We are social-tribal animals, atferall

How Did Personal Video Eclipse Entertainment Video | chrisbrogan.com:
"BUT personal media, making conversations using internet video, seems to be on the rise. With tools like Seesmic and ooVoo and Skype Video, there are lots of ways to have conversations between interested people. This could be business. It might be church. What do YOU know about it? Some quick thoughts to start the conversation."

Chris Brogan has a point.

Why are videos, especially, followed by social media now telling the search engines what they should be following? (His reference to iTunes is a bit the exception - but iTunes was built to share money, not stories.)

Because, at our base, we still live in a legend-filled world. We analyze our environments by comparing stories. Personal stories are more valuable than Hollywood versions (except where producers really follow Campbell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces").

This notion explains why "Cluetrain Manifesto" was such a hit - and is still true. And why corporate top-down structures don't get it (Comcast being an exception - because their business is social communication...) You can't run a corporation like a general from "Art of War" and expect to then be able to carry on ad hoc conversations and marketing at the same time.

And who are the "authorities" - people who consistently tell good stories. Who do you listen to? Why? Figure those questions out and you'll learn oh so much about yourself, you'll feel you somehow put your underwear on after your pants/pantsuit. (Graphic - TMI.)

Mastermind Groups Shortchanged

How to shortchange a Mastermind Group.

Ran into this from the linked blog (which I subscribe to) -

Business Coaching: How To Run A Mastermind Group:

"Size of group: Best to have about six to eight people in the group to bring in plenty of ideas to the mastermind group but not too many to make the process overwhelming.

Process: Divide the meeting into four segments of say 15 minutes each.

1. The person seeking advice describes the process in as much detail as they can.

2. The other mastermind group members ask their questions to find out more detail and to increase their understanding of the problem.

3. Now that they are fully informed and understand, the mastermind group offer up suggestions and ideas to solve the problem.

4. In the final segment, the person with the problem picks out the best ideas and makes a commitment to take certain action between this meeting and the next meeting.

Good advice from Rich Schefren on the running of the mastermind group and he made the important point that the group will hold the member accountable and that it is unacceptable to fail to implement and effectively waste the time of the group."

While this is useful for getting helpful solutions, along the lines of Jay Abraham, it isn't actually a mastermind group. It's a brainstorming group where your feet are held to the fire to use their data. Brainstorming, not a true mastermind group.

Read Napoleon Hill, "Think and Grow Rich" Chapter 10. That's a Master Mind group. You have a plan and you attract mentors or hire specialists which can help you with specific parts of that plan. They don't know the whole plan - they just know what you require of them. And it's a give-and-take with mentors - you give them something they need which is valuable for their time (or you simply buy their books and tapes and read them, so "hiring" them virtually). Look up Kiyosaki's (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) examples on this of getting mentors. A mentor can be anyone or anything you can learn from, who/which helps you solve your problems.

Don't do focus groups. Do brainstorm with others. But work to form real network links - the "strong tie" - to get practical, helpful advice in their specialty areas. (Getting a bunch of gardeners who don't use the internet and are business failures - they garden only as a hobby - to tell you how to create an ecommerce startup would be complete folly, a mastermind group failure.)

Luck to us all...

Blogs, Evangelism, and Word-Of-Mouth

As referred by Charles Heflin:

The Truth About Creating a High-traffic Blog:

"I want to suggest that very highly trafficked single-author blogs are knocking the ball out of the park in at least two of the following three core areas:

* Search
* Social media
* Evangelism"

Some points to note:

1. Search is playing catch-up to social media.
2. A blog is a part of social media.
3. Evangelism is word-0f-mouth (perhaps on steroids).

My underlying question is - "Why do you blog?"

To blog, you either do it as a hobby/therapeutic outlet (and have a day job), or professionally (this is your day job).

If you do it professionally, you are monetizing it in some fashion. Meaning, what you post and how you post and how often you post is connected to some product or service you offer as an exchange for that commodity called money. (Unless you swap stuff for your bandwidth - or live off a rich relative.)

So - success in this blogging venue is either
1) Top rankings and bragging rights. (Still got that day job?)
2) Clickthroughs to PPC, affiliate links, or your own ecommerce site. (What day job?)
3) Constant requests for paid speaking gigs - and more bragging rights (plus a captive audience to listen to your bragging).

Social media marketing means you are using blogs (and other media) to get qualified leads and buyers to your paying links.

Sequence is:
1) You post great content - on your blog and/or other social media.
2) Search engines find these and send you even more traffic.
3) People clickthrough to your monetization links.
4) You deliver your product or service to them and then post some more content. (Repeat and rinse - your mileage may vary.)

Good content and good products give you word of mouth - great content and great products give you evangelists.

Monetization and evangelism cross - and it's called joint ventures (mutually profitable back-scratching).

Blogging is the tip of an iceberg. And unless you sail a Titanic, you can navigate these waters quite profitably as a single-author blogger.

How Inernet Marketing Pays its Way - who supports top marketers and why

Internet Marketing is paid for by people who aren't possibly going to get all they can out of anything.

By statistic, they mostly all have day jobs and if they do finish this ebook, or package, or use the program other than once - it would be rare.

Just check around. Any survey will find the same thing.

