Internet Marketing Tool Tips

Get the most out of your Internet Marketing tools.

Online Marketing Tools – How To Set Up A Website The Easy Way

Online Marketing Tools For Building Your Own Website, Fast !!

Online Marketing Tools WordPress LogoThe need for fantastic online marketing tools is growing all the time. One of the most amazing tools I have come across to date allows you to set up your online presence or business website with ease once you have signed up with a Web hosting company.

I have no doubt most of you have heard of it already. I’m talking about the Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress. An example of what can be done with WordPress is this site.

Some would argue it is not a fully fledged CMS. That may have been true in the early days, but it has grown and matured over the years thanks to an army of dedicated volunteer developers. It has blossomed into a superb CMS which is used my millions around the world.

The basic functionality can be expanded and enhanced by the many different plugins available, both free and paid for. Plugins can easily be found and installed to your site with a few clicks of the mouse. WordPress allows you to set up amazing websites very quickly and with little technical knowledge required.

The truly amazing thing that keeps blowing me away when I think about it is, WordPress is Free. Yep, free, zero, zilch, nada, zippo…I could go on, but you get the idea. It is free to download, install, use and upgrade. I know there are other free CMS’s out there, but WordPress is currently my one of choice.

To install WordPress and get going you have two options.

  1. For the more technically minded you can download the free software from WordPress.org. They have the famous 5 minute installation guide which I’ve tried out myself. I guess if I’d rushed I may have completed it in 5 minutes, but the first time took a little longer. The main thing to remember is that installation is very easy. Follow the instructions and support on their website.
  2. If you don’t want to try out a manual install, check out your web hosting control panel. I’d be very surprised if they haven’t supplied you with access to scripts like Fantastico or QuickInstall which automate the installation of WordPress. (If they haven’t…get a new Host!) Using these scripts takes you through the installation of WordPress step by step and couldn’t be easier.

Whichever option you choose, once installed, take your time to have a look around the WordPress Dashboard and get familiar with the interface. It’s really quite simple to use.

Also have a look through the different menu items just to get a feel for what you can configure. This gives you an idea of how flexible WordPress is and how much control you have over your content and presentation.

The basic features are great to get you started. To enhance the functionality you can then install plugins to add new features as you need them. I’ll cover plugins in my next post.

There are many great free online marketing tools out there. I hope to introduce you to some of them as we go along.

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Online Marketing Tools – How to set up Web Hosting – Part 2

Online Marketing Tools For Your Web Hosting Needs – Part 2

Online Marketing Tools BarnCarrying on from Part 1, here are a few more features you should consider when choosing a Web Hosting company: 

Disk Space:

When signing up with a hosting company they will give you an allocated amount of land that makes up your field. Well, that is and isn’t true, sort of. Some hosts offer a finite amount of disk space. Some offer unlimited disk space. This is where my field analogy breaks down a little as pretty much every field I know of has boundaries. None are limitless. I guess “unlimited” disk space will have a theoretical max but it’s unlikely you’ll hit it. Maybe I should have used Dr Who’s Tardis to draw a parallel with the “unlimited” disk space option. Anyway, choose a Host which will meet your needs. Most offer Gigabytes of space. If you are just starting out then space will not really be an issue initially. I’m sure most hosts will offer an upgrade facility to increase disk space as required, all be it at a cost.

Download Limit Monthly traffic:

Similar to Disk Space above, some hosts will offer a limit in the amount of data which can be downloaded from your website, usually on a monthly basis. Some offer unlimited downloads. Depending on what you are planning on doing with your site will determine if a limit is acceptable of not. If you expect huge amounts of traffic or file downloads then you may find a limit restrictive.

Email & Email forwarding:

With each domain you set up, you should be able to control the email accounts associated with the domain. For instance, once I registered InternetMarketingToolTips.com I was able to set up an email account andrew (at) internetmarketingtooltips.com which has its own mailbox. This can be configured so that you can pick up the emails from your preferred email client such as ThunderBird.

As part of your Hosting you should also have access to email forwarding. This allows you to set up rules so that emails received at one email address can then be forwarded on to another email address. An example of this is, emails to andrew (at) internetmarketingtooltips.com actually get forwarded to one of my Gmail accounts so I can get emails on any computer I’m using rather than being stuck on one particular one at home.

Servers:

If you choose a budget package, which by teh way are great for starters, you will most likely share a web server with other people who are also buying their hosting from teh same company. You don’t have access to their data and they can’t see your data, but you all share the same disks and processors from the same web server. The drawback of this arrangement can be that your site’s performance can be affected by others on the same server. Maybe not a problem for most, but a potential problem all the same.

