Tiny Business, Mighty Profits » you tube

Tiny Action, Mighty Payoff: YouTube Search

Russ Henneberry — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:04:06 +0000

You haven’t heard? YouTube is the second most searched property in the United States.

People are looking for information on YouTube — could you be the provider of that information and possibly win some business?

What is being created around your industry and uploaded to YouTube? Take some time to navigate over and search YouTube for your keywords.

Watch some video and determine whether online video is a good fit for you and your business.

Is Barack Obama Your President Without The Internet?

Russ Henneberry — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:06:28 +0000

Barack Obama

I ran across some very interesting statistics while reading a book called Socialnomics by Erik Qualman. This book is a fascinating look at the drastic changes that have occurred due to the advent of social media. The book is current, fresh and very relevant to tiny business owners.

One of the chapters in the book discusses the way that Barack Obama was able to leverage social media to drive small $5 and $10 donations to his campaign amounting to millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

The statistics below are a snapshot of the numbers at the time of the election.

Network	Obama	McCain
Facebook Fans	3,000,000	600,000
MySpace Friends	800,000	217,000
Twitter Followers	113,000	4,000
YouTube Views	20,000,000	2,000,000
Blog Mentions	500,000,000	150,000,000

Obama also encouraged the youth of America to get out and vote by using online video and the powerful video sharing site YouTube. The video below, which is a spoof of the classic “WASSUP” Bud Light commercials was released one week before election day and at the time of writing this blog post had over 7 million views on YouTube and over 20,000 comments.

The “WASSUP” videos had been successful at selling millions of Anheuser Busch beers and were apparently equally successful at marketing the Obama campaign.

Could a relatively unknown Senator from Chicago have rocketed to the presidency in just four years without the power of the Internet? Are there similarities between Obama’s use of the Internet and JFK’s use of the new medium of television?

Leave Your Thoughts In The Comments Section! Remember — This is not a political discussion but a marketing discussion.

Content Marketing Strategy Building

Russ Henneberry — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:25:05 +0000

Content Marketing Is Powerful

This is a condensed version of my free report that accompanies my Tiny Business, Mighty Profits newsletter. The Tiny Business, Mighty Profits Report goes into greater detail but this is a great primer for anyone that is interested in learning to market a tiny business in the Marketing 2.0 era.

The concept of Content Marketing on the Internet is growing as small, medium and even mega-sized businesses come to grips with the fact that traditional marketing techniques are not as effective as they once were.

Defining Content Marketing

Before we jump into the business of creating a Content Marketing plan, let’s define Content Marketing for the uninitiated folks.

Read this carefully:

I define Content Marketing as “the act of creating consistent, relevant and valuable content and distributing it to your target market with the aim of creating a mutually beneficial business relationship.”

Creating a Content Marketing plan has three major steps:

Finding and Listening To Your Target Market
Creating Content On Your “Hub”
Distributing Your Content Through “Spokes”

Step 1 – Finding and Listening To Your Target Market

If you have identified your target market, you have already fought half the battle. There is an entire section in my free Tiny Business, Mighty Profits report about identifying your target market.

Once you have identified this group of people, it is time to go out and FIND them. Chances are, members of your target market are congregating on the Internet in various places.

The video below shows you how I go about doing the research necessary to find my target audience in places like:

Blogs
Forums
Physical Meet-Ups or Networking Events
Twitter

You will find that something amazing is going on in the places I mention above. People are having conversations. People are building relationships. People are venting about their problems. People are providing solutions to those problems.

In other words, they are talking about the issues that surround your industry and niche.

You should be listening and taking note of these issues — you will be using this new found knowledge in Step 2 of your Content Marketing plan.

Watch this short video that shows you how I find and listen to my audience:

Step 2 – Creating Content On Your “Hub”

If you have already started your tiny business, you may already have a website or blog.

This is your “hub.”

It is where all of your content and thus your marketing messages reside. It is from here that you will distribute your marketing messages to your target market through the “spokes” we will discuss in Step 3.

Although you may already have a website for your tiny business, it is critical that your “hub” contain a blog. A blog (and a self-hosted WordPress blog at that) is the easiest and most powerful platform from which to broadcast your message. WordPress is far and away the most user friendly and well equipped blogging platform available.

