Serve.

If you don't frequent this blog, I have a weekly "proverb Saturday" post that I do where I take a proverb from the Bible and apply it to internet marketing and business.

Although this weeks verse does not come directly from Proverbs, it is a proverb that was taught by Jesus to his disciples. I think it was too good to pass up.

The thing I love about this verse is that it's all about 2 things. First, preferring others and second, being humble.

1. Preferring Others
In the business world (affiliate marketing world especially) people are always thinking about me, myself, and I. In fact, it goes beyond business to all aspects of life.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in this business is that a lot of business deals come from you showing how THE OTHER person is going to benefit. The fact that you will make some money is not what's important to them most of the time. It's all about them. In a sense, you are "serving" them.

These are always the business deals that I listen and respond to. Unfortunately, these are few and far between.

Most emails I get from people pitching me ideas are something like... "I NEED", "I WANT", and are all about how the person has needs, wants, and it's all about them. Those are the wrong type of people to work with.

2. Humility
Few things make a young 20 something year old college drop out feel better than to make a boat load of money. It's easy to feel like you know everything about everything because your campaign started making bank.

In reality, the most successful people I know are some of the most humble. There are always exceptions but I believe that it all comes around eventually. Just going to DK's Think Tank event this year confirmed it with me.

Take Andy Liu as an example. Not only does he run the largest television website on the internet (and it's profitable), he owns a chunk of the cheezburger network (which get 90+ million page views per month), and has invested into about 20 other websites.

Although the guy is clearly uber successful, he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met. No, not just nice, but there is something else about him. I'd say it's humility.

Not only was Andy this way, but just about everyone at the DK Think tank event was. And THAT is one of the major reasons why I loved the event.

This, to me, is the true sign of success.

So my encouragement to you this week. Serve / prefer other people and while you're gaining success by doing that, remain humble.

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Movie Marketing: Its Own Worst Enemy

With Facebook the Movie: aka The Social Network hitting theaters this weekend it got me thinking about social media and movie marketing. I am not alone in this, as a quick Google search turned up a recent AdAge article that pretty much said what I was thinking, “Why Do Most Movie Websites Suck?”

I’m a huge movie lover, but I’ve hardly ever met an official website I didn’t hate. I always assumed it was because they’re generally full of flash and graphics with very little text. I’m a writer, I like reading. Chris Thilk, the author of the AdAge article agreed with me and he took it one step further. It’s not just that official websites are bad, it’s that the Facebook pages are better.

Facebook pages usually have more links to trailers, more photos but most of all, they have a means of exchanging information. I can ask a question about a film or proclaim my love of the lead actor. Few official movie sites are set up for this kind of interaction. Their idea of interaction is allowing me to type my name in so the site addresses me properly when I play their silly up and down button games.

In order to engage with the movie goer, Thilk suggests that studios do a better job of looping all of their products together. Use the Facebook and Twitter to mention a new trailer that’s on the official site. More importantly, he says studios have to “commit to the conversation.” Why corral a whole page full of fans then ignore them when they ask questions? That’s the problem with both websites and movie FB pages — often they feel like empty theaters. Pretty pictures on the wall but no butts in the seats.

I imagine that one of the reasons movie Facebook pages do have more information is because they are easier to update. It’s easy to slip in an unexpected appearance by the star in his home town, but adding a notation to a finely crafted flash site is near impossible.

Before writing this, I went to the official website for The Social Network. The opening screen (seen above) isn’t inviting and is a little confusing. I clicked the button to enter and got a slowly loading popup window with quotes from critics. None of which I read. Then I had to click another button which took me to the window you see here. At that point I said forget it.

Usability must be a dirty word in Hollywood because it’s obvious they were going for art over substance. I shouldn’t have to click through three sets of windows just to get my first snippet of useful or interesting info. That’s why Facebook works. When I hit the fan page for Secretariat, I see a question I’m likely to answer, photos from the premiere, a video tab with trailers and lots of conversation. That’s how you get people excited about a movie, or for that matter, any product, service or person.

Do you know of a movie website that engages? Point it out to us. We’d like to know.

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Why Getting Attention Won’t Make You Rich

Be remarkable. Be the purple cow. Get yourself noticed. Just be your own beautiful and unique snowflake self, and your allotment of raving fans will come find you and buy everything you make.

Ever heard that advice?

