Webinar Video: Internet Marketing Success in 4 Easy “Booster Rockets”

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Webinar via YouTube: Internet marketing... success

Last week, we recorded a live webinar as part of the re-launch of New Marketing University (NewMarU.com). I entitled it, “The 4 Booster Rockets of Internet Marketing Success” and we covered four key areas that are high leverage for any small business that wants to expand the effectiveness of its online marketing, including why these strategies are important and an overview of how we approach them.

The good news, if you are just passing by, is that I felt that this webinar was such a valuable introduction to how ComBridges approaches these kinds of innovations in Internet marketing as well as a taste of the kinds of useful information that will be available more and more via NewMarU.com, I decided to post this recording free and open to all on YouTube with no email registration required. In fact, this 45-minute video webinar is embedded below on this page so you can just click and enjoy it right now. 😉

In case you want to know what’s covered without watching anything, we discuss the following four strategic Internet marketing tactics:

  • Lead capture and lead nurturing along with the need to design a sales funnel process
  • Truly interactive Facebook Pages that go “beyond the Like”
  • Authentic engagement and what makes video content marketing more effective
  • Cost effective small business mobile apps to reach the rapidly increasing number of website visitors using smartphones and other mobile devices

All this and more in only about 40 minutes plus Q&A. Please check it out and comment, here or on YouTube. And if you want more, click on the “YouTube” logo to subscribe to our YouTube channel or register at NewMarU.com. Thanks! We look forward to hearing from YOU.

New Experiment: Weekly Tech Talk Google Hangout with “3 Geeky Amigos”

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3geekyamigos-logoOf course, we are all always learning; and another “always” is that I’m always telling myself (and others) that I need to do video on a much more regular basis.

I’ve also been attracted to the streamlined production efficiencies offered by Google’s Hangouts On-Air which not only provides a nifty and unique interface for group video chats, but a seamless integration with YouTube so that when you choose to record your Hangout, the “On-Air” part auto-magically posts the recorded video conversation to YouTube.

I’m also lucky to have some wonderful, knowledgable (OK, fellow “geeky”) friends who are excited to join my in this high tech video playpen (or I guess the tech term is “sandbox”). In this case, my co-hosts are Taylor Fogelquist of Active Ingredients and Peter Klein of Empower Your Brilliance.

The result is a new weekly tech talk show that we’ve dubbed, “3 Geeky Amigos.” You can join us live at 3pm PT every Tuesday afternoon (except June 18th). We’d love your feedback. Please tell us what you’d like us to explore. What would be most useful or interesting to you?

Here’s the first episode embedded below. It’s more of a “rehearsal” than a “premiere.” I’m confident we will keep getting better and better as we find the flow of this new media environment and get YOU involved. 🙂 And, we hope you will also join us this Tuesday at 3pm PT.

The Visual Web Demands New Video Presentation Tools & Techniques

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One of my ‘mantras’ is that “It’s not about the technology. It’s about the communication.” 

Quick infographic, presentation image

This image took about 5 minutes to create

Both the good news and the bad news is that online communication is becoming more and more visual. So much so that I’ve begun calling it “The Visual Web” and wrote this blog post about the trend.

The first is about the style of visual communications and the continuing “epidemic” of bullet-point list laden presentations, such as those created in PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote programs. (And given the increasing value of sharing presentations via SlideShare, presentation style is more important than ever.)

The second is a new tool that can be applied to both online videos (which I now consider a “must have”) as well as to the increasingly important content marketing strategy of creating infographics.

1. Presentations Done Right

Authenticity in online communications is an important key, and that means you have to walk your talk. Here’s a presentation that does just that. It illustrates what I agree are some of the most important techniques and style points about presentations using PowerPoint or Keynote, and it does so without bullet point lists. In fact, it not only makes a good case against all that text and bullet lists that we all see in far too many presentations, but it also offers some valuable resources. (New to me were Pictalicious for color palettes and PowToon, see below. I already love and recommend the iPad app, Haiku Deck.)

 

2. The Best and Easiest Online Video & Infographic Tool I’ve Seen (ever?)

 I will have to return to the subject of PowToon with a more complete review. For now, I’ll give it one of my highest recommendations which is, “I want to learn this app.”

It’s an online application designed for the creation of all kinds of online videos with an impressive array of built-in animation effects. Their site is full of examples, so I’ll just embed their excellent introductory video. If you are interested in this kind of production, ComBridges can do it for you, and more cost effectively than ever thanks to this tool. Check it out!

