PPC for Local Businesses: Part 2. Optimize and Protect Your Google Places Account

In this article we'll explore how to use Google Places to promoting your local business and how to protect the accuracy of your Google Places content.

You don't need a website to be found online. In years past, smaller local businesses found it difficult to advertise online because they didn't have a website. But now, Google provides Google Places as a location online allowing your business to have a web presence without having to build a website.

Whether a local company has a website or not, it makes good business sense for a company to create and build out a Google Places account.

AdWords is the advertising platform that many local businesses use to create and display ads online. One option that Google has provided to local businesses is that they can create a Google Places profile and then connect the places page to their account in AdWords.

Ensure that you have the correct geographic information. Google will provide a list of cities. Make sure that when you select your city, that it is the city in the correct state. For example, for the city Huntsville, there are multiple states with a city in it by the name of Huntsville (notably Alabama and Texas)

For more information on syncing your Google Places profile with your Google Account, read my earlier article entitled, "Using Google Places to Maximize Ad Performance in Google AdWords."

Google allows business owners to "claim" their Google Places by either having a postcard mailed or an automated phone call generated by Google that then allows the business owner additional access in configuring the Google Places content. The owner can add hours of operation, additional descriptions, photos, videos, etc. In addition, much of the information about the business recorded in Google Places can now be updated or modified by the business owner.

All of this owner content is good for users of Google Places, so long as the owner is still around to care. When a company goes out of business or moves, the Google Places listing is often left intact -- providing a local listing for a company that is no longer in existence. This can be frustrating to users of Google Places when the service identifies a business, such as a local restaurant, that is actually closed.

Google has recently (October 13, 2011) announced changes to the way the user-generated content (also known as "crowd sourced" data) is treated in response to this issue. Now, anyone who is signed into a Google Account can go in to Google Places and update the Google Places listing for any business. If the listing is claimed, the owner will receive an e-mail about the change, but the change may go live first. It is up to the business owner to correct the change if it is made in error. Note that this change affects only the organic content for your listing. Any paid advertising on Google will only use the information you provide.

Nevertheless, this can cause problems for business owners when then listing is changed for deceptive reasons. Imagine a business marking their competitors' stores as "closed permanently" in the Google database. Image if the closed business was your business. In a recent post, Chris Silver Smith illustrated the problems with this when he and some friends marked Google Headquarters as closed -- just to prove a point about the problems with this policy.

There are several things you should do to minimize the impact of this change:

Make sure the contact e-mail for your Google Places Listing is up to date

Check periodically for e-mails from googleplaces-noreply@google.com (including checking your Spam folder) for notices from Google about third party changes.

If your mail client supports it, set up a "rule" to flag these messages as high priority for faster response.

Add that e-mail address to your spam filter's "whitelist" to help insure you see the message when it arrives.

Periodically perform a manual localized search (that is, search for [your company] in [your town], [your state]) and review the information that comes up. Login to your Google Places account and review the data that way as well.

Christine Churchill is the President of KeyRelevance.com, a full service Dallas search engine marketing company that specializes in helping businesses succeed online. Christine and her experienced team of online marketers provide a holistic approach to marketing: increasing a site's visibility online, improving the user experience on the site, and maximizing the site's conversion potential.

8 Steps to Developing Ad Revenue from Your Website -- Part 4 of Start-up Success

CPM (cost per thousand views). This is the traditional way television, radio, magazine, and newspaper advertising is sold. A few higher value sites can sell ads this way on the Internet, but it's not easy. CPC (cost per click) or PPC (pay per click). In this pay-for-performance model, the advertiser pays only if a potential customer cares enough about the ad to click on it. By far the largest amount of Internet advertising is sold via this model. CPA (cost per action) is either pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale. Affiliate marketing (which we'll explore in another article in this series) runs on this model. Now let's look at the 8 steps to ad revenue generation. 

