Have you heard about the growth cycle of a bamboo tree? It’s actually quite amazing, for the first 2-3 years it grows only a few inches in height. Then in a period of about 60 days the bamboo tree explodes to potentially 60 feet or higher! So what’s happening during those 2-3 years where it seems the [...]
Read more...Social media monitoring and social media measurement are two very different things, but I think many of the searchers and social media taggers using those phrases don’t always make the distinction. For some quick insight from a qualified audience, I turned to Twitter and within an hour had about 40 replies. It started off with this [...]
Read more...About a month ago I talked about the New Microsoft Adcenter Desktop Tool. I was one of a handful of advertisers who got access to the beta release of this tool. The major limitation of the first beta release of this tool was that you couldn’t download stats! Well, Microsoft just released a new version of [...]
Read more...There’s a lot of products on the market promising a push button simple system to building a profitable ppc affiliate campaign. These products usually consist of a software program that do most of the work and a simple step by step tutorial to walk you through how to use the system. Now I’m not saying [...]
Read more...Networking has been a core tactic for building and marketing businesses long before the internet came of age and certainly even more so with the explosion of services such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Ning. Web technology and the mass appeal of making connections online makes social networking an attractive channel for businesses that want to [...]
Read more...I don’t know if you had a chance to listen to Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. It’s an amazing talk, full of pearls of wisdom. Check it out… I really connected with his address, in many ways. He is so right when he said that you can only connect the dots looking back and not [...]
Read more...There’s been a lot of talk, and some controversy, about the Performance Marketing Alliance. Well, I had a chance to interview Rebecca Madigan, founding partner of the Performance Marketing Alliance, to set the records straight… Click Here to Listen to the Interview Rebecca and I talk about a whole range of issues in this interview: Do we [...]
Read more...Here’s a technique I’ve been using a for awhile that’s extremely powerful, and yet VERY simple. You’ve probably heard of mind mapping. If you’re into mind maps you’ve probably used them for outlining a book you’ve read or a seminar you’ve listened too, etc, etc. I want to tell you about a unusual way of [...]
Read more...For those of you who have not seen it yet, this post is NOT a spoiler, so no worries. Dark Knight was sold out in over 90% of Movie theaters this weekend and broke into the record books with a $155 million weekend! Fortunately, Miami was not sold out so my wife and I had a [...]
Read more...The BIGLIST update of SEO blogs comes to you this week on a Monday because, hey, that’s the way we like to change things up here at Online Marketing Blog. This edition of the BIGLIST Update is chock full of blogs that offer SEO how to’s and practical insights as well as a good showing [...]
Read more...If you don’t know already, I’ll be speaking at the Affiliate Summit in Boston going on between August 10-12th. My talk is Titled : “PPC Super Affiliate Strategies You MUST Know” If you’re planning on attending the Summit in Boston, be sure to check out my talk. Funny thing, when the Affiliate Summit was [...]
Read more...You’ve probably picked up that this week is about SES San Jose from Dana and Ashley’s “15 Things Not to Miss at SES San Jose” followed by Jessica’s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” post. I am also headed out to sunny California next month. There’s plenty to take in on a trip [...]
Read more...Originally written by Burt Bacharach, the song Do You Know the way to San Jose, la la la la la… didn’t actually come to fruition until the lovely Dionne Warwick won her first Grammy for Best Contemporary Pop Female Vocal in 1968. Although I wasn’t around in 1968, I understand the anticipation Burt must have had [...]
Read more...I wanted to do a follow up post on recent post I did about the latest Google Slap. After taking a closer look at my Google account, I noticed I actually had been hit by this most recent Google Slap. For several of my search campaigns I discovered that almost half my min bids [...]
Read more...TopRank is sending five team members to the SES San Jose Conference August 18th-22nd, an event we’re sincerely looking forward to, especially with 80% of the sessions new to SES. Since this will be my first time attending the SES conference in San Jose, I am excited about all of the new sessions we will [...]
Read more...Whether you listen to classical music or not you know that Mozart, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, all have their own unique & distinctive styles of composing. All very different but yet all completely amazing! How in the world does this relate to affiliate marketing? Every PPC super affiliate I know has a very unique style to how [...]
Read more...For the 5th year in a row, MarketingSherpa has published their Search Marketing Benchmark Guide which has been completely re-written and edited including results from the Marketing Sherpa members search marketing survey, other studies performed over the last 12 months and “best of” research provided by over 50 respected sources. The SEM Benchmark Guide is helpful [...]
Read more...You may have heard, or hopefully not experienced, the Google Slap this week! Looks like Big-G is planning on quarterly slaps. I was basically unaffected, as usual-my strategy of building authority sites seems to be working. In some of my campaigns I saw my min bids inch up a little bit, but that’s typical. [...]
Read more...You don’t have to look too far online to see more and more people using social bookmarking services and news sites. Content publishers from blogs to mainstream publications like Minneapolis Star Tribune are looking for ways to make it easier for readers to save and share content. There are a variety of tactics including social [...]
Read more...[Note from Lee: Please welcome Ashley Bruce, the newest member of TopRank's Online Promotions team who is making her first blog post at Online Marketing Blog with this Lionel Richie inspired post about improving qualified traffic through online marketing tips.] Internet marketers often have to get creative when it comes to solving client web site traffic [...]
Read more...Once you’ve a super affiliate, and you’ve achieved a lot of your initial goals, such as quiting your job, not having to worry about money, having a better lifestyle etc, then you may start thinking about where you want to take your affiliate business in the long term. This is something I’ve put a lot of [...]
Read more...For Bay Area folks and social media enthusiasts the world over, “Social Media Club” is well known as an upstart organization looking to promote the goodness of social media as well as advance the knowledge of businesses trying to figure out where social media might fit into their digital marketing plans. Today SMC co-founders Chris Heuer [...]
Read more...TopRank’s SEO Team in Paintball Gear As much as companies find the need to outsource part or all of their SEO efforts, many do not have a clear picture of the value that comes from hiring an agency versus a full time, in-house SEO. While many consultants and some agencies offer “value meal” pricing and [...]
Read more...SEO is a hot topic for Online Marketing blog with the most recent posts, “Rushing Your SEO Doesn’t Mean Quicker Results” and “Should Companies Hire Multiple Search Marketing Firms?”. The next in what is becoming a series of insights into SEO is all about optimizing content for situations that really have little to do [...]
Read more...Over 4th of July weekend Shilpi and I spend 3 days on Little Palm Island, one of the most AMAZING resorts in the world, located right in the Florida Keys. Little Palm Island Resort is a tiny little island that’s only accessible by boat or float plane. The idea is total seclusion: there’s no alarm [...]
Read more...Happy 4th of July! Before you throw stones at me for not talking about PPC, hear me out! Amit asked me to do a guest post today because he’s out enjoying his ridiculous lifestyle while leaving the rest of us to work The concept I’m about to share today is something I taught Amit a [...]
Read more...Don’t you just love summer time? It’s the time of the year when traffic and conversions take a hit, and even a big hit depending on the market that you’re in. If you’re new to the game and have hit the Summer Slowdown for the first time then rest assure that profits will pick back up in [...]
Read more...On occasion TopRank will get calls from prospective clients that ask about hiring multiple SEO agencies in an effort to get the “best of both worlds” in terms of best practices and performance through competition. On the surface, I suppose I could see how someone might think this might make sense but in practice, it [...]