 

What do you think?

 

Is Vine, Twitter’s Video App, Useful for Social Media Marketing? Expert Reviews & Luscious Links

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The face of online video, or what I like to call The Video Web, has just grown a new “nose.” In other words, there is now a new dimension to the online video world. In case you haven’t heard yet, the latest mobile and social video sensation is called Vine and it’s a free download app for all major mobile smartphone platforms.

Like Twitter, Vine uses #Hashtags as a way to find things and connect to stuff

Like Twitter, Vine uses #Hashtags as a way to find things and connect to stuff

Vine videos take the form of some pretty neat (and of course sometimes boring) little six-second video clips that are tightly integrated with Twitter, who recently bought the company. (FYI, Vine videos are also post-able to Facebook.)

While Vine is getting some mixed reviews—ranging from raves that it’s “the next big thing” to distain that there’s too much porn—I think the truth is that it’s got potential. While we wait to see if its buzz will last, in my opinion, Vine is fun and worth checking out.

As you will see from the aggregated “luscious links” below—all of which are from what I consider to be a solid selection of social media authorities—many major brands as well as smaller businesses are already experimenting with Vine videos. Even Sir Paul McCartney of the Beatles (or a member of his team?) is starting to run contests via Vine (see below). So, as Dylan sang, “Something is happening here…” even if we don’t know exactly what it is…

 

(FYI, Sir Paul’s next tweet said that the answer was ‘Mamunia’ from ‘Band On The Run.’)

On a more personal note—beyond my own app-aholic fascination—my litmus test proving Vine’s viability was sharing the app with a couple of 21 year old women who I met at a party. We had already established that these extremely charming social-media-active individuals were way into Instagram. But Facebook, not so much. Even as a very active Facebook user, I could appreciate their point of view, “There are too many people on Facebook posting opinions that we don’t care about.” I found this point of view to be refreshing! 🙂

When I showed them Vine and how easy it is to create multi-scene six-second mini-movie clips, they literally took to it like fish to water. Fun! Here’s one of my first Vine videos, shot (which in this case is the same as produced) at that party:

Reinforcing the “mixed reviews” theme, MarketingProfs’ Ann Handley says, “Vine: Stupid, Simple and Brilliant.” In fact, it was also Handley who tweeted the first clearly commercial Vine video that I saw. Specifically, this little ditty by the LA Dodgers in support of a new baseball star bobble-head promotion:

More Luscious Links

And last but not least, one of my favorite “social media gurus,” Jay Baer not only offers valuable insights with The 2 Ways Most People Are Misusing Vine but in this 4-minute video interview (embedded below), he tells us the bottom line of all the hype, i.e. Vine will not usher in a “new era of content marketing,” but it is an interesting new tool for serious social media marketers who are being strategic about their use of content marketing:

Bottom line, as Jay says, content marketing without a coherent strategy is not going to have a bottom line impact, no matter how nifty a tool Vine may be. And it is nifty, IMHO. After all, making video this easy to create and post is not a no-brainer.

Any comments?

“It’s a Wonderful Web” 2013!

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cb-ipadThe first edition of our “It’s a Wonderful Web” e-newsletter for 2013 is out. It includes the following articles:

  • 2013: The Year of Anything is Possible
  • Special Offers!
  • Free 1-Hour Audio: Web Radio Interview
  • Luscious Links

If you’re not already a subscriber, click here to read it online.

New Internet Radio Interview: What’s So New About New Marketing?

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One of the fun things about having written a book about Internet marketing is getting to do interviews. Thanks to Susan Scher of the BlogTalkRadio show, “In Other Words” for the opportunity to take a full hour to discuss why I think that understanding the new dimensions of online communications is so important. Among other things, the interview (linked below) covered topics like “what’s so different about New Marketing,” authenticity, the rise of online video, the empowered consumer, social media marketing, my Attract/Engage/Relate approach to sales funnels, content marketing, and much more. Please enjoy and let me know what think.

