U.S. Branding Group, LLC has announced the official launch of their USB Insert™ Nano webkey. USB Insert™ Nano is an extension of their already successful USB Insert™ print to web tool, which was launched earlier this year throughout North America.

Like its previous version, the patented USB Insert™ Nano includes a custom detachable, die-cut cardboard holder onto which the tiny webkey is integrated. When plugged into a USB port, it automatically routes readers in seconds to a landing page, micro site, online promotion, multi media presentation or e-catalog, where they continue to learn, experience or simply shop.

The process of die cutting and integrating webkeys in paper, enables unlimited customization in terms of shape, color, graphics and logo, without the high custom plastic molding costs. It makes a webkey affordable as a mass media marketing tool.

According to Butler, “What makes “Nano” so special, is it’s unbelievably small size. The consumer sees only a small USB connector portion of the web key extending from the custom cover. The cover and key together read as a single, integrated piece no larger than 1” x 1.5” in size.”

“Best of all”, says Butler, “because USB Insert™ Nano is so small, thin and lightweight, it can be fully integrated cost effectively into magazine advertisements and direct mail campaigns without the worry of increased postage rates.”

USB Insert™ Nano provides optional unique integrated tracking codes, which can then report visits using basic analytics packages, including Google Analytics. It works smoothly on every recent Windows and MAX OSX computer equipped with a USB port.

The USB Insert™ Nano webkey can adapt to an endless range of exciting new applications such as print collateral, consumer packaging , product hang tags, magazine integration and more. It is a compelling, innovative solution for forward thinking marketers in today’s digitally connected world.

For more information, visit http://webkey.com/.

We have discussed the security risks of local business listing hijackings in the past. One of the comments made about these security discussions is why do the geo-listing websites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and up to 60 others insure the security to avoid hijackings? Of course the question to be asked is why should they provide the security service for a free marketing tool that will benefit the business?

Geo-Listing Security
Many of these websites do have some level of security built into the process of claiming an existing listing or adding a new listing. So far, these security processes have included sending a post card to the existing address with a pin code; a computer calling to the business phone number with the pin; or in some cases a manual review by staff working for these geo-listing websites.

On May 27th, Google announced that community edits of local business listings was no longer be allowed to go without staff review. An excerpt of their announcement states:

“We recently made a change to Google Maps to require all community edits to be reviewed before they are shown. In the past, some “pending” edits were shown immediately on Maps and only moderated (and sometimes denied) later on.

We’re taking this step to ensure that changes to Google Maps pass the high quality bar our users expect, while preventing SPAM and other problems from showing up before being reviewed first.”

In summary Google is stating all community edits made to unclaimed local business listings will have to be approved by a Google representative before they are sent live. Supposedly, this means no more worrying about a competitor hijacking your listing and stealing your customers. It definitely means it will take longer for information to reach the local consumers through web searches and mobile searches.

While on the surface this may sound like at least Google is addressing the security issues of local business listings, the announcement did not discuss the security of data coming from third party sources through API’s. Certainly third tier business directories have no security and their data is sold upstream or makes its way to other database across the Internet with wrong information available for the consumers.

Why the high expectations for Free Geo-Marketing services?
I am certainly concerned about the security issues around local business listings, but I cannot expect these geo-listing websites to provide security for my company. The reason I do not expect them to provide this security is because they are providing the marketing service for free. Why should any business assume that a free service should have high level of security? We could certainly say “you get what you pay for!”

The issue for businesses lies in the book titled “Crossing the Chasm.” This book discusses innovators vs. early adopters vs. late adopters. The questions to businesses that have seen the Internet add, mature, and change technologies are:

How long are you going to continue to wait to adopt Geo-Marketing technologies to help you generate revenue?
Do you feel like you’re always behind the eight ball with the Internet?

A business cannot possibly understand how to use the various Geo-Marketing technologies well. For this reason you need to consider securing professional help and engage in these marketing technologies sooner rather than later. Plan these technologies progressively over a 3-year period.

Additional incentives for early adoption of Geo-Marketing technologies There are three critical points that businesses need to consider now and not wait until the 11th hour.

1. The first and foremost we already discussed, which is hijackings.
2. Now let’s add that for your business there may be multiple duplicate listings that need to be cleaned up, merged and/or deleted to not confuse the consumers when there are multiple listings for your business.
3. Lastly, consumer reviews especially negative ones can potentially have an adverse affect on your website’s search engine ranking positions as search engine adopt consumer reviews as an additional data point to decide who is in the top ten for a search.

