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The famous French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously said “Man was born free. But everywhere, he is in chains.”

Of course, Rousseau was talking about politics and religious systems when he said this. However, his observation is spot-on regarding how most people choose to live their lives. We are born free, but we choose to walk around in chains. It doesn’t matter that the chains are invisible; their effects are still noticeable.

Let that sink in. People are born free because they have tremendous power over their reality. But when you look at the way most people live their lives, it’s as if they are slaves. They have all these imaginary lines that they have drawn for themselves. Things like who they can and cannot be, what they are and what they're not, where they can go and what's off-limits.

Believe it or not all of us actively shape our reality. Our minds make us the masters of our reality. The fact that you're taking this training with a certain attitude and you were able to buy this training in the first place means you are a master of your reality.

It doesn’t matter whether you accept that or not. It doesn’t matter whether you are aware of this or not. It's still the reality. In fact, just through the daily operations of your mind, you master and edit your reality.

What’s the problem? Well, most of us don't claim this power. We live our lives based on obligation. That's right. We try to be the kind of people our parents expect us to be. We try to live our lives based on other people's expectations.

We also get used to certain customs. Maybe it's part of our culture. Perhaps it's part of our little group. Whatever the case may be, unless we choose to open our eyes, we do things the same way as the people we hang out with. Birds of a feather flock together indeed.

We also turn our backs on our tremendous mental power to shape our reality by sticking close to tradition. Just because something has been done the same way hundreds of years doesn't necessarily mean that you should do the same. Just because there is such a thing as conventional wisdom doesn’t mean that it's the only type of wisdom applicable to you.

Finally, you’re walking around wearing your invisible chains because of bad mental and physical habits. It seems like no matter hard you try to change things or turn things around; your habits keep pulling you back. It's as if you only need to see or feel certain things, and you start acting in an almost automatic way. It is very discouraging. It makes you feel weak, small, and insignificant.

Mentalism teaches you to refocus your energy so that instead of these mental processes working against you, you train your mind to make it work for you. You only need to look at very successful people to see how this works. You only need to talk to very happy people and realize that they’re operating from a totally different place. You can achieve the same.

This training steps you through the process of how mentalism can help you live a more fulfilling life.

I don't want to mix metaphors here but just like people can easily live their lives wearing invisible shackles, we can also live our lives completely surrounded by invisible curtains. When you put curtains in your house, you do it to block out light. It’s your way of regulating natural lighting that comes through your windows. Did you know that you're doing the same with reality? However, instead of windows, you have your mind, and there are certain beliefs and practices that we have that block out reality. At the very least, it prevents us from seeing things as they really are.

Most people are mentally lazy. There, I said it. We really are.

First of all, the older you get, the more you assume things. Now, I can’t blame you for thinking this way because when you were growing up, you had to experience things first hand and then make predictions based on those experiences or based on what people tell you about those experiences. You have to go through that process so you can learn enough to see certain patterns.

As you get older, you can safely rely on the wealth of experience you've had and more or less make certain assumptions. At this point, you would think that it is fairly safe for you to assume that once you see certain patterns, then you pretty much can see the rest of what will happen.

This makes a lot of sense in most situations. You don't want to sit around and wait for things to fully develop when you know full well there's a high chance that things will turn out the way they’ve always turned out. However, this can only go so far.

Also, when you get older, you tend to use this power of assumption in situations where they don’t count or at least they shouldn’t be applied to. You can use this with people you meet, and this can lead to very unfair and even downright cruel dismissal of people.

I remember one time I was at a business meeting and one of the guys who was supposed to make a presentation showed up in shorts and flip-flops. At the back of my mind, I automatically assumed that this person was a slacker. No way is this guy serious.

He made his presentation and he left. I only learned a week later that person was actually a multi-billionaire. So much for my assumptions, right? It turned out that we needed him more than he needed us. He obviously did not need our money.

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the wireless revolution! If you’re new to the 3G wireless age, don’t worry. This is a great opportunity to learn about this technology and how it applies to business today. But, we understand that you do know business – and advertising. And, you certainly know how important advertising is to your business. Like any business owner, advertising is an expense to your bottom line. So, it’s important to spend your advertising dollars to your greatest advantage. And as technology changes, advertising strategies and tools must change, too.