If you need help setting up a WordPress blog, watch this 4 part video series that shows you EXACTLY how to set up your very own business blog.

Get My Hosting Package | Next Video

Index of All Videos – Click to Play

Video 2 – Installing WordPress
Video 3 – Design
Video 4 – Pages and Posts

You have listened carefully to your target market and you have taken note of the concerns, issues and problems that they are having.

It is time to deliver content via your WordPress blog that will solve these problems. Content creation can come in the following forms:

Text
Video
Audio
Images

Consider your strengths when deciding upon the form that your content will take.

Are you a strong writer? Are you a strong speaker? Would you be comfortable in front of a camera? Would you be more comfortable with just a microphone and no camera? Does your industry lend itself well to images?

The content that you create for your target market can take any of the forms above but your strategy must always follow The Three Pillars of Content Marketing:

Pillar 1 - Your Content Must Be Consistent

The most difficult part of any Content Marketing plan is consistency. You must continue to publish your content on a regular basis. A good rule of thumb is that you should be creating something of value every business day. It takes hustle, it takes perseverance and it takes will power to be successful with this type of marketing.

Pillar 2 - Your Content Must Be Relevant

This should go without saying, but the content that you create for your target market should be relevant to them. People usually miss the mark with this when they skip Step 1 — and don’t listen to their target market first. They make assumptions and those assumptions are sometimes wrong.

Pillar 3 - Your Content Must Be Valuable

This is the most important of the three pillars. If you aren’t creating something valuable for your market, you will be ignored. And there is nothing more deadly to a business than being ignored. Concentrate on creating high quality content that provides a benefit to your target market.

Step 3 – Distributing Your Content Through “Spokes”

Example Hub & Spokes Model -- What Will Yours Look Like?

The last step in a successful Content Marketing strategy is DISTRIBUTION. The Internet can be used to “broadcast” your content, and thus your marketing message, using hundreds (perhaps thousands) of free tools.

The key to your strategy will be selecting a few “spokes” through which to get your marketing messages out to your market. You will need to bring the content to them, instead of expecting them to come to you.

Go back to the research that you did in Step 1 and determine the best places to place your content. DO NOT attempt to use every tool available. You will never get anything accomplished — remember that you must be consistent.

Download the full version of my Content Marketing strategy eBook entitled Tiny Business, Mighty Profits by completing the form below.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do?

Russ Henneberry — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:31:19 +0000

As we propel headlong into the Marketing 2.0 era, traditional marketing (television, radio commercials, print ads, etc) is becoming more and more difficult to execute. The big brands know it and I hope that you and your tiny business know it as well.

The big brands are starting to make more and more of a push into blogging, social media and online video.

Here are some good examples – go on check them out:

General Motors Fast Lane Blog - Where GM “works on ideas that will influence future vehicles.”
Coca Cola on Facebook - With nearly 4 million fans of their Facebook Fan Page, Coke definitely understands the value of social media.
Jet Blue on Twitter - 1.5 million Twitter followers are receiving tweets from Jet Blue Airways.
Fox Broadcasting on YouTube – With nearly 40,000 subscribers and millions of downloads, Fox is serving up video on the largest video sharing site in the world.

Do you know what scares the heck (hey- it’s a PG rated blog) out of these big brands?

Breaking Up Is Hard Easy To Do

The relationships our businesses build in these Marketing 2.0 channels are fragile ones. The customer is in 100% control because of one important difference — THEY CAN TURN US OFF.

They stop visiting the General Motors Fast Lane blog
They “un-fan” the Coca Cola fan page
They “unfollow” the Jet Blue Twitter account
They unsubscribe from the Fox Broadcasting YouTube channel

As your customers and prospects continue to become more and more difficult to INTERRUPT due to technologies like iPods, Tivo, Netflix and RSS they are taking the reigns of power in the marketing relationship.

And they can break up with you at any time. They simply shut you off.

The Good News For Tiny Business Owners

This can be great news for your tiny business! Yes, it is easy for customers to break up with you as well. However, you have an opportunity to be more personal than the big brands. Because your business is so small, it can be more “human” than the big brands and corporations.

