Easily put, let’s say that your blog is like a coffee shop, and your blog subscribers then are the repeat customers who keep coming back on a regular basis. In business terms, your customers are what keeps your business up and running. If you don’t have customers, you might as well close shop. With a brick and mortar business, you certainly wouldn’t turn down the occasional customer, the casual guy who just comes in once a year, or the straggler who came in off the street, who’s never been there before and will more than likely never return. But it’s the repeat customer, the guy who comes in week in and week out, just like clock work… that’s the guy who keep you afloat. He’s the one you can count on for steady revenues.

The same holds true for your blog. Sure, it’s nice to have readers who find your blog accidentally; the ones who clicked a link from another website, not really sure what to expect. Or the reader who is looking for something very particular and found your blog in Google. These one-time readers are nice, but it’s your regular readers, the ones who subscribe so they don’t miss a single post, the ones who respect what you have to say and what you are able to teach… those are the readers you really want. They are the ones you’re posting for any way, aren’t they?

So, how do you increase blog subscribers to keep your blog running? Here are 7 easy steps for getting more blog subscribers – most of which can be implemented immediately.

1.    Make sure your readers know that you welcome their subscription. Place your subscription box in a strategic area where your readers can easily spot it. Consider adding the subscription box to the bottom of each of your blog posts. Include a warm and welcoming message to encourage subscribers and let them know you are interested in a relationship.

2.    Be a guest contributor or blogger on someone else’s blog. A reference to your blog with a brief description at the end of your post is a great way for increasing your blog traffic and subscribers. Just inform the blog owner of your plans before you start posting. And make sure that the content you will be posting is original content which cannot be found in your blog.

3.    Stay within your chosen niche. Do not stray away from your typical topic. A highly specialized, unique topic generally works best. Your readers will come back to your blog because you will be regarded as the authority on the topic.

4.    Consider offering a freebie such as an e-book, special report, an audio series or an e-course to your website visitors if they sign up as blog subscribers. Use a technique similar to the freebie offer for newsletter subscribers. (I’ll be doing a Twitter series on offering freebies in just a few days. Be sure to follow me on Twitter to learn more http://twitter.com/KarenScharf )

5.    Create a landing page whose primary purpose is to drive blog subscribers. Again, this is similar to the techniques used to increase email subscribers. This strategy can be used with your AdWords campaigns or with joint venture partners.

6.    Feature a podcast that is related to the subject matter of your blog. Have it listed in different podcasting directories and get it into i-Tunes. Never forget to mention your blog in every single episode and discuss the different benefits of subscribing. Another great way of promoting your blog is landing some interviews with prominent players in your niche. Aside from increasing your presence online, you are creating content that can be used as part of your special gift or “ethical bribe” for new blog subscribers.

7.    And just like driving traffic to your website, be proactive by participating in forums relevant or important to your niche. Creating informative posts will get you noticed and most likely, people will take interest in you and what your blog have to offer. Add your blog subscription form to your signature file or resource box.

But the most important tactic for increasing blog subscribers is to produce relevant, timely content on a regular basis. Once you get in that habit, I guarantee you that you will see your number of blog subscribers grow.

And while I’m always sad to see the Summer go, I love this time of year because it’s a great time to start preparing your 2010 marketing plan. But before you do that, you’ll need to evaluate which of your 2009 marketing strategies worked and which were not effective. Since email marketing is one of the best marketing strategies for increasing your online presence, you should be constantly evaluating it and making any and all improvements.

As a guide, I am sharing with you how I personally assess the effectiveness of our email marketing strategy. You can use this as a reference to evaluate your own email marketing campaigns for the last quarter of the year. It is an easy to follow guide that will help you improve the effectiveness of your email marketing within your 2010 marketing plan.

The first thing you must do is identify the overall goal of the email marketing campaign you launched. What did it specifically focus on? What was your overriding objective? Branding? Relationship building? Direct Sales? Did you have secondary goals? Were you able to reach the statistics that you targeted? By pinpointing the overall goal, you will know which metrics to focus on in measuring the effectiveness of your email marketing.