This book is designed to help you begin advertising to mobile phone users that are taking advantage of 3G technology. This technology gives them access to the internet, fast downloads, and streaming audio and video in addition to their voice and text messaging capabilities.

Even if you have a website and advertise via the internet, you may not be convinced that mobile advertising is right for your business. Following are some statistics that might change your mind.

• Nielsen Mobile, which reports on trends in the wireless industry says that statistic shows the development of global mobile internet traffic as of the second quarter of 2018. As of that period, 51.89 percent of global web traffic originated from mobile devices,. This means that 1.79 billion people are using their mobile phones to access the internet.

• 95 million mobile users in the US are paying for internet access on their mobile phones, but they do not use it regularly, according to this same report.

• Nielsen also reports that these mobile customers most often use their mobile internet connection to visit websites – even more frequently than they use it to access email.

• eMarketer reports that even older baby boomers (those aged 54-62) access the internet at least once per month, meaning that internet marketing truly appeals to all ages.

• eMarketer also reports that in the UK, restaurant advertising on mobile phones grew 63.6% in the year up to 2019 and clothing ads on mobile phones grew by 53%.

• This same report in eMarketer reports that the restaurant ads sent to mobile phones reported a 15.5% response rate. These ads utilized SMS messaging technology, rather than web browsing.

Hopefully, the statistics above have convinced you that advertising via cell phones is the wave of the future. It’s doubtful that you can boast a 15% response rate to any ad you’ve placed in the yellow pages, on a billboard or via direct mail. But, you may not yet understand how to take on this advertising venue, or what methods and resources are actually out there.

It is the goal of this e-book to provide basic information about marketing to the cell phone user, taking advantage of the new features and functions of 3G technology. Hopefully, we’re going to help you get creative about marketing your business to technologically savvy users.

In the pages ahead, we’ll take a look at 3G itself, including what features 3G offers wireless users. We’ll also look at how business users today are taking advantage of these features that 3G offers to make them more productive at work and at home.

This book will offer ideas and suggestions, as well as give you case studies about how these advertising methods have already been proven in the marketplace. You’ll probably be surprised at how many companies are already catering to the wireless user, offering ads on frequently visited websites and sending coupons via text messaging.

We’ll also offer you insight into the hottest applications available today and how they are being used or might be used to the advertiser’s advantage. There’s a lot of food for thought in the coming pages. It’s all designed to make you think about advertising your business in a very different way. It is our hope that these ideas and suggestions make your business successful and prepare it for the future of advertising in wireless technology.

1 HOW NEXT GENERATION PHONES ARE GREAT ADVERTISING VEHICLES

Many of today’s business people may remember early cell phones. They were heavy, bulky devices that worked only in your car – and then only sporadically, since there were more holes in coverage than there was coverage itself. Boy, have we come a long way. Today’s phones are lightweight, pocket sized, and calling them mere phones seems like an understatement of great proportions.

Today’s cell phones provide us regular wireless phone service, allow us quick text messaging, display our emails, provide gaming and surf the internet. Many also offer push to talk capability to reduce our costs in talking to those whom we chat with frequently. All in all, our cell phones have become a business necessity – serving our needs far beyond verbal communication. Most of us take our wireless devices with us everywhere.

And, what’s even more exciting about how the extent to which wireless phone capabilities have increased is the fact that the cost of purchasing a cell phone and of paying for service has not risen dramatically enough over the years to deter business people or consumers. Today, nearly everyone has a cell phone – even children. Industry experts estimate that cell phone penetration has reached nearly 100% in the United States.

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1. What is Craigslist?

The History of Craigslist

The popular website, Craigslist.com, was created by Craig Newmark in 1995 as an email distribution list of friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area, before becoming a web-based service in 1996. It was incorporated as a private, for-profit company in 1999 and has been expanding to cover more and more different cities since then.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark observed people helping one another in friendly, social and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and felt isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco. He decided to create something similar for local events.