We, as consumers, tend to break up with people when we don’t feel like we are getting ample attention. When we don’t feel like our needs are being met. As a tiny business owner, you can take the time to REALLY get to know your customers and prospects and deliver a more personal message to them.

What About You?

What do you do to ensure that your customers and prospects don’t break up with you?

Content Marketing: A Real World Example

Russ Henneberry — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:26:22 +0000

This real world example of Content Marketing comes directly from my Tiny Business, Mighty Profits Report that is available on my website for free.

Read through this example carefully and apply the lessons to your own business. How can you implement a Content Marketing strategy the way that Dave has?

An IT professional in the St. Louis area has just started Tiny & Mighty IT Consulting. The owner (we will call him Dave) has recently been laid off from a large firm that specializes in setting up small to mid-sized businesses with turn-key software that will run the entire business. His former employer also sets up computer networks and provides 24/7 IT support.

Dave knows his tiny business cannot be all things to all people. He spent most of his time at his old job setting up networks as an engineer and knows this part of the business like the back of his laptop. ☺ However, he was never involved in the software side of the business. He loves the networking side of the business and has decided that he will concentrate on this part of the industry.

Dave also preferred to work with mid-sized businesses because he found that they had the on-site IT staff to support projects. Dave has made up his mind, he will concentrate on IT consulting for mid-sized businesses in the area of computer networking.

Dave is a smart cookie and after doing some research he decides he will go out and listen to his market on the Internet. He finds dozens of computer forums full of IT staff members from businesses across the country. He finds a meet-up group that comes together at a local Starbucks once a month to discuss geeky networking stuff. He also finds hundreds of IT professionals on Twitter that are constantly bantering about – that’s right – geeky networking stuff. He finds three blogs that have lots of IT professionals leaving comments.

While Dave is ramping up his business, he starts spending a couple of hours per day on these websites. He listens, he lurks. After a couple of weeks of listening to his audience, Dave realizes that one of the most common questions that he hears his market asking is:

“How do I keep my computer network secure?”

Since Dave is quite the expert in this field, he starts leaving valuable and informative comments in blogs, forums and in social media channels whenever he finds these questions.

Then Dave decides to add a blog to his own IT Consulting website. He has no shortage of topics to blog about and will certainly start by addressing some of the concerns that he hears regarding networking security.
He writes blog posts with titles like:

Top 10 Network Security Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
How To Back Up Your Network In-House
A Review of Three Popular Third Party Data Back-Up Companies

Dave notifies the people he has been networking with both on-line and off-line that he has started a blog and that there is good information about network security on it now. He sends it out via Twitter and mentions it over a mocha latte at Starbucks to his meet-up group. He mentions it in blog comments and puts a link to his blog in the forums he has been visiting.

Dave may not realize it but he has begun to implement a powerful marketing strategy — a Content Marketing strategy.

The people that Dave has been conversing with both on and off-line are very appreciative and gain instant respect for Dave’s knowledge in the computer networking space especially in the area of network security.
Dave goes to Best Buy and buys a cheap web cam for $60 and starts shooting video of himself giving 10 minute tutorials about network security; he uploads them to YouTube and puts them on his blog.

He sends out notification to his group of friends that he has begun the video series. Again, he mentions it in the forums, on blogs and through social media. He also tells his meet-up group about it. His network loves the free, helpful information and they love Dave.

Dave sees an opportunity here because he has branded himself as an expert with his group of “followers” in the area of network security. He does a bit of research and determines that he can segment the niche market for his paid services even further by concentrating only on the network security segment of the computer networking market.

Dave keeps producing blog posts and video that is helpful to his audience and the traffic is rolling in on his website. He is getting mentions on other blogs and in forums. Some of his followers hire him and others give him referrals.
Dave loves referrals. They are much easier to sell than cold calls.

After several months of running this strategy Dave starts to get asked to do speaking engagements, guest posts on blogs and occasionally gets quoted in a mainstream newspaper.

Tiny & Mighty IT Consulting is doing well and Dave is able to select the projects he would like to work on and refers the others to colleagues of his as a gesture of goodwill.

