InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Ten Golden Rules for Podcasting

Join Jay Berkowitz, CEO of TenGoldenRules.com and Author of The Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing and Special Guests, Jason Van Orden and Jeremy Frandsen, Founders of InternetBusinessMastery.com, as they present the highly-anticipated "Ten Golden Rules for Podcasting".

This presentation will explain the following topics:

• Tips for finding your podcast theme
• How to produce a podcast
• Recommendations for equipment and technology requirements
• Proven methods for getting listed in Podcast directories and iTunes
• Understanding how to get your podcast picked up in Google and the other search engines
• Recommendations for launching and promoting your podcast
• Successful ongoing promotion and community building

Jason Van Orden and Jeremy Frandsen have an uncanny grasp for internet marketing and online media strategy. Now some of the most sought after internet media consultants, they teach how to use Internet media to magnetically attract droves of new customers, boost sales to record rates and turn fledgling businesses into market leaders that generate six-figures in sales each year.

Many of their clients are now top-featured podcasts in Apple iTunes and are viewed as *the* go-to-person in their respective markets. Their own show, Internet Business Mastery, has been the #1 podcast about internet business and marketing since 2005, garnering over a million downloads and listeners from over 100 countries.

Jason wrote about his podcast marketing methods in the popular book, Promoting Your Podcast, which for a time was Amazon’s #1 book on broadcasting. The book and their tutorial sites have been used as curriculum in numerous university and high school classrooms.

Jay Berkowitz is an author, an educator, an International keynote speaker and an award-winning thought leader. A senior online marketing professional with over twenty five years of marketing experience, Mr. Berkowitz has managed marketing departments for Fortune 500 brands: Coca-Cola, Sprint and McDonald's Restaurants, and he has developed online and offline strategies for AT&T and leading health and fitness website eDiets.com.

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, June 1, 2011 12:30pmEDT – 1:30pmEDT. To register and for more information please visit: Ten Golden Rules for Podcasting

One Week After LinkedIn Goes Public

The online social networking service, LinkedIn (LNKD) went public last week. In its initial public offering, the company set the price between $32- $35, and then increased it to $42 - $45 per share. The company raised $353 million in an IPO that valued it at $4.3 billion. That's the largest valuation for a U.S. Internet company since Google went public in 2004.

After the opening bell, the stock more than doubled due to demand sending it to $105 per share. As of Thursday evening, the stock did drop off it’s week long ride and closed at $86.37 per share.

Some speculate we are coming close to another "Dot Com Bubble," and there will be many more Internet companies with high valuations trying to go public off false expectations. Have we learned anything since 2001? Will we allow this bubble to happen again? If/When Facebook goes public, what will that IPO look like and where with that one day of trading bring those shares?

Simple Tips to Kick-Start Facebook Page Engagement

With more than 500 million active users, more and more businesses are starting to establish themselves on Facebook or build out their existing Facebook presence. Did you know that 50% of Facebook’s active users log on to Facebook in any given day spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook? So you have to ask yourself – what is your business’s Facebook strategy?

Whether your business is beginning to establish itself on Facebook or if you are just trying to liven up your Facebook stream, below are a few simple Facebook tips you can implement right away:

• Showcase Your Customers
Show your customers how important they are and how much you appreciate them.

• Entertain
Make your fans laugh, show them something interesting, provide a “break” from the norm.

• Educate
Provide your fans with information, add value, teach them something, inform and share.

• Ask Questions & Engage
Encourage interaction (i.e. using Facebook Questions), ask fans to post photos, ask for comments, encourage the community to share and interact with YOU and each other.

• Take Us Behind the Curtain
Provide a glimpse to what goes on behind the scenes at your Company to engage your fans further.

Facebook Pages Doing It Right
Are you looking for a couple examples of Facebook pages that are doing it right? Although I’m not personally a fan of Oreos, the Oreo Facebook Page does a great job engaging with its fans. They not only entertain and engage fans; they do it in a down-to-earth, fun and relatable way.

