I’m not sure why I even look at Google PageRank anymore… I know it’s full of crap most of the time and really means nothing when it comes to search rankings.

But, I can’t help but see that big ol’ green bar in my Google Toolbar (I know, I shouldn’t have that toolbar… I’ll probably be taking it down shortly … everytime I go to a website.

So, this morning my real estate blog had a new post on it (that drove a ton of traffic to a webinar I put on last night) and I hopped on over there to check it out again.  Anyhow, I was almost blinded by the Google PageRank bar stretching across my toolbar.

My normal pagerank for that real estate investing website is 3 (for the past month or so anyway)… and I haven’t been able to break it past that (I haven’t really put in much of an effort though either).  Well… what do I see when I head over there today?

A PageRank 6!

I refreshed the page several times and cleared my cache just to see if it would change… it didn’t… it’s still a 6 (for the time being anyway).

So, right now I’m strutting around with a PageRank of 6 (it’ll probably be back down tomorrow).

This Sounds Cool… But It’s Frustrating As Heck…

While it sounds all cool and all to have a pagerank of 6 (even if it is temporary)… it’s really not.  Pagerank means nothing at all… at least I haven’t found a huge use for it other than when I sell advertising some people still ask “what is the PR of the site?”.

Pagerank is kind of like a fancy bra on a car.

Two cars might have the same fancy little sporty looking bra… like this Ferarri…

Or… this Kia…

The fact they both have bras that look similar doesn’t make a difference at all how the car performs.

The Ferarri is always going to kill the Kia.

PageRank Doesn’t Equal Performance…

If you’re deep into the SEO and internet marketing world you SHOULD realize that PageRank has little (or nothing) to do with actual performance in the search engines.  Actually, I’m not really sure what it does to tell you the truth.

Two pagerank 3’s can perform very differently in search results.

For instance, I have a ton of pages (internal pages within sites) that are pagerank 0 that outrank pages for targeted keyword phrase with pageranks of 3 and above.

Why?

Google sees my pages as more relevant to the search term.

Don’t Focus On PageRank… Focus On…

Don’t focus on PageRank.  While it’s cool to see your website out “PageRanking” your competitors… it doesn’t mean a thing because Google doesn’t pay you money based on how big your green bar is.

You’re paid when people find you in the search results… and search results are governed by how relevant Google sees your site to the specific search term.  Thats is.

So, shoot for continued improvement on relevancy of your website and pages within the website to the specific search terms you are going after.

If you’re going after the Green Remote Control Car market… make a blog post or entire page (or entire website would be even better) dedicated to ONLY Green Remote Control Cars.

Be more relevant than the next guy.

If you run a content based website (which is what I’m focusing more and more on w/ my sites)… and your topic is more broad than “green remote control cars” (or whatever your topic is)… make specific sections or specific articles optimized for your moneymaking terms.

I have a real estate site that gives out free information on real estate investing.  But, I also have a ton of very targeted pages and articles on VERY SPECIFIC products and markets. Then, I optimize each of these sections and articles with internal link building and social media.

Guess What??

I rank very very well for extremely targeted search terms (with low PageRank pages) over sites like Amazon.com, Bizrate.com, Business.com, and others with huge PageRank for the competing pages.

I’m just a bit more relevant than they are (in my title, my content, my incoming links, my media within the pages, etc.).

Shoot for relevancy… not high PageRank.

Buy the car because it performs and looks awesome… not because it has a cool looking bra on the front of it.

Capisch?

While I was doing a bit of research and trying to analyze why some sites are ranking high for very competitive search terms…

… I ran across a site that is currently ranking #1 in Goolge for the search term "Cheap Viagra " .

While digging through some of their inbound links I quickly found that a very popular tech website is actually helping them rank #1 because the link spammers pushing this site up to the top slipped a link into one of the Techcrunch web pages.

The Techcrunch post dates back to the summer of 2006… and this link spam was made in early 2007 and blatantly includes 2 links back to their website. (the bottom comment).

(t looks like comments are closed on that post now (as far as I can tell)… but I wonder why Techcrunch hasn’t taken it down yet.  It’s probably that they get so many comments on posts they might not manually moderate comments anymore… but instead use spam filters to do the bulk of the work (this is just a guess though… )

Anyhow, this is a good lesson to put the term "viagra" in your Askimet spam filter.

So… technically… without knowing it … Techcrunch has helped this site get to the top of a huge money term and I’m sure rake in thousands of sales each and every day (Clarification… Techcrunch isn’t raking in thousands from this, the Viagra site owner is).

Just to be clear, I don’t write this post to implicate Techcrunch on anything or insinuate that they even know about this comment on their site… I’m positive they probably don’t have a clue the comment is even on their site.  It just goes to show that ANY website can let spam comments slip through… and we all need to be sure to monitor the comments we approve to keep our company image and professionalism intact.  You never know if a comment like this could turn off prospect reading your website… and cost you real dollars.

Is blog commenting still working for SEO?

