Steve’s Sunday Selections

The Drumbeat of the Internet and the Rebirth of the Mom-and-Pop Store

by Steve Scott

Drumbeat of the internet-Create Quality ContentFollowing Google Panda there has been a continuous drumbeat heard ‘round the ‘net.

The drumbeat sounds like this:

Ba dum bum bum

Create

ba ba bum bum bum

Quality

be ba bum bum bum

Content

tiki tiki boom

Over and over you hear it.

Create Quality Content.  Create Quality Content. Content is King.  Content Matters. Create Quality Content!!!

Are you sick of it yet?

Well…  not me.  That drumbeat is like sweet music to my ears.

I have long been a fan of writing stuff that matters.  Not simply fluff, but detailed posts that I like to call MVP (Massive Value Posts).

Now, I am not going to try and sell you a bill of goods saying that every article I have written is a homerun or manna from heaven.  That would be ridiculous.  But I take my shot at making most posts actionable and detailed.  I may fail, but I try my best to make this quality content.

I think you all should too!

I love the idea of creating something valuable and then giving it away.

In Affiliate Marketing, the ultimate goal is to make sales, but I believe that rather than beating people over the head with stuff you are selling I think it is important to build trust.

The Startling Re-Birth of the Mom-and-Pop store

Once upon a time you went to your local hardware store.  You chatted with the guy behind the counter.  He knew you.  When you bought tools for gardening, he might give you a few gardening tips.  Like how to plant lavender.  The guy behind the counter might mention a special they were having next week.  He wanted your business, but he also cared about YOU.

Then Home Depot arrived. This giant store has everything you could possibly want but is incredibly impersonal.

The Internet is simply Home Depot on steroids.  You can get anything but the personal factor is gone.

This is where that “trust” and “quality” comes in.  You can be that Mom-and-Pop store.

With quality articles, social media connection and giving away a lot of quality “free stuff” you build that trust level.  When Joe Shopper arrives at your site, you not only sell him the digital claw hammer and nails.  You make sure he has a few tips for building that deck he has planned.

That, my friends, is quality.

Joe Shopper will be back, and he may bring friends.

And that is why I love the current drumbeat of “Create Quality Content”

I want to be the mom-and-pop hardware store.  Not the Home Depot.

At the Mom-and-Pop Internet Stop, we get personal.  You try to anticipate your client’s needs.  You try to give them valuable free content and take steps to connect with them (at least casually) on a one-to-one basis.  You do not have to have your customers, “over to dinner,”  but you should know their first name and strive to treat them as more than a number.

It all starts with creating quality content they can use.  Not simply selling them products.

Quality Content

So what is Quality Content?

First off quality is subjective.  What I find to be quality you may not.

My personal benchmark is: Does the post/article teach you something?

You see “Top 5 Tips to Creating Quality Content” posts you everywhere these days.

Let’s face it, unless you are brand new: they will not teach you anything.

For someone starting out, those posts can be high quality, but for the rest of us, they may seem like derivative drivel.

Since Saturday is my round-up –slash- essay day, and my essay is done, let’s get to some examples of quality content.

As you know from my MVP’s, often the stuff I write is long and in depth for me to personally assume it is “quality.”

Quality does not need to be long.  Kim wrote an article I consider to be perfect quality.  She addressed those annoying “auto-play” video and audio sites.  She links a FireFox plug-in that stops the audio and video in their tracks.

To me that was perfect quality.  It brought up an issue.  It solved an issue.  Short and sweet.

A quality post can even go over things you know and reinforce them.  Lisa had a post that pointed out the importance of scheduling posts.  This is something I always do.  In fact it was the way only way I was able to post every day while traveling in Europe for 6 months.  Even now, most posts you read on SSS (with the exception of the “Saturday” posts) were written 6-10 days prior to publication.

Then you have Robert’s post this week.  He asked the question, “How Long Should a Blog Post be” and succinctly made his point.

Time is a valuable commodity too. Writing posts that save people time can also be quality content.

My essays/round-ups are perhaps too long-winded to really be considered a “time-saver” but as an example, Kristi does a great round-up every Friday that is an excellent resource for all of the topics you may have missed.

