The term firing on all cylinders is another way of saying things are working and flowing smoothly. For a company or business online this could mean a variety of different things. You could streamline your processes to optimize profits or you could find ways to boost sales and services. I’ll be focusing more for boosting sales and services.

Not long ago my compadre in arms talked about how Walmart’s Official Blog is completely failing at the moment. If Walmart has the horsepower to do just about anything it pleases how can it be that its blog is failing? It isn’t for lack of resources but lack of firing on all cylinders.

I am a fan of using a system called the Trade Ring for boosting sales and referrals from other similar (not same) businesses. You promote them and they in turn promote you helping all ships to rise together. Create a trade ring for your online contact points.

Everyone uses the Internet differently. I like to focus on blogs and Twitter as my main methods for connecting with others (slowly growing Facebook and LinkedIn). I am sure some people love to spend most of their time navigating Facebook for online news and interaction. The combinations are endless in the different ways you can mix and match online outlets.

Here are some ideas for different things you can do to bring these all together.

Website

Typically an online business will have a website. Most offline business do too. You don’t want to have a plain Jane website that is more like an online brochure than an information and connection portal. Instead, really step back and look for the different ways branching out online can help your business grow more profitable, connect you to your clients or connect clients closer to each other.

Consider adding a blog for starters and then start engaging in other ways to connect with your clients. Take a couple minutes to ask 10 of your clients if they read blogs, use Facebook or Twitter and so on. It should only take a minute to figure out where you could focus your attention for the quickest return on time and investment.

Blog

Starting a business blog is a great way to enable people talking about your brand, product or similar to be social on your site. A blog is a perfect way to build a brand online that doesn’t involve building a brand on someone else’s site or service. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are great but it’s a great idea to make your homebase somewhere you can call the shots. Blogs are excellent for this.

The idea around blogging is to create content by sharing ideas, thoughts or just about anything. A terrible idea for a blog is to use it as a permanent archive for all of your press releases. No one cares about press releases. If fact, I delete every press release that hits my inbox unsolicited or that is not over the top personalized. Use your blog as a tool to engage with others and help people when they have concerns.

Just maybe you’ll hear how someone did something totally different with your product that actually works. Now you can use that idea to help market that product to a completely different market. Who knew pantyhose could be used to buff your shoes.

Don’t forget to add your social media links to your blog/website with plugins like Sociable. Feed the circle from every angle.

Newsletter

Newsletters are becoming quite the norm now with just about every business. One of the largest problems with running a newsletter is not allowing people to take part in the conversation or to take action. If you are blasting out a newsletter with a weekly special you are running but don’t invite people to give current or past feedback about the product you are missing a great opportunity for them to interact with you. Don’t forget to include links to those lovely online profiles (Facebook/Twitter) or your blog. Make is a useful and desirable resource for your subscribers and they will continue to purchase and share with others.

Twitter

Not everyone gets Twitter and how it can help their business. There are a couple different ways Twitter can really assist in your online ventures. The first way anybody or business can use Twitter is to determine new trends or information in your industry or to find current consumers and interact. I said interact not shout at them. Shouting is the opposite of interaction and doesn’t encourage a response. Try to encourage a response.

Sites like search.twitter.com will let you search all day everyday tweets that people are sharing that revolve around your niche. Jump in there and see what’s going on. Take a long hard look at what people are saying about a niche and think of ways you can improve it. If you are an established brand, look at brand perception and see how you can start engaging the talkers to increase positive interactions.

This leads into helping those who use services like Twitter find and follow you. I typically start by interacting with someone a number of times and then follow/friend. Report is established and more than likely they will reciprocate. Sites like Tweepsearch.com help you find others who are in the same niche or you can use search.twitter.com to see who actually mentions your niche, then engage. One downside with search.twitter.com is only the ability to see current tweets and discussions not bios or past discussions.

Facebook

Due to the closer knit community that people of Facebook have, ideas and brands that one person likes might often be liked by others. So if someone follows your new startup brewery in Fargo and you become a fan, that will be seen by your friends. Chances are that your close friends would also think the idea of a new brewery in Fargo is intriguing, leading to more and more people becoming a fan. Because of this things can spread really quick over Facebook. The downside is, if you’re boring or shouting few will listen or interact.

The key to Facebook for a business is to get people to interact. The more who interact, the more times you’ll be seen by their friends and the more likely you’ll gain even more friends. See how this works? Pretty simple, eh?

Overnight you can have a brand’s fanpage explode from a couple hundred followers to thousands. But all of the friends/followers in the world won’t continue to participate or care about your brand if you don’t give them reason to get involved. Provide feedback loops for ideas and concerns. Allow the negative feedback to come and address it head-on and in front of everybody. Your fans will love you for the transparency you offer. They will feel/grow more connected and want to share their positive experiences with everyone.