Pareto Principle at work. 80/20 rule - 20 percent will actually produce 80% of the testimonials and income. But it's broken down on the Bell Curve, more likely, since there is another percentage which is pretty inflexible - 1-3% will buy anything you sell them, regardless. That same percentage comes up as the people who control most of the wealth on this planet.

These numbers just keep coming up over and over and over. 80/20 and 97/4 or something like that.

Criminals who commit most of the crimes in a community - 2-5%. Genius types in any body of people - 2-5%. Bell Curve statistics. (Except often the criminal are just genius-types who have some really bad computations going on, personally - both of them think outside any box given or perceived.)

Reverse this, now. When you sell a bunch of something, what's going to happen with that great product. Mostly, nothing. 20 percent will rave about it who buy it, making sure your next product is another bestselling success. But only 1-3% will really "get it". The rest are waiting to buy your next book so they can read (most of) it and put it on the shelf, or give to friends, or auction on eBay, or donate to a library, or, or, or.

Just the way it was set up. And it stays that way because we all agree on it.

Now, another tool: that 1/3% have no real competition on this planet. They actually do whatever they like to do - and will wind up making as much money or owning property (houses, fast cars) just as much as they feel like.

And probably this isn't the right blog for this one. But it's just one of those universal truths. A set of repeating statistics.

The next time you offer a product, think about this. And the next time you buy someone's stuff - think about this.

Are you really, really going to be using that stuff? Or is it time to simply sit back and get truly creative for once - to re-dedicate yourself to making this world a better place?

Because the only thing stopping you - is you.

Sure, all the evangelizing you do will only reach a handful - means you have to really, broadly market your stuff. And it has to be useful to the vast majority on this planet. 1-3% of several billion is several million, isn't it?

Go ahead, splurge on your intuitive, imaginative, and creative urges and talents. It's only going to come back to you the exact way you use them. Make a lot of people better with your art, your genius, your incredible native talent - and you'll only get better. Just don't try to cheat anyone, or con them - unless you like to be cheated or conned.

And there you have it. Shorthand for making millions - and creating world peace.

Cheers!

Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media | chrisbrogan.com

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media | chrisbrogan.com:
"Branding one’s self in an online environment built on entropy and go-baby-go is difficult at best, and impossible if you forget to take your happy pills. To that end, I’ve come up with a quick list of 100 things you might do to help with these efforts. Feel free to add your ideas to the comments section."

Marketing God - Warren's bestseller shows churches use same basics

Essays: 'Closing the God gap' by James Crabtree | Prospect Magazine October 2008 issue 151:
"Much of the cost of running the $20m church is met by the proceeds of Warren's wildly successful first book, The Purpose Driven Life. Published in 2002, the book's promise of salvation through a handy '40-day spiritual journey' found favour with churchgoers and celebrities alike. Readers seemed drawn to its rather banal message of the need to move beyond material concerns, and find a higher calling through engagement with faith and community. Warren claims the book is an 'anti-self-help book.' Its bullet point lists and easily digestible summaries nonetheless owe a debt to regular airport self-improvement manuals. It sold at least 30m copies: more than any work of American non-fiction of the last decade.

Theologian Harvey Cox thinks such innovations are key to the success of Warren's more liberal, relaxed brand of theology. 'Its all about market share. These churches are in competition for many of the same people, on the ground and through the media. The competition is fierce.' A believer in market research, Warren spent time studying America's largest churches. He and his wife also went door to door, interviewing local residents. Church, people told him, was neither fun nor rewarding. To change this Saddleback became one the first churches in America to combine glitzy services with the chance to"

Poll for the Wall Street Bailout

Pew Research Center: Most Approve of Wall Street Bailout and See Obama as Better Able to Address Crisis:
"By a margin of almost two-to-one the American public thinks the government is doing the right thing in investing billions of dollars to try to keep financial institutions and markets secure. Reacting to initial reports of the federal bailout plan over the weekend, 57% said the government was doing the right thing, while 30% said it was doing the wrong thing. At the same time, only 19% of the public believes that the government is currently doing an excellent or good job in handling the financial problems on Wall Street. Support for the administration's plan to bailout many of the nation's troubled financial institutions is largely bipartisan."

Survey aganist the Wall Street Bailout

Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Gingrich: Bailout Proposal a 'Dead Loser' on Election Day:
"The poll, conducted Sept. 16-21 with a 3% margin of error by Democratic pollster Doug Schoen and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway suggests an overwhelming number of voters do not support the government’s bailout proposal, with 68% of respondents saying they’d rather see the companies go in to bankruptcy even if it harms investors and the stock market versus the 19% who said they preferred government action."

Facebook "Lexicon" to Give Google Trends a Run?

Took some simple words and checked them on both Facebook's Lexicon and Google Trends.

Probably too small a sample, but it gives some pause...

16 Steps Elevator Pitch - social media marketing

Here's my latest boil-down:

Elevator pitch: You can make a living from social media marketing by participating in your niche conversation through your own blog.

Sequence:

1. Find the your niche conversation

2. Contribute to it

3. Get viewers to your blog

4. Convert viewers into buyers

Sorting out Jack Humphrey's "DNA" big release via wikipedia

For transparency, I only caught the tail end of Jack's special release - where I was asked to cough up thousands to "get in" on his latest deal. Now his deals seem pretty good - but I've enough credit card to pay off as it is.