If you decide that you weren’t too successful in reaching your goal, evaluate the different aspects of your email marketing campaign and identify the areas where you had difficulties. Review the metrics of your email marketing campaign. Dig deep to determine the reason behind your results, whether they were positive or negative.

List all the techniques you used to increase your subscriber list. Assess each of them to find out which was the most and least effective. Decide if the most time consuming technique is still worth your time and effort to implement. From the list, scratch out those ineffective list-growth programs you have used. No sense in adding ineffective techniques to your 2010 marketing plan.

Evaluate your current subscriber list and see how you can make it more personalized and how you can tweak your content to make it more relevant. Do you need additional information on your readers? Will you to implement a reader survey, or can you scrape together insights by simply looking at your email statistics and web analytics? How can you divide your mailing list to take advantage of this new information? Segmentation, personalization and relevance will be the keys to successful and effective email campaigns for next year.

Assess the content of the email messages you have sent out up to this point and see if they have been consistently relevant to your readers’ needs. Analyze the email content that you have been sending out on an individual basis. Appraise the schedule you have for sending out useful content-driven messages. Were you consistent in following your schedule accurately? Are you going to follow the same schedule or modify it? A consistent sending schedule has a great impact on your email delivery rates and open rates. If you’ve been unhappy with your delivery and/or open rates for 2009, be diligent with your sending schedule in 2010.

Compare all of your individual email marketing campaigns against each other. Pay attention to which of them turned in the best and the worst results. Know the reason behind each result and learn from it. Isolate each component of your email message – the subject line, the headline, the calls to action, the html, the images, the personalization, the relevance, the segmentation, etc. Determine which elements need to be modified to improve your results in 2010.

Check on your delivery rates for the past email marketing campaigns. How do your open rates compare with the standards for your industry? Identify the areas that could have caused any delivery problems. Was it technical issues? Spam Rejections? Develop a plan to improve your delivery rates for your future email marketing campaigns.

And finally, ensure that you have been compliant with the CAN-Spam guidelines throughout your entire email marketing campaign. Verify that your SPF record is up to date and that your domain name keys are set correctly. (If you need a little refresher on CAN-Spam compliance, grab a copy of my Free CAN-Spam checklist right here: http://www.modernimage.com/freereports/canspam.htm )

After evaluating your 2009 email marketing program, you should have all the information you need to create and execute an effective email marketing strategy for 2010. And if you’re disappointed after reviewing your 2009 statistics, don’t think of it as a failure; think of it as an awesome learning opportunity that provides an incredible chance to improve.

Keep in mind, adding your name to the author tag is not a magic bullet and will not improve your ranking for any other keywords. But, if you’re a service provider, it is a quick and easy way to improve the rankings for your own name should your prospects Google you before deciding to hire you.

But sometimes we get so mired in trying to figure out the technical aspects that we forget that email marketing is, at its heart, marketing. And the most important aspects of marketing have nothing to do with technology at all.

So, with that in mind, I’d like to present a surefire, non-technical way to improve the results you’re getting from your email marketing efforts:

Make sure your target market knows exactly who it is.

We all know how critical it is that we, as marketers, are 110% crystal clear about who our target market is. But the problem with email is that just about anyone can end up on your list. I call it “list creep”, and no, I don’t mean you end up with creeps on your mailing list. It simply means that your subscribers eventually start to spill out of the boundaries you’ve identified as your perfect target market.

For instance, let’s say you have a lead generation device entitled “4 Easiest Ways to Identify the Best Color for Your Office” because you’re trying to target small business owners who would like to redecorate. But a doctor who works at a large trauma hospital downloads the report because he wants to make sure he’s using colors that will sooth his patients in his doctor’s office. And Sam who owns the local handyman service downloads the report because he has a client who will be turning their fourth bedroom into a home office. And the school guidance counselor heard that a blue office can give kids test anxiety, so she downloads the report. Now you have at least 3 subscribers who don’t exactly fit your target market.

While, on the surface, it doesn’t seem like a major problem – after all, sending email is practically free so it’s not really costing you any extra to have them on your list – there might actually be repercussions in the long run.

First, we’ve already illustrated how your readers are filtering your message through their own level of knowledge. The doctor assumed “office” meant doctor’s office and the handyman assumed “home office”. It’s a natural occurrence, we all do it on a regular basis. So when your follow up messages and newsletters arrive, they too will be read and understood through those same filters.

