Most bloggers know that one way to encourage people to sign up to their blog is to offer an incentive. Some kind of free report, or ebook or other gift that is a tempting reward for a visitor to transform into a newsletter subscriber.

If you’re struggling to create your incentive, or your incentive doesn’t seem to be converting well, read this article. We’re going to look at how to quickly create an incentive that works as hard as possible to get you the right audience—and get them wanting your freebie.

Don’t give them what they need

It goes without saying that your freebie needs to be valuable to the customer, but giving too much can overwhelm them to the point that they can’t be bothered to sign up for it. Even if it’s something you know they desperately need.

Make it quick (to create and consume)

Valuable content that can be applied straight away is a very attractive offer for someone with limited time, but with a problem that you can solve.

What problem do you pick to solve?

With your visitors all having slightly different interests, and with you knowing so much about your chosen subject, how on Earth do you decide what problem to solve, and what kind of freebie to give away to encourage people to give you their details?

For example, if you teach social media marketing for small online businesses, your customers might be coming to you because they want to:

get more clients

build brand awareness

improve customer loyalty

increase viral marketing for the company

learn more about social media for businesses.

Once you have your top five, pick the one problem that you feel 70-80% of your target market is having. Let’s say in this instance it is: “getting more clients.” Read more at www.problogger.net

The path of the musician has become easier in the modern age, with online resources allowing musicians to get their music to the masses quicker than ever before. While persistence, dedication, and actually having good music all play a major role, there’s an additional factor that’s even more critical: you have to approach marketing correctly.

One of the major things to keep in mind is that MySpace is no longer the musical mecca that it once was. While still an excellent resource to check out established bands, much of the MySpace flock has moved over to Facebook. Facebook has some major advantages, such as the ability to quickly sell band merchandise and music through the ReverbNation Store, the opportunity to set up events, live music players and a veritable mosh pit of other useful band applications synced with Facebook.

One of the most common mistakes bands make on Facebook is setting up a “Group” or a “Profile” instead of a “Page.” What’s the difference? While you’ll have to manually go in to manage permissions, add friends, or otherwise interact with people from a “Profile” or “Group” page, an actual “Page” is designed to allow for the fastest possible spread of your band. Beyond allowing people to “like” your page without you giving them permission to do so, Pages have integrated advertising options, are displayed or suggested to users more frequently, and give some major revenue opportunities.

One of the most important and difficult parts of getting exposure is selling merchandise. Selling music, t-shirts, and other gear will help spread word about your music, and it generates the cash you need for simple things like gas for the band vehicle or recording fees, etc.

Now that you’ve set up a page and populated it with some basic content, you’ll need to actually bring people there to see it. As always, one of the best approaches is “word of mouth.” Word of mouth can be done online. As always, start by spreading words to friends, existing fans, family members, and anyone else in your social network. From there, begin including your Facebook info in your other materials, including: Read more at www.blueglass.com

One of the most common predictions is the growth of online advertising spend over the next however-many years. It’s the prediction that keeps the engine turning and the machine moving forward. After all, if there is no advertising then why are we doing this whole Internet and mobile thing anyway? Are we just trying to make life better for people? C’mon man!

One metric that no one in the marketing industry likes to talk about is just how accepted and effective online ads are. Well, I take that back. If the study says that these ads are a good thing then it’s presented as common sense and logic but if you see the kind of numbers that AdAge produced through a study done by Ipsos Observer, then the industry will look for the closest rug to sweep this one under. Emarketer presents these findings.

It’s safe to say that most people don’t like ads in general. They like to be entertained by them but not interrupted by them. They tolerate them but when they can watch a show or an event with limited commercial interruption or no ads at all they are quickly reminded how nice it is to just be able to take in some content without taking in unsolicited pitches.

So while it is never a good idea to draw strong conclusions from one piece of research, I always pay more attention to studies that find things to be less than perfect in the marketing world. This study does that with mobile and social ads (in other words, the future of the online space, right?) being the least liked ads across all media.

Apparently, just because everyone is starting to become mobile it doesn’t mean everyone wants to be hawked in the mobile environment. Face it, ads are intrusive on a small screen in that they take up valuable real estate or, even worse, they delay the ability to get information quickly that is the most appealing aspect of the mobile experience.

What do these attitudes by consumers actually mean for the Internet of the future? Like most things, it depends. It depends on just what people will be willing to ingest with regard to marketing messages in the mobile space. I think it will create a need for marketers to be less ad oriented and more “ad in the form of content” focused. Advertising will need to be useful rather than just “in the way” in this new, advertising real estate deprived, environment. Read more at www.marketingpilgrim.com

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When you stop looking at your catalogs and sales brochures as simple advertisements and start viewing them as tools to get people talking, good things will happen. A few ways you can encourage people to share them:

1> Feature your fans 2> Send extra 3> Make them look smart Read more at gaspedal.com

Today we’re launching a new registration tool that gives website owners the ability to offer quick, easy and social options for sign-up.

By minimizing the friction associated with signing up for a new account and making it easy for people to bring their friends with them, we’ve seen that people are more likely to complete the sign up process, stay on sites longer, share more content, and come back more often. For example, in beta tests with FriendFeed, Facebook sign ups increased 300%.

See more at developers.facebook.com

So the list below consists of people with whom I’ve built varying degrees of relationship during my usage of social media and social networking sites. In fact, I have spent hours on the phone or in person with many of the people listed. Not only do I consider them Social Media Phenoms, I consider many of them friends. I hope that, like me, you’ll manage to build invaluable relationships with them in the days and weeks ahead.

So the list below consists of people with whom I’ve built varying degrees of relationship during my usage of social media and social networking sites. In fact, I have spent hours on the phone or in person with many of the people listed. Not only do I consider them Social Media Phenoms, I consider many of them friends. I hope that, like me, you’ll manage to build invaluable relationships with them in the days and weeks ahead. Without further ado, here are some people I consider Social Media Phenoms: Read more at immediateinfluenceblog.com