Looking this up comes to "local search" and the idea of vertical markets, meaning one would search only a specific local area. Makes sense with both the expansion of the Intenet and higher prices of fuel and food.

Just disagree with Jack's idea of scarfing up domains and reselling them with a built-in search do-hickey on top. Plus, I haven't really been able to find anything else out about it, since that one special release webinar was it, apparently.

Chock it up to another "big release" I've missed...

clipped from en.wikipedia.org Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings. Typical local search queries include not only information about "what" the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also "where" information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude. Examples of local searches include "San Francisco hotels", "Manhattan restaurants", and "Las Vegas Hertz". Local searches exhibit explicit or implicit local intent. A search that includes a location modifier, such as "Bellevue, WA" or "98006", is an explicit local search. A search that references a product or service that is typically consumed locally, such as "restaurant" or "nail salon", is an implicit local search.

Global Recession for everyone else - not just U.S.

How about a Global Recession - and I thought our press was bad... Come on, folks, read Napoleon Hill and get your head straight - at least this author is planning to make some money off this book. I should start one with "Beat the 2009 Recession" since doom and gloom tend to hang around for a bit...

From this page: "AS THE global recession starts to bite, an increasing number of self-help tomes have started to appear on the shelves of book shops, aiming to equip businesses and their managers with the tools to weather the economic downturn."

clipped from www.irishtimes.com One such book, Beat the 2008 Recession: A Blueprint for Business Survival provides 176 recommendations to help small business owners recession proof their businesses.

Recession - what recession? Online businesses not "receding".

This from an email Colin MacDougal sent me G_d knows when - but the point is that while organized gambling is in a melt down - due to their gambling on the housing bubble (which they knew was a bubble) and then suddenly having all this "bad paper" on their hands. Oh, come on. At least we've already been there with the tech stock bubble...

clipped from mail.google.com LOL.... The only recession going on is for those people that are missing out on having a successful online businesses!!! Googler's are certainly doing well aren't they and they ARE an online business...

Green Bandwidth - (Your green-backs) Piggyback on others' sites

Parasite Piggyback Traffic | Netpreneur News:
"There are many, many sites you can be a parasite on. In fact, any site that will host your pages. Here’s some popular ones:

Wordpress
Blogger
Squidoo
Hubpages
Geocities
Typepad
GooglePages"

Done this for years. I don't call it "parasite" since you are giving them the service of providing content.

But I've learned to have the main, long post on your own site and post-point from these others to your site-blog-content.

What is needed is to check Alexa for each of these to see what they actually get as traffic - and what they can send to you. My Blogger posts show up on Google pretty fast; I don't know about these others. Time to brush off my old Geocities sites and see if they are still there...

eBay can blame itself - info products found its weak spot

eBay can blame only itself for its performance - info products found its weak spot

While eBay moved over onto all-solid products, "eliminating" its digital downloads (which still exist here and there), it still has this problem in its fee structure which info products continue to drive large trucks through.

Here's the basics: eBay charges less for smaller entries and lower prices. They make their money on higher-ticket items. Now Skip McGrath tells me that there is a sweet spot for middle-range items where the profit is larger and you don't have to sell as many to make a living. He's got a few hundred items or so that he offers weekly on eBay. And that is a real business you have to work at.

The Internet, meanwhile, was built on information exchange - pure and simple. eCommerce really just allows the payment of a commodity called money for another commodity called information. Rare or exotic information can command top dollar as long as it remains rare or hard to get - something which is time-based, in our file-sharing modern world, so you can get that top dollar only for a little while.

Now, eBay and info products collided when some smart people realized that once you had a sale, you could continue to make sales by offering other items directly to that customer - because you now had his email address and he was a paying customer. In other words, a qualified lead - or the beginning of your "reverse funnel."

And so the rush toward cheaper goods being sold, which depressed the market for people who were actually trying to make a living off selling info products on eBay. Especially, since you had free delivery as it was a digital exchange - no UPS or FedEx to take your package anywhere. And you had unlimited supply, since it was only a file on your computer.

When eBay said you had to sell your info product CD, this didn't change the equation - at all. Ok, so you had to burn a CD and paste a label on it, then ship it. A blank CD costs you as little as $.20 at Wal-Mart, and you can get labels to print for about that at Staples. I've gotten one CD from a person which cost him $.53 to mail. Now we are up total to $.93 to create and ship a product out. (I spend more for that, but I want repeat customers.)

If you set your eBay price for $.97 and shipping/handling for $2.95, you cover your cost of production and your eBay fees. The guy sees your product and snatches it up because it's such a great deal. And you have someone who will pay at least $3.00 for something.

On that CD, you set up an autorun program that takes her to your website for the latest and greatest. There, she opts-in to your mailing list and starts to get your other offers through her email. If your sales pitch is continually great, and you consistently give her valuable data as well as good products, she'll remain a client of yours and your sales pretty much go on automatic. Your time is freed up to find more products to offer and deliver.

Now, on top of that, you can get your CD's drop-shipped through Kunaki - or have a company burn your CD's in bulk for less than I outlined above. So you only have to print off the postage and put it in a mailer to them. Again, you set your fees so that the client pays all your overhead when they buy any given product.

