Viral Marketing Experts Don't Exist. Only "Consumer Mentors" do.

Visualization: How to FINALLY Use all your Business Intelligence

2009-01-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

As promised... once we get enough data from your users, THIS is what we can do. The business applications are endless as they are empowering...

Next: See

Why You Get Burnt By Your IPhone App Developer in NYC and LA

Twitter - Making Mild Mannered Reporters feel like Superman

2009-01-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

Google Indexes Your Gmail and Keeps Deleted Emails

2009-01-10T11:48:00.001-08:00

NOTE: First off, Let me say, Google is the ONLY company that REFUSED to hand over all of its email data to the Feds at Bush's Homeland Security. (Microsoft and Yahoo sheepishly turn away)... So the purpose of this email is NOT to be alarmist. I use gmail. I store personal information in Gmail. Gmail is probably the safest place to store your data.

Funny note about these pages... I couldn't find them in Google. I had to search YAHOO to find these pages! My Yahoo query: "spider gmail."

I know, I know... I've mentioned this tip once before in a compilation of techniques on how to get Google to love you. But this bears repeating because of how few web marketing professionals

A) knew about this

B) believe it even after being told!

"I think youve lost your mind"

"I think that your email comment is out to lunch"

"I seriously doubt google spiders the email..."

"never found anything so lame"

"May I have some of what you're smoking?
"Yeah - pass it around." - from: digitalpoint.com

Sure, nobody has all the answers. Google is constantly changing their algorithm. Facebook is constantly morphing. Youtube is constantly evolving. The web itself is a pubescent shape shifting living organism.

But one thing is for sure. If you think like the people who move and shake the internet, you too can move and shake the internet.

Oh, getting back to my original Google Tip. Get your URL and associated keywords in an email. Get that email to circulate into many many gmail inboxes. Your website WILL rise to Google stardom.

HOW? See: http://viral-expert.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-email-blast-grip-of-legit-opt-in.html

"Google doesnt need all to charge as much as others because Google leverages the value of the data on their servers to improve the algorithm" - digg: google spiders gmail

How to email blast a grip of legit opt-in addresses with google

2009-01-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

Building an email list takes time. Buying a list is a waste of money. Using a list you've bought is public relations suicide. So, if you want to email thousands of people without a single email address, how do you do it?

Simple. It only takes 24 hours to be in thousands of inboxes WITHOUT A SINGLE EMAIL ADDRESS. HOW?

It's called news.google.com

Google allows people with ANY EMAIL ADDRESS to SUBSCRIBE to news items based on key words. So... If you select a keyword and google news finds a news item with that key word in it, you'll automatically get a real-time email with that news item in your inbox.

Bloggers use this feature all the time to keep new fresh news pumping into the blogosphere.

So there are two benefits to getting into Google News. You automatically get dropped into potentially thousands of email inboxes AND many of the inboxes will belong to bloggers who will post your news item with a link to your site if it's news worthy.

So then. How do you get into News.Google.com?

That was covered in my last blog post. Click on "NEWS" in the key word tags below to find it...

PRWEB - How to get blogs to feature you and link to you

2009-01-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my last post, many NOT ALL of the most popular places you can put online comments are kevlar coated with a NOFOLLOW tag. This makes link building for Google love impossible in the comments field.

So, should you leave a comment and your url?

YES. If it is a relevant and valuable comment, YES. But since there is no link value ... do NOT make the link active. Active links in comments look spammy. Just say, "sparkah dot com." as if you really don't need anyone to visit your site. Ironically, more will come.

But that's not the topic here. Getting bloggers to blog about your site IS the topic. So how do you do it?

Exactly the same way the old news agencies got their storys to print in the papers, rags, and mags. DO A PRESS RELEASE.

Print and TV news outlets use Business Wire as their news source.

But since the advent of the blog, the fastest source of new is now PRWEB.com

. Remember, bloggers are famished, starving, ravenous for new and exciting stories to post on their blog. Give them something worth salivating over and you will get your hundreds of inbound links and content features.

