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.

Popularity: 69% [?]

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!

Popularity: 94% [?]

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.

Popularity: 86% [?]

If you’ve been marketing on the internet and into email marketing at all in the last several years… you’ve probably noticed that it is getting a bit more difficult every year to keep those open rates up… and even more… get those click throughs where we need them to be. People are getting so many emails... most of the pure junk… that they really need to have a compelling reason why they should spend their valuable time opening your email and reading what you have to say.

I believe heavily in the “history repeats itself” philosophy, and just like everything else… history once again is repeating itself. You can equate the current state of email marketing (i.e. - lower open rates, higher spam counts, lower interest in email) to how direct mail marketing was after the “newness” wore off.

When direct mail marketing first started, people gobbled up every piece of mail like it was candy because it was so darn exciting getting mail… from anyone… even if they were selling something. Now, direct marketers need to be pretty damn creative to get their pieces opened up… and even more so to get the prospect to respond in the desired way.

That’s Exactly Where Email Marketing Is…

Email marketing had it’s day in the sun too when open rates were crazy high simply because people were so excited when they heard the “You’ve Got Mail” ping. It was something new.

People look forward to hearing from their friends, finding something funny or amusing in their email to bring out a chuckle, and learning things that genuinely help them improve some part of their life or business. That’s what email started out being… and that’s what people really want from email at their core.

Getting At Peoples Core Is SO Important To Marketing In Today’s World…

People don’t like to be marketed to.

Plain and simple. If I walk into a car dealership I dread it when I see a salesman coming my way because I know their ONLY mission is to get me to overpay for a car… and drive that car out of the lot TODAY. I go on the defensive immediately.

However, what if the car salesman stigma changed overnight… and car salesman were instead seen as delightful people who have MY BEST INTERESTS genuinely in mind? They provided valuable information to me without pushing a sale… actually made me feel a bit happy when I saw them walking my way (I know, ya right!).

Wouldn’t that make you way more likely to walk into a car lot just to browse and see what they are all about? Wouldn’t that in turn make you more likely to head back to that car lot once you were ready to buy a car? I know it would make a huge difference to me.

That is what I really want in an ideal world of buying a car. That’s my core. If car lots marketed to me in that way… they would have huge success because they would be marketing to MY CORE.

Now, what if we translate that to email marketing? How can that affect your open and response rates? From experience, I can tell you that it DOES affect them hugely!

Increasing Email Open Rates By Talking To Your Prospects Core With Humor

Everyone likes humor in some shape or form. Deep down in our core beings we all like to smile, laugh, and enjoy ourselves. That’s just human nature.

A few months back I helped a client of mine start an email newsletter to their target audience of attorneys (I know, not the easiest market to target). This email newsletter has been hugely successful for my client for several reasons. Over the next month or so, I will break down different aspects of the newsletter that have made it successful so you can implement similar elements into your email marketing campaigns.

A Bit About The Market… and The List

To put everything in context, I want to describe the list a bit. Here we go:

• Market - Attorneys (specific niche within this market)
• Relationship w/ List - No prior relationship w/ 95% of the list
• Email List Size - Started at a bit over 700… and is currently a bit over 2,000 (and growing). By May the list will be right around 4,000 targeted attorneys.
• Our Objective - To build a relationship w/ new prospects by being real, and providing them with actionable information and resources that can help them protect themselves and their clients. No sales pitches, no solicitations, just content.
• Email Frequency - We chose to send the newsletter out approx. every 2 weeks.

Our Unique Approach With A Tough Market

Getting your emails opened is the first hurdle in email marketing. If the email doesn’t get opened your message doesn’t get read… if your message isn’t read… your offer can’t be acted on.

Even more difficult is getting your emails opened on a consistent basis and actually building a solid relationship with your target audience.

So, when developing the structure and content plan of the email newsletter we knew that we had to do something a bit differently than the company had done in the past (i.e. - send out boring semi-generic newsletters focused on their services).

Here’s what we came up with to roll out: (not scientific… just sat down and thought up things that we would like to see if we were the prospect… we got in their “core”). Following is the exact format of the newsletter… in this order.

• 1 short (3-5 minutes), main on-topic video of the company president (my client) discussing an important issue that he has come across in recent cases that is of interest to their attorney prospects. Basically, things that can help the attorney protect their clients better, and limit their own liability.
• 2-3 recent news articles that affect the attorney prospects business and their clients well being. Usually include a 1-2 sentence lead and a straight link to the article.
• 1-2 funny, amusing, or thought provoking resources (articles/videos) that have NOTHING to do with the clients business. Just something to entertain them and pique their interest for future emails from us… but that is targeted at the overall demographic of the target market. Be sure to place these at the bottom of the newsletter so the prospect has to read past the “on topic” resources first to get to them.