Turning people on to other bloggers is another way to create quality.  Rob did a post of up-and-coming internet marketing bloggers.  I may be biased as to this posts quality, since he was kind enough to include me on this list.  But I think this was also a great example of quality.  Hopefully turning people on to some great bloggers.

The Goal of Quality Content.

The goal of quality content is twofold.  Of course the main thrust is to get your readers to read it.  You want to provide that value.

But it is also to get it mentioned again. You want retweets, comments, Diggs, Stumbles, Facebook “likes”. You want your post to go viral.  Or at least as Tristan classically put it in his historic (to me) Info graphic, at least you want to go bacterial.  Your real goal is to get mentioned again and again on posts this to expand your reach and hopefully find new followers.

The ways you do this is by making your quality content also linkbait or traffic magnets, and of course having that snappy title.

Ana gives some great examples of topics (and things you can do) that can make truly quality in what she calls blog traffic magnets.

Zarko gives an excellent and clear explanation of the type of article you can write that in addition to being “quality” will also serve as link-bait.

As a final example of linkbait, Michael talks about actual bait.  He talks about steps he used/could use to build actual linkbait (quality) articles in the “Online Fish and Aquarium” Niche.  It is interesting to see just how many great ideas there really are in this fairly narrow niche. LinkBait and Content Marketing.

As a final (and mercifully quick) note, an important part of creating these articles that get shared like wildfire is the titles.  I will admit I am sometimes poor at this.  If you want to see good headlines check out some tabloids.  The stories themselves may be crap, but the headlines are copywriting gold.

The all-time best was the Classic NY Post headline, “Headless Body found in Topless Bar”

But I digress

If you want to see great internet headlines in “our” neck of the woods, check out Alex at Build Rank Profit (BuRP).  Alex is a great writer.  He has many quality posts.  But when it comes to titles, the guy is a pure genius.

Since I mentioned Alex, let me do a second of shameless self-promotion.  I have a guest post currently up on his site right now. If you want to read it it will show you how to make money with free traffic.

In fact, let me even go a little bit farther into self promotion. Last week in a guest post I talked about creating an eBook out of your existing material.  Well I took my own advice rewrote/repurposed some content into an eBook for you all. Create a Profit Pulling EBook Empire is now available for free to you.

This is not, “give me your name” free.  This is click the button and get it free.  All I ask is for you to hit that tweet button, Facebook “like” it, and all those goodies.  In other words.  Help spread the word…

Believe it or not, this is only about half of what had planned to talk about.  I think I got a little wordier than I thought I was going to.  Rather than burdening you with another three thousand word Saturday post.  I will just quit now and consider myself, “ahead”.

Get out and Enjoy your Memorial day weekend.  At least those of you in countries that celebrate it.  Regardless, get out and enjoy your weekend.  I know I will.

{ 21 comments }

Cleaning House and Creating the Perfect eBook

by Steve Scott

creating the perfect ebookWelcome to another Steve Scott Site Saturday link post.  Today’s post will be a quick discussion on some “housekeeping” items as well as a quick discussion on writing eBooks.

With Memorial Day just around the corner, Summer seems to be bearing down on us like an inexorable horde of zombies (Happy Zombie Awareness month!).  While Spring is still here, it is time to start our Saturday chat with a little bit of spring cleaning.

Dofollow

First of off is a little change of business.  Thanks to this nofollow/dofollow post by Ana, I decided to make a small change to my nofollow policy by using the nofollowfree plugin.  What does that mean to most of the comments on here?  Probably very little.

Right now I give away up to two links for each comment.  The “name” block, which has Keywordluv enabled and the commentluv block.  This new plug-in does nothing to change the commentluv block.  It is still dofollow and will be for the foreseeable future.

There is, however a slight change in the “name” (keywordluv) block.  This additional plugin makes it so that a specific “name” has to be used 3 times before it becomes “dofollow”.

For people that have commented in the past, this will be no difference.  Your links will be dofollow.

For brand new commenters, get those three comments in and your links will be dofollow.

And finally for people who use the @yourkeywords from keywordluv, you just have to ensure you get have three comments from each @yourkeywords to make sure that link is dofollow.

Also, regardless of the “name” block, all commentluv blocks are fully dofollow.