BONUS!: If you use PRWEB and just pay for ONE STAR, you WILL show up in google news too!

Ask your questions and discuss press releases for web marketing at the viral marketing forum

Top Blogs and Websites with NOFOLLOW in comments

2009-01-08T09:38:00.001-08:00

In case you weren't aware, the more RELEVANT websites that link to your RELATED THEME website, the higher your ranking and visibility in Google. Taking advantage of this, comment spammers have broadly spammed the blogosphere with links to their website making tons of maintenance work for bloggers.

In an effort to stop this, google started a campaign to NOFOLLOW all blog and website comments. Here is a list of popular sites that may drive you traffic but not up the google wall.

Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia
Brad Fitzpatrick - LiveJournal
Dave Winer - Scripting News
Anil Dash - Six Apart
Steve Jenson - Blogger
Matt Mullenweg - WordPress
Stewart Butterfield - Flickr
Anthony Batt - Buzznet
David Czarnecki - blojsom
Rael Dornfest - Blosxom
Mike Torres - MSN Spaces
Ross Rader - Blogware
John Panzer - AOL Journals
Kevin Marks - of Technorati also added a draft formal spec for nofollow.
Reini Urban - PhpWiki
David Gorman - ModBlog
Arnab Nandi - Drupal
James Tauber - Leonardo
Jeremie Bouillon - points out a GPL plugin for Textpattern
Simon Brown - Pebble
Ilkka Huotari - Netdoc
Shaun Inman - ShortStat
Eaden McKee - bBlog
Yariv Habot - backBlog
John Lyons - enetation
Steven Roussey - Network54
Will Yardley - Dreambook
Samuel Klingen Daams - Travellerspoint

3 Google Algorithm Secrets that nobody believes!

2009-01-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

"I doubt massively that google spiders email - even googlemail."

"never found anything so lame!"

"May I have some of what you're smoking?
"Yeah - pass it around. LOL."

The above are the responses I've gotten from the SEO Experts around the world. For my first three Google contributions to the knowledge pool at digitalpoint forums. I just started there so in a show of good faith and value... I decided to hand over a few valuable factors in the GOOGLE HIVE.

For your benefit... here they are again...
1. Google spiders GMAIL for url links!
Why else would they give you unlimited storage. How else would they know what adsense ad to syndicate in your inbox?!?!

2. Google measures repeat click throughs on each IP session.
This means that if the same person googles the same keyword twice and clicks the same link twice... that gets you extra brownie points.

3. Google weighs each link from 1-10 on every page on a relative scale.
This means that if #10 gets as many Click Throughs as #1, then #10 moves to #1 slot. SO make your titles and descriptions tempting!

Taken from this DP thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=10283010

and: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1180831

For Secret tips 4-10... http://www.youtube.com/user/viralmarketingexpert

Continued: Top 10 Google Ranking Algorithm Secrets

Secret: How to be a Power DIGG Playa.

2009-01-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favorite simple secrets. If you go around making DIGG friends, it makes you look spammy and doesn't help your link popularity. So... what I do is wait. I wait for the next story to hit page one of digg.com and immediately make a funny comment. All the other diggers read my comment and make ME THEIR friend. It's the set the trap method.

see comment by hackingtravel:
http://digg.com/comics_animation/Tis_Hard_to_Pee_Straight_COMIC

Hidden Dangers of New Media Marketing and Viral Videos

2009-01-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

If you think that viral videos and new media marketing is just another medium of communication. You are fundamentally misguided. I recently explained the new media paradigm to a client and have produced a video of my presentation for you to see as well. I strongly recommend that everyone who was not born in the myspace generation watch this explanation of where media is going. For your own good.

WATCH: New Media Marketing and Viral Videos with Youtube.

PREQUEL:

Top 10 Google Adsense Tips and Secrets

2009-01-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

NEW! uploaded google adsense tips and secret video...