That’s it. We shot it out to a COLD list who has never received an email from my client before and wrote up a short intro to the newsletter explaining:

• who we are
• why they are getting the email newsletter
• what they will find
• how to unsubscribe if they simply don’t want another email in their inbox

The key to the whole intro and the entire newsletter is to let the personality of the company president shine through. Attorneys are people too and they don’t like to be talked to like robots… they like conversational tones like the rest of us.

The Results Of The Campaign

Email Newsletter #1:

Here’s a screen shot of the first email blast we did to this cold list. On the left you can see that 791 emails were sent, 166 opened (22.4%), and just 11 unsubscribed. One thing that surprised me was how low the click through rate was, at only 13.2% of those who opened the email. Once again, this is a cold list who had never received an email from this company before.

I almost half expected more people to unsubscribe from the list on the next few newsletters… we’ll see if that happened.

Email Newsletter #2:

You can see in this edition, we didn’t add any new contacts to the list and actually had an open rate of 23.2%, which is higher than our first edition. This time our click through rate doubled to 23.8% of those who opened, and only 3 unsubscribes. Once again, this is the 2nd email these people have even received from the company.

We were really happy with these results… and this newsletter actually resulted in 3 direct phone calls to my client from these attorneys for potential future collaboration (in addition to several emails as well).

Newsletter #3 was very similar to #2 so I’ll skip to #4. Actually, #3 had a similar open rate but the click through rate jumped up to about 29% of those who opened. Nice.

Email Newsletter #4:

For this edition we more than doubled our email list of targeted prospects (once again, first time contacts from my client) to about 2,127. Our open rate dropped a bit to 16.8% which we were expecting a bit since we dramatically increased the size of the list… and the click through rate also decreased a bit.

What we were very happy with though was the very low unsubscribe rate as a result of our tweaked intro message. This time we only had 7 unsubscribes out of over 2,100… pretty good in my book for a very cold list to a very stiff and time poor market.

The bounce rate is pretty decent for a cold list like this… so we weren’t too concerned at all. Especially since this is NOT a purchased list… I used some list building NINJA techniques (just kidding, shoot me an email to discuss if you want) to build this list without purchasing a single contact… or using the company’s current database.

Email Newsletter #5:

This is the most recent issue of the newsletter. We tweaked the format of the newsletter a bit after the last one and actually added a 2nd amusing/funny resource at the bottom of the newsletter. Issue #4 only had one… and we didn’t write a very thought provoking headline that referenced the funny piece. In this issue, we made sure to reference the funny piece in the email subject line.

Open rates jumped back up to over 20% and almost 30% of everyone who opened clicked on a link. Once again, the unsubscribe rate stays low.

What Does All of This Mean?

Yes, these screen shots are pretty cool to look at and they do show pretty good statistics for a cold list.

As a whole, what they do show is that this newsletter has built a bond with the list and the list is choosing to repeatedly click through to see what we have to say. If our format wasn’t working… I’d expect open rates to steadily drop and unsubscribes to steadily increase. In both instances however, the statistics are actually improving.

Even more… I’m going to give you some great statistics to prove that the humor is a big part in the success in the newsletter. Below describes which type of information is clicked on the most in each issue of the newsletter:

• Issue #1: Humor videos/articles were the number 2 and 3 most clicked on resources out of the 6 included… and accounted for almost 35% of the clicks.
• Issue #2: Humor was the 3rd and 4th most clicked on out of 6 accounting for just over 35% of the clicks.
• Issue #3: Humor 3rd and 4th most clicked on again and accounted for 25% of the clicks.
• Issue #4: Humor was the 2nd and 5th most clicked on for 28% of the clicks.
• Issue #5: Humor was the 2nd most clicked on for 17% of the clicks.

Now, at first glance you might be saying… “Why would you want all of those clicks “wasted” on humorous articles that don’t sell the prospect anything at all?”

In my mind, these articles are obviously popular… and are playing a big role in getting these attorneys to open the emails in the first place.

In addition, for ALL of the humorous and amusing articles/videos… we are hosting these resources on back pages of the clients website… so when they click on the teaser copy from our email newsletter they are taken to our website where they can then see the humorous resource.

What’s right next to that video or article?

Several calls to action and more information about how my client can help the attorney protect their client better. Everyone wins.

What I’ve Learned From This Test

This email newsletter project has taught me a ton about getting to the core of the prospect… especially in email… and to markets that are time poor such as attorneys.