Steve Scott Site Blog is now on Kindle

Back in late March, due to a post from Brankica describing how get your blog published on Kindle.  I promptly kept forgetting to mention this for the ensuing two months.

>>>>Check Out the Kindle Edition of the Steve Scott Site<<<<

Since the “customer reviews” on the Amazon page is a cold and lonely place right now, I would greatly appreciate any comments the Amazon members might be willing to leave.  (Comment here)

The great eBook debate

Early this week I did a guest post for Tristan, “Why you already have a money making eBook”.  While I hope the content was good, Tristan asked a few questions in his initial comment, that set off what I think was a lot of interesting comments that may have discussed the topic of eBooks better (certainly more thoroughly) than the post itself.

First off, hats off to Tristan’s followers for a great reception.  The comments were in depth and as soon as I was done with my 3rd or 4th lengthy reply, I decided.  E-Books will be my Saturday “round-up” topic this week.

The first thing I want to point out is for people who do not like eBooks.  I can understand it.  I have a love of paperback books myself, but it doesn’t stop me from reading a ton of eBooks also.  You may not like them and maybe you never will, but they are not going away.  In fact eBook sales have begun to consistently outsell print books.

Next up, Lesley addresses some reasons why you should write an eBook.

Morgan then gives us an interesting idea of turning your Ebook’s into an audiobook.  This is actually something that I have been thinking of doing with my upcoming eBook.  Perhaps paying someone with a good, “voice” to “read” it into an audio file to give it that, “professional” feel, and offering the  audio file as a small, “upsell”.  I am still in the planning stages on this, but of course let me know what you all think.

Finally, Paul is working on creating a free guide to creating eBooks.  (Knowing Paul, this will be something you will really want to get).  His article is short, he simply asks for questions on creating ebooks, but the comment section has some vibrant answers to some great questions asked.

I failed this week – But you won’t

I usually let the articles I read over the week shape my Saturday topics.  This week I desired to write on a specific topic only to find that very few articles I could find, were on topic and “made the cut”.  I spent nearly two hours this morning doing fruitless “this week” Google searches on topics about eBooks and came up with little.

I debated making this a comprehensive, “best of all time” article about eBooks.  Since I know I have read quite a few good ones over the years.

But then I thought about another trend this week; Great discussions in the comment sections.  So I am going to kick this one out to you, the readers.

Do you have any worthwhile articles you have read (or written) that are associated with creating an ebook?

Do you have strong ideas or opinions about eBooks?

What I would like to hear about specifically is articles/comments on:

eBook pricing |  Putting eBooks on Amazon | Tips for making eBooks | Tips for marketing/promoting eBooks |  Finding ideas for eBooks | Beating “writers block” for eBooks | eBook “art” (cover/internal graphics and “offer” art) | How to utilize eBooks you have made | Why someone should want to make eBooks

Please comment and link any articles you have written or bookmarked from others that give some great tips on making eBooks.

I have failed this week in finding a huge depth of articles to go with the few good ones I linked.

But  I know you all will not fail.

If I get enough quality links, I will re-edit this article later in the week (or perhaps write a follow-up) including some of the best of the links to make a comprehensive guide on “how to eBook”.

I appreciate those comments both here and on Amazon.

To get you all started, here are the posts that I have written on writing ebooks over the past year.

Thanks for your time

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Yelling into a vacuum- The importance of online promotion

by Steve Scott

“Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”- PT Barnum

Importance of online promotionFor the past couple of weeks I have spent a lot of time on an important subject: productivity.

Productivity is all about getting things done.  In the past few weeks I have discussed:

Hopefully these articles have given you some inspirational ideas AND actionable tips on increasing productivity.  So now you have free time.  (Yeah, right!)  It is time to take all those free hours and turn an eye toward online promotion.

What is online promotion?

Online Promotion is everything you do to publicize a project, venture, blog, article or online business.  It is all about getting the word out there.  It can be as simple as a Digg or a Stumble or as complex as writing an EBook.

In fact let’s just look at just a few of the sites that are great for blog promotion:

This list is by no means, “complete” either.  Off the top of my head I can of about 20 more.  With research I am sure I could come up with another 100-200 of variable efficiency.  As you can see, finding places to do your online promotion should never be the issue.  The important part will be finding the time to do as much as you may want to do.

