“The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” Proverbs 13:14 (NIV)
When it comes to online marketing and exposure, most of the people I speak with want a magic bullet that will turn their business into an overnight success via the web. I don’t blame them, it’s natural for hard working business owners to desire such things – however unrealistic they may be. I mean, there must be a marketing strategy that will generate massive exposure and traffic for my website by next week, right? There has to be a way, considering the amount of people that are on the web, to give my brand exposure by tomorrow morning, right? Yet my answer is always the same to those I speak with – “no, you’re wrong!”
However, there is some great news in all of this! In fact, there is a way that you can elevate your business to unlimited heights of traffic and exposure on the web – and I can sum the process up in one simple word…
Diligence!
Let me put it another way – hard work!
The great news in this, the fact that it’s going to require diligence and hard work for your business to be successful on the web, is that very few (less than 1%) of all of your competitors are unwilling, or knowledgeable enough, to put in the hard work and diligence to succeed. And this gives you an instant competitive advantage in your online marketplace!
Do this – go ahead and search Google with your most competitive keyword phrases. I mean, a keyword phrase that really defines your business, products, and services. Now look at the front page (top 10) listings in the Google search results. More than likely, from my experience in doing this now for over 5 years, is that the top 1 or 2 positions will be the major competitors in your marketplace, and then 3 – 10 are secondary players, or competitors you may have never even heard of.
Again, based on my experience in analyzing front page rankings of businesses for over 5 years, I know that those who are ranked 3 – 10 more than likely are in those rankings because of:
- There website has more than likely been published to the web since 1996, before the Google guys even began crawling and indexing the web as we know it
- The keyword phrase you types is specified, in one derivative or another, the title tag of their web page
It’s not (in most cases, and from my experience) because those in positions 3 – 10 have been working hard to get there. It’s typically a result of other intangibles that factor into Google’s ranking algorithm that has allowed them to achieve that ranking.
Working hard at your online exposure
Because intangibles are placing the majority of your competitors on the front page of Google, this means that with hard word and diligence, you could very easily not only get front page rankings in Google for your keyword phrases, but you could dominate Google’s front page for a multitude of phrases that people are typing who are interested in what you offer.
And over time, your hard work, diligence, and persistence will undoubtedly pay off for you and your business. Remember, hardly any of your competitors (if any at all) are putting in the time and effort to build their online presence. So this means you have a great opportunity to dominate your niche marketplace on the web, and most of the time it can happen sooner, rather later once you get busy with the hard work of making it happen.
Ok, so you are now ready to get to work and be diligent about building your online exposure. Now the question is, “what do I do?”
That’s a great question, and I’m going to give an outline to follow – a guide if you will on where to concentrate your efforts in order to experience the best return on your diligence and hard work.
1) Start with a blog for your business.
There’s an old saying that’s been around since the Google guys were still at Stanford experimenting with their search engine. And that it “Content Is King!” It was true back in 1998, and it’s still true today. To get the most exposure, the best rankings, and highest levels of traffic and brand recognition, you must be producing great content.
Why is content king?
Because great content will naturally attract backlinks from readers, RSS feeders, and other people and resources that are eager to share your content with others. When it comes to the Internet, and specifically Google, backlinks are everything! You have to remember that Google, and most other search engines, need to have a legitimate way to organize and rank all of the pages on the web. And the best democratic way to do this is through analyzing, and attributing authority to all of the backlinks pointing to all of the other pages on the web.
The more authoritative backlinks you have pointing to one of your articles, blog postings, or website, the higher your rankings will be for your targeted keyword phrases. In fact, my website could have one backlink from a highly authoritative site like, let’s say, The New York Times. And your website could have thousands of backlinks from unknown blogs and websites – and guess what, my website will outrank yours, and everyone else’s, each and every time. This is because the one backlink from the New York Times is more authoritative than all of your backlinks put together.
And in order for The New York Times to provide a link to your website or blog, you absolutely must have high quality content that’s discussing news or some other information. Again, content is king!
Diligence and hard work can really pay off with a blog for you and your business. Because the more new articles you produce, this means the more pages of content you have available to be found in the search results of Google. And the more pages you have in Google’s index, the more frequently you can be found by those who are searching, even in more general terms, for what you or your business have to offer.
Writing good quality content (news, information, “how to’s”), and doing it on a frequent basis (hard work and diligence) will put you at the top of your niche market very quickly – leaving all of your competitors behind, and more than likely never to catch up. Because again, very few people are willing to put in the hard work and diligence that it takes to build an authoritative online presence.
2) Utilize Twitter and Facebook
Now that you are working hard at producing high quality content that is built around your business or brand, you need to syndicate that content into Facebook and Twitter. And primarily, I’m talking about syndicating your content into a Facebook Fan Page and Twitter profile that are customized for your specific business, product, services, or brand.
Why do that? What’s so important about syndicating content into Facebook and Twitter?
Let me share with you one of the secrets about Twitter and Facebook. You may or may not have realized this before, but the entire premise of Twitter and Facebook is to share content. So if I’m sending out a tweet on Twitter, or adding an update on my Facebook Fan Page, then I’m sharing content.
However, when it comes to sharing news, information, and other great content that I find that others have produced (i.e., if I found one of your articles), then when I share that piece of content, it’s going to also have a link associated with it.
And even other people are sharing my articles and content, every time I produce a new piece of content, I’m going to share it – along with a link back to the original article on my blog or website – with all of my Facebook Fan Page fans and Twitter followers.
The more I share my content with others, and making sure that I provide a link back to my original content, the more other people will start sharing that content with their network of friends and followers. So in a very short period of time, and through only a couple of people on Facebook or Twitter sharing your content, you could very easily have hundreds of people coming to your website.
This is the power of Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages for businesses and brands. The power of sharing content, distributing and syndicating links that point back to your site, is how Twitter and Facebook will work to build your brand and exposure for your business.
In essence, each time your content is shared (or syndicated), it’s like the backlinking system that Google uses – it’s a vote that someone has given you (your website). And the more authoritative votes that your website or blog has, the higher your rankings will be and the exposure you’ll get.
So does all of this happen over night?
Absolutely not! Does it sound like this could even possibly happen over night?
But with hard work, and diligence, you will build a strong audience of followers in Twitter and Facebook. And with a concerted effort to produce high quality content about your business or brand, your will build the backlinks you need to dominate your niche.
And by the time your competitors realize what’s going on, it will already be too late. Because again, they more than likely aren’t willing to do the hard work required to beat you at your own game!