7 More Tips for Emarketing

Hey Folks,

As I mentioned last time, visitors on the web have literally thousands of choices when it comes to which websites they will visit and whether they will subscribe or bookmark those sites. Remember that it’s always more important to you that the visitor remains on or subscribes to your site or newsletter or blog post. Making it worth their while is never a waist of your time.

A few days after I received the request I wrote about last time, I received another one. A fellow literary laborer who asked me to visit her site and subscribe to her blog posts. She explained, “The subscription form is at the bottom of the page in the center.”

Okay, one, kudos to her for telling me where I could find the subscription form. But two, if I had been a casual browser who happened across her site, there’s an excellent chance I wouldn’t have found her subscription form.

Remember that people generally won’t work in order to do you a favor. I mean, if you’re trapped under a log or other inanimate object in your front yard, the person casually strolling by probably will be willing to invest considerable time and effort in freeing you. (Inanimate objects only, though. If you’re trapped under, say, a bear or a tiger or a massive lizard in your front yard, not so much, although the truly caring individual might bother to dial 911 or Animal Control or something.) But if doing you a favor falls under the category of doing a lot of mental calisthenics, again, not so much.

To maybe help you with the marketing aspects of your website, hear are a few more tips for emarketing:

1. If you want prospective readers to sign up for your newsletter or your blog posts, make it easy for them. Put a subscription form at the top of the sidebar on your home page. (Newspaper folks call this “above the fold.” In modern computerese, anything important should appear on the screen without the reader having to scroll down.)

2. It doesn’t hurt to put a “conversion bar”(a subscription bar that converts browsers into subscribers) across the top of your site too. For an excellent example, see the gold bar across the top of HarveyStanbrough.com.

3. Provide at least one call to action (urge to subscribe) in the body of your Welcome or About page, and again, this should appear above the fold. You want the offer to be available whenever the reader is in the mood to take you up on it. (The key to all marketing is to make the product available at the moment that the buyer wants it.)

4. Put at least one call to action in the body of each blog post or immediately after each blog post you write or newsletter you send out. Again, making it easy for the reader to become a subscriber is the key.

5. Offer an incentive for subscribing. For example, if you subscribe to HarveyStanbrough.com you get a free copy of the humorous and informative ebook, The Seven Writerly Sins. I offer that particular incentive because most of my readers are writers or are interested in writing.

6. Offer another incentive for reading the posts. Perhpas offer a free short story if the reader finds the intentional error (spelling or wrong word) and are the first to comment on it. (By the way, if you find the intentional error (spelling or wrong word) in this post and are one of the first few to comment on it in a comment posted on this site you will receive a freshly minted short story from yours truly or one of my alter egos. 🙂

7. Litter your posts and pages with Share buttons. If you look at the bottom of this post or scroll to the bottom of any page on my websites, you will see one-click buttons where the reader can share my post or the information on my page via Email, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, and other venues. Go take a look; I’ll wait. I don’t have accounts with all those places, but why should I keep others from sharing where they have accounts?

‘Til next time, happy writing!

Harvey

8 thoughts on “7 More Tips for Emarketing”

  1. Hi Harvey,

    Thanks for the challenge. Waist and perhapas were the misspelled words, and websites in the plural when it should have been single.

    Hope awl is well with yu in Az.

    Pat

  2. Hey Pat! Good to hear from you. Hope you guys are doing well down there. Your short story is on its way via email. In the meantime, to get a new, freshly minted short story every week, sign up over at http://HEStanbrough.com! (New site, new challenge.)
    Harvey

    • We are doing well in every respect except writing. We have lost our motivation to do anything that requires effort. But we are hopeful to one day find our way back to the writers staircase that leads to the heaven of completed manuscripts.

      I often wonder how you keep motivated. Maybe you could share your thoughts on what drives your writers engine. I would enjoy reading that.

      All the best,

      Pat

  3. So that explains the “waist”, “hear”, “are” typos. You almost lost me in the beginning because I HATE typos, and generally very quickly leave any site–especially the site of a writer–when I see them.

    Glad I soldiered on….

  4. Actually, there are three typos or wrong words: waist, hear, and a more difficult one to catch, perhpas (vs. perhaps). Those are the only misspellings or misuses. 🙂 I’d be happy to send a short story (written this week). Just let me know which format you would prefer: Kindle, Nook/Apple or PDF. If you’d rather, visit http://hestanbrough.com and read something there by Gervasio Arrancado, Nicolas Z Porter or Eric Stringer. You may also sign up for the blog there and get a brand new short story once a week.
    Thanks!
    Harvey

  5. Okay folks, a quick update… there are three intentional misspellings or misuses in the above post:
    1. In the last sentence of the first paragraph, it should be “waste,” not “waist.”
    2. In the last short paragraph before the numbered list, it should be “here,” not “hear.”
    3. In numbered paragraph 6, second sentence, “Perhpas” should of course be “Perhaps.”

    There is also one unintentional misuse. In numbered paragraph 6, second sentence, “are” should be “is.” That happened as a result of my changing the plural “readers” to the singular “the reader” earlier in that sentence and not changing the verb to match.

    Finally, there is also a missing space in numbered paragraph 2. There is no space between the closing quotation mark after “conversion bar” and the opening paren.

    So there. 🙂 Who knew even professional writers could make unintentional mistakes? I hope you can overlook the unintentional errors long enough to learn something from the actual post.

    This particular contest is closed now. However, if you’d like any of several brand-new, freshly minted short stories, I suggest you visit http://hestanbrough.com. Click the tab for Gervasio Arrancado for magic realism, or Nicolas Z Porter or Eric Stringer for other genres. And while you’re there, sign up for the blog! Doing so will ensure you receive at least one new short story per week from yours truly or one of my alter egos.

    And how about we make this a challenge? I’ve set a goal of writing at least one short story per week for the next year. Why don’t you do the same? If you have time constraints, well, join the crowd. It all boils down to priorities. If you’re a writer, Write. 🙂

    Harvey

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