How to License a Product
May 13, 2008
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Over the last seven days, I went to the pediatrician five times. Incredibly exhausting physically and emotionally, but the whole time I was burning a trail to the doctor’s office, I kept thinking to myself, “Thank God I have a licensing agreement Read more
Seek Out the Best Mentors and Jump Start Your Business Dream
May 4, 2008
You got the startup dream–whatever it is… it seems huge. gigantic. overwhelmingly difficult… you’ve never done anything on this scale before. Now what? Read more
To Partner or Not to Partner–That is the Question
April 26, 2008
With apologies to Shakespeare, the decision to start a business with a partner or as a sole proprietorship is not one to be taken lightly. As one of two founding partners in Savvymom.ca, Read more
How Do You Turn a Profit from Blogging? Finding and Joining an Ad Network
April 23, 2008
Last year internet marketing expert and problogger, Wendy Piersall of the recently renamed blognetwork, Sparkplugging started a series on how to make money from blogging, Read more
How to Get and Prepare for a TV Interview
April 20, 2008
Ever wonder how to get your company featured on a Talk Show? National TV and Film Producer shares insider tips Read more
The Why’s and How’s of Business Networking
April 2, 2008
We’ve found that women entrepreneurs are not always familiar with the value of networking and how to go about doing it…
How to Avoid Big Mistakes in Marketing to Women Online
March 12, 2008
Today’s magical wisdom provided by Fairy Godmother Holly Buchanan, co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth, newly released this week. Congrats to you and Michele Miller for making it to the finish line (or shall we say scoring your goal?) A full review of the book will come soon… reading it while I’m on my treadmill! (not kidding) 
Anyhow, the following article will give you a glimpse of Holly’s work and research. Enjoy! (BTW, Holly, I need a bigger photo of you…sorry it’s so small here).
Women are shopping online in record numbers. The Internet is the perfect fit for women’s increasingly busy lives.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking women shop the same way online as they do offline. Offline, she is much more likely to browse, look around, see what’s new, even socialize with friends.
Online she is task oriented. She does not want to browse for hours. You must make it easy for her to accomplish her goals quickly and easily.
There are specific things you can do to create a better online shopping experience for your female customers. In my e-book, The 7 Biggest Mistakes in Marketing to Women Online, I look at the top mistakes online marketers make and how to fix them. Here are a few of the top mistakes:
#1 - Believing the Lowest Price Always Wins. Some things actually matter more than price. Providing what she feels is a good value is always important. But she may pay more to find something that is just right.
What can you offer to her that perhaps an online store can not? More selection? More product information? A chance to get to know who you are? (You do have an About Us page that tells your story, don’t you?) A chance to gather information and ask questions without feeling pressured? There are many advantages to shopping online. Make sure you take advantage of those advantages.
#2 - Failing to Establish a Relationship with Her. Have you noticed that most websites leave you feeling cold? You don’t feel like you really know who the company is?
Speak her language. Most websites have copy that is formal and full of clichés - “We’ve been in business since 1987 providing turnkey solutions to take your business to the next level.†Try using a more conversational tone, lose the clichés, and get rid of the techno-jargon. Be clear. This does NOT mean be condescending. It simply means if you have a benefit that sounds technical (think product specs) explain how that feature is a real benefit to her.
How to Write a Search Engine Optimized Press Release
February 20, 2008
Today’s post was written by Fairy Godmother Janet Meiners, Internet Marketing Specialist. Janet blogs at Newspapergrl and works at Orange Soda.
I’ve been writing a lot more Search Engine Optimized (SEO) press releases again and so it’s on my mind. I’d like to share the steps of writing 
an SEO press release.
1. Assemble the facts, news angle, and begin writing.
To me, the best quality press releases involve actual interviewing, on the phone. There is so much more information you get by talking to someone. Sure, you can use email and that works, especially because you can’t misquote and you have a record. However, when you interview the right person, their passion for the subject can shine through and you can capture that essence in your writing. It also makes the story unique. But it takes longer.
