The 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan
Common in the insurance business you will hear things like the 80/20 plan. What that means is some insurance plans will cover 80% of the bill while leaving you with the remaining 20% balance. With Internet marketing, I have coined my own 80/20 plan and indeed put it into practice.
My business is mainly in developing niche sites that are run using WordPress. I write content that targets very high paying keywords in Google AdWords. My content indeed is very well written, unique, useful, entertaining and informative. The goal in mind though is to monetize it using Google AdSense. Some content I write that targets certain keyword phrases need a little more boost than others. Most of my content targets longtail keywords. However, some do not and need additional love.
The 80/20 plan that I follow is very simple. I invest 20% of my time writing content and 80% of my time marketing it. Depending on the strength of competition of the keyword phrases I am targeting will dictate the level of depth I go into marketing each article or page I create. For me, Internet marketing is a primary method of promoting my content on the Internet. It combines two elements: search engine marketing and social network marketing.
Search engine marketing is really simple if you think about it. All that is required is a search engine optimized web site or blog and your ability to write content in a creative way that caters to both humans as well as search engines. In other words, in order for you to rank well for the keyword phrases you are targeting, you have to carefully write your material in a way that uses the keywords and related terms in your content a certain way and at a certain frequency. All in all though, it’s not difficult but it does take some time to master.
The tricky part is social network marketing. As mentioned above, there are times when I want to rank for more competitive keyword phrases. These terms fall outside from what I would consider being longtail. Long tail keyword marketing does not require backlinks, while targeting more primary keyword phrases do. That is where social network marketing kicks into gear.
Many people look at social network marketing in terms of scoring votes of your submitted content into these various networks. While voting does indeed play its role in the my big picture of social network marketing, it doesn’t take the role you may think it does. Many of these popular social networks NOFOLLOW their links. So even though the page that your submitted content appears on ranks well in the search engines, you dont’ get credit for the links.
What is the point towards getting your content submitted into social networks? Well, really the point and reason why I like my content listed in social netowrks is for the fact that if someone else likes what they read, they may in return write a post about it on their blog which will provide a direct search engine friendly backlink to my content and or home page.
Internet Marketing isn’t just limited to search engine marketing and social network marketing. You also have the element of email list marketing as well as instant messenger marketing. Email list marketing is great because you can send out direct email to your subscribers and inform them of the content you wrote. Depending on how close you are with your subscribers, you can possibly even ask your subscribers to link to your newly publsihed content. In doing so, you are establishing backlinks to your content.
The same is true for instant messenger marketing. If you have about 25 buddies in your instant messenger contacts and speak with them daily. You can easily ask them to check out your newly publsihed article or web page and ask if they wouldn’t mind providing you with a backlink to it.
No matter what you do, always remember the 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan. Once again, use 20% of your free time towards creating content and 80% of your free time marketing and promoting your content. If you do that, you’ll see super huge results.
What are some other ways that you can market and promote your content? If you have some ideas, feel free to share them below in the comments.
August 24th, 2008 at 4:54 am
[...] The 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan By Garry Conn Search engine marketing is really simple if you think about it. All that is required is a search engine optimized web site or blog and your ability to write content in a creative way that caters to both humans as well as search engines. … SEO Hosting Blog - http://www.seohosting.com/blog [...]
August 24th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Excellent article. A lot of people don’t realize the importance of content. I agree with your 80/20 concept. If individuals have a problem dedicating 20% of their time to content development, they can always hire a website content provider to develop the content for them. It is extremely convenient in the start-up process of a website to hire a web writer because at that point in time, more than 20% is required to develop the intial content.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Gary, I saw this article and immediately assumed it was going to be about building links with the 80/20 rule that everyone is obsessed with. I’m glad to see it wasn’t another article about that. When you look at the elite sites, they didn’t follow that link building rule. They just built outstanding content and had a natural influx of links. As a result, they gained trustrank and then used their internal linkage to push their way up the SERPs for targeted keywords. So, it’s refreshing to see someone talking about a different 80/20 rule. But I think you would agree there are certain pieces of content where you would break away from your 80/20 rule. If you’re building or having someone build an outstanding tool/plugin that you know is going to lead to a megaton of links, you might be required to break away from your 80/20 rule.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Other than creating great content, social networking, email marketing and instant messaging, we can also promote our content through social bookmarking such as Diggs and StumbleUpon.
In addition, Twitter is also a great way to get the word out when you post a new article.
Willy Lim
The Financially Free Advisor
InterNETwork Marketing in Asia
Follow Me at Twitter: http://twitter.com/willylim
August 26th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I’m just getting into niche blogging myself and I have a few questions for you.
1. Where did you get the idea to split this production/marketing into a 4-1 ratio? It’s an odd use of the 80/20 rule. Did you find this ratio useful through experimentation?
2. How much total time do you spend on a typical niche blog, including marketing? How much to you earn from adsense on average?
I just started with a niche blog at http://www.diabetespreventiondiet.com
August 27th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I’m suprised you didn’t mention Article Directories. I don’t believe most of them use Nofollow. Another great source of targeted backlinks.
Also, maybe you consider blogs part of the social aspect, but Blog Commens are also good for backlinks. Some are nofollow and some are not. Some even have a plug-in called CommentLuv which Garry has featured other places.
September 19th, 2008 at 4:28 am
yep.. i agree