In Episode 1 of the Successfool Podcast, I had the privilege of interviewing a very good friend of mine (& very successful) Justin Brooke from SiteFling.com.  Justin has done an amazing job at creating culture and building online community with his audience to the point of where he’s out performing some of the top marketers online.

This interview was packed with tons of great information and in it you’ll learn:

- Why combining Branding & Direct Response Marketing together
- How Justin is using “Anchoring” on Twitter
- How listening is a huge key to success
- His surefire way to creating online community in your niche
- Why website flipping is a great business for entrepreneurs with ADD

Tell me, what’s your favorite quote or thing you got out of the interview with Justin?

Blogging has absolutely transformed my business.  I had blogged for SEO purposes over the last couple years but never blogged to build my own brand.  It’s been over a year since I first launched my blog and it’s a long time coming.  You can take a look at my very first video here.  Be warned, I’m pretty stiff

http://successfool.com/video-1/

Since I started blogging to position my brand out there in the marketplace, a lot of people ask me the question, “How do I start blogging,” How important has blogging been to your business.”

Well I’ll answer one of the questions today and then have my partner Justin Brooke answer you tomorrow nigh LIVEt on my Internet TV show SuccessfoolTV.  Justin has been ROCKIN IT lately with his blog.  Quadrupling his traffic for his already successful blog Site Fliiiiiiiiiiing!   (you gotta say it that way with the exclamation mark!!!)

How important has blogging been to your business?

I tell entrepreneurs and small businesses all the time… “blogging is the nervous system…the cornerstone of your online presence.”

Because of the success that I’ve had with my blog, I’ve been given the opportunity to speak at conferences, coach others how to use social media to grow their business, ran my own conference and the list goes on and on and on.

Listen, there’s so much traffic on these social media sites, we’re talking a LOT of traffic.  Twitter is the fastest growing social network on the Internet, Facebook is growing at over 700,000 new users everyday.  If Facebook was a country, it would be the 6th largest in the world.

So the goal for businesses shouldn’t be just to communicate with folks on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and keep the conversation on those particular sites and try to offer products and services.  The goal should be to start a conversation with these people, add amazing value to people’s lives, then funnel them back to your blog (NOT a lead capture page) where you can add MORE value to their lives.   THEN, if you do a good enough job, you’ll have an opportunity to win over their business.

So has blogging been important to my business success, ABSOLUTELY.

Here’s some of just a few benefits of blogging for your brand or business:

- Brand awareness
- Traffic
- Research
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- Building relationships with your customers, clients or prospects
- Can review products or services in your industry
- Lost cost marketing
- Positioning you or your company as the “thought leader” in your niche
- Reputation management

How important has blogging been for YOU?  Would love to hear what your stories.

On this live show we talked about:

- Twitter Fight:  Ashton Kutcher and Larry King Ashton will be the 1st person to 1 Million Followers on Twitter
- Justin Brooke’s blog growing like crazy because of CONSISTENCY and CONTENT
- How I was voted Top 10 Internet Super Stars of 2009 (please vote for me at the bottom)
- Product Launches with Product Launch Rockstar, Chris Brisson
- I also showed off some AMAZING paintings by my friend David Garibaldi (follow him on Twitter)

Please use the RETWEET button up top and let your friends know.

Also, What did you like best about the interview with Chris Brisson?

Are you one who is carefully selecting the blogs you visit and comment on because they have ‘Do-Follow’ set up? Yes, I know, you get links this way – but are you really contributing to building a solid business and brand? If you are aiming for adding links in order to get better page ranking so that you can feed viewers to your ads, maybe you are gaining a little. But will they ever return? If you don’t make the effort to create value on your site, you will be forever seeking first time viewers because that’s all you will have – is that what you want?

I got started on this topic because of a post on one of the blogs I read pertaining to blogging. Blogger Maki of DoshDosh just put up a post titled, “The Unhealthy Obsession With Do Follow Links” which I suggest you go read right after you are done here. I won’t repeat everything he said here but just say, he poses the question of the validity of restricting yourself to commenting only on blogs with Do Follow set up for the express purpose of getting back links. And with the validity of the short spammy comments that don’t contribute to the conversation.