Basically, for a small investment, you get a proven list of buyers. Note that - Buyers, not visitors. The traffic coming to your site is now proved that they have available income to spend on your product. And if you take care of your buyers, they'll continue to buy from you from here on out.

To be fair, eBay didn't see this coming - and I don't see any way around this for them. They make their money off big ticket items, like everyone. So the low-end stuff really just got them complaints - which they mostly got rid of by making people offer CD's. That forced the real scammers to find somewhere else to play.

But it still left them a large hole in their marketing scene. You see, realistically, they don't take a final value fee on shipping and handling. They'd have a big revolt. But shoppers like free shipping - so they encourage you to offer free shipping - meaning that they can then take a final value fee off your total amount, which is higher to cover those same shipping costs.

Other than irritating, those fees really just ensure you keep to the standard shipping fees instead. You'll get the savvy shopper that way - someone you might want, instead of the blind "gottahaveitnow" type.

The bottom line - eBay isn't prepared for and can't handle the pure Info product. But you can - and use info products to improve your own bottom line.

Why people have to be persuaded to improve their lives

Here's why people have to be persuaded to change their lives

Because they are stuck in what they think is comfortable and secure. It's that last word which really dooms them - security.

You see, changes happen all the time. That's what this universe is all about - our evolution. So people, and the weather, and the other animals and plants on this planet are changing all the time.

People find this hard to predict and so tend to get stuck in just keeping things the way they are. This is what they think is "security". However, hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour, dependent on a very narrow layer of air which is only a very small percentage of the mass of this planet - and needing a to have a certain amount of water in you at all times, and having to live in an environment where that water can't get too hot or too cold - that's not all that secure, is it?

Practically, if you wanted real security, no change at all - a person would want to be moon dust, and just lay around all day, always pointing toward or away from the Earth, never moving, no wind - just some sun to warm you up once a revolution, unless the Earth gets in between. And how hot you got wouldn't matter, since even if you melted, you'd still be the rock you were made of.

But talk about boring...

No, the problem with people is that they've been sold a bill of goods.

Look, here's the lifestyle of the people I've talked to at these many warehouse and factory jobs I've worked in:

• They work for someone else their entire life and hope that they have enough government payments and money in the stock market so that they can make a ligvi when they get too bunged up to keep working.
• Meanwhile, the government tells them they have to take certain funds out of their accounts if they live too long - so they have to pay taxes on these. If you live long enough, you have all your money out of these accounts and either spent or into a tax-paying account.
• And when you do die, they take another chunk - forcing you to give away everything you own or save before you pass, making sure that you are dead broke by the time you're dead.
• So: you grow up, get in college to get a better job (with college debts) - or just start working.
• You get married, buy a house, have a family - and stay in debt for 30 years. By the time you have your house paid off, it's starting to fall apart over the next 20 years (saying that you built a new one and didn't buy an older one).
• Your working lifespan is about 40 - 50 years. So that house is ready for major repairs and overhauls about the time you retire - meaning you have to refinance it to pay for the cost, or build a new one.
• And your life insurance is really just enough to pay for the debt you leave behind - not to pass on any amount to your kids to help them out.

That's what we're all set to do if we agree with all we're told in life.

How many people are actually successful? 1-3% of this bunch. And guess what? They don't live that lifestyle at all.

• They usually work for themselves and invest their money in various accounts, getting a far larger return at much lower tax rates.
  
• And if they are really smart, they have their private corporation buy their houses, cars, yachts, and other toys - as well as pay for the licensing, insurance, fuel, and repairs.
• They set up trust funds for their needy relatives so that they can share their wealth and the government doesn't get a dime out of it - their kids and grandkids (and some others) get everything.
  
• (And we haven't even touched the idea of overseas accounts where no government taxes anything...)

Now, notice we mostly talked about Death and Taxes - the supposedly only certain items in anyone's future.

But the joker in this deck is that people actually agree to all this in order to be "secure". Of course, this is what goes for security in our "enlightened" Western "civilization". Other countries have it rougher. You can get killed a lot easier from a lot more sources outside of the "developed nations" like the US than you can within them.

Here you go: compare those two (or three) lifestyles.

• It's not impossible for someone to move into one of these developed nations from any of the other ones.
• It's not impossible for anyone to start their own business and become successful, regardless of any country you live in.
• It's not impossible to grow that business and become outrageously wealthy and live the lifestyle of your dreams.

So why don't more people do it? Why don't more people kick over their wage-slave traces and start making a real difference in this world we live on?

Because, as Earl Nightingale points out - we conform. We want to be just like everyone around us so that we can feel "secure". And meanwhile, our government, in order to protect our security has added on layers and layers of regulation and taxation so that we finally get our security - a 2x3x6 box underground. That's the real security.

How about really living at life? How about learning to sky dive, or ride horses, or hike in mountain ranges, or visit remote reaches of this planet?

How about doing something to help people around you - to work at solving global or local educational problems, health issues, energy crisis's - all those things?

Too often we find ourselves just living the regular, secure life of someone who really has nothing better to do than complain about what is in the newspaper or on TV.

And your life is gone, but what do you have to show for it?

Here, I'm appealing to those 1-3% of us out there. Let's re-educate these people. Let's sell them on what they could be having, doing, becoming - not just what they want.

And then this whole world could be a peaceful, prosperous, beautiful place.

