It was several weeks ago. I came home from the office and made a quick stop at the mailbox. On the way through the front door, I noticed a nondescript white envelop amidst the bills and magazines. I looked it over and quickly realized the return address was from a website I had signed up with some time before. Although it was a mass mailing, I still felt valuable to them. I opened the letter and found no postcard, no note, but three different stickers. The took a look at the stickers and before the night was over I was back on that site, digging for reasons for the stickers and making myself part of their community.

I must confess this is a paid review for a label and sticker manufacturing business. I only took the review because I liked what they had to offer and felt it could maybe help one of my readers with a need either now or down the road. This review presents the idea of the business to you, as I have not purchased any stickers from the company at the point of writing this.

Stickers and labels offered from Frontier Label could be used to promote a startup or to improve packaging for any number of products. The company uses state of the art technology to reduce costs and to improve output of the stickers. They use digital printing to create the custom labels and stickers. The savings get passed on to you.

The Sticker Ordering Site

The Frontier Label site has a lot to offer the end-user. The site looks terrific and really lends the company credibility from the start. You can quickly see they types of stickers they’re offering from the home page. You can also go through the site to create a custom order for everything from coffee bag stickers to bumper stickers.

Once you select the quantity of your desired sticker, then you can begin making decisions about its printing, quality, and size. They offer a wide variety of options for the laid back consumer and the need-it-now type. The prices are dependent on the type of printing your have done — HP Electroink or thermal transfer.

Buying from Frontier Label

Purchasing stickers couldn’t get any easier. The site offers a wide variety of stickers — good for any marketing venture, product image enhancement, or simple goodwill gesture. The site caters to small businesses, startups, and even bloggers if you had the need. Sending a bumper sticker through the mail to a reader might seem like a trivial thing, but it could encourage loyalty to your brand. If you have a need for stickers or labels, then you at least have one new place too look.

Recently I’ve been developing a few e-commerce stores. One of the stores has requested my help with building steady traffic to the site. Similar principles apply to an e-commerce store as to a blog. The idea remains the same — build backlinks to increase your site’s authority with search engines. Of course, no one knows the Google algorythm, but the trade secret doesn’t make it any less obvious to site builders that a link back to your domain from a respected source can net you significant jumps in search standings.

It’s not the only thing that matters though. As I’m thinking about ways to increase this store’s visibility on the web, I’m noticing a few stark differences between this store and a blog.

• An e-commerce store doesn’t have regularly updated content, and thus can’t take advantage of search services like Google’s blog search. There’s no pinging.
• Tailoring the content on each product description page should net the best return when it comes to SEO.
• Obtaining linkbacks for a product site remains a difficult challenge, whereas a blog tends to receive linkbacks organically.

So the differences set this project apart from my normal marketing of a blog. I’m in the habit of building traffic to blogs utilizing blog community sites. I also venture into forums, using my site as a signature, and also answer questions on Yahoo! Answers with links to my site. So this project has me looking at marketing a site in a completely different way. Social networks will all but disappear with this site. There’s not going to be any Digg traffic or Stumble visitors to it. So how do I build traffic to it?

Think Outside the Box

There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule. The Yahoo directory, DMOZ and others would be essential. The e-commerce site would need authority though. We need quality links from well ranked sites. One possibility could be wiki’s, AboutUs.org, WikiPedia (if the content was non-commercial), and others. I could still utilize Yahoo! Answers, but might have to branch out in the field of the e-commerce store to post comments on blogs and create connections with site owners.

I do own quite a few high PRs websites that have been around since the late 1990s. I’m fairly certain a link from one of these sites should benefit the site in the long run. I’m trying to stay positive, as the product niche for this store is saturated with big players and independent powerhouses.

I’m thinking of turning this SEO adventure into a series on this blog. Would this be something my readers would be interested in reading about?

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In the wild, bloggers tend to group together inside networks to survive. These instincts have been honed over several years of dangerous online activity. For instance, they survived the Blogger buyout, the various Wordpress hacks, and the influx of comment spam. They’re strong creatures.

But there’s always one that stands apart from the rest. When you spot an Alpha blog, we suggest walking backwards slowly. Do not break eye contact, as the blog will likely take you down like a gimp zebra. Just stay calm. Here’s several ways to spot an alpha blog.

1. You notice your hair stand on end when you visit their blog. It’s a biological reaction to the blog’s superior writing, resources, and design. It could also be related to the large RSS numbers seen in the Feedburner counter.
2. When challenged, the alpha blog will exert superior debating skills, causing the beta blog to falter. Alpha blogs do not casually exist, but are regarded as authorities.
3. Alpha blogs eat first. Their posts circumvent other news sites as they have contacts within organizations. Who wouldn’t go to the alpha blog with their spectacular press release?
4. Beta blogs act on command of the alpha blog. The alpha blogs say, “Use this monetization method,” and within weeks thousands of loyal beta blogs have implemented the method. This also works for contests. Beta blog contests usually fall flat, while Alpha blog contests win the web.
5. Alpha blogs receive their status from sheer willpower. They gain momentum with readers through superior content and marketing maneuvers. They can however be toppled by beta blogs. In this highly social species, politics may take a part in determining the next alpha blog.

In this highly social society, it’s often blog eats blog. Be sure you know your territory well. You may be walking into the jaws of an Alpha blog.