Yep… sure is…

Just ask the comment spammers behind the "Cheap Viagra" Google leaders.  Pretty much every inbound link I found going to their site is from comment spam… but not in a way that is blatant URL stuffed generic spam that we all see in our Askimet spam folders everyday.

It seems that a lot of the comments left on blogs from this URL do somewhat reference the post and/or the blog writers name… so they aren’t overtly spammy.  So, I guess you can call this spamming with a personal touch .

Seems to work (but I wouldn’t be able to tell you from first hand experience .

I’m sure you’ve seen the videos of this guy named Matt Harding doing his crazy "gumby-like" dance all around the world in front of well known monuments and landmarks in pretty much every country known to man.

If not… you really NEED to check the videos out for yourself… they are simple… but you’ll instantly see why millions of people have viewed the videos over the past couple years.  Actually… his most recent video (check it out below) was uploaded into Youtube on June 20th (3 days ago) and already has almost 2 million views… wow!

Anyhow, Matt did it again and just put out his most recent "Dancing Video " with a bunch of new locations… but he put a different twist on this dancing video.

What twist?… you say…

A new dance? NOPE… the same crazy (or stupid… ) dance as before.

A new sponsor? NOPE… Stride sponsored this one too.

The twist that Matt put on this most recent Where the Hell Is Matt "Dancing Video" is a twist of humanity.  Rather than Matt dancing alone… in every stop around the world Matt had big groups of people from that country joining in on the dance enjoying themselves each and every second.

Here’s the most recent video if you haven’t already watched it:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo .

Dissecting The Video… Why Does It Work So Well?

Making a viral video isn’t an easy task… but new viral videos are created virtually everyday… usually by people who didn’t intend it to go viral… and didn’t expect to attempt to make a profit from it.  That’s part of what makes a video viral… it has to be genuine… remarkable… relevant… and pull on one or more of the psychological triggers that compel us to be drawn toward certain things.

If you’ve watched Matt’s other videos you can see that they all are similar and play on the same wants/desires/ and core identities of human beings.

What’s The Hook?

Just like in advertising and direct response marketing Matt’s "Dancing" videos didn’t become a big hit because they were dull, overused, and uncompelling.  The videos worked because they had a "hook" that worked so well with people that people could identify with the video and the message that it sent.

In Matt’s first videos there were a few hooks that drew people in:

• People desire to live life to the fullest … even though 90% of everyone alive isn’t living the life they truly want to live.  Traveling the world is a dream that many people have deep down in their core because they know that life has more to offer than what they’ve seen and experienced so far.
• Matt’s Story …  Without the story behind the story these videos probably wouldn’t have had the affect and reach that they did.  People identify with stories better than facts… and like to relate what we’re seeing to the story behind what we’re seeing… it becomes more real and genuine when we can peer behind the curtain a bit.  Matt worked his ass off for a few years and one day realized that this isn’t what life is all about.  There’s no way we were created to slave away in cubicles for 40-80 hours a week and be forced to start living our lives when we retire.  So… quit his job… packed up… and spent the next year and a half traveling the word.  Really… who the heck wouldn’t want to do that?  I’d venture to say that almost everyone deep down in their core wants to do that… whether you think you do or not.
• Going against the grain … Matt could have made that trip and did what every other tourist does… take a few pictures or a video of himself standing in front of cool stuff in each country.  But, that wouldn’t have gotten even 1,000 views on Youtube probably.  Instead, Matt does this crazy "dance" in front of recognizable places around the world… and completely melds the "usual" (the locations) with the "unusual" (the dance)…

In Matt’s newest video (the one on this page)… it plays on the same "hooks"… but Matt knew that a 3rd trip around the world doing the same thing wouldn’t get much legs on the internet.  So, he added in the element of getting locals to join in on the dance… truly making it a joining of nationalities across all language barriers.

The added hook of humanity has so far helped this newest video to go viral again.

So, Let’s Break Down The Triggers and Success Elements

Any marketing promotion, advertising campaign, or video has to tug at one or more of our psychological triggers.

I think that the Where the Hell Is Matt video series play on the EXACT same triggers as Tim Ferriss’s book "4 Hour Work Week ".

We all…

• Hate to work a 9-5 job and know there is more out there
• Have an ultimate dream to travel the world and/or experience things beyond our little cocoon when we "retire" (in actuality… we’d all rather do all of that now… but have a mixed up view on what life ‘is supposed’ to be like)
• Are vulnerable and like to see that others are vulnerable and imperfect like we are (Matt’s dance… he could have said, "I’m not going to put this on the internet… people will laugh at me"… but he didn’t… and people admire that)
• Realize by watching the video that we CAN experience the same thing Matt did if we truly want to… all we have to do is step out of our comfort zones and make the decision

With Matt’s latest "Where The Hell Is Matt" Dancing video it’s so successful because it of course grabs at our desires to "live life and see new things", brings the unexpected (the crazy dance in front of well known locations worldwide), and now brings a touch of humanity that we can all relate to.

The idea of filming yourself in front of places around the world, putting music to the video, and putting it on Youtube isn’t anything new.  It’s been done before… and didn’t go viral… not even close.