If you wish, you can upgrade to a more expensive option which means you get your own server. You may also be asked to upgrade if you are beginning to get high volumes of traffic which may be affecting others on your shared server.

Your Checklist:

Before you choose any web hosting, make sure that:

  • The hosting type suits your needs
  • The hosting type is cost effective
  • Upgrading to a better server is possible
  • If needed, upgrading to a dedicated server is possible

My current host is the world famous HostGator. They have been great for me so far and the times I’ve contacted them via their online chat, the service has been fantastic. They also tick all the boxes for the features I’ve covered in Part 1 and in this post. 

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Online Marketing Tools – How to set up Web Hosting – Part 1

Online Marketing Tools For Your Web Hosting Needs – Part 1

Online Marketing Tools FieldWith the registration of your new domain name under your belt, what do you do next?

You need to find yourself some land to build your website on. That land is provided by a Web Hosting company.

The Web hosting company rents you out space on their computers called a web server. This space is like an empty field to start with. When setting up the rental/hosting agreement you provide them with a domain name as your primary domain which becomes the main address of this field. You can then build your website in the field.

There are parts of the field which are private and only you (and the web hosting administrators) have access to. There are other parts which are public. The pages that make up your web site live in the public part so that the rest of the world have access to see your website pages through their browsers.

How you decide to set up your website is up to you. More than likely your web hosting company will have scripts which can install all sorts of software onto your public area to allow you to either build or add to your website. They may also provide website building tools and online marketing tools. In fact the list, on how you can then set up your website, is endless. You can even hire web developers to set things up for you from sites such as www.elance.com and www.rentacoder.com.

Here are a couple of topics for consideration:

Sub domains:

Once you have a domain and hosting you can create what are called sub-domains if you need them, though if you are just getting one website up and running it is unlikely you’ll need them to start with. Sub-domains do not need to be registered. You set them up using the online control panel your hosting company will give you access to for your primary domain. Sub-domains are the part of the web address (uniform resource locator or URL for short) in your browser address bar which appears before the main domain name, for instance, www.InternetMarketingToolTips.com has a sub-domain of www. I could set up store.InternetMarketingToolTips.com or test.InternetMarketingToolTips.com or any number of sub-domains to logically split up my website as it grows.

Different domains:

You can also carve up the public part of your field and give each bit a different address, i.e. different domain names. This allows you to host many separate websites under the one Hosting account (if you have paid for this facility).

 

Above all, make sure you read the features for the online marketing tools provided by the Web Host so that you are not caught short further down the line.

There are another few important topics you need to consider when choosing a Web Hosting company. I’ll cover some of these in Part 2.

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Online Marketing Tools – Registering Your Domain Name

Use Domain Registrars as One Of Your Online Marketing Tools.

Online Marketing Tools Ink PotOnce you have chosen your domain name, using Online Marketing Tools such as DomainsBot, and know it is available, snap it up as quickly as possible before someone else does.

To register a domain name you need to visit a Registrar’s website, put in your domain name (usually by searching for it again on their site), add it to their shopping cart and complete the purchase. Prices vary between TLD’s and between registrars so there is no point in me listing info here that will be out of date tomorrow. Instead I’ll just tell you who I use at the moment

For .com TLD names I use Name.com.
For .org.uk TLD names I use 123-reg.co.uk.

I am a bit of a shoparound-aholic so I found Name.com was the cheapest for .com when I was looking. However they were really expensive for .org.uk TLD’s hence the reason I have a closer to home registrar for these names.

Search engines are probably the best place to start researching registrars. There are plenty out there. Just take some time to look through what they offer and their prices. The only thing I would say is that the Registrar should allow you full control over your Domain Name Server (DNS) settings on the domain. (Don’t worry; I’ll cover these settings in a later post. You just need to know the terminology at this point to know what to look for).

TOP TIP – Domain Name discounts

One more point which certainly applies to Name.com and possibly to a lot of other registrars. From time to time they run offers which give you discounts on name registrations. You just need to do a search for discount vouchers associated with your registrar of choice and see if you can find a promotional code to give you a discount in the region of 10% to 20%. It’s always a little saving if you can find one.

You have your domain name and secured it via a registrar. Now, what?

Now you need Web Hosting. That’s my next post.

Using these online marketing tools you can move step by step towards setting up your online presence or business.

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Online Marketing Tools – Choosing The Right Domain Name

April 28, 2012 No comments

Online Marketing Tools To Find You A Domain Name.

What do you need to do to get the right domian name?