But we cleared that up, right?

You now have time because you have increased your efficiency.  All that time you have saved on increasing productivity can now be spent on promotion.

Well still there are so many means out there for promotion; you can never do them all.

Pick a few of the “quick” ones from the list above.  Try to do those every day.

After that, it is important to schedule time blocks for some of the following promotion ideas.

Well it is a Saturday, my “link-love” day, so enough of my blathering.  Let’s look what some other great people have said on the general subject of “Online Promotion”

Social Media

I will be the first to admit that I am not a social media, “expert.”  I am constantly in a position where I feel I am “not doing enough” in this venue.  That being said, I am still doing, “enough” that I gain a considerable amount of traffic on a regular basis from social media.

Chances are you have a Twitter and Facebook account and understand the importance and reach of social media.

If not is reply to you with a resounding, “huh?”

How could it be possible in this day and age for anyone to still not have heard (a billion times) about the power and scope of these social media tools.  Did you awaken from a 10 year sleep like a modern day Rip Van Winkle?

Anyway I am not going to bore you with “5 reasons to be on twitter” or “8 reasons why Facebook is cool” articles.

Suffice to say, if you have not yet started trying to connect on a couple of Social Media platforms; you should.

There is one article that could be particularly useful for Social Media and online promotion.  For anyone who owns a local business this tip by Charlene is essential.  Even if you do not own a local business there are many reasons why learning to use Twitter to connect to local businesses can be very effective.

Email Marketing:

You may goggle at the fact that I start the section of “Email Marketing” for online Promotion with a link to the Blog Tyrant’s post on how to Make an EBook.  This is because I think it is essential to have free offers for your email list.

A free ebook, special offers, programs… Basically whatever it takes and as much of it as you can get.  You need to give away what is hopefully a lot of valuable free stuff to engage people and get them onto your “list”.

James starts us off this week with a basic description of an Email Marketing Plan.  Over-time you will surely want to refine things, but the concept is simple.

  1. Make a plan
  2. Make an offer (EBook etc.) for Opt-in
  3. Make a Squeeze Page
  4. Give good Free information and build a “relationship”
  5. Keep it regular

If you are new to the concept of email marketing, make sure to read James article.  It goes in depth on these (and other) topics.

This week Robert had a podcast interview with Ben, an email marketer.  Ben said a lot of things that go against the grain of the “conventional wisdom” of email marketing.  He even said a lot of things my own personal experience have shown the opposite of.

However, he did make some very interesting points, and I may be doing some direct tests on some of the things he said.  For the experienced email marketer this podcast on creating an undeletable email may be very intriguing, even if (like me) you are unsure if it works it gives what is, at very least, a really fresh perspective.

For those of you wondering some of the things he says that I disagree with:

  • Send emails daily
  • Do not provide too much free content in emails
  • Don’t soft sell

I still have to disagree on all these points, but it is interesting that he makes cogent arguments for all of these points.

Now on the other hand there is an email marketing article by Ana (2nd link for her this week) that I do agree with almost point by point top-to-bottom.  (I think a little differently, but only in a nit-picky fashion)

Ana discusses topics like how often to email your list, what the content should be, how hard should you promote.

While we are on the subject (not to be overly promotional myself)  here are a few articles you might like on the topic of Email lists.

Link Building

Many of the other methods work to link build.  Commenting builds links.  Social media builds links and connecting with others socially encourages them to also link to you.  Email marketing may not directly build links, but it can be used to drive traffic.

Link building is best thought of as something slow and steady.  Trying to “brute force” a 1000 links to a site, article or post in a week may drive you insane and also may land you in the Google sand-box.

This is certainly a case of the Tortoise and the Hare.  Slow and steady wins the race.  Take a little time every-day to work on some form of link building promotion.   For instance, as soon as I hit publish I try to do 5 links.  Usually it is Blogengage, Blokube and Amplify.  For the other two methods (usually quick), I try to mix it up a little for each post.  This ensures at least a few links for each post.

Later on, I go back and may try to do more links.  But a few quick links done every day pile up over time.

