MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Jack Canfield asked to interview me recently on the topic of social media. I did the interview but stressed that I really DISLIKE being asked to talk about social media marketing. I consider the whole social media marketing industry over-hyped.

I’m one of the most-in-demand speakers in this space (as I write this I’ll be in Vegas on stage in a few days with Tony Robbins to talk about social media marketing). But I want to emphasize the PSYCHOLOGY over the TECHNOLOGY.

Too many people fall into the trap of getting overly enamored with Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the social media to-do list, that they end up neglecting the importance of applying persuasion psychology to actually make the traffic deliver. I’m interested in response rates first — traffic second.

So, in this interview I reveal how I apply specific patterns of influence (psychology) within a framework of social media like blogs, Facebook and YouTube, (technology), to help many of the celebrities and best-selling authors I work with build a closer relationship with their audience and get far better responses.

Listen on!

WARNING: This post is not for the “good enough” minded. Why stop at good enough when you can push for great, leveraged, or better yet, integrated?

I started toying around with social media early back in 2005. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was just having fun throwing aimless punches blindly in the dark, in misguided hopes of hitting the jackpot.

Stupid me, it never happened. I lacked direction and had no system in place.

But I persisted, and learned from my many mistakes. Eventually, one thing led to another and I ended up working with MindValley. Not to mention, along the way, I also got invited to new media related conferences, including ones co-organized by Harvard University.

Long story short, I gained a good amount of experience and insights into the world of social media. And now, yours truly, the Social Media DJ, is about to reveal to you a few of his key learnings, so please… pay close attention.

What I’ve Learned from 4 YEARS of Stupid Painful Screw Ups

1. Base Your Efforts on the Triple B Formula

Social media marketing is mainly a long term affair. It won’t bring you sales overnight like PPC-driven affiliate marketing for example (although there are some exceptions). It takes time and persistence. Hence, the need for passion.

Burn, baby burn.

Passion is your fuel, your sense of direction, and ultimately your vision. Plus, it will help you determine how you’re going to use social media, better shape your marketing message, and pick the relevant allies to network with who share similar passions.

More importantly, when you’re passionate and genuine, it shows in your communication with others. You’re likeable. You’re fun, and that my friend helps your message spread further and makes it more well-received.

That’s precisely one of the critical reasons why deeply passionate guys like Gary Vayner Chuck do well with social media.

Keep it real. Keep it human.

Now, if you don’t know what your passion is yet and need to know, that’s ok. My friend, Chris Attwood explains how you can discover it and start living it in his NY Times best-seller, The Passion Test. Check it out if you want to.

Alrighty then, next.

2. Don’t Sprawl the Mall

Social media is a broad game. You’ve got Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Facebook Profiles, Facebook Groups, Facebook Fan Pages, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Ning, Digg, LinkedIn and the list goes on.

All have their weaknesses and strengths. Which will you pick?

See, you won’t know accurately until you clearly specify your intended business goals. Otherwise, it’s going to be difficult to select the appropriate social media channels for your unique needs and measure the ROI of your efforts.

Here’s what you can you use social media in business for:

1. branding
2. community building
3. attracting new prospects
4. networking with potential JV partners
5. generating buzz and unleashing the viral monster
6. involving your customers in the product creation process
7. listening in on current conversations about your offerings to gain valuable feedback
8. boosting relationships with your customers to increase retention and life-time value

Selecting from the above what you desire in a prioritized fashion will determine which social media channels you should pick, focus on more, and integrate together.

Moving on.

3. Prove. Improve.

Try not to reinvent the wheel. Go for proven strategies, and once you’ve implemented them successfully, improve upon them.

Hence, prove, and then improve.

The following are three simple examples of proven social media marketing strategies.

STRATEGY #1 - Use Blogs to Increase Interaction

Old news. Nothing revolutionary here. Blogs are lovely flexible publishing platforms that create interaction. For more on using them effectively, read this:

• Positioning, “Social Polarity” and Vibrant Blog Communities
• 7 Ways to Increase Your Blog Comments
• Blog Marketing: Monetize The Comments On Your Blog

STRATEGY #2 - Use YouTube to Attract Traffic

Being one of the top 5 most visited websites on the planet, YouTube is a serious source of traffic, so if you’re not marketing yourself there, you’re missing out on significant eyeballs. To use YouTube in cool profitable ways, read this:

• How I Made A Dollar From Everyone Who Watched My YouTube Video

STRATEGY #3 - Use Facebook to Build a Community

There are countless ways Facebook can be used for effective marketing, if you do it right. Here’s one that’s bound to spark some creative ideas in your head:

• Facebook Marketing: How Smart Restaurants and Bars are Using “Birthday Marketing” on Facebook

Okay, so now that I’ve quickly demonstrated three strategies, let’s go to the fourth step.

