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Internet Marketing Lessons 3 and 4 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

If you want a brief intro to Thomas Paine and why I mined Internet marketing lessons from his life and writings…

Read last week’s entry on Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business. I also discussed the first 2 of 10 Internet marketing lessons that Paine left us with:

1. Figure out the specific content that you can passionately contribute to your market/audience.
2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.

Here are Internet Marketing Lessons 3 and 4 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business.

3. Have One Main Point 

As you bring your content, personal brand, and “angle” to the marketplace, keep each “piece” of content simple by focusing on one main point that you reinforce through the beginning, middle, and end.

With Common Sense, Thomas Paine had one main point:  It’s common sense for America to seek independence.

Paine, in his introduction, let his readers know that his pamphlet lays out the irrefutable “Doctrine of Independence.”  As he makes his case, Paine writes that putting off separation from Britain will only delay the inevitable because “nothing but independence, i.e. a continental form of government, can keep the peace of the continent and preserve it inviolate from civil wars” (38).  And in the second to last paragraph of Common Sense, he concludes, “Independance is the only BOND that can tye and keep us together” (62).

4. Make Your Content Rich with Target Keywords and Phrases
Going out on a limb here, but I don’t think optimizing Common Sense for the search engines was on the forefront of Thomas Paine’s mind.  Nevertheless, he did a solid job of working into his content keywords and phrases that the colonists would have been Googling if the PC and Internet weren’t still 200+ years off.

Doing a keyword density analysis on Common Sense shows that Paine penned the words and phrases:

• “King” 136 times.
• “Govern” or “government” over 170 times.
• “Consititution” 26 times.
• “Independence” 22 times.
• “Form of government” 12 times.
• “Hereditary succession” (He wasn’t a big fan!) 9 times.
• “Common sense” 6 times.
• “Monarchial government” (Also, not such a fan) 4 times.

And he worked the words “independence” and “independent” into many longtail keyword phrases, which are meaningful phrases of three or more words likely to be searched on.

Don’t rip off of Paine’s keyword list, build your own!

• Use Google’s keyword tool, to build a list of shorttail (one to two word phrases) and longtail (three or more word phrases) that people are likely to search on in your target market, industry, or niche.
• Develop a list of 25 to 100 keywords that it are important for you to rank high on in the search engines.
• Either plan out your content around specific keywords and phrases, or look for opportunities to work keywords and phrases from your list into the title and body of your content.

Great job, you’ve made it through 40% of the lessons!  As you’re doing your duediligence, comment on this blog to share the type of personal brand you’re developing or how you’re carving out a niche for yourself.

Come back next week for two more Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine.

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

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