Steve Andrews's Blog

Before the advent of Twitter, bloggers were generally segregated into two - the elite, high-end bloggers who were mostly full-time bloggers and excelled in their work, and the hobbyist or wannabe bloggers who couldn’t quite ‘get there’.

Being popular and having to work hard for long hours, probloggers were generally found lacking in conversations with smaller bloggers. Of course, you may point out some exceptions, but they were just that: exceptions.

Fast-forward to the age of Twitter, and bloggers of any stature are able to communicate with probloggers. The role of Twitter: to provide a level playing field. No longer would you have to spend time commenting on other blogs to get bloggers to notice you and give you a reply. Michael Arrington, Darren Rowse, Chris Garrett, Robert Scoble - they’re all on Twitter and a @tweet away.

Here’s my own experience: I have contacted and/or established acquaintance with Darren Rowse (Problogger.net), Daniel Scocco (Daily Blog Tips), Amit Agarwal (Digital Inspiration) and of course, PChere (this blog) for this guest posting opportunity.

Some benefits of using Twitter as opposed to IM or email:

• Bloggers can chose to receive tweets when they want. This can be a boon when you’re busy and hurrying to meet deadlines. It is almost like an RSS feed for your instant messages - you chose when to receive content. In other words, it is a ‘pull’ system of communication (where you decide when to get the messages).
• Bloggers are no longer considered rude if they do not answer immediately. When using instant messaging or emails, most people take offense if you do not reply. However, in the ad-hoc world of Twitter, there are several reasons why someone may not reply: Twitter fails to deliver tweets sometimes, the recipient may be busy (and may miss it when coming back later) and/or both parties may forget.

Ultimately, Twitter’s best use for bloggers comes from the fact that it helps smaller bloggers communicate effectively and clearly, and those who ask questions will be heard, whether you are a no-name blogger, an up-and-coming blogger or a problogger.

So it’s been several weeks since you’ve launched and you are continuing your marketing campaign but it doesn’t seem to be improving. You aren’t meeting your goals, and you keep scratching your head and wandering where you went wrong. It’s important to know that not all marketing campaigns are successful, and that is why marketers have a job in the first place! Here are five common marketing mistakes that we all make, and hopefully you can prevent them from happening in the future.

Your brand is either too visible, or not visible enough

You may be scratching your head and wandering if its possible for your brand to be TOO visible. The answer is yes. By having your brand too visible, it leaves little room for people to provide buzz about it. If it is already every where, then why does it need to be more places? It also feels as if the brand is being forced upon its viewers. People like to discover things on their own so they can feel as if they found and bounded with something. If everyone knows about it, there’s nothing special about it any more and the brand will fail miserably.

On the other hand, by giving people too much room to buzz about your product, it could fall off the face of the Earth. You’re depending too heavily on people and their word-of-mouth. It’s important that you place your brands in specific areas that you know will expose it to the right crowd. It’s a tricky game, trying to gauge the perfect amount of interest that you want to build for your brand, and it’s never easy. The first few times you may fail, but eventually you’ll reach an equilibrium where you know your demographic enough to realize how much branding you need to put out there.

You’ve studied your demographic incorrectly

Often times, the result of a bad marketing campaign can be lead directly back to the basics. Studying your demographic. Studying your demographic is often over-looked by the simple marketer simply because they assumed that stereotypes fit. If you’re appealing to the teenage crowd, make sure that your brand appeals directly to them. Don’t make things look complicated or too professional or else they’ll be alienated.

It’s important to note that studying your demographic is probably the most important stage besides figuring out what goal you want to accomplish. A slight mis step may alienate your entire demographic entirely sending your marketing campaign into red ink failure. No one wants that to happen.

Look at brands that have succeeded in marketing to the correct demographic. Digg offers a hip and simplistic design that appeals to young adult males. Everything is fast loading and the content is the main priority. Take a look at Media Temple who features a slick site design that appeals to their inter-savvy demographic.

The timing was off

Planning your marketing campaign is extremely important. One aspect that is often over looked is the timing. You have to focus on your demographic and realize when the best and most efficient time is. It can go so far as to breaking it down hourly (when are they online the most?) to seasonal (when do they spend the most money?). Sure your initial thoughts may be to increase marketing in the down time, but I wouldn’t focus on that. Instead, try to increase and multiply your revenue margins according to the time that your demographic is most productive…otherwise you’ve wasted your money.

If you have a blog or a website, when do you update it? Do you update it in the morning when everyone’s driving to rush hour? Or do you post right before lunch hour when everyone is surfing the internet? These are important questions to ask because as a marketer, you must understand when your demographic wants to spend the most time with your brand.

You underestimated yourself

I’ve seen brands fail because their marketing department underestimated where the brand stood in the first place. If buzz about your brand is already happening, don’t ruin it by massively appealing to new-comers. Sure it’s great to have a new crowd, but instead, why not hit on the fact that you’re already being written about? Instead, act as if you’ve been in the game forever and appeal to the more experienced crowd who may just come to your site with all of the buzz.

Underestimating a brand means that you could provide a much more aggressive marketing campaign. If you don’t think your brand is strong enough to with hold the inevitable onslaught of attention, then perhaps you should start back at square one and determine exactly who your demographic is, and where you stand with them.

You’ve used too much jargon

Jargon is nice…if people know what it means. Again, this mistake can be tied directly with studying and researching your demographic. Who exactly are you trying to appeal to? Do they know what you mean when you say, “xHTML/CSS Standards Compliant”? By using jargon, you are limiting yourself only to those who know what it means. Solution? Why not offer a glossary, or even break down the jargon and not use it?

Once again, it’s important that you realize who your demographic is and what sort of product/service/brand you want to push onto them. Will they understand what you have to say, or do you have to completely break it down? Sometimes it seems easier just to use jargon, but remember that not everyone knows what it means, and you could be talking to a tree stump.

Today, i present you the review of an interesting website that offers you some helpful tips and some website addons for your contact page. As you may know, the contact page is very important to all website owners because it can make a connection between the administrator of the site and the site's visitors, or even potetntial buyers. Many visitors won't purchase goods or services from a website if it doesn't contain a valid contact page, so here comes Flash Attach. It offers you a Flash Contact Form that will help you in your business and will take care of some problems. Through it, your visitors are now able to attach files and exchange important documents. The file size is limited by your server settings. So, visitors no longer have to log into their email accounts to send documents which can be a waste of valuable time. Here is a contact form demo, check it and tell us what you think about it. Go there and take your Ultimate Contact Form, a contact form that will make your visitors proud to use it.