But remember to bring those discussions and ideas back to your own turf. You never know what the gods of the social media industry will one day deem something as inappropriate for their community or best interest and shut it off.

Look for the right social media numbers or metrics, not just more followers or fans.

LinkedIn

Not quite as fancy or flashy as the other kinds of social media sites, LinkedIn definitely has its place. If you are looking for a group of people that could help move and shake things for you, look no further. You can make a connection with hundreds of the top people in just about any industry overnight. LinkedIn networking might have a little different purpose than shooting a few tweets back and forth with someone, but where else can you find this level of talent so easily?

Taking the time to build and nurture a relationship over LinkedIn is a constant work in progress but in the end can drastically change your strategic partnerships and connections helping to boost awareness for your brand. Think about the ways you can use powerful business connections to your advantage and how you can in turn help others. There is a huge opportunity to establish long lasting partnerships. I would compare this to those awesome roommates you had in college, you know, the ones that attended your wedding and your 50th birthday.

Conclusion

Find the ways to find and interaction on a high level with your customers. Meet them where they hang out and bring the focus on them. They will in turn find ways to give back in many different forms, whether it’s promotion, ideas, thoughts or sales. How have you used these sites to connect yourself with your clients?

When I fist started blogging just about two years ago on www.joshwhitford.com I had no real idea on what I was going to talk about. I love business and I love marketing and eventually that became the theme of the posts I continued to write.

In the beginning I figured I would learn how to rank for keywords and then continue to do so. One of the first keywords I targeted was the term Unconventional Marketing. I thought the term was just what I was looking for as my starting point and target audience.

I eventually ranked for the term after trying for a couple of months and now I continue to hold the first spot in Google roughly two years later. For the record, I got most of my link love by changing the title on my site to the Unconventional Marketing Blog and then people continually linking to my site with that description. Pretty easy huh?

I recall when I showed up #1 for the first time. I wrote a post talking about being #1 for the term and how proud I was. Then a thoughtful commenter showed up and told me how my term sucked because according to all major sites, the term gets little or no traffic to speak of. Way to rain on my parade, right?

So I shuck it off and continued without much thought.

A few months later someone emailed through my site asking for me to develop a marketing plan and help them execute it for them. The deal turned out being a solid 5 figures and low and behold they found me through the term Unconventional Marketing. Crazy.

Not only was that one deal a success, but I have had 3 deals in the 5 figures result from that one search term… So much for no search traffic, huh?

What is the point of all of this rambling? Simple. Just because someone comes and rains on your parade about something you worked hard to get doesn’t mean that you should take what they say as fact or the law.

It also means keywords and search terms that get “little” or “no” traffic to speak of can result in large deals.

So many people get hung up on the numbers, how many people visit, how many page views, how many this, how many that and so on. Really the numbers are deceiving and can be manipulated pretty easily to give people what they want… more numbers. Instead, focus on what will help you reach your goal. Will 5 buyers get you closer to your goal? You bet. Can you find 5 buyers out of 10 visitors? You bet.

Before you think about keywords and how “little” traffic they get according to whatever source, realize that until you actually rank for the term, you’ll never know. I can tell you that people search and click on Unconventional Marketing about 3-4 times a day or 1,200 times a year. But out of those 1,200 visitors I’ve made a fair chunk of change. Get the point?

Try whatever you can and see the results for yourself. What if I had given up on the idea of unconventional marketing because some naysayers analyzed and determined I was wrong? What have you given up on because of others’ opinions? What do you think would be fun to try just for the sake of trying?

What is Unconventional Marketing?

Doing what the majority doesn’t and getting results…

By the end of this post you will be able to use this as a step by step guide on how to successfully build high quality backlinks to your website. As we know, backlinks are the lifeblood of most search engines and serve as a vote of endorsement for a website for specific keywords a site will rank for.

As most SEO type people know, all links/votes are not created equally. More work is usually required for getting better backlinks pointing towards your site.

Below is an exchange of email along with an attached guest post from probably the best guest post link builder I have ever seen. Instead of simply posting his guest post, I figured it would better serve my audience by highlighting the best points for those who are looking to use guest posts to build backlinks in the best way imaginable.

This is by no means a rip on Matthew, just simply too good to pass up. Look for my interjections beginning with Josh Here: Blah Blah

Step 1: Find your target

I have no doubt that Matthew took the time to find my site based on a set list of criteria. Is the site active? Does it fit my niche? Does it allow guest posting? What type of blog is it? What can I learn about this person via his about/contact/content and so on?

A little homework goes a long way. It would even help to go as far as making a few comments prior to proposing a guest post (didn’t happen in this case). But from what I have seen, Matthew looks like a well-educated, professional person who specializes in research. Only fitting, given the amount of detail he goes through to ensure the best possible links.