The Restaurant.com Facebook Page also does a fantastic job connecting with its fans. The Page provides informational tidbits to its fans, asks questions (asking questions both in status updates and using Facebook Questions) to encourage interaction and uses a bit of humor to brighten up the fans’ day.

Depending on your business, you should also test the Facebook Deals and Facebook Places features to engage your fans further and continue to grow your fanbase.

Do you have other Facebook Page examples that are doing it right? Any other tips you would like to add to the list?

Image credit: birgerking

Cloud Computing Underestimates the Power of Lady Gaga

Amazon.com servers temporarily crashed after they offered Lady Gaga’s newest album via their Cloud Service for $.99 rather than the $12 a user would normally pay if they wanted to purchase the CD (who does that anymore?). They were clearly underestimating the “Power of Gaga”.

Some users expressed their frustration in comments like “should have waited for it on iTunes”.

Amazon’s cloud supports customers like Netflix and Zynga (home of Farmville). A study by Sandvine Inc. showed that Netflix’s movies and TV shows are responsible for 30% of the total traffic on the Internet.

I remember a few years ago, Sun Microsystems was talking about the networked computer and how personal computers would be going away, but I always felt this was in response to how much the CEO at the time disliked Microsoft. Now with Cloud Computing this vision is being realized.

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Live Website Analysis: Improving the User Experience

Join Margie Schneider, VP Operations of Award-Winning Interactive Marketing Consultancy Firm TenGoldenRules.com, as she presents, “Live Website Analysis: Improving the User Experience.” This Wednesday Webinar affords the opportunity to submit your website for a live website analysis.

This presentation will explain the following topics:

• How to adhere to web convention standards via live demonstration
• Actionable tactics to improve the user experience
• Recommendations for optimizing your website for the Search Engines
• Best Practices for overall website usability

Margie Schneider has been involved with the interactive medium since 1994. She has participated in everything the Internet has to offer: developing, designing and delivering web sites; online advertising and promotion; search engine marketing: SEO and PPC and community and electronic communication. Her specialties include: social media, search engine optimization (SEO), PPC management, online reputation management, project management, personnel management, strategizing web development and design solutions; as well as experience marketing across all media types.

Want us to review how your website measures up to web standards? Submit your website for a Live Website Analysis! To submit your website, please join the Live Website Analysis Webinar Group, and post your website submission within the group (submissions will be accepted after post date of 5/12/2011). Visit the group here: http://bit.ly/WebsiteAnalysisGroup

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, May 25, 2011 12:30pmEDT – 1:30pmEDT. To register and for more information please visit: Live Website Analysis: Improving the User Experience

SFIMA Keynote Speech by Peter Shankman

I was at the SFIMA.com conference yesterday who had Peter Shankman as the keynote speaker. Here were some of the key points of his speech:

Be transparent
Peter told the story of an idea he came up with regarding creating a list of PR professionals. He was constantly receiving queries for comments on articles as an "expert", but some of the answers to questions or comments journalists were seeking didn't match up with his skillset. He created a list that he could then send these queries out to other "experts" like himself who could then speak with the journalist so they could make their deadline. The mailing list built up to a nice size when he was contacted by an apparel company who was interested in sending an advertisement to the list. He wrote an email to the list talking about the products with a tracking code + url pointing to the advertiser. The return was 17% when the apparel company was used to normally receiving less than a 1% conversion rate. When they asked him what he did differently, all he said was he just wrote honestly about it and people on his mailing list trust his opinion so they purchased.

Privacy settings cannot be protected by stupid
If you don't want your information to fall into the wrong hands online, then don't put it online. A story he told was that he asked an audience member what kind of personal details she posted online and she replied "All of it but I only have it online for my friends". He then asked her friend if they were connected on Facebook, to which he said "yes". He gave him $100 and logged in with his ID and went directly to her Wall and saw all her info. In summary, don't post information online that you don't want everyone to know about.