Read more...You know, the more people I try help with ppc affiliate marketing the more and more I realize that most people’s BIGGEST stumbling block to affiliate success is NOT : creating a landing page that converts, finding a profitable offer, optimizing their campaign for profitability or any other technical aspect of the business. So what’s the [...]
Read more...Just yesterday I was approved for the beta version of the new Microsoft Adcenter Desktop, which allows you to managed your entire Adcenter account offline! This program is the equivalent of Adwords Editor, a tool that I consider absolutely essential to building and optimizing my campaigns. Check it out… This program opens up a whole [...]
Read more...Just a quick FYI, if you signed for the RSS to Email for this blog you may have noticed pages of spam at the end of the most recent email update. Here’s the thing, Superaffiliatemindset.com has been hit by spammers and we’re currently in the process of upgrading to the latest version of WordPress and closing [...]
Read more...Companies that take their search engine visibility for granted or that ride the technical SEO loophole/manipulation train often get a hard smack back to reality when their online sales disappear. Orders start to slip or fall off the map altogether and the IT team red alert phone rings off the hook with calls from [...]
Read more...If you didn’t get a chance to see my talk on outsourcing you can download it here. I also want to address several questions that came up regarding outsourcing : Q : “If you’re a newbie affiliate, should you hire someone to build you an affiliate site?” A: If you’re a complete newbie to affiliate marketing, I would [...]
Read more...With so many “Web 2.0″ technologies coming in to play with web design and online application development, the effect on the search engines’ ability to find, crawl and index content becomes an issue. As such, this session moderated by Kevin Ryan included deep dive advice from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Strategist from Netconcepts and [...]
Read more...Today on this fine Friday ladies and gentlemen, we have a BIGLIST SEO blogs update for you slanting a bit toward agencies but not without some flavor from Germany and the Jungle. Read on: Seer Interactive Blog - Wil Reynolds and his team from Seer Interactive blog the gamut of Internet marketing topics ranging from SEO [...]
Read more...If you’ve been in the search marketing industry for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a wide variety of conflicting or outdated advice. Since “how to” information in so many other industries is often presented as an absolute, many people look for the same kinds of static and perpetual rules with search engine [...]
Read more...Before we get started let me define what a long tail keyword is. A long tail keywords is a highly specific keyword containing 4 words or more. Here’s an example : buy nike tennis shoes size 10 discount nike running sneakers red leather high heeled shoes As you can imagine someone typing in a keywords like : “buy nike tennis [...]
Read more...My first time in Toronto did not disappoint. It was brief but very busy with plenty of sessions to choose from during the day. Here is a collection of my favorite photos taken during SES Toronto this week: Matt McGowan, Joe Dolson and Todd Malicoat enjoying some pre-conference conversation Kevin Ryan getting the most out of Google’s [...]
Read more...I’m back from SES Toronto and wanted to share the presentation on Twitter with readers that weren’t at the show. Fellow presenters @davesnyder and @chriswinfield did a great job and the audience received a deep drill down into many aspects of Twitter. In the end, Twitter on it’s own and with it’s uptime issues isn’t anywhere [...]
Read more...Okay, this time I want to give you a heads up BEFORE I give my next black ink session. Tomorrow at 6:00pm EST (3:00pm PST) I’m giving an in depth presentation on the ins and outs of outsourcing for affiliates. If you want to discover how to effectively outsource your business and build a team around your [...]
Read more...You’ve probably heard a lot of people talk about this, and I myself have talked about it. So is ppc affiliate marketing just a numbers game? Is you success determined by how fast you can go through niche after niche, product after product, until you find a winner? Here’s the problem with that idea : [...]
Read more...Last week at the PRSA Digital Impact conference I met Steve Rubel, SVP Director of Insights from Edelman Digital and famous (sometimes infamous) PR blogger at Micropersuasion. He presented “2008 Digital Trends: Open Files” which talks about the framework Edelman uses (Faint Signals, Watch List and Hallucinations for tracking digital/social media trends. Read my live blogging [...]
Read more...Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a HUGE fan of Adwords Editor. It’s the lifeblood of my business because it allows me to managed 57 active campaigns and literally 1000s of adgroups. However, be wary of the newly released Adwords Editor 6.0. It has ONE major bug I’ve been pulling my hair out over [...]
Read more...I gotta tell you, my wife and I love it down here in Miami, we just got burned out moving in (still have some decorating left to do) so we decided to hit the beach this last weekend. We didn’t just hit the beach, we turned it into a weekend mini vacation at the Ritz Carlton [...]
Read more...This panel at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference includes Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall of Cision and Jason Falls of Doe Anderson and who writes Social Media Explorer. Heidi starts out a with a poll: How many comments for media relations? and How many have created a social profile for a client? A small number of [...]
Read more...Last time I talked about some key metrics you need to follow in your affiliate campaigns, today I want to talk about something just as important, that is, when to act on your metrics. Here’s one of the biggest mistakes affiliates make… Rash decision based on too little data. What do I mean by rash decisions? Tell me if [...]
Read more...The TopRank team works really well together, bringing to each team meeting various areas of expertise and interest, which makes for a well-rounded environment here in our Lake Minnetonka office. We know how to play off of everyone’s strengths and ensure our clients are fully serviced based on their needs and objectives by those [...]
Read more...This is a bit of a technical post, however, if you’re serious about making big money as a affiliate you need to understand your metrics. Let’s start with the basics : Cost/Conv Now if you’re using Google Conversion Tracking you’ve seen this column. Here’s what it means : Cost per Conversion, it’s the amount you spend (on [...]
Read more...I guess you could call this the “International Edition” of the BIGLIST Update of search marketing blogs as we have multiple countries represented including SEOs and PR professionals from the UK, New Zealand, Netherlands and USA. There’s plenty of flavorful writing, advice and tips so read on: Searchwritten - Netherlands based Ramon Eijkemans started this new [...]
Read more...Innovation, creative problem solving and passionate interest in the subject matter are a big part of successful internet and social marketing - the topics of prime interest to readers of Online Marketing Blog. Those same characteristics apply to organizations and individuals working to make strategic business and marketing changes for the future. In particular, these values [...]
Read more...Day 1 at SMX Advanced has wrapped up quite nicely. Below are some of the session highlights and the gorgeous Bell Harbor Conference Center. Danny Sullivan opening the show this morning in Seattle. Everyone milling around, getting ready for the first of this mornings sessions Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics panel this morning Building [...]
Read more...With all the sessions, speakers, networking and photo-snapping going on in the last 2 days at SMX Advanced in Seattle, it’s surprising any attendee got anything else completed at all. While I didn’t attend every session (can’t be in three places at once - just not possible for this girl :)) I managed to get [...]
Read more...While there is still a debate over the effect of the recession we are in, or even if we are in a recession at all, it seems most companies and individuals are preparing for it the best they can. Talks of budget cuts and conserving resources are on everyone’s minds these days. So where does [...]
Read more...Watch out link-and site-buyers alike! Matt Cutts is in town! For those of you know don’t know (is there anyone out there who doesn’t?), Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s web spam team; which means any secret we are hearing at SMX Advanced, Matt is making sure the shady tactics aren’t working anymore next [...]