It’s a social media truism that as long as you’re authentic, you can’t go wrong. Fame, fortune, and the latest Apple products will all be yours.

Let’s face it — authenticity can be a great way to draw a crowd. Especially if you have an over-the-top personality. And because we live in the age of attention scarcity, many people think that getting attention is the hard part.

If only I could get noticed. If only I could get someone to read my stuff.

But attention isn’t actually the rarest commodity in the 21st century.

Trust is.

It’s true that the first letter in every sales formula is “A”

All marketing has to start with attention.

If you can’t attract attention in the first place, nothing else you do has a chance to work. This is why headlines matter more than anything else you do.

And that’s been the case as long as selling has existed. If you’ve ever been to a Renaissance Faire, think about the way the food vendors let you know what they’ve got to offer.

When the pretty girl in the tight bodice shouts Hot Turkey Legs! and Cold Beer Here!, those are headlines. They attract your attention and let you know the most important details of the offer.

But you need to remember that the work of the headline is not only to attract attention.

The true job of the headline is to get the first line of your copy (whether it’s a blog post, email message, sales letter, video, or podcast) read, watched, or listened to.

In other words, if you gaze happily at the pretty girl but you never approach her for a beer, the headline (and the bodice) have failed.

Copywriting formulas have more than one letter

(If the whole idea of copywriting formulas is new to you, you can find 15 of them here.)

Conversion is the copywriting term for all the stuff that happens between that initial “A” and the sale.

• You craft an offer that people will actually want to buy.
• You build trust.
• You answer questions and counter objections.
• You describe appealing benefits to spark interest and fan it into desire.
• You make it easy for the prospect to see herself as a customer.
• You increase desire with appealing bonuses.
• You deliver a clear, compelling call to action.
• You build in urgency elements to get the prospect to act today.
• You state your call to action again.

Being a jerk is bad for business

Lots of us will reward a jerk with attention. But not many will reward a jerk with business.

Jerks can’t be depended on. They play head games. They don’t respect their audience. They amuse themselves at the expense of other people.

Prospects are already fearful enough. If your prospects don’t trust you, they’re not likely to spend any money with you.

You don’t have to be a wimp

You’ll notice that some very successful businesspeople have strong, tough personas.

They may well make themselves unlikeable to most of the population. That’s ok – they’re filtering out the customers who aren’t right for their business.

The message they send to their right customers, though, is always that they can be trusted. That they’ll tell the truth, even when it’s not pretty. That they’re consistent, whether you like them or not.

The dad from Sh*t My Dad Says would make a good marketer. Let’s face it, if you bought a car from that guy, you know that you’d have a completely accurate picture of what was good and bad about the car. He may be offensive at times, but he’s trustworthy.

(At least, the real dad and not the one who will be played by William Shatner.)

The dad from “Family Guy” would make a lousy marketer. He’s capricious, he goes for the cheap laugh every time, and he has no integrity. There are no customers gullible enough to buy a car from that guy. You may find him hilarious, but no sane person would find him trustworthy.

It takes more than being remarkable

Hey, I’m a big fan of remarkable. I built a blog and a lovely business around it.

But “remarkable” doesn’t mean “remarkably annoying,” “remarkably mean,” or “remarkably useless.”

You have my permission to swear on your blog, to fearlessly embrace controversy, or just to make yourself a likeable jackass.

But never, ever do it at the expense of the trust of your readers.

There is no effective copywriting formula that leads directly from getting Attention to creating a Scandal to making a Sale.

That’s just a formula for making an A-S-S of yourself.

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A Pop Up, Is a Pop Up, Is a Pop Up

Warning: This is a rant.

Since this blog is read by many Internet marketing influencers I just have to say one thing while I might have your attention for a sentence or two. This is not a new subject matter but it deserves a rant because it is still lurking about and getting worse. Here it goes.

Forcing a 30 second video ad (or 15 seconds for that matter) in between the content I am seeking and myself is bad practice. I know I don’t represent everyone on the planet but what makes your ad, which is slickly produced etc etc, any better than the old pop up ads that used to litter the Internet and render many a good site unusable? Oh and it if you have changed the terminology or the term pop-up no longer applies, that’s just semantics. A pop up, is a pop up, is a pop up. Period.

