Become an Internet publisher, and you\’ll need to learn a whole bunch of new marketing skills. You\’ll have to unwrap the mysteries of search engine optimization, figure out how to make pay-per-click advertising pay for you and get to grips with \”link bait,\” banners and keywords to name just a few.
None of it is really very difficult and all of it can be learned but for anyone just starting out, it will all be at least a little unfamiliar.
There\’s one type of marketing though that everyone knows about – even people about to touch a keyboard for the first time.
Word-of-mouth marketing is the sort of thing that people practice all the time. Whenever you tell a friend about a great movie you saw, ask where they bought their sweater or recommend a book that they should read, you\’re taking part in word-of-mouth marketing.
It\’s not just common though, it\’s also one of the most effective forms of marketing a business can benefit from. Just about any established business will find that a large chunk of its new customers come not from paid advertising, clever marketing tricks or special techniques, but from its old customers.
So what can a website do to encourage word-of-mouth marketing?
Some options are very simple. \”Send a Friend\” links have been around for years and whatever platform you\’re using to publish your site, you should find that adding them to your pages is a breeze. When a reader comes across a page he likes, he just pushes the button, types in the name and email address of a friend and shares the find.
It\’s a very easy way of helping people to spread the word.
Comments also help. When someone places a comment at the end of one your posts, he becomes a published writer too – as well as a participant in the debate. Both of those give him another reason to share the URL and show his friends what he\’s up to.
The best thing you can do to encourage word-of-mouth marketing though is the most important thing you can do on any website: produce good content.
If you create content that\’s interesting, informative and entertaining, people will talk. And on the Internet, word spreads fast. It might not be technical and no company has (yet) built a billion-dollar product to cash in on it, but the personal recommendations that sprout spontaneously from good sites could well be the most powerful force on the Web.