You ever notice how the more common sense something is, the more amazing it is on a list of secrets. If you can create a DUH!!! Factor, you've found a precious secret. So... In that spirit, I give you my most logical, common sense, DUH level google adsense tips and secrets. FYI, I am the holder of the all time engadget.com CTR for an advertiser. Ask Calacanis or Rojas about my 5% CTR.

Note: If you're planning on building an App, see:

Top 5 Ways You Get Burnt By Your IPhone App Developer in NYC and LA

Tip #1
Nobody likes ads. The last three times I clicked on a Google Ad, it was on ACCIDENT! I just clicked on a browser window behind another window and happened to click an ad! So... What you do, is what digg.com does. Put PICTURE ADS along the right side of your webpage. You'll get 400% more accidental clicks!

Tip #2
Create a community like a phpbb3 forum like MINE: http://sparkah.com and do something almost evil. Put the adsense ads in the most CLICKED ZONES of the forum. Next to the "POST REPLY" bottons. People with dirty mouse balls or a high BAC will click an ad 500% more frequently.

Tip #3
Create a community like a phpbb3 forum. People will support robin hoods. You give away secrets for free and they WILL CLICK your ads to thank you... You give away secrets for free

and they WILL CLICK your ads to thank you... You give away secrets for free and they WILL CLICK your ads to thank you...

Tip #4
Offer free shizah on a nude simple page that says, "Here is your free blah. Thank You for SUPPORTING my website so I can get you MORE FREE SHIZAH!" see: http://koreanovernight.com/free-korean-language-mp3.html

Tip #5
Create websites that attract high dollar click throughs. You realize that every ad will yield you a different payout when clicked on your site. There are ads that will pay you 10 cents. Then there are ads that will pay you $35 PER CLICK!!! So... pick your battles carefully. A website about ferns will earn you pennies per click but you'll have no competition and an easy time getting to Google's Page 1. A website about cell phones will get you $5 per click but you'll have a hard time competing with the big boys out there.

Tip #6
Encourage comments and responses from the members of you PHPBB3 COMMUNITY! Every comment they make is another billboard for your adsense ads AND if you use links in the template, you'll get bonus link popularity that will quickly take you to google's page 1 again.

Tip #7
Start a youtube channel. Google Owns Youtube. Did you ever notice that when Google bought blogger, all sorts of blogspot blogs showed up on page one under every manner of query. Hint... Hint...

Tip #8
See tip #3

Tip #9
Join my marketing forum at journik.com. I'll tell you more later.

Tip #10
Start an ELGG Social Network. Every single new member dynamically creates dozens of new pages and every comment or blogpost can make hundreds of new pages for your adsense code to replicate like a bad rash.

Ask questions and chip with with your own tips at

http://www.journik.com/community/pg/groups/292/web-design-and-web-marketing-forum/

How and Where to put adsense code in PHPBB 3 Forum Posts

2009-01-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

First of all, If you know even a little bit of HTML you can just go into google.com/adsense and copy paste your code into the new PHPBB code. EASY! All you have to do is get the styles/prosilver/template/viewtopic_body.html file

and paste the code just above BOTH "POSTREPLY" buttons... see:
http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10

WHY ONLY THERE?
0. because it looks tacky to have them in the home page and discourages new members.
1. because any more and it looks spammy.
2. because the POSTREPLY buttons are the most clicked in a forum... the highest likelihood that an ad will get clicked if they miss, is in the immediate viscinity.

What about a side bar?
A side bar skyscraper is useful BUT not better or more effective than two banners. I've done the comparisons on the CTR click through ratios. In some cases, they side bar IS more effective but largely due to a user clicking your site window to bring it to the front when obscured by another window. But this CT generally just annoys people. So stick with this. I'll show you my code here...

Removing Adsense User. How Do I remove an email address from Adsense

2009-01-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

This is really confusing. If you go into the support section of adsense, You will see all users with access to your account. If you see an email address that you want to remove... in my case it was because the email address was an old email address that someone else uses now... there is no link that says, REMOVE ACCESS in Adsense!

