Don't fall for the hype

I've just written an article about Web 2.0 tools for a client. I didn't really want to say, "Don't fall for the hype" at the start of it as some of their services include full-on Web 2.0 social networking and marketing, but right now, I feel like banging it into everyone's heads.

Don't fall for the hype.

12 years on, and many of the sites I look at still don't know the basics of PR and marketing, let alone online or Web PR / marketing. That's no bad thing, as it means that you can always improve on what you are doing to tell people about your products, brands and services, and hence achieve more sales. But it does mean that there is no point getting over-enthusiastic about the latest toy on the playground if you haven't yet mastered the basics of walking and talking.

The last post was about the IM gurus getting together and trying to flog Mark Joyner's latest product, which to me looks suspiciously like the Emperor's New Clothes scenario. Having flipped through that site, and refused point blank to part with any money, I am horrified at the hype. And how many people will fall for it, and part with good money for no seemingly good reason. (Hey Mark, feel free to correct me!)

(Go and look for yourself if you need to. This is not about becoming a best selling author as such, it's about solving America's obesity and health problems as far as I can see. You could also begin to think that the IM guys have taken psychological and emotional selling to a whole new level - possibly even bullying people into decisions they could potentially regret, however cheap they may seem?).

Back to the purpose of this blog, Web PR. Luckily, most of the Web 2.0 stuff is open source widgets etc, which don't need to cost you any money to incorporate into your marketing strategy, but there are also many other new toys that could cost you money and time you may not have.

Think about Christmas and kids. How many times have you watched a child open a present you spent hours searching and queuing for, only to see them chuck it to one side, and get more fun out of the cardboard packaging it came in? Lots of Web 2.0 stuff is at that level. And I don't mean the cardboard box. I mean the discarded toy.

Whichever strategy you decide to employ, make sure it works. Or software you decide to buy which may solve a problem you have - make sure it does solve that problem. And that it doesn't create a new problem. Like a cash flow crisis. More work than you can handle eg twittering to some non-existent community, blogging to your staff, creating videos for your secretary's friends, answering emails in relation to some offtopic post made casually on a forum, answering poor product reviews on websites because you made a cock-up of some Ebay sale etc.

And don't fall for the hype. Just because 20 Internet Marketers tell you something is great, is it? What do they do for a living? Yep, market products. And the porn industry and the IM guys are leagues ahead of others in selling the emperor's (or empress') new clothes.

Build customer loyalty by selling something worthwhile. Treat your customers as rational, thinking human beings. With respect. And build a community by offering something of value. It may only be a very small community, but it could well prove to be all you need to make a good and honourable living.

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Treat your customers' email addresses with respect

Today, I was forwarded an email that included all of the recipients' email addresses in the To field. This is such a big no-no in these days of spam that I thought I would blog about it to make sure, once again, that this practice ceases and to show WHY this should never be done by you.

The fact that this particular email came from a Government department should come as no surprise considering how lax the UK Govt has been with confidential data recently, and what we have all learnt about their lack of processes to protect data of any description. Worse still, this came from someone senior who advises Govt on Internet and Online Policy, and included email addresses which would be pretty hard to track down if you wanted to contact these people, so they are obviously not meant to be out in the "wild".

However dim this senior Advisor has been on a Friday afternoon, not sharing email addresses is basic netiquette, and should be one of the first things drummed in to any email user's head - whatever their position in life or reason to be emailing.

Open a new email message right now and look at the options you have for including people's email addresses. You should see:
To
CC
BCC

To is obvious. That is who your email is going to, and the recipient's email address will be shown in the 'headers'. There has to be an email address here or the email cannot be sent.
CC stands for 'carbon copy' and means that all recipients can see who else has received the email. Generally, but not always, email packages will only show the name rather than the email address.
BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy and means that none of the recipients can see any of the other recipients details.

Now, imagine you are sending out an email to all of your customers. Which of the three choices would you use?