However, a great marketing principle is to take two things that we all know and like… but that are usually unrelated… and combine them into one.  Often this synergy makes the difference.  Matt joined travel and uninhibited dancing… and it was a hit.

Another recent video that went viral that simply joined two things that we all know and like… was the "Wii Fit Girl " video.   This video joined the craze that the new Wii Fit launch caused… and combined it with the voyeuristic look at a hot girl in her underwear using the Wii Fit.  This video has got almost 5 million views in the last 30 days.

All In All…

Okay… I’m rambling a bit now (I tend to do that sometimes … so I’ll leave you with this.

There is no hard and fast system that guarantees a video will go viral.  All you can do is study the videos that have gone viral, pinpoint why they are appealing, and start to make a list of things.  Over time you’ll see that all viral videos play on our own psychological triggers and usually combine 2 or more of those triggers into a "new" thing we’ve never seen before.

So, here it is:

• Come up with a new idea that no one has ever explored before (difficult), or
• Put a new twist on an "old" idea with a fresh new perspective
• Keep your video usually under 5 minutes
• Capitolize on a "craze" or trend
• Go after 2 or more psychological triggers

Good luck in creating your next viral video and you’ve gotta hand it to Matt for following his dream and putting a new twist on his success to keep legs under it at least for the rest of the summer.

Social media is kind of a confusing term for most businesses today… let alone knowing how the heck to use it to benefit their online presence and profits.

So, I thought I’d give you a quick tutorial on one way to use social media websites like digg.com , fark.com , de.licio.us , twitter.com , etc… to drive traffic to your website very quickly… and build multiple search engine rankings in the shortest amount of time possible.

Who Should Use This Social Media Optimization Strategy?

Well… everyone. Everyone who wants more traffic , more quickly , more often , and for less money and effort . Is that you? If not, I’m going to have to ask you to push the back button on your browser and head over to your favorite news site and not come back here again ( , seriously ).

All kidding aside, every business who has a website should institute this simple Social Media optimization strategy (or one like it) for your important and high quality content.

What Is Social Media and Why Does It Help Your Website?

In simple terms, a Social Media website is a place where a community of people come to share things on the internet, network and connect with others, and find things that are related to their likes and interests.

Sounds simple huh? Well… it is.

Social Media can help your website and business in many ways including:

• Direct people to your website and content
• Build links back to your site for search engine optimization purposes
• Monitoring the discussion in your market… and about your business and products
• Engaging in the conversation with your market… and building a stronger relationship with them
• Networking to find new business joint ventures, partners, etc.

But, in this tutorial I’m just going to cover the part of building links back to your website and content (SEO) and driving traffic to your website quickly and easily.

Social Media Optimization for SEO and Driving Quick Traffic

In simple terms, what we’re going to do here is in 4 simple steps:

1. Create high quality content worth telling people about
2. Go to social media websites and let them know about your content, what it’s about, and create a good and compelling headline that piques peoples curiosity about your content
3. Integrate multiple social media websites together (news and RSS feed aggregators, bookmarking services, and video/podcast posting websites) in a way that best builds a web of links back to your content
4. Rinse and repeat for new content

Really, traffic can come from a few different places by using a strategy like this.

First , you get traffic from people clicking through to view your content (article, video, picture, etc.)

Second , you get traffic from search engines because the actual "bookmarks" or "submissions" on the social media website often show up great in search results (and very fast!) when you title it with the keywords and phrases that your target market is likely to search.

Third , many people who have websites and blogs read these social media websites every day looking for things to write about. If they see something worth passing along to their readers, they’ll write about your article and usually link back to your website… driving traffic to your site and building high quality links.

Okay, here we go…

Step 1: Create High Quality Content Worth Telling People About

This step is pretty self-explanatory… but not as simple as it sounds. The internet today is packed with more information than the world ever dreamed of just 20 years ago. This means that there are more competing places for your target markets attention.  Jeff Widman calls this type of content "wall-able "… meaning we should strive to create content that people would want to print off and hang on their wall because it is so profound, entertaining, valuable, etc.

In order to grab their attention… and keep it… you need to create high quality, high trust, content that is different than the other millions of web pages with similar content.

Whether it be separating yourself by being:

• Humorous
• More relevant
• More detailed
• More honest
• More cutting edge
• More timely
• and on and on…

You need to separate yourself from the pack in some way so your target market stands up and notices what you have to say… and cares about what you have to say. You can be mediocre and get noticed at first… but mediocrity does not last for the long haul and is way more expensive than just spending the extra time and effort to concentrate on getting only high quality stuff out there.

Here are some great resources to check out to help you learn how to create memorable content that will get you noticed:

• Do You Have Remarkable Featured Content?
• A Three Step Approach To Strategic Content Development
• How to Create Remarkable Content When There’s Nothing New Under the Sun

Just remember, when creating content… ask yourself the question, "Why would someone care about this?". If you have a good and solid answer for why someone truly would care about your content… excellent… post it and market the heck out of it. If not, keep writing.