The first emailed San Francisco event listings debuted in early 1995. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by June 1995 new software was installed to handle the expanding website better and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Newmark submitted most of the early posting himself and they were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in the San Francisco Bay area.

Soon, word-of-mouth led to rapid growth. The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings. People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for.

This led to the addition of a category for jobs. User demand for more categories resulted in the list of categories growing and expanding.

Community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark enlisted the help of volunteers and contractors to create a website user interface for the different mailing list categories.

In need of a domain name for this, Craig registered Craigslist.org (as well as Craigslist.com later on, to prevent the name from being used for other purposes). Around the time of these events, Newmark realized that the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and work full time running Craigslist. By April 2000, there were nine employees working out of Newmark's apartment on Cole Street in San Francisco.

Newmark says that Craigslist works because it gives people a voice, a sense of community trust and even intimacy. Other factors he cites are consistency of down-to-earth values, customer service and simplicity. Newmark was approached with an offer for running banner ads on Craigslist, but he decided to decline. In 2002, Craigslist staff posted mock-banner ads throughout the site as an April Fools joke.

In 2001, the company started the Craigslist Foundation, a section 501(c) nonprofit organization that connects people to the resources they need to strengthen communities and neighborhoods. It offers free and low-cost events and online resources to promote community building at all levels. It accepts charitable donations and, rather than directly funding organizations, it produces "Face-to-face events and offers online resources to help grassroots organizations get off the ground and contribute real value to the community.”

Since 2004, the Craigslist Foundation has hosted an annual conference called Boot Camp, an in-person event that focuses on skills for connecting, motivating and inspiring greater community involvement and impact. Boot Camp has drawn more than 10,000 passionate people since its inception. The next Boot Camp event will be held on Saturday, August 14, 2010.

The Craigslist Foundation is also the fiscal sponsor for Our Good Works, the organization that manages AllforGood.org, an application that distributes volunteer opportunities across the web and helps people get involved in their communities.

Craigslist Today

As of 2009 Craigslist.com has a staff of 28 people and makes most of its money from paid job ads in cities like San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon – and paid broker apartment listings in New York City.

The site serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 33rd place overall among web sites worldwide and 7th place overall among web sites in the United States, with over 49.4 million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone .

With over eighty million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over two million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements to personal ads and erotic ads.

One of the most notable things about Craigslist.com is that it has gone through very little aesthetic changes since 1996 and even for that time it's extremely simple and basic.

Today there are a plethora of options for users to choose from as far as which types of listings can be searched though or posted. Craigslist has comprehensive for-sale listings with everything from cars to household appliances. The website also has an extensive jobs/services section as well as a classifieds section for social interaction.

You can sell just about anything on Craigslist. People post ads for everyday items, brand new items sold in bulk or used collectables. Craigslist is renowned for being one of the primary online sources of local, affordable merchandise.

Selling digital content is also possible on Craigslist, usually with the help of a third-party website service for processing funds and delivering content. In this respect Craigslist works as an excellent advertising system wherein every poster gets at least a few minutes at the “top of the list” sweet spot.

Lastly there are untold profits to be made by seeking jobs on Craigslist or offering services. Craigslist has both employer-seeking ads as well as employee-seeking ads. You can provide service to local people and get paid per-job like a contractor, you can find local full-time and part-time jobs or you can look for someone to do the work for you.

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In offline marketing, joint ventures are not taken lightly. These can take months to negotiate and a legal contract is always drawn up, with each party’s responsibilities and rights laid out in black and white.

In internet marketing, however, there is usually no need for a contract unless you are actually developing a product together.

What’s The Big Advantage?

The truth is, in internet marketing, a joint venture can be (and usually is) as simple as having a well-respected marketer in your niche provide a review or testimonial.

It can be as simple as sending an email to several marketers and having them say: “Okay, that looks like a win-win situation…” Or it can indeed take several months, if you’ve opted for a partnership, and you and Marketer B are busy planning the Big Launch for a hot new product that will have both your names on.

