Archive for June, 2009
The Evolution of Twitter by @EvanWilliams
Posted by admin in Slap In the Face!, Web 3.0 on June 26th, 2009
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I tweet, you tweet, we tweet!
Rest On Laurels. . . and Die!
Posted by admin in Slap In the Face!, Wake Up Call!, Web 3.0 on June 23rd, 2009
seeded from Seth Godin’s blog!
Learning from Singer
At one point, the Singer Corporation had more than 12,000 people working in a single plant. They were selling more than a million sewing machines a year and had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. By any measure, it was one of the most important manufacturers in America. It was fun while it lasted.
Back then, it was easy to believe that Singer represented everything that was right with our economy, and that our future was intrinsically attached to the company’s.
When as the last time you even thought about Singer (or a sewing machine for that matter)?
The cycles are far shorter now than they were during the century that Singer was a shining light for corporate success. More now than ever, success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow.
Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing. I bet you can list a dozen "critical" industries that will be as relevant to life in 2020 as Singer is to our world today.
The key difference is that be then, managers and shareholders could stall and fumble and wait out the transition until after they retired. Now, it’s almost an annual event. Hiding isn’t working, and neither is whining. The best marketing strategy is to destroy your industry before your competition does.
Attraction Marketing
Posted by admin in Slap In the Face!, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 on June 21st, 2009
In here are nuggets to Marketing 2.0! Get past the sales pitch and hype and look at this for the power it is. Stop the push marketing of “buy my crap” and create value. . .
Look at this close with a cynical and jaunticed eye. What do you think I am doing with this blog. . . to you and for you?
Tevis
What Are You Really Doing with Your Business?
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on June 20th, 2009
seeded from David Bullock: What are you Really doing. . . .
Sometime you need to sit back and analyze what you are doing with your business. There is a whole area of activity that can suck up time and funds without the business owner truly being aware of the drain it can have on your bottom line. I called this activity “Non-Revenue Generating Actions”
As a business owner, you can easily get caught up in doing things that don’t make any money for your business. Usually we classify things like:
- getting the mail
- paying bills
- paperwork
- building websites
- answering email or the phone
as things that need to be outsourced and not “important” for a business owner to handle. The craze right now is to outsource everything. That is fine, if you are outsourcing the
- right things
- to the right people
- for the right projects.
But there is a bigger hole in your business that is beyond outsourcing. It is the thinking that chooses the projects that you work on.
Thinking About Project Selection
Are you one of those people who works on projects based on potential income?
The whole “get rich quick” industry is built on the idea of potential. But let’s bring this closer to home.
- How many projects are you working on right now that are potential income projects, not “get-the-revenue-now-I-know-it-is-coming-in-fact-it-is-already-here” projects?
- How many projects are you working on that are a “favor” for a friend?
- How many projects are you working on that are long-shots? Are you spending time and effort to make them work when it is clear that there is something amiss in the model?
The projects themselves are not the problem. The real problem is that you are spending precious time and effort working in areas that are not designed to give you the returns that you desire. Again, it is the time and the effort that is the real sticking point.
These are called “opportunity costs.” While you are working on these projects, you are limiting the time you can spend on actual revenue-generating activity. What you are doing is not bringing your closer to your goal.
Do this for me. Get a piece of paper and write down everything that you are working on (or thinking about working on).
Let me help you… Be sure to include all the:
- domain names that you have purchased with the idea of doing this cool project.
- projects for friends just to help them out.
- those joint venture projects that you are working on that are half-done and half-baked.
- all those long-shot unproven projects that you just want to do.
Go ahead. Take a moment and write them down. And write down the time you have already spent thinking and working on “half-dones,” “kinda-dones” and “maybe I’ll get to it” projects.
Guess what? All of these things are stealing your energy, time and brain space. No wonder you are not getting anything done. You are all over the place and getting no where. Seeing the list is pretty alarming.
We are all familiar with Product Margin, Low Cost, and High Margin.
But what about Time Margin. Never heard about that one?