Unless your website is related to an industry that is commercially viable, the chances are you won't be able to make much money on advertising. Simply speaking, advertisers will only pay you for advertising if it helps them make money. 

I have a friend who is a true expert on English grammar. He has developed a whole website around correct grammatical usage. It's even getting some traffic. Consider who such a site might attract: 

English teachers Non-native speakers trying to learn correct English Students who have an assignment to complete for class Are these people likely to spend money on this topic? Not likely. A dictionary publisher might want to advertise here, but since the book sells for $25 or less and there isn't hot competition for dictionaries these days, publishers won't pay much for advertising. If you had online English classes, you might want to advertise. But still, these ads wouldn't sell for much. 

Should my grammatical friend expect much advertising revenue? No. 

I have another friend who has a nursing website that has attracted interest from pharmaceuticals. Since the drug industry is very competitive and sells some high priced products, this kind of website has the potential to make good money, if developed properly. 

Not only do you need a commercial field, you must also provide high quality content: 

You won't get much attention if people don't learn from your website. If they learn, they're more likely to return. The Google Panda algorithm update tends to give lower rankings to sites with poor content, measured by such things as bounce rate, the presence of obtrusive ads, and evidence of "scraping" or duplication of something on another site. Internet users are getting more sophisticated and won't settle for mediocre content. They'll leave quickly if they don't find what they're looking for. Assuming that you've got step 1 under control, now move to optimize your content around high-priced keywords. You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find out what keywords get the highest bids in your niche. 

You optimize your content in two primary ways. 

Keyword focus. Select the two or three dozen highest priced keywords in your industry or niche. Then write content about these topics. Keyword placement. Put high-priced keywords (wherever appropriate) in your: Title tags Subheadings Alt tags for graphics Filenames for graphics and webpages In hypertext linked words and phrases. In the first and last paragraphs It's not enough to have great content. You'll want to focus your efforts on the most profitable topics, and then make sure your content is indexed correctly by the search engines for these profitable keywords. 

Perhaps this goes without saying, but unless you have lots and lots of traffic to your website, you won't make much money selling advertising. How do you get traffic? This is a complex topic, but mainly three ways: 

Search Rankings. Get highly ranked on the search engines for your keywords. In part, you achieve this by step 2.... Links. Get links and recommendations to your website from other sites, blogs, social media, directories, etc. Ads. Pay for advertising to get people to your site -- so they'll see the advertising there. You can learn more about how to do this by reading deeply at the Web Marketing Today website. 

If you were to try to sell advertising directly, one of the first questions their media buyers will ask you is: What is your monthly number of unique visitors or pageviews? Unless you have healthy numbers, they won't pursue you. Get the traffic and you may begin to attract interested advertisers. 

If you're pursuing an advertising revenue strategy for your site, you will have done a lot of looking at competition websites to see what makes them good -- and to determine how you can be even better. 

Type and Size of Advertising. Is most of the advertizing in your industry Google text ads or display ads (that is, graphic ads)? If display ads are popular, what size appears most often? 

As of February 28, 2011, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) lists seven standard ad units (dimensions in pixels are in parentheses): 

Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) Rectangle (180 x 150) Leaderboard (728 x 90) Skyscraper (160 x 600) Half Page Ad (300 x 600) Button 2 (120 x 60) Microbar (88 x 31) One size that's shown as "delisted" is the Full Banner (468 x 60). You'll still see this widely on the Internet, but not on sites that are seeking to sell to advertisers that pay well. Sometimes you'll see other sizes, but for designing your own page, stick to the most popular sizes in your niche or industry. 

Source of Advertising. Now look deeper to determine the source of advertising. Most third-party ads have two URLs. 

Intermediate URL of the ad server. The adserver is the company that displays the ad as well as counting and collecting information on the click-through, then redirects the user's web browser to the... Destination URL on the landing page of the advertiser's website, where the Internet user is supposed to end up. If you can figure out what the adserver company is, you can learn something about the advertising type. The intermediate URL can sometimes be seen by putting your cursor over the ad (without clicking) and looking for a URL at the bottom left of your web browser frame. However, some types of ad technologies don't disclose the intermediate URL -- and it's hard to see in the URL in the bar at the top of your browser, since it redirects so fast. Another approach is to right-click to "view source." 

