A new publication, DVDs that will help with online publicity

Can you think of a good reason why you shouldn’t be concerned with Internet marketing, which is tied directly to your ability to generate publicity online? If so, let me know because I can’t think of one.

If you have a website, and most of you do, you should know things like how much traffic you get and how much of that traffic you can convert to customers. If you’re too busy to keep up with stuff like that and you hire somebody to manage your site, that’s fine. But whoever you hire needs to know this.

Let’s say you aren’t selling anything. You’re simply trying to lure journalists to your website. You should know which colors and graphic elements immediately turn off visitors. You can have dynamite content, but if it’s difficult to read, journalists will bail out.

I want to give you the heads-up about a set of DVDs called “Stomping the Search Engines 2.0” and an accompanying journal called “The Net Effect” that the folks at Stompernet asked me to review last week. (I’ve been a Stompernet member since April and I don’t know how I’d be able to manage my online business without them.)

The product launch is tomorrow. They won’t say how much they’re asking for it, but they call it “Liberty and Justice for All,” whatever that means. You don’t need to be a Stompernet member to buy it.

Here’s a quick critique of the materials:

—They call the 45-page publication (with only two full-page ads)  a journal. I hate that word because it makes it sound dry and academic. I wish they’d just call it what it is: a damn good magazine.

—Several of the articles might bore you tears, like the one about the best strategies to use when going after inbound links to your website. But unless the person managing your site knows this stuff, you can’t hope to compete.

—A few articles will knock you off your chair, like the one titled “Wanna be Broke? Then Maybe You Shouldn’t Sell Cheap.” It explains why selling a bunch of inexpensive products can send you to the poor house. Sherman Hu’s article on how to distribute content you’ve already created (blog and audio, for instance) into several different formats will help you pull more traffic, save you hours every time you create media, and give the search engines more content or “spider food” to return to people, including journalists and bloggers, who are searching online.    

—On several pages, the graphic artist slapped graphics on top of print which makes some of the type difficult to read. So I hope they clean up the graphics in future issues and keep the content just as compelling.

—The most valuable part of the magazine is at the end, on the inside back cover: a 14-point checklist of things you should do, based on the articles in the review issue. Some you may have already done, but many of them I still need to do. 

—The DVDs are excellent even though some of the material may be too advanced for people who aren’t technically inclined or interested. If that’s the case, then at least encourage your webmaster, who MUST know this stuff, to buy it.  You can read about all the topics in the table of contents on this page. 
 
When I learn more about this tomorrow, I’ll report back with the details.