Stalking Your Social Marketing Heroes

Stalking Your Social Marketing Heroes

I got a lot of feedback about Jason Moffatt's
comment to my post last week. Got me wondering
about how it was that he found the post so fast.

Oh I know a lot of the ways to keep up with any
posts or content that relates to yourself, but
wondered if there were ways that I wasn't aware
of...

And of course there are. Got this in my inbox
last night, and thought I'd share it. Came from
Jason Moffatt himself:



Not sure about you but am already brainstorming
different ways to use Summize.com. This is definitely
at the top of my Twitter app list.

Watch the video a couple of times, and then go and
play with it. Then come back here and post your
ideas.

Eat a peach!

Floyd Bogart

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Social Marketing Still Requires A Purple Cow

Social Marketing Still Requires A Purple Cow

If you have been around marketing for a while,
that title isn't much of a surprise to you. On the
other hand many still aren't all that familiar with
Seth Godin and his Purple Cow principle.

It goes like this.

If you drive by the average farm, cows are so
commonplace that you don't really notice them.

But if you drove by and saw a Purple Cow, then
you would sit up and take notice. No doubt you
would tell everybody you came in contact with
about that Purple Cow that you saw. You wouldn't
be the only one either, and this would create a buzz
that would spread exponentially.

Virally you might say...

This concept has made a lot of people a lot of
fungolas with so called Purple Cow marketing
campaigns. Today however, with everybody
hitting Social Marketing with a sledgehammer
the importance of having a Unique Sales Proposal
(or USP) has slipped a lot of people's minds.

It shouldn't!

Just as the internet is just a tool, Social Marketing
methods are also just tools. They do nothing to
change the fact that your marketing message
needs to have it very own Purple Cow, or USP.

Now think about how quickly a Purple Cow ad
campaign can go viral using Social Marketing tools.

Want an example?

Okay, maybe you have heard of Jason Moffat.
His YouTube videos are hilarious! They get
tons of views and he sells affiliate products like
few crazy. Take a look at this one:



The particular offer that this promoted is over,
but I will guarantee that Jason's sales were in the
top 10% of all affiliates. Note that his "Prostate
Exam" got over 24,000 views. This is definitely
a Purple Cow approach to marketing.

Am I suggesting that you do something this shocking
to promote your campaigns? That is up to you!

Shocking is relative. Sometimes what will stand
out is not as over the top. Another YouTube video
that stands out is something that Seth Godin himself
has pointed to:



Who would think of running an iPhone through a
blender? The guy that did has gotten not 24,000
views, but in excess of 4,000,000 views!

Their site is listed in their YouTube profile as Blendtec
and has an Alexa rank of 117,028. Wanna bet they're
selling some blenders?

YouTube isn't the only Social Media site where it is
possible to start a Purple Cow ad campaign, but it
is a great one. The challenge is to use the unique
qualities of each to greatest advantage.

Take Twitter for instance.

It is the most widely used platform for microblogging
right now. How can you use their 140 characters to
make a marketing statement that will stand out in
a field like a Purple Cow? There are a growing number
of apps out there built just to maximize the Twitter
experience. Maybe they can help...

What about Digg? Can you make your profile, or
your Diggs themselves into a USP?

Hopefully this post will start your own creative
juices flowing. I know it isn't my first post on this
subject, but it is one of the toughest challenges
that we face as marketers. Creating buzz!

That's why I have a ceramic cow on my desk!

Guess what color she is...

Eat a peach!

Floyd Bogart

A HodgePodge Of Social Marketing Apps And Functionality

A HodgePodge Of Social Marketing Apps And Functionality

It is definitely one of the joys of working online
when you come across something that makes a
task easier, or gives you an alternative method
of promotion that is not only easy but just plain
works!

1. Yesterday while doing a bit of Digg-work,
there appeared before me an unassuming Tab
that said "Blog It". Okay so it ain't the Holy Grail
of Social site promotion, but it really makes it
easy to post something from Digg to several
different blogging platforms. I went back and
blogged a Squidoo Lens of mine that I wanted to
say a few things about here anyway. This made
the post almost effortless. Use this, it's quite
useful.

2. Speaking of Squidoo. Each and every time
you update one of your lenses, be sure to use the
"Tweet This" link in the green box that appears
for a few seconds right after you hit the "Publish"
button. This will post a Twitter update letting
your friends know that you have updated your
lens. Microblogging is an important part of you
Social Marketing tasks that this can simplify
dramatically.

3. This one is pretty well known, but for those
that have not run across it, OnlyWire is a great
Social Bookmarking service because it posts your
bookmark to over 20 different Social Bookmarking
sites.

