When you know that something hot is happening right now and you want to support it, here’s how you can get a good looking, self funding, great work promoting website up and running within a day.

In the example, we’ll use www.oneandonlymadonna.com, which is the site we have set up for our friend Evelyne Brink, who is currently on her way to winning the BBC1 prime time show hosted by Graham Norton: “The One and Only”. When she wins, she’ll have the opportunity to take her Madonna tribute show to Las Vegas for three months!

Here’s a 10 step plan on how you can create your very own site just like it…

Step #1: Get A Domain Name

Think up a domain name that you know people will be searching for. In our case, we chose www.oneandonlymadonna.com because our intention was to promote Evelyne Brink and help her get to Vegas, and the phrase “one and only madonna” was certainly catching on – Evelyne is most certainly the “one and only Madonna” on that show! See our article on Descriptive Domain Names for guidance.

Then go to GoDaddy.com and purchase the domain name that you think is ideal for your promotional campaign. You can pick one up for about £5. Sometimes you can even get a discount of 10% by searching Google for “godaddy promo code“and entering that code when you make your purchase. Hey, every penny counts!

While you’re getting this domain, you’ll need to point it to an external web host such as Dreamhost, by entering the relevant name servers – in this instance, you’ll need ns1.dreamhost.com. ns2.dreamhost.com, and ns3.dreamhost.com

Step #2: Get A Hosting Account

Next you need a place to actually host your website. We recommended Dreamhost for their hosting package, and you can get a terrific deal of approximately £60 for a year’s worth of hosting an unlimited number of domains.

Step #3: Add Your Domain To Your Hosting Account

Once you have opened your hosting account, you can add your new domain to be hosted at your new Dreamhost account. At this time, also create a new FTP account to upload files where necessary, and an email address to receive email correspondence specific to this campaign.

Step #4: Load Up Your Content Management System

The next step is to install the application on your host that lets you design and add content to your website quickly – for this you’ll be installing Wordpress, which is commonly used for blogs.

When logged into Wordpress, along the left hand menu, select Goodies –> One-Click Installs, and proceed with the instructions for setting up your new Wordpress site on your domain.

Once installed, you’ll want to log in to your new Wordpress website and set up the permalinks to show URLs with the full date and post name, as well as set the title and description for the site.

Step # 5: Install A Decent Looking Revenue Generating Theme

Now that you have the core website set up, you want it to look good and set up in a way that it generates revenue for you through contextual adverts such as AdSense and Amazon Associates – you’ll need to sign up with these services and enter the codes it generates into your theme.

The quickest way to find a decent theme that achieves this is by searching “adsense optimized wordpress theme” in Google, downloading a theme you like, and following the instructions given to you on how you can install the theme on your site.

Another way to make further revenue is to sell affiliated products – i.e. products that other people have either created or are distributing, and you are simply referring people to them and making an affiliate commission on each sale.   You can set up your very own affiliate store by signing up as a My Affiliate Store member.

Step #6: Add A Mailing List

Set up a mailing list on the site that can capture your visitors’ name and email addresses so that you may keep in touch with them and send them regular updates by email about the artist, to keep them engaged on the site. We recommend you use Professional Cart Solutions.

Step #7: Add Quality Content

When the look and feel of the site is set up, you’ll want to start adding relevant content. In our case, we located videos from YouTube, pictures of Evelyne as Madonna from Flickr, and Diva Eve’s music from the Last.fm playlist.

Evelyne has many fans around the world, so we have also been in touch with some of her most dedicated fans who are more than happy to write about Evelyne and how she progresses in BBC1’s The One and Only show with Graham Norton to be selected to perform as Madonna in Las Vegas for three months.

If you’re asking other writers for content, you may even want to create an account for them on your site so that they can contribute content as and when they are inspired to write.

Step #8: Help Visitors And Search Engines Find Your Site

To let search engines know that your site exists and ask them to list you, simply send them a request to add your site to their database. With Google, just go to their Add URL page.

You’ll also want to further optimise your site so that your description and keywords meta tags have something useful in them for search engines to pick up when visitors are searching for your content. The plugin we recommend that you download, install and configure is the Add Meta Tags Wordpress Plugin.

