Keller Hawthorne, FresheVenture
This is the final installment looking at Keller Hawthorne’s site, FresheVenture.com. In part one, we learned how she uses original content, along with sound SEO strategies, to develop her website like prime real estate. In part two, we saw how she increases the value of this real estate by driving traffic to her website with give-aways, contests, and interviewing the movers and shakers in her industry.
In this post, we will look at some of the strategies Keller employs when it comes to off-page marketing. Normally, when you hear off-page marketing, you think of online advertising, email marketing, forum/blog commenting, and social media.
Keller espouses these strategies, and appears to have practiced them early on, but there has been little activity of this sort lately (at least that I could find). Instead, I was surprised to find that her approach to off-page marketing is to bring it back to her own website.
Get Reviewed by a Big Name
In the previous post, we saw how Keller sought after, and received, the attention of Yaro Starak through reviews of his products which eventually led to an interview with him. In this example, she set her sights on John Chow.
While promoting one of Yaro’s courses, she received an email from John Chow, who was also promoting the course. He was offering a free website review of her site (he normally charges $500) if she ordered the course through him. Having planned on signing up for the course anyway, she jumped at this opportunity.
The review, Boost Your Internet Business with Fresh eVenture, was seen by thousands of his readers. It was great exposure for Keller from a guru in her industry. Perhaps, it was a little too much exposure. Why?
How to Handle Critics and Hecklers
The exposure caught the attention of one commenter who attacked both John Chow and Keller for the review. It wasn’t just a critic, the commenter was quite vulgar and viciously attacked Keller’s credibility. Not only did he attack Keller on her own website, he repeated his attacks by posting his comments on John Chow’s site as well.
There’s two sayings that come to mind when facing a situation like this.
- First, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
- Second, when life throws you lemons, open a Starbucks …err I mean lemonade stand.
So what did Keller do? She turned the comments into a blog posting on her site. You can read about it all in My Controversial Blog Review on John Chow Dot Com.
This post fanned the flames of the controversy sending more traffic to John’s site to defend Keller, which, in turn, caused more people to read the review and visit FresheVenture.com. It also generated many comments, and still catches attention of new readers weeks after the fact.
Give an Interview to an Upcoming Blogger
This is not the only time that Keller has managed to take a traditional off-page marketing tool and bring it back to her website. Jared Little, from The Money Cult, followed the example Keller set in part two of this series. He participated in Keller’s Best WordPress Design 2009 contest, and after catching Keller’s attention, he asked to interview her.
Keller agreed to the interview, and brought it back to her site through her post, The Money Cult Picked My Brain – Listen to My First Phone Interview!, announcing the interview and sending traffic to Jared’s blog. She also used social media sites like Twitter to drum up excitement and send traffic to the post she made on her own site.
You can listen to the interview, My 1st Phone Interview – A Real Life Success Story, on Jared’s site. It’s a great interview. It was also a great win-win situation, and an excellent example of shameless self-promotion. In this situation, to help the new blogger meant that Keller had to publicize the interview about herself.
Of course, she could have just sent all the traffic to Jared’s site without publishing a post on her site, but this would have reduced the traffic she received (and most likely Jared received) and would have cost Jared a link from a highly ranked site – a lose-lose proposition. She could also have not promoted the interview at all, like some gurus, and just take in the free traffic from Jared’s efforts.
Become a Guest Blogger / Bring in a Guest Blogger
I wasn’t able to find any examples of Keller writing a guest blog from her site, but as I pointed out in part one, her older posts are hard to find since there is no well organized archive page. By now, we should know Keller well enough to know that, if she were to be a guest blogger on another site, she would have found some way to bring it back to her own site.
Too many bloggers treat a guest blog post like a banner ad with the purchase price being their post. They do not actively try to drive traffic to the post, they do not bring the post back to their website following Keller’s examples, and they do not monitor and respond to the comments as if they were made on their own blog.
Perhaps, this is why so many bloggers treat guest posts like a red-headed step-child just filling a posting spot while they take a break. Why should a blogger who is sharing their audience through a guest post spot help promote the post if the guest blogger doesn’t?
And That’s a Wrap
There is so much more that I could write about Keller’s blog. It has truly been a great resource for me as I launched my blog and continue to build my audience. I hope that you found this information helpful.
If you missed the first two parts of this series, you can find them using the links below. Next time, as we continue our blog walking, we will look at a great site that walks you step-by-step through setting up your own WordPress blog.
The Shameless Self-Promoter Keller Hawthorne (1/3)
The Shameless Self-Promoter Keller Hawthorne (2/3)
DISCLOSURE: This is not a paid review – there is absolutely no compensation of any kind associated with this post. The owner of the website was not made aware of the contents of this post prior to it being posted on my blog. Unless disclosed elsewhere in the post, no notification of the post was provided to the owner of the website prior to it being posted on my blog (Since the first two posts in this series were labeled x/3 the owner knew to expect 1 more posts. No other notice was provided.). All logos or images from the website were used without prior permission and will be removed from the post upon request of copyright owner.