The same goes for internet marketing. Backend sales strategies, when applied correctly, are effective ways to improve sales and gain customer loyalty. But you won’t be asking your customers if they want fries with their information products. Instead, you’ll be asking them if they’d like a report on a related topic or a workbook that accompanies an ebook they pruchased.

As simple as it sounds, and as deeply woven into pop culture as it has become, the question, “Would you like fries with that,” is as strategic as a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Backend sales strategies aren’t just about how to improve sales, they are about knowing who your customer is and understanding what they want, what they need and how you can exceed their expectations… oh, and how to keep them coming back for more.

Don’t let the customer simply place their order, drive through and never look back. Hit them with the soft sell by asking a question, or showcasing similar products to what they have already purchased. Because in the end, they may not even know what they really need. Sometimes, when you offer them the fries, they’ll ask for the milkshake too.

Effective Website Content Writing

Effective website content writing should include some important factors that will not only get readers to your site, but will drive them to consume more of your content. Here are few to think about when planning the content that makes it onto your site.

• Be creative when writing your content and keep it simple for the reader.
• Try to connect with the reader by telling a story in relation to your product.
• Engage the reader by using humor or an upbeat attitude throughout the website. No one likes a monotone speaker and the same goes for boring, dragging content on a site.
• While writing, use an active tone to call the customer into action.
• Pepper the copy with SEO rich keywords to increase page rankings.

The main goal is to keep the reader interested in what they are reading. When a reader, especially online, loses interest you are at risk of losing a potential customer. The customer wants to feel a connection to what they are reading, so presenting the content in a casual tone and providing valuable content, will keep them coming back.

Content Marketing Strategies

Compelling content doesn’t have to just be in article or sales copy form. There are other ways to create quality content and keep the reader wanting to learn more about your product or service. Here are some non-text content marketing strategies to try:

• Graphics and Pictures
• Videos
• Podcasts
• An Interactive Forum
• Quality Backlinks
• Online Games
• eBooks for Download
• Testimonials
• Newsletters

The more compelling, quality content you have to offer, the longer amount of time your visitor will spend on your website. The more interactive the site is, the more someone will recommend the site to a friend. Quality content writing and compelling visuals will not only make your site stand out amongst the rest, it will solidify your place in your market.

You can read all sorts of link building advice on the net. How to get backlinks, whether or not chasing external links is valid strategy, how to drive your readers to speak up and leave their links in your comment section, how to find strong, quality backlinks, and the list goes on.

But there’s one super-powerful link building strategy hardly anyone seems to mention. And that’s having an affiliate program.

Think about it. It’s so easy to create a digital product, upload it to Clickbank’s marketplace – and having Clickbank handle everything, including signing up and paying your affiliates on time. Having your URL on Clickbank itself – with its Alexa traffic rank of 333 and U.S. rank of 135 – is also a great backlink.

Give Your Affiliates a Complete Link Building Campaign

Don’t just abandon your affiliates to Clickbank, however. Create a resource center for them on your product site, complete with snippets of code, social media campaign snippets, banner and button ads, self-improvement PLR articles, tips, FAQs and anything else that will help them enthusiastically sell your product.

Also provide them with a free brandable report they can redistribute to their list. If you’re not a writer, have a good ghostwriter produce it for you, filled with high value tips. Offer to do interviews and don’t forget to upload YouTube videos (yet another “must-do” place to get backlinks!) showing your affiliates how to create link cloaking redirects, or how to use your product, or whatever useful video you can think up.

The bottom line is to be ready with anything they need. Give them a complete link building package, and they’ll gladly promote you. The better quality your product – and affiliate resources – the more enthusiastically they’ll promote you, and increase your link power. Add that free brandable report and watch your links explode!

Then I’ve got good news for you.  Your social media campaign doesn’t have to mean huge learning curves and wasted hours all for the sake of networking. Actually, business networking isn’t wasting time at all and can be done in just a few minutes each day. You may need to shift your mindset a bit, but social media can provide valuable opportunities for free advertising.

Start small with easy-to-use social media tools, like Twitter.

You can’t find a faster method of promotion than Twitter. For example, let’s compare it to the time spent article marketing. Writing a 500-word article, uploading it to an article directory, and waiting days for it to be approved is a large time investment.

Now write a short phrase describing your latest blog post or information product. It might look something like this:

“10 ways to reach your goals” (don’t use quotation marks)

Now add to it a link to your post or sales page, shortening the link if necessary (Twitter allows for no more than 140 characters). Voila! You’re done.

In fact, in the time it took to write an article, you could have easily published several tweets to Twitter, each of them like little mini-advertisements. Just don’t make the marketing too blatant. Remember that you’re supposed to be hanging out, sharing and swapping.

Of course, it’s best if you don’t stop there. Once you’re comfortable with Twitter, branch out to other social media tools like Facebook and YouTube. But if you’re truly busy, Twitter is a good place to start. You can post three highly-relevant tweets a day, in less time than it takes to water your houseplants. You can even preschedule your tweets, send tweets to Facebook, and tweet from your mobile phone.