Does this sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Your tiny business can achieve mighty profits as well by creating a valuable and trustworthy body of content on the Internet that will brand you and your tiny business as the authority in your industry.

Download the free report Tiny Business, Mighty Profits and read it from end to end to learn the details about this powerful marketing strategy.

Rebel With a Keyboard

Russ Henneberry — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:46:25 +0000

We are living in the most exciting time period for tiny business owners in history. Today, you and I have the power of the press.

We have both the [free] tools and the [free] platform to create and publish informational and entertaining content to an audience.

The Platform

I suppose the overall platform that is available to us is the Internet in general but this notion is deceiving. The Internet has undergone a fundamental change since its popular inception in the early 90′s.

The fundamental change has been the availability of publishing tools like the one I am using to write this article — WordPress. This has been the real game changer. WordPress (and other blogging platforms) has given the tiny business owner a free and easy platform from which to publish content.

Learn to set up your own WordPress blog by watching these short videos.

The Tools

In my eBook, Tiny Business, Mighty Profits I teach the strategy that I (and thousands of other businesses) are using to market their small enterprises. It is called Content Marketing and it uses the aforementioned WordPress blog as a “hub” from which to broadcast content to your target market.

The tools that are available to us to broadcast from this WordPress blog platform are many:

YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion Video Sharing Sites
Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
Email Autoresponders Like MarketVolt or AWeber
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Social Networking Sites

And the list of free “tools” for broadcasting your marketing message (your content) goes on and on.

Create your own Content Marketing plan by downloading my free eBook – Tiny Business, Mighty Profits in the upper right hand corner of my website.

You are not reliant upon anyone else to market your products and services. You are your own media house. You are your own publisher.

You are a rebel with a keyboard.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Russ Henneberry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:36:10 +0000

Who do you want as a neighbor? Do you know?

If you know who you want to be associated with – that is half the battle. Let the power of online and off-line networking techniques find those people and allow you to build a relationship with them.

Become neighbors.

Look to become neighbors with several different groups:

Customers
Prospects
Competitors (They aren’t enemies, they are possible allies)
Industry Experts

Your goal, as a tiny business owner, should be to build your network and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. One of the best ways to do this is to build alliances and become neighbors with others in your industry.

Here are several methods short of baking an apple pie and knocking on their door:

Tweeting - Twitter is an unbelievably powerful communication tool. Find those that you would like to cozy up with and start communicating. Don’t come on too strong, look for some way to add value to their business.

Linking- Use your blog or website to link to their business website, Twitter profile, YouTube channel. Review their products and services and (again) look for any way to help them fulfill their goals.

Commenting - Comment on their blogs, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, etc. Spark up a conversation with them and do so with nothing but good intentions.

Off-line networking - Find out where they are hanging out off-line and attend those meetings. Go to their speaking engagements. Find others at networking events that would be possible business partners or referrals for their products and services.

Speaking - Look for opportunities to get before an audience of those that you would like to be neighbors with. Speaking is one of the best ways to establish authority in your industry.

What about you? How do you make new neighbors both online and off-line? Leave a comment!

My First Impression Of Your Business Has To Be That I Want More Impressions

Russ Henneberry — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:18:58 +0000

"Push" marketing is a trap for the tiny business owner

I decided to count.

I have seen the Coca-Cola logo in four separate locations today. Once on TV, once in my father-in-law’s hand, once at 7-eleven, and once on a soda machine at the airport — and it is only 3 pm.

Now that is branding.

Coca-Cola is voted year after year as one of the Top 3 most valuable brands in the world.

Wake up call: Your tiny business is not Coca-Cola.

Some of your larger competitors may have the ability to advertise the way that Coca Cola does — putting their marketing message in front of people 10′s, 100′s, 1000′s of times per year. In advertising terms we call these experiences with a brand IMPRESSIONS.

You and your similar sized competitors may be trying to grow your business this way as well.

You will go broke.

You will find yourself spending thousands of dollars to run an advertising campaign that will achieve this many impressions on your target market.