If you’re a new marketer, the simple promotional JV offer is by far the easiest to achieve. And it doesn’t matter whether your potential JV partner is someone you simply found on Google, who you had never heard of before today – or the most staggeringly well-known marketer in your target niche:

Present your offer properly, and you’ll make it easy for them to say: “Okay.”

6 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Approach them

1. “What risks and benefits can I anticipate?” 2. “What risks or benefits could my potential partner perceive?” 3. “What are my chances of making this a success?” 4. “How well have I researched the potential partner I want to approach?” 5. “Do I know how to give my JV proposal the best chance to succeed?” 6. “Will my product really benefit my potential partner’s niche market?”

If your sole reason for this Joint Venture rests on being told you should do it, or getting a sudden idea, or making quick cash, you will definitely need to rethink it. These things may be true – but you may actually not be ready for a JV yet – or you may not know that there’s one glaring condition guaranteed to make your JV offer flop on the spot.

So first, let’s change that situation, before picking our marketer and crafting our offer…

The Single Most Vital Thing You Can Do

One thing you need to know – and do – up front. Without this condition being met, you won’t have the slightest chance of attracting a JV partner. Don’t even think of proposing a JV venture until you have your own Affiliate program completely set up and running.

At the very least, take advantage of a third party Affiliate Marketplace network like Clickbank and pay the $50 one-time fee to list your product there. Clickbank will automatically set up an affiliate program for you, on that product. You’ll have to follow their rules about commissions, payout and refunds. And you’ll need to create a good Affiliate Center packed with resources specifically for you’re your affiliates to use when promoting that product.

Not only will it help and please experienced affiliates, when they very properly write to you to see what resources you have to help them sell (or you let them know, in your JV offer)… it will enhance the professional image you are presenting to your potential JV partner. Other Tips To Consider

One popular way to ensure a “yes”: offer 100% commission to your potential JV partner. This tactic is a good one if you have a small list, and theirs is large. At this point, you’re paying for the exposure and web recognition – as well as building your own list from sales she sends you (just make sure you know how to capture those leads without detracting from her commissions and captures.)

Also make sure that your own Affiliate script or service allows you to set cookies with a short expiry date. You may not intend to be giving your JV lifetime 100% commissions on every sale from that customer, right through your funnel – which is what will happen if you have “lifetime” cookies enabled. And agree that the 100% is only for:

A. That product B. The duration of the program

Top 8 Mistakes

There 8 things guaranteed not to incite a “Yes” answer, so make sure you’ve got them covered. The first one’s so important, we’re going to repeat it again:

1. Not having an affiliate program already set up 2. Not having all your affiliate resources complete, and ready to go for promotion 3. Approaching someone outside your narrow, specific niche 4. Not having a really strong and obvious USP (unique selling position) 5. Not having a strong and well-written offer 6. Expecting them to all the work 7. Not having any web visibility at all. (No social networking, no forum memberships, no favorite blogs where your comments are well known, etc.) 8. Not having any stats or conversion figures you can share with your potential JV partner

However, there’s one more less obvious mistake that can really damage your reputation, if you don’t know what you’re doing…

One More Fatal Mistake Not To Make

9. Deciding you need a JV partner just to “make a quick buck”.

JV partnerships should be about enhancing both your reputations and creating a trust-based relationship built for longevity.

However, if you honestly are more interested in “quick cash”, but really need to power of a “bigger” marketer to get it, there is one popular solution you can initiate – or find, and jump on an already-started bandwagon….

The Fire Sale

You’ve seen these: You get an email from a marketer whose list you belong to, excitedly telling you about a “Blowout”, with hundreds of free products by top name marketers. You go, and discover that you are able to download a pile of free eBooks (and the odd piece of software.)

In exchange, however, you have to sign up for each marketer’s list.

The purpose of this exercise from all the marketers’ point of view is a list-building exercise. But it’s a great opportunity for you to not only build your list, but get your name associated with well-known marketers – if you have a high quality offering.

One word of caution, however: You may be tempted to slap up any old thing. Don’t do it! Make sure you over-deliver, and that the item you’re contributed stands out like a beacon (it’s your one chance to wow all the new people who sign up for your product, anyway.)