Twitter is truly the place for people who are hesitant about social media. And it serves as a mini social media marketing plan!

If you haven’t joined Twitter yet, set up an account today and start tweeting.

P.S. - Wondering about the best way to shorten that link? There are two schools of thought.

Some say it’s better to use a keyword optimized post title leading directly to your blog, like so: “http://www.just-an-example.com/brainstorming.html”. Keyword-wise, it is better.

But most people shorten their posts with a shortening service like bit.ly for a couple reasons. It converts your URL to fewer characters than the original URL, because Twitter limits your “tweets” to 140 characters, so the shorter the better.It also allows you to add a button to your browser bar and check your click-throughs instantly. (And remember, social networking is driven by sharing, interest and need, not by carefully-optimized keywords.)

Creating physical products to complement your coaching practice is a great idea and is easy. My friend, Ronnie Nijmeh of PLR.me, has put together a quick video to show you just how easy it is to create physical products with PLR that will add value to your coaching packages.

In the video, he suggests setting up a Cafepress store and using inspirational wallpapers (included in PLR.me memberships) to create posters, calendars, and notepads.

And you don’t need to have a PLR.me membership to create great coaching products. You could design your own, but the premade wallpapers in the membership will save you tons of time that you would spend finding images and quotes. All you do is brand them with your logo.

When you take a closer look, the simple tabs on StumbleUpon’s official blog are a good model for our own coaching sites. The tabs on the StumbleUpon blog are:

- About us
- Recommendation Engine
- Official Blog
- Press
- Legal

We should always make sure that information specific to our coaching business, as well as basic coaching information, is provided on our web pages within plain sight, the way StumbleUpon’s blog lays them out in its “Recommendation Engine.” It’s so important to provide interesting, valuable, relevant, and original content, as StumbleUpon’s official blog does.

We should all have a Press Page, but too many of us don’t. And, of course, legal disclaimers are a must. But it’s the blog page that keeps our readers and prospective clients up-to-date on our coaching services and programs.  Take StumbleUpon’s example. Some recent entries on their official blog include news about StumbleUpon’s capabilities, news about important community events, organizational changes, contests, and news about StumbleUpon-compatible technology.

The information is concise yet gives the detail you need. And it’s always up to date! It is very frustrating for someone interested in our coaching services to read about a coaching program but discover that the program was offered two months ago. A blog let’s you communicate on a daily or weekly basis with your clients.

So check out StumbleUpon’s blog and see if you can incorporate some if its ideas into your own coaching site today. And for more info on how StumbleUpon can help your coaching business, check out Stumble Traffic Map.

Yes, you need to distribute the videos on sites like YouTube and other video sharing sites, but don’t forget about the social bookmarking networks, too.

It can be as simple as creating a video for your site or on YouTube and submitting it to StumbleUpon.  But there are definitely 3 tips you should pay attention to, as well as other tactics you need to be aware of, to get the most impact for time invested.

1. Don’t stumble just your videos. This looks overly self-promotional and spammy. It’s important that you also stumble videos and content from other sites as well.

2.  Make sure you have a Stumble button on your video page!  It allows stumblers who come to it organically through search engines to instantly stumble it, putting it in StumbleUpon’s database.

3. Don’t set your videos to autorun when people open your page. Give them the option of clicking Play.  People are more likely to “thumbs down” videos that autorun. When fellow stumblers were polled about videos set to autorun, many reactions went along these lines:

“It feels like a pop-up when they start playing before I can think and decide”
“I don’t like being hi-jacked”
“It didn’t say how long it was going to run, and I have to watch my bandwidth”
“I like to choose what I click on”

Using Videos As A Strategy on Your StumbleUpon Profile

When you click on your Favorites page in StumbleUpon, notice there’s another horizontal menu bar underneath the Discover, Favorites, and Stumblers tag. As well as All, this menu bar includes:

- photos
- videos
- discoveries
- your tags

Is your video tab empty?

If so, give your potential subscribers one more facet of your online personality to feel enthusiastic about. Be sure to include a few videos of your own.

And start stumbling your videos – and others’ – today!

If you’re using StumbleUpon for your life coaching business,or you want to learn how, CLICK HERE for quick pointers with screenshots to save your time and fast-track your way to StumbleUpon proficiency.

Waiting for this powerful social network to learn your preferences is all well and good – but there are definitely ways you can trim the fat from your Stumble results, leaving only those valuable golden nuggets (and I’m not talking about the McDonald’s variety, here!)

Here are my 3 best tips for getting better StumbleUpon search results:

1. Pay attention and subscribe to Superstumblers. These are people whose content is even more ideal for your needs than your own. Remember that when you subscribe to them and befriend them, their favorites are added to yours in StumbleUpon’s algorithms.  Search their content, if your own is proving too slow.

And if you’re subscribed, you can receive updates whenever they have something to share.  (It can be rather like going through your ultimate coach’s personal library and files, with permission!)