Self-Help: A polluted source - makes it hard to turn a profit

Why Self Help is a Polluted Income Source and what makes it hard to turn a profit

Because the most expensive advice is free.

And everyone was born with an opinion to give away.

Also, since everyone has their own world view, everyone has a unique solution to handle any problem in front of them.

So we get 2 or 3 dozen or more articles every week which never pass muster - because they are based on a single, isolated world view and have no credence. You can't believe them because no one else says they are worth anything.

These guru's out there got their credibility by delivering the goods - going out on a limb and being actually entertaining, enlightening, and educational. The best are all three.

And guess what, these are the three points Charles Helflin points out as being the key points you have to have in social media. Yes, being a self help guru is social media governed. Any celebrity status is. No real surprise. Same governs all commerce, all marketing. It's just been hidden under the lack of a feedback loop until the Internet showed up - and evolved.

Solution: quote well-known authors who already made it - become an expert on these guys. You can't just "talk" about the "current fad" in self help. Some subcategories are hotter than others, some are evergreen - like weight loss and depression. But you have to know what you are talking about - and give real, valuable, worthwhile data when you talk. Real solutions for real situations. You have to do this in a style which is entertaining, educational, and enlightening - all three.

Wayne Dyer is a great example of the above paragraph. Dissect a few series of his tapes and you will quickly see that this is sooth.

Over to you.

Your Subscribers Opt-Out - Fastest Way to Get Them To

Fastest Way to Get Your Subscribers to Opt-Out

Keep pitching them and deliver no value.

Worse than that - keep pitching someone who sends three emails a week selling his own product and nothing else.

Value. The only thing that keeps content King.

How to keep your subscribers forever:

Keep delivering valuable content with every issue - and don't make these issues more freguent than

1. You can really find useful content.
2. They can digest your data.

And you'll have those subscribers only as long as you continue 1 and 2 above. Only that long.

Focus and Concentration - winners' skills

Focus and Concentration - The Skill-Set Winners Learn

Look over the Pareto Principle and the Bell Curve. In both cases, you'll find that a minority are affecting the majority. Roughly 10-20% of any population is creating the bulk of the production or creating the bulk of the problems.

Further, many police officers have confronted the fact that the bulk of their crimes are committed by a handful of citizens. When they concentrate on corralling, or monitoring the specific areas where those citizens are located (or frequent), they can minimize crime for the much larger population.

The bulk of the wealth (and jobs) are created by a small handful of individuals - who get others involved in their ideas. It's a little-known or advertised secret that roughly 1-3% of the people in any nation or area control around 95% of the wealth in that area.

Why?

What makes the very rich rich and keep the very poor poor? How do some people live their lives without any problem with the law and others constantly run afoul of it?

The answer is the same:

Focus and Concentration

Which really mean the same thing.

Focus and concentration are skill-sets. They are learned through disciplined study. What goes for ADD is more probably a poorly educated mind - never trained in the finite disciplines of selecting a goal and devoting the vast resources any person has to accomplishing it.

Look up the life of Edison, of Tesla, of Bill Gates, of Warren Buffet, of any of the incredible geniuses and tycoons we've ever had on this planet. They all learned and developed their skills of concentration - the discipline of developing their own vision and devotion to it.

Perhaps the keynote study of this was done by Napoleon Hill - who took over 20 years and interviewed over 500 successful individuals to derive a simple, common sense system of personal achievement and success. His system was laid out originally in his 16-volume "Law of Success" and later a 13-step perennial bestseller, "Think and Grow Rich."

You'll find what he has to say about focus/concentration and success in the 2nd chapter of that last book.

Basically - you have to have a "burning desire" to succeed.

What is that? Focus on a self-determined goal or vision. Daily and weekly concentration on exactly what you want to achieve in life, casting out everything else as distractive.

Many, many other authors have found this same point to be basic to anyone's success. As I can make time for it, I'll edit a book for you with these excerpts. The interesting point is that these different authors also give various techniques and examples of how to increase your concentration.

In addition to either Hill book above, I'd also recommend Charles Haanel's "Master Key System" - which gives a 24-lesson course with specific exercises to improve your mental ability to concentrate, among other things.

(And while many artists - and art professors - will tell you that you have to be 'open to intuitive insight', that muse in your life, when you look up really productive artists you'll find them to be intensely concentrated on routine production of high-quality works. So it's probable that the artist with a trained focus is more able to tap into their 'muse' than the lackadaisical approach our universities recommend.)

Keyword position on your blog post title and why

Keyword position on your blog post title is very key - and here's why...

It's really simple, too much so.

Classic organic SEO has your keywords in three places:

1. Your title
2. Your heading (H1 and H2)
3. Incoming links.

One author I was following recently said that you want your keywords at the front of that title.

I didn't get it - until I looked at some links. The answer is in your "permalink" set-up.

Of course you opt for permalinks, so people can link to you. What Bloggers and others do is create a line out of that post title. So this link might be "keyword-position-on-your-blog.html"

You notice that it's not all there. Long titles are often truncated, even chopping a word in half.

But when your keyword is in the first 3-5 words (and long tail phrases these days are mostly four words or better), then that keyword is in any link to your blog.

So permalinks preserve your incoming link relevancy and so increase your organic SEO - providing you have your keyword front and center on that title.