Step #9: Get Fans To Rave About The Site

Finally you want fans raving about this promotional fansite by telling all their friends about it on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Help them do this by installing the I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin.

When fans are on your site, you can build stronger relationships with them by leveraging comments. Read our article on 6 Wordpress Comment Plugins To Build Stronger Relationships With Site Visitors.

Step #10: Sit Back And Enjoy

So there you have it – get your very own buzzing money making promotional website like www.OneAndOnlyMadonna.com up and running within a day. Now sit back, watch your favourite performer being helped along the way by their fans, and see some money coming in to make up for the time you spent building the site.

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One cool, affordable, and effective way of marketing your services is to run a free teleconference for your current or potential clients and customers.

By running a seminar, you put yourself forward as an expert in the field, whilst reaching many many people at once. This certainly raises your profile, and allows you to serve more clients better.

Here’s how a local plumber can do it…

Step #1: Plan Your Teleseminar

What are the top 10 questions your existing clients ask you about their plumbing or central heating? List the questions and write a few paragraphs for each answer.

Locate and register with a free teleconference solution to run your seminar over the telephone such as www.freeconferencecall.com

Set up a webpage with a registration form where those interested in listening in on your teleseminar can register for it. Once they register, they will receive an email with the details of your teleseminar.

Step #2: Announce Your Teleseminar

Determine a date and time to run your seminar which will be convenient for you as well as the majority of your target market.

Prepare an email which announces what your teleseminar will cover, why it’ll be useful to them, when it’ll be run, and the web link for where they can register for free. Give it a decent descriptive subject such as “Free Teleseminar On The Hottest Plumbing And Central Heating Questions For Your Home”, and then send it out to all your current and past clients, offering them opportunity to invite their friends and family to it too.

You’ll soon see registrations trickling in. 24 hours before the seminar, send all those registered a reminder of the details for the call.

Step #3: Run Your Teleseminar

Simply call in to the number you are given when you register with the teleconference service, ensure enough people have arrived on the call, and aim to start on time.

If it’s a one hour call, use the first 5-10 minutes introducing yourself, where you are based and what services you offer. This’ll help to pad out the time in case there are any late comers. Then use the next 40 minutes to deliver your seminar over the phone – as simple as 10 questions, 4 minutes per question. You can ask a friend help you run like a question and answer session, with you as the expert. Use the final 10-15 minutes to address any other questions that arise for your clients, and then round the call up with details of how they can easily contact you to take up your services.

Hey presto, you’ve now helped a large number of homeowners with their most pressing plumbing and central heating questions, as well as letting them know that they can give their plumbing and central heating work to you. All this exposure for your company and services for just 3 to 4 hours of work from your end.

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Chick-fil-A® have done it again by using a descriptive domain name to increase traffic to their promotion by capturing the attention of those who are looking for a free breakfast.

This is yet another promotion being run in the US by Chick-fil-A®, a fast food restaurant, where the visitor can register to be sent a coupon for a free Chick-fil-A® Chicken Biscuit in the mail.

When the site visitor goes to www.freebreakfastnow.com, they arrive at a landing page which asks them to click on an image to enter and register. When they click the ‘enter button’, the visitor gets taken to a form that asks them for their key details such as first and last name, email address, telephone number, full address, date of birth, and gender – and to top if off, they are ALL mandatory questions.

What the company gets from this is vital information about their target market – i.e. where they live, how old they are, what gender – as well as specific contact information so that further promotional material can be sent to them by post, by email, and over the phone.

Beneath these mandatory questions, there are the optional survey questions. Now HERE’s where they get really clever. They start by asking a couple of simple basic questions such as “Have you ever eaten at a Chick-fil-A® restaurant?” and “Have you ever eaten breakfast at Chick-fil-A®?”, which are most likely there to conceal the more sneakier items that follow…

Here come the subtle yet powerful marketing messages disguised as questions: “Please check which Chick-fil-A® Breakfast items you have tried:”. The page then allows the visitor to place a check mark next to any of the 5 items on the list that they may have tried for breakfast. Also, there’s the “Did you know Chick-fil-A® offers reloadable gift cards?” What this does is that even though these survey questions are optional, the visitor will still scan through them (even if they don’t answer) and even if they haven’t tried it, they will probably want to make a special trip into that fast food restaurant to have a taste of one of the other breakfast items, or even purchase a gift card.