Listen to internet radio with Perfect World Network Radio on Blog Talk Radio

New Forms of Online Video and TV Advertising Empower Advertisers

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In today’s TheTVNews “New Media / New Marketing” video report (which is embedded below at the end of this post), I talk about the tectonic shifts in the online video and TV advertising spaces. Video and TV advertising will never be the same as advertisers take advantage of new video-enabled advertising and marketing tools that are far more targeted and responsive than traditional TV could ever provide. Clearly, the old broadcast “shotgun” approach to advertising is rapidly going the way of the horse and buggy. Today’s advertisers rightly require accountability for their valuable advertising spends.

Native Video AdvertisingAlso, unlike, traditional TV advertising which is still extremely large in scope, the upstart online video advertising market is continuing to grow rapidly. According to one study, it grew 27% in 2012 and will grow at least 20% next year as well.

For your reference, here are a few links that provide more in-depth insight into these changes in the video-related advertising marketplace, including a new research study on “native video advertising” and a New York Times perspective on “programmatic buying.”

1. ReelSEO: Native Video Advertising Drawing Much Interest from Major Brands which references this Forbes study, “Going Native, How Marketers are Reinventing the Online Video Advertising Experience,“

In the words of the Forbes/Sharethrough study, ” ‘Native advertising’ has emerged as the convergence between original brand video content and dramatically new approaches to distribution that ensure an ad matches the look and feel of a website and does not interrupt the viewing experience in the manner of a television commercial.”

My favorite native video advertisement is the Red Bull “Athlete Machine Kluge” embedded here, but click on “YouTube” in the lower right corner of this clip to view on YouTube… and turn up your volume! 🙂

2. NYTimes: The New Algorithm of Web Marketing
Not only are we living in the era of the empowered consumer, but we are also seeing advertisers take on new power as “programmatic buying” technologies allow advertisers, not media companies to set advertising rates based on the real value of the highly-targeted consumers.

This is a major new trend that I believe can be expected to accelerate rapidly. And, as with all rapid changes, there are those who are dragging their feet. The Times reports, “That shift is punishing traditional online publishers, like newspaper, broadcast and magazine sites, who are receiving a much lower percentage of ad dollars as marketers use programmatic buying across a much broader canvas. Some sites, like CNN.com, refuse to even accept advertising through programmatic buying because they do not want to cede control over what ads will appear.”

Everything old is new again, especially in the online video advertising and TV spaces. Here’s my video comments about what’s linked and discussed above:

As always, I look forward to your thoughts and feedback!

Roger McNamee Sees a Future that Empowers Content Creators

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Thanks to a tweet by thought-leader, publisher, Tim O’Reilly, I was drawn to a video interview and then a TEDx talk from last summer, both by the very successful Silicon Valley venture capital investor and real life touring rock star, Roger McNamee. Both videos (and soon my concise video commentary via TheTVNews.tv) are embedded below for your viewing convenience.

Bottom line, McNamee illuminates, among other things, why HTML5 is so important and how Microsoft, social media, and I say traditional network TV, are all on the decline. In their place there will be a wave of “highly differentiated content,” and the thusly-empowered creators of this new breed of content will quite literally own their own stores—and, just to be clear, those are media “stores.”

In other words, as if we couldn’t already, HTML5, iPads and mobile distribution will enable those of us with our own “bands” (teams & other creative resources) will be able to seize the controls of our own destiny, in the web sense at least. (And, along these lines, I love McNamee’s concept of “full contact investing” where he uses his rock band’s marketing as an experiential testing ground.)

Obviously, content marketing has laid some of the ground work here, and so has blogging. But his vision is bigger than that.

Content creators with the hutzpah and the resources to develop real destination websites can include new, highly integrated forms monetization to produce extraordinary opportunities in the very near future. The time is now to act on these phenomenally potent changes. Please watch the videos below to understand more.

I’ll certainly be doing my best to do so as well as to educate you how to take advantage of these changes via NewMarU.com. So please STAY TUNED! 😉

If you prefer to read a text summary of some of McNamee’s key points, check out Facebook Investor Roger McNamee Explains Why Social Is Over

Here are the videos:

The first is via Sarah Lacy’s PandoDaily blog and this post:
Roger McNamee on the New Web: “Everything That Mattered Over the Last Eight Years Won’t Matter Anymore”

And the other video is Roger’s TEDx Santa Cruz talk (where he even paces like a rock star)
entitled, “Disruption and Engagement”

Please let me know what you think, via the comments below or any other channel. Are these insights useful to you?