Relevance - Find out how audience prefers to have their media delivered
He used an example of a non profit Animal Rescue group that was sending out coffee table books to anyone who made a donation. When he made his donation he called up the Rescue group and asked them about it. They told him their average donator tended to be older and didn't use the Internet. Well after getting added to the Advisory Board he conducted a survey and found out 2 things, 1) The average age of a donator was between 10 and 15 years younger than what they had thought and 2) they preferred to get their information online. He was able to save the Rescue group, $500,000 in the first year on postage and production costs while increasing their donations 30%.

Revenue. Always work on or create projects that will make money.
The days of the Pets.com sock puppet which went through $300 million in venture capital with very little revenue are over.

Attention Spans are very short.
The average amount of a person's attention span was 2.4 or about 142 characters. Normally you would think this was a Tweet but it's actually the length of a text message. As fast as cell phone growth is exploding, the text message is exploding along with it. Good writing is clarity and brevity and clarity and brevity is marketing.

Top of mind will win.
The big differentiator amongst all of the brands out there competing for your attention is customer service. For example, Delta had to make an emergency landing in South Carolina on a flight to NY and everything at the airport was closed while the pilots had vanished. He started tweeting to @Delta telling them they were stranded and then they needed help. Guess who responded to him? Southwest Airlines who told him if he could get them to an airport 30 miles north they would fly him to NY. Another time he was landing in Europe and was dead tires. He tweeted to his hotel that he wanted some coffee. When he checked into his room he had a knock on the door and it was room service with his coffee. These types of experiences are the reason why he stays exclusive to these brands.

What is your "KLOUT" score?
Influence is always important and just moving online. People with Klout Scores about particular subjects will have more influence in a decision making process.

LinkedIn Plans to Go Public May 19th

Tomorrow will be another big day for LinkedIn – it goes public. LinkedIn currently has over 100 million members and is used in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. It continues to grow at a healthy pace and now will be backed with additional working capital to further its products. LinkedIn reports it will use the funds from the offering for general corporate use such as working capital, sales and marketing, capital expenditures, acquisitions investments in complimentary technologies and general/administrative matters.

Additional details include:

• Anticipates raising near $274 million this week
• LinkedIn will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNKD
• Shares are expected to trade in the $32 to $35 range
• 7.84 million shares will be available

I do think LinkedIn will continue to grow and establish itself as the social media site for business executives. One aspect of the site that I do hope to see further improvements on is the advertising platform. It still feels like it’s in its infancy but could be a big win for LinkedIn, if they get it right. LinkedIn ads can be laser targeted by job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size or LinkedIn Group – but I’m still looking for success cases with the ad platform. Hopefully this IPO and the influx of funding, will aid in the development of the ad platform for the future.

Image credit: mariosundar

People often ask me 'What is a Blog'?

What are blogs? The term is short for web-log, and the original blogs were online journals and web reports such as live updates from journalists embedded with the military.

A blog is just a really simple website. The charm of a blog is that if you can send email you can blog. All you do is log-in, type a title and a short article (called a blog post) and push ‘Publish’ and your blog automatically adds the new blog post at the top of the page and pushes the older blog posts lower down the page.

Blogs have 3 main business benefits.
1. The search engines love blogs. Lots of words, frequently updates and bloggers often link to each other. Words+Links=Search Engine Success.

2. People subscribe to blogs to get an electronic notification every time you update the blog. The updates come to a cell phone or your computer through RSS feeds (a technical sounding term, but this is just a tool to facilitate blog subscriptions called Really Simple Syndication).
3. Blogs are more conversational than websites, you can allow a bit of personality to shine through a company blog or a CEO blog.

To see a few of my favorite marketing blogs, please have a look at our list of the Top 10 Internet Marketing Blogs on the TenGoldenRules.com website.