2. Identify the keyword phrase or related phrase you want to optimize your press release for.
This can be easy if you already know the phrase but most of the time you need to do keyword research to see the competition and demand for a keyword phrase. You may want to go for a niche keyword that you can rank for more quickly. If you choose something like “Internet marketing†then you’re up against at least 100k other web sites who want to rank for that. That’s a long-term investment.
3. Incorporate the keyword phrase into the press release.
You need to make the keyword phrase an anchor, use it in the first sentence, title, and body of the press release. Don’t overdo it or it will look like spam. There are times I take an existing press release from a PR firm and add SEO. Otherwise you may want to start out with keyword phrase first rather than adding it later. I like my press releases to read well and the feel of them to come through first and then add keywords.
4. Submit the press release to a press release distribution service.
This sounds easy, but this is almost as much work as writing the press release. Each press release service has different rules according to how much you pay.
Links - Some won’t allow links, most regulate how many links your press release can have. Even the process of creating links is different for each service (and not always intuitive).
Optimization in the code (you can’t see this because it’s just for search engines) - You might need a list of 20 related keywords and write a summary with keyword phrases. This is SEO that no one sees but is very important.
Categorizing your press release - You may need to categorize your press release by subject and geographic areas.
Social media optimization - You may be able to add tags or other aspects, like Digg, Delicious, etc.
Attachments - If the service (like PRWeb) allows attachments, images, podcasts, etc, you need to identify and upload those.
Timing- Most of the time you need to submit your release a day or more before you want it to go out. For the media, you want to make sure that’s not on a weekend.
When I’ve crafted a great press release for search engines and for people I know that my editorial score will be high so there will be upwards of 50k (conservatively) clicks. Then if company I created it for changes it so it sounds right to them (but messes up the search engine optimization piece). (Sometimes legal, a few VPs, and directors have to buy off. That can seriously affect the success of your release and takes much more time.)
I’ve written press releases for newspapers and the media and we just faxed or emailed them to a list. Not much thought after writing except to target the release to the right people. Writing for search engines is much more technical and takes quite a bit more time.
Feel free to add information that I may have overlooked, or reference your posts about SEO press releases. Within the SEO industry we know a lot and none of this is news to you. However, I wanted to distinguish the difference between regular press releases and SEO optimized press releases.
Here’s a useful template for press releases by PR Web.
What Would You Do if another Retailer was Copying Your Product Descriptions?
February 5, 2008
Grant a wish! We’d love your feedback on this critical issue. Here is an email I received from a Startup Princess recently:
I have an issue that I thought you might be able to provide some insight. 90% of the product descriptions on my site are written by me. I spend many hours writing them as best as I could. Sometimes I look at other retailers for ideas, but ultimately the work is different than everyone else’s.
We are the first to carry quite a number of items, I know because I research online like mad on less common items. As these products become popular and talked about, other retailers start to notice and start carrying them also. That’s great and dandy, and expected, but the thing that is bothering me greatly is, I recently came upon 2 sites that started carrying the items after us, and found they have copied my descriptions word for word, down to the punctuation and quotations. I recognize my own work and it is obvious those descriptions/content came from our website.
Couple of things to keep in mind, (1) I don’t know if they are aware the content/work is my original. However, (2) the manufacturer/distributor for these particular products do not provide descriptions.
I do realize that people are likely going to copy if they see something is good and nice, but it is my own original work and content that they are stealing!! What can I do, what do I say, and how do I approach these retailers? Or should I just let it go, what would you do if you were me? Thanks in advance for any advice / tips you can provide. I do not want others to steal my work.
How to Use Social Media to Launch Your Next Product
January 8, 2008
Today’s Magic Wand: I’m doing a little PR/Marketing consulting for a company launching soon and in my research I came across this amazing post on How to Use Social Media as a Part of a Product Launch by Ignite Social Media that I felt was incredibly useful for our readers. I like how the article summarizes the expectations of using social media for online PR/Marketing and several tips for how to go about doing it…including Twitter, Facebook, and more. Enjoy!