Emailing adsense-support at google gets you NO RESPONSE.

So... what do you do? Simple.

You go into your Google Adwords account and under the ACCOUNTS tab, you remove it there. Simple huh? OK So now, if you want my best secrets of how to market on the web with viral marketing strategies... without spending hundreds on adsense, see the my Google Adsense Adwords Secrets video.

Shocking Volkswagen Viral Video - VW Suicide Bomber

2009-01-05T17:05:00.001-08:00

So VW claims this was an unauthorize work by two creatives trying to make a name for themselves, Lee and Dan in London, at the expense of VW's sterling reputation. According to the Guardian UK, the creative team claims to have spent 40,000 GBP but will not disclose the source of their funding. Once tracked down, the director of the project, Stuart Fryer argued that the cost was closer to 400,000 GBP.

After stating that Volkswagen was pursuing legal action to claim damages for PR reasons, they state that they cannot find the two original film makers at leeanddan.com .

What does this tell you? To ask questions of discuss the strategic application of this approach for your own campaign, see me at http://sparkah.com !

Digg.com KOSHER Gaming. How to get to Digg's home page

2009-01-04T16:57:00.000-08:00

Getting to Digg.com's front page is neither and art nor a spammy black hat trick. The best way to get to Digg.com's home page is the most valuable way. What I mean by that is that you will have to get a subscription to several DIGG CELEB sites ... ESPECIALLY news.google.com. You'll see why when you watch the video. Gaming Digg Video How To

To discuss this post and ask questions... Gaming Digg: http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5

The Truth about Google Adwords and Adsense Web Marketing by a Dangerous Viral Marketing Expert

2009-01-02T14:20:00.001-08:00

Here's the truth. Adwords Adsense are not viral in nature. They are strictly a linear means of converting a marketing dollar into a profit dollar. This is fundamentally against my entire philosophy of killing flocks of birds with one stone then having that stone fall into a pond and kill every coy in that pond too. Then having all the frogs die because ... well.. you get the picture.

BUT Adwords and Adsense are absolutely necessary as a part of your entire marketing blend. WHY? for nothing more than budgetary benchmarking. If you spend 5 dollars per click through with adsense, and it took 200 cts to generate a sale, now you know that it costs $1000 per sale with an Adsense bench mark.

BUT BUT BUT. You also know how much your competitor is spending! That would be the guy that is one notch higher than you are for the same search result. We can take this competitive business intelligence and leverage it to make marketing extremely painful and expensive for your competitor. Then we take the same data and make it half as costly to generate the same sale... How? well... Let's Talk... see me at GOOGLE ADWORDS and ADSENSE DISCUSSION

How to elicit personal demographic data willingly for Business Intelligence

2009-01-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

First of all, lets imagine you are a fortune 1000 ceo or cxo. You can skip the next couple of paragraphs. For everyone else, YOU MUST understand the import of collecting sensitive personal private demographic data for the purpose of targeting your relationship management strategies. Ugh. That sounded really collegiate! In anycase, we are working on the assumption that you now have USERS of your website and not VISITORS as per the last post... OK here goes....

If you understand how old and where a registered user of your website lives, then you will be able to custom target location based marketing and or educational programs for them. Here's an example, lets say you sell ankle splints. Since this is day one of the new year and I am hanging out in Library Square Bar in Vancouver, there are tons of people slipping and spraining their ankles here.

Since you are an intuitive genius, you know where I'm going with this. If you have demographic data including location and age, you will be able to target your messages to maximize relevancy and minimize invasive advertising. You will only send a special slip fall email to the members of your website who live in vancouver, seattle, ottowa, the new england states, etc.

Lets imagine you own a chain of psychology clinics. If there is a traumatic event in a part of colorado, you will be able to pinpoint the members of your website who live local to that even and ask for their participation in calling the local news agencies to set up a televised support session.

YOU MUST KNOW every personal detail about your users as you can.

HOW to elicit personal demographic data willingly, the best practices.

