April 2012 – Audience Industries

Creating a Pinterest Campaign

After learning how to pin pages without images, we realized that an entire campaign could be built on Pinterest – not previously imagined.

Users of our Marketing Calendar Blueprint product know that the marketing of a campaign is only part of the overall business marketing calendar. Determining when that campaign should start and stop, integrating that campaign with SEO, buyer mindset and 3 other factors were important as well.

The addition of Pinterest to that matrix provides additional traffic, insurance against SEO changes, a method of capturing user intelligence like never before available. and the ability to repurpose images one more way.

Taking cues from Chapter 3 in the Marketing Calendar Blueprint, let’s look at Google Trends to see when we should start and end a campaign for “4th of July Party Ideas”. You can see that 4th of July search starts in June and ends on July 5th or 6th. You can also see Continue reading “Creating a Pinterest Campaign”

How to Monetize YouTube Videos

Everyone seems to ask how to monetize YouTube videos and it seems to me that most people are asking the wrong question. I think what people want to know is how do you derive income from posting YouTube videos. And the difference between those two questions is all the meat.

In a previous post I spoke at length of the Piano Guys Viral YouTube campaign and how well executed it was. After this I’d encourage you to read that. I talk some about how novel their ideas are in terms of monetizing a video campaign. But save that for later. . . Continue reading “How to Monetize YouTube Videos”

How to do the rel=author thing

The rel=author thing is pretty cool. It’s not necessarily new but Google has made it more fun and useful. And since they got rid of the indented listing, the rel=author thing is the next best search results promotion tool.

So what is it? Simply put, rel=author is an html tag you can add to your webpages and posts to link yourself, as the author, to your Google + Profile where more information can be found out about you. But the big benefit is the addition of the Google + profile photo embedded right there on the search results page.It really catches your eye and can make your search results position be the #1 traffic “getter”, even if you’re #4 on the page.

Step 1: Google Plus

You’re going to need a Google+ Profile page. So head on over to Plus.Google.com to get your page and profile set up. Of course the more complete you fill out the more information Google knows about you as an author. So attempt to answer all the questions. Continue reading “How to do the rel=author thing”

Should you start another site?

How many times have you gotten an idea and thought you should take what knowledge you’ve gained and start another site? If you’re like me and you continually renew domain names just because you have a good idea for them, you know what I’m talking about. So many ideas, so little time.

The question is should you start a second site? I believe the answer can be derived quite easily. So let’s talk about the pro’s and con’s as it pertains to branching out and starting anew.

Another Fork in the Road

Work Load

It’s not easy building a website that makes money and is profitable. It’s not hard to drive traffic to one coupon, one affiliate deal, one promotion or even a monetized lead capture page. In fact there have been cases where people made money on their very first tweet. But that’s not a business.

A profitable website is one where you’re making more money than if you were to have spent your time working elsewhere. If you would make more money as a clerk at Walgreens, I would submit that you’re losing money working online.

But that’s not necessarily bad.

The question is how long must you be “building” your business before you reach the profitable point? And what amount of content, links, pins, videos and tweets will get you there the quickest?

Let’s use some math as an example (oh no! not Math!!!):

For the purpose of this example, let’s say it takes 500 hours of work to make a profitable website from scratch. If you have 20 hours/week to work on your site it would take approximately 25 weeks of work to get there. Make sense?

What happens to that time if you add a second site? Even if it is in the same general niche, you become less efficient. If you divide your time up evenly, it now takes at least 50 hours of work to get there. But being less efficient, I would say that it will take a bit longer.

Can you afford to not be profitable for that period of time? Do you have the stamina to continually be encouraged throughout the duration? And will you get burnt out without seeing the joys of good income sooner?

Family Sacrifices

Do you consider your family’s sacrifice when you’re spending time on your business? Every moment you toil away is a moment away from helping your kids with flash cards, spending time with your spouse, or making your home a more wonderful place. And every moment they spend without you, they are agreeing to the sacrifice and are equally dependent on its rewards.

Think of them when you’re considering starting a second site. Will you and your family’s sacrifice be better spent on a new idea or diligently working to make your current site profitable?

Expert Status

Much of what you bring to the table is bound up in your expert status. Some would call it your brand, others your reputation. But it all boils down to whether people perceive you as the expert or not.