Step 2: Make contact

Below is the first email Matthew sent to me in order to make contact. You’ll notice a few things right off the bat where he uses my name and website in the subject line. This of course tips my interest because us humans love to hear our own name. Then this also serves a duel purpose of keeping track of responses from people after he has hit the send button. Now when I or someone else replies, he knows exactly where, who and what is being talked about.

First Email Sent

Subject: Josh, I Enjoyed Visiting Your Site At JoshWhitford.com – I Have A Question!
From: Matthew Papaconstantinou <weightlosstriumph@gmail.com>
To: josh@joshwhitford.com
Date: Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Dear Josh,

I enjoyed visiting your blog at JoshWhitford.com and enjoyed reading some of your articles. Your tips and techniques provide solid and valuable information to people like me who want to promote their blog.

I am writing to you because I would like to offer you an article that I wrote for your site. The article talks about my niche (weight loss ) and explains how my blog has already started enjoying good rankings as a result of me following your marketing strategies.

The article is informative, unique (never published in another site) and I believe your visitors will enjoy reading.

I would love that the article (see attachment) could find a home at JoshWhitford.com!

Let me know if you accept the article (or need me to modify it) and where it can be located on your site.

Kind Regards
–
Matt Papa
Publisher, WeightLossTriumph.com

Matthew Papaconstantinou, PhD
Washington University Medical School
Department of Biochem. & Molec. Bioph.
660S. Euclid Ave. 63110, St Louis, MO

Josh Here: In the beginning, look at the pumps being primed. A little flattery goes a long way. He quickly and clearly states what he wants and what he is after, plus a little more flattery. He also knows that people will not put up with content that can be found with a simple google.com search and will not post it. As far as I know, all his articles are in fact technically unique with much of the same content idea or same topic, just different wording. He wraps up the email by letting me know that if I don’t like anything, he is willing to correct it along with keeping the dialogue open for the details of where/when things will happen.

Step 3: Take time to produce good, original content

Below is the article that came attached in the first email Matthew sent. I left it completely original so you can see the links he was going for, along with giving him a little do credit for being so damn good at what he does.

By Matt Papa

Internet marketing has become a massive trend for many reasons—not just because of the hard economic times and widespread layoffs, but also because people want to work at home and spend more time with their families, and maybe most of all because individuals with an independent entrepreneurial spirit seek the freedom and innovation they can achieve through this kind of business.

But it seems like many people start at a disadvantage because they are going about it the wrong way—they want to make money without having an idea, a project or a product that they truly, passionately believe in and understand. You don’t have to be the world’s expert or have something that no one else has – that’s actually unlikely or at least quite difficult at this point in the growth of the home-based online business world. But to attract and keep an audience, you have to bring something special to your idea or your project – some added value that you and only you offer.

Perhaps you do have a unique product. If so, that’s a big advantage. Even so, you are still going to need to find effective ways to reach your potential customers and build up their interest in your product. Selling is selling, whether it’s online or door-to-door.

Style without substance and substance without style are both incomplete packages. Neither one will get you far for long.

What you have to sell is yourself and your unique voice and perspective on the value of your product and the needs of your potential market. That’s one reason blogging has become an almost essential part of any online business.

My niche: the weight loss market

Personally, I didn’t have to go out looking for a niche or product to market, because I already had a dedicated interest–the problem of obesity and helping people overcome their weight problems and achieve better health. My research had already given me many ideas and a lot of practical and scientific information, and I really felt a call to share that with other people. Blogging and creating my own website were just natural outgrowths of my desire to inform and share my knowledge.

Because I already had a good background in my topic, I had a head start on many people trying to build businesses online. Not just because I knew things, but because my interest was strong enough and real enough that I was willing to put in a lot of time and energy to build my site, whether I was making money or not. It was a labor of love, which gave me the motivation to stick with it while I learned what worked and how I could make it financially profitable as well as personally satisfying.

A major advantage I had was the magnitude of my niche’s potential market (no pun intended). It is a niche, but a big one. The reality is that two out of three people in the US are overweight, and many of them would like to find a way to help themselves lose weight. So I had no doubt that there was a potential audience and a potential market for the information I wanted to share. I just needed to find the way to put it all together.

My product: The Medifast diet

I had learned about Medifast through my extensive research into successful weight loss programs. It’s a great product that has been around for 25 years and has been tested and recommended by more than 20,000 doctors.

I was aware that Medifast has a great reputation – Forbes business magazine recently named them one of America’s Best 200 Small Companies. When I learned that they also have an affiliate program for marketing their plan, I realized that this could be a great opportunity for me to draw more people to my website, provide them with information and products that would benefit them, and also start earning some return on my investment of time and energy in weightlosstriumph.com.