Writing A Compelling Yet Relevant SEO Enhanced Title:

Part of creating great content is to create a great title (or "headline") for your content. Great compelling headlines will likely be read more through the social media websites because people will be compelled to click on them more.

Also, the title of the article, post, video, etc. should contain the keywords and phrases your target audience is likely to type into search engines.

FOR EXAMPLE:

You just wrote content packed article on the in’s and out’s of writing a kick @ss elevator speech.

You want to make sure the title of the article reflects what the article is about, is compelling, and has the keyword phrases that people are actually typing in search engines when looking for the solution your article helps them solve.

So, head over to: (and bookmark this site for future reference)

• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com (free keyword searcher)

Once you’re there type in "elevator speech" and see what types of searches people are ACTUALLY typing into the search engines.

In there you find…

These phrases are the actual phrases that people are typing in to search engines to get information on "elevator speeches". The numbers to the left of the phrases is the estimate of "daily" searches for that specific search phrase. Keyword Tracker doesn’t include Google in these estimates, which accounts for 2/3 of all searches on the net… so if you multiply the number on the left by 3… that’ll give you a decent idea of the search volume (still, this is just good for an overall look at phrases and volume… not 100% accurate).

In this search you see that the most searches are the phrases:

• "elevator speech"
• "elevator speech realtor example" (this shows that you might want to write an article specifically about elevator speeches for realtors)
• "elevator speech examples"
• another is "how to write an elevator speech"

So, now sit down with this new found knowledge and try to integrate one of these phrases (ideally one with more searches) into your content title.

For instance, if your article is on how to write an elevator speech… but you also include 7 examples of great elevator speeches… you might write something like:

"7 Elevator Speech Examples From Millionaire Entrepreneurs and How To Write One Yourself "

or

"How To Write An Elevator Speech That Actually Loses You Money "

Ya, I admit… the first one is a bit long… but you get the picture. With the second title, I used the reverse psychology principle. People will want to read the article simply to make sure their elevator speech isn’t one of the one’s that "lose money".

Notice how I integrated the "elevator speech examples" phrase and added some elements that will hopefully pique the interest of the reader.

Anyhow, that is a quick primer course on writing headlines for SEO and to make them compelling for readers to click on. For more info on writing headlines and content head over to copyblogger … he usually has some pretty darn good content over there on writing online copy.

Step 2: Let Social Media Websites Know About Your Content

The first time you do this step it will take you a bit of time… mostly because you need to go and set up free accounts at each site before you can post content. After your free accounts are all set up (usually takes no more than 5 minutes to set up free accounts on each site), you can really automate the posting process pretty easily.

There are a lot of places to find great social media websites that you can post your content to… and I’m not going to make a full list of social media sites (there are hundreds… maybe thousands), but we’ll just use a solid base of 20-50 social media sites to get the word out.

Various Social Media Websites:

• Digg.com
• stumbleupon.com
• de.licio.us
• propeller.com
• reddit.com
• slashdot.com

And a ton of others that I use.

Rather than redoing the work that other people have already done… here are a couple links that have great lists of social media websites that are great for driving traffic and building great links and buzz for your website.

• Dosh Dosh’s List of 48 Social Media Sites (great list)
• Tropical SEO’s List (good list as well… he’s got some that I hadn’t heard of)

At first, pick 20-30 social media sites (just go w/ the first 30 Dosh Dosh lists or the ones that socialmarker.com has)… and use them for your first batch of social media optimization. I like starting off small so you don’t get overwhelmed by the process and give up because it seems like too much work.

How To Get The Word Out:

There are a bunch of different ways to get your content onto these social media websites. One approach is to do each submission one at a time, which is good just so you learn the process… but takes way too much time if you do it every time.

I prefer to use services that help speed up the "bookmarking" and "submission" process like:

Socialmarker.com -

Socialmarker.com is a "semi-automatic" social media posting service that lets you post your content to about 50 of the top social media websites in probably about 25% of the time it would take you to go to each website individually. I use it a lot of the time because it’s easy and is free.

Onlywire.com -

Onlywire.com is pretty much the same as socialmarker… but with a few different bookmarking sites… and about half of the choices. Really, they both do the same thing (socialmarker supports more sites though) so check them both out and use the one (or use both) that you like the best.

Really, it doesn’t matter how you end up submitting your content to these social media websites… it just matters that it is done… and done correctly. If I were you, I’d start off doing it yourself the first couple times so you can then train someone else to do it in your company… or hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you (which is what I do).

Submitting Your Content:

Head over to Socialmarker.com and fill in the box in the upper right hand corner of the page with your:

• Content title (optimized for SEO as I wrote above and compelling)
• The link to the content
• Text explaining the content in a compelling way. You are looking to persuade people to click on your article.
• Tags. Basically, type terms that are related to your content. So, if you’re writing on elevator speeches you might use, "elevator speech, how to write, marketing, personal branding" etc.

