Marketing Your Business for Free: Yahoo

Yahoo is probably one of my favorite places to market and with good reason: they have become the content network for the Internet. Ranked #4 on the Internet worldwide as listed by Alexa, they get a lot of traffic, and they provide plenty of marketing opportunities for you.

Before I launch into this though, I want to remind you that if you haven't completed the other lessons, to go back and read them. Do what they say. This is how you gain momentum. Go where your customers are. This is your basic platform, and the sites in this series get tons of traffic, but they won't work for you if you don't use them. Don't focus on just one method of traffic generation or one site either. Things change.

Remember sites like Hi5 and Friendster, or MySpace? They used to be in the top 10 most visited websites. Now? Top 1000.

Your first step is to sign up for an account with Yahoo, and it's free. Use your name if possible or something related to your business. The reason is that this will be on your profile and in their people search, so you want to be found. Don't forget to include links to your website and add as much information as possible. You will hear me say this a lot. Don't hide behind your profile. Use it to market you.

Answers - Answers allows you to answer questions. Simple. However, it can be not so simple too. If you are in the internet marketing field, wealth, or something related to business, you may be wasting your time. Competitors don't mind citing you for terms violations especially in IM or business. I don't think I've ever had it happen to me, but it does happen.

To get the most from this resource, the best way to do it is to market affiliate programs unrelated to IM and business. Just make absolutely certain that the resources, (your affiliate links) are related to what you are selling, and they are good resources. I cloak my links off one of my domains so it looks like a page and not an affiliate link.

An effective way to answer a question is to only give part of the answer and then give a link for additional tips or the rest of the article. Use this to drive traffic to your offers and blog pages. If you choose to market using this site, do it regularly. Answer 5 - 20 questions a day and keep doing it. Those answers stay up, and they are there as long as this part of Yahoo is available.

Contributor Network - Contributor used to be Associated Content. Yahoo bought it and now it's Yahoo Contributor Network. If you market with articles, this is definitely a place you want to go. Post articles you have written elsewhere. As long as the article is good, it will get included, and believe me, they do get read.

Here's a tip no one tells you, but I will tell you. If you want to learn how to write good articles, then go to Ezine Articles and download their free course. Ezine Articles is technically the number one article directory on the Internet, and they teach you how to write articles for free.

Although video, social marketing, video marketing, and other types of content marketing are important, and effective, written content is still what drives the web, and it always will. Learn to write. There are enough people who butcher the English language that if you can write in way that is effective and communicates your message, you will be GOLD. Here's the link to the training: Ezine Articles Training. Sign up for their list and get their emails. Read them. Great content. Since Ezine Articles is one of my Twitter followers, they love me, and I love them.

Contributor tells you how to get more from your article marketing. Learn how to use this site, and it will bring you a lot of traffic. Contributor Tools

One thing to remember about Contributor Network is that they accept different types of content: articles, video, reviews, and interviews. Take advantage of it.

Delicious - Another site bought by Yahoo. I won't tell you the Alexa rank of this site because these things change. However, it does rank very highly in Alexa, and it's worth going here to bookmark all your links. Make sure you make them public and make sure you write a really good title, description, and don't forget to use your keywords. (In a different post I will talk about keyword strategy.)

Keyword Research and Search Engines

Flickr - Flickr is another one of those properties that was bought by Yahoo in an effort to compete with Google and MSN. Flickr allows you to upload and store your photos for free. You can make them private or public. The way to get the most from this site is to add photos of tutorials/how to. For example, if you have a six step business process to build a business, then create a chart that shows this process in action. Let your imagination run wild here. Product graphics are good too. Whatever you choose to upload, just make sure you include a link.

Groups - This is another section of Yahoo that is not only popular, but it's a hot place to market on Yahoo. They have groups for everything, and they've been around for years. The nice thing about using groups is that it's done by email, and so you can go through you messages each day if you use digest form and see what's happening with each list.

There are lists for articles, ads, discussion, just about any type of content you can imagine. To get the most from this marketing technique though, READ THE RULES. Each group has its own rules. This is the most successful strategy you can employ in your marketing. Follow the rules of the site you are marketing on. It's really none of your business why they make the rules they do. They have that right. They are a business. It may not seem fair, but that's the way it is. All these sites love me, and they give me a lot of traffic for it. That's traffic I will have for as long as they are around. Do it right the first time, and it pays off in the long run.

To get started, go to groups and search for the type of groups you are interested in. Just like forums, check for activity. You want groups with lots of members and are active. Smaller groups of around 1000 can be just as good if they are interested and highly into their topic.

How many groups? That's really up to you and how aggressively you want to market here. The more groups you are a member of, the more places you have to put your marketing materials. Just make sure the lists you choose are targeted. Otherwise you are wasting your time.

Bing Search - Since Yahoo gets its search results from Bing, create a sitemap and submit to Bing. Don't listen to advice that says link to another site and then wait to be indexed. Just do it.

Previous Lessons

Marketing with Google

Marketing With Facebook

Marketing on Youtube

That's it for now. Have to figure out what site is next. I think it's Amazon. One of my favorites.

Good luck. Do your homework. "Nothing happens until something moves." Albert Einstein

Jinger

 

I knew I left something out. You can get a $50 credit from Bing for their paid search marketing. A lot less competition, but make sure you use their keyword tool!

Jinger

 

I'll check that out. James Scholes has an amazing strategy for Yahoo Answers, and it works. It's a great strategy if you don't like doing video, but you're looking for a popular way to market.

Thanks. Glad you liked it.

Jinger