Mass Control - The Mass Influence of Frank Kern
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 Quick Video Marketing Report |
After having a week to reflect on everything I observed at Frank Kern’s Mass Control 2.0 seminar in San Diego, it’s pretty easy to see how influential Frank is to his audience — not a new revelation, but something deeper struck me.
Not only does his following hang onto his every word when he dishes out strategy (of course, in a highly entertaining way), but the ones serious about it go out into the world and make it happen.
That was the common theme amongst those who, like me, attended both last year and again this year. If you “get it”, you know it’s not all that difficult, but you have to take action. I can go ahead and re-phrase that statement in about six different ways, but here’s the bottom line…take action.
My favorite example of this is my good buddy, Jeff “Herschy” Schwerdt. In two years of pedal to the metal, no messing around fashion, he’s managed to generate over 1 million dollars. Overnight success…luck…I don’t think so. The dude doesn’t play. He straight up makes things happen. (THEN he goes and parties like a rockstar…and he doesn’t mess around there either LOL)
Anyway, he’s Frank Kern’s protégé and delivers in a way that makes Frank proud. Check out the awesome, 40 page report he put together on how he went from having his dream career as an F-16 Fighter Pilot and Instructor torn away from him, to where he stands today as the go-to guy when it comes to using video online.
Do-it-yourself Consumer Warning
With the mindless talking heads spreading frightful thoughts of swine flu, I thought this picture was both funny and relevant to the times 
Don't make out with the medical staff from the Twilight Zone, "The Eye of the Beholder", and you'll be good.
The Economy of Fear
 photo by Julie Lindsay |
Welcome to the Great Anxiety (not the new Depression). It’s no secret that were facing a serious economic situation throughout the country, with global repercussions.
A lot of fingers can be pointed in a lot of different places for total and what got us here. But none of that matters, to be honest. What matters is recovery, IMHO.
In order for there to be financial security, we must come from a place of stability. And herein lies the heart of the matter. How can we expect to get to that place a financial security when every media outlet is crying like Chicken Little that the sky is falling?
While I’m not one to point fingers at who started this mess, I am happy to point out that the media and politicians love the attention of a crisis. Kind of like how you get suckered into reading the headlines of those trashy tabloids that you see while you’re in line at the grocery store. Our media and politicians aren’t much classier.
The point is that there were not in a great place economically, or financially, we’re not going to turn things around if we continue to pay attention to all the fear that the would-be puppet masters are trying to inject.
How come no one has pointed out that (the basic economic ideal) of buy low? Wouldn’t that mean that opportunities are a plenty for the bold and the brave? Instead, we hear rants of how things are just getting worse.
What do you think would happen if there was a bit more consumer confidence? Meaning, those who still have their jobs, haven’t lost or still have time to build their retirement savings went about things, as normal – Not with fear of financial doom lurking in their subconscious?
Perhaps they would buy a few more gifts and/or services for their friends or loved ones, or they would treat themselves to a tree here or there. All the while, if you small businesses rack up a few extra sales. While it might not sound like much, never underestimate the power of compounding — meaning role this scenario out to a large-scale and we would already have some financial turn around, as small businesses may have healthy enough margins to cutback on cutting back, and perhaps even grow a bit. This, my friends, is economic stimulus and our ticket out of this down economy.
As simple as this sounds, it is very real. I hold the media and many of our appointed government officials responsible for this mass injection of fear and the downfall in consumer confidence, ensuring continued ratings and headlines for them, and tough times of struggle for the average person.
So, turn off the TV, stop reading the headlines, and get back to doing the things that you would do if we weren’t all stricken with anxiety. And for the risk-takers out there, opportunity is always around, just keep your eyeballs open.
You give salesmanship a bad name
No, this post is not nearly as much about Slippery When Wet era Bon Jovi as the above title might almost indicate.
What I do want to focus on is a general world view that’s held by many in our society, related to business. See, recently a friend of mine referenced me in his blog post and joked about my inherent salesmanship. Interestingly enough, that kind of struck a curiosity chord with me, as I’ve never held an official sales capacity in my entire stint in corporate America, used car sales aside. (I mean, I surely didn’t think the heinous 3 months during summer break of my early college years when I worked at a used car lot would haunt my into my 30’s…and let’s hope that wasn’t what he was talking about.) 
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| photo by rick |
It was interesting to me, because I realized that to the people who know me - my coaching clients, good friends and colleagues I mastermind with - I am a salesman. I’m an idea person…and I’m always winning people over with new ideas. I pitch suggestions, ways to improve results, efficiencies, boost traffic, conversions, training methodologies, better branding, yada yada.
While I would admit to my enthusiasm over these topics, I just never thought of it as selling.
Which is the main purpose behind today’s triumphant return to the blogosphere after working covertly on other projects for the past few months, neglecting ole’ TZ.com.
Every communication we have with anyone and everyone is selling of some sort. When we were kids, we had to sell yourself as someone fun, cool or exciting to hang out with in order to make friends. To our parents, teachers and other authority figures, we had to sell the idea that we were responsible, trustworthy, respectful. When we met someone of the opposite sex, we had to sell the idea that we were interesting, good looking and whatever else thought it was they were looking for.
And so it goes, throughout life…at job interviews, at daily/weekly meetings, at social gatherings and family events. We’re always selling something…an idea, a message, a persona. What’s being sold is at minimum, what we’re about and how we’d like to be perceived. Usually it’s more than that, but never less.
So, why is the sound of “salesman” (or if I was trying to be PC — “salesperson”) like nails on a chalkboard to many of our ears? Simply, it’s how we’ve been conditioned by being whacked over the head by too many lousy salesmen who use ineffective, in-your-face, overt selling strategies on us, in a commercial heavy society. That’s why. If more people learned to sell in a manner that was congruent with their personality (ala Frank Kern — an absolute master of this strategy), selling would come off as natural, much more powerful and with much less disdain from those being sold to.
But, just think about the core of what “selling” is really about, and you just may have a new found appreciation for sales (if you didn’t already)…and just maybe, even realize that it’s a crucial success skill for anyone who would like to get what they want out of this invigorating world we live in.
Thanksgiving is for turkeys
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Alright…before you peg me as some ungrateful fool, I just want to clarify the title of this post, on this day of celebrating thanks in the US.
First off, I love turkeys! They’re entertaining when they gobble and taste great!!
But in all seriousness, Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday (and I’ve found myself telling a bunch of people this story already, as I’ve felt obligated). I like it so much for a very simple reason…the basic meaning behind it - be thankful for what you have. And when you really do think about all there is to be thankful for, it’s overwhelming, no matter if you’re in a good place or striving for more.
What a tingling message on this special day. What a great way to feel good about life, the people in your life, the places, experiences and things that give (and have given) you happiness and inspire you to have more to share.
The only question I have is…
Why Do We Only Do This Once a Year?
Why not wake up and go to bed and give thanks for the beautiful things that enrich your life, each and every day? There’s no rule saying you can’t….in fact, many very successful (and by “successful” I mean people who are happy, fulfilled and satisfied by life) make a habit, a ritual, a practice of visualizing all of the things they’re grateful for on a daily basis. I encourage you to give it a try; if nothing else it will brighten your day.
Top 10 Things I’m Thankful For:
- My wonderful, beautiful, funny and awesome wife, Monica!
- My small (but incredible) circle of close friends
- My mentors and teachers
- My family - Zayas’, Faia’s, Patryn’s, Scaffide’s and the rest
- My country
- Rock music
- Good health
- Laughs
- The ability to hold a memory close
- Turkeys
Follow me on Twitter and see what I’m up to!
Psychological Triggers and Survival
Take this political season, for instance. A bit further out, candidates were focusing on a variety of issues and their respective takes and proposed plans…la-di-da. Within the past month or so, we’ve seen the focus shift towards one thing: The Economy. Why? Well, the mortgage companies provided tremendous fodder for this huge shift, but Bill Clinton did the same thing when he ran against Bush 41 in ‘93 - “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Of course the economy is important, especially in the midst of a global financial meltdown. But, the real reason it’s effective for politicians to talk about the economy is because it can be used to induce psychological triggers that either a) remove pain and increase pleasure (i.e. promises of a brighter future, turn the economy around, take care of the working class, etc.) OR triggers can be used to anchor the politicians opponent to the opposite b) increase pain and remove pleasure (i.e. suggesting that opponent will raise taxes, get the country into costly and dangerous conflicts, spend on unnecessary programs). Effectively moving voters either closer to comfort or away from comfort.
Pain vs. Pleasure - It comes down to emotion.
Human instinct is based on emotion. That’s why pain and pleasure is so important to us. We either want to move away from pain, or towards pleasure. And most of the time, we’d be more proactive in staying away from pain than from getting pleasure, especially if getting involves some work!
But the bottom line is that we all, at a very core level, think the same way. We make decisions based on emotion, then justify them with reason. Comfort can often be a crutch, an excuse, so you have to tread carefully.
To me, this is what makes the study of psychology, marketing, influence and persuasion all so interesting. There really are formulas to tap into that work like clockwork once you understand how to apply them.
I’ll leave it at that for now, but let’s just say that part 2 of this post is coming soon - the piece that any one of us can implement to help break these triggers, break out of their comfort zone and get so much more done in a day. We’ll discuss this success principle can make you a bundle, done correctly, and how, if not followed, the same principle can break you…especially in the world of web 2.0 marketing where there’s a ton of busy work at any given time that can be done.
Video Podcasting To Improve Branding, Search Engine Rankings and Traffic Generation
As YouTube is currently listed as the #3 most visited site on Internet, grabbing just under 20% of global Internet users per day (according to Alexa.com), it should come as no surprise that video has revolutionized the way communication occurs online. The power of video lies in that it allows video publishers to form powerful relationships with their visitors, as it is possibly the next best thing to direct, in-person communication, arguably even more so than talking over the telephone. Though such obvious benefit of utilizing video online is easily understood, many often overlook the various distribution models, including perhaps the most effective yet underutilized method for video syndication — video podcasting, also know as vidcasting.
Easy Video Syndication
In today’s world of rapidly emerging hand held technology, video is easy enough to capture with simple, yet decent quality producing devices such as mobile phones and digital cameras, in addition to more traditional methods, such as camcorders and webcams. Once created, these informative, persuasive or personal videos can be easily hosted through video sharing sites, such as YouTube, Google Video, Viddler, Veoh, Yahoo Video and Revver to name just a few services that will host and stream video.
But while all of these sharing sites are a great way to syndicate content, video podcasting has it’s own unique benefits that go beyond what streaming video offers, such as the ability for viewers to watch podcast episodes on their hand held devices such as their iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry or one of the many other video enabled mobile phones, or through their computer via a podcast aggregator, with the ultra popular Apple iTunes as the most prevalent example. Viewers can subscribe to a video (or audio) podcast, in which case viewers will be automatically notified of subsequent episodes, thus creating a powerful relationship and branding opportunity for publishers. Video podcasting is allowing anyone with basic video capability the ability to create what essentially equates to free Internet TV shows.
Boost Your Search Engine Rankings
The search engines aren’t ignoring the fact that video is a hot commodity online. In fact, videos hosted at sharing sites such as the Google-owned YouTube, tend to get indexed with the search engines with staggering quickness. It isn’t uncommon to see videos ranking in the top pages of the search engine rankings for relative keyword searches, and this is sometimes seen within hours after the video is uploaded. Though Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others are working on technology to interpret video content and rank accordingly, it’s important for video publishers to include descriptive, keyword-rich titles and summaries for their videos, as this is how videos are getting picked up by the search engines. Once again, video podcasts up the ante, as podcasts are being picked up in record time by Google and the other search engines. Podcasts have been seen indexed and shown in Google search results in less than 4 minutes!
Increase traffic and subscribers
High rankings in the search engines and widespread distribution means more visitors for the video podcaster, which leads to more exposure and subscribers. In turn, podcast publishers can build strong relationships and brand themselves as experts in their given field to a larger number of higher-quality audience than ever before. Podcast directories such as Podcast Alley, are becoming more popular to increase exposure, making podcasts even easier to find.
For those who mind find this exciting, yet a bit intimidating, take comfort in knowing that there are plenty of free tools and resources that are making video podcasting easier and easier. A great example is the free WordPress plugin, PodPress, which makes creating a video podcast a snap for bloggers.
Though video podcasting has been supported in some way, shape or form since version 4.9 of iTunes, video podcasting is still perceived as relatively new, so there is still opportunity to gain first-mover advantage and benefit from everything else that video podcasting offers!
Getting Onto Page 1 of Google
I’ve recently presented information on social media marketing to a few groups of entrepreneurs. I was very pleased with how well it was received, so I’ve decided to share the fundamental concepts in the video below.
It’s about an hour and twenty minutes, so grab a cold beverage, some snacks, a note pad and enjoy! 
Picking Your Niche
There are varying opinions when it comes to niche marketing: Some say pick a unique niche and become the authority, while others will argue that there’s a piece of the pie in the huge, competitive markets, for everybody willing to put the work in.
The huge markets are generally considered to be health, wealth and relationships. Niche markets would be anything that doesn’t fit into one of those.
No matter what you choose, do your research and make sure you have buyers in the market you choose…and that there are enough of them to sustain your business if you go for a small niche.
Here is some helpful additional reading:
Internet Marketing - Quick Start Tips
Choosing your niche is a key element in the success of Internet marketing companies. In fact, you should be very careful in ensuring that & 39; they are both a necessity and a significant number of people who want the product or & 39; …
How Important Is Picking A Niche?
More importantly, are they WILLING to spend it? If there is a lot of free info on the subject, maybe not. So yes, it is important to pick a niche that has a demand and lots of hungry buyers willing to dig into their wallets. …
How to know if the niche market has buyers.
Many newbie marketers know that they must pick a niche market to target when they want to launch their internet business. They know the market must has a lot of passionate people that are seriously crazy about the market and anything in …
Leveraging Social Media for your Business
Ads are dead. Think about it: Few pay much attention to Adwords ads, banner ads induce some type of instant blinder effect where the reader is physically incapable of looking at the ad, pop up ads are more annoying than gnats on a muggy hot summer night, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to put some of my friends emails in my spam folder…so imagine how we feel about email marketing!
Okay, okay…so I’m over exaggerating it a bit. But there is plenty of truth to all of those points. The greater point I’m getting to is that you and your business needs to stop advertising and start getting involved in the conversation!
Social media is growing at a ridiculous pace, literally taking over the Internet. Get involved, show your chops and offer some advice, become a contributing part of the community and people will listen (and buy)!
Here is some helpful info on getting your business on board in the social media landscape:
Social Media Test: Find the Holy Grail - Advertising 2.0 …
For all the social media marketers out there you need watch this video. Why because of all the noice out there in social media this video panel discussion is the most relevevant information for you. …
Still Doing Press Releases The Traditional Way?, Consider Social …
PRWeb kind of pioneered the use of SEO in press releases, complimenting the traditional distribution mechanisms. Countless marketers(including myself) and companies benefited from this service. Today, PRWeb and many other release …
Successful social media marketing (SMM) campaigns will likely be a key catalyst i for a small to medium sized business to grow their business strategy. Without a great deal of expense, and if implemented correctly, it will increase …
How Social Media Can Help Your Small Business
Laura Spencer at Business and Blogging shares the story of Tracey Lee Wallace, a web developer who lost internet access. She accessed Twitter, a microblogging social media tool (using her Blackberry) and vented her frustration leaving a …