What you're looking for is the name of the adserving company (not the brand of the ad serving software). For example, DoubleClick (now owned by Google) is often used to display higher-priced ads on better sites. Ad networks, on the other hand, display lower-priced ads. You'll see some of the names of ad networks in step 7 below. The detective work you do here may pay off in useful intelligence to help you develop your own strategy. 

Now that you've gotten an idea of how companies tend to advertise in your niche or industry, you need to design your webpage template to accommodate the most popular ad sizes. Be careful not to so overload your webpage template so it looks cluttered. Don't be greedy. A few ads designed to fit nicely on your webpage will achieve a professional appearance without looking overdone. And only the most prominent ads will get many click-throughs anyway. 

Typically, a site offering advertising will display a leaderboard (728x90) across the top, with another ad size along the right side of the page. Google AdSense ads can be placed anywhere on the page. But too often they tend to clutter the site and make it more difficult for readers to get to the information they desire. Be wise and experiment. 

Now consider three types of advertising on your site. You may even end up mixing these types. 

Google is the biggest advertising company on the Internet. Their AdWords ads that appear on search results generate a huge amount of revenue for the company. But you can put Google AdSense ads on your own website. To learn more, see https://www.google.com/adsense/ 

The advantage of AdSense ads is that Google tries hard to display only ads that are relevant to the keywords on your webpage. Also, they have millions of advertisers, many of whom are finding good results advertising on sites like yours. You don't have to find the advertisers. Google does it for you. And Google seems to pay publisher sites like yours about half of the revenue it receives from the advertisers. This can be an ideal solution for many small business sites. Since the ads are targeted according to your content, they command a higher bid price than untargeted ads. 

Also experiment with display ads (image ads) through Google AdSense. 

A second kind of advertising source are networks beyond Google. There are two main types of networks: ad networks and affiliate networks. 

Ad networks. These are companies that you contract with to display their clients' ads on your website. They may pay you on a CPM basis (perhaps 50 cents to several dollars per thousand ad displays -- or less), or they may pay on a Cost Per Click basis. Search on "ad networks" and you'll find lists of these. Some of the better known include ValueClick, AdBrite, Burst Media, Casale Media, Kontera, Chitka, Tribal Fusion, and Bidvertiser. Some ad networks are focused primarily on one sector; others offer ads across many industries. 

The problem I've seen is that ads aren't usually closely targeted to your content, but only to your general industry. Consequently, the click-through rate tends to be lower and your revenue is lower. If your website isn't highly targeted on a high priced commercial niche, however, an ad network may be your best source of ads. 

Affiliate networks. We'll consider affiliate marketing in another article in this series. However, affiliate networks fit here, since they offer display ads from many advertisers. The major difference from ad networks is that, while ad networks usually pay on a CPM or CPC basis, affiliate networks tend to pay primarily on a CPA (cost per action) basis, when a purchase or lead results from the click. Search on "affiliate networks" to see lists of these. Some larger affiliate networks to explore are: CJ (Commission Junction), ClickBooth, ClickBank, Shareasale, and Linkshare. You can typically choose the ad and ad sizes you want to display on your site as well as the advertisers you think will provide the best revenue for you. However, the individual advertiser may want to approve your site before allowing you to place its ads on your site. 

If you're finding good success in earning advertising revenue on your site, you might consider employing an agency to act as a sales representative to seek advertisers for your site. Sales reps are advertising professionals who are able to work out CPM deals directly with prime advertisers' media buyers -- deals that you wouldn't be able to land yourself, since experienced sales reps have inside industry knowledge and an extensive network of contacts. If you have a relatively lucrative advertising potential, this may the best way to get the most money for your ads.

