The Forge

Photo by Esther Lin/STRIKEFORCE

The guys here at Insight Forge are all pretty big fans of mixed martial arts (UFC, Strikeforce, Pride, Dream etc.) and in particular of heavyweight champ Fedor Emelianenko.  I’m not sure who caught the recent Strikeforce broadcast on CBS, but it was pretty great to see “the Last Emperor” prove himself yet again with a 2nd round knockout of Brett Rogers.

Which brings me to the subject of MMA Marketing.  Because mixed martial arts is still a burgeoning sport many of the larger advertising agencies and web marketing firms haven’t yet caught onto how big MMA is going to be.  The sport has international appeal, is  immensely popular on all ends of the globe and has the potential to dominate the 18-35 age bracket (mostly male).  This same age bracket spends a huge amount of time online and can be targeted accurately through online marketing mediums.  I’d like to go over a few of these specific mediums:

Web Design & SEO:  There are still quite a few high profile fighters out there whose websites look like they are from 1993. Fedor’s current official  homepage is fairly outdated, is a hybrid between English and Russian and was last updated in 2007.

Mind you, when someone Googles ‘Fedor’, this official homepage pops on the 1st page of results.   The keyword ‘Fedor’ gets nearly 2 million Google searches per month.   Given Fedor’s popularity within the targeted MMA Marketing age bracket, you’d think that someone would have fixed his site up.   Fedor, if you’re reading this, we’d be glad to help out.

Twitter: Twitter is fast becoming a great way for fighters to keep their fans updated with daily training regimens, upcoming fights, appearances, sponsors etc. Although there are already quite a few MMA fighters that are taking advantage of Twitter, there are many that haven’t yet picked up this good marketing habit.

One notably absent fighter, again, is Fedor.  Someone recently created a fake Fedor Twitter account and tweeted before his Nov. 7th fight that he may have the flu (which must have caused quite a few gamblers to freak out).  Which goes to show:  a fighter with Fedor’s clout should be in control of his own marketing destiny with an official twitter account.  As far as translating his tweets between Russian to English and keeping them up to date – Fedor, once again we’d be glad to be of service.

Forums: MMA forums on sites like Sherdog.com are amazingly active with fans and fighters alike. Forum users will post anything from their opinions on the latest MMA events to their opinions on health care reform. This is a great place for MMA marketers to reach out to potential customers, whether they are promoting a fighter’s newly designed homepage, an upcoming local MMA event, a fight gear site, or anything else related.

Promoters must beware that  simply blasting out spammy posts about your site will certainly cause you to be banned from these forums.   Your posts need to fit in with the topic of conversation and do so in a subtle way.

In conclusion:

I’d like to leave everyone with Fedor’s recent work of art:

Insight Forge has an MMA marketing and SEO skill set. If any fighters, brands or event promoters are in need of services, feel free to contact us for a free site review and campaign estimate.

Insight Forge has expertise in Search Engine Optimization for Resorts and the vacation industry in general.   While many of the basics of SEO apply to driving organic traffic towards resort websites, there also are several specific details to hone in on.

I’d like to take a minute to highlight some of these tips for Resort Marketing.

1.  Location is Key Your target keywords should definitely be relevant to your resort’s location.  Potential visitors will be typing things like ‘New Hampshire Resort‘ into Google.  You can even afford to get more specific with the keywords, such as honing in on a specific town in New Hampshire.  Even if the traffic is trimmer as you get more targeted, it also will be more relevant to a person’s search and is likely to convert into a booking.

2. A Hosted Blog is Integral In a travel industry full of big players, differentiating your resort with a hosted blog is a very big deal to getting ranked.  This is where you will have the opportunity to expound on the various amenities, seasonal deals, mini-vacation specials, activities and other great things that make your resort unique.  This super targeted content will contribute to making Google see why your resort is relevant for those location specific keywords.  We recommend at least two posts a week using a hosted Wordpress solution (www.myresort.com/blog).

3.  Targeted Social Media Instead of trying to reach as many people as possible with your social media efforts, try and target them towards your resort’s location and specialties.  If you are a ski resort, hop on the #ski Twitter hash, and blast out some of your blog posts mixed with other intresting ski-related articles.  Visit some location relevant forums and begin to create a repetoir with users, before letting them know why your resort rocks.

We have some other tricks up our sleeve… If you own or market for a resort feel free to contact us and we’d be glad to give your resort site a review, free of charge.

Welcome to the Forge, the official blog of Insight Forge.

Our team will be broadcasting / writing from the dense fog of San Francisco’s Inner Sunset, so forgive us if our posts suddenly take a turn toward the dark side of Internet Marketing (not black-hat SEO, but rather geeks dressed as Sith Lords).

Anyways… we’ll try to keep our posts here  informal as well as  informative.  We may at times stray off our primary topics of internet marketing, SEO, and advertising to discuss one of our favorite San Francisco bars, a trending internet meme, or whatever else is on our minds.

Essentially, we hope to make this a blog a bit different from the norm in marketing.

So stay on your toes and get ready, cause here we come.