How much did that ad just cost you?

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 30, 2009 in Advertising, Marketing, Rant | 15 comments

The following post is rated PG-13 for adult language.

I went looking for some decent affiliate marketing blogs to read and subscribe to this morning. Being the Googling sort, I searched for affiliate marketing blogs and popped open the top 20 results in a series of tabs to see what I’d found.

Of the top 20 sites that came back in my search, 2 didn’t load, one was flagged by Google as containing malware harmful to my computer, and 11 of the sites, before any content could load, popped up a whole-page, content-obscuring ad. Some of the ads were for newsletters, blogs, or other “freebies”, while others promoted the author’s latest books, DVDs, webinars, seminars, and other swill.

The very thing that would convince me to buy your book, CD, DVD, etc. is your content. How helpful is your blog? After all, if I quickly scan the first five posts of your blog and I learn something just from a quick scan, you can bet that I’ll think you’ve got even more stuff to offer. You taught me something in 30 seconds, and I’ll stick around much longer to see what else I can learn. I’ll bookmark your site. I’ll tag it and store it for future reference. I’ll subscribe and opt-in, because I love learning, and I love any site, blog, or outlet that helps me learn more.

However, when you obscure your content with piles and piles of ads, guess what? The value you present to me is absolutely zero, and you get put in the bin of perpetual ignorage. I don’t care how well ranked your book is on Amazon or that your book is on the Peoria TImes Bestseller List for the 213th week in a row. Endorsements don’t mean anything to me. Reputation matters very little to me. What does matter is the content, the goods, and if you block my ability to read your content with your ads, then you’ve effectively decided I don’t need to get any sense of your value.

Here’s the ultimate irony, you Internet marketing masters. (yes, one pompous jackass billed himself as such) One of the areas we cover less well in our Marketing Over Coffee podcast is affiliate marketing (with the quality of the blogs I surfed this morning, there’s little wonder why), so I was doing some homework, putting together a list of actually useful affiliate marketing blogs for our master blog list that we’ll be distributing in the next Marketing Over Coffee newsletter.

If you hadn’t blocked your entire site with tons of useless shit, you might have made the cut and had your blog included in a list that will be distributed and subscribed to by thousands and thousands of marketing professionals. Instead, you lose out on me, you lose out on someone willing to voluntarily endorse your writing, and you lose out on a ton of exposure, all in the hope that you could scrape up a buck with your ineffective ads.

We’ve all been beating this meme to death recently, but for good reason: be helpful. Be helpful in what you do and your work will practically market for you. Be helpful and useful in your writing, in your blogging, in your content production, and you’ll have won me over immediately, made me subscribe, and made me mention you to the folks who enjoy seeing what’s on my nightstand and in my blog reader.

Go take a look at your top five blog posts right now on your personal or professional site. If at least one of your blog posts doesn’t contain something helpful, something actionable, something useful, fix that. If you do have something that I can learn, take away, and make useful right away, then I congratulate and salute you, and know that your audience deeply appreciates what you do.

Updated: I posted the counterpoint perspective with data over on Marketing Over Coffee.

Enjoyed it? Please share it!

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com

How Batman will help you beat social media narcissism

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 28, 2009 in Marketing, New media | 16 comments

Mitch Joel and Mashable both are raising red flags about social media being focal points for insane quantities of narcissistic behavior. Mitch asks:

So, the question is this: how do people build and develop their personal brands, if all we really want is content that is valuable to us and not self-promotional in any way, shape or form?

This is the essence of empowering a personal brand. It’s not about you, but what you do.

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I *do* that defines me.” – Batman (2005)

Want to take your products, services, brands, and company to the next level? Forget about reinforcing brand and focus on what you’re doing to make things better for your customers. Want to see a great example at a small business level? Look at how Matthew Ebel is working his subscription service. Ask his VIPs if he’s all about himself or all about them, and you’ll find nearly universal agreement that he’s making the music FOR the customers, not just trying to sell them whatever he can for a buck.

Look at some of the powerhouses in new media, like Beth Kanter and Beth Dunn, movements like Twestival and Free Iran – all of these folks are less about them and more about their work, about promoting their efforts to help others. Look at Facebook’s applications – one of the most powerful and popular applications? Causes.

It’s not who you are, it’s what you do that will turn your brand up to 11.

Photo credit: Chan Chan

Enjoyed it? Please share it!

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com

Why you're not motivated (and maybe how to fix that)

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 27, 2009 in Awakening, Productivity | 9 comments

As I’m sure you have, I’ve listened to and enjoyed tons of motivational programming, from keynote speakers at conferences to books to audiobooks to seminars to… well, you get it. I can tell you all about Tom Hopkins’ sales motivational methods, recite Tony Robbins and Richard Bandler backwards, rant as much as Gary Vaynerchuk, etc. I’m sure you’ve done and listened to enough motivational stuff to open your own motivational bookstore just with the stuff in your home office.