For something like a niche site or a landing page, it will obviously take a little bit more, “concentrated” effort.

If you are unsure of the best link building methods Zarko has fortunately written a great post this week that goes over 20 of these link building methods.

Jane gives a good idea of the mistakes to avoid while link building.

Of course the words you choose for your link-building is important.  Anchor text matters.  If you are able to choose the words for you links, choose them carefully.  (this is part of the reason I like Ana’s tip that I put under “blog commenting”)

Blog Commenting:

Without a doubt, blog commenting is a great way to promote your blog.  It is particularly effective when a blog is starting out, but as a blog grows the effectiveness does not scale.  Even when your blog is relatively well trafficked, it is still worth investing some time and effort in this.

I do believe there is a right way to do blog commenting.

Joe starts us off by showing some ways to find blogs to comment on.  Then Suresh continues by giving a great guide to the unwritten rules of blog commenting.  Follow these tips and your comments will be valuable to both you and the blog you comment on.  Good commenting is symbiosis, not parasitism.  The goal should be to leave something valuable to the person who’s blog you are posting on as well as getting a link back to your site.

Next Paul has (as usual) an insightful and interesting view of the basic models of blog commenting from the view of the site owner.  From trying to respond to every comment to turning comments off completely there are many different ways bloggers view comments.  All blogs fall into one of the models of comment interaction.

I have been doing this whole blogging thing for a while.  It is not often that I find a little trick that is 100% new to me.  Ana found such a trick with this little way to get a little more out of your commentluv comments.

Final Thoughts:

As you probably noticed, there is a lot to this “online promotion” thing.  It takes a lot of time and effort to do it right.  One of the biggest examples I can think of a blog, “exploding” is Marcus over at the Sales Lion.

He wrote a wonderful article this week about what it takes to create massive blog growth.  Even if you do not have a blog, it is an important read, because it shows (to me) an important fact.  Truly incredible results are only received by connecting with people and busting your butt.

In the article Marcus discusses how even though a handful of months ago his blog was not heavily trafficked he had a recent article where the comments section was over 200 comments.  Most of them long and engaged comments too.  Literally, there were more words in the comments than most ebooks.

Amazing!

How can that happen?  Only one way truly caring and doing what other people will not do.  In one point of the article Marcus mentions he spent 1.5 hours writing the post and nearly 7 hours responding.

Wow!

Now comes the time when I tie Marcus’ efforts to online promotion. Marcus effort, and his obvious connection with others, is what it takes to guarantee success.

To be honest, I couldn’t do it.  If I spent 7 hours promoting/commenting etc.  all of the projects I have, I would spent about 32 hours a day on it.  Even outsourcing some parts of it, the math doesn’t work.

But the concept is still there.  When you post an article, create a niche web-site, make a squeeze page or any other sort of effort an online business that is just the start.  It is not even half the effort.  Perhaps 1/3 of the effort.

Get out there and promote.  Make connections.    I cannot over-emphasis the importance of online promotion.

Remember the quote I opened this piece with:

“Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”-

Good luck!  Now go promote!

{ 18 comments }

Motivation: What it takes to succeed

by Steve Scott

Motivation has been on my mind a lot this week.  Why do we do the things we do.  What tools and tricks can we use to motivate ourselves to get things done.Motivation: What it takes to succeed [click to continue…]

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Hey! Your Karma Hit my Dogma – A Steve Scott Weekly Roundup

by Steve Scott

Your Karma Hit my DogmaIt is time for yet another Steve Scott Site weekly roundup.  This week’s posts are on the subject or good Karmic and Dogmatic practices for getting ahead online.

It is where the esoteric “right things to do online” meet the well-known practices for success.

Yes! It is where the Karma hit the Dogma.

I will not belabor the bad pun with a long lead-in.  Let’s just get to this week’s links, where there are no weak links (I just can’t stop)…

This Saturday, we’ve got a lot of great links – Including a couple of great reads on Brand Linkbuilding.

______________________________________________________________________

Karma:  Ultimate results, good or bad, brought about through your actions


Put out good content, you will reap the rewards with linking: Lisa has created a great article about the importance of link bait.  This article even includes her 20 all-time best link bait articles.  The article itself is a perfect example of link bait (hence the linking here) so in fact including the article itself, it is 21 great examples of link bait.