Do you want all of your customers knowing the contact details for every other customer? Would you want one of your competitors to get hold of the contact details for each of your customers? How would your customers feel if they saw their address listed openly like that?

The answer to all three of those questions should be a resounding No. I hope! So, it has to be the BCC field. In the To field, you would put your own email address as you don't mind every customer seeing that twice.

What you are doing by using the BCC field is not just protecting the identiy of your customers from unscrupulous use by ANYONE who got hold of a copy of that email. Nor just protecting your customers' identities from a competitor. You are also showing that the information your customers have given you, eg their email address in this instance, is being treated with respect, and not revealed to any third party, intentionally or otherwise.

Even if you are forwarding a message that has everyone's email addresses in, you should remove them before you hit forward. These awful chain letters which go round the Net are prime sources of email addresses for spammers, and once your email address is out there, who knows which databases you will end up on, nor how much drivel will end up in your inbox as a result.

So, when you are sending an email to more than one or two close friends or colleagues, ALWAYS USE THE BCC FIELD.

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Podcasts and Transcripts for IM

Having mentioned transcription, it seems worthwhile extolling the virtues of using podcasts and transcripts on your website, and elsewhere, as part of your marketing toolbox.

What is a podcast?

A podcast is basically just an audio file. Think of listening to a radio show or interview - that is a podcast. Interestingly, the Internet has opened up the way for the BBC and other radio stations to make available 'recordings' or podcasts of all their shows, so the radio is no longer just real time. If you miss something you can listen again, by downloading the podcast to your ipod, MP3 player or computer.

For a business, a podcast can be a very useful tool indeed. And particularly because it fits into that category of items that you only need to create once and they become part of your marketing inventory or collateral. This is called 'long tail' marketing and means that a visitor to your website can listen to your podcasts whether your shop is open or shut, they can access it over and over again, and it costs you nothing more than the initial cost of creation. Which could be pretty much free if you use the many tools out there for creating and editing podcasts, such as Audacity. You can even record something on your mobile phone and make that available.

Podcasts can be about ANYTHING at all. That's the beauty of them. They can be short, or long. You can add music or jingles. They can be interviews, answers to common questions, descriptions of how to install or use a specific product, testimonials from satisfied customers, a sales pitch for a particular item - ANYTHING.

It could be interviews from people within your community or staff. The sound a machine or car should make when tuned up using your services. The silence outside your remote home office. A walk through of how to make an omelette. A description of how a new product has been developed, including interviews with those involved in the process. It could be ANYTHING!

The point of using podcasts though on your site is to get across a message to your potential customers that achieves a core objective, be that raising brand awareness, making a sale, answering a query, or CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

And once you have created a podcast for your site, don't forget to make it accessible. That is, for those with hearing difficulties, offer a transcript so they can read the information that is given in the podcast.

Transcription is cheap and easy if you use Mechanical Turk (as recommended in the last post), or software such as Express Scribe.....which you can downlaod and use for free, but some of their stuff requires a paid licence. See more here....6 Ways to Dictate. See our range of dictation software for PC, Mac & Pocket PCs. >>Download Today to save 10-50% off normal pricing.

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Mechanical Turks

I love being a Mechanical Turk! And I like the idea and ethos behind it, especially as a Web PR person whose clients generally have limited budgets. Also, the number of times a software app has failed to work successfully because it is only artifical intelligence and lacks 'people power' does seem to have been marginally solved with this approach. But what is a Mechanical Turk and what do we do?



MTurk is an Amazon company. It is basically a system which gets people to do the jobs that computers are unable to do. This can be something as simple as writing a review of a product, finding links for items that fit certain criteria, adding tags to Amazon books, or, my favourite, transcribing podcasts and interviews. There is a whole other side to it which involves web services, APIs, coders, etc but that doesn't really fit in a Web PR blog!