Usually it is called opportunity costs. But today I am calling it time margin. Because time is the only thing that we really have and your time has to yield a result. Outsourcing can multiply your efforts, yes, but if you are working on the wrong projects then you are multiplying your waste.
Take a few minutes to think about your time margin. I am telling you now, you are going to wrestle with the idea. Everything you work on is going to seem important. And I can hear the folks saying, “You can’t do everything for money.” I agree – you can’t, and I don’t.
But…
If I am working on a project that is supposed to yield a profit, then I need to see the profit. If I am working on a project that is not profit driven or profitable, it is in my best interest to recognize what is not working and make a decision not to be carried away by the idea of potential profit.
Very easy to say. Very hard to do.
Enjoy, folks. This thinking changed me and I hope it will change you.
Side note: This time margin thinking transfers to all areas of life. Think about the best way to spend your time with family and friends. Be deliberate on getting the most happiness, joy and smiles from the people you care about. It is not about business all the time. It is about life and getting the most out of it.
How to Get Visitors In the Door & Phones Ringing – A Great Call-to-Action
Posted by admin in Wake Up Call!, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 on June 6th, 2009
this Article was so hard hitting, to the point Poignant, and spot on, I SCRAPED it in its entirety for you your review.
Mad Props goes to the peeps at VerticalResponse Marketing at: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/2009/05/how-to-get-the-phones-ringing-a-great-calltoaction.html
Mad Praise goes to them. Read on and learn!
If you build will they come? Not automatically. If your phone isn’t ringing or people aren’t coming to your store or site, then maybe you need to have a closer look at your call-to-action. What is a call-to-action you might ask? In simple terms it’s what you want people who get your emails, visit your site or see your ads, to do.
Your call-to-action can be as simple as a "buy now" graphic on a web page or in an email, or a "Visit our website to get your 20% discount at www …" in a direct mail piece, or "Call 800…for your free…". Any way you display it, it needs to drive people to act, and act now!
Here are things you might want to use with your own calls-to-action for your marketing campaigns.
Deadlines - Giving a deadline for your offer to expire will undoubtedly move your readers to do something sooner rather than later especially if it’s truly a great offer. Make sure you outline what they’ll be saving or getting by ordering before the deadline and remind them up to the last day that they can tap this offer.
While Supplies Last – If you’ve got inventory that will go away, promoting that this offer will end with the end of the supply is a great idea. You may even want to set "limits" on the number of products that can be purchased.
The Bobble Head – If you’ve got a free gift to give to your customers if they buy now, then promote it! The baseball parks get FULL when they give away gifts to the first 1000 people that come to the stadium. It gets people to the stadium early and gets them buying things.
Free Consultation/Free Trial – Why not offer a number of hours of your services free to get newbies in the door. If free doesn’t rock your boat, then offer a deeply discounted rate for them to feel comfortable. Once they see the value, they’re sure to come back for more.
Not Available in Stores – Wineries do a great job at offering their wines direct-only. And they focus their messaging on that fact that you can only get the wines from the winery. Some have such limited production that they have people on waiting lists to get on the winery list.
Risk-FREE – If your recipients won’t have to pay or put down a credit card and they can walk away with no questions asked, then make sure this is largely displayed.
Free Accessories with Purchase - Under the deadline, why not try promoting an accessory with the product you’re offering. The accessory could even turn into another purchase down the road. For instance, if you sell face cream, you might want to add in a free sample of eye cream. If you sell jewelry, you might want to add a bit of jewelry cleaner.
One more thing, the presentation of your call-to-action is important. You’ll often find bursts and buttons in red, orange and yellow because those are colors that command attention, yet used too much can be distracting.
Make sure you have your call-to-action in more than one place. If it’s on your website, don’t only display it at the end of the page, make sure you include your call-to-action within your text as well as graphics. As always, test a variety of placements and see what works for your business.
Google’s Wonder Wheel!
Posted by admin in Wake Up Call! on June 2nd, 2009
An amazing new tool to ferret out elusive keywords and topics. . .
What will they think of next?