And remember that “qualifying” goes both ways: If the call for JV’s for the fire sale is put out by marketers you consider sleazy or shady… or there are any other signs that they are going to rip people off with a bunch of ancient, already freely available old reports… don’t touch them with a 10’ pole.

It’s not worth it, in the long run.

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Introduction

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a picture or a diagram has nothing on a video. Seriously. If a picture can pack so much communication value, you can't even imagine what a video can deliver.

Indeed, videos are worth thousands of pictures because they convey emotional connection. They communicate a sense of urgency. They efficiently explain concepts, and they reduce what could be confusing ideas into symbols or sequences most people can understand.

Videos are so powerful that more and more people are searching for them on the internet instead of text. Let's face it, most people are in a hurry. They don't have time to read through an article and piece everything together. This is especially true for articles that have absolutely no graphics. For too many people, text is simply too flat.

With video, you feel like you are dealing with a real person giving you information. It's easier to get into the video emotionally. It's easier to get engaged. In fact, if you think you missed something or if a concept kind of flew over your head, you can easily backtrack on a video and review that portion.

It is no surprise that more and more marketers are making a lot of money using videos. They use different types. Video Marketing Profit Kit Some use explainer videos to describe the ins and outs of a product or a concept. A lot of other marketers use whiteboard videos that have a voice over. These videos show a hand drawing different pictures while the voice-over explains key concepts.

Others prefer spokesperson videos. These are videos where there is an actual person talking straight to the viewer explaining certain points. All of these leverage the power of video because you get a sense of immediacy.

When you're reading, there might be a thousand things going through your mind. You may be understanding bits and pieces of the words in front of you, but at the end of the day, a lot of that falls between the cracks. It's like mental noise.

With video, it's so much easier to engage the viewer because you're right there in front of them. If you know how to grab their attention, you can communicate whatever it is you want to get across quickly, efficiently and effectively.

Used properly, videos give life to marketing materials. How many times have you published sales pages? In fact, I would bet that a lot of them fell flat. You have less chance of experiencing this with video.

Video brings personality to your text. It also brings depth to whatever infographics you use to market the product or service you are promoting. Finally, video enables marketers to achieve a sense of connection between their sales page materials and their target audiences.

In this book, I'll teach you how to create great videos that connect with your audiences.

I will also instruct you on how to promote your videos so you can turbocharge their traffic generation and conversion power. That's right. I'm going to teach you how to turn an idea into a video, which can then turn into money. See you in Chapter 1. Video Marketing Profit Kit

Chapter 1 - How to Figure Out the Right Kind of Video to Make

Now that we have a clear idea of the tremendous persuasive power of video, the next step is to figure out the right kind of video to make.

You have to understand that just because you know that video works at some level or another, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to instantly go out there and make some kind of random video. Last time I checked, taking wild shots in the dark is not exactly a winning strategy. You're not exactly going to hit a bulls-eye just because you took a random shot.

You have to be intentional regarding the videos you make. Otherwise, you're going to be spending a tremendous amount of time, effort and money only to end up with a whole lot of nothing. Let's get that out of the way. The key here is to have a niche target.

If you're trying to make money online in whatever form, you have to have a niche. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Otherwise, you are just simply wasting your time. Sooner or later, you're going to fail.

A lot of online entrepreneurs and online publishers who are clueless regarding the importance of niche eventually struggle. Whatever success they may have achieved is simply a product of dumb luck. Video Marketing Profit Kit Eventually, luck will run out. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. This is why it's really important to be both systematic and methodical in how you make your money online.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t all about keywords.

It isn’t only about long-tail headers and meta-tags. In fact, a lot of search engine spiders ignore meta-data anyway.

Assearch engines continue to evolve, they are looking more and moreat format and layout.

This coursewill discuss a few things that you need to be aware of.

During the process of going through this course, be sure to check your website to make sure thatyou aren’t overdoing or underdoing any of these steps, and your search engine ranking should increase.

While this certainly shouldn’t be taken as an end all and be all resource or course on the concept of local SEO, it would help if you go in with an open mind and a fresh slate.