The pay is pitiful, but that works well for those looking to get jobs done. However, as a Turk, the money in your account mounts up fairly quickly if you get bonuses, and you get to spend it on Amazon.com. (This isn't great for a UK Turk as it means no DVDs or electrical stuff, only books but hey...it's money).

However, for a company with a limited budget looking to achieve some results with online marketing but without necessarily the in-house resources (time, people etc) to carry out these tasks, Mechanical Turks are your solution.

Imagine you need to find blogs which are for your target audience eg interested in your products, services, industry sector etc. Don't spend several hours on Google looking for them, pay a MechTurk to find them for you, and review them. Do they have regular postings? How many subscribers? Do they accept comments? Would the blog owner be open for a product review of your product, a prize for a competition, and advert? The list is endless and the cost for a job like that would probably come in the 10-25cents region.

Interviewed a knowledgeable member of staff, a well-known guru in your industry - get a full transcript of it for a couple of dollars. None of the commercial services can do it this cheap, and there are over 20,000 Mechanical Turks up for that particular task.

Want content for your website? Set down some criteria and get it written for you for a few pennies. Want someone to review what your competitors are up to, all the keywords on their websites, what their rankings are in the search engines, etc etc etc? Hire a Turk!

It really is a cheap and efficient way to get jobs done, and the turnover of jobs (or HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks) on MTurk seems to imply that there are a considerable number of us whiling away our free time doing the HITs offered.

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Keyword Brainstorming

Five Easy steps to creating a keyword list.

You know you need keywords in your website, both for the search engines to index, and also for your users so they see the words they are looking for that convince them they have landed in the right place for their needs.

Your keyword list should be in place BEFORE you design your website.

Why?


Because those keywords, and where they are included in your site, can affect how your site is built.

However, it is likely that you already have a website, and that you had no keyword list available when it was built. Or if you did, perhaps your keyword list needs updating and hence your site needs to include the new keywords and phrases.

So, how do you find your keywords?

Here is a step by step process to a keyword brainstorm. Whether you have a website or are in the process of designing, or redesigning, you need a keyword list.

You don't need to do these in order, you just need to do each step to create a comprehensive list.

Step 1: Out of your own head
Get a nice, clean piece of paper, a pen, (or create a spreadsheet), make a coffee/tea/hot chocolate, and sit somewhere quiet. (Turn off the radio, TV, phone, kids etc!). Now, think about your business and start writing. You want every word and phrase you can possibly think of that anyone wishing to find you might consider to search on.

Name of business, location/address, products it sells, who it sells to, product codes or brands (if global or well known eg iPod shuffle, Nokia, N95, etc). Uses of your products eg in the health service, for education, bed & breakfast toiletries, listen to music - whatever uses your products have, think of them and write them down.

What questions might people ask about your products or services? "Who promotes websites?" for instance. Or, "What is the battery life of an Ipod?" "How does no win, no fee work?" "How do I stop my home being repossessed?" etc etc etc.

Think of any organisations or trade bodies you are a member of, and write them down. This can include Breakfast Clubs like BNI, or online networking sites (from Ecademy to facebook) - everyone with whom you may be associated.

Do your products involve a particular technology? Write down all the words you can think of to do with that.

Is there specific jargon for your industry? Write down as many terms as you can think of.

Are there any common mispellings associated with your products and services? eg acomodation. Write down any you can think of.

Log on to your website, and work through it carefully reading every word. It is amazing how many keywords you will find on your existing website that you may have overlooked. And don't forget to do "View, Source" in your browser. That will let you look at the lines of code behind your website.

At the top of each page you should find META DATA. That is code that a good website designer will include in your site to help the search engines rank your site. It looks like this:

Due to blogger restrictions, I have replaced < or > with ..
..title..Keyword brainstorm for perfect search engine optimisation../title..

..meta name="description" content="How to choose the right keywords and phrases for your website optimization" /..