From there, of course click "submit" and the social marker site will take you to each social media website to submit your content. The first time through you’ll have to set up accounts at each site… so it may take a little while… but after that it shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes to submit to more than 40 social media websites.

Advanced Social Bookmarking:

I won’t go into depth on this because this is a whole other article… but when you really get into social bookmarking your content… you’ll want to create multiple accounts at each social media website.

The reason for this is to of course provide more links to your content … but also to spread the submissions out across multiple accounts so it isn’t obvious that you are only submitting your own content… which social media sites tend to not like. Newsvine.com actually is pretty strict on this and my first time through I got my account canceled in just 3 weeks because I only submitted my OWN content.

And, it is important to bookmark content other than your own periodically to make it look like you aren’t only on their site to submit your content.

In addition, multiple accounts lets you leverage all of the accounts together to form a big web of links between your content and your websites… resulting in better search rankings (that’s the idea anyway).

But, don’t worry about these techniques yet except for the one about being sure to bookmark other articles other than your own periodically to throw off the social media sites from "thinking" that you are only bookmarking your own content.

The Aftermath (RESULTS):

After you bookmark your content with the targeted title, you should begin to see traffic coming in within 24 hours.

How much traffic?

Well… that depends on the quality of your content and how compelling your title was written.

Also, by submitting your content to the social media sites… the search engines (especially Google) will follow the links back to your website and index your content almost immediately. I’ve had my content show up in Google within 2 hours before… which is huge.

Here is a screen shot of the results of one article (with a video I created) after I optimized the article and video in social media. This was taken just 2 days after I did the submissions. This is the first page of a search for the name of a pretty popular product. The first two results are #1: the manufacturer of the product and #2 Amazon.com. After that, I take up 7 or the 8 remaining spots with either my website or social media pointing back to my content.

I didn’t post that screenshot to brag… just to illustrate the point that social media optimization really works when done correctly.

Step 3: Build The "Web" Of Links That All Lead Back To Your Company

The whole aim of social media optimization is to lead people back to you and your company in some way, shape, or form.

Really, I don’t care how people get back to my website… I just care that they do .

The best way to ensure you attract the most visitors back to your website is to cast the largest "web" out on the net.

You can do this by integrating social media and other internet marketing techniques together to get your content out to as many places as possible.

Here are some methods to build your "web":

• Social Media Marketing (as described in this article)
• RSS Feed Syndication
• Video Marketing / Content Producing
• Podcasts
• Press Releases and Articles (I won’t cover these here)

And on and on. Once again, this is a whole other article… so I’ll go over it briefly.

RSS Feed Syndication:

An rss feed is simply a way that people can easily read the content from your website without actually going to your website.  For example, you can "subscribe" to a feed and read the articles in your Google Feedreader or other feed reading service.  Yahoo news (and most other give news aggregation sites) use RSS feeds to gather the news and put it on their own website for their visitors to see.

The first step is to head over to www.feedburner.com and set up a free account.  Once you have your account up and running "burn a feed" (video instructions here ) for your website/blog, etc… and you’re done.

Now, whenever you write an article, your RSS feed is automatically updated.  Now, you can use this "new feed" provided by Feedburner to submit your feed to website and blog directories like Technorati.com , Yahoo News, and www.pingomatic.com which will get your content out to multiple websites automatically every time you write new content.

Pretty slick huh?  There is more to RSS feeds than this… but this gives you a good idea where to start and why to use RSS feed syndication.

Video Marketing / Content Creation:

Another pillar of your "web" should be video.  Video is a very effective way to drive people back to your website, teach online, provide great value, and generate more traffic.

Film a video of you talking about how your target market can solve a particular solution (that you help them solve)… or do a powerpoint presentation with your voice over… title your videos using the tips I mentioned earlier… place your website URL in the video to drive people back to your site… and submit the video to multiple video sharing sites like Youtube.com , Revver.com , Viddler.com , and others.

This is essentially the same concept as the social media marketing … but you are now creating video as your content and submitting the video to video sharing websites.

The same thing goes with submitting the videos…

You can do them one at a time yourself… or use websites like the ones below to "automatically" submit your videos in 5% of the time.

• Tubemogul.com – Free video submission service.  I use this one quite a bit and it works great… but it doesn’t support a lot of the video sharing website I like to use.  Great for free though.
• Trafficgeyser – Membership based automatic video submitting service that supports many more video sharing sites than Tubemogul.  The plans run between $50 and $97 / month and have a ton more features in addition to just submitting your videos.  I’m pretty sure they still have the $1 30 day trial .  I used to be a member but now I go with Tubemogul quite a bit and my Virtual Assistants who do the video posting for me using my systems.

Either way, I suggest you either hire out the video submitting or use one of the automatic posting services above.

That screenshot you saw earlier where I dominated many of the top 10 spots in google for the product name… most of those results came from these video sites.

Podcasts :

I haven’t gotten into podcasts a whole lot… but I do know that they work great for getting out your message and converting people into clients.

Since I’m not an expert on using Podcasts… I’ll point you over to Paul Colligan who is one of the top business podcasting experts in the world.