Now I’m certainly not going to try to put words in Maki’s mouth, you should read his post for yourself, but I can tell you my take on this, which I’m suspecting may not be too far off of his based on what he has said. With this obsession for link building many are fooling themselves into thinking they are actually building something that will last. First, I wonder how long it will take Google to come up with a method that detects and qualifies comments? They have already found ways to lock out other forms of spammy activity – can you say Google Slap!

Secondly, are you aware of how things are shifting within the online marketing world? With all the social networking sites exploding all around us people are showing that people respond to people more than some artificial hype. Is this full circle? We are back to basic word of mouth being the most potent mode of marketing. For years the internet marketing tried to cover over this with all the hype that was developed just to get eyeballs on to a page. However, if you are looking to build a real business with a meaningful brand this kind of focus is short sighted.

I have only been involved online and learning about online marketing for about 3 years but have seen major shifts take place in how it is being done successfully. Even the top ‘gurus’ in the niches most highly susceptible to hype style marketing, ‘Internet Marketing’ and ‘Work From Home’ have shifted to providing tons of quality information for free. It appears that the way forward if you want to build a brand for yourself and your business, is to be real, and provide quality and value.

And certainly one way to bring value to your site or blog and to the readers, is to actually participate in and contribute to discussions that benefit those people. When you put intelligent ideas in your comments readers will be more likely to follow your link to your blog to see what else of value you have to offer. I think, in the end, that a real human following from a comment is of higher value than a Google Bot. It’s real people who ultimately do business with us, are we assisting them with this action or are we hoping to accidentally capture them? Are you involved with what your audience needs and wants? Are you helping them get it? Are you directing them to other useful sources?

Here’s the trick, if you want to get good at something you must immerse yourself in it. And it can be very helpful to align yourself with others who are doing the same. You can actually kind of form a mastermind alliance with others just by who you associate with in your blogging. Follow those who are deeply in tune with and developing that which you are interested in and get involved by making comments on their blogs and making posts on your blog that really contribute to the conversation. And this must be more than, “really cool post man!” . . . ‘Dude’, come on, wake up!

If you are working on building yourself and your sites as your brand, the shallow comments will do you little good, in fact they will more likely knock you down a few points with your readers. You may not have figured this out yet, but if Google can program it’s computers to pinpoint the shams real humans can do it too – and usually quicker. Now if you are operating with a business model that only cares about traffic, any traffic, to get ad clicks, then the shallow, “cool man” comments will get you some mechanical links. Go for it, as long as it lasts.

But realize that at some point more bloggers will set up filters to not allow short comments – it’s only a matter of time. Because what happens on popular blogs is that someone who really cares about the topic and wants to learn more from reading the comments, like the author, must wade through all the trash. Just like the famed ‘Google Smack’ on all the trash site developers, the system, which here on the net is ultimately people, will tire of wading through the trash.

Get a clue from what is going on in the online world of business, people are fast realizing that the best way to build a business and a respectable brand is to be real. Sure we all click on ads and we marketers use ads, I don’t think that will go away, but the trend is towards offering quality and value.

Your blog readers will respect you far more if they see that you are involved with real meaty discussions with others that are adding value to the subject.

If you are afraid that you will loose your blog readers to another blog if you mention it in your posts, you are missing the big picture. You will gain more respect by leading them to other high quality resources, and if you are really contributing – they will have a reason to stay with you, both for your recommendations and your contribution. Short sighted fear will hold you back!

By getting involved in quality interactions with other bloggers you are creating collaboration,and through collaboration everyone wins. You really are tapping into the ‘mastermind’ concept even if not officially set up. When a group of minds get together on a particular subject they are each enhanced by the interaction. Ideas beget ideas and spark more ideas much faster than each individual can alone. And everyone reading this interaction gains more as well.

You can also apply all this too articles as well. Yes it’s great how you can get a nice link from posting an article on an article directory, but what you really want is real live readers that are impressed enough to click on the link at the bottom and go to your page. The article has already pre-qualified them, they are now a better viewer or your page than one that came from a search.

So, I guess the first thing to decide is, what is the business model you want to operate with? Will you continue to chase traffic alone or will you build a brand which becomes viral in it’s own right where people invite people.