Don’t you know, there’s no such thing as a free breakfast!?

In your business or community organisation, how can you model the promotional campaign that Chick-fil-A® have used to:

1. build your database of customers to directly promote to via email / post / telephone,
2. learn more about your target market, and
3. give your customers a subtle message about other products and services that are available?

What will be YOUR free breakfast?

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The Bake Me A Wish website at www.bakemeawish.com takes online orders for custom made cakes for birthdays and national holidays.

What has given this New York based business massive news coverage recently is that they are even taking orders from families who want to send a baked cake to their relatives who are service members stationed overseas.

What a terrific treat for christmas to show your loved ones that you’re thinking of them, even if they are halfway around the world!

Josh Kaye, owner of the internet cake business said “I received a phone call from a mom who wanted to send her son a birthday cake in Iraq, and I hung up the phone and said, you know, ‘‘What an amazing possibility that would be.’”

When you listen to your customers, and then announce it as a service that you are offering, your marketing effort really becomes a peace of cake!

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In line with Mik’s September 2007 post on Using Descriptive Domain Names To Drive Relevant Traffic To Your Web Site, here is a terrific resource called Good URL Bad URL that helps you understand:

1. what a good URL is and what a bad URL is using examples from existing sites
2. what would be a good URL for your own website
3. how to present your URL in your adverts

Check out www.goodurlbadurl.com before purchasing your next domain name for your online marketing campaign.

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On Tom Johnson’s blog titled “I’d Rather Be Writing”, he has pulled together a very valuable selection of usability tips for when you are setting up and adding content to your blog.

At Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences, Tom expands on each of the following tips:

1. Pick a topic for your blog.
2. Encourage comments.
3. Make it easy to subscribe.
4. Include an About page.
5. Present your ideas visually.
6. Keep posts short and to the point.
7. Use subheadings for long posts.
8. Link abundantly.
9. Make headlines descriptive.
10. Archive by topic.
11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post.
12. Allow users to contact you offline.
13. Present your real viewpoint.
14. Write for your future employer.
15. Include a Top Posts section.
16. Provide an index.
17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title.
18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
19. Reward commenters for commenting.
20. Post often.

Incredibly useful for new bloggers, and naturally a gentle reminder for the more experienced!

Highly recommend you check out Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences and then get in touch with us for any technical amendments you want for your blog.

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What can be leveraged from a simple and informative monthly community newsletter?

Currently, the National Council of Vanik Associations (NCVA) here in the UK produces a monthly newsletter called Vanik Voice which is available as a downloadable PDF file. This month the readership have been informed about it by email, and referred to a link where they can download the newsletter.

The newsletter itself is most certainly informative, awakening, and entertaining. See for yourself by downloading the Diwali 2007 issue at www.ncva.co.uk/newsletter/november2007.pdf

Although increasingly valuable to its readership, this approach to sharing information certainly has it’s limitations:

• Newsletter content is only accessible by those who know how to get to the downloadable PDF.
• Existing readers who remember an article from a previous newsletter would need to trawl through all the previous issues of the newsletter to find what they’re looking for.
• There is currently no easy and direct way for the issues covered in the articles to be explored easily amongst like-minded (and even non-like-minded!) Vaniks around the world.

7 Easy Steps To Overcoming These Limitations By Setting Up A Simple Online Blog (Web Log) And Mailing List Solution:

1. Get hold of an easy to remember domain name such as www.ncvanews.org (cost $10 USD / £5 GBP per year)
2. Host the website on a web host such as Dreamhost that allows you to set the site up using Wordpress technology (cost $7.95 USD per month)
3. Ask your web designer to make the site attractive in it’s appearance, have them install the various Wordpress plugins that encourage visitors to make comments, and set up your very own branded email address such as news@ncvanews.org. (cost £200 GBP)
4. Invest in an online mailing list solution such as Professional Cart Solutions that allows readers to automatically register for / unregister from receiving regular news updates. (cost $29 USD per month)
5. Start posting up your news and articles to this new Wordpress driven site. (cost: your time)
6. Create and an email each month to be sent to your mailing list which highlights the best articles / news items, along with direct links to each of the pages where the articles are posted. (cost: your time)
7. Respond to the comments that appear for each article on the site to encourage further community involvement and therefore further awareness of Vaniks around the globe. (PRICELESS)