4. Integration - The “Popeye Spinach” Effect

Aha, now here comes the fun part. This is where many experts have short-comings, because they’re too focused on a few social media websites and miss the big picture.

Thing is, the three aforementioned strategies are good. In fact, for many experts or so-called experts, they’re “good enough.”

Not for me.

Yours truly, the Social Media DJ, doesn’t want to stop there and doesn’t want you to either. Throw in some “Popeye Spinach” and watch the magic unraveling before your eyes.

Integrate the three individual tactics strategically. There are obviously a number of ways to do that. Here’s a simple one you can use if you’re an internet marketer with an email list.

1. publish a blog post that includes:

• some useful text-based content
• your own optimized YouTube video
• your Facebook profile badge

2. blast the blog post to your list
3. sit back and enjoy!

Your blog post should look something like this. The example below is from a MindValley-owned website with Burt Goldman aka The American Monk. It leverages a lot of integrated social media marketing.

Here are the benefits of integration and the “Popeye Spinach” Effect.

1. You interact with your email list via the comments in your blog post.

2. You instantly create thousands of views and momentum for your optimized YouTube video. This pushes the video higher in rankings, meaning it will continue to attract many more views for months, if not, years to come, which nicely translates into more targeted visitors to your website via your YouTube links.

3. Converting more of your list subscribers into Facebook friends, so you can better interact with them and have a closer relationship.

It all works. Here’s proof. Have a look at the number of blog comments (42), YouTube video views (22,575), and Facebook friends (1,294) in the screenshots below:

Are you beginning to see the power of integrated social media marketing? The “Popeye Spinach” Effect is yours for exploitation. Use it, my friend. Use it!

5. ROI. Tweak, Tweak. ROI.

Your ROI is a critical important number. It doesn’t really matter if you have 5,000 “friends” on your Facebook profile, unless you can measure the ROI of your social media marketing efforts. How do those true friends or so-called friends impact your business?

Come up with your suitable standards. Measure. Tweak to improve, and then measure again. That way, you won’t be aimless.

Now go, and have some fun.

Aim for maximum impact through the strategic integration of your social media marketing efforts. Are we clear, my dear friends? If not, drop your questions, and the Social Media DJ will answer them.

If you enjoyed dancing to my beats, I urge you to stick around. You’ve only just seen the tip of the iceberg. And for those of you on Twitter, the Social Media DJ has just joined the party there. Add me @passionomics for more profitable meat.

See you at the Land of Tweets.

Lately, we’ve been pretty busy behind the scenes working on putting together something new and revolutionary.

I’ve already unveiled a great deal of this stuff at an exclusive, private event. However, some of the basic tricks were already published here in this blog.

In this post, you’ll find a list of those useful tricks compiled for your easy access.

Before we begin though, here’s just some of the feedback I’ve received about my social media marketing presentation at the private event in Napa, California.

And now for your reading pleasure… the following complied list. Everything from leveraging blogs strategically, to the basics of YouTube and Facebook marketing is included.

1. Succumbing to EVIL Shortcut-ish Temptations and Forgetting the “Social” In Social Media

2. Positioning, “Social Polarity” and Vibrant Blog Communities

3. Facebook Marketing: How Smart Restaurants and Bars are Using “Birthday Marketing” on Facebook

4. 7 Ways to Increase Your Blog Comments

5. Blog Marketing: Monetize The Comments On Your Blog

6. How to Get Traffic from Web 2.0 Sites like Digg, Reddit & StumbleUpon

7. How I Made A Dollar From Everyone Who Watched My YouTube Video

Remember, the above posts only cover the basics but they contain tips you can implement today to boost your website’s performance.

Look out for the complete system in early 2009 when it will be launching.

If you liked this post, we’d greatly appreciate a Stumble. Thanks.

If you’re running an online business, then you probably know the importance of productivity when you’re working in front of your screen. In this talk I share ideas that will help you become more efficient through task prioritization.

Size Doesn’t Matter?

It does. Here’s why.

A few weeks ago we started helping one of our partners set up a successful presence on Facebook. His name is Burt Goldman, The American Monk.

I’m guessing he’s probably the ONLY 81 year old monk with more than 1,000 true friends on the social network, which brings me to my story.

Owen Thomas, a blogger at Valleywag (the Silicon Valley version of Perez Hilton), a tech gossip blog, published an amusing post about The American Monk which cracked us up over here at MindValley Labs.