Certainly your time resources are limited; let the experts of over 16 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.

About the Author:
Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. SmartFinds Internet Marketing provides Local Business Listing Management Services and can not only help you claim your local business listing, but also, manage the ongoing maintenance at multiple local listing websites. Not only to help you update the listings with your information, but also with promotions, coupons, QR-Codes, offers, videos and photos. SmartFinds Internet Marketing – http://www.smartfindsmarketing.com, and http://www.smartfindslocallisting.com.

Learn how to multiply your words, content, and your SEO visibility by marketing with multiple modalities during a special Published & Profitable teleseminar call, Tuesday afternoon (August 3rd) at 4:00 PM EST.

Multiple exposures = multiple sales

Roger C. Parker of Published and Profitable with be interviewing ESB Journal founder and publisher Traci Hayner Vanover, the Promo Diva®. They’ll be discussing how to take your writing to the next level by making it available through multiple media modalities.

Traci is a marketing and promotion coach who recently introduced Fiverr.com to Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing Association.

Upon seeing her Five Dollar Fortunes guide to marketing and selling on Fiverr.com, Jay Conrad Levinson commented:

“Traci Hayner Vanover has a positively brilliant idea which she masterfully describes in her “Five Dollar Fortunes” ebook. Her idea stands most old notions of the economy on their heads as she blazes new economic trails. I recommend what she has written to anyone alive in the 21st century.”

Call details
During the call, Roger and Traci will discuss the problems associated with single-media marketing modalities, the psychology behind how people learn and process information, and how content producers can make the logical transition to multiple marketing modalities.

You’ll discover how to get more out of your writing by exposing it to more prospects.
Most writers re-invent the wheel every day. By attending this call, you’ll learn a better way! Our call takes place Tuesday, August 3, at 4:00 PM EST. Seating is limited for this call, and we do expect it to fill quickly. Reserve your seat today by visiting this link. You can also submit your questions for Traci so that she can answer them during the call.

The call will be available for replay after the event, but only to those who register. Be sure to reserve your seat at this link. We look forward to “seeing” you on this informative call!

Do you want to be known as a “thought leader” in your industry? Of course you do!

A thought leader is essentially a trusted resource. And, in an information economy, a trusted resource is extremely valuable. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in – whether you have a Fortune 1000 company or a bakery in a small town – thought leadership will propel your business in ways that you could never imagine. For example, here are three benefits of becoming a “thought leader.”

Why You Want to Become a Thought Leader
Prospects will prefer you. The more expensive the products and services, the more prospects will want to seek out recognized leaders. They want to know that the provider is well established and can demonstrate expertise. They want someone who can provide reliable answers and someone who will continue to solve problems and provide cutting-edge information long after the purchase.

You will be recognized as a central source of information. When customers, prospects and the media need to know something that involves an industry, they’ll think first of the company or expert they perceive to be the thought leader. People invite thought leaders to speak at high-profile functions, present at trade shows, get interviewed and write articles, opinion pieces and books.

Dominate the search engines. Incoming links are one of the key ways to increase search engine optimization. Thought leaders who take advantage of online opportunities such as article marketing will develop a following, increase their company’s online visibility and at the same time improve their SEO.

If you write and submit articles the right way – you can become a thought leader fast.

So, how can you become a thought leader fast?

Top 7 Tips to Help You Become a Thought Leader Just By Writing and Submitting Articles Online

Write articles on a consistent basis. To be a thought leader – you need to consistently articulate and convey insightful information that listeners and readers value. This means, you should be writing articles – if not on a daily basis – then a weekly basis. These articles should be used for article submission. They should be on your blog. They should put into an auto-responder series. And, they should be turned into products.

Give away your best tips and advice. Truly insightful information is a rare commodity. So, if you reveal some of your best secrets that no one else is sharing, you will automatically become a “thought leader.” Plus, if the information you’re sharing is hot, prospects will think, “Wow! If he’s giving away this information for free – I wonder what I will learn if I get his products or consulting services!” They’ll be drooling to get onto your list, learn more about you and your offerings – and most importantly – buy from you. So, if you want to be a thought leader is then you have to be eager to give information away.