4. RSS becomes more important every day as a
means of both promoting your own site and also
to stay abreast of what your favorite bloggers are
posting, and giving you an opportunity to go and
get those all important Trackback Links. Grab
your 2008 Authority Blackbook at the top of the
sidebar for an explanation of how and why these
are important. Been relying more and more heavily
on my Google Reader for this lately, and find that
a web based RSS Reader just works better for me
than than anything else I have tried.

5. RSS Announcer. This is a handy little tool that
you can have on me. Run this every time you post
to your blog, or update any page you publish a feed
for. It will get you subscribers just about every time.

That's all for now.

Hope you enjoy these and use them too...

Eat a peach!

Floyd Bogart
Are You Leveraging Your Promotinal Efforts Or Are Your Wasting Them?

News Via Twitter - Is Everybody Missing The Point?

News Via Twitter - Is Everybody Missing The Point?

I have read several news items today referring
to the stories about people posting relevant and
important news to Twitter quicker than any
other medium had done.

Surprisingly, this is being mostly treated as a
gimmick, and with tongue firmly planted in
cheek. Take for example THIS ONE posted
by John Murrell at Good Morning Silicon Valley.

IMHO the point is not whether these Twitts beat
the conventional media to the punch, it is that here
we have one more way that news can, and is being
gotten out that is not corporately controlled.

Over and over again we have seen that "our" news
media is actually not ours. It is controlled by the
large corporations that own them, and they clearly
have their own agendas which may or may not have
anything to do with keeping us fully informed.

So to be so glib as to say that these Twitter updates
allowed us just to feel "saddened and powerless
minutes sooner" is not just naive, but also quite
dangerous.

Do yourself a little favor and do a Google search for
"Net Neutrality" or even just a Digg Search and
educate yourself.

Think this has nothing to do with Social Marketing,
Internet Marketing or your business in general?

Well, if AT&T, Sprint and the rest of the telecom
giants get to control the content of the internet,
who's sites do you think will come down first?

MSN.com, or your blog?

That forum you created and nurtured with your
own hands, or Yahoo!

And don't think that they have to just out and out
ban certain types of sites to get rid of them. It is just
as easy to eliminate content by levying fees for their
customers to access your content to shut you down.

This is not an issue that is going to go away soon.

Hey if they can do this, before you know it they
can suspend your basic freedoms!

Oh yeah, they already did...

Rant over!

Floyd Bogart

Social Marketing Programs - I'll Show You Mine If You'll Show Me Yours

Social Marketing Programs - I'll Show You Mine If You'll Show Me Yours

Here are the urls to my Social Networking
program profiles.

They are all used primarily to promote my
Social Marketing efforts, so feel free to post
your own below, and to add me as a friend
to your own profiles.

If you post yours in a comment below, I will
be happy to add you to mine as well.

Always a pleasure to interact with my blog
readers, whether it is here, or on twitter,
Pownce or Digg!

Propellor
Digg
Del.icio.us
Twitter
Tagza. (username is floydbogart
NewsVine
Swik
Sphinn (username is floydbogart)
Faves
Spurl (username is floydbogart)
Diigo
Folkd
Indianpad (username is floydbogart)
Myjeeves.ask (username is floydbogart)
Connectedy (username is floydbogart)
Google Bookmarks (username is boodles.offers)
Fetch (username is floydbogart)
A1-Webmarks
MyVMarks (username is floydbogart)
Wirefan (username is floydbogart)
Symbaloo
HealthRanker (username is floydbogart)
SlashDot
Technorati
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Fark
Furl (username is floydbogart)
BlinkList
MisterWong
Netvouz
BackFlip (username is floydbogart)
Bibsonomy
Linkagogo (username is floydbogart)
Plugim (username is floydbogart)
MyLinkVault
Oyax
Bookmark Tracker (username is floydbogart)
Mixx
Danogo
Ka-Boom-It (username is floydbogart)

You may wonder at the order of this list.
Not as random as it looks though. Take a
look at SocialMarker.com

This is the service I use to make bookmarking
quicker and easier. Always a good thing...

That's their widget down below my signature.
Makes it easier for readers to bookmark a post
too.

Don't forget to post your own links here too.

Floyd Bogart

A Few Web 2.0 / Social Marketing Tools

A Few Web 2.0 / Social Marketing Tools

Just a quick post to let you all know about a
some Web 2.0 / Social Marketing tools to make
your internet life a little easier and maybe a bit
more effective.

First off is Social Marker. This is an interface
that will allow you to move straight through each
of your Social Bookmarking sites automatically
signing you in, and autofilling most common fields.

I especially like their widget, which you can see
at the bottom of each of my posts, right after my
digital signature. Well worth the time to check out
and use as they are hooked into 46 different Social
sites and services.

Check them out HERE

Next is a nice little service that for Microblogging
to twitter, jaiku, Pownce, facebook, myspace and
bebo simultaneously.