Bottom line… podcasts are just another way to get your word out and grab more attention.

———-

Whew!

I know this article was a tad bit long… but I wanted to go into as much detail as possible on the overall social media optimization process that I use to easily generate:

• More traffic to my own (and my clients) websites
• Traffic more quickly
• More links to my websites
• Better search engine rankings

Really, the process sounds somewhat daunting at first… but once you go through the process the first time you’ll see how easy it is.

The really important part of making this work for your business is systematizing the whole social media optimization process so it is as hands off for YOU as possible.  Have a secretary or intern in your office take over the system… outsource it to a Virtual Assistant… hire a consultant (like myself) to take it totally off of your hands… etc.

Your job is to focus on creating quality content and serving your customers better… this social media optimization process simply helps you get the word out on the internet much more quickly, efficiently, and cheaply.

Any Question On The Value Of This System?

I know a social media marketing plan like this one is very valuable to my business and the businesses of my clients.  However, many small and medium sized businesses fail to see the value… until they see the targeted traffic coming in as a result.

Social media marketing / optimization works in all markets .  From ecommerce sites like Amazon.com… all the way to mainly offline businesses like attorneys, insurance salesmen, consultants, etc.

Develop a social media marketing and optimization plan (use mine to start) and get going!  You can have more targeted traffic later this afternoon if you want!

——

Social Media Marketing combined with traditional direct response Internet Marketing strategies and SEO are truly a killer combination for driving more traffic and converting it better.  If you’d like to hire Trevor Mauch to help you get the most out of your small or medium sized business website for the highest ROI possible … contact him to schedule a consultation today .

**UPDATE**

I am currently booked out for the next 60 days with project based and retainer clients.  I do have 2 projects scheduled to be completed soon… so email me so I can place you in my consultation cue and get your project moving asap.  I look forward to doubling your online ROI today!

UPDATE: Amazon was back up when I published this post… for a minute or two… now it’s back down.  Keep the $30,864.20 A MINUTE counting.

If you haven’t already seen it already… the Amazon.com website is down today for a while (I’m not sure how long).

For a company this big who relies so heavily on their website… this is a big deal.

How Big of A Deal?

• 2nd Quarter 2008 Projected Revenues for Amazon = $4 Billion
• That’s $44,444,444 a Day
• $1,851,851 an Hour
• $30,864.20 a Minute
• $514.40 a Second

How Long Was Amazon.com Down?

It is tough to tell how long Amazon.com was down for… but for all of those people who say that Twitter isn’t good for anything… I did a search at Summize.com to see when the Twitter stream started chatting about it (which is usually pretty close to real time nowadays).

Here’s what I found:

I ran this search on Summize.com at about 12:10 pm PST… not more than 5 minutes after Amazon.com came back online… which means that Amazon.com was down for right around 2 hours (can’t get it exact right now). When I ran this search, there were more than 600 mentions of the Amazon.com downtime (likely way more now).

So, if Amazon.com was down for about 2 hours, this flub might have cost them $3,703,702 in lost revenues (according to my rough social media ninja computing skills … and a ton of semi-negative chatter on the internet. Amazon could actually have used social media to turn this around and lesson the impact.

So Here It Is…

This post has a few lessons:

1. How important uptime is for ecommerce websites (pretty obvious) and how important a backup plan is in cases like these
2. How useful the social media is in fact finding and getting real-time news that companies and the rest of us can use to jump on trends. Look at Twitter… Twitter is more and more becoming a first line as far as breaking news comes… why aren’t all journalists on Twitter again?
3. Throughout all of this… Amazon.com didn’t come out and comfort their customers at all. Not even a message on the error page, no spokesperson on Twitter telling people what was going on, NOTHING. Big and small companies everywhere need to embrace the social media if they want to keep ahead of the crap talking curve online… get out there when the internet starts chatting… be a voice of comfort for your customers.

Hmmm…

I was doing a bit of research today and submitted to "get on" a newsletter about Writing White Papers from a very reputable guy… and best selling author.

When…

I came across this interesting (and compelling??) Captcha phrase hosted by the icebase server… which I’ve known to be from Cooleremail (could be other email providers on that domain, but not that I know of).

Here ya go.

Well… lol, the picture speaks for itself.

I actually chuckled when I saw it and really had no problem with it at all. But, what about the site visitors who stumble on a captcha phrase that says "orgasm "… and they have to physically type in "orgasm" to get to the next page??

To me, that could be a place where potential new newsletter readers jump off because they are either offended or think they were forwarded to some kind of x rated site.

It’s all about user experience … and to me, for the professional market that this guy’s website serves… this could damage his image in some peoples eyes.

Once again, I had no problem with it and thought it was funny enough to pass along… but I can guarantee you that there are some people that this could offend and "turn off" (like my play on word there?) to the site’s services.

Just something to think about.

But, the question does need to be asked:

What does happen when I press the button?

I’m in the tech scene as far as figuring out how to use technology for better and more effective marketing goes… I’m not much of a "techie" when it comes to digging into code to figure things out.