John

]]> http://successfool.com/do-follow-blog-links-are-you-fooling-yourself/feed/ 7 http://successfool.com/fairshare-might-help-you-locate-plagiarism-partners/ http://successfool.com/fairshare-might-help-you-locate-plagiarism-partners/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:33:54 +0000 John Halderman http://successfool.com/?p=542 John Halderman writes about personal growth and online marketing , helping people take command of their income, personal growth and wellness. He is also on Twitter

Any one who has been writing or blogging for any time here on the net(“The Wild Wild West”) knows that plagiarism is rampant. Now I am not such a purist to think that no one should ever read and regurgitate what they have read into their own words, that’s research, right! But the blatant ‘cut and past’ artists are the ones that  have become just a ‘little’ irritating.

I think most of these direct rip offenders are doing so to get some sort of content on their Adsense sites just to satisfy the search robots. These are the same people who a couple of years ago were able to do what is called “scraping” of articles and other website content, which is flat out copying the content of others and placing it on their pages. This way they get a content rich site the easy way!

Today this is harder to get away with as search engine bait, which is why the “duplicate content” rules has been established. Those of us that want to honestly put our articles in multiple places now must be very careful how we do this or we get punished just as if we had stolen the article. Lazy article writers and bloggers are still copying or close to copying to save time. I understand that this writing thing takes time, but there is such a thing as honesty that many choose to forgo.

I know I should not let it bother me, and actually I don’t stress about it. I know that those copycats will get their just rewards, there is a thing called Karma. Most likely their readers will see through their shallowness and they will not garner much credibility in the long run.

However, if you are wondering if and how much of your content is getting ripped, soon there will be a tool for checking up on your fellow bloggers. I know that first we should be trusting of others, but again, this is “The Wild Wild West” and almost anything goes. Content tracker Attributor which can check up on other locations using your text, pictures and videos has a new service geared to bloggers now in the beta phase called FairShare. It does appear from the website that they are accepting beta testers if you are interested. (2-24-09)

Well, whether you are blogging, writing and whatever online, and you feel the need to checkup on potential plagiarism of any of your content, the sources are available. I guess the determining factor in allowing others to get away with copying your content is in how you are monetizing it. So when someone copies it, viewers can see it somewhere other than your site, you loose any related income – and you did all the work.

You have the rights to the content you created, but online it is your responsibility to keep your plagiarism partners honest. Such a world!

John Halderman

The internet is an ever-changing thing. Trends come and go, but the good ones stay forever. It seems that the trend that originated in 2005, and has been steadily gaining popularity, is posed to take over in 2009. I am talking of course of video blogging.

In the world of Web 2.0, many people are looking to further interact with web content. Video blogging is a perfect medium for community interaction, and is closer to real human contact than a regular text blog. The obvious leader in public videos, YouTube, has quickly become one of the largest websites online today. The reason for this is, quite obviously, community interaction. YouTube is now the 3rd most visited site world wide.

Originally, the internet was used simply as a huge database of information. Today, people no longer want to just gather information, they want to interact with it and contribute to it. They want to give their own opinions, critique the content, and question the validity of it. Public interaction ultimately leads to an increased body of knowledge.

Another example of public interaction benefiting a website can be seen in the massive success of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the only major site that allows any content contained on the site to be edited by the general public. This allows for massive amounts of content, which is usually very accurate. Everyone is an expert in something, so everyone can contribute information to Wikipedia containing their personal knowledge.

In my opinion, people today are becoming sick of the isolation of the internet. With the success of Myspace, Facebook, and other social networks, it is obvious that people are looking to humanize the internet. Video blogging is perfect for this, because it is close to actually talking to someone. Take YouTube for example. You can watch a video of someone talking, then submit a text comment, or even an entire video of your own, to respond to the video you watched.

Up until now, common people, as well as internet companies, have been debating trying out video blogging. While a few private video blogs have sprung up, I believe that the popularity of video blogging will explode in 2009. People are always ready for change around the New Year, and I expect video blogs to begin springing up all over the internet, eventually replacing normal text-based blogs.

Up until now, most video blogging has online been done through free public networks such as YouTube. However, I think that once people realize how huge video blogging could potentially become, private blogs will become a common thing. Blogs are not that expensive, and anyone with a webcam can make simple videos for free.

Video blogging is not necessarily a new thing, but it is not very popular yet. In fact, there is already an award for excellence in video blogging. These awards, called the Vloggies, were introduced to the public in 2006. The first known video blog was created in January 2000, but no one really knew anything about video blogging until about 2004.

If a blogger writes on the web and nobody sees it, did they actually write anything?  You have to look at the way bloggers communicate to really get a feel for what I mean.

