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Geoff Hoff
Steve Mancini
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Posted in Web Marketing Strategies by .
by Geoff~
For years, people have told Steve and I we should have a podcast. We didn’t do it because we weren’t quite sure what one was and how to make one. Well, over the last several months, I have begun noticing a lot of web marketers starting their own podcasts and have helped several of my clients set them up, so I now know what it’s all about. And it’s a lot simpler than I thought.
What is a Podcast?
A podcast is simply an audio (and, lately, even a video) series that is automatically delivered to people who have subscribed to it’s “feed” through iTunes, Feedburner or any of a number of other podcasting services. These audio or video files are automatically delivered to your computer, your iPod or iPad or other MP3 device, so you can listen to each new installment without having to go looking for it on the web. (Or even having to remember that you’ve subscribed to it! It just shows up when you sync your device and you can say, “Oh, yeah, I wanted that.”)
But Why Should I Do One?
There are many reasons to do podcasts, but for web marketing, the main reason to do anything is to increase your list and increase your income and podcasting can do both.
When you create your podcast series and set it up with good keyword research, then record regular podcasts with good (or, let’s say it, even great) information, you can begin to get people to subscribe to your feed by letting the people you already know (your list, the people who read your blog, your friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, etc.) about it. Once it starts getting subscribers, it will start moving up in the search engines. And if it’s on iTunes, it will start moving up in the iTunes listings for specific searches.
As it does that, more people will begin to know about you. You can offer your listeners special offers to get them on your list, and you can direct them to products that you have made or that you are affiliated with that will benefit them in their quest for information.
In other words, you can build a bigger list of people to sell stuff to.
Setting up a podcast is relatively easy, and once it is set up, you simply need to record new episodes on a regular basis. If you’re already blogging regularly, this is very easy to do. There are lots of resources on the Internet that will help you get set up, but I recommend the WordPress plugin called podPress – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podpress/. I’ve also recently discovered a charming Brit who teaches how to set one up using that plugin, all the way from the planning through editing, then setting up your plugin and attaching it to iTunes to publish. It’s called The Podcaster’s Bible – http://jcpmarket.com/podcasts – and is very complete and also quite easy to get through.
So, go forth and podcast!
by Geoff~
On the last post I made on this blog, one of the people who commented (hello, Roger) mentioned that a lot doesn’t get done because he just doesn’t have the time necessary. This was a perfect comment, given what I am now looking at in my own life and my own business.
As you may or may not know, I am Connie Ragen Green’s new 10K Laser Coaching subject and in that program Connie is coaching me to increase my business up to and beyond $10,000 a month. As I get my marching orders on each call, the thing that I keep confronting is how inefficiently I use my time. (One of the things I agreed to in order to be part of it was being as transparent as possible with the process, so as I bump up against these barriers, I will share them with you.)
I often get to the end of the day before I notice I haven’t attacked any of the projects that I’d set out to accomplish. This has always been a trifle confusing to me, as my days seem to be filled and I feel busy most, if not all of the time. This last week, especially this weekend after the latest session for the program, I forced myself to be extremely aware of how I spent my days. I didn’t adjust them much, yet, I wanted to see what was going on.
I am embarrassed to admit (but also glad I see it so I can make appropriate adjustments)
by Geoff~
Image via Wikipedia
I admit it. I haven’t been very good at keeping a marketing calendar. I used to jot notes in a document on my computer regarding what I wanted to promote when, and often a) didn’t keep it up and b) didn’t actually pay much attention to it. Yes, I know. Not very effective.
In the last several months, I have begun to be much more organized with my marketing, which seems to be a very logical step in any process. If I want to consider being online a business, shouldn’t I treat it as a business? (That is a rhetorical question. No need to comment with a “duh”. I’ve already said it to myself.) I’ve started to really pay attention to what successful marketers are doing and I hear about marketing calendars fairly often.
I have products, both my own and those I’m
by Geoff~
The Kindle, in case you haven’t been paying attention for a couple of years, is an electronic device made by Amazon.com that is about the size of a large paperback book. They’re made to read the electronic versions of books so they don’t have a traditional computer-type screen. They have a screen designed to mimic what reading books printed on paper is like.
Unlike a book, however, with the Kindle, you can change the size of the type, zoom in on a page, search for specific words and jump to a chapter without all that inconvenient fumbling around with pages. You can also make notes and, if you’ve connected your Kindle to the Internet, see notes that other people have made about the book.