I like to know a bit about the technology I’m working with whenever I use it for marketing purposes… simply for the reason that when you know something and how it works… you might be able to take it to another level with just a few changes or additions that you wouldn’t have thought about if you didn’t know how the thing worked in the first place.

Anyhow, today I was doing a bit of research on flash video because I want to start using branded flash players on my own sites… and on the sites of my clients so we can provide a better user experience for our viewers and to get a few more capabilities out of the video that simply posting on Youtube /Revver /Viddler , etc. don’t let me do.

Well, I came across the next evolution in online video…

AND IT’S COMPLETELY AMAZING!

This technology is truly crazy as heck… and my head is spinning with ways to use it for marketing purposes (once it gets a bit more mainstream… and less expensive!).

Interactive 360 Immersive Full Motion Video

Check out the video below of this stuff. Once the video starts and loads… you can use your mouse to move around the video (360 degrees spherical) while the video is IN MOTION. That means you can look around… but also up, down, diagonal… any direction just like you are IN the video.

This is big time "Immersive video" that gives a whole new meaning to "user experience". This technology is by the same guys who created the Google Street View technology.

There are a bunch of other videos like these that are amazing. Check ‘em out and let me know your thoughts on how this technology will change the online video game for marketing and user experience.

Facebook has been on it hard for the last couple months to create a platform for it’s users that let’s us chat back and forth in real-time.

Like I wrote in my last post about Twitter vs. Facebook… people like REAL-TIME… and I really believe it’s a huge key in the success of any type of communication tool.

I’m sure if you could send someone a package through FedEx in “real-time” (i.e. – some type of teleporter for packages… “When you absolutely have to get it there in 5 seconds”), you’d rather do that than send it by FedEx overnight… which would take 8 hours to get there.

We are an impulse and instant gratification nation… and Facebook has finally done the right thing to quench this thirst that people have.

Facebook Chat Launches This Week…

Thanks to Mashable and DoshDosh (via Twitter) for the heads up on the Facebook Chat announcement. Basically, the Facebook blog says that the new Facebook Chat will be a bit like this:

• A 1 to 1 chat (not 1 to many like Twitter) similar to AIM or Gtalk
• Easy collapsible frame so you can get it out of your way when you’re not using it
• Does not save your chat convo’s for very long… and you can immediately delete the chat history if you want
• Cool updates right in the Chat Bar of the mini-feed of the friend you are chatting w/ (kinda cool sounding… let’s see how useful it is)

There are a few other things. Head over to the Facebook blog to learn a bit more.

Overall…

Overall, I’m excited that Facebook is getting with the trend and going real-time with some of their things.

Where the Facebook chat will be cool is now you can go to one place to have an instant 1 on 1 chat with your friends. Nowadays, most of my friends and those in my network are on Facebook… but it sometimes sucks trying to instant message them because some use AIM… others use Gtalk… others use MSN Chat… and on and on.

I simply don’t want to have 3 or 4 chat clients up and running all of the time… pain in the ass. But, now I can chat w/ my friends all right there in Facebook… and can get rid of my other chat clients one by one (maybe… we’ll see .

Leading up to this launch people were speculating what the Facebook chat was going to be about… and so far it doesn’t seem like it will really directly compete with Twitter in the 1 to many “crowd convo” style.

So, I’m excited to see what the Facebook chat has in store… and see how I can integrate it into the rest of my overall Social Media toolbox to build and maintain better relationships with my friends and network.

Hey, shoot me a message in Facebook Chat once it launches… I’d love to hear from you and see what you think about it… and whether you like it or not.

Friend me up <<

Good morning on this beautiful holiday!

Yep… that’s right… HOLIDAY. What holiday you say?

Well… today is National “Good People Day” 2008… as appointed by Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the net’s truly Good People (for real… great guy and as genuine and passionate about life as it gets!). I met Gary in Orlando in February and spent 4 hours chatting business and life w/ him and a few other entrepreneurs one night… a guy that I’d love to have a beer with any day of the week.

Anyhow, while Gary is one of the “Good People” out there… I’m sure a ton of other people will take it upon themselves to appoint Gary V. “Mr. Good Dude of the Day”… so I’m gonna pick someone else to focus on today.

It’s kinda funny... but the person I’m self-appointing as “Good Person of the Day” is a guy that most people probably wouldn’t think of first when you think of a good guy. I guess it’s because of his aggressive (but soooooo passionate) personality… or it could be that he is a sore loser (aren’t we all though… really??) … or that he simply so damn honest… people either love or hate this guy.

Guessed who it is yet?

Here’s a few more clues:

• He’s an internet millionaire (might be billionaire… not sure… let me know
• Get’s fined big bucks all of the time for voicing his opinion to the “zebras”
• His last name is like the best cigars in the world (bare w/ me here… I’m stretching far here)

Okay… this is just getting corny.

My Good Person highlight is for Mark Cuban… Mr. Maverick himself.