Hard work, Taking chances and putting it “out there” pays off: David some really good thoughts on what it takes to “make it” as a successful entrepreneur.  Taking chances, busting your butt and being ethical are just a few of these great traits of a successful entrepreneur.

Helping others helps yourself: Dia writes a personal development blog.  Almost every article he writes has good karmic overtones.  Many of them could fit into the dogmatic beliefs of the personal development professional too. One of his great articles this week was on how to encourage others.  When you spend helping others, often in the long run you are often helping yourself.

Do for a Year What Others Won’t Then Live for a Lifetime as Others Can’t: The previous phrase is the direct title of Danny’s great article about success in business.  Work incredibly hard, take chances, learn and learn some more and make real connections with people and you WILL succeed.  It is not a question of if, just a question of when.

Theft of Content: I sincerely hope no one who is reading this is guilty of this online bad karmic infringement.  But most of us have likely run across non-attributed copies of our stuff online.   It sucks to think that someone is potentially earning money off of your hard work without even having the decency to leave one single attribution link.  If you feel helpless when confronted with by this theft, worry no longer, Stephanie gives a great step-by-step guide to combating content theft.

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Dogma:  Strongly Held beliefs, an established opinion or authoritative belief held by a group, movement or profession


Creating Exceptional Results: One of the best ways you can learn things is with real life lessons of other people.  Not simply digested and regurgitated facts but solid cold, hard lessons.  Tristan gives us that explaining the reasons his last blog post had exceptional results.

Link-Building:  Zarko is a great SEO.  Link-building is an important topic.  Some of the strategies of link-building from SEO’s vary.  Some are very dogmatic.  Here Zarko shares with us some of his link building strategies.

Tao of Twitter: Twitter is polarizing.  There are many views of twitter often 120 degrees apart from each other.

Twitter is great for marketing.  NO Twitter should only be for connecting.  Twitter is a waste of time.  Twitter is essential for building real connections.  There are definitely two schools of thought on most aspects of Twitter.  Marcus gives us a lesson on how he changed his views on Twitter.  I should add… this article is also hysterical!

Is Fail really a “4 letter word”: One of my firmly held beliefs is that everyone fails.  Sometime or another even the most successful people try things that go horribly –perhaps even catastrophically-  wrong.  The main difference between successful people and those who … aren’t successful, revolve around learning from your mistakes.

Sometimes I even feel I have made enough mistakes to qualify for a PhD in “mistake correction”.  I have stated before about my feeling on the importance of  failing forward.

Nea gives us a wonderful article this week on making the most of failure.  Something that is essential to success in my mind.  Getting knocked on your rear-end happens in life.  It is getting up, dusting yourself off and attacking again, with a new perspective that shows real character.

Tomorrow (or today or yesterday, depending upon when you read this) is Easter.  I would just like to wish all the readers of Steve Scott Site a great Easter holiday.  Hopefully you are able to enjoy some quality time with friends and/or family.   Happy Easter!

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What you can learn about succeeding online from being a nerd.

by Steve Scott

I have a secret.

I am a nerd.  I try to hide it sometimes, but it is a fact… so there it is.

What you can learn from being a nerd.

Steve Scott on The Iron Throne of Westeros

I took an hour plus train-ride into NYC yesterday.  Then, I walked from Penn. Station to Columbus circle.  Just so that I could get this picture you see with me sitting on the “Iron Throne”.

I am an avid reader of a lot genre of books.  One type that I particularly enjoy is fantasy.  Specifically the writing of George RR Martin, who wrote the series that the new HBO television series, “Game of Thrones” is based on.

Like any real nerdy fan-boy my love for this specific series of books may go beyond normal appreciation into a near obsession.  I had been thinking about making my next trip around July 10th, then realized the next book in the series (which, in my defense, I have been waiting nearly 5 years for) comes out on the 12th, so traveling before I read that would be an impossibility.

I simply wouldn’t enjoy it knowing I could be reading the book.

What you can learn from being a nerd.

The whole point of this article is not to tell you how much of a nerd I can be.

I do have a point relating to internet marketing.