..Meta name="keywords" content="keywords, phrases, search engine optimisation, search engines, optimization, article, help, find, brainstorm, website, ranking, rank, SERP, search postion, meta data, meta tag, keyword, content, description etc etc etc"..

Nick the keywords out of there too. (We'll show you how to make sure that each page of your website is optimised so that these keywords in your meta data have the right weighting in your visible text another day!)

You should also find keywords behind your images, in what are known as the ALT IMG text, or longdesc (long description) text. Look for ..alt img=".....".. in the source code of the pages, or hover over an image and see what the little box says. (N.B. This will only work in Firefox if the site designer has included a ..title.. in the alt img text, so if you don't see a box when you mouse over an image, you will need to scroll through the source code of the page. If this is too complex, don't worry too much. Most people completely forget alt img text when building or optimising a site - more fool them!

Ok, how we doing? Got a full page of A4 yet? You should have.

Step 2: Friends & Family, Colleagues & Customers
Use the resources around you for free ideas. Ask all of the above to offer keywords about your business. Invariably they will come up with all sorts that you may have missed. Your customers are quite important in this process, as they will give you a good idea of what terms other potential customers may consider when trying to find you and your products.

You can ask your customers quite easily, without it seeming like you have suddenly lost all your marbles! If they phone asking for a catalogue, or to place an order, ask them at the end of the call what words or phrases they associate with you and your business.

And don't forget to ask them how they found your website either whilst you have the opportunity!

Step 3: Competitive Analysis

Next, we are going to look at which keywords and phrases your competitors use. After all, they are in the same market as you so inevitably will have used many of the keywords you need to include in your brainstorm.

If you have no idea who your competitors are, tut tut! If you do, then log onto their websites, and scan their sites for words of use to you. Check their meta tags as well.

Then, Google a few of the phrases you think your potential customers are most likely to use, and investigate the websites that those terms bring up.

Inevitably, you may find that other industries also use the same terms for different purposes, in which case make a note to yourself that this is the case. If you can make a strategic partnership with the top sites in the other sector, you can divert any traffic who has, because of the duplicate meanings of the terms, accidentally landed on their site back to you.

Right, now you have nicked all your competitors' keywords, and found many from friends, your own head, customers etc, let's see whether other people globally use them.

Step 4: Use keyword tools online
Now you have a fairly reasonable list of words, let's try a few online tools to see what else you can discover.

First up is WORDTRACKER.
This is without a doubt, looking at its Alexa ranking, one of _the_ top keyword sites on the Net now. We have used it since it was launched. Try the free trial, and then make the most of its cost-effective subscription based model because the more words you can lay your hands on that are highly used, the better for you, your site and the visitors you are trying to attract.

Using Wordtracker is easy, and there are plenty of instructions on the site to learn how to use it in a matter of moments.

Don't forget when using Wordtracker to note how many searches, or the popularity, of each term. This is useful info to get visitors.

Google Adwords offers another tool for finding keywords. Sign up for a free account, then under Tools, you will find the Keyword Tool. This will give you plenty of ideas about top searched keywords you can include in your text, metas, etc.

Overture (once upon a time called Goto and now owned by Yahoo) also offers a free keyword tool.

There are more free keyword tools. You can search for them if you choose to keep extending your list....

Ok, how we doing? A few pages now one hopes, of those all important keywords and phrases.

And finally, Step 5: your website traffic stats

You should have traffic stats for your website. These show how people have found your site (search engines, links etc), where they come from, how long they stay, which pages they visited, and may tell you far more depending on which package you are using. It could be sitemeter, Webtrends, Webanalyzer, or one of many others. This is the most important information you have about your website.

You need to access your stats and find keywords by looking for 'referrals'. It may be hidden under another heading like 'search engine keywords'. What you are looking for is information about which keywords your visitors typed into the search engines which led them to visit your website.

