Ok so here’s a funny albeit, interesting take on the way social networking can start to overrun our daily lives.

I am a total proponent of the power of social networking, but never the less this is very funny.

Think social networking sites are fun and useful? See what happens when things get a little out of control for one social networker who might just be over the whole social network thing. Let the social networking wars begin!

For more go to: Current

Everything I learned About Marketing, I learned From Paul Stanley of KISS!

Not quite but I’ll tell you what. If you pay attention to any great rock front man or woman, you will notice a couple of very clever tactics.

Dateline Sunday July 20th… So there I was indulging in a guilty pleasure… Let me back up. The first concert that I ever attended was a KISS concert in 1977 when they were at their pinnacle (I have seen them 5 times since, twice on halloween!)

Like I said, guilty pleasure… So sunday I popped in a DVD “Kiss w/ the Melbourne Symphony. Kiss, the garishly made up rock band (with tons of pop hooks) with a symphony… Should be interesting, I thought.

It’s amazing what a different perspective will do. The DVD was tons of fun (guilty pleasure, remember…) but I noticed all the sales, marketing and trainer tricks that lead singer Paul Stanley was using and realized that all the great Rock Bands do this to create the rabid, evangelist seeking following.

Acknowledge!

The first thing any good Rocker will do is acknowledge the fans and thank them: Paul Stanley on the DVD, “We had offers from a lot of Cities to play with a symphony, but we had such a great time here last time, we just had to come back!”

Giving your audience ownership: “You made this song popular, we may have written it but this song is yours!” - Yep, Paul Stanley said this too.

Wow that’s powerful!

Setting the Context

If you’re going to sell, let the audience know and get their permission first.

Never, ever lay into your sales pitch without taking the time to acknowledge your audience and getting to know them first!

This was a Tweet I received (sort of, since I can’t find the tweet or who twittered..)

At a bar-b-que: Me: beautiful day isn’t it? Other guy: Heard of Amway? Never, ever, ever!

“We’re gonna slow this next song down a bit. Is that alright with you?

Permission marketing creates loyalty!

What’s in it for me?

Again any decent trainer or marketer will lay out up front what valuable stuff is coming for the audience. “Over the next hour (or whatever) I’m going to give you/tell you about these things that will rock your world!

Paul Stanley: “We’re gonna rock your asses off!”

Now, if you make this promise, you better deliver!

Involving your Audience - leads to inclusion!

Rockers do this: Sing alongs, clap alongs.

Here’s a great example of involving the audience. In the 80’s I saw Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame on tour solo. When it came time to play the Led Zepp classic “Stairway to Heaven” the singer on the tour took a break. On stage a single spotlight stayed on an empty mike. So what happened? A chorus of 15,000 + sang instead. Amazing! At that point, if we hadn’t already, we were all drinking the Koolade. Don’t leave anyone behind.

Leading Questions

“Do you wanna Rock?” - what a clever way to involve/include your audience. How about if you are marketing razors… “Has anyone ever cut themselves shaving?”

Demand a response!

Audience participation part deux: Ever heard this one? “Does anyone wanna ROCK!” then after the first response: “What?! I can’t her you!”. This, as any trainer will tell you is called “Demanding a response!”

Do you want to leave your audience out? Next time you are attending a sales meeting, seminar, teleclass, whatever, pay attention to the speaker for, in my opinion, a fatal mistake. The presenter/speaker asks a question and the audience doesn’t really respond but they move on anyway. Guess what, they just left all those non responders behind.

Go to one of T. Harv Eker’s, Tony Robbins or Alex Mandossian’s events and watch masters at keeping the audience involved at work.

Or just go to a great rock show! And when you do, pay attention, you’ll be surprised at all you can learn from a ROCKSTAR!

And remember, it doesn’t matter how many tricks you employ, if you don’t, in the end, deliver the promised “goods”!

Great interview on Forbes,com with John McCrea, head of marketing for Plaxo, which manages 40 million online address books, to learn why entrepreneurs need to get into the game, how to do it and where this is all going.