So here is the story.  My brother and I (my brother, a far more “rabid” reader than I am, also ranks the Game of Thrones books as his #1) Finally get to Columbus circle.  We had expected to take our own pictures, but they had a professional photographer set up.

The process went like this.  You sat down on the “throne,” had your picture taken, they quickly loaded the picture onto one of 5 IPADS they had ready.  You pick your picture, enter your email and “bam” send it to yourself.

As we were walking away, my brother said, “What a remarkable method of email capture.”

Now, I make my living marketing and emails and email captures have always been my “thing”.  Anyone who has read this site for any significant amount of time will certainly remember me going on, “Ad Nauseam”, about the important of list building and email marketing.

But I didn’t even realize it had been an email capture.  -Not that it bugged me-   In fact it was brilliant.  HBO built their list of people who may be interested in memorabilia, and branded stuff.  They may have swayed people into giving the show a chance.  For the thousands of “rabid” fans like me who may have visited these “photo” sites across the country they get more than that.  I cannot imagine how many people, in addition to myself, posted pictures like this (branded with both HBO and Game of thrones information and logo) on their websites and Facebook pages.

This is a great example of a large company thinking outside of the box.  Their advertisements were much more than just some posters and some clips.  Their advertisements were outside of the box and they have the chance to create a real buzz and perhaps some “viral” elements.

Thinking outside of the box

None of us may be able to swing a budget like HBO did to promote their show.  But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try on a smaller scale.

Picture a Box..

Now picture yourself outside of it. Got it?

That is how you need to think.  Thinking outside of the box is not always easy.  If it were easy, everyone would do it, right?

Now let’s think for a second how you could take my nerd lesson and use it for your gain.  It could work wonderfully for a local event.  Offer a free give away.  A free drawing.  Or even pictures mailed directly to emails like the one I had.

These people will not be “on your list” yet, because they will not have gone through double opt-ins that most good auto-responders require.  But you know what interests them and you have given them nice goods for free.  It should not be a difficult stretch to convert these potential customers.

Let’s get specific with our out of the box thinking.  Understand this is all just theoretical too, I have not really looked into the cost/gains of this idea or the feasibility.  There is a TON of work to be done in pulling this type of thing off.

Let’s look a Gabi’s website, someone who fits the bill for the passion I will discuss later.  She has a love of running that I share.  What could she do in the “real” world to gain more subscribers/readers? … Many things.

The easiest would be to contact the organizers of local 5k or 10k races and see what they allow.  -There may be fees involved with even in giving away free stuff, it is wise to always investigate first.

Then she could try the same “pictures-method” as people cross the finish line.  OR- She could give away free keychain’s or pens to all finishers with her website logo clearly branded on the side.  All of the “old school” marketing techniques to get people to visit a new age blog.

Hey,  the “old” methods haven’t suddenly stopped working because Al Gore invented the internet!

Of course all of these methods do take money and effort to get them going.  There certainly needs to be a cost/benefit analysis done.  But trying other ways to drum up people for your site can work.

How about this….

I play poker sometimes.  Once in Atlantic City I saw a guy sitting across from me who had a shirt that said, “Ask me about my website:  A-1poker.com” (or something like that…I forget).

Sure enough I asked and he told.  And 8 other people at the table heard too.  Now that is not a ton, but with going to a few different tables a day; doing something he was going to do anyway…he might have gotten few people to visit his site (I know I did) just from wearing a T-Shirt.

Now if he also had business cards and a small baggie of give-away’s he could have perhaps done even better.

I am all for typical free offer eBook leading to email marketing, but if you can strengthen that with some other methods, it is even better.

Remember:  Think of the box and think of yourself outside it.  That’s the nerd way!

The Importance of Passion:

Passion is one of those strange terms.  It has been so over-used in relation to your online success that it has begun to lose meaning.

You have to have passion for you niche. You need to have passion for what you blog about.  You need to have passion, passion, passion…  It can get so overused sometimes the word has lost its power when used in relation to online work.

Regardless of all of those detractors for using the word, I still think passion is important.  If you work on something online for hours and hours you should enjoy it more often than not. Following the identifiers of passion that Steven points out I am absolutely passionate about the Game of Throne series, both the upcoming TV show and the books .  But there is not really any money to be made writing about that passion, so I don’t.