An affiliate program like Medifast’s works like this. Once you become an affiliate (at no cost to you), you build into your website a link or links that will guide interested readers to the sponsor’s own site—in this case the Medifast site. Each time one of your readers goes on to purchase one of their products, you receive a commission (for Medifast, 20 percent) on that sale. Medifast helps make their links particularly attractive by providing their affiliates with coupons to save your readers money—and make using your link even more inviting.

I could see that this was a perfect opportunity for me, and that I had a perfect website for Medifast. But I also knew that building a true internet marketing strategy would take a little more know-how than just plunking down a link onto my website.

If I could master the internet marketing skills I needed to transform my interest and my blog into a really valuable place that could help people make their weight loss dreams come true, I could also start to make good money online.

Niche + Product + Marketing — Putting it all together

Before people can start clicking on my Medifast links and thereby help my website earn money, first they have to find my website. So how did I go about increasing my visibility and building traffic for my blog? To make the most of my Meidfast affiliation, my website had to find its way to the top of Google’s search list for crucial keywords like “Medifast coupon code” and “Does Medifast work“. But there’s a lot of competition for these keywords.

I knew that just as I wanted to be a go-to site for anyone who is looking for information about Medifast and other important weight-loss facts and opportunities, there are go-to sites experts…like Josh…for people like me who are looking to learn about creating a successful blog and website.

One thing Josh Whitford helped me grasp is the importance of building a community and creating effective backlinks for achieving these search engine rankings. As Josh explains in his helpful 5 easy ways to build backlinks for your blog ,“Everything about search ranking and page rank is based on the foundation of good backlinks and anchor text links. The more links you have pointing towards your blog on certain keywords, the higher you will rate for relevancy of those keywords.”

Josh also has some really great advice on creating and maintaining a blog that will be a magnet for your niche community. He has three great tips for making your blog successful, but in a way they all boil down to one common factor – commitment. You have to believe in your subject and be committed to it – to making sure that your content is sound and fresh and that you keep it that way by sticking with it. It’s all part of building a community of readers who can trust that will find something new and valuable each time they come to your site.

My site is growing and has a promising future – not only because it’s a great topic that I love, but also because marketing know-how like Josh’s has helped me raise my search engine rankings significantly.

I was lucky that I already had the passion and the enthusiasm for my own subject – best weight loss programs. But being part of Josh’s community has helped me key in on some of the practical things I need to know about and do to keep my blog alive and lively.

Josh Here: Now I don’t really believe that Matthew learned anything from my blog about marketing ideas or how to build backlinks. This guy knows his stuff. But like I mentioned above, a little flattery goes a long way. His article is original, one of a kind and serves as a well-written piece, but tying in weight loss to marketing doesn’t seem to be natural as I have no incoming links about weight loss or anything like that. Almost all my links are related around marketing, unconventional, ideas, josh, techniques and just about every combo of those.

But notice how he took the time to read through a few of my posts and to draw that content into the topic at hand. By doing so he is making his post about weight loss into a marketing post, along with adding link juice to some of my own pages. This makes you think this guy isn’t being selfish, he is just trying to add content to the community and enhance the reader and user experience (probably both, a little bit).

Step 4: The follow through

For the sake of keeping this a little shorter I won’t publish the emails my girlfriend Lindsay has exchanged with Matthew via her Dog Blog. But rest assured that he will go to whatever length possible to make sure that his posts meet your standards and gets published.

He makes sure to keep the dialogue going by following up with relevant emails regarding a new or interesting topic. He will go to length to lay on the flattery thick through the process, like telling my girlfriend how good she looks in her about page picture. Ha, silly Greeks. Be careful with that one, don’t want to accidently piss someone off. I just think it’s funny.

Step 5: When there is gold, dig

Now, I haven’t been this far with Matthew yet and might guess it doesn’t happen. But in any case, I would presume that following up with a blogger after he or she publishes your successful blog post would only be natural. This opens up the opportunity for future guest posts. I would give a good 2-3 months depending on how often the blog posts to follow up again and see how things are going and whether or not the blogger would be interested in another guest post about xyz.

As you can imagine, taking this approach could be a full-time job, and I have no idea when this guy finds time to sleep, but in the end it must be worth the effort via clients or affiliate programs to justify the time spent.

or

Instead of taking the cold calling approach to guest posting and building backlinks, you could develop relationships with people. Building a community would make this whole wine and dine experience much easier. I could simply pull up Skype and ask, hey can I write a post about blah blah blah to get a couple links? … Just another approach to the same end.

In conclusion

If you made it this far you have way too much time on your hands. Or, you are probably in the business of building backlinks for the purpose of ranking a website over another. The formula is as follows:

1. Find appropriate active niche blog
2. Research and produce good content
3. Make contact and use flattery
4. Follow up and correct anything needed
5. Rinse and repeat