Once your expert status is known around the world, doors open up. Rarely do large organizations hire non-experts to speak. Rarely does CNN interview generalists on a topic. And rarely do the big brands ask weekend hobbyists to be their spokespersons.

Are you that expert now? If not, can you afford to divert your attention to something else while you become that?

If your new idea doesn’t directly tie to your current site, enhance your brand or reputation in your field, should you really take on the burden? Think of Bob Villa, the home repair expert. If Bob Villa were to start something new, should he take on the role of Dancing with the Stars host? Or do you think his empire would benefit by becoming the host of Extreme Home Makeover?

Empire Building

That leads me to the overall empire. If you currently run a wedding site and are thinking about starting a Bahamas Travel site, will you be building an empire? Will you be able to cross sell the two sites? If you develop a good relationship in the wedding niche, will you be able to email that to your Bahamas list?

This idea you have should both support and be supported by your current site. In building your list, your relationships and your cheerleaders do you really want to start from scratch on idea #2?

Remember Grey’s Anatomy and the TV spinoff Private Practice? Can you sense the synergy that came from moving one audience to the next? Do you think they would have received funding if they had proposed a car racing spinoff show? Probably not – the built in synergistic empire is not there.

Some people suggest that once your site has become profitable that you first clone yourself in that niche before branching out. That idea makes a lot of sense but for me doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. However there is definitely rewards to be reaped when you rank #1 and #2 for your keywords with two different sites. You truly do have an empire then.

If you’re at the point where you really just want to start something new, write a book. There’s a ton of credibility provided by a book. Your audience will love you. You’ll have a new product from which to derive income and you’ll have reached a new rung on your Empire ladder.

Podcasters will tell you differently as I learned at BlogWorldExpo. If you’re interested in their opinion, read this post.

Dan R Morris is the founder of LettersFromDan.com, a website dedicated to improving your revenue stream from online efforts. Dan is an infomercial producer, niche website owner, product developer, author and Mastermind leader. Dan actively encourages marketers to take that extra step so that “Hope” doesn’t become the marketing plan.

(Photo Credit: Ali Shevlin)

The Sales Pitch: Part of the Consumer Buying Process?

I once read a post on SavvyBlogging.net titled “Ditch the Pitch”, which made me wonder more about the role of the sales pitch in the consumer buying process? I wouldn’t ever advise getting rid of the pitch because the pitch generates the sale. But I would say the author makes some valid points about the sophistication of consumers.

Crystal Collins, the author of “Ditch the Pitch” insists that we’re now so socially savvy we can see a sales pitch from a mile away. I totally agree with that, in fact I use that to my advantage and try to look at everything from the view point of the other side. I’m always wondering “what is their motivation in this arrangement” thus when is the pitch?

While I’m sort of against being victim to the hard sell pitch, I know first hand that it works very well a great deal of the time. Having spent the last 8 years in the infomercial world, I’ve seen up-to-the-second tracking on our TV infomercials and can compare that to the incoming sales call log. We can track at what second during the show a person calls and compare that to what they just heard. 9 times out of 10 it’s the sales pitch that starts the phone ringing. Continue reading “The Sales Pitch: Part of the Consumer Buying Process?”

Make Photos Go Viral on Pinterest

I thought it would be hard to figure out how to make photos go viral on Pinterest, but I was wrong. It’s fairly easy. I’m not about to tell you that this is the only way to make an image go viral, because you’ll surely be able to point to another way someone else made their photo go viral on Pinterest. But you can check the “most popular pins” on Pinterest category at any time, you’ll find they all follows these rules:

Pretty

This rule is going to sit all by itself because if it’s pretty, people are going to repin it. That’s everything from a tree lined street to a fabulous bow window. But pretty doesn’t mean viral. It will certainly be repinned, but it takes more than “pretty” to get 30,000 repins.

Clarity

The image needs to clearly be about one thing. Not only that, but the caption needs to be in sync with that one thing. A beautiful sunset overlooking the harbor is great. But that won’t go viral if the caption is “I would love to be drinking a smoothie”. Cute, but that clarity isn’t there.

Take a look at this summer-y sangria looking drink. Beautiful picture of the drink. And the caption makes it even better. You look at the picture and say “that looks awesome” but then you read the caption and say “ooh I gotta pin this so I can make this later”. Continue reading “Make Photos Go Viral on Pinterest”