How to Conduct Competitive Research

Ranking. Most of your important competitors are likely to be at the top of the search engine rankings for your main keywords. Make a list of these companies and the keywords they rank best for. Start by listing the 10 to 20 companies that seem come up consistently on page 1 of the search results.

Pay Per Click Ads. List the companies that tend to show up on the PPC ads for your keywords. They may be fierce competitors, but don't have effective organic SEO.

Traffic. Now pare down your list by looking at the traffic going to your competitors. There are two great tools that can help you do this. Both draw their data from actual users. Compete (compete.com) allows you to profile traffic to a site over time so you can see traffic trends. The free version of the tool allows you to estimate monthly traffic and an overall ranking compared to all sites. The pro version ($200 to 300/month) can give you estimates of page views, time of average stay, pages per visit, etc., while the pro advanced version ($500/month) can tell you the gender, average age, and income level of visitors.

Alexa (alexa.com) has been around for a long time. It's free and shows you competitors in your space with their overall Alexa traffic rank, incoming links, and a graph of daily reach.

Use these tools to identify your top 5 to 10 major competitors. If these are all big companies, then you may need to narrow your niche some, so that you're not trying to compete head-to-head with the big boys.

You need to realize, however, that a lot of traffic by itself doesn't guarantee profitability. Not just the big guys make a profit -- and some of them are struggling. The Internet marketplace is large enough to find little niches that are quite profitable, even though the space seems dominated by a few big players. 

Once you've developed a short list of your major competitors, you need to study them carefully. The first question you need to answer is: Why is this competitor on top? For now, ignore that they probably have effective search engine optimization (SEO) and a wise pay per click (PPC) advertising strategy. Rather, look at what each competitor offers customers on its website. How does it present itself and its offerings?

You'll need to develop and then refine a list of categories that you're comparing from site to site. Each niche will have its own points of comparison, but here are some to start with:

Look and feel. What's your first impression overall? Is the website visually attractive? Does it look professional? 

Navigation. Is the site easy to navigate? What kinds of navigation tools do they offer? Look for tabs, menus, search features, ways to narrow down the search results, gift lists, etc. One reason they're on top is because they're probably doing several things right.

Personality. What is the personality of the site? Do they have a clever logo, perhaps a picture of a spokesperson or a mascot? Is it a blah site or does it have character? How do they differentiate themselves from other sites. Is the language formal or casual?

Demographic target. What kind of customers are they trying to attract? Newbies? Sophisticated users? What age group is their marketing aimed at? Are they trying to be "hip" or do they care? You can tell a lot by the graphics and the vocabulary they use.

Company story. Look at the "about us" pages. Read the company's story about who they are and why they're in business. How do they present themselves here?

Products and services. How do they display their products or services? Do they give stock product photos and standard descriptions received through an automatic feed from the manufacturer, or have they gone to the trouble to add value with better photos and deeper descriptions, product guides, shopping tips, recommendations, etc.? If price weren't a factor, how do they make you want to buy from them in particular? Why?

Pricing. How does this competitor price its products and services? Does it compete for lowest price? Or is it offering customer service and more information that will attract buyers who want to get the best product and support, rather than just get the cheapest price? Does it offer bundled pricing of related products that make sales more attractive? Are its prices cheapest, medium, or most expensive? Realize that your wholesale pricing will depend upon whether you can buy enough product to get volume pricing from the manufacturer or distributor. Your wholesale price for the product will also depend upon whether you purchase for inventory that you ship or do drop-shipping.

Customer service. How easy is it to contact someone if your have a question? Does this company try to avoid anyone calling them and getting a real person? What kinds of return policies do they offer? Shipping prices? Guarantees?

Checkout system. Study their shopping cart or ordering system, if they're an e-commerce site. If you're serious about learning, purchase a small product and watch how you put an item in their shopping cart and move to the final purchase. Many stores are pretty sloppy here and may not even realize it.