It will surprise you no doubt to find that some terms have actually led to your site. If you run a Bed & breakfast and discover that for some bizarre reason "womble porn" leads to your site, then brighten up your day by writing down the most obscure ones and pinning them to your office wall! And once you have done that, write down all the keywords and phrases which have led people to your site over the last week, month or year, depending on how much data you have on this.

We could suggest 10 or more other places to look for keywords (The thesaurus on [Open] Office Word, blogs, forums, etc etc), but that's enough for starters.

So, you are done!

And I bet your coffee/tea/hot chocolate is cold, or possibly even days old, so make a new one and then ponder the words on that list.

How many of them are quite surprising? Expected? Lead to places you hadn't expected when you googled them? Unthought of by you previously? Definitely (not) included in your website? Highly competitive? Bring in lots of (unexpected) traffic?

This exercise on its own should open your eyes to popular keywords, what your competitors are doing, terms you may not have considered for your niche, or terms that mean something else entirely when you look on the Net. Sometimes, you may be using what you feel is a barely used, industry specific term and find it leads to sites in a different sector with large budgets who you have no chance of competing against.

We have a client who discovered a term they thought was very specific to their sector was actually up against the adult entertainment industry - the experts of search engine optimisation and capturing traffic. And that this had led to the client experiencing high traffic and visitor numbers on their website but very few sales. It didn't take long to rebrand the product and change the keywords associated with it and pull in a qualified audience who were actually interested in the client's products and not fetishes!

Anyway, now you have your keywords, the next step is to prioritise them into the order of importance for your potential visitors and then ensure that they are included in your website.

Tomorrow is another day. And it would be good if for now you just let that keyword list you have created have a time to mature. And for you to think about the implications of what you have discovered through creating it.

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Lulu self-publishers introduce a new widget

For many people, a residual income stream can be earned by writing a book. Lulu.com is one of the places where the entire process is simplified, allowing you to self-publish and sell online. Whether your book sells thousands or just a few each month, once it is done, it is a long tail marketing technique.

The book may be a collection of white papers that you offer to each client or customer - for instance, I am just in the process of writing our Web PR book for SMEs, or it may be a children's book, or a tale of your business and its development. There is a book in all of us, so they say, and really, with Lulu and the like, you have little to lose and much to gain.

Widgets are all the rage at the moment, and Lulu has just introduced a neat shopfront widget to add to your website, blog, facebook etc. In an act of flagrant self-promotion, here is one for two of my books: JFDI Community Broadband: South Witham, and JFDI Community Broadband: Wennington.

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Traffic stats

Why is it that so many companies seem so disinterested in their traffic stats? This information tells you who is coming to your website, where your site is working (or not), what keywords are leading to your site from the search engines, who has linked to you etc etc etc. If you are ignoring your traffic stats because it just seems too much work to look at them regularly, think again.

Without this information your marketing plan must be operating in the dark. How can you know when a particular press release has worked if you don't look to see how many visitors it encouraged to your site? If you offer e-commerce facilities, how are you tracking whether people are going through the whole process and becoming a customer, or when they are falling off the site halfway through the shopping cart? How do you know when a particular backlink is successful, and therefore target other similar sites? How do you know when there is an influx of customers from a particular country? etc etc

There are a multitude of reasons for keeping an eye on your traffic stats. And for analysing them so you can make your marketing more efficient and cost-effective. This doesn't mean spending hours poring over columns of figures, but at least check that you are getting the most of your marketing spend.

* When you put a press release out or an ad, include a tracker URL (one that is specific to that press release) so you can see the response rate
* Check that the keywords you are spending money on, or have optimised the site for are actually bringing in traffic to the site
* Look and see which countries your visitors are coming from. If you are trying to break into the EU, for example, are your marketing efforts working?
* how long are visitors staying on your site? Is it "sticky" - are they staying for a look round or just leaving after 1 page, 1 minute etc? It is unlikely they will become a customer if they have paid so little attention to what you are telling them!
* is your site traffic increasing over time? Does the increase bear any relation to your spend? In other words, are you getting value for money? Or could you refocus your efforts onto the techniques that are actually working?

