Susan Boyle and the Power of Social Media

April 19, 2009 · Filed Under Social Media · Comment 

The world was stunned this week by Susan Boyle, the dusty old miracle voice from Scotland.  Yes, her voice was incredible.  Yes, the audience and judges were rude to her.  The judges probably had more reason to be because it is sort of their show.  The audience was following mob mentality.

The fascinating thing here is not Susan’s bushing eyebrows or nice voice or peoples inherent rudeness these days.  The really fascinating thing is the speed at which here fame and demand exploded.

A few years ago a hot new talent ot emerge on a British talent show may have gained world attention after a few weeks or months or maybe years.  When I first became aware of Charlotte Church she was maybe 14.  That was several years after her big ‘debut’.  When Susan Boyle hit the stage, Susan Boyle also hit Youtube and the social networks.  It’s now been a week since her performance and the video on Youtube now has over 31 million views.  Thats one version of it.  There are others on you tube.  That’s 31 million views in a week.  That’s what you call VIRAL.

Gary Vaynerchuk put it best in the keynote address at Affiliate Summit West in Vegas back in January, when he said the gate keepers of media have now been removed. There doesn’t have to be some high and mighty person across the desk who decides if your stuff is good enough for the world to want.  Now can put your own stuff out there and let the world decide it it is what it wants.

The world is wanting more of Susan Boyle.  Yes, her demand may be short lived, as some predict, but she will undoubtedly retain a cult following for many, many years to come.  It’s the power of Social Media.  The world decides what it wants and what it is willing to pay for.

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Pooh Marketing

April 16, 2009 · Filed Under Rantings · 1 Comment 

My kids are into Pooh as any little kids are.  My personal favorite is the classic, ‘The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh’ and we all spent hours watching it over and over. But, then came the much anticipated, Pooh’s Grand Adventure, which really stunk, in my opinion. That one was a poor attempt to capitalize on the earlier success.

What does this have to do with Internet Marketing? Probably nothing, but one particularly obnoxious tune in the movie was where the Friends were doubting where they were and Rabbit was sure that all they had to do was follow the map.  Remember, though, that the map was just something hastily drawn up by Owl, the perceived authority.

Rabbit sang:

Never trust your ears
Your nose, your eyes
Putting faith in them
Is most unwise
Here’s a phrase you all
Must memorise
In the printed word
Is where truth lies

If it says so
Then it is so
If it is so
Well so it is
A thought’s not fit to think
‘Til it’s printed in ink
Then it says so
So it is

Never trust that thing
Between your ears
Brains will get you nowhere fast
My dears
Haven’t had a need
For mine in years
On the page is where
The truth appears

That’s the mentality of normal people when it comes to the internet. If it says so, then it is so.  They see Jenny lose weight and blog about it with the Dynamic Duo available to try for free and they eat it up.

Then Sally, then Jessica, then Becky, all the same pictures all the same stories, all the same offers. They see Brian and Jeff and Mike all rake in thousand’s with Obama grants and line up for theirs. If it says then it is so.

Aff Marketers are so quick to capitalize on this mass naivete to the detriment of us all. Fleece them for a few months with this, until they wise up, then fleece them with this other thing for a few months till they figure it out.

How long will it be before the common folk all say “Buyer Beware”?

The internet is a gold mine.  The sheer population numbers involved stagger the imagination.  Just a dollar from each person online today would more than set anyone up for life.  If we kill the goose to get our golden eggs quicker, there may not be any more eggs for anyone, ever, and then won’t we look real stupid.

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Back Up, Back up, Back Up

April 14, 2009 · Filed Under Basics · Comment 

All right, no-brainer quiz here.  What’s the number one thimg to do on a routine basis to ensure the survivability of your sites and your business?  Obviously back them up on a regular basis.  Everything.  The databases, files, themes; everything.  We all do it all everyday, right?

Right.

Well, I have this small site I created for a local band.  Decent little community.  With the proliferation of Xrumer the poor guest book was taking a beating. More and more spam until this last week I would clean it out in the morning and find a dozen more by evening.  Finally, I broke down and did some upgrades to the security.  In all the haste to get this non-profit chore done, the tables got overwritten and all of the last two year’s worth of entries were gone in a flash.

Bummer. Surely they will understand. The band , I mean.

This story has a less than unhappy ending.

I could find no sql dumps for this site anywhere, though I know I had made them at one time. Hey, half a guest book is better than none at all. I even called Godaddy.  They have a recent backup, right?  Yes they do.  And for a mere $150.00 USD they will be glad to send you  a copy.  One more reason to get the heck off of Godaddy’s tit.

Then the bright idea hit me.  Check the Google cache. A quick site: search and surely enough the spiders had been there last week.  I printed out dozens of pages of now precious entries which can be manually re-entered. Whew.

Moral of the story for me.  You can’t be in this business and be very lazy.  There are lots of little details that either have to be attended to to personally or they have to be delegated.  Ignoring such details is begging them to bite you in the butt.  Even the small details.

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There Are Thieves and Then There Are Thieves

April 4, 2009 · Filed Under PPC, Rantings · Comment 

Ripping off campaigns is s a fact of life in this business.  Some clever, original marketer finds a technique that works well, then some idiot either outs the lander on a forum or chat room and every lazy punk kid marketer out there wants to just copy the thing verbatim and run the offers.  That probably isn’t going to change as long as the internet contains advertising.

Then, there’s the process of finding someone successful to *cough* copy *cough* (ripoff).  You do a Google search of your intended keywords and then start immediately clicking the Sponsored Ads in the right pane of Google SERPS.  Got to check out the old competition, right?  Well, yes that is true.  Know thine enemy.  Not everyone knows, though, or stops to consider that every click on those links costs somebody some cash.  This is, after all, PPC — Pay Per Click.

While you’re looking for campaigns and landing pages to jack, you’re jerking the cash right out of your competitors pockets.  And it’s a good chance that it’s probably somebody you pester with stupid n00b questions in the chat channels.  You get stuff to steal, Google makes a little bit and the poor aff marketeer loses money and potential market share.

Tip 1:  AT LEAST right click on the add, Copy Link Location (assuming you’re smart enough to use Firefox) THEN copy the link into the address bar.  Strip the link down to its location and then go there and steal them blind.

OR better yet.

Tip 2:  Download the SEOBook Toolbar.  It’s a very useful toolbar that will automatically display backlinks, Yahoo linkdomain info, PR, etc.  The best feature is on the Competition part: Show PPC Destination URLS.  When it is active, the destination URL of the Google Sponsored Ads is listed under the ad.  You can then easily visit and get ideas without costing the hard working, non-douchebag, aff marketer a ton of clicks for your laziness.

Get the toolbar and quit being quite as big a douche.

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