Age of Conversation Cover

Yes, I realize I used the word “Peeps” but I do believe it is Friday. So, yeah.

I have been blessed to participate in the Age of  Conversation project again this year.  Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton put a call out to authors on the topic of Social Media, and those who make the cut get a chapter in a collective book.

To make things even better, all proceeds from the project go to charity. In short, I totally get to talk about myself and all the proceeds go to a good cause. It just doesn’t get better than that.

Seriously though, if you read last year’s edition, or the one before, you know that these collections tend to be packed full of wisdom and advice from a dizzying array of experts from many perspectives you might never have thought of before.

The book officially comes out some time in April, and pre-ordering starts soon.

In this blog over the next month while I wait for the book to come out, I’ll be sharing the experience with you and telling you about the people I’m writing with.

In fact, let’s start that part right now, shall we? Meet the authors of the Age of Conversation 3, below:

Everyone wants to know how I’m able to help my clients get their stories in the Buzz section of StumbleUpon, in Tweetmeme or on the front page of Digg.

Sh! Social Media Success Secrets!

You can’t sell access or ranking in any of these social media sites,and buying votes is a tactic that doesn’t bear up, strategically.

What I am able to do is coach my clients on how to use social media, how to build their online and offline networks, how to be authentically influential and how to create content that their desired audience finds compelling.

That way, when their content is naturally discovered or promoted, or on the sites that allow it, submitted by them, they don’t make it to the pre-popularity stage, only to be taken out of contention for the site.

What I do in that regard is no secret.

How is it done? That seems to be the big deal. Greater minds than mine have attempted and failed.

My answer is that it’s not just what you know. It’s not just who you know.

It’s whether you can get those pivotal people, that critical network, and the user base at the site in question to move the way you want them to — and that’s whether or not you’re talking about social media sites, or just life in general.

I approach social media the way I approach most areas of success in my life. I use strategies that magnify the tactics everyone else is using exponentially. While everyone else is looking at their next move in Checkers, I’m thinking about my next game of Chess.

In the Social Media Success Package, I’ll teach you how to do with 100 — 1000 people what other people can’t seem to manage even with 100, 000 friends, followers, or connections.

Because it’s not about the number of followers. It’s nice to have several thousand or even a hundred thousand people following you for show.

But it’s really about what you can get people to do, and why. Can you get your content in places that it will be discovered? Can you write content so compelling that people can’t help but share it and save it? Can you do this over and over again, consistently?

And can you build yourself a fan base, an alliance or a network that willingly supports your endeavors without having to rely solely on collecting and trading favors?

It’s really about how you add so much value to the discussion that the right people want to return it to you.

It’s not enough just to have influence but it IS a huge component to social media success.

Since strategies and tactics go hand in hand, included in this package is a quick guide to how you can get duplicate my method of getting 27,000 StumbleUpon users to a site in one week. To highlight that, for the next 24 hours, I’m going to cut the price of this package by $20 — until 3:33 pm tomorrow, you can get it for just $47 $27.

You can get a sample of the document directly from here until this time tomorrow.

After that, you’ll have to sign up to my newsletter to get a free peek.

Look in the upper right hand corner for the download link.

It’s the number one topic on everyone’s mind at some point: what will happen to my business during hard times?

It doesn’t seem to matter what business you’re in, or whether the news says it’s getting a little better or a little worse.

Every business owner’s mind drifts to the recession at some point.

We wonder: are we headed for another Great Depression? Or will we just be tightening our belts to ride out the latest storm?

Wish I had the answer to that but I have no clue. I’m a website promotion specialist. How
would I know?

What I do know is that I’m not participating in the recession — I’m too busy and I haven’t got a *thing* to wear!

I say that with tongue in cheek, but due to an expensive health problem I’ve had since 1992, I really don’t know what it is to have an adult life where you can consistently indulge in extras — mine always went to meds or physical therapy, or back-pay on doctors’ bills. So for me, it’s Always a recession.

But I believe you can turn just about any circumstance into a positive, and sure enough, it puts me in a unique position to tell you how to get your business to prosper in a time when it feels like the economy is in a tail spin for some indefinite amount of time.

The answer to recession for me?

Market harder, and market better.

