Have you ever dreamed of running a business from home, writing about topics that you love?
Do you already have a business that you want to bring more customers to?
Or maybe you just want to make a difference and have a message you want to share?
Either way, the web is the best place to do this and thanks to the internet we now have the means to contact anyone on the planet and to reach a huge audience with whatever message we want to share.
Unfortunately though, so does everyone else…
And this is where the problem comes in: standing out is incredibly difficult with there being such a wealth of content and information available on the web. So how do you go about getting noticed and standing out when we live in such a noisy world?
That’s the challenge of any modern blogger and it’s what we’re going to be looking at in this ebook. By the end, you’ll know exactly how to break through the chatter as though you had your very own foghorn!
Standing out online is more important today than ever before. The days of direct ads are now firmly behind us and studies show that a Tweet or social media post from the right person is now much more valuable than even a prime time advert on television.
But people are getting savvy and if you’re going to get noticed you need to start seeing differently. In a world that’s full of constant overstimulation, many of us now suffer from ‘banner blindness’. Trying to get someone to sit up and take notice of you is the name of the game and you won’t do that by using the same tired methods that worked 10, 5 or even 2 years ago
The Landscape: Stats & Facts
Before we dive straight in, let’s first take a look at ‘the lay of the land’. The statistics surrounding internet marketing right now can tell us a great deal about what’s working and what isn’t and about how best to approach your online marketing.
Here are some statistics for 2016:
- 91% of internet users own a PC or laptop
- 80% of internet users own a smartphone
- 47% own a tablet
- 37% use a games console
- That said – more traffic now comes from mobile than any other platform
- Facebook now has more active users than the population of China
- YouTube is the second largest ‘search engine’
- But in terms of traditional search engines, Bing is right behind Google with 21% of the market share
- That goes up to around 30% if you include Yahoo! (which is powered by Bing)
- Instagram is the second largest social media platform behind Facebook
- Email marketing is the form of marketing with the highest ROI
- 84% of American adults use the internet
This gives us a little bit of a ‘snapshot’ of the way the web is being used today and in turn will help us when we come onto the next chapters and start looking at how we’re going to find, reach and be heard by our particular segment of that audience.
Have a look over this mind map to understand how to get your voice out (best seen in full screen)
Now, if you want to start putting some proven advice into practice, here are some steps to get you started:
- Choose your niche, your brand, your mission statement and your audience. Think about a smaller amount of competition but also about what makes you unique and what you’re interested in.
- Get a domain and hosting and build a WordPress site.
- Design that site and add a mailing list.
- Set up social media profiles and choose a few to focus on based on your target demographic.
- Consider how you’re going to offer value to that audience.
- Post regularly and consistently while providing value.
- Think about targeting specific users with specific posts.
- Look for online communities and places to share your content.
- Add social sharing tools to your site.
- Consider using advanced growth strategies like influencer marketing.
Do all that and your site will have the very best shot of growing and helping you to be heard. Of course global stardom doesn’t come overnight though, so keep at it and stay vigilant.
If you love what you do and if you’re truly passionate about your topic, then you’ll eventually be successful!
You have your megahorn – now you just need to decide what you want to say!
