from weirsdo

Every day this week, I’ll be posting based upon a random Flickr image that inspires me. Here’s one now.

This photo exudes happiness, freedom, confidence, and joy. Each of us has experienced such boundless expression at some point in our lives, when we shed all inhibitions, danced simply for the joy of it, and really allowed our true colors to shine through. Infusing this colorful freedom of expression into not only our “play time” but also into our work time is critical to success, in my opinion.

You don’t have to be colorful, playful, joyous and creative in every blog post or every site article, but that side of you needs to shine through on occasion. Your joyful spirit can embody your ebusiness in many ways, some subtle, some vibrant. Humor, joy, flamboyance, and elation WILL affect your readers in a positive way.

Have you ever seen someone having an uncontrollable giggle attack? They laugh and laugh and laugh… and you don’t know why they are laughing, but for some reason, you start laughing as well. And the more they laugh, the more you laugh. Others see the two of you laughing, and they begin to laugh. Only the original giggler knows what caused the laughter to begin with, but his explosion of giggles affects everyone around him in the same way.

That’s powerful stuff. We all have beautiful colors within us that we can share with others on our blogs and our web sites, and the sharing of those colors will affect those we share them with. If you are looking for a way to connect with the visitors to your site, find a way to share your colors. As Cyndi Lauper said in her 1986 song, True Colors:

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And thats why I love you
So dont be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

And in deference to the always wonderful Ms. Lauper, sit back and enjoy a little YouTube video of her singing True Colors. Afterwards, think of ways you can share your joyful side on your site.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cyndi Lauper, e - business, Youtube
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1. Organic search engine traffic – This is the granddaddy of all traffic. Visitors who arrive at your site from a search they’ve conducted are extremely targeted. This is what SEOs live for – high search engine rankings for popular phrases related to your niche. Bonus points if the great rankings are on Google, as that sends far more traffic than others. Don’t make the mistake of concentrating solely on search engine traffic however. If you lose your rankings, and you have no other sources of traffic, your site’s traffic will be devastated.
2. Sponsored search engine traffic (PPC) – Second best is the traffic obtained from visitors clicking on sponsored listings from those same search engines. Essentially, you get all the same benefits as above, but there’s one difference. You have to pay for this traffic. The major search engines have made it a bit more complicated to play the PPC (pay per click) game. No longer is it as simple as “the biggest spenders get the top listings”. You can be very successful with this method, and the fact that you have more control over placement is a big draw. Keep in mind, however, that without experience, you may end up spending a bundle of cash on PPC systems such as Google’s Adwords without reaping any profits.
3. Referrals from other sites – This could come in several forms. Other sites may simply link to you because they like your site, or you may have chosen to purchase advertising (either as a link or a banner ad) on others’ sites. Either way, if a highly-trafficked sites in your niche recommend your site, there’s a good chance that you’ll receive nicely targeted traffic from those sites.
4. Participation in forums/communities – If you participate in forums and communities related to your niche, you can build up an element of trust. That trust helps send others community participants to your site via any links that you’ve listed in your signatures or profile pages. This may not send large quantities of traffic, but it will probably be traffic that has a strong bond with you. Those visitors may then go on to either link to your site or recommend your site in other ways.
5. Guest blogging – Like the community participation above, guest blogging helps build up others’ trust in you, and your name becomes well known. This in turn builds up your personal brand, and you become more recognizable. At some point, people will know who you are, and that almost always translates into more site traffic. Obviously, you should be creating quality posts on others’ blogs if you hope to succeed with this method of traffic generation and increase blog traffic.
6. Social networking – Traffic from social networks such as Digg and Stumbleupon, or social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, or popular video sites such as Youtube, can be huge. However, the traffic comes in spikes, usually only lasts for a few hours or at most a few days, and the visitors rarely stick around. These visitors may not be very targeted, or they may just not be all that interested in what you have to offer. Nevertheless, you may get some much-needed attention (buzz) or a few nice links, so social networking traffic is worth getting. It’s just not worth as much as the factors mentioned above, in my opinion.
7. Article marketing / Directory submissions – Submitting your site to directories or writing articles that will be syndicated via article marketing sites are both useful for obtaining a few links to your sites, and perhaps a handful of visitors. You won’t see much direct traffic from these sources, so put this a bit lower on your list of things to do. It’s not a bad idea, and it can be useful for link building purposes, but it’s just not highly useful.
8. Purchasing traffic packages and traffic exchange programs – In general, you should avoid these, and I only include this in the list so that I can warn you about them. If you are tempted to “buy millions of visitors for only $99″ or whatever the offer is, ask yourself if you enjoy throwing money away. These types of programs may or may not send you traffic, but the traffic they do send will likely either be fake or it will consist of visitors who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in your site. You will be wasting money. Likewise, traffic exchange packages usually consist of webmasters visiting each others sites, just to obtain more traffic for their own sites. Again, they aren’t interested in your site at all. They only want to increase their own traffic, which won’t be useful traffic for them either.