Now there are apps that let people read Kindle books on their computer, their phones and their tablet devices such as the iPad.
Sales of Kindle books has boomed in the last year or so. This is great news for
by Geoff~
Last week I wrote a post on our other blog about how arbitrary the actual date for the new year was in our Western culture. As true as that is, the new year is still a grand time to reevaluate and revisit what has happened in the previous year and look forward toward the new one with an eye towards what you want to create in your business and your life.
Actually, many people say you should do this every evening before bed and every day when you wake up, but if you aren’t in that habit, a good, honest look at where you’ve been, what worked and what didn’t, can always be incredibly valuable and a date with such a widely agreed upon symbol of beginnings as the beginning of January has can be a very powerful
Screenshot of My Fiverr Gigs
by Steve Mancini
A few months ago I heard about a site called Fiverr. In case you haven’t, it’s a community where members buy and sell services for five dollars, and only five dollars. You can get an article written, a short video made and all sorts of things for just five bucks.
On a lark, I decided to join. I have a few Twitter accounts that I’d been running, so I decided to see if I could use them to earn some extra money by putting them on Fiverr. I offered to post a tweet on these sites for five dollars each. The great thing is that I have complete control over what ads I’ll accept or reject. No hate, spam, warez, etc…
A couple of days passed and I got my first order! It was pretty exciting since the only promotion was
by Geoff~
I received an email today from Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, that I really admired. A little background, first.
I am an unabashed movie nut. I love movies. When I discovered DVDs way back when, I was in heaven. You not only got the movie, you often got a master class in movie making with the “making of” features and the commentaries. Of course, sometimes the master class is in what not to do.
There were a series of movies, not bad movies by any means, and the commentaries were entirely about what went wrong, what didn’t go as planned, what obstacles got in the way of them making the movie they wanted to make. After a few of these, it started to dawn on me that obstacles are almost always the opportunity to make an even better movie than what was originally planned.
This was born out by several other commentaries where the director and/or writer said just that. Those were the commentaries I most liked listening to. An object lesson not only in movie making, but in life. They acknowledged what they couldn’t do (rather than complain about it) and, with some creative problem solving and a few calculated risks,
by Geoff~
A little confession. I’ve been getting emails from some fairly respected marketers for a while that are promoting actual “Get Rich Quick” products. I usually just ignore them, but once in a while, I go look at the sales pages to see what’s there. (I recommend looking at as many sales pages as you can to see what works and what doesn’t.)
The sales pages for these products are usually extremely well made and the pitches are seductive to say the least. They hit directly at the emotions without stopping for a moment’s time at the mind. I’ve secretly thought about buying one or two just to see what was behind the curtain.
Last night, I’m almost ashamed to say, I did. The pitch talked about how all those “gurus” try to scam you and how they want to keep the real information from you and that he had found the real information and automated it with his own army of programers from Russia and had built a huge bank of servers, to get it to you, etc., etc. He talked about a smoke filled room with a bunch of marketers laughing about how they were cheating the little guy with this information, and how he was going to give it to you simply because he wanted to get back at those nasty, cheating baddies! I’m not exaggerating at all.
The product was interesting, had a new way of doing a thing or two, but was absolutely, positively not what had been promoted in the “They’re Out To Cheat You!” sales page. Luckily it didn’t cost me much. The main lesson was that I do need to keep away from things
Posted in Advertising Education by .
Photo by bunky's pickle via Flickr
This week, Steve and I held a teleseminar on creating or finding content for your blog, articles and products. If you weren’t on the teleseminar, you can listen to the replay here:
(That recording will only be there until next week, so go listen now if you haven’t already.)
There have been lots of questions on PLR and Master Resale Rights packages, so I am answering some of the for you here:
Q. What is the difference between PLR and Master Resale Rights?
They can be the same, but with PLR, you are buying complete rights to do what you want with the articles (except post them on the article marketing directories.) With Master Resale Rights, you are buying specific rights and each package has slightly different things you can do with it. Both are great for creating products, however.
Q. How many people are buying the same package as I am?
That depends on the site you’re buying it from. Most of the better sites will only sell a limited number of the package, and will often tell you how many are being sold. As you can imagine, many people buy these packages and do nothing with them, but other
Posted in Product Creation by .
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