More than anything, no matter what your market is… you need to come up with ways to compel people to WANT to open your emails… even if those reasons have NOTHING to do with your services/products. I can tell you from experience that overtly soliciting business and not using every possibility to benefit your prospect in EVERY WAY is pretty much a waste of time nowadays.

So, no matter what market you are in… please… please find a way to better relate with your prospect through your emails. Look beyond how you can help your prospect as far as your services and products go… find ways to benefit your prospect in their everyday lives. Inject some humor into your newsletters, personality, and make your newsletters something worth looking forward to…

… and more than anything… make your newsletters something WORTH OPENING.

Wow! That was a bit longer than I expected. In the next few weeks I’ll go more in-depth about the specifics of the newsletter campaign.

If you want to chat about your newsletter and how you can use it to better improve your bottom line… shoot me an email or give me a ring.

Popularity: 79% [?]

I’ve heard it a time or two… “In the end, the best product will win out every time“.

Hmmm… while this sounds all warm and fuzzy… and when looking it at completely logically it SHOULD be true…

Does the best product REALLY win out in the end??

In a perfect world where everyone gets the same chances, all variables are the same, you can predict successes and failures of products, and people only take into account their own personal beliefs and needs when deciding to buy a product or to do something… I think that the best product would win out pretty darn near every time.

But…

What happens when it’s not a perfect world?

• What happens if people not only listen to their own beliefs… but they listen to the beliefs and actions of others too?
• What happens when variables are different and even the slightest change in variables can have huge effects on entire markets, product successes, and the direction of an entire culture?
• What happens when a product/person/ or company somehow gets an edge (because of a variable) even though their competitors have a superior (or even identical) product to offer?
• What happens when the exact same product (or very similar) is a huge success today… and the company uses the same criteria and formula to launch another product… and it’s a complete failure?

What happens is that the superior products don’t always rise to the top… and often we can’t predict with a whole lot of certainty that something will be successful or not.

Now, I know… I’m going to have some critics reading this saying “when I launch a product, I know pretty darn well that it will be a success“. Okay, some products and markets can be launched with a degree of certainty; however, let’s look at mass markets and huge successes that generate millions of customers (i.e. - Record albums, social media websites, the next “clapper”, real estate, software, etc.).

Where’s the certainty now?

Do People Really Buy What They Want… or What Is Best For Them?

In marketing we’ve all heard that “the consumer doesn’t really know what they want… we have to tell them what they want and why they need it to solve their problems”.

When you really look at that statement, it’s pretty damn true.

Do you think that millions of people thought that they needed Facebook, while at the same time Myspace had tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of users already?

I’m thinking not. So, why did Facebook become a hit? Really there’s no real solid and quantifiable reason why Facebook has done so well and the hundreds of other social networking sites have absolutely flopped.

Yes, Facebook has some unique features and it’s much different than Myspace… but so are a bunch of other social networking sites that have failed miserably (some that are just as good or better than Facebook).

Many people joined Facebook because it was a great way for them to solve some of THEIR problems with staying in touch with their friends…

… but, the vast majority of people have joined Facebook not necessarily because it is truly the single best use of their time… but because they saw the craze about this “Facebook thing” (myself included) and thought… “Facebook must be the best social networking site for me because ALL OF THESE PEOPLE have already joined, therefore… it’s gotta be the best“.

Enter… The Network Effect

First of all, I didn’t coin the term “Network Effect”. It’s been written about many times and is a pretty well known philosophy in the marketing and sociology world.

In essence, the Network Effect is simply:

“The phenomenon whereby a service becomes more valuable as more people use it, thereby encouraging ever-increasing numbers of adopters. “

In simpler terms that even I can understand, people like to do things that a bunch of other people have already done (the majority of us think this way anyhow).

Your brain reasons that if something is used by more people than something else… it must be the best… therefore it is a prudent to go with that service.

The Network Effect On Products/Services/Brands

Today’s world is a complex and ever changing world. It’s pretty damn tough keeping up with everything and having the time to fully research every buying decision we make.

Can you imagine the time and effort it would take to do OUR OWN full research based ONLY off of OUR OWN personal experience and opinion about whether or not that product is really best for us? I would go insane.

So, to help streamline things for us, our brains have developed a clever little thought process that makes us feel safe when we are confronted with decisions.

Here is the thought process according to my brain:

1. First, find out what I “think” I want or need
2. Find products/services that look like they might fit the bill
3. See if anyone else has used this product and what they think about it
4. Usually go w/ the highest rated and most popular
5. Find the best place to buy it for the best overall offer (price and everything else that goes with it)

That’s it for me anyway.