I’m sure there are other traffic sources, but those are the ones that I receive the most traffic from. If you know of any other great sources, please share in the comments below.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article marketing, directory submissions, forums, Google, guest blogging, high search engine rankings, Organic search engine traffic, search engine, search engine traffic, search engines, SEOs, social networking, social networking traffic, social networks, sources of site traffic, traffic exchange, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Easy Video Insertion Plugin: I currently use a WordPress plugin that makes it simple for me to drop a Youtube type video into any of my blog posts. I highly recommend it if you want to include a video in any of your posts. You can get it here.

Video Gallery Plugin: This allows you to create a gallery of an entire Youtube video collection. It does a few other things as well, such as:

• local thumbnail caching (youtube can be slow to display thumbnails)
• random thumbnail in your sidebar
• display an entire video collection as a gallery
• display your favorite videos as a gallery
• display a specific video in your post/page

You can get this cool plugin here.

Video Comments Plugin: Video Comments allows you to post video in your blog and let your users comment on it. A popup window displays the video and commenting area; as a video is viewed the comments associated with a current video time will be displayed, viewers can also see all comments and jump to a specific point in time. The comment area can accept a comment at given point in the video and saves itself in the existing word press database so no additional configuration is needed. All comments are listed in the individual post as a regular comments (with timecode) and can be easily modified or removed by the editor. (You really need to see this one to appreciate it).

As I play around with video more and more, I find it interesting to see what tools are available to make this media more accessible and interesting for everyone. I think all 3 of these plugins can help you create visual interest for your own blog and give your readers a little something extra to appreciate.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: caching, editor, plugins, video, video on your site, WordPress, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Me: Although I know logically that Bold Interactive is primarily an online marketing blog, somehow I tend to think of it in more far-reaching terms. I almost feel like I’m listening to my own life coach when I read the posts. Because of that, I decided I needed to pick Nathania’s brain, and find out why I felt that way.

Nathania, your company’s online marketing blog affects me in a personal, life-coach kind of way. Why is that? What point of view do you have that transforms marketing into something much broader?

Nathania: Thank you. That’s a huge compliment! The types of marketing we’re encouraging companies to do are new – at least to them. Social media, blogging, conversation marketing – it can all seem intimidating if you’re used to direct mail, broadcast media, and traditional PR. Even if you’ve been doing online marketing for years, the way online marketing is being conducted and received is changing. So my goal is to help people feel positive about the change.

There’s a ton of bloggers out there who write about specific technical tips for SEO, paid search, social media, etc. But I know that long-term success is based on the values behind these techniques. There is a reason why social media works. There is a reason why blogging increases conversions. I’m here to help you with the why.

Me: Ok, in layman’s terms, what is conversational marketing? It sounds so…friendly.

Nathania: Conversational marketing is when companies stop pushing products and start engaging customers. It has to be friendly because if it’s not, it won’t work. The core component of conversational marketing is listening. Think about times when you truly felt listened to. That’s how everyone wants to feel, but these moments seem unfortunately rare. So if you’re looking to stand out among the competition, then conversational marketing is the way to go. (Of course, you have to be genuine about it.) But even if all of your competitors engage in conversational marketing, you’ll still stand out. Because no one can communicate and connect authentically in exactly the same way that YOU can.

Me: I know you’re a part of a team at Bold Interactive, but you seem to be the blogger of the bunch. Are you the official blogger, or do you just have the most to say? And more importantly, does that have anything to do with your past political consulting job? (ducks and runs)

Nathania: Anyone at Bold can blog, but so far I’m the only one who does it. That has made me the face of Bold by default, I guess you could say. But it’s not because I have the most to say. Adam Schultz, our CEO, has the most to say. He just doesn’t have the time or patience to type it all out. His mind works at a million miles an hour.

Your question about my blogging being related to my prior work as a political consultant was unexpected! I hadn’t quite thought of them being related. My career has been in marketing, communications, and PR no matter what industry I’m working in at the time. But now that I think about it, my work in politics has shaped who I am as a blogger. Mostly, it has taught me what NOT to do! Politics is a nasty, dirty game whether you’re a donkey or an elephant. It’s so ironic to watch the parties smear each other because they both engage in the same dirty tactics.

