It’s Help Desk time! Today, Russell asks this question.
I’m 59 yrs. old and didn’t grow up with computers. I find it very difficult to figure out which computer skills I need to know to market on the net. I hear people talking about creating capture pages, building web sites ,building your lists…but I need someone to tell me exactly which skills I need to develop to accomplish those things and where to go online to get this training. Thanks for your help, Russell
A: Thank you for entrusting me with such an important question. When my friend Kelly McCausey was asked a big question like this she said something like “I feel you just asked me to swallow an elephant”. That’s what I feel now 🙂 This is a big mega huge topic but I’m going to give it a go.
You want brutal honesty? The bottom line is, you need more marketing and business skills than you need technical skills. If you have some capital to invest, then invest in a good web designer or a good virtual assistant who is capable of doing these things for you. Let them handle building web sites, capture pages, blogs and so on. You learn about the marketing aspects such as why should you build a list. How do you promote the website, tactics to get JV partners, create content or create ideas for content.
I do not know where you are right now in this journey. Do you already have a product? Do you have a market you are interested to enter in (a niche)? The way I see it, this whole online marketing this is a process. A series of steps. So start with the basics.
If you already have a product or a target market you’d like to focus on, your first step is to create a web site, blog or some kind of web presence. If you are brand new and you don’t have much capital. Start with a website builder like InternetBasedFamily.
Another way you can go is a blog. Hire someone to set up the blog on your own domain. If you want to DIY check out BloggingStarterPack. When you tear everything down, a blog really is just a web site (I know some people will want to debate this point with me) but that’s just a technical fact.
The rest of the stuff mentioned – building lists, building capture pages come after you set up your web presence. So consider that step 2. If it were me building a site, I’d put list building as the next thing to tackle. Once you have these three things down pat, you have a good foundation. Everything else you do from then on will be done to promote your blog/website and get people to signup for your list.
On a parting note, don’t wait to learn certain skills before you take the plunge. Internet Marketing is a very hands on industry. As long as you can email, complete forms you’ll get there because there are tons and tons of tools that make the tech stuff easy. Pick the thing you commit yourself to do and go for it.