John McCrea: There are a few phases to social networking. The first phase was Friendster, MySpace and clones and it was pretty frivolous. Everyone connected as a friend. Strangers came together online. The second phase was about who you knew, maintaining and enriching your relationships. It was a way not to lose touch with people as you changed jobs or moved. The latest phase is an online representation of real world activity. Small and midsize businesses were always people who spent money on their Rolodexes and then on database software. They survive and thrive based on the power of personal networks.

I’ll point to Plaxo as a network address book and “Pulse” as an online service as examples. Plaxo was a precursor to an Internet-based service and it’s composed of members keeping up their contact information on their “implied profile page.” Even then, many users would share birthdates and would get e-mails about who changed jobs, whose birthday it is, etc. It allowed people to connect and send flowers on a birthday or congratulate someone on a new job. It made networking stuff easier to do and made a smaller businessperson appear well organized and thoughtful. Pulse brings the address book to life. Users can connect up with different services on the Web. They can share postings on Flickr or a blog, where getting an audience can be hard.

Truly it is about starting a relationship first. Nothing is more annoying than the guy (or gal) who upon the first meeting immediately bombards you info about the latest and greatest network marking company etc… Get to know me first is my policy.

Getting to know your customers and/or potential customers is the fiirst step in discovering their needs and how you can best assist them, solve their problem or ease their pain.

The Business Value Of Social Networking - Forbes.com.

News Flash! This just in!

As I have been saying online video is so important. We’ve all heard of  YouTube. Most of us have watched movies online. Video is quickly becoming the most important marketing weapon in your arsenal!

While video is important, guess what will happen when everyone is using video… Only the great, well produced videos will get noticed.

Hollywood, CA. — July 1 – Online video is becoming an important part of Internet marketing and is driving word of mouth. A recent study by eMarketer revealed that ‘recommendations from other consumers’ is the most trusted form of advertising online and according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57% of internet users have watched videos online - and most of them share what they find with others.

The most recent figures for US internet users is just over 150 million, so some 85 million Americans are watching online videos and sharing them with their friends and connections. These findings show that video on your website is no longer just something nice to have – it’s a must.

Although one might think that the audience for online video is very young, and they are watching silly videos made by their friends, in fact content such as product information and travel destinations are much more popular with every age group.

And 62% of online video viewers prefer professionally produced content.

“Companies are beginning to realize that one of the best ways to reach people today is with a well-made video distributed online. It’s no longer just something nice to have – it has become a must.” says AC Christiansen, Executive Producer of Seven Pictures Film & Video Production, an award-winning video production house that has made high-end corporate videos, commercials and PSAs for more than twenty years.

“Your video needs to have excellent content that people would want to share. And although it has become possible for anyone and everyone to make a video and upload it to YouTube, these surveys show that for best results online video should be shot and edited by a professional.”

To meet this new demand for online video Seven Pictures has added a new line of professional video products. “Technically speaking, these short online videos require fewer resources, making a professional digital video very affordable – and very effective,” says Christiansen.

For maximum online exposure and search engine visibility, videos should be syndicated and distributed to social media sites, such as Google, YouTube and Revver.

Part of this new product line is content development, script writing, RSS Feed syndication (so the video gets found by the search engines and is automatically included on sites like iTunes) and video submission and distribution to the top 30 video sharing sites.

To get a pro to do this for you, go here: http://www.SevenPictures.com

Here’s the alternative: Make professional looking video yourself by learning tips from the  pros. Film School by Phone

What’s the average site conversion rate for a typical merchant today? About 2.4%. That’s pretty depressing when you think about it.

That’s the Lead question and answer in this intriguing article on TheMultiChannelMerchant.com. If you aren’t sending the right message, you Small business (or any business) will suffer the consequences online.

This really well thought out article talks about visitor personality types and how they respond to your website architecture. Pretty great stuff!

Before you begin analyzing the effectiveness of your content, you need to understand your visitors’ frame of reference. Every visitor does things for specific reasons. These reasons translate into four distinct preferences that explain the how and why behind what people do.

Once you understand the four basic personality types — emotional, logical, fast-paced, and disciplined — you can build perspectives or snapshots that give you insight into how your customers might want to purchase your products. From there you can adjust your site design, content, and creatives.

