Everything You Ever Wanted To Ask About Online Marketing...

by Yvonne DiVita, Cofounder of BlogPaws

Everything You Ever Want To Ask About Online Marketing in 10 Questions or Less. Yes, in 10 questions (not less) I'll share everything you've ever needed to know, ask, wonder, or learn about online marketing. And, if you believe that, I have a park in NYC I want to sell you.

The truth is, I could list 100 questions and still not cover everything. Each of us views the world differently, so my questions may be totally different than yours, and yours different than Chloe's, etc, etc, etc. What I'll do today is cover 5 of the most asked questions I get, and if yours isn't covered, you can comment and we'll take it from there. Next week, I'll conclude with the final 5.

Ready? Set... go...

1. What exactly is a blog campaign, anyway?

When a brand has a new product or they're doing a 'program' (in support of shelter pets, for instance), they may be on the lookout for bloggers to write about it. They create a 'campaign.' For further reference, here's a "dictionary definition: Campaign - a series of coordinated activities... designed to achieve a social, political or commercial goal. So, a blog campaign is part of the coordinated activities." By the way, it usually includes mention on Facebook and Twitter, too.

2. How do brands or agencies decide which blogs to target for their campaigns and how can I get my blog noticed by them?

Blogs are noticed for many things - design, writing, comments, topic, video or photography, and frequency of posts. If an agency or brand is trolling the net, the blogs that are returned via SEO will be the ones they notice first. Is your blog on the first page of a search for your topic?

3. What do they mean when they ask about "text links" or "contextual" links? Is that just a link on my site? I don't get it.

Wikipedia explains contextual advertising better than I can. But, in short, think "context" - the brand wants to assign a campaign (usually visual with a link) to your keywords. They've identified a post with the 'right' keywords and they want to add a link to those words - often, it will open a pop-up box with information in it, and a link to a page they want your readers to visit. For plain text links, you would add a link to specific words or phrases, either in the post or in your sidebar.

4. Is online marketing different than regular marketing? How?

Oh yeah. It's far different, in too many ways to share here. But, for the sake of this post, online marketing can be more targeted - for instance, a magazine ad is created for the readers of a magazine, which is a targeted demographic. But, there is no way to know who is actually seeing the ad. With online marketing, today's robust tools allow folks to interact, in real time, with readers. Blogs are not necessarily "real time", but Twitter and Facebook can be. Another way it's different is in the ability to create truly innovative, interactive, fun, visual and viral campaigns.

According to Hubspot, "Online shoppers will reach 184.3 million in 2012, up 3.3% from 2011." Does that say powerful, or what? Are you part of that? Yes! Do visit the link because the HEADLINE of that blog post is worth seeing.

5. What's the difference between pageviews and uniques?

That's a doozy! Pageviews, calculated by your analytics software (Google, perhaps?) tells you and whomever you share that number with, how many times your blog was "looked" at in a period of time, like a month. Everytime someone visits your blog, that's a pageview. The number of pageviews tells a brand how popular you are. It does not tell the brand whether any of those eyeballs came on purpose or accidently. So, it's a deceiving number. THAT'S why they generally also want to know uniques.

This stat refers to specific visitors who come to your site on a regular basis. So, if you visit BlogPaws every day, you're a unique visitor. Our tracking tools recognize your IP address and you become part of our uniques. No, the tools can't tell it's you if you're at the library using the library computer. You're attached to your IP address... if you're not sitting at your computer, the IP address you're using is not calculated as being you. Webopedia has a great definiton, if mine doesn't work for you.

Next week, we'll have the last 5 Questions for Everything You Ever Wanted To Ask About Online Marketing