So why, then, do you and I wake up some days and just have no motivation? Why does that blank patch of wall in our offices still get face time with us, when there’s so much to do and we’ve got so much motivational knowledge in our heads?

I can’t speak for you, but there are generally three things that deplete my motivation or self motivation:

1. I don’t care. There are some tasks, and we all have them, that I just don’t care for, like cleaning the cat’s litter box. There’s no amount of NLP reframing or Tony Robbins that will take that task and make it a delightful challenge.

My fix: burn through those tasks as quickly as possible, and find ways to distract your thinking mind (which is the part that gets bored) with something else during those times. If you ever look at my Twitter usage during the workday, there are lulls and spikes. You know I’m doing something like database maintenance, mailing list management, etc. during periods of spikes because my thinking mind is waiting for one or more tasks to complete, especially on long database issues.

2. Bad climate. Ever been to one of those meetings that just sucks the life out of you? I was once at a sales meeting at a former company (unsurprisingly out of business) where the sales team leader was this guy who spoke in a monotone and sounded like a prophet of doom. No matter how well or poorly sales were going, he was guaranteed to be the wet blanket that made you want to call in sick for the next year. Every company has its demotivators – endless meetings, bad leaders/managers, office politics, bureaucracy without end. That’s unavoidable unless you’re a sole proprietor, in which case, you’ve got other problems to solve if you hate the leadership.

My fix: Get out of the office, even just for a day. Go talk to your best customers. Go talk to the people whose lives you are directly impacting in a positive way, and see how the stuff you do on a daily basis actually matters. Sales charts and quarterly bonuses and metrics are all fine and good, but they’re bloodless. No one feels anything about a percentage increase in sales. Talking to a single mother who got a scholarship because of a blog post you wrote and is going back to college can refresh and revitalize your energy and motivation like nothing else. Find out how you and your business are actually making a difference to the people you serve, and if you’re not making a difference at all (or worse, are actively harming people), get the hell out of your job.

3. No direction. How long is your to do list? I know mine’s infinitely long and seems to get longer (if that were mathematically possible, which it’s not) every day. With so much to do, it’s kind of like going to a buffet that’s two and a half miles long. There’s so much to choose from, you don’t know where to start.

My fix: Make a list of the stuff that you have to do. Do NOT assign priorities to it. Instead, look at the list and find one or two things that you can accomplish very quickly and that are reasonably fun and entertaining to do. Why? You want to jump start your momentum of accomplishment. Chances are the stuff on your list that’s super high priority is also stuff that will require intense focus, energy, and effort – and if you’re not moving right now, going 0 to 60 instantaneously is difficult. Pick one or two items that can get the ball rolling, and after you’ve restarted your momentum, then move over to a list that has priorities assigned to it, or start to assign priorities.

It’s always good to refresh your motivational potential, your stored energy, with things like those books, seminars, etc. but at the end of the day, you need to convert that potential into action, into energy, into results so that you make a difference. Making a difference in the world, accomplishing something, having results at a human level that you can be proud of – that will fuel your future motivation more than all the self help materials in the world.

Get through the stuff you don’t care about. Get out of the office. Find a direction and get the ball rolling. That’s how I break my demotivational spells. How about you?

Enjoyed it? Please share it!

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com

The Pareto Principle of Twitter Spam

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 26, 2009 in Twitter | 7 comments

The Pareto Principle – 80% of something comes from 20% of something – is so often repeated that it’s cliche.

It’s also true.

The majority of your revenue comes from a minority of customers.

The majority of your time spent on anything is focused on a minority of time sinks.

and so forth.

Twitter’s no different. Recently, Robert Scoble unfollowed everyone. He paid a service to do a mass, mass unfollow of hundreds of thousands of people and has been manually refollowing since then. For those of us with fewer connections than Robert, it’s worth pointing out that the majority of crap in your Twitter stream comes from a minority of people. Filter them out, unfollow them, and you’ll see Twitter become usable again.

My criteria for an instant unfollow are pretty simple:

1. If you talk about making money on Twitter at all, you’re gone. This is the fastest and easiest kill of all.

2. If you talk without listening – meaning your stream has absolutely no conversation, you’re gone. Doubly so if all you’ve got are sales and promotions.

3. If you just retweet with nothing else, nothing original, not even “my cat just threw up!”, you’re gone, because you’re probably a robot.

4. If you’re a robot, you’re gone. Robots are fairly easy to spot – unlike humans, they typically truncate tweets mid word over and over again in their stream.