I have discussed this at my blog before but you may have missed it (What?! You don’t read my blog or even know I had one? Shame on you )

I’ll give you an example. I think that The Business Insider family of sites / blogs or whatever you want to call them are great. That doesn’t stop me from getting completely irritated that I have to find the close button (x marks the spot for freedom from misplaced advertising messages in my estimation) as quickly as possible so I can get to the information I am looking for (which I came to via your RSS feed so advertising to me is even more annoying).

I realize that I can read the content in the feed and avoid all of this but I like going to sites for the original item. Why? Because if there is good information in one spot maybe I can window shop the rest of the site to find something else of value. When I do that put up as many display ads as you want. I may actually look at them. Just don’t use them like a kick returner in football uses a wedge of blockers to get in the way of potential harm.

This annoying trend toward larger, longer and even more intrusive ads is not the way to go marketers. It’s just bad user experience. When you piss off your visitor at your front door don’t you think that might taint the rest of their visit?

Look, I am sure there are statistics somewhere that say that this type of intrusive, in your face and annoying advertising works. I would challenge that research as probably being sponsored by those who produce these things.

So Mr. Big Time Site Owner With Big Brand Advertising, stop doing the online equivalent of sticking your leg out and tripping me to get my attention as I enter your website. It’s annoying. And advertisers, if you really want to get me upset do your best to hide the “close button” so your ad runs a few seconds longer. Oh yea, that’ll make me desire that product! Panhandlers on the streets of New York have more style than that technique. No one likes to be trapped or tricked into watching a message. Where did that idea first get green-lighted and can we put that person up against the wall please?

Anyway, rant is over. If you made it this far what is your feeling about these pop ups?

Have a nice weekend!

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Social Media Creators and Brands: Distortion or Reality?

According to Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, we here in the US are so self –absorbed that we do whatever we want and really don’t pay attention anyway to the details like pricing of products etc. Unfortunately, his remarks weren’t too far from the truth. The remarks were also an incredibly stupid thing for a CEO to say but that’s for another post.

Another apparent habit of us here in the US is embellishment. Really?!?!? In a larger sense we tend to distort things especially when we pass them on to others. Ever play that silly kid game of ‘telephone’ with adults? Start a message at one end of a line of 25 folks and see what it has morphed into when it is passed along one person at a time. Embellish? Distort? Nah, not us. Not in the land of ‘experts’, ‘mavens’, ‘ninjas’ and other distorted reality self proclaimed titles? Really?!?!?!?

Check out the chart below from eMarketer and Burston-Marstellar. You can see why this propensity to distort reality can be a real problem for marketers.

The brief article then says

PR and communications firm Burson-Marsteller analyzed more than 150 messages sent out by companies in the Financial Times Global 100 list of firms and discovered a large gap between the messages that went out and how they were covered on blogs.

Message distortion was highest for companies in Latin America and the US, with a global average of 69% of blog postings not reflecting the message companies were trying to send. According to the report, bloggers tended to include “opinions, personal experience, knowledge of competitors and products, and speculation.”

Whoa wait a minute? How are we defining ‘brand distortion’ here? If it means that people (in particular, bloggers) don’t send the exact message that a company is trying to push out to the buying public but rather includes opinions and personal experience then I say “Distort away!” I also say to this research “No s$#%, Sherlock”. That’s one of the major plusses of social media which is learning about actual experience of a brand rather than the Fantasyland version that marketers produce. It’s about the truth and if truth is a distortion of a brand message then maybe you better check the message.

Firms like Burson-Marstellar are actually masters of distortion (read: PR) so this kind of research is a bit ironic coming from them. I say that if opinions, personal experience and competitive knowledge are bad things then we should ignore this research and just going about our business. That’s the whole point of all of this! If we blindly trust every marketing message that has ever been shoved down our throat we’d all be driving Yugos while smoking cigarettes and eating a stick of butter because the makers of those things think it is in our best interest to buy them.

This is why I am extremely cautious about research in this space. When you see any infographic (which is all the rage) don’t get sucked in by the chart or the pretty picture and just take it as the truth. Dig a little and see what is really being said. You may find that what was being marketed by that research could be embellishment right out of the gate. When that’s the case, you have to put on your caveat emptor caps and use some discretion.

After that, if you want to distort and embellish some more go right ahead because apparently it is the American way.

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Help LogoMyWay Take Home the $25,000 First Place Prize

It’s really tough to create a new web site and break into a niche where there are already big and successful sites. When my friend Joe Daley said he was going to create LogoMyWay.com, a marketplace for graphic designers, I thought the idea was great, but knew he would have a lot of trouble competing with other big sites in this market like 99Designs. That was over a year ago, and now LogoMyWay is killing it, and also one of my favorite sites for having logo design work done.