But I do enjoy the things that I write about.  They are subjects that I could spend a lot of time talking and writing about.  Perhaps I am not as, “geeky” and “passionate” about things like landing page design (thanks Bryan), email marketing and SEO as I am about fantasy and the like, but it is something that I still could talk about for ages, and really enjoy discussing and learning about.  Is that passion?  I think so.  But even if you would not call it “passion” it is at least, “strong like”.

“Strong Like” is at least the minimum threshold for any single topic you will be writing about for a long time.

When it comes to finding something to write about online it needs to be something you could talk, and write about A LOT.  Call this “passion”.  Call it a “interest” in the topic.  The term is just semantics.  The important part is that the topic really can get you flowing.

Most of my readers are probably familiar with Patricia and her passion for lavender, as seen in her recent article on Lavender brews.  Is she really “passionate” about lavender.  Not knowing her personally, I would say yes.  But even if she is not passionate she has more than enough of a deep connection and caring for the product to.

Let’s take a flip side of this coin.  Perhaps you know Alex Whalley just completed a 30 day article marketing challenge.  The idea was to make a niche website.  Write one heck of a lot of articles about it and see how they did using UAW (Unique Article Wizard) as the only back-linking source.  I will let you read his article to see the results.

But while Alex is passionate about keywords, making niche sites and ranking niche sites he wasn’t writing about that.  He was writing about Drills.  Now there may be people out there who have a passion for drills.  Alex doesn’t seem to be one of them.

In fact the first line of his article reads, “I hate drills”

While he wrote a lot about drills in 30 days for the challenge, he didn’t make his own “personal goal” of how many he was going to write.  You can do a certain amount of writing on a subject you detest by willpower alone, but it is not a long term solution.  If Alex had to make a career writing about nothing but drills for the next 3 years, I have no doubt he would eventually fail.  Likely ending it by putting the drill to his head like the classic scene from “Scanners.”

In the long term, you need passion.  Passion can sometimes be the geek inside you.  I know I am talking about the “right topics” when I get someone cornered who is not really interested in the topic and I talk about it so much I see their eyes glazing over just a little bit.

Embrace the power of the nerd. Embrace your inner passions for your subjects and niche.

What you can learn from being a nerd? A lot I think.

Game of Thrones

OK, now it is time to let, “my” nerd loose.  So watch out.  For everyone with HBO, I hope you give Game of Thrones a chance (HBO- Sunday 17 Apr 9PM EST).  Personally I just “got” HBO just because of this series.  If you do not have HBO and you are a reader, I hope you give the series of books a chance.  (not to condone it…but some people have been known to download bit-torrents of some of these great HBO shows the next day…  Bad-bad people)

Anyway check out this clip.  It has a couple seconds, “trailer” and a solid 14 minute clip from the first 1/4 of the first episode.  (Basically a mixing of the prologue and the first chapter from the book)

You do not need to be a big fantasy nerd like myself to enjoy Game of Thrones.  Unlike Lord of the Rings.  The “magic” and fantasy is kept to a bare minimum.  In fact the little “intro” piece you see in the above clip, “north of the wall” is really the only “magic” I remember from the first book (it was the “prologue” chapter).

Unlike LOTR this is a series much more based on the characters.  The characterizations are absolutely top notch and it is WAY too involved to ever possibly make a good movie.  In fact, 15+ years ago, when I first read this book, I remember thinking the ONLY way this could ever be made and not become a complete, “horror” was to be done on HBO.

But I will not bore you any more with my nerdy habits.  It just so happens my brother also loves these and has made a few Squidoo lenses about this series when he was bored.

If you want more info check out

Cast and characters of Game of Thrones -  It has a collection of many of the “major” characters video snippets.

-And-

Game of Thrones HBO for a general review of the story (I think he plans on updating as the series progresses.)

Hopefully I can “nerd talk” with any of you about the show after tomorrow night.

Regardless of your interest in this topic though I hope you will all consider the importance of passion and thinking outside of the box for your own successful endeavors?  Remember you can learn a lot from sometimes being a nerd!

Even though we are fully into spring…. Remember

… Winter is Coming!

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