So these “creepy subscribers” will go on reading your messages through their own filters. But eventually, somewhere along the line, things will stop making sense for them. It will soon become apparent that your message isn’t meant for them.

If you’re lucky, they’ll just stop opening your messages. But then your open rate will drop and your statistics will be all askew. And you’ll think there’s something wrong with your message or your marketing because you see your numbers falling. So you’ll make some adjustments that may or not be relevant. You’ll run some split tests. You’ll spend time and effort and money trying to improve your email marketing.

And if you’re unlucky they’ll get tired of seeing your messages in their in box and they’ll report you as a spammer. Now you’ve got the whole issue of delivery and ISP relations to deal with (which is a topic for another day).

But what you don’t see is that your marketing was just fine for the people who really mattered. Your “real” target market was opening your message at their standard rate. They were opening and clicking and interacting just as they always did.

And now you’re really not quite sure exactly where your email marketing efforts stand.

We can all avoid this situation simply by being clear about who we serve in all of marketing messages. Instead of focusing on growing a bigger list and acquiring more names, we need to focus on growing relevant lists with targeted names.

Now I’m not suggesting that you deny anyone the chance to download your free report. But I do think it’s a good idea, in all of your follow up efforts, to be clear about who you are trying to reach. As we create our email marketing pieces, we tend to assume that our message is going out to readers who have been on our list for years, who are familiar with our business, who know exactly what we do. But the fact is, our lists are churning everyday. Everyday we’re losing and adding subscribers. At any point in time, there is probably someone reading our email message who really has no idea who we are or what we do.

A simple blurb in your email message such as “We provide remodeling services to small businesses in the Detroit area” will allow your untargeted readers to quickly unsubscribe. You’ll end up with a cleaner, more targeted mailing list – albeit smaller. And a more targeted list allows you to more accurately measure and test your marketing efforts.

Remember, in email marketing, it’s not the size of the list that counts, it’s the responsiveness.

That’s because using testimonials can help ease your prospect’s mind and reduce her buying resistance. Because testimonials are so tremendously influential, as marketers, you and I should never produce one single piece of marketing collateral without including testimonials.

But I believe testimonials are even more essential on your web pages.

That’s because the web can be such an impersonal selling environment. Your web visitors have their “scam radar” at high alert. They don’t trust much of what you say – but they will trust what others say. So start adding testimonials to each and every one of your web pages today.

If you don’t have any customer testimonials yet, just follow these easy steps to start using them as soon as possible:

1. Develop a system for collecting testimonials. A simple web form should work well in most situations. Don’t forget to ask for your customer’s full name and get permission to publish the testimonial.
2. Request a testimonial immediately after the sale. This will have two benefits. First, the details of your service will still be fresh in your customer’s mind. Second, buyer’s remorse and refund requests will be reduced once the client has “taken a stand” for your service.
3. Be specific with your request. Instead of simply asking, “What did you think of our service?” you should say, “Brenda can you write down a quick sentence or two about how we cleaned your carpet and put all the furniture back in place when we were done?”
4. Ask your customer to provide a description of his problem before he used your product or service. This helps your prospect identify with the customer giving a testimonial, and also helps aggravate the pain the prospect is experiencing.
5. Use a picture of your customer whenever possible. Either snap the photo yourself with your digital camera or ask your client to email you a digital image. This will make it easy for you to incorporate the photo in your web page.

Once you’ve collected your customer testimonials, be sure to include them on as many web pages as possible. After that, you can also:

• Put all your testimonials into a free report and use it as a lead generator.
• Put audio versions of the testimonials onto a CD that you can send to new prospects.
• Put your clients’ testimonials on a DVD and play the video in your waiting room. This is especially effective if you have testimonials about products or services that many of your customers aren’t aware that you offer. This makes great covert “advertising”.
• Add a corresponding testimonial to all of your advertising. If you are creating a coupon for a free piece of pie with any meal, include a testimonial praising you for your fresh, home baked pies.
• Instead of a corresponding testimonial, try a complimentary testimonial in your advertising. If you’re advertising an oil change special, include testimonials about your tire rotation service.