In the process of closely examining a number of sites, you'll begin to discover how some are better than others. Hopefully, you'll begin to see some "holes" in the way your competitors are doing business. You may recognize some unreached target audiences, some stupidity in the products offered or the presentation. You will start to get a feel -- I hope -- of how you could do some things better than they do. This insight is key to helping you shape your own unique online business.

Marketing is complex, so I'll oversimplify a bit. Smaller online businesses typically have four types of marketing you can look for. Study these:

Search engine optimization. How do they rank for keywords important to you? Without quite a bit of experience, you probably won't understand why they're ranked high, but an SEO professional might consult with you for an hour or two to give you an idea about the techniques your competitors are using. A lot of their ranking is because of the types of links to them from other sites and the number of "quality" links. There are tools available that can help you study their linking patterns. You'll need to learn how to match them at optimizing your pages and getting links if you want to match their traffic.

PPC text ads. Most successful small online businesses have learned how to pull highly targeted traffic in their field from the text ads that appear to the right of the search results -- as well as ads on key information sites in your field. For example, if you're selling HO gauge train models, look for your competitors' ads on the most popular model train blogs. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to estimate what your competitors are paying per click for their ads. Are they seeking the #1 position or are they targeting the #3 or #6 position most of the time? If they're savvy, their usual position is part of their marketing strategy, not just a sign of how high they can afford to bid.

Social media. Increasingly, small businesses are learning to use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to increase their visibility. Study what they seem to be doing that is clever and/or effective.

Branding. "Branding" is a technical term that refers to how a company presents itself -- both in its messaging, website design, tag lines, logos, spokespersons, display advertising, and PR. Brand image is not just one thing, but the whole package. In a few moments I'll explain the concept of a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Go to each of your competitors and try to write out what you believe their USP might be. It may be pretty obvious, since you've been paying attention. If it's not, then see its lack of sophistication as a competitive advantage for you.

The kind of study I've outlined here takes time to conduct. If you're working full-time, then you'll need to devote several weeks of your evenings to this project. The more you study your competitors, the more sophisticated you'll become. You'll not only understand your competitor's strengths and marketing strategies, but you'll also begin to see their weaknesses -- places that you can do better and show your customers that you are the best choice.

Seven Tips for Hosting Webinars that Rock

1. Do the training. Whatever platform you choose, see what they offer in terms of videos or a training manual, and go through every scrap of it. Check the specs and make sure your computers and microphones will work with your chosen platform.

2. Record a practice. Arrange to do a separate practice session with your presenters, and record it. Play it back and listen to how you sound. Consider writing a script or at least talking points so you have something to refer to as you present. 

3. Have a co-presenter. Collaborating on live events with service partners is the way to go. You get another business to promote your event, double the expertise you offer your audience -- and now someone can be talking or responding to chat questions while you're frantically trying to fix whatever might be going technically wrong.

4. Go slow. Remember The King's Speech? The slower you talk, the more authoritative you sound. Don't rush or talk over other speakers. The presentation software tends to lag, so if you go too fast your audience may miss what you were trying to show them.

5. Stay calm when things go wrong. Run on the assumption that some issue will arise -- someone's screen will freeze, they won't be able to hear, the slideshow won't work, the entry or exit chimes won't turn off, or your co-presenter's computer will fry mid-presentation (these have all happened to me). Take a minute to try to resolve it, but if you can't, apologize and move on. Otherwise, you risk losing the rest of your audience. If it's really a disaster, offer a freebie item or recording of the event on email later, or schedule an encore.

6. Don't try to do too much. My first one-hour Webinar covered 40 points. It was pretty frantic trying to get through it all. By contrast, I've seen fantastic events where just five points get covered. Remember, the point of most live events is to get participants to buy something from you after the event. Give them a small taste of what you have to offer and leave them wanting more.