This means you write your post - every post - like this:

1. Keyword in first few words of blog title
2. Keyword in first line of blog post, which is preferably bold and H1 or H2.
3. And the rest of the blog post is themed with words that have to do with that keyword phrase.

That's really the simplicity of it.

And permalinks are why.

16 steps to Success - Webinar 3 notes

Notes from Sam Clark's "16 Steps to Success" Webinar 3

LSI starts it off. (Sure I know this stuff, but let's listen anyway...)

Basically is that Google has shifted from keywords to themes. Will be more advantageous to build around several related phrases in the future. (Themezoom does this - per the dated PDF's I have - by creating related long-tail keywords [dog collars, dog leashes, dog training, dog beds] - which are all below the real keyword you want to gain traction on [in this case, "dog"]. You do this by building in "silo's" and not cross linking articles about collars over to leashes - except to the top-level index page for that sub-category. In this way, they also give Pagerank love to these other pages - but the key point is that it doesn't dilute the theme of collars with (and cross-dilute) leashes.)

Gives a number of LSI tools, and article re-writers which can work over your writing to make several versions of essentially the same original article. (Article Marketers have been doing this for some time - and there are several free tools out for some time which have done this. One guru tells me that you can escape penalty with PLR articles by changing as little as 30%.))

Make your pages clear and easy to understand. (Rule of thumb I've been told is to have your keyword in 1) Page title, 2) H1/H2 header - and that header needs to be bold, 3) any incoming links [harder to control] - and then the rest of the page is themed to support that keyword.)

Clarity and understandability goes for search engines and especially users.

Don't dilute your theme with disrelated links. (Build silos for that subject - all containing that one set of articles which all cover that same keyword phrase. Then link once to a related silo of yours - it's index page.)

Video traffic doesn't convert as easily, but Google is incorporating search and links into their advertising scene. Worth keeping track of - still in beta currently.

- - - -

Back to me and my work:

Got Jack Humphrey's Blackbook yesterday and have been reworking it to make better sense to me. (Essentially, it didn't flow right, so I couldn't keep attention on the subject, but got distracted easily - just drop it into Acrobat Pro and output as html, then translate that to text in Note Tab Light, saving the URLs, then open that file up in Open Office so I can add headings and organize it.)

I moved all the links (blackbook) to the end so that I could read his stuff straightforward.

Still a lot to study to do.

And so I get back to it.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/whodathunk

Weak Tie and Strong Tie Networking - Social Media Uses

How to profit from both Weak and Strong Tie Networking - uses for Social Media


Here's some data I've not found anywhere else. I first ran into this reference through the One-Minute Millionaire ebook by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen.

In that book they discuss the "weak tie". Now, I figured various things about this, but finally a comparative from another source came up. This fellow was talking (podcast) about how to develop a real, working network through Social Media contacts. And he made a lot of sense.

That's the "Strong Tie" - where you develop real business relationships out of mutual respect and benefit. Joint Ventures are an example - and a result.

The "Weak Tie" best example I've seen so far is when you have their email address and can send them regular notices about sales and whatnot. They stay on your list because you send them continually quality stuff. That's the trust relationship you have, but it isn't particularly a strong one - and you can relate to them because of their trust in you. Here's where you cover the mailing lists and autoresponder series.

Obviously, in the Strong Tie, you'd have mutual trust and a great deal of closer interaction. This is where the Master Mind comes in - what Napoleon Hill talks about in both "Think and Grow Rich" and "Law of Success".

The trick is to do both and know when you're doing what. Build weak ties all over the place and help them as much as you can. Build your strong ties into your mastermind group and assist them with their vision as they do yours.

Some of your weak ties may become strong ties.

Simple really - but I don't know anywhere else that this is explained, so I just did.

Cheers!

ROI - Social Networks - Charles Heflin - and all the old standby's

How Heflin converts social media using all the old stand-by's

Just viewing one of Charles Heflin's post on getting ROI from social media.

His video tells the same scene - get people to opt-in to your mailing list and then give them good content through your autoresponder series (A/R S).

Nothing new, really.

Good content on the social networks (social media) - which then sends them to your site with an opt-in link. If you are using a blog, you have that opt-in link on every page. Opt-in form has an ethical bribe relating to what your content (and ARS) is all about.

The trick is that nothing about what he's saying on this video hasn't been known by article marketers or "older" online marketing lines for a long time.

It used to be that Search Engines would get you traffic, and they still do - but their day is basically gone. Because social media networks have become the go-to referral sites. SE's are simply playing catch up and working out how to index the social sites as fast as they can.

Now, let's review (for my sake and yours):

8 key promotion outlets for you:

1. article directories
2. blogs and social media (videos, slidecasts, podcasts, even twitter)
3. Squidoo (a hybrid social media)
4. offline media, such as tradeshows and postcards and radio interviews.
   