Because SEO is always changing, it’s important to remember that advertising and search engine optimization work the same as the real world.

The following is just a baseline that will help you brief yourself and get fully up-to-date on the topic of local SEO and such.

Take a good look at your page. Now go find a four-year-old and have them take a look. When you log into your website, you might already know where everything is, but if you have left it in the hands of your IT guy, that might work to your advantage inthis case.

• Is your siteeasy to navigate?
• Is it visually appealing without appearing cheap or overly gimmicky?

Believe it or not, web crawlers are starting to look at page layout and ease of navigation among other things. They will see if your internal links are easy to read, and they will compare the information from following those links to make certain that accuracyand consistency is maintained.

Search engines care about the user experience, after all, and they want to get their regular customers to the right information quickly.

The days of java buttons and cute pictures are gone.

If you have buttons that appear on the site as images, make sure that they are tagged in the HTML with exactlywhat is written on the button. You may have noticed this on other sites. You mouse over a button that says, “Home,” and a caption near your pointer reads “Home.”

Web spiders aren’t looking at your page visually, they are analyzing it through code, so if a button isn’t tagged, they never load the picture to decode the information presented. They simply see it as a picture and a link. That’s bad.

Generally speaking, text is best. With CSS and font embedding available, there is rarely a need for an image link (and if youhave one, then it needs a caption encoded with it).

The next thing you want to look at is easy navigation. Look again at your landing page. Pretend thatyou are your average customer.

Why did you come to this site?

If you run a flower business, then your customer probably showed up to buy flowers, not to read about the history of how it’s beenhanded down from your grandpa. If the order form or catalog isn’t the very first thing they see, then a link to it should be the first underlined text they come across.

Everything else should be in the menu, or in the sidebar, or at the bottom of the page. But the middle of your screen is the prime real estate. You viewers are typically there for one thing, put it right in front of them.

Your NAP information(Name, Address, and Phone number) should be readily availableas well.

Typically, this information is either found on a side-bar, or down at the bottom. This way it’s displayed on every page of the site, and the user (and consequently, the web spider) doesn’t have to go hunting for it by clicking every option on your menu or anything.

It should be on every, single, page; and it should appear identically.

If you do have an “about us” page where it is listed as part of the content, that’s fine. Two to three total impressions are the max, not because you should spam your address all over the place, but because you might have a map page, or a how to find us, or something similar.

You want this information to be tight and easy to read. No fancy fonts, make it large enough to see.

The one thing that is incredibly important is that the information appears the same, everywhere it is listed. Check every instance of this online business card to make sure they match, and search engines will treat you favorably.

If you have a transposed number in your zip-code, or a different formatting for your telephone number, it will be frowned upon. Remember, spiders aren’t people, they’re programs, and as much as they are attempting to emulate a user experience, they aren’t actually loading content, or seeing the page as your human customers do.
To plan for the future, all text on your site should be spoken in the language of human speech.

The sound and feel of every little blurb should sound as you would if you were speaking directly to your customers.

This is where overuse of keywords will become obvious, and a natural language approach will be better for voice searches and navigation, which are becoming more popular all the time.

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It’s a brave new Internet world, and search engine optimization changes almost daily.

While computer chips aren’t doubling in speed every couple of months like they used to, the tech industry and all aspects of marketing continue to evolve at a viral rate.

It’s a whole new world for marketers, where competition is stiff and fierce.

One angry competitor can essentially bring your business to its knees with a couple of negative comments, well placed and believable, especially if you are relying on Google-maps alone to promote your company.

Marketing has taken on many faces over the years, but in the modern world, the newest is the ability to shape-shift. To morph on the fly.

Whole marketing campaigns are launched with the thought that the entire platform could change overnight, and the campaign might need to be scrapped, and replaced with another idea waiting in the background.

Marketers act more as liaisons to the consumer, delivering ideas and advice to help shape products, which in the digital world can also change from day to day.

Nothing is static. No strategy holds its ability to promote your brand or product. No one service can be trusted with your marketing strategy.

While this course will cover a lot of marketing tools you can use to promote your product, the key thing to keep in mind is that all of this could change tomorrow.