OK, all you big wig CEO's who get million dollar severances can tune back in. Never, never, never require personal demographic data without a direct EXPLICITLY DIRECT benefit for the user. You cannot build confidence in your self, website, agenda, etc by making your market feel compromised for something they want. In otherwise... NEVER say, "give me your email address and I will give you a treasure map to your dream car."

The kosher version of this is, "Give me your email address so that I can tell you when I am done with my blog post that will show you where to get your treasure map to your dream car."

YOU MUST SHOW direct relevancy.

If you ask for age and gender, make it a no brainer for your website members to see how it benefits them. How could surrendering age and gender possibly benefit a user. What is the most priceless thing for most humans? A passionate relationship! In the same way a dating website makes it clear that age and gender divulsion will help you get laid, in a niche industry, if there are women here online... I want to know how old they are and I want them to know how old I am. This is the most gutteral example I could think of. But the principle remains. Make every piece of data you ask for DIRECTLY of valuable to your websites' user base.

One more example so you get the import of this issue. Even if you have a website on... oh, i dont know... selling car parts. You want location information because maybe you will find that you have a strong concentration of users in the San Diego Area. Well... you would be smart to use that information to host a private site members only hosted bar party after the San Diego Auto Show.

But since you asked where your members live, They must see that if there is ANOTHER 1976 Camero fan anywhere within 60 miles of them, by revealing their own address, they have access to the 1976 camero club. Imagine if there was a 29 year old tall bombshell in Del Mar, CA who needed your extra camero radiator AND help installing it!

You MUST follow the policy: "If its good for the goose its good for the gander!" Make every piece of data that will pinpoint your marketing efforts and dollars intrinsically beneficial to the person submitting that data.

Now, you can create an empire.

This data is best requested and recorded via a software called ELGG. It's free. For help installing it from a elgg installer or elgg programmer... which may cost a few pennies... ask your questions at http://sparkah.com

Questions or comments about data mining and elgg??? http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10

How to collect online demographic data willingly

2009-01-01T13:12:00.000-08:00

So far, we've established in our last blog posts how to begin architecting a web viral marketing strategy. You will notice that we haven't even touched content development or marketing creative. This is because your infrastructure must be in place before you spend a single penny on the actualy marketing pieces.

Before we get too far. You and I both know that since you have a collection of email addresses, you really should put it to good use. Make sure that you do NOT use these email addesses for anything self serving YET! I MEAN IT! NOTHING!

Each email must only deliver the promised notice of a new educational or entertainment series on the related to the market you are targeting. Basically, what we are doing is creating the most friendly open free range mulching grounds.

Then, at a rate of about 2x a month, offer valuable unique NON SELF SERVING EMAILS. What ever your industry, i'm sure that you have some tidbit that will make you look like a benevalent omnicient oracle. Give value in short emails.

Once you have over 2000 email addresses where you have built up a strong credibility base and good will. You can now start collecting the truly valuable online demographic data. Install an open source facebook clone web appplication called elgg. With elgg... you will be able to get your users to get YOU each other's demographic data.

In other words, two users will communicate about a video or how to doc or blog post or email you sent out. One user will ask another user what his/her real name is, age, location, etc. And now that they are grazing on your fields, you become the defacto beneficiary of all this valuable data.

But dont get me wrong. For a long term success, you must never fleece your citizenry. Even when you milk them, make sure they enjoy it. I'll explain how to build in mutually beneficial ecosystems online next...

To ask questions about collecting demographic data and why: http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9

Gathering demographic and personal contact data from subscribers

2009-01-01T12:47:00.001-08:00

Now that you know where to start your viral marketing architecture... you go where there are the most fish and fewest fishermen (huh? see last blogpost) how do you grease personal information from each of your nameless, faceless, placeless subscribers and website visitors?

You already know why it is crucial to have a personal relationship with each visitor from the first post here.

Without boring you with the database application and business intelligence mining applications of what I'm about to tell you, hang on, if you dont already know why you will need the following data.

