Internet Marketing Trends For The New Year Indicate That Blogging Is Dead!

Entrepreneur.com published a very interesting article regarding Internet marketing trends to watch in the new year. While their top 10 list of online trends contained the usual fare, there were some eye opening trends that they have spotted and that we all may want to take notice of.

They rated their survey of trends as either, Invest in them, Test in them, or Give them a rest (i.e. fuhgettaboutit!). Two of the trends that they said were dead for 2010 made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The article said that blogging as we know it is done, over, finished. Surprisingly, I agree.

Let’s face it, the system is gamed to the max. How much more can be written about the same subject over and over again. There are only so many keywords (at least that’s what many think), the industry is permeated with black hat seo tactics and not that I’m a Nobel Laureate, there’s a lot of crap being written just to “try” and fool the search engines.

The result is a consumer that bypasses much of what’s written as they are skeptical and resistant to the onslaught of “you too can make $10,000.00 per day and I have the secret!” Remember, Col. Sanders made KFC a brand by NOT giving away the secrets. Yet inane Internet marketers continue to think the public is stupid. Pssst…if it’s a secret code then why are you selling it? Just asking..but I have to tell you that selling the “secret code” is an oxymoron! Sort of like airport security. Just saying…

All is not lost however, as Entrepreneur says…”If you’re writing a blog to help with search engine rankings or to inform existing customers, you should continue to test or invest”. Which is why we, for the moment, continue to write. Notice the words “sell” and “market to”, were not included in that line. I agree. I really never saw blogging as a sales platform. It has been more an ends to a means per se.

We blog to of course improve our rankings, but first and foremost to inform our existing readership. That’s why we chose a magazine style format when we created this blog. We didn’t want the site to appear like an ocean of text merely directed at selling to the point of nauseation (yea..I made that word up!).

If you are truly looking to sell to a consumer then you are going to want to target them with landing pages that give them what they are looking for. For instance, this article is about Internet marketing trends. If someone is reading this they are more than likely looking for what will be hot for 2010.

I guess I could sell them and e-book or some kind of special report, but I’m looking to “inform” our readership which in turn hopefully brings them back for future visits. maybe they return enough to the point where they give me permission to market to them by opting in for something.

However, this article is not written to sell or market anything to them. If I was looking to market something to this demo (you do know what that is right??), I would create a new landing page on a new domain that is a pitch page. That’s how you market directly to a prospect. As the entrepreneur.com article suggests… “

Converting prospects into customers depends on driving visitors to content that maximizes conversions, and that means your conversion rate is only as good as the content on your landing page. If that landing page is your blog and your blog changes frequently, your conversion rate is only as good as your latest blog post.”

Get the point? Hopefully you understand that when the consumer is looking for a camera, then sell it to them. When they are looking for “pictures of corvettes” don’t write a blog post that ends up being a pitch. Your conversion will suck! Maybe that’s the reason so many Internet marketers work on the 1% conversion model. it’s probably due to the fact that they won’t test and invest in creating new landing pages on keyword specific domains.

Look at it this way. If you launched just 2 landing pages per week, it would only cost you about $80 bucks per month. At the end of the year you would have 100, keyword specific, laser targeted landing pages directed at what the consumers really want.

Enough about blogging. Now for the other startling bit of info from Entrepreneur.com. They say that online radio and podcasting is out for 2010. Yikes! Just as we are about to launch Massive Profits Radio, could we be dead before we start? well it doesn’t appear that we’re toast as we luckily already have a listenership and readership. If we were just starting out with no traffic and no name recognition I doubt we would be getting into it.

Also, it’s not a media component that you want to half-ass your way through. We have spent thousands of dollars on equipment. The idea is to differentiate ourselves. We have known many who tried to follow us when we were doing our real estate radio show and they failed miserably. It’s not easy and if it’s not done right, you may end up actually hurting your brand rather than enhancing it.

One of the reasons that Entrepreneur.com advises against podcasting and online radio for 2010 is because they believe that most who attempt to broadcast a show don’t have the resources to “make the media more shareable” and “more engaging“. Our shows had both of those aspects covered. Trust me, you may not have liked what we said on our shows, and you may not like what you hear on Massive Profits Radio, but you WILL be engaged. We make it a point to be entertianing AND informative.

But alas, we live in a YouTube world and as Entrepreneur.com says and as everyone has been clamoring about, video is the wave of the future. So does that mean Massive Profits Radio will soon morph into Massive Profits TV? Well let me ask you this. If one of the strongest Internet marketing trends for 2010 is the increased use and penetration of online video..what do you think?

Trends 2010: Here come the paywalls The Guardian, on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:40:29 -0800… field – and with the iPhone and the new touchscreen tablets a market has just started to develop and spread. As we enter a new phase of the internet, …

Small Business Trends in 2010 Australian Migration News, on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:03:43 -0800 Partnering via blogs with larger companies presents an opportunity for small businesses, especially with companies that target the small business market, …

Internet Marketing Trends – SEM Synergy Extras – Bruce Clay Blog Apr 29, 2009 … In an industry that’s as keen on data as ours, there are always reports being released about the state of the trends of the surveys, …

Top ad trends list spotlights online behavior | Software … Dec 17, 2009 … New data from research firm Nielsen shows that brands need to manage consumer experience across all the screens–TV, PC, and mobile.