Be motivated by generosity, not self-interest. People are more likely to follow altruists – and they instinctively know the difference. Don’t ruin your article marketing efforts by writing an amazing article – and then try to sell them in the bio box. Earn your prospect’s respect first by telling them how you can help them – and then invite them to get a free special report or other call-to-action that reinforces the fact that you are a thought leader. Then focus on selling them.

Be different. If you are writing the same thing as everyone else, just using different words – how does this make you the expert? It doesn’t! Build a foundation of expertise. Quantify you experience. Record what you currently know about your industry that others in your industry may not know. Imagine that you’re a mentor writing a long letter to a protégé. Focus on uncommon expertise and wisdom.

Use proven article templates that will help you write articles and content that prove you are a “thought leader.” For example, a case study article template will help you write an article that shows prospect that you are the expert – and that have you gotten desired results. An example is my article, “How to Promote Your Book to the Top of the New York Times Best Sellers List”.

Submit your articles to the top websites, ezines and blogs. Most people focus their article marketing efforts on sites like EzineArticles.com. Submitting your articles to article directories like EzineArticles.com is good for building links and improving your search engine optimization. But it sucks at helping you become a “thought leader!” Anyone can get published on article directories (including kids) as long as you follow their editorial guidelines. This doesn’t make you stand out at the expert, does it? Get your articles published on top, credible websites. For example, my articles can be found on sites like About.com, SiteProNews.com, MarketingProfs.com and hundreds more.

Turn your articles into videos and submit them to the top video sites like YouTube and Viddler. As a thought leader, you want to get your message out to as many people as possible in as many formats as possible.

If you follow this advice, you will become a thought leader and make more money online.

About the Author:
Article marketing expert Eric Gruber creates online marketplace opportunities for small business owners who want more online publicity, website traffic and profits. To see how you can start writing articles faster, check out his free article templates at: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com.

The “long-tail phenomenon” is a buzz word for selling smaller quantities of a wider range of goods. The goods are designed to mirror consumer preferences and have higher profit margins. They fill a niche.

Companies have embraced the long tail for some time. Low volume, high-profit product examples include super-premium ice cream, heritage meats and heirloom vegetables.

The idea doesn’t work for all types of products, but it does work for unique marketing areas in which products are so pleasing that certain consumers are willing to pay more.

Other qualifications, according to The Wall Street Journal:

Determine what is a real sweet spot rather than a valueless niche. Listen to what customers say to you and on their blogs. But think about it. Henry Ford reportedly said if he’d asked people what they wanted in the way of transportation, they would have told him, “a faster horse.”

Using tools like SpredFast, TweetBeep, StepRep and HowSociable make keeping a pulse on your market more manageable. These tools enable you to track brand and keyword mentions, so that you can respond accordingly.

Standardize components to limit the costs of producing another product line. Variety and standardization can be achieved at the same time.

Before starting anything new, review your present products and weed out those that are not profitable. But some products that make little profit have value when considered in broader terms. They can make your company’s other products more profitable.

The sweet spot products don’t have to be better than others already on the market, but they have to be different and appeal to the targeted customers.

Local business listings began with a basic business directory more than a decade ago. Chances are, your business has a local listing wherever you have a physical address location. Check it out – go to Google, type in your company name. You’ll probably see a map locating your business and an address. Of course all you may find other information too. Local business listings are treated passively by many businesses. But that could be a mistake. You’ve probably read that prospects have something specific in mind when they are shopping. So try this test. Go back to Google, type in the name of a product or service your business provides plus your hometown. Did your business show up? If it did: congratulations. If it did not: you’re missing a major marketing opportunity.

Times have changed
From a marketing standpoint, the use of local business listings has exploded with the increase of social media and mobile devices. Consumers not only use these interactive yellow pages to locate a business, product or service in their area; they are also posting reviews of those products and services. Today, there are over 60 local business listing websites on the Internet in five different categories. They include the search engines, social communities, 411 websites (aka yellow page type websites), GPS websites and that age-old business directory.

