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Sport & Exercise Marketing Platform
iStadia is a powerful platform for marketing your sports or exercise business, whether you are a small business, a consultant, or a corporate enterprise.
Because iStadia is content-driven you have control over who you reach, using keywords to attract the right kind of eyes. Content such as articles and blogs are an important method for building trust in your brand and bringing potential customers closer to a decision to buy. If you want to attract athletes, you write articles and blogs about thing that athletes are interested in. If you want to attract exercisers, sporting parents, or sports coaches write for them and they will find you. More on using content for marketing.
Your profile is also a very important marketing tool. It has been developed to be attractive to search engines, particularly by using the additional features (such as custom title and summary) that are available to Premium and Premium Plus members.
How do I go about exploiting the marketing potential of iStadia?
1) Identify your target market
Hopefully this is really obvious to you, but often people say to us "I'm not sure iStadia hits my target market".
Let's bust that myth right now.
Your content - and the keywords (next step) that it contains, will define the people that your content reaches - whether your profile or other content (later). In other words, we provide a platform that lets you reach your target market.
The vast majority of our visitors come from search engines, where they find your content. That's what's so important about content. It really is the engine that drives the internet, and iStadia is no exception to that.
"Amazing. 26 hours after posting the blog post it ranks number 2 on google. Off to generate a big list of long term keywords to play with."
Dr Gordon Cameron, Sports and Orthopaedic Surgeon
2) Choose the keywords for which you want to be found - that will be searched for by your target market.
This is a really important step, and not to be skipped. Think about what people might actually search for, not clever or fancy terms that people don't know.
For example: "Sports Marketing" is a generic and very competitive search term. It attracts 9,900 searches a month on Google, but the competition for rankings means that your chances of getting onto page 1, and getting a share of those searches, is slim.
"Sports Marketing London", however, gets somewhere in the region of 600 searches a month, but advertiser competition is low and you can be confident that if you are a sports marketing company in London the searcher is looking for you, and not general information about the field.
Rob (iStadia co-owner) says, "When I was working as a sport psychologist I changed my keyword strategy from focusing on 'sport psychology' to 'sport psychologist'. I got fewer hits, but more enquiries. It seems obvious now but for a long time I chased hits and got them - from people that didn't want to buy!"
3) Put the keywords into your title*, profile text, and tags.
Think of this as the golden thread that tells search engines that your profile (and the same is true of blogs, articles and news) is a relevant page to show someone searching for those keywords.
You also have a profile summary*. This is like an elevator pitch and should scream "click me" (metaphorically, that is) as it will appear on searched for you on search engines.
*Requires Premium or Premium Plus membership.Staying with the example of the sports marketing consultant in London, you might simply make your title "MyCo Sports Marketing, London".
Don't 'stuff' your tags box with keywords that might dilute the relevance of your page. Stay focused. Don't be tempted to be all things to all people
4) Write your profile copy
It is really hard to overemphasize the importance of your profile. Used well, it may be more important to your business than your own website. Of course, this depends on how big your business and web budget is. But for $9 a month, what kind of a web presence can you get elsewhere?
You can get a free website, but what are the chances that it is really doing anything for your business? Nowhere else on the web is as focused on sport & exercise professionals as iStadia, and that focus means that you won't be hidden among millions of other profile.
iStadia has been designed so that once you have signed up to your Premium or Premium Plus membership, you have access to a suite of tools that are there to make you more visible.
Whatever your membership level, the most important thing about your profile copy is that it states clearly to visitors that you have something to offer.
Write for people first. Yes, you need to get your keywords in for search engines, but your copy has got to read well to the human eye.
Focus on the benefits of what you are selling - what can you do for them? WhatÕs their pain, and how can you take it away? People don't necessarily want to see your qualifications first. You might be (rightly) proud of your certification or accreditation, and some clients might want the comfort of knowing that you have credentials, but these are irrelevant unless you can convince someone that you have something they need. Focus first on the target customer and their needs - not yours!
5) Set up your Signature
Your signature is added to any posts that you make, anywhere on the site. It gives people a chance to see what you do and search engines a relevant link to your own site or profile (crucial for gaining rankings).
Think of your signature as a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to where you want visitors to go. Whether that is your profile or your own site, include it.
4) Post content. Regularly
This isn't nearly as difficult as you might think. Think little and often.
Why? Because very piece of content you post attracts both people and search engines.
You should have articles, case studies, or company news at your fingertips. If not, why not? Articles in particular bring potential customers closer to a buying decision. You are building a bridge between the customer and a sale. That's not to say that the work is finished, but they help. Sharing your news - new contracts, new products or services, industry news - all help too.
Article Marketing is a Key Strategy
Article Marketing is a highly effective way of establishing credibility, trust and reputation. It can also deliver high levels of focused web traffic.
The key is in the writing.
To be effective, articles should
- - Define a problem
- - Make a compelling case to fix that problem - pick the wound a little
- - Present a solution and a call to action (e.g. visit your website/profile)
Content, whether an article or blog, should not be a thinly disguised advert, but should be worth reading.
Tip: Premium and Premium Plus members can add an excerpt to each article. This is just long enough to fit nicely under the link to your article on search engines and should be written to make your article attractive to potential visitors.
Blogging is easy and can be just as useful. You can just share what comes into your head that day. You can respond to events in the real world. You could build a regular bank of hints and tips, and release them as short blog posts over a period of time. Simple. Just be consistent with your goals.
Premium and Premium Plus members also get:
- - A unique title and description for their blog 'home'. Again, this is important for visibility and search engine optimization.
- - The ability to display your latest content on your profile, thus feeding views to your content and ensuring that it gets crawled more often by search engines.
5) Advertise your events
If you run seminars, workshops, conferences or training courses, ensure that you post them as events on iStadia! Once you've signed up, it's a free advert. Use it! All of the previous advice about content apply to posting events.
If you need further convincing that a Premium or Premium Plus membership can give your business a real advantage, talk to us.
Better still, don't take our word for it. When you sign up for either a Premium or a Premium Plus membership you automatically get one month for free to try it out with no-obligation to continue.