Here are some major benefits with this new approach:

• News is added on the blog whenever something new arises – now no more waiting to put it into the next issue.
• Blogs are set up with RSS feeds which are great for those who want to be kept posted on news as soon as you post it on the site.
• Those outside the Vanik community can also benefit from the fresh content which helps raise global awareness of the Vaniks.
• The editor now just needs to post articles and news on the blog, and then compile a simple monthly email with links to the most important / popular blog posts.
• Appropriate pictures and relevant videos from sources such as YouTube can be displayed on the site.
• Most importantly, comments on the blog by the readers and random visitors who are interested in the content, certainly help to enhance community involvement, and encourages dialogue with the international Vanik community and beyond.

So would the initial cost of setting this up and maintaining it yearly be worthwhile when it comes to the overall value received by the whole Vanik community and those beyond it?

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When we set up your website using Wordpress technology, you’ll soon realise that comments on your site play a very powerful part in encouraging people to continue visiting your site, and when they do arrive, comments are great at getting visitors to stick around.  People love to be part of a community, and comments allow visitors to interact with others who are visiting the site.

The longer that site visitors spend on your site, the more time you have to build a stronger relationship with them.  Stronger relationships result in greater awareness, and certainly better sales conversions.

Here are a selection of Wordpress plugins that will encourage more comments to be placed on your site.

1. The Subscribe To Comments plugin allows a commentator to check a box, which then notifies them by email any time someone else comments on the same post.  This encourages them to return to the site and stay immersed in the conversation.
2. The Show Top Commentators plugin displays a list of top commentators (their names and number of comments) in the site sidebar, and it encourages discussion by the site readers.  This is a terrific simple way to show recognition to those who are contributing to your website community.
3. The Comment Relish plugin makes you appear polite!  It sends a thank you email to those who comment on your site for the first time, making them feel good about coming back to comment regularly.  This is a more private form of recognition, but equally as effective as the Show Top Commentators plugin.
4. The Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin places a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment on the page.  What happens is that whenever this reply link is used, the new comment is placed directly below the comment being replied to, rather than at the end of the page.  This makes it easier for people to reply to comments rather than having to quote or refer to another comment, and prevents readers having to search all the way down the page when looking for answers to their question.
5. The Get Recent Comments plugin displays the most recent comments in the sidebar.  This plugin can be set up to link the recent commenter’s site as well as an excerpt of their comment – the link to their site obviously encourages them to leave more comments!
6. The Live Comment Preview plugin displays a live preview of the visitor’s comments as they type.

Get in touch and have us install any of these six plugins to have you build stronger relationships with your site visitors and truly tap into the magic of comments!

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As you may be aware, we at Cynergise are very fond of Kavit Haria and the way he continues to serve through his work.

Kavit Haria, founder of Young Drummers, has been playing the Tabla (Indian hand drums) for over 12 years and has trained with Pandit Sharda Sahai of the Benaras Gharana.

Now, Kavit is offering weekly term-time Tabla lessons for kids, and the classes this term kick off with a free Tabla lesson.

To promote these tabla classes, we have set up a 4-page website and promotional domain name that allows parents to get the information they need, register their children for the initial free lesson, and let their own friends know about it.

If you know of a parent in the North West part of London (England) whose kids would be up for learning a new art in a welcoming family environment, how about you ask them to visit www.FreeTablaLesson.com so that their kids can also get the benefit of a free Tabla lesson by Kavit Haria this month.

If you have any questions about these classes, please visit www.youngdrummers.com/faq

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Articles have the power of driving massive amounts of traffic directly to your website.

Targeted traffic comes to your website in one of two forms. Either directly through the link to your site which sits in the ‘bio box’ at the bottom of the article, or because your website has risen up the search engine rankings because it has been linked from many other websites who have republished your article.

It takes a little skill to put together a decent article that the end viewer loves to read. It takes quite a bit more effort to have your article republished by many other webmasters, bloggers, and ezine editors.

A tool we use and highly recommend is Article Announcer, that submits your article to the world’s top article directories, which is then picked up by many publishers across the world who will help drive targeted traffic towards you.

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