This edition of the Powder Keg Review series examines the impNERD web site’s explosiveness. The name for the site makes me think of little green men running around with black framed glasses. After reviewing the About page, I realized “imp” is an acronym for “Internet Marketing and Publishing.” So you won’t be getting your hands on little impish men, but on some quality Internet Marketing and Publishing content.

Gary Hess runs the impNERD site. The archives date back to October 2005, but Gary didn’t start blogging prolifically until September of 2007. Since then, the posts have focused on information any blogger or website owner should know about. The content contains helpful information on using Wordpress, monetizing your site, joining affiliate networks, and the ins-and-outs of social networks. It’s packed full of content relevant to today’s bloggers. From the latest post, it appears Gary will be reining in the posts published per week to focus attention on marketing the blog, and to give each post a chance to breath. Not a bad idea at all.

The impNERD site houses Wordpress plugins as well. Gary gives back to the WP community through his unique creations. He offers the following plugins on his site:

1. Keyword Snatcher
2. Random Ads
3. Featured Posts
4. SEO Tip of the Day

I’m planning to install the Keyword Snatcher plugin. It shows you the keyword density of any article inside the administrative area of Wordpress. This a great tool for SEO writing itself. The best part — it’s free. The other plugins look good as well. I encourage you to check them out for your own blogs.

The Layout
I like the subtle grays and the easy-to-read site text. impNERD also makes good use of their own creation — the Feature plugin — on the frontpage, which right now illuminates the Keyword Snatcher plugin. The wide adspace along the right compliments the two columns below. This valuable ad space should be a steal for the price he’s asking. Be sure to grab the $15 dollar spot for quality exposure.

I especially like the header where you can find more information about impNERD, see the popular posts on the site, view the available Wordpress plugins, and subscribe to the blog. I only have one complaint. I could not find the search feature. I wanted to search for a keyword to see if anything was written about the topic, but couldn’t find it. I think this is crucial to blogs as they grow in size. The more content we have — the more options we should offer to find that content.

Conclusion
I think it’s safe to say the impNERD site will continue to grow with quality content for bloggers, site owners, and affiliates. Gary’s contributions to the WP community, his insightful commentary on social media, Internet marketing, and web development should carry the site through the coming months and years. I have subscribed to his feed. How about you?

After writing Creating Your Blog’s Perfume Page I received quite a few comments regarding the topic. Many of you commented that blogs cannot surpass the boundary of visual stimuli just yet. We do however see people placing audio ads into their pages. This obvious intrusion into our quiet privacy triggers the wrong emotion in many of us.

What can we learn from sensory branding methods? How can our blogs anchor (thanks, Mark) our brand to certain feelings?

A case study might work to flesh out more telling details. As was suggested in the previous comments, we may have to go with sensory modalities when conveying a message. However, we can look parallel to that idea and say we can create the impressions of the senses through metaphoric imagery. Let’s look at it from a fiction writer’s point of view.

Writer as Branding Aficionado
A writer can cause you to feel fear, see beautiful vistas, hear amazing conversations, taste exotic foods, and smell destruction using only words. As bloggers we can use the same tools to reinforce our brand. How do they do it?

That’s the hard part.

Metaphors are a giant tool for writers and might be the most underutilized branding tool for bloggers. Let’s take my blog for instance. My tagline, Exploding across the Internet, should not be taken literally. I am not in pieces. I am however writing content I feel will be valuable to a wide audience, who will eventually spread it throughout the internet. This will create the explosion. The big bang. You get it, right?

Metaphor: the transference of a word to a new sense. A claim that a certain subject is equal to another creates a metaphor.

How to Write your Blog’s Metaphor
A metaphor can elicit a subconscious response from a reader. For instance, the following sentences:

His blog - the Sherman tank rumbling through the streets - cannot be mistaken for any other.

Her blog has the warmth of a cup of cocoa.

These metaphors compare the blog with something quite different. The first one compares a blog to a Sherman tank. You realize nothing will stand in its way. It is powerful, steady, and impenetrable — a great resource for combat. There’s a lot you can pull from a metaphor. In this instance, the blog may also be unfriendly, deadly, caustic, etc. A metaphor can speak to positives and negatives.

The warmth of a cup of cocoa brings thoughts of positive moments when we’re with friends or enjoying solitude. It usually reveals a positive moment. This metaphor’s power comes from its simplicity. Often times, the simplest metaphors create the most vivid response from readers.

The right metaphors engage an audience and create the nostalgia we talked about in the previous post. Your blog’s metaphor may be in the tagline, or it may be scattered throughout your posts. A good metaphor will penetrate a reader’s mind and then cement a feeling for posterity.

Triggering Nostalgia
The metaphor creates the feeling of joy, happiness, fear, etc. The metaphor also hooks that feeling to your blog, but then how do you trigger it? Specifically, how do you trigger it when those readers are not on your blog?

I think this is what truly great advertising does. It creates a hook that later causes you to think of a commercial, which leads you back to a brand. I’m sure you’ve all had moments where you recalled a commercial moment. When this happens to me, it’s because I’m talking about the subject matter or just witnessed a reminder. Usually funny commercials are the ones that sneak their way into my conversations.

‘Remember the Sprint commercial where the guy slammed his phone into the other guys head? What a security system that phone had, right?’

Any number of things might have triggered that phone commercials memory within me. I’m wondering, can we do the same thing with our blog’s and their brand? If something of our content goes viral, I think so. What do you think? Does this theory hold water?