You can no longer be passive
To make your interactive yellow pages listing a stronger marketing tool, you must first “claim” the listing with all the search engines, social communities, websites and organizations that lead people to it. Once you prove the listing is really yours you can update it with your business marketing material. Businesses are realizing the importance of this claiming process. Once you have claimed your local listing you can update information with text, keywords, business descriptions, products, services, photos, videos, coupons, and more. Some websites, such as Google, allow you to use all these options while others charge a fee for enhanced listings making this information present for local consumers through web or mobile searches

So what’s the “security challenge?”
The claiming process is crucial to security because if the wrong person gets access to your business local listing they can direct customers to a different location by phone or website address. Additional damage can include incorrect information on photos, videos, coupons, and more. Because consumers are using local business listings to locate a business, product or service in their immediate area, the security around local business listings must have a high priority for any local listing website.

Remember phishing?
Phishing was described in 1987 before the Internet was a commercial boom. The first recorded use of phishing was in1996. The question is whether the business industry is going to wait for something similar to occur using Local Business Listings. The security holes are quite evident with Local Business Listings and I don’t think it takes a genius see what could happen if businesses do not “claim” their listings – the first step in closing those “holes.”

When hackers capture a Local Listing it’s called “high-jacking”
It is absolutely important that businesses not passively wait for local listing websites to put the appropriate security in place before you claim your listing. Installing security starts with the obvious claiming process, but many sites allow data to be inserted from other databases on the Internet and I am not sure there’s good security around this later process. If someone wanted to hijack a local business listing, they could easily insert the wrong information through a low level business directory that sells its data upstream or inserts its data directly into a higher level local listing website.

While the top search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo have “some” front-end security; their API’s (Application Programming Interface) makes them vulnerable through the back door. Data is provided to their local listings from 3rd party sources including “get listed” services. Additionally, if someone cannot claim a listing easily, the process within these local listing websites allows for additional listings with the same address to be submitted by anyone.

Certainly your time resources are limited; you will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Consider using this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.

About the Author:
Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. SmartFinds Internet Marketing provides Local Business Listing Management Services and can not only help you claim your local business listing, but also, manage the ongoing maintenance at multiple local listing websites. Not only to help you update the listings with your information, but also with promotions, coupons, QR-Codes, offers, videos and photos. SmartFinds Internet Marketing – http://www.smartfindsmarketing.com, and http://www.smartfindslocallisting.com.

In shaky economies, companies that invest in their marketing often come out on top. But for small business, making these investments often feels risky. Not only are time and resources tight, many small business owners feel they lack the knowledge to make the marketing choices that provide a return.

In fact, figuring out “what works” is the top marketing concern for nearly 80 percent of small business owners, according to a recent survey by Deluxe Corporation.

“Most small business owners are talented at their trade, but not at promoting their businesses,” says Stephanie Chandler, entrepreneur, speaker and author of “Leap!: 101 Ways to Grow Your Business.” “They’re willing to work long hours and invest whatever is necessary to grow their businesses, but demystifying the marketing process and having the confidence to try new approaches can be daunting, especially if they have tried something in the past and were burned.”

The survey also showed that more than 60 percent of small business owners would be more confident investing in marketing if there was a way to guarantee return on investment.

Chandler says that there are five things all small business owners can do to rev up their marketing and see better results:

Plan the work, then work the plan: Decide specifically what you want your marketing to do – raise awareness, generate leads, retain customers – then choose the marketing elements that will accomplish your goals. Stick to the plan and give your efforts time to work. If you are not sure where to begin, SCORE, counselors to America’s small businesses, offers free advice.

Let leads lead you: Look at the leads you are already generating, or the ones that most often convert to actual customers. Ask them how they found you so you can efficiently invest in those areas to increase your likelihood of success.

Ask an expert: If you have a specific marketing need, like designing a logo or writing Web copy, ask an expert for help. Look for resources among your peers or in online forums such as PartnerUp.

Polish your social skills: Social media is here to stay. Look at sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. See where your customers are engaged and join the conversation. Start with one tool. If it is working, it is easy and free to keep building your social media connections.

Know what success looks like: Decide what indicates success for your business – new customers, leads, website visits, coupon redemption – and track your progress over time. Look for times when your marketing efforts overlap with increased performance.

To help small business owners learn to market well, Deluxe has partnered with SCORE, a national non-profit group that counsels entrepreneurs, and Chandler to launch Project Rev – a yearlong, marketing lab to help small businesses find marketing solutions that work. For more details on these and other small business marketing topics, visit http://www.projectrev.com.

- Courtesy of ARA

A lot of companies go about marketing all wrong. Companies love to look at their competition and figure out how they are better, and why not — you need to be better to thrive. But when this emphasis merges with your marketing efforts, you need to do a vanity check.

