Article Marketing & Online Marketing Strategies from IdeaMarketers - Where Your Ideas Shine

New Article Categories: SEO, Article Marketing, Natural Remedies and More

We're adding new categories at IdeaMarketers to make it easier for people to find specific information. We've reassigned articles into these categories based on keywords found in their titles, but if you have articles on these subjects, you might want to double check that yours were reassigned. If they weren't, you can just log into your writer account and go to Edit Articles. From there, go to the Edit link to the right of the title and double check your category. You can change it on the form that comes up.

Basically what we did was move anything with SEO in the title to the Tech:SEO category and anything with "joint venture" in the title to Business:Joint Ventures, and so forth.

Here are the new categories we created:
Business: Joint Ventures
Marketing: Article Marketing
Tech: Blogging
Tech: SEO
Tech: Social Media
Life: Law of Attraction
Life: Natural Remedies
Life: Alcoholism
Financial: Financial Freedom

If you have suggestions for other categories, please email me at [email protected] . We do need a significant number of articles on a subject before we'll make a new category.

We're also looking for experts for each of our article categories. If you know anyone who may be interested, please send them to www.ideamarketers.com/experts/qualifications.cfm for details.

The Secret to My Success - Listening to and Acting on Inspiration

A while back a customer conducted an extensive review of all my web sites. Upon completing his investigation he phoned me to say, "You have such a remarkable business model. I've never seen anything like it." I had to chuckle because I wasn't aware of any "business model" at all. If it was a business model, it certainly wasn't anything I designed by intention.

Rather, I just pray for direction, listen for answers and act immediately upon any inspiration I receive. The business model created as a result of consistently working in this manner was something Someone higher than me envisioned. I just followed step-by-step directions.

Now you may not be a religious person so my formula for success may not be something you relate to. But, no matter your spiritual beliefs, most people agree that everyone has an inner guidance system that if listened to will lead them in the right direction.

Small Business Expert, Sandy Reed specializes in helping small business owners incorporate this inner voice into their businesses. She's coined a term for it -- she calls it being a Soulpreneur(tm). In her article, "You Can Have What You Want" she says, "All that you've ever wanted, and more, can be found by looking to only one source - the one found inside of you. This is the source whose quiet voice you can hear, if you stop looking outside long enough to be still and listen. It can, and will, point you in the direction of your dreams - the ones you feel deepest in your soul."

In her article, she goes on to give 5 practical steps you can take to start recognizing and heeding your inner guidance system. I recommend reading her article and visiting her expert area designed to help you with your small business.

What about you? How important do you feel listening to "inspiration" or "intuition" or your "inner voice" is to your success?

Your Customer Service Can Make or Break Your Online Business

Have you ever been to a web site, looked around, thought you would like to buy something, but just wanted to talk to a human before you made the purchase? I know I have - lots of times. In my search for a phone number, I've discovered that most sites lead you to a "contact" page with a form. No email address or phone number is listed, just one of those generic fill-in-the blank forms with a drop-down list from which I'm supposed to select what my question is about. I don't know about you, but I hate those things. They scream impersonal - as if I'm going to be routed to a computerized queue where based on my selected question type I'll receive a generic FAQ auto-sent to me.

Most of the time, I just ignore the form and leave the site. One sale lost for that company - and no telling how many more sales they've lost besides mine.

People want to do business with people - not web sites and not shopping carts. While one should make their web site as intuitive and easy to use as possible, there should always be some way for a potential customer to contact you by phone or direct email. Frankly, sometimes I contact companies just to see how responsive they are before I'll buy from them - especially if it's a software product or something I anticipate needing tech support for in the future. If they're slow to answer a potential customer, how slow will they be after I've made a purchase?

Few people realize just how important customer service is to their online business, but one of the biggest compliments I receive from my own customers is that they love that I'm a real person. They like knowing they can pick up the phone and call me and that I actually reply to emails. Granted, sometimes an email does slip through the cracks, but overall that is the number one comment I get from customers - they love that I'm responsive. That one trait means so much to them that they're willing to come back time and time again.

As part of our new Expert section on IdeaMarketers we've added an official Customer Service Expert - Digital Info Diva who will be posting articles about online customer service. I hope you'll visit this section of our site frequently as it continues to grow over time. Customer Service is an area of your business that you ignore at your own risk.

IdeaMarketers Remodel

I've revamped the masthead at www.IdeaMarketers.com to hopefully make it clearer, less cluttered and less confusing. Hope you like it! I'm also working on something exciting  related to expert guides on the site... more to come on that as things progress.