Read more...For those of you who don’t know, I did a session this Monday on “Pay Per Click Mastery” for Jeremy’s Black Ink Project. For those of you who haven’t heard of Black Ink, it’s without a doubt the most comprehensive free affiliate marketing training course ever put together. Kudos to Jeremy Palmer for doing this. Anyway, [...]
Read more...Technical issues flavored the beginning of this session at SMX Advanced in Seattle. However, "oopsies" notwithstanding, Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics was informative with plenty of advice for gaining the authoritative inbound links web sites need to rank well in the search engines. The session was packed with link builders looking for new and [...]
Read more...The search marketing industry is rich with acronyms: SEO, SEM, PPC, ROI, SERPs (even LMAO) as well as buzz phrases such as “search engine optimization” and “social media optimization”. Do we really need another? One of the few things to be counted on in search marketing is that there will be change. That change comes in [...]
Read more...At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, I’ll be presenting along with David Snyder and Chris Winfield a hotly anticipated session called “Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool?”. With the fast growth and uptime growing pains, debates about Twitter are plentiful so let’s settle it once and for all with a Twitter [...]
Read more...First off all to reply to some of the misinformed comments on the last post : I’m living at the Residences at the Village of Merrick Park, which is a luxury apartment complex. The estimated value of the apartment I’m renting is $1 million and I’m paying $3000/month rent (its discounted since it’s now [...]
Read more...I’m finally settled in to my new place in Coral Gables, which is a suburb of Miami. Check it out… The food, the culture, and just about everything else in Coral Gables ROCKS! For Shilpi and I it’s been a total upgrade from the condo we had in Boston. As soon as we get back to Boston [...]
Read more...With over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati, there is a tremendous amount of momentum and motivation for businesses to take advantage of all the marketing, PR, support and revenue opportunities that business blogs can bring. Sometimes it seems there are more “blog consultants” than there are business blogs due to the ease of using free [...]
Read more...Shew! Finally, moved into my new place in Coral Gables. Exhausted today, tomorrow I’ll give you a video walk through of my new place - it’s AMAZING. Miami is Amazing, my wife and I absolutely love it here. I’m going to make this short and sweet, since I’ve been completely slammed the last week [...]
Read more...SMX Advanced is less than a week away, and let me tell you, I am excited. Not only is Seattle one of my favorite cities in the country, but the agenda for the 2 day long search marketing event looks outstanding. Along with the keynote speakers - Kevin Johnson and Matt Cutts - here are [...]
Read more...I’m a firm believer in the power of nuggets. Information nuggets that is - not the mystery stuff you order from a “value” *cough* menu with a large fries and shake. What I like to do is bookmark the video clips, interesting interviews, etc. I come across while online and then pick a time to sit [...]
Read more...Here we SEO again with a bi-weekly update of TopRank’s BIGLIST of SEO blogs. The list must be hot because we’ve been receiving requests just about every day over the past few weeks. Of course, that’s not the best way to get on the list if you’ve read the guidelines. Links are always a good [...]
Read more...This is a guest post by Miles Baker. Yesterday I noticed someone asking a question on a forum about how to organize all their affiliate login information. It reminded me of years ago, how I used to set up file folders and I would actually print out each page of login information and attempt to [...]
Read more...Companies large and small spend significant proportions of their revenue on branding efforts as well as those things that influence customer perception of brand like product development, support and customer service. While there is debate about who “owns” a brand, the company or it’s customers, partners and employees, it can be agreed that there is tremendous [...]
Read more...Late last week, Lee, Jolina and I attended the event, Dual Reality: Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise, sponsored by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA). As we sat in the front row, eagerly awaiting the discussion panel to emerge, we reviewed the roster of panelists, including Interactive Directors (titles varying from one company [...]
Read more...Someone that I’ve wanted to interview as much as Robert Scoble is Guy Kawasaki. Guy is an enthusiastic promoter and marketer which are qualities Online Marketing Blog readers can appreciate a great deal. In this interview, he talks briefly about his most recent project, Alltop as well as changes he would make to Twitter, [...]
Read more...This is a guest post by Melanie Tan. Last Saturday, I stumbled upon a site that was promoting an affiliate day close to where I live. It’s “Affiliate Dag” in The Netherlands! (Sorry folks, text on site is all in Dutch.) I read that the keynote speaker is none other than Kris Jones of Pepperjam and [...]
Read more...Lee and Rob at PRSA International 2007 On the marketing conference circuit, online reputation management is a hot topic now more then ever. Whether it’s search marketing, public relations or direct marketing, companies are trying to make sense of how to monitor and manage the brand impact of online conversations and their visibility in search [...]
Read more...My Condo’s almost empty, mover are here right now clearing it out. My wife and I are moving to Coral Gables in Miami, Florida! For the next 6 month I’m going to be soaking in some sun in South Florida. We’re renting out a luxury penthouse apartment, it’s about 1400 sq ft and on the [...]
Read more...The results of our poll on how Online Marketing Blog readers use Twitter are in. We had over 220 responses, which isn’t a bad sample considering this blog is fairly niche with a modest sized (and very smart) audience. Below I’ve listed the poll results and a few comments on each. (39%, 87 Votes) Sharing links [...]
Read more...So you bust your butt for months and finally find a hot market and you’ve actually build a kick ass landing page/site that converts better than the merchant site. You’re as happy as can be, raking in $350/day profit, then you discover some loser has not only ripped off your site, page for page, but is [...]
Read more...Tonight interactive gurus from General Mills, Best Buy, Target, Fingerhut and Gage will convene at an event hosted by MIMA to discuss: Duality Reality: Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise? As a preview, I reached out to Douglas Pollei (left) of Social Media Club Minneapolis and VP of Internet Strategy and Corporate Development for IKANO [...]
Read more...Conferences are a big part of TopRank’s marketing and content promotion strategy and it looks like a busy summer is ahead of us. Numerous events are coming up quickly - enough to make your head spin. Here is a summary of our involvement with PRSA, DMA, PUSH, SIS, SES and SMX events over the next [...]
Read more...My Coaching Program : A number of you have asked about joining my one-on-one coaching program. Here’s the thing, at the moment I only have ONE one-on-one coaching student, and he’s paying me $2k/month for 30 minutes of one-on-one time a week + email support & access to all of my training material. Honestly, [...]
Read more...What a week! Spring is officially here in Minnesota. Don’t laugh, it snowed just 2 weeks ago. This week’s BIGLIST of SEO and SEM blogs includes a nice mix of search, social and online PR content. When I co-hosted the Daily Searchcast on Thursday it was great to have Danny Sullivan mention the [...]
Read more...I’ve recently taken on a one-on-one coaching student. He’s doing very well, he has 2 profitable campaigns right off the bat! There’s something he said that really struck me : One of the reasons that he wanted to work with me on a one on one basis was to avoid getting confused. What did he [...]
Read more...Here’s a quick thought for you : PPC affiliate marketing is an much art as it is a science . I talk a lot about : Optimizing your bids Split testing ads Split testing your landing page Setting up your campaign properly And tracking your metrics This is the scientific, or analytical, aspect of affiliate marketing. And as a former scientist [...]