Joe is currently in second place for a Kodak Home Office Prosper Contest and the first place winner takes home a $25,000 prize. Joe has a great story and a killer site, so he deserves to win the contest, so I’d surely help him in his efforts to win this contest, and would like for you to do the same. Here’s how you can help, and possibly win a free t-shirt in the process!

Step 1 – Vote for Joe Daley
(Visit page, click vote, then confirm email)

Step 2 – Leave a Comment on this Post Stating you Voted.

Ten winners will randomly be selected from comments made on this blog post to receive a free t-shirt from this blog. Winners will be contacted and posted on October 10th. Good luck to both you and Joe!

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Yahoo Executive Exodus Continues

You know that we here at Marketing Pilgrim have had boatloads of fun at the expense of Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz. Initially, I thought (like many others) that her brash style would be good for the ailing Internet property that was once at the top of a pretty large heap in the Internet space.

As is often the case with perceptions they can fall far short of reality. Carol Bartz’s tenure at Yahoo to this point has to be classified as at least a perception gone horribly wrong. The evidence comes in the form of the continued executive level departures at the highest levels of the organization. While some at Yahoo are trying to spin this executive revolving door as a planned action, not many are buying it.

Kara Swisher of All Things Digital says this as she reveals the chaos that is Yahoo’s leadership

The executive turmoil at the very top of Yahoo continues, with the company poised to announce the resignations of three top execs, including U.S. head Hilary Schneider (pictured here), according to sources close to the situation.

The other execs also leaving, which Yahoo (YHOO) is planning on revealing Friday: U.S. Audience head David Ko and, as BoomTown previously reported, VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro.

While some at Yahoo are trying to spin it as an ouster, sources close to the situation said that Schneider–who presides over media and advertising sales at Yahoo–has wanted to leave the company for a while, but was convinced to stay on by CEO Carol Bartz.

She then says

This entire mess–and that’s precisely what it is–calls into question the tenure of Bartz, a tough-talking, cost-cutting exec who was brought in to clean up Yahoo after the maelstrom around the failed takeover attempt by Microsoft several years ago.

Swisher is not alone with her assessment as another influential tech insider, Henry Blodgett says over at Business Insider’s SAI that when it comes to Carol bartz and Yahoo the thrill is gone.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s penchant for shooting her mouth off saying colorful things is coming back to bite her.

In recent weeks, Carol has:

- Annoyed Apple by saying company’s control-freakness will doom its efforts in the ad business
- Annoyed Alibaba’s CEO Jack Ma with some public remarks about Yahoo’s Alibaba stake
- “Alarmed” execs at search-partner Microsoft, one of whom tells Kara Swisher that “It is becoming a little unsettling.”

When things are going well, a CEO can say just about anything he or she wants. (And, in fact, it’s refreshing, as it was in the early days of Carol’s reign). When things are going badly, however, as they are at Yahoo, colorful remarks can create the impression that the CEO is a loose cannon or all hat and no cattle.

If you have ever been an employee of a company that has this much drama and turmoil as the focus rather than products, services, revenue and getting business done, it can be disheartening. As a result, this turmoil bleeds down through the organization and can kill the spirit of even the most dedicated employees.

So what’s Yahoo to do? Maybe to kill this monster they will need to cut off its head. Swisher says

This week, according to sources, some board members had an emergency meeting at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ to try to figure out how to deal with the burgeoning management issue.

Some speculate that they will hire a second-in-command to Bartz, who might be able to take over for her when her contract is up in 18 months.

Yahoo declined to comment.

If I were Yahoo I would probably want to decline to comment as well since it looks like everything else with the company is in decline already.

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5 Mind-Blowing List Building Techniques

Let’s face it, without an e-mail marketing list, you are reducing the potential you have for driving traffic, building your brand and increase your profits. This is one of the biggest mistakes I made when I first started out; I didn’t realize the true value of a list and didn’t have list building techniques in place from day one.

There are literally hundred of different ways you can build your list up. However, recently I have personally implemented these 5 techniques and have found to generate outstanding results.