It is called hellotxt

Very simple to use. Just fill in your username and
password for each of your accounts once, and allow
it to verify your data and you are ready to roll.

Check it out HERE.

I have already mentioned the Social Linking
BlackBook for 2008 in a previous post, but it
bears repeating...

This thing is just chock full of Web 2.0 / Social
Marketing resources tactics and info that you
really can't afford not to read it.

Just take a look at the top of the right hand
sidebar to grab a copy gratis...

More coming later today so check on back!

Floyd Bogart

Squidoo and Twitter - What a Combo

Squidoo and Twitter - What a Combo


After watching the video in my last post, I promised that I would be
launching my own campaign using this method the following day.

Here are the immediate results:

I pored over my PLR materials and decided to do a Squidoo Lens in
the Travel niche. Here it is:

Travelling in Canada

This was pretty simple to put together in spite of the size of the lens.
I just cut and pasted each article into it's own module, and then searched
Google Images for an appropriate jpeg to post with it. Then I put up 4 posts
to my Travel Blog here:

Floyd's Travel

Then I spaced out three modules throughout the lens with
RSS Feeds to these blog posts. Now to supply Traffic!

I went to Twitter
and put up a new profile here:

Traveling Man

Now I "Twittered" the absolutely simplest
post pointing to my Squidoo Lens.
You can see it at my Twitter Profile.

Then I just searched the Twitter Profiles for the keyword Travel
and got back 66 pages of matching profiles. At 20 profiles/page
that translates to around 1,300 profiles with something about
travel in their text.

Not having bought the software from the page in Willie Crawford's
email, I had to manually push the "Follow" button for each profile.
To be honest I only got to about page 30 before calling it quits for
the night.

Twelve hours later, having only Twitted the Lens once, I had gotten
over 30 visits to the Squidoo Lens. I immediately finished off the rest
of the 66 pages of profiles, and then Twitted the Travel Blog as well.

Both are continuing to get steady traffic, and I still
only have the two posts at Twitter on that profile...

I will definitely continue to do more Twitting of the Lens
and the Blog as well, seeing as the initial results were so good.

More on this later!

Floyd Bogart

Learn The Secrets Of Squidoo!

MicroBlogging ?! What A Concept... Plus a Little Something Extra

MicroBlogging ?! What A Concept...
Plus a Little Something Extra




Today I got an email from Willie Crawford (always a welcome event)
with a video so full of valuable content that I just had to share
it. I even left Willie's affiliate link in place at the bottom so
that you can get the discount he is offering.

Frankly, the info is phenomenal even without the
product offered so watch the video and learn!

Click Here to see the Video.

Great stuff isn't it?!

If you can't create traffic with these methods, then you just
aren't really using these methods! The automation software
offered would definitely kick it into overdrive, but very respectable
results can be achieved without it. I plan to kick off this type of
campaign tomorrow AM, first thing. I have about 3 or 4 niches
all picked out...

The Little Something Extra:



When you clicked on the link above to see the video,
you should have noted a couple of things:

First that the link took you to a url that looked like this:

http://floydbogart.com/WCMB.html

And not to what that link originally looked like:

http://sustainabletrafficworkshop.com/lab/microblogging-willie.html

Most people are less put off by shorter, less "Affiliate" looking links.
Also it is good for the link to look like it originated with you, or at least
like you are in a JV with the originator.

Heck, it just looks a bit more professional.
Admittedly, Willie's link wasn't too bad, just a bit too long...

The next thing you may have noted was that the page had a very thin
ad ribbon across the top. This ad is viral, and totally free to implement,
as is the ability to cloak your links to look more professional, and less
"Affiliate"-like.

Here is all it takes:

First Click Here to get Russell Brunson's LinkBrander, at no charge.

In the backroom you can turn those long affiliate links into shortened
"LinkBrander" urls. That is already a step in the right direction, but
let's take it one step further:

Now go and use my HTML Cloaker, totally free of charge, and not even in
a backroom: Click Here to use it Free as often as you like!

Input your "LinkBrander" url in the field for Your Target Web Address,
and give it an appropriate title and push the button. That will generate
a little bit of code that you can put in a text document like NotePad, and
then save as a .html file. Now upload it too you WebHost, and there you
have it!

It's short, it looks like you own it, any affiliate links are cloaked and best
of all everytime someone looks at it, you are earning more traffic to the ads
you set up in your LinkBrander backroom.

You can make the whole thing even more viral by promoting LinkBrander
through Russell's Second Tier Affiliate Program.

Little things like this make your whole approach look more seamless to
whoever is reading your webpage. Professionalism is something that is
mostly noticed when it is lacking, and frankly a few little things like these
can make a huge difference in conversion rates.

Try it!

I'm sure you'll like the results...

Floyd Bogart