Doing better, faster and more creative marketing has always helped me move my business forward, even when I was having a hard time — even now when it seems like Everyone is having a hard time.

I was no genius when I started thinking this way, so don’t think that just because website promotion and marketing is my business, this strategy can’t work for you.

So what does marketing harder mean? Or marketing better, for that matter?

I’m not saying that if you were spending $2000 a month on advertising that you should now spend $3000. Nor am I saying cut back. There are basically two steps.

First, spend your advertising money *smarter* –make it go as far as it possibly can. Really look more closely at what is working the best to bring your business leads, sales and in the case of the web, traffic, and focus your money and attention there.

Reduce or eliminate everything else. If it makes you feel better, put it on hold and resume it when you have more in your pocket.

In other words, if ezine ads have always set your sales on fire, but pay per click has always been iffy, move more of your ad budget into ezine ads until the economic storm passes. Once your company is in better financial health, you’ll be able to afford to hire an expert to tweak your pay per click if you need it.

Some sites seem to be made for pay per click, but get hit and miss results with press releases. In that case it would be better to reduce, but not end, press release campaigns, and shift that money to PPC until you have more profit to risk.

The second step would be to append that advertising with more cost-effective marketing, especially in whatever area you’re not doing now. If it will only cost you a few hundred dollars in the short term to implement a tested technique that will get you results for years to come, investing the time is a wise move.

Let’s say you’re doing article marketing by posting to hundreds of directory-style sites.

Awesome.

Now get those same articles distributed directly to ezine publishers that have better
reach, and are more exclusive about who they accept. Need to test them out first? Run a classified or top sponsor ad.

And don’t stop there. Once your name gains recognition among your peers, take your expertise marketing to the next level and do some interviews.

Find ten people with targeted audiences and do 10 interviews. You can even cut those ten people in on the profits by offering their audience a special offer and paying them a percentage per sale as a referral fee.

There’s all kinds of creative marketing you can do that you can start with quickly, from blogging, article marketing or social media to organic search strategies. And of course ther are also all kinds of twists you can put on whatever you’re already doing.

How do you find them? For at least 30 minutes today, sit down and write marketing ideas. I learned a tip from a brilliant man named Allen says that after your mind has been working on something for 30 minutes, it just keeps coming up with more ideas on autopilot.

I’ve found that the longer I go, the better my ideas get. So even if you have to stop after 30 minutes, take that pad and paper with you.

And no matter how silly any idea seems, write it down. It may inspire something else later.

When you’re done, pick the best one and go do it, or assign it to your marketing team if you have one. Research who does something similar, and follow their successes.

It’s the ultimate recipe for getting a business through hard times — market harder, market more creatively, and do it in addition to, not instead of, advertising. Some marketing takes a little time to work.

The people are still out there. Your business still helps people. A recession or hard times just means you have to work a little smarter for the same amount of money.

You can do it. Don’t abandon hope just yet.

It boils down to this.

No matter who you are, it seems comparatively easy to get 100 people to do the same thing, to go in the same direction.

By comparison, especially if you’re new to online marketing, it seems much more difficult to get 10,000 people to do the same thing.

You may find yourself wondering if you even KNOW 10,000 people or if you have that kind of reach.

With the Mini-Viral Success Formula, the pressure is off. At the same time, you’ll find that once you get the hang of generating 100 unique visitors, 250 doesn’t seem that hard. And eventually you’ll come to realize that you can get to 10,000 visitors by repeating what you did to get 100 visitors, 100 times.

Instead of trying to gain 10,000 followers in Twitter during your first week out, you learn how to get the same results with only 100 or 1000 followers. By the time you actually get to ten thousand connections, they’ll be as effective as the next person’s 100,000.

Creating a series of small successes is also a much more sustainable model than attempting to recreate the conditions which must exist for one massive viral campaign to be successful. Aiming to get to the Buzz page in StumbleUpon several times a week is easier than attempting to get on the front page of Digg every month, and the rate of success rate is much higher.

How much does it matter to you whether you get 40,000 visitors in one day, if they aren’t the type to buy, click or subscribe? If you can get 40,000 visitors in two weeks, and convert them at one percent, isn’t that better? For most business people, creating a series of mini-campaigns is better for business because it takes less time, and involves more profit.