#1 Mind-Blowing Technique - Good Karma List Machine
I stumbled across this technique while watching the ShoeMoney System 2.0. This idea was originally created by Frank Kern during his List Control launch, however Jeremy created a public version that anyone can download.

The Good Karma List Machine allows you to rapidly build your email list by utilizing a referral system that entices people who sign-up, to get their friends to sign-up as well. It works extremely well when you give someone something of value for free, then you give them bonus content if they refer x number of people to sign-up. Similar to how Twitter updates spread like wild-fire through RTs, the same concept is applied to list building through referrals.

The List Machine system, automatically integrates with AWeber and has a backend where you can control how many referrals people need to have in order to get the referral bonus content.

I actually just started using this system for my free 10 week Internet Marketing course that you can see in action and sign-up for right now.

==> Download the Good Karma List Machine

#2 Mind-Blowing Technique – Multiple Triggers
The more opportunities you give a user to sign-up for your free offer(s), the better the chance you have of capturing that person’s contact information.Try adding your offer in the following places on your blog.

1. Sidebar: Adding a quick sign-up form in the top of your sidebar will make it one of the first things the user will see. Using a well designed graphic with a contact form integrated will surely help the # of people who sign-up for your offer.
2. After Every Post: A problem with blogs is that many readers will just read the newest blog post, without really navigationthe rest of your site. If you put a sign-up box with your offer at the end of each post, it reinforces the user to sign-up.
3. Bottom of RSS Feed: A am a big fan of the RSS footer plugin created by Yoast. This plugin allows you to add HTML code into the footer of your RSS feed. Because many subscribers read your posts in their RSS reader, they may not see offers you have on your site. This will help display that offer to your RSS subscribers, by putting a text or banner ad in the footer of your feed.
4. Author Bio: Whenever you write a guest post for another blog, this is a great opportunity to not only mention your blog, but anything that you are giving away for free. Add a link to the landing page where they can download or sign-up for your content.

Below you can see this example in action at Michael Dunlop’s blog incomediary.com.

#3 Mind-Blowing Technique – List Swaps
List swapping is basically where you send an e-mail to your marketing list, promoting someone else’s product, offer or content and vice versa.Of course there are potentially a lot of issues with list swaps, as you are not familiar with the quality of the other person’s list. That is why it is important to personally contact the person who you are doing a list exchange with and find out more about he/his readership and list. Ideally it seems to work better when both of you have the same list size, similar credibility in the industry, and same readers.

Another technique you can try when doing list swaps, it cross-marketing in vertical niches. For example, if your list is mainly made up of Internet Marketers, Affiliate Marketers, etc…you may want to try find partners who have Web Designers and/or Web Programmers on their list. Odds are that many of these users are probably interested in how they can better market websites they are designing/programming.

Here is a list of various list swapping sites that connect others who are looking to grow their list, just like you.

• AdSwapFinder
• List Swapper
• Warrior Forum – JV Partners
• JV Notify
• Safe Swaps (paid)

#4 Mind-Blowing Technique – Pop-Up Domination

There has been some recent controversy over this technique, however the bottom line is it works! Pop-Up Domination is a wordpress plugin that will display a lightbox pop-up to the user when they get to your site. That pop-up will put your offer, front and center to the user and drastically increases your opt-it rates.

The great thing about this plugin, is you do not need to have any type of design skills at all. There is a simply step by step process that you follow, where you fill in the blanks and the plugin will do the rest. Another option you have is being able to control how often the pop-up is displayed to the user. Because some users may find it obtrusive, you may want to only show the pop-up every few days or once a week.

#5 Mind-Blowing Technique – Contests
A great contest with a high value prize can go viral and make a huge spike in your subscriber numbers. Giving away things that are hot like the iPad, free pass to a conference or copy of your latest product can easily make people want to sign-up.You can also be creative with how you structure your contest to help spread the word about your contest.

For example having multiple prize tiers for referral contests, affiliate sales contests, incentive contests can give people added reason to participate.

• Tier 1 = 20 Referrals / 1 iPad
• Tier 2 = 50 Referrals / 3 Months of Coaching
• Tier 3 = 100 Referrals / Pass to SMX East + Copy of Latest eBook

About the Guest Post Author
Mark Thompson is the creator of StayOnSearch, a blog dedicated to Internet Marketing professionals looking to increase traffic, build their brand and make money through blogging. Make sure you sign-up for his newly released free 10 week Internet Marketing course. You can also follow Mark on Twitter.

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