Web Tyrant – Wonder Wheel from Simon Hedley on Vimeo.
Traffic, Traffic, Traffic, “Come to my website, and git in my belly!”
Posted by admin in Slap In the Face!, Wake Up Call!, Web 3.0 on June 2nd, 2009
Good Boogly woogly, it is the lament of every website entrepreneur. How to get targeted traffic to your website, and have them buy your stuff? (the Austin Powers vibe-we gotta get paid) No bullcrap, here is the answer: Writing Articles. . . is Your Secret to Free Traffic!
Let me share with you how to do it:
Do you own a website that is receiving so-so traffic or receiving no traffic at all?
Would you like significantly more website visitors without spending any money?
Duh, of course the answer is yes. . . What you need to institute right now is the web 2.0 method that has been kept secret by knowledgeable SEO and SEM experts, and marketers as a top website traffic generator — writing articles!
The idea behind writing articles to drive traffic is simple. You write as many quality (targeted to your potential customer base), interesting, and original articles as you can crank out, and then submit each article to as many article directories as possible.
Article directories is as follows:
- WordPress
- Digg
- Technorati
- PR Web
- Hub Pages
- Squidoo
- TypePad
- Blogger
- Microsoft Live
- BlogSpot
- Blog Catalog
- You Tube
- Vimeo
- eZine
- eZineArticles
- TweetDeck
- . . .and a bazillion more that I can think of, click here. . .
Didja notice that I put You Tube and Vimeo in there also? yes, video is the new web 3.0 way of communicating with your constituency. . . Please see the iJustine article within this blog for more information. . .
These article directories in turn will drive traffic to your site.
Note that when writing your articles, you must deliver content that is helpful, informative and non-promotional in nature. Moreover, your article content must focus specifically on the
service or industry your website is targeted for.
After you have written your articles, spell-check and proof read each and every one of them (again duh. . .put your best foot forward).
You will not get any website traffic with a poorly written article, nor an article that has been scraped from another bloggers website. Google penalizes for duplicate content. . .to the extent of de-listing you from the index.
Futher, what about shameless promotion? Arent we all here to sell our crap? yes and no! First in the push versus pull marketing game, we have to seduce our potential customer to listen to us.. . . how? By creating value and offering it in advance.
Let me be perfectly clear, out of 10 articles you have written, provide value for your customer, fixt their problem, make their lives easier, make them feel prettier. . .and then in ONE article promote your product.
the ratio, 90% value, 10% promotion. . .
Now that you have your salient, and original and value added articles in hand, what next?
Submit your articles to as many free-content, free-for-reprint article directories as will accept your articles. There are also some niche article directories that will cater to your industry and you should also submit your articles to these.
So where does this so-called traffic come from, Tev?
Well digglily dog glad you asked, hold on to your pants, here is the most important doggonit on this BLOG post. . .
An article directory will typically allow you to place a link back to your website in a section about the author. Readers who like your articles will be able to click on that link and visit your site.
Write one article and submit them to 1,000 article directories and you have obtained 1,000 inbound links free of charge.
by way of social viral marketing, several ezines might just pick up your article (entertaining, informative, written with personality and your voice) for redistribution, then your article can potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people via the ezines’ mailing lists. Now, think of this as a marathon, rather than a sprint. . . If you wrote 100 of such articles and repeated the process for each one of these, can you imagine the volume of web traffic you will eventually be receiving?
go on, type “Xcel Bamboo” or “Oceanic OC1 computer” into Google. . . and see the magic. . .
Writing articles clearly gives you a free, zero capital method to increasing your website traffic. . . .
Well, go on. . .start writing!
Tevis
Having Trouble Coming up with an Article for your Blog?
Posted by admin in Wake Up Call!, Web 3.0 on June 1st, 2009
. . ugh, it is Monday morning, you are waking up from a hangover of schnapps and chocolate binge. . . you are kind of nauseous and not feeling very insightful, nor very smart for pouring the schnapps into the the M&Ms to speed up the process. . . Welp, here I am, Tevis Verrett, to the rescue:
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