7. Leave lots of time for Q&A. The number-one reason people come to live events is to get their questions answered. Too many Webinars run long and cut out the question time, which leaves participants unhappy, so keep an eye on the clock. Leave at least 10 minutes for questions in a one-hour presentation -- 20 minutes is even better.

Three Financial Guesstimates Every Business Plan Needs

Almost all of finance and accounting deals with three fundamental financial statements: the income statement (also called profit and/or loss); the balance sheet; and the cash flow. But there's a critical difference between accounting and business planning. Accounting essentially reports on past transactions, putting them into these three statements (which you could also call tables). Business planning looks to the future. It uses estimated guesses of monthly results to try to project how these statements will look in the future.

The Projected Income Statement

The income statement, whether it's projected or historical, is about profits and/or losses. It shows financial performance over a specified time, like a month, quarter, or year. The format for projected income in your business plan is the same as for income statements in accounting.

The income statement starts with sales. Then it shows the direct costs associated with those sales. Depending on your business, those may be unit costs, cost of goods sold, or direct costs of delivering the service. Subtract direct costs from sales and you get gross margin, usually in dollars and percent. Gross margin is useful for comparing your business' performance to industry standards, and bankers and financial analysts expect to see it.

Related: Three Questions to Answer Before You Write a Business Plan

From there we subtract expenses, including interest and taxes. That gets us to profits--the famous "bottom line."

In business planning you can't really do an income statement, because you often don't have income to report. Instead, you draw up a projected income statement, also called pro forma income statement. It follows the same format, but it's all about the future and therefore takes some educated guessing. You make your best guess as to what your monthly totals will be, and go from there.

The Projected Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is a statement of a company's financial position at one specified moment in time, such as the end of the month or end of the year. It shows assets, liabilities, and capital. Assets are normally cash, money owed to the company, and business property and equipment like chairs and tables, the espresso machine, vehicles, etc. Liabilities are debts: money the company owes as accounts payable, and loans to be paid. Capital is money invested in the company, which usually includes initial investment and retained earnings. Recent earnings are normally included in capital, so they provide the link back to the profit or loss. 

Related: How to Estimate Startup Costs

In a business plan we talk about the projected, or pro forma, balance. It's another educated guess, in this case a guess about what assets, liabilities, and capital will be in the future.

And one magic equation, essential to the whole set of tables, is that assets must always be equal to the sum of liabilities and capital. If that isn't true, then the balance isn't in balance, and something is wrong.

Projected Cash Flow

The cash flow statement sometimes feels like an afterthought in accounting statements, but in business planning, cash flow is essential. Make mistakes here, and you'll end up bouncing checks.

The cash flow statement pulls information from both the projected income statement and the projected balance sheet, and ties them together. It shows money coming in, month by month; money going out, month by month; and the projected cash balance. 

Related: Five Common Startup Money Mistakes

The reason cash flow is so important is that the income statement doesn't necessarily reflect all the money. There might be sales that haven't been billed yet, for example. And the balance sheet doesn't necessarily reflect all the money either. There might be loan repayments, or new loans, or new investment, or buying of assets, none of which show up on the income statement. The cash flow statement ties the other two statements together.

Other Tables and Projections

And there are some other tables that are common, but, depending on your specific situation, they may not be essential. That list would start with market projections and market numbers, such as the size of the potential market, the total addressable market, and/or market growth. Most people would consider these essential for companies seeking investment, because investors want to know about the market. Other common financial tables are the projected break-even analysis, and the projected valuation at exit.

The relevance of these other tables depends upon the exact use of the plan. But the big three--the projected income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement--belong in almost every plan.

Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success

Steve Jobs' impact on your life cannot be overestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect -- computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs' greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.

1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world for the better." Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, "I'd get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about." That's how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.

2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, "Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" Don't lose sight of the big vision.

Related: Steve Jobs' Surprising First Business Venture

3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn't have any practical use in his life -- until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don't live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.

4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to? 

5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?

6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter. Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.

7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It's so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.