2. Don’t stumble by topic or category, if you’re really serious about finding specific information.  Search by long-tailed keyphrase instead. You can do this by clicking through your “All” button until you locate the “Search” channel.  Click on “Search” and enter your long tail.  You’ll find the results well worth it!

3. Don’t forget to visit your favorite power stumblers’ profiles. Subscribe to them (the green “Subscribe” button in the top right-hand corner. Check “accept shares to my toolbar” to be party to their new discoveries.  Review their entries (not every one, but your genuine, absolute favorites) – it’s well worth it, when they (hopefully) review one of yours in reciprocal gratitude. And because you’re both like-minded.

These three tips may not seem like the be-all and end-all of power searching, but put them into practice and I guarantee you’ll see a significant positive impact in your StumbleUpon search results – and who knows? Perhaps in your own traffic and fan base, too!

Are you working at branding yourself or your business?  If so, consider adding StumbleUpon to your arsenal of strategies.

But branding isn’t going to happen unless you have a clear target. Decide who you want to be known as on StumbleUpon, and what for. And thoroughly research your potential audience.

The real trick, however, is not to spread yourself too thin. It’s better to be known for one thing you do really well than for your average performance in several areas.

12 Tips for Tailoring Your Branding to StumbleUpon

Once you’ve got who and what you are on StumbleUpon firmly fixed, it’s time to implement your StumbleUpon branding strategy. Make sure…

- Your profile reflects your brand

- You stumble each entry on your blog (but not all at once!)

- You stand out from the crowd: Speak with your own unique “voice”

- Be friends with fellow Stumblers. Review their pages and sites – but keep it honest and real. (Never do this just to “collect” friends!)

- Visit and stumble only quality sites. Don’t mix business with personal, if the personal doesn’t enhance the business

- Read reviews to see what people are really thinking and feeling about a site or issue

- Stumble your “competitors” favorites to find out what gaps they’ve left you

- Factor backlink creation into your branding strategy

- Guest post on your Stumble buddies’ blogs.

- Stumble your Stumble friends’ posts

- Be consistent in your Stumble life

- Stumble your guest posts!

Once you’ve decided on a course of action for your StumbleUpon branding strategy, do your best to stick to it. After all, consistency is the most important key to branding. (Think how disoriented you’d feel if Coca-Cola suddenly started producing bright green cans with a rocket ship as their mascot, instead of a polar bear!)

Don’t forget to tie your Facebook and Twitter strategy in with StumbleUpon too… And if you’re a LinkedIn user, make sure your profile and information on that site reflects the image you’re portraying in your other social sites.

Remember that in branding yourself, the most important thing is to create and nurture your own strong, separate – and consistent – identity. So ask yourself, what do you want to be known for?

But before I get into that, let me just remind you that you don’t have to write these ebooks yourself. Here are a few providers I highly recommend, because I’ve purchased from everyone of them:

• Mom PLR eBooks – “Done-for-you” complete packages for the Mommy market. Use coupon code “ebookboost” and get your first month membership for only $5.

• Special Report Club -”Done-for-you” complete packages for the Internet business market. Read my review.

• Nicheology – Two “Products in the Rough” each month that target the current hottest niche markets on the Internet. Read my review.

• Easy PLR – Ebooks in the Internet marketing niche.

• PLR.me – Self-help and personal development PLR. Read my review.

1. Blog Comments – Use content from the ebook to post meaningful and valuable comments in blog posts related to your niche.

2. Guest Posts – Write a blog post about each topic in the ebook’s table of contents and use as guest posts in related blogs.

3. Surveys – Use the ebook as the basis of an online survey, to help you learn more about your market such as what type of information they want.

4. FAQ Page – Create a FAQ page or special report with links to your site and/or affiliate links. Then make it go viral.

5. Motivational Posters – Distill the key points of an ebook into a poster – to give away or sell.

6. Landing Pages & 404 Pages – Use information in the ebook to create high-quality landing pages for your Pay Per Click campaigns or to put your Error Pages to work for you.

7. Comics - Based on the ebook contents, develop a set of comics you can give away to build your list.

8. Pre-loaded USBs and MP3s - Pre-load a USB flash drive with several related ebooks and sell at a premium. You can also record the ebook as an audio file and pre-load a MP3 player to sell along with the transcript of the ebook.

9. Coaching Tool – Offer the ebook as an add-on to your coaching program.

10. Webinars – Organize a webinar around the ebook. Record the webinar, have it transcribed, and you’ve got a brand-new product to either sell or give away.

Whew! With our previous blog post, that’s a total of 36 ways you can use ebooks to build your business. If I’ve missed any, please feel free to let me know by posting a comment below.

There’s so much you can do with content, but it takes time, effort and money to create it. When you have access to high-quality PLR content for a specific market, then you’ll have plenty of time and energy to get maximum profits from the content.

I have given you so many ideas for building your biz with ebooks – which one will you do first?