5. eBay - great qualified lead generator and income source
6. press release sites
7. forum postings
8. affiliates
   

The sequence is to use the same data and simply re-publish it in new formats. (Now, note carefully how we do this - since Google and other SE's have been getting smart to self-referencing social media posts):

0. You've already done your homework on what your niche is, what your solution is, and what format you are offering your valuable service/product in - as well as figuring out how to acquire and deliver the goods, at a profit.
00. You keep track of the news and conversations that are occuring in the forums. Use Google Alerts to tell you what's happening and you can also keyword analyze these posts to get the theme words they are using as well.
1. When you've got a hot area, build a product around it (information product) and also then create an autoresponder series for that product. And get your product up for delivery through your ecommerce site - especially if you can do digital delivery.
2. Write an article (like a product review) on that and post this to the top two or three article directories.
3. Record this and post to archive.org as a podcast.
4. Create a powerpoint presentation and upload this to slideshare.
5. Combine it with your podcast to make a slidecast.
6. Create a video from the slides and podcast and submit to multiple video sites - particularly the biggest ones.
7. Write a news release about what you just did - and post these.

- - Now, note to this point we haven't referenced anything, other than putting our website address into the articles and tacked to the end of the podcast and slideshare/slidecast. So we aren't gaming the search engines at all.

8. Create a full blog post on your site with links (and embedded media).
9. Now - create a Squidoo Lens about all of the above with their links.
10. Now post a mini blog entry on Blogspot (because Google runs it) about all the links and what's important there.

Note: 8, 9, and 10 all have your opt-in form on the template, so that people can opt-in to your ARS.

11. If you want to at this point, you can twitter it, or post it to your Facebook group, or anything else.

The point here is that we haven't done anything until 8 which says all these things point back to you. What you did do is to create a bunch of new (and hopefully high-quality) content that answers someone's questions. And all of this is on individual sites which themselves are independently getting indexed by Google.

What you should start having is lots of people opting-in to your ARS and then you are able to convert them.

Next week (yes this means an article, podcast, slidecast, video weekly - 50 per year) repeat with a new set of compelling data about your area. Templates still say where people can opt-in.

What I used to tell people at this point was to Digg your own stuff, as well as submit these to as many social sites as possible. THAT is where the search engines would begin penalizing you.

Now, get creative though - Twitter is fine. Use mini-url's to forward the mystery. On Stumbleupon, you can make your own blog post - and that's different from stumbling your own stuff. You can also blog on eBay, and several other sites (like Lulu.com). All these links add up.

And there is forum posting, where you can help other people with solutions (that you also sell on your site).

Affiliate marketing is a different loop - but builds after you have already started moving this product - because these Affiliates can make use of your video, podcast, slidecast, etc. as embedded media in their own sales pages. And there is promotion for these Affiliate sites - like Warrior forum - but that's another loop, like I said. This loop is started after you've gotten the first set going. But you do it the same week.

Because you're going to be busy every week with this stuff. (The Affiliate stuff probably only has to be done once for each product, so that's a break. But when you add extensions to that product, you'll have to update these.)

- - - -

How to set up your week:

1. Take a day or two and do carefully structured research.
a. See what is selling and what you are doing well and could improve.
b. See what people have their attention on in your niche - what's news, or how news is affecting them.
c. Look up your website/ecommerce metrics to see what has become/continues to be really popular.
2. Take a day and do your site maintenance.
3. Now, the rest of the week (between 3 and five days) are for your creative self to shine.

If you're selling on ebay, schedule your auctions at #2.

When do you create new produts? That is also in the time you save from 3 - when you get really good. Remember, I've said several times that the articles you write can become ebooks or full books on their own. The podcasts can become audio books. The videos can become video CD's or Webinars or DVD's.

OK - good.

Now, I've got to get to work...

Happy to help.

16 steps 3&4 notes

Set up for second installment. Sam promises this to be shorter. Got PDF earlier this time.

Starts with an overview of the first session.

I'll start noting what isn't in the handout:

Says ezinearticles is still a very hot property. (and so the relevance of putting articles into the handful of top article directories instead or in addition to the top 100 or so.)

Web 2.0 is loved by search engines and recommendations by friends are key - by survey. (Another aspect of this survey is that this augments existing networks and friends, not meeting new ones. So Internet has become extension of G.O.B networks.)

Social media builds on recommendations - extension of word of mouth.

Jack Humphreys now getting most of his traffic from social media and cares little for what the search engines do.

Can't market to social media directly (become a trusted authority and then get people to your site to monetize them.)

Long quote from Heflin.

Reach is about meaningful relationship.

Sam throws people off his list (emails) if they aren't giving value. (Note to marketers - this is the complaint of mine - guys who only joint venture and give no real data.)

RSS feeders give you the data with no junk - built in filter. You should track your niche for 3 months. (Trick is finding good RSS feeds for your stuff.)

Themezoom Pyramid of Promotion - (really a list of stuff you can do to promote your stuff and start marketing it). (I really disagree with their pyramid if it's giving values to these.)

Quantcast.com - instant demographics for a site. Look at top competitors in your market.

(I'm really going from how to monetize what I've already been doing - or increase the amount of money I've been making.)

(shorter session today - Tgod)

Basics of Marketing Apply to Online Anything

In order to succeed at online anything - you have to know and apply the basics of marketing.

Hit me like a brick today. Attended an online course by Sam Clark of Authority Site Center yesterday and it took me off everything else for the rest of the day.

Because it was full of basics and very intense (took almost 3 hours).

He's doing a great job with this. (I'd love to redesign his handouts, but I'm a trained designer, so that's my way of helping - his stuff is fine and readable.)