Notice #3 in my thought process? “See if anyone else has used it and what they think“(the Network Effect at work).

General intuition should say that the more people using something, the better the product must be. Right? I mean, when I go to download a song or piece of freeware software… if there’s a “download” counter on the page for each product… I’ll usually pick the one with the most downloads. I’d be willing to venture a guess that most people act this way.

I know, you’re way ahead of me here... but that statement isn’t always right. Let’s think of a few very popular products right off the top of my head that challenge this statement:

• Microsoft Windows (is it REALLY the best operating system in the world? Hmmm…)
• Is Justin Timberlake really the best singer and entertainer out there? Not likely. Or, even better… Britney Spears?
• McAfee Anti-Virus… please, do I need to go into this one?

All of these products have huge followings… but are they really the best at what they do? So, why did the crowd say it is?

The Network Effect and First Adopters or Promoters

Yes, we’ve already determined that people like to make it easier on themselves when making decisions… and a lot of the time will place trust in the crowd that the crowd has picked the best product.

But, also as we’ve determined… the crowd isn’t always technically correct on judging the “best”… and this still often leads to inferior products/services ending up on top.

The reason for this is simple (or so it seems

If people like to trust the “crowd” this means that people are at the whym of the crowd… and the person or people who started the crowd in the first place.

So, if the person that “started the crowd” is absolutely correct on which product is truly the best (the best for them anyway), the people joining the crowd with similar likes and dislikes will also be correct in choosing that product.

However, if the person who “started the crowd”:

• Chose randomly and made the wrong choice
• Has unique likes/dislikes and is actually part of the minority
• Is an influencer and helps the product/service/brand along in the early stages (this one is important)

… the crowd may not necessarily be choosing the truly best product to fit their needs. But, they are choosing a product based off of the likes/needs of the early adopters/influencers and the crowd of people before them who have also followed that initial jump start.

Okay… where am I going with this?

How does this directly relate to marketing and the success of a product/service/brand?

After you finish this article, head over to read this great article on the subject. It goes in-depth on actual scientific studies on the Network Effect and shows mind-blowing results that are extremely simple when you really drill down to the core of the Network Effect.

In essence, the article goes to show that in mass market products (software, music, movies, Web 2.0 websites (social media), etc.)… the success of these products are really at the whim of the Network Effect and how well the products/services grab hold with a core of influential users. Even though some products may not be the best… they are still a huge success because “their number was called” and the market happened to go their way.

If we were to replay the past over again, a completely different set of companies, people, and products would dominate our culture depending on how the Network Effect took hold in the beginning stages of the product.

Here’s a great passage from that article:

“…while in some sense these markets do reflect what people want, that is true only of what they want right now. If markets not only reveal our preferences but also modify them, then the relation between what we want now and what we wanted before — or what we will want in the future — becomes deeply ambiguous.“

So, long story short (way longer than I was planning ;-), we can’t always predict the success of a product/service/brand when you look at the past… or even when you look at the quality of the product.

We as marketers need to utilize the tools available to us including:

• Advertising
• PR (huge one)
• Social Media and Web 2.0 (and beyond)
• The blogosphere
• and on and on…

… to give our products and brands the best chance of capitalizing on the Network Effect to propel its success.

Yes, quality is hugely important and will play a big factor in the success of the Network Effect. However, if we don’t do a good job of getting our products to the influential early adopters in our markets (and across other markets), someone else will and our companies will be the one that was lost in history as a result of the Network Effect at work.

How Do We Do This?

There is no real formula for ensuring the Network Effect goes your way. However, with the tools we now have… it’s important that we do a few things:

• Build a community around your brand/product/service
• Enable your users to be evangelists for your product and spread the word to everyone else
• Create a solid offering that speaks to the core of the user… from your own core… basically, be who/what you are… don’t try to be something you’re not
• Make it easy for users to share their experiences and questions with you and the rest of the world (online communities, company blogs, community outreach, etc.)
• Find the influential early adopters in your market and make them a user of your product/service… then promote the hell out of that
• Whenever you can, use social proof and social proof by numbers during the marketing and sales processes

And more than anything… create your own luck and just make sure you utilize every tool you can to get your message, product, and offer to the people who can benefit from it the MOST.

Finally, Think About This…

Next time you go out and buy a CD (download on Itunes), sign up for a new social media website, or even go to a movie… think about how the Network Effect has affected the product… and how you can apply that to your business.

Question:

Have you been able to capitalize on the Network Effect? If so, how much easier was it for you to spread your brand once it took hold? My guess is waaaaayyyy easier.

Let me know.

Popularity: 64% [?]

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 <<

Popularity: 96% [?]