SEO Werkt!

If you’ve ever been on a long road trip, you know that you see some crazy things when driving through the country. When you’re driving, you can’t just grab a camera and take a picture. Thankfully, Hack a Day has put together a guide for mounting cameras to your car so you can take pictures with a single click without fumbling over the camera itself. More »

When KK Bold Creative Director, Clayton Hove, tweeted “Saw a bird had crapped on a Smart Car. Totaled it.” Smart Car could’ve ignored the tweet, or made some lame joke, or worse, been defensive. Instead they tweeted back “Couldn’t have been one bird. Sounds more like 4.5 million (Seriously, we did the math).” and included a link to awesomely hilarious infographic on how many various birds that exactly would be.

The idea was from their agency, Razorfish. Kudos guys – love an agency that pushes their clients to do crazy things like this, and love a brand that says “heck yeah!”

…I’m writing a book!  Actually I’m writing the only book I’ve ever wanted to write, Think Like a Rockstar!  Rockstars have passionate fans that absolutely love them, so why can’t brands as well?  The short answer is they CAN, and Think Like a Rockstar will show companies and organizations how they can cultivate advocates for their brands and the business value in doing so!

Here’s some of the main areas that will be addressed by Think Like a Rockstar:

• Who are your brand’s fans, and why you need to connect with them instead of simply trying to ‘acquire’ new customers.  I’ll walk you through how to not only recognize your fans, but how to connect with them and even how to convert ‘ranters’ into ‘ravers’ (If your company has been struggling with how to respond to ‘negative’ feedback online, this is for you!).  I’ll also profile individual brand advocates so you can learn what makes these customers so very special.
• I’ll walk you through exactly what Rockstars do to connect with and cultivate their fans.  And a lot of what they do is completely confusing and counter-intuitive to most marketers.  They do crazy things like give away their product to the people that are most willing to buy it, and instead of trying to blast marketing messages to millions, they go out of their way to connect with only a dozen or two customers at a time.  But their methods work, and you’ll learn why.  Also, if your company is one of the many struggling to build engagement around your social media marketing efforts, Think Like a Rockstar will teach you how to solve this common marketing problem.
• An overview to becoming a Fan-Centric company.  Yep, after this you’ll have no more excuses!  This will show you what needs to happen both internally and externally in order to create a framework where you are directly connected to your brand’s fans, and they to you.
• And oh yes, there will be case studies, lots and lots of case studies!  I’ll look at dozens of examples of how both Rockstars and brands are embracing and empowering their biggest fans.  I’ll walk you through exactly what they did, explain why it worked, and show you how you can apply those lessons to YOUR marketing efforts!

I’ll be sharing more in the coming days/weeks/months about Think Like a Rockstar leading up to its publication (I’ll be sharing with you those dates as soon as they are nailed down).  Think Like a Rockstar will be published by McGraw-Hill and I could not be happier to be working with them.  Plus my editor, Casey Ebro, immediately ‘got’ why the idea behind Think Like a Rockstar was so big, and has been so enthusiastic about this project.  That’s critical, if you are thinking about writing a book, the importance of having a passionate editor that believes in the potential of your idea cannot be understated.

For the last four years, people have been asking me ‘So, when are YOU going to write a book?’  I haven’t written a book because I didn’t want to write a book, I wanted to write THIS book.  Seriously, this is the only book I’ve ever wanted to write, ‘writing a book’ is not on my bucket list but I wanted to write this book because I believe in the concept that strongly.

This wouldn’t be happening without the help and advice of many people, but I wanted to mention a few friends that really helped me turn this project into reality.  They are Beth Harte, Lisa Petrilli, Lou Imbriano, Ann Handley and Amy Africa.  And an additional thanks to Lisa for introducing me to my agent, Linda Langton, who was an immense catalyst in helping this project see the light of day.  I’ll have a future post on the value of getting an agent versus going it alone when trying to get a book deal (and I tried both!).

Thanks to everyone that’s been so supportive of my being able to write Think Like a Rockstar.  Now if you don’t see me blogging as much here for the next 4-5 months, hopefully you’ll understand why

If you’re reading this right now, you already know what day it is: iPad day.

We headed down to the 5th Ave. flagship store in Manhattan this morning to see just how crazy things would get, but truth be told, the mood was quiet. In fact, the media seemed to be the most raucous, while soon-to-be iPad owners simply tried to keep warm in the freezing mist.

Since it was before the crack of dawn, many of the people standing in line were still rather sleepy, but as I searched through the crowd for an enthusiastic face, I came up with a familiar one instead. Remember that girl who stood in line for 40 hours when the iPad 2 launched, only so she could sell her spot for $900?

She’s baaaaaaack. Unfortunately, her big offers (one topping out at $2,000) fell through. Maybe it was because she wasn’t first in line this time, but third.

We also caught up with the second person to leave the Apple Store with an iPad (NY1, Bloomberg, and others believe he was the first, but the first actually ran off without speaking to the media). He flew in from Brazil to pick one up for his friend and him, and seemed intensely emotional about it.