Websites are still the crux of online marketing, but they are adapting too, as mobile usersare beginning to replace laptop and desktop computers almost entirely.

New competition can crop up overnight, and crush your entire market with a new idea, or a product that completely reinvents the way that we think about a product or service.

Uber is doing this with taxi companies. Air B&B is doing the same with hotel chains. The ability to scrap and adapt, to shift and change, to stick and move. That’s the market today. It’s fast, it’s dynamic, and it’s impossible to predict.

Some of the methods discussed here can help you find your way in this world of technological whirlwind, and they have been around for years.

Some are brand new as of this writing, and could either become staples of the SEO world, or be gone tomorrow.

We have to think ahead, and always be on the look-out for the newest marketing strategies before they emerge.

Hopefully the insights that you gain here will put you in that mindset, and you will come up with the next big push in marketing.

Staying current on SEO practices is good. Staying ahead of the trend with your online business is better. Remember, search engines have one goal, to deliver the best possible content to users.

If you have the best content, then your next strategy could be the next standard in search engine optimization. Don’t stop once you are caught up. Continue to surge ahead.

If it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. Just don’t fool yourself about what’s working and what isn’t.

Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for billboards all over thecountry was once thought to be an effective advertising method, but there’s a problem.

It’s not effective. It’s not trackable. And there is no way, at the end of the day, to judge your return on investment.

Marketers used to burn up cash to slap a billboard up that might never be seen by a single member of their target audience.

The same reference could be made about SEO. What good is 100,000 page views if none of them has the slightest interest in your content or products? Sometimes having the best keywords isn’t the best tactic.

I’m not saying that older methods can’t work, they can. But they need to be targeted and precise. They need to be placed right in the hands of your customers, ignoring everyone else.

That brings us to the best place to startany marketing campaign in this new age.

The social platform.

I know what you are thinking. Facebook advertising doesn’t work.

That’s okay, it doesn’t have to. What it does is allow you to go straight to your target audience and engage them directly.

Forget about the ad budgets, what you want is personal engagement. You want sharable links the can pass from person to person. You want virility.

You aren’t going to get this with a simple business page, though it’s a great place to keep your audience close. In order to build that audience, you need personal accounts.

You can have everyone at your company either use their own personal account to talk about work, where they can invite friends that are interested in what they do.

Instead of frowning onsocial time, make it effective.Make competitions for who can drive the most likes to a business page.

They can join groups. They can plug your products. They can share links.

And here’s a little tip: they can leave a direct link back to your productpage without all the URL nonsense.

Simply type an ‘@,’ followed by the first few letters of a business page that you follow, and you can select it from the list.

Facebook will drop in a clickable link that looks like it targets a personal site, and directs clicks straight to your page.

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Viral Marketing for Your Online Businesses

The Elements of a Successful Viral Campaign

When you're planning your viral marketing strategy, it's important to keep in mind the basic requirements of every viral campaign. Without these, your stampede might turn out to be more like a leisurely stroll.

To build a good viral campaign, make sure your plan includes

- A free product or service
- The product has to be easily transferable to another person
- It has to be able to scale easily
- It has to take advantage of other people's resources
- It has to be unique

Over the next few pages, we’re going to take a look at each of these elements, and examine how you can use them to design and launch your own viral campaign.

Don't worry. It's not as complicated as it looks!

There is a Free Lunch, and You're Serving It

Every single viral campaign begins with giving something away. Every one. It could be an ebook, a piece of software, an instructional video, or even a few laughs, but it has to be free. And when we say free, we mean free. Not free with an opt-in or a free trial. It has to be really free, because you're going to encourage your customers to share it with their friends, and no one wants to tell their sister she has to sign-up for your list to get the cool thing you're giving away.

Now that doesn't mean you're giving away the farm. But you do need to give away great stuff. There's lots of ways you can do that, while still leaving your customers wanting more.

For example, if you build and sell a software package that helps bloggers find free photos for use on their blog, you could offer a free version of the software that only searches one database instead of several. Or if you've written an ebook, you might release one chapter for free.