Read more...Two heads are better than one. How many times have we all heard that in our lives? When having a brainstorming session, it helps to bounce ideas off of one another to generate the best possible solution. Even when saving the world, is it always important to have a sidekick. Or a team of sidekicks. [...]
Read more...[Editor's note: We're excited to share this next guest post from David Alston of Radian6. A fast emerging leader in the field of social media measurement, Radian6 (a TopRank client) provides social media monitoring tools to hundreds of leading PR firms, ad agencies and brand marketers.] David is VP Marketing at Radian6 in New Brunswick, Canada [...]
Read more...Yesterday, Junta 42 announced their latest list of top content marketing focused blogs (Online Marketing Blog came in at #2 in between Copyblogger and PR 2.0) and it reminded me yet again of how important content is for SEO. It used to be when discussing search engine optimization services 5-6 years ago, we’d focus [...]
Read more...TopRank's Mike Yanke reviews the new book, "The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World by Kelly Mooney and Dr. Nita Rollins with advice both for marketing agencies and in-house marketers looking to make sense of branding in a Web 2.0 World.
Read more...Have you ever wondered why only 2% of affiliates completely clean up, bring in 95% of the revenues and profits, while everyone else is fighting for table scrapes? In this special report I answer this question. Click Here to Download The Special Report: “Why 2% of Affiliates Rake in 95% of the Profits…” This is the first report [...]
Read more...Right along with Facebook, YouTube and blogging, Twitter is one of the most often written about social media communication tools. (Follow me @leeodden) We’ve run polls about how people use Twitter as well as aggregated tips from the Twitter community on how to get the most productivity out of it. This post shares a few [...]
Read more...Check out this very funny SEO Cartoon Quiz. I only scored a 67%, just missed the passing score of 70%! LOL What can I say, I’m a PPC guy.
Read more...If you’re following me on twitter then you already know that I’m helping Jeremy with the Black Ink Project. In fact Jeremy has been gracious enough to let me do 2 modules: “Pay Per Click Mastery” and “Outsourcing - The Key to Growth and Sustainability.” I can remember back when I was a newbie [...]
Read more...Going by the last month of updates, we’re now updating the BIGLIST of SEO blogs every second Friday. That should give us more time to filter out the better sites for inclusion. Read on at the bottom as there are several reminders on how to get on the list as well as stay on. The [...]
Read more...Here is an awesome poem about the July 2006 Google Slap, written by David Guggenheim, “Ocean Doctor”, one of my top coaching students. David is a marine biologist and founder of 1Planet1Ocean, a non-profit organization “founded to explore, restore and sustain the oceans through strong international partnerships, offering solutions to the problems our oceans [...]
Read more...It’s a near nightmare situation really. A client sends an email on Friday saying, “We’re launching a new web site on Monday, can you take a look at it to make sure our site optimization is ok?”. The Account Manager asks for a URL and upon receiving, clicks to find a “pretty” home page with 90% [...]
Read more...If you’ve been following Part I & Part II at this point you should have : A Keyword list broken into different categories or themes 2 Ads (just the body copy) for each category of keywords Your Google Conversion Tracking code on the thank you page of the affiliate offer The next step is to use EfficientPPC to quickly [...]
Read more...When I last spoke with Anik Singal he was absolutely shocked with the success of the free Blog Classroom pre-launch course. They’ve had over a 1000 comments! People are following all the free blog classroom videos, putting up their own blogs, and getting TRAFFIC right away. I decided check out what all the commotion was about. Let’s get [...]
Read more...Online Marketing Blog manages a list of over 500 search marketing blogs called the BIGLIST, but it’s not ordered other than alphabetically. A year ago I took a sample of SEO and SEM blogs that were publishing Feedburner counts and posted a list ranked by the number of RSS subscribers. Below is a re-ordered list [...]
Read more...Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well. Over the past 3 years we’ve become very much involved with conferences and even becoming the first blog to be an official media [...]
Read more...Okay, last time we talked a lot about keywords, that is, how to clean up your list and segment it. This time I’m going to walk you through how to write your ads, and setup conversion tracking. In the last post I’ll show you how to put it all together and build a killer Adwords campaign [...]
Read more...There are a few additional photos from Web 2.0 Expo that I wanted to share and so I took some creative license with the timing of some of the events to tell the story of a typical conference day. The first day of a conference for me typically starts out with registration: A stop by the speaker/press/blogger [...]
Read more...One of the most entertaining keynote presentations at the Web 2.0 Expo by far was delivered by Forbes journalist, Dan Lyons. It’s a 15 minute long story of how Dan came to start the Fake Steve Jobs blog, it’s success and lessons learned. He also makes fun of EVERYONE. Enjoy: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3550977413365196450 Sponsored By: TopRank Internet [...]
Read more...I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this lately and I wanted to clear up a lot of confusion that people have about setting up their Adwords campaigns. Your first job is to build an effective keyword list, I’m not going to go into the details about that in this post. For starters, [...]
Read more...Social media evangelist Brian Solis of Future Works, PR2.0 blog and bub.blicio.us during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. tooks a few minutes to share his insights into what’s hot in Web 2.0 and the interplay of technology and communications. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7664387870231379089 Sponsored By: Start a Career in Search Marketing Announcing the best online SEM courses [...]
Read more...When registering for Web 2.0 Expo I ran into Robert Scoble whom I had just met 2 weeks ago in San Francisco at another conference. He a agreed to do a quick video interview on what’s new in the Web 2.0 world and offered a few tips on how to get more out of attending [...]
Read more...While in the blogtropol.us blogger lounge today, I caught up with a dapper Dave McClure of 500 Hats who took a few minutes before a PayPal reunion dinner to talk about his work helping co-chair the Web 2.0 Expo event, a little something about “AARRR” for startups and thoughts on marketing with Facebook. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7601563463451791714 Sponsored By: [...]
Read more...After finding out my new camera’s SDHC card wasn’t recognized by my Sony Vaio laptop, I was stuck taking lots of photos but not posting to Flickr as I normally would. After checking several stores I finally found a card reader and below are a few photos from the Web 2.0 Conference here in [...]
Read more...After the keynote frenzy this morning, the session that stood out for me was “Facebook Marketing: Best Practices” with Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research as moderator, Evan Mager from AKQA, Holly Liu from Watercooler, Brett Keintz of 750 Industries and Stanford GSB and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional. Some of the key takeaways from this [...]
Read more...Check out this shot of the MarketLeverage Team wearing SuperAffiliateMindset T-shirts : WOW! This a great way to generate buzz for your company, especially considering market leverage has send out team shots wearing T-shirts of various blogs.
Read more...Nothing smacks more of ADD in a Web 2.0 world than micro blogging and microcontent. “Flow Apps” as Stowe Boyd calls them. As such, the last session I’m blogging on day two of Web 2.0 Expo is appropriately named: “Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia” The cast of [...]
Read more...No, I didn’t write the headline for shock value, Stuff White People Like is actually a hilarious, somewhat edgy, and controversial blog. Stuff White People Like doesn’t really make fun of white people, so much as it makes fun of urban hipsters & yuppies. The author of the blog is actually a white guy himself! I love [...]
Read more...The first session for me on day two of Web 2.0, “Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business” with Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester, was one I’ve been looking forward to since I first read Groundswell. See my previous interview with Charlene Li on Groundswell. In this session, both Li and Bernoff [...]