Politics is the antithesis of where marketing is trending right now. It’s not about real conversation. No one really feels listened to. And when there’s so much at stake, desperate measures usually take hold. Consumers are almost always the ones to lead an industry into the realm of social media and conversation marketing. But consumers have yet to truly lead politicians in that direction. Don’t be fooled by YouTube debates or MySpace profiles. We have a long way to go before politicians from either party start being transparent!

Me: If you could package up some bold words of wisdom into a one-line fortune in a fortune cookie, what would it be?

Nathania: Ha! This question is so ironic because my previous employer was Fortune Interactive. So we like to say Fortune Favors the Bold. But if you’re looking for something original, try this:

“Stop chasing after other people’s success, and instead create your own.”

Me: Finally, do you have any other sites we should know about?

Nathania: I have my personal blog (nathaniajohnson.com) where I write about TV, Movies, Music, Politics, Fashion, Religion, etc. TV is dominating my posts right now because I love TV and there are a ton of incredible new shows on. Pushing Daisies, Life, Aliens in America, Journeyman, Private Practice, and Bionic Woman – I’m just blown away by the quality of television this season. That might make me sound like a couch potato, but I’m a screenwriter, improvisor, and indie filmmaker “on the side.”

Me: I can’t thank Nathania enough for taking the time to answer my questions and letting us all get to know her just a bit better. Add her to your roster of people to learn from, would you? She’s a great resource to have.

There’ll be another great interview with someone else on Monday. Look for it!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Adam Schultz, Aliens in America, America, CEO, Fortune Favors, life coach, online marketing, online marketing blog, political consultant, Politics, screenwriter, social media, social media works, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Presenting your knowledge in unique ways can turn ordinary information into extraordinary content. People learn and absorb information in different ways. Some respond better to visuals, others to sound, and yet others to the written word. By using various methods of presentation, you are more likely to capture attention. That attention can then be turned into profit, via word of mouth buzz, links, traffic, conversions, and sales.

So, while you are working on creating content via the tried-and-true methods of Web 1.0, such as ebooks, start researching various Web 2.0 presentation methods as well. Here are a few to kick off your research.

Podcasts – I’m sure many of you have already experienced podcasts. They are fairly simple to create, and I will be showing the process I use to create them in a tutorial in the future. Podcasts are especially useful to people who like to absorb content while on the move – commuting, jogging, working, etc. This enables you to reach users even when they aren’t sitting at their computers.

Videos – This is the YouTube generation, no doubt about it. Anyone can create videos and share them with the world, and the world eats them up. This is a really great way to demonstrate how to do something, and make it drop-dead simple for others to understand what you are trying to show.

So far, we’ve covered ebooks, podcasts, and videos, and while there’s a good chance you haven’t actually created all of these forms of content yet, you probably have at least thought about how to do so at least once. But the list doesn’t stop there. There are plenty of other ways to present content in unique, compelling ways. Here are a few more ideas for you.

Mashups – Wikipedia defines a mashup as a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; a typical example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data from Craigslist, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally envisaged by either source. While it may take a little extra effort, or even the help of an outside source, to mix and mash together data from different sites to create something new and innovative, the result can be enormously popular – and profitable.

Screencasts and Sketchcasts – Like videos, screencasts and sketchcasts enable you to visually show your users how to do something, because they will be able to watch as you do it yourself. The process is fairly easy to do, and your readers will really appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time to recreate each step of some process yourself, while allowing the users to “look over your shoulder” while you do so.

Mindmaps – Mindmaps enable you to display complex subject matters in an easier-to-comprehend visual presentation. Here’s a good example.

As Web 2.0 evolves, more and more innovative presentation techniques are being created. Pay attention to the forms that are most intriguing to you. If you appreciate them, it’s highly likely that others will as well. You can use these innovative presentation forms to create your own unique content that can turn your site or blog into a profitable, traffic-laden destination.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: content presentation, distinct web service, ebooks, Google, integrated tool, mashups, mindmaps, podcasts, sketchcasts, Videos, web application, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Music and lyrics published before 1922 are in the public domain, but sound recordings of any music never go into public domain. You can record those old public domain songs yourself if you want. That can be used legally. Or you can record your own original music and use it however you want, of course. Anything else requires that you shell out some money to license something.

Unless you plan on using a lot of recorded clips, the pricing isn’t too bad, so it’s not a big issue. A one-time fee of around $20 is certainly doable, but of course, paying that kind of money many times would be prohibitively expensive for many of us. But if, like me, you only need one clip, then ponying up $20 isn’t too big of an issue.

So where do you get these clips? I bought mine at PD Info, and I also checked out Music2Hues, which I think may be affiliated with PD Info. I spent several hours on PDInfo’s downloads page, listening to clips from each of their categories.

So, now you know how to get your own cool music clips for your next project. Good luck!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: licensing, music clips, public domain, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.