Flickr Photo Credit francescopozzi

TrafficWave - OceanSwell TEAM Update (#71)

I just want everyone to know that I have updated the rotating URL's again for both TrafficWave and Global NPN.  To be perfectly honest with you, we've had a lot of drops.  Yes, you wish that people wouldn't join affiliate programs and then drop like flies within 90 days (or less).  But that's just reality.  They do, and they will.  That's because everyone's chasing that feather in the wind, and serious players are few and far between.  For those of you who are in this for the long-term (as in forever), it just means that your affiliate link is more likely to come up in the rotating system that we use with Team OceanSwell.

With any kind of MLM-style affiliate program, it's really pretty simple - if everybody does it, everybody gets rich.  But everybody won't do it.  Most simply can't.  That is why it is my belief that the best chance you will ever have for building an affiliate downline is by having a plan and a system that others can duplicate without much 'thinking'.  If there's a better system out there than what our team is using, I haven't seen it.  Believe me, I've seen it all... and I've joined many of them.  But one thing people tell me a lot is that 'I don't have time to promote'.  Well, don't tell it to me.  In my job, I work seven (yes, 7) days a week.  So I don't want to hear it.  We ALL work hard and nobody has enough time.

Anyway, we still have many active team members who are working their butts off every month.  This month's $40.00 team member, promotion bonus goes out to Leo Watson (hardjudge).  Leo is a long-time team member who actually uses TrafficWave in his online business activities.  Leo, just send me your AlertPay or PayPal address and I'll get that $40.00 bonus to you pronto!

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Lessons from Thomas Edison: 5 Ways to Think Like an Innovator

Join Sarah Miller Caldicott, a great grandniece of Thomas Edison and co-author of Innovate like Edison (Dutton, Penguin), as she presents “Lessons from Thomas Edison: 5 Ways to Think Like an Innovator.”

After spending the first 15 years of her career in consumer packaged goods at Quaker Oats and Helene Curtis, she began researching the timeless innovation methods of Thomas Edison at Rutgers University. Sarah’s book reveals the success factors that led to Edison’s development of 6 industries in less than 40 years, all of which remain today.

This webinar will introduce a carefully researched, easy-to-apply system of the five success secrets inspired by the creative methods of Thomas Alva Edison. The greatest innovator in American history, Edison set the stage for America’s global leadership in innovation by his focus on practical accomplishment. Now you can apply the best practices of this American genius to contemporary business situations to help today’s leaders harness their own innovative potential. Learn the blueprint for success that will enable executives and entrepreneurs to revitalize their own ingenuity and thrive in today’s culture of innovation.

Sarah is an innovation consultant, speaker, and trainer offering insights on Edison’s world-changing methods to Global 50 companies as well as small, entrepreneurial firms.

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, May 18, 2011 12:30pmEDT – 1:30pmEDT. To register and for more information please visit: Lessons from Thomas Edison: 5 Ways to Think Like an Innovator

Gold In The Phones

Do you have a smart phone? Even if you don’t, I’m willing to bet many of your friends and family do. The number of people using smart phones continues to grow exponentially. Over the past year, the amount of users has gone up 187% to just over 18 million. As this number increases, so do the opportunities for marketing. There are countless online articles relating to the potential smart phones have for marketing to individuals using their mobile devices for shopping, directions, and focused social media.

Mobile-only social media sites are becoming popular with those who do not want to carry a laptop but will instead use their smart phone. This is producing more marketing opportunities within new mediums. Studies have shown that the number of consumers using their mobile phones for shopping increases daily by the thousands. Retailers can use this information to target more focused marketing. Revenue from social related networks is said to be around $60 billion by 2012. These are numbers that companies cannot afford to ignore.

With search becoming so individually targeted by Google and others, mobile shows nothing but incredible numbers from a marketing stand-point. Smart phones become more and more like PCs with every new release. These increasing technological advances continue to open new doors to innovative marketing strategies. No matter how you look at it, mobile marketing is a future with great possibilities.

Facebook Update: Encourage Fans to Tag Your Business Page in Photos Now

Mashable has announced, starting today (although it hasn’t been completely rolled out yet with all of the details), Facebook users will now be able to tag Pages (products/brands) and People (i.e. celebrities) in their Facebook photos.

What does this mean for your Business Page?