Online Marketing Tools Domain NameTo set up an online presence you need a website. There are a number of free online marketing tools out there to get you online quickly. These free tools serve a purpose, but if you are serious about having your own website and online business, you’ll need a little more than these freebies. As a minimum you will need a Domain Name and Web Hosting for your website.

Domain Names and Web Hosting go hand in hand. I say this because I’m not aware of being able to set up Web Hosting without at least registering one Domain Name as your hosting domain. Saying that, once you have your hosting set up with your initial domain you can then have many domains set up on the one hosting account. I’ll therefore cover the basics for choosing a good domain name in this post and look at domain name registration and setting up web hosting in subsequent posts.

Choosing a suitable domain name.

First, consider your business name or product for which you want to set up a website. Brainstorm ideas associated with the relevant names and functions of your business or product. This should get those creative juices flowing and allow you to come up with ideas and word associations you may never have considered before.

See if you can put these words into some order which clearly states the content of your new website. When I registered InternetMarketingToolTips the name came to me fairly quickly. I wanted to make it clear that I was aiming the site at Marketing on the Internet and that it was a site where folks would come to gain helpful tips and ideas on online marketing tools and software available to them. Sometimes it is not quite so easy to find a domain name that suits and it takes a little more time and thought to come up with one you like and is fit for purpose.

Keep the name relatively short. A few words (okay, my domain name is 4 words) strung together should be sufficient to give the visitor / searcher an idea of what to expect on your website. This is a general rule of thumb. I have seen domain names which contain much more than 3 or 4 words, however they are not that catchy and more difficult to remember.

Once you have a firm idea of the message you wish to convey through your domain name, try out my favourite online marketing tools for domain name research:

DomainsBot

I use DomainsBot to do an initial search for .com names. If you can get a .com over any other TLD (Top Level Domain) I recommend you buy it. .com’s are still the most saught after TLD over others, although .net and .org are pretty good too and search engines also like them.

DomainsBot does not check all TLD’s but does cover .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz & .us and a few others. Once you have found your ideal name you can always check the availability of more local TLD’s at a registrar nearer home, for instance .co.uk, .org.uk, .au.

There are also techniques to choose exact match domain names. This takes time to research, combining the power of online marketing tools Google Keyword Tool and DomainsBot. For the purposes of this post I’ll assume you are looking for a highly relevant domain  name and not one that is targeted at getting you traffic. I’ll look at this technique some other time.

To register your new found domain name, stay tuned.

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Online Marketing Tools – How To Research What You Need – Part 2

April 25, 2012 No comments

Research And Choose Your Online Marketing Tools Solutions

Online Marketing Tools Magnifying GlassAs a follow up to Part 1, I wanted to quickly cover the main research method I use for finding online marketing tools. In fact, to be honest, I use it to research pretty much everything I want to buy.

Yep, you’ve guessed it. Google!

Okay, so I know you either love or hate them. I confess, I’m in the former group. I think their tools are awesome. The fact they have become a verb in the English language is pretty impressive you have to admit. I don’t hear many folks say they will Bing it or Yahoo it. I do however hear people saying they will Google it. Anyway, Google it is. My research tool of choice.

Now that you have been through identifying your key area for change and drilled down a bit into the specific detail of what you want to improve, you need to go searching.

Think of keyword combinations associated with the topic or tool you are researching. Don’t just stick to the one or two obvious words. For instance, say you are looking for online marketing tools to build  a membership site on WordPress. The most obvious keyword you would initially use to search for is:

  • wordpress membership site

As the Search results appear, make sure you don’t ignore the paid Google AdWords ads at the top of the organic search listing and down the right hand side. These are businesses with something to sell. It is likely that some of them will have what you are looking for.

Notice from the search results there are a few other words that keep popping up such as:

  • software
  • plugin
  • create
  • and the good old faithful, free

Add these common words to refine your search as you wish, building a more complex search query by appending +plugin or +free, etc.

As a matter of course I open interesting results or ads by right clicking and opening the links in new tabs. It’s not uncommon for me to end up with 15 – 20 tabs open.

Then start reading.

  1. Look for their Pricing structure to see if they offer free evaluation copies or cut down versions of their software. Sometimes the cut down version is sufficient for what you need.
  2. Look for the features the software has to see if it fits with your requirements. Not all will.
  3. Look for instructions on how to install the software. Is it easy? Can you do it yourself or will it require some sort of programmer/technician?
  4. Are there user guides or support forums available for you to get a flavour for how to use the software and any potential pitfalls?
  5. Does it appear to solve the problem you are trying to solve?

Make sure as you go through this research process you also include the online marketing tools you identified by word of mouth. Look up the appropriate vendor’s websites and look into the products people have mentioned to you.