5. If you’ve just got stuff I don’t care about in your stream, you’re gone. One person had nothing but quotes from Jesus in their stream. Not my cup of tea, being Buddhist and all. Another person was a true cat blogger and cat tweeter with nothing else. I have a cat, so rather than experience their cat vicariously, I’ll just peek at my lump of gray fur.

Here’s a simple way to weed out the crap. Once an hour, go to your Twitter home page. Browse through the tweets. Cull off any stupidity or robots you see, and repeat for a couple of days. It takes literally seconds to peek quickly and make a decision – we’re not talking a major investment of your time at all.

You’ll find that just by pruning out the garbage after a few runs, Twitter will be easier to use. The Pareto Principle holds true – 80% of your crap is from 20% of your follows, so nuke them.

If you use a client like Tweetdeck, you’ll find you miss fewer updates from friends, especially if you follow a lot of people. All clients like Tweetdeck pull a limited number of tweets from your stream on a regular basis, so the more crap you filter out, the less likely it is you’ll miss good stuff from your friends.

Remember, unfollowing someone doesn’t mean you stop communicating with them. You can and always should be monitoring without needing to follow – if you haven’t grabbed a copy, go get the Twitter Power Guide eBook. It’s free.

Enjoyed it? Please share it!

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com

A bottle of awesome

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 24, 2009 in Awakening, Buddhism, Jedi mind tricks, Non-profit, On ko chi shin | 5 comments

I had a conversation recently with a friend after she’d gone for a long drive along the lakeshore with her favorite music cranked to 11, and she expressed the rather fervent wish that she could somehow bottle the way she felt, but couldn’t.

The thing is, you very much can do so, you very much can create the mental and emotional states you want to experience. Your body and mind are designed to do exactly that, because at our most primitive levels, we’ve evolved to remember strong memories and feelings as a key to survival.

Look at your own history of strongly anchored memories, from basic things like the taste of an apple to incredibly complex things like the first person you kissed. You have tons of memories, good and bad, that you’ll never be able to get rid of. You have tons more memories waiting to be triggered at the drop of a hat – the right song in a public venue or the right scent of perfume, and you’re instantly somewhere and somewhen else. Ask any couple that’s been together for a while if they have a song that they strongly associate with, and you’ll get an enthusiastic yes far more often than not.

What emotional states do you want to invoke? Confidence? Serenity? Awesome?

The trick to refreshing and triggering the emotional states you want to experience is to know what your triggers are for memories you do have, and set new triggers when you want to anchor down a state for later recall. For memories you already have, few are more powerful than music, which is where the post about using your iPod for mental protection came from. Go read it and try it if you haven’t. Go dig up the powerful, positive states you want to recall out of your past. If high school or college was a positive experience for you, go dig out those yearbooks that are inevitably collecting dust on a bookshelf and take a quick jog down memory lane to extract the memory triggers that still have strength and impact.

If you know in advance that you’ll be encountering an experience that you’ll want to remember, like my friend’s lakeshore drive, then decide in advance how you’ll anchor that experience for later recall. Perhaps you’ve got some special hand gesture that has significance to you – many devout folks who pray with clasped hands find that just the act of physically doing so refreshes their mental and emotional state. Maybe it’s a special outfit you wear or a special routine that you create, a special habit that you can invoke – whatever works best for you.

There’s ample precedent for all of this. If you look at some of the images from Buddhism and from ninjutsu in which various hand postures are shown, you’ll see that they are less about portraying practices to the uninitiated and more about prompting practitioners who’ve gone through training to refresh their memories and experiences. Having a picture or statue in your home of Fudo Myo-o, Jesus Christ, the Dalai Lama, St. Mary, etc. isn’t so much a thing to pray to or worship as it is a daily, constant reminder of a mental and emotional state you’re seeking to invoke in yourself. (though of course many people do use them as foci for worship as well)

You don’t need to use religious materials, either, especially if they don’t connect with you. Plenty of people have powerful state changes when they pop in their favorite movie. Plenty of people have powerful emotions when they fire up Team Fortress 2 or Sim City or World of Warcraft. Plenty of people have associations that are just as strong around Yoda, Tirion Fordring, Superman, Indiana Jones, Batman, the Terminator, and Rocky Balboa. Use the tools and content that speak the most to you of the emotional and mental states you want to generate.

For “bottling” the feelings and states you want to recall, the trick is to be consistent. If you go for lakeshore drives as your way of refreshing yourself, then set a routine, a hand posture, a habit, whatever, so that similar experiences and emotional states are anchored with the same habit. If you love watching Rocky jog up the steps of the art museum, set those physical habit reminders for that feeling. Whatever creates the way you want to be, set your reminders, your anchors. Then, later on, when you need to invoke that same mental and emotional memory, the habits and physical gestures brings back what you’ve stored.

Give it a try and see how “mind-setting” works for you!

Photo credit: Mark Blevis

Enjoyed it? Please share it!

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com