Free advertising! Anyone can tag a Page in a photo, regardless if they Like the page or not. These tagged photos will appear in a Page’s photos page. As you would expect, privacy settings will still apply to whom a user’s photos are exposed to.

How do you take advantage of this feature?

Encourage your fans to tag your Page within their photos. Interact with your fans so that their desire to tag your Page within their photos just happens naturally. For example, if I purchase fitness attire from your Company and I attend a sporting event with a group of friends, take some photos, and tag your Business Page in my photos – your Page has now been exposed with free advertising from me, your customer.

How will you engage your fans to tag your Page in photos?

Image credit: jadendave

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Working with Interactive Agencies: Selecting Your Business Partner

Join Jay Berkowitz, CEO of Internet Marketing Agency TenGoldenRules.com, as he presents “Working with Interactive Agencies: Selecting Your Business Partner.” The process of selecting an agency can be complex. Learn effective and successful methods for facilitating this selection.

This presentation will explain the following topics:

• Understanding the various types of agencies
• Recommendations for compiling your short list
• Fit: What is the right size and chemistry?
• Best practices for agency evaluation and negotiation

Jay Berkowitz is an author, an educator, an International keynote speaker and an award-winning thought leader. A senior online marketing professional with over twenty five years of marketing experience, Mr. Berkowitz has managed marketing departments for Fortune 500 brands: Coca-Cola, Sprint and McDonald's Restaurants, and he has developed online and offline strategies for AT&T and leading health and fitness website eDiets.com.

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, May 11, 2011 12:30pmEDT – 1:30pmEDT. To register and for more information please visit: Working with Interactive Agencies: Selecting Your Business Partner

The Search "Filter Bubble"

I'm a huge fan of TED Talks. What started out in 1984 as a conference to bring people together to share ideas about Technology, Entertainment and Design has blossomed into a wonderful online portal for inspirational ideas. I TRY to catch at least one talk a week. This week I caught a really interesting talk from former MoveOn.org Executive Director and current President, Eli Pariser and his recent experience with search results.

The crux of his talk focuses on the levels of personalization services currently being implemented by a lot of websites. From Facebook to Google, the information you see every day depends more and more on the data these sites collect about YOU. Interact with more friends than others on Facebook? Those are the friends you'll see more of. Are most of your Google searches related to travel? That's the kind of content you'll see when searching a current news event location like "Egypt".

Pariser believes there is a danger within this framework of personalized filtration - and I have to say I agree with him. We seek information for a variety of reasons. To learn, to broaden our world view, to find important support information for work or home - whatever the reason, our optimistic hope is that we are getting the full spectrum of information. That somehow when we search online we get a good sense of the whole picture collected from a global perspective. If sites like Google and Facebook start to "decide" what content I access, what does that mean exactly and what are the long term ramifications?

Watch the whole talk. I'd love to hear your opinion. Well, if that's okay with Google.

Do You Have a Facebook Page for Your Dog?

I was on Facebook the other day (common trait working for an online marketing agency), and noticed my cousin's dog (a nice black labrador retriever) with its own profile and about 15 or so friends. Since their privacy settings on their wall posts were open I had a peek to see what exactly they were writing about. For the most part he writes about how good looking he is. Here were some statistics I found from a recent survey that Lab42 did of dog owners:

• 14% of dog owners have Facebook accounts for their dogs.
  
• 94% have Twitter accounts for their dogs. (Maybe microblogging makes better sense for dogs versus status updates).
  
• 94% have Flickr accounts for their dogs
  
• 73% have YouTube accounts for their dogs
  

Then the survey goes into how much do you spend a year on your dog, and a few more demographic questions.

When I saw that my cousin put up a page for her dog I admittedly thought about doing the same but for now I will leave it to just writing about her constantly on my own wall. The way I see it, if she has her own profile then it's all downhill for me since she'll most doubtedly need her own Farmville farm and I have already overdosed on that game.