In order of easiest to gather to hardest to gather, the data you will need from each visitor is,

sex

country

state

city

birth year
birth month

birth date

real name

phone number

credit card number

email addresses of friends

location of friends

If you are not a hard seasoned veteran business school exec, all of this information may seem invasive. You aint seen nuttin yet.

Even before we get most of this information, we will have the name of each visitor's ISP, web browsing habits, know what website they went to after they leave yours, every single time each person visits and for how long each time. We will know what size monitor they have, what OS they are running, and if they are on a PC, MAC or LINUX box.

Heck, we will even know if they are visiting your site from within a cubicle during their officing hours. Believe me. You will have to know all this data to maximize your marketing success likelihood. I will explain the beauty of BI data mining to pinpoint marketing a bit later.

For now... since the easiest contact data to gather is an email address... Start a groups.google.com account. DO NOT USE YAHOO. Yahoo breaks the url link tags making it hard for google to find you. If you use google, well, it wont be so tough for google to find you.

Now... how do you get people to give up their email address? It's called BONUSES and NOT Bait and Switch. An example of bait and switch is when you create an ongoing series of how to blog posts like these and then when we get to the climax, I require that you enter your email for the last key blog post. THAT is not cool.

You want to build rapport and support. NOT an adversarial relationship. So... what you do is deliver value consistently as promised. Whatever you are selling or marketing, ask yourself why you feel what you do is valuable. Then talk about it in a way that is entertaining, valuable, and memorable to your market. Finally, when you are done with a series on a topic, simply say,

"To be notified directly to your personal email when we begin our next series, Please go to mysite.com"

Be direct about requiring their email address. Being shy about it makes you look sneaky. Now lets talk about how to gather the other key personal information and why it is crucial to yourviral marketing success.

To ask questions: http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8

Bullet Proof Viral Marketing Architecture for FREE

2009-01-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

Ok... so now that you know how important collecting personal information from each of the anon subscribers and visitors that hit your website or youtube from around the world, lets talk about how to do this... FREE.

Personally, I actually recommend the free solutions regardless of the size of your pocket book. This is because all the free solutions are owned by google and are directly tied into google's vast network and database of users.

This is to say that IF you choose a personal enterprise equivalent to anything I'm about to tell you... you may have a few more bells and whoopie whistles... BUT SORRY... you'll be belling and whistling in the middle of a dessert where there are no roads leading to you.

So... I dont know if you've been observant enough to notice what I am doing with my own consulting site structure. Let me lay it out for you.

The highest viewer to content producer ratio on the internet right now is YOUTUBE. Think about it. Why blog if a million people blog daily but only three people read blogs a day. Didn't use to be that way... See http://www.engadget.com it was one of the first tech blogs. Now, it makes many thousands of dollars every DAY!

Now, the tide is in youtube's favor. Few people have video cameras. Even fewer have anything interesting to say. And even fewer can say it entertainingly. So. I always go where the allegorical male-female ration is in my favor. I start with youtube.

BUT... now... how do I build my own web and create personal relationships with all these anon subscribers, AND collect personal contact / demographic data?

To ask questions about this post use the viral marketing forum: http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7

First rule of web viral marketing. Create your own interwebs.

2009-01-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is rule number one. In order for you to have maximum success potential on any and all web marketing campaign, you MUST create your own interwebs.

I know. Thats a dumb word. But if you dont, you are even dumberer.

This is why. If you amass a million subscribers in youtube, get to page one of google under any and all key words, have a huge network of friends in digg, but don't have your very own intimate relationship with the people you've build into following you, then you are dating the most sexy person in the world through a surrogate and proxy.

Think about it. You have all these people. You have all these relationships. BUT do you know anyone's real name? Anyone's real geographic location? Demographic? What about a simple email address?

This is all 100% ABSOLUTELY important. If google changes it's algorythm, youtube disables viewer hijacking, and digg shuts you out for being a spammer... what do you have left?

So then how to gather personal contact information from your subscribers? Let see...
To ask questions about this post see: http://sparkah.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6