Your visitors fall into certain profiles that give you a better understanding of who each group is and what their mode of behavior is going to be:

• Fast-paced or spontaneous visitors: Hip, stylish, and fun-loving, these people look for impulse buys and in-style products and services.
• Emotional visitors: These people think in terms of family and relationships, and will look for what everyone else is buying, or whatever will most help them be socially involved.
• Logical visitors: This group wants to drill down into the details of your products or services and compare and contrast options.
• Disciplined or competitive visitors: These folks know exactly what they want and are on your site only to get it in a quick, methodical, and straightforward way.

The article go deep into the idea of designing a site for different personalities. Have a good read here.

Once you understand the four basic personality types — emotional, logical, fast-paced, and disciplined — you can build perspectives or snapshots that give you insight into how your customers might want to purchase your products. From there you can adjust your site design, content, and creatives.

Hopefully you haven’t been doing anything on YouTube that you don’t want a federal court to find out…

In it’s ongoing legal battle Viacom over copyright, a judge has ordered that Google must do the unthinkable…

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google’s liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

This according to an article in Wired Magazine.

Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users’ privacy, the judge’s ruling described that argument as “speculative” and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already reacted, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that “threatens to expose deeply private information.”

The Court’s erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube.

So let’s just breathe and see what happens…

One of the most productive things you can do on Facebook is to create an event. The numbers of Facebookers taking advantage of this great marketing tool are increasing every month. Your event could be a live event (a Business or Small Business mixer, a networking event or Seminar, etc), a teleclass or tele-seminar or even a recorded presentation. By using the Events feature to it’s fullest you can connect with huge numbers of Facebook Users. To make your event a super success follow the 9 SIMPLE steps outlined below.

1. To set up an event, just go to your Facebook profile and click the link in the left hand navigation area that says “Events” (it’s just below the search bar in the “Applications” area). Next, look for the button on the right that reads, “Create an Event”. Click it and your good to go.
2. On this next page you get to name your event. This is probably your most important step. You want to make the name of your event create curiosity and interest. Be clever but not too clever. The name of your event should leverage your  expertise. People want to go to an event lead by an expert! Here’s your chance to be recognized as an expert which, in turn, breeds credibility amongst your Facebook peers.

   **One important note: Once you name an event, IT CANNOT BE CHANGED!

   If you are using a Facebook Event to introduce your Business, Small Business, product or service, you want to make  sure that you open your event to the entire Facebook community, you never want to limit the potential attendance.

3. List your Event Tagline, your Host’s name (that’s  you or one of your groups) and the type of event planned (you have choices like “Party”, “Causes”, “Education”  and “Meetings”). I like Education and/or Meetings.
4. Next you’re going to add the description of your event.

   The Event description is  also a very valuable bit  of real estate. You want to make it brief but full of the reasons why this event MUST BE ATTENDED! List the benefits for the attendees. There are 2 things you must accomplish in this brief event description:

   1. ETR - Stands for Earn The Right - who are you and why should I listen to you.
   2. WIIFM - “What’s In It For Me” - List the benefits for the attendees. You need to provide them  with all the compelling evidence needed for  them to attend YOUR event.

5. Make sure to fill out the rest of the required info on this page and click  the “Create Event” button.

   Note: If your event is a tele-class, tele-seminar or webinar, list that in the Location Field.

6. On the next page, you will (yes, WILL) add a picture for your Event. No one is going to take you seriously and attend your event if you don’t bother to add a picture. Ask yourself: Would you?”
7. You are given a lot of other options on this page. Most of the defaults are fine but I would disable “Photos” and “Videos”. There is no reason that I can think of to allow others to post pics or videos on your event page. We want to limit distractions.

   Do however, allow posted items. If you can get people engaged and talking on your Event page, you mission is nearly accomplished!

8. Once you have uploaded your Event Picture and selected the rest of the event settings, you are ready to “Save and Continue”. (The blue button on the bottom…)
9. The Final step is to invite ALL your friends. Make sure you send along a message and invite them to share this event with others.

That’s all there is to it. Now go have a successful event!