One thing to remember, though, is that the free product must be useful all by itself. You're not releasing a free trial, you're essentially building two products. One which you'll give away and one which you will sell, and they both need to be valuable to your users. Free software that is so limited as to be worthless is not a good candidate for a viral campaign. The same is true for a chapter of an ebook that ends with a question.

Some marketers pull just this sort of trick to "force" customers to upgrade, but very often it will backfire. Customers are savvy, and they dislike being manipulated this way, so don't make the mistake of thinking you'll lose sales by giving away too much information, because the opposite is actually true. You'll gain sales by giving away great stuff. Especially if your great stuff is easy for your users to share among their friends, family, and colleagues.

Share and Share Alike

The second element of a fantastic viral marketing campaign is the ability of your customers to share your product with their peers. Think about the hundreds of email forwards you get in a year. That's because people love to share great stuff. Good marketers know this and take advantage of it by providing their customers with what they want, and then they sit back and watch it spread.

Social Networks

Viral campaigns thrive on the Internet largely because of the social networks that exist. Ten years ago marketers had to rely on telephones and email (maybe) to get the word out about a new product or a great service. You can imagine the results were unpredictable and slow to materialize.

Today, we have dozens – maybe even hundreds – of social networks to use to get our message to the masses. But for some, that means having the opposite problem: where do you start?

For an online marketer, the first place to start is with your very own email list. These are the people who already know you, like you, and buy from you. They're your biggest fans, and they're the ones who are most likely to pass your great products on to their family and friends and social network. So make sure you're keeping them informed about the latest products you're developing, any contests you're holding, or any other thing that's going on that they might want to share. You probably have an account with several of the more popular social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter. But for viral marketing to work in these venues, you have to be hanging out with the right crowd. If you use Facebook primarily for friend and family interaction, trying to launch a viral campaign there is probably not a good move.

The same goes for Twitter and Google Plus. Do you follow those in your niche, or those who are other marketers? If it's the latter, your niche campaign won't have very good results here either. Instead, make an effort to follow those who share your passion for your niche, instead of those who are simply marketing their own online business. Now if your niche is internet marketing, then you should be following other marketers, but that's the only exception. Concentrate on following – and being followed by – those who are in your niche, but who are not necessarily selling in your niche. In other words, you want to be hanging out with the buyers, not the sellers.

For strictly social interaction, Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter are your number one choices. If your target market is other business owners, though – say for example you sell a product aimed at accountants – you need to get on LinkedIn. If you're not familiar with it, LinkedIn is basically a database of business professionals in all areas of expertise. It's similar to Facebook, but without the games and other social activities.

LinkedIn allows you to network with other professionals in your area of expertise, form groups, organize meetings, and develop a vast network of colleagues you can reach out to through private messaging or by posting status updates. You can automate your LinkedIn updates just like you can with Facebook and Twitter, and even link your other social network accounts so everything is up to date. If your product is geared toward professionals, LinkedIn is the social network of choice. For viral campaigns built around funny videos, great photography, comic strips, or other visual media, StumbleUpon is the social network of choice. A combination of a social application and a bookmarking service, StumbleUpon is where you go when you're looking for new stuff on the Internet. Just click the button on your toolbar, and you'll be transported to the next interesting thing as determined by the choices you made when you signed up. Like animals? StumbleUpon will serve up a random cat video or heartwarming dog story. Into sports? You might land on a video of Tiger Woods hitting a hole in one, or an ad for a new kind of practice ball.

Of course, getting your content to go viral on a social network involves more than just putting it out there and hoping for the best. Later on we'll discuss how you can give your campaign a virtual push to get it started, but for now, just be aware of the options available in the social networking world. Each has its own purpose and followers, so pay attention to where your customers hang out to determine the best social networks for your needs.

Learn to Use Your Friends and Their Resources

Leveraging the power of your own network is an important aspect of any successful viral campaign. Chances are some of your friends are marketers just like yourself, and chances are they've got mailing lists, blogs, and Twitter followers in related, complementary niches. These are powerful assets you can use when it comes to launching a viral campaign.