Read more...Sessions on day two begin at 8:30 PST and while I appreciate that, it’s aggressive in my book. So, I’ll be attending, Twittering and blogging the following sessions at Web 2.0 Expo today as well as visiting blogtropol.us: 9:40am Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business [...]
Read more...The second workshop of the day at Web 2.o Expo, “Startup Metrics 101: Product & Marketing Workshop” provided attendees a glimpse into the vast depth of knowledge from Dave McClure of 500 Hats who offered some pirate speak, “AARRR” to help delegates remember his model for building web businesses. Hiten Shah of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics provided [...]
Read more...My first post from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is the second half of “Free Traffic: SEO/SMO 101 (Search Engine & Social Media Optimization) with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts and Muhammad Saleem of Advantage Consulting Services. Unfortunately, I missed the SEO portion and gauging by the crowd around Stephan, it went quite well. Muhammad [...]
Read more...The buzz about SEO in the public relations industry has grown tremendously over the past 2-3 years. Press releases in particular, have been the easy target for promotion as candidates for optimization. With the growing use of Google and Yahoo News, optimizing press releases have been an easy way to gain prominent visibility in the [...]
Read more...My wife and I had a chance to take a peak at the Boston Marathon today. The Marathon goes through Beacon St., 1 block down from where we live, at mile marker 23. Funny thing, we actually had to cut across the Marathon runners to get to our acupuncture appointment! Watching the Marathon runners got me [...]
Read more...This week might as well be called “social media week” with the NewComm Forum, SMX Social Media and the Web 2.0 Expo all happening at pretty much the same time. Companies worldwide are trying their best to make sense of the emerging landscape of social technologies and the new book, Groundswell, from Josh Bernoff and [...]
Read more...Now last time I talked a lot about health issues, there’s other stuff you have to deal with, here a major one : #3 MOTIVATION Before I quit my job I was super motivated. Just the thought of not working job kept me up long hours working on my affiliate marketing business. I remember like yesterday, I [...]
Read more...Good things come to those who wait and dammit, we’ve been waiting a good long time for some new search marketing blogs worthy of addition to the BIGLIST. You can still get updates by following the BIGLIST Twitter account as well. Enjoy! WebmasterRadio.FM - Our friends from WebmasterRadio.FM have joined the cool kids [...]
Read more...I had a chance to talk to my good friend, and super affiliate Jeremy Palmer today, and he convinced me to join Twitter. Click here to follow me on Twitter! Honestly when I first heard about twitter I was reluctant to get involved. Twitter is basically instant messenger on crack. Every time you post something, [...]
Read more...I had a chance to talk to my good friend, and super affiliate Jeremy Palmer today, and he convinced me to join Twitter. Click here to follow me on Twitter! Honestly when I first heard about twitter I was reluctant to get involved. Twitter is basically instant messenger on crack. Every time you post something, everyone who’s [...]
Read more...[Note from Lee: Please join me in welcoming Jessica Cameron-Ruud as a contributor to Online Marketing Blog. Jessica works as an Account Coordinator with TopRank’s Online Marketing clients] Over the past few months, MCAD and MIMA have hosted a series of events here in Minneapolis entitled ‘Conversations About The Future of Advertising’ (CATFOA). The most recent [...]
Read more...Thanks to the response received (@gyutae @AlbertMaruggi @AnnBernard @briansolis @martinbowling) from a Twitter post (follow here) on the topic of social marketing vs direct marketing, this post invites your opinion. In a recent strategy session, some colleagues and I were discussing a promotion where one position was to focus on a direct marketing approach and another [...]
Read more...Check out this news story : “Google’s (GOOG) U.S. paid-click growth in March was as bad as in February — up only 2.7% — rounding out a violent deceleration in Q1…” Looks like the party’s over. Potential causes according to the article : “1. Google’s ongoing efforts to improve both lead quality for advertisers and the user experience for [...]
Read more...This past Saturday, I visited local Twin Cities brewery, and soon to be local institution, Surly for their weekend growler sale. As per usual, my group and I were not alone in our quest as local denizens lined up to purchase as much as they could carry of the finest locally produced brew since [...]
Read more...After 10 plus years in the SEM business, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that the nature of SEO is constantly changing. Those changes involve both the search engines refining the way they sort and display search results as well as consumer search behaviors. A simple example would be a year [...]
Read more...Now I’ve talked a LOT about the benefits of being a super affiliate and, in most cases, these benefits also apply to having a successful online business. I talk about all the benefits for a good reason, I want YOU to experience how awesome this life is. I also want you to know that whatever struggles [...]
Read more...Photo Credit, CC Chapman At last year’s DMA07 Annual Conference, I had the good fortune of giving half of a workshop on social media with renowned author, speaker and new media marketing guru, Joseph Jaffe. Too many marketing pundits don’t “walk the talk” and I found this not to be the case with Jaffe. A [...]
Read more...I’m a big fan of Robert Kiyosaki, I’ve read a number of his books and played the board games CashFlow 101 & CashFlow 102 - which I HIGHLY recommend (NOT affiliate links, just in case you’re wondering). Before I struck it big and become financially independent, my wife and I played the CashFlow games literally dozens [...]
Read more...M&O PR’s Kevin Sawyer and I are now finally back in the office after two jam packed days of Media Relations Summit. Public and media relations professionals, academics and business communicators from across the country gathered at what is known as the largest event for media relations in the world. Kevin blogged the [...]
Read more...In the opening keynote at Media Relations Summit, the legendary TV journalist and interviewer, Charlie Rose, had the tables turned and became interviewee with the famous PR guru, Howard Rubenstein. Rubenstein: Why are your interviews so revealing? How do you get your guests to reveal so much? Rose: The thing about a story… Describes the recent news [...]
Read more...You know, there’s a lot of affiliate out there telling people that direct linking no longer works, and that they shouldn’t waste their time with it. I was one of these affiliate. But in the paste several months I’ve come full circle. Here’s some success stories : I meet two guys at Yanik’s Underground. One guy is [...]
Read more...The day two Media Relations Summit lunch keynote is given by Mike Moran, a distinguished engineer from IBM, who starts out with a question: Did Robert Scoble make you feel technologically stupid this morning and now you’re thinking you have to listen to an engineer? Mike admits he can’t be Robert and neither [...]
Read more...This session at Media Relations Summit includes Tac Anderson from HP, Jennifer Cisney from Kodak and Robert Scoble from Fast Company. First up is Tac Anderson from HP, who shares a specific example of a tactical execution of a blog. HP has had bloggers for 3 years. 60+ blogs. Example of using a business blog as a [...]
Read more...Don’t stick with one affiliate marketing strategy for very long. Once you’ve tried something for a month with no results try something else. Keep jumping around constantly : SEO, PPC, facebook, article marketing, etc. Check your sales stats every 5 minutes, and be sure to agonize about it. If this doesn’t COMPLETELY distract you [...]
Read more...Our client visit to San Francisco last week fell right next to the Media Relations Summit conference happening this week at the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. The near crossover meant a weekend in one of my favorite cities. As one of the largest conferences dedicated to media relations, this event attracts an array of [...]
Read more...Okay, I admit, my last post had no point at all! LOL I figured I’d give you a teaser before I dished out some real meat. So here it is, some hot tips (as applicable to affiliate marketing) that I picked up at the Underground : TIP #1 : EBEN PAGAN’S TIP ON TIME MANAGEMENT This is a tip that [...]