There Is a Better Way

In my eBook, Tiny Business, Mighty Profits I unlock the secrets behind a revolutionary type of Internet Marketing called Content Marketing. At the core of this marketing strategy is creating VALUABLE CONTENT to be used as marketing material both online and off-line.

I teach tiny business owners to market the way that I do — using a WordPress business blog to BROADCAST your content to your target market.

This method of marketing is extremely effective because it uses FREE (or inexpensive) technologies on the web to market INFORMATION.

Why Content Marketing Works

I think we established above that you don’t have the marketing budget to go toe to toe with your larger competitors using traditional advertising methods.

But — you still need to get your marketing message and your business in front of your target market as many times as possible.

IMPORTANT: The key is to get your target market to actually SEEK OUT your marketing messages.

How do you do that?

Think about it — what do you SEEK online? Answer — stuff that is valuable.

What Is Valuable?

Things that make me more successful
Things that save me time
Things that protect me or my loved ones
Things that make me more money
Things that entertain me

IMPORTANT: Find out what your target market needs and provide these benefits — if you do so — your target market will PULL your marketing message to them instead of you having to PAY money to PUSH your marketing message to them.

Examples of PULL marketing:

People asking to receive your email newsletter
People signing up for your RSS feed
People subscribing to your YouTube channel, Twitter feed or Facebook channel
People downloading your White Papers
People subscribing to your podcast or vodcast
People downloading your eBook

If you are going to get a limited number of IMPRESSIONS on a member of your target market — you must make that one impression so VALUABLE that they will then PULL your marketing to them on a regular basis through some of the methods above.

The real brilliance to this strategy is that once you get a member of your target market to start PULLING your marketing message to them — it costs almost nothing to market to them. You don’t need to run another television, radio or print ad to PUSH your message to them. They WANT it!

When I meet you or your business for the first time, I should be compelled to seek your marketing message in the future — to SUBSCRIBE to your marketing — get busy creating something so valuable that I can’t wait to see what you will say next!

Image credit – purple_onion

Read this related post by Seth Godin on the power of permission in your marketing.

Why You Haven’t Heard A Peep From Me About The Importance Of Link Building

Russ Henneberry — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:42:08 +0000

I rarely talk about the importance of links any more – but it is not because it has become less critical to have incoming links from other websites — links are still extremely valuable.

If you aren’t aware — incoming links to your site from quality websites will give you better rankings in the search engines.

I Have Reformed

I was an Internet marketer that purchased links from brokers and engaged in other “black hat” link building techniques to manipulate Google (and the others) search results. I don’t do it anymore. Not because of law or ethics (though there is some of that), but because there is no future in it.

The Threat To Google

Remember that Google (and the others) are in the business of providing reliable, trustworthy, and relevant search results for your searches. They DO NOT want you to manipulate their search results. They want the best websites for a particular search term to rise to the top because they have GOOD CONTENT.

Google is paying some of the brightest minds in the world to develop ways to keep their search results from being manipulated. Paid link building is Public Enemy #1 in the battle against manipulation and they have been quite vocal about the fact that they have declared all-out war on paid links. It is a serious threat to the future of Google and is getting ample attention within the organization.

Let Your Hub and Spokes Build Links Naturally

In my eBook, Tiny Business, Mighty Profits, I discuss the ultimate marketing strategy for a small business owner. The book will walk you through the process of building a hub for your content by using a WordPress blog. The book then shows you how you can broadcast your content across the web using a series of spokes that extend from your blog.

Use broadcast vehicles like:

Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, etc)
Online Video (YouTube, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, etc)
Email Marketing (AWeber, MarketVolt, Constant Contact, etc)
Podcasting
White Papers
eBooks
etc, etc.

Using this “hub and spokes model” will allow you to build links naturally because people will find your content and link to it. This will present no threat to Google. And guess what — when you are building good content and building links naturally to your website — Google will award you with traffic.

It will take time — more time than logging into a link brokers website and buying gobs of low-quality links back to your average to below average website — but in the end, you will build a resource on the Internet that your visitors will WANT to visit.

If you build something valuable on the Internet, your website will become the most profitable asset your company owns. It will work day and night for you with little money invested. You will build a buzz around your business that will naturally attract links — and the referrals will roll in from Google and the others.