And remember, the clients who give you testimonials are your best and most loyal customers, so be sure to reward them properly. You might need to get creative with your reward system so it doesn’t appear as if you’re buying testimonials, but a little extra special treatment will definitely be worth it.

But you need to make sure that you’re studying current information. That’s because the search engines changes their algorithms on a regular basis and if you’re using outdated information you might be doing more damage than good.

A few years ago, entrepreneurs wanting to optimize their own web pages were taught to fill their pages with their keywords. No matter what. Just throw the keywords in whilly-nilly, and as long as the words appeared a certain percentage of the time, it didn’t really matter whether they made sense or not.

If your keyword appeared over and over again in your web page, the search engines awarded you a lot of points. The web page that had the highest frequency of a particular keyword was awarded the most points and would appear first in the search engines.

But this system left a lot of room for abuse. Spammers quickly learned that they could stuff a web page with highly sought-after keywords and easily benefit from all that free traffic. In no time at all, the search engines were returning irrelevant results. The programmers knew that something had to change, or web surfers would no longer use their search engine.

So they changed their algorithms. Several times. And then a few more times.

And it is now much more important to write your web page copy in a natural manner, so your human visitors will understand what you’re talking about. After all, it’s your human visitors who are reading your text. It’s your human visitors who are buying your products. It’s your human visitors who are becoming your clients.

But there is actually more to it than that. Writing naturally is more than just being altruistic and acknowledging that your website visitors are actually living, breathing, human beings. Writing for human IS writing for the search engines.

That’s because the search engines have gotten smarter. Really smart. (Almost scary smart.) They now actually have the ability to distinguish between natural, human language and keyword-stuffed or machine-generated language. They can utilize latent semantic indexing to determine whether the surrounding text is legitimately discussing the keywords in question.

So be careful with your keywords. Don’t force them to appear a certain number of times, resulting in an unnatural flow of your web copy. Write your text naturally, so it reads just like you would talk.

And use complimentary keywords. If your web page is about German Shepherds, be sure to include the words “dog” and “puppy” and other equivalent words. Read your text out loud. If it doesn’t sound like you would say it, rewrite it.

The good news is, this is a win-win-win situation. You will find it is actually easier to write your web copy when you write in a natural manner. The search engines will be able to return relevant results. And your web visitors will find the content and information they are actually looking for, rather than a spammy, keyword-stuffed web page.

Oh yeah, you’ll probably make more sales too.

There continues to be a lot of misinformation surrounding the so-called “Duplicate Content” penalty. I actually have one client who was extremely reluctant to start repurposing his articles and distributing them on article directory sites because he was concerned about getting hit with the duplicate content penalty.

There is a myth floating around – and it has been for some time – that if a webmaster publishes the same content on his site that appears on another site (for instance, by publishing an article on his blog and also submitting it to Ezine Articles) then his website will get penalized for duplicate content and banned from the search engines altogether.

Quite frankly, that’s just true.

It IS true that the Google guidelines clearly state “Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.” However, the guidelines go on to say “Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”

So, in plain English, what exactly does all that mean? First, Google will not BAN your site for publishing duplicate content. If you publish an article on your blog and 4 months later you forget and re-publish the same article, your entire site will not disappear from the SERPs.

Likewise, if you publish an article on your blog and then submit the article to online directories, your entire site will not disappear from the SERPs.

Additionally, if you have an HTML version of your article and also offer a PDF downloadable version of the same article, your entire site will not disappear from the SERPs.

I hope you see where I’m going here. Google will not “kick out” your website because you’ve published duplicate content.

However, if you do publish duplicate content on your site, Google will most likely list only one page in the SERPs. When the spider encounters duplicate content on your site, it will try to determine which pages more authoritative and that is the page that will be displayed in the search results. If you do publish duplicate content on the same website, only one instance of that content will be displayed.

If you would like to control which version of your content gets displayed, you can specify it in your site map and your robots file. If your site has been rebuilt, use 301 redirects instead of duplicating the content. And be consistent in your linking strategy, since www.YourDomain.com and http://www.YourDomain.com/index.html will be seen as different pages.