Read more...I discovered several of the blogs on this week’s update via all the new Twitter followers we’ve been getting at the leeodden and the BIGLIST accounts. Welcome to all of our new friends! 70% of the blogs queued up for review this week didn’t make it to the list, but what we do have [...]
Read more...The greatest asset to your business is your Customer, specifically, your Customer Lifetime Value.
Read more...Many people are saying that the internet is dead. So is there still money to be made from the internet?
Read more...As a business owner or marketer, if you don't reverse the risk in your product or service offerings, you're really missing out in what can be one of the most powerful weapons in your marketing arsenal.
Read more...Backend offers are the determinants of whether you make marginal or staggering profits. This is regardless of the types of business you're in, and is also regardless of whether you're marketing your products and/or services online or offline.
Read more...Identifying sub-markets or groups would allow you to more effectively position your product and/or service offerings, your internet marketing communications, your pricing policy and the rest of the 7 marketing mix elements. The result is more satified customers and increased profits.
Read more...As an online business owner, crediblity and trust is everything. You absolutely must establish your credibility and build trust, regardless of the products and/or services you're offering, if you were to boost your sales and succeed in your internet business.
Read more...To capture a larger market share and be viable, sustainable and profitable, you absolutely need to differentiate or distinguish your business, products and/or services from your competitors. In other words, you need to make your business special in the eyes of your customers and/or prospects.
Read more...A full house was in attendance for this SES NY session in which panelists discussed how to squeeze the most out of analytics and turn data into action. Specifically, Avinash Kaushik, Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist from Google shared the following. 3 Tips to Getting More out of Analytics 1. Measure bounce rate As [...]
Read more...What can I tell you about Paris? It’s a breathtaking city. Just imagine, it’s 2500 years old. That’s 2500 years of history and culture. The city itself is a museum, with many of the building dating back 100s of years, and archaeological sites going back to the time of the Romans. Paris [...]
Read more...It’s pretty common in the interactive, advertising and PR agency world to outsource components of an engagement where the lead agency does not have specific domain expertise. Those scenarios are often structured by the client who is already working with other vendors or the lead agency bringing in outside expertise. For the most part, it’s [...]
Read more...At SES San Jose in 2006, I took a 21 second video of Mike McDonald from WebProNews while we were standing in line for the bus to the Google Dance. That short video was followed by many other videos interviews with interesting people in the search marketing business which you can find on TopRank’s YouTube [...]
Read more...While I am presently an offline/online media relations guy, my background spans a variety of media and tactics. As such, I have always been fascinated with the phenomena of SuperBowl advertisements. What other event allows you to generate buzz simply by making a media buy? When it comes to search, it is nearly [...]
Read more...Ah yes, we skipped a weekly update of our SEO blog review for the BIGLIST. Conferences in New York will do that to you. This week we have the usual social media trend as well as SEO with one re-inclusion. Social Media Mom - Social media consultant Kristen Munson sports some nifty red pumps [...]
Read more...Until only recently, only people who had the proper technical expertise or access to a large budget could tap into the true potential of the internet. The introduction of blogs or, more aptly, simple publishing is changing all that, turning the tables on conventional content providers and forever altering the face of modern networks.
Read more...On day two of the Search Engine Strategies conference the expo hall has opened and I found my way past two floors of exhibitors to find the SEMPO booth staffed by the famous “free agent” and SEMPO board member, Sara Holoubek. In this video interview, Sara talks about the local SEMPO groups that are forming [...]
Read more...Today’s Orion panel at SES NY really took a different spin on the topic of universal search. I went in expecting to hear the same info about what it is, how info is gathered and how to optimize for universal search. Which, if you are interested, can be read about in a previous SES [...]
Read more...I just got back from Yanik’s famous Underground Seminar in LA. It absolutely ROCKED! It was by far the BEST seminar I’ve ever attended in terms of quality of speakers and the information that they presented. The Underground represented a whole new world to me, it was the first information marketing seminar I’ve ever attended. As I’ve mentioned [...]
Read more...Day two rolled right along here at SES New York with great sessions well documented by an array of blog coverage. This includes our own Jolina Pettice who filed an SES inspired post on “Tips for Overcoming Client-Created Roadblocks” as well as session coverage of “Converting Visitors into Buyers” and the Orion panel on Universal [...]
Read more...The abundance of Online Marketing Blog coverage of SES New York slowed significantly by Wed afternoon but there was nothing slowing down the SES NY conference, which had record breaking attendance numbers. Despite my TopRank blogging compatriot Jolina having Thursday off and myself moderating and speaking that day, there was plenty of action documented during [...]
Read more...There are many reasons social media can be a productive marketing channel or platform. Rather than emplying it as a tactic du jour, the purpose should dictate strategy and the tactics used for reaching desired goals. A few common outcomes for social media marketing efforts include: Gain insight into a community of interest -You can [...]
Read more...A number of my readers have asked me to blog about the recent Google Slap. For a lot of affiliates it was more like a Google Knockout Punch. A few of my friends had their campaigns, their life and blood, wiped out overnight. I was unscathed, and I’m still trying to fully understand why. Based [...]
Read more...This will be my last post on Paris. There are WAY too many things to share about Paris, so I’m just going to give you some key highlights. A big highlight was The Louvre Museum of Antiquities, which is-without a question-the TOP Museum in the world. Shilpi and I literally ran through the ENTIRE Louvre [...]
Read more...Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg kicked off the morning with a discussion about how consumers have changed. Specifically, moving from a push marketing model to a pull in which the audience is engaged in a different way. The audience, which is has historically been bombarded with TV ads, that they either listen to or not, is now [...]
Read more...Closing out day 1 at SES New York was a panel discussion on vertical search moderated by Incisive Media’s Kevin Ryan and Rebecca Lieb and featuring panelists Bill Tancer GM Global Research at Hitwise, Jason R. Finger CEO Seamless Web, Paul Forster CEO Indeed, Steven Krein CEO Organized Wisdom.com and Joshua Stylman Managing Partner Reprise [...]
Read more...Yesterday proved to be an interesting kickoff to this year’s Search Engine Strategies conference here in New York. The Organic Listings panel was entertaining and informative as always and the Build Investment Interest in your SEO/SEM firm was an early indulgence for myself that offered great tips for those looking at the future liquidity [...]
Read more...The conversions track at SES New York continues to be packed with those wanting to increase the performance of their search marketing campaigns. The “Converting Visitors into Buyers” panel was moderated by Aaron Shear from Boost Search Marketing and the speakers included: Mike Moran from IBM, Nigel Ravenhill from McAfee, Michael Sack from Idearc Media Corp. [...]
Read more...After gathering around the caffeine this morning for Day 3 of SES New York, attendees gathered to listen to a keynote from Gordon McLeod, President, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Gordon led the audience through the evolution of SEO within the Wall Street Journal organization, noting that they didn’t necessarily do things right the first [...]
Read more...On Thursday I’ll be presenting on a panel, “Beyond Linkbat: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online” with Chris Boggs and Sally Falkow. Sage Lewis will be moderating. I think this type of session is very timely as search engines begin to put more and more emphasis on higher quality and editorial link sources and less on sources [...]
