Book review: The Essential Step-by-step Guide to Internet Marketing

The more I am reading various online free marketing resources the more I appreciate the wonderful times we are living when you can have access to so many useful resources that could help you change dramatically your business perspectives and, consequently, your financial status.

This booklet is first of a long series of Hubspot resources that I will review in the next posts. In less than one hour I got a lot of information and tips that otherwise you pay a lot to have access to. As a curious and passionate reader I downloaded them all and I am ready to spend long and fruitful hours reading and blogging about them.

The main aim of this ebook is to provide a simple guidance through the marketing strategy: 'from establishing your initial keyword strategy and leveraging social media to promote content online'.

The main steps are:

- Create a keyword strategy for your business - This section urged me to start redefining completely the media strategy of my modest blogging empire, but this plan will be the subject of further blog posts.

Thus: you should find a list of 3-5 keywords relevant to your business, very well defined that you should mention permanently in your posts, the title of the page, the metadescription and various labels associated to your blog. On the other hand, you should avoid the keyword stuffing.

- Increase your chances to be found by: on-page SEO - which counts for 25% of your overall search engine ranking, respectively off-page SEO - meaning what other websites and blogs say about you. The latter aspect is very important for businesses. 

- Create a blog and provide quality writing. Organize your posts and update the content regularly. It is recommended to include various downloadable books, learning materials, free consultation and webinars. 

- Promote your content through social media. Also, create various Google Alerts for your area of interest that will allow you to be updated permanently. If you are a business, you should use the tools dedicated to Premium customers, as for instance Twitter for business. 

- Try to convert your website traffic into profit. In addition to the media content you need to offer to the visitors to your site other resources. Evaluate permanently the metrics and try to adapt your content and strategy to what your customers/visitors/readers are looking for. Find the right solutions to engage them, including by setting up a permanently updated e-mail list and sending regular newsletters.

- Adapt your website to the challenges of social media, for example, by creating dedicated versions of your blog for mobile viewing.

- Permanently analyze and refine the marketing strategies by:

1. identification of new opportunities

2. correction of eventual mistakes and inadequate perspectives

A lot of work to do, but before that, many other Hubspot books waiting to be read! Will be blog back very soon!

Book review: Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses

Hopefully, the end of the month is the right time for the freelancer to read and discover new valuable resources for improving his or her work. Yesterday evening I discovered that I have on my Kindle a book about Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses and decided that it is the right time for a useful lecture. 

The book belongs to the category of what I call 'anchor books': in the search for new customers, you need to offer as many credentials as possible and thus, a book or more plus an updated website will help you to improve your pitch. Nothing despicable in this case and the advantages of many books and articles from this category are that free of charge or in exchange for a very low price you can read a lot of insightful ideas about a variety of domains.

The book was published at the end of December 2011 and most probably there are many things that Facebook changed since then and in less than one year the book will need an improvement. However, if you are looking for a fast lecture - of around 30 pages - and useful ideas, you should take a break for an hour and read it.

What are my lessons learned?

As for the moment I am not too much involved in social media projects, I got almost all the technical information I was looking for about Facebook Fan Pages and the advantages of using Facebook advertising for businesses.

Randomly, some of the best advices at the end of the lecture:

- The Fan Pages should contain only professional/business related information. The post should be regular - but not as frequent as in the case of Twitter, for instance -, entertaining and addressed to the current and prospective community. You need to set up a plan of posts for at least one month in advance, outlining various aspects of your business. A 'like' is not enough, you should be ready to start and be a part of a conversation.

- Regardless of your object of activity, you should always connect with your community. Thus, before you start writing, you should know what is the profile of your target, to establish the demographics and the main interests.

- If you want to expand your community, the Facebook fan page should be used as a reference to your website and, in general, as part of your general business communication.

There are many ideas that I will explore further soon and thanks to this book I am able to continue the journey through the social media jungle. 

Pros and cons of freelance writing

Freelance writing is what I always wanted to do. As a non-English speaker I fought hard to find my way in the world of writing. The beginning was ridiculous from the financial point of view, with 500-word articles paid for $1 and a first 'salary' of $20 and other potential frustrations for someone used with high financial revenues. Add to this the long nights spent searching for new opportunities, struggling to balance the time dedicated to learning and reading with the enormous amount of time required for writing and editing my texts. The last months were for me an amazing journey in humility. 

Freelance writing is not a job when you should expect a decent salary within months. You should be ready to wait 4-5 months until you will have a decent income for covering your basic needs and even more until you will enjoy convenient life standards. Most probably, this situation is available for experienced writers as well, as the competition is very tight. For each ad on Elance addressing English language editors more than 6 offers are submitted instantly by people with apparently high credentials.

Thus, I completely agree with the earlier advices from experienced freelancers that were warned that unless you have some savings for at least one year, you better try to keep your old job while freelancing. 

On the other hand, I am sure that my life as a freelancer will be much easier if most people I am working with would have a minimal responsibility and business ethics. Apparently, I am not in the right freelancing place, as most people I am dealing with prefer to pay weeks after their very high emergency job was delivered flawlessly in due time and for more than a convenient price. Add to this the high chances that, if you are taking freelancing jobs through various networks, you will for sure stumble upon some very kind persons that after 1-2 weeks will disappear without paying. It happened at least once the month in the last five months of freelancing and besides the feeling of deep frustration it prevents me at a great extent to take new work unless I am not sure that the employer is 100% verified. 