What is Marketing Vanity?
We’ve all seen marketing vanity in action. It’s all very well saying things like “Our logistics processes do x, y and z, which means that we are more effective at jargon, jargon, jargon.” But when you are speaking to your customers, you sometimes need to reexamine what you are trying to achieve.

The thing about customers is that they are basically selfish — not in a bad way — it’s just human nature. They don’t care about your company and what makes it better than any other company, all they really care about is how your products or services can satisfy their needs.

Have a look at your home page, or your brochures, or whatever else you use to communicate with your customers, and be honest with yourself. Is your sales speil driven by ego? Or is it focused on selling the benefits of what you do?

How to Construct Customer-Focused Copy
Producing good copy, for your website or anywhere else, is a subject that I could write dozens of posts about, and maybe I will eventually. But it all comes down to thinking carefully about what your customers want when they arrive on your site, and showing them that you’ve got it.

So rather than saying “our logistics process use state of the art…” you might say something more to the tune of “We get stuff to you faster than anyone else” or maybe even turn it into a guarantee “Guaranteed 36-hour turn around after payment is received.”

Ok, so you can work on the specific wording a little bit, but you can see how the first phrase is focused on the company, whereas the second and third are focused on spelling out exactly what the benefit is to the customer.

Summary
In marketing there is a place to talk about your company and show off a little. Some customers are going to want to know more about you before they do business with you. This is exactly what your about us page on your website is for.

But when ever I land on a website and the home page is a big block of text explaining all about the company and what they do, I can’t help but cringe. Focus on the customer, and embrace the notion that less is more. Customers only care about what you can do for them, so that’s what you need to tell them.

About the Author:
Mark Johnson is an internet entrepreneur who spends his time blogging about business, internet marketing, SEO, blogging and just about anything else related to making money online. Visit Mark’s Marketing Blog. Latest post: Use Google custom search to increase your Adsense CPM.

Geo-Marketing (or Geographic Marketing) is a new method of marketing a business and its website through web searches, mobile searches and social media. As you can see, the geo-marketing tools being used are digital and through the Internet or Mobile devices.

While geo-marketing’s definition is the association of data and maps in the traditional sense, the added convergence of local business listings, mobile marketing, and social media makes this method of marketing more powerful than ever before.  This marketing tool is no longer just a large business marketing tool, but is available to small and medium size businesses too.

We should define what we mean by local business. A local business is any sized business dependent on the local consumer for its revenue.  This means you could be a national company like Home Depot, U-Haul, or Best Buy or you could be a local florist or independent store only known to your local geography.

From a technical standpoint an Internet user’s IP address is tied to GPS data, like longitudes and latitudes, which are mapped with technology to geographies around the world down to the city and street level.  While all this data may seem overwhelming, the good news is that most businesses do not need to concern themselves with this part of geo-marketing. Many of the tools already have all of this information built into their software or hardware technology so we can stay focused on how we will use geo-marketing tools.

The difficulty with any new marketing tool is a business’s inability to adopt the methodology early. When it comes to technologies and the Internet, in the past, by the time most businesses are ready to adopt a marketing tool, the industry has already moved on to something new.  Being an early or at least an earlier adopter of marketing methods on the Internet and through digital devices can only benefit the business.

We have seen many signs over the past two years regarding the evolution of geographic marketing.  When companies like Google, Apple, and the investment community of Wall Street start to put $100+ million and more behind a technology it will become part of our daily lives whether a business wants it or not.  Consumers have and will be using more of these geo-marketing tools to find businesses, services or products near them.

Let’s take a look at the three main tools that consumers are using to find businesses, products or services close to their geography.

Web searches are the first and most obvious, however, these are web searches in which a map displays with targets the businesses that match the search criteria. Unlike the traditional yellow pages, these geo-listings (a.k.a. Local Business Listings) can be claimed and updated with your business marketing information in order to meet these search criteria.

While this may sound relatively easy, geo-listings also include: consumer reviews that need to be managed; the clean-up of duplicate listings; coupons; offers; discounts; videos; photos; citations; QR bar codes; and, hyper local websites.  Understanding what to start with and how to strategically use these components can be done by a professional marketing firm that specializes in this area.  You can read more about these components in one of our previous article

Mobile Marketing is the next most significant geo-marketing tool in which SMS Texting, Mobile Applications, Mobile version of your website, and Mobile advertising are your key components. The starting point in this process will be with SMS Texting to get your alerts out to customers that subscribe to your short bursts of information.  The reason why this is your starting point is that it will take time to build your list of subscribers.