Read more...The New Face o In-House Search included Ron Belanger as the moderator and Bill Hunt from Global Strategies International, Olivier Lemaignen from Intuit, Marshall D. Simmonds from New York Times, Bill Macaitis from Fox Interactive Media and Brendan Hart from National Geographic Digital Media. First up is Bill Hunt to talk about what perspective companies should [...]
Read more...A big part of my responsibilities at TopRank involve the wonderful world of social media. As with search marketing, there is both an “organic” and an advertising component to marketing on social networks, news and media sharing sites. As social media usage increases month over month, marketers have found a way to use these popular sites [...]
Read more...Recently internet marketing legend, Larry Chase of Web Digest for Marketers asked for a contributed article on marketing with social media. Unlike many SEO focused social media marketing practitioners which tend to emphasize promoting stories to go “hot” for traffic bursts and ancillary links, TopRank focuses on a long term mix of Branding/PR/SEO tactics to [...]
Read more...On a quick note my wife and I are back from Paris, we had a REALLY great time, will blog all about it soon. For now I want to talk about where I see my business going. The fact is I don’t see myself doing strictly affiliate marketing for the rest of my life, I’ve [...]
Read more...I recently had a friend and a student go full time in affiliate marketing. Good stuff, huh? Well, not quite, my friend is making ZERO income as an affiliate and the student only has one small profitable campaign (he quit a strong 6 figure job). I talk a lot about taking a leap of faith, and having the [...]
Read more...While sitting in sessions at any Search Marketing Conference, you will hear agency-side search marketers asking the panel for advice on how to keep clients from standing in their own way. Questions like: What if my client ignores our optimization recommendations? What if a client doesn’t see any value in social media? Some search marketers might [...]
Read more...Social Media is an important, growing channel in the world of online marketing. Certainly indicated by the number of attendees crammed into this afternoon’s session at SES New York. The panel for the session included moderation duties handled by Erik Qualman from EF Education and the following speakers: Jennifer Laycock, Liana Evans, Tamera Kremer and William [...]
Read more...This is a guest post by Miles Baker Split Testing, Multivariate Testing, A/B Split, Bounce Rate, Taguchi Method, and HeatMaps are enough terms to make your head spin. However, if you don’t know what some of these terms mean, or even worse - you aren’t using any of these methods in your marketing efforts, then [...]
Read more...Targeted traffic is the life-blood of any online business. Generating and driving targeted traffic to their websites is also one of the greatest nightmares of online business owners. There're a myriad of traffic generation tactics that online business owners can employ, but by far, the most cost- effective one is undeniably that of "building an army of affiliates".
Read more...When I was a younger, I used to think a lot about the different ways people earned money outside of a job. I spent time reading random books on multiple subjects - investing, the stock market, flipping real estate, etc. The question that always seemed to pop back in my head was “what are these people doing that’s [...]
Read more...One of the fastest and most profitable way to skyrocket your online sales and boost your profits is to create alliances through joint ventures. The reason this is so is that joint venture utilizes the powerful marketing concept known as "leverage". A properly executed joint venture can literally explode your sales and profits in a short period of time.
Read more...This is a guest post by Melanie Tan. Since Thomas covered the “L†word, it inspired me to discuss the “O†word… outsourcing. By now, you’ve probably already realized that one of the things that set Super Affiliates apart is that they don’t do EVERY little thing by themselves. They zero in on their BEST ability/qualification and [...]
Read more...Having just gone to Paris, I learned a few things about French people and French culture. Here’s the 10 requirements to passing off as a French Person : Don’t Smile Be Skinny Drink More Wine Than Water Don’t Wear a Beret - contrary to popular belief, very few French people wear berets. During my time in Paris I saw [...]
Read more...FYI, I’m in LA right now at Yanik’s Underground Seminar, all I can say is that I’m TOTALLY blown away! I’ll give fill you in on the details when I get back. Anyhow, here’s a letter I recently received from a reader in China : “Dear Amit, I kept reading your blog everyday since you started it [...]
Read more...B2B Search sessions (both organic and paid) can be few and far between, so any time it exists I’m sure to plant myself in the front row. The B2B Tactics session was moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget Speakers included: Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc. Adam Goldberg, [...]
Read more...Have you ever wished there was an easy way to tell at-a-glance how your taxpayer dollars are spent? I'd venture a guess that most Americans are unaware of just how much of our taxes are funneled into the military. A man after my own heart, Jesse Bachman spent close to a year in scouring official documents to get the facts where the American government spends our taxes.
Read more...Customer service is one of the greatest keys to your business success. It can literally make or break you. This is so because your entire business, marketing, sales and profits depend on your customers. You're in business to generate profits by selling your products and servcies to people who need and want to buy. Customers want to know how you can make their lives better or easier and/or how you can relieve them of their pain.
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Ecommerce platforms be afraid. Be very afraid. Today I stumbled on a brand new ecommerce solution under development by the extraordinary team at Varien. On top of being free and open source, the platform looks to rival the functionality of longer established, (much) higher priced ecommerce solutions on the market.
I'm constantly amazed at how my purpose for this site keeps shifting. MerelyHuman was originally intended to be my mental warehouse of sorts. The philosophical depths of which you could lose yourself in. As a professed blogger, the only thing I'm losing is my mind as paper keeps proving itself to be the more accessible medium. It'll get there, I suppose, I'm just coming to terms with the idea that it'll take time.
So on paper my best ideas remain, until I can master this particular juggling act. For now, I'm just going to have to settle for putting out average length blog posts. Don't cry, unless you're emo.
Blogging is hard. My advice to you if you have nothing to say: Don't Blog.
So, in todays news...That's some shit over at Kottke.org
I can think of more than one community besides the bloggers that could greatly benefit from an organization which supports individuals through incidents of corporate strongarming, much as the ACLU mounts efforts against government agencies and corporations which perpetrate social injustices.
As it is, almost noone emerges victorious from a legal battle against a large corporation without more than a few wounds. A watchdog organization, rallied for the public good, could grant individuals access to the kind of legal resources that give large corporations a decided edge in legal matters.
When push comes to shove, the public can and will mobilize heavy forces.
This isn't the last we'll hear about this sort of thing. Rather, it's a sign that the system is just starting to adjust to the integration of powerful new technologies into the cultural fabric. The Blogosphere's going to get very interesting in 2005.
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Since business is so misunderstood, I feel it's the responsibility of people who 'get it' to take pot shots at the pravailing wisdom until something happens and then spread those ideas which promise to have profound positive implications for people in commerce. I'm going to try to do that here on this blog.
Plus I will even create some original works of my own: Practical programmes and procedures for growing your business enterprise and honing your business acumen. I'll release useful aids, dispense free advice and eventually launch a weekly periodical.
All here on this blog for your convenient access and timely edification.
In the coming weeks, the information rollout will be fairly swift. Don't get too excited if there are days when three or four bits of content get posted. This initial spurt of updates is meant to attract the search engines and establish some positive momentum. After that I'll relax my posting to a level that's comfortable for everyone.
Of course you don't need one. But you sure want one!
Yahoo 360 remains pretty unexciting at this point, but they promise a lot of cool features in the coming months. You'll probably want to get on the ground floor regardless, being that this is Yahoo! and they're almost certain to deliver a good combination of features and usability.