And there’s no need to avoid distributing your articles online, however, you do want to syndicate carefully. According to the guidelines, “Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.”

In a recent search of one of my own articles, 4 different versions were displayed on page one of the SERPs:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=So+I+Got+Mad+and+Threw+It+Away!&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

If you are not doing anything malicious to “trick” the search engines, if you are not scrapping content from other sites, and if you are publishing responsibly with the intent of aiding your human visitors, chances are you do not need to worry about duplicate content issues.

According to U.S. Can-Spam laws, all of our marketing-based email messages must contain some obligatory text, including a physical mailing address and opt-out instructions. Many email templates include this information in the footer section with a very small font.

Unfortunately, these very small fonts can often trigger spam filters, since the filters assume you are trying to hide malicious code or other unscrupulous text inside the small print. And, since many marketers run only their individual article content through spam checkers prior to sending their messages, this spam trap often goes undetected.

A general rule of thumb is to use a font size of at least 10 px. If you’re a stickler for design, you might be worried about the effects on your layout. I suggest that rather than varying the font SIZE you experiment with font faces. For instance, a block of 10 point Times New Roman will be much less obtrusive than a block of 10 point Verdana.

And finally, it’s always a good idea to run your entire message through the spam checker, rather than simply checking your content since certain HTML codes can trigger spam filters.

FREE Spam Triggers Checklist

Want to know what else triggers spam filters? Download my FREE CHECKLIST right here:

http://www.modernimage.com/freereports/spam-words.htm

As email in boxes are getting more and more crowded, marketers are getting more and more flamboyant with their subject lines. You’ve probably been the recipient of subject lines such as:

• “%$firstname$% they told you no, but we’re saying YES”
• “re: Did you see this %$firstname$%?”
• “%$firstname$% This is Your Last Chance to Get In on This Incredible Offer”

On the surface, it would seem that these extremely vague subject lines are a great way to entice your readers into opening your email message. Afterall, arousing curiosity is one of the proven tactics of direct mail.

However, studies show that straightforward, “boring” subject lines actually generate better results. A study of over 40 million email messages proved that subject lines receiving the highest open rates were:

• [Your Company] Sales & Marketing Newsletter
• Upcoming Events at [Your Company]
• Invitation from [Your Business]

Today’s readers are suffering from email overload and if they can’t immediately determine the value of your message, they won’t even bother taking the time out to investigate. A straightforward subject line is less likely to be seen as spam, and when they see your name in the subject line (or at least in the From field, as I generally recommend), your readers know they are already interested in what you have to say (assuming your emails are always full of valuable content!).

As a quick aside, using “re:” in a subject line to make it appear as if you are replying to a previous message has been determined to be against the CAN-Spam act. To ensure that your email messages are totally above board, download a copy of my free CAN-Spam checklist right here:

http://www.modernimage.com/freereports/canspam.htm

Photo by Nicobobinus

It’s pretty easy and straight-forward to use the geo-targeting feature in AdWords. Simply log into your campaign setting, the specify the areas you want to target. Your ads can be limited to certain countries, to certain states, to certain cities, or even a specific geographic radius, such as a 5-mile circle around your store. One of the neatest features is that you can draw your own target area using the map and your mouse. This is a great option when the radius feature just won’t do, such as if your store is bordered by a lake to the north, or maybe a big industrial park to the east. This shape feature allows you to get extremely specific about exactly where you want your ad to appear.

Another great feature is the ability to exclude certain areas within your selected location. First, you chose the areas you want to target, then click the “exclude areas..” link and make your selection. So, if you want to run an ad offering free overnight shipping, you can target the entire United States, and then exclude the states of Hawaii and Alaska. Or, let’s say you own a franchise. Many franchise agreements allow you to advertise only within a specific location, so you can easily exclude certain trade areas in your AdWords campaign.

So how exactly does this work? Actually, it’s relatively simple: geo-targeted ads are shown based on the web surfers IP address. If I want to advertise my same-say-delivery flower shop, I can chose to display my ads only to surfers with IP addresses within a 3-mile radius of my store.

I definitely suggest you give geo-targeting a try. It’s very easy to set up, and it provides a great testing opportunity for future marketing campaigns.