Top 3 Social TV Trends Emerge from CES News Announcements [Video]

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CES,  the Consumer Electronics Show, happening this week in Vegas, is a sure bet for the inside track on the latest innovations in social TV and the convergence of traditional television and the exploding world of online video. As I explain in TheTVNews video commentary below, three CES news stories stand out for me as big-picture trend indicators. This blog post also provides links to the stories themselves so you can get more details.

Bottom line, the difference between being online and watching TV is blurring as a hybrid experience of the multi-screen experience and social TV comes to the forefront. Contextualized advertising, watching TV with friends who aren’t actually in the room and integrated TV/web browsing are just a few of the changes I expect to shake up the way we think about watching television as well as the TV industry itself.Another CES TV announcement

1. Google TV Isn’t Going Away
Despite its slow start, Google TV is re-emerging as its Android platform is being integrated into more and more Internet-enabled TV sets. Thus, Google is re-entering the TV market via at least four TV manufacturers: Sony, Samsung, LG and Visio. All four will be including Google TV into their internet-enabled televisions.

2. Social TV is Already Attracting Significant Investments 
The social media and mobile Internet revolutions (and I don’t use the term “revolution” lightly) have led to the rapid growth of people using mobile devices to interact while watching TV. This has resulted in an assortment of “second-screen,” social TV solutions, which allows users to hang out on the “virtual couch” with their friends while watching TV.  The fact that one of these apps, Zeebox, has just received at eight-figure investment from the News Corp-controlled pay-TV firm BSkyB shows how serious this new media playground is becoming. Neat Zeebox promo video and more details here. (Meanwhile, Forbes magazine thinks GetGlue has taken the social TV lead.)

3. TV Advertising Gains New Power
I think this is great news for small businesses. Google AdWords has already fueled Google’s approach to becoming a $40 billion/year company. Now its TV Ads product is expanding its reach through a new deal with a major cable system operator (MSO). Google TV Ads has signed a new deal with Cox Media, the ad sales extension of the big cable operator Cox Communications.

We can only hope that our ever-splintering attention level will serve as motivation for content-creators to offer deeper meaning, connection and context, within whatever social platform we happen to be sharing, at any particular moment.

If you’d rather watch than read, my video report starts at about 20 seconds into this clip:

Stay tuned.

 

Your Social Media Future: It’s Time to Say YES.

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I continue to be amazed by how many professional people still resist social media marketing. In fact, this seems to be one of the main reasons that participants find so much value in my workshop, “Mastering the Social Media Marketing Mix.”

The US “premiere” of this workshop will be in San Francisco, next Wednesday, October 12th. The producer, Linda Kosut just sent out an email announcement to her list with the headline, “Social Media IS Our Future” including a commentary about how she personally resisted this idea for a long time.

social media marketing workshop in Auckland, NZ

"Social Media Marketing Mix" workshop in NZ

When I was in New Zealand, Mark Lowndes of the law firm Lowndes Associates described his experience this way:

“A year ago I was certain social media had no relevance to our commercial law firm.  Today I am convinced I was wrong. Social media will be an increasingly important part of our interaction with our clients and the business community at large. As with many businesses, I now believe there is no option but to learn how to engage effectively using social media.”
— Mark Lowndes, Lowndes Associates

When I speak about how important I think it is for companies and professionals of every variety to engage in social media marketing, I compare it to the ’80’s when I used to tell business audiences that email was as important as their toll free phone line. (Yes, amazing but true, not everyone recognized email at that point as an important customer service and/or sales communications channel.) I told these business people that they have to respond to their customers, and your customers have the right to communicate via any communication “channel” they want to use.

Now, your customers are “calling” you via social media. Of course, I think you should be pro-active in this new arena. But, for openers, if your toll free phone line was ringing, or you were getting email from a prospective customer, you would answer, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Well, if you’re not engaged in social media marketing yet, please consider this your social media marketing “call.”

And, here’s a real invitation: If you are in the SF Bay Area, please do not miss the chance to experience the whole 3-hour presentation of “Mastering the Social Media Marketing Mix” at Ft. Mason, Wednesday, October 12th, 6:30 to 9:30pm. Frankly, the $99 registration fee is a remarkable value. My four-week online version of this workshop which will be announced shortly is expected to cost $397.

So this San Francisco live presentation, to a small interactive group offers great value. It will also deliver great inspiration that will motivate real productivity. And there will be tons of great information. I promise all of this, and I hope to see you there. Please click here to register and/or for more information. Thanks!