I only have 50 invites left to give out and I want them to go to people who appreciate their value. Please don't ask for one if you're only nurturing a short-lived curiosity.
Hopefully Yahoo! will replenish my Invites once they're all used-up, however since you can't be too sure you should think about grabbing yours now! If you like the idea of getting in on the action early, Email me. I would definately be interesting in getting back some links to Merely Human in exchange for free Yahoo! 360 Invites.
Blogs. RSS. Information aggregators. Human-friendly content management and delivery systems. These trends and more are a formula for the rapid proliferation of information and knowledge. Taken to it's logical conclusion, it's not hard to see how in the future all--or most--information will be freely obtainable from more than one media source.
There are too many gurus pushing the same information products. Too many books to read, magazines to buy, websites to check. Selling "make-more-money" information products is fast becoming a losing proposition because the information wants to get out.
What does that mean for people in knowledge-based businesses? Get out of the way and let it. People are suddenly in the market for execution. They're realizing that despite their best efforts to keep up with the knowledge curve, they aren't getting anything done by themselves. They want to bring in impact players who can do the things they read about.
Which is the basis on which I'm going to build my consulting practice.
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Ok, you might be wondering what this is about. Believe me, you don't want to miss this one.
Today the blogosphere welcomes it's biggest marketing celebrity since Bob Bly. Jay Abraham, one of the most respected minds in marketing is officially launching his blog.
The reaction in the blogosphere could, and probably should, be bigger than when Bob Bly, renowned author, copywriter and savvy businessman in his own right, started his blog. The difference it appears--and why "business bloggers" should pay attention--is that Jay is coming out of the gates with a game plan for making money out of this venture--and he has a really good track record of succeeding.
Will we pay heed and watch as one man co-ops the emerging architecture of the internet to geometrically expand his empire at almost frightening speeds? Will his efforts bring legitimacy to the dream that blogs can be richly profited from? Or will this prove to be another half-baked scam dreamed up by a marketer desparate for a piece of the action?
Whatever the case, the future commercial applications of blogging will be generously informed by the outcome.
There is in fact a magic bullet in marketing that will virtually guarantee your sale. Pay attention. It is a performance-assured solution to an acutely felt problem or need.
A marketing message armed to the hilt with sensitivity to a person's pain hits home every single time. It's just that some professionals get so absorbed in the smoke-and-mirrors aspect of promotion that they neglect the simple notion of Supply and Demand (should be redubbed Demand and Supply for the modern era. More on this later) that has driven commerce forward since day one.
Fortunately, it doesn't take exceptional powers of discernment spot a humongous need. The marketer's job has been simplified with the advance of internet technologies. Many and populous communities of people across the net have organized for the expressed purpose of telling you what's missing from their lives.
Don't do self-indulgent advertising. The magic happens when you're attentive to other people's problems.
Now you know -- lock and load.
Tip: Your window into the market's collective conscious are high concentrations of critics. If you want to tune into their frequency you are handicapping yourself if you aren't paying attention to Amazon.com and other feedback enhanced portals.
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I have spent some time over the past two years researching blogging. And the longer I immerse myself the more convinced I become that blogs are merely a symptom of something much bigger happening on the web. No, let me restate that...happening TO the web.
Nobody's completely figured it out yet, but every day we are nearing closer to an approximate understanding of what their impact will be. The only thing we can conclude is that the question of what a blog IS isn’t so important as the question of what a blog CAN BE.
None of the conventional definitions of a blog are altogether wrong, but they are limited. And for anyone who has worked inside the industry, they will agree that the public advent of blogging represents so much more than just another distribution channel in a marketers toolbox.
In fact, I would venture to say, marketers at large are falling behind in their collective grasp of the evolving internet. Their pockets may be well-lined, but they have impoverished models of the new world.
Today, blogs are a still a blank canvas. Their uses are by no means set in stone, nor have all their possible applications been explored. I challenge people who think they really "get it" to stop concurring about what blogs are and start discovering what blogs can be.
Over the next couple of months I will be rendering my observations as lucidly as I can.
It seems like only yesterday that I signed up for a fledgling Squarespace and started writing for Merely Human. So many developments in the year leading up till now and yet I've done such a poor job reflecting them to my readers.
Well, it's back to blogging full-time. Three things have held my attention of late:
Between these three items my focus is a fairly even split. I've been wanting to separate my business blogging and consulting conversations from my human potential related one for a while now. Trying to encompass all three conversations here, on a single blog, while giving each one the coverage it deserves has been very limiting. Therefore, I'll be partitioning these conversations into three separate blogs.
Insofar as the first is concerned, there are going to be some changes around here, marked by shorter, more frequent posting habits. I'm one of those people who suffers from too-much-to-say and sometimes my mind gets clogged up with a zillion disparate conversations all clamoring to come out first. Overlay my perfectionism you have a recipe for full-on writer's paralysis. So the only way for me to continue writing for Merely Human is to narrow down its focus.
My goal is to give you more high-quality information on this blog than you would otherwise be willing to pay for. My whole gripe is that certain people on the net are aggressively pushing lame products and unoriginal content onto ignorant markets, thereby doing a disservice to all of mankind. Thus the "Don't Pay for Philosophy" philosophy behind my latest activity. Certain institutions and gurus must be exposed and I'm ready to talk smack.
Then, very soon, I will be announcing two new blogs which will serve as companion sites to this one.
PS: In the future I will try and tighten up my paragraphs for easier reading. As I finish writing this, I realize mine are the Esuvee's of blog entries.
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That's your problem -- Defining your industry as say "Media" is too broad and not specific enough. Taking the opposite approach would be more advantagous to your company in the shorter and longer term.
For example, spinning off a unique sub-category of "advertising" will yield far better for your brand than broadly trying to encompass the concept of "media", which has already been divided and sub-divided into many distinct categories (err... industries) in the minds eye of the consumer.
Much easier to divide and sub-divide your market indefinately than it is to collapse it all together under a single brand, which is what you may be trying to do. Don't.
Even if consolidating your industry is what you're ultimately driving at, you must know that a market can't be collapsed under a single brand until you own numerous positions within that market.
It can't be an accelerated process and it takes an extremely savvy strategist at the helm to execute. It's highly doubtful even the Big Two-or Three in your industry have this person, yet it's the kind of undertaking you should fear most by your competitors.
Vast resources and mass market acceptance has placed your industry's top-guns in the enviable position of being able to deploy customized solutions as and when new market opportunities crop up. Before less developed companies can organize a response, big companies have subsumed all viable niche opportunities into themselves. Sadly, the majority of advertising agencies operating today belong to but a handful of holding companies whose evil purpose it is to control everything.
Small businesses like yours have no such initiative of scale. Fortunately for us guys, most attempts by large companies to consolidate the market in such a manner fail. Despite succeeding in advertising, trying to concentrate on too many targets usually leads to hitting none. Therefore your marketing mandate is to deliver a more complete argument to narrower audience.
Your absolute best chance of dominating anything is to paint yourself into a corner. Stake out a niche and own it. Do everything in your power to make competition with you impossible. You can't succeed in that if you're trying to be everything to everybody--you must patiently cultivate authority and trust within a small crowd possessing well-defined consumer needs. Only after you own your segment totally can you think about encroaching on someone else's.
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