I just read a unique blog post from a good friend of mine.  She sent me a direct message (DM) from twitter to alert me about it.  The title intrigued me, so I went to her blog, read it and commented on it.

Social Networks are a very potent force in communication.  People hear more about MySpace, Facebook and Twitter from their sitcoms, because those platforms reached a critical mass, where people can no longer ignore them unless they want to continue being completely anonymous.

But posting on social networks just for the sake of posting is like writing just to fill lines on  page.  If you are not providing value of some kind, nobody will read you.  In many cases, people who do not provide good content become lost in the sea of information.

What is content?

Content falls into 3 major categories:

• Information
• Help
• Entertainment

Some people on the social networks are information junkies who just need to consume facts, figures and trivia.  They need a steady diet of these to keep their active minds filled with new data.

Others on the social networks have a problem that they need solved, and they look to the social community for their assistance.  They might ask where something is located, they might need to find a particular person or maybe they just need to connect with someone who has a specific talent.  In all of these cases, the distressed networkers can quickly sift through the responses to find the nugget that they were looking for to solve their problem.

Finally, the group of social networkers who are looking to be entertained are looking for laughter, music and videos that keep them filled with joy!  So if you are a provider of entertainment value, you are going to build a large following by being entertaining.

With that said, your presence on the social networks should give people a sense that they know you.  If you are using my favorite social network, Twitter, you might be telling people who you met at the latest seminar, or how you and your family are going to see a movie.  While those seem like insignificant things to talk about, they are defining you to the outside world.

Being yourself is what draws people into your circle.  If you try to be someone you aren’t eventually the facade will come off when people are around you and you will lose them.  Much better to be yourself all the time and only attract those that like you for being you.

So when you update people on Twitter, you are giving them a slice of your day, make it count by giving your slant on the topic. Say you are ready to try out the new restaurant in town, make it an event!

“I took a chance on the new Asian Restaurant in town and was rewarded with great service!”

This tells people what you did while providing information to the info junkies.  The fact that you took a chance tells people that you usually do not go to new restaurants.  People who are used to staying within their established routines will look at you as a daring adventurer and may actually venture out on your recommendation.

If you just say, “I had Pork LoMein For Dinner.” You aren’t telling anyone much, and probably irritated a bunch of people with growling stomachs!  Think of each of your updates as a part of your autobiography.  You are writing each sentence of it with the updates you choose to post!

If all you want the world to remember about you is that you ate Pork LoMein, you will blend into the scenery with all the other meal updates the world has to offer.

Remember that your followers, friends or acquaintences in the social networks around the world have more than just you to read about.  Make each update count toward them developing a relationship with you that means something.  While you are reading this, your next million dollar partner or client could be looking over your tweet-stream deciding whether or not they want to press the “follow” button on your profile right now.

Make your story be the one which makes them anticipate each chapter daily.  Once you start to examine what you find is important to you, your updates will show it… The life you change may be your own as you write your story one update at a time!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Now that you have people on your website or blog are they able to move around efficiently and get through on the links they click on? It takes a lot of work to get visitors to your site so it’s important to make sure they want to stay. Of course having good content is of utmost importance but many people will get aggravated if they can’t navigate smoothly between your site pages and through to links outside.

It’s important to periodically make sure that everything works properly. If you had a manufacturing business you would make sure all the equipment was always in proper working order and if you had a retail store you would keep it stocked and presentable for the shoppers, your web site is no different. If you are expecting thousands of visitors a day to your site don’t you think you should make sure everything is working correctly?

I know it probably was all working fine when you set it up, but remember what we are dealing with here. . . computers! They are far to human like to be trusted to be reliable! Stuff happens, it’s your responsibility to keep it running properly so your visitors have th best experience. So what should you be checking for?

A common problem is with broken links.

It’s a good idea to check all of the links you have, both internally and external. The external being the ones to check most often as you can’t guarantee that a link you have will remain valid. If your link is to a specific blog page or entry as these are often changed when site owners modify their sites.

Your on-site links to check are most often are the ones to photos and audio files. It’s easy to not realize, at the time, the ramifications of changes you make that may affect these items on your site. You will want to check for problems or ‘leaks’ in the flow of your site, that’s where you want your customers to go throughout your site. If they can’t access something you may loose them.