If you do just one thing today, it should be to look at your traffic stats... Go on, log into them now.

Has the number of visitors risen in the last 3 months? If so, can you work out why?

Are visitors leaving in droves from a particular page? Can you work out what is wrong with that page?

Are they failing to complete the purchase process? Try it yourself and see if there is anything wrong with it.

How long are people staying on the site? If less than 3 minutes, there is something failing to appeal to them and you need to increase the amount of time people stay on your site by adding interesting and tempting text and information, calls to action etc.

Where are the majority of your referrals coming from? The search engines, links on other sites, forums? Check the links on other sites and forums - make sure everything being said is positive. You never know, there might be people slagging off you and your products out there.

Are the keyword referrals those you expected to see? Or are people searching more frequently on terms you hadn't realised they might search on? If so, add information to your site that captures that traffic more effectively.

What is your top exit page? Take a long hard look at it and work out why.

There, not taken you long has it? And you have undoubtedly learnt several things that you hadn't realised before commencing this exercise. Now, take some action to correct the things that are wrong with your site, and have another look next week to see what the changes are to your stats.

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Targetting the younger income

Are your products and services aimed at a younger demographic? If so, you need to spek da lngwij!

As mobile phones become the must-have item we all own, including 4 year olds it seems, the English language is suffering.

Good spelling and grammar appear to be going out of the window as youngsters (and adults) attempt to cram their messages into 160 characters. This is having an impact not just in SMS speak, but is spreading into the real world and online.

In the real world we see it most commonly as a grammatical error in the overuse of the grocer's apostrophe eg potatoe's, taxi's etc. However, more and more often, it is the general misspelling of words. Not just commonly misspelt words, like accommodation but even potatos. If you offer acomodation, accomodation, or even acomodashun, you won't pick up search traffic from those who choose to type that into Google if your website only includes the correct spelling in its keywords.

And the sad thing is that, as our 8 year olds turn into young, well-heeled spenders, (who can't spell), looking to spend a weekend away with their partner, they are unlikely to fall across your hotel, guest house, B&B or campsite if you haven't realised that they will be spelling one of your key search terms wrongly when they look for you. Some of the problem is solved by search engines, such as Google, offering a spell check service and pointing them in the right direction. However, other search facilities, link directories etc don't.

Additionally, aside from misspelling keywords and phrases, there is the need to communicate effectively with your target audience. You need to write in a style that hits all the right buttons. Obviously, depending on your products and services, this needs to be approached in different ways, especially if you also target an older demographic who may not wish to read product information or articles in ... ahem, let's call it a 'contemporary style'!

For instance, let's take I want one of those.com (IWOOT) and consider the writing style. It's relaxed (or chillaxed as my kids would say), passionate, youthful, and appealing. It triggers the "I want one of those" emotions perfectly.

They achieve this by understanding their audience, and getting into their shoes.

As part of our Information Architecture process, we ask our clients to consider 5 different potential customers. Who they are, where they might work, what they wear to work, and start to think how to market to that person, or that demographic. You don't necessarily need to consider what they had for breakfast, or which brands they buy, but it does all help.

And then you need to write for those people, or that person. Speak their language.

For marketing to the younger generation, it is probably a good idea to get hold of a young person, tell them what you are trying to sell to them, and get them to describe it. It is quite amazing how differently this type of focus group activity can make you describe your product or services. Young people can usually be bribed with sweets or paid minimal amounts of money for this activity, and school holidays, when parents will do almost anything to entertain their children, are a good time for a recruitment drive if your target demographic is the under 18s!

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How to give information away for free, and why

You decide to produce a white paper to educate people about your products, or about one aspect of using your product. You want to offer it for free as a sales tactic, or to raise brand awareness, or as a service to existing purchasers of the product/services.