Social Media Marketing continues to evolve and is, also, geographic in its targeting ability. Consumers are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wiki sites, Four Square, Instant Messaging and other social community tools on their mobile devices.  While they use it mostly to find businesses, products and services, in the social communities they are seeking recommendations from their friends (near and far).  They are, also, using these social communities to post their experiences with a business, product or service.  For this reason you have to monitor the social communities in order to embrace any potential problem situations and work with them.

These three geo-marketing components are important to any business size – large or small – and each have their own sub-components that need to be well understood in order to succeed.  Understanding the strategy amongst them; the acceptance and embracing them early; and, finally planning on a 3-year return will put you on the right path of geo-marketing.

Certainly your time resources are limited and Geo-Marketing Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use these geo-marketing tools properly to generate revenue with positive customer experiences.

About the Author:
SmartFinds Internet Marketing provides Local Business Listing Management Services and can not only help you claim your local business listing, but also, manage the ongoing maintenance at multiple local listing websites. Not only to help you update the listings with your information, but also with promotions, coupons, QR-Codes, offers, videos and photos. SmartFinds Internet Marketing – http://www.smartfindsmarketing.com, and http://www.smartfindslocallisting.com.

With the enormous popularity of social networks, you often hear a lot of talk about creating “outposts” on the web that point to your main website or blog. One overlooked resource that you should be considering is Scribd.com — often referred to as the “YouTube for documents.” This brief excerpt from “ProScribd by the Promo Diva®” will provide you with a success prescription that will provide a look at a few popular (and effective) ways in which you can employ your hosted documents at Scribd.

Building Your List With Downloads
o doubt you’ve heard the saying, “the power is in the list.” Your mailing list is perhaps your most valuable business asset. By building and maintaining a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a great deal of time, effort and expense in marketing – simply by focusing on your existing list of targeted prospects.

Never Underestimate the Power of “Free”
Everyone loves to receive things for free. Why not use this to your advantage? There are many things that you could potentially offer that would serve as both valuable content, as well as promotional tool. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Software script or utility
• Reports or short ebooks
• Desktop wallpaper, signature avatars, etc
• Handy reference materials (conversion tables, etc)
• E-courses
• MP3 audio file of a past webinar or seminar event, teleconference call, etc.

TIP: You may wish to only upload a “teaser” or portion of an article, which then directs the reader to visit your website for the full report. This would enable you to create a lead-capture form on your homepage. It is very important that you capture those leads, and begin to build rapport. Today’s leads can be tomorrow’s customers.

When you create a document, look for other popular documents that are focused on the same topic. If a significant amount of traffic is coming to that document from Stumble Upon, for example, you’ll want to use Stumble Upon to send traffic to your document.

Think of it like this: The sources are “converting” if they’re sending traffic to documents related to your content. That said, if you optimize your content properly, those same sources should send traffic to your documents on Scribd.

Using Traffic Analytics, make note if the document is indexed in the search engines. If so, make note of the search queries where the traffic is coming from. View the document and take note of the tags the document uses.

You can create a related document, optimize the content, and use the same tags.

If a document is getting a significant amount of views by using the traffic analytics feature you’ll have an idea of where the traffic to that document is coming from and you can then piggyback off its traffic by creating a closely related document that is well optimized and properly tagged.

Research and savvy use of traffic analytics is the key to skyrocketing your traffic with Scribd.

About the Author:
Traci Hayner Vanover is an business consultant, author, and publicist, with over 20 years experience in the fields of sales, market research and promotion. Traci’s work has been featured in national magazines, books, ebooks, and websites. She is the publisher of Entrepreneur & Self-Employed Business Journal. When she’s not working on ESBJ, Traci works with private clients as a publicist, copywriter and consultant. Find out how Traci can help you position your brand and take advantage of social media by visiting her blog at http://promodiva.com.

This excerpt is from Traci’s eBook, ProScribd by the Promo Diva® — a 40+ page guide to leveraging Scribd.com to building your list, gaining free traffic, and increasing sales. Order your copy here!