There's one story that I think sums up Jobs' career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that's the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.

7 tips for creating great link bait

1. Give them a reason to link to you

Before we begin to weigh into creating link bait effectively, it's worthwhile to remember what type of marketing strategy it is. The great thing about this technique when it's done effectively is that it will make other websites promote your online presence. And why would they do this? Mainly, they would be interested to promote you because it is an incentive for them. People share content that increases their social status in some way - that makes them look clever, funny, or in the know.

Strong and exclusive content from your website give their readers what they want, and when links are made back to your website, you get traffic and interest which will bring sales. As you can see, the first point is to give other blogs and web pages a reason to link back to you, offering something that makes you stand out from the crowd.2. Link out first

The second point to creating great link bait is to make sure that you offer connections and references n to other websites, giving your visitors connections to other relevant online services. In a way, this could mean that the website you have helped will pay you back by linking back to you at a later date, meaning that you both generate new hits as a result.

3. Do the hard work to uncover great content

The third tip for making memorable link bait is one that many of us will follow begrudgingly: doing research to make our content have 'the edge'. You need to bear in mind your aims and cater to your core demographic. The things you produce should inspire a cathartic response in your readers - stirring the emotions in a way that makes them want to link their friends to view your website for themselves.

So, once you've done the planning that many of your competitors will fail to do, you need to ensure that the research you've done in advance is used to create a twist on the content that already exists. If you're writing about the travel industry for example, you won't want to produce link bait about growth in the tourism sector if another website has already done it.

Instead, you will want to develop and grow the content you create into something refreshing and novel that hasn't been done before. Why not use trends and analysis from experts to predict where the industry will be in a year's time? How about scrutinising how the tourism sectors here in the UK and abroad have done comparatively amongst British travellers during the economic downturn?

By including fascinating statistics, you could instigate a conversation and a debate about the industry that revolves around the facts that you found for inclusion in your article. Even though number-crunching in link bait will do you wonders, make sure that you obtain the findings from a reliable source, as there is nothing worse than feeding your readers untrue information and your reputation diminishing slightly as a result.4. Keep their attention

Fourthly, a way to ensure your link bait is top notch should be to ensure that you don't let a word count define your content. There is nothing worse than when you have to write 500 words of content, but you only have 300 words of valid points to make. As a result, you find yourself padding out the information you have with the remaining 200 words.

Slimming down the length of link bait in favour of a more succinct, tightly-written and informative article is far more effective, retaining the interest and attention of the reader. The concentration span of many Internet readers is low, so you want to place the most hard-hitting information and objectives of your link bait first.5. Think of the visual element

This brings us onto fifth pointer on our list. Even though the written word has the ability to blow Internet users away, an original image will bring just the same effect - potentially in a better way than relying on your descriptive gifts. Creating a summary to accompany the photo will be wise, and photo storage websites will ensure that the traffic your server is able to handle won't be breached by the increase in bandwidth you will use.6. Make the headline re-tweetable

Number six is a relatively new point, particularly because of the developments that have been made in social media. Now more than ever before, you want to keep your headline 're-tweetable'. So: what does this mean? Many blogs and websites now allow visitors to post a micro URL onto their Twitter account, meaning their followers will be shown a hyperlink and the headline of your link bait.

With the few words you have to use, making sure that you make an impact and leave the reader intrigued is vital. First impressions are integral to your link bait's success, and asking a question of the reader is one way to establish that all-important connection. If you are re-tweeted by a user or service that has thousands (or even millions!) of followers, you will reap in the traffic afterwards.7. Don't overcomplicate things

And finally, the last point which will get you on your way to making fantastic link bait is this: don't be afraid to keep things nice and simple. Sometimes, if you have a powerful message, delivering it very clearly and without gimmicks will get you far further. After all, if you have too many clich?s, bells and whistles in your content, could the main points and objectives be detracted from?

Link bait is an art not a science, and using these seven tips will be the start of a long journey towards mastering it.