You push out a press release (or use another promotional strategy) and it hits some of the appropriate news sites, ezines etc. People start to click on the link to view or download the white paper.

And this is where so many people trying to use this promotion tactic get it wrong. What are these interested people, who are generally making a spontaneous decision to view your free white paper, faced with?

A sign up form.

Your personal details please. This can often be 20 or more fields asking questions about name, address, email, what sector they work in, job description, where they heard of you etc etc etc. And if they are lucky (not!), you will offer them a chance to click a few more times before they get close to the white paper - to view your privacy policy, to uncheck the box for further mailings, to read about the fantastic newsletter you will be sending out daily, etc.

DON'T DO IT! Let people download the white paper for free, unencumbered by form completion. Don't ask for personal details. You honestly don't need them.

Even a two field form - first name and email address - is a turn off. After all, they are going to ask themselves: what are you going to send me now you have that info? What are you going to do with my personal info?

It is likely they know nothing about you as a company, and you may be about to sell the email addresses for all they know. They do not want to have to look up your company history, reviews of your company and products etc just to download a free white paper which may or may not even be of interest to them.

It might be the most interesting and exciting white paper since sliced bread, but if you want to give it away for free, don't ask for anything in return.

Watch your traffic stats. How many people come to your download page and how many people actually signed up? Try asking for personal details from one set of ads, and not from another. Look at the difference in responses - there will be one and it might surprise you how many people are put off when you ask for their email address.

How to do it right.....

Include in your white paper calls to action to buy the product, sign up for a newsletter, and/or get in touch.

Try different adverts - wording, images etc.

Have different landing pages for each of your press releases or adverts about the white paper, all leading to the same download but with tracker URLs so you can see how many people responded to each advert. Then next time you can focus on the most effective ad.

For free info such as a white paper, don't harvest email addresses. If they are interested, they will get back in touch because you have given them full contact details, URLs of further information etc. Not because you bombard them with newsletters, autoresponders etc that may be of no further interest which they then need to unsubscribe from.

OR offer a non-compulsory registration to receive further information at this point. But don't make the download reliant on that registration. You want them to read about you, not be forced away by the need to register.

Make it easy for them to find further info without needing to pick up the phone.

Add specific pages to your site that deal with further issues leading on from the white paper, and track the number of visitors who come directly from the white paper. They are going to be far more interested in your products/services. After all, they have taken another step to find out more, and they have read the first white paper.

Include more calls to action on those pages and this is where you begin to harvest email addresses, more information about them etc but be gentle how many questions you ask at a time, or how much personal information you seek from them.

Offer a further white paper(s) within the white paper. You can ask for an email address at that point because they are expressing further interest, and you can ask them to register in order to get yet more free info from you. But it shouldn't be compulsory to register their details.

Internet marketers are a whizz at asking for basic registration details, and harvest enormous numbers of email addresses. You then find yourself on an autoresponder which sends out messages every time they come up with a new info product, or to follow up on the fact you haven't taken advantage of their latest offer, but it has been extended for 3 more days, and NOW is the time to buy etc. It gets quite tedious, and the pressure to buy is what the IMs count on and include emotional triggers each and every time they mail you.

Why do they do this?

Because Internet Marketers are making big bucks out of selling you their knowledge, software, tools etc. Really big bucks. But they also openly admit that their databases of email addresses often only include 50% or (much) less of people who have responded more than once to their marketing ploys.

Customer acquisition and loyal customers are important to you so don't put off over half of your respondents with your tactics the first time they come to you. Don't demand demanding personal details in exchange for a free white paper.

Let 'em have it. If they like what they see/read, they will be back. And if they aren't, then maybe, if they are to become a valued and valuable customer to you, and you are targetting your advertising/marketing to those places where they hang out, they'll see an ad of yours again, and be back anyway.

Don't waste marketing energy trying to gather up EVERYONE. Focus on those who are most likely to make a purchasing decision, and once they get in touch, treat them well and look after them.

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