Seriously, Cuban is a dude who people either love… or people totally hate with a passion. And, to me… that’s the sign of someone who has opinions… voices them… and is generally a really honest guy.

Seriously, think about it… if someone is doesn’t polarize people… they probably aren’t being honest with people (or themselves) all of the time. No one can appeal to everyone… and if they are… you better take a hard look at them to see where they are fudging a bit so they can not tweak some people the wrong way.

Polarization is a good thing… and in Mark Cuban definitely polarizes people because he has opinions and isn’t afraid to be honest and state his opinions.

I came across a video of a speech he did at BlogWorld… and really you can see that at his core he is a “Good Person”. He’s honest (whether you like it or not), does the right thing, and doesn’t take the easy way out.

Check out the video… it’s pretty long… but a great listen.

So, what does it mean to be a “Good Person”… to me anyway?

To me… the definition of a good person is a pretty simple thing.

• They do the right thing
• Speak from THEIR core and don’t sell out for anything
• Like to have a good time in life and business
• They like cool people… but aren’t afraid to call out people who are being idiots
• Work to help other people anyway they can

Sure, there’s a ton more that goes into being a “good person”… but those points are ones that explain good ol’ Mr. Cuban pretty well.

Like I said earlier... you might think I’m an absolute idiot for thinking Mark Cuban is one of the good guys… I’ve never met him so I couldn’t tell you for sure what he is like behind the scenes.

But, the main reason I chose him as a good dude is his honesty, his passion, how he speaks from his core, and how he goes after everything he does 143% (yep… I said it… 143%).

So, check out the video above… check out his blog… and let me know who you think is a good person. I’d love to hear from ya!

If you haven’t seen the hoopla in the past couple weeks about the Twitter color wars… it’s pretty entertaining stuff. As of today, I’m officially on the @VeryGreenTeam.

If you’re not a “twitter-head” as Mashable put it… you probably have no clue what I’m talking about… and to tell you the truth you probably really don’t care either.

What’s the whole Twitter color war thing anyway??

Well… really don’t know yet. From the looks of it… it’s being really pushed by top guys like Gary Vaynerchuk, Ze Frank, and some other dudes big time in social media.

Basically, there are a whole bunch of teams named after different colors (verygreenteam, red, green, yellow, blue, orange, pink, gold, off-white, plaid, fuscia, clear, white, purple, stripe and puce (thanks Mashable for this rundown on the teams!) ZeFrank linked up a new webpage that looks like it’ll be dedicated to the whole Color Wars 2008 thing… this is crazy!! But I like it!!

I got to thinking about this whole color war thing and it goes way beyond just some crazy (and kinda stupid) games on Twitter.

This whole thing is showing in real time how Twitter and other social media can be used to control crowds and build excitement.

Crazy stuff when you think about it…

This is Crowd Control 2.0.

This is cool stuff… but at least so far it’s the good guys using the Twitter crowd for good (i.e. Gary V’s @santagaryvee thing that is basically free Woot… awesome way to further build his brand!)

I know… no one is being controlled… and no one is against their own will (sometimes I think I am though because I’m so addicted to Twitter and Web 2.0)…

… but, think about it like a big ol’ wave at a professional baseball stadium. When crowds are involved… and some outgoing people get creative and want to have some fun… it gets contagious and crowds can be told basically what to do (up to a certain point

Before Web 2.0 (and really… apps like Twitter and Facebook) an online version of the wave (I’m talking real time here… not forwarded emails and stuff) was pretty much impossible because of the time lag and non-interactivity of the crowds.

Now… this whole colorwars thing is showing how crowds of people can interact in real time in creative ways like online roshambo… and if we wanted to… we could create some type of “wave” competition to see which team can (in real time) keep the wave going the longest (I have a few ideas on how we can do this from the technical side).

Wow… more and more the offline world is being replicated by the online world.

Can you imagine the possibilities for companies and brands (big and small) to start grassroots viral competitions like this on these new social media sites to drive traffic and subliminally build their brand at the same time??

Wow!

Ya, it would take some sneaky thinking to get it so it didn’t appear to be coming from a commercial entity… but I can definitely see the possibilities… my mind is spinning right now.

How do you participate in the Twitter Color Wars?

I’ll tell you what. There is only one team in my opinion… the @verygreenteam is the only way to go.

Why?

Green is a pretty cool color. Money is green, trees are green, golf courses are green (at least they should be!), and Gary V. and ZeFrank are leading the charge on the green team.

I met up w/ Gary V. in Orlando in February and chatted w/ him for a while about biz and life (with some other cool people)… he’s an awesome guy and knows his stuff when it comes to building a brand and using social media to spread his good word.

Anyhow, I wrote this post for two reasons… to let ya’ all know about the Twitter ColorWars (for fun)… and to show you how little games like these are real time experiments in Crowd Control 2.0… bringing real time interaction on traditionally offline activities… online.

This is only the start… and us little guys are the ones who will pioneer the advances on the web… while the big guys will continue to be the late adapters.

So… head over and follow me on Twitter… pick your team… and join in on the war!