But then this am (after a good night's sleep) I log on to clear off my emails. and see this really obnoxious one which I somehow opted-in to. Mainly, they had invented a term, were selling services and didn't have a clue. (If you need a clue about modern Internet Marketing, read "ClueTrain Manifesto.) Old style "hit-over-the-head-until-you-pay" marketing - which simply doesn't work in this day of feedback (and traditionally has had only a 2-4% success rate).

These two events prompted this blog post.

Basics of Marketing

1. Purpose of marketing is to create a market - build the channels so commerce can occur, not make the sale happen or convert page-views to buying customers or anything else. You are simply building the channels so they can buy something if they want to.

2. Your sales depend on your ability to hold a conversation. ClueTrain again. You are telling people, "Hey, I've got a solution to your problem - because I had that problem once, too." And if they are interested, and like your value, and think it's worth it - they'll buy your product. If your product is any good, they won't return it. If your product is great, they'll use it and tell their friends about it. If your product is excellent - and you have similar products to offer - they'll be back to try out your other solutions. (Beating someone over the head about how great you are isn't a conversation - it's an argument.)

3. The first step is to build trust - and the second is to let people know you exist. That seems backward, but you have to offer something valuable for free to begin with. Give a valuable gift - this tells people you want to help them. Now, on the Internet, this is often just giving out some good information on your website that they can use. It might be just going into a forum and answering some questions others have - and dropping your link. But that link has to have something valuable there. Some place to go, something to do. So you build something - like a blog with a link which tells someone how to get your product. That simple. And then you promote it by helping people.

4. Your ongoing work is how to keep helping people while organizing it better. That's the core of all marketing and sales and delivery. Those products which continue to sell are ones which continue to help people. But as you get flooded with orders, you have to be able to deliver the goods and meanwhile keep finding more people to help. So that takes some organization. (I like digital products and delivery for just that reason... like print-on-demand books.)

Now, out of those above points, you see how the whole thing holds together. And you can read into these all the SEO and social media and PPC stuff you want to. I'm just talking basics here. What you do with it is your choice (mileage may vary).

Good Hunting!!

Getting paid to tell secrets - which aren't really secrets

If I had a dollar for all the people who wanted to "tell me secrets" - which weren't really secrets at all...

Just opted out of yet another autoresponder mailing list where the guy was simply trying to sell me more junk which I'd already heard about. He was trying to pass it off as a "secret", when anyone could work it out - what he was selling was simply more techniques based on common-sense data.

Look, there are only a few simple, common-sense facts which generate all the income you could want through online or offline marketing. And these have been around since the dawn of time, and have been written up over and over - even before pre-colonial Adam Smith or our modern gurus like Jay Abraham.

Let's lay out everything there is to know about online marketing, or marketing in general:

1. You have to have a product which is valuable - provides an actual service.
2. You have to be able to produce this product routinely and inexpensively.
3. You have to be tell people you have this product - and that it's worth something to them.
4. You have to be able to deliver this product (service) quickly and easily.
5. You have to make sure your client is happy with his service (product) and got more than he thought it was worth.

That's it. Really.

#1 is the failure of most online marketing, because what they are selling is just trivial data. And that is why people opt-out of your mailing list (like I did above). I don't need to be pitched - because I don't waste my disposable income on just anything that comes around.) This is also the failure of cheap markets, like auctions - but also the clue to their success. People want to get high-quality items for cheaper than their perceived value. Perceived is the keyword there.

#2 is the downfall of eBay PowerSeller wannabes and the headache of most start-ups. How to set up manufacturing and how to generate these products routinely, for as low an overhead as possible. Information products are the cheapest down this line. But their downfall is that once they are released to the Internet, they are simple to copy and reproduce. As well, people can pass your static download address to anyone - sucking down all your bandwidth and giving away the shop. So this takes some figuring out, even with "virtual" products.

#3 is all promotion. Promotion isn't marketing, just a small part of it. Marketing is building/creating a market. Marketing means you get conversions and sales. But if you don't promote, you can't get leads, can't get conversions, can't get sales. So you have to tell people effectively how you have this product and how they can get their own copy/version of it. This is where your sales page has to be top notch - and why social media loves informational content.

#4 is the next hitch. Rising fuel costs has made some of this prohibitive. Just more overhead and money is just another commodity, so it floats upward = inflation. Digital delivery might be one solution, but again - you have to have your backend in place to ensure the paying customer gets his product and the others don't.

#5 concerns follow-up. Happy customers tell 4 other people, unhappy ones tell 10. This means having an excellent product and contacting buyers to see what they have to say about it. You can then use these testimonials in your next promotion - and as well, cross-sell that customer other products. Here's your backend and your sales funnel.

Now to be fair, things change constantly. New techniques are worked out all the time. Social media didn't exist a couple of years ago, and the Internet is hardly a decade old. Yet nearly a quarter of our commerce is now Internet-based. So you have to keep on top of things.

But the basics are these:

• Good products - great value.
• Good promotion - includes how to write copy.
• Great delivery and follow-up.

As you keep these simple few points in, all else falls in line.

If you hear about people trying to sell you secrets based on how much you can make from their product - figure they are just trying to make money out of thin air and have no real value to exchange with you for your hard-earned money.

And like me, you'll probably want to unsubscribe from that mailing list...