Also, search engine spiders don’t get the full picture of what’s going on with your site when they encounter broken links. Here again is another place where your efforts can get wasted by not paying attention to your links.

Here are a few places your visitors might ‘leak out’ from, become frustrated and never return to your site:

* Do each of your subscription forms lead to the proper location?

* Are you using custom “thank you” pages or depending on auto-generated
ones? Auto-generated thank you pages might not lead back to your site.

* Have you customized your error pages with links back to working
parts of your site? If a customer finds a missing page and ends up
on a default “404 error” page, you may never see them again.

* Are you giving away your traffic to web rings and link exchanges
that don’t have easy-to-find links back to your site?

You can also utilize some software tools to help with checking for broken links. A couple of free link checking services are, http://validator.w3.org/checklink and http://www.dead-links.com/ and there is a free software that works on your desktop, Xenu’s Link Sleuth at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

It is enough work getting good traffic to your site, don’t allow it to get wasted by broken links. We all know that ‘stuff’ happens on a web site or blog, so keep up with regular maintenance ensuring your visitors get the experience you want, so you get the results you want.

If you have anything to add to this subject that could help others maintain proper links, please leave it in a comment below, then . . .

Go to your site or blog and check all the links to make sure they are all still working as you intended.

John

I had spoken before about the benefits of reaching out to the bloggers and getting exposure for your business that way. But, now I want to talk about the best way to do it.

Traditionally, companies or their PR agencies call the media (or fax/email/whatever) and “pitch” them a story idea. The media knows the deal and knows why you are calling. They know you are “selling” them something. In my world, I sell stories. They don’t always love it, but 99% realize that it’s part of the game.

Well, bloggers are different and need to be approached differently. If you want to connect with the bloggers and get them to talk about you or your website or product or whatever, you can’t be a salesman. You need to be their friend.

Do not try to force things on them just to get them to post it. Think about them and their blog (you should really apply this to traditional media as well). What type of information do they like to talk about? Then think of the best way to package your information so that it’s of interest to them.

When I send something out to a blogger, I usually couch it with “I thought you might find this of interest for your blog.” And I really mean that. I want to come across as a friend or associate, not someone spamming them. Do not spam the bloggers, it’s a great way to get shunned. Send information that really might be of interest to them and they’ll see you as a helpful associate, not an obnoxious salesman.

I know all of this may sound obviously, but as a blogger myself, you wouldn’t believe the stupid stuff that I get sent to me.

Another good idea (and this applies to traditional media as well), is to send bloggers information that doesn’t benefit you at all. If you happen to see an interesting story on, say, dieting, send that to your diet blog contacts and let them know that it doesn’t have anything to do with you, but you thought it might be something they’d like. People appreciate this because it shows that you are thinking of them and their agenda, and not your own. This will make them more receptive the next time you do have something that benefits you.

I’ll be talking about this quite a bit and to start, let’s talk about the importance of connecting with the bloggers. So, why are the bloggers important?

Well, it’s pretty simple: the media landscape is changing and more and more people are getting their information from blogs, just like you are doing right now. I’m not knocking traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, radio and television, but let’s be honest, the media is shifting away from that.

The days of the two-newspaper cities are quickly coming to a close. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is in trouble, as is the Philadelphia Daily News. I’ve even read that the Old Gray Lady’s print edition is in serious peril.

I don’t think print is ever going to go away completely, but circulations are down and online readership is up.

Perfect example is the websites of newspapers. Newspapers aren’t stupid, they know the deal. Go to your city newspaper’s website and I guarantee you will see blogs. The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer…they all have blogs. They know that blogs are just too fast with the information and that people won’t wait until tomorrow morning’s newspaper.

Like I said before, I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan. By reading blogs online, I know that Brian Westbrook missed practice at 3:30 PM on Thursday. Why would I wait to read the same thing in Friday morning’s Inquirer? I wouldn’t, nobody would. Blogs have the news faster than anyone, and that’s a big reason why people read them.

Sure, bloggers will never completely take over. Traditional journalists are held to credibility and accountability standards that most bloggers aren’t. But, there are more than enough bloggers who have that “street cred” and the number of them who have it is only going to grow. It’s very important to recognize the PR importance of blogs for you and your business. You need to reach out to them in order to maximize your company’s exposure.

Next time we’ll talk about the best way to reach out to those bloggers and get them to write about you.