However, I will continue freelancing and I am more than delighted to observe my improvements and the new opportunities that I can't wait to cope with. I don't want to be outrageously rich, but only to enjoy my life as a writer, meaning to have enough money for me and my family, my trips and, of course, the healthy provisions of books for my Kindle.

Writing happiness

As a professional writer in the process, I enjoy every piece of advice about how to improve my writing, either it is about simple blogging or sophisticated literary writing. 

Thus, I enjoyed a pleasant lecture of the eBook by Marya Jan - Writing Happiness, How to write blog content that works. You can read this booklet very fast, for free, and if you are looking for some inspiration in-between posts or when you feel that the writers' block is around, it is the right lecture to lift you up.

In the words of the author, it is a "non-grammar focus guide for writers and non-writers who are in the business of generating content". This is the reason why, for instance, you are not scholarly advices that first and forehand your posts should be grammatically correct in order to achieve success. In a way it is obvious, in a world of words facing a very serious confrontation. 

The book includes a couple of very useful advices, more or less evident even for experienced writers. It includes a couple of insightful quotes, mostly from Stephen King's On Writing, a book which I highly appreciate. Regardless of your domain of writing activity, you will find for sure 2-3 tips.

Shortly, here are my lessons learned from the lecture of the Marya Jan's book:

- If you are a writer it does not mean that you should stop reading. You should be in touch permanently with what people from your domain are writing, but also for improving your style and looking for new sources of inspiration. My experience is, when I find something interesting, I prefer to blog about it as well and, eventually, share my impression with my audience.

- You need to find a reason to write. In other words, to find a clear reason to put your words in order. The reader needs to discover something new, and thus clarity is key. The organization of your blog post matter as well: the headline and the first paragraph are very important for a successful reading. The end matters as well as an incentive to encourage the reader to return or to go further to explore other writings published on your blog. 

- Related to the previous aspect, you should find your voice in writing. This is the reason why very often I preferred to put my intensive blogging on hold for a couple of weeks or even months, as I was looking to accommodate different voices and writing personalities.

- Add to the ingredients of a successful writing the proper connection with the reader. Do you know who are your readers, what are their tastes and interests? In many cases, your domain of activity is limiting your domain of activity and thus, creates the possibility for the development of your niche. For instance, if you are a fashion blogger, you will be interested in covering all issues dealing with fashion, but if you are into do-it-yourself fashion it will be even better for reaching a certain audience.

- As you are writing for a blog, you should take into consideration the limited attention and time of your usual writer. If you are interested in complicated writing, you should avoid blogging. However, there are many examples of successful bloggers addressing highly complicated issues with the help of clear expressions and short sentences. The book does not address the issue of multimedia support - podcast, video, 
pictures, but very often the visual aspects can add more readership.

The conclusion: a simple and useful writing for any kind of writers facing with the challenges of the 2.0 world.

Freelancer vs. Elance

Another stage in my free wild freelancer life: how you can find decent, reliable and constant sources of work? As a beginner freelancer writer, at the very beginning, every single writing challenge is a good test. And, if you are paid - modestly, at least for the moment - you can enjoy the pleasure of learning and being paid. An option which is more than tempting. This was the positive paragraph sending good waves and encouraging other writers-in-the process to leave their boring non/anti-writing jobs and to start their new life.

But the life of a freelancer is not a carefree experience on a work in the pinky cloudy office. Or, in the beginning, it is not at all. One of my most difficult experiences lately is financial planning.  Please don't blame me for being so messy with my budget. Honestly speaking, since I have started my full freelancing experience a couple of months ago, my monthly revenues can hardly be considered enough for a modest survival. Long life to the careful saving! 

In the beginning of my full-time freelancing life, last December, I started by using Freelancer.com: a lot of offers, but the prices are ridiculous sometimes - I was offered $0.40 for 500 words, an opportunity that I did not consider honouring at all. After a couple of months of intense presence, and 1 person per month that did not pay - a student, a scam another scam - Freelancer.com continue to be my main source of medium and long-term profits: through them I started to work in the domain of customer support - the subject of my next help-book, I learned a lot about SEO, Wordpress and online marketing and even tried the taste of some modest translations. The main problems are:

- the low prices - for instance, I saw people offering for an academic editing and even substantial rewrite around $70.

- the high risk of scams - be sure that you communicate exclusively via the website because in case that you do not receive the money the perpetrator could be blocked; when you accept. However, I saw a couple of days ago that they intend to remove many doubtful profiles.

Curious to test new opportunities and to find long term working opportunities, I tried Elance.com. An elegant design, incredibly interesting opportunities, but if you are not a native English speaker, no chances to be accepted. Elance displays a high concentration of professionals in English writing, with competitive credentials. I hope that one day someone will accept by bid. As in the case of Freelancer.com, you need time and energy to build your credibility and for that, you need to be offered the opportunity to do so. 

Another opportunity for freelancing is oDesk where I made an account a couple of days ago, but did not have the time yet to create my profile and explore the market. Being a freelancer is not easy, but every time I am about to finish a new project, I am happy to discover my new skills and the improvement of my writing style.

The freelancing experience goes on and I'm getting ready for new opportunities. 

What is Pinterest?

A short history of a social network on the making, via BBC