As you go through this process you should be reducing your list of solutions that you built up until you get down to two or three, though maybe one stands out as a clear winner.

From here you have two choices. Try each one in turn to see which one fits best, or go with the one you instinctively feel is the most appropriate and stick with it.

I prefer the second option myself. Once you’ve done your reading and research you will be pretty clued up on what is out there to solve your problem. Although you may not think it now, you’ll have a good grasp of what you want and a good feel for what can meet your requirements. Just go for it and choose one.

It’s better to have something that meets 90% of your needs rather than something (nothing!) that misses 100% of your needs.

And lets face it, no matter what you choose, there will be a steep learning curve while you get things installed and up and running. When I say steep, it’s relative to your solution. A new WordPress plugin may have a steep learning curve of 5 minutes. A large CRM software package could take weeks to learn.

Whatever online marketing tools you end up using, I have no doubt you will see great benefits to your business and I wish you every success with them.

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Online Marketing Tools – How To Research What You Need – Part 1

April 23, 2012 No comments

How Do You Go About Researching And Finding The Online Marketing Tools You Need?

Online Marketing Tools HammerAfter identifying the key area for change you then have to get specific about what you want to achieve. This will help determine the features you need from the online marketing tools. Don’t bite off more than you can chew at this stage. If you become overwhelmed with change by looking at multiple areas at once you will get nowhere fast.

Do you want to:

  • Reduce operational costs?
  • Simplify end to end processes?
  • Make time savings?
  • Enable quicker more efficient research?
  • Speed up distribution?
  • Automate repetitive tasks?

Again, the list is endless. You know your business best and you will also know where you need to make improvements. Be specific so that you can spot the online marketing tools which will benefit you the most when you start looking.

Which leads me on to where to look and how to identify these online marketing tools.

We all know that personal recommendations are one of the best ways to find products, services or even people that are worth their weight in gold. Recommendations take some of the risk out of your decisions because the person making the recommendation has already taken the risk of the unknown and come out the other side happy with the result. If they weren’t happy they wouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place, or even worse they would have warned you off!

So your first step in researching online marketing tools is to ask around. Speak to people in your industry or niche that do similar things to what you want to achieve. Ask their advice and ask what they use.

You may hit opposition and find some do not want to tell you. That’s to be expected. You will always find people unwilling to share information. Just keep asking around until you get some answers.

Through this process you will more than likely end up with a list of online marketing tools that do similar things.

Part 2 covers a further research technique to help evaluate your list of tools and help you make a final decision on what online marketing tools you need for your business.

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Online Marketing Tools – Would You Consider Them To Grow Your Business?

April 20, 2012 No comments

Why Would You Even Consider Using Online Marketing Tools To Grow Your Business?

Online Marketing Tools -ToolboxThe reasons for you to move to using online marketing tools are too many to list here. However, maybe the main one I would highlight is that everyone else is doing it.

Following the crowd may not be the best business strategy for you right now, however there is nothing wrong with looking around to see what your competitors are doing and, if it appears to work for them, why not for you? In fact copying others is a basic skill every child learns from day 1. Children learn by copying those around them. Why should it be any different in business? Copying is nothing to be ashamed of. It can save you huge amounts of time and money. Mind you, be careful who you copy. Not everyone is doing it right. Check out  what your  competition are doing and strive to do it better than them.

With regards to online marketing tools, can you afford not to use them when your competitors are? Do you want to be left behind while others get a step ahead of you in your market or niche?

Where do you start?

First, STOP and THINK. You need to decide exactly what it is you are trying to achieve for your business. There are many different aspects to a business that can benefit from the use of online marketing tools but you need to know what your goals are before even starting your search for a solution.

A selection of business activities (and some are obvious I know) where online marketing tools can be put to good use are:

  • Website hosting
  • Website building
  • Copywriting
  • Press Release submission
  • Keyword research
  • Digital product distribution
  • Lead generation and capture
  • Customer relationship management
  • Payment processing
  • Online demonstrations
  • Paid advertising
  • Email marketing
  • Document sharing
  • Time management
  • Outsourcing
  • And on…and on…

Okay, so some in the list are not directly related to marketing, but they certainly add great value to your marketing endeavours by enabling smarter and more efficient working practices.

The next step is researching what solutions are out there…

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A new Blog is born – My “Internet Marketing Tool Tips” blog

April 20, 2012 No comments

It’s been a while in coming but I’ve done it. I’ve started my “Internet Marketing Tool Tips” blog.

I wanted to get online with a blog that had some meaning and that people would find useful or interesting. Time will tell whether I manage it or not, however I do hope people find it useful.

continue reading…

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