He did this after I quickly pitched him - and other tech bloggers - our unique Facebook story. We’ll take his post as a compliment. You can read it here.

The funny thing is (besides all the exaggerations of course), is that they’re implying Burt Goldman may not exist. After all, this is what you’d expect from an amusing tabloid-like blog. Well, I’ve got news for Valleywag. He’s real, and here’s a video of him celebrating his 81st birthday.

All in all, Owen’s post was a good read with amusing comments. Do check out Valleywag if you’d like to keep up with tech gossip and be entertained. It’s fun.

PS - Thanks for the exposure Owen. We appreciate it. Already, just from your post, we have people approaching us for advice on social media marketing.

Who knew that such a tiny, little addition - a small image to be precise - can have such a significant impact on sales?

Well, we certainly didn’t expect it, and that just goes to show the importance of split testing even the smallest tweaks.

Here is what we did.

One of our biggest websites is www.SilvaLifeSystem.com and below is how the top banner of the website looked BEFORE implementing the tweak.

This is it AFTER the tweak.

Spot the difference?

Adding the “McAfee Secure” seal boosted sales by an average of 15%.

The seal and the information it leads to when clicked seem to make a group of suspicious prospects more comfortable at making a purchase online.

Considering the positive impact it had, it’s clearly obvious that our $2,000 investment for the seal was very worthy.

If you’re making big revenues with your online business, a 15% boost in sales, or even just a small 5% boost will easily cover your costs and you can enjoy the ROI for months to come.

I do believe that boosts in conversion rates will vary depending on your target market though.

To certify your online business, all you need to do is make an application at the McAfee Secure site:

McAfee Secure web sites are certified as providing the highest level of protection for their shoppers.

Are you going to give it a try? What are you doing now to boost the confidence of those who are suspicious and still uncomfortable with buying from you?

Please share your insights with us.

Recently we published a post about how Kenneth created an impressive presence on Twitter and used it to raise $10K for his dowry.

There are some updates and clarifications that need to be shared.

1) Unfortunately, Kenneth and Laura didn’t make it to Zimbabwe in the end. They were flying to Zimbabwe by way of Thailand. But Visa transit issues at Thailand forced them back to Malaysia again. Apparently Thailand law required Laura to apply for a transit visa. So they were not allowed aboard their flight from Bangkok to Zimbabwe and had to return to Malaysia.

The good news is that they’re attempting another trip in December to settle things.

2) The $10k Kenneth made was not cash in hand. Twitter is not the best tool for affiliate marketing and immediate cash. It’s the ultimate tool for leads and finding JV partners. The $10K was the value of JV and consultancy offers Kenneth accumulated in the months to come.

3) The dowry is still far from being paid. The ritual is complicated and involves a whole series of steps. Moreover, depending on negotiations, it can go from 5 cows to cell phones, cars and even small houses. Kenneth can only determine the exact things and amount of money involved once he arrives there, but for now, the value of the dowry is a rough estimation. Phew! Marrying someone in Zimbabwe is tough. Where’s a Vegas drive-through chapel when you need one?

We wish the best of luck to Kenneth and Laura. Once the wedding happens, we might share a picture or two with you here!

In this video, Kenneth unveils his simple formula for a winning marketing angle. It’s powerful, yet nothing complicated.

The key to a winning sales angle is dominant emotion. Watch the video below to learn how to

1. find your prospect’s dominant emotion and
2. incorporate it into your marketing.

Click the link below to download an excellent article by Clayton Makepeace

• Are You a Direct Response Gazillionaire-In-Waiting?

This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

Lately we’ve been having fun testing some new cool social media marketing strategies here at MindVallley Labs.

Here’s what happened during this time.

Our very own Kenneth Yu needed to raise $10K for a 5-cow dowry to wed Laura, his beautiful Zimbabwean bride.

The dowry is an important tradition where Laura comes from.

Now, to come up with the money, Kenneth successfully managed to pull a cool stunt that revealed to us the true potential of Twitter as a powerful networking and money-making tool.

We’ve always known that Twitter is neat, but not THIS neat.

You’re About to Witness a Phenomenal Social Media Marketing Love Story - So Powerful, You Might Shed a Tear or Two!

Watch the two videos below to learn how Kenneth Twittered his way into raising $10,000 for the 5-cow dowry he badly needed to wed his Zimbabwean bride.

How K Twittered $10K for His 5 Cow Dowry (Part 1 of 2)

How K Twittered $10K for His 5 Cow Dowry (Part 2 of 2)

How did you like the videos? Please leave us your comments and feedback.

PS - Good luck raising money for your own dowry!

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