction to help you get better faster.
• Blogging makes me a better salesperson - I write like I speak and often I write to sell an idea or even a very specific tactic. It’s amazing, but I find that clearly stating idea pitches in writing has improved my ability to quickly articulate them in selling or interview setting. It’s like you build up this reserve bank of preprogrammed discussion points.
• Blogging makes me a better speaker - This one falls nicely from the previous point but I’ll also add that working through blog posts on meatier topics, those that readers weigh in on has produced some of my best presentation material to date.
• Blogging keeps me focused on learning - The discipline required to create even somewhat interesting content in the manner I’ve chosen requires that I study lots of what’s hot, what’s new, what’s being said and what’s not being said in order to find ways to apply it to the world of small business.
• Blogging allows me to test out ideas - I’ve made some incredible discoveries about some of my ideas (okay, and had a few flops too) based on the immediate and sometimes passionate response from readers. I’m currently writing a book that reveals a business principle tested out here.
• Blogging makes me a better networker - I have developed hundreds of relationships with other writers that provide me with ideas, tips and resources to share and who willingly pass on my ideas, tips and resources. Some of these relationships remain professionally on the surface, but some have evolved into very strategic and fulfilling personal relationships as well. (Sharing a beer at a conference helps that along)
• Blogging allows me to create bigger ideas - This one is related to testing out ideas, but the habit of producing content over time also affords you the opportunity to create larger editorial ideas that can be reshaped and repurposed for other settings. I’ve taken a collection of blog posts on a specific topic and turned them into an ebook more than once.

My hope is that, if you’re one of those business folks who has been blogging, but doesn’t know if it’s worth it, or you’ve held off because you don’t think anyone wants to read a blog written by you, this post will give you the leverage of long-term benefits sufficient to keep at it.

John Jantsch
Source Here

A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic - The One Two Punch

Written by Gyutae Park

Social media is all the rage these days. Everyone wants to get in on the game and promote themselves on networks like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Digg. Social media, when done right, is a proven method of Internet marketing that can send hordes of quality traffic to your sites. But where does on-page SEO fit into all of this (particularly the title tag)? Does your SEO need to suffer in order for you to do well on social media sites? Contrary to what you may think, the answer is no. In fact, you can utilize social media to jump start your SEO efforts and get the best of both worlds.

In this article, I’ll describe the role of the title tag in social media and in SEO and let you in on a little title trick you can use to maximize both your social media and SEO exposure.

Title Tag for Social Media

The ultimate goal in social media is to create compelling content that people will voluntarily share and spread virally via word of mouth (using various social sites). In order for this to happen, the title tag (and header tags) need to be optimized to spark readers’ attention and hook them in. The title is essentially the first impression of the article and many people will actually vote up stories on social bookmarketing sites like Digg and StumbleUpon solely based on the headline.

So what makes a good title for social media? The use of specifics, numbers, names, and descriptive power words always helps.  Here’s an example. A current hot story on Digg is entitled “Electric Motorbike Does 0 to 60 in Under One Second!” Did that get your attention? It certainly got mine. That’s the mark of an effective headline.

Title Tag for SEO

Whereas title tags in social media should aim to get readers’ attention, titles tags for SEO should focus on incorporating highly relevant and popular keywords for the search engines. The title tag is by far the most important on-page SEO attribute and if you want to rank favorably for targeted keywords, you have to be sure that they’re strategically placed in the beginning of the title tag.

For example, using the previously mentioned Digg story, a better title for SEO purposes might be “KillaCycle Review - Fastest Electric Motorbike”. It’s descriptive with a lot of keywords, but it just doesn’t get your attention like the social media version, “Electric Motorbike Does 0 to 60 in Under One Second!”.

This presents a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, you want to optimize your titles for spikes of social media traffic, but on the other hand you want to optimize your titles for the search engines. What do you do?

The Solution - One Two Punch

Here’s the trick. When you first write an article, write the title (including both title tag and header tag) for social media. Be shocking or controversial. Do whatever you need to do to craft an interesting title that will be sure to get people’s attention. Once you have that in line, promote the article on social media sites. Get the word out and give it a chance to spread on sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc.

If you do a good job, you’ll get a big influx of traffic and links. However, after a few weeks, the traffic will inevitably die down and your article will be buried in the archives.

Once this happens, change the title tag on the article to be more SEO friendly by incorporating descriptive keywords with high search frequency (use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool). Leave the header tag as is with the social media version to entice search visitors to further read the content.

What does this do? You maximize sharing on social media by writing compelling titles - which aren’t always descriptive and search friendly. Once you get the traffic and links from that effort, you then maximize search traffic by changing the title tag to incorporate more keywords - and thus increase rankings. Make sense?

Have you used this tactic to increase both social and search traffic to your articles? If not, you may be missing out on a lot of new visitors you could be driving to your site.

Leave a comment with your thoughts. I’d love to hear more about additional strategies you’ve employed to maximize both social and search traffic to your sites.

Blogging Top Ranked Digital Marketing Tactic for 2009

by: Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog