In this week’s episode of “Inside the Mind“, we talk about The Perfect Landing Page Copy.

If you like these videos consider subscribing and leave a comment letting me know what you’d like to see covered in future episodes!

In this week’s episode of “Inside the Mind“, we talk about The Perfect Landing Page Design.

If you like these videos consider subscribing and leave a comment letting me know what you’d like to see covered in future episodes!

In last weeks episode we talked about how to make a sale using social media…

Then it occurred to me, we’ve talked about sales, networking, strategy, content development, and key performance indicators but we haven’t talked about one of the most important pieces in this equation which is Landing Pages. The glue that holds this whole online marketing business together.

So we’re going to Tarentino this motha fluffa and work backwards, in part 1 of this special two part guide to landing pages.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn about different design techniques that go into a compelling landing page, why they work, and why these pages need to have your utmost attention.

(little tommy on shoulder) But wait, can’t I just use my regular blog pages to sell stuff?

Well Little Tommy, let’s look at this from your customer’s perspective.

(v.o) Say you’re involved in a back channel chat on twitter. For this example we’ll just say it’s a chat about twitter tips and you’ve just happened to write an ebook on the subject. And in this chat,  you’re on FIRE. I mean you’re giving super actionable advice left and right, and like every other tweet you come out with gets retweeted by at least 10-20 people.

Well it’s inevitable that someone will think what you’re saying is spot on, so they’ll go to your profile to click over to your website.

(Split Screen one side Big Tommy and Little Tommy)
Now in one scenario, they go directly to your homepage, which is kind of generic and untargeted, so they might look at for a total of 20 seconds before they go back to the chat.  and in another scenario they go to a specialized landing page that acknowledges they’re coming from twitter, gives a little background behind who you are, what you do, and your most recent project which happens to be… an ebook on twitter tips.

(little Tommy) Ohhhh

(full screen big and little tommy)
It’s at this point the person makes a critical decision, do I buy the book? or do I go away?

And while you could argue there are a number of factors that go into this decision,(little tommy jumps off shoulder and off screen) the design of your landing page has a lot to do with it.

Now while there are no hard and fast “rules” when it comes to designing your landing pages you must remember that they are used to focus the visitors attention, present a high degree of message match and gently guide your users toward their goals with as few negative barriers as possible. (text overlay)

Elements like a strong logo can make a significant impact on whether a person can trust you with their credit card number or email address.

Headlines being one of the first things people read, should not confuse or bore, but invite the visitor to take a closer look. Depending on what your landing page is about, try playing with different fonts to come up with something that accurately reflects the message.

Trust symbols like third party verification or better business beauru logos indicate that you’ve been verified to be secure. Companies like ACLens saw a 41% increase in conversions once they started using Verisign in a highly visible location on the page.

While we’ll talk more about content in next weeks episode, the content has to be there in order for people to learn more about the product. If you skimp on the content you’re sure to lose conversions. Things like product descriptions, testimonials or reviews, and guarantees are all big factors in gaining the trust necessary to hand over a credit card or email address..

Make sure too that your videos and images reinforce the wording of the page. Also including video of customer testimonials or reviews, can have a really positive impact on viewers, because when you think about it, you can fake text, but it’s really hard to fake being someone else over video.

And finally – A strong call to action should always stand out on the page, and be above the fold. Also, depending on what sort of information you’re looking for, your call to action might be above your button, or the button itself.

Orange or Yellow buttons do a very good job at catching viewers eyes.

(Little Tommy) Yeah yeah, but what about colors? How do I know what I want my color scheme to be?

Great question Little Tommy!

There have been various tests showing that people associate colors with different feelings, so depending on what you plan on using the landing page for, will widely depend on what color scheme you use.

Black for example is viewed as powerful and sleek, while pink is seen as romantic and feminine…

I won’t bore you with all the details on that, you can just follow the link in the description to read a great article on the subject.

(Little Tommy) ok and what about some of the more advanced stuff?

Ok, so if you’re selling a product, show the product. Seems to make sense, but there’s still a ton of companies that fail to do this.

Let’s take a look at blackberry for example, while their website is beautifully designed, there is very little here that shows their new pho…oh wait there it is… oh it’s gone… there’s nothing here that gives me a look at what the product actually is, and they’re making me look harder to learn more about the newest device.

Apple on the other hand shows me the iphone 4s front and center, and two out of three of the images here show me the improvements of this generation of iphone over the others.

(little tommy) Ohhhh I get it! What else?

Derek over at social triggers turned me onto these three concepts:

He says:

As smart as we human beings are, we can’t resist certain urges, and three of those urges are as follows:

1. People can’t resist following the gaze of other people
2. People can’t resist seeing where an arrow points
3. People can’t resist following the “line of sight” of objects

In this first example, you can see that the people are looking towards the opt in area which instantly draws your eyes over to that spot. They also make it very clear through the design that all you have to do is enter your email address, then click the button.

Next, people not being able to resist seeing where an arrow points is also very true. Granted, using arrows is about as subtle as a punch in the face, but it also visually tells your visitor to ignore everything else, and look here. You see this quite a bit on Facebook landing pages to call attention to the like button.

people can’t resist following the line of sight of objects is also very truel. In Derek’s article on social triggers, he shows this image of a baby looking at the headline, then points out that the baby’s chin also acts as a subtle arrow to the rest of the text.

When this same image was run through eye tracking software, a study found that a viewers eyes were first naturally drawn to the baby’s face, then moved in to a sort of F pattern towards the call to action.

Mega affiliate marketer Ryan Diess has also found that heavy use of “Line of sight” and natural reading patterns has become one of his top converting landing page designs.

In this example he starts with a strong headline, then an image of the product right next to it.
Then he inturrupts your eye pattern with an opt in box, brings your eye to the side of the page with the video and image, the brings it all the way to the bottom of the page with another opt-in box.

(Little Tommy) Woah… that’s a lot to take in…

Yeah, it sure is. There’s a whole segment of the market that is dedicated to Landing page optimization, because there’s a lot that can go into the design of a high converting landing page.

And the final thing about landing page design, is that you should always be testing. If you feel like another design is going to work better, test them against each other to see which one will work best.

If you’re like most people, you’re on your own. So I’ve included all of the resources I’ve used for this video in the description, so you can go and read up on more of this in your own time.

(Little Tommy) Thanks!

(Little Tommy) Alright That’s all we’ve got for today’s episode of inside the mind, please be sure to tune in next week for part two when we talk about the perfect landing page copy.

(Big Tommy.) I’m On Facebook, Twitter, and Google +

(Little Tommy) Please be sure to “like this video” and Favorite it for easy viewing

(Big Tommy) If you have a question, please leave a video response by clicking on my face

(Little Tommy) and subscribe if you want to be the first to know when the next video comes out.

In this week’s episode of “Inside the Mind“, we talk about How to Make a Sale Using Social Media.

If you like these videos consider subscribing and leave a comment letting me know what you’d like to see covered in future episodes!

Make A Sale Using Social Media.

This week’s episode comes from a subscriber question. Bill Gluth says: I’d love to see you create an online marketing segment on how social media tags into the sales conversation. I see lots of content, comments and sharing but I’m not hearing a lot about sales and revenue generated as a result of that effort.

Thanks so much.

Bill

Well Bill this one’s for you, because today’s episode is all about…. Drumroll please… How to Make A Sale Using Social Media (Yaaay!)

Major social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter, and even specialized sites like forums and blogs give you unparalleled access to people’s wants and needs.

The thing about these sites that has revolutionized marketing is that you get to learn about people’s personalities in an unfiltered way. Things like their likes, interests, and most importantly whatever experience they’re lacking in their lives are all made readily available when you learn to read between the lines.

When you use all of this information people are literally giving you, you can craft content that  easily leads them into a purchasing decision.

(V.O)The blog over at Kajabi has an excellent article on becoming a copywriting badass. Step 2 is to visualize your customers.

They say to “Simply slap on a Facebook Fan Widget (like the one we have on our blog here) and check out your fans.

After viewing a couple dozen profile pages, you can soon get to know your audience.”

Then create a checklist of your audience.

In the example they say Meet Kajabi Joe:

Then list out Joe’s favorite Movies like Rocky and Rudy
Interests like Self Help and Internet Marketing
Favorite Books like “Think and Grow rich” and Four Hour Work Week”
They also list out Kajabi Joe’s Favorite Quotes Music and Political Affiliation

Doing this vastly decreases your chances of ever creating a piece of dud content because you can use different elements of their own personalities to create content that speaks to them on their level.

When you know who exactly your customer is, they’ll be the one’s telling you how to make the sale.

The reality is, making sales is about a handful of things.

1. Have a Offer people want or need

2. Attract said people “in the wild”         Episode 2 touches on this with content development

3. Present your offer in a way that’s compelling, usually through the design and copy of a landing page which we’ll talk about in a future episode.

4. Get them onto a list.

5. Make the Offer.

Surprisingly though, very few people take the time to do the detailed research necessary the extent they know what kind of movies and music  their ideal customer’s like.

Instead they resort to tactics that play on common desire, like “How to get more Facebook Fans”, then offer a free webinar, or pdf report, then do this.

(Email marketing guy)

While this might work in the short term, ultimately manipulative tactics  leaves customers  feeling pressured into a sale. On the marketing side, this means that you’ll have to spend more money, time, and resources on acquiring new customers, rather than maintaining relationships with existing ones.

But marketers who don’t do their research aren’t always aggressive. The lack of research still shows in the way they try to get your attention.

(two people having conversation while paper balls are being crumpled and thrown)

Now I know this can all sound very ambiguous, but I want you to keep this in mind the next time you make a purchase.

I want you to ask yourself Why am I choosing Brand A over Brand B. Why am I trying this new product? That type of thing.

Awareness of how your own purchasing decisions are influenced can be one of the greatest tools you can have when influencing other people.

*product

While there are a number of different sales techniques and processes that you could use,at the end of the day if you want to make more sales, just listen to the market, they’ll tell you how to make the sale.

Then deliver a product that is massively transformative to their lives.

And to give you an idea of how all of this can lead to sales generated, we need to look no further than Starbucks… (sips coffee)

Back in 2008, Starbucks was slipping. Sales and traffic were falling for the first time in its history as a public company. Founder Howard Schultz, even admitted, the company had lost it’s soul.

As part of their turnaround plan, the chain launched MyStarbucksIdea.com in July 2008 as a forum for consumers to make suggestions, ask questions and, in some cases, vent their frustrations.

As a result, Starbucks posted its first U.S. same-store sales gain in two years for the last quarter during a time when the company relied on digital and social-media promotions instead of what had become an annual TV blitz.

Now I imagine they didn’t switch up their tactics too much after they noticed this working, Flash forward two years to 2010 when they launch VIA their brand of instant coffee… after 10 months, they were able to release this headline.

Starbucks VIA® Ready Brew Hits $100 Million Sales Mark in First 10 Months.

But wait Tommy, I’m not Starbucks you say, I don’t have the same resources available to me you say.

Fair enough, back in 2005, my team and I created a video for a local band. We released the video on Myspace. Two months before the band’s first album dropped and showed it only to people who we thought would be interested in the music.

There was quite a bit of positive feedback on the video, and when the midnight release of the album came around, this is what the store looked like.

*end

Alright that’s all I’ve got for today’s episode of Inside the Mind, thanks so much for watching, I’m on Facebook, I’m on Twitter and Google +. Please be sure to like this video and favorite it for easy viewing.

If you have a question please be sure to leave a video response or ask in the comments below, and subscribe if you want to know when the next video comes out.

In this week’s episode of “Inside the Mind“, we talk about How to Develop Key Performance Indicators (Kpi’s) so you can determine progress, and measure success.

If you like these videos consider subscribing and leave a comment letting me know what you’d like to see covered in future episodes!

Key Performance Indicators.

Hey what’s up guys, welcome to inside the mind where we talk about online marketing strategy, what it is, why it’s important, and why you should care.

In the last episode, we talked about strategic networking and a simple way to start finding communities with your prospective customers.

This week, we’re going to talk about Key Performance Indicators and how to create a simple dashboard so you can measure progress and determine success.

(troll face guy)
Why talk about this? Metrics are Boring! Can’t I just try a bunch of stuff and wait for something good to happen?

Of course you could, and plenty of people do, but when you’re looking back at your stats 6 months from now, how will you remember everything going on at the time so you can repeat your success? And how are you going to know what stuff was a total waste of time?

(troll face guy)
Uhh..

The reason for setting up Key Performance Indicators is to have measures and goals within certain time frames. When you break down your efforts with these Key Performance Indicators, you can easily determine which of your efforts are yielding results, and what’s holding you back.

Now what we’ll be going over today is just a basic view of key performance indicators, and there are really hundreds of ways  these can be set up, but this is a good place for you to get started.

First things first, before you set up your Key Performance Indicators, you need to define your goal.

(scrolling list)

Pick One. Have a target you’d like to achieve, and set a timeframe. That could mean more traffic, more sales, what have you. And you need to have a specific set of actions in place to help move your numbers. Without specific actions to measure against, you’re just measuring for measuring’s sake.

For Example actions for “traffic building” could include, (Guest posting on blogs, employ link building strategies, Power Digging, Power Stumbling, Submit to article directories, host a teleseminar, and so on)

With that in mind, there are three types of performance indicators.

The first is Raw Numbers. This can be Number of Traffic, Number of Ebooks, Number of Mentions on Other Blogs, that type of thing.

The Next type of Measure is Progress. This comes in the form of percent complete. If you want to attain a certain amount of traffic, or sell a certain number of ebooks, this is where you track your percentage of completion towards that goal.

And the last measure is percentage of Change. This is a directional measure,as an example increase in sales  over last month, last week, or last year.

And now that you have that set up, let’s dive a little deeper into some other things you need to think about when you’re setting your measures.

After you’ve determined what the measure actually is, you need to determine the source. and ask yourself, do you already have the data? or is it new, and something you have to collect?

So your source for your raw numbers might be something like your Google Analytics, On Progress it might be your Content Strategy, and with your % of Change it might be a Profit and Loss report.

It’s really important to know where your data is coming from so you know month over month what you’re calculating.

Frequency – This is where you determine how often you’re measuring certain goals. With something like traffic for the year, you could track your visitors weekly or monthly, progress you could track quarterly, and percentage of change you could track monthly.

So to recap, we’re looking at what we’re measuring, where we’re getting the data, and how often we’re measuring it.

And the last item that goes along with your key performance indicators is what is the target? What are we trying to achieve?

After we have all of the data, all that’s left is to graph it.

In this week’s episode of “Inside the Mind“, we talk about Content Development That Gets Them Salivating.

If you like these videos consider subscribing and leave a comment letting me know what you’d like to see covered in future episodes!

How to Build A Network of Paying Customers

In this week’s episode of “Inside the Mind“, we talk about Content Development That Gets Them Salivating.

If you like these videos consider subscribing and leave a comment letting me know what you’d like to see covered in future episodes!

Content Development that Gets them Salivating.

Hey what’s up guys, welcome to inside the mind where we talk about online marketing strategy, what it is, why it’s important, and why you should care.

In the last episode we talked about (gets interrupted by clip from last week in a thought balloon thing) What makes and online marketing strategy, and more importantly what doesn’t.

(get a little frustrated, pushes thought balloon off)

This week, we’re going to talk about content development, specifically as it relates to your blog.

The biggest mistake most people make when it comes to writing for their blog is that they talk about whatever it is they feel like at the time.

(troll face. I’m going to talk about boring business crap)

But this doesn’t work. Why?

Because very few people in the world are so prolific, that we’ll actually take time out of our day just to hear whatever it is they have to say.

People are busy, they’ve got a million things going on, like emails, phone calls, and you know, actual work.

So instead of writing about whatever you want to write about, why not write about what they want to read about?

But Wait?! How do I know what people want to read about?

I’m so glad you asked.

If you go to google and type in “Keyword tool” on the top result you’ll find the Google Adwords Keyword tool which will give you a rough estimate of what people are searching for on any given keyword.

So lets say for example I wanted to create a piece of content that was based on Content Development.

I would type content development into the search bar, and voila! I would find out that the phrase “content development” gets roughly 33,100 searches every month globally.

Not only that, but I get a list of other related searches that might spawn some ideas for some other types of articles.

Now if there were 33,000 plus searches in Google every month, there’s a pretty good likely hood that “content development” is something that people would want to hear about, right?

And now that you know how to do some basic keyword research, let’s talk about the different types of content.

If you consider all of the stuff that’s worth looking at on the web, it can basically be broken up in to a few different categories.

Viral
Discussion
Lead Generation
Sales content

The next biggest mistake people make when using their blog as a marketing device is that they expect every piece to perform the function of all four of these types of content. And while there can sometimes be some cross over, this generally is not the case.

The secret here is when you write, you want to write with a single intention in mind, and have that intention flow through every word that comes out of your fingertips.

So let’s break these content types down.

Viral content is a piece of content that spreads throughout a community like a um, virus.

Now “Viral” doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be Antoine Dawson or the Star Wars Kid
type big.

In fact it’s perfectly acceptable, and much more realistic, to create something that is relevant to only a relatively small community.

For example, back in October, I wrote a guest post for Chrisbrogan.com titled 106 excuses that prevent you from ever being great. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Chris, he’s one of the top authorities on Social Media who wrote tje New York Times bestselling book Trust Agents, and is one of the must read blogs if you’re someone who considers themselves an entreprenuer.

Anyways, in the article, I go through 106 common excuses people, but more specifically entreprenuers tell themselves that often prevent them from doing awesome work. The intent for writing this article was that I wanted it to spread throughout the Entreprenuer community, and spread it did.

A few days after the article went live, Chris sent me an email letting me know that there had been over 38,000 unique visitors to his blog who read the article, and at the time of this recording there have been 2,221 tweets, 2,000 likes on Facebook, 220 +1’s on Google+, and 55 thousand + stumbles on stumbleupon.

There were also hundreds of comments, and quite a few links.

What was the secret? I spent several days brainstorming excuses that I’ve told myself, and have heard other entreprenuers tell themselves and devised a master list. Then went through and destroyed every excuse in a thought out and logical manner.

The other secret, big lists tend to do well because of the perceived value of bigger being better. I could have very easily done a 10 or 12 list, but those are so common these days that in order to stand out, having some outrageous number like 106 sparks a little intregue in the people who click, because they think “there’s no possible way there could be 106 excuses” but low and behold, there they are, many of them you’ve probably used yourself.

Ok Next, Discussion Content.

Discussion content is an article that you write that is meant to get the comments section of your blog lit up like a Christmas tree.

Maybe it’s an event that’s going on in your field, or maybe it’s something that you know a lot of people are feeling, but not a lot of people are saying.

There are conversations people are dying to have, but are too afraid to be the person who brings it up.

Discussion content can be polarizing, with the author taking a strong stance in one direction when there’s an equally strong opposition.

Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com is probably one of the best people I know when it comes to creating discussion content.

In his article “The Content is King Myth Debunked” He argues that “Content is not king, design is king, because people make snap decisions about whether or not they’ll actually read your content based on your design. If your design isn’t trustworthy, people won’t read you”

And you know what, he’s right. If a website looks like crap, or the font is too hard to read, people don’t stay.

And if you disagree with me, tell me about it in the comments and let’s talk about it

(smile with ding)

Next, let’s talk about lead generation material.

Lead gen content needs to be (interrupted by previous episode clip) Seriously dude? Seriously?

Anyways, lead gen content should help people to realize one thing, and one thing only, “I need help”

The other thing you want is for your readers to be able to identify themselves throughout your lead gen material.

This is a major mistake that many many people make, they give away very valuable free content as a lead generator, but what ends up happening is people will come for the free stuff, then do this…

(arms folded tommy) What do you mean you want me to buy something?

Ideal  lead generation helps someone to qualify themselves by saying “I need help” when they get into your funnel.

And a lot of that has to do with the way you position the content itself.

Let’s pretend you’re a person in the health and fitness field, and you want to start generating some leads, so you create a free pdf on your website and call it 7 tips to a healthy lifestyle.

Now this is a common tactic, but tell me does anyone ever roll over to their spouse in the middle of the night and say “Honey… Honey! We need 7 tips to a healthy lifestyle?”

No probably not right, instead they might say something like “I need to lower my cholesterol” or “Honey we really need to lose some weight”

With your lead generation material, you need to know what keeps your prospective customers up at night, then work that into your content so they can qualify themselves.

Consequently, when people come to you in this manner, they’re also more likely to want to take action on the stuff that you put out there.

And if you take this just a step further, we have Sales Content, which is like Lead content, and can be structured very similarly, but instead of your prospect wanting to get a free thing, they’re taking out their credit card and ready to make the purchase.

The major difference between the two is that Sales Content is designed to bring people to a decision, rather than just get some free stuff.

Alright here’s the recap, the four major types of content include.

Viral Content
Discussion Content
Lead Content
and Sales Content.

And if you want to be really strategic about your content development, you plan each piece in advance and have them work together like pieces of a puzzle.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for today’s episode of Inside the mind, thanks so much watching.

I’m On Facebook, I’m On Twitter

Please be sure to “Like” this video and favorite it for easy viewing.

If you have a question, leave a video response or ask in the comments below with a link to your blog and I’ll be sure to feature you on the next show, and subscribe if you want to be the first to know when the next video comes out.

(Video not showing up for you? Click Here)

Thanks for Checking out “Inside The Mind”

If you like this episode, please remember to Subscribe to the Tommy.ismy.name Youtube Channel

Transcript

Hey What’s up Guys and welcome to the first episode of Inside the Mind

where we talk about in Online Marketing Strategy and how it all works together.

With this being the first episode and all that, let’s talk about what makes an online marketing strategy and more importantly what does not.

Now if you run a business, or if you’re the marketing person in your company, at some point you may have had a conversation that sounds something like this “We need to get a Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, blog, email newsletter”

“Ok”

Then you go out and you create a profile on said platform, and start talking about the stuff you sell.

And this is what ends up happening.

(crickets chirping)

Ok Ok, I’ll cut you some slack, maybe, that’s not the case. Maybe you have all of these things and people are talking to you On a regular basis.

(Yay!)

But when you ask for a sale…

(crickets chirping)

Now a lot of businesses are just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks. And what many more is create one thing, and only distribute that through multiple channels.  Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn’t, but either way this isn’t social media strategy, this is social media vomit.

(bleh…)

I mean, when it comes down to it all, the main reason anyone looks at huge a time suck like Facebook, (clicking through facebook photos) or as hyperactive as Twitter (tweetdeck sped up) and says…”Let’s represent our business there”

Is because they want to make more money. It’s the only way you could possibly justify paying an  ADD riddled redbull addict to “participate in the conversation” on Twitter Because eventually You hope there’ll be a big payout in the end.

But Here’s the thing: Make more money by itself is not a goal, it’s a by-product of a successful online marketing strategy.

So. The first step in developing an online marketing strategy is to

define your goals

(::scrolling action:: Some examples of goals include: acquire new customers, augment customer service, build word of mouth buzz, snipe customers from a competitor, get feedback on a product, crowdsource ideas for improving customer experience, create loyalty programs)

Next: Do research to discover who your customers are, what they talk about, where they’re talking about it, and how they interact the platforms they’re using.

In other words, once you know what you want to achieve, find your ideal customers “in the wild” and learn everything you can about them.

Then, develop content that resonates with them, and moves them towards your goal.

(Tangental thought!)

Ok so here’s the thing about content. When thinking about content development, a lot of people’s minds jump directly to the written word. But content comes in all shapes and sizes.

• Content is a blog post.
• Or an email
• or an advertisement
• or a podcast
• or a tweet
• or someone else’s link that you tweet.
• or a status update
• or a picture
• or a forum signature
• or an app
• or a landing page
• or a webinar
• or a website
• or a video

Or you know, anything else that show’s up on a computer screen. Everything you publish online is content and, all of your content has to be designed to bring someone from point A, to your goal.

(show scrolling list again)

And Most importantly about content, IT HAS TO BE GOOD!

Ok Next, go back and look at all of the different platforms where your ideal customers are, determine the strengths and weaknesses of those platforms, then play to the strengths of each platform to reinforce your message.

Youtube Artist Destorm Power does an excellent job of this. His “Homebase” Platform is Youtube, where he releases videos at least once a week and frequently collaborates with and covers other artists.

He uses his Facebook Page to give a behind the scenes look at what’s going on in his schedule, give motivational quotes and showcase his sense of humor. But the main reward for being a fan on Facebook, is that you’re able to hear the music well before the video is released on Youtube and he consistently uses Facebook to build a perpetual cycle of anticipation for the next release.

Let’s take a look at the most recent example.

He just dropped his most recent video “Love a Bitch” at 3pm on December 11th
There was a mention of it being finished on the 10th
A set photo released on the 8th
A set photo was released from when they finished filming at 11:32pm on the 6th
The announcement they were beginning to film at 2pm on the 6th
And the soundcloud track released at 3:14am on the 6th

SOooooo He releleased his song first thing in the morning, notified his fans that he was recording the video, then gave his fans a photo when they finished filming. Then gave periodic updates to progress of the video before it was released.

In between postings about the song and video, there were motivational quotes, and an announcement of him going Tour to break it up a little.

And he’s also on Twitter, where he really plays to the platform’s real time nature and updates about different things going on in his day,communicate one on one with his fans. and shares photos he’s taken with instagram (where he also has a following)

Now how does all of this make him money? As a Youtube partner, he get’s a 50/50 split of all of the ad revenue that is generated from his page. He also sells music through itunes, and can be hired for a minimum of $5,000 for speaking engagements.

So, if you want to follow someone who’s “Doing it right” go to Youtube.com/destorm and see what he has to say.

Phew! OK and lastly when it comes to Online Marketing Strategy, You have to, have to, have to set up performance indicators and benchmarks to measure your success.

Without a way to determine what success is, you will always be stuck in a vacuum unable to determine what parts of your strategy you can improve and what parts to trim.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for today’s episode of Inside the mind, thanks so much watching.

I’m On Facebook, I’m On Twitter

Please be sure to “Like” this video and favorite it for easy viewing.

(cheezy soap opera voice over with elegant font) On The Next Episode of “Inside the Mind” We’ll be talking about content development, specifically as it relates to blogging.

If you have a question, leave a video response or ask in the comments below with a link to your blog and I’ll be sure to feature you on the next show, and subscribe if you want to be the first to know when the next video comes out.

There is a fine line between being self-employed and unemployed.

If you’re one of many “online entrepreneurs” please don’t forget that.

Recently I read a post by my friend Margie Clayman entitled “How Social Media Is Broken For Me Now”  and it got me thinking about how that sentiment seems to be shared by many of the people I talk to on a regular basis.

Last week, Shane Ketterman from Rewire Business talked for several hours about how I’ve been able to grow my business dramatically over the past few months without heavily blasting Twitter, and Facebook, and all that other stuff you’re “supposed to do”.

But what got me emotional about Margie’s article was it’s subject; Bruce Serven.

Now I didn’t know Bruce personally, and I’m sure we’ve crossed paths once or twice, but if you’re unacquainted with Bruce’s story it ends like this;

On October 23rd, 2011 Bruce Serven shot his 22 month old son in the chest, then himself in the head, after an argument with his wife. (link)

Self Deception is tricky.

Like I said, I didn’t know Bruce.

But I know plenty of people who were in Bruce’s position.

Looking at Bruce’s blog, it looks just like any other online entrepreneur type. His last post was on Sept 11 titled “The things people say they’ll never forget.” and it combines humor with personality to make the point, “Don’t say you won’t forget, when you probably will.” The article had one comment.

Bruce’s Facebook Page had at most only 2 comments on recent entries and 267 fans connected to the page. Bruce’s Twitter connected to 1,748 followers appeared to have tweets that were automatically pushed out links of influential people via twitterfeed with no real interaction with anyone for at least to the beginning of October.

He had a landing page on Facebook to capture email addresses, the email opt-in on the sidebar on his blog and his description:

I’m an everyday entrepreneur, working hard to build and sustain an empire, create jobs, make a meaningful difference, and capitalize on opportunities, while passionately living a purpose driven life & helping others to find their success in life.

But, according to the local news coverage of his death it said: 

On the internet, he portrayed himself as a maverick entrepreneur with his own motivational blog and Facebook fan page, but in real life, he was a man who had been unemployed for months and had recently taken a job as a forklift driver.

Don’t lie to yourself.

Of course Bruce is an extreme case, but Trey Pennington is another who committed suicide recently, and I feel like I’ve heard about more suicides in the “online entrepreneur” space more than ever before.

In Bruce’s case, his online persona was that of an entrepreneur, but in reality he was unemployed.

Being an online entrepreneur myself, it’s not hard to empathize with someone who feels like they have to maintain the persona of a successful entrepreneur while watching his entire life fall apart (he was going through a divorce at the time of his death).

The Duality of maintaining a fictional personality can become extremely stressful, and incredibly dangerous, if the fictitious personality doesn’t have roots in reality. In one world, you’re a successful entrepreneur, in another you can’t pay your bills.

The pressure builds until eventually only one personality can win, and it’s usually the one who’s lights are about to get shut off.

What about addiction?

Bruce eventually took a job as a fork truck operator, his local news tells us that. But they didn’t mention whether or not he was addicted to social media. Really, if he was or wasn’t is irrelevant, because so many of us are addicted to our virtual communication methods and probably don’t even realize it.

When talking to my wife about this today, she gently pointed out that I check my email more frequently than I smoked, which was roughly 20 times a day. Right now, I have a second monitor dedicated strictly to email so I can quickly glance over instead of switching tabs. Before that, it was bought with the sole purpose of being dedicated to Tweetdeck.

Being in this space, and having times where I poured countless hours into my computer wishing with everything that something would pay off, I can certainly empathize with the incredible amount of personal failure and frustration that Bruce must have felt.

Then having to keep that pain away from the virtual people you spend the most time with, then sacrificing time with those people to drive a forklift to make ends meet.

It must have gotten very lonely.

We live in public.

For Bruce and Trey (and the rest of us) you must also factor in the stress of living a splintered life in the spotlight. As digital citizens we’ve deemed it necessary to live out a considerable portion of our lives in public, without recognizing the potential consequences to the human condition.

In 2009, a documentary titled We Live In Public (available on Netflix, iTunes, and Youtube) showed the journey of web entrepreneur Josh Harris.

In 1999, Josh started the Quiet Experiment which asked 100 artists to live in a bunker and have every moment of their lives recorded and streamed live over the internet.

The purpose of the experiment was to document the effects of  ”living in public” 24/7 would do to the human psyche.

Josh says of the project “Everything is free except the video we capture of you, that we own.”

By the end of the Quiet Experiment, participants appeared to simultaneously detest and crave the spotlight, doing virtually anything to get their 15 minutes of fame on a daily basis.

Josh later turned the experiment on himself. For 6 months, he and his wife would broadcast every moment of their lives, documenting and being the catalyst for the break down of their relationship eventually leading to their divorce, and Josh’s mental collapse.

Watch the trailer below.

Is it possible that the constant need to perform was a contributing factor for these social media suicides?

The price of fame.

Celebrity suicides and mental breakdowns are something we’ve become accustomed to in traditional media.

Social media has for many of us dictated we build our own version of celebrity to showcase our businesses or talents to the world and achieve widespread success.

The reality is, famous or not, we’re all subject to the same exact rules and pressures of fame. According to a study in 2007, the price of fame for successful rock and pop stars is that they’re twice as likely to die an early death.

Yet, we crave a similar high octane lifestyle. To be a well known “business celebrity”. The problem is, we’re not as well equipped as the traditional celebrity. If we have an addiction, we can’t just check ourselves into rehab and get treatment from Dr. Drew.

Mental breakdowns don’t afford us merchandising opportunities like Charlie Sheen.  Instead, we deal with mental breakdowns and our personal lives privately, while pretending everything is ok online.

No, social media didn’t kill Bruce or Trey, depression did.

My friend Chris Brogan says Depression is an Offline Event and requires real offline help.

I very much agree with this, reaching out to anyone who will listen will usually end poorly. After talking with my wife about this article, she suggested something brilliant, which is an “online buddy system.” An online friend who you share with in a very real way.

Yes, if you’re feeling depressed, seek offline help, but also have just one person online who you know you can talk to and share anything with.

Because let’s face it, people in the real world just don’t understand what it’s like to be a digital citizen.

I can only imagine the incredible pressure Bruce and Trey must have feeling leading up their final moments.

I urge you, please, if you’re in a place where you’re calling yourself self employed when your reality is something different, please stop the insanity and get real with yourself.

If you’ve been banging your head against a wall wondering why nothing’s working for you, take a step back and reevaluate your methods.

Working for yourself  is meant to bring joy and freedom to your life, not take it from you.

Thank you so much for reading this, if you agree with it’s message I ask that you share it because this is a very real issue that is affecting very real people.

I have to apologize to Margie Clayman for stealing the headline for this post.

But after having the 106 excuses post run on [chrisbrogan.com], and experiencing an overwhelming response with email, tweets, comments etc, it is critical that I share this with you.

This is only the beginning.

With every major achievement you make, if you want to be exceptional you must expect that major milestone is only the beginning.

In music, it’s the difference between one hit wonders, and becoming an icon.

Just because you fill the stadium once, does not make you a rock god. If you’re able to still fill the stadium 15, 20, 30 years after you started, that is what makes you a rock star.

In business, it’s the difference between a startup who’s bubble burst, and companies like Virgin who have their hands in every market imaginable.

You must always up your game.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very appreciative of being published on Chris Brogan’s site, but with that also comes a higher standard for the content I produce for you on a regular basis.

Not everything has to be as epic in length as the 106 excuses article, but it does raise the bar on the quality of my output.

The 21 days series did this for me back in July, and the Brogan article does this again in October.

Don’t. Ever. Quit.

Reaching the next level doesn’t just happen.

Yes, there have been plenty of people who request a strategy session as a result of the Brogan post. That doesn’t feed my family in a year.

Enjoy your successes, but move on to the next one.

Often times people get wrapped up in the moment and lose sight of their vision.

The local band with the dream of “getting signed” doesn’t consider the ramifications of being a part of the “music industry” which will always be more concerned with moving units than they are about a musician’s integrity.

When the band stops selling albums, the label drops them, and everyone goes their separate ways.

Far more common than becoming a legend, and it’s primarily due to a lack of vision.

Have vision, and know what comes next.

I’ve wanted for two years to get on Brogan’s radar, and decided to take a chance in a very big way.

Now that’s happened.

It’s time to do it again. and again. and again.

My high school English teacher once said,

“If you expect greatness, than you’ll achieve greatness.”

I expect nothing less from myself, and so, on to the next one.

(lyrics NSFW)

First and foremost, I want to thank Chris Brogan for accepting the 106 Excuses That Prevent You From Ever Becoming Great article as a guest post on his site. A guest post there is rare, and having the opportunity to stand on such a big stage is something I will not soon forget.

It’s easy to take certain things for granted.

A long list post. The opportunity to guest blog. Professional relationships, the attention you receive.

Realistically, not everyone will have read all 7,000+ words.

Realistically, the article will get buried and forgotten about in less than a week’s time.

Realistically, none of those things matter, and now that the article itself is live, I want to share with you the history behind it, and what I learned in the process.

Resting on “what you know” isn’t enough.

The genesis of the 106 excuses article happened on August 25th, 2011.

I was discussing the psychology behind the “Big List” guest post with my students at CelebrityDiagnosis.com, and how it is almost always the best way to start a guest blogging relationship with popular bloggers.

Problem was, I hadn’t done a big list for someone in quite a while. In fact, I hadn’t written a single guest article for anyone for some time.

I’m not the type of guy that goes about teaching things that I’m not practicing.

After the lesson, I sat in my office chair, stared at the computer screen, wracking my brain, begging it to formulate the premise for my epic list, but with every thought generated a reason why that premise wasn’t good enough.

Learn to recognize your greatest ideas.

In retrospect, using the excuses I was giving myself as the premise for an epic list seems natural.

But really, those excuses have just as easily defeated my ambition time and time again in the past.

So when it struck me that “Excuses” would make a pretty good premise for an big list, I set a high, seemingly unobtainable goal, and I grabbed my notebook and pen, and started jotting down the excuses lies I was telling myself.

The first 15 came easy.

But as I continued to jot them down, they didn’t come out quite so easily.

Remember to ask for help.

I asked my fiancee (now wife) for help. I took the notebook to our pre-marital counseling session and asked the Pastor for help. I asked my Father-in-law for help. I asked my Aunt for help.

I asked my little Facebook community for help.

 All that help made it easy to exceed the original goal of 101 excuses to 106.

And when the time came to formulate, and write out original rebuttals to each of the 106 excuses, my fiancee (now wife) Megan helped there too.

(much discussion went into the “My spouse won’t let me” excuse)

Grind it out.

5 days after arriving at the premise of the article, and generating the master list, it came time to write.

After the first session, I very clearly understood this article was going to take some time…

Now something you must understand about me; I can have a very obsessive personality.

In many ways I believe an obsessive personality is necessary to taking on a giant task like this. Say what you want about prioritizing and productivity; to me none of that matters if you can’t get yourself to tune everything else out, and just work.

It’s because of this, and help from my wife, an additional 6,000(ish) words were cranked out over the next two days.

The first draft was sent out to Jon Morrow to review for Copyblogger on September 2nd, 2011

Be prepared to wait.

Understand this, people are way busier than you. Always.

I sent the first draft out to Jon on September 2nd, then a reminder on September 13th, and another follow up message on September 19th.

In response to the third message, Jon asked me to submit the article in the Guestblogging Forum for review.

(Disclaimer: Jon’s a mentor of mine and runs Guestblogging.com so multiple emails aren’t unwelcome. People don’t mind a little nagging when you pay them money)

I published the draft to the forum on September 20th, and Jon said on the 21st he’d review it by the 23rd.

On the 24th, he responded in the forum letting me know he loved the post and thought that the responses to each excuse were “surprisingly thought provoking” and that even though he was expecting it to run out of steam, it never did, which was difficult to do.

He let me know that there was a possibility that the article might not make it to Copyblogger because it’s not in line with the editorial direction of the site, but that he would try.

Give it some polish.

One of the other suggestions was that I hire Shane over at editinghacks.com to edit the piece.

While the price was more than fair, due to the sheer size of the post, became too much for me to spend. But I was very happy that Shane lent his talent to do an edit of the opening of the article.

I followed Shane’s lead, read his blog, and trimmed over 1,000 words out of the final edit, and uploaded the final draft on October 6th.

Jon recommended I change the original headline on October 11th, and submitted to Copyblogger for approval on the 12th.

Be prepared to change plans.

On the 14th, Jon relayed unfortunate news that the post could not run on Copyblogger due to the editorial reasons we had discussed earlier, but recommended I try Bnet.com and another site.

On the 17th, I emailed the chief editor of Bnet.com only to find out later that day the site was getting shut down.

I emailed the other site the next day, but never heard anything back.

Finally, on the 23rd I decided to email Chris.

Hey Chris,

How are you? I know you’re a busy dude, so I’ll keep this brief.

Remember to be grateful, and take nothing for granted.