“Apple products have changed my life,” he said.

Cats doing crazy things, talking and/or dancing and/or laughing babies and zombies are soooo over. Ok, maybe not cats, but regardless, Dogvertising seems to be all the rage lately. Sometimes when it doesn’t even make sense. But that’s ok because who doesn’t love to see a furry, wurry, fluffy wuffy wittle bitty doggie in a ad, huh?

*ahem, ok* Anyway, if this puppy-packed ad for Purina from Leo Burnett doesn’t give you the warm and fuzzies inside then you have no soul man.

I have heard so many crazy things about Klout and I am seeing the same myths repeated over and over again. So, I asked some of the leaders in our industry some questions related to the Klout myths I see often. I highly suggest that those that are doing SEO, social media and also those [...]

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Sometimes I hear voices … they suggest I do crazy things … and sometimes they end up being the best things I’ve done!

Speaking of 'Crazy Ideas'

Okay, that’s one of the strangest first lines of a post that I’ve written but it struck me today as I was looking back over the past few years that some of the most successful things that I’ve done have often started out as a “crazy idea.”

Perhaps it is just my personality type, but I’m a prolific idea generator. Barely a day goes by when I don’t have at least one idea for a new product, blog post, or even new blog. Sometimes the ideas are simply extensions on what I’ve done previously, but occasionally I get a really crazy idea—something that is either really big, or something that makes me laugh and shake my head.

For a long time I would simply push aside the crazy ideas, but I’m learning to at least give them a second thought these days, because the ones I’ve acted upon do have a history of working.

Let me give you some examples of “crazy ideas” that I’ve had that have worked out well, or which I’m currently working on building up:

• Bestselling ebook: One “crazy idea” that I’ve written about recently was 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. The original idea came on 30 July 2005, when I decided that I’d write a 31 day series of blog posts here on ProBlogger, each day containing homework for readers. It was crazy because I’d never done a series that long before, I’d not really given readers “homework” to do before, and because I decided to start it the following day with no promotion or planning. The idea paid off—it eventually evolved into my bestselling ebook.
• Successful conference: Another “crazy idea” was to hold my first ProBlogger training day. I started pondering what would happen if I held a training day for bloggers in Melbourne. Again it was something I decided to do on the spur of the moment. The period from my having the idea to running the training day itself was a matter of weeks. I’d had no experience in planning conferences, had no venue, and didn’t know how much to charge or even what we’d do on the day. Again, the idea paid off—we’ve now held two training days and there’s significant demand for more (we’re planning some exciting events for 2012).
• ProBlogger “Tour down under”: One more “crazy idea” that looks like becoming a reality dawned on me on the way home from a conference in one of Australia’s northern states (Queensland). The state has some of the most beautiful beaches and natural wonders that you’ll ever see and, on the spur of the moment, I tweeted out that I wanted to run a competition to get bloggers form overseas to come do a tour with me of some of our country’s most beautiful regions. Among the tweet replies that came in from hundreds of bloggers wanting to come on the tour were a couple of replies from Aussie Tourism boards. Those conversations continue today—watch this space to see if this was another crazy idea that might pay off!
• ProBlogger clothing range: Lastly, a fourth “crazy idea” that I’ve had for a couple of years now, and which looks like it might come to be, is the long-awaited “Blogger Work Ware” range of clothes. Again, this started as a crazy tweet saying I wanted to develop a range of “work clothes” for bloggers: PJs, bathrobes, and so on—after all, we’re known for blogging in our PJs are we not? The number of people who responded that they’d buy a bathrobe or PJs was overwhelming. I’m now looking at it more seriously (watch this space).

Of course I’ve had my fair share of crazy ideas that I’ve not done anything with, or which have failed. But in each of the cases I’ve mentioned here, the ideas came out of the blue and, for some reason, just wouldn’t go away.

In each case, the reaction I had straight after having the idea was to either laugh or gasp. In most cases, the reaction was the same when I told those around me. I’m learning that the laugh and gasp reactions are good. They tell you that you’ve thought of something a little out of the box—something that will, at the very least, get noticed.

The other thing I did each time was to share my crazy idea with others. In some cases, it was with another couple of people who I trusted, and some cases the “test” was to share it more widely (on Twitter in the last two cases) to see if the idea had any resonance beyond my imagination.

What has been your most crazy idea that has paid off?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Listen to Your “Inner Crazy Voice”

You may have seen a crazy video making the rounds this week in which a crazy guy cutting a parking meter off with a saw to avoid getting a parking ticket.  The video’s description read, “caught this guy on my iPhone during a cab ride in Brooklyn: a cop was giving these two guys a ticket because their van was parked by an expired parking meter and one of them got really mad and cut off the meter with a saw!!! Gotta love Brooklyn!”  It’s true.  Crazy things do happen in Brooklyn.  But today Thinkmodo revealed that this particular instance was nothing but a viral hoax, produced to promote the movie In Time, which hits theaters today.
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