I picked up Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet a couple weeks ago, after seeing a recommendation for it from Nickycakes somewhere on Wickedfire. To be honest, I just recently started reading books regularly again. If there’s something I feel I must read I usually find a digital copy of it somewhere rather then spending the money on a book. Usually I’m just too preoccupied with work to read. But I had a Borders gift card burning a whole in my pocket, so I ordered a few books, the othe being “Marketing Outrageously” recommended by Rob of Eureka Diary.

The basic concept of the book is to teach you to perform like a big guy, even if you are on the smallest of budgets. As somebody that fits this description, I found the book rather informative.

The books is quite good overall. It has a lot of interesting points for the novice, as well as the advanced internet marketer. However, some sections of the book were so basic that I wasn’t even able to finish reading them. The perfect example of this is a section in Chapter 3 titled “Choosing your Domain Name and Hosting Company”. This book definitely seems more geared towards the brick and mortar business looking to take their marketing efforts online.

Other bland sections are dedicated to proper site navigation, different types of pages/sites, RSS, and basic SEO. There is also a whole chapter dedicated to “Web 2.0″ which consists of definitions of web2.0 terms like tags and open source, not really a web2.0 thing, but whatever. A lot of this book is for complete noobs. But it wasn’t all bad. In fact, there actually is a lot of good information for intermediate/advanced internet marketers.

By far the most intriguing part of this book were the chapters covering media (video/audio). They give you just about everything you need to know to get started recording audio and video and how to make the most of it. I will be applying a lot of the concepts in this chapter to my local efforts. It should be no surprise that people would prefer watching a video over reading. Using these mediums makes it much easier to connect with potential clients compared to text.

Autoresponders are also a big part of this book. Included is a basic workflow and displays the transition of a passerby to a returning customer. If autoresponders are something you aren’t all that familiar with, there is definately a lot to be learned.

Other things I liked:

• Perfect for the noob trying to grasp basic concepts.
• Plenty of reminders of things seasoned marketers and affiliates should be doing.
• Podcasting, audio, and video production. Bannerblindness.com should read this section.
• Lots of information regarding writing sales copy. Though nothing you can’t learn on Copyblogger.

Not so good:

• They provide links for all kinds of different resources, I have a pretty good feeling these are links to their own affiliate sites. Though I guess the book is all about getting the best returns for the smallest costs. So I guess I can’t blame em.
• The affiliate program section isn’t all that great. Though if you are starting your own affiliate program, a chapter can’t even begin to cover it.
• The sections covering outsourcing and building a “virtual team” need a lot of work. For a more detailed guide read 4 Hour Work Week.

This is probably a really obvious tactic for some, but I just thought of it a few days ago, and I’m anxious to share it. Let me first say that the traffic is pretty limited, especially for me, using it in a relatively small city, but I figure the links are worth it alone. The PR for the main city page I’m working with is a PR4, just 2 clicks away from my link. And the Topix homepage is a whopping PR8.

The goal is to become a local topix editor this will give you freedom to publish whatever the hell you want, but of course we will be posting our own links. There is a small catch though, you need to be approved. My guess is that larger cities will be a little more difficult to get approved as an editor for. But you never know till you give it a try. I’m going to be venturing into a larger city for my local projects soon, and hopefully I get approved.

The traffic however, isn’t so great, at least not in smaller cities. I’ve posted 2 local stories in the last couple days and I’ve got only a small handful of visitors. But better than nothing I suppose. Again, bigger cities will probably give you better results.

I’ll also be posting an update to the Local SEO series in coming days.

Dominating the local SERPs has been something I’ve been pondering for quite some time now. But as with so many of my projects, I never get around to them, lose inspiration, or some other pathetic excuse. The reason local SEO has always appealed to be is the added sense of security. There will always be small business in my area that are looking to expand onto the web, and I certainly believe I can help.

My plan of attack is to create a number of various, high traffic, web properties for my “hometown” of Gaithersburg, Maryland. I hope to make some valuable connections with local small businesses, by offering low cost, high traffic, ad spots across my network. But where will they direct this traffic? Ah-hah! That’s where I come in. Not only can I offer my customers low cost, highly targeted, local traffic, but I can also provide them with a full blown web presence, and internet marketing campaign. In other words, the cheap ads will be my foot in the door.

Gaithersburg Local

My first project is GaithersburgLocal.com, which will be my main hub. I’m honestly not quite sure how I’ll be keeping it full of fresh content, but maybe November is just the start of many 50k word months, thanks to WebWriMo… we shall see. Working on a local project will hopefully get me in touch with some people that will be happy to help out too.

Anyway, the goal is to compete with the local newspaper(s), and hopefully I will gain the advantage as newspapers become obsolete. I plan to be providing news, business, entertainment, sports, dining, and event coverage. I’m still not sure if all these different super-mini-niches will be contained under the GaithersburgLocal title, or if I will migrate them over to their own domains. Wordpress probably isn’t capable of everything I want to do, so it will likely be the only option. Again, we shall see.

Day 1:

I justed started working on this a couple hours ago, but I’ve gotten a good chunk of work done already.

• I got another sexy theme from Elegant Themes. I’ve actually used a few themes from Nick, the owner already. I figured I would take advantage of it since it’s only $19/yr. The theme still needs a lot of changes, but it’s hard to work with without much content to fill it with. Many changes will be made in coming days.
• I got a post up about a Veteran’s Day event being held in downtown Gaithersburg. I plan to stop by tomorrow, during the event, so I can take pictures and such. Community involvement is going to play a big role in the success of this site, so I figured I’d start sooner than later.

Whats Next?

I obviously need to add more content so the site can start looking worth the $8.81 I payed for the domain. Once the site fills out a little more I’ll be able to present it to local business owners, and properly promoting it.

I know a few business owners in the area, and am going to try to strike a deal for free ads on the site, in exchange for some in store ads, that will hopefully bring some traffic in. I also plan on taking a page from Shoemoney’s book (though I doubt this is in anyway original), and try to collect emails by offering coupons from local merchants.

I’d really like a community of some sort to go along with it, but it may be one of those features that deserves it’s own site. Speaking of which, has anyone ever tried phpizabi? I used it when it was still very unstable, and it caused me nothing but trouble. However, it looks much more promising than before. Glowleaf recommends phpfox, but I almost always prefer to go open source (because I’m cheap and like the faster development).

The other option is to go with a forum, and I’ve always wanted to use Vanilla or bbpress.

Anywho… I’m just rambling at this point, and I doubt anyone wants to continue to read my frantic brainstorming. I’ll try to update you guys on the progress of my local efforts, the results in particular.

I wish I knew exactly what was next, but then again, this industry wouldn’t be as fun if I did.