About the Author:

The author loves his French Mastiff, Avion, and feels that adding an online presence would conflict with her already full schedule of sleeping, eating, and going for walks in the shade.

Multiply Your Content In Half The Time

With the recent changes google has made to the way it conducts its website popularity contest, adaptingis important. Online businesses have to make sure that the information and services they offer comply, are fresh, and relevant to their site, in turn producing traffic. All the while they have to stay complient with Google's rules and content requirements.

The problem is that it becomes difficult to come up with all the differesnt types of copywrite. Between sending out e-mail newsletters, posting articles, and optimizing page text, it gets a little taxing. Fortunately if you geta little creative with your methods you can kill two birds with one stone in half the time.

An article over at Search Engine Journal explains how you can take your email newsletters and offers, and adapt them to site content. By applying this content to your site, with a good navigating system for users, you can optimize for SEO with always fresh content. You can create a whole back log of information with fresh and relevant content that will help you move upwards with organic search.

Is Google Trying to Show Its Human Side?

Launched early this week, Google’s new Chrome ad is definitely attempting to reveal a bit of its human side. With over 325,955 views on YouTube in just four days – this “Dear Sophie” video depicts a father using Google products to share memories with his daughter as she grows up. This includes sending her notes via Gmail and posting baby videos of her on YouTube.


Although the video may come off more like a Gmail ad rather than a Google Chrome ad, it still does its job. It evokes an emotion powerful enough that it makes people want to share the video. There is one aspect I feel the video is missing though – Sophie’s reaction, as an adult, to her dad’s notes.

It’s okay you can admit it – it made me shed a tear too. : )

Who Said IPO’s Are Dead?

Renren, which is China’s largest social networking service, has files for an IPO. They are looking to sell shares between $9 and $11 totaling $743 million according to their filings. As of March 31, they have about 117 million active users who are able to play games, network and purchase items. Should Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook be nervous? I’m saying no to this one. They are being looked at like a “golden child” and shares are expected to generate lots more money. Investing in Renren is a good idea however, as China’s growth is expected to three times faster according to Goldman Sachs Group.

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Case Study: Applying Internet Marketing Tactics to Real World Business

Join our Marketing Panel for this week’s Wednesday Webinar, “Case Study: Applying Internet Marketing Tactics to Real World Business.” Our Special Guests will explain how to take acquired Internet Marketing knowledge and apply it to real business for successful results.

Chad H. Pollitt, Director of Social Media & Search Marketing at Kuno Creative: Since 2002, Chad H. Pollitt has played an integral role in designing, developing, deploying, executing and tracking robust web marketing strategies for client companies and organizations. With over 10 million dollars of tracked ROI for SEO alone, he has been a guest lecturer, featured writer, blogger, keynote presenter & featured on multiple radio shows, podcasts and in The Wall Street Journal.

Simon Kerr, Director of Chester Marketing Solutions Ltd: Is a highly experienced and divergent thinking creative professional, Co-Founder of Chester Marketing Solutions Ltd and Director of Internet Marketing and Social Media. Simon is also a recent graduate of the IAB approved Master Certificate in Internet Marketing from the University of San Francisco’s prestigious School of Business and Professional Studies.

Joe Schembri, SEO Specialist at Bisk Education: Responsible for developing and implementing SEO strategies for Bisk Education, the nation’s largest exclusive facilitator of online degree and certificate programs from the nation’s leading universities. Joe is responsible for reviewing collected data and analyzing for maximum optimization including full page optimization, internal & external link building, as well as performing other related SEO best practices.

This presentation will cover the following topics:

• Overview of Proven Internet Marketing Tactics
• Tips for applying your acquired Interactive Marketing knowledge to real business
• Best Practices for Setting Measurable Goals
• Test, test and test some more! Understanding the importance of always testing with Internet Marketing

This webinar provides an opportunity to submit your questions for a live Q&A session with our Experts.

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, May 4, 2011 12:30pmEDT – 1:30pmEDT. To register and for more information please visit: Case Study: Applying Internet Marketing Tactics to Real World Business